Editing Tales of Linus (section)

== Child's Play with The Admiral ==
Nathaniel "The Admiral" was a bard I played who... was a very crappy bard. His story began in the bathtub of a fancy tavern which he subsequently broke out of by stealing everything valuable in the room and sneaking out the window.
Over the course of a few weeks he:

*Stole an entire tavern, board and nails, because he had a grudge against the owner
*Dug a hole at that tavern's site 120 feet down in broad daylight, and somehow stumbled upon a cavern with a god's artifact or some bullshit which he took, then threw away out of boredom
*Pretended to be a clergyman to get out of having to pay for his crimes
*Posed as a gardener to robe a noble's house, and nat 20'd when forced to do a prof: gardener check
*Fought a bunch of fish-monsters at a nearby lake to make some spare coin from the local guard
*Was hired to knock down an old house on a hill overnight in order to collect a reward

Understandably, the DM wanted him dead. Yeah? I don't like to think this character was That Guy, mostly because I was playing without a party, and the people watching (characters were separated so people watched other people's play sessions for shits and giggles) loved his plucky and off the wall way of doing things.

Like, he walked around with a wooden toy ship he said was his own vessel, of which he was the Admiral of an entire armada. When people questioned this he Barded it up and told them the scarily convincing tale of the dreaded Curse Kraken in the Underdark's Ocean, which people claimed didn't exist, but shortly after he convinced them it did. Kraken and all.

The Curse Kraken cursed his fleet and shrunk it all, and only by diving into the dreaded waters himself did he not get shrunken and eaten. He saved his own ship, wearing it as a hat as he swam for days and days to shore, climbed out of the underdark, and that's that. None of it was true, but everyone believed it.

Another time he saw a carriage flip and pin a few guards, and some people went to help lift it.
The crowd stops, helpers and all, and he tells them he knows exactly what to do in this situation. So he then tells the people who were about to lift the carriage to... lift the carriage. And with some easy diplomacy he becomes The Admiral, saviour of the common man, by tricking people into thinking it was his master planning that saved the two lives. He was just... that kind of guy. His mission was to steal all the glory and fame he could, while doing none of the work. And I did, for the longest time.

The DM decided to force an actually quest on him finally, to knock down this old house. Turns out it was a haunt and, after entering it to see where the weakest points were, it sealed him in with three NPCs.
After some careful exploring which nearly killed one NPC off the bat, the Admiral finds it's haunted by the ghost of some little girl and she's wanting people to play with her. Forever.

Who didn't see that coming? Raise of hands. None? Thought so.

The Admiral wants none of this shit, and tells the little girl to release them or he'll ground her.
She practically kills him in one fell blow, so he changes his tune and is suddenly anxious to play these games.

It's up to me to decide, with the NPCs, what games we play. Hide and seek is suggested all around, and so it begins. The Admiral wisely runs and finds a window, thinking he'll climb outside and run away.

Outside is now an abyss of nothing, but, the windows at least open. So he climbs to the roof and waits there, and suddenly parts of it start exploding as "she" looks for him and the others. She doesn't notice him behind the chimney though, and searches elsewhere. Eventually he's teleported back to her, minus one NPC, who was found. She explains he's... in the loser box. When asked what that was, she opened a crack in the ground and showed NPC being tortured horribly by several black tendril arms in a dark corner of her private abyssal universe.

The NPCs vote on other games that'll cause there to be losers, but the Admiral wisely chooses some that have no losers. Just ties. Like tic tac toe, etc. She claims she's bored of these because nobody "loses" and says she'll kill him if they don't play something fun.
A little diplomacy later, the Admiral convinces her that there aren't enough people for proper games, so she summons her dead family and other "losers" to play with them. Enter about thirteen NPCs to help pad the numbers and keep me alive. Thank god.

"Red rover, red rover send.... that corpse guy over?"

And he fails to make it through our line, so he goes to the loser box.
Pretty much goes like that for awhile, doing all sorts of games, until she decides to play Catch. Catch consists of throwing a magical ball that inflicts negative energy damage on touch, and if you drop it you lose automatically.
The Admiral suggests that they used apples when he was a kid, and fails to convince her to change to harmless apples, 'cause DM's tired of my shit and wants me dead.

We begin to throw the ball around, NPCs and I getting closer and closer to dead each time we catch the ball.
Eventually one of the NPCs throws it to the girl, who I distract. Bardic performance.

She drops the ball, yuck yuck yuck. She uses her god-like powers in her haunt to make the ball float back to her hands and claims it didn't touch the ground, but the Admiral says he won't play with cheaters and vehemently storms off to nowhere in particular. This pisses her off and she "kills" six of her raised family members in anger, after agreeing she did in fact lose. As icing on the cake, the Admiral makes her apologize for cheating, and she's righteously pissed at this point. She decides she wants to play one more game, winner takes all, so the Admiral is fine with that. He picks Musical Chairs, and offers to play the music. The NPCs and remaining "family" have to try and survive while the girl teleports a chair under her each time the music ends.

The Admiral also plays ten minute long songs, just to piss her off even more, 'cause fuck this girl. Some bluff/sense motive between the NPCs and I give them a sort of coded nod to when I'll be stopping, so they don't lose to the girl and statues. It comes down to the girl and the NPCs, and I have a good fifteen minute song going when she tells me if I don't stop soon I'll lose the game myself.
Tragically, the music does stop, as the Admiral snaps one of his own lute strings.

The NPCs were given the nod before he snapped it, so as the music stops, they sit. The girl, distracted, doesn't get her chair teleported to her because it's now an occupied object. She loses, she rages, she's downright pissed. She says we don't get to leave, ever, unless we pick somebody to stay behind. Forever.

So the Admiral and another NPC look at the third one, shrug, and say "kill that guy."

Then she releases the Admiral and the other after he's sucked down and horribly killed. The DM looks at me and goes "You.. didn't want to solve the haunt or save him or anything?"

I shrug and say no, leave, report the haunt to the temple authorities, get paid after they destroy it and tear the whole house down (finishing my own job for me in the process) and I go about my normal Admiral business.