Editing Tales of Linus (section)

== Ryler the Unrealistically Lucky ==
''Linus the Skeltal  08/02/14(Sat)19:31:17 No.33845672
:''I just remembered one last one, about a fighter atheist named Ryler the Rook, who in the face of an invasion of undead that threatened to conquer the town he lived in, and despite seeing miracle after miracle, never wavered in his stubborn refusal to acknowledge the gods existence. This was one character who actually had a slight party, too, of other PCs.

There's a small town called Bordo, with a local lizardman and undead problem. Couple attacks, no big deal though. Enter the cleric, Nevin, an elf worshiper of Pelor whose goal in life is to get rid of all undead ever and for always. Despite worshipping a god of such nobility, he runs around the battlefield shouting "FUCK UNDEAD!" and "I LOVE YOU PELOR!" at the top of his lungs.

Then there was Huh. Huh is a ranger two-weapon-fighter I can't remember the name of with undead as his favored enemy, and was really good at tracking and always fought defensively. With the monk vows he was allowed to take, the cleric had like a 36 AC from all his stats and bonuses. The Ranger had a lower, sadder, 27. And then there was Ryler, my unarmed two weapon fighting fighter who was straight "let's punch them..." attitude.

He had a 7 int. An 8 cha. And an 8 wis. He should not have been capable of rational thought, but I rolled to "have ideas" from time to time and was the smartest and most helpeful of the group. Oh, and he was an orthodox atheist (don't ask how) who refused ANY evidence of the gods existence and laughed at people that worshiped them.

So our rag-tag party is sent out to investigate some undead seen in the area, and in doing so, we come across a giant tower filled with the bastards. The Cleric wants to go get help from the small town, like form a mob. He's tried this in the past, and gotten them all killed against other undead raids, so even if we went back it'd be a waste. The ranger wants to scout and find a back way in. Ryler wants to scale those walls, and he does (he had one rank put in climb every level, since he only got ONE skill point for low int and all that, and was an awesome climber with his strength bonus).

DC 30? Made it 1/3. DC 25 at this point? Failed it... take damage. Try again.

Ryler stubbornly scaled that fucker until he made it to the top, the cleric convinced he'd have to drag a body back to town and pay to res me. But Ryler got up there, punched a few skeleton archers off the roof, and snapped their bows instead of taking them back to town to use against undead. Because that's what Ryler does.

So he turns to go into the tower where the wraith one level below bursts through the hatch and goes for him. Ryler is not a clever man. He leaps off the tower, aiming for an old well he saw on the way up it, and splashes into its murky disgusting probably infested waters. Before he gets caught by the obvious undead traps down there he swims up, making all the fort saves against diseases. The Wraith flies down, but the cleric slaughters it with some holy channels and spell-flinging.

And then the double doors to the tower open, and the ghasts and wrights pour out in waves and waves, along with skeletons and zombies.
It's a clusterfuck. It's violent and bloody and awful. It's Ryler's home sweet home, and he jumps into the middle of it swinging like a madman, while the others are ordering a retreat.

Ryler begins to climb a large wall in the courtyard that's a bit shit and crumbled, but keeps him from being surrounded. He kicks off and beats down any undead that climb up there, and thankfully no archers or spell-slingers are around anymore. The wights get creative and start hitting the wall to knock it down, while everything else in the world chases the ranger (who was nasuated and could only run) and the cleric (leaving me for dead and trying to save his friend ranger, Mr. Huh)

Ryler, in a burst of brilliance, braces his feet against one edge of the wall and pushes off with all his might, teetering it while backflipping to the ground. The strength check shatters the last few stones at its base and it crumbles onto the undead trying to knock it down, killing an entire swarm of wights and two carnwights. Ryler makes the acrobatics to land safely, and begins to beat the shit out of the rest of the undead. The Ranger hides and the Cleric comes back to help, seeing that I've beaten off a good deal of them, and heals me wile using his out-the-ass-AC to avoid hits. So the Undead focus the only thing they can, Ryler with his AC of like 13... And he just punches his way through them all, until we win.
Level up.
Loot acquired: Old stone tower and shit inside.

Well, we scrap it for all it's worth, which was nothing. Turns out it'd been emptied by the undead leader or something, and only this small force was left behind. Signs of a larger threat and all that.

We go back to town, which has been hit by an undead attack (small but still deadly) while we were gone. They say they need to be safer, and we mention the tower, which people consider relocating to. Ranger and Cleric point out the lack of defenses it had and how easily overwhelmed it'd be, plus no resources or food etc.

So they say they should build a wall or something instead.

Ryler, while they all start talking about what to do, begins to punch down every tree between town and the tower. He hauls them back himself, until people begin going in work parties to help him, and they begin to make new houses or walls or weapons from the lumber. Some make wagons to help haul them back. Eventually he gets to the tower, and they question what to do with it. Ryler tells them to stay back, and goes inside, looking around. He punches a wall, and it cracks a little. Strength 21, plus power attack, etc. Bypasses hardness and begins to break the large stone walls slowly and slowly, bit for bit, until some of them crumble apart. He breaks gaps in several portions, moving from place to place, weakening the base overall so the tower will collapse on its own weight.
Eventually it does, and he hauls ass as it falls down, spilling into the woods as boulders fly. We roll checks to see if he gets crushed, and he doesn't. He is deafened for two days though.

But Ryler doesn't need ears to DO. And doing is what he does.

With the work parties, Ryler begins to load stones and haul them back to tone, giant fucking slabs of the things, to make walls around the whole town. And then a new barracks, siege towers, and siege weapons. A tradeship comes by and rather than evacuate we prepare for an undead invasion, getting all the silver we can for ourselves off them.

Ryler digs a moat and clears the woods back some more to provide line of sight. The Cleric and Ranger keep up moral, help with building, and do everything Ryler can't, basically.

The day of the undead invasion, we're well prepared. They have 300+ forces in additional to sevearl Crypt Things, riding Nightmares, some Ghosts, and they're lead by a Vampire Noble and his Vampire Spawn.

They come in force, and the smarter Cleric and Ranger dictate forces and help turn the tide, while the defenses we've built up force the undead to play carefully rather than overwhelm us. The Ghosts try to possess the siege weapons but can't, because they've been consecrated. Townsfolk are moved to the churches for protection. Ryler operates one siege weapon as a loader of heavy rocks while the crew aims and fires.

We do well, for a time.

Then we start losing men. They burrow up from below. They fly in, teleport in. They're charmed and walk off the ramparts willingly. In the end we force them to retreat, but the Vampire Noble teleports into town to confront us and proposes a truce, for now. Why would we agree?

He points out how lucrative it'd be, for us at least, and the Cleric is keen to hear him out if only to save some lives. The Ranger and I? Not so keen. We nod to one another, aim two siege weapons, and fire.

Direct. Hits.

Barely hurts him.

He charms us into fighting some townsfolk and the Cleric uses his pretty much one-time-use prayer to his god that the DM homebrews in. He asks for this vampire threat to be smitten off the face of the world.

Ryler witnesses his first miracle as holy light from Pelor himself eradicates the vampire beyond dust.

Everyone is in awe of this, until Ryler, being Ryler, berates the town for making him do all the work. Since he'd hit the vampire with a siege weapon, clearly that's what'd done it.

When the Cleric tries to point out the obvious miracle Ryler shakes his head and calls him stupid.

Some time passes, the town is beyond saving because of our losses, so we abandon it and journey north to help others. Along the way, the cleric and ranger part company from me to go investigate the undead fortress itself.

Ranger dies when a minor reaper appears and kills him.

Cleric runs off, surviving in the woods with some NPCs while undead hunt him.

Ryler goes north and runs into lizardmen, who capture him to use as a human sacrifice.

Well, Ryler won't take their shit. They've cut his palms and feet to "reduce his strength check" so he can't break the ropes, according to the DM. He's on a totem in the middle of a camp near a bonfire, in the sunlight, and is getting sunburn. He's hungry thirsty and annoyed.

He's constantly insulting the lizardmen, and when he asks their holy man to explain their god to him, he actually spits in the lizardman's open mouth while the preaching is going on.

If Ryler weren't needed as a sacrifice, they'd've killed him LONG before this point, because he kept talking about how unfuckably ugly their women were, or anything he could thing of to annoy them into killing him.

Eventually, in desperation, Ryler prays to any gods above- or below- that he'd like to be saved please.

The DM quirks a brow and tells me to roll high on the d100, or the prayer won't go off. I get a 98.

Light from below turns them all to ash, and frees Ryler, and some dark deity releases him and gives him an unavoidable quest to yadda yadda bullshit. Ryler snorts and proclaims allowed that he has to do everything himself, and clearly he finally broke the ropes and the lizards ran off in a hurry. Couldn't be divine. Gods don't exist.

He begins to travel along the coast, a few days later coming across another band of lizardmen. This one has a magic-sword-wielding badass of super strength and enhanced stats, who despite Ryler's best efforts at running away, chases him. And I mean chased. Ryler ran and ran using his Run feet for all it was worth, until the DM told me to roll fort saves. And every fort save I had to make, I passed, for like seven in-game hours Ryler was running full sprint full movement speed across the beach, but these lizards somehow kept pace. So in a desperate move he jumps into the ocean and swims for it. Fatal mistake- this lizard is FASTER in the ocean.

He catches up and starts swinging, until a dire shark appears and swallows both of them whole.

Inside the gut of this shark they scramble not to get pulled into its stomach, until they hear a WOOOORSHing noise and the shark opens its mouth, revealing the inside of some LARGER SEA CREATURE that ate it. Ryler and the Lizardman fight to the death, with Ryler winning, barely, and he asks for another miracle to put him safely back on land away from anything that'll harm him.

The DM snorts and says no, but it's not technically against his homebrewed rules. So he says I need to roll high, again.

I throw the dice, and we stare at them.

The DM turns to the watchers, Cleric and Ranger's players, and asks "Should I allow this miracle?"

Cleric says no, so the DM said "it fails..." and I stare, annoyed, at the 99 on the D100 roll.

And so somewhere, in the stomach of a great beast, Ryler has failed his quest for the dark god of destruction and was turned to stone. His statue rests in the decaying bones of a leviathan monster at the bottom of the waves, a testament to the enduring don't-give-a-shit-attitude he kept in life. The statue is laying on its side, boredly picking dirt from its fingernails.

As a bonus, after turning to a statue and dying, Ryler saw the God of Destruction face to face. The god wiped him out from existence, destroyed his very soul, so that he never again can be. Heaven and hell are not possibilities for Ryler, because he has no soul to send to paradise or torment.

For Ryler, it proves only one thing: There is no heaven and hell. There are no gods.
In oblivion, he is proved right, and that is his final laugh at the world.