Editing Tales of Linus

{{Story}}
After a post came up asking for GMPC stories, one Anon brought up his story about Linus, a skeletal bartender.
He then went on to detail a few more tales from that campaign linked to different characters he played, constantly battling the whims of a PC-Murder-Happy GM.
These tales include a guard who refused to be beaten by win-or-die rolls, a merchant witch who screwed over an incubus, a compulsive liar who outsmarted an infant ghost, and a determined atheist who was convinced that he proved religion to be false.


== The Arrival of Linus the Skeltal ==
''Anonymous  08/02/14(Sat)15:31:21 No.33842841
:''What about a skellington, who is pretty average stat-wise(or not fighting at all) and is used as comic relief?


I played a skeleton bartender named Linus once. He'd save the day by wading through undead-heavy puzzles on his own, stockpiled foodstuffs for everybody else in the bag of holding in his ribs, had a million puns that'd be the death of you, and had absolutely no combative skill what-so-ever except throwing his foodstuffs. Usually in a fight it boiled down to "Fighter, throw me!"
And then he'd get hurled, which makes sense kinda 'cause skeletons are only around 20lbs, plus his extra carrying weight?
And then he'd throw Molotov cocktails and pickled eggs or herring.
A lich ended up taking him over, and I wasn't allowed to play the character anymore because it was a "no evil allignment" game and he automatically became evil once controlled.
Nevermind saving throws. Those didn't exist for me because I was "just a corpse" with "no will"


''Anonymous  08/02/14(Sat)16:17:47 No.33843417
:''But the monster manual even says all undead substitute fortitude for will saves, which means they get will saves... your GM is silly


He's wasn't great, but I don't play with him anymore. I found a new one that's almost as bad.

He has his own GMPC who is an edgy Paladin of Homebrewed Luck God. He's crossed the Underdark three times alone, killed dragons and liches, found a god's artifact, stopped three wars, and is only level nine.

The highest level PC in the campaign to date has been my level eleven fighter.
Everyone else manages to die around level 5, because he kills them off before they get strong enough to matter, or get leadership, or anything else.

And he homebrews so many rules and feats and things that it's essentially not D&D anymore, then forgets what his ruling was and changes it to fit what he wants that moment. We started writing them down as he made them and he'd say "I changed it." and ignore the written version he'd approved already.

I take solace in the fact that I've pissed him off more than enough times by surviving his deathtraps.

Re: "Zane the Unkillable" and "Teatime with Teagan" and "Child's Play with The Admiral"
I can post a story of any of those if anybody cares..


Obviously, /tg/ calls for story time...

== Zane the Unkillable ==
It's.... very long. Very very long. But sure. Two sides notes: DM loves "story" and will go to great lengths to stroke his ego and make "epic stories" that don't necessarily need PCs involved. DM also likes to keep PCs separate until they meet, to avoid that cliche tavern start, so there hasn't BEEN a party yet.
Roll up a fighter diplomancer, because fuck beatsticks. Charisma score good, diplo and bluff acceptable for what I want to do with him. Give him heavy crossow and ranged feats, this was before I knew about class archetypes like a fighter that specifically builds crossbows.
Tell DM about my backstory: ex-guard turned bandit, who wants to make a bandit gang and raid roads and woodlands.
DM convinces me to not be bandit yet saying I would die right away, might as well be guard first and see what causes me to stop, etc etc
Inserts his own Les Mis crap-plot about my guard captain boss, Taylor, who is basically Javert and rides my fucking ass to try and get me to quit and run off right away.
Stick it out, being a good guard, 'cause nothing IC justifies what "Zane" would consider worth running off.
DM decides to quicken things up or kill me off, 'cause I'm fucking up his epic storyline.
One day, on patrol, screams. Investigate house by knocking on door. No answer- in the name of the law kick it in!
Blood.
Everywhere.
On the walls, ceiling.
On me too.
Writing on walls says "you couldn't save them".
No clues, I'm questioned about it all, thrown in jail for "protection".
Released when more murders, couldn't have been me.
DM makes me roll nightly for nightmares because it was "so horrifying." Fail the saves and I wake up with exhausted condition, yay me.
Investigate murders in my off-time because it's what Zane would do.
Long story short, it's magic, and some asshole assassin mage was hired to be a serial killer and either pin it on me specifically or drive me insane and make me kill myself or other people. Didn't work out.

So I found where the bastard worked as his "cover" for being in my city, and go to his magic shop after hours and snoop around. Hidden path underground in back, leads to dungeon with all the victims, whose bodies always vanished, alive and well. Turns out illusions made up the corpses and he'd just been kidnapping people, and all were alive for now. I release them and hand them spare weapons in his weird-ass torture dungeon and send them out. He appears, and throws his strongest spells at me. Missing. Entirely. Zane gives chase, and for whatever fucking reason, I'd decided to buy like five quivers with max bolts in each. The mage is screaming "THAT ISN'T FAIR!" while I rapid fire his running ass and give chase, with him unable to stop long enough to throw more spells my way without me catching up and slaughtering him outright.

He ends up jumping onto a teleport pad I'd found and toyed with earlier, and I'd changed the exit point to be in a cell. He's stuck, because I close off the part he just stepped on, and I shoot him while he's trapped inside. Glorious.
I'm the hero of the force until, a few days later, somebody throws a bomb into my window and blows up my apartment and half the building, and I'm evicted (not that it was livable after that anyway).
I go to stay in the barracks like a recruit, and the DM one night tells me to "roll a perception check."
22. DM swears and looks at some notes, then tells me I hear somebody trying to open my window and picking the locks. I have Tricky Rope and a crossbow, so I set up a quick trap to let the rope do my shooting for me. Super rapid fire at this point, since I don't have to be the one to pull the trigger and can just load.
A witch and a bard try to sneak in and kill me in my sleep, both of them trying to use sleep effects on me after they notice I'm not only awake, but fully prepared to lay siege to my windowsill.
After a good deal of fighting I realize I'm outmatched and run for it.

Down the halls I sprint, a bard on a floating disk riding it like a jetbike, the witch on it with him ('cause fuck weight restrictions and all that) and throwing nearly-vorpal fucking chakram at me which start to rip me apart and return to him. Also, spells thrown at me. I'm running down the halls screaming and waking the ENTIRE BARRACKS THEY'RE ATTACKING ME INSIDE OF, and men pour out, slowly, to help. But are put to sleep immediately by bard and witch.
I dive out a window, roll not to take damage from the fall, and book it across the courtyard. The bard/witch fail their own saves and crash, and I start opening fire from distance, until they close in again and I run back inside. This time I corner them with some allies, and they blow themselves up to take me with them. Building collapses, plus giant explosion, roll reflex or taking ungodly crushing+fire damage.
I make the save, which the DM glares at, and Zane is kicked out of the Barracks just like he was kicked out of the apartment.
DM tells me a bit later that the perception check was "save or death" because they'd have slit my throat in my sleep, no save allowed.
So Zane survives, and finds out that those two were assassins, like Masked Mage Serial Killer, and had been hired to take him out since he beat the first assassin.

It occurs to Zane at this point that somebody is really out to get him, but I've met no powerful NPCs or pissed anybody wealthy or strong off. That I know of. I do some investigating, and find out that a underworld lord named "Crowley" who is a giant pedo and drug kingpin has been angered that I busted some of his men in one of my first sessions with Zane. And has hired killers to take me down. Zane, who cannot refuse a challenge, decides to go after this kingpin himself, off the books.
He waits a few days, knowing that somebody else will come for him, and sure enough they do. A fighter and a ranged specialist, like me, using more of those teleporting mats the mage guy had. He teleports roof to roof to roof shooting at me across the city, while my partner and I try to corner him. Eventually we get rid of enough mats that he can't pop around anymore and we confront him in the giant cul de sac of a noble district, where we really shouldn't be fighting. He throws firebombs at us and we stay in the open to avoid getting houses blown up, which is my duty as a guard. Eventually I run into a magic shop's tent where the owner is gone, and I wait, rolling a stealth check.

Also my guy has dabbled in alchemy in his off time and I roll a check to see if I recognize any alchemy potions, so I take a few. Health regen, fire resist, and dragon's breath.
The guy tries firing into the tent, but keeps missing. Then he burns down the tent, but I survive and am hidden so he comes down to investigate up close.

Zane fires from stealth and... misses. I re-roll stealth with huge minuses and he fails the perception, so Zane fires again, and, misses.
They toss their crossbows aside and start throwing bottles at one another, hitting each other with random effects. Zane uses the dragon's breath finally and the assassin throws a bottle which Zane realizes is a powerful alchemical bomb, so with an out the ass reflex he manages to catch it and throw it back at the assassin, who blows up.

Fuck due process. Zane slits his throat, then leaves, letting other guards figure out what went down.
He found on the corpse some orders, and decides to set a trap, since the orders say this guy should kill me then kidnap a new little boy sex toy for pedo Crowley.
Zane has a few underworld connections, people he's let go from time to time, and uses them to find a halfling that looks like a kid and hires him to pose as a new fuck toy. They go to the place Crowley wants and Zane hides inside, with the rogue halfling "kid" on the bed. Crowley turns out to be a tiefling rogue with more money than brains and goes for the kid, not noticing me. The kid fails his surprise attack, but I don't, and a huge fight starts up. Because I have my back to the closed door, Crowley doesn't get to leave or stab me in the back as a level seven rogue. I do take AOO from firing in melee range though, and kid halfling doesn't hit for shit when it matters. Barely, we kill Crowley, who turns out to be an evil Tieflinf ambassador to our land. I don't give a fuck, I vanish his corpse and pay the kid off and leave. Big bad evil kingpin is dead and it's before he's even supposed to be. DM is annoyed I figured out what was going on and set a trap and won, because he still wants his Les Mis plot and Taylor has been riding my character's ass this whole time, about inconsistencies in reports and blah blah blah. He knows something is up, but not that I just did us all a huge service by taking justice into my own hands.

For a time in-game it's all good, until a ranger assassin shows up. I growl, but the DM justifies it as "the last assassin I was supposed to face who was already paid" and he's still after me because he "enjoys the hunt."

Okay, fine. We fight through the city until I run out of town and ride off on horseback, with him chasing. We're firing, his bow and my crossbow, thundering through fields and past farms on a race towards death, until we kill one another's mounts and crash.

A close-quarters fight begins, but I have a +5 poisoned dagger I got off of Crowley and Weapon Finesse and more dex than strength, so I start landing some good blows. The Ranger, after a good deal of rolling around, asks me to stop before dealing my killing blow. I... do?
He concedes defeat and asks me to let him go, honorably, until we fight again. Zane's not one to pass a challenge and lets this assassin go, warning him there won't be a concession next time. Zane goes back to town on foot, bloody, exhausted, and truly tired of this shit. DM things I'm about to quit the guard but I don't, so he moves to phase II of "let's force what I want to happen onto your character."

''Linus the Skeltal  08/02/14(Sat)17:19:18 No.33844073
:''I should note that all this takes place between levels 3 and 4.. I got almost no experience for any of it, was expected constantly to die, and the assassins ranged from the weakest (level 4 mage) to the strongest (level seven ranger) and then Crowley himself, who was level seven with enhanced stats and out the ass gear.
Yeah. It was like that.

So the DM has an entire town go missing because Misc. Plot Line 5 going on elsewhere that nobody knows about is still going on. The army goes to investigate and needs volunteers. Zane is keen, and tags along, and after a month of riding they get to the giant sink-hole where the town was. It leads into bad parts of the underdark and the leader of the army regiment here says "Let's explore it!"

Zane is put in a squad of ten men who, lo and behold, get seperated and then, after an earthquake, seperated again. This earthquake was the result of either the barbed devil Zane talked out of killing everyone or the beblith that attacked them shortly after. And I'm still level 4 at this point.

Squad of ten becomes Zane and four others, stuck in a pile of stones and unable to get out. After careful engineering checks (because my fighter studies and knows shit) he figures out how to excavate stuff safely and digs them to a lower chamber, where a dungeon is. Said dungeon is filled with everything from phase spiders that he diplos into working for them to a "reclaimer" or something, which is a giant metal fire-spewing spider. Vampires, ropers, a gorgon, and several other lovable things such as gates to hell and nagas also show up. Zane somehow makes it past all, until they get to a last door, large and magic, and guarded by... an iron golem. Level four still.

Zane tells the people he's going through that door. They say no. He tries to get to the door and the golem starts swinging. Not only that, but four stone golems come out of the ground nearby and join in. Everyone runs, and Zane uses quick thinking to set a trap for them all. It involved two giant braziers, a 500ft pit, the spell "grease" and a little stone shaping. But, it didn't work, because while Zane bought them time to set things up, the dungeon sealed him from them and he was stuck five golems versus himself.

So what does a level 4 fighter do against a CR13, 11, 11, 11, and 11? He takes off the ring of blah blah blah he had on, throws it at the giant magical door, and shoots it to break it can cause an arcane backlash explosion (not sure if this is homebrew or legit, but apparently popping magical items causes BOOM).

The door, too, pops. So does the entire dungeon because of runes and spells. Rocks fall, everyone dies.
Except for my reflex I somehow make, avoiding not only the giant magical wave of death but the rocks that crush everything around me.
Zane survives while four stone golems are crushed, and the iron golem is buried. It begins to dig out, but I remind the DM that by his own rules if you dig out of a pile of rubble you roll a sleight of hand or it shifts and crushes you more. Iron golem can't make the DC and constantly crushes itself until death.

He gives me 1000exp for "shenanigans" and that's all. I go through the door, which leads to a catacombs. My party of NPCs hasn't caught up with me, and I doubt they will since the entire dungeon is rubble.
It takes about five minutes for Zane to come across a lich.

The Lich crawls out of its tomb and, off the bat, "maximized fireball" hits Zane. He lives, barely, and drinks a health potion. The Lich throws a "cone of cold" at my newly level five fighter, and he lives, again, because it rolled low.

Zane then makes the will save for a Circle of Death, and starts shooting magic candles around the Lich, popping them like he did the doorway, but the DM wised up and they're far enough apart there's no chain reaction.

The Lich then tries to use a sleep effect on Zane and he passes the save, so he tried again. A friend watching pointed out you can't use the same spell to knock him out for 24hrs but the DM said "it's different- this is something from my system" and left it at that. Obviously I failed this one. He tells me to roll a fortitude save... and I pass. While KO'd?

The DM grunts and I wake up later, apparently the new bitch of the Lich who left me alive but is mind controlling me. Whatever... I'm sick of it by now.

I'm forced to travel to the Shadow Plane where everything is instantly three CRs higher, and I'm deep down in the Underdark, out of resources, level five, and mind controlled.

Zane meets a party of adventuring Fetchlings shortly thereafter, and through diplomacy convinces them he's not a poor weak sap stuck deep underground but a STRONG DANGEROUS man from another plane who is there for shits and giggles. They back the fuck off, because it's easier to believe that than everything he's been through, and Zane wanders around until he finds some of his NPC buddies for whatever reason. One of them has gone mad at an ancient goddess's shrine, and casts disintigrate on Zane, which he survives with a few HP and proceeds to stab that fucker to death. Zane goes back to the Fetchlings and tells them he's lost but he'll protect them from scary monsters IF they guide him to the surface. Sounds good to them, they were heading that way anyways and shit's dangerous so this strong guy watching over them is a good deal to serve as sherpas.

Zane gets to the Shadow Plane surface, talks to the mayor of a local town, and is sent to his own plane after saving a little girl from an evil cult of evil. After he gets back to his own plane he FINALLY says "fuck it, I quit" and leaves the force. The DM skips for joy, says Taylor has sworn a blood oath to hunt Zane to the end of his days, and will find and ill him for betraying the kingdom, being evil, and doing nothing to help anybody but himself and never assist the Guard.

Zane is retired and I roll up a new character, Teagan.

== Teatime with Teagan ==
''Anonymous  08/02/14(Sat)17:56:34 No.33844515
:''Please, don't stop.

Teagan was a witch I rolled up to be a traveling merchant, and not some big damned hero. I prefer smarter or diplomatic characters, not people who run in swords swinging and spells flying... It's kept me alive pretty well, and in non-combat situations a diplomatic character's more use anyway. So Teagan was traveling around, avoiding obvious quests and plots, going town to town trading. This town is under siege? Go to a new one. But.. says the Dm.. But it's under attack! You aren't going to save it?

No. I'm a fucking merchant. My prices may be KILLER but I'm not an hero.

Teagan eventually comes across a town that's survived a few raids and has a broken keep nearby, unused, and decides she wants it. Nice place, lots of trade routes, sort of fortified... good base of operations for her growing business. She pays them 3k gold and give them some masterwork weapons she'd gotten in a great deal, in exchange for the land and property, and a title to state her the owner of it and a quasi-noble on top of that. BUT... she must bring them additional reinforcements from another town. So she sets out to gather some troops, but is told the easiest way is to go to a little cottage where a famous baker and his wife spellcaster live. Teagan accepts the bait and goes, hoping to ask this strong spellcaster to help, and might stock up on some food supplies or sell the husband some while there. Business and profit is her motto.

She shows up, knocks politely, and is ushered in by the husband who tells her the wife is out on whatever errand and won't be back for a day or so. Nothing strange here, all seems normal.. my saves (I roll randomly for illusions after some of Zane's stuff) don't break any illusions and sense motive shows he appears to be a nice middle aged man.

He invites me to stay for dinner and drinks and I tell him something of my story and why I need his and his wife's help, and he agrees. But first-

Would Teagan be willing to please try his newest drink, which he's very proud of? He hands her a tall glass filled with a purple liquid which my senses tell me "smell like sweaty feet and decaying undergrowth" and bubbles slightly. Teagan takes one look at it and rolls to determine anything about it, being an alchemical dabbler like I made Zane, and also she specialized in poisons and ranged shots instead of hexes (which in this setting using witch spells was immediately recognizable and a death sentence).
She sees nothing wrong with it according to rolls so I drink it.

The DM lights up at this, asking if I really drink it, and I say sure, why not... he asked me to and nothing seems wrong. He tells me to roll a fort save versus instant death and "defender wins" so Teagan on a 25 makes it. All her traits and feats were geared towards making and fort saving poisons, thankfully..

I roll another check for both sense motive and alchemical bullshit, and determine two things:
There's a lot of nightshade and other stuff in this. And the man is clearly saddened I'm still alive. Teagan smiles, sets the glass down, and thanks him for the drink but tells him it was a little tart for her personal tastes. The "man" and she begin a thinly veiled exchange of polite hostilities, neither directly attacking one another but making it clear that Teagan knows what's up and the man isn't who he says he is or smart enough to kill her.

So he drops his guise, and lo and behold it's an incubus surrounded by devil imps. But... isn't an incubus a demon? Nevermind that, says the DM, it's not important even though in this setting they're enemies.

The Imps try to kill her off but she's got silver utensils and starts trapping them in large silver serving dishes they can't bust out of, sheer torture for them har-d-har. The Incubus meanwhile runs to the basement to finish the last steps of his great achievement, stolen from the mage and her husband who he's locked up and replaced.

Teagan, after dealing with the Imps and running down the halls, finds the husband and releases him. He's useless in a fight so he stays there, but the Incubus appears out of nowhere and just as quickly Mass Teleports (can they do that?) her and himself into the basement where... a Pie Golem waits. Strawberry, blueberry, cherry. But crafted not from declicious desert, but raw PAIN! It deals 2d6 steam damage on contact, whether you hit it or it hits you. On top of that, it's basically the same stats as an iron golem, with increased DR and other bullshit he threw in to kill me. Teagan listens as the Incubus shouts about how she's a fool and he'll kill her and get away with his master plan because nobody knows what's going on, and even if the husband is released he'll be caught again soon, blah blah blah.

Teagan, who up to this point hasn't cast any hexes or spells because.. witches get burned... decides to use one in the basement.
I ask the DM what's around, roll perception. Nothing- basement is empty. No food, weapons, ways out except the door to the basement and some rickety wooden stairs, the Incubus is blocking. I roll an acrobatics to jump past him and run up, but he teleports in front of me and commands the Golem to start trying to kill me. So I do the two things I can possible manage to keep me alive... I roll an opposed charisma check on the golem and... fail. But so does the Incubus, so it starts going mad and trying to kill both of us. The Incubus laughs that it can't hurt him 'cause immunities to fire and all that, and he'll watch it kill me. I use the hex "feast of ashes" on him, and smile, and hand the book to the DM so he can read it.

Basically, pass will save or be forced to try and eat the closest food nearby. If you do, take horrible minuses and get sickened condition or something like that.

He failed the save. The DM laughs and says no food was in the basement. I shake my head and point out that, yes... there is.

The DM kind of pales as he realizes there's lots of food there. In fact, it's trying to make minced meat out of me.

The Incubus is forced to begin EATING the pie golem, the two going at each other as I run off. Somehow, the golem wins, by sheer brute force, and the Incubus goes back to the Abyss. The Golem can't climb out of the basement because it breaks the stairs, and won't fit through the door anyway, so Teagan grabs the husband again and they have a picnic outside until the wife gets back some hours later. Turns out, they won't give her the help she needs despite all this, and Teagan doesn't get her keep. So she moves on to the Dwarven lands to do some trade there.

She was asked by a cleric to look in on one of the Dwarven leaders, the strongest blacksmith in the world, who the villain was trying to have a meeting with. But Teagan got there first and found out he's sick, so she promised to get him a cleric to help. The villain lady was stopped by Teagan who told her to go away, the guy isn't taking meetings right now, and suddenly... assassin, when she's on her way back from the temple with a cleric.
No res provided.

I've got one left, the Admiral and Child's Play. It's the first of these, chronologically, actually.. Guess I'll start it too.

== 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.

== 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.