So we were playing DnD with my group, and we were tasked by an NPC we are buddy-buddy with to kill this one dude. Problem is, dude is nigh god damn invulnerable because he’s got a Medallion of I Don’t Fucking Know and also the blessings of the God of Boulders or some shit, and point is, trying to harm this guy in any, ANY sort of manner is just trying to demolish a metaphorical and more than literal brick wall by swatting at it with a paper bag full of wet noodles. It doesn’t help he’s a really competent combatant, too. Now, the NPC (and the DM) warned us: “But it’s fully fine if you refuse! In fact, I expect you to, I’m just telling everyone I know and trust about this in case they know how to deal with either his Medallion or his Blessing, maybe even both, but if you don’t, then I’d rather you don’t kill yourselves against him!”
PROBLEM IS, this NPC is an influential figure in what has come to be our hub city. Influential enough that currying favor with him might just net us a big ol’ abandoned barracks that we could use as our home (and in fact, him wanting Mister Invulnerable dead has to do with political matters; the guy isn’t evil, he’s a noted warrior with some small heroic fame, but he is employed by a political enemy of our friend NPC, and said political enemy does have some very questionable plans for the city, and thus is dangerous). We’re not too sure if we can take on this guy, but when we asked him if he had any other jobs for us instead, he said “well, there’s some matters I need resolved in Corvoda”, a distant city we’ve been to before, but one of our party members hates this city a LOT, and the city, well, hates him back, and it’s a long ass trip and our finances ain’t looking that hot, so we’re like hmmMM maybe we can, we can think about this some more. A light bulb manifests above my head, and my (in and out of universe) friend notices.
“Is this another one of your terrible ideas, Rasmus?” she asks.
“Quite possibly the worst one yet, dear Claudia,” I reply, and point towards another party member’s satchel.
What that satchel contained was a Scroll of Transcendent Transmigration. More on that later.
So, my character is a Human Rogue named Rasmus Kasper Istre, with heavy Dexterity and Charisma stats. His backstory is that he’s a charlatan, a fortune teller without any sort of actual prophetic skill, handy with the word and the dagger. His friend that he’s known since before the plot and our Wizard, Claudia Mesmer, is the more morally-attuned of the two, though not by much (tl;dr: Rasmus swindled the wrong fat cat back on their hometown, and Claudia, member of the local town guard, was sent to arrest him; she asked for her cut and they both jumped town). So, with this in mind, read on:
First, we (including the influential friendly NPC) start spreading the rumors of an impressive and continent-famous fortune teller being in town. NPC prints out flyers, taverns keep the gossip hot, suddenly everyone’s talking about this frighteningly accurate fortune teller from the South, and everyone wants their fortune told. It turns out, while tailing our mark, we learn he’s highly superstitious, so Claudia starts making makeshift paranormal activity around him to make him think something ill will occur to him soon. Thunder falling near him on a clear day, apparitions on the corner of his eyes, whispers, the works. He gets antsy and decides to go to the fortune teller.
That’s me. I’m the fortune teller.
Clad in a purple turban and the most exotic silks of the South, I welcome the invincible warrior. With my trusty crystal ball, I start reading into his past as an opening courtesy, giving him various “oh my…”s as I recall, in order, all that happened to him. He eats it all up thanks to my Charisma score, and this man is convinced I am the genuine article. Just going by his personality type, I start making various assumptions of how he is and what he usually goes through, I land it, and then I start convincing him of how he is in the center of fate’s iron sights. As he’s been blessed with everything, the World, great equalizer it is, now wants to take some back. He panics, slams a small bag of cold coins on my table, and gets up to leave. “Wait,” I hail, “my talents aren’t limited to mere fate reading, oh no, my good sir. Fate is based on the principle of causality, and thus, can be altered if one takes the necessary steps. Nothing is ever set on stone!”
He buys it and begs me to find a solution for him. He wasn’t afraid of physical harm coming to him (he’s nigh invulnerable, after all) as much as spiritual. I tell him that’s exactly what we’ll do: Instead of having the World claim too much too quickly, potentially ruining his life, we’ll apply some light curses and inflict other minor maladies on him so he gradually experiences misfortune instead of all at once, and that should make it so he can continue with his life as it is. He loves the idea, and I instruct him to sign a document, you know, just as a formality.
So let’s go back to the Scroll of Transcendent Transmigration.
What this scroll does is set a location, an “anchor”, if you will, and lets you teleport to it wherever and whenever you are (within a limited but very generous range). On our previous adventure, long story short, we were riding a massive manticore and locked in midair combat with a platoon of wyvern-mounted mercenaries from the deep West, nasty bunch, you wouldn’t like them, bad table manners but damned handy with a javelin, and they had our tail on lockdown, which is bad juju in aerial combat, so what our party member with the scroll did was affix it to some place in the middle of the sky, and the idea was to let some time pass, then SWOOSH teleport behind them and put US on their tails, giving us the advantage. It turned out to be unnecessary, because our Ranger rolled like the gods and took out the mercs without us needing to use it. Problem is, well, uh, mm, we now had affixed our super dope and rare scroll to an effectively useless place. The scroll only affects those who sign it willingly, and cannot be used on unwilling targets.
Guess what it is that I had him sign? In his panic, he didn’t read any of it (the scroll reads like a Terms of Service contract), in a hurry to start the treatment to curb his upcoming misfortune. The moment he does, I hand it over to my ‘assistant’, our Ranger, owner of the scroll and the only one that can activate it, and off he goes.
A couple of minutes later, we’re all sitting behind the tent we used for this little trap, with its nice hillside view and convenient proximity to where our dogfight took place, and soon enough, there, on the sky… Is that a bird? Is that an airplane? Is that Superman? No! It’s him! Mister Invulnerable! Falling from I-don’t-know-how-many-meters in the sky! With a sound like cannonfire, he lands on the ground and… He’s intact.
Oh. Fiddlesticks.
But he’s not moving.
We get close and that’s when we realize what’s going on: His body was indeed intact. The outer part of it, at least. Inside? All of his organs, his brains, and his bones were all smashed to slush and dust from the impact. Dead on arrival.
We’ve done it.
And that’s how my session of DnD ended, with the party now proud owners of some abandoned barracks and whatever we looted off this dude.
I don’t really wanna spill the whole beans on him (at least not yet) since he’s very much a work in progress, given we’re pretty early in our sessions, but what I can tell you is: 1) Rasmus has been at the whole fortune telling scams since he was a brat, 2) He used to be a kid from the slums of a port town, and picked mostly on travelling merchants and superstitious sailors that stopped by, and 3) He and Claudia are both wanted, because the Elf merchant Rasmus stole from has kept quite the grudge, and which only got worse when he hired Claudia personally to arrest him, she took the money, and then ran off with Rasmus, and 4) Our Barbarian rolled low one time to grab something to cover himself from an incoming crossbow shot, and ended up using Rasmus as his meat shield accidentally.
And yes, I acted out his dialogue. In this group, we have a rule that we can’t just say “I do Thing” unless it’s something trivial like “open a door” or whatever. Anything critical and that requires finesse or a roll, we have to describe.
