Characters that have been: The Laughing Jester
This character was in a different WoW D20 game, run by the same DM as the game with my tauren brawler. He also appeared in a game of exalted. The character had a name, but he was usually referred to as my master thrower, or the Laughing Jester. The name came from his outfit. He wore a set of studded leather armor that was painted green and purple, and made to look like a jester’s outfit. The ensemble was topped by a jester’s hat, with silenced bells, and a smooth mask like Vega from Street fighter.
This character was a performer, focused on sleight of hand. This skill played into his combat prowess allowing him to catch enemies off guard with thrown weapons, dealing sneak attack damage in the process. The first session with the character he managed to make a perform check that would have been high enough to please a god, if one had been around. My wife, girlfriend at the time, was also playing in this game. Her character immediately hated mine. This animosity led the Jester to pickpocket her shortly after they met.
Though he was sometimes an antagonistic character, he had his own version of family. He was part of a traveling troupe of performers. He ended up getting involved with the other heroes of the adventure when his troupe stopped in the same town. He fell into a mission with the party, promising to catch up with his troupe when the whole thing was done. While he was away, the troupe was attacked and slaughtered.
The Jester took it badly. He spent the night in the bar, determined to have a drink for every lost member. The tauren fighter in the party eventually drug him out and dunked his head in a bucket of water before he died of alcohol poisoning. He wasn’t happy, but he got over it. He ended up getting a tattoo of tear drops beneath his left eye, and a shaded circus tent across his back with a set of eyes in the shadows for each member of the troupe.
With nowhere else to go, he stayed with the party. They were sent to track down a man who was building a force of bandits. When they found the man, the Jester was captured, along with my wife’s night elf. She fought, I didn’t. She was determined not to give in, and to be a pain in the neck the whole time. I went with the double agent approach and convinced the bandit leader that I was there to join his group. This plan would have been fine, but I couldn’t fill in my companion on the specifics. As far as she knew, I had just betrayed the group.
The party ended up in the arena where the bandits were stationed. They were forced to fight for the entertainment of the leader. My character was in the spectator box with him, as a welcome guest. The night elf was also there, chained to the leader’s chair as a slave. I still hadn’t found a way to tell her what was going on.
During the course of the fight, the gnome tinker in the group managed to scrape together a bomb. This bomb made its way into the spectator box with the help of a ‘bad’ throw. Seeing an opportunity, I maneuvered the leader into the bomb and tried to get myself out of the box along with my companion. Instead, she threw me into the arena and took cover. The bomb, and a few shots from our scout, finished off the leader. All should have been happy, but I was currently dodging crossbow fire from the box. My wife’s character had broken free after the explosion, but still thought the Jester had betrayed the party. Not wanting to hurt her, I scrambled for the nearest thing I could throw to stop her. I found two broken pieces of spear haft roughly the size of daggers. Two called shots to the forehead, and a critical hit later, she was unconscious long enough for me to explain the situation to the rest of the party.
When she finally woke up, I had the rest of the group on my side. she wasn’t happy, but she couldn’t do much. The whole situation didn’t do anything to change her feelings about the Jester. He ended up having those two broken pieces of spear whittled into blunted daggers that he would casually pull out whenever the two got into an argument. My wife still hates the character.
When I recreated him in Exalted, he was trying to rebuild his troupe. In addition to his daggers, he had upgraded to using boomerangs.
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Stephen Mayo lives in Montana with his wife, daughter, and three cats.
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