Badrick Witch***

I didn’t have to ask Mel to give me a topic today! I came up with one all by myself. Lol. You should all be proud of me… and those of you who aren’t… well, you all can bite a hockey puck flavored biscuit.

Not sure where that came from. I might be a little hyper. Though, it’s more likely that I’m so tired I’m going crazy.

Anywho…

I had to work today, and there’s nothing like work to bring out the worst in me. I don’t know what it is, but it’s like I go to work and sink to the bottom of a cesspool. So, I tried to keep my mind busy with something else. It turned around towards something I did last night.

While I was working on my Dungeons and Dragons adventure I had to come up with a minor mob fight for an encounter. The PCs last left things off in a bar, so I figured I’d use the barkeeper as the mob for the encounter. I’d planned to use him as a way to give the PCs information and thought why not have them beat the info out of the barkeeper.

So, I worked up stats for the NPC (non-player character) based off of what I’d told them about the barkeeper before. He’s a dwarf who was in some terrible mishap and lost both legs and an arm. These limbs were replaced with big hulking stone limbs like one’s you’d see on a golem. In fact, the template I applied to the NPC is the Half Golem template. I worked the stats up, did some play testing and figured that was it.

Today, as a way to escape from work I named him. Badrick Witch*** (that last part is vulgar and I’m trying to stay kid friendly today) and he is the owner/operator of The Witches *** (same word, same reason) the bar/tavern/inn the PCs are staying at. But, that wasn’t enough. I wanted to know what had happened to him to make him the way he is. His name isn’t Darth Vader, so I don’t believe it was a fateful lightsaber duel on the volcanic planet of Mustafar.

Then an argument crept into mind. One a father and son might have. The father wants his son to do one thing, and the son wants to do another.

And, until I started to write the argument out I had it right there at the front of my mind.

“You’re a Witch***, and Witch***s are barkeepers. I’ve got a bar, passed down to me from your grandfather, and he got it from his father. This bar has been in the Witch*** family for fourteen generations, and you want to break the chain?”

That’s Badrick’s father. It’s an age old fight that will go on so long as there are fathers and sons. But, Badrick wanted to be an adventurer, he told his father as much and ran off to join an adventuring party that had just stayed at The Witch’s ***. They took him along, and the party ran afoul of a deep horned dragon, a damn (there went the kid friendly) big beastie with eight heads, who thought the party would make a tasty snack. The dragon killed the adventurers one by one, swallowing them whole. It chomped on Badrick’s arm, then his legs (actually taking everything from the waist down), and left him there to die.

A wizard came along, fried the dragon, and saved Badrick’s life. But, there wasn’t a cleric to be found and arcane magic doesn’t do much good with replacing limbs. So, the wizard used his wizardy might to make stone replacement limbs for Badrick (The 6 Million Dollar Dwarf). Everything went pretty much as planned and the wizard sent Badrick on his way.

He returned home, his heart broken by the cold fact that he wasn’t cut out to be an adventurer. He accepted the destiny his father put before him, and became the disgruntled dwarven barkeeper he is today.

As a neat little character trait, I’ve made it so that Badrick’s lost some control of his limbs over the long years, and the limbs have taken to murdering random NPCs. Yet, the people of the town Badrick lives in don’t perceive this trait as a problem. He does live in a pirate town after all.

Anywho, that’s enough from me. Maybe the PCs will overcome Badrick the Half Golem, maybe they won’t. And, maybe Badrick will make another appearance later on in the story.

Laters.

Ryan

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