The Epic of Xenken

Originally posted by Xenken, as a New Year's present on the last day of 2022.

Game lore only, as much as I would love to expound on Drew’s codenames gaming, I just don’t know that much on that front. Also, I have never DMd, so as much as I want to give you a peek behind that curtain I just can't.

These records are written from a very personal perspective, and I do not try to be fair and balanced. This is partially because I want to crank these out as fast as I can, but it's mostly on purpose. Look, there can't be a cogent A&S canon without a lot of people doing a lot of writing, and I'm doing my small part to facilitate that. I'm just sayin, if someone reads this, gets mad, and writes their own post in an attempt to tweet at me, everybody wins!

Just for the sake of timekeeping, and to immediately give you something deranged, note that an A&S year is 900 days long. Realize that your new level 1 PC in their mid 20s actually has 60 years of life experience. Also, 1 day out of game is 1 workweek in game, and a workweek is 10 days long. Our 2 year anniversary was about 2 months ago as of time of writing, meaning a shade under 22 years of game time, which is actually less than 9 axe and sickle years.

(I'd give you details on geography and weather patterns and what not, but note that The Ohm Basin exists in The Roil, an infinitely long tube, which means all that shit is probably borked and no one wants you asking about it.)

Alright, let's begin.

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Alabaster was my first 3.5 character ever. Their core concept came about because I had wanted a druid to be my first, I wanted to be a good guy, and I didn’t want to bother with magic items. Thankfully those goals all dovetailed really well.

Domu, Alabaster’s first Animal Companion, was the best dog! They’re such a best dog that their build is now completely impossible to make. (This is, uh, a recurring theme. Alabaster was the first and last person to do a lot of things.) Domu the Dragonslayer is probably pretty common knowledge now but not enough people have heard of Lord Ramel fights 1 and 2. Oh yeah, there was a time when fighting just the one Bearded Devil+backup was impressive all on its own! (Though if I remember right it was a lot of backup, I distinctly recall party members being literally enveloped.) It was hard too. Everyone who went on Ramel 1 died. I believe that was the fight where Valen was K.O’d, kept onto their horse, but then died of exposure as their horse carried them back. Tragic.

Granted, we were all, what, level 3 or 4? At the time. Compared to now, we were ALL little babies back then, in loadouts, skill, levels, everything. Lord Ramel 2 was close, the part that sticks in my memory is a bit when Alabaster rushed in in a desperate bid to heal Domu, and got swatted hard by an AoO that would’ve killed me, had things gone just a bit worse.

If anyone ever mentions the concept of a struggle session, few people know about it better than Alabaster. Basically, it’s a session where a notable chunk of playtime is spent on either arguing about the right thing to do, or the consequences of said argument. These very rarely happen anymore but Alabaster was in at least 3. There was the time our low level party was sent to rough up a (was it kobold or goblin? Some little critter) house, and then we decided that they did nothing wrong, effectively declined mid adventure, and yeeted ourselves elsewhere. There was the time just before the vault dragon, when we spent time arguing about how exactly to dispose of some mercs, and I’m 90% sure the session where I let Zheng Yi, one of Edith’s cool little bastards, bleed out in front of me had one but I forget the details. It’s difficult, figuring out how to be Exalted good in the murder dice game, which is part of the point of it I think. But it was harder back then. The A&S had a lot less evil about it, to the point where you’d frequently be in a party where 2 or 3 out of 4 guys would be happier if everyone came out alive. I don’t know how much of this is on purpose, but enemies are definitely noticeably more despicable now too, on average. Less “just doing their job” types, or bulletin board no-knock raids on civilians. Shoutout to the recent time something close to this happened and an Exalted PC just…broke their vows and became punished to handle the dilemma.

Oh god I just remembered Drew’s “puzzle” door that actually just gave you random outputs. I get the idea, the idea was funny, and Drew runs fun games, but holy shit that sucked. I honestly wasn’t fully in the moment because my mind always disconnects a little when puzzle time comes around, and it still felt like an hour of suffering. God help the poor souls that actually tried to solve the unsolvable.

Oh, did I ever tell you about the time I wanted a level up…and just went and got one? I was level 2, I wanted to get to level 3. I was quite close, no games were happening anywhere, and it was frustrating, so I went to Drew (who was essentially the only A&S DM at the time) and was like “hey could I just wander around and get random encounters?” and then we ran that. Fought 2 Hellhounds and did in fact level up. First and last time ever on that one.

Alabaster also saw the rise of Casterhuas, a building with way more intricate lore than I could possibly do justice. One might call it an avatar of purposeless bloat, but I think that’s being uncharitable. It did have a purpose, for one thing. It was built by Cyrrig and Viljo to store scrolls. That ended up being relevant for, like, 4? Of its dozens of members.

No, the real defining moment for Casterhaus was the first time someone (sources tell me it might have been Luke Olly,) wanted to join just because other people were there. And then another, and another…

I worry it might be hard to appreciate how much history is here. That place is A&S's The Oldest House. Beginning it’s construction was the first downtime post ever made. For half of you reading this, it might as well be older than dirt. It was being built around the time we were figuring out how to build *anything*.

So when people were allowed to start just paying for their own room to be added, it was a game changer! We take PC made social groups as a given now, but we didn't know how any of that was even going to work before Casterhaus, which then set the standard for everything else that came after. The only requirement to join was that you were capable of casting a spell and could pay for a room, and since any scroll dangers were quickly solved with a few runes, it largely stopped having a goal as an institution. Between the open border, status as the only A&S club, and very low (and obviously justified) barrier to entry, basically everyone joined, all with their own values, goals, and things to share with the group of their own volition.

Easily the best thing about Casterhaus was the sheer absurdity of its populace all sharing this much personal space for years, especially considering who they were. Casters tend to be individualists, and also tend to be…very opinionated. And remember, everyone was here. Rich, poor, (ok adventurer poor, you still dropped basically the gdp of a small town just for room and board,) scourge, saint, it didn't matter. We often compared it to a frat house at uni but honestly it was so much more extreme than that.

For example, even though the haus is officially divided into an arcane and divine wing, a few services used by everyone were still only located on one side or the other, so people would have to walk across the hall anyway. One such service was the completely open stone room with a gigantic, seemingly bottomless hole in the ground, set at the end of the divine wing. This was the communal bathroom. Yes, we had that. I was there in vc when this was explained, and I remember this detail vividly because a) Who the fuck designs a bathroom like that, and b) Alabaster's little hallway nook of a room was right next to it. Poor guy. So not only did arcane people have to walk all the way down the divine wing just to use the bathroom, but inevitably there are going to be moments like the Exalted Good Alabaster needing to take a midnight whizz at the same time as one of our necromantic little goblins, both of them just seething at the awkwardness of the whole thing. It rocks. Casterhaus is a lot bigger now so I'm hoping the bathroom is more of a suite situation, but I wouldn't be surprised if no such thing happened just because half of the major architects were sadists.

The Oldest House is a great parallel to draw, actually, because Casterhaus is *also* an eldritch abomination of a building. The original scroll storage room was probably pretty normal, but things quickly changed as people came and it became more of a living space. As you might have been able to tell by the name, it's design was originally inspired by Groverhaus, essentially a gigantic writeup on how *not* to build a home, and it was put together by nerds who explicitly both did not know what they were doing and sometimes actively hated you. There's the couch in the central lobby that Svenja tried to make a warmth enchantment for, only to mess up and create an actively uncomfortable Hot Couch instead, and instead of using our coin to get a new one we made it a sort of opt in hazing ritual for anyone that wants to ponder with our scrying orb. There are doors that open directly onto lower floors with no stairs, made solely to gatekeep people who couldn't fly or teleport. And there's a permanent, emplaced layer of random trash on the floor. Everywhere. Funny thing about that, too. The more people came, the wider variety of trash. First it was just scrolls, you see, but then came books, material components, alchemical reagents…rats…

And I promise you, none of that got any better as we got approximately 1 bajillion dollars and a lyre of building and made it all bigger; As Casterhaus bloated to a small mansion and then an increasingly not small mansion and then something more akin to a small town that just happened to also be a single building. Oh, you're worried things might be disorganized? I promise we can fix that after we add kitchens, labs, libraries, research rooms, a summoning circle, a sacred grove, a dungeon, a university, an orphanage, a secret paramilitary effort to train and condition orphans from that orphanage while teaching them magic so they can become diehard soldiers that report solely to us, and of course more rooms.

Wait, where was I? Oh right, Alabaster.

Besides Ramel 2, The two Alabaster adventures I remember most distinctly are The Graveyard and Black Knight 1. We’ll get back to them in a bit, but first I need to introduce someone else very important to A&S lore.

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Sapphire taught the Axe and Sickle many, many lessons, and she was a pretty harsh teacher. There are two types of veteran PCs in this realm: the rich ones, and the ones who didn’t like her. I don't think I'm being overzealous when I say she's probably somewhere in the top 3 most influential A&S characters of all time.

I’d say Sapphire was the embodiment of capitalism, but that’s honestly not giving her enough credit. She’s the embodiment of capitalism if it actually worked, the image of the american dream before it’s tarnished by reality, your parents telling you you’ll be a millionaire if you just worked hard and stayed in school. But we can’t talk about her without first talking about Ava, and we can’t talk about Ava without talking about Knives.

Knives was an interesting fellow who is sadly no longer here. Their character, Ava, was the first ever Artificer on the server. Sapphire only exists because I saw Knives having too much fun and I wanted in. The thing I remember her best for, and probably the thing that’s most relevant to da lore, where her rambling posts about all the terrifying stuff Ava could, but totally would not, do.

Fun fact: Arms and Equipment used to be core. You could just take stuff from it, back in the day. Knives put an end to that with some talk about…Ava with an elven double bow, I think? And boom, just like that it was whooshed to the +1 pen. It’s worth taking a second to note how incredibly rare of an event that was. A player getting something banned without actually using it is very very rare, to the point where I can’t offhandedly name a second instance, but she just had that kind of power. In retrospect, Ava did work but overall didn’t have that much bite, while Knives barked a *lot.* Sapphire, by contrast, spoke softly.

With Trapfinding, skills, and Personal Weapon Augmentation, Sapphire at level 1 was basically a rogue but with a Bane Everything weapon instead of Sneak Attack. Overall a great setup, and it worked well for her first adventure: scrounging for secret documents just before fighting what was effectively a rival adventuring party. Despite the success, I was greedy. I only played 1 session at that level before I decided I wanted my magic items now! So I retired Alabaster and got her to level 5 instantly. (Yeah you could add retirement xp to pre-existing characters back then. Can’t anymore.)

When people remember Sapphire they probably remember her during her endgame, since that’s when she was at her most powerful and made the most money, but on reflection that’s not her most important period. Immediately following the level up, Sapphire and Ava were basically the same level, and directly competed as crafters, but relatively quickly Knives didn’t want to play Ava anymore and *killed them* so their Rogue/Spellthief could join the Assassins. (Still probably the most epic retirement so far.) Later, Nicholau, Svenja, Eld, and others would rise to prominence in the crafting scene. But there was a period in the middle there when Sapphire was effectively alone, which gave her a REALLY big stick. She was basically the federal reserve, and decisions on her item policy could ripple out and hit everyone else.

I was entirely unused to having this much power (over, like, 8 people in a small discord somewhere lmao) but overall I think I used it wisely. Take for example, the 130% pricing. The unenlightened eye would assume I was just trying to maximize my profit while I had a monopoly, but I actually didn’t care much about trying to do that. The real reason I did it was because I heard Drew worrying out loud that I’d be a gateway to everything being way way too cheap, and simply choose to prevent that by setting prices high until I couldn’t anymore. Drew reckoning with Sapphire’s existence is a tale that ultimately ends in tragedy, but let it be known that we both tried to meet each other halfway. Speaking of responsibility…

Ok I’m about to spill some tea right now. This is shit the establishment doesn’t want you to know. If I’m suddenly kicked from the A&S after posting this, you’ll know where to start pointing fingers.

So, Sapphire and the martial union.

Of course if you ask the union about her they’ll probably tell you she’s an enemy of the state, treasonous lout, etc etc. And…you know they’re not wrong, but we’ll get to that. We have to start the story at the beginning, when they were friends! Or they should’ve been, anyway.

First off, it didn't *start* as the martial union. It started as martialhaus. It started as some of the people with no spells, basically the only people that couldn't join us, seeing dat Casterhaus swagger and wanting a piece. I don't blame em, I would too, but it is poetic that the first driving force for what would become the union was jealousy.

The second was aggrievement. Before they had a channel, a house, or even an understanding of themselves as a coherent entity, they had salt and rage. And, I remember, the very first thing they had salt and rage about was healing. Some healers on the server (I think this started with Merric, but put a grain of salt on that) began charging for the wands of Cure Light Wounds they bought to keep people healthy through adventures. The big armor stand in front guys were furious! They put life and limb out there and suddenly cuddlecore was gonna force them to pay out just so they could do their job? And you know what, Sapphire agreed. Before the cowards on the staff team implemented minimum pricing, she offered healing everywhere for free. Afterwards, she never charged during adventures, scolded other healers for trying, and intentionally flooded the healing market so the charging schemes would stop. It worked too! That practice has been essentially wiped from the server and has never come back.

So yeah, that was Sapphire’s first ever interaction with the union: doing them a favor, for no other reason than her thinking it was the right thing to do.

The third driving force behind the union's creation was, and is, the need for power.

Their response to Sapphire's batting for them was initializing their price drop-for-loot policy. A.K.A, a tax on everyone else just for them doing their job. A.K.A, the thing they were just complaining about! Turns out the union will just backpedal immediately if they find a way to make some cash on the side. Awesome.

Sapphire was annoyed. *I* was annoyed, at the time. But it wasn’t enough for me to say anything drastic. After all, this was basically in her Winningest era and I had better things to think about. Things escalated, however, when Nicholau got in on the action.

Now Nicholau himself was a cool guy. They were a good guy, with an impeccable aesthetic, and were fun to be around. A very common, nice Sapphire partner. He even worked marketing for her at one point. So, what happened?

Well, the union loot rule had the caveat that it could only apply to loot the member was actually planning to use. You couldn’t, say, buy loot under cost just so you could sell it at cost to someone else. Nicholau messed with this system. They had a cool BoED feat, Ancestral Relic, that let them basically absorb other loot to add to their spiked chain. (And maybe you’re thinking “You know, Book of Exalted Deeds seems to come up a lot in A&S lore!” To which I say: Yes.) This meant that they could, and did, siphon every available weapon and armor from a loot pile like a vacuum, under cost, to upgrade their Elucidator or whatever.

They eventually stopped doing that, as even the union thought it to be too much, but I reacted first. I was tired of having Sapphire pretend like they couldn’t do anything without union members around…and I casually mentioned in a VC that, hey, maybe I just make a golem to do the frontlining job for me? And the tone of the chat instantly changed.

Funnily enough, Knives said the exact same thing, when they caught wind of the union forming for the first time. But no one reacted because that’s the thing about Knives; she barks. When Sapphire says that shit everyone gets panicking, because she’s terrifyingly likely to actually do what she says she’s about to do. And I did consider it, but I ultimately thought it to be too big of a hassle at the level I was at.

What I did, instead, was attempt to challenge Nicholau for head of the martial union. I don’t know if you still can, but back in the day you could attempt to trial-by-combat your way into becoming union leader. The rules were strict, for me. No spells of above 2nd level, no spells that target or can affect or opponent, and most importantly, no infusions *at all*, A.K.A banning all of Sapphire’s primary buffs while leaving Nicholau’s untouched. Was it fair? I mean probably not, no, but if I was the union setting things up I wouldn’t want things to be fair either. That would’ve made it extra funny if I won though. I didn’t. It wasn’t close but I think I made it a decent contest. Ultimately I was a) over confident and b) had a skill issue. (I really didn’t understand how many spells could still be squeezed in even under the limit, this would change.) I lost fair and square, good fight. Although, Fun Fact: it was later revealed to me that if I had won, the union would simply disband and reform as a technically separate entity that just does the same thing. I guess there’s nothing stopping you but holy shit, martial union says something and actually means it challenge (difficulty impossible).

Either way, Sapphire became basically the union’s primary antagonist, and as we know having someone to hate is a great rallying point! Also, she *was* actually vaguely threatening, which did kind of force them to find a volumetric shit compressor. Through this, (and, you know, the literal help she gave them for free,) they’re probably a significantly more competent of an organization than they would be without her.

And…now we have to talk about Sapphire as a traitorous lout. But before that we have to talk about Kaya which means we’re also talking about the Black Knight, because they’re two very interconnected memories for me.

Kaya was a big nice girl, a mundane crafter with a magic forge, and most importantly for us, the beatstick to end all beatsticks. She did to the idea of Big Strong Fighter what Sapphire did to crafting. DMs would repeatedly be forced to cope and seethe as Kaya one tapped all their favorite monsters, it was awesome. Of course they had the constitution of a leaf in the wind but that’s what characters like Ava and Sapphire were for. One could ask for her secret to success but she didn’t really have one? She just went and got more of the bigger-er and stronger-er features than anyone else. (And the resurrection reroll she got from Human to Half Orc, that probably helped.)

I remember her best for her performances in Black Knight 1 and 2. The first of a pair of adventures meant explicitly for the groundbreaking group of level 4 and 5 characters that had formed at the time. Highlights include: -cleaving through 3, yes 3, dragon wyrmlings in one round. -Being one of the one characters that could actually do anything to this asshole troll guarding the bridge leading to Black Knight 2. -Being litterally impossible for a mind flayer to grab even while stunned, letting Serif grease it with my grease gem and then stab it to death. -Fighting the Black Knight himself.

The Black Knight was one of the A&S’s first recurring villains, probably the one that got the traction to make recurring villains stick around as a server concept, and is as far as I’m concerned the only A&S character with their own dedicated theme song. I’m not sure if a version of him is still around, but if he ever pops up again, let's just say you’ll really like what he does on the first turn 🙂.

Anyway, cut to several adventures later, and at some point Kaya decides to get themselves a…fukin…+6 strength DR 5 golem arm?? And attach it to themselves? Ok. Honestly I don’t know the full story on that, but yeah that sure was a thing. After not going insane from the process of doing that they decide they want a huge win and invite a juvenile dragon to a 1v1. It was a big event.

The rules of the fight included a buffing clause, not least in part because Kaya had wise advisors to note that she’d get wiped in a straight up fight. Nicholau backed her, I think out of a sense of martial union solidarity. He give her everything he had, and when that wasn’t enough he bought scrolls out of pocket for things he didn’t have. I decided to offer my assistance too, and after she explained her situation (including being broke to the point that Nicholau was paying for her buffs) I offered a potion of displacement, one of my finest spells. In a stroke of cunning, I suggested that she tell Nicholau I was driving a really hard bargain, and we’d split all the extra profit 50/50. Got a clean extra 150 gp from that.

And, now the twist. When Drew caught wind of Kaya’s multi-PC buff coalition, they wanted something to even the odds a bit. I had once joked that Sapphire could be the Dragon’s coach, and Drew asked if that could be for real. I agreed, both because I thought it was cool and I was gettin paid, and I went all in too. Overall, the Dragon ended up being about as buffed as Kaya was, and won the fight.

Now, the potion thing was hilarious and I would do it again 11/10 times, but I honestly regret hard buffing the dragon. Yes this double cross lynchpin role did inflate my ego, and yes it was hilarious to watch paragons of martial might ultimately hinge on spells that were beyond their understanding, but Kaya had never wronged Sapphire! Nothing had been done to earn the betrayal that this effectively was. Present me judges this as out of character for Sapphire, but past me is on record as disagreeing, hmm. Either way, this will have consequences later.

The fun thing about plumbing Sapphire’s history is that I kept a ledger of all her interactions, so I can refer back to it as an abbreviated timeline of events. Expect more here at a future date.

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Laoshi is definitely my most underrated A&S character. Formerly a jewel of Zheng’s Royal holdings, now a escapee of royal bearing who sided with Alabaster’s rebellion and sense of freedom for good. She’s awesome, but it’s an awesome that’s hard to communicate through a character that doesn’t speak, paired with Alabaster who doesn’t like to brag. At least actions still say a lot, though.

For example, Flaksz’s Graveyard Bash. There was a lot of cool immolotian infighting stuff happened on it, but I don’t understand enough of it and you’ll just have to wait for the Felix rambling post instead. The part I can fill you in on was when Laoshi threw hands with a f*cking lich. Y’know who else did that? Flaksz, who is a cleric, and Ursumea, who died.

Wait wait hold up, I thought you said you retired Alabaster to send Sapphire to the big time! How’s he back? Well, youngsters, if you retired a character back in the day, there was a provision that you might be able to unretire them after a very very very long time. You can’t now, and IRC Alabaster was the only one who came back for One Last Job™ that way. .

Y'know, technically I shouldn't mention this, because strictly speaking it never happened. It's the black text on a black background at the bottom of the iceberg. Call it a ghost story, maybe.

I was hackled, mildly, after the Nicholau/Sapphire throwdown, mostly because I recognized my skissue and I don't like leaving those alone. Thus, I wanted a rematch. First Sapphire asked for a salty runback that Nicholau very reasonably refused. But when Alabaster asked, it made them pause for a second.

Alabaster just doesn't carry the risks Sapphire does. He never wanted anything to do with the Martial Union, even before considering that he literally cannot own anything and thus could never hold the union title. Between them this was strictly a test your might sort of thing, so Nicholau agreed.

Cut to fight night. Alabaster wild shapes into a giant squid form with a bunch of attacks, and I fix my skissue by casting like 7 spells, but Nicholau got Enlarged a little while ago, so who wins?

I don't remember the initial skirmish much, but I do remember Alabaster's first full attack…because it was the only one. I was asked if I was using nonlethal, I said no because I didn't have anything to negate the attack penalty, then I’m informed that Nicholau died?! Chat's shocked and so am I. Clearly I underestimated my strength.

Now, had we thought more clearly, we might've used a “you can obviously stop your full attack after you see your opponent's knocked out” rule, like in the tournaments we had. What happened instead was every other DM in the vc immediately freaking. They basically pulled out the reality stone and said No. No, that didn't happen. It was just a dream. Wake the fuck up, Samurai, you're fine. Which was good for me! Much preferable to the reality where Alabaster murders a close comrade for no reason. Besides, the point had been made, and now everyone could go home.

But, uh, don't go talkin about this, because it didn't happen, remember?

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Ash is the character I have the strongest conceptual sense of. She’s the daughter of a fighter who adventured in a now bygone era. After asking permission if I could (as it had never been done before,) I rolled 3d6 for her ability scores. I was blessed by RNJesus, getting an 18! Unfortunately the rest of her stats were a 12 and then nothing above a 9. This will come up later. She likes carousing, rations, and has quietly always wanted to smoke out the dungeon like in the good ol’ days. She loves sword and board, never using anything else, and she will only take feats from the PHB.

Ash’s story is, in part, the long slow arc of these fundamental tenants eroding as expeditions wore on.

My memory of low level Ash’s time is murkier for me than I would like. I remember fighting undead in a graveyard on one expedition. Joining the Martial Union, taking my punch, and getting a room. Another expedition, when the party had to infiltrate a dungeon with all sorts of goons lurking in ceilings and behind doorways. The anniversary dungeon! More undead that were much much funnier. Unfortunately the one clear memory I have of her is that she sucked. You gotta understand, Ash is my character. I stan her and would do so for life. So you have to keep my biases in mind when I say that she sucked super bad. Remember when I said her stats would come up later? Well we’re level 1 and they’re coming up now, bitch, because I’m a 3d6 PHB Fighter and I’m in hell. Sword and shield means no two hander, so Power Attack returns are trash, and every other stat being 12 means no hitting prereqs for anything, so in terms of feats to help you hit stuff it's Weapon Focus or nothin, basically. (Fun Fact, you could fight with just a shield, two handing it, and it’d be a better build. Fuck.)

Thinking back on it now, Ash two weapon fighting with her sword and shield might have been my first, smallest betrayal. She still didn’t have the dex to do this naturally, so she actually needed to borrow over 3000 gp, at level 1, to get the gloves of dex now needed to keep things functional. It certainly wasn’t the sword’n’board I had first envisioned, but it did have good enough returns to give her a competent full attack! (Oh yeah, Ash was in debt a lot. This was a recurring theme. Also, you can’t do this anymore, for reasons I’ll get to.)

New problem though: 12 in dex meant Ash had 8 con. Her first hd roles were fine, 4 and 5 I think, but 8 con meant she had about 2/3rds the hp of your standard strength lad, as if level 1s weren’t frail enough already. Just imagine adventuring with her, a bozo that couldn’t stand in front because they didn’t have hp, couldn’t do anything in the back having brought no ranged weapons, and was pretty slow, given the heavy armor. Once or twice a session they get space to flank and are pretty ok for maybe 2 rounds.

This was when I invented a piece of Ash lore I’ve come to really really like: her frailty was her own undoing. She thought she should be training relentlessly, always preparing for battle in a bid to make herself stronger, but instead she just messed up her legs and back for no good reason. She had a hard time getting up out of bed, and walked with a slight limp and crunched posture.

Honestly I was down for this state of affairs, as it still exceeded my expectations, but at some point Drew *insisted* that I at least carry a javelin or something, and I took that really seriously because he liked the old school concept more than anyone. Thus, a shift in thinking. A little more erosion. I decided that other weapons were fine, if I was out of range or a sword couldn't do damage. Thus came the introduction of the javelin, warhammer, and the idea of a reach weapon. But before I selected my longboi of choice, I first had to unlock the other half of the PHB tech tree.

I think Ash getting herself Enlarged at level 3 was their first real step out of abject misery and into being a true warrior. The reach meant she could get into range more consistently, and the procedure itself was very very cheap. Though, whoops, you just lost dex! I hope you're ready to suck up another 9000 gp in debt just to stay where you're at feat wise. Sword stuff aside, level 3 was also when their armorsmithing first started to bloom, complete with skill focus. Cranking those crafting checks to sell stuff as a second source of income helped a whole lot.

This was also when she entered the anniversary dungeon…and got rocked by dr 10(!!) undead because I forgot to bring a silver weapon and no one else could really do anything to them. That was an embarrassment. Moving on.

I had originally pictured Ash as Good. I saw that as sort of the default adventurer attitude, and certainly the one a parent would instill in the child they hoped would take over the family business, but she just didn’t pan out that way. Something I hadn’t really noticed until I was called out on it in chat one day. My Ash was strictly goal-oriented, tied down by obligations much heavier than her armor, and more mercantile even than Sapphire. Y’know, the actual merchant. IDK if it’s class design influencing thought or what, but whenever I played Ash I just had this surge to find the thing I was supposed to hit with a sword and hit it. They’re Neutral, really. Which is good considering their friends.

Ash had good working relationships with two other weapon people: Del and Catlyn.

Caitlyn was just an archer girl doing their job. I always saw her as just the slightest bit of an underdog, but she kept it together on the field. As much as I wanted Ash to be able to improvise and have some obscure mundane item for any situation, Drew actually had the head for it, and Caitlyn having Arms and Equipment as her +1 really let them have a ton of weird and wacky little gadgets.

Del, meanwhile, was a fukin grimy little rat. They were awesome. It didn’t hurt that Gribbly, their player, might just have the best voicework ever seen on the A&S. She had participated in Del’s not-nearly-infamous-enough Crime Squad. A small, loose band of marauders, thieves, and assassins. The two things I remember about Crime Squad are the time we succeeded in raiding a fort while vastly outnumbered, (including a memory of us pulling a hilarious prank on some guy in the bathroom the details of which escape me,) and the time we took a mission from THE JONKER to assassinate a goody-two-shoes princess…which we flubbed. Cue one of our party members immediately fleeing, us losing to the guards, and being forced to spend time doing community service in repentance.

Time to talk about stats. Again. Yes, it's only been 2 levels. We're still in hell. So by meeting dex prereqs you have successfully unlocked 2 cool feats. If you want the rest of em you'll need Combat Expertise, which means that 9 INT has to be a 13. I hope you like immediately making another 10k+ purchase right after paying off your first one!! At least by this point I had Giorno, who didn't care much about spending on himself, so I could speedrun the process of flexing my perfect credit rating to characters who would have too much money to care anyway.

This time was different, though. Ash with dex and int was now actually good! Not mediocre, not even just competent, but starting to really bust it down. Sure, “big lad with reach and trip” wasn’t anything new, Nicholau had already done a lot of field-testing on it, but it was a winning combo regardless. Thus came Ash's choice of big stick: a guisarme, the only non-exotic reach trip weapon I knew of. As it turns out, when you have 20 ft reach and are large, other weapon boys tend to want to stand in front of you so they can use their smaller weapons, get charges, etc. And this prevents you from moving in close enough to use weapons like…say…a longsword? More erosion, as Ash’s longsword use dropped hard, to the point I’m sure some people didn’t know she had one.

Int also gave her access to another skill, entirely her own. A skill lost to history. A mastery of the blade that was seen once, and might never be seen again. Whirlwind Attack.

The traditional stance is that Whirlwind Attack is a bad feat because it requires 4 awful prerequisite feats and isn’t usually that useful. This…is mostly true. Even for Ash, someone with 20 foot reach, on the A&S’s accelerated feat progression, with only access to the PHB. About 85% of the time, she was only facing 1 or 2 people, and would rather just do trip shenanigans on one of them. That last 15% though…

.

The setting sun, alone in a cloudless sky, highlights the fortress walls in an aura of red and orange. Above, the stammer and pratter of a score of little feet on wood beams can be heard even from dozens of feet away. It’s a terrible day to be alive.

Ash stands in the entrance, pierced in the chest by several spears, their hooked tips penetrating her armor and catching on her breastplate. Lines lead from them off into the darkness of the building’s canopy, lit only by greedy eyes and grinning teeth. Ixchel, her adventuring partner, is paralyzed and drowning in a pool of corpse water. Suddenly, the lines go taught. Goblin bandits pull, trying to lift Ash and leave her hanging helplessly in the air. Ash holds on, pulls back, but though she may be exceptionally strong, she’s outnumbered 4 to 1 or worse. She feels herself start to rise…

(Natural 20 strength check, strength check tie.)

…Summoning a force of will she didn’t even know she had, Ash crouches to stay planted and then tugs, goblins stumbling in the walkway above. They neither fall nor let go of their holds, but it is enough to lighten the pressure and let her move forward. Rhydwyn, the party healer, kept Ash alive as she charged ahead. Miraculously dodging two more impalings, she reaches the pool and starts pulling Ixchel out.

Caitlyn, meanwhile, as the only ranged character on our side of this mixup, has chosen to attack the fort superstructure, breaking wood beams and setting them alight with incendiary arrows. It was a smart decision. While those attacks didn't kill goblins, it did ruin their high ground and force them to retreat deeper into the building, where they couldn't attack us. With Ixchel rescued, the party rehealed, and the courtyard effectively secured, it was now a matter of crawling through the fort's corridors and scrubbing the bloody place down. And hey whaddya know, Ash had just the thing for that.

It's grim work, clearing the fort. Sacrificing their escape route, the goblins chose to make last stands in corners of the building, at the ends of corridors that would channel any attacker into a narrow stream to be ganked en masse. It might have worked better had Ash not been here, going after the largest pocket even now.

A goblin runs forward to attack her and dies instantly. She slashes wide, a simple stroke, and five more are cut down. Ash momentarily considers showing mercy, but her party's instinct to help these brigands had walked them right into an ambush less than an hour ago.

This would be over quickly.

.

Ash had leveled into the 5-7 range, and she started taking a lot of wins actually, it was really nice! She even had enough loose coin to get geared out a little, such as the Triple Weapon Capsules she carried on her weapons, a loadout that would prove to be one of her signatures. (Not least for the time she popped 3 of em, crit, and killed a boss instantly.) But with my playing of Giorno, my first psion, I had started to gain a certain kind of knowledge. Knowledge that one may call…unnatural. Unholy, even. But within it lay the key to finally escaping hell.

What was the cost? Well, money. A lot of money. A lot a lot of money. “You might never be able to buy an item ever again.” kind of money. A level of debt that is now physically impossible to take, due to financing rules put in place because of what I did here. It was also the kind of money that might actually put a dent in a rich PC's accounts, so one of my other characters would have to shoulder it, and Giorno could only cover a small fraction. In a surprising twist, Aponchix, despite being lower level than both Ash and Giorno, had gathered a small fortune between crafting and super lucrative adventures. He could cover the rest. And so the stage was set for Giorno to make, and Ash to buy, the single most fun magic item ever seen on the A&S. The Skin of Proteus!

No longer would Ash have completely garbage dex and con scores. No longer would she be slow and frail, unable to properly move under the weight of her own armor. No more back pain! In so many ways, she was free in a way she'd never been before, and we haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet! Little did I know how quickly I'd need the help.

The first adventure immediately following Ash's purchase was Edith's Vargouille Cave. Man, it was a great adventure but there sure was some 3.5 happening. “Oh? You wish to fight? Everyone make 3 con saves, NOW!⛈️, or get paralyzed and Coup-De-Grace'd immediately.”

Ash, even now with decent con, was still paralyzed. But before she could be struck by Vargouiles and killed, her turn came around again. Though she was standing still, activating the skin was a mental only action, so she could change shape once more. Just one problem: I…didn't actually know of a creature that was immune to being paralyzed. But metamorphosis also came with the option to turn into objects, so Ash just turned into a rock. Success, instant death averted!

New problem, a rock couldn't fight. The Vargouiles simply moved right through me on their way to the rest of the group. This was especially bad since another one of our party was Del, an Assassin who, in a classic rogue moment, literally couldn't use any of their class features or items against them, and ran away instead, meaning we effectively had 3 party members instead of 5. I was panicking and scrambling, speed reading through the bestiary to try and find a way to contribute to combat, while what was left of the party made a desperate holdout.

I eventually found such a creature, and Del would stop running and come back, but by the time either of us could do anything we had been relegated to cleanup crew. The real heroes were the three holdouts, who essentially won with only half a party against an encounter including AoE paralysis. Unfortunately I hadn't been paying much attention to their standoff, t'was looking stuff up, but I distinctly remember Onggur, an old man wizard, polymorphing himself into a troll before getting out of his wheelchair and walking up to throw hands. What a badass.

I can now see why stripping Druid's Wild Shape and making a whole class out of it is such a common homebrew desire. “You hit stuff + You can turn into some guys” is a perfect level of complexity. 90% of the time Ash was an Annis Hag, holding her longsword or guisarme just like before, hitting hard and taking hard hits. That 10% of the time she turned into a sprite to fly out of a pit, or turned into a tiger to run a race, or turned into a bird just because she could? It was fun, and quirky, and useful, but it didn't take spotlight or brainpower away from the goal of hit stuff hard.

And boy did she hit hard. One especially epic moment I remember from this period was a Drew adventure where the party had to face off against a set of elves in a circular arena, and they had to immediately scramble to not get instantly blended, as Ash could control the entire court with Combat Reflexes and Whirlwind Attack. Good times. Ash was a terrifying opponent in general, and made a name as one of the better A&S big str hit stuff warriors. One of the DMs gave her a portrait that looked a bit like a statue of medusa, and despite it technically not being the right monster, the image fit very very well. Ash, a lady of stone. Unbreakable.

Speaking as her guardian angel, I was so proud of how far she'd come from her frankly tragic beginnings.

Such was the state of affairs as she would meet her greatest challenge yet: the second Martial Union tournament.

Held as the contest to determine who will lead the Union whenever its previous owner paragons, (or dies for real, presumably, but that hasn’t happened yet,) Martial Union tournaments are some of the biggest events to come through the basin, with about a dozen players involved and many more watching. Some key players for this one include:

-Ursumea, played by Specter. Winner of the first Martial Union tournament, and former Union leader. Has already paragoned, and is in fact one of a very small selection of people to participate in a paragon tier adventure. Is a monk that likes to stun you. A lot. Very favored to win this year.

-Nezerre, played by Ro. Member of the Moroder family. Makes a name with their dual-wielding quick draw Net+Trident set, including Deep Crystal and powers like Psionic Weapon to get critical burst damage. Can use various chains to buff her stats. Has levels in, like 5 different classes plus a prestige in order to make the specifics of their build work out. Definitely has the highest posting power of anyone here.

-Jalil, played by Barrbaric. Probably the candidate with the most prestige and respect, which is doubly impressive when considering the actual leader is here. He’s been around a really long time and has an impressive tenure. Psychic Warrior, with a lot of different swords to hit you with, including Deep Crystal and powers like Psionic Weapon to get critical burst dam-uh, ok ok but this guy can also get super big and give himself miss chances and stuff. Generally the Union's most powerful psion. Also had a monk's belt+high wisdom+psionic armor that stacks with it, for high AC. The person most people hoped would win.

Before the fighting could commence, there was politic. We had to set the rules, after all, and decided to do it via based approval voting. There was some…typical politics at work. Of course the monk wants no spells and yes supernatural abilities, of course the psychic warrior wants spells, of course I wanted magic items. But I can safely say, to the Union's great credit, that most people just didn't care and voted purely on aesthetics, which is impressive. (Of course we must mention the contingent who wanted the Skin of Proteus classed separately from every other magic item and banned, on the basis of your character's polymorphed form no longer really being your character, who I will now write into history as mere haters afraid of Ash's powerful energy.)

The voting was over pretty fast. Unlimited 10/min buffs, no damage spells, no poison, no magic items, special materials allowed, supernatural abilities allowed, no precombat buff rou - wait, no magic items?? That's right. Ash's stat boosters were given no special exemption. Seven of her nine combat feats would fall off and stop working.

This was the martial union tournament! A celebration of Barrow's Maw warriors at their best and brightest, and Ash would not only be forced back into hell, but stripped there. All her progress, history, ability, her rising above circumstance, all chucked into the void while she's slapped around like a dog.

No. No! Fuck That! Ash is a chill lad and would no doubt simply bow to these obligations, but *I* chose to step in, because she's my blorbo and I knew better than anyone that she deserved more than this. And there was a chance to get it, too, but only if I had a plan…

.

There were a *lot* of good fights in the tournament, especially in the depths of its lower tiers. From capable fighters like Caitlyn and Thorn, ready to take on all comers, to little guys going for gold like Buzga and his Buzga Blitz, but unfortunately I don't remember enough about them to do them justice. My attention was elsewhere, that day. There is only one tournament story I can tell properly.

.

Ash literally leaps for Ursumea, screaming down like a bat out of hell, gigantic shield held overhead, knowing that ending this in one shot was her only way to win. Ursumea, meanwhile, studies the situation, even as she prepares herself for the attack.

Despite being fellows in the Union together, Ursumea didn’t know Ash that well. Not that she hadn’t made herself known to her the same way she did all new recruits, but that’s about where it ended just because they didn’t usually hang out in the same adventuring parties. Even so, she knew something was off, even putting aside the odd choice of weapon. Ash fought with a controlled, refined style. Most Union members did. She couldn’t think of anyone that would be this reckless besides Varuskha or-

The blow connects, hitting even through Ursumea’s impressive guard. There’s a loud crunch; bones breaking as shield edge meets face, the force almost enough to knock the monk back. Ash lands amidst a small rain of blood, copper stains on the dirt of the arena floor.

-or Kaya.

But this wasn’t much for a lady who’s taken aboleths, a Jabberwock, and death beams from super liches.

Ursumea starts hitting back even as she recovers, letting no time pass before her own fists fly. One blow to Ash’s eye, another to her liver. A third crumples her chest armor, causing her to stumble, and a kick twists her knee just as she starts to put weight on it. Each impact hurt in its own special way, and the sum total of them was so much worse. Debilitating. Ash collapses to the ground in surrender, knowing she has already lost.

.

Botan's greatsword was a pristine, beautiful thing, made of hard adamantine. It snapped in half, tip flying away as Ash crashed into them…

There was a harmony in how Ash's new build matched my mindset, fighting back then. Feast, O great warrior, or be feasted upon.

Caitlyn collapses, bow falling to pieces in her hands. She almost draws her knife, reconsiders…

If 18 strength and 8 fighter levels was all I had, then good god I was going to use it. The final tenant was gone; None of this PHB only flab. (I still didn’t take a +1, though, somehow that felt like too much, and I didn’t know what I’d get from one anyway.) I simply retrained all the feats I couldn’t use, and went looking for a build that could actually work with this statline, starting with every feat that needed Power Attack as a prerequisite. Two options made themselves available: Sunder, and Charging with a shield. They worked together well, and I had room for both. Thus, I could charge someone, Leap Attack and Shock Trooper for bonus damage, use that damage to sunder something, use the sunder to attack them with Combat Brute, and use the attack to trip them with Shield Charge.

That wasn't the end of it either. I made myself a suit of adamantine armor for the DR, came loaded with tanglefoot bags and weapon capsules, and, most infamously, I had a small sized guiarme, in order to have a reach trip weapon I could hold in one hand in case I got charged.

Yvette, despite their grim circumstances and poor position, is still giving it their all. Ash can see it, a flash of fear in their eyes. But they refuse to surrender, so Ash doesn't ease up. Her shield comes down like a guillotine, and a head flies off.

With clarity born of hindsight, it's pretty easy to see how things stood. Our quick cast of key players, earlier? They were targets. Not easy ones, mind you, but I'd gun for them regardless.

Everyone else? Well, I gotta be honest, all I see are a whole lot of victims.

.

For Ash, it was the hardest fight of her life. For Nezerre, I'm sure, it was Tuesday.

Quick on the draw, Ash charges first. One of Nezerre's tridents is shattered within seconds.

Sure, Ash has been in fights against far tougher foes, fights where she was worthless, and fights with very very good chances of her coming home in a body bag. But the one thing uniting all of those was the team at her back. This was the hardest, because of the cold truth of 1v1 PvP formats like this: You are alone.

Nezerre, pulling another trident, has already found her range. A net snares Ash easily, and the followup trident attack spears her far too close to her heart. A spike of psychic energy can be seen through her backside.

The fight was long. Long and bitter. I can say with certainty that I would've lost if my toolbox was even one piece short. The two of them were the same level and both liked to weapon juggle with quick draw, so I'd love to imagine them as equally matched, but that just wasn't true. Nezerre…had actual class features! She was tougher, faster, stronger, had magic, and probably got more bitches. Ash couldn't beat her in a straight fight. But, unlike Ursumea, she had one fatal flaw! For weapon ladies like her, so in tune with their style, their blades might as well have been second limbs.

And everyone, eventually, runs out of limbs.

.

Things were settling, now. Ursumea had beat everyone standing before them, including Jalil, and won without much fuss. But they couldn't be crowned the new leader from their own paragoning tourney, so 2nd place was in the running.

I'm sure it didn't seem that way to those watching, with how Ash had dominated many of her previous opponents, but I saw her win over Nezerre as a huuuge upset. (Not least because it was 1 of, like, 5 major Union fights in history that couldn't be predicted solely on the basis of who threw more magic into the mix, with most of the others involving Ursumea.) It also left me still in the running for Martial Union leader, which was a weird thing to realize because I really hadn't expected to get that far, especially considering I lost in the second round.

Ash's current build would probably be decent against Jalil but, I actually had a much better idea. Though no one else did, Barrbaric and I actually shared the same philosophy on what the tournament was supposed to be about, and what its contests should represent. A celebration of the Union at its greatest.

So I made a simple offer. Why not cut loose? Let’s not tie ourselves to these restraints, these limits, that so many others cling to. If Jalil and Ash are to meet to decide the next leader, let them meet as their true selves.

He agreed.

.

Jalil stands to his full height, his *real* full height, for what feels like the first time in weeks. Well over 15 feet tall, he seems much more akin to a giant than anyone yet seen in the arena. Energy radiates off of him in waves, the ripples obscuring his position. Even with his sheer mass, it's hard to tell exactly where he is.

His greatsword, on the other hand, is crystal clear. A masterpiece among masterpieces, the edge leaves a shimmer of gold as it traces the air. Twice the height of a man and enchanted to a degree that was rare even among adventurers, the blade could probably cut down an elephant, stem to stern, and keep going. Five or six equally impressive weapons are visible, holstered around his waist.

He adjusts his stance and the ground quivers. Ash looks at him, sizing him up.

Despite being just over half the size of her opponent, she still towers head and shoulders above the first set of bleachers, gray unyielding flesh enclosed in curved armor, itself well made but scarred from many past battles. Wild hair frames cool eyes with no pupils, set against the backdrop of her clean, relaxed posture.

Contrasting her height, it was clear she'd have the reach advantage. While her sharp curved claws were clearly deadly in their own right, the real star of the show was her guiarme. It might not have had any fancy enchantments, but it made up for it in sheer length, seeming to reach halfway across the space between them before she could even move, level with Jalil's chest.

The die is cast.

The final round of the Martial Union Tournament begins now.

.

Aaaaand I lost. It was really close though! It seriously, actually came down to a 0 hp Jalil using Autohypnosis checks to power through on his last legs.

Sometimes I imagine someone asking me if I regret doing what I did here, to which my answer is no! Are you kidding? That was some of the most sicko shit I’ve ever done in my life it was awesome.

Technically speaking 3rd place isn’t that impressive, since it’s exactly where you’d expect her to be just counting up the levels, but man I am so proud of her fights. Especially that last one. She went out and put some respect on that name, and that’s all I could ever ask for. Bonus points for earning so much xp that even after retraining everything twice she still leveled up.

Ash would become the Union's first official accountant, and later their first official smith. She donated armor and weapons to pay for all the property damage she incurred in the tourney, and would donate a lot more as her responsibility within the Union grew and she made the long slow climb out of her proteus debt hole. You know that Belt of Giant’s Strength in the armory that’s low-key the only thing the Union’s good for right now? Yeah, that was hers.

Post tournament was honestly a pretty mellow period for Ash. Sure, she was epic and a badass, but everyone who made it this late in the game was epic and a badass, so she just kind of fit in. Her last set of missions would see her working to help fulfill the quest of one of the A&S’s most beloved characters: Brutal Mike.