I dug my hands into the deep, cold, wet sand at the shore. There were sharp pebbles in the sand, and my knuckles grated against the coarse gravel, and I felt the sharp pricks of pain in my skin and they sung to me, woke my brain, made livid the little lepers that kept all my files in order.
I scrubbed with the sand, and while I scrubbed I couldn’t look at my hands so I looked out to the orange sea, the cascade of white cloud and brittle sun peeking out shyly from the blooms of white. Lasers come down from on high, screaming insignificant in the scale of the world, held there in the dark mass, the crinkle metal, the squeal of chains as the jackalhead raised the contraption on high and watched my soul sink, sink, sink.
The candelabra on the mountain, the vizier in the mushroom throne. The lake was a portal to a strange place, all deep silty brown, all wicked green algae. It choked and it slaughtered by sitting there, bursting its putrant bile into the aqua where the fish eggs slept, caviar in the womb. Let the heat rain down, let the sweat rise from my dermis into the beast that holds my soul. There is a shadow hanging over me, it has waited there like Damocles’ shaving razor, growing, growing, growing, and now it’s out and I can commit to the sin. I can live in the lake and breathe deep the water. The lake is blood and iron. The water is coolant, and I am the nuclear blender, and to prevent my bones from sloughing into slop and sludge I dip myself into the cool damp places of the earth, where the caves run miles deep and the climbers and the swimmers, heroes and questers and knights, all go to drown in the place where all things drown.
I’ve sworn myself to the Lake. And it’s not so difficult, and it’s not so cheap as a hotdog from the cart, rolled for ten hours, ignored and abhorred. There are men and there are monsters and the monsters, indeed, are men and that makes it worse. What irritates me are the little creatures, the other souls, who would look upon me and see not the man but the lake, the interminable deepness, the wild wild world where the sand is wet and cool and draws blood from your knuckles, so much blood, blood dripping squealing, muscles pulsing, neck contorting, and so much blood from the knuckles you’d swear upon your mother’s life that it wasn’t all mine.
I want to tell you about the time my murder paladin killed a man with literal actual sewage.
My drow paladin Vhax was in the sewers, alone, hunting down a drow assassin that had been sent by his former matriarch to kill him. Now Vhax had been dealing with these assassins for some time now - every now and then another one would pop up, give him a hard time, and Vhax being Vhax he’d carve them into bloody pieces with his great black messer.
In fact the first time the party had met him had been in the shallower areas of the Underdark, and he’d been propped up against an ancient statue of a nameless hero, alone in the dark, resting after a particularly vicious fight with two or three assassins.
He was familiar with how they operated, respected their profession, and understood why they were coming after him - you don’t abandon your former matriarch without consequences. He made that choice when he ditched the Spider Queen Lolth and picked up the mantle of Khaine (I wanted to bring in the Murder God from Warhammer fantasy. My GM ruled it as a forgotten religion of which I was the only believer, and my goal was to bring the cult of Murder back).
But this time, alone in these sewers, Vhax began to suspect that this assassin was on another level than some of the ones he’d dealt with before. They’d already tussled once, and Vhax was still bleeding from that minor scuffle. He'd had watched how this assassin operated, how he’d moved, and saw how his adversary had swapped locations - leading him into these cramped, fetid tunnels where sewage ran in rivers.
Here, Vhax was at a disadvantage.
But he didn’t much care. Vhax had always been a prideful and confident sort of beast and either way, someone was likely to be murdered. Khaine would be pleased one way or another. Sure, Vhax had his preferences, but he also figured if he ever died the fight would have to have been of some epic proportion and he knew in his heart that Khaine would begin to whisper to the one who had killed him: thus he was secure in knowing the Cult of Murder would survive beyond his own life. Vhax was not afraid to die.
Vhax still wanted some advantage in tracking his enemy, and so turned on his Detect Magic spell to sense where this assassin and his magical items were. Soon after, the assassin struck. Scoring a major blow (4d6 sneak attack damage is a lot) the assassin did what assassins do. Vhax countered, going in with his BFG sword, but the assassin was incredibly squirrely and the tunnels were narrow and ill-suited for his great weapon. Vhax and the assassin clashed time and time again, but Vhax coldly began to assess that the fight was not going well for him. More and more he bled, worse and worse his wounds became. As his breath grew haggard and his strength ebbed, Vhax decided it was time to play dirty. He was an Executioner, a paladin of Khaine, a cold-blooded killer who was front and center in any battle and relished in dicing his enemies to bits. But now Vhax had to tap into another part of himself, something more clever and refined.
So he turned and ran from the assassin. The assassin, having clearly read up on Vhax’s personality and patterns, was surprised momentarily before throwing a dagger perfectly into Vhax’s back.
And with that, Vhax collapsed to the floor, unmoving.
The assassin approached, cautiously, but detecting no sign of life or movement from Vhax confidently knelt down to gloat and take Vhax’s blade as a trophy and proof of his success.
That’s when Vhax turned over, seized the assassin in a grapple, and rolled into the river of sewage with the assassin in tow.
They both plummeted into the sewage. In a fight for survival, you gotta do what you can and Vhax wanted to WIN. So he held his breath and held onto the assassin as they sank into the mix of piss and shit and water.
The squirrely assassin, unfortunately for Vhax, managed to wriggle free from his grasp and swim away in a panic. And since the sewage was so dense and murky, Vhax could not see where the assassin was swimming - at least, not through conventional means.
This is when I realized something. "GM," I asked, "Does the assassin have anything magical on him?"
"Why?" asked the GM.
"Because I still have my Detect Magic on."
We'd forgotten completely about Vhax activating Detect Magic earlier.
We did some retroactive Concentration checks, and since Vhax had started as a fighter my Constitution score was just high enough to secure the Detect Magic over the course of the fight (with the use of on of my Inspiration points, to be fair.) I was exceedingly lucky on these rolls.
And so there, just a few feet away, Vhax could see the assassin floundering toward the surface.
Vhax lunged, grabbing the assassin by his ankle, and dragged him back down into a crushing bear hug. This time, the assassin did not break free. Vhax held onto him, his breath burning in his lungs, but not nearly so much as the assassin. Finally, the assassin could hold on no longer. He opened his mouth and tried to suck in air, but all he got was shit. The assassin drowned in literal actual shit, and as soon as he went limp. Vhax hurriedly swam up and broke the surface, gasping for air himself.
I remember this encounter vividly it's probably one of my favorite moments in my 10+ years of roleplaying games. It was all so visceral, so high stakes, and I pulled the win through trickery, brutality, and yes, some very lucky Con saving throws.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Vhax the Murder Paladin will always be a character I'll want to play.
The premise of Skyrim is just so funny. The shouts are just dragon language, making the fights between dragons basically an argument? But now this puny human has a minimal grasp of the vocab. Imagine you're disagreeing with your bud about something unimportant like pineapple on pizza and then a mouse came running over and called you a bitch
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