Azalin Reviews: Darklord Puncheron/Doerdon
Domain: Risibilos Domain Formation: Unknown Power Level:💀 ⚫⚫⚫⚫ Sources: Book of Crypts (2e), VRGTR (5e)
King Doerdon and his court jester, Puncheron, are the Darklords of Risibilos. The details of this Domain are perfunctory at best. However, based on what is provided, one can theorize that Risibilos is a small pocket Domain which encompasses King Doerdon’s Castle loaming atop an enormous hill with a scattering of hamlets and farmlands.
Doerdon’s status as a Darklord is a long meandering joke in which its teller forgot the punchline. He was once a King on Oerth, though where exactly on Oerth is unknown. I doubt he was anywhere near Knurl or I would have dealt with the fool myself.
Doerdon had no sense of humor. He did not understand it nor could he physically laugh. Any joke he heard or comical situation he encountered resulted in confusion as to why others chuckled, cackled, and chortled all around him. Recognizing his own weakness, Doerdon attempted to understand humor by holding merry festivals and questioning others on why they found something humorous. It should come as no surprise that this resulted in Doerdon being the butt of many jokes.
Using his position to combat his own insecurities, Doerdon outlawed ‘jokes’ and ‘toys’ to ensure he would no longer have to hear the sound of someone else’s laughter. This, for obvious reasons, did not work and eventually this ridiculous King outlawed laughter on pain of death. Still, people laughed in secret.
As a wizard Apprentice in Oerth, I can attest to how the rich of my homeland often paid exorbitant funds for magics they could not ever hope to comprehend. This particular somber King hired a wizard to craft a staff empowered with the spell “weird”. For those of you that are not masters of the arcane, the spell “weird” assaults the victim’s mind with images of their most feared enemies.
Equipped with this weird staff, Doerdon roamed his small kingdom and killed anyone who so much as smiled. This pulled the King and his land into the Mists. Within his new Kingdom was a jester named Puncheron who followed Doerdon’s every move. Puncheron’s sole purpose is to tell horrible jokes (worse than my dad jokes, I assure you) which causes the King to succumb to fits of incontrollable and painful laughter.
Of course, the humorless King attempted to have Puncheron executed for this, only to find that Puncheron is the King’s nether-self. The jester cannot die as long as Doerdon lives. Completely under his own shadow, Doerdon keeps wizards on hand to ‘dispel’ the effects of the laughter Puncheron has on him and everyone in Risibilos must obey the only rule of the land: The Laughing Law, in which laughter is no longer outlawed, but mandatory.
The latest scholarly report of van Ricthen’s transforms Doerdon into a ventriloquist who is forced to entertain others with the assistance of a dummy that looks remarkably like Count Strahd von Zarovich. The dummy has a mind of its own and insists it is the true Count Strahd, causing fits of laughter in their audience. I do not see why anyone would find this amusing as I see little difference between the two.
Puncheron and Doerdon have one decent joke between them and for that I will award this Darklord duet a single somber skull.
