Oaen’s Excellent Adventures

Hav­ing played Dun­geons and Drag­ons for a while now, a new char­ac­ter is refresh­ing espe­cially when he’s not like any­thing you’ve played before. I find myself all too often falling into a mer­ce­nary fighter role, some­times a valiant hero but that’s much less com­mon. So when I knew I needed a char­ac­ter, Oaen (pro­nounced Owen) was about as dif­fer­ent as I could get.

See, Oaen is 3’4″ tall and about as smart as a rutabaga. As a player, I go into every gam­ing ses­sion look­ing for stunts to pull which should, in all hon­esty, end up in the death of poor Oaen. The prob­lem is that Oaen is built, in terms of the game, to be damn hard to kill. Let’s give you a run­down of the lat­est gam­ing session.

You know what? Screw that, here’s the story from Oaen himself.

***

A story eh? Fine, but I’ll be want­ing a pint when I’m done.

Oaen leaned back in the chair and propped his boots up on the table, not an easy feat con­sid­er­ing his stature, but he man­aged it and made it look easy.

I had been else­where doing other things, if you know what I mean, and I had come to catch up with the party but when I reached the docks they had already cast off. Damn. Now, I’m fast, but water is my undo­ing. I’m the first to admit, I’m not a strong swim­mer. So I decided to laze on the docks, relax­ing in the sun until I couldn’t wait any longer. So I begin look­ing for a ride out there. No one seemed to be depart­ing any­time soon, so I bum­bled about when a kind gen­tle­man and I struck a deal. I’ll spare you those details, but just under­stand that I won that bet fair and square, it’s not my fault he didn’t know just how easy the propo­si­tion was for me.

So with the boots, I ten­ta­tively came to the end of the dock. Then I leapt onto the water, not sure what to expect but I found that it was a lot like run­ning on marsh, so I took off at a trot and left the lit­tle vil­lage behind me. As I ran I watched a larger ves­sel come up along­side my friends’ boat, unfor­tu­nately the wind was to my back so I couldn’t hear any­thing but I saw some weapons flash and I decided to kick it into high gear.

Now my legs may be short but I can move along when needed, and so I ran up towards the ships, stop­ping about 100 feet away. Look­ing around, I real­ized that a lone fig­ure on the water may be a bit unusual and there wasn’t exactly any­thing to hide behind so I just crouched down and took stock of the sit­u­a­tion. Now friend, I don’t know if you know this, but those Red Wiz­ards are always get­ting in my way. Sure enough I spot one on the deck of the larger ship, along with what looks to be his body­guards and some armored imbe­cile. Full plate on a ship. Great idea.

They had lashed the small fish­ing boat to theirs and they looked to be prepar­ing to jump in the water as near as I could tell. I saw the lot of them strip­ping off heavy armor and extra items. So, fig­ur­ing my friends were under the water, and with only eight or so ene­mies I felt my odds were bet­ter than good. I pulled out the cross­bow and loaded a bolt, and I took care­ful aim. The wind was behind me, which would help the shot, and the ship was large enough that it wasn’t mov­ing too ter­ri­bly much. And then I waited.

Who knew it could take so long to jump in the water. I watched as four of them all jumped in at the same time, just as they did I unleashed my cross­bow bolt and took off at a sprint after it. The bolt flew true and nailed the wiz­ard in the shoul­der, even with the wind behind me I could now hear his cursing.

I know what you’re ask­ing your­self, how did Oaen get onto the large ship with­out giv­ing up his safety? Sure, I asked myself the same ques­tion as I was run­ning towards them. Thank­fully the wind had kicked up and I saw my answer. The anchor chain. The ship was pulling roughly on the anchor line, and I won’t lie and say I didn’t grin as I ran straight up the chain to the bow of the boat.

Now those that know me, know that a con­fronta­tion isn’t my style, but I felt fairly con­fi­dent that chaos was a good strat­egy at this point. So as I appear at the top of the bow, another sol­dier had jumped into the water and chaos was def­i­nitely a good theme at this point as the ship’s crew were run­ning about, yelling, and try­ing to fig­ure out how the bolt had come out of nowhere. It took them a moment to even notice my form on the bow.

Unfor­tu­nately for me, the red wiz­ard gave me a nasty blow with his damned magic mis­siles and so it was earn­ing of another cross­bow bolt before I decided to dis­ap­pear and run up the sails. From there I sur­veyed the chaos I had cre­ated, invis­i­ble and safe from the bat­tle as the sol­diers in the water soon began to bleed and pop up dead and as those on the ship had more to worry about. See, it was actu­ally a bit chaotic due to the sud­den appear­ance of a swarm of rats, attack­ing any­thing they could reach (which wasn’t me thankfully.)

So with this going on, I decided to add to the chaos again. I tossed two smoke­sticks down to the deck and began shout­ing “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE” only to sti­fle my laugh­ter as the rats cov­ered the smoke­sticks for me and the sailors fren­zied once again to try and con­tain my nonex­is­tent fire. At this point I pon­dered a num­ber of other options, my friend Nym had appeared and was in com­bat with the knight and the mage was dis­tracted as it seemed, his forces quickly dwin­dled as they fell into the water and did not return.

At this point I pulled out my Drow poi­son and applied it to my kukri, decid­ing to go for one fell swoop of attack. I mean look at me, as awe­some as I may be, toe to toe bat­tles aren’t my forte. So I take my time, drink a heal­ing potion, and gauge my attack. The knight ended up being quickly killed and so it is all begin­ning to calm down above the water, the smoke and rats are gone, the wiz­ard seemed to think order had been restored. Oh how wrong he was.

I’m not going to lie, I wanted to scream like a ban­shee when I leapt off the sail rig­gings. I mean it, fly­ing through the air, my gut reac­tion is to scream and hoot, but I didn’t this time. No, an invis­i­ble wraith, I leapt down onto him and used my force to shove the kukri into his shoul­der, dri­ving his hov­er­ing form to the deck of the ship, my blade in to the hilt.

Now, had I been given the chance, he would have been done but as soon as I take him down, Eleanor shows up drip­ping wet and puts her sword through him, end­ing any oppor­tu­nity I might have had. But had it not been for my fly­ing leap from thirty… no, forty… maybe fifty feet up, he would have def­i­nitely been a big­ger issue. Yep, I won that bat­tle. And had the cap­tain of the ship some­how per­ished in the bat­tle, I had been ready to claim it and begin my life as a dreaded pirate, alas though he survived.

Now, about that pint…