#benjamin larkwright

[philcoulsonismyhero]

It's Make A Terrible Comic Day! (Or was, ignore my timezone.) So here's one about something I've been having a lot of fun with in my DnD game, feat. my war wizard, Benjamin Larkwright.

(None of the DMs* have let me have alchemist's fire yet, but that's just making me more creative so they may come to regret that...)

[spacecapart]

My flatmate roped me into a DnD group and naturally I've ended up obsessed with my character, so meet Benjamin Larkwright, war wizard! I've been working on some outfit sketches and a design for his face, and I'm really enjoying what I've got so far.

(Yes, the Jedi vibes are entirely deliberate - I like to design characters by mashing together existing ones that I like and this guy was heavily inspired by Obi-Wan Kenobi as well as Thomas Nightingale from the Rivers of London books.)

(Image described in alt text)

[philcoulsonismyhero]

Less than an hour until our next DnD session, and I am So excited about this one because I've been conspiring with the DM (my flatmate, so conveniently located for conspiring with) to cause some problems on purpose this time.

So, we've been investigating this casino with a plane-shifting gimmick (each time you walk through a door the room beyond might be located in one of the four elemental planes, the Feywild or the Shadowfell) because there's been a serious spate of missing persons in the town it's in, and last session we finally confirmed that the djinn who runs the place is allowing people to bet years off their lives for fantastic prizes because he's dying and consuming the life force that people lose is what's keeping him alive. And he doesn't care if people bet their entire lives, hence the missing people, who aren't just dead but have basically had their souls consumed to make magic batteries for him. So they're Dead dead, no chance of resurrection, and their corpses have been dumped in a mass grave in the Shadowfell which we've now got a map to the location of.

Understandably, the whole party is Very pissed off about this, because we were hired to investigate those missing people, so last session we headed into the Shadowfell in order to find these graves and mark the location so our new friend the artificer who created the plane-shifting machine (and didn't realise the nefarious purposes it was being put to because she was just so excited to have funding for her ideas) can build a portal to it later and the townspeople can recover what's left of their loved ones.

Unfortunately (for the characters, rather enjoyably for us the players), two things happened the second we set foot in the Shadowfell - two of our party failed the wisdom save against Shadowfell Despair, and we were set on by a trio of skeletal centaurs who weren't a very difficult fight but did manage to do a number on our paladin Droozh (a Loxodon) and his steed (a pygmy elephant called Florian). The party's half-orc barbarian, Bob (who has a much longer name with a dozen surnames but goes by Bob to save confusion), was one of the ones who failed the save, and he got hit by the apathy effect, so he didn't contribute to the fight at all because what's the point?

And the other person who failed the save, really quite badly, was my wizard, and this is where it gets Very fun for me.

See, my guy, Benjamin Larkwright, human war wizard, is the oldest member of our party at a very ancient 46ish. He was a soldier as a young man, which is where he learned his magic, but he lost basically everyone he cared about to the war he fought in, including his parents, his younger brother, and nearly his entire unit of war wizards. (He's halfway based on Obi-Wan Kenobi, can you tell.) He quit the army after that, spent about a decade being miserable and also a watchman just to have something to do, and only decided to take up adventuring in the past year or so after Various Events reminded him what it was like to care about people and to be able to actually help.

So missing people who turned out to be dead along, and were horribly taken advantage of? Something he is Extremely angry about in and of itself, and is also kind of hitting him where he lives because he never did find his little brother's body. Phillip Larkwright was a doctor, something he chose to do against the objections of their parents who wanted both their sons to join the military (and also not be queer and settle down and continue the family line after an appropriate period of military service, but that's a whole other Thing). He volunteered with a civilian medical organisation during the war, saving lives in the towns and villages along the border most affected by the war, and that's how he got killed. (Aged 29, Benjamin was 32ish.) At least, that's what Benjamin has managed to find out. All he knows is that one day his brother's letters stopped, and then he found out that the town he'd been working in was destroyed when the front line shifted, and he was eventually able to track down a colleague of Phillip's who said they'd last seen him helping patients during their attempted evacuation. So Phillip disappeared, and his most likely fate as far as Benjamin can determine was that he ended up in one of the mass graves left behind in that town. Killed by the war that Benjamin was fighting in elsewhere.

So you can see why this whole situation was already an enormous trigger for Benjamin! And then he failed that save, and now he's been hit with a Shadowfell Despair effect off the custom table I came up with for him, and is Utterly convinced that he just gets everyone he cares about killed, and it's going to happen to the party too, and it's all going to be his fault. (It Really doesn't help matters that one of them is 17, and only one of the rest isn't either in their 20s or the cultural equivalent thereof, so as far as he's concerned they're all children and thus his duty to protect.)

And now with all the context out of the way, we finally get to the problems I'm going to cause on purpose. Because Benjamin is having a Bad Time. He's been thinking about his brother all week (Morvath the djinn mentioned him, because one of the prizes he offers as enticement towards huge bets is the resurrection of loved ones), he's just watched these kids get attacked by monsters the second he led them into the Shadowfell, and now his mind is telling him that he's going to get everyone here killed. And Benjamin is the one with the location marking device, and the written directions to the grave site.

So he's going to run off on his own to complete the mission without putting anyone else at risk.

But he's not just going to do a runner, the DM is letting me use an inspiration point to affect the entire party (minus the half-elf rogue/bard, who's immune) with the Sleep spell first, as a distraction. So Benjamin is going to very quietly boil over into a full blown freak out, cast Sleep on the entire party, bark at Alyriia to "Get them to safety!" and then disappear into the fog.

And I have no idea what's going to happen next...

Well, except for one thing, which I'm Even More excited about. Which is that Phillip, the dead brother, is going to show up in Some Capacity. Is he going to be a hallucination? A ghost? A zombie? I have no idea, but the DM has been handed him as an NPC and I've been informed he is Definitely showing up. Which I am absolutely Bonkers about because any version of that is going to be Devastating, so I Cannot Wait to see what happens there.

DnD! Love this game

[philcoulsonismyhero]

Man, I'd missed DnD. My flatmate got a group together and we had our fourth session tonight and it feels like we're really properly getting into the swing of it and it's So much fun.

My character, Benjamin Larkwright, is a war wizard who was a magically-trained soldier as a young man and then a watchman for about a decade before quitting to take up his magic again and become an adventurer, and playing a mystery adventure as an ex-cop who keeps forgetting about his magic and solving problems like a detective is Really fun. I'm getting to mess around with all the crime drama tropes that I love while Also being a wizard, it's Great.

A couple of stand-out moments from this last session included getting to do the Hot Fuzz fence jumping thing, where the loxodon paladin just walked through the garden wall and Benjamin, on principle, vaulted a bit of still-intact wall aaand managed to roll an 8, land badly on his bad ankle and nearly faceplant in the street. The other wizard who, despite being a nerd and unathletic, is also 17 and limber managed to get over the wall with no trouble and got waved off from helping him up with a cranky "I've got a bad ankle, it's fine, I'm old, leave me alone." (He's like 45ish.)

We'd also earlier been to talk to the local sheriff about the epidemic of missing people we'd been hired to investigate (by his sister, it turned out, who thought he wasn't doing enough about it), and I got to play Benjamin going from marching in all judgemental and dragging this guy's curtains open in the face of his dreadful hangover and pointedly shifting the bottles off his desk to put down the list of missings we got from his sister, to leaving with a gentle word about hangover cures and all his missing person files and a promise to deal with whatever hold the villain has over him that he couldn't tell us about but had clearly caused an extended breakdown and is preventing him from investigating properly himself. (Kidnapped wife and son, we later worked out, who are among the people going missing around this Highly Suspicious Casino that appeared in town six months ago.)

The best moment, though was when I finally got to catch the other wizard out on the gems she stole from a bag in the mail car when we were searching the train to the town for Weird Shit. She'd managed to do it while the rest of the party were all out on the platform tidying up the mess from our fight with a gargoyle that had also been sent in the post via the train, so none of us had any reason to even suspect she'd nicked them. But then we were investigating a weird magical effect outside the temple we were in, and Abigail goes and pulls out these gems right in front of Benjamin's nose to see if they react to the magical field. He recognises them from before, asks her where she got them from, and she lies to his face that they were something she inherited from his wizard grandfather. So, two sessions after the theft, I finally get to insight check her, with my +5 insight vs her +0 deception, and I roll a 21. Which, upon realising that there's nothing she can roll to beat that, causes me, out of character, delighted, to exclaim "ha! Get insighted, crime child!"

Which was apparently the highlight of the session to the DM and everyone else and got me an inspiration as the culmination of a bunch of good ex-policeman roleplaying, which was delightful. (Got a good grade in DnD, which is both normal to want and possible to achieve.) The player of the other wizard now desperately wants me to draw a very pleased-with-himself Benjamin looming over a cowering Abigail pointing and exclaiming "Get insighted, Crime Child!", he was that amused by it, and honestly I might later when I'm less busy.

In-universe, Benjamin just gave her The Look, though, and said "alright, I'll believe you", with them both knowing Full Well that he doesn't. It was then followed up by him dashing (so Detect Magic didn't run out) over to the temple down the street to check if the magic field effect was also unable to penetrate the inside of that temple, and passing Abigail who tried to follow him on the way back, much slower on her "weak nerd legs" and pestering her into jogging the whole way back again while Benjamin made it very clear without outright saying that the jogging was her penance for the petty crime. (He's not a watchman anymore and he's not her dad so he's just going to mess with the kid in the hope that it makes her think twice the next time she gets the urge to be sticky-fingered with potentially dangerous magical items. And also for his own amusement, tbh.)

It was all very funny, I'm having a great time being the (metaphorical, he's aroace) straight guy to the rest of the party's hijinks and also occasionally indulging in my own. We ended the session thoroughly convinced that all roads lead to the Suspect Casino, having tugged on every investigative thread to Benjamin's satisfaction (and everyone else's), and he snapped his suspiciously-police-looking notebook shut and said "On that, Droozh, we are in complete agreement." to the loxodon paladin's declaration that he thinks now is Definitely the time to march into the casino and demand to know what the hell is going on. And yes, Droozh has wanted to do that since we arrived in town and the place seemed a bit sus from the whole 'got sent a gargoyle in the post' thing, but now we can march in and start cracking skulls in an Informed and Well Considered manner, having a better idea of what we're up against.

I love DnD, I've missed it.

[philcoulsonismyhero]

Help, my flatmate roped me into a DnD group and I'm going to finally get to play a character I've had slowly cooking in my brain for about six months and I can just Feel the brainworms taking root

So, here's many and various fun facts about Benjamin Larkwright, war wizard:

He started out as a combo of Thomas Nightingale and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and ended up with a decent dose of Sam Vimes in there as well which is very fun (weld Vimes' arc on to the end of Obi-Wan's story instead of him dying and you basically end up with Nightingale, which is something very fun I only noticed when I thought about all three of them at once)

He's aroace

He's a moustache guy, of the early 20th century soldier sort of vibe, and one of those folks with brown hair whose facial hair is noticeably more ginger

He's got. Nineteen (19) total hit points at 4th level, I rolled like Garbage, he's terrifying squishy

(But I took War Caster and Spell Sniper as feats so ideally he'll be raining death on his enemies from Very Far Away from all that melee nonsense)

His arcane focus is the engraved metal cap on the end of his quarterstaff, and he made it from scratch himself as part of his magic training

We started with extra gold since we're starting at level 4, and he's ended up being the 'Pack Full of Random Useful Items' Guy (also the only one with land vehicles proficiency, so he'll end up being the Designated Driver, and why do I always end up playing the Party Dad Friend...)

Highlights from The Pack of Everything include a crowbar, a scroll case, a bullseye lantern (with oil flasks for fuel and also throwing with the spell Catapult, an option I'm very excited about), a shovel, a bag of caltrops and one of ball bearings, manacles, and a grappling hook

He learned his magic in the army as a young man, but quit after his specialist unit of wizards was almost entirely wiped out. His whole military pension and his entire inheritance goes towards supporting the families of his dead comrades and paying the medical bills of the survivors

He's also the last surviving member of his family (wiped out by the war he fought in) and technically he has a title that he inherited from his father, but he Never uses it

The man's got So Much survivor's guilt, poor chap

He took a job with the City Watch so he could afford to eat, and then spent about a decade in a holding pattern not really looking after himself and not doing any magic and just generally being Pretty Miserable and trying to pretend to himself that he wasn't (see: Vimes, pre-Guards! Guards!; Obi-Wan between trilogies; and Nightingale pre-Rivers of London, and you see what I mean about their stories overlapping?)

Until one day he got dragged into Shenanigans by a nobleman he was guarding who turned out to be a gentleman spy, and he ended up using his magic for the first time in years in order to save the day

And it turned out picking magic back up again and using it to help people was the purpose he'd been trying to pretend he didn't need in his life

So he dug his staff out of the back of a cupboard, cleaned the cobwebs off it, set about relearning all the magic that he gave up when he destroyed his old spellbook back in the day, and quit the Watch to become an adventurer

Personality-wise, he's Obi-Wan but stiffer and with significantly less people skills, and Nightingale at his most brisk and soldierly. The Vimes influence is more in his backstory than personality, but he's got shades of the temper and the Strong Opinions as well. He's polite, respectful (unless someone proves they don't deserve it, in which case he is Very obvious with his disapproval), formal, got a bit of a temper but also nerves of steel, stubborn as all hell, likes to solve his problems head-on, got a strong sense of duty and obligation, and got a surprisingly sly sense of humour.

And he's got a moustache. I've mentioned that already but it greatly entertains me so I'm pointing it out again.

I love him a lot, I'm excited to get to actually play him. (We're starting next week!)

[philcoulsonismyhero]

The OC hoard in my brain is getting a little bit ridiculous and I keep bouncing between thinking about all of them in an endless loop, so here's a thinking-out-loud list in an attempt to quantify just how many of these guys I've got at this point:

DnD folks, various - Arren Conall, Sam Harnendil, Benjamin Larkwright, Arthur Fenn, Cor Fenn, Theron Adeshola, Phillip Larkwright, and a druid, a monk and a ranger who don't have names yet

The whole unnamed NPC gang from the Sam comic - Dwarf Doctor, Orc Doctor, Human Doctor, Human Nurse, Halfling Nurse, Elf Nurse, Human Orderly, plus Tarrick Shar who does have a name, and also various bit part patients and soldiers

Science fantasy setting - Willa Stonehold, Sam Hargrave, Maisie Kennard, Polly, Orrin, Barnaby, etc.

Arcane vibes setting - Jay (also technically a DnD guy, just setting-incompatible with the others), Wrenn, unnamed Science Girl

Ewan and William, aka the Woodsman and the Wolf Traveller (who also have DnD alternate selves)

Detectives etc. - George Glen, Tim Kingswood, Naomi Edusei, Chris Sharpe, Ellie Glen, The Usual Suspect (a cat), half a dozen as-yet unnamed minor characters

Red Shift Blue Shift (joint custody with @yourfriendlyneighborhoodenby) - Dan Gibson, Peregrine, Max Mwangi-ZQ82WX1, Georgie Toa, Cobi, Bob, [redacted], Kamari, Patch, Hector Cardenas, Chanda Ghahramani, etc.

Vaguely Discworld setting - Arren Conall again, Xi, Dwarf Pathologist, Dr Werewolf (possibly an alternate Tarrick Shar?), Kid Werewolf, Shadow Powers Woman, Hamish

Space hero thing - Charlie, Vesper

Other space thing - Alastair Hayashi, Charlie Charleston (different Charlie), Anwara Siddiq, Flynn Turnbull, Bird Alien Scientist, many other secondary folks that would take too long to list

Wizard of Oz-ish thing - robot soldier, bird scout, wizard

Werewolf detective duo

RWBY OCs (joint custody with @squireofgeekdom) - Resca Merlo, Otto Cairn, Niol Savannah, Hugh, Dot

And also many and various half thought out character concepts created by mashing other folks together, plus like half a dozen other iterations of Sam who tends to get everywhere

That's. More than 50 with names and at least 20 who don't have names yet but exist as pretty solid concepts, which is. Silly.

Don't get into original fiction, folks, it goes and gets into you and suddenly your brain is full of 70-odd people all clamouring for attention.

[philcoulsonismyhero]

14 sessions in, we're only a session or two away from wrapping up our first adventure in my DnD game, so I thought it would be fun to share some of the shenanigans that have been going on.

First, the party, now at level 5, in order of recruitment:

Benjamin Larkwright (he/him), human war wizard 4/fighter 1 (my character) - middle-aged, moustached, ex-soldier, ex-watchman, trained as a human artillery weapon but out of practice and tends to solve his problems with detective work instead, polite, methodical, stubborn, sometimes irritable, and often sarcastic

Bob (has a much longer name that starts with Ingophilius and gets more complicated from there, goes by Bob for others' convenience) (he/him), half-orc berserker barbarian - gets hyped rather than raging, makes friends wherever he goes, accomplished linguist, has your back but don't expect him to have been paying attention

Droozh of the Bright-Tusk Clan (he/him), loxodon Oath of the Ancients paladin - grew up in the Selesnya Conclave and on his first solo trip into the wider world, big fan of trees and other things that grow, not the brightest but trying his best, direct thinker (solves problems with his maul or by tackling people), pretty chill guy when his temper isn't roused

Abigail Hearder (she/her), human conjuration wizard - aged 17, kicked out of wizard school for blowing up a building (took up adventuring to pay back the damages), loves dogs more than life itself (her family breeds them), book smart but not as street smart as she thinks she is, a bit of a gremlin

Gimble Garrick (he/him), gnome life cleric of Arawai - joined the first adventuring party that came along because he was bored of just fixing the bumps and bruises of annoying children in the temple all day, possibly regretting that decision, thinks he's the only sane person here

Alyriia d'Alembert-Seyntinn (she/her), half-elf swashbuckler rogue 3/bard 2 - rich girl from the big city, family black sheep (least terrible of the bunch by all accounts), sent out to the sticks to keep her from causing trouble, Sherlock Holmes with none of the people skills, late addition and still not sure herself how she ended up being considered a part of the team

Droozh, Alyriia and Bob are all literally or culturally the equivalent of in their early 20s, Gimble is 40 and thus still relatively young for a gnome, Abigail is as previously mentioned 17, and Benjamin, 46ish and the only one not completely new to adventuring, frequently feels like the babysitter. In grand DnD party tradition, I'm pretty sure every single member of the party thinks they're the only sensible one. (Some of them are more correct than others.)

Notable NPCs and others:

Marvin Druitt (he/him), firbolg high level rogue legitimate businessman - guildmaster and proprietor of Marvin Druitt's Adventuring and Sundries (not the worst adventurer's guild in the city but also not faced with much competition for the title) and thus technically the party's employer. An extremely slippery customer, up to all sorts of schemes with the end goal of getting his half-elf twink boyfriend out of jail, almost certainly using the guild for money laundering (Benjamin is investigating him for this, but as a hobby since he's not officially a watchman anymore. Marvin knows he is, it's enrichment for both of them), does actually provide real adventuring work and thus technically is in fact helping people, crooked but not actually all that bad

Morvath (he/him), djinn - proprietor of a fantastic casino with a multiplanar gimmick in a tourist town in the mountains, directly responsible for a great many missing people (which our party was hired to investigate by a concerned citizen), Definitely All That Bad. He offers tantalising prizes so people eventually bet their limbs and even years off their own lives, and when the house inevitably wins he siphons off the life energy to sustain himself. Has convinced himself that no one is being coerced into making the bets and thus it would be impinging on their free will to have any sort of safety systems in place so his customers don't end up killing themselves, and we're all going to enjoy murdering him in the face shortly to put an end to the sheer amount of death he's going to continue being responsible for if he isn't stopped

Myrhana Wiggleboots (she/her), gnome master artificer - excitable inventor of the magitech machines that power Morvath's casino and enable him to siphon life energy from his patrons, so happy to find someone interested in her work and willing to fund it that she didn't realise exactly what she had become complicit in, now helping us to put a stop to it thanks to the power of nerd friendship (Abigail) and a stern lecture or two on the subject of Being Aware Of The Consequences Of One's Actions (Benjamin and others)

Flibbertigibbet (he/him), halfling priest of Arawai - head priest at the temple of Arawai in the town, currently cheerfully giving us room and board thanks to Gimble, very old and just a tiny bit eccentric, obsessed with brains, useful man with investigating psychic magic effects that make people forget their missing relatives as long as you don't let him break out the brain screws

Puku (he/him) - Abigail's fey familiar, usually in the shape of a small black dog. Inherited from her grandfather who was also a wizard

Florian (he/him) - Droozh's fey steed, takes the form of a pigmy elephant. Named after his childhood imaginary friend, and the cause of a Great Many out of character 'elephant in the room' jokes, mostly from me I'm afraid to say

Kitty - Bob's perfectly ordinary parakeet that he won in the casino. Was asked about pronouns by Droozh at Bob's urging, neither of them really understood the question

Various other characters include but are not limited to Billiwick Tooms, the gnome woman who hired us to investigate the missing people, her brother the local sheriff whose given name is pronounced Dingus and spelled Diingucce because the DM had had enough of being asked how things were spelled and decided to fuck with us, Adoreen Phan the very annoying (to half the party, the other half find him amusing) casino employee we keep running into and seem to have convinced to unionise the place, Billy the human kid that we met on the train to the town whose wizard uncle had gone missing, and, posthumously, the aforementioned Uncle Vergil the divination wizard who was the last person to try to take down Morvath and died for his trouble, but by following in his footsteps and building on his plans we should hopefully be able to take the bastard down for good.