The Queen's Bounties

This past Friday, I had the privilege of serving as Dungeon Master for a brand new group of Dungeons & Dragons players. We laughed, one of us cried (we’re not sure why), and I discovered a new place where I can put my storytelling skills, imagination, and voice acting talents to good use. The name of the campaign is The Queen’s Bounties, and the story will follow a group of bounty hunters caught in a much greater power play of political backbiting unfolding in the shadow of a world-ending threat. Perhaps not the most original setup of all time, but hey, it’s D&D.

Anyhow, I put in a great deal of time and effort into our story, and thought that perhaps you, my dear readers, might enjoy following along with the adventures and antics of our haphazard party of bounty hunters. In the series of posts that will follow, I will write out our campaign story and notes into prose that will have the look and feel of a novel, but with a twist: I will call out what accent and/or impersonation I used to bring a given non-player character (NPC) to life. The world I will build will be part medieval fantasy, part modern backyard party, akin, perhaps, to the delightful weirdness of the film Your Highness.

In the story, any and all narration is done by the world’s supreme creator, who sounds awful lot like Sir Sean Connery. And it his he who kicked off our campaign with an info-dump to set the stage for our adventure.

A final note: this is not professionally edited or polished and will read like a first draft. It’s just for fun.

Upon the death of his first wife, and on the advice of his counselors, Emperor Brevalaer took a new bride, Mathilde, the daughter of the lord of the Garnache. That night, as he consummated the marriage, Mathilde became pregnant with the emperor’s fourth child. His three sons were Brevalaer the Younger, Kylian, and Sineod, and they feared that, if a boy, the unborn child would force the emperor to redraw the terms of his succession, under which he would, by law, have to divide his lands equally among each legitimate male heir.

No sooner had news of the pregnancy reached the courtiers than the sons rebelled. A devastating civil war erupted, culminating in the Battle of the Hallowed Cliffs, where the flower of the empire’s nobility was slain, including the emperor’s own son, Sineod. The lordships of many of the empire’s fiefdoms were left vacant, and widespread chaos ensued. Within months, the Alainian empire fractured into a thousand disparate shards, each contested by a new breed of local strongmen who saw an opportunity to seize power from the old ruling class.

As the empire crumbled, opportunistic predators began to breach its borders. A ferocious seafaring orcish tribe, the Worrcingas, launched raids from the Western Sea upriver, laying waste to the empire’s wealthiest cities and settlements. Another equally ruthless people of nomadic horsemen, the Khaggiars, moved in from the Eastern steppes. With the empire in turmoil, the royal court started to fear that a mighty civilization of dragonborn called the Umooryiads, whose first invasions of the Empire had rallied the Humans to unite in a bid for survival, might take advantage of the situation and launch renewed attacks.

Mathilde soon gave birth to a son, whom she named Salomon after her father. On Emperor Brevalaer’s deathbed, she proclaimed him King of the West. As regent, she drew on the remaining levers of power to consolidate her authority as queen and stabilize the land. Brevalaer the Younger and Kylian were exiled. And to rid herself of the numerous strongmen who refused to pay her homage, she devised an ingenious system to turn the countryside’s chaos to her advantage by placing hefty bounties on their heads. These soon became known as The Queen’s Bounties.

It is one year after the institution of the so-called Queen’s Bounties that we meet our fellowship.

A crowd of cutthroat bounty hunters crowded around the empty billboard where the Commequiers bailiff posted the local Queen’s Bounties. The surrounding marketplace buzzed with activity, and yet the local people who scurried from stand to stand kept their eyes on them, as did the city guards. This was no ordinary gathering, for the creatures who had arrived looking for their next bounty were a rough-looking bunch, indeed. A Cervan with ten-pointed horns and spiked chains wrapped around his arms, a muscular Loxodon with two massive broadswords crossed over his back, a scarred halfling carrying a crossbow matching him in height—these were but a few of the dozens of listless ruffians who had arrived in the city on Bounty Day.

They all fell silent when Moe, the well-liked jailer, entered the crowd holding a parchment over his head, saying (in a Scottish accent), “Make way, make way! Bailiff is out today, but I have the bounties yer lookin’ fer. Back, back, ye scoundrels.”

Moe nailed the parchment to the billboard and turned to the crowd. “Yer not gonnt’a like it.”

A grizzled man with a thick beard, balding head, and carefully carrying a bag from which protruded a disturbed fishhead, stepped forward and asked, “What does it say?”

Moe shrugged and ran a hand across the brim of his round sun hat. “Yer welcome to read it.”

“Read? I can’t read!” the bounty hunter exclaimed, perhaps too enthusiastically. “I, Knightly Professor Griswold, demand that you read it to me.”

Moe sighed. “I canna read it, either.”

Griswold thrust forward his bag containing the fish and added, “Mr. Fish, my trusted scribe, decipher for me that which the parchment says.”

Moe regarded the fish with suspicion. “Odd bunch,” he grumbled.

“Odd, indeed,” a voice to his left interjected.

Moe turned to find a woman a head taller than he in shining plate armor, long black hair tied in a braid that reached her hips, huge…tracks of land…and with piercing blue eyes that froze him to the bone. He bowed and said, “Lady Karen, it is an honor to be in your presence once again.”

“It’s Lady KARINA,” she corrected him. “Now give me that parchment; I’ll read it.”

Moe motioned for her to approach the board. She squinted her eyes and studied it. All eyes were on her. But she soon started to pat at her hips, saying, “It’s written too small, and I’ve forgotten my reading glasses back home.”

Griswold lifted his fish a little higher and said, “Mr. Fish can read it, I assure you.”

Lady Karina glanced at the fish and paused. It glanced back with an empty stare, the kind only a fish can give. She then slowly lifted the bounty for the fish to read.

Mr. Fish’s voice boomed, sending a jolt through the crowd, saying, “The Queen has proclaimed a bounty for the traitor Robert the Strong. She offers one million gold coins to the man or each man of the group that brings her his head.”

“Robert the Strong?” several bounty hunters exclaimed together.

“He has five thousand men!” one of them added from the back.

The crowd was soon abuzz with chatter, and in the ensuing chaos, a majority of them started to clear out of the marketplace, scoffing and spitting and grumbling as they left.

“Wait,” Karina called after them. “Did you not hear? We can work together.”

“Bullocks, this!” one said on his way out.

“Impossible!” said another.

“Evidently, they do not believe themselves capable of achieving the task at hand,” Griswold said.

“Even if all of us here worked together, we’d be outnumbered one hundred to one. It’s suicide,” the Loxodon said as he left.

Once the crowd cleared, there remained only Lady Karina, Griswold and his fish, and a half-elf with a big round hat and a Tabaxi woman who stood slightly to the side of the billboard.

“I will take this challenge,” Lady Karina said. “Who will join me?”

“We will,” said the half-elf. “I am Hard Pard the Bard. This is my companion, Hiss-Teria.”

Lady Karina turned to Griswold. “And you?”

Griswold stood a little taller, put one hand on his hip while holding Mr. Fish in the other, and said, “I live for danger. That is why I hired Mr. Fish, my scribe, to chronicle my adventures.”

Hiss-Teria approached Lady Karina and said in a low voice, “You must be desperate to take on this bounty.”

“As must you be,” Lady Karina replied.

Their eyes met, and they shared a glint of recognition.

“When the two of you are finished undressing each other with your eyes, let’s talk logistics. Is there a stable where we can, ehrm, borrow horses?” Hard Pard asked.

Griswold chimed in, saying, “The most logical means of travel would be by river. Everyone knows Robert the Strong is in Hammars Pointe on the coast.”

“Agreed, we should travel by river,” Mr. Fish said.

His fish eyes caught Hiss-Teria eyeing him, and he slipped further back out of sight.

“Of course the fish would want to travel by water,” Hard Pard said. “But the rivers are dangerous these days.”

“Aye,” Moe said, drawing everyone’s attention. “The Worrcingas raided Chinon not three weeks ago, and worse further north.”

“The Worrcingas would ignore a small barge with the five of us on it,” Lady Karina said.

Hard Pard, fiddling with his lute with impatience, said, “Fine. The docks it is.”

As the group moved across the market square toward the exit that would lead them to the docks on the river, a deep, resounding horn sounded in the distance. Lady Karina, Hiss-Teria, and Mr. Fish paused, but Griswold and Hard Pard gallavanted onward as if they had heard nothing. The two reached the alleyway off to the side of the market that would have taken them to the docks.

But the way was not open to them. A horde of Worrcingas was moving up the narrow steps toward the market, their bodies writhing together like the thousand-fold steps of a centipede. Armor clamored. Teeth gnashed. Seaxes and axes glinted in the midafternoon sun.

Griswold panicked and tossed Mr. Fish over to a well-placed fish stand nearby, saying, “Blend in, Mr. Fish!”

Hard Pard cast Bardic Inspiration on Hiss-Teria as she rushed over to his side to face the approaching horde of orcs. Griswold soon found himself beset by the first three of the two dozen rushing at him. They swung their arms like wild beasts, but he managed to dodge them all. Lady Karen dashed into the fray to support her ally, landing an underkick to knock one orc prone, and slashing at another with her sword. The blade sang as it cut through flesh.

As they fought, another horde of orcs appeared from another alleyway adjacent to them in the market, in the direction of the Commequiers fortified bridge. They made quick work of the two city guards before moving on to Hard Pard. The bard warded them off with a wide sweep of his rapier, which slowed them for a moment. Hiss-Teria fired her shortbow into the three orcs surrounding the bard, and then moved with blinding speed behind one of them to fell him with a sneak attack.

As everyone fought, Mr. Fish cast Faerie Fire to give his allies aid. It worked, and for the following few seconds, Griswold, Lady Karina, Hard Pard, and Hiss-Teria felled more orcs. As they did, one lone remaining city guard, an affable young man still in training named Carl, fired his first arrow at the orcs. It hit the ground with an echoing thud at the precise moment that there was a sudden silent lull in the fighting.

“Who taught you how to loose an arrow?” Hiss-Teria chided him.

The guard notched another arrow and fired again. It flailed in the air like a fish out of water and struck an orc sideways. Mr. Fish started to laugh at him, with laughter only a fish could produce.

With no help from the city guards, the bounty hunters soon found themselves hopelessly outnumbered. Four orcs rushed Lady Karina, overcoming her defenses, and they knocked her unconscious. Hard Pard also took a hard blow to the head. Hiss-Teria withdrew, using the distance between her and the orcs to fire her shortbow a couple more times. No matter how many orcs they felled, more poured into the marketplace from the alleyways.

“Perhaps we should consider fleeing,” Griswold called out.

“We can’t leave our friends,” Hiss-Teria said. “But I can’t get to them; they’re surrounded.”

It seemed all was lost. Until…

A dozen large wolves moved up from the docks and attacked the orcs. In the other alleyway, a fearsome dwarf with bright red hair flowing up like flames, wielding a massive battleaxe, cut his way through the orcs and into the marketplace. A knight in blackened plate armor, adorned in a flowing burgundy cape, followed him, wielding a longsword with unquestioned mastery. Soon, the orcs were all slain or fleeing.

A dashingly handsome man in an expensive-looking white overcoat over his bare chest gallavanted into the market behind the wolves, riding a large, displeased-looking goat. He had a pipe in one hand and a bottle of port in the other. His thick, caterpillar-like eyebrows wriggled at the scene.

“By the gods, they never smell any better, those!” he said (in a boisterous Matt Berry voice).

Griswold turned to the man on the goat and asked, “Who the f—k are you?”

“Who the f—k am I? Who the f—k are you?!” he retorted.

Griswold stood taller again, puffed out his chest, and said, “I asked first.”

The man on the goat grinned and took a puff of his pipe, saying, “I am Belenos the Remarkable. And those are my wolves that saved you.”

Belenos waved his hand, and a golden light shone over Lady Karina and Hard Pard, healing them instantly. The two rose to their feet, somewhat still stunned.

“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine,” the fiery dwarf said (in a low grumble, with a standard American accent).

“What are you counting?” our bard asked.

“How many orcs I killed. I like killing orcs. I drink their blood, and it gives me powers.”

Hard Pard gulped. “That’s…not normal.”

“He’s unconventional, but indispensable in a fight,” the tarnished knight said (in a posh English accent reminiscent of Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek). He removed his helmet to reveal a chiseled chin, short black hair, thick, well-kept eyebrows, and sapphire eyes.

“He’s gorgeous,” Hiss-Teria hissed under her breath.

“Who the f—k are you?” Griswold blurted out.

“Gods, professor, that’s not how you get people’s names,” Lady Karina said, shaking her head.

The knight smiled. “He’s right, my lady. Introductions are in order. You’ve met my right-hand man, Belenos, who has no trouble introducing himself. This is Dwarfzilla, whose name says all there really is to know about him.

And I…I am Robert the Strong.”

Here are the designs our “heroes” made in Hero Forge:

My son designed all of my NPCs in Hero Forge (I have 30 for the campaign so far). These were all 3d printed, though they still need to be painted. Here are the first four. Enjoy!