The backstory of Hans the Killer - a tale of love, battle and being crushed to death by wildshaped druids.
As Hans heard his skull crush, he thought to himself, "I think I'm in love." He'd just seen the most beautiful woman in the world Originally, she'd been an elephant, and Hans had hunting it with his dear Bella, but that didn't seem important now. What mattered was that he would never again see that beautiful shapeshifting woman that he'd so foolishly tried to dive-bomb, only to be put into a headlock by an elephant's trunk, gored on the tusks and stomped on. He supposed he should consider himself lucky that she changed back at all, giving him the chance to see her for those brief seconds before he died, but he was now face to face with the ugly mug of Gruumush the Orc God.
It was strange what you'd put up with when you were distracted. Normally, Hans would be furious that he'd been diverted from his final reward (an eternity with a harem of beautiful erinyes, if the Master Assassin was to be beleived) but he wasn't sure he wanted them now. He was sure of it - he was head over heels in love.
Gruumush finished his speech. It wasn't an important speech, or at least Hans hoped it wasn't. He hadn't caught all of it. Now, he'd wondered where he'd gone wrong. What, if anything, he should regret.
Hans started out life as a two-bit thug in the biggest city that his homeland had. It was a cesspool of a kingdom, of course, and was ruled by a tin-pot lich king who had spent more time fighting paladins than he did ruling the country, but it was where he grew up. Can't fault a man for having patriotism, can you?
Hans had grown up with Braxus as king, and he figured he was a good king as any. Whenever a manticore would show up, there'd always be some servant of the King there to kill it and drag it up to the castle. He'd even fought off an invasion of giants once, or so rumour told. Even when the Hobgoblin Khanate came marching in to take over, Hans had been a loyalist, fighting in the street and ambushing the gobbos when he could. He trained and learned to fight with a quarterstaff, since that was all the citizens could get their hands on. He even killed his first bugbear at 15, thanks to a little poison. He didn't think that was there he went wrong, everybody should be willing to defend their homeland, right?
It wasn't enough, though. Their side lost. When Braxus was killed and they smashed his phylactery in the town square, Hans knew it was time to get out of town. He manage to pull off one last trick on the gobbos before he left - he went up to Braxus's castle, picked the lock on the stable and released all the beasts he had in there to rampage through town. Stole one for himself, a giant winged bug-looking-thing with a saddle on it, and flew south over the mountains on her. Named her Bella and eventually found out that she was a "spider eater" and that she fed on monstrous spiders. Hans had never really liked spiders, so that was fine by him. Befriending Bella was the right choice, he was sure. After all, she'd been brought back with him, here in the afterlife.
In time, he fell in with what turned out to be a cult of assassins that had served the same infernal cause as King Braxus had. That, possibly, had been a mistake. Looking back, he'd always get the most insanely dangerous missions the cult had, killing warlords in their camps, assassinating dragons mid-flight, even murdering a cloud giant once. But he'd always done it with a grin, because the Master Assassin had promised arcane power in life, an eternity of easy living and fiendish booty in death and more gold than he'd ever been able to spend. It was a thrilling life, always full of excitement. Especially when he'd take that leap off Bella's back, hold his weapon before him and fall straight into the midst of the enemy. THAT was what he lived for.
So, no. That wasn't the mistake he made. He had no regrets about the people he'd killed or the life he'd lived, only the untimely ending he had. He regretted having decided to take a vacation. He regretted deciding that it would be fun to kill a herd of elephants for the sport of it. He regretted that he'd been killed before he could learn that druid's name.
Maybe if he fought well enough to survive, he'd find a way to get ressurected and to find her...
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Topic: 3.5 Arena : Paradise (Play by Post) : Round 1 Turn 3, King of the Hill (Read 24373 times)