[Heroic Sacrifice] Going out in a blaze of glory

[ForceUser]

There we were, invading the frost giant lair. The lair of fell winter gine who for so long had defiled dwarven lands and kept the ancient city of kings out of dwarkar hands. In our bold company stood a group of diverse companions who had shed blood together time and again: Nocnae Thorngage, the hobbit virtuoso; Blaine First-Born, the peerless huntsman and nemesis of giants; Nim the Hammer of Khazurag, a mighty dwarven warrior-priest; Yrgach the Champion of Boar Clan, orcish nature's warrior; Louri the Mystic, cunning dwarkar mage; and Brulon the Noble, Arm of God and Paladin of New Eyre.

Our foes were fierce, the fighting tremendous and bloody as we forced our enemies to climb over the bodies of their dead to face us. Master Thorngage ensorcelled the minds of the giants with deadly illusions and inspired his comrades to great deeds of courage, while Louri rained down brutal empowered fireballs on giants trapped within his solid fog, and seared their flesh with the acidic gas from a hellish cloudkill as they struggled to exit the clinging embrace of his insidious mists. Brulon and his faithful steed Ageos slashed the gine with steel and hoof, Nim bolstered his brethren with holy power and healing, and Blaine the archer rained down death with a neverending stream of arrows, pouring all his strength and skill and hatred for giants into each volley.

And Yrgach, the druid. Yrgach, gothi of the Boar tribe. Yrgach the barbarian, the warrior of nature, who rampaged through his foes infused with the spirit of the dire ape. Yrgach, who cut a swath through frost giant and ogre and winter wolf, rending flesh and bone with his terrible claws, who defended his blood brothers with his body and his rage, more than a match for almost any gine. Yrgach, who at the edge of victory was felled by a mighty blow from the evil frost giant jarl.

The day was won, a great victory for the dwarves, but at high cost. So far from civilization, no revivification proved possible. And so his blood brothers built a great pyre and committed Yrgach's body to the flames, that he may enter the halls of the dead with honor and take his place among his ancestors. He will not be forgotten.

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Character death in D&D is a given if you play by the book. It will happen, and occasionally circumstances will conspire to prevent a character's return to life. Sometimes that's okay, because it's better to have a PC go out in a blaze of glory than to cheese out, flub a die roll and let him live, or fudge versimilitude and find a res in time. This cheapens the character's sacrifice and diminishes the roleplay experience for everyone. To those DMs who refuse to kill characters on principle, I'm here to tell you you're missing out on an important facet of heroic fantasy. My character, whom I played up from 1st level over the course of the last two years, died last night in a huge important fight, the outcome of which has changed the course of campaign history and left a profound impact on the surviving characters. Yrgach will be missed, but the campaign is stronger, more vivid and more exciting than ever. Without loss you can't truely appreciate gain.

Let's hear your stories of heroic demise.

 

[ForceUser]

Bah! I refuse to the believe that out of the thousands of D&D players who frequent this board every day, not one of you has a story of heroic sacrifice that they wish to share! Come on, folks. How many others have played a character that ultimately followed in the footsteps of Sturm Brightblade or Thorin Oakenshield?

 

[DragonLancer]

I don't think in all my time as a DM that any character has died such a heroic death. Most tend to come to tragic ends, the paladin who fell to being a blackguard and had to be slain by his former friends for attempting to seek vengeance on the kingdom that was stolen from his family. Dark stories like that are more common in my games.

 

[Darkness]

The one V:tM character who died in a dark park when fumbling a fast-draw roll for his desert eagle after mistaking a nearby hobo for a possible enemy doesn't count, does he? (The PCs were on the run from the rulers of the city and were quite paranoid. Technically, the PC didn't die instantly; he just fell into torpor. The others couldn't transport his body, though, so...)

 

[Ron]

I played once a game that, in the Grand Finale, the party faced impossible odds. One of the characters was a cleric of Odin. He sacrificed one of his eyes to gain some advantage in the final battle -- very cool moment . He, and most of the party, died in the final adventure. The two surviving characters (of a party of six) buried the party and everyone, with dead characters or not, was very satisfied with the ending. As much as it is a meaningful death, especially in the end of the campaign, the reward can be sufficient to overcome the natural frustration of having a character death.

 

[Piratecat]

I can't tell yet, but it'll come up in my story hour next week.

I once had a PC in my game leap into a sphere of annihilation, chasing a clumsy demon and thinking it was a gate. What's worse, the rest of the group tried to follow him.

 

[thundershot]

Characters always seem to get resurrected in my campaign. They always cast that corpse preservation spell and put the body in a bag of holding or something...

However, there hasn't been a death since Tharizdun was released, and the entire status quo of the gods has changed, and resurrections are no longer possible. There've been some close calls, but no deaths yet...


Chris

 

[Darkness]

I once had a PC in my game leap into a sphere of annihilation, chasing a clumsy demon and thinking it was a gate. What's worse, the rest of the group tried to follow him.

And the demon? Did it actually jump in or teleport away?

 

[the Jester]

Well- it's late and I'm tired, but I've referenced this before- there was the time with the guy whose head exploded, materializing the small keep in the extradimensional space inside it to destroy our enemy's defenses...

 

[Goblyn]

Heroic Death

I once had a heroic death. It was years ago, back in the day of 2e. Our high school DnD group got together fora few games acouple of years after graduation; this was the summer before the first release of the 3e player's handbook, actually.

The group of PCs was located in a city named Versilley, your typical trading hub and political cesspool. My character was a bard-the riddlemaster kit, from some sourcebook. Her background involved losing her father to a plague and studying folklore until having to give up her mother to an asylum, unable to prove that she was not possessed by evil spirits. During our short summer campagn, the city came under attack by a malevolent entity known only as Binqis.

Binqis is a powerful demon, awake for only 30 days out of every hundred years, he makes real the dreams and nightmares of some soul that had suffered the cruelty of the big city. The only previous known occurrence, the only solution was to wait out the time, and hope that oneself did not find oneself dead, or mutated by some paranoid fantasy.

The only wasy to stop Binqis, was to stop the person he was possessing; this was not as easy as it sounds. The possessed becomes quite aware, and able to manipulate reality at his or her whim(this is 2e, so no, there are no rules for this. Stuff just happens). Any malevolent thought, towards the person or the spirit, and Binqis knew; the malevolent thinker was no more. The only way was to make the person realize that he was possessed, and he may expel the spirit himself, or to get the person to wish to kill himself.

When our group encountered him, Binqis had granted his power to a raving doomsday priest; a lunatic who had skinned live a giant beaver and wore the thing's pelt as clothing; this madman told us everyday how the world was going to end, that the streets would be washed away by torrents of rancid goat's milk ... and they were.

We realized that one who saw-or even wished- that the end was nigh could easily bring it about via the power of Binqis. So we pondered. It seemed a hopeless situation, for there was naught that could fight this power until:

Caitlyn, the riddlemaster, could not stand to see a demon win. Whatever it took, she would see the demon fall.
Towards the peak of madness, when vampires sold ice cream on the street and golden-plated Death Knights roamed the alleys, that Caitlyn wished to speak to the man. Getting to him was difficult, for she went out alone, but the riddlemaster was calm; serene; protected. She came to the man, through all of his rantings, and admitted to his prophecy of the end.

The rain fell around the pair as they staired at each other acros the thatched roof they stood upon. It was quiet, like the grave; even the rain seemed to make no sound in the darkness beyond.
"That's it, you've won. The end is here, just as you've said," The scant reflections on Caitlyn's monacle danced with the bob of er pigtails. The wizened character shuddered before shaking his head, much too earnestly, in a twitching fashion.
"Heeeheheh ... the end is coming. It's almost here, by Jehosephat. My tea was almost cold, but no, it is not yet time." The line between genius and insanity separated also his eyes. "So? Does your finger hurt, or are we going to have to jump out the window again? You know how Stanley hates it when we play in his shirts." One glared. One eye stared. Caitlyn had to concentrate to keep her own train of thought.
"But so very soon. Not minutes away, it must be. Look, everyone is gone, everything. The sky bleeds around us, and the world sinks away ..."
"YES!! The world sinks away, and the butterflies dance. I think you thought I didn't already know what I think that you thought I was thinking about." Drool and spittle mingled with raindrops on his withered face as he squinted at her in an attempt to appear sly. He then became serious. "But it cannot end. Not yet."
"Why not?"
"Why not?WHY NOT!?!" It is not the end, no, not yet. There lies oblivion, and here lies ... us." The demeanor faded.
"Then we must end as well." Caitlyn saw no other way out. "We will die, and the end will have come."
"Good then;" at that moment behind them one of Binqis' death knights appeared. "I don't trust you; you die first." The thought flashed in her mind at this moment, that Caitlyn grab the old man and leap off the roof, likely killing the both of them in the acidic broth below; but almost as soon as it appeared, she dismissed for fear of Binqis grabbing hold of it.
She made eye contact with those empty sockets, and the thing ran her through.
At cackled glee and rambled goading, the monster turned to its master and placed the giant sord between the old man's ribs, as commanded.
Three days remained, for Binqis' presence, though for them he was not. The death of the old man dismissed the devil, away for another century. There are those who would scoff at the saving of three lousy days; the spirits of those death from the previous month surely feel no comfort for this. But Binqis was defeated, and a few lives were saved.