Back in the heady days of 3.5, things were a little bit more chaotic on the character sheet, and if you knew how to properly work the numbers, you could easily break the heck out of D&D those days.
Our DM decided to take a break from our usual campaigning, and he said to make new characters, but that this was a special instance. Throwing down the PHB he said, “You can make a character with any class and any race that you could possibly want. I’m creating a new world to play in, and i need legends to power its history. These first characters will be some of the first legends in this world’s lore.”
One guy made a Thri Kreen monk with six limbs to attack with every round. Another made a sentient parasitic whip that latched onto an Ettin. The next made an Arakkoa ranger with a high powered crossbow.
I made a half-dragon half-ogre who was a massive hulk of pure damage resistance. When I asked about magic items he said “Keep it within your level and you can have whatever you want.” So, naturally, I got a greatsword, but I was so big that I held it in one hand like a longsword. Using our now-infinite supply of money I enchanted it with fire, frost, shock, poison, acid, sonic and psychic damage, all a single d6 of damage, but enough different types to make it effectively an epic-level weapon.
Nothing could stand before my firey breath from my Bronze Dragon heritige, and the hp regeneration from my ogre heritage made me nearly unstoppable, so i made him a paladin of Pelor, along with the fancy name of Balthazar Delquax.
Now, for some background, my DM and I both really loved roleplaying and getting into character, trying your best to think, feel and act like they would if they were actually real. As such, in the third session of this Solo campaign, he put my Paladin through a crisis of faith: to stop the big bad evil guy, I first had to destroy the vessel his spirit was being kept in. A 2 year old human boy. Even in the real world, I was conflicted about this decision. Should i commit the lesser of two evils? Kill the child and destroy the villain, or spare the child and unleash the evil? I chose the lesser, and my Paladin was blessed by his god for being willing to sacrifice his own purity for the sake of the world.
This even then fueled me to drive back the forces of darkness, to strike out at the worshipers of Vecna and the undead in their ranks. I campaigned across the continent, scouring every last trace of this vile cult I could find, even going so far as to summon a lesser deity to raze a city of cultists, down to the last man, woman and child. My god had already blessed me for destroying the wicked at any cost, so i turned it up to 11.
I hunted their leaders who fled like cowards, I crossed the planes to seach for the headquarters, and finally i decended into the underworld to find and destroy Vecna himself. It was a ferocious battle that laster four game seasions, but I finally stood victorious over the crumpled and truly dead body of Vecna.
My DM then took out a stack of papers and began reading back my grand tale of justice, campaigning across the world to rid it of the taint of undeath. He described my exploits with regality, the rewards for which i got were many. All in all, it took about a half hour to get through.
Then, he took out another stack of papers, equally large.
“That” he said with an evil grin, “is what you believe happened. I will now tell you what really happened. Let me tell you the tale of Balthazar the Black.”
He then began reading, and it started out the exact same way, all the way up to… the child.
He described that, in that moment of weakness, Vecna jumped into my mind and placed a filter, a veil over my eyes. Everything would be reversed. Good became evil, evil became good. I was embedded in the most powerful dream ever concieved as I saw myself championing for the forces of light, I was actually leading an army of the dead across the land, reaping souls in Vecna’s name. I even summoned a lesser diety to destroy the capitol city and primary headquarters of the Church of Pelor. I crossed the mutiverse scouring out any followers of the god of light until I finally ascended into the heavens and murdered Pelor himself, only for, in the final breaths of his life, the veil over my eyes to dissolve. And it all came rushing back into my head. Everything I had done.
We had intended to do a follow up campaign but I ended up having to move, and we were never able to finish it, but I would have loved following through and killing Vecna.
I actually continued his legacy, many of the characters I’ve made over the years have been Bronze halfdragons with the name of Delequax hoping the restore the family name.
[zombify_post]
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