DND Storytime: The Legend of Cornelius. Part 1, humble beginnings

Dungeons and Dragons. I'm sure some of you have played it before. Well, this is the legend of Cornelius, the drug dealing bard who stopped an ancient war between wizard factions, stopped a coup attempt in a regional capital and all around got in peoples ways. Also there's a magical candlestick.

To begin this saga, and let me say, it's an epic one, you're going to need some context to the game. There was 3 main people involved, myself who played Cornelius, the DM who we will refer to as S, and finally the other main player who we shall call M. Now M was kind of a friend but also not. He's a reasonable guy most of the time, but could be highly irritating when he didn't get his way or someone else was getting attention.

The world was a generic fantasy setting with wizards and dragons and angry redhead women who seemed to always get their way. The story of Cornelius takes place in a town known as Stagstead. I had a few sessions of experience with the group before Cornelius where I played an angry orc who hit things. During this time the warring guilds of the town formed together to create a "government" if you can call it that. There was 5 guilds:

• The Assassins Guild.
• The Thieves Guild.
• The Tunnellers (engineers) Guild.
• The White Horses (American Indian themed mercenaries).
• A mercenary guild who's name I've forgotten but played a substantial role.

The hierarchy was essentially Melani, the head of the assassins and a very angry drow > everyone else.

So with that out of the way, we can get to Cornelius. Beginning at level 1, Cornelius was a meagre bard who probably couldn't beat a group of goblins in a fight and barely had any money. What he did have however was a impressive speech modifier and a small stash of devilsweed on him. Accompanied by the two other new players, a warforged warrior and a weird homebrew pixie ninja thing (They were not re invited) he was smuggled into the town which was on lockdown. M was absent for this session.

From there he was dragged into some plot about people smuggling (what a shock) and desperately tried to find a buyer for his herbal wares. Luckily for Cornelius, the town had a wizards tower which had a group of druids in it. Turns out Druids enjoy a casual smoke and agreed to buy however much he could get. While this happened his companions milled about and generally contributed nothing to the world.

From here he looked for an opportunity to hire some muscle for work. Entering the nearest tavern, we had time to witness a large bald man hit a slightly smaller bald man over the head with a glass and knock him out. Cornelius had seen his muscle and it was time to use his speech skills (because why else do you dump strength and max out charisma.) Here we meet Ivan, the stereotypical Russian thug. Covered in scars, lacking most of his teeth and incapable of literacy, he agreed to work for Cornelius for free essentially (adventurers make A LOT more than your average person) .

So with some muscle, some useless companions who would never show up again and a buyer for his devilweed. Cornelius was feeling pretty good about his options. That was until M showed up and we meet his character Teddy.

Tune in next time to meet Teddy and his player M. It get's out of control pretty quickly.

(So this was something I've wanted to write down and post somewhere for a while. Steemit has finally given me the motivation to actually record these events. I'm going to try get these out as regularly and often as possible. It gets a little out of control in later points but it's a story my friends I've told have always enjoyed.)