What if the NPCs that gamers so wantonly destroy got organized…?
I was a wreck, a shambles… nerves shot, I tell ya! Without the kind ministry of the NSPCNPC, I couldn’t even tell you this horror story without a belly full of the hard stuff and a half yard of linen for snottin’ on.
Me and me lads were just having a piss-up ’round the pub, when in walks this weird group of richies and their hulking bodyguard. Never seen such armor and fine, shining steel. –And who wears armor to the pub, anyway? But I digress….
So’s anyway, the tart of the group–a fine-enough looking wench dressed like she’s planning to work upstairs at the Speckled Hen, if ya ken–sidles up and asks me and the lads if we’d like a bit of work for a few days. Yeah, right, we’ll “work” for ya–nudge, nudge. The bodyguard didn’t much take to our little jokes, and we were about to tell ’em all to sod off, but this skinny, shifty-eyed bloke in the group drops a heavy looking sack of dosh onna table and tells us to be ready to leave at dawn. Fair enough–we could drink until dawn, easily; done it most week’s ends.
And so it’s now dawn, we’re a bit the worse for drink but can still shift the packs we’re given to haul, and the group leads us up into the hills. And then into a bloody cave–no, really, they did, I’m not takin’ the piss! We din’ even know there was caves in the hills, ’cause most good folk know better than to muck about up there, what with the wolves and bears and such. But, hey, we’d drank half our pay already, so it wasn’t like we could pay these barmy blokes back and leave! And the bodyguard woulda likely skewered us on his improbably sized sword, if’n we’d just tried runnin’ off. SO… Some torches, a bit of roping together, and we become speelunkers.
That when the first horror struck–some fell beast or such, like we’d never seen… and poor Barney–the fella with the big jowls and rheumy eyes that used to live over west?–that’s when he was took. Split right in two, like a sausage for pan-frying, and there’s blood all over everyfing. I was set for quittin’ right then, but the beady-eyed bastard what paid us starts waving around a nasty little pig-sticker, and it seems we’re in for the long haul. But, hey, at least our shares in the pay had just gone up! Gotta find the silver lining, not to pun ya.
It never got any better after that, though. Freddie the Fisher was told to open an odd-looking door–don’t ask me why there’s a bloody fooking DOOR in some old caves!–and he lets out this sort of soft sigh and just slumps to the ground, deader’n last years Christmas goose. Turns out some right bastard had hid some kinda thorn or some-such, with a narsty poison onnit, behind the door pull… and it was Freddie’s day in the barrel, like they say.
Should I go on to recount, in gory detail, how Stew was disemboweled by some kinda bear with the head of a fookin’ BIRD? Or how Little Mark was made to lead the way down a corridor and got pin-cushioned by bleedin’ arrows flying outta the damned WALLS?! Or Frank from Bogend being crushed under a cave-in when he was told to poke and prod at some squiggle-marked wall with a stave?
I still hear their screams, though I can at least sleep through the night, now, thanks to the NSPCNPC. But I don’t think I’ll EVER get over the fact that the bastard “adventurers” raked in a haul of lucre enough to feed a family of ten for 50 years, were lauded as heroes by the smallfolk back in town, and ended up shagging every virgin left in the county! It’s a bad world, I reckon; and the worser the crew, the better their lot. Here we’d lost six of our stoutest lads–all with families to feed and plots to work–and I’d’ve been left in that pit with them if I hadn’t been just a wee bit lighter on my feet than Little Mark. Want to see my “share” of the take…? Here, take a long look at the right arm I ain’t got anymore!
It could happen to you. Support the NSPCNPC.
I am known as Hallal, The All-Devourer! [not real name] Kneel before me and beg that I might merely make you a slave!
Before the NSPCNPC, my glorious fortress was incessantly broken into, pillaged, and sometimes even woefully damaged by thrill-seeking, greedy miscreants! Swine in clattering armor and crackling robes! Sure, some would profess being begged to assault my property and person because of… minor disagreements with some of my neighbors in the village in the vale. But who are these foreigners to dictate terms to Hallal?!? Who are they to meddle in mere internal politics and issues of proper sacrifice schedules, availability of virgins, and eminent domain?
Well, as it turns out, they’re foreigners with extensive resources, rather advanced educations, and apparently some contacts with deities. Err, that is, deities LESSER THAN I, THE ALL-DEVOURER!!!
And, so, unbelievable as it may seem, I was made to suffer discorporation and the painful and time-consuming degradation of finding a new vic–um, assistant–to enjoy the hospitality of their mortal form. I treat such host forms quite well–after all, su casa me casa, no?–and I even entertain petitions from what’s left of their minds, every fourth full moon. It’s an amenable relationship to all concerned: I live, they don’t get devoured.
Then I must make my way back to my desmense, COMPLETELY restaff, effect repairs to my walls and internal security measures… the costs are atrocious, and an All-Devourer KNOWS what that word means. Just for another pack of interlopers to muck it all up again!
But all that ended when I joined the NSPCNPC. Their attorneys have issued restraining orders on the local villagers and sued the village’s mayor for slander and libel, which provided me with a timely leg-up on expanding my labor base to better-patrol the grounds surrounding my fell keep. And should yet-another wayward party of murderous ideologues come around, the NSPCNPC provides temp solutions for a variety of pest-repellent professions.
My home has never been safer, nor more peaceful. Well… for me, that is. You, not so much….