Personalities, NPCs, and miniatures

[Dr.Bedlam]

This is Heckelmeyer, Undead Jester, as sculpted by the excellent Bob Ridolfi, painted by the brilliant Lyn Stahl, and linked from Reaper's own Inspiration Gallery.

My own Heckelmeyer looks very little like this one, being painted by my own hands and in my own colors, which means it looks kind of like a retarded tree sloth on PCP colored it with big, chunky felt tip markers, held with its feet, while wearing goggles smeared with vaseline. At least, in comparison to Lyn's work. But Heckelmeyer is important. Y'see, Heckelmeyer's an old friend of the family.

I bought the mini ages ago, not for any particular purpose, but because I very much liked the look of it. Skeletons are so generic, usually. This one had something SPECIAL going for it, you know?

I threw it in there during a game of Dungeons and Dragons, once. It was a skeleton, wandering through a dungeon. The party attacked it. 

For some reason, I... didn't just have it fight. I had it run screaming away.

This confused the party to no end. They went after it, eventually cornering it, where it cowered in a corner, covered its eye sockets, and waited for the end., trembling. I repeat, I had no idea why I did this. It just seemed interesting, and different, and a way to shake up the party (2nd level, working on 3rd, mostly).

It did. I think this may have been the first monster in the group's history that the party didn't just automatically go tactical on and hack into gory chutney. After some discussion, the cleric tried to turn him. I pointed out that while the creature was obviously undead, he was ALREADY cowering, and would flee if they didn't have him cornered; what did he EXPECT the poor thing to do? Explode?

There was more discussion. The cleric cast Detect Evil; the creature was not inherently evil. The wizard cast Detect Magic, and determined that the creature radiated strong necromantic energy... the same as any animated skeleton would. Finally, the fighter approached... and tried to talk to it.

........well, this left me at a bit of a loss. I certainly hadn't expected THIS. What was I going to do? Well, being an experienced DM with years of practice in multiple game engines, systems, genres, and styles under my belt... I made it all up, right there on the fly, of course.

After much crying and weeping and reassurance that the party wouldn't kill him, Heckelmeyer (for some reason, the mini's name stood out in my memory) told them his story: He'd been part of an earlier adventuring group to venture into the dungeon complex, a hireling of the wizard, whose job it was to keep enemies distracted while the wizard did his job. His party had encountered an evil mage... who was in the LAST STAGES of the spells and rituals necessary to achieve LICHDOM! And the party charged in there and attacked!

It had been a mess. It WOULD have been a slaughter, but the evil mage had discharged most of his spells in the process of preparing his lich ritual, giving the party some chance to kick him around and hopefully kill him!

...and at the last minute, the evil mage had flung a flask of some strange bubbling liquid RIGHT at Heckelmeyer, and then cast Chain Lightning at the big armored fighter. And it all went off, boom, boom, boom, the potent bolt jumping from person to person, and hitting Heckelmeyer RIGHT as the flask struck his chest and BURST, soaking him in strange, arcane potion stuff...

...and at that moment, something blew up. After all, there HAD been a ritual going on, strange arcane energies in flux, and then a Chain Lightning spell cast, right there in the middle of it all. Boomski.

Heckelmeyer had awakened some time later, feeling a little odd, but not bad. He was crestfallen to find the bodies of his companions AND the evil mage, all dead, and mostly burnt to a crisp by the lightning, explosion, and resultant fire. Heckelmeyer, being mostly outside the blast radius, seemed to be all right at first... until he noticed the flesh falling off his fingers...

Somehow, the lich formula had been triggered by the spill, the lightning, and the explosion... turning Heckelmeyer into the first ever First Level Lich Jester. He'd been wandering around down here for months, afterwards... he didn't know how long... lacking a map to find his way out... occasionally pursued by monsters...  The party was the first remotely sympathetic thing he'd seen since his death. And they were genuinely sympathetic. Albeit a tad confused. What do you do with a friendly skeleton?

And so, the fighter abruptly smashed him to hell with a sword.

The group was shocked. "What did you do THAT for?"

"Well, the poor guy's dead. It's not like he could go back to his old life or anything. Killing him's a mercy, really. So, he fell apart after only ten points of damage? I guess that means XP is for a skeleton and not a lich, huh?"

The rest of the party was QUITE put out with the fighter, and an argument began to brew. I decided to put a cap on it. The bones rattled, vibrated, and came back together. After a minute or so, Heckelmeyer sat back up, as surprised as the entire rest of the party was.

They did not try to kill him again; Heckelmeyer remained with the group until they left the dungeon, and then went to go seek his fate in the wide world as an undead first level jester guy.

Heckelmeyer would later go on to become one of the campaign's recurring NPCs. They encountered him as a street performer (wearing a mask) in one city, and he provided valuable information about the local thieves' guild. He later turned up at a Mage Faire, amusing the patrons and networking with wizards. It got to be a running gag that whenever he turned up, the fighter would smack him, and he'd fall apart, and then pull himself together, with a "You'll have to do better than THAT!"

...all because of a miniature I picked up on a whim during a trip to the game shop.

This post was inspired by DanMayhem's "Female Gnome Conversion" post http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/53732-ingrid-female-gnome-convesion/#entry839277 in which he shows us a mini he's working on SOLELY to be a personality/NPC in his own game. Made me think about similar minis I have, and my own inspirations.

At the possible risk of this turning into a "character stories" thread, does anyone have any similar stories about miniatures that became important NPCs?

[Dr.Bedlam]

...and in case anyone's interested:

HECKELMEYER, skeletal jester

Medium Undead

 

HD 1d8 (8 hp)
Initiative +5
Speed 30 ft/6 squares
AC 15
Base Attack +0
Attacks: Punch in the chops (1d4)
Space/Reach 5/5
Special Attacks: See below
Special Qualities: DR 5/bludgeoning, darkvision 60 ft., immunity to cold, some undead traits, Sneak Attack +1d6, Find Traps (as per first level rogue). Holy water and holy objects have no effect on Heckelmeyer. In addition, if reduced to fewer than 8 hit points, Heckelmeyer's bones will lose cohesion and he will fall apart; a Detect Magic spell will reveal his bones as inert and nonmagical. After 2d6 rounds, however, Heckelmeyer's skeleton will reassemble itself magically, and he will become reanimated; his personality, unconscious when he was "killed," will "reboot," and he will become conscious again. Weirdly enough, Heckelmeyer DOES still need to sleep, although he requires neither food, water, or air. Smashing Heckelmeyer's bones to small bits will simply delay the process, depending on how badly damaged the bones are; he tells the story of pulling himself out of a pile of Purple Worm poop several weeks after being eaten. It has been speculated that the only way to permanently put him to rest would be with a reversed version of Raise Dead or Resurrection, but so far no one has seen fit to test this theory. In addition, Speak With Dead can force Heckelmeyer to truthfully answer any questions posed during the spell, although he considers this kind of rude. 

Skills: Appraise, Bluff, Climb, Pick Pockets, Diplomacy +2, Disable Device, Gather Information, Escape Artist +15 (he can literally pull himself apart and reassemble himself), Hide, Innuendo, Intimidate (at +6 if he reveals himself), Jump, Move Silently, Open Lock,  Perform +5, Search, Sense Motive, Spot, and Tumble. He CANNOT use Swim; his nature causes him to sink like a rock. However, he cannot drown, since he does not breathe.
Saves: Fort+0, Ref+5, Will+5
Abilities: STR 12, DEX 16, INT 14 WIS 13 CON - CHA 3/16 (depending on whether or not the observer knows he's undead and/or cares about such things; Heckelmeyer retains the personality he had in life, and was an accomplished jokester, raconteur, and was quite engaging. He regrets, however, that his looks aren't what they used to be).
Feats: Improved Initiative, Run Like Hell
Environment: any, but favors urban
Organization: any
Treasure: 5d20 GP at any given time, Hat of Disguise (which he uses to pass for human when necessary)
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Special attack: Heckelmeyer is the mangled result of an old Dragon Magazine article about Jesters and having a skeletal jester miniature on hand for a quick throw-together game. Consequently, he can attempt a sort of Charm effect against any opponent who can hear him AND understand his speech. This Charm effect takes the form of a joke; anyone failing a Will save may not strike Heckelmeyer or interfere with his speech for three rounds, the time it takes him to finish the joke. Heckelmeyer also claims to know Diarmuid's Last Jest, although he also claims that if he were to tell it, it would kill you.
 

[Aard_Rinn]

Oh my goodness, that's fantastic...

[ShadowRaven]

I love it. the story is awesome, and he sounds like such a versatile NPC to have show up places, either to lighten the mood after a harsh turn, or to provide useful information, or anything

[Dr.Bedlam]

...wul, he WAS durn handy... and being unkillable did come in handy.

I wish I could say I designed him that way, but it just sort of happened.

[kay13]

Now thats a cool sounding NPC

[Dr.Bedlam]

He also inspired the following conversation:

"So how many XP was he worth?"

"A moot point. You didn't kill him."

"I did too. He just came back to life."

"And since he remains alive, you get no XP. Otherwise you could just stand there and whack him repeatedly, turning him into a slot machine that dispenses XP with every whack. To get the XP, he has to stay dead."

"So... how do you kill him permanently?"

"Seems to me that figuring that out would significantly affect the XP reward, now, wouldn't it?"

[Chaoswolf]

That's pretty cool.

 

I can't think of any cool NPC stories right now, but I've got a couple of pretty good character stories if the thread develops (devolves?) in that direction.

[CrimsonStar]

Love the story.  Inspirational for me as a DM.  It reminds me of the undead friend in "American Werewolf in London" as well as a Diablo novel I read where an undead "friend" of the party kept showing up to help/annoy the group.  I think those seat-of-the-pants moments in DMing usually produce the most creative results.  Great job!

[Mad Jack]

 Heckelmeyer may well be one of the top ten coolest things Reaper has ever produced, right up there with Kaladrax...

 

I've never had any important npcs inspired by minis, but I've had more than a few minis inspire me to stat something out for them and find a reason to put them in an adventure.

I used to have an oldschool lead skeleton that bore an almost ridiculous resemblance to the undead knight from that one episode of the old D&D cartoon. Can't remember if it was Partha or Grenadier. But that thing showed up in about half a dozen adventures as various intelligent undead both good and evil before my house ate it. (Ya ever notice how much character those old skeletons had? Especially the Parthas - they'd put out skeleton ninjas, skeleton wizards, skeleton everything, but even just the regular skellies were in unique poses with all kinds of armor and weapons...)

 There was a wizard from the old TSR Magic-users and Illusionists set (second one from the right in the top row on the back of the box with the staff, backpack and droopy moustache), which became not only my first attempt at freehand way back in the old Testors enamels days, painting his robe as a series of multicolored tattered patches, but also became "Patches, the Wizard", an evil npc wizard masquerading as a kindly old man who loved children...

 

 (On a side note, while looking for a pic of the back of the wizards box set, I came across a place that actually had one for sale... And bought that and the "Monks, Bards & Thieves" set for $104 including shipping.... I officially hate you now, lol )

Edited February 24, 2014 by Mad Jack

[Dr.Bedlam]

Hm.

What are the chances of Heckelmeyer being resculpted and rereleased in another pose, or something? It's been done with other Reaper special characters... I need to dig this guy out for Halloween.

[Mad Jack]

 Well, ya know...

 

 Considering that most of his outfit is in rags, and the boots, gloves and hat don't have a lot of complex shapes to them... Theoretically it shouldn't be too difficult to just grab a random skelly in the pose you want and greenstuff on the official Hecklemeyer^TM "skin"... Put three thin wires in his head/helmet as armitures for the three points of his hat and use some small beads for the bells and you're good to go. The wand you'll probably have to borrow from an actual Heck figure, though, unless you're good at sculpting fiddly bits.

[Dr.Bedlam]

One day a drunken bard met Krotala (kroe-TALL-ah) drinking in a bar and asked her, "How you keep those swirly gold hubcaps from fallin' off your ta-tas?"

Without changing expression or missing a beat, Krotala replied, "Carpet tacks."

 

[Last Knight]

[Mad Jack]

 Heh... That sort of reminds me of a picture I drew several decades ago - a large barbarian woman in a chainmail bikini has a clearly sodden-drunk fighter-type jacked up against a wall, held several inches off the ground with one hand, and her other arm is pulled back to punch the guy. The guy's friend is desperately grabbing onto her free arm trying to hold her back, and screaming. "Axe! Axe! He said "Nice AXE!""