Worldbuilding Prompt #737 - The Day Widefinger's Nickname Changed To Scarneck

This post was inspired by a writing prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - Worldbuilding Prompt #737 - Scars

It's inadvertently perfect timing, as an incident in a Dungeons & Dragons game (3.5 Edition) a couple of weeks ago plays right into the prompt.

Enjoy !

Image created by AI in Nightcafe Studio

It's a steamy jungle. The party of heroes has been working their way upriver in a small boat after being cast adrift on a hostile coastline. This is a land where they appear to be the only humans.... indeed, the only mammals. They had come across a couple of sentient races already, both feathered lizards, the Kurak and the Aburaq (DM note - heavily re-skinned and customised kobolds and lizardmen respectively).

Now, as they worked up the river, they had found an abandoned village. When they started to investigate, they were jumped by a new type of feathered lizard, but this time they were undead. Fast undead. The males were hulking brute warriors, the females were smaller and deadlier with the ability to paralyse their victims. (DM note - again heavily re-skinned, this time bugbears with the zombie template added, with the females being ghasts).

In the distance they saw smoke rising. Heading that way, they found a small town - a significant change from the grass huts and ancient abandoned ziggurat ruins they had seen in this land so far.

Within the town, they found the living equivalent of the undead, a folk who called themselves the Tlaxmec. These feathered lizards had barricaded themselves in the town, and as the party arrived, from the other direction a horde of zombie Tlaxmecs charged the town.

The party joined the defence, with those who could firing missile weapons and spells down from the flat rooftops onto the horde of undead.

Among the party was a chap called Widefinger. He was a berserker with dreams of becoming a famous pirate. The fact that he had never been to sea before this adventure, and had precisely zero skills related to navigation, seamanship, or even swimming didn't bother him in the slightest.

Now Widefinger wasn't really a man for missile fire. He was more of a "charge in, get angry and hit things" kind of guy. So when he heard something large crashing through the jungle towards the fight, he knew it was just his kind of opportunity.

What none of them expected was what they actually saw. Emerging from the jungle was a Z-Rex. Yes, you heard that right. Not a T-Rex, a Z-Rex. A zombie tyrannosaurus.

The reaction of the rest of the party was along the lines of "Oh s&*t !".

Not Widefinger. He charged it.

Very heroic.

Very stupid.

It bit his head off.

With a stunning lack of forethought, he'd totally not thought about the thing's ten foot reach. That meant it got an attack of opportunity as he moved in. A natural 20 ! Followed by a conversion, meaning it did double damage. 45 hit points of damage took Widefinger from full hits to unconscious and bleeding to death in a single bite. Ouch !

Things looked bad. The zombie horde were starting to overrun the Tlaxmec defences, and the party were down their best close combat fighter.

Luckily the zombie dinosaur wasn't bright. The starting creature wasn't exactly Einstein, and being dead didn't do anything to improve it's already limited brain power. It's target was down and not moving. It had no need to eat any more, so it moved on, attacking the town and starting to chomp on Tlaxmecs and stonework alike.

In D&D 3.5, when a character is reduced to unconsciousness, they bleed one hit point a turn until they die (the standard rules are that you die at -10; we have a house rule that you die at minus your Constitution score). But each turn you can pick a number and roll a D10. If you roll the number you pick, you stabilise; you're still out cold, but you stop bleeding.

Widefinger only had 2 more hit points left between bleeding and dead. He jokingly nominated a 1 as his choice, on the grounds that he rolled it so often when he tried to hit anything. Wouldn't you know it, he rolled a 1 first time !

The party's ranger, Aegil, jumped off the top of a building and used his considerable Hide and Move Silent skills to evade the rampaging dead-osaur, and worked his way to Widefinger. There, he applied the full charges of his Healing Belt to bring Widefinger back to consciousness.

By that stage the Tlaxmecs had fled, their morale broken by the terrifying monster, and the party rapidly decided that there was no shame in running away from something they couldn't beat. Well, they might have been able to if they hadn't already blown most of their spells fighting zombies.

When it came time for the after-action roundup, I thought about it for a little while, and decided that Widefinger's actions had certainly delayed the Z-Rex for a turn or two, and charging it single-handedly was definitely heroic.

So I announced that since the thing had virtually bitten his head off, even with all the magical healing D&D provides he would be left with a ring of circular scars around his neck. If he chose to have them on show, it would add +2 to his Intimidate skill.

Also, and totally irrelevant to the story, when I tried to get NightCafe to come up with an image with a pirate and a zombie dinosaur, it misunderstood the prompt in a slightly entertaining way. It gave me the image below, which is fo good I just had to include it....