Characters / Rotgrind A World In Decay

Rotgrind Player Characters - "Our Destined Band of Chucklefucks"

Vaali

Captain Vaali, the Pirate/Vina, the Castaway

Ancestry: Sylph

Class: Swashbuckler (Fencer)

Vaali is a pirate and outsider to the land of Outset, who was betrayed by her former crew and left to die in the middle of the ocean, where she washed up on the shores of the Pawn's Pilaster and fell into a liquor bottle for months. She aims to claim her vengeance, as well as her ship, before returning in an even bigger way than she started her buccaneering journey: to become a sky pirate.

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• The Alcoholic: She drinks a lot.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: She has pale blue skin with cloudlike markings, as befitting her nature as a Sylph.
• The Chains of Commanding: Vaali knows the realities of captaincy all too well. Notably, she knows just how bad she is at it.
• Fish out of Water: She's the newest out of everybody to Outset, and further as a Sylph sky pirate is much more accustomed to life on skyfaring vessels.
• The Leader: She's good at managing the various manias and personalities of the group; declaring herself the "Captain" of the crew more or less without much incident.
• Legacy Character: The name "Captain Vaali" is actually her Mother's, and more importantly the name of the captain of her old ship. It's notable because she was actually pretty bad as a captain, to the point that her crew didn't mutiny out of evil, it was because she was so incompetent the ship could've been sunk with her staying at the helm. She's exceptionally aware of it, and it leads into her alcoholism. She sheds her old title at the end of Season 2
• Tainted Veins: She dies twice within the Pawn's Pilaster, and contracts the Rotten condition, which takes a visible toll on the body, with black veins in the eyes and across the body being a notable symptom.

Rehua

Rehua, the Anarchoclast

Ancestry: Conrasu

Class: Cleric

Unlike his companions, Rehua carries no ill-will or baggage with him, having come into being only very recently. He is a friendly sort however, and seeks to experience the world of Outset for what it is, even if he sometimes puts his foot in his mouth.

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• Anthropomorphic Personification: As a Conrasu, Rehua is one for the concept of chaos, though he's actually quite well-mannered.
• Arch-Enemy: The owl-like Sawsoarer fey that cause trouble in Outset near instantly after meeting them. In general, fey seem to inherently dislike him, and he dislikes them in return.
  • He also thinks of anything made by Perfectites, an inherently Lawful extraplanar race, as anathema.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Played for Laughs; as a Conrasu, his understanding of the world around him is extremely unusual, and will happily rope Oran or Tannhauser into whatever thing he's happening to do at any given point. He also loves congregating allies to live in or near Baldric's house for seemingly no reason other than it seeming perfectly reasonable to him at the time.
• Green Thumb: Due to his tree-like nature, most of his spells are flavored like this. Unlike Oran's magic however, they're mostly just treated as extensions of what his core is doing to his plant body.
• Really Was Born Yesterday: Due to the inherently unusual nature of Conrasu, Rehua came into being only a few months before the campaign started, and so he is tremendously naïve.

Baldric

Baldric Weathers, the Alchemist

Ancestry: Human

Class: Alchemist (Bomber)

Baldric was previously a respected man of alchemical science in the land of Outset, but the accusation of a crime he didn't commit led to his reputation being demolished, his life's work destroyed, and his good name tarnished so that the corrupt Outset government could have a convenient fall guy. Now a terrorist, he seeks to boil, burn and blow up the elements of corruption in his wake.

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• Berserk Button: His wanted poster. He's actually had several throughout his time in Outset, and no matter what they do or he does, the guard never get the shape of his bucket right.
  • Eventually, Rehua keeps adding unwanted guests to Baldric's apartment that they actively come to blows over it.
• I Work Alone: He spends a lot of the first part of the campaign trying to get away from the party, to absolutely zero avail until he finally gives up and accepts they won't let him.
• The Faceless: Baldric always wears a bucket-helm with a visor drilled into it, so nobody seems to know his face.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: A rare heroic example: He was your bog-standard, completely uninteresting alchemist for years; respected in his community, but otherwise a perfectly harmless researcher who wanted for nothing beyond what he had before his wrongful conviction. From there, he became one of Outset's most notorious terrorists.
• Knight Templar: His one-man crusade is set to purge the corrupt elements of Outset's nobility in the most violent way possible. Notable in that unlike Tannhauser, he is only interested in purging the nobles, and has absolutely no interest in rebuilding it beyond that.
• Mad Bomber: His use of Alchemy has been almost exclusively in terrorism, building bombs and flasks of acid and explosive reagents wherever he can.
• The Stoic: Baldric generally never raises his voice, which fits his nature.

Tannhauser

Tannhauser, the Metal Anachronism

Ancestry: Android

Class: Magus (Laughing Shadow)

Formerly a slave from the far-flung desert inheritorlands of Golgotha; his intellect and aptitude for knowledge saw him receive a rare education and a comfortable position within his master's care. He hated the feeling of being in shackles however, and organized a slave rebellion and revolution, wherein he made his escape to Outset; where an accident saw him go from a happy man to a revolution obsessed anarchist, dedicated to overthrowing oppressive systems by any way necessary.

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• Born into Slavery: Tannhauser knows all too well the oppression of the nobility, having experienced it first-hand for the first half of his life in Golgotha, living life as a mere bandit raider for his master.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: While he is obsessed with bringing the revolution, when his friends begin fighting he's actually very good at reigning people back in and keeping them on task, and is quite adept at identifying magical concepts for what they are.
• Chummy Commies: He uses a lot of communist rhetoric to inflame revolution; but otherwise he's a perfectly nice fellow.
• Face of a Thug: Tannhauser's augmented face makes him look and sound rather intimidating, but he has nothing but respect for most of the common people he comes across and is by all accounts heroic.
• Foil: For Baldric. Both are well educated men, but Tannhauser is a former slave who successfully managed to escape and presumably overthrow his oppressors who wants to build any coalition with his fellow man to oppose the local politiky and give power to the people through specific collective action, whereas Baldric was a disgraced alchemist who's need for vengeance supersedes any thought to what would come after he cleansed the corruption of Outset's nobility.
• Large Ham: Wouldn't be a Speaker D character without it.
• Magic Knight: Part and Parcel with his class, with his conflux abilities being specific examples of the two mixing.
• Magitek: Currently sustains his life, as well as a major component of his spellcasting.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Red Oni to Baldric.
• Rebel Without A Cause: Tannhauser is obsessed with the concept of revolution; something that his friends frequently make light of when he's not immediately in earshot or question the validity of due to his vagueness on whether or not he has a plan beyond the revolution itself.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Had his body reconstructed with advanced metallurgy, which allowed him to survive an unspecified accident that appears to have taken his legs, arms, and most of his face.

Oran

Oran, the Avian Druid

Ancestry: Strix

Class: Druid (Storm)

Oran is a native to the mountainous regions around Outset, who always found work while helping sailors and tribesmen near his home, all the while learning from his best friend in the whole world; Gorgamunger the White Dragon. One day however, Gorgamunger disappeared, and his attempts to find him with a group of companions ended in disaster. He now seeks to find his lost friend and discover what exactly happened to him.

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• An Arm and a Leg: One of his arms is replaced with a living wood prosthetic due to having given one of them up to Gorgamunger.
• Break the Cutie: Oran tries his very hardest to see the best in everybody and keep a positive attitude, but seeing just what the Perfectites were willing to do with even mere parts of his friend, on top of the many ruthless and just plain cruel individuals he dealt with in his time in Outset finally begins to wear down on him to the point he begins to experience existential depression. To say nothing of what he goes through when he finds out what happened to Gorgamunger.
• Foul Medicine: His healing magic does work, but it involves him gathering piles of bugs and mud together and slapping it on top of open wounds, something that squicks out his companions to no end: particularly those who are mostly made of metal.
• Friendless Background: He grew up terribly lonely, to the point of actively seeking out Gorgamunger, a dangerous dragon, as a companion.
• Green Thumb: Part of the gig of being a Druid.
• The Heart: While Rehua could also fill this, Oran is the one the crew is usually most protective of and is usually the most openly kind and emotional of the group.
• The Medic: Though both he and Rehua share this role to an extent as the resident magical healers, Oran takes more of an overt focus on this role, picking up the Medic archetype and a series of skills and items with the intent purpose of maximizing both his magical and non-magical healing capabilities.
• Mercy Kill: Performs a heartbreaking one to Gorgamunger, singing him a quiet song and then ending his agonized life quickly and relatively painlessly.
• Replacement Goldfish: More like a Reincarnation rather than replacement, but after the party's experiences in the Solitude, Oran finds a way to imbue Gorgamunger's spirit into a

Rotgoons Player Characters - "The Goons"

Grey

Grey Crocus, the Old Huntress

Ancestry: Gnoll

Class: Ranger (Precision)

Player: PartyDemoness (Minerva)

An elderly Gnoll woman who is caught up with the Goons, serving primarily as their voice of reason.

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• Cold Sniper: she's an incredible shot, able to take whole chunks out of opponents with a crossbow, most notably nearly erasing a mini-boss all on her own with a Nat 20, all the while staring daggers into them.
• Heroic BSoD: In a complication, she briefly is stunned silent by the image of one of her children dying before her, something implied to haunt her.
• Feeling Their Age: She prefers hunting with a crossbow as it allows her to keep the stress off her body, and complains quite a bit when she's forced to exert herself.
• Perpetual Frowner: Her model naturally has a resting bitch face.
• Team Mom: She ends up managing a good portion of the team's manias through her own experience as a mother.

Tellem

Tellem, the Merchant

Ancestry: Ghost

Class: Magus (Sparkling Targe)

Player: Kabhaal

In life, Tellem was a shrewd merchant from the sand-bleached lands of Quanchir, before being slain in a sudden bandit attack. Tellem's unlife is now built by the desire to find out why he was killed, and to continue his profiteering.

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• Death Is Not Permanent: Downplayed; Tellem has clung to unlife as a restless spirit in the wake of his untimely demise, but if his ghostly form is destroyed, he disappears for good.
  • Played With . He does indeed die at one point, but is found to have left behind a soulstone.
• Magic Knight: By virtue of being a Magus, Tellem wields with a whip-like blade and shield in tandem with an arsenal of arcane magic, weaving an intrinsic blend of spellcraft and swordplay into his fighting style.
• Only in It for the Money: Considers his time with the party as a way to regain his profits, and just about every decision he makes is related to money.
• Shock and Awe: One of his most commonly used spells is Shocking Grasp, which he channels into his asp coil like a metal-infused lightning strike.
• Trauma Button: Having clung to unlife as a ghost due to unfinished business, Tellem is heavily impacted on a psychoemotional level by that which triggers either memories of his death or the now even deeper-seated sense of materialistic greed that still anchors him to the world of the living. This has played directly to the party's detriment when he went into a dissociative state in the sewers, obsessively homing in on a shiny object and trapping the Goons in a flooding room with its removal.

Heart

Heart, the Wrestler

Ancestry: Human...?

Class: Monk/Kineticist

Player: SaltyJub

A massive specimen of humanity from across the sea, Heart was found doing odd-jobs by Beetle before becoming friends with him, and has followed him about ever since.

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• Beware the Silly Ones: Despite the goofy, happy-go-lucky exterior he often shows the other party members, Heart is a terrifying mountain of muscle who frequently kills people with his bare hands in borderline cartoonishly brutal feats of strength.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Heart's understanding of most things tends to perplex others, thanks to a number of unorthodox influences on his worldview growing up. These include his belief in the inherent untrustworthiness of wizards (no offense, Tellem), the terrifying magic wielded by every old lady in existence, and the complete normalcy of his dad creating him out of godly primordial fire.
• Death Glare: Thanks to his Intimidating Glare feat, Heart can wordlessly demoralize creatures without speaking. Given that he's a mountain of a man, it only adds to the feeling.
• Force and Finesse: The force to Beetle's finesse, charging into battle and bashing opponents to death with his mountainous physique while Beetle fights at range with tactical wit and dexterity-based weaponry.
• The Heart: It's in the name. Heart's motivation throughout the campaign is rooted in helping and encouraging his friends. Not to mention that the others are just as likely, if not more so, to step in to protect him in emotionally distressing situations than they are for even resident li'l guy Beetle.
• Humanoid Abomination: It's clear that Heart probably isn't human; able to activate a horrifying ability that mostly turns him into a thicket of arms surrounding a central mouth.
• Meaningful Name: Serves as The Heart of the party.
• Parental Abandonment: After his father created him, he left him to be raised by the locals of his home island.
• Tranquil Fury: Heart is one of the most even-keeled members of the party, pretty much always radiating a happy-go-lucky attitude. He is also easily one of the most ruthless, obliterating those who cross his friends with little to no hesitation.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: According to Heart, the most terrifying thing in the world is old ladies. He believes that any and all elderly women the party comes across are presumably capable of powerful magic and not to be crossed, changing course the instant one stands between him and his goals without fail. Given that he's often right, it's not hard for him to have that reinforced.

Beetle

Beetle Zebub, the little guy.

Ancestry: Kobold

Class: Investigator (Forensic Medicine)

Player: FroggyLoch

A truly bizarre little creature who does odd jobs in the Pawn's Pilaster in order to support his family.

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• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Theoretically, Beetle is in fact quite intelligent. It's just that the way he goes about showing it is so bizarre most would correctly assume he's probably just book smart.
• Force and Finesse: The finesse to Heart's force, typically fighting at range with his tactical wits and projectile weapons while Heart gets up close and personal with direct feats of brute strength.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Beetle has apparently a gigantic family with so many sisters he's actually lost count of how many he has. He usually settles somewhere between 14 and 16, and when they show up at Elma's; it's revealed the number is actually higher than 20.
• The Medic: A skilled forensic doctor, Beetle has taken the mantle of party healer, patching up the Goons' wounds and analyzing medical evidence in pursuing various leads.
• Non-Standard Character Design: In-Universe. Beetle is a strange kobold, with bugged out eyes and a large flexible snoot; something that his gigantic family doesn't share. It's implied something to do with a Taffy Puller caused him to look like this.
• The Smart Guy: As an Investigator, Beetle has the highest Intelligence and the most knowledge-based skills of the party. The crew regularly finds humor in the fact that despite this immense well of technical proficiency, his scatterbrained nature and frequent lapses in common sense tend to undercut it more often than not.

Junker's Delight Three-shot "Our Merry Band of Chuckle-Fonks"

Lyssa

Lyssa Saryssa

Ancestry: Ramiyel

Class: Mystic

A bubbly Ramiyel podcaster who endlessly catalogs the supernatural in the galaxy...whose equipment just so happens to be very out of date, and so made her way to Acheton-4 to hopefully make enough money for a new microphone.

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• Alliterative Name
• Intrepid Reporter: She's a paranormal investigator most of the time, following leads of haunted and paranormal phenomena so she can report her findings on her podcast.
• The Medic: Her Mystic training naturally follows her being a healer.
• Mind over Matter: Her main way of dealing damage is through a Telekinetic Throw.
• Nerd Glasses: Has a pair of glasses that make her eyes look much bigger than they actually are.

Duuran

Duuran Discordeae Deleterious

Ancestry: Moyishuu

Class: Envoy

A Moyishuu Pop-Star and Celebrity that's been left on the planet due to a mishap. They don't seem to much care, however, as they're more than along for the ride.

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• Berserk Button: Duuran has extremely few given their nature, but one thing you do not do around them is insinuate they might even be an impersonator of themselves. They are the genuine article, accept no substitutes.
• Impractically Fancy Outfit: They showed up to a salvage mission in an extremely gaudy, form-fitting uniform with a corset, a sequined duster, and heels. Naturally, it doesn't stop them whatsoever.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: During Episode 2 they become so enamored with Uliu's antics it garners this reaction, which gets accusations of Duuran trying to turn Uliu into a purse dog.
• Sense Freak: Duuran's hedonistic nature leaves them often quite like this; offering to give a potential foe hard drugs in order to deal with the pain, to the consternation of the entire party.

Keschurr

Keschurr

Ancestry: Wrikreechee

Class: Mechanic

An extremely nervous Crab-person who is deeply in debt to an organized crime syndicate, and desperately hopes that this mission will get her out of this.

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Uliu

Uliu-451

Ancestry: Grey

Class: Technomancer

A Grey who had his flying saucer impounded after it crash-landed on Acheton-4, and looks to get enough credits to have it returned to him so he can definitely not invade the planet properly.

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Adex

Adex

Ancestry: Sentient Robotic Organism, or SRO

Class: Soldier

A borderline ancient robot soldier whose incurred an absolutely absurd debt after years of fighting in war after war, most notably against "The Swarm", which has left him here on Acheton-4 after yet another mishap. He figures doing this job ought to help him pay it off.

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• Berserk Button: The Swarm. Any sight of them will set him off immediately.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Adex has a lot of baggage from fighting The Swarm, and any form of the Swarm; real or imagined, will cause him to attack on sight.
  • Parodied also, as he'll sometimes do stereotypical things from war movies for melodrama.
• Survivor's Guilt: While Adex generally gets over that kind of thing quickly, it's clear the horrors of war have worn deeply on him.