Pet Sematary

[DRD1812]

Far too often in this hobby, losing an animal companion is little more than a bookkeeping headache. But if a cavalier has to spend 1 week of mourning before going horse shopping, it ought to be a big hairy emotional deal.

Therefore! I propose we find collective closure with some animal companion eulogies. Who was your faithful companion, how did they die, and why does their heroic sacrifice deserve to be memorialized?

(Comic related.)

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

I'll start with a tangent. In one game I played in the druid's animal companions lasted on average two sessions. At one point we were in a single area and the giant apes were dying all over the place. We had visions of the local giant ape tribes 'hearing the call' and leaving behind their friends and family to go off and die for the Uncaring God. Jokes of the genocide of apes in the country abounded.

My actual entry is Schniff-Schnuff, the derp-faced dog with the Wrecker archetype from our Broken Lands mini campaign. He started off as a mount for the party's goblin cavalier and was loved as the being with most personality in the party after the first session. The humanoids were raiding a nearby human village and after the first night they had snagged some pigs. The second night they left SS to guard the pigs while they raided again. they came back to find half a pig gone and SS lying on his side, belly grossly enlarged, his tail weakly flapping in joy at seeing his master again. They had to put him on the cart along with their loot and carry him home.

The cavalier died soon, and SS disappeared until the cavalier's replacement also died and a ranger was brought in who had SS as his animal companion. There was much rejoicement. From then on SS was played with more love than any of the PCs, biting things and people, a perpetual look of derpy incomprehension on his face. Most of the campaign took place in the Shadowdeep, so being the only member of the party without darkvision, he needed a light source. They got him a small helmet with an Everburning Candle on it, which always hung a bit too far off to the side, making him look extra derpy. A memorable adventure was when the PCs were captured and SS and the two familiars were left behind and had to stage a rescue. Familiars who were smart but couldn't talk to each other, and SS. It was hilarious.

SS never officially died, he just lost his ranger master and the rest of the party disappeared, either dying or being reincarnated to the penultimate stage of their Path of the Polymath. leaving poor Schniff-Schnuff alone in the depths of the Shadowdeep, in an undead-infested desert. Suggestions have been made of having him somehow become Immortal himself on his journey out of the dark - the patron of Good Bois and Lost Puppies. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing to happen in Mystara.

[VoodistMonk]

Dwayne "the Roc" Johnson was like the party's pet in my Kingmaker campaign. The Druid retrained or was reincarnated or otherwise stopped being a Druid, so Dwayne was actually free to leave on his own volition. But the Slayer, Rusty Shackleford, and Dwayne had formed quite the partnership... the Slayer even paying a significant sum to make Dwayne some nice wyvern armor.

Anyways, the party was fighting an unknown number of Gorgon-Minotaur hybrid monsters, and Dwayne got hit by not one, but two, of their breath weapons in the same round...

The table went silent. Every eye one Dwayne's D20 for the saving throw. He passed!

Much rejoicing that Dwayne "the Roc" Johnson was not permenantly petrified on entirely different plane of existence.

I know, this doesn't really fit, because Dwayne "the Roc" Johnson did not, in fact, die.

[Heather 540]

Mick the boar. Raised from a baby by Irlana the Hunter and the Awakened Boar that raised her. Killed by a dragon after getting the unconscious Irlana to safety. Irlana was devastated and she begging the local warforged wizard to revive him.

[DRD1812]

Heather 540 wrote:

Mick the boar. Raised from a baby by Irlana the Hunter and the Awakened Boar that raised her. Killed by a dragon after getting the unconscious Irlana to safety. Irlana was devastated and she begging the local warforged wizard to revive him.

Hey, I think I know that boar!

My own sad story was memorialized over here: https://www.deviantart.com/fishcapades/art/He-s-not-a-Pet-He-s-an-Animal-Co mpanion-273296468

He got better!