| skyfaller |
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hi folks, I was a player in a War for the Crown campaign for a little while (we didn't finish the AP). In between sessions for "extra credit" / hero points, I wrote a Dame Trant fanfic because she was such a memorable character. I thought someone here might get a kick out of it. I don't think it spoils anything about the AP, we didn't get that far, but let me know if it somehow does. I hope it captures something of Dame Trant's (violent) essence.
Warning: some cursing (which is automatically bleeped out, I guess) and adult themes.
I'll just paste it in below:
Dame Trant feeds the ducks
The sun was setting on a lovely summer day in Oppara, as Dame Trant and one of her minions wandered along the riverside. She thought of him as a minion, at least, but the minion thought of himself as a minor noble trying to improve his station through, well, sycophancy. Not every noble has an inheritance, and sometimes you’ve got to make your name by sucking up to the right people. Dame Trant didn’t seem to care who you were, so long as you had her back in a fight, and cleaned up her messes.
She was drinking directly from an absurdly expensive bottle of wine. Minion #1 was carrying a backup bottle for when she ran out (which wouldn’t take long) and a loaf of bread (from a world-renowned bakery) to soak up some of the alcohol so that she could continue... partying? Drowning her sorrows? Her mood was unclear, and that made #1 nervous, because Trant was a mortal danger to herself and everyone around her at the best of times, but when she was angry? Hooh, boy.
He fidgeted as the silence stretched out between them, until he desperately ventured, “Wow, you sure beat the s!@* out of that guy, huh?” Usually fighting people cheered her up, so he hoped reminding her of that would make her happy.
Dame Trant spent the next 30 seconds chugging the bottle, and did not respond.
“My favorite part was when you fed him his own boot. That’ll teach him some manners, huh?”
Trant looked at the empty bottle glumly, but did not acknowledge #1’s presence.
“I don’t think any of his friends will give you lip after that, either.”
She sighed, and mumbled, “He really shouldn’t have spoken to me like that. It was just a friendly duel, ‘til he made it personal.”
“Yeah! That’s what I’m saying, you sure showed him!”
Trant abruptly hurled the bottle with all of her might at the city wall, shattering the glass into a thousand shards, as #1 ducked involuntarily.
She growled in #1’s face, grabbing him by the shirt and shaking him, “I like him! I didn’t want anyone to know I like him! I thought fighting him would be a good way to spend time together!”
He did a double take. “Wait, what? You challenged him to a duel as, like, a secret date?”
“Yes!” she wailed, and then got on her knees and threw up through the railing into the water. #1 handed her his monogrammed handkerchief, which she used to wipe her face. She then casually dropped that into the river, as well. Welp.
“I can see what you were thinking. His grace certainly has a reputation with the saber, and you seemed evenly matched at first. It was quite a rousing clash of arms, until you took his sword away and broke it. You probably should see about your hand, by the way. Looks like it’s stopped bleeding, but...”
“I’m fine,” she interrupted. “I just don’t get why he had to make that crack about my looks. Give me some of that bread, will you?” He did. She ate it, and he munched on some as well. They settled into something resembling a companionable silence, like vacationers in the caldera of an active volcano, or thieves resting on a dragon’s hoard mid-burglary.
As the bread loaf gradually got smaller, she began tearing off bits and hurling them ineffectually at the ducks, which devoured the crumbs gleefully. “Ducks. They suck,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“My tutor told me all about them. Supposedly they sleep with one eye open, so you can’t sneak up on them. They’re always watching you. Creepy buggers.”
“No way!”
“He also told me the drakes take advantage of the females. He said it rather suggestively. He told me they have corkscrew dicks, or some s$++. Inappropriate behavior around a young pupil, I thought. It’s just biology, he said.”
“How did you respond?”
“How do you think? I kicked his ass, of course. He walks with a cane now. Should have kept his trap shut. If I wanted to know about ducks, I could have read a book.”
Encouraged by Trant seemingly confiding in him, he joked, “Ha, did you like him, too?”
He immediately knew he had made a grave error.
Trant slowly turned towards him, her face absolutely expressionless.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I overstepped my bounds, please forgive me...” he babbled as he began backpedaling, but it was too late.
She struck with shocking speed, seizing him before he could respond, and then hurled him into the river, narrowly missing a barge.
As he surfaced, gasping for air, he heard her yell, “Go feed the ducks, you little s@$#! F&*% you!” A stretch of railing sailed over his head into the water as well, and then she stormed off. After several seconds, terrified barge workers peeked out of the wheelhouse to make sure that she was really gone, and that no more projectiles were incoming.
As #1 swam to shore, scattering the ducks with his clumsy strokes churning the water, he found something. “Hey, my handkerchief!” Isn’t that just ducky?
