The Barbarians · The Paths
The Laughing Maul
Bard · College of the Brasslung
✦ Name pending — what should we call them?
The names in the book aren’t final — we’ll announce the chosen ones before launch. Yours could be it.
STR
17
+3
DEX
10
+0
CON
16
+3
INT
10
+0
WIS
12
+1
CHA
17
+3
Affinity Voice
Ward the Undertow
Bane the Cold Between
Proficiencies Mirth · Performance · Athletics · Persuasion
Bard · College of the Brasslung
War-horns and open-throat rally. Blasts that buff allies and break enemy courage — and one laugh that is artillery.
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The Ladder
What they learn
LV 1
Crowd Work Hold a frightened group's attention; while they listen, they don't run.
LV 3
The Set A prepared bit: 1/scene, grant all allies advantage vs fear.
LV 6
Artillery Laugh An area morale strike; hostile crowds lose cohesion, friendly ones regain it.
LV 10
Load-Bearing Joke 1/story, cancel a mass-panic outright. SCARRED: fails in any scene that recreates the square where it once failed.
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For the Guide
How to run The Laughing Maul
VoiceBig, warm, born on a stage. Timing like a landslide.
WantsTo make the terrified town laugh — it keeps them alive. To keep his best friend company. To hold the line with the one weapon that works.
Do this nowThe Laughing Maul lands a laugh in a dread scene — grants the party resistance to fear; steadies a panicking crowd; buys composure.
“We disqualified him for flying.”
Load-bearing comedy. Genuinely, professionally funny — and the novel spends six chapters making you love his timing so that the one time his laugh fails, it bankrupts the room. His memory is a sieve about his best friend's story; he re-learns The Headtaker's grief and re-grieves it, forty-one times, and the love never resets. His failed laugh is a one-time event — never reuse it.
Fights best beside — The Rallying Cry — voice and mirth, the unharvestable crowd. And The Headtaker, always The Headtaker.
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