Characters / Puffin Forest

A list of the characters seen in the stories Puffin Forest has animated.

Ben Scott

The creator of Puffin Forest. He does all the animation, narration, and voices.

Tropes

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: In-universe, Ben portrays himself as having been accidentally right without knoweldge that would have helped him be so.
  • Ben, who seemingly has never read the The Silmarillion, only seen the movie triology, needed to make up a character sheet for Sauron. He ended up making him an evil, micromanaging blacksmith bureaucrat. All traits which could canonically apply to Sauron.
  • He used the Purple Worm statblock in a Pathfinder game because he couldn't find the sea monster stats. It turns out that the purple worm is actually very similar to sea monsters.
• All Your Powers Combined: While discussing Magic: The Gathering, he mentions some of his favorite commanders, which include Kenrith, the Returned King, the First Sliver and Karona, False God, all of which are all-color commanders.
• Berserk Button:
  • People who can't be bothered to read the spell description in the Player's Handbook.
  • Modules that give the DM too little information, such as expecting the DM to make small talk for random NPCs for 45 minutes straight or keeping the facts of a mystery secret from the DM as well.
• Big Eater: Ben has admitted to be as much in the Christmas video, saying that his favorite part of the holiday is the food.
• Big Fun: Given Ben's art style, he makes himself (and just about every other character) look like an oval with legs. His avatar especially embodies this, being portly but one of the main sources of comedy (a given, considering he's the one telling the stories here).
• Book Dumb:
  • Inverted; Ben often gets in over his head in D&D due to not thinking his actions through, but in real life, he has a bachelor in biochemistry, so he's pretty intelligent.
  • He makes a video where the joke is that he doesn't remember anything from college, and just googled it. However, the fact that he was able to quickly understand a complicated scientific explanation and summarize it in a simple and concise manner shows that he does know what he's talking about.
  • Ironically, despite his constant jokes that he hates making attacks because it means he has to add up numbers and do math, he takes an entire section of the Pathfinder video to talk about how monster stats work, which is way more advanced math^note The part he explains is that doubling a monster's stats does not make it twice as powerful, rather it makes it 16 times as powerful. Doubling its attack bonus means it hits twice as much, while doubling its damage means it deals twice as much damage for each of those hits. Doubling its HP means it can survive twice as many hits, but doubling its armor class means it takes half as many hits.
• The Cameo: He guest stars in Dingo Doodles' halloween special as a creepy, disembodied voice.
• Catchphrase: "It was a DECEPTION!" or variants.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Ben came to realize when he attended the Stream of Many Eyes that because he never once showed his face in any of his videos (at that point, anyway), nobody could recognize him.
  • He wanted to DM an Adventurers League, which resulted in him having to DM for an already in progress campaign for a module he hadn't read yet. As a result, he had to skim through most of it, resulting in him skipping how the party is suppose to get into the fortress and only finding that out after the party had already gone in guns blazing. The end result? What should have been a simple stealth mission turned into a massive blood bath that contrary to the title, the party barely survived.
  • In one of the real life videos, Ben was suprised that nobody recognized him from his show at a gaming convention. Then he remembered he had never shown his face in his videos...
  • When Ben got to play in an evil The Lord of the Rings campaign where the player characters were villains brought back from the dead, he eagerly chose to play as Sauron only to realize that he had no idea how to roleplay as Sauron or what Sauron's abilities were and thus he had to make up Sauron's personality and guess his abilities, which may have explained why nobody else picked Sauron. ("Evil, Micromanaging Blacksmith" is remarkably close, though).
  • Ben tried to show some friends the game Traveller, but didn't consider that they'd come to hate the character creation system.
  • On a more humorous note, he made a quest for the players to track down a group of lycanthropes called the Wild Things. It wasn't until one of the players was halfway through making the pun that he realized he had sent them to find Where the Wild Things Are.
  • He monkeyed around with a Kraken's stats to make it more manageable, but he didn't think to give it magic resistance, immutable shape or legendary resistance, meaning that it fell prey to a basic polymorph spell from Asiago (it should still have +11 to wisdom saves, so he presumably had an unlucky roll).
  • For a Song and Ice and Fire Game, he wanted to make a Horse Master character obsessed with horse rights. The characters veto it because even with his Loonie antics it was too weird and could offer nothing. But then the other peole forgot who he was, so he responded by making an Evil Uncle that did fit in.
• Ditzy Genius: For all his antics and shenanigans, Ben is actually pretty damn intelligent. Considering that he's a biochemist, he kind of has to be.
• Dungeon Masters Girlfriend: Brother, in this case. Also averted; just because his brother Will is playing doesn't mean Ben gives him any special treatment.
• Everybody Hates Mathematics: Or at least doesn't consider them a fun part of tabletop, which is why he prefers classes that only make on attack per turn and do very straightforward damage. Ironically, his favorite class is one of the classes in the game with the most attacks.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Played for laughs a few times.
  • In one video, a fellow player would rather sit on an armchair filled with broken glass and poisonous snakes than on the couch next to Ben.
  • When talking about a Star Wars game he was in, Ben said that the GM "brought me along for some reason".
  • Ben thinks that someone not installing enough locks on their door means they like him.
• Genre Savvy: When the GM for a Star Wars game brought pregen characters, Ben picked the Han Solo character before he even saw the character sheets. This is Star Wars, there is going to be a human smuggler.
• The GM Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • Ben is very anti-cheating, though he does say that if you're going to cheat, it needs to be consistent and for a good reason. On the other hand, he calls out the idea of a GM "needing" to cheat when they are literally god in regards to power level towards the game.
  • He has admitted to fudging dice rolls on one occasion, in the Waterdeep campaign. This was actually in the players' favor, since he needed the barkeep to win a fight against a troll.
• Heel Realization: He has one of these when he realizes that five games he's tried to run have crashed and burned in some way. Just look at what happened when he tried to run Traveller.
• Hypocrite: Ben may express distaste whenever a player makes a pun, but as shown with Aligaros's "Mind Axe" he's more than willing to make some groaners of his own.
• Killer Game Master:
  • "Miscellaneous Monsters and Bears of Sand" shows that Ben can sometimes be a Killer DM. Ben once killed two of his players and forced the others to retreat by having them fight a permanently invisible beholder. When asked how he tackles large player groups, he responds that he kills half of them before they roll initiative.
  • To be fair, most times he takes this role it's because the module calls for it, or because the players made stupid decisions. He does play it like this, occasionally, like in the Malikar video, adding in monsters just because he thought they looked cool, without concern for CR.
  • While it's played for laughs, every time he shows off the notes he's brought to a game, all they say is "Kill Everyone".
• The Loonie: Self-admitted in the Detective Clancy Video, he likes making gag characters. Esepcially dumb ones who aren't as awesome or smart as they think they are.
• Lovecraft Lite: Ben tends to run his Call of Cthulhu games like an episode of Scooby-Doo.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Falls in with being the friend that nobody likes. Played for laughs, of course.
• Never My Fault: Ben does seem to have this attitude from time to time.
  • In one game, the players completely derailed the game using a portal to the moon they randomly encountered. Ben had intended to use it as a Chekhov's Gun, so he was totally unprepared when the players actually decided to use the mysterious magics he had them run into and was surrounded by magical protection.
  • In a few other games, the campaign becomes less enjoyable for the players because Ben insists on following the module even when it's obviously poorly written. A key example is Wallace, who Ben foisted upon the part because the module had no provisions for a party declining to take him along. Also an invisible beholder.
  • In "Chadwick Strongpants", he complains about how his brother doesn't like tabletop RPGs. However in one session, the brother was stuck doing nothing while everyone was having fun. In the other session mentioned, Ben intentionally made a terrible character for his brother. With this in mind, the brother's dislike for RPGs seems more justified.
• Noodle Incident: When he's talking about the Deck of Many Things, he ends up pulling The Void, the worst card you can get. If his comments of "God damn it, every time" are any indication, this has happened before.
• Railroading: This can sometimes happen, usually by the design of the module Ben's running.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: No damage is indicated by him saying "Tink", splashing is "Splish-splash-splish-sploosh", and a dragon's fire breath is "BLARGH! MEGA DEATH FACE FLAMES!"
• Self-Deprecation: One could easily think Ben's art style, that being making him look like an egg with legs and arms, would mean that he's actually quite chubby; in reality, Ben is a beanpole.
  • He's also shown sleeping at a DM meeting for Adventurer's League, which could lead to the whole incident with the obelisk.

Ben's Player Characters

Aligaros Ashuin

Solving problems with his mind axe since forever

Katia: Nono, Aligaros. We're using our Mind Axes on this one.

Ben's human fighter character. He's kind of an idiot and a racist towards aarakockra.

• The Alcoholic: Every night he goes out drinking, gets black out drunk, and then wakes up in a jail cell.
• Alliterative Name: Aligaros Ashuin.
• Boisterous Bruiser: A given, considering he's a fighter.
• Crazy-Prepared: He once sat on a single Mind Axe ability for months before he had a chance to use it.
• Dumb Muscle: Fights with an axe. Isn't very smart. Afraid of libraries.
• Epic Fail: Being a non-magic user, he thinks that using magic just involves making silly noises and expecting something to happen. When he tries to dispel a fire like this, it just results in him getting immolated.
• Evil Costume Switch: Happens during an Imagine Spot where Ben imagines the DM using Aligaros as the villain in another party's campaign.
• Fantastic Racism: Towards Flynn the Aaracockra Bard. This goes as far as him insisting that Flynn be locked out of a fancy dinner while there's a hurricane going on outside, trying to hand him over to a king who wanted him dead for writing a satirical piece, punching him in the face for pointing out that the rest of the party was wrong about Garathor, and not considering him a member of the party.
  Aligaros: Look at him with those people clothes he's wearing. He thinks he's a person.
• Fat Bastard: He can come off as this, given he's a jerk to Flynn and Ben's art style.
• Fat Idiot: Given Ben's art style, he looks like a walking oval, and he isn't very smart. Surprisingly, Aligaros isn't an idiot in terms of statistics (one video reveals Aligaros' Intelligence is actually 12), but is played that way by Ben simply for the sake of consistency after he found out he'd misread a table.^note "Average" Intelligence in Dungeons and Dragons has been 10 since 3rd edition.
• Horrible Judge of Character: He immediately trusts Garathor, despite the guy clearly looking like a villain. His reasoning? He has a trustworthy face. Said face is obscured by a mask and a hood.
  • Flynn is quick to call him out on this, but Aligaros doesn't listen.
• Overly Prepared Gag: He sacrificed 10,000 experience points just to use a psionic mind axe ONCE.
• Too Dumb to Live: The aforementioned dispelling fire incident. Nor only did he try to dispel despite not. being a spell caster, but normal fire can't be dispelled, since it's not magic. Ironically, he thought he couldn't dispel it because it was magic.

Abserd

He is the hero that they're calling and the name that they are calling is Abserd!!!

Other Player: How does he play?

Ben: He doesn't!

Ben's lv. 14 character with a level in every class.

• Entropy and Chaos Magic: In a Q&A with Dingo Doodles and JessJackdaw, Ben revealed that Abserd's sorcerer level was Wild Magic, to precisely no one's surprise.
• Fan Art: Tumblr user Gilgamessedup drew, as he put it, Abserd, but drawn way too cool.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Since Ben didn't want him to just be evil, he needed another reason for why he'd get kicked out of every group he joined: His voice is so extremely annoying that even his party ditched him the moment the opportunity arrived.
• I Shall Taunt You: Why he got stabbed by a quickling. Instead of attacking, he wasted a turn taunting it.
• Jack of All Trades: His schtick. He has a level in every class.
• Joke Character
• Master of None: However, having a single level in each class means he's actually really bad in each of those classes. With only +1 in each ability score (except constitution, which he has less in), his saving throws and ability checks are abysmal compared to the other player's, even those he has proficiency in. He can use every weapon and armor, but lacks any upgrades to how many attacks or how much damage he does, so he'll do the same damage as a first level character. He can use some 3rd level spells, and has a lot of cantrips, but most other players have 6th, at least, and cantrips have lost much of their viability at that point. His spell save DC is also so low that most enemies at that level will shrug them of.
  Ben: I'm an archer that can't shoot, a fighter that can't fight, a healer that can't heal, a wizard that can't cast spells...
• Meaningful Name: He's an absurd character.
• Motor Mouth: Almost constantly talking with a supremely annoying voice. One of the other players convinces him at one point that they need to be stealthy so he stops talking... and starts using telepathy to directly chatter into their head.
• Telepathy: Because the patron that grants him his warlock powers is a Great Old One, he has the Awakened Mind feature, and can project his thoughts into other creatures' minds even when he can't otherwise talk.
• Took a Level in Badass: The last time we saw Abserd, he was captured by a villain. Next thing you know, he's the mayor of Greenest.

Detective Clancy

You're thinking of a different detective

Clancy: I'm actually not as smart as I think I am!

Beat

Clancy: Wait, nevermind. Yes, I am.

The self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Detective". Now if only he was actually as good as he claimed to be. Ben made him when he wanted to play a rogue class character who, rather than having a high Dexterity, instead had high Charisma.

• Blatant Lies: He claims to have an 18 in Intelligence. His -1 modifier to his Investigation (an INTELLIGENCE based skill) says otherwise. Ben claims that he's actually just too stupid to realize he isn't a genius.
• Beyond the Impossible: The DM tells Ben that he'd have to climb up a near vertical surface and then on the roof to get to the mushroom illuminating an underground dwarf city. A minute later, Detective Clancy is doing just that. While disguised as a wicker basket.
• Catchphrase: "Detective Clancy, world's greatest detective."
• Disguised in Drag: He disguises himself as Trixie Starbright while at a party.
• Genius Ditz: Inverted. He claims to have a high Intelligence (an 18, to be exact, which would give him a modifier of +4, which would make him almost as smart as Bill Nye the Science Guy), but in actuality, he isn't smart at all.
• Incoming Ham: He makes his appearance pushing his way through a crowd saying "Excuse me, excuse me, pardon me, 18 Intelligence coming through."
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: He actually does this to himself to fool a blindfolded suspect, pretending to beat up Trixie Starbright (whom he just happened to be dressed as, by the way) in order to get the information he needed.
• Legacy Character: Not exactly, but he IS a less gruff and crazy version of Detective Savage Rage.
• Named After Somebody Famous: A random NPC asks if he's named for famed author Tom Clancy.
• Master of Disguise: His idea of a disguise is a basket.
  • Though he can throw his voice and change his appearance to suit the situation, which gave Ben the perfect opportunity to bring back Trixie Starbright.
• Troll: Ben admits that he made this character just to screw with everyone else.

Detective Savage Rage

Detective Detective Savage "Savage Rage" Rage

Rage: Is my first and last name "Detective Rage"?

A detective for the San Francisco Police Department. Ben played him in a The Dresden Files RPG

• Boisterous Bruiser: He loves a good fight and is always talking about how awesome he is.
• Catchphrase: "Detective Rage, San Francisco P.D."
• Cowboy Cop: The reason he doesn't have any ranks in Investigation.
• Defective Detective: He doesn't do any investigating. Ever. Ben poured all his stats into driving and shooting.
• Drives Like Crazy: He claims it's because he's running jaywalkers off the road.
• Expy: Ben straight up admits that he just made Kung Fury from the movie of the same name.
• Overly Long Name: His true name is "Detective Detective Savage "Savage Rage" Rage".
• Repetitive Name: His true Overly Long Name is "Detective Detective Savage "Savage Rage" Rage".
• There Was a Door: He'd rather smash his way in through a window.

Garo

^{Click here to see him after his resurrection} 

Doing his best

Ben's player character in "The Shenani-Guys in The Curse of Strahd", a wood elf cleric/monk multiclass.

• Aesop Amnesia: Subverted - the party learns from blindly trusting Fiona and tries to not repeat the same mistake with Patrina. Double subverted in that they do not try hard enough.
• Beyond Redemption: As of chapter 5 how he clearly feels about Strahd. After listening to Strahd's tragic story Gouda actually feels bad for the Dreadlord. Garo just says he maybe would feel the same, if it wasn't for the massacre at Church of St. Andrews Strahd had ordered to happen earlier that day. By the time Gouda comes around, Garo ridicules her for taking so long.
• Came Back Strong: He dies in the first session of the campaign and is resurrected as a Plant Person.
• Celibate Hero: As a cleric/monk, he has taken a vow of chastity. Doesn't stop Gouda from teasing him about his relationship to his Dryad patrons.
• Commonality Connection: He is a good-natured Cleric of a god of light and champion of nature spirits, while Boshack is a Chaotic Evil man-eating warlock of a demonic, world-ending serpent. Yet they both bond over complaining about working for higher power and being forced to work for Night Hags, comparing it to working with a manager. They're also the ones encouraging Krusk to pray for a Dark Gift and even consider killing him so that he has to accept one to come back to life.
• Cruel Mercy: After hearing the various options for Strahd's replacement, Garo actually proposes just leaving Strahd in power. Killing Strahd and sending him to the Hells to be tortured isn't much different from leaving him in Barovia, where he is already miserable due to the Dark Powers tormenting him.
• Downer Ending: Out of the entire Shenani-Guys party, he had the most tragic end. His pact with the Fanes forced him to remain in Barovia forever. When a new darklord rose to power, Garo became the Abbot to her Strahd: A broken man forced to placate her, lest she punish the people. He even called upon the same dark clouds he had worked so hard to dispel at her behest. Ultimately, he decided that, were he to send a message beyond the mist, they would be the same words as the old burgomaster: "Leave our sorrows to our graves."
• Everyone Has Standards: For how much he became single-minded in his goal to destroy Strahd over the course of 10 previous episodes, he still finds it in himself to feel a bit bad for the guy upon finding out a ridiculously cruel and petty way in which the Dark Powers torment him with visions of the homeland he can never return to again.
• Evil Counterpart: He has one in the Abbot, a holy man slowly broken and corrupt by Strahd and his inability to protect people from him in any meaningful way. His final fate is to become the Abbot's equivalent to Strahd's replacement.
• The Face: He gets forced into this role despite having a charisma of 8 as he is the most diplomatic and to his chagrin, Boshack uses Intelligence as his casting stat instead of charisma, as it made more sense for roleplay. This also happens just because the other characters prefer to let him talk, even when he tries to prompt them (Gouda and Krusk are a Charisma-based caster and half-caster respectively, but given that Krusk is a Knight Templar and Gouda is a Cloudcuckoolander, Boshack and Garo are really the only options for this trope).
• Failure Knight: Garo feels this way about himself and the party by Chapter 5 after multiple failures to save people, hoping that one day, maybe they can actually save someone.
• Foil: Downplayed, but he has two:
  • Boshack and Garo's storyarcs have some notable contrasts and paralells. While Boshack changed from Chaotic Evil to Neutral Evil because he felt that he was becoming more focused on the goal of taking down Strahd, Garo's focus on killing Strahd is making him more hostile and ruthless. Garo is mad that Boshack would refuse a Dark Gift, while Boshack recognizes that his patron was demanding too much. Thanks to his refusal of the pact, Boshack gets to go home and kill his enemy, while Garo got trapped in Barovia to slowly become as bad as the Abbot.
  • A minor one in Father Donavich. Like Garo, Donavich was a pious man and ordained priest in the church of the Morninglord who was slowly broken down by the horror and suffering of Barovia. Unlike Garo, Donavich gave in and became a monster. Garo sadly meets the same fate when trapped in Barovia as a new dark ruler rises.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: When one of the hags pleads for her life, pointing out how she had previously spared him, Garo replies that thanks to everything that's happened he now knows how they do things in Barovia. He then caves in her skull.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Is sliding into this as of Episode 10, losing his temper on Boshack and Krusk when they give up their extra powers because the bargains asked for were too much, while not ever questioning his own bargain as all he cares about now is stopping Strahd.
  • In Part 11 he does, however, draws a line at Emilio's plan to attack the town of Vallaki and turn the inhabitants into werewolves.
  • He falls right back into this trope in part 12. When they arrive in the village of Barovia, they find it under attack by undead led by father Donavich, gone mad from grief. The party kills him and Garo doesn't object, despite Donavich being a once pious man and ordained priest, just like Garo.
  • In the final part he gets worse, being so adamant that all vampires must be exterminated that even Gouda is creeped out by him.
• Hope Spot: Barovia enjoys giving him these and then yanking them away, including after Strahd is defeated.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Quite a few times, most notably trusting Fiona Watcher and even more so with Patrina.
• Hypocrite: When Gouda says her patron didn't ask for anything and let her keep her powers, Garo is skeptical as "everything has a price." But when his patrons show a way to decrease Strahd's power and hand over valuable information, also for seemingly nothing? Totally different. He realizes his mistake a bit too late.
• The Leader: In-Universe, he and Boshack seem to share this role, but since the story is told by Garo's player, he gets the most focus and Boshack is relegated to The Lancer.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Inverted Trope. When Madam Eva tells him that the only one the Dark Powers will accept as Barovia's new Darklord is Gouda, he and Boshack compare it to being passed over for a promotion in favor of someone less qualified, comparing the Dark Powers to a CEO.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: He's a Cleric Monk who gained druidic powers through a warlock-like pact. A pseudo-warlock/druid Cleric Monk.
• Odd Friendship: Not only are Boshack and him polar opposites personality-wise, but Garo worships the Morninglord, a god of the Sun, while Boshack's patron is Dendar the Night-Serpent, an Eldritch Abomination who's purpose is to eat the sun. Despite this, they are best friends.
• Oh, Crap!: When he and Boshack realizes that Gouda is the only qualified party member to become Darklord, they have the same reaction:
  We're fucked.
• Only Sane Man: Boshack is a Chaotic Evil cannibalistic Lizard Folk, Krusk is taciturn and Lawful Stupid, while Gouda is... Gouda.
• Power Fantasy: Part 8 opens with him dreaming about beating Strahd to death with his bare hands.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: His ultimate fate - serve as the Abbot equivalent to new Darklord of Barovia, slowly becoming more corrupt as he makes more and more concessions because he knows if he won't do it, someone else will suffer for his refusal.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Garo gains a mysterious benefactor who is later revealed to be one of the spirits of the land, who Strahd usurped (Garo thought she was a dryad). Gouda calls her his Magic Girlfriend, to his annoyance, which only gets worse when another Land Spirit joins her in aiding Garo, making Gouda think it's now a threesome.
• Sympathy for the Devil: He admits that he feels a tiny bit bad for Strahd when he learns that the Dark Powers have been showing him visions of his ancestral home in the mist.
• Taking a Third Option: In part 9 It looks like he is going to give in and take the Sadistic Choice Strahd offered him but last moment he turns around and starts turning undead.
• This Is Gonna Suck: After careful deliberation, he realizes that none of the candidates for Darklord are viable; Ezmerelda is barely holding on to her humanity, Arabelle and Victor are children, Patrina is a wild card and Gouda is... Gouda. Their only option is keeping Strahd in power.
  Garo (directed at Madam Eva): You sadistic fuck.
• Toilet Humor: At one point suggests "defeating" Strahd by accepting his invitation and collectively taking a dump on his dining table.
• Unreliable Narrator: Ben tells the story from his point-of-view, including various biasses and misconceptions. For example, Garo completely misunderstands Boshack's backstory and thinks he comes from a Doomed Hometown and wants to avenge his family, killed by a dragon who destroyed it. In reality, said dragon took over Boshack's village and is responsible for his powers and high intellect, the latter of which got him exiled. Boshack wants to kill his family for exiling him as much as the dragon.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • He blames himself for both the massacre at the Church of St. Andrews and for bringing Ismarck and Irena to Mordekainen's sanctum, thus leading Strahd to Mordekainen and Rudolph Von Richten.
  • In Part 9 he realizes that by telling the Baroness of Krezk about the Abbot turning people into human-animal hybrids, he led to the Abbot's victims being murdered as monsters.
  • Forgetting to insight check Patrina in the final episode bites him and Barovia in the tail badly.
• Unwitting Pawn: In Part 8 Garo realizes the entire party been used by Strahd to fish out his other enemies. Reinforced in episode 10 when he realizes Strahd was easily tracking them because they didn't know he could scry on anyone who says his name—they literally led him right to them.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes:
  • He initially resolves to kill Gertruda because she is a nascent hag and he thinks that's the only way to stop her from turning evil. Ultimately defied when Garo cannot kill her and she resists her nature.
  • After a week in Barovia, he views vampires as a virus and later insists they need to kill a pair of vampires who are actively assisting the party rather than let them escape Barovia.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: They are about as different as night and day, and insult each other a lot, but he does get along well with Boshack.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Because of his pact with Fanes he can no longer leave Barovia.

Sauron

"He's just an evil blacksmith now"

The Sauron, the most iconic Evil Overlord of all time. Ben played Sauron in a game set years after the War of the Ring where he was brought back to life by a necromancer and set about conquering Middle-Earth.

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: In univerise: Ben has no idea what Sauron's charactarization is since he's only seen the films. "Micromanaging Bureaucrat-Blacksmith" is remarkably close to his canonical portrayal in The Silmarillion.
• Affably Evil: He is rather nice for being an Evil Overlord bent on enslaving all of Arda.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Just replace "Corrupt" with "Actual embodiment of evil." Since Ben had no idea what kind of character Sauron was he ended up roleplaying him as this trope, and ran the team of villains and their armies like a company.
• Legion of Doom: He leads an alliance of Tolkien's greatest villains consisting of his right-hand man Saruman, the sycophantic Wormtongue, the muscle Smaug and Durin's Bane, Shelob and Gollum.
• Only Sane Man: Portrayed as this, as Ben realizes he needs to figure out what all the other evil characters want to get them to work for him. On the other hand, while Sauron 'clearly thinks he's this, he's actually quite unreasonable, since he's apopleptic that the big pile of treasure in the Lonley Mountain is gone because it was all spent to help rebuild the surrounding communities after the War of the Ring and considers it madness that they did that.
• Order Versus Chaos: Firmly on the side of Order, as in canon...showed by acting like a massive bureaucrat who handles everything with paperwork. Rebel villagers pelting you with rocks? Report them to the Mordor Human Rescources department!
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Ben was at first confused as to why no one had picked Sauron as their player character before him. Then he learned that the other characters were Shelob, Smaug and Durin's Bane.
• Pragmatic Evil: He prefers to go through the proper bureaucracy to punish his subordinates and keeps his alliance together by providing his allies with what they want.
• Sorcerous Overlord: Subverted. While he presumably has the powers of his canon counterpart, Ben does not mention using any magical powers while playing Sauron.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Ben draws him with white hair and pale skin, resembling his guise as Annatar.

Solomon

An elderly wizard that Ben once played. Despite being an old man, he was in fact the youngest of the group, due to nearly every player race in D&D having a significantly longer average life expectancy than humans.

• The Baby of the Bunch: At around 70, he's the youngest of the group, despite being elderly.
• Eldritch Abomination: He can summon these.
• Eldritch Location: If he's not summoning the abominations, he's sending his enemies to the abominations.
• Expy: Of Gandalf. A very aggressive Gandalf, but Gandalf none the less.
• Insane Troll Logic: Ben's reasoning for all of the above? "Just because we didn't see Gandalf do it doesn't mean that he didn't."
• Team Dad: What he wanted to be, before realizing the bit below.
• Token Human: The only human in a group that also consists of an elf, a Halfling, and a dwarf. And as such, he's the youngest member of the group despite being an old man.
• Wizard Beard: No surprise, considering it was based off of Gandalf, and really, who has a better beard than Gandalf?

Trixie Starbright

Besties!

Trixie: YOU WILL KNEEL BEFORE ME AS BESTIES!!!

A teenage girl attending a Pokémon University. She's currently in a race to become the most popular girl in school, and will go to any lengths to ensure that she gets the crown.

• Alpha Bitch: Oh, like you wouldn't believe. She may SEEM sweet and innocent, but that just hides the devil on the inside.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She acts all nice and sweet, but she actively sabotages her opponent's attempts to be the most popular girl in school and tries to frame her.
• The Cameo: As Detective Clancy's disguise in the video of his name. He ends up in another Wounded Gazelle Gambit to make the gnome they are interrogating talk.
• Characterization Marches On: Discussed trope, where originally Trixie was a straight-up example of The Cutie, but overtime she developed the darker side as Ben came up with a better idea for her.
• Cute But Psycho: Look at that sweet, innocent face. Now imagine said sweet, innocent face blackmailing you and threatening you because she wants to be the most popular girl in school.
• Frame-Up: She decides to frame her opponent for hurting her and breaking her arm to not only cover the wounds she got from fighting Pokémon poachers, but also to cover her friends' return to their own dorms.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: After the party "freed" a Mewtwo, she refused to let him out of his pokéball unless he became her "best friend" and helped her become the most popular girl in school. It's implied that the party did this to multiple legendaries.
• Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: Par for the course for Pokemon, a group of gangsters are doing nefarious deeds, but are stopped by preteens.
• Teens Are Monsters: As if you didn't get the idea earlier. The GM at first didn't think that Ben was playing the "average teenage girl" like he said he was.
  GM: Ummm, Ben? I don't think you're playing an... average high school girl like you'd said.
  Ben: You.... didn't go to the same high school that I went to, did you?
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: She plays one of these as part of her attempt to frame her opponent while covering for her friends at the same time.
  Trixie: It's hard to think anyone would do that! I just- I don't want to go spreading rumors or anything.

Zeebo Zebrath

Artwork by Dingo Doodles

A gnome trickster domain cleric of Pelor that Ben plays as in the Holiday One Off, and again in the Halloween One Off.

• Nun Too Holy: In the Halloween one-off, Ben reveals that Zeebo is cynical and burned out. He still seems to believe in Pelor, and genuinely tries to do good in the world, but he became a cleric out of self-interest and is kind of burned out.
• Good Is Not Soft: He's genuinely interested in helping people, and is quite affable, but he insists on watching an evil mayor's execution to make sure the man is dead.
• Too Dumb to Live: In the Halloween one-off, Ben fails his perception check to notice that there's a real zombie in the streets. As a result, Ben plays Zeebo as having no idea that it's a real zombie even after his two party members attack it. He only finds out what ought to be glaringly obvious after Lord Dreadbone tells him to his face.

Other Player Characters

Characters that other people have played

In General & Unnamed Players

• Aerith and Bob: In just the Turtle F[riends] and Warriors of Really Shitty Timing we have Michele and Shiro contrasted against Asiago, Cordelia and Azreal.
• And I Must Scream: The fighter at the end of the Malikar Campaign ends up paralyzed partway up Malikar's tower, and he stays there even after the fight has ended. Michele never bothered to check up on him when he left, and we don't see him in the sequel video, so he's probably still there and dead of starvation. If he even can starve.
• Badass Crew: Some of them try to be, with varying success. Emphasis on TRY.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: One group is revealed to be called "The Turtle Fuckers". Ben refuses to animate how the group got that name. ^note In a panel, Ben revealed it was actually the Turtle Molesters, due to the party's habit of using Touch-based spells in uncomfortable areas, and having a turtle mascot. Turtle Fuckers is just far funnier.
  • An angel, after the defeat of Malikar, is hesitant to say the name of the group because of this very reason, and the party soon renames themselves the Turtle Friends.
• Big "WHAT?!": After everyone is reunited following the defeat of Malikar, they head off on a ship for their next adventure. They're going along in relative peace, until....
  WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU LOST THE MOURNEBLADE!!!
• Did Not Think This Through: The groups that Ben's part of or runs as a DM have a tendency to act before they think, which almost always lands them in trouble.
  • In a game of Call of Cthulhu, a player decides to expel a monster by setting the room on fire, not even considering until after the fact that he has no way out.
  • A player in the Deadlands game decides to make an earth dome to protect the group from a skeletal tyrannosaurus, only to have the dinosaur trap them inside it by crushing it under its foot. And it only gets worse from there, as the gunslinger and Prospector Jenkins are unconscious, and the only light is coming from the lit fuse of a stick of dynamite that is going to blow any second.
  • Knocking over the obelisk even AFTER discovering there's something evil inside. It's only after the nalfeshnee manifests that they think "That wasn't a good idea."
  • Both times Wallace is encountered, the party sends him back to town, only to then realize that they sent him back with EXACTLY WHAT THE TOWN WANTED HIM TO BRING BACK! And the second time, he came in riding a bear the town mistook for his tamed war bear.
• Genre Savvy: When Ben first runs a game, he gets a player who knows exactly where the plot is going to go even before Ben says anything. He imagines a swarm of otyughs coming up out of the sewer and eating her.
  • Another player in Call of Cthulhu instantly guesses that a character is the villain before said villain even takes a breath.
• Hypocrite: See Michele bellow.
  • The dwarf in Aligaros' party claimed that "Magic doesn't work like that", only to realize that he had no adequate explanation for how magic works either.
• Immortality: The Turtle Friends were gifted with the Boon of Immortality for their service in ending the covenant wars. The fighter spend eternity in the Beastlands with his loved one, Azreal took up residence in the interplanar towers that would come to be known as the Azreal Towers, Shiro wanted to become the ruler of the Material Plane, and Michele simply vanished into legend.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One character in Fane of the Night Serpent suffers this fate when he teleports into the head priestess's room.
• Killed Off for Real: A few characters have died, such as the one above, and the other characters in Tomb of Annihilation who either fell to their deaths off the broken airship or died on the nearly three week trek back to the nearest city. Leaving Ben's character the only one to make it back alive.
• Leeroy Jenkins: A new player immediately tries attacking Lenathon, the adult blue dragon. While the character doesn't die, he also does absolutely nothing but annoy the dragon.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The party consisting of Flynn, Aligaros, and Katia have this reaction when they realize that all the good they thought they were doing was just making everything worse.
  Aligaros: I don't want to be chaotic evil!
  DM: Don't worry, you're not chaotic evil. You're pure.
  Aligaros: Oh, thank god.
  DM: PURE EVIL!
  • Played for laughs when the party sends Wallace back to town with the villain he was tasked with apprehending.
• Never My Fault: The players like to blame other people in the party, or even the DM, for their mistakes.
• Never Split the Party: Some groups have suffered because of this, like in Fane of the Night Serpent.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: One character fell and hit his head so hard he became a sword mage. He also spontaneously generated a new sword.
• Pet the Dog: The Turtle Friends weren't the nicest people, but they did actually care about Claire.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: A group has this reaction when they walk through a door and encounter a fire elemental.
  • Baron Valus after his samurai (see Valus Samurai) started a school shooting, bringing dishonor to the house. He wisely decided to stay of the radar for a while, and the player switched to playing Shredder.
• Too Dumb to Live: Often as a result of their tendency to act before thinking, or sometimes act and never think.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: One player assumes the idyllic village is a cannibal cult because they would love to have the party for the feast.

Cauli

Artwork by Dingo Doodles, and if you don't check it out, Pelor will smite you from the inside out.

A drow war cleric of Pelor, played by Dingo Doodles during the Holiday One Off, and again in the Halloween One Off.

• Edible Theme Naming: Dingo mentions that she names a lot of her characters after food. Cauli's name comes from Cauliflower.
• Heel–Faith Turn: Her backstory is that she left the Underdark after growing sick of Drow culture and consequently became a worshipper of Pelor.
• The Fundamentalist: In the Christmas one-off, when asked by the town of Burghiem to give a speech to commence what what they are lead to believe is a happy celebration, Cauli gives a fire-and-brimstone speech.
  Cauli: "If you don't believe in Pelor, let him come down and smite you from the inside out so your eyeballs will liquify and your bowls will explode."
  • Later on, in the Halloween one-off, she starts the game aggressively trying to convert children out trick-or-treating.
• Noble Bigot: Dingo states early on that Cauli is racist around gnomes, yet has no trouble cooperating with Zeebo and treating him as an equal.
• Robe and Wizard Hat: She is a cleric, but she dresses like a wizard because in her backstory she wanted to be a wizard but didn't have the smarts for it.
• Serious Business: The Lolth clerics' gift being fruit that's a day out of date is treated like a grave offense by her.
• Sweet Tooth: She ended the Holiday One-Off by eating an entire box of cookies, and in the Halloween One-Off she chose the bag of infinite candy as payment when Lord Dreadbone offered to pay the party with magical items.

Chadwick Strongpants

The greatest hero the world has ever known. Villains fear him, civilians love him...and he's no different than you or me. In actuality, he was made to punish Will, and any other player who doesn't have a character ready by game time.

• Bullet Catch: He's played up as being able to catch a bullet as it's fired from the muzzle, and this is after running around the world.
• Joke Character: He was made to punish anyone who didn't have a character ready by the time the game started, though he started with Will.
• Luke Nounverber
• Mundane Made Awesome: He's so average, and yet, the mere sight of him makes villains tremble with fear.
  • Some of the players wanted his powers to be an ability to nullify other characters' abilities to be just as mundane as him.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: He has no super powers or epic backstory. He's just a guy.

Dick Tracy

World's greatest detective

A detective played by one of Ben's players in his Call of Cthulhu games. He apparently made it into several adventures, despite going mad at least once.

• The Alcoholic: He's a heavy drinker, fitting the Noir detective type. His player didn't realize until later that the game took place during prohibition.
• Dirty Cop: He's a heavy drinker during Prohibition. He specializes in busting speakeasies, and tends to confiscate any alcohol for his own use.
• Double Entendre: Ben has a lot of fun with his name being "Dick."
  For the right price, I can take dick anywhere!
• Eagleland: At one point, he broke into the female dorms. When the girls asked what the hell he was doing there, he went on a long spiel about freedom while his companion Justin Time hummed the American national anthem and waved an American flag.
• Expy: Dick Tracy if he was a Lovecraft protagonist.
• Fatal Flaw: Curiosity, possibly with a smidge of Chronic Hero Syndrome. He pushed into the ghost town past the point of reason to figure out the mystery and/or to save David.
• Genre Savvy: Incredibly so. He identified the villain before he even said a word.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Following his first encounter with the mythos, he developed a crippling fear of insects.

Flynn

An aarakockra bard and part of the same party as Aligaros and Katia. And the poor bird is also the subject of a number of racist jokes, mostly from Aligaros.

• The Bard: His role in the party. This gets him in trouble when he writes a satirical song for the local king and thus said king wants him dead.
• Bird People: Aarakockra are bird folk.
• Butt-Monkey: The subject of many racist jokes, mostly from Aligaros. He's been locked out of a palace during a fancy dinner while there's a hurricane going on outside, punched in the face for pointing out that he was right to not trust Garathor, threatened with execution by a local king, and not be considered a member of the party.
  • To be fair, he was being smug about the whole Garathor thing and the king did feel insulted, so that's kind of Flynn's fault to begin with.
• Deadpan Snarker: He can snark right back at Aligaros, assuming he's not unconscious on the ground from a black eye.
  (after Aligaros dismisses him as a member of the party) You know, I'm not the one who got his name from a random name generator for Pokémon, ALIGAROS!
• "Eureka!" Moment: He's the first one to put together that Garathor and Tar'Hogar are the same person, coining the now memetic phrase:
  Tar'Hogar? Garathor? Tar'Hogar!
• Fantastic Racism: He's frequently the target for this kind of behavior, mostly from Aligaros.
• I Told You So: He tries rubbing in the fact that he was right to distrust Garathor, only for Aligaros to knock him out with a single punch.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: When they think an ally is dead, he says it's no big deal, saying "he was kind of a jerk anyway".

Helgmoss "Moss" Burson

You know the drill, Dingo Doodles

"I'm from the streets, bitch!"

A elderly dwarf nature cleric of Pelor, played by Zee Bashew from Animated Spellbook during the Holiday One Off, and again in the Halloween One Off.

• Actor Allusion: Like most of Zee's characters, he's short with a large beard.
• The Cameo: He appears and is even mentioned by name in Zee's Shillelagh video.
• Cool Old Guy: He is a very old man and the oldest member of the party. Doesn't mean he can't fight.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Is fond of doing this on his quarterstaff when casting Shillelagh.
• The Heretic: In the beginning of the Halloween one-off, Helgmoss becomes uncomfortable whenever Cauli quotes the holy book. Halfway through he reveals the reason why; while still a follower of Pelor, he belongs to an obscure fringe denomination with it's own version of the holy text.
• Enemy Mine: He's willing to make amends with the clerics of Lolth, even thought they've been trying to steal the credit for saving the children, and worship a chaotic evil deity.
• Fluffy Tamer: When he gets shrunk down to the size of a mouse he tames a now giant in comparison rat.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In the Halloween one-off, the party kills a zombie messenger. Later they learn that the children out trick-or-treating were transformed into whatever they were in costume of, and realize to their horror the zombie was probably this as well. Later on Lord Dreadbone, the mastermind behind this curse, reveals that that it was a real zombie. Moss is beyond relieved to learn he doesn't have an innocent child's blood on his hands.
  Moss: I think we may have killed a boy...
• Nature Lover: He is a botanist and has a religious reverence for plants.

Katia

A female human wizard part of the same group as Aligaros. She's often the voice of reason, though isn't above the occasional shenanigan.

• Action Girl: She's a wizard in a Dungeons and Dragons game. Comes with the territory.
• Big Sister Instinct: She'll go out of her way to help her fellow party members and provide them some life lessons. Whether they take it to heart or not is a total crapshoot.
• For the Lulz: She'd rather watch and laugh as Aligaros swings a magic sword around like a lightsaber than tell him how magic actually works.
• Mad Bomber: Despite usually being the saner member of the party, she randomly blows up one of their two exploration options for no reason.
• Not So Above It All: See above. She also apparently fell for Garathor's deception.
• Super-Strength: Downplayed, since her strength isn't unnaturally high, but despite being a wizard, her strength is roughly on par with Aligaros, who's a strength-based fighter.
• Team Mom: Mostly towards Aligaros, trying to steer him in the right path. Though with Aligaros being, well, Aligaros, this tends to backfire.
  Katia: Okay, Aligaros, let's try not to get into any trouble while we're in town.
  Aligaros: Don't worry, Katia, there is no miscommunication between us.
  Gilligan Cut to them tied up

Prospector Jenkins

A character from the Dead Lands game. He loves to throw dynamite, which tends to cause issues with everyone around him.

• Always Chaotic Evil: At least, that's Ben's impression of characters like Prospector Jenkins. If you have dynamite, you will be chaotic evil whether you like it or not, because it's just so much fun to watch things go boom.
• Born Unlucky: As a Grim Servant of Death, he has a chance to damage himself and his allies if he rolls a 1 (in a game that uses only D6). Sometimes it can be as simple as accidentally shooting them; other times it can be as bad as blowing a hole through reality or trapping them in a cave about to explode.
• Catchphrase: Always introduces himself as "Prospector Jenkins, Grim Servant of Death."
  • Phrase Catcher: And whenever he introduces himself as that, someone always says "Huh?", causing him to just introduce himself as "Prospector Jenkins".
• Epic Fail: As a Grim Servant of Death, and thus incredibly unlucky, this tends to happen. In the Dead Lands video, he blew up the entire city block, with the players, while trying to escape the radical reverends, which was enough power to break reality and create a split timeline. He did this multiple times over the course of the adventure.
• Tempting Fate: His player rolls a 1 as he tosses a stick of dynamite behind him while screaming "Catch us if you can, suckers!" And the entire city block goes boom.
• Too Dumb to Live: Pretty much a prerequisite for the "Grim Servant of Death" trait. Whenever he rolls a 1 on a die, he hits an ally. Not too bad in D&D, where the chance of a natural one is 5%. In Deadlands, however, the dice used are d6, increasing the chance to about 17%. Still not a huge deal. Until you realize his main weapon is dynamite.
• Verbal Backspace:
  Prospector Jenkins: Prospector Jenkins, Grim Servant of Death.
  Other character: Huh?
  Prospector Jenkins: Pro — Prospector Jenkins!

Zod

A black dragonborn fighter who was part of a group where Ben was playing a cleric.

• Anything but That!: Turning into a human elicits a reaction similar to this.
• Beast Folk: Sort of. He's a dragonborn.
• Fantastic Racism: He shows shades of this, if his reaction to becoming a human when the group gets transported to New York City is any indication.
  Ben: It's okay, Zod. I play a human every day. Now you're just. Like. Me.
  Zod: Oh god. The horror.
• Forced Transformation: When the group gets transported to New York City (as in, the real world), he becomes a human for the duration of the trip.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: The party leaves him trapped in a pit he fell into and he remained there for 3 days while being attacked by rats before he escaped and caught up with the party, rightfully irritated with them.
• No Body Left Behind: The party think this when he falls into a pit. Turns out the pit was only 10 feet deep.
• Surrounded by Idiots: His facial expressions tell us a lot about what he thinks of his fellow party members.
• Token Non-Human: Ignoring the colors of his scales, he's the only dragonborn among a group of humans and elves.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He gives one of these to his party when he finally escapes the hole after digging for 3 days and getting chewed on by rats.

Turtle Fuckers / Turtle Molesters / Turtle Friends

Azreal

The elvish sorcerer from the Malikar and Covenant campaigns. At the end of the Malikar campaign, they got thrown into Arcadia, the plane of Lawful Good / Lawful Neutral, before getting kidnapped by a devil and taken to Avernus. At the end of the Covenant campaign, he was gifted the Boon of Immortality, and became the steward of the Spires of Lynn, which eventually were renamed the Azreal Towers.

• Ambiguous Gender: For the first few videos, it's really hard to identify their gender (Ben refers to their player as male), since Ben voices every character, and his artstyle is rather androgynous. Ben finally uses male pronouns in the final Covenant campaign video.
• Didn't Think This Through: All the while setting up the trap, he apparently never realized that blowing up the building they were in would end poorly for them.
• Dirty Coward: he was really not okay with being in the same town as an illithid
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: As stated above, Ben's artstyle is usually androgynous, but Azreal seems to lean slightly toward female, despite being male.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Halfway through explaining the trap, he realized that he, Michele, and Bernard were in the area of effect.
• Immortality: Gained the Boon of Immortality.
• My Nayme Is: Their name is "Azreal", spelled like that instead of the more common spelling "Azrael".
• No Name Given: Kinda. His name is never said aloud (until the last Covenant campaign video, that is), but if you keep an eye on the background, you'll notice that their explanation for how they should avoid the illithid is named "Azreal's Survival Postulate".
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: His reaction to being in the same town as an illithid.
• Shrouded in Myth: His role as the steward of the Spires of Lynn eventually turned him into a legendary figure. Even the name of the spires were eventually lost, until people only remembered it as the Azreal Towers.

Michele

A character played by Ben's real life brother Will, a gnome monk (the character, not Will). Initially meant to be a joke, as Will wanted to be the most useless character ever made (which sounds like another gnome who was made to be a joke), he ended up, for a while, being the only one of the party in the Malikar Campaign to remain on the material plane. After ending the covenant wars, he gained the Boon of Immortality and faded into legend... Until he suddenly reappeared, having been invisible for several centuries.

• And I Must Scream: Apparently Michele accidently turned himself perminently invisible, and was totally alone for five centuries before the new adventurer party was able to find him.
• The Alcoholic: Following the defeat of Malikar and the loss of his group, he became a homeless bum who spent his days drinking beer and getting high off of mushrooms. This inevitably led to him losing the Mourneblade.
• Deadpan Snarker: Considering that he's Ben's brother, it's no surprise.
  Michele: Who are you to talk to me about what's good and what isn't? You're a lawful good paladin, and yet you have a Halfling slave you keep on a leash and have him check for traps!
  Paladin: Slavery's legal...somewhere.
  Michele: Glass houses, that's all I'm saying. Glass houses.
• Did Not Think This Through: To be fair, he was drunk and high when he did it, but who buries a soul rending sword in a sandbox at a park where children play? Now we can't help but wonder how many kids have been reduced to dust by pure accident thanks to the Mourneblade.
• Drowning My Sorrows: He spends the two years following the defeat of Malikar and the new adventure as an alcoholic and druggie in a local park.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He appeared in the first Malikar video, and was officially introduced a few episodes later.
• Fluffy Tamer: He not only tamed the giant spider Bitey, he's also the only one who can understand him.
• Hypocrite: Not him, but see the above example where he calls out a lawful good paladin for having a slave.
• Legacy Character: The only member of the Turtle F*** to return as part of W.O.R.S.T.
• Legend Fades to Myth: After the Covenant War, he walked a separate way from his companions. The legends told of him were eventually shrouded in myth, until they faded completely.
• Lethal Joke Character: He was made to be a joke, as Will wanted to make the most useless character he could^Actually... Gnome Monks aren't good, but they're not the worst. Gnomes have no ability score improvements or racial traits that would benefit a monk, but something like Orc Wizard would be far worse, since Orcs actually have a negative improvement in Wizard's most important stat, but Michele ended up being the one to go toe to toe with Malikar, Mourneblade in hand.
• Immortality: Gained the Boon of Immortality.
• Irony: Will wanted to play as a useless character who sucks at everything. He proceeded to play Michele through three campaigns, and he became on of the most iconic Puffin Forest characters, aside from Abserd.
• Joke Character: This was the original idea.
• Retcon: His original ending after the Malikar campaign had him pass on the Mourneblade to his descendends, just in case Malikar returned someday. Then, the Covenent campaign rolled around, and turns out Michele lost the Mourneblade after leaving it buried in a sandpit.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: He just gives up when his last attack fails to kill Malikar.
• Shrouded in Myth: What eventually became of him, until even the myths became forgotten.
• Sole Survivor: For a while, he's the only one of the original party to return alive. Averted, though, as the other players were still alive (most of them, anyways)
• Walking the Earth: After gaining the Boon of Immortality, he split from the party, and they never saw him again. Whatever stories he might have made for himself, faded into legend.

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

A player in the Malikar campaign. He's probably a warforged. Before this, he was Mega Man. He is the only member of the party (aside from the fighter that the players abandoned) that didn't return for the Covenant campaign, and was replaced with Shiro because the player wanted to change characters.

• Balance Between Good and Evil: For some weird reason he decided to kill some enemies with the Mournblade and some with Barathorn for the sake of Balance, probably just to be funny.
• Dual Wielding: Tries to duel wield both Barathron and the Mourneblade.^note Which would be highly impractical unless they were home brewing, as a glaive is not a light weapon and official D&D rules only allows for dual wielding with two light weapons.
• Humongous Mecha: Not so much humongous, as he's roughly the size of the average human, but being metallic he sure is bulky.
• Killer Robot: No doubt the reason this player wanted to be this. And after getting the Mourneblade, he sure was.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Ben calls him Mobile Suit Gundam Wing in all the campaign videos.
• Put on a Bus: He is the only party member of the Malikar campaign who didn't return for the Covenant campaign because the player wanted to retire the character and make a new one. So when the party members are reunited by all getting kidnapped and brought together again, the kidnapper accidentally kidnapped somebody else instead who became his replacement.
• You Don't Look Like You: Before he was Gundam Wing, he was Mega Man.

Shiro

The Mobile Suit Gundam Wing characters' replacement played by the same player. He is a warforged based on Solid Snake and has a pet construct based on Metal Gear Rex. At the end of the campaign, he gained the boon of immortality and sought to bring peace by ruling the world.

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Despite being an excellent setup for a Big Bad, he never appears outside of the Covenant campaign.
• Forced Transformation: He was accidentally turned into a human at the end of the campaign.
• Hypocrite: He expects the Dream Team to accept any mission he gives them because he's a quest giver, and you can't just ignore a pothook like that. When the Dream Team complains that the mission was unbalanced for them, he claims that they shouldn't know about balance since they're NPCs
• Immortality: Gained the Boon of Immortality.
• Impersonation Gambit: Had to impersonate Gavriel when Azreal swapped out Claire's sending stone with one of theirs. He later has to impersonate Claire when Gavriel calls.
• Mistaken Identity: Shiro joins the party in the beginning of the Covenant campaign because the devil that kidnapped all the other party members somehow mistook him for the Gundam character, since his player was the only one that wanted to change characters.
• Pet the Dog: While impersonating Gavriel, he took the opportunity to commend Claire for doing a good job.
• Take Over the World: His goal after gaining immortality.

Warriors of Really Shitty Timing / W.O.R.S.T.

Asiago

Pyromania has never been this cute

This druid is a little girl with white hair who wears a bear fur coat.

• A Wizard Did It: Her justification for why she could create the internet in a setting without electricity.
• Ax-Crazy: Downplayed. She generally acts like a Cheerful Child with a hint of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, but when the Rogue starts ranting about Otterton being the big bad, she fears that, having bankrolled Otterton's fishing business, she's in to deep, and will have to murder the entire party. To be clear, there was no reason for her to murder the entire party.
• Badass Adorable: She can shoot fire from her hands, and isn't afraid to do so if someone threatens her fellow party members.
• Cheerful Child: Is noted as being very cute, so much so that the party trusts her as soon as they see what she looks like. Additionally, when she tries infiltrating the boarding school by posing as a student, she succeeds right away without even having to roll for deception.
• Cuteness Proximity: Goes crazy for anything they find cute. She herself also reacts like this to both Otterton and Meklyzzyak.
• Easily Forgiven: After criticizing her for setting children on fire just hours after Asiago agreed not to, the Paladin apologizes for setting an unrealistic expectation.
• A Hell of a Time: She died once and mistook Hell as heaven.
• I'm a Humanitarian: At one point, Asiago gets into an argument with Cordelia where she argues that since animals eat other animals and humans eat animals, humans being freaked out by the idea of eating other humans is just them being speciesist and they should be more consistent with their rules. Cordelia thinks she has a point and decides to go vegetarian.
• The Kindnapper: She forces Captain Ottie-Otterton to come with them on their mission and into the real world, despite his protests that he has other things to do.
• The Loonie: She's the biggest source of the group's problems due to her chaotic behavior. One time when bored she planted magical beans...that turned into Slaads that the party had to kill and, not knowing about the Slaad's parasitical egg touch, caused a town to be overrun with them. They also have to keep her sadated while they're in heaven because she keeps wanting to eat the baby seals there.
• Magitek: After finishing the campaign, Asiago creates the internet in her world and several social media and review websites for it. She did this just so she could review-bomb Otterton's business competitors.
  Ben: "You want to make internet, but in a medieval setting."
  Asiago: "Yeah!"
  Ben: "In a world without computers or mass-electricity."
  Asiago: "But we have magic!"
  Ben: "Can't argue with that!"
• Playing with Fire: She is a Druid of wildfires and has set a lot of people and buildings on fire.
• Pyromaniac: Sets a lot of children on fire, so much so that the group paladin has to remind her not to. To be fair, children seem to be more collateral damage of her use of fire spells. At one point, Ben thought it'd be a good idea to give her a Wand of Fireballs.
• Token Evil Teammate: Aside from the Valus Samurai who was thrown out, Asiago's Loonie traits stray into Chaotic Stupid and Stupid Evil, to the point when she died at one point she ended up in hell, which she mistook as heaven for Wildfire druids.

Cordelia

A Paladin in Michele's new party. She uses a whip as her weapon and she's presumably Lawful Good.

• Boring, but Practical: When the party receives a mission to infiltrate a boarding school, she goes to the police department to get a warrant so they can legally search the school. This isn't very exciting, but it lets her get into the school with no trouble. Meanwhile the rest of the party breaks in and the situation quickly goes into chaos.
• By-the-Book Cop: Based on the fact that she wears a blue police uniform, and is able to file search warrants, she's probably a police officer.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Asiago tries to make an argument that it doesn't make sense that cannibalism is frowned upon, they misinterpret her point as arguing for vegetarianism.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When the Valus Samurai throws a grenade in the school, she covers it with her own body to prevent it from hurting anyone else. She survives as well, but is badly injured.
• Skewed Priorities: After the party starts a fire currently engulfing an orphanage, Cordelia gets side-tracked berating the team for breaking their "No burning children" policy. All the while the orphanage is burning and burning children are running past.

Valus Samurai

No one has to get hurt

A samurai in the new campaign, set in the Malikar Campaign's world after a long Time Skip.

• Axes at School: When his party's attempt to infiltrate a boarding school failed, he tries to restore order by pulling out a gun. It doesn't work.
• Ax-Crazy: Before the video he's introduced in the samurai murdered a civilian, tried to murder the Paladin, and nearly murdered the thief. Over the video itself he holds a boarding school hostage at gunpoint and throws a grenade at a crowd of children.
  Valus Samurai: "Swear to God, I'm taking all of you with me!"
• The Friend Nobody Likes: His party dislikes him for the above tropes, so much so that if he breaks out of jail and returns to them they'll just tie him up and turn him back into the police.
• Would Hurt a Child: Tried to throw a grenade into a crowd of children.

Valus Baron

A baron in the new campaign, whose player swapped out for another character after the actions of the Valus Samurai.

• Convenient Replacement Character: Immediatelly replaced by the Shredder when his player swapped characters.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Books it out of the story after the samurai in his employ has been disonored, since they both wear the same house insignia.

Shenani-Guys

Boshack

^{Click here to see him after his empowering} 

Doing what he wills

A Lizard Folk great old one pact warlock from "The Shenani-Guys in The Curse of Strahd".

• Affectionate Nickname: He calls Dendar "Evil Snake Mom".
• Arch-Enemy: An ancient green dragon who conquered his hometown and ate his arm. In final fight Strahd casts Banishment on him, sending him right in front of the Dragon, who proceeds to beat the ever-loving snot out of him.
• Badass Transplant: After praying to his patron Dendar and whining about everyone else getting cool new powers, she blesses him by replacing his missing arm with a mass of writhing snakes. He lost it when Dendar put him in a "magic time-out" but at the end Madame Eva cast a spell to make him regrow a proper arm as a reward for defeating Strahd.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: He wants to return home and kill ancient green dragon who took his home away from him. He probably didn't mean "being teleported right in front of the dragon in the middle of an already exhausting fight with Strahd".
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Madame Eva showing him kindness without expecting a reward makes him become not good, but at least no longer evil.
• Blunt "Yes": When asked if he would willingly leave a child behind to become Barovia's Darklord.
• Brains Evil, Brawn Good: All lizardfolk believe that, so when dragon's experiments result in Boshack gaining a high intelligence, they exile him.
• Chaotic Evil: This is his stated character alignment. He isn't bothered by the fact that a coven of hags is sacrificing children to make magical pastries, and has a nice conversation with them when he finds out they worship the same master as he does. On the other hand, he also doesn't mind fighting them when they mess with the party too much.
  • In Part 9 he canonically switched to Neutral Evil as he has realized he can't simply follow the party around and enjoy the death and mayhem. He believes he has to take charge and lead them if they are to accomplish their goals.
  • In the final part he switches to Chaotic Neutral, realizing that if you're not an asshole people can be nice to you back. He is still not good but he at least understands why people would be good.
• Character Development: He gets most of it from the entire party, so much in fact he went through two alignment shifts.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Strahd banishes him back home - right in front of ancient green dragon who got him cursed. In turn, the dragon starts playing with him like a cat with a mouse.
• Cursed with Awesome: Turns out his Warlock powers and high Intelligence are a result of him being cursed by an ancient idol a dragon experimented on him with.
• Deal with the Devil: Par for the course for a Warlock. Specifically, his bargain is with Dendar the Night Serpent, a dream eating Eldritch Abomination who he considers his evil snake mom. She later takes back some of her support when he refuses to do as she says.
• De-power: In episode 10, he refuses to go help reform the coven of Night Hags the group defeated in episode 5, who'd been baking children into pastries. Dendar removes his powerup, turning him back into a normal lizardoflk and leaving him with just his usual warlock powers. This is reffered to as "magic time out" for "not helping his sisters" according to Dendar, even though Boshack argues that "they were bullying me!"
• Doomed Hometown: His home was destroyed and family killed by a dragon, he joined the party to gain allies in his quest for revenge. At least this was what Garo thought...
• Earn Your Happy Ending: He gets the happiest ending out of the entire party, being allowed to return to Forgotten Realms with strong allies who help him have his revenge.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He considers abandoning the party in the middle of a fight to be "pretty cold".
• Foil: Downplayed, but there. His and Garo's storyarcs have some notable contrasts and paralells. While Boshack changed from Chaotic Evil to Neutral Evil because he felt that he was becoming more focused on the goal of taking down Strahd, Garo's focus on killing Strahd is making him more hostile and ruthless. Garo is mad that Boshack would refuse a Dark Gift, while Boshack recognizes that his patron was demanding too much. Ultimately, their attitudes toward their patrons seal their respective fates: Boshack turned his back on Dendar, allowing him to leave the demiplane and earn his happy ending. Garo didn't, and was stuck as a result.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: When he displeases Dendar, who is both a Dark Power and his Patron, she takes away his powers...but only his Dark Gifts, not things he gets from Warlock class.
  • Becomes Gameplay and Story Integration once you learn his real backstory and Fridge Brilliance kicks in - his Warlock powers are a result of a curse that also lead to his banishment, meaning when Dendar took away her support, she only took away those of gifts that he asked for.
• Handicapped Bad Ass: He is missing an arm for the first few sessions, until his patron gifts him with a mass of snakes as a replacement.
• House Rules:Even though warlocks generally use their charisma stat to determine how potent their spellcasting is, the DM lets Boshack use intelligence instead, reflecting the fact that Boshack's spellcasting comes from knowledge of Eldritch Abominations. This unfortunately leads to the party wrongfully assuming he has a high charisma score when it's actually one of his Dump Stats.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Happily eats human flesh and while walking through a graveyard has to be talked down from looking for any tasty bits. His patron later gives him the ability to regain HP through this ability.
• The Lancer: In-universe, he seems to share The Leader role with Garo, but since the story is told by Garo's player, he ends up serving this role mots of the time.
• Odd Friendship: Not only are Garo and him polar opposites personality-wise, but Garo worships the Morninglord, a god of the Sun, while Boshack's patron is Dendar the Night-Serpent, an Eldritch Abomination who's purpose is to eat the sun. Despite this, they are best friends.
• Only in It for the Money: He only cares about saving people to get money.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: When they jump Izek, Boshack wears a potato sack over his head which does nothing to hide that he's a one-armed lizard folk.
• Pragmatic Villainy: As he explains, he would rather have good guys be in debt to him and help him have his revenge than risk working with another villain who will just betray him.
• Psychic Powers: Great Old One Pact gives him some, notably Telepathy and later Telekinesis.
• Revenge: All he does is to gain allies to kill the dragon who enslaved his home and kill his tribe for exiling him. After defeating Strahd he goes to accomplish that goal.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: The reason he doesn't betray the party and teams up with Strahd. Bad guys have a tendency to stab you in the back, making it far safer to stay loyal to the good guys.
• The Smart Guy: He is the only character whose magic relies on Intelligence, rather than Wisdom or Charisma. Not that he uses it. He gained this intelligence after the dragon which enslaved his village experimented with a cursed idol that both gave Boshack his warlock powers and intelligence. He was then exiled, as lizard folk hate intelligence.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: When party saves him from a receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle against a dragon in front of which Strahd banished him, he is insisting he could win it. No one is buying it.
• Super-Intelligence: His intellect got artificially boosted by the same event that gave him his powers.
• Token Evil Teammate: He stands out because the rest of the Shenani-Guys are good or possibly neutral. His player notes that when Garo was pleading for help to save the burgomasters of Vallaki, Boshack was just laughing at the good show.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: For all their bickering and differences, he and Garo are genuine friends.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: Unlike what Garo/Ben though, Boshack's village is still around but enslaved by the green dragon. Boshack was exiled after he was made intelligent by the dragon; aside from killing the dragon, Boshack also plans to kill his tribe for that.

Krusk

Doing what needs to be done

A half-orc paladin of vengeance from "The Shenani-Guys in The Curse of Strahd".

• The Big Guy: No surprise.
• The Comically Serious: Stern and serious and easily played off of by his zanier teammates.
• Deal with the Devil: He makres a bargain with an orcish power who wants him to embrace his orcish heritage in return. He ultimately relents on it when the power asks him to turn his back on his god.
• De-power: In Episode 10, he refuses to turn his back on his god and become an Oathbreaker Paladin for even more power, resulting in his recent powerup from an Orc spirit to be taken away.
• The Fettered: While the others either received or sought out Dark Gifts in Barovia, Krusk initially refused to take a patron and remained loyal to his god. Krusk did eventually receive a Gift but ultimately chose to refuse the full power as it would mean abandoning his faith.
• Godzilla Threshold: After their first fight with Strahd and the death of Ezmerelda, Krusk admits he needs more power and takes a patron.
• I'm Standing Right Here: His reaction when the other player characters discuss killing him in the hope that he will resurrect with new powers, right in front of him.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: After losing his Gift, Krusk decides to accept the offer of becoming a werewolf for extra power. Van Rickten calmly tells him he's a moron and points out that the initial transformation would have rendered him feral and a danger to the party when they most needed him.
• Knight Errant: After the campaign, he decided that he would dedicated his life to travelling around the Demiplane of Dread to root out all evil therein. Unfortunately, he soon learned that the Demiplane is a rather large place◊, and that there is way too much evil to root out all of it. He then decided to travel with Gouda for a while. Due to her pact to "always be the Hero", they both ended up becoming Knight Errant of a sort anyway.
• Lawful Stupid: While the party is ambushing and murdering Izek and his accompanying guards, Krusk refuses to wear a disguise because that's for "low-lifes".
• Only Sane Man: If Garo decides to start being weird alongside Gouda and Boshack, the Sanity Ball generally falls to Krusk.
• Out of Focus: The least focused upon of the Barovia party. Post-Game talks revealed that this was due to his player being less outspoken and roleplaying than his compatriots.
• Refused the Call: When his spirit patron calls on Krusk to abandon his god and embrace his orcish nature fully, Krusk refuses.
• Revenge Before Reason: As a Paladin he is very useful against servants of a vampire lord as he does extra damage against the undead. So of course in every fight when he can he focuses on Rahadin, whom he considers his rival after losing to him early on. Rahadin is the only guy among Strahd's main forces who isn't a vampire or any sort of undead, but, as the DM put it, "just an asshole".
• Tempting Fate: He brags how he doesn't need to pray to Dark Powers for a gift and that his Paladin powers are enough against any threat Barovia has in store for him. Very next battle he has his first fight with Rahadin.
• Walking the Earth: Krusk wanted to wander the Demiplane of Dread doing good, and that's exactly what he ends up doing by accompanying Gouda in the epilogue.

Gouda Thyme

^{Click here to see her after her resurrection  Click here to see her after her second resurection} 

Doing her family proud

A gnome wild magic sorcerer from "The Shenani-Guys in The Curse of Strahd". Played by the same player as Asiago.

• Abusive Parents: Implied. Her father is probably absentee, based on how she talks to Mavaras. When Baba Lysaga hits her with a stick, Gouda remarks that it's "just like home".
• And the Adventure Continues: A really dark example. Her final fate is to be cursed to travel the Demiplane of Dread forever, finding constant adventures on her way, forever derailing her from returning home.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: She wanted to be a hero so Mavaras ensured she will always be one. By ensuring she will always being distracted by more adventures, preventing her from returning home. And she will always be a hero because each time she dies she comes back in a new body while a new villain is created to fight her.
• Came Back Strong: After dying in the second episode, she comes back part-beholder. Later, she dies again and reincarnates as a Tabaxi.
• Cat Folk: Following her second death, Mavaras brings her back as a Tabaxi.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: A cruel twist on it by Mavaras - since Gouda desires to be a hero, her fate is to never return home as she will always find more adventures on her way.
• Cool Horse: She manages to summon not one but two Unicorns to aid her, through Ben has Adapted Out the second one as it was killed by Strahd in the same battle it was summoned.
• Create Your Own Villain: At the end of the campaign, Gouda comes face-to-face with two villains who only exist because of her. Every time she gets resurrected she chooses a new body from those presented. The one she doesn't choose becomes a creature existing only to kill her.
• Deal with the Devil: She dies in the second episode, and has to make a bargain with a dark power, a death tyrant, to come back. In return, she is sworn to spread chaos throughout Barovia. Which she would've done anyway, simply by being herself.
• Didn't Think This Through: When Baba Lysaga mentions a dark lord, Gouda forgets about Strahd's ability to scry on people who say his name, and prods for this "dark lord"'s name, just in case it's a new NPC. She gets it eventually, at which point she realizes her mistake.
• Disappeared Dad: Implied. When her beholder patron, whom she calls her magic dad, finishes speaking to her it disappears despite Gouda still wanting to talk, she says that he is just like her real dad.
• Empathy Pet: She has a bird familiar named Snacks that copies her when she poses. Her resurrection caused it to change from a bird to a gazer.
• Entropy and Chaos Magic: Her Wild Magic sorcery doesn't come up too often, except that one time she accidentally rolled three Fireballs in a row, which also detonated a wagon full of explosives next to her. This is mitigated later on, as her patron gives her the idea to roll for two options on the Wild Magic table at once, and choose which outcome she wants.
  • However, as Ben reveled in episode 10, as she grew in power her percentage chance to get a Wild Magic result also grew. The normal Wild Magic sorcerer has a 1 in 20 chance to getting wild magic. By the time they reach the Amber Temple, Gouda's is 1 in 5.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: After being resurrected, she has Extra Eyes all over her body.
• Flying Dutchman: Gouda's Dark Gift grants her Resurrective Immortality but also curses her so that she can never return to Faerun and her family.
• Foil: In a meta sense, she becomes one for the Darklords of the old Ravenloft setting, though it's likely unintentional. Old Ravenloft Darklords were damned for some great evil act they performed and refuse to take fault for. If a Darklord accepted their punishment as what they deserved, they were free to go, but most of them were so egotistical that they never would consider that. At noted under Horrible Judge of Character, if Gouda learned about her curse, she would blame herself, not the incredibly obviously evil Death Tyrant following her around.
• The Heart: Downplayed. She is the most bright and cheerful of the party, but in Barovia this ends up making her more of The Load.
• Heroic Wannabe: Gouda started from an idea of an art-school girl dreaming of having great adventures and being a hero, only to learn the actual life of an adventurer is pretty hard. As her player admitted in post-series discussion, Barovia gave Gouda all the hard lessons she wanted the character to get and then some.
• Horrible Judge of Character:
  • Instantly believes Strahd's version of events when he relates his tragic backstory with Tatiana, and is pissed to find out he lied and she had been thinking she'd get to save a Tragic Romance.
  • Her mysterious patron is a Death Tyrant commanding her to spread chaos throughout the land. She thinks he's nice and calls him "Magic Dad." Even when he tries to seduce her to more power in the Amber Temple, she only has a very brief moment of concern about his methods.
    • During the post-campaign discussion, Gouda's player states that even if Gouda learned she was trapped in the Demiplane due to her Gift, she would have blamed it on her own magic and never have suspected Mavaras.
• Irony: Invoked by Mavaras. Gouda is very adamant about being happy with who she is, so Mavaras gives her the choice to turn into one of two other races. It's implied that doing so would essentially replace her with a different person. Later, he doesn't give her a choice.
• Last-Name Basis: Played with. Everyone refers to her as Gouda, under the assumption that it's her given name. It's actually her family name.
• The Loonie: A wild magic sorcerer primarily concerned with puns and fun, who often rushes to do things despite others telling her not to.
  • Invoked by her mysterious paton, a Death Tyrant (undead beholder) who wants her to spread chaos throughout the land, knowing she'll manage just by being her.
  • During the tense confrontation in Episode 9, she straight up walks over to Strahd...and pulls out a notebook to ask his horse's name, since she doesn't know it and feels bad about referring to the horse by a nickname in her head. Strahd was very confused, but obliged her.
• Name Order Confusion: "Gouda" is treated as her given name, but when her family is discussed they all have it as their first name and different last names.
• Oculothorax: Not her, but her patron and her familiar. Her patron is Mavaras, a Death Tyrant, or undead beholder. After accepting the bargain, her bird familiar was turned into a Gazer, a lesser beholderkin.
• Pungeon Master: Makes puns at every opportunity.
• Punny Name: Her first name is a cheese, her last name is a spice, and when spoken together sound like "good time."
• Resurrective Immortality: As a part of her deal with Mavaras, any time Gouda dies she will be reborn in a new body of her choosing; the body she does not choose is incarnated with the sole purpose of killing Gouda.
• Sad Clown: Like Garo, she is broken down by the horror and tragedy in Barovia, though she acts silly to hide this.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Her tendency to see the best in people (even in Barovia) results in this. See Horrible Judge of Character.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Spurred on by Strahd, she thought for a while that she was in a tragic romance about two lovers cursed by vindictive gods to forever be apart. She eventually realizes that she's in a gothic horror story, the romance is entirely one-sided, and Strahd entirely deserves his curse.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Because of her deal with Mavaras she is cursed to never be able to return to Forgotten Realms.

NPCs

Allies

Bitey

Don't worry, he just wants you to be warm

A giant black spider that Michele the gnome monk tames and befriends.

• Adorable Abomination: Much like the aboleths, Ben's art style depicts these monstrous arachnids as quite friendly and cute. Bitey sure thinks of himself that way.
• Blatant Lies: He tells one when Michele asks him if the other spiders are willing to leave the drow and join them.
• Giant Spider: He's a spider the size of a large dog.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Bitey doesn't want to hurt the kids he's cocooning up in his webs; he thinks they're cold and is just trying to warm them up.
• Nice Guy: Despite being a poisonous spider, he's actually very sweet. Too bad the only one who really knows this is Michele, since he's the only one who can understand Bitey.
• The Unintelligible: Because Michele is the only one who can actually understand what Bitey is saying, all anyone else hears is insectoid hissing.

Captain Morgan

A drug smuggler the group hires to go to an island guarded by a dragon turtle. The only reason he agrees to it is because he's high out of his mind on cocaine.

• The Alcoholic: Just replace alcohol with cocaine. There isn't a single second this guy isn't high off his ass on the stuff.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He may be a drugged up goofball, but he still managed to tame a group of gnolls and bullywugs, and burn down half a village in the process.
• Catchphrase: "Always trust in the cocaine!"
• Cloud Cuckoolander: As a result of said cocaine, he's not all right up in the head.
• Drugs Are Bad: He sure doesn't think so, being a drug smuggler who's constantly high on cocaine.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: Constantly on cocaine he's probably suppose to smuggle.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Sort of. One of the players decides to call him Captain Morgan after said Captain Morgan asks what would be a good name for a pirate.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Though we don't get to see much of him, Captain Cokebeard, another pirate high off his rocker on cocaine, so much so that the entire fight between the two has them both on their own ships and just swinging their swords at the air.
• Spoof Aesop: Remember, kids, do drugs! They make your problems go away!
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: He claims to be a drug smuggler, but we only ever see him, never his crew, and we only see him ferry the party from one island to the next.
  • To be fair, he probably hallucinates a crew, considering that he's always high on cocaine.

Captain Ottie Otterton

An anthropromorphic otter that the W.O.R.S.T. party encountered in the dream world and brought into the real world. He also may-or-may-not be an evil mastermind.

• Batman Gambit: Subverted... Maybe. The W.O.R.S.T. party realizes halfway through the campaign that he might be the big bad, and has been pulling this on them all along. There is no evidence to imply this, and considering Ben's history with off-the-rails campaigns, it's unlikely that he'd be able to manipulate the players that throughoughly. But then again, a later video shows that a troubling number of characters in Ben's campaigns turn out to be Evil All Along so the players might be Properly Paranoid.
• The Chessmaster: The Rogue theorizes that he's this, but other than The Dog Was the Mastermind, there is no evidence to support this.
• Dream Land: The world he originated from.
• Evil All Along: Subverted. While Otterton seems to be just a kind-hearted Otter Captain, the rogue convinced the whole party that he's a criminal mastermind who is both exceptionally evil and extremely powerful.
• Semiaquatic Species Sailor: He is an otter and a sailor.

Claire

A servant of the angel Gavriel, whom he sent to keep an eye on the party. Also a big fan of the Turtle Friends.

• Ascended Fanboy: Well, girl. She was a big fan of the party before joining them.
• Horned Humanoid: Interestingly for the servant of an angel, she's a tiefling, a species with infernal heritage.
• Nice Girl: She's overall friendly and kind, and even the party liked her enough that they didn't want to hurt her feelings. When "Gavriel" became sick, she was clearly concerned for him and asked him to get rested. Shiro even took the opportunity while masquerading as Gavriel to commend her for doing a good job on the party's behalf.
• Obliviously Evil: She does not realize that is working for a villain, but the players do know it and purposefully keep her unaware because they don't want her boss to know they know he is a villain and also because they feel sorry for her.
• White Mage: A cleric, and doing a good job at it, if Shiro is to be believed.

Lord Dreadbone

The "villain" in the Halloween One Off. As Felix is the DM in that campaign, he provides the voice for this character.

• Affably Evil: Despite being a lich and creating undead, he is quite friendly to those he consider to be his minions. This actually becomes a plot point, as the party decides not to kill him at the end because he's so likable. That does not mean he's not a Lich who consumes souls to feed his immortality, however.
• Benevolent Boss: He gives his minions free dental and pays them in magical items.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He is a lich. Unless Felix monkeyed around with his stats a lot, he would easily be able to overpower even a high level party.
• Child Hater: He finds children annoying, especially since they barge into his property and demand candy because of a Halloween-like holiday in the town. However he doesn't want to seriously hurt them, just to keep them off his property.
• Didn't Think This Through: He wanted to chase children away from his tomb, so he created a curse that turned children into whatever they were dressed up as. He never considered that actual monsters might be a tad bit harder to deal with than children.
• Expy: The voice Felix gives him is highly evocative of Skeletor.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's surprised when he hears that the party thought they killed a child, and says this:
  Lord Dreadbone: "What's this about killing children? And I thought I was evil."
• Forced Transformation: He casts a curse to turn all children who enter his mausoleum into whatever monster they're dressed as. This backfires as the children proceed to overrun his lair and are too powerful to shoo out.
• Harmless Villain: The party asks him point blank what villainous acts he's committed, and he can't name a single one. As Moss points out in a later group discussion, his attempts end up less 'horrific' and more 'delightful'.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: He admits that once he put a "curse" on the town by making one of it's water springs yield alcohol, but the townsfolk considered that a blessing.
• Obviously Evil: He's still a skeletal lich who lives in a mausoleum with a small army of zombies and skeletons as servants. Lord Dreadbone seems to think this is what being evil is all about.
• Poke the Poodle: His idea of a deadly trap in his dungeon is an hour-long elevator ride with boring music, to cause adventurers to die of boredom.
• Sweet Tooth: He has an enchanted back that yields an infinite amount of candy. When asked why he has this if he hates children, he states that he likes to eat candy. He gives it to Cali as payment for clearing his lair, as he offered to pay the party with his magical items and that's the one she wanted.

Melkyzzyack

Fiercesome beasts, born of the gods themselves...

Aren't what they used to be

A Kraken that allies with the players after they defeat him by turning him into a cat.

• Achilles' Heel: Even low-level polymorph spells can be his bane, since he lacks magic resistance, legendary actions and the Immutable Form trait.
• Brought Down to Badass: According to Ben, he has +400 million to his attacks, so he balanced it by decreasing it to +399 million.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Subverted Trope, Ben is very surprised to discover that Krakens in 5th edition D&D don't have anything to protect them from Forced Transformation.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Ends up allying with the players after they defeat him.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Was imprisoned by a magic seal (as in the animal) and escaped as a result of the mysterious event that caused all magic to stop working for a short time.
• Weaksauce Weakness: To being turned into a cat, since Krakens in 5th edition don't have Contractual Boss Immunity to it.

Sherlock Bones, Ghost Dog Detective

A ghost dog that the group's druid tamed. He's now a valued member of the group and helping them solve mysteries around Waterdeep.

• Adorable Abomination: For being a ghost dog, he's quite the cutie.
• Defective Detective: His full title is "Sherlock Bones, Ghost Dog Detective". Could explain why the group took so long to solve a mystery.
• Punny Name: His name is a dog version of Sherlock Holmes.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: While the group had no qualms about exorcising the human ghost harassing the group in the mansion provided to them by Volo, all but one of them absolutely refuse to fight the dog for this reason.

Tortle Wizard

An elderly tortle wizard that the party wants to help them find and reforge the pieces of the Mourneblade. He would like to help...if they would stop calling him Oogway.

• Beast Folk: Of a sort. He's a turtle man.
• Deadpan Snarker: Upon being called Oogway one too many times, he quips "Never mind, it looks like I have more important stuff to do" when the party wants his help.
• Malicious Misnaming: Michele outright tells the tortle that his name is now Oogway. Naturally, this pisses said tortle off to the point where he refuses to help the party when they desperately need him to.
• Older and Wiser: Outside of Malikar, he's probably the oldest character in the entire campaign, and being a wizard, he's pretty damn intelligent, too.
• Humanshifting: It is mentioned in the "Too Many Betrayals" video that he was one of the many characters that betrayed the party. It turns out he was actually a doppelganger in disguise.

Volothamp "Volo" Geddarm

It'll be FABULOUS, daaaarlings

THE Volo, of Volo's Guide to Monsters fame. He becomes the group's benefactor in Waterdeep and gives them the deed to the mansion where they eventually meet Sherlock Bones.

• Affectionate Nickname: He calls the entire group his "darlings".
• Camp Gay / Camp Straight: His romantic preferences are not mentioned, but he acts very campy.
• Catchphrase: A very effeminate "Mmm, yes, darlings."
• Celebrity Paradox: Of a sort. He IS Volo, but the group doesn't recognize him at first. Most likely because most new players only know him as a name on a book.
• Large Ham: "Mmm, yeeees, DAAArlings"
• Self-Deprecation: On Ben's side. He admits he's running out of voices and agrees with his players that this is a new low for him.
• Signature Headgear: He's always wearing the same beanie type hat he's seen wearing on the cover of his book.
• Spanner in the Works: Thanks to him, the players are able to meet Sherlock Bones, Ghost Dog Detective, and solves several mysteries in and around Waterdeep.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: He speaks with a very effeminate voice that, according to Ben and his players, is a new low for him. Ben admits that he's running out of voices.

Wallace

He's not nearly as useful as he looks. And he doesn't look useful

A young boy from the town of Parnast who, two times, is tasked to go with the party — first to hunt game for a town festival and then to track down a villain. Due to the players having no choice but to bring him along, they really don't care for the kid, and that's putting it lightly.

• Adorably Precocious Child: He's MEANT to come off this way, but instead he just comes off as useless and annoying.
• And Show It to You: A variant of sorts. Just replace "heart" with "intestines" and "out of your chest" with "out of your mouth".
• Butt-Monkey: In both instances where the party are forced to take him with them, he ends up trapped and beaten up somehow. That's to say nothing of his treatment from the party itself.
• Children Are Innocent: He's a small, young boy who just wants to help the party.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The half orc of the party wants to rip Wallace's intestines out through his mouth and strangle him with them, just to get the kid to shut up.
  • The half-orc heals Wallace after he's mauled by a monster, not because he felt bad for the kid, but because he wants Wallace to live long enough to realize just how useless he is.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: He sure feels like he should be a member of the group, to the point where he asks for payment. The tiefling agrees to pay Wallace exactly what he's worth. So he gives Wallace a single penny. He later asks for the penny back.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: He ends up taking more than his fair share of the praise for the good deeds carried out by the party, to the point that two statues are put up in his honor.
  "Praise be to the Hero of Parnast! Praise little Wallace!"
• Frame-Up: When the party is trying to plant evidence that Wallace is the one vandalizing Parnast, it turns out that the villain they're after has the exact same goal.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: The rest of the party despise him and spend the sessions he appears in treating him like crap.
• Half-Human Hybrid: His dad is a human. His mom is a tiefling.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: He's subject to two, one from a treant that a pixie sics on the party, and another from the villain who's trying to frame him.
• Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: He and the Dream Team somehow managed to make their way past a Gold Dragon, three Beholders and a Lich.
• Rail Roading: None of the party actually wanted him to join them, but they're required to take him along because the writers of the module he appears in didn't take the possibility of his help being turned down into account.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Even after the party treats him like shit, even after he gets the crap beaten out of him...twice...the kid is still an optimist and still heralded as the eponymous hero of Parnast.

Whimsy

Bish bish bish bish bish bish.

RAAAAH! MURDER!

An aboleth that the players encounter on the fifth level of the eponymous Tomb Of Annihilation. He's not all right up in the head, having a split personality — one being an evil, murderous side and the other being a small, curious child.

Whimsy also has a tendency to cameo in other videos since "Terror of the Deep", usually in the background of a wide shot involving a large body of water or as one of the group's pets in "Too Many Pets".

• Admiring the Abomination: One of the players thinks that Whimsy is precious. Keep in mind, every time they meet in person, it's always with the nice side of Whimsy's personality.
• Adorable Abomination: Aboleths are certainly NOT adorable, and yet Ben's art style makes them look like cute whales.
• All There in the Manual: Reading Tomb of Annihilation reveals his real name, G'lyh'rul (Golorr in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist), and the reason for his split personality (trauma from Acererak's imprisonment).
• And I Must Scream: He's all alone on the fifth level of Acererak's tomb, with no one to talk to, both before and after the players go through.
• Badass Boast: When he first speaks to the players, his evil side says "One day, my kind will rise up and defeat even the gods. Until then, we wait in darkness."
• Bait-and-Switch: When the players finally meet him in person, it seems like he's about to attack them with a tentacle. Instead, he starts waving hi.
• The Cameo: He has a tendency to pop up in some of Ben's other videos, whether in the background or as part of the story.
  • In one of the videos where he's explaining the plot to Tomb of Annihilation, there's a wide shot of the island of Chult. An aboleth can be seen in the water.
  • Whimsy appears as one of the eponymous pets in the video "Too Many Pets", though how the party got him as a pet is anyone's guess.
  • The aboleth in the stone the party get in the video "The Xanathar Guild" has the exact same mannerisms as Whimsy.
• Catchphrase: "Hi guys, how's it going?"
• Children Are Innocent: His nice, child-like personality certainly emobies this. Hell, one of the players even says that he's precious.
• Eldritch Abomination: Nice side or no, he's still an aboleth.
• Evil Sounds Deep: His evil side has a deep, booming voice.
• Friendless Background: He doesn't get a lot of new friends.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: At least, his nice side does. His evil side...not so much.
• Oblivious to His Own Description: When Whimsy meets the party in person, he warns them about a scary creature that he hears is also swimming about in the water. The party instantly realizes that Whimsy is just describing stories he has heard about himself, without realizing he's the one being described.
• Split Personality: He's not all right up in the head. One personality is that of an evil murderer, while the other is that of a curious, small child.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Ben has this reaction after a player makes a random roll and determines that they're going to meet the nice side of Whimsy's personality when they confront him.
  Ben: Oh my god, they're gonna be so pissed off.
  • However his players were actually ok with it, since it would have been so much worse if they had spent the entire time talking to the nice side only to get hit by the murder side when they finally met him.

Allies from 'Shenani-guys and the Curse of Strahd'

Emil

The former alpha of the Barovian werewolf pack. The Shenani-guys encounters him in Castle Ravenloft dungeons. They end up making a deal with him for the loyalty of the Barovian pack in return for his freedom and aid in overthrowing the usurper alpha.

• Logical Weakness: He and other werewolves are immune to any attack that isn't magical or made with a silvered weapon. However, since their own attacks are neither of those things, it means they are unable to hurt each other, something that became a problem when Emil got into a power struggle with another werewolf.
• Missing Steps Plan: His plan to counter Strahd is to build a werewolf army by turning the entire town of Vallaki. He has no actual plan for how he is going to beat the town's powerful guards, turn the hundreds in the town, keep the resulting hundreds of feral werewolves from running amok, or successfully controlling the werewolves once they're sane enough to remember what he did to them.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He acts like everything he does is to free Barovia from the devil Strahd, but the Shenani-guys know that would just replace one tyrant with another.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: He was born a werewolf, meaning that he can control his transformations.
• Scary Black Man: He has some of the darkest skin in Barovia. Granted, his scariness has a lot more to do with him being a werewolf than him being black.
• Smug Snake: For all of his arrogance, both personally and as a werewolf, Emil hasn't made good on his boasts. He was first discovered having been imprisoned after losing the fight for control of his pack and he never really redeems himself afterwards. His plan for Vallaki may be ambitious but it's also incredibly shortsighted.

Ezmerelda d'Avenir

Rudolph van Richten's apprentice, a vistana and the party's chosen ally.

• Back from the Dead: Through vampirism.
• Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire: Van Richten makes a deal with the dark power Vol, the Vampyr to turn her from a vampire spawn into a fully fledged vampire, freeing her from Strahd's control.
• Refusal of the Call: She rather flatly refuses becoming Barovia's new Darklord.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: She is killed rather quickly after her first apparence, and taken by Strahd to become a vampire spawn. Subverted when van Richten makes a deal to get her back.
• You Killed My Father: Averted. She knows van Richten killed her clan, but she doesn't hold it against him.

Mordenkainen

A legendary wizard from Oerth whom Ben's party finds in Barovia.

• Adaptational Attractiveness: With a dash of Older Than They Look - he is usually portrayed as a man in his forties or fifties and often a menacing-looking one. Ben draws him as a smiling, good-looking guy in his twenties.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: In the module, Mordekainen is described as uncaring and concerned less with people and more with his schemes. Ben plays him as an extremely nice person.
• Awesome Aussie: Ben gives him an Australian accent.
• Big Good: While he is originally a True Neutral, in this campaign he is still filling this role.
• But Now I Must Go: He leaves, promising to return once he finds his spellbook.
• Counterspell: Uses this a lot
• False Friend: Zigzagged. He is replaced by Strahd in disguise shortly before the final battle, with the real Mordenkainen sent back to Oerth.
• Famed In-Story: Several spells and even one of Fifth Edition sourcebooks are named after him.
• Fastest Gun in the West: introduces himself as 'the fastest spell in the multiverse". Mechanically he backs this boast up by spamming Counterspells.
• Mage Marksman: He is a wizard but Ben gives him a personality that makes him feel more like a wild west gunslinger shooting magic instead of guns.
• Mythology Gag: Riddles in his house that Ben's party had to beat are all references to his wizard friends from other worlds.
• Oh, Crap!: Once he realizes that Shenani-Guys had unwittingly lead Strahd right to his doorstep.
• Precursor Heroes: Downplayed, he tried to take down Strahd a year before Ben's party arrived. He failed, and was driven mad, hiding in the woods.
• Put on a Bus: In final episode turns out Strahd secretly cast Banishment on him and sent him back to Oerth and then took his place right before the final battle.
• Shattered Sanity: His fight with Strahd has left him a mentally broken, but with Van Richten's help he got better.
• Walking Spoiler: His existence is a huge spoiler for Curse of Strahd because the module initially leads you to believe the wizard who fought Strahd is dead and doesn't tell you it is one of most iconic wizards of the entire franchise.
• Worf Had the Flu: He participates in battle against Strahd but admits he is not gonna be much help so soon after coming to his senses and without his spellbook.

Rictavio

Rictavio aka. Rudolph van Richten

A famous vampire hunter disguised as a travelling minstrel.

• The Alcoholic: His journal mentions that he had taken to the bottle on the night of his son's kidnapping, and that is why he failed to save the vistana's life.
• Back from the Dead: He dies in the Amber Temple, but is soon after brought back by Kasimir using Revivify.
• Big Good: Arguably. While he is just as prone to be killed as the party, he is far more knowledgeable and experienced.
• Cool Old Guy: He's clearly getting on in the years, but can still kick vampire butt.
• Curse: Those close to him are doomed to die from a curse laid upon him by a vengeful vistana.
• Deal with the Devil: Like the party and Kasimir, he makes a bargain with a Dark Power. Unlike them, he does it on behalf of Ezmerelda, to free her from Strahd's control.
• Expy: Of Abraham van Helsing. Ben even ditched the running gag of making a character named Stan Velsing when he realized the module beat him to the punch.
• Like a Daughter to Me: Garo calls Ezmerelda van Richten's daughter at one point. He doesn't object.
• Sophisticated as Hell: He usually keeps to a very formal and polite mode of speech, but his response to Kursk willingly taking on a Werewolf curse is a straightforward "you fucking dumbass".
• Staking the Loved One: His journal reveals that he had to kill his son, Erasmus, when he was turned by a vampire.

Enemies

Acererak

The dark master

Ancient lich and creator of the Tomb of the Nine Gods. Though he has had no speaking roles yet, his influence is felt all throughout Ben's Tomb of Annihilation videos.

• The Ghost: Kind of. We see him a couple times, once as a typical lich, and once as a mysterious figure wrapped in shadows, but next to that, we know nothing of him.
• Greater-Scope Villain: As Ras Nsi's master and creator of the Tomb of the Nine Gods, he's the cause of every challenge the party encounters in Tomb of Annihilation.
• Our Liches Are Different: A pretty standard D&D Lich.
• You Don't Look Like You: In his first appearance, he appears as a crowned skeleton, standard for a lich, but in his later appearances, he's a very familiar figure hidden in shadows.

Antonio de Castilian Maximiliano

The finest goblin swordsman in all the land. And he more than lives up to that title. He's a boss enemy encountered during the Malikar Campaign.

• Badass Boast: "Now you cross blades with Antonio de Castilian Maximiliano, the greatest Goblin Swordsman in all the land!"
• Badass Normal: He's actually a completely normal goblin, the only difference being that he wields a rapier. Ben just had some really lucky rolls.
• Boss in Mook's Clothing: Subverted. He downs several players, but he actually doesn't have any particular powers. He's just a normal goblin with good rolls.
• Curbstomp Battle: He subjects the party to one of these. When one of the players accuses Ben of pouring a lot of fighter and swashbuckler levels into him, Ben responds "He's just a regular goblin; I just rolled really well this time".
• Foregone Conclusion: We know that the players are going to get past him, considering that they end up fighting Malikar.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: One of the players accuses him of being a third level bard, fifth level fighter, eighth level swashbuckler and 29th level jerk.
• Swashbuckler: A regular goblin...who also happens to be really damn good with a sword.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The players are forced to run from him when he gets the upper hand in the fight. He's never seen again, so we have no idea if they went back and fought him again or just bypassed him.

Garathor/Tar'Hogar

A trustworthy face

An patron of Ben's party. Secretly the same person as the party's mortal enemy, Tar'Hogar.

• Evil Sounds Deep: He has a very deep and hoarse voice.
• Obvious Judas: Anyone with a brain can tell that he was planning to betray the party. And yet, out of the entire group, Flynn was the only one to even consider that a possibility.
  Flynn: "Tar'Hogar? Garathor? Tar'Hogar?"
• Obviously Evil: [[spoiler:Despite the white robes and hood, the man wears a black and red mask and speaks with a deep, raspy voice. Does that sound like someone you would trust?
  • If your name is Aligaros, then yes.
• Self-Demonstrating Article: We've censored all of it.
• Significant Anagram: Tar'Hogar is an anagram for Garathor.
• The Team Benefactor: He hired the party gather a set of shards to construct a crystal of ultimate evil.

Gavriel

Angel of Mount Celestia and leader of the Hosts of Heaven. He stole the Covenant in order to reignite the war between the Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia and the Nine Hells of Baator so that he could finally defeat his hated enemy.

• Archangel Gabriel: Downplayed. He certainly fits the bill as leader of the heavenly host, but his name is Gavriel, not Gabriel.
• Big Bad: Of the Covenant campaign.
• Big "NO!": Lets out one while being banished to California.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He appeared in the first Covenant video as one of Celestia's angels.
• Fate Worse than Death: The party banished him to California.
• Forced Transformation: The players defeated him by turning him into a potted plant.
• Front Line General: He served on the front lines of the war between Heaven and Hell.
• General Ripper: Seems to be this, since he was willing to destroy the Covenant, wreaking all kinds of chaos in the Mortal Realm, solely to destroy his hated enemy.
• Ideal Illness Immunity: As an angel, he can't get sick.
• Obviously Evil: The players figure out almost immediately that Gavriel is actually a villain. Averted, since he never really did anything to warrant suspicion, and the party were simply Genre Savvy.
• Our Angels Are Different: He's mostly a standard angel, from what we see, but he treats the mortal heroes as impatient children, and talks down to them when they don't obey him. He's also a General Ripper.
• Spell My Name With An S: "Gavriel" instead of "Gabriel".
• Time Abyss: He was already the leader of the Celestial Host 20 000 years ago.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He wants to destroy the infernal legions of the Nine Hells, something that definitely would benefit both angels and mortals in the short term. However, there's no telling what chaos he might open the doors to if Hell goes out of the picture.
• Winged Humanoid: He's an angel with white wings on his back.

Malikar

It seems you have fallen for his great deception. This trope will now be used for the purposes of eviiil

An immortal being who's bent on bringing about the end of the world.

• A Fate Worse Than Death: To someone like Malikar, being stuck on Mount Celestia, where Lawful Good angels and paladins live, is this. Ben equates it to a known criminal walking into a police station.
• Badass Boast: Practically every sentence that comes out of his mouth is one of these, though they don't seem as much thanks to the voice Ben gives him.
• Big Bad: Titular villain of the Malikar Campaign.
• Catchphrase: "[Something or someone] will now be used for the purposes of Eviiiil!"
• Cold Ham: Ben certainly hams it up with him.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: His army delivers one to the players, leaving only Will's character Michele the gnome monk standing.
  • He's on the receiving end of one upon waking up on Mount Celestia thanks to an entire tavern full of angels and paladins.
• Deader than Dead: The party planned to inflict this on him, destroying his soul with the Mourneblade, but it didn't quite work out.
• Did Not Think This Through: The players did manage to foil his plan, for which he had no contingency.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He may be an immortal being who wants to destroy the world, but even he won't stoop so low as to belittle a prisoner. He chastises a henchman for this.
  Malikar: There's being evil, and then there's being a jerk, and that's what you are right now.
  • He also considers death traps unsporting.
• Evil Is Hammy: Boy, is it ever. Pretty much every piece of dialogue consists of Ben chewing the scenery like a Christmas ham.
  Malikar: I'm afraid you have falleeen for my great Deception!
• Red Herring: The last Covenant campaign video opens with the party trying to find out who stole the Covenant. Cut to Malikar escaping from prison... For 5 minutes until he's caught again.
• Resurrective Immortality: His soul is immortal, being constantly reborn into a new body every so often. This has been going on for at least the last few hundred years, causing....
• Sanity Slippage: With every rebirth, he loses a part of his humanity and becomes even more deranged.
• Vocal Dissonance: You'd expect a villain to have a deep voice, but Malikar's is quite high pitched and he speaks with the same inflection as William Shatner.

Mayor Rowan

The villain in the Holiday One Off. As Felix is the DM in that campaign, he provides the voice for this character.

• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Not a single townsperson misses him after Lolth's Cat eats him.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After the party defeats him, he begs and grovels for his life. Subverted, since Zeebo knocks him out after it becomes clear he's willing to tell any lie to save his skin.
• Can't Argue with Elves: He's an Elf, and it's hinted that he believes this; despite governing a town of humans he mocks their shorter lifespan. He later turns out to be evil, though, and by the end of the game he's defeated by the party and killed by Lolth's Cat.
• Eaten Alive: He subjected a number of his citizens to this every winter solstice for three years, sacrificing them to Lolth's Cat. He himself dies in this way, though Zeebo knocks him out first.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He has a pet dog whom he takes good care of, and at first cites this as a reason for the party to show him mercy after Cauli shows reluctance to kill a dog-owner. It doesn't work; instead, Moss claims the dog as his own pet.
• Mayor Pain: An evil mayor who mind controls and sacrifices his people every year.

Nihiloor

The swashbuckling Cthulhumanoid

A mind flayer from the Xanathar guild whom the players encounter in the sewers of Waterdeep.

• Cthulhumanoid: One of the original.
• Forgot About His Powers: Due to Ben misreading the stat block, he never once figured to use his Mind Blast ability, which would pretty much instakill the entire party.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Due to Ben misreading the stat block, he ends up becoming a swashbuckler instead of a powerful psionic.
• One-Hit Kill: He has an ability that can instantly melt the entire party's brains. Somewhat subverted, since he's meant to be fought by much stronger characters.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: He's supposed to do this during the player's encounter with him, but couldn't, because the players blew up his only means of escape.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: It's subtle, but he has a skull for a belt buckle.
• Swapped Roles: Due to Ben misreading the stat block, he ends up swapping roles with the Nimblewright, a duelist construct. Justified, as there is no actual stat block for Nihiloor in the book Ben was reading, and he was actually supposed to use the block from the Monster Manual. Due to some poor layout, the picture of Nihiloor is right next to the Nimblewright stat block, so Ben's confusion is understandable.

Ras Nsi

The villain of Fane of the Night Serpent, a segment in the Tomb of Annihilation adventure.

• And Show It to You: The wizard teleports into Ras Nsi's room just in time to see the snake man rip a slave's still-beating heart out of his chest.
• Badass Boast: "You worm, you dare challenge a god?"
• Big Bad: The main villain of Fane of the Night Serpent.
• Cool Sword: He has an ornate longsword....That's also on FIRE!

• Hoist by His Own Petard: He loses said sword in a duel with the group's fighter and is then stabbed through the chest with it.
• Snake People: Top half of a man, lower half of a snake.

Xanathar

The beholder who runs the guild named after him. Outside of himself, the only other thing he cares for is his pet goldfish Sylgar.

• Berserk Button: Finding out that Sylgar is dead. It didn't happen in the video, but Ben implies that Xanathar would go on a rampage if he ever found out.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: And his loved one is a goldfish. He makes sure Sylgar gets treats.
• Extra Eyes: As a beholder, he has 10 eye stalks and one main eye.
• Giggling Villain: He lets out a few chuckles while talking about his evil plans.
• It's All About Me: Well, me and my pet goldfish. To quote him from Xanathar's Guide:
  What is it with people and the weather? It's just the sky weeping and shouting because it's so far away from me.

Zalkin

Believe it or not, the real Nalfeshnee doesn't look too different

A nalfeshnee (type 4 pig demon) that Ben's players release from an obelisk while playing Tomb Of Annihilation.

• And I Must Scream: Implied. Acererak sealed him in that obelisk, and who knows how long ago that was. All he could do was look out at whoever was looking in at him.
• Badass Boast: I wonder which of you I should be eating first.
• But Now I Must Go: He's only around for a certain amount of time before being whisked away to the Abyss. As he does, he promises to return with even more demons.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Or it would be if he and the players could actually hit each other.
  • To clarify, he has resistance to all attacks, magical and non-magical alike. The players are so decked out with armor and magic items that he can't seriously hurt them. And both parties have such ridiculously high HP that the most they can do is an annoying scratch.
• I Am a Humanitarian: His boast pretty much solidifies that.
• Line-of-Sight Name: Not exactly, but he cycles through a list of names when asked what his is before choosing one that sounds the most demonic.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Not stated, but while the players did technically win, since they survived and he retreated, the players had still wasted spellslots and potions just before entering the most dangerous dungeon on Toril.
• Ungrateful Bastard: The players free him from his above And I Must Scream, and he responds by trying to eat them. justified, as he is after all a demon
• Victory by Endurance: Ben called it a War of Attrition. The players just had to survive until Zalkin went back to the Abyss.

Enemies from 'Shenani-guys and the Curse of Strahd'

Rahadin

Strahd's chamberlain and the one of his servants the Shenani-Guys have to fight the most often.

• Actually Not a Vampire: The party doesn't realize he's mortal until none of their anti-undead weapons work on him.
• An Arm and a Leg: After his death in the Amber Temple, Boshack steals and eats one of his legs. During the finale he initially appears without a leg, but it's an illusion as the real Rahadin has both legs.
• Combat Pragmatist: Like Strahd, he makes damn sure the odds are stacked in his favor before fighting.
• Cool Horse: He rides Strahd's Nightmare at one point.
• The Dragon: Strahd's right hand-man, most loyal servant, and fiercesome foe in his own right.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: An odd case. Rahadin only ever acted according to his master's orders when it came to making life miserable for the Shenani-Guys, but the party showed far more vitriol and personal investment in fighting him as opposed to Strahd.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Strahd's crimes are not a concern of his.
• Really 700 Years Old: He has served Strahd for a long time, but is not undead. Simply a long-lived elf.
• The Rival: Krusk considers him this. Rahadin's thoughts on the matter are unknown.
• The Renfield: He serves Strahd willingly, not out of compulsion or madness.
• The Undead: Averted. As it turns out, he's Strahd's only servant who's not a vampire or other undead. This makes it tough on Krusk, who considers him his nemesis, but doesn't get his paladin bonuses when fighting him. Played straight after he dies in the Amber Temple and is brought back.

Strahd von Zarovich

Lord of Castle Ravenloft

The Big Bad of "The Shenani-Guys in The Curse of Strahd" campaign, the Vampire who rules the land of Barovia but is also trapped in it.

• Actually a Doombot: The party barely survives an encounter with Strahd only for Boshack to point out his "body" turned into water rather than mist like a normal vampire. Cue the actual Strahd arriving to reveal what they just fought was a simulacrum.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: He is technically a king, but doesn't use the title. Either way, he is Barovia's feudal lord and is quite evil.
• Big Bad: Of Curse of Strahd
• Big Brother Is Watching: It takes Shenani-Guys up to Part 10 that find out that he can at will scry on anyone saying his name. Despite the fact it was not a well-guarded secret.
• Cain and Abel: The Cain to his brother Sergei.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: As of Part 8 the party is concerned why he still let them live only to too late realize he wanted them to lead him to other people on his kill list that he couldn't track.
• The Chessmaster: As the game goes on it becomes more and more apparent that Strahd been manipulating the party on multiple fronts for his benefits or amusement.
• Combat Pragmatist: He stacks the battle heavily in his favor before engaging the players, supplying them with cursed magic items, calling vampire spawn to even the action economy and even outfitting Krusk with an Animated Armor under his control. Not to mention the fact that he sent a simulacrum before fighting them himself.
• The Comically Serious: Briefly in Episode 9, when Gouda asks the name of his horse. He is extremely confused by her behavior, but even obligingly spells the name out for her when she realizes she can't spell Beuceaphalus.
• Create Your Own Hero: Because he killed Esmeralda, turned her into a vampire spawn and let Rahadin take her to kill Shenani-Guys when they were in Amber Temple with Van Richten, Van Richten was able to get her blessed by Vampyr and let himself be killed by her, thus making her fulfill all requirements to make her a true vampire. This made her a much bigger threat to Strahd than she was before.
• Deal with the Devil: His vampirism comes from a dark power called the Vol, the Vampyr (possibly an Eberron reference)..
• Disproportionate Retribution: While by default the massacre at the church of St. Andrews can happen in the campaign if players don't prevent it, in the one Ben played Strahd ordered it because the party didn't drop everything to immediately answer his invitation. That he didn't even put a date on.
• Divide and Conquer: Possibly tried to invoke this in Part 9 on if he really was going to let everyone go if Shenani-Guys ask him to spare live of any single specific person, he probably was banking on the very act of choice in the first place making others distrust the party and destroy any chance of his enemies creating an alliance, letting him hunt them down one by one. Even if Garo took a third option, this was partially successful and Werewolves and Ismark left the party.
• Dogged Nice Guy: His relationship to Tatyana demonstrates this attitude, at least from his point of view.
• Entitled to Have You: His attitude towards Irena - he believes he is entitled to her hand because she is a reincarnation of Tatyana.
• Evil Is Petty: See above, he had a whole church massacred because the party refused his invitation.
• False Friend:
  • Pretended to be Vasili, a friendly guy supplying Shenani-guys with magic items, to make the party put on several cursed items.
  • In the finale he does it again, banishing Mordekainen and secretly taking his place to lead the party into a trap.
• Fighting a Shadow: When it looks like Krusk killed him after a serious battle that almost ended in a TPK, real Strahd arrives moments later to reveal it was only a Simulacrum, basically a Hard Light Body Double.
• Green-Eyed Monster: As in canon, Strahd was jealous of his younger brother Sergei. In this version of the campaign, the jealousy stemmed from Strahd being past his prime by the time his family moved into the land he conquered. When Tatyana rejected Strahd in favor of Sergei, he became fixated on Sergei's youth and Tatyana's love.
• Hellish Horse: His Nightmare, Beuceaphalus. It is completely black wiht burning eyes and mane. It can also fly. Crosses over with Cool Horse.
• Hero Killer: Early on the party is told a story of a mighty wizard who tried defeat Strahd and was killed by the vampire in Part 8 they discover the wizard, legendary Mordenkainen, is still alive. And of course, Part 7 ends with Strahd forcing the powerless Shenani-Guys to watch him kill Esmeralda and leave with her body to raise her as a vampire. In part 10 Ben brings up Strahd wiping out a whole order of heroic paladins, something the party knew about early on but wasn't brought up... because Ben was absent for that session.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: By the Part 8 Shenani-Guys realize he had multiple chances to kill them and/or kidnap Irena and yet he didn't. He knew they'd eventually lead him to two people he needs to kill - Rudolph Van Richten and Mordenkainen.
• Immortality Bisexuality: He has three female brides and a male "consort".
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Boshack questioning how Vasili knew the weapons he gave them were cursed leads to Vasili revealing he was Strahd in disguise.
• Just Toying with Them: Some of his actions, like tricking Shenani-guys into gathering all his enemies in one place so he can kill them all and then secretly promising to let everyone go if Garo chooses anyone but Ireena for his Sadistic Choice, have a shade of this. It is the main reason in the module why adventurers even have a chance against him - he dwarfs them in power so much he could kill them early on and they only get to catch up because he is so incredibly bored to prolong tormenting them for his own amusement.
• Knight of Cerebus: Most of the villains in Ben's videoes are comedic even if they end up beating the party, be it by his choice of how to portray them or other circumstances like reading wrong stat block or (un)fortunate dice rolls resulting in wackiness. Strahd is none of that. There are very few humorous things about him, he pulls the strings in the darkest series of videos Ben has so far done and is directly or indirectly responsible for several moments of horror and tragedy that Ben's videoes otherwise seldom, if ever, dwell into. Even the artwork used for him on this very page is a picture from the book, rather than Ben's more silly artstyle, something that's only the case for him, Ras Nsi and Acererak, other serious villains.
• Mad Love: Strahd is in love, or at least obsessed, with Tatyana even though she has no memory of him from her previous reincarnations.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: A medieval version.
• Master of Illusion: Was supplying the group with cursed magic items disguised as Vasili and instead of facing them himself, he first send a powerful illusion made of Hard Light to beat them near to death.
• Noble Demon: He is most definitely a villain, but as Barovia's feudal lord, he is beholden to courtly honor. He never breaks his word and only openly attacks the players once they start working against him.
• The Plan: Killing the players immediately means they're dead. Killing them later provides entertainment. Letting them travel around Barovia to gather allies means he can take out his most dangerous enemies at once.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Ben had this issue trying to play his lines, at few times he even ends up sounding like Tommy Wiseau.
• Pragmatic Evil: He sends the party to rescue the village of Barovia from an undead attack because he needs father Donavich to perform the marriage ceremony between him and Ireena. The players find out that Donavich is corrupted and kills him, leaving Garo the last ordained priest in Barovia.
• Reforged into a Minion: In episode 10 it's revealed he did it to Silver Dragon Angryvost, transforming him into a Dracolich to guard Amber Temple and of course he turned Esmeralda into a Vampire Spawn.
• Royal Harem: Has three wives, and a boyfriend. The wives are all powerful vampires and major threats to the party.
• Sadistic Choice: In part 9 he makes the party (or rather Garo, since others dumped this choice on him) choose between lives of an innocent werewolf pack, Mordekainen, Ismark and Rudolph Von Richten.
• Self-Serving Memory: The story he told the players during their dinner was very different from his actual backstory according to his tome.
• Speak of the Devil: Strahd can scry on anyone who speaks his name out loud, which is why everyone refers to him as The Devil. It took Shenani-Guys several episodes to figure it out.
• Tortured Monster: By the time he reveals to the party how he is cursed to be tormented by reincarnations of woman he loves dying before he can wed any of them and break his curse, Garo hates his guts too much to feel any sympathy. It does work on Gouda, until they find his journal and learn Strahd didn't tell the whole the truth.
• True Sight: One of his powers, with which he taunts the party while they try to sneak an invisible Ismark out of his castle.
• The Usurper: Turns out some of his power over the Land of Barovia comes from stealing the powers of three land spirits.
• Vampire Vords: Faint, but present in how Puffin does his accent.
• Villainous Valor: Even with all his allies dead, outnumbered and surrounded Strahd fights to the very end.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Dark Powers set up an illusion of Strahd's homelands at a specific place to torment him with the fact he can never come back to them. Even Garo considers this a dick move.
• You Said You Would Let Them Go: Subverted. When presenting Garo with Sadistic Choice mentioned above he telepathically promised him to spare everyone as long as Garo chooses anyone but Irena. Garo suspected this trope but DM claims Strahd was being honest.

Weapons

Barathorn, Glaive of Champions

A dwarven glaive that the party finds in a cave. He's been there for at least the last thousand years and is desperate to go on an adventure.

• And I Must Scream: Sure, he can talk and people can hear him, but for the last thousand years he's been ignored and stuck in a cave until the party came along and finally took him on an adventure.
• Catchphrase: "It is I, Barathron, Glaive of Champions!"
• I Just Want to Have Friends: He really, REALLY wants to get out of the cave.
• Motor Mouth: He's constantly talking. The only time he shuts up is when he first speaks to the Mourneblade, and even then, it's only for a few seconds before he's back to chattering again.
• No Indoor Voice: He's not shouting, but DAMN is he loud.
• Noodle Incident: He and Greg know each other from high school. And that's all we'll ever learn about it.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: There's some hints of this between him and Greg, another magic sword the group has. All we know is that they went to high school together.

Greg

A sword of fire and ice that the party has. He knows Barathorn — they went to high school together.

• Noodle Incident: The party bought him from a store. How much he cost and how the shop owner got him is anyone's guess. This was explicitly an example of how the Monty Haul situation in the campaign had gotten out of hand.
  • Also, he and Barathron went to high school together. And that's all we'll ever learn about it.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: There's some hints of this between him and Barathron. All we know is that they went to high school together.

The Mourneblade

An evil, sentient sword that rends the soul of whoever it kills, destroying it and making it impossible for that person to be resurrected. As such, it's the only weapon that can destroy Malikar for good.

• Attack Its Weak Point: It destroys the soul.
• Badass Boast: "I exist only to destroy. Innocent, guilty, it doesn't matter to me, as long as I can bathe in their blood." It actually gets Barathorn to shut up for a few seconds.
• Bifurcated Weapon: Sort of. The sword was broken into two pieces, and most of the Malikar Campaign involves finding those two pieces and putting them back together.
• Cessation of Existence: Implied to inflict this on its victims, destroying their souls.
• Combat Tentacles: It has dark, necrotic tendrils that come out whenever someone other than the party tries to touch it. That poor, poor blacksmith.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Like Whimsy's evil half, he's got a deep, booming voice with some serious reverb to it.
• Meaningful Rename: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing wants to rename it the Infinity Blade, partly because when it destroys a victim's soul that victim turns to dust, and partly because he wants to kill half his enemies with the Mourneblade and half with Barathorn.
  Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: There must be balance in all things.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The last we see of it, Michele, in his drunken stupor, buries it in the sandbox of the local park. The next time he went to fetch it, it was gone. It's possible that some kid picked it up thinking it was a cool sword.

Sword of Warning

A defective magical sword that tells the party when something bad might happen, but is vague on details.

• Catchphrase: He has 2:
  • "Something bad might happen today", at the start of each day, followed by "Who knows" when asked what that something is.
  • When something bad DOES happen, no matter how mundane or miniscule, it always says "I warned you" in a very smug, sing-song voice.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After Ben describes how Malikar is close to achieving his goal, the sword gives one last "I warned you" before vanishing. It is never brought up again.