Legends of Aekran is a Dungeons & Dragons-style tabletop RPG that parodies the genre's usual tropes and settings, and is started in the Minecraft Forums by Bioshock_Rulez of Outpost Defenders fame, and later migrated to the Space Battles Forums with Bioshock_Rulez continuing to serve as the gamemaster as Exoskeletal65. You can find the game on the Minecraft Forums here
, though that thread is now defunct as it has migrated to Space Battles Forums and continued from here.
The game takes place in a medieval fantasy world, where the players take the role of a group of mercenaries called the Blades of Virtue, hired by the emperor of the eponymous Empire of Aekran to defend the empire from all kinds of threats, from simple outlaws to otherworldly abominations.
Tropes of Aekran:
- Anachronism Stew: Despite being a medieval fantasy setting, Aekran is chock full of things that are from the wrong time period altogether, likely to play up the game's nature as a parody.
- Animal Mecha: Mechacrab, one of Gregory's Four Champions, is a huge crab fused with a M1 Abrams MBT (yes, really).
- Crabbell, another one of Gregory's Four Champions, is a lesser example, being a similarly huge crab that has a bell in place of its shell that it can use for its attacks.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Both enemies and bosses can have parts of them severed, which hinders their capabilities in combat.
- Ax-Crazy: Aoife likes to harm and torture criminals in very unusual and excruciatingly painful ways. She even has a passive ability called Sadism, which lets her deal extra damage to an enemy whenever she successfully inflicts a status effect upon said enemy.
- Badass Crew: The Blades of Virtue.
- Bathos: Coolthulhu is an Eldritch Abomination that is a very obvious Expy of Cthulhu. It also parodies the very concept of Eldritch Abominations, in that it wears a pair of Cool Shades and talks like a Surfer Dude. Basically, Coolthulhu is a rare example of an Eldritch Abomination that one laughs at for the duration of the encounter with it.
- Bears Are Bad News: Downplayed. The Blades encounter a bear-man thing when infiltrating the Brigands' Hideout in "Gangbuster", and runs into it again when infiltrating the Blackguards' base in "Morgan - Blast From the Past". But while scary-looking, both times it just takes a look at the Blades and leaves without bothering them much.
- Boring, but Practical: Many of the problems encountered by the Blades of Virtue are solved by really simple solutions. For example: Exploring a really dark area? Good thing The Crafter has brought a bundle of torches earlier in the game.
- Brown Note: The cult encountered in "The Song of Battle" and "Strike a Chord" intentionally weaponizes this trope in their bids to take down the Aekranian Empire.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Averted. None of the bosses are immune to any status effects or even permanent debuffs caused by having parts of them severed, and One-Hit KO doesn't count because the ability doesn't exist at all in this game. Thus, it can be quite amusing to see an Eldritch Abomination suffer intense bleeding, poisoning, etc...
- Dark Is Not Evil: Talis is a Necromancer who is actually a pretty nice guy. So is Umbra, the skull that talks in his stead.
- Dem Bones: "The Bones Are Their Money" revolves around skeletons rising from their graves to attack people. The head honcho behind the mass resurrection turns out to be one himself, and a massive one at that.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Killing Eldritch Abominations is just business as usual for the Blades of Virtue.
- Did You Just Have Tea With Cthulhu: The Blades manages to talk down Coolthulhu and make it leave them, and the world, on friendly terms.
- Eldritch Abomination: The game has plenty of these, called Antediluvians.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Three of Gregory's Four Champions are huge crab-like beings.
- Item Crafting: Players can fused their weapons together with some items in their inventory to create more powerful weapons. Some shops even sell metals that are used solely for upgrades.
- Kaiju: Metroplex is an inversion of the "city-smashing" part of Kaiju in that it is a city build on the back of a Brachiosaur-like creature.
- Luck-Based Mission: Unlike Outpost Defenders where only attacks have a chance to fail due to them missing their targets, here, anything the players do aside from talking and exploring are determined by dice rolls on whether they succeed or not. The chance of success can be improved by having higher stats, but not by much.
- My Greatest Failure: One of the challenges in the ossuary in "Talis - The Cure" has the Blades of Virtue face off against manifestations of their past failures.
- Seymour's is himself from back when he's still a ruthless mercenary.
- Zephil's is the Black Bard Virgil, who he was unable to stop from burning down the Bard Academy that he once studied at.
- The Crafter's is the time when a village was raided and almost burned to the ground completely because he was hesitant to take action against the all-female raiders.
- Quill's is when he left his adoptive family (after running from his blood family) for dead in order to save himself, which he now sees as him being a coward.
- Ziggar's is when he failed to kill a vicious hydra that killed all of his previous comrades the last time he fought it.
- Morgan's is when he went to Geralt of Nivea for help, only to discover that the man is a merciless killer. In fact, Morgan's first appearance in the game has him trying to get away from Geralt for that reason.
- Junia's is when she accidentally murdered an innocent man in a fit of rage. Considering that she's a pacifistic healer, this accident hit her really hard.
- Aoife's is when she wrongfully convicted an innocent man and executed him, which led to the mass murderer she was actually looking for to get away and kill more innocents.
- Talis's is when his wife died and he couldn't do anything about it.
- Necromancer: Talis is one.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When infiltrating the Brigands' Hideout in "Gangbusters", Zephil unintentionally blows the Blades' stealth by lighting the furnace, drawing the brigands over to investigate and starting a fight in the process. The other Blades promptly calls out Zephil afterwards.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The Crafter. His introduction has him claim that he doesn't need a (real) name.
- Red Herring: Aoife suddenly shows up right after the Blades of Virtue defeats Mallatus, in order to arrest him. Her sudden appearance aroused suspicion from some of the Blades, and they think that she may be a villain in disguise. But it ultimately turns out that she is just doing her job as Guard Captain of the Red Plains, and she just have a unique way of doing her job.
- Robotic Reveal. The Iron Maiden has no flesh underneath her metallic exterior, suggesting that she may not even be a creature to begin with.
- Running Gag: Zephil Solstrider likes to cause distractions by playing songs. Most likely very loudly.
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Serial Numbers Filed Off: Geralt of Nivea. - Serious Business: Zephil likes Megalovania a lot, and it is ill-advised to butcher it in his presence.
- Sheathe Your Sword: Some bosses were defeated simply by talking them out of whatever it is they were doing before the boss fights against them. Though this method is not apparent at first glance, and can only be discovered by trying to invoke the trope and see if it has any effects.
- Angryoso, the Immortal Barbarian, is "defeated" by calming him down and snapping him out of his rage.
- Special Person, Normal Name: One of the first villains fought by the Blades of Virtue is a dark sorcerer who summons Eldritch Abominations in his bid to Take Over the World. His name is... Gregory.
- Stealth-Based Mission: The game doesn't actually force players to be stealthy at all. Though in many cases, stealth is preferred over brute force, either because the Blades are trying to reach a target person without raising the alarm, or there are too many enemies to fight off.
- Threatening Shark: Scubaron, the fourth and last of Gregory's Champions, controls a herd of sharks that he uses to attack his opponents. The Blades of Virtue turn them against him by making him bleed a lot.
