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Characters / The Intercontinental Union of Disgusting Characters

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A list of the actual AD&D Character Sheets for many of the characters in these stories can be found here.

Ringman

  • Babies Ever After: He fathered two successive families, one of which didn't even feature kids that raised themselves.
  • The Bait: When Omnion wants to draw Sick Sword out into the open. Involves torture via Vogon poetry.
  • Breakout Character: Before the author began writing the first story, his characters were just AD&D characters. Ringman was the lesser of his two paladins: Lower ability scores, less magic treasure, and one experience level lower, than Peter Perfect. Except that he happened to find a better holy sword. In essence, the first scene in the first story was the author's excuse for transferring Prometheus from his lesser paladin to his more powerful paladin. But in the process, Ringman became the ultimate foil for all the munchkinism going on around him, and eventually entered the limelight.
  • Happily Married: In the 3rd story, to Izabella.
  • Healing Hands: But only once a day, per the paladin rules. He uses this to aid his rallied militia against a zombie invasion, and again on Danny under potentially disturbing circumstances.
  • The Hero: Ringman finally becomes this in the 3rd story. Even though he's still the weakest character by far, and has to have his life saved repeatedly by his offspring.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: He'll never take unfair advantage of the rules, even if it means being a wimpy 9th-level by-the-book paladin for the rest of his life.
  • The Lancer: To Sick Sword in the 1st story, and to his daughters in the 2nd.
  • Loved I Not Honor More: After living an idyllic life of semi-retirement with his wife Izabella, Tiamat decides to crash the party. His wife is flabbergasted that he'd throw away his life fighting a dragon he couldn't possibly beat. His response:
    "You knew when you married me that I am, first and foremost, a paladin. That means I have a duty to protect my village from evil. We were lucky; over the eighteen years since I've been here, no invaders attacked. But now our luck's run out. And now, this paladin almost literally has to march into hell for a heavenly cause."
  • Only Sane Man: He is the series' Voice of Reason where everyone else takes Refuge in Audacity. More often than not, this makes him the Straight Man.
  • The Paladin: Oddly, averted. He's less The Hero than the male version of a Damsel in Distress.
    • Played straight in the 3rd story, though, when he frees a billion doomed centaurs.
  • The Everyman: Almost to the point of being a Ridiculously Average Guy. At least on Central Earth.

Peter Perfect

  • Alliterative Name
  • Blood Knight
    Wierd Dough: "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go mug a centaur and take his four one-million-gold-piece gems!"
    Peter Perfect: "Kill a centaur and take his four 1 000 000 g.p. gems."
  • De-power: At the end of the first book, the anti-disgusting characters strip him (and the rest of the IUDC hangers-on) of all psionic powers. Now he's just a plain old non-psionic 20th level paladin with a sentient holy sword, three artifacts, and about fifty other magic items. He gets his psionics back in the 3rd book, thanks to the big Rules Change.
  • Horse of a Different Color: As of 2nd Edition, a paladin's warhorse doesn't have to be an actual horse. Peter Perfect takes full advantage of this clause.
  • Knight Templar: Technically Lawful Good. Technically.
  • Moral Event Horizon: When he killed Ringman and annihilated his soul. Even his sentient Holy Sword, Prometheus, thought this was going too far and refused to play along.
  • Named After Somebody Famous: His name comes from a character on The Wacky Races.
  • Rules Lawyer: He can decapitate a random peasant, and attack another paladin without provocation, and still retains his paladinhood — because he knows how to find a loophole excuse.
  • Sociopathic Hero: And we're still not sure about the "hero" part.
  • Tautological Templar: He's a paladin, so anything he does must automatically be lawful and good. Conversely, if Ringman doesn't do what Peter Perfect would, this is proof that Ringman isn't a True Paladin.

Prometheus

Sick Sword

  • Action Girl: The made-up Weapons Master class operates on agility rather than toughness, allowing her to be lithe and quick — and not have to hide her body inside armor.
  • Action Mom: In The Sick Kids.
  • Alliterative Name
  • The Hero: Only in the 1st story, though.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Paticularly when she appears in another plane totally naked, and later gets her clothes burned off by a fire-breathing dragon. If you've got an 18 Charisma, you might as well flaunt it.
  • She Who Fights Monsters: In order to defeat the Intercontinental Union of Disgusting Characters, Sick Sword had to become disgusting herself.
  • They Call Him "Sword": Or her, in this case.

Omnion

  • A Hell of a Time: She dies and goes to hell, and her unspeakably horrific punishment is ... to do laundry. True, she's surrounded by searing hellfire, but she's got so much fire resistance she hardly notices it.
  • Lawful Evil: It was the only alignment not already spoken for at the time.

Homer the Brownie

  • Familiar: It seems to be a brownie's lot in life.

Koenieg

  • Ice-Cream Koan: Practically every line he utters. He even uses it as a weapon against Rango during the penultimate battle in the 1st story:
    Koenieg had been spouting Zen Druid Bhuddism to Rango continuously under his hail of 25 ineffective sword hacks, and evidently it was getting to him. Upon telepathically hearing 'One to change it and one not to change it' for the twelfth time, Rango threw down his weapons, threw up his arms, and cried, "No more! No more! Get this tree brain away from me! AAaaagghh!"
  • True Neutral

Wierd Dough

  • The Archmage: He is over level 18, after all.
  • Chaotic Good
  • Punny Name
    "I didn't misspell it by accident," Wierd Dough explained, "I just spelled Wierd weird to be weird."
    "And your last name?" Peter asked.
    "My father was a dough maker and I handled his shipments, all right?"
  • Really Gets Around: At least in the 2nd story.
    Wierd Dough: "Er, um, yes, well, ahem, you see, I haven't had . . . uh . . . much time for family life recently. Yeah, that's it, not much time."
    Middle Monk: "Oh? You seemed to have plenty of time for that cute blond apprentice sorceress last —"
    Wierd Dough: "That's different! She needed help learning her . . . um, somatic technique."
    Middle Monk: "I'll bet. What did you teach her to cast, a sleep spell?"
    Wierd Dough: "Well, you're just jealous because you couldn't score with any of the female recruits in your monastery."

Clerasil

  • Church Militant: What good is being a cleric if you can't smash 'em with a magic war hammer?
  • Desk Jockey: Somebody had to do the bookkeeping for the IUDC. It gave him an opportunity to exercise his clerical skills. <Rimshot>
  • Ominous Pipe Organ: He carries Heward's Mystic Organ around with him in a portable hole. It's not so much ominous as poorly played.
    "I'm a cleric. Of course I can play the organ." ... followed by imitating the melody line in parallel fifths.note 
  • Punny Name: As a cleric, I'm sure he has at least one spell that can cure acne.
  • Thunder Hammer: His Hammer of Thunderbolts is even named Mjolnir. It's a wonder Thor doesn't sue him for trademark infringement.

Rango

Da Bad Dude

  • Dungeon Maintenance: In the 3rd story, he invests all of his money in building a miles-long dungeon, so that he won't have enough gold or gems left to be worth killing for the x.p..

Wild Max

Middle Monk

Dirk the Destructive

Melnic the Loud

  • Mind-Control Music: Planting a suggestion spell in a song is a standard bard power, y'know.

Izabella

  • The Ditz:
    Sick Sword: "Well, you said yourself that the broom doesn't work. I'm only interested in the handle." [pries the bristles off the end of the broom]
    Izabella: "But won't that violate the warranty?"

Disgusting Sword and Ridiculous Sword

  • Bare-Fisted Monk: When they're not wielding their artifact weapons. (They even have +6 holy gloves for such an occasion.)
  • Like Mother Like Daughter: Their mom was, in her time, the most powerful character on Central Earth.
  • Little Miss Badass: Disgusting Sword became the most powerful character on Central Earth when she was 10-and-a-half. Then Ridiculous Sword took that crown away from her ... at age 9.
  • The Hero: Ridiculous Sword is this in The Sick Kids.

Gross Sword

Jimmy

  • The Call Knows Where You Live: He became an adventurer only because his parents got turned into zombies. His gaining straight 18s in all stats, and instantly jumping to experience level 5, were partly due to Ridiculous Sword's conniving.
  • Little Jimmy: At least at first. Then his parents turn into zombies and he gets disgusting characterhood rammed down his gullet.

Unbelievable Sword

  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Some 1st and 2nd Edition humans are satisfied with being a Character With Two Classes. Not Unbelievable Sword. He's a Character With Thirty-Two Classes.note  This gets cut down to a paltry 18 classes when the pure Second Edition Revised rules are imposed.

Danny

Josephus

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