Adventurers! is a webcomic by Mark Shallow, who later created Antihero for Hire (there's a crossover... of sorts). It began as a series of console RPG jokes connected only by the presence of the main characters, but gradually developed a storyline that culminated with a massive battle against the Final Boss.
The storyline is now finished and the comic no longer updates. You can start at the beginning here.
The Tabletop RPG Console, also an Affectionate Parody of CRPGs and their tropes, uses Adventurers! strips for some of its illustrations.
A sequel series, Adventurers!!Two is now running.
This webcomic provides examples (almost always Lampshaded or Parodied) of the following tropes:
- Aborted Arc: Nate Wars, among several recurring comics during the first 100 strips.
- Academy of Evil: As shown in a flashback, Khrima, after taking some courses in evil subjects in senior high, enrolled in Evil University.
- Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Much of the humor in the strip comes from taking these literally.
- Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: Karn outlines a plan with an excessive number of acronyms in it that may or may not mean anything.
- Action Bomb: Bombats explode when the party encounters them in battle.
- A.I. Roulette: When Eternion agrees to face the party in an RPG battle, he finds that he can't use his most powerful skill a second time because RPG bosses choose attacks randomly.
- Alien Geometries:
- Imposis specializes in these, creating an "impossible object" when challenged as to the meaning of his name.
- An NPC declares that the Wrap Around on each side of the square world map makes their world an "impossible" shape. Apparently he's never heard of a torus.
- All Myths Are True: Actively cited as a law of the universe.
- Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Khrima has one built just for the sake of conforming to this trope."See, Eternion wouldn't bother with this. That's why he'd never make a good final boss!"
- Amazon Brigade: Karn suggests that, since the party's splitting, Karashi, Tesla and Lumi should form one of these, go off on their own quest and indulge in Stripperiffic Costume Porn during battles. They don't like the idea.
- Apathetic Citizens: The Bystandrians, who are doomed to stand idly by instead of taking action in the face of danger.
- Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: When Karn tries to figure out how to escape from a collapsed dungeon, he decides the key to escaping is the model airplane and completely ignores the cracked wall and explosives...
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit:
- Every traveling party must have exactly three people because there's a law that says they can't have more. This explains why every Trauma Inn has the same number of beds.
- Near the end when Cody suggests he might have been able to join the team if they didn't have nine characters already. Since there's only one named Optional Party Member, this suggests Cody and Drecker are Mutually Exclusive Party Members as well.
- Made fun of in this strip, in which one party member must stay behind for what turns out to be no reason whatsoever.
- Art Evolution: The art does improve over time, although it is still very amateurish. Inevitably parodied in this comic, in which, at the beginning of a flashback, the characters complain about the sudden lack of quality in the art (which is drawn in the style of the early strips).
- Attack Its Weak Point: Karn decides that a robot's glowing red power core must be its weak spot and attacks it. It doesn't work out the way Karn hoped it would.
- Awesomeness Is Volatile: While preparing a really big spell, Ardam says: "Incidentally, if I catch on fire or explode or something, that's probably normal."
- Author Guest Spot: The author occasionally appears to address the audience and hang a lampshade on something or other, but he doesn't interact with the characters directly.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Karn finds out the hard way that a ridiculously-shaped sword he bought, despite its high ATP, is structurally unsound.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Argent isn't about to just let a de-powered, mortal Eternion go.
- Bankruptcy Barrel: Karn wears one after all of his equipment (including his clothes) is stolen by Drecker.
- Barehanded Blade Block: A couple of characters manage to pull this off by virtue of having robot arms. Happens again during the final boss fight.
- Behind the Black: Characters can't see anything that's out of the "player"'s field of view, no matter how illogical this is.
- BFS: All of Karn's weapons are oversized swords.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Khrima and Eternion, both of whom correspond to different kinds of RPG villains. (Khrima is an Evil Overlord, and Eternion is an evil Physical God.)
- Bishōnen Line: This strip, in which the characters comment on the relative monstrousness of Khrima's different forms, is the Trope Namer.
- Blah, Blah, Blah: A whole panel full of blather.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: Parodied in a strip where the characters speak gibberish and then blame it on the translator.
- Block Puzzle: The party faces these in every temple they explore, including one temple dedicated to "the annual festival of the pushable cube." Everyone but Karn hates them.
- Boss Battle: The party encounters many of these.
- Bottomless Magazines: Tesla is quite happy that console RPG characters never run out of ammo, ever.
- Bowdlerise: An early joke is that Drecker, hard-bitten thief that he is, finds himself able to swear only in cutlery once he joins the party. This extends to everyone else (except Eternion) and becomes a Running Gag; when Khrima's about to go through a lot of pain in the Final Battle, he says "Oh utensil."
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Not a heavily used trope, but there is one notable example. Final Boss Khrima uses an attack spell with an animation so over-the-top, it doesn't just include an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, it actually cracks the Adventurers! game disc, requiring Karn to tell the "player" how to replace the disc with a backup copy.
- Brick Joke:
- In an early strip, the party defeated a microbug and won a piano. During the final fight against Khrima, Karashi, realizing that she could throw anything...
- When he finds out that the person who his boss most fears is a bard of all things, Cody wonders if he isn't really a superhero in disguise. Then fast forward to the finale...
- In an early strip, as Ardam is dangling over an Acid Pool, Karn plays Boggle with Khrima and spots "gorilla". Several strips later, Khrima spots the same word as he plays Boggle with one of his minions. And again when he fights Eternion.
- Early in the strip, an Ice Dragon which has painted himself red to make itself look like a Fire Dragon. It later appears in the news, complaining about the quality of the paint, which has apparently faded to green.
- A very subtle one: Early in the strip, Ardam spoons up a summon and realizes he got the wording wrong. Then during the final battle, he gets it right. And when he sends an enemy to the Realm of Calling to be attacked by all his summons at once look for panel eight.
- But Thou Must!: The heroes are rather used to NPCs not taking "no" for an answer.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: The Khaos Generals have to say a phrase to use their Flowgem-granted abilities. "I would have gone with the naked costume change but she doesn't change costume."
- Caps: After strip number 999, every subsequent strip was also numbered 999.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Khrima identifies as one.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Even after the plot picked up there would be periods where they went back to complete "gag a day" strips, justified as taking time off from the plot to level grind.
- Chained by Fashion: Eternion's second form wears chains.
- Chainsaw Good: Spybot gets one and is very happy about it, though it doesn't get put to any use.
- Character Development: A few nice bits.
- Karn is frustrated, but he never did have much patience for anything that didn't involve hitting things with swords.
- A couple times earlier, Karn tries to actively demonstrate Character Development by being angsty or apathetic, but both times is called out on it - particularly since his personality doesn't really mesh. He also dreams of getting amnesia.
- Character Name Limits: Karn is befuddled by these in this strip:Karn: Guys, what's an X-LKSK? If they're gonna trim skill names for space they should at least have the decency to leave a vowel.
- Character Shill: Parodied - Karn shills for products such as "Hero Hair" brand hair gel, "Ribbon" ("Blocks status ailments!") and "Armor-Armor-All" armor protectant.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- Played straight with Argent. Inverted in this strip, in which a character is conspicuously introduced and then never seen again.
- This actually happens with several characters early on, mostly because the series hadn't switched from its gag-a-day nature. Later on, many characters were merged into the story line, but many of the less defined ones didn't make the cut. note
- Chest Monster: And it's bigger than the box it was hiding in!
- Collapsing Lair: Standard issue for RPG villains. Averted once because the designers 'were on a budget'.
- Combatant Cooldown System: Karn knows all the details of this, and wonders at one point why he doesn't get to act when his bar fills up.
- Combat Pragmatist: Tesla, when challenged to a duel, starts fighting a little sooner than her opponent expected.
- Combat Tentacles: Dark Doomsceror uses them for counter attacks. Drecker notably worries they might be the naughty kind instead.
- Commonplace Rare: Apples, for which NPC vendors charge a surprisingly high price.
- Continuity Cavalcade: Most of the summons seen in the comic return when Ardam summons Pantheon.
- Continuity Nod:
- A silly one comes up late in the comic. Early on, Ardam fights one-on-one with an evil wizard named Whizrom, who begins melting/evaporating after he's defeated. Both of them notice that Whizrom is taking an awfully long time to finish disappearing (which Ardam lampshades), and hundreds of episodes later we see him again, still evaporating and going about his business normally. And later still, he appears in the final dungeon, after being frozen into the shape of a sphere.
- Septuple Scare.
- Karn plays Boggle with Khrima in one of the earliest strips, and still has a Boggle set during the final battle.
- See also Brick Joke, above.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Karashi and Tesla train their jumping skills because, as Karashi puts it, "EVERYTHING is protected by floating platforms over lava."
- Convenient Questing: The Demon Peak Pass becomes passable just when our heroes need to get through it. Karn and Ardam sarcastically remark that that's "not predetermined contrivance at all." An earlier strip has Ardam complaining about this sort of Railroading.
- Cool Mask: The Eternals all wear masks.
- Coup de Grâce Cutscene: Karn says that Ardam's plan to have him strike the final blow against Khrima in battle is unnecessary: "It doesn't matter who makes the final hit, the plot says I do it anyway."
- Crate Expectations: Karn, trying to solve a Pressure Plate puzzle, suggests pushing a crate on top of it.Ardam: For the last time, there are no crates!
Karn: There are always crates. - Crossover: With RPG World. And with Antihero for Hire... sort of.
- Crossover Cameo: Hero and Cherry from RPG World appear in the background when Maxima Termis calls for 'a spiky-headed hero and his sidekick'. The later when Eternion announces in a newspaper that he's making a bid for Final Boss, another article in the newspaper is titled "Galgarion to gardners: Prune or Die." In turn, Khrima made a cameo in RPG World, appearing in the hallway at Eviltown U.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: After much epic adventuring, the party has finally managed to confront Eternion, one of the two Big Bads, and drag him into an RPG battle. The result? "Well, that was easy." Subverted: Ardam had a Relife Ring equipped.
- Cutscene Power to the Max / Cutscene Incompetence: When threatened by a goon with a gun, Karn remarks that there's no way that gun will do enough damage to reduce his HP to zero. Then he wonders if he's in a cutscene, and decides that he'd better run away, because things in cutscenes actually can kill characters.
- Cut and Paste Environments: Karn complains about two buildings having the same layout, though Ardam tries to point out that it makes sense since they're designed for the same purpose.
- Cutting the Knot: When stuck in The Maze, Karashi climbs over the walls and Tesla breaks through them.
- Ardam gets frustrated with a puzzle and opts for a simpler solution.
- Damage Over Time: This is apparently the effect of being poisoned, which isn't as horrible as Drecker thought it would be.
- Damsel in Distress:
- In Lumi's job description, evidently. "Didn't they teach you anything at your church? Next thing you'll tell me they didn't tell you how to properly get kidnapped."
- Also attempted with Karashi on two occasions. Both times she freed herself. One time she actually managed to free herself and make it back to camp before the rest of the party realized she had been kidnapped at all.
- Death Glare: It's a little insensitive to complain about feeling left out to the party's resident Butt Monkeys, Ardam.
- Death is Cheap: Any character that appears to be "dead" inevitably returns. As Karashi puts it, "the worst part about being dead is all the stuff you miss before you get revived."
- Death Trap: Found in the ancient temples. They do surprisingly little damage.
- Dimension Lord: The Eternals are a race of these, with Maxima Termis being their initial leader, followed by Eternion.
- Distressed Dude: In one storyline, Karn is captured by Khrima and tied up.
- Dramatic Thunder: Karn makes Ardam use a lightning spell only for the sake of this trope.
- Dramatic Unmask: Eternion when Khrima hits him with the Mallet of Extreme Pain. The fact that the mask is his face should tell you where it heads.
- Duel Boss: Ardam vs Whizrom, among others. (The author has a rather low opinion of these.)
- Dungeon Shop: A temple that supposedly nobody has set foot in for centuries turns out to have a hidden gift shop inside.
- Easter Egg: Karn follows some ridiculous directions in order to find one.
- Egopolis: Khrima's vision of "Khrimopia" (which he decides he should write down) sees "a laser in every pot, and robots patrolling the streets".
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Including such elements as "Tastes Like Orange Tang," "Doesn't Taste Like Orange Tang," and "Peanuts." There's also a tree that is healed by fire because it's red, and therefore must be weak to water.
- Elevator Floor Announcement: The elevator carrying Garshask up to Eternion:"Ding! Third floor! Cookware, men's socks, battles for the fate of the universe, and giftwrapping!"
- Eleventy Zillion: The winning bid in an auction is "seventy billion trillion million gold."
- Emphasize EVERYTHING: An NPC 「Soldier」 in strip #127 insists that 『brackets build character.』
- Enemy Mine: Played straight and later subverted when the less-evil Khrima realizes Eternion's trying to force him into one with the heroes, as part of his gambit to secure the role of Final Boss.
- Equipment Spoiler: Invoked when Karn panics on discovering a shop that sells a weapon no one in the party uses in case they missed a secret character. They meet and recruit the user of said weapons later.
- Event Flag: Brought up in strip #91:Karn: Looks like we're going to have to wait a while longer.
Ardam: If we went and furthered the plot it'd be ready by the time we get back...
Karn: Oh, like some unrelated event thousands of miles away would trigger that. Rrright. - Everything Trying to Kill You:
- Anything and everything can attack the party in a Random Encounter, even a cup of coffee Ardam was trying to drink.
- The monsters don't need a reason why.
- Lampshaded (with a literal lampshade) back in strip #55, where Karn strikes an Ass Kicking Pose and draws his sword on a lamp, on the grounds that it just might be "an evil lamp monster."
- Evil Chancellor: Parodied - the chancellor wasn't evil and the monster impersonating him had a cold.
- Evil Counterpart: Most of the good guys have one - Ardam vs. Wizrom, Drecker vs. Rio, Karashi vs. Mizuna, Gildward vs. Dirlend, even Chookie vs. Blanc...
- Evil Minions: Khrima, being an Evil Overlord, has lots. Most of them have Fs in Evil, but still.
- Eviler than Thou: Eternion is clearly more evil than Khrima and attempts to usurp the role of True Final Boss.
- Explosive Instrumentation: Khrima apparently built them like this on purpose.
- Fake King: Parodied: Karn meets a chancellor and immediately defenestrates him, on the assumption that he's been replaced by a monster. It turns out that was the real chancellor; the monster assigned to replace him was out sick.
- Fantasy Gun Control: Karn attempts to defy this in strip #87, where he buys an X500 Plasma Rifle instead of any of the Elemental Weapons Ardam thinks they're supposed to buy instead.
- "Far Side" Island: Karn and Ardam seem to be stranded on a one-tree desert island for a few strips... but it isn't really one.
- Faux Symbolism: Lampshaded with the holy sword Longinus, which Infinel points out is named after "a loosely named item being enough fundamentally different to make the affair meaningless."
- Fetal Position Rebirth: one of Khrima's transformations.
- Fetch Quest: Karn is given a UPS hat when he volunteers to do these.
- Fighting Your Friend: Karn wants to fight Ardam because he's desperate for the XP."C'mon... I promise I'll resurrect you."
- Fight Woosh: Ardam hates battle transitions. Eternion also thinks they're pointless.
- Final Boss: Khrima and Eternion actually get into a PR battle over who gets to be Final Boss. Khrima wins.
- Flechette Storm: Drecker's "IKNIVES" causes him to sprout knives all over his body and hurl them at the enemy for 7777 damage per hit.
- Floating Platforms: Subverted during the final battle, after Khrima's Bishōnen Line transformation, when Drecker notices the supposedly floating platforms have supports.
- Flock of Wolves: One of Khrima's plans was to capture all the party members and replace them with robot duplicates, then have the robot duplicates strike when they least suspect it. There are four major flaws with this plan:
- One: The robot duplicates don't look like the people they're supposed to look like.
- Two: The plan involves capturing them all. Why would they need to bother doing anything else if they've all already been captured?
- Three: If he'd captured and replaced them all, then when the robots strike, they would be attacking each other.
- Four: Why would they make a robot duplicate of Evil Killer Death Spybot 5000? He's already The Mole.
- Follow the Plotted Line: A road sign says so.
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: A few filler strips feature the comic's author answering questions from fans.
- Frickin' Laser Beams: Khrima demands that his engineers put lasers on everything, even ballistic missiles. He later fires one of them for inventing a weapon better than lasers.
- Game-Breaker: In-Universe. All of Karn's ultimate abilities. Although Khrima's final form actually blocks one of them.
- Game-Breaking Bug: In-Universe, one boss attack breaks the game disc!
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Lampshaded - the characters can do ridiculous things in battle, but can't do any of it outside.
- Gasp!: Lampshaded in this strip:Ardam: Why did you gasp?
Karn: I don't know. - Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Parodied and played straight at different points.
- Eternion's first appearance is as one of these.
- After defeating the True Final Boss, the party just runs away from "Necrevil" instead of fighting it.
- Global Airship: The party gets one, but the rest of the party hates when Karn flies it. Also, In a world that has airships, there are still places you can't get to except by flying on a bird.
- The Glomp: Tesla glomps Ardam.
- Goldfish Poop Gang: Kemmit and Meck are one.
- Good Bad Bugs: In-Universe. A nod to Final Fantasy VI's infamous "Vanish" + "Doom" Game-Breaker combo.
- Gotta Catch Them All: The Elemental Relics: Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium...
- Grail in the Garbage: Karn has found legendary swords in the oddest of places: someone's shower and a barrel marked "FISH."
- Grand Finale: Goes on for just under 300 strips.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: There may be many guards in the castle, but they don't seem that good at keeping their secret passwords actually secret. A later strip subverts this somewhat.
- Guest-Star Party Member: The Guy Who Took the Gold Armor, the Level 99 Guy.
- Guide Dang It!: Ardam finds out that he and Karn were supposed to perform a ridiculously complicated series of steps based only on the clue "GNWG".
- Guns Are Worthless: Parodied - gun-wielding enemies do very little damage because their weapons fire Nerf balls.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Despite looking completely human, Karn is quarter-Skyrian, as revealed via painfully straight As You Know; his father is half-Skyrian. The green hair probably should have been a giveaway. Also, Karashi and her sister are half-dwarf. They get their looks from their father.
- Harmful Healing: In the cast pages, it's mentioned that Karashi has a ninja healing technique which works by cutting off bits of the people to be healed. This is probably why Tesla refused to acknowledge her offer of "ninja healing" late in the comic.
- Harmless Villain: Nearly all of them.
- Head-Tiltingly Kinky: In this strip, Karn and Ardam have this reaction to Karashi fansites.
- Healing Potion: Ardam speculates on the magical ingredients used in these.
- Health/Damage Asymmetry: The result of Khrima not investing in healing research.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Name entry screens pop up when new characters try to join the party. Drecker complains that he was trying to have a conversation, and Karashi gets one even though Karn just said he already knew her name. Lumi doesn't get one because a few voice clips use her name.
- Helping Granny Cross the Street: Khrima once helped an old lady cross the street... but he still counts it as evil because he didn't use the crosswalk, thus setting her up for a criminal career in Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking.
- He Knows About Timed Hits:
- When an NPC tries to explain the controls for placing flags, Ardam complains that he doesn't have an "X button." (Drecker does, because he stole one from Khrima's keyboard.)
- As Karn's duel with Argent begins, the latter reminds the former about the fighting controls.
- Heel–Face Turn: Argent is one of Khrima's underlings, but he turns out to be very helpful to the party in the struggle with Eternion.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Karn is not very interested in mastering battle techniques other than "hit things with a sword."
- Heroic BSoD: Ardam, after being attacked by the Evil Pants.
- Hidden Elf Village: Chookie leads the party to Chooktown, the secret abode of small annoying creatures. Drecker sees it as a Place Worse Than Death.
- Hit Points: As is standard for an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, the heroes and enemies have them and are aware of the amout of damage they do and receive.
- Holiday Mode: December 25 puts Santa hats on dragons.
- Holy Hand Grenade: The Smite spell. Pity Lumi only has enough MP to cast it once.
- Honest John's Dealership: Honest Cid's Used Airships
- Ho Yay: Lampshaded by Karn in this strip, in which Ardam says he'll miss adventuring with Karn.
- HP to One:
- Eternion's Grief Impulse wouldn't work on anyone he couldn't kill in a single turn anyway, but he uses it because he enjoys the cruelty of it regardless.
- Khrima also has one that hits the entire party, but due to an abundance of healing options they weren't particularly intimidated.
- Hurricane of Puns: Strip #777 wants you to know that it has a theme.
- Impossible Item Drop: Ardam wonders how a small insect could have been carrying a piano.
- Impossible Theft: Drecker can get away with stealing pretty much anything. Even objects that would be too large for the victim to be carrying.
- Indy Escape: Karn and Ardam fail to outrun a boulder, but they only suffer a few hitpoints of damage from it.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Treasure chests can be found even in hitherto unexplored places. One strip explains them to be the result of tiny robot pirates dancing through caves. Karn knows that it's mandatory for them to all look the same.
- Infallible Babble: Lampshaded:Karashi: What if the rumor isn't true? It could just be a rumor.
Ardam: When has that ever happened?
Karashi: ...I see. - Informed Equipment: When Karn puts on a new suit of armor, it makes him look exactly the same.
- Insecurity System: Khrima's "Easy-Break" security system allows Security Level A to be deactivated by pressing a conveniently located "A" button.
- Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: The party pilots them in one strip, much to Ardam's confusion "Since when did we have giant robots?"
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Parodied twice - once when a villain places a chair in the party's path and Karn doesn't comprehend the notion of stepping over it, and again when he performs a jumping attack on an enemy in battle, but then declares a small obstacle too high to pass.
- Intentional Engrish for Funny: This butchered version of Hamlet is implied to be a back-translation.
- Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Karn insists on using once-only keys, even though there are other ways of opening locked doors.
- Irrelevant Sidequest: A prominent NPC is concerned with having the heroes bring back his stolen vase, even when they would rather get on with Saving the World.
- I Will Show You X!: Khrima is quick to object that he hasn't been vanquished yet:Khrima: They think they vanquished me!? Well... I'll make them see what it's like to really vanquish me!
- Joke Item: Karashi tries throwing a wet sponge at Khrima. It does no damage, though Khrima is disgusted by it.
- Joker Immunity: Khrima up until the final arc, and the party knows it.
- Just Between You and Me: Lampshaded. Khrima tells a captured Karn everything, even though Karn tells him it might not be the smartest thing to do. "Whatever, I'll tell you guys anyway," Khrima says.
- Kamehame Hadoken: Chookie uses Hachooken. It's not very effective.
- Kick the Dog:
- "He kicks cute things" is the theme of one PR campaign to prove Khrima's villain cred. It's not a terribly effective way of showing evil, given that Karn habitually beats up defenseless animals for the sake of Level Grinding.
- Mizuna tries to prove she's evil enough to Khrima: "I've been practicing! I kicked a kitten just a few days ago!"
- Killer Rabbit: Ardam falls victim to a DevilRabbit.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: Karn is unapologetic about being the sort of hero who habitually ransacks people's houses and castles for useful items.
- Knight of Cerebus: Eternion. Things get much more serious and plot-oriented when he appears.
- Lampshade Hanging: The basis for much of the strip's humor.
- Last Disc Magic: Magic attacks start doing a lot more damage in later strips.
- Lazy Backup: When Karn gets switched out of the active party, he can't do a thing to help them in battle, not even give them some of the soda he's sipping.
- Let's Split Up, Gang!: The party has to divide into three groups to attack the Khrimalith. Ardam gets stuck in a group with Chookie and Gildward.
- Level Grinding: Yeah, they've got to do lots. It's a compulsive behavior for Karn.
- Limited Wardrobe: Karn's outfit doesn't change regardless of what he equips. Also subverted in this strip, in which Khrima is wearing something different from his usual dark robes...
- Load-Bearing Boss: Khrima, naturally. Beating him in battle makes his fortress start to collapse.
- Literal-Minded: Khrima in this strip:
- Loads and Loads of Loading: Here and here/
- Lock and Key Puzzle: A mandatory part of dungeon design.
- Look Both Ways: Invoked by Khrima when he uses a Scroll of Summon City Bus to win a Wizard Duel.
- Love Interest: Lumi for Karn, Tesla for Ardam, and Karashi for Drecker
- Macross Missile Massacre: Spybot inflicts one on Khrima. The missiles only do 100 damage each, but there's a lot of them.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Karn can testify that "getting killed hurts."
- The Maze: The party gets trapped in one at one point. They don't solve it in the traditional way.
- Meaningful Name: The city of Doomdia, and the Bystandrians. Arguably, Gildward, whose name is a composite of "Gilbert" and "Edward", the Japanese and English names for the Spoony Bard in Final Fantasy IV.
- Memento MacGuffin: Lumi's amulet.
- Metaphorgotten: Khrima attempts to explain evil: "You see, evil is like... it's like a bowl of oranges..."
- Million to One Chance: Ardam doesn't even want to guess the impossible odds of finding the gold key needed to open a Locked Door. The next moment, the Keeper of the Gold Key appears and hands it over.Ardam: Have you ever considered trying the lottery?
Karn: I'm not very good with numbers. - Mind Screw: Karn's reaction to some unexplained weirdness during the ending: "This is going to cause message board debates for years."
- Also, when they ask the Plot Computer to explain the convoluted plot of their own game, the answer they get is "Wait for the sequel."
- Minion with an F in Evil: Khrima, despite being the Evil Overlord, just can't seem to come up with an evil plot that is actually evil.
- The Mole: The aptly named Killer Evil Death Spybot 5000, who, incidentally, is never seen spying again.
- Mon: Humorously averted. Karn catches a "giant snake monster" which does nothing for him but try to chew his arm off.
- Money for Nothing: Karn grows disappointed in finding only gold when he opens treasure chests.
- Monumental Damage: Blanc's justification for targeting landmarks with the Khrimalith: "Have you seen their ticket prices?"
- Mook Chivalry: An important aspect of a turn-based battle system, as Karn explains to Decker.
- Motion Blur: Parodied in this strip, where motion blur effects just make everything harder to see for the characters.
- Motivation on a Stick: A variation with a treadmill and a sign reading "plot" is used to keep Karn occupied in strip #415.
- Mundane Utility:
- Khrima uses a Kill Sat to make toast.
- Ardam uses a Lightning cantrip to recharge Drecker's iPod.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: Webrunner explains that muscularity has no real relation to strength: "Often scrawny kids can be strong enough to destroy gods without getting any visible muscle tone."
- Musical Spoiler: Subverted. Tesla hears "dramatic plot music" and expects a plot point, but it turns out that it's just Gildward playing.
- Mysterious Informant: Imposis.
- Nerf Arm: Karn finds that a rolled-up newspaper and a stick do great damage.
- Narrative Profanity Filter: See "Bowdlerize", above.
- Never Found the Body:
- A dimensional distortion swallows Argent and Garshask while they were fighting. Karn insists that since no bodies were found, they're obviously still alive. He's right.
- And in another incident, after Big Bad Khrima accidentally destroyed a magic crystal, wrecking a sizable part of his fortress, Drecker mentions that Khrima hasn't been heard from in months. Ardam speculates that he might have died in the accident, and wonders if they've seen the last of him. There is a pause, then both heroes burst out laughing.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Whizrom claims immunity to both physical and magical attacks in his Crystallium sphere form.Ardam: I don't suppose that works both ways?
Whizrom: It's one-way Crystallium!
Ardam: Dang. - Nightmare Retardant: In-Universe examples:
- Ardam is less than impressed by the revived Whizrom's appearance. "That is confusion, not fear. Try again."
- Kemmet and Meck try to scare Karn with a clown mask.
- No Endor Holocaust: Karn manages to save Bystandria from a plummeting Khrimalith by cutting it in two with his sword and making the two pieces barely miss the city. After this, Ardam totally gives up on expecting the world to make any sense whatsoever, even according to video game story logic.
- No Hero Discount: Ardam tries and fails to get an NPC vendor to give Karn a 2 GP discount on a 50,000 GP sword after saving the town.
- Non-Action Guy: Gildward isn't of much use in combat.
- Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: The party's Spoony Bard is hit by one such attack, which rolls "slow" and "attack down", but it downs him anyway because he's just that fragile. Played for Laughs.
- Non-Lethal K.O.: After Ardam takes a little too much damage in battle, Karn, having no revive potions on hand, carries him back to town in a wheelbarrow, claiming he's "fainted."Drecker: -ba-ah-ah-whoaaaah! He looks worse than 'fainted' to me!
Karn: Well, that's what he did—he fainted.
Drecker: But the—
Karn: Fainted!
Drecker: It's through his...
Karn: I said fainted.
Drecker: And what about...?
Karn: Fainted.
Drecker: It's hanging off the...
Karn: Fainted fainted fainted! - No-Sell: A supposedly "powerful" attack of Khrima's is "Totally Blocked!" by Karn.
- No Sneak Attacks: Parodied multiple times. On one occasion, one monster persuades another to attack the party in their sleep... only to discover their tent is electrified.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Khrima tries to pull one on Karn. It doesn't work.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: Khrima turns out more competent than he originally seems, but he's still not very threatening.
- Number of the Beast: An Enemy Scan shows that Eternion has 666666 HP and 66666 MP.
- Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!: Karn discovers that the only Adventurers! character to have fansites is Karashi. After looking at one, he says "I suddenly find myself very, very glad that I don't have any fansites."
- Ominous Latin Chanting: Invoked. It's the only thing Khrima considers appropriate music for a Final Boss fight.Khrima: Ahem. Cue the choir
- One-Winged Angel: Khrima. He uses Wing-B-Gone to deal with it. He also goes through four forms in the final battle.Khrima: Fourth time's a charm.
- Only Idiots May Pass: Upon finding the fourth energy crystal, Karn explains that they can't take it unless they first go back to town and talk to a NPC, even though this makes no logical sense.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: The reason Khrima saves the party when Eternion first appears.
- Only Sane Man: Ardam, who can't stand the absurd RPG tropes he has to deal with. Near the end — he gives up.
- Only Smart People May Pass: The party sometimes has to deal with riddles and other puzzles.
- Operation: [Blank]: Cody announces, "Commence mission code name Enter the Khrimalith." He's not very imaginative at coming up with these.
- Optional Party Member: Drecker is not pleased to learn he's one.
- Our Hero Is Dead: At one point in the final battle, Karn gets killed by Khrima. The next strip has Ardam revive Karn while Khrima busies himself with Evil Gloating.
- Overrated and Underleveled: Karn wants to leave Chookie behind because Chookie joined the party at level one.Karn: It's your own fault. You should have levelled up before you met us.
Chookie: But... I didn't have an experience choogauge before then... - Padding: Woo boy, that last arc. Lampshaded, of course.
- Palette Swap: Which one's the navy one?
- Pamphlet Shelf: RPG libraries only have one readable book on each shelf; the rest are just empty covers.
- Parody Commercial: Strip #270 is a commercial for the "game" itself.
- Party in My Pocket: Lampshaded.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: After Eternion is defeated and made mortal and Invisin offers to try and help him adapt, Argent explodes them both.
- Permanently Missable Content: Cody could have been a party member if the party hadn't already picked up the optional party member. Karn was disgusted to learn that Chookie was optional the whole time, and was told that Drecker was actually the optional party member
- Physical God: The Eternals
- Plot Coupon: The characters are trying to collect all of the Elemental Relics.
- Plotline Death: Discussed in strip #72 (implied to be about Final Fantasy VII):Karn: And why doesn't that guy just use a Revive potion or cast "Life" instead of mourning over her so much?
Drecker: They have to take some liberties to keep things interesting. - Pointy Ears: Karn has them.
- Poke the Poodle: Most of Khrima's attempts at proving how evil he is... such as giving Karn free passes to an amusement park that doesn't have any cotton candy.
- Polish the Turd: A marketing department tries its best to make wind magic look Totally Radical and not totally ineffective like it actually is. Ardam isn't taken in.
- Precursors: "There are ancient, highly advanced civilizations hidden everywhere," Karn claims.
- Priceless Paperweight: In one story arc, Khrima plots to steal a magic water-generating crystal, which provides the only source of water for a city, to use in his office water cooler. Mizuna then says that, once they have it, it would be better to ransom it back to the city in exchange for its inhabitants becoming his servants. Khrima agrees that her idea is better. Then, in the process of stealing it, the two of them discover what the people who live in the city are actually like - and into the water cooler it goes.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Most of Khrima's Mooks appear to be these.
- Pure Energy: Ardam tries to explain to Karn why it's not scientifically possible for a sword to be "made of pure energy." Karn justifies it by invoking the Rule of Cool.
- Puzzle Boss: Whizrorb, in his second appearance, is not defeated in the usual RPG manner.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Khaos Generals take on this role as Khrima's most powerful underlings.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Ardam is amazed that the machinery in the "thousand-year-old temples" still works, and that mana potions found in 100,000-year-old Inexplicable Treasure Chests are still good for him to drink. Apparently, the construction company that built the ancient temple talked the owners into paying extra for this exact feature...
- Random Encounters: One of the inevitable annoyances of living in an RPG Mechanics 'Verse. In a Guest Strip, Karn tries to invite these by walking back and forth.
- Randomly Drops: A typical way for Karn and company to get items... that have no relation whatsoever to the enemies that drop them.
- Rebellious Princess: Gildward claims to be one when introducing himself. "I may have exaggerated a little..."
- Recurring Boss: Numerous. Khrima, Eternion, Blanc, Mizuna just to name some. Lampshaded in strip #651:Blanc: Mark my words! I will return and exact my vengeance!
Ardam: Well, obviously. It's kind of hard to find someone we beat and don't kill that doesn't come back. - Revive Kills Zombie: This strip illustrates the results when Ardam takes advantage of this trick.
- Rewarding Vandalism: Karn destroys a priceless vase because it might contain an item, much to its owner's outrage.
- Ring-Ring-CRUNCH!: One strip has Karn sleeping at an inn "after a busy day saving the world." An alarm clock rings and he smashes it with his sword.
- RPG Mechanics 'Verse
- Rule of Drama: "No respect for drama, heroes today," Khrima complains.
- Rule of Funny: Real world physics occasionally come in to play, just to make Ardam's life more difficult. Especially with wind magic.
- Rummage Fail: Karashi spends two strips searching through the inventory for a party-healing item. No Megahealers, alas, but the inventory does contain such items as 27 Useless Things and 67 pieces of Pocket Lint.
- Running Gag: "Gorilla" is spotted in any word game Khrima plays, whether it's Boggle or Scrabble or Rock–Paper–Scissors. In one panel, Ardam reads a book titled Gorilla: Is It Really Right There?.
- Scratch Damage: Although the highest-tier summoning spell can inflict the damage cap on each hit, one of the attacking creatures only does 1 point of damage.
- Save Point: Karn restores from one, surprising one of Khrima's henchmen, who says, "I knew I shouldn't have had that thing installed."
- Save the Princess: "Princesses usually get kidnapped 3 or 4 times of a week," Ardam says.
- Scrolling Text: Unfortunately for Ardam, there's no way to speed it up.
- Sequential Boss: Khrima has four forms.
- Shark Pool: Khrima threatens to throw his enemies into a "vat of boiling sharks", but soon realizes that it wouldn't work.
- Shoot the Medic First: Ardam figures out this strategy when Byte-L keeps reviving Khrima.
- Shout-Out:
- The "Magic Eight Squall", the name Gildward, and several others.
- The use of "spoon" as a swear-word refers to the line "You spoony bard" in Final Fantasy IV's translated version.
- Tesla's jetpack has the activation code "YAMAT0".
- The override command to activate Spybot's Cannon Mode is "MAC-R-0-55".
- "That stupid rich kid bought the model airship I wanted," just like in Final Fantasy VI.
- Karashi's IDOUBLDRGN attack throws a boxed copy of Double Dragon.
- The footer caption for a Killer Rabbit encounter: "What, behind the rabbit?"
- Show Within a Show: In addition to Khrima's daytime TV and various other shows, the entire comic turned out to be a Show Within a Show - or more accurately, Game Within A Comic - in the final comic, where it's revealed Wrench of Antihero for Hire has been playing it the whole time.
- Side Effects Include...: A Parody Commercial for magic ends with the warning: "Magic has been linked to low physical strength in test subjects. If after using magic you have any abnormal reaction, contact your local item shop."
- Sidequest: Karn recommends taking sidequests as "an efficient way to increase our battle efficiency through equipment and experience."
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Eternion demonstrates that, as an extradimensional being, he isn't bound by the world's rules against cuss words.
- Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: An Earth-Shattering Kaboom does not as much damage as you'd think.
- Slave to PR: Khrima wants to be seen as an evil supervillain because Evil Is Cool. He is hypocritical about his devotion to evilness, though.
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: A Guest-Star Party Member runs off with the expensive gold armor Karn bought for him, much to his annoyance.
- Solo Sequence: Karn must go into the Vine Forest on his own, without the Party in My Pocket to invisibly accompany him.
- So Much for Stealth: Karn's plan for a secret infiltration marks the spot where the party will get ambushed. Ardam raises the obvious objection:Ardam: Wouldn't it be better to not get ambushed?
Karn: Boy, you don't know much about infiltration missions, do you? - Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Partially subverted; the party fights Eternion before Khrima, even though Eternion seems to have been more powerful both in and out of battle.
- Spikeballs Of Doom: Strip #307 gives one of these a speaking role.Khrima: Shouldn't you be moving back in forth of a door or something?
Spikebot: I GET SO VERY LONELY. - Spikes of Doom: It's someone's job to keep the spike traps in perfect shape.
- Spoof Aesop: The lesson Gildward learns from being kidnapped: "But most of all I learned never to tick off a ninja."
- Squishy Wizard: Ardam. Gildward is a squishy bard.
- Parodied when Ardam had to fight a Duel Boss fight against Whizrom. Whizrom was completely immune to Ardam's magic - but being a squishy wizard himself, he was vulnerable to Ardam's usually useless physical attack.
- Status Effects: Parodied.
- If you're on fire, being doused with water will make you wet but won't stop the burning.
- Getting "Berzerked" makes Karn glow red and hit monsters over and over... though the latter is what he usually does anyway.
- The various items for curing these effects don't make much sense.
- Start of Darkness: Khrima describes in detail of how he came to be a lord of darkness.
- Stating the Simple Solution: A minion tries to give Khrima advice.
- Staying Alive: Khrima, as shown in the "secret post-credits scene", survived the game's ending and is trying to retire from evil. here.
- Stealth Pun: In this strip:Khari: Well, you know what they say about assuming.
Ardam: Since the wordplay wouldn't make sense in the original Japanese and it wouldn't make it past the censors anyway, I can't say that I do.
Khari: Let's say it makes you a donkey and leave it at that. - Steampunk: No matter how anachronistic it seems, all machinery and technology is powered by steam.
- Stock Animal Diet: Ardam complains about being swarmed by rabbits while Karn obliviously snacks on a bag of carrots.
- Strategy Guide: Karn is seen reading a walkthrough when he gets stuck in a puzzle.
- Stupidity Is the Only Option: If the plot requires that the party do something stupid, they have to do it even if they know it's stupid.
- Suicidal Overconfidence: Monsters attack the party even though they have no chance of winning the fight. "What attracts them to us enough to override their self-preservation instincts?
- Summon Magic: Ardam uses this, and so do a few other characters. He sometimes gets it wrong, though. The theory behind it is explained in this comic.
- Superboss: Lampshaded in one of the installments, Karn and company are climbing a mountain to fight an optional Superboss. He's asked why and he responds that it's because [the boss] is there.
- Super Mode: Karn has probably one of the most broken cases ever seen. Lampshaded as with everything else.
- Suspect Is Hatless: Maxima Termis, trying to find Karn, puts out a call for large-haired heroes, a description which turns out to be nowhere near specific enough.
- Suspiciously Cracked Wall: Karn blows up a cracked wall because he thinks there could be some treasure behind it. There isn't.
- Take That!: "Squall belongs to Square. They can keep him."
- Take Your Time: Made fun of repeatedly. In one of the more ridiculous examples, Karn runs off to Talk to Everyone at the bar while Ardam is fighting a boss.
- Taken for Granite: Khrima hits Karn with a stoning attack during the final battle, forcing the party to use a remedy.
- Talk to Everyone: This is rule #1 of adventuring.Ardam: Wait a sec, you actually mean to talk to everyone on the planet?
Karn: Well, yeah, multiple times. There can't be more than a few dozen. - Temple of Doom: And they contain Block Puzzles!
- Ten Paces and Turn: Tesla and a villain attempt this, but are foiled by the RPG battle system.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: As Khrima explains, "Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers."
- Thing-O-Matic: Khrima immobilizes Karn by sneakily deploying the Bindomatic Mark VII.
- This Cannot Be!: Eternion's final words: "NO! It cannot be! I am invincible!" The next panel shows the party members gaining experience for defeating him.
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: The reason that Ardam has to fight a Duel Boss, even though he'd rather not.
- Throw-Away Country: Khrima magically obliterates a village the heroes have been to. He couldn't do that to a village the heroes are actually in, since that wouldn't be fair.
- Timed Mission: The party encounters one in this strip.
- Time Travel: Used for a couple of cheap jokes and then never mentioned again.
- Timmy in a Well: One early strip has Ardam unable to communicate except through Visible Silence. He tries to tell Karn, "Help, giant octopus! Run!" Karn, hearing "...!!!", responds: "Jimmy fell into the old well?" He runs off to the well as Combat Tentacles close in on Ardam.
- Took a Shortcut: How the NPCs get there first.
- Took a Level in Badass: Dirlend, an evil bard, learns to play Heavy Metal music and is no longer Squishy.
- Too Many Belts: Decker thinks lots of belts make him look cool. Ardam says it makes him look stupid. Karn already went too far with them.
- Total Party Kill: Save Points make these little more than an inconvenience.
- Trap Door: Khrima can activate one of these from a button on his desk. However, he can't use it to get rid of a Skyrian ambassador because Skyrians have wings.
- Trap Is the Only Option: As Karn explains, "If it's a trap then it's a plot point and we have to follow the plot."
- Trippy Finale Syndrome: There's a point in the ending where things get weird.
- Troperiffic: Just look at this page!
- Trauma Inn: "Just sleep it off, you'll be fine."
- Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction: Subverted. The "world's largest cut diamond" turns out to be a cardboard cutout.
- Two Gamers on a Couch: Parodied in a one-off strip, with Karn and Khrima as teenagers laughing too much at Xenosaga.
- Ultimate Blacksmith: The Trope Namer is this strip, where he wonders why the party hasn't followed the confusing clues to find his very out-of-the-way shop, Guide Dang It!.
- Underground Monkey: Discussed:Khrima: I was a busy person. I had evil to plan, ancient texts to translate, heroes to mislead, monsters to create.
Cody: Most of the time you just took an existing monster and put "ice" in front of the name.
Khrima: Do you have any idea how long that takes? - Underwater Boss Battle: Karn is eager for the party to follow a monster into the water and battle it there. Ardam wonders how they'll breathe.
- Unexplained Recovery: Leaving the party is always temporary.
- Universal Poison: Lampshaded in strip #84, where Drecker receives a poisonous snakebite and finds that the effects aren't as bad as he thought they would be.Karn: What, you thought that you'd get sicker and sicker and die or something? Don't be silly.
- Unknown Rival: Khrima is annoyed that Eternion seems to be taking over the role of Big Bad. Eternion, for his part, considers Khrima a mere puny mortal of no particular consequence.
- The Unpronounceable: Strip #139 has Karn as the host of a kids' show asking the audience if they can say the name of the evil demon Kh'htrrild58dj@dhf.
- Unsound Effect: Several:
- One strip in the final boss battle gives us "Slash! Cleave! Bisect!" Another from earlier has "That sound ninjas make when they jump silently!", and then later "That same sound from the last comic about jumping ninjas!"
- Sound associated with a falling safe!
- Unusual Euphemism: "Spoony" and its variants.
- Urban Legend of Zelda: Karn decides to stare at a spot on a wall for 45 hours, having heard that this will unlock a great weapon. Ardam doesn't put much stock in these kinds of rumors.
- Useless Useful Spell: De-Lificate proves to be ineffective when cast on enemies. It seems that most of Gildward's abilities, which supposedly "can cause status ailments," are equally useless.
- Useless Useful Stealth: The narration of Strip #312 brings Karashi to the realization that "stealth doesn't mean much in a turn-based battle system."
- Vagueness Is Coming: Lampshaded in this strip, in which a mysterious hooded NPC warns that "'It' is about to rise, and the 'Time' is upon us," and Ardam asks him if he could possibly be more vague.
- Verbal Tic: Chookie says "chook" a lot.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Khrimalith
- Video Game Geography: "The world is not round." Like many other RPGs, if you go off of one side of the square world map, you end up on the other side.
- Video Game Stealing:
- The use of this in Final Fantasy X is parodied: Drecker, the resident thief, destroys a robot by stealing a grenade, and notes that all robots are built around one. When Ardam asks if that's dangerous, Drecker replies "Only if you pull the pin".
- And earlier than that, when he steals a sword from someone threatening them with a knife.Bandit: Wait... I had a sword!? Why was I using this thing, then?
Drecker: Yeah, well, it's ours now.
- Villains Out Shopping: Khrima is sometimes shown doing entirely mundane things.
- Visible Silence: Lampshaded in strip #692, where the villains practice conversing in ellipses.Khrima: My, aren't we being stoic and mysterious. Good work.
- Walking Disaster Area: Parodied. Karn wonders why a town he shows up in has been destroyed—it's because he landed his airship too close.
- Wall of Text: Lampshaded in strip #670, where Endless tries to cram as much expository text (with no spaces between words) into a single panel as possible before even properly introducing herself.
- Wangst: Subverted. Karn tries to be angsty, but fails.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Khrima has a few of them; in one battle, he's weak to "Peanuts" element because he's allergic. Also, the greatest weakness of one of his final boss forms turns out to be getting hit on the head with a piano.
- Weapon of Mass Destruction: Khrima tries to build and use these.
- Webcomic Time: the final battle lasts a year and a half.
- Welcome to Corneria: Parodied repeatedly. In the comic's RPG Mechanics 'Verse, it's apparently in the NPCs' job descriptions to walk back and forth shouting one line to passersby. Repeating one line over and over again may be boring, but at least one NPC doesn't take kindly to being questioned about it. The line "There are many guards in the castle" became a Running Gag, especially as seen here.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Argent claims that this is the reason he works for Khrima.
- Whammy Bid: Karn and Ardam get outbid by Eleventy Zillion when an elemental artifact they want is being auctioned.Auctioneer: I heard 3000. Going once. Going twice.
Black Cloak: Seventy billion trillion million gold.
Auctioneer: SOLD!
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: All the playable characters get one during the game's ending. So does Khrima.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Argent. Ardam immediately guesses he's evil upon seeing him.Argent: What!? You think a guy can't have silver hair and gold trimmed black armor without being evil?
- Word, Schmord!: Strip #349 is titled "Skyrian Shmyrian."
- Wrap Around: On the world map, a scientist discovers that you teleport to the south side of the world when you go past the northern boundaries.
- Wrecked Weapon: Happens to Gildward once.
- Written Sound Effect: Lampshaded with the "FOOM!" effect in strip #338.
- You ALL Look Familiar: To Karn, Lucinda seems to be important because she has a unique character sprite.
- You Can't Fight Fate: The characters follow the plot, because that's what you do in an RPG.
- You Do NOT Want To Know: In this strip, Karn tells Ardam that he does not want to know where monsters carry the items that Drecker steals.
- You Have Failed Me: Strip #57 has Khrima doing this to a white-haired minion who has run out of excuses:Minion: I'm fired, aren't I?
Khrima: If by "fired" you mean "set on fire and thrown to the lions" then yes. - You Meddling Kids: Given a Shout-Out here.Eternion: And I would have gotten away with it if not for you pesky adventurers!