The Dark Lord Bert 2
Chris Fox
Chris Fox Writes LLC
Copyright © 2021 by Chris Fox
All rights reserved.
Contents
Previously On
Prologue - Castle Games
1. Magic Lesson
2. Oh, Crap
3. An Adventure
4. The Moist Mountains
5. Bobertown
6. The Thirsty Games
7. White Has No Balls
8. Darby the Leprechaun
9. Riddles
10. High Elves
11. Icosahedron
12. White's Wight Factory
13. Dirt Mittens
14. An Adventurer's Tale
15. Somewhere Out There
16. Following Bert
17. The Eye of Soreness
18. Dungeon Warming Party
19. Monster Interviews
20. The Armor of Plote
21. Kit Goes Home
22. The Dark Lord White
23. Escape Goat
24. Breakfast
25. Whiteworld
26. A Hasty Plan
27. Deal with Him
28. Player Kill
29. Cautious Advance
30. Unionized
31. Brownie Bits
32. Wizard's Duel
33. Surrender
34. The D20
35. Hullo
Epilogue
Note to the Reader
Previously On
You know that annoying feeling when you pick up a sequel and have to make that monumental decision? How well do you remember the previous book in the series? Do you dive right in or do a reread?
I always tell myself I’m going to do the reread, but I can never wait and so I jump right into the latest book. Sometimes I can’t remember what happened, so my solution for my own books is to write a Previously On, delivered just like the recap before most of our favorite TV shows.
Here’s what happened in The Dark Lord Bert, told from Bert’s and Kit’s perspective.
Last time on The Dark Lord Bert…
Hullo! Bert supposed to tell about adventurers. First Bert do short version, then Kit tell details.
Bert’s job follow adventurers and take copper they leave behind. Bert wanted to save up and buy mount, so Bert could get full hit die. Couldn’t afford mount so Bert buy pet instead.
Boberton have two heads, but shopkeeper not charge Bert any extra. Boberton is Bert’s new best friend. Boberton good dog.
Anyway, Bert and Boberton follow adventurers when they go into Tomb of Deadly Death. Adventurers kill Dark Lord, and White become new Dark Lord.
Bert sneaky though, and steal treasure before White can get. Bert find dark lord trope, and Bert become strong. Meet Kit. New friend. Bert and Kit go kill White.
Boberton and Kit and Bert live happily ever after.
How about the long version?
Hi, there. My character’s name is Kit. I play an elven sorceress who can shapeshift into a fox. My real name is Jess.
Bert’s given you the short version. Now I’ll fill in the blanks in case you want all the details.
My gaming group has been going to the same magical world for some time now, a delightfully silly place I’ve had an absolute blast in. As I mentioned I played Kit. My fellow adventurers were Master White the human necromancer, Crotchshot the elf ranger, and Brakestuff the dwarf paladin.
I figure if you’re reading this you’re probably a gamer, so you’ve probably been in groups with people like this before. White has to be in control of everyone and the story. Crotchshot shoots everything. Guess where? And Brakestuff smashes everything. He’s not picky about where.
My group and I murder-hobo-ed our way through dungeon after dungeon, but apparently somewhere along the way we picked up a stray. Bert the goblin began following our group, and did it successfully for months without us ever having detected him.
He’d go through the trash we left behind, mostly copper, and had apparently gathered quite a tidy little sum. The day he met us we were fighting a fearsome dragon, but Crotchshot shot it in the crotch and that was pretty much the end of that.
White animated the creature, which was rancid and dead, and then the party flew back to town. Why, you ask? Why would a ranger who is supposed to be in touch with nature abandon his horse to board an undead dragon?
Because it had a fly speed of 90. Because my friends care more about rules than they do about roleplaying. They never get into character, and wouldn’t know good RP if it bit them. Yes, I’m a little bitter. I love my friends, but I’m so tired of power-gaming.
Anyway, I got to run back to town as a fox and when I arrived I found my party drunk in the local inn, the Salty Gamer. White had decided to spend the XP we’d gotten from the dragon to remove a negative quality. In this case…his family, who counted as dependent NPCs.
Did I mention White’s stated alignment was lawful food?
So we pillaged our way through the town, and killed the current dark lord’s chief minions, then turned around and sold their loot in the very magic item shop where they’d probably bought it.
Once we were prepared we invaded the dark lord’s Tomb of Deadly Death, where we were met by the death knight Sir Patrick, and his great sword NC1701. We battled past him, and then the adoramancer Ramen Brotep and his kittens, but those kittens turned Crotchshot to stone.
Unbeknownst to us at the time, Bert was shadowing our party and saved us. He rushed into the room with a torch and lit the mummy on fire, and his dog Boberton chased away all the kittens so they couldn’t petrify us. White took credit, of course, since Brakestuff didn’t even know Bert existed, and Crotchshot was too stoned to notice.
The rest of us made it to the Kount, the sitting dark lord. He was a nuppet, and after a brutal fight our party triumphed! We set out to claim the loot, which would have included the dark lord trope, but it was gone…all of it.
Bert had stolen the treasure while we were fighting, and now had possession of the dark lord trope. He headed back to the town of $Placeholder, where he purchased the town dump and set it up as his new headquarters.
White launched a campaign to begin subjugating and murdering the entire kingdom, and every day planned more atrocities with his buddies in the OLP. The OLP, which I have feared my entire life, stands for Ominous Latin Phrase. I was deeply disappointed.
Meanwhile I’d finally grown sick of White’s
