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The Bucket Brigade
Sir Becket/Bucket
"Lemme see... If I got this straight."
A snarky, yet violently religious Oath of Redemption paladin that leads the party trying to control their murderous and destructive tendencies.
- Accidental Murder: While Sir Becket has committed plenty of intentional murder during his adventures, the death of the king was definitely by accident due to Does Not Know His Own Strength. Fortunately, his party was able to bring them back to life relatively easy at the cost of a diamond, but Becket was definitely panicking for a bit.
- An Arm and a Leg: "Konrad the Breaker," brought back as an undead, tears his arm off. Normally dismembered limbs can be reattached with healing magic, but Torvald decided to try sewing the arm back on and reviving it with necromancy instead, whereupon it tried to strangle Becket before escaping completely.
- Artificial Limb: Is given a new arm (seemingly made of stone) by Drin in Arms Trade, with the intention of it being a temporary replacement until the party can find a druid or cleric who can properly grow a new arm.
- The Atoner: Swore his Oath of Redemption after recognising the countless atrocities he committed in the name of his crusade.
- Bald of Authority: He's implied to be bald under his helmet due to growing up in a monastery. He's also The Leader of the Bucket Brigade.
- Beware the Nice Ones: He is generally pleasant, but someone who pisses him off enough (such as breaking his Tragic Keepsake) will be getting a nice impact frame panel depicting their brains flying out their skull.
- Chaste Hero: In the present, he has taken a vow of chastity, although Becket admits that it's optional for his order and he only took it well after his graduation from the monastery, before which he frequently skipped class to make out with classmates, both male and female.
- Covered in Scars: One strip where he's shirtless shows that his back is covered in scars. Given his religious background and status as The Atoner, they're almost certainly from flagellation.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: It's hard to be a righteous holy warrior in a party beginning with a Pyromaniac and Ax-Crazy. It doesn't help that their next party member avoids paying taxes at all costs.
- Dark and Troubled Past: As a crusader, before he swore his new Oath of Redemption.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: Having gotten used to fighting giant monsters and mutants all the time, he didn't quite hold back enough when punching the king in the face.
- The Dreaded: A pair of bounty hunters refused to go after him after the last guy who tried was smote with a quill.
- Epic Flail: For his primary weapon, he ends up with a holy relic of a brick tied to a rope. He had also used a flail in his crusader days.
- Good Is Not Nice: He usually tries to do good, but will ruthlessly slaughter anyone and anything that he thinks deserves it.
- Heel Realization: He did some... bad things during his time as a holy crusader that made him let go of that life.
- Improvised Weapon: After a villain breaks his sword (a bad idea), he picks up a brick and breaks the villain skull. He continues to carry the brick around tied to a rope and continues using it for as long as his sword is broken for. Word of God states it counts as an Improvised Flail.
- His affinity for flails comes back when he finds himself needing to fight werewolves and not having magic or silver on him, his solution? Pack a bunch of silver coins in a sock and use it as a flail.
- Later, after breaking his sword a second time, a group of monks offer him a holy relic to use as a weapon... Said relic being a brick tied to a rope. (Said Brick on a Rope is stated to be a Holy Brick on a Holy Ropenote, making it a Legendary Weapon)
- Finally, an assassin ambushed him in a church, knowing that Becket would have disarmed himself before entering. Becket proceeds to channel Smite through a quill.
- The Leader: Of the Bucket Brigade.
- Malicious Misnaming: Trevor calls him "Sir Bucket" to annoy him, he's stopped correcting him after a while.
- Mirroring Factions: He briefly wonders if they should be more accepting of cultists' religions, considering his own church of Stevicus started in a basement. Then the cultists sacrifice a puppy.
- Not So Above It All: After the Time Skip when he notices everyone else has updated their outfits, he decides to go shopping to remedy this. Trevor takes it that his order doesn't have any tenets against vanity, which he admits.
- Only Sane Man: In his party, at least until Klara joins.
- Religious Bruiser: Almost by definition, being a paladin of Daelvor.
- Straight Man: Reacts to the party shenanigans either by yelling at them or sighing.
- Team Mom: As much as he hates it, he's mostly stuck in this role keeping the party in line.
Klara: Beckeeeeet! Grogna is trying to peer pressure me into using cursed weapons.
Becket: It's cool to say no.See AlsoMore Hill Democrats call on Biden to quit race - Roll CallDNC moving forward with Biden virtual nomination; voting to begin no sooner than August 1 | CNN PoliticsSoracom takes Skylo satellite integration to initial service roll-out stage | Computer WeeklyIgnoring controversy, Democrats move forward with nominating Biden via virtual roll call - Throw the Dog a Bone: He really wishes they could get another pious member of the party but is at least happy when it turns out their new Warlock has her deal with a Celestial and is a lot saner than the rest of his teammates.
- Token Human: Manages the party consisting of a dwarf, a halfling, a half-orc, a tiefling and himself.
- Tragic Keepsake: His sword, shield and cloak. Taken from a family he killed before changing his ways; the sword and shield from the father, and the cloak from the mother, while he took the name of the child who could give nothing else. Also his helmet, which he kept so that he would "never forget the face of his shame."
- Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Tried to explain why it's wrong to hunt down and kill tax collector bloodsuckers, until finding out the taxmen were actually vampires.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: He is utterly exhaused at the party's violent shenanigans, but when it comes down to it he cares deeply about them and could have left long ago but enjoys their company too much to ever consider it.
- Would Hurt a Child: In the past. After regretting killing a family, he took the child’s name as a reminder of his sins.
Trevor Hazelbog
"I'm a damn sorcerer Bob, A force of fuckin' nature!"
A gnome Wild Magic sorcerer with a tendency to kill things with fire, commit petty vandalism and be a nuisance to civilized society.
- Amazon Chaser: He's with Grogna, after all. When Grogna refuses to wear chainmail because it would hide her biceps Trevor can be seen fainting at the sight of her flexing.
- Book Dumb: His reaction to finding out Torvald is a tax cheat is to ask "The fuck are taxes?". He also frequently asks the meanings of very simple words.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Has a tendency to acknowledge the ridiculousness of his world, such as when he mocked a rogue for having an overly tragic backstory. From what we know, it might be a side effect of eating the mushrooms he grows in the bag of holding.
- Creepy Souvenir: That badger-fur hood he's wearing? It's the badger who raised him. Granted the badger herself was cool with it, so long as Trevor burned the entire enchanted forest to the ground.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Fire is his preferred tool in any situation. If Fireball doesn't work, he tries Firebolt. This does not work out well when he faces a foe whose primary schtick is that it is already on fire.
- Entropy and Chaos Magic: He's a Wild Magic Sorcerer of the D&D kind.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Despite enjoying the mushrooms himself, he's rather concerned when Torvald has eaten seven of them and starts hallucinating that he's a Youtuber.
- He is disturbed by the fate of their horses, especially Becket's celestial mount who seems to die and come back with a piece of his soul missing. One of the common agreements he and Beckett reached is that they don't ride horses anymore for the safety of the creatures.
- He genuinely gets concerned when Becket has one of his freak out episodes of extreme violence, becoming greatly concerned for Becket's mental health.
- The Lancer: He is a trigger-happy sorcerer that contrasts the responsible Becket and more or less the second in command who gets a turn picking party members.
- Never Learned to Read: He's illiterate, due to being raised by badgers. He can write profanities thanks to a cheat sheet he got from Torvald, but holds Klara's application upside down without noticing.
- Nemean Skinning: Wears the skin of Mister Badger, who asked him to do it.
- Not Helping Your Case: When drunkenly ranting about how everyone mistook him for a rogue/druid, he is interrupted by a guard announcing he is a wanted man, revealing he has a name connected to nature and was wanted for thievery, robbery, arson and stabbing an officer in the knee.
- Official Couple: With Grogna.
- Pet the Dog: He decides to spare a bandit because he wants to make Becket happy. The bandit turns out to be suicidally overconfident, but even then, Trevor only polymorphs him into an octopus rather than killing him.
- Pyromaniac: His favorite spells are all fire-based (especially his signature fireball), he has burnt down merchant shops twice, and burnt down the Enchanted Forest he was raised in.
- Raised By Badgers: His family couldn't afford to sustain him as a baby, so they left him out in the wild with a note pleading to give him a good life they could not. A sentient badger in what is implied to be the feywild happily obliged.
- Lovable Rogue: As endearing as he is chaotic.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: He may be little, but he's got magic on his side and fights dirty.
- The Stoner: He eats a lot of hallucigenic mushrooms and other spell components.
- Where I Was Born and Razed: Burned the enchanted forest where he grew up to the ground (or at least tried to) at his adopted badger mom's last request.
- Wild Magic: His main skill.
Grogna Goretusk
"Yeah, a real softie that one."
A quiet brute of a woman with about as much love for Trevor as she has for murder. Often mistaken for a barbarian due to her brutality in battle, when she is actually a fighter.
- Action Girl: A Half-orc fighter who loves getting violent.
- Ambiguous Disorder: Between an unpredictable Hair-Trigger Temper and what is implied to be selective mutism, its not out of the question she's not entirely neurotypical.
- Alliterative Name: Two 'G's in Grogna Goretusk.
- Ax-Crazy: The Cursed Sword of Brunn increases her bloodthirst to ridiculous degrees. Given this is Grogna we're talking about, the party hardly notices.
- The Brute: Her job within the party as the strongest offense member by a landslide.
- Bruiser with a Soft Center: According to Trevor at least.
- Cursed Item: At a certain point, she acquires the legendary Blade of Brunn, a cursed greatsword that increases it's wielder bloodlust to self destructive levels. Not that it affects her very much
- Half-Human Hybrid: A half-orc from a surprisingly happy and stable family.
- Hidden Depths: Is seen in her childhood making cookies on her parents' bakery.
- She was also shown to be intelligent enough to deal with a Bounty Hunter wearing an Armor of Invincibility, by tying him up and throwing him into a Well to drown.
- In Love with Your Carnage: One of the possible reasons for her attraction to Trevor is that he is possibly as nasty in a fight as she is.
- Like Parent, Like Spouse: Grogna's dad was a short and quirky man like Trevor. He used to adventure naked in dungeons with his future orc wife before opening a bakery.
- Official Couple: With Trevor.
- The Quiet One: Early in the story the most we get out of her is maniacal laughter as she cuts down some mooks. She talks in signs later in the story.
- Slasher Smile: Sports one the first time we see her putting the Blade of Brunn to work.
- Sports a Similar Grin when a Bounty Hunter boasts how his armor has made him immune to all Damage.
- The Team Normal: For a given definition of "normal". She's the only member of the party without magical powers.
- Two Girls to a Team: Originally the only female member of the party until Klara joined.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: Once killed a potion seller for having perceived a threat towards Trevor. They end up burning the town on accident on the process of escaping.
Torvald Sturlagsson
"We're not the good guys, are we?"
An anti-authoritarian dwarven necromancer wizard fleeing from his clan after having been condemned to death for tax evasion. Later revealed to, ironically, be his clan's prince consort.
- The Ace: He's good in a physical scrap, can raise legions of the dead and keep up with Trevor in the offensive spellcasting department.
- Battle Trophy: Took the head of a lich he defeated while it was still "alive". He eventually subjects it to a Fate Worse than Death by giving it to his kids as a toy.
- Berserk Button: He really dislikes tax collectors and Liches.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Torvald has a few addiction problem and is as creepy a necromancer can be but he is an extremely smart and talented spellcaster. He has a degree in magic and knows how to circumvent magic resistance by following Rule of Cool.
Torvald: I don't argue with illusions sober. Dispell Magic.
- Calling Your Attacks: "SHOVEL"
- The Chosen One: Possibly, he had a run-in with a demon in its own plane which declared him his nemesis fated to destroy him, before running away when he realized Torvald was confused with the whole affair, he also might've just tripped and fallen on a portal by accident.
- Cool Helmet: Goes from his hat all the way down to his beard.
- Creepy Good: As creepy as they come, and a pretty nice guy when you look past his... weirdness.
- Genius Bruiser: He's The Smart Guy and a straight up terror in a melee.
- Grave Robbing: Occasionally. Presumably, it's primarily for the corpses, not the valuables. That's how he grows his army of zombies.
- Heel Realization: Has one in chapter 30.
Torvald: We're not the good guys, are we?
Becket: Doubt it.
- Improbable Weapon User: Out of spells? No problem, he's sharpened his shovel for a reason.
- I Love the Dead: Possibly, according to himself, he puts the "romance" in "necromancer". It might just be poor wording, since he is later revealed to have a wife and kids.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Several scholars and a demon lord thinks his shovel is a legendary artifact. Torvald thinks it's a normal shovel, and bought it in a store two years earlier.
- Mushroom Samba: Somehow hallucinated being an unboxing youtuber after consuming some "magical" mushrooms Trevor grew in the bag of holding.
- Necromancer: And a pretty good one at that.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Magic-user or not, he's a dwarf, and that means being decked out in heavy armour and not being squeamish about wielding a sharpened shovel.
- Really Royalty Reveal: He's a prince by marriage. Trevor who knew he was married with children is surprised by this part, as he had assumed he had been kidding.
- Relationship Reveal: To the surprise of Becket (and the audience), Torvald is married with children. And to a princess, no less.
- Second Episode Introduction: Becket, Trevor and Grogna debuted in the first issue and had been adventuring for some time whereas Torvald was introduced in the second as the newest recruit at the time.
- Shovel Strike: Wields a sharpened, short-handled shovel as his go-to weapon.
- Square Race, Round Class: He's a Dwarf, a race that offers no Intelligence increases a Wizard typically wants, and favors front-line classes like Fighters or Paladins. He also presumably has the Heavily Armored and Tavern Brawler feats to be able to use the equipment he does, neither of which help with the spellcasting he's supposed to specialize in.
- The Smart Guy: He was hired to the party because they sorely needed some brainpower. True enough, Wizards were until the Artificer came along the only class reliant on Intelligence.
- Zany Scheme: His business idea was to pay his clansmen for the right to reanimate them as zombies after they died on their own time so he could rent the bodies for cheap labour, as labour laws didn't apply to the dead. Turns out he had to pay an income tax on the profit, which he didn't... And now he's got a price on his head because tax evasion is a capital offense where he comes from.
Klara
"Is this normal for you guys?"
The Tiefling warlock that Trevor hired when Becket asked him to hire someone "pious".
- Angelic Abomination: Her patron. She describes seeing it as one of the top 3 most traumatic experiences of her life.
- Bargain with Heaven: Unlike the typical Warlock modus operandi, her deal is with a Celestial.
- Crazy Sane: She's perfectly nice and pleasant and good company, especially compared to Creepy Good Torvald or Ax-Crazy Grogna and Trevor. However, it is strongly implied that there is something deeply wrong with her, as she never has any particular complaints about the party's actions even while thinking of them as good guys, and a flashback shows that she kills and drains creatures she knows are sapient to use their blood as paint for murals.
- Diagnosed by the Audience: She seems rather well-adjusted now, but her flashback shows that she was confined in an asylum before her patron broke her out, and she mentions that seeing her patron's true form did little to help her mental state. She also draws art of her patron by ritualistically killing goblins for their blood to paint murals.
- Healing Hands: As a Celestial Warlock she knows some healing spells, including Revivify, filling a role the party was somewhat lacking before she joined.
- Horned Humanoid: As a Tiefling, she carries Infernal blood which manifests as two horns on her forehead (and presumably oddly coloured skin too, though the comic is in black and white)
- The Imp: Her familiar is a Quasit, a minor demon similar to an Imp. It usually takes the form of a horned toad. In the past, it was tricked into saying some holy words that bonded him to Klara's patron.
- Mad Artist: Again, makes paintings using the blood of (questionably) intelligent creatures.
- Naïve Newcomer: Being new to the party, she's still not totally used to the insane shenanigans they get into on a daily basis.
- Nice Girl: Her schtick is being a pretty pleasant person.
- Ship Tease: In a strip where Becket strips, Klara can be seen oogling him with the text "staring respectfully" above her head.
- Two Girls to a Team: Joins the party as the second female member after Grogna.