Hey! This is an original(-ish) story based off The All Guardsmen Party and some old D&D campaigns I played through. All the characters in this besides roughly 6 are all original characters that were either PC's or NPC's in the campaigns and later made apart of the setting's world building. There are also hella references in here so like, spot them all if you want to?
Either way, have fun with this dumpster fire I wrote.
Fighting was in his blood. From a prizefighter, to a smuggler, to a murderer with warrants in more kingdoms and countries than he had fingers, he had seen more violence than most men saw their own junk.
He was Judger goddamn Jacklaw, the Winch Green Soldier, the man who had gone toe-to-toe with a Demon Prince of the Abyss and come out the winner.
Now here he was, sitting across from the leader of the Dead Bones Hunters and his best friend, handcuffed to a chair, and explaining why exactly he had been kicking that nobleman's teeth in.
"Well, Judger? Why did you decide that Lord Holger deserved to have his limbs shattered and his face stomped on?" Art asked him as he stared him down, chin coming to rest on his interlaced fingers.
Ikraam just looked at him like he was an idiot before slowly placing his head on the desk between them and letting out a long groan. Gee, thanks for the support bud.
"He tried to force me into being a slave. I work for exactly one person, and he's too busy with his siblings to be giving any orders, so you can understand if I was a bit rude in my refusal." Judger said with a cheeky grin, eyes crinkling into little upside-down u's as he leaned forward and tilted his head in a way that suggested Art was either an idiot, incompetent, or just too damn thick-skulled to understand why forced servitude was a bad thing.
"Right, never liked him anyhow. We're not letting you go just yet though." Art said, voice heavy with sarcasm as he stretched his arms back and his shoulders let out a pair of loud pops.
"Oh? I break some law I wasn't aware of?" Judger asked, expression surprisingly cheerful for someone who was, at best, one wrong move away from lifetime imprisonment in the deepest and darkest dungeon that Gilead had to offer.
"No, but we're using this as your punishment for the half-dead noble." Art said as Ikraam snickered from where he had his head on the desk.
Judger's expression went from cheerful to what could best be described as the bastard child of apoplectic rage and horrified shock as Art slid the paper to him across the desk.
At the top, in large bold writing, it read "Instructor Contract for Judger Kiran Jacklaw at the Gilead Inquisitorial Academy".
Judger spluttered, screamed, cursed, and begged for them to just execute him or something merciful like that, but all he got for his efforts was Art and Ikraam laughing even harder.
Rotten bastards.
Starting the next week, he would be teaching the brightest pupils in Gilead melee combat, Field Demonology, and combat improvisation.
The first two he knew well. One was his livelihood and the other was something he used on an hourly basis when dealing with Dante and/or his siblings. The third he assumed was just a fancy name for 'how to roll with it 101'.
After they explained the situation to him, they uncuffed him, gave him back his weapons (he may have cried when he got his swords back), and told him to look through the files when he got to his new accommodations.
The dormitory in the upper level of the academy was nice, almost posh, but the color scheme of olive drab and black dragged it back down to the level of a faculty dormitory in a fortress of a school.
He sat down at the desk and opened the sealed envelope containing his pupils for the year. It was a small class this year, even for the Inquisitorial Academy, with less than a dozen students per teacher.
The first file was one that reminded him of those pulp novels you could buy for a copper. Gyre DeWitt, a slum kid who had scrounged his way to the top of his class in the Guard Academy, been caught up in some scary orc shit, and as the lone survivor said scary orc shit was transferred into the Inquisition. The sketch, however, gave him other ideas. The kid was packing more explosives, than should have been necessary, with an expression that went past paranoid straight into primal fear of the world around him. He was listed as a demolition specialist and that he had jury-rigged a barrel full of some unholy mixture of booze, alchemist's fire, and broken glass with a stick of dynamite for the plug, and had used it to clear a frontier town of orcs after they slaughtered his squad and the inhabitants of the town.
The next started with the sketch on top. It was a depiction of a stumpy looking man with big ears, a big nose, and pockets full to bursting with things Judger could only imagine were stolen going by his smug expression. Flipping through the file, he noted dozens of behavioral issues including, but not limited to, theft, sabotage, theft, distribution of contraband, theft, racketeering, theft, assault, theft, illegal gambling, and more theft. His name was Nathan "Nubby" Hollis and it was speculated that he was part goblin somewhere in his family tree.
Looking at the sketch again, Judger could see where they were coming from.
Officially, Nubby was an "acquisitions specialist". According to his former commanding officer, he was a chronic kleptomaniac, compulsive liar, and an outright coward in the field.
All Judger could think was that he'd have to check his pockets more frequently.
The file after that one was surprisingly bare. No behavior issues, no huge amazing feats, nothing extraordinary.
That was, until he got to the section outlining specialization and training.
The young man, whose name was Otto Kleef, had more specialized medical training than anyone else Judger had seen in his life. There had been people who could heal with magic, sure, but this wasn't magic. This was training, pure raw grit and spit training. This guy wasn't a mage of any sort, he was just a good damn doctor.
When he looked at the sketch, Judger had expected some battle-worn field surgeon or gritty looking back-alley doctor, but instead it was a young man, maybe early 20's at the most, who looked nearly as nervous as Ikraam when Art had first began to court him.
Judger almost felt bad about having such a nice looking kid under his care. His type weren't cut out for a battlefield.
The last file of the bunch, well, to put it lightly it scared Judger. He was no stranger to getting up in someone's face and turning their torso into what could be called ground meat at best, but as he read over the file of Ezekiel Jedidiah Remus "Slasher" O'Callahan, the accounts of carnage that the man had been the perpetrator of brought Judger nearly to the point of vomiting.
Honestly, how do you turn someone's stomach into something like that? How!?
Reading further, he found out that the man had been a former surveyor of all things, and that he had been brought into the Guard for being the sole survivor of a ghoul ambush.
The fact that he was the owner of a massive serrated sword taller than Judger that he apparently called "Millicent" was just batshit icing on the crazy cake.
The sketch scared him too. A short man who by all rights should have had the muscle tone of a stick of butter holding a (sheathed, thank the gods) sword that must have been a whopping 7 foot long across his shoulders, arms hanging onto it by his wrists and hands drooping like they were in a stockade.
The terrifying grin did not help the image, nor did the fact that he was evidently covered in blood.
Stuffing the files away, Judger turned to address the other package on the desk. It was supposed to be his instructor's uniform, and had apparently been made for "function over form".
Tearing open the brown paper wrappings and unfolding the garments, Judger once again returned to that state of apoplectic rage and horrified shock, but this time it was mostly rage.
The outfit was all black and gray, which was a horrendous idea for somewhere like Gilead, where the daytime heat could easily reach sweltering in the shade. On top of that, it was layered. The top consisted of a black form-fitting shirt with two pockets on the chest (which Judger appreciated), a loose gray tunic which evidently was supposed to tuck into the trousers, and a long black overcoat that split near the bottom of his back into two long tails. The coat was bedecked in metal skulls and crosses, and even had an Inquisitorial Rosette of all things on the lapel. It had two deep pockets on the outside, which were a plus, along with what must have been half a dozen hidden pockets on the inside. The trousers were black, and had the standard hip pockets along with a pair of pockets on the sides of the legs. The boots were acceptable, maybe even an upgrade to his current pair so he might sneak off with those when his time there was over.
But, what topped the whole thing off (pun intended), was the hat. That thing was a goddamn disgrace to all headwear. It was a peaked cap, with an inquisitorial symbol above the brim and gold ropes on the brim.
It was a garish and disgusting display of stupidity and anyone who actually wore this on official Inquisitorial business must be either a goddamn idiot or just that good.
Sighing, Judger took the bundle of clothing (except for the boots, those were fine) and unceremoniously dumped the waste of cloth, metal, and leather into the wastebasket.
He then dropped face first into his bed, belt and swords hung on a bedpost, and a single thought running through his head.
"I'm not cut out for this."