This got sparked from a conversation on Tumblr about the Gang playing D&D. Heavily inspired by the Adventure Zone, although absolutely no knowledge of it is actually necessary.
Elliot paused to take a sip of water from his glass, and then set it aside, wiping his lips. "-where was I?"
"Well, 'Hitch'-" Ruby shot him a momentary glare, apparently not happy that he had woven her house manager into the insane narrative that he had so far created. "- 'Hitch', our half-orc friend with a crossbow- he just showed us into a throneroom or something inside one of the spheres in this weird moon base."
"The Bureau of Balance," Clancy corrected, tapping his pad of paper. He had been taking meticulous notes, which probably would have been helpful for him and his paladin character, Leitrum, if Elliot looked like he actually knew what he was doing.
"Yeah, that, whatever," Ruby said.
"Should we be doing anything, or-?" Red wondered.
"No, hang on, I've got this. Okay." Elliot cleared his throat. "So, you walk down the carpeted runway to the, uh, throne portion of the throneroom, and you end up standing on sort of the edge of the a dais that the throne is sitting upon. And sitting upon the throne, upon the dais is a human woman in her, maybe early fifties. She's got dark skin, white hair, and super blue eyes. And she's got a pretty otherworldly quality to her in all honesty, you might think she's an elf of sorts, if it weren't so clear she was human."
"Is she an elf?" Del interrupted.
Elliot rolled his eyes. "No, I just said she isn't, keep up-"
"But could she be?" Del rolled a dice. "I'm doing a perception check to check if the woman's an elf or not. Aaand-" She frowned downwards at the result, and then stuck her tongue out, clearly annoyed. "That's a one."
"You trip over your shoelaces, fall face-first onto the floor, and black out instantly," said Elliot. "Okay, what else? She's dressed in plain white robes, sorta ornate like? She's also holding a long white oak staff. And I feel like it's worth mentioning, she's not an elf. This lady is completely human."
Out of the corner of her eyes, Ruby saw Clancy scribble 'probably an elf' onto his notepad.
"And she looks at you," Elliot said, "and she says- wait, hang on, I gotta figure out a voice for her…"
"Welcome, the five of you, to the Bureau of Balance," said the woman in white, studying the party of adventurers with an inscrutable look in her eyes. "It's a…" She hesitated briefly, picking her words. "… an absolutely pleasure to have you here with us. I've heard a lot of things about your performance from Hitch."
Scarlett stared at the woman with faint suspicion. For some reason, she could have sworn that she knew her, but… "…thanks, I think."
"All good things, I hope," said Leitrum, fiddling nervously with the hem of his cloak.
"Of course they're good things!" said Del, whose creator hadn't actually picked a separate name for the character that she was playing. "We completely blitzed that last level, or did you not notice all of that totally cool sword fighting I did?"
"To be fair," said May, the Halfling cleric and healer, in her characteristically soft, near-unhearable tone, "we did end up decimating the entire town in the process."
"Nobody got hurt, right?" said Del, with a roll of her eyes.
"Apart from an entire town's worth of NPCs," Adaira reminded her.
"Well, yeah, but- details?"
"But they are important details," the woman in white pointed out. "And speaking of the decimation of the small town of Twinford- I'm going to need you to hand over the gauntlet that caused all of the destruction in the first place, so we can destroy it promptly and completely."
"Elliot, are you going to name everything in this game after stuff in real life?" Scarlett demanded of the ceiling, somewhat randomly. "Because that's going to get super old, fast."
"I have no idea who Elliot is or who it is that you're talking to," said the woman smoothly. "Now- the gauntlet?"
"I hand it to her," said Leitrum, who had been carrying it in his Bag of Holding.
"I have no idea why you've decided to announce the fact that you're doing it to the world of general, but I appreciate it," said the woman.
"Wait, hang on, shouldn't we discuss this first?" asked Ruby.
"I mean, she seems trustworthy," Clancy shrugged. "And besides, I've already done it."
"Hey, can I make a Perception check to see if she's actually trustworthy?" Red asked, reaching for the dice and accidentally knocking them off the table in the process. "Ah- whoops! Hang on…"
"Sure, you can do that," Elliot said.
"I think I'll do that too," said Ruby, and rolled the check just as Red remerged from under the table, looking sheepish. "I got… a 15, plus 2, so- seventeen. How's that?"
Red rolled her own check. "Five. Plus zero. Drat."
Elliot laughed. "Okay, so Red- you notice that the woman's wearing white clothing, and you get distracted over how cool she looks."
Red seemed happy with that. "Nice."
"Ruby- you look at the woman for a long time, and eventually decide that-"
"-yeah, you seem trustworthy," Scarlett concluded. "Giving you the gauntlet wouldn't be an awful idea, in my opinion."
"Well, I'm certainly glad to hear that, since it's already been given to me," said the woman dryly. "But nevertheless, thank you for your trust. You will be paid handsomely for your reclamation of this artefact."
"Money?- sweet," said Del. "Sign me up."
"I'm okay with this," said Leitrum. "I also volunteer as treasurer for this group, mainly so Ruby- sorry, Scarlett, and Del don't get their hands on it."
"Wow, I thought we were friends," Scarlett said, and then, "I roll for slight-of-hand to punch him on the arm without him noticing it." There was a brief pause. "14," she said, and then promptly punched him.
Leitrum yelped, and then glare, considerably more sulky now. "All I'm saying is, the last time we let you have the money, you spent it on buying novelty T-shirts in the Twinford marketplace."
"And it was well worth it," said Scarlett, proudly pulling off her cloak to reveal a shirt with the words 'If you're close enough to read this, you've just provoked an attack of opportunity' in tiny print along the middle. "I don't see what the problem is."
The woman rolled her eyes in response to this- apparently completely done with this back and forth exchange of banter. "This is all well and good, but-"
"Sorry, wait, what's your name?" interrupted Adaira.
"You may address me," said the woman, "as the Director."
There was a brief pause as everybody exchanged glances.
"That implies that 'the Director' isn't your actual name," said Del.
"Of course 'the Director' isn't my actual name, that would be ridiculous," said the Director. "Nobody gets named something like 'the Director' at birth, can you imagine what my parents would have been thinking-"
"Okay, but if that isn't your real name, what is?" Scarlett asked, curiosity piqued.
"My real name is actually classified information," said the Director with dignity. "But as I said, you can address me as 'the Director', or 'Madame Director', but…"
"What sort of check would I need to make to find out her real name?" Del asked, cutting across Elliot's narration.
"Please don't," said Elliot.
Clancy and Red both leaned over Del's sheet of character information, looking over it for an appropriate modifier.
"I'm thinking Charisma," said Clancy, "or maybe some sort of Intelligence?"
"I'm going to go with Charisma, I've got plus three in that," said Del, and rolled the dice. "-natural twenty!"
"You've got to be kidding me." Elliot looked extremely tired all of a sudden. "Okay, you roll a twenty on Charisma, which means that-"
Del smiled really goddamn sweetly and batted her eyelashes at the Director, whose face suddenly softened. She looked slightly wistful, and her blue eyes teared up. "Oh my god, I just realized. You remind me so much of the daughter I never had. I trust you completely and utterly now, and that trust extends to your friends as well. I'll now proceed to tell you my full, classified, name, and my entire life story from the moment I was born-"
"You're overdoing it a bit," said Mouse.
"Her name was meant to be an important plot point in the fifth story arc," Elliot said through gritted teeth, flipping through his notes. "And you guys just went and derailed it like that." He made a small, annoyed noise. "You know what, I hadn't even thought up a name for her yet. I was going to get to that later."
"So think one up," Clancy said after a moment of silence in which Elliot hid behind his makeshift cardboard DM's screen without saying anything.
"I'm bad at thinking up names," Elliot mumbled. "That's why I'm stealing names from real life and everything. Um, Mrs Drisco?"
"I may murder you if you pick that," said Del cheerfully.
"Mrs Digby, Mrs Beesman," Elliot said, "-why don't I know the first names of any imposing female figures in this town? This is kind of ridiculous. Um. My mom-?"
"How about LB?" Ruby suggested, who had just worked out exactly who the Director reminded her so much of. Clancy made an odd noise of surprise from his end of the table.
Elliot gave her a look of confusion. "Um, LB? Just, like, two letters?"
"Yeah, it sounds kinda mysterious, right?" Ruby said. "It fits her character."
Elliot thought about this and then shrugged. "All right, yeah- I like that. LB it is, then."
"My actual name's LB," said the Director, wiping a tear from her eye, "but if you call me that in front of the rest of the Bureau, I can have you executed. Painfully."
"I roll for Charisma again," said Del. The die bounced on the table, and then came to a halt. "Seventeen plus three- another twenty!"
Del's eyes grew huge and wide, Bambi-like, and the Director let out a loud sob, burying her face into the sleeves of her robes to muffle the sound. "Oh my god that's adorable- okay, you can call me 'LB' in front of the rest of the Bureau if you want, but only you."
Scarlett, quite inexplicably, was laughing uncontrollably- she had braced herself against the wall, and was finding the entire scene disproportionately funny.
"What does 'LB' stand for?" asked Adaira.
"That's actually double-classified," said the Director, straightening up, and rubbing at her reddened eyes. "It's so secret that even I'm not allowed to know it."
Elliot slapped Del's hands away from where they were slowly creeping towards the dice again. "No, don't you dare, that's the fifth story arc you're meddling with there."
"Now that all of that's over and done with," said the Director, now also known as LB, "I believe it's time to deal with this pesky little item." She held up the gauntlet in one hand. "And unless you've got any objections-?"
"None," said Leitrum quickly, before everyone could start arguing again over trivialities. "Let's destroy it."
That's all I got, kids.
Also,
Elliot- dungeon master, getting increasingly exasperated because the party won't walk into his elaborate traps
Ruby- Scarlett Proudscar, human rogue/theif, chaotic good.
Clancy- Leitrum (can't figure out a last name for him), dwarf paladin, lawful good
Red- Adaira Rodan, elf wizard/spellcaster, neutral good.
Del- Del Lasco, human fighter/barbarian, chaotic neutral.
Mouse- May Sylquen, halfling cleric, lawful neutral.
LB/the Director- definitely human, no matter what anyone thinks. A sorceress of some sort. Hiding a Dark Secret. ?
Hitch- half-orc fighter/bodyguard. Lawful neutral.