The Great Kender Crusade

[DerVVulfman]

Trust me guys, I didn't come up with this.
I got this from a youtube video recounting pen-n-paper RPG stories.
Unfortunately, no names were attributed.

The Great Kender Crusade

You know, when it starts with "I started a Holy Crusade" that everything is going to be great from then on out. You see, I was banned from ever playing a Paladin again, back in my old high school D&D group.

On a lark, I played a Paladin in a new campaign. The DM let me create my own pantheon, who were loosely based on the Nordic deities. I even wrote down the tenets of the Order and my Paladin's exact vows.

The campaign was running smoothly enough, despite the tendency of the DM to railroad us. And since my Paladin was more about duty and honor than slavis obedience to the law, there wasn't too many inter-party conflicts. Mostly just my Paladin insisting we have to actually honor contracts we entered into. Honesty was a big deal to him.

So then we get a new player, a buddy of the DM who we really didn't know. But ... "Hey, more players!"

So we all got to learn about the Kender, the "oh so cute", innocent (my butt), little kleptomaniacs who are just so noble they don't actually have a concept of ownership. At first the party thought it was merely funny when my Paladin routinely made the Kender in our group to turn out his pockets and ruck before we left a village, and return everything he had "borrowed."

Then the little bastard started stealing from the party. The Ranger's bow, my holy sword, money, food... everything.

After several months of this, we're on a big quest, near the end, and we've lost the MacGuffin. We searched high and low, fought enemies we'd rather have avoided, because we thought they'd stolen it. We finally et it back, and low and behold, we find out that the little Kender had stolen it and sold it to a merchant for... something... leading us on this merry chase of recovery.

It was then my Paladin realized the truth. The Kender are the masters of lies. They pretend to be sweet and innocent, and use that as a cover to spread chaos and discord. They unweave the very fabric of civilizatin with their depredations. All the while claiming moral superiority, being "above" notions of ownership. They are agents of evil, working to destroy life as we know it.

So this little... *cough* ... so he stood there, staring up at us with those big, innocent eyes, unable to understand what he'd done wrong. Sure. My Paladin struck the Kender's head from his shoulders. The party was shocked, especially the jerk playing the Kender. He thought his antics were cute.

And thus began the Great Kender Crusade!

I single-handedly derailed the entire campaign to launch this crusade. By this point, the other players were ticked off enough at Kender-Boy, and the DM for letting him run amok, that they went with it.

The DM at this point became directly adversarial, but couldn't pull a "rocks fall, everyone dies", because we would have just started a new game without him. Further, Mr. Kender-Lover became the DM's assistant, basically playing for the side of the Kender.

Things got brutal. We burned villages, piked Kender, slaughtered families, recruited allies. We had to look up the rules for massed armies to fight!

I got into high form, channeling the best evangelical preachers and orators, rallying allies to our cause. The DM tried to revoke my Paladinship, claiming I was no longer lawful. I argued that I was utterly lawful, that the Kender were thieves and liars. I even challenged him to show where I had violated my vows. I hadn't.

By the time the campaign was finished, the world had been cleansed of the vile touch of the Kender, and my companions looked upon what we had wrought and wept. The grass grew green, fed on the red blood of the Kender. Of course my Paladin exulted, his holy task finished, and the great evil of the world cleansed.

And that's why they wouldn't let me play a Paladin again.