Once I had my first roleplay up, it wasn't long before a friend got in the action. Known in KOL as Your Funkiness, he's beyond question next in line after me as the driving force in Adventures in Loathing.

The KOL equivalent would be Mr. Skullhead to Jick, but actually typing that sounds so egotistical. Maybe like, the vice president? Right hand goon?

This roleplay introduces his character- Kronall Bearsmasher! I've a feeling he's going to prove the keys to AiL's stories quite often in the future. The character is already well rounded, and he'll go on to star in the next rollover, which'll be the first official rollover of the first official season.

Read on if you want to know a little bit more about Kronall now known as Konall. Great battle contained within.

 
Kronall Bearsmasher was hunched over a meatcar, tricking out the engine with a few modifications. He was in the Degrassi Knoll, tooling around with some Knollish gearheads in “Pimpt.” Pimpt was the name of the name of the mechanics shop he was working in. No, he wasn’t “working.” The word “work” implied labor, and Kronall was here for the pleasure of playing with engines. The word “work” also implied services rendered in return for money, and Kronall wasn’t getting paid.

He had dropped into Degrassi Knoll on assignment for KoKoL. He was here mostly as an observer, to keep his eyes on the situation. Observing was not his style, running in blindly and bashing everything in sight was more of his thing, but a job was a job and instructions were instructions. He was told to wait and look, and that’s exactly what he was doing.

He had worked in this particular shop before; the mechanics there were friends of his. When he had offered to spend a few days working with them, for free of course, they were more than happy to let him. They even let him have the storage room in the back to stay in; it was pretty Spartan, but then so was home. But while he was working, he was also talking. If his mechanic friends were good at anything besides fixing meatcars, it was speaking their minds, and Kronall had already acquired a pretty accurate picture of what was going on in this town.

Spaz flew by with a wrench in his hands, oblivious to everything around him except for the meatcar. Spaz was an ADD demon that Kronall had found one day and adopted. Surprisingly, the thing wasn’t evil. Spaz might lie, cheat, steal, and just about anything else that popped into his head, but his problem was a lack of focus. He would flit from one thing to the next, never thinking about what he was doing. Something shiny catches his eye and he picks it up. Then, he sees something else that interests him, and he goes outside to get it, forgetting that he’s still holding the first item. Problem is that the owner of said item is none too happy about a little demon flying off with his property. Spaz’s world was a place where actions had consequences, but the consequences took to long to think about. He caused a lot of trouble, but he was definitely worth keeping.

One thing that kept Spaz’s attention, a miraculous feat, was working on cars. Spaz might be popping about from activity to activity, driving everyone in the vicinity nuts, but as soon as you put a wrench in his hands he had a one-track mind, to the exclusion of everything else.

Kronall left Spaz to do his thing, knowing that whatever the little imp was doing with the meatcar, it would be a master of machinery. Kronall himself was modifying the engine, making it run faster and smoother. He was also chatting with his gearhead friends and learning a great deal.

Both the knob goblins and the mafia penguins had recently bludgeoned their way into town. Neither group got along that well, but so far there had only been a few minor skirmishes. A full-scale conflict was imminent. One side would win, probably the penguins, but whatever the outcome the knoll would be devastated. The goblins controlled the north side of town, and the penguins took the south.

But the conversation wasn’t all business. The talk was now centered on the impressive pile of weapons Kronall had stashed up against the wall.

Being a seal clubber, Kronall was loathe to carry around a single weapon that would hopefully be useful in every situation. Instead, he had several, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Today’s ensemble included a club, a longbow, and the haxxor. A haxxor was a cross between a hammer and an axe, specifically a battleaxe. The wedge at the top was a half-moon on one side that flattened out into the flat bottom of a hammer on the other. A spike protruding straight out from the top, combined with the long handle, made the weapon useful as a sort of halberd as well. This particular haxxor was a family heirloom, one that was incredibly well crafted.

Thrown in with the weapons was the armor. Made from leather and furs, it was composed of hard plates attached to flexible leather, allowing for both strength and movement. The buckler had a spike on it, and though it was primarily intended for defense, Kronall found that it made an effective weapon. More than one opponent had parried a blow from Kronall only to find that he had left himself open to a shield bash.

“What’ve you bin doin’ these last few years?” said a mechanic by the name of Moe.

Kronall replied, “Well, I’ve been hunting and trapping mostly. Sometimes I do some woodcutting, sometimes I make armor and weapons, and sometimes I hire on to do assignments, you know, mercenary work, little quests, that sort of thing. I felt like working on cars, so I thought I’d drop on by. It feels good to be rolling in grease again.” He neglected to mention that he was on one of those assignments right now. The mechanics were acquaintances more than friends, people he liked but didn’t completely know. They were probably trustworthy, but he couldn’t be sure. Besides, it would ruin the mood to tell them what he was up to.

“So,” a gearhead named Joe said, “if I remember right, your father was a berserker or sumtin.’”

“Yes he was,” the seal clubber replied. “as am I.”

“Isn’t a berserker just a guy that can’t control his temper?” was Joe’s retort.

This was a common misconception. It irked Kronall a bit, but he shrugged it off. The knoll hadn’t meant any offense. Berserkers were masters of controlling their anger. Normally, in situations like this, they simply calmed themselves down. But there’s a time for putting out a fire, and there’s a time for building one up. Berserkers were also capable of stoking their rage into an inferno, and then channeling that energy into combat.

The trapper recalled a time once, when he was seventeen, and he had just returned from a hunting expedition. A large band of smut orcs was standing outside the remains of the village they had just burned, Kronall’s village. The ruthless army was led by a malevolent sorcerer who had brought every orcish mage he could find. Kronall’s brain was shouting that the raiders had just assembled a massive force of mages, that he and his companions were outnumbered at least sixty to one, and that now that his family was dead, there was nothing more he could do for them. But his heart told him that justice had to be served, no matter what the cost to himself.

Without thinking, Kronall took off all of his armor, threw away his shield, cast off anything else that might slow him down, and picked up the two largest swords he could carry. He charged straight into the forming lines, not looking to see if his companions had followed him. They would be, but it didn’t matter; his only goal was to inflict as much damage as possible. It was a long and bloody fight. By the end of the battle, the twenty hunters had inflicted over seventy casualties on the enemy, including every last mage.

Kronall had inflicted much of the damage himself, but that was due to a fury he would never see again. No, that wasn’t exactly right. A series of dark portals had appeared, allowing the remaining orcs to retreat to safety. No one on Kronall’s side of the portal was capable of any sort of magic, let alone the kind needed to teleport an entire army to safety. That meant someone on the other side had opened those portals, some mage who was extremely powerful. Kronall’s brains couldn’t come to any further conclusions, but his guts told him that someone had ordered the attack on his village, and whoever did that was going to be on the receiving end of the full brunt of a berserker’s fury. That person would…

A voice interrupted his thoughts, “I don’t think that bolt’s going to get any tighter.”

It was Poe, another of the gearheads. Kronall looked down and realized that he was pulling on a wrench as hard as he could, his teeth gritted. He had been lost in thought. Maybe he couldn’t control his anger as well as he had always believed.

Quickly, he recovered. “How’s it coming?” he asked.

From the other side of the meatcar, Moe called out “Almost done here. This ride is pimped. What’s our next order?”

Kronall started sticking a few attachments on with meat paste as Joe said, “This was the last one. Next up, we’re tricking out Krony’s meatcycle.”

“Aww, guys, you don’t have to do that,” Kronall replied “I mean…umm…it’s one thing to trust you with someone else’s ride, but you can keep your mitts off my ‘cycle. I just got that thing running again.” A few chuckles sounded around the room.

Spaz flew over to a rack of massive wrenches on the wall. Though he was only five pounds, he picked up a wrench that must have weighed eight or nine pounds. Even though Kronall knew Spaz was a demon with supernatural powers, he still marveled at the little imp’s ability to carry weight around. Sure enough though, when Spaz grabbed the tool he knocked the whole stand over, not even realizing it. Kronall went over to pick up the mess.

He didn’t mind that much. He cleaned up after Spaz, and Spaz cleaned up after him. Specifically, whenever he went on a hunt, the demon managed to find every piece of everything lying around after a fight. He also picked up while going about his unique style of foraging. The extra loot more than made up for the trouble he caused.

It was then that danger walked though the door. Three mob penguins sauntered into the room. Spaz, with his natural curiosity, dropped the wrench and went over to orbit one of the penguins in his usual annoying fashion.

The lead penguin came forward, thumping his kneecapping stick on the palm of his left flipper in a threatening manner. He said, “The Don wishes to thank you in advance for repairing one of his cars, free of charge.” He pointed through the window to a vehicle outside. “There are some…dents…in it. We had ourselves a little scrape. Your generosity is appreciated.”

“And if we don’t?” Kronall asked. If they were going to threaten him, they would at least going to give him a concrete threat, something that would hold up if he had to explain this incident later.

The penguin replied by taking out his kneecapping stick and hit Spaz with a crushing blow, knocking him against the far wall.

Spaz was the closest thing to family that Kronall had left. The clubber was now holding a four-foot-long wrench in each hand, and he was not happy. Kronall felt a fire in his muscles, his rage feeding into to his strength. Before the goon could react, Kronall had struck him across the head with one of the tools and was moving the wrench in his left hand to finish him off. He dropped the wrenches and picked up his haxxor. The second penguin was aiming his crossbow, but the waterfowl was panicking, and the shot went between Kronall’s legs. Swinging the haxxor to the left, Kronall drove the crossbow into the wall, smashing the bow into a pile of twinkly powder. The next blow sent the penguin flying across the room.

The third had been too stunned to act, but as Kronall came toward him he prepared to parry a blow. As Kronall swung his weapon downwards towards the penguin’s skull, the bird was able to quickly move his longsword overhead to block the blow. It did little good. The blade barely slowed the haxxor’s progress, and the penguin went down.

The battle over, he ran over to Spaz. The demon was unconscious. Kronall wasn’t too worried. Demonic powers allowed Spaz miraculous healing abilities. He’d be fine in a few hours. The seal clubber slipped Spaz into his pocket and turned to the next task.

Kronall dragged the dead penguins one by one into the back room. An experienced trapper, he quickly had the beasts split into meat, furs, and miscellaneous. He then turned to the discarded weapons. The longsword would be quite useful so it went into his inventory. The kneecapping stick was better than Kronall’s current club, so he made a switch and decided to sell his old club as soon as he got an opportunity. He also knew of a good market for twinkly powder. With his trusty travel-size tenderizing hammer on hand, he fashioned the penguin skins into a tuxedo costume that resembled a mafia penguin. It wouldn’t fool anyone with a brain larger than a grain of rice, but there didn’t seem to be too many of those in the Kingdom of Loathing.

He now had a disguise. He went back into the workshop and told the gearheads he was leaving for a few hours, maybe even a day or two. That said, he slipped into his penguin costume and headed out to do some scouting.