This is the story of Tarquin, my greatest pen-and-paper-role-playing-game character. Tarquin was an immortal god amongst foolish men. Tarquin was everything I could never be, and would never want to be, and yet was greater than I could ever aspire to be.

Tarquin was created for a one-shot game of Dread. Dread is a horror RPG in which most characters meet gruesome fates as they are picked off one-by-one. In this case, we weren’t playing Dread with a Jenga tower as is traditional, but a variant using a stacked tarot deck. In the deck were neutral cards, a small number of positive “resource” cards, and the Major Arcana whose effects varied but would fundamentally determine the fate of the character drawing them.

Tarquin was many things to many people, but is best summarised by the one sentence description I came up with for him during character creation:

Sigma Grindset “Investment Banker”

It’s safe to say (I hope) that Tarquin was the opposite of myself in almost every aspect. He acted and thought precisely as I would not in any given situation.

Tarquin was utterly oblivious to his role as a horror rpg character. He approached the game with a legendary level of genre blindness as yet unseen in gaming. Here are a few highlights of his exploits:

  • Attempted to sell NFTs from his personal collection “The Tarquins” to almost everyone he met including other players and terrifying embodiments of the major arcana of the Tarot
  • Constantly searched for “babes” despite repeatedly being told there were no babes on the island by various omniscient entities
  • Drank continuously at any opportunity. Manifested six packs of beer apparently at will
  • After crawling and squirming through the hardest possible route in a pitch-black cave using only phone torch light, greeted a malevolent cave witch named Luna with a cry of “ey yo Luna up in this cave!”
  • Went swimming in the ocean whilst on a cursed fishing voyage (in his words “boat party”) with no ill effects
  • Escaped from a cursed lighthouse by performing an epic slide down a 217 step spiral staircase banister. Suffered no ill effects other than a friction burn to his behind

Worth highlighting in particular are Tarquin’s interactions with The Fool. The Fool, as we eventually discovered was the embodiment of the major arcana 0 and the lynchpin of the whole horror situation we found ourselves in.

Upon first meeting The Fool, Tarquin successfully sold him an NFT from “The Tarquins”. The Fool paid €500 in monopoly money which Tarquin happily accepted. Tarquin then attempted to buy weed from The Fool, paying him back with the same €500 of monopoly money. Finally, Tarquin nicknamed The Fool “Wheels” because of his habit of cartwheeling mischievously around the room. “Wheels” became the name which we used exclusively to refer to “The Fool”, even convincing the other major arcana we encountered to also start using it.

About the weed purchase - The Fool delivered but in ironic fashion. He filled Tarquin’s hotel room with apparently random plants as a literal interpretation of the request. However, Tarquin discovered this after the epic lighthouse butt slide incident and managed to find some aloe vera to sooth his scorched buttocks. Tarquin also attempted to smoke random plants from the selection with no ill effects.

At the start of this article I referred to Tarquin as an immortal god. This is because, throughout the game where I took the most dangerous possible actions in any horror situation, I only ever drew neutral or positive results. Other players drew the negative results several times over each but Tarquin came through every situation unscathed. I started to chant “Never. Going. To. Die” after every flip inevitably came up in Tarquin’s favour.

The climax of the game came with a direct contest between Tarquin and one other player to see who would be able to activate the final mcguffin and change the fate of the cursed island we had found ourselves on. One final flip between Tarquin, and a mere mortal human being who dared to stand against his godhead. A battle between light and dark for the ages.

The final cards were drawn.

The final cards were flipped.

Tarquin’s foe was showing a major arcana, sealing his cursed fate once and for all.

Tarquin drew a neutral card once again.

NEVER

GOING

TO

DIE

In the final epilogue of the game, Tarquin found himself back on a plane with the few other survivors of the adventure. Even after all that time, I still had a resource card left to play. Tarquin managed to survive and “win” the adventure with resources to spare.

Tarquin spent the final action of the game on buying a round for the remaining party and flirting with the plane stewardess.

He finally found a babe.