It’s time for the fourth and final member of our surviving Funnel party for my Dungeon Crawl Classics storytelling (the other three are linked above). If you’ve been reading along to this point, there is absolutely no surprise what class I’m choosing for Graymoor’s village baker, Hilda Breadon. Yep, she’s the Wizard. On paper, Ethys or Erin look like better fits, but the story with Hilda as the Wizard makes too much sense to ignore.
Here was Hilda’s Level-0 character sheet:
Hilda Breadon. Level 0 Baker. STR 9, AGL 11, STA 18, PER 9, INT 11, LCK 11. Init +0; Atk rolling pin +0 melee (1d4); AC 10; HP 7; MV 30′; Act 1d20; SV Fort +3, Ref +0, Will +0; LNG Common; AL Lawful; Equipment: chain, flour, 26cp.
Hilda was my first and only 18 on any single ability score. She is as tough as they come, with a +3 Stamina and whopping 7 hit points. Unfortunately, everything else about her is utterly average. Until the very end of her adventures, she wielded a rolling pin for goodness’ sake! Once I’d started playing and writing Portal, you may notice that I gave Hilda almost no airtime in the narrative until the end.
One I realized she may very well survive to be Level 1, I assumed her toughness would translate into a mediocre Warrior. But then her greedy nature started to emerge from the story, and I became more and more comfortable with Hilda as a Wizard. As I heard in an interview with one of the DCC designers, Wizards are the junkies in the game, interested in acquiring power at the expense of themselves and those around them. That fit my understanding of Hilda perfectly. Then the party found a magic orb, which was my excuse for granting her spells and a patron.
As I’ve said before, many people believe the bonkers magic system is the best thing about DCC, and Wizard spellcasting is really what they’re talking about. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dive right in…
Hit Points: As the Wizards of almost any old school game, Hilda only gets d4 hit points per level. Thankfully, she has a good base, will min out at half, and will get that sweet +3 bonus. The roll is… 4! Ha! Hilda will start her adventures as the hardiest mage in the land, flexing with 14 hit points, the most of any party member!
Magic: Alright, here is what we came to see. Magic in DCC is unpredictable, dangerous, and inhuman… great powers granted from otherworldly patrons that, over time, fundamentally transform the caster. At first level, Hilda will have learned 4 spells from the whisperings of her patron through the mysterious orb. As with Erin, she will need to make a spell check to cast these spells, which will be d20 + 1 (her level). Here are the spells she received, rolled randomly on a table from the core rulebook:
Spell 1: Read Magic, which is boring but makes sense as a first step towards being a Wizard, especially for a villager who may not have even been able to read at all. I suspect this was her first spell. Next we roll on the very-fun Mercurial Magic table to see how this spell expresses itself. The idea here is that spells vary based on several factors, including how it was gained, who’s casting it, etc. For Read Magic, Hilda will transform into a man for 1 hour after casting the spell (unless she fails to cast it, in which case it will last a full day). Ha! That will be interesting.
Spell 2: Feather Fall, which allows her (or someone of her choosing) to avoid falling damage. Unfortunately, the spell is also a vermin attractor, bringing a cloud of bothersome insects at Hilda for 1d4 rounds after she’s completed the spell, biting and distracting her during that time. Ouch.
Spell 3: Patron Bond, which is amazing. It takes a full week to cast, but doing so puts her in direct contact with her patron (which we’ll get to below), forming a permanent pact with it. This is not a spell to cast lightly but is just filled to the brim with story consequences. Even cooler, after casting it the Mercurial Magic table tells me that she gains a psychic focus, clearing her mind and granting her a +4 bonus to 1d4 spell checks afterwards (it’s technically 1d4 rounds by the table, but that makes less sense for a casting time of 1 week). This overall spell result makes me giddily happy.
Spell 4: Chill Touch, which allows Hilda to give a necromantic touch of the dead, damaging opponents. And… on my goodness… I rolled a 01 on percentile dice for Mercurial Magic, which means every time she casts it, someone she knows dies! Holy crap. That is horrifying all around, and I suspect she won’t immediately figure out this cost until later.
What an interesting assortment of spells and side effects. There’s a little utility, a little offense (at great cost), and Patron Bond for pure craziness. Hilda is going to be fascinating.
Supernatural Patron: Who is speaking to Hilda through the veil of the magical crystal orb, granting her these dread powers? The core rulebook provides a handful of detailed options, and not surprisingly the DCC community has increased the list exponentially (check out here and here and here for great free resources). I’m going to rely on this delightful book, because there is a Patron there that fits The Portal Under the Stars, perfectly: Ptah-Ungurath, Opener of the Way. I won’t say much about him now, but I will say that he is terrifying, cosmically vast, and someone that Hilda should want to avoid. But it’s the key to her powers, and she wants more power, so we’ll explore that conundrum as the adventures unfold. I may tweak the “insects” effect on Feather Fall above with this Patron in mind, keeping the effect but changing how it manifests. Anyway, when her Level 1 adventure kicks off, she will not know the name of her Patron, much less his ineffable nature. Will she have cast Patron Bond yet when the adventure kicks off? This is something I’ll ponder.
Other Abilities: As a Wizard, Hilda can’t really wear armor, so yay for piles of hit points. There are circumstances under which she could obtain a familiar and learn extra languages, but those haven’t happened yet. Finally, she gets a +1 to her Reflex and Will saves, which means she’ll have bonuses to all three.
Title: None of the suggested titles for Wizards work for the image I have of Hilda in my mind. She is not part of an order and is not self-taught, nor does she even understand schools or types of magic. Instead, it is the simple act of spending time with an orb that gives her access to speak with an otherworldly entity that is the reason for any magic she possesses. She’s a vessel, not a scholar, akin to a Sorcerer, Warlock, or Witch in D&D/Pathfinder terms more than a Wizard. The portal she entered to get this orb opened under the light of the Empty Star, so I think this will be Hilda’s inspiration. As she embraces this new path before her, she’ll stop referring to her family name (yes, a baker named Breadon maybe was a little too spot on, but I do crack myself up) and instead call herself Hilda of the Empty Star. This title fits the Patron perfectly, so Ptah-Ungurath will be pleased.
Here she is, in all her soon-to-be-corrupted glory:
My choices over these four level-ups will drive any min-max power-gamers insane. I made a dwarf with bonuses only in non-combat stats my frontline fighter. The closest thing to a thief has 6 Agility, and my cleric is the only PC with a negative Personality modifier. To top it all off, I took the only character of the four without an Intelligence bonus and made her my mage. Do I want them all to die or fail miserably? On the contrary, I am pulling for my party of four, desperately hoping they survive their first big adventure. But you don’t play DCC to win, you play to tell a great story. These four PCs, I am confident, have terrific stories on the horizon (assuming they don’t die horribly in the first encounter). I can’t wait to get started!
But first, a look at Hilda’s early corrup–, er transformation…
Hilda closed the shutters of her home with practiced ease. She’d already given her unbought items to Redor from the Beggar’s Alehouse, cleaned her kitchen, and prepped ingredients for tomorrow. Thanks to farmer Beeford, she still had an abundance of peaches, so tomorrow she’d decided to bake peach cobblers in addition to her usual items. Hilda knew several people who would be delighted.
She wiped her hands on her stained apron before removing it. Hilda wrinkled her nose. There was washing to do, but not tonight. She’d do it tomorrow. Tossing the apron aside, she turned to her bedroom with anticipation in her tired eyes.
Without cleaning face or hands from the day, Hilda removed her clothes and donned her nightgown. Everything she’d done today had been rote, like an ox pulling its cart. She baked her wares, smiled when it was required, made small talk with her neighbors and patrons, and performed her necessary chores. To anyone paying close attention, however, the shadows beneath her eyes had grown darker each day, a yawn always barely contained behind her lips. She’d lost weight, too, giving more unsold items to the Alehouse and rarely eating them. If anyone had noticed, none had brought it to her attention. They must have thought she was still recovering from her ordeal from the night in the portal. They could not be more mistaken.
Hilda sat cross-legged on her bed and carefully uncovered the item beneath her blankets. Shimmering light filled the room. There, in the center of her mattress, sat a crystal orb the size of a small watermelon, its pale light casting dancing shadows around the room. Her eyes sparkled at seeing it, the smile on her face genuine and wide for the first time today.
“Hello,” she whispered, caressing the orb lovingly. “Will you visit me tonight, then?”
She did not know how long she stared at its depths, yearning and wishing it to change. It had been days since the last visitation. And ho! Was that a flicker of blue amidst the white tonight? Hilda rubbed her eyes and then the orb, looking again. Yes, most assuredly a small square of blue, and growing. Her smile widened.
With an almost sensual sigh, Hilda waited. Soon the orb’s light was a pale blue, like the portal beneath the Empty Star into which she and the others had entered. Embracing the sensation, she felt herself pulled into a great vastness within the small sphere, beyond anything her mind could grasp. Hilda Breadon had never left the outskirts of the village of Graymoor, never considered that her home sat on a continent of land, surrounded by vast oceans upon a wider world. How, then, could she hope to comprehend an entire universe, full of countless planets living and dead, floating within a sea of stars and empty void? Her utter insignificance, her soul infinitely less meaningful than a mote of dust landing upon the Teawood River… Hilda had no words nor frame of reference as she lost herself to the orb’s cosmic scope. But lose herself she did, for hours on end, until the dead of night. Something unlocked within Hilda on these nights, though she could not explain to herself how or what.
Hilda stared vacantly at the blue orb, all sense of individuality gone, as she had done a handful of nights in the past two months. Tonight, however, was the first that a figure moved into view. A slender, hairless man, his body not so much black as the absence of anything, stared back at her from the orb’s interior. For long moments he considered her, as Hilda sat on her bed, staring, drooling, moaning, and expelling her bowels without care.
Then he spoke, and Hilda Breadon’s unprepared mind shattered into fragments as numerous as stars in the sky.
My Hero Brain 
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