To most people it seems as though the adventurers known as the “Troublemakers” led an almost charmed existence. There were certainly times when serious harm was inflicted on them, and even death befell more than a few of them during the course of their adventures. Most of the time these misfortunes were able to be handled relatively well thanks to the powerful spells of the group itself or of its allies. Almost everyone in the Troublemakers died at least once, but Archduke Xan took the most damage, with many of his closest friends having lost count of how many times he suffered fatal injuries. In fact, he died so many times that he was unable to continue adventuring as a ranger and had to accept life as a mere warrior.

Violent deaths awaited several of the other members of this intrepid band that they were not able to recover from. One of these was the secretive young woman who went by the nickname “Tre Pee”. She stayed close to the mysterious and talented fellow who called himself “John Smith” until they left the Troublemakers and set out on their own. Almost immediately they had a difference of opinion as to what they should focus on. John wanted to return to the town of Jivet-au-Marruse to try and restart a hunt for Druuna the green dragon. Tre Pee wanted to immerse herself in a life of opulence and luxury, and that would not be found in Jivet-au-Marruse. Therefore, she headed north to the land of Escaut. With her charms and dazzling personality, she became quite popular in the court of the Count of Gravensteen. She spent a few blissful years here avoiding any real adventure until one fateful evening when adventure showed up unannounced in the form of the Viceroy and his army of hobgoblins. Wielding a terrific curse that became known as the Gravenplague, everyone in the city of Gravensteen was turned into a zombie that became carriers of the horrific plague that would go on to kill over eighty percent of the people living in Escaut. Tre Pee spent a few miserable months as a mindless undead minion of the Viceroy until she along with all of her fellow monsters were irrevocably annihilated during Brother Zach’s “Show of Divine Power”. Tre Pee and her secret identity, that of the true heir to the throne of the elven king of Maelonbourg, were forever erased in a fashion that made it impossible to divine, leaving the Archduke of Maelonbourg the rightful ruler of Renatus and passing that right to his heirs.

John Smith had perhaps an even more dismal end. Once back in Jivet-au-Marruse he did what he could to find a weakness that he could exploit in order to kill Druuna the fearsome green dragon that ruled Foret Verte. At every chance he would tell anyone listening in the taverns of Jivet-au-Marruse about how this dragon had pulled a “dick move” when she ambushed him and two others in Foret Verte, using her chlorine gas breath weapon to kill all three of them. The orcish shaman Brohka was able to revive them, but John still held a grudge. And so, a couple of years down the road when this same green dragon had been transformed by the Viceroy into a dracolich which then descended on Jivet-au-Marruse in a violent rage, it was no surprise that those in close proximity to John heard him howl “What a dick move!” as the dragon once more unleashed her chlorine gas. John perished with nearly the entire population of the town during this horrific assault, their bodies devoured by the dracolich in order to further fuel its terrifying breath weapon.

The Troublemaker’s first paladin was a bold yet humorless man named Strohan. His life course was on track to make him one of the most powerful of the group as a force for justice and good, but instead he followed his own desires and found himself in a very dark place. While Tubicus Aurelius would take up the role of paladin for the group, Strohan ventured north to investigate the rumors surrounding the man known only as “Le Duc” who ruled Condamner with an iron grip. Strohan originally set out to destroy this wicked creature, but over time he became seduced by the sinister evil of Le Duc. Succumbing fully to his darker urges, Strohan became one of the fiendish ghouls in the service of Le Duc. When the great revolt took place in which the people of Condamner overthrew Le Duc and his undead vassals, Strohan was caught up and along with hundreds of other ghouls was burned in a great pit near the capital. No hint of him remains to this day as the horrors of Condamner’s past have been systematically wiped out by the new lord of the land, none other than Strohan’s replacement in the Troublemakers, Duke Tubicus Aurelius.