Luckiest Longshot

Fenmoor Basin's Bog of Wails reeks of rot, mud, and terrible decisions. In it, Lucky Longshot was right at home.

It wasn't always all play and platypuses, though. Craniax the Quick's undead were everywhere. The Nimbledook gnomes held them off because no one else would. Four of them against an army that didn't sleep, didn't tire, and didn't care if you were having a really bad day.

And Lucky's bad days were on a very long streak.

One day, during a skirmish with the Conclave Arcana, she spotted something wedged in a corpse's skull. A boomerang. She yanked it free. The corpse sat up with a groan. Turns out it wasn't actually dead yet. Just undead.

Panicked, Lucky hurled the boomerang. Instead of hitting the undead, it clanged off Roddick Brassbuck's helmet, knocking him out cold. The boomerang returned to her hand. The undead lurched closer.

Lucky threw again. This time, the boomerang took the undead's head clean off. Then it sailed toward Razi Clanktrap. She ducked, and it bounced off her clockwork owl before returning to Lucky's hand. The owl screeched in fury.

Lucky stared at the gracefully curved piece of wood in awe. "It's a godforged-weapon-of-divine-return."

She threw it again. Razi ducked again. It ricocheted off Loving the Moo's horn and once again returned to Lucky's hand.

Loving the Moo scowled as he rubbed his horn. "It's called a boomerang, Lucky."

During a later battle, with the undead shambling ever closer, Lucky found a wand on a slain Conclave mage. It had bent when he fell. She carefully tried to straighten it… and the wand snapped, dangling at an awkward angle.

"Perfect," she said.

She turned and pointed it at a mindless thrall tottering toward her. The blast of magic hit a tree instead. The tree went up in flames that quickly spread to its neighbors.

Zipta Tumblegrit threw a canteen of water on it. No effect. Razi suggested it would be tactically advantageous to be elsewhere, perhaps where the trees weren't on fire. The others agreed, and they beat a hasty retreat.

Ah, the memories.

Nowadays, Lucky still fights with that same boomerang. She chucks it without looking. The odds of it hitting a nearby friend are a coin flip. The odds of it hitting its target are only slightly better.

She still has that broken wand, too. She aims carefully with her tongue poked between her lips in concentration, and the magic unerringly flies in the entirely wrong direction.

Once, during a drunken bet with a halfling barfly, she aimed the wand at a tankard of ale balanced on his head, and the blast of magic shot straight upward. They watched as it vanished into the sky.

Later that night, the halfling, Lucky, and the other Nimbledook gnomes sat around the campfire. Lucky laid out her meal, tied a napkin around her neck, and admired her scrumptious food.

It was at exactly that moment that the magic from her wand fell back to earth. It crashed into her plate with a horrendous explosion of noise and light. When the smoke cleared, no one was hurt. But all that remained of her dinner was a charred ruin.

The halfling gaped. "Why they call you Lucky is beyond me."

Lucky beamed at him. "Because I've got the bestest friends a girl could ask for, which makes me about the luckiest gnome there is."

Roddick grinned and punched her playfully on the shoulder. "Luckiest. I like it."

Razi raised her canteen in a toast. "Luckiest Longshot it is." Her clockwork owl hooted. It did not sound approving.

Somewhere in Praetoria, the gnomes of Nimbledook are still exploring. It's probably somewhere dangerous. And something ravenous with sharp claws and big teeth is probably stalking them. But Luckiest Longshot's got her boomerang, her broken wand, and three friends who'll never abandon her. Things will go wrong. They always do. But somehow, they pull together, and everything turns out alright in the end.

That's why, in spite of her never-ending streak of unluck, she's still the luckiest gnome in all of Praetoria.