You are Dude, a valiant type of guy from Placelandia, out to defeat the evil Baron von Badnoun and save the land from whatever's wrong with it.
You've been walking for a while. It's pretty expository and easy to follow. But then, suddenly, there are choices! The road splits into three ways: left, right, and straight ahead.
Which path do you choose?
You choose to go left. The path leads down into a valley. In the middle is a huge dragon.
You weren't prepared for this kind of thing so soon, so you die fairly quickly. Baron von Badnoun lives on to terrorize the place and wreck stuff, and your quest fails utterly.
THE END.
You choose to go right. The path soon comes to a beach, and then fairly quickly, an ocean. You don't remember living so near the ocean before you set out, but, hey, whatever.
Baron von Badnoun's evil fortress dungeon of evil lies in the far distance to your left, suspended over the sea on a rocky crag that looks pretty ominous, as far as rocky crags go.
How will you get there?
You choose to go straight. Pretty soon, you're at the Baron's evil fortress dungeon of evil. Hey, that was pretty easy. Guess you wouldn't really need to hide something that ominous, would you?
You stroll through the front gate unhindered to the front door. It's locked, of course. Just because you don't hide your evil lair doesn't mean you want everyone barging in on you all the time.
How do you get in?
You decide to walk your happy butt right down the beach to the Baron's house. It's rather sunny and pleasant, and there are even a few cute girls in bikinis frolicking about nearby. Good idea.
Soon, though, you're at the foot of the foreboding cliff, on top of which is the Baron's evil crib. It's pretty far up there.
Now what?
For some reason, there is a ship nearby. You decide to use it.
Despite having no prior sailing knowledge and no one to help you with the rigging and anchors and ballast and whatnot, you somehow manage to get the ship out into the open water and turn it toward the Baron's fortress. That's actually pretty impressive, so good job there.
Suddenly, you hear sirens, so you pull over. That's when you notice the trio of scantily-clad merbabes lounging on the nearby reef, singing and smiling and lounging and having a merpillow fight. They beckon you over all sexily-like.
Do you dare?
You decide to climb right up the cliff face to the Baron's keep.
You get about halfway there before your arms give out and you plummet to your death on the rocks below. Maybe bring a rope next time if you're gonna try these stunts.
THE END.
You choose to go around to the front of the fortress. Why complicate things, right?
Pretty soon, you're at the Baron's evil fortress dungeon of evil. You stroll through the front gate unhindered to the front door. It's locked, of course.
How do you get in?
You decide to go hang with the merbabes. Using your uncanny shippery knowledge, you sail right on up to their reef and weigh the anchor. It's pretty heavy, so you go ahead and drop it in the water.
The merbabes are all impressed with your big, sleek ship and the way you handle it so effortlessly. In fact, they're so impressed that they ask for a ride.
Pick up the sexy sea chicks?
You decide to ignore the sexy, mostly naked mermaid girls who are all alone on that reef and totally coming on to you without even trying to hide it. Yeah. That's, uh...y'know. Probably for the best. Good call there.
Anyway, now there are pirates. I know, right?
Whaddaya gonna do?
You tell the lovely fish ladies to hop onboard. They promptly do so. Soon they're hanging all over you while you do donuts in the waves. You can't imagine why anyone ever said that paying attention to sirens was supposed to be a bad idea.
Suddenly, a kraken appears! But instead of tearing your ship to pieces, it tells you how awesome you are at this and offers to be your buddy. You accept, and you, your new kraken buddy, and your posse of merbabes go on a spur of the moment treasure hunt.
You find a buttload of treasure and all get rich. Soon your name is known far and wide as that amazing, super-rich sailor dude who's always surrounded by sexy merbabes. Life quickly becomes freakin' awesome, and you spend the rest of your days having grand adventures and getting more and more famous and beloved the world over, all with the constant niggling suspicion in the back of your mind that you're forgetting about something.
THE END.
You decide not to give the sultry sirens a lift on your ship.
They decide that this isn't very nice, so they drown you.
THE END.
You decide to stand your ground and fight the pirates! You'll show them!
Or you would, if you had cannons and gunpowder and all that. But you don't. So really, you just end up shaking your fist at them menacingly while they blow your new ship into little tiny toothpick-sized pieces.
Hmm...maybe shoulda stayed with the sirens, eh?
THE END.
You decide that screw this noise, you're going home. You didn't sign up for this crap. You were just supposed to go stab an evil Baron, and now there are random ships and flirty mermaids and pirates out of freakin' nowhere. This is ridiculous. You quit.
You turn that boat around and park it back on the beach, then walk back to your village. Baron von Badnoun is still out doing that evil stuff he was doing, but whatever. Let someone else deal with that headache. You can't see it from your house anyway.
You spend the rest of the day surfing the internet. Later on you'll live a fairly normal life, completely free of evil Baron stabbing. You're pretty okay with that.
THE END.
You decide to knock politely on the front door. The front door, very impolitely, bites your head off.
Whoa! Didn't see that coming, didja? Yeah, don't feel bad, nobody does.
THE END.
You decide to bust that door right the hell down. So you back up to the front gate, put your head down, and charge.
The door opens on its own a moment before you reach it, and you run headlong through into the front room, which is mainly taken up by the huge spike pit right in the center that you hurtle yourself over and into.
If you hadn't been staring at the ground as you ran, you would've seen that coming.
THE END.
You decide to sneak through a nearby window. It's not high off the ground, and it's big enough to fit through. You don't even have to break the glass - it just lifts right up.
Inside is a large bathroom, white marble done up in hot pink accents, with a big claw-foot tub against the far wall. The tub is full of sudsy bubblebath water, a small yellow rubber duck, and the evil Baron von Badnoun, completely naked save for a shower cap with a flowery pattern.
The two of you lock eyes at the same time, neither of you moving, and for the length of a long and awkward pause the only sound in the room is the gentle popping of the evil Baron's bubblebath bubbles.
"Wh-who, er..." the Baron stutters in a wavering voice. He clears his throat and tries again. "Who dares disturb the great Baron von Badnoun's repose?" he booms, his now-deep voice echoing off the marble. More bubbles pop. That rubber ducky is staring right through you.
How do you respond?
"It is I, Dude of Placelandia," you announce courageously, "come to put a stop to your evil ways. Prepare yourself, villain!"
"Oh," says the Baron, regaining his composure. "Dude. Yes, I've heard of you. You're the noble yet inexperienced protagonist, correct? I've actually been expecting you." Then, to your horror, the Baron starts to stand up. You quickly turn away and cover your eyes to prevent the sight of his evil, soggy junk from invading your eyeballs.
Suddenly, you're on fire. "I admit I wasn't expecting you for at least another few pages," the Baron says over the crackling of you being on fire. "Luckily I always keep a spare fireball in Ducky here, just in case. Thank you for sticking so adamantly to some semblance of a serious plot, or else I might have forgotten about it entirely."
You might curse his name, or vow vengeance, or caution a reckoning for his wicked ways, or even say, "You're welcome," if you weren't on fire. Unfortunately, you're on fire.
Very soon, though, you stop being on fire and start being dead. Or, actually, there's a bit of overlap in there where you're simultaneously dead and on fire, but for all intents and purposes the chain of events goes "fire, dead." No sense arguing the semantics of causality.
Not that you could. On account of being dead. Because of the fire.
THE END.
You point a derogatory digit at the soaking Baron and laugh heartily. "Baron von Badnoun?" you chortle. "More like Baron von Bubbly...pink...girlysissystuff," you finally decide. You didn't have a well-planned taunt prepared for something like this. You chortle a little more to make up for it.
"Cease thy chortling!" the Baron commands, cheeks going as pink as his interior decorating. "There is nothing humorous in this! I am, I am the scourge of all known worlds and, and perfectly secure in my masculinity, and there is nothing embarassing about, er, about...er..." His protestations die off in the wake of your derisive mirth, and he slumps down into the bubbles, face still flushed, staring down at his rubber ducky as if for guidance.
"Yes, alright," he mumbles after you've tired of chortling. "I get it, okay? This isn't what an evil Baron's evil fortress dungeon of evil is supposed to look like, I know. But not all of us have to perpetuate a stereotype to feel good about ourselves, alright?" He pulls off his flowery shower cap and drops it to the fluffy pink rug next to the bathtub. "So what is it you want then, eh? Justice? Fame? Denouement? Let's get it over with, already."
Good question. What do you want?
You threaten to reveal the Baron's embarassing secrets to the world unless he cuts you in on a piece of the action.
The Baron quirks an eyebrow. "What action?" he asks.
"You know," you clarify for him. "Evil Barony powers and large sums of money and free-reign over a poorly thought-out and simplistic quasi-fantasy world."
"Oh," the Baron says with a snort. "That. Yes, well, that's easy enough. You have a deal."
And so, with the evil Baron von Badnoun dealt with (though not in the way you'd initially planned), your adventure comes to an end. The Baron takes you under his wing as his successor, and you enjoy joint custody of the oppressed populace that now cowers at both of your names instead of just his. You split the bimonthly tributes fifty-fifty, the Baron teaches you the best techniques to use when torturing captured heroes, and you move into the swanky evil fortress dungeon of evil. You even get your own bathroom, which you promptly redecorate.
You're a real dick, Dude.
THE END.
Without a word, you pull out your sword, walk calmly across the bathroom, and shove it through the evil Baron's neck before he can scrabble out of his bathwater. He gurgles and falls back into the bubbles, now washed dark red by his rapidly-draining lifeblood. You are hard-freaking-core, Dude.
Good thing, too. If you'd let him stand up, you'd have seen all his naked wet Baron bits, just flopping there out of the water. No one wanted that.
With Baron von Badnoun vanquished, the land is saved! You return to Placelandia a hero, loved by all, especially the ladies. They give you a medal for your heroism, erect a statue of you in the town square, and then give the statue a medal for being so damned handsome. Parents tell stories of your adventures to their young'uns, who try desperately to emulate you.
This causes a huge tragedy when dozens of kids, following in your footsteps, leave town to retrace the steps of your adventure. Unfortunately, at the expository crossroads, they all turn left. None survive.
So now you've gotta go slay a dragon to redeem your legacy and avenge the slain children of Placelandia's grieving citizenry. But we'll get to that later.
Maybe do some push-ups or something beforehand. Y'know, just in case.
THE END.
You take a deep breath and laugh at the Baron some more. Then you snatch up his shower cap and rubber ducky and climb back out the window before he can stop you, ignoring his hasty demands to know what you're doing and the sloshing sounds of him frantically getting out and looking for his clothes.
When you get back to town, you promptly tell anyone who will listen about your encounter with the evil Baron von Badnoun and his girly habits. You even invent a few new ones yourself: according to you, the Baron also wears frilly dresses when he's home alone, insists on being called "Stephanie," and his group of evil minstrels play nothing but Squire Bieber songs on repeat. You pass around the flowery shower cap and cute little rubber ducky amongst the populace for proof.
Before long, all the land has stopped being afraid of Baron von Badnoun (or, as he's more commonly known by these days, Baronette von Powderpuff, which admittedly is much better than whatever you came up with). No more fearful tribute is paid to him, no more serious adventurers go out to stop him, and he can't make an appearance in any town without being thoroughly emasculated. Humiliated beyond belief, he retreats to his fortress never to be seen again, though occasionally some local kids go and toilet paper the place and come back with stories of hearing a grown man crying like a little girl just inside the walls.
Surprisingly, you start to feel pretty bad about this. Of course, he kind of deserved it - evil was right there at the beginning of the title, after all - but still... Not the most mature way to handle things there, Dude.
Seriously, what would your mother say if she knew?
THE END.