Tough Luck McDonald

“If something’s going to go wrong, it might as well hit me first.”

A broad-shouldered dwarf farmer with more grit than glory, Tough Luck McDonald walks into danger because someone has to — and because he believes he deserves it.

Who He Is

Tough Luck McDonald is a farmer’s son who never meant to leave home.

He speaks plainly, thinks slowly, and carries more weight than most men twice his size. He wasn’t the smartest in his family, nor the quickest with words, but he was steady. Reliable. The sort who could work a field from dawn to dusk without complaint.

Now he wanders from settlement to settlement asking the same question:

“You seen a dwarf girl? About this tall.”

He never explains much more than that.

He says she was taken.
He says the trail led toward Drakkenheim.
He says he’ll find her.

When pressed, he grows quiet.

There’s something in his eyes when the subject turns to children—something harder than anger and heavier than grief. Whatever happened, it happened close. Close enough that he still feels it.

And he means to make it right.

Why He Came to Drakkenheim

Mac believes his sister was taken into the ruined city.

He has asked nearly everyone he meets if they have seen her.

He does not hide this. He does not cloak it in pride or strategy.

He is here for her.

Everything else is secondary.

Personality

• Dry, self-deprecating humor
• Protective to a fault
• Assumes the worst — prepares for it anyway
• Willing to stand between danger and anyone smaller than him

He expects things to go wrong. He simply refuses to let them go wrong for someone else.

Reputation (So Far)

• Physically imposing
• Reliable in a fight
• First to step forward when someone is threatened
• Surprisingly gentle with children

While others debate tactics or politics, Mac tends to ask a simpler question:

“Who needs help?”

Present Status

Operating out of Emberwood Village with the party, Tough Luck walks into every fight as a brother first. He has a date, a page, and three living names who walked out of the Garrison the day his sister didn't. He's fought through the Queen's Men's pits alongside the others, the Ironhelm dwarves are the next door, and he has not stopped asking his question.

Drakkenheim took something from him.

He intends to take it back.

Recent Developments

A Lieutenant's Promise

After the rescue of Petra Lang from the Rat's Nest Tavern, Petra extended Tough Luck a quiet courtesy. She promised to check the Shepherd's Gate ledgers herself, and to ask Slovak — the gate's overseer — to do the same. They were looking for any record of a dwarven girl matching Hazel's description who might have passed through.

She did not promise results. She promised the search.

A Captain's Word

Following the same rescue, Captain Ansom Lang committed his own resources to the question. He told Tough Luck he would review the Lantern records personally and consult his dwarven contacts in the wider network. "It may take time," he said. "But you've earned the answer if there is one to give."

Tough Luck did not press him further. He had heard those words before.

The Name in the Log

On the third morning back in Emberwood, Tough Luck pressed Ansom again at the Watchtower. Ansom told him these things took time.

Before the meeting ended, a messenger arrived from the duty desk with a folded slip of paper. Ansom read it twice before he spoke.

"Her name — Hazel McDonald — appears in a quartermaster's log from four years ago. A supply run into the Garrison. She signed in. She did not sign out."

"I'm not telling you this to give you hope. I'm telling you because you've earned honest information. We'll keep looking."

Tough Luck did not say much after that.

But for the first time since he arrived in Emberwood, the trail had a place. The Drakkenheim Garrison. Four years ago. A name on a page, in a hand he did not know.

It was not much.

It was something.

Taken

Against the Warp Witches on the road back from the Chapel of Saint Brenna, one of the witches got inside Tough Luck and held on. The party couldn't hit hard enough to break its grip. It took Katja Braun — the Falling Fire prisoner Six cut loose mid-fight — locking him in place with hold person before the others could beat him down to unconsciousness and drive the thing out of him.

He came back to himself carrying two levels of contamination.

The Price at the Stones

Rustar walked him out to Old Zoya and her seven standing stones. She was plain about it: what she could do for contamination wasn't a cure, it was an exchange. Nothing comes off a person for free.

Tough Luck accepted. The price was some of his blood for the stones, and a sliver of his own luck, drawn out of him along with the contamination.

He walked away lighter. His luck doesn't quite sit where it used to. That debt is still on the books.

The Page

At Shepherd's Gate, Tough Luck wanted the actual ledger, not a report of it. Slovak said he didn't have authorization. Tough Luck flipped his desk. Two gate captains arrived, and for a moment it looked like it would come to blows — until Tough Luck turned Slovak around with nothing but a hard look and plain intent. Slovak brought out the book himself and opened it to the page.

Five names went into the Drakkenheim Garrison on the 14th of Harrow, four years past. Three came out that evening: Corporal Bram Osgood, Nella Ferris, and Wick Talbot. Two did not: Hazel McDonald, and a hired porter recorded only as "Dredge."

Slovak is still digging into the other names. Tough Luck has started waking before dawn with Osgood's name in his teeth.

The Ivory Inn

At the Black Ivory Inn, Tough Luck's tremorsense found the basement and the tunnel beneath it. When the party broke into the smugglers' den, he held the doorway and took the worst of it so the others could grind the smugglers down.

When the time came to end the Inn's fifteen-year night, Tough Luck was the one who smashed the piano.

The Misfits' Question

The party's catchphrase in the pits of Buckledown Row is Tough Luck's own: "Have you seen a little dwarf girl?" By the champion fight, the Row was selling it on tunics. Tough Luck believes the crowd is on his side, and wants to help him find her.

The morning before the champion fight, Tough Luck pressed Six again about the dwarves and his sister. Blackjack Mel turned up mid-conversation, plainly having overheard. Mel assured him that his contact, Baldric Grimwick, was on the case, and that there would be more help once the ladder was done.

In the ring, Mamba Jones's poisoned blades found Tough Luck more than anyone.

Most recent session: Session 19 - The Queen Walked Out