The Jester

The Jester (formerly known as The Lonely Jester) is a being created by Melissa Psylionne's Epithet: Illusion. Therefore, like all of Melissa's illusions, The Jester is not a real person, but instead essentially a mass hallucination that everyone is picturing at once. It is due to this that his actions actually seem to have some sort of impact on the world around him, even if it's a strange kind of placebo. Despite this, The Jester is one of two illusions (along with Abel) that appear to have some kind of weird, greater tangibility within the world. Of course, this is hard to confirm, and he doesn't believe it either. Under any applicable circumstances, he will always make sure to tell everyone around him that he is, in fact, not real.
The Jester is also one of Melissa's most recurrent illusions, as he typically tends to remain at her side under most instances. He has been around for at least a year or so minimum, seeing as how he has made his presence known in the Destruction Bench Agreement Tournament, which takes place approximately a year and a half before the events of Madness Ensues.
== Powers ==
In a very strange scenario, even though he is comprised completely of "Illusion Epithet Energy", The Jester has somehow gained an Epithet of his own: Riddle. This gives him dominion over anything puzzle or riddle based, which has a variety of applications.
His basic attack is a "Brain Teaser", where he utters a riddle so ancient, so incomprehensible that his target's brain begins to ache. This is essentially a psychic shock wave.
As for the rest of his powerset, his main gimmick comes from his Passive: Mad-Lib Mania. With this, The Jester can ask any of his allies for a given type of word at the start of his turn and then stored the word in a word bank. These words can then be applied to various of his other abilities. "From Riddle to Reality" lets The Jester take one of his stored words and apply it to the real word either by summoning the thing the word represents, taking the meaning of the word and applying it to a person, or anything else he can manage to stretch with what he's given. "The Bigger Picture" creates a monster by combining three words, and this monster's powers depend entirely out of which words it is constructed out of.
Unrelated to his Passive, The Jester can also use "Puzzling Technique" to transform two objects into jigsaw puzzle pieces that fit together. This causes them to zoom towards each other, seeing as how this puzzle just has to be completed.
== Madness Ensues ==
=== Part 2: A Grade-A Performance...Actually, More Like Grade-F ===
In this Part, the party first encountered "The Lonely Jester" after exploring the rest of Bloomenburg High School's first floor post Melissa Illusion. He served as the gatekeeper that blocked the way up to the higher floors, requiring the party to solve three riddles before they could pass. Taylon Carvaan didn't even attempt to use his brain long enough to solve them, but the rest of the party faced a daunting task. The first riddle was fairly simple, but the second one ramped up the difficulty a decent amount. However, once reaching riddle three, The Jester confessed that he had forgotten what the original riddle was, and had the party partake in a Mad-Lib instead. Considering the party were a bunch of immature high school students, you can imagine how this went.
Once his trial had been completed, The Jester admitted defeat and gave the party a cautionary riddle regarding the second floor before disappearing. He was next seen behind the second floor's locked gate, ready to give the party one last riddle regarding the third floor before passing them on to Abel. However, after claiming that "this would probably be the last time he saw all of them", various members of the party expressed their genuine like of The Jester and how they wished to be his friend, officially removing the "Lonely" from his name. In particular, Slick Horseman attempted to offer him an egg as a sign of their friendship. However, The Jester simply replied with: "Well, that's real nice of you Slick, but I'm not real!...Goodbye!!" and disappeared without fanfare. Slick was left partially traumatized.
The Jester was seen very briefly after the party confronted Melissa, where she summoned him as an emotional support illusion while she was having her venting moment.
== Destruction Bench Agreement ==
=== Episode 8 ===
The Jester was summoned out of nowhere in this episode after Venus Vanderbelt used an ability that allowed her to take one of three pairs of rolled adjectives and use it to create a siege weapon of some kind. One of the words she rolled was "perplexing" which was used to create a grenade that exploded into illusory, purple smoke, causing The Jester to appear. Since he didn't have any riddles prepared beforehand, it took him a fairly long time to get his things prepared. Once he was finally ready, though, he challenged Venus and her party to answer his riddles and gain a fair amount of stamina back if they got the correct solution. This...took very long to resolve, and due to the team's lack of riddle-solving-prowess, they didn't garner much of a result.
-
=== Episode 12b ===
The Jester was one of the many audience members the party was leading out of the DBA Building during the episode's monster outbreak. When they reached the DBA Main Lobby, he and the rest of the audience members were initially placed within a protective barrier which cut them off from the incoming horde of Robo-Robins. However, after Benny Brooks got an incredibly high roll to summon a "monster card" from his deck, the card he drew inexplicably summoned The Jester. This was very cool, but The Jester was almost immediately obliterated by a Natural 20 Robo-Robin explosion.
-
=== Episode 26 ===
This episode marked The Jester's first appearance as a party member, albeit as a follow-around NPC. He was one of the six DBA contenders transported into The Shadowrealm by W, although by W's own admission he was a last minute pick seeing as how the rest of W's intended picks ditched the DBA match last minute. This caused an unexpected issue once the party and other NPCs within W's mock killing game reached the cruise ship's lower deck, were Epithets were disabled. Seeing as how The Jester is composed of pure Epithet...W had to make an exception.
Throughout the session, The Jester proved to be a fairly useful supporting member of the party. He was able to push the players in the right direction during the investigation and trial when needed, and also demonstrated a great amount of utility in the fight against "Wiktor". Unfortunately, The Jester was the only party member to actually be knocked out during said fight. Fortunately though, he was revived just in time to help deal the final blow.
As a fun side note, due to Slick's unique circumstance as to how he was in DBA, The Jester did not recognize him in the slightest when they met here. Slick was initially very disheartened, but the two of them soon began to get along just fine.
-
=== Episode 45 ===
The Jester appeared by technicality in this episode, with an even less real version of him being summoned by Googol's Saffron Judith Pemberton Summon by use of Mars Asterbelt's Gachapon based powers. Upon his arrival, he used his Mad-Lib powers to send a Villainous Venus Vanderbelt Summon to a Christian Cathedral in order to have her "not be evil". This partially worked, and then he gave Mad Pixel Lord Leon Neon a gun.
-
=== Episode 50 ===
The Jester appeared by technicality as a Time Construct created by a chain reaction of temporal anomalies at the heart of DBA. He showed up during the fourth and final DBA PC Mob Rush, where he made up part of an audience of NPCs. He had no idea what was going on.
== Trivia ==
* Patronix had the idea for "The Lonely Jester" while taking a shower, specifically having "I'm The Lonely Jester! They call me that because I don't have any friends!" be the starting basis for the character.
* The Jester's voice was another key factor as to why he was made, and it is a roundabout reference to internet personality ProZD's video "games that think more gameplay mechanics equals more fun" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZKcZbi1rg
* The Jester was originally created to be a one time gag, but much like Robin Rimmicks, he was loved by the players and viewers to the point that he has now become a more integrated/important part of Madness Ensues and DBA lore.
* Patronix absolutely loves playing The Jester when he can.
* Details regarding how The Jester can exist without Melissa being anywhere nearby are incredibly underdeveloped and it is probably better that way.
* The Jester is incredibly short, being approximately 2 feet tall.
* The Jester has gained an infamous reputation for holding up combats (or other scenarios) by virtue of his riddles and/or mad-libs.
Category:Characters
Category:Madness Ensues Characters
Category:Destruction Bench Agreement Characters