The Life of a Barrel Breaker

Based on the ridiculousness of role playing video games.

My name is Bohr and I’m a barrel breaker. Just like my father, and his father before him, and his father before him and so on. In fact, my family is the oldest family of barrel breakers in the valley.

Each of us started out learning the basics by helping out our fathers. At the right age, we become their apprentice until we’re good enough to earn our barrel breaking license and join the Breakers Guild.

My boy’s not old enough to be an apprentice yet, but I’m teaching him all I can. He’s a fast learner with an inventive mind. I know he’ll be a better barrel breaker than I am one day and I dream he’ll become the best barrel breaker there ever was.

Barrel breaking is not year-around work. So I have to help the town smithy repair huts and stables or forge tools and weapons for a blacksmith to earn money until another contract comes in.

The town I live in lies at the opening of a valley that serves as an entrance to many lands and kingdoms until you reach the sea. Questing adventurers, heroes, and “Chosen Ones” make it their first stop. It’s here where they recruit others to join their party—warriors for hire, mages, elves, dwarves, and a barrel breaker, of course.

The barrel breaker’s job is to break open any barrels the party comes across on their journey. All hoping to find valuable loot. Like gold, silver, gems, or a special item needed to open a secret door, break a curse, or something else mysterious like that.

Any loot I find goes to the Quest Leader, who keeps some for himself and some to the others as he sees fit. But none goes to the barrel breaker. We get 5 pence for every 20 barrels we break. I also demand money for travel and food expenses and before the quest even starts.

Many quest leaders will try promising a share of the loot at the end instead, but experienced breakers learn not to fall for that. Despite all the heroic boasting, there’s no guarantee he or any of the questers will even make it to the end alive.

My work helps the questers save time. While they’re exploring a new town—talking to shopkeepers, bar patrons, housewives, and farmers—I’m breaking.

I break, I wait, and I follow. Mostly follow.

Following while they retrieve a farmer’s chickens in return for a golden egg, or get a housewife’s son back from hungry goblins to receive a magical flute as thanks. What would today’s townsfolk would do without eager questers to do all their dirty work for them?

What I don’t do is fight. The Breakers Guild fought very hard to make sure that’s in every contract. My tools may look like weapons, but they’re for breaking only, not killing. So, when the fighting starts, I find a safe place to hide until it’s over.

You have to pick your safe place carefully though. Hiding behind a too small boulder during a dragon fight taught me that lesson. And gave me burn marks all along the right side of my body in case I ever forget it.

The quests that only take you through towns, full of the same type of people, can be pretty dull. Thankfully, most quests mean traveling through shadowy dungeons, long-forgotten mines, and incredible lands full of ice, fire, exotic energies, and so many mysteries.

Barrel breaking is really about solving mysteries. Solving the mystery of what’s in the barrel. You can never know what’s inside it until you break it open to find out. It’s a very exciting thing for a barrel breaker.

If questers ever knew how fun barrel breaking can be, we’d be out of a job. Then, I’d end up one broke barrel breaker!

My wife hates that joke. But my father taught it to me and I still love him for each and everything he taught me. Now, I’m teaching my boy how to break barrels and solve the mysteries of the world. So one day, he might become a breaker that bards will want to write tales about.

My name is Bohr, and I am a Barrel Breaker.