Pebbles Quest - TV Tropes

Your knight in shining armor.

Pebbles Quest is an animated series by Atastic. It stars a knight named Pebbles on a quest to save the princess of his dreams, meeting and rescuing other fair maidens along the way!

...Well, that's the generous way to put it. Most of the series is about Pebbles either kicking ass or suffering various misfortunes. Starting off as conceptual animations under the title of MasterQuest, it would come back as a series of tangentially related skits, then develop into story arcs with the introduction of B.

The full series so far is available on Atastic's YouTube channel.

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This work provides examples of:

• All There in the Script: Because of the overall lack of dialogue, a lot of characters go unnamed in the animations themselves. Atastic's video descriptions and community posts reveal some, like the ghost named Beatriz, the thief called B., or the goblin Zock.
• Ambiguously Human: Besides communicating in steam exhaust, Pebbles moves more like a sentient suit of animated armor than a person wearing the armor, able to spin his hands to drill into things with punches and cut them with his fingers. When his arm is mangled, it clearly causes him pain, but he's still able to move it and gesture with his hand, albeit in contortions that cause audible cracking sounds. This also applies to Bell, another knight who's never seen without the armor, though she doesn't do what Pebbles does.
• Androcles' Lion: When Bell cures a treant-like entity from a parasitic dark sludge that makes it wilted and droopy, it returns the favor by pounding the resulting sludge monster to a pulp just as it's about to kill Bell. The tree then lifts her up to give her a view of the forest...and a thumbs-up for good measure.
• Attempted Rape: Implied by Carla's kidnapping of Nova and stated intent to have some "alone time" with her. Fortunately, Pebbles catches up and stops Carla with the help of Prince Alucard.
• Bag of Holding: B.'s face is just a black void. Anything she puts in her hood falls into the void, but while B. can stretch her hood to fit large objects, a huge golden moai-like bust proves too big to pass through, and she tips over from the weight when she tries to walk away with her hood wrapped around it.
• Beware the Silly Ones
  • Pebbles himself qualifies. In some ways, he acts like a rubberhose cartoon character, and like a rubberhose cartoon, he switches between a pathetic wimp and effortlessly bodying whatever he fights as required for the scene.
  • Orwyn is basically just a beard and two eyes in a little cloak, who talks almost exclusively in memetic audio samples. He also lives up to his 'Shadow Wizard' status with the power to wreak incredible (if cartoonish) violence, and conjure anachronistic weaponry up to and including nuclear bombs. In "Hold", he seemingly destroys Pebbles with Hollow Purple out of absolutely nowhere.
  • Crawly, a character based on CRAWLY's real-life gnome wizard skits, fights Orwyn one-on-one using only a net and transmogrification magic. Their battle ends in a draw.
  • Carla's first appearance in "HoverBlade" sets her up as a bully, but goofy and non-threatening, same as how Orwyn only ever inflicts Amusing Injuries on Pebbles. Then at the end of the Apple Arc, Helene the escort staggers her way to Pebbles, seriously injured at Carla's hands...
• Boisterous Bruiser: Prince Alucard has a tendency to give himself the majority of the credit for everything, even when he and Pebbles work together. It's hard to say he doesn't deserve credit, though, seeing him oneshot a huge cyclops, effortlessly block Carla's attempt to catch him monologuing, and later use his Retractable Weapon to pull Pebbles in for a surprise Combination Attack.
• Breakout Character: Bell, the healer who appears to be an Ambiguously Human armored figure like Pebbles, was originally one of many side characters in Pebbles' story. However, her similarity to the main protagonist, her bumbling efforts to help that caused more harm than good, and the amount of personality she conveyed without a voice all endeared her to viewers and stirred up no small amount of shipping. This popularity led to Bell's expanded role in Pebbles' story, and eventually her own dedicated side-adventure series, making her a sort of Deuteragonist.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Pebbles Quest began as a series of seemingly disconnected short skits, but with the Thief arc, it starts to develop a story. Then with the Healer arc, it starts taking itself seriously.
• Dem Bones: In "A Bone to Pick", Pebbles fights a room full of skeleton soldiers with red-and-white equipment and spiked helmets that put themselves back together after he defeats them, complete with Dry Bones sound effects. He also deals with some blue mushroom-themed skeleton guards that do not have this ability in "Cookies"...which bites Pebbles in the ass when the skeletal princess Olga walks into the room and sees the state he left her guards in.
• Dynamic Entry: In the middle of his Incoming Ham declaration, Prince Alucard rams his horse directly into someone before finishing it. The first time, he does it to Pebbles, and the second time, to Carla.
• Expressive Mask: Both helmeted characters have this. The gaps in Pebbles' visor can change shape, usually into tiny dots for surprise/confusion and spirals for disorientation. Bell's visor can do the same, the gaps bending like eyebrows to more directly convey emotions.
• Heroic Mime: Pebbles does not have a voice. The closest thing to vocalization he makes is train whistle noises, complete with puffs of steam.
• Incoming Ham: "Do not fear! PRRRINCE ALUCARD IS HERE!" *horse whinny*
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Prince Alucard is self centered and claims all of the credit for taking down Carla when Pebbles was just as instrumental in her defeat, but he still helped Pebbles do so without expecting anything in return while making good on his promise to help Pebbles in a time of need.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Prince Alucard is a heroic hamfest with a thoroughly pronounced chin. So pronounced, he can hold spare crests in the crack in the middle of his chin.
• Large Ham: PRRRINCE! ALUCAAARRRD!!! Complete with Trrrilling Rrrs.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Pebbles is most often a Butt-Monkey surrounded by beings who overpower him, outwit him, or just scare him into submission. But when he gets pissed, he can let loose an onslaught of destructive attacks that leave his opponent completely unable to defend themselves, as the Thorn Knight experiences firsthand.
• Line-of-Sight Name: Prince Alucard is the one to give Pebbles a name in-universe, knighting him 'Sir Pebbles' after some stray pebbles on the bridge where they cross paths.
• Mêlée à Trois: "Boom" stars both of Pebbles' initial main antagonists, Orwyn and B., running into him and each other at the same time when Orwyn interrupts Pebbles in the middle of chasing down B.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: Carla mockingly telling Pebbles to play with his other friends seemingly reminds him of the crest he received from Prince Alucard, which he promptly uses to summon the prince to turn the tides.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Bell the healer and Sticks the friendly novice mage both try to help Pebbles at various times, only for him, and sometimes them as well, to suffer as a consequence. Bell gets better about it, eventually.
• Pile Bunker: Prince Alucard's lance works like a hybrid between this and Retractable Weapon. It simply extends with enough force to carry a cyclops taller than him standing on his horse's back into a Twinkle in the Sky before retracting just as quickly. All without Prince Alucard moving his wielding arm.
• Psycho Lesbian: Carla is only interested in women, specifically princesses. She also kidnaps them and is a cackling madwoman who takes great pleasure in beating Pebbles into gravel.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Prince Alucard is a prince (duh) who travels the land, fighting monsters and ne'er-do-wells, knighting travelers, and gifting crests that can be used to summon him in times of need.
• Trauma Button: The pain Pebbles endured at the hands of Orwyn leads to him approaching Sticks with hostility for also being a wizard, even though Sticks has none of Orwyn's malice.