A bolt out of the blue, James was in the middle of DMing for his pals when a magical artefact encountered in the game crosses the boundaries of imagination to draw them into the world of fantasy!
*Warning, trying to keep the DnD jargon down in this story is almost impossible. I'm explaining things as I go for the uninitiated and it should be less of a problem after this chapter.
Beyond the Screen
By Dr. Bender
Chapter 1
It was a typical college Sunday night. Crickets were chirping the night away outside, somewhere in the distance a frat party was raising the roof and tucked away in our quiet little corner apartment, five nerds gathered around a large table covered in pizza, paper, dice, coffee and soda and pretended to slay dragons.
But I guess I better introduce you to the guys first. Contestant number one on my right tossing popcorn into his mouth is Daniel Bronson, aka Sir Tristan Wallace, Paladin of Gozer the Sun God. An Arts and Philosophy major, Daniel took great delight in testing the edges of the Paladin’s moral code of ethics (for the uninitiated, Paladins are a type of character that gets power from following the faith an tenets of their gods, who are always Lawful and Good… don’t worry, I’ll sit you down and talk you though alignment later). Between pontificating upon the nature of and evil as well as wrestling with his own conscious, Daniel also enjoys fertilizing Sir Tristan’s garden with the blood of Evil creatures great and small, mowing them down with alacrity using a greatsword longer than he is tall.
On Daniel’s right sits Jason Darling-Woodcock, the man with the most unfortunate name on campus, adjusting his glasses. He made up for his name, his lack of personality, his arrogant streak and his chauvinism with an ability to memorize small factoids and follow rules that bordered on godlike. Naturally, he was in Engineering. Our resident rules lawyer, Jason only ever plays Wizards, I suspect because he discovered how unfathomably powerful Wizards are after several days of careful number crunching at some point in his youth. His current character, Haian Nailo, was an enigmatic Grey Elf Wizard (Grey Elves being the variant elf race that gets Intelligence bonuses, thus making them the superior choice for Wizards rules-wise). Enigmatic because Jason didn’t bother with things like ‘roleplaying’ or ‘character background’, his character purely exists as an avatar through which Jason can kill things with large explosions.
Opposite Jason on my far left is Ryan ‘The Duck’ Howard, the group mascot and newbie. A freshman still looking for a major, Ryan’s portly five-toot-six frame earned him his nickname, spurning the more traditional Monty Pythonesque suggestion of ‘The Shrubbery’ when it was offered. As the resident newbie, the group had foisted off upon him the job of being the Cleric. It’s not that Clerics are a bad class, they have quite a few benefits over other characters, it’s that the vast majority of a Cleric’s job is being the party medic. When most of your spells go towards keeping the idiot members of your party alive, it’s not often that a Cleric actually achieves much else unless there’s some Undead around. Alan Wyldmane, Priest of Sharess, was at least a deep character with several pages of background material (bloody freshmen get all the time off, I swear) dedicated to freeing the oppressed and giving charity to the poor.
Standing as he shook a dice in his hand (standing is a sure-fire way of attracting high rolls to your dice) directly to my left was the last player, Thomas Penny. Taking the role of the Thief (or Rogue, as the rulebook calls them, but in Thomas’ case his character was most certainly a Thief) mainly because Wizard was taken, Thomas was undeniably in the game for the looting and pillaging. Most parties only manage to cart out of a dungeon the things which are valuable but not nailed down. Thomas’ ability to affect means of transportation for things otherwise unreachable to the ordinary player was the stuff legends are made of, as was his ability to talk his fellow party members into some epically stupid situations. His character, Jace Longarm, had a nice background blurb that sketched out his previous life as a Half-elf bastard living on the streets that was at once compelling yet served as a vehicle for Thomas’ avarice. Being in IT, he and Jason were alternately best friends and at each other’s throats.
Finally, sitting at the head of the table was my humble self, James Wilson, Dungeon Master, Greybeard (an honourable or dishonourable title given to older players by the younger generation) and system administrator for the university network (such as it is) at the ripe age of thirty three. Being, I’m informed, aged and wise I got the job of DM, which I don’t believe for a minute. I got the job of DM because I’m the only one with a job that doesn’t have to study six hours a day on top of class schedules and I’m a sucker. On the other hand, they did seem rather vehemently opposed to me playing again after our last trip to GenCon (an enormous gaming convention).
“Come on baby,” Thomas implored his dice as he shook it, rolling to see if Jace had the skill to disarm the acid trap on a treasure chest, “papa needs a new pair of Boots of Elvenkind…”
He dropped the dice, which rolled into the clear patch of table between the empty pizza boxes and a stack of rulebooks, bouncing off Daniel’s glass of concentrated caff… er… Mountain Dew. Our Lady of Averages failed to hear his prayer, however, as the twenty-sided dice landed on a natural one.
“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” Thomas screamed at the ceiling, doing a better job of it than Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith after discovering that he’d killed the love of his life along with his unborn children.
I did an admirable job of holding in my evil glee. “Well, it’s a good job the rest of you waited outside. The chest explodes into a torrent of molecular acid, covering the whole room. Thomas, Jace takes… thirty seven points of damage. You’ll also take an extra 2d6 per round as long as you’re in the acid.”
Thomas made a strangling noise after subtracting the damage from his hit points (hit points or HP being the measure of a character’s health). “Oh, shit… guys, I’m down to -2! Ryan, I need a cure, STAT!”
“The acid is also slowly eating through the piles of treasure in the room,” I added helpfully.
“NO!” Thomas cried out in a panic. “Ryan! You’ve got the Ring of Telekinesis, SAVE THE TREASURE!”
Ryan was looking a bit confused and flustered at Thomas’s confusion and intensity, so I came to his rescue. “Thomas, you’re unconscious,” I gently reminded. He immediately fell boneless into his chair and groaned. “I need a beer,” he griped.
“No alchohol,” I rebuked sternly, “not after the pubic hair noodle incident. What are the rest of you doing?”
Jason finished flipping though the Player’s Handbook (the rulebook that guides players in creating and playing their characters. There are companion volumes for the DM’s eyes only along with a few expansions) and looked at his fellow players. “I know this is going to sound crazy but we should set the acid on fire.”
“WHAT?!?” Ryan shouted as Thomas turned pale and Daniel shook his head in disbelief. I, myself, started to get a headache.
“Look, the acid does 2d6 points of damage per round,” Jason explained his ‘logic’ patiently (2d6 being short hand for two 6-sided dice that give a value of between 2 and 12 when rolled together and a ‘round’ being about 6 seconds of in-game time), “being set on fire only does 1d6, which is half the damage. Plus, the fire will oxidize the acid faster which will stop it from melting the treasure. Putting a fire out is much easier than neutralizing the acid, unless someone happens to have several hundred pounds of alkaline handy.”
I rolled 2d6. “Ok, while you’re discussing what to do, the acid does 4 points of damage to Jace Longarm and melts half the gold into a puddle of slime.”
“-6, guys,” Thomas reminded them, “if I get to -10 I’m toast.”
“That’s it, I grab the torch from the wall sconce and throw it into the acid,” Jason declared.
“The moment I see him reach for the torch,” Daniel countered, “I tackle him and try to grab the torch out of his hand.”
I gave a long-suffering sigh. “Ok, the two of you roll initiative.”
An initiative roll occurs when someone wants to start a fight, to see who gets the drop on who and goes first. Daniel’s character, Sir Tristan, won due to his better dexterity and proceeded to tackle the weedy Elf Wizard Haian to the ground where they struggled while their friend dissolved into his constituent atoms.
“While they’re struggling,” Ryan said, looking through his character sheet, “I’m going to cast an area of effect Cure Serious Wounds that should get Tom… er, Jace Longarm in the area of effect. I roll… a 9!”
“Good thinking,” I encouraged. “Ok, Thomas, what’s Jace going to do?”
Thomas sat up before speaking, brought back to life by being part of the game once more. “I take out my flint and tinder and set fire to the acid!”
I paused for several moments to take the opportunity to squeeze the bridge of my nose and push the burgeoning headache that was starting to gain traction to the back of my mind. “Ok, you are now covered in burning acid. You now take 3d6 points of damage per round and I roll… 16. You’re dead, Jim. Oh and the treasure is now nothing but a puddle of goo.”
Jason tried to pipe up as Thomas stared daggers at him. “Wait a minute, the fire should burn off the acid!”
I ticked points off on my fingers. “Number 1: the acid wouldn’t burn off that quickly. Number 2: acids aren’t flammable by themselves but I’m assuming that some form of by-product from the chemical reaction is producing a flammable gas, like Hydrogen, in small amounts. Number 3, would you much rather such a byproduct was being given off in copious amounts, thus producing an effect much like a fuel-air bomb…”
“No-no,” Jason quickly recanted, “your ruling is fine and fair!”
And that, dear friends, is how you deal with rules lawyers. Turning the page, I quickly glanced through the items in the treasure horde. “Oh, wait, there is one thing left. Once the fire goes out, you notice a glowing gemstone amidst the sludge.”
Their spirits appeased after the loss of their hard-earned loot, the party decided to wait for the acid to neutralize by itself before retrieving their comrade’s corpse so that Alan Wyldmane could use one of his Resurrection Scrolls to bring Jace back to life (a Scroll being a magical item that has a one-use spell written on it, useful for when you need a spell beyond the level of your character or as back-ups so that you don’t have to use your character’s memorized spells that have a limit to the number of times you can cast them per day). While Alan and Jace were busy, Sir Tristan and Haian considered the glowing red orb on the floor.
“I make a spellcraft skill check to identify the orb… I roll 47.”
I muttered something under my breath behind the DM’s screen (a cardboard partition that conceals the DM’s gaming notes, rolls and assorted swearing at the stupidity and mary-sueness of players from the players themselves). “No matter how hard you try, you cannot identify the item through either mundane or magical means. Its name, purpose and intent seemed to be obscured through occult means.”
“Oooh,” Daniel cooed, enraptured, “might be an artefact!”
I must apologize at this point for the large amounts of jargon. Artefacts are powerful magical items that throw spice into games by deliberately breaking the rules. Each is unique, powerful, and usually a complete pain in the ass for DMs and Players alike. This doesn’t stop Players from coveting them, mainly because players are incorrigible, relentless, aquisitionistas. Yes, I had to make up a new word to describe the depths of greed to which Players will sink. Mammon is an amateur, Adventurers are the professionals.
“I’ll pick up the orb,” Jason said.
Nodding, I began to read out the appropriate passage from the dungeon’s text. “Red mist swirls inside the gem for a moment before coalescing into the image of a burning eye…”
“Original,” Thomas muttered. I glared at him before continuing.
“…the stonework shakes and trembles as the malign intelligence beyond the depths of the jewel turns it’s gaze upon each of you in turn. After a moment of fearful tension, a deep voice speaks…”
“GREETINGS MORTAL VOYEURS OF THE OUTER REALM, YOUR FOOLISH TINKERING WITH FORCES UNKNOWN IN YOUR CONTINUITY HAS BROUGHT MY PRESENCE FOURTH.”
The deep breath I’d taken stuck in my throat as the booming voice hailed us from the thin air over our table. We all froze for a moment, looking at each other in fear and confusion.
“Er,” I coughed and smiled when nothing more was said, suddenly feeling sheepish, “all right, where’s the CD player?”
“I AM NO PRE-RECORDED MESSAGE,” the voice growled, an inky black stain beginning to bleed into the air from the point it issued from, “THE LEFT EYE OF THE ELDERS SEES THROUGH THE BARRIERS OF CONCEPTION. ALL YOU CAN IMAGINE IS. WHAT YOU IMAGINE EXISTS OUTSIDE YOUR CONTINUITY, YOU MERELY PEEK THROUGH THE BOUNDRIES AS I DO TO FUEL YOUR PETTY GAMES.”
I blinked and discovered that I was standing, perhaps unconsciously trying to look into the expanding cloud over the table and talk to it ‘eye to eye’. I slapped Daniel’s hand down when he tried to reach out and touch it, not wanting to risk that he wouldn’t be pulling back a stump. The other four were staring at it in a mixture of wonder and terror, I can only attribute my clear head to being so deeply in the mindset of the game that the internal sanity buffers that usually protect me from player’s decisions kicked in and saved me from going mad.
“What do you want?” I asked, sounding braver than I felt.
“LIKE YOU, I LOOK UPON OTHER WORLDS TO EASE THE BURDEN OF EXISTENCE. IT AMUSES ME TO CAST THOSE SUCH AS YOURSELVES INTO THE PRIME MATERIAL PLANE FOR MY SPORT.”
I gulped. To explain, DnD has a whole cosmology based around the worlds that we bring to life through our play. It’s best to think about it like an onion, though this is a gross oversimplification. The centre of the DnD cosmos is the Prime Material Plane, which contains worlds that we would consider more normal except for the existence of magic. Beyond that you have other planes of existence: positive and negative, the four elements and the ‘great wheel’ which is divided into realms such as Heaven, Hell and even less savoury places.
“ENTER THIS COVENANT WITH ME AND I SHALL WATCH OVER YOU IN THE OTHER WORLD, GIFTING YOU WITH POWER BEYOND YOUR WILDEST IMAGININGS. OR REFUSE AND SPEND THE REST OF YOUR DAYS LANGUISHING IN THIS BANAL EXISTANCE.”
Jason stood up, his eyes suddenly alight. “Power? You mean, like magical power?”
“IF THAT IS THE CHARACTER YOU WISH TO PLAY…”
“Wait,” Thomas stood up as well, “you mean we get to pick who we are in this other universe if we go with you?”
“ERRR… YES.”
I wasn’t sure if the booming voice suddenly sounded unsure of itself because it was unused to being interrupted or if it simply wasn’t expecting such an enthusiastic reaction.
“TO AN EXTENT,” the voice quickly added, “THE CHARACTER MUST BE AN ORIGINAL CREATION.”
“Yes!” Daniel exclaimed, leaping up to give Thomas a high five.
“Wait a minute, guys,” I said, trying to break the three dunderheads out of their rapture, “use your brains for a minute. I’m older and nobody will really care if I up and disappear. You all have parents, family and friends.”
“I’m going to get real magic, hot elf chicks, magic swords and everything demotivational posters said I wouldn’t ever have,” Jason replied, “screw ‘em.”
The other two enthusiastic idiots nodded in agreement.
“You might also get to know what it’s like to be doused in burning acid,” I rejoined.
Jason frowned, his thoughts wandering. “Maybe I can create a Wall of Powered Soap spell…”
I gave up and turned to Ryan, my last hope for sanity. He sat stunned, staring at the character sheet that lay on the table before him. “Ryan?” I called to him gently. He broke out of his reverie immediately. “What? Wait! Wait, we’re not leaving,” Ryan cried out in a panic, “I haven’t decided which character I want to be yet!”
My last hope crushed, the disembodied voice laughed as the black cloud expanded, engulfing the room in the darkness between worlds.
Before our intrepid adventurers enter the DnD world, they must face a test of might and mettle without a rulebook to guide them.
Beyond the Screen
By Dr. Bender
Chapter 2
The next thing we knew, we were falling. My feet hit the ground after only a few feet but, being unprepared for the impact, I face faulted into the hard, cold, dusty, stone floor. We coughed, hacked, writhed and groaned on the floor amidst billowing clouds of dust for a few minutes as our brains adjusted to the teleportation induced vertigo. The first to recover, I hauled myself onto my knees, checking out the room as I did.
We were lying in a dungeon room; that much was obvious. Brickwork reminiscent of medieval castles decorated the walls, floor and ceiling, vaulted to prevent the roof from caving in on us. It was a circular room with a single exit, the centre dominated by a wide pedestal atop which rested a variety of unusual objects the precise nature of which I couldn’t account for from my position on the floor. The pedestal, however, was decorated with embossed silver dragons and engraved Celtic knotwork. Curious, I picked myself up and took a few trembling steps forward.
Atop the pedestal sat a silver bowl engraved with a pentagram, the tips of which touched the rim. Sitting inside were five translucent crystal balls, each occupying one of the triangular points of the star. Beside the bowl sat an honest-to-gods scroll, yellowed and brittle with extreme age.
“Hey,” Ryan croaked at me, “a little help here?”
Nodding, I gave him a hand up and a pat on his shoulder, noticing that Daniel was doing the same for the others. Jason was immediately drawn to one of the iron lanterns that hung from a hook on the wall, literally oooh-ing and aaah-ing as he stared into the light from different angles. “It’s a Continual Light spell on a stone,” he informed us, “this is so fucking awesome!”
“All right, Elminster,” Thomas quipped, rubbing his head where he’d hit it on the floor, “care to inspect the pedestal for traps while you’re at it?”
Rolling my eyes, I circumvented the next few hours of possible indecision by picking up the scroll, causing a chorus of shocked shouts and gasps. “Dude!” Daniel admonished me, pale as a sheet. “You don’t just grab shit like that!”
“Anyone here have any ranks in Disable Device?” I asked, looking at all of them. My group shared a confused glance at each other in reply, giving me nothing more than a noncommittal shrug. “I didn’t think so,” I confirmed, opening the scroll as I spoke, “but look. The walls aren’t crushing us, there’s no pit traps and I haven’t keeled over from contact poison. I just saved us several eons of agonized indecision.”
Ryan chuckled, wiping his sweaty brow. “I see what you mean, was he really this bad at GenCon?”
“No,” Thomas muttered so that he thought I couldn’t hear, “that was nothing compared to GenCon.”
“Welcome to the DnD world,” I read from the scroll, partly to conceal the evil smile of satisfaction that was threatening to betray my joy at their despair, “in this bowl, thou shalt find the crucible of your transmogrification. Before you may leave the Tower of Testing, you must carry these crystal balls through three trials. How you act, approach, solve, succeed or fail these trials will determine who you will become before you face the wider world. Your new history will be written, along with new memories, skills, abilities and even bodies; though you will always remember your true origin. Take up yon crystals and bring the fight to the myriad forces of evil. Yours sincerely, Xagyg. Well, that explains things a little.”
I mused on the name written at the bottom of the page. Xagyg was one of the many alter-egos of one of the creators of DnD, a legend amongst gamers in his own time, the man who created an industry. By the lore, an eccentric mage powerful enough to build an artefact that could steal Godhood. Comparably, pulling a group of players into the fictional world of the game was child’s play.
Jason picked up one of the crystal balls and started waving it around. “Transform! By the Power of Greyskull! Pikachu, I choose you!”
“Gotta do the trials first, dumbass,” Daniel muttered as he took up his own crystal.
“I dunno about this,” Ryan admitted as he looked at the room with his crystal in front of one eye, the other squeezed shut, “the magic items the party got in the cartoon show were cooler.”
“Kid,” Thomas groaned as he picked up his crystal, “Tiamat’s probably still passing those through her digestive system. I don’t care so much as long as I don’t get the power of Heart. Seriously, what sort of lame ass power is Heart?”
Rolling my eyes, I picked up the crystal without a word and, since nobody seemed interested in the scroll, I tucked it under my arm as well. “So, I got the scroll, who’s trying the door?”
“No guts, no glory,” Daniel sighed, stepping up, “I’ll do it. Ryan, behind me, we’ll go through first; then Jason and Daniel on the other side and James behind them.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Why am I taking up the rear?”
“Age before beauty,” Daniel said with a wink.
Parties often adopt a standard operating procedure for opening doors during dungeon runs. You can never be too sure whether the next room is empty or if you’re about to run into the jaws of a Red Dragon, so it pays to have a plan. Daniel listened at the door for a moment before turning the handle and opening it as quietly as possible. Fortunately, it wasn’t locked and the hinges were oiled and quiet. “Clear hallway, another door at the end of the hall about ten feet along,” Daniel reported with some relief after taking a peek, “I’m moving to the next door, same party order, keep the noise down.”
We moved lightly, still dressed in sneakers, dirty t-shirts and trousers. My mind wandered, thanking whoever had built the place that it was warm enough that we didn’t need jackets. I’d just fallen into place behind Daniel when the door behind us slammed shut.
“Oh…” I only got half the oath out before the wrenching feeling of teleportation vertigo hit me like a sledgehammer.
#
Daniel emerged from a glowing silver portal as if a bouncer had shoved him roughly out of a nightclub, stumbling a few feet before he regained his balance. He couldn’t tell how big the room he found himself in was, a thick mist obscuring everything around him. Shadowy pillars loomed on all sides, the diffuse light not strong enough to properly illuminate anything but the fog that surrounded him. Aware that he was all alone, he stopped for a moment and listened, trying to make out any clue of where he should go next.
That was when he heard the feint cry of a child pleading for help.
Always a man of action, Daniel was running forward before his brain caught up with the idea that the noise might be bait for a trap. Pushing the doubt out of his mind, however, he surged ahead. The mists parted suddenly, revealing a short, green-skinned, humanoid that Daniel immediately recognized as a Goblin from the pictures in the Monster Manuel. It was standing over a blonde-haired human boy in a peasant’s smock, kicking him in the ribs repeatedly.
Enraged, Daniel screamed as he charged, seeing red for the first time in his life. The goblin turned, startled at the sound but screamed back in defiance, pulling a dagger from its belt. Daniel didn’t bother with niceties, skipping a step to kick the foul critter in the head, sending it reeling to the floor. Dazed, it didn’t see Daniel’s boot coming down on its face until the last moment, one last cry of fear reduced to a gurgling death rattle.
Making sure the thing was dead; Daniel knelt by the kid on the floor. “Are you ok?”
The kid sat up and nodded, cradling his ribs. “I think so. Thanks, mister.”
Daniel blinked as the innocent smiling face before him started to fade out of existence, dissolving into a bright golden radiance. The light swirled into a sparkling cloud that was quickly sucked into the crystal ball in his hand.
#
Jason rolled with the fall through the silver portal, landing in a crouch. Taking in the mist and the pillars with a glance, he moved in a half-crouch to take cover behind one of the pillars just in case someone was drawing a bead on him. No arrows, knives or bolts of lighting shot his way, however, so he continued moving from pillar to pillar after allowing himself a short breath of relief.
It wasn’t long before he heard the sound of a scuffle and the cries of a child. Peeking around one pillar, he saw the same situation as Daniel (though he didn’t know it at the time), a goblin kicking a human boy who was on the ground sobbing. Hefting the crystal ball in his hand, Jason decided that it was both heavy and solid enough to use as an effective bludgeon and crept out from behind the pillar while the goblin’s back was turned. The first blow caved its skull in, staining the crystal with blood, brain and bits of skull.
“You ok, kid?” He asked as he started going through the goblin’s pockets. Worried when he received no answer, he looked over his shoulder to find that the boy had disappeared. He gasped when the goblin’s body dissolved into red light that was quickly absorbed by the crystal in his hand, the blood on it evaporating as it began to glow.
#
Never the most co-ordinated of people, Thomas slipped as he came through the silver portal, falling heavily on his bony ass. Groaning, he picked himself up and stumbled forward, wincing as he rubbed the sore spot. He was totally oblivious to the sounds of scuffling and crying until the mists parted and he found himself staring at a goblin who was staring back as it stood over a whimpering human boy.
Thomas froze, not knowing what to do. The goblin wasn’t so indecisive. Its scream startled Thomas before it charged, pulling a dagger from the sheathe at it’s belt. The first blow was a headbutt into the man’s groin that doubled him over, the second saw the hilt of the dagger being rammed into his forehead, toppling him. Dazed, clutching the bleeding wound on his forehead, Thomas couldn’t do anything but groan as the goblin spat on him and scampered away.
The boy managed to get to his feet and limp over to Thomas, giving him a weak smile. “Thanks for trying to help, sir,” he said, before dissolving into a weird grey radiance that turned his crystal ball milky white.
#
Unbeknownst to him, Ryan discovered one of the tricks of overcoming teleportation vertigo by accident. He his gut reaction to the wrenching sensation caused him to blink, avoiding the usual embarrassment of stumbling or falling as he emerged from the portal. He also heard the scuffle and cries almost immediately upon arrival and moved cautiously forward, keeping an eye on his flanks as he moved ahead at a brisk walk. When the mist parted, he took in the situation and put on his best scowl.
“BEGONE WITH YOU, VERMIN!” He bellowed at the goblin, marching forward with purpose and hoping that the weird light and the mist would obscure the fact that he wasn’t armed with anything more than a glass ball.
The goblin bought it, scampering off into the mist without another word. Ryan knelt beside the boy, his first aid training kicking in. “Are you hurt kid? Let me see.” The boy looked up and smiled at him before dissolving into sky-blue vapours that slid peacefully into the ball.
#
I barely stopped myself from losing the contents of my stomach, feeling quite dizzy after emerging from the silver portal. Pushing the feeling away with sheer willpower, I took stock of the misty room and looming shadowy pillars and quickly but quietly moved behind one before proceeding forward from pillar to pillar. It wasn’t long before I heard the scuffling and the crying but I determined not to rush into anything until I knew more.
Peeking around one pillar, I saw the little pre-programmed tableau of the goblin and blonde-haired boy. I also took in the dagger that sat sheathed in the goblin’s belt, which started to ring alarm bells in my head. Goblins being evil humanoids, why would it kick the boy when it could just as easily slit his throat? Determined to find out more, I snuck around the pillar and up behind the goblin while it was preoccupied and deftly pulled the dagger from its belt before grabbing it by the back of the tunic and hauling him into the air.
The goblin did a lot of kicking and squealing but I held it at arm’s length until he got tired. “Are we done now?” I inquired as his legs slowed. “I just want to ask you a few questions.” Looking panicked all of a sudden, the human boy tried to scramble to his feet and run. I took the initiative and kicked his legs out from under him. “And you, stay down there until we get to the bottom of this.”
The kid whimpered and cried some crocodile tears, clutching his shin where I’d kicked him but I blew it off, turning back to the goblin. “Well? Why torment this boy?”
The goblin spat at the floor and answered in a voice that was half growl and half high pitched squeak, almost as if a small dog had gained the ability to speak. “That little pukata stole my coinssss! Give them back, thieving runt!”
I mentally filed the word ‘pukata’ away as an insult in Goblinoid languages. Looking down at the boy, I glared. “Is this true?”
He flinched and didn’t meet my gaze. “Of course not…”
I dropped the goblin and grabbed the kid, quickly searching his pockets. I found a few loose coins that I tossed to the goblin, which hugged them to his chest.
“Hey!” The kid protested. “Mom says stealing from goblins is ok because they’re all Evil!”
Sighing, I showed him the goblin’s dagger. “Kid, you’re lucky all he gave you was a thrashing. Now show me how you got in here in the first place...”
I blinked in surprise as the kid’s tunic slid out from between my fingers, turning along with his flesh and the nearby goblin into a pulsing purple light that poured itself into my crystal ball. I barely had time to retrieve Xagig’s scroll before I felt the wrench of another teleport and suddenly I was stumbling out of another portal in a circular room with more portals affixed to the wall.
“Yo, James!” Daniel said, hopping over and patting me on the shoulder. “A bit tense there for a moment, almost thought we’d lost you.”
I scanned the room, finding the other four, each with their crystal balls filled with a different coloured glow. Thomas had a bandage on his head made from Ryan’s shirt sleeve but everyone else looked fine.
“Let me guess,” Jason said to me, “Kobald kicking a boy? You did something and your ball got filled with this weird magic mist?”
I nodded.
“I kicked its ass,” Daniel skited, “Jason here snuck up and brained it. Ryan scared it off.”
I looked at Thomas. “Got your ass kicked, huh?”
Thomas had the good grace to blush. “It got the drop on me. What about you?”
“I disarmed it,” I shrugged, “found out the kid had stolen some copper pieces from its pocket and gave them back.”
Daniel looked at me like I’d grown a third head. “Dude… goblins are always Chaotic Evil.”
“Usually Chaotic Evil,” I countered, quoting the goblin entry in the Monster Manual from memory, “goblin could have stabbed the little bastard to death just as easily.”
“Meh,” Jason interrupted, “I should have searched the kid. You got here late, so everyone called dibs on the items already.”
I blinked. “What items?”
The guys led be over to another pedestal, beyond which stood an iron door. It was larger than the first one, probably in order to fit the five items that sat atop it. The first was a Longsword of fine make, engraved with dragons and rubies at the hilt. Next was a dagger, a dull blade with an edge honed to razor sharpness and a hilt bound with scaly black hide. Third was a silver amulet with an engraved rune that I didn’t recognize inside a perfect circle. Fourth was a ring inset with a diamond. Last was a large tome.
“Sword’s mine,” Daniel informed a little too possessively, “Ryan’s taking the amulet and Thomas bagsed the ring, of course.”
I looked at Jason. “Not the book?”
Jason shook his head. “It’s not a spellbook, I checked, just a bunch of maps and some bullshit history lessons.”
My interest piqued, I opened the book and scanned the contents. “Actually, this is just fine. We’ll need to know this sort of thing once we get out of here. So, when we pick these up, will the door open or will we get teleported again? Any bets?”
“Only one way to find out,” Daniel said, grabbing the sword. Since I was right there, I scooped up the book. It wasn’t until Thomas, the slowest of us, had pocketed the ring that the door swung open of its own accord, revealing a larger room beyond.
“Not going to put it on?” Ryan asked Thomas as he slipped the amulet over his head.
“Nah, don’t want to risk that it’s cursed,” Thomas said. Ryan grabbed the amulet as if it were about to burn him but nothing happened. Thomas smirked. “Don’t worry, I’m paranoid.”
Daniel and Jason brandished their weapons, obviously braver now that they were armed, and made their way into the next room. I followed with the other two taking up the rear. The room beyond was also circular and we found ourselves facing another pedestal. This one, however, had glowing blue magical runes hovering in the air above it. There were no other exits apart from where we’d come from. The floor was bare and dusty like the rest of this place, with a few bits of rubble on the floor from stones that had fallen loose from the ceiling. Jason, Thomas and I stepped up to the pedestal while Jason and Daniel did a lot of posing with their weapons on the pretence of searching the room thoroughly. Ryan simply wandered about, kicking pebbles.
“What do we think, guys,” I said to Jason and Thomas as we stared at the glowing blue runes, “solve the riddle, open the secret door?”
“No, look at this,” Thomas stepped up, pointing out various symbols. “See? They’re the same four symbols repeated randomly. Four by Four square, four of each symbol, sixteen in total. I’m betting it’s a simple sequence puzzle; we’ve just got to work out what the right order is.”
“Shit,” Jason muttered, “I never was any good at this.”
“You need to play more video games,” I said, never believing as I wiped the dust off of the pedestal that I’d be right. The same runes that were floating in the air were engraved there, concealed by the dust. A four by four square arranged in a progressive sequence with one rune shifted to the right and the end rune retuning to the beginning of each successive line. Curiously, the square was surrounded by two concentric circles of more runes, though these were different to the ones in the centre. “Guys, get ready,” I informed the other three as Thomas began arranging the runes in the right order, though we all seemed clueless as to what we should actually do.
“There,” Thomas said, placing the last rune with a flourish.
Several things happened in quick succession. The runes turned red and took their place at the centre of the pedestal, inserting themselves into the engravings. There was a grinding noise for a moment as the two outer circles of runes began to spin, the glowing blue runes emerging from the stone to float listlessly in the air. We all looked upward as the ceiling began to descend in classic DnD style, earth raining down on us from between the brickwork. One of us muttered an oath but for the life of me I couldn’t tell you which one of us it was as the words ‘we’re screwed’ were running through my head at the time. I wasn’t aware that my thoughts were prophetic until a spark of white light leapt from the pedestal and exploded in the middle of the room into a weird quadruped form. The creature was an insane amalgam with the head, talons and wings of a bird of prey before the body, hind legs and tail of a lion. It was also the size of a horse.
“GRIFFON!” I shouted, identifying the monster immediately. Unfortunately, it was faster than any of us, its raptor eyes fixing on Ryan who stared like a stunned mullet. The griffon leapt without pause, pouncing like a cat with talons and beak outstretched with a single beat of its wings.
Ryan screamed and threw his hands over his head, expecting to be eviscerated. I don’t really blame him for losing continence; I doubt I’d have had as much dignity as he did. I think he was more shocked than the rest of us when the griffon bounced as if an invisible shield had been placed between them.
Daniel recovered first, charging at the monster, yelling at the top of his lungs. He put on a good show of it as well, slicing the beast’s neck with the tip of his sword and distracting it from Ryan. Fortunately, it looked just as unsure as to how to attack Daniel as Daniel did holding the blade. Jason was about to join the fray with his dagger but I grabbed his elbow. “Jason,” I shouted over the clamour, noticing that Thomas was slipping the ring onto his finger, “engineer, slow the ceiling down!”
Realization dawning, Jason nodded and handed me his dagger while he ran off, grabbing a brick before attempting to scale the wall. Great, I thought to myself, looking at the dagger in my hand, I just volunteered. Grabbing Thomas’ shoulder, I turned him around to face the pedestal. “Solve this!” I shouted. He nodded, letting me know he understood.
By the time I was able to turn my attention to the battle, things were looking bad. The beast had Daniel backed against the wall and was testing his defences with short snips of its beak and swipes with its talons. Ryan, however, was distracting it with small success by throwing bricks at it. Taking a deep breath, I dropped the book and scroll, tucked my crystal ball into my pocket, took the hilt of the dagger in both hands and charged. I wasn’t stupid about it. I timed my charge between Ryan’s throws and targeted the area between the thing’s shoulder blade and neck. I felt a measure of triumph as the blade sank into flesh like a hot knife through butter.
My victory was fleeting. Screeching in pain, it glared one eye at me to let me know that it was pissed off before slamming its head into my chest, sending me hurtling into the wall and knocking the breath out of my lungs, leaving the dagger still in the wound. Daniel took advantage of the distraction to dart past it, giving it a swipe with the sword that cleaved its left wing from its shoulder. To add insult to injury, Ryan scored a good shot, bouncing a brick off the griffon’s head as it whirled around to face Daniel again.
We all shuddered when the squeal of gears announced that Jason had figured out how to jam the ceiling. What we weren’t expecting was the engineer student’s leap from his perch on the wall and on top of the griffon, retrieving his dagger and depositing it back in the creature’s eye. Daniel joined in, lunging to bury his sword up to the hilt between the creature’s ribs, searching for the heart. Leaving that fight to them, I hauled my shaky self to my feat and leaned against the pedestal.
“Jason’s bought us some time,” I told Thomas as he busily played with the runes in the air.
“I can’t get these things in order,” Thomas said through clenched teeth, scowling in frustration. “They keep floating away! There’s too many!”
Considering the runes floating in the air, I reached out and grabbed one of the weightless slivers of light, noticing that I could hold it perfectly well, even if I couldn’t feel it. Looking down at the rotating circles, I picked out the same rune and placed the glowing one into the engraving. The rune immediately burst into red radiance. “There, rune for rune,” I pointed out. Thomas nodded and got to work.
I copped my scroll and book back up, checking on the other three. Jason and Daniel were finishing off the griffon still, who hardly had any fight left in him and was just barely keeping the two at bay. Ryan was puffing on the floor, red in the face and sweating bullets. I decided he needed a distraction. “Ryan, Thomas and I need your help.”
It took a few seconds but Ryan seemed grateful for my intervention and we quickly got the runes inserted. We felt another wrench as the last rune was slammed home, propelled through space and time once again.
You’ll forgive a storyteller; I’m sure, for presenting what happened next in an order that enhances the drama of the event. I assure you that I tell my story this way only so that you, dear reader, may feel the full gravitas of the situation. In truth, however, I wasn’t in any fit state to remember much except for the broad strokes, though I can infer much and doll it up with a little poetic licence.
Daniel landed with a clatter on the tall grass, surrounded by woodland under a clear sky. A bracing breeze brought with it the scent of pines and he allowed himself a few moments to breathe the fresh air and feel it on his face, laughing to himself. The clatter came from the plate armour that had appeared on his newly fit and muscular body, a body that was used to battle drill and hard travel. He was also now handsome, tanned and lantern-jawed beneath his helm, with a sword belted at his hip.
He leapt to his feet, shouting and laughing in incoherent joy, his voice much deeper and more masculine. “Woah! Woah! You guys feel that? Hey, I’ve got armour now… and lookit these GUNS!” He said, posing to show off the thickness of his arms, which was impressive even encased in steel (or perhaps more so).
He grabbed Ryan around the shoulders as the new cleric stared, too enraptured to notice. Ryan was dressed in red and white robes over a thin suit of chainmail, a holy symbol of a design that I didn’t recognize around his neck. A mace hung from his belt, perfect for beating in people’s heads, though he looked like a more handsome version of himself compared to Daniel’s gross physical changes.
Daniel’s smile fell away when he noticed Jason staring daggers at Thomas, instinctively knowing who was who. I mention that, indeed, we did instinctively know which of us occupied which body despite radical changes in features of mannerisms. We just knew each other and that was that. It was therefore obvious why Jason was so upset and how Daniel managed to restrain Jason before he did something he might regret.
Jason was a Grey Elf, shorter and slighter than Daniel’s new body by a good margin. He was even shorter and thinner than Ryan now. He was wearing black leather armour festooned with straps and assorted daggers and blades, most of which could be covered by his dark grey hooded cloak. His features were now angular and sharp, even more than his lven heritage should dictate, with large dark eyes that were at once soulful, mischievous and dangerous. At that point, however, mostly dangerous.
Thomas, on the other hand, was still human. Dressed in a grey robe with embroidered silver trim, he looked a bit older and more gaunt, his dark hair worn to the shoulderblades bound in a series of ponytails. He also carried an ornate black staff tipped with a roaring dragon’s head, rubies inset in the eyes.
Jason screamed expletives as Daniel picked the little man bodily off the ground in a bear hug, preventing the elf from running over and clawing out his eyeballs, though he kicked and screamed in Daniel’s grip. “YOU SON OF A MOTHERLESS WHORE! YOU STOLE MY MAGIC! I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU!”
For his part, Thomas backed away slowly, looking like he was ready to bolt (whether this meant running or casting lightning, I could have probably gone either way).
“Jason!” Ryan snapped, his grave tone serious enough to cut through the rogue’s ranting and command attention. It wasn’t until they noticed that Ryan wasn’t staring at them or himself that they followed his gaze, turning their heads in unison to where I stood.
I was standing, in shock, knees shaking, staring at petite hands that grasped firm, dumpling-shaped, protrusions on my chest.
My hands.
My chest.
My breasts.
I was a woman.
Some challenges are greater than others, though this may be lost on most of our intrepid, oblivious, adventurers. For James, however, the challenge of not breaking his hand on foolish heads will be great indeed...
Beyond the Screen
By Dr. Bender
Chapter 3
I was a woman. The words bombarded my brain, ricocheting off the inner walls of my skull, repeating themselves over and over as if to test their sanity and validity. That alone might have pushed the limits of my sanity but, looking down at myself, there was much more to say. I was a HOT woman. A Kendrick male of the Lensman series would have called me a ten system call-out (a measure of the number of planetary systems worth of males would chase after me with their tongues hanging out, though I can say in all honesty that I could have depopulated whole constellations in this manner).
Beyond my petite hands and pleasantly rounded, though not enormous, breasts, I was a sleek beauty with a waistline I would have called impossible without PhotoShop if I couldn’t see it with my own eyes. Enhanced by a lovely teardrop ass, round hips and long, shapely, legs encased in skin tight laced leather pants with my feet in gorgeous dark red boots that had a heel just high enough to show them off without feeling uncomfortable. Later, I would surmise that their comfort was part of their magic.
My torso was held tightly by a leather corset worn over a blouse the same colour as my boots with a sleeveless crop top leather jacket that only came down to my ribs, leaving my shapely curves exposed. The sleeves of the blouse were bound at the forearm with a pair of magical bracers, leaving the material to puff out a little over my upper arms. I also wore a ring on each hand and a choker around my neck, all magical as well. Long, straight, light blonde hair fell over my shoulders mixed with several platted bangs. Reaching back I retrieved a small hand mirror from a pouch on the side of my backpack to check my face. What I found was shocking — shockingly gorgeous.
Smooth featured with great skin, a tiny chin, high cheekbones and gorgeous almond eyes, I had the kind of face that could melt a man’s knees from across the room with a glance and a smile. Stroking my hair behind my ear, I confirmed my new race with the reveal of a short, graceful, pointed tip. I was a half-elf, my mother had been a sorceress from the far away land of Zin-Kuei, my father a wandering High Elf.
At the same time, I was assailed by the memories of my childhood on the road; loved by my parents, scorned by society. Eighty years of memories and yet I looked like a girl of 19, marriageable age in most civilized lands. I was going to have to beat away humanoid males with a stick.
Although, I fondly remembered one night of romance with a young Elven boy culminating in a tender kiss under the stars that led to…
I shoved the memory into the back of my mind, locked it in a mental box and sat a boulder of rejection on top of it. I did NOT want to remember that, nor did I want to deal with the tingling sensation the memory was provoking over my skin. Fortunately, I was heavily armed, which meant I could defend my chastity if the need arose. And yes, I was actually thinking like that. Believe me, having two sets of memories and instinctive behaviours can be confusing.
“Um,” Jason interrupted my visual exploration, “James? Is that you?”
James, he called me, a name that no longer fit. I was Al’ressia Quilvue’ran Na Korechillic, or Ressia in the human tongue. I was a bard, a famed performer who could command the applause of princes. I slipped into the role naturally, as if I were shedding an old skin that had become worn and tattered. I came out of my reverie to find my companions looking worried, even Jason had forgotten why he was angry.
“I’m fine,” I lied, my hand coming up to my lips. My voice was high and melodious, even when I was speaking normally. “I… I’m Ressia, Half-Elven Bard. Formerly James… I… I think you better call me Ressia from now on.”
For a few minutes I didn’t know which of us was more shocked. The four of them did their best guppy impressions, eyes bugged out and mouths wide open. I might have found it comical if I’d been in my right mind. As it was, my every thought was drowned out by inner screams of panic.
It was Ryan who snapped out of it first, removing his cloak and wrapping it around my shoulders. “Enough gawping, guys,” he scolded, “can’t you see she’s in shock?”
Jason perked up. “I volunteer to do CPR!”
My body reacted by reflex, slamming my fist right between his eyes with enough force to knock him on his ass. “You don’t treat shock with CPR!” I growled through clenched teeth, shaking with rage.
“But it seems you can cure it by being a lecherous smart-ass,” Ryan noted under his breath, retrieving his cloak from the ground where I’d discarded it in haste.
“And you two,” I snarled, whirling on Daniel and Thomas, “eyes off the merchandise!”
At least they had the decency to be embarrassed. “Hey, what’s the big idea?” Jason whined, rubbing his cheek. Ryan slapped him on the back of the head before helping him up. “The lady punched you because you deserved it,” Ryan informed him, “and I hate to say it but we’ve got bigger fish to fry than our friend’s sudden gender change. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of the wilderness.”
Jason, Daniel and Thomas glanced around, only now realizing where they were. The forest around us wasn’t like the woods of Earth, except maybe the wildest regions of the jungle. Even then, I doubt four foot tall toadstools are part of the ecology. We were standing in a small clearing bordered by standing stones, each with a rune carved on the inner face. Beyond those stones, however, was a wild, untamed, tangle of gnarled trees, twisted vines and a canopy so thick that it was hard to see more than twenty feet beyond the treeline.
It wasn’t Kansas that was for damn sure.
“I know we’ve all got new names and personalities now but I don’t think I have to remind anyone here that there’s such a thing as a Wandering Monster Table,” Ryan reminded us anyway. “And the chances increase after dark. We need to find shelter.”
Desperate for a distraction, I latched on to the job like a drowning man to a passing raft. Information rose to the fore of my brain, a wealth of knowledge as broad and deep as an ocean. I must have zoned out for a while because when I came back to myself I found the boys arguing over a map. They had it unfolded with a brass compass holding it down.
“You can see the mountains to the west,” Thomas pointed to where the peaks showed in the distance. “The coast is to the east. We should head in that direction and find a fishing village where we can get directions.”
“I know where we are,” I said, walking up to where they sat in a small circle on the grass.
“Are you kidding?” Jason argued, apparently not hearing me in the slightest. “There’s snow on that mountaintop, this continent’s tropical. I still say we’re over here, we need to head south to this road. We can follow that east to Hallowfel. I know some people who know some people, you know?”
“Uh, guys,” I said, raising my voice to get attention, “I said I know where we are.”
“We shouldn’t do things by half measures,” Daniel countered, still clueless to my presence, “there’s a chapterhouse of the Order a short way west on that road, we could get to Hollowfel much faster on horseback.”
I felt the veins in my temples throb. Were they deliberately ignoring me?
Ryan looked like a child caught between two arguing parents. “Come on, you guys, we have to make a decision!”
I’d never felt so angry before in my life. Before I really knew what I was doing, I whacked the top of Daniel’s helmet down so that it covered his eyes and stuck there. I then used the distraction to snatch the map moments before the paladin managed to reef the helm off his head. “What the fuck?!?” He swore, glaring at me, red-faced. I slammed the map back down in front of them. “We are here,” I informed, pointing at our exact location, “these are the Standing Stones of Caer Dur, the highest peak of the region that you can see there.” I brought my pointing finger up to draw their attention to an oddly shaped peak. “Caer Dur is a dwarven stronghold. A dragon once blasted the peak with magic attempting to invade the city below backed by an army of trolls. If we travel directly east, we can take this trade road south toward the down of Venifar, from which we have more options. Before that, though, we can take shelter in one of the forts along the trade road, they’re spaced evenly along the route to keep the ore flowing from Caer Dur. It’s patrolled but this is wild country, there are bandits, orcs and worse in these woods.”
They stared at me for a while, to a point where I thought I was going to have to teach someone a lesson again, until Thomas coughed. “Not that we’re not happy to have you back with us, princess,” he said, earning a warning growl from me, “but I have studied the arcane lore of these lands and I’ve never heard of these standing stones. How do you know they’re there if they’re not marked on the map?”
“Thomas… Vanad,” I said, knowing his new name without needing an introduction, “you’re what, in your thirties?”
He scowled. “I’m twenty eight… Vanad is, anyway.”
“Right, Ressia is eighty seven,” I explained patiently, “still a child by the standards of the elves but I’ve been travelling this world for most of my life. I’m a bard, dumbass, and if I remember my class table correctly, I’m about 10th level according to my spells. About the only people who might know more than me are specialist sages in their fields and I’m betting they don’t have my breadth of knowledge… or, of course, higher level bards.”
“What, we’re going to trust the chick’s sense of direction now?” Jason griped rhetorically.
It took a lot of willpower not to bust him in the chops again. “You know what? Fine. You boys sit around and circle jerk each other until dark, I am going east. If you’d like to be sleeping in a warm bed tonight I’ll let you tag along.” With that, I stood up from where I knelt, dusted off my knees and turned on my heels to begin the long walk east. Absently, I wondered why I’d been a girl for less than half an hour yet referred to the others as ‘you boys’.
“Is that an offer?” Jason called after me. I gave him the finger without turning around or even so much as breaking stride.
“Shit, dude,” Ryan scolded, “that was uncalled for. I don’t know about you guys but she seems to know what she’s talking about. I’m going with her.”
“Fuck, man, it’s not like she’ll give you any,” Jason retorted.
I’d made it clear soon after I’d met Jason that I didn’t appreciate his ‘jokes’ and if he mistreated any woman in front of me we were going to have words. It seemed that now that I was a woman, he’d completely forgotten my feelings on the matter. As I entered the forest with Ryan close on my heels and the sound of bickering far behind us, I found myself wondering if I should go back, cut his hamstrings and leave him for the crows. A half hour as a woman and I was already contemplating the murder of a chauvinist pig, though honestly I’d felt the same way as a man.
“They’re following us,” Ryan informed me as he caught up, though I was aware of Daniel and Vanad’s bumbling as they clumsily picked their path. Jason was faster on his feet, being both an elf and a rogue, but his angry muttering gave him away. I took some delight in picking my way through the uneven forest floor with ease, partly thanks to my low-light vision, a gift from my elven heritage. “Look, about Zenis… I mean, Jason,” Ryan continued, “you’re best ignoring him. I know this change is hard on you but in a weird way we’re all dealing with it. You gave us a scare going all blank like that, we thought you’d snapped. Jason’s dealing with it by being an asshole but he’ll get over it.”
“Ryan,” I sighed, glancing over my shoulder at him and noting that the others were about twenty feet behind us, “you’re a nice guy but you’ve seriously got to work on your judgement. Last year I came within a hair’s breadth of kicking Jason’s ass for harassing a girl gamer at an event. Since then he’s reigned in his impulses… but he’s in engineering. I think they test for a poor attitude towards females as a requirement for acceptance. It’s not just a coping mechanism, he really is an asshole.”
Ryan mulled that one over as we walked and I was glad for the eventual quiet as we fell into routine. I was also happy to be going first because it meant I could concentrate on keeping a lookout and not on the way the protuberances on my chest would bounce as I walked. My mind also strayed to the million gold piece question: why had I been turned into a girl?
I ran over what I’d done during the test to try and figure out if anything I’d done seemed to warrant an F next to gender on my character sheet but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything. By talking to the goblin I’d solved the situation with social skill; by picking the book, I’d chosen knowledge over magic or fighting prowess and by organizing the others by pushing them into following their strengths and helping out rather than taking on a job alone I’d shown some classic qualities of the bard class. The others were obvious, except for Thomas who seemed to have fallen into his role rather than earned it. Wizards are among the worst hand to hand combatants, compounded by having every reason to dump their Strength score, and he’d taken up the ring due more to the fact that it had been the only item left. We had a Cleric, a Fighter and a Rogue, a balanced party needed a Wizard to round things out only I’d shown social aptitude where he hadn’t.
None of which indicated that I needed a change of gender, though I worried that my addiction to TG fiction had something to do with it. Before you jump to conclusions, allow me to explain. I wasn’t transgendered. What I enjoyed about TG fiction was the transformative aspect, a person changing their physical form into something else. I enjoyed a lot of fiction from that perspective like furry, superhero and otherkin stuff (otherkin are a group of people who believe they’re the incarnations of mythical creatures… considering what I now know, I’m no longer willing to rule out that they might be right). But I was not transgendered… or at least that’s what I kept telling myself at the time (but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves).
I was keeping my eyes out for trouble, however, as we clambered through the ancient forest and the work succeeded in keeping me distracted and focussed. Nothing like the threat of death around every corner to remind you how good it is just to be alive. If anything, the woods got thicker and we were often forced to clamber over moss-slick boulders to make progress. Even the flatter ground was broken by tangles of roots that forced you to pick each step carefully, slowing our pace to the point where I wondered if we’d make the road by nightfall much less a nice, cosy, inn.
We were working our way around a tall hill when I noticed something amiss, thanking whatever part of my brain had nagged me to look up every so often. I made Ryan stop with a quick hand signal and waited while the rest caught up, holding my finger over my lips to indicate that they should be quiet. Then I pointed up at IT.
On earth there are bird-eating spiders the size of dinner plates that eat birds, snakes and rodents. Nothing quite awakens your childhood fear of spiders quite like a three foot long spider hanging on a web made of quarter-inch thick strands. I had caught sight of it because a stray beam of light glistened off its chitineous black carapace, otherwise I might have walked underneath it blissfully unaware; or straight into its web. In the game, giant spiders aren’t a big deal, at least ones this size weren’t. There’s a big difference between statistics on a page and the real deal in your face, however. I’m happy to say I wasn’t the only one whos heart was racing.
“What do we do?” Daniel asked in a whisper. “Go around? Will there be more of them?”
“Grown spiders are solitary hunters,” I whispered back, “though the anthropology we’re used to goes out the window in this world. I know an old school trick, though, giant spider webs are flammable. Torch the web and the spider gets tangled up in its own web and burns to death.”
“Good luck with that,” Jason whispered, “I’m not taking that thing on.”
“Actually, I was thinking Daniel…”
“Sir Altek,” Daniel corrected, looking a little offended.
“I was thinking Sir Altek should burn the web. Paladins have better fortitude saves.”
“Celton,” Sir Altek raised his voice slightly to call Ryan’s attention, “you got a Neutralize Poison memorized?”
Celton, the former Ryan, nodded.
“I’ll do it. Zenis, string your bow. If you get a shot, take it; just make sure I’m clear first.”
Zenis nodded. I strung my own bow without being asked while Altek moved forward, pulling a torch from his pack along with flint and tinder. Zenis glanced at me as I stepped up beside him and sneered. “Maybe you should stay back with Alton, sweetcheeks,” he said, sotto voice, “I wouldn’t want you to shoot me by accident.”
“True, it’s hard to tell one vermin from another,” I retorted, keeping my voice as low as possible, “but don’t worry, if I shoot you it’ll be on purpose.”
His scowl deepened as we pulled back out bows and took aim when Altek finally got the torch lit. The spider twitched, probably feeling the light and heat rather than seeing it. The thing was still twenty feet in the air, after all, and preferred hunting prey that had already been ensnared. Vermin aren’t the smartest creatures in the manual, by the time it moved it was too late, the webs were burning.
Giant spider webs are indeed extremely flammable; it was like watching someone throw a match into petrol. The spider actually screeched as it fell, wiggling all its legs and twitching, wrapped in fire. Altek backed off to give us a clear view and we didn’t disappoint, putting two arrows each into its soft underbelly. Finally, it curled up into a ball and ceased all lay still. The paladin prodded it a few times with his sword to confirm the kill before kicking it out of the way, the fire slowly dying out. The forest was moist, so there weren’t any secondary fires, if I’d thought that likely I wouldn’t have suggested it and Altek put the torch out by shoving the head into a patch of bare soil.
Slightly shaken, all of us reminded of the dangers we now faced, we continued on in silence, each of us glancing nervously about for signs of danger.
I can tell you one thing, since that day I ALWAYS look up.
One day in the fantasy world and all Ressia and her companions want is some hot food and a nice, warm, bed. Fate, however, has other plans.
Warning: This chapter contains a short explaination of the DnD alignment system. May cause drowsiness, irritibility, altered states of consciousness and spontaneous brain matter combustion. Sorry, everyone, but it's important to the storyline, please bare with it.
Beyond the Screen
By Dr. Bender
Chapter 4
The rest of that first journey through the wilds was uneventful. I refrained from skiting when we reached the road and the boys, except for Jason, mumbled an apology. Jason mumbled something about know-it-all bitches instead, which I felt was going to set the general trend of our relationship from that time forward. There’s definitely one thing that the game glosses over: dirt. By the time we emerged from the forest we were covered in mud, grime and sweat. I also discovered the hard way that females really do have a better sense of smell than males, if you ever wonder why girls are so compulsively clean, I’ll tell you I needed a bath just to get away from my own stench.
It wasn’t until we were a ways down the road, with Zenis and Altek up front, that I noticed the mud, dust and grime fading away until I looked like I’d been taking a pleasant evening stroll rather than a gruelling trek through untamed wilderness. A quick mental checklist informed me that this was a property of the Courtesan’s Choker that I wore around my neck, a minor artefact that also combined the powers of a Periapt of Health and a Periapt of Proof Against Poison, the first granting immunity to diseases both natural and magical and the latter fairly self explanatory.
This revelation led me to search my addled and abused mind for more information on my gear as we walked, which proved interesting. For starters, I discovered that Ressia didn’t think of things in game terms, she compared magical abilities to mundane items to describe their effects rather than the numeric system that James was familiar with. For example, Ressia’s memories informed me that her Bracers of Armour gave her protection roughly equal to wearing a suit of chainmail. James translated that into ‘+5 bonus armour class’. I also wore a Ring of Protection that enhanced my protection to the equivalent of a full suit of plate mail, with James noting that I’d still have my dexterity bonus on top of that making me surprisingly hard to hit. The second ring was a simple Ring of Feather Fall, an item that had saved Ressia’s skin more than once. My nice, light, backpack turned out to be a Handy Haversack, a storage item that could hold far more than its physical size could possibly allow (if you know Dr. Who, think Tardis). In addition, I was wearing Boots of Elvenkind that made me much stealthier and, more importantly, would save my feet from the rigours of travel. Ressia’s memory of life on the road before acquiring these boots made me wince.
So it was that we approached The Nymph’s Pool, an Inn that better resembled a small fort than a business establishment, just as the sun began to set. I counted ten guards with crossbows on the walls, with likely another ten inside waiting to take the night shift. Even as we approached I could see that several caravans were already inside, and it was likely that they had their own mercenary protection. I was also willing to bet that the King’s soldiers would have their own waystation inside, affording the landlord considerable protection. Indeed, it would take a small army of Orc marauders to sack the place, or perhaps a single older Dragon.
I watched Altek step up to talk to the gate guard with a small measure of surprise as the man, and it seemed most of the men on guard, were staring at me. I tried to ignore the stares but it didn’t keep me from feeling like a piece of meat being sized up for the cutting block.
“Sir Altek Lanzig,” the paladin introduced himself, “Order of the Golden Rose. My group and I seek food and shelter.”
The guard was a professional and it seemed that Altek’s title curried a measure of respect. They shook hands as the guard asked the formal questions; names, point of origin, destination. Altek did a good job obfuscating our true nature, spinning a tale wherein we’d sprung a teleport trap that landed us nearby and how we were bound for Hallowfel to rest and recuperate. I’ll admit, it sounded a lot better coming from someone reputable considering how crazy it sounded.
I couldn’t help but notice that everyone’s eyes followed me as we passed through the gate. Not us, though we were an unusual bunch, I tested my theory by pausing to adjust my boot as if I’d gotten a stone in it and heads paused with me. I moved on before conflicting emotions from both of my personas could overwhelm me, ignoring the slight glow of pride that welled up in my heart.
Inside the high wooden walls was a grubby establishment common to frontier outposts. The rooves were tiled and tarred to prevent fire attacks from burning the whole place down. A main two story building sat at the far end from the gate, flanked on the right by the barracks and the stables on the left. As we walked toward the main doors, an off duty guard gave me a wolf whistle on the way past. A mischievous urge suddenly took hold of me and, smiling, I waited until he was taking a swig from the tankard in his hand before flipping my golden hair as I glanced in his direction. He was still coughing and spluttering as we entered the tavern, one of his companions thumping him on the back.
“By the Seven Heavens, Ressia,” Altek scolded.
Grinning impishly, I shrugged. “I don’t know why I did that but it felt good.”
“Perhaps you should try to attract a bit less attention,” Vanad murmured, pretending to cough into his fist. I wondered what had gotten into him at first until I noticed the room. You know that scene in just about every western where the hero walks into the bar and everyone stops what they were doing and stares? It wasn’t as bad as that, not dead silence, but when thirty or so people are staring at you for the first time it feels like the world is grinding to a halt. Of course, what was a first time for James was old hat to Ressia, her instincts rising to the fore.
“Get a table and order some food,” I muttered, “I’ll be with you all in a bit.”
Altek frowned. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
I grinned impishly as I walked away, deftly weaving through the crowd with a not-too reassuring wave of my hand. I caught a glare of envy from one of the serving girls as I stepped past, an older human woman in her thirties who’s wrinkles were already starting to etch her face. Some sort of sixth sense warned me of an impending goosing by a particularly bold drunk, enabling me to slap his hand sharply yet casually before he ever got close much to the delight of the snickering crowd. The barman looked a little nervous by the time I was leaning against the counter, waiting for service. I waited for all of a few seconds.
“What’ll it be, miss?” He asked, forcing himself to stare at the tankard he was wiping dry rather than at me.
“Wine,” I informed him, though James wasn’t a drinker, Ressia was a connoisseur, “and permission to play.”
He glanced at me, surprised. “I doubt I can afford you.”
“Consider this one on the house,” I quipped with a smile.
He chuckled. “Be my guest.”
I retrieved my lute from the depths of my Handy Haversack as I made my way to the fireplace, pulling an empty chair away from a table to give me a place to rest. I dropped a few of my things on the floor nearby where I could keep an eye on them and pulled my hair over one shoulder to keep it out of the way as I sat, crossing my legs by reflex. I’d never played before but the lute felt comfortable in my hands and my body was tingling with excitement. Ressia loved performing and was in her natural element on the stage, playing an audience with all eyes on her. So I played, strumming the lute with practiced ease as I raised my voice in song.
I proceeded to bring the house down. I sang ballads and odes to love and joy from the far corners of the world, raising spirits to dizzying heights. Then, when the mood was right, I brought them down with sweet lullabies and elvish laments. Finally I exalted them once more, leaving the stage to a chorus of cheers and stomping feet. I didn’t have to ask for a room, the bartender threw me a key without a word and ordered food sent to my room. Finally sipping some wine, I gave my companions a wink before ascending the stairs, enjoying the stunned looks on their faces.
I was high as a kite, physically aroused from the performance. The room was nice, cosy and clean and I took some delight in kicking off my boots and throwing myself onto the soft mattress without spilling a drop of my wine. Stretching, I unbuckled my corset and discarded it on the floor, breathing a sigh of relief. It wasn't long before I was disturbed by a timid knock on the door but I could smell the aroma of roasted beef, freshly baked vegetables and gravy through the door. My stomach didn't have to girgle to remind me it was empty but it did so anyway and I found myself giggling as I opened the door.
The serving girl I found outside was young, pretty and blushed cutely as she stood there holding the tray of food. Her blush deepened as I took her burden from her with a grateful smile and placed it on the small table across from the bed.
“Um, can I ask you a question?” She asked, gingerly stepping through the door.
I bit back several sarcastic replies, figuring she was too young to appreciate them. “Sure,” I replied, taking a small bite out of a sweet potato and savouring it for a few moments.
“Where did you learn to… sing like that?” She asked hesitantly.
The question brought over eighty years of memories to the fore of my brain, which might have provoked me into hysterics except that the memories were generally pleasant. I remembered wandering from town to town with my parents, watching the stars with my mother under the night sky, practicing various arts every night as a little half-elf girl. By the time I was twenty, I had a reputation as a child actor that carried with me into a long puberty. Such was the way of Half-Elf physiology, caught between the short span of Humans and the virtual immortality of the Elves. I’d lit my mother’s funeral pyre at the age of forty; she’d died of old age. Never the same, Father had returned to the land of the elves to ease his grief while I chose to continue wandering as before, with no place amongst my Father’s kind. It was with world-weary eyes that I looked at the young girl before answering. “Decades of practice and a patient father. Would you like to sit for a while?”
She positively bubbled with enthusiasm, closing the door and taking up the chair opposite, carefully arranging her skirt. “I’d love to! I’ve got the rest of the night off now; it’s so good to finally get off my feet.”
Having worked taverns before, and even less reputable establishments for one reason or another, I could sympathize. I finished off the wine in my glass and retrieved the new bottle from the tray, already uncorked, and poured myself a new glass. Lifting the goblet to my nose, I savoured the bouquet.
You’ve probably been able to surmise that Ressia is a consummate actor. It was her skill that enabled me to act naturally as I casually put down the goblet and smiled, picking up the empty goblet that had come with the rest of the meal so that I could fill the glass. “Sorry, where are my manners,” I apologized, still smiling, “you really should try some of this, it’s exquisite.”
My suspicions were confirmed by the drop of sweat that trickled down her forehead; she was a good actress but not good enough. My eyes wandered to her hands, which were folded on the table, noting the calluses that come from weapons practice and the barest hint of the stains that come from practicing herbal alchemy. “Um, no, that’s all right,” she refused, even as I poured, “daddy doesn’t let me drink wine yet.”
Her innocent airhead act was good but she wasn’t fooling a fooler. Fortunately, I didn’t need her to be willing to accept the goblet and drink from it. One of the less powerful Bard spells in my repertoire, called Beguiling Gift, could force her to accept the goblet and drink if she didn’t have the will to resist me. All I needed to do was expend a little more effort and I could cast it without the usual incantations by using the art known as Metamagic to the initiated. It made the low-level spell expend as much energy as a higher level one but being able to cast spells secretly was a boon. I cast the spell as I offered the goblet to her, looking into her eyes.
She blinked and, for a moment, I thought the spell had failed. Then she took the goblet from me and drained it in one gulp. The sequence of emotions that played across her face was darkly comical. At first she looked shocked at what she’d done, eyes wide in alarm. Then the magic of what she’d put in the wine took hold and her expression went slack. Then she stared at me and the dumbfounded look gave way to the deepest, purest, abiding love and admiration the likes of which most people would never know (unless they also possessed a Philtre of Love, quite a nasty potion that acts quite like it sounds). What I wasn’t expecting was the sudden upwell of desperation and terror as she grabbed my hand.
“I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry, my love!” She begged my forgiveness desperately and I must admit the total change in her attitude creeped me out (not that I felt sorry for her, since she’d tried to do the same to me). “We have to get out of here now! They’re coming!”
She stood up abruptly and went to peek out the window, leaving me half-standing over my meal. “Who’s coming?” I demanded. “What’s going on here?”
“Quiet, they might be listening,” she said, looking around outside for a moment before returning to wrap her arms around me. Ressia remembered similar moments, some platonic and some more intimate, with other girls and somehow I felt comfortable returning the gesture. “I’m sorry. My name is Kendra,” she introduced herself, talking at a rapid pace; “I’m an initiate in the Circle of Fallen Leaves. The Grand Druid sent us to capture you and the others; the Gods of Nature spoke to him, he knows who you really are! Please, you have to run away with me before they get here, we don’t have much time…”
The same impish urge that compelled me to flirt with the men as we walked into camp made me silence Kendra with my lips. She responded with some enthusiasm and was meek as a lamb when we finally parted. “It’ll be ok,” I told her gently, “now tell me, what are we facing here?”
She drew in breath to speak but never got a word out. It’s hard to describe the terrible sounds that came next, or the screams that accompanied it.
I didn’t want to look out the window to see how deep in the shit we were. A Grand Druid is among the most powerful spellcasters on a planet, able to call the forces of nature to war if he so chose. Communing with his deity wasn’t quite the same as calling up a close relative for a chat but the effect was much the same, if said relative had the power to see into the future and alter reality at whim. I didn’t doubt that we weren’t fooling the gods and I knew that destroying a small fort in the middle of the wilds was child’s play to a Grand Druid. As I looked out the window, I prayed that we were unimportant enough that he’d delegated the work.
A lower-level woman would have crapped her pants at what she saw outside. Even so, I certainly had severe reservations. The initial sound of splintering wood had been the emergence of a Bullette from under the north wall. Resembling an enormous burrowing armadillo with large, sharp, teeth, Bullettes are also known by the name ‘Land Shark’, their primary method of hunting much like the aquatic predator they were nicknamed after; only on land, of course. By the time I peered out the window, it was already snacking on several guards with more lying buried under the rubble.
The Bullette would have been bad enough if several Treants. If you’ve seen Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, you know what a Treant is, they’re identical to the Ents from that movie; huge, walking, talking, trees that can tear apart houses and stomp grown men underfoot. The caravan guards had already formed up around their wagons on the south side, shooting flaming arrows into Treant’s foliage. Unfortunately for them, the flames weren’t catching and I made the intuitive leap that the Treants had been warded magically from their greatest weakness. That meant that the druid in charge of the attack was still out there somewhere in reserve, which wasn’t good at all.
I was considering the best way to escape when Altek decided to charge out of the tavern right at the Bullette, his glowing sword held aloft as he yelled a battle cry that would have curdled the blood of an intelligent enemy. And with that, all hopes of escape were dashed. The Bullette answered Altek’s roar with it’s own, more impressive, version before leaping to the attack. The paladin hadn’t really expected the thing to fight back, sliding to a halt before the thing pounced, desperately blocking it’s foot-long burrowing claws that would serve just as well eviscerating plate mail as it would boulders with his magical sword and dancing backward to avoid the giant snapping jaws that could swallow him whole. His return strikes didn’t do much more than scratch the beast’s carapace, a testament to the legendary toughness of the Bullette’s hide. Fortunately, the Treants were too busy crushing buildings and guards to deal with Altek.
It wasn’t until I heard the crash of limbs striking the south wall that I remembered an important little fact. Treants in DnD can animate any and all regular trees within one hundred and eighty feet of itself. Combine that with the fact that we were surrounded by forest and the need to escape with all haste hit me like a dump truck. Consider the idea of an entire forest picking itself up to try and kill you… terrifying isn’t it?
I didn’t bother putting anything on other than my boots and sword, shoving everything else into my haversack (including the spiked bottle of wine that I plugged, the bartender having the sense to leave the cork on the tray with it) before leaping out of the window with Kendra hot on my heels. As serendipity would have it, I slid down the thatch roof to the ground, landing just as Celton and Vanad burst through the front doors, the wizard immediately turning to blast whatever was chasing them with a bolt of lightning that made the little hairs all over my body stand on end and filled the area with the stink of ozone and charred wood.
“Weretigers!” Celton reported, eyes bulging and red in the face from his ordeal. “Hiding in the crowd!”
I cursed but I had to admire the elegantly evil nature of the ambush as a long time DM. It was the sort of thing I’d have done to my PCs. My admiration turned to horror, however, when I heard the screams from inside and the horrible, wet, sounds that accompanied them. Vanad had a front row seat and, I can tell you, he was pale and the look of terror in his eyes. In that light, I don’t blame him for what he did, casting Wall of Ice across the doors and windows, sealing everyone inside with the weretigers. It was a hard choice but it probably saved our lives.
Calton grabbed my shoulders, the battle raging around us, and looked at me, pleading with his eyes. “Ressia… I don’t know what to do! What do we do?!?”
Now that our backs were covered, what to do wasn’t my problem. There’s an old saying on Earth that holds true to adventuring: know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em and know when the run like hell. Armies of Treants aren’t the sort of thing you can fight without a portable apocalypse in your pocket, so running was our only option. My real problem was that we had a paladin in our party who would be dead set on facing said army armed with nothing but a fancy iron toothpick and indomitable, yet perfectly futile, faith.
Some of the guards and merchants who’d escaped the inn had already gotten the right idea and were running for the gates. Once the Treants were done with the barracks and stables, Altek was toast. The Bullette was wounded but so was Altek, blood dripping from rents in his plate mail where the beast had scored some good hits with its claws.
“Vanad,” I ordered, pointing at the Bullette, “roast that sucker!”
I admit, I was trusting Vanad’s judgement not to roast Altek along with it but my faith in my companion’s grace under fire was rewarded. He gave me one nod before casting another lightning bolt from his fingertips, the crackling energy peeling away the monster’s hide, charring and burning the flesh beneath. It screeched a high-pitched note of pain as it disintegrated into ash and cinders. I felt the backwash of the blast and I can tell you, I never wanted to be hit by one of those spells. I’ll admit, though, that I was faintly envious of the firepower, Bards don’t have access to combat magic of that magnitude.
All that didn’t matter at the time, however, I was running for Altek before the spell was even completed, quickly casting a healing incantation so that it was ready when I slapped the paladin on the shoulder. The magic did its work, the bleeding stopped immediately. “Daniel,” I shouted over the din, using his former name to grab his attention, “we’re surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned. We are leaving, soldier, NOW.”
I held my breath for a moment, hoping that he’d be smart. I really didn’t want to have to use a charm to get him to do what I wanted. He looked at the Treants on both sides and the front of the inn covered in Vanad’s wall of ice. The guards and those patrons that had escaped were already fleeing for the open gates, it was only a matter of time before the rest either routed or were crushed. I saw regret in his eyes the moment he made the decision. “You’re right. Where’s Zenis?”
I had forgotten about our caustic rogue, I swear! You really thought I was trying to leave him behind on purpose, didn’t you? Nobody was questioning Kendra’s presence, notice; I think they figured she was following us because we were her best bet for survival.
“He scarpered after you ran out the door,” Celton reported with some bitterness, “we haven’t seen him since.”
“Come on, run now, think later,” I advised, leading by example as I sprinted as fast as my legs could carry me. The others did the same without question, Altek running slower at first but quickly catching up to me, with Kendra and Celton equal third and Vanad puffing along behind.
It was every man and woman for themselves. I saw one of the caravan guards slit his master’s throat to steal a horse, only to see the man snatched from his saddle by a giant branch, the horse bolting past us and through the gates, riderless. Others made good their escape. I didn’t see anyone who looked like kitchen staff and hoped they had a secure bolt hole to hide in. Hiding wasn’t an option for us, unfortunately, the Treants and whoever was behind them wouldn’t stop until we were dead. Pardon my selfishness but I wasn’t about to martyr myself.
Relief washed over us collectively as we passed through the gate but we weren’t foolish enough to stop running or even slow down, turning south on the trade road. I knew I was running on adrenaline, my belly aching from lack of food and my muscles burning. Altek moved like a machine, even outpacing me despite my head start, but the rest of us were pushing ourselves. Even so, we pushed ourselves until Vanad fell on his face, his legs giving out. We all ground to a halt, puffing, while Celton went to render aid to Vanad.
“Think we lost them?” Altek asked, getting his breath back first.
“Hope so,” I answered between breaths.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, milady,” a new voice said from the shadows of the forest, “but I’ve been waiting for you to wear yourselves out for quite some time.”
We all froze, staring into the shadow from where the voice had come. The brushes parted by themselves; moving to make the being’s passage easier as it emerged into the moonlight. It was a tiger, long, sleek and large, about the size of a horse. As it stalked forward, however, it changed, shrinking even as it rose up onto two legs, fur shifting into hair and clothing. In moments, an older human man stood before us in well worn travelling robes, barefoot. I estimated that he was about fifty years old, steel grey streaks in his chestnut brown hair.
“Father,” Kendra gasped, looking scared and guilty before gaining some determination. She stepped in front of me, blocking his line of sight. “Please, father, don’t hurt her!”
“Ressia?” Altek asked, giving me an accusatory look.
“I’ll explain later,” I answered, keeping my eyes on the druid.
“Bravo, Bard,” the old man said, miming applause, “it seems you’ve foiled the plot in mind for you. Ressia is it? Allow me to introduce myself; I’m Lornel Gallo, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“Charmed,” I muttered sarcastically, “almost.”
“Witty,” he complimented without smiling. “As much as I’d love trading barbs with you, however, I have an offer for you that might speed up proceedings. Run away with my daughter and leave these others behind. I promise not to chase your for, oh, a week should do it.”
Kendra practically threw herself at me, begging with her whole body. “Please, Ressia, I don’t want either of you to die. Run away with me, we can escape to where he’ll never find us.”
My stalwart companions were staring daggers at me. I rolled my eyes. “Come on, he’s sooooo lying,” I sighed, glaring at Lornel. “He’s buying time for his allies to finish up turning The Nymph’s Pool into kindling and track us down.”
Celton frowned. “But why us? We never hurt anyone!”
“They know who we really are,” I answered. “I don’t know why it makes a difference to the Circle, though. What’s a few more people in the world to you?”
Lornel scowled, shaking his head. “You have no idea what you’ve done, the balance of nature has been broken, history and events were re-written to integrate you into our universe. You don’t belong here, so we require your death before you doom the world we have sworn to protect. The gods have shown the Great Druid the future cast in iron and fire and blood. You are the heralds of our doom and I regret that your death is necessary.”
Looking at him, I found Lornel to be the most frightening person I’d ever met. His eyes didn’t burn with fanaticism or hate yet at the same time he didn’t have regret in his heart. He didn’t care if we were good or evil; indeed he didn’t care if he was good or evil himself. We were just on his ‘to do’ list. Milk, eggs, sugar, kill adventurers, pick up kids from school…
I realized my mistake a moment too late. Vanad wasn’t about to wait for the Treants and Weretigers to catch up to us to have a showdown and he probably thought Lornal was ignoring him. He started casting as soon as he got his wind back. Unfortunately, Lornal wasn’t stupid enough to forget the wizard. Celton shrieked when a Dire Tiger, this one not a druid using shapeshifting magic, pounced from the bushes behind them, landing both front paws on Vanads back and crushing the frail man into the ground. One bite of its fearsome jaws eviscerated the wizard as it raked with its hind legs, tearing him apart in a shower of blood and gore.
A lot of things happened at once in the next few seconds. Celton was screaming, covered in blood as he scrambled away from a tiger the size of a truck. Altek was shouting another battle cry as he charged the beast, taking a paladin’s natural immunity to fear to new heights of stupidity. Lornel watched me with some amusement as I reached for my sword, hindered by Kendra who was trying to drag me away, imploring me to run.
So it was that I was watching Lornel’s face as a nice, solid, foot of sharpened steel burst through his chest. His wry smile faded as he looked down in confusion at the blade that had pierced his heart, wondering how the hell that had gotten there a moment before he died. The blade disappeared the way it had come and the druid fell forward, revealing Zenis standing behind him holding his now bloody short sword, the rogue’s form blending in with the shadows.
“FATHER!” Kendra screamed, falling to her knees and weeping in despair. I didn’t have time to comfort her, however, as Altek slashed the dire tiger’s eye, provoking the beast into a roar that shook my bones before it lunged at the paladin, knocking him down. A quick mental checklist told me that I only had one damaging spell in my repertoire, so I cast it. Taking a deep breath, I screamed.
It wasn’t a normal scream, of course. It was a scream with enough sonic energy behind it that the tiger’s fur disintegrated where the cone of effect touched it. The skin beneath was rent into a bloody pulp even as its eardrums burst. Unfortunately, Celton has just wiped his face clean when tiger blood sprayed over him. Blind in one eye, deaf and grievously wounded, the tiger wailed before turning tail and running back into the forest at full speed.
“Sorry I’m late babe,” Zenis drawled, “miss me?”
Considering that the rogue had just saved our collective asses, I bit back the nasty comment that came to mind and settled on a more sarcastic tone. “Congratulations, you’re just in time to help retrieve Vanad’s stuff.”
The elf paled when he looked at the bloody smear that used to be our friend and, for once, was at a loss for words.
“Celton,” Altek said, suddenly looking away from the wizard’s corpse, “you can cast Raise Dead, right?”
Celton, however, was busy trying to wipe the blood off of himself, to no avail. I left Altek to deal with our cleric while I picked Kendra up off the ground and hugged her. She was the enemy, even though I’d charmed her, but she had just seen her father die and I had enough sympathy for that.
Then something weird happened to Lornel’s corpse. At first I thought it was just muscle spasms or death throes but they started to get more violent. Zenis, Kendra jumped when a ghostly image in the form of an owl burst from his back, pausing a moment to spread its wings before shooting into the night sky.
“What the FUCK!” Zenis shouted, stumbling back from the druid’s corpse.
“Some sort of contingent reincarnation spell,” I surmised, drawing again on Ressia’s knowledge of our new world, “we haven’t seen the last of him after all.”
We didn’t have time to tarry and it took some tough love to break Celton out of his stupor. That’s code for Zenis slapping him so hard he came close to breaking the cleric’s jaw. We got him pulled together, healed up and washed the worst of the blood off his face so that his brain could reboot and reformat into something resembling normalcy. Then we went about the grizzly process of gathering Vanad’s body and possessions. Fortunately, Zenis could carry the wizard’s backpack without any problems but Altek got the unenviable duty of carrying a sack filled with bloody meat.
Funny how the game glosses over little details like that, huh? I can’t remember how many times a character of mine has scraped a companion’s remains into some sort of container so we could cart their asses back to get resurrected but I’d never considered how gross the process actually was. We would have gotten Celton to cast the spell right then and there but the cleric wasn’t in a fit mental state for spellcasting. Believe me, Raise Dead isn’t the sort of spell you want to flub.
Once the cleanup was done, we started walking. We were too exhausted to run anymore, so we had to pray that the Treants and Weretigers would wait for their leader to finish his reincarnation, which would take a few days as the spell built a new body for him safe under the earth. As we walked, I comforted Kendra while interrogating her about the Circle of Falling Leaves.
To understand where the Druids fit into DnD’s cosmology, you have to understand the alignment system. I’ve delayed this talk for as long as I can because it takes some explaining. In the game, a character’s alignment represents their general moral outlook on the world as well as they types of gods, philosophies and planes that their views align with. It’s not a hard and fast classification, it doesn’t delve into specifics and it doesn’t mean that someone with that alignment will never act out of accordance to its alignment. In general, however, a being will follow its principles.
There are five axes of alignment: Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic and Neutral. Combine any two of these and you get an alignment, but only Neutral can be combined with itself. The nine alignments are therefore: Lawful Good, Chaotic Good, Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Evil, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Evil.
Read that a few times if you like until you get a handle on it before moving on.
Lawful Good beings in general believe that order is right. They believe in truth, justice and working together for a better tomorrow. Paladins like Altek are required to be Lawful Good, being the DnD equivalent of Superman. If you want a darker side to Lawful Good, however, I’d point to Dirty Harry. Harry believes in the law and doing the right thing but that doesn’t stop him from doing bad things to bad people. Cultural bias back on Earth has DnD’s official line being that Lawful Good is the ‘best good’. I can tell you from personal experience, however, that being Lawful Good doesn’t prevent you from being a dick.
Chaotic Good beings are interested in doing the right thing, being happy and helping people as well. It just happens that they don’t give a fuck about the law. The classic Chaotic Good hero is Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. The flip side to Chaotic Good is the vigilante that quite happily murders criminals rather than bringing them to trial.
Neutral Good is a little more nebulous, like most neutral alignments. Law and order doesn’t matter to a Neutral Good person like it matters to Lawful and Chaotic Good beings, they see both attitudes as having a time and a place. What matters to them is doing good. The classic Neutral Good character is a philanthropist, giving freely of themselves without asking for anything in return, even going so far as to offering redemption to evil creatures heedless of their own safety.
Lawful Neutral creatures follow the rules without question. A good example would be Judge Dredd, applying the law dispassionately and dispensing justice without conscience. Emotions and feelings don’t have a place in their hearts, the rules are there to be followed and they must be followed so that order may flourish.
Being True Neutral means different things to different people. You might just not give a crap about anything and just want to live your life without ever considering your morality. You might believe in striving to balance your karma, walking the tightrope of good, evil, law and chaos. You may take the position that ideals are for chumps and extend your empathy only to certain people. You may even believe, like the core Druidic philosophy states, that you should integrate yourself into the natural world and nurture the planet by whatever means necessary.
Players often make the mistake that Chaotic Neutral is a license to act like an idiot. Sure, the alignment does include the hopelessly delusional lunatics who hold detailed conversations with walls but most members of the alignment simple value their own freedom without the hang-ups of needing to either help or hurt others with that freedom. Consider the jester that points out the flaws of others but never does anything personally to correct them or the hermit that lives out in the woods and just wants to be left alone. Or even the wandering bard that has no time for a society that rejects them and continually travels so that familiarity cannot breed true contempt.
Things start going south with Neutral Evil. Neutral Evil builds selfishness into a philosophy. There are two ways to glorify yourself above others: climbing over the bodies of your enemies and beating everyone else into submission. An example of a Neutral Evil action would be starting a war so you could sell arms to both sides or murdering someone for their shoes.
Your average corrupt noble stereotype is Lawful Evil. Think Darth Vader and you’ve got the right idea here. The law is a tool for power and personal aggrandizement. Forcing others to obey is their drug of choice, domination and submission the truest expression of human relationships, the strong are right to overpower the weak. Beings with this philosophy are dangerous because they’re organized and can work together towards goals. Betrayal is integral to the philosophy but no alpha worth his salt in a Lawful Evil organization will fall prey to such plots easily. After all, they got to where they are through betrayal and a strong survival instinct.
Finally, Chaotic Evil: mad, bad and dangerous to know. If you’ve watched The Dark Knight and seen Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker, you’ve seen the face of Chaotic Evil with a sense of humour. Inflicting pain on others is their greatest delight, watching the world burn a wet dream. Lone serial killers are the most common Chaotic Evil dangers, though such beings do work together, just not well. Most commonly, groups of Chaotic Evil creatures form around a strong leader that can keep them in line through brutality and fear alone. Lawful Evil groups love their rules and strictures and pay lip service to hierarchy; Chaotic Evil groups have no rule but obey or die.
Each alignment has their own plane of reality and their own mystical representatives that inhabit those planes on the Great Wheel. It needs to be reiterated that the alignments aren’t hard and fast rules of behaviour. Lawful Good creatures stray from the right path in their adherence to rules or from hubris. Chaotic Evil creatures may love and laugh like anyone else. It’s just that they’re as likely to do it over your corpse.
Back to the Druids, however, they fit in the neutral area of the alignment chart. The core druidic philosophy is one of integrating yourself into the natural world. They concern themselves with preserving and promoting mother nature in all her forms, though they may disagree with each other individually as to how to go about it. Some see cities as inimical to their philosophy while others see nature’s hand in the ecosystem of human hives. The Circle of Falling Leaves, as Kendra explained to me, is a militant order of Druids that excise dangers to the natural order like cutting cancer from a human body. She was apologetic when she explained that she had thought of me as a disease to be cured rather than a person.
I admit that what she told me combined with what I knew of Druidic lore from both Ressia’s memories and my old life as James scared me. Imagine a group of people with magical powers to manipulate nature, shapeshift into animals almost at will and conjure natural disasters. Imagine that this group could turn a forest into an army of giants and recruit every beast on the face of the planet into their service. Imagine that they were highly organized and driven, believing implacably in the rightness of their cause. Imagine that they had no need for money, being able to live off the land and happy to eschew the trappings of civilization. Now imagine that they wanted you dead.
Not a pleasant feeling.
We didn’t stop walking until Zenis was about to fall over the next day. Grey elves are more dextrous and intelligent at the expense of physical strength and endurance, so it wasn’t a surprise when he called uncle before anyone else. In a way we were lucky that Vanad was dead, his constitution was worse than Zenis’ so we were able to put more space between us and the enemy.
Altek gave me a meaningful look as we rested in the shade by the side of the road that I interpreted as ‘we need to talk’. I agreed, so I bade Kendra to sleep and snuck away from her while she was under.
“What did you do to that girl?” Altek asked, accusation in his voice.
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Nothing she didn’t try to do to me first. She brought me a meal that included a bottle of wine spiked with a Philtre of Love. Her father was trying the time tested and mother approved divide and conquer strategy, he just didn’t count on me being able to detect it. I used a minor spell to make her drink it instead.”
I didn’t mention that I had no idea what was in the wine until she drank it. You have to be careful with these little details when managing paladins, they’re touchy but luckily most aren’t too bright.
“And now she’s in love with you. Were you planning on breaking the spell?” He asked like a patient teacher that feels a paternal need to rebuke you for evils you haven’t done yet.
“Of course I was,” I said truthfully, my tone letting him know that I was disgusted that he thought I’d just leaver her like that, “it’s just a matter of when will be the best time to do it.”
He misconstrued what I meant, of course, and glared at me angrily. “Now would be the best time I think.”
“Are you really thinking on that score or are you acting hastily because you want to blame someone?” I asked calmly. “Let’s consider. Say I break the spell, what do we do with her?”
“You’re right,” he admitted. Bless his heart, I could see the gears working in his head as he mulled it over. “We should take her back for trial,” he finally decided, “she conspired to murder a whole bunch of people including us and tried to subject you to mind control. I don’t blame you for acting in self defence but she should answer for her crimes.”
“And for all we know, she’s high enough level to wild shape,” I countered, “think they build prisons that can hold a mouse or a cat around here?”
“The Order of the Golden Rose has cells to hold magical prisoners,” he informed me, “if we can get to a chapter house, I can have her incarcerated.”
“And we wait until then to break the enchantment? You know, she might be in love with me, Altek, but she’s not stupid. I doubt she’ll let herself be locked up willingly. Of course if we break the enchantment before then we’ll have drag her back, which frankly I don’t think we have the wherewithal.”
“Please don’t tell me you want to execute the girl,” he growled, “I won’t be party to anything like that.”
I shook my head. “No, that’s not an option either. Considering Lornel’s contingent reincarnation, the Circle obviously has no qualms about bringing its members back from the dead.”
“I hate having to leave her like that,” he said, shivering as he contemplated someone doing the same thing to him, “isn’t there a better way?”
“We can’t drag her back, you don’t want to kill her,” I said, ticking off his objections on my fingers, “you don’t want to leave her like this but you won’t consider letting her go. I have one suggestion but you’re not going to like it either.”
“Try me.”
“Another type of enchantment,” I offered, “I think she’s low enough level that a Lesser Geas will work. I’ll order her to follow us to your chapterhouse and hand herself in to custody without a fuss. If she tries to resist the compulsion, she’ll be wracked with unbearable agony until she complies.”
He winced. “That’s… horrible.”
“As horrible as throwing someone in a cell or ordering their execution? Face it, white knight, that’s what’s waiting for her at your chapterhouse, a quick trial followed by a swifter execution. Heck, they might even have to take measures to prevent the druids from reincarnating her.”
“If she repents for her actions and begs for leniency they might communicate her sentence,” he said, doubting the words even as they came out of his mouth.
I sighed, giving up on that line of debate. Never argue philosophy with a paladin, they just get on their high horse and nothing can bring them down to earth again. “Look, a Geas isn’t like the Philtre of Love. Believe me; I don’t like having a mindfucked slave following me around, particularly if we’re visiting a chapterhouse full of twitchy paladins that might not believe my story so readily. Honestly, it’s more like a magical chain that keeps her under control where physical chains can’t.”
“I think there’s something you haven’t considered,” Zenis said, from where he was pretending to sleep close by, opening his eyes.
“What?” Altek prompted him to continue.
“What happens when she gets to the chapterhouse and starts going on about how we’re unholy dimension travellers dooming the land to damnation?”
Altek shrugged. “We’re not dooming anything, I’ve sworn to defend honour and justice and I will do so.”
“And what does honour and justice compel you to do if they discover that she’s right?” Zenis countered. “Not that I think anything of the sort but what if some cleric communes with your god and he says ‘yeah, it might be better to take them out to be on the safe side, for the greater good’?”
I groaned inwardly, not because Zenis was wrong but that he just made the argument a question of faith. The look on Altek’s face confirmed to me that no more progress was going to be made on the subject before he even spoke.
“If my God demands my life then I will happily sacrifice it for the good of all,” Altek rebuked, “and I would feel compelled to encourage you to follow my lead, though I would balk at such measures, the greatest good will be accomplished and I will join my ancestors in Heaven. Now get back to sleep all of you, I’ll keep watch for now.”
I returned to Kendra feeling trepidacious, having caught Zenis’ dark look in Kendra’s direction. I admit, I’d been suspicious of Zenis since his attack on Lornel the night before. Lornel was a powerful, high level, druid. In game terms, Zenis had appeared to use the rogue’s ability to do more damage with a ‘sneak attack’, however that didn’t account for Lornal’s immediate death. Ever really thought about killing someone by stabbing them from behind? It’s not as easy as you’d think. Where do you stab someone? How do you hold the blade? How can you be sure to kill them immediately? Now apply that logic to a magical world where a ring can give you the same protection as a suit of chainmail or a spell can make your skin as hard as stone.
There was a class that could kill anyone with a sneak attack, however, without worrying about armour or damage. A class trained specifically in the art of killing by stealth. A class called ‘Assassin’. The problem? To qualify for membership, you have to be evil in the same way that paladins have to be good. I chewed over this fact in my mind as I rested beside Kendra, my guilt over having enslaved her making me worry if she’d live to see Altek’s chapterhouse.
I considered asking Altek if he’d used his paladin ability to detect evil on us (all paladins have the ability, it’s one of the most frustrating class abilities in the game) but seriously, how do you ask something like that? Hi, Altek, I was just wondering if you’ve been suspicious enough of us that you’ve checked to see if we’re evil? Yeah, like that’s not a one way ticket to an ass kicking from one of a thousand directions. Personally, I didn’t care if Zenis was evil as long as he kept his evil ass out of my face. If it became a problem, I would deal with it one way or the other but I wasn’t about to let him kill Kendra and, honestly, I wasn’t of a mind to hand the girl over to the executioner either.
Sure, she tried to mindrape and murder me but she did so for motives that, I have to admit, were noble from a certain point of view. It also occurred to me that we knew Kendra and Lornel were after us now and if we got rid of them the Circle would just send someone else after us, someone we couldn’t watch out for.
Besides, she was cute.
But that was totally not my main reason for trying to save her.
I swear.
Maybe?
The party finally arrives in what passes for civilization in the fantasy world, lulled into a false sense of security. Worse yet, they need Vanad back but someone seems to have their foot in the revolving door of the afterlife.
By the way, a Lich is a type of undead wizard that looks like a zombie. Not that there's anything wrong with that if you're into zombies...
Beyond the Screen
By Dr. Bender
Chapter 5
My first thought when I came two was a wish that I’d been able to come up with a better plan; one that didn’t involve getting cracked over the head. Worse yet, it had taken Kendra’s sweet little love-stricken heart three goes to put me down.
Like all good plans, I kept it simple. I gave Kendra a letter for her father after making her swear a most solemn oath not to open it and give it straight to her father as soon as she was able to find him. Just to be sure, I laid my Lesser Geas on her, giving her orders to that effect. She was angry at me but the love spell kept her docile and agreeable. The letter read as follows:
Dear Lornel Gallo,
It is with no regret that I must apologize for not allowing you to kill me. I do, however, regret the state that your daughter is currently in, despite the fact that I charmed her in self defence with the potion that she tried to give me first. I’ve sent her back to you so that you can break the enchantment and she can live out the rest of her life outside a jail cell if left to the devices of my paladin companion or six feet underground in an unmarked grave if the man who stabbed you has his way.
Do not mistake this kindness for weakness. If you come for me, I will do everything in my power to destroy you, your pet cat, your daughter, the Circle and anything else that you hold sacred. I am patient. I was here on this world before you were conceived and I will be here centuries after you depart your mortal shell. Come against me at your own peril.
Yours Sincerely,
Al’ressia Na Korechillic.
You might have noticed that I’d left out part of my full name. I’d been named by my father’s blood in the elvish way, taking five names that represented both my being and the bloodline of my ancestors. The first name was my elvish use-name unique to me, the second the short, humanized, version that the less developed civilizations could pronounce with greater ease (which is kind of insulting, practical and arrogant at the same time, which characterizes my father’s people fairly well). The third name was my secret name, composed by my mother who would hold on to it until I came of age and she gave it to me in a secret ceremony, upon which she immediately forgets it forever. And I mean that literally, the ritual of naming is recognized and enforced by the elvish deities (and in the event that a mother dies before passing on the name, the same deities hold it in secret until a new ‘mother’ is appointed by the child in question). My fourth name, ‘Na’, is my mother’s family name, which naturally isn’t elvish in my case. Last but not least, I possessed my father’s family name.
But back to more pertinent facts, the bruises made me wish in all honesty that half-elves weren’t immune to sleep spells. I hoped that Kendra had the good sense to fly to her father in bird form like I’d suggested rather than hanging around to see if I was all right. The last thing I wanted was for Zenis to catch her again.
My last act before being brained was to cast two spells that would help me deal with my companions once they were able to wake me up. The first, Glibness, enhanced my ability to lie to truly preternatural levels. The second, lower level, spell enhanced my ability to appear completely blameless and innocent of any and all suspicion. Together with my natural ability to lie like a devil with a forked snake for a tongue covered in honey, I probably could have sold ice to fire elementals.
I felt bad when my companions fell for it hook, line and sinker but I have to admit, fooling them was also kind of thrilling.
“Don’t blame yourself,” Altek consoled me as we continued walking down the trade road, “she fooled all of us with that act. I seriously thought she really was enchanted.”
“I had my suspicions,” Zenis lied, “but at least now she can’t go ratting us out. All due respect, Altek, I strenuously recommend omitting that particular detail next time you talk to your superiors. Not that I’d ever consider asking you to lie for us but things they don’t know can’t come back and bite them. You ask me, they get one extra paladin out there fighting the good fight, that’s gotta be worth something.”
Altek nodded slowly in reluctant agreement.
I mentally bumped Zenis’ threat rating up in my head from yellow to orange. His ability to lie and wheedle was almost as good as mine. Fortunately, he was abrasive and unpleasant most of the time and lacked breasts.
Speaking of which, there’s nothing like miles of hiking as a girl to make you appreciate the humble brassiere. I think it’s to my credit that after a day in a girl’s body I was starting to get more comfortable with it. It helped, of course, that I had a lifetime of memories as Ressia to guide me in the details of feminine hygiene and was wearing a magical item that eliminated the need to bathe and thus examine myself without clothes on (an inevitable confrontation that still made me nervous, so I wasn’t completely enlightened) but the important revelation that came to me was that despite the change I was still me. Lots of things were different, some more than others, but I retained my sense of identity. I was both James and Ressia and, to be honest, I was starting to enjoy being Ressia.
Our main problem was the seventy pound elephant in the room. An elephant that stank to high heaven, was covered in flies and oozed and indescribably fluid. Naturally, I’m talking about the sack that held the remains of our late, lamented, companion Vanad. You might be wondering why we hadn’t brought him back from the dead yet. The truth is, Celton was a powerful cleric who did indeed have the power to bring the dead back to life. He just wasn’t powerful enough to do it when the body had been eviscerated and partially eaten. When the body is that badly damaged, only the highest levels of spells will do the job without leaving the person in question horribly maimed.
So it was that Altek approached the gate guards of the next waystation, another fortified inn named The Rampant Stag, with the unenviable task of having to explain why he was carrying human body parts in a sack. Fortunately, respect for the Order of the Golden Rose and prior reports of the battle at The Nymph’s Pool got us past questions of foul play once Altek proved his paladinhood by spontaneously healing a few minor cuts and scratches (another benefit of being a paladin). Unfortunately, such respect didn’t extend to the smell Vanad was exuding and we were refused entry (the boys also reeked to high heaven due to not having had a bath for two days but eu de rotting corpse covers a multitude of stenches). As a concession, I managed to convince the guards to bring the stable manager out to trade with us and we managed to ride away from the establishment on the backs of four fine horses. I will say if there’s a positive side to no longer having testicles, it’s that riding a horse is infinitely more enjoyable, if the swearing of my companions was any indication. Personally, I found my first horseback ride quite bracing.
As we were setting up camp a cavalry column flying the king’s colours thundered past without giving us a second glance. “They’re from the garrison at Venifar,” Altek confirmed, “I doubt the knights from the chapterhouse will be far behind.”
“Awesome,” Zenis commented, “maybe they’ll take out those Circle goons for us.”
“No,” Altek and I both said in unison. We looked at each other. “You want to take this one?” I asked. “Ladies first,” he rejoined. I poked my tongue out at him before taking up the explanation. “Until we get to Venifar and the Kingdom of Anarhod proper, this is still the wilds. Heck, inside the kingdom isn’t that safe, it’s just better patrolled. Out here, the law lasts as far as the reach of your sword arm. Goblinoids, Orcs and Kobalds infest the mountains, the Fey, Druids and Elves rule the forests and occasionally there are pockets of real, eldritch, evil. The bad guys have their own gods who work to ensure that the good guys never get too much of an upper hand. In fact, the bad guys win most of the battles; they just can’t put the slam dunk on the war. Getting revenge on the Circle of Falling Leaves isn’t the priority for Anarhod, it’s making sure good dwarven steel gets down this road from Caer Dur.”
“Anarhod’s besieged from all sides, you’ve also got the underwater kingdoms off the coast, the Empire of Saquasim to the south and a bunch of assorted human kingdoms in the west as well and none of them really get along… you really don’t know any of that, Zenis?”
The elf shrugged. “First time I’ve ever been to Anarhod; never really cared much for politics outside the guilds.”
We set watches like good little party members but I was happy that my elven heritage allowed me to enter a trance state in which I was aware rather than truly sleeping. Altek and Celton slept like babies but then I doubt they even remotely suspected that Zenis was an Assassin. I knew Altek didn’t at least or they might have tried to kill each other already… unless I was wrong. Or I was right and Zenis had magical items that could fool a paladin’s ability to detect evil. Or Altek was a total fool and hadn’t bothered to give all of us a once over with the morality scanner. So I was paranoid and ‘slept’ with one eye open.
We continued on at night after we got our eight hours, eating iron rations as we rode and over the course of the next few days we fell into a routine. We rode, striking a good balance between keeping the horses healthy and maintaining our speed, we avoided the waystations and moved at night, interrupted only by the occasional caravan and highway patrol. When I finally couldn’t stand the stench any longer, I went and found a fresh water stream and ordered the boys to bathe before we continued and further. I was quite happy to keep watch and risk death at a discreet distance to preserve their modesty as long as the unbearable smell was somewhat abated. I even forced us to stop at the next waystation we came across to purchase a small barrel as a temporary home for Vanad and his detestable odor. So it was that we arrived at the fortified city of Vanifar in a somewhat presentable fashion without the worry of having to explain why we were carrying a four day old corpse to the guards at the gate. If there was a bright side to the whole ordeal, it would be that we were all too tired to snark at each other or think about Vanad’s death and the danger we were in. Even Zenis was subdued, unable to work up the energy for so much as the smallest of chauvinistic comments.
I remembered more impressive cities thanks to Ressia’s memories but the sight of thirty foot high stone walls was imposing to say the least. Vanifar performs several functions for the Kingdom of Anarhod, the first and foremost being the defence of the realm against the northern wilds. The second is as a trade hub between human farmers and dwarven smiths.
The dwarves and humans had formed an uneasy alliance long ago when the kingdoms of man were founded. Dwarves pride themselves on their abilities as miners and smiths without peer as well as their self sufficiency. Unfortunately, living most of their lives underground, food production is not one of their talents. While they are able to grow edible fungi and herd underground animals for some meat, the state of semi-constant siege that the dwarves find themselves under against the Drow produces great demand for food, necessitating trade with the surface to sustain their way of life. Conversely, kings all over the world rely on solid dwarven steel to arm against the evils that infest the world and retain their grip on civilization, a symbiotic relationship that has kept the peace for centuries. Thus, Vanifar was one of the most important cities in the realm, with fortifications designed and engineered by dwarven siege experts, some of whom were on loan to the Duke as advisors.
The last function Vanifar serves, and the function we were most interested in, is as a safe haven for adventurers intent of pillaging the wilds. The deal between adventurers and the Kingdom is simple. Adventurers keep themselves out of the Kingdom’s hair and in return, we get to keep any loot that we come across no questions asked. This created a profession composed of what amounted to highly trained mercenary special forces who traded life expectancy for potential riches. Riches, of course, have to be spent and adventurers need a place to rest and recuperate between missions. Vanifar, being the last city many adventurers would likely ever see, catered for such stalwart heroes. On the flip side, however, you really can’t call anywhere ‘pro-adventurer’. It’s not that adventurers don’t often earn the ire of the citizenry but they also provoke envy and spite.
Consider a regular citizen’s point of view. An adventurer waltzed into town with a sack full of gold, festooned with magical items that could be traded for enough food for a whole family for years. While they’re busting their humps for a copper piece a day (one hundred copper pieces being worth a single gold piece) and eeking out a living, adventurers live like royalty, seducing their sons and daughters both into their beds and out of the family business for the prospect of living fast and dying young. They don’t get to face the eldritch evils that plague the world or drag their friend’s carcasses around for days so that they can get resurrected after being reduced to a pile of Dire Tiger snacks.
If you’ve ever worked in the movie industry, you know how this phenomenon works. Whenever a camera crew waltzes into a town back on Earth, the price of everything mysteriously jumps upward within a twenty mile radius. Similarly, adventurers are forced to deal with the ‘adventurer’s tax’ that combines an increase in prices with the need to bribe every official you encounter just so that they won’t make needless trouble on the flimsiest of excuses. Unfortunately, Altek didn’t grasp why the guard at the gate was being so difficult as the man’s hints went completely over the paladin’s head.
“Pardon me,” I interrupted when Altek was on the verge of drawing his sword, “I just remembered; I’ve forgotten my donation to the town guard’s retirement fund. Would you gentlemen be so kind as to deposit my twenty gold pieces for me? I’d be ever so grateful.”
We were let through in short order to a chorus of apologies for the misunderstanding and we got our first glimpse of a proper human city in our new world. It’s a curious thing living in a land of magic. For starters, the level of technology is rather random, with steel and glass being available yet hardly used in construction. The densely packed streets were cobbled and the buildings were built of stone and mortar with slate rooves with practical dwarven influences painfully evident in even the smallest of architectural features. The genius of elven architecture is that it looks elegant and lasts forever. The dwarves had yet to master the first part. It was surprisingly clean, however, a testament to the effectiveness of the city’s public works.
Despite the somewhat austere nature of the city, it still held sights and wonders to behold. Divided into segments by high walls with cross streets that radiated from major landmarks, the city could be locked down in segments enabling the guard to fall back to better defensive positions with ease while forcing an enemy to fight for the city inch by inch while providing ease of navigation. Each enclosed district had its own park, square or market around which businesses of various types could flourish, with each district specializing in a certain industry, profession or in some cases race. I found the Halfling and Gnome quarter’s tiny homes to be quite cute and intriguing as we passed by.
Altek, however, was fuming as we rode through the streets and wasn’t in the mood for sight seeing. “I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be bribing a police officer just to get through a gate,” he growled, existentially enraged.
“You payed highway tolls back home didn’t you?” I quipped.
“That’s not the same,” he protested, “tolls are lawfully sanctioned and go into a treasury, or to the private company that built the road to pay them back for their initial investment. What they just did was extortion.”
“If you hadn’t made such a fuss, I could have gotten away with ten,” I countered, “on the bright side; we probably just paid off the city guard’s bar tab.”
“I’m not lugging around my friend’s corpse just so we can earn enough money to pay for anyone’s drunken revels,” he said through clenched teeth. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to calm down. “Forget it. We turn right at the next street and follow it straight to the Temple of Anar. If I put in a good word they won’t gouge us for the resurrection.”
The Temple of Anar the Sun God had pride of place in the temple district as the patron god of Anarhod. It was less of a building and more a cathedral with towers that loomed high over the city walled and rivalled the height of the Duke’s castle that lay at the centre of the city like a spider at the centre of its web. The temple was covered with depictions of Anar wrestling with the dark, inhuman, form of Nesti, God of Death and Disaster along with various demon lords and other alien beings that shrank from his light as they prostrated themselves at his feet. The most amazing feature, however, were the giant double doors of solid gold that stood open to allow admission with militant clerics standing guard in a constant silent vigil.
Celton made his apologies and broke away from the rest of the group when he spotted the Temple of Phastroma, Goddess of Beauty and Art as well as being Celton’s patron goddess. I was kicking myself when I finally recognized the design of his holy symbol, wondering if I’d just had a complete brain fart or if I’d just experienced my first natural one on the twenty sided dice of fate. Her temple was much smaller but more elegant, surrounded by lush gardens and decorated with the most exquisite sculpture.
I was surprised to discover that Ressia didn’t acknowledge Phastroma as her patron goddess, nor did she acknowledge any one god or goddess as her patron. Unusual for adventurers for the same reason that there aren’t any atheists in foxholes; though it’s hard being an atheist in the DnD multiverse when clerics can demonstrate the power of their deities by healing the wounded and crippled, curing sickness with a mere touch and creating food and water out of thin air. Not that Ressia was an atheist, she prayed often to a variety of gods and goddesses in different situations, such as the traditional prayers that actors make to Pharistoma before the curtain goes up. I just didn’t have a single god or goddess that I could point to and say ‘yes, I have faith in them’.
We were so caught up in the journey that we didn’t notice that Zenis had disappeared until we dismounted on the steps of the Temple of Anar and had to hitch up the horses. “Don’t worry,” Altek advised when I voiced my concern, grunting as he hauled the barrel with Vanad’s remains off his horse, “he’s a big boy and you’re not his mother.” I didn’t tell him that I wasn’t so much worried about Zenis as what the elf was doing while we weren’t looking over his shoulder.
As we ascended the long flight of steps that led inside, I couldn’t help but wonder if Anar had a confidence problem. Take the temple’s entrance, a fifteen foot wide, twenty five foot high set of double doors that weren’t even half as tall as the entire building. The sanctuary inside was festooned with gold, from sculptures to gold leaf holy symbols. The altar was a complex series of sun-disks cast from solid gold, each at an angle to spread the light that streamed down from the skylight high above evenly throughout the room.
We were stopped by a votary with a book and a box with the word ‘alms’ embossed in the rich wood with gold lettering. “Welcome to the temple, most holy knight,” he greeted, bowing in respect, “may I inquire as to the purpose of your visit.”
“Foremost I require prayer in a consecrated place, brother,” Altek replied, obviously relieved to be in his element again, “however I regret that I must prevail upon the high priest to return my companion who fell in noble battle back to life.”
The votary lapped up the paladin’s formality like a cat laps up milk. “Of course, sir, if you would follow me I shall deliver you to him post haste.”
The opulence of the temple didn’t stop at the altar room. The corridors were lined with rugs of the finest make, some hailing from far away lands that would have cost a veritable fortune. The floors were clad in thick red carpet, soft enough that I was tempted to take off my boots to scrunch my toes in it. Finally we came to a heavy hardwood door bound in iron at which the votary knocked politely before entering, bidding us to wait a moment while he announced our presence.
We waited for half an hour before we were called inside, long enough to let us know that we weren’t that important but short enough to show a measure of respect to Altek’s paladinhood. The High Priest wasn’t the ultimate leader of the Church of Anar but I was loathe to consider what the chamber of the supreme authority would look like. His office moved beyond lavish into the realm of decadence, all he required to tip the balance was a hookah and a bevy of courtesans. It occurred to me that they might be kept in his bedroom. The High Priest himself wore a robe of white silk embroidered with a pattern that repeated his god’s holy symbol rendered in gold thread. He wasn’t as handsome as Altek but he made up for the lack with confidence that lesser men didn’t possess.
“Altek,” the High Priest greeted warmly, clasping the paladin’s hand in a firm shake and patting him on the shoulder, “it’s been too long, brother.”
“Indeed, High Priest Brevor,” Altek agreed, returning the shake. “Allow me to introduce Lady Ressia, a bard of some repute.”
“I am delighted to make the acquaintance of such a rare and exotic beauty,” Brevor said, lifting my hand to his lips for a brief kiss, “am I to understand that you are good Sir Altek’s betrothed?”
Altek spluttered a bit but I kept my cool and returned his smile, though mine held a bit less mirth and a lot more impending danger. “Don’t make me hurt you, High Priest, it’s a waste of useful magic.”
He laughed, slapping Altek on the shoulder rather hard. “Yes, she’s a keeper all right Altek. Now, I understand that you need a companion of yours resurrected. You do understand that such a service can’t be provided for free, Anar frowns upon it.”
“How much?” Altek asked, suppressing a wince.
#
“Thirty thousand gold pieces.”
Celton spat his ale back into his tankard.
We were sitting in a tavern called The Smiling Goddess in the temple district, a nice establishment with a strangely pious atmosphere that was remarkably clean and quiet for such a venue. Clerics love a good tipple as much as the next person, I can tell you, but they’re not the most boisterous crowd (with some exceptions) even when they’re in their cups.
“So then we went looking for a Resurrection scroll,” Altek continued, muttering darkly into his cup. “Guess how much they are around here.”
“Thirty thousand?” Celton guessed.
“Thirty one thousand,” Altek corrected, “they tack on double the cost of materials. And the prices on healing spells are fixed, everyone charges the same.”
Our cleric muttered some very impious oaths. “I can cover twenty thousand with the spell components for Raise Dead and Lesser Restoration,” he offered, the components for said spells being diamonds and diamond dust respectively.
“No,” I disagreed, “we need those spells in reserve. If the Dire Tiger hadn’t made a mess of things we wouldn’t be bothering with this. We need a third option.”
“You have an idea?” Altek asked hopefully.
I nodded. “Vanad might not like it but it’s the most practical option and it has to be done soon before the time limit expires. Reincarnation is a lower level spell and should be much cheaper.”
“But we can’t approach any druids for fear they’ll rat us out to the Circle,” Altek pointed out.
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t scrolls floating about,” I countered. “It’s not a bard spell but I can cast it from a scroll given about an hour. Only problem is, we’re running the risk of him coming back as something without hands.”
“How likely is that?” Celton inquired.
I shrugged. “Flip a coin and take your chances. Honestly, I don’t think we have any other options. He’s been dead four days, nearly five, and the window for Reincarnation only lasts a week.”
Of course, Zenis chose that moment to suddenly appear, throwing a heavy scroll onto the table before sliding into his seat. Looking smug, he leaned back and put his hands behind his head before propping his feet up on a spare chair. “There’s your Resurrection scroll,” he declared pompously, “do try not to fuck up casting it.”
There was a long pause as we stared at the thief until Celton snatched up the scroll to have a look at it. Blinking several times, he gulped. “Uh, it’s a Resurrection scroll all right. Where the heck did you get one of these?”
Altek glared at the rogue. “I will not be party to thievery.”
“Woah, woah, woah there, big man,” Zenis said, attempting to placate the paladin’s righteous wrath, “you’ve got entirely the wrong end of the stick. I went to see a guy who knows a guy, savvy, and happened to mention our little predicament with our poor departed friend. As an upstanding citizen, he introduced me to a philanthropist who just happened to have a spare Resurrection scroll he was willing to donate to a just cause.”
“Mind if I take a closer look at it Celton?” I asked, holding out my hand. “I’d like to examine it thoroughly to see if it’s cursed.
He handed it over, shrugging. “You’ll have to cast it anyway; I can’t use scrolls of that level.”
To explain, in the game there’s a skill called ‘use magic device’ that lets people with it use scrolls and other magical items without being wizards or clerics. The major advantage being that if you have a high enough skill level, you can use magical items that even wizards or clerics can’t. In the reality of the DnD world, Ressia was well versed in the construction of magical items to the point where she could divine the nature of such items and how to activate them as well as decipher magical script thanks to her elven upbringing. It can seem a little weird that bards and rogues are best at this ability compared to wizards and clerics, the difference being that bards and rogues cheat to get their magical power where wizards and clerics come by it though honest study and discipline.
I concentrated on studying the scroll while the other three bickered, Altek and Celton highly suspicious of the sudden fortuitous appearance of exactly what we needed for free. Both of the religious types seemed certain that Zenis had stolen it but, unless the rogue had an ungodly ability to bluff or I was out of my skull, as incredulous as it seems, his words rang true. Of course, if Zenis wasn’t playing us then whoever had given him the scroll was playing us, which was why I asked to examine the scroll more closely.
My suspicions were all but confirmed the moment I touched the scroll. I wasn’t surprised that neither Zenis nor Celton had either noticed or remarked on it since magical scrolls can come on a remarkable variety of exotic hides. There is, however, no mistaking the texture of treated human skin once you know what to look for. One of the little foibles of the alignment system is that it tends to colour the magic you use. Evil people make evil magical items with evil ingredients, the biggest difference being that such spellcasters can generate power through the pain and degradation of others, defraying both the monetary and personal costs of creating magical items. After all, why waste perfectly good diamonds on resurrection scrolls when the heart of an angel or the powdered wings of tortured pixies would do just as well?
After examining the scroll carefully with the aid of an aura sight spell, I rolled it back up and placed it on the table. I wasn’t expecting the other three to be watching me so intently when my attention returned to reality and, startled, I took a deep breath to collect my wits. “It’s a resurrection scroll all right,” I informed them, deciding to omit certain facts for the greater good, “there’s a minor curse on it, though, which is probably why the original owner didn’t mind parting with it.”
“How minor are we talking here?” Altek inquired.
“It’s the old ‘grow an inch of hair per hour’ deal on the user,” I explained, “annoying but I’d rather have Vanad back.” No I wasn’t about to tell the paladin that the scroll was evil. If I had, he wouldn’t have let me use it and being all noble and pure wasn’t going to bring Vanad back. “Besides,” I continued, “that curse usually only activates once on spell completion items. I think this one will last a bit longer than that but it won’t last forever. Even if it does, Remove Curse is a lot easier to cast than Resurrection.”
Altek frowned and for a moment I thought he might object to using the scroll anyway. After a few moments, however, he looked me in the eyes and nodded. “Do it.”
It wasn’t as easy as that, of course. First I spent most of the night deciphering the scroll in my room, going over it several times and triple checking everything just to be thorough, though I admit I overdid it a bit. It was my first time, after all, even if Ressia was confident James still had nagging doubts. The worst part was when Altek opened the barrel in my room, even though we opened the windows first. Celton had to purify the whole room just so we could breathe and I had to wait for the tears and gagging to stop so I could cast the spell without mishap. Then, after all that, I had to muster the courage to touch the body. Call it girly if you like but the idea of touching dead things makes my skin crawl, I even leave looting corpses to less squeamish adventurers. Fortunately I discovered that the spell only requires a light tap with the tip of my finger, so I was spared too many of the grizzly details.
Watching a pile of body parts metamorphose into a healthy, living, human being is a sight you won’t soon forget but wish you could. Everything kind of liquefies and blobs together in a disgusting, opaque, fleshy, sack that starts growing eyeballs and hair everywhere before the bones solidify and appendages push their way out of the mass; even worse when the end result is a naked emaciated wizard in desperate need of a woman to take care of him. Not that I was about to volunteer for the job with both my personalities recoiling in horror at the idea for completely different reasons.
Both of them managed to shut up, however, when Vanad woke up and started screaming. It’s another little detail that the game glosses over so none of us ever even considered what it’d be like to wake up alive after being torn up and eaten by a tiger the size of a bus. Unfortunately we were idiots and Vanad suffered the full mnemonic backlash because of our carelessness.
Watching Vanad utterly break down into a gibbering mess broke down a wall inside me that I hadn’t realized existed. Another of those strange urges propelled me forward and the next thing I knew, I found myself cradling him in my arms as he cried into my shoulder, whispering comforting platitudes into his ear. After a few moments, I noticed the boys fidgeting uncomfortably around us and, for a reason I didn’t quite fathom at the time, their inactivity irritated me.
“Celton,” I snapped, surprised at how natural it felt to be ordering them about, “don’t gawk, boy, get a blanket for him. Altek, wipe the blood off his things. Zenis… just turn around and wipe that smirk off your face or we’ll see how you faire coming back after being skinned alive.”
I must have been quite scary at the time because all three of them went pale and did exactly what I asked without question. I can’t help but smile wryly when I look back on that moment but at the time their awkwardness and insensitivity was just so damn frustrating it made me want to gouge their eyes out.
Vanad wasn’t ever the same. I comforted him until he calmed with Celton’s help, wrapping the wizard in a warm blanket to preserve his modesty (not that he had much to be modest about; I’d think about that, players, the next time you make charisma a dump stat). The innkeeper came up to see what all the noise was and we had to buy him off with even more gold not to kick us out onto the street, much to Altek’s disgust, then had to rent another room for the distressed wizard on top of that.
I used a sleep spell to force him to rest and we tucked him into bed. Altek and Celton vowed to take turns watching over him during the night. Zenis offered to watch over me all night so I bruised his shin. Just to be safe, I cast a simple Alarm spell on my door and window before flopping onto my bed, still fully dressed. I don’t remember actually hitting the pillow.
Looking back, if I’d known what was going to happen next, I would have jumped out the window and run for the relative safety of the wilds, never to return. After all, when I woke up the next morning, I was going to have one of the greatest trials of my entire life, worse than a flight of dragons ridden by an army of devils; worse than fending off the romantic attentions of a lich; worse even than being forced to watch both Dungeons and Dragons movies back to back.
Yes, my dear audience, in the morning I was finally going to bathe.
May the deities have mercy.