D&D 2 (Patreon)

Felt like having some more of that D&D tabletop adventure.

D&D Game 1

———

Gert grinned wide, eyeing both Tesko and Chendra. “So,” he asked, dragging the sound out, “who wants to play the nephew?”

Tesko crossed her arms. “No way.”

Chendra didn’t exactly jump at the chance either.

“Y’know,” said Gert, “I can play him, but he’d be far less … adversarial if someone on your team controlled his actions.”

Chendra continued to look sour, but softened the slightest bit.

Gert smiled. “You wanna play Melmin?”

“His name’s … not really Melmin, is it?” she asked. Gert slipped a sheet from his stack and passed it to her. She groaned, “It is. His name is Melmin.”

“The two of you leave the mayor’s house with Melmin,” said Gert. “He’s a tubby little coosa squeezed into black leather armor that’s too small for him, and he’s got a bunch of daggers strapped to various body parts. He moves stiffly, like he’s not accustomed to wearing any armor, much less this particular set.”

Inzari threw up her paws in frustration. “This is ridiculous!” she shouted. Gert’s heart sank. He really thought she had been enjoying the game up until this moment. The curvy little ringel waved her paws angrily at Chendra. “How the fuck are we supposed to keep this … thing alive and unscathed?”

Gert brightened and his ears fell back into a smile of relief.

Chendra pretended to stick a finger all the way up her nose like she was really cramming it in there, digging for something. “Well,” she said in a nasal tone, twisting the finger back and forth, “when I get hurt, Auntie Jewel usually sends for Father Heng. He knows lots of healing spells.”

Stix’s eyes popped open wide. “Healing magic? Yes!” He hopped excitedly on his stool. “We need that! We need healing magic. For coosa and me too. I don’t have any armor on.”

Inzari gave Chendra the side eye. “Do you suppose this Father Heng guy would want to come with us? Try to keep you alive?”

Chendra shrugged then pretended to change nostrils, excavating deeply for more buried treasure. “Maybe? He’s a priest. He’s not gonna want a share of the bounty on monster heads.”

“That’s fine!” said Stix. “Auset and I don’t mind keeping his share of the gold.”

Inzari glared at Chendra. “You’re not getting any either,” sneered the ringel. “I promised the mayor we’d take you along. I never said anything about sharing the bounty.”

Chendra pretended to pull the finger from her nose and she made a Pop! sound with her lips. Tesko covered her face and tried to stifle a laugh.

Chendra made a flicking action with the finger that had been in her nose, but Inzari quickly pointed a finger and turned to Gert. “I set it on fire!”

“What?” he gasped, unprepared.

“The booger!” laughed Inzari. “I incinerate the booger he’s flicking at me. Burn it up before it touches me.”

Stix blinked. He looked from face to face. “Can she do that?”

All three geroo nodded excitedly, but it was Gert who explained, “Absolutely! If it adds color and doesn’t change the story, I won’t even make you roll.”

Inzari stuck her tongue out at Stix, but he just smiled.

Gert went Pfft! and made a starburst of his fingers over the middle of the table to represent incinerated mucous.

“That’s fine, keep it,” said Chendra in Melmin’s nasal voice. “If I wanted any of Auntie Jewel’s money, I’d just take it from her purse.”

Chendra paused and puffed out her cheeks. She pointed at the ringels. “But if we find any treasure while killing monsters, you’re not screwing me out of my share! I want some magic daggers, or magic armor, or potions or something.”

Inzari and Stix shared a look, but then they both nodded. “Yeah, that’s fair,” said Stix, remembering to use a deep voice for his character. “Well, maybe Father Heng will be interested in killing monsters … just so there’s fewer monsters?”

Chendra shrugged.

“I climb back up on Kynorymz’s shoulder.” Inzari looked to Chendra. “So, where do we find him?”

Chendra pointed off to the side. “The poor part of town,” she said. “He likes helping out the poor.”

“I guess that makes you Father Heng—unless you have a better idea,” said Gert as he sifted through his sheets. Tesko accepted the sheet without complaint. He announced, “You find the priest in the slums, ministering to the poor. Though the lio is a little shorter than Kynorymz, he’s just as broad. You suspect he wears armor under his humble robe. He carries a staff with a large, iron religious symbol at one end, but you suspect the staff could use it as a mace.”

“Hey! You wanna kill some monsters?” called Inzari with paws cupped around her muzzle.

“What?” asked Tesko.

“Monsters,” said Stix. “They’re killing the peasants, and we need help fighting. We need healing spells to keep us alive while we fight.”

“Yes, very well,” said Tesko. “I will do my best to protect the peasants.”

Gert shrugged. It wasn’t much of an interaction, but it would do. “You head south along the road, but recent rains have reduced it to mud.”

“What’s that?” demanded Inzari.

Gert looked around the table, and everyone stared back at him. He felt surprised and had been sure that some of them would know the word. “Well,” he explained, “planets are covered in dirt—the stuff we grow plants in on the agriculture decks. From time to time, water falls from the sky on planets like this, and when dirt soaks up too much water, it turns into a gloppy mess called ‘mud’ that makes travel slow and difficult.”

“Mud is one of those things people planetside just have to live with.” He shrugged. “You hike south for several hours—”

Tesko gasped, “Hours!” Then she covered her mouth when everyone turned toward her.

Tesko was a brilliant scientist, so of course she could understand that planets are huge and that it takes a long time to walk from place to place on one … but then again, walking from one end of the ship to the other only took a few minutes, so it was only natural for her mind—brilliant as it was—to resist the notion of spending hours walking anywhere.

“—several hours south to the place that Mayor Jewel had described,” said Gert. “You’re surrounded by farmland, but not far from the road—perhaps a hundred meters to the west—you see a strange tower that emerges from the ground.”

Stix pointed nowhere in particular. “There! There’s that … thing the mayor mentioned.”

Inzari slapped at Stix’s shoulder. “Get a move on! I want a closer look.”

Gert said, “You trudge across the muddy field. The tower is about ten meters tall, five meters wide at the base, and narrower at the top. And though the tower looks like it’s made from blocks of black stone, it doesn’t appear to have been built atop the ground. The dirt and plants have been shoved aside as if the tower burst through the land like a sprouting plant.”

Chendra pulled a finger from her nose to point. “Weird shit!”

“Black stones have been laid in a spiral path up and around the tower, like stairs.”

Inzari’s eyes opened wider. “It’s a corpse nest! Like where insects crawl out of a dead guy’s chest!”

As one, all the geroo paled, their ears drooping, but Stix looked excited. “Yeah! Yeah! And the monsters must wriggle out like corpse beetles!” He laid out a palm in the air and then slapped it hard with his other. “We should just wait here for the monsters to come out and then smash them!”

Gert looked to Chendra and then Tesko. They appeared just as uncomfortable as he felt.

Eventually, Tesko straightened, having overcome some of her queasiness. “Or I suppose we could go inside it and take the fight to the monsters.”

Stix and Inzari shared a wide-eyed look. “We could!” whispered the fire mage.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18t8mNteNQ9Jx6e7bsvh_QnClt3z9DXp25xopUArv3-I/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?