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amu23m1

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Pat 1: The Golden Ticket

 

Crawling through the thick brush, Thoven’s thick masculine body wasn’t designed for stealth… The snapping of twigs and rustling of leaves gives away his position to the previously unaware orc camp. Thoven, realizing his cover was blown, stands to his full 6’4” height. His 240lb frame of solid muscle wrapped in tight fitting leather armor and a marvelous chrome breastplate barely big enough to cover his pecs creates quite an imposing figure. The orcs pause at this, despite outnumbering the Elven Paladin 10 to 1. That pause was enough for Thoven to take a long lunging step forward at the group of orcs. He raises his massive sword preparing for a long sweeping strike and…

 

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“…It’s a critical failure.” I hesitantly say as my d20 rolls to a stop on a one, the worst possible roll. I wince as a devilish smile creeps up on the DM’s face. Derek is known in our group for having the most severe ideas when it comes to critical failures. We’ve already lost 2 of our characters to his sadism at the beginning of our play through. Hopefully now at level 13, Thoven can withstand what Derek has thought up. Hopefully…

 

With a strike that could have decapitated half the orcs in front of him, Thoven swings wide but loses the footing for his lunge. Grazing cleanly over the heads of the orcs, giving them haircuts in the process, Thoven’s sword lands in the trunk of a large tree to the left. Although, “land” might not be the right word as it doesn’t come to a stop until it’s cut clean through the tree trunk. With an earthen creak the massive tree comes falling down towards Thoven, the sound of it’s slow decent to ground sends chills down Thoven’s spine. So much so he stands there shell shocked until the tree slams into the ground, his massive body but a bug underneath. Dealing him… 58 points of damage.

 

“Come on dude… at least let him roll to dodge if you’re going to deal 58 points of damage for a single failed roll…” pipes in Travis, his low quite voice coming to my defense as I myself am shell shocked after coming within 10 points of a knockout. His rather small frame dwarfed by Derek’s own hulking one. “It’s not like this is an important encounter to the campaign… We already beat your boss for the day.”

 

Snickering, Derek just shrugs his overly grown shoulders, “A one is a one. If I didn’t do this, they wouldn’t be CRITICAL FAILURES anymore. And a near death AFTER the boss? THAT’S GOTTA throw you for a loop! It’s called suspense for a reason.” Ignoring his inaccurate use of the word suspense, I motion for Travis to back down. I’ll just graciously take the damage as none of us really want to deal with Derek’s bull headedness this late into the day. It’s something we have just come to accept as part of our after school sessions anyways. Not that we could kick him out of our group if we wanted to…

 

This D&D campaign is actually put on by our school’s Gay-Straight Alliance as one of our guidance counselor’s (oh so often NOT) “Great Ideas”. So unfortunately we’re not some random group of friends who can start another campaign behind The Annoying One’s back. Our Guidance Counselor felt roleplaying cooperatively would be a great way for members to immerse themselves in the thought processes of others. A novel idea albeit, but the one who needs that sort of empathy training the most ended up as Dungeon Master and is always focused on the “me” rather than the “we”. A way of thinking that might just be reflex for him as the school’s football team captain and self-proclaimed number one go-getter (AKA he’s loved by the teachers too, something none of us at the bottom of the food chain can quite figure out...).

 

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN by spell shaping?” booms Derek, bringing me back to reality just in time to see Jastivan (Travis) save Thoven’s ass from a small hoard of orcs with a massive fireball. A small grin on Travis’ face as Derek can do nothing about the nat20 sitting neatly on our game mat.

 

“Looks like we’re both pretty lucky, in our own ways.” I laugh, giving Travis a high five which he meekly returns. With the last of our battles out of the way, Derek grumpily leads our group back to town so we can cash in our treasures, rest and level up before our next session. With all his chances to kill us out of the way, what is usually a pretty lively part of the game turns into just a conversation in the meta game as Derek leaves his character voices behind and basically just deals with our characters as himself.

 

Packing up our stuff for the day, me and Travis skedaddle before Derek hones in on us to relieve some of his pent up frustration. We laugh together about today’s victory over the boss (AKA just Derek trying to seriously kill us with some random monster from the monster manual) on our way to our local board game store “High Adventure”. They have a massive selection and everyone there is super knowledgeable. This one guy who works there named Jordan has been playing D&D since the game first came out! We always go to him for the best news on what adventures to try and what we really need in order to play.

 

“Oh guys! Over here!” we hear Jordan as we walk into High Adventure, whispering at us from the D&D shelves as he frantically moves books around. “I was just ‘restocking the shelves’ before you get here. Didn’t want anyone but you guys to get their hands on this.” he says secretively, pulling out a very thin gold trimmed D&D book. “I was shocked when I saw this on the shelves this morning... I got a copy a long time ago, and it’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me.” Both Travis and I look at each other, neither of us knowing what to make of Jordan’s excitement and this apparently great buy.

 

“So uh… What’s with the book Jordan?” I ask, noting by the gleam in his eyes that he was clearly waiting for me to do so. Rather than actually saying anything though, he simply pulls us behind the shelf and hands over the small book. Travis and I thumb through the surprisingly few number of pages, realizing quickly they are all just the same thing; gold inked character sheets on aged paper. Shocked and disbelieving I say, “Really Jordan? You’re this excited about some dumb character sheets with gol…” until Travis slaps his hand over my mouth, both him and Jordan glancing around frantically as if to make sure no one overheard me. “What?!?” I gasp as I pull Travis’ trembling hand from my face.

 

“Is… Is this really?!?!” Whispers Travis, his excitement now on par with Jordan’s as he seems ready to jump up and down, quite literally. They share quite, reaffirming nods with one another, clearly privy to some sort of knowledge they have yet to share.

 

“Guys… At least let me in on what’s so great about these dang charac…”



“SSSSHHHHH” they both scream at me in whispers.

 

“OK! Ok, I get it… These are The Shit.  Excuse me for being a bit curious…” I bite back sarcastically, confused as to why they don’t just tell me what’s up with these damn old, gold character sheets!

 

With a seriousness I don’t think I have ever seen in him, Travis breaks me from my pouting and asks “Do you trust me?” Taken aback by his serious tone, I just nod. “These… There is no way I can explain the details, but if these are real… You’ve just got to trust me here. This purchase could change our lives. We’ve always been the kids at the back of class playing our little imaginary games, ever since we were little. But this! This will make all that time worth it.” Stunned to silence, I try and wrap my mind around what the implication is here, but these guys are being way to vague. If Travis is this set on it though...

 

“Well then,” I say decidedly to Jordan. “I guess you’ve got yourself a sale.”

 

Leaving the store and Jordan behind, our new purchase in hand, Travis and I head towards my place since it is only a few blocks from High Adventure. Travis and I don’t talk along the way like we usually would, Travis being too busy shaking with excitement, while I for the life of me couldn’t understand what was causing that. There’s no way that some fancy character sheets would cause Travis to freak out like this. So then what is it? Travis’ excitement feels infectious as I conjure my wildest imaginations to play with the idea, which gets me nowhere fast. I just get some dumb ideas like these being part of some super high-tech new game system for D&D, or that the gold leaf is real gold? Neither of which sound convincing enough to explain Travis’ current state. After a few minutes of walking in silence with our minds abuzz, finally we get to my house and we run up to my room. With no more walking to distract from the topic at hand, I open my mouth to speak.

 

Before I get the chance to vocalize my thousand questions, Travis pipes up, “Don’t bother Caleb. I know it’s strange, but I really won’t be able to explain anything to you until we make a character using these sheets.” I try to argue, but not knowing anything here I just sit down on my bed defeated. I at least manage to give Travis an annoyed stare, my patience for all this vague talk about to evaporate. Picking up on this and knowing my more than inquisitive nature, Travis grabs the book. Removing a character sheet with surgical delicacy, he hands it to me and takes a deep breath. “Ok now, the fastest way to explain is to just do.” He says, his voice trembling, “Close your eyes and imagine your dream D&D character. What do they look like; are they muscular or skinny, gruff or graceful? Are they tall and heavy, or small and light? What are they wearing; a knight’s full garb, a wizard’s robes, or nothing at all? Get as much detail as your imagination can come up with.” I sit for a minute taking in his words, trying with all my might to decide on what I’d want my dream character to be.

 

“Well?” pipes up Travis, a crazy grin on his face. “What did you imagine?” Before I managed to put it into words he’s looking over my shoulders, pushing down with his full weight in order to see. “This… This is just Thoven’s character sheet.”

 

“Well it’s pretty hard to come up with something on the… Wait? What do you mean by that? How did you know I pictured Thoven?” Shocked, I tentatively look down at what really is just Thoven’s character sheet, exactly the same as the one in my backpack but written in gold. Weirdly enough, written in my hand writing too. “Dude, what the hell is this? I didn’t write this!” Freaked out, my voice comes out in a higher octave than it has in years. I drop the sheet to the ground and look at Travis, “Explain. Now!”

 

Picking up the sheet, Travis returns it to me with a sigh as he says, “I guess that reaction is to be expected… This really isn’t something you could expect.” Glad to be reaffirmed that I am indeed not crazy, but terrified further by the route this conversation is taking, I take a deep breath. Seeing me calm down, if only a little, Travis continues slowly, “So, I know this isn’t what you want to hear… but these sheets really aren’t something I can totally explain either. Up until just now, they were just some wild rumour I had read on some small D&D forum. It’s hard to believe that they might be real…” Taking a few breaths, Travis spends a few moments to reorganize his thoughts into what better be how he plans to explain this. “I… Actually,” a thought popping into his head, “I’m just gonna bring up that forum post and you can read it yourself.” And with a few quick and practiced motions, he has the forum up on his phone, holding it out for me to see.

 

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Reading over the post a few times, I try to wrap my brain around the idea of becoming Thoven… Knowing this is ridiculous, I hand the phone back to Travis, a little upset and confused as to why he’s so dead set on getting me to believe this idea.

 

“Come on Caleb! Where’s your sense of adventure. This is amazing!” Travis’ excitement keeping him ignorant to my lack of enthusiasm. “With these character sheets, we can actually LIVE OUT our D&D campaigns. I have so much stuff I want to try with you.” Blushing, he pauses to catch himself. “Just imagine what we can do. The possibilities are...”

 

“Enough Travis…” The lack of belief in my voice makes it come out tired and impatient. “What are you and Jordan doing this for? I’m not dumb enough to be fooled by some crazy conspiracy theory and some trick character sheet.”

 

“But the sheet… it knew…”

 

 ‘What? It knew what I was thinking? I don’t get why your doing this… Did you use some heat sensitive ink to make Thoven’s character info appear? You think I’d believe all this?” waving the character sheet around and pointing at his phone. “It’s insane. We don’t live in a world where something magical comes along to just make it all better.”

 

“Yeah, but with these we can experience another world.”

 

“Just stop… I don’t get why your pushing this so hard, but I’ve had enough for today.” I hand the character sheet over to Travis and walk him to the door. He slowly follows behind, not wanting to give this up but not knowing how to continue the conversation. “Can you go peddle your magic to someone else? I’m not buying.” I say, opening the door and waving Travis through.

 

Just before he crosses the threshold of my front door, Travis stomps down and turns to me with what looks like a teary eyed determination. “Fine, I get how crazy it sounds. Just… next time we have our D&D session at school bring this character sheet with you. Then you’ll see.” He say as he shoves the character sheet into my arms once again. Before I get to protest he turns around and makes a very grandiose un-Travis like exit.

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Eheheh, really? Caleb really is surprised to why Travis is annoyed & frustrated at him? He should know that not believing him, and brushing something that Travis find so awesome off as fake & accusing him of pulling a prank on him while he is obviously not, makes Travis a little angry at him. >.=.>; Caleb doesn't believe it sure, but he at least could either play along or just be polite to his friend.

 

Caleb is an ass. >.=.>;

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  • 1 month later...
38 minutes ago, JohnnyAdams said:

This story has some real potential! As an avid D&D player I'm intrigued! Any plans on continuing it? 

I do have plans! Although not sure if they will come to fruition with school breathing down my neck at the moment...

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