xp_logs | Dungeons & Derangements: A Simple Game (Reply)

An innocent game of Dungeons and Dragons takes an interesting turn.

The moon was full behind the pane glass of the library study-room window. If that weren't creepy enough a couple of bats darted between the pillars of light that the grounds shone from the gothic lamps in the gardens. Spread out across the table was an array of food, mostly of a variety high in sugar or salt, but they were teenagers and those sorts of things didn't really matter...unless you were Julian Keller who happened to have been raised in California where that was something you considered after age two. "Wow, Dori, this looks..." he couldn't quite find the right word, something that rhymed with dorky, but not quite. "Really interesting," he decided after a moment.

There were grids and miniatures on the table, as well as the character sheet that Doreen had pestered him into filling out one day instead of studying- apparently, he'd been the last one to do it.

“Isn’t it awesome?” Doreen said, moving around a couple of the minis. She had painted a lot of them herself, which was hard work with her hands the way they were, “It’s going to be lot of fun. And you totally have to try the trail mix,” she said. She abhorred most health food. Dad had always considered it a waste of time, unless he had to make nice with a client. “We’re going to get started soon. This is going to be the best campaign ever! I’ve never DMed with this many people though. I hope I do okay.”

"Eh, you'll be fine." Julian said with a smirk, "I mean what's the worst that can happen, it's just a game."

"The worst it can happen involves us all playing this for the next three weeks, totally addicted. Not a bad idea, if you ask me", commented Nico as she looked around, still telling herself she was entirely capable of playing a spell caster. Because she was a spell caster, so it was like the obvious position for her to assume.

"So, can someone explain to me what are we going to do...again?"

“Well, basically the characters you rolled you’ll be playing in the world I made,” Doreen said, tail twitching happily while pulling Monkey Joe out of the trail mix, “When certain things come up you’ll have to roll the dice to see if you can do it or not, but it’s not all the time or anything. And I hope mostly it’s just a good story. I get the stats for the monsters and stuff from the book. Make sense? Any more questions?”

A voice suddenly piped up from the far corner of the room. "So, I'm this little guy I'm assuming..." Nicholas Gleason took a few steps forward from his spot away from the group. Bending down, he plucked a pewter figure of a wolf off of the table. Turning it over in his hands, he pushed his fingers against the fangs of the wolf figure several times before a small smile appeared on his face. "Quite the likeness, no?"

There was a giggle from Yvette, part nervous reaction more than because the comment was that funny. She was feeling rather overwhelmed by all this, especially with her language issues, and was hoping she didn't mess things up too badly. "I think it is very like you," she replied. She picked up her own figurine, a tall, willowy elven cleric. "Mine is not so much, although I sometimes would like to be as tall as this, yes? It would make getting things down from the shelves much easier."

"But so much less fun," Julian smirked and gave Yvette a wink. He wasn't sure if the tiny, red girl still disliked him, but he wasn't going to press the issue if she wasn't. "And this dashing hero must be me," he said, levitating the small plastic figure of a golden haired cleric up to his hand. "Or not, I'm not really sure. They all kind of look alike."

"We spent hours painting them!" Doreen protested, "They don't all look alike! Just give it a chance and it'll be fun. I promise."

Catseye tilted her head at Julian as she bounced her purple werecat figurine in her palm. "Maybe Julian is colour-blind like a dog or a regular housecat?" she mused to the group. "Megan and Dori and me painted them very bright colours," she added. "Megan is a veryvery good painter and she has lots and lots of paints!"

"They're not the same at all! I'm the purple paladin," Megan said cheerfully, between bites of chips, indicating her metallic purple figure with the helmet and shield. She had tried to do a dragon emblem on the shield. It got kind of blobby so she'd turned it into a rose, which worked. She popped one more potato chip in her mouth, then rubbed the chip dust off her hands as if ready to get down to business.

Meggan chuckled as she picked up her own figurine. “Well, I think you did a great job on the coloring.” She thought her little blue bard was very well done. But was that supposed to be a tiny scroll or just an oddly shaped instrument the figurine was holding in one hand? She wasn’t sure at first, but decided it had to be a scroll in the left hand, and a pan pipe in the right. Even if it was blue.

From what Klara had gathered, this seemed to be a more grown up version of making up imaginary adventures and pretending like a child did. This game had rules and dice, and seemed to be a bit like a board game as well. Mostly, she was joining in to be a part of the group she'd come to think of as her friends to enjoy a perfectly harmless activity. Granted, when she had looked up what "Dungeons and Dragons" entailed on the internet (it had taken a while, but she was starting to get the hang of it), there had been Christian groups who objected to it and saw it as 'evil', but Klara had cultivated a healthy level of skepticism since beginning her classes here. It seemed just like the people who said mutants were evil without ever meeting one.

She picked up the little druid figurine, painted in earthy colors of brown and green, with a red flower that had been painted onto its dark hair. She admired the detail put into hers. It looked like everyone's playing piece had been personalized.

"This is very nicely done," she said, feeling that she should say something.

Artie nodded and gave her a thumbs up. He scooped up his own halfling and examined it quickly - it was dressed in a brilliantly bright yellow shirt, green vest and red pants. He took a moment to build it into the middle of a hologram, showing beams of light radiating out from its clothes and shielded his own eyes with one hand.

Picking up hers, Nico examined the dark robbed elf. "Well, she's pale and has black hair and...is she wearing black shadows over her eyes?" That was one of the few times Nico sounded pretty damn gleeful, giving the figurine a closer look. It also was holding a staff that looked a lot like her own. "Alright, this is definitely awesome."

*****

Nico was fidgeting with her character sheet; she was so not going to be able to remember all the things it could do -which was really lame, considering it was a magic caster-. Still, she envied it a little. Without really noticing, she ran a finger for the edge of the sheet, getting a paper cut. "Oh shi- When Blood is Shed Let the Staff of One Emerge." The words had come out by themselves, and the staff just escaped her, making the goth wince. "I guess it wanted out?", mumbled as it gave a poisonous glare at the staff. "I think I can force it in again though." There was no point on keeping it there, right?

“No, nono!” Doreen said excitedly, “It’ll make a great prop. I mean, it doesn’t do anything unless you tell it to, right?”

Nico couldn't help but to remember how the Staff of One had taken a word she had said as a command, but decided it had been because she had truly wanted it to happen -after all, there wasn't an on/off switch on the stupid thing-. "Eh...fine? I guess it will get bored sooner or later." So she placed the staff over her crossed legs. "Found anything yet?", she didn't want to force Doreen, but she had been roaming through that book for a while now. "You know we can probably work our way around pretty much anything, as long as it isn't...eh, incredibly strong." Or so she thought.

"I'm working on it. Gimme just a minute..."

Nico nodded. "Any options in mind? Or you can't really tell us?" Maybe they could fight something like a giant squirrel, if those existed.

Yvette had flinched back as the Staff had emerged, and was sitting rather stiffly and trying not to look at Nico. She liked the girl fine, but the whole thing with the Staff coming out of her chest, was beyond creepy. "I think if we know what the monster is before hand, it is not so much the random encounter, yes?" she suggested, speaking more to the group around the table than Nico herself.

There was a time when the sheer thought of something like Nico's Staff of One would have sent Klara trembling in a corner praying to God for salvation. After months in a school where every student had some sort of mutant gift, Klara's reaction was nothing more than her dark eyebrows shooting up in mild alarm as the staff emerged from Nico. Remembering the words 'when blood is shed', she thought to ask "Do you need a bandage, Nico?"

"Well...you have a point there." The fact Yvette didn't really acknowledged her made her feel...slightly guilty; she had managed to creep her out when surely the girl had lived through a lot of other stuff with more self control. Klara caught her attention though, and Nico was surprised the girl was pretty calm, apparently. "Nah, it's only a little paper cut; I guess I'll just suck on the wound until it stops bleeding." Stopping the game for something like the Staff of One was a no-go.

It had taken Julian a little bit of time to get used to the staff of one emerging like it did through his girlfriends chest, but by now it had become so commonplace that he'd hardly even noticed it had happened as he looked over his character sheet to make sure he knew what he was doing. "What's going on?" he said, looking up from the sheet of paper, "what about sucking?"

Nico shot a half loving, half poisonous look as she showed him her still bleeding finger; paper cuts were really dangerous. "No need to get a band aid; if I used one for every time I get some blood out...you get the point."

"It's going to be the best prop ever," Dori spoke up happily, feeding another piece of candy to Monkey Joe.

*****

"We are in a dungeon I think?" Well, it was a cave of sorts, or something, and somehow Nico was leading the party. "And...Cats already opened this door and we need to decide whether we go in or not? How do we do that?"

"You just say what you're going to do," Doreen said, shifting through some character sheets.

Nico got comfortable in her seat, holding the Staff of One as she checked her sheet again. Well, it didn't seem like they were risking much by going in so... "Alright, as the leader of the party, I say we are in."