Cogidubnus
2011-03-06, 03:01 PM
This thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=189379) spawned a variety of stories about what people thought might happen to them. Mine's actually going to be quite long (read: will continue until I tire of it) so I thought a separate thread for it would be a good idea. Feel free to comment or post your own stories too though, it's good to share.
Ed: This thread has created the desire among several of us to write a communal story, so linked below my updates are their threads. The plots start separate, but will converge over time.
Ed: Also, apologies there are a few expletives in the first bit. Didn't originally intend to post this so I forgot to take them out before the filter got them. I promise I'll try to avoid them in future.
Update the First:
I was stood in the queue, staring idly at the slowly-diminishing pile of shopping the woman in front of me had. I was only here to buy a copy of PC Gamer and a snack. A guy walked in through the door beyond the checkout. I watched him fiddling nervously with a small pouch at his belt. My imagination started to run riot, as usual, imagining a fantastical scenario where he would attack with magic and I, understanding it, could save the day. "He’ll cast Burning Hands, and I’ll drop to the floor, sweeping the legs of the woman in front out too. Then up, use the checkout as a leg up, and a flying kick and punch to his face. While he’s dazed, punch-punch to the face, kick to the chest as he staggers back. He comes off his feet, crashing to the floor. Pin him, elbow strike across the temple to leave him out for the count. Break his fingers and take his spell components to disarm him”. It was a damn good thing I was watching him. He looked about nervously, then suddenly swept his hand up to point at the compacted queue of shoppers. I saw the spark leap from his fingers a moment before the flames started to spread, and dropped below the level of the checkout, slamming my foot into the knee of the woman in front, sending her toppling to the floor. The flames roared over my head, and I could feel their heat. I knew how I’d done it, like I knew how I threw a punch. Evasion. The screaming started behind me, and I knew that people were seriously hurt, but I had to neutralise the threat first. I was up and over the checkout in a moment. Stunning Fist. It was just there, in my head, the knowledge. My kick struck him on the jaw and my punch crushed his nose (4, 4) He toppled back, and I remembered I’d once promised my girlfriend I’d never kick someone in the face. She’d been afraid I’d break their jaw. I paused for a moment, and then suddenly felt the rest of my abilities kick in. I knew this boy’s motives, I knew his feelings. I felt the evil in him, and I hated it. He had come here and attacked innocents for experience. To level up, to get more power. All my compunctions vanished, and I threw another pair of punches to the stunned caster, hitting him in the stomach, followed by a crunching knee to the already-mashed face as he doubled over (4, 5, 8). He collapsed, bleeding, and I knew I could leave him to die. I felt a small rush, and knew I had 600 xp from defeating him. I did some quick calculations. Must’ve been third level. But I also knew how to stop it. Without pausing, I bent down, touched my hand to his chest, and pushed a tiny jolt of positive energy into him, stabilizing him. Cure Minor Wounds. Another 100 xp flooded me. Role-playing, no less. I turned back, and saw someone had been smart enough to douse the checkout girl and the shopper behind me with a fire extinguisher. Both had picked up pretty nasty burns though. I rushed over, touching each of them. Cure Light Wounds. The burns receded, and they looked almost as though nothing had happened, save for scorched hair, burnt clothes and smoke-blackened skin. No burns though, which was what mattered. I bent down over the caster, and pulled the pouch from his belt. Then, methodically, I stamped on each of his fingers. No one even seemed to notice. I hated doing it, but it was the only way to safely prevent him casting, and his hands would get better eventually. I checked his bag, but no sign of a spellbook. “Probably a sorcerer”, I thought. I stood up. I could hear the sirens now.
“I need to go,” I told the security guard. I grabbed a pen from my pocket and scribbled on a handout on the wall. “My number, if the police want it. I...need to go check on someone.” I had to know how many people this was, what linked them, whether they all understood what was going on. And I needed time to look at my character sheet.
Update the Second:
I started running down the street. I was fast now, and running seemed easy. I was flying along. I knew where I needed to go first, but I also needed to talk to a few people. I pulled out my phone and was about to start writing a text to Ken, Lara and Eddie, but Ken got there first.
> “There’s some serious **** going on here. Like, magic ****. Can you get over
> here? We need to talk.”
I told him to give me an hour. “Kk” was all I got back. I leapt onto a bus, flashed my pass, and got called back by the driver so he could have another look at it. I tried to conceal my frustration as he dallied, but we got going pretty quickly. The journey was only fifteen minutes, but damn if I wasn’t agitated enough by it. I should’ve run home and got the car. Might find myself having to do that anyway, especially if we’re going to Ken’s later. I whittled the time away by trying to get my character sheet to show itself. I could feel it, in my head, a list of my abilities and class features and feats. I almost had it. There! “Level 6 Monk? 9 years of martial arts training paid off, I see.
Power Attack, Flying Kick, Roundabout Kick, Unbalancing Strike, Close-Quarter Fighting, Snap Kick. Two flaws to buy that many feats, I see. Ah. Colour-blind. Well, a feat’s the best disability compensation I’ve heard of. And Inattentive? I’m not that inattentive, am I? Hold on, was that my stop? No, wait, next one. And gestalted with Paladin. Both using a homebrew fix. Excellent.”
I leapt off the bus and dashed the short distance to my girlfriend’s house. I found her in the garden – slightly odd in itself, even on a warmish spring day like this one – singing to the birds. All of whom were sat, staring intently at her. A cat sat below them, purring contently along to the singing. They all seemed oblivious to anything else. “Fascinate, maybe. So she’s a bard. Is this happening to everyone?”
I called out to her. “Helen, are you ok?”
She blinked, surprised, and stopped singing. As soon as she did, the cat sat up and the birds flew away.
“Oh, hey love. I just woke up this morning and felt different. I was in the kitchen, and I saw the birds, and I thought how I’d want them to let me come close to them. So I started to sing, and they all turned their heads and listened. It’s quite weird, actually. What’s going on?”
“I think...in all honesty, I think people are getting powers and class levels like in a role-playing game. DnD, I reckon. I’ve already met a sorcerer, and I appear to be a Monk//Paladin. But I can’t work out the reason, or the rules for this setting.”
“What are you saying? That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Not really, no. But when I was in the supermarket, some guy came in, tried to fry everyone with a cone of fire that looked suspiciously like the Burning Hands spell. I’m a Monk, so I can evade area of effect attacks. Then I kicked the crap out of him, felt myself get closer to levelling up for it, and then used magic to heal the people burned by the fire and stop the sorcerer haemorrhaging to death before I came here. And Ken seems to be having a similar experience. He texted me.” I showed her. Helen looked at me.
“You’re serious aren’t you? ****. I like normal life. Why can’t it stay normal? I don’t understand all this gaming stuff like you do, I don’t like it, I don’t care about it. ****.”
“I know, H, I know. But we’ve got to make the most of it. We’ve got to find out what we’re doing. Is it just a few people? In that case, we’re in danger. Both from scientists and from less-scrupulous people hunting experience to level up. If it’s everyone, well, the whole world’s about to change. And what’s causing it? Is there some kind of giant game being run, with us as the players? We’re going to need to stick together.”
“So what do we do?”
“We go see Ken, see what class or classes he’s got. Maths whizz like him, probably got wizard. Rules, patterns, studying the fundamentals. Then we find as many more people to help us as possible. Band together, stay safe. And try to keep others safe from the bad guys too. Come on, we’ll head to mine and get the car. Fastest way to Ken’s.”
“Alright, let’s go.”
Update the Third:
We didn’t talk much for a while. I think Helen was still pretty uncomfortable with what was happening to her, and with how excited I seemed by it. Truth be told, I was excited. And pleased. Here was genuine power to help people. But once we’d got back to mine, she began to ask questions. She’d noticed how we could travel faster without tiring than we’d ever have managed before. I wasn’t even using my bonus to speed when she saw me, except to open her door into and then be in the driver’s seat a second later. That she thought was quite cool. I explained the class system to her, and gestalt. We weren’t sure if she had a gestalt class too. I hadn’t had a chance to tell if that sorcerer did, but he sure hadn’t picked a class with a high hit-die if he had. She didn’t know. I tried to get her to see her character sheet, but while I was driving and unable to do much to help, and while she didn’t really understand what was going on, she didn’t have much hope. We resolved to wait a bit. It wasn't like there was a great rush. What was interesting was that I could feel all those skill points burning away in the back of my mind, from all six of my class levels. So, my previous skill set hadn’t been erased, but neither had it been deducted from my skill points. That was a distinct advantage. I assumed it would be the same for the others. I asked her if she could tell.
“There’s a feeling...like a potential to be good at anything I want to. But I also feel like I can do virtually anything already.”
“That probably means you’ve got your skill points waiting, and got Bardic Knack instead of Bardic Knowledge to boot. That means you can use all sorts of skills without putting points into them.”
“So what, I could just sit down at a canvas and start painting?”
“Yeah, I guess so. That’d be either Craft or Profession, and both can be used untrained.”
“Hmm.” She lapsed into silence, and seemed to be thinking about the implications of this. I smiled to myself. She would love being a skill-monkey.
We pulled up at Ken’s about 25 minutes after leaving mine, his estate being on the far side of town from the road I came in on. This made it a little over an hour since I’d taken out the sorcerer. I was half-surprised I hadn’t received a call from the police yet, but they were probably busy trying to sort out just what the hell had happened in that supermarket. Ken answered the door after a minute.
“Helen too? Fair enough,” he said, “Come upstairs. I’ve got something to show you.”
We followed him up to his room. The first thing I noticed upon entering was the sheer amount of paper on the bed. Then I realised – they were scrolls. There must have been over a dozen.
“You got wizard, then, Ken?”
“You’ve worked out what’s going on then? Yeah, I’m a wizard. And something else, but I don’t know what. Whatever it is, it made me really good at making these scrolls – I’ve got all sorts of spells I don’t know here.”
“Sounds like Artificer. On top of your prepared spells for today, can you feel any other abilities? Artificer’s have infusions, which are like spells you cast to make items better.”
“Like this?” K asked, picking up the keyboard for his computer and frowning hard. The keyboard seemed to glow for a moment, then appeared normal.
“There. Try hacking my system now.”
Helen sat down immediately, without even being asked, and started tapping at the keyboard. Within a minute, the user password gave out.
Helen looked stunned. “How did I do that? I can’t hack a computer.”
“Well, like I said, Bardic Knack means you can be reasonably competent at almost anything you try. And it looks like Ken gave that keyboard some kind of magical bonus to computing skill checks...?”
“Yeah, that’s what I was trying to do. That didn’t feel like a spell though.”
“No, it is an artificer infusion. Looks like you might be gestalt too. We need to get Eddie and Lara here, see if anything’s happened to them. And then I suppose we need to start finding ways to get experience, so we can protect ourselves.”
Ken sidled over to his bed and looked at me sideways. “Could always start by killing cats, I guess. Move up from there, start taking out people. Be a long time before you were caught under ordinary circumstances. With the world going this mad...we might never.”
“No. That’s evil. I am going to stop anyone who tries that. I’m going to spend the rest of my life protecting people from those who’d try that. I was hoping you’d help me.” I didn’t hesitate with my response.
“Flip, Tristan. It’s the fastest way. Please, don’t be a pain about this. You know I don’t agree with your moral code. It’s survival of the fittest.”
“Don’t, Ken. I’ll take you down too.”
Ken frowned for a moment, then started to mutter something, his fingers twisting the air. I felt it, a ripple in the fabric of the universe. I wrapped my mind around it and squeezed. As the two magic missiles leapt towards me, I tightened my mental grip, squashing them back into the energy stream they came from, and stepped across the room. I deflected Ken’s hand as he went to punch me, twisted his arm behind his back, kicked his knee bent and forced his face hard into the carpet.
“I am the strongest person you’re going to find around here. My training actually meant I got a lot of class levels before any of you. So don’t expect you can beat me, and don’t expect to find a better protector. We can level up without killing innocents. We can spar with each other, and we can help people. Imagine being able to use Colour Spray to take out a whole group of muggers in a back alley, then knocking them all out with a sap. That’s a whole bunch of CR one-half enemies you just took out by yourself, and you helped someone. THAT’S how we’ll level, not by hunting those who simply can’t fight back. Agreed? Or do I put you down now?”
A rather muffled “alright” was audible through the carpet. I let his arm free, and he pulled his face off the floor, gasping now he could breathe clearly, away from the dust and carpet fibres.
“Sorry Ken. I forgot about your asthma. I shouldn’t have pressed you into the carpet.”
“I...think I...deserved...it,” he coughed, grinning all the same. I sometimes wonder how guys seem able to solve even giant philosophical divides between friends with a short fight.
I pulled out my phone to get hold of Lara and Eddie, when Ken stopped me with a wave. “Already got hold of them.” He coughed hard for a moment, then continued. “Thought they’d want to share the sight themselves.”
We all turned as we heard feet bounding up the stairs. Ken moved to hide the scrolls under his duvet, but wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to get there before the door was pushed open. Lara grinned at us, her little face covered with a grin.
“Hey all. Sorry about not knocking, you don’t usually mind, do you Ken?”
“No, not usually. This time, you gave me a bit of a scare though.” He indicated the half-covered pile of scrolls.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t think you’d be doing anything that embarrassing.” She laughed then. “Anyway, guys, I assume you know what’s going on. I need to pick my classes!”
“Wait,” I said. “You get to pick your classes? We, as far as I can tell, just got assigned ours according to our skill bases. Me and Ken are definitely above level one, I dunno about Helen. We haven’t been able to see her character sheet yet, but I reckon we’ll get there.”
Lara looked at us, slightly bewildered. “I just woke up and knew something was different. After a bit, I just realised I needed to pick two classes, one for each side of my first level of gestalt. I came to you guys to help me.” She grinned.
“Alright. We need to head back to mine, get hold of my sourcebooks as you haven’t picked a class. We’ll pick Eddie up on the way back, if you don’t mind all squashing in the back of my car.”
Update the Fourth:
We found Eddie outside in his front garden, practising through techniques with his katana. He looked up, seemingly unperturbed.
“I see I’m not the only one who’s been feeling a little different today. Give me a minute to grab some stuff, then I’ll come with you. We need to sort our character sheets.”
I still find Eddie’s ability to remain calm and un-perplexed by any situation both baffling and very impressive. He takes everything in his stride, never worrying about what’s happening, and always seems to understand it too. Damn him, I wish I could do that. Plus, the boy’s a tank. He once broke his ankle playing rugby, and carried on until half time assuming it was just bruised. I’ll be damn glad to have him with us.
He came back out after a few minutes, carrying a large navy sports bag, with the hilt of his katana just sticking out of the top.
“What’ve you got in there?” Helen asked, puzzled.
“All sorts. Never know what we might need. Just the usual kit for taking to Tristan’s house, mostly.”
“Ohh,” everyone said in unison. Eddie and I often practised combat training together, so he would bring a variety of weapons when he came over. The bag managed to squash in the boot of the car, and Lara, Ken and Eddie managed to squash in the back seats. I grinned slightly to see that shotgun rules still stood despite the unusual situation – driver’s other half always has shotgun.
By the time we arrived at mine, Lara had pretty much decided she wanted to be a sorcerer//bard, Eddie had settled on Warblade, but wasn’t sure about his second class, and we all theorised that Helen needed to pick what class to pair with the bard levels twelve years of music had given her, and a brief suggestion had been druid, to make use of her high wisdom and add some punch to her lack of melee capability. I turned my laptop back on, printed out some character sheets, and sat everyone down.
“Now, first, just write what seems like it ought to go there. That’ll tell us things like how many feats you already have and your ability scores. At least, I hope it’ll work.”
It did. What it told us was even more interesting. We all had very good stats, especially in our key areas. Too good, in fact. Better than we’d ever been before. Ken looked at me sideways, looking in particular at Eddie’s phenomenal ability scores.
“This can’t be right...have our stats actually been boosted by this?”
“It looks like it,” I replied. “Like we’ve been upgraded from NPCs to PCs, and got class levels into the bargain. Nevertheless, Lara, it confirms you should be a sorcerer. 18 charisma. Phew. It also tells us both Ken and Helen are already 3rd level, and that I am indeed 6th. Best sort out classes for Eddie and Helen then.”
I dug my sourcebooks out, letting the others flick through them while I skimmed the raft of bookmarked homebrew on the GitP forums. I hit on something.
“How about Magitech Templar, Eddie? It gives you a free suit of magical armour, that you slowly upgrade and that acquires increased sentience and senses as you level. Basically, it turns you into Iron Man. Plus, it can give you combat upgrades while using your high intelligence.”
Eddie grinned at me. “Which of my stats ISN’T high, Tristan? But that does sound pretty awesome. I do love tech. But where’s it going to come from?”
“Where did Ken’s spellbook come from? Where did class levels come from? It’ll sort itself out. Helen, have you seen anything?”
“Definitely Druid,” she replied, “purely so I can transform into any animal I feel like. I’m starting to get the hang of this, aren’t I?”
I grinned at her. “Yeah, you are. All of you seem to have some spare feats, though all of mine are tied up. Somehow Eddie appears to have got Improved Unarmed Strike and Improved Grapple for free, without flaws, but I suppose that’s probably the mixed martial arts training.” Eddie had done a couple of years of MMA, but nothing like as dedicated or long-term as my study. We sorted the feats out between us, Eddie focussing on hitting things, Helen improving her newly-acquired magic mostly, Lara her Bardic music, and Ken going with meta-magic feats. Ken also took Skill Focus: Spellcraft to go into Arch Mage later. Having written all this on paper, we suddenly wondered if it had actually made any difference. Lara decided to experiment, and promptly froze a pile of books on my floor solid with a Ray of Frost. There was no sign of Eddie’s armour yet, though.
Update the Fifth
We decided we might as well go outside and spar while we waited. It was going to be the best way for Lara and Eddie to get some quick experience, as defeating higher-level opponents, even in non-lethal combat, would help them a lot. Eddie and Ken decided to spar together using the bokken, since they knew how to use them. Plus, Ken having a couple of extra levels would help him match Eddie’s single combat-focussed one, as he had used up all of his prepared spells experimenting that morning. I put Lara and Helen together, because Helen didn't have any prepared spells, having only just taken her Druid levels, so Lara could use some magical defences to give her an edge over H’s higher hit points and attack bonus. They were also forced to resort to using unarmed strikes, as we didn’t have any practise rapiers they could use. Eddie suddenly paused, and asked me what I was going to do.
“I’m going to meditate and pray. I reckon, if you can improve your strength in this world by working out, you can improve your wisdom by introspective thought, or your charisma by practising public speaking. Worth a shot, anyway, as I don’t have anything to do until one of you has beaten the other into unconsciousness and you need my healing magic.”
Helen looked at me spuriously. “You expect us to wait to get beaten into unconsciousness?”
“Interestingly, that’ll take far less time than it would have done before. Now all you need is non-lethal damage equal to your current hit points. So any hit with an unarmed strike will contribute, not just hits to the head. In fact, Lara, please don’t hit my girlfriend in the face. I’m going to have enough trouble ignoring the fact that you’re hitting her at all.”
Lara laughed at me. “Don’t worry, I won’t break her pretty little nose.”
“You’re mocking me,” I sighed, “but don’t forget I’m the one with the plus six BAB and monk unarmed strikes.”
I knelt down on the grass and let my eyes unfocus, tuning out the sounds of wood clacking together, or Lara and Helen throwing punches with three-quarter BAB. I breathed in deeply through my nose, smelling the spring grass, relaxing totally, slowly shutting off from the outside world.
Eddie did later recount to me what had happened while I’d been tuned out. He and Ken had started sparring, slowly at first, but quickly warming up to it. He’d found his manoeuvres made a big difference to his style, allowing him to put Ken off balance before striking or disrupting his attacks. All the same, it wasn’t easy. Meanwhile, H was having less more luck hitting Lara than vice versa, thanks to Lara’s casting of Mage Armour and good dodging. Lara’s lack of skill in combat held her back a little, but the difference in armour did tell, and Lara eventually landed enough blows to collapse Helen. I was up in an instant and at her side, while Lara looked on concerned, worried that she’d gone too far. Physically, Helen seemed fine – no serious bruises or broken bones, just a sheer mathematical rule saying she ought to be knocked out at this point. For the first time, it occurred to me just how unreal these rules we were living by were. I quickly healed her. Cure Light Wounds. I felt the wave of energy leaving me was larger than it had been before, and watched Helen’s eyes open. She looked slightly flustered, but bounced to her feet.
“Let’s go again,” she grinned. “I actually enjoyed that, apart from being knocked out at the end. It wasn’t like I was even particularly badly hurt either, which is weird.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “the non-lethal damage rules don’t make much sense in the real world. Still, it makes training a bit easier. Lara, you did get experience for that, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, 900. That’s nearly a level-up, isn’t it?”
“Should be. You guys go again, I’ll get back to meditat-”. At that point, Ken collapsed, Eddie have finally beaten aside his defences one too many times. I hit him with another Cure Light Wounds, and he got back up, making much the same observations as Helen, and more than ready for another go. Before I resumed meditating, I noticed Lara hopping from one foot to the other, grinning with excitement. Helen was a little calmer, watching carefully and planning how to attack. They were learning fast, which was a relief. Things were calm at the moment, but I couldn’t believe that sorcerer was the only one who’d go on a rampage sooner or later. I closed my eyes and prayed until they needed me again. This time, Ken had gone down first, Helen being much more cautious about letting Lara get within striking distance. I was out of 1st-level spells, so he had to make do with a simple Cure Minor Wounds to bring him back to consciousness. Eddie was grinning, ecstatic at the feeling of having levelled. We all jumped as, suddenly, a green gem appeared in his chest, out of which a suit of black-and-silver armour rapidly spread, engulfing Eddie’s body, wrapping around his head but leaving his face exposed, two silver wings ready to swing shut and protect him at a moment’s notice. He laughed.
“Well, we found out how I was going to get my armour.” He tapped the glowing green circle in the chest of the armour, then looked at his reflection in a window. “This looks pretty cool. I’m like a cooler version of Iron Man.” He frowned then. “I can upgrade this now that I’ve levelled, I just need to decide how.”
“Take Ken inside, get him to sit down. I’ll wait out here until one of these two needs resuscitating then bring them inside and help everyone recover from their non-lethal damage.” I’d already assigned some of my skill points, maxing my heal ranks immediately. I thought it would probably come in useful.
Helen went down again, as Lara had hit her with a Flare spell and then a Ray of Enfeeblement, quite cruelly ruining her ability to fight back. Lara was as jubilant as Eddie had been at levelling up, and was already talking about what spells to take this level. I brought Helen back round, and we all had to endure a short tirade on how Lara hadn’t been playing fairly. I was quite glad my parents were busy taking my brother to a music competition of some sort, as they’d have been asking all sorts of weird questions if they had been in. I sat everyone down, got them some stuff to eat and drink, and generally helped clean them up. After a few minutes, we flicked the telly on to see if there was anything on the news channel to help us see how widespread these events were. And I was surprised the police still hadn’t called.
Update the Sixth:
The news showed nothing of interest. There were a few reports of odd goings-on, but nothing to alarm any of us. Eddie added the Variable ability to his armour, making it Glamered so it could be disguised as normal clothing, and also allowing him to vary what material it was made of. For now, he picked adamantine, figuring the DR could come in handy. Lara added, among other things, Charm Person and Sleep to her spell list. It was beginning to look like Spell Focus: Enchantment might be a good move for her.
“Guys, what do you say I take you back to your houses, you get some overnight stuff, and spend tonight here? It’ll be easier to organise ourselves tomorrow, and, honestly...I’m a bit worried. I’ve got this enormous aura of Good that’s bound to attract attention eventually, and while I can handle myself, I don’t want my family getting hurt.”
“Of course we’ll stay,” Helen said, “but there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ken, “we haven’t seen any evidence that these abilities are widespread, or that people are using them to cause trouble.”
“But we’ll be here all the same,” Eddie declared, cut off by Lara pointing out how fun sleepovers are. I grinned at their support.
Helen got a bus across town to get her stuff while I drove Lara, Ken and Eddie back to their houses. I was a bit worried about letting Helen go off by herself, but I forced myself to stay calm. She could easily handle herself. And she could spontaneously cast Summon Nature’s Ally, so it’d be alright. I got Lara to text her and tell her she could do that, if she needed help. Ken’s parents were back home from their shopping trip by now, but were more than happy for him to spend the night at mine. They were used to him doing what he wanted by now. Lara’s flatmates weren’t in, so she left a note on the fridge and brought her stuff out to the car. Eddie’s parents detained us the longest, but only by being hospitable. They insisted we have something to eat while he got his stuff together, and that of course took far longer than throwing a handful of clothes into a bag, not least because we hadn’t really had a proper lunch, just snacks. Eventually we managed to tear ourselves away and get back to my house, where we found Helen already waiting for us. By this point it was around half 2.
“Listen,” I suggested. “We spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing, and that way, our spells will all refresh before we go to bed. Then we have them if we need them tonight, although we probably won’t. Plus, my parents and brother will be home before too long, and if they find Ken brewing potions in the kitchen sink while the rest of us sparring outside, they’ll give us some odd looks.”
The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. The police didn’t call, nothing happened on the news, and we spent most of the time eating and talking. When my parents came home, they seemed perfectly normal.
“Hey Chris,” I said, catching my brother before he went upstairs, “have you noticed anything weird today? Anything different?”
“No, why?”
“Nothing, just got an odd feeling is all.” My family are kinda used to my madness, so things like that don’t even draw attention anymore.
My parents had also long ago been beaten into letting all my friends sleep in the lounge together, regardless of gender, simply because it was what we did at everyone else’s house, so setting up some defences for the night wasn’t too hard. The front door is like the door to Fort Knox, being several inches thick, made of hardwood, and having two steel bolts and a giant lock. I don’t know why it’s so impenetrable, it was like that when we bought the house. The back door, therefore, was where any intruders were likely to try and sneak in. If they were willing to break windows to get in, we’d hear them, sleeping next to all the ground-floor windows. So we put the dog in her cage and had her sleep in a different room, so she wouldn’t be in danger from a disrupted intruder, and then set up a tripwire attached to some mops part-way through the porch. We reckoned the noise of knocking them over would wake us, but if we stayed quiet, the intruder would think he was ok and not run. We could then ambush him and then Lara and Ken could, hopefully, simply take him out with either Sleep or Grease. If not, there was no way he’d be faster than me, and I could knock him out to stop him escaping. Our plans in place, we happily settled down to sleep, chatting quietly before drifting off, curled up on sofas and airbeds.
And suddenly I was jolting awake. I heard, consciously, the last little clatter of the mops. Helen ‘s eyes opened sleepily. She started to mumble something, but I rolled across the floor and clapped my hand over her mouth, miming for silence. After a moment, her eyes showed recognition, and she nodded. We all rose carefully from our beds, glancing around in the half-light that crept in around the curtains from the streetlights beyond. Slowly, I opened the door to the hall, well-practised as I was in opening the old, creaky doors in my house silently. Eddie was without his armour, as he couldn’t easily sleep in it, so I led, my Monk abilities giving me the best defences. We listened patiently at the door to the kitchen to see if the intruder had moved beyond the porch. After a minute, we heard to soft sound of a heel dragging on the stone floor. I nodded, and Eddie pushed the door open. Helen conjured a light as Lara sent a Sleep spell hurtling into the room. A man stood, transfixed in the beam emanating from Helen hand, eyes wide with surprise. I felt a revulsion as I looked at him, which brought angry tears to my eyes. It was like looking into all the reasons for hurt in the world. Then his eyes closed and he crumpled to the floor. I felt my experience total go up by 90. Upstairs, I heard my parents door open.
“Quick,” I hissed, “get the electric lights and snuff that one out.” I quickly struck the intruder on the head, just enough to bruise, so it would appear he had simply been knocked out. I heard my dad’s voice, softly, trying not to wake the house.
“Is everything ok down there?”
“Come down quickly Dad,” I called back, not trying to be quiet. “Someone’s tried to break in.”
He rushed down the stairs, and saw us all crowded round the unconscious man in our pyjamas. “I’ll call the police,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We’ll tie him to a chair in the dining room.”
As we dragged him through, I heard Dad dialling on the phone. We tied him to a chair using a tablecloth, and I slapped him to wake him.
“Wuh-” he groaned, “what happened?”
“You broke into my house,” I hissed, “so we knocked you out. Quickly, now, before the police get here. Tell us why you really broke in here and we’ll let you testify to them yourself. Nor will we press charges.”
“Big house, thought I could get something valuable he-”
“Not good enough, try again. The front door alone is forbidding enough to burglars, and if you were here just for cash you’d have run once you knocked the mops down. Now tell us. Why are you here? Do you know I’m a Paladin?”
The man looked at us, shocked. “You mean, an actual Paladin? Detect Evil, all that?”
“Yes. I can smell it coming off you now. It’s revolting. And as you understand what I mean, I assume you’re in the same predicament?”
“Yes, alright, yes. I’ve got a couple of levels in Rogue. I didn’t even know what was going on at first. I just kept getting waves of nostalgia to the days when I used to play DnD in school, long ago. Then I realised why I kept remembering that. It was happening to me. And tonight, I was looking for a score, but there was just something about this place. Made me think coming in here with this,” he tried to tap a knife at his side, but Eddie smacked his hand and stopped – “might be needed. I don’t know why. Look, I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me.” The square-shouldered coward looked genuinely terrified of the teenager standing over him. I realised just how imposing a Paladin must be to Evil, in any form.
“I could kill you right now. No one would even know what happened. Unarmed strike, non-lethal damage, but the Smite Evil would be lethal. Your heart would just give out, spontaneously. Problem solved. But I’m better than that. Instead, I’m going to tell you this. Confess everything, every crime you’ve ever committed, to the police. Stay safe in prison. And then I won’t see you again, and I won’t feel the need to wipe you off the face of the earth if you’re still as twisted as you are now.” I stepped back, and realised the others were all staring at me. Eddie looked positively approving, and I realised he understood everything I’d said. Helen and Lara both looked slightly shocked, while Ken looked downright uncomfortable.
“Alright, I agree,” the man said. “I’ll confess.”
“Good. Eddie, Ken, can you keep an eye of him. I need to get away from him for a bit. It’s making me very angry.” Then I realised why Lara and Helen were so shocked. Silent tears were streaming down my face. I walked through to the next room, taking a moment to collect myself. I knew the police would be there soon, to take the burning, stinking temptation away from me.
Update the Seventh:
Helen followed me through and just sat, one hand on my shoulder, letting me calm down. The tears stopped pretty soon after I got the thief out from under my nose, but the anger and adrenalin took a little longer to die away. After a bit, she hugged me.
“You ok now?”
“Yeah. It just makes me...angry’s not the right word. It’s...a need to do something, to fight, just to take some action. To actually halt it. And the most obvious path is violence. But that’s not the right one. It’d just breed more wrong. But I want to. I really want to just wipe that stain out.”
“Breathe, Tristan. Come on. He’ll be gone in a few minutes.”
She was right. At that moment, my dad answered the door to the police. The bolts crashed back, the lock clunked open, and the door groaned to allow the two officers in. They came in, and first secured the man before coming to talk to us. Luckily, they asked us all together what happened. I told them, before anyone could get a word in edgeways, that we’d been sleeping downstairs and the sound of the mops being knocked over woke us. We crept to see what was going on, and found a strange man, with a knife in his belt, in our kitchen. I said that as both me and Eddie had studied martial arts we were easily able to knock him out, and that we then tied him to a chair while Dad called the police. He woke up shortly later, and I spoke to him for a bit, before getting angry and walking away from him to calm down. It all washed like clear running water. I felt a bit bad about fudging the details, but I couldn’t exactly tell them we’d used a Sleep spell on him. Before the officers left, I stopped one of them for a word.
“I was involved in an incident yesterday morning, involving a man with some kind of flamethrower in the Co-Op in town? I left my number for the police, but they haven’t got in touch yet. You wouldn’t happen to know why?”
“I heard about that one. I wouldn’t worry about it, we’ve had a lot of stuff coming in today. It’s a bit busy just now, but you’ll be contacted eventually.”
“Ok, thanks,” was all I said in response. It was weird that he’d suggested today had been unusually busy for them. The news seemed, if anything, quieter than usual.
After the police were gone and my parents had gone to bed, we sat down to talk for a bit before we slept.
“I had another word with him after you’d left,” said Ken. “I found out he wasn’t gestalt, but that he had been gifted with two levels of Rogue straight off, without needing to level up or getting the chance to pick his classes. Whatever’s causing this, it seems to be happening without rhyme or reason. It’s not just affecting teenagers, it’s not just creating gestalt characters, and not everyone gets to choose their levels.”
“But at least it doesn’t seem very common,” Lara pointed out.
“This is all true,” I said, “but what’s worrying is that he came here. Maybe I drew him, maybe we all did – maybe we’re just going to attract trouble. Regardless, I think we should all get some sleep and plan more tomorrow.”
We realised the next weird thing when we woke on Sunday morning, in time to see the sun rise over the houses in my street. We’d gone to bed early, tired from a strange day with a steep learning curve, but despite the interruption in the early hours, by half six we had all had a good night’s sleep. Which was a welcome relief from still being tired rolling out of bed at ten o’clock.
“What the deuce am I doing awake so early?” Helen grumbled, for all that she wasn’t tired.
“Well,” Eddie pondered, “we’d normally only need six hours of sleep in DnD, wouldn’t we? Eight hours of rest, but only six need to be of sleep. And we had a good eight hours rest in the afternoon anyway.”
“So we can live eighteen hour days as long as only 16 of them are spent relaxing, now?” Helen queried.
“I don’t see why not,” Eddie replied.
“I reckon you’re right. Ken, can you explain something?”
“I don’t know, you haven’t asked me yet,” Ken said, grinning.
“How did you make those scrolls? I mean, crafting costs xp. Now, as an Artificer, you get a pool of Craft Points to spend instead of xp, but it also requires material components. What did you do about that?”
“I don’t know about crafting costing xp,” Ken replied. “I’ve got a pool of points, but they cover material costs, not experience costs. I don’t think my crafting does. I got the material components by breaking down other things. I just knew that if I took something, I could reduce it to magical components and use those to make items. I had an old turbocharger in my room, one that wasn’t working no matter what I did, and that fuelled most of those scrolls by itself.”
“And how did you make so many scrolls in one morning? They should have taken...” I did some maths in my head, “at least half an hour each, if they were first-level spells.”
“They took like, a quarter of an hour each?”
“Ok, so crafting is also following some sort of house rules. Not totally daft ones, I’ve heard of plenty of DMs removing crafting xp to save headaches, although your ability to reduce mundane items into magical components might make time the only constraint on the number of magic items we can possess...”
“So we can eventually exceed wealth-by-level?” Ken asked.
“Well, yes, except, of course, what you can craft is restricted by your level. For example, until you hit level 5 you won’t be able to make a Restful Crystal for Eddie’s armour, so he won’t be able to sleep in it. Still, there are plenty of useful things you can already make. Might I suggest you start on an attribute-enhancing item, maybe a +2 Belt of Strength for Eddie? That’ll take you maybe sixteen hours of work, but we’ll all want attribute-enhancing items and I think it’d make the biggest difference to Eddie.”
“Sure, but I’ll need the materials to craft it.”
“Hmm. Hold on a sec.” I ran upstairs, and returned carrying a large plastic box.
“I was going to just flog all this on eBay, but we might get more value out of it here. It’s a pile of Warhammer figures I don’t want anymore. Can you get any value out of them?”
Ken examined them for a minute, running his hand through the box’s contents, then suddenly focussed. The figures turned into a sort of golden jelly, though not wet or very fluid.
“This’ll do perfectly for a start. What’re you going to do while I craft?”
“Well, I know Helen brought some schoolwork she needs to get on with this weekend, and I thought Eddie, Lara and I might go out, see what the actual lay of the land is. Find out if anything odd’s going on. Might as well see if we can find you a supply of parts for crafting as well.”
This plan met with general approval, so we split up, despite my trepidation.
Update the Eighth:
We weren’t really sure what to do, so we took the car into the centre of town, then get out and wandered around. After a bit, Eddie suggested we head down to the tip, as there might be something there Ken could dissemble. It was a sunny day, so rather than go back to the car, we walked out to the edge of town where the tip was. There was a lot of just plain rubbish there, but we had no idea what Ken could make use of. I walked over to the guy keeping an eye on the site.
“If there’s stuff here we want, is there any reason we couldn’t take it?”
“Don’t see why not. It’s all just rubbish, anyway. Can’t imagine you’d find much worth having though. Why? Have you seen something?”
“No, we were just wondering. It might be a good place to find scrap bits for tech projects and stuff.” Who cared if Bluff wasn’t a class skill for me? Everyone has a few ranks in Bluff from lying to their parents and teachers, and I had a good Charisma.
“Well, if you find stuff you want, go ahead and help yourselves.”
“Thanks.”
I walked back over to the others, who’d salvaged some barely-broken electronics but not much else.
“Reckon these might come in handy,” Lara told me, “but I don’t know what else Ken can make use of. He might be able to use it all, or none of it.
As we were walking it, the guy at the gate stopped us.
“You might want to try the scrap yard over the way. They’ve got heaps of old machines they’re never going to get any use out of, they mightn’t mind you carting off some bits and pieces.”
“Cool. We might well give that a shot,” I smiled in response.
The scrap yard certainly looked promising. There were mounds of old machinery, in various stages of rusting, and the amount of pieces being stripped, crushed or recycled didn’t seem to make any impact upon the piles that remained. Things were a bit more organised here than at the tip, so we went to talk to the foreman or whoever he was. The guy in charge anyway, though he was still dressed in dirty overalls and boots.
“Can I help you?” he asked, glancing at us for a moment then going back to the pile of forms. I started to open my mouth to reply, but Lara cut me off.
“We were just wondering if you’d mind us salvaging a few parts from the machines here, for projects, not for any kind of business or anything.”
“Can’t help you, sorry.” This time he didn’t even bother to look up.
“But,” Lara said, then mumbled something I didn’t catch or didn’t understand, and touched the foreman’s arm, “it’s not like it’s any use to you here.”
The foreman looked up into Lara’s face. “No, I guess it isn’t. Help yourselves, I’ll tell everyone to leave you be.”
Lara thanked him, smiling sweetly, and turned to go.
“Oh,” he said, making us pause, “take some hard hats and hi-vis jackets from the pegs there. You need them while you’re on-site.”
Once we were outside, I looked at Lara questioningly.
“Did you just do what I think you did?”
“Charm Person is the most awesome spell ever. And, I got xp for it. I love overcoming challenges.”
I laughed. “Once upon a time, challenges were a pain. Now we hope for them because we get xp.”
We had a good hunt around, pulling out the lightest, most expensive-looking pieces of kit we could find. Eddie was more use than me or Lara, but his experience was still mostly with computers, so he could only be so much help. We reckoned we should make the best of the time the foreman was charmed, although we could always do it again at a later date. With a couple of things each, we headed back to town, stopping to grab some sheets from the tip on the way to stop my car getting dirty when we put the machinery in the boot.
Update the Ninth (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10600347&postcount=53)
Update the Tenth. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10630800&postcount=107)
Update the Eleventh. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10657738&postcount=166)
Update the Twelfth (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10835827&postcount=217)
The community's plotlines, running alongside this one:
Swift Mongoose's Plot-line. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192262)
Zolkabro's Plot-line. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192267)
TyChris1's Evil Plot-line. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192409)
The Glyphstone's Plot-line. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192581)
Herpestidae's Plot-line (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192799) - no making fun of him for his name. Or his character's :smalltongue:
Ed: This thread has created the desire among several of us to write a communal story, so linked below my updates are their threads. The plots start separate, but will converge over time.
Ed: Also, apologies there are a few expletives in the first bit. Didn't originally intend to post this so I forgot to take them out before the filter got them. I promise I'll try to avoid them in future.
Update the First:
I was stood in the queue, staring idly at the slowly-diminishing pile of shopping the woman in front of me had. I was only here to buy a copy of PC Gamer and a snack. A guy walked in through the door beyond the checkout. I watched him fiddling nervously with a small pouch at his belt. My imagination started to run riot, as usual, imagining a fantastical scenario where he would attack with magic and I, understanding it, could save the day. "He’ll cast Burning Hands, and I’ll drop to the floor, sweeping the legs of the woman in front out too. Then up, use the checkout as a leg up, and a flying kick and punch to his face. While he’s dazed, punch-punch to the face, kick to the chest as he staggers back. He comes off his feet, crashing to the floor. Pin him, elbow strike across the temple to leave him out for the count. Break his fingers and take his spell components to disarm him”. It was a damn good thing I was watching him. He looked about nervously, then suddenly swept his hand up to point at the compacted queue of shoppers. I saw the spark leap from his fingers a moment before the flames started to spread, and dropped below the level of the checkout, slamming my foot into the knee of the woman in front, sending her toppling to the floor. The flames roared over my head, and I could feel their heat. I knew how I’d done it, like I knew how I threw a punch. Evasion. The screaming started behind me, and I knew that people were seriously hurt, but I had to neutralise the threat first. I was up and over the checkout in a moment. Stunning Fist. It was just there, in my head, the knowledge. My kick struck him on the jaw and my punch crushed his nose (4, 4) He toppled back, and I remembered I’d once promised my girlfriend I’d never kick someone in the face. She’d been afraid I’d break their jaw. I paused for a moment, and then suddenly felt the rest of my abilities kick in. I knew this boy’s motives, I knew his feelings. I felt the evil in him, and I hated it. He had come here and attacked innocents for experience. To level up, to get more power. All my compunctions vanished, and I threw another pair of punches to the stunned caster, hitting him in the stomach, followed by a crunching knee to the already-mashed face as he doubled over (4, 5, 8). He collapsed, bleeding, and I knew I could leave him to die. I felt a small rush, and knew I had 600 xp from defeating him. I did some quick calculations. Must’ve been third level. But I also knew how to stop it. Without pausing, I bent down, touched my hand to his chest, and pushed a tiny jolt of positive energy into him, stabilizing him. Cure Minor Wounds. Another 100 xp flooded me. Role-playing, no less. I turned back, and saw someone had been smart enough to douse the checkout girl and the shopper behind me with a fire extinguisher. Both had picked up pretty nasty burns though. I rushed over, touching each of them. Cure Light Wounds. The burns receded, and they looked almost as though nothing had happened, save for scorched hair, burnt clothes and smoke-blackened skin. No burns though, which was what mattered. I bent down over the caster, and pulled the pouch from his belt. Then, methodically, I stamped on each of his fingers. No one even seemed to notice. I hated doing it, but it was the only way to safely prevent him casting, and his hands would get better eventually. I checked his bag, but no sign of a spellbook. “Probably a sorcerer”, I thought. I stood up. I could hear the sirens now.
“I need to go,” I told the security guard. I grabbed a pen from my pocket and scribbled on a handout on the wall. “My number, if the police want it. I...need to go check on someone.” I had to know how many people this was, what linked them, whether they all understood what was going on. And I needed time to look at my character sheet.
Update the Second:
I started running down the street. I was fast now, and running seemed easy. I was flying along. I knew where I needed to go first, but I also needed to talk to a few people. I pulled out my phone and was about to start writing a text to Ken, Lara and Eddie, but Ken got there first.
> “There’s some serious **** going on here. Like, magic ****. Can you get over
> here? We need to talk.”
I told him to give me an hour. “Kk” was all I got back. I leapt onto a bus, flashed my pass, and got called back by the driver so he could have another look at it. I tried to conceal my frustration as he dallied, but we got going pretty quickly. The journey was only fifteen minutes, but damn if I wasn’t agitated enough by it. I should’ve run home and got the car. Might find myself having to do that anyway, especially if we’re going to Ken’s later. I whittled the time away by trying to get my character sheet to show itself. I could feel it, in my head, a list of my abilities and class features and feats. I almost had it. There! “Level 6 Monk? 9 years of martial arts training paid off, I see.
Power Attack, Flying Kick, Roundabout Kick, Unbalancing Strike, Close-Quarter Fighting, Snap Kick. Two flaws to buy that many feats, I see. Ah. Colour-blind. Well, a feat’s the best disability compensation I’ve heard of. And Inattentive? I’m not that inattentive, am I? Hold on, was that my stop? No, wait, next one. And gestalted with Paladin. Both using a homebrew fix. Excellent.”
I leapt off the bus and dashed the short distance to my girlfriend’s house. I found her in the garden – slightly odd in itself, even on a warmish spring day like this one – singing to the birds. All of whom were sat, staring intently at her. A cat sat below them, purring contently along to the singing. They all seemed oblivious to anything else. “Fascinate, maybe. So she’s a bard. Is this happening to everyone?”
I called out to her. “Helen, are you ok?”
She blinked, surprised, and stopped singing. As soon as she did, the cat sat up and the birds flew away.
“Oh, hey love. I just woke up this morning and felt different. I was in the kitchen, and I saw the birds, and I thought how I’d want them to let me come close to them. So I started to sing, and they all turned their heads and listened. It’s quite weird, actually. What’s going on?”
“I think...in all honesty, I think people are getting powers and class levels like in a role-playing game. DnD, I reckon. I’ve already met a sorcerer, and I appear to be a Monk//Paladin. But I can’t work out the reason, or the rules for this setting.”
“What are you saying? That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Not really, no. But when I was in the supermarket, some guy came in, tried to fry everyone with a cone of fire that looked suspiciously like the Burning Hands spell. I’m a Monk, so I can evade area of effect attacks. Then I kicked the crap out of him, felt myself get closer to levelling up for it, and then used magic to heal the people burned by the fire and stop the sorcerer haemorrhaging to death before I came here. And Ken seems to be having a similar experience. He texted me.” I showed her. Helen looked at me.
“You’re serious aren’t you? ****. I like normal life. Why can’t it stay normal? I don’t understand all this gaming stuff like you do, I don’t like it, I don’t care about it. ****.”
“I know, H, I know. But we’ve got to make the most of it. We’ve got to find out what we’re doing. Is it just a few people? In that case, we’re in danger. Both from scientists and from less-scrupulous people hunting experience to level up. If it’s everyone, well, the whole world’s about to change. And what’s causing it? Is there some kind of giant game being run, with us as the players? We’re going to need to stick together.”
“So what do we do?”
“We go see Ken, see what class or classes he’s got. Maths whizz like him, probably got wizard. Rules, patterns, studying the fundamentals. Then we find as many more people to help us as possible. Band together, stay safe. And try to keep others safe from the bad guys too. Come on, we’ll head to mine and get the car. Fastest way to Ken’s.”
“Alright, let’s go.”
Update the Third:
We didn’t talk much for a while. I think Helen was still pretty uncomfortable with what was happening to her, and with how excited I seemed by it. Truth be told, I was excited. And pleased. Here was genuine power to help people. But once we’d got back to mine, she began to ask questions. She’d noticed how we could travel faster without tiring than we’d ever have managed before. I wasn’t even using my bonus to speed when she saw me, except to open her door into and then be in the driver’s seat a second later. That she thought was quite cool. I explained the class system to her, and gestalt. We weren’t sure if she had a gestalt class too. I hadn’t had a chance to tell if that sorcerer did, but he sure hadn’t picked a class with a high hit-die if he had. She didn’t know. I tried to get her to see her character sheet, but while I was driving and unable to do much to help, and while she didn’t really understand what was going on, she didn’t have much hope. We resolved to wait a bit. It wasn't like there was a great rush. What was interesting was that I could feel all those skill points burning away in the back of my mind, from all six of my class levels. So, my previous skill set hadn’t been erased, but neither had it been deducted from my skill points. That was a distinct advantage. I assumed it would be the same for the others. I asked her if she could tell.
“There’s a feeling...like a potential to be good at anything I want to. But I also feel like I can do virtually anything already.”
“That probably means you’ve got your skill points waiting, and got Bardic Knack instead of Bardic Knowledge to boot. That means you can use all sorts of skills without putting points into them.”
“So what, I could just sit down at a canvas and start painting?”
“Yeah, I guess so. That’d be either Craft or Profession, and both can be used untrained.”
“Hmm.” She lapsed into silence, and seemed to be thinking about the implications of this. I smiled to myself. She would love being a skill-monkey.
We pulled up at Ken’s about 25 minutes after leaving mine, his estate being on the far side of town from the road I came in on. This made it a little over an hour since I’d taken out the sorcerer. I was half-surprised I hadn’t received a call from the police yet, but they were probably busy trying to sort out just what the hell had happened in that supermarket. Ken answered the door after a minute.
“Helen too? Fair enough,” he said, “Come upstairs. I’ve got something to show you.”
We followed him up to his room. The first thing I noticed upon entering was the sheer amount of paper on the bed. Then I realised – they were scrolls. There must have been over a dozen.
“You got wizard, then, Ken?”
“You’ve worked out what’s going on then? Yeah, I’m a wizard. And something else, but I don’t know what. Whatever it is, it made me really good at making these scrolls – I’ve got all sorts of spells I don’t know here.”
“Sounds like Artificer. On top of your prepared spells for today, can you feel any other abilities? Artificer’s have infusions, which are like spells you cast to make items better.”
“Like this?” K asked, picking up the keyboard for his computer and frowning hard. The keyboard seemed to glow for a moment, then appeared normal.
“There. Try hacking my system now.”
Helen sat down immediately, without even being asked, and started tapping at the keyboard. Within a minute, the user password gave out.
Helen looked stunned. “How did I do that? I can’t hack a computer.”
“Well, like I said, Bardic Knack means you can be reasonably competent at almost anything you try. And it looks like Ken gave that keyboard some kind of magical bonus to computing skill checks...?”
“Yeah, that’s what I was trying to do. That didn’t feel like a spell though.”
“No, it is an artificer infusion. Looks like you might be gestalt too. We need to get Eddie and Lara here, see if anything’s happened to them. And then I suppose we need to start finding ways to get experience, so we can protect ourselves.”
Ken sidled over to his bed and looked at me sideways. “Could always start by killing cats, I guess. Move up from there, start taking out people. Be a long time before you were caught under ordinary circumstances. With the world going this mad...we might never.”
“No. That’s evil. I am going to stop anyone who tries that. I’m going to spend the rest of my life protecting people from those who’d try that. I was hoping you’d help me.” I didn’t hesitate with my response.
“Flip, Tristan. It’s the fastest way. Please, don’t be a pain about this. You know I don’t agree with your moral code. It’s survival of the fittest.”
“Don’t, Ken. I’ll take you down too.”
Ken frowned for a moment, then started to mutter something, his fingers twisting the air. I felt it, a ripple in the fabric of the universe. I wrapped my mind around it and squeezed. As the two magic missiles leapt towards me, I tightened my mental grip, squashing them back into the energy stream they came from, and stepped across the room. I deflected Ken’s hand as he went to punch me, twisted his arm behind his back, kicked his knee bent and forced his face hard into the carpet.
“I am the strongest person you’re going to find around here. My training actually meant I got a lot of class levels before any of you. So don’t expect you can beat me, and don’t expect to find a better protector. We can level up without killing innocents. We can spar with each other, and we can help people. Imagine being able to use Colour Spray to take out a whole group of muggers in a back alley, then knocking them all out with a sap. That’s a whole bunch of CR one-half enemies you just took out by yourself, and you helped someone. THAT’S how we’ll level, not by hunting those who simply can’t fight back. Agreed? Or do I put you down now?”
A rather muffled “alright” was audible through the carpet. I let his arm free, and he pulled his face off the floor, gasping now he could breathe clearly, away from the dust and carpet fibres.
“Sorry Ken. I forgot about your asthma. I shouldn’t have pressed you into the carpet.”
“I...think I...deserved...it,” he coughed, grinning all the same. I sometimes wonder how guys seem able to solve even giant philosophical divides between friends with a short fight.
I pulled out my phone to get hold of Lara and Eddie, when Ken stopped me with a wave. “Already got hold of them.” He coughed hard for a moment, then continued. “Thought they’d want to share the sight themselves.”
We all turned as we heard feet bounding up the stairs. Ken moved to hide the scrolls under his duvet, but wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to get there before the door was pushed open. Lara grinned at us, her little face covered with a grin.
“Hey all. Sorry about not knocking, you don’t usually mind, do you Ken?”
“No, not usually. This time, you gave me a bit of a scare though.” He indicated the half-covered pile of scrolls.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t think you’d be doing anything that embarrassing.” She laughed then. “Anyway, guys, I assume you know what’s going on. I need to pick my classes!”
“Wait,” I said. “You get to pick your classes? We, as far as I can tell, just got assigned ours according to our skill bases. Me and Ken are definitely above level one, I dunno about Helen. We haven’t been able to see her character sheet yet, but I reckon we’ll get there.”
Lara looked at us, slightly bewildered. “I just woke up and knew something was different. After a bit, I just realised I needed to pick two classes, one for each side of my first level of gestalt. I came to you guys to help me.” She grinned.
“Alright. We need to head back to mine, get hold of my sourcebooks as you haven’t picked a class. We’ll pick Eddie up on the way back, if you don’t mind all squashing in the back of my car.”
Update the Fourth:
We found Eddie outside in his front garden, practising through techniques with his katana. He looked up, seemingly unperturbed.
“I see I’m not the only one who’s been feeling a little different today. Give me a minute to grab some stuff, then I’ll come with you. We need to sort our character sheets.”
I still find Eddie’s ability to remain calm and un-perplexed by any situation both baffling and very impressive. He takes everything in his stride, never worrying about what’s happening, and always seems to understand it too. Damn him, I wish I could do that. Plus, the boy’s a tank. He once broke his ankle playing rugby, and carried on until half time assuming it was just bruised. I’ll be damn glad to have him with us.
He came back out after a few minutes, carrying a large navy sports bag, with the hilt of his katana just sticking out of the top.
“What’ve you got in there?” Helen asked, puzzled.
“All sorts. Never know what we might need. Just the usual kit for taking to Tristan’s house, mostly.”
“Ohh,” everyone said in unison. Eddie and I often practised combat training together, so he would bring a variety of weapons when he came over. The bag managed to squash in the boot of the car, and Lara, Ken and Eddie managed to squash in the back seats. I grinned slightly to see that shotgun rules still stood despite the unusual situation – driver’s other half always has shotgun.
By the time we arrived at mine, Lara had pretty much decided she wanted to be a sorcerer//bard, Eddie had settled on Warblade, but wasn’t sure about his second class, and we all theorised that Helen needed to pick what class to pair with the bard levels twelve years of music had given her, and a brief suggestion had been druid, to make use of her high wisdom and add some punch to her lack of melee capability. I turned my laptop back on, printed out some character sheets, and sat everyone down.
“Now, first, just write what seems like it ought to go there. That’ll tell us things like how many feats you already have and your ability scores. At least, I hope it’ll work.”
It did. What it told us was even more interesting. We all had very good stats, especially in our key areas. Too good, in fact. Better than we’d ever been before. Ken looked at me sideways, looking in particular at Eddie’s phenomenal ability scores.
“This can’t be right...have our stats actually been boosted by this?”
“It looks like it,” I replied. “Like we’ve been upgraded from NPCs to PCs, and got class levels into the bargain. Nevertheless, Lara, it confirms you should be a sorcerer. 18 charisma. Phew. It also tells us both Ken and Helen are already 3rd level, and that I am indeed 6th. Best sort out classes for Eddie and Helen then.”
I dug my sourcebooks out, letting the others flick through them while I skimmed the raft of bookmarked homebrew on the GitP forums. I hit on something.
“How about Magitech Templar, Eddie? It gives you a free suit of magical armour, that you slowly upgrade and that acquires increased sentience and senses as you level. Basically, it turns you into Iron Man. Plus, it can give you combat upgrades while using your high intelligence.”
Eddie grinned at me. “Which of my stats ISN’T high, Tristan? But that does sound pretty awesome. I do love tech. But where’s it going to come from?”
“Where did Ken’s spellbook come from? Where did class levels come from? It’ll sort itself out. Helen, have you seen anything?”
“Definitely Druid,” she replied, “purely so I can transform into any animal I feel like. I’m starting to get the hang of this, aren’t I?”
I grinned at her. “Yeah, you are. All of you seem to have some spare feats, though all of mine are tied up. Somehow Eddie appears to have got Improved Unarmed Strike and Improved Grapple for free, without flaws, but I suppose that’s probably the mixed martial arts training.” Eddie had done a couple of years of MMA, but nothing like as dedicated or long-term as my study. We sorted the feats out between us, Eddie focussing on hitting things, Helen improving her newly-acquired magic mostly, Lara her Bardic music, and Ken going with meta-magic feats. Ken also took Skill Focus: Spellcraft to go into Arch Mage later. Having written all this on paper, we suddenly wondered if it had actually made any difference. Lara decided to experiment, and promptly froze a pile of books on my floor solid with a Ray of Frost. There was no sign of Eddie’s armour yet, though.
Update the Fifth
We decided we might as well go outside and spar while we waited. It was going to be the best way for Lara and Eddie to get some quick experience, as defeating higher-level opponents, even in non-lethal combat, would help them a lot. Eddie and Ken decided to spar together using the bokken, since they knew how to use them. Plus, Ken having a couple of extra levels would help him match Eddie’s single combat-focussed one, as he had used up all of his prepared spells experimenting that morning. I put Lara and Helen together, because Helen didn't have any prepared spells, having only just taken her Druid levels, so Lara could use some magical defences to give her an edge over H’s higher hit points and attack bonus. They were also forced to resort to using unarmed strikes, as we didn’t have any practise rapiers they could use. Eddie suddenly paused, and asked me what I was going to do.
“I’m going to meditate and pray. I reckon, if you can improve your strength in this world by working out, you can improve your wisdom by introspective thought, or your charisma by practising public speaking. Worth a shot, anyway, as I don’t have anything to do until one of you has beaten the other into unconsciousness and you need my healing magic.”
Helen looked at me spuriously. “You expect us to wait to get beaten into unconsciousness?”
“Interestingly, that’ll take far less time than it would have done before. Now all you need is non-lethal damage equal to your current hit points. So any hit with an unarmed strike will contribute, not just hits to the head. In fact, Lara, please don’t hit my girlfriend in the face. I’m going to have enough trouble ignoring the fact that you’re hitting her at all.”
Lara laughed at me. “Don’t worry, I won’t break her pretty little nose.”
“You’re mocking me,” I sighed, “but don’t forget I’m the one with the plus six BAB and monk unarmed strikes.”
I knelt down on the grass and let my eyes unfocus, tuning out the sounds of wood clacking together, or Lara and Helen throwing punches with three-quarter BAB. I breathed in deeply through my nose, smelling the spring grass, relaxing totally, slowly shutting off from the outside world.
Eddie did later recount to me what had happened while I’d been tuned out. He and Ken had started sparring, slowly at first, but quickly warming up to it. He’d found his manoeuvres made a big difference to his style, allowing him to put Ken off balance before striking or disrupting his attacks. All the same, it wasn’t easy. Meanwhile, H was having less more luck hitting Lara than vice versa, thanks to Lara’s casting of Mage Armour and good dodging. Lara’s lack of skill in combat held her back a little, but the difference in armour did tell, and Lara eventually landed enough blows to collapse Helen. I was up in an instant and at her side, while Lara looked on concerned, worried that she’d gone too far. Physically, Helen seemed fine – no serious bruises or broken bones, just a sheer mathematical rule saying she ought to be knocked out at this point. For the first time, it occurred to me just how unreal these rules we were living by were. I quickly healed her. Cure Light Wounds. I felt the wave of energy leaving me was larger than it had been before, and watched Helen’s eyes open. She looked slightly flustered, but bounced to her feet.
“Let’s go again,” she grinned. “I actually enjoyed that, apart from being knocked out at the end. It wasn’t like I was even particularly badly hurt either, which is weird.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “the non-lethal damage rules don’t make much sense in the real world. Still, it makes training a bit easier. Lara, you did get experience for that, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, 900. That’s nearly a level-up, isn’t it?”
“Should be. You guys go again, I’ll get back to meditat-”. At that point, Ken collapsed, Eddie have finally beaten aside his defences one too many times. I hit him with another Cure Light Wounds, and he got back up, making much the same observations as Helen, and more than ready for another go. Before I resumed meditating, I noticed Lara hopping from one foot to the other, grinning with excitement. Helen was a little calmer, watching carefully and planning how to attack. They were learning fast, which was a relief. Things were calm at the moment, but I couldn’t believe that sorcerer was the only one who’d go on a rampage sooner or later. I closed my eyes and prayed until they needed me again. This time, Ken had gone down first, Helen being much more cautious about letting Lara get within striking distance. I was out of 1st-level spells, so he had to make do with a simple Cure Minor Wounds to bring him back to consciousness. Eddie was grinning, ecstatic at the feeling of having levelled. We all jumped as, suddenly, a green gem appeared in his chest, out of which a suit of black-and-silver armour rapidly spread, engulfing Eddie’s body, wrapping around his head but leaving his face exposed, two silver wings ready to swing shut and protect him at a moment’s notice. He laughed.
“Well, we found out how I was going to get my armour.” He tapped the glowing green circle in the chest of the armour, then looked at his reflection in a window. “This looks pretty cool. I’m like a cooler version of Iron Man.” He frowned then. “I can upgrade this now that I’ve levelled, I just need to decide how.”
“Take Ken inside, get him to sit down. I’ll wait out here until one of these two needs resuscitating then bring them inside and help everyone recover from their non-lethal damage.” I’d already assigned some of my skill points, maxing my heal ranks immediately. I thought it would probably come in useful.
Helen went down again, as Lara had hit her with a Flare spell and then a Ray of Enfeeblement, quite cruelly ruining her ability to fight back. Lara was as jubilant as Eddie had been at levelling up, and was already talking about what spells to take this level. I brought Helen back round, and we all had to endure a short tirade on how Lara hadn’t been playing fairly. I was quite glad my parents were busy taking my brother to a music competition of some sort, as they’d have been asking all sorts of weird questions if they had been in. I sat everyone down, got them some stuff to eat and drink, and generally helped clean them up. After a few minutes, we flicked the telly on to see if there was anything on the news channel to help us see how widespread these events were. And I was surprised the police still hadn’t called.
Update the Sixth:
The news showed nothing of interest. There were a few reports of odd goings-on, but nothing to alarm any of us. Eddie added the Variable ability to his armour, making it Glamered so it could be disguised as normal clothing, and also allowing him to vary what material it was made of. For now, he picked adamantine, figuring the DR could come in handy. Lara added, among other things, Charm Person and Sleep to her spell list. It was beginning to look like Spell Focus: Enchantment might be a good move for her.
“Guys, what do you say I take you back to your houses, you get some overnight stuff, and spend tonight here? It’ll be easier to organise ourselves tomorrow, and, honestly...I’m a bit worried. I’ve got this enormous aura of Good that’s bound to attract attention eventually, and while I can handle myself, I don’t want my family getting hurt.”
“Of course we’ll stay,” Helen said, “but there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ken, “we haven’t seen any evidence that these abilities are widespread, or that people are using them to cause trouble.”
“But we’ll be here all the same,” Eddie declared, cut off by Lara pointing out how fun sleepovers are. I grinned at their support.
Helen got a bus across town to get her stuff while I drove Lara, Ken and Eddie back to their houses. I was a bit worried about letting Helen go off by herself, but I forced myself to stay calm. She could easily handle herself. And she could spontaneously cast Summon Nature’s Ally, so it’d be alright. I got Lara to text her and tell her she could do that, if she needed help. Ken’s parents were back home from their shopping trip by now, but were more than happy for him to spend the night at mine. They were used to him doing what he wanted by now. Lara’s flatmates weren’t in, so she left a note on the fridge and brought her stuff out to the car. Eddie’s parents detained us the longest, but only by being hospitable. They insisted we have something to eat while he got his stuff together, and that of course took far longer than throwing a handful of clothes into a bag, not least because we hadn’t really had a proper lunch, just snacks. Eventually we managed to tear ourselves away and get back to my house, where we found Helen already waiting for us. By this point it was around half 2.
“Listen,” I suggested. “We spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing, and that way, our spells will all refresh before we go to bed. Then we have them if we need them tonight, although we probably won’t. Plus, my parents and brother will be home before too long, and if they find Ken brewing potions in the kitchen sink while the rest of us sparring outside, they’ll give us some odd looks.”
The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. The police didn’t call, nothing happened on the news, and we spent most of the time eating and talking. When my parents came home, they seemed perfectly normal.
“Hey Chris,” I said, catching my brother before he went upstairs, “have you noticed anything weird today? Anything different?”
“No, why?”
“Nothing, just got an odd feeling is all.” My family are kinda used to my madness, so things like that don’t even draw attention anymore.
My parents had also long ago been beaten into letting all my friends sleep in the lounge together, regardless of gender, simply because it was what we did at everyone else’s house, so setting up some defences for the night wasn’t too hard. The front door is like the door to Fort Knox, being several inches thick, made of hardwood, and having two steel bolts and a giant lock. I don’t know why it’s so impenetrable, it was like that when we bought the house. The back door, therefore, was where any intruders were likely to try and sneak in. If they were willing to break windows to get in, we’d hear them, sleeping next to all the ground-floor windows. So we put the dog in her cage and had her sleep in a different room, so she wouldn’t be in danger from a disrupted intruder, and then set up a tripwire attached to some mops part-way through the porch. We reckoned the noise of knocking them over would wake us, but if we stayed quiet, the intruder would think he was ok and not run. We could then ambush him and then Lara and Ken could, hopefully, simply take him out with either Sleep or Grease. If not, there was no way he’d be faster than me, and I could knock him out to stop him escaping. Our plans in place, we happily settled down to sleep, chatting quietly before drifting off, curled up on sofas and airbeds.
And suddenly I was jolting awake. I heard, consciously, the last little clatter of the mops. Helen ‘s eyes opened sleepily. She started to mumble something, but I rolled across the floor and clapped my hand over her mouth, miming for silence. After a moment, her eyes showed recognition, and she nodded. We all rose carefully from our beds, glancing around in the half-light that crept in around the curtains from the streetlights beyond. Slowly, I opened the door to the hall, well-practised as I was in opening the old, creaky doors in my house silently. Eddie was without his armour, as he couldn’t easily sleep in it, so I led, my Monk abilities giving me the best defences. We listened patiently at the door to the kitchen to see if the intruder had moved beyond the porch. After a minute, we heard to soft sound of a heel dragging on the stone floor. I nodded, and Eddie pushed the door open. Helen conjured a light as Lara sent a Sleep spell hurtling into the room. A man stood, transfixed in the beam emanating from Helen hand, eyes wide with surprise. I felt a revulsion as I looked at him, which brought angry tears to my eyes. It was like looking into all the reasons for hurt in the world. Then his eyes closed and he crumpled to the floor. I felt my experience total go up by 90. Upstairs, I heard my parents door open.
“Quick,” I hissed, “get the electric lights and snuff that one out.” I quickly struck the intruder on the head, just enough to bruise, so it would appear he had simply been knocked out. I heard my dad’s voice, softly, trying not to wake the house.
“Is everything ok down there?”
“Come down quickly Dad,” I called back, not trying to be quiet. “Someone’s tried to break in.”
He rushed down the stairs, and saw us all crowded round the unconscious man in our pyjamas. “I’ll call the police,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We’ll tie him to a chair in the dining room.”
As we dragged him through, I heard Dad dialling on the phone. We tied him to a chair using a tablecloth, and I slapped him to wake him.
“Wuh-” he groaned, “what happened?”
“You broke into my house,” I hissed, “so we knocked you out. Quickly, now, before the police get here. Tell us why you really broke in here and we’ll let you testify to them yourself. Nor will we press charges.”
“Big house, thought I could get something valuable he-”
“Not good enough, try again. The front door alone is forbidding enough to burglars, and if you were here just for cash you’d have run once you knocked the mops down. Now tell us. Why are you here? Do you know I’m a Paladin?”
The man looked at us, shocked. “You mean, an actual Paladin? Detect Evil, all that?”
“Yes. I can smell it coming off you now. It’s revolting. And as you understand what I mean, I assume you’re in the same predicament?”
“Yes, alright, yes. I’ve got a couple of levels in Rogue. I didn’t even know what was going on at first. I just kept getting waves of nostalgia to the days when I used to play DnD in school, long ago. Then I realised why I kept remembering that. It was happening to me. And tonight, I was looking for a score, but there was just something about this place. Made me think coming in here with this,” he tried to tap a knife at his side, but Eddie smacked his hand and stopped – “might be needed. I don’t know why. Look, I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me.” The square-shouldered coward looked genuinely terrified of the teenager standing over him. I realised just how imposing a Paladin must be to Evil, in any form.
“I could kill you right now. No one would even know what happened. Unarmed strike, non-lethal damage, but the Smite Evil would be lethal. Your heart would just give out, spontaneously. Problem solved. But I’m better than that. Instead, I’m going to tell you this. Confess everything, every crime you’ve ever committed, to the police. Stay safe in prison. And then I won’t see you again, and I won’t feel the need to wipe you off the face of the earth if you’re still as twisted as you are now.” I stepped back, and realised the others were all staring at me. Eddie looked positively approving, and I realised he understood everything I’d said. Helen and Lara both looked slightly shocked, while Ken looked downright uncomfortable.
“Alright, I agree,” the man said. “I’ll confess.”
“Good. Eddie, Ken, can you keep an eye of him. I need to get away from him for a bit. It’s making me very angry.” Then I realised why Lara and Helen were so shocked. Silent tears were streaming down my face. I walked through to the next room, taking a moment to collect myself. I knew the police would be there soon, to take the burning, stinking temptation away from me.
Update the Seventh:
Helen followed me through and just sat, one hand on my shoulder, letting me calm down. The tears stopped pretty soon after I got the thief out from under my nose, but the anger and adrenalin took a little longer to die away. After a bit, she hugged me.
“You ok now?”
“Yeah. It just makes me...angry’s not the right word. It’s...a need to do something, to fight, just to take some action. To actually halt it. And the most obvious path is violence. But that’s not the right one. It’d just breed more wrong. But I want to. I really want to just wipe that stain out.”
“Breathe, Tristan. Come on. He’ll be gone in a few minutes.”
She was right. At that moment, my dad answered the door to the police. The bolts crashed back, the lock clunked open, and the door groaned to allow the two officers in. They came in, and first secured the man before coming to talk to us. Luckily, they asked us all together what happened. I told them, before anyone could get a word in edgeways, that we’d been sleeping downstairs and the sound of the mops being knocked over woke us. We crept to see what was going on, and found a strange man, with a knife in his belt, in our kitchen. I said that as both me and Eddie had studied martial arts we were easily able to knock him out, and that we then tied him to a chair while Dad called the police. He woke up shortly later, and I spoke to him for a bit, before getting angry and walking away from him to calm down. It all washed like clear running water. I felt a bit bad about fudging the details, but I couldn’t exactly tell them we’d used a Sleep spell on him. Before the officers left, I stopped one of them for a word.
“I was involved in an incident yesterday morning, involving a man with some kind of flamethrower in the Co-Op in town? I left my number for the police, but they haven’t got in touch yet. You wouldn’t happen to know why?”
“I heard about that one. I wouldn’t worry about it, we’ve had a lot of stuff coming in today. It’s a bit busy just now, but you’ll be contacted eventually.”
“Ok, thanks,” was all I said in response. It was weird that he’d suggested today had been unusually busy for them. The news seemed, if anything, quieter than usual.
After the police were gone and my parents had gone to bed, we sat down to talk for a bit before we slept.
“I had another word with him after you’d left,” said Ken. “I found out he wasn’t gestalt, but that he had been gifted with two levels of Rogue straight off, without needing to level up or getting the chance to pick his classes. Whatever’s causing this, it seems to be happening without rhyme or reason. It’s not just affecting teenagers, it’s not just creating gestalt characters, and not everyone gets to choose their levels.”
“But at least it doesn’t seem very common,” Lara pointed out.
“This is all true,” I said, “but what’s worrying is that he came here. Maybe I drew him, maybe we all did – maybe we’re just going to attract trouble. Regardless, I think we should all get some sleep and plan more tomorrow.”
We realised the next weird thing when we woke on Sunday morning, in time to see the sun rise over the houses in my street. We’d gone to bed early, tired from a strange day with a steep learning curve, but despite the interruption in the early hours, by half six we had all had a good night’s sleep. Which was a welcome relief from still being tired rolling out of bed at ten o’clock.
“What the deuce am I doing awake so early?” Helen grumbled, for all that she wasn’t tired.
“Well,” Eddie pondered, “we’d normally only need six hours of sleep in DnD, wouldn’t we? Eight hours of rest, but only six need to be of sleep. And we had a good eight hours rest in the afternoon anyway.”
“So we can live eighteen hour days as long as only 16 of them are spent relaxing, now?” Helen queried.
“I don’t see why not,” Eddie replied.
“I reckon you’re right. Ken, can you explain something?”
“I don’t know, you haven’t asked me yet,” Ken said, grinning.
“How did you make those scrolls? I mean, crafting costs xp. Now, as an Artificer, you get a pool of Craft Points to spend instead of xp, but it also requires material components. What did you do about that?”
“I don’t know about crafting costing xp,” Ken replied. “I’ve got a pool of points, but they cover material costs, not experience costs. I don’t think my crafting does. I got the material components by breaking down other things. I just knew that if I took something, I could reduce it to magical components and use those to make items. I had an old turbocharger in my room, one that wasn’t working no matter what I did, and that fuelled most of those scrolls by itself.”
“And how did you make so many scrolls in one morning? They should have taken...” I did some maths in my head, “at least half an hour each, if they were first-level spells.”
“They took like, a quarter of an hour each?”
“Ok, so crafting is also following some sort of house rules. Not totally daft ones, I’ve heard of plenty of DMs removing crafting xp to save headaches, although your ability to reduce mundane items into magical components might make time the only constraint on the number of magic items we can possess...”
“So we can eventually exceed wealth-by-level?” Ken asked.
“Well, yes, except, of course, what you can craft is restricted by your level. For example, until you hit level 5 you won’t be able to make a Restful Crystal for Eddie’s armour, so he won’t be able to sleep in it. Still, there are plenty of useful things you can already make. Might I suggest you start on an attribute-enhancing item, maybe a +2 Belt of Strength for Eddie? That’ll take you maybe sixteen hours of work, but we’ll all want attribute-enhancing items and I think it’d make the biggest difference to Eddie.”
“Sure, but I’ll need the materials to craft it.”
“Hmm. Hold on a sec.” I ran upstairs, and returned carrying a large plastic box.
“I was going to just flog all this on eBay, but we might get more value out of it here. It’s a pile of Warhammer figures I don’t want anymore. Can you get any value out of them?”
Ken examined them for a minute, running his hand through the box’s contents, then suddenly focussed. The figures turned into a sort of golden jelly, though not wet or very fluid.
“This’ll do perfectly for a start. What’re you going to do while I craft?”
“Well, I know Helen brought some schoolwork she needs to get on with this weekend, and I thought Eddie, Lara and I might go out, see what the actual lay of the land is. Find out if anything odd’s going on. Might as well see if we can find you a supply of parts for crafting as well.”
This plan met with general approval, so we split up, despite my trepidation.
Update the Eighth:
We weren’t really sure what to do, so we took the car into the centre of town, then get out and wandered around. After a bit, Eddie suggested we head down to the tip, as there might be something there Ken could dissemble. It was a sunny day, so rather than go back to the car, we walked out to the edge of town where the tip was. There was a lot of just plain rubbish there, but we had no idea what Ken could make use of. I walked over to the guy keeping an eye on the site.
“If there’s stuff here we want, is there any reason we couldn’t take it?”
“Don’t see why not. It’s all just rubbish, anyway. Can’t imagine you’d find much worth having though. Why? Have you seen something?”
“No, we were just wondering. It might be a good place to find scrap bits for tech projects and stuff.” Who cared if Bluff wasn’t a class skill for me? Everyone has a few ranks in Bluff from lying to their parents and teachers, and I had a good Charisma.
“Well, if you find stuff you want, go ahead and help yourselves.”
“Thanks.”
I walked back over to the others, who’d salvaged some barely-broken electronics but not much else.
“Reckon these might come in handy,” Lara told me, “but I don’t know what else Ken can make use of. He might be able to use it all, or none of it.
As we were walking it, the guy at the gate stopped us.
“You might want to try the scrap yard over the way. They’ve got heaps of old machines they’re never going to get any use out of, they mightn’t mind you carting off some bits and pieces.”
“Cool. We might well give that a shot,” I smiled in response.
The scrap yard certainly looked promising. There were mounds of old machinery, in various stages of rusting, and the amount of pieces being stripped, crushed or recycled didn’t seem to make any impact upon the piles that remained. Things were a bit more organised here than at the tip, so we went to talk to the foreman or whoever he was. The guy in charge anyway, though he was still dressed in dirty overalls and boots.
“Can I help you?” he asked, glancing at us for a moment then going back to the pile of forms. I started to open my mouth to reply, but Lara cut me off.
“We were just wondering if you’d mind us salvaging a few parts from the machines here, for projects, not for any kind of business or anything.”
“Can’t help you, sorry.” This time he didn’t even bother to look up.
“But,” Lara said, then mumbled something I didn’t catch or didn’t understand, and touched the foreman’s arm, “it’s not like it’s any use to you here.”
The foreman looked up into Lara’s face. “No, I guess it isn’t. Help yourselves, I’ll tell everyone to leave you be.”
Lara thanked him, smiling sweetly, and turned to go.
“Oh,” he said, making us pause, “take some hard hats and hi-vis jackets from the pegs there. You need them while you’re on-site.”
Once we were outside, I looked at Lara questioningly.
“Did you just do what I think you did?”
“Charm Person is the most awesome spell ever. And, I got xp for it. I love overcoming challenges.”
I laughed. “Once upon a time, challenges were a pain. Now we hope for them because we get xp.”
We had a good hunt around, pulling out the lightest, most expensive-looking pieces of kit we could find. Eddie was more use than me or Lara, but his experience was still mostly with computers, so he could only be so much help. We reckoned we should make the best of the time the foreman was charmed, although we could always do it again at a later date. With a couple of things each, we headed back to town, stopping to grab some sheets from the tip on the way to stop my car getting dirty when we put the machinery in the boot.
Update the Ninth (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10600347&postcount=53)
Update the Tenth. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10630800&postcount=107)
Update the Eleventh. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10657738&postcount=166)
Update the Twelfth (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10835827&postcount=217)
The community's plotlines, running alongside this one:
Swift Mongoose's Plot-line. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192262)
Zolkabro's Plot-line. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192267)
TyChris1's Evil Plot-line. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192409)
The Glyphstone's Plot-line. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192581)
Herpestidae's Plot-line (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192799) - no making fun of him for his name. Or his character's :smalltongue: