“I have just the thing in mind. Bring that ugly little demi-troll to me.”
Two guards quickly responded and carried by the scruff of the neck the demi-troll that had formerly been a balding and portly MBA by the name of Percy, and held it out in front of the Great Mage of Greenbriar.
Percy looked into the eyes of the man whom he had known as Ned, and once again noticed the flames of vengeance that burned in the place that should have been occupied by pupils.
“I told you that you forgot whose realm this really is,” the Master Wizard reminded him oh so malevolently. Then he announced to the entire banquet room, “I foresee a dragon hunt later this evening, but first it will be a few rousing frames of troll bowling, just to get this little bugger’s juices flowing. Dragons prefer their bait nice and juicy.
“And, once again, as always, let the games begin!”
THE WAR ON TWO FRONTS
Jean Rabe
I drew a pristine RAF SE 5a to fly.
That’s Royal Airplane Factory Scout Experimental No. 5a to folks who know nothing about WWI aviation. (Not that I know all that much, but I can talk impressive.)
I do know that some of the greatest Allied aces took to the skies over the Western Front in these babies—Billy Bishop, Edward Mannock, James McCudden, Bogart Rogers, and me—Maynard T. Rizzo from Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.
With dihedral wings—that refers to how the wings are inclined—and a single seat, this plywood and canvas crate was nearly as maneuverable as Snoopy’s Sopwith . . . or rather had been as maneuverable, back in 1918. When I was a kid I saw a restored one hanging from the rafters of the Dayton Air Museum during an “education vacation” with my folks. Good thing I wasn’t born until seventy years after the war ended; to be honest I wouldn’t have had the guts to have flown one of those things for real.
But this cardboard counter in front of me? I can fly one of these with the best of them.
I wasn’t the flight leader for this particular game session, but I should have been. That honor, just because he rolled friggin’ boxcars, belonged to some zit-speckled thirteen-year-old who called himself “The Verminator of Vermont.”
With luck, the players flying the German planes would shoot him down in the first turn and ol’ Verminator would have to pick up his stuff and move to another table.
I have to admit that it wouldn’t be horrible if the Germans got me a dozen or so turns later. Oh, I’ve no intention of purposefully flying in front of their sights, but if I got shot down halfway through the game I’d have just about enough time to get me a bladder-busting-sized soda and a box of Milk Duds and be able to hit the restroom to pay the rent on same before the noon slot.
I mean, I love this game and all, it’s vintage and still oddly popular—I have two copies on the shelf in the basement, one still in the shrink wrap in case I ever want to sell it on eBay. But this game wasn’t why I’d driven seven hundred and twenty-three miles in a rusty Toyota with two other guys from Brooklyn and one hitchhik ing biker dude we’d picked up along the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
I could play this stinkin’ little game anytime.
I’d come here to enter the ever-lovin’ once-in-a-lifetime Delvers and Dragons National Championship.
August, Indianapolis, the site of the Great Game Convocation—GGC as we gamers lovingly refer to it. A mecca of role-playing, board, card, war, strategy, family, and computer games. And this year host to the Delvers and Dragons National Championship.
Magic in the air here, let me tell you! And I’m not talking the collectible card game.
I have a Delvers ticket—bought it a few months back on the first day you could preregister for the con, called in sick that afternoon from my Geek Squad job at Best Buy just to make sure I’d get signed up for the games I wanted.
Said ticket is like a red-hot coal burning one of those proverbial holes in my jeans’ pocket.
I’d dressed for the occasion. I was wearing my blackest black Delvers T-shirt, featuring the image of an airbrushed Day-Glo green troll munching on a dwarf while uprooting trees and stepping on puppies. I’d bought the T-shirt at last year’s GGC and had managed to keep it untouched until this morning. I’d even showered and shaved and washed my hair in the Motel 6 bathroom before we piled into the Toyota early enough to get a space in the lot across from the convention center.
And that was damn early, let me tell you.
So, like I said, I have a ticket.
I just wasn’t able to use the friggin’ thing this morning.
All the seats were taken for the first running of the Delvers event by people who somehow got here even earlier, probably by spending the night on the sidewalk like the rabid fans who wait for tickets to a rock concert. Next year I’ll know to join them.
“Come back for the noon slot,” the event marshal had told me. “No worries, we’ll get you in then. In the meantime, find something else to play.”
“No worries,” I’d parroted, but I didn’t budge.
The Delvers National Championship is an elimination tournament with three rounds and the top prize being one copy of every product ever published in every language for the Delvers and Dragons game. If I won—which everyone who entered had high hopes of doing—I’d have to rent a U-Haul to carry my loot back to Brooklyn.
“I promise,” the marshal said. “I promise I’ll fit you in at noon.”
“You better,” I muttered, finally wandering off. “Or I’ll sick my Uncle Vinnie on you.”
I had spotted an opening here, at this Dogfight Patrol game. It was the first table I’d come to that had a vacancy, and so I grabbed a seat rather than take the time to scout around the rest of this room the size of a football field on the off chance I might find something more appealing to fill my time until the noon Delvers session.
The officiator didn’t ask me for a ticket, said I could play free—if I had an open mind.
“Yeah, my mind’s an open book,” I replied as I stuffed my backpack with its priceless Delvers rulebooks inside under my chair.
It was an old copy of the game the officiator was using, the cover of the box so faded you had to squint to make out the words, the sides taped together to keep it from falling apart. Probably a first printing, or maybe even a prototype. Bet it’d be worth quite the penny if it was in mint condition. The components were obviously old, too, and had a musty-fusty smell to them. That was all right with me; it was just something to pass the time until the Delvers session, and it wasn’t costing me anything. I noticed that the other players had tickets in front of them and that the officiator collected them before he said, “Begin.”
“Cool beans,” I said, pleased I’d saved myself a $4 generic ticket. “I’m ready.”
Like I said, this Dogfight Patrol game is sorta fun in a retro kind of way. Besides, it was made by the same company that later produced Delvers and Dragons. It just never sold as well.
“Your turn . . . Maynard, right?” The officiator fixed me with a level gaze, his black eyes looking like marbles. “Maynard . . .”
“Rizzo. Maynard Rizzo. But just call me Manny.” I was impressed he’d bothered to read my convention badge.
“Fine. Manny, you’re up.” The officiator looked all business in his Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen scarlet polo. He tugged at the hem to pull a wrinkle out of it.
“Starting altitude?” I know he’d told us that right when I took a seat, but to be honest I hadn’t been paying all that much attention. I’d been thinking about that Delvers game. Still thinking about it to be double honest.
“We’re at nine thousand even,” the Verminator cut in. “A cloud bank a hundred feet thick runs from ten thousand five to ten thousand six. Too high to hide in.” The Verminator said something else, wind speed and direction probably, but I couldn’t make out the numbers, as he’d stuffed a grape Tootsie Pop in his mouth.
“Nine thousand,” I repeated softly. Midrange altitude for the SE 5a. I had paid just enough attention to know we w
ere looking for a German aerodrome to strafe. Between me and said target was a mixed bag of Albs and Doctors. That’s Albatros D IIIs and Fokker Dr. Is to the mundanes, the latter a tripe that the Red Baron made famous and that is pictured on the box covers of both the third printing of the Dogfight Patrol game and my favorite brand of frozen pizza.
“We don’t have all day.” The officiator drummed his fingers on the edge of the table.
I touched the cardboard SE 5a and prepared to make my move. A little electrical jolt raced up my arm—the sensation like static electricity, you know, like when you’re not wearing shoes and you rub your feet across shag carpet. I would have said “ouch,” but that wouldn’t have been very manly, so I sucked in my lower lip and nudged the counter forward. My arm tingled even stronger.
I’ve got a great imagination, which is probably why I love games. But my imagination had never been so vivid.
The tingling got worse, and suddenly I didn’t see the colored pencil-drawn map covered with a clear grid overlay, I saw farmland cut through by a railroad track and a few winding roads, and fields of corn and beans, everything green and tall with summer, except for the crater where someone had dropped a bomb. The aerodrome was at the far edge. In place of the one-inch square pieces of cardboard with the outlines of planes on them . . . and the cardboard felt odd, let me tell you . . . I saw the real thing.
Better than what I’d remembered from the Dayton Air Museum.
My SE 5a was earth brown with three red stripes on the tail—blue, white, and red—indicating we were part of a British unit, concentric blue, white, and red circles on the fuselage, a polished mahogany propeller, taut cables running between the wings. I was in a leather jacket with tiny cracks at the elbows like the crows’ feet on an old broad, and with a sheepskin collar I’d turned up for warmth. The insignia revealed that I was a captain. I had a leather cap on my head, and I reached up to fit the goggles over my eyes properly.
SE 5a Aces Billy Bishop, Edward Mannock, James McCudden, Maynard T. Rizzo, and me—Bogart Rogers—were all in the sky this day.
The air was clean this high up. I pulled it deep into my lungs and held it as long as I could. It had a wonderful bite to it that I’m sure turned my cheeks a bright, rosy pink. I could even feel a bit of the cold through my gloves as I gripped the stick and nosed her down. It was good to be flying again.
The sky was a brilliant blue and full of birds. I couldn’t hear their cries over the roar of my engine, though I suspected they were all squawking angrily at the arrival of our squadron. I smelled the oil spitting off my Hispano-Suiza and tasted it on my tongue. My heart raced, and I forced the image of the long-ago war from my mind.
I wasn’t really over the front, after all. I was in the convention center in Indianapolis.
“Eight thousand, one hundred feet,” I announced in Manny Rizzo’s Brooklyn accent.
I had taken my plane down nine hundred feet, a conservative move that put me closer to the Doctors and Albs, but not so close that they could climb for a good shot at my plane’s underside. I was setting us up for a good position so that the Germans would have to climb, then we’d have the advantage.
It was so very, very good to be in the air again. Like old times, even though it wasn’t the real thing.
“Chicken,” the Verminator mumbled around his Tootsie Pop. “I’ll show ya how it’s done, Manny.”
Manny? The name’s Bogart, I wanted to tell him, and I outrank you! But I wisely kept my mouth shut.
Out of the corner of my eye the Verminator leaned across the table, purple drool dropping from his lower lip onto the grid, inches from my SE 5a counter. He picked up his own counter and with a clumsy flourish placed it in the middle of the board, smug look plastered on his zit-speckled face.
“Seven thousand, five hundred,” he stated. “That’s a hundred foot overdive for me, but no prob.” He rolled a pair of dice and nodded. “Yeah, my wings are still there.”
“Idiot,” This came from one of the other Allied wingmen—there were six on each side. He had the build of a defensive lineman, potbelly spilling over a belt that wasn’t hitched quite tight enough to keep his plumber’s crack from showing. The sweat loops were thick under his arms, and I could smell him over the oil and the crisp clean air that I’d dove through heartbeats before—decades before. “Yo, Verminator. Yous got so close that theys can come up and take a two, three-hundred-foot belly shot on yous. What was yous thinkin’? You weren’t, were you? Thinking.”
Plumber’s Crack was up next, and he dove to my altitude, nose-to-nose with me so we could cover each other with our guns’ field of fire, a defensive box the maneuver was called; he’d clearly played this game for some time. But the rules were not so difficult, as I’d effortlessly pulled them from Manny Rizzo. He sat there in a corner of my mind, disbelieving, amazed, taking it all in rather than shaking me off. I sensed him wonder if this juxtaposition of our consciousnesses was the price he paid to play this game without coughing up a ticket.
Three of the players on the German side were next. It would be a while before it was my turn again. I leaned back in the folding chair and closed my eyes. “Come along, Manny,” I whispered. “You’ll enjoy the ride.” Instantly my SE 5a took me away from the Verminator and Plumber’s Crack and the officiator in his Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen scarlet polo, away from the bone-jarring cacophony of this football field-sized room. I concentrated on the 1918 wind whistling against the canvas and felt it tug the scarf around my neck. I breathed deep again and held in the chill air of that long ago year, and I pulled back on the stick and climbed toward the ceiling of the convention hall.
There was magic in that old Dogfight Patrol game far below on the table, something in it that acted as a conduit between one world and the next. Better than an Ouija board, it had allowed me to manifest and to push the entity called Manny Rizzo to the background. Indeed, he had an open mind. And I walked right into it.
“Are you with me, Manny?” I asked.
Yeah, I guess.
It was brighter up here, near the banks of fluorescent lights that stretched from one end of the room to the other. Banners hung here and there, the closest advertised a new science-fiction role-playing game: Alien Cosmic Vistas it was called. I knew from reading Manny Rizzo’s thoughts that he had considered picking that game up, but that would depend on how much money he had left come the last day of the convention. There were some other things higher on his shopping list: The Whole Earth Catalog of Magic for the Advanced Death Rattle of Cthulhu Game; a couple of slipcases for his Delvers and Dragons reference books; the new best-selling novel by supreme gamer geek Robby Dobert—he was a guest of honor here at the con and Manny Rizzo had hoped to get it autographed; a set of polyhedral dice in the latest swirl of colors; and another airbrushed troll T-shirt, this one a limited edition and signed and numbered by the artist.
None of those toys meant anything to me.
I’d only crossed over for a four-hour “slot,” and I was certainly going to make the most of it. As far as I was concerned, there was only this plane and the sky and this glorious moment in this convention center in downtown Indianapolis in the height of August with wall-to-wall games and gamers. I knew from Manny Rizzo’s consciousness that this was the biggest gathering of its kind in the country, and that it drew folks from around the world, even celebrities . . . particularly over-the-hill actors who had played secondary characters on science-fiction shows that had been off the air a few years. Manny Rizzo was apparently only interested in meeting one celebrity—Mr. Dobert—and entering the Delvers and Dragons National Championship.
He could well do those things after this game was over and the mystical SE 5a counter was returned to the box, forcing me to return to the realm of dead Aces.
Hmm . . . and thinking about that tournament Manny Rizzo seems so focused on, I might as well fly over to that part of this football field-sized room to indulge him—the magic in this SE 5a counter is certainly strong e
nough to carry us there.
My plane skimmed just below the fluorescent lights, so close I could feel the heat radiating off them. I performed a classic loop, followed by an Immelman to get around a banner promoting the Axis and Allies WWII free-for-all, and then did a side slip and a split-S to get me above the Delvers and Dragons arena. It wasn’t really an arena, it was just a section of the hall marked off with those thick velvet ropes that they have in big theaters.
It was easy to do the math: thirty-five tables, six players at each, meant two hundred and ten competitors for this slot alone—each vying for one copy of every product ever published in every language for the Delvers and Dragons game.
There’d be two more runnings today, and two tomorrow before the names of those who advanced to round two were announced. Maybe a thousands gamers going for the prize. Manny Rizzo certainly had his work cut out for him. I let him edge forward from the other realm to share what I was seeing.
I nosed my SE 5a down so we could get a closer look. We spotted a scattering of men and women in Delvers T-shirts; but unlike Manny Rizzo they’d obviously wore the shirts before, the Day-Glo faded and the squished puppies indistinct blobs of brown and gray with splashes of pale red here and there. T-shirts seemed to be the uniform of the day—most of them serving as walking billboards for this or that game or the latest Japanese cartoon shows. There were a bunch of GGC shirts, too, from previous years of the con; it had been running for thirty years after all—the Dogfight Patrol game offered at each of them. (Manny Rizzo had only been to the past ten conventions I ascertained.)
One strapping fellow had a three-pound coffee can filled with colorful odd-shaped dice at his elbow. Another had a stack of rulebooks so tall that I felt I certain I heard the table groaning in protest over the weight. A tall redhead with unblemished, peach-hued skin and a chest so ample that she shadowed her character sheet had a lucky rabbit’s foot in her manicured hand. A child that could have passed for the Verminator’s twin had an array of pretzel and potato chip minibags next to him, and like a dealer selling drugs to desperate junkies he was selling them for three or four times what I suspect he’d paid.
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