d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

  d6

  A Caverns and Creatures Mini-Adventure Collection

  By Robert Bevan

  Copyright 2013 Robert Bevan

  This is a collection of the first six Caverns and Creatures Mini-Adventures. It includes:

  Cave of the Kobolds

  ZOMBIE ATTACK!!!

  Orcs, Bears, and Assholes

  Shipfaced

  Dungeon Crawl

  The Creep on the Borderlands

  No new content has been added. Nothing in the stories has been changed. If you’ve already purchased these stories, there’s little need for you to purchase the e-version of this collection.

  I’m making it available for those who either haven’t read them yet, and prefer them in a bundle rather than as individual titles on their reading devices, or for those of you who would like these stories in paperback format, which should be available soon.

  Acknowledgements:

  First, I’d like to thank Joan Reginaldo for her invaluable criticism. It’s tough to find a good beta-reader. I went through a few before I met Joan. I can’t stress enough how important it is to find someone who understands your vision and is able to help you achieve it. There’s so much more involved than pointing out misplaced commas (though she did a lot of that, too). Go take a look at Joan’s blog if you have a chance. She’s got some good tips on writing. Leave a comment. She likes comments.

  Next, I’d like to thank my beautiful wife, No Young Sook, for her constant support, and for getting up to get the kids ready for school every morning because I left early to go to the office to write some books.

  Next in line to be thanked is my brother-in-law, No Hyun Jun. Every cover of mine you see is the end product of a communication struggle, his English being about on par with my Korean. But the guy can work some Photoshop magic. And he also helps out with the kids quite a bit. Thanks, Hyun Jun.

  I’d also like to thank all of my followers on Twitter, especially those of you who re-tweet my endless loop of book advertisements.

  Finally, I’d like to give a huge thank you to all of my fans out there. I know you’ve been patiently waiting for the first full-length sequel to come out while I’ve been dicking around with these short stories. In truth, I only ever intended to write the first one as a promotional vehicle for the real books, set the price to free, and get going with Book 2. But you know what I found out? Writing short stories is a whole lot of fun!

  Worry not, friends. Book 2 is currently being edited, and should be released before too long. Thank you for your patience.

  Cave of the Kobolds

  A low level Caverns and Creatures mini-adventure.

  (Original Publication Date: July 16, 2012)

  Cooper reached a clawed hand under his loincloth and scratched his balls thoughtfully.

  Julian, catching an unwanted glimpse of Cooper’s balls, noticed that the hair on them was as sparse, long, and twisted as the hair on his face. No, that wasn’t quite right. Cooper’s ball hair was perfectly normal. The strange part was that Cooper looked to have a face full of pubes.

  It wasn’t his fault. He was a half-orc with a Charisma score of 4. But still, Julian didn’t think he’d ever be able to look at Cooper’s face again without making the connection.

  When it occurred to him that he was staring at his friend’s balls, Julian turned his head toward the entrance of the cave. “It’s… um… dark in there.”

  Cooper plugged one nostril with his thumb, and shot a snot rocket out the other. “It’s a cave. Caves are dark. Light up a rock and chuck it inside.”

  Julian picked up a stone from the ground. “Light,” he said. It was too bright outside to see whether the spell had taken effect, so he tossed it into the cave. Light flowed into the cave as the stone clattered along the floor.

  “Could you please explain to me what we’re doing here?” asked Ravenus, flapping in from a nearby tree. He perched atop Julian’s quarterstaff.

  “Jesus Christ, could you shut that fucking thing up?” said Cooper. “I had a lot to drink last night. I don’t even know what half of it was. My head is killing me and I really don’t need that thing screeching in my ear this early in the morning.”

  “You’d be able to understand him if you’d just spend a skill point on learning the Elven language next time you level up. It’s just English with a British accent.”

  “The day I speak with a British accent is the day I stick a baguette up my ass and slap a beret on my head.”

  “I think you mixed your xenophobias.”

  “Yes, I did,” said Cooper, impatience rising in his voice. “And that’s why I have a fucking hangover. So tell your fucking bird to shut the fuck up.”

  “He just wants to know what we’re doing here,” said Julian. “I wouldn’t mind an answer to that myself.”

  “We need money,” said Cooper. “I’m tired of pulling silver arrowheads out of my ass and melting them down for cash. We’re going to get some gold the old fashioned way.”

  Julian squinted his eyes and peered in at the walls of the cave. “Mining?”

  Cooper closed his eyes and clenched his fists. He breathed deeply a few times. An impressive snot bubble expanded and contracted from his right nostril. After one long, final exhalation, he spoke.

  “I’m supposed to be the one with the low Intelligence score here. Look around. What do you see?”

  “A cave.”

  “Or you might even call it a cavern, right?”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re stuck in a game called Caverns and Creatures. So it’s a pretty good bet that there are some creatures living in this cavern. Creatures often have treasure.”

  “So we’re going to go in there and steal their shit? What if they see us? We should have brought Tim. He’s the sneaky one.”

  “Tim would have said no. It’s too dangerous or some bullshit. And no, we’re not going to steal their shit. We’re going to claim their shit as our own after we kill whatever’s in there.”

  “So we’re talking about murder then?”

  “We’re just going to kill some monsters. If there are any people in there, we won’t kill them.”

  “What about goblins?”

  “Goblins are monsters.”

  “That guy Shorty was pretty cool.”

  “Yeah.” Cooper picked between one of his lower tusks and the tooth next to it with a fingernail that looked like a rhinoceros horn. “Okay. No goblins, no humans. Anything else is fair game. Agreed?”

  “How do you even know we can take what’s in there? I mean, without Mordred running the show, we have no guarantee that we’re going to be up against level appropriate creatures. There could be anything in there. Maybe a cockroach, maybe a horde of dragons. Maybe nothing.”

  “That’s a good point. Okay, here’s the plan. If we find something we think we can take, we’ll beat the shit out of it and be on our way. If it looks like something tough, you can diplomafy it.”

  “What?”

  “Use your high Charisma score. Talk your way out.”

  “That’s a stupid plan.”

  Cooper unstrapped the enormous double-bladed axe from his back, and ran an edge against his cheek, leaving one patch of bald semi-cleanliness on his otherwise filthy face. “Let’s go.”

  Cooper stepped across the threshold into the cave. Ravenus flapped down from Julian’s staff to perch on his shoulder, and they followed Cooper inside.

  When they reached the center of the light, Julian stooped down to pick up his stone. He stayed kneeling on the ground and scrunched up his face. His eyes started to tear. “You’re right,” he said between shallow breaths. “Something definitely lives in here. I just got a whiff of their waste.”

&n
bsp; “That was… um…” said Cooper. “That was me. SBD. Sorry.”

  Julian stood up. “Jesus, Cooper. How about a little warning next time?”

  “Consider yourself lucky it was just a fart.”

  Julian waved his hands around in an attempt to stir up the stagnant, fart-filled air. Shadows leaped up and down violently on the wall before them.

  “Stop waving that rock around,” said Cooper. “You’re making me dizzy. I don’t think you want to add puke to your olfactory buffet.”

  Julian took a few steps to the left, holding the stone out in front of him, and then did the same in the opposite direction. A tunnel led out of this chamber in each direction perpendicular to the entrance. “What do you think? Left or right?”

  Cooper shrugged.

  “Ravenus.”

  “Yes, Julian,” said the raven, hopping from Julian’s shoulder to his outstretched forearm so they could talk face to face.

  “Pick a direction. Left or right?”

  “Um… right?”

  “Ravenus says we should go right.”

  “So we go left,” said Cooper, sticking up his middle finger at Ravenus. “Fuck you, bird.”

  Cooper started down the tunnel on the left. Julian threw the glowing stone at his head.

  “Ow!”

  “Oh, sorry!” said Julian. “I was just trying to throw it ahead so we could see where we were going.”

  Cooper rubbed the back of his head. “Oh, right. Good thinking.” He bent down to pick up the stone. Julian winked at Ravenus.

  Cooper chucked the stone at an angle, and light bounced back and forth along the tunnel as the stone ricocheted off the rocky walls. When it came to rest, Julian caught a brief glimpse of a small humanoid reptilian creature, no bigger than a human twelve-year-old, staring back at him through beady red eyes. He blinked and the creature was gone.

  “Did you see that?” Julian whispered.

  “I saw something,” said Cooper.

  Julian put his hand up to his shoulder for Ravenus to perch on, and then cradled the bird against his chest. “Cooper, I’m scared.”

  “Don’t be a pussy,” said Cooper, but his voice was distant, and his eyes remained focused on the darkness just beyond the stone’s magical light. “Come on. Let’s check it out.” He stepped into the light and picked up the stone.

  As soon as the light moved, the sound of running footsteps echoed off the cavern walls. They were running away from Cooper and Julian. The footsteps were soon accompanied by what might have been a yapping terrier, or what might have been a language. If it was the latter, it wasn’t any language that Julian was familiar with.

  Cooper grinned. The light illuminated his face from below, making his tusky grin all the more horrifying. “I think I know what these things are.” He walked briskly down the tunnel, which gradually turned to the right.

  Julian had to jog in order to keep up with Cooper’s long strides. “What are they?”

  “Kobolds.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to me. Why are you smiling?”

  “Because kobolds are weak. We can take these fuckers down with no problem.”

  Julian looked down at Ravenus. “Do you know anything about kobolds?”

  “I know they’re kin to dragons.”

  “Jesus, Cooper,” said Julian. “Did you hear that?”

  “I heard ‘Scrraaawwwww!’.”

  “Ravenus told me that kobolds are related to dragons. Is that true?”

  “How the fuck should I know?”

  Ahead of them the faint glow of firelight flickered on the walls of the cave. The fleeing creature’s panicky yapping was met with more of the same. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t alone.

  “Well what if it is true?” asked Julian, grabbing Cooper by the elbow to stop him. “Are you really so confident that we can take on a nest of dragon people?”

  “Look,” said Cooper. “Kobolds are the weakest, most generic monster in the game. They’re what lazy Cavern Masters use for baddies in low-level dungeon crawls. Maybe the book says they’re related to dragons. I don’t know because I’ve never given a fuck. But they don’t breathe fire and shit. You saw how big they are. They’ve only got a couple of hit points each. You can beat them to death with your shitty little walking stick. Hell, I bet even your stupid bird could take on a couple of them by himself. They are nothing to worry about.”

  This was of little comfort to Julian, but he kept his worries to himself. There would be time enough for I-told-you-so’s while they were having their limbs gnawed off. He set Ravenus on his shoulder, readied his quarterstaff, and walked toward the flames.

  A pair of torches mounted on the walls marked the entrance to a chamber, within which was the source of the excited yapping. When they were about twenty yards away, Cooper pressed a finger to his lips.

  “Shh.”

  Julian nodded, and Cooper tossed the light stone into the chamber. The yapping came to a sudden halt.

  “Dude!” Cooper whispered excitedly. “I can see in the dark.”

  “Seriously?”

  “This fucking rules.”

  “Well I can’t see shit,” said Julian.

  “Yeah, you kind of look like a jackass right now, reaching out your arms like that.”

  Julian jerked his arm away from something in the dark that tried to grab it. Then he realized it was just Cooper and relaxed. Cooper’s attempts to tip-toe were laughable. He couldn’t have been any louder if the floor had been made out of cats.

  They hadn’t gone more than five steps when light rushed into the tunnel toward them like water bursting through a hole in a dam.

  “Goddammit!” Cooper shouted into the chamber, holding his hand over his right eyebrow. “What if that had gone in my eye, asshole?”

  Julian looked down. His light stone had been returned to them.

  After a brief bit of yapping from a single voice, a chorus of high-pitched laughter from maybe a dozen different voices echoed toward them. The yapping was definitely a language, and Julian had a strong feeling that someone in the chamber had just translated Cooper’s shouting.

  “Is he crying?” asked Ravenus.

  “No, he’s not cry–,” Julian looked up to see Cooper wiping a tear away from his eye. “Cooper, are you crying?”

  “It stung, alright,” Cooper snarled.

  Ravenus laughed.

  “That’s it,” said Cooper. Apparently, He didn’t need to understand Elven to know when he was being laughed at. “I don’t need to take this shit from a fucking bird.” He made a grab at Ravenus.

  Ravenus flew out of Cooper’s reach. Cooper raised his giant axe with both hands and swatted at Ravenus, trying to smack him out of the air with the flat of his blade. Ravenus flapped and dodged, but not by much.

  “Cooper!” Julian shouted. “Knock it off. He didn’t mean anyth–” He grunted and fell to his knees, a loud caw ringing in his ears.

  Julian’s vision was gone. All he could see was twinkling white lights in his periphery. He heard the clank of Cooper’s axe falling to the ground, and he felt massive clawed hands grabbing him by the upper arms and lifting him.

  “Julian! Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  Julian’s vision was slow in coming back to him, but he could feel the warmth of Cooper’s breath on his face, and the smell… it was like meat that had gone so bad that flies wouldn’t go near it. He bent his head back to breathe in some nice stagnant cave air.

  “Where’s Ravenus?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit him so hard. I was just trying to –”

  Julian didn’t need sight to make a pretty good guess at where his foot was in relationship to Cooper’s balls. His right foot connected with the first kick. He heard a grunt and the all too familiar squirt of Cooper’s bowels letting go, and then he was on the ground again.

  His vision was blurry, but coming back to him. “Ravenus!”

  “I’m here, Julian,” said Ravenus, flapping down int
o Julian’s lap.

  Julian stroked the feathers on the bird’s head and neck. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” said Cooper. “Don’t sweat it.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” said Julian curtly. “Ravenus, are you okay?”

  “Yes,” said Ravenus. “He just knocked the wind out of me. That’s all.”

  “For fuck’s sake, man,” said Cooper, rolling around on the ground with his hands on his balls. “My fucking nuts.”

  Julian blinked a few times until his vision became clear. “Cooper. Is there something you’d like to say to Ravenus?”

  “I’m sorry I hit you with my axe, Ravenus,” said Cooper. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Thank you,” said Julian. “Ravenus. Cooper said he’s sorry for hitting you. Is there something you’d like to say to Cooper?”

  “Go fuck yourself, shithead.”

  “Ravenus said he’s sorry for laughing at you. Are we all cool now?”

  Cooper lowered his head. “Yeah, we’re cool. I’m really sorry, dude.”

  “Forget it,” said Julian. “I’ve suddenly got an urge to beat the shit out of something. What say we go in there and kick some ass?”

  “All right,” said Cooper. “Let’s roll.” He took a step toward the firelight and Julian grabbed his arm.

  “Shouldn’t we have some sort of a plan before going in there?”

  “Okay, fine. So what is it?”

  “You don’t have to heap all of the responsibility on me, you know.”

  “I’m a fucking moron. Strategy and planning are not what my character was made for. Any plan that I come up with is bound to be shitty.”

  “Okay okay,” said Julian, tossing the light stone up and down in his hand. He caught it and looked at it. “Ravenus. Can you fit this stone in your beak?”

  “I think so,” said Ravenus. “I once ate the eyeball out of a dead sheep. It was a little bigger than that stone.”