dispatched it with extreme prejudice. The two remaining vermin immediately realized that the tide was turning, but before they could retreat I leapt forward and
Contested Friskiness Roll
Improvised Weapon!
Raze’s Friskiness Modifier: +2
Roll: 7 + 2 = 9
Rat’s Friskiness Modifier: 0
Rat’s Roll: 6 + 0 = 6
Result: Raze Success
Damage: 3
Hit Points Remaining: 0
Experience Gained (after being split amongst Crew members) = 3
Achievement Unlocked:
I Was Told There’d Be No Math
Reward: Now that you’ve seen how modifiers work, your rolls will include all applicable pluses and minuses! This should make the Audible version of your adventures slightly less annoying… (You’ve also been granted the Codify skill at rank 100, just in case you need to assess how current conditions will affect your roll.)
Contested Friskiness Roll
Improvised Weapon
Raze: 6
Rat: 17
Result: Raze Failure
Contested Friskiness Roll
Improvised Weapon
Raze: 17
Rat: 10
Result: Raze Success
Damage: 2
Hit Points Remaining: 0
Experience Gained (after being split amongst Crew members) = 3
stomped them both to death.
I was out of breath and sweaty, but most of all I was amazing!
No, I was much more than that. I was drop-dead awesome, as in ‘worthy of awe’. I’d taken the fight to those rats and come out on top. The thrill of victory was such a new high for me that I felt like I’d been huffing green smoke or popping Netflix and Chill pills.
Also, I finally had something to eat.
Flushed with success and a much-needed meal, as I wiped my lips I couldn’t help but wonder how long it’d be before the world bowed before me. All of my enemies that refused to bend the knee would rue the day they’d dared to cross my path without showing me a suitable amount of respect. All my foes would crumb-
Crap… The sticky mess beneath my boots didn’t bother me, but when I glanced down at the miniature battlefield it looked like only two of my four victims had tails worthy of collecting.
I picked them up, and now the number that kept coming back into mind was 18, when it used to be 20.
The tails that I left behind were sliced and broken. Heroes often complained about killing ‘rats without tails’, insinuating that the world was somehow rigged against them. The reality was that questgivers were only authorized to accept pristine specimens, and combat was the worst way imaginable to procure them.
The rats hadn’t dropped any other loot, but I wasn’t in the least bit frustrated. Instead, I was almost embarrassingly exhilarated. This was so far a cry from the cynical pessimist I knew myself to be that it was a little unnerving, but I cut myself some slack.
For the first time ever I’d been given a chance to work toward a goal. I was earning experience, raising skills, and perhaps even building a new life for myself that I’d actually still want to occupy, come morning.
How many times had I stayed awake when the other kids were already in bed, begging Mother Mayeye for more stories of ancient Gearblin Heroes only to interrupt her fables with bold, baseless claims that one day I’d be amongst their ranks?
Too many.
I was glad that Patch was receiving a share of the experience. It made me feel less guilty for leaving her behind, and nothing felt more heroic than providing for someone I cared about.
If this was as close as I ever came to being a Hero, a real one, a thing of legend and not one of the bullies that walked our streets, then maybe that was enough.
Under any other circumstances I’d have happily hunted down rats all day every day, but right now I needed to find a way to speed this up.
Heroes were always complaining about arbitrary nature of RNGesus, annoyed that it’d taken many long hours of rodent extermination to gather the required tails.
I couldn’t wait around that long, not if I wanted to get Bingo and myself back to the mountain and work out a way to either keep the big doors shut or defend Rule of Cool’s old base of operations from the Reenactment’s assembled Heroes.
The next few minutes were fruitless, which was to say ratless. It was the least-populated ‘infestation’ I’d ever seen. There were more rodents in my digs in ‘Neath than here, and all I had to show for my efforts was increasing darkness and 2 rat tails.
“It’s inefficient,” I muttered. “And it smacks too much of playing by their rules.” Annoyed, I turned on my heel and stomped back upstairs to reassess the situation.
I should probably just abandon the quest. That’d make sense, but I wasn’t ready to admit defeat. Instead of leaving behind valuable experience and equipment, not to mention a chance to humble one of Hallow’s lynchpin factions I decided it was time to apply a little Gearblin know-how to the task.
At least when you finish up you can turn the quest in to yourself when you pick up Bingo from Illgott’s…
Decipher (Auditory) Roll
Cunning Roll: 4
Result: Partial Success
There was a noise across the way, but the maze of crates and the sprawling layout of the basement combined to muffle the sound I’d heard. I headed in that direction.
My burning longbow was still where I’d left it, but the flame was dying fast.
Stealth Roll
Friskiness Roll: 4
Result: Failure
Someone had left the lid of a crate leaning against a wall and I accidentally knocked it over. It fell, making enough noise in the process to alert every rodent in the place that somebody was stalking them.
A rat poked its head around a corner, teasing me by waiting until I was almost within striking distance to turn and vanish between the boxes as it darted toward the middle of the maze.
My longbow torch was little more than cinder and ash. Instead of chasing my quarry, I slid the arrows from the quiver and used the last of the flame to light their fletching before stalking back upstairs.
By the time I got back out to the front of the temple, Adrius was deep in conversation with yet another group of Heroes. A new Dwarf with blue tattoos all over his face, passed me as I was pushing my way out of the temple.
“Is that all you got, wee one?” the stout braggart asked, pointing a stubby finger that looked more like a sausage at my belt.
I sidestepped him. “Keep your hands to yourself, pervert.”
“What? No? The rat tails, not your di-”
Oh… “Says you. Get down there and find some treasure of your own, if you think you can do better.”
He looked utterly mortified. “I don’t… I mean you’re a handsome enough Gobl-”
“Gearblin.”
“Of course. What I mean to say is that you’re quite a striking fellow, but I prefer the company of-”
“Elves. I understand. I meant for you to go into the temple and slay some rats. I’d be quick though, if I were you.”
The Dwarf didn’t say anything, and I walked right past him.
Adrius saw the look on my face, but he was in the middle of doting on new prospects and didn’t cut his words short to query me. His dedication would have been far more admirable if it wasn’t devoted to pressing a foot down on the throats of me and mine.
By the time the Priest finished explaining ‘Vermin Sermon’ to a skinny Mage, I was almost past him. “Were you successful in eradicating the infestation?” he asked.
“Not yet. It’s worse down there than I thought.”
“I see.” He shook his head sadly. “That place has been in disrepair for so long that I fear we will never fully reclaim it.”
“Don’t be so sure about that.”
Adrius clearly wasn’t used to seeing people quit so early, and when I tried to go around him and head into the forest he
was bold enough to take a step into my path. “Where are you going? Your riches will only be rewarded upon the completion of the task at hand.”
“Got it.”
“But… I don’t understand. Are you rage quitting?”
“Nope.”
“Looking for group, then? You are welcome to, though I assure you that the quest is easily completed by a lone individual. Countless thousands of Heroes have passed this way before, and I cannot remember any of them giving up as easily as this.”
“I’m not giving up.”
“Are you lost, then? Most of my valiant rat hunters spend a minimum of an hour in the sacred walls of the temple, while you were there for less than a quarter of that time.”
I stepped around him. “Relax. I’ll be back soon. While I’m gone, I suggest you tidy up your resume. By the time I’m done with your quest, you’re going to be out of a job.”
Chapter 19
The RNGesus temple the Significant Fraternity was hoping to make rodent-free was set against the woods, which meant that my Meager Chopper and I didn’t have to wander far to get supplies.
By the time I returned to Adrius I’d worked up a sweat and a Forestry skill of 11. Sunrise wasn’t far away, and now the Priest had a crowd of new Heroes around him. They all turned and watched with interest when I came back into sight, my arms full of wood.
“So industrious!” Adrius praised, pointing at me. “Look here, fellows! I admit to misjudging his dedication, but now I see that he is making up for his lack of stature with ingenuity. Observe, a moment.”
I felt a dozen interested gazes on me, and I scowled in their direction.
“Such intensity!” Adrius narrated, an accidental Attenborough. “Tell me Hero, what are you planning on building?”
“A fire,” I said, striding by him and the throng of newcomers. “The lighting down there’s terrible.”
“I see.”
“Well, I couldn’t. Hence the wood.”
“But…” His voice trailed off as another pair of protagonists stepped from the forest. The Priest cleared his throat and squawked, “Hail and well met, Heroes! Join us as we witness a failed champion who has returned to try again! Let this be a lesson to us all. Use his devotion to the task as personal inspiration to complete your own.”
I cast him a withering look of disdain. “You’ve wasted your life sending thousands in to kill some rats. The temple’s still overrun but I’m the failure, huh?”
“We are doing important work!”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself. Hey, how many losers have you got in there doing your bidding at the moment?” I asked him, angling my chin at the temple.
“They’re not los-”
“How many?”
“Due to the hour of your approach you were the first, but quite a few Heroes currently toil in the depths. Fear not, though. The rat population will sadly adjust to provide more than enough tails for all of you to retrieve.”
“Convenient…” I marched back into the temple. Very little of the grey light outside was filtering in, leaving the interior almost as dark as it had been. I’d used a vine to lash the wood together, and I slid a slender length of kindling from the stack and lit it with an existing torch.
Once the flame caught, I headed straight back down the stairs.
Thanks to my new light source, I could see right away that Adrius had been vastly underselling the number of Heroes he’d sent into the basement. The place was swarming with a chorus of chanted spells, singing steel, smashing clubs, and rat squeals.
I spotted a Paladin, a trio of Rogues, a Cleric, a Monk, and a Mage engaged in their own private rodent wars. There was even an idiot Hunter over there getting repeatedly bitten as he tried to tame one of the rats.
It sounded like there were other Heroes down here too, hidden from me by the crates.
I worked fast. With all that noise and the fierce competition for tails, nobody had time to wonder what I was doing when I chopped the stairs into kindling.
Once I’d made it harder to get back to the ground floor, I started busting open crates. Some of the containers had already begun to split at the corners, and a few well-placed swings spilled their contents everywhere.
The boxes used brittle hay as packing material, and I yanked out a bunch of it and spread it around. Waterfalls of d20s tumbled off into the darkness in every direction, and I kicked at the whole mess a few times to spread it out even further.
After that, it was time to grab handfuls of wood and make a few strategic lean-tos here and there.
The crush of noobs and the wildness of their imprecise attacks meant that I had to occasionally
Friskiness Roll
Roll: 15
Result: Success
dodge an errant slice or
Friskiness Roll
Roll: 18
Result: Success
sidestep a thrown knife on its way to a rodent.
The hardest thing to do was stifle my cackles as I made a few return trips to the pile of chopped timber by the ruined staircase. The temple quest had become a passion project, and time flew by.
A little while later there was just one more thing to do, and I picked up the flaming brand to do it.
People are always saying that a fire requires three things; heat, fuel, and oxygen. Technically that last one should really be ‘an oxidizing agent’, but I can’t be annoyed about that since schools quit teaching the basics a long time ago.
There’s a fourth thing though, a special ingredient that I’ve always found is essential to a roaring blaze.
Malice.
I’d lived on my own long enough to have started thousands of fires. Campfires, pilot lights, hearth fires, and of course a certain recent inferno at a well-known alchemist’s shop. In my experience, the ones that caught the fastest and burned the brightest had always been built with the intention of causing damage to property.
Everything but the flame was already set up, and as I darted around and thrust fire into the kindling not a single Hero glanced in my direction. After less than a minute I had a dozen of my perfectly built fires going. The hay spread the conflagration to even more crates, and the old wood caught immediately.
Even when the Heroes noticed the flames, instead of raising the alarm they thanked me. My fires threw a lot of light as they grew, and they nodded in misplaced gratitude.
“Here it is,” I told them, “your own personal bright side.” I saluted and skedaddled.
I’d already done what I could to destroy the staircase, and now it was time to see if I’d done my job too well.
Friskiness Roll
Roll: 13
Result: Success
It was just pure, dumb RNG that allowed me to scale the wreckage. Once I was safely at the top of what was left of the stairs, I looked over my shoulder one last time.
The fire was hungry, and I’d given it plenty of food.
Just to be safe, I bent and yanked the doorstops out. I stepped out of the way as the heavy iron doors slammed shut. Once they had, I wedged the wooden triangles back underneath from the side I was on.
Nobody down there was panicking. The Heroes must have still been too busy with their hunt to worry about something as minor as their lives. I ran to the entrance of the temple just as the first few wisps of thick black smoke were beginning to curl up between the floorboards beneath my feet.
These doors were ostentatious things of thick oak and wrought-iron filigree, somehow even heavier than the ones to the basement that I’d just barred. The building may be decrepit now, but there’d been a time when it’d been a fine place to roll the dice of your future.
I shoved them open and closed them behind me, pressing my back against them and wiping sweat from my brow as I caught my breath. In a second I’d have to run, once Adrius and his protagonists worked out what I was doing.
People see what they expect to see, though. Instead of frightened shouts or angry curses, the Heroes in the temple’s courtyard w
ere complaining at me loudly for getting in the way of their quest.
“Move aside!” an elf demanded, while a human that looked and smelled like he’d been raised by foxes
Contested Friskiness Roll
Raze: 16
Vernal: 21
Result: Vernal Success
Damage: 0 (Grapple)
grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and lifted me out of the way. “Move!”
“Be my guest,” I panted as he set me down. “Hurry up, though. The rats in the cellar won’t last long. Once they’re gone, this quest’ll be forever worthless.”
That got them, and the fresh wave of greedy Heroes cranked the front doors open and charged inside. I stole a look past them and saw that the floor they were rushing across couldn’t possibly maintain its integrity for much longer.
Ever helpful, I dutifully closed the front doors behind them again and turned to find yet another gathering of Heroes stomping toward me. Adrius had been working overtime.
I could see from the Priest’s worried look that he’d noticed the smoke beginning to billow out of the windows.
I was winging this now, and a sudden burst of inspiration ran through me like ghost pepper curry. “I have a quest!” I shouted, which instantly silenced every Hero in front of me.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. I’d only been in charge of a few quests and never crafted any, and instead of a bunch of prompts and parameters greeting me I got a whole lot of nothing.
The Heroes were too green to know the difference.
“The rat one?” asked a Cleric who’d been the last to leave before I’d shut the front doors. He had his hands full of bloody rat tails, but that didn’t stop his greed from turning him around to face me. “Because I’m done with that.”
“This one’s new and exclusive! Here,” I said, pointing to the tails, “let me hold those for you and I’ll explain.”
Know Your Roll Page 18