Homebrew (Metagamer Chronicles Book 1)

by Xavier P. Hunter

  He attempted to resist.

  d20: 13 + (To Hit +1) + (Strength -2) = 12

  To Gary’s amazement, Beldrak failed to gain the leverage to lift him aside. He could only imagine how badly the paladin must have rolled.

  “Gary, get out of the way!” Braeleigh ordered. She tried to force her way past as well.

  d20: 15 + (To Hit +1) + (Strength -2) = 14

  Braeleigh failed to oust him as well. Gary was beginning to feel downright Spartan if it weren’t for the fact that he suspected Kurgath’s motivation in heading to servants’ wing.

  “Gary, what do you think you’re doing?” Sira demanded. At least the priestess had the decency not to attempt to manhandle Gary.

  “We’re no match for him,” Gary blurted. “Can’t you see?” If he’d been running the game, this was the sort of place where he’d drop hints heavy enough to crack the stone floor that this guy was not one to mess around with.

  “There’s five of us,” Zeeto said, nigh invisible in the shadows by a window curtain. “And he’s going to be missing a lung soon.”

  “Please trust me!” Gary shouted. He was panting in desperation. “This isn’t the time. This isn’t the place. Kurgath wins today. OK?”

  “Thy cowardice is unbecoming. A hero wouldst not yammer thus.”

  “Heroes die doing one brave thing, even if they fail at it,” Gary pleaded. “Legends live. Don’t be the brittle blade that shatters on an enemy’s shield. Live to be the tempered, engraved, enchanted weapon of mass destruction that cuts that shield in half like parchment to deliver justice.”

  Kurgath returned then, bearing a limp Miriasa in his arms. “Pretty speech. I do love a good dose of cowardice in my henchmen. Keeps the backstabbing and mutiny in check. I’ll be keeping the elf woman company until such time as you return with Nethel. I’ll make an even swap of them.”

  “No!” Beldrak bellowed. His greatsword came down in a blur, humming through the air.

  Gary winced and squeezed shut his eyes. But the paladin overbalanced. The iron blade of the Shard of Pellar passed right through Kurgath’s head as if the intruder were made of fog.

  “Shit! Fog elemental!” Zeeto shouted.

  “It’s a spell, you idiot!” Sira snapped. “He’s incorporeal. Not solid.”

  With a laugh that burbled up from his belly, Kurgath strode onward, walking right through the closed door.

  Braeleigh tore open the door just in time for them all to see Kurgath dissipate in a swirl of wind with Miriasa right along with him.

  “Smooth move, plate-mail,” Zeeto said snidely.

  “Better to fail in the attempt than to wallow in fear of what might come of heroism,” Beldrak said. He slammed his sword into its sheath and strode from the foyer.

  “What do we do now?” Braeleigh said quietly. “He’s got her.”

  “There’s only one thing we can do,” Gary said. “We pack. We’ve got a long way to travel and a thief to catch if we want Miriasa back.”

  40

  Sillimar wasn’t Rome, but in the kingdom of Kovia, all roads still led there. From up in frost Durrotek, there was a clear route to get there, if not a direct one.

  Down the road that paralleled the Yellow River, travelers on foot could reach Ord Margid in a few days. A barge trip down the river could cut the time to a third of that. Horses were the more expensive option and slower than the river current, but horses were reusable, whereas river barge captains took their fare with but one trip paid in return.

  Trekking overland, the party had the choice to head due east to Freezu or veer more east-southeast to Temblin. The untamed wilds would be slower than the roads, but the savings in distance was undeniable. But that speed would be bought with dangers posed by the beasts and monsters that roamed free beyond the reach of regular city patrols.

  Either way, their journey would take the party through Evidge, the trade city whose eastern road faced directly toward the capital.

  Gary laid out these options like a local travel agent, complete with the pros and cons of each. He tried to remain neutral, truly curious which way his friends would choose in character.

  “Amongst us, we must possess coin sufficient for the purchase of equine transport,” Beldrak argued. “’Twould be the surest and quickest way. Foul hands wander while we tarry.”

  “River barge,” Zeeto countered. “No point getting to Sillimar exhausted. Plus, we don’t have the money for horses. We’d be selling off stuff we need to accomplish our quest—like weapons and so forth. If you’re willing to invoke a temporary exemption to adhering to law and order, I could—”

  Beldrak held up a hand and squeezed shut his eyes. “Nay! No thirst be slaked from a tainted river.”

  “Just sayin’… two wrongs don’t make a right, but one and a whole bunch of good to make up for it might,” Zeeto replied.

  “Overland travel is safer on foot anyway,” Braeleigh said. “Horses are great on roads and tame fields, but in the wild, tame horses can turn an ankle, get spooked by monsters, or—”

  “We get it,” Sira snapped. “But the longer we debate this, the longer that fiend has Miriasa.”

  “None of you even met her,” Gary said quietly. They all turned to look his way. These were the same friends who required pizza and beer to move a couch, who kept a Google doc chronicling petty loans for takeout food. “I spoke with her last night. It wasn’t long, but I got to know her just a little.”

  “Art thou saying we ought hunt the villain Kurgath directly?” Beldrak asked.

  Gary shook his head. “We don’t know where to begin looking.” Well, aside from me leading you straight to his lair and in the secret back way past all the guards and traps. It was hard enough letting the campaign play out without being a walking spoiler. Meeting Miriasa—a few scribbled lines of notes in a binder back in Palo Alto—was shaking the foundation of that philosophy. “Either route to Org Margid places us on the road closest to Abrax. If we want to avoid major trouble, let’s take our chances with the monsters in the wilds instead of the ones that rule renegade cities.”

  Zeeto snickered. “About time you showed you’re foreign. Most of the time you know this kingdom better than the natives. Abrax is harmless. I wouldn’t go there, mind you. I like the idea of my immortal soul moving on to the Breakfast Halls of Nazdak when I die, swimming in pancake syrup and eating fifty meals a day. But it’s not like Abrax sends out press gangs the way the King’s Navy does in wartime.”

  “Right,” Sira said. “It’s just a blemish on the map like an unsightly mole. Don’t pick at it.”

  “I went there, once,” Braeleigh said. “I was little, so I don’t remember it much, but it wasn’t weird or anything. You just see skeletons walking in among the pedestrians. But still… overland is faster unless we steal horses.”

  “All in favor of horse thievery?” Zeeto said. He and Braeleigh raised hands. Braeleigh whispered something in elven, and Caspian sat up on his haunches, holding up one paw as high as his canine anatomy allowed.

  “Thy wolf hath not a vote,” Beldrak said. Before Braeleigh could object, he added, “Either way we choose, Caspian shall walk on his own legs.”

  “Three to two,” Sira said when no other votes for thievery were forthcoming. “Not that I relish the idea of an extended camping trip, but it’s got to be days faster than following the roads, and if we wind up in the dungeons as horse thieves, we can’t do Miriasa any good.”

  “A righteous man carries a prison in his heart when mortal law doth let transgressions slip.”

  Gary checked his inventory.

  Backpack

  Belt pouch (x2)

  Lantern

  Lantern oil (x10)

  Flint and steel

  Canteen

  Bedroll

  Money: 3g

  Well, unless he was willing to sell off Hair Splitter and leave himself unarmed, that was the end of any discussion of buying horses.

  “Guys, let’s just suck it up and walk,” Gary
said. “We can debate and vote and argue and preach, but nothing except moving is going to get us any closer to Sillimar.”

  Half an hour later, they headed out the eastern gate of Durrotek. It was a warm morning by autumn standards, but Gary’s breath still made puffs of fog each time he exhaled. He looked forward to days of airships and flying mounts, of magical tents larger on the inside than appearances would let on, and of wealth to drop piles of gemstones on an innkeeper’s counter to take the finest of accommodations.

  In the meantime, Gary looked forward—in only the most literal sense—to wearing down the soles of his boots and freezing his nuts off every night he slept on the ground, bedroll or no bedroll.

  And with that hyped-up brain he’d earned, Gary reviewed the local monsters along their path. He knew it wouldn’t be long before one of them attacked.

  41

  d20: 7 + (DEX -1) = 6

  No one enjoyed waking up to an Initiative roll.

  Gary thrashed free of his bedroll and fumbled for his weapons. In that hazy moment between dreams and wakefulness, he scooped up his lute by the neck and held it like a baseball bat.

  It was still nighttime. Stars hung in the clear Kovian sky like LEDs in a vast dorm room, barely giving light enough to navigate a floor littered with beer cans and dirty laundry—or in this case, camping cookware and bedrolls.

  “What is it?” Sira asked groggily, mid-yawn.

  “Something’s coming from the trees,” Zeeto said, his voice emanating from the darkness somewhere nearby.

  There was an inhuman shriek from the forest.

  “Pieces!” Gary shouted, pointing when he saw what was coming.

  Oh, how at times like this Gary regretted his chemical-boosted imagination. He vaguely recalled the origin of the so-called pieces. It had been the three of them—Gary, Zane, and Marty—and it had been Halloween night. The trick-or-treaters had all petered out, and they were left to devour the glut of candy they’d purchased in full knowledge that the neighborhood couldn’t provide enough plastic-pumpkin-toting ankle-biters to claim it all. After that, it had been smoking up and watching horror movies.

  Somewhere along that gory-splattered movie marathon, Gary had wondered why zombie hordes always started out as mostly-whole bodies even when the severed limbs kept moving when cut away. Maybe they were just slower. Maybe they fell behind the pack. Was there a group of stragglers behind the main zombie horde consisting entirely of… pieces?

  Rotting arms clawed their way across the dirt like inchworms. Dismembered legs hopped, racing ahead of their peers only to fall and struggle back upright just in time for the other pieces to catch up. Severed heads rolled along by unseen necromantic forces.

  The party burst into action.

  Braeleigh twanged off a shot with her bow. The arrow stuck into the papery skin of a torso that was paddling along the ground with two stumps of arms for flippers. The horror showed no sign of impairment from the wound.

  Beldrak took a golf swing at a disembodied hand that sent it sailing off into the tress, but its wiggling fingers showed that it was far from defeated.

  One monstrosity that was little more than a skull with flaps of remnant flesh leapt at Zeeto. The halfling skewered it through the eye socket with his dagger. When its snapping jaws sought out the stubby fingers holding that blade, Zeeto yelped and flung the skull away.

  Gary needed to help, but Hair Splitter would have fared no better, and the lute, though possibly a better weapon for melee combat, had far better uses. He flipped the instrument around and slung the strap over his head in one smooth motion, then strummed.

  “They send the left foot in; you kick the left foot back; they send the left foot in, and you use a blunt attack. You do the pokey pokey, and you’ll end up just like that. That’s what it’s all about.”

  He added a second quick verse for the right leg and advised that fire damage also worked.

  Inspire: +2 To Hit

  “I have neither fire nor hammer,” Zeeto said, backing away from a hopping leg that was about to kick whatever it could find, ass or otherwise.

  “Thy boot!” Beldrak said, stomping down on a skull and grinding his weight onto the bone with a crunch and crackle.

  “Drop it!” Braeleigh scolded, shaking a finger at Caspian, who was shaking a desiccated arm clenched in his jaws. “Drop it! Bad wolf! That’s yucky!”

  Sira, whose mace had crunched the bones of a snake’s ribcage—some large constrictor by the size of it—lowered her weapon and prayed.

  Searing golden light brightened the night. Dead flesh burst into flame it its touch.

  “You go, girl!” Zeeto cheered as he shimmied up the trunk of a nearby oak.

  There was little Gary could contribute beyond his song. There was no other secret to fighting pieces or avoiding them.

  Name: Pieces Hit Points: Varies Damage: Varies

  Leftover fragments of corporeal undead still able to move. Immune to sharp damage.

  And so Gary sang. The heavy metal rocker pent up inside him balked at plucking out children’s songs, but this was one case where the rest of the party needed a tutorial. Music cut through the squabbling and indecision to lay out exactly what it took to finish off these undead abominations.

  With a high-pitched war cry, Zeeto plummeted from a branch. The halfling landed on a chittering skull and crunched the bone.

  “I thought thee fled from our battlefield,” Beldrak said as he brought the flat of the Shard of Pellar down to mash an arm that continued up to a detached shoulder blade.

  “Yo, land-whale. I’ve gotta get me some oomph to squish hopping skulls,” Zeeto replied. “I’m more the light, sporty model.”

  There was no count of the undead amid the chaos of battle. When everything stopped moving beside the five living beings—six, if one counted Caspian—they all took stock of their wounds.

  “Gary, you know everything,” Sira said. “Do these things turn us into more of them?” She asked this as she tended to a bite wound on Zeeto’s shoulder.

  This was dangerous territory. Gary could continue laying out the way of the world at every turn. He could become a legendary bardic sage, able to spout obscure divine lore, expound on the economics of far-flung kingdoms, and even predict broad strokes of the future.

  But he couldn’t allow that.

  “Not that I know of,” he replied with a shrug. “The combat advice was general undead protocol. Weapons designed to draw blood don’t help against things that don’t bleed and wouldn’t care if they did.”

  Braeleigh offered a quick hug. “See? This is why we need him. Told you he wasn’t useless.”

  Zeeto shrugged. “For a non-combatant, I guess. But if this Miriasa chick can shoot fireballs out her fingers, I’d be willing to have a debate over the merits of having a wizard along.”

  Gary’s cheeks warmed. He could barely recall the last time he’d been a legitimate boon to the party’s fighting efforts. Miriasa, once fully recovered, was level 14 and easily capable of incinerating the party at her leisure. The only fact that kept Gary from worrying over his job was the fact that she’d never join an adventuring party of noobs like them.

  “Should the lass’s profession indeed be the dark arts,” Beldrak said, “we ought consider ourselves lucky to enter the lady’s good graces. Be that the width and breadth of the matter. Let us not talk of allying ourselves with such practitioners.”

  “Call her ‘lass’ again,” Braeleigh said with a scowl that couldn’t help looking cute. It was probably the crinkling of her nose. “To her face, next time.”

  The bickering signaled a return to normal. Gary used the opportunity to check on his XP gain.

  Level/Path: Bard 1,2,3B, 4A XP: 5,766/8,000 Race: Unknown

  STR: 7 DEX: 9 CON: 8 INT: 21 WIS: 17 CHA: 18

  To Hit: +2 Weapon: Hair Splitter (1d8+1)

  Armor Rating: 11 Armor: Leather (+2)

  Path Powers: Inspire (+2), Lullaby, Fascinate, Historian

  Skills: Per
suade (+8), Music (+8), Study/Search (+8)

  Tricks: Fast Talk

  Profession: Cook (+1)

  Some quick math suggested that there had been twelve of the monsters. Divided five ways… yeah, that worked out to 350 XP apiece, which was probably more than they ought to have been worth.

  For some reason, Gary still considered making a tweak to the stats of the pieces once he got back to Palo Alto—or woke up, or recovered from his trip, or whatever was ultimately going on.

  Zeeto scuffed the dirt with a toe. “So… anyone up for an early start on the day?”

  “We can make breakfast once we find a new camp site,” Braeleigh said, agreeing implicitly.

  Sira took a long breath. “Yeah. No point staying around this spot any longer than we have to. No way I’m falling back asleep.”

  And so, by the light of a billion distant stars, Gary and his friends packed up and headed onward, hours before dawn would warm the horizon.

  42

  The days that followed felt like a montage slowed to glacial speed. It was almost as if whoever had taken the reins of this campaign world had wanted to test out every monster native to the region.

  At the fording of Saphex Creek, they were ambushed by a school of furry, amphibious eels. Beldrak had barely survived, stunned into unconsciousness by electrical attacks that not only ignored his armor but found it an ideal conductor. Braeleigh and Zeeto had to finish off the eels as Sira and Gary rescued Beldrak from drowning face down in two feet of water.

  They’d been worth 220 XP each, and there had been six of them. Gary kept tabs and watched 264 XP inch him on his way to level 5.

  Traveling the open plains, they’d been stalked by a pack of wheat hounds. Gary hadn’t liked their odds, and the territorial hunters had given up the chase after an hour of pursuit. Somehow, despite fleeing for his life, Gary had been gratified that his friends had been willing to retreat at his advice.