by Marty Myers
The man doing all the talking must be one of these dungeon masters he had come to find so he focused on what he was saying. “ Okay now that you all have parts to play in this story we will get started. You have all journeyed far across the countryside having followed whispered rumors of a dungeon hidden deep in the mountains, to at last reach this secluded hillside where all you see is scrub brush and a few goat trails. Make a check to see what else you find.”
There were several people picking up dice and one spoke up to declare they had a special ability to make the check easier for them to pass it. Alastor did not say anything but plucked a dice from the table and sent it rolling to blend in with the others. “ Good,” Hank said, “ those of you who rolled higher than a twelve do indeed spot a cave entrance mostly hidden by a particularly big stand of scrub brush with a rocky outcropping in the hill above. Now he said who is doing what?” Several of the players said they were approaching the entrance and pushing through the brush. Hank asked for those to make another check and after looking at the dice described a rock fall that had rained down from overhead catching and injuring a couple of them. A few people grumbled and questioned this but Hank calmly explained the trap and that no one had declared their intentions to check the entrance carefully beforehand.
Next, the group backed off and people began actually rereading their characters. One said she was a healer and mentioned tending to the wounded. Then someone asked whether there was anyone who was a thief. Alastor did not answer. Finally, the fellow next to him leaned over and said, “ hey you are a thief why aren’t you speaking up?” “ Because no real thief is going to admit to that unless he is traveling with brigands who are worse than he is,” Alastor said.
The guy gave him an odd look but continued on. “ Look we just want you to look for traps. See here on your character sheet it shows you have the skill to detect and disarm traps. No one wants to blunder into another one if that can be avoided. My name is William by the way, haven’t you played before?” Alastor said, “ I have not done this before, no. I came here to speak to a dungeon master.” William said,” okay so you’re a newbie. We do get them from time to time. I can help you figure it out if you want. Here just roll this dice after you tell the Dungeon Master you are going to look for more traps at the entrance.” Alastor complied with the pushy fellow just to continue fitting in.
Alastor was even more confused now. He had thought that after a while the people would have been led out to a real location, but instead apparently the dungeon Hank was describing was still in the early planning stages. And what they were doing now was designed to find flaws in the trap placements and room arrangements before any of it was even built. After a while though, of listening to Hank describe the dungeon and the others, in turn, calling out their likely actions he began to see the value in this new method. Many of the adventurers made many stupid mistakes and injuries resulted that would have broken most heroes resolve to continue deeper into the death trap this dungeon apparently was going to be when it was built. Instead, they continued on. Perhaps this was to finish studying the deeper traps he thought as he to agreed to press on for now.
As these characters were either killed or wounded so seriously that they could not continue, Alastor increasingly hung back while William his pushy table mate urged him onward. The dice apparently acted as random factors for both sides to do good or bad at any given action. There weren’t just traps either as some wrong turns down dead-end tunnels demonstrated. Secret passages had also been discovered hidden in the walls of the dungeon. Adding to the danger various minions and monsters also appeared from time to time wearing down the warriors and the healers’ ability to keep them all going. By the time they had reached an impressive set of double doors half the people had been eliminated and left the room.
It was found that the doors were locked and once again William urged Alastor to step forward but he refused. “ I want nothing to do with opening those doors,” he said. “ This group is far too few and too hurt to face whatever is awaiting us beyond this portal. This group is going to be lucky if they can even make it back out the way we came without any more deaths.” William got red in the face and moved away from him after that.
Hank asked, “ what is everyone doing?” William spoke with the others and soon they announced they were going to use their axes to chop and bash their way through the door. Alastor quickly countered that he was going to slip away quietly and try to make it back out of the dungeon in one piece. Hank nodded to both of them and had them make some rolls. After about five minutes and a few more successful checks, Alastor had made it back out with a few more coins collected from the fallen comrades’ belongings who had fallen along the way.
Meanwhile, the others had made it through the doors just as six more orcs who had heard the noise came through another passageway nearby. Beyond the battered doors, an even greater number of orcs and their leader were gathered to repel the adventures. Not long thereafter everyone else was dead and the adventure was done. While Hank was wrapping up, Alastor set there thinking about the scenario. While he still didn’t think the heroes would have continued on so long as they had, he couldn’t help but be happy with the end result.
The dungeon had held up nicely to a serious threat with acceptable minion losses. He felt that his master’s skeletons and zombies would be fairly equivalent to the proposed orcs and goblins Hank had used to test it out. Suddenly he felt a much firmer pull upon the familiar bond. Damn the liche! Here he was working towards his master’s goal and he was being rushed again. He needed to speak to Hank now. Most of the others were filing out of the room as Hank put away his dice so Alastor spoke up. “ Hank that was a fine dungeon you described. Really some fine work. I do have some questions though and a business deal I really want to talk to you about.” Hank looked over the screen at the smart gamer in the thief’s costume questioningly. “ Yes, what is it you want to ask,” Hank asked? Alastor said, “ for one, I wanted to know what the plans for the rest of this dungeon are like.”
Hank said, “ normally I would not reveal that to a group or person that I was going to run it again for. But since I likely won’t see you again, I am willing to show you.” Hank motioned him to come around the table and showed him the layout of the map from the module. As Alastor avidly scanned the map he questioned Hank on the meaning of some of the symbols. Alastor said, “ I work for someone highly interested in having a dungeon similar to this one made up for him. There will be differences of course but the ideas and concepts. The traps and monsters I have seen and heard spoken of here make me think you are just the man we need.” Hank was flabbergasted, sure he had heard that game company recruiters sometimes scouted at the cons but he had never thought he would be approached by one, especially in a pickup game.
Alastor continued, “you would be paid for your work very well. But we need it done fairly quickly. You would be working in the strictest secrecy and we would have to start almost immediately.” As he said this he felt another harder tug upon the bond connecting him to Provoas. Alastor pulled out a contract Provoas had had him write up before he left. Another gift innate for a demon was that a contract written by the imp could be read by anyone and it would appear in their most familiar language. Such was its magic that even illiterate people could understand the words written upon a demon contract.
A fantasy style scroll was definitely a weird touch Hank thought as he leaned over to take a look at it. The calligraphy written on the page was done in the most amazing penmanship he had ever seen. It was truly a thing of beauty. As Hank began reading through the contract he noticed the recruiter was a bit anxious. Huh, just how big of a deal was this project anyway? Should he even consider this. Then again if he and Francis were truly done he would need to move out and find somewhere else to live which probably wasn’t going to be cheap. His job down at the copy store certainly wasn’t paying all the bills right now. If he could get on full time at the gaming company after this piecework for them then that
would be a big step up.
He was interrupted when Alastor stood up suddenly ramrod straight and announced in a strange voice, “ my time here is done Hank Graves I must have your answer now.” Alastor then produced a fancy quill pen like nothing he had seen before. Hank was thinking this was the oddest hard sell he had ever been on the receiving end of. Alastor also pulled out a big wad of bills and set it down next to the scroll. “ This is an advance upon your signing. As the contract states you will be made extremely wealthy should you complete the contract to our satisfaction.” That helped Hank make up his mind. Opportunity doesn’t knock twice his dad always said. Hank took the pen and the money and signed at the bottom of the scroll. As soon as he did he felt something strange happen. It was like someone had strummed a chord in his chest leading all the way down his arm to the paper. He stumbled into Alastor who grabbed a hold of his arm and swept his other arm over the table gathering the contract and Hanks gaming supplies and book bag up.
Chapter 6
Without any more warning, there was a mighty lurch as if an earthquake had shifted the ground from beneath their feet and then slammed them around. They both cried out in pain as darkness was alternated with flashes of light and extremely loud jarring sounds battered their senses. After several of the longest minutes of Hank’s life filled with this weird feeling, the bright lighting, and jarring cacophony finally stopped assaulting him as he fell to the floor with his eyes tightly shut, trying not to throw up. “Alastor, where have you been?” A strange raspy voice demanded. “ I have been summoning you for days. I expect a much more timely arrival from you when I call.” The chilling voice with strange echoes to it made me wonder if all the noise hadn’t damaged my hearing. I carefully opened my eyes as the nausea receded. I can’t begin to describe the horrors awaiting me, as I immediately tried to stifle a scream so as to not bring any attention to myself.
In front of me, sitting upon an ornate chair was a dark gray robed mummy or skeleton with glowing green eyes, or no as my vision cleared I saw they were actually small green globes of fire floating in the skulls eye sockets. “ Master, I have been gone but for a night and a day I swear” Alastor cried out! He sat up within the newly drawn magic circle inscribed upon the floor before the master’s chair. “ I swear it is true when I left here I traveled swiftly east teleporting as far as I could each time until a strange feeling came over me during one such jump and I appeared into another realm of men. I felt most unwell there but I continued my search for you. It took most of a day to recover my energies there but I looked for one to build your dungeon in the meantime and in the afternoon I found this man named Hank Graves putting on a demonstration of dungeon building techniques at a large guild hall where they specialize in dungeons and did bargain with him for his services. I swear upon the bond that what I have said is the truth.”
“ You have been gone for weeks,” the liche roared! “ I could feel our bond growing thin shortly after you left here but did not realize you had gone so incredibly far until I first thought to summon you back after a weeks time. The bond must weaken as it stretches beyond the bounds of this world. You have never been able to travel between the dimensions without being summoned before my imp. So you have gained a new power.” The liche paused and thought.
“ Regardless Alastor could you not feel my pull upon the bond between us?” Alastor hung his head down to the floor and admitted that twice he had felt the pull and resisted it for the mission was not completed. Provoas slammed his bony hand upon the chairs armrest and purple necromantic energies shot out of him to strike Alastor’s prone form. “ Never again are you to defy me this way imp,” yelled the liche in an echoing voice full of thunder and menace. “ I am the master here and you are the slave. You shall serve me in all things or I will punish you down through the ages unending.” The crackling purple lightning sparked and sputtered as it diminished and finally died off while Alastors body convulsed on the stone floor.
Meanwhile, Hank had been laying still paralyzed with fear right next to Alastor and so was caught in the energies edge. It felt like a million fire ants ripped into him and then they were electrocuted while simultaneously being dropped into a vat of arctic ice water. He screamed and flopped around before finally mercifully passing out. Provoas tried to calm down. Flying into rages was an uncommon, but not altogether unheard of behavior where he was concerned. But still, he needed to not permanently harm his imp nor he realized after settling down had his dungeon builder escaped unscathed from his outburst. He reigned in his temper and his magic and reestablished his control of the familiar by reinforcing their bond.
Looking over this man Alastor had brought him he noticed that some of his energies were still playing lightly across his still form and slowly seeping into his aura. This was most unexpected and meant the man might have a magical potential compatible with the dark energies. He opened his arcane sight up to better see and much more gently he called upon his powers and ran a tendril of magic over the mans still form to see what might happen. As he had suspected the energy touched the man’s aura and after a brief moment of resistance began soaking into him. Interesting, he thought, he then filtered and split his dark essence into separate aspects and played them across different portions of the man’s form. All the dark energy was eventually absorbed but the quickest by far was the necromantic energies. He saw they were being absorbed in two ways, through the auras surface and funneling in faster through an opening in the man’s aura into his core where the imps demon contract entered into the man’s soul. Looking carefully he found there was also a tiny mix of necromantic and demonic energy seeping down the contracts tether from the imp himself into the man as well. In effect, Provoas’s own energies were now being absorbed into the man who was acting like a sponge long denied moisture.
Hmm, he thought this man could prove very interesting to experiment with. But at the rate his core was absorbing necromantic energies so fast, his unprepared body would surely drown in it and die before it stabilized itself. He quickly cut off his own tendrils of energy pouring into the man and looked at the diminishing energies as they finished soaking in at a safer pace. Provoas was an academic at heart and enjoyed thinking and puzzling over things and sometimes experimenting to see if his suppositions were correct. He wanted to expound upon the mysteries of undeath and be known to have added to the necromantic college one day. Many necromancers were like this as they had endless time mostly to themselves.
He noticed his imp was recovering himself and so ordered him to return to his true form and to go back into his cage which sat next to the liches chair. Only after ordering this did Provoas release the pent-up magic and break the summoning circle. With two unexpected magical talents appearing before him there was much to think about and plan for. He willed two of the skeleton guards to carry the man off to a secure sleeping chamber behind the hall and to stand guard at the entrance. To keep the man there but not to harm him and for one of them to come to him when the man awoke.
Another, he had to pick up the satchel and papers that had been blown around by their sudden arrival which he then took a look at back in his chair. With a spell barely spoken he became able to read this foreign language, he found the papers written in. Sitting there he finally looked over and asked Alastor, “ what is the meaning of these papers?” Alastor responded, “ some of those are drawings and descriptions of a dungeon the man Hank was in the early stages of working on. They contain descriptions of likely traps and monster placements while others are supposed approximations of likely adventurers that could show up to try to pillage and destroy those in the dungeon, Master.” “ Truly it is a novel approach to develop better ways of designing and safeguarding them,” Alastor explained. Provoas was at first flummoxed by Alastors explanations of this new concept but as he asked more questions and looked at the papers including a book with a design and map of a dungeon and detailed descriptions of traps and monsters and likely outcomes for heroes dealing with them he became fascinated and even a
bit excited by the idea.
Perhaps he had been a bit hasty to punish the imp so quickly upon arrival, especially since he had inadvertently punished the builder as well. Although he had no compunctions about dealing out harsh punishments and even tortures as they were earned he knew starting off a relationship like this was ill-omened. He picked up the contract from his skeletons arms and reread it. It would ensure that the man did work on building the dungeon for him but it didn’t guarantee he would do his absolute best to truly safeguard Provoas. Also, the fact that the man came from another realm meant he would have an incomplete understanding of the workings and dangers of this world.
Then there was this Hank’s potential for Magic to consider. Being as old as he appeared he should have already discovered his affinities and began filling them or been found by another who would have made use of him years ago. But no, Alastor had mentioned during the retelling of his travels of how this other world was almost devoid of magical essence. With such poor natural resources there, it was likely his potential would have remained dormant without this trip here having awakened it. Provoas was considering whether to take on shaping Hank’s potential as a necromancer, not out of any goodness, but to use him for his own ends. He needed more capable minions than just skeletons and zombies, ones able to think for themselves to a degree that the lesser dead could not and if this man became adept at commanding the skeletons to dig and build then all the better.