The Companions of Tartiël (59 page)

“Yeah,” Xavier agreed, completely dazed.

Silence reigned supreme in the room as all of us replayed our favorite parts of the campaign over in our heads. I relived my favorite battles, interspersed with the roleplaying sessions involving Astra and other NPC characters. I saw Caineye next to Kaiyr, standing proud in my mind, and Wild skipping along next to us, with Vinto padding beside his master.

Dingo stirred first, picking up his notebook. “We’ll have to talk more later, guys,” he said quietly. “I have to pack.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Xavier sighed.

I glanced down at my character sheet, then back up at Dingo. “Say… since we’re all going to be here next semester, if all our schedules happen to work out… ah, you know, I could totally keep playing as Kaiyr. That would be awesome.”

Xavier looked over at me, a smile growing on his lips. “Definitely,” he said, bobbing his head. “I’d love to keep playing as Caineye. I’m loving this character and this group.”

Dingo chuckled and shook his head. “You guys. Already thinking about next semester.”

“Duh,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I look
forward
to school, if only because it’s where I get to play the most D&D. You can’t imagine how difficult it is to get a decent group going over the summer.”

“Well,” our Dungeon Master replied, “I’ll have to think about it. I wasn’t planning on taking this any further, but when the time comes, if you guys really want to keep going, I’ll keep it in mind as a possibility. For now, though, I’ve really got to get going. I’ve got another final tonight, a paper to write, and a final tomorrow before my mom picks me up at three.”

“Hey,” I said before he got any further. I stood up and extended my hand. “Dingo, in case I don’t see you before you leave… it’s been awesome. I doubt we’ll get a chance to hang over the summer, but good luck with whatever you’re doing. It’s been a blast.”

Grinning, Dingo gave my hand a hearty shake. “You, too, man. I’m already starting to look forward to next semester, too. Xavier.” The two of them shook hands as well, and Dingo was gone.

*

It wasn’t until Friday afternoon that I could leave the school. I worked at the dormitory as a desk assistant, and I was scheduled to work the last shift of the year.

Finally, at four in the afternoon, I was free to go. I had already managed to stuff my red 1993 Camry with everything I had brought with me (don’t ask how I got the fridge in the back seat), and I took one last look around Lackhove Hall room 152 to make sure everything was in place. Our beds were broken down and bare, and the desks, which hadn’t moved since our arrival, were the same. I made sure the room was ready for inspection and gave it a silent salute for all the good times I’d had there. Then, after closing the door and locking it, I dropped my key in the return box and hit the road.

Afterword.

In July of 2008, Xavier and I spent many weekend afternoons at my parents’ house painstakingly recalling and documenting our adventures across the face of Tartiël with Matt and Dingo. Our construction of the synopsis also included not a few phone calls to the other two players, who helped us fill in any gaps. I had really latched onto the idea of eventually writing some kind of chronicle of our characters’ deeds, and I wanted to record the events while they were still fresh in our minds, though I wouldn’t begin writing the manuscript until January of 2009.

Our characters did indeed go on to further adventure throughout Dingo’s world, and (spoiler alert) we continued playing with our characters for two more semesters before finally retiring our alter egos when Xavier I graduated. Matt never made a return to the game, and we saw neither hide nor hair of the halfling, but we did occasionally hear of his deeds, constructions on Dingo’s part. We had a few players come and go over the semesters, as well, but Xavier and I, as well as our characters, remained unwavering and close companions forevermore.

Perhaps those tales, too, will be told. Perhaps I, or maybe Xavier, or Dingo, or one of the players who joined later, will be the one to tell the next story; or the next tale may simply fade and leave the next adventure up to your imagination. But that won’t be so different from the actual story; after all, I know that I, for one, fantasized about the next adventure even before it happened, and some of the things I wished for came true, while others surprised me and turned me about, but that is what the
Dungeons & Dragons
game, and roleplaying in general, are all about: the imagination.

The sky’s the limit where that’s concerned.
^[49]

Sources.

Bernstein, Eytan, Andy Collins, Mike Mearls, and Stephen Schubert.
Dungeons & Dragons Magic Item Compendium
. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2007.

Cook, Monte.
Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide: Core Rulebook II v.3.5
. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2003.

Cook, Monte.
Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook: Core Rulebook I v.3.5
. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2003.

Decker, Jesse.
Dungeons & Dragons Complete Adventurer: A Guide to Skillful Characters of All Classes
. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, Inc, 2005.

Grubb, Jeff, Mike McArtor, and Matthew Sernett.
Dungeons & Dragons Spell Compendium
. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2005.

McArtor, Mike, and Wesley Schneider.
Dungeons & Dragons Complete Scoundrel
. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2007.

^[1]
Dungeons & Dragons is © Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. “Dungeons & Dragons™” will hereafter be referred to mainly as “D&D.”

^[2]
“DM” is an abbreviation for the “Dungeon Master,” in Dungeons & Dragons™. The game is played with numerous players and one DM. The players each have their own characters, usually only one, while the DM controls the rest of the world and spins the story. In a way, the DM is essentially the arbiter and narrator of the story, as you will see over the course of this book. Sometimes we use “DM” as a verb, and we conjugate it normally and even turn it into gerunds and participles.

^[3]
“Character classes” are how the characters in a D&D game world define their roles in society, to an extent. There aren’t specific classes for mundane occupations such as accounting, cooking, farming, etcetera. On a day-to-day basis, D&D accountants, chefs, and so on tend to face similar dangers and problems and thus aren’t differentiated very much. Characters owned by players, known as “Player Characters,” or “PCs,” however, have their roles in the party much more rigidly defined by the class they chose. A wizard casts spells, fighters hit things, rogues sneak around, disarm traps, and stab things. Basically, a character’s class defines exactly how you smash, stab, slice, shoot, immolate, and obliterate things in the game. There’s more to it, but I don’t want this footnote to take up the whole page.

^[4]
DC is an acronym for “Difficulty Class,” a numerical measure of how difficult a particular action is. Attack rolls (which use AC, or Armor Class as target numbers) and a few other kinds of checks do not have a DC, instead using other means to determine success.

^[5]
Short for “retroactive continuity,” “to retcon” means to alter past events in a fictional setting, usually on the fly.

^[6]
A critical hit, sometimes shortened to “crit,” occurs when a player making an attack roll rolls a twenty on the twenty-sided die. Normally, a secondary roll is necessary to confirm a critical hit, but Dingo doesn’t like that rule. Once a critical hit is made or confirmed, the attack deals extra damage, usually double damage, but sometimes three or four times as much damage. Some weapons even score critical hits on a roll of 19 or even 18. My soulblade would deal double damage anytime I rolled a 19 or a 20.

^[7]
“AoO” is an abbreviation for “Attack of Opportunity.” When a creature does something that leaves him extra vulnerable to attack, nearby enemies may get a free attack on that creature, even during another creature’s turn.

^[8]
At the start of a battle, all engaged parties roll initiative to determine the order of actions during a combat round. In D&D, a round represents six seconds of time, even though it can take many minutes to actually play out the events.

^[9]
Challenge Rating: a measure of how difficult a monster is.

^[10]
“DR” means “Damage Reduction,” an ability some creatures have to ignore a certain amount of damage. Generally, there is some kind of required weapon type or material that allows the weapon to bypass the DR, in this case, silver. The above damage reduction would be written as “DR 10/silver” and would reduce the damage the creature took by 10 unless that damage was caused by a silvered weapon. Most spells bypass damage reduction, because damage reduction applies only to slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning damage (usually weapon damage).

^[11]
Hit points, or hp, are a numerical value with a maximum allowed value determined by a character’s ability scores and their chosen class. They represent how much damage a character can take before dropping unconscious at -1 hp. At -10 hp, a character dies.

^[12]
“Hit Die” is a term used to describe the type of die (d4, d6, etc.) used to determine a creature’s hit points.

^[13]
AC refers to a character’s Armor Class, an integer that determines how easy or difficult it is to successfully strike the character with a direct attack, such as a sword, arrow, or aimed spell. The higher a character’s AC is, the more difficult he is to hit.

^[14]
Combat Expertise is a “feat” characters can choose, if they qualify, which allows them the ability to trade offense for increased defense in a more efficient manner than is normally available.

^[15]
Alignment is a nebulous system by which a character identifies himself as a generally good or bad person. There are two axes to the alignment system: good-neutral-evil and lawful-neutral-chaotic. A character’s overall alignment is one of nine types (choosing one from each axis) and can be labeled as “lawful good,” “neutral,” “chaotic evil,” and so on. Certain spells and abilities can detect a character’s alignment or may affect characters of certain alignments differently than others.

^[16]
“Tank” is a term originating in online computer games that refers to a character with high hit points or (in Kaiyr’s case) armor and the ability to avoid attacks. The tank’s job is to keep enemies from attacking the weaker characters behind him.

^[17]
“In-game” refers to anything that happens within the frame of the Dungeons & Dragons game; in other words, everything related to things our characters do, see, say, etcetera. Conversely, “out-of-game” refers to everything not covered by the previous term. Obviously, unrelated discussions (sports, the weather, Dingo’s mother) are out-of-game, as are terms for in-game themes. For instance, Kaiyr has a Strength score of 12. That information is out-of-game, because the character Kaiyr has no clue that his physical strength is rated with such a number, even though he knows he can reliably lift and carry about 120 pounds without collapsing under the weight.

^[18]
Adamantine is an ultra-hard, very rare, and expensive metal in the D&D game. But still not my favorite.

^[19]
A free action is an action taken by a character on his turn in the initiative order that requires virtually no time and only minimal effort to accomplish. Speaking a short sentence is a free action, as is dropping a held object.

^[20]
NPCs are “Non-Player Characters.” The term refers to any character in the D&D game that is not one of the Player Characters (PCs);
i.e.
any character played by the DM.

^[21]
“Metagame” and the verb we made up for it, “to metagame,” refers to knowledge that the players have which their characters do not (and, more rarely, knowledge the character has that the player does not). It is considered in poor taste to apply information to the game which the characters may not know. For instance, if a player makes a decision based on consequences dictated by the rules, rather than what his character might think; or, if a player catches a glimpse of the DM’s notes and keeps his character from rounding a corner because he knows there’s a hidden enemy lying in wait, even if his character does not know this, he is “metagaming.”

^[22]
Average Party Level: simply the rounded average of the characters’ levels in a party (technically to be averaged by dividing by 4, the expected number of people in a typical D&D adventuring party).

^[23]
Mithril is a metal common to many fantasy settings. Although its actual composition varies between the various myths, it is generally accepted to be lighter than but as strong as or stronger than steel.

^[24]
Dastana are a kind of bracer that also covers much of the hand, sometimes even including an armored glove.