Chapter 2- Makin' my way downtown
My body jerked, and I opened my eyes to see Bubby two feet from my face. "You fell asleep," he said. I scrambled away, my back running up the side of the barge. "Take it easy, we made a deal, I wasn't trying anything," he said, "I was just letting you know that we're about to put in at the dock. They want us off first so we're not in the way."
I had closed my eyes at home and opened them here, no dreamy intro, no weird dreamscapes coalescing into... this. I also felt more present, or aware than I had before. First and foremost, everyone on this barge was rank. Bubby smelled like a walking talking shart that survived on hot garbage, and based on the look of the barge crew, they were probably worse, with stale booze added to the mix. And despite being on what seemed to be a more elevated section of the barge, my pants felt damp where they had met the deck. "Uhh, okay," I said, trying to collect myself, desperate to find wherever up-wind was. "Here, take these, a deal's a deal." I started handing over the replacement crossbow, bolts and hatchet. I gave him his old rusty knife back too, "you should use some of that money to get a better one," I told him, "nothing too big and nothing too flashy. You'll want to keep it hidden. Same with clothes too, not too flashy, I mean. If you need work, go to the warehouses on Gleaming Street, I have business there and I might be able to help you get set up."
"Why do you want to help me?" He asked.I shrugged, pulling on my pack and said, "we're going the same way, and it's something to do, I guess." I hadn't considered a larger role for this character when I was writing the campaign, but now that I was in it without backup, it might be useful to make some contacts that could fly under the radar, because I was about to have some fun.
"Welcome to Nelsholm," my own voice, speaking to me again, "you found your way down river on a filthy, ore laden barge, and just when the smell was about to end your adventure early, you hear bells ringing and men shouting from the docks of Nelsholm. Founded by pirates 80 years ago at the mouth of the Olpass River, the city controls most of the river trade coming from the Glimmering Mountains to the North. The Darkling Sea brings trade from all over the world to change hands in Nelsholm. You can find just about anything in this city, if you know where to look. Just don't cross any of the Wardens. You can go ahead and level up."
I felt something loosening in my mind as I was shuffling to the edge of the barge, trying to stay out of the way. It was like I was about to remember the name of a song that I had forgotten I was trying to remember. I needed to get somewhere quiet.
I paid the boat boss or barge captain or whatever you call the person in charge of a river barge, with a single gold piece and bade farewell to Bubby, "I'll be staying at the Busty Sherman for now," I said, "don't look for me on Gleaming Street for a couple of days."
The riverside neighborhood was sprawling and uneven. All the roads were dirt or mud (or worse in some places), with the worst parts covered by planks to make traversal a little easier. The buildings along the river were mostly collections of ramshackle huts, with netting and ropes used to support awnings and to hang various goods and household items. It was obvious that the buildings along the river were built with disassembled ships and salvage, I knew it would be the same around the bay. I headed South and East, away from the river, to the drier streets. I was ultimately headed for the lower 9th ward that was the newest Warden's territory, but first I had to make a stop in the 7th.
The buildings got a little nicer and the streets a little cleaner as I got farther from the river. The smell of waste, sweat and raw fish was replaced with roasting meat and baking bread. The morning sun was warm and the air was chilly, with the southern breeze leaving a salty taste in the fresh air. This was the place to live the good life. The buildings here were painted and had shingled roofs with slat siding, most built in a way reminiscent of the Traditional Bahamian style, and even with the mildew from the humid air, they looked opulent compared to the riverside. The people were milling about doing the morning tasks you might expect to see in a period drama. A maid beat off a rug, a well dressed man climbed into a coach, but if you looked closely you could see more. The maid's sleeves barely covered the dagger tattoo on her wrist as she hung the rug, and the brand on the man's cheek is not quite concealed by his bushy beard. The people here were dangerous from the bottom to the top.
Most of the people in the city had spent time on ships. In fact, piracy was encouraged among the younger crowds, just not in the immediate vicinity of the city. Those who were caught plundering too close were hanged or branded like anywhere else (though, promising young pirates with connections usually slipped the noose, using a stand-in). Thieving of any kind within the city carried a penalty of a slow, public execution, so it wasn't really much of a problem among the rabble. The idea was that unofficially sanctioned piracy brought in goods that would have came in anyway, but at a fraction of the price, and the gold would stay local. Regular trade partners knew which colors to fly to avoid any trouble in the shipping lanes, and those inclined to pursue a life of violence and fortune could do so at the expense of any uninitiated merchant vessels. Established trade partners didn't care, it cut down on their competition, so they kept their mouths shut. Stealing within the city wasn't completely unheard of and there was still plenty of violence; you could still get a knife in the gut for a few gold coins, but if you could provide evidence of a theft, the thief would be apprehended and executed. I happened to know of something of great value that had recently gone missing when changing hands during a transaction.
The man's carriage pulled off and headed South. When it was out of sight, I made my way to the house he had left. A yellow slatted, two story house with white trim, green shutters and a wraparound porch. I peered through the windows, saw nothing in the front rooms and walked in. Old maps centering on the Confederate city states with shipping lanes, ranging all the way from Kathla to the West Baronies, were framed on either side of the foyer, the walls painted the same yellow and white as on the outside. There were flecks of blood on the dark hardwood floors. I scanned the empty dining room on the left- with its long table, dusty, except for the seat at the head- and the empty sitting room on the right- with a few scattered books and a couple of worn armchairs- as I moved farther into the house.
"Hello?" I called, "is anyone home?" I had Shocked ready to go in one hand and my knife in the other in case of a jump scare. There should be a couple of people here. I could hear some shuffling overhead. I stopped, listened and tried to focus.
"Make a perception check!" The other me said.
Dice roll
"A creaking board towards the back of the house on the lower floor, a change in airflow moving towards the stairs to the right. If you go up the stairs, you're sure someone will be waiting for you at the top behind an open door. You're also certain they have a partner watching the back of the house who will sneak up behind you to box you in."
"Good," I thought, "I'm not going up the stairs then." I kept walking straight and leaned up flat against the wall, concealing myself behind the doorframe heading to the kitchen, eyes on both the stairs and the doorway. I'd never have been able to do that normally, working a desk job had left me 200lbs, at middling height, so my gut would have shown around the side, no question. But while I was a player in my game, I was built like someone that had to walk everywhere their whole life. Not exactly a peak physical specimen, but healthy. No stuffed crust pizzas or craft beer in Nelsholm. I waited.
I had set this up as a freebie encounter for the players, to make them feel strong, while they investigated a theft on behalf of one of the Wardens- Warden Corvis of the 9th. This was supposed to happen a little further along in the story though. The three of them are typically pretty gung-ho, and would have just stormed this place, taking the two goons alive for interrogation. They would have learned that the bloody-shod branded man and his lackeys work for another Warden- Warden Rosa- who is also trying to recover the missing item. The thing in question was the rightful property of Warden Rosa, so this was meant to be a kind of heist. Easy for an established party, extremely questionable solo.
I couldn't help but smile while I waited. It was like chasing a friend around as a kid and then you both decided at the same time to wait around the corner to jump out at the other one when they came looking- there was an air of expectation, like you could feel that everyone was holding their breath, waiting... I always won that game by just taking myself out of the moment and thinking of something else. It would work for me again in the house. After a couple of minutes, imagining my would-be attackers were starting to wonder what was going on, I could almost feel it when the man in the back decided to investigate. I heard him approach the doorway from the kitchen. I was ready.
I saw the knife first, and reached out, grabbing his wrist, pumping him full of electricity. He was a big man with a long scraggly beard, buzzed hair and the large eyes and slightly pointed ears of a half-elf. I pulled him through the doorway and held my knife tip to his throat, then closed my eyes and pushed as hard as I could. He flailed. Pain burned across the left side of my face as the knife in his other hand carved at me. There wasn't much force behind it, but it fucking hurt. It hurt more than it should have, actually, but I didn't have time to think about that in the moment. I don't think I've ever felt dream pain before, not cool. But that was it, he was already dead, just convulsing. I had ended up pushing him back through the doorway into the kitchen and against the counter.
I guided his body to the floor and swiftly moved through the door to the left side of the kitchen into a little room stacked with firewood, brooms and wooden tubs. A door to my right led outside, and to the left, a door led into a study. I went left, creeping through the study towards a door that led back to the main hallway, directly across from the bottom of the stairwell. I could already hear footsteps as the dead goon's partner ran down. There was a pause when he made it to the bottom. "Norman?" He called, quietly, the stairs let out a long creak as he shifted his weight.
I leaned into the door, pushing it open, and cast Lava Shot at the man. He was a lanky ginger with a bit of a paunch, clean shaven, with greasy, slicked back hair and dead gray eyes. He leveled a hand crossbow at me just as I cast. I popped him in the chest and his bolt flew wide into the door. He was reaching for his bolts to reload. I cast Strong Hand and grabbed at the bolts, scattering them on the floor. He turned to run back up the stairs. I ran after. I swung around the railing and cast Poof, careful not to inhale this time. I reappeared at the top. I kicked out as the momentum from my swing brought me to a sitting position, catching him in the chin, just as he had tried to stop. He fell backwards down the stairs and landed hard against the wall, unconscious, but not dead. I was a little bummed that I couldn't make the "round-about roundhouse kick" joke where someone could hear. I took a quick look around the upstairs just to be sure there wasn't anything else to worry about- nothing that couldn't wait. I bound and gagged the ginger man and stuffed him in the pantry with his dead partner, locked all the doors and headed back upstairs.
"There are two main rooms on the upper level, a large bedroom off the landing to the right, and an office on the left next to a guest room. The office is overflowing with books, lining the shelves along the walls, stacked in chairs and corners. There isn't a surface of the room that's not devoted to ink and parchment. There is a finely crafted brass telescope in the corner by a big window, and a matching sextant hanging on the wall. Cowering in the floor is an old One-eyed Fenrian- a wolf man."
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The wolf man looked up at me with his good eye, "well, what do you want," he asked bitterly, "you here to rob me of something I don't have too?""No, I'm Casimyr" I said, "I'm here because I want to help you, and you're going to want to work with me after we talk. Let's get you cleaned up first."
I helped the old dog to his chair. He seemed to have some broken ribs and a lot of cuts, especially around his only eye. As I examined him he said, "they kept threatening to take my good one if I didn't give up what they wanted." He didn't appear to be suffering from anything life threatening.
"Why didn't you comply?" I called, as I moved to grab some spare sheets from the guest room."Trust me, I would have if I actually had what they were looking for," he replied. I knew he was lying.
I didn't say anything, I came back into the room and stripped the sheets into bandages. I used the liquor I took from dead uncle Jessup to sterilize them and started helping the old dog clean and bandage his cuts. "Thank you," he said, "my name is Oliver." I nodded, a little annoyed that I hadn't taken a more immersive route when making my NPCs. This guy was actually pretty cool. I checked my work on the bandages.
Dice Roll
"He's not bleeding out, but he's not getting any better either."
Damn. "Do you have anything else I can use to treat you?," I asked, "You're cuts aren't bleeding, but I can't do anything about your ribs."He regarded me for a moment, "bring me the bag from the bottom of the wardrobe in the big bedroom," he said, "there's a false bottom."
He had me lay out the contents of the bag on the desk-
Two potions, a scroll case, a heavy jingling pouch, a bandolier with vials of green liquid, a box of alchemical supplies and an ornate wooden rod.
He indicated the rod, "Do you practice at all?" He asked me."Yeah, a bit," I picked up the rod and looked it over. It was about 20 inches long, as thick as a drumstick with a large crescent moon at one end and a full moon at the other, the rest had been carved into twisting vines that had grown to encompass the moons like they were trying to pull them together and were failing. I could feel the magic there. I held it out and spoke the word that came to mind, "iaomai."
The wolf man whimpered as his bones knit and was left panting for a few moments. He stood, stretched and peeled off the bandages, his cuts now healed. "Okay, Casimyr," he said, "I'll hear you out. But first I'm going to have a word with the men downstairs and get cleaned up. I suggest you do the same," he took the rod and healed the cuts on my face. "Make yourself at home."
"Won't they send more men when those other guys don't report back?" I asked."Yes, but we won't see anymore company today," he said, "they were left here to watch me in case I tried to make a run for it. They'll be relieved at nightfall I imagine, but that's a problem for later. We should have all day."
I washed my face in a basin by the back door and moved to the guest room upstairs. I locked the door and moved a chair to block it. I sat on the bed and ate some of a ration brick from my bag and started to level up.
I closed my eyes and relaxed, focusing on that part of my mind that seemed to loosen earlier. I thought about some spells that I wanted to try, to see if I could puzzle out how to weave them together. A lot of magic systems revolve around the idea of a tapestry, which always made a lot of sense to me, especially after I learned a bit about String Theory and particle physics. The idea of rearranging atoms that you can't see or touch, until they take on a form dense enough or create a reaction powerful enough that you can see and touch is pretty cool. It's the whole basis for the replicators from Star Trek, and the underpinning logic behind magic. Right now, I seem to be kind of stuck in the rules here more than I should be, but I think I can still power-level my way to the end. I wrote this to be a two year long campaign, but most of it is pretty standard fare. I do always write in some ways for the party to break the game, things they wouldn't think to try, and nothing even hinted at, but they could technically do if they wanted.
When I finished ruminating, my spell list had expanded to include:
Leap- 30 foot jump for 10 minutes per spell level.Climb- Gain climbing as a natural ability for 10 minutes per spell level.Animorph- take on animal traits for 1 hour per spell level (subject to DM approval)North Winds- Freezing wind and sleet blast a small area, potentially blowing your targets farther away.Ritual- Mostly for flavor, the effects of the Ritual spell are specific to each ritual, and can have a number of outcomes. From doing your laundry to making spell effects permanent, each requirement of a specific ritual must be met for the magic to be effective. Rituals can be created by a player (subject to DM approval) or discovered in game.
I didn't seem to have the same intuition about my physical abilities or skills, though I did feel like I had more energ- BZZZZ BZZZZ "WELL YOU CAN TELL BY THE WAY I USE MY WALK, I'M A WOMAN'S MAN, NO TIME TO TALK. MUSI-"
I reached out and slid the off button on my phone alarm, indicating that I had five minutes left of my lunch break. I had jerked awake again, this time in the real world. It was jarring, like I was getting whipped around. I was sweating and felt a little ill; my head ached. I got up, my body feeling incredibly heavy and my joints sore. I assumed I had been laying wrong and slept too hard, not moving enough. It's one of those things that people are talking about when you complain about aging in your 20's and they say, "wait until you hit your 30's!" Cliche, but it's honest.
I dragged myself to the bathroom, stretching my aching shoulder- limping a bit while my stiff knee and ankle sorted themselves out. The shoulder was a result of a torn rotator cuff that had never healed, by my best guess, accomplished by doing dips while I was way too heavy. It was fine most of the time and I usually only noticed it when I would throw something or try to reach over my head behind my back. The ankle injury was the result of a vodka induced skipping accident. Yes, skipping, as in with some friends on the sidewalk like we were, "off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz." The knee was the real bitch though, contact sports all through childhood, bumping it into hard corners and martial arts in my 20's had worn it down bad. It creaked, it got sore and sometimes it would buckle if I tried to bend with too much weight on it. I was going to be a really broken down old some day. Maybe I was already one of them and just couldn't admit it. I guess that would all be a matter of perspective.
I liked to keep some raw opium under the sink in the bathroom (don't ask how or where I got it, we all have our hobbies), and I swallowed some, because smoking kills. I used to be addicted to the stuff, like full on physical addiction, where if you stop taking it, you feel like shit of an intensity and duration proportional to how long you were high. It sucked, do not recommend. And I think that's the trap, you feel really good, and then you feel terrible, so you take more to avoid feeling terrible, and it feels good. And if you can't get more... Unfortunately no matter what you do, normal is on the other side of terrible. Once I reframed the withdrawal in my mind as a hangover, it ceased to be a big deal. Two days of feeling good meant one day of sniffles, and that wasn't a bad trade. Not as rough as a night of drinking. At least there were no headaches.
I threw together another plate of girl-dinner and logged back in for work, two minutes late, always the rebel. I was still thinking about my dream; I'd ended up in the same dream before, but never so seamlessly. Normally I'd have to naturally fall into it again after bumbling through some other bonkers dream shenanigans, but I basically just picked up where I left off, pretty much in control and it was crazy vivid. I liked it. The entertainment potential of lucid dreaming is limitless, but ultimate control in a single setting wouldn't be fun for long. It's the same as using console commands in a PC game to just give yourself whatever you want, you can do it, but then what's the point of playing the game? There have to be boundaries in place. Weirdly, that seemed to be what had happened with my dream. I hadn't had much in the way of actual control. I knew things, but otherwise seemed to be in the position of a level one player, after leveling from zero. At least I think that's what happened. Our group sometimes starts at level zero with nothing, using custom rules. Casters would get their cantrips, other classes would get their weapons and some background info and that's it. The idea was to allow players to earn their starting equipment and more powerful abilities.
Nothing was really happening with work, so I started making some notes, just some things to adjust for the campaign when I had time. The opium started to kick in and- "brrrttt" Krom appeared on my desk and was in my lap before I could react. He flopped against my chest and started rolling into the crook of my arm, making his little crooning warbles the whole time. He wanted me to hold him like a baby. I always did when my hands were free, so I leaned back let him do his thing while I gave him belly scritches. A few minutes later Baloo appeared and hesitantly made his way into my lap too, with a face that said, "Um, I was wondering... Um, I mean...I saw that you had a cat, and I was wondering if... Is... Is it open to all cats? Can... Can a Baloo sit with you too?" Obviously, I let his Oliver Twist ass sit with me, and pet him until his anxiety seemed to dissipate.
Baloo, once he settled, was laying on my propped up legs like a hammock, Krom laying in the crook of my arm, the length of my torso. Each was 13-14lbs and after a few minutes, love started to lose its fight with discomfort. Luckily, the sound of the bathroom door closing from the bedroom relieved me of that struggle. I braced as they both launched themselves across the room and out the door. I knew that they had to get in position so they could be acting cute and casual when Amelia appeared. They were good at that game. Amy worked restaurant hours and we didn't always wake up at the same time, meaning the gray boys could sometimes manage second breakfast...or lunch...or dinner, if they caught us at the right time, before we had a chance to talk.
"I had some cool witchy dreams," Amy told me when she finally appeared, yawning. She was tall, with wavy dark hair and beautiful. I smiled, knowing where this was heading. She hated the patriarchy, and rightfully so, it had an awful lot of wars under its belt for humanity to not consider an alternative. Sometimes that frustration extended to all men, including me. I really like that in a woman for some reason. It feels... dangerous? Women who are angry at the system got that way from seeing it in action, nothing exists in a vacuum. "There were men," she looked at me with... almost...mock-accusation, "who were putting women on trial for witchcraft, but I was the one they were really looking for. So I started hunting them down with my coven.""Sweet! Did you set them on fire or drown them or anything?" I asked."No, we just killed them. I didn't see a need for pageantry."Dangerous. I laughed.
We talked for a bit while she got ready for work. She asked me if I'd watched the videos she'd sent me and I had to explain that I had started to catch up on them, but had gotten distracted. I was already a couple of days behind. Mostly we discussed the headlines. Plans for thousands of new data centers, bringing few jobs to communities, straining energy grids and likely to be abandoned before completion when the AI bubble burst; Another questionable assassination attempt just before the Supreme Court was set to make a ruling on a matter of "national security" for the president. Actually not a bad tactic for a criminal politician, making everyone hate you enough to want you dead, so everything about you becomes a matter of national security. After we finished engaging in the extreme leftist ideology of wanting our tax dollars and labor to benefit ourselves and everyone else that works for a living, we said goodbye and I went back to work.
I got a lot done in those last couple of hours, feeling pretty good by then, and like I always do, dramatically closed my laptop and sighed like I had just finished a shift in the mines. It wasn't a hard job, it was remote and I didn't actually have to do that much work at the moment. But the corporate bullshit adds up over time, you know? For the last year, I'd been watching these assholes getting all horny for AI productivity tools, telling employees that the goal was to reduce their workload, while we all knew that they were going to use that as an opportunity to lay people off. The worst part was, when they realized that AI required humans to quality check the output, they'd start hiring again. That's how it always went, AI was just the newest shiny thing to make executives see dollar signs, and management was keen to tickle the taints of their corpo daddies; who cares if they have to put regular people in a tight spot to do it? It wouldn't be so bad if they were at least honest about it though. They'd tell you all day, every day about how essential you were to the mission, how your dedication made it possible for the company to achieve, "another record breaking year!" Then, at the end of the fiscal year, they'd somberly sit everyone down and explain that no matter how hard they fought, they just couldn't get approval for the raises everyone deserved; that they, and everyone else on the management team personally had to forgo a raise and bonus themselves so all the employees could get something. Bullshit. I had a few friends in management that told me about their bonuses and raises, also complaining. Trickle down economics is drier the closer you get to the bottom. Another year where the labor was less valuable to the company than the year before, at least as far as the mooks were concerned. Leaving work at work could sometimes be a struggle, because it was just another part of everything else that was going on in the world. It's what corporate greed looks like when you're at the bottom looking up. The wars, the pollution, the corrupt politicians, that's what it looks like from the outside in.
Feeling like I could have a good nod, I fed the gray boys, and hit the couch again. I put something on TV for background noise and let my eyes close.