Big Bad Boss

Of Dice and Glen is a story being written following D&D 5th Edition rules and using Minecraft as the battle mat (and to set the scene). Each of the two writers control their own characters and share the job of Dungeon Master (controlling the environment, story, monsters and background characters). As a result, neither of us has any clue of what's going on or where this is going. So, let's have fun!

This story is split between episodes being posted on the second Monday of every month. You can find the first episode here and the previous episode here.


Of Dice and Glen Episode 8: Big Bad Boss

“Something’s in trouble!” Luna whispered, gaze never leaving the stairway, tail lashing silently behind her. As ready as she was to kill evil, she could not abide senseless suffering, even though it was more than likely evil itself suffering.

Shaddar nodded. “You lead the way, under cover of darkness.” He placed his torch on the ground by his feet, ready to kick it down the stairs, and drew out his bow, nocking an arrow. He wanted to be sure he could hit a target before losing the element of surprise.

Nodding vigorously, and thinking privately that if they were going to be doing much more hunting together that a signal system might be a good idea, Luna took a deep, quiet, breath and crept down the stairs.

The room was big and round, lined with crumbling and rotting bookcases. In the centre of the room was a large stone table covered with arcane markings and around the room were other workbenches, cauldrons and mysterious alchemical instruments in various states of disrepair. By another downwards stairway, filled with dirt, a kobold was digging away. Nearby was a big, nasty goblin with a whip who lashed out every time the kobold wasn’t moving fast enough - or whenever it felt like it.

Luna immediatelysaw the conflict and despite the target of the whip being a wretched kobold, the tiefling winced in sympathy. She glanced up Shaddar pointed down, in front of herself, then made motions as of an obscenely fat and grotesque creature whipping, then chuckling heartily.

Not understanding Luna’s odd dance, Shaddar thought she was playing another one of her games. Snapping his jaws impatiently, he nodded his head to tell her to get on with it.

Snorting in frustration, she opened one hand to reveal a ball of flames. In her irritation at her dragonborn, she threw the flaming missile off-balanced and it sailed harmlessly past the ugly head of the large goblin.

“Motherless son of Frost Giant!” she swore loudly, there no longer being any point to her stealthy movements.

The boss goblin has just been raising its whip again when it dimly noticed the fire shoot past it.

“Fire?” it rasped, in dull confusion. “Fire!” Turning, it searched for the source and spotted Luna. “Fire demon!”

Shaddar charged down the stairs, kicking the torch ahead of him to light the room, as soon as he saw Luna’s fire. He was still on the lower stairs when he released the arrow at the goblin.

The projectile flew true, lodginging itself in the goblin’s shoulder just as it finished speaking. It yowled in rage.

“Turn on your master, in the name of Kurtulmak!” Shaddar shouted in the draconic language, believing the kobold to be the only other one who would understand him.

Hearing the name of its demigod spoken in the sacred tongue, the kobold turned to face its master’s back, an evil gleam in its eye.

Switching his bow for his swords, the white dragonborn continued to charge right up to the goblin, slashing with both weapons. While the second hit barely nicked the goblin, the first one slashed a deep gash through its chainmail.

Not one to be left out of the fun entirely, Luna readied another fireball.

“Mielikki,” she whispered. “Please let this one fly straight.”

The ball flew from her hand and struck the heavily-armoured shoulder of the goblin, sizzling uselessly until it expired. The tiefling cast about for a curse at her second failure of the battle and gulped down a burning in her throat. Her completely black eyes began to swim in moisture.

Snarling viciously, the big goblin took a step back, lashing at the dragonborn twice with its whip, leaving two deep gashes.

The cracking of the whip served to be too vivid a reminder for the kobold and it couldn’t work up the nerve to attack its master. And, a scary as the fire demon was, she seemed harmless next to the towering dragonborn. So it jumped up on a table to swipe at Luna’s legs with its dagger, but in its nervousness failed to land the blow.

Trying not to show how badly he was wounded, Shaddar pressed forward, swinging his swords at the goblin again. Both blades just glanced off the goblin’s armour - he didn’t have the strength left to do any damage.

“No-no!” Luna whimpered softly, tears beginning to seep down her face.

She looked quickly from one foe to the other. Her first instinct was to engulf the evil goblin in flames for hurting her friend, but she couldn’t quite get a clean shot from around his bulk.

The swipe of the kobold’s dagger solidified her choice. Her third fireball struck the unfortunate kobold square in the face.

The kobold opened its mouth to scream, inhaled the flames and was dead before it collapsed on the table, looking like some sort of grotesque sacrifice.

With a roar of glee, the goblin lashed at Shaddar with its whip again, leaving a slash across his face.

The pain and the wounds were too much for Shaddar. He fell to the floor.

With a whoop of glee, the goblin leaped its fallen foe and moved toward the base of the stairs to face the tiefling.

“NO!”

Luna faced off with the goblin and sought desperately for another spell that might help more. Holding both hands out in front of her, she spoke the words of the incantation and unleashed a shockwave. A monstrous thunder boom echoed deafeningly about the small antechamber and knocked the goblinoid backwards ten feet.

The goblin hadn’t a second to brace itself before the wave of energy hit it. There was an odd rattling sound that may have come from teeth or ribs. Flying back ten feet from the sheer force of the impact, the goblin landed against a rotting bookcase with a crunching splat. It was dead before it slid, squelching, to the floor with sawdust fluttering down around it.

The tears had dried on the tiefling’s face and she stood panting with the effort of her spell-casting. Then her attention slowly came back to the present and the prone form of her dragonborn friend lying bleeding on the floor near her feet.

“Shaddar!” she groaned and stepped quickly to his side, tail lashing the floor in tiny half-circles of terror.

Without ceremony, she fell to her knees and she prodded him ineffectually for a moment. Then she tugged his new shiny maille shirt higher up on his broad chest and attempting to listen for a heartbeat. There was one, distinct but slow, undoubtedly because of the pool of blood now staining her clothing and boots, Luna thought to herself.

“Alive,” she muttered to herself.

Holding her hands out automatically to cast her healing spell, she screwed up her concentration. Nothing happened.

“No...” she said, her voice faint and thin.

Magic cost her energy and she would not regain enough to do anything more than simple gimmicks until she’d had a long sleep. Even talking to animals was beyond her now.

“Ok, ok, no magic. What then? Think! You stupid, filthy, mangy, ignorant half-breed...”

Insults people had thrown at her in rare moments of contact with civilized places sprang quickly to her tongue as she fought her own rising panic. She’d had few friends before, though she knew in her heart that every plant, rock and good animal living in the world was her friend. Rarely had anyone who could speak Common deigned to spend more time with her than it took to aim an unkind word or a blow.

“You can’t die, dragony friend...”

She had never truly wished for a companion, certainly not after those insults. This one had been different. This one had been aloof but kind. This one had treated her as if she had value...

“Find the wounds. Stop the blood. Cushion the head,” she remembered, slowly, some taught by a friend long ago, some just common sense picked up by the necessity of living far from any aid.

Beginning her work, she methodically went over his entire scaly body, doing what she could and cursing over what would simply take time.

Shortly after she’d tended his wounds, the dragonborn’s breathing became less harsh and his pulse slowly became stronger.

Vaguely noticing these improvements, Luna continued to work past efficacy. Finally, when she could no longer find even the tiniest thing to do, she sat back on her haunches and truly appreciated the improvement in his condition.

“Don’t worry,” she murmured, awkwardly stroking the scaly forehead. “I’m here. I’m on watch.”

Discover what happens next in Episode 9: Deathwatch

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Treasure!

Of Dice and Glen is a story being written following D&D 5th Edition rules and using Minecraft as the battle mat (and to set the scene). Each of the two writers control their own characters and share the job of Dungeon Master (controlling the environment, story, monsters and background characters). As a result, neither of us has any clue of what's going on or where this is going. So, let's have fun!

This story is split between episodes being posted on the second Monday of every month. You can find the first episode here and the previous episode here.


Of Dice and Glen Episode 7: Treasure!

“Look out!” Luna yelped and dodged around the dragonborn to get a clear shot at the new foe. Holding up a hand that was suddenly brimming with fire, she hurled the molten missile at the goblin.

The flaming ball hit the suspicious goblin and it shrieked as the fire spread from his chest to his arms and even licked at its disgusting, stringy hair.

As Luna pushed past, Shaddar caught sight of the goblin he hadn’t noticed before. He followed in behind the flying flame, swinging at the goblin with sword and torch while it was frantically flailing at the fire.

The goblin’s flailing inadvertently helped it to dodge the swinging sword, but the torch slipped in to hit its forehead. The monster fell backwards onto the ground as the remaining flames stole its life away.

Panting, Shaddar turned and smiled weakly at Luna, his tongue unconciously flicking from behind his pointed teeth.

“Thanks.”

Smiling slyly at him, the tiefling poked her small, red tongue out from between her own pointed fangs. Her tail twitched in the dirt on the floor, in deep amusement.

“You’re welcome.”

Rolling his eyes - a maneuver he had learned from observing Luna - Shaddar turned and set about searching the corpses, not even bothering to ask the tiefling before sorting the money he found between the two stashes in his pouch.

“No boots,” she muttered, examining the corpses in her own way, ignoring Shaddar’s careful division of the money.

Looking at the tiefling’s booted feet, Shaddar admitted that they looked fairly worn, but they were still in perfectly serviceable condition.

“Your boots look fine to me, why would you need new ones?”

“What?” she looked up, distracted. “No. Not new. The older the better.”

Giving up, she stood and glared at the corpse, tail swishing irritably around behind her. Moving through the doorway before them, Luna quickly explored the small chamber, with no interest. Peeking cautiously around another doorway, she squeaked with excitement and fell upon a crude chest.

The chest was in a rough hewn cave that appeared to have been excavated around the remains of what had once been a balcony for the tower, but was now encased in stone and dirt.

Shaddar quickly followed behind Luna, worried that she was rushing into trouble.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Look! Look!” she squealed with delight holding up the gleaming, green emerald and for the moment ignoring the rest of the plainly expensive contents.

“Looks like we found their treasure trove,” Shaddar commented, coming over to examine the contents of the chest with her.

“It’s so pretty!” Luna agreed, with childish delight, not taking her eyes from the stone. “Can I keep it?”

Taking a close look at the gem, the white dragonborn’s tongue flickered.

“It’s magical. Do you know what it does?”

The tiefling’s hand suddenly shot out, grasping for the thin, forked tongue that was vanishing back behind the dangerously pointed dragon teeth. She caught it deftly, and gently, between two fingers, then released it just as quickly.

“No! Do you?” she said, as if nothing out-of-the-ordinary had happened, but there was a slight, incorrigible tilt to her head.

“Why’d you do that?” Shaddar demanded and started rubbing at his sensitive tongue, trying to eliminate the dirt and tiefling taste.

“To see if I could,” she said simply, then, slightly quieter, “why do you sound like I just lit your bed on fire?”

“Becauth you tathte terrible!” Shaddar said. Giving up on the scrubbing, he took a drink of his water. He gave her a sideways look - somewhere between frustrated and amused. “Don’t do that.”

“Oh, ok!” She agreed readily, turning back to her magic stone. “I did bathe last month,” she added, slightly hurt.

“What else have we got here?” Shaddar asked, going to look in the chest for himself. His eyes were immediately drawn to a shiny scale shirt. He lifted it out of the chest and gasped.

“It’s so light!”

Without worrying about possible consequences, he took off his current, heavy scale shirt and started putting on the new one. Under his scale shirt, his actual scaled back had a tree-like pattern in gold scales on his more common white scales.

Luna quickly grew bored with the laborious and tediously long business of fastening and unfastening armours. She amused herself by examining each item in turn, but all the time, keeping the emerald resting safely on her lap.

Looking up just in time to catch the tree-patterned scales, she sucked in her breath in awe and shuffled forward on her knees to get a closer look.

“You’ve got a tree in your scales! It’s so pretty!”

Shaddar turned around, inadvertently hiding his back from her curious eyes. “Hmmm? Yes, I was born with it.”

“I like it. Do all dragon-people have trees?”

Laughing, Shaddar shook his head. “No, everyone has their own patterns and colouring. I’m told both white and gold dragonborn are uncommon in the world, although both occasionally hatch in my clan.”

Crossing her legs and sitting in front of him, she listened, giving him her full, and rare, attention.

“What clan are you from? What are you called?”

“Drachdeliath,” Shaddar said, a hint of pride in his voice. He finished fastening his new armour on and moved about to get a feel for it. He snapped his teeth in approval. “I like this! Very nice; very light. What else have we got here?”

Luna wasn’t listening, however.

“All hail and cower before the mighty Drak-lilacs!” she bellowed, leaping to her feet, tail lashing excitedly about her. “Mightiest, honourable-est, strongest of all dragon-people!”

“Drachdeliath,” Shaddar corrected sharply, his eyes narrowing dangerously and small wisps of smoke issuing from his nostrils.

Instantly, the dun coloured tail ceased its excited lashing and Luna turned to regard the dragonborn with the first indication of fear she had ever shown towards him.

“I, um...” she began, uncertainly. “Oopsy! Sorry, I didn’t mean to... Could you pronounce it a bit slower?” she added, staring hard at his face, a determined expression replacing the quick flash of fear.

Shaddar’s expression instantly softened. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, turning away, toward the chest. “I don’t use my clan name anymore, anyway.”

“Why?” she asked, her voice softer than normal. A ridge of concern formed below her horns.

The dragonborn didn’t answer. Instead, he picked a vial of red liquid out of the chest. Curious, he gave it a shake and the red liquid glimmered. Fairly confident it wouldn’t be harmful, he unstoppered the vial and took a tiny taste.

“Healing potion,” he said, nodding as he felt the familiar tingle of healing magic.

There were certain hints that even this wild-living tiefling could read. The small wrinkle of concern didn’t smooth, but Luna nodded silently, behind the large, draconic back.

“You should take that,” she stated. “Some of us have healing in our hands.”

As proof, she held up both her grubby hands and wiggled the thin, but strong, fingers.

Shaddar chuckled. “That you do. Now this is a mystery.”

He held up a sloshing ceramic jug that looked like it could hold about a litre of liquid, but when he uncorked it, there was nothing inside. He even turned it upside-down and nothing came out, though it continued to slosh.

“I know! Here,” she reached out for the strange jug.

The dragonborn willingly surrendered the jug.

Grasping the container tightly, she appeared to take a small sip.

“Am I invisible?!” she squeaked excitedly.

“Where did she go?” Shaddar gasped sarcastically.

Clutching her hands in tiny fists pressed to her cheeks, Luna giggled like a small child and danced on the spot.

“I’m right here! Oooooh!”

“So you are,” Shaddar chuckled, reaching to pat her on the head, but then withdrawing his hand when he remembered her reaction last time.

Luna watched his hand approach, then begin to retract with satisfaction. Then, unexpectedly, she found herself not so averse to what was beginning to seem like a sign of... Affection.

Quickly, she ducked her head forward, bringing her horns up on either side of his hand, brushing his palm with her purple hair.

Slightly confused, Shaddar patted her head, then turned back to the chest. “What else have we got here?”

He reached in and pulled out a short blueish-grey cloak, trimmed in gold and with a long, thin tail protruding from the back.

“More magic, or I’m a talking lizard,” Shaddar said, flipping it around and examining it. “I wonder what it does.”

Smiling with embarrassment to herself, Luna examined the cloak as well, grabbing for it in her enthusiasm. Swirling it around her shoulders she suddenly crouched to the ground and scurried about the small chamber.

“Squeak! Squeak!” she said, in a passable imitation of a small rodent.

“Looks more like a sea creature than a mouse,” Shaddar commented, his voice tinged with amusement.

“A sea mouse?” she asked in slight awe. “I’ve never been to anything that big. Just ponds and lakes in one or two forests.”

“I’ve been to the sea a couple times,” Shaddar said with a shrug. “It’s just a big salty pond.”

He turned back to the chest and pulled out the last item - a fairly normal looking blue satchel. Frowning, knowing instinctively that it had some magic about it, he poked his nose inside. His eyes flew open.

“It’s bigger on the inside!”

“What?!” she exclaimed and grabbed at the edge, yanking it down. “By the Loki’s nose hair, it is!”

“I’ve heard of this sort of thing, but never seen one before,” Shaddar said, putting the open bag on the floor. “Watch this.”

Her retrieved his old scale shirt and put it in the satchel, then lifted the bag from the floor.

“I was right!” he said, laughing aloud. “The bag’s the same weight as before, even with the heavy scale mail inside.”

Luna stared in amazement, tail pointed stiffly in surprise. Quickly growing bored with this new wonder, she turned back to the chest, still wearing the odd cloak.

“That’s the lot,” she said, slightly disappointed. “Now if we can only figure out what it all does...”

Holding up the emerald again, the curious tiefling squinted at it, hard.

“Reveal your secrets to me, little shiny stone!”

The emerald glinted back innocently. It seemed to be surrounded by inaudible whispers.

“If we took the time, I’m sure we could figure them out,” Shaddar said, “but I’m worried about the rest of the goblins. I don’t want their boss to escape again.”

“Rrrrrrrr...!” the tiefling growled, viciously, dropping to her hands and feet in good imitation of a wolf. “You’rrrrrre rrrright! Let’s get ‘em!”

They traveled back to the room with the decrepit bed and through the second doorway, past the kobold Luna had killed. Around a corner at the far end of the passage, there was a stairway leading down. From below came the occasional crack of a whip, followed by an anguished yelp.

Discover what happens next in Episode 8: Big Bad Boss

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.