Strange Happenings

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 10: Strange Happenings

The next morning, Luna rolled over on her somewhat grubby pallet and mumbled sleepily. Drifting in semi-consciousness, she heard her own words as if from far away. Sitting bolt upright in alarm, she groggily reached for her dagger in the gloom of the basement.

“Dragony-face!” she shouted. “Quick!”

“What? What is it?” Shaddar demanded, bolting upright and grabbing for his bow.

As the fog of sleepiness began to drift apart, Luna realized her mistake. Looking away, she put her dagger away and shrugged.

“Never mind! I... It’s ok! We’re safe!”

Giggling awkwardly, she stretched, tail tensing, then relaxing behind her.

Shaking his reptilian head, Shaddar relaxed and stretched. He coaxed life from the coals of the fire then examined his wounds from the previous day. They were healing well and wouldn’t cause him any trouble. In fact, he felt better than ever.

He started packing up his bedroll.

“Do you have everything you need before we go to town?” he asked Luna.

Town. She had entirely forgotten about that. Stiffening, she turned to snarl at the idea, not him, when she felt an odd prickle. It was similar to the sensation of magic casting, but it was moving from the top of her head, down, across her face, then around her neck. The anger at “town” mingled with the magical sensations and she gave an echoing snarl.

The tiefling’s nose began to elongate and her ears, face and hands began to sprout fur. With the snarl, she fell to all fours and her weapons, backpack and clothing merged and disappeared. A full-grown wolf now crouched, ready to spring, where Luna once stood.

Startled, Shaddar took a step back, his hand sliding to his sword hilt.

“Luna…?” he asked cautiously. He’d heard stories of those so attuned to nature that they could take on animal form, but he’d never been sure if they were true.

“What?!” she tried to snap, but all that came out was a guttural, aggressive bark. The wolf blinked and gazed down, in confusion, at its paws. The cunning, intelligent eyes widened and Luna gave a frightened whine.

Sighing, Shaddar relaxed.

“Come on, enough playing around. Let’s get going.”

The furry, solidly muscled limbs began to shake and Luna’s red tongue flopped out of her mouth as she began to pant nervously. The piercing eyes pleaded with her dragonborn friend and there was genuine fear in them.

Finished his packing, Shaddar frowned at the wolf in the flickering firelight.

“Is something wrong? It’s really neat that you can turn into a wolf - that’s some powerful magic. You won’t be able to climb the rope like that, though.”

Padding over to him shakily, the tiefling-wolf pressed its powerful body against one of Shaddar’s scaled legs. Her whole body was shaking now and the whine was repeated. Hesitantly, she scraped one paw at his boot, gazing up at him with that same pleading, terrified expression.

Powerful magic. From where? I’m scared! Help me... Please, Shaddar... I’m so scared...

“You okay?” The white dragonborn kneeled down at her side. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you have no idea what’s going on. On the other hand, I never would have guessed you were powerful enough to turn into an animal at will.”

At will...?

Slowly, the trembling stopped and the wolf’s eyes closed. Luna concentrated all her energy and imagined herself, as she realized she must appear, in wolf form. Then, her unaccustomed magical focus straining, she envisioned herself in her ordinary form. Every detail shimmered in her mind, from her horns, all the way down to her tail.

The fur began to recede, the ears shortened and returned to their normal position and the small horns poked out from the rapidly growing hair. Luna crouched beside her friend, breath coming in sharp, painful gasps as she opened her eyes.

“Son of a gnoll’s nephew...” she breathed, then glanced up at Shaddar sheepishly. “Sorry. I wasn’t playing around.”

“You didn’t know you could do that?” the dragonborn asked.

“No,” she almost laughed. “That was... Very strange, but I think I know how to do it again. Here!”

Closing her eyes, she envisioned Writing Desk in her mind’s eye. Taking a deep breath, she concentrated and tried to stretch her wings, gaze about at the world through beady, penetrating eyes.

Nothing happened.

“I guess it was a one-time thing,” she shrugged, opening her eyes again. “What were you saying?”

Shaddar thought back and shrugged. “Just that we should get going if we want to find out anything about this note.”

“Oh,” the former wolf slumped and nodded grimly. “Yeah, that.”

Sluggishly, but swiftly, Luna packed up her bedroll and checked her equipment, then dragged her feet toward the stairs.

“I don’t want toooooo..!” she whined, sounding for a brief moment like the canine form she had just quit.

“Neither do I,” Shaddar said. “I suppose we could always find another forest to live in and allow evil to have its way with ours.”

Luna narrowed her eyes and glared at Shaddar.

“Fine,” she stated and began to climb the ancient stairway. “But I better get  something sweet. And a new pair of boots.”

Chuckling, Shaddar followed her. “Would you mind making us some light?”

"Wh- oh! Right! I forgot; you're blind," she grinned back at him, but obligingly popped a fireball into her outstretched palm.

Continuing up the stairs, they found nothing had changed. The corpses, the mouldering scenery, everything was untouched.

"I guess nobody came nosing around. We were lucky."

“This place is fairly well hidden,” Shaddar said. “If we’re truly lucky, no one will ever find it again.”

They climbed up to the top room of the tower, filled with mounds of dirt dimly illuminated by the hole leading up to the surface. They scaled the rope, up into the blinding sunlight. The two goblin corpses still remained - swarming with flies - but the kobold had been dragged off by something - most likely a fox.

Shaddar looked around, at the corpses and the barely visible crenulations protruding from the ground and at the hole they’d emerged from.

“I don’t like the idea of leaving it like this,” he said. “Sooner or later, someone could find it. Especially if whoever wrote that letter sends more searchers.

Wrinkling her nose at the putrid dead, Luna skittered around the hole on all fours, sniffing like a dog.

"Maybe if I throw enough fireballs it will collapse on itself?" She suggested, hopefully, to her companion, tail wagging lazily through the air.

“Perhaps,” Shaddar said, his voice tinged with doubt. “It lasted gods know how many years underground, though, it seems fairly sturdy.”

He looked to the mound of dirt that had been hauled out of the tower, his tongue flicking with indecision. “My instinct is to bury all traces of this place, but dislike the idea of taking so much time.”

Nodding, Luna, too, stared with a frown at the stonework at their feet.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, suddenly, leaping upright and grinning. “Just one second!”

Without another word, she ran into the forest and disappeared.

“I - Luna…!” Shaddar gave up with a sigh, shaking his head. His eyes landed on the insect-ridden goblin corpses. Those would be a beacon for any further agents searching for this place.

His snout wrinkling in disgust, the dragonborn started moving the corpses to drop them down the hole into the tower.

Discover what happens next in Episode 11: Furry Friends and Giggling Trees

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.

Asylum

There is no escape.

I cannot get out.

My arms are bound to my sides.

I am trapped by my padded surroundings.

I feel warm and safe, but I cannot stay here.

I do not belong here.

There is no escape.

I must get out.

My life is not in here.

I must escape.

I must throw off the covers that bind me.

I must get out of bed.

Just a little poem I wrote the other morning. I don’t often write poetry, especially ones without rhyming.

Oh, and don’t read it from bottom to top. It defeats the purpose of this motivational poem.

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.

Habits

            It always astounds me how easily we get into habits. Or the things that can become habits, even when we are not expecting them to.

            Take writing, for example. I very deliberately developed a habit of writing every day. I made the decision to write every single day six years ago and I haven’t looked back. What I didn’t expect was the secondary habit I didn’t even notice I had until earlier this month.

            Once I finished writing my first book, I set a goal for myself to write a book every year. I managed it for the first five years, but last year I decided to switch it up a bit. I wanted to take the year to really focus on building the world I write in – developing people, places, cultures and maybe writing a few short stories.

I focused on that for about three months before I found myself with a book idea I just had to start right away. So, the new book took on much of my writing time until I had yet another idea. I focused on the world building around that idea, while still taking some time to work on the book until I’d developed the idea to the point where I was ready (and extremely excited) to start the new book.

            So, I did something I promised myself I would never do – I started the new book without finishing the previous one. What has all this got to do with habits? Well, I’m getting there.

            January rolled around and during my year of only world building I had a quarter of a book and a half of a book. However, for the last five years, January has been the time when I have started work on a new book. An idea started tugging at my brain – an idea for a book I’ve had for a while, but now my mind was trying to start writing it even though I have two unfinished books to complete first.

            That’s when it hit me. I’ve actually developed a habit of starting a new book in January. It is so ingrained in my brain that it tries to do it whether I want to or not.

            Apparently habits can be built into our systems on an annual calendar. I find it astounding to think our minds can pick up on something happening with such a large time gap in the middle and still make a habit out of it.

            Now I must go resist starting a third work in progress.

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.

Silly Suggestions

            I have a bad habit of making half-joking suggestions that I never expect people to take seriously, and then getting roped into actually doing said suggestions. BBC’s Sherlock, one of my all-time favourite shows, had a special episode that was being played in theatres for only two nights: The Abominable Bride. Both nights were sold-out at the nearest theatre, and I was lucky enough to be going with my wife and her mother.

            So, the night before the movie, I made one of these half-joking suggestions. I suggested that my wife and I could go in costume – an easy enough enterprise, since my wife already had costumes for both Sherlock and John Watson. Colleen got quite excited about the idea. She’d been planning to go dressed as Sherlock anyway, but she was more than willing to surrender that costume for a chance to do a couple’s cosplay.

            The problem for me is that to feel comfortable enough to wear a costume, it needs to be as accurate as possible. My hair wasn’t right for the role of Sherlock and Colleen’s wig that she uses for the costume wasn’t accurate enough – not to mention I wasn’t up for wearing a wig anyway.

            This is what led me to making, the morning of the show, another silly suggestion. I pointed out that I needed a haircut soon anyway, if we could get that done before leaving to see the show we could also get my hair styled properly for Sherlock.

            ... Before I knew what was happening, Colleen had called our hairdresser and made an appointment. An hour later, there I was. Getting my hair curled for the first (and likely the last) time in my life. I must say, the hairdresser we go to is a miracle worker. We show him a picture of what we want and he can make it happen (even if it’s an animated character). So, here is what I went to see Sherlock: The Abominable Bride looking like.

Mr. Holmes I presume

John and Sherlock on their way to The Abominable Bride

Sherlock seeks a mystery worthy of his vast intellect

            And in spite of the fact that I still think my half-joking suggestions are a bad habit I should kick, I had a great time and am glad I did it.

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.

Deathwatch

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 9: Deathwatch

Waiting for the injured dragonborn to wake, Luna realized she was shivering. Shaddar’s torch had burned out some time ago. Many was the time she had seen a lizard or snake sunning itself on a warm rock in the life-giving rays. Perhaps dragonborn had similar heat needs?

Standing suddenly, she set about gathering old and rotting wood from the bookshelves, the tables, even the bed and dresser from the floor above. Piling it an arm’s length from her friend, there was soon a small, fitful, but sufficient fire.

During this unusual firewood foray, she found two strange relics of the bygone inhabitant of the dessicated tower. The first was a pyramidal shaped lump of some substance she could not and did not wish to identify. As is fell from a shelf she was wrenching off for fuel, it toppled and bounced toward her. The foul odour it was exuding hit her before the black object could and, hissing in a distinctly feline manner, she skittered out of its path. After it had squelched to a stop, she approached it cautiously, but one sniff was enough and she kicked it off into the shadows.

The second trinket she came upon before disturbing it, and was very glad she had. On a bottom shelf, half buried in decaying and unintelligible books, was a tiny but intricate cage of some metal that may once of been brass, but now was so tarnished as to appear unrecognizable. Resting inside the cage was a minute, clockwork, canary. Fascinated, the tiefling caught it up with delicate care and examined it closely. It appeared to have no practical function but she stowed it away in her pack nonetheless.

Threatening shadows cast by the flames danced around the sinister chamber and every so often she would toss a handful of magical fire onto the smouldering pile. After a time, the tiefling’s black eyes began roaming and her concern for her friend was replaced by an almost unbearable boredom.

Her gaze fell upon the magical items they had retrieved above. First she regarded the emerald with deep fascination, still tossing fire onto her makeshift heat source.

After twenty minutes of concentration, a strange smell reached her and she sat up and looked around. A magical apparatus opposite her was sputtering with a feeble flame atop it, caused undoubtedly by a stray fireball and feeding on whatever ancient and mysterious potion had been contained within. She froze with panic, then leaped for the table, frantically reaching for the flame.

She had just reached Shaddar, her body between him and the potion fire cocktail, when there was a small explosion. The force knocked her back a few feet but she managed to stay upright, shielding her face from the expectation of shattered and flying metal and glass. All she felt was a slight tickle on her exposed flesh and when she looked up, the flame was gone. In its place, a fine dusting of what appeared to be chicken feathers sifted slowly toward the floor.

Luna almost laughed with relief and shook her head at the folly of whatever sorcerer had created a potion of chicken feathers. She gathered a few and stuck them in her purple hair as she returned to the study of her emerald.

The emerald was undoubtedly magical. When she concentrated on it, there seemed to be odd whispers surrounding it. There were also peaceful, almost mesmerizing sounds like waves and bubbling streams. After forty minutes of focusing on the confusing words and trying to discern their meaning, Luna was confident she knew what this stone was, and how to use it. It was an elemental gem; if she were to break the emerald, it would summon a water elemental to serve her for a short while.

“Water...” she muttered to herself as she stowed the stone in her pack. “All shall be alert, and beware. Balance there must be, of earth, fire, water and air.”

The recitation of a passage of wisdom an old mentor had given her soothed her initial distrust for such a blatant favouring of one element over the others. She knew there were Elementals in the world, and that there were ones of each type, including evil. This one however, while being wholly water in nature, was in balance with its fire, earth and air brethren and would therefore not be in disharmony with her self-proclaimed championing of the world’s elemental balance.

As she turned to face toward the dragonborn again, her movement dislodged the hood of the cloak they had found. It slipped past her small horns and over her eyes. Grinning, the playful tiefling batted fiercely at it for a moment, before pulling it off and turning her intense study on it.

She tried at first to imagine how the animal Shaddar had said it resembled would fly. Obviously it must be at least partially an air-faring creature with such magnificent wings. Picking up the long, thin tail dangling off of it, she frowned. It looked like the tail on a rodent.

“Sea-mouse... Flying sea-mouse...”

After much study, she found the secret, stitched along the hem with the gold trim. It was in a language she didn’t know, yet somehow she came to understand its meaning, as she had with whispers of the emerald. It told her that if the cloak was being worn with the hood up, it would allow her to breathe underwater and fly through the sea like the majestic manta ray.

“Not sea-mouse...”

Smiling, she fingered the beautiful gold stitching and closed her eyes, picturing herself speeding along under reeds and water lilies. Giggling, she tried to decide what item to examine next. Her eyes came to rest on Shaddar and she at length moved to kneel beside him.

The armour shirt was beautiful and well crafted. Lifting a corner now she wasn’t in the throes of panic, she did notice how light it was, as her friend had said.

The scale armour wasn’t brimming with magic, as had been the other items. It had a subtle magic, not from enchantment, but from the natural magic in the metal itself. On one of the scales, she found a delicate elvish inscription saying that this was armour made out of mithril, as strong as any metal and a fraction of the weight. It was to be stored in a dry place and cleaned by rolling it down a hill in a barrel of sand (or by some other similar means).

Shaddar groaned and Luna jumped back, hastily moving the shirt back into place.

Slowly, the dragonborn’s eyes opened. He blinked a few times.

“Luna?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“Whaddaya mean “Luna?”?!” she demanded, squinting at him irritably, but unable to suppress a wide smile. “I am who I am.”

Turning his head from side to side, Shaddar looked around. “The goblin?” he asked weakly.

“Everyone’s dead except me,” she said, reassuringly and pressed one hand to his shoulder, warning him to keep on the ground. With her other hand, she brought her waterskin out of her pack and offered it.

The dragonborn frowned, confused. “Am I dead? If I’m dead and you’re not, how are you here? Or how am I here?”

“You’re not dead,” she said with withering impatience, reticent of a teenage child explaining the simplest concept to a parent. “But you gave it your best shot.”

Shaddar heaved himself up onto his elbows, looking around. When he spotted the dead goblin, he smiled, impressed. His expression turned to a frown as he looked around.

“What were they doing here?”

Fowning, the curious tiefling glanced in the direction of Shaddar’s gaze. For a moment, the urge to abandon the precariously recovering dragonborn was overwhelming. With a visible effort, however, she dragged back her attention back to him and shook her head.

“Don’t care,” she pretended, obviously. “You’re really hurt and I gotta heal you before we can look around anymore. So now you’re getting better, can we both sleep? I’m really tired. And when I wake up I can heal you again.”

At this last cheerful thought, something of her old grin reemerged and she shook her mane of unkempt purple hair back from her face.

“I’ll be fine after a rest,” Shaddar said, waving his hand dismissively. “It’s one thing to have goblins and kobolds terrorizing the forest. It’s quite another for them to be excavating something no one knew was here.”

He pulled himself up and stumbled over to the kobold first. Searching through its pockets he found nothing more than a few gold coins.

“Dragons,” Luna muttered in exasperation, shaking her head. Clambering to her feet, she wheeled around in front of him. “If you want their metal bits I can do all that for you. What will it hurt to have the mystery wait 8 more hours?”

Ignoring her, Shaddar made his way over to the goblin. There he found more money and a pouch with several gems in it. Smiling to himself, he rolled a translucent white stone with a pale blue glow over to Luna, figuring it would distract her while he continued his search.

Luna had been opening her mouth to continue the argument, when her eyes fell on the shimmering, multi hued stone. It was even more spectacular than the emerald she had been clutching for over an hour. With one swift glance between her newest prize and the dragonborn, she was on it.

Smiling, Shaddar turned back to the goblin.

“Cards,” he muttered, pulling out the remnants of a deck and setting it aside. He kept searching until, finally, he came up with a crumpled piece of paper. “Ah ha!”

“What?” Luna blurted, rudely awakening from her jewel-induced trance. She leapt to his side and stared at the paper he held. Her face was so close to the mysterious document that all Shaddar could see was her shaggy purple mane with her two tiny horns poking through.

“Out of my way, imp,” the dragonborn said, giving her a playful swat as he turned to the side and flattened out the page.

Rubbing the back of her head good-naturedly, Luna decided she like the comparison between herself and an imp.

“Oooooh…!” she intoned, flapping around the room on imitation arm-wings. “I know many secrets of the Abyssal plane, wizard…! But lend me your skill and all my wisdom is yours…!”

The page was covered in a tidy handwriting, written in the common tongue. It read, Good, you have finally found the tower. I was beginning to think I would have to send someone more competent to get the job done. I want no further delays. Get digging at once. Notify me the moment you find it.

The letter was signed not with a name, but with a horned skull crowned with fire.

Frowning, Shaddar read the note again. Whoever had written it clearly had a lot of means and power. They controlled goblins and kobolds, which likely meant they were up to no good. What were they searching for in this tower? What was that skull-symbol? Did it represent an organization, a cult or a single person?

There was no way to know, but they were sure to send more monsters if something wasn’t done about it.

“We need to tell someone about this.”

“What?” the Imp-oster said as she whirled and looked again at the note. Reading it in a few seconds she shrugged. “Who would we tell? Why don’t we just go find them and deal with them like we did these ones? It could be an adventure!” she added with a sudden burst of enthusiasm.

Shaddar started to laugh, but stopped because it hurt too much.

“Because we have no idea who sent this,” he explained.

“But-! Rrrrrr...!” she snarled and scampered about on the floor, in tight, angry circles for a moment to let off her frustration.

“Besides,” Shaddar added, “this could be bigger than we can handle. We’ll have to take it into town to see if anyone knows anything about this symbol.”

He tapped the letter’s signature.

“Tomorrow, though. You’re right that we need to rest. We can use some of the time to figure out our new treasures.”

Pausing in her circles, Luna looked up and hissed viciously.

“What?” Shaddar asked, quickly looking behind him to see if there was some unknown threat approaching. He immediately regretted it as his head started reeling.

“Town...” Luna replied, a quiet growl deep in her throat. “Don’t like town. Don’t like town people. Don’t like walls. Don’t like stones. Don’t like-”

The white dragonborn laughed. “I agree, Luna. But if we don’t go to show this to people, we might have many more unwelcome guests in our forest.”

Stopping dead in mid-hatred, Luna glared up at her friend before standing erect, tail lashing. She frowned and there was a long moment before she spoke.

“Town.”

“After we rest,” Shaddar agreed.

A growl was her only response as she turned moodily and began to make a bed for herself. She did not like the idea one bit, but if it was a choice between some personal comfort and her forest, there was no choice.

Making his way back to Luna’s fire, Shaddar spread out his bedroll, but didn’t immediately lie down.

“Let’s see if we can’t figure you out,” he muttered, pulling over the magical bag they had found for closer examination.

The tiefling lay with her back to the dragonborn, unmoving, her hidden expression set in resentful anger. After a moment of staring defiantly at the nearest mouldering bookcase, her eyelids dropped and she curled into a tight ball of sleep.

After some studying, Shaddar discovered that the blue bag was what he’d guessed - a bag of holding that could carry an immense amount, yet always weigh the same.

Satisfied, but his weariness overcoming him, the dragonborn lay down to sleep.

Discover what happens next in Episode 10: Strange Happenings

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.

Three Years of Blogging!

            Three years of weekly blogs! Wow, and to think I even said from the start that I might have to cut down to less frequent posts. I’ve considered it numerous times, but for some reason I just keep puttering on and finding something to blog about. Of Dice and Glen has helped a lot, taking the pressure off one week of the month. Perhaps I should designate another monthly post as something, like book reviews... I’m not sure I can get my hands on enough books for that, though.

            Anyway, it’s been a good three years here in the blogosphere. Sure, I’ve had some off weeks, but who doesn’t? I’ve covered everything from running a small business to philosophy – I even sneak a peek at world events sometimes. Hmmm, no sports though... unless LARPing counts. I’m gonna say it does, since that’s the closest I’m likely to get.

            So, here’s to 2016 and another year of fantastic (well, at least some of the time) blogs! Happy New Year, everyone. I think this’ll be a good one.

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.