The Day of the Dwarf by Roger Moore

The Day of the Dwarf by Roger Moore
Dragon #42 p.54

There were eight of us at Daniel’s place, preparing to set off on our Saturday-afternoon adventures in Upper Middle Earth, when the doorbell rang. Dan (the DM for the day) went to answer it while we unpacked our characters, Cokes, Cheetos, cupcakes, and all the other equipment necessary for D&D.
We were setting up for one of our high-level adventures; there was a rumor in the area where we lived of a new monster lair, in the Firefall Mountains to the west, that help unparalleled treasures. We had most of the known artifacts, but this sounded like something different. We agreed it was going to b worth a try.
It was going to be too unwieldy for us to bring all our henchmen, hirelings, and armies, so each of us brought only our main player character, steed, and familiars as required. Joanna brought her Paladin lady and her horse with the mithril barding, and managed to get special dispensation from her church (The First Temple of Wonder Woman) to bring all seven of her holy swords. Alan took his storm giant and mattock of the titans, and led the party alongside Jerry’s golden dragon character. Jerry griped a lot because he couldn’t take Farrah, Kate, and Jacqueline, his henchdragons, but Dan had been firm. Belinda got her brownie, her homonculous, and her two golf-bags full of wands, staves, rods, and scepters and saddled up her unicorn, riding beside George’s arch-Druid/Bard and Isaac’s elven Ranger/Cleric/Magic-User with the mutant horse (he called it a Brute Horse or something) he’d gotten on another plane. I tool out my caveman and +5 vorpal battleaxe and became the rear guard. Above us flew Margie and her Pegasus, serving as air cover and emergency medic (16th-level Clerics are much appreciated in our group). Margie works as a nurse in the hospital downtown, and she fit the clerical role well. Before setting out, we agreed as a group to hold down psionics and we swore not to summon any gods into the adventure; we’d been quested so many times that we knew the Abyss like the backs of our hands.
About the time we had unpacked the Cheetos and set up the party formation for the march, Dan came back into the room with the guy who was at the door and introduced him.
“Folks, this is Jack. He’s a D&D player who moved into the area and I invited him over to get in on the action.” We introduced ourselves and jack smiled nervously, clutching a loose-leaf binder full of papers and a cigar box that rattled. It turned out to be full of miniatures. We had him sit at a place on the sofa next to the soft-drink cooler, between Alan and Belinda. Jack gave a lot of funny looks at the miniatures we were setting up on our marching order, especially at the giant and dragon. Jerry caught his look and smiled at me with an “aha, a neophyte” look.
“Am I allowed to bring in a character I used in another campaign?” Jack asked, pulling a character sheet out of his notebook.
“Let me see it,” said Dan from behind his judge’s desk. He took the sheet and began looking it over, and then laughed. He then made a note on the sheet and handed it back to Jack, who read it and smiled.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention I,” Said Dan. Jerry and I exchanged looks and shrugged. He passed me a note that read, “maybe he raised him a few levels.” I didn’t think so; Dan was wild, but fair. If Jack was a low-level character, then he’d have to survive as best he could (wit our help, of course).
“On the way out of Battlecloud Galactica,” Said Dan, referring to our cloud-castle hideaway (the name was Alan’s idea), “you have an encounter.” We weren’t surprised, and were told we saw a dwarf walking along a path in the woods below.
At this point Jack placed his character’s miniature on the tabletop and confirmed most of our suspicions. It was a dwarf with a sword and shield, a colorful backpack, and chainmail. No other weapons were visible on the figure. Daniel described the dwarf’s alignment as true neutral when Margie checked. At best, the dwarf was ninth level, unless he was a thief as well as a fighter. But the chainmail decided it for us.
We hailed him and reintroduced ourselves as our characters. I admit we overdid it, showing off our powers and everything. Jack seemed quite impressed. “Just what do you do for a living?” asked Jerry, with a careless dragon-type yawn.
Jack shrugged and smiled. “Mostly I stay alive. I’ve been pretty lucky so far.”
“I’ll say,” Said Belinda, testing a wand on him. “You’re not carrying any magical items.” She concentrated in his direction briefly and frowned. “You’re not psionics, either.” Alan, Joanna, George, and Isaac also confirmed the lack of psionics.
“You can go on an adventure with us if you want,” I said, twirling my vorpal axe with the deftness that a 19 dexterity gives you. “I’d recommend a place near the center of the party unless you’re suicidal. We’re going into pretty mean territory. Probably a lot of demons and beholders and liches and stuff like that.”
“Fine with me,” said Jack. “I’ll go wherever you people are going.”
Isaac shook his head in amazement. “That’s a dwarf for ya. Guts.”
It was a four-day journey to the Firefall Mountains, even at our speed, and encounters began appearing with their usual frequency. The first night out, a beholder (speak of the devil) tried to blast us while we were camped out. Jerry laid a wave of fire across it and Alan beat it into the ground with his mattock.
The two hundred orcs that swarmed in on us at dawn found Belinda wide awake and her wands working overtime, we all had a chance to get in on this one, even Jack (who insisted he not be left out). He gave a remarkable account of himself, somehow managing to escape unwounded though he slew twenty orcs. A pit fiend was apparently leading them to us, and it got into a furious hand-to-hand melee with Joanna (who had chopped her way through the orcs just to meet it). The devil lost his head in the combat, however, Joanna gleefully sheathed her vorpal blade and then went at the orcs with her sword of sharpness. The battle ended about seven in the morning and we prepared to be on our way. While Margie was passing out doses from one of her seven staves of healing we kidded each other about the fight, especially Jack.
“You can always tell a happy dwarf by the pile of orcs he stands on,” said George. George had gotten the worst of the melee, having been used by the orcs as a trampoline.
Jack gave one of his now-characteristic smiles and didn’t answer right away. “I’m just interested in staying alive. I figured you could use a hand, though, and I couldn’t resist it with all the orcs around.”
“He, what level are you, anyway?” asked Isaac curiously.
“That’s rude to ask,” replied Jack, “but I usually hit what I am at.”
This sparked my curiosity, too, because I was wondering how Jack had managed to hit every single orc he’d swung at. No one but Jack and Dan had seen his rolls to hit, which was one of own group rules for D*D. We made our saving throws and attack rolls on Daniel’s desk so he could witness them and check them against the power or weapons that we didn’t want anyone else to know about, like Isaac’s sword that I suspected was actually Stormbringer. We all trusted Dan, though we sometimes had doubts about each other.
Another curious thing was that Jack had killed each of those orcs with a single blow, except on that had apparently lost all but one hit point in a single stroke. I passed a not to jerry to this effect, and he wrote back that he suspected the dwarf’s broadsword was an artifact of some kind. I’d thought as much, too, though it was still possible that Jack’s character was rather lucky.
Our course took us through the middle of a swamp, which was the DM’s playground. Suddenly, clakars swarmed in out of the mist and beat the storm giant senseless. Dragon breath and twenty-hit-dice fireballs from George’s sickle of the druids filled the air. I found myself wrestling with a clakar without my battleaxe, and had to dodge several swings of the same from the clakar that had taken it from me. I choked to death the one I was wrestling and Isaac rode up and lanced the other one with my axe, but he was snatched off his mutant percheron by another. I was regretting our decision to ban psionics (as perhaps we all were), but we fought off the attack and began to regroup. It was then that we found Jack’s dwarf washing off in the creek, after having slain three of the winged apes. He was smiling that secret smile of his, and didn’t appear to be seriously hurt at all.
I wanted to nail him right there and ask him about his broad-sword, but we had more pressing business. Isaac was gone. Belinda checked one of her weird artifacts (the one that had STARFLEET COMMAND stamped on the side) and announced that the retreating clakars were carrying Isaac toward one of the mountains in the Firefall chain. Our work was cut out for us.
After raising the storm giant from the dead and reattaching my left arm, we set off at a rapid pace. We bypassed a large camp of bandits (though Joanna launched a meteor swarm into their midst from a Ring of Spell Storing) and also evaded some racks thrown from a previously unmarked group of hill giants. Joanna nearly left us to do battle with them, but we convinced her otherwise because of time considerations and she contented herself with a Wish that they would all change alignment to lawful good. As we left, we watched them haul down their banners of allegiance to Demogorgon and free all their prisoners.
Two days later, we stood a the foot of a bleak and forbidding peak. We knew we’d arrived at the right place from the description that Dan gave us of the chill in the air, the uncomfortable feeling of unspoken and ancient evil. I could feel the adrenaline flow in my veins. As we prepared to enter the mammoth caverns that Jerry located in the mountainside, we made practice rolls wit twenty sided dice and sat on the edge of our seats.
We entered the caves invisibly and silently, and sneaked past the four hydra and Tyrannosaur chained by the entrance. George began mapping and we moved through vast corridors and rooms, past huge golem guards and various roving devils. Our luck ran out when we rounded a corner and Dan told us one of the ten Ice Devils we saw had seen us, apparently with its detect invisibility powers.
Combat was joined on the spot. Joanna began carving a highway down through the devils with her vorpal blade (with the flaming capability) and Jerry used two breaths of gas to clear the hall behind us. Moments later more devils teleported in and there was a free-for-all that ended in part of the ceiling collapsing from a lightning bolt, with Jerry being buried underneath the rubble.
I’d been hit by an ice storm twice and a winter wolf had me by the leg; the rest of us weren’t much better off. Abruptly we all switched to psionics and traded psionics blasts and psychic crushes with the major devils left alive. Jack’s dwarf was trained in the way of the psionics, battling two barbed devils, but he didn’t seem to be affected in any way (though one blast killed a barbed). Once the fighting died down for a coupled of rounds, we found that Belinda’s homonculous and brownie had been subjected to the old shake & bake, and Margie’s pegasus and he storm giant had been freeze dried. Everyone seemed to be hurt, and about a third of our magical items were just so much burnt wood and melted metal. I finished off the winter wolf and took charge of damage control It was then that I noticed the dwarf had only a couple of cuts and bruises from the battle. Everyone else was down by half their hit points.
“Did you swallow a ring of regeneration or something?” I asked, not believing that I was told I was seeing. “Or does that sword of yours drop your armor class to minus thirty?”
“Neither, really. I’m just lucky.”
“Damn,” I said. I looked at everyone else, made a decision, and in my best heavy-thunder voice, said, “I think it’s time we cut loose on this place.” I then took off the amulet that gave me control over my alter-ego, and I bean to shapechaned into a green-skinned giant with muscles the size of tree trunks. “I want to smash this place. Hulk has had it!”
I wasn’t really the Incredible Hulk, of course, but I was close. It was the result of a tremendous burst of radiation I’d received on the same alternate world where Isaac had gotten his Brute Horse. The amulet was something Belinda made, and gave me the self-control to keep from wrecking everything. I had some weird from of epilepsy when I became “the Hulk” and Dan would pass me notes telling me what I had to do (like “Start knocking down the building” or “Run off in a random direction”).
Dan wrote me a note as soon as I took off the amulet, and I had to start stomping down the corridor, attacking everything I met and turning it to oatmeal. Before I was out of sight, everyone else had gotten out their stuff, too. Joanna pulled out the magic rope she’d gotten from Wonder Woman herself, Belinda shouldered her phaser rifle and pulled out her disintegration grenades, George whipped out his light-saber (and brown cloak) and Margie lifted her Mace of Almighty Destruction. They charged on behind me, having sent the remains of everyone else to the clone tanks on Battlecloud Galactica.
We overran everything we met and finally found ourselves outside an immense steel doorway. I grabbed the door handles, ignoring the powerful magical jolts I got from them, and tore the door off. We rushed inside…
…and froze in our tracks. We were looking into a vast and beautiful throneroom, with chandeliers of purest ruby and great columns of diamond and other precious gems. And Asmodeus sat at the end of the room, toying with that super-rod of his. Ten pit fiends stood on either side of him, and at his feet was Isaac, tied up and missing all his equipment.
I should say something here. As I said, Dan was fair, not only to use but to his monsters, too. And we’d never been able to successfully attack any demi-god, god, demon prince or arch-devil in the past without very heavy losses and many failures. We’d lost whole parties in the past, of levels not much lower than our own now, trying to make Demogorgon’s palace or something like that.
Dan played Asmodeus to the hilt. “Welcome,” he said quietly. “I confess that I hadn’t expected you so soon, but no matter.” Asmodeus beckoned us closer with a wave of his great left hand. “I’ve already been enjoying the company of a friend of yours. I’ve tried being a good host but he doesn’t seem to appreciate it very well.” He shrugged. “No matter. Perhaps you’ll be more courteous.”
We were in a sweat. We had no preparation time and had thought wed already beaten the best that was here. Joanna had replaced the amulet on my neck so I wouldn’t be tempted to jump Asmodeus; she announced this none too soon as Dan was preparing another note, probably to that effect. None of us had any doubt that the room was antimagical, and we hadn’t enough hit points or psionics power left to fight the Duke of Hell and his henchdevils. He didn’t appear to want to kill us outright, so we waited and tried to think of a way out.
“I understood there was some huge treasure down here,” said Jack in a remarkably calm voice. Until the moment he spoke, I’d forgotten he was even in the party with us.
Asmodeus nodded. “A most effective rumor, planted by my agents in your city. I’ve been keeping tabs on you since you raided one of my underlings, Geryon. You slew an Assassin of the Gods and twenty-eight devils to recover some artifact, about a year ago. I rarely forget a debt owed.”
“That wasn’t entirely of our own free will,” Belinda said. “We were quested by Mitra”
“Truly spoken. I’d possibly consider allowing you your freedom if you would each repudiate your deities and declare yourselves to be my own true followers.” He picked up some papers beside his throne and held them out to us. “All that would be required would be your signatures. I’ve provided a small pin with each document for you to, ah, extract the ink necessary to sign.”
That got to Joanna the Paladiness like nothing else.
“I’d sooner walk through the Plane of Fire in gasoline armor than sign your accursed paper!” The rest of us exchanged looks (Joanna really got into being lawful good—or, as we sometimes called it, “awful good”). We decided to go with the flow.
“No deal,” I said, knowing there were now long shadows cast on our immediate futures.
Asmodeus stood, his ruby scepter leveled in our direction. “I see that while you are all possessed of immense courage, you are also as impolite a group of guests as your friend here.” He sighed. “Now, as for your dispositions…”
“I have a suggestion,” said Jack. “Why don’t we roll dice to determine our fate? If I can roll higher than you on percentile dice, three times in a row, then we go free.”
We were a bit stunned, the rest of us, but we couldn’t think of anything better. Asmodeus (Dan) smiled broadly and laughed.
“Excellent! You show a remarkable amount of courage yourself. Very well, if you win, then you shall be teleported from this place to that could of yours. If I win…well, let’s worry about that when it happens. Here’s your dice.” Dan tossed Jack a single ten-sided die. “You get that one die. I get two, for the full range of one to one hundred.”
“That’s not fair!” yelled Joanna.
“I don’t think anyone said anything about fair,” Said Asmodeus. Dan motioned Jack to come up and roll his die on the tabletop, and everyone else got up to watch the rolls. Dan kept Asmodeus’s rolls secret, however. “Ties do not count,” Dan added. The game began.
The first roll gave Jack a seven. Dan threw his dice, looked, and announced,”Asmodeus rolls a zero six.”
We felt pretty good about that, though the chances were slim of our luck continuing to hold like that. The second roll produced a five from Jack and a zero-two from Asmodeus, and we began to feel giddy. We weren’t sure if the rolls were really coming up that way, but if Dan said they did, it was fine with us. I wondered if the dwarf had been blessed or had a lot of gambling skill.
On the last roll, Jack got a two, and we listened in silence as Dan rolled, and called out “Zero one.”
We acted kind of silly then, cheering and all, but Dan took up Asmodeus’s role again, with none of the finery and polite talk that had preceded the dice game for our souls.
“Indeed, fate seems to have been with you. I keep my word, as always, but you shall be immediately teleported out of here, physically sound. But I will not forget you, particularly you, dwarf, and I will seek you out when you least expect it, when your precious luck has run out at last, Then you will know me as your master, and experience my rage.” He waved his great hands at us, uttered some arcane words, and we popped back to Battlecloud Galactica (without our magical items, of course). We untied Isaac, and the adventure was over.
Except for one issue.
“Were you really rolling that low?” I asked Dan. “I can’t believe that you actually came up with what you did.”
Dan smiled and looked at Jack, who also smiled. Jack motioned to Dan and said, “I think you’d better tell them.”
“Jack and I know each other from way back. We ran the D&D games inn our hometown before I moved here. We used to have a pretty wild group, and we did a lot of experimentation wit the rules and the game. Jack was playing a character he used in one of our campaigns; I figured that as powerful as you people were, it couldn’t hurt too much. I really couldn’t resist.” He picked up his copy of Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes and leafed through it.
Aboard the Battlecloud Galactica, a room full of people looked at the dwarf in the chainmail, and at the broadsword, and asked. “Just who are you, anyway?” We hadn’t asked him his name because we’d assumed he wouldn’t live through the adventure.
The dwarf smiled shyly and said, “The call me Bes.”