Call me Themocaw. This is my blog.
I’m mostly creating it to encourage me to write more. I’m an aspiring writer (that and two bucks will get you a hamburger in this town). So yeah. This is where I write.
Since this is the internets, and I am a nerd, I’m gonna start by talking about a very nerdy subject indeed: Dungeons and Dragons.
The events are true, but the names and certain details have been altered to protect the identities of the people involved.
I was fifteen the first time I really played Dungeons and Dragons (as opposed to flipping through the source books and ogling the breasts on the succubi in the Monster Manual).
Early Entrance Program at Cal State Los Angeles was formed as a program for specially gifted and talented kids. At 15, I was actually one of the older kids in the program: some of the youngest children, the real genius types, were as young as 12 or 13 when they entered college.
EEP, as it was called, was basically a giant stewpot full of very smart kids with a lot of free time on their hands. Naturally, we ended up spending a lot of time playing games nerdy kids do. There was a Nintendo 64 that became the focus of endless games of Goldeneye and Super Smash Brothers. There was a set of three computers that were hooked up to this new thing called The World Wide Web (ostensibly for work and research, but I vividly remember a perplexed program director calling everyone in to explain that the computers were being taken offline for a time due to a virus that had spread through them by some anonymous person deciding to visit a website called “HardcoreGrannies.com”). There was a small library filled with yellowing old science fiction and fantasy novels, many of which were worth a flip-through at least. There were endless games of Magic: The Gathering, and long hours spent playing Quake on the one computer set aside for computer games.
And then there was Dungeons and Dragons.
I was invited to join the game by a guy I will refer to only as TDM: That Dungeon Master. TDM was smart even for us, and knew it. This would be his first time running a D&D game, although not his first time playing in one. TDM recruited me among the first group of players, handed me some information about the world, and told me to make a character.
If there’s one good thing I can say about TDM, it’s that his worlds were interesting and nuanced. I was an elf named Kenzie, a mage-thief (Second Edition, by the way), but I wasn’t your typical golden-haired mithril-wearing immortal pretty-boy. No, these elves came from a culture derived from the cultures of the Native Americans. We lived mostly without metals, making use of wood, bone, and stone tools. We used war clubs made of compressed wood. We were hunter-gatherers, but we cultivated the land with magic and skill so that the trees would provide for us with their bounty. And we lived in felt tents, like Mongols.
Kenzie was a special elf agent who would go into the outside world, look for interesting things (like metals) and bring them back to the Elf villages. (If you’ve ever played Mass Effect, think of it like a Quarian going out on Pilgrimage). Kenzie was specially trained to work with the humans. He had learned magic to augment his sneaking and stealthing skills, and he owned a special set of lockpicks that I’d spent much of my starting gold on.
Another player in the game was Rico. Rico was playing a dwarven berserker named Grout. Grout was a follower of the dwarven god of fire, chaos, and warfare: Fluoros. (If you’re scratching your head at the name, look up the chemical properties of Fluorine: nasty stuff.) That’s all you really need to know about Grout.
There were a few other characters too. The pertinent ones were Dahlia, a human psionicist, and Bibliothecarius, a human cleric of. . . well, basically the Catholic Church.
And there was Petunia. Bibliothecarius’ beloved packmule and pet. Petunia’s story does not end well.
There is one more thing you need to know about the game. TDM had this policy that we wouldn’t get experience until we had a chance to sit down and think about what we had learned and apply our lessons.
We accepted this. . . mostly because we were a bunch of fifteen year-olds who had never played D&D before and didn’t realize it was supposed to work differently. Also, it made sense to us.
The problem was. . . we never got the chance to “sit down and think about what we had learned.” So, six months into our game, we were still Level 1.
This isn’t completely relevant to the story, but experienced gamers probably read that line and winced. For those of you who don’t play D&D. . . this means that we had basically been around the block, fought in several life-or death battles, won several quests. . . and we still were at the same skill level as raw recruits, having learned nothing.
I say this only as a means of illustrating a major problem with the game. . . namely, TDM’s inexperience as a DM. Like I said, this was his first time running a game, and he didn’t see the warning signs. He didn’t realize the growing level of discontent and frustration among his players, who had spent so much time playing the game but had no substantial advancement to show for it.
Maybe if he had, that might have prevented the Flaming Dwarf Incident.
One session, we had just encountered a random group of Orcs in the forest while. . . I’m not sure exactly what we were doing. As D&D adventurers do, we set up our ambush and went into battle.
At the time, I lived about an hour away by train, and I didn’t have a driver’s license, being fifteen. So I had to leave that session early, after the first round of that combat, in fact. I handed my character sheet over to Rico to finish off the battle and entrusted him with my beloved character.
The next Monday, I walked into the EEP lounge and asked Rico how the battle went.
“Dude,” Rico told me. “Kenzie was awesome. I had him sneak attacking from the shadows, and he killed, like, four Orcs on his own. I was rolling crit after crit and he was putting arrows in eyes. It was awesome. We kicked ass.”
I felt pretty good about that.
The day came for the next session. We sat down around the table again, and TDM said the words that began the downfall of the campaign.
“I’ve decided that the last battle didn’t happen. I’m going to reset it to the beginning of the battle, and we’re going to replay it. Roll for initiative.”
Rico and I looked at each other. The excitement and energy was gone, replaced with annoyance, anger, and disappointment. All of Kenzie’s exploits. . . gone. All those awesome crits. . . wasted. All gone to the black hole of retroactive continuity.
Yet another little turn of the screw. One more frustration and annoyance to add to what was slowly turning into a flaming fiasco.
We rolled for initiative. We began the battle again.
And that’s when we discovered that instead of 1/2 Hit Dice Generic Cannon Fodder Orcs. . . TDM had upgraded them to LEVEL FOUR ELITE SPECIAL OPERATIONS ORCS.
I remind you, at this point, we were still Level 1.
We got our asses kicked harder than Cumberland taking the field vs. Georgia Tech (look it up).
We woke up with our hands and feet tied, strapped to the back of horses, being carried off by Orcs to a horrible, unknown fate.
There was an escape attempt. It failed. There was a second escape attempt. It also failed.
Frustration and anger rose. It seemed that we were doomed to be devoured alive by Orcs in some horrible ritual to appease their savage god of. . .
“You crest the hill and find yourself overlooking a clean, well-maintained city with paved roads and beautiful gardens, shining white walls and high towers,” TDM said. “All about you are orcs, going about their daily lives in peace.”
(Let me interject by saying that the humans in this setting were pretty much the peasants from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: filthy, grubbing, Dark Ages types who lived in rude straw huts or stone castles.)
So the Orcs were way more civilized than the humans. This could have been an interesting setting, an interesting twist on the usual dynamic. . . except that NOTHING we had seen had prepared us for any of this. We’d fought orcs before, and they had been the usual savage cannon fodder. Getting our asses kicked by orcs who were nicer and more civilized than the humans was basically a big middle finger to all of us for, you know, fighting orcs. The sort of thing that you expected to do in D&D.
I looked over at Rico. His jaw was tense and his eyes narrowed. I almost felt his anger start to boil over.
We ended up being fined five hundred gold pieces each for assault and battery.
We had our choices of ways to make up the cash. We tried working at a quarry. But the downside was that, at our wages, it would take us around twenty years to pay off our fine. And so, as one does in D&D, we signed on to do an adventure.
The adventure revolved around a new addition to the group: Macaulay, a new player, playing a Spy. The Spy was a human raised by orcs, trained to infiltrate human society for special forces missions. The Spy told us that he needed help to break into a tower on the border between the Orc and Human kingdoms to rescue an Orcish Prince who had been captured by the humans.
The Spy, as played by Macaulay, was an arrogant prick. We all hated his character, and some of that hate rubbed off on Macaulay.
It got worse at the next session, as we approached the Tower where the adventure would take place. The Spy turned to Kenzie and Grout and said, “It would draw too much suspicion of non-humans were in the party. So you two will have to wait outside while we do the mission.”
Rico and I stared at each other incredulously again. What Macaulay was saying was that while the three human party members (The Spy, Dahlia the Psionicist, and Bibliothecarius the Cleric) had the grand adventure, he and I were going to be sitting outside doing basically jack shit for the next three hours.
Bibliothecarius decided that he should leave Petunia the pack mule with us. He gave her pets, fed her a sugar cube, and said a fond goodbye to his beloved pet.
“Now take good care of her, you savage brutes. It’s all your kind are good for, anyway,” Bibliothecarius said.
And then he went off to do the adventure.
Leaving Kenzie and Grout (and by extension, me and Rico), watching the fucking mule.
I had a friend in junior high school named Prasat. Prasat was a lonely, strange boy. When I knew him, he professed an actual belief in the deities of D&D (specifically the Dark Sun setting).
This was considered lame even for people who played D&D. After all, it was just a game. The gods and magics that we roleplayed didn’t really exist.
But if, by some chance, there exists a God of Fire, Chaos, and Warfare named after the element of Fluorine, I believe that was the moment that Rico became its avatar. Like Achilles being guided by Athena, or Hector by Apollo and Artemis, he was suffused with the essence of that fictional deity and became the living embodiment of Fire, Chaos, and War.
All he needed was a chance to burst into flame.
Rico and I watched as the humans completely fucked up the quest.
The Spy started things off by walking up to the guards at the tower and saying, “Ho! Friends! We are merchants travelling to a distant land! May we stay here tonight?”
The guards looked at these three humans walking along by themselves and asked a reasonable question: “If you are merchants, where are your carts?”
The Spy thought about this for a moment and answered, “Actually, we are not merchants. We are. . . agents.”
The guards gave him a skeptical look.
“If you help us,” the Spy continued, “the Queen will reward you well.”
The guards looked at each other, then nodded. “Agents of the Queen, I see. Come inside, good sir.”
The Spy walked into the tower, smug and confident.
He was immediately grabbed by half a dozen guards and held down.
“How long have you been travelling with this lunatic in your company?” the Guard Captain asked.
Dahlia and Bibliothecarius shared a look.
“For about six months,” Bibliothecarius said, deadpan.
“Please don’t be cruel to him. He is my brother. He is quite mad, but harmless,” Dahlia begged. “Please put him in a dungeon cell with food and water, and he will harm no one.”
And so the Spy was dragged off into the dungeons and locked up.
“Perfect!” Dahlia’s player said gleefully. “Now all you need to do is break out of your cell, find the Orcish Prince in his cell, break him out. . .”
“Actually,” the Spy admitted miserably. “I can’t pick locks.”
“What?”
“I have no points in Pick Locks,” the Spy repeated. “And even if I did, I don’t have lockpicks.”
I looked down at my character sheet.
Kenzie had a very solid rating in lockpicking. And he had a custom-made set of lockpicks, too.
I considered telling Macaulay this. I decided against it.
I don’t know why. I think mostly so I could rub it into his face later.
So the Spy ended up tossed into a dungeon cell, right next door to the Orcish Prince.
“Who the hell are you?” the Prince asked.
“I’m a spy,” The Spy sighed. “I’m here to rescue you.”
Meanwhile, upstairs, Bibliothecarius and Dahlia were roleplaying out this dinner banquet in excruciating detail, and Rico and I were getting more and more bored by the minute.
“All right,” TDM said. “Let’s cut to the elf and the dwarf. What are you doing for food?”
“Well, I have hunting as a Nonweapon Proficiency,” I said. “I’ll go into the woods and. . .”
“Why bother? We have a ready source of meat right here. I butcher the damned mule,” Rico growled.
Bibs’ player laughed. “Funny joke, Rico,” he said.
“Who’s joking?” Rico growled. “Do you want me to roll for it?”
“You can’t do that!” Bibliothecarius protested.
“Actually, he can,” TDM said. “Roll to hit, Grout.”
It took three axe swings to kill Petunia as Bibliothecarius’ player looked on in slack-jawed horror.
“I take the meat and roast it over a campfire. Does Kenzie want some?” Rico asked.
On the one hand, I was horrified that Rico had just outright murdered Petunia, who had been a beloved pet and packmule and had been the source of a lot of humor in the past.
On the other hand. . . waste not want not. Use every part of the animal, etc.
“I’ll take a haunch,” I said. “Can I make mule jerky?”
“Sure, why not, TDM said.”
“Maybe we should cook the brains or something,” Rico said.
“Doesn’t that give you Mad Cow Disease?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure if there are any prions in mule brains that can affect humans,” Rico said. “Oh, and Grout will skin the damn mule and turn its hide into a makeshift cape.”
“Can I use some of the bones to make arrowheads? I’m running out.” I asked.
“Sure,” TDM said.
I can’t remember Bibliothecarius’ character doing anything much more for the rest of the game. I think the shock of losing his beloved Petunia just took all the fun out of the game for him.
That left Dahlia to try and finish the mission by herself.
Her method of doing this was to drive several guards into a frothing frenzy using psionic powers and accusing one of rape. I’m not sure what her player was trying to accomplish with this, but the end result was that Dahlia was declared a witch and tossed into prison was well. Then Bibliothecarius got tossed into prison for good measure.
So the entire mission was botched. The only ones who could still act were the elf and the dwarf, waiting at the base camp. By all logic, we should have just left. Found something else to do. Left the humans behind and abandoned the quest and gone to Tahiti or something.
But we were D&D players. And though we hadn’t heard those words yet, something told us that as adventurers, we were obligated to a sacred creed.
Leave no one behind.
So although it made no sense, although we had no in-character way of knowing that the mission had gone completely haywire, we went into battle.
Grout donned his new muleskin cape. I put an arrow to my bow.
We strode across the grasslands towards the tower. . . a blood-stained dwarf with a huge axe wearing a bloody, crudely made muleskin cape. . . and a foppish looking elf wearing maroon leathers carrying a shortbow.
About a hundred yards away, Grout opened up all of his lamp oil bottles and soaked the cape in oil.
About twenty yards away, he struck flint and steel together and ignited the cape.
He sprinted the last ten yards into battle, screaming, “NO SURVIVORS, NO SURVIVORS!” at the top of his goddamn lungs, swinging his axe around wildly. (We were fans of The Princess Bride). I imagine it looking rather like that infamous scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” where Lancelot charges the castle.
And so we charged into glorious battle!
We got our fucking asses kicked.
We were Level 1 characters charging into battle against an entire tower full of elite soldiers. We didn’t last too long.
We had a pretty good battle plan at first. While Grout berserker raged his way through the tower, hacking and slashing away while gleefully quoting our favorite action movies at the enemy, I skulked downstairs and used my lockpicks to open the jail cell for the Prince.
The Orc Prince refused to leave. “It’s safer in my cell!” he protested.
We tried to break the spy and the psionicist and the priest out too but they were pretty much useless as well.
In the end, we basically got surrounded by human guards and had the shit kicked out of us.
We woke up to find that the Orc Prince had rescued us all and was taking us back to the fucking orcish metropolis with their goddamn civilized enlightened orcs.
Yay.
That’s not the end of the story, but the tale of how we left the city and we all died except Kenzie is a story for another time.
I still hang out with Rico on occasion. He’s one of the few college friends I still talk to these days.
I still play D&D on occasion, too. Whenever I meet new roleplayers, I usually tell the story of Grout and the Flaming Muleskin Cape.
I don’t know why this story resonates with me so much. I mean, at heart, it’s mostly a story about fifteen year old kids playing make-believe, being immature brats and lashing out due to our frustrations with our own inadequacies.
Maybe it’s because, at heart, there are times when I wish I could just be Grout. There are times when frustration builds and you feel so fucking helpless, that I can understand the impulse to light yourself on fire and charge blindly into danger while screaming and swinging a giant fucking axe.
On the other hand, the one that saved us all in the end was the calm, collected Orc Prince who waited patiently in his cell for the right moment to act.
That’s not nearly as entertaining a story, though.
Next Time: The Dreadful Tale of the Great Reaming (And What Came After). I anticipate that from now on, the blog will update once per week, probably around Fridays or Saturdays.
Capricious Musings 
How dreadful. Petunia was killed.