Sex & Drugs & Dungeons & Dragons

DUNGEON LEVEL G: The Conjurer's Capture

Tony spent the next few nights sleeping in the back of the Pizza Hut, and the next few days playing Dungeons & Dragons with his friends.

"As you descend the uneven stone steps," Griffin described, "the darkness seems to close in around you. You can almost feel it physically pressing in, barely held at bay by the dim light of your flickering torch."

"This darkness almost feels alive," Hope whispered with concern.

"I wouldn't worry about it," Derek replied with confidence. "It's just flavor text."

"What's 'flavor text'?"

"It's like mood music," Tony explained. "it's just descriptive narration that's supposed to set the vibe."

"Yeah," agreed Cobi, "it almost never has any actual effect on the game."

"All right, if you guys say so, I guess we'll just keep going."

"The stairs curve round and round," Griffin continued, "bending back on themselves as you descend deeper into the bowels of the earth. You hear the steady drip, drip, drip of ground water seeping through the cracked mortar. You almost stumble at the stairwell's end. As the torch sputters, your surroundings flicker in and out of darkness. In that intermittent light you suddenly realize that the walls of this underground chamber are not paved with stone or brick, as you'd expect, but with human skulls. And the drip is not seeping groundwater, but oozing blood."

"Still think this is just flavor text?"

"I hope so," replied Derek, suddenly a lot less certain. "Ritter von Zeppelin shifts the torch to his left hand and places his right on the pommel of his sword."

"That's not good."

"Suddenly there is a gust of wind so strong that it blows out your torch. The chamber is plunged into darkness! What do you do?"

"Oh shit."

"We're screwed."

"Don't worry, I got this," Hope announced. "I cast continual light!"

Griffin looked at her, puzzled. "Really?"

"Of course? Why wouldn't I?"

Griffin looked down at the printed adventure text, reading it over again just to make sure.

"What happens, dude?" Tony said, worried.

"Yeah is something wrong?" added Cobi.

"No, no, just double checking," Griffin assured them. Then he sighed and fell back into his Dungeon Master voice. "Lady D'Espaire raises her pendant—a silver crossed circle—and calls out a prayer to St. Cuthbert. The jeweled holy symbol begins to burn with righteous fire, but you feel no heat. A nimbus of light pushes against the darkness, driving it backwards like a shield wall driving back an invading horde. Then the crossed circle flairs and brightens almost to the intensity of the sun. You hear a painful shriek and glance two dozen wiry figures flee from the light. They're thrown against the skull walls where they smoke and sizzle, screaming in agony as Cuthbert's power burns. In a moment all that remains are their outlines, like the negative chalk outlines of murder victims."

"Holy shit," Tony breathed in horror. "You were right. The darkness was alive."

"What were they?"

"Wraiths. They're monsters that are kinda like ghosts. We would have had to fight them blind, in the darkness."

"Woulda been a TPK," Derek marveled.

"What's a 'TPK'?"

"It stands for 'Total Party Kill'," Tony explained. "When every character is killed. No one's left to recover the bodies, so you can't even raise anyone from the dead."