They were standing atop the hill where Vevic had her chair placed at its crest. A camp fire burned a few feet away and it threw their shadows, long and dark, across the hilltop. Before her, Brightfeather had just brought her news of a rumor spreading amongst her goblins.
This one is as loyal as he is smart. She balanced her chin on her hand. “Tell me, what is this rumor?”
Brightfeather did not look up. “One of the prisoners, a girl-child we rescued from the fire, ha...
2023-10-20 04:43:18 +0000 UTC
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Vevic stood atop the hill and watched the village burn. The villagers had put up a meager fight. An armed band of men had met her army in the fields just west of the village. Her chieftains had met them there, leading a swarm of her little green skinned warriors into a make-shift infantry charge. As spear, sword, and shield began to clash, a second group had come in from the flank. The village men (and a few women) had fought bravely, but the result was a foregone conclusion. It was simply a ...
2023-10-20 04:42:35 +0000 UTC
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As the blaze of their village faded behind them, the men on the raft surrounded the last of the goblins, killed them, and threw their corpses overboard. Calista was too busy to help as she tended the wounded Thalias. The half-elf had taken an arrow to the chest and was bleeding from both ends. So far, Calista had used nearly every bandage she had in an effort to save Thalias who, to her, seemed determined to die.
“It’s okay, you can just let me go,” the half elf said. “I’ve li...
2023-10-20 04:41:55 +0000 UTC
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Part One: A Brief Detour Inside the Mind of a Goblin
Fatlip hadn’t had this much fun since … well, he couldn’t remember. So far tonight, he had killed a goat, set fire to a haystack, scared several children, and helped disembowel a farmer. All that and the night was still young.
Their old boss, Ikzurash the Lich, had neglected them after forming an alliance with some of the local human tribes. Many of his brethren had been reduced to working the mines while others had slunk ...
2023-10-20 03:00:11 +0000 UTC
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She hacked at the goblin, but it raised its buckler just in time as her sword nicked the wooden shield and then bounced off. Kicking her smaller opponent in the belly, she brought her blade around again and this time she caught the little marauder in the neck. The goblin whimpered and died.
When she had first ran out of the tavern, she had hoped to fight her way to the stable, find a horse, and make for the hills. However, she hadn’t made it more than a few feet around the corner befo...
2023-10-20 02:58:30 +0000 UTC
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As he shut the door, Lefty felt the fatigue hit him like a sack of bricks. Dropping to the bed, he was unconscious the moment his head hit the pillow. In fact, he was out so cold that when the innkeeper later arrived to ask if he wanted any food, Lefty didn’t even stir.
Feathers also slept.
So it was, several hours later, when they both awoke to someone shouting and banging on their door. Lefty, bleary eyed and head tingling, wiped the drool from his mouth as he looked around th...
2023-10-20 02:57:54 +0000 UTC
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Soon after Abby returned with the ale, they all got around to introducing themselves. Since Thalias had already asked, she started by explaining she was a Delver, the same class she had specialized in before. “They also gave me some sort of dark background where my father killed my mother and then himself and that I may or may not be wanted for something back at Yandmouth.” She turned to Thalias, “What about you?”
“I’m a bard who failed out of wizard college who still likes ...
2023-10-20 02:56:51 +0000 UTC
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It was dark as she limped into the village. The rain had followed her the entire way and a steady drizzle pelted her as the guards let her across the bridge. Hobbling past the first houses, she could see the town was quiet, but not empty. A man smoking a pipe nodded to her from his doorway as she passed. A dog lifted his head to look at her and then slinked around a building. She passed a woman carrying an empty bucket and two men armed with spears.
It wasn’t long before she reached t...
2023-10-20 02:56:07 +0000 UTC
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It wasn’t long until they found a road. It wasn’t much, a pair of dusty ruts that ran along the edge of the river, but it appeared to know more about where it was going than either Lefty or Feathers did, so they each picked a rut and followed.
One look at the water told Lefty the river was running high. The dark blue water rushed over the rocks and frothed at its edges. He wasn’t much of a outdoorsman, but he knew this could really only mean one thing: It was spring and the winter...
2023-10-20 02:55:20 +0000 UTC
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Vevic sipped her wine as she inspected the empty skull. Lord Sott, of course, had chosen to fight her. After an hour of flying around the fortress, torching soldiers and burning some of the more useless looking outbuildings, she shape-changed into human form and strolled into the grand hall to find the skeletal mage standing in a pool of black flame. He had spouted off something about her impudence and some very trite threats before starting in with his magic. Unfortunately for him, he did no...
2023-10-20 02:54:14 +0000 UTC
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A mile into the woods, the horse died. The animal simply stopped, lowered itself to the ground, and it lay on its side as it closed its eyes. Calista dragged Rorick off the saddle and sat him against a tree. A few breaths later, the horse was gone.
Rorick was not far behind. Pulling himself upright, the wounded rebel counted his wounds. He had a cut along his side, another on his foreleg, and the two goblin arrows buried in his chest.
“Calista, I ride to the Great Elsewhere soon...
2023-10-20 02:53:10 +0000 UTC
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Part One: Vevic
Vevic swooped down on the ramparts and let out another blast of flame on the hapless guards. Soldiers died where they stood or fell, burning to the ground below. Arrows bounced harmlessly off her scales. Below, soldiers and slaves screamed in fear. She hadn’t had this much fun in … maybe ever.
The open air beckoned to her. Soaring through the mists, she could hear the cries and alarms being shouted below. The fun part was still coming. She turned, made another ...
2023-10-20 02:52:27 +0000 UTC
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She awoke lying on the wooden floor of a cart as it bounced and creaked over a muddy road. Above her stood trees like dark sentinels against a gray, cloud covered sky. She tried to wipe the sleep from her eyes and discovered she couldn’t. Wait, am I chained? Looking down, she discovered manacles braced to her wrists and chained to the floor. What is this?
“Hey, you, you’re finally awake,” said a blonde, well built man sitting across from her. “You were trying...
2023-10-20 02:51:22 +0000 UTC
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She rested under the watchful eyes of her new companions. When she woke, she was pleased to see all of her mana had regenerated. So, she spent most of the morning using her magic to heal her wounds.
Vevic had chosen Witch as her class as it had an interesting blend of both healing and offensive magics. This, she believed, would augment her status as an independent dragon who did not need to depend on the skills or whims of others to get by. She was also quite taken with the hats.
...
2023-10-20 02:50:32 +0000 UTC
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She had decided to let them keep the name. Tribe of the Bloody Foot was fine so long as they knew who was in charge.
She had made them take her back to their lair. Marching through the valleys and hills, Vevic had used what little magic she had left and summoned a mist to conceal her. She still did not trust this new place. Trees and hills and caves and mountains were all new to her.
They were a pitiable race. Small, green, greedy, savage. They smelled bad. Their version of buildi...
2023-10-20 02:49:37 +0000 UTC
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Standing in the sunlight as it filtered through the leaves, Lefty looked down at Feathers and then at the empty space before him where the Attendant had just been. He still had more questions. Like, just how many people were watching him now and just how was he supposed to know when and where he had any privacy? Was this all designed to make him uncomfortable or was it just the sort of thing you got used to after a while? He strongly suspected it was the latter.
Beside him, Feathers was...
2023-10-20 02:45:48 +0000 UTC
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He blinked hard and suddenly he was standing in the glade again. The sun burned against the tree tops as the blonde woman in the stewardess uniform flipped through a magazine. Lefty stopped to rub his eyeballs and collect his thoughts. Then, as he opened his eyes again, the stewardess stood.
“Good, it looks like the both of you are up to speed now. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am the Attendant and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the planet Wraath, your new home. I will n...
2023-10-20 02:44:57 +0000 UTC
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Floating, Lefty grasped desperately to the magical umbrella that was his staff. While the goblins’ arrows still harried him, they were becoming increasingly inaccurate. Behind him, he heard the bear howl in rage. Swinging his legs, he managed to turn around in time to see the bear crash into the horde of goblins as it slashed and mauled its way through the little warriors. Soon, goblins were being pitched, tossed, and thrown off the cliff as they fell screaming into the tree tops below. Sho...
2023-10-20 02:43:51 +0000 UTC
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The window before her blinked out and then returned with a list of different stat blocks. The Attendant inspected her nails as she spoke, “Congratulations. Now that you’ve selected a race and finalized your appearance, please select a basic class so that you can be given stats.”
Another series of windows popped up and began their orbits as the control panel once again changed to reflect the options presented. These windows reflected her character as if it were one of the game’s ...
2023-10-20 02:43:00 +0000 UTC
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“As one of our newest V.I.P’s, you are entitled to an empowered re-roll with the singular caveat that you do recreate Calista Stricthaven as her exploits in the Earth version of Sable Unlimited tested very well across a number of our demographics, particularly your last misadventure in that dreadful little dungeon that brought you here. So, after you pick your race you’ll be automatically assigned female as your gender. From there, you’ll be able to alter some of the more sup...
2023-10-20 02:42:09 +0000 UTC
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Calista came to lying on her back while a slight breeze blew through the grass around her. The sun was bright overhead, its bright rays nearly blinding. Where am I? Shielding her eyes, she sat up to look out over the green stalks and found she was sitting atop a small rise in an open field. To her left sat a forest, to her right, hills. She glanced again at the sun and saw it to be about mid-morning.
Out of the corner of her eye, something moved. It began as the top of a feathe...
2023-10-20 02:40:30 +0000 UTC
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From their right, a horse whinnied.
Lefty glanced at the duck, but the bird was already waddling toward the sound of the horse. Great, just great. As he followed his feathered friend through the branches, he began to feel like the unwilling participant of a guided tour through the crocodile pen at the zoo. Only he was on the wrong side of the fence and his guide was a duck. Briefly, he wondered if there were a better metaphor he could come up with, but couldn’t. He was too sc...
2023-10-20 02:39:34 +0000 UTC
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He found a hefty chunk of change on the ogre - three-hundred-eighty-two gold pieces to be precise - and a rusty dagger. He had left the dagger. The gold had immediately transferred itself into his inventory, where it stored for free.
He still had no idea where he was or where he was going, but he could see the sun and knew that he was headed generally east. Twice he spotted hills in the distance, but what province, zone, or country he was in was still a mystery.
The duck had deign...
2023-10-20 02:38:46 +0000 UTC
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He awoke laying in a bush.
Lying on his back, strands of sunlight beaming down through the leaves, his first though was, Things have not gone as planned. This, strangely, was followed closely by his second thought, What were these things and why did they not go as planned? And together they skittered through his mind like scared animals until his third thought - Who is standing on top of me? - arrived and punched both thoughts squarely in the nose, knocking th...
2023-10-20 02:37:33 +0000 UTC
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The earth heaved, sagged, heaved again, and finally collapsed into a hole filled with darkness. Fire, smoke, and lightning streamed out in cascades of magic as the dungeon’s defense system continued to malfunction. A shadowy form, a monster perhaps, tried to crawl out but was pulled back down, screaming. Finally, an explosion and then silence.
The hole sat there, exposed. It was about as wide as a small keep and if anyone were brave enough to walk to its edge and look down, they would...
2023-10-20 02:36:30 +0000 UTC
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After escaping the Morphic Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Lefty and Calista find themselves Isakai'd onto the real world of Wraath, a procedurally terraformed planet owned by the intergalactic gaming corporation of Concept. Starting over at level one, Lefty and Calista find themselves placed in the beginner zone of Sommerdale.
...
2023-10-20 02:29:43 +0000 UTC
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The little dragon swished her tail as she looked down on the bugs lovingly laid out on the book before her. She had been listening to her invisible friend explain them for over an hour and was quite entranced. Her eyes brightened as she looked to a silver winged creature that had patterns on it like a map. “And just what is that?” She asked.
“It’s a moth.” An invisible hand pulled the pin and then the moth rose into the air. “A Monothyptic Atlas to be exact. They’re able t...
2023-09-12 17:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Dillard jogged down the hallway on silent feet. Through her many escape attempts, she had long learned how to move through the depths of Severin’s dungeon without making a sound. Many days and nights had been spent running through the halls and corridors dodging the arch-mage’s patrols. Many a room had been broken into. Many a lock had been picked. Many a troll had fallen to her ambushes.
She enjoyed killing. It was a pleasure.
But now was not the time for pleasure. Now was th...
2023-09-11 17:00:01 +0000 UTC
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“You see,” the feminine voice continued, “the two of you are dead.”
“What do you mean, we’re dead?” Calista snapped. “We made it through this whole thing without dying. We’re not dead. We’re standing in a pool of water in some creepy room with a creepy burning doorway. So don’t give me some weird cryptic message about a second life, okay? We’ve been through hell to get here.”
“Yeah,” Lefty looked up at the ceiling, “I mean we can’t log out, we fee...
2023-09-08 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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A tremor shook the cavern. Oh great, the place is going to break apart. I suppose Blake just thought to himself, ‘If I can’t have it, no one can.’ She wondered briefly about the kobolds and the two trolls Smith and Smithey, but then she reminded herself that they weren’t her problem right now. Getting herself out alive was.
She bent down to check Severin’s corpse. If she was going to die here, she was at least going to die a rich woman who had just looted the corpse o...
2023-09-07 17:00:01 +0000 UTC
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