This is the other kitty who lives at Blue Moon Keep.
Her favorite perch is on top of the ferret cage and her best bud is Wudjie the ferret, although Itzl’s convinced he’s her best bud.
Since I dislike the NaNoWriMo novel I wrote this year, I started a new story.
There’s a snippet of my NaNoWriMo Compensation Story I’m not sure yet if this bit will even appear in the story itself. It may not be needed, or I may embed the information in other ways.
You hear a lot about Gamers trying their luck in dungeons and on quests. It seems as if they get all the fun – travel, treasures, action. If they survive, they get EP and gain levels to grow wealthy and powerful. Those of us who’ve been cast as non-player characters, puppets for the Godly Game Master; we are fodder for the Gamers. Our role is to be the method by which those Gamers gain their EP and levels and wealth, regardless of our lives, our families, or our own desires to gain EP, levels, and wealth.
Most of the time, our role is to die. For us, there is no resurrection. When we die, it’s to the Death.
Trying to get the Game Master’s attention is very difficult. We aren’t beloved of the Game Master. Like pawns in a chess game, we are interchangeable, lacking in any individuality at all. The Game Master created only one Character Sheet for all of us. When we meet the Gamers, that one Character Sheet forms the template that shapes and rules us to ever give the advantage to the Gamers. If they win, they get EP and treasure. If we win, we get to survive until the Game Master sends another adventuring group our way. Everything we’ve worked for can be ripped from us by a single encounter – all our hard-earned wealth, our families, our very lives.
So far, I’ve been one of the lucky ones in spite of the family curse. The curse killed my father when I was a child. Ma moved us to another lair, deeper in the woods, past the waterfall mazes and hazardous cliffs of doom, hoping Da’s death would end the curse. That rickety old treasure chest with which our line was cursed waited patiently for us in the new lair. Ma moved us a dozen times, and always, that nasty treasure chest waited, filling slowly with gold, gems, and the occassional magic item until one day an adventuring group found us and slew half my family and emptied out the chest.
Ma decided we couldn’t handle the curse alone. Somehow, she convinced other families to ally with us. All us monsters were doomed to die at the hands of Gamers. That’s how the Game Master designed it to be. Ma convinced these families that by guarding the treasure chest alongside us, they were at least dying for a cause. With more people guarding the chest, fewer of us died. It was a win-win situation for us and for the other families. That’s how we became a clan, strong enough to defeat most adventuring groups.
That displeased the Game Master. We weren’t supposed to be strong. He sent devastation upon us, and pestilience, until the survivors caved and agreed to die for His Gamers once more. Ma died in that confrontation, and most of my siblings.
We didn’t have to guard the treasure within the chest – just the chest. The treasure chest itself was a thing of powerful magic – it looked old and decrepid, so rickety it could barely contain the treasures within it, and it was impossible to lock well. It attracted lost coins and gems and forgotten magical items. These things would just appear in it, filling it. When the chest was full, we knew Gamers would come along to slay us and take away the contents. The chest itself was always in such poor condition they abandoned it. When it was empty, it would appear back in our home lair and slowly refill.
Only Gamers, with Character Sheets of their own, can use the magic items and spend the coins. If a monster, sharing like me the One Sheet for all my species, tried to use anything in the chest, it wouldn’t work right. More often than not it killed the monster weilding it. The Game Master always made sure of that.
We tried to go about our daily business: making jewelry and clothes, growing food, playing games, falling in love, having children, guarding that damnable chest. We tried to build a society, create our own culture, to grow beyond the stats the Game Master gave us through the rolls of His Holy Dice. The One Sheet ruled us with an inky fist.
Entire families and clans were wiped out at the whim of the Game Master.
It didn’t help that some families and clans thought our cursed treasure chest was a desirable thing to have, and we fought not only the Gamers sicced on us by the Game Master, but also other monsters; even monsters of our same species. Not all monster families were cursed with a magic treasure chest. The families and clans who had nothing at all to die over were determined to gain some treasure or magic item which might give some meaning to their deaths, and so we fought our own kind over that as well. Nor did it bode well for a peaceful life that the Game Master would encourage the Gamers to build massive monster armies to fight over these worthless treasures.
We did have a few blessings that made our brief, violent lives worth living. We had deep passions we freely expressed in the short time we were allowed to live. Although our lives were bound by rigid rules, those rules applied only to those things the Game Master thought important. We had no rules but our own outside of the Game Master’s limits, giving us a freedom He probably never intended us to have. This was how we were able to form our clans. The existence of those clans gave us not only the strength of numbers, but also wisdom, the kind of wisdom that comes with age as more and more of us were able to live longer. Those who lived past the combat years and retired to our protected hidden villages discovered they had not just passion but coveted skills in crafting fine items like jewelry, laces, scupltures, and precision mechanical devices to delight and charm the children. With these skills, we could barter for the finer luxuries of life.
Like all prey species, and there is no doubt the Game Master intended us to be the natural prey of the Gamers, we bred fast with large litters to compensate for our high death rates. In the protection of the clans, that breeding brought with it an increase in population that in turn brought about some small magics among us. Rare, precious children were born with the magical ability to set up protections and wards, to heal, to speak the future, and to name truly.
We’ve become wily with these small magical abilities. Since it’s that hideous magic chest the Game Master wants his Gamers to find and empty, we learned to divide our clan. The women and children and the frail are hidden in villages protected by our magic. We set up decoy camps far from our home village, built around those abominable deadly treasure chests. The strong and the young staff those decoy camps because we know if we don’t have a goodly force to defend that treasure chest the Game Master will find our home villages and send the Gamers against them, killing all the innocents just for a few tawdry gold pieces and a cursed magic item or two.
That’s the way things were when our clan namer grew old and older and the names she began to bestow on the children made no sense to us anymore. I myself was named Walks Far on Toes. My sole surviving brother was named Chips Wood Into Little Pieces. Those are good names, normal names. My grandchildren, though, and his, bear names like Shelby and Barbara Ann and Lynn, Franklin and Michael and – well, Pierce isn’t too bad. Letting the Speaker name the children is worse, though, because she names them for the visions she has about them. Barbara Ann was told her new name would be Dies Wetly. Shelby was given the Speaker name of Flies with No Wings. Lynn became Has Head Lice. Franklin became Piss Off Until Tomorrow You Moron. Michael got the new name of Breaks the Sacred Statue. We were afraid to let the Speaker name any more of our children with horrible names like those. And the Clan Namer – well, we haven’t told her about the litters that have been born since she started giving out such weird names. We name them secretly ourselves now, with names like Long Nose and Big Ears and Freckles and Clumsy, waiting until a new Clan Namer is born to give them proper names.
It’s those names, I’m sure, that changed our fates.
That horrible chest was full again, which means the time has come to send our strong young ones out to set up the decoy camp and meet their deaths with the Gamers. The Death Party is as spectacular as always – music, food, portentous sayings, rowdy games and competitions, lots of weeping from parents and younger siblings.
I sat in the place of honor because the chest belongs to my family. A Bukolaji always has to go to the decoy camp with the chest or it won’t stay there. The chest was resting on its pedestal, looking as if the dovetailing holding it together would pop out at any minute. Some of the wooden boards were broken and the gold and jewels within it glittered in the bonfire’s flicker. I couldn’t see the rust on the hinges and lock, but I knew it was there. No amount of polishing and cleaning would remove that rust. Amid the gold and jewels rested a Dwarven Mug of Never Thirst, a Sword of Wonder, a tiny Herbert’s Shield, and a Charming Lariet. The Gamers sent for this chest wouldn’t be the usual First Level Adventurers. They’d be experienced Second Levelers, maybe even Third. Brooding on the future of this chest and the decoy camp and all our children who would be there with their weak names, I made a decision.
I stood, raising my arms for silence in the same way the Clan Speaker announces her visions. It worked for me as it did for her, the silence spreading all around the bonfire, the laughing and howling dying down as all eyes turned to stare at me. When it was quiet enough, I shouted, “I will be a Guardian of the Chest!” I lowered my arms, and waited.
A deeper silence greeted my words, then my grandchildren started cheering. Spears and axes were waved high as others joined the cheer. Old, bllind Kills With An Atl-Atl copied my gesture, then announced, “I, too, will be a Guardian of the Chest!”
Before anyone could cheer him, Leaves No Tracks jumped up and shouted, “Me, too!”
“And me!” Makes Fire In Rain added.
The noise following his announcement was a physical force beating against our ears, at once compressing us and uplifting us. Mothers praised us for accompanying their children to the decoy camp. We were given mugs of strong beer and choice meats, and garlanded with flowers. I watched Makes Fire In Rain stagger around the bonfire with Collects Dwarf Moss in Baskets, drunk on his promise and the potent beer Sharper than A Beesting brews just for the Death Parties. The drums beat so wild and loud, the flames of the bonfire caught their rhythm, flickering into the trees who danced to the beat of all our foot stomps. The very air pulsed with our passion. We live! We dance!
As the Moon rose full and red, we who were chosen to guard the chest at the decoy camp withdrew from the frantic party to collect our gear and be gone before the party was stilled by dawn’s first rays, and the village descended into a waiting silence.
I would not be a part of that mournful silence this time.
Kills With An Atl-atl, for all he was blinded in one eye by an orc and the other by a Human Paladin, walked briskly away from the village carrying his share of the camp gear we would use, an axe tucked into his belt, a quiver of arrows and his atl-atl slung over his backpack, and using a spear as a cane to feel his way. It made me proud of him.
Makes Fire In Rain used a cane, too, for her bad knees. She kept pace with Kills, leading the way to the old decoy camp with Leaves No Trace. All three were former Guardians of the Chest, retired for their injuries, lauded for their deeds. Together, they had the experience and knowledge to defeat Gamers without resorting to the strength and agility from which age had deprived them. Assuming, of course, that the fresh young Guardians listened to them.
The young ones all bunched up in a group behind Kills, some five hundred strong. More than half of them would die before we reached the decoy campgrounds – what the Gamers called our “warcamp”. Right now, this was all play to them, sneaking out of the village under the red glow of the moon. They were fresh and eager. And so very young.
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phoenix_singing has some exciting new job prospects. Everyone seems healthy.
Ebonypearl 