Collide Gamer

Lu Zhi was already missing her ability to create jade at will. It was just such a flashy, convenient little thing to have. Now, she held the ability to go into frothing rages and tear people apart. Which, when John had mentioned there would be shenanigans afoot, had been exactly what she had bargained for. The shortstackening, she could have done without. ‘Eh, you win some, you lose some,’ she thought.

This would be a nice exercise in letting loose her inner warlord. Unlike Vinh, the imperial tomboy knew when to restrain that urge.

The sound of pages rustling travelled up from the ground. “…Alright, got my notes in order,” Gnome said. “Now… your group of five has been assembled by necessity. By edict of church, adventurer’s guild, and godly whispers, you were sent as one. During your travels to this village, called Lakeside, you talked little. What you did learn about each other is that you could trust one another not to shiv you in your sleep.

“Your mission here is a supposedly simple investigation. The yield of the fields and the fisheries of Lakeside has been too good for too long and has only been rising in recent years. This was deliberately overlooked for a long time, as there were no strange occurrences within or around the villages. Well, recently the villages have reported that they have been feeling hungry, unnaturally hungry, and so requested the investigation themselves.

“You may now begin.”

‘Alright, get in character,’ Lu Zhi thought.

Terzia squatted down, her bestial instincts guiding her to stay close to the ground. Her home mountains had many aerial predators that would pick up a little kobold for a snack. Even if she was fully grown now and had achieved, what her dragon lord called, the 5th circle of power, she still maintained some old habits.

‘Plus the view from down here is just fantastic,’ the thought of the player overpowered the character instantly. She knew exactly why John preferred ass over tits. There was Sylph’s rear, with bonus cushion today, Salamander’s plump derriere that was just… wow in levels of size, Fianna’s bubble butt that was not far behind, and John’s pleasantly firm cheeks. The leather really complimented those nicely. He could stand to present that bit of his figure more, his effort to have Physical Stats really showed.

Terzia’s tail smacked the ground as she evaluated who of these comrades of hers she could trust. The Paladin and the Warlock were both suspect, so it was best to stick with the normal adventurers. As the others talked, the kobold shimmied closer to those she deemed normal.

“Honoured comrades,” Soggo declared, his voice reverberating with the sanctimonious spirit of the zealous. “We have finally arrived at village Lakeside. If you shall follow me, I am certain we can have all of this unravelled before nightfall!”

“Follow… you?” Spethica chuckled weakly, then coughed, as if even that bit of mirth was too much on her undead body. “I’m chosen of the Lady of Graves… I’m good.”

“Your goodness remains to be proven and it is best proven by marching in lockstep with my divinely attuned decrees!”

“Whatever…”

“No, but seriously,” John spoke without the cadence of his character. “Just to keep this show smooth, who should be the face of the party?”

“Who has the highest Charisma?” Fianna asked.

“Definitely not me,” Lu Zhi stated, then growled in character. “Only thing I’m halfway decent at is intimidation.”

“I have a Charisma of 16,” John boasted.

“18! I have 18!” Sylph blabbered.

“As do I,” Salamander said. “Didn’t put any points into the talky fucking skills though.”

“I did! I did! Yes, Sir, madams, I did put all the points in all the talky and thievy stuff!”

“…So… Sylph will be our… primary… talker?” Fianna said very slowly.

The party looked around, then at the bouncing halfling. There was no good argument against it, not in a game where stats dictated so much. Every point was worth 5%, which was quite a lot.

“Oh… goodie…” the voice of the world muttered.

Lu Zhi nearly burst out laughing. She managed to hold back the impulse, then half-crawled, half-walked within the party. “Madame Pithy, you are most nimble of tongue, I request that you do the talking,” Soggo declared as they walked.

“Can do, I am very talky, so I can do the walkie and the talkie, but I warn you that I am not that good at the stabby – well, I am good, I got my diploma, buuuut it’s not where I put the hours of my day, if you catch my drift?” Pithy babbled.

“Your drift is… caught,” Spethica groaned. “Who named you?”

“Myself! Why? Why the question? Why this random question?”

“…Irony…” Spethica groaned.

They stepped into the bounds of the village proper. Around them were flabby people, so flabby the predatory birds of the mountains would have likely spared them. There was a good meal and then there was inviting heart disease.

Pithy did not lose a second to begin her verbal assault. “Hello, person of this village, we are investigators sent to investigate that which is worthy of investigation, which, according to the request, is you all being fat. As my own eyes can perceive, you are indeed very, very fat. When did this rotundness come about?”

The addressed person turned towards her with a blank expression. “…Roll Diplomacy for your first impression, please,” Gnome requested.

A spectral die the size of an orange dropped out of the air in front of Pithy. Bouncing, clacking, rolling, it filled the air with the delectable sound of (mis)fortune in motion. Then, it stopped. The number atop floated upwards and a modifier was added. “12 + 8 – not so natural 20!” Sylph chirped.

“I see…” Gnome hummed.

The expression on the man shifted to a puzzled smile. “Glad that we have you here?” he said, uncertainly. “We all put on a little weight recently. We’ve been living well for a while, but the hunger emerged… I want to say it started two months ago?”

“I see, I see, I hear, I hear.” Pithy rubbed her chin. Her brunette hair dangled one way then the other. “Aaaaanything interesting that happened around that time?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“Can I roll to Sense Motive or otherwise see through a lie?” John asked.

“Sure, give me that Sense Motive roll.”

Another pleasant click-clack of the math rock later, the Gamer announced, “17.”

“You are certain he is telling the truth.”

“Alright then… guess we’ll continue to look around?” John’s suggestion was heeded.

The village was very little of an actual village. Lu Zhi had been to parts of her empire where the people refused to adopt modern technology and busied themselves with the carving and whittling of their fenceposts. Such villages were often small, but not this small. More than the absence of houses, the absence of people stood out. Those that were present were rarely working. Feasting or standing around idly were the common occupations.

Lu Zhi zoned out a bit. Soggo and Pithy were doing most of the talking, with Spethica chiming in every now and again. ‘Maybe picking a combat class wasn’t the wisest idea for a Live-Action Pen and Paper Roleplaying Game,’ she considered. ‘Ah well, might as well kill a bit of time.’ “Yo, Fianna?”

“Yes?” the white-haired woman asked. She was the least visually changed of all of them.

“I do have a question – do you have any innate feelings towards me?”

For a moment, the eyes of the human Fighter reverted to those of the White Tiger’s Cardinal Chosen, showing the slit pupils. She blinked and the sign was gone. “I take it my patron often comes with such?”

“Actually not, no,” Lu Zhi answered. “The White Tiger blesses whoever it thinks is best equipped to deal with the situation that caused the Cardinal Beasts to be invoked. This is the first time that the power chose a foreigner, but it is also the first time that the power was invoked to the benefit of a foreigner.”

Fianna absorbed the information. The shifting of her features was interesting to follow. What she displayed on her face was what she wanted to show. Lu Zhi knew the effort from people that aimed to manipulate her. This was different. The white-haired woman was weighing what emotions she considered appropriate.

“I believe you are to be respected. I know you did not invoke the ritual for my benefit, but you have my gratitude anyway. As far as I am concerned, Heavenly Jade Empress, those feelings are my own.” Fianna looked to the man of their shared affection. “Were I not following him, I would pledge my loyalty to you instead.”

“The two are far from mutually exclusive,” Lu Zhi pointed out. “We will be a pair of regents, before long.”

“Would it be a first in history to have a Cardinal Chosen a willing vassal to the holder of the Mandate?”

“Far from it, the Black Turtle is always loyal.”

“Then… would it be a first to have all of them be in the same harem, united in one family?”

Lu Zhi raised an eyebrow. “Where is that idea coming from?”

“Idle thoughts and respect to you, Heavenly Jade Empress. You strike me as the kind of woman who likes to write history.”

A slow grin spread on the imperial tomboy’s face. “Do I, now?” she asked, mischievously.

“The answer is to be found in the water!” Soggo’s confident declaration ended their idle talk.

Snapping back into character, Terzia growled, “The shit do you mean?”

“The foolish slime… is… urgh, explaining is such a bother… Pithy?” Spethica handed the duty off to the halfling.

“After great deliberation and great questioning and greater consideration and in review of all available evidence, Soggo has decided that the answer to our conundrum is found in the big lake, the big, big lake!” babbled the Thief.

“What is that evidence?” Anne asked.

“Point one, water is holy and thus anything that happens in its presence happens by virtue of the water,” the Paladin declared. “Secondly, it is the grain and the fish that are abundant here, one who lives in and the other who draws nourishment from the water. Thirdly, a most foul storm came through here recently, which must have disturbed the blessings on these waters.”

“Checks out,” Terzia said.

“Uh… uhm… o-okay? So you’re heading to the water?” Gnome stammered.

“Yes!” Soggo declared confidently.

An hour later, they had found nothing. They had walked the shore, finding nothing. They had inspected the quality of the water, finding nothing. They had swam around, scanning the lake bed, finding nothing. They had even done a ritual to rouse the bones of some fish. It had answered every question with, ‘Blub’.

A celestial sigh gently vibrated the earth. “Can all of you roll for intuition?” the GM requested.

“Nat 1 – I remain convinced it’s the lake,” John said.

“9 total,” Salamander said.

“10,” Fianna reported her result.

“7,” Lu Zhi sighed, after the click-clack math rock came to stop.

“14 total,” Sylph said. “Wait, wait, wait! Luck of the Halfling! Uhhhhhh, Natural 20, let’s go!”

“Thank Mother Earth.” Gnome’s relief was palpable. The blades of grass got a bit straighter and the sun a little brighter. “Alright, you heard that there was a foul storm recently, which disturbed the waters… but what else did it do?”

“There was a lightning strike?” Soggo suggested.

“Yes… and where would lightning strike in this village?”

Everyone’s eyes wandered to the highest spot in the village – the belltower of the church. “…I genuinely thought visiting the church would be too obvious,” John defended himself from the accusatory stares of the followers.

“You went with the lake instead of the obvious?” Gnome asked, exasperated.

Lu Zhi cackled, it was a rare treat to hear the highly agreeable cuddle rock raise her voice like that.

“I thought you put a big lake here for a reason!”

“It’s scenery!” Gnome audible held back the urge to shout more. “That’s fine… that’s fine… you just… investigated thoroughly… so you go to the church now?”

“That we do,” John said.

“You don’t decide that, I’m the leader now!” Salamander declared, then, after giggling for a bit, continued in character, “Now that the zealot had his fun playing with water… let’s head to the centre of the faith.”

Soggo grumbled something under his breath, but followed the very life-affirming hips of the undead to the church. It was an alight structure. As far as Lu Zhi was concerned, European fantasy lacked colours. They liked stone and gold, maybe fresco paintings, and that was about it in most cases. When they wanted to get fancy, they used marble and Roman designs, white concrete and mosaics.

They could use a whole lot more red and green in their life. Pillars and glass framed in knotted patterns. ‘Nothing beats Chinese architecture,’ the Heavenly Jade Empress thought.

‘Indeed,’ Tianlong agreed. The God of Tradition, her eternal companion, slunk back to the back of her mind after delivering the singular word. It preferred not to speak much, so even that weighing in was a surprise.

They entered the church and found it reeking with the particularly nasty mix of odours that accompanied the morbidly obese. The source of it came from a side chamber, Terzia’s nose told her. “I want to do a Stealth check and see if I can sneak up on the origin of the scent,” she said.

“You do that,” Gnome agreed.

The die spawned and fell. It rolled and rolled, ultimately landing on a 7. Combined with her modifier of 8, she came out at a 15.

“Good enough,” the GM decided.

Terzia snuck on over, following the scent. Noises soon joined the trail, choking, sobbing and gagging. She only had to make it through two doors to see the priest of the church stuffing a whole, unplucked chicken down his throat. His mouth and gullet were unnaturally extended. Tears fell from his eyes. After she snuck back, the kobold reported, “Pretty sure he has the hunger the locals talk about times 20.”

“Or he is the source of this vile affliction,” Soggo declared.

“Urgh… I hate suggesting this… but let’s go up the stairs first… maybe there’s clues where the lightning struck?”

A quick round of voting had them do exactly that. Up the narrow, steep staircase of the medieval European tower they climbed. On the top, they all rolled for perception. Between all of them, they had enough attempts to get it.

“The damage from the lightning strike was fixed, for the most part. You, Spethica, notice a burned out rune beneath the bell. Once you spot it, you find other pieces of linework. The more you inspect it, the odder you find it. There is no rhyme or reason to what you see, it seems as if someone, by accident, had built a network of holy symbols, a network that is now disrupted. It continues down the tower.”

“So much reading… and all I want to do is sleep… instead I have to carry all of you on my bowed back…” Spethica complained. “The Lady of Graves has no chill.”

“Wouldn’t she usually be around room temperature?” Pithy asked. “Being, you know, a corpse and all that?”

“…Yes… also, sacrilege…” Spethica’s hand traced over another rune. “This binding goes deeper still. Follow me.” A staircase delivered them beneath the church. They passed by shelves of communion wine and finally made it to a part of the cellar where the very air reeked of hunger. It was a scent that involuntarily made Terzia’s mouth water. “I see now… someone, generations ago, must have made a pact with a demon of gluttony for good harvests… and by pure accident, the townsfolk invested the money from those harvests in a measure that contained the collection of payment.”

“And ish thaht noht unfair?!”

The priest wobbled into the room, biting chunks out of a whole cow leg, including the bone. As he walked, the obese priest’s skin turned red, his nose deformed to that of a pig, and curled horns sprouted from his greasy hair.

“Ahm I not owed a little… satisfaction?” the demon-possessed priest gargled. “I’ve beehn contained shoooo loooooong.”

“The only thing you are owed is the purifying bite of my blade, demon!” Soggo declared.

“Well, that’s clear enough. Roll Initiative.”

The two words triggered multiple changes. The land around them shifted. Barrels and shelves moved atop ground that stretched and contracted, all to accommodate the grid that came to fill the battlefield. Each member of the party was placed on their own spot, the tile they occupied visibly outlined in green. Unoccupied squares became highlighted by a faint white light, while the surrounding of the boss, a 2x2 area, was marked in red. Follow current novels on novel※fire.net

Several barrels in the room shattered, the wood scattering harmlessly. Imps that had rested inside revealed themselves, rubbing their bloated bellies and slobbering all over their stunted bodies.

‘Finally,’ Lu Zhi thought. Her character’s name was first on the initiative. “I rage!” she declared.

The frothing rage came over her in a mixture of perfect clarity and absolute craving for violence. It was like having an out of body experience, part of her mind remaining Lu Zhi, while the rest lost itself in the moment of being the Berserker. With a reverberating war cry, she charged across the room. The reasonable remnant of her delighted in the die roll. The rest delighted in tearing the nearest imp apart.

The boss was next in the initiative. A bolt of hellish fire cut across the distance between him and Terzia. This reality’s rules prevented her from even attempting the dodge. She was struck in the chest and her Hit Points went down immensely.

“Oh shit,” Soggo declared. “Am I the only healer?”

“Yup,” Anne answered.

“Let’s hope she makes it until my turn then.”

The two remaining imps had their turns immediately after. One was too close to take advantage of the charging rules and thus only stepped next to her. The second now could close the distance and strike with a flanking bonus.

And rolled a Nat 1.

“Do I get a counterattack or something?” Lu Zhi asked.

“Uhh… rules as written, no… but I’ll allow it.”

Terzia side-stepped the snapping of the crooked, yellow teeth. Her knee shot up, her elbow down, and the neck of the imp was crushed in-between. Laughing, the Berserker threw the corpse back into its square. “YOU’RE NOTHING! NOTHING!”

“…Note to self, give adds more HP…” the ground mumbled.

“Urgh, first I have to find this and now I have to cleanse it,” Spethica groaned, launching some kind of spell of her own. Two slicing gusts of wind went across the chamber, one injuring the imp, the other missing.

“I got it!” Pithy declared and charged at the injured enemy. Her daggers stabbed into the air. “I don’t got it.”

“Full Round Action, Rapid Fire,” Fianna announced. Her character unloaded four arrows into the battlefield. One struck the imp, killing it, the other three riddled the hide of the priest.

“Should we try to save him?” John asked.

“You can attempt it,” Gnome responded.

“Alright… Lulu, you fine over there?”

“Eh, even if I go down, you can scratch me off the floor.”

“Alright then…” Soggo turned around and stepped up to where the scent of hunger was the thickest. He pulled a flask of holy water from his inventory. “The power of Lady Aqua compels you, demon! Leave these blessed lands!”

“Alright… roll… uhhh… Knowledge Religion to see if you know the correct ritual.”

“Aha! I have Assurance on that! I will be taking that 18 to go, please.”

“OOOOOOOOOH! IT BURNSSSHHHH! STOHP THAAAAAAAHT!” the demon of gluttony lamented. The red crawl over its skin diminished.

“Spethica, help me with this ritual! Together, our prayers can banish this abominatio-“

“Nat 20.”

Everyone went silent when Lu Zhi announced her attack roll. The Heavenly Jade Empress shuffled through her mentalized notes.

“And I have a 4x modifier on my Crits… aaaaaaaand that’s max damage. With both claws. I have Raking.”

“How?” John asked. “I am pretty sure that Feat is for Animal Companions, not you?”

“I greenlit it, it sounded cool,” Gnome said. They could hear her scratch the back of her head. “And, uh, the exorcism is qualified as spirit damage so… uh, yeah, you… ehem, let me just show you.”

Terzia leapt across the distance. Her world was red, her eyes filled with the rushing of blood. The screams of her allies to spare the priest did not reach her. She was a murder machine and the enemy was in front of her. Her claws sliced across the chest of the bloated priest, leaving a cross-shaped mark on the possessed priest’s front.

Gracefully, brutally, she landed against the bloated hide of the man, then kicked herself backwards. That last impact was too much. Muscle, fat, and skin all tore, the enormous amount of food the priest had been stuffed with bursting his organs, which spilled out over the floor in a disgusting, red slime.

“Did you have to do that?” Fianna asked.

“Literally yes, it’s written in the rules: I can’t stop raging unless every enemy is dead or otherwise taken care of.”

“Oh.”

“Yup, yup… uh, so… you have killed the priest. Innocent blood on Terzia’s hands, you finish the ritual. What do you tell the locals?”

“Do I have an oath against lying?” John asked.

“No.”

“Then we swindle the hell out of them and tell them the priest was too far gone.”

“Alright, Pithy doesn’t even have to roll for that.”

“I am a great liar!” the Thief declared.

“Indeed. And so your adventure in Lakeside ends, the curse taken care of. The harvests of the land return to normal, drying up the riches, but leaving behind an all around healthier and happier population. The end of the oneshot… I really need to give my enemies more HP.”

Lu Zhi could only imagine that GMing was difficult.