#but i am very tired | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

eriquin · 8 months

Text

The Prophetic D&D Game, part 10

Fuck it. I just finished this chapter. I'm posting more parts of it.

(master post)

Part 10

“Okay, so you’re bluffing your way past the doctors. How, exactly?” he asked.

Grant explained his plan to use Maya’s illusions to make them look like staff members. She could handle the disguises and Natalia’s background as a former cleric would mean she could do some healing if they needed to really sell it. They’d be able to infiltrate the place and figure out where to find Sir Englund. Then they just had to arrange for enough time to talk to him about the murders and get away. “Easy, right?” Gareth said.

Eddie smirked. “Better get your dice ready.”

They rolled very well for the initial infiltration, but then they discovered that their target was in a high security wing. It slowed them down a bit, as he increased the difficulty of their checks. They were near the final cell block, where they knew Sir Englund was kept, but they had a problem.

“There are two guards here at all times,” Eddie said. “You can spend some time watching them and figure out their schedule, but there aren’t any other ways to get in. Do you have any other ideas?”

Grant and Gareth looked at each other and nodded. “We’ll observe for a little bit. How often are the guards checked?”

Eddie rolled some dice, though it didn’t have any impact on his answer. “Frequently. Looks like there are people by to look in on the guards very often. Lots of changes and activity nearby. Someone will definitely notice if they go missing.”

Gareth frowned. “Maybe it’ll be less busy at night?” he wondered, more to Grant than to Eddie.

Grant shook his head. “We don’t have time to wait. We’ve got a cursed party member, remember?”

“Okay so... If we can get rid of the real guards, I could make the illusion of two guards outside the hall, but I’d have to drop the illusion on us to do it.” Gareth shrugged and glanced at Eddie to confirm this was right. He nodded.

“Well, we don’t need the disguises inside the hallway,” Grant said. “It doesn’t matter if the prisoners—I mean, patients—see us.”

“There might be another guard inside,” Gareth said.

“We’d have to take care of him anyway in order to talk to Sir Englund. Yeah, here’s the new plan...”

With a little bit of luck, they managed to knock out the two guards and put illusions of them in their place. There was a guard inside the hallway, so they had a quick fight with him as well. His players rolled well, while Eddie rolled poorly. It was a little disappointing, but it moved the story forward.

“Okay, so you have some time to chat with Sir Englund,” Eddie said. “Think up what you’re going to say. I’m going to go see if the other group is doing anything.”

He already had Englund’s backstory written up in parts in his bag. He’d been keeping it there since the last time they played, and it had that wrinkled and worn look of all the other papers that took up long term residence in his backpack. At least he hadn’t spilled anything on it. He pulled it free while Dustin and Lucas told him that Sadie was going around, trying to talk to all the people she was closest to and make amends.

“Is Caleb on that list?” Jeff asked. “Are they going to reconcile?”

Lucas grimaced. “I don’t know if I want to role play that with you,” he said.

Jeff laughed heartily. “Don’t worry. I don’t think my dude would let her get all mushy on him, anyway. He wouldn’t let her make any last requests, just keep promising that they’ll figure it all out when the fight is over.”

“What’s the deal with her curse, anyway?” Dustin asked. “Did we figure out what’s causing some people to get cursed and not others?”

“I think that’s what Grant and Gareth are finding out,” Jeff said. “What do you guys think? Got any theories?”

Lucas kept his lip buttoned up, and Dustin didn’t have anything to add. But they were both going through Sadie’s backstory for more people that she could talk to. They were wondering if one of them might be able to help, or have some ideas about why she was cursed.

“You going to tell them about the demonic influence that once plagued the town?” Eddie asked with a grin. “Not worried someone will find out that you’re breaking your vow of secrecy?”

The three boys groaned. “You’re railroading them,” Jeff said.

“I’m just reminding them of their responsibilities,” Eddie said, trying to sound innocent.

“The only people that Sadie knows who know anything about the demon are already in the party,” he said. “Or they’re dead.”

“Wait, who does she know who’s dead?” Dustin asked.

“That thing with the pod people? The first one converted was her cousin.”

Eddie furrowed his brow. “Wait, her cousin? Did I write that?” He held his hand out for the sheet and Lucas handed it over. It definitely said cousin, with some details on how she’d watched him perish in the last demonic invasion. He scratched his head.

“Is that wrong?” Lucas asked. He sounded worried.

“No,” Eddie said, making a snap decision. “I remembered it as being a closer relative, but cousin is fine.”

Lucas glanced at Dustin, who looked suspicious. “Closer, how?” Dustin asked. “Like, immediate family?”

Eddie shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Are you doing anything with it, or are we moving on?”

“I mean, we could try to speak with the dead,” Jeff said. “If you think her cousin could give us info on if the demon’s still alive, or up to something.”

Jeff and Dustin started to argue, with Dustin saying that they needed a cleric for that, and Jeff pointing out that they could just get a scroll and have their bard or paladin wing it. Or they could wait until Natalia returned and have her cast it.

“We don’t know how long they’ll take,” Lucas said. “Sadie’s cursed and wants to act now. Let’s get to it.”

“Okay, so we’re winging it,” Jeff said. “We’ll get a scroll and go to the graveyard to see if Sadie can speak with her cousin’s ghost.”

Eddie gave them some guidelines on how to pick an appropriate level scroll and let them argue about who would cast it. He reminded them that they had a paladin to work with. Jeff waved him off and told him to go work with the other half of the team, and that they would figure it out.

Across the room, Grant and Gareth had come up with a list of questions for Sir Englund. He took on the old madman’s personality to talk them through a terrible story. He told them of his happy family and young children, and how one day they had been attacked in their home. He told of his wife being cursed, and trying to escape with his children, but being cursed himself before he could.

“What was it like?” Grant asked.

“More importantly, how did he escape it?” Gareth asked.

“From his place in the shadows of his cell, he laughs,” Eddie says. He adopted the old man’s voice again. “‘I was taken to my darkest memories, forced to relive the worst days of the war. It was as if one minute, I was in my home, and the next, I was walking through the burnt out shell of an enemy village. Everything was completely real. You could smell the burning flesh of our enemies. My men were all around me, looking for stragglers in the ruins. We went into the ruins of a farmhouse and saw them... The bodies all huddled together. But they weren’t knights in armor sent out to fight us. They were a farmer and his wife, trying to protect their children. And the next house was just the same, and the one after that...’”

“Jesus Christ,” Gareth muttered. Grant crossed his arms and nodded for Eddie to go on.

Eddie switched back to his regular voice. “Then, just as he was about to give in to the despair of being trapped forever in his worst days, he heard an angel singing to him. It pulled him back from the brink, and he awoke from his cursed state, unharmed. But he found that while he had been frozen, the demon had killed his two children. And so he went mad.”

Grant was deep in thought, muttering something about ‘divine intervention’, but Gareth was frowning. “I don’t know, man. He doesn’t sound all that mad.”

“Do you say this?” Eddie asked.

Gareth shook his head. “No. No, I do not,” he said.

“Good, because then he starts talking about how he tried to join his children,” Eddie said. “He steps out into the light, saying ‘but they stopped me!’ and you can see that his eyes are nothing but scars.” Eddie made the motion of stabbing his own eyes out.

Gareth flinched away. “Gah, quit it,” he said. “Enough. Christ. I’m gonna have nightmares.”

Eddie grinned and turned back to Grant. “You hear a commotion in the distance. Do you want to keep questioning him, or make a break for it?”

“We should go,” Grant said. “I think that’s all we’re going to get out of him.”

“Agreed,” said Gareth.

“Better start rolling well to escape, then,” Eddie said.

The two boys had a narrow escape from the asylum, and started trying to figure out how to get back to the rest of the group.

Tagging: @weirdandabsurd42, @10moonymhrivertam

#the prophetic d&d game #my writing #hellfire club #stranger things #i wrote so much of this today #i'm trying to break it up into consumable bites for tumblr #but i am very tired #it is unedited #no beta we die like bob

7 notes · View notes