The Dusty Tome of D&D Stories: Chapter Nine

J is for... JAR OF FINGERNAILS

The dark times loomed close, my friends. The end of our golden age of gaming was almost at hand. Soon, my players would go to college and I would discover alcohol, and through alcohol I would obtain just enough courage to interact with real life females.

I would eventually even get drunk enough to somehow secure a girlfriend! She was not into D&D at all. No, she was a "normal" person. As far as I could tell, her only hobby was... me.

I knew the relationship was in trouble after we had just seen a Star Trek movie. We were walking in the parking lot towards the car, and I asked her what she thought of this Star Trek movie.

She said, "It was OK, but where was Dark Vader?"

Dark...! Vader!  

DARK VADER?!

I almost collapsed right there on the pavement. My dorkish impulses were on overload. I had multiple rants trying to explode out of me at the exact same time. I eventually lectured her on both the name of the sith lord as well as the differences between the two franchises. I was a geek utterly mortified.

Yes, they were grim times indeed. But before the epoch ruled by the villainous Dark Vader, there is a last gasp of tales from a simpler time:

The Female Player

Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say

A new player joined our ranks. She was the smartest person in our school, she rode horses, she was pretty, she was a... SHE.

I have always been obsessed with writing down or archiving D&D games so stuff doesn't get forgotten. I have an audio recording of one of our game sessions. This two-hour recording consists almost entirely of four guys desperately trying to impress the female player through any means necessary.

I ran a terrible game which was a sequel to my "predator" campaign. One male player's knight character was always hitting on the female's samurai character. She didn't like it. She quietly informed me that if he ever fell unconscious, she was going to slit his throat. In our games, in that situation there is no roll. You're just dead. It was a house rule that was well-established and often used.

Well, she went with him to a ship inquiring about a serial killer who kept a jar of his victims' fingernails (I told you this campaign was terrible). An old man launched into a nonsensical story about wearing an onion on the belt which was ripped off from The Simpsons. I spent a number of years of my life committing entire episodes of The Simpsons and Seinfeld to memory.

The knight's player said "I fall asleep". The samurai's eyes went wide.

I carefully asked, "Wait, are you pretending to fall asleep, or is your character actually asleep?"

"I am actually asleep, snoring. This guy is so boring."

The samurai slit his throat right there. He died. The knight's player was devastated. He loved this character. This character contained the spirit of a character from a previous campaign, a very evil and powerful soul.

She knew this, so she sold his soul to this cult that was feeding souls to their dark god. He was beside himself. Not only had she killed him - now he couldn't be raised! He was gone forever.

She ended up in jail, and another player teleported into her cell and killed her as revenge. Dirty deeds!

The Dead God

I ran this game just before I hooked up with Dark Vader. There were two players: The Great DM and Some Guy He Knew.

I ran a neat little campaign where the heroes had to protect the last believer in a dwarf god. If this last follower died, then there would be nobody left to believe in the dwarf god and thus the dwarf god would die.

Some Guy played a charlatan thief. He was low level, but would try some pretty brazen things. He tried to take over the local assassin's guild when he was 3rd level! He ended up being hung from a flagpole by his underwear or something.

Some Guy didn't like this dwarf follower NPC. Other enemy gods were sending mortal agents to kill him and wow that was annoying! Our heroes were trying to figure out a safe place to bring the dwarf.

They were leaving a dungeon with the dwarf, climbing a tall ladder. Some Guy got into an argument with the dwarf. The dwarf didn't like charlatans and was blunt with him, as dwarves sometimes are. And then Some Guy said: "I push him off the ladder".

The dwarf follower fell to his death. And then the god of the dwarves died. The world itself shook, reeling from the implications. The good gods wept, and it rained for 30 days.

All because of Some Guy.

Fun Fact: The image of the giant dwarf I use as my logo for this blog is an art commission of the god of the dwarves' dead body floating in the astral sea. There's a town built on it, called Stone's Rest. The dwarves, ashamed at having turned their backs on him, now watch over his body amidst the roiling purple mists in the astral sea.