>”Welcome traveler. Please, tell me who you are.”<
Was the first thing she heard. She blinked several times, squinting, as the light from the bright room was overwhelming. “What…?” her voice called out, echoing in the vast space.
>”Welcome traveler. Please tell me who you are.”<
The soft yet robotic disembodied voice said again.
“Who… am I…?” She looked down at her hands seeing tan skin and painted nails, a watch on her left hand, and… something in her right. She turned over her fisted hand and opened it. A small white and metal die with 20 faces was in her hand. Why was it familiar? She turned it over in her fingers bringing it close to her face.
It looked old, well worn and well used, having scuff and marks on its surface. She tilted it again and saw a flash of her reflection.
Oh shit.
Bailey remembered how she got here.
Fucking Dylan.
-----
“-And don't message me again on Mycord!” Bailey huffed out as she left the game store, her arms full of her TTRPG gear, trying to hold them all so they didn't fall into the puddles of the parking lot.
She trudged her way through the lot, no longer caring that she was getting soaked in the rain. Thunder rolled above her as if mirroring her own internal anger. Bailey fished for her keys in her purse, cursing as she fumbled them. They slipped from her hands and with a *plonk*, fell through the grate of a storm drain.
“Oh come the fuck on, really!?” she lamented. In her frustration more of her gear fell from her arms. “ALRIGHT YEAH SURE! WHY NOT!?”
Bailey resisted the urge to kick the hell out of the nearest object, running her hand down her face. She took in a breath, and tried to calm herself from being overwhelmed.
“You're fine. Everything is fine. You're just wet, it's just water….” she told herself.
She looked at her stuff that was being ruined and scattered by the wind and rain, and felt a deep sadness. She spent so much time getting this campaign ready, and her players turned out to be the world's most egregious murder hobos.
Kevin only wanted to roll Charm on every female NPC they encountered, Sarah kept killing first and asking questions never, and Dylan, FUCKING DYLAN, was the worst of them. Dylan had only been playing Monsters and Labyrinths for about 4 months, and that apparently made him an ‘expert’. An expert who min-maxed a broken character he lifted from the M&L Boarddit subboard that didn't fit the parameters of the campaign.
Dylan also found that Bailey didn't know how the rules of M&L worked, even though she had been playing and Game Mastering for almost a decade.
”What? A Water Elemental should take double damage from a lightning spell!” Dylan argued.
“No, it doesn't. It has no weakness to lightning damage,” Bailey replied exasperated.
“It should! It's water!”
“Just because water in the real world conducts electricity, doesn't equate to doing damage in game.”
“Come on! That's stupid and you know it.”
“No it's not. And it's in the rule book, see?” She showed him the stat block for the Water Elemental.
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“You let Sarah's Catfolk character have night vision! The rule book doesn't have that as a racial feature!” Dylan threw back.
“Catfolk not having night vision is the stupidest official ruling, everyone overwrites that one, Dylan!”
Ugh… he was a headache. And that wasn't even the worst of it.
Kevin and Sarah eventually dropped out of the game last minute tonight leaving just Bailey and Dylan. They both got into a fight over the logistics of a ‘peasant railgun’ Dylan wanted to do that he got off the internet. The last straw for her that night had been when Dylan said she was a ‘stick in the mud rules later who never let them do the rule of cool,’.
Bailey and Dylan threw many choice words back and forth at each other until the owner of the game store told them to stop or be banned. And now, Bailey was drenched like a pathetic cat in the parking lot, keys in a storm drain.
Fucking Dylan.
Bailey, having no shame at this point, got down on her hands and knees at the drain. The rain water was flowing too fast for her to get a good look at her keys, or any of her other items that fell down. She squinted and moved her head and swore She saw a glint of something metal.
“Aha! There you are!”
She gripped the slats of the drain and with a lot of effort, lifted the metal up and onto the asphalt of the parking lot dropping the heavy thing with a loud *clang*.
“Bailey? What the hell are you doing?” the voice of Dylan called from the door of the game shop.
She rolled her eyes and sighed deeply.
“Talking to a Ninja Turtle.” she deadpanned, the last thing she wanted to do right now was talk to Dylan while wet, frustrated, and over stimulated.
“You don't have to be so fresh all the time,” Dylan scoffed. He looked up at the rain and back at Bailey seemingly making a decision in his mind before jogging over.
“God, Dylan can't you see I'm not in the fucking mood right now?”
“I see you having a breakdown in the parking lot and tampering with city property.”
“Ugh, so what, you're gonna report me to the city water commission because I'm trying to get my keys?”
“You dropped your keys?”
“Yes! I dropped my keys, then I drop my stuff, and now I'm soaked, knee deep in a puddle with my hand down a storm drain, all while it's raining and my hair is wet and my clothes are wet, and I can't see in this rain, and-”
“Whoa! Calm down dude,” Dylan interrupted her mini rambling breakdown.
“I am calm!” She yelled.
“Right.”
“Oh fuck off! I have this handled,” she growled out as she went back to fishing her arm around in the run-off.
“You're an idiot, do you know how many diseases you're gonna get from that water?”
“Oh my god, I don't care, I need my car keys!”
“Why not just call the fire department?”
“For this?”
“I'm trying to help!”
“I didn't ask for it!” Bailey said, whipping her head around and up to look at Dylan, this was a mistake. It threw her off balance, and she slipped falling down into the storm drain with a short scream.
She landed on her ass hard in the rushing water, the strength of it pushing against her trying to take her down stream.
“Bailey!” Dylan yelled from the surface level and he looked down.
Bailey groaned, her back and ass sore from the drop. It wasn't too far of a fall, if she could stand up, she could pull herself out. She moved to stand up but a sharp pain running up her back stopped her in her tacks, “Ow, ow, ow…. Sssshit.”
“Here, grab my hand, I'll pull you back up!” Dylan reached his hand down into the storm drain. The thunder storm was raging harder, and the water began to rise a little more.
Bailey sighed and swallowed her pride a little and lifted her hand up to grab Dylan’s when she spotted that metal glint again in the water next to her. Her keys! She retracted the hand and reached for the object.
“Bailey!? Come on! This storm is getting worse-” he said reaching in farther, his hand just touching her upper arm. And then it happened.
Bailey felt all of the hair on her body raise and tingle with static, and in a bright hot flash the world around her exploded.
-----
Bailey let out a frustrated yell into the bright void, the sound echoing and bouncing back at her.
“If Dylan didn't grab me, he'd be the only one fried by that lightning! Gaaaah!”
She dramatically flopped herself on her back in the void, staring up at the nothing above her. What was this place? Heaven? No, no angels and gold gates. Too bright to be hell either.
Maybe the lightning didn't kill her? It did strike Dylan first and then her, so maybe she got lucky and is just in a coma. Yeah. A coma, that would explain it.
She sat back up, her legs crossed as she looked around the void. “Pretty boring coma dream… aren't I supposed to be seeing an alternate version of my life or something? Like what if I didn't become an artist and became a doctor instead but then realized that being an artist was the better option all along. You know all ‘it's a wonderful life’ style? Hello??” She called out into the void, hoping it would give her an answer.
>”Welcome traveler. Please, tell me who you are.”<
“You're no fun.”
>”Welcome traveler. Please, tell me who you are.”<
“Alright! Geez! I had no idea coma dream makers were so damn insistent…” she sighed as she rolled the D20 in her hand. “Bailey Gardiner,” she said to the disembodied voice.
A buzzer noise sounded.
>”I'm sorry, but that character has been vanquished, please make a new sheet”<
“...What?”
A floating scroll the size of a fridge materialized in front of her. Bailey blinked a few times. She'd seen this exact sheet hundreds of times before. It was a giant version of a Monsters and Labyrinths character sheet.
She looked at the sheet and then to the D20 in her hand. “Ahh… I get it. My mind is making a dream around the last thing I did. Could be worse I guess, at least this could be fun, oh! I can definitely turn this into a campaign…” she muttered to herself.
>”Please begin filling out your character sheet”<
“This coma dream is pushy.”
Bailey looked over the sheet in front of her. It was completely blank except for the pre-made information.
[Name:---]
[Race:---]
[Gender:---]
[Architype:---]
[Sub-Architype:---]
[Level: 3 ]
[Power:---]
[Physique:---]
[Finesse:---]
[Brains:---]
[Reason:---]
[Charm:---]
[Gear:---]
[Spells:---]
[Mana Points:---]
[Morality:---]
[Religion:---]
[Background:---]
[Appearance:---]
“Huh… looks like I'm starting out at Level 3. Not bad, I'm never a fan of starting my campaigns at Level 1,” She said as she looked it over. Then Bailey had a realization. She had been a ‘Forever GM’ for years, always hosting and running games. This would be the first time in years she'd get to be a player, albeit in a weird coma dream.
She smirked to herself, “If I'm going to get to play, I'm gonna make something fun.”
