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“No, no, I won’t allow it! You can’t all be paladins! That’s boring!”
“There’s nothing boring about hitting things with a big axe!”
“I, personally, prefer the implications of exploring the holy warrior trope outside of the confines of real-world history.”
“Okay, okay, enough guys. If Lily says we can’t all be paladins, we can’t all be paladins.”
They all rolled their eyes, but they knew Remus was right. Sirius crossed his arms and Peter sat back in his seat a little. Lily looked satisfied from behind the tri-fold blind she had set up in front of her, until Marlene shouted out, “I’ll be the paladin, then!”
More chaotic chattering roared to life for a bit, before finally Lily stood up and pounded her fist on the table like a gavel. “I am the dungeon master!” she began firmly, “And since Marlene said it first, Marlene gets to be a paladin! The rest of you, come up with something else.”
Everyone groaned and slumped in their chairs, except for Marlene, who pumped her fist in the air triumphantly. After some vigorous erasing and a few more minutes exploring the handbook, they all finally settled on what their characters would be like for their first ever Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
“I’m Kilara, a big and beautiful half-orc paladin,” declared Marlene.
Peter interjected with “Orcs aren’t beautiful,” only for Marlene to elbow him. “Ouch!” he exclaimed, rubbing his arm with a pursed lip.
Dorcas turned to Marlene and cupped her hand into a C shape, moving it in a circular motion and touching it to her chest before pushing both her palms upward and outward. Afterward she smiled brightly and rested her head on Marlene’s shoulder.
“She says that she thinks my character is great,” Marlene translated, raising a smug brow at Peter.
“You’re biased,” retorted Sirius, before quickly retreating from the fire in Dorcas’s gaze. “But you’re right, orcs and half-orcs are objectively sexy.”
“Don’t forget being a paladin too. That might be Kilara’s sexiest trait,” Remus added. They all nodded in agreement. “Anyways, my character is Thamric Goodfellow, a wise old Halfling druid.”
Sirius snorted and raised a brow at Remus. “Goodfellow? That’s lame. And why do you want to be an old man? Won’t that make it harder to survive?”
With a skeptical look, Remus responded, “Oh, and your character is better?”
“As a matter of fact, he is!” exclaimed Sirius, sliding his character sheet forward so everyone could see it. “Xarnon the Great and Powerful, a Tiefling bard, world-renowned for his excellent playing of the horn and bagpipes.” Everyone laughed. Sirius feigned offense, clutching his chest. “What? What’s so funny, you prats?” His words were harsh, but the cheeky grin on his face told a different story. “I’ll have you know, Xarnon is going to be saving all of your arses with his horny magic throughout this entire game!” Everyone laughed again.
“Well Xarnon has nothing on my character,” challenged James. He stood and pushed his glasses up his nose, dramatically clearing his throat and fluttering his paper before reading aloud, “Sharptooth, Dragonborn rogue.”
Dorcas waited for the chatter to quiet down once more before announcing her character’s name. She signed it, and Marlene spoke it. “Mine is Branwyn Ironfist. She is a Dwarf fighter.”
“Ironfist?” Remus parroted, his inflection high and skeptical. “So you guys made fun of the surname Goodfellow, but not Ironfist?”
‘What’s wrong with the name Ironfist?’ replied Dorcas, her narrowed eyes accented sharply by the wings of her eyeliner.
“Oh! Nothing! Nothing!” Remus insisted, smiling nervously. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and held his other up as a signal of surrender.
Unable to maintain her stony expression, Dorcas burst into a fit of giggling, gripping Marlene’s shoulder to steady herself. ‘I was just kidding, but man, you should’ve seen the look on your face!’
Once the uproar had subsided yet again, they all turned their attention to the final member of the group: Peter, who had gone quiet as he intently sketched his character on a blank section of the page.
“Peter?” Lily asked, “What about your character?”
He looked up from his drawing with widened eyes as he quickly recognized that they were all staring at him. “Oh! Erm, his name is Vamaris Ariessus. He’s an Elf wizard— High Elf, to be specific.”
“Aw, no fair,” James piped up, “He picked the coolest name!”
“That’s what happens when you actually spend time reading the handbook!” Lily retorted.
And finally, they could start the game.
***
“And as you round the corner… Roll for initiative.” Lily leaned in close over the table, only the top half of her face visible behind the blind she had set up although it was obvious she was smiling a wicked smile.
The group let out a collective gasp, the tense silence only broken by the clatter of dice hitting the table.
“The order, everyone?” Dungeon Master Lily prompted, and one by one they announced their turn order.
Sirius was first up, followed by Dorcas, then the enemy, then Peter, Remus, James, and lastly Marlene.
With a growl in her voice, Lily reached over the table and placed a hand-painted figurine of a werewolf on the map. “A hungry werewolf blocks your path. He is fully transformed under the full moon and is quite obviously on the hunt. You attempt to hide once you see him, but this feeble action is no match for his superior wolf senses. Xarnon, what do you do?”
“I attempt to seduce the werewolf,” Sirius replied immediately, flipping his hair over his shoulder and giving each person in the party a flirty bat of his eyelashes.
“You’d fuck a werewolf?” Remus huffed, nose crinkled in disgust.
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Ew. That’s it, you’re going to jail,” Peter interjected, chuckling.
At that Sirius gasped loudly, turning his shocked and slack-jawed expression to where Peter sat across the table. “What, no trial? Am I not entitled to a trial with a jury of my peers?”
James elbowed Sirus to dislodge him from his melodramatic display and demanded, “Just roll already, Padfoot!”
Sirius took a few more moments to squeeze as much melodrama out of the moment as possible, pouting his lips as he rubbed the spot on his arm where James’s had impacted him. “Fine, fine,” he sighed before tossing the die onto the table. Everyone leaned in to view it. They frowned, horrified, as Sirius shoved his chair backward and stood up in sheer excitement.
“Natural 20, baby!”
And they all listened, partly mortified and partly intrigued, as Lily reluctantly described an explicit scene shared between Xarnon and the werewolf.
“Haha, he’s my bitch now,” Sirius purred, a smug grin parting his lips as he sat back in his chair with arms crossed.
At this comment Lily rolled her eyes, but with a visible pause of thought on her face, she raised a conniving brow and smirked. She rolled a die, then her smile grew wider. “He is quite infatuated with you, it seems,” she began, “so much so that he is rather protective of you.”
Suddenly Dorcas waved her hands in the air and slapped them on the table to get the group’s attention. ‘Oh, no, I see where this is going!’ She interrupted, frantically grasping her die in her cupped hand and shaking it.
With a quick interaction between Marlene and Dorcas, Marlene excitedly shouted, “Branwyn is going to swing her warhammer right at that nasty dog’s face!” Dorcas dropped the die.
“Flustered and panicked by the baring of the werewolf’s teeth, Branwyn swung her hammer, but she wildly miscalculated the distance between herself and the monster, instead impacting a nearby tree. In retaliation, the werewolf lunges to bite the next nearest person. Remus, make a Constitution saving throw.”
Remus groaned and tossed his die, then gasped as it settled to reveal the dreaded skyward-facing 1. “Oh no—”
“The toll that Thamric Goodfellow’s elder years have taken on him begins to show as he attempts to escape the werewolf’s jaws. His speed and agility are greatly outmatched. The creature plunges its teeth into his shoulder and shakes him, tossing him to the side with an angry snarl. He takes 6 points of piercing damage and 1 point of bludgeoning damage as he hits the ground with a thud. He feels a strange sensation wash over him. Those of you who have brushed up on your monsterology, or your arcana, are aware of the difficult truth: Thamric has been cursed with lycanthropy.”
“What?!” Remus exclaimed, exasperated.
“Don’t worry babe,” Sirius teased, resting his head on Remus’s shoulders with a wide, innocent gaze up at him. “I’d still fuck you.”
“Oh, please, you’d fuck anything vaguely person-shaped,” Chastised Marlene, shaking her head with a teasing smirk. James tilted his head, then shrugged and nodded in agreement. Dorcas chuckled and rolled her eyes.
Peter wasn’t quite paying attention to the conversation, instead focusing on his drawing. However, he must’ve somehow known it was nearly his turn, because all of a sudden he looked up and said, “I want to retreat to the back of the group and hide behind a nearby tree.”
“Are you sure?” Lily replied, “You’re close enough to cast an attack spell on him.”
Peter nervously shook his head, and James shouted, “Coward! You’re a coward and a traitor, Wormtail!” He pointed at him accusatorily, albeit playful in his stance.
A tad frustrated at this exclamation, Peter huffed and countered, “Rather alive and at a safe distance than dead for pretending to be the hero!” He gestured to Remus, then added, “Look what happened to him!”
“Oh, how dare you,” Remus grumbled, his gears clearly turning as he searched for a clever response.
“Settle down, boys!” Lily ordered, standing from her seat to remind them of her authority over them. “Remus, it’s your turn. Unfortunately, though, since this is a full moon, and you’ve just been cursed, you must make a Charisma saving throw every turn in an attempt to resist the transition.”
“Charisma? My Charisma is negative!” Remus pouted, half-heartedly tossing his die. “Oh, hey! It’s a fourteen.”
Lily nodded thoughtfully, then slowly said, “You resist the urge for now, but you do notice that your feet and hands are a bit more hairy than usual. Your teeth feel… strange. Like they don’t quite fit inside your mouth.”
“That’s it, we’ve gotta kill Remus,” James sighed, shaking his head with his eyes solemnly closed. “You had a good run, Thamric Goodfellow, but you’re a bad fellow now.”
‘Clever,’ Dorcas signed, her lips pursed sarcastically. James stuck his tongue out at her.
A few dice rolls, cheers of triumph, cries of horror, and suspenseful close calls later, the group finally defeated the werewolf. A successful first session was complete, and they all mostly survived.
“In the next session, the party will adventure into a nearby village in search of someone with knowledge of how to break Thamric’s curse. However, it seems that someone else is lurking in the shadows, following close behind… Someone with different intentions in mind.”
James was the first to start in on applause and cheering for Lily’s excellent leadership of the campaign, and the others joined in despite her dismissive wave of protest. “That was great, babe!” he praised, fawning over her and acting as overly-affectionate as usual.
“It was a very interesting and creative session,” Marlene added, her smile wide.
“Oh, hey, Wormtail, why don’t you show us that art you drew of Vamaris?” Sirius asked as he pulled his leather jacket off the back of his chair. Remus quietly gathered all of his things as well as the rest of Sirius’s things, then used his free hand to chat with Dorcas.
“Oh,” Peter uttered sheepishly, a pink flush blossoming across his cheeks. “I actually drew all of us.” He held up the piece of paper he had been drawing on and Sirius took it from him, grinning widely.
“Wow, mate, this looks amazing!” Sirius exclaimed, prompting Marlene to pull the sketch away from him and see it for herself. She then passed it off to Remus and Dorcas, while Sirius continued, “You really captured Xarnon’s greatness and powerfulness.”
“Thank you, Padfoot!” replied Peter, visibly emboldened by the compliments.
“Yeah, this is really good,” Remus agreed, and Marlene and Dorcas both smiled as they looked it over. “All of this was really fun. Let’s do it again next week, yeah?”
“Yeah! You better come back, or else your characters will die a horrible death!” James threatened. “Lily’s been working on this campaign for weeks and I won’t have any of you ruin it for her.”
Marlene assured, “We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” and Dorcas nodded as she passed the drawing back to Peter and adjusted her backpack on her shoulder.
As they all hovered near the door preparing to leave, Peter held up his drawing to examine his work again.
In the drawing, Vamaris held a spell book in one hand and his wand in the other. Xarnon leaned against him, playing his horn, while Sharptooth danced to the music. Thamric, walking staff in hand, conversed with Branwyn, who was sitting proudly atop Kilara’s bicep.
They were a ragtag group, certainly, but they were a family nonetheless. And whether they were arguing, commending one another, or listening in horror to the Dungeon Master’s description of werewolf seduction, they were together, and when they were together they were home.