Chapter Text
I'm Tabitha, and I've spent more hours than I care to count being someone else. Sometimes it's been out of necessity. Turns out growing up queer in some Midwestern backwater kicks rocks; who knew? It wasn't all bad though, and as often as being someone else was hiding, it was also an act of self discovery. That's mostly in the past though. These days, it's often because we have a client that has a specific mental model of 'actuary', and it's just easier to meet them where they are.
When it's not done for someone else's benefit though, or begrudgingly done for my own safety, it's something I do for fun. You see, when I'm not working or taking care of the mundane concerns of life, I spend what little time I have left over for myself role playing.
Not the sort that was popularized by that novel.... though I've been known to dabble. No I mean tabletop role playing games. Dungeons! Dragons and their hordes. A Crown Royal bag filled with plastic polyhedra. Bards with lutes. Amateur improv and suspect voice acting. Samurai with spines made of chrome. That sort of thing.
I've played at a lot of tables over the years, and they each have their charm. And their peculiarities. In middle school, the youth pastor joined us because it took the Satanic Panic an extra couple of years to reach our particular corner of nowhere. He left two sessions in when he realized it was just math and pretend. There was that DM in high school that had his NPCs try to seduce all of the players. Not for any plot reason, of course. He was just lonely, or maybe he was just working through something. Then there was my first vampire LARP. That was my only vampire LARP for similar reasons, but I did get to meet the dark prince of Muncie, and he was pretty cool.
This, however, was the first time I'd had a DM give me homework. Like, not in a session 0, "Come up with a couple of character concepts and we'll hash out the party over some beers" kind of way. No, I was supposed to play a whole adventure with my character. In our shared fantasy world. That I'd be introduced to for the first time tonight. With no DM.
So there I was, staring at a three ring binder that held all of the tools I'd need to play by myself, sipping on half a cup of rapidly cooling coffee, feeling like a whole asshole. The blank page refused to fill itself, and I didn't know how to help it.
Kelly had been insistent about it though. And irrepressible. "It won't be that bad! You know how stories work. You know how games work. You've run dozens before. Just... do something with your character and see where the story goes. They've got two weeks of downtime to play with. Plus, bonus exp...." He'd gestured as if he were swinging a small bag to and fro as he said it, literally... well figuratively I guess? Metaphorically? Anyway, he'd dangled the thought of early character advancement above my head.
I wasn't so sure he'd been right. That it wouldn't be that bad, I mean. Starting had been rough so far. I barely knew Jess. We'd only been together for one session, and session 0 at that. There'd been no stakes, no battles, just making sure everyone had a mechanically sound character and a reason for the crown to involve them in our inciting incident.
My reason had been simple enough. Jess was an unaffiliated mage, something of a rarity in the lands of Vernon. Other mages could be relied upon to inform the guild of their actions, and perhaps to 'lose' some artifacts or 'misinterpret' some runes in the process. Jess' primary value lay in her distinct lack of love for the guild. Well, that and the hard-won knowledge of ancient scripts and the lands beyond the Mists.
I knew damn well who Jess was, in a ludo-narrative sense. I knew exactly how she contributed to the party, and how she was likely to fit into our first adventure. She could read the clues; she'd be the vehicle Kelly would use to prod us when we got stuck, or at least a vehicle. She was crowd control and spike damage. I knew how she'd spend her starting money, what her first three level ups would look like. I even knew how much I'd paid to commission a sketch of her: too much, all things considered.
What I didn't know, what I had literally no fucking insight into, was what she was like when she wasn't off risking life and limb to rob graves for members of the aristocracy with too much money and too little appreciation for historical sites.
"Sometimes a little push will get you going. A pebble can start an avalanche if it falls in just the right way." I took a sip of the now cold coffee and wondered what motivational poster Kelly had pulled that from. I could see it now, posted right next to a dangling cat with "hang in there" in some secret closet deep in the warrens of his house, concealing a little shrine he used to fight off the sarcasm he'd been consumed by when we were in our twenties.
That image got a chuckle out of me, and the laughter seemed to unstick whatever mechanism was frozen in my mind. I reached for the three ring binder. A green flag labeled "oracles" stared back at me. I flipped it open. Table upon table of words. Nouns. Adjectives. Verbs. About adventuring. About carousing. About monsters and rumors and weather. It all felt like bullshit. Picking a weather word could impact the voyage, and that didn't feel like my place. Introducing an encounter in the city was too heavy handed, and certainly I shouldn't just give myself a pile of treasure.
I shook my head and looked away from the book, my eyes landing on a tarot deck on the corner of the desk. Not one of my fancy ones from some long forgotten Kickstarter, no, the dog eared deck I'd had since I was twelve. The one I bought from a head shop 'downtown' with lunch money I didn't spend on food. Picking it up, I started to cut and shuffle, letting the familiar weight and roughness of the cards distract me.
Hopefully the distraction was exactly what I needed. Maybe if i sidled up on the answer I'd be able to find it. That's why I'd picked it up in the first place. Legerdemain I mean, not the tarot; that had been a youthful dalliance. The sleight of hand, on the other... hand I guess... anyway, that had been deliberate. A way to channel idle, nervous energy so I could sneak up on the answer to the problems that needed singular, rather than divided, focus.
Sssssssss.... schk. Bridge the cards, turn the page. Not nature, not ship names, not smells. Sssssssss... schk. Not religions or demons. Maybe a girls name. Sssss....schk. Halfway through my fourth bridge, I remembered what I was fidgeting with. Tarot. What was tarot for if not random generation? Pictures, numbers, vague interpretations that could attach to anything a cold reader might pick up on. Why not as a solo oracle?
I shut the book, cut the deck one last time, and kicked out the top card. Queen of wands. Well, that's Jess isn't it? Who else could it be? Another card. Ace of cups. New romantic beginnings? Lousy time to start a romance, right before you're whisked away on an adventure. Maybe more literal then; She's gonna go out for a drink to celebrate her new venture?
Part of me rebelled against the exercise. Ok, she goes out and gets a drink. Then what? I started to kick out a third card, but stopped myself. No, dummy, the drink is the answer. Think about every film, every show, every book you've ever consumed. There's so much in a drink. What's her drink of choice? Where dose she sit? Does she nurse it, or does she slam it? Who did she go with? I kicked out another card. The Hermit. Well... she went for a drink alone then. Makes sense, I can't pilot the other characters, but why would Jess go for a drink alone?
I looked back at the queen of wands, at the woman on the card. She sat there, alone on a throne fashioned from a flower, holding a stave and petting a cat. There was a peaceful look on her face. My eyes looked past the card, and I saw Jess, there, in my mind.
She was sitting at a bar in some public house in town, one of the quiet ones, away from the gate and the docks. It would have fired clay shingles, like most of the houses, and two large chimneys, one at either side of the building. There would be one for patrons and one for the kitchen. Two stories, plaster and timber, like everything that wasn't a municipal building out here -- those would be brick. The door, polished wood, leaded glass, banded in metal to hold it together, would open inward. It creaked no matter how much you greased it.
Inside, a fire in the hearth and the fading evening sun cast a red sheen over the whole room. There she was, perched at the bar, so different than I'd imagined her. There was no flowing cape, no wide brimmed hat as befits a wizard. She wore simple clothing in simple colors. A linen tunic that hugged her torso. It had no collar, but it was capped with a dark brown scarf, wrapped loosely around her neck and disappearing over her shoulders. Her curly red tresses lay against it, giving the scarf an almost ombre effect. She wore a small leather satchel cross-body, the leather strap adding an accent to the cream-colored tunic. Her pants were a plain affair too, simple and green with no visible decorations. They hugged her legs from thigh to presumably calf. I couldn't tell. The dark leather thigh boots she wore stopped just above her knee. She looked less like a stereotypical mage and more like the protagonist of a gender bent Harlequin romance, not that I was complaining.
Her posture was another surprise. I'd imagined her running, jumping, swinging a staff down on some unfortunate brigand's head. I even had some sense of what she should look like when casting spells, but I'd never bothered to think of what she looked like at rest. Jess sat next to a wall in the corner of the bar, draped across the high backed chair, rather than in it. Her legs hung down, one resting on the legs of the chair beneath her. The the other stretched out, forward, resting on the legs of the chair next to her, as if to claim it, and a little privacy, as well.
Her arm stretched out across the bar to an old tabby who had come to investigate the condensation on her tankard of ale. She smiled gently as the cat alternated between licking the mug and butting its head into her hand for attention. Once the cat had its fill of both, it curled up on the bar next to her elbow. She moved slowly as not to disturb it, then hefted the tankard and took a modest drink from it.
There was nothing about this scene that was what I expected. The natural thing to do at this point in the game was to cement the relationships in the adventuring party. Maybe try to prepare for the coming journey by buying gear and information. Here, though, was a woman profoundly unbothered with what she was supposed to do. Her mind was not on her new comrades in arms, nor some local soak with all the gossip. No, she'd gone to drink alone because she wanted to be alone with her own thoughts, because she wanted to celebrate her good fortune at securing a new job, and to rest before the coming storm. For a moment, she wasn't a heroine in some grand adventure. She was just someone relaxing at the bar after a long stressful day of new people and first impressions. I could relate to that.
As much as the scene told me about Jess, I suspected it wouldn't pass muster and get me extra XP from Kelly. After all, nothing exciting had happened. I started to draw another card. I saw the corner tip up, revealing part of the page of cups. The page represents the beginning of an emotional or creative journey, usually embodied by some messenger. My hand stopped, holding the card there, slightly bent, half dealt. It felt, not off, but a little on the nose, you know? Tarot can be like that. The cards are open enough that there's always an interpretation, but this felt almost too obvious, or at least heavy handed.
Still, I hadn't manipulated the deck. This is just how they'd come out. I drew the card the rest of the way, focusing on it. Who was the messenger? What exactly was the message? It was probably the barman. It's almost always the barman. I fixed my eyes on the card, then shut them, returning to the public house with the crackling fire, the softly purring cat, and the slowly warming ale.
I expected to see Jess, squared up to the bar, speaking over it to the tavern keeper. Instead, he was where I'd left him, standing in a corner, polishing glasses, keeping an eye on the tables for someone asking for another round. My eyes wandered back down the bar towards Jess, hoping to catch a glimpse of the messenger.
They weren't there. Jess was still sitting alone, but her posture had changed. She was no longer leaned back; she sat upright, feet dangling towards the floor. Her beer sat behind her, forgotten, next to the cat who was still dozing on the bar. Her eyes no longer cast languidly around the room. She looked right at me, or at least at my little porthole into her tavern. It was such an intense gaze. Eyes held wide open, her green irises constricting and relaxing as she tried to focus on, on what? Nothing I could see.
I felt that piercing gaze bore a hole through me and into the space behind. I needed to know what it was she was looking at. It was the key to all of this, or at least the key to enough XP for another level. I turned my mind's eye towards the back of the tavern, where Jess had been looking. Empty tables, not even a window to peer out. It made no sense. Something had caught all of her attention, and in a way that left her on guard. Something had surprised her.
Convinced I'd missed something I turned back around to look at Jess and the rest of the room, but she wasn't at the bar anymore. She was halfway to the door, hand buried in the pouch at her waist. It moved out with practiced motion, holding a small lump of something white in it. Chalk? Salt? I couldn't tell at this distance, but I watched as she rubbed the white stone. Maybe it was a worry stone? If it was, it wouldn't be around for long. A few small pieces flaked off the main clump, trailing onto the ground behind her as she strode towards the door.
And just like that she was gone, the bell of the door ringing as it shut behind her. I felt the scene in my mind move to follow her, but as I approached the door, I lost the thread. Where was the public house in town? Were the houses old or new? Decadent or simple? Were there vendor stalls here, or just residences?
I had seen it all so clearly as I was coming into the scene, like a bird flying above the town choosing a place to land. Now that I was engaged and wanted to follow her, leaving that room felt like stepping through the backdrop in a play. The moment I was out of the door, the fiction ended. Suddenly I was at my desk again, looking at the journal in front of me. A little black notebook Kelly had given me to record my adventures. I opened the first page and started my entry,
Jess goes to a bar to reflect on the day's events. She enjoys the company of a fat little tabby over a beer, but leaves when she feels she is being watched, slipping away into the crowded city.