Juniper introduces Arthur.
Synopsis[]
On Earth, Juniper and his friends play games. Dungeons & Dragons, naturally, but countless other RPG systems too—using the two dozen sourcebooks in "the Collection", left in Arthur's hands by his college-bound brother. Over time, the collection grows to fill two sagging bookshelves in the downstairs den at Arthur's house.
As other players come and go, Juniper and Arthur remain the two constants. Juniper invents worlds and stories, and Arthur brings them to life. Every time a campaign begins to run out of steam, Arthur bails Juniper out by suggesting that the group switch to something else the following week. Arthur participates in pretty much every non-athletic activity offered by their school, but always has time for Juniper.
Until, in the summer of their junior year, Arthur's car gets hit by a truck. The crash leaves Arthur comatose, and he dies of complications eleven days later.
Months later, Juniper eats lunch in the cafeteria and turns to tell Arthur something—but Arthur's not there any more.
The Collection moves to Juniper's house, and the games continue twice weekly. Angry at the world, Juniper sends the party through the thresher time and time again—pitting them against Fel Seed, Nightsmoke, the borogoves and the mimsies; villains whose evil can never be undone, in worlds that can never be set right.
On Aerb, Juniper worries that he'll have to face those enemies himself. He opens his character sheet and dumps both of his skill points into PHY, raising it (and POW, SPD and END) by one. He feels his body change in response, and decides to swap his machete for the dead Fuchsia Coterie thug's sword. When he wields Cypress' pistol too, he unlocks the "Dual Wield" skill—but he doesn't feel confident using both at once, so he resolves to find something he can use to store his weapons when he's not using them.
Juniper reasons that Comfort is isolated enough that it should have its own government services—and that if they have a courthouse, then a shire-reeve's office must be close by. He also reasons that he included shire-reeves in practically every game he ever ran.
Sure enough, it doesn't take long to find "Aleister Duchy Shire Reeve's Office". There's a corpse lying halfway out the broken glass door, from which Juniper collects soul 4/7.
There's a much older corpse inside the office, along with a calendar showing a picture of a tall white spire which Juniper recognises as a White Spire from his Drowned Valleys campaign setting. The month is "Halig". Another corpse deeper inside is wearing a sheath, which he loots.
A notification appears for Deception reaching level 2—realising that this probably means there's someone nearby, Juniper hides. He sheaths his sword, raising Deception again. Another of the Fuchsia Coterie enters, but Juniper shoots him in the head. Three notifications chime in quick succession.
Someone outside throws a small purple crystal into the room, and a moment later entire chunks of the office and its contents simply disappear—along with a palm-sized chunk of Juniper's back. The grenadier enters the room and Juniper shoots him, but he doesn't fall—instead he points his own gun. Juniper has already thrown his pistol aside and is drawing his sword—the bullet glances off the blade, unlocking the "Parry" skill. Apparently it's such a skillful Parry that it brings the skill straight to level 1. Juniper kills his assailant and collects another soul.
There's too little left of the first corpse to let Juniper collect that soul, but—to Juniper's surprise—a third member of the Coterie is lying dead in the hallway, another victim of the grenade. His soul brings Juniper's total to 6/7.
Juniper continues to search the office, finding another pistol and some newspapers mentioning the Cradle King and the Barber's Edict—both names he recognises. Hurt, exhausted, hungry and thirsty, Juniper leaves the office—only to come face-to-face with a monster made of thirty corpses.
He turns and runs back inside the office.
Featured characters[]
- Juniper Smith
- Arthur Blum (mentioned only)
- Amaryllis Penndraig (mentioned only)
Quotes[]
Look, you probably want to hear more about the sexy motorcycle mechanic or the punk gangs or the giant zombie creatures, but before we go too much further, I need to tell you about my D&D group. I know, I know, but so much of Aerb is a reflection of my scribblings while DMing, so there is a point to this. I’ll try my best to keep it to what’s important.
- —Juniper breaks the fourth wall to say no you can't just skip the flashback sequences-
His parents offered to let us keep using their den, but my mom told me that it wouldn’t be good for them to have their dead son’s friends coming over twice a week (and yes, those were pretty much her exact words).
- —Juniper comments on the fallout of Arthur's death.
I had no idea what the governmental structure of the Risen Lands looked like, but Comfort, though small, followed a pattern I was familiar with. It was surrounded by farms and farmlands, far away from any other town. The whole point of this town existing was that the sparse population of the surrounding area needed a place to go for the essentials they couldn’t grow or make on their own. I was certain that there was a store with farming supplies somewhere, and a hardware store where someone could get some nails and a replacement hammer. But a town like Comfort wasn’t just going to be a collection of shops and the houses of the people who worked in those shops, it was going to have government services as well. Hence, a courthouse, so looking up the deed to a parcel of land or a marriage certificate didn’t take a six hour round trip to whatever the local equivalent of Wichita was. I knew based on the size of Comfort that it was bound to have one -- but it wasn’t the courthouse that I was looking for, it was the shire-reeve's office next to it, because if a farmer needs legal services to be within a half hour’s drive, then he definitely needs a lawkeeper at least that close.
(Again, 2 KNO was bullshit.)
- —Juniper reminds us just why he was a Dungeon Master.
Notes[]
Real-world references[]
- When talking about the composition of his D&D group, Juniper likens it to the ship of Theseus—a famous thought experiment in which a ship's parts are slowly replaced until none of the originals remain.
- The "borogoves" and "mimsies" reference a line of Lewis Carroll's famous poem "Jabberwocky": "All mimsy were the borogoves".
- Juniper finds it strange that the Fuchsia Coterie use swords when guns exist on Aerb—he cites the Holtzman Effect from Frank Herbert's Dune as an example of worldbuilding that would encourage such a scenario.
- A "reeve" was a title for a senior official/bailiff in Anglo-Saxon England. A "shire-reeve", then, is the name for the reeve of a shire—this title would, as Juniper explains, eventually morph into that of "sheriff".