McLean Wolf V Can't Fight

Sorry, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binaries: the road to hell is closed for repairs. So what do we do with all of these good intentions? We make a D&D character who has the best of them, but belly-flops at the thought of executing them. And thus we have a level one human mage created in the late 1990’s named McLean Wolf V. His name was so badass that there had to be five generations of those motherfuckers. Unfortunately, McLean was so bad at fighting that it was amazing there was one generation at all. Never mind abortion rights, because killing off the first generation would have been sufficient birth control for a fifth-generation character that turned out to be a drive-by abortion in the end. You see…how do I put this as delicately as McLean’s fragile bones? The man couldn’t fight worth a shit.

And it turns out, that’s how the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules designed mages to begin with. They start out with four hit points. Four! You know what that means? It means there isn’t a constitution modifier in hell that will keep him from dying from a fucking paper cut. Mages can’t wear heavy armor and they can’t use heavy weapons. McLean of course had neither of those things. He had a wizard’s robe, a knife, and a bola sling. That’s. About. It. You’d think with all of my experience playing Final Fantasy games I would have figured out a long time ago that wizard-type characters were going to be piss-poor fighters who couldn’t be self-sufficient if they tried. Tellah from Final Fantasy IV can throw all the lightning bolts he wants, but if an imp so much as pokes him with his short sword, he’s on the ground sucking his thumb like a bitch. In the very first Final Fantasy game, white mages and black mages are the first party members that monsters go after, because they’re more fragile than Lego sets. Ever wonder why bullies pick on smaller kids? Because if they picked on hulking body builders, the police would need the bullies’ dental records to identify them afterwards.

So…I’ve got McLean Wolf V ready to go for a campaign. What he lacks in fighting prowess, he makes up for in magic…provided that he studies his spells every fucking night like he’s cramming for the SAT’s. And once he exhausts his spells, he has to study them again…and again…for hours upon hours…Well, guess what, McLean? Your enemies aren’t going to give you hours and hours to prepare for them. If a barroom brawler wants to pound you into coffee grounds, he’s not going to wait for you to study your fireball spells. He’s going to beat the shit out of you weather you’re ready or not. Schoolyard bullies don’t wait for their victims to complete karate training. Terrorists don’t wait for their victims to learn how to use firearms. Nobody’s going to wait for McLean to get his nose out of his books. In fact, forget the footman’s mace, you could just take his Stephen King-sized doorstop and beat him to death with it. It would only take one hit and he’d go from lying on the ground to lying IN the ground.

And because McLean couldn’t do a damn thing on his own, my brother invited his friends Nathan and Chris to come play with us. They could wield all the battleaxes and long swords they wanted to. I, on the other hand, had to throw fireballs, lightning bolts, and magic missiles like they were substitutes for a gatling gun. And if you ever needed an indication of how forgetful of a memoirist I am (which is a lot like being a mage who can’t fight), I don’t even remember what quest we were doing or why we banded together. All I knew was that midway through the game, I wanted to tear up my character sheet and never see McLean Wolf V ever again. James, my DM brother, wasn’t having any of that nonsense. He said that if I did that, he would make my eighth level paladin Charles Goodhorn die of natural causes…even though he was only twenty-five years old. He’s not even old enough to use his bastard sword as a walking cane and already my brother wants to hold him hostage so that I’ll keep playing as a mage made of glass. I guess he was trying to motivate me to try new things since I was so accustomed to playing warrior characters. Either that or it was the 1990’s and we were constantly at each other’s throats due to the inevitability of problematic brotherhoods.

Well…the campaign continued and Chris, Nathan, and I found ourselves in the middle of a cleared forest getting our shit pushed in by orcs and goblins. Chris and Nathan’s warrior characters slashed and hacked their way through the frontlines while I was in the background preparing for a spell. This was my chance to save their lives and prove myself as a wizard. The orcs and goblins became too much to handle due to their swelling forces. Even with the heaviest equipment, Chris and Nathan couldn’t fight them all without getting swarmed. So…McLean conjured a massive fireball and rolled it onto the battlefield like a bowling ball on a snowy mountain instead of a proper bowling alley. The analogy was appropriate since the fireball indeed got bigger and bigger as it rolled along. The screams of goblins and orcs burning alive was like a Baroque symphony of beautiful music. Then came the magic missiles to take out the stragglers. And the lighting bolts to make the battlefield crispier than a bucket of KFC, though not as tasty, but probably greasy considering the monsters we were dealing with. And just like that, the battle was over and I was the hero of the day. My opinion of fragile mages hasn’t changed, but I had more fun playing them as I got older. Truth is, they’re better in groups than on their own, not unlike D&D itself. Tellah lived as long as he did because the dark knight turned paladin named Cecil protected him. Black mages are always accompanied by hulking fighters turned knights and thieves turned ninjas.

Teamwork is the name of the game. But the D&D party that wins together serves prison sentences together. It wouldn’t be a James Haines-Temons D&D campaign if it didn’t involve incarceration of some kind. At this point, we should change the name of the game from D&D to Shawshank Redemption. While none of our characters had rock hammers to dig us out or posters of Raquel Welch to cover up our schemes, McLean was allowed to keep his books. Prison libraries are a thing, not unlike The Shawshank Redemption. But why in the hell would you allow a wizard capable of throwing avalanche fireballs to have access to books? That’s his source of power! You wouldn’t give Chris and Nathan their weapons and armor, so don’t give McLean Wolf his books! Nothing made sense in the 1990’s, but this should have been glaringly obvious. I guess we’ll never know if McLean torched the whole fucking prison, because that’s where the campaign ended for the day. We never did continue it. Bummer.

I’m not against the idea of wizards in my fantasy settings. They’re aesthetically pleasing, after all, and that’s why I enjoy fantasy so much. I could have a necromancer with skulls everywhere and poison mist surrounding him. I could have a pyromancer with fiery staves and spiky red hair that resembled his flames. I could have a sorceress who wore fancy black dresses into battle and could turn the skirts of them into circular blades while she twirls in a dance. The possibilities are as endless as my imagination. But as far as playing videogames and tabletop RPG’s goes, maybe it’s best if my wizards were accompanied by other characters. Every party has a role that needs to be filled. As much as I love the idea of an all-barbarian squad, who’s going to heal them when there’s no cleric and they get their shit pushed in after being exhausted from rage? What about an all-thief party? Who’s going to protect them without a wizard’s magic spells if they get caught? Like life itself, there’s something for everybody in this world. Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something. A wizard can’t carry the load by himself. Otherwise, he wouldn’t need a chiropractor at this point, but an embalmer.

Harvest Moon

The orange and red harvest moon was the only thing bright about the medieval night in the city of Tristan. Everything else seemed dark, damp, and gloomy. The Red Warrior Funeral Home was no different. Yes, the bodies were preserved in neat, comfortable bedding within their casket homes. It was the living who suffered the brunt of the foul stenches, ripped curtains, and occasional mice crawling across the floor. Even the tarantulas weaving webs in the corners of this place weren’t immune to the pungent atmosphere as evidenced by their corpses being littered all over the stone floors and walls.

The only person who could take in all of this gloominess and come out of it feeling somewhat neutral was Kendra Callahan, assassin for hire. With dark robes and a hood surrounding her and only an oil lantern guiding her way, her combat boots clanked off the stone floors of the funeral home. If somebody was down here defiling the corpses, she would be the first one to notice and that person would get the shit kicked out of him or her.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” she thought to herself as she made her rounds. Guarding this funeral home would have been a cakewalk and she could have had the rest of the evening to herself. How would she have filled that time? Reading? Sharpening her blades? Staying in shape? No. This evening wouldn’t afford her the luxury of a comfortable home, because someone was down here.

The sight squeak of a coffin lid put Kendra Callahan in defensive mode. She got in a fighting stance and drew her steel poison-tipped claws. This sudden racket wasn’t caused by a mere mouse or spider. The intruder was as careful as any stealth artist should be. Kendra took a few more steps and shone her lamp in the general vicinity of the noise.

As soon as the light danced in the right places, the quick and light sounds of footsteps could be heard skittering across the floor. Someone was definitely there and Kendra was determined to give this intruder a taste of her poison. She reached into her belt and chucked a shuriken in where she believed the burglar was standing.

The sounds of pierced flesh and dripping blood put a smile on Kendra’s face. She jogged over with her lamp to see just what had happened, but it wasn’t what she expected at all. A flare of green light illuminated the entire funeral home. The source of such brilliant magic was a witchdoctor dressed in a demon mask and velvet red wizard robes. He gently pulled the shuriken out of his stomach and his wound healed over as if nothing happened.

“What the hell are you doing down here, Ambrose?” said Kendra sternly. The man she was referring to was Ambrose Volta, a delightfully eccentric wizard who didn’t mind delving into his darker side every once and a while.

“Do forgive my abrupt entrance, Miss Callahan, and I shall forgive the shuriken in my stomach. You know why I’m here,” said Ambrose.

“Actually, I don’t have a single fucking clue, but I can take a wild guess and say that you’re down here to get it on with your new undead girlfriend,” said Kendra with a smart-assed smile.

“I would never do such a thing and you know that to be true, my dear,” said Ambrose. “What is true, however, is that these preserved corpses concern me. Their souls are forever trapped in these caskets, a prison for the afterlife of sorts. No more will they suffer. After I work my magic, these souls will find a new and more comfortable place to rest: the Harvest Moon. It’s what religious folks refer to as heaven up there. But the Harvest Moon welcomes everyone and gives them a second chance at peace and beauty, not just those who conform to a certain ideal.”

A confused look formed on Kendra’s face when she said, “And I’m supposed to believe all of this, why? It’s almost like you’re asking me to conform to something I don’t trust myself. Well, there’s a reason why I’m wearing these claws and there’s a reason I’m patrolling this funeral home. Intruders are to be killed on sight. Well, Ambrose, you’re an intruder, so I guess I’ll have to kill you now.”

Kendra started the battle by bolting toward Ambrose and throwing her clawed fists in every direction he planned on going. One scrape from these weapons and even a powerful mage like Ambrose would have keeled over from the poison. And yet, he dodged every slash and every roundhouse kick that followed with so much ease that Kendra hit the wooden caskets instead and knocked a few corpses over.

Ambrose wagged his finger at his nemesis and said, “Naughty, naughty!” He then stretched out his fingers and shot a ball of black sludge in Kendra’s face. The assassin rolled around on her back trying to scream and peel through the tar. The mice and tarantulas were attracted to the scent of this goop and congregated around her face to nibble and chew her snow white flesh.

“Now, where was I before you so rudely interrupted me?” said Ambrose Volta as he turned his attention to one of the corpses that got knocked over. He knelt beside what looked like a young man in his 20’s and shot two bolts of purple lightning in his face.

By this time, Kendra Callahan peeled off the sticky sludge and crushed most of the mice and spiders that were eating her face. The end result was a visage full of nasty-looking battle scars, the same visage that wore an angry expression as the clawed warrior charged at Ambrose again.

She threw rapid-fire punches and kicks at the shaman while he was in the middle of casting his spells. This time there was no easy defense. Ambrose took every slash and every bone-crunching kick and rolled over on his back bloody and beaten. This felt too much like a hollow victory for Kendra. No way it could be over that easy.

She was right. The orange soul of the young man Ambrose was working on floated out of its host body and clutched Kendra around the neck. The soul screamed in a fiery voice, “You idiot! Some of us are trying to get to the Harvest Moon! Meanwhile, all you’re worried about is some shallow payment of gold and silver!”

The soul released its grip and dropped Kendra to the ground, where she hacked and wheezed as she held her throat and tried to suck in oxygen. The soul was laid to rest once more. But it didn’t go back into its own body. The flaming spirit was orally sucked in by the now sitting up Ambrose Volta. The vile wizard stood up and dusted himself off as if he didn’t just get his ass brutally beaten.

As soon as Kendra recovered most of her oxygen and gingerly stood back up herself, she saw Ambrose standing before her with his hands on his hips shaking his head. She freaked out when she said, “No! No! That’s impossible! Why won’t you die, damn it?!” She bum rushed the wizard again, this time with even faster kicks and punches. Her strikes would have been enough to kill most people instantly, but Ambrose concocted a whirlwind cocoon around himself and felt nothing.

Once the assassin tired herself out and stood hunched over, she saw that her adversary took off his demon mask and revealed himself to be a smiling old man with stringy white hair. At least that was one side of his face. The other side held the half-visage of a rotten black skeleton with a glowing orange eye. Even though she was a hardened warrior with virtually no emotions, Kendra Callahan knew it was time to be scared and showed it by shivering violently.

“Miss Callahan,” said Ambrose Volta in a syrupy voice. “I think the two of us have had enough, wouldn’t you agree?” The wizard held out his fingertips and telepathically threw Kendra against the wall, which conveniently enough had deer antlers mounted against it. The tough bones pierced through the clawed fighter and she bled out and died instantly, never once letting out a scream because her powerful lungs were punctured like balloons. The battle was over and all that was left for Kendra’s vision was a field of darkness.

Hours had passed in this dark plain. Not a single noise. Not a single sensation. And then out of nowhere, she heard gentle voices telling her to wake up from her dream. Kendra slowly opened her eyes and allowed them to adjust to the orange morning sky. She slowly stood up and found herself in a field of multi-colored autumn leaves. The voices that comforted her were those of the corpses in the funeral home, their bodies healed and their faces gently smiling.

“Where am I?” asked a weary Kendra Callahan.

A young girl grabbed her by the hand, which no longer had a claw, but a velvet red glove. The girl smiled brightly and gently said, “You’re on the Harvest Moon. Welcome to your new home!” And what a heavenly home it was.

Unleash the Animal

How exactly does an ancient weapon like a blunderbuss take down something magnificent like a rhino or a cheetah? For Joseph Stone, a few creative modifications such as a pump handle and an automatic firing chamber would have been the answer to that question. He tested the weapon out on a family of small rabbits to great success. He dined on their corpses afterwards and was hungry for bigger and better meals. The only place he could find such a gigantic meal was out in the Cracker Box Plains. Rhinos, antelope, buffalo, cheetahs, mmm-mmm-mmm!

Joseph Stone wasn’t the most athletic guy in the world with his belly protruding underneath his flak vest and over the top of his khaki shorts. Then again, he didn’t need to be since his hunting methods were so foolproof he never once had to run away from an animal. Even if he had the body of a Greek god, running away from one of these dangerous animals was damned near impossible.

And speaking of which, as soon as pudgy-buns Joseph spotted his next kill, he ducked down into the tall grass and cranked his modified blunderbuss. After making himself inconspicuous, he looked through the scope on his weapon and could only ask himself, “What the hell?”

It was an anthropomorphic rhino wearing spiked metal armor while carrying a nasty-looking battleaxe with a bone handle and a stone blade. To his animal peers, he was known as Stinger Crushwar, badass barbarian and all around disgusting creature. To Joseph Stone, Stinger was a potential dinner that made his chubby jowls water. He didn’t want to take the shot unless he was sure it would kill the son of a bitch right away.

Stinger stripped off his heavy metal armor and cannon-balled into a pool of silvery, pristine water. Well, the water wasn’t so pristine anymore after that. The dirt and grime on Stinger’s body mixed in with this usually delicious water and turned it into murky sewage. The rhino warrior also let out a monstrous fart that created a bigger splash than the cannonball. “This is the life!” he said to himself.

“You moron! Look what you did to my reflecting pool!” The nails-on-a-chalkboard voice that caught Stinger’s attention was that of an anthropomorphic antelope dressed in blue wizard robes named Rosie Moonbender. She stood there with her hands on her hips and an angry expression that was more wrinkly than a raisin. She went on to say, “I use this pool to mix potions and create spells! And now look what you’ve done! You turned it into your own personal shit hole!”

Stinger let out another rancid blast from his ass and the bubble splashed a little bit of water on Rosie’s robe. The antelope wizard held her clothing with disgust and shock, but not nearly as much as when she saw a gigantic brown turd floating near the top. Stinger smiled at his female rival and said nonchalantly, “You were saying?”

Rosie’s hooves dropped to her sides and clinched tightly as purple electric energy was swirling around her. Whatever spell she was going to cast had almost apocalyptic implications with the nearby tress being blown over and the grass turning the ashes. Stinger didn’t give a second shit how powerful this wizard was and armed himself with his battleaxe. He held the blade to her face while still wading in the sacred pool and said, “Don’t you try nothing funny, bitch! I hunt and skin your kind just for fun!”

A white beam of energy descended upon the rhino barbarian and the antelope wizard and blinded them temporarily until the source of the magic appeared right next to them in black knight’s armor and a red cloak. It was a buffalo paladin named Magnus Hoarfrost and his holier than thou stance led Stinger and Rosie to believe he would play the role of lawman in these wild plains.

“Clearly, a peaceful solution can be accomplished. The two of you are just too stressed out to see it right before your very eyes,” said Magnus in a deceptively calm deep voice. Stinger and Rosie looked at each other in confusion before letting the buffalo knight to continue this oratory. “The good lord has his eyes on everyone here in these holy plains. If you want to make a good impression, you can’t behave like sinful children. All you have to do is believe in the divine light that surrounds you all.”

The mighty religious rhetoric made Stinger yell, “Ha!” before the rhino warrior picked up his nasty turd and tossed it at Magnus, who looked down at the mess on his armor and shook his head before languidly wiping it off. Stinger, being a natural born animalistic migraine, laughed at the paladin with a hoarse and boisterous voice. Despite having her reflecting pool violated, Rosie Moonbender joined in the obnoxious laughter as well.

“Alright, you wild animals!” screamed Magnus Hoarfrost, who was now armed with two maces with spiked metal shells at the end of them. “If you want to act like disgusting sinners, then I shall treat you as such! The bowels of hell are hungry for new souls! You two will do just fine!”

The three-way battle was underway when Magnus threw a bolt of holy lightning down upon Rosie, who countered that spell with relentless glacial spikes. Magnus rained down holy fire upon the antelope wizard, but was met with a tidal wave of black magic. For the longest time, these two magic-slingers exchanged gigantic volleys of energy whether it was fire, ice, lightning, or shadow. They both had a counter for each other and even more surrounding trees were being knocked to the ground or shredded to pieces.

The one thing the two energy-slingers didn’t count on was them each getting a face full of murky water compliments of Stinger Crushwar, who was now out of the pool, fully dressed in his spiky metal armor, carrying his primitive battleaxe, and laughing at them like the sickening man-child he was. He even fell ass-first into the burned grass and didn’t feel a thing.

Rosie and Magnus nodded to each other and then powered up for what was surely to be cosmic chaos. Stinger got his bearings about him and got up into his defensive stance. He angrily charged across the burned grass and swung his axe with caveman passion as the magic users threw their fireballs and ice sickles at him. He smashed the energy shots away like he was playing the world’s most vicious and violent game of baseball.

One of the ice sickles bounced off of Stinger’s axe and impaled Rosie through her stomach. She gagged and coughed as blood was pouring out of her wound and her mouth at a rapid pace. The mystical diva dropped to her knees and plopped over onto her face as she took her final blood-covered breaths.

Magnus looked on at his “partner’s” death with Shakespearean shock when his mouth dropped open in dramatic fashion. He reached both maces to the sky and shouted, “Why?! Why, my dear lord?! Why would you take this fine young girl away from this earth?! She could have been saved! She could have listened to your divine word! She could have…”

The excessively dramatic speech was cut short when Stinger sneaked up behind Magnus and chopped his head off with one swing of his blade. The buffalo’s head rolled while the body shot blood out of its neck and fell to the ground with a loud thud. Stinger looked around at what he just did and raised his own fists to the skies to give out a barbaric war cry. “Hell yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! Now let’s see about getting back in that pool!”

After Stinger let out two casual laughs, his head exploded from his shoulders and his body dropped to the ground with blood leaking into the shit-infested reflecting pool. The whole time they were bickering, neither one of these three could pay any notice to the one person who could spell doom for these entire plains: Joseph Stone.

The hunter stood proudly over all three meaty animal corpses and nodded viciously before saying, “Yep! I’m going to be eating well tonight! Mmm-mmm-mmm!” He then started singing meaningless “doos” and “duns” to himself as he gathered pieces of the knocked over trees to build a bonfire. The blunderbuss he used to blow off Stinger’s head also had another creative feature attached to it: a flamethrower for barbecuing the meat that he loved so much.

Cooking the three corpses and eating them all took anywhere between three to four hours total. Joseph Stone’s appetite was that big. He sat on his ass with his flak vest open and his sauce-stained gut hanging down. He had dipping sauce, blood, and little shreds of meat hanging all around him for what was indeed a satisfying meal.

What wasn’t so satisfying was the fact that Joseph had a hard time sitting up. He could roll over and push himself off all he wanted to, but he was so glutinous that he was stuck on the ground. His heart rate began to accelerate and his skin was getting sweaty and cold. He crawled aimlessly with his sausage fingers over his boobed chest until he could crawl no more. That was when he accidentally plunged himself into the diarrhea pool and drowned while having a heart attack at the same time. To say that there were no winners in this battle for nothing was putting it mildly.