Mastodon

“Ten-thousand gold pieces for the capture of mass murderer Courtney Robyn, wanted dead or alive.” That seemed like a sweet deal to Christopher Brown. Find the craziest bitch in the town of Middlesex, cock the sniper’s crossbow, fire, repeat. Shouldn’t be too hard for a pro like Christopher. He’d only been tracking her for a whole goddamn year with no solid leads and minimal sleep.

And boy, did his lack of sleep ever show itself in the most obvious ways: constant yawning, dark circles under his eyes, depression, bad posture, and hazy vision. He wouldn’t have sacrificed his health so easily if that ten-thousand gold piece reward wasn’t badly needed.

For all the times he was wide awake, he thought of the fact that his log cabin of a home was falling apart little by little. The rainy weather was warping the wood, termites were chewing on it like beef jerky, and sleeping at night was impossible anyways due to the cold temperature and wet blankets. Finding a new place to live, preferably something worthy of royalty, wasn’t just for the sake of convenience; it was do or die in the worst possible sense.

As Christopher Brown walked down the street in his studded and spiked leather armor with the crossbow strapped to his back, he suddenly felt energized and awake, as if the danger of his situation shot a river of adrenaline through his veins. That was because after a year of hunting clues, he had that bitch Courtney Robyn clear in his sights.

Try as she might to conceal her appearance in a monk’s robe, she made one mistake when attempting to shake off bounty hunters: she didn’t brush her teeth. Christopher could smell that horrific oral stench from a whole block away: children’s blood mixed with women’s flesh and men’s muscles. Courtney’s victims were all dismembered and mauled in some way, leading authorities to at first believe they were attacked by wild animals. But these butchering marks were too perfect for animal paws. These bodies were dissected like a turkey’s corpse: with the intention to be eaten.

Time to collect a paycheck and get this cannibal off the streets for good. Christopher stood on the street corner and watched as the familiar and foul smelling “monk” in brown robes headed to a fruit stand in the bazaar. The street markets were filled with all sorts of customers and food mongers whether dinner that evening was fish, meat, or in Courtney Robyn’s case, fruit, probably to cleanse her breath.

Christopher approached his target with the vast number of customers in the bazaar getting out of his way since he was the most intimidating guy there. Brown hair in a ponytail with a scraggly beard and a face tattoo? Yeah, you’d better move. By the time he made it to the fruit stand, however, Courtney had already made him.

She threw off her brown robes and pulled a crying baby away from its mother before holding a jagged blade to the little guy’s throat. This was her alright: curly blond hair, the face of a demon, the clothes of a street dweller, and the breath of a cannibalistic monster. As soon as Christopher drew his crossbow and pointed, Courtney threatened, “Don’t take another step, bounty hunter, or the baby gets it!” She then kicked the hysterically crying mother in the shin to shut her up. The baby, on the other hand, was noisy enough for everyone in the bazaar, who were now fleeing the scene.

“Courtney, if you so much as pin prick that baby, I’ll put a bolt right through your fucking head! I know how you are! You’ll kill anybody as long as they taste good! I bet that baby tastes like pumpkin pie, but you’re never going to know if I get a good head shot!” threatened Christopher.

“Oh, you’re so good! You truly are an avid professional! I can smell the sweat equity you put into hunting me down…and that sweat smells like heavenly butter on that delicious man meat of yours!” said Courtney as she ran her monstrous tongue across her yellow teeth and chapped lips.

“I’m warning you, you psychotic bitch! Put the baby down or else…”

“Or else what?” The Mexican standoff ended when Courtney threw the screaming baby like a football into Christopher’s line of vision, hoping he’d pull the trigger of his crossbow out of instinct. His finger was itchy and twitchy, but he never fired. He dropped his crossbow, dove forward, and caught the baby in his muscular arms.

He spoke calmly to the little guy in a cutesy-wutesy voice while the mother limped up to the two of them crying herself. Christopher got up from the ground and handed the baby back to his mother, being ever so gentle despite his own scary appearance. “Thank you so much!” said the tattered clothed mother before she hugged him around his thick neck.

In all of this excitement, Christopher had lost eye contact with his target Courtney Robyn. The baby toss was just a diversion to help her get away. As the bounty hunter hugged the teary mother back, he was doing it also because a year’s worth of work had just gone to waste. His eyes would get blacker, his bed would get colder, and his depression would get heavier. In his mind, he cursed himself for being so “stupid”. On the outside, he held onto the hug for a little too long and the mother and her baby had to struggle to break free, which they did.

The mother and her baby would have the same reasons to cry as the rest of the bazaar customers, who were still running away in packs. Courtney Robyn didn’t escape from Christopher Brown. She didn’t want to. After a few loud, earth-trembling steps that cracked the cement roads, it was apparent that the cannibalistic murderer was still in control. Of all the animals to be riding, she had to chose a mastodon.

Not just any mastodon, but one powerful enough to squash large numbers of people like ants underneath its massive feet and towering legs. The body of this magnificent creature was stiff with muscles that made riding it feel like laying in firm bed, a luxury Christopher wish he had. Courtney Robyn, being arrogant and crude, rubbed it in by laying on her back with her hands behind her head while the beast of burden trampled through the crowd.

Some were fortunate enough to pack themselves in the alleyways and huddle underneath dustbins. Most of the customers were trying to outrun the godlike beast and got crushed and bloodied for their efforts. The streets of Middlesex looked like a battlefield with the number of flattened carcasses laying about. Christopher’s crossbow looked like someone had spilled toothpicks on the ground when it too was crunched.

Christopher himself, on the other hand, took a different route from the rest of the pack: he began scaling the buildings. The buildings were made with bulging stones held together with shallow cement, so sticking his feet and hands between spaces was easy. Climbing quickly was even easier since the adrenaline made him forget about his depressive tiredness.

But then the mighty mastodon was bumping into buildings as more people were trying to get away from it. The whole incident felt like a mosh pit with the mastodon crushing and smashing everything and anyone in its path. Courtney had done a hell of a job of riling the beast up, yet she was the most comfortable on its back. What a sick prick.

Christopher was beginning to slip and slide from his climbing position, but he was so close to the top. He could feel that final stone with in his muscular grasp. He held on with such tightness that it resembled the kind of chokehold he wanted to do to Courtney. The building continued to shake with the mastodon’s fury and Christopher’s fingers were getting weaker. With the last of his fingertips slipping away, he plummeted to the ground below in what was sure to be a splatter punk death.

He didn’t land on the cement ground to be pummeled, though. He landed right on the mastodon’s back with Courtney just now “waking up”. The spikes and studs in Christopher’s leather armor were so sharp and jutted so far that they irritated the mastodon like a bad case of flees. The destructive monster bucked around in the air like a rodeo bull, jostling Courtney and Christopher into the air and onto the cracked and split pavement.

In the last few seconds of consciousness he had after hitting the ground with deadly impact, Christopher could see the feet of not only bazaar customers fleeing, but also animal tamers lashing ropes around the mastodon to try and tame the beast. It was a relief to see the monstrous animal subdued within the world’s longest minutes. He could finally go to sleep.

No, he couldn’t! With one gloved hand, he held his left eyelid open. With the other, he rolled over on his belly and dragged himself over to where Courtney was laying. Christopher’s vision was blurry at best, but he knew the positioning all too well. She landed on the back of her neck with her legs doubled over her face.

Just a few more drags across the pavement with the detached studs in the bounty hunter’s armor irritating his skin. Another one. And another one. With bloody skin and quite possibly broken bones, Christopher Brown was finally able to drape his arm over Courtney’s lifeless body. Any authority figure looking at the two of them would know that Courtney was his catch and nobody else’s. They’d have no choice but to pay up and hopefully witnesses would back Christopher up if they didn’t.

Maybe the mother with the frightened baby could be a witness. Maybe the stony ground wasn’t such a bad place to nod off after all. Maybe…maybe…zzzzzzzzzzzzz….Goodnight, Christopher Brown. Rest in peace, Courtney Robyn.

The Four Horsemen of D&D

These four characters aren’t submitting job applications, though they may be used in future stories. Instead, they’re going to listen to my obituaries. I talk all the time about how in 2010 when I binge-played Dungeons & Dragons with Heather and TJ, four different player characters died under my watch. Every time one of these deaths happened, tears formed in my players’ eyes and RPG life wasn’t the same without them. Their spiritual essences would haunt the PC’s dreams and bring back traumatic memories as they entered their next battlefield thinking the next one could be one of them. As they say at the beginning of every episode from the Law & Order franchise, “These are their stories.”


NAME: Chris Bryan
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Human


Chris and his cousin Wade made a pact to be lifelong vegans after running away from their farm home due to the bloody treatment of innocent animals. To sustain themselves, they both signed up for the Middlesex National Guard. Both cousins graduated, but at different times in their careers. Wade went on to be a personal bodyguard for the lead PC Darthania Gaveston (controlled by Heather) while Chris joined much later. The cousins and their new PC friends were inseparable. And then one night, their world turned black (not that it already wasn’t in a crime-infested place like Middlesex). Middlesex Fighting Championship, the main MMA enterprise of the D&D campaign, was blocking traffic because ticket sales to their most recent event were skyrocketing. In a fit of road rage, one of the MMA stars, Glenn Allen, tried to run over several innocent people while honking at them. It took Chris, Wade, and an elf paladin named Windham Farrell to subdue Mr. Allen. Unfortunately, Chris was the recipient of several unanswered kicks to the ribs and died of suffocation. Wade was so devastated by his cousin and best friend’s death that he thought about quitting the bodyguard business until his mentor, Zell Jardine, convinced him to do a commercial promoting National Guard membership on the basis that they rescue animals from their abusers. Wade did as he was told, but described it as the most sobering experience in his life. Poor guy.


NAME: Gerard Killings
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Human


NAME: Kurt Blades
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Panther


Zell Jardine, the founder of the leftwing terrorist organization The Trench Coat Militia, trained a lot of people in his lifetime into becoming badass soldiers with his ruthless drill instructor mentality. But of all those people, he only had four he considered his best pupils. Gerard and Kurt were among those four people, the other two being a human fighter named Ethan Stryker and a troll fighter named Michael Heaven. Together, the Trench Coat Militia changed the city of Middlesex from a dictatorship to a democracy, but not without shedding a shit ton of blood along the way with their machetes. But when you bring about change with violence, you can expect more violence as you can guess from the deaths of Gerard Killings and Kurt Blades. Both warriors died defending different MMA events from terror organizations and criminal gangs. The difference between the two deaths is that Gerard had a 19-year-old son named Jason who signed up after his father died. Kurt Blades had no family and died in obscurity. Kurt even visited one of the PC’s, a half-orc barbarian named Agrusk Xis (controlled by TJ), in his dreams and asked a profound question, “Why, sweet God, why?!” Agrusk couldn’t come up with an answer even if he was awake and alert.


NAME: India Malakar
LEVEL: 2
CLASS: Monk
RACE: Elf


Considering the fact that India was an elf with a negative constitution modifier and a warrior class, his death shouldn’t have come as a surprise. What was really surprising was how this guy became the longest reigning MFC Welterweight Champion of all time before losing the gold to Agrusk Xis? A negative constitution modifier is detrimental to the work of a mixed-martial artist since most of what they do centers around their conditioning. In gaming terms, India was a level two character with only 7 hit points. This made absolutely perfect sense at the time I played with him, but it doesn’t make sense anymore. Before turning to MMA as a source of income, Brutus Warcry (a human barbarian that I controlled) along with his wife Darthania (Heather’s half-elf wizard) and best friend Agrusk Xis (TJ’s half-orc barbarian) needed help capturing wanted criminals around Middlesex and turning them in to the authorities for bounty money. These criminals could blow the shit out of populations with nail bombs or they could just slash everyone they see to pieces. They were too dangerous for one person to take on alone. India gladly lent his help and surprisingly did a good job of it. But when bounty hunting became too much of a dangerous chore, India was the one person who recommended Brutus, Agrusk, and Darthania become involved with mixed-martial arts, which is much safer and much more regulated by comparison. Brutus became the MFC’s Heavyweight Champion, Agrusk as I’ve said before became the Welterweight Champion, and Darthania became the Vice President of the company. They did well for themselves, unlike India who while helping his new friends fight off terrorists died after having his throat slit by a rat warrior. India’s death was the first to take place among the official PC’s, so everybody in the game took it hard. Even Agrusk, a macho half-orc, was blubbering as he tended to India’s dying corpse.


Four dead player characters from a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in 2010. But death is only the beginning. The greatest thing about being a fictional character from another canon is that there are always extra chances. Instead of rotting in the Middlesex Cemetery, these four are in the unemployment line of my imagination. But don’t worry, they’ll find work soon enough. They always do.

Darthania Gaveston

NAME: Darthania Gaveston

AGE: 20

OCCUPATION: Wizard

CANONS: Dungeons & Dragons: The Middlesex Campaign and Fireball Nightmare

Technically, this character doesn’t belong to me. She belongs to my good friend Heather, who I used to play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons with back in 2010. She was the wife of my human barbarian Brutus Warcry, who I’ve talked about in previous character profiles. This couple did everything together. They chased bounty heads, they competed in mixed-martial arts, they went on missions to kick some villainous ass, and they even protected the mayor of Middlesex Shawn Simms on more than one occasion. Darthania and Brutus’ romance and adventures were the ultimate rags to riches tale. They started off begging for handouts and became eighth level millionaires.

Darthania comes from a similar romantic background to her husband Brutus in the sense that he was not her first choice. Before Brutus came into her life, Darthania was studying wizardry at the Middlesex Academy of the Arts. She was a damn good student as well as the man she fell in love with at the time, Randy Farrell. They’d do experiments together whether they were wizardry assignments or otherwise…and my definition of otherwise is very loose if you know what I mean. Hehe!

They started off as lab partners and became lovers destined for marriage. And then one day, an accident during class caused a chemical explosion that poisoned Randy and killed him slowly while he rested in a hospital bed. Darthania never got to say goodbye to Randy and still missed him even after marrying Brutus. Brutus never got over Kai Nightwolf and Darthania never got over Randy Farrell. The relatives of the dead lovers entered Brutus and Darthania’s lives as government-paid bodyguards, those guys being Electra Nightwolf, Sandra Nightwolf, and Windham Farrell. It’s not the same, though. It’ll never be the same again.

Darthania had a huge impact not just on Brutus’ life, but on the lives of everybody who participated in that game from Heather to TJ to Sid to Amber. She was so much of an icon that I asked Heather for permission to use her in Fireball Nightmare. Not only did she say it was okay, but she said she was honored since she admires my writing skills (not to brag about it or anything. Hehe!).

In Fireball Nightmare, Darthania Gaveston’s new role was the ex-lover of Brutus in a love polygon that involved anywhere up to seven people. That’s a lot of emotional turmoil to go through. And a lot of condoms. But if she could put those dark feelings aside, then she would have been responsible for Deus, Brutus, and company finding the Lunar Crystal, which when dropped down Vahd’s volcanic opening would cool the earth off from the hellfire it was subjected to. In other words, Darthania would have been responsible for earth’s freedom. But because of confusing plot holes, perfect characters, and all around shabby writing, Fireball Nightmare has been deleted from my archives and is yet another failed project. I had a chance to make Heather’s character famous and I blew it. That’s worth a deep sigh.

Since I already asked once if it was okay to use Darthania in a novel of mine, I’m sure Heather will say yes every time after that as well. It all depends on how many times until I find the perfect fit for the lovely elf wizard. Like every other unemployed character I plan on using, Darthania’s chances of being chosen for a story are random. But if she’s going to stay in my archives indefinitely, the right thing to do would be to let Heather have a crack at writing a story for her. Granted, I’ve never read any of Heather’s writing before, but judging from how well she played Darthania in the D&D sessions, I know she can hack it as a writer.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“You could say I’ve lost my faith in politicians. They all seem like game show hosts to me. But if I ever lose my faith in you, there would be nothing left for me to do. I could be lost inside their locks without a trace. But every time I close my eyes, I see your face.”

-Sting singing “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You”-

Kai Nightwolf

NAME: Kai Nightwolf

AGED: 23

OCCUPATION: Medicine Woman

CANON: Dungeons & Dragons: The Middlesex Campaign

Have you heard George Carlin’s latest idea for world peace? It’s simple: every person in the world has to get in a parallel line and shake the hands of the people in the other line. In other words, if everybody knew each other a little better in spite of the races and cultures, they’d be less likely to kill each other because they’d develop empathy that way. Before the Dungeons & Dragons world even heard of Electra and Sandra Nightwolf, there was a completely different tribeswoman who would break down racial barriers through her romantic escapades with Brutus Warcry. Her name was Kai Nightwolf.

Kai was not a warrior in any sense of the word. Her role within the Nightwolf Tribe was to heal those who came to her with illnesses, whether they were mental, physical, or spiritual. If you think a paladin’s “lay on hands” trick is pretty neat, try spending a night in Kai’s medical hut (don’t get any perverted ideas, you’re not getting any action). When entering Kai’s hut, think of yourself as a Diablo II character with one hit point left and poison running through your bloodstream. With one click, Kai will refill your health meter and expel the venom from your body. Okay, so that’s not exactly real time, but she was that good.

She had heard stories about the Warcry Tribe and how brutal they were (despite the Nightwolves being just as brutal themselves). And yet, when she was out picking herbs and berries for her natural medicine, a wounded warrior from the Warcry Tribe needed her the most. Kai knew this stranger was considered the enemy, but she still laid him on the ground and worked her healing magic. Within an hour of shamanistic rituals and medicine dances, Brutus was patched up and ready to go back into battle. But he didn’t want to go back to battle. He wanted to fall in love with Kai.

Brutus began to visit Kai more often even for little injuries like a hangnail or a splinter. The two of them began to realize how stupid racial hatred was. Despite their differences in flesh hues (Nightwolves were brown and Warcries were black), they went on dates together, long walks among the creek, naps in the forest, and they even made love once or twice. A barbaric extrovert like Brutus should have been used to having multiple women gather around him for sex. But this wasn’t sex with Kai. This was love making. This was a moment of beauty and passion, not shallowness and disgust. It’s because of moments like these that Kai and Brutus even considered running away from their respective tribes to get married.

Kai never made it. The day before she and Brutus could escape the tribal grounds, an army of Warcry warriors led by two unenlightened halfwits named Titus and Cabal surged through a Nightwolf encampment and slaughtered anybody with brown skin, including Kai, who had her head chopped off by Titus and Cabal themselves. Scalps were taken, weapons and treasures were looted, and dead bodies created an ocean of brown and red violence. Brutus found out about this heinous assault and excommunicated himself from the Warcry Tribe immediately.

Brutus was so heartbroken that he ran off to the city of Middlesex just to get away from his so called “family”. He never got over Kai. The feel of her smooth skin. The jasmine scent of her hair. The beauty of her chocolate eyes. The sensitivity and intellect within her tormented soul. Everything about Kai Nightwolf was beautiful to Brutus. He told this to his future wife Darthania and she too confessed that she never got over a past love of her own: a wizard named Randy Farrell. Brutus and Darthania were so lonely that they had nobody’s arms to run to but each other’s. They married while Kai and Randy’s spirits were floating in the heavens. Where’s the justice in that?

Wade Bryan

When you combine the names of WWE wrestlers Wade Barrett and Daniel Bryan and make a Dungeons & Dragons character named Wade Bryan, you’d better make him into a serious badass. He can’t just look good carrying a two-handed sword and dressed in 100-lb. metal armor; he has to look and fight like a war god. He may be a level one human fighter, but back in 2010 when my D&D output was particularly high, he was my level one human fighter. He’s Wade Bryan, damn it, and every time he kicks the bad guys’ asses, everyone gathers around him for flash photography. Wait a minute…flash photography in a medieval fantasy game? How can that be?

In order to grow up to be a kick-ass fighter, you have to be battletested both mentally and physically. That means growing up with a dark past few people gather the inner strength to talk about. For Wade, that was easy. He grew up on a farm with lots of cute animals. He petted chickens, rolled around with pigs, patted the cows on their heads, basically, he was one happy kid whose joyful nature couldn’t be tainted by anything. That is, anything except for learning about what eventually happens to these cute animals on the farm. Wade Bryan wasn’t just shocked by learning these animals were eventually slaughtered; he was traumatized and disgusted.

Upon seeing a row of cow corpses in the slaughterhouse, Wade’s childhood was ruined. He ran away from home with his cousin Chris and decided to pilfer vegetables off of other people’s farms. He and Chris made a pact together to never eat a single bite of meat, eggs, cheese, or any other animal byproducts for the rest of their shattered and war-torn lives. Being a vegan was easy for Wade, because every time a piece of steak would touch his lips, he would get violently ill from the trauma he experienced as a kid. Since he and Chris were close, Chris sympathized with Wade to where he too would get sick at the thought of meat.

Stealing vegetables wasn’t the best way to survive in farm territory, so when Wade and Chris were old enough, they joined the National Guard under the tutelage of the ultra-tough Zell Jardine. Zell put them through hell, and no, I’m not trying to be cute by saying that. The training consisted of constant aerobic and combat exercises with Zell’s piercing screams blasting in the trainees’ ears. It got bad enough for some people that they quit after the first few days. Wade and Chris, on the other hand, graduated with honors and eventually became best friends with Zell Jardine. Funny how that works out.

When Wade Bryan was introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons scenario, he was part of a government program called The Bodyguard System. The Mayor of Middlesex (the main town of the game), Shawn Simms, would grant the services of a high ranking bodyguard to whoever helped his city in any way, shape, or form. The main characters of the game, Darthania Galveston and Brutus Warcry, protected Shawn Simms from various criminal gangs, so they got the services of Wade Bryan. The rest, they say, is history. Wade wasn’t just a government employee, he was also a fuck buddy for the female characters of the game. But that’s a story for another day, probably in a future publication called Fifty Wades of Grey. I’m kidding. Maybe. I don’t know.

　

***PROVERB OF THE DAY***

“What you do to your children, they will do to the world.”

-Unknown-