Let The Dice Roll- Part 2 of 2

The white plastic cubes were flung across the table, and all the nerdy occupants drew their collective breaths in anticipation. The first ceased rolling- a six. The second spun on a corner, and looked like it was going to be a one, but teetered and came down again- a six. The third had too much momentum, and continued rolling right to the edge of the table. It looked like it was about to fall to the floor, but its progress arrested suddenly and it flicked back with six back dots pointing up to the ceiling.
All sixes. A collective sigh was let out and one person took up applause which led the rest of the group to join in. My opponent glowered at me.
"The Blade of Serenity pierces your battle mesh," the Dungeon Master intoned, "but is turned aside as it glances off your Compendium of Secrets, kept in a pocket above your chest."
"You mean like a notepad?" I queried.
"Yes, like a notepad."
"The kind a detective would have?"
"No. You wrest the blade from Mysterius' hand and push him against the wall, his own weapon now pointed at his throat. Mysterius loses 10 armour points and drops the Gauntlets of Extreme Gauntlet-ness."
"Who comes up with these names?" I asked.
"The Gauntlets of Extreme Gauntlet-ness have been passed down from father to son for a thousand generations."
"And in doing so, obtained the power of...?"
"Gauntlet."
"Ah."
"-Ness. Now, your leperous guide sits in awe, his one good hand frozen in fear at the display of your battle prowess. You beaten foe agrees to answer your questions. And you ask-"
I interrupted here. It was time to earn my payday.
"I ask him: last week a clan of hobbits came through this part of the town. Frodo Gamje, the love-child of Frodo and Samwise and a Level 60 Hobbit with a plus 15 enchantment on his sword and a negative 50 enchantment on his dating life, was amongst them. You challenged him to single combat and won."
"What?" said the Dungeon Master. "How do you know about this?"
"Shush," I responded, "I was talking to Mysterius. Now answer, or I'll roll to see if I get to pluck your eye out, stick it in the sky, and make it live above some stupid volcano until some midget comes, likes the lava, and puts a ring on it."
"It was fair combat!" Mysterius replied. "It's not my fault if Frodo always begins with the same attack!"
"I guess it's Hobbitual," I replied, "but that doesn't concern me. Your unexpected string of good fortune, however, does."
"I rolled those numbers fair and square!" he replied indignantly. I looked at him long and hard.
"You did, did you?" I asked. "Is that your final answer?"
"What are you saying?" asked the Dungeon Master indignantly. "Are you implying there is some impropriety in this noble battle? I have been Dungeon Master since Time Immemorial-"
"You've been Dungeon Master for four weeks," I replied shortly. "Now I'm going to put on my magical detecting cloak of I-Can-Have-Sex-With-Actual-Women which has infinity Answer-Me-Or-I'll-Punch-You-Right-In-The-Nose points and get to the bottom of this. Mysterius' unnatural run of luck destroyed Frodo after rolling three consecutive triple-sixes. Dungeon Master, what do you say about this?"
"Well, of course I was suspicious," he replied hastily, "but we let the dice roll, the laws of chance decide and we abide by its outcome. That's the rule we've always had."
"Ah, the dice," I replied. "And yet no-one thought it odd that the third die which was about to fall off the table stopped so abruptly. Dungeon Master, I've done some digging. Lord Englewood who by day is Phil From Tech Support also has a third life, does he not, as a children's entertainer and amateur magician, The Amazing Horatio?"
"Well," he said, drawing himself up, "I like to give back to the community-"
"Indeed. An admirable pursuit no doubt. I would like to shake you by the hand in recognition of your civic-mindedness."
Warily, he extended his be-robed hand, mysterious and arcane symbols drawn around the cuffs of the sleeves. I shook it, grabbed it at the wrist, and flicked a small pocket in the cuff whose stitching was almost unnoticeable to the naked eye, except to those who were looking for it. Three dice fell to the table. I rolled the existing dice again- they came up all sixes.

"Now, Lord Englewood, I will tell you what I know, and you will tell me why. You conspired to use your sleight-of-hand skills to swap the dice on a number of occasions. By prior arrangement with Mysterius, you ended Frodo Gamje's young life after three year's development by Eugine Finkelstein, who describes himself as 'Frodo's avatar in this world.'"
"Fine!" the Dungeon Master replied, "I switched the dice! I'm glad this is out in the open, finally! It's about my son! He killed my son!"
The room went silent. I froze. Had I stepped into something beyond me? Was I backing the wrong horse? Wait a second- when had this guy even spoken to a woman who wasn't clad in green and wearing elvish ears?
"What son?" I asked suspiciously.
"Lord Englewood II, the son of Lord Englewood I, who died at the hands of Frodo Gamje when he was dropped from a precipice while scaling the Mountains of Infinite Peril!"
I paused for a second. Breathed in deeply. Breathed out.
"I just want to get this straight," I said, "you cheated by switching dice to destroy a guy's character because his character killed your imaginary son- inside a game you completely control?"
"Yes! But he dropped him!"
"In a story you made up?!?"
"It needed narrative tension! A defining tragedy! But then I couldn't forget or forgive him!"
"So you're blaming him for an event you scripted because your imaginary character feels betrayed by his failure- that you wrote- and so now he needs to make a new character and begin from the very first level?"
"Yes!"
"And for that, I've been paid $15,000 and had to spend six weeks undercover?"
"What?"
"You know what? That's enough. Lord Englewood, I hereby deduct a million I-Have-A-Point-On-This-Planet points, which earns you this-" and here I punched him squarely in the nose, and as he lay recumbent on the ground continued "-and I will take this evidence to my client so that he knows he was cheated and can resurrect his character." I turned to the room in general, and said "you are all witnesses to this admission. If I have to come back here, so help me, I'm going to just set a fire near the doorway and let nature take care of the rest."

I stood up. The Dungeon Master shuffled backwards hastily from his position on the floor to get out of my way. I removed my false ears, bundled them up in my cloak, and dropped them on the floor by the door. In the vacuous silence of the room, the creak of the hinges as they opened seemed cacophonous. I stepped forward meaningfully, turned, and slammed the door to make a point. I pulled a small recording device out of my pocket, removed the memory card, took out my phone, and called my client.
"Sir? It's Knut Tortenheimel. Yes, I have the evidence you wanted. No, it wasn't hard to get the admission. Yes, your character can be revived, the room and the players are witnesses but I have a memory card confirming the dice were loaded. A bonus? $20k total? That's very kind of you. I'll drop the file off on the way. You have my bank details. It's been a pleasure doing business with you."

I hung up the phone, and paused to reflect on the bizarre world that I had been involved in. I couldn't imagine how people could devote so much time and energy on such a worthless, socially isolating, imaginary pursuit. Still, the bonus was going to be worth it.
I could finally put a deposit down on that 1971 Malibu Barbie I'd had my eye on, the last prize in my collection. Three hundred and twenty-two dolls in mint condition. I couldn't wait to tell the other dozen people on the Barbie message boards. Now that was a man's hobby.

Let The Dice Roll- Part 1 of 2

It all came down to this. A roll of the dice. One deft flick of the wrist. I had to keep my cool- if they had suspected that I was undercover, well, let's just say it could go very badly for me very quickly.

I wrapped my cloak around myself temporarily, not as much to keep out the chill as to suppress shiver of nervousness. My opponent in this game had many more years experience, and his eyes betrayed nothing. But experience can count for little, when luck has a casting vote, and I had luck in spades.

Undercover work is a challenge. For a start, it's expensive for a client- you need to be able to insinuate yourself into your target group; not look too desperate, but also not appear too interested. The lingo, the pop culture references that apply, the clothing, the body gestures, and hangout scenes, all these things have to become second nature. At the same time, you had to try not to get drawn so far into the scene that there was no returning. All that takes time, and time is money.

In this case, I was in a clandestine world few were even aware of. A tense dungeon of mystery, inhabited by supplicants for whom each decision could mean life or death. I was completely surrounded by virgins, and not the blow-yourself-up-and-get-seventy-two-of-them kind, no; more the saving-myself-for-Princess-Leia kind of virgins.
This was the world of LARP- Live Action Role Play, and I had managed to merge seamlessly into their midst by issuing the time-honoured secret code, "Where Are We At Tonight?" to which the appropriate secret counter-response was given, "Dave's Place At Half Seven, Bring Snacks To Share". Around the room I could see four hobbits (merkins glued to their feet), three elves (fake ears and all), a dwarf, two reavers, someone designating themselves as a wraith who had draped a large back sheet over their heads with two eye holes cut out, and one person who had just written "troll" on his t-shirt with a Sharpie. They were a dermatologist's dream, each face a menagerie of skin issues that tend to crop up when you consider Coca Cola to be a "magic potion", except for the wraith, whose choice of costume was possibly in fact a social grace to spare us the horrors underneath.

Lord Englewood, better known as Phil From Tech Support, was an interesting guy at least. He had worked his way up the be the current Dungeon Master by sheer ambition, one roll of the dice at the time. A risk-taker and ambitious warrior who presently lived in his parents' basement "so that I can have the time to focus on maximising my Druid's potential", as he put it, he wove tales of mystery and intrigue and was the keeper of all the group's collective knowledge, although after fifteen minutes amongst them, I was pretty certain that the collective knowledge wouldn't fill a four-page notepad. "Showers", for example, was a mystery deeper than the origins of Mordor.

My opponent was a veteran mage with forty years' experience. By the way he had said it, it was apparently something to be intimidated by, and being undercover, falling on the ground laughing would have been unprofessional. I had, however, mentally substituted "experience" with "of being completely alone"; he had apparently subsisted on diet of Doritos and salsa for at least thirty of those years, his patchy beard turned almost to random dreadlocks with the crust of hydrogenated fats, cheese flavouring and MSG. He had indicated that the beard was a point of pride, akin to the warriors of old whose own facial hair had been crusted with the blood and tears of their departed enemies, and I had refrained from pointing out that the warriors of old wouldn't use a motorised scooter to move between the kitchen and the fridge because "walking that made them out of breath."

The Dungeon Master had said "You are a seeker of truth, and unraveller of mysteries, a chaser of enigmas, an unpicker of the the tapestry of lies in which our tale is set."
"You mean, I'm, like, a detective?"
"No! Nothing so urbane, weary traveller."
"'Cos it sounds like I'm a detective."
"No! You slave at the crucible of conundrums, refining the ore of misinformation and discovering truths within truths, wherein, this fateful night, we find our tale."
"Pretty certain you just described a detective."
"Silence! There are no detectives in Middle Earth!"
"Are there cops?"
"No!"
"Banks?"
"No!"
"Robbers?"
"N- actually, yes, there are robbers. Thieves, I should say. Thieves."
"Who punishes the robbers?"
"An assembly of the local guards who work for the king defend the honour of the realm and are tasked with restraining these miscreants."
"What did they steal?"
"Well, Stroemfeld the Invincible over there- no, the one drinking the Red Bull in the red shirt- once stole the fabled Eye of the Unseeing Eye from the cave of Arin'Tune, and was celebrated in story song throughout the land henceforth."
"Shoulda put it in a bank. Then the cops coulda protected it."
"Silence. You, weary traveller, have reached the battered gates of the small trading town Leper's Leap, out beyond the Desert of Unbidden Dreams."
"What's in the town?"
"Lepers. Anyway-"
"Wait, why am I going into a town if it's filled with lepers?"
"You're going in to solve a mystery!"
"What, like a detective?"
"Ye- no! Anyway, as you walk the wretched streets of this city, you meet a man with no hands."
"Probably wants a hand-out."
"SILENCE! This man is Jerra, the great master builder of the Temple of The Seventh Sun."
"Not much of a handy-man any more, is he? What's he do, hammer the wood with his forehead?"
"Shut up! Now, Jerra takes you to the local tavern for some mead, and introduces you to Mysterius, Arch-Mage of the Ninth Realm and Keeper of the Book of Mysteries- that's Jason, to your left-"
"But his 'Book of Mysteries' is a Playdude with 'BoM' written over the top of the magazine title."
"It's the Book of Mysteries! Do not sully its forbidden knowledge, knowlessman! Mysterius sees through your clever disguise and recognises in you an opponent most artful. He says he will not answer any question you raise until you defeat him in mighty challenge! Will you accept?"
"Well, I've been told you insert Part A into Part B and C what happens-"
"Will. You. Accept."
I breathed in. Breathed out.
"Fine."
The dice in a cup had been passed to a smug Mysterius, who had then rolled three fives for his first attack. Apparently his "armour level" meant that unless I rolled a perfect three sixes- the perfect attack, I would not penetrate his "battle mesh" and his "Blade of Serenity" would basically strip my immortal soul and turn it into a pizza delivery man or something. It wasn't important. What was important was answers, and I wouldn't start getting answers until I won this battle.

I scooped up the dice carefully. Put my hand over the cup as I shook. Breathed in deeply. And threw.