The Companions of Tartiël

by Jeff Wilcox

  Kaiyr grimaced in pain, and for one split second that seemed to drag out into hours, he felt something strange course through him. He felt a sudden longing for the moon, which shone ever-so-enticingly brightly tonight, and he wished nothing more than to run alongside Cobain in a more natural form, hunting prey and living as a predator.

  Then the blademaster’s training took over, and he realized what was happening. He couldn’t afford to become a werewolf himself. Willing his body to fight off the magical disease, Kaiyr felt the mystical influence of lycanthrope leave his body and fade away completely.

  Then Vinto darted in, a gray streak that circled around behind Cobain and nipped at his heels. Kaiyr, thankful for the help, switched from defense to offense when the werewolf mistakenly turned his attention to the real wolf. “Leave him be,” the blademaster growled. “I am your enemy!” With a precise slice, the blademaster severed the muscles in Cobain’s right arm, rendering it useless. As the other three wererats closed on him and Vinto, though, Kaiyr suddenly did not feel so confident, but he did not let it show.

  Caineye and Wild worked together to take down two more wererats most ungracefully with a hail of slung stones and thrown daggers. Then they turned their attention to the foes surrounding Kaiyr and Vinto.

  The elf and the wolf fought like a pair of old war veterans. Vinto suffered a few minor nicks and scratches from the three remaining wererats, but he kept his attention mostly focused on Cobain and the larger threat he represented. Kaiyr spun and whirled about like an exotic dancer. Trails of blood followed in the wake of many of his slashes, though most of the cuts were barely skin-deep.

  Finally, after turning to parry an attack by one of the wererats, Kaiyr’s foresight told him that Cobain had made a critical error and had bared his undefended side with its useless arm in the blademaster’s direction, hoping to kill the wolf and have done with it. Without even looking, the blue-haired elf whirled his soulblade around in his hand and struck out behind him. His attack was rewarded with the slight pressure of impact, followed by less resistance as his blade slid into Cobain’s body, angled upwards and into the werewolf’s heart. Kaiyr released his soulblade, and Cobain dropped to the ground, transforming back into his human form in death.

  Almost immediately, the last three wererats broke off the attack, stepping back and raising their arms in surrender as they shifted back into their human forms. Vinto continued to nip at their heels until they retreated several paces away from the blademaster, druid, and rogue.

  “We… we give up,” panted one of the brothers, whose name none in the party cared to recall. “Please spare us. We… oh, gods, we were just working with him because he threatened us!”

  Breathing heavily, Kaiyr, Caineye, and Wild exchanged looks. The blademaster took the initiative, the better to cow the wererats into submission. “And why should we spare you? You attempted to kill us.” He stepped forward, his soulblade held confidently at his side in a manner that told the three cowards that he could—and just might—kill them at his leisure. In truth, Kaiyr knew his role was to play the aggressor, and unless these three tried anything untoward, he had no intentions of killing them now that they had surrendered.

  “We… we promise to help you, and to make amends,” offered one of the creatures.

  Caineye stepped forward, still spinning his loaded sling in one hand. “Do you promise to repair and consecrate this holy ground which you have desecrated and used to achieve your own ends?”

  “Y-yes, we’ll do anything you wish. Just don’t kill us!”

  Kaiyr fixed each of them with his unavoidable stare. At length, he nodded and released his soulblade. “I suppose we can grant them clemency,” he said, beginning to turn away. “But I shall warn you once, and only once. I give my enemies one chance to redeem themselves. Betray this mercy, and I shall be relentless in pursuing you. Should that happen, you will not escape, and you will not live. This I promise you. Until then, I pledge you my protection.”

  Caineye nodded at Kaiyr then looked at the bodies on the floor. “What should we do about this mess?”

  Kaiyr grimaced, glancing at the bloody bite wound on his elbow. “I have wounds to tend, as does Vinto. If you wish to clean it up now, do so. Otherwise we can handle it come morning.” He looked back at the wererats. “Get some rest. We have much work to do after the sun rises.”

  The wererats shuffled away, their heads bowed in shame.

  Returning to their room, the adventurers noted that the wererat they had bound had slipped his bonds.

  “He probably shifted form and got away,” Caineye suggested.

  “I cannot decide whether I should be glad or annoyed,” Kaiyr admitted. “You two may rest. Master Caineye, you should be familiar with this, but Master Wild may not. We elves, when we rest, do not relinquish our vigil. Even as I dream, I shall be watching over us all. You may rest easy tonight. I am going to bathe in the spring and repair my robes. I bid you both a good night.” He bowed once and left, heading for the spring.

  “Good night, Master Kaiyr,” both the human and halfling replied respectfully as Caineye tended to Vinto, who did not seem too troubled by his injuries. After Kaiyr returned, the three of them went silently to their beds. The others lay down, but Kaiyr sat with his legs crossed and his eyes partially open. As the night drew on, dreams filled the minds of the unusual group of comrades, who had just survived their first battle together—and in one piece.

  *

  “And that’s where we’ll end for tonight,” Dingo said. “I want all of you to level up. That was one tough battle.”

  “Woot!” I exclaimed. “Level two. Watch out, mofos! Here we come!”

  We all shared a chuckle before I looked at Dingo. “Oh, how do you do hit points

  [11] at each level? Do you just do the standard, where you roll once?”

  Dingo shrugged. “No, I usually have players roll twice and take the better of the two. How do you do it?”

  “Well,” I replied, looking at Xavier, who was familiar with my games. “It’s kind of convoluted, but my players like it. You roll once. If you like what you get, you keep it as normal. But if you don’t, then you have a choice. You can either roll again or take half the max roll, rounded up. But if you roll again, you have to take it, no matter how crappy it is.”

  Dingo pursed his lips, thinking about it. “You know what? I like that. It sounds interesting. Let’s do that.”

  “All right.”

  He watched while we all rolled our hit points. I distinctly recall rolling an eight on my first try. Blademasters can gain between one and ten hit points each level, thanks to their d10 Hit Die

  [12] , so I was pretty pleased with that result, which set my maximum hp to twenty.

  After scrawling in his new hit point total, Matt relaxed in his chair. “I dunno about you guys, but that was awesome. Even the bitching we did.”

  “Yeah,” Xavier and I agreed at nearly the same time.

  “That really was cool, Dingo. Even the werewolf, which I’m glad you modified from the standard one,” I said.

  Dingo shrugged again. “Heh. Thanks, guys. It would have been a short campaign if I’d left it the way it’s supposed to be. But I’m glad you had fun.”

  I glanced at the clock. “Man, it’s past one in the morning. I can’t believe we played for six hours. It feels like it was only one or two at most.” I yawned and stretched and jiggled my computer’s mouse to make the monitor wake up. “Well, thanks for a fun time. I’m really liking this game already, Dingo.”

  Everyone else nodded, and Dingo replied, “Yeah. I’m loving the way the party interacts already, too. Your characters are all really interesting and fleshed-out. And Xavier, you’re usually such a quiet person, but you really get into this.”

  Xavier just smiled and muttered something I didn’t catch.

  Everyone packed up, and Dingo and Matt headed out after we all agreed to meet for D&D again a few days later. Xavier and I stayed up for a while, talking ab
out the experience we’d just had, as well as our hopes for the future of the game, before turning in just before two in the morning.

  IV.

  I was greatly surprised and pleased when Dingo agreed to allow me to play my homebrew blademaster class. In fact, he really seemed to want to see my creation in action after I explained the concept, mechanics, and flavor of the class to him.

  “So, tell me about your blademaster class,” he said over the bustle of Kriner dining hall a few nights before the first game session. “I take it it’s some kind of melee fighter.”

  Around the food in my mouth, I responded to Dingo’s question: “Melee, yes. Fighter, yes, sort of,” I said. “It’s hard to explain using current classes, but… take a paladin, mix in a little monk, and then toss in some soulknife for some flavor, mix it all together… and that’s what you get, at least on a rudimentary level.”

  Dingo kind of stared at me with one eyebrow raised, waiting for me to go on. “I’m waiting for you to tell me how that’s not broken.”

  “Well, the blademaster’s powers are mitigated by certain limitations on equipment, as well as by daily usage limits on many of their abilities. Most of their class features can’t be used in medium or heavy armor or while wielding a shield. They also aren’t proficient with ranged weapons, so outside if five or ten feet, they’re not much of a threat. Oh, you are running with the three-five edition rules, right?” I asked, referring to the current edition of the D&D rules.

  He nodded. “Yeah. So this soulblade you mentioned earlier, how’s it work?”

  “You know how the soulknife class creates its mind blade with mental energy? It’s similar in function, except that the source is the blademaster’s spirit rather than his mind. However, blademasters can’t throw their soulblades like the soulknives can; in fact, the moment it leaves the blademaster’s hand, his soulblade disappears.

  “Can it be broken or disarmed or anything?”

  “Mm, sort of,” I replied. “It can be sundered or disarmed, but because of its nature, the blademaster can just reform it on his next turn, or, if he’s high enough level, even before then. Really powerful blademasters technically can’t be disarmed because they can reform their soulblades as a non-action, even during someone else’s turn.”

  Dingo whistled. “Sounds interesting. So are they heavy hitters, or what?”

  “Not at all. I mean, if you built a blademaster solely around dealing damage, you could do it, but you’d get much better mileage out of a fighter or barbarian. Blademasters are designed to be highly defensive and to be able to defend other members of the party. They gain an insight bonus to AC

  [13] equal to their Wisdom bonus and AC bonuses like the monk. Then, based on certain ‘blademaster paths’ the individual blademaster chooses, he can gain numerous abilities. You could grab ‘fast movement,’ followed by ‘lightning manifest,’ which allows you to make one extra attack as a free action, a number of times per day equal to the blademaster’s level. Or, you could choose to gain an ability where you extend you Combat Expertise

  [14] AC bonus to an adjacent ally without giving them the penalty.”

  “Ooh, I’m liking it.”

  “Their damage is limited to a d8 plus whatever bonuses they have from Strength, but by choosing certain abilities like the ones I was talking about, they can increase their damage dice, too.”

  Dingo nodded. “Cool, cool. Um, these soul… blades, can they be enhanced magically?”

  “No. In fact, spells that would normally enhance weapons, like magic weapon and greater magic weapon, don’t work on a soulblade, because it isn’t a manufactured weapon. And the magic fang spells from the druid list don’t work, either, because the soulblade’s not a natural weapon.” Again, Dingo raised his eyebrow. “Okay, well, part of the concept of the blademaster is that he is self-sufficient in that he relies—or tries to—on his own power, on his own spirit. Like the soulknife class, the blademaster’s weapon gains an enhancement bonus to attack and damage over time, and some of the blademaster’s paths hold abilities that can be added to the blade, like an alignment

  [15] -based damage type, and so on.”

  “Okay. So where’s the monk come into play?”

  I winced. Dingo had previously said he was not a fan of Eastern influence in terms of flavor, but I went ahead anyway. “Well, it’s more samurai-like than monk-like. Blademasters are very quick and very martial focused on their community. But a blademaster is actually beholden to himself before his people. They’re loyal to those they’re sworn to protect, and they never give up, but unlike samurai, they know when to retreat, and their loyalty is not blind. Their training, like both samurai and monk, makes them very focused, so concentration is an important skill for them—it even lets them manifest their soulblades in an area of antimagic.”

  “Whoa, that’s neat.”

  “Yeah, well, I decided it would suck if a martial class got fucked over because he waltzed into an antimagic zone and couldn’t draw his sword. And since the sign of a true blademaster is the lack of any material weapons, I decided to balance that out. In areas of no magic, the soulblade loses its enhancement bonus as normal, but with a high enough Concentration check, he can even add those back in.”

  “I like it,” Dingo said. He kept on eating as I talked, my food growing cold.

  “As for the paladin, blademasters have to be lawful, and they cannot be evil. That part is flavor from my books, where the people who can become blademasters literally are incapable of being evil. Anyway, blademasters serve in much the same role as paladins—as leaders, tanks

  [16] , and secondary healers. They don’t get lay on hands, like the pally, but they get half-casting with their own spell list, mostly minor buffs and abjurations, with a few cure spells tossed in.” I grinned. “I’d need you to look over it, but I also made a couple spells for the blademaster. In my novel, the one blademaster breathes out fire a couple times during a battle, kind of a ‘stoking his spiritual fires’ deal, so I made it into a spell.”

  Dingo nodded again and kept eating.

  “A lawful neutral blademaster might be cold and merciless, but as long as he doesn’t resort to truly evil measures, he’s good to go. A blademaster could use torture to extract information from an enemy, for example, as long as that enemy proved that he was irredeemable. In a pinch, he could torture an enemy who might have been redeemable if the blademaster’s pressed for time, like if his wards are going to die if the bad guy doesn’t spill the beans.”

  I fell silent after having run my mouth for a solid several minutes. Dingo took that as a cue that I was about out of words. “Want to get dessert?” he asked.

  “If by ‘get dessert’ you mean ‘walk to the dessert table and walk back empty-handed,’ then yes,” I said wryly.

  He chuckled and led the way. To nobody’s surprise, we returned to the table with no dessert after spurning the choices available to us. I might have gone for ice cream if it wasn’t January.

  “The blademaster sounds pretty cool,” Dingo told me on our way out. I pushed open the door to be met with a blast of wintry air, and we proceeded out into the cold and back to Lackhove. “Print me out a copy of the class so I can read over it. Other than that, sure, you can go ahead and make your character. Any idea what Xavier’s playing?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, hunching up my shoulders against the icy claws of January. “He was set on the druid last night.” I chuckled a bit, remembering. “He barely glanced at anything else. How about Matt? Does he have a character yet?”

  We crossed the campus road between Kriner and Lackhove, the asphalt blotchy with white salt that had melted snow and subsequently crystallized again as the snow evaporated and sublimated.

  “Sort of. He says he wants to play a rogue. Said something about pairing that class with the halfling race, so his fingers’ll be extra sticky.”

  Dingo rolled his eyes. “Great.”

  “Heh. Well, we’ve got a balanced, if small, party. If Matt�
�s playing a rogue, then we’ve got the skill monkey covered. Xavier will be our healer and artillery, and once he hits level five, he’ll be able to hit the front lines with me. I’ll hold down tanking for now and do secondary healing and buffs after level four.” I paused, looking at Dingo. “Have you found another player? We could use an arcane caster. Xavier’s got some big shoes to fill.”

  Dingo just shrugged as we got back to Lackhove. We entered and nodded to the desk assistant on duty on our way back to our respective rooms. “I asked a couple people. Some of them said they could play but couldn’t really commit to being at every session. Oh, that’s something I wanted to say. How are you at being at D&D sessions? Like, you don’t miss them often?”

  “Pff,” I scoffed. “Dude, I’d be more surprised if you could run D&D as often as Xavier and I are willing and wanting to play.”

  V.

  “All right,” the DM said, after we had assembled in our dorm room and finished warming up our dice, giving each a few rolls and selecting the one that rolled highest. “Kaiyr, you’re an elf, so you only need four hours of sleep. That means you’re the first person awake the next morning. And by morning, I mean like, three in the morning or so.”

  “Yeah, nothing unusual,” I said, shrugging. “Kaiyr, as he always does, spends an hour in waking meditation to prepare his mind and soul for the upcoming day, followed by a short physical regimen outside with his soulblade.” I scratched my chin. “Let’s see. We left the lycanthropes’ bodies in the entrance hall, right?”