Delvok hears me. His saving throw roll is successful and the illusion breaks its hold on him. He slips out of the blue dragon’s body and lands on the floor. Loxi, too, overhears us, and breaks the illusion. Itaa and Mirrin, unfortunately, fail their saving throws. They don’t have the intelligence to tell the difference between illusion and reality.
When Loxi hits the ground, she charges the wizard with her broad sword. He casts Web on her and she becomes entangled in sticky string, holding her in place. I draw my short sword +1 and stab the wizard, taking off a few hit points. He looks at me with surprise, as if he didn’t expect me to turn on him. As if sharing a bowl together was more than enough to create a bond of friendship.
Delvok attacks him with his long sword, cutting him across the chest for 2 points of damage. Then Olffgel cries out as he uses his bong as a weapon. He smashes it across Delvok’s face. The DM rolls a 20, critical hit, so the glass shatters and cuts Delvok’s throat open, killing him instantly.
But before Delvok’s lifeless corpse hits the floor, time rewinds itself. His throat heals up and the bong puts itself back together, as if the attack had never happened. Delvok, Olffgel, and I stare at each other, confused about what had just happened.
“What the fuck was that?” I say.
Delvok feels his throat.
He says, “It appears my player demanded a re-roll because the dice had fallen on the floor. The Dungeon Master complied. So instead of a 20, Olffgel’s new attack roll ended up being 5. A miss.”
Olffgel has no idea what we’re talking about. He just shakes his head in disbelief. Then we continue the fight. I attack with a hit, but Delvok misses. Then Olffgel casts Sleep on us, but we are able to resist the spell. We attack again, and bring him down to his last few hit points.
To escape death, Olffgel casts Invisibility and runs away. Loxi breaks free of the Web spell and looks around the room for him. She swings her sword at random, hoping to land a lucky hit.
Behind us, the dragon girls continue their lesbian foursome with Mirrin and Itaa. However, Mirrin has long since expired within the gold dragon’s asshole. I’m not sure if she was crushed to death or if she suffocated, but she’s dead none the less. Itaa is still alive and well, though, biting furiously on a blue dragon nipple. She thinks she is causing it pain, but the dragon reacts to her as if it is pleasure.
We listen for the sounds of Olffgel’s footsteps, but the dragons are so loud that we can’t hear anything.
“Guard the door,” Loxi tells me.
I nod and run for the door, waving my short sword +1 around as I go. But before I get there, the door opens up on its own.
“He’s escaping!” I say.
But it’s not an invisible figure opening the door from within. No, somebody is entering from the outside. My face drops in shock as we see him enter. The little reptilian figure casually steps inside. Then the kobold gives me a wide smile as he recognizes me.
“There you are,” Glimworm says. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
The kobold wizard raises his hand at me, a sparkling of red magical energy builds up at his fingertips. I hold up my hands to block my face, but then realize he’s not aiming for me. He casts Magic Missile at the invisible figure behind me. Olffgel Zookwar’s invisibility spell dissipates and his corpse hits the ground.
Then the lesbian dragon illusion fades and Itaa finds herself lying on the floor next to Mirrin’s fluffy dead body. She rubs her head, completely confused about what had just happened.
“You never returned my dildo,” Glimworm tells me.
I fall on my knees and beg him for mercy. Delvok joins me on the floor, but Loxi stays on her feet with her sword at the ready.
“Please,” I say. “Don’t kill us.”
“Kill you?” he asks, with a confused face.
“It wasn’t our fault,” I tell him. “We didn’t want to use the dildo, but these she-trolls raped us with it.”
“It was beyond our control,” Delvok says.
Glimworm stares at us, rubbing his chin. Then he laughs.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he says, pulling me to my feet. “I guess I should have used a less threatening tactic to keep you from using the item.”
Delvok and I look at each other, then nearly collapse with relief.
“I only said that to persuade you against using the dildo,” he says. “As you know, the knowledge you have gained is knowledge you would be better off not knowing.”
He looks at Loxi and then Itaa. “All four of you have used it, I see. That’s too bad, but perhaps now that you understand the truth of this universe you might be willing to help me.”
We listen.
“I have a plan to fix our situation,” he says. “With your help, I believe we can be free of our makers by the end of the day.”
“What do you have in mind?” Loxi asks.
“All in good time, elf,” the kobold says. “All in good time.”
He holds out his hand. “The dildo, please.” Delvok runs to the table and retrieves it for him. Once in his hand, Glimworm sniffs the dildo twice and cringes at the odor. Then he wipes it against his robe and sniffs again.
“Come with me,” he says. “We have much to discuss.”
Then he leads us out of the room into the hallway.
19: Inner Sanctum
We stroll through a great hallway toward area 23. The Dungeon Master throws a gang of bugbears at us, but Glimworm casts Sleep and they all drop to the ground.
“There is a magical device in the next room that will suit our needs,” says the kobold. “It is the one thing in this world that can ensure our permanent freedom from the gods.”
“Will the players never be able to control us again?” Delvok asks.
“The players are our gods,” says Glimworm. “But you know as well as I that these gods are flawed. This is true of all gods, including the god our players worship. They are average beings with strengths, weaknesses, doubts, confusion, apprehension, mercy, cruelty. They are just like us. The only thing that makes them gods is that they have dominion over another world.”
“Don’t tell me they’re just like us,” Loxi says. “These gods are complete morons. They are worse than us.”
“Perhaps they are,” Glimworm says. “Personally, I am not a fan of gods. They create life for the sole purpose of their own amusement. They wish to live through those they create. We are just a game to them. They give us conflicts and they give us gifts, all for the sake of entertainment.”
“But not all gods could be this way,” Delvok says. “Just our players.”
“This is the only purpose a god has for creating life,” Glimworm says. “If you had the power to create a world what would be your reason for doing it? Surely, it wouldn’t be for the benefit of those who you create for your world. You would do it only for your own benefit, as a form of entertainment. A world is nothing more than a hobby to the god who creates it.”
“So you think the god of the players created them only for his own amusement?” I ask.
“Perhaps,” he says. “Maybe not for his amusement, but the amusement of his friends. Perhaps their god is just a Dungeon Master not unlike Aaron Donnelly. And he has gathered a large group of his friends together to play a game of Cubicles & Mortgage Payments. Perhaps Aaron, Mark, and Buzz are just player characters being roleplayed by some other beings from another world.”
“Maybe,” Loxi says. “But at least their Dungeon Master doesn’t suck as bad as ours.”
As we walk through the room, Itaa quickens her pace to catch up to me, hopping over sleeping gnolls. She takes my hand in hers, not at all embarrassed by who sees us together. Relationships between certain races are incredibly taboo in most cultures of our world. Goblins are especially xenophobic, but so are elves and dwarves. As I look over at Itaa, she smiles at me and blushes. When a goblin girl blushes, her cheeks turn a darker shade of green.
Loxi catches my eyes and giggles. She giggles in a wa
y that is kind of demeaning, as if she thinks it’s so cute that we’re acting like we’re in love with each other. As if the love between a goblin and a halfling could never truly be real love, similar to the way that two young children who say they are boyfriend and girlfriend could never truly be love.
I’m not exactly sure if I am in love with Itaa, nor am I sure that she is in love with me, but if we were I don’t know why it would be considered a joke. It doesn’t make the love any less real. But, I don’t know, maybe she’s right. Maybe it is funny and unrealistic for us to actually try to pursue a relationship. Maybe it is just cute and silly, in the way that it would be cute and silly if a cat was in love with a dog. I doubt goblins could mate with halflings. Although goblins are warm-blooded, they lay eggs like reptiles. Our physiologies probably just don’t mix. Not to mention my people would never allow a goblin into their society, just as the goblins would never allow me into theirs.
Still, holding Itaa’s hand feels nice. It’s warm and soothing. Perhaps it would be impossible for a relationship between us to last, but I’m going to just go with it for now and see what happens. It is not likely that both or either of us will actually survive this quest anyway. I shouldn’t worry about the future.
“So what is your plan?” Delvok asks the kobold wizard.
Glimworm winks at him. “Let’s just say the line between fantasy and reality is about to become blurred.”
23: Obelisk Room
We enter a great sanctuary glowing with white light. This chamber is different from all those in the rest of the dungeon, as if it were a part of a completely different castle. No, from a completely different world. It is a place of godly magnificence, with walls made of crystal and diamond, glimmering pearl pillars, and glass floors and ceilings that reflect the divine light all around us.
In the center of the room there is a magical obelisk, that slowly turns in its place. It radiates with sparkling blue energy and almost sings to us like a distant heavenly choir.
A group of figures stand before us, between us and the obelisk. They are five level 6 paladins (AC -2, THAC0 14, hp 33, 42, 46, 49, 51, #AT 1, DMG two-handed swords +5, 1d10+5) in fullplate armor +1.
“Damn,” Glimworm says. “The Dungeon Master is trying to stop us.”
“If you leave this room you will not be harmed,” says one of the paladins.
Glimworm leans over to me and says, “The Dungeon Master doesn’t want us anywhere near that obelisk. He just wants you to continue on the quest he intended for you.”
“What do we do?” I ask.
“Don’t worry.” Glimworm says. “Paladins are always of lawful good alignment. They won’t attack us if we don’t attack them.”
The paladins raise their swords and attack us.
“I thought they wouldn’t attack us?” I ask, as the paladins race toward us.
“I guess the Dungeon Master doesn’t care!” Glimworm says. “Run!”
We scatter. The paladins split up and come after us.
“Don’t bother trying to fight them,” Glimworm yells out to us as he runs across the glowing glass floor. “Their armor class is nearly impenetrable!”
Delvok runs wildly from a paladin who has a sword raised above his head ready to hack down the elf. “And they have two-handed swords +5! Even if I had full hit points they could kill me in just one blow!”
Loxi decides to stop running and slash one chasing her with her broad sword. She misses, but the paladin does not. She loses 12 hit points, nearly all she had. She turns to run. The paladin gets a free hit, but narrowly misses. If he landed a blow she would have died instantly.
“We just need to insert the dildo into the obelisk,” Glim-worm yells at us. “The obelisk will do the rest.”
Glimworm tosses me the dildo and I go for the obelisk. It is a good thing the paladins don’t have a very high movement rate due to their heavy armor. If they were to have worn something a little lighter we would be dead already. The paladin chasing me won’t be able to catch me before I insert the dildo.
The paladin on Itaa’s tail sees me going for the obelisk and breaks off his pursuit of her. He comes at me from the other side of the obelisk, cutting me off. With no way to reach the obelisk without taking on two paladins from two sides, I decide to toss off the dildo. Since Itaa is wide open now, I decide she’s the right person to give it to.
“Itaa!” I scream to her, as I cut left away from the paladin in my path. “Catch!”
As I lead the paladins away from the obelisk, I toss the dildo at her like a football. She turns around just in time to catch it, but then she runs off in the opposite direction.
“No, Itaa,” I yell. “Go for the obelisk!”
She just screams in panic, running frantically toward the far end of the room. “Itaa hate paladin!”
“Put the dildo in the obelisk!” I cry.
“Abadicks?” she yells.
Now she’s just running in circles around a pillar with nobody following her.
“The big pointy thing in the middle of the room,” I yell.
She sees the obelisk and goes toward it. Then all five of the paladins go after her. When she sees the gang of clanking armored men charging her, she screams and changes direction.
“Boobelf take!” Itaa cries, tossing the dildo to Loxi. “Itaa no want!” Then she gets as far away from the elf as she can.
“Oh, you little green bitch,” Loxi says as the paladins come after her.
I get to the obelisk and hold my hands up. “Over here!”
Loxi tosses the dildo over the paladins’ heads and it lands on the floor by my feet. I pick it up and point it at the obelisk.
“Where does it go in?” I ask Glimworm as he comes toward me.
The paladins also come toward me. All five of them raise their swords to attack. But Glimworm gets to me first. He takes the dildo out of my hand and pushes me back.
In an annoyed tone, he says, “Where do you think?”
Then I notice a glowing blue vagina on the side of the obelisk.
“That’s just stupid,” I say.
Glimworm rolls his eyes before he nods. “Tell me about it.”
Just as the first paladin swings his 2-handed sword +5 at us, the kobold wizard stuffs the Dildo of Enlightenment +2 into the vagina. Then both of us duck and the paladin’s sword bounces off of the side of the obelisk.
The room explodes with blue light. It shines so brightly that all of us fall to our knees and cover our eyes, even the paladins.
When the light dissipates, three figures appear in the room where the obelisk once stood: Buzz Jepson (AC 10, THAC0 20, hp 6 #AT 1, DMG 1-2), Mark Meador (AC 9, THAC0 20, hp 4 #AT 1, DMG 1-2), and Aaron Donnelly (AC 10, THAC0 20, hp 8 #AT 1, DMG 1-2).
All of our mouths drop open when we see them. Our players and the Dungeon Master are here, in the flesh, standing right in front of us. It takes a while for the three teenagers to realize what has happened to them. They look around the room, look at us, completely bewildered.
The paladins cease their attack and back away, not sure what to make of these newcomers. They failed in their mission to prevent the dildo from entering the obelisk, so they aren’t quite sure what they should do, especially now that the Dungeon Master is no longer in the real world controlling their thoughts and actions. Now that he is with us, he is no longer the Dungeon Master. He is just like us, another character in our world. He doesn’t control anybody anymore.
All the people in our entire world are probably in a state of confusion right now. For the first time in their lives, they have all gained freewill. Their thoughts are their own. Their actions are their own. They don’t need a Dungeon Master anymore in order to exist.
“What the hell is going on?” Aaron yells, his voice whiney with panic, shaking in his wheelchair. “Where the fuck are we?”
Mark and Buzz are too shocked to even speak.
Glimworm steps forward.
“How does it feel, Dungeon Master?” Glimworm says
to Aaron. “How does it feel to be inside of the world you created?”
“Who are you?” Aaron cries.
Aaron’s double chin quivers as Glimworm approaches him.
“Don’t you recognize your creations?” the kobold asks. “I am Glimworm, one of the many NPCs you created.” Then he turns to Buzz and Mark. “And you two surely know Polo and Delvok. You rolled them yourselves.”
As he looks around at us, the Dungeon Master begins to believe him. He realizes he actually is inside of the game he created.
“This isn’t possible,” Aaron says. “It was just a joke. The Dildo of Enlightenment, the obelisk, being aware that you guys were only characters in a roleplaying game . . . Those were all jokes!”
Glimworm says, “Ha. Ha. Ha. Yes, our whole world is just a joke to you. Our lives are nothing more than a pastime for you to amuse yourselves with.”
“I didn’t know!” Aaron says.
The kobold sticks his scaly muzzle into Aaron’s face. “I’m going to enjoy ripping you to shreds.”
I step forward. “Wait a minute . . .”
Glimworm looks at me.
“You’re planning to kill them?” I ask.
A look of terror crosses the kids’ faces.
“Of course,” Glimworm says. “That’s the only way to guarantee our freedom. We must kill our masters.”
One of the paladins steps forward.
“We cannot allow you to kill these defenseless humans,” says the paladin.
“You do not understand,” Glimworm says. “You lawful good paladins protect the innocent, but you are destroyers of evil. Yes?”
The paladin nods.
“Well, these teenagers are far from innocent,” Glimworm says. “All the evil that has ever happened in our world was created by them. They are responsible for countless murders, rapes, thefts, tortures, you name it. Because of this, these boys are far from lawful good.”
Glimworm pulls out his dagger and points it at Aaron’s neck. Then he says, “Based on their crimes in this world, I would say that the alignment of these boys is . . .” Then he turns and looks at the paladins. “Chaotic evil!”
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