I looked to my right. "Topher," I said, "it looks like your tusks came in."

Topher brought up his hands to feel his mouth, only to poke his chin with sharp… fingernails? Maybe 'claws' was a better word. Either way, they dug slightly into pale greenish skin. He pulled his hands back in surprise.

"I'm… green?" he asked.

"Only slightly," I reassured. "Other than that and the tusks, not much has changed." His hair was still light brown and he still had a square jaw, though it was pushed into an underbite to accommodate two of his teeth sticking past his upper lip. He was outfitted with chainmail. A large sword and a blade attached to a long haft - a glaive - were strapped to his back.

He met my eyes, and I noted he was about an inch taller than me now, when before he was less than half an inch shorter. "You look the same," he said.

"I did choose 'human'," I responded. I looked down, only to be somewhat disappointed that I was still a bit chubby, and then relieved that I wasn't still in my pajamas. I was wearing a hard, brown leather tunic, dark pants reinforced with more leather, and well worn boots (which were also leather).

Many cows died… to bring me this armor.

"You two look good," said Kevin, who I realized was standing on the other side of me. He was wearing the same get-up I had, though it was more darkly tinted. A long, thin blade hung off his left hip from a belt, and a dagger did much the same from his right. He had an unstrung shortbow and a quiver of arrows on his back, attached to a woven sash.

"We don't look as good as you do," I said. His face betrayed no signs of aging - his skin was smooth, his cheeks were gaunt, his eyes didn't have any bags under them as testament to long hours gaming. His ears were a couple inches taller, and ended in points. "…Though your goatee seems to be missing," I added.

He felt his chin for it, but his attention quickly changed. "Oh, damn, that's soft," he said.

Weren't we missing something? "Where's Jenn?" I asked.

"Right here." We simultaneously turned around.

She was tall - a little taller than Kevin, who's about 5'10". Her chainmail armor, though bulky, hugged her curves (not tremendously generous curves, but curves nonetheless) down to chainmail greaves, which continued down to dark boots. A spear was strapped to her back, and she had a mace (a kind of weighted club) on her side. Her right forearm had a circular shield strapped to it (was she a lefty?), and showed no difficulty in handling the extra weight.

I quickly realized where my eyes were focusing and turned my attention to her face. Her skin was tanned. Her hair was dark brown and cut very short, and above her prominent cheekbones sat intelligent brown eyes, which were quizzically looking us over. I'd have guessed her to be early twenties. Lastly, I noticed, was a slight point to the tops of her ears.

She was hot. A thousand base urges and instincts cheered loudly in celebration of this fact, but I swiftly silenced them (a skill every man must master at some point, though I'll admit to being a willingly slow learner). I stepped forward and offered my hand. "Nice to properly meet you. I'm Jack MacQueen."

She shook my hand and met my smile with her own. "Jennifer Farkas." The multitudes began cheering again as our eyes met, but I backed off to let Kevin and Topher introduce themselves.

Pleasantries handled, Topher looked back down at his hands, a dissatisfied grimace on his face. Dejectedly, he turned around and started to walk off.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"I could really use a drink," he responded without stopping.

Geez, we shouldn't split up. "I understand," I commiserated. "It's not easy being green."

That stopped him. He turned and glared, suppressing a smile and pointing a mock-threatening finger at me.

"But seriously, we should stay together. Here's as good as anyplace," I reasoned. "Or maybe out of the middle of the street?"

We headed to a secluded patch as Kevin was saying: "Well, it's doesn't seem as bad as our worst-case scenario."

"But it's still pretty messed up," said Jenn, looking around. "Why's the sky purple?"

Out of everything new, a purple sky was the most eerie. I waved my hand dismissively. "Probably nothing," I said. "Sometimes, when a DM makes a world, he tries to make it seem more 'fantastic'." On the last word I denoted poor mysticism with wiggling fingers. "In the end, it either doesn't matter at all, or he tries to make the entire plot hinge on it." I imitated a previous DM I'd known: "'You thought the purple sky was just setting, but it's really the cause of the apocalypse!' It tends to be something that either has no bearing on the story, or comes so far out of left field that it couldn't be predicted."

The rest of them went quiet. I'd been a little too upset by the subject, it seems. There might've been some unresolved issues.

Jenn turned to Kevin. "What's a DM?"

Kevin smiled. "It means 'Dungeon Master'. DMs run D&D games."

"Thanks."

"Anytime."

Topher looked pensive. "You know, D&D is supposed to be a set of rules to simulate a fantasy reality," he said. "And, while those rules seemed very relevant when we were 'making characters', I wonder how much they matter now that we're actually here."

"Yeah," agreed Kevin. He drew his rapier and dagger, holding one in each hand. "I mean, I know the rules for when I attack with a rapier," he motioned with the sword, "but what if I decide to use the dagger only for defense?" He simulated a parry with it. "In D&D, I'm just as easy to hit whether or not I use the dagger. Will that be the case here?"

I thought about it. "In D&D," I said, "most things are decided with a d20, and the smallest a modifier can be is plus or minus 1. This equates to a 5% bonus or penalty to the action. Maybe using the dagger will only make you 2% harder to hit, in which case it wouldn't matter in D&D…"

"…but it might matter here," finished Kevin. "Maybe. Worth trying, I suppose."

"I'm just worried about hit points," said Topher. He dragged a claw over his arm. "If I cut myself right before bed, will it just… magically heal itself by the time I wake up?"

"Umm, best not to tempt fate," I said. "You have, what, 13 or 14 hit points? In order for it to count as needing to be healed, it has to take away at least one hit point. Imagine making a cut on you that, with a dozen similar cuts, will kill you. Not fun."

"What's more likely," Kevin jumped in, "is that you'll heal enough from the cut so that it won't affect you should you get damaged again. The cut would still be there, but maybe just scabbed over a little."

Topher nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah. I suppose there's also the chance that 'Hit Points' doesn't exactly mean 'Meat Points' - one hit point of 'damage' might not actually hurt at all." He shrugged. "I'm sure we'll get a chance to test it eventually," he said.

Jenn was looking at Topher's arm, though her gaze seemed to be miles away. "Jenn?" I prodded. "You okay?"

She didn't change her expression, but said, "I could heal a cut…." Her words came as though they were slowly dawning on her. "With magic. I know how to do it." She closed her eyes. "I'd just hold out my hand… quiet my mind… listen…."

She'd left us entirely - didn't even know we were here. "Farkas! You're freaking us out."

She snapped out of it. "Oh!" With a sheepish grin, "Sorry."

"That's fine," Kevin shrugged it off. "Magic is huge. It, more than just about everything, will be hardest to get used to. And now that I think about it…" He looked down and furled his brow, hands rummaging his pockets. After a moment, he pulled out a small bit of brown, metallic wire. Copper? Concentrating intensely, he brought the wire to his lips and said… something. It was too quiet to make out. After this, he held an end of the wire in his mouth and clamped down on it.

A half second later, "Can you hear me?" rasped quietly in my ear.

I was startled, but hid it well. I whispered: "Don't be a creeper."

A second later, Kevin smiled. "That was awesome," he said.

"Wait, was that the Message cantrip?" Topher was excited. "Cast it on me!"

While Kevin brought the wire to his mouth and silently spoke at it again, I started thinking about my own magic. At once, all the knowledge came flooding into my consciousness. I could cast spells. It was simply a part of me, unnoticed until I thought about it - like wiggling one's toes. Except this was more like an unseen limb, stretching from my mind to reach into my soul. I focused and allowed it to extend in…

It was dark, cold, and murky. I searched for what I needed, though the process made me feel clammy. Suddenly, I found it - or them, I suppose - a kaleidoscope of… colors wasn't the right word, but it was the best I could think of. They were all there, arrayed in a magnificently flowing pattern. Like a Rainbow in the Dark. I took what I needed, and brought it to the surface.

I refocused to the here and now. Jenn and my friends were having fun with Message, and I had been absently watching them. The spell demanded my physical body do something, so I held the 'color' inside as I searched my person for what I needed. It was only then I noted I was carrying a longsword, dagger, and, slung on my back by a strap, a lute. I finally found a small bag that had what I needed: a bit of white fleece.

I looked at the space between the four of us and let my imagination take focus. I closed one eye, holding the fleece up to the other like an opaque monocle. Then I unleashed the 'color', the limb hurling it unnoticed into the world. I removed the fleece from my eye, but a part of its white seemed to remain in my vision, formed as the shape I'd imagined. The white began filling with the colors I'd pictured for it.

Between us all was a large snowflake, decorated in a rainbow of colors. The conversation stopped immediately as they took notice of it.

"Whoa," breathed Topher.

"It's beautiful," said Jenn.

Kevin look back at me. "Is that…?"

I nodded. "Minor Image," I answered. With a bit of focused thought, I dismissed the illusion to the sounds of disappointment. Always leave them wanting more.

"So," said Jenn, looking around, "we're standing in the middle of a street. What's supposed to happen now?"

I took in the surroundings. A large woman in a bonnet with a kid in tow was chatting with a sickly, but pleasant, stall owner who was selling apples. A hook-nosed man was sitting on a bench, splitting his time between reading a book and sadly watching children play. A pair of dwarves (what I assumed were dwarves, at least) were sitting across from one another over a barrel with some kind of chess-like board game. Asleep on a rocking chair perched in the doorway to a store was an elderly man, maybe three feet tall but perfectly proportioned by human standards - I guessed he was a halfling, though that term always struck me as racist (it's possible I've spent too much time thinking about sociological problems in fantasy worlds). We received a few odd looks from people, though mostly they were polite enough not to stare.

"Well, nothing around is screaming 'adventure'," commented Topher, "except for those kids with sticks who're saying it as a battlecry." Sure enough, some kids seemed to be playing a game where they'd charge headlong into alleys, "swords" flailing above their heads while bellowing with their tiny lungs, only to be chased out by some invisible menace.

"Jack, you're our usual DM," said Kevin. "As such, do you any insight into what we should do?"

I scratched my chin. "It depends," I pondered. "It's our first 'play session', or whatever the equivalent is here, so I'd try to set the tone at the very beginning. If I wanted the campaign to be a free-wheeling, fun grab for gold and glory, I'd have you wander around and look for adventure hooks. This would give a feeling of no pressure, happy-go-lucky antics, with plots that could be picked up and put down whenever."

I folded my arms and tapped my fingers rhythmically. "If I wanted this to be largely story based, with a fate-of-the-world plot and goal which I would railroad you into attempting to complete, I'd have something big or urgent happen. This would set a tone that would keep you perpetually on-edge, and ever ready to react and counteract the workings of a complex evil mechanism, the constant strain of which ideally pushing you to your narrative breaking points."

No sooner had the words left my mouth when a scream, fueled by terror and desperation, rent urban tranquility.

"You know," Jenn looked at me, "I'm pretty sure that was your fault."