Dane and his merry men had moved on from the dead village, randomly lashing out at inanimate objects and actually killing another mimic, a lesser phasar according to their strange prompts, before setting out once again across the strange dimensional madness of the Buffalo suburbia. It didn’t take long for them to find another settlement, this one quite inhabited.

It was like something pulled straight from a European history book—old mud and timber houses radiating in a rough and unplanned circle around the central small temple, the tavern, and a general store. One of the huts was caved in, and the thatch had been stripped off the roof. A few sawhorses stood with timber atop them, meaning someone was in the middle of repairs. Off in the distance he could hear a water wheel chugging along.

Weirdly a lot of people were gathered in the market square area created by the central buildings.

Oh, and there were dead birds everywhere. The people had been shoveling them into piles of sparrows and pigeons and others Dane didn't know because he wasn’t a bird watcher.

Rivera wasn’t Daniels. The lieutenant was no-nonsense and all about moving the mission along. Sergeant Rivera didn’t seem to regard this situation as important at all. Dane would have turned to Guzman and made her the face of the operation, given that classically fae always ended up with high charisma (Charm in this case), but nobody asked him. Instead the gigantic robo man tromped up toward the townsfolk.

The people were staring down at the bodies of dozens of birds, or had been until a gigantic stone and metal man invaded their space.

“What seems to be the problem, people?” Rivera boomed.

The townspeople shrank back. A few children began crying. Dane received a notice that a person from his adventuring party had just failed a Charm (Mingle) check, and also failed a Luck roll to salvage the situation.

“We ain’t want no trouble!” the folks said.

An old woman appeared. “Git, hear? Git on yer way. We got no loot for yous.”

“Let Guzman handle this,” he whispered.

“What rank were you again, Just Dane?”

Dane sighed, but tried again, “Guzman’s Charm attribute–”

“I will lodge my Charm attribute securely up that tiny little butt of yours, Just Dane.”

Well that was both impossible and quite rude, and clearly Dane wasn’t going to get anything done by talking. Instead he bent, removed the brass eagle from its carrying case, and used his telepathic control to launch it into the sky. A few powerful wingbeats later it was aloft and spiraling around.

“Oh cripes, it’s another one!” one of the townsfolk cried.

“Another what?” Corporal Pugh asked.

“A bird! Get it out of here!”

The game prompt again informed him that they’d failed another Charm (Mingle) check, this time Pugh, followed closely by another failed Luck check. How wonderful it was to be surrounded by combat-ready badasses who had not the first clue how to approach non-combatants. The assembled townsfolk, numbering forty five, had gone from Neutral to Disgruntled. The next level over was Hostile, and a tooltip popped up to let them all know the people had stones, pitchforks, hammers, daggers, and several of them were excellent hunters, so they might consider taking situations seriously for once.

“We’ll be moving on, then. Let’s get a move on, people.”

The squad pulled up their gear and started northwest again. Perhaps it was best to put these people and their avian death problem behind them. Dane wanted to know more, mostly because he was more of a scientist than a soldier, but he shut his yap because he was smart enough to learn things after the third or fourth time.

One middle aged woman met them when they’d reached the edge of town, and onto the pitted wheel ruts that optimistically thought of themselves as a road. “Are you from outside?”

Dane was busy minding his own business, getting a look through his Familiar’s eyes. He sighed, turned to the rest of them, and loudly said, “Guzman, you should answer this lady’s question.”

The four Rangers regarded him in silence for a moment before turning back to the woman. She was a dwarf, basically a small woman with thick red-blonde curls and very bushy eyebrows.

“We’re from outside, yes.”

“Military?”

“We can’t answer that question, ma’am. I’m terribly sorry,” Guzman said, and for once a skill check went their way. Charm (Mingle) succeeded. Mark it on the calendar.

“Yeah, that’s what the military would say. Anyhow, look, I bought my house just last year, okay? I basically got in debt up to my eyeballs just trying to afford this house, and then… this all happened.” She waved her hands around wildly at the surroundings. “When is the president sending in the troops to fix all this? How long do I have to play miller’s friggin wife? Oh, and why do I wake up in bed when I die and lose half of my stuff? I’m not exactly complaining about that last one, but I would like to understand it.”

Dane raised an eyebrow. They respawned when they died? Good to know.

“I wish I had an answer for that,” Guzman said. “I really do.”

Her eyes widened and a moment later an exclamation mark appeared above her head. They all stared at it for a moment, then she grabbed a hold of it, tugging violently.

“Now what sort of nonsense is this? I’m getting tired of this world and all of its pitter-patter monster-eating ya wake-up-in-bed like nothing ever happened sort of nonsense.”

“I have eyes on another village,” Dane said, interrupting her. His eyes looked all twisted about, the one practically beebopping in his socket. Understandable since the eagle eyes thing was disorienting if you had your own eyes open. It had you trying to process two different sets of information at once. Luckily he’d learned to close his eyes and look through his companion’s without a great deal of trouble. Unluckily he just returned from his regal eagle to find a giant quest marker hovering over a real life lady, and his mixture of surprise and excitement sent the mechanical beast plummeting downwards at a suicidal angle.

“Oh jeez, oh crap!” he yelled, babbling and waving his arms about to steady the far away mechanical avatar.

They all gave him a hard look.

“Do you happen to know what is going on here, Specialist?” Sergeant Rivera asked. Dane fluttered about a little bit more then breathed out a long sigh of relief.

“I think so, Sergeant. It looks like this lady here has a quest to provide us. Something in-game.”

“In-game he says,” Neiderhauer mocked. “Does this look like a game?”

Pugh barked a laugh. “So, lady, you got a quest or is Dane just blowing smoke?”

Her eyes were wide, her face that screwed-up lemon-sour look that baffled people tended to wear. “I have heard tell of a cave, brave adventurers, a place that leads to a city of the underdark. A city severed from the empire of the deep dwellers, a place filled with the feral descendents of the one noble citizens. Here lies the treasures of their people, a people no longer in need nor want of the gleaming dust covered coins and precision cut gems that fill the chests found there.”

New Quest received! – The Treasure of the Lost City

Some lady just happened to have information about a place full of money. How convenient. It might be dangerous though, take this!

Quest Item received. Old man sword.

To successfully complete this quest:

Enter the local cave, find the treasure of the lost city, and return from its dark, evil-begotten depths without losing a single life.

Reward: Treasure. For buying stuff. Oh, and heck, you can get 500 xps. My treat.

A sword had appeared on the ground, a short sword covered in glyphs. On the hilt were inscribed the words Old Man. Above the woman, the exclamation mark had vanished.

“Well, I’m going to add exclamation marks and forced dialogue to my list of why you soldiers need to get this figured out fast,” the lady moaned. “Go do your quest, do whatever you need to shut this thing down, ‘cause this blows.”

Everyone looked over at Rivera. Rivera’s metal head bobbed up and down in a quick nod, his stone body swaying a little with the motion. “Might as well.”

***

The journey to the cave entrance was short and without incident, but with the late time of day, Sergeant Rivera suggested they set up camp anyways. Better to assault a dungeon after some breakfast than in the dark on an empty stomach.

So everyone set about making the place a home, sweeping together needles and bedding. Guzman didn’t participate, instead using her seemingly limitless fae forest skills to set hunting snares all around the perimeter. Rivera, for his part, dug a long trench around them in case of night time rain.

It was nice and calm. Dane didn’t like how placid it was. It was almost like this new world was eager to have them enter. The rest of them, though, were a totally different story. He could see the shine in their eyes. Treasure, a quest, it was awesome stuff from games and movies right here for them to do in real life. And he was a bit wary of it. He didn’t want to get eaten by a grue.

Still it made sense to get more money. They’d need it when they stumbled upon a shop that sold cards and magic items. Something that Dane was increasingly suspecting was on the horizon.

When they awoke in the morning the snares were without prey, and travel rations were brought out, with Niederhauer commenting that MREs would’ve been a delicacy right now. No dice, all their food had transformed into practically inedible bread, hardtack, ripe cheese (which had already been eaten) and some nuts (again, already gone). The dry sawdust texture of hard tack did little to fill their bellies as they regarded their next move.

The entrance was more of a square than a circle, a dusty rocky mess that didn’t look natural, like a god without a proper sense of geography just decided to plop it here for them to play with. It opened from the side of a grassy hill, half-encircled by tall white willows, suggesting a lot of water underneath.

And there they stood at its edge.

“So we’ve got a deep and dark cave screaming ‘enter me.’ Anyone want to take point?” Neiderhauer asked, a half-grin twitching his lips to the side. The soldiers tittered nervously. All but Rivera himself, whose hulking stone body tromped up out of the sunlight, blocking the entrance with his massive body.

“Like you even had to ask,” he rumbled. There was humor there but Dane felt a spark of sadness. He had this horrid theory that in a week or a month they would all be different people. That these races and classes were changing them and that Rivera was going to just be some sort of magic RPG robot, no real personality left in him. He watched Rivera lumber into the hole, and Pugh came up next in line.

“Do you know what card power you have yet, Corporal?” Guzman piped up, her eyebrow arched. “Other than the fancy mail and shiny gloves I don’t see that any single thing has changed about you.”

Dane narrowed his eyes to try to figure out the class, but his skill apparently wasn’t quite high enough to even bring up the name yet, let alone what abilities it bestowed.

“System says I’m a town guard. I keep the peace.” He turned to peer out at Dane, and flashed a badge that had apparently come with the class. “I can summon town guards to my aid, one first level guard per level, and I can hand out one-star warrant debuffs in cities and towns on people who break the law. Or piss me off.”

Dane just stared. The fact that Pugh thought these were great powers said it all.

“All clear up here,” Rivera rumbled out from the cave. Pugh rolled his eyes at Dane and popped in, running a second sweep behind Rivera’s first.

Rivera gave Dane a long stony look and his own eyes dropped to the dirt. Neiderhauser barked a laugh. “When we get back to the real world, you really need to get your girlfriend to give you your balls back,” he said, popping into the cave entrance next.

Guzman was last, her elfin ears poking up through her stiff black hair. “He isn’t wrong, Dane. But you’ve been doing a hell of a job and just trust me, Neider wouldn’t be saying a thing to you if you hadn’t earned a bit of his respect. Just keep up what you're doin’ and don’t let them bring you down.”

Dane smiled and looked back at Sergeant Rivera. “Dane, I’m heading in next. Bring up the rear and make sure nothing climbs in after us.”

“Can do, Sergeant,” Dane answered. He commanded his eagle to come down, and stowed it carefully in its layers of fabric. Rivera followed after the others into the cave, and Dane shuffled up to it, giving the land outside once final scan before following in behind him.

You’ve entered a low-level dungeon! Awesome!

Sadly, it also contains low-level loot.

The interior of the mountain was dry and the ground dusty, not the wet dankness he had expected. Up ahead he saw that Rivera had struck a torch and passed by the rest of them, retaking point. The rest were off the path, no doubt silhouetting the bodies against either side of the long, straight passage. He could see by the light that there was a small downward slope, but it was so slight at the point that it felt like they could traverse the entirety of the world and end up just ten feet below their current position. Judging by the fact that the hill couldn’t possibly be the size of the world or even half of it, he knew that sooner than later they’d see a drop and he expected it to be huge.

“Got movement ahead,” Rivera rumbled. This sort of thing would have gone over ear pieces in other circumstances. But given Rivera had apparently lost ability to whisper, the words blasted through their confines.

“Jeezus, Sergeant. What are you trying to do, wake the dead? Just walk back and whisper that crap,” Neiderhauer yelled at him, himself echoing through the tunnel. Dane stopped and scanned his rear, his vision able to see through the dim light of the rear as easily as if it were day. One of the benefits of being a three-foot gnome, he mused with a smile.

“What kind of movement do you see?” Neiderhauer asked. Rivera turned and started tromping back. “Just yell it since they all know we’re here anyways.”

The sergeant turned back around. “It’s all shadows from here, but I swear they look like skeletons. Walking, hell maybe talking. Holding weapons too.”

Dane breathed a sigh of relief. “Skeletons are almost always low-level mobs. To be honest, I bet you could go down and two-fist the whole lot of them, Rivera,” he said. Rivera pounded a stony fist into a stony palm and loped ahead. The rest of the squad broke cover and followed. As the circle of torchlight coursed forward, illuminating the heretofore unseen area, they all saw the passage widen into a cavern, a dozen skeletal figures organized into two ranks, behind which stood a zombie wearing gleaming armor. Next to him a pennant supernaturally fluttered, stuck into the sandy stone by a long pole beside him.

“Back it up guys, this doesn’t look right,” Dane called. He was too late, he saw, as Rivera bowled into the skeletons, smashing out their center and exploding four of them with his charge. From behind came the twang of bows, their missiles plinking at the scattered undead soldiers. Nothing too bad so far. But Dane didn’t trust it. He brought out his eagle and sent it soaring ahead.

An explosion reverberated down the tunnel as Rivera continued his charge and tried to blast through the zombie. An orb of sickly green light flashed about the enemy commander, sparking and crackling like something from a scifi movie. Or any RPG really, he supposed. What the heck was it? He brought up Inspect and tried to zero in on what they were up against.

Shield of Retribution - all direct damage attacks dealt to this opponent are instead reflected back at the attacker.

“Guys, pull back! This is something special. I was wrong!” Dane tried to order their withdrawal, but he could see that they weren’t moving. Rivera got back to his feet and cast the commander a long baleful stare before turning back to the skeletons who had moved forward and engaged with his squad mates. Melee weapons had made their appearance, thank the gods or whatever for that, and the skeletons were ground up in no time. Still the commander didn’t move. Dave moved his Inspect over to the commander, focusing on him instead of his spell.

Critical Success. Inspect level 3 attained.

JuJu Zombie Principale - level, HP and abilities unknown. Why not increase your Perception or Inspect to learn more?

Meanwhile the rest of the men were cautiously celebrating. “Dude, that was easy. I mean, twelve of them and done in just, what, a minute?”

“Heck yeah, man. I could fight a horde of those things. But why aren’t they lootable?”

There was a crackle of thunder and the walls of the cavern shook, tumbling stones and sand down upon them. Everyone quieted. And the skeletons rose again. But that wasn’t the worst part. Behind him, Dane heard the soil crack and snap. Moments later a rift had formed between them and the entrance. And crawling from this void came more skeletons, clawing their way quickly to the tunnel surface and then standing upright to face him.

Dane didn’t wait to yell. He ran to where the rest of the squad was again fighting. Neiderhauer was blasting them with fire breath while the Guzman had taken up her crossbow. He saw that Pugh was snapping shots as well. Only Rivera was fighting right, smashing through the skeletons with his fists. They were done in short order. All but that principale.

“Umm,” he said, watching its teeth chatter, the dead rising again around them.

Rivera grabbed one by its legs and swept in a circle around him, destroying them all again.

“Nice,” Rivera said, examining the smashed and broken piles of undead. Dane cast him an incredulous eye at him.

“Now what?” asked Pugh.

“Well, I don’t think we can kill the boss. There is some sort of trick, but I don’t even know if we need to. I say we just walk past him. He’s just gonna raise his undead when he gets his mana back.”

“Yeah, if this is like a console game we can just walk far enough and we’ll be past his aggro,” Pugh added. “He’ll forget we were ever here.”

“Where was all this gaming knowhow back at the start?” Neiderhauer asked.

Pugh cocked his head and smiled broadly. “I’ve got my moments.” He cocked back his crossbow and leaned forward to rush past the boss, and the others followed suit.