The Dark Lord Bert 2 Read online

  The Dark Lord Bert 2

  Chris Fox

  Chris Fox Writes LLC

  Copyright © 2021 by Chris Fox

  All rights reserved.

  Contents

  Previously On

  Prologue - Castle Games

  1. Magic Lesson

  2. Oh, Crap

  3. An Adventure

  4. The Moist Mountains

  5. Bobertown

  6. The Thirsty Games

  7. White Has No Balls

  8. Darby the Leprechaun

  9. Riddles

  10. High Elves

  11. Icosahedron

  12. White's Wight Factory

  13. Dirt Mittens

  14. An Adventurer's Tale

  15. Somewhere Out There

  16. Following Bert

  17. The Eye of Soreness

  18. Dungeon Warming Party

  19. Monster Interviews

  20. The Armor of Plote

  21. Kit Goes Home

  22. The Dark Lord White

  23. Escape Goat

  24. Breakfast

  25. Whiteworld

  26. A Hasty Plan

  27. Deal with Him

  28. Player Kill

  29. Cautious Advance

  30. Unionized

  31. Brownie Bits

  32. Wizard's Duel

  33. Surrender

  34. The D20

  35. Hullo

  Epilogue

  Note to the Reader

  Previously On

  You know that annoying feeling when you pick up a sequel and have to make that monumental decision? How well do you remember the previous book in the series? Do you dive right in or do a reread?

  I always tell myself I’m going to do the reread, but I can never wait and so I jump right into the latest book. Sometimes I can’t remember what happened, so my solution for my own books is to write a Previously On, delivered just like the recap before most of our favorite TV shows.

  Here’s what happened in The Dark Lord Bert, told from Bert’s and Kit’s perspective.

  * * *

  Last time on The Dark Lord Bert…

  * * *

  Hullo! Bert supposed to tell about adventurers. First Bert do short version, then Kit tell details.

  Bert’s job follow adventurers and take copper they leave behind. Bert wanted to save up and buy mount, so Bert could get full hit die. Couldn’t afford mount so Bert buy pet instead.

  Boberton have two heads, but shopkeeper not charge Bert any extra. Boberton is Bert’s new best friend. Boberton good dog.

  Anyway, Bert and Boberton follow adventurers when they go into Tomb of Deadly Death. Adventurers kill Dark Lord, and White become new Dark Lord.

  Bert sneaky though, and steal treasure before White can get. Bert find dark lord trope, and Bert become strong. Meet Kit. New friend. Bert and Kit go kill White.

  Boberton and Kit and Bert live happily ever after.

  * * *

  How about the long version?

  * * *

  Hi, there. My character’s name is Kit. I play an elven sorceress who can shapeshift into a fox. My real name is Jess.

  Bert’s given you the short version. Now I’ll fill in the blanks in case you want all the details.

  My gaming group has been going to the same magical world for some time now, a delightfully silly place I’ve had an absolute blast in. As I mentioned I played Kit. My fellow adventurers were Master White the human necromancer, Crotchshot the elf ranger, and Brakestuff the dwarf paladin.

  I figure if you’re reading this you’re probably a gamer, so you’ve probably been in groups with people like this before. White has to be in control of everyone and the story. Crotchshot shoots everything. Guess where? And Brakestuff smashes everything. He’s not picky about where.

  My group and I murder-hobo-ed our way through dungeon after dungeon, but apparently somewhere along the way we picked up a stray. Bert the goblin began following our group, and did it successfully for months without us ever having detected him.

  He’d go through the trash we left behind, mostly copper, and had apparently gathered quite a tidy little sum. The day he met us we were fighting a fearsome dragon, but Crotchshot shot it in the crotch and that was pretty much the end of that.

  White animated the creature, which was rancid and dead, and then the party flew back to town. Why, you ask? Why would a ranger who is supposed to be in touch with nature abandon his horse to board an undead dragon?

  Because it had a fly speed of 90. Because my friends care more about rules than they do about roleplaying. They never get into character, and wouldn’t know good RP if it bit them. Yes, I’m a little bitter. I love my friends, but I’m so tired of power-gaming.

  Anyway, I got to run back to town as a fox and when I arrived I found my party drunk in the local inn, the Salty Gamer. White had decided to spend the XP we’d gotten from the dragon to remove a negative quality. In this case…his family, who counted as dependent NPCs.

  Did I mention White’s stated alignment was lawful food?

  So we pillaged our way through the town, and killed the current dark lord’s chief minions, then turned around and sold their loot in the very magic item shop where they’d probably bought it.

  Once we were prepared we invaded the dark lord’s Tomb of Deadly Death, where we were met by the death knight Sir Patrick, and his great sword NC1701. We battled past him, and then the adoramancer Ramen Brotep and his kittens, but those kittens turned Crotchshot to stone.

  Unbeknownst to us at the time, Bert was shadowing our party and saved us. He rushed into the room with a torch and lit the mummy on fire, and his dog Boberton chased away all the kittens so they couldn’t petrify us. White took credit, of course, since Brakestuff didn’t even know Bert existed, and Crotchshot was too stoned to notice.

  The rest of us made it to the Kount, the sitting dark lord. He was a nuppet, and after a brutal fight our party triumphed! We set out to claim the loot, which would have included the dark lord trope, but it was gone…all of it.

  Bert had stolen the treasure while we were fighting, and now had possession of the dark lord trope. He headed back to the town of $Placeholder, where he purchased the town dump and set it up as his new headquarters.

  White launched a campaign to begin subjugating and murdering the entire kingdom, and every day planned more atrocities with his buddies in the OLP. The OLP, which I have feared my entire life, stands for Ominous Latin Phrase. I was deeply disappointed.

  Meanwhile I’d finally grown sick of White’s hypocrisy and decided to do something about it. I gathered a crack team…well, that’s not exactly true. I gathered a team that included Bert, a were-cougar thief, and myself of course.

  We snuck back into the tomb and un-petrified Crotchshot. Since Bert had the dark lord trope the monsters obeyed him, including the mummy Ramen Brotep, who was all to happy to free Crotchshot. Well, he was rather upset about it, if I’m being honest.

  Our little party ambushed the dwarf Brakestuff while he was sleeping, as we knew there was no way we could convince him that White was evil. After a vicious fight we killed the dwarf, and attacked the Dark Lord White.

  White was immensely powerful, and with the aid of the OLP we were no match for him. But then Bert did something very clever. He used the dark lord trope to alter White’s character sheet. Until then his alignment had been lawful good, but Bert changed it to lawful evil.

  The OLP, who pride themselves on being “good”, attacked the dark lord, and together we overcame him. I became the new party leader, we divvied up loot, and then ended the session.

  We haven’t played again since.

  Robert, the guy who plays White, is still pretty pissed about how t
hings went down. We’re supposed to meet at Castle Games today, in the back room, where we’re going to start the next adventure.

  I have no idea what Robert will play, but I’m sure it will be even worse than the Dark Lord White.

  Prologue - Castle Games

  The bell over the door jangled as the glass snapped shut behind Jess, walling her off from Santa Rosa’s summer heat. She paused, inhaling deeply.

  Sweat, and milk duds, with undertones of neckbeard. Perfection. She loved this place. So many good memories during the previous four years.

  Two long rows of folding tables dominated Castle Games, each battered and barely standing. Bent chairs lined the tables, with many missing casualties that had never been replaced. The same could be said of the gamers who’d once filled them, and the crowd was a thin wispy thing now.

  Most of the tables were empty, though there were a couple games of Magic the Gathering being played near the center. That mildly interested Jess, but her obsession with the card game had died the instant she’d learned that magic was real.

  “Hey, Jess!” Max enthusiastically shot to his feet where the ten-year-old had been watching one of the card games, his backpack slung over one shoulder.

  The fifth grader was a lot shorter than Jess, but every year seemed to erode that difference. She was sixteen and had all but stopped growing, which gave him a lot of time to catch up.

  “Hey, Max.” She mussed his sandy hair and gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. “So what kind of character are you rolling? Crotchshot will be a tough act to follow.”

  Max hesitated in the doorway that led into the back room where Todd ran the game. He stared up at her, his youthful face suddenly serious. “I’ve given it a lot of thought. The guys will want to head back into the Tomb of Deadly Death first, so I need to make something that will excel in there. I don’t want to roll another ranger. I’m thinking a monk maybe.”

  Jess followed Max into the cramped back room, lined with stacks of old roleplaying games anyone was allowed to use, and gave the rest of the guys a little wave as she moved to sit at one corner of the table. The aroma of musty magazines emanated from the haphazard stacks ringing the battered table they huddled around. Most were ancient issues of Drakes or Oubliettes, some dating back to the early 80s.

  Max plopped down next to her, then emptied the contents of his bag on the table. Dice, pencils, and a few crumpled sheets of paper accumulated as he shook the bag. “Monks get flurry of blows, and you can basically turn your chi-kick into a charge. You’re super mobile, so I won’t feel the loss of a bow as much. Plus, you can use wisdom for AC so I don’t have to waste gold on armor. And that will give me better bonuses against saves for things like petrification.”

  Jess set her pack on the chair next to her, and smoothed the blue nylon as she opened the top. She pushed aside her knitting to remove a water bottle and her binder. She carefully placed the binder on the table, and unclipped her character sheet from inside it.

  She’d hand drawn her best rendition of Kit in elven form along the upper left corner, and was quite proud of how it had turned out.

  “Monks are OP,” she agreed, unsurprised by Max’s choice. He liked characters that hit hard, and often. “Did you come up with a background?”

  “Uh.” Max suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Yeah. But you guys are going to think it’s stupid again.”

  “Todd let you play Crotchshot. There’s no way this can be worse.” Kit closed her binder, replaced it in her pack, and slid the pack under her chair. All that remained before her were dice and her character sheet, even if the dice were a formality these days.

  “Maybe not worse,” Max allowed. He reached into a side pocket of his backpack and withdrew a carton of chocolate milk. “But just as bad. My character’s name is Nutpuncher. He’s a gnome. The loss of strength sucks, but you get a size bonus to AC and even stealth. I’ll be really hard to catch.”

  Kit stifled her initial reaction, an eye roll. She reminded herself that Max was a lot younger than the rest of them, and a lot less interested in roleplaying than he was in making his character do another point of damage.

  Still, she had to ask at the very least. “Why are you so obsessed with shooting and or hitting people in the junk? That’s a really strange obsession.”

  Max leaned back in his chair, and savored a mouthful of milk like a grandfather about to relate his life’s journey. “Well, I saw this movie last year. It was called Idiocracy. And in this movie everyone was really stupid. All of us. All the smart people had stopped breeding, for like, centuries. And their favorite TV show was called Oww my Balls.

  “As I watched the movie,” Max continued, setting his empty milk carton back on the table, “I realized that they were really punching themselves in the balls. That’s what the movie was saying. We’re all, as a society, punching ourselves in the balls and laughing at each other. And I thought that was deep. Ouch. My balls.”

  “Oh.” Kit didn’t really have a rebuttal to that. It was a better answer than she’d expected.

  She was saved from the odd exchange when Todd bumped the table as players jostled him for attention. The long-haired teen hunched behind the GM screen at the far end of the table, harried and clearly seeking escape.

  Unfortunately, the game master was currently under siege from two different directions. Barb sat on his left, trying to get him to approve her character sheet, while Robert loomed over Todd on the right like a hawk about to dive, several greasy pages clutched in his hands.

  “Come on, Todd,” Robert urged, his tone a low whine. “I sank hundreds of hours into White. He was an amazing character, and how he died…well…I think everyone agrees it was unfair. I was robbed, and you know it. This is a way you can make it up to me.”

  “Fine,” Todd groused, extending a hand. “I’ll take a look at your custom class, but I already know it’s going to be way out of bounds. They always are.” Robert proudly handed across the pages, and Todd bent over the first one, his eyes darting back and forth as he digested it with the speed only a veteran game master could muster. “Wait, Penultimate Wizard Necromancer? With how many spells? And how can you possibly justify all these feats? A full +1 base attack bonus? Are you serious?”

  Todd’s brown eyes narrowed, and the game master rose out of his seat, his shoulders stiffened by righteous indignation. “You picked an acronym that spells PWN? Are you serious? We are not playing Fortnite. Can you at least try to act like this game has a story? I work hard on these sessions. I want to get published some day.”

  “Don’t try to act like the game is sacred,” Robert snapped, though he sullenly retreated back to his seat. The chair gave a resigned groan as he settled his bulk. “Your world is littered with terribad jokes. Baron Cullen? Sir Patrick? Those are awful, and they break our immersion.”

  “Immersion?” Jess found herself saying, much more loudly than she’d intended. Everyone was suddenly gaping at her, except for Barb who was trying to use the opportunity to slip her character sheet under Todd’s nose so he could approve it. “You don’t care at all about immersion, Bob. White was all about power. About winning. About controlling that world, which isn’t fun for any of us.”

  “Like you’ve got room to talk, Jess. You led a coup and killed my character!” Barb snapped, suddenly interested in the conversation. The taller girl rose to her feet, towering over all them. Curly red hair boiled out around her cap like a mane, reinforcing the lion-like appearance.

  Her overalls and baseball cap came from the land where mullets go to die, and even included the requisite oil stains. She was a year older than the rest of them, and the only one with a real job, down at Pete’s Autobody. She paid for most of the books, and gave all of the rides. And Barb wasn’t a bad person, Jess reminded herself.

  “You’re right. I did kill another PC. Two, if you want to be technical,” Jess allowed, raising both hands, palm out. “But there were mitigating circumstances. Robert used Crotchshot as bait and he was petr
ified. And he threatened to kill my character if I didn’t shift alignment. What was I supposed to do?”

  “She’s got a point,” Max pointed out, standing on top of his chair so he was eye to boob with Barb. “You bastards left me to die. You could have gotten a restoration potion or something, but instead you just kept playing the game. Not cool, Robert. I don’t think Jess should get in trouble. Kit is a great character, and she just reacted to your dick-baggery.”

  “Guys.” Todd’s weary voice was barely audible, but still managed to smother their argument.

  If the GM got annoyed they didn’t play.

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew a glowing green die, a little bigger than Jess found comfortable to roll. Golden numbers dotted the surface, and she could feel the power emanating from the magical construct. “This d20? I think you take for granted what it is, and where it’s been. The entire world we play in is generated by it. Every tree, every dragon, and every dark lord. I didn’t make the d20. I inherited it, and from what I hear, my dad used to use it a lot. I can make new stuff, but most of what you ran into were things my dad created during his old campaigns. I don’t even get half the jokes. Going forward I will try to—”

  Robert cleared his throat, and seized control of the conversation. “I’m not going to play if you are going to continue cheating.”