This is a fantasy story I'm writing by playing a solo roleplaying game. I will improvise my adventures guided by the rules of the game, random prompts, and rolls of the dice.
Story premise: Milo, a nerdy teenager, gets summoned into an abandoned Dark Tower by a band of goblins attempting to resurrect their former master. In a world where the forces of light have conclusively defeated the darkness, restricted the use of magic, and now rule with the iron fist, he becomes the seed of the resistance. To build a Dark Empire powerful enough to liberate the world, he must pretend to be the fallen Evil Overlord, master forbidden magics, and lead a tribe of goblins, all while hiding from the Evil Overlord's former enemies and allies, who would kill him if they knew he existed.
As soon as the goblins left, Milo dragged a heavy wooden table to bar the door, then leaned against it, and started to shake - from the fear, excitement, cold, maybe all three. So what, now I am stranded alone, in this abandoned tower, and I have to somehow prove to a tribe of bloodthirsty goblins the dreadful powers I don't have?
He recalled reading his favorite books and dreaming of being transported into a fantasy world. Even then, he was resolved to make sure that if that ever happened to him, he would do it right. He was not going to be one of those whiny protagonists who complains about the incredible situation he was thrown into. He wasn't gonna fall apart at the first challenge the adventure has thrown his way. And he wasn't gonna waste time lamenting the life he left behind. Somebody else will have to fill the role of a middle-class engineer or a developer he was planning to grow up into. Milo now had better plans for his future. Yes. Obviously. If you get transported into a magic world, there are many paths you could take, but only one is the path. He was going to become a wizard.
But first things first, he needed to survive through the next day.
He stared at the magic items the shaman has left behind. The cloak, the staff, and the ancient tome. He was certain that they were the key to both of his goals.
There, in the cold and long-abandoned room, he opened his first spellbook. Inside, he saw complex diagrams and formulas made out of runes. It was like staring at advanced physics problems or music sheets - completely incomprehensible without years of study.
Around the formulas, he saw notes which were scribbled in an unfamiliar language. But after glancing through several of them, Milo was surprised to learn that he was able to read them. The notes said things like "mana yield in the third ring is suboptimal, must adjust the Esser's circuit?", "the potion achieves the intended effect, but I should try replacing sun-iguana tails with fire-mushrooms. Iguanas too scarce and difficult to catch.", "must be careful when etching this rune into a wand, explodes on mistake", "to properly secure the warding schema I'll need a hair of a landlord who has never told a lie. Where am I supposed to find that?"
Comprehending words in an unfamiliar language was a strange sensation. Milo couldn't explain how he was doing that, the meanings of the words just popped into his mind naturally, just like they did when he was reading English. Come to think of it, were the goblins speaking English? Definitely not. Interesting. Milo shuddered, did something in the spell mess with his precious brain?
As he was flipping through the book, he saw a piece of paper fall out of it. It depicted a simple, child-like illustration of several goblins standing in a circle, with the words of the chant spelled out phonetically. That must be what the goblins used to bring him here.
Milo set aside the book and reached for the staff. It was a long and gnarled piece of wood , covered in runes. As soon as he touched it, he felt energy coursing through it, it was almost vibrating with power, like touching a live wire.
The energy felt like the extension of his own thought and will, he could sense it resonating through his arm. He reached out to it and tried to carefully push some of his own energy into the staff. Several runes on it lit up in different colors, emitted a piercing noise, and the broken chair the staff was pointing at lit on fire.
"Hey, watch it!" Milo heard a cranky voice from a pile of trash in the corner of the room. What was that? Doesn't matter - first, to deal with the emergency.
Milo rushed to move the table out of the way, open the door, and kick the chair our into the lawn. He heard some surprised shrieks from the goblins, who have set up a camp outside. He briefly checked to see that the chair landed far enough away from the camp that nobody was in danger, then rushed back in to barricade himself again.
"Oof, I need to be more careful with that."
"No kiddin'." said the voice from the garbage pile.
"Okay, seriously, what is this?" mumbled Milo.
"Hey pal, how about a little respect? I'm a who, not a what. And I'm over here, in this pile of garbage, under an old wet sock."
Milo carefully approached the pile, picked up a broom handle lying on the floor and gingerly poked at it. "Ouch! Careful there, you got me right in the eye."
"Sorry, sorry." Milo moved the trash aside, and then jumped back with a shriek. There, half-covered by a sock, laid a human skull.
"Ouch, again." said the skull. "That one hurt my self esteem. How'd you feel if people screamed when they look at you? Am I really that ugly?"
The skull looked dusty and charred, it was missing a few teeth, and has clearly seen some better days. "Um... I haven's seen too many skulls, so I don't have anything... anyone to compare you to. Sorry again. I'm Milo."
The skull looked back at him with the grin only the skulls have. "Hey no worries pal, I'm just kiddin'. Chuck's my name. Good to see a new face around here. Why don't you place me somewhere more comfortable."
Milo carefully picked up the skull, and put it on the shelf over the fireplace. "That's better. Hey, if you don't mind me asking, what is this place?"
"Oh, this is Alatar's tower, of course! The one from which he has ruled these lands for centuries, until some years ago an adventuring party came through. Powerful ones too. Killed Alatar, looted the tower, you know, typical adventurers. My head flew off in the explosion, and then I sorta just laid low here for a bit."
"So you were a skeleton, even back then?"
"For as long as I remember, bud. Alatar rose me from my grave to do chores for him, help around the lab, clean the tower, that sort of stuff. I don't really know who I was before that. Not a great guy, that Alatar. Never thanked me even once for all my hard work."
"Well, thank you for the valuable insight, Chuck!" smiled Milo. Things were starting to make sense. "And nobody has visited the tower ever since?"
"Oh, there were a few looters and vagrants who attempted to come in, sure. But the wards on the tower were strong, still are, I guess. Meant to repell folk who don't belong. But that stuff's beyond my paygrade."
So that was disturbing. Why am I not being repelled by the wards? Let's add that to the list of mysteies.
Milo put on the robes, in part for warmth, but mostly because they made him feel like a real wizard. Like with the staff, Milo could sense the magical energy weaved into these robes, but he wasn't ready to risk meddling with it to figure out what properties they possess.
"Alright. As may have heard, I may be getting eaten by the goblins tomorrow, if I don't figure out some way to impress them. I need to make a plan. The best place to start is to analyze what I have, and then figure out how to use it to get what I want." Milo thought aloud. He went downstairs to grab his backpack, pulled out a pencil and a blank notebook, and started taking notes.
"What I have is a wizard's tower, my magic items, and a tribe of goblins who will do my bidding if I manage to persuade them not to eat me instead. The shaman seems to be on my side, at least for now, since he doesn't want to get eaten for messing up the spell. That's a great start."
"Khe-khem." coughed the skull, offended.
"And, of course, I have you, Chuck! So. First things first. Surviving the next day. I need to find a way to deal with the goblins. I will also need some food, water, and a way to keep this place warm. Any thoughts on any of that?"
"Well, water isn't going to be a problem, there's a small stream right outside, I used to carry water from there to the tower. There's plenty of fruits and animals in the jungle, if you think you can survive going there. As for the warmth, why not just use that staff you've got there, like Alatar did?"
"Do you know how to use it?"
"Hey, I'm just a simple skeleton, I ain't into all that wizardry mumbo-jumbo. But even I know that you can cast a simple firebolt to light up the fireplace, Alatar used to do that all the time. It's extremely hard to weave the spells on your own, of course, but with a staff you just gotta activate the right rune - that's what these things are for, to make basic magics fast and easy. You'd need to know how to manipulate mana to be able to activate the runes, but you seem pretty good at that, you've done a great job almost setting me on fire."
"So each of these runes is a spell?" Milo looked at the hundreds of runes etched into the staff.
"Not really, they're more like components of spells. Like letters you can make the words out of, you know? But things like creating heat and cold should be pretty basic, many spells use them, you might be able to manage with one or two runes."
Milo thought for a few minutes. So these runes form a language of magic, and all I need is to know what they mean, and how to combine them into spells? He rushed to open the book to see if it will give him any hints.
The problem was, the book looked like the notes of a PhD research, when what he needed was to learn the alphabet. He saw long and complex strings of runes, which seemed closer to functions in a programming language than to regular sentences. Some runes depended on or triggered other ones, some only worked under certain conditions, others had to be toggled at just the right time. And, from what he could guess, you had to run all these operations in your head as you were casting.
"Hey, Chuck! Where does a staff like this one comes from? Is there an instruction manual?"
"Heh, no, you can't just buy something like this at a store. Alatar has crafted this staff himself, I remember he was very smug about it too."
So, if Alatar has crafted it himself, thought Milo, there must be schematics for it. He flipped through the book, and sure enough, he found the sketches and blueprints of the staff he was holding. It was drawn from multiple angles, had zoomed-in sections detailing more intricate runes, and, best of all - the runes had annotations!
Lines of text pointed at the runes, and said things like "sequence trigger", "reverse loop activator", "placeholder array", "shaping funnel", "mana stream emitter". All this looked complex, but also strangely familiar, Milo had a strong sense that he could figure it out. He was always interested in engineering and tech, and this didn't seem that different from learning how to code.
He kept reading through the labels until he found what he was looking for. "Light", "heat", "sound", "momentum", "force", "sense", "shape". Now, these are the basics.
He found the "light" rune on the staff, concentrated on it, and slowly and carefully tried to push a small amount of mana into that specific rune. He felt the mana move through him into the staff, pass through a series of complex pathways inside it, then flow into and gradually fill the rune. The tip of the staff began to emit sinister red glow, first dimly, then brighter and brighter until it was as bright as a campfire.
"I am doing magic! I am seriously doing freaking magic! Ah, crap!" exclaimed Milo, and then immediately stopped the flow of mana into the staff.
"Way to go, buddy! It usually takes people years to get a hang of this." said Chuck. "But what's the matter, why'd you shut it down?"
"The light," said Milo. "I really don't think it's a good idea to attract attention of who knows what's out there." He went to the windows and closed the wooden blinds - a sensible precaution. "Alright, let's try something else."
Milo sensed that he could activate the rune in different ways, by making mana flow through various channels. As he tried different channels, the staff glowed in different colors. Some channels didn't seem to do anything, and Milo suspected they emitted the colors outside the visible spectrum.
Milo tried experimenting with other runes. The heat rune, predictably, made the staff radiate warmth, immediately making the room a lot more comfortable. He tore a small piece of paper, touched it to the tip of the staff, slightly increased the mana flow, and...
"Ta-dah!" Milo was now holding a burning piece of paper. "Me Milo! Me make fire! Fire good!" He dropped it into the fireplace, threw some remnants of broken furniture on top, and soon the room was filled with cheerful crackling of fire, and warm light danced on the walls.
"Now, the sound. I think I can guess what that one will do." Milo channeled mana through the rune as he spoke, and, as he suspected, his voice grew louder and louder as he went on. He played with the direction mana flowed through the rune, which modulated his voice, making it sound deeper or squeakier. At some point it even seemed to split into multiple frequencies, making it sound like a chorus of voices.
Then, he noticed he could move mana in the reverse direction, which made his voice sound quieter. "Oh! That will be so useful!"
Milo tried running mana in reverse through the light rune, and marvelled at the small cloud of darkness radiating from the tip of the staff. He pushed more mana to extend it, covering the entire room in complete darkness.
"Mwahahaha! I am the king of darkness!" he laughed maniacally.
"Wow, your first evil laugh? And so soon. What's with the wizards and their lust for power?" noted Chuck.
Milo ignored him, he was in the zone. He was doing magic, and it was working! He always hoped he'd grow up to do legendary things and change the world some day, and now it was beginning to look like he actually underestimated his potential.
He activated the "momentum" rune, and learned that he could push small objects away from him or pull them towards himself, like with a strong magnet. By running mana through it in different ways, he could throw objects in various directions. For a few seconds, he even managed to levitate an empty vial, until he lost control and it smashed against the ceiling.
Milo felt lightheaded, his mind reeling with possibilities. The laws of physics were no longer "laws" to him, merely suggestions.
The "force" rune didn't seem to do anything at first, but Milo could feel the rune working. He reached out to the end of the staff, and felt his hand bump into an invisible object the size of a basketball. It hovered in place, even when he moved the staff away. He tried channeling mana in different ways, and realized he could change the size of the orb, and the consistency of it - it could be as solid as metal, or it could create only weak resistance, like moving your hand through water.
At this point, Milo started feeling extremely tired, like he just ran ten kilometers, and the lightheadedness grew stronger. "Huh," he said, his speech slightly slurred, "so, this mana thing is, uh, umm..." He felt an overwhelming desire to sleep. "it's, um... pretty draining, huh..." and only then realized that he was still channeling a stream of mana, sustaining the orb. He went to stop the current, finding it difficult to think through the exhaustion. By the time he managed to stop the mana flow, he fell to the floor, and passed out.
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