Know Your Roll Read online

  RULE OF COOL

  #1 Know Your Roll

  by Matthew Siege

  Copyright © 2019 by Matthew Siege

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For My Family

  –

  Thanks for being on my Crew. Levelling up with you guys is a blast.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 1

  Aside from being one of the few places in Hallow where you could turn in quests and slake your thirst at the same time, Illgott ‘N’ Games happened to be the crappiest arcade in town.

  Unfortunately, it was also the only one.

  The Yelp reviews of the run-down establishment never failed to mention some combination of the perpetually sticky floors, disgruntled ogre owner, prominently mounted Chekhov Gun, the Gearblin chained to the questgiver desk and the paltry selection of outdated video games.

  We only had five, and to reach even that lofty number you had to count the rigged claw game in the corner and ‘Hero Within’, a relic that’d been missing both of its joysticks for as long as I could remember.

  Illgott’s strict no-refund policy (shackled employees included) meant that I could only rely on Space Paranoids, Killer Instinct and Starfighter for my escapist fantasies.

  Space Paranoids… That was my current obsession…

  Contested Poise Roll

  Raze’s Poise Modifier: -2

  Additional Modifiers: Repeated Willing Exposure: -3

  Total Modifier Score: -5

  Roll: 9 - 5 = 4

  Space Paranoids’ Compulsion Spell: +2

  Roll: 16 + 2 = 18

  Result: Raze Failure

  You are under the effects of Space Paranoids’ ‘Dopamine on Demand’ ability. If possible, you’ll pay for another hit at the earliest opportunity. Sucks to be you, since the first one wasn’t even free.

  The spell put me in a daze, and I started to climb down from my seat. I’d been known to wander off before, which was how I earned the manacle in the first place.

  “Raze!” My overseer cut through my mania, his big voice booming from where he was stationed at the other side of the bar, serving watered down booze to watered down Heroes.

  “What?” I asked, rubbing my eyes as the Compulsion faded from me.

  The ogre tapped a wooden sign dangling from a length of cord attached to the roof. It had ‘You get what you work for, not what you wish for’ written on it. He’d commissioned a bunch of different sayings a while ago in a futile effort to motivate my nose to kiss the grindstone.

  The sign beside it had been angrily shaken at me so many times that it was barely hanging by a thread. The words, chipped and faded, read ‘The Customer is Always Right, Raze’.

  I ignored him and his slogans, looking instead in the direction of the arcade games with a longing that probably bordered on the obscene. The Compulsion was gone, but even without it I couldn’t wait to slog through the rest of the long day so that I could blow my money at the end of it.

  So what if my distraction delayed the Heroes from continuing to ruin our lives for a few extra minutes?

  I’d lost count of how many hours I’d spent elbow deep in the guts of ‘Hero Within’ as I tried to unsuccessfully install black market controllers. They never fit, since the console was way, way older than any of the other equipment I could find.

  I’d probably have fewer compatibility issues if I jammed a banana into the hole where the joystick should’ve gone…

  Illgott, vigilant as ever, was sick of me stalling. “Enough daydreaming, Raze!”

  As intended, that earned a chuckle from some of the protagonists in line. Everybody knows that Dregs can’t dream, and the ogre rubbing it in was designed to score points with the clientele at the expense of the staff.

  “Cram it, you butterball sellout,” I shot back, petulant as ever. He was a Dreg too, though he’d long since accepted his fate and turned bootlicker.

  He was probably right about me getting back to work, though… The place was packed, and the queue of Heroes waiting to begin new quests or hand in old ones was out the door. The rumble of rumor and the impatient sighs of my potential clients was just about drowned out by the music being piped through the speakers mounted in every corner.

  Illgott was obsessed with Lynyrd Skynyrd, and he squandered his Spotify subscription by forcing their Greatest Hits to pour into the unwilling ears of everyone present. I was as cool with Southern Rock as the next guy, but wherever Alabama was, it stopped sounding like a ‘Sweet Home’ somewhere around the ten thousandth play through.

  Raze, I said to myself, focus on the task at hand instead of all the sweet tunes you’re missing out on. Keep your cool and you’ll keep your hide.

  That last part was a familiar mantra handed down to me from Mother. It’d kept me alive so far, and I had to trust that my fortunate RNG would continue.

  “Next!” I called, waving over a tall man in leather armor that was so new I could still smell the tanner’s urine wafting from it. The Hero was a Hunter, and I braced myself for this conversation to go as badly as possible. Of all the archetypes I was forced to deal with, they were the most dense.

  I couldn’t remember a time when a Hunter turning in a quest had gone smoothly, and I doubted this would be any different.

  True to form, the first thing he blurted as he stepped up to my desk was, “Are you this slow on purpose, or did you hit your head on the gutter you were whelped in?”

  I was used to the Heroes’ lack of tact, but even for them this was extreme. None of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in raising their Reputation with the Dreg faction of Hallow. Why should they, when they could get away with talking to us like this?

  Powerless, I fantasized about his inevitable death as I bit my tongue and forced a smile. Despite my years of pragmatic servitude, I was surprised to find that I was already reaching for the dagger at my belt.

  It was an empty threat, since a Dreg can’t win a roll against a Hero. I shifted my body to hide my action, clanging my ankle chain against the leg of the desk to divert his attention.

  He didn’t see me make a play for the weapon, so I cleared my throat and pointed at the air above me. “I’m this slow because the Vigilance Committee spends all of their money on armor polish all of their time playing grabass instead of fixing my sign.”

  “What’d you say to me?”

  “Patience, grasshopper!”

  I needed a moment to talk myself down from the ledge, and the inefficient wiring of the badly buzzi
ng neon sculpture overhead provided it. A couple of seconds later it finally cut power to the exclamation point that’d marked the previous Hero’s visit and fired up the question mark to signify the new guy’s need.

  The transition was loud and full of sparks. I brushed the worst of the embers from my shoulders and concentrated on not talking myself into an early grave. “Let’s begin again. Greetings,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Gods you’re ugly. You look like the mobs I used to grind against before they sent me here. What in all of the living hells are you, anyway?”

  I ignored him, pressing on. “It looks like you’re here to complete a quest,” I told him. “Correct?”

  His inevitable sneer told me that, yet again, I’d been right about Hunters. They never seem to get the point, just like they never did the right thing if the wrong thing was easy and staring them in the face. “Hang on a minute. I asked what you were. You look too much like a Goblin for my liking, and I’ve got a Racial Enmity with the little green cusses.”

  I sighed. “If I were a Goblin and you did have an ability that worked against me, wouldn’t you know it?”

  “Well, yes, but-”

  “And wouldn’t your tiny, practically helpless brain have crawled out of its decrepit cave and let you know that I was a Goblin long before you bellied up to my desk and embarrassed yourself with the question?”

  By now my voice was loud enough to cut through ‘Gimme Three Steps’, and the Heroes behind him were sniggering.

  “Of course!”

  I suppose I had a death wish, but at this stage knowing that was true and reining in my attitude were two vastly different things. One of these days I’d get Illgott to add a little disclaimer about my Race to his row of signs, so that I could stop repeating the spiel fifty times a day.

  I held on to the edge of the desk, bracing myself for the unavoidable. “I’m a Gearblin.”

  “A what?”

  There it was. Far worse than the endless echo of their inane queries was the scorn and malice that laced every word. I’d live longest if I was an obedient, customer-focused, results-orientated Non-Participating Citizen of Hallow, but I simply didn’t have it in me.

  One of these days, I really would go for a Hero’s throat. Sure, my chosen victim would end my worthless life without even trying, but dead or not at least I’d have finally stood up for myself.

  I took a deep breath and tried again. Impractical flights of fantasy involving me going down in a blaze of impotent glory weren’t going to get me to the end of the day with my skin still intact. I’d be safest if I remembered that Heroes were first-class citizens and Dregs like me were third.

  If not lower.

  I leaned in and beckoned the Hunter closer. He obeyed, and I couldn’t help but notice how easy it would have been to stick something sharp in his jugular and wiggle it around. If not for the fact that I couldn’t roll against him and win, of course… “I said that I’m a Gearblin.”

  “You’re filthy is what you are.”

  Says the guy who smells like pee…

  I smiled up at him sweetly. “That’s hardly mutually exclusive. If you don’t like us, you’ll be pleased to learn that there aren’t many Gearblin left. Before the Smash, this place was lousy with my kind.”

  “What happened?”

  “The smart ones fled and the stubborn ones stayed, same as always. Our city got burnt and yours was built on top of the ashy foundation. Of course, Hallow getting fully stocked with crude monuments and partially-devoted followers of the Gods that’d curb stomped us lowered the property value considerably. A thousand years of that sort of thing tends to have an impact on a Race’s census numbers.”

  The Hunter didn’t care. He was still looking at me like something he should’ve scraped from the bottom of his boot a while ago. “Sounds to me like you lot are on your way out.”

  I chuckled. “We’ll be around for as long as the world has drunk Goblins and slutty Gremlins. That’s how you get a Gearblin, just in case you wanted to grow your own.” He was visibly uncomfortable, and that made it even more fun. “Why do you think they say that you aren’t supposed to get a Gremlin wet, if you know what I mean…?”

  He wrinkled his nose, though I wasn’t sure he got it. “Then why have I never encountered one before? I’m no stranger to the wilds, having hunted every beast between here and the Glades of Great Galad-”

  I held up my hand, cutting him off. “Keep your backstory to yourself,” I told him. “I’m not a beast, and I’m not interested in your autobiography. Just type ‘Gearblin’ into your Pokedex and read the description so that we can get down to business, shall we?”

  “Huh?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Ash Ketchum? Mewtwo? That annoying little one that still hasn’t managed to get all the way out of his egg? I mean, can you even imagine how badly that thing must stink?”

  The Hunter self-consciously glanced over his shoulder before turning back to me and shaking his head, losing confidence by the second. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I’d clearly thrown him with the Pokémon reference, which told me a lot about how out of his depth he was.

  After all, Hallow only had two purposes; hosting the farcical Reenactment on the anniversary of the Smash and exporting the memes that fell through the Rift, be they spicy, dank or tasty.

  If this moron was too wet behind the ears to have figured out that what passed for ‘local culture’ was borrowed from somewhere or somewhen else, there wasn’t a lot I could do for him.

  But that was his problem, not mine. “Never you mind.” I pointed at the cluster of rat tails hanging from his belt. “Those are for me, right?”

  “Are they?”

  “Only if you’re here to turn in the temple quest Adrius accosted you with on your way into town.”

  He frowned, and I watched his eyes glaze over as he mentally consulted his internal list of objectives. I could see that he was overwhelmed by all the new tasks, skills and errands he’d been forced to keep track of since his arrival.

  It was a little like watching a roach attempt long division, and I felt a flicker of empathy awaken before I had a chance to smother it. “Look,” I told him, “if you’re sorting by ‘completed’, it should be up near the top.”

  “I can’t see it,” he said, panicked. His cluelessness was making the line of protagonists behind even more irritable, which meant more trouble for me than him.

  That put me in the awkward position of career counselor, a job I was even worse at then questgiver. “Relax. It’ll be there. The Significant Fraternity always names their quests something hoity-toity. The rat tails are for the first in their initiation line; ‘Vermin Sermon’.”

  “Quit your drivel for a moment while I look,” he demanded. “Ah, there it is.”

  “I think you mean ‘thank you’, but whatever.”

  Hero or not, his attack was almost comically slow. I saw the backhand coming from a mile and a half away, not that it mattered. Trying to dodge would only embarrass me.

  At least I had plenty of time to brace myself before the blow caught me hard across the face.

  Damage: 1

  Damage Type: Physical (Bludgeoning)

  Resistance: N/A

  Ongoing Effect: Know Thy Place - This blow was intentionally delivered with the back of the hand. The Giver’s Vigilance standing amongst Heroes who witness the attack has increased by 5. The Receiver’s Social Checks made in opposition to the Giver suffer a 10% penalty throughout the rest of this encounter, though your status as a Non-Participating Citizen removes your ability to engage in Social Checks with Heroes.

  Hit Point Loss: 1

  Hit Points Remaining: 4

  I tried not to react and failed. Stoicism is all well and good, but when some random evaporates twenty percent of your hit points with a pimp slap, it hurts.

  The pain made the room spin and wobble like a top whittled by a cross-eyed gnome. For a moment I was afraid that I might fall right
off the stool, but I was able to grab on to the edge of the seat before that happened.

  I stared down at the surface of my desk, fighting to bury my rage back beneath a thin veneer of world-weary sarcasm and droll commentary. If I locked eyes with the Hunter now, he’d see my hatred. They all would, and he’d be forced to save face by lashing out again.

  I didn’t trust him to have enough control not to kill me. The only person in this room that might care if I died was me, and even my jury was out.

  The Hunter and a few of the Heroes behind him snickered, mistaking my rare moment of self-preservation for cowardice.

  I wanted him dead. No, I wanted them all dead, and I closed my eyes and fought to slow my breathing as I imagined leaping across the desk and slicing a hole in him big enough to tear everything out that wasn’t nailed down.

  “I’m glad the fight’s gone out of you,” he said, dropping the bundle of rat tails on the desk and splattering my papers with rodent blood. “Now give me my reward.”

  I bit my tongue and plucked a short sword and a curved dagger from the stack to my left, setting them down in front of him. “Take your pick but not your time.”

  I’d had a lot of chances to practice my part of this quest. Everyone who stepped off the Platform passed the Fraternity’s fallen temple, which meant that Adrius had ‘Vermin Sermon’ thrust into their brainpan before they knew what hit them.

  I let his gaze sweep back and forth between the weapons, licking my chops and scooping up the rat tails before tossing them in the fly-swept storage barrel. They smelled delicious, and my mouth was watering so much that I had to swipe my forearm across it to mop up the drool.

  The looming Reenactment had more than tripled Hallow’s population, and a couple of thousand tails would likely walk through the door before the end of the day. If I could catch Illgott looking in the other direction, I might be able to sneak a few of them for lunch.

  The Hunter’s wolf companion had been quietly waiting outside, but now he started yipping and howling. The noise caused a couple of the Heroes near the door to put their hands on the hilts of their weapons and stare the beast back into a fitful silence.