We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
Book 4: Chapter 17: Trolling for Treasure

Bill

August 2334

Virt, Pits of Paebak

The troll lay at my feet, sliced in two, the halves neatly cauterized. I cleaned my sword—carefully—and re-sheathed it. I’d gotten the flame blade and some enchanted armor in exchange for the staff of fireballs and most of my portion of Gargh’s hoard. It had been a fair trade in that both myself and Saruman the Wise claimed we’d been fleeced. Still, neither of us backed out of the deal.

Our dungeon party was currently creeping along a dark hallway in the Pits of Paebak. When asked about the name, the current DM would only smile mysteriously and say that all would be made clear at the conclusion of the campaign. Which probably meant a bad pun or something was in our future.

Kevin was back as his original character, having left behind just enough identifiable pieces to allow a resurrection. Gandalf had used one of his scrolls, after taking all Kevin’s remaining worldly goods in payment. Kevin seemed to have finally gotten over the loss of his staff, thankfully. I hadn’t been subjected to any more glares, at least. Tim, who hadn’t left anything but floating ash, was back as a first-level thief. He was staying in the center of the group until he levelled up enough to not be killed by an inadvertent sneeze.

Verne, Pete, and I provided the muscle and sharp implements. So far, we’d been able to handle the encounters, but the increasing difficulty sent a pretty clear message that we were getting close to the payoff.

Gandalf strode along just behind me, acting like king of the mountain. I hoped his talents matched up to his attitude. He was remarkably closemouthed about his actual abilities and assets.

“That was a troll,” Tim said unnecessarily.

We turned to look at him. “And?” Verne said.

“Pretty hefty monster for this level of dungeon,” Tim answered. “If not for Bill’s flame blade, I’m not sure we’d have been able to take it down. Not without losing another player or two anyway.”

I looked back in the direction of the troll carcass. Tim was right. I’d gotten too used to being able to cleave just about anything with one swipe. But trolls were, generally speaking, more than a handful.

“Are you suggesting we’re being set up?” Gandalf asked. “Anyone made any enemies lately?”

I glanced at Kevin, who gazed back at me innocently. That was a long shot anyway. If Kevin was that sensitive about losing treasure, he’d never make it as a Gamer. Everyone else was looking around at everything and nothing as they considered their own recent pasts.

“There’s a secret door here.”

We all turned at Tim’s comment. He was poking at a random section of wall.

“You sure?”

“It’s about the only thing I’m good for,” Tim replied. “Why do you think I picked this character class?”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s see if we can crack this.”

We all started poking, twisting, pushing, lifting and pulling every protuberance in the area. A few seconds later, a door opened with the typical stone-grinding sound effect, revealing a pitch-black tunnel.

“That looks dark,” Tim said. “And cramped.” He pulled a copper piece out of a pocket and tossed it into the blackness. There was a dull thump, followed by a metallic tinkle. ＲＡΝỗ₿Ɛꞩ

“Uh …”

“Yeah. Something’s in there. Anyone got a light spell? Or a flashlight?”

We needn’t have bothered. Whether we woke it up with the coin toss, or it simply decided it had lost the element of surprise, the demon hound charged out of the tunnel, straight at Verne. He, a battle-hardened, fearless half-dwarf warlord, went rigid with fear. Seriously. The hound knocked him over like hitting an inflatable Bozo the Clown.

Apparently, the hound had been expecting more resistance than Bozo had been able to deliver. It continued on in its trajectory, speed unabated, and fetched up against the far wall with a loud thump. The hound made an oddly human “oof” noise and slid down the wall to land in a heap.

Pete, who hadn’t gone rigid, took the opportunity to impale the beast before it could get up. As the light went out of the hound’s eyes, Pete smiled and said, “About time I got a good kill—”

The second demon hound hit him at neck height, taking his head clean off. “Shit!” his head said as it bounced along the floor. I finally unfroze, pulled my sword, and parted the hound cleanly.

“Well, that’s suboptimal,” Gandalf said. He grabbed Pete’s head by the helmet crest and lifted it until they were face to face. “No resurrections, buddy. Even if you could afford it, I used my last scroll for Kevin.”

Pete’s head said, “Yeah, okay. I was getting tired of this character anyway.”

The conversation was interrupted by a heavy bass growl ahead of us in the hallway.

“What the blinkin’ blue blazes was that?” Kevin whispered.

Tim replied, “Dunno, but it had a certain quality of bigness to it.”

“And hungriness,” I added.

Tim peered into the tunnel. “I think we’re being herded, but it’s this or go straight back. I kinda wish you still had that staff, Bill.”

I shook my head in reply. “Firing it off in that cramped space would as likely as not cook all of us with the blowback. Gandalf, you got anything for close-order fighting?”

“Not like what you mean, Bill. I think your flame blade is our best hope.”

“Wonderful.” This meant I would be going first, holding my magic sword out in front of me in hopes of killing an attacker before it could get to us. Which would do diddly squat against a magical attack. My future began to truncate in front of me.

I shrugged and edged carefully into the tunnel. “Someone want to shed some light on this?”

Gandalf muttered something and a light shone over my shoulder, illuminating the tunnel ahead. The tunnel wasn’t high enough for us to stand straight, so we were forced to move forward bent at the waist. If I’d been bio and doing this in real, I would have had back spasms within a minute or two; but in the spirit of classic D&D, the game engine allowed us to overlook some of the more realistic aspects of adventuring.

The tunnel eventually terminated in a blank wall. We all turned to Tim, who shrugged. “I don’t see anything.”

“I’m getting tired of this campaign,” Verne muttered. “We’ve been battling high-level beasts since almost the entrance, lost over half our group, and we have sweet diddly to show for it.”

“Hopefully the final payday is worth it.” Gandalf checked through his satchel. “I have a spell of True Seeing in here somewhere … Ah.” He pulled out a small notebook and paged through it. A few seconds of nodding and muttering and he looked up. “Let’s try this.”

Gandalf made some gestures and spoke in an arcane tongue. He then squinted and peered intently around, checking the blank wall and the tunnel wall around it. “Nothing. What the hell?”

We all stared at the blank wall. Red herrings were one thing, but dead ends generally needed to have a point. “I’m really starting to hate this DM,” Tim said, and turned around to head back up the tunnel. He took three steps, then said, “Really, really, really hate.”

We looked past him at the blank wall where a tunnel used to be. We were now in a section of tunnel about twenty feet long, blocked at both ends.

I frowned. “Gandalf, is your True Seeing spell still active?”

“Yes, for another minute or so.”

“See anything in this tunnel we should know about?”

“Nope.”

“What blocks or counters a True Seeing?”

“Er … higher level magic, of course. But I’d sense that.”

“Tim, you see anything significant?”

“No. And a True Seeing would pick it … hold on.” Tim put his hand near a section of wall. “There’s a draft here.”

We moved over to it and each took a turn feeling for the slight air flow.

“On the list of things that defeat a True Seeing,” Gandalf opined, “we can add low-tech tricks like building a wall without mortar.” He pushed on the section of wall and it gave a little.

We all put our backs into it, and after a few seconds of resistance, the wall collapsed outward.

The good news is that it crushed several of the zombies who were waiting on the other side. The bad news is that it alerted all of their still-uncrushed brethren. We were at one end of a large subterranean hall with a ceiling so high it was lost in the gloom. Torches lined the walls, giving enough light to illuminate dozens of zombies milling around the chamber, and a large nondescript statue at least twenty feet tall standing at the center.

“Oh shit,” Tim exclaimed, and backpedaled frantically.

“Brainssssss …” said the zombies, and advanced on us.

“Now hold on,” Verne exclaimed. “That’s entirely the wrong kind of—”

“Shut up, Verne,” Gandalf growled. “Kill now, carp later.”

I raised my sword and started swinging. Perhaps a little too enthusiastically, as Verne yelled, “Hey, watch it!” and danced out of the way.

Without Pete, we were down to two fighter characters. Even with magical accessories, Verne and I wouldn’t be able to hold off a bunch of undead. “If you’ve got anything in that bag of tricks, Gandalf, now would be the time,” I yelled.

“Gimme a sec,” he yelled back. I could hear muttered curses, then “Aha!”

There was a pop and a zombie that was trying to eat Verne’s axe turned into a cloud of smelly gas.

My eyebrows went up, but I didn’t have time to think about it. Zombies weren’t particularly powerful opponents, but they made up for it with sheer numbers and a total lack of fear. And they were very hard to kill. You generally had to reduce them to sushi before they’d stop coming at you. And I had at least a dozen of the critters about to step into range. I cocked my sword arm, and—

Pop, pop, pop.

“Woo-hoo!” Gandalf yelled. The sudden disappearance of several zombies gave me time for a quick glance over my shoulder. Gandalf was gesturing with a wand. Each time he pointed it, there was another pop.

“Damn, that’s handy,” Verne said, and chopped another couple of zombies.

“Bibbety boppety boo,” Gandalf replied, dancing around and waving his wand. “Bibbety boppety bibbety boppety pibbety boppety boo!” With each downbeat, another zombie went up in smoke. The odor was verging on overpowering, and the game engine wouldn’t let me turn down my olfactory sense.

We were down to the last dregs of the zombies, and I was beginning to think we might survive this, when a huge hand reached out of nowhere and wrapped around me. I found myself hoisted into the air, unable to draw a breath.

The last few zombies disappeared with popping sounds, and Gandalf stopped the song and dance routine. Strangely, I don’t think anyone had noticed my predicament until that moment, judging from the shocked expressions. “Little help?” I managed to squeak.

“Hello, wabbit,” a voice said from behind us. Verne and Gandalf turned—I couldn’t move, but the huge hand helpfully rotated me to face the voice—to find Kevin grinning at me, holding a scroll. “Golem,” he explained, waving the scroll. The helpful hand turned me around again, and I was finally able to see what I’d previously assumed was a statue. A twenty-foot-tall clay-colored humanoid shape stared back at me impassively with a face surprisingly reminiscent of Odo from DS9. It loosened its grip slightly so that I could more easily breathe and talk.

Kevin put the scroll into a pocket and I reflexively struggled. No joy, of course. He didn’t have to hold the scroll to control the golem, just possess it. And golems, besides being almost indestructible, were hella strong.

Kevin walked a little ways to the side to put some distance between himself and the rest of the group, still smirking triumphantly but not saying anything. It looked like he was going to wait for us to ask the first question.

“What’s going on, Kevin?” Verne asked obligingly.

Kevin gestured at me. “Bill here. First time in a campaign, he goes from dragon fodder to a level above me by basically tripping over himself. Does practically nothing and comes out golden.”

“Plus I took your staff of fireballs. I’m sure that figures into it.”

Kevin glared at me. “You needed to be taken down a peg, bud.” He directed nasty grin my way. “So I set up this campaign and made sure you were invited.”

“You played and DMed?” Gandalf exclaimed.

“No, I’ve got a friend running the show. I’m just what you might call a—”

“Backstabber,” Verne finished for him.

“Whatever. None of you have anything that can take out a golem. Enjoy your deaths, courtesy of Bill. And speaking of Bill …” Kevin raised a hand and made a squeezing motion.

I waited for the end, hoping the sensory feedback filter was set way high, but nothing happened. Kevin got a perplexed look on his face and repeated the motion. Still nothing. Kevin reached into his pocket, and the concerned expression changed to panic.

“Looking for this?”

We all turned at Tim’s voice. He was leaning up against the wall, casually flipping a scroll in his hand.

Oh, yeah, that’s right. Thief.

“You truly are an asshole, Kevin,” Tim said, and opened his other hand. The golem dropped me, then reached out, grabbed Kevin around the head, and squeezed. There was a pop sound, not the least bit like a zombie exploding, and squishy juice squirted from the top of the golem’s fist.

Verne bent over and retched.

“Oh GOD!” Gandalf exclaimed. “Did you have to do that?”

Tim grimaced in sympathy. “Okay, maybe not my best move. However …” He held up the Golem Scroll. “I appear to be in possession of one kick-ass piece of magic. I feel some levelling-up in my future. Let’s see what else we can find.”

We grinned at each other. Another successful campaign.

I’d invited myself over to Gandalf’s VR again, and he was eyeing me suspiciously. Maybe he was expecting another lecture on the Gamers’ involvement in the expedition. But that wasn’t what I was worried about this time.

“So, about Kevin. That’s not Bob-like behavior. How far has he drifted, anyway?”

Gandalf shrugged. “He’s actually one of my descendants. I could ask him, but off the cuff I’d say he’s about twenty-fourth generation. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s drifted a lot.”

“Bit of an asshole. A vindictive one, at that.”

“Yeah, listen Bill, I get why the whole drift thing bothers the senior Bobs. But you need to appreciate that, from our point of view, it’s more upside than otherwise.”

Well, that was interesting. I raised my eyebrows and made a rolling motion with a hand for him to continue.

“When we first started the Gamers group, most of us were still mostly Bob-like, and frankly it was a little boring. Everyone wanted to be a magic user, the dungeons tended to all feature intellectual puzzles, everything was carefully balanced … all very civilized. Now …” Gandalf made a helpless gesture. “Nowadays, you can’t always depend on your fellow players, sometimes crazy shit happens—like today—and sometimes things go wildly out of control. Campaigns are way more fun these days. Also, we are now getting non-Bob replicants joining up from some of the post-life replicant arcologies.”

“What, seriously? Who?”

“No one today. This was all Bobs. But a couple of guys from your last time out were ex-human. Interesting that you didn’t notice.”

“Huh.” Well, he had a point. “So Kevin—”

“Is going to suffer a loss of reputation, but not so much for the attempted backstabbing as for failing at it. We’ll still let him join campaigns. We just won’t let him stand behind us, if you know what I mean.”

I chuckled and shook my head. “You’re right. It’s too easy to get myopic and see everything from the point of view of my own priorities. And that’s going to become an increasingly dangerous habit. I think I have to make an effort to start seeing everyone as individuals.” I stood. “Thanks, Gandalf. For the game, and for the lesson.”

He was still smiling when I popped out.

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