Short Story - A Story from The Sprawl
The following post has adult language and fantastic elements.
My players except Eric - DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS!!!
I have recently started a new online DnD 3.5E game. The setting is a campaign world I’ve created known as The Sprawl, or The Evercity. The Sprawl seemingly goes on forever in all directions, across water, up mountains, across vast plains and deserts, and even out into vast oceans.
This character’s (Opus’s) background includes him acquiring a tome from a thief just before the thief is killed. The Paladins (holy warriors) of the church the tome was stolen did not know the thief had taken the tome initially. So when very little was found on the thief’s body, Opus was allowed to leave. This short starts less than a week later.
Opus
The Sprawl extended in all directions. While it typically extended up only four or five stories and down rarely more than two, the Evercity continued North, South, East, and West forever. Housing was only an issue in the most overpopulated areas. Even so, the phenomenon of overcrowding was a relatively new one. Multiple Burgs in all directions must be filled to capacity before those in the center began to force people to the streets. This was where Opus began his life, in the heavily overcrowded burg of Xandersburg.
Wizardry was thick in Xandersburg, and the streets and alleys were filled to overflowing with merchant stalls and vendor carts. People rarely ventured more than a few blocks from their homes because everything was available right outside one's door. Similarly, stolen goods were always easy to fence and brought good coin. For a street rat and bum, it was an excellent location to sharpen one's skills.
Days after the encounter behind the Temple of Justice, Opus got wind that the Temple Paladins were looking for someone who may be in possession of a dangerous artifact. The Paladins formed gangs to scour the streets for the homeless. Opus laughed inwardly with contempt. A small incantation spoken and Opus the bum became Opus the merchant. Never assuming the same disguise twice, he avoided a dozen or more roving gangs within the span of a week.
Opus gathered what little of his belongings he had stashed in various niches around the burg to move his operations further away from the temple and deeper into the most crowded sections of the burg. His reasoning was that when your enemies are searching for a rat in a refuse pile, it is better for the rat to find a larger refuse pile, and there was no greater refuse pile than central Xandersburg.
That's when the Temple of Justice priests cheated and started using magic.
Opus was still searching for safe spots to use as caches for his most valuable items when someone grabbed his arm as he crossed a bewilderingly busy street to reach another alley.
"I got 'im. I got 'im!" the man shouted to someone unseen through the throng. "And 'e looks just like tha Sista said 'e would."
Panic ripped through Opus's chest. They knew what he would look like? He had only chosen this mundane disguise last night. The street called out to Opus however and reminded him that there's a reason he uses mundane disguises. Magic was saved for emergencies and making money.
A hasty incantation and quick prayer to whom-the-fuck-ever would listen and Opus became the spitting image of a young woman he watched pass a second before.
"Let me go, you beast!" the disguised Opus heard his own voice cry in a rough but feminine voice.
His captor looked back to Opus. The man's face wore a proud smile that immediately twisted in confusion, confusion that turned to shock.
"Wha...?" the man stammered. "Dear gawds, s'rry ma'am."
Opus saw a shock of blue and disturbance in the throng of people behind the man at the same time the man released Opus's arm. Kicking off with one leg, Opus pushed himself away from the disturbance in the throng and his would be capturer. Voices complained as Opus pushed through the waves of passing people and let the crowd swallow him.
"Where is he?" a voice rang out only a few breaths later.
A muffled reply was lost in the din of people.
Opus continued to push himself through the masses toward the alley. Surely he could find a suitable hiding place there. If not, he imagined himself pushing through the alley to put a couple streets between him and his pursuers, find an open door, or if he was desperate, some stairs to take him off street level and up to the rooftops.
"You did not stop to consider that a WIZARD might use MAGIC to make himself look different?" the same booming voice rose above all other sounds.
Opus didn't know if he heard or imagined the whimpering that came as a reply, but he felt himself stumbling into nothing as he finally passed into the comparatively deserted alley. The din of the people on the street was subdued by the thundering sounds of the heart beats echoing in his ears. Opus stopped for a handful of breaths to examine the narrow alley before him. Shadow cloaked the space between the buildings in cool, comforting shadow, but his brief stint in the open sun of the street made the shadows darker than he was comfortable wandering into.
The thunder of his heart could not lessen the voice of his pursuer however as he clearly heard, "EVERYONE STOP"
Like something out of a nightmare, the world abruptly became terribly still, and the only sounds were distant conversations and the chattering of a handful of birds.
Opus turned and looked behind him. Everyone in the street for multiple blocks left and right from the mouth of the alley had come to a complete stop and had turned to look in one direction. Opus turned that way too. Head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd stood one figure covered in shining metal armor. A pair of sky blue plums rose up and back like dragon's horns from the top of the full face helm.
Opus knew there were eyes within the helm, and those eyes were looking for him. He almost could feel those eyes sweep across the crowded street from his right to left and back. Then the eyes were upon him, and Opus felt his stomach slam into the back of his throat.
Opus was running before he knew what was happening, but he was glad for the automatic reaction when he heard the voice boom once more.
"CLEAR A PATH!"
Relatively fewer people in the alley still meant there were quite a few, yet it seemed even they were compelled by the voice. People of all stripes be they bums, beggars, thieves, merchants, passersby, and even a whore with her client all stopped in the middle of whatever they had been doing and pressed themselves up against the sides of the alley. Opus refused to look behind him. He could outrun the average bloke and certainly even the fastest runner in full plate, but he wanted to take no chances. Looking back would only cost him momentum. He was halfway through the alley however when he felt magic wash over him.
People along the walls gasped.
"Ha!" a whiny feminine voice called out somewhere behind him. "Told ya it was weak ass magic!"
Opus knew his disguise had been dispelled. A quick glance to his sleeves showed as much. The disguise spell was never meant for more than to get himself freed from the man who'd grabbed him, but to have his magic so easily countered was dismaying. He pushed that feeling down, however. He had greater things to worry about, such as the sound of swiftly clanging footfalls getting closer.
This time Opus did look behind him. The figure in full plate was running. Worse it was catching up.
Terrified, Opus pulled a large stack of crates down behind him as he passed. He was ten feet passed the tumbling stack of crates as it crashed behind him. Glancing back again, he smiled. The impromptu obstacle was better than he hoped. It sprawled the alley from wall to wall and was almost six feet tall.
The last thirty feet of alley passed in the blink of an eye. Opus burst into the sun again and couldn't help but stop and catch a breath or two before planning his next course of action. Fewer than a single breath later, two things happened simultaneously. First Opus felt a rumbling beneath his feet as people behind him and to his right screamed, but Opus could not turn to see what the commotion was as he was paralyzed not believing the shit he was seeing. Fifty feet away, the figure in full plate armor was in mid-leap ten feet over street level and drawing a sword made of white flame from the nothing over its shoulder.
Something hit the ground between Opus's feet. The paladin landed on the near side of pile of crates, cobblestones splintering and exploding up from the ground, then Opus felt what landed between his feet. His heart.
Opus clutched his chest, but no, he was still whole. It only felt like his heart lay on the stones between his feet. Running now seemed futile. The chase was over before it began.
Or so he thought.
A massive wall of wood and metal appeared between Opus and the contents of the alley.
"Stand down, Paladin of Justice. The contents of this street and all others extending from Xander sectors x-14, y-285, to x-16, y-280 have been lawfully assigned for redistricting. Your quarry included."
Opus was unsure what else was said as he finally noticed the rumbling beneath his feet and the screaming all around him. He turned to look. The first thing he noticed was that other large yellow and black, steel and wood walls blocked the spaces between buildings to his right. To his left, automata, the mechanical servitors of the people of the Sprawl were twisting and changing themselves into new walls between buildings. Stepping back from the wall, Opus saw that it too was a transformed servitor. This one however extended up three stories.
Random waves of screaming people ran past Opus. Some tried to enter buildings through doors or windows, but the doors were somehow barred. Blood streaked many windows where people tried to shatter glass and frame. The common first-floor window designs with their small diamond-shaped panes set in a crisscrossing metal frame proved their anti-thief function may have had unintended consequences.
Opus stepped back in horror, unable to process it all immediately. His fight-or-flight response took over however when several blocks down the street from the direction the automat came, a building sized automata came into view from a cross street. At the intersection, automata had created a two-story wall blocking two of the streets forming a box. The building sized automata moved fully into the intersection, stopped, and shook violently as the top of the automata rotated 90 degrees. A blade the width of the street slid out from the front of the construct and slid down to street level while the front of the thing opened up into a rough approximation of a cone. The bottom of the cone opened and a blood red light spilled forth. Once the transformation was complete, the blade tilted to scrape street while the thing lumbered toward Opus.
Opus ran. Opus tried to open doors. Opus tried to find stairs to climb, windows to break, or some open alley to escape through. Mostly, however, Opus ran. Everyone ran.
It was inevitable. The constructs forced people into tighter and tighter confines by leaving some streets unobstructed while the building sized constructs continued to scoop up and devour those that fell behind. The unobstructed streets all lead toward the same location, and soon the streets were packed wall to wall with people. The massive building sized constructs then simply pushed down these streets. People were forced into the cones, and one by one swallowed whole by the automata.
As Opus fell into the blood red light, all he could think was "Whom ever answered my prayer earlier? Piss off."
Opus awoke in a random room the next day. It looked like any other room in any Sprawl building he had ever entered. On the room's only table he found a scroll that stated he was now assigned to live in the room in which he awoke. He was now in Brawksburg, which was not nearly as crowded as Xandersburg, but it still held its own population of beggars and bums. A population he could easily assimilate to.
Now, one might assume that forced repopulation without warning would not be exactly the blackest of luck, especially when it meant getting so far away from a powerful Paladin who wanted your head that no one knew the name or location of your old home, but Brawksburg was where Opus first met Lily.
Shortly after arriving in Brawksburg, Opus was approached by a teenaged girl. Younglings seemed to only ever approach beggars and bums to roll them for what little tin or copper the poor miscreants may have acquired. This girl however knew how to ask Opus about fencing something for her. She was cute with a bit of what the old timers would call an elfish look to her. Lily never told him her name, and her general appearance changed almost as often as Opus's own if only in dress and hair color. She always wore something with a Lily stitched into the fabric however, so Opus simply began to think of her as Lily.
Lily's goods were often worthless at first, but against his better judgement, as well as the voices from both the little angel and demon that would occasionally whisper in his ear, Opus would throw the girl a few tin bits for the junk she would bring. He didn't know why he would give this one person such charity. Perhaps, he thought, he saw a bit of something of himself in her, the young scrapper just trying to find their place in the Sprawl.
Eventually Lily's goods got better. Opus assumed her skills were improving and gave himself a small bit of credit. She improved in part because he bought her stuff, which in turn allowed and encouraged her to do more work. Then one day she turned up with something remarkable. A small gold rod no wider than Opus's thinnest finger and no longer than the width of his hand, easily concealable with one's palm assuming one was not a halfling. The rod was divided into seven segments with unusual writing carved into and around each segment. Opus could feel the hum of magic in the object just from holding it. Even not knowing what the device was, Opus knew the thing was more valuable than all the money Opus had on him, maybe more than all the money that had ever passed through Opus's fingers accumulated.
"I can't buy this," Opus said. "It's too much."
"Oh, come on, Bummy," Lily said. She nicknamed him Bummy when he wouldn't share his 'real' name. "This is big, and I can't keep it. The guys I took it from are going to come lookin' for me, and if they find this on me, they'll kill me for sure."
Opus laughed, "Oh they'll kill for it will they?"
"Oh, not YOU, Bummy. They'll kill me for having taken something from them. They don't know you or even that you exist."
"No."
"Please?" Lily asked giving Opus her biggest sad eyes face.
This time his reply was slower coming and less certain, "I said no. Besides, like I said, I don't have enough for what this is worth. I don't like taking advantage ... well, too much advantage, of anyone. It makes them remember you. I don't like being remembered."
Lily pumped her clenched fists next to her hips, a level of frustration Opus had only seen her perform once before, the first time she tried to sell him something. It was cute.
"Fine. How about this?" she asked. "You give me everything you have on you right now."
Opus was about to object, but Lily held up a single finger. She wasn't finished.
"You give me everything you have on you and hold this for me. If you can find a buyer, sell it. Set aside half for me, minus whatever you give me today. The next time we meet you can either give me my cut if you have sold it, OR you can give me back the trinket and I give you back double ... no triple what you give me today. And we'll say that after umm ... two years, if I haven't come back, you can keep it all."
"NO!" screamed Opus's instinct.
"Nope!" said the angel on Opus's right shoulder.
"Hmmm ... as for five times as much," said the devil on his left shoulder. "What is that, quintuple? Quintuple? Quipple? Quiche? Quandary? Quixotic?"
"Not helping," stated the angel.
“Fuck off,” said the devil.
"Fine," Opus said as everyone in his head groaned.
Lily squealed in delight.
It was adorable.
"But I want four times ... um, quadruple as much."
Lily beamed and nodded her head in excitement, her thin-lipped smile stretched from almost pointy ear to almost pointy ear.
"I don't have to worry about that," she said as Opus counted out his purse. "I know you're going to find a buyer lickety split. We'll both be fabulously rich!
‘Fuck me,' Opus thought in disgust at himself.
That was a little over a year ago. Lily hasn't returned, but Opus assumed that if she gave him a timeline of two years, she must have been planning on being away for a while. In his spare time, Opus would occasionally take out the object just to try to figure out what it might be. One night as he relaxed in bed under the light of a full moon, he took out the device. He had a potential buyer lined up, the friend of a friend of a complete stranger kind of thing. His descriptions were vague enough to entice anyone interested in curious magical items without screaming what it was. Five thousand gold was his asking price. It wasn't retire to a fifth floor studio money, but it was a good start. Unless Lily never returned, but Opus didn't want to think about that.
Opus held up the device to the light through the window to get a better look at one of the characters, which seemed to be glowing. He pulled the device into the shadows and confirmed the characters on the first of the seven segments were glowing, if only faintly. The glow vanished within seconds, so he placed the device back into the light and the characters once again began to glow. This time he held the device in the light longer and when he brought it to the shadows again, the light faded but more slowly this time. Repeating the process a couple more times, Opus found the glow to last longer and longer. Finally he stood the device on the floor where the moonlight spilled.
Opus sat and watched from his bed as the characters on the first segment glowed brighter and brighter until some threshold was reached. No matter how long he waited, however, the brightness did not change nor did it spread to any other characters in the other segments. Once the angle of the moonlight spilling onto the floor moved and left the device in shadow, he got up to move the device. He found the segments of what he assumed was a solid device now spun freely from each other.
Opus played with the device, spinning segments randomly this way and that until something clicked. The glowing characters flashed, and the device was dark and solid again. Opus shook the device as if that would change anything, but it didn't. Instead, the device felt solid once more. Inspired, Opus tried the next logical step and put the device in the moonlight again. The second set of characters began to glow immediately, but the intensity of the glow grew more slowly than the first.
"Interesting," he thought as he set the device to stand in the window.
The exercise never completed. The moon descended behind the buildings of the Sprawl before whatever limit was reached, and the glow faded from the second segment as quickly as the first. "This information should be valuable to the buyers," Opus thought as he settled back into bed. Tomorrow was going to be a good day.
Tomorrow was not a good day.
Opus was to meet his client the following day in a tavern near the Ra'dosburg Wall Eastgate. It was a lively location with lots of privacy if one knew how to ask for it, and it was never in the front room. He arrived early as he always did to scope out the crowd and perhaps gather some additional information where possible. One should always be looking for new work, and Opus sat at the one table he knew could listen in to almost every other table if one knew how to turn their ear.
Opus sat staring off toward the middle distance of the door, a drink in his left hand and a smile on his face. The couple nearest him were discussing their next rendezvous. His wife would be visiting her mother two burgs away the following week. Her husband would be out on drills for two days that same week. Opus’s smile deepened wickedly as he learned this. The husband was the Captain of the Guard after all.
Opus covered his smile with a long draft from his mug as he thought, ‘Hello payday.’ Almost immediately, however, he almost spat out his drink as two men entered with lily designs sewn into their cloak collars. The same lily design that Opus's Lily had sewn into her clothes.
Opus got up and moved to the bar where he ordered a fresh ale. The men took a table near the corner and waved over a waitress. A coin exchanged hands, and she headed toward the bar. One of the two men loosened his collar, exposing another lily, this one tattooed to his neck. Opus took his ale and wandered over to the table best for listening to the men.
"You think this is the place?" the tattooed man asked his voice was smooth but forgetful.
"Yeah," the other said. His voice was rough. "Guy said to order three ale, drink them, and stack the cups in a triangle. Then one of the serving girls will come get us and bring us back to a private room."
"He has the artifact?"
"That's what we think," said Gravels, the nickname Opus gave him because it matched both the man’s voice and face. "Seems like he activated it. Our mages can't sense the item anymore."
"What are the chances? You think he knew what he was doing?"
"With that sort of timing? Either he's brilliant or blessed by the Gods. It won't save him from the organization."
Opus's stomach soured.
'What have you gotten me into Lily?' he thought as he got up and took the stairs to the second floor.
Once there, Opus found an empty room and applied a new disguise. Ten minutes later he descended, went out the back door, fled several blocks before magically changing guises again. He kept walking until he found himself just outside of another tavern, in another burg. Opus had never been to this tavern, but it and its proprietor were famous. The tavern was The Lonely Dwarf, and the proprietor, Logan, was the only known living dwarf anywhere that anyone knew. Logan owed him a favor, and it was time to call that favor in ... and maybe ask for a few more on top.