Young Writers Society

When you open your eyes, you find yourself in an unfamiliar world. It may similar to your own, but there are little things that aren't the same. The songbirds sing different tunes. The trees and grass are a slightly different shade of green. The clouds in the sky above are lighter and fluffier than those of your own.

But the setting isn't the only thing that is wrong. Some things have changed. Your clothes, at least, are different. But other details may have also changed - you've gained features that weren't previously present, and abilities that you could have only dreamed of. It doesn't make any sense in the slightest.

You don't have much time to process your confusion, however. The woods you are in border an unsuspecting village. You find yourself drawn to a tavern nestled in the heart of it. Maybe it's because taverns are naturally a place of gossip; maybe it's because you realize this situation is eerily reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons.

Maybe, this tavern - and the people within - will help you find a way home.

1. Please include a description of your character in your first post - you can throw it into a spoiler using the code down below and put it at the top of your post.

Code: Select all

[spoiler]Put your description here![/spoiler]

If you don't include the description in your first post, make sure to mention it over in the DT!

2. Feel free to pick characters from whatever you want. They can be from another roleplay, a storybook, a novel or even a fanfiction of yours. The world, time and plot they're from ultimately just impacts how they interact with this roleplay, so it's really up to you.

3. You can have as many characters as you want, but there'll come a point where you can no longer add new ones because it'll get too overwhelming. I'll make sure to say something when that happens, so don't worry about it for now.

4. Please don't write for anyone else's characters. It's hard to predict what someone else might have their characters do, and it takes away some of the fun for the other writers.

5. You're free to have your character guess what the plot is, but don't make any plot-altering decisions with talking about with me first. You can PM me or chat in our discussion topic/DT if you have an idea - I love scheming!

(It would also be really helpful if you said you were joining over in that thread, rather than in a post here. )

6. Don't post multiple times in a row, and make sure everyone has a chance to get a response in. There's going to be times where it makes more sense to post back-and-forth between two people, but try avoiding it unless you absolutely have to - it prevents the other writers from getting too behind and feeling like they aren't involved with the story.

7. Have fun!

When he opened his eyes, it was to the sound of low, familiar groan.

Everything was wrong. He should have been laying in a comfortable bed in the Black Dragon Inn, and shouldn't have been sitting perched in a tree in the middle of a forest.

(At least, he guessed it was a forest. It was a little hard to see with the leaves in front of his face.)

His hood began to slip back as he craned his head; he absentmindedly went to pull it down. It was only when he had completed the action that he realized that he hadn't been wearing a hood before, and that was when he heard a wolf howl.

Okay, he really needed to see what was going on.

It was hard shifting his weight without breaking the branch, but he somehow managed to pull it off. Now he had a bird's eye view of the spectacle down below - even he, who had seen many, many things, couldn't help but stare.

There was a guy down below him. He knew the guy well. They had spent the past week or two traveling together, and he knew him even better from before all of this. He was still in his ridiculously edgy suit of armor, still awkward about the whole being an extra foot taller, and still surprisingly intimidating. But the twist was what he was facing off with. Because while wolves were common and made sense, one that big and that bloody definitely didn't.

He dropped down from his perch.

His...acquaintance gave a yelp poorly disguised as a cough in surprise and moved back as he approached the wolf with a swish of his coat. The wolf gave a low, angry growl, but the growl quickly turned to a whine when it looked him in the eyes. Which was weird, considering that he didn't look nearly as terrifying as he could have right now, but he wasn't going to kick a gift wolf in the mouth. Especially when the wolf darted off with its tail between its legs.

He looked at his acquaintance.

His acquaintance looked at him.

And then they looked back in the direction of the wolf.

"...That was a dire wolf," his acquaintance said.

"You play D&D?"

If guys wearing suits of armor could look embarrassed, his acquaintance certainly did. He didn't even given Dresden the dignity of a response. He was so against the idea of being considered nerdy - despite being an avid gamer - that he didn't want to admit that he actually knew what D&D was. But, insecurities aside, he was probably right. That did look like a dire wolf.

Which made the two of them...

He looked down at his outfit.

He looked back up at his acquaintance.

"Are you still the same?" he asked. "Because if you are and we're somehow in a campaign, then I'm a necromancer and you're a l-"

His acquaintance slapped a metal hand over his mouth.

"We're near a tavern," he hissed, gesturing at the back end of the building. It was off in the distance - Dresden could barely make out more than a few minor details. He wanted to retort that he had eyes and could see the tavern, too, but he had been too preoccupied with the wolf to notice it earlier. Anyways, he got the implications. The last thing that he wanted was for someone to attack the two of them when his magic was still wonky. Raptor didn't even have a weapon.

He slipped out of Raptor's grip.

"Great," he said, "because taverns are exactly where we should be going right now. If we're here, there has to be some sort of quest we can hijack. Let's talk to some NPCs!"

"You are not calling them NPCs-"

Without giving Raptor a chance to argue further, Dresden marched off towards the tavern - with Raptor quickly chasing after him.

Melikae woke up to the warmth of the sun.

It was rather nice, really, but why was she feeling sun? Her eyes flitted open, and although she was a sun elf who supposedly bathed in sunlight religiously, she cannot even right now. She could barely remember what happened in the tavern last night, but she knew it was a good time. Right now, though, her eyes and whole body wanted to melt in the sunlight. Where were her sunglasses...

Melikae stirred and sat up straight, once again wondering why she was outside under the sun in the first place. If she had woke up to find herself passed out on the tavern table with booze pooling near her face, okay, that was believable, and may have happened once or twice. But outside, passed out next to a tree? No, even her tipsy self wouldn't do that, because nothing was worse than getting woken up by the forces of nature on a weekend.

(Never mind that elves don't need sleep. To Melikae, it was relaxing, and felt oh-so-human.)

She slowly stood up on her feet, holding her pounding head. So, she had no idea how exactly she arrived in these woods, but it was likely she was too intoxicated to remember, or maybe it was a prank. Imagine that: her con artist friends conning the master con artist. Wouldn't that be something.

Voices were heard as she rummaged through her bag to find out that almost everything was gone. Was this a robbery? Why was her stuff gone? With her head spinning and her eyes still seeing color when shut, she barely had time to process everything going on before she ducked behind a tree to not be seen.

It was two unfamiliar voices. She overheard their entire conversation and heard them talk about... D&D? A campaign? NPC? Tavern? Necromancer?

No way... did she hear that right? It couldn't be...

They were near a TAVERN?

Thank goodness. She probably somehow weaseled her way outside last night and plopped on the ground nearby, but more importantly, she could go back there right now. Being a professional scam artist was hard work and she deserved to spend the weekend stealing beers.

Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, like she wasn't supposed to be here.

Suddenly overcome with these feelings, Melikae silently sneaked up around them and impulsively decided to have a little fun to prove something. She smirked as she rounded the surrounding bushes to travel around the tavern unseen.

And casted a minor illusion spell so that the two of them heard each other's scream. It was meant to be a spooky prank, really; she heard both of their voices, so it was practically their own fault for talking out loud. And because the two of them were more than 5 feet away, they only heard one scream: each other's. Ah yes, nothing like some good paranoia to start off the day!

Satisfied that magic works normally and no longer having that gut feeling that something was wrong, she continued to quietly snake her way around the building and enter the tavern.

She wanted to scream. In fact, she would scream as she tugged her cloak out of the clutches of an unfamiliar boulder that she just found herself asleep by.

This was not the fancy inn she and those other buffoons had paid good money to sleep in. This was not the cold, dreary pine forest surrounding the mysterious carnival they were supposed to be exploring. No, this was a some stupid bright green forest lit up by a stupidly bright sun that stung her sensitive eyes. Why couldn't she have at least ended up in some dark, dank cavern that felt a least little bit homey?

And to add onto all that, she couldn't find her fancy staff or her magical crossbow anywhere. It must have been that sticky fingered rogue. She hadn't trusted him to begin with. (Not that she wouldn't have done the same to him if given the chance.) But that didn't explain how she ended up here, far far away from anywhere she could even recognize. She didn't think there were even forests like this anywhere close to where she last was.

She stomped around the tiny clearing, rustled through a few bushes, and yelled a few choice words (at both the leaves and the sun) when she couldn't find anything. Eventually, she decided there was just too much brush to efficiently look through it all.

Her solution was to set it on fire.

She wrapped her hand around the stem of a small bush and set it ablaze at will. A nasty grin spread on her face as she watched the flames swallow the twigs and leaves and then quickly jump to the next collection of grass and bushes, almost as if it had a mind of its own. There was never a problem fire couldn't solve.

She waited a few minutes as the fire cleared out that annoying brush, but she only found disappointment where her stuff should have been. Still nothing. Guess it was time to think of another plan. She spun on her heels and walked away from the clearing that was now completely engulfed in flames. Spire only started the flames but putting them out was always someone else's problem.

A flame or two licked her skin as she passed by a few of the burning bushes, but the heat didn't burn or scar her at all.

She stumbled through the forest for a couple of minutes, grumbling to herself, until she happened across an older, working man. He was walking in her direction, staring behind her as if concerned about something.

Spire put on a deceptively sweet smile as she caught his attention. Her voice was soft and smooth, no trace of her previous annoyance, as she said, "Excuse me, sir. I'm a bit lost. Is there a village somewhere around here?"

The man paused, looked her up and down, and then looked back behind her with a worried expression. His hurried response was, "Yeah, there's a town not ten minutes' walk from here, back that way." He gestured from where he had just walked and then hurried away from her. When Spire looked back, she could almost see a faint column of smoke billowing into the air. She smiled again. To the town then.

There was the sound of someone screaming.

Raptor stopped. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought Dresden was screaming. But Dresden had never screamed the entire time that he had known him, and Raptor couldn't wrap his head around the idea of him screaming now when he seemed perfectly fine.

Dresden turned to look at him, a confused expression flickering across his face.

A chill ran up Raptor's spine.

Dresden didn't look he had just screamed.

"You didn't scream," Dresden slowly realized.

The chill was getting worse. Trying not to betray just how spooked he was, Raptor glanced around the woods in search of the true owner of the scream. If he hadn't screamed and Dresden hadn't screamed, then who had screamed-

"Oh," Dresden said, far too nonchalant for something like this, "it's like a mockingjay."

Raptor gave him a blank look.

A moment later, Dresden was returning it with an exasperated one of his own. "You know D&D but you don't know Hunger Games?"

Raptor crossed his arms and tried to hide how flustered he was. For once in his life, he was grateful that he had to wear this helmet. He was sure that Dresden would be able to see right through his expression, and he really didn't want to deal with his teasing right now.

Dresden sighed.

"It's not us screaming," he explained. "It's probably some kind of auditory illusion. It sounds like us screaming, but neither one of us is actually screaming. Either someone decided to prank us, or there's something here that's good at imitating voices."

That sounded absolutely horrifying, but Raptor was never going to admit that - especially not to Dresden. He just gave a nod, tried to stop himself from shaking, and let Dresden start leading the way to the tavern again.

When they finally stepped inside the tavern, they both received a few looks. Raptor honestly wished he could be anywhere else. He had never loved being the center of attention. It had been bad before, but it was even worse now. Add in where they had just ended up...

He hoped no one was trying to guess what was underneath his armor.

Dresden, of course, seemed to have absolutely no problems with the attention. He grinned when he was being watched, strolled right up to the bar counter, and grabbed a handful of coins from his pocket before requesting a drink. Raptor just stood awkwardly in the doorway until someone cleared their throat and slipped past him.

Raptor joined Dresden over at a table in a back corner. Dresden had gotten two tall glasses of what looked like some kind of beer. The smell made Raptor feel queasy, but he knew he couldn't let Dresden realize that.

"Are you going to drink both of those?" Raptor asked, disapproval in his tone.

"I'm offended you think I would," Dresden said, taking a swig of one of the glasses - and immediately gagging at the taste. "One of them is for you."

Raptor gave Dresden a long, hard look.

Dresden dropped his voice down. "Not for you to actually drink. Your helmet gets in the way, and it would be stupid for you to lift it up here of all places. I got it so you fit in more."

The first thing Bobby noticed was the grass. The soft cushion between them and the hard earth sent them jolting awake with a horrible start. Stiffly woven, embroidered, and embellished cotton fabric moved awkwardly around his frame, like the clothes were made for him but he was still proportioned all wrong for them to quite fit.

His hibs ached in protest as he clambered to his feet and looked around in growing panic. He didn't know these woods. There was nothing like them anywhere near the city. Where was he?

A twig snapped and he whirled around in a panic, stumbling away from the sound even before the source came into focus.

A boy. Built like some kind of delicate plant with long stems and extravagant exteriors, he looked like he was dressed up for a play.

"Ah! I see by your freckled completion that you could not possibly be one of my dastardly kidnappers! I am Connery, Connery Blight, and you must be a native of these strange, unknowable lands. Tell me, precisely, where is it that I've been stolen away to?"

The barrage of words came at Bobby at an incredible pace so he couldn't even get a word in if he wanted to. When he finally did pause, Bobby could only shake his head in response.

"Oh! So you are a fellow victim of this awful kidnapping! Worry not! Those fiends will pay for their wretched actions, I assure you. There is what can be generously described as civilization through the trees over yonder. Come now, we'll lose the advantage of daylight if we do not go in search of our kidnappers immediately!"

With that and a flourish, he turned on his heel and strode off into the trees.

Bobby stared after him. What choice did he have? He trotted along behind.

Soon, with Connery talking all the while and making it seem like a much longer amount of time, a taven - like, the medieval kind - came into view. As Bobby slowed, heart pounding against his throbbing ribs, Connery took notice.

"Do not be afraid!" he announced with gusto, "I am adept at standing against the horrid kind that took us from our comfortable lives. You will never be safer than you are standing by my side!"

Somehow, Bobby didn't find that comforting.

Kiirion was not where he had fallen asleep, and it was, as was with any sleep interrupted by some sort of kidnapping, alarming.

He pushed himself off the forest floor where someone or something had decided to dump him. The least they could've done was put him somewhere less muddy, but they didn't even give him that courtesy. He sighed as he wiped off what he could, even though he knew there was mud stuck to his back.

He twisted his head around to get a better look at his backside, and as he suspected, he was right. Mud, all down his back, his butt, and his legs. Quite the sight, and not one he wanted others to see. He muttered a small cantrip once, twice, and thrice to cleanse his clothes and rid himself of the mud, and while doing so, noted all of his missing items.

He still had his bow on his back, and he still had his Warhammer, strapped to his side, but his traveler's pack was nowhere to be seen.

That was inconvenient. And rude. But it wouldn't have been the first time he was robbed, and it probably wouldn't be the last. In all his years traveling the globe, it was inevitable.

Speaking of travel - he didn't recognize the woods he was in. Nothing felt familiar. The land was completely foreign, and something just felt wrong in his gut.

He looked up to the skies and sighed.

Was Pelor watching? Disappointed, maybe? Or did he even care?

As he scanned the trees, he caught a glimpse of a building, through the trees. At least some sort of civilization was nearby. Naturally, Kiirion gravitated towards it on light feet, eventually getting a clear look.

A tavern.

Of course it was a tavern, tucked away at the edge of a town, where it met the border of the forest.

Hopefully, he could at least find someone with a map or some idea of where he was.

Just as he was about to step out of the cover of the trees, he saw two boys pass into his line of sight, also heading towards the tavern. One very clearly looked like a bard, while the boy following behind seemed more to be just... a child companion, though a very scared and reluctant one.

Kiirion had seen stranger things, so the sight didn't really phase him.

He waited in silence for them to pass before continuing to the tavern. The bard seemed chatty, and Kiiron wasn't really, well... in the mood.

Kaith stirred awake. His eyes took a minute to adjust to the light peering past the trees.

He remained low to the ground as he scouted out where to move and when. Still holding his hand above his head, he shuffled over to the trunk of a tree and sat down.

The spot where he was before was empty. There was no sign of his tools or his trusty dagger. He patted his robes, and once again, there was nothing there.

After a few moments, he stood. Everything felt tighter, and his legs ached every step he took. He rested a hand against the tree to balance himself and straighten his back, removing any sign of that scared person he was before.

Feeling a little better about himself, he turned around, and in the corner of his eye, he saw something. People gathered around, so it must've been a tavern.

He went to mutter something, only to feel his throat tighten, and through a painful daze, he managed to calm himself. That wasn't normal, and now that he thinks more about it, who exactly was he?

He didn't want to think about it, so into the tavern he goes with one mission: Get out of this bird's body.

"Tiefling," Dresden absentmindedly said, chin resting in the palm of his hand and his elbow on the rough surface of the table.

Raptor groaned. "Do you have to say the race of everyone that comes into the tavern?"

Dresden gave him a long, hard look. He knew that Raptor was probably regretting their first meeting right now, but he refused to stop what he was doing. It was boring waiting for some quest to present itself. Seeing that he also didn't regularly end up in D&D, commenting on what every new customer was had to be the best fun he could get right now.

"Obviously," Dresden said. He took a sip of his beer, trying his best not to wince at the taste. This ale was absolutely terrible. "Elf, followed by a human."

Raptor covered his helmet with his hands. "You're going to offend someone."

"Pfft," Dresden said, giving a dismissive wave of his hands. "I'll be fine. Anyways, look - there's another elf coming in. Is it is just me, or is this place an elf hot spot? There was already another one in the tavern when we walked in. Maybe elves are part of this campaign."

"Why did I decide to stick with you?" Raptor muttered. It was probably more to himself than to Dresden, but Dresden didn't really care.

He shrugged.

"My charm," Dresden suggested. "If not that, my expertise when it comes to-"

He paused, peering at the latest newcomer to the tavern.

"...Huh," he said. For once, he didn't know what the person was. Elves and tieflings were easy; they came up in campaigns all the time. But the person who had just appeared didn't match anything that Dresden had ever seen in the few campaigns that he had done.

Raptor lowered his hands from in front of his eyes.

"...Kenku," he softly said.

"Bless you," Dresden replied.

"That wasn't a sneeze," Raptor said, red pinpricks burning a little brighter in what Dresden assumed was an attempt to roll his eyes. "I was saying kenku. That's what they are."

Kiirion had to duck a little to enter into the tavern doorway, but that was normal. The tavern didn't seem exceptional or remarkable - it was like many taverns he'd seen in his day, with the exception that it was full of diversity.

He made his way to the bar, a small distance from a man in full armor and a man dressed in all black. He sat down and waited for the bartender to come to him, once he was finished serving other customers. Apparently, this tavern at the edge of the woods was busy.

Bobby followed Connery into the tavern, shuffling steps after obnoxiously confident strides. Connery's expression was one Bobby would describe as 'determined' if he had never seen a determined expression before. His face was all scrunched up and angled down, like an old-fashioned cartoon character making his way to the bar. Bobby cringed at the thought that Connery was about to interrogate the poor barkeep.

Instead, the...boy? Man? Bobby couldn't tell how old he was, but he tucked a strand of his slightly-too-long behind a way-too-pointy ear and flagged down the barkeep.

"What is the name of this rotten-smelling place?" he demanded as soon as he had the barkeep's attention.

Bobby wanted to crawl out of his skin.

The bartender gave the elf a long, hard look.

"The Boar's Hat," she said. She looked irritated by the insult, but Raptor didn't have the chance to think too much on it. Dresden had just snorted behind his hand. When he glanced at the now-necromancer, he saw that Dresden was trying to look dignified - but was also desperately trying not to laugh.

Raptor stared at him.

"You-You don't get the name?" Dresden asked.

"No," Raptor said. "I don't."

Dresden snorted again. He gained a few confused looks from the other patrons, but he didn't seem to care. He leaned forward across the table and whispered, "The Boar's Hat is from Seven Deadly Sins. Whoever the DM is, they're not that creative."

"...What do sins have to do with this?"

Now it was Dresden who stared.

"It's an anime-" He sighed. "Never mind."

"Can I get you something to drink?" the bartender asked the elf, seemingly oblivious to Dresden's actions in the corner of her tavern. "Or are you just going to insult my tavern?"

"Start a tab," Melikae said as she walked away from the bar.

The bartender began to protest. "Actually, we don't—"

But she was already halfway across the room with the pint in hand, and the bartender sighed. It was fine as long as she paid for her drink before she left, right? Too bad the bartender didn't know that she planned on putting deceptively fake coins down on the table.

She sat down at an empty table near a window, noting that there were small plumes of smoke in the distance. Either there was an incoming forest fire or there was a pyromaniac nearby. Either way, both ideas amused and excited her.

After taking a big slurp of beer, Melikae looked around and examined the people of the tavern. For being at the edge of the woods, this tavern was surprisingly diverse. There was a sun elf just like her, but she groaned at the thought that he was likely all uppity and snooty like all other high elves ever. There was also an obnoxious bard with a skeletal boy who, frankly, looked like he had been kidnapped. Another pair that caught her eyes were the two she played the screaming prank on just a little bit ago. She made a mental note to prank them again before she left, just because.

Someone who really caught her eyes, however, was a bird man. She had never seen anyone quite like this before, and she had to wonder: was that his actual skin? Or, er, feathers? It could very well be an impressive illusion.

He looked quite awkward standing there nearby, so she perked up and cleared her throat.

"Hey, you," Melikae called to him. "Yeah, you." She lifted her glass and smirked.

"Looks like you could use a drink."

Spire had found the bar stuffy and crowded for her liking, and no one had even bat an eye when she'd entered. She was used to turning heads from her appearance, but with so much else going on, she was lost to the crowd as she slunk to the corner of the main bar and seated herself.

The next couple of minutes she had spent observing who she'd presumed was the tavern owner. Spire was particularly interested in how the woman handled the money and where she kept her main sack of money. The mage hand cantrip was just a quick utter away, and Spire was well practiced at slight of hand such as this.

But before Spire could find her opportunity, a man had barged in and insulted the place. Spire stifled a chuckle. Even she wasn't that bold, preferring to keep a coy politeness until she deemed it unnecessary.

As Spire watched the brief exchanged, she noticed that she was near a sun-elf, one who completely towered over her, even though they were both seated. He was dressed in a full leather armor, which Spire found a tad overkill. Maybe he preferred to go deeper into fights. (Spire left that to her companions.)

She waved her hand and offhandedly muttered so only the elf could hear, "Do you think we'll be served anytime soon with him here?"