“Okay, she's hot and everything...” Devon sighed at the AI generated cloaked woman that had appeared behind the heavy looking table on his friend's computer monitor. “But doesn't using a digital version of a dungeon master kind of defeat the point of table top gaming? At this point we may as well fire up the PlayStation...”
“Hey, no one was stopping you from putting a campaign together.” Toby shrugged. “Besides, it's free. If it's no good, we can stop and you can walk home in the storm.” As if to emphasise his point, thunder crashed outside and the two boys, along with their friend Steve looked warily at the blinking bulb swinging above Toby's attic.
The trio had been meeting almost every weekend to play out Dungeons and Dragons campaigns for nearly fifteen years, but since their buddy Ryan had left for college two months ago, they had been without a Dungeon Master. Ryan had promised to lead campaigns via Zoom calls but after three weeks of being away, he had plundered a fair maiden of his own and spending Saturday nights teeing up monsters for his old pals to knock down no longer held the same appeal. The boys had looked for a new fourth with no luck leading to Toby, inspired by their brief experience with a Zoom based DM, having the idea to seek out a virtual master to plot their dungeon crawling.
“Hey, it's starting!” Steve put down his beer and belched loudly. On the monitor, fog was circling around the cloaked woman as she rose from behind the table. Pulling her hood back to reveal frosty white hair and icy cool grey eyes, her sinister smile appeared to reach through the screen and forcibly hold their gaze. The mist continued to swell around her until it occupied the bottom half of the screen. The heads of three figures emerged from the fog above the command – 'CHOOSE YOUR CHAMPIONS!'
“The Mighty Knight, the Indomitable Mercenary...the Demon Queen.” Devon read aloud. “Well, the knight sounds generic as hell and while I don't know what Indomitable means, screw playing as a girl. I choose the mercenary!” As if hearing him, the character glowed on the screen. Steve quickly chose the knight and the armoured figure also glowed, leaving the party's host to select the Demon Queen.
“Grow up, guys.” Toby sighed. “It's just a gaaaamm...” But even before he could finish his sentence the room began to glow around them. All three boys felt a pulsing beneath their skin as their bodies slowly transformed – Devon into a bare chested brute covered in scars, Steve into a regal looking soldier wrapped in chain-mail...and Toby into lithe blonde creature dressed in little more than a tiny bikini ordained with skulls and a pair of gauntlets fashioned from a shiny black material. He blinked at the enormous sword that had appeared in his slender hands, and then turned to the computer monitor where a message had appeared. 'Prepare to receive your tools!' In spite of the storm raging outside, all three boys heard a thunderous boom at the front door...
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