Rokudai Excerpt - D + D

The air is getting colder as the sun descends behind the mountains ahead.

You sense an otherworldly presence – the Whisper is back, tickling at the base of your brain.

You cannot yet make out what it's trying to say, but it is definitely a bit louder than it was the first time.

"He got anything good?" asks the Monk, scratching his wispy beard from a safe distance.

Having inspected the brigand's corpse thoroughly, the Rogue sighs. She kicks the dead body in the rib with a huff of dissatisfaction.

"A dagger," she grunts. "Fuckin' arrows...Nothin' else."

She scoops up the worn dagger before concluding that nothing else is worth salvaging.

"Don't you need those arrows?" you pose to her.

The Rogue gives you a deadpan glare. Her amber eyes pierce through you with impatience. Her deathly pale Elven skin glistens in the evening sunlight reflecting from the snow.

She informs you flatly, "I have a Magic Poison Bow, dipshit. Remember?"

"Oh," you squeak, fussing with your robes awkwardly. "Right. Forgot that."

"This bitch's attack wolf had five gold," yelps the Barbarian, jingling the metal pieces she's retrieved against her gauntlet's palm. She tucks the change away in her coin purse before pulling her Metal Venom dagger from its holster. She scratches another notch into her wooden shield before rattling her blade against its surface in a show of celebration at another kill. "That's fourteen now!" she roars with triumph. "Fuck yea!" she bellows. Her voice carries across the frozen mountain valley, echoing into the distance. "I'm winning," she scoffs, re-sheathing her equipment.

The Monk speaks up, "I don't...really think any one of us can win at-"
"I'm winning," the Barbarian insists with a cocky shake of her head.

Disinterested in such discussion, you divert your attention to the oddly quiet Bard lingering by the pines ahead. A brisk gust of wind and snow wash over the party, and you see the Bard shiver. Her elaborate blindfold's golden tassels ripple in the wind. Though her eyes are veiled, you feel you can see a disgruntled mood on her face.

"I am not disgruntled," protested Jun, her bottom lip propped, brows furrowed from behind her aviator glasses.

Zeke replied off-handedly, "You sound pretty disgruntled."

"Fuck you," Jun countered, puffing at her bangs.

"Like that," Zeke casually cited. "That right there? Disgruntled."

Juniper let fly a "Tsh" at Zeke's assertion, shoving her aviators up over her head. She buried her face in her arms against the wooden table.

Coral slurped the last of her Mountain Dew from its bottle before crushing its empty plastic between her fingers.

"I like this drink!" she announced, her voice deeper than usual. "Another!" She theatrically chucked the emptied bottle to the floor.

"Augh," Katrina winced, practically flinching from the gesture, which had splattered a couple of sugary drops against her bare knee. As she brushed them off, she advised, "You're gonna get that stuff on the floor, and we're gonna get ants..."

Coral tossed her hand with dismissal.

"Boktar the Bold will crush puny ants who dare-"
"Uh-kay," Jane cut Coral off at the pass, nudging the woman with her elbow. "That's enough, fuckin'...She-Thor." Jane snickered at the exaggerated intensity that Coral's character was exuding through her player's spirit, and the two swapped another one of those...looks. Katrina wasn't blind to them, but had not yet allowed herself to dwell on the observations, as she didn't like the conclusion they would arrive at.

"Yea, you're getting' pretty into this," Zeke noted with some satisfaction.

"It's almost like we found your sense of imagination," Aaron coyly pointed out.

Coral snorted through her nostrils like a bull, brutishly flexing her bare bicep – the tribal shark tattoo on her skin ebbed with her muscle's movements.

"I don't need to imagine being bad-ass, 'cuz I already am."

Jane nodded thoughtfully, taking in the flashy gun in her face as she rubbed her chin with an exaggerated expression of acknowledgment. Aaron rolled his die and conversed with Siku about some odd detail in the background, while Coral flashed Jane a sly smirk, shoving Jane by the collar bone with her beefy palm.

Katrina, eager to ignore the exchanges between her friend and her cousin, extended her hand to Jun's shoulder, which flinched at first, then relaxed at the realization of whose hand it was. Katrina rubbed Jun's back lightly with affirmation, her insides swelling with a sense of pride at Jun's recognition. The blind girl didn't lift her head from the table, though.

As Aaron struggled to convey to Coral how brawn and murder didn't make for a hero, Katrina slid her half-emptied bowl of caramel popcorn playfully into Jun's elbow. With her head still out of sight, Jun groped up her hand and found a few kernels of the snack.

"Heh-hermmm!" Zeke cleared his throat quite loudly. "Do you guys want to freeze-slash-starve-slash-die in the frigid mountain side?"

There was some more grumbling and groaning.

"There you go," you mutter to the disgruntled Bard as she nibbles at the sliver of Journeybread you've shared. "Have to keep your strength up. Were you hurt in the fight?"

"Nah," the Bard mumbles. She shivers, drawing her hood over her head.

"Can I, like, um...-" Katrina was twirling her finger through a stray lock of hair, checking her character sheet's numbers. "-...Can I do a Healing check to see if she's freezing?"

"Wh...? Uhhh, sure, I guess."

Katrina took up her purple, marble-styled 20-sided die and gave it a light toss.

-clak!-

"Uh...seventeen," she cited. Wait! No, no, she forgot to add her one bonus from that...one thing. "I mean, ninteteen."

"Mm, mm-hm..." Zeke scratched at his scruffy neck, burying his face behind the laminated map he had propped up to veil his treasure trove of resources.

You help tighten her hood against her cheeks and ensure her scarf is wound back up. You, uh...inspect her aura and are able to detect that her feet are colder than the rest of the her body. You worry that her ignorant choice in footwear might be leading to a case of frostbite.

"Fuck you again..."

As you lead the Bard back to the rest of the group, she trips and falls flat on her face into the snow.

"Augh! What?"

At Juniper's scoff, Zeke primly stated, "Stop arguing with the D.M."

"Rrrmmph..."