Choose Our Own Adventure
Reluctant Beginnings are Still Beginnings
By Jason (Aeston) Rosa
Every once in awhile, it’s important to take stock. Life seems to move you from one experience to the next and very seldom can you take pause and really consider the chain of events that led you to where you are. A lot of these quests begin with sitting in a tavern. Both alcohol and adventuring leave a bad taste in my mouth so I tend to avoid the places as best as I can. But what can you do? Your buddy meets this hot dwarf-chick, dates her for twelve years until she threatens to decapitate him with an axe if he doesn't propose to her, and then he invites you to his bachelor party. So off to the Bar and Wench I went to celebrate.
Now I won’t say that we were the progenitors of the bar fight, but I won't not say that either. Listen, I never learned Orcish. Everything they say sounds like they’re yelling and angry. Well, three lines of misinterpreted dialogue later and I’m hitting people with chairs in a huge brawl. I guess my furniture-bludgeoning must have been above average because when the dust cleared a severe-looking woman dressed as stereotypically druid-y as you could possibly imagine was offering me a job if I would be willing to beat up on monsters as soundly as I beat up on the bartender. I wish I had said no but the money was too good, and I’m a greedy, greedy man.
So six hours later I had squeezed my increasingly ample gut into my increasingly snug armor, found my good boots, designated such because they had worn away in the least numerous locations, and strapped my greatsword on my back so that it was doing the least permanent damage to my shoulder blades. I found Chloe (that’s the Druid-y woman) and the rest of her group at our designated meeting spot, and met Simon, a rather disheveled looking priest of Aurora, and Kenna, an elf with a pair of swords and a demeanor that said “talk to me just once and I will stab you in the chest.” So there you have reasons, like, one through twelve of why I never really enjoyed going on quests in the first place.
So here I am now. Having taken stock. I’m sure you’re wondering where we’re going and to what end but I’m pretty tapped out on exposition at this point. Its enough to say that Chloe wanted a thing that required a lot of murdering to procure and honestly I wasn’t really listening to most of the explanation anyway because my greatsword was starting to dig into my back really painfully. So we started our journey walking North in the direction of Blackwood and it wasn’t long until we got to the area of country where sheep outnumbered people fifty-to-one. It was late afternoon and the entrance to a large expanse of woods was set before us. The rest of the group started to discuss the various options we had in these circumstances and shortly afterwards began to argue vehemently about those same options. I guess because I’m older they assumed my past experience was somehow valuable to the decision making so, reluctantly, I told them...