I played the game…
You see, I was about to become one of the victims, about to disappear from the world without a trace.
It all started when I was trying to make some friends. I’m not sure I can recommend it based on my personal experiences but that’s how it started.
My name is Dean Thompson. An average college student with no real hobbies, friends, or interests. I did not exist to anyone and was always in the background. I wore glasses and was quite a recluse even among other reclusive students. I did not call attention to myself, at least as far as I could tell. People around me were like stellar objects… and I was but an insignificant asteroid on the lives of those around me. Sometimes I would be drawn in, but inevitably slingshot at high speed, only to be attracted to the next center of gravity. People in turn drifted away from me or barely noticed me. I could not bring them towards me as I lacked sufficient gravity.
I never could understand people… the art of friendship, shared hobbies or interests… why people ‘liked’ something when it all seemed utterly pointless to me. I journeyed through the school system, learning about the world around me… and was noticed as quiet, shy and awkward despite a strong intellect. I suppose I should be flattered of that assessment. I assumed my peers knew and understood the same things I did… it was not as if I made a special effort to learn and understand science and nature. It was all quite natural to me.
That another could be Ignorant of the world was a novel concept that I struggled to understand or even accept. I was quite sure people ‘choose’ ignorance, as there was a measure of sense to this theory. The science I understood could drive one a little mad as I considered the philosophy of self and ideas once I became familiar with them.
I grew in knowledge of the ways of history and politics as well as war and science. I took to such knowledge like a sponge and understood the principals of existence and the nature of humanity very quickly. I excelled in mathematics and enjoyed playing with numbers as this somehow made the universe make more sense to me. Numbers were comforting, in a way. My family didn’t understand me and I became a shut-in. The outside world was such a nuisance.
I was quite sure my family were ashamed of me.
I understood people well enough through the prism of probability and the more I understood them, the bleaker my assessment of humans had become. Girls never noticed me of course; I was not worth their interest, and I was too… strange. I didn’t blame them. It seemed like they were a separate sub-species with their own rules, but it was best not to speak of this. It was best not to speak at all really.
Though part of me resented the world, I accepted my standing here as simply part of my life. I did not mind my life being quiet during college as I could get on with my work and studies while drama unfolded around me. I was a straight A student… I studied… I learned and theorised having read almost every book in the library. I stayed out of everyone else’s way… but there was a growing emptiness inside of me. It gnawed at my very soul…
…I was lonely.
Books could only provide so much.
I wondered if being ignorant made it ‘easier’ to have friendships… I dismissed people because I knew how it would inevitably go. They would find out how strange I was and leave embarrassed. Why play out the charade? Numbers never lied, but I did have to do ‘something’ with my life. Even with my grades I did not aspire to ‘change’ the world as people would seem to think. I doubted I could have any significant effect even if I became the next Einstein.
My eventual goal was to make money to gain a measure of ‘safety’ from the dangerous forces of society. I could see it sway people into awful situations, drugs, gangs, depression, anxiety… I didn’t really have time to go into any of that- which made my… pangs of loneliness that much more concerning.
I was annoyed at such a trivial emotion. As a human I was beheld to emotion as much as I desired to transcend it. It was all in the mind this need- this wanting to belong to something… and I couldn’t deny such a desire.
What to do…
On the college billboard, I saw an advertisement for a group interested in acquiring some D&D players with- what was a highly regarded Games Master. His name being Mitch Drake. It was an online affair and I suppose I saw it as convenient. An effortless way to get that interaction I craved.
Of course, I never even joined the actual club at the start of the semester but I… I was curious. D&D had a lot of numbers and mathematics behind it, trivial ones usually but also… the picture of the world in the poster felt somehow inviting to me. I dismissed this as simply clever advertising. Did not all fantasy worlds look the same in the end? Elves, fairies, witches, wizards, grunts of orcs and devils… stories based on religious fables.
Peering closer, I could see all kinds of creatures. Monster races of Harpies, Lamias, sphinxes, as well as strange mixtures of human and animal that the internet would say ‘furry.’ The poster made it look like they were fighting each other but… I was not so sure. They were exotic creatures in the background, and it seemed like the artist painstakingly made it so that you had to look past everything to take the entire picture in…
Curious… I put my name down, Dean Thompson. My name… on a group.
I was excited.
I was… about to make… friends? I estimated the probability of a friendship at about twenty seven percent- yes- highest then it had ever been in my entire life!
By a strange twist of fate, the most unlikely person ever was going to play a game with some people that I had never met. I had no social skills whatsoever though… I honestly was not sure how to present myself or what character to make- or what the story was going to be. It took a week for me to acquaint myself with all the rules and the many ways I could make a character. Suddenly, I found myself on social media, talking and debating what we would do with three other players. I was nervous as Hell, but I felt excited too.
The GM was very nice and guided us through the process. I felt almost like I had met a kindred spirit… He told me of the world he had created… a world called Mirya and that we would become the heroes of this strange world.
He described it as a world like Earth but with fantastical creatures… there were humans, monsters, and something in the middle as well as the usual classical races. Essentially, everyone and everything existed, and we could create ‘anything’ we wanted as long as they complied with the established basic rules. We could even become ‘monster’ races if we wanted to.
He did say something interesting to me about monsters. Although Good and Evil were indeed ‘real’… there are Good Monsters and Evil Monsters… some more so than others.
I browsed through the exotic races. I made up my mind that I never wanted to be human… I despised the very idea of humanity and if I could pretend to be anything else… anyone else… that was what I wanted to play.
Looking at the rules I was curious about the demi-human races… beings that were ‘animal touched’ in some way. They had special powers related to their ancestry so did not usually practice human styled magic. Cats were healers, wolves had sensing magic… both were considered very ‘top tier’. I saw a… strange race under the ‘demi-human’ class that intrigued me the most… a squirrel.
Cute, adorable and fluffy… as opposed to my hard, distant, emotionally flat self. They were loved and beloved by most of the races as… cute.
It was as far away from ‘me’ as I could be. The only way it could be ‘less’ like me was if… it was female? Could I… do that? The DM approved… I guess I never had to say ‘what’ I was in real life…
Reading more they were among the ‘short race’ shared by the Rabbit and mouse class and considered the absolute weakest of the demi-human classes… the lowest tier with extraordinarily little to offer a ‘serious’ player. That was fine- I did not really want to be serious in my first play.
Nobody would ever use them in a battle due to their low stats and people questioned why they would even exist. They had inferior stats to even the next best thing (the rabbit-class) but they made up for this with some unique tree-climbing skills (which again was useless when there were no trees.)
A squirrel’s signature power was in ‘storing’ items in a ‘pocket space’ that only they could access. The size of this space was relative to the level of the squirrel, with the first level storage space at about a 5-foot cube. Players saw this as an inferior (yet invisible and couldn’t be removed) bag of holding. This could potentially be useful to ‘any’ class in some small way, but it was not worth the downsides of this race. People theorised that it might work well for a rogue, as a pickpocket or to store a hidden weapon, which seemed the most optimal use of such a power.
In theory such a power would be quite useful as it levelled up… the storage space getting larger. However, it was quickly found that a party would lose all the items ‘the squirrel’ stored. If anything happened to him/her (which was quite frequent) it would all be lost. Also, because the squirrel couldn’t defend against attack that well, the ability was far more trouble than it was worth. It wasn’t as if this pocket wasn’t common knowledge either so… it couldn’t be used secretly.
The squirrel also had some minor abilities to influence dice rolls, adding an extra point or taking one away- occasionally randomly if they were not careful. A tiny boon to fortune and luck, which gave them a reputation for attracting trouble.
Despite their short comings I found myself loving such a being… they had such an intriguing balance of being annoying and yet endearing to me.
I wasn’t going to be that useful perhaps in combat- but I saw potential. I was curious where it could go? The GM was... intrigued by my choice and said it could be fun- and that there were extra abilities on which he was working that I might be able to take advantage of.
I was sure I would be useful in the long term if I stuck with it. I was confident I could do something interesting and that I could access some unique magical abilities.
The games proceeded as expected… the group fought; dices were rolled… I did my best with my sub-optimal character as they played their highly overpowered perfectly tuned characters. I was enjoying myself though. I even gained a magic wand which the GM said has some special powers to discover later.
About six sessions into the game, I had received a message. I was to be removed from the group, my character was not working out with them. I was given a very long… very long paragraph of everything I had done wrong by the group leader. I suppose this is what happens during a breakup as well? Heh…
Lots of words- tons of words from everyone. to explain their regrets, why it was my own fault, and how without me things will proceed a lot better, that I should seek some other group somewhere that would take the game seriously…
The GM stayed out of it and I was surprised by that.
It was best to take myself out of the equation and simply move on.
I suppose I should be upset- well- yes- I was upset, but sadness was not a useful emotion when nobody was around to see it or even understand ‘what’ I was upset about. I stayed in my room for a while, looking at my screen in the dark. I took a breath and wondered what I should do next? There would be another game, right? I did like them…
…but they did not like me.
I figured that would be the end of it… but I was very wrong.
Later in the evening, the police turned up at my door.
I was… stunned by this. They looked at me and explained that the people I was playing with had vanished across the world.
Apparently, a number of strange disappearances all happened at the same time… with one common theme… Mitch Drake. He was the GM of every single one.
They asked me about the game and I said it was harmless… I said Mitch was just a guy we played with and I didn’t know anything about him. Apparently, he was running a great number of games on the internet as well as in the real world, including forum posts, text messages…
I was the only one who had not vanished…
I gave all my logs as they asked for it and I hoped they were okay… they said my leaving the group is what saved me.
I wondered what happened…
I couldn’t sleep. I knew something was wrong and it involved the game. I looked at my computer wondering what to do… I then received a message from Mitch.
’Abandoned by your companions, what do you do?’
I was stunned. This was the guy the cops were looking for. How could he possibly post? I wasn’t too sure what to do but I felt nothing could happen at my house…
“I would go back to a little village and examine that special wand.”
The GM was writing something significant in return. I felt like this was a good moment to call the police to let them know he was online. I started to call them to explain that I was in contact with Mitch again.
Though the last thing I swear I could hear as the world faded around me was the sound of many dices around me being rolled and clattering on the table…
“What.. the..”
