Chapter 1

"Yawn~"

Sam let out a big yawn while stretching, sitting up on his bed. His head turned towards the direction of his clock.

'Still have some time before the bus' he thought before hopping out of bed to get dressed.

Sam is an average high schooler, going to high school every week. Today was a Monday, objectively the worst day of the week for every student, since it means that there's 5 more days of school before the weekend.

Sam started to get dressed in front of his mirror. The mirror was slightly too small, given that he outgrew it. Before, when he was young, the mirror was the perfect size for him. Now, since he grew up, he's 6'1" and giants over the mirror. He has to go on his knees to see his full reflection with his brown hair and green eyes staring back at him. He put on a white t-shirt, a hoodie and some jeans before going to the bathroom to brush his teeth and stuff.

After getting dressed and going to the bathroom to freshen up, Sam went downstairs to get some breakfast. Going into the kitchen, he saw his mom moving two plates of eggs and toast onto the kitchen table.

"Hey mom"

"Hi sweetie! Are you ready for school today?"

"Yeah, like I have a choice…" Sam says rolling his eyes.

"Oh come on. It's just your first semester. Plus, your classes are things you enjoy! Math, and Physics this semester, with more Math and Chemistry next semester as well"

"But English, Art, Gym and French are mandatory"

"Still, better than junior high"

Sam shook his head. He could never beat his mom in an argument. She was always an optimist, even supporting the idea of his dad moving away for work, like nothing bad will come of that.

His mom, Lucia, has a brown ponytail and blue eyes. She's dressed up in a pleasant yellow dress. To him, she is always relaxed, but Sam knows that his mom is actually quite busy. She runs a game store nearby, and being the owner of a store is no easy task. She has to deal with many things such as staff, customers, management, stocks, profit, and more. When Sam was younger, he would sometimes go with his mom after school to the game store and hang out around there.

Sam finished his breakfast and left to go to the bus stop (While hearing his mom say "Have a good day at school honey!"). From there, he boarded the bus when it came and sat down.

Knowing he had some time before he arrived at school, Sam pulled out his notebook and started writing. The notebook had the word 'Unertha' written on it.

The notebook had a but of notes for a D&D campaign Sam was making. He started making it 2 weeks ago, and has a lot of stuff made and maps designed. This, so far, is his most detailed and well built campaigns.

But, he had one problem. He didn't have a group to run it.

_______________

Around a month ago, he was a DM for a group of people that went to his moms game store. They met up every Tuesday and Thursday, playing for a few hours each session before leaving. He was running his own campaign that he made, putting a lot of time and effort into it. At first, it all went well, and the players liked his campaign and ideas.

But then, one of the players got his friend to join and he basically ruined the whole experience for everyone. He argued with Sam almost constantly, scuffed rolls and lied about them, interrupted other players when they were role-playing, hoarded all of the items and healing to himself, constantly killed even when it wasn't necessary, and complained when something didn't go his way.

Sam tried to stop him, but it never worked. He even asked him to stop ruining the game or leave, but his friend stood up for him and said that it was Sam ruining the game for them. Sam, never having encountered a situation like this before, didn't know what to do and just let it go.

The other players were unhappy and complained to both the bad player and Sam, but Sam couldn't do anything and the bad player couldn't care less. Eventually, the players left one by one, and Sam left when only the bad player and his friend remained.

_______________

From there, he took a break from D&D, only preparing another campaign when his mom encouraged him to and told him that he'll eventually find a new group to play with. And with that encouragement, Sam started up a new campaign, calling it 'Unertha'.

As of now, he didn't have a group of people to play with, but since he goes to his moms game store quite often, it won't be long until he finds a new group. D&D, or tabletop RPG's in general, are a good source of income for the store. The game store sells tabletop RPG books, modules, mats, figurines and dice. During the day, people will come by and buy some stuff that interests them, but come night, groups would flock to the store to play at a table.

Lucia sets up foldable tables and chairs from the back (with Sam's help if he's their) and lets people run sessions. She has a schedule set up to show which tables are rented and reserved each day, and it costs 5$ to rent a table for a day. It comes with free figurines, dice and a mat for the players, but they can also bring their own or buy some from the store.

As Sam was thinking and writing, the bus arrived at school and he got off. From there, he went to his classes and continued his school day until lunch time came around.

Sam went to the cafeteria, where his friends were already at a table chatting. With his lunch bag in hand, he sat down next to them.

"Yo Sam, what's up" a blond boy said to him.

"Nothing much. How about you Matt?"

"Something amazing!" Matt replied.

Matt was wearing a black sweater and grey jogging pants. His hair was slightly sweaty, but that was a given since he just had gym. Matt had blond hair and green eyes, with a big grin on his face. He's always upbeat and friendly, but sometimes maybe too much, to the point where he's quite hyper or playful.

His other friends, Nate and Jacob, were sitting at the table as well. Nate was wearing a blue collared shirt and cargo pants. He had black hair and blue eyes, covered by his glasses. Nate is the person that could be found in a picture dictionary under the word 'Nerd'.

Meanwhile, Jacob is the opposite. Jacob was wearing a green sweatshirt and black jogging pants. He has brown hair and brown eyes. Jacob is pretty good at everything and adapts to new things well, but his specialty lies in music. He is a part of the school band and school jazz band, and is quite popular among the band kids.

He and his friends first met up at elementary school and hung out together ever since. Despite their varying interests and personalities, they remained friends throughout the years.

"Do you want to know what it is?" Matt said.

"Dude, just tell us already" Jacob responds, disliking the anticipation.

"Okay, recently I've found out about this cool thing called D&D"

"What's that?" both Nate and Jacob say.

"Dungeons and Dragons! It's this cool thing where you can role-play as adventurers in a fantasy world. We can go around and explore, finding many dungeons and fighting lots of monsters!"

"That sounds okay" Nate comments.

"It also has calculations"

"That sounds pretty cool!" Nate exclaims, being more interested.

"How do you play?" Jacob asks.

"Apparently, you make your own character sheet, which decides your character and role-play what you do" Matt explains. "Almost everything you try to do is decided by dice rolls, and your character can use their skills to either get bonuses or penalties to what they do, depending on the character"

"That does sound fun" Jacob says.

"Yeah, but there's one problem" Matt says. "We need a dungeon master"

"What's a dungeon master?" Nate asks.

"Well, you can't explore a fantasy world if you don't have a fantasy world. And the players themselves can't make one, or else it would ruin any surprises and plot since you know what's going to happen" Matt explains. "That's where the dungeon master, or DM comes in. The DM creates the fantasy world that the player explores, and basically creates every town, NPC, enemy, dungeon, everything. Then, the DM would explain the world around the player, what happens when a player does something and role-play as the NPC's and enemies"

"Well, we can find a DM later" Nate says. "But I would be down to play some D&D if we found someone who could DM"

"Same" Jacob says.

"Same for me as well" Matt adds.

"Hey, Sam," Nate says. "You've been awfully quiet. What do you think?"

"Um, about the whole D&D thing…" Sam says. "I… actually play D&D"

The rest went silent for a moment, before flipping out.

"Why didn't you tell us?!" Matt said.

"Yeah, why not?!" Jacob added. Nate also looked at Sam for an answer.

"Well, I didn't think you guys would be interested. Plus, you guys never asked!"

"We were just discussing it right in front of you and you still said nothing!" Nate exclaims.

"I was shocked that you guys actually were interested in D&D. If I had known, I would've started playing with you guys"

Sam was excited that his friends were interested in D&D. He never mentioned it before, in fear of his friends thinking it was dumb and lame, but who knew that they would be so interested in it.

"Anyways, I actually have a campaign planned, and I was looking for a group to run it with" Sam says. "If you guys are serious about playing D&D, I could DM and we could meet up after school every Friday"

"That would be sick" Matt says. Both Nate and Jacob agree.

"Cool, then you guys prepare a character sheet and come to my house after school at around 6:00, if that works with you"

"Sure" "No problem" "Good with me" their responses ring out.

"Okay, then that's settled" Sam says.

'~Brrring' the bell rings, signalling that lunch is over. Everyone left for their next class.

Sam went through the rest of the school day as usual, with a new anticipation for the campaign. He finally had a new group to play with, and it's his friends. The reason why he never mentioned that he plays D&D was because Sam always had trouble making friends.

Ever since he was young, Sam could never seem to make a friend. He didn't know what to say and never really had anyone to call a friend. He couldn't talk to other boys, not to mention any girls. Only when he met up with Matt, Nate and Jacob did he finally have a group of people that he could call his friends, but even then he just considers himself lucky. He thought that saying he plays D&D would sound weird and that they wouldn't want to be his friends.

Of course, rationally speaking, that would never happen, but the fear of losing his friends made that paranoia grow into a secret that he didn't want to reveal. Only today, when his friends ended up talking about D&D and how they would be interested in it did Sam finally realize that his fear was purely irrational.

Sam went through all of his classes and went home. When he entered, he saw his mom on the computer working.

"Hi honey~" she said. "How was school?"

"Good. Also, can my friends come over this Friday?"

"Sure sweetie. What are you guys doing"

"D&D"

Sam didn't hear his mom say anything for a couple of seconds.

"Uh, mom-"

"Really?!" his mom exclaimed. "That's great sweetheart! Now you have a new group to play with and you know what happened before with your previous group won't happen again"

"Yeah, I'm excited too"

"Well, make sure you have everything ready. Are you guys playing in the basement?"

"Yeah, probably. Why?"

"You might want to start cleaning up now. It's pretty messy~"

"Ugh, fine" Sam grumbled.

Even though he had to clean up the basement, Sam was motivated by the prospect of playing D&D with his friends. The basement was cleaned up in no time, and Sam got to work on the campaign. Because now, he had a group to play with. Things were looking up, and a new adventure awaits, in the lands of Unertha.