Chapter 18

A Wizard In Alexandria's Court

Chapter Eighteen

by Skysaber

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Story Day Eleven, April 16th 2011, Saturday - Early Evening

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Author's Forward:

We actually get quotation marks from the ancient Egyptians. In their hieroglyphs, they used a pair of lips above and on either side to mark something as spoken dialogue. We obviously use a simplified form of that.

On a related note, I am reverting to something I'd been doing in the past, using the tilde '~' in the same way to indicate thought, or telepathy, as thought is supposed to be waves, and so the wavy character fits the same convention as speech being from lips. It also has the advantage of being a character on the regular keyboard that it is not otherwise used in the English language.

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The PRT had come to the field and they weren't fooling around, doing their best to stop the race and arrest all of the racers.

On receiving secret instructions from Cauldron over her Protectorate earbud, Battery had gone out to Lung, reached into his mouth and done something, so the rage dragon was breathing again. Then the PRT had reflexively foamed him down, but that had never stopped him before. So it was only a matter of time before that disaster they'd re-enabled became a problem again.

Nobody thought for a minute the PRT could actually hold him. They never had before.

Then the Protectorate rushed out onto the field, backed up by PRT forces.

Jared had been ready for them, quite peeved by their behavior.

Armsmaster had ridden out at the head of the unwelcome heroes. Jared had popped one of the two uses per day of Improved Invisibility he got from his pair of those boots he'd prepared for all of the members of his little group - improved because this form of invisibility allowed one to attack without becoming visible.

He'd teleported out to where he could ambush the PRT's expected attack, and Armsmaster was the first to come rushing by.

The wizard started out with an illusion of Marvin the Martian appearing in their path via a Looney Tunes teleport effect, and raising his little ray gun towards the approaching heroes.

Jared then hit the Protectorate forces with a Heat Metal spell.

A second level spell, not usually on the wizard spell list, so Jared cast it as one of the spells he got as a Gestalt Cleric, through which he had access due to the Sun domain. For the first six seconds nothing seemed to happen, allowing Armsmaster to get right out onto the racing field and begin intercepting vehicles, tossing containment foam grenades left and right.

However, for that first six seconds things were just getting warm - literally. The next six seconds was when they got interesting. That was when everything affected, from the Tinker's motorcycle, his replacement halberd, every plate of his armor, down to every wire and minuscule drop of solder in his electronics got as hot as the burner on a stove, and began to burn everything touching them.

The first hint Armsmaster had was when his computers glitched out - all of them failing simultaneously as the wires literally cooked their insulators and began to fry everything in those delicate little chips.

His next clue was when the gas tank on his Armscycle exploded, having cooked off all of the gas at once due to the intense heat, and flinging him off his ride and directly under the wheels of the traffic he'd just tried to stop.

The Protectorate Tinker got run over, repeatedly, as most cars could not even see him lying down there on the road through the press of traffic. It would not be until that pack had passed that he became visible as an obstacle so drivers could avoid him.

Thankfully, his armor saved his life.

Unhappily for him, his armor was literally cooking him inside of it, every plate, control, or speck of metal in it having grown hot enough to fry an egg on.

However, Armsmaster was a veteran hero, and a Tinker with many years of experience. No sooner had the situation become clear to him (shortly after the cars had stopped running him over), than he had reached for and opened several emergency panels on his armor, using a combination of the controls inside to cause an emergency release system to activate.

It failed, having been electronic, and those having quite literally burned out before he'd made the attempt. However, he was able to manually remove the suit in record time, collapsing, next to naked, surrounded by the ruins of his Tinkertech as the results of his burns overcame him.

Jared smiled grimly.

D&D was not Pokemon, where the objective was to capture your foes alive. No, it was closer to Doom, where the capacity to kill monsters rapidly, one after another, was the only way to survive. The D20 system had next to no nonlethal options, and those few that existed were weak, deliberately hamstrung to such an extent that almost no group ever used them.

Sleep, the classic spell for that purpose, had been nerfed so badly as to have been rendered unusable. It was so weak, and impossible to aim, you could not stop an unruly kindergarten class with it. It was so completely useless most people forgot that spell even existed.

In the 'Kill or be Killed' environment of the D&D cosmology, it was your responsibility, even your duty, to kill your enemies before they killed you - and the training of all adventurers reflected that. Civilization, and the survival of all intelligent races, depended upon their doing that reliably, skillfully, and as expeditiously as possible.

That phrase, "Be polite, be professional, and always have a plan to kill everyone you meet," described the adventuring lifestyle fairly well.

The reason why he'd been so polite to that crowd of Emma's hangers-on was that he'd really rather not kill people if he could avoid it. Some people, calling themselves adventurers, had reputations so bad they'd earned the title of 'murder hobos', and he preferred to be nothing like them. So he owned a home, several actually, and went out of his way to avoid casual deaths among civilized people.

Really, it was hard to call yourself a hero when you casually left stacks of human bodies behind you without good reason. So, to err on the side of caution, Jared consciously avoided killing civilized races whenever possible.

However, some people left you with no choice.

Like when they dump truckloads of lethally-armed assault troopers on top of you.

One of the things he would not do, would NEVER do, would be to try to play patty-cake when the other side was actively seeking his destruction. That was not nobility, that was idiocy. A little chat before hostilities start? Sure, sometimes, when the risks are low. But when the enemy goes lethal, you go lethal in turn, or you die and whatever you're defending gets destroyed. And he would not betray those things he'd chosen to protect by accepting defeat and letting them be destroyed like that.

Terry Goodkind: "Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent!" He hated it when people went easy on those trying to kill them, for plot reasons or because they pretended it was more moral.

In comic books, and basically nowhere else, sometimes you get such huge disparities of power that you can fight with one or both arms tied behind your back, and still win. Reality is almost never like that.

Jared was still a beginning mage, just barely out of training. He was able to use what little power that gave him, and what amounted to a huge number of system exploits, to do some incredible things so high above his nominal level that they made him seem quite powerful. But what he was doing amounted to something like striking the self destruct button inside of an enemy base. Actually taking an axe and destroying that much steel and concrete, defended by robots or laser death beams or whatever, would require incredible power - and hitting a button took almost none.

Assuming that someone good at hitting self-destruct buttons, like Ron Stoppable, had incredible power, and sending them off to do something that actually required said power, like fighting Darkseid, would only end in ruination and sorrow for anyone involved.

Jared was not powerful enough to be merciful. Not yet, maybe not ever. The D&D system really did not lend itself to that.

Adventurers, to his mind, were civilization's immune system. They stood between society and those that would destroy it. Their role was to target and eliminate those elements that, left unopposed, would destroy things for their own selfish reasons.

Put in other words, he saw his role as to "destroy the destroyers", like an anti-missile seeking out and destroying a missile before it could hit its target, adventurers went out destroying ghouls, goblins, vampires, and other nasty things - ideally before they could claim too many victims.

And what of those adventurers who did the opposite? The murder hobos? Well, just like cancer was some of the body's own cells turned inimical and acting against it, sometimes there were elements of society that destroyed that which they were put in place to protect, like corrupt cops enabling crime, or rulers turning into tyrants, adventurers gone bad, or whatever.

Those elements had to be eliminated. Just like cancer.

And he was seeing a lot of those 'cancerous society' elements here on Earth Bet. Frankly, what he'd seen of this place did not seem like an American city to him. It felt more like Menzoberanzan, the fabled city of the Drow, where treacherous factions were constantly murdering each other and the only rule was "Don't Get Caught". It was almost as if the place was designed to implode.

Even so, the wizard had chosen to hit Armsmaster with Heat Metal, a spell so weak almost no one ever used it. It just wasn't worth the time casting it when there were so many, much more effective, options that could be used.

So, in his way, the wizard had been as merciful as he could have been in his takedown of the Protectorate heroes attacking this race.

Glancing back over the now-failed PRT assault, Jared assessed the damage. Heat Metal could strike multiple people per use of the spell, and his artificially inflated, sky-high caster level made that quite a few. So he'd made use of that to hit the government assault force with enough castings a majority of their troops were now desperately stripping down to their underwear on the battlefield, casting aside assault rifles and ammo pouches before the ammo in them cooked off, along with storage tanks of the fluids that combined into containment foam, many of which were currently exploding and sending the searing liquids inside splashing all over the unarmored troopers.

Modern troops depend upon metal, and used it everywhere. Cast on electronics, Heat Metal was devastating. Cast on barbarians or orcs, the spell was merely annoying.

Most monsters in D&D did not carry or use metal, so on 90%+ of all encounters, the spell was exactly useless. What does a giant spider care about metal it doesn't have growing hot? Or a giant slug? Or a dragon that, even if it was wearing a magic ring from its hoard, was often immune to heat and flame anyway?

Cast on modern troops, it was debilitating, yet far from the worst thing he could have done to them.

Yeah. It would have been so much easier to use his staff to cast Fireball on them, reducing those troopers to drifting flakes of ash instead. But this way at least some of these men would survive. In fact, it took a while to die from burns. Most if not all of these men should at least survive to reach the hospital, where they'd have access to whatever healing, normal or parahuman, the PRT could arrange for.

And that was the best he could do for them. The game did not offer "Stop this small army without hurting anyone" options that he was aware of, certainly not at the lowest levels of spells he was still mostly restricted to.

It was a grim business, killing monsters. And he really, really hated turning those talents against people.

But when they force the issue, what can you do?

Conditioned by long training to loot his fallen enemies, Jared teleported out to where Armsmaster was lying, and had his illusion of Marvin the Martian turn a selector dial on his raygun to 'disintegrate', then fire it in that direction, while the invisible wizard cast Gathering Swirl, causing all of Armsmaster's still red-hot equipment to fly up into the air, swirl around, then vanish into one of the elf's extra-dimensional bags.

He repeated that process with Miss Militia's destroyed motorcycle, then the piles of destroyed PRT weapons and armor.

He then directed his illusion of Marvin the Martian to mime blowing smoke from off the barrel of his ray pistol, and vanish away in another Looney Tunes teleport effect.

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Missy was floating above the race in a hot air balloon.

The former Vista, now in cosplay as Marigold from the Tom Slick franchise, had chosen a hot air balloon because it gave her both the altitude and the perspective to look down on the entire airport, which enabled her to use her power of spatial manipulation in small and unobtrusive ways to affect the outcome of the race.

And since the prize was worth a fortune, it wouldn't do to have a villain win the race!

Her first act had been 'assisting' Skidmark's tank to crash into the side of a building. Over the next several minutes, she had 'helped' those Merchants shooting things to mostly hit each other, although there had been so many her help wasn't obvious, or even always needed.

They'd done a plenty good job drunkenly shooting each other without her aid.

As the race neared its close, however, she had taken more and more time out of hampering bad actors, and actually assisting those she'd wanted to win. Helping out here and there so Kid Win dodged bullets (she'd recognized her former teammate despite his disguise. Chris had never been that good at acting like anyone but himself - too distracted by having his mind full of Tinker blueprints and plans), or New Wave had avoided wrecking when hit by laughing gas.

Her stomach shrank and knotted inside of her when the former Ward was forced to watch the PRT attack. She did not mind the Empire beating Lung again, Lung was a swine and routinely performed acts of cruelty that placed him as the worst of human scum, while Jared had shared with her his plans for defeating the Empire, and she had to agree that would work.

It even got her to giggling whenever she thought of it.

So the Empire did not concern her. They were not a threat, and their downfall promised to be very amusing.

Now if only the PRT weren't being such Smurf-heads about things!

Smurf-eating Smurf-heads full of Smurfy Smurf!

She saw Armsmaster go down, and get run over. That had happened before, fairly often when fighting Squealer, so the Tinker had long since adjusted his armor to protect him from getting run down by vehicles. So she wasn't worried about that. What concerned her was when the Tinker, obviously in distress, began to strip practically naked right on the raceway!

That behavior was very *unlike* Armsmaster! But, warping space so she could zoom in and get a good look, she saw parts of his armor glowing red hot and smoking where they touched plastic or fabric or other non-metal things. Okay, she could see now, being stuck inside of a Tinkertech waffle iron could trigger that sort of a response. But why had Armsmaster built that function into his armor?

Unless it was an anti-theft device. She could see him doing that. He'd actually built a homing beacon and dozens of little legs into his primary halberd, for in case it got stolen, and the teleport-home function failed for some reason.

Then she had to abandon the assumption that Armsmaster had been caught in one of his own anti-theft features when she looked over the rest of the PRT contingent and saw that the 'broiling inside of your armor' thing was general, not restricted to the Tin Woodman, aka the Tinker without a heart, as she'd frequently thought of Armsmaster.

So it had to be some sort of attack on them.

Missy told herself she hardly cared, but the urge to leap up to their defense was strong, and had to be constantly suppressed as she saw what they were going through.

Being out in the field, unarmed and unarmored, while dealing with burns was a nightmare scenario for them.

So, if they were under attack, where was the attacker?

Missy cast her gaze about, missing a certain illusory teleport effect, before latching onto a likely target, whereupon they narrowed.

~NO!~

~Well,~ Missy told herself, bolstering up her courage as her hand reached back into her delightful cloak that could store so many things (a cloak that was, in her private opinion, the best job perk she'd ever had - she thought she still had at least fifty rolls of toilet paper left in there after the camping trip, along with all of her camping supplies and her entire arsenal) and sought out her Winchester 70 Safari Express rifle, ~This is what I trained for. This is what we all prepared for.~

She brought the elephant gun up to her shoulder and began carefully aligning the sights on her target.

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Jared, still invisible and having just collected tons of smoldering hot, discarded PRT gear, had been preparing to teleport out to someplace safer, when he had one of those uncomfortable sensations which told him that he had just failed a Perception check - and it was someone else's turn to get a surprise round.

Which meant free attacks on everybody.

The elf felt himself rolling initiative anyway, thanks to a feat out of Quintessential Barbarian: Combat Awareness, which said, "Even if your side is unaware of the enemy, you are never surprised. You may always take a partial action during the surprise round."

Someone who really liked barbarians must have written that, as combat in D&D was deadly, and getting surprised was one of the deadliest things of all. Getting caught with your guard down meant that you were subject to exceptionally deadly attacks that could never be done to a prepared foe.

So, to prevent their beloved Conan archetypes from getting killed like punks left and right by sneaky types, some content creator had given them the option of being a main character - of never dying soundlessly to a knife to the ribs by an enemy sneaking by.

Jump scares? Horror movie monsters leaping out of ambush? Meet axe to face.

But the designers had forgotten to restrict that feat to just barbarians.

However, despite that opportunity and high bonuses, the boy's initiative roll was terrible, and he knew he would not be going first.

A Faerie Fire spell went off, outlining and illuminating the wizard. Nominally harmless, Faerie Fire could be devastating in that it canceled all benefits from things like invisibility and other forms of concealment, leaving the elf standing, still in his Rick disguise, yet obvious and unconcealed, surrounded by very wounded, yet very highly aware PRT troopers on all sides.

Other feats flared to life and the elf could suddenly sense volleys of small missiles from out of sight that were about to perforate his body.

His nose caught of whiff of something on the air, POISON!

Knockout Poison! DROW!

Being low in the initiative order meant losing the ability to dodge, at least until your turn arrived, which meant getting hit by almost all attacks unless you were heavily armored - which he was not.

However there was, in the Encyclopedia Arcane supplement for Divination, a feat that could be taken up to five times, for greater benefits each time. It was called Defensive Divination, and read, "Through the subtle, constant use of divination abilities, you are made aware of danger a few moments before it actually occurs. While this does not always give you the ability to evade such dangers, you are able to react when others could not."

So a lifetime of being a Star Wars fan came to his rescue, as he'd loaded up those Defensive Divination feats as high as they could go. The feat Quick Draw brought a weapon to his hand as a free action. With a distinctive Snap-Hiss! he activated a humming blade of glowing blue plasma five feet long from the metal hilt he held in his hand.

Yeah, the Dragonstar Campaign Setting had knock-off lightsabers, and Ultimate Equipment Vol 1 had clothes that could store up to 24 small objects unobtrusively, to be drawn as free actions.

From Plot & Poison: A Guidebook to Drow, came the feat Cut Arrows, which removed the restriction on the Deflect Arrows feat requiring a free hand to use it, and made it so you could deflect ranged attacks with your feet, a weapon, or an object in your hands.

Yup! With that combination, one could make for a pretty impressive Jedi impersonator.

The elf spun around, blue plasma blade striking out in glowing arcs to intercept the drow-poisoned crossbow bolts that he had seen would otherwise sink deeply into his flesh, taking him out of this fight.

But there was more than one drow crouched before him, darkened goggles protecting their eyes from the sunlight. Several more raised their dual, hand crossbows and opened fire.

The elf smirked, as that same drow supplement he'd tapped for the Cut Arrows feat also had the Improved Deflect Arrows feat, permitting anyone who had it to deflect a number of ranged attacks per round based on their dexterity modifier, plus one, not just the once permitted by the base Deflect Arrows.

He had a very high dexterity modifier.

However, these drow had dipped into another supplement, speed loading bolts while dual-firing their crossbows, getting an improbable number of attacks on him. But between his Defensive Divinations allowing him to dodge, as well as deflecting those attacks that would have struck true, as well as their being denied the ability to hit his weak spots as they would have if he'd been surprised, he made it through their barrage. Only a couple of bolts struck home, and though he could feel the poison coursing through his veins, he could also feel his body resisting, so it had not immobilized him.

That was lucky, as still being low level his ability to resist such things, called saving throws, were not nearly as high as they could have been.

Still, five drow dual firing hand crossbows, four attacks each, so twenty attacks total. If they'd caught him off guard their bolts alone would have killed him, shredded him even. They would not have needed the poison.

But drow were the kind of race to poison their children's bath toys, so it's not like they would have held off using it, even if it wasn't needed.

Then he saw, with a feeling of encroaching doom, that the front rank of drow rogues and fighters sheltered a back rank of four casters, two each of both male and female, so probably wizards and clerics.

One of the clerics gestured to her group of commanded undead, ordering her small pack of ghouls to begin moving to attack him, while one of their wizards cast a summoning spell, pulling a trick Jared was familiar with to get his summoned creature to appear right then, without the usual delay, getting an actual hell hound that rushed to attack, charging in to flank Jared from the other side.

Then the surface elf's eyes widened as he caught sight of the Mind Flayer behind them all - obviously directing these drow.

A small, dispassionate corner of his mind concluded it made sense, in a way. This looked to be a fairly ordinary drow patrol, like they used around their cities all of the time, and while dark elves were *resistant* to magic and supernatural stuff in general, and especially to all Charm effects, resistance was not immunity, and Mind Flayers had abilities that let them Charm others at will. All one would have to do is ambush one of many drow patrols, hit them with a Mind Blast or two to stun them all, then contain them, and the Mind Flayer could then try its Charm ability as many times as it took until it had every dark elf in the patrol under its control.

Evil clerics often commanded undead as auxiliary forces, and even under Mind Flayer control, the drow clerics would still retain control of the undead they'd had along with them. Actually, since undead were one of the best things to use against Mind Flayers, seeing as how mindless corpses were immune to most of their tricks, it made sense that any group of drow patrolling anywhere near where Mind Flayers could ambush them would have taken undead along.

It didn't always help. But it was a good defense generally.

Ghouls were also one of the best choices of what to command among low-level undead, being both faster and deadlier than zombies, but with three times the number of attacks, a disease carrying bite, and the ability to paralyze most foes with a touch.

Being paralyzed in combat was Game Over.

But the pointy-eared Jedi poser was not out of tricks yet.

Luckily, his opponents were charging, as he had the Hold the Line feat out of the Complete Warrior, granting him a free attack on each charging creature to enter the zone he threatened with his weapon, resolved before they got their attacks on him.

Its prerequisite was the Combat Reflexes feat, granting him enough of those free attacks to go around.

Luck was with him, and with four sweeping arcs of his blade of plasma, all four ghouls went down, and in enough pieces to reinforce the Jedi image quite dramatically.

Ghouls were essentially glass cannon: extremely deadly, but not terribly durable or hard to hit.

Then, of course, came the hellhound, a rather typical specimen standing at roughly four and a half feet tall at the shoulder, and weighing in at approximately one hundred and twenty pounds. Roughly twice as durable as a ghoul, not even half as deadly. However, most vexingly, the species were immune to all fire damage, which his faux-lightsaber was classified as in the setting that produced it.

There would be no one-hit takedown on this monster.

Fortunately, it did not seem to know that, and instead of leaping directly for his throat, having seen his takedown of the pack of ghouls, and far more intelligent than them, the hell hound stopped short of making a physical attack, instead electing to soften him up with its breath weapon, standing back just out of reach and exhaling a cone of fire that enveloped the elf.

A lucky break, as it could have killed him otherwise.

Fire resistance or even immunity was easy enough to obtain, and since it was the single most common attack form of all the energy types, he liked to joke that among seasoned adventurers it was almost as common as wearing pants to have some form of protection against fire. The poor hell hound's breath attack did little enough damage that even the most basic resistance to fire often stopped it cold.

Jared survived, but it did strengthen his resolve that the first action he got he was going to teleport out of there. He was in no way prepared for this fight. The Mind Flayer alone was nearly three times his Challenge Rating! And that was without considering the drow or the undead!

The hell hound by itself was a Challenge Rating 3!

Player characters were not supposed to be attacked while alone! They were supposed to be in a party of four to six players of equal level before facing threats of their OWN challenge rating!

Of course, it's not like he had not been abusing that system for his own benefit for years. But he still was, technically, only a third level character!

He could only conclude that Random Extradimensional Bastard had gotten bored, and was 'spicing things up' again.

Out of the corner of his eye the wizard saw Battery, of the Protectorate, go to tackle that Mind Flayer and had to wince inside as he saw the monster gleefully accept it - there was no way for a mortal to win a grapple with a Mind Flayer, even with her power obviously all charged up. Super strength and submission holds did not help when it was not the creature's *arms* you should be watching out for!

Sensing his turn about to come up, Jared prepared himself to teleport out to safety.

One of those two drow wizards leveled a wand at him and five Magic Missiles issued forth.

The bolts of magical energy struck home and Jared went down to negative hit points and knew no more.

OoOoO

Jared awoke moments later to the sensation of one of his homunculi being destroyed.

He found he was lying on a surgical table, with one of Blackjack's decoys having just removed the last crossbow bolt from his body, and one of his own homunculi having just administered a maximized healing potion.

Oh yeah. The emergency medical response he'd set up beforehand for the race. At a guess, when he'd told his homunculi to cast Status on all of the racers, they'd included him in that, as he was a racer. Thus, when he'd dropped, unconscious or dying, they'd replaced him. That meant the homunculus he'd felt being destroyed was the one that had switched out for him, where he'd been fighting the drow.

They had obviously killed it.

Well, better it than him.

It's not that he *liked* losing constructs, but they were infinitely easier (and cheaper!) to replace than he was.

Then Lisa's voice came over their temporary, shared telepathic link he'd set up for this race. ~Hey, we've got some pointy eared black people on the field who are attacking the PRT.~

~Those aren't anything like the black people you are familiar with,~ came his instinctive, urgent reply. ~Those aren't even human, they are a variety of elf. Those are drow.~

~What are drow?~ came all of the girls' mental voices over the link simultaneously.

The wizard spent a moment honestly stumped.

How to explain the drow to them?

Drow were the only race he could think of whose honest opinion on first seeing a bikini would be, "That has too much material."

They would then re-do the entire thing using barbed wire and spikes.

Then they would ask the question, "Is there any way this can be made entirely out of spiders?"

The drow race served a goddess of treachery and murder so vigorously that, of the two, she's the first one to flinch when it gets too much. As she, the very embodiment of treachery and murder, wasn't comfortable taking it as far as these guys were and periodically had to tell them to, "Quit it, you're all about to die off."

Amazingly, they were more devoted to treachery and murder than she was, and really chaffed under the restriction whenever she told them to, "Chill out, and take a breather until your numbers come back up."

They would still commit treachery and murder, even when she told them not to. They just did less of it.

And that definitely said all you need to know about the race, that when their goddess of treachery and murder found them too much, and told them to back off, they would betray her in order to murder each other anyway.

Given her position, nobody should be more in favor of treachery and murder than she is; but they are.

He owned a supplement on drow that gave rules for them doing cloning of new drow using artificial wombs, just as the only possible way they could keep their numbers up and avoid extinction, they were so vigorous about murdering each other.

Yeah, one reason Jared could be so sanguine about Nazis was that he had seen worse. Oh! So much worse! Drow made actual Nazis look like amateur hour at a preschool.

Then the wizard shrugged, and just told them everything he'd been thinking, just the same as he'd just thought it.

He was met with silent dismay and amazement on all of their parts.

But through this Jared had not been idle. He'd been busily casting spells to buff himself and expand his abilities during this mental conversation, as he did not intend to fight the infamous, and treacherous, species at anything but his best.

And even his best might not be enough.

~Are they really that bad?~ Taylor squeaked out in disbelieving horror.

~Let me put it another way,~ Jared sent back. ~Most normal races have a problem with orcs; actually, lots of goblinoids, but for now we'll just focus on the orcs. You see, Tolkien had it right, orcs are mindlessly violent, and hyper-aggressive; you're more likely to get mercy out of a cancer cell than you would from an orc. Worse, they breed like rats. So not even the greatest archmages, or the greatest kingdoms in D&D history, or both working together, have managed to kill enough orcs to stop them from coming back in a generation for more looting, raping, and pillage.~

They could almost sense humor in his tone as he continued. ~However, drows' only problem with orcs is they have to keep importing them, otherwise they run out.~

Horrified silence was his only answer.

~Run out?~ Dinah whispered.

~Yeah, they like enslaving them. But they just can't stop killing them long enough to keep any around. So they have to keep importing more,~ was his honest reply. ~Frankly, back at Redhurst I had a roommate who was royalty, and their kingdom was on the verge of being overrun by orcs. So I set up a service where I hired orcs as mercenaries, thousands at a time, and transported them to drow cities, where I sold their contracts so they got to serve in the drow houses. All perfectly honest and above-board on my end. I even paid well.~

~What happened?~ came several voices.

~We ran out of orcs,~ came his steady reply.

~WHAT?!~ came the general response.

He actually sounded amused, as he answered, ~Yeah, turns out the murder rate from working for drow far outstrips the death-rate in full-on war. This may sound impossible, but war actually takes pauses for maneuvering, rest or resupply, or other things. The drows' urge to kill never rests. Only the resources available to them fluctuates. Give them plenty of orcs? That's more resources, so more die.~

~Wasn't that expensive? Hiring all of those orcs?~ Lisa asked.

~Nah,~ came his confident reply. ~The drow paid very well. We actually turned a substantial profit on those contracts, enough to rebuild the ravaged kingdom and then some. On top of that, on the march down, at every meal I served up plenty of good, nutritious food and the orcs choice of drinks, including a weak alcoholic beverage called grog. Of course, I also gave them the option of purchasing stronger alcoholic drinks, so by the time they arrived at the drow cities my orc mercenaries were penniless, having spent their signing bonus, and all their pay, plus any money they had before I'd hired them, on booze. Funny thing was, I looted those orcs of valuables far more effectively by selling them booze than I could have if I'd killed them all and searched the bodies, because treasures they had hidden just as well as they knew how, they cheerfully pulled out to spend on more alcohol.~

He snorted. ~Lots of people think being brainless barbarians is somehow an advantage. All it really does is put them at the mercy of anyone willing to think. Even Conan, the archtypical fantasy barbarian who'd looted countless treasures, always started each new tale penniless, having spent it all on booze and women. You don't make a fortune as Conan's sidekick, no that's deadly. You do it as his wine merchant. Anyway, things worked out so well we branched out into hiring other goblinoids, as well as gnolls, ogres, and the like. Now that region is among the most peaceful on that planet. It's a very pretty place, I'll take you by sometime so you can see it.~

~Isn't hiring orcs dangerous?~ Taylor was concerned. ~I mean, wouldn't they just grab you, overpower you, and either kill or enslave you?~

~If I was there, absolutely!~ he thought back. ~But you don't deal with orcs personally, you do so through intermediaries, such as Charmed members of their own tribe. If you have to be there for any reason, you do so under illusions so you look like them. Besides, I gave a huge feast at signup, along with a cash bonus, so they were always cheerful to join up. Then, by the time any second thoughts or discontent had stirred up to where it could cause me any trouble, they were already partway into their march through the maze of tunnels to the deep underground cities where the drow live, and I'd always been careful to arrange for trail markers and supply drops ahead of my marching mercs, but never behind. So they could eat if they went forward, but were on their own if they wanted to go back. And you could drop the population of New York into those tunnels and lose them, those winding passageways are endless.~

He gave a mental chuckle. ~No, dealing with orcs was the easy part. Dealing with drow is far harder. They are actually quite intelligent, yet have the same inclinations. So you have to be far more careful, for all of the same reasons. Because given half a chance they will kill you in ways that would make Dr. Mengele puke his guts out - and spend all of their time thinking of ways to do this to literally everyone around them. Drow are also very highly resistant to Charm effects, and have ways to see through illusions.~

~So how do you make them keep their bargains?~ Dinah rather innocently asked.

Jared almost laughed. ~You don't *make* them do anything. The most powerful person I've ever met couldn't *make* drow do anything. Their own deity can't even *make* them stop killing each other. Instead, you use your knowledge of their own motivations to set it up so they want to deal with you. They *want* those orcs. So you arrange it so they need to keep the deal in order to get the orcs, and so that any possible betrayal would cost them more time and effort than it's worth. So the easiest thing is just to pay you and be done.~

He gave a mental shrug. ~That doesn't stop them from betraying you, of course. They're still guaranteed to betray you in all the ways they think they can get away with, and then a little bit extra just for spite, just because of who they are. But, if you're careful, you minimize the damage from that to 'acceptable breakage'. The drow kill a couple of your orc scouting parties just because they felt like it? That's fine. We budget for half a dozen of those. They put poison or diseases on the gold coins they use to pay you? Yeah, we expected that too, and feed them through an ooze that dissolves everything but metal. Then we melt them down and re-mint them into new shapes, before laundering them through an interplanar brokerage service. None of us ever actually touch the coins. Finally, we cast Detect Magic and other spells to identify and remove all of the curses, trackers, and other nonsense the drow can't help pulling on all of their trade partners. But before all of that, to keep them from trying too hard, you let one or more tofu decoys 'die' in horrible agony from one of the tricks they pulled - just to keep them satisfied. Otherwise they feel it is a challenge, and step up their efforts.~

After a moment, Lisa's mental voice came back in reply, ~Shouldn't devotion to a goddess of treachery be against her tenets? Devotion and treachery being, you know, opposites?~

Jared almost smirked during his reply. ~Oh, just think of drow as a lesser variant of demon. We all do.~

~Well, they don't seem to be very resistant to bullets!~ Missy's mental voice cried out.

Jared gaped, having no response to that surprise announcement.

~By the way,~ Missy added, punctuated by another crack of a bullet. ~How do you kill trolls? At least I think that's what these are. They keep getting up, no matter where I shoot them.~

Lisa giggled, sending, ~Thank you, Jared, for the dissertation on drow. But as we don't seem to have any alive here anymore, it's not going to be very helpful today.~

The young wizard stood up and flung back the tent flap, allowing him to see out. Looking over to where he'd been attacked, he saw only the headless bodies of the drow who had attacked him.

The PRT had pulled out.

After a moment of gaping, he asked, ~How did this get started?~

~Well,~ Missy returned, along with another sharp 'Crack!' from her elephant gun, ~When I saw one of those things you'd described as a Mind Flayer, I reached for my rifle. Then these drow thingies started killing people, and then something that are probably giants cropped up... Yeah, the only ones that are still giving me any difficulty are probably trolls, since they regenerate, and I recall trolls doing that from the video games Clockblocker used to play.~

There came another sharp 'Crack!'

Around them, the race continued on full-force, the drivers unconcerned with the threat that wasn't a threat anymore.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Okay, first important thing to explain is, yes, the Random Extradimensional Bastard got bored with this adventurer playing at 'slice of life comedy', and decided to invoke what he calls "random encounters" - that are anything but random, or CR appropriate.

Second thing to explain is I did not make up any of those facts about the drow, or how they are. According to the official canon, across multiple owners of the franchise, the drow goddess really does have to call a halt to the murder fest every so often to prevent them from dying off.

To quote one example: "In 1361 DR, Triel announced the Peace of Lolth, a decree from the goddess for the drow of Menzoberranzan to stop shedding each other's blood until Lolth instructs otherwise."

It is also sourced from multiple books that the drow are... less than perfect about obeying that command.

It is also a common theme in canon that drow are constantly importing slaves, that orcs are among their favorite slave races, and that without those imports ... supplies run low?

Hmm, I wonder why. Nobody else has problems maintaining enough orcs. Quite the opposite, really.

It is also canon that the legendary archmages of the legendarily powerful kingdom Netheril, during the greatest period of magic ever experienced by the Forgotten Realms, could not kill enough orcs to put an end to their frequent attacks. Nor can anyone else.

Except the drow, who frequently run out.

Drow also get a racial bonus to their saves against poison - because of frequent exposure.

Yes, even their children.

The poison may not be on their bath toys, but it's on something.

Oh, and lest you think I was making other claims up, the supplement Plot and Poison, A Guidebook to Drow by Green Ronin Publishing, under the D20 license, shows a female drow wearing what could only be called a bikini made out of living spiders. Roughly thirty pages later, under prestige classes, you have one whose top is essentially made out of barbed wire.

Nor is that the only book on drow to depict them in ... extreme attire.

So, yeah. A good friend once said drow sounded like, "A race made by an edgy fourteen year old girl who wants to be goth but her parents won't let her."

Third, elephant gun just means a large caliber gun meant for big game. Just like "shotgun" or "missile launcher", it represents a category of weapon, not a specific example.

The Winchester 70 Safari Express rifle is an elephant gun, expressly designed to hunt elephants, rhinos, hippos and cape buffalo. Winchester advertises it as "the finest big game rifle in the world." The .458 win mag cartridges specifically mentioned by our characters when they were purchased from the gun store represented the standard for dangerous game cartridges for decades, and remains one of the popular choices today. They were even mentioned as used during the camping trip, when Taylor got attacked by a bear.

Yes, Missy is warping space to get some recoil compensation when firing that thing.

And yes, I do get an awful lot of mileage out of those Transmute Water to Wine cantrips, don't I?

Beta work by Dogbertcarroll.