Waking up was strange. The headache from drinking and staying up late was present and expected but that was all that was the same. I remembered my room clearly and this wasn’t it. For one, instead of the white popcorn ceiling of which I was used to, there was a vaulted gray stone ceiling. To my left and right there were doors recessed into the walls, versus the normal one bedroom door. In place of the normal incandescent lights that would normally light my room, the vault was lit by softly glowing orbs of white light floating freely in space. My nice soft bed had been replaced by a cold slab of stone, and to top it all off instead of my normal boxers I wear to bed, I seemed to be encased in some sort of armor.
As I struggled to understand my predicament I heard voices nearby.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit! Run!” Someone breathlessly cried.
Another voice said, “Hurry, I see a door ahead. Hopefully, we can barricade ourselves in there temporarily.”
An additional voice devoutly shouted, “Pray to Pelor that it’s not locked”
The voices were getting closer and I was wondering how many more there were when suddenly the characters the voices belonged to burst through the door on my left.
“Quick! Look for something to block the door with.”
“Hey! It’s got a lock bar.”
“Drop it into place quickly.”
A second after the bar had dropped into place the door shuddered as something big hit it, but it held. The group seemed to relax allowing be to study them. There were five members in the group. One was a large and burly man whose skin had a greenish tinge to it. Two of them appeared to be male humans, but on closer inspection one had pointed ears and the other had somewhat pointed ears. The last two shortest male members of the group were vastly different from each other. One looked like a barrel with a head, two arms, and two legs. The other looked like a small, but fully grown, person. So I had what looked like a party of a Halfling, a Dwarf, a Half-Elf, an Elf, and a Half-Orc that had just burst in on me. Déjà vu from the night before.
As I was studying the group, no they were an adventuring party, they were looking around the room. They seemed a little bewildered as to where they found themselves.
What was probably a Half-Elf broke the silence saying, “I’ve never felt such a concentration of mana before; what is this place?”
The one who looked like an Elf explained, “Ever since the recent earthquakes these old ruins have seen quite a few changes. One of which being new monsters, from which we have just avoided being eaten by one by escaping through one of the newly opened passages. Perhaps the shifting earth has changed some mana channels in the ground.”
The Dwarf of the group interjected, “Um…have you guys noticed we are not alone in here? Look at the sarcophagus in the center of the lights”
It was at this point the party focused their attention onto me.
The probable Halfling whispered, “Janek can you cast Purify on the sarcophagus to kill any undead near it?”
Janek, who was the Dwarf replied just as quietly, “Sure. ‘Purify’”
After Janek finished casting his spell, a white light enveloped me. My headache from before vanished like the figments of a dream, and the various aches and pains in my body faded away.
“Thanks for that. Purify works great on headaches apparently.” I said.
“AHHH!” Screamed Janek, “I thought Purify was supposed to work on undead and this one can talk!”
“That’s because I’m not an undead or a construct; the sarcophagus, as you say, is actually me, and if you give me a minute to sort myself out we can have a better conversation,” I replied.
As the group was stunned into silence, I used the time to try and get up. I had noticed that ever since waking up I had been getting warmer and was now a very comfortable temperature. As I attempted to sit up and swing my legs off the slab of stone the armor made some soft whirring noises and I found myself rising almost effortlessly up.
The motion seemed to startle the party into motion. As they scrambled to get into a defensive formation I just watched them.
“You do remember that Purify does nothing to ‘good’ aligned beings right?” I asked.
“Wait, your right. So…you’re good?” Questioned Janek.
“Yes,” I answered. “Now can we put the weapons down and have a conversation?”
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The group looked at each other before coming to a consensus. They nodded and slowly sheathed their weapons.
“Now I know one of your names, Janek, but who are the rest of you?”
The Halfling said, “I’m Garret, the rogue.”
The Half-Elf proudly said, “I am Galstaff, a sorcerer.”
The Elf said, “I am known as Elas Eiljor, a ranger”
The Half-Orc grunted, “I am Grognak the Barbarian.”
“As for me,” I said, “you can call me…Miles Naismith.”
“What’s your class?” Garret queried.
“Honestly I have no idea. I woke up just before you crashed through the door and have no idea where I am or what is going on.”
“Trying saying status and see if that does anything,” Galstaff explained
“Status”
Character Name
Miles Naismith
Player
Zane
Class
Space Marine
Experience (EXP)
0/1000
Level
1
Amor Class (AC)
24
Strength (STR)
18
Hit Points (HP)
15
Dexterity (DEX)
16
Mana Points (MP)
12
Constitution (CON)
16
Weapons
Bolter
Intelligence (INT)
14
Chainsword
Wisdom (WIS)
14
Grenade (Frag)
Charisma (CHA)
10
Skills
Reload
“…huh, Space Marine. Well, I guess that explains the armor.”
Elas asked quizzically, “Space Marine, what’s that?”
I simplified what a Space Marine was by explaining, “Well let’s just say that I’m the tank in combat”
Garret said with a relieved tone, “Good, maybe we can still get out of this alive.”
“Just to clarify, what is ‘this’?” I asked.
Garret explained, “Recent earthquakes in the area have changed the layout of this dungeon. We were sent by the Adventurers Guild to map any changes we could find. The job was supposed to be easy, go in with the old maps, note and record any areas with changes, and return a job well done. Instead, we encountered monsters you are only supposed to see much deeper into any dungeons. We lost one of our fighters to a Roper and a warmage to a Fomorian. When we burst in on you, we were running from a Purple Worm.”
“That sounds bad,” I said worriedly, “However I’m not sure how much help I will be considering I’m only level 1.”
“How are you only a Level 1?” Elas incredulously asked.
“I have no idea. As I said before I just woke up and I’ve got no idea where I am or what is going on. Perhaps we should concentrate on getting out of here?”
Elas paused thinking for a moment before replying. “You’re right. We can’t go back the way we came in since the Purple Worm is acting very territorial and I would rather not get eaten. Let’s try the other door to see if we can get out.”
We headed to the other door and cautiously opened it. Behind the door was a spiral staircase with a section leading deeper underground and the other section leading up. As we headed up the staircase, Garret was in the lead checking for any traps and I was having a question and answer session with Elas and Galstaff. Grognak was watching the rear for any surprises.
Amnesia is a convenient excuse. Under the guise of learning what I had ‘forgotten’, I learned several things, one of which was that the world I had woken to find myself in was called Lumarest. Very earthlike in several ways with the climate being very similar to Earth equivalents, cold at the poles and hot at the equator, marine temperate zones, deserts, forests, and plains. One of the biggest difference for me was the fact that there were three moons, still only one sun. The moons were in the same orbital plane but were at varying distances from Lumarest. The technology was about the Late Middle Ages, there was not as much technological drive due to the inherent magic of the world. The time scale was also the same with 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, and 24 hours to a day. The year was divided into 12 months, with each month being about 30 days.
Every 6 minutes or so of climbing we would stop to take a breather and after about 30 minutes of this I was wondering if we were ever going to get out when we finally reached the top. What greeted our sight was a bricked up doorway, but we could see faint cracks of light coming from around the bricks. After breaking through we found ourselves in a rubble strew courtyard. The doorway was built into the center of a mural depicting what must have been the surrounding area at one point. However instead of the green forests, large meadows, and a nearby tower, all that was left were stands of trees, rubble-strewn fields, and there was no tower in sight.
“Let’s go,” Elas wearily sighed, “there is a place to camp nearby we can use before returning to Safeld”
It was getting near dark and after traipsing through the overgrowth we arrived at a flat, cleared section of land. Galstaff took off the backpack he had been wearing and started to take out camping gear. The backpack must have been a bag of holding considering how much he removed. Asking if there was anything I could do to help Galstaff gave me a cauldron and sent me to a nearby stream to gather water for dinner that night. While walking through the woods I realized that I had grown, I used to be 6ft tall, now I appeared to be about 7.5ft. While wondering if my body had changed or it was just the armor I found the stream. In one of the pools on the side, I got my first look at myself. I wasn’t the generic blue of an Ultramarine at least, but I wasn’t painted any of the other chapters I knew of. The armor was mostly battleship gray with Cherenkov radiation blue highlights. My chest plate, helmet, and shoulder pauldrons were free of any chapter markings. On my way back to the campsite I wondered what would become of me in this new world.