Jasper Stone

Age – 0

Race – Outsider

Class – Unknown

Mana Alignment – Unknown

Sun – Unattuned

Moon – Unattuned

Shadow – Unattuned

Candle – Unattuned

Ox – Unattuned

Owl – Unattuned

Blessings – The Forefather, the Child.

You are blessed by the Gods, in acknowledgement of your trials;

‘The Knucklebones’

Survive certain death.

Passive

Gain an instinctive sense for approaching danger.

Completion

Gain an instinctive sense for opportunity.

(2 Links)

Empty – Empty

Jasper– somehow– didn’t die when he hit the ground. He lay there groaning, surrounded by the green world of the forest. His body ached; his vision was blurred.

As his eyes cleared, he saw something in the edge of his vision. It was a little gray box with a number ‘2’ printed beneath an image of a pair of cupped hands, catching a sun from the sky. As he focused on it, the window expanded, filling his sight.

Blessing –

Protection of the Sunfather.

( Divine Tier )

Granted to all beneath 16 years of age. Three times, this blessing will protect you from death.

“But I’m not…”

Jasper groaned. He was definitely past drinking age– closer to 30 than to 20, now. Yet all the same, this dumb game seemed to think he was a child. A fact which had just saved his life via divine intervention.

Three times…

Jasper guessed he’d already spent one.

"Fuck." Jasper rolled onto his feet, feeling grievously bruised. The whole drop from the heavens was still replaying through his head– the rush of the wind, the earth lurching up from below. He shivered.

But as he looked up, what he saw wasn't comforting at all. Enormous trees wrapped with green vines towered up towards the distant sky. Tiny, furry creatures scrambled along the branches, and flowers hung like petal-sweet bells from above. It was a dense, deep forest, the way forward crowded with thorny vines and bushes. "Fucker."

He had absolutely no idea how he was going to find his way to civilization. "Fuckest."

Something howled deep in the woods– there were places where the light didn't reach, and the only illumination came from the bodies of fireflies.

Nobody was coming to save him.

There was no way back to his comfortable apartment.

This was real.

He let those facts slowly trickle through his consciousness as he sat there in the dirt; he gazed emptily at the trees and the natural wonder. And slowly, like a miracle, something changed. He began to smile, just faintly.

His old life had sucked.

Here, a giant ant the size of his fist marched across a tree, softly glowing threads of parasitic mushroom sprouting out of its skull. Here, songbirds with fire dancing on their wings sung beautiful, blazing lovesongs to each other, up in the branches. He watched as a small rodent, some kind of tree-dwelling rat, was swallowed by a snake the color and translucency of smoked glass– the poor thing never had a chance. The serpent was all but invisible as it lay motionless against the bark.

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Magic was everywhere, here.

He was in a new world– a new life– and all he had to do was get himself to civilization, to find a town or a city and then, then he could start fresh. He could figure out how to win this game. Maybe he’d even find out he had magical powers, a gift from the gods, or at least some kind of destiny to follow.

“I can do this.”

He stood up.

“I can do this…”

— — —

“Oh god. God help me. I can’t– I can’t do this.”

The forest just kept going. An endless green prison. His reward for finding the stamina to stumble another few steps was another set of trees blocking out the light, another thorny bush to tear through on his way. There was nothing resembling a path. The ground was uneven underfoot and more than once, had collapsed into slippery mud and sent him skidding down a hill.

And the bugs!

They swarmed to his sweat and pricked at him with their stingers, drinking the blood right out of him. Jasper felt like one of those little juice pouches getting stabbed over and over with the straw.

But if he just kept going…

New life. New world.

With a final lurch of energy he pushed his way through a low-hanging set of branches, pushing them away and stumbling forward. His shoe hit nothing but air-- he'd walked right over the edge of a small, mud-lined cliff.

There was a kind of squawk and he went tumbling down.

When he opened his eyes, he was no longer alone. He had fallen onto a small footpath and landed eye-to-toe with a boot. Looking up, Jasper saw a huge bear of a man, clad in a wolf-fur cloak that still had the head attached and hanging over his shoulder like a grisly deflated muppet. The man smiled; it was a smile that conveyed no warmth or friendship for anyone present.

The man drew a glinting steel dagger from his belt, and Jasper decided this was not the place to be.

He rolled onto his back and tried to scramble away, only for the knife to go flying, landing in the ground next to his head with a weighty, threatening thunk. It quivered as it stuck up out of the ground.

Jasper stopped trying to run.

The man smiled a greasy, yellow smile. There were two other men riding up now, coming along the path on horseback. One was small and lean with a face like a boxer dog, all bent-back nose and jowls outlining his mouth. The other was huge, with a black beard cascading down in braids.

Something about the second man pinged instinctively on Jasper's radar. This was the big dog-- the man in charge.

And Big Dog said, "What have we got here? His clothes look foreign."

"Just caught 'im. Could be anyone." The man with the wolf-fur cloak-- Jasper instinctively named him Toothy-- leaned down and pulled his knife out of the earth. "But he ain't no local. Maybe an Ardish type, come ta' adventure and slay us?"

"Ah yes." Jasper's mouth was open before he could stop himself; "Slay you with the big honking sword you can clearly see I have; unless you think I'm hiding it down my pants?"

Toothy froze.

He wasn't expecting backtalk.

To be honest, Jasper was surprised too. It would've been about ten times smarter to just stay silent and let them talk. But that was the problem; his mouth ran away before his brain got itself in gear.

But the Big Dog snorted, suppressing a laugh. And that clearly upset Toothy, who was getting made fun of in front of his boss. A kick slammed into Jasper's gut, cutting his words short and replacing them with unpleasant little gaspy sounds as he choked on his own spit.

"You could be a wizard!" He snapped, and then, turning back to Big Dog, repeated in a childish tone. "He could be a wizard…"

"Wizard..? Sorry, not everyone who can spell past C is a wizard." Jasper groaned out. "But don't worry baby, lots of people are afraid of my big D."

This time, the Big Dog let out a sharp, loud belt of outright laughter, and Toothy's face colored in with a furious red embarrassment. With an ugly sound his sword came rasping free of its scabbard, and Jasper-- from his position on the ground-- found himself staring down the cold metal length.

A gulp ran down his neck.

From out of memory, a phrase from an old cartoon drifted through Jasper's head. Me an' my big fat mouth.

"Relax, Tyben." A word from the Big Dog probably saved his life; Jasper wasn't sure if the 'protection' he had going would stop the man from killing him, or just stop the first two swings and let the third one past.

Toothy-- or Tyben, apparently-- glowered down at him.

"It's obvious he's a fool. And there's no sense arguing with fools, any more than you can wrestle with a pig. You'll get covered with mud and the pig will enjoy it. No. Here's how you handle fools…"

Big Dog dropped down from his saddle, walked up to Jasper, and grasped him by the collar. A single motion yanked him to his feet, and brought him under the man's piercing gaze.

"You. You work for me now. Tyben and the rest, you can crack wise at; they won't harm you because I say so. But there's men you can make fun of, and there's men who don't have nothing fun about 'em. Me? Say one wrong word about me and I'll split your head before you get the second out."

Jasper nodded, very seriously.

And bit down so many goddamn insults.

"Good. We understand each other." Big Dog clapped him on the shoulder. "Been a while since we had any entertainment.”

And with that, Jasper found his new life:

Being the entertainment for a pack of unwashed bandits.

— — —

They marched towards an ancient castle. Even from a good distance, Jasper could see it was wrecked. Huge breaches tore apart the walls. The turrets and towers ended in broken stubs, like the fingers of a dead hand raking at the sky.

Safe to say getting closer didn’t improve his opinion.

Big Dog’s crew lived like squatters, setting up a campsite city of tents in the space between the ruined walls and the castle proper. They argued over food, drank shitty beer, gambled, and by the scent of it, rolled in shit at least once a day.

Jasper’s eyes settled on a rat, stuck on a spit and roasted over an open flame. The poor thing was turning black and dripping grease down onto the coals.

He tried, unsuccessfully, to look as normal as possible. A regular bandit going about regular bandit business…

“Boss, whose the weaselly-looking' one?”

It didn’t work.

“This is our entertainment.” Big Dog clapped him on the back and steered him forward. Jasper grimaced; he felt the weight of their stares digging into him. “Fool! Do something amusing!’

He looked at the rat.

The rat looked back with crisped, burnt-up eyes.

Yeah, I’m ten seconds out from being fucked, just like you.

“C’mon fool! Dance or somethin’!” Someone called. Jasper flinched as a bottle went sailing over his head, and ducked back, thinking desperately. He glanced to Big Dog– the man just grinned, clearly willing to be amused by Jasper getting torn apart

“Um…”

“How about…”

There was a three-fingered man picking fruitlessly at the strings of a lute. Jasper darted forward, pulled it from his hands, and began to play an awkward rendition of a familiar song. “Okay, okay. So here’s a story I know none of you have heard…”

“It starts a long time again in, uh, a kingdom, far far away…”

— — —

Three days later.

Swords cracked together, and the actors danced across the stage, trading mock-thrusts and stabs. The swords were painted green and red, clashing together again and again until–

With a sudden sweep, the green blade clattered to the floor, and the white-clad bandit drew his hand into his sleeve, crying out in ‘pain’.

“Join me…” The black-clad bandit reached out a hand. “And together, we can rule the world!”

Jasper was pretty sure he’d gotten the dialogue wrong, but it didn’t matter. His audience was eating it up; they sat around the campfire calling out and gasping in tune with the movements of the actors. He had them in the palm of his hand.

And when he ran out of movies to steal, well, hopefully by then he'd have planned his escape.