The stand-in-System (aka the Savant of Slime, The Master of Mold, the Friend of Fungi, the Maestro of Mildew or, to his friends, just Dave) was not happy. Not happy at all. One could almost say he was miffed. The pigeon had been trouble. He had been a pain. The pigeon had made it known, in very blunt terms, that he wanted to be a dragon. Dave had tried to explain, as patiently as he could of course, that the rules didn’t allow that. He could be a goose, which was certainly a vicious enough animal, or at best an owl, but the pigeon hadn’t earned the right to be upgraded to a dragon.
Was that good enough for the pigeon though? Oh, no, he had rights, and when they were rejected, he had actually pecked Dave. It hadn’t hurt, of course; there was a benefit of not being, technically, real. Or alive. Or whatever it was he was not. But it had annoyed him. The pigeon had wanted to be a dragon, and so a dragon he was going to be, even if he had to spend all eternity arguing about it.
In the end, Dave had given up and sent the pigeon off as a dragon. He permitted himself a smile just thinking about the pigeon’s reaction when he discovered that, while he was a dragon, he was only three inches long. And bright neon pink.
Of course, he was going to get into so much trouble for that stunt, but maybe the Boss should have thought of that before he had run off and dumped the running of the whole thing in Dave’s lap. But, no, that hadn't happened, which left him, Dave, dealing with pigeons and the various other inanities that had followed the pigeon.
“I’ve made up my mind.”
Dave sighed as the voice called out, a somewhat squeaky, high-pitched voice that belonged to the one called Max Masters. The pigeon may have been trouble, but that kid was mad. That was the only way to explain it. And it was going to lead to trouble, he could just feel it. Once again, this was an incident that the Boss should be dealing with, not a lowly administrator promoted far beyond his usual role of dealing with slime and other oozy substances.
“Fine, fine, I’m coming,” he grumbled and moved himself from his current locale to the preparation chamber where Max was waiting, perched on the white bench. From his perspective, both places were, in fact, the same place, which made the task all that easier.
A couple of the manuals sat open beside Max, while the rest were scattered haphazardly around the chamber, and there was no second choice for guessing who was going to have to clean them up; him, Dave, that was who. While, technically, there was no concept of time in the preparation chamber, it had been a while since he had left Max there to study the manuals.
“At last, there you are,” the weedy kid grinned, pushing up his glasses, looking far too pleased with himself. Oh, yeah, that did not look good. Dave did not like it, not at all. The kid was up to something.
“You’ve read through them?” Dave asked.
“Yup.”
“All of them?”
“Yup.”
Dave had to admit that was impressive, if true. No one read through the manuals anymore. They had been sitting on a shelf in a back room, gathering dust. It had been so long since they were last used. “Right, give me your choices then.”
“We get to choose our race, class, a background, two feats and a power, correct?” Max asked.
“Yes, that is correct, though there are some limitations on what you can choose, depending on other choices, and what is available to you based on your past life."
Max nodded. “Understood. For my race, then, I choose Proto-Troll.”
Dace at first thought he hadn’t heard right. The kid had chosen Proto-Troll? Surely that couldn’t be correct. No one ever went with one of those. They were part of the whole Southcleave experiment, which had ultimately failed to live up to expectations - mostly because everything there was too mechanically weak - and where almost nobody went except for some attempt to wallow in nostalgia. The dreaded Leech Queen, Dh’ark R’avhen, spent most of her time perched on her Blood Throne twiddling her thumbs out of boredom nowadays. Certainly, no one voluntarily chose to start there, what with how underpowered the options provided were.
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“A Proto-Troll? Are you certain?”
“Yup,” the kid grinned.
Dave was certain now that he was mad. “You don’t want to reconsider? Look, I’ll do you a favour - I know you don’t technically qualify for it, but I should be able to wing the paperwork to allow you to take High Ogre. They fulfil the same role, but the High Ogre is mechanically superior.” A lot better, he had to admit, but anything to get the kid out of his hair. Even after the redesign, they were still better - some of the original High Ogres were still out there, causing no end of trouble.
“No, I’m fine with Proto-Troll thanks.”
Dave shook his head. "Okay then. Max Masters,” he boomed, “You have chosen to be a Proto-Troll!”
Max changed as the choice was locked in, shifting from his weedy human form to one that was not too dissimilar, Dave felt. True, it had been stretched out a bit, its shoulders hunched and limbs longer, but the now grey skin wasn’t far off the pasty colour the kid already had from being inside far too much, the hair was a similar dark colour, only longer, and he even still looked a bit like Max in the face. The designers had really phoned it on with that one, unlike with the later Trolls, who were widely considered as one of the high points of creation, near as to perfection as could be made.
Max raised his hands to look at them before giving a satisfied nod. He then stamped on the floor, and the room shook, marginally. “Excellent!” he said with a broad grin.
“You do know that your Troll Quake ability is tied to your Prowess stat, and that you start with a Prowess penalty?”
“Yup.”
“And that you can’t access any class that boosts Prowess. Proto-Trolls can’t be spellcasters.”
“Oh, I know.”
“Just checking.” Dave shook his head, not for the first time. “Next on the agenda is your class. Look, can we hurry this up? I have to see a man about a Christmas tree.” Dave looked down at the memo he held. “Sorry, I have to see a man about becoming a Christmas tree.”
“Class is easy; I want to be a Brewer.”
Dave gave Max a long, hard stare. “Are you serious?” he asked finally. “Brewer? It is not what you’d consider an actual class, more suited for NPCs.”
“It says here,” Max said, picking up one of the manuals, “In Cookmasters of Bananaria, that the Brewer is a highly valued and respected member of society.”
“Maybe when serving cocktails with those little umbrellas in them, but I’m fairly sure the Boss and some of his friends were drunk when they came up with that one, as something of a joke. It doesn’t even have any useful attacks, just the ability to forage for items to brew up into alcohol.”
“It sounds like fun.”
“Fine, have it your way,” Dave replied, resigned to the whole ordeal. "Max Masters, you have chosen to be a…Brewer!”
An apron appeared on Max, with BREWER written across it, and a small keg was in his hands.
“Come on, next, the Christmas Tree isn’t waiting. Well, it is, but the sooner I dispose of it, the better.”
“For my background, I chose Sailor.”
Dave gave Max a long, long, long look. “Okay, now I know you are extracting the…I mean, just messing around. A Sailor?”
“Oh, yes, it's a life on the ocean waves for me. Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum.”
“Proto-trolls can’t be sailors though.”
“But Brewers can be,” Max pointed out. “Says so here, in The Kraken-clysm.”
Dave nodded glumly, considering by that stage running away like the Boss had. He wasn’t going to argue anymore. “Fine. Max Masters, you are a sailor.” He no longer had the heart to put an effort into it.
A jaunty sailor’s hat appeared on top of Max’s Proto-Troll head, at an angle, which looked silly, all things considered.
“Just give me your feats and power and we can be done with this whole farce.”
“Easy, give me Quick Imbibe, which is a Brewer Feat, and The Finest Stomp, a Proto-Troll one. And, for my power, I go with A Brew Perfected.”
“Right, right, fine. All totally useless. But whatever - you can have them. No doubt I’ll be seeing you back here in five minutes after that woeful selection of choices. Southcleave is going to eat you up. Well, the Bloodworms certainly will. Some of the others may not even bother to chew.”
Max cocked a finger in Dave’s direction. “Not if I see you first, sport.”
Dave waved a hand, to send Max careening off, to start his, undoubtedly short, existence as a Proto-Troll Brewer Sailor. Grumbling, he started to clean up the preparation chamber. And then he had to see to the Christmas Tree. “Oh, he wants baubles. Of course he does. And an angel to…” he stopped. No that was going too far. The sooner the Boss got back the better for everyone.