Prologue: Of Dice And Men

This prologue is not absolutely essential to read to understand the following story. It is just a dramatized (though, for the most part, accurate) description of the players you will encounter in the story and how the whole concept began. This is useful if you want some backstory, but you will miss nothing critical if you choose to jump right into the action.

"I was actually planning something like that," said Brendan. He and Micah were sitting at his place discussing their rather uneventful spring plans. Micah had suggested forming a group to play Dungeons and Dragons.

"Only," Micah had clarified. "I don't want it to be, like, strict dungeons and dragons rules, you know?"

Brendan had agreed to that point instantly. Strict obedience to the rules was not in their nature anyways.

"What kind of ideas did you have in mind?" Brendan asked.

"Well I plan on doing a Zombie Apocalypse one. Really get you inside the element of fear, you know?" Micah suggested.

Brendan nodded. Micah had an uncanny taste for the macabre, but usually it was limited to tasteless jokes and a love of the horror genre. It would be interesting to see what he did with a dungeons and dragons setting.

"In fact, Josh, Meg, Stefanie and I did one a couple nights ago. It was pretty cool. But that was really just the prototype," Micah went on. "What about you? What would you want to do?"

Brendan rubbed his chin and lit up his iPad. He figured he better start taking notes.

Meghan was Micah's younger sister. He had two brothers and another sister besides Meghan, but they didn't often come in contact with them just due to distance. Meghan had once been described by Brendan as a "giggling JPOP creature". It kind of annoyed him, but on retrospect all of his friends were (at least) a little annoying.

Stefanie was Micah's fiancé. He didn't know much about her, except that she loved Zombies and that Micah couldn't shut up about her. Micah kept insisting that the two had to meet eventually and this might be a good opportunity to do it.

Josh was an obvious choice for a player; he and Brendan were brothers. Josh and Meghan used to date, but remained good friends to this day. They had their own little language, probably because Josh was nearly as rambunctious as she was, although as Josh had gotten older he'd developed some restraint, unlike Meghan. Along with their youngest brother Eric, who was still in High School, they and their parents made up the Mitri family.

Brendan's father Mike was Lebanese and his mother Cheryl half-Asian, giving Brendan a very indefinable complexion. Whether or not he liked to admit it, with the beard, he looked very much like his father.

Except for my eyes, Brendan thought humorously, even though this was not the case. And then it hit him.

"Well," Brendan said. "I kinda thought a Harry Potter one would be funny."

Micah folded his arms. "Beat me to the punch. I was planning on doing one, but I never got it out of the 'planning' stage. Ah well, you're a friggin' encyclopedia when it comes to that stuff."

Brendan nodded. "Well, I've been talking to Jacob and he wants to bring back his old Star Wars DnD."

Jacob, and his Star Wars DnD was the stuff of legends. It was the first DnD experience they had all had. The most memorable session Micah had actually recorded, and it had lasted over 10 hours.

Jacob himself was almost as big a show-boater as Micah tended to be. He was bursting with confidence and sometimes over-confidence. He did have a track record of doing foolish things just for the fun of doing them, but the results were always fun to watch. He was also an excellent Dungeon Master, better than either Brendan or Micah.

"That'd be fun," Micah nodded. "Well we need to do a session or two before Meghan moves out to California."

Brendan blinked, and then shook his head. He'd almost forgotten that in only about three months, Meghan would be leaving them for Los Angeles to go live with her and Micah's oldest brother.

"We'll have her join the other sessions via Skype, no worries. Put her down," Micah insisted. "Who else should we invite?"

"Well," Brendan thought. "There's always Sam…"

Sam was not as reliable these days as he used to be. Brendan supposed there was a lot going on in his life at the moment (even though he wasn't technically employed) but it was sad that he wasn't around much these days. When he did hang around he was usually laid back and good for a laugh or two. But lately…

"Well invite him. If nothing else it'll show we'd like his company," Micah said. "We should probably invite Heather too."

"And Emma," Brendan nodded.

Heather was a mutual friend of Brendan's and Micah's. Brendan and Heather used to date, but things did not work out there. There had been some bad blood but that had long since passed. Hell, there'd been even worse bad blood between Micah and Brendan but that had long since been washed away in the past.

Heather was simple and somewhat emotionally fragile. This had magnified since her pregnancy (which incidentally was not caused by Brendan). Still, the group had long since determined that she did not mean to cause anybody problems but she was maybe just a tad clumsy. And besides her heart was always in the right place, and considering some of the people the group had known that meant a lot.

Emma was a new friend, Brendan and her had gone on a couple of dates, but it wasn't anything serious. Not yet, at any rate. Emma was on the surface a quiet introvert, but if you were able to open her up there was a very kind-hearted person underneath. She, like everybody else in the group, had a slightly twisted sense of humor, although Brendan and Emma were probably the most "normal" people in it.

"Well I think that's everybody," Micah said. "And I'm just gonna take a wild guess and say that you and I are playing too, huh?"

"Well, no shit Micah," Brendan replied responding aptly to Micah's terrible joke.

Micah was an unusual person. He kind of hit the full range of personages from asinine twit, to quiet intellect. Although the dial was usually switched to the asinine twit. He had a few moments of brilliance and none could argue that he wasn't creative, determined and resourceful. But he was first and foremost a show-man who loved to be the center of attention.

Then there was Brendan himself. How would he describe himself, he wondered? Intelligent definitely. Well-learned, which Brendan understood to be a very different thing from intelligent. He was socially awkward and wondered often what he had done to attract Emma. He also had a tendency to be slightly self-centered, but in an indirect way- he never tried to screw over anybody to get what he wanted. And driven, he'd say, but then Micah would be a smartass and point out that a number of his projects were abandoned. This would of course prove Micah a hypocrite as he had just as many abandoned projects.

Upon realizing that, Brendan shot Micah a look. Micah returned the look as though he'd been thinking the exact same thing. The two had developed a sort of "one mind" as Micah had described it. Their thoughts and fears often seemed to mirror each other.

"We should probably start planning this stuff out," Micah said. "Get things started right away or else we'll forget to do it."

And that was where Micah and Brendan had their greatest differences. Micah could charitably be described as a man of action, but more accurately described as a fool who rushed in where angels feared to tread. But, he did manage to get shit done. Brendan was more methodical, and a bit of a perfectionist. The downside to this caution is that sometimes he planned and planned and forgot to actually do the project he'd been planning which is something that Micah often chastised him for.

"If we leave the project to you," he had once said during an argument. "You'll plan this thing right into the grave."

But he definitely needed to plan this out, otherwise it would be terrible. Perhaps a compromise of ideals was in order here.

"We'll need to plan these DnDs out," Brendan said. "But I agree we need to have a session as soon as possible."

"Makes sense," Micah nodded. "I recommend you create a Facebook group to put us all together so everybody can get notified of session dates."

"Sure," Brendan agreed. He sighed. "I don't want to call it Dungeons and Dragons though. I mean we're not gonna follow the Dungeons and Dragons model, are we?"

"Hell no. I thought we already agreed to that. We'll just go with Roleplaying… well that's kinda boring we need a name," Micah said, rubbing his chin and leaning back in his chair.

"You're right. Well we could always use the Mountain Cur label," Brendan suggested.

Mountain Cur was the name of his film company which Micah had been helping with lately. The two had done student films in High School, Micah under the name Wicked Panda Productions and him under REC Studios. They had combined recently under The American Gentleman label but then the aforementioned bad blood had resulted in the dissolution of that group. Mountain Cur was the latest incarnation, although Micah claimed to be doing short films under the moniker Identity Crisis Media.

So far there hadn't been a single film put out.

Now who's planning stuff into the grave, he thought sardonically.

"I like that… only let's change it up a bit. It's DnD-ish, so let's call it Clan Cur Roleplaying," Micah amended.

"That's great!" Brendan nodded. "You know, I think we can have our first session maybe in a month?"

"Can you have everything ready by then?" Micah asked.

"It might be a little raw, but I'm sure I'll be good by then," Brendan said.

"Okay," Micah nodded. "This weekend then."