"Another day, another dollar" was the first thing I said as I dipped my paper in the punch box on my way out from overtime with slightly tired drooping shoulders. The company I worked for used a tan metal punch box the color of a manila folder to punch out after the work day was over. It was an old system, but the few workers in the building had no intentions of cheating the system.
I worked in a school for special education children as a janitor. After all the kids went back to their dormitories or took their busses home, I would go through the buildings with my four co workers and clean the floors and walls. After that, I would bring all the trash bags to the dumpsters and replace them. The four of us switched duties daily, so tomorrow I would have to do the bathrooms. All of us hated doing the bathrooms.
After I punched out, I took off my cleaning gloves and tossed them in the dumpster behind the office buildings. Returning to my car, a small used dark blue Toyota my friend from work sold me, I drove out of the campus and on to the open road. I lived in upstate New York where aside from clusters of buildings like the school area and small city four miles north, there was a large amount of open road and fields.
A freight train track passed through the northern end of the city where Johnson's steel mill and the factories stood tall. The city wasn't particularly large or imposing, but for me it was more than enough. I had been to Manhattan as a child, but other than that, big cities were a rather alien thing to me.
I drove down a rather quiet paved road, the trees in bloom, the fields green and growing. It was late spring and it was rather nice to look at, if not a bit repetitive after a while. I put on the car radio and tuned it to my favorite classic rock station. It was playing Glory Days by "The Boss" himself, Bruce Springsteen. With the windows up, the inside of the car was blasting with loud music. I sang along as the music rang out.
"Well there's a girl that lives up the block. Back in school she could turn all the boy's heads" I was singing loudly with very little care for my surroundings. I was caught up in singing so much that I payed almost no attention to the myriad of signs on the side of the road reminding me that I was coming up to the train track crossing. I don't know what came through me, but I didn't look at both sides of the tracks when I crossed the tracks, and unfortunately there were no bumper stops to stop a car.
The train must have blared it's horn multiple times, but I did not hear it. And so, I died. My small car stood no chance. The train smashed into it, crushing the car and me completely. I don't know if I had the chance to scream or not because it was over so quickly.
When I came to, I was lying on a cold marble surface. Above me, there was a gold leaf coated ceiling with depictions of angels and fruit trees spanning it for at least fifty feet. Looking to my side I noticed something that made my heart almost jump out of my mouth.
The four heroes of Baxtoria.
I still had not fully came to an understanding of how exactly I was alive and what was going on, but I had a creeping feeling of dread. It all started from my memories of one of my first Dungeons and Dragons 3.5th Edition games I played.
I was only thirteen at the time, and I wasn't particularly smart when it came to things like nuance and political intrigue. Our dungeon master Paul was a balding man in his mid forties and the people I played with were ranging from fourteen to twenty years old. I was the youngest.
I had chosen a rogue because I was at the time obsessed with stealth and the stupid crits a rogue could get in early 3.5th. I also wanted to be the edgy loner type. Sure enough on the massive white marble summoning altar, I see the half elf, half human rogue I made lying there and looking around quite confused. Picture every edgy teenage rogue stereotype, and he would be exactly that. His name was Evan Silvertounge.
Next to him was the young female ranger, a human named Ashley. She was the concoction of the sixteen year old Irish guy of the group. She had white hair in long pigtails and wore a green and brown leather outfit that was horribly inappropriate for someone of her age. She had started with a magical bow with an extra plus one to all attack rolls because he had payed the dungeon master twenty bucks beforehand for it. Everybody else just thought it was okay and didn't press the issue.
Next was the battle hardened paladin. Sergei. A mace and shield wearing dwarf of Tymora. He was heavily hairy and spoke in a Russian accent which was explained away as his home accent. He always joked about Vodka and dice gaming. The guy who created him was the twenty year old who would come over high as a kite. Nobody said anything about it because he was a pretty cool guy at the time.
The final hero was Danzo, a monk made by the fifteen year old Iranian kid that had moved into the neighborhood a few years back. There wasn't much to say about the monk other than he was the quiet and stoic monk you would expect to see in martial arts movies. He wielded a red quarterstaff and wore brown robes.
Me, I was the dungeon master's stand in, the pack mule of the group. I was a tall oaf of a human, with light skin and a large oval like bald head and a lazy eye. I wore clothes only a poor country man would wear. A tan tunic and brown breeches. My boots were a old pair of dark leather. I had no combat skill whatsoever other than a stupidly high strength and endurance skill alongside a high movement speed. The dungeon master used him as a way to communicate with the party without having to speak outside of the game.
He wouldn't fight, nor would he interfere with the party, just give advice here and there. I was essentially the background character.
"Shit!" I cursed.
One of the first things my edgy rogue character did was kill off the pack mule because I wanted to spite the party for not giving me a weapon from a chest on our second day playing.
If there was ever a day I wanted to punch my past self in the face, it would be right now.
If I wanted to stay alive, I would either have to appease my edgy rogue or make a desperate escape almost immediately. Fortunately, the first job we got as a party was to clear a cave of goblins. At the end of it, the pack mule was given a bow and shoddy short sword by the party to defend himself. We had stayed in a nearby town overnight and as most parties do, got immediately drunk in the inn. That was when I would make my desperate escape.
Obviously I wouldn't steal any of the party's items or equipment, as that would turn out quite bad for me later on when the party became a higher level.
I would keep my head down and try to figure out just what to do and how to survive.
"Heroes! Welcome to the nation state of Baxtoria!", came the light voice of an elderly man standing in front of the large altar we lay on. How the story went was that we were created by the Gods and Goddesses above to strengthen the nation state of Baxtoria. There was no demon lord or evil dragon we had to instantly go out and fight. What were were were soldiers sent by the gods to strengthen the might of Baxtoria.
The man standing in front of the altar had light skin, deep purple eyes, a wrinkly visage and wore light purple robes that covered almost every inch of him except for his face. He held a golden crozier that was hooked at the top with a blue spherical gem the size of an adult's hand floating below the top end in his right hand. Behind him were men and women in similar robes all kneeling in reverence to us.
The first thing I heard made me contemplate trying to kill the rogue on the altar nearby even if it cost me my life.
"I don't care. Just tell me where I can kill some goblins" The rogue said as he sat up. What we didn't know at the time was that the summoning could easily be done multiple times and would only find out until much later that one of the previous summoned heroes tried to get cocky with the summoner and attack him.
He was instantly beheaded by the nearby guards before he could even swing his sword. The guards were very much the elites they were shown to be. They wore shining, but practical armor with the crest of Baxtoria, a golden bell with two crossing spears behind it.
The deep rich voice of Sergei calmed the excitable rogue a bit.
"Easy there friend, let's hear out what our summoner has to say" He said as he sat up and looked around.
The other two just quietly watched what was going on.
"Good thinking mister dwarf. We have summoned you to be adventurers and heroes of Baxtoria. Come, I'm sure you have quite a few questions. Let's go somewhere more comfortable" The man with the crozier said as he turned towards the far large entrance to what I assumed to be a cathedral.
We obediently got off the altar and followed the man down to the entrance. The kneeling men and women watched us quietly as we passed, our feet clinking and pattering on the marble floor. As with many of the campaigns that were run, the adventurers were always the most obedient in the first session when they didn't know much about the world and situation.
After we exited the building, we were greeted with a magnificent sight. We entered a stone courtyard that stretched like a semicircle for two hundred feet with short stone walls up to a human's chest rising from the edge. All around us were tall buildings and towers reaching up into the sky. Various crystal birds flew back and forth with packages and letters in their claws. the sun shone down from above us and men and women on horses and various lizard like mounted beasts trotted and scurried about roads and bridges connecting the massive city together.
All of us let out gasps at the scenery. I knew the general gist of it from the dungeon master's description, but seeing it in person was a very different situation. It was beautiful in every sense of the word. So much so that I didn't even know my jaw was hanging low.
This was the start of a crazy adventure.
Who knows what the future would hold for me?