Unfortunate Encounters

A Mattson Academy Tale

“Roll for initiative!”

Eric Masters giggled while his students’ dice rattled on the wooden desks pushed together to form a playing area. Teaching math was all well and good during the day, but DnD club was something he looked forward to every week.

“Wait, why are we rolling? We’re in combat?” One of the students, Pim Wizzek, paused with his hand held above the desk, dice unrolled.

Mr. Masters stood up and looked over the DM’s screen to double-check the scene. He was tall, lanky, and swam inside of his Hawaiian shirt. The four students’ miniatures, little plastic representatives of their characters, stood together on one end of the table and three squat, ugly little figures with daggers and hatchets on the other. Everything looked right. He’d planned the whole encounter out.

“You opened a door in the dungeon, and you found these three goblins. Of course you’re going to fight them.”

Pim narrowed his glowing green eyes and pointed to his large, bat-like, very green, goblin ears. His brows came down into a withering scowl.

Okay, Masters thought. Maybe I didn’t plan this out as well as I meant. He shuffled some papers around on his desk and scrambled to find some of the story beats he’d planned to thread in later. “Yeah, sure, you’re right. Totally my bad. Let me, uh, just come up with some names for them real quick.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” The table burst into boos and jeers, and Pim and his classmates threw crumpled-up paper balls at Mr. Masters.

“You didn’t even name them?” Pim hissed.

“Not cool, Mr. Masters!” Gurna shouted. The dwarven girl tugged on her long, braided pigtails and pursed her lips in a petulant pout.

Mr. Masters took quick account of his students and swallowed a massive lump in his throat. He’d been playing DnD so long that he didn't think much about the poor stereotypes of the myths and monsters the game housed within its manuals. Not so for the kids sitting before him, three of them understandably upset Folk, the non-human races of the magical world.

“You guys are right. This was insensitive on my part. Give me a do-over. You’re in the bowels of the castle.” He ignored them giggling at the word “bowels,” pushed up his glasses, and kept going. “The dark stone walls are damp, and everything smells like mold and mildew. You open a warped wooden door. It creaks in protest as its rusted hinges swing inward. Inside, guttering torches cast dancing shadows, and you’re confronted by three goblins scurrying around a table covered with alchemist's tools and bubbling concoctions in a riot of colors.”

Pim cleared his throat. “I step into the room and I ask them if they’re prisoners, or if they’re in service to the archduke.”

“Do you speak goblin?”

Pim again pointed to his ears and rolled his eyes, but Mr. Masters reached over the table and tapped Pim’s character sheet where it said, “Minotaur Fighter.”

“Uh, okay, fine,” Pim muttered. He looked at each of his friends in turn. “Did any of you take goblin as a language?”

The kids checked their character sheets, but one by one, each shook their head no.

Sweat trickled down Mr. Master’s back. He’d already offended them once, and he really liked this group. “Uh, it’s okay. Turns out these goblins speak common. One of them sets down a glowing flask and cautiously approaches you.” Mr. Masters considered doing an accent but thought better of it and used his normal voice. “Who are you? What are you doing down here.”

“We’re adventurers!” Gurna boasted. “We’re here to free you.”

“The goblins look at each other, and their de facto leader returns to his dangerous chemical work. ‘We don’t want to be free. The archduke pays gold while we scrounge for copper back in the mines. Leave us be!”

“They work for the archduke?” Pim pounded his fist on the table. “Let’s kill ‘em!”

“Fireball! I cast Fireball!” Gurna bellowed.

Eric Masters sighed. “Roll for initiative.”