and Stumphammer, my profane, drunken dwarf warrior.
And most of all Ulvaak, the half-orc assassin (with his sentient sword, Bloodgusher—no, really). This was the last “character” I played before the gun of hormones fired me headlong into forever pursuing sex, and it shows.
Ulvaak was strength and violence incarnate. I was so addled with confusion, loneliness, and lust that I was in danger of falling out of the class-clown clique I normally hung with. Reciting Monty Python bits, paraphrasing
Saturday Night Live
sketches, trying to make Richard Pryor and George Carlin routines fit our everyday conversations—only now, puberty was a bag of cement lashed to my ankle. At least conversationally. Everything I thought and said now had this burning undercurrent of “How’s this going to get me laid?” And wit can’t have an agenda. So I clammed up, and I spent the summer between sophomore and junior years swimming, lifting weights, eating salad and fish, and clumsily trying to reroll the sorry stats I’d been given at birth.
So Ulvaak became my proxy during my clamp-jawed sophomore year. But he never made it past that summer.
18
Strength. He could punch through walls if I wanted him to. I all but bullied my Dungeon Master into giving him Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength, upping his Strength stat to 19.
18
Constitution. He could take the sting of a cockatrice tail, endure the deadly vapors of a green dragon’s breath, or absorb a stab from one of his own envenomed daggers (worn in bandoliers across his blast-furnace chest) and shrug it off like a mild cold.
18
Dexterity. Fast—two-handed attacks, thrown knives always finding their mark, dodging an enemy’s blows like an oiled serpent.
I fudged some of these rolls, by the way . . .
And, finally—
3
Charisma.
Three.
Repellent. Frightening. Not only did I conceive of Ulvaak as physically ugly—eyes crookedly set, a sneering maw full of gray teeth, horribly scarred from a slime monster attack—but also obnoxious and unpleasant. Cruel jokes, quick to anger, slow to calm—he was comfortable being everything that, in life, I wished I wasn’t. Even at my politest, with my braces and cystic acne and snowman torso, no one wanted anything to do with me. So I created a fantasy character who had the strength, speed, and guts to back up every awkward remark I spent my days apologizing for. My comfort during the loneliest days of my adolescence was happy nihilism, which carried an ebony sword.
I left the hideous, confident bastard on a demon-fueled plane of existence. I remember it exactly—me and three other friends at our fourth friend’s house. In the dining room. Sitting around the table—paper, pencils, dice, and lead figures to represent our characters.
The Dungeon Master had taken my figure off the table, to the side, to represent how he’d gone through a hell portal to a different plane of existence, where the sky was roiling blood and the ground was the scabbed-over corpse of a dead god. Ulvaak stood, in dragon-hide armor and a tattered cloak, holding Bloodgusher one-handed. The demon who ruled this hell plane—I forget his name— parlayed with Ulvaak, offering to send him back to the material plane of existence if he’d act as the demon’s messenger and assassin.
Ulvaak served no man, monster, or demon. Knowing that slaying the demon lord would, in effect, destroy the hell plane he now stood on (it being a manifestation of the demon’s ambition and avarice), he slung Bloodgusher like a burning shard from a graveyard explosion. It sliced the demon from shoulder to belly, and Ulvaak, the Black Blade of Gamotia, laughed as nameless damnation disintegrated beneath him and a sky of blood swallowed him whole.
Then I went to a pool party—the first one I was skinny enough to swim at without my shirt. I made out with a girl, and the curve of her hip and the soft jut of shoulder blades in a bikini forever trumped the imagined sensation of a sword pommel
And most of all Ulvaak, the half-orc assassin (with his sentient sword, Bloodgusher—no, really). This was the last “character” I played before the gun of hormones fired me headlong into forever pursuing sex, and it shows.
Ulvaak was strength and violence incarnate. I was so addled with confusion, loneliness, and lust that I was in danger of falling out of the class-clown clique I normally hung with. Reciting Monty Python bits, paraphrasing
Saturday Night Live
sketches, trying to make Richard Pryor and George Carlin routines fit our everyday conversations—only now, puberty was a bag of cement lashed to my ankle. At least conversationally. Everything I thought and said now had this burning undercurrent of “How’s this going to get me laid?” And wit can’t have an agenda. So I clammed up, and I spent the summer between sophomore and junior years swimming, lifting weights, eating salad and fish, and clumsily trying to reroll the sorry stats I’d been given at birth.
So Ulvaak became my proxy during my clamp-jawed sophomore year. But he never made it past that summer.
18
Strength. He could punch through walls if I wanted him to. I all but bullied my Dungeon Master into giving him Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength, upping his Strength stat to 19.
18
Constitution. He could take the sting of a cockatrice tail, endure the deadly vapors of a green dragon’s breath, or absorb a stab from one of his own envenomed daggers (worn in bandoliers across his blast-furnace chest) and shrug it off like a mild cold.
18
Dexterity. Fast—two-handed attacks, thrown knives always finding their mark, dodging an enemy’s blows like an oiled serpent.
I fudged some of these rolls, by the way . . .
And, finally—
3
Charisma.
Three.
Repellent. Frightening. Not only did I conceive of Ulvaak as physically ugly—eyes crookedly set, a sneering maw full of gray teeth, horribly scarred from a slime monster attack—but also obnoxious and unpleasant. Cruel jokes, quick to anger, slow to calm—he was comfortable being everything that, in life, I wished I wasn’t. Even at my politest, with my braces and cystic acne and snowman torso, no one wanted anything to do with me. So I created a fantasy character who had the strength, speed, and guts to back up every awkward remark I spent my days apologizing for. My comfort during the loneliest days of my adolescence was happy nihilism, which carried an ebony sword.
I left the hideous, confident bastard on a demon-fueled plane of existence. I remember it exactly—me and three other friends at our fourth friend’s house. In the dining room. Sitting around the table—paper, pencils, dice, and lead figures to represent our characters.
The Dungeon Master had taken my figure off the table, to the side, to represent how he’d gone through a hell portal to a different plane of existence, where the sky was roiling blood and the ground was the scabbed-over corpse of a dead god. Ulvaak stood, in dragon-hide armor and a tattered cloak, holding Bloodgusher one-handed. The demon who ruled this hell plane—I forget his name— parlayed with Ulvaak, offering to send him back to the material plane of existence if he’d act as the demon’s messenger and assassin.
Ulvaak served no man, monster, or demon. Knowing that slaying the demon lord would, in effect, destroy the hell plane he now stood on (it being a manifestation of the demon’s ambition and avarice), he slung Bloodgusher like a burning shard from a graveyard explosion. It sliced the demon from shoulder to belly, and Ulvaak, the Black Blade of Gamotia, laughed as nameless damnation disintegrated beneath him and a sky of blood swallowed him whole.
Then I went to a pool party—the first one I was skinny enough to swim at without my shirt. I made out with a girl, and the curve of her hip and the soft jut of shoulder blades in a bikini forever trumped the imagined sensation of a sword pommel
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