Our D&D campaign – Small Embers – has inspired some amazing artwork and fan fiction, and the following is one of our favourites.
It explores the inner and outer world of Jeff – a boat captain who appeared in chapter 59: Jeff and the Leather Dynamo.
It was written by Lou Lyz – who also wrote the tale of Jenny the war camel and the Waiting Room. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
🎲🎲🎲
“Roksana! Roksana, we have to go!”
The door to the tiny dwelling slammed open, bringing with it an icy wind that cut to the bone and illuminating a woman wrapped in a shawl hunched over by an unlit fire.
Roksana tucked her needle neatly into the jacket she was mending, folding it deftly and placed it in the wicker basket by her feet. She rose quickly and made her way to the door to where her husband stood shivering in the cold, misty light.
“Roksana, please, we…”
A pale hand roughened by hard living yet warm with compassion alighted upon Jeff’s cheek, momentarily stilling his chattering teeth. Roksana took in her husband – clothes dripping wet, the muddy stink of river water and his wild manner. Jeff was not normally a man of great passions so to find him in such disarray alarmed her greatly. Overwhelmed by this simple display of kindness Jeff collapsed into his wife’s arms, sobbing like a child.
Roksana simply held him. It wasn’t always necessary to speak, just to be. In time his sobs quietened and breathing slowed to be replaced by a bone deep shivering.
Exhausted and numbed from the rollercoaster of emotion, Jeff allowed himself to be led into the tiny, one-roomed tenement whilst Roksana bustled around lighting the stove, placing a blanket around Jeff’s shoulders, hanging his damp clothes over a rack and placing a kettle on to boil.
Ashamed of his tears, Jeff palmed them off his cheeks and rubbed his reddened eyes. He watched Roksana as she moved effortlessly through the cramped space. Poor Roksana, she was often the butt of the joke. Pale, freckled, with deep red hair and broad shoulders she was not the traditional picture of beauty. Even more so as beneath russet brows her eyes were clouded blind. Yet here she was, taking care of him when he could not take care of himself, her belly swollen by their growing child, moving like a dancer between obstacles she could not see. In this moment there was no more beautiful woman alive.
She pressed a steaming mug of a fragrant herbal concoction between his trembling fingers, her hand resting upon his for longer than it needed to, and with a warmth that lingered long after it had gone.
“Now tell me,” she sat down opposite, arranging her tattered skirts around her. Another wave of shame washed over him. Twenty gold was a fortune to people like them. It could have provided for them for months if they were careful – got essentials for the baby, meant Roksana could rest once it came and meant they both could live in comfort for a while – but he had thrown it in the river rather than risk another visit from The Crooked Man.
“It was… he looked like a man, but I swear he was nothing of the sort. A demon or a devil maybe, but nothing human. I’ve never felt fear like that, deep down in my soul. I jumped in the river rather than face him and…” the lump in his throat nearly choked him again, “the other boatfolk, people I’ve known for years, refused to help. They pushed me back in the water, laughed as I nearly drowned. It was as if their minds had been clouded by some evil spell.
“Something terrible is coming, Roksy. I know it. I don’t know if the Crooked Man is an omen or the cause, but something is very, very wrong. You have to believe me. You do believe me, don’t you?”
The pause was agony. Jeff knew it sounded mad, could have half convinced himself it wasn’t real if it weren’t for the icy claws that tore at his stomach. He clung on to Roksana’s hand desperately, his last lifeline in a sudden, desperate decline.
She squeezed back. “Of course I believe you. Is the Leather Dynamo still there?” Even saying the name still made her smile. They’d named it in a fit of drunken euphoria, their first tiny leather-clad child, the path to their independence. They’d scrimped, working every hour they could to buy her and her name was always designed to bring them joy.
“No. The Crooked Man took her.”
Roksana nodded sadly, “By road, then. We can go to my brother’s.”
***
Frosthollow burned.
The caustic stench of dragonfire blanketed the surrounding countryside, adding streaming eyes and scorched lungs to the woes of the populace. Those that had survived at any rate.
On that dreadful day every corner seemed to spawn a new horror – walking skeletons attacking the living, people and animals running mad as they bled from their eyes and ears, although some may say they were the lucky ones compared to those whose flesh sloughed off their bones entirely. And then came the dragon. Was it a mercy that the beast bathed them all in flame, cutting short the madness and screaming and ending the suffering of so many, or had it stolen the chance from those who may have otherwise survived? That was a debate for another day. A day when the ashes had been cleared.
Whilst most were fleeing the city, a small but significant number were moving against the tide. Not soldiers or raiders but ordinary folks from the outlying villages coming to help. They hurried through the snow, laden down with blankets, healing herbs, food and anything that they felt could be of use.
“Are you doing alright there, Mrs Seeksorrow?”
Jeff and Roksana had found the older woman trapped in a cottage and surrounded by piles of mouldering bones. Armed with nothing but a fire poker and a frying pan somehow she’d managed to hold off her previously unobtrusive neighbours. As soon as they’d told her the coast was clear she’d busied herself gathering what she needed and packing it on a scruffy grey pony who seemed blithely oblivious to the situation.
The older woman waved dismissively, “Don’t worry about me and old Dodger. We’ll get where we need to go.”
She patted her pony’s muscular neck. He was her son’s pony really, and in a lot of ways they were very much alike. Strong, steady, happy to be just doing the work but with a surprising knack for violence when the time called for it. “Coffin” Dodger’s powerful little hooves had made short work of the few undead who’d come to disturb him. Dodger was used to death – he helped drag the dead to their final resting place and waited patiently until his master had tucked them in to the earth.
Oberon had always liked animals – perhaps finding a simplicity and peace in them that humans lacked. He’d run off to find help – of course it would be the gravedigger who first noticed a problem with the dead – and not come back. She hoped for the best but he was a Seeksorrow and the Seeksorrow men did not have good track records. In such a tumult of horror there were endless possibilities in how he could have died. None of them pretty. But you had to hope, didn’t you?
It was even worse inside the city. Fallen masonry, some broken, some burned, some melted by the sheer intensity of the heat, blocked streets. Smoke drifted like a living thing, a choking, creeping malicious entity. Bodies were everywhere – the dead, the dying and the broken.
Roksana stumbled, the unfamiliar ground treacherous enough for those who could see. Jeff caught her gently, noting her pinched features and ghostly pallor. He should have left her safe at her brother’s, but she wouldn’t be dissuaded from returning when she thought people might need help, “Are you alright, love?”
Mrs Seeksorrow planted herself firmly against the blown-out frontage of a shop, “Jeff, you go on. Roksy and I will do what we can for these people here. It’s safe enough to set up a triage station and the more we get on their feet the less we have to bury.”
Jeff nodded, dumbstruck by the sheer level of devastation all around him. Roksana placed her hand gently on his unshaven cheek, “Bring as many as you can to us. I love you.”
He kissed her soot-stained hand, “I love you too.”
It wasn’t until Jeff had disappeared down a smokey street that Roksy allowed herself a moan through gritted teeth. Mrs Seeksorrow dusted down her hands and fetched blankets and a canteen of water from Dodger’s back. “Right now, missy. Looks like someone wants in on the action. How about you focus on your breathing and let me take care of the rest.”
***
Up ahead there were the sounds of shouting. Jeff picked up the pace. A cart blocked the way, adding extra chaos to an already dangerous situation. Some were trying to shove it out of the way, whilst the occupants were desperately trying to defend their property, laying about the besieging folks with horsewhips and whatever else came to hand decrying them as thieves and brigands. The horse attached to the traces was beginning to panic, dancing as much as it was able within its harness, its eyes rolling in their sockets.
An inexplicable anger rose up in Jeff, “What’s going on here?”
One of the people in the crowd, a man with a blood-caked beard and eyes almost as wild as the panicking horse, pointed at the blockage. “These fools have blocked the road and won’t let us shove the damned thing out of the way. There’s people dying back there, and all these posh nobs care about is saving their stuff!”
Jeff cast an eye over the contents of the cart – a family, finely dressed but terrified and behind them… furniture, clothes, clocks and valuables. A cold anger descended over him. The encounter with the Crooked Man seemed to have used up all his fear. Drawing his knife he cut the straps holding the horse to the cart, watching with grim satisfaction as it bolted away to safety. A whip stung his face, drawing blood in an instant.
“You fiend! You monster! You’ve ruined my family!”
Jeff turned slowly, wiping the blood that dribbled down his head, squaring up to the irate gentleman who towered above him. Jeff did not care. “You’re blocking the road. You might want to flee but you walk, but you walk with nothing, just like the rest of us. If you were any kind of man at all you’d stay to help your city, but I don’t think you’re one of us, are you?”
For the briefest of moments Jeff thought the man might just show some spine. Send the wife and kids to safety, but shoulder some of the burden himself. He could respect that. Not so. The family scurried into the night, followed by jeers and insults.
“Never liked them much anyway,” the driver of the abandoned cart shrugged off her livery and gave a toothy grin, “terrible tippers at Ungarmas.” With a practiced vault she landed in the bed of the cart, heaving a gilt-framed portrait over the side whereupon it shattered on the cobblestones. “Come on, lets’s get this lot shifted!”
Antique furniture, exquisite instruments and delicate glassware became so much kindling as the people of Frosthollow set to it with a will, lightening the cart until they could move it off the road. Energised by a small victory they pushed forward into the burning streets to see what else could be done.
Jeff turned to the former driver and offered her a hand, “Jeff. Sorry about your horse.”
The driver laughed, “Magda. Don’t worry about him. He’ll find himself somewhere safe. Got more sense than the rest of us, I reckon.”
They picked up more along the way, Jeff somehow becoming the unofficial foreman directing bucket chains and, once a gnomish tinkerer had turned up with a truly inexplicable amount of explosives in a burning city, ordering demolitions for firebreaks. The fires were contained, then faded, then died.
Plumes of smoke still rose from smouldering buildings as the city surveyed what it had lost. Hundreds of people were dead. A huge portion of the city was a burned out husk. And the Warden was dead.
This last hit the survivors like a hammer blow – the great protector of the city fallen, his death unleashing the horror he’d fought so long to keep at bay that had then needed the dragon’s fire to burn away. Misery compounding on misery to lead them to ruin. The people put their grief to work, treating the wounded, sheltering the displaced and clearing the wreckage.
Jeff returned to the makeshift hospital to find it full of people. Dirty, wounded, shattered people caring for each other. And at their heart a miracle – a pale, gurgling, helpless, joyous miracle wrapped in a singed shirt. A light amongst the darkness, a hope for the future that drove him to his knees as he held his child born in horror.
Mass graves were dug, though the gravedigger was not found amongst the slain. Some said they’d seen him with The Crooked Man – Jeff’s ill omen observed by many and now equally reviled in the city – seemingly sealing his fate. His mother looked for his face on every body she and Dodger took to the pit, her tears wetting the pony’s ashen mane. She knew the grief she’d bought marrying a Seeksorrow.
The absence of the Bluecloaks only became apparent after the clean-up had started. Some said as the fires had raged they had fled, sailing off to Gods knew where and leaving the people to die. As many stories were said of their cowardice as were whispered about The Crooked Man – the architect of all their ills. A bogeyman that stalked the nightmares of the survivors.
Roksana tended to the wounded, little Wulf strapped to her chest, the returning sunlight after what seemed like an age seeming to flow into her. What first began as a tingling soon spread as magic blossomed in her veins. Ashen ground sprouted in her wake and wounds healed at her touch.
It took Jeff several days before he dared go down to the waterfront for fear of what he might find. But there, bobbing on the water like a duck amongst the wooden wreckage of finer boats, sat the Leather Dynamo. Jeff wept with joy into the dark hair of his newborn child. “See that, Wulf? That’s yours. She’s a survivor, just like us. Everything’s going to be all right now.”
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Thanks again to Lou Lyz for writing this story. For more fan fiction, to chat about the show and to meet some friendly people, join our Discord community: the DiceCord.
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