"First of all, I didn't do it. Or at least I didn't intend to," I softened the incoming blow. "But when I added you to the party, this thing apparently started treating you as my NPC companion."

  "An NPC? Should I start every conversation now by telling you about how I took an arrow to the knee? I don't like this one bit."

  "It was that or letting you croak."

  "I'm serious, Buck. What does being an NPC mean?" Quint tried a few random motions, formed and released a fist. "Can't say I feel any different."

  "I've no idea," I admitted. "Up until it told me you were an NPC, I was running under the assumption the Sensates needed direct access to reshape you to their liking. Either they get you with revitalization, or they send in Mr. Clean there for a more hands-on approach."

  "Then how do you recon you fit into this? Why'd your revitalization not take?"

  It was a good question. One that's been weighing heavily on me. Before answering, I found an overturned barrel, set it straight and used it for a chair. Quint did the same with a log by a dead campfire.

  I wasn't thrilled with us parking like this. Not with the Sensates knowing where we were. But with what Quint was put through that morning, he deserved to be on the level. Even if it meant a delay for us.

  "There are rules governing this shitshow. Rules we don't know yet," I said. "Our floater friend couldn't poof me out of existence like he did with your people." These words put a scowl on Quint's face. "Sorry," I quickly added. "Point is, I'm special. Whether my only partial revitalization is to thank for it, or something else entirely, I don't know."

  "The one time your momma was right, eh? Must be nice to feel special." Quint's drawl was drenched in vitriol.

  "Hey, I never asked for this. I'm just playing the cards I've been dealt."

  "Easy for you to say when you've got pocket rockets, and I'm sitting here buck naked with seven-two off suit."

  The guy was hurting. I didn't blame him. At the same time, this defeatist attitude was getting us nowhere. For all we knew a squad of flying Sensates was on their way.

  I glanced at the trees. There were no vortexes there for the time being. This gave me a window to bring Quint over to my side.

  "Look, this doesn't have to be a bad thing," I started. Before Quint told me to go eat shit again, I threw in a quick, "You said it yourself. You don't feel any different. Now you can enjoy not getting evaporated on sight by those assholes. And you keep your revitalization virginity on top of it. Everyone wins."

  Quint rubbed his charred shoulder. "Sure feels like I'm a winner."

  "We're still kicking. And this appears to annoy the aliens. That's winning in my book." I heard no objections from Quint. "Now, if we level you up right and get our synergies going, who knows, maybe we can extend our stay in this madhouse and throw a wrench or two in their works."

  Quint smacked his lips, thoughtfully. "I do like the idea of screwing them alien sons of bitches. But step off thinking you're leveling me up. I ain't letting you treat me like your plaything, hoss."

  I wasn't about to tell Quint he didn't have much say in the matter. I needed him on my side.

  "If it makes you feel better, you'll get a veto every step of the way."

  "How about I poke around my scrolls, lay out what I come up with, and you tell me if it's any good?" Quint asked.

  Remembering the hassle of picking my own class and how long that took, I knew this was a terrible idea.

  "If we encounter a legal puzzle, I'll defer to your judgment. That's fair, no?" Quint nodded to my question. "You'll agree then that when you turn NPC and your first go-to is an arrow to the knee joke, you don't exactly paint yourself as an expert in the field."

  "Who died and made you the ultimate authority on RPGs?"

  "The whole wide world," I blurted out without thinking. After a heavy pause, I pressed on, "I'll make this simple. Which one of us knew Gary Gygax better? Me, I met him at a Gen Con once. What about you?"

  "Who?" Quint asked.

  I shook my head in disbelief. "And that's exactly why I'll be picking your shit. And you let me know if you hate an option too much."

  We were sitting in a goblin camp that looked lived-in despite the actual goblins getting wiped out before the camp existed. It was exposed from all sides. I moved us closer to the center of it, so that if we were attacked, at least we'd see it coming.

  "Could always mosey over to the woods," Quint suggested.

  I was happy Quint was getting over his angry moping phase and was starting to participate. His was still a stupid idea.

  "You know what lives in the woods in a world that has goblins and minotaurs?"

  "No."

  "Me neither. And I'm not in a rush to find out. Especially when your class is still listed as undefined." We settled down around what looked like a garbage heap of great importance to the camp's intended occupants. "Now, let's do this."

  I opened Quint's level-up scroll. Peeking past it, I saw the blank stare in his vacant eyes. He must've been looking at the same scroll from his end.

  I exhaled. "What do we need, what do we need?"

  "Can I stay a lawyer?"

  I had to scoff at his suggestion. "If there is a lawyer class, it's probably a rules lawyer. You don't want to be that. Terrible creatures."

  "I don't wanna lose who I am, hoss."

  "And you won't. You'll still be able to argue a case in court should the need arise. You'll just be listed as something more useful in a dungeon."

  "What, like a gimp?"

  "Dios mio," I said in exasperation. "If this is to go anywhere, start thinking Lord of the Rings, not Pulp Fiction."

  In the interest of getting Quint on board, I rushed past the initial stages, leaving him as a Human Male. I was a bit curious what other racial options there were, but if Quint was so ornery about his class, I had no desire to hear his thoughts on potentially becoming a Gnome.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  After confirming that selection, I was surprised the scroll then asked me to choose Quint's Class. It skipped traits altogether. For all I knew, NPC companions didn't get traits.

  "With me on the front line, we'll need a class that can heal. Don't want to rely on resting alone. The obvious choice here is a Cleric. A fancy twist on that would be Paladin – double the bashing with extra healing on top. But then we'll be fighting over loot and who knows, you might develop an overwhelming urge to give away our spoils. Paladin is a no-go."

  "In any case, both of those would want you to pledge yourself to a divine power." I noticed Quint's face going sour. "Yeah, yeah," I preempted his objection, "I doubt this has Jesus or his pa as an option. For all we know divine interventions here are supplied by a Sensate behind a curtain, so this path is a bust anyway. We don't want to put ourselves on their radar."

  "Why do I have to be a support?" Quint managed to squeeze in a few words during a short break in my ramblings.

  "Because I'm already a Fighter."

  "Just a Fighter? Isn't that boring and useless?"

  "Ah, what do you know. Fighter kicks ass. Sure, a Wizard might fry a tribe of kobolds with one fireball and I'll need to bonk them one at a time. Only when he's out of fireballs and there's another tribe of kobolds yipping at his ass, the Fighter will still be going strong."

  Quint yawned performatively.

  "We also want to be good at talking and convincing others to see things our way. That's kind of like being a lawyer, so you should be happy that's going to be your job. Mainly because I've already dumped my Charisma. What's more, we'll need to know how to deal with traps and locked doors. Ideally we'd want another party member for that, but for all we know we're on our own in this fantasy land. This means you'll need to shoulder that too, amigo."

  I grinned at Quint.

  "What?" he asked with a great deal of caution.

  "Since you like classes that are useful," I started as my grin widened with every word. "There is a class that can heal, is great at persuasion, can engage in thievery in a pinch, and even has a few offensive spells in his repertoire."

  "Hold your horses, Buck. Sounds to me like you're trying to push a pig in a poke on me. What's the catch?"

  "The class I'm thinking about, it's Bard."

  Quint stomped his foot on the ground. "Hear that? That's the sound of the other shoe dropping." "You really think I'd want to be a horny jester? That ain't me, hoss."

  "You're too young to know it, but Bard is bad ass. It was the first-ever prestige class. Everyone hated it back in the day because it was too strong. Horny jesters became a thing much later."

  That seemed to perk Quint up. "How strong?" he asked.

  "It was as strong as a Fighter, as crafty as a Thief, and had access to Druid magic. And Druid was already a better Cleric back then."

  "So you're saying this Sensate world is running the original Bard?"

  "No idea," I dashed Quint's hopes. "But even in the later editions where most people played Bards the way you suggested, it was still a very strong and versatile class. Precisely what we need."

  "You win, Buck. Bard me up and call me Dandelion."

  Bard

  From traveling minstrels playing bawdy tunes in roadside taverns to somber-faced skalds preserving their tribes' eddas in song, a Bard represents one of the oldest callings in most cultures.

  Starting skills

  Loremaster

  Performance

  Persuasion

  Five Skills of Your Choice

  Starting spells

  Dazzling Panache

  One First Circle Spell from Any Basic Spellbook

  Average Battle Prowess

  Average Base Spellcasting Efficiency

  "Hot damn, this is great," I said with a whistle.

  "That sure is a lot of skills," Quint supplied. "But I'm not hot on being all average."

  "Don't worry about it. That Loremaster skill is what got me all excited. If it works how I think it does, you'll be able to recognize some of the things we encounter. It kills me not knowing anything, and that skill seems like a good fix."

  "That does sound good. Now what do we do about those skills we need to choose?"

  This got us into the weeds of discussing our options. It was a slow and frustrating process, not in the least because I first had to explain and then demonstrate to Quint how we didn't have the full list available to us, and had to rely on guesswork.

  By the time both of us were red in the face from arguing, we expanded Quint's starting skills with Lockpicking, Sneaking, Trap Disarming, Survival, and Ranged Combat.

  The first three of those were easy to agree on. Then we started butting heads. Having seen the Survival skill on the Barbarian list, I knew I wanted access to it. Since we had no idea how densely populated this new world was, being able to live off the land was a no-brainer.

  Quint insisted that since he was a Bard, he should tailor his skills for thriving in the more civilized lands. He wanted a trading skill. Buy low, sell high. When I pushed against it, he took that as me saying that stealing things was the better alternative to buying them. We discovered there was a Picking Pockets skill, and he wanted it bad. My opposition to it came from us not having a quick save button. If he got caught with his hand in someone's cookie jar, we'd be screwing ourselves big-time.

  Ranged Combat was another point of contention. Quint originally wanted to get the Dodging skill. If they can't hit you, you can't die, as he put it.

  My original plan was to only give him social and utility skills. He persuaded me otherwise. We couldn't guarantee he'd never get into combat, but Dodging wasn't the answer there.

  You didn't win battles by surviving. You needed to get the other guy. It took some doing to get past his initial resistance, but eventually Quint opened up to the idea of Ranged Combat. He liked the skill, and after I watched him blow away the Sensate, I liked him having it.

  Then we entered uncharted territory. I didn't have to pick any spells as a Fighter. To my complete lack of surprise, there wasn't a list of options.

  At least we didn't need to argue. We both wanted a healing spell. Our experiments quickly landed us on Healing Touch. Our further attempts at producing a healing spell from the first circle, perhaps one that didn't imply having to touch the target, ended up fruitless. We went with the touch one.

  After that came the time for attribute selection. I told Quint how high they could go, and how because of that it didn't really matter what we did with his starting ones. I wasn't sure how true that was, but at least Quint more or less gave me free rein to adjust his stat spread.

  We ended up with what I considered a pretty respectable character sheet.

  Quint Callaway – Human Bard NPC Companion, Level 1

  Strength 8

  Agility 12

  Constitution 8

  Intelligence 8

  Perception 14

  Charisma 15

  Skills

  Loremaster 1

  Performance 1

  Persuasion 1

  Lockpicking 1

  Sneaking 1

  Trap Disarming 1

  Survival 1

  Ranged Combat 1

  Spells

  Dazzling Panache

  Healing Touch

  Since we didn't expect Quint to get into much if any melee combat, I felt confident about lowering his Strength and Constitution. I threw a couple points into Agility to bolster his Ranged Combat skill. For Intelligence, I wasn't about to have a companion who was smarter than me.

  Raising Quint's Perception so high made me feel bad about putting any points into my own, but I couldn't do anything about it at that point. Everything else I could spare went into his Charisma.

  When I was finished with the process and Quint wasn't voicing any objections, I confirmed that this was what I wanted him to be. His basic description changed from Human Undefined to a Human Bard.

  Leveling Quint up also restored his health to full. Full 22 hit points.

  "What is this bullshit?" I complained. Quint's shoulder was completely clear of any charring now, his lean frame visible under the torn shirt. "Why do you have twenty-two health as a Bard when I have sixteen as a Fighter. And your Constitution score sucks too."

  Quint flashed a slight smile at me. "Guess you were right, hoss. Bard is overpowered."

  Billy Joel Facts - Chapter 9: