Dungeons and Dragons x Overwatch

Danrielle Movreur, or Dani for short, fell face first into the sterile white polypropylene plastic floor panel from a height of approximately four and half meters. Said face crunched in a particularly unpleasant manner. Now a one-story high fall face first isn’t usually lethal, but it is always painful and potentially disfiguring.

“Owwwwwwwwwwwwww!” She howled as she rolled onto her back, curling into a foetal position and vainly attempting to rock the pain away. “Owwww…” She couldn’t even muster the energy to scream anymore, all of her focus drawn into trying to alleviate the pain.

It was thus that she didn’t notice the yawning blue portal situated approximately four and a half meters above her head close with a singular bubblegum-esque pop. And so too that she didn’t see the rather spectacular array of weapons drawn in her direction by an equally if not moreso spectacular array of persons wielding them.

“You uh alright there, missy?” An odd dialect of drawl filled the room. Dani blinked the cascade of tears from her eyes in an attempt to place the person to the voice. She wasn’t very successful, but she managed what looked like a vague brown and red shape with a wide brimmed hat. And was that wand of some sort that he was carrying? A fellow sage?

“Buhhh.” She rasped out in response, the air having been knocked from her lungs. Words had left her, which as she realized, was quite dangerous for one of her profession.

“No worries, missy. You’ll be right as rain in no time flat. Ain’t that right Mercy?”

What, what was going on? Dani’s head was spinning. She tried to stand up, but she hadn’t the strength to manage more than a slight uncurling. What had she been doing? Where was she now?

“Of course. But proper security protocols first, please. Athena, how’s the background check?” A female voice this time. From the red-brown sage’s right. Her left. No his left. Uh.

And then another feminine voice responded in turn, though this one sounded truly odd. Almost like a golem.

“No matches found.”

“None?”

“Correct.”

“Huh.” The woman, who might be a sage as well by the staff she was carrying, sounded confused. Join the guild!

“Tch.” A gruff sounding man sounded out from behind Dani. She didn’t have the energy to turn to look, but she could imagine an old soldier type with a knocked crossbow aimed at her back.

And then an even deeper voice roared out with the strength of a griffin backing it.

“Nonsense! A fair maiden is hurt and we’re trifling over nonsense. The first thing to do is get her healed and then we can question her all you want when she isn’t half .”

Ah, a knight! Finally some proper manners, as to be expected from a member of a knightly order. She would like to be healed very much, thank you!

“Fine.” The woman with the staff stepped forwards and raised it. Finally, a proper healing spell. Dani had feared that this adventurer’s guild or whatever it was didn’t have a proper healer among them.

A faint yellow aura began to envelop the staff, and then -- without an invocation, a beam of light erupted to engulf Dani as well. She immediately began to feel her injuries recede. Slowly at first, but it didn’t take too long in total, maybe half a minute for her to feel completely rejuvenated. Better than normal even. That was quite some healing prayer. The cleric must be quite high level.

“Thank you.” She got up and then bowed deeply to the woman. It was clear, not just from her proficiency, but also from the richness and strangeness of her garb that she was well respected. Perhaps even a high priest.

“You’re welcome. Now would you be so kind as to tell us your name and why exactly you decided to open a portal directly into Overwatch headquarters? A location that should be absolutely confidential, mind you.” The words were enunciated without any emotion, but the biting nature of them chewed on Dani’s mind.

“Ah. Oh. Well.” She took a moment to take in the rest of the room and its occupants. They all seemed to be equally as important in garb and armament, and disposition to. There was a certain confidence to the well-positioned, and they all had it in their bearings. “You see. Uh. My name’s Danrielle Movreur, pleasure to meet you. As to the reason why I’m here… I don’t know?”

“You don’t know.” The woman, Mercy?, responded flatly.

“No. Well, I remember attempting a teleport spell to Phyrith, but I suppose that’s not where I ended up.”

“Athena?”

“No known location by that name.” That disembodied golem again.

“Phyrith, huh. You said teleportation spell. Clarify.” Danrielle could tell Mercy was losing her patience, so she hurried to obey.

“Of course. You see, I was in Vrexridge and had business in the Red City. The Red City being Phyrith I mean, if you don’t know. So rather than taking a caravan, I was performing a teleportation, lesser grade three, to the city. I’ve done it a thousand times, but, uh, I suppose it didn’t go as planned. Where am I anyways?”

“You’re in Overwatch headquarters, and like Mercy said, I reckon if you don’t know, and we don’t know, then she’s right.” The red and brown wizard with the curious shaped wand answered her. “A security risk’s security risk, no matter how it’s wrapped. Vote for keeping her in the brig until Athena can dig up some actual intel?” He raised his hand. The rest of the members joined him in a chorus of aye’s. “If’n you’ll follow me, missy, we’ll see you to your temp quarters.”

“Oh… ok.” She eyed their weapons. Even though she was healed physically, she hadn’t prepared the proper spells to engage in this kind of combat. The downfalls of being a wizard and all that. She got up on shaking legs. A big bear of a hand reached out from behind to steady her.

“Don’t mind the cowboy. You won’t come to any harm, by my honor.” She turned around to see a giant of a man put a hand on his heart. The gesture did a lot to settle her nerves.

“You followin’?” The cowboy -- was that a local term, had already started walking ahead. She hurried to join behind him, escorted on all sides by his fellows.

The brig, or temp quarters, or whatever it was called, was amazing. Indeed, the entire headquarters was amazing. The amount of enchantments was staggering. Take for example, the one that ‘toggled’ the light on and off. Simple enough in construction, but that was just one example among many, and it was the number of them that astounded. There was the light, the water in the sink, the rotating bladed device in the ceiling (that one was a bit spooky, but the air circulation was nice), it all combined together to flummox the normally self-confident mage.

Honestly, she felt a bit inadequate. She was a very specialized mage. Every wizard secretly dreamed of being a generalist who could cast everything and anything whenever they wanted, but that was hardly the reality. For her case, she was specialized in enchantments and illusions, and while the former might suppose that she could construct a similar room, it was mostly in the realm of the biological that she worked. Artifice like this was beyond her, and the memories of her failed attempts and her old enchantment teacher’s pained grimace still struck raw even now.

She was currently probing the door, trying to understand the lock mechanism. The cowboy had assured her it wasn’t openable from the inside, effectively meaning whatever they decided to call it, this room was a prison for now. That didn’t mean it was the case in sooth. She had seen Lysanis break the magicked lock on a four century old elven tomb, which her entire party, her included, had thought impossible.

Her problem then was twofold. One, that she didn’t know such magicks, and two, that she wouldn’t want to break it even if she could. That’d be breaking her erstwhile hosts’ trust, and presumably inviting them to fry her with a well-timed fireball by the looks of the cowboy’s wand. It had that feeling of fiery or lightningy evocation about it.

It was only an academic curiously then that drove her to press her finger against the raised pad on the frame of the metallic door. It made a curiously light tone when she did so, and the other depressed pad above it glowed with a different sigil on each press of a different portion.

Certain presses trigger different sigils and tones, and occasionally it would ring angrily before returning to its neutral disposition. The first time it had turned red, she had feared she had angered it, but it didn’t seem to have a sentience. Rather it was just some advanced construct which presumably had some relation to the door’s locked state.

It was in the middle of one combination of presses that the door opened abruptly, though not because of any action on her part. Rather, it was that Mercy woman who had opened it from the outside. She was carrying a tray which held what looked to be some sort of stew if Dani was guessing right.

“Dinner. We’ll begin questioning tomorrow morning. Do your best to ‘remember’ anything you may have forgotten. Understood?”

“Yes.” Dani replied meekly, looking down.

“Good.” The woman turned around and closed the door behind her. Dani heard a clicking sound, and she didn’t need to test the door again to know it wouldn’t open. She took the tray and set it on the small table adjacent to her assigned bed.

The implement, a ladle sort of thing, was surprisingly useful as a food delivery mechanism, though she missed a few times getting used to the feel of it in her hand. She was tempted to just drink the soup directly, but part of the fun of travel was trying to learn new cultures’ oddities.

The soup itself was delicious, rich beyond compare. Well, she had something like it once in Cence at the King’s palace, but she had the feeling the food offered to prisoners was lesser than this organization’s standard fare. There was something completely, unabashedly arcane about this. The wealth, the power, the multitudinous nature of everything. It could only mean one thing.

She must have stumbled accidentally upon a secret society of Heroes! There had always been rumors, especially after the last demon war that the Heroes never truly went away, and instead were waiting in secret in case they were needed again. They obviously didn’t want to be known about, otherwise every king and oligarch worth his salt would be bothering them with inane requests.

Which was a problem and an opportunity. A problem in the sense that they probably wouldn’t want her blabbing about their location (not that she knew where they were) or about their existence (which she assuredly did know about now). Maybe if she really needed to, she could attempt the teleportation spell again.

But she didn’t want to. Because as she had noted, it was an opportunity as well. A truly delicious, mind-numbing-because-of-the-possibilities opportunity. She caught upon her own breath, her brain hitching at the thoughts she was conjuring. That was her problem, wasn’t it? What had landed her in this situation to begin with, but had also blessed her. The curse of the archmage, aware of the possibilities and able to pursue them.

She conjured her spellbook, a simple enough cantrip. She opened it to page sixty-three and sixty-four and selected two spells. This would serve her purposes. Satisfied, she closed the book and dismissed it. She turned off the light, as she had learned the button next to the door performed such an action.

Then, she shuffled on over to the bed. Tucking herself under the covers, she again marveled at the fresh, healthy feeling the cleric had been able to provide after such a nasty fall. Being a mage, she hated physical injury. It was one of the primary reasons she had decided to join the local enchanter’s guild and then eventual mage’s college as a youth. Wizened to an old age of twenty-four, she still remained as averse.

And one of the best ways to avoid injury was to avoid it before it even had the possibility of occurring. If a bandit pointed a bow at you and you hadn’t prepared for it, well, that was already too late. Best instead to have set up an anti-ballistics charm beforehand.

For cases like her current one, when the danger was unknown, but the agents of that danger were known, well, there was one very good way to preclude such unpleasantness. And if it happened to have the side effect of introducing a little bit of fun, a dollop of pleasure, well, who could blame her.

She closed her eyes and nodded off to sleep, with the mental construction of ‘Charm Construct, Greater’ and ‘Charm Persons, Greater’ echoing through her dreams.