Wicked Smart

It was very uncommon to see a woman at Friday roleplaying games night, least of all a woman quite like Yvonne. Later, nobody could remember who even invited Yvonne, so the assumption became that she just heard about the group and decided to drop in. Implausible as that all seems now.

Let me explain: Gerald's games night was made up of friends who’d developed an interest in tabletop roleplaying games, at first in school and college, and then in their first jobs and second jobs and third jobs, and so on into early middle age.

For many years the guys had gathered at Gerald's place and chucked the dice and had a beer or two and the mandatory large pizza with extra pepperoni and had some fun playing games. Well-established rituals were in place. Gerald was gamesmaster and decided which game was to be played. D&D usually.

When it came to the adventurer party, it was pretty much a given that skinny, diminutive Larry would be the tank, soaking up the damage while the others fought back, that underachiever Josh would be the mage or alchemist or whatever, the one who outsmarted the adversary, and Marl (short for Marlboro, short for Marlboro Man, a hefty, cowboy-hat wearing construction worker) would be the sneaky-pete thief or ninja who found his way to the rear and started blow-piping the enemy with poison darts.

Other guys came and went, so on any given night we might have several tanks or mages or thieves, but these handful of buddies were the core players, the guys who pretty much always showed up. Occasional wives or girlfriends might drift in for one night and try it out, but maybe they just weren't into the whole roleplaying thing, or in some way ended up feeling not so welcome. Only Cynthia (half-orc, half-elf, mixed ranger and cleric) was a regular female player, but she was a lesbian and so didn't really count.

I wasn't at that first session when Yvonne showed as I’d opted to stay at home to complete the tricky kneecap mission in Aggressor on PS5. I'd just seen it played through successfully on a Twitch stream, and I had to replicate the trick while it was still fresh in my mind. Turns out you have to shiv the taxi driver before he gets to the trap house, not on the doorstep as implied in the briefing. Which is why I didn't get to meet Yvonne in person that first night.

But did I ever read about it in the texts flashing at me:

OMG what just showed up

Arooga Harooba [bulging wolf eyes]

Not happening must be succuba sent by Satan 2 tempt us imto sin

Really? Can you guys just NOT be creepy around a woman 4 once?

Shaddap Cynthia your just jealous

And so on.

The buzz around new girl Yvonne was hot. Friday following I made sure to attend the session at Gerald's. But Yvonne didn't show. A despondent and half-hearted venture into the Catacombs of Owlwich was abandoned when it became apparent there wasn't really enough enthusiasm and nobody was even willing to go for the extra beer required to complete the expedition.

But as the others drifted away, Cynthia took me aside and let me know the insider scoop: Yvonne was hosting a ‘special games night’ tomorrow, Saturday, at her place and had invited the original group members. Cynthia was counting me in because I was usually in attendance. It was a solid solid from my solid old Cynthia.

We’d always got along. I'd stood up for her in a session the previous month when some out-of-towner orcs had been orcsplaining the rules to her, and I later kicked their collective butt back to the dark kingdom by using a special magic weapon known only to me and GM Gerald. The orcs were irked, but Cynthia and I had cemented our alliance.

"So what's the deal with this Yvonne, Cynth? What’s all the thirst about?"
"Well, you know, objectively she's quite the item. Plus being a hot girl with a liking for gaming makes her a rarity like even unto the finest wine."
"Like unto an elven mail hauberk."
"As it were a draught of the most powerful love philtre brewed by mage Trismegistus."
"Even so, my liegess. Got any photos?"
"Matter of fact..."

The selfie she showed me wasn't the best, Cynthia taking up most of the frame and duck-facing like crazy, but what one could see of Yvonne in the murky halfshadow at the corner of the frame was appealing enough. Gothicky but not too much so, late twenties, leather jacket, slim frame. Clearly out of our league and therefore both alluring and deeply suspect.

Cynthia and I headed for a waffle place and she filled me in.

"She started out modestly enough, a meek low-level hobbit trailing at the rear of the party," said Cynthia, offering me a hit of her hipflask. Cognac and something fruity. "But at some point she takes Gerald aside and confers privately. He's all nodding, smiling, which is never a good sign."
"A contented Gerald is a dangerously unstable Gerald," I diagnosed.

"No shit, Sigmund. So the party goes on, wrecking the dungeon, cleaning up on treasure, until we get to a certain chamber. Faced with a clutch of kobotrolls, we decide to make a tactical withdrawal, but what's this?"
"What?"
"The door’s been locked behind us. As arranged previously with Gerald, Yvonne was in league with the trolls and trapped us on the killing floor. All of us mercilessly slaughtered in that fell death room."
"Devious shit."
"After the slaughter was done she sashayed in and split the booty with the trolls."

"Trolls never honour their word."
"They did this time. Apparently, said DM Gerald, her hobbit dad had saved the trolls from the slave mines of Graktar and they were in her debt. Or some such shit that she'd patched together with Gerald in their little side-conflab."
"Gerald, who was nodding and grinning with his tongue hanging out."
"A happy dungeonmaster is a dysfunctional dungeonmaster, what I always say."
"When it's Gerald as DM, that goes double."
“Such betrayal.”
“And for what? He hasn’t got a chance with her. She’s playing him like a bard’s golden lute.”

I chewed on my waffle and swallowed another draught of whatever the fuck Cynthia was handing me in her hipflask. In normal gamer circumstances such treachery and overt subversion of the DM, and from a newbie player to boot, would merit instant ostracism. But it seems these guidelines don't apply when the transgressor is a hot babe.

Cynthia went on:
"So I was a bit miffed, and I said to her, ‘You know your character will never be able to live this down? Betrayal has tarnished her rep forever.’ And she said: ‘Who would even know? All the witnesses are dead.’ And I said, ‘We know, the players know.’ And you know what she said?"
"’Whatever happened to role-playing?’"
"That's right. How'd you know?"
"Obvious really. Baller RPG-ing if you think about it.”

So the next day was Saturday. Maybe I got a haircut specially, or maybe I had a booking at the hairdresser anyway, I can't recall. Cynth texted me the address. It was for 7pm, and of course it would be super-uncool to show up at exactly 7pm.

I was there at 7.02pm.

Gerald was already there, standing at the door of the apartment. The prick. So uncool to be eager like that. Making intros.
"Yvonne. This is our oldest member, Dave."
The prick. ‘Oldest member.’ True in the sense that I’d been going to his stupid evenings before anyone else. But not oldest in years. That was him.

Yvonne stepped out from the kitchen. Slinky, petite, without being hobbit-like, more a vampish elf than hairy-footed temptress.

We shook hands and while Gerald stepped out to get some beers I offered to slice crudités. The fact that we were going to snack on crudités and hoummus spoke of a level of sophistication unheard of in our group. Doritos and pizza was our standard fare, which played hell on the character sheets and dice.

"So Dave, what do you do?" asked Yvonne. She had a voice like a fur mitten being rubbed around your ear-hole. We stood side by side in the kitchen, cutting carrots into long strips.
"I'm an event shaper."
"An event shaper, sounds good. Don't know what it means but it has a ring."
"A piece of PR bullshit. There are PR events, right? Club openings, product launches, celeb reveals? I plant the subconscious desire in people to hear all about this crap ahead of time."
"Like a psyop?"

Smart cookie, Yvonne.
"Just like a psyop. Leaked rumors, crappy news snippets, those little hesitant words that the radio announcer starts to say, but then thinks better of? I dream up all that shit and plant it in the news, podcasts, on social media, whatever."
"Interesting. Does it work?"
"Between you and me? I doubt it. But we tell the client it works. And they believe it, because we've already prepared the way with targeted subconscious prompts that predispose them. On social media, whatever. LinkedIn for the true grindset wackos. So it definitely does work. Just not necessarily on the people we say it does."
"Great way to turn mindfuck into a job there, Dave."
"Isn't all nonmanual work just a form of mindfuck?” I put down my carrot and knife, turned all cool and nonchalant to face her. “And so what do you do, Yvonne?"

Before she answered, the doorbell rang. It was Gerald, back with the beers, along with Cynthia and Josh. Cynthia shot me a meaningful glance, but I didn't get the meaning, so it wounded up as a meaningless glance. General chitchat started up, and I never did find out what it was that Yvonne did for a living.

Though I would find out a lot else about her that night.

"Lady and gentlemen. The game I propose for tonight is a little bit... different."

Yvonne sat at the head of her dining table, the DM's screen set up in front of her. She was sipping on a sophisticated-looking cocktail with an olive in it. The rest of us had beers. To her right was Gerald, in the unaccustomed birddog-seat of a regular player, not DM for once, then, widdershins round the table, Cynthia, Larry Stungun, Marlboro, and myself - Dave - each with a character sheet before us.

Easygoing trance playing on the soundsystem. Smoking rules were relaxed since George and his asthmatic condition were not present. Some had regular smokes, Cynth had a fat spliff. Stungun had what looked like a crack pipe, but he told us it was a crystalline smokeable vitamin supplement.

"The rules will be standard D&D with a couple of tweaks, gents and lady." Yvonne had really taken on the Dungeonmaster's mantle with aplomb. Her confidence level was high for one so new to the group and she comported herself like she'd always been the DM. There was something almost otherworldly in her composure.

"You'll see that the character attributes on your sheet are FORTITUDE, BRAINITUDE, ZIPPINESS, CLOUT. They're self-explanatory. You won't miss the other ones."
"What about wisdom?" piped up Larry.
"Wisdom isn't really a thing, Larry. It doesn't exist in the real world. Have you ever seen anyone display any wisdom?"

Larry shrugged. Yvonne was quite definite on this point, and Larry seemed to accept it without any resistance. I concurred heartily. I always hated the fucking clerics and their high-minded way of preaching healing and spiritual values to you while bonking people on the head ‘bloodlessly’ with their blunt weapons. What’s so all-fired sagacious about that?

Yvonne went on with the briefing: "No need to roll the dice for these values. You can put any number you like on the sheet for any of these attributes, just don't take the piss." This was a radical approach but was also accepted without demur.
"You'll all start as level one,” said Yvonne. “It really won't matter so much."
"But it does matter," said Josh. "Different levels mean different spells..."
"Use whatever spells you want," said Yvonne. "Magic is all about conviction and not technique anyway."

Again, this unorthodox style of gaming caught everyone unaware. But there was a general mood of acceptance, of whatever. Of experimentation, perhaps. After all Saturday night gaming was different, it wasn’t Friday. Yvonne was different, there was a general sense of difference that permeated everything. It added a certain taste to the lite beer and the pepperoni pizza, like some new and unnamed spice available for a limited period only.

"So, character classes," continued Yvonne. She took a big slurp of her olive-burdened gin-vodka-tequila-whiterum cocktail and set it down. "The classes are Bigboy, Slipslider, Esotericist, Ghost-stepper and Brainspiker. All fairly self-explanatory. You'll already know what you want to be without needing to know any details."

I found that indeed I desired to be a Brainspiker, even though I didn't know what exactly that was. I wrote it on the sheet. The others were writing too, no doubts or hesitations. Gerald and Larry were Bigboys. Cynth was a Slipslider. Josh was an Esotericist. Marlboro was a Ghost-stepper. The party was nearly complete.

Only Stungun was undecided. He hit the pipe one more time, then staggered to his feet. Without another word, he walked out of the room, opened the apartment door and we heard it slam shut. Nobody thought this behavior was strange, which was in itself bizarre. Yvonne watched him go without irritation or delight, simply accepting of his sudden withdrawal as if it were just another stage in the game.

"Couldn’t decide, I guess” she shrugged. “That’s what substance abuse will do to you. Finally, folks, the alignments. I've put the most thought into this. Ethics is such a fascinating topic, don't you think?"

The music had taken a turn. It was a wilder kind of pulsating grimdark trance; not loud, but definitely more intense. She held up a sheet with a printout of her new ethical alignment system.

"I toyed with putting in some kinda third axis, making a truly 3D ethical system, but that didn't work out. Looks like morality is destined to be flat. The axis of lawful versus chaotic is as it's always been, but now considered as rules-based versus spontaneous. But the other axis is different: cool versus boring. Or nonconformist versus conformist, if you prefer."

Gerald put up his hand, like a kid in class: "What about good versus evil?" he asked.

Yvonne looked at him much as a kindergarten teacher would look at a troubled child who says he’s messed his undies. "We've moved way past good and evil, Gerald, we’re grooving like Nietzscheans in the beyond now. Okay?"
"Yeah, sounds good." Gerald beamed. He was assuredly not himself. Not expressing disgruntlement in the face of such bold and radical toying with his beloved ruleset? Most uncanny.

An image of him with a spike through his skull, blood pouring down his lank blond locks, flashed quickly though my mind's eye. I reached across the table and took a hit of Cynth's spliff.

Calm was restored for now. I considered the character sheet. My character took form. Oligan the Brainspiker, Chaotic Cool, was born, and he began to take over for me just as he was most needed.

"You're in a long dark tunnel that stretches forward for as far as you can see. There are no doors. What do you want to do?"
"We move forward."

"You're in a long dark tunnel that stretches forward for as far as you can see. There are no doors. What do you want to do?"
"We move forward."

It had been going on like that for a very long time. Twenty minutes? An hour, two hours? Several days? Nobody griped or called a halt. The players were deeply absorbed, even though it was objectively the most boring and futile roleplaying game ever played. Snacks were consumed and beers sipped. The game went on, hypnotic.

"You're in a long dark tunnel that stretches forward for as far as you can see. There are no doors. What do you want to do?"
"We move forward."

"You're in a vast chamber which stretches out as far as you can see. Phosphorescence on the walls, the dim light of a thousand billion fungal spores and lichen blooms, allows you to perceive that the cavern or room is apparently limitless. What do you want to do?"

So here we were at last. The actual dungeon. But there was no sense of relief at the end of our long sojourn in the darkened tunnel, just the businesslike deployment of the party spreading out in the vastness of the chamber. I could see it, I was in it. Time had stretched out but space had collapsed to this table huge as caverns.

Gerald barked squad orders: "Bigboys forward. Jolarch the Heft to the right, Ghant of Jukyll to the left. Slipslider Maryth the Dread moves center right, esoteric guy Habbard Sparkfingers center left. Brainspiker Oligan takes rear spot. Marlboro, your Ghost-stepper Flytte the Fleet: roam free looking for openings left or right. Ghost mode, bro."
"Roger that."

Yvonne moved swift fingers. The miniatures on the table were adjusted.

"You take but three steps forward when you come face to face with your deepest secret fear. Shapeless, formless, dread incarnate. What do you do?"
This sounded flippant, but in some unknowable way something real gripped us with authentic dread.

Each spoke in sudden unexpected honesty:
"I cower."
"Squat and raise my arms to protect the fragility of my face."
"I shit my hose."
"Go catatonic."
"Gibber and flail."
All spoken matter-of-fact, like the opening abyss of despair, that void of nihilistic emptiness, had become some inconvenient obstacle.

It came to Josh. The only one of all of us to remain unfazed.
"I cast a spell of Revocation and Banishment. Let's get this badboy exorcized."
"I like your style, Habbard the Esotericist,” said Yvonne. “Do you sincerely believe in your magic?"
"Excuse me?"
"It's a simple question, Josh. Do you have sincere faith in the puissance of your esoteric mojo, mister spellcaster?"
"I... uh... I guess."
"Not sincere enough. Your spell fails. Believe more next time. What's next?"

I found myself speaking up."I stop gibbering and flailing and try to brainspike it."
"Where's its brain?"
"Uh... What does it look like?"
"It's your deepest unspoken fear, Oligan. You know what it looks like."

I looked over to squad leader Gerard for guidance.

Yvonne caught my gaze. "No use looking to him, David. Only a Bigboy, boiling there in his big boy blood. Anxiety-locked, useless to you in your moment of need. Gotta use your own initiative, buster. Your fear, your fight."

I knew then what I had to do. I spoke the words. It all happened, it all unfolded...

Today we remain friends, but the Friday night sessions are over. Gathering round a table would bring back too many memories of our scary failures and our even scarier success that endless night playing Yvonne's Game.

But we've changed the venue for our meetups to the local pub, and our activity has switched from gaming to karaoke and reckless drinking, and though the vibe is different, it may actually be better, despite all that happened. We help Gerald throw the darts and we applaud him when he hits the board. He can’t speak any longer, but he smiles and is happy.

Nobody thinks of my words and what we all took part in. Where it all happened after I said those words there. I don’t know what those words I spoke there were, but it spiked their brains. It spiked my brain. The only brain that remained unspiked was Yvonne’s.

My work has changed somewhat too. I still implant subliminal suggestions on behalf of a cartoonishly evil PR outfit. But now I implant the suggestion of an equitable society instead of the desire to buy corn chips and slap smell-liquid over sweat glands. I’ve gone feral for fairness.

My employers don't know, or rather they do know in a certain way, but I've fucked with their minds to the extent that they don't know they know. Such is the power of the psyop when its imaginings are wedged into your skull with a slim and painless implement.

All in all, things are working out pretty good. I just wish there was a way to somehow get this jagged gnawing spike from out of my mind. Soothe that punctured cerebrum with the cool balm of normality. But Gerald and the others will always be there to tell me it can’t be so.

Bigboys and Esotericists, unbelievers who slipslide into my presence at night and tell me to hit it, to hit it hard.

And so I hit hard with my spike and everything changes.

END