Dane needed a specially-prepared kiddie stool to get on the level with the rangers, but soon enough he also had his own kiddie-sized tankard of ale, which felt… wrong.

“First things first,” he said. “We spread out everything we’ve got, we look it over, and I ask you if there’s anything you absolutely refuse to do.”

“Listen to you?” Niederhauer suggested, but more lightly than Dane was used to.

“We’ll need a healer,” he said.

The LT leaned forward. “Everyone is aware of the mission, and we are willing to do what’s necessary to ensure the mission is a success. I’ve given you dispensation, which means you figure out who’s best suited to the healer position.”

Dane gulped, and felt their eyes on him. While he welcomed them listening to him, he couldn’t help but yet again be intimidated by the task at hand and the casual lethality of these people, and their blithe acceptance of everything the LT said. One part of him was real glad he’d only gone through Basic… those years ago.

“Okay, cards out.”

They spread their cards out, which was a depressing mix of commons and uncommons. He had Silent Step and Anything Can Be a Weapon. Burst Arrow made its awful reappearance. Daniels had lost his cards when he was killed, and both Niederhauer and Push had gone core. Add to that they’d sold several of their starting cards for arrows and bolts, and he sighed.

“Just shittin’ ya, pogue,” Pugh said, and produced Jack of All Trades and Acid Darts.

Jack of All Trades claimed to give you ranks in basically any skill you didn’t already have for 2 minutes. Acid Darts was exactly what it sounded like: shooting darts made of magic that did acid damage to your target.

Guzman produced hers as well, one Blade Barrier, an uncommon. This was a defensive aura that put up a rune shield capable of absorbing a bit of damage before breaking. Lastly, she came out with Slippery, a common that gave the user +1 on all Attributes for dodging and resisting debuffs. The game had given her the choice between ranger and rogue from the start.

Rivera came up with Strength of the Bear, and when Dane looked at him expecting a few more cards, shrugged instead of answering. The card, already level 2 somehow, read ‘Gain +9 hit points per player level’, and that changed to ‘Gain +63 hit points’ when he touched it. He slid it back to Rivera.

“You keep that. Don’t put it in Core, just keep it equipped.”

So they had seven cards between them… but luckily they had a big old sack of coin. Pretty soon that sack was a tad lighter, when the beers arrived

“Here’s what I see,” he said, and made sure to make eye contact with all of them. “It’s clear Rivera’s our tank. He needs armor, hit points, a way to keep opponents focused on him, and if possible, a way to whittle opponents down faster than just hitting with his fists. For right now he gets Anything Can Be A Weapon. It’s not much.”

“Next, we need a ranged attacker… support role. Someone to fire the explosive arrows and buff the rest of the team. That’s likely a bard or a ranger. Guzman has natural Charm… wait.”

He inspected Guzman again, then looked down at the Jack of All Trades card.

“What skills do you have?” he asked her.

“Survey, Mingle, Carouse… and I bought Acrobatics.”

“That’s perfect. I have an idea. Everybody finish your beers.”

The door to the card shop clanged against a set of chimes, jingling and jangling all different notes at various frequencies while waking up the man at the sales desk. There weren’t any other proprietors in the shop, and for a moment Dane wondered if maybe the place were somehow out of cards or otherwise unable to serve them. But the man at the desk pinned them with his eyes. A deep red-amber, Dane saw, as they seemed to float forward to him, riding upon his gaze.

“Velcome to my shop of vonder and dreams. You seem shy, young adventurers. There is no need to fear me. Not so much as the monsters of the deep dungeons in which you quest, yes?”

“No fucking way,” Neiderhauer yelled, backing up a step. “That dude just fucking charmed us.”

“Indeed I did,” the man said. Dane’s head felt clearer all of a sudden, and he saw that the shop proprietor was wearing all black clothing, draped over with a cape. He snapped over to his Survey ability and checked out what exactly stood smirking before them.

Dracuposer

Some beings spend eons of near death agony to earn their place in the eternal darkness. Others just buy a cape. The Dracuposer is a being that has used magic means to attempt to transform into a vamp, but has only partially succeeded.

Dane didn’t like that. He inspected further, trying to find out more about this outlandish species.

Dracuposer species bonuses include the following:

Hypnotic Stare. At the start of any encounter you may attempt to draw beings to you. In combat this gives you one free round of action, and any attack delivered during that round will automatically inflict its maximum damage allowed if it hits. Night Owl. You are a creature of the night. As such, during times of night during which the sun is not present, you receive a universal +15% resistance to all forms of attack and magic. However, during daylight hours, the universal resistance modifier changes to -15% resistance. Undead Debutante. Your Charm is boosted by 5 and Sway is boosted by 2 during cordial conversations and dialogues. Wispy Wispy. A dracuposer that is near death will break into a cloud of mist, floating through the air to the place he last slept. Here his mist will reassemble. Unholy Magic. At night Dracuposers have access to a list of magical spells and forces, uniquely chosen by each individual. During the day, their access is cut off and non-existant.

Dane shot up an eyebrow, flashes his eyes to meet the strange stare of the proprietor’s own. The sales drac shrugged. “Vish I could say I chose this, but it sort of chose itself. At least I don’t have to drink any blood, hey? Vlah! I don’t vant to suck your blood, hey?”

Lieutenant Daniels starting booming laughter. “Ay, tis a good thing that you don’t wanna taste. I don’t think your belly would appreciate a pint of my own. We’re new to all of this stuff, recent immigrants to the area—”

The shopkeeper snorted but held his tongue. Lieutenant Daniels gave him a stare. “But it would seem that first we need to build up a proper deck. Would you be able to help us with that laddie?”

“Call me Vick. Yeah, I vas pretty good with card games back before all of this. Vat do you have, vat are your species abilities, tell me everything about you all.”

The party settled down over the counter, Daniels and Dane boosted by high chairs, and all of them shared their various abilities and cards. Vick drew out a series of small boxes from the back, inside which sparkled the greens, blues and sparkled foils of an amazing amount of stockpiled cards.

Dane watched it all in awe. In this world at this time that much power must be worth a fortune.

They got down to work.

***

Dane watched the wannabe vampire expertly draw out and then fan out a whole host of cards from his big boxes in smooth, practiced motions. The cards here had a number of colorful borders, some with foil on them. He noted white borders, black bordered cards with virulent purple and green threaded through, blistering red with flames, white and marbled, with holy golden light flowing down from above. He noted the orange icons (mythic), the yellow of rares, silver uncommons and a large number of white commons.

“I haf cards for trade, or for coin, of course. I also gif out a free common vis every purchase off a rare or higher.” He smiled, full of welcome. Dane couldn’t help but like the guy.

Dane hadn’t expected prices, especially after seeing this guy’s fake species abilities giving him such a crazy boost on dealing.

He spent some time sifting through the cards. He found tons of spells: invisibility, walls of bones or blood or fire or spears, wards against evil, or beasts, or fire. He found breathing under water spells, jumping really high spells, falling really slow spells, and even spells capable of making new spells each morning, only to have those spells disappear each night.

He naturally began to sort: White with the radiant sun shining from above was Holy, the reddish black lava with the tiny screaming faces peering up was Unholy. After that, spell cards went in terms of magic schools: Divination, Evocation, and so on, but a number were for Order, a smooth steely border, and Wild, a border that sort of looked like green vines crawling over each other, which overlapped the text box and the illustration in a couple of places. Not long after he came to cards without borders, but rather a neutral bluish that he first thought was for water, but didn’t have any Aspect.

“You haf a good eye, Mister…”

“I’m looking for something in particular,” he muttered, rather than answering.

“A man about hiss business… off course, perfectly undersstandable. Vat might you be in ze market for, exactly?”

“Mana regeneration,” he said. “We’re in need of more spells.”

He’d found the card he needed, but slid it back under the others as if he hadn’t seen it.

“Zose can be pricey,” the shopkeep said.

“Power can’t be cheap,” he responded.

Another box appeared, and several cards were slid out and onto the countertop before Dane. One of these was Mana Beacon, an uncommon that boosted mana regeneration for only 2 minutes at a time, with a 10 minute cooldown. The next was Mana Battery, a common, which was even worse: a one-time boost to MP for one player, like Strength of the Bear. The last one, Nexus Siphon, was the one. First off, it was rare, which would give him the common he really wanted. Second, it gave everyone double mana regeneration for 10 minutes, with a 5 minute cooldown. That was unbeatable.

“This is the one.”

“I am afraid zat will be fifty gold,” the shopkeep said.

“Half that,” he said, and ignored the pop up telling him he’d failed a Charm (Sway) check.

“My deepest apologies, but I cannot let it go for under forty-five. Ze market for zeese types off cards iss in higher demand zan you vould imagine.”

This was half their earnings so far, but it had to be. This slimy bastard wouldn’t part with the card he’d found, not if he knew what Dane had in mind. He forked over the gold, tried not to despair over the weight of his sack, and scooped up the common he’d found.

“A pleasure doing business vis you.”

He peered at it while the bell dinged and Guzman walked into the shop. Dealmaker, the card read. Passive: Gain +5 to Charm and Sway when dealing in trade or coin. He turned and passed it to her without the Dracuposer being able to see, and murmured, “Make sure it’s not a pleasant conversation.”

Her upper lip curled into something halfway between a sneer and a grin. “Don’t worry.”

Dane hung around the shop and listened as the conversation began muted and cordial, but soon erupted with a roar of fury. Specialist Guzman was generally quiet and reserved, one of those traits that usually signaled what Dane’s buddies called an avalanche personality. One minute everything was fine, and then the next minute you saw your inevitable doom sliding toward you. And toward the end it got real loud and awful, and you wished you could just get away from it, but of course it was impossible: the avalanche was everywhere, surrounding you.

This went on for damn near an hour.

At about the thirty minute point, he signaled Daniels, Pugh and Rivera, who headed in. Like a furnace, the ugly heat of the argument roared out of the open door, and people on the street stopped and stared. Dane politely closed the door so they could go back about their business.

Daniels, Rivera and Pugh only spent about ten minutes in the shop, before reappearing in the middle of a hissing match. The terms ‘douchebag’ and ‘vile harlot’ were being used on both sides with abandon. He closed the door after his three compatriots emerged.

“How’d it go?”

Pugh just chuckled. “We just made out like bandits.”

***

Lieutenant Daniels didn’t need Dane to tell him it wasn’t wise to stick around, or even dump an armload of cards on the tavern table in the Five’s city. They humped it out of the city with cards hidden, and met back up with Prissy and the Otherworlders about an hour’s hike later. This allowed Dane to compose himself in the face of seeing Prissy again, because he definitely couldn’t afford to get off-mission on account of a high school crush. Also, he was pretty sure she and the other cat person were into each other. Also also, he didn’t think it was going to work out with anybody who wasn’t roughly his size, unless he found a grow-bigger spell. Also also also, he really needed to keep his mind on the mission.

So… cards. A whole big stack of possibilities he had to sift through and combine into ways for these people to not get him killed.

Right now, it had to look like this: Rivera could be nothing other than the party’s tank. After that, he needed a healer for the team, but Guzman might go nuts on him if he assigned her the healer part. That left Pugh or Daniels… would the LT lose his mind if he was given the job of casting healing spells. Guzman had the Agility to be a ranged DPS, and…

“No,” he hissed. “You know what? No. Everyone listen up. We’re sorting cards, right now. Sort out all all spells in this pile, all special abilities in this pile, all the summons here, all the manifests there, and all the items there. Then I want us to pick out anything that looks like it’s got Rivera’s name on it. We’re especially looking for passive abilities that won’t take any mana, or pictures of punching things to death. Or they say ‘you become an Adventurer’ near the bottom.”

“You heard the man,” Daniels barked.

They got to it.

They had close to three hundred cards, but in under five minutes Dane began to spread out everything they’d chosen. Niederhauer picked up The Right to Bear Arms, equipped it, then terrorized Pugh for a few moments with actual transformed bear arms, complete with claws. Daniels picked up Hirsuit, which equipped him with a suit of thick wooly hair. This card conferred basically nothing except some cold resistance, but was good for a laugh.

Five minutes later they had Rivera’s Strength of the Bear, along with Bear Totem, Taunt, Berserker’s Rage, Combat Reflexes, Nullifier, Down But Not Out, Find the Weak Spot, Roid Rage (a mythic), and Brawlerina. They had plenty of others, but threw out some, such as Have At Thee, useful only with a one-handed weapon, Doolittle, which would let Rivera talk to furry woodland creatures, and Full of Hot Air, which would allow him to perform leap attacks… with farts? The propulsion method wasn’t clear. The anti-surprise card An Eye In The Back Of Your Head was promising, and Dane had Rivera keep it in his inventory for night’s watch, so he’d be immune to surprise.

Most of these were passive bonuses: a bunch of hit points, attribute buffs, bonuses to dodge, and that Weak Spot one made him stronger and tougher the more damage he took. He had only three ‘active’ cards: one aura, the taunt action to aggro enemies, and Down But Not Out, which Dane wasn’t sure on. It was a good heal, 5 HP every 5 seconds over the course of a single minute, but Rivera needed to be doing absolutely nothing for it to actually work. With luck, Rivera would be in the middle of allies picking up the slack, and that would give him the time he needed to use it.

“Okay, looks like Roid Rage is the best of these. Let’s Core Lock it.”

The distinctive red-orange shimmer of power soon announced that Rivera had graduated into being an Adventurer. They followed this with Berserker’s Rage, a rare, which again flashed with a blistering reddish color swirling around the golem’s feet, with fiery twinkles of red orange drifting up around the rest of his body. Inspect now showed him to be a Barbarian class. The last card was a toss up between Nullifier and Brawlerina, both of which were rare. When Rivera touched Nullifier, the card showed that he would become a Spellcrusher, but with Brawlerina, he would become a Rocksmasher.

Dane peered around at them, but saw the suit of wooly hair on Daniels, and the stupid grizzly bear arms on Niederhauer. They weren’t going to be any good in helping with the decision making. “Go with Brawlerina. Rocksmasher sounds like what we want.”

This last time, when Rivera core-locked his last card, the dance of swirling energy around him was much more pronounced. A deep thrum accompanied the change, like a war drum being whacked by fifty drummers all around them in a huge circle, along with a dusty, primal smell.

“The rest of those get equipped,” Dane explained. “Get used to using the Taunt to keep enemies in your face, and the Totem when that’s not working. You can see the icons, right?”

Rivera grunted and nodded.

“You’ll need to memorize which are which. I think you can prioritize them by swapping the order around, but it shouldn’t be hard to memorize what you’ve got and punch it when it comes time.”

“Ooh ooh, speaking of punching, punch me!” Niederhauer cried.

“Not a good idea.”

“Don’t be a puss, Dane.” He turned to Rivera. “Go on, give us a whack. Rage that shit up and hit me.”

“Don’t–”

Rivera’s eyes and the strange lines around his joints all flashed a dangerous, warning red. His fist shot out and crashed into Niederhauer’s face. One second Niederhauer was there, and the next second he just wasn’t. Dane found him crushed against a nearby tree, with zero hit points. Niederhauer let out one final, shaky breath, before half his inventory spilled out of him and he respawned.

By the time Niederhauer returned they were having lunch while Dane got their cards in order. The others ribbed him for being such a dumbass, which he took well. The good-natured idiot came over and joined Dane at the table while the others left him to his card sorting.

“Those cards are no joke,” Niederhauer said.

Dane spent the next few hours, and stood watch with Rivera for the night while they camped out here, in a field outside the Five’s big walled city. He called for quiet, sorted cards into various piles, sometimes sorted them into various piles, and tried to make the best card into the starting place for a class build. It was the sort of mental work he’d been drawn to in engineering and programming: total focus on stringing all the complicated parts together into a greater whole. Sometimes the second card he had picked for someone ended up being needed for someone else, so the whole build fell apart. They’d gotten a lot of commons, which were just single tricks. What he needed was to try to maximize the mythics and rares with a common that would stack or be the perfect fit for the combo.

“What you got for me?” Niederhauer asked the next morning. Dane had been up before any of them, except Rivera, who was munching on a pair of rubies they’d picked up… somewhere? The sound of his golem mouth grinding up gemstones was worse than nails on a chalkboard, worse than that dry erase marker squeak.

“I think you can probably end up being an Eldritch Blade.” It was the only way to square the difference between Niederhauer’s idiotic level up choices and the card he’d already settled into his Core slot. Dane held up Arcane Attack, which stripped away all opponents’ resistances to magic for one minute after being hit by the Spellsword’s non-magic attack. This bad boy was a mythic, but it was restricted to Eldritch Soldiers only. He also had a Spellbook card laid aside, so Niederhauer could have additional cards equipped beyond the typical ten.

“Roger that. Eldritch Blade is my jam.”

“We just have to get you there.” He held up a card called Wolf Pack, which gave all nearby allies a bunch of tiny bonuses on all cards. “Does this turn you into an Eldritch Soldier if you Core lock it?”

Niederhauer took the card, but shook his head. Dane tried again with Commander’s Call, another ally aid style card. Again, nothing. The last one was a rare, which Dane didn’t want to Core lock unless he had to, not when there were mythics around. But then Niederhauer picked it up, the wording on the card shifted from Caster to Eldritch Blade.

“Battle Caster, all right.” The card disappeared into his inventory, and then a new aura appeared around him: the orange and red he was coming to associate with Adventurer classes, entwined with the same blue and greenish light, intertwining around one another. After that, Dane fed him Arcane Attack, and started in with a heap of attack spells, buffing style spells, auras, and the few summons they had. While Niederhauer transformed into an Arcane Knight, Dane tried to sort through everything else, so Niederhauer wouldn’t accidentally end up with all their good cards.

“Spellbook is yours,” Dane said. “Lay off everything else until I can figure out–“

“Okay but I’m totally taking Acid Darts. That way I can do acid.”

Sigh. Fixated over another common. “Yeah. Practice with that while I figure out what else to get you.”

He’d been through basically all these cards, sorted the spells into the various schools: enchantments, evocations, illusions, necromancy, the works. And for all that, he had no dedicated healing spells. What Rivera ended up with was a pittance, a desperate last-ditch attempt to stave off death or recharge in the middle of a battle going well, nothing more. Definitely nothing like what they needed from a designated healer.