I stood with my friends in front of the stall at the Bristol Renaissance Fair. “C’mon guys, I’ve told all of you about this at least once, we’re not gonna fall for this.” I was the only Brony in the group, and, we were all in costume as our characters from our D&D campaign. Me as my changeling sorceress, Sec.
“Nico, chill,” my friend Vinny, painted green and wearing a fairly decent cardboard replica of samurai armor, Dantez the half orc fighter, said.
“They’re just stories, they can’t actually be real,” James said from my side. He was wearing a silver dragon mask and monks robes, along with a mason jar hanging at his side as a decanter of endless water. Kriv, the dragon-born monk.
“I don’t know guys, if it bothers him this much, maybe we should steer clear,” Esben said. They wore elf ears, white out contacts, and plastic armor made to look like bits of turtle shell roped together. Blind high elf Druid, Ira Star.
“Ezzy look at those prices”, Shaye, our Dm said, gesturing to The Merchant’s stand. “This is a one-off, he can stay back if he wants, we’re gonna get some loot”. He was dressed in leather armor and fake elf ears, half elf ranger, Dez, the party’s Dm NPC.
“Guys we’re at a renfair, no way would they allow a stall like that,” I said pointedly. “Plus he referred to us as our character’s names as we walked by, best case scenario he’s a stalker.”
“He probably just read the stories we posted on Reddit, and recognized the characters,” Shaye said as they all began looking at his wares. He looked my way, and even with the mask I could tell he was grinning maliciously. They each bought a weapon from him, real, quality weapons, all for under 30 dollars. Ezben bought a wooden staff, done up in a very woodsy style, Shaye got a recurve bow in an elven style, and a quiver of silver arrows. Vinny got a jewl encrusted broad sword, and James got an emerald trident with a moonstone at the connection point. I blinked, and they were gone, he gave the smuggest look I’ve ever seen.
I sighed and stepped up to him, pulling out my wallet, “ah, loyal to a fault, huh Sec, Rainbow is going to like you.” He said mockingly, I could hear the smirk he had on behind the mask.
“Fuck off you extra-planar dick,” I said grabbing the red “blindfold of darkvision” along with the shield guardian control amulet (maybe I could have someone build me a Kronk, that’s what my shield guardian was named in our game). After a moment I decided that since this was it, I might as well spend as much as possible to stack the deck in my favor. I grabbed a short sword, a one handed crossbow, about 20 bolts, a bag of holding, more potions of healing than one person could use in a month, a pariphat of healing, a tiara, a glove that made my left arm look clockwork robotic, and then spent the rest of my life’s savings on equestrian bits.
“Look, I don’t exactly like you, but can you do me a favor?” I asked him.
“Depends on what it is,” he stated calmly.
“Can you erase us, from this world, I feel like all of us would feel better if we knew no one was grieving our disappearance.”
He seemed to smile softly, “I can do that, but it will come at a price, you won’t remember your names, trying to remember you’ll get the names of your characters.” He snapped his fingers, and I ceased to exist.
When I came to, I was in a grassy field, sitting up, I could see my friends. Dantez, Dez and Kriv were taking stock of our situation. Ira seemed to be trying to get used to her new lack of sight and ability of tremor sense, seemed I missed her “I can’t see” panic.
I stood up, cracked my neck, and shouted, “I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!” They all jumped, causing Ira to fall over, not used to walking with a 360 degree field of “vision”.
They all walked over to me, all showing at least a bit of guilt, though Dantez looked pissed as well. “Sec,” he grunted, his voice now much deeper, “why can’t we remember our names?!”
“Simple, he took them as payment, so that we don’t have to live with the GUILT of LEAVING OUR FAMILIES BEHIND!”
They looked surprised, “w-what” Dantez questioned, looking astonished. I’ll admit, maybe I was a bit angry, but I didn’t want to hold it against them too much, after all, I did willingly jump in after them.
“I made a deal,” I growled down at them, “they forget us, we never existed, no grief, no sadness, no unending pain wondering where we went. So that we can rest a little easier at night, knowing they’re happy. He didn’t give me a chance to reject the deal after he told me the price, so I’m sorry! That I accidentally bartered off our names! But would you honestly want it, if it meant they had to spend their lives wondering where we went!?” I said looking down at him, Sec was 10’10” due to a few wild magic surges resulting in her growing, so I stood around four feet above Dantez, who was the next tallest.
They looked down in a stunned silence before Ira looked towards me, “Thank you,” they said reaching a hand out to my arm. I nodded silently before kneeling down, mental note learn how to shapeshift. I wrapped all of them into a hug, and we began to cry. We stayed like that for about an hour, I think, my sense of time isn’t great, before we got ahold of ourselves.
“Alright,” Dez said in a more chipper tone. “Sec, you were the brony among us, so, where are we?”
I immediately facepalmed, “I was so worried about proper supplies and money, that I forgot to get a map.”
“That’s way too in character for you Sec” Dantez said as he Dez and Kriv all facepalmed as well.
“Yeah yeah, I know, 10 wisdom and all that, let’s just hope I also got her Charisma, and the modifiers for it, a plus 8 would not go amiss in Canterlot.” I joked. “Our best bet is just to head for that mountain, it’s called canterhorn, and the capital city of Canterlot is there, best to meet the princesses before we go causing trouble.”
“Why would we cause trouble?” Kriv asked looking towards mount Canterhorn.
“Because it’s us and we’ve been given enough power that in time we could fight and kill gods,” Dez responded mater of factly.
“With great power, comes great responsibility and all that,” I said.
“Ok uncle Ben,” Dantez said sarcastically as we started walking, he helped Ira along as they continued to figure the tremor sense out.
There was a little idle banter as we walked, but nothing I paid attention to until Dez asked me a question. “Hey Sec, back on earth you were a guy, your character can change genders so why haven’t you switched back yet?”
“Three reasons actually. One. I don’t know how, this body didn’t come with instructions. Two, my metal arm,” I said tapping my left hand a getting the metal twang. Though it looked normal, guess the illusion matrix transferred over from the game. “Don’t know if I need to change it separately. And three. I’m non-binary, just never told any of you because I don’t actually care, just not worth it to get offended over what pronouns people use for me.”
“Hmm, fair enough,” he said, “though you should probably figure out how to change. Didn’t you once say something about changelings in the show, maybe one of them could teach you?”
“Maybe, but I doubt it,” I answered. “Their ability is fundamentally different, they actually become whatever they turn into, turn into a dragon, they can breathe fire, turn into a fish, they have no lungs and a functioning set of gills.”
He went back to talking to the others after that, a half hearted discussion about whether or not ghost rider could beat Goku. After a short time we hit a forked railway, it was forked going the direction we came from. “We could wait for a train,” I said. “Or we could fallow the tracks, should lead right into the mountain, spiral up to the city.”
“And what do we do when we get there?” Dantez asked.
“Literally none of us are a species that’s exists here,” I said. “Though classes and monsters from D&D are likely part of this world, so we’re just gonna let the guards bring the strange creatures before the princesses. Unless Twilight is in charge then it’s just the princess, or if we came in on episode one, I’m rambling, allons-y.”
One of them muttered something about the doctor as we began walking again. It took hours, but we made it to the entrance just as day switched to night. The Mare in the Moon wasn’t there so it was post episode one, which I explained to the others. The tunnel was constantly winding, and well lit with magic torches, it also had a raised path so the earth ponies could walk to Canterlot if they chose to.
We were probably about half way up the mountain before Ira and Dez both spoke. “Guys this place is laced with open spaces, not connected to this tunnel so far, and occasionally something in them moves.” Ira said worriedly.
“And something is off about the prints going up the path,” Dez said. “I was expecting four hoof tracks because ponies, but while whatever it is has hooves, it almost for sure walks on two legs.”
“Ira,” I said to answer. “The mountain has many long forgotten crystal caverns. The movement is probably a goblin clan so long as D&D elements are here. As for the tracks Dez, it’s probably an anthro world.” They gave me an odd look so I explained, “human pony mixture looking.”
They nodded and we continued, we had just passed a sign marking the 3/4 point when Ira stopped us. “Up ahead,” they pointed, whispering, “there’s a hole connecting to the caverns just around the corner, and several small human shapes with big ears.”
“Goblins?” Kriv asked.
“Probably,” Dantez responded, “Sec and I will take point, our characters spoke goblin, hopefully we got that skill.”
“We’ll call for backup if we need it, until then stay out of sight,” I told them, then Dantez and I went around the corner. Almost immediately upon turning we found ourselves at the crossbow point of around 20 goblins.
One of the said something, the words all had a pattern of consonant vowel consonant. It was unlike any language I’ve ever heard, and yet I understood it perfectly. “give us all your bits, or we’ll kill you.”
“We have no bits to give,” I lied, I had already checked, the 1000 plastic bits I had bought had become real gold.
The goblin that seemed to be in charge thought for a moment, then smiled maliciously. “Then giant lady gives us her clothes.”
“Excuse the fuck out of you!” Dantez shouted, he was about to continue but instead jumped back. All 20 of the goblins were consumed in an explosion as I cast fireball. None survived.
“Hmm, so that’s why they’re not allowed to clump up like that in game, that was a CR five encounter.” I said as the rest of our group rushed to meet us after the explosion.
Dantez looked at me “you couldn’t have WARNED ME BEFORE YOU DID THAT?!”
“I thought that was the plan, if diplomacy fails, raise hell, diplomacy failed.”
“Yes but first off you barely gave diplomacy a chance. Secondly thats NOT at ALL what I meant, next time you decide yo blow something up, WARN US!”
“Ok ok” I said while giggling a little.
“So why did we just nuke a goblin clan?” Dez asked.
“Yeah I was about to ask,” Kriv said, Ira was laughing too hard to talk.
“They tried to take our bits, we said we didn’t have any, so they told me to strip.” I said as I began looting what I could from the charred corpses, mostly crossbow bolts and 40 bits. Though one had a pack of metal throwing darts, which I handed to Kriv.
“So you killed them?” Kriv said.
“I’d like to think of it as overzealously sanitized,” I joked as I gestured for us to continue. We now had 21 crossbows and 420 bolts, I gave one to Dantez along with 210 of the bolts. “Have some range.” It wasn’t much longer before we left the tunnel, there was a flat path on a small grassy field, surrounded on all sides by mountainous walls. The path ran next to the tracks straight up to the city, by this point the sun was rising once again.
As soon as we reached the city’s entrance we were stopped. “Halt!” Said the brown earth….. pony? He had hooves and his legs were like a horses hind legs and a humans, and upwards from there he was human except he had a slight snout and pony ears. He also had a tail and wore full body armor, and he had a spear, clearly a guard.
“Is there some sort of problem sir?” Dantez asked?
“A problem!?” The guard asked incredulously. “Not one of you is a species known to exist on equus! I’m going to have to ask you all to come with me! The princesses will want to know of this!”
We gave our various affirmations, before fallowing behind him. Other guards fell into step around us, likely to obscure us from citizens, as well as put a wall between them and the possibley dangerous strangers. This was it the state of the throne room and info from the princesses would confirm the time we were in, I couldn’t wait.