“TUTORIAL START”

I get a tutorial for this thing? Hopefully the tutorial is more focused on whatever this power is cause I’m already plenty familiar with D&D rules.

“Everything in this world is randomly decided, some call it Fate others name it Destiny. You’re able to slightly influence and bring visual representation of this greater power in the form of Dice. As an example try to examine your surroundings for any threats or for something of use, simply announce the skill internally or externally with magical intent behind it.” Time unfreezes as the feminine narration in my head finishes speaking.

Ah, so when I wanted to look around the Apple farm earlier the reason the dice roll appeared wasn’t because of me. Explains why it was Arcana instead of Perception. Well let’s give it a try then, Perception.

That familiar blue takes over my vision again as I see the dice roll and land on 8. Below the dice I see “Wisdom +2. Proficiency +2.” and the dice shifts and becomes a 12.

Time resumes and nothing really happens, but then I spot a cluster of gray mushrooms sprouting in the middle of some tall grass. I’m not sure why I didn’t notice it earlier but for some reason it’s like something is just drawing my attention to them now. As I slowly approach the mushrooms I hear the narration again in my brain.

“This is called an Active Check. You can opt instead to rely on passive mode in which case you’ll interact with the world as if you rolled a 10 plus your modifiers. Your passive Perception for example would be 14. If you choose to not actively check something you’ll perceive it as if you rolled that, but you can and should still actively roll. Sometimes however, the Universe will demand a roll from you regardless of if you have a skill in passive mode or not.”

Before I can even start formulating a thought on how I want to use this new information the dice rolls again.

1. CRITICAL FAILURE. +5 Nature.

This time the +5 doesn’t even change the number it just fades away leaving the words Critical Failure in bright red. Back to the world around me I look at the mushrooms and determine that I’m 100% sure these mushrooms are Rogue’s Morsel. I can use these to make healing potions later once I find an alchemical setup. I pick them up from the ground and put them into my bag for later.

With no further interruptions from the mysterious power I decide to start walking forward trying to continue in the same general direction we were walking as a group.

“You know aimlessly walking in real life is alot worse than I thought it’d be. I definitely prefer the DM just waving their hands and going “after an uneventful walk for a few hours you begin to see a structure in the distance blah blah” maybe I can try doing it the same way as an active check. Fast Travel! ….. Yeah I didn’t think that’d work.” At this point I’m just talking outloud to myself to try and make the time go by faster as I keep steadily moving towards the castle, atleast I hope I’m going towards the castle.

Before I can fall into a cycle of doubt and panic I see the dice roll again. 15, +4 Perception, 19.

The hair on my neck and arms stands up straight and I feel like something is bearing down on me. I stop instantly mid step, pull out my rapier, and start slowly looking around me when I hear it. Bush leaves bristling together to my right. I quickly spin to face the bush and ready my blade. “Whatever you are, come out now!” I yell.

INITIATIVE. 11, +4. 15.

The narration begins again, “In combat every action is taken in turns. The order in which every creature take their turn is decided by rolling Initiative, the highest number goes first. Once the tutorial has been completed you may choose to allow combat to happen in real time with no turns, but this is not recommended as there are almost no benefits for beginners. Good luck.”

Some amalgamation of wooden bark and branches comes speeding out of the brush barreling straight towards me. It’s moving fast enough that it’s almost a blur, but I can make out its canine-esque shape with 2 green eyes. It lunges directly at me and I try to block it from biting my neck by giving it my forearm. It was too fast I couldn’t even try to dodge.

It feels like time slows to a crawl as I see it’s mouth start to close on my arm and right before its teeth begin to dig into me, “SHIELD!”

A translucent bubble bursts outward from my core sending the wolf back to the ground where it’s now growling at me. Okay shield is active until my next turn so I should have 21 AC right now.

I take my empty left hand and make a motion with it over the blade of my rapier and as I do a purple energy almost like lightning goes from my hand to the blade, as I silently cast Booming Blade. Quickly following that I make a fierce stab towards the wooden wolf.

1. +4 Dexterity, +2 Proficiency Bonus, +1 Weapon Enchantment. 25.

I’m apparently fast enough that the wolf can’t react fast enough to side step me and the blade pierces straight into it’s wooden head. Time doesn’t stop but I see in the top right of my peripheral vision an eight sided die rolls in place before landing on a 3. +5, 8 Piercing damage.

I quickly withdraw the blade and the wolf makes some type of pained response, I decide to take this opportunity to run. If this is one to one for D&D I’ll suffer an attack of opportunity but the wolf still looks a little dazed from the attack I don’t think it can react.

I am apparently wrong as the wolf notices me turning away to start running and makes a lunge to bite my calf, but is stopped again by the shield. Phew, it missed again. Sure enough, after a few seconds I’m almost forced to a stop and I turn around to face the wolf. So, I guess this 30 feet away.

The wolf lowers its head which is now leaking a glowing green liquid and starts to run at me again, but after it starts to move it’s body is wracked with a purple lightning and it yelps. Booming blade baby, if you move 5ft after being struck you take 1d8 thunder damage. I see the same 8 sided die roll before stopping on 4. Okay assuming it doesn’t have any resistances it’s taken 12 damage, hopefully it’s tapped out now.

Turns out, the wolf is not tapped out as it resumes it charge towards me, this time I pivot and spin so that I’m not in the path of it’s wide open maw. However I fail to notice the creatures paw as it goes straight through my shield leaving 3 scratches across the side of my torso as it flies past me before it lands and spins around to face me.

The pain is instant and I can feel my face contort as I wince and grab at the wound. I see my health go from 21 to 12. Gods above that burns.

My shield drops indicating it’s my turn once again as I decide to respond. My anger flares up again and I close my hand into the shape of a finger gun again and yell, “FIRE BOLT!”

I immediately regret firing my fire bolt as I see two dice appear with word “DISADVANTAGE” under them. In my panic and anger I forgot firing a ranged attack while in melee distance imposes disadvantage, fuck.

1. 16. +6, 23. Damn I got lucky this time, but I’m pretty peeved I missed out on a natural 20 due to my mistake. There’s spark at the end of my finger gun’s barrel that turns into small ball of fire before flying away and slamming straight into the wolf.

8 Fire Damage. The entire wolf bursts into flames as it falls on its side and flops about a couple of times before going completely still. The glowing green light gone from its eye sockets. Dead.

I collapse right onto my ass and start breathing heavily. I didn’t expect to take this much damage from 1 graze of it’s paw. I look around in my bag and see 2 small red vials. This must be the passive roll taking effect as I instantly realize these are both potions of healing. I pop the cork off and down the red liquid as quickly as I can and time freeze as I see two little pyramid shaped dice roll in front of me. 1 and 1. +2, 4. I curse at the bad roll and watch my health counter in the bottom left of my peripheral vision change from 12 to 16. The burning pain on my side lightens and the scratches instantly scab over with a very light green glow. I gotta get some leather that covers my entire torso instead of just my chest and back.

After collecting myself for a few minutes and letting my heart rate go down I continue to march forward. My path eventually narrows up and I notice far above me there’s an olden wooden bridge, silently thanking the powers that be that I don’t have to walk across that. Suddenly I notice a cloud that looks almost exactly like the night sky fly over me and up towards the bridge, and I pull out my blade ready for the worst. The cloud continues up and out of sight and after waiting for a few seconds it seems like nothing is going to happen, so I continue marching on.

After I walk under the bridge I notice a collapsed stone wall up on the ledge above. “There’s the castle! Hopefully I’m not too late.” After a few athletics checks I heave myself up onto solid ground and look straight ahead to see what must’ve been a massive structure in the past, but is now a collapsing ruin with two large rotted wooden doors.

Perception.
15. +4, 19.

There’s no hoofprints in the ground, so I think I made it here first and as I walk up to the doors I don’t see any trip wires or other traps. Slowly opening the door I see a big mostly empty room, save for some type of stone statue…. Monument? I’m not sure what it is but it looks almost like a constellation system with one large moss covered orb in the middle surrounded by five smaller stone orbs that each have different symbols engraved on them.

I walk up and place my hand on one of the stone orbs and think Investigation. Immediately I can tell these objects are magical in nature and I think they might be those trinkets Twilight was talking about, but from what I can tell there’s only 5 here and she mentioned 6. Seeing as I’m the only one here I decide to make myself useful and start taking the orbs off the monument. If everything is already in place when they get here it should help a little.

Right as I place the last orb on the ground the doors slam open and a strong gust of wind knocks me clear across the room, now on the complete opposite side from the doors. That same starry night mist flows in and materializes in between me and the monument with the trinkets on the other side of the monument.

“You really decided to come here alone? Has Celestia really neglected to properly teach this nation about the past and who am I? Do I not strike fear into your heart?” The mist fully formed now and I realize it’s her. It’s Nightmare Moon.

I notice a flash in the top left of my vision and gulp as my main quest has been updated. The main quest is still Get Home, but there’s a sub-quest bullet under it now.

“Survive.”

Author's Note

Quick ret-con, in the scrap vs NMM in an earlier chapter it should've been turn based. In my head it was turn based as I wrote it but then I decided to do everything as if it was turn based but then put it all together and have it happen all at once which is technically speaking how actual D&D combat is meant to be narrated. I might switch between these depending on the number of combatants purely due to how long turn based combat takes to write. I think in the future if it's narrative combat I'll switch to 3rd person and for turn based combat I'll keep it 1st person POV.

Also don't think this story is back and kicking, I was randomly inspired to write this chapter but there is no backlog, I don't have any future chapters sitting in draft. If I decide to keep updating this story again it'll probably the same way I used to do it. I'll write until I don't want to anymore and then I'll round it off and end the chapter and upload. All my chapters are written in 1 session I try not to stop in the middle of a chapter so I usually keep writing till I'm sick of it or if the chapter is in a nice spot to end on.

Anyways thanks for reading, sorry I'm not active!