The original, 3-page short story version of

"THE MAGIC WAR"

Copyright © 1980 by Roger M. Wilcox. All rights reserved.
(writing on this story began 23-May-1980)

The original draft was written on a mechanical typewriter, with no right margin. All spellings, punctuation, capitalizations, strings of exclamation points, lack of regular paragraph breaks, etc. are as in the original.

You have been warned.




Preface: This story was written by an Advanced D & D'er, about an AD&D'er, for an AD&D'er. So, if you're not heavily into Dungeons & Dragons, bail out now, before it gets too complex for you!

Well, now that the only ones reading are AD&D'ers, I guess I can continue. Throughout this story, I will use two very famous names in D&D: Gandalph and Zelligar. These, of course, are not of my own creation, but of some other brilliant writer.

Gandalph (to some known as Gandalf the White) was walking in the town of Ranseu Kemesh, cousin city to Al Kemesh. This city was just as dismal as Al Kemesh was, being always the time of dusk. Through his searching, Galdalph (Gandy, for short) finally came upon a large metal door. In the upper left-hand corner of the door was written, in large letters, "B1" (pronounced "Bee-one"), and across the middle was written, "In Search of the Unknown." Without thinking (Wizards are never big on wisdom), Gandy knocked on the door (with his hand, not the spell!!!). With this, he heard a set of footsteps approach the door, and as the door swung open, Gandy noticed a Kobold. BIG DEAL!!! He couldn't possibly have more than 4 hit points, and Gandy had 36. Gandy also had a cloak & a ring of protection, bringing him down to armor class -1, which is pretty damn good. He pulled out his plus 2 dagger, and struck the kobold dead. For killing him, Gandy got a whole 8 experience points, and found 17 whole copper pieces on his body. He wanted a real challenge, like another "ring of doom". With this in mind, he quickly lit a torch, and entered the Dungeon. The air grew damp and dark, for the sooty moisture made it difficult to see. Finally, a gust of wind came along, and extinguished his torch. No big deal, except that then he heard the clattering of bones. He took out his ten-foot staff, and cast a "Light" spell upon it. It was then that he noticed the reason for the clattering: two skeletons. Who cares?!? All he did was throw two vials of Holy Water — one at each skeleton. One died instantly, one was just severely wounded. With that, Gandy proceeded to smash him with his staff. This he did, and quite quickly, as well. Well, there were 40 more exp. points for him (oh, big wow!)!

This dungeon was getting boring. Gandalph was just about to give up, and dimension-door out, when he heard a loud crash of thunder. "Aha!", he thought to himself. "Magical powers! Now, then, where did that thunderclap come from?". He quickly located the direction, and proceeded northwest. Within only a few melee rounds, he found the center of the sound — it was coming from a blank wall! Since he did not have a wand of secret door & trap detection, it took him three turns to finally roll a "1", and open the secret door. Within was a horrifying sight. The wizard, Zelligar, was torturing some innocent dungeoneers — just a poor first-level magic-user, & a second-level cleric! With this, Gandy entered, and exclaimed, "Release them, or I shall have your hyde!!! (pretty lawful-good statement, eh?)". With that outburst, Zelligar turned about, expecting to see a chaotic-evil magic user of first- or second-level. What he saw instead made him turn white with fear. He immediately stopped his torturing proceedures to see what to do about that goody-twelve-shoes (he had six pair of magic boots), Gandalph the White. Before he could do anything, however, Gandy swung a mighty finger, and summoned a lightning bolt upon the evil Zelligar. Since Zelligar had a lightning rod with him, however, he only took ½ damage (totaling 23) (well, okay, 23½! Shiesh!!!). That damage was heavy, true — but not heavy enough to kill Zelligar. In fact, it even left him with a good number of hit points.

Now, it was Zelligar's initiative (Zelly, for short). His move was a "call" spell — not "call lightning", not "call woodland creatures" (which are both druid spells), but "Call Dragon". Within seconds, a Large Ancient Red dragon fell from the sky, and landed directly on Gandalph. This would have killed him as well, if he had not cast a "Shield" spell immediately previous to this, in which case he made his saving throw against falling red dragons, thus only taking ¼ damage (powerful save, eh?).

Well, now guess whose attack it was? WRONG!!! A giant centipede had just walked in!!! For his attack, he decided to bite himself to death. And wouldn't you know it, he missed! With that, he got so angry, that he just killed himself. Now it was Gandy's attack. He decided to give ol' Zelly a dose of his own medicare; he himself cast a "Call Dragon" spell. Nothing. Well, either the sky made its saving throw, or his dragon's number was unlisted. Well, before he did that again, he wanted to go outside, where he could really do a "call" spell (its' not so easy calling things from the sky where there is no sky!). With that, Gandy cast a Dimension-door spell, going directly upward. At that same instant, so did Zelligar. After taking a whole seven segments recovery time, which is about 42 seconds, Gandy decided to cast another spell. He was running out of spells; he only had about 37 left (really low, eh?) (don't you just hate the way I cross my 7's???!?), so he had to really conserve.

Now, for a really long and tedious ending!:

Gandalph cast a fireball spell on Zelligar, and Zelly died. The end.

THE living END




Author's notes from 2013:
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