The Demon Lord of GMs's page

That beautiful, terrible, wonderful, tear-jerking day.

Every detail is clear to me even now. The beige walls of my bedroom, the scattered technological gear, the massive, homemade computer on my desk that operated faster than any gaming pro's, the pizza boxes strewn across my shag carpet. The sounds of Brad and Kenny bickering downstairs-most likely their morning routine bickering and &!7$jng about the sides of their room... and oh, yes, ohhhhh yes, that heavenly smell of pancakes! Due to my late night partying, I was barely coherent enough to open my eyes, but the seductive smell wafted into my nostrils, tugging me downstairs.

After lumbering downstairs-nearly falling two times (thank all of the gods everywhere that the wooden stairs had rails)-I sagged into my beat up, badly-needing-reupholtering stuffed chair, groaning. “Fooooood,” I moaned, looking miserable.

Mom looked down at me, exasperated. “I'm guessing you were partying again, judging by the rings under your eyes. Thank the gods your responsible enough to know not to do drugs or drink alchohol, Analise. Anyways, I made pancakes.”

I nodded in gratitude, and I wolfed down a massive stack of the things in 49.12 seconds. I staggered up from the chair and tumbled my way over to the threadbare couch, letting my brain cells atrophy by staring at the TV for a while. After enough express to kill a person of lesser coffee-swilling skills, my tired brain finally remembered it was Launch Day. I burst out of the couch and ran up the stairs with a sound that would've been described in Saturday-morning cartoons as binka-binka-binka.

Bursting through my room door-nearly slipping on three pizza boxes, accidentally spying my portly physique in the mirror that I keep putting off taking down, and crash into my bed, snagging the Riftgear laying on my charred desk, and pulled the bulky helmet on. I had arrived 61.85 seconds before the game went online.

The time slowly went down. As soon as the amazingly accurate clock in my head hit 3, I began the startup process. “3...2...1...SNAP!”

All was nothing for a moment, then white flashed into existence and streams of color raced by. Suddenly, a horrible wrenching began in my gut, and all was nothing again.

That was when I left Earth.

The first thing I felt was pain. And when I say pain, I mean horrible, unrelenting agony that would normally accompany being riddled with bullets, blown up by dynamite thirteen times, and being run through with a sword all at once. Thirty four times in a row. With nerves running at ten times capacity and sensitivity. I will neither confirm nor deny I screamed like a little girl during that time. After what seemed like untold aeons, the pain finally faded away, and I was able to open my eyes. The first thing I noticed that there was no HUD. No health bar, no mana meter, no quickbar... nothing. The second thing I noticed was that I was in a burning laboratory, with men shouting in a strange language, running around, and generally panicking. In a moment of absurdity, I thought Wow. These guys have obviously never read the Hitchhiker's Guide. There was wrecked equipment everywhere-reminescent of my room, actually-and what appeared to have once been sterile white walls were now charred black and grey. A big, strong man picked me up and rushed me out of the lab, out into a hallway. We took quite a dizzying array of twists, turns, and loops that I'm not able to remember what exactly the hallway looked like.

The Hulk-I'm calling him that, since he was that massive-rushed me into a lab, one that wasn't burninating. A harried-looking, greying man in a coat stood their, then attached a strange device to my head. “Can you understand me?”

I nodded dumbly.

“You are part of an experiment to abduct sentients from other planes to learn about their cultures, and add the information to our database. After we are done with our information gathering, we would release you to your home plane, but since you are our first experiment, the equipment had not been properly tested, and now the technology is rendered inoperable. Now, what is your name?”

I wasn't thinking about how this was completely impossible. I wasn't thinking about this had to be some crazy, in-game introduction. I knew in my heart that I was really on another world. What I was thinking about, however, was that I was angry. Very, very angry. How DARE these [bleeping] [bleeps] kidnap me! I was going to escape ASAP, but I didn't want to make the Hulk angry. I had I feeling that I wouldn't like him when he was angry. So, I complied. For now, at least.

“Analise Rodhire. May I ask a question?”

The old man looked at me dubiously-I think I'm going to call him Evil Gandalf-and said flatly “Yes.”

“What is the name of your organization?”

“The Technic League. Now, is your planet capable of interplanetary travel?”

“We're on the brink of it. What is your position within the Technic League?”

At the second question, Evil Gandalf looked slightly annoyed. “Prime Scientist. Does your plane have magic?”

Now this question surprised me. Did this place seriously have magic?!? I tried to retain my composure, and cooly answered. “No. Does your plane have magic?”

“Yes. In fact, I am led to believe that our technological advances our stymied due to intense reliance on it. Now, on to the next question.”

The drilling continued to for hours. I gained information about his world-called Golarion- exchanged for information about mine. Apparently, I was in a country called Numeria, a land of deep contrasts. Due to a starship that fell here long ago, Numeria was extremely advanced compared to the rest of Golarion. Howver, the Technic League tightly controlled the flow of the tech, and so a lot of the place was relatively primitive. Finally, Evil Gandalf said “That was satisfactory. Targon, restrain Analise and take her into the experimentation rooms. I want to see the genetic variances between humans of this plane and hers.”

The Hulk advanced menacingly upon me, and picked me up like a baby. I struggled, squelead, and again, I will neither confirm nor deny I screamed. I was hyperaware when he took me out of the room, looking around at my surroundings. I was in a hall made out of metal, kept scrupulously clean, with blinking lights everywhere. Then, I noticed that the Hulk was... clanking, for lack of a better word. He was a robot. He was a [bleeping] robot. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I started laughing hysterically. A [bleeping] robot. There seemed to be an access panel in his back. I then had an absurd idea. Something that would very likely get me killed. I tried to get to it, but the panel was just barely too far away. Then, I sort of... reached.

It was as if some door in my unconscious was thrown open, and a massive well of energy was in there, just waiting to be used. Somehow, I knew-barely-how to use it, and slowly, excruciatingly, I used the strange telekinetic force I had summoned slide open the access panel and cut wires. It’s “nervous system” went down, I squirmed away, and ran like the wind.

I scurried away through the twisting and turning hallways. Distantly, there was the sound of something exploding, then yelling. The place was a veritable labyrinth, and I had no doubt that would find me before long. Desperate, I made a few turns... then found myself at an apparent back door. I heard metallic clanking behind me that reminded me waaay too much of Cybermen from Doctor Who. I ran at full tilt-surprisingly fast, given my rather chubby frame-threw open the door, and pressed a random combination of buttons that happened to lock the door.

From there, everything was a blur. I had absolutely NO idea how I managed to outrun the Cybermen-was it my imagination, or was I hearing “DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.”?-but I eventually managed to run far away enough-well, more like wobble-to find a small grove of oak trees. Twisted, mutant oak trees who looked like they wanted to eat me, but it was getting dark, and I was willing to hide anywhere.

I wobbled (yeah, in my early days in Golarion constituted of wobbling, thank the gods that casting spells burns a lot more calories than you think) into it, and promptly collapsed.

When I awoke, I was distinctly aware of what appeared to be a living tumbleweed on my chest, sucking out my blood. Screaming-okay, I admit it, I screamed-I drew upon that power again and blasted the damn thing with something that looked like it came out of a flamethrower. Perhaps due to my panic, the spell was extremely effective, and it was incinerated the damn thing. Will the horrors never cease?

I meandered my way through the countryside for the next few weeks, incinerating any who dare come near me. Okay, so maybe it took all of my castings for the day sometimes, but it proved generally effective. As I learned at Torch when I got there, I was, quite simply put, absurdly lucky while I was traveling through the Hills. Wrong turn there, a couple steps over that way, and I would’ve fallen play to numerous mutants, bloodthirsty Sunder Horns, and hungry mutants. Really, the only thing I did of note was to scream like a little girl when a cute-ish junkyard robot lumbered at me. It probably didn’t even want to hurt me, although I turned on the heat anyways. I sprayed fire at it for a solid forty seconds. It was a pile of molten slag by the time I got through with it.

So, I eventually wandered into the plains, where I found Torch. A small-time local wizard helped train me there. Eventually, the fire went out. Bad, bad, very bad, badbadbadbadbadbadbad news. For some reason, I could smell the League all over it. The scent of evil: machine grease, burning, and Numerian fluids. So, I decided I might as well help out with my newly honed powers.

That was a mistake.

A big one.

More like a Godzilla-sized one.

That’s when everything went cuckoo.