When we found out we were getting this cool cover, we were very excited. We immediately began asking questions. How could we monopolize on this cover, while still maintaining our high standards of shameless self-promotion? Then it hit us. Maybe we could get the dragons from the various roleplaying games to duke it out. Sort of a cross between Bloodsport and a cock fight. Best of all, we were living off the cream of other people's intellectual property. It was like there was no down side.
I was placed in charge of this fine project, but I needed help. Who did I know that could travel the different Roleplaying planes and have the clout to talk these fine beasts into a fighting arena.
There was only one possible answer, an arch-mage from realms not so forgotten anymore. Because of exclusive contracts he has with a major game manufacturer, we can't print his name here, so we offered to call him the Big E. He told us he preferred the Masked Magician. We were afraid he wouldn't take our offer, but evidently he's always had an admiration for Don King. That and all the Mountain Dew he could drink, and we had ourselves a deal.
Our fight promoter then began grilling us for info. Who did we want? Who did we want to exclude? After a while, we set some ground rules.
- Rule 1: All dragons must be the same weight class. No deities posing as dragons.
Rule 2: All dragons must be evil, or at least really mercenary. They must also be dragons. We had to tell Marilyn Manson several times that being evil was not enough.
Rule 3: Dragons must be willing to fight to the death.
Rule 4: No pofftas.
Rule 5: Winner gets loser's horde.
Interview with the Fight Promoter
Now that the rules and the purse had been set, Elmin-I mean, the Masked Magician set about gathering our three main contenders. We came by these three after long and painful deliberation. The entrance requirements were painfully strict. They had to show up.
CONTESTANT ONE: Pete
Our first contestant comes from the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game. His name is Pete, and he assures us that there is no relation.
We wanted a Warhammer dragon very badly. Unfortunately, when we tried to find the universe, we discovered only Bloodbowl teams and miniatures battles. It took us some time to realize that the entire thing had been sold off.
But our intrepid promoter wasn't to be beaten that easily. After some effort, he discovered the whole world had been moved to some universe called Hogs Head. He began combing the world for fighters.
Unfortunately, the draconian race isn't what it used to be. Most of the dragons are long gone. Those that remain were deep asleep, and he couldn't wake the lazy SOB's up. We had almost given up when we discovered Pete right here in our own universe, posing for a miniature.
His agent told us Pete would have nothing to do with exploitational blood sports. The lovely folks at Hogs Head, however, reminded him of the clause in his contract that stated his obligations extended to the roleplaying universe. After a fierce argument which resulted in Pete eating his own lawyers, he agreed to participate.
Interview with Pete the Dragon
CONTESTANT TWO:Despoiler
We went straight to the source for contestant two. Deep in the hearts of the Lands of luz, we found a disgruntled Red Dragon in the Greyhawk fantasy setting. Discouraged with his diminished importance after the expansion of Iuz's empire, he was looking for a way to rebuild his rep.
Well, he's found it. No need to worry about spreading terror under the shadow of a demonic demi-god here (unless you count Clinton). Our second contestant, calling himself the Despoiler, outweighs contestant one by a wopping 399 tons. He is a lean, mean, killing machine, fit for both ravaging a countryside, and lounging about the fire and counting his horde. Whether cooking peasants or building shrines to Tiamat in our Greenroom, this baby is a force to be reckoned with.
CONTESTANT THREE: None-Of-Your-Damn-Business
Contestant three is a bad boy named None-Of-Your-Damn-Business, He is a Fire Drake and comes in somewhere between the other two foes, at a respectable 90' in length. Though dwarfed by the size of the Despoiler, a quick conversion from the old Rolemaster Creatures and Treasures shows that he has almost twice the hits.
In addition, he has a deadly conversion poison for blood.
Though smaller than a the great wyrm, he is a terror of a killing machine. His only drawback is a slower cycling time in his breath weapon when using the combat rounds given in AD&D's Combat and Tactics. Good thing both of these monsters are immune to each others breath weapons. It's down and dirty time.
Interview with None-Of-Your-Damn-Business
OUR CONTESTANTS AT A GLANCE
Pete the Dragon:
Length: 30' Weight: 1 ton. Education: High School dropout. Hobby: Posing Turn On's: The click of high shutter-speed cameras. Turn Off s: Last month's fashions. Strength: Good sense of positive and negative space. Weakness: Originates from a lower-powered game system.
The Despoiler:
Length: 356' Weight: 400 tons. Education: Experienced spell user. Hobby: Cooking (It's difficult to properly season your prey before breathing). Turn On's: Screams of Agony. Turn Off s: Upstart adventurers, trying to make a name for themselves. Strength: Size. Power and versatility of magic system. Weakness: Was designed to be beaten, not to eat parties alive.
None-Of-Your-Damn-Business:
Length: 100' Weight: 40 tons. Education: Innate spell user. Hobby: Convincing people he could have beaten Smaug. Turn On's: Money. Turn Off's: People who buy into the dragon kidnapping a dragon cliche'. Strength: Designed to destroy parties dead. Weakness: A lucky critical can kill him.
THE ARENA
We chose the Bonneville Salt Flats as our battle zone, near the Utah/Nevada border. This location had two main advantages. First of all, it's close to the legalized gambling of Nevada. Second of all, there's a stupid tree sculpture out there we were all hoping would be wiped out.
The crowd was gathering long before we got there. Roleplayers and miniature gamers and CCGers alike set aside their differences and turned out in droves for the spectacle. We even let in the LARPers (the dragons would want to snack, after all).
This mass of out-of-shape people had turned up the radio and were partying like there was no tomorrow. The festivity level was cranked up high, and the alcohol was flowing freely (luckily, no one can get drunk off of Utah Beer).
The dragons arrived to the cheer of the crowd. One group, wasted on Nevada beer, began standing on their cars and whooping and hollering. We began to wonder why we hadn't charged admission.
The Masked Magician was shouting "Let's get ready to rumble" and the metabolism of the event was cranked to maximum when the worst happened. Chaos ensued.
Event #1
In retrospect, we shouldn't have expected a chaotic evil dragon to follow the rules. We had planned to have the two smaller dragons duke it out for the right to take on the Despoiler. The Despoiler, however, had other plans. Declaring Pete the Dragon was violating Rule 4, he attacked. We were hoping for a spectacle. Figuring that Pete and None-Of-Your-Damn-Business were at least near each other's size, we thought that we might get a bit of a show. None-Of-Your-Damn Business had even agreed to make things interesting, and not kill him off right away. Play the crowd a little, like a pro wrestler.
The Despoiler swallowed Pete in one gulp.
Event #2
Now don't get me wrong. For all that Pete had sold out to the Games Workshop mercenary approach to gaming, he became a Hogs Head man in the end. If you could have seen the look on the Despoiler's face as he refused to stop fighting, it would have done your heart proud. I have rarely seen such a look of indigestion. It was like when you swallow one of those hard bits of french fry, and it lodges sideways in your throat.
But in reality, he never had a chance. After five minutes, ten tops, the digestion process had happily begun.
The crowd looked on, stunned. Then they started booing. The Despoiler began eating LARPers, but nothing could cheer these people up. Things were getting ugly.
Luckily, the Masked Magician chose that moment to show why he's the most famous mage in all the Realms. I meant realms. No need to capitalize that. The word has no special significance, understand? A rush of magic and everyone was calmed down. Our fight promoter, knowing that magic could only hold back a blood-crazed mob so long, began working quickly.
"Now for our prime event! In this corner, the Terror of the Lands of luz, the Despoiler!" The crowd roared. "And in this corner, the tyrant of a world system that has yet to be published, None-Of-Your-Damn-Business!" The crowd looked confused a second, then cheered.
"Contestants, it's clobbering time!"
We need to control what comic books that guy reads.
The battle was joined. Both contestants started with blasts of fire, more for the crowd's benefit than their own. They then got down and dirty.
The Depoiler began with spells. He was no fool, and having read Rolemaster, knew he had the advantage on his opponent at range. The AD&D magic system is higher powered than Rolemaster's, and he intended to make the most of it.
Unfortunately, he had never sat down and calculated just how slow he was when you converted his AD&D movement rate to miles per hour. That would prove a fatal error.
None-Of-Your-Damn-Business closed quickly, tearing into his foe with wolverine-like ferocity. His close quarters fighting style was bloody and violent, and even when the Despoiler scored a hit, it just ensured he was coated in conversion poison. Nothing that he couldn't save against, but everyone rolls low eventually.
Then the worst happened. None-Of-Your-Damn-Business, subject to Rolemaster criticals, was stunned and unable to parry for multiple rounds. He plummeted from the sky, shattering the salt flats with his impact. The Despoiler was on him in a minute. Chunks of poisoned flesh was flying in great globs, disintegrating spectators where it landed. The air seemed to rumble as the Despoiler began tearing through None-Of-Your-Damn-Business's hits. The battle looked bleak. Then, just as the stun was wearing Off, the Masked Magician stated in a loud, clear voice:
"Let the Player's Options apply!"
With a blur of attack, None-Of-Your-Damn-Business tore into the Despoiler, returning critical for critical. As the weight of AD&D's Combat and Tactic books fell upon the Despoiler, he learned for the first time what it was to take a bleeding crit.
None-Of-Your-Damn-Business stood and looked down upon his dying foe. The Despoiler looked up, fear in his eyes as death approached. The crowd was hushed. Everyone stood, watching with morbid fascination. The Despoiler, a being who through years of survival in a hit-point-only system had never known what it felt like to feel your life pour upon the ground, looked up. He found himself staring into the eyes of a foe who had lived his entire life with the gritty knowledge that bleeding kills. None-Of-Your-Damn-Business looked down with compassion, a tear in his eye.
In that moment, years of rivalry fell away. Two worlds, divided by the might of their marketing engines, came together for the first time. None-OfYour-Damn-Business reached down and rubbed his head against the Despoiler, even as the great wyrm closed his eyes and passed beyond the veil.
AFTERMATH
We watched, stunned by this touching sight, when suddenly a stirring moved through the crowd. It took a moment for me to pull my wits about me and realize what the crowd had noticed. It was a distant sound, a rhythic thumping. Deep and soft, methodical.
Thump ... thump ... thump ...
I looked to my editor, who looked back.
We both shrugged. I started scanning the horizon. He followed suit. ... thump ... thump ... thump ...
What was it? The whole crowd had pinpointed the direction of the sound, now. We were all looking to the east when I heard a stirring about the radio. Someone turned it up.
" . . how dare you dishonor us so?" the radio was saying. "I repeat. This is Takashi Kurita. I am transmitting on the 107,500,000 hertz band because I have detected commercial communication traffic there. You dare to hold a battle of dragons and not invite the greatest of all draconian warriors? I have come to defend the honor of House Kurita. I have brought my battlemech, the Grand Dragon, and I ask again, how dare you dishonor us so?"
All hell broke loose.
None-Of-Your-Damn-Business, not a dumb beast by any account, knew that a new competitor had crashed the party. He took to the air, wounded as he was, and prepared for battle. Even as Takisha began transmitting Black Sabbath's Iron Man.
He never stood a chance.
His spells couldn't ground on the pilot without seeing him, and Takashi Kurita had stylishly tinted windows on his battlemech. His damage spells did nothing but cause the mech to run hot. He never got close enough to try hand-to-claw.
The Grand Dragon, a variant of the Dragon battlemech, might not be the best machine in the Battletech universe. It weighs in at a terribly inefficient 60 tons, yet tries to move as fast as a 55 ton mech. It pays for this speed with a light weapons compliment, and it's one of the last mechs in the world I would choose.
Still, that PPC can vaporize over a half ton of steel armor per shot. The LRM 10, packs a similar wollop. The three medium lasers than account for almost a ton by themselves.
No, it was nothing to sneeze at. This 60 ton package of mechanized death cut our dragon champion to pieces by the time Iron Man's heavy boots of lead were filling his victims full of dread. When the smoke had cleared, it was barely even overheating.
To add insult to injury, he had brought the outdated 3025 version.
Dragons Who Didn't Make It
Legend of the Five Rings: The head of clan dragon sent us a geisha (who the publisher's wife made me return) and his apologies. He said that clan business was pressing, and that he probably violated the deity rule (a lot of people claimed this, whether they deserved it or not). He said he'd be tuning in on his crystal ball from Rokugan.
GURPS: Unfortunately, the dragons of GURPS couldn't decide what the official genre of GURPS was. The argument has turned into a dimension-hopping war. We hear Fox has bought the television rights.
Rifts: Weren't invited. After the abolition of apartheid, the protesters have latched on to Rifts stupid megadamage system. They were excluded for the sake of political correctness.
Paladium's fantasy game: These guys are still lobbying to be admitted. Unfortunately, our research has yet to produce evidence of a single person who actually plays this game. We will not fall prey to a clever marketing engine.
The Dragon of Athas: He gives out spells, so he qualifies as a deity (the Rolemaster dragon still insists he can take him). Anyway, he was embroiled in an internal political debate. There seems to be an argument over whether or not Preservers truly taste like chicken.
Shadowrun: Two things happened in the Shadowrun universe. The greater dragons were all way too interested in promoting their own political careers (they probably were considered gods, anyway). The other dragons were all taken down by LAW rockets. Maybe we shouldn't have put our recruiting office in the Downtown DeMilitarized Zone.
White Wolf: If they actually have any dragons, they're all too busy boycotting my LARPers column.
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