Tomb of Malevolent Evil Book 1: Roll For Initiative

Jorge wants to get the gang back together for a game night but tensions run high between old friends, and it seems Jorge has something extra special planned.

Tomb of Malevolent Evil 01: Snippet

1 – Terry pulled to a stop in Jorge’s driveway and put his vehicle in park. The engine rumbled angrily as he shut it off and it coughed a cloud of black smoke from the tailpipe. His car had not liked the drive. Even though the stretch of highway had been short, the beater had not reacted well to moving at speeds in excess of fifty-five miles per hour.

He sat in silence for a few moments and prepared himself for the ordeal ahead. At least he’d arrived before everyone else. Today would be as awkward as hell, but things would have been so much worse if he’d been late. Being the first one there meant he could take a little time to shake his growing anxiety out.

In theory, anyway.

It unfortunately didn’t seem to work very well in practice and he decided the effort only added to the problem. He opened his door with a loud grind of too much use and not enough maintenance and stepped into Jorge’s flowerbed. With a mumbled curse, he regained his balance and moved around the plants. He wasn’t used to being early and able to park directly in front of his friend’s house. 

His sigh reflected his dogged uncertainty. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to be there. This would be the first time the gamers would hang out since Terry and Jewel broke up—since he’d ended their relationship. Before that, their little group had gathered weekly for years and he had screwed all that up.

It wasn’t that he’d wanted to end things with Jewel. The problem was that she had begun to nag him for a commitment and he wasn’t ready for that. When he looked back at their last few months together, he realized now that the signs had been obvious.

She had constantly pointed out houses for sale, wedding rings, and even floated baby names once. That had scared the hell out of him. He was all of twenty-five years old and nowhere near ready for marriage, children, and all that.

That had been the death knell for the gaming group. Jewel wanted nothing to do with Terry. Her best friend Mandy was also in the we-hate-Terrance camp. Morgan and Jorge both still spoke to him but with half the group gone, it looked like they might not be able to keep playing at all.

Given all this, it had come as a surprise when Jorge texted the group about hanging out to play a new D&D module—some “tome” he had found—and Jewel had been the first to respond. It had been a simple, sounds good, with a smiling emoji, likely an auto-filled option on her phone, but it had been enough to get Terry to game night—and early to boot. 

Honestly, he didn’t know what to expect. He was super nervous about playing and not at all sure it would work. They had played tabletop roleplaying games together before they had started dating, but once they became a couple, their characters always reflected that. No matter who they chose to be, they had always made their characters fall in love—or lust at least—much to the chagrin of the DM.

That no longer seemed like a funny idea for a side story, though. 

Terry walked up to Jorge’s front door, drew a deep breath, and knocked resolutely on the wood. 

It opened the second his knuckles rapped on it. 

“Announcing the arrival of Sir Terrence!” Jorge grinned as he beckoned him inside. He was a little shorter than him, with skin like sand and dark hair.

“Hey, Jorge. Long time no see.”

“It’s only been seven weeks, but who’s counting?” His friend chuckled awkwardly. It never ceased to amaze Terry that he could simultaneously be the best game master he had ever played with and one of the most awkward people alive when it came to regular conversation. 

“So tell me about this ‘tome’ you discovered,” he said to break the ice. 

“Sure, yeah. Right this way.” Jorge relaxed almost instantly. Merely talking about gaming made him chill out. It was a huge relief that he didn’t want to talk about what had happened between Terry and Jewel. 

He followed the other man out of his entrance hall and into the “gaming room.” Everyone knew full well that this was his living room with the dining room table moved into it, but the walls all featured posters of stone towers, powerful sorceresses, or muscled barbarians, so it worked well to create the right setting for their games. 

“This is it right here.” Jorge picked up a surprisingly thick and shockingly old-looking book. “I give you the Tomb of Malevolent Evil! TOME—get it?”

Terry smirked. “I don’t want to know what Mandy will say when she finds out we came here under the pretense of a pun.”

“You don’t think it’s funny?”

“It’s cool, Jorge, no worries. Can I take a look at it?”

His friend hesitated. “Sure…uh, but don’t read any of it. I don’t want you to—”

“Confuse player knowledge with character knowledge, yeah, yeah. I only want to see when it was published. It looks like it predates D&D completely.”

“Nah, it’s newer than that—see?” Jorge opened the book carefully to the first page and pointed out the year in which it was published. “It uses the latest system and everything. You guys will love it. I haven’t had a ton of time to dig into it, but the writers have covered everything. It’s a fully fleshed-out world!”

Terry nodded and tried not to feel intimidated by the people who had written the book. He had written parts of some stories and helped his friend with some of his worldbuilding but he’d never finished anything. Usually, he would get started on a great idea and when he reached a part of it that didn’t seem quite as easy as it had been, he would quit. 

“It looks cool,” he managed to say and yanked himself from that train of thought.

“Don’t let its aged appearance deceive you. I think it will be awesome. It’s extremely well made with stitched binding and everything, and the character sheets it came with are beautiful. They’re on papyrus or something, I swear. Oh, plus, wait until you see the dice! They’re super awesome too. The only reason it looks so worn is because the previous owner must have loved it so much. I’m telling you, it’s exactly what this group needs to bring us all back together.”

He nodded and sat at the table. “I hope you’re right.”

***

Mandy stepped out of her car and scowled. Terry had taken her usual spot and crushed some of Jorge’s flowers in the process.

“I swear, that asshole has no respect for anyone.” She hissed in irritation as she clicked up to Jorge’s front door in heels. Although she knew she needed to relax, she couldn’t. Terry was almost always late but today of all days, he was there early? 

She’d wanted to be early so she could be there for Jewel. That was the main reason she’d come at all. Frankly, she felt like this whole attempt to bring them all together was more likely to be a train wreck than anything else.

Jewel deserved far better than Terry. Mandy used to think he was nice but how could he take someone like her friend for granted? It’s not like she’d proposed to him. She had only said—ugh! It was obnoxious how he’d responded. 

Still, she had to be there so she drew a deep breath, knocked on the door, and hoped Jorge didn’t say anything to defend Terry. She liked him but he could sometimes be overly empathetic. While she didn’t want to subject him to the sharp edge of her tongue, if he came out acting like there were “two sides to every problem,” she would knock his block off. Hopefully, since their friendship had survived more than that, it could survive this too.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t Jorge who answered the door. It was Terry. 

“Hi,” she said, her voice a dead monotone.

“Mandy!” Terry almost yelped. “It’s…uh, nice to see you!”

“Is it?” She knew she shouldn’t have said it but she was annoyed that he was there at all. 

“Yeah. It’s been a while. I…uh, Morgan said he asked you to join us for drinks a few times. It would have been nice to see you.”

“I’ve been busy hanging out with other friends who don’t need as much space.”

He winced. 

Twerp. Mandy brushed past him and drew a deep breath. She wanted to be there to support her friend, she reminded herself. Preemptively snapping at Terry wouldn’t do that. Let Jewel bring it up and then she could come to her defense. 

“From the land of fire and steel, of acid and the crystals of the sea, Her Majesty Amanda has arrived!” Jorge proclaimed proudly when she entered the gaming room.

“Don’t worry, Jorge, I brought snacks.” 

“And that’s why I love you.” He grinned unashamedly.

She put her bag of snacks down—all cooked that morning at the restaurant where she worked—and embraced her old friend. 

“I love you too, bro.”

Mandy and Jorge had known each other longer than anyone in their gaming group. He had practically learned how to be a game master by practicing on his “sister.” Unlike the other four, he had not attended college. There had been a time when both of them had feared that this difference in life choices might have driven them apart, but they needn’t have worried.

After completing a degree in biology with honors, Mandy decided she wanted to be a chef, of all things. That put her firmly in the world of blue-collar jobs, exactly like her old buddy, who had found himself a niche doing detailed paintwork on high-end houses. They were closer than they had ever been and ought to stay that way—as long as she didn’t ruin the evening he had no doubt spent hours preparing for. 

“What have we got tonight, chef?” Jorge asked.

“You think you’ve had French fries,” she said and withdrew her first parcel of food.

“This is true. I’m very sure I have.”

“That’s where you’re wrong because you’ve never had anything like these. Waffle cut, fried twice, then garnished with truffle oil, parmesan, chives, and more parmesan. They are paired with garlic dill aioli that I think is good, but the head chef says I still need to ‘dial in,’ if you can believe that.”

“Delicious.” Jorge grinned around a mouthful, although he was always an easy win. Mandy had cooked snacks for him for as long as he’d hosted games. “Honestly, I think the garlic dill aioli is perfect and if he thinks you need to change it at all, he should be roasted alive in one of his ovens. Also, I have to admit that your description lost me at ‘waffle fry.’”

“Well, I’m glad you like them. Now I need to confess—the head chef agreed to put the fries on the menu permanently.” She smirked at his widening grin.

“Mandy, that’s huge! Why are you complaining about the dip?” This was a long-running tease between them. He had always known she was a perfectionist. 

She shrugged. “I merely like to know what my taste tester thinks.”

“This is on you,” he protested. “You know I don’t have any taste.”

They both laughed at the old shared joke, and Mandy felt some of her tension leave her. To think she had considered not coming tonight when she knew how much she enjoyed hanging out with him. 

“So…what would these fries pair well with?” Jorge asked, not at all discreetly. 

“Uh-uh. No way. You know the deal.” She shook her head firmly.

“Not this time. This module is amazingly paced. You get nothing until we start.”

“Even a little worldbuilding? Are we talking medieval? High Magic? Low Magic?”

“Nothing. Even if it means I have to wait to taste whatever else you brought.”

“How am I supposed to make a character if you don’t tell me anything about the world?” she responded in a wheedling tone. “You can at least tell me if we’re dealing with magical races or if it’s only humans. Please tell me it’s all humans. I love it when Morgan complains about how boring it is to swing a sword all night long.”

“Fine. There’s magic. I guess that doesn’t spoil anything since one of the characters is a sorceress.”

“Wait—one of the characters? They’re pre-made? You know I like to make my own!”

Jorge shook his head. “The module calls for specific pre-made characters. They all have backstories and everything.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Come on what?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Can you at least tell me the character classes, then?”

He frowned but could never say no to Mandy for long. “Fine. Sorceress. Cleric. Barbarian. Bard. Now, what’s in the bag?”

“But you haven’t told me anything yet!”

“Wait—you’re telling Mandy stuff? You didn’t even let me look at the pictures,” Terry said as he sat at the table after pilfering a beer from the fridge.

“All I told Mandy is that there are pre-made characters. I’ll pass them out once everyone gets here. Now, Lady Amanda, you were telling us about what you captured today in the battlefield?”

She smiled and took another container of food out. “You think you’ve had carrot soup…”

Something seems off about this old book Jorge is planning on using. Things could get interesting on more than one front. Find out when Tomb of Malevolent Evil Book 1: Roll for Initiative is released on March 4, 2022. Until then head over to Amazon and pre-order today.