Sergeant-Major Adrian Shephard

Shephard's not entirely clear on exactly when the Douglas kid is from- they didn't teach the kings of Scotland when he was in school- but he knows it's a damn long while back. This is going to be a day for Xen monsters and hunting. Showing off his ship is not on the menu- by the time he got done explaining Borealis alone, never mind PIaDOS, they'd likely have lost so much daylight as to make safe travel in the woods a serious problem. Better, then, to come into Milliways from somewhere a little more explicable- the smokehouse outside the main Rowlesburg cave entrance'll do.

So if Shephard smells like a weird combination of wood smoke and some unknown meat or something when he comes through to Milliways all geared up for a hunting expedition, William, that's why.

Hey, Hansen, have you been sleeping well lately?

Because at 4:30 in the morning there's gonna be the kind of knocking on your door that only comes from a very insistent metal fist.

Shephard doesn't take no for an answer.

When you have been old for a very long time, you start to smell Death coming. You catch a whiff of her on the wind one day and you know, you know, that she'll be turning up; maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but she'll be there soon.

Sometimes you've smelled her coming before. Some people do. The difference is that when you've been old for a very long time and you catch that whiff of her on the wind, it starts being okay. You might need a little time to finish some things first, maybe get those last few stories written down before she arrives, but whenever she gets there, it's going to be okay. You've done enough. You know where she's going to take you.

Sometimes you've got a little niggling spark of spite and irony to you, one that says, I always knew something in particular was going to get me killed one day. Let's go see if I was right. So you put down the stylus- that hand of yours finally stopped moving anyway, there's nothing left for it to write now- and you turn out the light behind you, and you head on down to the hangar to see if there are any pilots willing to take an old man up for one last spin. She's coming for you now; there's nothing left about those fucking murderbirds that can scare you any more.

And you really see a hell of a lot from up here.

---

When you have been old for a very long time, you know how it feels. It didn't feel like that any more. Nothing hurt. Nothing was stiff. When he flexed his fingers, his left hand moved as easily as his right; when he looked around-

Huh.

"Okay," he said eventually, "I'm gonna need some help here. This don't look like what I was expecting. This ain't Heaven, is it."

Not that he had any kind of an objection to a huge, tumbling field of grass and stone, rolling away into fog and forest in the distance, but there wasn't nearly enough mountain to it for it to be a proper kind of Heaven.

"No," said the woman next to him. He couldn't make out much of her face or form- body armor and a proper environmentally sealed helmet tended to obscure a lot of distinguishing features- but that was very definitely a woman's voice, and an amused one at that.

"Huh," was his response. If he squinted some he could about make out a big, slope-roofed building at the edge of the field, lights in all its windows and little curls of smoke rising from a dozen chimneys. "Ain't quite what I'd've figured Hell was gonna look like either."

"No," agreed the woman, who sounded if anything more amused than before. "Definitely not Hel."

"And you ain't Saint Peter or Gunny Hathcock," said Shephard, "so I hope you don't mind my sayin' so, but I'm drawin' a blank here. Mind tellin' me where this is?"


The woman laughed at that, a sound too sincere to be unkind, and started undoing the catches that held her helmet on. "There are," she said, "more fates than that for a man. When the lion took your hand, all those years ago, it changed one of your names."

tiwazRotorhead to tiwazRegulator. He hadn't thought of that in years. "Yeah," he said slowly. "So?"

"So you went and you looked for what remained the same. What it meant," she said. "And when you found a book to tell you about tiwaz, you kept reading and saw and who it stood for-"

Tyr is a one-handed god / and leavings of the wolf / and prince of temples

"Wait," said Shephard, holding up one finger. "Wait-"

"And you kept reading, didn't you?" The helmet came off; a golden braid easily as long and as thick as his arm spilled out from under it. She grinned at him. "Do I have to give you any more hints? I thought you were more clever than that."

"You're a fuckin' Valkyrie?" he spluttered, belatedly recovering just enough good sense to add, "ma'am."

"Something like that," she said. "Call me Sýr, if you like. Are you so surprised?"

"No offense or nothin', ma'am, but I died a Christian last I checked."

"Oh, yes," she said, "you did. But that one has a war-host already, and has no interest in more. And you never turned away when other gods smiled on you before, did you?"

"They were right in front of me," Shephard felt obliged to point out. "I wasn't gon' be rude."

Sýr laughed again. "No doubt! So there was that. I saw no reason not to make a move. You would have been bored soon in the other one's presence anyway."

She had, Shephard was forced to admit, a point.

"The time came," she went on, "and I came looking for you."

"Question," he said suddenly. "I thought you ladies were lookin' for warriors on the battlefield to take back with you. Ain't there somethin' in the rules about dyin' of old age disqualifyin' you?"

"Says the man who died in the gunner's seat of an attack helicopter on patrol." Sýr fixed him with an arch look. "You went out of your way to look for enemies one last time before the end. No one could call that the straw death."

Shephard fell silent.

"Come now. How much have you been through? Did you truly think something so small as dying could stop the… what did you call it… 'weird mythic shit'?"

"I suppose not," Shephard said, and squared his shoulders. "All right, then, ma'am. I'mma guess that building I'm seein' over there in the distance's Valhalla, then?"

"Not quite, but you could not be blamed for that mistake," Sýr said, almost kindly. "Óðinn only receives half of those chosen, the ones who fight for glory or valor or conquest. Those who fight in defense of home and country and family, to defend rather than to overrun, are chosen first for she who is possessor of the fallen slain and of Sessrúmnir. This field is Fólkvangr; the hall is Sessrúmnir, and beyond it there is anchored a ship of the same name."

She put two fingers in her mouth and blew a short, sharp note. Two dark, shaggy shapes came trotting across the field, the biggest boars Shephard had ever seen- well, no; one was a wild pig, to be sure, but a sow instead. And a familiar one at that. "Uh, ma'am-"

"She only tried to gore you while she roamed Elysium," said Sýr. "She will bear you now, if you like. Or walk if you would rather, but Sessrúmnir is a longer march from here than you can see. I will be riding Hildisvíni, myself. Are you coming?"

After Shephard's bartending shift is over, he heads on down to the garage. Not that his bike's not up to the pseudo-Scottish weather outside, but it's less likely to wind up on the wrong end of some maniac using grenades on the firearms range if it's underground.

Yes, he's still sore about that.

Anyway, through one thing and another he winds up safely out back with the Buell at his side, its paint freshly waxed and its engine glowing blue.

Well, he did say there were upgrades.

So. A wish.

These things are tricky, and potentially dangerous. Shephard figured as much from the very start. Brimstone's not human, and he's not an alien, so he's something of a kind Shephard doesn't know. Might be Fair Folk with some kind of weird animal head action going on, he knows that happens. Might be an Egyptian god running in disguised, fuck knows that kind of thing happens at Milliways. Or demonic. It's the Bar. Demons happen just as much as gods.

Doesn't quite seem like something demonic, though. Shephard's no geek and he doesn't much know magic, but he's seen plenty of movies like The Devil and Dan'l Webster. Demons make it super, super, super easy for you to screw yourself over right from the start, from what he knows of them, assuming the deal they make you doesn't include the screwing to begin with. Trading animal teeth for wishes doesn't seem to have that kind of potential in it. Plus, Brimstone doesn't feel weird- not that Shephard knows what a demon's presence would feel like, but he's pretty sure there'd be something unusual in the local atmosphere. Something creepy, or something much too reassuring to be normal- trying too hard to pass, kind of thing. And there's not that. Brimstone just seems like a guy. One with an animal head, but a guy.

So that leaves him where he was in the first place, with a wish he bought and paid for and now he gets to use.

He's heard the joke about the man with the tiny piano player. He's read a couple of stories- not many, he's not that kind of reader, but a couple- about people who made stupid-ass wishes and got bit in the ass for it. Far as he can tell, this wish is his to fuck up. He knows what he wants- he wants to do his jobs right, all of them- but even with magic involved he really can't imagine knowing what he needs to do is gonna be that easy. And if he tries to make it that easy, it's only going to bite him in the ass. That's how these things work; the only person who ever, ever got all he needed to know to do his duty all at once was King Solomon, and that was because God Almighty was involved. Everyone else still has to work for it.

Well, the way he sees it, knowledge is knowledge. And while he's never been much of what you'd call a classroom type, he did okay in high school. Knowledge that's not in his head is still knowledge, it's just that it's up to him to get it to where he can use it. Books are probably safer than asking for all the knowledge he needs to show up in his head anyway. He's pretty sure that just asking to know what he needs to be a good captain and a good Commandant will either make his head explode or leave him with the voices of dead men constantly in his ears. Not to mention that books don't die with their owner, so getting what he needs to know in the form of books means he can pass that on to other people pretty easily.

You can't get everything you need to know out of books, but you can get enough to get by, otherwise Annapolis wouldn't have amounted to much, is how he sees it. Anyway, Bumi can fill him in on the stuff you can't write down, right?

Right. So, might as well make the damn wish, he's been working out the exact words for the last three goddamn days.

"Hey. Bead," he says, picking up the flawless garnet Brimstone gave him. "I got a wish for you."

It's not listening exactly, it's not that kind of magic object, but there's still an odd kind of feeling in the air that has him treading carefully as he reaches for the scratchpad he's been using to work out his exact words.

"'I wish for the knowledge I or anyone else in my world might need to be the best possible captain of my ship Borealis, as well as any other ship of my world's waters if that is possible, in the form of readable books in good, long-lasting condition that are written in good, clear English that I can read and understand'," he reads out loud, doing his best not to tense his shoulders.

A moment later there is an awful lot of cursing coming from his room.

The houndeyes aren't coming to Svalbard. Shephard loves his dogs dearly but there is no way in Hell he's bringing those little boogers to an unfamiliar environment that's almost certainly crawling with predators. It's bad enough at home. So, he's taking what time he can with them now, including bringing them to Milliways for training runs.

And maybe drumming up some other company while he's at it. He happened to notice a familiar face heading into one of the upstairs doors the other day, so today he's found that door and he's banging on it.

The sun may or may not be actually up yet. Just sayin'.

Shephard doesn't have to go back to his world for a while yet, what with the time stop and all. He's taken his beer to a table where he can sit and let the hand do some more of its high-speed writing; there's still plenty of life stories left to record, and if he doesn't give that hand time to work it winds up finding a pencil and trying to write on the wall when he's half asleep. Scribbling furiously away on the tablet Nepeta alchemized for him's as good a way as any to let the information out until Hansen's done with his tending shift. Not like the elevator's far from his table, anyway.

Shephard's been doing his best since encountering the little jadeblood grub. There aren't a whole lot of troll childcare manuals out there. Mostly he's been working from the premise that what worked for him during Cubefall should probably work now, which is why there's a cocoon-tub-thing in what little floor space of his room isn't taken up by notebooks and Mrs. Wilson. Got to keep the sopor slime somewhere, it's not like he's going to let the grub sleep someplace he can't keep an eye on her.

Thing is, she's worse than a cat. No matter where you put her down to sleep, sooner or later you wake up with the little wriggler huddled up on top of your blankets.

Oh well. He'll deal. He's exhausted enough not to give a damn after a week of child care and cheerful threats and profanities (trolls get schoolfed, he vaguely remembers that, but that's no reason not to teach her a little vocabulary, right?).

So, yeah, he's probably snoring at the moment. He does that sometimes.

The door from Milliways opens onto the deck of a boat; the trolls will probably recognize the Borealis. The heat outside isn't high equatorial summer- this is, after all, the Southern Hemisphere- but combined with the humidity and the raucous sounds of Darwin only knows how many different species of both Earth and Xen origin out there, it's close enough. "Here we are, ladies," says Shephard. "We're in Brazil, pullin' up on the shores of... shit, I forget which part of the Amazon river this is."

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Paladin/Ranger (2nd/2nd Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-17

Dexterity-18

Constitution-18

Intelligence-15

Wisdom-14

Charisma-13


Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment when it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.


Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.


Primary Class:
Paladins take their adventures seriously, and even a mundane mission is, in the heart of the paladin, a personal test an opportunity to demonstrate bravery, to learn tactics, and to find ways to do good. Divine power protects these warriors of virtue, warding off harm, protecting from disease, healing, and guarding against fear. The paladin can also direct this power to help others, healing wounds or curing diseases, and also use it to destroy evil. Experienced paladins can smite evil foes and turn away undead. A paladin's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast. Many of the paladin's special abilities also benefit from a high Charisma score.


Secondary Class:
Rangers are skilled stalkers and hunters who make their home in the woods. Their martial skill is nearly the equal of the fighter, but they lack the latter's dedication to the craft of fighting. Instead, the ranger focuses his skills and training on a specific enemy a type of creature he bears a vengeful grudge against and hunts above all others. Rangers often accept the role of protector, aiding those who live in or travel through the woods. His skills allow him to move quietly and stick to the shadows, especially in natural settings, and he also has special knowledge of certain types of creatures. Finally, an experienced ranger has such a tie to nature that he can actually draw on natural power to cast divine spells, much as a druid does, and like a druid he is often accompanied by animal companions. A ranger's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)