SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
didn't surprise me, but clearly impressed everyone else -- and she arrayed our forces such
that we sliced through the trash hordes, beat the mini-bosses, and made it to the final
boss without suffering any major losses. She was a born tank, and loved bulling through
our adversaries while directing our forces. Wil gave her tons of extra XP for doing it all in
character -- barbarian swordsmistress came easily to her -- and her example led us all, so
by the time we got to the dragon empress in her cavern at the middle of the dungeon, we
were all talking like a fantasy novel. Barlow was a master at this, improvising heroic poetry
and delivering it in that whiskey voice of his. Meanwhile, Mitch and John kept catching
little hints that Wil dropped in his narration, discovering traps and hidden treasures based
on the most obscure clues. I can't remember when we'd had a better time.
Mitch and Barlow kept shifting on their cushions, and just as we broke through into the
main cavern, they called for a stretch break, and got to their feet and rubbed vigorously
at their lower backs, groaning. Wil stretched, too, and checked the yurt's door. “Storm's
letting up,” he called. It was coming on to midnight, and when Wil opened the door, a cool,
refreshing breeze blew in, along with the sound of distant music.
Part of me wanted to rush back out into the night and find some music to dance to, and part
of me wanted to stay in the yurt with my heroes, playing D&D. That was the thing about
Burning Man -- there was so much I wanted to do!
Wil came over and handed me another cup of mint tea, the leaves floating in the hot water.
“Pretty awesome. Can't believe these guys let me DM their game. And I can't believe I ran
into you.” He shook his head. “This place is like nerdstock.”
“Have you known them for long?”
“Not really. I met Barlow and Gilmore a while back, when I did a fundraiser for EFF. I ran
into Gilmore at random today and I told him I'd brought my D&D stuff along and the next
thing I knew, I was running a game for them.”
“What kind of fundraiser were you doing?” Wil looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place
him.
“Oh,” he said, and stuck his hands in his pockets. “They brought me in to pretend-fight a
lawyer in a Barney the Purple Dinosaur costume. It was because the Barney people had
been sending a lot of legal threats out to web sites and EFF had been defending them,
and, well, it was a lot of fun.”
I knew him from somewhere. It was driving me crazy. “Look, do I know you? You look
really familiar --”
“Ha!” he said. “I thought you knew. I made some movies when I was a kid, and I was on
Star Trek: The Next Generation, and --”
My jaw dropped so low I felt like it was in danger of scraping my chest. “You're Wil
Wheaton?”
SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ 37