Let's Play Heroes of Sandpoint

((Fanfiction about kids pretending to be the PCs))

It was a warm, bright morning in Sandpoint, and the heat of the sun beating down on the town square competed with a cool, salty sea breeze blowing in from the harbor. Most of the townsfolk had wandered off to form a crowd around the sawmill, leaving the square mostly deserted. A small crowd of children clustered around the fountain, getting ready to argue and debate over the day's entertainment. A young woman sat on the edge of the fountain with her whittling knife and small supply of wood, someone's older sister assigned to supervise the kids.

"Did you bring the ball?" a brown haired, ruddy faced boy asked.

"I thought you had the ball!" a slender Varisian girl complained.

"Nuh uh, I lended it to you, remember? You wanted to practice balancing it on your head for the circus!"

"That's not why! And that was last week, I gave it back to you, remember?"

"No you didn't!"

"Yes I did! You probably forgot it at home."

"We don't have a ball, let's play make believe," a girl with straight dark hair tried to head off the argument.

"Ok, but not fairies this time, I hate being a brownie," the boy grumped.

"I wanna play house," one of the younger girls murmured. No one seemed to hear her.

"Let's play Shoanti and Settlers!" a short, round boy shouted.

"Nuh uh, my Auntie says that game's racist," one of the girls said.

"That's 'cause it is!" a tall Shoanti boy agreed. The chubby boy sheepishly murmured an apology.

"Let's play Heroes of Sandpoint, then!" The varisian girl suggested, to a chorus of cheered agreement. "I wanna be Xenvia!"

"Nuh uh, you're a Varisian, you should be Zeldana!" one of the boys insisted.

"That's racist!" someone protested.

"Well, you are the best dancer here..." the dark haired girl said diplomatically.

"Ok, I'll be Zeldana, then" the Varisian girl shrugged and agreed, warming up to the idea of dancing. She began waving he arms and shuffling her feet while the others argued.

"I'll be Morvius Krupt, Deputy of Sandpoint," the Shoanti boy suggested.

"You're too nice to be Morvius," one of the younger girls objected. The round boy nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, the strongest one should be Morvius, 'cause he carries Coral the most," the brown haired boy said, puffing out his chest and pointing a thumb at himself.

"Nuh uh, Vehran carries her the most," mumbled the girl who'd wanted to play house. If anyone heard her, they didn't respond.

"You should be Vehran because you're very nice. Also, he's taller than Morvius" the dark haired girl posed to the Shoanti boy.

The Shoanti boy scratched the back of his head uncertainly, "Um, actually I heard Vehran can be kind of mean..."

"Well, you don't have to be mean..."

"You be Vehran. I'm the devil!" shouted the brown haired boy. "Besides, lots of girls like you. It works."

The Shoanti boy flushed and opened his mouth to protest, but he was cut off. "Who's gonna be Coral?" the Varisian girl asked, spinning in place.

"I could be..." the dark haired girl began, only to be interrupted.

"Let's make Shally be Coral," the boy who would be Morvius pointed to the smallest, doll toting girl. "She's the lightest."

"Do you want to be Coral, Shally?" the dark haired girl asked her The little girl hesitated a moment, then nodded.

"Don't throw Shally in the water while she's pretending to be a mermaid, please." the young woman called from the fountain. She was answered by an unenthusiastic chorus of murmured acquiesence.

"We have too many boys," the brown haired boy complained. "Who's Dolan going to be?"

"I could be Balor Hemlock," the round boy, apparently named Dolan, tried.

"He could be Oric," someone supplied.

"Oric's not a Hero!" someone else objected.

"He doesn't have to be a boy, he could be a girl," the dark haired girl put forth.

"Well, I guess I could, but we've still got seven people and there's only six heroes," Dolan shrugged

"You can be Xenvia's dog," Coral for a day said, hopping up and down and speaking for the first time.

"Xenvia doesn't have a dog," the new Morvius scoffed.

"Look over there," stand-in Zeldana managed to point while still rhythmically twisting her body.

Sure enough, on the far side of the square was a tall dark skinned woman, clad in light chain and leather, engaged in training an immense white wolf. She seemed to be trying to teach it some hand signal or gesture. It was slowly getting the idea that if it saw this hand signal, and hid itself somewhere nearby, it would then get a strip of jerky and a pat on the head - a bigger strip of jerky if it took Xenvia longer to find it.

The girl with the quiet voice hopped up and down excitedly, her eyes going wide at the sight of the wolf. "I wanna be Xenvia!" her exclamation the loudest sound she had produced today.

Everyone turned to look at her. "Are you sure you want to be Xenvia?" Boy Morvius asked. "She's never afraid of anything. She's not afraid of goblins, or frogs, or trolls, or um... troll poo," he said in a

The girl flinched at the mention of troll poo, and her voice quavered a little, but she insisted "I'm not afraid!"

Morvius Jr. suddenly leaped at her, waving his arms and stomping his feet, and shouted "I am the devil!" Little Coral hid behind Dolan, but the dog-loving quiet girl who would be Xenvia made a show of creasing her brow and shutting her lips tight and glaring at the boy. Morvius nodded, patted her on the shoulder and said "You'll be a great Xenvia."

"I guess that leaves you or me to be Ash," the dark haired girl said to Dolan.

"We could make Annie be Ash. She's old!" Dolan pointed at the young woman at the fountain. She gave him a withering look. "A-and she's very good at taking care of us all!" he added, trying to get his metaphorical foot out of his mouth.

"Milly," mini-Coral said simply, and pointed at the dark haired girl.

"Yeah, Milly should be Ash," Zeldana's understudy agreed. "She's afraid of Dragons and she keeps us from doing dumb things."

"Didn't you say you wanted to be a doctor?" Shoanti Vehran nudged her.

"O-okay, I'll be Ash then," the dark haired girl named Milly nodded.

"Yeah, you like helping people, and you've got that world-weary melancholy sadness," Dolan agreed.

A concerned look crept over the face of the new Ash, and she turned to the shaved Vehran, "Am I really sad?" He smiled and shook his head.

"So, Dolan, who are you going to be?" the devil boy asked.

"I - I could be Balor Hemlock?" he tried again.

"You should be Vehran's ghost that haunts him!" the spinning Zeldana exclaimed.

"Ghost?" child Ash asked. "Do I need to perform an exorcism on you?" she asked the tall Dhampir for a day.

"I heard it's the ghost of his dead dad," Littler Morvius jumped in.

"Oh, the thing that shows up when he uses magic? Isn't it an avatar of Pharasma?," little Ash asked.

"I heard a woman loved him so much, that her spirit still clings to him even after she died," Dolan said.

"I've heard of the spirits of one's ancestors guiding and aiding them. Maybe that's what's following him?" the Shoanti Vehran wondered aloud.

"So I'm going to be your ancestor?" Dolan asked skeptically.

"Doggy," little Coral tried suggesting again.

"I don't really want to go around on my hands and knees all day..." Dolan hesitated.

"It's ok, I'll find a real doggy." young Xenvia smiled at the younger girl.

"This is taking too long! You'll just be my Devil Deputy! Now let's go save Sandpoint!" Morvius Jr. shouted. "I am the Devil!" one clenched fist shot into the air.

"I am also the Devil!" Devil Dolan yelled, copying the other boy's pose.

"Let's go fight the Rusty Dragon!" Young Vehran shouted, scooping up the little Coral.

"W-wait, dragon? Do we have to?" little Ash balked.

"I'm not afraid!" young Xenvia said, if anyone heard her.

"La la la, la la la la" little Coral sang a stream of rhythmless random notes from her place in the tall boy's arms.

"My dancing is making you faster!" a whirling Zeldana assured them as she skipped out of the square ahead of them.

Annie the chaperone glanced up from her seat at the edge of the fountain as the children clamored down the street toward the Rusty Dragon Inn. Hurriedly, she gathered up her spare wood and half-carved figurine, leapt up and chased after them, murmuring her complaints and worries to the breeze.