Magical Mayhem

A 216-post collection

Challenge #03516-I228: Breaking the Chain

A fortress of Elves and Tieflings is dedicated to training anti-slavery soldiers who go out to seek slavers, and free the slaves. They prefer not to kill, but will if they have to. -- Anon Guest

Assumptions can, have, and will kill thousands. Like, for instance, assuming that an Elf is rich and a Tiefling is only safe once in iron chains. Or that the Elf and the Tiefling aren't working together in a sting operation. Sometimes, it is the Elf in iron chains and the Tiefling as the wealthy purchaser. The script is more or less the same.

A chain of slaves, some fresh-captured and also in stocks and hobbles, walks behind horses and carts. The "rich purchaser" has been secretly tracking one of them for a few miles, and arranged to arrive in the opposite direction.

The coterie glitters. The slavers anticipate a very profitable day. How little they know.

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Challenge #03512-I224: Walk a Mile

A being that HATES tieflings, and goes out of their way to hurt them, ends up in a temple. The magi (the cleric who is the scion of the god of that temple) sees the being harm a tiefling child, one of the many orphans there. And does the one thing that, to the hateful person, is the ultimate nightmare. The person wakes up having the form of the being they hate most. -- Anon Guest

Beware the hand of Justice. It

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Challenge #03510-I222: A Place For You as Well

A memorial goes up to the men and women that wore the Crown of Days to protect the youngster who helped them win the war. The young woman, the parents, and the duchy both honor her, and the brave ones who sacrificed their lives, dying one day at a time, to give her the strength needed in those terrible days, also thanked the last one, bent and aged before their time, for their lives.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02821-g264-caste-of-the-shadows -- Anon

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Challenge #03508-I220: Educating Warriors

"Kids, I could use some help in the kitchen!"

sound of many running feet

"FO' DIN-DIN!!!" -- Escla

Warrior cultures aren't warriors all the time. Many people think so, and presume that everything is a fight. They presume that the entire tribe lives by the sword, on a horse, and nothing else ever happens without bloodshed. No culture is a monolith and no one group of people ever do the same thing.

The Orcish steppes are chilly, that much is true. The

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Challenge #03501-I213: Blessed With the Ability to Curse

They were born with heterochromia and when their canines grew in, they grew in long and pointed. Yes they were human, it was a genetic anomaly. But hey, they loved how it scared pirates when they smiled fully and showed THOSE teeth!

[While I don't have heterochromia - a condition where the person is born with one eye being one color and the other eye being a completely different color, when I lost my eye-teeth, aka the canines, as a kid, the

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Challenge #03480-I192: Same Song, Different Singers

A ruler had just ascended the throne, and began to look into the reports of what was going on in the kingdom. They knew some of it, but until their father retired, there was little they could do. Now, they were going to crack down on the mistreatment that so many, like the Tieflings, Kobolds, and other "lesser" races, were receiving at the hands of the authorities of this nation. -- Anon Guest

Being unwelcome is a self-defeating life. One is judged,

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Challenge #03475-I187: Conflicting Values

A young magic user has only one special ability. When they sing, they heal those that are sick and / or injured. A powerful ability that, sadly, the greedy tend to covet. Good thing they've gentle friends to help them. -- Anon Guest

Blessed was a blood-red Tiefling. Hir eyes were pitch black, and only someone who knew hir could tell where ze was looking at any given time. Ze had wickedly spiked horns, and cruelly sharp fingers, as well as hooves that

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Challenge #03469-I181: Strange Bedfellows

Yes I am Human. Yes I am marrying a Bugbear. We don't care what you think! -- Anon Guest

Everyone thinks that Bugbears are goblinoids created to be the violent enforcing arm of goblin rule. However, their temper is entirely understandable. Goblins are furless tunnelers distantly related to both lizards and Dragons[1]. Hobgoblins are only a little larger than their extremely prolific cousins.

Bugbears average out at eight feet tall.

Once all three goblinoid people banded together, it was the Bugbears

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Challenge #03466-I178: The Rest of the World is Wrong

That push of regret was everything. But it happened, and now things were forever changed... -- Pixels By Kris

The regrets of the past poison the decisions of the here and now. Valiant Stormwight Hallowfine Whitekeep, third of the name, had watched his older brother Purity roll himself in debauchery and excess. There wasn't a girl in all the Earldom that he hadn't sweet-talked into a bedchamber or, in extremis, an alley. And why not? Bastards of the Earl's line were a

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Challenge #03448-I160: Transparency Would be Nice

A Human Adventurer is collecting Kobold eggs, carefully putting them into a lined basket. They are attacked, defending themselves and avoiding harming the eggs. They explain about the danger to the eggs, and continue to gather them to get them to safety. -- Anon Guest

Litefinger had learned well. One being can change the world with two kind hands. Those kind hands had stolen a basket, foraged a lot of wool from the thornbushes, and were now lifting eggs from a Kobold

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Challenge #03440-I152: Practice Makes Perilous

Several individuals go into caves and start hunting the Kobolds. But instead of harming them, the wooden blades are covered in red dye as they teach the Kolbolds how to better defend themselves, how to hide better, while others teach some Kobolds healing magic to treat the wounded. -- Anon Guest

It was chaos. The entire warren was in disarray. Kobolds scattered in all directions. The caverns, tunnels, and chambers alike echoed with the screams of hundreds of the burrowing dragons. Peasants

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Challenge #03429-I141: The Last Song of Ease

An apprentice cleric is about to be elevated to journeyman status. Their mentor goes to teach them the song of death. The melody which ends a life gently, and eases the dying into the next world. The apprentice is appalled that such a song exists, but there is a reason it can only be used on those who are at the edge of death and in pain. The journeyman has to sooth the apprentice, this is one of the hardest lessons among

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Challenge #03425-I137: Explosive War Prevention

Please tell me, father, why we keep going to war? It never works, and all that happens is we lose the ones we love most. -- Anon Guest

"That's the trick of it, my lad," said King Gerhardt. "They also lose the ones they love the most. Make them pay for killing ours, eh? Balance the scales a bit. We must remember the pain they caused us so that we can claim our vengeance."

Prince Ethelbert frowned at the concept as he

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Challenge #03410-I122: From the Mouths of Babes

The sun is shining, the snow is melting, and the air is much warmer now. So... WHY does our village run the ice festival NOW instead of in the coldest part of winter where everything would've remained more solid? -- Anon Guest

"But this is the middle of winter," insisted the grownup. "It says so on the calendar."

"We're tobogganing down mud," insisted Galiena. "The crocuses are out. Birds are returning from the south. It's not winter."

The officious officer Thoralf Rutsk

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Challenge #03409-I121: Curse-grown Blessings

I curse you with ten thousand years of life! Sounds like a blessing doesn't it? But I'm not done yet. You are now incapable of doing any harm to ANYONE ever again except under two conditions. You are actively defending your OWN life, you are actively defending an innocent's life. Good luck. -- Anon Guest

Year One:

Sword and dagger alike failed to hit. Fists stopped short of their intended victims. Arrows missed their target. Even words meant to injure pride failed

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