Root the Gladiator
Channel: Saving Throw
Date: 2017-01-10

It's that same old story. A series of misunderstandings leads to you becoming an unwitting gladiator atop a baby rancor.

It's a tale as old as time.

Teline's commentary: I have made many memories with Saving Throw that I treasure: worshipping the great god Kroger, A.R. Oomba, every second of Miss Adventures, but there is one particular moment (or series of moments) that I am particularly fond of. 

The place: Granga’s Gambles. The bizarre group of adventures, led by General Dodana in a fake mustache, had just disembarked into this garish, tacky, pleasure palace. Root, the lost Ewok, is never really sure what is happening. The whole universe confuses her, and the way she explains this all to herself is superstitious and barely good enough to help her cope. She is riding her baby Rancor Yerp into this flashing, strange-smelling morass.

Some security guards spot her and hustle her off to an arena where terrible creatures fight to the death to amuse crowds of equally terrible gamblers.

But the moment Root set foot in that arena, she achieved clarity. Here was a place where things were simple. A thing comes in; kill it or be killed. The smell is familiar: the metallic tang of blood. The feeling is familiar: complete confidence.

Root is physically weak, but clever. Yerp is immensely strong but too young to act independently. Root was always mentally tough and ready to face whatever came, but this was the first time she had the brawn to back it up.

The way David set it up, I faced three opponents of increasing difficulty, and I would get one roll for each. I know that you should never tell me the odds, but those dice rolls, the odds were stacked harder and harder against me.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you felt like something was so right, it had to happen that way? There was never a moment in that fight that I ever had any doubt that I would crush those rolls. And I did.

As Root and Yerp ate the heart of their last victim, suddenly the lights went out and people fled, and Root was dropped back into her regular life, where she relied on a chubby space angel and a murder god/droid to get her someplace that she wasn’t sure she’d ever find. But for a while, everything was clear. For a moment, Root was able to be fully Root. It was bloody and violent, but to me, it was beautiful.