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Joker's Wild

Summary:

Istus. Pan. The Raven Queen. Each of them have their chosen ones among the Seven Birds.

But unbeknownst to the crew, Davenport was also chosen to serve a god: one whose patronage he doesn't understand, one whose designs he will spend a lifetime grappling with.

This is the story of Captain Davenport, unwilling emissary of the God of Pranks.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: Warren

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The first time Davenport meets his god, he is thirteen years old and skeptical.

The air in his bedroom shimmers like sunlight catching on jewels, and Garl Glittergold appears with a big grin on his face.

"Dwimly Drew True-Blue Cloch Davenport," he says.  "I am Garl Glittergold, Lord of Pranks, First of the Golden Hills and Watchful Protector of Gnomekind.  And I have chosen you to be my emissary to the world."

Davenport looks up from the model engine he's been tinkering with on his desk.  Very slowly, he lifts the goggles from his eyes.  "What?"

Garl's grin doesn't waver.  "You're to be my emissary," he repeats.  "My champion.  My chosen."

Davenport frowns.  Images flash through his head of gnomes who've dedicated their lives to Garl Glittergold the Joker.  Pranksters and rogues travelling around making fools of themselves.  Clerics holding epic prank wars among their ranks.

In short, they're everything that Davenport is pretty sure he doesn't want to be.  He can't tell a joke to save his life, for one thing, and pranks are just a waste of time.

"Um," he says.  "Have you met me?"

But Garl just keeps grinning.  "I know, right?  Nobody would ever expect it!"

Davenport gets to his feet.  "All right, Bunder," he says, "joke's over.  Drop the illusion."  Where's that jerk cousin of his hiding?  He checks his wardrobe, peers under the bed.

Garl's grin finally fades.  He clears his throat.  "I'm definitely not the work of Bunder," he says.

"Sure," says Davenport.  "Gwight, then?  Who's decided to make fun of me today?"  He rolls his eyes.  "Take your pick, it's all the same."

"While I'm flattered that you think that I, Lord of Pranks, am a prank myself, I assure you I'm quite real."

"Yup, you sure are."  Davenport scoops up a pillow and throws it straight at him.

It bounces off his head with a shower of golden sparks.

Davenport's eyes widen.  He stands up straight.  "Oh gods," he says in a strangled voice, "you're really there!"

Garl's smile returns.  He twirls one curling end of his magnificent coppery mustache.  "Like I said." 

Davenport sits down hard on the bed.  "Oh gods, I just threw a pillow at Garl Glittergold," he said.  "I just threw a…"  He trails off, burying his face in his hands.  He can feel his cheeks burn with embarrassment.

Garl sits down beside him on the bed.  "Now now, it's all right," he says.  "A thrown pillow never hurt anyone.  Now, hold out your hand.  I have something for you."

Davenport looks up at him, blinking.  "This…really isn't a joke?" he squeaks. 

Garl waits.  Davenport swallows, and holds out his hand.  Part of him hopes that nothing will land in his open palm, part of him hopes that this is still some clever trick of illusion, or maybe a weird dream he's about to wake up from.

But something heavy and cool lands in his hand, and a jolt like lightning runs from his scalp to the tip of his tail.

He looks at his hand.  He's holding a golden die with twenty faces.  The 20 is currently face-up. 

"Um," he says.  "Thanks…?"

Garl smiles, and taps him right in the middle of his forehead.  Lightning runs through him again, and visions flash through his brain in quick succession.  The die rolling across the floor; his name burning in bright letters across the pages of a huge book; a banquet hall full of feasting gnomes and Garl Glittergold standing up from the chair beside him, lifting an intricately-crafted goblet and raising a toast to him, Dwimly Drew True-Blue Cloch Davenport the Unexpected, Joker's Emissary, while the other gnomes cheer. 

"I like you already, kid," says the double-headed war axe strapped to Garl's back.

And then he's back in his bedroom, alone, flopped on his bed and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.  The die grows warm in his hand.

 

#

 

The next day, he wakes up and the die is still there, sitting on his desk.  He decides to conduct experiments.  He gets out a notebook and lists the numbers one through twenty down the side of one page. 

The die feels comfortable in his hand, solid and weighty but not awkwardly heavy.  He lets it roll across the floorboards of his bedroom.  It lands on a 16.

A strange tingling sensation fills his hands and makes his fingers twitch.  It feels like the same sort of magical energy when he casts a Minor Illusion cantrip (only ever in school, only when he has to, because his illusions always come out awful, like one of his little siblings' crude crayon drawings).  Only now it feels much more…potent.

He lets the magic spool out, shaping it to an image in his head.  His bedroom transforms into a stunningly realistic cloudscape.  Bed and dresser become towering cumulus touched soft pink with the light of a setting sun.  The air feels chilly against his cheeks and clean in his lungs.  The clouds drift and shift around him.  The sky seems to go on forever.  He gasps at how real it all looks.

He looks down, and his stomach drops at the sight of how far away the ground is.  He stumbles back, losing his balance and almost losing his lunch. 

He forms the illusion of a sturdy glass platform beneath him.  He knows he's not falling, but his brain is reassured nonetheless.  He crouches down and looks through the glass.  Forests and oceans drift past, visible in the gaps between the clouds.  He shapes a flock of white geese flying far below him in a V-formation.

He tries to cast it again, shaping a different landscape altogether.  But the spell doesn't work a second time.  He can manipulate the already-existing cloudscape but that's all.

"O-okay," he says, reaching for his notebook. 

  1. One (1) use of Hallucinatory Terrain

He rolls the die again, but nothing happens.  He adds a note to the bottom of the page. 

   *Once Per Day

The next morning, he rolls it again.  It comes up at 5.

A weird and slightly unpleasant tickle forms at the back of his throat.  He crinkles his nose at the sudden overwhelming sensation of an oncoming sneeze.  He can't quite reach his handkerchief in time, and sneezes into his hand.

A pair of white doves burst from his mouth.  They flutter up to the ceiling of his bedroom and unroll a small cloth banner between them.  The words "Congratulations!  You Did It!" are written in fancy blue script.

He winces.  "Gross." 

  1. Message Dove Sneezes??? (Random message?  Possibly sarcastic.)

Well, it is the Joker he's dealing with.  He sighs and puts his quill away.  The doves flutter there for a good few minutes before dissipating.

The next day he rolls a 12.  He feels the world slow down around him.  The clock on the wall ticks so much more slowly now.  Either time's being messed with, or he's at the receiving end of a Haste spell.  He decides it's the latter, and uses the extra time to work more on his model engine. 

  1. One (1) use of Haste (Target: self)

The next day he rolls a 3.  There's a popping noise and a tingling sensation on his scalp.  He reaches for his head, and is shocked to find poofy, neon-green curls where his normal ginger waves are supposed to be.  He staggers to his feet, staring in horror at his reflection on the dresser mirror.  He looks like a green puffball.  He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. 

There's a knock at his door.  "Davenport, are you ready?" comes his mother's voice.  "We're leaving in five."

"W-what?" he gasps.

"Temple communion," she says.  "It's the thirteenth."

His cheeks burn.  He checks his wall calendar, and there it is…the thirteenth of the month.  Garl's day. 

"Uh, y-yeah, I'll be right out."  He winces, leaning over his dresser.  He tries casting a Minor Illusion cantrip over his head.  But what comes out is a crude angular shape, like a wig carved badly from wood and then painted bright orange.  And it doesn't cover the green pouf completely, so sprigs of curly green poke out of it like corkscrew grass.  He dismisses the illusion, and instead digs a knit cap out of one of his drawers.  He tugs it down over his hair.  It's the middle of summer but an afternoon of uncomfortable sweating is at least better than public humiliation.

He checks himself one more time to make sure the cap covers his hair completely, then he slips out of his room.

The family is gathering in the main den, his mother and father and all his siblings and a handful of aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents.  His mother raises an eyebrow when he arrives, shoulders hunched and hands stuck deep in his pockets.

"Davenport, you'll be too warm in that," she says.

"I'm f-fine," he says, grimacing.  His stutter always gets worse when he's nervous.

(He didn’t stutter once when he was talking to Garl.  Later, he will wonder about that.)

She gives him a long look.  "Okay, if you say so."

He realizes, just as they're heading down the tunnel to the central temple of Garl Glittergold, that he's still clutching the golden die in his pocket.

 

#

 

The monthly services to Garl are one part prayer circle, one part dance party, and one part Open Mic Night.  And none of those things make Davenport particularly comfortable.  Even the quiet periods of prayer leave him restless, uncertain what to do.  Even now.  Especially now.

He huddles down in the pew, trying to make himself invisible. 

"So, um," he mumbles.  "Am I supposed to…do anything specific?  Do I have you on a…a direct line now?"

"Or you can just talk like a normal person," says a voice at his side.  He nearly jumps at the sight of Garl Glittergold sitting beside him in the pew, dressed in the robes of one of the Jewels, his priestly order.  He winks at Davenport.  "I see you've been trying out my little present."

Dav's cheeks flush.  He pulls the knit cap tighter down his head.  "I don't get it," he says.  "What am I supposed to do?  Do I have to become a Jewel?  Go around evangelizing?  I don't…I don't know what it means."

Garl shrugs.  "What do you want it to mean?"

He sinks further down into the pew.  "That's not very helpful," he grumbles.

"Dav," says his mother, "who are you talking to?"

He jumps.  The spot beside him is empty.  "Um…just p-praying to Garl."

She gives him a small smile. 

"Hey Cloch," says his little brother Clocthi.  It's their nicknames for each other, the gnomish words for Big Pebble and Little Pebble.  "Are you gonna tell the cow joke today?"

"Later," he says quickly.  He's told one joke in his life that made anyone laugh, and it was a dumb joke that his kid brother found hilarious.  Now he keeps insisting that Davenport go up during the Open Mic portion and tell the joke to the congregation.  And Davenport, who stutters when he's nervous and who hates public speaking, keeps pushing off his promise. 

Clocthi frowns, disappointed as usual, but he doesn't push.

The service crawls along for hours.  There's a troupe of jugglers, a call-and-response riddle song that goes on forever, a stand-up routine, and a long homily from their head priest, Star Ruby Jella, about the joys of family and community.  Davenport tries to pay attention, tries to let himself be carried along by the sounds of his enormous extended family all sharing this happy communion.  But he just feels as awkward and detached as he always has.  Like he's peering through a window at a party he doesn't know how to enter.  Only now, he carries the added weight of the golden die in his pocket.

It's a relief when the service ends.  He slides up out of the pew and joins the river of gnomes streaming down the aisles. 

The knit cap is yanked from his head by a Mage Hand.  Bunder laughs behind him as his green hair poofs out.  "Whoa!" he chortles.  "Lookit that!"

"Wow," says his cousin Glinta, giving him a lopsided smile.  "That's a brave look, True-Blue.  Should I start calling you True-Green?"

"Bunder!" he shouts, flailing for the cap dangling over his head.  "Give it BACK!"  He hears laughter from all sides.  All of it sounds like it's directed at him.

"Boys, that's enough!" roars one of his uncles.  The Mage Hand vanishes and Davenport, who'd squeezed his eyes shut to try to hold back a flood of hot embarrassed tears, feels the cap thrust into his hands.  He wipes his eyes, shoves the cap over his head and runs, half-blind, for the exit.

He doesn’t stop moving till he gets back to his family’s den, to the quiet sanctuary of his room.  He’s gasping hard and his legs are shaking.  He wraps the die in a handkerchief and stuffs it in a small leather bag.  And he buries that bag in the back of his bottom drawer, never to be touched again.

Notes:

Hey, so I'm back with yet another Davenport fic! Big surprise there, huh? Anyway, this came about because I had a weird idea and the TFW Discord folks were entirely too encouraging ;) So buckle up and enjoy this tale about Davenport being the chosen emissary of the last god he'd ever expect.

Also, I'm being a little overconfident and actually posting chapter 1 before I've completed chapter 2, which is...mostly written >.> Updates will come when they come!