Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The Epic Adventures of Jackson and Toby

Matt Welty and I first met at a Dungeons and Dragons game (2nd Ed Advanced DnD I think) in 1988. I’d recently moved to Orange County from Kentucky and didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t realize at the time how much the culture shock was hitting me. All the societal rules I’d grown up with were different in Orange County. I didn’t have my familiar group of geek friends to hang out with on the weekends, or the track and cross country team to make me feel like a part of a team.

The first thing I do when I move to a new city is find the local comic and hobby store to seek out people I can immediately understand. In this case it was a store on El Toro Rd called Comic Quest. I’d managed to befriend and game with a couple of the employees when the owner, Rich Grinnel, invited me to an after-hours ADnD game at the store. I was stoked, though I probably didn’t know what ‘stoked’ was at the time.


I don’t remember all the players. The game was run by a local chess master named Rich Kassa and had at least Rich Grinnel, Matt and myself as players. The night I started in the game the group had just rescued a boat load of slaves from a slaver ship. I didn’t have a character yet and I’ve always been a fan of playing whatever would help the group so told them I’d play one of the previous NPCs (non-player characters). I think it was Matt that came up with the idea of my playing a half-ogre that had been a slave on the ship. For lack of a better name (names have always been my weak spot in RPGs), we named him Toby. He was a simple-minded character, brutally strong, sweet at heart and could only use the one weapon that his strength was worthless with—a whip.

Matt and I recognized pretty quickly that we were both more interested in telling a good story than in ‘winning’ or min-maxing our characters into the most powerful ones at the table. A half-ogre with a whip proved that. Toby immediately attached himself to Matt’s character, a Zulu-type warrior by the name of Jokchunda Liklajo, or as the "pig-men" used to call him, Jackson Littlejohn. Jackson used to call them "pig-men" because they squeeled when you stick them.

Toby followed Jackson everywhere and did everything he did. We fell into the inevitable “Of Mice and Men” dynamic and loved every minute of it (I suppose I should have named him Lennie). The best part being Jackson, a warrior from a foreign land, teaching Toby, a half-ogre outcast the ways of the world. A situation exacerbated by several language barriers and the fact that Toby was fascinated with the feathers worn in the hats of aristocratic ladies. Butterflies were also a fun past-time and Toby caused all kinds of problems reaching out for passing butterflies while riding in a rowboat through stirge and parasite infested swamps.

Which brings me to why we were in that swamp in the first place. We were trying to find a witch to tell us some information we needed. We’d finally found her dank and moss covered hut but Jackson was put off by all the magic in the air. He went out to the dock and sat by the edge bitching about ‘finger wagglers’ and devil’s magic when some tentacled black swamp creature tried to pull him in. He eventually pulled it out and killed it. But the funniest part was when he dragged it into the hut proudly declaring he was going to make gumbo out of it. I can still see Matt chuckling to himself with that Puck’ish grin on his face. From then on Jackson tried to make gumbo out of everything. And Toby would happily eat it.

One of the funniest reoccurring themes of Jackson and Toby’s career together was that they couldn’t make saving throws to, well, save their lives. In one game we were attacking another ship on the high sea. Magic was something Toby couldn’t comprehend and Jackson feared like the devil. At one point our ship rammed the other ship. One of our party members (Grinnel I believe) threw a magic bean onto the deck of the opposing ship that created a giant cloud of sleep gas to incapacitate their soldiers. Unfortunately, Jackson and Toby were already in mid air, leaping from the bow of our ship to the deck of the other. We landed square in the middle of the sleep gas. Two saving throws and two natural ‘1’s later, Jackson and Toby slammed into the deck of a now burning ship snoring away. We laughed our asses off. And then Grinnel’s character saved both our butts, to Jackson’s eternal annoyance. Jackson hated Grinnel’s character. I can’t even remember that guy’s name.

Matt especially missed saving throws against Cone of Cold spells. They were like Jackson’s kryptonite. At one point we even gave him a Luck Stone to help boost his rolls. Not long after that a wizard nailed him with yet another Cone of Cold. He not only missed the save for himself, but for the Luck Stone as well and it shattered into a million little icy pieces.

Matt hated ‘finger wagglers’. Hehe

After the first night of the game, Matt and I stood by our cars in the parking lot and talked. We even had the doors to our cars open as if we were going to head out any moment. I think the game ended about 10pm. We talked until at least 2am, maybe 3. One of the subjects we covered that first night was comics, and the comic that clenched our friendship was a little known title called Alien Legion, published by Marvel’s short-lived publishing wing Epic. Alien Legion was the first comic I had read where main characters that I cared about died; permanently and sometimes brutally. The book was set around a military force similar to the French Foreign Legion, but with humans and aliens. The opening quote from the brilliant graphic novel “A Grey Day to Die” described them like this:

Footsloggers and soldiers of fortune, priests and poets, killers and cads—they fight for a future Galarchy, for cash, a cause, for the thrill of adventure. Legionnaires live rough and they die hard, tough as tungsten and loyal to the dirty end.
Matt and I were both floored that the other had read the series and ranked it as one of our top 10 if not in our top 3 series of all time. We understood the allure and struggles of every noble soul, criminal, vigilante, heartbroken poet and hardened soldier that filled the Legion. And we could reminisce about one of them dying like we’d both lost a good friend.

The ADnD game went on for a couple of months I think, maybe longer. Every time, Matt and I would sit outside by our cars and talk. We never ended conversations because we’d run out of things to say. It would just get too late and we’d have to go to work or school the next day so we would try to tear ourselves away, often unsuccessfully, until it was finally far too late.

My friend Alan sent me a quote a few months ago after Matt died. I’ll try and paraphrase it here:

You will know your friends better in the first five minutes that you meet them than you will acquaintances after knowing them all your life.
I knew in those first conversations Matt and I had something special as friends. I got to enjoy and rely upon that friendship for 20 years. It’s been six months since he died and I’m still breaking down. I miss him badly, in everyday things. Knowing that I won’t be able to share a new comic series, or movie, or game with him shuts my heart down a little. Eventually it locks up all together and I have to let it out. I’m hoping that writing some of my favorite Matt stories will keep my heart open. I’m starting to feel scar tissue build over it and that is the last thing I want. Matt and I both enjoy life too much for that to happen.

I still have the Jackson Littlejohn miniature that Grinnel hand-made for Matt. I never had a Toby mini, but I’m sure I could find one somewhere. If I do I should make a diorama for them, maybe in a swamp spilling out of a row boat, or on a city street accosting aristocrats with feather hats, or, more likely, in the woods around a fire with a pot full of gumbo; Toby lovingly not caring what's in it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you, man. :)

I never sent you that goodbye I wrote in May to Matt. It's a locked post, and I don't think you have the LiveJournal, so I'll copy it here...

****
Or whatever it is you call it this time of night

I just realized that Matt nabbed a userpic from me.

While this makes me fall apart again, at the same time, for some reason, this cheers me immensely.

I have never before cried like this while smiling. I still don't understand it. I still don't know what to do with it. The racking sobs, the complete loss of breath... I can't fit it into anything I'm comfortable with. I don't understand. It all seems like fuel for some great fire, some engine with an inscrutable purpose. But I don't know what to do. And I don't want to let it go.

I feel like me letting it slip by and pass would be a betrayal of some kind, like it would be denying him a ticket to the show, telling him that I didn't want him here anymore.... But I want him back. I don't want him to go. I don't want him to be gone.

I want to sit on his floor reading comics, him handing me issue after issue, knowing that the ride he took me on was perfect for the day...

I want to drink coffee with him, listening to the wonders he described to be found around the corner...

I want him to speak calmly and patiently to me, reminding me that everything is all right...

But he won't. Because I can't reach him. Because he's gone.

Maybe it's the fire to remind me. Maybe it is fuel for the engine. Maybe it's that last tank of gas, to take him down the road out of town...

I hope he makes good time.

Godspeed, my friend. Save a seat for me, yeah? I miss you.

Anonymous said...

And, yeah, Alien Legion... I loved that comic. I had about gotten about half of the original series collected when I lost my comics. I should really pick up graphic novels of it...

Unknown said...

I think about Matt all the time. However, I don't get sad. It isn't that I don't miss him, which I do, it's that I think that I subconsciously and psychically prepared myself for his absence.

Now, this is a subject I really don't share with most; the subject of Psychicness. Ironically, it's a subject that Matt and I were big on with each other, not so much for others. You know, we have an image to uphold. Can't go talking about Crystal Woo-Woo when you're trying to be a crass punk. However, on the real side, we were deeply into it. Psychicness, ESP, Past Lives, Spirits, Spirit Guides, Totems, Angels and Demons.

Anyway, for about a year before he died, I stopped coming over so often. In fact it became a downright rarity. Eventually even phone calls stopped. All that was left was the Hectorlist. I think that the reason for this, other than his all consuming passion for Nici, was that I instinctively knew the time was near. Matt and I understood that we were frequent stars in each others numerous lives and that we seemed to be cut from the same wood, as it were. Though we never got too specific about the roles.

There are times I regret not seeing him more before we left.
Thankfully, I did get to see him one more time, at St. Willmo's Day. But I think it was for the best. Had he died while I was still going over to the pad every wednesday to talk about Life, the Universe, and Everything(another irony in that he REFUSED to read those books) in between our TV watching, I probably would be a mess.

What I miss the most about Matt is that he got me. He got me more than anyone, other than Ray, and that's contestable.

This was our time, right now. Halloween. We'd be fresh from a Cramps show and watching Bionic Woman on Wednesdays, until around 11ish when I'd start passing out on the couch of slumber.

The thing that freaks me out is when I "spoke" to him shortly afterwards, he said, "Don't worry about it. You're next"

Needless to say, I'm going to the Doctor soon, been working out four days a week, quit smoking, and cut waaaay back on the green. Fuck that shit. I want to make it to 2012 just I can once again laugh in the faces of the Doomsday sayers!

Turi said...

Hi Rich,

Reading your post, I could imagine the adventures of your characters in the story you all built through the games. Its a colorful past to have lived two lives (and perhaps) more together in living memory. :)

T