____ Welcome back, friends! Yes, it’s been a while since I posted a story ‘round these parts, but worry not! For the Halloween spirit has strengthened my writing spirit once again! And now I have a tale that will chill you to the bone! But surely Heroscape's not scary... right?
____It is spooky-fingerpuppet-ghost-month, after all. And we all know scary things happen this time of year. So grab a hot beverage and huddle around the computer. You'll need it!
____ You see, this is no Fanfic, for it is not fiction at all. It’s 100% based on a true story, and that’s what makes it all the more horrifying! So turn off the lights and find a sheet to hide under, as I share with you the chilling tale of…
HEROSCAPE.EXE
Spoiler Alert!
____ For the safety of some of those involved, the names of the people appearing in this story have been changed. That notwithstanding though, keep in mind that this is all a TRUE STORY!
____ Now I’ve always been a big Heroscape fan, much like everyone else. I always liked the sets after Master Set 3, but I’m not above playing the old fashioned stuff. I’ve never had a bad experience with the game, although that may not be true after the experience I had…
____ It all began one day. I was running the D&D Master Set campaign by myself (I like challenging myself and trying to beat all four battles) when I noticed that the mailman had arrived and put something in my mailbox. I of course immediately dropped what I was doing and went to check my mail, like anyone would. The only thing in there was a letter. I noticed from the handwriting that it was from my best friend: Kyle. Although I hadn’t heard from him in 2 weeks and four days. Though the handwriting was weird and hastily written, practically unrecognizable, I read it aloud:
____ “TAF,
____ I can’t take it anymore! I have to get rid of this thing somehow before it is too late! But I can’t do it, he’s after me, so I mailed it to you so you can destroy it for me. If you don’t destroy it, he’ll come after you too! He’s too fast for me…!
____ Love,
________ ~Kyle"
____ I thought it was weird but forgot it. Also enclosed in the mailbox was a Heroscape Master Set 1—one of the originals and in mint condition no less! Heroscape being pretty pricy nowadays, I decided not to destroy it and took it inside.
____ Sure enough, it was a Rise of the Valkyrie Master Set, in that classic red box. The only thing that was off about it was that the words “HEROSCAPE.EXE” were written on the front in black marker. I thought it was weird, but once I saw “HEROSCAPE” I became excited and wanted to add it to my collection, because I’m a big Heroscape fan.
____ I went downstairs and opened the box and emptied it and looked at it. I was excited to see all the tiles and figures pop out, and even said “Awesome!” aloud when I saw Sgt. Drake Alexander because he is my favorite because his Thorian Speed is the coolest. The single attack for 6 makes his tactical options practically limitless. The first thing I noticed that was out of place happened when I picked him up. There was a split second when I saw everything turn into something much different, something that I now consider upon further reflection and study to be horrifying.
____ I remember in excruciating detail what the image looked like in that split second. Everything had turned red and black. The Heroscape box had become decayed and ruined, and the Hasbro logo on the corner was now Hasbro 666!
____ But the freakiest thing was Sgt. Drake’s minifigure! His eyes had become pitch black and were bleeding what looked like HYPER-REALISTIC blood and with two glowing red dots and his smile stretched from ear to ear! I was very disturbed by this but figured that the old Master Set must just be glitchy and moved on without a second thought.
____ After the split second everything went black for about 10 seconds. I was scared but figured it was just a weird coincidence and decided to continue to play with the Heroscape.
____ So I built a map out of the Master Set 1 and continued playing by myself. I was a little freaked out still so I didn’t want to play Sgt. Drake but for some reason I felt compelled to anyway.
____ I built a 200-point army of Sgt. Drake and Syvarris versus Raelin, Tarn Vikings, and Ne-Gok-Sa. At first everything seemed normal. I KO’d Raelin in one hit with Drake, but then things got weird! Sgt. Drake didn’t just put five wounds on her: he KILLED her. Her sculpt fell in two pieces, and what looked like blood came out. But not just blood. It was hyper-realistic blood.
____ (Now I want to remind you all, that all of this is a TRUE STORY, and REALLY HAPPENED!)
____ Drake laughed evilly. I was taken aback. How could Drake be so cruel? Him and Raelin are supposed to be friends! After about twelve seconds, it all stopped. I was pretty freaked out, but as a smart tabletop gamer I figured that it was just a manufacturing error.
____ After that Drake went and killed all the Tarn Vikings. He chopped off their limbs and hyper-realistic gore spilled out onto the board. I could practically smell the plastic! The Sgt. didn’t even seem concerned for the sake of his Jandarian allies.
____ Now I was beginning to suspect that this game wasn’t manufactured incorrectly; it was obviously hacked! It was definitely hacked, and pretty creepy, but I wasn’t scared. It was probably just the work of my best friend, Kyle. Although I was scared, curiosity made me continue playing.
____ Now while Drake had killed Raelin and the others, Ne-Gok-Sa had been dueling with Syvarris. I had Drake use his Thorian Speed to dart over and finish the battle. Now when they began fighting I suddenly heard some creepy pixelated laugh that sounded a lot like Kefka from Final Fantasy. I was scared.
____ This laugh continued for about 15 seconds. Then NGS and Drake had their battle. Because NGS has 6 Defense and Drake has 6 Attack they were evenly matched, so it went on for a while, as if neither could be the victor. But then something changed. Drake’s minifigure got this evil look across his face.
____ Neg-ok-Sa’s look changed too. He looked… scared! And I was scared for him! He looked shocked and saddened, as if the rival he knew as Drake had snapped, or was no longer there!
____ Suddenly the map around them changed too! The Grass Hexes became Blood Red, like the lava tiles except even more red! The sand became bones and the rocks became spikes with skulls on them! The field was littered with the bloody corpses of all the figures. The Izumi Samurai had all killed themselves, Mimring’s limbs were scattered all over the field, and DeathWalker 9000 had hung himself from one of the trees! The wound markers on the cards were actually bleeding, and the grenade marker actually exploded in a miniature explosion! I could not contain my horror and threw up all over the floor!
____ I was too scared to clean it up, so I kept playing. I had to get the Maker’s Mark to remain calm, and shakily took 2oz shots for approximately 28 seconds.
____ Then Sgt. Drake finished Ne-Gok-Sa for good! He cut him into three halves. Sgt. Drake picked up the bottom half and ripped out Ne-Gok-Sa’s spine, holding it up and saying wickedly, “More like Ne-Gok-DEAD!”
____ Then he looked at me, ME, and said: “Hello TAF. Do you want to play with me?”
____ Then I heard that creepy pixelated laugh, only now it sounded like an old man: “HEEEEEEEEEE!”
____ I could barely hold down my lunch after seeing the horrific act so I downed some more hyper-realistic bourbon to hold it back.
____ Now I was beginning to suspect that this Master Set may have not been hacked after all. I thought back to the warning I received from my best friend, Kyle. How could this happen? How could Kyle, who was my best friend, have met such evil, and what became of him? Such questions would haunt me for the rest of the week, but I forgot about it and figured it was just a coincidence.
____ Then Sgt. Drake moved on his own! He moved on to Syvarris and raised his sword. This made me puke all over the board all over again, unable to stop for about 14 seconds. How could Sgt. Drake be so evil? Syvarris is his friend. They are on the same team?
____ Drake advanced six spaces and killed the elf. As a genius gamer, this disturbed me greatly because Drake only ever had 5 move. I referenced his Army Card and was totally blown away!
____ The card had become blood-red, as if Drake now served Utgar. But it was more red and more evil, and instead of Utgar it said “SATAN” on the card, written in hyper-realistic letters!
____ His life was 6. His move was 6. His range was 6. His attack was 6. His defense was 6. And most disturbing of all, his point value was… 666! How could this be? I could not afford that many points in a game of this size. I smashed the shot glasses and picked up the Maker’s Mark directly and drank straight from the bottle, for it was the only way to calm myself down!
____ His Species was now Demon, and his Personality was now EVIL! Instead of Unique Hero it said Unique Villain! And most creepy of all, under Class it said GOD!!! Additionally his Grapple Gun now had a move of 6 and could reach up or down levels up to 667! This frightened me most of all.
____ Syvarris tried to defend himself, but Drake’s Thorian Speed was too quick! He dodged the arrows and cut his former friend down! Blood spilled everywhere, and now the board was like it was on fire! Drake’s minifigure licked the blood off his sword and grinned at me, and now his teeth looked like sharpened razor blades! He laughed evilly and I thought I could faintly hear music like that CGHG theme from One Punch Man! This continued for about 49 seconds and then he said, “You’re too slow! Want to try again?”
____ I was beginning to think that Drake was talking to me, but I was too scared to think that.
____ I screamed aloud until my mom came down and told me to knock it off. I wept openly for Syvarris and Su-Bak-Na and Raelin, all my favorite characters… dead! Now I knew the wisdom in the words of my best friend, Kyle. This Drake was evil! He enjoyed their suffering and was evil!
____ I was at this point at least 58% certain that this was no error or hack, or whatever it was. I was freaked out, so I decided to throw the game in the garbage can. I wiped off the blood and puke and fire and put the game away and threw it in the dumpster right outside my house.
____ I thought this would help but that night I was plagued by terrible nightmares! Every time I closed my eyes I would see Drake’s evil face, those red hyper-realistic eyes peering at me from under that helmet. I dreamt that I was always running from him, but he kept using his grapple gun to drag me back. It was so bad that I could not sleep at all for at least a month. I could barely even pick up a Heroscape tile without bursting into tears and screaming uncontrollably. I could always hear Drake’s voice, laughing at me and saying, “You’re pretty fun to play with kid. Just like your best friend, Kyle, although he didn’t last long.”
____ I knew that the only way to beat the haunted game was to defeat evil Drake. When I went downstairs I saw that the Heroscape Master Set had already set itself up into some gigantic hellish map. A single Army Card was laid out for me: it was Taelord; Drake’s biggest rival! He was always my least favorite MS1 character because he was too expensive, but it seemed now that he was my only option.
____ I sat down and moved my only unit forward. The board was very large, and I couldn’t see anything else on it, so I just continued moving to the other side, where Drake must be hiding.
____ I was nervous, and Taelord’s sculpt looked nervous too. Not as nervous as Syvarris or Ne-Gok-Sa had looked, but he did have a suspicious look on his face as if he was paranoid, and really creeped out to the point of extreme constipation, but he tried to hide it. You know, that look. I couldn’t blame him; my fears had given me the same symptoms!
____ Anyway, he continued forward for at least 1 minute and 48 seconds. Then I heard that horrid laugh like a pixelated version of the king’s laugh from Stardust. The tiles began to look all black and red and staticy, and my Order Markers began bleeding, to the point where I couldn’t see which ones were which, which was really confusing for me, and it took at least 16 seconds to figure it out, about the same length as it took to write this run-on sentence.
____ Then Drake leapt out from behind a ruin, and attacked Taelord. My vision became blurred with red static that lasted for about 89 seconds and then it showed me a most unpleasant image…!
____ The image was a hyper-realistic of Drake standing in the dark, which back holes for eyes that were staring RIGHT AT ME as opposed to past me, and he had giant sharp, VERY SHARP fangs! His grin literally spread from ear to ear, no, across his whole face! I stared at it for a good 167 seconds… that face… it only took about 37 seconds to etch itself into my brain for good. Even now I can see it on the back of the box as I eat my Boo Berry. It was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen.
____ Then some distorted bloody text showed up in my vision, saying the most horrifying tryhard thing I’d ever seen!
____ “I AM GOD!”
____ It was then that it hit me. I realized that this Drake was not the Sergeant I knew and loved. This Drake was a monster, pure and evil, sadistic all-powerful nightmarish demented monster who used his Thorian Speed and 6 attack for evil! And all of his victims, including Raelin and Ne-Gok-Sa and Syvarris and Taelord and possibly Kyle who is at least a real human being are just his toys, and this game is somehow the very gateway into his chaotic world of nightmarish delusions come to life!
____ I thought about this for a good 212 seconds and then the vision faded. I stared at the board, seeing both Drake and Taelord gone. I cried for them, pitied them for the agony the plastic figures must be going through—they were forever trapped in the game, forever tormented by that one army guy. Suddenly, one last voice came up: “Ready for Round 2, TAF? Roll for initiative…”
____ I sat there for maybe 335 seconds, and I heard a voice RIGHT behind me… “Try to keep this interesting for me, TAF!”
____ I whirled around, and what I say made me scream so hard I died horribly. Sitting on my bed, right behind me, staring at me…
____ …Was a plushie of Sgt. Drake, with bloodstains under its eyes.
Trick or Treat, friends!
Spoiler Alert!
I deeply apologize to anyone who actually read through this whole thing, doubly so to those who don't get the joke.
~TAF, who is apparently a ghost
TAF was the Storyteller...
in THE ENEMY'S LAST RETREAT