Stealing Myself Away (Non-Pony Short Story) · 2:44am Oct 23rd, 2014
This may surprise some of you, but I do on occasion write things that aren't horsewords. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen from time to time. One of said times was last week.
This here started out as the backstory for my social rogue gnome in a D&D 3.5 game being DMed by friend and fellow aspiring author Coffeebeans. The campaign is set in the world of a book he's currently writing, and he challenged me to write my rogue's backstory as a short story within the setting. He likes the result, and so do I, and so I'm posting a link to the GDoc here. It's about 1600 words long, so it's a quick read. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Note: This isn't technically the story in its original form. I've had to file some serial numbers off of it (e.g. changing character races to generic fantasy equivalents) in order to avoid spoiling things for the book he's working on. It didn't lose too much in the transition, at least.
So that's what I was doing last week. What I'm doing this week? More Desert Spice. 
Poor "John Bernard".
At this rate the captain is going to command that any new Bernards shall pay their fees in full, and in advance before they make landfall at the next port...
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Well, as long as they pay as they go...
re the RPG story:
Hah!
re Desert Spice:
Yay!
re both:
:D
Plot twist—John Bernard is actually an experimental 10th level compulsion spell that gained sapience and escaped its sorcerer. The identity papers are are actually a charmed totem that compels persons/beings of a minimum threshold of intelligence to take the papers and assume the identity of "John Bernard", thus acting as a host for the spell, and transporting it away from the pursuing sorcerer.
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I would read that.