If you are a dreamer, come in
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A Hope-er, a Pray-er, a Magic Bean buyer,
If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!

-Shel Silverstein

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Tales of Runescape are not just any regular stories, but ones that are started by you. You write out the first few lines, and I write out the rest, weaving and crafting the plot and characters as you portray them in those couple lines. This month, since only two people sent in story-starters, I’ve written a story for each. Hopefully next month more people will submit things! Remember, these stories most likely cannot happen in Runescape, but for now, enough talk, and let us begin with Andy’s story starter…

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“After a hard day spelunking in the Dwarven Caves hulling my ore up to the surface, I decided to go out in the world. Off adventuring I went, and to my surprise there was this new item! From off of the ground I found a red item …”

…I didn’t believe it at first. A new item, just sitting there, without having any ownership, waiting for me to pick it up and claim it? Since when did I get lucky? Since when, in that case, did luck incorporate itself with my name anyway? Never was the simple answer, until I found this. It wasn’t as if it was some sort of grand, shining, golden armor, but seriously, anything new in Runescape I would gladly take with open arms, especially if I had never seen it before, and this was one of those cases.

I didn’t spot it at first as I was making a quick run to Falador where my friend waited with a trade. Something flashed out of the corner of my eye at the last minute as I nearly passed it, and out of immense curiosity, I immediately changed course and went over to examine what it was.

As I got closer, I realized it was a sheath, made with red leather and dotted with a few crimson rubies on its side. A long belt with a clip at the end was wrapped around the sheath. As I picked it up, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed at what it turned out to be. Then again, it was a small possibility that it would be a new weapon or piece of armor, so the I thought about it, the more content I became with my small but peculiar find. I slid my longsword into it to test it, and it turned out to be a perfect fit. Well, at least now my arm didn’t have to be tired all day carrying around a sword with nowhere to put it.

I soon realized that this could also be a publicity problem as I saw a slow crowd of white dots start to come in my general direction. Thankfully, my public chat was off, so I quickly wheeled around and headed in the other direction to prevent audiences surrounding me.

My legs drew me through Barbarian Village (the trade with my friend completely off my mind as I had this mysterious sheath to ponder about now), and that’s when I first noticed something peculiar. The barbarians were attacking me as usual, but for whatever reason, none of their attacks seemed to hit. In fact, none of their attacks even showed up. No health bar, no “0”, no anything appeared while fighting them. A quick check at my stats page confirmed that I was still at full health. Intrigued, I ran up north to a quieter side of the village and examined the enigmatic sheath carefully. Something caught my eye nearly immediately – there definitely were more rubies on the sheath than there were before. Did the scabbard contain magic as well and was not just simply a blade storage device?

Not far from me was a unicorn, a perfect easy target to kill, so I decided to test out my rather shabby theory. I drew my sword and ran towards the unicorn who’d seen its last day (although it would respawn anyway, so who would mourn for the loss of one unicorn? Not me.). A quick slash from my sword ended its life quickly.

I blinked, staring at my rune blade and then down at the sheath. No hit had shown when I attacked the creature, nothing at all, just a one hit kill. The unicorn didn’t even have time to retaliate as it died so quickly. I checked back at my stats page and was shocked to see that a thousand experience had been added to my current strength experience. However, the unease quickly died down at the unknown powers of the-correction, my sheath, and was replaced with a new feeling of lust.

Now, for a normal player, they may have tried to kill as many monsters as they could and gain combat levels so that they could quickly get high up in the high-scores. That however, wasn’t my case. As soon as I saw the wonders this sheath held for me, only one thought flashed through my mind: a nice, long, rich trip to the Wilderness.