Random stories

I bear the Mark of the Hero.

Once every hundred years, a random person in the world is born with the Mark, and from the moment we walk, we are consumed by the insatiable desire to fulfill our destiny.

It is widely believed that the only people who are capable of bearing the Mark are Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and certain variants of Beastfolk.

I am the first Kobold Hero.

I'm used to people seeing me walk into town and staring in complete and utter shock because my kind are usually of the baby-stealing basic monsters that everyone and their grandmother can punt.

I always have to explain that, yes, this is truly the Mark, and I make it glow just to illustrate my point. I even choose someone to grant temporary Hero Powers to ensure there is no confusion.

And once the speculation begins, I'm always the first one to cut in and simply say, "My family is a warren of Kobolds who live in the capitol city sewers. We needed somewhere peaceful to stay where we wouldn't get mass murdered, so for around two-hundred generations we just stayed there not bothering anyone."

I'd usually choose that moment to casually take a drink of mead or eat some food, and follow up with, "Turns out, peaceful proximity to large groups of civilized people makes one eligible."

My first act as Hero was going to the surface, fighting my way through waves of giant rats, insects, and thwarting a death cult that was minutes away from releasing barrels of toxic fog throughout the city.

The adventuring party that had been tracking the cult down had already been defeated, one of them was unfortunate enough to have one of the cult's masks grafted directly to their skull.

Ironically, or maybe appropriately, he was the only one of the group who actually liked how cool it looked.

When I came in, I had crawled in through a hole in the wall, pushing a barrel over that happened to contain the only thing that counteracts the toxic fog, which the cult had been planning on using to survive.

The moment I heard, "Quick! Release the Death Fog!" my Mark had begun to burn and I knew that the beginning of my destiny was at hand.

The defeated party watched in blind terror as little old me carved my way through the cultists, had weakly stood to defend themselves, only to realize that I was the new Hero, that the lack of appearance of one wasn't some terrible omen of doom- which ironically led to the formation and eventual discovery of the death cult, who wanted to put the world out of its misery rather than live without the Hero- and that I had just saved their asses.

Being the first Hero of a race also sucks! People are almost always saying I'm just a fluke, or that maybe I'm one of the few good ones, as if there isn't an entire warren of Kobolds currently integrating into the capitol!

Well, this morning proved to be just another really bad day, because in spite of my warnings, I could hear the sounds of battle in the village.

Again.

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Submitted by Drakolf on Sun, May 28, 2023 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

You are a legendary hero. One day, you checked ahead of your party in the local inn for the night. Later, you are woken up because of a fight in the town's square. The villagers are attacking a group of monsters mercilessly. There is one problem : those monsters are your beloved party members