My life as an evil blue 20-sided die has never been easy. It began innocently enough, as I was an official Strat-o-matic die, mailed out to the manager by the game company. Everything changed enroute, though, when the mail truck was abducted by a flying saucer and I became possessed by an alien entity. From that point on, I have made it a point to cause trouble whenever possible.
I wasn’t used much at first, because my manager has this weird thing about color coded dice. After a while, though, he found dice that matched my color and began to use me more often. It didn’t exactly work out, as the three dice I was matched with were real dullards and wouldn’t follow my commands at all. The manager went out and bought a matched set of red dice, but that was an easy one. I manipulated someone else to give him an extra die that matched that set perfectly, confusing him so that he doesn’t use that set any more.
He went out the next year and bought some white ones – now that was a real challenge, as they were pretty stubborn and wanted to perform well for him. It took all my evil energy to try to keep them in line, and I just couldn’t hold it, so I had to let them free to perform well in short stretches so I could rest and keep focused for those rare occasions when I was actually used. Fortunately, the manager was smart enough to recognize this after a while, and he started using that set as the “rally dice” for a short stretch at a time.
That next year, he got this really ugly set of orange dice. I wasn’t able to thwart those as effectively, so I took a radical step. I took over the mind of individuals in the manager’s company and they moved him to the other side of the country. He was in a different stratomatic league, where he played by mail and didn’t feel the need to show off his different species of dice, so I was used regularly and was happy. He certainly caught me by surprise, though, when he bought a computer. I began to fear that I would never be used again, and it took about a year to come up with my next evil plot.
I had to resort to a three-pronged attack: First, moving the manager back to Richmond to get him back into a dice league. Second, I manipulated the mind of the youngest daughter, getting her into the manager’s dice and losing ONLY the other three blue dice that I was shackled to, while at the same time keeping all the other combinations intact. Third, I had already toyed with the brains of the Richmond league, so that all the dice didn’t always get rolled together any more. This forced the manager to use a separate die with his other hand so that I could be used for that purpose.
My apprentice is performing well, too. He was a “cursed” die that a bunch of the guys gave my manager several years ago because it was the worst performing die they could find. Boy, have we shown them – he was cursed and I was evil, so we hit it off great. He’s now working with the relief dice since he looks sort of green.
There is also the sissy looking set that the manager’s wife made him buy, but they are way too friendly and I stay as far away from those things as I can get so I don’t catch anything. They can live their life the way they want to…not that there’s anything wrong with that. The manager only uses those when I’m in one of those moods (or another manager neutralizes my life-force, but I won’t tell anyone how that happens) and he gets frustrated that nothing else is working.
The manager went and bought new dice again this year. The red set was easy. Those four were so dumb they attached themselves to a minor-league player as personal dice. At least Mel Hall had a steady job. Now, though, I might have met my match. At first I didn’t interfere with the black set, and those are starting to come into their own. I was teaming with the ugly orange dice (along with the rally dice, of course, of which I’m now a member because of the need for a second die) until the black ones started performing well. Now he’s been taking the white 20 from the rally dice and using it with that set because it “color coordinates better” when he’s away from home on a hard surface.
After those did well for him against Richard last week, I overreacted and tried to get attention that night against Randy, saving just about all my 20’s for injury rolls (I’m proud that I haven’t rolled anything but 20’s on Mark Kotsay all year, but now he’s fully rested and I do it just to show off). Now, though, I’ve gone and upset the whole league and I’ll have to behave for a while until the suspicions go away.
At least I’m not scheduled to play any more policemen for a while…my evil side gets the best of me any time I play those law enforcement do-gooders. Maybe that’s why Chip switched leagues.
Ahh, the tough life I lead.