In a jam full of DND-related stories, The Tale of Drac de Na Coca surprises by… not being that, in spite of really, really feeling as though it ought to be. More than anything, the first half of this feels like a DND campaign to me - the meandering over seemingly pointless conversations, the traditional party composition, and the very blatant eldritch blast references. Honestly, when the story got to the more serious bits, I found myself getting somewhat surprised by the lethality of it all, given just how decidedly non-lethal DND tends to be what with the omnipresence of healers and whatnot.
The first half is slow, and it feels somewhat in conflict with the more grim latter half, but I can certainly buy it as a representations of the characters sort of ‘repressing’ anxieties relating to the looming disaster of the fight with the dragon. And I think it does do a good job of representing that disaster - both in the leadup at the camp, and during the moment-to-moment action of it all. At the end of the day, after spending a good couple thousand words getting to know these characters, it certainly does feel sad to see what occurs - even in the happier endings.
That said, I do think the beginning half is the story’s weaker half - it feels like a somewhat arbitrary collection of conversations - you get the conversation to introduce the MC, then the scene to introduce the My Wolf, then the rest of the party members, etc… The flashbacks felt especially out of place, and I’m ultimately left wondering if a more natural way of providing these introductions could have helped bridge the gap between the story’s two halves - to provide more hints towards the impending doom of the characters, or maybe to better introduce the ‘secondary adventurers’ who show up in all of the endings.
Speaking of endings - I really liked them all! Both the ‘bad’ ending and both good(ish) endings were quite effective (though I’ll admit that I didn’t really understand how the choice of sticking with the bard mattered all that much in the grand scheme of things given what was going on), to the point where I felt compelled to check out all three - and I greatly enjoyed doing so. At the end of the day though, I’m still left with the feeling that if both halves of this story were better bridged together, then it could have been even better.