---Nkasiogi’s perspective---
I stoop down to pass through the door into the Human tavern.
I’ve got a slender Elfboy under my right arm and a heavily armoured Dwarfgirl under my left.
We’ve had a long day of questing and I’m looking forward to a little… ‘relaxation’…
I approach the bar, slap a brawny, green skinned arm clutching a club onto the counter and, through a tusk filled mouth, demand “A room for the night… large, sturdy bed… a bath… a meal and drinks for before we retire!”
The NPC manning the counter gives my party an appraising look before saying “A king-bed room for the night’ll run ye 10 silver if ye’re wantin’ a bath… 1 silver 5 coppers’ll see ye fed… as for drinks…” he points to the Dwarf “…mead…?” he points to the Elf “…wine…?” he points up at me “…whatever’s cheap enough ta be brought out by the bucket?”
“You know it!” I laugh, not allowing my companions the chance to answer for themselves.
“It’ll be money up front!” says the barman, warily.
I smirk and slap 2 gold onto the bar and say “This should do you! Keep the change and keep the drinks coming!”
The script instantly flips from ‘guarded suspicion on account of my race’ to ‘sycophantic grovelling to the generous customer’ as the NPC says “Certainly, Ma’am! Someone’ll be right out with yer drinks! ’Bout the food; I assume roasted pork will do fer ye and yer Dwarf friend and that ye’ll…” he turns to the Elf “…be wanting something vegetarian? We could make ye a vegetable stew? Should be appetisin’!”
“Sounds good! We’ll be waiting!” I answer for the group, turning the three of us toward an open booth.
On the bench facing the wall, I drop my studded club and my companions drop a bow, a quiver, an elegant sword, a hefty axe, a shield and some of the heavier and more detachable pieces of armour between them.
I allow the golden-orange haired, amber eyed Dwarf to be the first one onto the opposite bench, facing the door. I follow her in and lead the green eyed, white haired knife ear in behind me.
Contentedly, I squeeze both of them to my sides so that they end up placing their hands on my bare stomach to brace themselves.
The Dwarf comes to rest with her head against the left side of my ribcage, the Elf with his head against my right shoulder.
A waitress quickly arrives with our drinks.
I take a deep draft of the gallon sized jug that was placed in front of me with my left hand (my left arm being less impeded by what’s under it than my right is by what’s on it), give a satisfied exhale, close my eyes, lean my head back against the wall, place my bare feet up on the bench where we dumped all of our stuff and say “So… what do you guys wanna talk about?”
“You could always tell us what it was like on R’qal? I’m dying to know!” answers Luul.
---Amahle’s perspective---
“I keep saying… one of us should’ve been a support class!” insists the gigantic and, now, somewhat drunk Orcwoman who’s got me sandwiched against the wall “Like a healer or something… the amount of our earnings that we spend on potions every time is ludicrous!… What about respeccing as a bard, Ami? I bet you’d be amazing as a bard!”
I give a wry smirk and answer “Being a ‘bard’ is my day job… when I’m here, I like to cut loose by just whacking things with an axe! I didn’t see you being at all concerned with conservation of the local ecosystem when we were exterminating those dire boars earlier, Kas(!)”
She dismisses that with a wave and says “That’s not the same! You’ve got real, transferable skill in music! This isn’t a real ecosystem! Those boars will be back the next time someone picks up that quest…! Nothing’s real here! That’s how come this medieval inn in the middle of bumfuck nowhere has a room with a king-bed and a bath to offer us! That’s how come you can go around armoured like a tank from the neck down and not be suffering constant head trauma from running around with no helmet, the way you fight! That’s how I’m not constantly passing out from blood loss from not wearing any armour at all! That’s how all those girls (and a few of those boys) are able to fight in what amounts to high heeled shoes and metal lingerie here!... That’s how I can say ‘The babe, in the park, with big, beautiful, buttocks as ripe as mangoes’ without these tusks turning it into ‘The vave, in the fark, with vig, veautiful, vuttocks as rife as vangoes’(!)”
“That’s quite enough about my bottom, thank you(!)” I giggle.
“Who said I was talking about yours(?)” she smirks back, playfully.
I gesture around “I don’t see anyone else whose mango ripe ‘vuttocks’ you might have been perving on through those trees(!)”
She roars with laughter at that.
“Anyway…” I continue “…transferable skills or not, the point stands that the moment your day job gets involved the fantasy becomes miles less fun!… Imagine if you had to write up an ecosystem impact assessment both before and after every monster extermination request! Doesn’t sound like fun, does it! It sounds like work!… That’s what playing as a bard would be like for me!… Same way you vetoed scifi games because you’re living them right now(!)”
“Alright… fair!” she concedes.
At this point another player passes our table and spares us a curious (though, seemingly harmless) glance as she does.
“What’re you looking at?… Hoping for an invite to the foursome(?!)” growls my fiancée, menacingly.
Startled, the girl averts her eyes and hurries away.
Fixing her tiny red irises on the retreating woman, Kas says “Imagine… playing this game and choosing to play as a Human(!) All of the boundless possibilities of Fantasia open to you and you choose to face them as just… some lady… some gal! How fucking boring can you be!?”
“You realise that there’s a nonzero chance that she isn’t Human IRL, right?” chuckles Lu “She could be an uplift… or an AI… maybe even a gardenworlder (though, my understanding is that it’s a vanishingly small proportion of the playerbase who aren’t Terran, given the difficulty level)… playing the game as a Human, and getting the authentic Human experience, may actually be her fantasy… no need to be hostile about it…”
“On the contrary…!” retorts the tower of green skinned muscle, spilling some of her beer “…if she wants the authentic fantasy Human experience, then getting growled at over the slightest provocation by an Orc in the local tavern should be right up her alley! …So… she’s welcome!”
“You know…” I start, ponderingly “…maybe she just doesn’t like the way she looks in the real world? Maybe she’s a Resurrectee who’s always fantasised about being a pretty Sapiens girl? She might be trans and in the process of saving up for gene therapy? She might just have something about her face or her body that she dislikes and has always dreamed about being a girl who looks like that… she doesn’t necessarily need to be a nonHuman to want to play as a Human…”
Kas’s face falls while she considers.
“Great(!) Now I feel like an arsehole!” she sighs “I guess I should go and apologise!”
I catch her arm as she makes to stand up and she turns to me with a quizzical look.
“I think… Kas… even if this is only a game and she, logically, understands that she’s in no real danger… if she sees 2.6m of tipsy, muscular, mostly naked Orc stomping towards her, (moments after tearing her a new arsehole for no reason) she’ll probably be too scared to listen to your apology… best leave it!”
She pouts but, seeing the sense, slumps back against the bench (causing it to reverberate under her enormous simulated weight) and says “Yeah… you’re probably right… I feel bad though… I guess I can get a little too into the whole roleplaying part of MMORPGs…”
“You(!?) Naaah(!)…” teases Lu, to mirthful grumbling from Kas.
I stroke a gauntleted hand over the bare, green skin of her washboard abs and smile “You know we love you for it!”
She smiles back and squeezes both of us appreciatively to her sides, stroking the clawed fingers of her massive left hand through the vivid, goldenrod hair of my sideburns (as close as I can bring myself to having a beard, accurate as it supposedly is for Dwarfwomen to be bearded) and gently tracing the claw tips of her other hand over the bare side of Luul’s scalp, above his long ear and below his floppy white mohawk.
Her ample boobs rise and fall as her broad, deep chest expands with a contented sigh… followed by a distinctly uncontented sigh!
“I really fucking miss you guys!” she says, miserably.
“What do you mean?!” chortles Lu “We’ve just been questing for the best part of a fortnight straight together!”
“You know what I mean!” she huffs “This is definitely better than nothing but… it’s no substitute for the real thing! Plus, we can only do this when I’m on a planet or in a well enough trafficked space lane for it to have FTLcom signal, you two aren’t working and all of us are awake!”
“Kas…” I smile sympathetically “…just be grateful we live in a time where keeping in contact like this is possible! It’s only a generation or so that separates us from a time where the only way for us to keep in touch with you would have been to wait for ever sparser vid files to make their way back to us and sending return messages would have been nigh impossible!”
“Yeah… I know…” she answers, dejectedly.
“We can spend time together… talk… eat…” I reach up to cradle her jaw in my hand “…touch… among other things!”
She smirks mischievously at her empty bucket of booze “Speaking of which… I think I’m about done drinking… What say we turn in?”
---Luul’s perspective---
I’m walking up the stairs next to Ami when I feel a muscular arm wrapping itself around my trunk and my feet being pulled from the floor.
I feel my sword (not a euphemism(!)) be pressed into my hip as Kas carries me under her arm like a pig!
I look across her stomach and see that Ami is receiving identical treatment. We chuckle to eachother.
The towering, green giantess carries us up two flights of stairs and down a corridor to room 205.
Fumbling a little to retrieve the key and unlock the door with Ami tucked under her right arm, she eventually manages to get the door open and ducks to get inside.
Grasping my lapels, she lets me swing out to dangle from her hand (causing me to drop my bow, which clatters to the floor along with Ami’s axe) before bicep curling me back into a vertical position and slamming me into the wall, feet still dangling around a metre from the floor.
Ami, again having received the exact same treatment, was slammed into the wall just to my left, at the end of Kas’s other brawny arm.
We share a nervous glance.
I feel my quiver dig into my back as the one pinioning us leans her gigantic head close and softly growls “So… who wants to go and draw up a bath and who wants to help get me lubricated?” smirking.
Neither of us say anything as the Orcwoman looks between us for an answer.
I watch as she brings her face to Ami’s and takes a deep, sensual inhale.
First teasing her by stroking the ends of her tusks over Ami’s lips, Kas presses the Dwarfwoman’s skull against the wall with slow, passionate kisses…
That’s good compornsion!
Then it’s my turn!
I feel her hot breath on my face and smell the musky aroma that is the game’s attempt to interpret her natural, real world smell, mixed with its interpretation of what it thinks Orcs smell like.
She runs her tusks along my face, just to the outsides of my mouth…
Her skull is so much bigger than mine that, as she presses her lips to me and slips her pierced tongue into my mouth, her nose ring dangles at the bridge of my nose!
Pulling away she announces “I’ve decided…” and drops Ami who, falling more than a metre, is dragged to the floor by the weight of her armour “…I’m in the mood for femboy mouthpussy, to warm up! Ami, you run us a nice hot bath for afterward! Then come back here and take off that armour… nice and slow… let me see it!… Let me really enjoy my slutty little paladin getting nude for me!”
Of course, we could undress nearly instantaneously, using the character menus, but that is far less sexy!
Ami gets up and runs to the next room, presumably to do as instructed.
Kas turns back to me, fixing me with her tiny red irides, as she says “As for you…” she begins unfastening my robe, shifting her hand to keep pinning me to the wall by my chin.
She pulls my sword from its frog and pulls my quiver from my back.
I’m quickly denuded by the powerful woman.
Pulling me away from the wall she pushes (more than carries) me through the air, as she strides across the floor!
One armed, she slams me into the tabletop (hard enough that I actually lose a few HP from it!) and slides me to the edge such that my head overhangs.
She removes her hands but the unspoken command ‘stay exactly where I’ve put you’ is well enough implied(!)
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
My head hanging upside down, my mohawk flopping below it, I watch as the amazonian woman begins to pull the simple, tight ring of cloth, around 20cm wide at its widest, that serves as her only upperwear, over her head, baring her immense, green breasts, her perky, pierced nipples a green so dark they almost look black…
Pulling her hard, wooden club out from where it was tucked into her loincloth, she drops it to rattle to the floor.
Unstringing the party coinpurse from her belt, she tosses it over me to land with a clink and a thud, uncomfortably close to my coinpurse(!)
She undoes her belt, allowing her loincloth the drop, exposing her crotch.
She opens her menu and fiddles with settings I can’t see for a moment before, between her legs, materialises a titanic phallus!
Lined with the gold studs of genital piercings, the glans hangs at her knees and would be too girthy for me to grasp without using both hands!
The impossible member pulses as it expands and draws erect.
If we were bound by the laws of physical reality right now, then, forget the fact that that thing would block my windpipe! Forget the fact that she’d be crushing my heart, lungs and every other internal organ with every thrust! Forget the fact that she’d be dipping it in my stomach acid! She wouldn’t be able to insert it into me without breaking my jaw first!
No orifice on any creature my size could ever be wide or deep enough for a cock that large!
The naked woman steps to me and lifts up her jumbo cock to drop it on my chest, the tip resting a few centimetres above my naval.
“You don’t mind a bit of futanari cock down your throat, do you slut?” she smirks.
Not waiting for an answer she grasps the bare sides of my head, forcing my mouth open with her thumbs.
She draws her megacock across my chin and plunges it into my mouth!
Given that I have the oral erogeneity mode (more colloquially known as ‘mouthpussy mode’) enabled, it feels utterly sublime as she impales my slender body on her cock!
I feel the studs slide past the sensitive flesh of my oesophagus as my insides are pushed out of the way.
Since I don’t actually need to breathe, there’s no time limit but my pulse is still enormously elevated (more than would be normal, given the circumstances(!)) due to the autonomic fear response of having my body insist that I must be about to start suffering oxygen deprivation!
I moan and my hands reach out to grasp her tree trunk thighs.
I feel my own, stiff cock (regular sized, not that it would seem so by comparison(!)) wave forward as my legs, reflexively, start to raise my hips.
She removes a hand from my head to place it on my stomach, pressing my lower body back down against the table. The other she clamps around my bulging throat (because apparently, my insides alone aren’t constricting enough(!))
“That’s right, you little Elf slut! Take it!!!” she snarls.
---Nkasiogi’s perspective---
The hot, wet inside of the skinny little, femboy, Elf slut feels amazing as I skewer him with my futa cock!
For someone who claims to be ‘100% straight, yessirree!’, he certainly seems excited by having more than half a metre of cock shoved down his throat(!)
His own, cute little Elf cock is hard and moist at its tip, between his raised thighs. He’s moaning (in a way that I don’t think would be possible, IRL, with his windpipe blocked like this) and grasping the backs of my thighs.
Feeling his throat bulging out and seeing his stomach deform from having my member inside him is incomparable!
Of course, as amazing as this is… it’s no substitute for the real thing…
Just as I’m in danger of getting sombre, my little, marigold haired Dwarf returns from drawing our bath.
“You better have drawn it hot, slut! Gods help you if I get in there and find it’s gone tepid, later!” I growl with gleeful malice.
Of course, it won’t actually go tepid… game water stays at the temperature you make it until you either use it, discard it or mix it with water of another temperature… but getting an opportunity to scold her (and taking it) fits my character!
She just nods, nervously.
“Did you forget what the next part of your instructions were, girl? Undress! Let me see you dance sexy for me… I know you know how!” I chortle.
Her history as an exotic dancer has, as far as I’m aware, not given her any direct experience in how to make the shedding of heavy, plate armour sexy… Nevertheless, you’d never guess that this wasn’t the exact outfit she walked on stage in, every time!
I watch, slowing my skull fuck down to a crawling pace, as the tiny Dwarfgirl with hair and eyes the colour of a sunsset makes armour removal look like the single most erotic act possible!
She gets down to her cloth underlayer before reaching to pull her top over her head, exposing the adorable fat rolls of her gorgeous, ebony belly and… a metal bikini top! Hilariously unrealistic and uncomfortable looking… but damn if it isn’t sexy!
She turns around to put her back to me, undoes her trousers and, pulling them outward to get them past her mile wide hips and arse, reveals her mango ripe buttocks cupped by stylish metal undies matching the bra.
---Amahle’s perspective---
Bending seductively, I push the ludicrous metal underwear off of my butt and slide it down my legs. It rocks back and forth once I step out of it, a single, rigid piece. It’s a good thing I can’t feel it when it’s under my other clothing! I can only imagine how it would chafe!
Before I can free my (mildly more ample than IRL) boobs from their metal prison, Kas calls out “Daertyn…” using my character’s name. I turn to look at her “…would you come here for me?” she beckons with a clawed finger and a smirk.
I walk over, my boobs still contained in my solid metal fantasy bra.
I gasp as she grabs my long braid and lifts me off the floor by it until she’s put my face level to hers.
Grasping my braid below her hands and doing my best to transfer my weight through my arms and not through my follicles, I bite my lip as her small, red eyes wander over my bushy eyebrows, sideburns and down to my tits before finally settling on my eyes.
“I’ve got a problem with this Elf slut I’m fucking…” she grins, evilly.
“What’s that, Ursul?” I ask, nervously.
“Yah see… Yelren is such a little slut that he can’t keep his hips on the table while I fuck his throat! Waving his pathetic little Elf cock around, distractingly!” she cackles “I reckon he needs about…” she waggles the arm holding me in the air, up and down, pretending to weigh me “…83kg to weigh down those slutty hips of his!” she says, naming the exact weight of my unladen avatar “Think you could oblige him?”
I give a little nod and she beams, extending her braid grasping arm to face me away from her, dangling me over those skinny Elven hips before dropping me onto them.
Lu’s lower body is slammed into the table by my weight. I’d feel a little sorry for him if I weren’t so envious(!)
Pushing his legs down to flatten them to the table, I take a hold of his cock. Pulling it vertical, it comes up to around the level of my belly button and has a nice thickness… it’s only by comparison to Kas’s (or ‘Ursul’s’) that it looks so pathetic!
Sandwiching it between my labia I spend a few moments grinding my pelvis against his stomach and coating the top of his cock in my lubrication before lifting my hips, bringing his glans to my lips and coming down with him now inside me.
I bounce, up and down, feeling the jiggle of my arse and knowing exactly where Kas’s eyes will be.
I haven’t been going very long but, since the game has a simultaneous orgasm feature, when Kas blows an impossibly large load into Lu’s stomach it causes him to cum… which, in turn, causes me to cum!
The three of us just pant exhaustedly (not that we actually need the air) for a few moments before I hear the squelching sound of a colossal cock being withdrawn from a tight windpipe.
Then I feel two, strong, clawed hands around my sides.
I’m lifted up and hurled through the air!
---Lu’s perspective---
The mammoth cock is slid from my throat and its owner reaches over my belly, bloated with her seed, to pick up the Dwarf recovering on my hips, and toss her 6m to land on the king-bed!
She then grasps the back of my neck and calmly walks over to the armchair facing the bed that every hotel room has for some reason… the ‘cuck chair’ as she calls it(!)
She drops me between the high arms. I sit there, still dazed while she fiddles with her inventory.
She produces a rod-of-unmoving from hammerspace and places it across the arms of the chair, on top of my faux pregnancy bulge.
She activates it, locking me into position, and smirks “You’ve had your turn, so now… just watch while Daertyn gets hers, alright?” before lightly tapping the side of my face with her palm.
She turns, showing me the chiselled muscles of her back and triceps.
Raising her massively brawny arms she lets down her ponytail of bluish black hair and short dreads spill down, covering her gold piercing laden Orc ears.
She stomps to the bed, picking the bright orange haired Dwarfgirl up, takes position against the headboard and, slowly, slides the 138cm tall woman down her 60cm phallus, using her more like a fleshlight than a sex partner(!)
I get a good view of the monstercock deforming Ami’s stomach, disappearing behind her ribcage and reappearing (impossibly) at her throat!
This world may be constantly reminding me that it isn’t the real thing but, as I watch my fiancées moan and gasp from the pleasure of their virtual bodies connecting, I don’t particularly care that it isn’t ‘real’!
---Kas’s perspective---
Steam rises from the wonderfully hot bath water as the three of us relax, side by side, sitting on the underwater ledge, lining this side of the ludicrously large, inground bathtub.
“How are we feeling?” I ask, dropping the ‘Ursul the Merciless’ character for the moment, giving them a caring squeeze and a lovely marshmallowing (the side of Lu’s face pressed against my right tit, the side of Ami’s against my left).
“Good!” smiles Ami, to nodded agreement from Lu.
“Good…” I respond leaning my head back against the edge of the bath “…we should get a nice long rest and… tomorrow… we should head South… I hear there are some juicy quests on offer down there!”
Both of their bodies go tense and they sit up.
Immediately, I look up at them and ask “What’s wrong?”
Ami opens her mouth but what comes out is mostly white noise, the game making her mouth distort, ghoulishly, in order to resolve how she’s supposedly forming those sounds “……n’t……………ad……………ality……”
My heart sinks as the room and my two beautiful, fantasy companions spend a few seconds coming into and out of focus before my vision finally goes entirely black save for the words {CONNECTION LOST}…
Gone is the pleasant postcoital muscle ache, gone the wonderous heat from being in the bathwater, gone is the feeling of the Elf and Dwarf nestled against my sides.
“No! No! No! No! NO!” I say, pulling off my nervejack headset and desperately trying to see anything wrong with it, as if I don’t already know “Come on, you piece of shit! I’m missing the aftercare! Just because I was Domming, doesn’t mean I don’t like to cuddle! Doesn’t mean I don’t benefit from reassurance! Doesn’t mean I’m OK with pumping and dumping my subs… let alone how their feeling! Just work! Every minute you make me spend out here is nearly half an hour I don’t get to spend in there!”
I look miserably out of the window at stars trundling by.
Desperately, I put the headset back on and try to restart the game only to be repeatedly met with the message {UNABLE TO LOCATE SERVER}.
I take it off again, run into the hall and shout “Twila?!”
“Yes, Kas?” she responds instantly.
“How long will it take us to be out of this signal deadpatch?!”
“It’s only a small one, so we should be back in comrange in around 20mins. That patch will last around 3.5hrs then it’s dead air for the next few days, I’m afraid.”
“Please let me know the second we’re back in coms…” I say, the bottom dropping out of my stomach at being told that I’m going to miss the entire night with Lu and Ami!
“I will, Kas, I’m… sorry about whatever got interrupted!” she answers.
“Thanks…” I say with a joyless smile and disappear into my room.
I spend the next twenty minutes sat, crosslegged, on my (far too large for one person) bed, my knee bouncing agitatedly, eyes flicking between my holo and my gaming headset in front of me, nervously chewing my bottom lip.
*Ping* goes my holo, with a message showing from Twila ‘Coms are back!’
Reaching for my headset, I dictate “Holo: message Twila ‘Thank you!’, send!”
I log back in and find myself outside the tavern, dressed and with everything of mine that I left in the room back in my inventory.
I check my messages and see one from Ami.
Ursul
We missed you last night but we understand it was unavoidable.
We’ll be playing for a little while longer so, if you can log back in, try and catch up.
See you soon, hopefully!
Love Daertyn and Yelren ♡♡♡
I check my map and see that they’re only a little way South… I can probably catch up to them in two hours, if I run!
I begin composing a message ‘I’m back, I see you guys. I’m on my way to you…’ but, at that point, my stomach growls.
It only feels like a little while ago that I was enjoying that pork dinner, to me, but… in in game time, it’s been nearly half a day since then!
If you didn’t play for a year and then tried to log back in, you wouldn’t instantly famish away to a skeleton but you would be hungry. I’m quite hungry!
I change the last sentence to ‘I’ll be on my way to you, once I’ve eaten. Love Ursul ♡♡♡’ and send it.
I stoop down by about half a metre to pass below the doorframe, back into the tavern.
---Aja’s perspective---
This game is hard!
I thought it would be fun to play as a supernatural Human, wandering the land and vanquishing evil, but I haven’t been able to find a party and, without one, it seems impossible to advance beyond herb gathering quests(!)
I lean a Human head, on a Human hand, over a Human elbow, resting on a Human countertop and take a moment to appreciate how natural the game is able to make this alien physiology feel!
Maybe I should just quit… find another game that’s more my difficulty level!
Just as I’m thinking that, the stool next to me is pulled out and a clawed arm (with every muscle clearly articulated from every other) enters my peripheral vision.
“Innkeep… you do blueberry pancakes?” comes a frighteningly loud voice from several head heights above mine.
“Yup… comin’ right up!” responds the grey bearded tavernkeeper.
“Large please!” adds the woman.
Nervously, I look sideways and see a gargantuan [Orc]woman, mostly naked and about as well muscled as the celebrity Thran Hunter, though looking nearly twice the height!
She notices me looking and turns her head to look down at me, terrifyingly.
“Oh… hey! It’s you!” she says with recognition “Listen… sorry I snapped at you last night! Don’t take it to heart. Just something I felt my character would do. It wasn’t personal!” she adds, kindly.
“That’s… alright?” I answer, nervously.
“The name’s ‘Ursul’… in game at least… nice to meet you!” she grins, baring the roots of her tusks.
“I’m Aj… Lorena… it’s nice to meet you, too?”
She laughs “Almost gave me your real name there, didn’t you(!)… Listen, babes… relaaax! I’m not going to bite your head off, even if I do look like it! Just try to think of us as too normal Human gals sitting at the same bar… It’ll be easier, trust me!”
“Erm… OK, Ursul… err…” I cast around for a topic of conversation “…where are your companions?”
Her face falls.
[Fuck]!
That was the wrong thing to say!
“I got force logged out when I went through a signal dead patch… they went on ahead. I’m just gonna eat and then catch them up.” she answers without smiling.
“I… see…” I answer, relieved she didn’t bite my head off.
There’s a pause, during which the same dish I saw her companions eating earlier (though much larger) is placed in front of her and she begins eating.
“So… you new to the game…?” she asks between mouthfuls.
“Yes… though I’m not sure it’s for me…”
“Oh, yeah… how come?” she responds.
“I just… I… I think it might be better to play with a party… none of my friends in the real world want to play with me… and I haven’t found a party willing and able to take me.”
“Oh… sucks to hear, girl!… What level you at?”
“Urm… 9… I think?” I answer, uncertainly.
Her eyebrows raise, her eyes still fixed on her food, as she says “That’s not too bad for a solo player! What’s your class?”
“Cl… Cleric?”
She stops dead in her tracks and turns to look at me, her red eyes wide!
Oh gods! What did I say!? How do I fix this!? I don’t want this woman to bite my head off or beat me to death!!!
“Do you know any healing spells!?” she asks, vigorously.
Trying to work out if that was a roundabout threat, I eventually decide to just answer honestly “Yes… low level ones… sure…”
“What about buffs?” she asks, almost frantically, leant over to put her face inches from mine!
“A few… again, low level!” I answer, terrified!
I’m about to open my mouth to apologise for whatever I did to offend the frightening [Orc]woman when she says something I do not expect “PLEEEEEASE join my party!”
“I’m sorry…?” I say, head spinning.
“Just for a mission or two! See how you like it! If we don’t get on, we separate, no hard feelings! Equal share of the loot and any drops!”
“You want… me… in your party?” I query, warily.
“YES!!!” she answers, emphatically “It’s so hard to find good support class players! We’ve got two heavy hitters and a range player but no support so we waste such a massive amount of our money on healing and buff potions! You’d pay for yourself, instantly!”
“OK, but… I wouldn’t be… [fourth-wheeling]?”
She chuckles “Don’t get it twisted, now! We are a polycule but you’d only be one of the foursome in the party sense… and maybe the friendly sense… but no other sense!… We’re poly but that’s not the same as being in an open relationship! Separate sleeping arrangements for you and us. If that’s a dealbreaker, then I’m sorry!”
I consider the terrifying woman’s proposal.
I am certainly not disappointed by this being an entirely platonic offer… I was just bemoaning the level wall I’d run into… and this would be a wonderful opportunity to socialise.
Tentatively, I say “Alright… I’ll see how I feel after a mission or two but let’s party up until then…”
The woman’s greenskinned face lights up as she says “Amazing! Let me finish my pancakes and send you a friend request, then we can go!… You alright with riding my shoulder? I wanna go fast to catch up to them!”
“That sounds… exhilarating…” I answer, anxiously.
---later---
Sat with the woman’s broad, brawny shoulder beneath me, far higher in the air than I’m comfortable with, we are racing down the Southward road, the village we met in a distant memory behind us.
I see the recognisable backs of a slim, white haired [Elf] and a thickly armoured, orangey-yellow plaited haired [Dwarf] ahead of us.
“Guys!” shouts the woman playing mount to me.
The two turn around as we rapidly approach them. Their eyes mirror eachother's as they look first to their companion then, surprised, to me.
We draw up to them and the giantess puts me down.
“Sorry about last night, you two! Bad signal patch…” says Ursul, regretfully.
“No problem, babes… Who’s this?” says the [Dwarf]woman, gesturing to me.
“Guys… meet Lorena… she’s a cleric, and I invited her for a trial run in our party… hope that’s alright…”
The other two both look surprised… but don’t seem upset.
The sun haired [Dwarf] smiles at me “Hello, Lorena… I’m Daertyn. It’s nice to meet you!”
“I’m Yelren and likewise!” nods the [Elf].
“Nice to meet you, too…!” I smile, hoping I can get them to like me.