DoucheMage

by Damien Hanson

  They were too busy watching Psythulian bring up tentacle porn. It was only after Cornholen’s monk slippers flashed that he snapped out of it and faced Brian.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “What’re you doing?”

  “It’s perfect,” he said. “Here, watch.”

  He twisted and aligned the artifact again, now pointed at the Supple Orb. For a second, the feed to the creature’s tentacle porn flickered, and the audio warbled in and out, then a similar screen emerged from Darian’s Transmogrifier. YouStreamIt Triple X Welcomes You!

  “There, see? And now I get to do for real what I should’ve done the first night you pushed me into a puddle of piss.”

  He’d cued up the spells on his HUD days ago. Each one had to be carefully selected to reach efficiency between SP cost and ease of casting. In other words, only the spells he could reliably roll two or three dice to cast. The rolls screamed by: Lore, Wreck, Athletics, and more. His SP dropped at once.

  He unleashed his first spell, which took Robby Robber and flung him up into the ceiling, and stuck him there. The second caught Casino the Warriorish Princess by the ankles and flipped her straight onto her face. She got up on her knees, with blood running everywhere, just in time to see a ten ton steel block fall from the sky and crush her dragon. She screamed out loud, drew her sword, only to drop it because it was glowing with molten heat.

  “How could–“

  He struck her blind, deaf and dumb with a Will roll and yet another Spell Point.

  “Bro,” Curtis said, hands raised non-threateningly. “We were just–“

  A great wave of semi-transparent force clocked him in the nuts and finished that sentence for him. Tears sprang to his eyes.

  “I’m the alpha,” he seethed. “None of you are fit to lick my boots. You spit on me, And you tormented me, I won’t even repay the favor in kind.”

  A choking cloud of stinking gas appeared around Curtis.

  “You’re not worthy of this honor your money afforded you. You’re nothing but shit. You’re lower than shit. In fact–“ He cast another spell (failed once, grabbed a Plot Point, then succeeded 3 more SP later), and in moments a twelve foot golem composed of nothing but crap stomped into the room, presumably from the privy where Psythulian took his rankest of shits. It was several tons of pure excrement, and Brian pointed it toward the three Muskyteers.

  Then he teleported away.

  ***

  Nicole should’ve been there. Sure she hadn’t done anything bad to him. Point of fact, she was the definite best thing about this place. Even if you factored in the spellbook and Darian’s Transmogrifier, she was the brightest ray of light.

  Everyone else had simply come here to satisfy their carnal desires, no matter how twisted. Taz was proof of that, the gnome and the halfling were proof of that. Even if it was with his fiancé, Curtis still wanted to do it with someone who didn’t really look like her, someone else.

  Nicole was different. She was paid to be here, enjoyed the experience, and was looking to help him get the most out of Prestige Gaming. He’d done that, and that meant she should be rewarded.

  As he stepped through Ye Olde Magick Shoppe, a chain establishment apparently, he ruminated over Nicole while co-opting all the magic abilities from the best of the shoppe’s selection. Given that he was a VIP, he was sure to be able to summon her at any given moment. She probably got paid a bonus for having him as her personal client, which meant every moment away from him was a double bonus, because she was likely to be exempt from any other VIPs, just for being on call for Brian.

  He spent the rest of the day in a tavern poring over the Transmogrifier, and lubed himself up with several Dragonscale Fizzies while poring over the LUBE. He was very near the end. He was amazed it had taken him this long to finish reading it, though to be fair he had a plain old parchment folio of notes he'd painstakingly written in quill and ink to keep the really important parts handy. This, more than anything, was what concerned him when he’d gotten killed. If he’d lost all his notes on how to exploit the system he might not have–

  “Great Galdalf’s Ghost!” he shouted. About him flashed an aura of silver and gold. Heavenly chimes clinged and clanged, while every single NPC in the joint began shouting and cheering. His mind raced ... there wasn’t anything about this in the manual!

  “Achievement Unlocked,” a voice boomed from high in the sky. He shot a glance at the nearest window, half expecting it to explode into jagged shards from the sheer force of the announcement. “Morelon the Learned has become the first person in all the land to finish the LUBE. He shall now hold the title, LUBE Master. May his knowledge serve him well.”

  Well wasn’t that something. Morelon the Learned stood up and bowed to them all, then sat back down. The NPCs calmed down as well, going back to their various drinks and conversations. It made Brian regard them speculatively. What did NPCs actually talk about?

  Something was flashing in the corner of his HUD. He knocked back the rest of a Dragonscale Fizzy, and closed his eyes, feeling it course down cool and fruity against the back of his throat. The achievement wasn’t that amazing but it couldn’t have come at a better time. He’d smashed those assholes hard– and gotten a trophy after. Prestige Gaming was great.

  Opening his eyes he selected the flashing icon. His eyes widened as it swelled open and expanded over him. It was a menu filled with icons and options. At the top of the list were the words– Legendary Abilities. His eyes flashed about, pleading for the question mark icon that might explain to him just what the fuck was going on here. He found it tucked away tiny and small into the exact same spot that the flashing icon had been previously.

  Click! he thought in a panic, desperate to understand what was happening. Words popped onto his screen.

  CONGRATULATIONS AND WELCOME TO LEGENDARY ABILITIES. LEGENDARY ABILITIES ARE THOSE POWERS UNLOCKED BY UNIQUE ACHIEVEMENTS. NO GUEST MAY HAVE MORE THAN A SINGLE LEGENDARY ABILITY AT ANY TIME. LEGENDARY ABILITIES ARE ASSIGNED TO THOSE WHO COMPLETE SECRET ACHIEVEMENTS WITHIN THE GAME SYSTEM. THEY ARE RETURNED TO THE LIST WHEN THE PLAYER DIES. SELECT WISELY - AND MAY YOU LIVE LONGER AND PROSPER.

  Right. Okay. Brian rubbed his hands together and peered through the items. There were so many of them that he envisioned himself pulling a quill and a parchment out of his inventory so that he could screen them all and record the most interesting ones onto the paper as he spied them.

  RULES LAWYER- Once Per Day– Force the target to redo all actions from over the last minute due to a noticed irregularity

  LUCK OF THE DEVIL- Each time you gain a Plot Point, you gain 3 instead. Each time you spend a Plot Point, any 1’s or 2’s are automatically re-rolled until none remain.

  KAREN- Intimidation always works on Lvl 1 monsters

  ALL-SEEING- automatically detect all hidden items, traps, doors or opponents within your line of sight or ten feet. You are never surprised.

  DUNGEON SPAMMER- gain the ability to spawn a new random quest from unpopulated caves and mines.

  THRILLER- Spend one stress. Every undead being in the vicinity begins to dance.

  DIRTY FIGHTER- plus one harm when you stab someone in the balls.

  TROLL- Spam another player’s HUD with comment about his mom over the course of ten seconds. Costs 1 Spell Point.

  SAURON- Gain the ability to summon NPC beings normally hostile to player characters.

  HAREM- Every NPC you encounter of your preferred gender falls in love with you and wants your big hard dong.

  Good lord. Some of these were just unbelievably powerful. And the Harem power… cringeworthy. He definitely wanted to be All-Seeing. Surprise was roughly 90% of combat as far as he was concerned. He tapped the All-Seeing power, and immediately holy light flowed down upon him, along with another heavenly chorus of angels.

  The next thing he did was take a leisurely stroll around the city, to get a better idea of what this new power did. There wasn’t much, but what he did find was pretty incredible: a trapdoor
in one cellar which led to a low level quest (mostly slimes or gelatinous cubes, which were very cool looking, what with the odd floating skull or armor piece still stuck in them) with a pretty nice quest reward, which he immediately stored in his Transmogrifier. Next, he found a secret cache of Credits in the form of a sack of platinum crowns, hidden beneath a stone in the crook of a thick, gnarled root of a massive and ancient tree.

  He made a widening spiral around the city, positively bouncing on his feet. And then, when it was over, he bought up to Access Level 4, and immediately set out to level up for maximum efficiency. Soon enough he would have 64 Spell Points.

  ***

  While the AR simulation was the absolute premier experience one could have on planet earth, Prestige’s meeting rooms left a bit to be desired. They were soulless, undecorated, and if one were being frank, a bit of a cheap out. Clearly they’d spared no expense… for the guests.

  Three presenters from the storybuilding department sat on stage, another stood and paced back and forth with the presentation projected behind her, while the VIP Services personnel were scattered about in cliques, as they normally did. Which was a shame.

  Nicole told herself she needed to stop being so negative: she’d been offered fresh-baked danishes, fruit and veggies with handmade spinach dip, along with her choice of non-alcoholic beverage for the meeting. She hoped it wasn’t her recent Swords & Sorcerers experiences rubbing off on her. God, when had she last been off campus to have a night on the town? Alburqurque didn’t have much to offer, but it also didn’t have nothing. She needed to get out more… one of the downsides of being constantly on call for Mr. Morecock.

  Heh. It was like he was built for Prestige, with its stupid acronyms.

  She felt lucky to have gotten away from Brian, now that they had this genre mashup program to unpack. The core guidelines and version notes were something like nine hundred pages in all, a thick tome in a springy plastic binding. It felt absolutely mammoth in her hands.

  Honestly, the presentation by the coding teams wasn’t much more encouraging. With twelve genres that could be mashed together into different combinations, there were over a hundred new genres available. You could put together cyberpunk with romance, fantasy with thriller, horror with swashbuckling (zombies vs pirates?), sci-fi with war, demigods with western, and everything else under the sun.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in,” the lead of VIP Services said, “but the good news is that your job doesn’t change. You take the guest through their tutorial, their two weeks of initial questing, advising capacity, and to top that off, you’re on call if they have any serious difficulties fitting in.”

  “And if you’re Nicole, you get unlimited free time while your lifer goes out and becomes king of everything,” Tandy commented.

  General good natured laughter followed, while the presenters frowned without knowing the inside joke.

  “So as far as we understand it, the point system hasn’t changed. Whatever movies and TV shows and books you’re reading, those all stay the same. Some multi-genre media you’ll have the choice to credit towards one genre or the other. I don’t really understand the system, so I’m told that you’ll be clapping and cheering now?”

  She must’ve, because she smiled knowingly while the clapping and cheering went on.

  “What we need from you is even more simple. Some of you have retiree VIPs… I’m told there are a half dozen or so. They might be getting high up in level by this point. What we need is to make sure there’s no possibility that they’ll break the game. This new version roll out might end up having some bugs and glitches, and we want to minimize that by easing the load on the system itself.”

  Oh… that didn’t sound good. That was precisely the opposite of what Brian was about, honestly. She groaned inwardly and tried to tell herself she would be doing her job by confronting him on mastering Swords & Sorcerers, then trying to get him into a different genre. Just for the time being.

  The meeting droned on with her wildly considering what it was she would have to do to get Brian out of his current element and into a place where he wouldn’t cause undue stress to the system.

  All of a sudden her cushy, unbelievably simple job seemed a whole lot harder than she’d imagined.

  Chapter 13- Studelon the Studly

  Something wasn’t right. Brian couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but it was nagging at the back of his mind. Life was simple enough right now, what with clearly laid out statistics, stakes, and rules, but he instinctively knew there was something he was forgetting, and Nicole was definitely the reason.

  She had on a leather and fur bikini, essentially, and had brought along two other girls. One of them was definitely another of the VIP Services choices he could’ve made: tall, dark complected, with smoky eyes and amazing hair. She was dressed up as an elf, with the pointed ears and a faint sparkling aura. She also had a special kind of backless shirt that appeared to be composed of twisted vines that barely covered the essentials, and a grass skirt that basically didn’t cover the essentials.

  The other one was a halfling, but a super buff halfling barbarian, with a skein of bones threaded together on leather cording, which formed a sort of shirt over a thin fabric tube top, and a single animal skin over her nethers.

  He smiled, “So good to see you again. These are your other VIP Services friends, I presume?”

  Nicole danced up to him and offered up a hand for high fiving. His smile widened.

  “I don’t recall the harem power extending to VIP Services.”

  Cue the laughter.

  “Call me Morelon the Learned,” he said, and stood, then cast a quick spell to pull out the ladies’ chairs for them, then push in once they’d begun to sit. The spell wrangled a halfling-sized chair for the tiny one.

  “Tandy,” the tall one said, and shook his hand.

  “Chrissy,” the other said, and also shook on it.

  “What can I order for you? I know everything’s taken care of by the company, but consider this on me. Wait? Are you allowed to drink? No, of course you’re not supposed to… but as a VIP, I insist.” He leaned forward. “Little loophole I found… anything Nicole’s not supposed to do because of Prestige rules, I can just say I want her to and she gets to do it anyway.”

  He got a couple of impressed snorts.

  “The least I can do is relay your order and bring it back in person. Sorry if I… would you believe it to be a chivalry thing? No offense intended.”

  “See?” Nicole said.

  Tandy grinned. “You’ll get no dissent from this elf. I’ll take whatever Nicole normally has.”

  “Go for it, tall, dark and bearded,” Chris said. “I’ll have something magical.”

  He returned with a Leaps and Bounds for Chris. It was a color-shifting drink which jumped and swirled around the glass, and two Sparkle Tails, which was smooth and silky ale that fizzed and popped as they drank it.

  “Oh I had no idea this existed!” Chris said.

  “Glad to introduce something to someone,” he said. “There are a couple of other magical drinks… one that turns you lighter than air and lets you bounce around on the ceiling, one that makes you blow multi-colored bubbles out of your mouth and ears, and I’m pretty sure one that gives you a fourteen inch tongue for a half hour or so.”

  The three of them burst out laughing.

  “Those sound amazing!” Tandy said. “I gotta get back here sometime.”

  “So what brings you three out here?”

  Nicole licked the foam from her top lip. “Well, first to congratulate you!”

  “You’re one of our first ever Access Level 4’s in the park’s history!” Tandy added.

  “Discounting the coders, the testers, and the owner’s family, you’re like number three,” Nicole said.

  He threw two Stress Points at a Consort roll, hoped they wouldn’t see him rolling, and ended up with two 1’s and an 8. Fair enough. The game generated several pithy and/or clever re
marks, and he went with one of them, and beefed it up a bit.

  “I’d say it’s mostly down to the expert tutelage of my very own phenomenal VIP Services paladin here. Cheers to her.” He raised his glass, and sloshed a little bit of overzealous Leaps and Bounds against his glass.

  Nicole blushed, which was quickly becoming one of his favorite sights in these last few weeks. The enormous sphincter of doom was a close second.

  He steeled himself for the inevitable rejection again. After all, women only brought their friends when they needed the added security from the creeper at the bar. Not that he went to many bars… it was just generally known.

  “By the way… what happened with those three after I, uh, left?”

  “I figured you watched the video… yeah, they collected their rewards and we parted ways.” Not technically a lie. He’d given them what they deserved.

  “Oh gosh,” Chris squeaked. “I got some on me! Gotta go powder my nose, eh?”

  “I can use a spell if you–” he started to say, but she was already off.

  “I’ll keep her company,” Tandy said, and slipped off. Brian made it a point not to stare at her obviously superior posterior. Nicole would notice him ogling, he was sure of it.

  “You didn’t have to, you know,” he told her, “but I really appreciate it.”

  “I got good news for you,” she said. “You want to take a bit of a walk? I feel like I get my best talking done when I’m walking.”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “You can bring the drink,” she said. “There’s no open intox law here. When Prestige bought the land, they signed a special self-governance contract with the state.”

  “Funky.”

  “Not the conversational gambit I was gonna start with, but we’ll take it.” They headed outside and into the crisp, climate-controlled cool of dusk in Kapi Tal. The rustic houses, the flaky paint on the signboards, and the soft tavern music drifting out from down the block all served to make the atmosphere cozy and comfortable.