A game.

"So here are our character sheets. Ash and I are playing two human mercenaries who take contract work from various frontier companies. Their most recent job takes them to a mining planet, where they are to investigate claims of violent alien entities preventing miners from doing their jobs."

"And I'm supposed to play a lump of rock?" Tibby asks. "Is this your way of saying you like Ashley more than me?"

"That's right. You're the dumb floating rock." You laugh and stick your tongue out at Tibby before whispering to her, loud enough to make sure everyone can hear you. "Don't tell Ashley, but you're actually the coolest member of our team."

"Now, why don't we just get started and figure this game out as we go along?"

You and your pets are sitting at the kitchen table, various papers and cards scattered between you. Your nose is buried in a campaign booklet, and Ashley has the instruction manual open in front of her. You're about to play your first tabletop RPG using the prewritten campaign Ian gave Ashley yesterday. She probably thinks she's gotten out of her edging punishment by bringing up the game right after breakfast. You'll let her keep thinking that for now, you decide. That way it'll be more fun when you spring it on her later.

In the mines.

"Stealth mode on," Riker Bonestrong [John] said, activating his suit's advanced camouflage.

"What is it, did you find it?" Hops Galore [Ashley] asked.

They had been tracking a Class 2 entity for days, the miners wouldn't enter these tunnels while it was wreaking havoc so the mining company had hired the pair of specialists.

"Never mind, it's just Big Rock."

Big Rock was, well, a big rock. More specifically, it was a buoyant sphere of porous igneous matter Riker and Hops had discovered as kids. Thinking little of the curiosity, they had started playing catch with it. Imagine their embarrassment when it turned out the rock was home to a sentient being that was using it like a hermit crab's shell. But they'd soon formed a loose friendship with the strange being, and even now, almost 20 years later, they still bumped into it on random planets. All the planets in this sector were connected by an uncharted network of portals. You could never know where you'd end up if you fell in one, so human colonists still travelled mostly by ship, but Big Rock had a knack for showing up wherever its two friends went.

"Stealth mode off," Riker said as he prepared to greet his floating acquaintance.

"OoOoOoOooh, I'm Biiiiiig RooOooOk," Tibby intones. "GreeEEEETings, my human friends."

"What are you doing?" Ashley asks, looking up from her cards.

"What do you mean what am I doing? I'm doing the voice!" Tibby exclaims. "That's totally what a weird floating alien would speak like!"

"If you say so." Ashley doesn't sound convinced. "Hey, is Big Rock male or female?"

"The booklet doesn't specifiy," you say. "It's always just 'it'."

Tibby looks at her character cards. "Same here. I'm going to play him as male, because he's a buff manly hunk with rock-solid abs. He's Dwayne the Big Rock Johnson."

Ashley groans in defeat. "If he's The Rock then he can't talk like that!"

Tibby huffs. "Fine. I can't do a deep rough man voice though. You'll just have to imagine it while I talk normally."

"We'll do our best, Tibs," you promise her. "Now, shall we get back to the game?"

[Author's Note: I have a decent amount of worldbuilding for this campaign, but not much in the way of plot yet. I don't want it to interfere with the main story either, so if I continue this it'll be found here.]