Endgame, Part 2: We Require More Vespene Gas

Behind the Scenes, Some Time Ago

Gwendolyn “PenGwen” Frostqueen is sitting at her computer throne, ready for another day of streaming. As the immortal empress of Earth, everyone is required to subscribe and watch her streams as they go about their daily tasks. She loves the attention. Her Pengis are dancing for her amusement as the mods and technical support crew in her harem get her ready.

Her royal theme music plays. She prepares to perform for her adoring audience of serfs and subjects. Her hair is perfectly combed. Her uniform is perfectly pressed and perfectly hugging her curves.

“Konnichi-rawr, my loyal subjects! It is I, your immortal queen and ruler of all of time and space, PenGwen Frostqueen! As per usual, the first 50 superchats of 200 PenGuinea or more will get special privileges. And I promise to read all superchats worth 10000 PenGuinea or more! Today, we will be continuing my attempt at a perfect playthrough of a fan-game made by a devoted Pengi of my time on Harem Hotel. It’s so interesting to see what that Pengi thought would happen if I played the game differently as the Mistress. Of course, I already had that Pengi beaten to **** for thinking at Añil wouldn’t be eliminated in a perfect playthrough, but still...”

Gwendolyn’s thoughts are interrupted as what appears to be a mermaid arrives, unannounced and uninvited, into her streaming room. The face is familiar, but PenGwen doesn’t know from where. Not that it matters.

“GUARDS!”

Before they can react, the mermaid seems to use magic. The guards turn their guns towards PenGwen. The mermaid speaks, “Hello, PenGwen. This is Beckie Petersen. You had a guest appearance on my season of Harem Hotel? I’m here to make an offer. There is no need for ****. Right?”

PenGwen does not fear her guards being temporarily turned against her. She has more coming. “You mean that season with the doll contest? Wasn’t the host a disgusting old crone instead of a mermaid?”

The mermaid shifted into the expected crone form. PenGwen watches her viewership count drop. The fact that people turned off the stream knowing that they would be given 40 lashes if they are caught not watching speaks volumes towards how revolting the crone looks.

“How would you like to add someone new for your harem?” The crone explains her plan. Her delightfully demented plan. There is only one problem with it.

“I do not desire to enslave another Añil. Not...”

“Oh, super smexy cyber fox slut got herself eliminated. I’m not talking about her. How would you like to be the owner of a lovely mermaid, only slightly used?”

PenGwen, Now

PenGwen is in her igloo reskinned Hatchery, sending out orders on a computer set up just like her streaming set-up. She’s streaming the match, of course. A great collab, as the Harem Hotel audience can send superchats, too. Even if her streaming audience isn’t that much larger than normal, maybe she’ll get a few more non-serf subscribers.

She’s scouting for the opposing base with her overlord (reskinned as a Pengi in a hot-air balloon) as she preps for a 9 pool opening. She wonders what her opponent, who is apparently a novice, is going to do as an opening. She’s not expecting decent play, so she’s planning on just bug rushing as soon as she finds the mermaid. Eeeeh! I always wanted a mermaid! I hope she’s busty and cute! Of course, I can make her busty and cute, if she’s not, so no big deal.

And there the enemy base is. Directly across from her on this map. Easy. And, she has nothing, beyond her starting units. A few workers and a command center. No barracks. No factory. No gas extractor. The workers are even idle. The mermaid is cute, if a little small in the chest and currently be-legged. She won’t need to have legs once PenGwen is done with her.

Easy peasy. PenGwen pulls the overlord back to base as she sends her first batch of buglings (reskinned as Pengis with bowie knives). This will be quick. PenGwen switches to full speed 9 pool mode. Time to crush my new toy with a steady stream of basic units.

Daphne

Daphne is panicking. She has no idea what to do and her mermaids don’t want to listen. They seem to just repeat the same 4 vocal cues on a cycling repeat. How does the game work?

Then, Daphne hears some cute squawking. A half dozen cartoony penguins, each holding a couple of knives, are storming down the workers and that coral reef thing the mermaid just noticed. And both workers, cursing in dolphin, just die in one hit.

“Ack!” Daphne squeaks as she casts a Storm Sphere, centered on the mass of (admittedly cute) penguins hitting the reef. They bob around from the wind and Daphne hits one of them with the lightning bolt quite effectively. The penguins keep stabbing at the reef; it’s almost as if they think they’ll win if the reef falls apart. The penguin Daphne hit with the lightning bolt from Storm Sphere dies. One cast of Synaptic Static pops all 4 penguins in range, which is good; Daphne barely grazes the last penguin, who gets out of the storm sphere to just turn around and start hacking at the reef right by it. One last bolt is all it takes.

Aha! I am victorious! Daphne is disappointed when the announcer guy doesn’t say she wins.

PenGwen

The fuck just happened? The mermaid dropped a DoT effect, then nuked most of the initial swarm in one ability? This is bad. I have to treat her like she’s a fucking siege tank. Need to shift builds. Only good news is that, since it looks like she never started mining, she’s screwed if she doesn’t defend her base. It’s not like the calvary will come.

PenGwen starts to input commands to shift her strategy to pumping out Mutabugs (reskinned to penguins with cute fluffy wings and boomerangs). She just needs enough cuddly **** penguins to take that command center down.

Harper

Harper steps into the scene to see a really, really bad situation. Daphne is alone, with only a coral reef(?) in her base. No troops. No buildings to make troops. No workers.

“Hey, Daph, what’s your mineral count? We need to get a game economy going.”

“What’s minerals? Why do I need them? How can I tell?”

Harper sighs. She wonders if she can check using her battlemap transformation. Clicking it on, she sees the Daphne has no game resources. And another wave of foes are incoming. Maybe 30 seconds out. “Daph, quick, what can you tell me about what’s going on?”

“Ah, the opponent is named PenGwen Frostqueen and she’s played a lot?”

Harper had a bit of a crush on PenGwen back in the sad days of watching VStreemer VoDs just to not feel alone. PenGwen plays bugs in Spacecraft. The reef is identified as a command center. Okay, I’m starting to form a plan. One cast of Foresight that should last the entire gauntlet later, she barks out, “Another wave incoming. Lean on Psychic damage. Then, we start playing this like Battlecraft III.”

Six cuddly looking Pengis with knives and six cuddly Pengis flapping with fuzzy wings. Buglings and Mutabugs. A few seconds from being in range. Harper summons a draconic emerald dragon. “Intercept and take down the fliers!” She starts the bladesong, charging ahead to protect Daphne. Harper bets that if Daph or the reef falls, the match is called for PenGwen.

Harper is faster than the buglings. She casts Steel Wind Strike and what was 6 buglings is now down to 1. The dragon spirit rends through 2 mutabugs and heavily damages a third. It fires off the breath weapon, which does less damage than Harper would like. Daphne fires off a Synaptic Static, which drops the injured mutabug and heavily injures two more.

When the bugling bounds up to attack the sea elf, Harper braces and nearly kills the thing. She dodges around it’s knife slashes. The dragon above just tanks the mutabug boomerang hits. One basic slash and one mind sliver later, and the foes are down to 2 fliers, which the dragon tears apart.

The dragon flies back, awaiting new instructions. Harper checks her battlemap and the full health dragon is showing up on it as her summon. And she sees that its vision is removing the map’s fog of war. That is a good idea. “Hey, find the opponent’s base and deal as much damage as you can. Attack units, then whichever buildings look easiest to take down.”

Harper watches the dragon fly away, in the general direction of where the foe came from. The fog of war on the map is dissipating along the dragon’s flight path. Harper turns to Daphne, “Okay, Daph, into the reef. We’re flying it out of here.”

“What?”

PenGwen

“Bullshit! That fight was bullshit! The fuck!”

A new blue chick was in the opponent’s base when the second wave hit and, between summoning a dragon like this is a mod map in that dumb Battlecraft game and it’s own abilities, basically wiped out half of her raid in a few seconds. And both units have enough armor that her units couldn’t even deal a point of damage.

Okay. New unit can summon a flier and said flier can drop a mutabug in a single hit. Mutas are no longer valid. Hydrabugs? Scourges? Spore Colonies? Queens? This is not a normal situation. Kitchen sink this.

Daphne

Harper and Daphne are riding the coral reef thingy. Apparently, it can fly? Harper is looking for a place to land it. She finds a fun little plateau with no ramps up to it and tells Daphne to land there. This whole “control a flying building thing” is weird. While Daphne sends the order to land, Harper is checking her map. That was a good purchase.

“Dragon found the base and we are pretty close to it. We should move.”

PenGwen

The dragon looks odd up close. Spectral, glowing green, with floating spines and horns. PenGwen hopes it’s a once a match kind of thing. She microed like crazy to assemble a decent horde with a variety of units, hoping something will work. The corruptor (Pengis with jetpacks and acid sprayers) the dragon attacked survived, barely. The dragon does take damage, and the corruptors do weaken it’s armor. It takes most of the scourges (Pengis tied to rockets) she made to finally drop it, but PenGwen does finally end the menace. She sends the last scourge to check for the enemy.

And the enemy is there, at the entrance to her base area. The blue chick blew the scourge out of the air in one shot. What kind of cheating bullshit is this imbalanced chick doing now?

PenGwen orders the rest of the units to sally forth. Surely, 2 squishy chicks won’t survive being stomped to **** by an ultrabug (reskinned as an adorable thresher driven by a pengi). And blue chick pulls out another bullshit ability. The ultrabug and 2 hydrabugs (Pengis with blowdarts) all start to fall straight up? The mermaid summons a big AoE psychic blast that drops a corruptor. The other corruptor is too discombobulated to hit with a spray of acid. Then the blue chick summons a magic shield to deflect all 4 hydrabug shots.

Blue chick summons forth another bullshit ability. PenGwen tries to micro the hydrabugs back, but blue chick dashes way too fast, wind bursting her forth and, with 2 slashes, drops the Pengi she targeted. PenGwen gets a bit of a break, as the mermaid only grazes the corruptor she shoots with some weird green beam. And the corruptor and both of the hydrabugs all hit the blue chick.

Blue chick does the same bullshit dash and smash down a hydrabug in a couple of hits. The Ultrabug and hydrabugs stop falling up. The mermaid turns the last corruptor into dust with the green beam. The blue chick dodges out of the way of the hydrabug shots.

Then blue chick pulls out yet another ability. Just how many does this chick have? She starts to shimmer in silvery light, then the remaining of PenGwen’s forces start to fall. The two start peppering the falling units with abilities. Mermaid busts out more green beams and psychic blasts. The blue cheat seems to drop a sun on them. When the Ultrabug is almost on the ground (and could therefore do something), blue chick pulls out another bit of bullshit, mounting the ultrabug while it’s still in the air, and slashes it thrice with her blade. When the ultrabug finally finishes its fall, it squishes.

PenGwen is super pissed as she exits the hatchery, knowing that this is effectively over. “What was all of that bullshit? How many fucking special abilities do you have?”

Blue chick shrugs, “In the parlance of Spacecraft, something like 28?”

“I concede. I don’t care how cute the mermaid is. I can’t beat against a fucking cheat hacker. And where is that doll dude?”

Blue chick shrugs again. “Hi. Harper. I’m the Mistress of this season.”

“If you are the Mistress, what the fuck happened to Añil?”

Blue chick snaps her fingers, and a two-tailed fox appears. The fox starts growling and blue chick starts to pet her. “Vix is my familiar. She likes junk food, if you want to feed her.”

“Yeah. I’m out. Later.” And PenGwen leaves to complain to Snow Squall about how that bullshit match shouldn’t count on her record.

Daphne

The battlefield dissolves into a plain white room. Daphne lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. A silvery squid is in the middle of the room. Daphne gives a big shark toothy grin, “Wow! Thanks Ms. E! You look sooo cute! What are you doing here?”

The squid waggles some tentacles. “Ms. O’Connor helped you succeed, so now it’s time to send her back and then give you your exit.”

“A moment, Ms. E,” Harper interrupts, “Do we still get XP? If Daphne earned enough, may I give her that final level?”

“Oh, Ms. O’Connor, breaking the limits placed on mortals isn’t enough power for you? Very well. You did earn it.”

Daphne: +30 XP (Killed 12 Level 1 monsters, x0.053 penalty [overleveled], Killed 10 Level 3 monsters, x0.158 penalty [overleveled], Killed 3 Level 5 monsters, x0.263 penalty [overleveled], Killed 1 Level 21 monster, all rounded down at the end)

Harper: +38 XP (Killed 6 Level 1 monsters, x0.045 penalty [overleveled], Killed 10 Level 3 monsters, x0.136 penalty [overleveled], Killed 10 Level 5 monsters, x0.227 penalty [overleveled], Killed 1 Level 21 monster, x0.955 penalty [overleveled], all rounded down at the end)

Harper pulls out her DM tablet and levels them both. Daphne picks up Signature Spells (Picking Lightning Bolt and Tidal Wave, only one of which she’s actually used, but she tended to not really use 3rd level spells), plus a couple of lower level spells (Far Step and Alter Self). She grabs a bit more SP and HP, too. Her Beloved gets the ability to crit hit easier with Improved Criticals, plus some more HP. Then Harper disappears.

“Now, Ms. Daphne, it’s time to write your final transformation, your exit from the show. Given the supposed theme is supposed to be about testing methods to reduce ‘helplessness,’ I figured I would allow you girls to write your own exits. A last bit of self-determined change. So, what do you want?”

Daphne thinks, really thinks, but there is really only one thing she could want. “I know this is going to sound weird, but I used the last bit of my Beloved’s seed as a part of making my transmuter’s stone. I can’t bear to sacrifice the stone to use those master transmuter effects. Is there a way I could always keep it?”

The squid smirks. It looks a little weird, to be honest. When Ms. E speaks, Daphne’s heart soars, “There will be consequences, but sure. That is rather sweet, in a perverse way.”

Thus, the negotiations begins. The back and forth was interesting. Daphne doesn’t know how long it takes to settle the wording, but, when they did, the mermaid is happy. Ms. E even threw some extra stuff for free.

Master Transmuter +1: Daphne’s transmuter stone is now indestructible and embedded into her chest, just above the start of her cleavage. When Daphne uses a Master Transmuter effect, the stone will crack instead of being consumed and will slowly repair itself over the next 8 hours. The stone loses it’s passive special effect while it repairs. In addition, Daphne can ignore certain restrictions of transmutation spells (such as the “beast only” restriction on Polymorph) while the transmuter stone is whole (Wizard – Exit Transformation).

Daphne makes an oof sound as she feels the stone in her inventory binding to her. When it’s done, Daphne touches the stone; it’s warm. She is happy that she has this little part of her Beloved bound to her.

“Now what?”

“Now, we wait to see how the others succeed. You’ll get to join your Beloved Ms. O’Connor at the final ceremony.” Daphne sees a Jacuzzi appear and happily dives in. Okay! Harem-sisters, I’m rooting for you all!