Kevin and Harper

{reveal "Context:"}

Part of Xar's Wedding Events, following the chapter Whiskey!, featuring Harper from the Francis O'Connor branch.

{endreveal}

The sea elf pats a spot by her on the bench. “Have a seat, Burgmeyer. Time for a Harem Hotel tradition: a Master who has been going through this longer than you giving unsolicited advice.”

“I don’t know how often it happens, but it sounds like a good idea whenever it’s possible. It’s not like most of us had any idea what was going on when we first got pulled in, and I think more information can only be helpful.”

“Lily hasn’t opened up your season for fan-mail, but a solid 80% of the mail you’d get would be stuff like this,” Harper notes as she pulls out a couple of glasses from her inventory. “Scotch, Crab Trapper, Drow Mushroom Wine, Evermead? One of my wives made the last two herself. Or you just want some water?”

“You know what, mushroom wine sounds fascinating.”

Harper gives Kevin a heavy pour of the dark amber wine, smelling of loam. For herself, she pours two fingers of Glenfiddich Suspended Time. She raises her glass and gives Kevin’s glass a clink before toasting, “Slainte.” The scotch slides down her throat with her sip and is exquisite. Worth every copper.

Kevin takes a sip, then makes a complicated expression as he tries to analyze the flavors. Eventually, though, he just shrugs and takes another drink. “My compliments to your wife. I’m not sure that I’d switch to be a daily drinker, but it’s fascinating and new.”

“I’ll pass that on when I see her. This first bit is NOT advice, just my experience with the game. Our first Host was as lazy as she was incompetent, and incredibly cruel. She grabbed a set that was abandoned during pre-production and adapted it to minimize the amount of work she’d have to do during the game. She left things in the show design that she shouldn’t of. So, me and mine ended up turning our season into a punchier version of yours. We made some questionable decisions, power leveled though our dungeon, did some questionable things, got our revenge. The hag died doing what she loved: masturbating to reruns of Matlock. Coordinated sneak attack during our Endgame challenge; we didn’t give her a chance.”

Kevin's expression wavers between fascinated and horrified during the whole explanation. He eventually nods and comments, “That sounds – honestly it sounds like a nightmare, so congratulations on being past it, I guess. I know speed running is an option in mine, Lily made that perfectly clear, but with the implication was that if we try to rush it and fail, we’ll wind up in worse circumstances than if we take our time. I plan to push things along faster, if only so there are fewer rounds of transformations, but the feeling I get is that no matter which direction we go, we’re always playing into Lily’s plans.”

Harper takes a sip to let the thought linger for a moment, then continues, “I would advise caution in both directions about that. Lily’s goal is to make an entertaining story out of you and yours. It is not necessarily hostile to you, but it’s also not exactly benign. As an outside observer, she is very good at what she does; she will craft the tale no matter what you decide. So, your instincts are right; you need to be more proactive. Your companions are bound to you, no matter what happens. Letting Lily dictate everything will leave your relationships with them to her whims. She will guide everything towards what is most interesting to the audience, not necessarily what is best for you and yours. You want something good with everyone at the end, you will need to pursue it before she sets something in stone.”

“I’m working on that now, I’m just trying to make sure that the direction I take everyone in is something they – and I – can live with," Kevin affirms, then asks, "How do you reconcile knowing that inaction is worse than action with the general... ick of feeling like you’re participating in a system designed to strip away free will? I can’t even claim I’m only following orders – Lily is obviously willing to keep control of things, but I don’t have access to the breaks, just the steering wheel."

“I may not be the best person to give you advice about that. My season’s stated premise was an experiment in letting the contestants mold me into their ideal Mistress. I was locked in the Master’s Suite for the whole first week and I binged as much of the show as I could stomach. I viscerally saw what happens when the Master fails someone, over and over again. So, I did everything I could to stop that from happening, to an unhealthy degree of self-sacrifice; I mostly succeeded, despite myself. Mostly. Have you seen the results of an elimination yet?”

“Not in person – at least, not that I’m aware of. My suite is equipped with some written transcripts of other seasons and I spent my first night binging them instead of sleeping, so I have the general idea, but-”

Harper snaps her fingers and a two-tailed fox appears on her shoulder. The sea elf summons a handful of snack food, which the fox happily eats, tails waggling.

“This is Vix. Her original name is Añil Rodriguez. Long story short, she colluded with another Host to kill me and this is her result. My season’s Producer made me write the transformation when she deemed the ones submitted by the actual staff too cruel. Given the fact that your fox is the one most likely on the elimination chopping block, imagine this, but in her current body. That could happen. You can try House Rule on her to read her elimination, if you wish. I will warn you that it is the equivalent of a tenth level spell, so don’t touch. You’ll only hurt yourself.”

Kevin's expression darkens with each of the next few moments that pass as he studies Vix and the magic woven around her with her elimination. When he eventually returns his focus to Harper, he shakes his head. “No, I haven’t seen anything like that before.”

“And taking care of her needs is a part of my everyday,” Harper adds, then shifts topics, “Speaking of it, House Rule is an interesting transformation. There are a lot of different seasons with a lot of different rule variants. I wonder what the limits are? Could you plug in whole new systems? What would copying Andy’s achievement system do? Or Pompadour’s audience BP store? Or the XP system from mine? Could you add useful transformations from other seasons to wherever that shop exists in Adventuria? The veto system from my season could be especially useful, if you could manage swapping it in. I had the veto power, not my Host. Granted, I was generally only allow to edit the winning transformation instead of swapping it out, though I did find a loophole, but, if you could wield it, you would get advance notice of the winning transformations, maybe the hidden text? In exchange, my contestants got to give me extra transformations. You veto the right companion’s transformation, and they could respond by getting you something broken.”

Kevin doesn’t dismiss the suggestion out of hand, though his expression shows clear signs of concern. “I... eventually, maybe. I’m still getting a feel for House Rule. If all I’m doing is exactly what it describes, just swapping out a couple of words, I can usually make the change no problem. If I try to use it again on the same effect, it gets harder, or if I try to make changes that are more significant still, it's harder still. Part of that is practice, and the more I use it the easier things get, but part of it is power. Each week that goes by it gets easier to use, but trying to affect the whole season and setting?” He laughs, then shakes his head. “It's the difference between using an IDE to edit code and trying to directly update the compiled results. House Rule gives me just enough understanding of the latter for me to have a vague idea of what I'm doing, but the bigger the changes I make the harder it gets to keep everything straight in my head. Right now, I think I’d mess something up and just make things worse.” After a pause, though, he asks, “Do you think... do you have any way to try to get me more information on those systems, though? If I had the chance to study them for long enough, maybe I could do something...”

“Only know enough about coding to be dangerous on a TI calculator, but if the analogy works for you, great. Now, magic? Magic I know a lot about. I will say that any competent Host will be doing bespoke work, but...”

Harper summons two books from her inventory. The first is handed over easily enough, “This was my season’s rule book. It, like most rule books handed to game participants, is a convoluted mess of legalese. You don’t have a lawyer among your companions, but I picked up one. Her notes are in the margins. This is as close to my veto system’s design spec that I can get to. Much of my season’s design work has been made classified for... reasons.”

The other book is given more hesitantly. “And this is a design primer, made for normal people granted the power of a Host needing to make their first set. You did NOT get this from me; you found it tucked somewhere in your library. I doubt Lily used much of the material in here, but it would get you a place to start looking. As far as specific systems go, ask the relevant Host. Arabella might let you peek at her Achievements system. Look for a short black-haired nut job surrounded by penguins for Pompadour’s audience shop tech. Alternatively, look for a teal-furred cat-girl with a cybernetic arm during the reception; she’s somehow translated magic into computer code and hacked sets before, so she may be able to help you.”

Kevin tucks both books under one arm and nods. “I'll see what I can do, but from what I can see, Lily has my season in as close to quarantine as she could manage. Reaching out to people in other seasons isn’t something I’ve found a path to yet. I’m not even sure what happened to get me here. Maybe somebody went over her head? Regardless, though, thank you.”

Harper takes another sip, then nods, “You are quite welcome. For that last nagging question of yours, the answer is... complicated. We can get into the nitty gritty, but the multiverse is a real thing and many worlds you know as fiction exist somewhere in it. If you need examples, in my home world, Gygaxianism is the second largest religion in the United States; my current world makes Adventuria look almost prudish at times. So, my understanding of how divine ascension works may be different than yours and it may not work. I know it would work for me, if I chose to dive into it. Forgive the anatomy nerdiness, for I was a college professor several lifetimes ago, but divinity is, as far as I understand it, a positive feedback loop. The divine grants a mortal some kind of power: a favor, a spell, a miracle, an answered prayer. The mortal offers worship in thanks. The act of worship increases the power of the divine, usually more power than what was granted, especially over time; the mortal also shares tales of the divine act to others, increasing worship in said others. More power means being able to help more mortals, which leads to more worship and worshipers. So on and so forth. Make sense?”

“Yeah, in the abstract at least. I’m not sure if that's what my end state will look like, but from what I can tell that’s not impossible. It’s not like Lily has told me any real details of what’s going on, of course, so right now I'm just going on guesswork.”

“The tricky bit is to find a way to start the feedback loop, that initial spark of divinity and the subsequent power to start that first miracle. The show can grant it, I can tell you that much. There is at least one goddess you will see at the reception, if not before, that got her start from an endgame wish or a Hotel transformation. Personally, I am an immortal quasi-deity, not fully divine but close enough to it that I am not one by choice instead of by limitation; my start was by breaking the level cap, which I did via a combination of a transformation and excess XP right before my endgame challenge began. It can be done in other ways, of course. Being granted divinity by another deity is the usual way; see Hercules as an example. If you wanted to pursue that route, I’d ask to speak to Kyle’s manager. Or, if you are feeling really froggy, my world’s Eilistraee is showing up to the wedding; you can ask her.”

Kevin can’t prevent the laugh that bubbles out. He shakes his head gently, takes a deep drink of his wine, then chortles out, “Just, you know, pop over to a different reality to ask Eilistraee to help me move to rank zero divinity instead of whatever I am now.” A moment later he adds more seriously, “Seriously, though, if you’d told me any of this before the season started, I would’ve called you crazy. Then it would’ve haunted my dreams for the rest of my life. I think going back to Kyle is probably my next real step – I just need to make sure I’m ready to take it before I ask, because I get the feeling it’s a step I can’t take back.”

Harper sighs, “I am choosing to ignore the fact that my blue skin, pointy ears, and neck gills apparently would not have been enough to convince you. One final bit of caution. Immortality is a real danger to one’s long term mental health. I’ve buried grandkids who died of old age and I don’t look a day older than when my season ended a century ago. Think long and hard about it. Make sure you are ready to live with the consequences.”

“Yeah. Trust me, the length of the path I’m staring down has not escaped me.” He shakes his head. “We should get back; we’ve been away from things for a while. I appreciate everything you’ve said to me, and if I get the chance I’ll try to reach out and make contact again.”

The sea elf nods, finishes off her drink, and sends the glass back into her Inventory. She offers Kevin a hand, and they head back towards dinner.