Oak

Cherry looked at her lair. The small cave had more than doubled in size. The orc had gathered a full stack of wood earlier, and now they had some stone. She checked out her minion again.

Level 2 Orc Laborer
Orc, Explicit
Experience to level up – 150/200
Attributes
Strength 31 Dexterity 21 Endurance 30
Charisma 11 Manipulation 11 Appearance 23
Perception 18 Intelligence 11 Wits 12
Skills
Athletics 10
Brawling 10
Dodge 5
Lore 5
Melee 20
Stealth 15
Crafting (Woodworking) 50
Crafting (Stoneworking) 6
Feats
Laborer – Increased crafting skill gain, increased productivity when using crafting skills
Lesser Orc Rage – increased damage and damage resistance while raging, less effective than Orc Rage
Liege – You have chosen another monster to be your Liege. It is harder for you to lie to or work against your Liege. Your Liege may choose to impart a number of benefits to you.
Liege (Touched by the Fey) – Effects from your Liege’s spells and abilities are increased when cast on you.
Lower caste – desire to serve someone more powerful, increased loyalty when serving a liege, increased succes rate and productivity when following orders.
Lumberjack – Bonus damage when using crafting tools as weapons, +5 to lore and stealth in woods.
Cowardly – Impulse to hide when faction is in combat. +5 to stealth when afraid. Grants coward’s strike ability
Coward’s Strike – x2 damage to attacks with surprise.
Monstrous Appearance – when attempting to use Appearance in a positive way on creatures without the Monster subtype, count it at 20 points lower until the target gets used to you.

With his strength and endurance and rage he would be a decent fighter, if he had armor. The players had taken back the boots they had looted, but they could loot other ones. She wondered if she could make him stronger, he was well below her level, and she’d love to get him enough intelligence that it didn’t take so much effort to get him to do even simple tasks.

She checked the lair storage, the stone went directly there now, which was nice, getting resources from the orc’s inventory meant talking to him, and that sucked. She watched the amount of stone tick upward, 98, 99, 100.

“Hell yeah!” she shouted.

“Boss?”

“We have enough stone for our first upgrade.” She shouted with glee at the big dumb brute.

He pointed to himself, “Build now?”

“Yeah, give me a moment.” She said.

She went through the command windows, selected the generic big room she had looked at, most of the smaller rooms she needed to level up her lair needed this one big room first. She selected it.

A new progress bar appeared, not like the mining one that just made the cave a bit deeper and gave stone, this one was big.

“Alright stupid, get to work.” She said.

He complied.

She was starting to dislike calling him stupid. He was stupid, but calling him that felt mean now that he was useful, she wanted something better to call him.

Something that said he was big, and stupid, but not in a mean way.

She flew over to him and landed on his shoulder. He froze.

“Hey orc, how would you like a different name?” She asked.

He didn’t respond, he just stood there, his eyes wide and his cheeks turning red.

“Hey, you in there?” she asked.

A grunt was the only response she got. The realization hit her, she was touching him and his brain shut down.

She laughed. She couldn’t blame him; he was a dumb brute and she was easily the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen.

“Hey, orc, get it together, if you can’t talk to me, you can’t serve me, I order you to answer.” She commanded.

“Yes Boss.”

That worked, the whole lower caste thing gave her great power over him now.

“I asked if you would like a new name.”

“Whatever boss want.” He said slowly, his face still red.

“Of course.” Yeah, he’d take whatever name she gave him, he was ecstatic the first time she called him stupid, and she was mostly sure he knew what that meant.

“You like trees, what if I called you tree?” She asked.

A grunt of approval was all she got.

“I don’t actually like that, what about maple or pine, or oak.”

He nodded.

“Actually, I like that one, oak. I think that’s what we’ll go with, you like that, you want to be called oak?”

“I like.” He said with a smile. She was pretty sure he actually liked it. That is, if his brain actually understood what it meant to like something.

“Great, your name is Oak now.” She said, then flew off his shoulder and back out towards the glade. She looked around, had a thought. She flew back in to the cave.

“You must work harder to bring honor to your new name, Oak.” She stated as regally as she could. “You are my first minion; the glory of my kingdom relies on your labor.”

He grunted loudly, it seemed like a good sound. He also started punching the wall again, faster than before. She smiled to herself as she flew to her respawned tree and laid down on the soft, reddish-tinted bark. She looked back to the cave, to her minion working hard to improve her lair. She could get used to this; she was born to rule.

She brought up her own character sheet, she hated looking at this stuff, it just made everything less elegant. She was a small, beautiful, smart and sexy fairy because she was born that way, but according to the character sheet she was categorized as tiny, had high intelligence, wits and appearance. That just made everything so. . . mundane.

But she needed to look over a few things, she was now a ‘micro-boss’ she guessed that came with the liege status. She was still level 10, always had been, as far back as she could remember. She had stats, blah, blah, blah. Skills, whatever, Okay, there’s the section she was looking for.

Feats
Fairy Flight – You have mastery of flight as long as your wings are functional.
Fairy of the Forest – You can control vines and other plants, cast basic nature magic and hide inside trees.
Fey Glamour – +10 Charisma, +10 Manipulation, +10 Appearance, bonuses doubled when using seduction actions.
Invite – You can invite other creatures to take up residence in your lair as minions. Doing so successfully grants you experience, and you will gain a small amount of all the experience your mooks gain. Having sleeping quarters, food and water already available will increase your chances of a successful invite.
Micro-Boss –When you are defeated in battle, lose accumulated progress to your next level rather than all gained experience. Spend Fame on unique bonuses to your lair, your minions and yourself.
Neutrality of the Fey – Players can gain neutral or positive reputation with fey factions, Archfey can create quests for players and sell items to players with neutral or positive reputation.
Quick and Delicate – Your strength counts as 1/10th when used to lift, carry, use tools or deal damage. +50 evasion versus attacks from targets more than one category larger than you.

Invite was important, it’s how she turned Oak into her minion, and apparently gave her the right to name him. Micro-boss was interesting, she regretted that she hadn’t paid more attention to the pop-ups she received, but she’s pretty sure she gained some experience from defeating the player with the armor, and must have lost it when the fire mage returned and killed her. Neutrality of the Fey was new, and interesting. Apparently if any player somehow was neutral with her, she could give them quests and sell them things. She didn’t have any idea how to pull that off though, players only ever wanted to kill or fuck her.

Construction complete.

She jumped up. Flew to the cave. Oak was standing there smiling, a big tusky grin on his huge dumb face. She looked, the cave extended back, but now to the side was a big, roughly cut out room. She flitted with glee, she was going to make it, she was going to expand and build this ugly prison of a cave until she could claim the grove and build her tree house.

She was so excited she flitted to Oak and kissed his cheek.

Follower Successfully Charmed, bonus to social interactions expires in 10.0 minutes.

Shit, she looked at Oak, his cheeks red and his eyes big, staring at her, looking her over lustfully.

“Sorry about that.” She felt her own cheeks getting warm, the way he looked at her, it was a bit scary, and though she was reluctant to admit it, a bit exciting. She needed to change the mood.

“Great work Oak,” She said, trying to sound like she had planned this. “You have served your liege well. More rewards will be given for continued service.”

He nodded, she hoped that had helped redirect his focus.

Cherry flew into the room, tried to put that look out of her mind.

She brought up the next window. She could keep expanding or select a room type for this room. She didn’t have enough stone for most of the options, and she felt like she needed to think over a layout for this lair before committing to room type. It was also getting a bit late in the day and she was starting to feel a bit tired; she decided to build a bed for herself.

“Oh Shit!” she yelled. She had forgotten about the crafting table, and she needed it to make a bed. Fortunately, because of Oak she had wood, plenty of wood. Her brain went to a place she didn’t want it to, and she had to push down thoughts of that look again as she felt the warmth returning to her face.

She opened her crafting window and selected the crafting station.

“Oak, could you build this please?” She suddenly felt timid talking to her minion.

He punched the pile of wood a few times and it turned into a crafting station.

“Thanks.” She found the bed options, she needed wood, feathers, silk. . . shit, she didn’t have feathers and silk, that would take a trip and fighting spiders.

“Fuck.”

“Oak help?”

“Sorry Oak, you can’t help this one, at least not tonight. Why don’t you dig the cave a little deeper, get more stone.” She had a thought, clicked on the crafting station, there it was, basic pick axe. She clicked on it, she had enough stone and a massive pile of wood. It didn’t require tools to make so she could craft it herself.

She took the pickaxe and flew to Oak.

“Here Oak, use this.”

He took the pickaxe from her hands.

“Thanks boss.” He said with a big smile. She felt her cheeks get warmer, this was awkward and awful, why did it keep happening?

“Just make sure you dig a lot with it.” She snapped at him. “If you don't work hard I'll. . . I'll turn you into a snacker.”

Oak just smiled and turned, started slamming the pickaxe into the wall. She watched his brutish shoulders flex as he swung, the muscles in his back tensing, glistening with sweat. She wanted to touch him, feel how those big orc muscles moved. The first section of the wall collapsed. The speed at which he tore through the stone was impressive. She stared at him, brought up his information. He was still level 2, he had gained some feats based on taking a liege. She looked at his stoneworking skill, it had leveled up to 12, but he had bonuses taking it up to 35. She selected those and saw more, bonus from his laborer feat, more from his lower-caste feat, and holy shit, +15 from being charmed.

She sat there and thought about it, she had kissed his cheek, charmed him and now he had a massive boost to do the job she asked him to do.

“Damn.” She said as she smiled to herself. She really was born for this.