The tutorial quest kind of trouble.

Dammit. It'd been about a week since the last quest, and just like clockwork, some of you had decided to do something stupid to be able to buy a meal or a drink or a whore that will provoke the guards again. The guards will issue the quest in the morning, the newest players of Shard of Arkus will pick up the quest to gain some easy XP, and all of you will be killed again, just to respawn and live in the same gods-forever-damn-it cave in the sewers. The nicknames change with every respawn, but you stay the same—you're always the blind one, Scars (or Blade or Stabby) is always the oldest, Ratty (or Louse or Scab) is always dirty and matted, and so on. If lives were going to be so damn monotonous, couldn't you at least have gotten an existence that involved a little more food?

Well, at least you had the small consolation that sometimes you were the one doing something stupid and buying a meal or a drink or a whore. Not usually that last one, though—you're about tied with Ratty for worst looker of the group, and were the only one to have been explicitly turned down by a lady of the night. Just the once, but unfortunately that was one of the few memories the rest had made sure stayed strong through every respawn, through constant repetition.

Constant. Repetition.

You walk across the room to Ratty, and tap her on the shoulder. "My watch."
Is it your watch? You have no idea, but you're not tired. Ratty doesn't seem to have any objection—without even a word, she hands you the wrought-iron fencepost "spear" that Gekko stole from somewhere, and heads deeper into the cave. You settle down by the doorway to the sewers, and watch, and think.

It's not hard to know what's going to happen tomorrow. A few PCs will come down in their group, running down the sewers into the cave, swinging swords and casting spells with abandon. They're usually pretty bad fighters, but with your group's stats and levels it doesn't take a battlemaster to kill you all. Most of you will die, one or two might escape, and then the next thing you know you're respawning in the sewers—new names, same faces, same hunger. It's enough to drive you nuts, and maybe it did.

You wait just outside the door for one hour, then two—ordinarily you'd have dozed off by now, in time-honored feline tradition, but tonight you're not sleepy in the slightest. And, well, if you're not tired, there's really only one other thing you can occupy your time with...

Propping the "spear" up against the wall, your hand slips down under your tunic and scavenged shorts, and begins coaxing your dick out of its sheath. It takes barely any time before you're nice and hard, with a respectable (for a catfolk) five and a half inches filling your padded hand. You start stroking yourself languidly, panting softly as your hand slips up and down the shaft, with its soft, fleshy "spines" bending under your fingers, amplifying the sensation and rapidly bringing you to the brink of orgasm. But before you could finish yourself off, your sensitive ears perked up—there was noise in the sewers, and it definitely wasn't the four others coming back from whatever crime they were attempting.

All thoughts of self-pleasure flee from your mind, and the spear is in your hands before you even realize it. Down the sewer tunnel, way down the sewer tunnel, you can hear two faint voices and see the flickering light of a torch.

Adventurers? At this time of night, with no quest that you know of? That's practically unheard of—if it's happened before, you sure can't remember it. You slip back into the cave to wake the others. Scars and Slick are the closest to the door—as the oldest (as far as you can tell) and the strongest (but not by much) respectively, they protect their spots viciously and with pride. But unfortunately, they also use their position to get the lion's share of the spoils, which they'd apparently spent getting blind drunk; you can't wake either of them, and not for lack of trying. Next up is Jitter, who you barely have to touch before he's wide awake and shivering like he's dripping wet.

"Milky, wh-wh-why did you wake me up? What-t-t's the ma... why's your di-di-dick out?"
You eep, and shove your sadly forgotten, still-hard cock back into your raggedy shorts. "Gods, gods, gods—sorry. I was on watch and heard voices. It's not the others. Get up. Don't call me Milky."

Yes, it's your name—for the moment—but you can't help but hate it. It's stereotypical, although you're not entirely sure how you know that. Why couldn't you have gotten something cool, like Deatheye or Cyclops or Bardeye, all of which you had tried and failed to get the others to use in the past whenever Milky came around again in the name rotation.

You turn to Ratty, but find she's already awake, and she might not have slept this whole time. She motions for the spear, with a glare in her eyes.
"You're loud when you jack off. Be fucking quieter or I'll stab you next time."

Face absolutely burning under your surely bright-red cheek fur, and hearing Jitter's pausing, hushed snickers behind you, you give her the iron bar.
"I'm not... It wasn't... fuck it. C'mon. Let's check this out."

Ratty leads the way, as the strongest of the three of you—not saying much—while you follow closely behind, Jitter practically on your heels. You've got your most prized possession in hand, a rusty pocketknife you found on the streets, while Ratty has the guard 'spear' and Jitter holds a large shard of glass wrapped in a cloth "handle." As the three of you get closer to the flickering light, it becomes easier to hear what the strangers are saying...