Rowana & Azzie Read "Well At Least I’m a Magic Pirate Now" by Jerynboe, Part 1

"I need to pee," Rowana declared. She hefted herself off the bed, the leading edge of her stomach preceding her by almost two feet. Half-Orc twins, it turned out, carried heavy.

"Can I help?" Azzie asked, slipping behind her wife and running green hands on that taut skin, tracing the small red stretch marks.

"Yeah, you can get our next review set up," the ex-Ranger said with amusement.

When at last Rowana emerged, in a waddle that upset her more than she would ever admit, the Uruk-Hai had set up the couch with enough pillows to make even a Hobbit happy. She was on her feet in a moment, helping to guide the human down. Any excuse to touch the bare flesh. Their Hobbit-made hole had air conditioning, but Rowana ran hot, and was dressed in only panties and an old army bra that barely contained breasts getting ready to feed two hungry kids.

On the screen, the story they'd be reading and reviewing.

"'Well At Least I’m a Magic Pirate Now,' by Jerynboe," Rowana read. "A branch off of The Waifu Catalog- Beta Testers."

"What's a waifu?" Azzie asked.

"From my understanding, you're my waifu," Rowana said. "Sexy green woman who insisted on knocking me up."

"Hey, I said I'd get the next one. Or three," Azzie purred the r in three, as her fingers played with Rowana's navel. It had popped last week, sticking out like a third nipple.

"Anyway. The conceit of the story is a combination of isekai and cyberpunk: people die, and then wake up in a new world that is actually a virtual world. There are rules, which we are not going to read, and the protagonist wakes up having been impressed into service on a pirate ship," Rowana said. "There is also, for reasons I do not understand because I'm not clicking on it, a random Patreon link dropped in the middle of the text."

"I would admire the hustle better if it took the form of a finely-crafted link," Azzie said, as she rested her face against that swollen stomach.

(5 nonlethal damage)

"Oh no," Rowana groaned. "It's another story that uses game-like mechanics but isn't game mode."

"I think the kids call that LitRPG," Azzie said. "Not that we have that in Middle-earth."

"Right, whatever," the ranger sighed. She reached out and cupped a hand around Azzie's breast for moral support, giving the great green orb a squeeze that probably would have restored Sanity if that was a mechanic that had any meaning in her world. "It's one way to write a story. Fine."

I took a moment to process those 7 words. I had a minute to think while quietly following Asshole. Darkvision, as in the ability to see in the dark? Plus “intelligence check”. D&D? You roll intelligence to know things in D&D, right? I was grasping at straws, but those were words I’d mostly seen in tabletop games. For fucks sake, out of all the religions in the world, do not tell me that anime is right about what happens when we die.

"On the plus side," Azzie said, happily being groped, "the narrator seems to be coming to terms with this as well. Proper isekai opening, really."

Seal of Alternative Payment
Aura: Enchantment
Description: by touching this ring to the bare flesh of someone and proposing a trade, you may convince them that sexual service is an appropriate and reasonable payment for something. This may be used as an offer of or a demand for sex, as appropriate.The price of the service or object in question will determine how much sex (and of what quality) will be required to pay (generally speaking, each successful perform: (sexual act) check deducts an equal number of gold pieces in value). On a successful Will saving throw, the target will still accept the basic premise of exchanging sexual favors without any offense, but will generally value your sexual service far less, their own sexual service far more, and in the event of incompatible orientation or total lack of interest they will respectfully decline. After this ring has been used in this manner once, its magic fades and it becomes a mundane signet ring worth 15 gp.

"You could write an entire story based around this magic ring, provided it could be used more than once, and it would be potentially interesting," Rowana said. "As a one-off in a random isekai fantasy, less interesting."

"We don't have a protagonist name yet, because Eru Ilúvatar forbid we should know who 'I' is in this story, but I looked at the character sheet and it is Emrys M’Dair, Rakshasa Blooded Sorcerer, level 1," Azzie said. "Which is weird, because the one thing about Rakshasa is that their hands are inverted, the palms upwards at rest. Which you would think would be something he'd notice?"

Watching my hands working independently was jarring; they weren’t my hands. They were impossibly slender and narrow, with spindly fingers and manicured nails. Stranger still, they were charcoal grey.

"Despite the name, character sheet also says he's male. Not that this has come up yet, but I imagine it'll be important going forward," Rowana said. "Speaking of which, Emrys has become the ship's cook."

There was nobody in the room that I wanted to trade sex with.

"With an isekai story, you either get a big mechanics dump at the front or a slow trickle of information as they find out over time. Usually a combination of both," Azzie said. "This one goes for big dump at the front. Which isn't the most exciting way to start a story, but it helps establish the premise."

Oh my god, how soft do you have to be for sewing all day to fuck you up.

"Working with your hands and sharp metal objects will fuck you up," Rowana said. "Trust me."

(Knowledge (Religion) 19+2=21 Success! He is performing a ritual to curry favor from the neutral aligned goddess of ****, Pharasma.)

"The story isn't exactly fast-paced," Azzie said. One green finger slowly circled Rowana's baby bump. "And there's been no sex so far. Which is okay. Not every story needs to rock the cocks out right away. The writing is competent; grammar and spelling mostly correct, good variety in the sentence structure—first-person stories can get very tiresome, starting every sentence with 'I.' So that's all to the good. But—"

"—it's definitely not enticing," Rowana finished. "Deciphering the character sheet takes forever. Too much downtime between missions. It's still early in book one of a long story, but I feel like there should be more of a hook to draw the reader in, and instead, we're getting a let's play of a solo-RPG run that is taking its own sweet time to get going."

"Which I'm sure some people enjoy, but at the moment there's little promise of the sexy times to come," Rowana said, running one finger up her wife's big green ear as the Uruk-Hai played with her gravid belly. "Though the commentors seem invested enough in the story, with Wrynn posting:

Eventual sex is still sex. And the dice screwed him as well.

"Do rakshasas have cat dicks, with the spines and everything?" Azzie wondered.

"We'll find out eventually, I'm sure," Rowana assured her.

Royal Pardon
Strong Enchantment
When opening this luxurious vellum envelope, the user may choose a single category of actions, from the categories of ****, ****, theft, destruction of property, or sexual misconduct. All past actions within that category will be forgiven and any legal charges will be dropped. Directly injured parties may roll a will save to instead have their disposition towards the user improved by one step, to a maximum of neutral. This has no impact on future misdeeds. After the pardon is used, it crumbles away into worthless ash.
I don’t need that right now, but it’s one hell of a get out of jail free card.

"Does this cover, like, ****?" Azzie said, wrinkling her nose. "Like, if Emrys **** somebody and sued the pardon, could the victim still hunt them down and cut their balls off and dry them in the sun to make a pair of earrings that tell the world what the price is for nutting inside her without permission?"

"I really hope so," Rowana admitted.

“You literally charm a girl’s pants off and she wakes up the next morning satisfied and a bit confused, that’s not really a problem. Oh, she might gut you for it if she pieces it together, but Besmara considers that fair play, and **** is good for a growing girl. If you take someone Besmara took a shine to and push her into doing things she’d never do normally, to the point where looking back on it with a clear head she sees a sex puppet wearing her face? That’ll fuck her up, might turn her off of the whole pirate lifestyle, and that’s when Besmara might send a serpent to crush your ship. Same thing goes for tying her down, though there’s a lot less gray area there. Got it?”

"Ah, so the finer parts of morality and magic finally come into play," Azzie said with satisfaction. "Like, as an ethical thought experiment it's fine, though in practice I think this might be an example where show don't tell would have made a more visceral impact on Emrys and the reader."

I passed the rest of the night studying my summon monster spell; mostly it seemed like I was just summoning moderately small animals from hell.

"Unironically would enjoy more backstory about hell having adorable little fiendish puppies or something," Rowana said. "I feel like for all the efforts to invent new magic items and use old mechanics, not a lot of thought goes into how the metaphysics of the setting are supposed to work."

"I don't think anyone reads CHYOA for the metaphysics, dear," Azzie said.

With a groan, Rowana sat up. Her stomach gurgled. And she had to pee again.

"Let's put this review on pause for a moment. I need a bathroom break and a snack," the pregnant ranger said.

"You just went!" Azzie said.

"And now I'm going to go again. I have about twenty pounds of orc babies dancing on my bladder. We'll pick this up again later..."