Rule Deviation Highlights

Tyalangan

Tyalangan lets out a long, slow breath. A lot of these contestants are much rougher than I expected. Let’s hope they can come together. Or the local walk-ins can make up the gap.

Speaking of rough contestants, Tegan snipes, “And what about you answering the smut questions? You promised.”

“Do all of you want to hear my answers?” Tyalangan scans the contestants. She shrugs, silences the humans (just to prevent interruptions), and starts to answer, “For those of you that did not get my name during your agreement to be on this show, I am Tyalangan, 48th Queen of the Copse-Wood Throne and ruler of the land you find yourself in. I am also the Host of this season of Harem Hotel. We’ll go over the rules in a bit. Age is complicated for me. I stopped aging when I became an immortal quasi-deity, so I am perpetually in the body of a sea elf that is approximately 220 years old, or about 28 by human standards. I have physically existed for about 150 years by my perspective. My body measurements are 38D – 28 – 36. I am a happily married lesbian, with 8 wives and 4 additional live-in girlfriends. Plus, a whole mess of kids that I adore, some of whom you’ll meet soon enough. Let’s just say that this season is a family run affair. I eat one of my wives out every morning for... reasons, so, technically, that would be my most recent sexual encounter, but the fun answer was last night. My bonny bunny and a couple of my other companions had a lot of fun with that cunnilingus competition, right?”

“Right, cutie.”

Releasing the silence effect for a moment, the contestants and Mona start all arguing at once. Another snap of the fingers, and they are silent again. The more prickly among them glare.

“One at a time. Raise your hand if you got something to add. You, Tegan, you’re up first.”

The biathlete snarls, “It’s not fun if you aren’t embarrassed by the questions. The fuck?”

“You’ll get used to the weirdness. And the perversion. Just like I did. Next. Tessa?”

Tyalangan’s sister looks frustrated. “How did all of that happen?”

“Again, it’s complicated. We’ll talk when I have a moment. Mistress?”

Mona looks shocked, which seems to be a common occurrence. “Eight wives? And four girlfriends? And how many kids?”

“Depending on how you think I should count my wasp-children, either lower four digits or mid six digits.”

Everyone looks stunned, as is reasonable, given that the idea of hundreds of thousands of wasp-children is ludicrous. R-selection parenting is weird (even if Tyalangan loves the emotionless little wasplings). “A follow-up,” Mona stammers, “How do you do that?”

“It’s complicated. I had a century to figure it out. You’ll get there. Any more questions, or can I move on to the rules?”

The contestants seem ready to move on, thankfully. Not that Tyalangan is particularly embarrassed by her present, but she isn’t the point of the show. They and the game they are playing are. The new Host starts with a burst of mental info dumping, giving Mona and her harem a general understanding of how this game works. They do not exactly react well to that; the silence effect is holding strong, helpfully.

She addresses the audience via the main camera, hoping it addresses most of the immediate complaints. “Well, perverts, we all know that most of you know the general rules of our little show here, so let’s just focus on the deviations to the usual formula. Contestants, full details of all the rules are available to you for your perusal on your own time; you will find a copy of the rule book with your welcome goodie bag in your room. Usually, the contestants would be purely competing for the love and affection of our lucky lady Mistress, but this season, the goal is a little more... expanded. In fact, this may very well be the first season of Harem Hotel where, theoretically, everyone could win the game and still leave the Mistress a blushing virgin. As both Kevin and Gaia has shown, for this season victory points (VP) are out, experience points (XP) are in. Contestants can earn XP in a wide variety of activities: slaying monsters, completing quests, performing well in training exercises, and, as expected for a VP substitute, actions of love and affection within the harem. The options for earning XP with the Mistress are more expansive and rewarding than with another contestant, but a little lovin’ among the other contestants will provide some XP rewards, too. So, in a hypothetical situation, you could go out and kill giant rats all day, every day of the competition, outside of mandatory events, to get all the XP you could ever possibly need.”

“Next question is, of course, what you DO with XP. Two options. First, spend it on yourself. When you collect sufficient XP, you can use it to gain a level, like in a role playing game, with our Dungeon Mermaid. She’s like a Games Master for Dungeons of Delving. Now, every major quest, which is our equivalent of the weekly challenge, will have a level minimum requirement. Fail to meet the level minimum and the contestant will be barred from participating, giving him or her an automatic last place finish in the quest ranking result. So, it can easily turn into a doom spiral. Don’t get lazy or complacent, ladies and gentlemen.”

“The second thing you can do is gift your XP to your dear Mistress Mona. Mona is unable to earn XP on her own, but will be needing a bunch of XP for the main quest, our version of the endgame challenge. Gift her 100 XP, and you are safe, a full-fledged member of the harem. Gift her less than 100 XP and you are less than safe, a lesser member of the harem. Gift her the MOST XP at the end of the game? You win the wish. Details on the rules of the wish can be found in the rule book. End up with negative XP at the end of a major quest? You are eliminated. And, trust me, you don’t want that. Questions? Mistress?”

Mona is hard to read. Her emotions are in a tangle. Confusion. Shock. Relief. She asks, tentatively, “So, you’re saying that, if someone doesn’t want to have sex with me, they could just ignore me altogether?”

“Not exactly. They are bound to you for the rest of their lives, no matter what happens. The nature of the binding may differ among seasons, but, if they do not have a good relationship with you, they are looking at a miserable existence. Now, does that relationship require a sexual component? No. No, it doesn’t. And not all the XP gains with Mistress is sex. Kevin is in the lead right now or did you ignore the notification ding you should’ve heard when he hugged you?”

Andromeda holds up a hand, so Tyalangan allows her to speak, “So, I could hug her for a certain amount of XP right now?”

“If you can do it in a fashion that conveys your love or affection for her, yes you could. Intent matters, not just the act.”

Craig scoffs, “So, all I gotta do is dick her down enough times to get 100 XP, then we’re done. C’mon, Mona, let’s get...” Tyalangan silences the lineman again.

“Again, not exactly. For one, are you capable of ‘dicking her down’ in a manner that shows sufficient love or affection for it to count right now? And two, you only get the relationship based XP rewards once per distinct act. You’d have to get... creative to get enough purely by sex.”

Feeling like she can move on, Tyalangan gives the next bit of change, “Bonus Points (BP) work basically like the rules primer I shoved in your head already. It’s basically money for stuff: transformations, consumables, training sessions, items to make quests easier, et cetera. Only major change from the usual BP system that will affect you directly is that bounty boards, a semi-regular feature of the game in play this season, are being handled via a per room basis. Participants can only take bounties from the board in their own room; each room will have bounties unique to that room. Both contestants in a room can take the same bounties, so there is no need to squabble for who takes what. Mistress Mona will also have her very own bounty board so she can earn some spending money too. Simple enough?”

Noting the nods, Tyalangan continues, “This next bit is for the audience. My dear, deranged perverts, sometimes the best thing you can do as a host is steal a good idea from another season and tweak it just enough to avoid copyright claims. You have your very own bounty board and your very own shop of fun toys to reward a contestant you love or annoy a contestant you hate. Check them out on a special page on the season’s website. The system will even track how much BP you have if you wanna save it up for something special. And some of the items on there are... special.”

Andromeda is quickly becoming quite a fun contestant, as her gears are already turning over that bit of information, “You mean the audience can warp the game in favor or against one of us? How do you balance it? What items are there in the audience shop?”

“Well, Andromeda, this is a more cooperative game than the initial rule read would indicate. While the audience could target someone for suffering, those items are generally more expensive and should, therefore, pop up less often. As for what’s in there, you’ll have to wait until you start seeing them be purchased.”

That did not seem to assuage the gamer girl but she stays silent.

“Another brief note, we are doing the exceedingly rare thing and not locking all the contestants away in an isolated demiplane. There are actual people here. If they are on camera, they have signed a waiver and all that nonsense. Some events may even have an in studio audience! For non-citizens of Nimlith Grove, you can purchase tickets to live events in the audience store. The final major change concerns our initial transformations. Mona, come on up.”

The girl nervously gets off her throne and meekly walks up to the Host. Tyalangan smiles and whispers in the girl’s mind, “Don’t worry. This isn’t bad.”

“The rest of you will be getting your own version of this, but you lot need a couple of features to function in this world and, frankly, a lot of you need a basic tune up. So, my bonny bunny, care to show off their first present?”

Tina, salutes with her tongue out, this fires up a Major Image with the words of what Tyalangan has dubbed “The Standard Package”:

The Standard Package – To best assist our (for now) human friends in integrating with their temporary home, they gain the following:

• A personal pocket dimension for storing small items. See a description of a Bag of Holding for complete details. Storing living matter inside of the pocket dimension will be considered non-sexy ****. The volume of the pocket dimension will increase as the participant levels.
• Access to the ability to scry certain personal details of another person (range: touch). An unwilling target can attempt to resist the scry with a successful Intelligence save. The level of advantage to resist opposing scry attempts and the level of disadvantage for the target to resist a scry attempt from the human both increase as the participant levels.
• A general health boost for the participant, repairing severe injuries and diseases.

As the humans read, Tyalangan applies a slightly souped up version of it to Mona. The effects are subtle, imperceptible to the human eye. The Host grants Mona the ability to use enough magic for the other functions to work, but that is a genetic tweak and a rapid cellular protein production process. Mona will only feel that as an intense hunger by dinner time. The pocket dimension and scrying abilities (souped up so that the contestants cannot resist Mona’s scrying) are purely magical, so it’s equally invisible. The heath boost fixes some hardening arteries, some overproduced neurotransmitter reuptake pumps, and a lot of underproduced insulin receptors. Mona is not going to like the diet she’s about to go on to keep her from redeveloping heart disease and metabolic syndrome, but she will adapt.

Tyalangan sees Craig stand and start to hobble over. She waves her hand and Craig finds himself back sitting. “The rest of you will get them tomorrow morning, with your other transformations.”

“Other transformations? The game usually only gives one per round,” Andromeda objects.

“All of you contestants will be getting 4 transformations, just for this round. Subsequent rounds will be the usual 1 per vote, assuming no ties. Yeah, it’s a lot, but humans have been basically bred to extinction here. Ask for the details later, if you need to know. And humans from your dimension are incapable of using magic, which would really suck for some of you. So, just for Round Zero, we are treating it like a Session Zero. In addition to the “Standard Package,” you will be given a set of transformations to build a character sheet for you, but in real life, selected by our dear perverts in the audience. A species swap, a transformation that unlocks a class, and then a transformation based on your background. This set of transformations will also establish your transformation paths. So, the audience members that complain about the animal-girl slop always winning will definitely get to see something interesting in addition to that.”

Tina quips, “Not that my cutie wife has a problem with animal-girls, right?”

Tyalangan gives Tina an ear rub as she replies, “Right, my bonny bunny.”

Tina bumps Tyalangan’s hip, then sashays over to Tegan, saying, “Well, cutie, I think it’s time to introduce the choices to the audience. Tegan, you’re up first.”