Session Begins; Preparing for a Siege

Rhia answered the door before I could get there, since I’d been cramming in the last few emails that I needed to send before I took the rest of the afternoon off for the Game. I could hear the surprise in their voices, finding their friend not only already here since they’d arrived early themselves, but also already in costume.

I was coming down the stairs when Elyse said, “Wait one flippin’ second, I know that look.”

“What look?” Rhia asked.

“That look in your eyes, and that stupid little grin!” Elyse cackled, her eyes darting to me as my head cleared the floor above and I could see them. “You got fucked.”

Tori snorted, grinning over at me as well and rolling her eyes as if to say, ‘These two have no tact.’

“OK, maybe I came over here early,” Rhia grinned, and then all three of them were laughing and hugging.

I still had a hard time wrapping my head around the relationship that had evolved between them on this. They hadn’t been all gung-ho to share a sexual partner before the Game had started; in fact, I’d heard them complain loudly during conversation topics about people they knew from college not following ‘girl code,’ both back during the year and during summer. Really, I knew way too much about the dating lives of several college kids I’d never met. But for some reason, they were celebrating the fact that all three of them had fucked… me. Like it was a special club that Rhia had finally joined or something.

Tori broke away from the other two first as your feet hit the first floor, coming to you for the now-traditional welcome hug and kiss. Today she’d come wearing a cute little summer dress that looked better suited to a fancy brunch at some golf club than to hang out for nerd shit, but considering she was going to change into her costume as well, I didn’t think much about it. Her kiss was insistent, slipping her tongue between my lips and then sucking on my lower lip for a moment before pulling away. The fact that she was being so forward was something I needed to chew on a little - was she feeling more forward today, or was she reacting to the news of Rhia’s sexual advancement in the group? With everything that had happened so far, I didn’t see her suddenly getting a spat of jealousy, but it was something that I was going to need to keep an eye on just in case.

“You look gorgeous today, Tori,” I told her as our kiss slowly ended, my hands on her waist.

“I didn’t have a chance to change after work,” she grinned. “Thank you.”

Elyse was jumping up into my arms a moment later, full of energy, wrapping her arms around my shoulders as I was **** to catch her with my hands on her tight, plump little ass. She laughed into our kiss and pulled back, looking me in the eyes. “Do I look gorgeous today, too?” she asked with a smirk.

“You look like trouble,” I snorted, giving her a firm peck. She was dressed in a tight grey vintage T-shirt of the 90s X-Men cartoon and a pair of jean booty shorts that just barely stopped short of showing the bottom inch of her ass. “Hot, steaming trouble.”

“I’ll take it,” she grinned, pulling me in for another kiss with her hands in the hair on the back of my head.

“What a horny slut,” Rhia chuckled, giving Elyse’s ass a clap below my supporting hand, making Elyse start giggling all over again as she released her leg-lock on my waist.

I let her drop, and Elyse turned to face Rhia while also leaning back against me, wholly comfortable with the over-the-top amount of physical contact. “Says the girl who… I’m betting he fucking creampied you, didn’t he? Put a big load of jizz right up that little snatch of yours to satisfy your craving for his dick.”

That made Rhia blush a delightful pink. “Fuck off,” she laughed.

“Dirty, dirty Rhia,” Tori teased.

“Alright, you two,” you sighed, rolling your eyes at their antics. “We’ve got a lot going on with the game this week. How about you girls go get into character so we can get started?”

They headed off towards the back bathroom to get changed, which was kind of funny considering how much I’d seen them all naked. They really could have just changed in the game room, or right there in the front hall. But routines were important, and this had become part of their ‘getting into character’ routine.

Rhia, already wearing her faux chainmail, strappy sandals, headband and other little bits and bobs that she’d slowly been adding to Olivia’s character, grinned sheepishly at me. “That doesn’t bother you, does it?” she asked.

“You three talking about what we do sexually?” I guessed, and she nodded. “It’s weird, but it doesn’t bother me.”

“You don’t talk about the stuff you do at The Game with the others?”

“Not like that,” I chuckled. “Sometimes, sometimes, with your Mom when she’s over here for coffee, but not like that.”

“Well, maybe it’s a good thing we’re more open about it,” Rhia shrugged, grinning. Then she stepped forward and took my hands, placing them on her bare waist and then sliding them up under her ‘chainmail’ to her bare tits as I leaned down to kiss her. “Mmmmhmm,” she hummed into the kiss, taking in a deep breath through her nose as my fingers found her nipples and softly massaged them.

“That's what you were looking for?” I asked quietly once the kiss ended, my hands still cupping and kneading her breasts under her shirt.

“Yeah,” she breathed heavily, eyes half drooped as she leaned a little heavier towards me. “But, fuck, I might have made a mistake. I’m getting horny all over again, and I have no idea if it’s a Sexy game session or a Fighty game session.”

“Could be one,” I smirked, teasing my fingers back down from her tits to her bare waist. “Could be the other. Could be both.”

“Tease,” she chuckled, which made me laugh because that was my entire job as a dungeon master. Keep secrets, tease them out, then play out the repercussions.

Olivia of Parnasus, Paladin of Revelry, felt like there was more she should do. Something to bolster the spirits of the few defenders of the keep, to rally the will of the people. Revelry was about life, living it to the fullest in celebration.

Except, before morale could win the day, before there could be celebrations to spit in the face of destruction, there was work to be done.

“We’re running out of lumber, m’Lady,” one of the three men skilled in carpentry left in the Keep said, panting slightly from his jog up to the top of the walls where Olivia was examining their current project. There was no one hole, per se, that Alexander Houndsfang’s bandit army could pour through, but the Keep hadn’t seen proper maintenance in decades. Even before the Dark Lord rose in the West and the wars began, drawing away resources, the most Duke Unger’s duchy had feared was from wild monsters and bandits that were hunted by both his own trained rangers and the lawmen of the King’s Highway. Armies had not set foot in the quiet wilds at the edge of the kingdom for untold generations.

Before the war, the duchy had sprouted dozens of small towns like Tremulous Crook, full of persistent settlers and hardy folk willing to carve out a life for themselves and their descendants from the wilds. Now the Keep could barely protect itself, let alone all those withering communities.

“Then we need to make more,” Olivia grimaced. “We need to shore up the Northern wall there, and there. See? And we haven’t even touched the Eastern gate yet.”

“We would need to fell trees, m’Lady, and the Duke ain’t given permission for that,” the carpenter said, wringing his wrists nervously. “And it would take time to age the wood so it won’t warp an’ such.”

“Will it warp in the next few days?”

“Mayhaps,” he winced.

“Will it warp enough to cause more problems than it will fix?” she asked more pointedly. “If we were aiming for a longer-lasting solution, we’d be sending for masons, my friend, and you could focus on artisanry instead of raw work. These patches only need to hold through the battle. Once we turn away the Bandit army, the Princess will take a stronger hand in her father’s stead to look towards the future.”

“It- It can be done,” he said. “But the trees, they’re the Duke’s property, m’Lady. We must get permission to fell anything that has not fallen itself.”

Olivia sighed. She loved the people she’d met in the rural counties she’d travelled through since leaving Parnasus, the Greatest City in all the world, but some of their problems were so strange.

“Then come, we’ll see the Princess,” Olivia gestured. “Let’s be about it quickly.”

“I like this not,” hissed the Priest to his two cohorts.

“Hush, Freddie,” the Lady of Benevolence whispered back. “It’s necessary.”

“It’s not necessary,” Father Fred said. “I’m the holy representative of Duty, I know what’s necessary.”

“Will you two hush?” Renee de l’Ombra grumbled. “I need to keep my concentration.” She went back to painting her runes on the ground in the middle of the chapel.

“It really is quite ingenious,” the Hedge Monk said to his companions after a long moment of silence. “If it works.”

“I’m sure it will work,” the Lady of Benevolence said.

“She’s a- a- a witch, Dorothy,” Father Fred hissed under his breath. “A heathen witch.”

“A heathen witch blessed by a Paladin of Revelry," Renee said. “One ordained in the Cathedrals of Parnasus.”

“She’s quite sure it should work,” the Lady of Benevolence said.

“Should being the key word there,” the Hedge Monk muttered. “Though I say again, it is ingenious if it does work. Tying the Keep walls magically to a brick of lead to ward off destructive magics? I’ve certainly never heard of it being done before.”

“That presumes this so-called ‘army’ even has arcanists among their ranks,” the Priest of Duty sighed. “And that they would be powerful enough to do anything at all to our walls, let alone while we sing a Prayer of Bastion.”

“If there are wounded, I cannot be part of your chorus,” the Hedge Monk reminded him.

“A duet then,” the Lady of Benevolence said, trying to offer encouragement.

“Mm,” the Priest grunted. Everyone knew that the more voices in a holy choir, the stronger the Prayer spell would be.

“Finished,” Renee sighed, standing up and shaking out her wrists. The brick of lead in the middle of the floor, melted down by the blacksmith earlier that day and poured into a simple mould to create a heavy block worthy of being set in the foundation of the keep walls and then etched with some basic transproperative shadow runes, was surrounded by concentric rings of runes, with directional flows outlined towards the cardinal directions along with in the direction of each of the keep towers and gates. They were drawn in thick black ink that would take a significant time to scour from the floors when this was all over.

They also had a distinctly… witchy aesthetic.

“What now, then, Shadow Witch?” the Priest demanded.

“Now I need to paint the matching runes in the precise locations of the inside of the walls,” Renee sighed, rolling her neck, and all four of them heard a pop. “And then we perform the ritual.”

“There’s a ritual?” the Hedge Monk asked.

“You said nothing of needing a ritual. The Lady Aileen said nothing of us needing to take part in a ritual, either,” the Priest complained.

“What sort of ritual, dear?” the Lady of Benevolence asked.

“It shouldn’t take long, just a binding ritual to connect the outer runes to the circle, and the circle to the lead anchor,” Renee said. “Then the castle walls should reflect the same magic-resistant properties as the block. We’ll just need a goat each. Oh, and baths waiting for us once we’re finished and the ritual is complete. These things tend to get messy.”

“What?” the Priest asked in horror.

“I’m joking,” Renee said, already grabbing her bucket of sludgy ink and heading for the door of the chapel. “We don’t need any goats. I will need you three to all be naked, though, so go trim anything that you might worry is overgrown.”

Renee smirked to herself as she left the three stodgy holy folk behind, heading first to the main gate. The plant-summoning cunt serving Houndsfang was her main concern, outside of the werewolf himself, and if she could keep the sorceress from taking down the gates or walls with some super-plant spell, or even doing anything inside the ring of the walls, that would be a major win.

Fourteen guards, five local trappers who had been found and rallied, a curmudgeonly Castellan who was technically in charge of the martial defense of the duchy but was unlikely to be able to take more than one swing with the sword that was sagging from his belt (let alone climb the stairs up to the ramparts), four young stablehands and workers whose only training was wielding a pitchfork or shovel to move hay and shit, and Aaron Tide, Captain of the Guard.

“And Fergus,” Elyse quickly pointed out after I had outlined for Tori exactly how many fighting men and women Jade had available to her.

“You can’t forget Fergus,” Rhia agreed. “He’s the DM Insert, he’s got plot armour.”

I pursed my lips and narrowed my eyes, making a show of starting to scratch out a note to myself.

“Never mind, forget Fergus. Forget Fergus!” Rhia said quickly.

“Red alert, bail of Fergus! No one mentions Fergus!” Elyse laughed.

Jade sighed, trying to figure out how she could put together a half-decent defence with fifteen trained men, four untrained ones and an elderly man who had less years left in his life than teeth in his mouth - and he had a pretty gap-filled smile for a nobleman, even for an elder. Apparently he’d been a big Yarrowroot chewer in his younger days.

“Three men to a wall was always the plan I had in mind,” Aaron offered as they looked over their rough map of the keep and the surrounding environment.

“That could work,” Jade said, scratching at the rabbit fur under her chin. “If we put two of your guards on each wall, and one of the lads, then we have you, me, Olivia, and six trained fighters to respond where they attack or to hold the gate. We can split the trappers on the South and North towers, and Renee can station herself on the North overlooking the main gate.”

“You don’t want to use the East tower?” Aaron asked with a frown. “It’s the tallest of the three and has the best few of the eastern approach and the inner courtyard if they break through.”

“It’s also tall enough that they can’t try to climb up and get in that way,” Jade pointed out. “And it covers the approach, but it’s too tall for the archers to hit anyone up against the wall. With enough archers, it would be fantastic, but with what we have? I’d rather put the men where they might need to block a siege ladder or grapnel.”

Aaron’s face was pinched as he regarded the map again, moving around several of the painted stones they were using to denote the men they had to hand, trying out different numbers to see if he could spare even a single man for the East tower.

“We could put Castellan Garland up there,” Jade smirked. “He can hold the tower and send a runner if he spots anything.”

“We’ll need to carry him up there,” Aaron smirked back. “The old dog can barely make it up one flight of stairs in the keep at a time.”

“Better that than him leaning on his sword in the courtyard, getting in the way or being pincushioned by arrows,” Jade said.

Aaron winced and nodded. “I’ll find someone to act as a runner. What about the gates? If we send too many of the reserves to the walls, we won’t be able to hold them if they start to push through.”

“If they start to push through, we’re all finished anyway. They have the numbers to swamp us, swarm us and then we should die than be captured,” Jade grimaced. “I’ve seen the inside of that army, Aaron. If all the bands join up with Houndsfang, there aren’t many who I would consider ‘best of the lot’ to be captured by, and even then, it won’t matter much. The only people in this keep I can see being safe are Lady Eileen, the cook, and maybe the Priest of Duty.”

“They would kill the Lady of Benevolence?” Aaron asked, horrified.

“The Lady of Benevolence is too pretty to kill,” Jade grimaced.

“Oh,” he said, then darker. “Oh.”

“Filthy, feral mongrels,” Jade said. “Not all, but most. Too many.”

“We’ll hold,” Aaron said, gritting his teeth. “For every life in this Keep, for Lady Eileen, and for Valmar, we’ll hold.”

“Wait, who’s Valmar?” Elyse cut in when there was a quick pause between me and Tori.

“Right, maybe his name hasn’t come up,” I said, quickly checking my notes behind the DM screen. “Valmar, of the Schrader noble line, is Lady Eileen’s late husband. You girls would have gotten that information through some basic osmosis of being around the keep by this point.”

“Wait, Schrader as in, like, Victor Schrader?” Rhia asked.

“Mhmm,” I nodded, playing innocent.

“As in Victor Schrader’s younger brother?” Rhia asked, half standing out of her chair.

“Possibly,” I said, tutting softly.

“As in the guy who got murdered was the younger brother of my Dad’s character in The Game, who that whole party rescued from a thieve’s guild trying to ransom him?”

“... That might have happened," I said.

“Jesus,” Rhia said. “Jesus, Shane! Dad’s gonna kill me if his younger brother is dead and I could have stopped it. Hell, he’ll be all like, ‘You didn’t even get ****, Rhiannon? You just let my brother’s murderer be a bandit lord?’ if we don’t fucking win this.”

Tori was watching this back and forth with her jaw dropped open, realising how interconnected my games were again. Elyse was snickering, trying to hide her smirk behind her hand.

“What’s so funny?” Rhia asked her, turning her ire off of me for a moment and toward her blonde friend.

“You had fictional lesbian sex with your Dad’s fictional younger brother’s widow,” Elyse laughed. “And I was the widow.”

Rhia froze, the information processing in her brain for a long moment, and Tori started to snicker as well. “Aw, hell,” Rhia said, throwing up her hands and glaring at me again. “I’m so fuckin’ screwed.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault you girls didn’t even ask for the dead guy’s name,” I shrugged.

She flashed me the finger, narrowing her eyes at me like she was promising to get back at me for that one.

Then I remembered that she could easily do that by asking me the name of every NPC they came across, and something about their backstory. In character. Oldest trick in the book to annoy the DM.

I made a note that I needed to refresh my big list of names and backstory factoids.

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