DGVRPG fanfic (5 chapters up, last updated Nov 07)

[Revx_Z]

Oh? I figured it was like in Shells - the hero has a fate mark that gains power from the death of pretty much anyone around them. (And if anything regarding experience gain is to be regarded as a bug, it's probably the trick I used to grind my naga up to level 90 - have very low-level Water magic and low Intelligence, fire Acid Burps at Venus Demons and other stuff with high HP that doesn't move, and gain a fixed amount of experience per shot instead of per kill or based on damage.)

Edit: PS: Abstract experience and skill points are weird no matter how you slice it, really. Eat a couple of helpless NPCs, use the skill points to train Axe Mastery. Use a spear to stab a bunch of succubi to death, use the skill points to train Earth Magic. Get swallowed while unarmed and unarmored, kill stuff with the Poison skill that way, and train Defense or the like rather than Streetfighting, Squirm or Endurance. And so on.

[Aleph-Null]

didn't know about the acid burp bug but the guards always make starting easier, especially if you are playing a squishy class. I'm not sure if kill XP is divided for guard kills, if not than the only reason using a guard would be slower than solo would be lost XP for not doing damage

[Duamutef]

Oh? I figured it was like in Shells - the hero has a fate mark that gains power from the death of pretty much anyone around them.

I'm afraid I can't claim to have that good of an excuse; fate marks weren't invented until I wrote them into Shells, which was many years after VRPG. She wouldn't have that particular fate mark anyway; if she did she would be gaining levels even if she just slept all day.

The four marked folks in Shells gain XP any time anybody within half a continent of them dies.

The hero in VRPG was just that--she had the hero birth class in addition to her normal class, meaning she was turbocharged. There are several such characters in Shells, including all three of Aerothi's big scary minions (but not Aerothi herself).

The real reason you get XP per hit in VRPG is because it's a means of balancing actual character power vs. real character power. It works well normally, but in VRPG's case it was easy to exploit simply because I never worked in the secondary component (which is that per-hit XP is linked with all the others, including damage XP for both you and your enemy, so if all you do is hit them but neither of you take damage you wouldn't get XP. If you hit them and didn't inflict damage but they were completely mauling you, on the other hand, you'd get tons of XP, as well you should, since you're obviously in grave peril.)

Anyway, loved the new chapters. Huge throbbing awesomeness.

[Revx_Z]

I am leaning a bit on the extensive worldbuilding that Duamutef has done when writing this. One of the references it may help to know for this chapter is that girl honey "clears the mind and mildly heightens intelligence and awareness." (I am trying not to copypaste or infodump overly much, while still keeping the story readable for people who didn't read much or forgot most of the Duam's world pages.)


Chapter 4: Difficulties

I awoke in Salyna's beautiful arms. We were still embracing one another, having fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion last night. I gently licked her left tit, and she twitched in her sleep without waking up. Seeing how sleepy she was, I disentangled myself from her, slipped on my shirt and slithered out of her house.

"Hello, Luli?" a villager called. "Likaysha wanted to see you. She said you could find her at the north end of the city, drilling."
"All right." I answered and headed in that direction. I found Likaysha and a bunch of others, among whom I recognized Rudiia, doing weapons drill, hitting and stabbing at various haystacks and wooden poles.
"You wanted to see me, Likaysha?" I asked.
"Oh, Luli. One moment." She hacked another few notches in a pole with an axe. "Yes. We were attacked by harpies tonight. They gulped down three girls before we managed to drive them off, and only one of them had a scroll. They normally stay in the dry plains to the west, where they can catch thermals and spot their prey from above, so we were caught rather off guard. We were lucky enough to capture one that didn't die on the spot. Before it expired, it said they were hunting us because they were being driven here by a giantess who was encroaching - "
"You must be crazy if you think I'm going to take on a giantess." I interrupted and turned around.
"Luli, wait!"
"No."
I stuck my fingers in my ears and left rapidly. Maybe I'd consider it worth a try once I had a year of experience under my belt. I don't have a year. I thought. In a year, I'll be eaten by Thirsha. I went right past Salyna's house as I argued with myself. I need more training. Tanna says I train fast, I can train on the way there. Against what, the sort of harpies that swoop down and gobble up girls? I went past the healing fountain too, muttering under my breath. I'm good with a bow, I'm big and strong and heavy, they can't get me. Yeah, right, see how long that optimism lasts in the belly of a harpy or a centauress. Hey, I want to taste a centauress, they'd be easier than karis.

"Hey, watch where you're going!" I had bumped right into a girl, causing her to drop an armload of bleached cloths.
"Oh, sorry. I was lost in thought. What are these?"
"Scrolls." she said. "I'm a scribe."
"Haven't seen you before, what's your name? I'm Luli. Also, what's a scroll do?"
"You're the one who recovered Salyna's jewelling kit!" she cried and hugged me.
I grinned. "Yes, that would be me."
"Here, take this, it's probably the most useful for you." She sorted through the scrolls she was picking up and handed me one.
"What are they?" I repeated.
"Oh, sorry."
"Stop being sorry and answer my question!"
"So- err, a scroll is sort of like a spell that's been cast already, so anyone can use it, anywhere. That's a teleport scrolls, which can get you to safety even after you've been swallowed. Just tear across the runes."
"Thanks a lot."
"No problem." she said. "Any friend of Salyna is a friend of mine."

I put the teleport scroll in my voluminous-on-the-inside, tiny-on-the-outside silk bag and headed for the plains to the west of town after arguing myself into at least trying to see if I could take on the inhabitants.

The trees thinned rapidly, and I soon spotted a centauress. She spotted me at about the same time, and we both drew bows. Three arrows later, I had determined that the range was too large, something the centauress had already known, as she had refrained from firing. We closed. Another three arrows later, I was mildly tickled while the centauress was hurt and bleeding, so she charged, pulling a spear from her back.

I tried to sidestep, but she was fast enough to follow, and crashed into me. Her spear scratched across my armor, and my sword flailed across her back as she knocked me to the ground. In moments, we were grappling one another, her superior strength and weight countered by my flexibility and length. She had pinned my upper body to the ground, but my tail was wrapped around her oversized rump.

"You're good." said the centauress happily.
"Good enough for you to let me go?"
"No. I've never tasted a naga before."
She grinned and opened her mouth wide, biting at my head. I twisted out of the way and yawned twice as wide as her, but I couldn't get at her arms or head.
"Truce?" I suggested.
"No way."
"Fine by me."
I clenched my tail, trying to crush her or pull her off me. She kicked me with a free hoof. I tried to distract her by rubbing my tail on her buttocks. She leant sideways and started pinning me more and more. I waved my tail, but didn't have enough of it free to get anywhere. Her face was approaching mine. I lashed out at her side with my sword, but I could only get in a few slashes without much force behind them. Then she more or less fell over sideways, releasing a bit of my tail but pinning my sword arm, and she grabbed my head.

Her mouth was wide and full of large, pearly white teeth for eating grass or fruit with. But the dripping saliva on her pink tongue and red jaws said that she was no stranger to living prey. Her breath came hot and close on my forehead as she began to engulf my head. I screamed and thrashed as the world turned a deep, mottled red. She swallowed, her tongue drawing saliva all over my face. She put her arms under my shoulders and started drawing her lips down over my armor. My arms were trapped, but my tail got free as she stood up to help me down. I tried to wrap it around her, but she was too big for me to get a hold.

She quickly stuffed the armored part of me into her mouth and down her throat. As my belly went down, she got to my flower. At that point my hands were barely sticking out of her distended maw, and she stopped a little. I felt my tail waving from side to side as she swiveled her head to look for danger, and then I felt my honeypot growing hot as she extracted its contents with one hand and her tongue.

I thrashed about, head somewhere in her esophagus, tail hanging out of her mouth and waving about uselessly and with increasing frenzy and speed as she got me off. I wondered if she was habitually this sensual with her meals, if it was beginner's luck, or if she just loved the taste of me that much. I punched and screamed in her throat, trying to get loose and only pulling myself a little further down. The centauress grabbed my tail to hold me in place until I came in her mouth, and then returned to greedily devouring every inch of me. Bit by bit I was drawn inexorably down her gullet, slipping through the hot wet slimy darkness, until I came to a muscular sphincter. It hindered me only for a moment, quickly opening up to admit me headfirst to her large stomach.

*BEEEELCH*

"Oooh, you were delicious." said the centauress appreciatively after burping up most of the air that she had swallowed down with me. I was right next to her lungs, and her voice was only a little muffled through the walls of her stomach, which clenched tightly about me and started to churn. Acid dripped from the roof of the locale I now found myself in, sizzling on my armor. "What was your name?"
"Why do you care?" I asked, wriggling around to keep my armor out of the pool I was sitting in.
"Sorry, can you speak a bit louder?"
"WHY DO YOU CARE?" I shouted and downed a healing potion.
"You must think I'm some kind of uncivilized beast. Are you from the east, perhaps?"

My scales itched as the centauress' stomach strove to digest me. It was kneading and pushing and squeezing me in every direction, rubbing against me everywhere. The thought of being digested by it was a little too distracting for me to answer, but I wasn't in any danger just yet.

"You see, there's a recently arrived Blackscale tribe of centaurs over there which I suppose you've run into. They're a bunch of aggressive, warlike, short-tempered hungry bitches. More like a brood than a tribe, really."
"And you just ate me by accident, I suppose?"
"Of course not. But the point is, Blackscales think nothing of invading girl villages and gorging themselves on civilians until they're all bloated. We Ixath centauresses, on the other hand..."

She told me the rules they had for catching prey, which could be boiled down to "warriors first", which I certainly qualified for. I told her my name. She also told me that the Ixath also had a very carefree attitude towards death. They believed that a person's spirit was born into a new body at once, so they didn't care much if they won or lost a fight.

"That's nice, but I have a quest to get on with to kill Thirsha the Dragon." I said. "So how about you spit me out and taste me again on the way up?"
"I don't think so. Thirsha would just eat you instead of me."

I reached my free hand into my bag and pulled out Melanca's scroll. "Well, I think so." I said and tore it. I vanished from the centauress' stomach and appeared a hundred feet away on dry ground, still covered in her digestive juices. My armor was damaged, but still functional, as was my sword. "Let's try that again."

This time I withstood her charge and cut her to ribbons. But I had barely finished wiping stomach acid off myself when a harpy who had been waiting above me dove down mouth-first and crammed my upper body into her gullet with one big swallow. I cursed as she settled back on her feet, raised her head and slurped me down like a worm before I could react.

I didn't have any sort of meaningful conversation with the harpy; she was foul-mouthed and I was angry. Instead, I twisted around inside the bitch's stomach. It was slimy and had the occasional feather stuck on the sides, suggesting that she had eaten another harpy recently. I used my sword as a lever to get around to the right position, eventually turning around in the fetid, burning belly, but doing so caused the weapon to corrode even faster than it otherwise would have. I gave it up as a lost cause after the tip started breaking off.

The harpy was too heavy to fly after eating me, so she just lurched around on the ground. So I coiled my tail like a spring, hearing the harpy moan with pleasure from my struggles, and then barreled my way up her throat again. The harpy squawked furiously as I punched my way out of her mouth, getting my shoulders free. Without proper hands or another harpy to help her, she was incapable of gulping me down again now that I had my arms out and could grab at her wings. As soon as I got a handhold, I pulled myself a little further out, and then the weight of my armor pulled me out onto the ground.

Several feet of my tail were still in the feathered bitch's mouth, and she gulped furiously, trying to suck me back in. I was too heavy outside for that, but I didn't have the leverage to pull the rest of the way out, and I had left my sword somewhere in her gut.

So I began to belch up the contents of my stomach at the harpy. She squawked furiously as I spattered her with acid, singeing her feathers. I concentrated, using the little magic Zettia had managed to beat into me to produce more and sharper acid. My stomach was happy to oblige, as though it were helping to digest a particularly large meal. The harpy was undeterred and kept gulping at my tail until I finally burned away much of her face.

Once I had pulled my tail out, she uttered a number of choice epithets, ending with "Screw you, I'm outta here."
"No you're not." I said and wrapped my tail about her leg, crushing it as she tried to take off. "Next time, I suggest more flight, less talk. But there's not going to BE a next time."
I pulled her towards me and stuffed her into my maw as fast as I could, feeling I was doing the world a favor by ridding it of this foul-mouthed and equally foul-tasting pain in the ass. Several of the feathers went down backwards and scratched my throat. I swallowed a few times, hearing the harpy's last words of invective before I clacked my teeth together in a very definitive manner.
"Good riddance." I said, pushing it down to digest as fast as I could.

I looked up and saw no more harpies. Before any arrived, I used the gem Salyna had given me. It grew warm in my hand, pulsing with cool blue light that grew into a nimbus and enveloped me for some time. When it faded, I was standing on the gravel around the healing fountain in the City of Angels. I drank deeply, water spilling into my belly, running down onto the harpy that was still cursing somewhere in my tail.

My sword was gone. My armor was holed and paper thin. My self-confidence had taken a massive blow. I considered the matter, and remembered that I had thought about it already, and I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was. Between the cities, after all, the monsters were feral and speechless because they were the first to arrive, spawning as fast as possible, and they were weak for the same reason. To the west, on the other hand, the centauresses were obviously well established, intelligent, and strong.

The City of Angels could hold out for a while yet. I was going home. I wanted to think, and train, and make love to Tanna while she explained things to me. She was... I didn't know how old she was. Years, probably. Far older and wiser than me, anyhow. She had loved me from the moment I came out of my egg, and she was willing to caress and comfort me. She was my hero as much as I was hers. I wanted to lie on her lap again and suckle at her breasts while she made the world seem a simpler, easier place.

But first I went looking for Melanca, and soon found her at the south end of the village.
"Melanca, do you have any more scrolls like that?"
"Not at the moment. They're hard to make, and most of them go to the guard anyway."
I asked for a deeper explanation. The scrolls weren't actually difficult - she could probably teach me to make my own in the course of a few days - just magic-intensive. This was soon remedied by my paying about two-thirds of the gold I had collected earlier, which Melanca muttered a spell over. She started writing on more pieces of cloth, and once the gold had turned to dross and begun to crumble, I found myself the owner of three more scrolls.

Then I set out for home. The road was still wooded and overgrown, but practically free of karis and much safer to travel than it had been a few days ago.

The harpy had gone quiet. I let out a small belch as I felt it starting to break down. I continued, breaking off a branch from a convenient tree to smash the few slimevines that got in my way, and came to the swampy patch again. Here I felt a pressure mounting behind my anus and stopped to relieve myself of the harpy, before deciding to relieve myself of my armor as well, since the weight of the remaining iron cancelled out what little protection it now gave. In doing so, I tore away the last shreds of clothing that had become stuck to it, and continued naked.

I hunted and ate a few giant frogs, charging them from above or lurking in the water and slurping them down from below, but they tasted like bland slimy jelly and I soon grew disinterested.

Back at my hometown, some of the girls were out picking fruit and nuts from the appropriate trees, and chopping several others down. My arrival and nudity distracted them a bit. I shouted for someone to get me some clothes and soon slithered into a large pink dress.
"Great to see you, Luli!" someone called. "There are a few hostile plants we've been hoping you could-"
"Yeah, whatever, show me." I said and shrugged. I pulped a few clusters of slimevines around the village, dropped the improvised club and wandered into the central village grounds as the others began reclaiming abandoned ground from the forest. Ah, progress. I thought. It's good to be a hero.

Tanna was talking to Yratta and Allanna, discussing the feasibility of reopening trade with the City of Angels, when I arrived.
"-enough amazons." Allanna was saying. "Hello, Luli. I'd invite you to take a seat, but, well." She waved her hands at my tail. "Do join us."
I approached the table where Yratta was pointing at a map. "Speak of a star and it shines." she said. "We were just discussing you a little while ago. How do you feel about fighting giant snakes?"
I shrugged. "Fine, I guess."
In the discussion that followed, there was a half-hearted undercurrent of trying to preserve my perceived sensibilities until I pointed out that none of them hesitated to fight karis, who were half girl, and I didn't consider myself half snake. I considered myself part of the clan, as I had ever since Tanna had hugged me for the first time and I had felt our bonds.
I learned that there was an abandoned temple to the southeast which I should probably visit to see if any powerful magic items had been left behind. To get there, I could travel either through the thinner woods to the east or the deep swamps to the south. The woods, it turned out, were indeed filled with lesser centauresses, as well as more karis, while the swamps contained crocodiles and extra giant snakes in addition to the ones that lurked in the temple, according to Zettia's scrying.
One question about the route led to another about the monsters, and soon I was pestering Tanna with questions. I didn't see the subtle nod she gave the others, only that they left, and soon after I was alone with Tanna, I was hugging her tightly and telling her everything about Salyna and the giantess and Melanca and the centauress and all the doubts I had and everything I wanted to know, which was a very great deal.
We talked into the evening, and when she eventually began to grow tired while expounding on the Goddesses that I should pay my respects to at the temple, her next explanation was biological in nature. I had been eating well, dining on angels, sprites, harpies, karis and frogs, so my breasts had swelled with honey, which stored a great deal of energy, something she was low on. I apologized profusely for having been so selfish and ignorant and almost shoved my breasts into her face to return the favors she had been offering me so far. She took two big slurps, stimulating my nipples intensely, and moments later we made love frenziedly for half an hour, after which she looked much more energetic. With a smile she continued my education well into the evening and then sent me on my way to my hut, where I slept the sleep of the just and dreamt of the Goddess Trina.