“You’re a catboy?!” Jeff growled.
The fat bear was covered in slime, his robes soaked with juices…suspiciously around his groin, mostly. Charlie's eyes narrowed. Greg looked abashed. His axes were being carried by Charlie since he couldn’t carry them anymore. Even his loincloth had to be adjusted to fit.
“She wanted to see me alone…” Greg said defensively.
“And you let him?” Jeff demanded, turning to Charlie.
“How was I supposed to know she was an ancient evil hag looking to steal his essence?!” Charlie replied hotly, his hackles raising.
“Because the whole world is basically a fetish fantasy!” Jeff said.
“What did you do to the slimes?” Greg asked, staring at the stains around the fat bear’s groin suspiciously.
“That’s not important!” Jeff replied. “We’ve got a useless barbarian now and the hag who did it is gone!”
“What do we do?” Greg asked.
“Find the bitch and cut off her fucking head!” Jeff snarled.
“The door disappeared.” Charlie said.
“She’ll be in town. It’s the door that’s magic. She can probably take over any door to an abandoned building in town. Magic shops sometimes use it as a security measure.” Jeff replied.
“You guys can kill the hag, but what can I do?” Greg lamented.
“Bait.” Jeff said promptly. “You said she wanted you, right?”
Greg nodded solemnly.
“Then we use you as the bait. You wander, we keep behind you out of sight. Some woman will accost you, encourage you to follow them. When that happens, agree, and when she turns around, raise your fist like this.” Jeff raised his flabby arm. “And signal us.”
“Okay, when a woman-” Greg began before Jeff cut him off.
“Anyone.” Jeff interjected. “She can use illusions. It could be a little girl, an injured dog, a guard.”
“How do you know so much about hags?” Charlie asked.
“I know magic. If she can do the door trick, she can use illusions.” Jeff replied. “You guys clearly need to understand some basics. Let’s go back to the tavern first.”
They all wandered back to the starting tavern. Greg enjoyed the familiarity, still unsure how he would deal with his new change. He was lithe and tiny and…it felt good, too. Like this was how he was supposed to be, not some crude, overly-muscled lion. He saw his reflection in the mirror. A cute tabby cat anthro wearing a loincloth stared back at him with emerald eyes. Charlie noticed him staring at his own reflection and gently pulled him away to a nearby table.
“It’s alright, we’ll fix this.” Charlie said firmly, his paws gripping Greg’s shoulders.
Greg looked up at him wide-eyed and nodded.
“So what do we do?” Greg asked, his voice much higher now.
“Well, let’s look at the map first.” Charlie said, the dusky-furred wolfman pointed at the opposite wall.
They wandered over to it.
“The Kingdom of Chloa-Chlaithe, huh?” Charlie said. “It sounds….Gaelic or Welsh. So western fantasy.”
“We assume it’s a generic western fantasy, but we have no way of knowing.” Greg pointed out.
“Can we take out a hag? Isn’t she, like, hard to kill?” Greg asked Jeff.
“Yeah. That’s the sucky part. I may have been a bit too angry and tried jumping the gun.” Jeff agreed. “We need to do another quest-one we can get a level off of. How about caravan guards?”
“We should go deal with the rancher and help them out.” Charlie said. “I used to live on a farm.”
“Yeah. Being caravan guards means we’ll immediately get into combat. I’d rather ease my way into it too.” Greg said.
“Oh, you don't know if you’ll immediately come under attack…” Jeff smirked.
“Come on bro, everyone knows how the caravan ambush scenarios go. It’s an age-old trope.” Charlie rolled his eyes. “And as far as killing the goblins goes, I’m not sure I’m comfortable killing sentient races. Like, why are the goblins hated? Because they are primitive? I mean, we could be murdering the fantasy-world equivalent of native Americans.”
“I don’t know if we want to read too much into real-world analogies. There are evil races here.” Jeff pointed out. “Goblins in this world are little fae bastards. They and Orcs are what happens when humans mate with faeries.”
“Any other setting lore we should know?”
“Elves are aliens who journeyed here and crash landed. Their technology was so advanced they couldn’t replicate it and they ran out of fuel after terraforming a few countries.” Jeff explained. “Gnomes are fae refugees from a failed war against an Arch-fey who cursed them. Dwarves are basically constructs, created as miners and laborers by the titans who ruled the world before the Elves came and wrecked shit. Then we have Humans, who were also technically created as base templates by the titans. Then there are…us. The Anthroforms. We are humans the Titans mixed with animals for various purposes.”
“Okay, then Lycanthropy…?”
“Genetic viruses that cause mutations during the moon phases. Same thing with vampirism. On the surface, the setting is fantasy, but it’s really one of those ‘ancient highly advanced civilization falls and everything looks like magic’ sort of settings. There’s the elf’s crashed spaceship to explore as a mega-dungeon, the Titan Crucibles which can genetically modify people, the Fey Realms, which are like…kinda a side dimension you can accidentally wander into. Then, of course, the various legends that have been created in the many millennia since the fall of the Titans and the elvish loss of technology.”
“Wow. You guys thought about this setting a lot for something spur-of-the-moment.” Charlie said, wide eyed.
“Nah, We kinda just kitchen-sinked a lot of other campaign settings and lore to make it.” Jeff shrugged. “And since the Chronivac is a computer, most magic is very literal. In the case of open interpretation, it will always choose the path of least resistance.”
“Chronivac?” Charlie asked.
“It’s the device we used to warp reality. We’re in a sort of bubble right now, a pocket dimension.” Jeff explained.
“Cool. So back to the quests. I’m going to guess all of them seem straightforward, but with a twist?” Greg said. “Like that hag?”
“Yup.” Jeff smiled. “What do you think awaits you at the ranch?”
“Oh no….” Charlie groaned. “I like being a wolf!”
“Do you now?” Jeff smirked. “What about you, Greg?”
“I’m afraid if I stay a little twink too long, I might end up liking it and staying this way.” Greg said. “Plus, I’m fucking useless as a barbarian with no strength or constitution. My dexterity is lower too!”
“Maybe, if we go to the ranch, you can get turned into a bull man!” Charlie said, sounding strangely eager.
Jeff grinned. “Ranch it is!”