DE Vol. 1 pt. 76

“And so, the tale begins with a dark, cold night. Those traveling the roads or in search of a simple drink have decided to share shelter in the Standing Carp Tavern where all are welcome so long as they have coin to pay with. The tavern’s owner, an old and burly demon with a beard that reaches down to his protruding gut, cannot help but notice that some of the tavern’s guests look a bit better armed than usual and keeps a close eye on them. Meanwhile, a bard in the corner plays his lute as he sings songs about revolutions of old. All is—”

“Can I fight somebody?!”

Zira’s narration was interrupted by an excited Kaila who was practically bouncing out of her seat.

“You… you can, but are you sure?” Zira asked. “Remember, your actions will have consequences, and there are armed guards inside who have taken shelter from the rain during their patrol.”

“Oh! They sound strong! Can I fight them?” Kaila asked, clearly not deterred.

“You… you may.”

“Alright! I want to attack them!”

It didn’t take long for Zira to realize her mistake as the game’s dungeon master.

For as long as Kaila was with us, any campaign was likely to devolve into nothing but senselessly murdering everybody and everything.

“How do you want to do this?” Zira asked Kaila. “Do you want to sneak up on them, or—”

“I shout at them that I wanna play!” Kaila answered, her tail wagging more and more behind her.

“You shout at the guards your intent to play with them while brandishing your claws, making your intent clear and causing the guards to stand and draw their weapons.” Zira paused to look at me, Enna, and Thad who were all just sort of sitting there in silence. “What are the rest of you doing?”

“Ignoring them,” Thad answered, “and talking to the owner about how good the booze is.”

Zira looked at me next, so I said, “As the proud and honorable Lucy, I pinch my nipples, moan, and spread my legs while turning to watch the fight that’s about to happen. Of course, I’m also looking around the room every now and then to see if there are any attractive men for me to try and turn into my daddies.”

“I have regrets,” Zira said, placing her palm against her face. “And you, Enna?”

“A-ah, umm… I walk over to Kaila’s character and try to tell her to calm down!” Enna answered.

“Kaila, how do you respond?”

Kaila, her tail still wagging as rapidly as before, simply shook her head and said, “No!”

“Well… roll for initiative then.”

Kaila rolled for initiative… and managed to get a natural twenty for her very first roll of the campaign. Meanwhile, both of the guards rolled under ten for their rolls.

Even so, we pretty much all believed that Kaila was going to get killed. She was playing as… basically a self-insert who still had the same name and everything, and she didn’t have anything that would help her even the odds against two armed guards significantly stronger than her.

The rest of us didn’t want to join in to help her, either. She looked perfectly happy getting to fight on her own, and we were all happy to let her suffer the consequences of her actions as she realized how bad of an idea it probably was to do what she wanted to do.

And yet.

What happened next… was the opposite of Kaila being shown her place. Rather, Kaila took charge and put Zira in her place if anything.

I never saw one party roll so low so consistently while the other rolled so high so consistently, and it was Zira with the low rolls and Kaila with the high rolls.

Within just a few minutes of starting, the tavern was a bloody mess with the guards’ limbs strewn about throughout the room, Kaila’s self-insert was covered in blood and smiling, and the rest of us… just sort of watched in horror.

“That was fun!” Kaila said. “Who do we fight next? Are there any bigger monsters? They were too easy!”

Zira, already looking broken by Kaila, looked down at her notes with trembling hands… before just tossing them aside. “If that’s how this is going to be,” Zira said, looking up at Kaila, “a swirling vortex opens up inside of the room and absorbs all of the spilled blood into it! That is when a mighty, powerful archdemon whose head reaches the ceiling and wings reach to the walls steps out through the portal and says, ‘Finally, a blood sacrifice has been made to free me! After being sealed here for so many years, only able to be freed by an appropriate amount of blood being offered to me in this exact spot, I am now free to resume my reign of terror!’”

Me, Thad, and Enna just sort of sat there, blinking at how derailed the session already got before we even had a chance to do anything, while Kaila’s eyes went wide with excitement as her tail furiously wagged behind her. The other Volcano Hounds nearby all looked just as excited… while the other Demons nearby looked like they had no idea what was going on either.

Zira cleared her throat and then continued talking in a deeper tone for her new demon. “‘As the one who has freed me from my prison, I shall save you for last. Enjoy what limited time left you have on this world.’ The demon then jumps up through the ceiling, breaking out through the roof, and flies off.”

“But I want to fight!” Kaila shouted.

“You can attempt to chase him if you want.”

“Yeah! That! Chase!”

“And the rest of you?” Zira looked at all of us non-murderers.

“I… guess we’ll go with her, since we have to stop an unleashed demon from destroying the world?” I answered.

Enna nodded and Thad shrugged.

“Yes!” Kaila cheered. “Friends hunt enemy together! Like a pack!”

And just like that, the entire original plan for the campaign shifted into one of pure chaos with Kaila at its head.

The rest of the day, breaks excluded, was spent continuing the campaign at what felt like an extremely rapid rate. Kaila was seriously blessed by the dice gods because she somehow always managed to succeed with every single one of her rolls. She was utterly unstoppable with nothing able to slow her down while the rest of us basically just followed her around. Thad’s character always tried to get a drink whenever possible, Enna’s character occasionally convinced Kaila to not murder random, innocent people, and my character, Lucy, basically just served as a living joke who kept on calling random men daddy.

Most of the Demons who were watching us went off to go and do other things, but every Volcano Hound in New Liberty basically gathered around the table to watch our campaign.

And in that regard… the project was an absolute success. The whole reason why I wanted Zira to come up with the game in the first place was to give the Volcano Hounds a less dangerous outlet for their energy and murderous nature, and that was exactly what they got. They seemed all too happy to have fictional self-inserts of themselves thrown against increasingly powerful enemies while the dice gods dictated whether or not they won their battles.

I wasn’t sure I ever saw Kaila as happy as she looked while playing. There was basically zero roleplaying being done, and all she was doing was killing everything and anything that we didn’t stop her from killing… but it worked.

And somehow, thanks to Kaila being Kaila and being blessed with good rolls, and surely thanks to Zira for speeding things up to prioritize Kaila’s mission, we managed to travel across the world, kill countless monsters, accidentally overthrow an empire, and defeated the final boss: the demon Kaila accidentally freed.

“Now,” Zira said, “standing above the corpse of your slain rival… you realize that you have defeated all of the world’s greatest foes. There is nobody else left who can defeat you.”

Kaila’s ears began to flatten against the top of her head, and her tail finally calmed down for the first time all day… but not for long.

“But that is only on this world,” Zira continued. “By defeating the archdemon, a dozen portals have opened up leading to realms and worlds with even more deadly foes!”

And just like that, Kaila was back in full excitement mode alongside all the other Volcano Hounds.

“What do the rest of you want to do?” Zira asked us since it was pretty obvious that Kaila was going to choose going into the portals.

“Retire and get a drink,” Thad said.

“Start—start an orphanage for all those children we freed,” Enna said, leaving out the part about how Kaila almost killed all of said children.

That left me. At that point, I had no idea what to say. I was already mentally exhausted and I stopped trying to stay in-character a couple of battles prior to that. “I want to… start a church dedicated to spreading the holy word of God and his daddiness.”

“Then for now, we’ll end things here,” Zira said.

Honestly, even though Zira basically let Kaila dictate how everything went, she looked like she enjoyed herself. I figured she was just happy to finally get to play again even if nothing went according to plan.

“That was fun!” Kaila cheered. “Can we play more?”

“In the future, yes,” Zira answered.

Kaila then, literally, jumped from her seat over the table, wrapped her arms around Zira, and knocked her down to the ground for a hug. “Zira is friend! Good friend! Fun friend!”

I stood up so that I could check on Zira to see how she was, and what I saw was her making an expression that looked like she had no idea how she was supposed to feel about that. She did, however, end up smiling and blushing a little.

“Alright, I’m going to bed,” Thad said, standing up. He was the one who I assumed had the least amount of fun out of everybody, but… “I’ll look forward to next time.”

He didn’t even do anything other than mention wanting drinks every now and then, yet he apparently enjoyed it enough to want to play more? I wasn’t sure how that worked.

That left me and Enna looked equally confused.

Then again, maybe it made sense. Sure, it was a bunch of chaotic nonsense, and the entire thing revolved around Kaila, but… we did have fun. We got to relax, spend time together, and just have fun going with the flow.

It would probably be a better idea to separate us, though. All the Volcano Hounds could have their own campaign while the rest of us had one without them. If any Demons wanted to join the murder hobos, and if any Volcano Hounds wanted to join the non-murder hobos, then they’d be welcome to, but having some separation by default was probably a good idea in the same way that separating PvP and RP servers in games was a good idea.