[Short Story] Collector Of Rare Princesses (Patreon)

This was not happily ever after!

Jogrand Fire of the Mountains, shining flames in the dark, ruler of the Alkazoh ash lands, Gem Scale Master, and most importantly, the collector of rare princesses. Well, he considers the last one the most important. Others tend to focus on the Master bit or maybe the fact he owns land if they’re new to HappyAfter.

He honestly prefers just going by Rand when talking to his fellow collectors. Were there some people that considered him a stereotype for being a dragon that collects princesses? Of course, and they can all take a long walk off a short pier for all he cares.

Except he had a problem. It seems some idiots new to the whole afterlife thing had seen what he was doing and decided they didn’t like it. They even had the nerve to call themselves the Hero’s party because they managed to get the cash together for one of their members to get the title. The newbs. Why pay for the title when there are a million and one quests out there that just give it to you. Sure, it takes some time, but what else are you going to spend it on? Anyway, since they did technically have a hero, the narrative favored them and they managed to break in and steal some of his princesses!

Now his precious collection was on a timer before it all expired. The idiots don’t realize what they’ve done! If they wanted to do the classic “hero saves the princess from the dragon” nonsense, why didn’t they set up their own scenario? Hell, if they were dead set on Rand, he had a few earlier iterations of his lair available for free. Sure, you don’t get an original princess, but that clearly isn’t what the fools are after.

Rand made sure to keep all of his collection in figurine mode. Not like the neutered npc logic was interesting to talk to. Sure, there was an option to get full npc princesses, but he didn’t want to accidentally spawn a sapient. Not only didn’t he want to be a parent to a being that started life as a literal princess he had kidnapped, but they stopped being a collectible.

Though that’s about to happen to all the ones the zero’s party got away with. They turned off figurine mode, which meant not only that they suddenly were reintroduced into way too many storylines and might become queens or the like. It might actually cause some trouble for the locals on those servers. After all, even if the royalty are all npcs, that doesn’t mean they can’t go into a full civil war when lines of succession suddenly go all higgledy-piggledy.

Rand stops fidgeting and takes a deep breath. The problems are big enough that calling in a few favors wouldn’t be out of line. But who to call?

Rand dials up a friend that comes to his mind first. “Heyo! Charles, I’ve got a problem and need your help.”

Charles yells back, “You think you have a problem? You’ll certainly have a problem once I’m done with you for allowing that damn princess to get reintroduced into the story! I called on you to do your thing because she actually wanted to marry me, instead of just praising my heroics. No way in any virtual hell am I going to marry a neutered npc.”

Rand, “Not my fault, man! Besides, I’m calling to get your help with that exact issue. We’ve got some newbs who crashed my collection, I guess that girl was one of the princesses they took.

“Anyway, get this, they paid for the hero title! So given the narrative drive we’re all under in this part of HappyAfter, I’m not exactly the guy to handle the issue. Can you help me round up a good ol’ fashioned mob for some of that justice they’re known for? Oh, and I’d like collection back, which is why I’m calling in my favor with you”

Charles, “And who else is going to be in on this? My group is fine going in on this. The hero title you get for money honestly sucks so we can wipe the floor with them.”

Rand, “Let me tag them in, I’m thinking Meri.”

Charles, “Meri? Don’t you want my help?”

Rand, “What’s that? Can’t hear you, beep boop boop beep, connecting.”

Charles, “Oh no you don-”

Meri, “Is that Charles I hear? How’s it going Bro, I hear you’ve got a wedding in your future! Heh.”

Charles, “How do you even know about that? This literally just happened within the last couple days! Rand got raided by a chowderhead newb who, at the very least, released the damn neutered npc that wanted me hard.”

Meri, “I thought it was Rand who called! Hey Rand, sucks that someone messed with your collection. I’d hate it if someone went and tried to kiss my frog princes that are still frogs. Stupid hard finding them before someone is compelled into giving them the smooch.”

Rand, “Yeah, I’m calling in a favor with Charles so his group can help recover my collection from those title buying idiots. If your group is up for some exercise, I’d owe you a favor.”

Meri, “Of course! I know you’d do the same for me. Well, as long as it wasn’t thematically stupid for you to do so. As the sexy witch archetype, I’ve got a pretty good matchup against members of a hero’s party so I can certainly help there. But man, you need to call in Stephen! He’ll really do the job right. Here, let me add him to the call.”

Stephen picks up, “Meri, what nonsense are you trying to get me into now? You know that as a church official it doesn’t exactly help me keep advancing if I’m seen hanging around a witch, even if you did manage to swing the white witch classification. Don’t know how you managed that when you’re clearly more of a hedge witch.”

Meri, “This isn’t for me, Rands on the call and needs help.”

Stephen, “And you think dealing with a dragon is any better?”

Meri, “This is for a bit of OOC clean up.”

Rand, “Yeah, a store-bought hero new to the area decided to break into my real lair and take off with some of my collection. Charles is here too and will be helping as well. I can’t exactly do it since hero vs dragon is pretty cut and dry. Can you help gank the idiots before they cause even more trouble?”

Stephen, “They did what? What’s even the point of that? It’s super well known that you never deal in npcs that could potentially wake up. Though even if you did, you keep them suspended the entire time.”

Rand sighs, “I have no clue what they’re thinking. They buy a hero title and the first thing they do is raid my lair? If I had been home, that is like, one of the few times where dragon beats hero! So yeah, Charles and Meri are joining up to smack them down. You in? I’ll owe you a favor.”

Stephen, “Sure, why not? Like, who raids a dragon’s lair? Even if you succeed, they’re going to come for you. At least if it was an npc, once you beat them they’re gone, you’ve won. Against another person? I know a guy who actively hunted another for over a hundred years. There wasn’t even a reward or anything. They just decided to do it after being insulted a bit too much. If there’s one thing we have, it’s time and so being a bit diplomatic is kind of required.”

Rand, “I figure with the three of you, because yes Meri, I was going to get Stephen in on this from the start, there is a good chance of success. A church official to denounce them, a white witch to predict their dark future, and a time tested Hero of great renown to take them down. Heh, try and pay to win with a title? I’ll get that title stripped from you faster than Charles could crush them!”

Charles, “So I know what they did and that it is causing me problems, but isn’t that going a little too far?”

Rand, “If they want to stay a hero there are just as many ways to regain the title in some form or fashion. It will just be tougher. Plus, I give them a fifty-fifty shot at becoming a fallen hero type. Which would be fine with me. I’ve made sure to keep myself in the natural disaster territory. So since evil never prospers in the long run around here, I’m actually favored to win that match up. Fits the classic hubris storyline.”

Charles, “Fair enough, and if they really are that butt hurt about it? Well, they can go off and find another ever after to stay in. Not like they’re chained here or anything.

“But I’m going to have to ask you to leave the call, Rand. While chatting with whoever you want is mostly fine, starting to use it for in-game purposes gets iffy.”

Rand, “I understand. Don’t want the narrative to turn against us.” And he hangs up the call.

At this point, Rand begins to fidget again. Talking to the others on the call had calmed him down a good bit, but that had mostly been a facade. Now that he was alone, Rand couldn’t help but start to compulsively count his hoard of gold coins. While he wouldn’t call himself a true collector, he had gone out of his way to make sure at least half of it was special coins.

Rand also tended to go out to any EverAfter instance in the area where they had a new coin design and grab a hundred gold. From coins so small, even humans had trouble handling them, all the way up to giant gold rings. Though that last one wasn’t technically meant to be moved around, following in the tradition of a pre-postbio culture that used giant stones and just traded ownership. Rand had to get his one hundred specially commissioned as basically novelty coins.

In his younger years, Rand had trouble with counting them all. Not because he had too many gold coins or anything, but because he got really picky about counting their actual value. After all, a gold coin sizes for one of the smaller fae will have a different value compared to the standard gold coin, which is always equal to one credit, and the giant gold rings. Though even the mass of gold uses doesn’t always matter. Some of his tiny fae coins are actually worth more than even the big rings because of how they’re enchanted. Then you add on top of that the fact that sometimes the prices vary? That makes trying to count coins by value an impossible task.

With time, though, Rand had settled down and realized something important. Since he doesn’t consider himself a coin collector, no matter how much others may disagree with him on that point, he can just collect them for fun! So since that realization, Rand has literally just been counting his good by piece. So a small fae coin would be one and a large gold ring would also be one.

And before he realized it, Rand had truly calmed down. The clinking of good on gold, as well as the feel, the sensation of which was known to be particularly soothing for dragons, helped him settle. Rand knew that his friends could handle things, with the big question of how many of his princesses would be recovered in time and not whether they would be recovered.

While it would lower their value to him, Rand knew that any recovered queens, rebel leaders, or what have you could probably be traded to those who collected such things. Well, collected isn’t quite the right word. Rand only considers an npc a collectable if they have a figurine mode. Otherwise, they’ll grow old and die on you.

All the while, chaos descends on the various nearby kingdom instances. Just the sudden “rescue” of previously vanished princesses would be enough to cause turmoil. But then a large group appeared to denounce the hero’s party that had released them? If the npcs had the ability to think these things through, it would be right confusing for them. Good thing they had the realms narrative to keep them mostly on track.

So, with the church, a witch, and a renowned party of Heroes all going against the upstarts? The narrative quickly turned against the so-called “hero’s party”. And in the end, all the realms settled on what direction the narrative was headed. The returned princesses weren’t actually the lost princesses, but rather a ploy by a false hero to cause chaos. And so when the party of Heroes started going around and collecting those princesses again? Why, they were just removing vile doppelgangers!

As for the false “hero’s party”? They kept yapping about how they were the true princesses, nevermind how some of them came from thousands of years ago in some cases. At least, they did until Charles, Meri, and Stephen finished recollecting the princesses and then gathered together for a final climactic fight. Which did look pretty impressive, mostly because the three and their people held back massively so all the affected realms could settle after the “great evil” was put down.

Though at the end, they did have to get a little serious. Much to the newbs horror, because they were narratively the bad guys, they got the classic “second form”. Which involved them recovering to full health while being twisted into fiendish forms to prove they were evil the entire time. In reality, their second forms being more about the narrative requiring the true heroes to need to put in at least a little bit of effort, but in the end Rand’s friends succeed.

There are celebrations and all kinds of classic hero’s homecoming type stuff. Right before the group rides off into the sunset with the “false” princesses in tow, to be given to a great and powerful dragon for safe keeping. That dragon, of course, being the very relieved Rand. His friends had managed to head off the problem quick enough that none of his stolen princesses had managed to fully transition into a new narrative role. So, with great care, he slots each of the missing princesses back into his display case. All while his friends party in the background. And with one final appreciative glance over the display, Rand turns around and walks over to his friends, shrinking down to human size as he does, and joins them.