Pirated Entertainment - Introduction (Patreon)

 Written by the wonderful Rabidbadger, here's a small Choose Your Own Adventure set in the Ashen Expanse! Trapped by your debt into playing a strange game, how will YOU survive? 

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Markus wasn’t exactly sure he’d just woken up. Some of him felt like he was, the creeping awareness was there, but apart from that the young snow leopard couldn’t seem to feel anything else. It wasn’t explicitly a numbness, more of a profound disconnection. No pain either, he found. That didn’t mean the situation was good per se, there were plenty of problems that remained, like how his attempt to roll over or touch his face or just… anything really had failed outright. No movement, no sense of being restrained, no sense of anything.

The problem with sensory deprivation, which Markus quickly realized he was experiencing (being that it was the only thing he was experiencing) was it made it hard to tell how long you had been dealing with it. It had definitely been long enough for Markus to start to panic though, that was real. Mentally he had begun flailing, shouting, something that would’ve likely stirred up a ruckus and gotten attention under normal circumstances.

Oddly enough, whatever the blazes the current circumstances were (certainly not even remotely normal), it seemed to do the trick now as well.

Hey! Take it easy there, little guy! Oi, take the edge off for him, will you? Don’t worry, this is going to feel lovely. We just need you calm while we talk. Understand? Blink once for yes, twice for no.

Markus immediately screwed that up by thinking about blinking several times in confusion, which only made things worse what with him being blind at the moment and unable to speak – or at least hear himself if he was speaking. It took a few spare moments for him to pause and ‘hold’ his thoughts, then deliberately blink once. Even that nearly escaped him when a creeping rush of cold descended upon the snow leopard’s being. It was floaty, even a little pleasant, and it made it a bit harder to keep his thoughts on the panic.

Better, right? So, I’m sure you’re confused right now. Try to think back – what’s the last thing you remember?

As intense an understatement as ‘confused’ was, Markus tried to comply just the same. While the immediate past didn’t come to him right off, he did get close. His shipping job, unexpected repairs he needed to manage, then…

The ‘blinking’ happened again as a different kind of chill saturated Markus. Coronet. He’d found salvage, dodgy salvage, and limped to the Coronet instead of trying his luck with a port. Great money, then the ‘fun’ – the drinking, the gambling.

Yeah you ended up in the hole pretty fast there. 

That urge to panic was still there in Markus, he just couldn’t seem to make it finish its startup process. Every time he wanted to something flattened all the spikes in his thoughts out and didn’t quite make him relax but came close in an uncomfortably artificial way. 

And that’s why you can’t move right now, among other things. Your debt was called in and you couldn’t pay. But! We’re pirates here, not bankers or tax-men. You’re not out of the woods yet, but you’re not up the creek either.

Markus wasn’t totally sure what those statements meant. He’d grown up on a space station, woods and creeks were words he kind of knew but had no direct experience with. The quickness this voice he was hearing reacted to that with left him certain he must be saying things even if he couldn’t hear them.

We’re gonna play a little game, or you are anyway. The rules are simple. You get your player from the start to the end, each room has got some fun and some trouble, and we let the Coronet tune in to the experience.

While it wasn’t exactly a clear-cut species of relief that Markus felt after that, there was one just the same. He’d heard of things like that before, not exactly legal but usually pretty profitable. Given that these were pirates he was sure it was going to be dodgy to say the least, but if it got him out of this mess…

That’s the spirit. So, there’s more than one way through these rooms, right? And more than one path. The trick is this – your ad revenue and stream donations need to cancel out your debt for the problem to go away. My advice? Go balls-out. Crowds like that.

Balls-out. For the pirates. Markus hesitated a moment and did his best to center himself, then got around to thinking a question and hoping he asked it out loud too. It was a simple thing.

You’re not hurt, and you won’t -be- hurt unless you do something to yourself. Pirate’s honor. So – show’s about to start – you ready to pick your avatar for this?

It might just have been thinking it, but Markus went through the equivalent of a hard swallow and a nod afterward. The instant he did something of a proper sensory reaction came back to him. It wasn’t exactly a natural one, Markus was fairly sure he was being fed information from a video feed based on the angle, the slight feedback buzzing sensation he was getting, and the odd field of view. 

There were four people Markus could see, all sitting with their heads bowed in a room that looked like it was designed for arming gladiators. Or whores. The walls were lined with armor, skimpy and otherwise, in metal and leather – and a few other exotic things that looked dubiously like insect chitin. At the bases of them were weapon racks that seemed just as likely to house paddles and large rubber dildos as maces and axes. None of this appeared to have been availed of by the occupants of the room; respectively a slender looking young lad of a mouse, a heavily breathing and gently shivering russet-furred cow, a stoically motionless hawk with an ugly gouge along the side of his beak, and a young-looking possum whose tail was curled around her hands looking quite nervous.

Choose your champion – then arm them. Once you’re ready? The show begins!

***

Who shall Markus pick to play this doubtlessly sinister game, and how shall they arm themselves?

https://www.strawpoll.me/16973564

A: The nimble looking mouse.
B: The sturdy looking cow.
C: The fierce looking hawk.
D: The nervous looking possum. - CHOSEN

https://www.strawpoll.me/16973570

W: Armor up and prepare to hurt people.
X: Armor up and prepare to embarrass people.
Y: Tart it up and prepare to hurt people.
Z: Tart it up and prepare to embarrass people. - CHOSEN