Dungeons and Dicks Ch. 02

"I vote for the City of Yesterton!" Craig exclaimed quickly, rising his hand and speaking in Tyrian's stentorian tones.

Mark also rose in a heartbeat to Anne's bait. "Renault also thinks that a nice long walk in the country will be refreshing after all!"

The women all laughed, Anne in self-satisfied fashion. "I was good with the city all along," said Geri. "But now you've laid down a marker for yourself for next week."

They set off happily for the city of Yesterton.

They had to get there first.

I made them waste almost half an hour with various hostile monstrous wildlife, a band of bandits (mostly because I wanted to torture Sir Tyrian with another humiliating trap), and one particularly nasty griffon in a cave that I put there to have an excuse to give them the treasure I had forgotten to hand out from the desecrated altar.

Then, as I was about to send them on to the city, Tess decided to take care of some business of her own, giving me a golden, unplanned opportunity to get the LARPing going. LARP is a gaming term meaning Live Action Role Playing, and it was what I was calling our new game enhancement in my mind. Most LARPers run around in the real-life woods in bad cosplay armor, hitting each other with foam swords or shouting 'fireball!' The kings of detailed, realistic LARPing are the US Civil War re-enactors, but even they had nothing on what we were doing...

"When we reach the edge of the forest, can Shanora do some herb gathering? When I she finally does level up, I'll have some new potions I can make, and I want to have the stuff to do it ready so I don't waste our time then," she asked me.

"Sure, what do you want to try to find?" I asked, as if incurious.

"Uh, what would be some good names..." Tess mused. "Let's call them Rustwort, Yellow Mung-grass, and... Pink Titweed," she finished with a grin, already starting to write the items down in her inventory sheet. No one else was paying much attention. They seldom did when somebody wanted to do this kind of logistical housekeeping with me during adventure downtime. The 'Pink Titweed' name didn't even get a... titter of laughter.

"Cool. When you next break camp, Shanora wanders off in search of her required herbal finds," I say, a little louder.

Tess had not expected this to be more than housekeeping for later and she looked at me in surprise. I winked at her and she actually flushed a little. She figured out what I was up a moment or so before anyone else.

"How high have you bought your herbalism lore?" I asked her idly. It didn't matter. Shanora could have been a fucking PhD, and I was going to have her fail the knowledge check and grab the wrong plant. I was already envisioning her slayed out on her back in a field of poppies, like a sexy Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I rolled two dice behind my screen, they came up a five and a 17, which meant exactly nothing.

I shrugged to myself. If any of the now fully intent group believed for one second that what I had just rolled was going to change anything, they did not know me well. In combat, I let the dice fall where they may. When I wanted to tell a story, it got told.

I looked like I was thinking for a minute. There is a lot of acting in being a good DM.

I looked at everybody else. "Let's see some rolls for perception..."

"Are you Damsel in Distress-ing me two weeks in a row?" Tess hissed at me.

"Hush, Darling," I replied in a stage whisper. "We don't talk about that sort of thing in front of the children," I added, jerking a thumb at the other players.

Tess did not look entirely upset at the prospect of being rescued again. In fact, she looked pretty smug about it. So smug, I wondered if this may not have been her intent in the first place. Good players know how to manipulate the DM as much as vice versa...

The other players rolled a 20-sided die each. Craig rolled a 17, but Anne rolled an 18. She stuck her tongue out at him. "Gotcha," she said to her husband.

"Actually, Tyrian gets a plus-two to his roll, and notices first," I said.

"What? Why?" Anne complained.

I looked at her and waved vaguely in the direction of Tess's cleavage.

"Okay," she admitted. "That's worth a plus-two... but just for guys?" Tess shot her a scandalized, wide-eyed smile. Anne giggled back.

"Sir Tyrian is the first to notice that Shanora has strayed out of sight as you walk through the thinning forest. How do you handle it Craig?"

My buddy screwed up his face in thought. "Our wayward sorceress has wandered off," he declared in Sir Tyrian's splendidly over-bearing voice. "I doubt we need to stop. I'd like to get to the city before nightfall, myself. I'll see if I can chivvy Shanora back with the group before she actually gets lost."

"Don't surprise her," Mark said idly. "If you come up too close behind her while she is bending over picking flowers or whatever she is looking for, she might blast you..."

"Good advice, sir thief," Craig replied heartily.

"Sir Tyrian vaguely remembers that the last time he checked out, um, er, I mean saw Shanora, she was to his left," I said drily.

"He drifts off to the left no more than needed to just be out of sight in the thin trees," Craig said, in his own voice. "She won't have gone too far away in this short of a time. Once he does get out of sight, he turns and decides to backtrack in the direction they came. 'She won't have gotten ahead of us while browsing, her pretty little head filled with the trivial esoterica of her magic,'" he added in Tyrian's voice.

Tess seemed pleased with 'pretty little head', and less so with 'trivial esoterica'. I liked that Craig stayed true to his character's long-time description and was playing Tyrian as the lovable douchebag he was supposed to be.

"Somebody needs to watch more horror movies so they know not to wander off alone like this," muttered Geri in mock foreboding. She was leaning forward, restless in her seat.

"Sir Tyrian bumbles through the jungle, fortunate indeed that there really are no baddies around to lay traps for once..." I glowered at him for not taking appropriate RPG precautions. I really wished I had thought to truss him up in a tree and have Shanora rescue him instead.

Wait.

I was making this up on the fly. I could do what I wanted.

Craig turned to look at my wife with a look that from another man, in another setting, might have earned him a punch in the snoot. Even in our current, bizarre situation, it was going to earn him this...

"... except for the old trap he steps in right now," I finished.

"Oh, come on!" cried out Craig, who popped up out of his seat on the couch. He was clearly looking forward to something quite different from another episode of Embarrass Tyrian With Traps.

I shrugged, as if helpless. "An old snare snaps closed around his ankle and a tree snaps upright," I said, making a sweeping gesture at Craig, while holding his gaze. "You swing sideways and slam hard into an earthen embankment where a huge tree had fallen. You are stunned and hanging upside down." I waved him idly toward the stairs.

"Fine," spat Craig. Since he was already standing, he almost instinctively followed my gesture and walked over to the stairs up to their loft. He glared at me, and lay himself down halfway up the stairs, head downward. He smiled after a moment, then stuck one leg straight up in the air. He waved his arms around for a moment. "Damn and blast!" he yelled in Tyrian's voice. "Where's my sword to cut myself loose?"

"Stabbed into the forest floor, right where it fell during your flight," I said. "It's well out of your reach."

Tess didn't even wait for my cue. She slid out of her chair beside me and began to walk across the room, hips swaying. She mimed holding up some kind of bouquet of flowers to her nose. She stopped and laughed in Shanora's haughty voice. "Sir Tyrian!" she exclaimed. "Another trap?"

"Shanora! Thank the gods! Come cut me down!" Sir Tyrian exclaimed.

Shanora stared toward him, putting even more swish into her step. My wife can sure swish when she wants to...

Tess stood at the base of the stairs, arms on hips. "Will you never learn?" she scolded.

"When you are as mighty a knight as I, mere traps are little threat to my life," Sir Tyrian growled, then wilted under Shanora's gaze. "Just to my dignity..."

"Well then, sir knight, we shall have to further threaten that dignity, so you finally learn your lesson," Shanora purred. Her hand reached out and brushed the cheek of the dangling Sir Tyrian.

The knight gulped.

Shanora bent slightly and kissed him, their heads pointed in opposite directions, her eyes looking straight at his throat. Her hand reached up and stroked his chest as they kissed. The only problem for them both was that kissing someone upside down from you is not easy. Not if you want to get serious. Shanora seemed quite interested in being serious.

They broke apart briefly to clear their noses from each other's chins.

"Um, m'lady sorceress," Sir Tyrian interjected. "If you were to cut to me down, I could..." Craig started to sit up.

"Hey!" I said sternly. "Even Tyrian's mighty abs are not up to pulling himself upright after he's hung there so long. Lie back!"

Craig's laugh was very not in character, but then he flopped dramatically back down.

His polo shirt was sliding up his torso, leaving his belly exposed. Shanora perched on the stairs and reached up to caress Tyrian's stomach. It twitched inward as her fingernails trailed over it. "Mmmm... abs," she muttered. "Are your abs tired and sore, sir knight?" she asked softly. "Are they worn out and unable to do the job?"

"Mayhaps, m'lady sorceress, if you were to cut me down, I might show you that they have yet some strength within them," Tyrian grunted. His face was actually a little flushed from lying head down.

"I am not sure you have learnt your lesson," purred Shanora. "But I'd hate for you to be in pain. Perhaps I should massage them."

With that, Tess rolled over atop Craig.

Shanora's expanse of cleavage filled Tyrian's vision as her fantastic breasts nestled around his face. Her face nuzzled his stomach and her hands rubbed around his sides. They slid back downward to press her bosom together against Tyrian's face. He softly expressed his delight, and his hands swung wildly for a moment before coming to rest, clasping eagerly at her curvaceous backside.

Shanora's fingers curled into the neckline of her dress and pulled one side fully open--the side toward us. She twisted slightly, sliding the exposed breast over Tyrians face and he briefly licked the oblong dark aureole before clamping his lips around the highly responsive nipple at its center. She pressed it firmly against this face.

The hand not guiding her nipple to Tyrian's mouth slid upward and began to caress his middle, massaging the iron hardness she found distending the front of his trousers. We could all see him tremble.

Then she slowly removed her hand from his crotch and drew her breast free from his mouth, leaving it hanging right before his face but out of reach. "There," she said softly. "Have you finally learned your lesson about traps, my knight?"

Craig grinned. "Alas, m'lady, I fear not," intoned Sir Tyrian, his reply pouring on a mix of his usual arrogance with outright pleading. "I mayhaps need further chastisement. I would not want to die so needlessly, my party and my realm have too much need of my sword!"

Shanora laughed. "Your sword is too important, is it?" she grinned at him. He lifted his head, mouth questing toward her seriously awesome breast, dangling just out of reach. She relented slightly and let him kiss it once more. "I think you need to learn that other things are as valuable," she purred softly. Both her hands swept down to her dress, to that slit I had discovered earlier. She spread the skirting apart, revealing to everyone, but especially to Craig, that she wore no underwear downstairs either. The smoothly shaven skin of her thighs glistened, extending upward to the neatly trimmed and groomed landing strip of brown wisps.

Tyrian's eyes grew wide. "Oh yes, there are other very important things," he said in soft but enthusiastic tones.

"Then earn your release," Shanora said, crawling up his body until his face could lift up between her legs. Tyrian's hands slid into and under the parted skirt to grasp her ass as his face disappeared under the dress and between her legs.

Shanora's head arched back in pleasure, swiftly crooning her approval of the knight's lesson. We could not see much of Sir Tyrian's technique, but it was clear from the sorceress's reactions that he was indeed skilled with more than blade.

I stole a look at Anne. She had her feet pulled up underneath her in the center of the couch, one hand bunching up the tight fabric of her top over her left breast. She gnawed lightly on her other thumb. Her eyes were locked on the play. Just as I was about to look away, Geri leaned over and whispered in her ear. Anne chuckled and softly replied. I think she said, "You have no idea, girl!"

Geri sat back on the end of the couch, intent on the scene as well. I slid my eyes back to Shanora's pleasure.

Her body was soon undulating atop Tyrian's face, the signs I knew so well of her impending orgasm looked very different from a distance, but were nevertheless both unmistakeable and totally, excruciatingly hot. The generous flesh of the one breast which still dangled free, jiggled as her body rocked, her face grew rosy cheeked, and each labored breath was shorter than the one before. It was fascinating watching her reaching this state, but without my instigation.

Suddenly, she cried out a short burst of exhaled breath. Then she cried out again louder. Then she bucked hard against the knight's face and yelled, "Good fuck, Crai... Christ! Oh wow! WOW!"

Her hips moved almost desperately now, and we could all see she was trying to move away. But the knight's grasp on her most grabbable ass was resolute, and his tongue must have been so too, because he held her in place and drove her over the edge again with more loud, helplessly enthusiastic cries.

"Fuck, Tyrian! Stop!" Sharona gasped, almost desperately over-stimulated. "If I cut you down, will you relent?"

He let his head drift back down and away from the site of her torture. "Am I sufficiently chastised?" he asked, extremely smugly.

"Oh wow, yes," Shanora gasped, taking the opportunity to roll off his face and comport her mind a little. "By all the gods, yes!" She stood shakily to her feet, her dress sliding closed. Tess turned to me and said, still tremoring, "I cut down Sir Tyrian... with due care for his well-being."

Craig really seemed to be getting a head-rush from being sort of upside down for so long, and had to struggle to turn and restore himself to an upright condition.

"Yeah... um... you guys are going to need to hustle a little to catch up to the rest of the party," I said, my eyes boring into Tess's, which sparkled at me in return. She returned to her seat in the modern art chair beside me, her first step or two still unsteady. Craig shook his head a time or two, then slid back into his place on the couch.

He leaned over toward Anne, who only handed him a hand towel from the table with an amused look. He grinned goofily and set to wiping his face free of the mess all over it. We had already resumed the journey into the city by the time he was finished. He leaned over again to Anne, who did kiss him this time. Her suddenly wide eyes told me that the wiping had been insufficient. Tess stifled a giggle. She glanced at me and I winked broadly at her smiling face.

"Uh, girlfriend..." Geri said with bubbling amusement. The horrible bitch was waving her finger to point out to my glorious wife that she had forgotten to put away her exposed breast.

Tess yelped cutely and tucked herself back in, to three groans of protest. Actually, four groans. Anne complained as well.

As they finally reached the city, the group spend a funny but over-long period of time selecting an inn in which to stay. Mark's Renault, in particular, is always paranoid about inns. There was the usual testing of locks, and clandestine checking of kitchens. But now we had the added spice of my peppering descriptions with buxom barmaids. I also threw in a few studly stable boys, but could get nobody to bite. Apparently, I would need to come up with a more entertaining scenario than a bland roll in the hay.

As it dragged on, I was considering having a toilet monster leap out of the next privy that the thief needlessly inspected and eat Renault's head. But Anne saved Mark's character from that fate by neatly stomping on his paranoia. "This one will do," she said firmly. "Gala needs to get on with redesigning her armor now that she served two gods." The promise of new, character-appropriate cosplay for Anne was remembered by all, and everybody shut up to hear the preview.

"Where would you like to go?" I inquired, interested.

"Gala is going to ask about for the best armorers who serve the local aristocracy. She needs armor with ceremonial as well as functional elements," Anne said firmly.

"Okay... um, she hears of only one truly suitable man--a master armorer by the name of Trunk the Smith, whose shop is not far away."

"Cool," she replied. "Gala walks down the street toward the smithy." She looked at me. "And don't go rolling up encounters with footpads or kidnappers. Gala is on a mission and her face reads like an early death for any rando assholes who get in her way."

I laughed. "Interesting defense method! Okay, on at least two occasions along the way, Gala notices one or more unsavory types who size up the lovely cleric... until they look at her face and decide suddenly that they have better things and people to do. You safely arrive at the smithy, where Trunk works away on the finishing touches of a glittering helm." I stared at Anne cooly. "The smith is a massive man of youthful age, especially for being Master rank. In the heat of the forge, he wears no jerkin and his sweat reflects firelight off his massive thews."

Anne looked back at me, cocking an eyebrow. I thought it looked like a possibly promising eyebrow. It was definitely challenging.

I was the fricking DM here. Why was I going to have to earn this?

I supposed it was because my earning it would be fun.

"He looks up briefly as you enter, then returns his gaze to his work, banging with surprising gentleness at an ornamental rivet on the helmet. You open your mouth to speak, and he merely holds up a hand for you to wait."

"Wait?" huffed Anne. "Gala is an important priestess, she isn't..."

I kept talking over her objections. "With more exquisite care, Trunk lightly hammers the final rivet, which seems to possibly be made of low-quality, but actual, gold, into place. He examines the helm carefully, and finally satisfied, sets it respectfully on a high shelf. He wipes his hand on a towel and turns again to you with a shallow bow. 'I beg your pardon, Holy One,' he says. He seems to finally get a good look at Gala and is unable to keep from straightening his spine a bit, which throws out his chest. 'How may I serve your temple?'"

"Gala does not look at his bare chest," Anne said.

"Are you sure?" I almost giggled. "It's awfully big to avoid looking at."

"Ha!" Anne smiled. "She tells him, 'My needs are my own. I have recently come to find I enjoy the patronage of Our Lady of Love in addition to my service to Feyrth, her brother/husband.'" Anne rose to her feet and gestured to her chest, indicating the tabard that Gala wore. We all already knew it bore the prominent bow and boar-spear symbols of the God of the Hunt. "I must keep my vestments as they are, but I would have new armor more in keeping with my status as servant of our lady," she went on in the high voice of Gala. You could hear her voice growing scratchy, which it often did when she had to voice Gala a lot. At least once a week she regretted giving the character that angel-like voice.