An Introduction to Drazu Slavery

Karmen got a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she placed her clothes on the dresser. She turned, catching her image full on. Her dark nipples stood out against the olive skin of her full breasts. She smiled at the woman looking back at her. She was beautiful, full-figured, and strong. With thoughts of her character and the game running through her head, she felt exposed and vulnerable. Seeing herself naked had taken on a whole new significance. It was both exciting and terrifying. It was time to face the challenge.

Karmen slipped into the pod and selected Drazu Challenge from the menu. The lid slid closed, and her awareness faded.

She found herself in a virtual entryway. A living room with sofas, a coffee table, and some chairs was in the background. A virtual interface hovered before her:

Choose how many of your team’s points you will offer to the following categories:

• Faux pas avoidance (bronze acclimatization): Points you offer may be consumed to smoothe over situations where you act out of character or are unaware of the world you find yourself in. A point might get you a reminder to go to work. Hundreds of points might smoothe over a situation where you failed to realize someone was a Drazu sympathizer or a member of the resistance.

• Quest Discovery (bronze acclimatization): Points may be accepted to let you know how actions you are considering can turn into quests and the rewards for these quests.

• Luck: Luck represents the positive effects your points have on the world. Some luck is ambient. For example, the more points you have, the more likely slaves you care about will be presented to interesting potential owners, the more likely you will be to be present at pivotal moments, and the more likely people will listen to your ideas. Offering points for luck affects the world in at least these ways. Points you offer for luck may be accepted to move things you try from the realm of the possible into the realm of reality. (The realm of the possible is circumscribed by your total points.) Offering points for luck also lets you tell the world which of the things you work on are most important. As the realm of the possible expands, it might expand in areas aligned with actions you take while offering proportionally high points for luck.

Fortunately, the in-game chat interface was available. The rest of the team had already been discussing the point allocations. Karmen read a help link that Osman posted to chat. The team’s points were a shared pool. They currently had 200 points. However each person individually offered points for the available functions. Points were tied up when they were being offered. Points could be removed from offer so long as they had not been accepted. Accepted points were removed from the available offer and from the total pool.

<So you cannot control when your offer is accepted?> Karmen asked in chat.

<Looks like, > Osman replied. <You throw it out there, and something might bite. You do not know how big of a bite gets taken. If nothing has bit yet, you can take it back.>

<So how do we allocate?> Zara asked.

Jing sent, <I think we should all allocate some points to faux pas. Perhaps five. Ash has the most pressing problem: the resistance. Karmen might be able to do a lot through the government and through her connection with Jack. I think those two need the most luck and quest discovery.>

<Are you proposing we take the remaining points?> Karmen asked.

<How about you and Ash split 100 points between you. Then we all split the remaining 75.>

<Sounds good. Let’s do that; readjusting is easy.>

Karmen stood in the living room. She looked down and found she was in a navy blazer over a pinstripe blouse. She almost stumbled before getting used to her heels. This outfit was not something she would wear unless she was at a gallery, but in this world, she was a government official, not an artist.

Her gaze swept the room. Zara looked great in that pencil skirt. That tall hunk over there in the golf shirt and jeans must be her husband. Her heart pounded. He didn’t look half bad at all.

She looked up at the woman next to him. That must be Maria in the royal blue bodycon dress. Maria’s pumps gave her some extra height, not that she needed it compared to Karmen.

<Wow, Karmen, your husband is a real looker, > Zara sent.

<Yeah, perhaps you won’t need your sex toy stash after all, > Ash sent.

<Oh, I bet they use them together, > Zara sent.

Karmen suspected she would get plenty of practice hiding her blush with her friends ribbing her. <Look at Maria.>

<Yeah, I bet Osman is drooling, > Zara replied.

<I am not going to hit on the host’s daughter, > Osman sent. <She is a real looker though.>

“Maria,” Jack said, “I wasn’t expecting you here for this.”

“You are watching the Drazu slave videos, right?”

“Yes, which is why I don’t think you need to be here.”

“Dad, what makes you think I do not need to see them? I bet I need them more than the rest of you.”

Karmen wanted to start finding out what was going on. “Why do you want to watch, Maria?”

“Mom, I know dad wants to keep me safe. I just don’t think either of you can guarantee that. You both know how the other kids look at me. Do you think the Drazu are going to think I am any less attractive?

“Besides,” Maria asked, “how are you going to stop me from watching them later?”

Jack looked to Karmen. “What should we do, honey?”

• Karmen discovers 2 quests (2 points accepted).*

Quest

Confide in Maria Quest: Your team can treat maria as the adult she wants to be. She’s right. Many of the Drazu soldiers (both men and women) will consider her attractive. If you treat her as an adult, the risk she faces is not insignificant. However, she is popular and connected with the college crowd. She is also smart and has been taking relevant college classes. This quest offers 5 points now and is a gateway to a tree of related quests.

Quest

Protect Maria Quest: If you ask Maria to trust in your protection, she will. If you make sure that Maria survives as a free citizen until the departure of the first Drazu slave ship to visit Talthania with her autonomy in tact, you earn 200 points. If Maria is enslaved, raped, or killed before that time, you will destroy her trust and lose 100 points. This quest is a dead-end and is incompatible with Confide in Maria Quest. The total value of this quest is less than the potential value of the Confide in Maria Quest and the opportunities it opens. However closing off those opportunities will give you some advantages in protecting Maria.

<Holy fuck!> Ash exclaimed. <It didn’t take long to feel like the game is living up to its reputation.>

<Yeah, > Osman replied.

<What should I tell Jack?> Karmen asked.

<I think it’s fairly clear what the game is saying. You can use her as a resource, and there’s emotional risk to that. Or you can sideline her, and you will get a modest reward unless you screw up. We have no clue how hard keeping someone safe is actually going to be. So, are you going to be too emotionally messed up if you work with her and she gets hurt?>

Karmen thought there were other risks involved. Did she want to be dealing with someone’s burgeoning sexuality in the middle of a Drazu invasion? Eventually she thought back to what she was like at that time of her life. It had not been many years ago—she wasn’t going to think about how her character didn’t look any older than Karmen’s actual 26 years. She would have wanted her parents to be honest with her and actually let her try and be responsible for the risks she was facing. Karmen didn’t have the emotional attachment she would to a real kid. Even so, she would become attached to Maria: it was inevitable with AIs as advanced as this game had. Those emotional attachments could be brutal when something went wrong, but at least that ache was familiar from the mor immersive games the team had played.

“Jack, Maria does have a point: we are all in this together.”

“Do you really think Maria needs to watch ‘Good Drazu Slave?’”

“Why are we watching that?”

Karmen: faux pas (1 point accepted). Jack hears “Let’s explain why we are watching the videos to Maria.”

“Your mom is right. Even if you do not watch the videos, you should understand why we are doing this. So why don’t you take a seat and I will explain?” Jack sat on a love seat. Maria took an adjoining chair. “Sit here beside me, Karmen. Explaining this to our daughter isn’t easy.” Karmen sat next to Jack. He snaked his arm around her. Slowly, she relaxed against him.

“Look, honey,” Jack said, “this is hard to say, but we are losing. We are not going to be able to stop the Drazu.”

“Duh!” Maria said. “I am sure you and mom have more information than I do. I am not stupid though. When the news stopped showing maps, I put together my own and plotted the airstrikes and battles on it.”

Jack said, “We are going to have to deal with the Drazu, and so we need to understand them. They have propaganda for people they are annexing. We thought we would watch some of it. Can anyone actually be as horrible as our government makes the Drazu out to be?”

“You know I started that Drazu studies class before it got canceled. Even in that class, the Drazu didn’t make sense. Of course we were studying the Drazu without reading any of their own history. The professor said that focused too much on slavery, and she wanted to avoid that.”

“That’s one of the big things your mom and I do not understand at all. Slavery seems important, even though the Drazu have more technology than we do.”

Jack looked down and squeezed Karmen’s hand. “We’re going to try as hard as we can to stay safe. But honey, they say ... well, they say you can make it better if ... well, the Drazu say it’s better to know ahead of time. I just want to do everything we can.” Jack was crying now.

Maria reached out and grabbed his hand. “Dad, I understand. It’s not easy. You joined the guard to keep us safe, and now this...”

She stretched her shoulders. “I want to watch. Not understanding sucks. Not knowing what could happen sucks too. At school ... well, if all the things they say are true, it would be better to piss off the Drazu until they glass Talthania like they did Anakrya. But plenty of people are part of the Supremacy, so it can’t be that bad ... can it?”

“I really hope not, honey. I really do.”

Osman discovers 1 quest (0 points accepted).

Quest

Don’t Nuke the Home World Quest: If Talthania is reduced to radioactive glass before one of your team members gains a Drazu Challenge gold pendant, you lose! This is one of the few ways to irrecoverably lose your challenge. Even if one of your team members has a gold, recovery may be impossible if a player on your team loses all their characters in the destruction. Seriously, radioactive glass is not the answer.

“Then let’s all get settled and watch what the Drazu have to tell their conquered peoples.”

Instead of the hunting hawk flag of the Drazu fleet, this video opened with a flag Karmen had not seen before. On a gold field, figures knelt in a circle. As she examined the flag more closely, she realized that the stylized figures formed a crown.

The opening faded. A woman stood in the camera’s view. She was naked, her legs a little more than shoulder width apart, arms at her sides with her palms forward. The camera pulled back until everything was on display. Her clit was visible against her shaved pussy.

The camera zoomed in on her upper body. Her nipples stood out. She smiled. “I am 44372Slave Proxima, use name Lisa. Some of you out there picked up this video because you were feeling naughty and you wanted to know what it was like for the Drazu slaves. You can skip ahead to the later videos. They will be wilder than you have imagined.

“Most of you are watching because the Drazu are coming. You are scared. You want to know what’s going to happen to your world. Perhaps you’ve even admitted that you want to know what happens if you find yourself thrown on a shuttle and offloaded on a Drazu slave ship.

“This video is for you. I will be your guide. Watching the entire first video could save your life if you get to join me in submission. Drazu slavery can be a wonderful life if you come from the right mindset.”

Lisa crossed her arms behind her back. “Let’s get started. We’re not going to be shy today. We’re going to dive right into what it means to be a slave. Some of you have already been looking. Take as much of a look as you like. Slaves are there to look at.” She swung her right leg up and grabbed it with her hand, balancing on her left foot. Her sex was wide open for anyone to see. She let her leg fall and hefted her breasts, teasing her nipples until her entire ariole was engorged.

“Slaves are also there to use.” The camera pulled back as a large hulk of a man entered from stage left. He was as naked as Lisa. He flexed his muscles.

“This is Alexander,” she said. “He is another slave. That doesn’t mean he cannot claim supremacy over me.”

Alexander stepped beside Lisa, his arm circling her and cupping a breast. His already prominent cock hardened as he played with Lisa. “Down, hands and knees,” he said.

Lisa assumed the position Alexander ordered. She smiled up at the camera as he mounted her. Alexander began to fuck, using Lisa’s breasts as handles. She pushed back against him, a wide smile on her face. With a bellow, he came. He swatted Lisa’s ass as he got up. Cum dripped from his cock as he stood.

Lisa collected herself and stood. She smiled at Alexander. “I’ll get mine later, have no fear.” She turned to the audience as Alexander exited. “Normally he’s not so fast, and I have a lot more fun. Today, most of you are here to learn about the Drazu, not to watch us fuck.”

A feral grin filled her face. “I will ride him later, and let me tell you a big man like that in submission to me is definitely going to hit the spot.” She licked her lips.

“As you can see,” she said, “Drazu slavery is sexual. Slaves have no autonomy—not from the citizens, generally not even from other slaves. We have no privacy: our entire life is recorded and most of it is available to view.

“Most of you must think I am crazy talking of happiness and talking of finding a good life. I was once where you were. I am registered Proxima. That means I was not born a slave. I was taken in the Proxima annexation.

“When my number came up in the lottery, I thought it was the end of the world. That first week”—she shuddered—”I wish I had taken the time to learn about the Drazu before. It took me a while to realize the Drazu were more complicated than I expected. It took me even longer to learn and fix the damage I had done.

“I thought the Drazu were monsterous. I thought they did not care. I thought they were cruel with no compassion.

“It isn’t that simple. Submission and supremacy are core to the Drazu at every level. It is literally their religion.