Chapter 16

From the Video Blog of Ariel, the First Immortal Whore

I was pumped! My first time as a whore with real clients, and I had done well. It was naughty in a good way.

And let me tell you out there it’s not easy. Perhaps I could have been a robot doll for the craftsman. I don’t think so though: he was happy that I was excited too, and he enjoyed bringing me to orgasm.

The couple, no way. They actually needed help to get to a place where they were ready for a whore. I needed confidence. I needed to be open about what I was facing, and to understand and work with Jungletank9’s concerns about making his girlfriend happy.

I don’t think Bruce would have been impressed if I had just accepted the sex either. He wants me to offer myself—offer connection. Being ready to do that with enough confidence that I won’t regret my openness has not been easy. I’m proud of the work I’ve done.

It looks like I’ve gotten a number of notifications too:

Notification

Fucking is now at level Beginner 5. You and your lover start to dance. Bodies fit together; spirits mingle. Things are good now, but you begin to see that with more practice and vulnerability, so much more is possible.

As your skill increases, your pleasure and that of your lover increases. As your skill increases, you and your lover can more easily form a deep connection. Whether that’s about relaxing together, building trust, or letting your spirit free, fucking can be the door and you will hold the key.

Notification

Exhibition is now at level Beginner 3. The audience makes it better. They turn you on; you excite them. Whether you’re watching or performing, or some mixture, the connection between the exhibitionist and the voyeurs drives things higher.

As your skill increases, things become easier with an audience. You will become more successful, find and give more pleasure with an audience. When you are watching, you can lend this to others. Soon enough, the power of exhibition will make things that seem impossible alone within your grasp, if only the right people are there to watch.

Notification

Seduction has jumped to Beginner 3. Whether it is the sway of your hips, or a word in someone’s ear, you are finding the skills to stoke their fires. Flirtation, reassurance, openness, and out right lust are your tools. While you cannot quite make your love interest putty in your hands, someday you will.

Notification

New Skill: Vulnerability. Love and connection can never be a single skill. But they start with vulnerability: offering something of yourself, and accepting the openness that another offers. Opening yourself up for connection or rejection.

I guess I got vulnerability working with Samantha, accepting the openness she offered in her room.

My Making Out advanced to Beginner 5.

And the big news: I finally got to level 9. Of course with that comes two bonus skills. I picked Life magic so I can start learning healing spells. I was hoping that it would start at Beginner 2, but apparently life magic advances slowly enough that I didn’t quite get enough initial points for that. And take a look at my second skill:

Notification.

New Skill: Smell of Sex at level Beginner 2. There’s sex in the air, and you love the smell of it.

At low levels, what you would smell subconsciously is something you will notice consciously. You will notice your own smell and that of your lovers. The tang of fear, the smell of arousal, and the pungent scent of release will all become clear to you. They will all excite and tease you in their own ways.

At high levels? Yes, this is the skill all the whores have been embarrassing you with throughout your game play.

Both passive and active; add mana for greater perception.

Okay, smell of sex might not be the most practical skill. But if Nora or Aubrielle found I passed it up, I would never live it down. Besides if I’m going to rub my nose in everything, I might as well get the full effect. I’m rubbing my legs together, enjoying the nastiness of it all.

What’s kind of cool, but also kind of scary is that a lot of the skill descriptions talk about how it will be easier for me to do things sexually. It talks about how these skills will let me find and create connection with lovers. Even the description of Making Out is talking about going beyond enjoying the dance of touch and breath to make deeper connections. What does that even mean?

Some skill advances are about things that actually change in a player. As you become inured to the blood and guts of battle, you’re going to be more effective. Some things are partially in the player and partially in the character. The game is realistic; if you learn to use a sword, some of your muscle memory transfers to the real world. But you can gain skill with a sword much faster than your brain adapts.

Some skills are purely in your character. Even if I get a knife made in the real world that is an exact replica of my casting dagger, I’m not going to be able to channel water magic through it. The real world just isn’t magical.

What does it mean when they talk about humiliation and exhibition making things easier as I get higher levels of the skill? If it’s just that after I’ve done things I’m going to get more comfortable, I have no problem. But it sounds like it might be more than that. What have I gotten myself into?

Just as I start to get worried, I’m interrupted by another notification. The game administrators have overridden my friends list and added MarvForAriel as a trusted contact. I guess you all know who Marv is; he runs the channel. Didn’t know he had a character though. I feel self conscious that even his character name is focused on me.

MarvForAriel: <Hey, just a reminder that you’re coming up on your first fan chat. You ready?>

Ariel: <Uh, not really. Kind of uncomfortable with what’s going on with my skills. Want to see if I can track Bruce down and ask about it. Are you up on my current commentary?>

MarvForAriel: <Just a sec, let me stream the last couple minutes. But you got a bunch of folks ready in five minutes real world.>

Ariel: <could we do something ... I don’t know, live stream my commentary and my conversation with Bruce, merging into a fan chat about what it means to be a whore as I finish with Bruce?>

I wait impatiently while Marv catches up.

MarvForAriel: <Yeah, I can totally work with that. I’ll montage some of the scenes with your clients—we’ll run the full thing after of course—and then run your commentary about skills. I’ll see if I can compress so we’re at real time by the time you and Bruce are done.>

Ariel: <But even if you catch up with Bruce and I in the stream, won’t the game be compressed faster than the real world?>

MarvForAriel: <Oh, right! The time compression of the game makes this hideously complicated. I’ll go ask someone more senior and do something awesome for you.>

I find Bruce back in the training space. He’s starting to talk to Susan Lawler, the innkeeper’s daughter. I interrupt. “Bruce, I’m kind of worried about something. Can I chat when you have a second?”

“Susan, mind if I take this? I will be happy to take you out front after I’m done with Ariel.”

He turns to me. I half expected him to be grumpy, but he is only concerned. “What is it?”

“I’m worried about what happens as my skills advance. The descriptions talk about things getting easier ... about me enjoying it more. How much of that is just me getting more comfortable and how much is the skills changing me?”

“I don’t understand. That’s how skills work. You get good at something and it gets easier. You focus on what you enjoy. Over time you tend to enjoy it more, at least if you are inclined to happiness.”

“But I’m an immortal. It’s more complicated between our characters and the part of us in the immortal world.”

“Questions like this are part of why immortal whores have confidants. I think you should ask yours. But I’m happy to be there if it would help to lend my perspective.”

“Yes please. You’d take the time?”

“You are nervous about this, and I see it is important to you. I would.”

So, we are off to the Roasted Pig. I’m nervous on two levels. First, it feels like I’m wasting his time: I’m getting in the way of Susan working with clients. But also, I worry about what the game might be turning me into. Every time I think I find how far the game is pushing my limits, it seems like there is something new. What will I be like in six months?

MarvForAriel: <While you’re walking, mind reviewing the rules for your fan chat?>

Ariel: <I guess.>

MarvForAriel: <It all comes down to how risque are you going to be and how risque will you let your fans be. There cannot be sexual contact between people in chat, but legally we could show anything that you could show on an erotic webcam.>

MarvForAriel: <I’m assuming that we let you do anything we can legally get away with. There’s no real benefit in restricting you: your videos are explicitly adult.>

Ariel: <Yeah, no sense in restricting me on my own channel. Obviously just because I can doesn’t mean I will.>

MarvForAriel: <Right. So the real questions. Do you permit nudity for your guests?>

Ariel: <Why would I?>

MarvForAriel: <A couple of people have written in talking about how they are pushing their own boundaries. They wanted to come in not very much, talking about how you’ve helped them accept vulnerability.>

Ariel: <We can still kick them out if they are being jerkish about it, right?>

MarvForAriel: <Yeah we can kick them out for whatever behavior we choose. But if we’re going to have a dress code, it’s only fair to enforce that ahead of time.>

Ariel: <For now, let’s say everything and nothing goes for clothing. If people are finding I’m helping them push limits, we want to support that.>

MarvForAriel: <What about sexual displays? If guests get turned on, can they touch themselves? That sort of thing?>

I had a vision of a circle jerk with my fan club. And then I realized that with the right preparation, something like that might be a good way to give my fans a taste of the vulnerability I am facing. Still, that isn’t really how I imagine this going most of the time.

Ariel: <For now, no environmental restrictions, but let people know that they need to be appropriate. Assume we will generally eject people for being sexual.>

We had arrived at the Pig. It was late enough that the place was packed. Goody Brown was passing through the crowd with drinks. I couldn’t see Hulda Brown anywhere.

Bruce and I approached the good woman. “Goody, any chance Bruce and I could have a word with you or Hulda?”

“Hulda’s gonna be right busy with clients. With Bruce here an ya recording, ya know it won’t be confidant private even if ya had me alone.”

“Yeah, that’s okay. I do want your thoughts as a confidant, but it won’t need to get to the private stuff.”

“I might could work from the bar, if that’s good like for ya.”

“Sure.”

We sat at the bar. We both ordered ciders. “So, whats on your mind,” Goody Brown asked.

“I was looking at my skills. Humiliation, Exhibition and a couple of the other skills talk about how things will get easier and more pleasurable as I go along.

“What’s that going to be like? It sounds like I could turn into a total slut. It sounds like just the idea of something being dirty—and perhaps an audience—would make it something I’d enjoy.”

Bruce looked at me. “Oh, if that’s all you’re asking, I can answer. If you keep focusing on humiliation and exhibition, then sure they can become really powerful for you. If you enjoy that thrill, then it can become a powerful motivation.”

“You’re saying that as my skill increases I’ll just do more humiliating stuff just because it feels good? Even if I don’t want to? That sounds really horrible.”

Bruce looks confused. “Ariel, the humiliating stuff feels good because you want it to. You focus on making that feel good. You even follow a path about embracing your desires. So yes, when you face humiliation because you want to, it gets easier the next time.

“Look, let’s think about another path. Imagine you were a warrior. You are interested in martial forms, so you focus on them. You gain skills, which make them easier and more enjoyable. So, you focus on more martial forms. Same thing.”

I’m not sure it’s the same thing at all. “But for the martial forms, it would be me desiring them. It sounds like you’re saying the skill warps my enjoyment and desires.”

“Ah, an now I see why ya want a confidant,” Goody Brown says. “Ya want to know how much is Ariel and how much your immortal soul.”

“Yeah.”

“An of course it’s all tangled like. At the beginning your soul drives the skill. Ya push hard to do something humiliating, an ya find the skill. Your soul cultivates the spark of a skill in Ariel.”

“Uh huh.”

“An it feels good and goes well for ya. So your soul might get a bit more open to that. Ya have a good experience as Ariel an it’s a might easier to do the same thing as Ariel, as another life tied to your soul, an even out in the immortal world.”

“That makes sense.”

“But all this is cause ya want it. That want, and the spark between Ariel an your soul stokes the skill.”

Goody Brown rests her chin on her hand. “An it grows. Ariel’s more comfortable wearing humiliation. Cause of your curse, she can grow faster than the soul. Ya think whoring’s different than another path.

“Nay to that. Ya take up a sword, an that gets easy. Then ya take up bows and arrows. An soon enough, what’s comfortable is a weapon.”

“But it’s not like a warrior will get driven by their choices,” I say. “It sounds like my lust could build up the more I enjoy it, until that’s how I think about the world.”

Bruce laughs. “Warriors not driven by their choices? Have you not heard of people who think of violence turning to violent solutions because it is what they know? When the sword, the bow, the spell are all easy and comfortable, diplomacy, seduction and running away may not come to mind. It’s all the same. Your choices drive who you will become.”

“But the warrior still has to decide to draw the sword.”

Bruce nods. “And you have to decide to spread your legs. You have to decide to mount your lover or let them take you. You know it will be pleasurable. If you continue as you’re going, you know a crowd will help your juices flow. But you still make the choice.”

“Aye, like that,” Goody Brown says. “Ariel may grow faster than your soul, but they still gotta fit together. Ya can be a fool right easy. But if ya stop to consider how you’re gonna feel tomorrow, well that’s a skill too. An that skill’s one this world cultivates as fast as your soul will let it. In that, Ariel an your soul will stand in accord.”

“So the skill is not going to cloud my mind so much that it gets in the way of my consideration?”

She nods. “Not any more so than your soul in the immortal world—less if Phoenix Rising can manage. Ya can still fall head over heals in love. But ya can tell the comfort and pleasure of your body from what you think is best.”

Goody Brown hesitates. “Well, for your own skills leastwise.”

“What do you mean?”

“Charms and someone seducing ya and the like. Even then ya have the option to watch third person, an least for sex, ya can withdraw consent.”

“Ah right.” That was a chilling thought. I’ve been charmed or enthralled once or twice by monsters. As a whore that sounds fairly disturbing, but the game does give you a good idea what’s going on.

Bruce brings us back to the effect of my own skills. “Your skills will affect things. As a master whore, I know I’m going to enjoy almost any sex I have. I have all sorts of ways to make sex pleasurable (even meaningful) to me. So many reasons someone might not want to offer themselves don’t apply to me. Even so I’m not going to spend my time with an odious, malodorous oaf. I might enjoy the sex, but I value myself more than that.”

He’s getting at something that has been trying to break out of the back of my mind. “So how does this all work with respect. I mean if I’m going to get turned on auctioning my evening to a bunch of misogynistic pigs just because there is an audience, isn’t that kind of throwing the idea of demanding respect out the window?”

“That depends on how you want to see it.”

“Bruce, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“The simple answer is you decide you’re worth more than that and ignore the pigs.

“But perhaps you have a good time smirking to yourself as they fuck you, waiting for your party to break down the doors and slaughter them all after you’ve gotten off and taken your evening’s price.

“If that’s not your style, perhaps you’re working to seduce them and build a connection so you can show some of them the error of their ways.

“Or perhaps they are so far beneath your contempt it’s like masturbation. You get off, take their money, and never look back. I don’t see you taking that last choice, but some whores do. The point is you decide what it means to you. Your skills give you options. Sometimes that’s easier, sometimes not. You decide what you do with those options. You live with the consequences.”