Streamers in Not a Death Game: POV Tests

[wolffyluna]

I have been working on my "f/f VR streamers in not a death game" by writing little scenes outside of the story itself to get a feel for the character voices of the two leads. I think they're some fun little scenes, and seeing as they aren't going in the story itself, I can share them!

RatGlaive logged into the Coliseum, and logged into stream. “Hi all, just playing something casual. Don’t expect too much fancy footwork.”

27wheelsofcheese: ha, as if you can play casually

Norvegicus: and that’s why we love her! ❤️

The Coliseum was always good to make some easy content, a nice schedule filler. The only problem was the Coliseum after a patch was it’s own very specific brand of chaos. The crowd was a mess of jittery time travel as the netcode fought the lag. The lobby was silent except for the royalty free music, which was good, because otherwise it would be a cacophony of mostly racial slurs.

RatGlaive was partway through putting out an ad when the ‘bloop’ of a speech request came through.

“RatGlaive! I never thought I would see you slumming it here.” And that would be Matchiavelli. She’d friended him for a reason, he was good collaborator for content. He was a good heel. The problem was he didn’t seem to realise that. His model could best be described as “renaissance anime fuckboy,” the sort where some poor artist had spent the better part of a week modeling his doublet.

He always looked at her like he expected this time she would have bought a better model.

Sucked to be him, a free model made by furries with some jankily added equally free clothes was part of her brand now. “I wouldn’t say I’m slumming it. There’s some people here who know what they’re doing.”

“Oh, Rat, I’m wounded.”

“Would you like to be actually wounded?” That’s why they were both here. “C’mon, I’ll call bush dance rules if you don’t.”

Match grinned the broad grin of someone with expensive face tracking. “I never thought you’d offer your—“

“Do not finish that sentence.”

He gave a flourishy bow. “I would be delighted to join you in honourable combat.” He was slimy nerd who’d read too much Meyer, but she couldn’t even call him that because she was a Meyer nerd too. “Flat ground, first blood?”

She shrugged. “Sure.”

He put in the request, they were teleported to a blank box with gridlines.

Rat felt the lag disappear like surfacing from a pool filled with honey. She selected a saber from the menu, and pulled it out from her scabbard.

He looked at her quizzically past his own drawn sabre. “You? Without your big stick?”

“You see, Match, unlike some people, I read the patch notes.”

“It’s a poor fighter who changes what they do just for the meta.”

Well, he could think that. “Ready?”

“En garde!”

They fought each other carefully, feeling out the other’s reactions while trying to give away as little of their own as possible. They’d fought enough times she knew what he was like— careful and technical and an annoying arsehole if you let him be. Still, he’d had as much time to practice since last bout as she had.

It was true he’d used a sabre more than she had. She was inexperienced. She’d spent the last two days pulling all nighters helping out the wiki people. Getting all the new frame data and damages for each weapon, comparing the button inputs to the full body imputs, the works. It was a shame how’d they’d nerfed polearms, but she had the cold hard data to see how bad it was.

She liked her glaive, but she didn’t like her name enough to lose fights about it.

She focused on reading him, tuned out the comments flowing into her stream. (It was mostly “RatSabre! RatSabre!” and random emojis anyway.)

Match fought her like she was his mirror image.

Match fought her like she was still on 3.2.

A bad fighter followed the meta.

A good fighter forged their own path.

A great fighter made the meta her bitch.

She left an opening near her face.

The poor fool took it. He thrust straight at her.

She blocked him with the flat of her sword.

That very nice face tracking showed the moment of confusion. She could have parried that. She ‘should’ have parried that.

That moment lasted for less than a tenth of a second.

She swung at his face. “PLUS EIGHT ON BLOCK, FUCKER!”

She drew a stripe of blood across his cheek.

The Coliseum kept the pain turned low, but that still would have stung like hell. His sword clattered to the floor as he grabbed his cheek and worked his jaw. “That was unsporting,” he said, though he sounded secretly thrilled.

Rat leaned on the tip of her sabre. “You think I’d be sporting in a slum?”

Her chat became a mess of cheering and open mouthed emojis.

Sternumambush: YOOOOOOOOO

Veeringbiryani: FUCK MATCH GO RAT

27wheelsofcheese: OUR CASUAL QUEEN REIGNS SUPREME

And this was why you helped the nice wiki people get their frame data.

“Hello pianists and prose poets!” Lamatyave reached up and adjust the party hat on top of her model’s head. “Guess what day it is! It’s the fifth birthday of Catacomb of Cataclysm! I have to celebrate the birthday of my darlingest baby!” That everyone forgets I made. “Come on, let’s jump in.”

She did a new version of her loading screen dance while she waited for the server to connect. She’d put a copy on her private server— all the publically available copies had the pain turned up way too high for her tastes, even SplitValley— but it meant she missed out on the joys of a high budget paid server, like a proper CDN.

She popped into the windswept field outside the castle. She’d worked hard to make it look imposing, but it had been so many years and so much tinkering with it in Builder Mode that she forgot how much it looked over you in first person. Past her knew what she doing.

Lightning flashed behind the castle, carefully modulate to not cause problems with photosensitivity.

She opened the ornate wooden doors. There was deep echoing groan. She expected it— it was her voice, modulated and edited and fought to the death— but it still sent a chill up her spine.

“Now, you have to understand I made this five years ago. This map had graduated it’s bachelor’s and is planning to go for it’s master’s. Which means you can’t laugh too hard when I get my derriere handed to me.”

Flonkingbaggins: could you beat this when it first came out?

She smiled. “Aww, come on. Despite my reputation, I did playtest this one. I was the best player of this—“ she stuck her tongue out between her teeth. “—until I put this out into the public.”

And that got her chat laughing, and not doubting her abilities too much.

She summoned a torch and an eleven foot pole from her inventory. “It may have been a few years, but I do remember who designed this.”

Weirdobazooka: and the 60 foot rope?

She smiled wide, flicking her eyes to her preview in the corner of her screen to check face tracking had picked it up properly. “Never leave home without it!”

She walked through that first dark corridor. In the distance, an organ played “My Grandfather’s Clock” muffled by the sound of rain on a roof. …why was that the ambient music she had chosen for this floor?

She tapped her pole in front of her, feeling the satisfaction as she set off each dart trap in front of her. Catacombs had always run on reputation and sheer bloody mindedness. It was hard and tricksy, she’d worked for months to make it that way, but at the end of the day, even she could beat it. “See, easy peasy lemon squeasy. You guys are more scared than me!”

Flonkingbaggins: because we’ve seen you play before

Well, that was uncalled for. Another tap, another click, and a quick spark of satisfaction.

And then a jet of flame came barelling right towards her face.

She dived to the floor with a yelp.

The pain was low enough that it just felt like a hair dryer against her back.

The thing that made her heart rate spike was the flashing health bar in the corner. Down to 50% already, and she’d made this without health bar gradients (or any coyote time, which was going to make the jumping puzzle splendiforously fun if she ever got there.) “I should have rememembered I made this for the eleven foot pole people.”

The chat was laughing, at least.

She picked herself up, and checked for traps more carefully. It was for show mostly. She knew that flamethrower trap was meant to catch the overconfident, and then it was quiet. Give people time to stew in distant music and the fact the torch only shone 15 feet in front of them.

She reached the first right angle turn of the dungeon. She remembered what she put there well, she remembered the tips and tricks to get around it. She put out her torch.

She wasn’t in complete darkness, the game’s lighting engine wouldn’t let you do that, but she had to look hard to see where the walls were.

She dropped low, and shuffled slowly, hoping the stealth engine would be kind to her.

There was a growl.

The first corridor ogre.

She’d seen them a lot, from rearranging them throughout the dungeon. She’d got so sick of them, she’d never used them in any project again. She thought they would have lost all terror for her.

She’d forgotten exactly how they loomed over a crouching opponents. They low glow of their eyes, that reflected off the studs in their clubs just enough for you to see them properly.

Her audience wanted to hear her scream ‘like a little girl.’ They also wanted the fool Lamatyave Experience. “Hi there, stranger. You come here often?”

It wound up for a blow.

The hit felt like cat jumping onto her ribs, but the rushing blackness made her scream anyway.

She respawned back outside the castle, text floating into view: ‘You Have Lost to the Catacombs: One Time.’

“Well, second time’s the charm? Maybe me and that troll might get to know each other a little better. ”