It was a dark and stormy glitch in my video card that night I first entered the rogue camp. I couldn't help but think about how "early '99" the graphics in the rogue camp were, but that was until I set my eyes on this little Philly named Charsi.
Oh sure I had seen few female blacksmiths in my day. Most of them looked like Griswald. A few of them even looked like the evil Griswald from the holocaust-version of Tristram. But this Charsi was different. I approached her with a skip in my step, which wasn't easy in my 40-pound plated boots.
"Hi there. I'm Charsi, the blacksmith here in camp. It's nice to see some strong adventurers around here."
"Well hi there yourself," I happily rejoined. "My name is Druid_61. I bet you say that to all the guys."
Talk ... Introduction ... "Hi there. I'm Charsi, the blacksmith here in camp. It's nice to see some strong adventurers around here."
"Okay, let's dispense with the small talk," I demanded with a coy thrust of my hips. I finally broke her out of her two-level dialogue tree and we began to talk of our pasts.
It seems that Charsi grew up in the south of somewhere and had some traumatic experiences with someone or something and I just couldn't concentrate on what she was saying because I kept admiring her leather corset.
After spending about three minutes talking about herself, I gave her a two-hour rundown of my history. I told her about how my mom always got mad when I told her that I was growing my hair long and sleeping with vines because I wanted to grow up to be a druid. She giggled wistfully when I told her about my time in grade school when I always got in trouble for shape shifting on the playground and mauling the girls to death. She gave me somewhat of a sour look, however, when I told her that for graduation my grandparents gave me a new skill that allowed me to devour corpses whenever I needed a little boost.
I asked her about this rogue camp and she went on to tell me about the other girls. She mentioned Blood Raven, Akara, and Kashya... Akara, Akara, that name rang a bell. Oh yes, I told Charsi, I think I used to date her back in the day. But back then, I was going through an "Oriental Phase" and I thought she was Chinese. I broke up when I discovered she was wearing a ring that gave her +2 to Asian.
Our small talk so far was going well, and I thought that possibly she was interested in me. I wanted to try to score a date for later that night when she got off work. Figuring that I was smothering her, I decided to leave her alone for a bit, and explore this rogue camp.
The camp seemed rather small on the whole, and no matter where I wandered, I was always within earshot of that daft, ever-present Deckard Cain hanging around the fire. I constantly try to avoid that guy, and I refuse to let him identify anything that I am carrying. That just feeds his ego. Stupid Mr. Know-it-all. Everyone that town portaled near him, he wound desperately call out "Stay a while." "Stay a while." "Stay a while." Pathetic old man.
But I did plan to weave a little Deckard Cain into my romantic musings. Later that night, if everything went well with Charsi, and she pulled down my pelt to see my little druid, I was going to say in my best Deckard Cain voice, "Congratulations! You've found the Horadric Staff. Stay a while."
Ah well, I was getting ahead of myself. I wanted to see a bit more of the camp. Something seemed a bit strange, and I couldn't figure it out. I walked over to Kashya, and she tried to rent me a female rogue for the day. Every time I went over to her, she had a new array of women to rent me, some were into kinky ice stuff, others into some sadistic fire stuff, and they were all too expensive for me. I figured they might cramp my style on the date tonight if I always had a female archer nervously walking around my boudoir.
I walked over to Akara, praying that she didn't recognize me. Just in case, I morphed into a werewolf and ran up to her on all fours. I wanted to get the inside scoop on this camp, because the more I thought about it, the stranger it all seemed. She started telling me about this Den of Evil and I told her to shut her trap. I didn't want to hear about that nonsense, I wanted to find out about different tricks that I could use to get Charsi into bed. But first, I couldn't help but notice how large her most womanly of chestly objects were.
"My goodness, Akara," I said in a stunned werewolf voice, "your chest is a lot bigger than I remember."
"Do I know you?"
"Err. Um no," I was almost busted, "I saw some drawings of my back in my village, and they must have been more conservative in the bosom area."
"I see. No, I'm sure that drawing was accurate. You like my figure? That's nice of you to say. I just had my breasts imbued by Charsi."
"What?"
"Yes, didn't she do a wonderful job?" Akara placed her hands on her hips and turned side to side to show off Charsi's fine work.
This was all very strange, and I was beginning to get a fuller picture of what exactly was going on in this rogue camp.
"Well, yes, I suppose." I hesitatingly agreed with a nervous shifting from side to side of my werewolf eyes. "Let me ask you something. I'm not sure how to say this in a medieval politically correct way, but, errr, ummm, since this camp has no men in it, and since this camp has all women in it, and since, err, umm, well, are you into, errr, ummm."
"Yes, if you are saying what I think you are saying." She confirmed with a curt nod of her head that quickly reverberated down to her bosom. "You see, I used to date this real jerk named Druid_61 and he broke my heart. Ever since then, I can only find true happiness in the arms of a fellow leather-clad female rogue."
So that was it. The plot thinned. I had to have some time to think about these latest developments. I headed towards the opposite side of the camp to commune with the cows. As I was walking away she starting telling me to go help her with some spurned lover named Blood Raven that was really into this Goth stuff in the cemetery, but I just ignored her and tossed her a fulminating potion that I had mistakenly lodged in my cod-piece.
So, if Charsi was like the others, and I had a feeling she was, this was going to be a really tough challenge for the famous Druid_61. I communed with nature in my most druid of ways and exchanged methane with my bovine brothers before I began to hatch a plan of monumental proportions. This plan would not only convert Charsi back to the world of medieval heterosexuality, but it would also get me a free imbue. I felt really ripped off since I wasted my last imbue on a key.
I strolled over to Charsi again to see say hello and ask her out. This was stage one out of sixteen stages in my plan. For the reader, don't worry about this turning into a long affair, because stage two through stage fifteen involved different ways for me remove ticks from my body.
I asked to see Charsi's inventory, and to my surprise, it was completely different than it was just ten minutes beforehand. How was this possible, I asked? She just shrugged her shoulders and said she had no idea. She went on to explain all the different surreal experiences that happened around the rogue camp - like how she never seemed to run out of health potions, how she had a built-in profit margin of about 80%, and how she can repair a sash with a hammer and anvil.
Then I started taking a closer look at her inventory, and I started seeing a trend that I found disturbing. Besides imbuing the breasts of the women in the rogue camp, it appeared that Charsi's lean-to also served as the local adult-bookstore. Apparently, in her free time, she smelted a wide array of medieval sexual implements to be used, shall we say, exclusively by women in the solitary comfort of their home. After asking her about it, she said the most popular model was "Deckard's Cane." I quickly changed the subject; because this was seriously diverging from my multi-staged plan to eventually get a good look at her outer cloister.
Before she could continue pontificating on the merits of manufactured manhood, I interrupted and asked her out.
"Charsi, you and I don't know one another very well," I began, with a woeful look crossing my face. "This troubles me, and the only just ramification would be if we had dinner together, tonight, at a little restaurant I know in the Dark Wood."
"Oh that sounds lovely, I'd love to!" She exclaimed and jumped around.
To make myself seem a bit more dangerous, I leered at her, threw my cape around my body, and backed away wordlessly. My head was lowered as I glowered in her general direction, backing up slowly, slowly, tauntingly, slowly, until 15 minutes later when I was finally out of her sight. Oh yes, with this sweet egress, I had set the stage for what was sure to be a night to remember.
I didn't really have a home or anything, but I did have a nice little place in Act 4. It was called the River of Flame, and it was always crawling with demons and about nine different creatures that all had managed to creatively incorporate the word "Stygian". I went back to clear out all of the riff-raff so that everything would be romantic for when I would bring back Charsi later that night.
I donned my best clothes, many of which were Unique. I knew that Charsi, being a blacksmith, would immediately recognize each and every element of my outfit, so I chose each item with meticulous care. I wore a dark suit of armor that was called, "The Pulverizer"; a pair of gloves called, "Woman Ripper"; and I topped off the ensemble with a fetching belt called, "Infested Privates."
The sun was setting, so it was time for me to get going. I went over the plan in my head during the long walk to the rogue camp. It was my theory that Charsi had become so asphyxiated by the rampant estrogen around her that she just settled for the company of a fellow woman. To combat this, and take her away from her nightly girl parties (estro-fests), I prepared to verbally and physically eviscerate the taint of estrogen with an extra-heavy dose of testosterone. Not just any testosterone, but the special strain of hormone that can only be secreted by Druid_61.
So it was with this mindset of overly aggressive testosterone-filled dialogue that I began and continued the evening.
"Hey baby," I confidently announced upon slamming open the door to her home. "Damn you look good. The last time I saw leather look that good on a lady was when it was the hide of a prize-winning heifer at the local faire."
She looked taken aback, so I slapped her rear-end and gave her a little "gitty-up" look.
"Look what you've done to me already!" I proclaimed, sweeping my flattened hands in a pointing motion towards my groin. "Am I happy to see you, or is there a Monk's Scimitar of Chain Lightning in my pocket?"
She seemed really quite alarmed at my behavior, but I paid it no mind. I grabbed her arm and led her out of her home. I used my war scythe to shut her door behind us, and I accidentally decapitated some flowers in the front garden. I apologized for that, and then slapped her hiney again. We were off to dinner.
We arrived at the small restaurant, romantically nestled deep in the forest, and I ordered two steaks immediately before we even sat down. I told the waiter that the lady would be having a salad of Inifuss.
Throughout dinner, I tried to make as many callously insensitive remarks as I could conjure, trying to keep with the theme of "extreme man." I invalidated her feelings, belittled her emotions, praised her hot body, derided her intellect, and insulted her mother, all before the dessert was served. I was never good at reading women, so she was either starting to warm up to this treatment, or she was getting ready to use Critical Strike.
"Oh my gods I am full!" I yelled aloud, slapping my hands on my gut and sliding my chair back from the table. "Those steaks really hit the spot, which is what I will be doing later." I glanced her direction and gave her a double wink. "How was your meal?"
"You mean this little salad? Well, it-"
"Ah shut it baby," I cut her off. "You're here to look good, not to interrupt my questioning with answers."
She looked confused.
"But-" she began.
"Listen here, sister," I began, rolling my head around my shoulders in an annoyed manner. "I've had the hottest dames from Kurast. I've had the most primo betties from Travincal. I've even mistakenly had a tanned young boy from Lut Gholein. But until I saw you this morning, I've never seen a lass with such great set of goodozoongas."
"Goodozoo-"
"Silence, wench." I demanded. Maybe I was getting too much into this scene, but I figured it was all or nothing. "It's time to get to my place. I've got a bed that's been dying for my sweaty and hairy body to roll around in it. You must know how that bed feels. Come on baby, let's go."
The check came, and I didn't have any money on me so I paid with a mummified head that I had in my pack.
We walked back to my place in silence. Occasionally, I would stop and give her a brooding and frightening look before continuing onward. Other times, I could sense her looking at me as walked, and she would only see a scowling stare beneath a furrowed brow, as I feigned a demeanor of menace.
The River of Flame was unseasonably warm when we arrived. She seemed bothered by the red-hot lava that flowed around the cold stone floor. Apparently, she was used to walls and carpeting and other conformist amenities. Tiny wisps of flame shot out of the molten rock and licked at her legs as she walked. A deep grumbling sound continually vibrated the rock-strewn floor and gave her a daunting feeling. Her Ann Taylor shoes were soon coated with a deep red after walking through several puddles of pooled blood that would ooze through the grout from the depths of hell. Home sweet home.
Finally arriving at my bedroom, I realized that I hadn't really done that great a job cleaning up after all. I tried to be nonchalant as I swept some decomposing bones and rotting skulls from my bed. There were still a few bone chips and fleshy remains, but I couldn't find my Dustbuster. I just hoped she didn't mind a little viscera and gristle during her lovemaking.
Suddenly, I grabbed Charsi around the waist and pulled her body to mine.
Charsi," I hastened, "You the next lucky recipient of my love. I can't say I don't envy you."
With that, I kissed her deeply. She resisted, and I entered a state of Feral Rage. She seemed to like that, although the glowing red ball that spun around us confused her.
"Hurry," I urgently explained, "This only last 20 seconds, and I forgot to stop at the store to get more mana."
Then ensued the best 20 seconds of my life.
"Are you done?" She demanded, throwing my spent body in a careless heap beside the bed. I laid there like a worthless pile of discarded tissues, with my eyes rolled back into my head in thin state of consciousness.
"Please," I managed to utter between gasps of air, "Can you scratch my back and turn on ESPN?"
"I don't even know that that is!" Charsi said, getting irate. "You mean this is what the big hype of men is all about?! This is what some of the other women in the rogue camp used to do before joining us? This is ridiculous!"
"ES," I was fading into sleep, "PN."
"I used you tonight just to see what all the hype was about!" She screamed, throwing a Flummoxed Javelin of Discontent at me. "I hate you! I hate all men! I'm leaving!"
She was gone. What's worse, she didn't even turn on ESPN. What's worse, I didn't even have a television. What's worse, I didn't even know what a television was. But the Charsi leaving part was bad too. Oh, it was also bad that I had a javelin now stuck through one of my lungs.
This original story can be found at the articles at gamespy.com.