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“It’s a harem,” said Fenn.
“I thought you’d give me more credit, considering your familiarity with my writing,” the Narrator grumbled, snatching the neat stack of printed pages from her place at the table.
“You, maybe, but not him,” she replied, gesturing at B-side Juniper. “It was his idea, right?”
“You could say it was all three of us,” I interjected. “I’d been playing with the idea of doing a delve with you all, but I didn’t want to go into a setting I’d already designed.” The very nature of a delve meant I could make myself not know this while inside, but it still felt less authentic somehow. “I reached out to my counterpart here, and he’d been thinking of something similar.”
“We both had already started designing worlds—”
“Big surprise there” interjected Amaryllis,
“—and decided to swap. We looped in the Narrator at our next Godsgame match, and he wrote a short treatment for each to introduce the setting,” continued Buniper (a name neither of us liked, but had no alternative for). “My team has already agreed to run the ‘Glimwarden’ campaign, and you all, if you choose to, will run ‘This Used To Be About Dungeons.’”
We were seated at an ostentatious circular table at the Narrator and the Fenns’ house. Fenn, or rather, both Fenns, was/were in Mecha Form, which made the meeting slightly less confusing (three Junipers were enough to worry about). The Narrator sat to her left, followed by Buniper, myself, Amaryllis, and Grak. Raven was off on a delve of her own, and Val was vacationing with the kids and Jorge in a lower heaven, though she wished us luck.
“I haven’t been able to fully grasp the cosmology at play here,” said Grak. “It’s a series of tiled hexes, rather than one repeating one? Or are they staggered above each other by ‘elevation’?”
“When you start the delve, you’ll automatically have relevant knowledge of the world that any inhabitant would have, so you don’t really need to know all that right now. This introduction I’ve written for all of you is simply a way to be introduced to the story.” The Narrator shuffled the papers, which were mostly there for effect.
“However, I can mildly spoil some of the basic ideas,” Buniper said. “Essentially, the world is tiled into hexagons, each with a height of 12 miles, and each hex has a dungeon in it that anyone can enter exactly once in their lifetime.”
“Hold on,” said Fenn, “Height? Like the ground is six miles deep and the sky six tall? What’s above it?”
The other two Junipers and I all started to answer at the same time, abruptly stopped, and gestured for another of us to continue. After a few awkward seconds of gesturing and “no, you go,” Amaryllis spoke up. “The height of a hexagon is the distance between each pair of opposite sides, so each hex is about 124.708 square miles.” The old Mathematics virtue of doing mental arithmetic instantly was something I had obviously decided to keep around after the end of the world, and we’d both boosted it somewhat. “Anyway, I had my own question - we’re an adventuring party, and we can only go to each dungeon once. It seems like in our situation we’d eschew a home base and just go to new dungeons constantly, stopping in towns when needed. That, plus the skill combination of the characters we’ll be playing, suggests we’ll just be murderhoboing around for as long as the story goes.” She hesitated for a moment. “Actually, how long do you expect this delve to last?”
“I’ve set things up in such a way that there’s a clear ending in mind, not that I’d spoil it,” replied Buniper. This was also something the three of us had agreed to — while the ‘reverse dreamskewer’ delve format meant our lives now wouldn’t be remembered in the delve, the memory incorporation afterwards could be somewhat tainted with a sense of knowing the end before we’d started. “And to answer your question about murderhoboing, that isn’t really what I intended. Once you’re in the story, you’ll of course have agency, so your group could decide to do that. However, what I had in mind was more of a low-key story that didn’t revolve around adventuring, hence the title. I’d really rather focus on interpersonal relationships rath—argh!”
There was a loud bang as Fenn exploded, and two voices shouted in unison “Which is why its a harem!”. After the dust settled, there were two chairs next to the narrator, occupied by two identical Fenns differentiated only by t-shirt, which today read ‘I can be your angel…’ and ‘…or your devil’. The Narrator had mentioned this was a thing they were doing these days.
“A story can focus on relationships and not be a harem, and I swear we talked about not doing that in front of guests!”
“Not when its a group of girls and one male protagonist” replied the Angel. “I can’t believe you’d write Joon into another harem, and a slice-of-life one at that.”
“Speaking of the same thing, hexagons again?” The Devil continued the thought. “No wonder it’s Buniper’s setting, he can’t think of any other shape for a world?”
“I’m not going to play Tohru to Juniper’s Kobayashi - at least, not this Juniper” the Angel winked at the Narrator in an uncomfortably blatant way.
“Hold on, what makes you think I’d be Alfric?” I cut in before either of them could mentally connect harems, mecha, and anime, as another hour-long Evangelion argument would get old fast.
“It’s obviously what was intended,” said Amaryllis. “Joon, as the protagonist and general mover of the plot, is Alfric. Mizuki and Hanna are the Fenns, because weeb and excitable, obviously. I trust the parallels between your initial relationship to Grak and Alfric’s to Isra are clear. Finally, I’m Verity, but I only arrived at that conclusion through elimination.” She turned to Buniper and the Narrator. “Did I get all that right?”
“You’re extrapolating way too much here,” replied the Narrator. “If I wanted to write about you, I’d just continue Worth the Candle. I took on writing these treatments as a palate cleanser from that, anyway.”
“Not to mention that I’d started coming up with the characters before your Juniper approached me about a swap,” added Buniper. The same had been true for me, even moreso, as “Glimwarden” had been a tabletop setting from back on Earth. “However, you will all need to come to an agreement on who to play, or at least draw straws. I would suggest ‘playing against type,’ though, it might be an interesting experience to look back on when you have your full memories restored.”
— — —
“I’ll do it,” said Grak, after more idle discussion about the world, its mechanics, and a strange diversion about its number system. “A few years ago, I wouldn’t have said so because of the mindwipe. Now, however, I could see myself looking back on an experience like this fondly when it’s over”.
“Juniper and I had talked this over already, and its something we’d been wanting to try for a while anyway,” added Amaryllis. We’d mostly discussed it in the abstract, as we didn’t have details of the story, but we’d precommitted to agreeing with anything that wasn’t too intense or close to our adventures on Old Aerb. “Fenns?”
“Of course we’re in,” said the Devil, “as long as I get to be Alf”
“Please don’t call him that,” I said.
“Will you survive without us, my dearest Juniper?” the Angel asked in a tone that approached histrionics.
“There will be plenty to entertain myself with by watching all of you. I’ve been meaning to write a new book anyhow.” the Narrator flashily produced a pen from thin air and jotted down a couple of notes, which everyone knew was purely theatrical.
“Am I correct in assuming you’re going to record this meeting as well?” said Amaryllis as she stood from her chair. There were preparations to be made, after all. “Like a sort of prologue?”
“Probably not — I think it’ll just be a standalone thing.”