
For the first Saturday morning in years, I wasn't happy
to be at my friend Ben's house. Our weekly Dungeons and
Dragons sessions had been feeling lackluster ever since
Andrew moved out to Palo Alto, but the solution was *not*
to invite someone totally new into the group without really
talking to us about it. Ben was a great DM, but he struggled
with some social skills, especially when it came to women.
The fact that the new arrival was a woman left me in a
particularly sour mood. I have no problem with women in
the abstract, but up close I don't know how to deal. I
consider myself a feminist, but that doesn't mean I'm
immune to my nerdy nervousness. I get awkward and sweaty
and am forever worrying about a billion stupid little things.
For years, D&D had been a safe place where I could feel
comfortable expressing myself. I knew I would never be
able to do that with someone new and female in the group.
Making it worse, the idea that I felt so repulsed by the
idea of a woman joining our group made me feel wracked
with guilt. I know how awful the gaming community can
be to women, and I really did not want to be one of those
guys.

I had been really looking forward to playing a horror
campaign, and had carefully constructed a character with
all the mental flaws you would expect for such a theme.
My gnome illusionist had watched a vampire slaughter his
sister for sport as a teen, and lost a hand trying to
stop it. The experience had left him permanently scarred,
and loosened his grip on sanity. Of course, Ben had called
me last night and told me that Alissa wanted to do more of
a high-powered campaign. He told me I should treat any
mental issues I had given my character as flaws and match
them with feats. Normally we totally banned flaws, but
apparently Alissa was using several in her character.

The other guys trickled in one by one, and I greeted them
like the old friends they were. It was a little weird to
be there without Ben, but he was picking Alissa up so he
would be there late.

I smiled when Ben walked in the door, but I'm not sure
quite what my face was doing when Alissa followed him.
Ben had told me she was hot, but I wasn't prepared for
this. Shiny black hair tumbled down around her shoulders
in thick waves, and full red lip fought with piercing
blue eyes for my attention. Both lost out to the
gravitational pull of cleavage created by a tight corset.
She was wearing a low-cut shoulder-less dress that hugged
her ass like a second skin and stopped just below her hips.
Shiny black spike boots brought her over 6', and the height
made her appear even more intimidating. She looked more
like she was ready to go to a club than play a board game.

She beamed at us, "Hey boys, whose ready to play?" Without
really waiting for an answer she went on, "I worked so hard
on my character. I'm so ready to get this show on the road!"

"Awesome." Said Ben. He had had more time to adjust to Alissa,
so he was the only one not staring. "While I get set up, why
don't you guys pass around your character sheets?"

Passing our sheets around was a time-honored tradition. It
gave us a chance to understand what everyone was capable
of for the coming campaign. Remy had gone with his standard
ninja, this time as an elf, no real surprises there. Alex
was playing his third Druid in a row. Alex was Ben's kid
brother and while he was a lot better about it now than
when he started playing, he had a tendency to build his
characters for strength rather than flavor. Still, this
Druid did not look as broken as TurboBear had been, so
I was fine with it.

Alissa's character, named Lady Lyss, came on several sheets
of paper. The first was a colored drawing depicting a tall black haired
woman holding a ball of light in her palm. It was quite
skillfully done. It looked like a self-portrait of Alissa
except that she had been magnified. The sheet of paper
said that the woman stood 8'2" though I was not sure if that
height was supposed to include the wicked heals she was
wearing, whereas the real-life Alissa could not have been more
than 5'8" (at least without her boots). Even more
notable than the height difference was the difference
in figure. Alissa was busty, but it at least seemed plausible
that she could buy bras off the rack. The woman on the page
had extremely exaggerated curves. I noticed that the dress
the drawing was wearing looked just like the one Alissa had
on.

When I turned over the page to look at her stats I saw that
she was playing a human sorcerer. All of her stats were at
epic levels, and I wondered why until I got to the flaws
section. She had given herself a series of "tragic beauty"
flaws which gave her enormous boosts to charisma and a
few physical ability scores at the cost of an irresistible
hypnotic aura that allowed her to make suggestions to
anyone she enthralled. What made it a flaw was that she
could not turn off the aura. It was so ridiculously
broken that I wondered if Ben was going crazy. He
normally hated excessive character optimization as much
as I did, but for some reason he had let it through.
I could think of a few possibilities based on the way
he was ogling Alissa's cleavage.

"Alissa, where did you find the rules for these flaws
and abilities?" I asked.

"I made most of them up. They seemed like fun." She
replied. There was a challenge in her eyes and under the
intensity of her gaze I found that I had lost what I
was going to say. After I failed to respond, quailing
a bit before her blue eyes, she said. "I know Lady
Lyss is a bit high powered, but I think high powered
campaigns are the best. I already talked to Ben about it
and he said it was ok. Why don't you guys add some extra abilities
to your characters to even things out."

I did not really want to, but I could see that I would be
playing a twig in a game meant for gods if I did not give
myself some OP juice to play with. I ended up giving my character
an ability that let him win any will save, one that made his
illusions 95% real, and the ability to trap someone in coma
filled with insane hallucinations that slowly drained their
wisdom. They other guys amped up their characters a bunch as
well and we were ready for the first roll of the day.

We found ourselves in the same compartment of a magerail on our
way to the city of Redcliff. We were each going for different
reasons and did not know each-other.

"Wait, everyone has to roll will saves." Said Alissa.

"Why?" asked David. He did not like spending too much time thinking
about stats, which I appreciated about him, but it probably meant
that he had not read Alissa's character very thoroughly.

"Because," Alissa began as if it was obvious, "Lady Lyss is
so beautiful that you have to make will saves or become fascinated."

David and Alex reached for dice and rolled away. Examining the
numbers Ben declared, "You both fail! You are fascinated by the
incredible beauty of the tall, voluptuous woman sitting across the isle
from you."

Looking at Remy and myself, Alissa asked, "Why didn't you roll?"

"As a paragon illusionist, I always know true reality, and have
gazed into the unfathomable depths of possibility. My will
cannot be broken." I informed her.

She looked a little annoyed at that, but she just turned to ask
Remy why he had not rolled. "I am focusing my chi in preparation
for a coming danger. In my altered and heightened state of awareness
I feel no fear, anger, pain, or lust." He replied. Her full lips
thinned, but she held her tongue.

Before we could reflect on the implications of the fact that Alissa's
presence was enough to incapacitate two of our party, Ben informed
us that the magerail had been abruptly de-powered.

"I go towards the engine to see what happened." Said Alissa.

"There aren't engines on magerails. Each car draws power from
the track and propels itself." Ben informed her.

She rolled her eyes, "Well there has to be someone in charge,
right? I go look for the conductor."

"Ok, Alissa is going to the front of the train. What do you guys
want to do?" Ben asked.

"I cast Mage Armor on myself." I said.

"I'll follow Alissa." Said David.
"Me too." Chimed in Alex.

"Well hold on, you two are still fascinated by Alissa's beauty."

"I beckon for them to follow me. They look like they can fight."
Said Alissa.

"Remy, what do you do?" Asks Ben.

"I remain in my seat, but listen for anything that might indicate
why the train has stopped."

"Ok"

Turning to me Ben said, "Mark, what are you going to do after you
armor up?"

"I guess I'll follow the others to the front of the train, but
I'm going to hang back a bit."

Ben nodded, "Ok, Alissa, you get to the front of the train and
see five people in light armor standing over the passengers.
One of them is holding a large sack while a second stuffs
an overweight man from the first row into the sack. The
conductor is nowhere to be seen."

"I demand to know what they are doing." She said.

Ben rolled several dice behind his screen, "One of them
looks at you with adoration in his eyes, overcome by
your beauty and commanding voice, but the others resist.
Each of them has a red glow in their eyes, and they look
frenzied."

"What does the guy who fell for me say?" Asked Alissa.

"We are here to collect tributes for the ascension of the
Black King."

"I tell him to get out of my way and go punch the nearest
red-eyed guy."

Alissa killed two of the attackers with her fists before
taking down the other two with chain lightning. She apparently
had an ability which allowed her to cast a spell while attacking
or moving, and another which gave her access to her bonus spells
early.

"Now I'm going to ask the guy I dominated to tell me everything
about the Black King." She said. We soon learned that the Black
King was a particularly powerful vampire who was planning to
ascend to demigod hood by drinking the blood of 1000 souls.
It sounded to me like he was supposed to be an ultimate boss
that we worked our way up to, but Alissa had different ideas.
She had soon gotten the location of the most senior flunky her
prisoner knew about and was storming off to find him.

"I bring the druid and the barbarian with me, and I ask anyone
else on the train if they want to come." She said, offering
an olive branch to us after dominating the first encounter.
I felt like I should object, but Alissa had an energy around
her that was hard to resist. Instead of trying to address my
gaming concerns, I found myself staring at her cleavage. Had
there always been that much of it? Somehow I remembered Alissa
being smaller when she arrived.

I found myself agreeing to go after the black king's flunky,
and in short order the party was kicking down the door of
a demon duke's castle. A hoard of vampire lords stormed
out of the walls and attacked us.


"Ok, where are they?" Alissa asked around a mouthful of
pizza. She had convinced us to order two pies and split
the cost, but then she had placed them on a table that
only she could reach. None of us had felt brave enough
to ask her for a slice, but she was on her fifth with
no sign of stopping.

Ben placed the monster mini-figures. I thought about pointing
out that we were supposed to declare our marching order first,
but the moment passed.

Alissa placed her figure in a prime spot to slice and dice.
David, Remy and Alex all had some capacity for a standup
fight but I was definitely not going to be able to survive
even a single blow from one of these vampires, so I positioned
my figure behind the others.

David's barbarian got dropped unconscious immediately by a blow
from one of the vamps, and Alex's druid only avoided a similar
fate thanks to an extremely unlucky role for one of the other
vampires. One of the vampires was foolish enough to provoke
an attack of opportunity from Lady Lyss and found its head
separated from its body.

Alyssa's initiative was the highest, so once the vampires were
done she went first. Two of them fell to strokes of her massive
greatsword and another bolt of chain lightning took out the
rest.
