FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

And here's the next portion of Realms of Fantasy. As always, all constructive criticism is welcome. Enjoy!

---

"Wow; you weren't kidding when you said this game had a heavy emphasis on anthropomorphized women." Katt marveled as we walked through the open air market, looking at all the other players in various states of dress. Armored warriors, archers, mages, clerics; all could be seen mingling throughout various points. Intermittently placed were players in simpler, casual garb as well as the uniforms of the various crafting and gathering classes. While some morphs were clearly more popular than others, the sheer variety of classes and races meant it was almost impossible to find two players with the same combination. "I'm seeing cats, wolves, dogs, some kind of bird of prey and... is that a cow?"

"Yup. If there's an animal in the real world, there's probably an anthro version of it somewhere in Realms." I led the way through the crowd over to a stall that sold casual clothes; we'd worry about getting Katt some armor later. Right now I just felt weird walking around with my Old Lady while she had barely more than rags on. The human male behind the counter of the stall smiled as I approached.

"Hello, miss! What can I help you with today?" His voice sounded a little rehearsed, but it was no surprise. This was a stall run by an NPC(non-player character, for those unfamiliar with the term), so the program that ran him was set up for only the most basic of interactions. A greeting, getting the item you selected down from wherever it was in his stall, presenting it to confirm that's what you wanted, and then taking payment for it. In fact, if you looked closely at the ground in front of any of the NPC run stalls, you'd see a line in the shape of a half circle looping out from one end of the stall to the other. Anyone who wanted to buy something had to be within that circle or they'd simply be ignored.

"Let's see..." I glanced around the selection of clothes hanging around the wooden stall. "Katt, any preference on color?"

"Huh?" Katt stepped closer to the stall, crossing the line that would trigger the vendor to respond to her. "I guess the white a-ah!"

I hid a smirk as Katt yelped a little as the vendor engaged with her. While the vendor wasn't exactly great for conversation, having such a basic program allowed him to engage with multiple players at once. I heard the vendors originally started out being much more personable and lively, but they could only engage with one player at a time. That got to be a problem as Realms got more popular and major lines would form at a lot of the booths. Now the vendors, or at least the ones that stocked basic goods like starting equipment and common supplies, ran the much simpler vendor program.

"I-I'm sorry! I don't have any money..." Most players got used to it pretty fast, but I could understand Katt's bewilderment as gave me a confused look. To my eyes, it looked like the vendor still had his full attention on me. In her eyes, his attention was fully on her, yet I was still engaging with him and handing him money at the same time he was focused on her. Katt apologized furiously and backed away while I finished up the transaction.

I explained to her how the vendors worked as we headed toward our destination, The Oasis. A mixture of tavern and inn, it also served as the central hub that directed players to almost anything they were looking for. As we entered through the double doors and into the entry way of The Oasis, Katt's eyes were immediately drawn over to the Request Room. An entire room just inside the entry hall was devoted to various requests and advertisements for in game services and organizations, with different colored fliers denoting the type of advertisement and whether it was something generated by Realms itself or another player. I made a mental note to show Katt that room later, but for now we directed our attention to the hostess waiting at her stand further in.

"Hi there! Welcome to the Oasis!" The fox girl asked cheerfully. Her personality and tone seemed almost as bright as she was. Her tail, her outfit, her hair, her ears and even her eyes were all bright pink. While I wasn't exactly on a first name basis with all the girls who worked here, she must've been a new hire for me to not have noticed her before. "I'm Serena; how can I help you two today?"

"Hi, Serena." I pulled my hood back and smiled as I motioned toward Katt. "My friend here just broke out of prison and needs to clean up a bit. Can we get a private room for two?"

"Of course!" Serena smiled as she searched around her podium for a moment before producing a key. "If you two ladies will kindly follow me, I'll show you to your room."

Serena skipped and hummed as she led the way to the door across from the Request Room toward the rooms available for rent. The key twirled on her finger as we passed several rooms, all marked as either being presently occupied or rented by a small plaque under each door number. Business was clearly booming; the last time I stayed at the Oasis, my room was still in the double digits. Since they were filled sequentially based on the number of guests, the fact that room 181 was the first that wasn't already occupied suggested the Oasis was getting more and more popular.

"Here we are." Serena inserted the key into the lock, then turned back toward me. "How would you like the room done up?"

"Let's keep it simple. Two king sized beds, with privacy curtains for each. Separate bathrooms, and a copy of Wander No More: A Beginner's Guide to Realms for my friend here to pursue at her leisure." I motioned back toward a confused looking Katt as I continued. "Basic furniture otherwise...oh! Almost forgot; internet access as well, please."

"Xa...I-I mean, Aerilla..." Katt managed to correct herself as Serena slowly turned the key in the lock. "Are we going to have to come back later? That sounds like that will take a while to get d-"

"Done!" Serena opened the door for us, revealing a room with all the amenities I'd described. The initial shininess and wonder I had when first playing Realms had dulled a bit as I played, but even now it did still hold a sort of wonder with how anyone with the right permissions like our hostess could modify a space in the virtual reality to my liking. It was certainly nowhere near Katt's level of awe; I ended up having to physically tug her into the room. I sat her down on her bed(the copy of Wander No More sitting on the pillow made it clear that it was hers) and did a quick look over the room to confirm everything was as requested.

"Looks perfect." All the Oasis staff were players like myself, and while they would get some payment from their work normally, it never hurts to tip service staff. I made sure to give a small stack of coins to Serena, which she humbly accepted. "That's it for now. Will you be on duty for a while?"

"For another 3 hours of real time; then the next shift starts. Everyone's great, though, so don't hesitate to ask anyone for anything you need. Thanks for staying at The Oasis!" With a big smile(I was half surprised her teeth weren't pink as well), she waved and made her way back to her hostess stand.

"You can take those off now, Katt." I said, motioning toward the metal claws she still wore on each hand as I leaned the staff hanging on my back against a wall. "You don't have to worry about monsters or Breaches inside the city."

"Oh; O.K..." Katt slowly disarmed herself, setting her claws down on a nearby dresser. "I'm sorry; all of this is just so much to take in. And this has been around for years now?"

"Yup. Traditional console gaming's still going strong, but VR gaming is steadily catching up in popularity. The price point is really what's been slowing it down, but since that's starting to come down I think it's only a matter of time before it's equal or even exceeds the major consoles. A controller and TV just can't offer the same level of depth and immersion as the Dream Machine can."

"Speaking of..." I sat on my bed across from Katt, looking over her avatar. "Mind if I ask what it's like for you as a newbie to VR gaming? I mean, as some who's-"

"Old enough to have an adult child?" Well, good to see Katt was still my Old Lady underneath that avatar. She was just as ready to cut me off from revealing her true age in Realms as she was in real life. "Well, the tail and ears are just weird to me, to be honest. But that's not really what you're asking about, is it?"

"Honestly, it's equal parts alien and amazing." Katt held out her hand, studying it in detail as she explained her thoughts. "I mean, I know this isn't my real body, and there is a weird disconnect knowing that I'm just sleeping in my bed at home right now and that I'm not really here in this world. A part of me just feels it's all just kind of wrong. I have a fake body, in a fake world, filled with fake people and real people pretending to be people they're not."

"That being said, the sensations it's sending to my brain, the touch of this bed in my hand, the sun beating down on me when I was outside; it all FEELS really, really real. The world may be fake, but the level of detail shows it was clearly made by real people who really love it. And I can't deny its popularity, if the walk through the market and the hallway showed me anything. Sure, that guy you bought the clothes from was a program, but that woman; she wasn't, right? She seemed really happy, and she's working as a hostess in a game about magic and monsters and fighting."

"The Oasis is entirely player run, yes. And yeah, people get drawn in by the high fantasy stuff, but a lot of them settle into working other jobs. I know a few people who've played for years and barely done any of the main quest line because working as a blacksmith or one of the other more, 'mundane' jobs caught their interest and they fell in love with it." Heck; our guild employs a personal chef who's never stepped foot into a battle outside her opening quest. You wouldn't know it based off the way she swings her frying pan, but that's a story for another time.

"That's what I thought. And whatever I may think about the whole anthropomorphized aspect of the game, I can't deny how good this body feels. The way I was moving, fighting, and with none of the aches and pains that come from getting old..."

"Oh; right! I meant to ask about that." I interrupted Katt's story briefly. "How was your opening quest? I know what happens, but I didn't experience that particular quest line myself. What was it like?"

"It was... an experience..." Katt began to tell her story, starting from being returned to her cell after being sold off in the slave auction.

---

"Come on, kitty; your daily ration's here."

The sound of the cell door sliding open drew my attention away from the floor I had been staring at. Having been groped, pinched and sold into slavery, I was not exactly in the best mood at the moment. While this guard had the same general attitude as the one who bought me to the auction, he lacked the red bandana or scar on his cheek the other one had. With a heavy internal sigh(the Collar of Silence around my neck kept me from vocalizing it), I glanced at the tray in front of me.

Bread that was covered in mold, an apple that could most generously be described as rotten, and a bowl of... something? It sloshed and moved like a liquid, but it was a strange purplish color, and some sort of weird white glow surrounded the whole bowl. It honestly kind of reminded me of the clouds in that Breach that Xavier(Aerilla? Both of them?) was fighting in. Either way, nothing appealed to me as I pushed the whole tray away.

"What's the matter, kitty? Water's not good enough for you?" That was supposed to be water? I was fairly certain water would still look like water in a fantasy world, and that didn't look like any kind of healthy water to me. "Well, no point letting it go to waste!"

The guard eagerly pressed the bowl to his lips and drank down the foul liquid while I tried to hold down my own lunch. He drained the bowl in seconds, the strange glow fading as well as he tossed the now empty bowl with the tray of food on the dirt floor of the cell. With a satisfied smirk, he turned and started to walk toward the cell door.

He only made it about halfway there when he clutched at his stomach. My satisfaction at the sudden onset of diarrhea that foul water gave him turned to concern as he fell to the floor, groaning and sweating profusely. Concern turned to alarm as the back of his shirt seemed to throb and bubble. Alarm became terror as large purple-black spikes suddenly erupted through the back of his shirt. The terror was only amplified further as he turned toward me with fierce, glowing red eyes and a mouth that was starting to look less human and something much more feral.

^New Quest Added!^

Those words suddenly appeared at the top of my field of vision, high enough to not block my view of the horrible thing this guard was becoming as his hands started to shift and move, becoming more claw like as he slowly stalked toward me.

^New Quest: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!^