I’ve made brief reference to it both on my Bluesky and in my previous writing about Tourney of Tyranny on this blog, but this series of light novels really, truly contains some of the writing I’m most proud of so far in my career as a longform writer. I’ll prove it later on with a lengthy excerpt from the recently-released second book in the series (Tourney of Tyranny Part 2: A Conquest Claimed), but before I get to that I thought it’d be nice to write a little about how enjoyable the process of working on ToT is for me.

When you’re working on games with a lot of writing in them (like ours have), not only are you DOING a lot of writing, you’re REVISITING that writing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and so on, again and again, until everything you’ve written, no matter how clever or funny or hot it might’ve been when you first wrote it, starts to look like grey mush. You stare at what you’ve gotten down on an unfinished script while you’re attempting to cudgel your brain into producing the remainder of it. You read it over and over while doing your own edit pass, and then over and over again after your editor gets back to you with notes. You read the whole thing through while you’re implementing every single sentence in the game’s code, and you’d BETTER read every single sentence over again while you’re testing, lest you made a mistake or twenty. By the time a game gets in front of an audience, reading what I’ve written makes me want to puke.

This is not to say there isn’t quite a lot of re-reading for me to do in the process of creating Tourney of Tyranny – quite the opposite, in fact. There’s plenty of going over paragraphs during the writing process, and plenty of re-reading during the edits, and then plenty more when I’m planning out a given book’s illustrations for Blueparikeet, and then even more still when all the illustrations are completed and it’s time to format everything together. But the really crazy thing is that in spite of all that necessary re-reading, I’ve nevertheless found myself rereading both books… for fun? As in, I genuinely enjoy it? I find myself reading through them and smiling and laughing and even thinking “man, I can’t wait until there’s another one of these”. I know that this likely sounds nauseatingly self-congratulatory, but it’s the truth!

The process of writing them has also been straight-up Fun, too. Another thing about making games is that it takes FOREVER for the things you write to appear in their proper context, so working in a medium where you can just have something On The Page is so quick and easy that it basically feels like cheating. What’s interesting is that I had no great ambitions towards literary excellence when I started the Tourney of Tyranny project. It all began as a way of scratching a certain itch, kink-wise, and giving myself an excuse to contract the services of one of my favorite artists. The quality of the writing was always meant as an afterthought. However, something strange happened when I was working on the draft for Tourney of Tyranny Part 1: A Champion Chosen, and it basically hasn’t stopped happening since: I was surprising myself with how good I thought it was. I wasn’t even TRYING and yet this stupid goofy completely-unserious erotic kinky science-fiction dreck was making me feel as though I was Becky Chambers or Terry Pratchett (I’d never dream of going so far as to favorably compare myself to Sir Terry, but (as I mention in the Opportunity Retrospective), his is the ghost I’m most obsessed with chasing in my work. Sidenote: direct comparison like this is another privilege of the novel format. In games, which so often have writers’ distinct authorial voices sanded down flat by multiple revisions and notes from a dozen different stakeholders, it can be tough (not to mention unproductive) to try to compare one’s writing to well-known works).

However, I know that all of this is just me talking. If you’d like me to back up my words with, uh, words, you can go ahead and download the free safe-for-work PDF previews of Part 1 and Part 2 on Itch. But maybe you’re in a bit of a hurry, or you’re on a work device, or you just don’t want to make any extra clicks. I get you. Below is a nice chunky excerpt from Tourney of Tyranny Part 2: A Conquest Claimed. Here’s everything you need to know going in:

• Our protagonist, Lilith Lacrimosa, was plucked from her dead-end system administrator job by Goblinoid aliens and made their Champion in a proxy tournament in which she is tasked with fucking crazy-style with more frequency and creativity than a number of far more attractive and charismatic humans. Lilith thinks they’re crazy but went along with it because the consolation prize for losing is more money than she’s ever seen in her life.
• As part of her induction as Champion, Lilith was injected with a tiny tracking implant.
• Unbeknownst to Lilith, the Goblinoids are cheating and have modified Lilith’s implant so that it makes her hornier, more sexually-proficient, and most crucially, makes it so that whenever Lilith makes eye contact with someone while she’s sexually-aroused, that person will become overwhelmingly sexually-attracted to Lilith.
• Again, this is important: Lilith DOES NOT KNOW that she has been fitted with a mind-whammy sex implant.

That’s it! Happy reading!

Lilith knocked on the door of the apartment door, her stomach in knots.

After the gala, the Grand Tourney had officially begun. Lilith had officially quit her job, and then officially suffered minor panic attack about it. After recovering, she decided she needed to at least make an effort on behalf of the Goblinoids in the Tourney. Yes, of course, she was guaranteed to fail, but it would have been impolite (at the very least) to isolate herself in her apartment for six months just so she could collect the consolation prize at the end. However, the problem remained that she didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to date any more, let alone SEDUCE anyone. And so, she’d reached out to one of the few people in the world who she hadn’t completely alienated: her best friend Gigi.

Lilith would have been the first to admit that the designation ‘best friend’ could very easily have been substituted with ‘only friend’, and probably would have even gone so far as to admit that even ‘friend’ was pushing it. They HAD been close, for quite a few years, but a number of factors had driven them further and further apart: Lilith’s deepening depression and mounting alcoholism, Gigi changing careers from computer engineering to graphic design, and finally, Gigi moving in with her then-girlfriend-now-fiancee in her plush high-rise apartment that was all the way across town. As a result, Lilith and Gigi hadn’t seen each other in person in almost nine months, and their last conversation of any length had been six weeks ago.

Gigi hadn’t managed to mask her surprise when Lilith called asking if the two of them could meet so that Lilith could ask for Gigi’s advice, but she’d swiftly rallied and invited Lilith over for the next day. Lilith had thought about just asking for the advice over the phone, but she’d recognized that any attempt at seducing anybody was going to necessitate learning how to be around people again, and an in-person hang with Gigi was the gentlest reintroduction to society she could possibly get.

Which brought her, today, to a bright, clean, tall apartment complex in the nice part of town that had all the restaurants that charged twenty-five dollars for a hamburger and no graffiti anywhere in sight and if a person so much THOUGHT about becoming homeless they were efficiently and emotionlessly bundled up and deposited in the part of town where Lilith lived. Gigi’s apartment building (well, her fiancee’s apartment building) had shining brass handles on its shining glass front doors. There was a front desk, staffed by someone in an actual uniform. The elevator had been perfectly, terrifyingly silent. There were real living plants in the hallways, and they looked healthy.

Lilith (who hadn’t known what to wear to a ‘we haven’t seen each other in almost a year and I’m about to ask you a lot of very personal questions’ hang and was thus wearing her least-damaged pair of jeans and a graphic tee for an anime that her and Gigi had done cosplay of one time) felt more out of place here than she had aboard the literal alien spaceship filled with actual aliens.

The door was flung open, and the 200-watt bulb of Gigi’s brilliant smile beamed up at Lilith. At one time, Gigi had been short and fat, and at a glance she still appeared so, but this was simply because Gigi had proportions that would have prompted uncomplicated people living four thousand years ago to construct clay statues of her. Gigi’s remaining body fat was clinging on for dear life atop a frame of well-conditioned muscle and energy, and it was losing its grip everywhere except in her bust and hips. For much of the time she and Lilith had been close, Gigi had attempted to conceal herself under shapeless hoodies and baggy sweatpants. Now it seemed that she lived in only the snuggest-fitting athleisure couture. Her teeth gleamed and her skin glowed. Every single thing about Gigi screamed ‘I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life’, which is a terrible look to see on someone you miss horribly.

“Hi there!! Wow! It’s been so long!” The sheer enthusiasm in her old friend’s voice was so powerful that Lilith could ALMOST overlook that the greeting hadn’t contained any variation on ‘It’s nice to see you’, or ‘You’re looking really good’. This thought was quickly followed by another berating Lilith for having the first thought.

Gigi went in for a hug, but was brought up short by Lilith raising the skinny bag she’d been holding. “I brought wine,” Lilith said. “It, um, seemed like the… grown-up thing to do?”

Gigi took the proffered bag and smiled. “It’s a little early for wine, but thanks a bunch! Come on in!” After Lilith had come inside and removed her shoes, Gigi deposited Lilith’s gift on the kitchen counter next to several other bottles of wine that were almost certainly better than the wine she’d selected.

This was not, technically, Lilith’s first time being in this apartment. It was her second – the first had been when she’d made a largely-ineffectual attempt to help Gigi with her move. But an apartment mid-move is not an apartment’s true form. Lilith had been prepared for the apartment to be nice in a ‘furniture store showroom floor’ kind of way, but she hadn’t been prepared for HOW nice it was. The furniture were all-wood, lovingly-restored mid-century pieces. The kitchen had stainless steel EVERYTHING, with the obscenely ample counter space comfortably housing a wide array of appliances that Lilith desperately coveted (and a few she didn’t even RECOGNIZE). There was art on the walls – not the occasional framed print or anime wall hanging; actual PAINTINGS. There were even SCULPTURES.

The apartment was nice, but what it WASN’T was pristine, and that made it even worse. If this had been the kind of upscale apartment whose niceness was defined by a kind of shrink-wrapped, blinding-white, sterile materialism, Lilith could have comforted herself with that. But instead, it was… lived-in. The fridge was covered in magnets, notes, and photos. The balcony hosted a pair of sun chairs with towels draped across them, in between which was small table that held a pair of empty glasses and an empty jug that had once something cold and fruity and playfully alcoholic. Lilith could see that Gigi even had a small table in one corner of the living room completely dedicated to painting wargaming miniatures, just like she’d always talked about wanting back when she and Lilith had whiled away so many hours in her old cramped shithole apartment that wasn’t so terribly unlike Lilith’s present cramped shithole apartment.

The one feature of the suite that Lilith could have done without was Gigi’s fiancee Noriko, who was on her phone while looking out at the cityscape through one of the apartment’s colossal windows. There was no possible way she couldn’t have heard Lilith enter.

“…badly trashed are we talking? Because if this anything like Lisbon – so just a SMALL fire. Okay.”

Gigi met Lililth’s gaze and pressed a finger to her lips, her smile indicating that she thought her bride-to-be in Work Mode was just the CUTEST and that she and Lilith should keep it down until Noriko was through.

“Any police? Mhm. Mhm. Good. And no paramedics? Okay. Good. Just the one priest? Mhm.”

As far as Lilith understood it, Noriko was highly-placed at an international talent management firm, overseeing performers from girl groups to influencers to cover bands to circus acrobats. Noriko’s particular specialty was crisis mitigation, which made her particularly invaluable to an organization that dealt exclusively in the high-strung, the thin-skinned, and the vacant-skulled.

“Alright, here’s the game plan: you tip the housekeeping and front desk staff GENEROUSLY. It won’t keep things from getting out but it should buy us some time. I’m going to get on conference with our narrative team. With any luck we can make this look like something that happened TO them instead of something they DID. Oh and for God’s sake, take their fucking phones away. Alright. Yeah. Bye.”

Noriko hung up and turned. She didn’t grimace when she looked at Lilith. She didn’t frown. All that happened was that she somehow contrived to look even more tired than usual, and Lilith had never known Noriko to look any way other than Exhausted.

Noriko had never liked Lilith. No, that wasn’t quite true, Lilith thought. Noriko HAD made a good-faith effort at getting along with her girlfriend’s best friend when she and Gigi had started dating. However, it hadn’t taken long for Noriko to pinpoint Lilith, with professional certainty, as the single greatest source of crises in Gigi’s life. How could she not, with Gigi cancelling every second date to pick Lilith up after she had a panic attack in the grocery store, or to bring Lilith sports drinks after she gave herself food poisoning trying to eat week-old Chinese leftovers, or to spend two hours on the phone with Lilith after Lilith had yet another bitter blowout with her family. Oh, it would have been so very convenient for Lilith if she could have convincingly argued that her former best friend’s fiancee had somehow conspired to drive the two of them apart, but they both knew better.

The look in Noriko’s eyes when she looked at Lilith simply said “Please, don’t be back for good”.

Her mouth said, to Gigi: “Sorry, I’ve got to head in. Witches Three tried to perform a summoning in their hotel room.”

Gigi giggled and bounced over to place a kiss on her fiancee’s chin. “Ooooh, what’d they summon?”

Noriko managed a thin smile. “A big fucking headache for me, that’s what.” She kissed Gigi’s forehead, making the shorter woman giggle again. “I might be late for dinner, so order whatever you like. I wouldn’t say no to some leftovers from Serene, though.”

“I’ll make sure to leave you a beef roll and cumin lamb, babygirl.”

“You’re the best.” Noriko looked at Lilith again and seemed to search for something to say, but could only come up with a sigh. “See you later.”

She grabbed a briefcase, slipped on her shoes, and was out the door.

Gigi opened the fridge and retrieved a chilled water bottle. “Can I get you anything? We’ve got milk, lemonade, b-beer…”

Lilith wished she hadn’t noticed the way Gigi had clearly regretted offering alcohol before realizing she was already too far into the word to course-correct. “No, thanks.”

Gigi did a bad job concealing her relief. “And do you mind if I do my afternoon run while we talk? I know it’s rude, but I feel weird if I miss a day.”

“Oh, um, no, go ahead.”

“Thanks!” Gigi hopped onto a compact treadmill on the other side of the living room and started walking while Lilith parked herself opposite in an armchair that was nicer than any piece of furniture she’d ever owned. “So, what did you want my advice about?”

“Um.” Lilith thought about telling Gigi all about the Grand Tourney and the fucked-up role she’d been chosen to play by an alien woman who’d then let Lilith blast rope all over her big alien tits, presumably as a sweetener. Grizzelda had even said that there wasn’t actually any rule preventing Lilith from telling anyone she wanted about the Tourney – the one caveat was that anyone she told would no longer score Lilith any points if she fucked them after (since telling someone ‘if enough people fuck me, I’ll become the richest and most powerful human who’ll ever exist’ has a certain compromising effect on one’s inherent desirability). However, Lilith just couldn’t bring herself to say it. Reconnecting with Gigi felt tenuous enough without asking her to swallow something as ludicrous as what Lilith was currently going through. “I was… well, I’ve been thinking about getting back into dating, and you’re, um, obviously pretty successful on that front, so…”

“Ohhhhhhhhh! Oh, that’s so exciting to hear!” Gigi squealed as she pressed her thumb down on the button to speed up the treadmill, moving herself up from a brisk walk to a light jog. “So what are you looking for, exactly?”

At present, Lilith caught herself looking at Gigi. Modern athletic wear can be wonderfully steadying and supportive, but portions of Gigi simply denied containment. She coughed, doing her best to play off the pause as a moment’s thought. “It’s kind of embarrassing, but, um… I’m not interested in a relationship so much as, well…”

“What, really?” Gigi laughed, her breathing starting to come a little harder. Lilith was watching Gigi’s breathing, intently. “That’s funny! You always used to go on about ‘finding true love like Aaminah and Calliope’ whenever we were marathoning Mythknights.”

“Hah, um, yeah! I did, didn’t I? Well, you know how it is…” Aaminah and Calliope remained Lilith’s favorite Mythknights of Magic Justice ship, and even weakly denying that she still to this day fantasized about a love like theirs, a love that could explode in the sky and snuff out the stars, felt like drinking a cup of hot nails. “I’m really just looking for something physical, but I kind of feel like I’ve forgotten how to convince people to sleep with you.”

“I’ve found it helps if you can make them laugh,” said Gigi, a woman with breasts that registered on the Richter scale when she took off her bra. She increased the speed on the treadmill again, moving up to an easy run. “Well, I’m all yours! Ask whatever you like!”

Lilith was having a hard time keeping her questions at the forefront of her mind as the increased speed of Gigi’s footfalls provoked an inevitable counter-motion in her chest. A sort of bouncing, swaying, hypnotic counter-motion. The kind of counter-motion that good-quality athletic tops do their very best to minimize, but which is nevertheless more and more difficult to eliminate completely as one’s cup size climbs into the middle of the alphabet.

With a rising flush, Lilith realized she was feeling a familiar, insistent pressure in the front of her jeans. Oh God, really? Was Lilith really getting hard for her best friend? She’d known Gigi for years, and it’d never even OCCURRED to think about Gigi in that way! Of course, it HAD been a long time since they’d last seen each other. And Gigi WAS way more fit, not to mention happier and higher-energy. And she was running on a treadmill in front of Lilith while wearing clothes that might as well have been painted on. She’d never done that before – most of Lilith and Gigi’s hangouts prior to this had involved watching anime next to each other on a couch and not moving for hours. Oh God, Lilith thought, I can’t stop staring at her mouth.

“Lilith?”

“Yuh???” Lilith averted her gaze and wiped a bit of drool away. “Sorry, I was… I mean, sorry, it’s, um, hard. Hard to know what to ask, I mean! Ha ha!”

“Oh, don’t worry, I get it! It’s… it’s tough out there!” Gigi was starting to breathe harder, her cheeks becoming flushed. Why couldn’t Lilith stop staring? “There’s always… dating apps, of course! But you’re… going to have to… sift through a lot of… weirdos!”

“Ha ha! Yeah! Weirdos!” It was getting harder and harder to dance around the face that Gigi’s tits, her big awesome tits, were bouncing up and down and up and down and up and down over and over and over while she ran. More than once, Lilith caught her mouth hanging open. Would it be weird to mention how good Gigi’s boobs looked? It’d be weird, right? Why couldn’t Lilith just be NORMAL about her best friend’s huge succulent increasingly-sweaty breasts jiggling just a few feet away from Lilith’s salivating mouth? Why couldn’t she get her erection to go down? Lilith wished she’d thought to wear a skirt today, at least that would have concealed it better. Maybe she could excuse herself to the bathroom, where she could shamefully beat off. Oh no, oh fuck, the thought of jacking off in Gigi’s bathroom was only making her HORNIER OH FUCK

That concludes this free preview of Tourney of Tyranny Part 2: A Conquest Claimed! If you find yourself intrigued and entertained, there are three different ways you can purchase the story:

1. If you’d like to spend the maximum amount of money, you can purchase Part 1: A Champion Chosen and Part 2: A Conquest Claimed individually ($8 apiece) via their respective Subscribestar collections.
2. If you want to get both books (and all future books) for a single discounted price ($10), you can purchase them as a bundle!
3. And finally, if you want to get the books AND offer BP Games your ongoing support, you can subscribe to our Subscribestar at $5/month or above, which will also give you access to the book downloads!

(If you’re curious as to why the books are available exclusively through Subscribestar, I get into that in my previous writing about Tourney of Tyranny.)

Thank you for reading! I hope you have a better understanding of why I’m so proud of Tourney of Tyranny, and that you’ll give it a try! Part 3 will be coming as soon as we can make it!

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