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World of Westeros

Summary:

Sansa Stark has some questions about her new, unaccustomed, role as a healer in the new massive multiplayer online game ‘World of Westeros’.
Will she be able to keep Arya, Gendry, Hot Pie and Sandor alive by mashing buttons and panicking?
Why does every quest seem to involve killing innocent creatures?
Why should she avoid venturing alone into the mysterious tramway?
Most importantly, will she become closer to the striking and mysterious Sandor Clegane?

Notes:

Welcome to the exciting world of online gaming! Non-geeks will be able to follow the story just fine, because Sansa also has no idea what's going on 😂

Rating will be changing to a smutty smut-fest E by the end of the story.

Chapter 1: Adventures in the Frozen North

Notes:

Many thanks to Prairie_Garden_Girl for her helpful feedback on this chapter as a non-gamer!

Chapter Text

“Sansa, you know how you owe me a favour?”

Sansa lowered her book and peered at Arya. “I thought we agreed I’d make you a new dress in return for you cooking all the dinners last week. Not some unspecified favour.”

Arya leaned back on the couch with a sigh and cupped both hands around her mug of tea. “Never mind the dress. I’ve changed the deal.”

Sansa let the book, a sizeable history of Stormlands fashion design, flop down the rest of the way onto her lap. “You don’t get to change the deal afterwards, Arya, that’s not how deals work.”

“This will be easier than dicking around making me a dress,” Arya said, shrugging expressively.

“I like making you clothes,” Sansa objected. “My petite range has been amazingly popular, and it was all inspired by you.”

Sansa’s clothing boutique, Small Wolf Tall Wolf, specialised in less common clothing sizes, providing flattering garments for people who had trouble buying items off the rack in mainstream stores. Everyone else in the family worked for the Stark family sustainable forestry business, but equitable fashion had always been a passion for Sansa.

Arya waved her hand, almost sloshing tea over the rim of the mug. “And I eternally thank you for providing jeans I don’t have to get shortened before I can wear them. But this is important, we need a priest.”

Sansa blinked. “Arya I’m a seamstress, not a Septa.”

“No San, there’s a bunch of us from work wanting to group up to play that new massive multiplayer online game, World of Westeros. We need a healer for our levelling group, our, ah, team if you will. We had Lommy lined up because he usually games with us but he’s decided to take up bird watching instead.”

The changed nature of their bargain still occupied Sansa’s focus. Making a dress seemed a fair exchange for a week of dinners. Just the two Stark sisters lived in their Winter town apartment, unless Arya’s boyfriend Gendry stayed the night, so they usually divided the chores up equally.

“You know I’m not really a computer person,” she hedged.

“You loved playing Dream Daddy,” Arya said indignantly. “You cried when the Daddies got married at the end.”

“That was a lovely game,” said Sansa, misty eyed with the memories of the adorable Daddies. Forming relationships with other single Dads. Living their best lives with their cute kids. She shook herself, then frowned at Arya. “But I’ve never played games with other people, unless you count that one when we were kids where we ran peoples lives and you deleted the swimming pool ladder so they drowned. I’ll be terrible at it. Would my computer even run it?”

Arya made a dismissive gesture. “Gendry can upgrade it for you, he’s the hardware guru in our IT department. He’s already done Sandor’s home computer and that piece of crap runs like a charm now. We all got sick of the big guy glitching out in everything we played together.”

Sandor. That name sounded familiar.

Sansa snapped her fingers as she remembered.

She had a vivid recollection of getting berated by a huge, hairy, scarred man last time she visited Arya at work. His striking presence had transfixed her.

“Isn’t Sandor that mean security man?” Sansa didn’t bring up her recollection of his appearance. He couldn’t help his scars. Being mean was far worse.

“He’s not m…” Arya paused and scrunched up her nose. “Okay yes he’s a dick. Sandor’s alright though, once you get to know him.”

Sansa frowned. “He told me off for staring at him, but I wasn’t.” She felt her cheeks flush red with embarrassment. “I was looking at the cut of his shirt. A, um, big strong man like that needs a more fitting cut. Maybe some cunningly placed darts. Then I thought if I ever did a man’s clothing line, I’d like to cater for gentlemen like him.”

“Gentleman isn’t the word I’d use to describe Sandor but okay.” Arya snorted. “He probably doesn’t even remember you. He hates basically everyone. Getting shitty at people is a daily thing. He’s the company’s best security person though, and Dad likes him. Fuck, even I like the cranky bastard.”

Sansa was dubious, but she let it slide. “Who else is in the group?”

“Hot Pie is our other regular gamer.”

“Well Hot Pie is nice,” said Sansa, relieved. “I can talk to him. He always gives the best baking tips.”

Arya rolled her eyes. “You’ll be fine, it’ll be fun. I’ll get you set up with some coms.”

“Coms?”

“Communication equipment. Typing is too slow so we usually game with voice chat.”

Sansa had a vision of the group in their respective homes, surrounded by old fashioned CB radio equipment. “Oh like truckers use?”

Arya blinked and looked at her askance. “Sure Sansa, like truckers use. From fifty years ago. Before the internet.”

Sansa nodded and made a mental note to look up the appropriate lingo to fit in with the group.

The idea was starting to grow on her.

 

***

 

Sansa adjusted her headset, still disconcerted by the microphone positioned in front of her mouth. “I need eight mangy wolf pelts,” she enunciated carefully. “I repeat, eight mangy wolf pelts. Over.”

“Sansa you can go ahead and kill those wolves,” said Arya’s voice over the headphones. “I’m on the other side of the Frozen North zone right now waiting for Hot Pie and Gendry to pull finger and join us online.”

“Um, roger that,” said Sansa. She squinted at the screen. Her game character was tall, slender and had purple hair and pointed ears. The person looked out of place standing in a snow-covered field, surrounded by snow-covered trees, wearing a light summer dress. As Sansa watched, her character, Alayne, did a little animated jiggle, causing her breasts to bounce merrily. Sansa winced. She had spent a long time getting her elven woman to look perfect in the character creation screen. Having her creation getting too… flagrantly bosomy was somewhat off putting. 

A chime sounded in Sansa’s ear. An electronic woman’s voice said, “a new player has joined the channel. Please welcome…” there was a pause and a gruff man’s voice said, “fuck off I’m not giving you my name fake bastard cunt,” and the woman’s voice finished “…to the channel.”

“Sandor, you grumpy shit,” said Arya’s voice. “Welcome to the game.”

“Aye,” grunted Sandor.

It was strange hearing him so close in her ear.

A little shiver ran down Sansa’s spine when she remembered the sheer physicality of his presence. Sandor had been unpleasant, but he had certainly made an impression.

She was a professional, Sansa reminded herself. It was her job to notice people and think about dressing them. To consider their body shapes and how clothing could work for them.

“Maybe you could join Sansa? Her toon hasn’t moved in the past five minutes, eh Sansy?”

“What? How do you know?” said Sansa, startled out of her reverie, “I mean, ten four over that. Or ten five? I don’t know.” Her character jiggled again, and Sansa cautiously pressed the W key to make Alayne walk forward towards a snowy hill. The terrain did look like the far North, which it was supposed to be based on. The entire game had been modelled on the real lands of Westeros, but changed just enough to create a fantasy atmosphere. Each of the Seven Kingdoms had their own zone, with different difficulty levels of monsters and quests for their characters to adventure in. “There, see, I’m playing. I’m walking. This is fine. Just walking.”

Arya sighed audibly. “Just collect some pelts Sansa.”

A notification flashed up on her screen:

<Hound has joined the party>

A short, red headed character that Sansa recognised from the character creation screen as a ‘dwarf’, ran over to her.

Sansa wasn’t sure why they had such odd choices for races. Elves, dwarves. Gnomes. Orcs and Trolls. All ‘classic fantasy races’ according to Arya. Why not Children of the Forest, or giants or Deep Ones? At least those were real.

“Girl,” said Sandor over her headphones. “Arya’s sister. I’ve got the same quests as you.”

“How do you know that? Um. I’m Sansa by the way. Hi Sandor,” said Sansa. She huffed at the screen. She could do this. She promised Arya she’d play this game, so play she would. “Roger that on the mangy pelts. Over.”

Sandor muttered something that his microphone picked up as “seven hells,” though that seemed to Sansa to be a little extreme for just gathering mangy pelts.

She didn’t particularly want earn a rebuke over the coms so she moved her character towards Sandor’s, figuring he would know what he was doing more than her if he’d done this sort of thing in other, similar, games.

Hound suddenly took off towards some wolves wandering around minding their own business nearby.

Sansa moved her mouse pointer so she could better see their surroundings. The scenery really was very pretty, made even more picturesque by the charming woodland creatures frolicking around. A squirrel sat eating a nut at the base of a tree, birds chirped in the background and the ambient music of the game swelled into a crescendo reminiscent of wholesome outdoors and fresh air.

Sansa smiled. She could get used to this.

Sandor’s dwarf pulled an enormous axe out and swung at a little wolf. It gave a tragic whimper and fell to the ground, dead.

Hound knelt beside the sad corpse, apparently checking the body for something.

Alayne cheerfully jiggled her bosoms as Sansa stared at the screen in horror, her mouth dropping open.

“Mangy pelt on that one,” said Sandor. His character stood up and ran off towards the next wolf, axe in hand.

The birds chirped sorrowfully. The chittering of the squirrel sounded like a rebuke.

“Do we have to kill them?” whispered Sansa. “Isn’t there another way to play? I’m supposed to be here to share my magical energy and heal people, not to do wolf murder. Um, over.”

There was a lengthy pause.

A low muttering came over the coms, then “You’re making the frozen North safer,” said Sandor abruptly.

Sansa remained unconvinced. “By collecting mangy pelts?”

“The quest description says the wolves have been attacking local children,” said Sandor. “By clearing the excess population, you are keeping children safe. They are all stuck inside that fucking building where we picked up these quests. They want to be able to go outside.”

Arya made a choking noise, but that explanation did make Sansa feel better.

“Go on Sans,” said Arya. “Unleash that holy smite spell.”

Sansa examined her spell bar as something else occurred to her. “Roger that, but why would I need to smite something? What gods do I follow that they feel they need to smite things? I would rather heal. Over.”

“You just need to grind to get XP. Then you can level your toon and we can do dungeons.”

Arya sounded like she spoke a foreign language, but Sansa had already gathered from some pre-game study that her character would get more experienced the more she played and would gain access to different abilities and skills. She was vague about dungeons, but according to Arya they were special adventures you needed to be in a group to do. A group with a dedicated and competent healer. Her.

“Isn’t this an RP server?” asked Sandor. “So we should probably cook up some kind of justification for our adventuring group.”

“Shit,” said Arya. “I keep forgetting about that. Fucking Hot Pie picked this one. I wanted to go player versus player and kill some noobs.”

“What’s an RP server? Over.” Sansa was starting to feel more lost. RP, player versus player, noobs. A whole lingo existed that she didn’t understand. She was only just getting a handle on their coms-speak.

“It means if someone asks your character to go into a private room of an Inn with them, don’t.” Arya sounded amused, for some reason. “RP means role-play.”

Sandor snorted. “I heard there was an underground tram between the ‘Winterfall’ and ‘Queen’s Landing’ zones where most of the online fucking takes place.”

Sansa gasped. “What kind of game is this?”

Killing animals and online… intimacy. Sansa was no stranger to sex, though her ex Harry had said she was a prude and sex was currently something of a sore point, but she couldn’t imagine how it would work in a game.

“You’ll be fine Sansaroony. Just stick with one of our group and no one will bother you.” Arya’s voice sounded matter of fact. “My toon is male, so no one hassles me. Gendry is taken, obviously, Hot Pie is ace, and Sandor is…. whatever the fuck Sandor is. We’re a group of friendship and safety.”

The chime sounded in Sansa’s ear again whilst she processed all the new information.

She could do this.

“A new player has joined the channel. Please welcome…” this time the voice was more familiar, “Hot Pie is a perfectly valid name, why do I have to deal with this every time?” and the electronic voice concluded, “to the channel.”

“Hey folks,” said Hot Pie’s cheerful voice. “How are we all today?”

Sandor grunted something that might have been a greeting.

“I’m killing yetis waiting for you and my ridiculously slow boyfriend,” said Arya. “While our healer and tank have moral debates about killing fake animals and cybering.”

“Hey Hot Pie,” said Sansa. “I’m helping to humanely cull wolves, and not visiting Inns with strange men. Over.”

“Well good for you, Sans,” said Hot Pie. “Those pelts will save the world.”

“Less talk, more playing Sansa,” said Arya. “Then you can catch up to us.”

“Over here,” said Sandor.

Sansa’s character looked around. A short distance away Hound was standing surrounded by corpses. Alayne jogged over to join him.

“That’s a big ten-four,” said Sansa, remembering she should try to be professional on the coms so the others could understand her. “Are those troll things? Over.”

Sandor hummed an affirmative. “Aye, according to the quest log they are trying to stage a military coup of this region, so we need to keep the area stable for the locals who just want to live in peace.”

“I see, that seems reasonable. Over.”

“Loot those corpses,” Sandor said before running off towards another group of enemies.

There was a dress in the items she picked up that her character could wear. It seemed to be the only good thing amongst items labelled as ‘trash’. Things like broken teeth, more pelts and ragged clothing. Why would the troll-people be carrying trash around?

Sansa carefully clicked on the dress to equip it on her character.

The dress had odd cut out sections exposing large swathes of her character’s torso. The ‘fabric’ appeared a dull puce in colour, which clashed with her hair, but she felt most upset about the cut. A revealing garment wasn’t a bad thing, as such, but the way it had been designed and constructed was simply implausible without extensive boning for structure and tape to stick it to the body.

She was offended on behalf of her fake online person being given such shoddy workmanship to wear. Even though it was made of pixels and not fabric.

“Well that will never do,” Sansa muttered to herself, using her mouse pointer to drag her previous garment back onto Alayne.

Her previous dress, or technically ‘robe’ according to the item description, looked pleasingly tasteful, with cream fabric with red detailing, off the shoulder and flattering. She nodded at the screen and followed Sandor.

Several piles of troll corpses later, Sandor’s dwarf stopped.

“You had an upgrade drop,” Sandor said over her headset. “Why aren’t you wearing it?”

“Oh no, it was ugly and implausible,” Sansa replied.

“It was ugly,” said Sandor flatly. “And implausible? How the fuck?”

“Yes, the cut was unflattering and unsound, and Alayne doesn’t suit that shade of puce at all. This dress I started with it much nicer. Look at the detailing on the bodice.”

Alayne obligingly chose that moment to jiggle her breasts. Sansa sighed.

“It’s that stats that are important,” interjected Arya, with a long-suffering air. “Who gives a shit what your character looks like? You’re being shallow.”

“It’s not shallow to want a character that looks nice,” said Sansa.

“Sansa does have a point,” said Hot Pie. “If you have a particular character concept in mind.”

Sansa wasn’t sure what Hot Pie meant by character concept, but she knew what she liked and shoddy workmanship was not it.

“Besides, all the wolves and trolls and things are hitting Sandor, not me,” Sansa pointed out instead. “I don’t need to have better statistics. Over.”

Sandor’s sigh gusted through his microphone. “You should still equip it.”

Sansa scowled at her screen. “But it’s ugly.”

“The stats are better.”

“It’s still ugly.”

“Look at my character, girl, I look fucking ridiculous, but these legs have a plus one to my stamina.”

Sansa zoomed her camera in to examine Hound. He certainly did appear different to when they started playing. He had chainmail shorts on instead of long trousers, exposing his lumpy knees.

“Chainmail shorts,” she whispered. “That’s a crime against nature.”

“I’m pretty sure whatever fucked up way these trolls reproduce is the crime against nature, but yes the chainmail shorts are fucking ugly and I’m wearing them, anyway.”

Sansa frowned at the myriad of corpses slain by Sandor and had a sudden and uncomfortable feeling about troll babies. She shook herself. It wasn’t real.

She followed Sandor, trying out the new instant cast healing spell character now had access to.

“Clothing is important,” she said as she trotted behind him. “When people are dressed in flattering garments, they feel good about themselves. It gives them confidence and self esteem. Over.”

Sandor snorted. “Some people are irremediably ugly, girl. Can’t dress up a piece of shit and make it look like anything other than a piece of shit.”

Sansa’s heart broke a little because she suspected he was talking about himself.

She also wasn’t sure what to say to a man she hardly knew about something so personal.

She looked at their characters on the screen and gasped.

A very large and impressive troll was sneaking up behind Sandor.

“Oh, oh. Ten thirty-three, Big Daddy  is in the building,” said Sansa, panicking at the thought Sandor’s character might suddenly get hurt on her watch. “Um, Papa Bear has come into the house. Over.”

Sandor sounded mystified. “What the fuck?”

“Are you okay, Sansa?” said Hot Pie, his voice genuinely concerned.

Arya laughed. “I’m sorry, did you call Sandor Daddy? Because you might need a private channel for that.”

“Shut up Arya,” squeaked Sansa. “I’m trying to say there is a huge troll thing behind him.”

“Shit,” said Sandor, whirling around to confront the creature with his axe. “Die fucker.”

The creature attacking Sandor had a little plate above its head with its given name on it, rather than a generic one saying the type of creature. Apparently that meant it was a ‘mini-boss’ and was more difficult to dispatch than everything else around the area. It seemed more awful killing something that had a name, but Sansa diligently healed Sandor with her magic as he hacked away at it.

Sansa’s whole being focused on the little green bar above Hound’s head that indicated his health. Her job was to keep it full as the huge troll attacked him. She continually clicked on each of the healing spells Alayne could use, one that quickly healed a certain amount of health points and one that restored points over a period of time.

The troll snarled and snapped as Hound valiantly battled it with his axe. Sansa poured her magic into the warrior, determined to aid him as best she could to defeat their foe.

Sansa was concentrating so hard on the most efficient way to time her heals of Sandor that she hardly noticed the electronic voice saying “A new player has joined the channel. Please welcome…”

She jumped as Gendry’s voice suddenly sounded in her ear. “Fucks sake, Arya, I need to disable this name function on the coms server. It’s lame.”

“…to the channel.”

“Good of you to finally join us,” said Arya.

“Aye, yes, hello everyone.”

With a loud groan the creature Sandor fought slumped to the ground, slain, and Sandor’s warrior stood proud, whole and unscathed from the encounter, thanks to Sansa.

“AHH WE DID IT!” yelled Sansa. The rush of excitement when the creature fell was unexpected. They’d worked together to defeat a terrible enemy. Sansa’s heart raced, her breath shallow and fast.

A startled silence overtook the coms.

“Our healer and tank have been bonding,” said Arya.

“I… see…” replied Gendry.

“She’s not fucking bad at it,” said Sandor grudgingly. He cleared his throat. “We’ve almost caught up in levels. We’ll be able to leave this zone and join those other cunts now.”

“Don’t call me a cunt, you cunt,” said Arya indignantly.

“Play nicely children,” said Hot Pie.

Sansa looked around the area that she and Sandor had just been traversing. “Do we get to come back? I like it here. Over.”

Sandor huffed a laugh, which sounded odd through his microphone. “You didn’t like it when we were collecting pelts.”

“That was before I got into the story,” replied Sansa loftily. “And I realised that this was fun. Anyway, it seems a shame just to leave everyone here to manage without us. What if the wolves start attacking children again? Over.”

“You can skin yetis in this next bit,” said Arya.

Sansa made a face at the screen. “That sounds awful.”

“They are evil yetis,” said Gendry soothingly.

“Oh are they planning on a political upheaval like the trolls?”

“Worse,” said Sandor, “they are plotting an attack on the nearest city.”

“Okay, let’s keep levelling.”