Author's Notes:

Yes, Firelink has actual game rules. With several ruleset variants too.

Fun fact: Most of the rulesets can be played using a regular 54 playing card deck. Well, except the ones that require a tied-up submissive.

This chapter contains some cloppy elements with objectification and incest.

Welcome to ‘Carte Blanche’, the Society’s premiere firelink atelier. I’m Card Trick, I run this little shop. You’re a new face around here, I can tell. I know every single firelink player in Equestria ‘cause you betcha’ anypony who’s ever laid hooves on a firelink card will make their way here to get a taste of the best.

So what’s brought you out here to the depths of Paragon Alley? Exploring? Looking to learn the game? Or did you hear about the legendary Night Light appearing at the Firelink Grand Ashes again this year? Thinking of winning one of his coveted Twilight Velvet cards? Well, I don’t blame ya. I swear some ponies here would sell their sisters to get their hooves on one of those. I’m sure some have actually tried. Legend has it the only Velvet card to ever leave Night’s hooves presently resides in a secret vault in the Crystal Empire.

So, think you’ve got a secret vault ready to handle one of those?

Huh, you’re an ambitious one. I like that. Well, you’re gonna at least need a deck of your own if you’re gonna face the world champion. Lucky for you, you’re in the right place. We only sell premium firelink cards made the traditional way, the way the ol’ Kindler granddaddies used to make’em. Granted, their technique is more for producing holy icons and what we do with it would probably make Chancellor Puddinghead turn in her grave if she hadn’t been laid to rest with all her bondage gear.

What’s that? You want to know how they are made? Well, I’m glad you asked. We absolutely love showing off our millenia-old technique. Our atelier has a live demonstration workshop where you can see our cards being made firsthoof. Now, you probably already know about adamantite, that thing we use to make everything from our eternity collars and fire weapons to fidget spinners.

What? They make great horn play toys. Not everything CTRL makes is completely useless.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details. You just need to know that adamantite is incredibly good at absorbing and holding Devotion. That’s why the Fire of Devotion is the only thing that can melt it. It’s also why we use them adamantite discs called ‘Ex-Ps’ to store and replay moments of devotion. You simply drench the disc in fresh sex juice and the memory’s ‘burned’ onto it for posterity. Yeah, you’ve probably seen them offer the chance to dive into another pony’s saved experiences at one of those dive shops. Trippy stuff, but it can be fun once in a while.

Now, firelink cards are made using the exact same property. A very thin coating of adamantite is applied onto each and every card which gives them their glowy purplish sheen when you look at them under the light, see? That’s one of the ways you can tell they’re the genuine article.

As you can see from the cards on display, the face side will feature some kind of fetish modelled by slaves. A lot of the hardcore players like Night Light will have personalized cards featuring either their slaves or even themselves. But most ponies are happy enough buying one starring one of the many models both vintage and contemporary. Whichever model you’re looking for, our store has it, from the ever popular Cherry Stellar and Fading Crescent to good ol’ vintage Somnanbula. Our partners at the clopography studios are always grooming new stars and producing new material for our cards.

That said, there are some new Somnanbula cards coming out soon. Who would’ve thunk, eh?

Now, the cards are printed using these printing presses you can see in our live demo workshop. Our store has both the mare version more often seen here in Clocktower Equestria East and the stallion version more common to West. This here is Tarot, my daughter and our mare printing press on display today. Don’t mind the moaning noises she’s making in her gag. We’ve just had her print out a whole deck of 54 cards in one go.

As you can see, she is suspended securely in this rack with these doohickeys holding her legs spread. These modified Cerberus leashes spreads this here cunny as wide as it’ll go, ensuring the widest possible platen for printing.

In the earliest days, they used to rub the cards into the slave while enacting the fetish they wanted to capture. It used to take forever to produce a standard 54 card deck. Nowadays, we can have the slave replay a fetish using Ex-Ps discs. We can also choose to print cards using EX-Ps starring specific models. For this example, let’s go with my favourite Fading Crescent flick. The Ex-Ps disc inserts into the platen like so. Notice how Tarot’s groaning and fidgeting in her rack? That means she’s begun to replay Fading Crescent’s experience stored on the disc. Don’t worry, the restraints will make sure she doesn’t move around too much no matter how intense the experience she’s reliving.

Now obviously the Ex-Ps contain an entire experience, not just one isolated fetish. To make sure we print the specific fetish we want, we’ll need to cycle through the experience until we find what we want to print. We do that by inserting the ‘plugin-play’ display into Tarot’s tailhole, like so. Tarot’s rather small and tight and these display adapters are always rather big so it can take some jiggling. We try to use as little lube as possible though, that’s the way Tarot likes it. Now, let’s switch it on. Don’t mind the humming. That’s the sound of the plugin-play display sending weak but pleasurable electric signals to the Ex-Ps. You can see how much Tarot enjoys this bit.

The plugin-play display will project what she’s experiencing onto the wall like so. You can see that Tarot is currently reliving Fading Crescent being rammed in all three cocksleeves at once. Yes, this is the same technique we use in our clopography theatres. So next time you go to watch a show, spare a thought for the poor sub being used as a projector and be sure to tip him or her after the credits.

Now, if you twist the dial on the hilt of the plugin-play display like so, you can fast forward to the parts you want. Don’t worry, Tarot is meant to twitch and cry like that when we’re fastforwarding. Here we are, let’s print a card featuring Fading Crescent being whipped by a roomful of doms. If we turn the dial to ‘pause’, it’ll make Tarot hold onto this moment in the memory. We can also turn the dial to slow down the replay, though we do that to tease our slaves more than anything.

Now that we have the image we want, we can print out card. All it takes is one tug on this lever to bring the entire rack down, pressing Tarot’s platen down onto the printing stone holding the card. Here we have the traditional wooden-horse-style printing stone that ensures maximum contact between the card and the platen to produce the highest quality pictures. Now we just want to hold Tarot down against the wooden horse for a bit to make sure she soaks the card thoroughly, don’t mind her moaning and squirming, aaaaand….voila. There we go, a new firelink card.

Obviously, it can take forever to produce 54 cards this way. This is why we have the more modern printing rollers in place of the wooden horses. Now, Tarot’s just a bit worn out so it’s important we refill her toners regularly. These toner bottles up there runs into the penis gag in her mouth and feeds her my own personal toner cocktail; Starbright to sensitize her platen, stampede to keep her horny, buck to keep her going and big apple to help her produce more ink. The rest of it is made up with my cum which she enjoys. Go on, dear, nod for mommy. Good girl. Go ahead and take a few long gulps. This bottle down here pumps the same toner with added lube into a nozzle that runs up her pussy and feeds into her womb. I keep her slightly cum-flated with the mixture to produce the best quality cards. Let’s give her a little refill. Feel the bulge in her belly? That’s the perfect pressure for card-printing.

Now these printing rollers are incredibly simple. Just place it here in between the press’ legs, link it up to the plugin-play display to synchronize the cards being printed, then press the platen down on the roller. Sure, it eats up a lot of lube, but it’s incredibly efficient. You can turn out an entire deck of 54 cards in less than half an hour this way.

Let’s leave Tarot to printing that deck. Good girl, Tarot, keep it up. Now, let’s finish by showing you the stallion printing press. This is my son, Poker, our stallion model. Yes, we’re a happy little family-run establishment. As you can see, Poker is set up in much the same way as Tarot. The main difference is Poker’s platen is the flat surface of his flare. So it’s important to keep him as flared as possible. This ring behind his flare helps trap some blood to keep his flare nice and engorged. This ring and the rings behind his medial ring, cock base and the one behind his testicles are all held together by this frame, keeping him erect in between ejaculations. The frame also helps milk him for his ink. Let me show you. Let’s turn on the printing rollers, bring the lever down and engage the milker.

As you can see, the flare ring squeezes the flare down flat against the roller to maximize printing contact. The medial ring and cock root rings do all the milking. Poker also appreciates a manual milking, or at the very least a tight squeeze from time to time. He takes a little time to spool up but once he starts ejaculating the machine will keep him going for a long, long while and he can print half a dozen decks in no time at all.

Now that you’ve seen the secret to our top quality firelink cards, we can get you kitted out with a starter deck. Don’t worry, they all get a thorough licking and a perfect wash after they finish printing. Let’s teach you how to play while we show you the cards on offer.

Building a Deck, also known as a Bonfire

Most players own and play with their own decks or ‘bonfires’. The cards can be easily modified with custom art to the owner’s liking at any CTS card atelier. Each deck is made up of 54 standard cards.

Firelinks

Also known as ‘Firekink’ cards, these are cards featuring various fetishes. Each card is marked with the numbers ‘2’ through ‘10’ denoting their ‘Intensity’. Every deck will have 4 cards of each intensity, giving them a total of 36 firelink cards. There are various firelink card variations available for purchase and trading. Owners are free to mix and match the cards they like in their decks as long as they have a maximum of 4 cards of each intensity.

Dungeons

Each deck has four dungeon cards. As the name suggests, the card features a dungeon. Much like firelink cards, these are customizeable.

The Bell Cards

Aftercare

Each deck has 4 aftercare cards. The aftercare card will end the player’s current scene. They will not be able to add more cards to the scene, however they gain a 2x multiplier to their Devotion for the final card or ‘Tease’ in their scene.

Stop-Drop-Unknot

Each deck has 2 Stop-Drop-Unknot cards, also known as the seven bells card by virtue of the seven bells on its front. The Stop-Drop-Unknot card will force both sides to end any scenes in play. Both players keep the score from their previous scenes but can no longer add more cards to said scenes. This is useful to stop enemy players from using any aftercare cards and is especially damaging to players with multiple scenes in play.

Breathing Space

Each deck has 4 Breathing-Space cards, also known as the five bells card. The Breathing-Space card will prevent both sides from adding a card to any active scenes for the next turn. Players are still able to draw new cards or start a new scene with dungeon cards. This is especially useful to stop opponents from adding more to their active scenes while you intend to draw new cards or start a new scene.

Slower Pace

Each deck has 4 Slower-Pace cards, also known as the three bells card. The Slower-Pace card will allow you to draw three cards on this turn.

Standard Legion Firelink Rules

Most historians agree this is the original version of the game. The oldest known surviving decks date to the second decade of the Age of Fire. This coincides with the first written records of the game’s rules. Nopony knows how exactly it came to be. Many believe that it developed as a result of the intense cultural mingling between the many nations that made up the Firelink Legion in the worldwide crusade against the Windigos. Some suggest the pictorial renditions of fetishes helped overcome language barriers when communicating interests and limits in the multilingual environment of the Firelink Legion camps. Some argue it was born from the first frank and open discussions on how to carry out ‘scenes’.

In this version of Firelink, players begin by deciding who plays first. It is common etiquette to allow submissives to start first, beginning from the youngest, followed by dominants, again in age order. The game requires a minimum of two players. There is no upper limit to the amount of players who can play in a game though generally play time increases with each extra player added.

The game revolves around building ‘scenes’ much like a BDSM play session. Each player aims to build their own play session into the perfect ‘scene’. They do this by placing a card down in their own play area each turn.

Players draw 10 cards at the start of the game. Players may only have a maximum of ten cards in their hooves at any point in the game. Players must discard excess cards if they draw more than the allotted 10.

Devotion

Scenes are scored by their total ‘Devotion’ points. The first to reach 33 points wins the round.

Firelinking

Each player must always start the game with a firelink card. Note that the first scene is the only scene that does not require its own dungeon. Players then aim to slowly add more actions to their scene with more firelink cards. Each card added generally adds +1 Devotion points. The exceptions are the ‘Teases’ described below which confer bonus points.

When firelinking, players must watch the intensity of each successive action. The ideal scene rises in intensity slowly from foreplay to finish. This is reflected by keeping the intensity of successive cards within 3 points of the previous card.

Rising in intensity by 4 points or more from the previous card to the next will trigger a ‘Clockface’ for you alone, i.e. you will not be able to place any firelink cards down on the next turn.

Going down in intensity will cause that card to be worth no points.

Tease

‘Teases’ are combinations of cards that provide bonus points. The following are all the possible teases in the game:

Discipline

Placing down a second card of the same intensity as the previous card will provide 2 Devotion points instead of 1. Placing a third provides 4, and a fourth provides 8.

Example: 3,3,3,3 – Results in 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 = 15 Devotion Points.

Punishment

Placing down three cards of successively increasing intensity provides 3 Devotion points instead of 1 on the third card. Placing a fourth provides 5, a fifth provides 7, a sixth provides 9, and so on.

Example: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 – Provides 1 + 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 17 Devotion Points.

Edging

Placing down three cards rising in intensity in steps of ‘2’, e.g. 3, 5, 7, will provide 3 Devotion points instead of 1 on the third card. Placing a fourth provides 4, a fifth 5, and so on.

Orgasm

Combining any two teases will result in an ‘orgasm’, doubling the Devotion gained in the two teases.

Adding a New Scene

Placing a dungeon card down allows players to start a new scene. They may only add a card to one scene during each turn.

Where Legion Firelink is played

Legion firelink is the most commonly played version of firelink, both competitively and casually. It is played in all firelink clubs and ateliers in every Society site across the world. There’s never a shortage of games in bars and clubs around the Society either.

There is an annual worldwide tournament called the Firelink Grand Ashes where players compete to hold the Ashes for the year. Legion firelink is one of the three versions of firelink played at the tournament.

Eden Sudden Climax Rules - Cutie Hold’In and Hair Trigger’s All’In Variants

During the windigo siege on Flying Fortress Eden, the newly-designed Fire-of-Devotion-fueled airships spent months hiding in Eden’s cloud cover while watching the Windigo battle lines. These first airships were poorly-built and even the slightest rocking motion of its occupants could upset the entire vessel. This made engaging in scenes to refuel the Fire of Devotion powering each airship a challenge. You can see some of the solutions they came up with in the few surviving ships in the Fire Legion museum at CEE, including the first technological leaps in suspension play as well as the first spring-dampened racks.

The ultimate solution was the Eden Sudden Climax firelink rules first introduced by Commander Head First. Legend has it that his sub, lieutenant Cutie Breeze, boasted that she could beat him at firelink with her legs and wings tied up. Commander Head First took her up on her challenge, tied her up mercilessly in his cabin, laced his cards with that era’s equivalent of starbright and stampede, and proceeded to play a game on her bound body. That was when it was discovered that this caused the bound victim to relive the fetish on each card. Furthermore, comboing the cards in ‘teases’ produces even more intense results. Soon, the entire Eden fleet was fueling their ships using this technique.

Fun Fact - In honour of the first ever sub to suffer this fate, subs used as firelink tables are called ‘Cuties’.

The first games were played with all players sharing a single cutie. This quickly led to cuties orgasming midway through the game. Altering the game to have every player bring their own cutie didn’t help matters with how intense the game can be during tease comboing. This apparently led to Head First ordering Cutie Breeze to hold it in and not orgasm without permission. This order soon evolved into the first variant of the Eden ruleset called the ‘Cutie Hold’In’. In this variant, the player loses if their cutie orgasms before they reach a score of 33 or achieve two teases in a row.

This led to problems with personalized decks as cuties would be stimulated at different rates with different decks. Initially the use of personalized decks was simply forbidden in ‘Cutie Hold’In’ games. It was only a century later when Hair Trigger developed a new ruleset wherein the first cutie to orgasm wins the game. This was later called the ‘Hair Trigger All’In’ variant. This version allowed and even encouraged cuties and their owners to work together to develop winning decks to aim for the swiftest orgasm.

Where Eden Firelink is played

Similar to Legion firelink, Eden firelink is played in Society sites all across the world. As it incorporates play, games are often restricted to the clubs and bars in dungeon areas. The two variants, Cutie Hold’in and Hair Trigger All’In, are the other two firelink versions that feature in the Firelink Grand Ashes.

New Lunaria Hold’Down Rules

New Lunarian rules originated in the New Colonies. There is a popular myth that the thestrals created the shorter New Lunarian version of firelink because they could never finish a longer Legion game before they start bucking like rabbits. Thestrals of the Society seem to enjoy propagating this myth, treating any challenge to a game of Legion Firelink as an invitation for a night of kinky fun.

The new Lunarian version uses very similar rules to Legion firelink. The main difference is that all players are dealt three cards from the same deck. Three more cards are placed in the center of the table. The objective is to build a ‘tease’ using the cards in one’s hoof and the cards on the table. The players take a single round of turns discarding and drawing new cards. Afterwards, they reveal their cards. The player with the highest tease score wins.

In the New Lunarian version, bell cards could be used in one of two ways. They could be revealed at the end of a round in which case they will be counted as additional firelinks, either as ‘11, 12 and 13’ respectively or as ‘Dungeon, 0 and 1’ respectively. If revealed before the end of the round, they will apply the following effects:

The New Lunarian ruleset doesn’t have an official Eden version but you’ll find it played Eden-style in many of the more backstreet Society bars, clubs and gambling dens.

Where New Lunaria Hold’Down is played

New Lunarian firelink has its own massive following. It is not played as often in formal firelink clubs. However, it’s speedy nature and its ease of use as a gambling game makes it a far more popular option in the Society gambling dens across the world. In fact, the ‘Hold’Down’ in its name is said to have stemmed from how doms would play a quick game on top of a held-down sub to decide the sub’s ownership.

New Lunarian Hold’Down has its own worldwide tournament, the Grand River Tourney, held annually in Lunaria.

Twilight Family Rules + Eden-Style

Nopony is entirely sure about the origin of this ruleset, neither is anypony sure why it is named after the Twilight family. The oldest surviving rule sheet was found in what is now the Incest Guild headquarters at CEE. Some historians argue that this suggests it was originally designed as a variant to be played by families. However, the fact that the Incest Guild HQ was originally the maternity guild up until five centuries ago casts doubt on that theory.

Either way, it is easy to see why many consider it a family/communal version of firelink. Similar to the New Lunarian version, each player is dealt five cards at the start of the game. All players share one dungeon. The players take turns placing cards down in the shared dungeon. The same firelinking rules apply, requiring each player to place cards of the same value, incremental value or in ‘teases’. The first player to use up all their cards wins. If four ‘stop-drop-unknot’ cards are placed, the pile must be redistributed among all the players except for the player who placed the last towertop card. If four ‘breathing space’ cards are placed, the player who placed the last card can place a new card of their choosing. If four ‘slower pace’ cards are placed, all other players lose a turn.

The Eden-Style variant involves all players playing the game on one cutie. If the cutie orgasms, the player who last placed a card must pick up the entire pile. If the cutie passes out, the cutie is untied and taken to an aftercare room. If the last player to place a card is a sub or switch, they must become the new cutie. If the last player to place a card is a dom then they lose the game.

Where Twilight firelink is played

Twilight Firelink is more a party game for friends and family. The Eden-style variant is played in almost every incest and polyamory guild across the world. It is also a very popular game for dragon hoards.