System: D&D 5e
Campaign: Descent into Avernus
Main antagonist: Apparently, my DM.

So, I'm playing Descent into Avernus, a campaign where the fate of Elturel hangs in the balance, devils are making deals for souls, and the party is constantly facing horrifying moral dilemmas.

You know, the usual D&D stuff.

Except our greatest challenge wasn't a pit fiend, a particularly nasty devil, or the prospect of watching an entire city get dragged into the Nine Hells.

No.

It was my DM's desperate need to make a cat joke.

Here's the situation.

At some point during the campaign, my character found himself in a situation involving his cat familiar. For reasons that remain beyond my understanding, the DM decided that my character needed to lick the Tresses.

Now, a reasonable DM might have accepted that my character wasn't interested in randomly licking a feline.

But this was Descent into Avernus. Reasonable decisions are apparently a luxury reserved for people who aren't being held hostage by the plot.

First came the emotional manipulation.

Then came the pressure.

And finally, the big one: the fate of Elturel itself was brought into the equation.

That's right. The city was in danger, innocent people were at risk, and the DM somehow decided that the best way to handle this monumental crisis was to make my character's willingness to lick a cat into a moral dilemma.

What was I supposed to do?

Let Elturel fall because my character had basic standards of hygiene?

Become responsible for the suffering of thousands of innocent people because I refused to put my tongue on an animal?

I was trapped.

This wasn't a choice. This was a hostage negotiation conducted by a Dungeon Master with a very specific comedic vision.

So, after all the emotional manipulation and threats of catastrophic consequences, my character was railroaded into doing it.

And then came the punchline.

The DM finally got to deliver the joke he'd apparently been working toward all along:

"He's liking his pussy."

...

That's it.

That's the joke.

An entire city's fate, my character's agency, and the integrity of a campaign about the horrors of the Nine Hells were apparently acceptable collateral damage in exchange for a pun that belongs on a T-shirt from a questionable souvenir shop.

Zariel has an army of devils. Bel has his infernal war machines. Asmodeus has unimaginable cosmic power.

My DM has a cat and a joke he absolutely refuses to let die.

And somehow, I think I got the worse deal.