Critical Role’s In-Game Romance Novel ‘Tusk Love’ Is Going To Be A Real One You Can Read
Penguin Random House will publish Tusk Love, a real-world version of one of Critical Role’s most infamous inside jokes.
I don’t know if it’s art imitating life, life imitating art, or what. But I do know that in Campaign 2 of Critical Role, one of the biggest recurring jokes was a “romance” novel called Tusk Love. In the world of Exandria, Tusk Love was all about the “saucy” relationship between Oskar, a half-orc, and Guinevere, a traveling merchant’s daughter.
Now, it will be an actual real book you can read. Penguin Random House is going to be publishing it. And the world proves that reality is about as flimsy as a skin atop a pudding.
Tusk Love – A New Romance Novel From Critical Role
This continues the trend of Critical Role taking an inside joke and running with it as far as they can. First, there was their company name, Metapigeon, which is a reference to a metagaming pigeon. Then there was the Critmas Album. It’s actually quite good; you can listen to it now.
And now there’s Tusk Love. If you weren’t familiar with it, it was the book that Jester Lavorre bought in Chastity’s Nook, which came to define her whole love life. She’d often call Fjord, the half-orc party member with whom she fell in love, as Oskar, seemingly by mistake.
It calls to mind another similar in-joke from the Mass Effect series: Fleet & Flotilla. F&F was an in-game “historical romance” that told the tale of a Turian and Quarian falling in love/lust and all the many things they had to overcome to be with each other.
As the Romantasy Genre continues to take off, I’m here for it. I only hope it will be as smutty as the novel in the game was reported to be. Here’s what we know so far:
“As the daughter of an ambitious merchant, Guinevere’s path has been predetermined: marry into a noble house of the Dwendalian Empire, raise her family’s station, and live quietly as a lordling’s obedient wife. But Guinevere longs for a life unbounded by expectations, for freedom and passion and adventure.
Those distant dreams become a sudden reality when her caravan is beset by bandits, leaving her guards slain and Guinevere stranded alone on the dangerous Amber Road. Her only chance of survival is to travel alongside Oskar, the aloof half-orc who saved her during the attack.”
