Dungeons Are Bad Business

Before Vee knew it, the rest of the week passed in a blur and it was Opening Day. After a night spent tossing and turning in his bed while worrying about a million things that he couldn’t control – Were the moons waxing or waning? What if it rains? – the cold gray morning peeked through his window and the time for thinking was over, replaced by the time for doing.

Vee sat up and rubbed his eyes. He was tired, but he’d shake it off after getting some food into his stomach.

One small problem with that plan. His appetite was less than non-existent. He forced himself to spread some peanut butter and drizzle some honey on a piece of bread, but lacked the willpower to force down even a small bite. He left it on the table.

Alforde was nervous too, if his pacing back and forth across the room meant anything. The armorsoul fidgeted with his limbs the way a person might fiddle with a ring, twisting them back and forth and occasionally removing them from their sockets. He tapped Hammy against the floor as he walked, muttering to himself. It sounded like he was still working on his banter.

Only Reginald was in a good mood. The hat was perched atop the table where Vee had left him the night before and was grinning from ear-to-ear. Proverbially, of course, as he had no ears on account of being a hat.

“Gooooood morning!” Reginald sang. “Today’s the day! Let’s hurry up and head to the dungeon, so that we can do one final review before the adventurers start showing up. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that once things get rolling for the day we won’t have time to fix any little problems that may crop up.”

That sounded fine to Vee, so he brushed his teeth, shaved off the few piddly hairs on his chin, and got dressed. For today’s event, he’d gone to a [Tailor] and spent a handful of gold fleurs on a nice outfit. His pants were dark gray, and were pressed so that they had a crease running down each leg, and his shirt was black with ruffled sleeves and a gold pattern embroidered down the front. It was the most expensive shirt and pair of pants he’d ever bought in his life.

Naturally, he wore his normal coat, but the [Tailor] had used one of her skills on it so that it had tails that reached his knees like a tuxedo jacket instead of stopping just past his waist. The lining had been changed too; it now bore a star pattern instead of being a flat color, and the coat’s ebony buttons had been replaced with gold ones.

It was all very fancy, which made the contrast between the outfit and Reginald’s dingy appearance all the more noticeable. Vee had taken the hat to every [Laundress] that he could find, but none of them had a skill strong enough to remove the base layer of dirt and stain that plagued the top hat. One of them had politely suggested buying a new hat, but Reginald would entertain no ideas of the sort and Vee didn’t bring it up again.

Other than a handful of people wandering the streets, the city wasn’t really awake yet as Vee and Alforde headed to the Westown gate. As they walked, they took in the bevy of decorations that the council had put up to celebrate Crestheart’s opening. It was a stunning display, and a little offensive.

Ribbons of silver and blue adorned the lantern posts up and down each street, and signs proclaiming that a new day had come to Oar’s Crest had been plastered on at least one building per block.

The streets, naturally, were still filled with trash and other debris. It seemed that while the council had money for big pronouncements of how excited they were to welcome the future, they didn’t quite have the resources to clean up the present. Unfortunate, really.

“Vee, look at this!”

Vee turned and saw Alforde holding up a newspaper. On it was a picture of a bald man with owlish features. The headline read “Council excited by opportunities created by new dungeon!”

Cursing under his breath, Vee snatched the paper from his friend’s hands and read the article, which was mostly an interview. It was an infuriating read, filled with platitudes from some idiotic council member named Michael Seidon - whose picture it must have been on the front page - and plenty of prattling self-congratulations about how the council’s revitalization fund had inspired “The young [Dungeon Master]” – not once did the article refer to Vee by name! – to go ahead and start Crestheart.

“I can’t believe they didn’t interview you,” Alforde said. “You went down to the newspaper office and everything.”

Vee didn’t answer though, because he was reading the last question of the interview and almost foaming at the mouth.

Well, thanks for your time, Mr. Seidon. Do you have any final words for the people of Oar’s Crest?

Yes. The council wishes to thank the community for their support as we undertook the steps to bring this dungeon to life. We’re proud of the work that’s been done and we’ll be sure and work even harder to improve Crestheart in the future.

That was it! We? We?! There was no “We”, there was just Vee! Okay, that wasn’t technically true; there was Alforde and Reginald and Dheart and a bunch of other people – suppliers from the union and such – too, but the council certainly had nothing to pat themselves on the back about. He hadn’t even met any of those crusty old jerks yet, and he’d even gone to their headquarters in an attempt to do so. Twice!

If there was one thing Vee hated it was stolen valor, and it seemed the city was full of it as the council tried to make it seem like his dungeon and his hard work had been the result of their policies. Okay, yes, technically it’d been seeing the announcement of the fund that had helped give him the idea in the first place, and the extra gold fleurs had helped get the ball rolling, but was that really enough to justify taking so much of the credit and more importantly all of the page space in the paper?

Not in Vee’s eyes. Not even close. Snarling, Vee ripped the newspaper in half and threw the pieces on the ground. He spat on them too, for good measure, but then collected himself and stomped towards the gate.

“I will remember this,” he growled to himself.

A woman with her arms full of bread dressed in [Baker]’s garb shied away from him as Vee passed. He glowered at an old man sitting at a table in front of a small café who was reading out bits of the interview to his wife, and the man spilled his coffee when Vee shouted at him to shut up.

[Intimidating Presence +1]

That brought Vee a temporary reprieve from his anger. He hadn’t even been using [Mean Mug]!

Like a ray of sunshine to Vee’s storm cloud, Alforde apologized on his friend’s behalf to both the baker and the old couple once the [Dungeon Master] was out of earshot. The armorsoul knew that his friend’s temper sometimes got the better of him and had long since made it a habit to smooth things over before they became bigger problems down the line. Though, to be honest, Alforde was pretty upset too. He quite enjoyed doing the paper’s daily crossword, but resolved to avoid purchasing a single copy for the next week as an act of protest. No, that wasn’t enough. The next month!

But what was he going to do in the mornings now after his hammer practice?

Sometimes, it wasn’t much fun being a [Right Hand Man].

Instead of the usual two guards minding the gate, there were no fewer than eight today. Their armor gleamed despite the gloom of the sky and their weapons all looked pristinely polished.

“Good morning, Mister Vales!” cried the little salamander guard that had been so concerned about the fiends and ghosts not that long ago. Her name was Wureini.

Vee greeted her and forced himself to smile as the gate swung open – without its usual creaking and squealing – and Vee and Alforde walked down to Crestheart Tower.

They climbed the stairs to the top floor and were greeted by Dheart, who was happily humming away. Vee walked up and tapped the top of the machine.

“Hey, Dheart. Would you mind pulling up the dungeon’s floor plan again? I want to do some last minute reviewing before the open.”

“Still can’t decide what to do with those fire elementals, huh?”

Vee nodded as an image of the dungeon appeared in the air in front of him. It was made of gray-blue light and Vee could flick and twist the image to swap between a top down perspective and a detailed three dimensional view of each room.

“I’m pretty sure that I’m going to keep them on the second floor, but I just want to check the flow of the first floor again for good measure.”

“You’re overthinking this,” Alforde sang as he stood beside Vee. He’d polished Hammy the night before and had the weapon slung over his shoulder. “The hallways of flame are a cool idea.”

As a level one dungeon, Crestheart had three floors, each represented by a cube of light roughly two feet wide on each side. If Vee wanted to add more – and he did! - he’d have to invest shards of chaos in order to strengthen Dheart enough to sustain them. Unfortunately, being able to do so was a long way away. The first floor addition would cost two hundred and fifty shards, and Dheart claimed that each one after that would cost even more. Vee needed to see how many shards he got from the opening, but he suspected that getting enough for a floor expansion would take weeks, if not months to acquire. So it went.

He'd decided to go ahead and use ghosts as Crestheart’s primary minions. It was probably not going to be a permanent decision, but for now the cost savings offered by having such cheap access to ectoplasm was too much to ignore.

Since his level one ghosts were frail, raggedy things that needed to be in melee range to do any damage and fell apart when hit by anything stronger than a stiff breeze, he’d decided to splurge a bit and bought a complement of level one lesser fire elementals from the union’s supplier to fill out the dungeon as well. The tiny, cherublike creatures fought from range by spitting small embers at their opponents.

The initial plan had been to use the elementals as a ranged unit to support the melee groupings of ghosts, but the elementals weren’t great when it came to aiming and the ghosts were not the slightest bit fireproof. After watching a full dozen of his ghosts get turned to ash by their “allies” during Alforde’s test of the first two floors, Vee gave up on the idea for the time being. Eventually, he’d be able to prevent this type of problem by giving his ghosts fire resistance, but [Modify Elemental Resistances] was a level 20 [Ghost Maestro] skill, and so Vee had a long way to go before he could protect his minions from each other.

The workaround had been for Vee to keep the ghosts mostly on the dungeon’s first floor, which had been divided into six rooms, and put the elementals on the second floor, which was a long pair of hallways filled with traps. The elementals would harry the adventurers as they moved towards the third and final floor, which was Alforde’s arena.

Since the armorsoul was pretty much immune to fire damage, Vee had thrown a good chunk of the elementals down into his arena as well. They could hang out in the corners and constantly spit embers at any adventurers lucky enough to make it down to the boss. Hopefully there weren’t too many of them.

Well, it wasn’t the greatest floor plan ever devised, but Vee hoped that it would be good enough for a successful launch.

“You’re right,” Vee said as he dismissed the dungeon images. “I’m overthinking this. Even if I did have a great idea for how to better allocate the minions, I don’t have enough time to make the necessary changes. All we can do now is to sit back and wait for the opening ceremony to start. How long do we have until then, Dheart?”

“One hour, twenty two minutes, eighteen seconds. Seventeen seconds. Sixteen --”

“I get it, thanks.” Vee sat down on the floor in his makeshift office and took a stack of notecards out of his pocket. He’d written a little speech the night before and planned to read it during the ceremony. Since he had nothing else to do just then, he figured he might as well practice.

However, before he could finish even the first few cards, a loud knock thundered on the door.

“Excuse me? Young [Dungeon Master], are you inside?”

Vee looked at Alforde, who shrugged. He looked at Dheart, who was, for once, mercifully silent. The knock was repeated, and so Vee stood up and walked to the door.

When he opened it, he saw a bald man with owlish features, who bowed to him with borderline excessive formality. Behind the man was a pair of burly men wearing suits that were at least one size too small. [Bodygaurds], most likely.

“Pardon the intrusion, young [Dungeon Master],” the man said. His voice made it clear that he thought quite highly of himself and that he didn’t really feel like he needed Vee’s pardon. “I apologize for disturbing you. You probably don’t recognize me, but my name is Michael Seidon, and I’m a humble member of the Oar’s Crest Council. Do you have a few minutes? There are some things I’d like to discuss with you before the opening ceremony.”

Vee was as still as the dead for a moment, and then his mouth widened into a feral, terrifying smile. “Why of course, Mister Seidon,” he said with a sickly sweet tone that only Alforde would have recognized as a huge red flag. “Please do come in. Alforde, open the window, would you, friend? I’m afraid that it’s quite stuffy in here.”

[Plotting +1]

Character Sheets:

Vee Vales:

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 15

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 5 (+1)

Might: 6

Wit: 23

Faith: 12

Adventurousness: 8

Ambition: 5

Plotting: 6 (+1)

Charisma: 2

Devious Mind: 7

Leadership: 6

Guts: 3

Intimidating Presence: 2 (+1)

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 10 (+2)

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 8 (+1)

Tertiary Class: Clunker (Vee Vales), Level 5 (-1)

Additional Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 4(+1)

Might: 22 (+2)

Wit: 10

Faith: 24 (+1)

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 5

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 29

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 4

Might: 1

Wit: 24

Faith: 2

Ambition: 21

Greed: 16

Deceptiveness: 35

[ERR#$! Sk%^$ E_-*# ___-!]