Dungeons Are Bad Business

Like all of Oar’s Crest, the adventurer’s guild had seen better days. The carpets were stained and splotchy, and Vee could see the thick layers of dust atop the windowsills as they walked up to the lone receptionist. He was a big, puffy man with a receding hairline and dull eyes.

“Guild cards, please.”

The man’s voice had that flat, soulless tone that one might expect when dealing with city employees. He hunched at his desk and the only real sign of life that Vee could see was a slim, bright green fountain pen next to seven almost completely full bottles of ink in each color of the rainbow and one bottle of black ink that was basically empty. As a fountain pen enthusiast himself, Vee knew that pain pretty well.

“Uh…we’re not members of the guild. We’re new in town and looking for work.”

Vee squinted at the tag on the man’s shirt. It was stained though and so he couldn’t make out the name.

The receptionist looked up at him, and a flicker of emotion passed through the man’s eyes. “You’re not? Well, I’m sorry, but we can’t offer any work to those who aren’t members of the guild.”

“But in the town square a man told us that you were always hiring folks to work.”

“We are, but I’m sorry, the jobs are only for guild members.”

Vee tapped his foot, but Alforde stepped forward.

“That’s fine. How do we join, then?” Alforde asked. He politely folded his hands in front of his hips and slightly inclined his head.

The receptionist reached down and drew out a stack of papers as thick as Vee’s forearm. “You’ll need to fill all of these out, and then pay the licensing fee of fifty silver fleurs. Processing will take approximately two to four weeks, depending on how many other applicants are in the system.”

“We haven’t got that kind of –” Vee started to say, but Alforde held up his hand and silenced his friend.

“Thank you,” the armorsoul said. “We’ll go ahead and fill these out now. Do you perhaps have a pen we can use?”

The receptionist handed over a cheap pen and Alforde took it and the papers over to one of the aged benches in the center of the room. Dutifully, he began to fill the forms out.

“What are you wasting your time with that for?” Vee asked. “Didn’t you hear that guy? The licensing fee is fifty silver fleurs! That’s almost what my father gave me when he kicked me out! We’re scrounging for every fleur we can get. How are we supposed to find that kind of money? And two to four weeks for processing? We don’t have that kind of time!”

Alforde shrugged, his pauldrons making a squeaking noise as he did so. “Perhaps we can file the paperwork now and pay the fee in installments, or set up a plan to take it out of our earnings until we’ve covered the balance in full. Things like that get done all the time in construction.”

Vee crossed his arms over his chest and snorted, but didn’t really have a decent retort. So, he went and looked at the job board instead. It was typical fare. Rodent removal from the city sewer, package delivery, fiend hunting, that type of stuff.

The rewards offered were…pretty terrible on the whole. Most of them paid less than five silver fleurs, and all of them were under ten. However, Vee noticed that the board was almost completely empty, so it was possible that all of the higher paying jobs had already been taken. After all, Luna – Vee felt his cheeks flush just at thinking her name – had gotten something worth forty silver fleurs. But even that wouldn’t be enough to pay the fee for getting into the guild.

Dejected, Vee sat down next to the job board and looked around. Alforde was scribbling intently, but the armorsoul had never been known to be a particularly fast reader or writer, so they’d probably be here for a while. Vee needed something to do to pass the time.

On the other side of the room, Vee saw a table with the scattered remnants of a newspaper on it. He got up, walked over, and picked it up.

Normally, Vee was not the type to believe in fate. He’d been raised in a strong secular household, and believed that what most people thought of as divine intervention was simply coincidence and various biases mingling together. However, as he read the headlines of each section, trying to pick one to read first, he felt as if the circumstances of the world had been specially arranged for him just then.

The first headline, in big bold typeface, was: CITY COUNCIL DECLARES FUND FOR CITY REVITALIZATION, and skimming the first paragraph gave Vee the gist that the government was trying to solve the city’s economic woes by offering a big pot of money to whoever could somehow find a way to bring some sort of industry back to Oar’s Crest. Interesting, but on its own nothing special.

However, when read in combination with the second headline, Vee saw a path forward as if it had been written in neon typeface thirty feet tall. Atop the Sports section, it read: DAUNTIER DUNGEON DEFEATS CELEBRITY ADVENTURER! OWNERS COLLECT 1 MILLION GOLD FLEUR PRIZE!

Next to it was the third headline, which was actually just the name of the section: EASY LIVING.

Like grains of sand hit by lightning, Vee’s mind – or perhaps Fate, because after all, he couldn’t be sure that it didn’t exist – fused the three headlines together into the glass of an idea. Why didn’t he open a dungeon? The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.

There was so much ectoplasm around that he could make a near limitless supply of minions, and there was plenty of room to build. It seemed like almost three quarters of the city had been abandoned, and if he had to knock down a few buildings here and there to build things to suit his needs, he was pretty sure that nobody would mind all that much.

Dealing with the fiends and monsters that apparently lived in the “abandoned” parts of town was a different problem, but one that Vee could leave to his favorite problem solver: Future Vee, who’d never steered him wrong, except for all those times he’d turned into “Present Vee” and kicked whatever can he faced further down the road.

Yes, this was the play. Vee could feel it in the marrow of his bones, which was more than a little unsettling.

[Ambition + 2]

[Adventurousness +4]

[You have unlocked the Aspirational Class Dungeon Master, would you like to take it?]

Vee hesitated, and looked at the popup for a long while, and then reached up and accepted it. He heard the clunk in his head that marked his decision to take a new class and saw Alforde’s eyes snap to him. The armorsoul put down his pen.

Vee put down the paper, and walked back over to the receptionist. The man had the “Fun and Games” section of a newspaper in front of him and was carefully scanning the word jumble.

“Excuse me,” Vee said, and the man snapped back to attention and hastened to hide the paper. “What does one have to do in order to open a dungeon?”

The clerk’s mouth fell open. “You want to open a dungeon? Here?”

“Is that a problem?”

“No, no, not at all. It’s just that we’ve never had a real request for someone to start a dungeon here. The council has tried to entice citizens to take up the task, especially since celebrity adventuring became such a big deal a few years back, but no one wants to deal with the fiends or work with ectoplasm. You are aware that you’ll have to deal with ectoplasm, right?”

Vee smiled and pulled the second ectoplasm sphere he’d made on the way over out of his pocket. “I’m a [Ghost Maestro]," he said. “Ectoplasm is the tool of the trade.”

The receptionist smiled and, after rifling around inside his file cabinet for a few minutes, handed Vee a single form. “Excellent. Please fill this out.”

Vee took it and looked over at the stack that Alforde was still nowhere near getting through. He felt that, maybe, there was simply too much paper to become an adventurer, if opening a dungeon only required a single form.

Perhaps there was a different catch.

“What does it cost to file this?”

“Nothing,” the receptionist said. “There was a program put in place a few years back by the council that waives the administrative fees for ‘activities deemed beneficial to the city’s future’ and opening a dungeon counts.”

Vee couldn’t help but notice now that the man had perked up considerably. “Do you have any ideas for the theme of your dungeon?” he asked, more than a hint of excitement in his voice.

Vee hadn’t, but it probably wouldn’t do well to say so. He wanted to look the part, after all. So he winked and held a finger to his lips, as if it were a secret instead. Taking the form, he walked over to Alforde and took the pen.

“This is a pretty big deal,” Alforde said quietly as Vee filled in his own name in the field marked ‘Name of Dungeon Master: ’. “I thought you didn’t want a second class. Are you sure about this, Vee?”

Vee nodded and looked down at the next item on the list. ‘Name of Dungeon Champion, also sometimes called a Boss: ’. He tapped it and looked meaningfully at Alforde. “I’m positive. You want to be the dungeon champion, bud?”

“Do I get a hammer?”

“If that’s what you want, sure.”

Alforde took the pen and signed his own name in the space provided. The rest of the fields were of a more technical nature, and Vee filled them out as best he could, making things up as he went. Type of hazards? Minions mostly, but also some traps. Ascending or descending nature? Both. Treasures offered? Arcane or enchanted artifacts, money. Estimated income? Depends on market conditions. He was particularly pleased at the professional ambiguity of that last response.

When he was done, he took the completed form up to the counter and handed it to the receptionist, who read it in less than thirty seconds before putting it into a machine.

“Stand over there, please,” the receptionist said, indicating a square of tape on the floor next to where Vee was standing. He did so, and there was a flash of light as a camera took his picture. A few seconds and a series of loud beeps later, the machine spat out a card and Vee took it. He grimaced at the picture of himself. How had the camera made him look so terrible? His eyes were sunken as if he were drunk, or on drugs!

The receptionist had Alforde stand in the same spot, but had to adjust the camera to account for Alforde’s greater height. Unlike his friend though, the armorsoul was thrilled with his own visage on the second card that popped out of the machine.

“Look, Vee! I look tough, don’t I?”

Sure enough, when Vee looked at it, his friend did indeed look imposing and powerful, just the way you’d expect a dungeon champion to look.

“Do we need to do anything else?” Vee asked, and the receptionist shook his head.

“Not right now, but once you pick a site and begin building, please let us know so that we can give you the appropriate permits. Here, take this with you. You might find it useful in your efforts.”

He handed Vee a large scroll that a quick peek revealed to be a map of the city, and also a small bag filled with twenty golden fleurs. Vee almost dropped it, because it was so much money.

“What’s the money for?”

“It’s part of the city revitalization fund,” the receptionist said. “Consider this a small investment on behalf of the city council to help you as you take the next steps in building your dungeon. Good luck, Master Vails."

“Thanks.”

Vee put the pouch in his pocket, and multiple popups appeared at once.

[You are now officially recognized as a [Dungeon Master]. The requirements to permanently obtain your aspirational class have been fulfilled. You are now a [Dungeon Master, Level 1]

[You can now earn points in Plotting! Plotting + 2]

[You can now earn points in Charisma! Charisma + 2]

[You can now earn points in Devious Mind! Devious Mind + 2]

[You can now earn points in Leadership! Leadership + 2]

[New skills unlocked! You can check them in your soul’s mirror!]

The soul’s mirror was a fancy way of saying the mind’s eye, but Vee decided that he’d do so once he got back to Sculla’s. He wanted to be able to really read them over and think about their implications. For now, his mind was racing with ideas and schemes, courtesy of his new Plotting skill. Feeling excited, he left the guild with his champion behind him, leaving the partially filled out stack of papers to become adventurers on the table.

These were picked up by the receptionist. But instead of throwing them away or shredding them, as one might expect, he stashed the papers in a small black bag and hid it under his desk.

“Sacre will want to hear about this,” he muttered to himself as he resumed his word jumble.

Stat Sheets:

Vee Vales:

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 13

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

Might: 6

Wit: 19

Faith: 11

Adventurousness: 8 (+4)

Ambition: 5 (+2)

Plotting: 2 (+2)

Charisma: 2 (+2)

Devious Mind: 2 (+2)

Leadership: 2 (+2)

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Clunker (Vee Vales), Level 9

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), level 7

Tertiary Class (Aspirational): Hammer Afficionado (Self)

Additional Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), level 1

Might: 18 (+5)

Wit: 10

Faith: 23 (+3)

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 3

Reginald:

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

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 26

Might: 1

Wit: 24

Faith: 2

Ambition: 18

Greed: 15

Deceptiveness: 37

[O%HE$ #TATS BL!C*+D AND H&DD@N BY _R------]