Dungeons Are Bad Business

Pausing occasionally to stop and take a sip of his drink – which had once been steaming and was now barely lukewarm – Vee filled out what felt like an endless stream of paperwork in the lobby while he waited for Micah to arrive. Sculla had been successful in her lobbying; the council agreed to allow Vee’s fiends into the city to help clean up the streets so long as the [Ghost Maestro] took personal responsibility for their behavior. If they attacked any passerby or destroyed any property, it would be on Vee’s head.

Of course, Vee wasn’t really worried about that in the slightest. His fiends were well behaved – and getting better with every day – but he was concerned that the citizens of Oar’s Crest might not see them that way. The people were deeply suspicious of ghosts and fiends, and were inclined to call the [City Guards] on them or attack if they possessed sufficient skills themselves.

To combat this, Vee had already left a note for Torres asking the [Stationer] to make some posters and flyers advertising the new cleaning service to hopefully start getting people used to the idea. He hoped that would be enough.

Once he was done here, he was also planning to go try and find the twins who’d helped with the slime snow control project a few weeks back and see if they were interested in a repeat performance for garbage and debris. The light section of his orchestra were good at what they did, and worked faster than any living people could have, but there was so much to do before the circuit started. Nothing could clean it all up in time.

It was a simple fact of life that the [Dungeon Master] would have to widen his proverbial net.

But first, he needed to interview Micah. Vee drummed his fingers on the table. Where was Juniper’s friend?

“Gotta say this doesn’t bode well, boss,” Reginald said. “[Bakers] need to be real early birds. If this guy can’t show up on time to talk to you, how’s he going to make it work for coming down here to the lobby each day?”

“I know, but we’ll go ahead and give him the benefit of the doubt here,” Vee answered. “Life happens.”

Still, he looked at the clock and frowned at the fact that Micah was already ten minutes late. Reginald was right that it didn’t look good on its surface.

Juniper was hard at work behind the counter, and Vee got up to get another drink.

“Do you have any idea where your friend is?” he asked. “I hate to be pushy, but there are lots of other things I have to do today.”

“He should be here any minute,” the [Herbalist] replied. “I talked to him yesterday, and he was really excited to meet you. Give him a few more minutes?”

“Fine,” Vee said. Technically he had plenty of paperwork that still needed to be filled out, so it didn’t cost him anything to wait a bit longer. If the [Baker] didn’t show up by the time he finished though…well hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

Taking his new drink, Vee returned to his table and picked up his pen once more. He grabbed the next document and started reading, growling at the fact that it was asking for information he’d already provided a dozen times.

Goodness gracious, government paperwork was so repetitive!

Micah finally showed up when the stack of paperwork in front of Vee was down to roughly a quarter of its original size. He was a short, stocky man, with cropped black hair and a thin goatee. In his arms were three foil covered trays, which Vee supposed were the reason he’d been so late.

The [Baker] looked around the lobby, his expression uncertain, but then he caught Juniper’s eye and the [Herbalist] jerked her head back toward Vee’s table. Once Micah saw Reginald, he hurried over and put the trays down a safe distance from Vee’s papers.

“My goodness, I’m so sorry for being late,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that these were all perfect, and for some reason the hammers just wouldn’t firm up.”

Vee raised an eyebrow. “Hammers?”

Micah grinned and pulled the first sheet of foil off one of the trays, revealing small white cookies that looked like Reginald.

“Crap, wrong tray,” the [Baker] said quickly, yanking the foil off both the other trays at once. The second one contained what looked like little frosted ghosts, but the third one was filled with multicolored hammer-shaped cookies.

“Go ahead and try one,” Micah said. “I think you’ll like it!”

Vee did so, picking up a cookie and taking a small nibble from the hammer’s head. It was lemon and vanilla flavored. The handle was chocolate mint, and Vee gobbled down the whole thing in hardly any time at all.

“That’s delicious,” he said as he wiped the last crumbs from his chin and looked at the rest. “Are they all flavored like that?”

Micah shook his head. “The hats are cinnamon raisin, while the ghosts are all just simple vanilla cookies with different flavored frosting. One of the things I was thinking was that it’d be nice if you sold things related to the dungeon here in the lobby, so I worked really hard on making a couple different options for you to try.”

Vee sampled a ghost with red frosting. It was raspberry and thyme flavored, which he hadn’t really ever tried before but found quite good. A smaller bite of the cinnamon raisin was similarly pleasant, and Vee held out his hand for Micah to shake. “These are all fantastic.”

“I’m glad you like them,” the [Baker] said. “I’m still pretty new to baking, but I’ve got loads of ideas for things to make. I love coming up with new creations and seeing them come to life. If you decide to let me take over things here in the lobby, I’d work really hard to make sure everything is delicious.”

Vee nodded, unsure of how to respond. By Gawain, how he hated this type of thing. What was he supposed to say? There was no doubt that Micah could bake, but could he handle the rest of the things that the lobby needed? Would he run out of ingredients, or show up late, or do any other things that would cause Vee future headaches?

On the other hand, Juniper vouched for him, and that meant a lot. The [Dungeon Master] doubted that the [Herbalist] would be willing to stick her neck out to recommend Micah if he was a flake, though friendship occasionally caused people to do such things.

Eating another frosted ghost cookie, Vee decided that some things were worth a bit of risk. He’d go ahead and give Micah a chance.

[Faith +1]

“Let’s talk about the details,” the [Dungeon Master] said. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

Sealing the deal with a handshake, Vee got up to leave the lobby. It was almost time for the dungeon to open up for the day, and he wanted to make a few ghosts before the adventurers started getting in. He doubted that he’d be able to make another hundred ghosts, but that was fine. So long as he made positive progress every day he’d consider it a success. Small things added up and all that.

However, Brice Gilbert was waiting outside the dungeon with a big box in his arms. He waved when he saw Vee approaching.

“Hey there!” the [Toymaker] called. “I’ve finished up the first prototypes of the dunpla figures we discussed. I think they’re ready to start full production, but wanted you to take a look at them first. Do you have a few minutes?”

Vee nodded, though he lamented the fact that reviewing the dunpla figures would seriously cut into his ghost making time, if it didn’t eat it up entirely. Still, the dunpla figures were important, and he supposed that he could always go down to the workshop after the day’s runs were finished and crank out some ghosts.

Once they were up in the office, Brice opened up the box and took out the Alforde figurine. The ectoplasm had turned gray, and the little armorsoul was posed to look like he was challenging an adventurer, with his right arm pointing forward and a miniature hammer resting atop his left pauldron..

“I’ve done some tests, and there’s a good number of paints that work on them,” Brice said. “Though some colors definitely take better than others. I have yet to find a decent yellow, for example. Each one I tried needed four or five coats to look halfway decent. In contrast, most greens and blues looked pretty good after a single coat.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that there’s not a lot of yellow in Crestheart,” Vee said. He picked the figure up and examined it. The pieces of armor were all carefully carved and surprisingly detailed. Alforde’s plates had been copied faithfully, though the little figurine didn’t move the way Vee had originally hoped.

He poked through the rest of Brice’s box, examining ghosts, skeletons, and even a couple different variations of slimes. All of them were impressive, as were the miniature platforms and trap toys that Brice had rigged up.

“For launch, I was thinking we’d offer three different sets,” Brice said. “The first would be a basic monster pack. Three ghosts, a skeleton, a slime, and maybe one or two traps. Just enough to let people get a taste of what dunpla is all about. Then, we’d offer a ‘First Floor’ set or something as our middle tier. It’d include a few more monsters, a few more traps, and maybe a couple of platforms too. I’m planning to make some treasure chests too, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

He reached into the box and drew out the rest of the options he’d brought. There were even more minions – differently posed ghosts, skeletons, and slimes, with a few other original creations like evil-looking snowmen – and more traps. Beyond that, there were a few basic adventurer models. A [Fighter] with a mace and shield, a [Mage] with a staff and flowing robe, and a crouching [Rogue] with twin daggers.

“Finally, our flagship product will be ‘Crestheart Complete’. It’ll have enough minions, trap pieces, and other elements to form a full dungeon model. It might not be a totally accurate dungeon model, but that's neither here nor there. Additionally, it’ll come with Alforde and all three adventurer figures, though we’ll of course sell those separately as well. Here, I’ve made some box designs as well for you to take a look at.”

He pulled out three sheets of paper, and each was adorned with a series of images that showed what he’d just described. Vee thought they were fine, albeit a little plain, but he wasn’t much of an artist and kept his mouth shut on the matter.

Beneath them, on a fourth sheet of unadorned paper, Brice had included all of his tentative prices for each set. The basic monster pack would cost one silver fleur, the single floor would cost five, and Crestheart Complete was going to be at least twenty. The adventurers were going to be sold for twenty five bronze fleurs apiece, or sixty for the set of three, while Alforde cost seventy five bronze fleurs all by himself.

“What if they don’t sell?” Vee asked. “How much slack do we have in the pricing?”

“A fair bit, but I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that,” the [Toymaker] said. “I’ve shown them to a few of my regular customers, and they’ve all loved them. There’s even been some talk of people organizing them into games of their own once they go up for sale. They’ll have to make up some rules, but with how creative that bunch is I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

His expression changed. “That actually brings me to my next question. Would you be willing to sell me more of that ectoplasm so I can make some other models unrelated to Crestheart? I had some other ideas I want to try bringing to life.”

“How much are you looking to buy, and what are you hoping to pay for it?” Vee asked. Getting some extra money would be great, especially with the next collection day rapidly approaching.

And so, the two men haggled and negotiated, ultimately coming to terms of a thousand sheets of refined ectoplasm a month for five silver fleurs, with the option of doubling the order at the same price per thousand sheets if it proved necessary. Should the demand somehow spiral out of control, Vee agreed to renegotiate the price to be cheaper per sheet of refined ectoplasm, though he and Brice agreed that such a thing wasn't particularly likely to happen.

Still, it never hurt to hope and plan for the best.

Main Character Sheets:

Main Character Sheets

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 29

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 23

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 6

Might: 15

Wit: 35

Faith: 24 (+1)

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 15

Plotting: 19

Charisma: 15

Devious Mind: 24

Leadership: 19

Guts: 14

Intimidating Presence: 10

Citizenship: 21

Public Relations: 8

Determination: 4

Persuasiveness: 4

Bargaining: 2

Patience: 1

Competitive Spirit: 1

<3<3 Infatuation <3<3

Alforde Armorsoul (UNCHANGED FROM LAST CHAPTER):

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 29

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 15

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 18

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 10

Might: 51

Wit: 14

Faith: 28

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 9

Endurance: 28

Intimidating Presence: 12

Heart of a Champion: 12

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Vigilance: 8

Vanity: 2

Reginald (UNCHANGED FROM LAST CHAPTER):

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

--~%@(%$@ &% (*$ #&#e !i$$ (#$%#$%#$@!)~--, #$v@& ????

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 41

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 18

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 9

Might: 1

Wit: 36

Faith: 16

Ambition: 27

Greed: 24

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 39

$#&*!@!!: !!!

Loyalty: 46

Patience: 9

Irritability: 22

Remorsefulness: 17

[#&%%%@%!#@__--#%]

Hop@#!! @#$@!@#

@#$@%%^

#4^5#*&_!+++#(@$#

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8