Dungeons Are Bad Business

It was still dark when Joleimna woke up. He carefully extracted himself from the warmth of his wife’s body, and moved slowly through the darkened bedroom to avoid making any noise that would wake her up. Moving quietly was not a skill that came naturally to salamanders, with their tails and claws that almost seemed to have a mind of their own, but he’d had plenty of years to practice and managed just fine.

As he slowly closed the door behind him, Joleimna smiled. Seven hundred thirty five. That was how many days it’d been since he last woke his beautiful wife from her slumber as he bumbled away and got ready for work.

He tiptoed through the hall of his small house so as to not wake his children either, but was not quiet enough to keep from waking Grumble, the family cat. The pudgy orange animal wound itself between Joleimna’s legs and rubbed up against his right shin, purring in the hopes of getting an early treat.

Today, like every day, Joleimna couldn’t resist the fuzzball’s charms. Opening a small bag of chicken flavored treats, he pulled out a few and set them on the ground, then bent down to pet Grumble’s head while the cat scarfed them down. He wiped the tiny pool of spittle from the floor and received a lick for his efforts. Then, it was time to get ready.

He kept his sugar and flavorings in a small shed outside his house, and Joleimna was relieved as he always was that the small lock he’d put on it hadn’t been broken the night before. Even though he hadn’t been robbed ever since moving his family to this neighborhood six years ago, he still expected to wake up one morning and find that his supplies had been pilfered. Still, even if that happened, it was better to have the shed broken into than his home.

Whispering a prayer of thanks to Sereinov, the salamander Goddess of small blessings, Joleimna strapped his bags of sugar to his back and grabbed his flavorings from their shelf and started trudging towards the market.

A few of his more…unsavory neighbors were lingering in the dark spaces along the path, but they knew Joleima and he was in no danger from them.

Pin, an older elkin who always carried a small, cracked vision sphere, looked at Joleimna with his milky gray eyes and nodded. “Crows be coming, best be making soup.”

Joleimna nodded solemnly and walked past as quickly as he could with his heavy load. Pin was always saying strange things like that, and Joleimna had long since given up on trying to understand what the poor elkin meant.

“Any spare fleurs?” asked a man with shaggy hair. Joleimna didn’t have a name for him, but he shrugged when Joleimna shook his head. “Me neither.”

One of the few streetlamps that lit the sidewalk along his route was flickering and went out as he passed beneath it. Hopefully that wasn’t an omen of bad things to come. Joleimna curled his fingers in the sign for protection and quickened his pace, ignoring the protest coming from his knees, hips, and back. He disliked the cold morning air and yearned for the warmth of his worktable.

To chase away the chill, he reached down to his pocket and pulled out the small flask he kept in a loop on his belt. It was filled with emberberry wine, and Joleimna took a small swallow as he walked. The liquid burned his mouth and throat, which was exactly what the salamander wanted. He’d have another small sip as he began work, but no more than that. He’d seen too many people – many of them his friends – lose their ability to think and work for want of the drink, and he refused to join their number. He had a wife and kids to feed!

Henley and Margot - two of the handful of [City Guards] who kept the market reasonably safe at night – waved at Joleimna as he entered his stall and put down his bags. A moment’s pause here, to rest his aching back and rub some life back into his limbs.

“It’s supposed to be a bit cloudy today,” Henley said as he walked over to chat with the salamander. “But it’s not supposed to rain. Or at least, that’s what the [Weatherman] told me when I saw him last night.”

Joleimna smirked. “He also told you there wasn’t supposed to be any snow last Saulsday too, and look how that worked out for us.”

The [City Guard] and the [Candyman] both chuckled at the memory of over two feet of snow falling in less than a day.* What a Saulsday that had been!

Henley stayed for a few more minutes of small talk, and then returned to his post as some of the other merchants began filing into the market square. Joleimna looked up at the large clock in the center and saw that he had roughly an hour before he could expect the first few customers of the day.

Taking another sip from his flask, the salamander let the warmth from the liquor fill his body and then put his hands onto his worktable. “[Fire Breath],” he said. When he’d been a young salamander with more fire in his belly than he knew what to do with, he’d shouted the skill name at the top of his lungs and delighted in the way everyone else in the market jumped as he roasted the surface of his table with great gouts of flame.

These days, he would have been mortified at such a garish display, and mentally scolded his younger self for being such a silly fool.

His turned his head slowly from left to right, making sure that his flames evenly warmed the table's surface. There were [Alchemist] crystals underneath the top that would store most of the heat, and with a few extra applications of fire as the day went on, they would give him a perfect surface for rolling and shaping his sugar. Warm enough to keep the sugar soft, not so hot as to have any chance of burning it.

Which, speaking of sugar, he needed to get his first batch melting, or it wouldn’t be ready in time. Picking up his heavy ladle, he filled it with sugar and turned his stove onto its lowest heat. He smiled as it slowly started to melt, transforming from crystals of white powder to an amber gold slurry.

He hadn’t always wanted to be a [Candy Man]. No, in fact, when young Joleimna came to Oar’s Crest almost thirty years ago, barely bigger than a nymph, he’d wanted to be a [Glassblower]. Coming from a small town, he’d only ever heard rumors of the great city of Oar’s Crest, where the finest artisans in the world worked and lived. He’d scrimped and saved until he could afford the journey, and then came looking for a workshop to apprentice at.

Imagine his surprise when he’d learned that the city hadn’t been prosperous for decades at that point and that there wasn’t a single [Glass Master] left in the city. How he’d cried! But then, when wandering the virtually deserted streets wondering what he was going to do – he didn’t have any money for the return trip, having expected to find employment at a glass shop – he’d seen an old gray salamander sitting on a small bench in front of a tiny flame. In the salamander’s mouth was a long stick and at the end, a ball of what Joleimna had thought in his naivete was a bit of glass. He’d run over and watched, his eyes as big as the moon. As it turned out, the material wasn’t glass, but sugar, and the salamander was bending and twisting it into animal shapes. He’d given Joleimna one of a fish for free, and that had been it.

Joleimna had fallen on his knees right there and then, begging the old [Candy Man] to take him as an apprentice. It wasn’t glass, but it inspired the same sense of wonder, and that was good enough. Thankfully, the old salamander had long lamented that none of his children wanted to learn his craft, and had prayed daily for someone to pass his experiences down to. Naturally, he’d been more than happy to teach Joleimna everything he knew, and Joleimna had happily spent the next decade learning the trade of making treats.

The sugar was melted now, and Joleimna stopped his reminiscing to lift the ladle from the flame and tipped it onto the worktable after putting down the four thin rods of metal that would keep it from spreading too much. Reaching into his bags of flavoring powder, Joleimna drew out a handful of red, green, and white. These were all dumped on different parts of the sugar and Joleimna pointed a long claw at them in turn.

“[Mix Well].”

The powders swirled around in circles until they were fully combined with the sugar, and he looked at the spots of color to see if the colors looked okay or if he needed to add more powder. The green wasn’t quite the vibrant shade that he liked, so he added another sprinkling and used the skill again. Once he was satisfied, he flavored the sugar with squirts of syrup and let it cool just enough so that he could cut it into distinct pieces with his claws.

From there, it was folding and folding followed by more folding and occasional folding. The sugar was warm and pliable in his hands, and he lost track of time as he activated [Kneading Rhythm]. That was technically a [Baker] skill, it worked just fine for making candy too. Joleimna had learned it from one of the bakers in the old tradesman’s guild, back before it closed down.

Once the sugar was ready to go, Joleimna rolled the colors into a log and began the pulling and cutting process that would turn it into bite size pieces of candy. This was always his favorite part of the process, the part that required the most care and artistry. If his seams were sloppy, the final product wouldn’t have the nice shape that Joleimna took so much pride in, and if he took too long to pull the candy into the long rods that he’d eventually cut into individual pieces, the texture would be wrong.

He was so immersed in his work that he didn’t even notice the big orange kitrekin standing in front of his stall until he’d cut the last of his caramel apple candy into pieces and started putting them in bags. When he did, he bowed his head ever so slightly and reached down for his money bag.

“That time of the week already, is it Simon?”

The burly kitrekin nodded and grinned so that Joleimna could see his missing tooth. “Aye, it’s that time again, old friend.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“Sure you are,” Big Simon said. “You’re a decent, honest fellow who always has his protection money ready on time. Speaking of protection money, actually, there’s been some spots of trouble lately with a few of Sacre’s boys acting up, so the Don regrets to inform you that the price of keeping this place safe has gone up.”

The [Candy Man] scowled. “How much? He just raised prices not two months ago. I’m not made out of money, you know! I’ve got a family to feed!”

A shrug. “We’ve all got hardships, friend. Ten silvers a week.”

Joleimna almost dropped the bag of candy he was wrapping up.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Simon said. “I just come to collect it, it’s not me setting the rates.”

Joleimna sighed and handed the kitrekin a small pile of coins. He hated having to pay protection money, but he was a realist. If he wasn’t paying the don, he’d be paying Sacre, and while the score between them was close, the kitrekin crime boss was the lesser of the two evils.

Well, three evils technically, but no one had seen or heard a peep from the third in many years and so it was just Sacre and the don carving up Oar’s Crest between them.

Simon jangled the coins in his hand. “[Stack it up]. Hmm. Well, it looks like it’s all here. Pleasure doing business with you, Joleimna. See you next week.”

The kitrekin went to leave, but turned around at the last second and grabbed a bag of caramel apple candy from the front of Joleimna’s stall.

“My little girl loves these,” he said by way of explanation as he held up a paw and walked away into the morning gloom.

“Yes, of course, enjoy,” Joleimna said, even though the [Enforcer] was already well out of earshot.

He finished bagging up the rest of the caramel apple candies and repeated the entire making process for his strawberry lavender, raspberry lemonade, and orange cream flavors. Unfortunately, the work didn’t relax him the way it usually did, as his mind was locked on his new costs. So, on a bit of a whim, he decided to do some sugar sculpting.

It'd been a while since he’d last done any, and his claws were a bit clumsy as he balled up some of the hot sugar on the end of the long wooden stick he held between his teeth. His first attempt, a fish, didn’t look quite right, but the act of pinching and pulling the shapes together helped Joleimna work out some of his frustration. His second attempt was better, and by the third his hands had remembered their full skill. He set that sculpture, a dragoon with wings outstretched and its jaw open as if roaring, down on the front of the stall. Someone would pay handsomely for such a treat; dragoons were always popular. They were smaller than dragons -- or at least they were supposed to be, and the latter were virtually extinct around the continent so it was impossible to check -- and somewhat popular as pets for various [Tamers] in the northern cities. Joleimna had seen some once in a traveling circus, and the details had burned themselves into his memory.

The ugly fish wasn’t fit to try and sell, but instead of throwing it away, he ate it himself, enjoying the sweet butterscotch flavor. A sweet mistake, that was.

People were starting to file into the market now. Mostly it was the tradesmen – the [Chefs] and [Cooks] who were coming to get fresh ingredients for the day, but there were a few regular shoppers too.

The first of this latter group for the morning was a kitrekin mother with a young son in tow. She bought a bag of the strawberry lavender candies and Joleimna smiled at the way the child’s eyes lit up when he saw the dragoon.

“Is that dragoon made of candy too?” the boy asked.

“It sure is. Do you like it?”

The boy nodded enthusiastically. Joleimna picked it up and handed it to him.

“Oh no, we couldn’t possibly afford –“ his mother started to say, but the salamander waved her protest away.

“Please, don’t worry about it. It’s the job of a [Candy Man] to make the world taste good, after all. It’s a gift.”

After all, it was simply some sugar and some flavoring and a bit of time. It wasn’t like the dragoon was anything fancy. He was sad to see the chance at some easy fleurs go, but Joleimna never doubted his gut on things like that, and felt that the boy would truly enjoy the sculpture. That made it plenty worthwhile, so long as the salamander was concerned.

[Generosity +1]

At his mother’s prodding, the young kitrekin bowed his head and thanked Joleimna for the gift, but then he reached up and scratched his ear with a paw.

“Mister, what’s that picture for? Is it candy too?”

“Picture? What do you mean?”

“There’s a little square on the corner of your sign, it looks like a paw.”

“Oh, that,” said Joleimna. “Don’t worry about that, little one. It’s just a mark of the trade.”

“But you’re a salamander, why do you have a picture of a kitrekin’s –”

“Nathan, that’s enough,” his mother said in a firm voice that brooked no further discussion. Maybe she knew what the image meant too.

“But mooom,” the little kitrekin whined as he was dragged away by the paw. The dragoon bobbed up and down as the kitrekin made it zoom through the sky before taking a big bite of its wing, and Joleimna was still smiling as the next set of customers found their way to his stall.

Everything is going to be okay, the salamander thought as he counted coins and handed out bags of candy. The rest of the day passed without incident, and when the sun started to set, he cleaned up his worktable, packed up his sugar and flavorings, and made his way home. His wife was waiting for him with a hot bowl of soup, and a purring Grumble settled itself in Joleimna’s lap when he sat down on the couch to watch his children play in front of the fireplace.

Life was good. Another small prayer of thanks to Sereinov.

Tomorrow, Joleimna would wake up and do it all over again, and that suited him just fine.

*To the [Weatherman]’s credit, the snowfall that day was the responsibility of a rogue [Snowmancer] who’d robbed the bank and was trying to escape with her haul. Had that not happened, it would have been sunny and warm, perfect weather for Saulsday.

Joleimna Character Sheet:

Joleimna Duhn

Primary Class: Candy Man (Horeisus Sugartooth), Level 44

Secondary Class: Entrepreneur (Self), Level 36

Tertiary Class (Aspirational): Glass Blower (Self)

Might: 40

Wit: 32

Faith: 50

Generosity: 60 (+1)

Honesty: 65

Ambition: 31

Budgeting: 53