Dungeons Are Bad Business

Vee ducked as Mr. Chills – his giant snowman ghost – jerkily swung down from the ceiling on a band of ectoplasm and landed hard in the center of the room. The floor beneath the [Dungeon Master]’s feet rippled, and it took Vee a second to be sure of his balance. With his eye on the mini boss, the [Ghost Maestro] pretended to be an adventurer in the middle of a run, jogging to the other side of the room. As he moved, he braced his right hand against his left forearm so that he’d be ready to raise the ectoplasm shield strapped there at the first sign of a thrown snowball. The light section had packed ice into the spheres, and after having one cheek get cut during the day’s first test, Vee had no appetite for any further injuries.

When the projectile didn’t come toward him until he’d already touched the wall, Vee sighed and started walking toward the ghost with his shield raised. Snowballs shattered against the ectoplasm, sending slush in all directions as Vee winced at impacts. Even though the ghost arms were only working at thirty percent of their normal strength, the [Dungeon Master] was already starting to get sore.

“[Would You Kindly] stop your attack,” he called. Mr. Chills slowed his assault, and after thirty seconds no more snowballs hit Vee’s shield. That was slower than Vee would have liked for it to be. I’ll have to make another adjustment to the stopping orders, he thought. That delay is unacceptable. I don’t want adventurers getting pelted if they forfeit their run in here.

He turned his attention to the bigger problem: that there was such a long delay for the ghost’s target acquisition. With how long it took for the snowman to start throwing, faster adventurers would probably be able to disarm it before it even got its first attack off. What could the problem be? He’d checked the sigils more times than he could count, and had found nothing amiss. The same went for the dungeon’s floor orders, which were all set to have the ghost attack as soon as it landed inside the room.

Still, for good measure, Vee checked his sigilmancy yet again from top to bottom, going through each step of the process as if going through the process for the first time. He paused often, looking for any sign of inconsistencies or hang ups with his sigil logic that could potentially be the cause of the problem. When he didn’t find anything, Vee cursed and gestured for Do to hoist the ghost back up to the ceiling. “We’ll test it again,” he said. “I want to time how long it takes to start throwing and see if it’s a consistent delay.”

The [Dungeon Maintainer] pulled on the ectoplasm rope and Mr. Chills swung back into the sky, vanishing into the artificial gloom Vee had spent the morning making. The locking system clicked into place and the room was ready for the next test.

They repeated the experiments, but frustratingly, the delay wasn’t consistent. Oh, it was always there, but it lasted for different lengths of time each experiment. The shortest pause was only five seconds, but the longest was more than twenty.

Exasperated, Vee tugged on his hair and pulled out his notebook to study his sigils again. Had he misplaced some of the orders, perhaps? Was he looking past a redundancy somewhere? The [Ghost Maestro] didn’t know what else it could possibly be.

“Um, Master? If I may be so bold, I think I have an idea for what’s causing the problem,” Do said quietly as Vee returned to his starting side of the room.

Now that was interesting. Vee cocked his head to the side, looked at the fiend, and said, “Oh yeah? What is it?”

“Well, I noticed that Mr. Chills is hitting the ground rather hard,” Do said. “Is it possible that it’s being stunned by the impact and that’s why it’s not activating right away?”

Vee swore loudly and closed his eyes. Of course it was something obvious like that! He hadn’t given any thought to status resistances! How had he missed that?!

He’d been too focused on optimizing his sigils for proper targeting behavior and different attack patterns, he decided. Caught up in the euphoria of quick work [Shaping Ectoplasm], he’d neglected to consider the entire ghost. Not for the first time in his life, Vee swore to himself that bothering with sigilmancy was more trouble than it was worth! There were simply too many things to keep track of. It was stupid!

Vee squared his shoulders. No, that wasn’t true. Sigilmancy was tedious and finnicky, but it was going to be increasingly necessary as Crestheart grew. During his regular ponderings about the dungeon’s future, Vee found himself thinking more and more that he’d have to take a more hands-on approach to crafting minions, which meant more time at his workbench drawing sigils.

This was a learning opportunity, Vee decided. It was true that he’d screwed up, but ultimately the mistake wasn’t too bad. He wasn’t going to beat himself up about it.

That didn’t mean he was going to let it slide easily, though.

“From now on, I’m following a list of things to include on dungeon ghosts,” Vee said. “I’ll do it like they showed us back in school. Bullet points and everything, and I’m not touching a scrap of ectoplasm until I’ve got it all planned out. No more freewheeling for me.”

Do looked vaguely concerned.

“Are you, um, talking to me, Master?”

Vee shook his head and the fiend visibly relaxed. He went back to holding the rope steady, ready for the next test to begin.

Vee returned his focus to the matter at hand. For now, what he needed was a quick and dirty fix to get the ghost to the point where it could be used in dungeon runs. Crestheart was going to be in trouble real soon if he didn’t get it figured out.

Citing the lack of minions, only three adventurers had signed up for the next day’s runs, and having such low turnout was a vibrantly unwelcome dent in his buffer of funds for staying on top of his repayment schedule.

Pacing back and forth, Vee decided that the best course of action was to simply make an ectoplasm pad for the ghost to land on. If it was thick enough, it should absorb enough of the minion’s impact to prevent Mr. Chills – and all of his doppelgangers Vee didn’t feel like naming – from getting stunned.

His other option, trying to give the snowman status resistance, was not really viable. Sigils had a tendency to get entangled with one another – sigil dependency – which meant that any attempt to make changes typically caused the ghost to suffer bizarre malfunctions that took forever to track down and figure out. There were groups that claimed to be interested in helping [Ghost Maestros] solve their sigilmancy problems, but every time Vee had tried to interact with them, he'd found nothing but people arguing about definitions, focused on optimizations irrelevant to the request, or telling the asker that they’d worded their question wrong.

It'd soured him on the whole idea.

Promising himself that he’d rework the sigils from start to finish before the next batch of mini bosses got made, Vee pinched his thumb and forefinger together and used [Shape Ectoplasm] to weave a large, springy pad.

Do installed it in the center of the room, and on their next test, Mr. Chills bounced a few inches into the air but started throwing snowballs right away.

Vee grinned. It was far from perfect, but it would work.

[Perfect is the enemy of good.]

[Congratulations! You are now a Ghost Maestro, Level 29!]

[Wit +1]

[Your ability to shape ectoplasm is now more powerful!]

***

As soon as the gate clanged closed behind them, Vee saw that there was a commotion of some kind in town. The [City Guards] were out in force, patrolling the streets in their shining silver armor, and they all had their weapons ready. However, despite their apparent vigilance, the atmosphere in the streets was calm, which was a relief. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t a crisis. Yet.

Walking over to a tall elkin who was guarding the nearest corner, Vee asked what was going on.

“Some of the adventurers from the open call have returned,” the [City Guard] explained. “They brought back a handful of prisoners and a bunch of damaged goods too. The council asked us to make sure that nobody in town gets any funny ideas about taking things that don’t belong to them while the guild sorts everything out.”

Returned goods?

“What all did they bring back?”

The guard shrugged. “Heck if I know, Mister Vales. I’m just a strong sword arm. The guild and the council are doing the sorting over in the market square if you want to go and take a look at the boxes for yourself.”

Thanking the elkin, the trio hurried to the market as quickly as they could through the crowd. Whenever they got stuck in a knot of passerby who didn’t want to move, Alforde cleared the way for them with words and – if that didn’t work – gentle nudges from his chilly pauldrons.

Just as the elkin said, there were dozens of boxes stacked in the center of the market. The vendors who normally ran their businesses there had all packed up for the night, but a few were taking advantage of the crowd to do a little more business.

Joleimna, for example, was threading his way through the crowd, selling individual candies and small bags to anyone who wanted some. Unable to resist the sweet treats, Vee bought some lemon lime sugar hats and popped one into his mouth. He devoured the whole bag in no time at all, savoring the juxtaposition of sweet and sour flavors.

Vee looked at the pile. [Clerks] from the guild and the council office examined each box in turn, probably making notes about what was inside or who it belonged to.

The [City Guards] were fanned out in a wide perimeter around the boxes, and they politely but firmly stopped Vee and his companions from getting any closer. So, Vee had no choice but to stand on his tiptoes and try to see if any of the boxes belonged to him from a distance.

He smiled when he saw a trio of battered, bouncing boxes over on the far side of the square. They were wrapped in blankets and fastened tight with ropes, as if the people handling them had been afraid of whatever was inside escaping. No one would have taken him up on it, but Vee was willing to bet a tidy sum of fleurs that it was his skeletons.

They weren’t the only familiar boxes though. Vee saw a couple here and there that he was pretty sure contained elementals and ghosts. That was great.

It took another two chilly hours before the inventory was done and the [City Guards] started allowing a trickle of citizens through to try and claim their recovered goods. [Shopkeepers] and [Merchants] walked up to the [Clerks], described what they’d been expecting, and then were led to boxes that they had to drag away. It was slow, and Vee feared that it’d be morning before he was allowed to see how many minions had been recovered. He didn’t want to go another night without sleeping.

Luckily he was spared a further wait; one of the guild’s [Clerks], who’d seen Crestheart’s name printed on one of the skeleton boxes came up and said that the guild wanted the monsters taken away as quickly as possible.

“Those things are a menace,” she said as she gave Vee a stack of forms to sign. “One broke free on the way back and it took the adventurers two hours to chase it down.”

“That’s why we use them,” Vee said with a bright smile as he looked down at the papers. They all said virtually the same thing: that he’d come to reclaim his property, that he accepted the fact that the goods may have been damaged as part of the recovery process, and that he’d fork over ten gold fleurs to show his gratitude for the “heroic efforts” of the adventurers.

That last stipulation rankled Vee, but he agreed to pay it without complaint. After all, without minions, he’d lose more than ten gold fleurs in just the next day.

All told, there were twelve boxes that belonged to Crestheart: three big boxes of skeletons – including two boxes of skeleton lancers – four boxes of elementals, and five boxes of low level ghosts. His slimes had been lost, but since Pretzel was producing plenty in the menagerie, that was as good as it could get, loss-wise.

“And how will you be transporting these back to the dungeon?” the [Clerk] asked.

“We’ll have to hire a carriage,” Vee said. “We’ll go see if there are any available.”

“I’m afraid that there aren’t any,” a voice behind Vee said.

The [Dungeon Master] spun around and found himself looking at Michael Seidon. The councilman smiled mirthlessly.

“You see, the adventurer’s guild has requested additional carriages to help transport the remaining goods recovered from the bandit camp to other cities nearby. Naturally, the council has agreed. As such, every carriage in the city is currently spoken for. However, we’ve allocated a few for our own goods, and would be happy to deliver your minions to Crestheart.”

“And what would that cost?”

Seidon shrugged.

“Nothing much. Just a small fee of one gold fleur for each of the big boxes, and…let’s say twenty silver for each of the smaller ones.”

“That’s almost another five gold fleurs!” Vee cried. “Are you crazy?”

The councilman smiled. “Not in the slightest. You are, of course, welcome to carry your boxes allll the way back to the gate and beyond by yourselves. The choice is yours, Mister Vales.”

Reginald’s brim tightened around Vee’s head.

“We should do it, Boss,” he said. “It sucks, but we’ll be back in business tomorrow. Proper business, you know?”

“I know,” Vee said.

Though he hated it, Vee signed the paper Seidon handed him and agreed to pay the delivery fee.

The things he did for his dungeon.

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 29 (+1)

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 17

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 5

Might: 12

Wit: 32 (+1)

Faith: 21

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 13

Plotting: 17

Charisma: 12

Devious Mind: 21

Leadership: 16

Guts: 12

Intimidating Presence: 9

Citizenship: 20

Public Relations: 6

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 21

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 12

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 14

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 3

Might: 38

Wit: 12

Faith: 25

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Endurance: 18 (+1)

Intimidating Presence: 13

Heart of a Champion: 8

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Vigilance: 5

Vanity: 4 (+1)

Reginald:

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

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

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 39

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 14

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 7

Might: 1

Wit: 32

Faith: 11

Ambition: 26

Greed: 22

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 35

$#&*!@!!

Loyalty: 45

Patience: 10

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

$@%^#$: @#@$*

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 7

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