Dungeons Are Bad Business

The address the woman had provided led the trio to a small, dilapidated neighborhood near the border of Southtown, where the city was a bit less urban. There were actual yards and small gardens, though most of them had clearly been neglected for years and were little more than weedy patches of moss and dirt.

However, one property had definitely taken advantage of the space offered. With all the flowers, shrubs, vines, and bushes, it was hard for Vee to see the house amidst all the greenery, let alone confirm the address. Still, Vee was confident that he’d found the right place as he opened the ivy-covered gate and made his way up the small walkway that led to the door.

Inside, Vee could hear the unmistakable sound of someone smashing things and swearing about it.

“This should be fun,” Reginald said. “Seems like a real swell lady, eh?”

“Shut up,” Vee said. “Don’t you go making things any harder than they need to be.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, boss. I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse.”

Alforde giggled. “Somehow I doubt that.”

Reaching up, Vee knocked on the door.

“Who the – *hic* -- whaddya want? I’m busy in here!”

As if to punctuate her point, the sound of breaking glass rang out and Vee winced. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. It wasn’t like they were obligated to talk to this lady, right? After all, there was nothing stopping them from going and finding someone else to make the potions, was there? Vee took a step back as he contemplated turning around and leaving, but something in his gut told him that this was the place to be. He decided to trust his instincts, though a little voice in the back of his skull was screaming for him to flee.

[Guts +1]

“Um, Miss Juniper? Hi, my name is Vee Vales and I’m the [Dungeon Master] of Crestheart, the newish dungeon in town. I’m here with my [Dungeon Champion] Alforde and my [Majordomo] Reginald. We were hoping to see about having you brew some potions for us?”

“Oh reeeeaally? Some potions, *hic* you say? Well let’s just bloody see ‘bout that!”

It took a little longer than it should have for Juniper – hopefully it was Juniper and Vee hadn’t gone to the wrong house or something – to come down the hall and open the door. Her trip was punctuated by a few more screams of rage and slams against the wall.

Juniper was a small slip of a girl, a hair shorter than Vee with long dark hair and thick, circular glasses that made her eyes seem a bit too big for her face. Dressed in a sleeveless gray-green tank top and pair of tightish purple pants, she was pale, and both of her arms were covered in an intricate web of black and purple floral tattoos. Most of the flowers outside were purple too. Vee sensed a theme.

In her right hand was a mostly empty bottle of mead, and in her left was a small knife that she held up to wave in Vee’s face. “Right then. Whas that you were sayin’ ‘bout potions?”

Judging from the dark bags under her eyes, Vee got the feeling that it’d had been a while since she’d last slept, and thanks to the strong stench of mead that filled his nose as soon as she opened the door as well as her glassy gaze, he had a good idea of the reason why.

“Lemme tell you *hic* something ‘bout potions,” Juniper said as she waggled the knife a little bit more. “I paid my bloody protection money every week for a year. A *hic* whole year! And then guess what happens? The same pricks I’ve been paying go and smash my shop up because they didn’t see the bloody snail on the *hic* window. Whaddya have to say ‘bout that, eh?”

“Uh, well, that doesn’t have anything to do with potions,” Reginald said, proving that when the chips were down and he’d given his word to keep quiet, he was totally incapable of doing so.

Wary of the knife, Vee thought an angry rebuke to Reginald and tried to divert the conversation. “Well, that’s certainly unpleasant, but if you’re interested in getting back to work, we’re in need of –“

“An’ how’s I’m ‘sposed to do bloody anything with no space to work?”

While she waited for him to answer, Juniper took a long pull from her bottle of mead, shuddering after she swallowed.

“If you’d just put the knife down, we can talk about this better,” Alforde said gently. Juniper looked up at the armorsoul and after glaring at him for a minute, slowly lowered her shiv and waved for them to follow her.

“Better to talk inside,” she said as she led them past a mass of shattered plates and glasses. “One of my neighbors has a thing about noise.”

Vee looked around and saw that the interior of Juniper’s house was just as filled with plants and flowers as the outside. Interestingly, despite the copious amount of debris strewn everywhere, none of the potted vegetation was damaged in the slightest.

“Give me a *hic* minute to sober up,” Juniper said as she directed them to a neat square table in the center of her cozy kitchen. Vee sat down and took Reginald off so that he could keep an eye on the hat. I’m watching you he mouthed with a glare. Reginald winked.

The [Herbalist] swayed her way to a cabinet filled with jars. She threw it open with abandon, drained the rest of her mead with a great swig, and started pulling down jars chock full of petals. These she set on the countertop before turning on her stove, filling a kettle with water and setting it to boil. Then, once it was ready, Juniper filled a mug with the dried flowers and poured the steaming water over them.

“[Infuse Sobriety],” she slurred, and the water started turning orange. “’S gonna be a few minutes,” Juniper said, “but if we’re *hic* goin’ to talk business I should sober up a bit.”

Vee pointed to the cup. “Does that really cure drunkenness? Surely such a skill would be invaluable? You could sell it for—”

Juniper laughed. “Only works for people with the [Flower Child] class, I’m afraid. Otherwise I woulda made my fortune and skipped out of this bloody *hic* city a long time ago.”

Sure enough, when she downed the drink a few minutes later and sat down across the table from Vee, her eyes were clear, and she seemed like an entirely different person.

“Now, what’s this you wanted to talk to me about?”

And so Vee explained what he wanted her to make. It wasn’t anything particularly fancy, just a few minor potions that would help adventurers recover from some of their wounds, restore some of their energy, and other things like that. Little things that could be sold for a few fleurs every run.

“Sure, that’s all easy enough,” Juniper said. “But like I said earlier, all my equipment got smashed up. It wouldn’t be impossible to replace my gear since it mostly just pots, kettles, and stuff like that but the bigger problem is that I don’t have anywhere to actually brew and make things.”

“What about doing it here?” Vee asked.

“Definitely not,” Juniper said. “One of my neighbors is insane about smells.”

“Heck of a neighbor,” muttered Reginald.

“Sorry, as much as I’d like to I don’t think I can help you.”

Vee shrugged. He’d figured that Juniper would say something like that, and his plan wasn’t deterred in the slightest.

“Are you planning to return to your old workshop, then? Perhaps we could help you clean it up? I’m sure with Alforde’s help you’d be back in business in no time.”

“No way,” Juniper said. “The rent was nice, but the protection money was brutal, and at the end of the day, it wasn’t even effective. I love what I do, er, what I did, but I think I’m just going to go back to working for my sister. She’s the [Tailor] who has space in the big market. Cutting cloth isn’t my favorite thing to do in the world, but the money isn’t too bad.”

“Well, that’s certainly one option,” Vee said, swapping to his best salesman voice. It sounded a little bit like Alforde with something stuck in his throat. “But I’ve got an alternative if you’re interested.”

Juniper raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

“Sure do. There’s an abandoned shop near Crestheart that would be perfect for you. If you’re interested, we’ll help you move in and get set up.”

The [Herbalist]’s eyes grew wide, which had an even greater effect than normal due to her glasses. “Out past the gate to Westown? Are you crazy?! There are fiends out there! And ghosts!”

Vee’s palms went to his face faster than you could say “Again?”. He groaned and started shaking his head. “What is wrong with the people in this city,” he mumbled.

Sensing the rant that was barreling towards them all, Alforde recognized this as his cue and stepped in.

“Miss Juniper, I assure you that the threat from fiends and ghosts beyond the gate is grossly overstated. We haven’t had any issues, and Vee will arrange protection for your shop after sunset to ensure that none of your materials or equipment get damaged overnight. Our little strip of Westown is perfectly safe.”

Juniper leaned back and folded her arms across her chest. “And what would that ‘protection’ cost me? Seventy silver fleurs a week? Eighty? A hundred? Look, I’m really not interested in swapping from one extortionist to another.”

Vee got his head back in the game and looked up. “No, nothing like that at all. No protection money at all. As for rent, just show me a receipt of what you used to pay at your old spot and I’ll match it. The only thing I’ll ask is that for the next year you make us as many potions as we need free of charge. After that, we’ll pay you wholesale prices for them.”

“How many potions are you talking about?” Juniper asked. “That sounds nice, but if I have to brew hundreds of potions a week, I’m still basically paying protection money.”

Vee shrugged. “I can’t really say for sure. It depends on how popular they are. I was thinking we could start with ten a day or so. We can adjust from there. If the number starts increasing too much, we’ll figure something out. How’s that sound?”

“Just to make sure, when you say potions you mean individual sizes right? Like doses? You only want ten doses a day?”

“Yeah, to start. We’re not sure how well they’re going to sell yet.”

Juniper smiled. “Well, that’s not bad at all. That’s only half a cauldron or so.”

“Great,” Vee said, fully aware of wheels turning in Juniper’s head. It was fine if she thought that she was getting the better of him. All he really cared about right now was getting her into the space and brewing potions for Crestheart. Better to not push too hard though.

“I’m not really into high pressure tactics, so go ahead and take your time to think about it. Come see the space if you want to. I’d be happy to show you around. If you still want to go work for your sister after taking a look at it, that’s fine too. We’ll find someone else. Thanks for your time.”

Juniper met Vee’s gaze and she grinned. “Sure thing. I’ll go ahead and think about it.”

Vee inclined his head a little bit as he stood up and picked up Reginald.

[Charisma +1]

With Alforde behind him and Reginald in his hands, Vee left the [Herbalist]’s house and headed back into the city.

“She’s in,” Reginald said. “Hundred percent.”

“Hopefully,” said Vee.

Making their way to Crestheart, Vee went up to his lab and started the process of animating the mannequins. Adventurers were scheduled to resume their runs tomorrow morning and Vee wanted the shopkeepers ready to go as quickly as possible. Setting the first one – which he called Lumpy – in the center of his workspace, Vee crouched down and surrounded it with a circle of shaped ectoplasm. Then he cursed and did it a second time, because he’d screwed up the thickness of the ectoplasm and saw that his first efforts wouldn’t work. If the ectoplasm was too thin, it’d break under the force of what was to come.

Once the circle was in place and to his satisfaction, Vee closed his eyes and collected his thoughts. This was going to be something. Sigilmancy was far from his favorite type of [Ghost Maestro] work.

“[Vivify Minion: Base]!” he cried.

A sickly green light covered his hands and Vee walked around the circle, drawing shapes on the ground that would give his mannequin shopkeepers the illusion of life. First came the winding glyphs of Bu, which was the cornerstone of all big ectoplasm workings. There were four of these equally spaced inside the circle – one on each cardinal point – and they’d serve as the anchors to keep everything that came after them in place. After those came the square, bracketed glyphs of Gu, which would give the mannequin the ability to retain orders. There were four of these as well. After those came An and Mo, which would let the mannequins move their arms and heads, respectively. Since they’d always be sitting, he didn’t have to worry about the squiggly Un sigils which would have allowed them to move their legs.

Sweat beaded Vee’s neck and forehead as he finished the last base sigil, and he sighed. He wasn’t even into the hard stuff yet! Clearly, he didn’t do this type of thing often enough. Closing his eyes once more, he activated [Vivify Minion: Orders] and continued his drawing. This time, the light that covered his hands was yellow. The orders to be followed by his mannequin were written in a series of pictograms, and it was this step of the process where Vee could have used a reference book from the library. It would have been nice to make sure that he was using the correct images for each thing he wanted. But he’d felt it was important to try and muddle way through on his own.

Thankfully, his needs were simple. He only had to draw two pictograms. The first was a bag, and he hoped it meant inventory. There were several bag pictograms of varying shapes and sizes, with a bevy of meanings that were all slightly different. Thankfully, they were close enough that even if he wasn’t perfect, the mannequin wouldn’t have major issues.

After that, he drew the fleur su cha, the flower that gave fleurs their name. It was a simple flower with four leaves that all curled to the right. Vee frowned. He hoped that he’d done a decent job on the proportions. Just like bags, there were dozens of floral pictograms that could be used in sigilmancy. However, unlike bags, floral pictograms had meanings that varied from ‘money’ to ‘water the plants’ to ‘kill this person and bury them’. Vee definitely didn’t want to mix those up.

The two pictograms were linked to each other with a pair of arrows that indicated an exchange of one for the other. Thankfully, the arrows were simple and impossible to screw up.

Vee repeated the pair of pictograms and corresponding arrows a few more times so that there was one set inside each of his Gu sigils. Had he been a higher level [Ghost Maestro] – say, Level 35 of so – he could have added more pictograms that would have given the minion a unique voice and some degree of personality. Alas, those were both well beyond his current skillset. Something to revisit in the future, he supposed.

Vee’s head was starting to ache something fierce, and he took a short break to catch his breath and collect his thoughts. The next set of markings would complete the vivification process, and were far more delicate than the ones he’d drawn already. Due to the fact that they required a greater degree of precision, he’d have to use his [Ghost Baton] instead of his fingers. Taking a deep breath, Vee summoned his baton and activated [Vivify Minion: Finalize]. The baton was bathed in blue light.

Terrified that he was going to screw something up, Vee got on his hands and knees and started drawing the intricate loops, arcs, triangles and dots that would complete the minion’s ability to follow the orders it’d been given and carry out his commands. The markings had to be balanced between all parts of the circle, but also couldn’t just be a repeating pattern. Sigilmancy was picky that way.

Vee had always hated having to count the shapes as he drew them, just as he hated having to keep track of where he hadn’t drawn a triangle or a circle in a while. However, by pausing every few shapes and checking his work, he did his best.

The process took the better part of two hours, and Vee was both nauseous and drenched in sweat by the time he finished. But there was still more to do. Now he had to do his first tests to make sure that he hadn’t screwed anything up until this point.

Clapping his hands together, Vee activated the energy within the circle and watched as the mannequin’s eyes filled with crimson light. Shoot. He’d made a mistake somewhere; the light was supposed to be green. Pulling his hands apart deactivated the circle and Vee double checked his symbol balance. Sure enough, he’d miscounted the number of triangles on the circle’s northern side and had to add three more somehow.

“Stupid sigilmancy,” Vee muttered as he crouched back down to fix the error. He scanned his work again, marking the count of each shape on a piece of paper beside him. Luckily, it looked like he’d only made the one mistake, and when he activated the circle again, the soon-to-be-shopkeeper looked up at him with eyes so green they could have been carved from jade.

That was encouraging! Vee was too worn out to go ahead and test the rest of the orders by going through a practice exchange, but he’d do that later in the afternoon after a nice long break.

Using his coat as a makeshift towel, Vee slumped to the ground and pressed his face into his knees. He was shaking as if he’d just run a long distance, and it took him a few minutes to start breathing normally once again. Despite how crappy he felt physically, a fierce sense of pride welled up in Vee’s chest. Even if he ended up needing to go back and redo a bunch of sigilmancy, he’d done the entire vivification on his own without reference. That was pretty great, he thought.

[Congratulations, you are now a Ghost Maestro, Level 22!]

[Your Vivify Minion skills are now more powerful!]

[Your Ghost Baton skill is now more powerful!]

[Faith + 1]

When Vee, Alforde and Reginald made their way to the gate the next morning, they were surprised to see Juniper waiting for them. She was wearing a yellow dress and holding a large plant that Vee himself would have had a heck of a time carrying.

“Good morning,” she said in a cheerful voice. “I thought about it a lot last night and I’ve made my decision. So long as the place isn’t a total dump I’ll take you up on your offer.”

“Told you,” Reginald said smugly.

Vee wasn’t going to press the matter further. He grinned as he shook the [Herbalist]’s hand to seal the deal and directed Alforde to carry her plant to her new location. The armorsoul did so without complaint, joking that it was much lighter than the things Vee usually ordered him to carry.

The gate opened and as they all walked through it, Juniper made a noise.

“Its….so clean!” she said, looking from left to right up and down the street. “There’s no trash anywhere! I can’t remember the last time I saw a clean street in Oar’s Crest.”

Vee laughed. “Yeah, some of my helpers have been working on clearing it out. It’s coming along, but we’re not quite done yet. The next step is to figure out a way to get rid of the grime on the sidewalks and stuff.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Juniper said. “Cracklethorn sap is great for scrubbing and cleaning.”

As they walked and Juniper explained the multitude of benefits offered by various plants and herbs, Vee felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. Something big was moving in the ethereal. Not wanting to interrupt Juniper, he turned his head to the side and activated [Third Sight] to get a better look.

The movement belonged to the mysterious new spirit that he’d first noticed with Casys. The shape of its body was still too murky to pin down perfectly, but it was drawing strength from Juniper just as it had been from the townspeople. With the intuition gained from his most recent levels of [Ghost Maestro], Vee could tell that it was an Expectation, but he still didn’t know what kind.

With a maw that didn’t look entirely friendly, the spirit reached for Vee, and he once again deactivated the skill before insulating himself from any sort of ectoplasmic attack. None came, but Vee was still unsettled as he opened the door to the Juniper’s new building.

The [Herbalist] walked in and looked around. She was grinning ear to ear as she ran her hands along the shelves and looked inside the old barrels. She had Alforde set her plant down on one shelf, and then changed her mind and had him move it to the other side of the room.

“It’s perfect,” she said. “Laurel loves it here!”

Vee looked at the plant, which must have been Laurel and frowned. It didn’t seem any different than it had a moment ago. Must have been another skill of the [Flower Child] class.

Before he could think about it much further though, a popup appeared in front of Vee’s face and distracted him.

[Failed to receive quest! Reason: Citizenship too low (Requires 20 points)].

Now what could that be about?

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales:

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 22 (+1)

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 9

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 2

Might: 8

Wit: 28

Faith: 17 (+1)

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 9

Plotting: 11

Charisma: 4 (+1)

Devious Mind: 12

Leadership: 10

Guts: 4 (+1)

Intimidating Presence: 5

Citizenship: 5

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 17

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 10

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 10

Additional Class: Clunker (Vee Vales), Level 4

Might: 29

Wit: 10

Faith: 24

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 6

Endurance: 10

Intimidating Presence: 8

Heart of a Champion: 2

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 3

Vigilance: 3

Reginald:

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

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 34 (+1)

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 6

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 2

Might: 1

Wit: 27

Faith: 3

Ambition: 23

Greed: 18

Deceptiveness: 31

E$@$: $%

[-------------------------]

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 2

BONUS: Juniper's Character Sheet

Juniper Digby

Primary Class: Flower Child (Self), Level 33

Secondary Class: Herbalist (Esmerelda Ogg), Level 28

Tertiary Class: Tailor (Willow Digby), Level 11

Might: 11

Wit: 30

Faith: 14

Ambition: 8

Citizenship: 4

Charisma: 12

Endurance: 9

Green Thumb: 14