Dungeons Are Bad Business

Early the next morning, Vee headed to the dungeon by himself, having told his friends that he wanted to work on a new ghost design that had come to him overnight. That was true, technically, but the real reason Vee wanted to be by himself was so that he could think about Sacre's "offer" and come to a conclusion that was wholly his own.

It was a chilly morning, though the sky was clear and it was supposed to warm up as the day went on. A handful of people were out and about, and Vee exchanged polite greetings with them as he passed. Returning an old [Baker]'s friendly wave, Vee felt a little guilty: he should probably learn their names at some point. After all, he'd been passing them for what felt like years now and still didn't know who they were.

Deciding that there was no time like the present, Vee walked into a small cafe and sat down. He wasn't in any rush to get to the dungeon, and thought that perhaps ruminating on his problems over a cup of coffee would help him think.

Putting on his best smile, he struck up a friendly conversation with the [Shopkeeper], a middle aged salamander woman who was named Keilin. Doing his best to commit that to memory, Vee sat down at a small table in the corner and took a sip of his drink. It was hot and bitter, which was a perfect compliment for the [Dungeon Master]'s mood that morning.

Ugh. What was he supposed to do about Sacre's offer? On the one hand, it felt like he had a ton of time to think about it, but on the other the [Dungeon Master] knew all too well that the weeks would start passing faster once he was in the middle of them. A month was a long time… all the way up until it wasn't.

Looking out the window, Vee thought about his options. The way he saw it, there were three primary choices and then a few variations on those. The first was probably the simplest: agree to let Sacre take half of all the future revenue generated by Westown and then do his best to keep the man's ambitions tempered. There were…several obvious problems with that approach, not least of which was that Vee had no easy ideas for how to go about trying to keep Sacre in check once he was established in Westown.

The second option was to refuse the deal and then do whatever was necessary to block Sacre from expanding to Westown. That was what he wanted to do, but knew that it would be almost impossible to succeed: he didn't have the ability to compete with Sacre's gang in terms of muscle. Even if he did, though, Vee also lacked the Ruthlessness necessary to deal with the other man in the way that would likely end up being necessary.

With those two options largely off the table, Vee thought again about something Reginald had suggested: accepting that his vision for Westown wasn't going to happen and allying with Don Curlytail in an attempt to establish a new form of balance between the powers that existed within the city. Alternatively, instead of allying with the kitrekin crimeboss, Vee could technically go out to the council too and try to reach some sort of agreement that would bring them into the administration of Westown. They were a better option than Curlytail in many ways, but worse in others. He wasn't really interested in having his own aspirations bogged down in endless bureaucratic bickering or favor-trading.

Vee took another sip of his coffee and shook his head. There was technically a fourth option too that he hadn't really considered: abandoning the development of Westown and hoping that Sacre's attention got pulled somewhere else. However, that was unlikely and undesirable.

Vee sighed.

Leaving a couple bronze fleurs on the table, the [Dungeon Master] got up and left. He walked the rest of the way to Crestheart tower, and headed up to his workshop. Maybe his subconscious would take care of things if he distracted himself with a project.

Closing his eyes, Vee reached through his bonds to his orchestra and summoned Cog, telling the fiend to attend him as quickly as possible.

While he waited, he walked over to the neatly organized piles of refined ectoplasm and grabbed a few blocks of blue since Soleir – the salamander [Ghost Smith] who'd provided his tutorial – had said that was always a solid choice for starting a new project.

He tested the weight of the block in his hand and squeezed it, then grabbed a cube of red and green and repeated the process. Sure enough, while all three were similar, the blue cube was definitely lighter and squishier than the other two.

Taking two cubes of each color over to his ectoplasm flattening machine, Vee rolled them through it a few times until they were long and thin, then twisted them into rods that were each about as long as his arm. He couldn't explain why that felt so right to do, but it did.

By the time he'd finished three, Cog had arrived in the workshop. "How may serve, master?"

Vee handed him the rods of ectoplasm and gestured to another machine in the workshop. "Cut these down into smaller pieces for thorn posts. Each one should be about an inch and a half long. Think you can do that?"

The fiend nodded, and took the rods over to the cutter so it could get to work. It had an innate sense for length, Vee saw, because it didn't stop to measure or anything before it made its first cuts, which were the perfect size.

He quickly flattened and twisted the rest of his rods, setting them beside Cog and grabbing another handful of blue cubes. He had a different idea for these, and took them over to his [Ectoplasmic Anvil] so that he could mash them together into a ball. Strictly speaking, he didn't need the anvil for that, but the small orb made the job quicker and also allowed him to imprint it with sigils as he did so.

Vee added symbols that would let the blob spin around continuously, then got to work shaping it into a disc. The process of doing so was somewhat finicky, and after a few minutes of concentrated effort Vee ended up with an oblong…thing. It kind of looked like a peanut, which wasn't what he'd had in mind.

Sighing, Vee squished the ectoplasm back into a ball and tried again. This time, he set it on the floor before shaping it, pushing down in the center and pulling the edges out while rotating it until it turned into a proper disc.

"Much better," Vee said, checking his symbols to make sure that he hadn't forgotten any. He looked over at Cog, who was through four of the six rods and surrounded by a tiny mess of :thorn: rods.

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Flattening another couple cubes of red ectoplasm into long pancake-thin sheets, Vee wrapped them around the disc. Before they hardened, he picked up a handful of the :thorn: rods and used [Weld Ectoplasm] to fasten them in random places around the disc.

Setting his creation down on the floor, Vee carefully grabbed a few of the thorns – which were properly sharp now – and gave the disc a spin. It made a slight swishing sound as it did so, and Vee gave it a gentle kick toward the far wall.

It spun as it moved, and bounced off the wall when it struck. Vee smiled. That was what he'd been hoping would happen, and as a proof-of-concept it was pretty solid.

Now though, he wanted to find a way to make the disc – which he was starting to think of as the spiny – properly animated, and that was going to take some more work.

Vee sat down to think about the best way to start going about that, and his thoughts returned to his dilemma. What were you supposed to do when you were faced with a choice with no "good" options? Simply accept the least bad one and hope for the best?

That…felt bad, but maybe it was all he could do.

Vee rubbed his hand through his hair. He just wished it was easier to decide which one that was.

Feeling decidedly melancholy, Vee set his latest ghost creation aside and left the dungeon after about another hour of work. He'd given Cog a couple dozen more twisted ectoplasm rods along with the order to cut them into more :thorn: pieces, and the fiend had seemed happy to comply.

Eventually Vee would start trying to find ways to get his helper to properly assist him with the creation of ghosts from start to finish, but for now it was nice to have someone else doing the tedious tasks that Vee didn't much enjoy.

Wanting more time to think, he turned down the alley near the dungeon and headed for the menagerie. It'd been a couple days since he'd talked to Kai and Dandelion, and he wanted to see what they were up to. Maybe a friendly conversation would spark some sort of idea or help him see things in a new way.

There were several empty buildings along the way, and Vee looked in through the broken windows at the dusty rooms within. They were filled with broken bits of junk and other debris, but that wouldn't be a problem for his fiends to clean up and he might even be able to use [Salvage Materials] on some of it to get more things for the dungeon. Or actually, any materials he managed to scrounge up would probably be better used on improving the spectator arena, which was still rather bare bones. He didn't have any aspirations of turning it into a "luxury" experience by any means, but it would be nice if the stands didn't look so decidedly home made.

A low groan coming from a building a few streets over caught Vee's attention, and he wandered over to take a look. Two thin fiends with crimson eyes and sharp claws were haunting the space between another building and an alley, and they turned toward him with violence in their hearts.

Completely unperturbed by the sight of the monsters running toward him with their arms raised, Vee held up his hand and [Banished] them. He felt a bit of pity as they dissipated into the ethereal; they'd been interesting and if he'd had more space available he could have added them to his orchestra.

Hmm…that sparked a thought.

Wondering if it'd be worth the effort to go ahead and expand his orchestra to accommodate some more fiends in the hopes of being able to use them as a deterrent against Sacre, Vee wandered until he reached the menagerie.

Planter boxes were everywhere, and almost all of them were filled with green sprouts. A few even had flowers – tiny though they were, with blue and white petals – and Vee couldn't help but smile at the sight of them.

Kai and Dandelion were hard at work on yet another box, the bonsai treant's barkbody holding two planks of wood together while Vee's fiend hammered a wooden nail through them.

Dandelion noticed Vee first, and set down its nobby hammer to wave.

"Greetings, master! A good day to you!"

Kai waved too, the eyes of his barkbody growing bright. "Oy, Vee! This is perfect! I was actually about to come and find you! Come see, there's something really exciting happening in the menagerie!"

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Smith (Self), Level 10 (+1)

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar's Crest), Level 25

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 8

Might: 16

Wit: 42

Faith: 25

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 16

Plotting: 21

Charisma: 18

Devious Mind: 30

Leadership: 22

Guts: 16

Intimidating Presence: 11

Citizenship: 24

Public Relations: 8

Determination: 7

Persuasiveness: 6

Bargaining: 5

Patience: 3

Competitive Spirit: 1

Pragmatism: 1

<3<3 Infatuation <3<3

Alforde Armorsoul (Unchanged):

Primary Class: Hammer Specialist (Self), Level 6

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 19

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

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 13

Might: 60

Wit: 16

Faith: 28

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 9

Endurance: 34

Intimidating Presence: 16

Heart of a Champion: 15

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 9

Vigilance: 11

Vanity: 2

Single-Mindedness: 1

Reginald:

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

#$&Q#$)(@#$#@#$%!@#$##%#%()@#$**@@##

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 43

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 21

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 14

Additional Class: Hyperthymesiac (Self), Level 5

Might: 2

Wit: 37

Faith: 17

Ambition: 29

Greed: 24

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 42

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

Loyalty: 47

Patience: 11

Irritability: 26 (+1)

Remorsefulness: 17

Expository Prowess: 23

#%$Pragmatism*#$: @#61$5

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

@#$@%%^

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

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 9