Dungeons Are Bad Business

The next day, Vee woke up early and led his friends to Westown. It was a cool, overcast morning, and the sky was filled with skinny gray clouds. However, there were a few tiny streaks of blue visible on the horizon, and the [Dungeon Master] hoped that they were signs that the weather would improve as the day went on.

After all, he didn't particularly relish the prospect of shivering outside all day.

As part of his attempt to memorize the names of the people he saw on the way to the dungeon a bit, Vee stopped and talked to a pair of old kitrekin women sitting on a bench with small steaming mugs of coffee in their paws. They were polite, if a bit curt, and Vee failed to get their names before his manners urged him to end the conversation and move along. Oh well. This was one of those times where the act of trying was more important than the results, and he'd keep trying as time went on.

Alforde, on the other hand, had no trouble getting the names of every member of a young salamander family passing by, which Vee found a little frustrating.

When they reached the gate that led to Westown, a pale [City Guard] with a scraggly beard and hazelnut brown eyes emerged with a smile.

"Mister Vales, good morning!" he called as he held up his hands. "It's good to see you!"

"Thanks," Vee said, returning the man's smile with one of his own. He tried to remember the man's name, but nothing came to him. "It's nice to see you too."

"Gawain's beard, I tell you that it's been weird here for the past few days without any adventurers coming to the dungeon. How long are you going to be closed?"

"I'm not entirely sure," Vee admitted sheepishly. "A few weeks probably. It's a real pain, actually. We hadn't planned for a pause in our operations."

The guard laughed. "That's the way it always goes, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Well, with the dungeon closed, what exactly are you doing to stay busy?" the guard asked. "Planning another event? Something to celebrate spring, maybe?"

Vee shook his head. "Not right now. We'll probably do something for the summer, but right now we're focusing on some…urban renewal that we've had on our to-do list for a long time."

"Ah, well, I'm sure that'll be nice too," the guard said. Vee couldn't help but notice the fact that he was obviously disappointed, and he hurried to provide reassurance that the effort would be worth the wait.

"Don't worry, once we're done we're going to go and petition the council to have this part of the city open full time, and if it all goes well there should be a lot more to do here in the next couple months even without a special event."

The [City Guard] perked up. "That sounds great. I'm going to hold you to that."

Vee chuckled, and waved farewell to the fellow as the junky gate slowly swung open. The trio passed through it to the wide street that led down to the dungeon, but instead of looking down at Crestheart the way he usually did, Vee turned his attention to the buildings on either side of him as he walked.

They were old, graceful things, though they were also in desperate need of some actual maintenance and repair. That was what he was going to focus on for the next few days. When they'd first set up shop here in Westown, he'd directed Alforde to simply throw barriers over the broken windows and missing doors so that people wouldn't notice how decrepit the buildings themselves actually were. He'd intended to go back and clear them out once the dungeon was operational, but one thing had led to another and here they were all these months later still needing to get back to them.

Vee sighed. It was crazy, the way things got away from you if you didn't keep your head on straight. That was a lesson he was learning more and more with every passing week.

Pausing in the center of the road, Vee lifted up his hands and started counting the buildings. There were…fourteen in total between the gate and the dungeon, and three of them were already occupied. That left eleven vacancies, which wasn't nearly as high a number as he'd originally feared.

"Alright guys," Vee said, pausing where he stood and getting Alforde and Reginald's attention. "It's time to tell you guys what I'm thinking."

"Freakin' finally," Reginald seethed. The hat had been furious that Vee hadn't immediately spilled the details of his plan to deal with Sacre the night before, and had been hissy about it all morning. "What's this magic plan of yours, boss?"

"Well, I don't know if I'd call it magic, but I think it's a decent idea, though it's going to take us a few months to implement fully."

"A few months? We don't have that long, Vee," Alforde said. "We only have a few weeks before Sacre's offer runs out."

"I know, I know. Give me a second and I'll explain what we can do before then and what we're going to have to worry about afterwards."

Looking around at the buildings, Vee sighed. He had a clear picture of what he wanted to do in his mind, but now that it was time to put that picture into words he found it surprisingly difficult to do so.

Actually, now that he thought about it, he had a way to bypass that problem entirely! Activating [Get The Picture], Vee projected his intent right to his friends through the skill. The image of the buildings between the Westown gate and Crestheart was messy, but Vee was confident that it carried his intent the way he wanted it to.

"It doesn't look like much right now, but this is just phase one. These buildings are the future home of what I'm calling the Westown Strip. Basically, we'll clear all of them out and solicit people to move in and set up shop."

He closed his eyes, focusing on the image and making sure that it changed as he spoke. "Once they're ready to be occupied, we'll go out and find people who want to start new businesses or expand their old ones. Honestly, it doesn't really matter what they are, all we care about right now is getting every one of these eleven buildings filled before Sacre's offer expires and making the newcomers promise not to pay anyone protection money under any circumstances. We make it clear that Westown isn't going to be like the rest of Oar's Crest."

"What's that going to do?" Reginald asked.

"Well, in a perfect world, it keeps Sacre out," Vee said, feeling his temper rising slightly at the hat's dismissive tone. "It's kind of tautological but, if there's nowhere for him to go, there's nowhere for him to go, right? He can't expand into empty air."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"I guess? Technically? I'll be honest with you boss, I don't really see that being enough to stop a man like Sacre. He hasn't gotten to where he is by stopping as soon as he's presented with a little obstacle, throwing up his hands, and admitting defeat. He thinks that there's opportunity for profit here, and I believe that if you want to keep him out of Westown permanently you're going to need more than a few businesses. After all, what's to stop him from just setting up down the street or a few blocks over from here?"

"Reginald's got a point," Alforde said. "There are a lot of empty buildings here in Westown, Vee."

"I know, but so far he's been unwilling to go and mess with the fiends that live around here. Hopefully they'll keep deterring him, but if they don't I've got a plan for that too," Vee said. "Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure we can pull it off, and even if we can it's going to take some time to get rolling."

"Oh? What is it? A polite request to stay out? A sternly worded letter?"

Vee met Reginald's eyes, and changed the illustration depicted by his skill so that the Westown Strip and Crestheart were the only things that were visible. The rest of the buildings – which had been represented by a messy mental scribble in the background were gone.

"No. Nothing like that. When I said that there'd be nowhere for Sacre to go in Westown, I meant it."

Reginald hissed. "That's…ambitious, boss. I might even go so far as to say crazy."

Vee shrugged. "Well, it's going to take a while before we can start working toward that in earnest. Truthfully, all I'm hoping for right now is that Sacre will get distracted by someone or something else if we can get these buildings filled up and give us some more time for the rest of it."

"That's a lot to hope for," Vee's [Majordomo] said.

The [Dungeon Master] nodded. "It is, but I think it's the best option we have available to us right now, so that's what we're going to be doing, okay?"

Reginald fell silent, closing his eyes atop his ghosthetic and thinking. "What a mess this is going to be," he said quietly.

A moment later, he flapped his brim, wiggled a bit, and perked right back up. His mouth spread into a crazy grin. "I love it. Let's hope we get lucky, eh?"

Vee snorted. "Yeah, that'd be nice. What do you think, Alforde?"

"I like this idea a lot more than any of the other options we had," the armorsoul said. "Honestly I was afraid that we'd have to…become like Sacre to keep him out."

"Don't discount the possibility," Reginald said. "There's plenty of time yet for that to manifest."

"Let's hope not," Vee said. The Expectation on his shoulders twisted slightly; apparently the snake dragon felt otherwise.

"Okay, so what do we start with first?" Alforde said.

Vee pointed to the boarded up windows. "Let's get all these barriers taken down. I'll summon my orchestra, and we can start walking through everything and seeing what we have to work with. Knowing what our options are will make it easier to identify people that we want to court to come into Westown."

Closing his eyes, Vee reached through his bonds and summoned all of his fiends. They promised to come as quickly as they could, except for Dandelion who begged off on account of menagerie business.

Alforde had gotten the barriers off a few buildings by the time Vee's minions arrived, and the [Dungeon Master] hurried to explain what he wanted them to do.

"I want the interior of these buildings as clean as you can make them," he said, looking at his light section. "Medium section, your job is to get all the debris out and make sure that there aren't any signs of fiend activity nearby. I don't want any spirits moving in once we get the buildings clear. Understand?"

His fiends nodded, and Vee dismissed them to work. Then, turning to his heavy section, his [Dungeon Maintainers], Vee smiled.

"Once things get cleared out, I want you in every building looking for the best ways to use the space. When you've got that figured out, come and tell me. If I like it, I'll have you start building new things for each building, and then after that you'll be hard at work. We're going to need lots of furniture and decorations. Do you think you can handle all that?"

Do, standing in front of the other [Dungeon Maintainers], nodded enthusiastically. "Of course, master. It won't be a problem."

"Then let's get to it," Vee said. "We've got a lot of work to do and not a ton of time. I expect you all to help me bring the Westown Strip to life!"

[Citizenship +1!]

The Expectation stirred again, and for a moment, Vee almost felt as if it would get up off his shoulders and take flight.

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Smith (Self), Level 10

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: 22

Charisma: 18

Devious Mind: 30

Leadership: 22

Guts: 16

Intimidating Presence: 11

Citizenship: 25 (+1)

Public Relations: 8

Determination: 7

Persuasiveness: 6

Bargaining: 5

Patience: 3

Competitive Spirit: 1

Pragmatism: 1

<3<3 Infatuation <3<3

Alforde Armorsoul:

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: 27

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 9

Endurance: 34

Intimidating Presence: 16

Heart of a Champion: 15

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 10 (+1)

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: 28

Manipulativeness: 42

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

Loyalty: 48 (+1)

Patience: 11

Irritability: 26

Remorsefulness: 17

Expository Prowess: 23

Pragmatism: #@$%@$

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

@#$@%%^

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

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 10 (+1)