Town Builder

Chapter 40: Town Administration

I had no will to look at the NPC auction for the next cycle. It really didn’t matter anyway. I would invest my time when the timer got closer to zero this round. The players had taken the gloves off, and it was now a competition, and it was best not to reveal which NPCs I was interested in too early.

I was guessing even those players who would lose their characters at the end of the testing phase were bidding. Those were the dangerous ones if you thought about it. They had nothing to lose, so there was no reason to hold back. I wondered what would happen to their avatars when the testing period ended. I would ask Mad Dog if he knew tomorrow. Tonight, I decided to break from drafting or even looking at the town management tabs. My head already hurts from today.

I curled up with Jaesmin in the middle of the night. Jaesmin moved into me, and we had a sensual session of lovemaking. Jaesmin was doing all the work. Being in a video game, it didn’t take long for me to recover. I was going to reciprocate, but she held me back. She said this was her thank you for replacing her as Master of Guilds. So, it was make-up sex? If that was how this AI thought, then maybe I should find more ways to upset her in hopes of getting another lengthy session of sensual bliss.

In the morning, Jaesmin was slower to rise. NPCs, I had found, had more of a natural day-to-day fatigue. Since the time dilation was 4 to 1, I could usually get away with sleeping every fourth day. But I did find my brain was starting to react to the day-night cycle as well. I wanted to sleep at night to recharge more and more. I was downstairs at my drafting table, so I sent off an inquiry to the admins. It came back almost instantly with a preprogrammed response.

This phenomenon was already documented, so I received a canned response.

Hard-wired players experiencing inclinations to sleep at night, every night, is a normal neural response to the game cycle. If you find the need, it has been determined you can get a full hour of REM sleep (4 game hours) to satisfy your brain’s requirements. If you have further questions, please direct them to Doctor Almedia’s inbox.

So, what should I do? Should I start getting on a daily sleep cycle in the game? What was healthier for me? It didn’t matter since my body had been in a coma for decades. Jaesmin came down the stairs and started making breakfast.

“I am going to the inn for breakfast and to talk with our new gnome paladin. When you are ready, you can meet Sanso and help him with the residential buildings.” I went and kissed Jaesmin and headed out. If I was going to eat food this morning, it was going to be Fareth’s cooking and not Jaesmin’s. Maybe that was a little unfair to my wife. I stopped walking. I backed up my mental thought process. I had just called Jaemsin my wife in my head. I mean, that is essentially what she was to me, but she was more than a fictional video game wife.

I must have stood there for a good 10 minutes in the middle of the road, wrestling with the idea in my head. Finally, I decided that it was what Jaesmin was to me and that I should make it official. What did I have to do in the game to accomplish this…give her a ring? Have a wedding? Who should I ask? No, I should just do it.

I was at the inn a short while later. Titus, the gnome paladin, was eating a massive steak. It had to be at least 64 ounces. He yelled to the back kitchen, “Fareth, you culinary angel, I missed your cooking!” He was eating large chunks of meat, barely chewing before swallowing. Besides the fact that the steak for breakfast was off, the steak was as big as the gnome’s head. It is a game, I told myself. I went to the kitchen to talk with Fareth.

She was working hard in the kitchen and spoke with a smile when she noticed me, “Lord Tallis! Your friends already left this morning for the forest. Can I get you anything special?”

Since she was in such a good mood, I decided to get some information and ask a favor. “I just wanted to know about Titus out there. Is he staying?” Fareth cocked her head before answering.

“If he wants more of my cooking, then yes. But you should talk to him. I have known him since he was a newborn. He was a questing knight in my old king’s retinue. He sought out chaos beasts all over the world and slayed them. A bit one-minded, that one.” Well, it was good information before talking to him.

“The second thing is I plan to take Jaesmin as my wife…” Before I could say another word, the small woman hugged me and picked me up. How was the tiny woman so strong—right, it is a video game.

“Good man! And you want me to prepare the wedding feast? Consider it done! Oh, I need to gather so many ingredients. Where are those gluten players when you need them…” she left me in the kitchen, a little stunned. I went into the common room, but she had left the inn. With nothing better to do, I sat across from Titus.

“So, Lord Tallis, Fareth has told me a lot about your settlement. She says there are good people here, and I have not detected any chaotic elements. Why did you need my services?” He said as he moved the plate to the side. It just had a bone, all the meat consumed.

“Ah yes, well, I recruited you to help defend my citizens from the—chaotic elements. You will be given a residence, monthly salary, and meals at the inn.” I offered him the job. I should have searched for some official title to appoint him to. Titles seemed to make the NPCs easy to convince.

He nodded, then spoke, “All I require from you is to pledge to the Path of Order and denounce the Path of Chaos.” He looked expectantly at me.

“Can you explain what that entails? Am I pledging myself to gods or something?” I asked, not wanting to jump into something.

Titus nodded, “Not so many gods but courses of actions. There are dualities out there. Chaos vs. Order. Good vs. Evil. Light vs. Dark. Undeath vs. Life. I have dedicated my life to subverting Chaos in favor of Order. I could spend hours talking to you about the benefits of Order over Chaos, but it should be obvious for a growing hamlet like yours.” He sat and waited. Yeah, it made sense, and I was getting the feeling the game’s AI pushed this gnome to me.

“Agreed, Malcum will follow Order.” As soon as I said it, I was hit with notifications.

Reputation with the Order Faction +1000

Reputation with the Chaos Faction -1000

Ok, he didn’t mention anything about faction reputation. I went into my sheets and there it was in my player tab and again in a city management tab. Hopefully, this wouldn’t cause problems down the line. All the other dualities listed were equal at 0.

“Fantastic! Lord Tallis. Just a place to live, food, and enough funds to maintain my equipment, say 30 gold a month. I may travel to seek out problems, but I hope the players will be able to handle any Chaos elements I uncover nearby.” Titus was beaming and so was I. I had just hired some type of quest-giving NPC! Since I hadn’t eaten yet, I snuck into the kitchen and grabbed something on my way out. One NPC is done…onto the next.

I skirted the city’s outer wall and found the halfling enclave already tilling fields. I talked with the head of the family briefly, and they were content with the land but did ask for more regular patrols outside of Malcum’s earthen works. I said it would be done and went to find Tanguin. Tanguin was responsible for security outside the walls, while Galana was responsible for security within.

I found Tanguin at our makeshift guard tower over the river. “Lord Tallis!” He yelled from the top. I moved and joined him up top. I had built this as a tower to huddle the townsfolk together when the orcs attacked the city. It was mostly unused, and my interface said it required maintenance.

“Tanguin, I was looking for you. The farmers around the city are looking to increase patrolling. I told them I would talk to you.” He nodded thoughtfully.

“Yes, the number of farms is growing. I can do a loop every few hours with Bohai. That should satisfy them until your garrison arrives. So are the dusk elves going to be put under the command of Mira?” He asked. Mira? Oh, I checked and he was referring to the demonkin ranger-type.

“Do you think that is the best plan of action?” I asked while nodding. Hopefully, he would be ok with this.

“As much as I would like to control the scouts, I think she can do a better job. She is in the forest now with Galana.” He turned and looked into the woods with some consternation on his face. “She is better with the bow than me. I should focus my efforts on the footsoldiers.” He sounded more resigned. Did my big giantkin general have confidence problems?

“Tanguin, you are not the stealthy type anyway. The cavalry and infantry are your domain.” He brightened. “So, has Mira decided to join us?” I asked, hopeful I wouldn’t have to do some inane quest to get her to stay.

“Yeah, I think she is going to stay. Galana and her have been talking non-stop since they arrived. They went to meet the centaur druid this morning. If that goes well, she should stay.” He said with a heavy tone.

I could tell something was bothering him, so I asked. “Is there a problem?”

He looked puzzled for just a second before talking, “Galana and I have…you know…been getting along well. And now this new demonkin shows up, and it is like they are best friends. It reminds me of growing up with my seven sisters, being the odd man out all the time.” Ok, my general did, in fact, have insecurity issues. This games AI personalities kept things interesting, but damn. I patted him on the back and said something I would have said to cheer my friends up back when I lived in the real world.

“Well, maybe you get them to have a threesome with you. Mira does have a killer body.” I realized my mistake immediately. His eyes brightened, and he didn’t take it as a jest that it was. Oh, I was an idiot. I tried to withdraw my comment, but the damage was done, and Tanguin left before I could correct my mistake. This was going to be as bad as I had forecasted. I wanted to fix my error, but I had too many things to do. Hopefully, I could catch Mira and Galana before they ran into Tanguin.

My next stop was the town hall. My dwarf city planner had the largest room and had a massive table set up and was creating stone buildings with a shaping skill and placing them on the table. I skipped past her door, not wanting to be told how stupid I had been in my planning right now. On the next floor up, I found my giantkin guild master.

He was in his office and had already built-up paper stacks. Bureaucracy at work! Since he was already hired, I was mostly curious about his master skill in ‘guild bureaucracy.’ Talking to him, it was better than I could have hoped for. It gave him game authority to register player guilds and for those player guilds to purchase bonuses for their guilds from him. Malcum could get rich from this NPC if we attracted enough player guilds!

He also educated me on player guild buildings. The town could rent land within its walls to player guilds for guild houses, stores, training yards, crafting buildings, and more! I sent Mad Dog a message about it, and he said he would visit Neral, the giantkin, when they got back. So, paying him 25 gold a month was definitely worth it!

I snuck out of the town hall and checked on Sanso and Jaesmin’s progress, my two new builder’s, the bearman, Varrine, and Elf, Iona, were working with them. They had improved the work and progress much faster than I expected. It only took a few minutes to confirm the new worker’s salaries. The bearman was going to get housing and 10 gold a month. The elf woman was going to get 22 gold and a plot of land inside the city to build her own residence. The best part of it was the bearman had four children, a father-in-law and wife; and the elf woman had an extended family of 12! I was sure all the adults would have skills to add to the productivity of Malcum. They were doing well as a team, and we had lunch together at the inn.

I was surprised not to find Manto drinking at the inn. Then I remembered he had taken our new brewer under his wing last night when he had arrived. I would have to go and check on them. I also needed to find my furniture maker and lumberjack.

The brewer and Manto were already working on the first batch of ale. Being a game, it was only going to take 24 hours to finish. The brewer, a minotaur named Kassta, was a friendly sort. I was surprised how easily the big bull-man was bossed around by Manto. Well, maybe not bossed around, but whatever Manto said, he hoped right to it with an excited eagerness to please. Just what did Manto do to the man last night? After a round of negotiating, his monthly salary was a residence in town, 10% of profits and 5 gold a month. Finally, a reasonable amount of funds for a master crafter!

Kassta seemed to think we could start exporting ale in a month if the farmers could keep up with his needs. He also assured me that the product would be of extremely high quality between his skill and the building bonuses. I think Manto was drooling when he said that. It was late afternoon when I finally broke away to check on my last investment.

The lumber mill and furniture shop were both active when I arrived. My lumberjack was a tiny elf woman, and I couldn’t fathom how she chopped down trees. She had red hair, freckles, and brown eyes, and you could call her cute. Her husband and aunt were helping her work. She had powerful Nature magic that allowed her to cleanly cut the trees and then start them growing from the stump to be harvested again in a few days.

Essentially my master lumberjack was a master arborist. We worked out her pay in short order. She did give me a quest to get a logging camp established in 30 days or less, but that shouldn’t be an issue. Once Mad Dog finished off the goblin threat, it would just take a day to raise up the buildings on the other side of the river.

Unfortunately, my furniture craftsman didn’t have magic spells to help him along. This meant the wolfman operated along at a slower pace than I had hoped for. The two chairs he completed today were of excellent quality, though. Since he was only an expert, his salary wasn’t too high. He also already had 384 orders!

It had been a long day, and I was excited to go home and relax with Jaesmin. I had decided to pursue sleeping nightly…maybe in slight hope of getting some more midnight ministrations from Jaesmin. But also, to try and get some normalcy in the game I was trapped in. I was walking home when the elf girl Savannah came running up to me. I was worried for a second, but she just delivered her message and ran back the direction she had come from, the trader had returned with my sheep. Oh, I had forgotten about that. I had tasked both the players and the NPC trader with the same task…get sheep for Zion the barber.

I fast walked to the general store to meet the trader as I had hoped that the man had also obtained the other item that I wanted…plans for the auction house!