Town Builder

Chapter 50 Lord’s Manor

I settled into my drafting table. This next building would be extremely important—my lordship’s residence. Jaesmin was due to give birth, and I wanted something defensible but not ostentatious. Definitely not a castle with a moat, draw bridge, fancy towers, and a massive ballroom.

I kicked around ideas drifting to old English estates of the nobility. I had studied a few old English estates while in college. The floor plans were on the edge of my thoughts, but I could recall some of the elaborate rooms inside. I kept coming back to Somelyton Hall. I would model my plans after that Victorian building.

I would have a solid 8’ wall around my estate, and the manor would be close to the road, but the gardens behind the building would be hidden. I started working and wished I had access to the internet and that my enchanting skills were high enough level to weave some enchantments into the building as I drafted it. When morning came, I was not even close to done. It was a massive building, and I wanted to get it right.

Jaesmin made us breakfast, and then I left to start my day. I noticed some of my new giantkin infantry exploring the town in brand-new uniforms. We had prepared for their arrival, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to do a tedious quest to retain their services. My garrison was compensation from the admins, so if they didn’t stay, I would throw a fit.

I was headed to find Sanso and my build team when Hyraena approached. She was the angelkin who had spoken for the garrison yesterday. “Hyraena, I hope everything is to your satisfaction. Are you settled in?” I was crossing my fingers.

“Lord Tallis, everything is excellent. We hadn’t expected such a welcome. Tanguin is a bit…. eccentric. But not a bad sort. I wished you had some time to talk.” These were the dreaded words I had hoped not to hear as a quest usually followed.

“Of course, what is on your mind,” I said mechanically, expecting a long-winded conversation ending in a required quest.

“We have come from the Hyraenfel kingdom. Our kingdom borders the Shade, the lands of the Midnight Desolation trapped in eternal night. We kept the undead from breaching the mountains and overrunning the land. Our War Wizard in charge of the citadel opened a portal for us to flee and told us to seek refuge in your town.” She paused for dramatic effect, and I guessed the War Wizard might have been an admin reprogramming these NPCs to fulfill the promise of manning my garrison.

Hyraena continued, “Many of us didn’t want to leave our country. If the Shade encroaches on the lands of the living, everyone will be in peril. I implore you to make a vow or pledge to fight the undead hordes.” She looked calm but expectantly at me. I searched the game updates for ‘vows’ and ‘pledges’ to NPCs. A vow was an informal contract. As long as I abided by it, my relationship with the NPC would slowly increase. A pledge was a lesser form of a vow. It was usually short term with only one goal, such as I will kill one thousand undead.

I faced Hyraena, “I vow to always fight the undead hordes that threaten Malcum and the lands within its borders.” She nodded and crossed her arm across her chest in salute. My notifications dinged, and it just said my vow had been logged to Hyraena. She bowed and headed back to the barracks. That seemed too easy. I shrugged and found my build team working on the town’s walls.

I decided to pull them all to the new school house project. It was the only building I needed to upgrade the town. They could return to working on the walls after. Breda was summoned and indicated the place and orientation of the building, and I helped for a short while until Mira, my demon huntress, came to me with a dusk elf walking by her side.

“Lord Tallis, this is Joralf. He is senior among the dusk elf scouts.” The male elf bowed to me.

“Please walk with me Joralf. I have questions that only you may be able to answer.” I started walking, and the elf joined me on one side and Mira on the other.

“Joralf, the dusk elves seem to have faded to myth, yet here I find sixteen within my walls. I know the dusk elves were the shield wall between the surface lands and the dark elves. What can you tell me of the dusk elves’ fate,” I spoke smoothly and eagerly waited for his response.

“Lord Tallis, the dusk elves still guard the deep passes beneath the earth. We do not thrive like centuries ago, but we yet hold. Betrayal has thinned our numbers, and we rarely travel to the surface any longer. My band and I were twenty-eight-strong when we came to the surface to investigate the dark elves who entered the Shade. My band fell in with the Hyraenfel kingdom to defend its lands from the undead. We were seeking to discover the pact between the dark elves and undead,” He finished looking me in the eyes.

Quest updated: History of the Dusk Elves, reward 10,000 experience

New Quest: Choose a side, either reinforce the dusk elves with men to side with them or eliminate a dusk elf fortification in the Endless Dark to side with the dark elves.

I read the new quest and felt lucky that it had no time limit. I turned to Joralf, “So you never discovered what the dark elves were doing in the Shade?”

“We did. The undead in the Shade are planning to send hordes of their foul creatures to attack our fortresses from the other side. We relayed the information to our captain and were told to remain here as our numbers had dwindled,” he said sorrowfully.

I needed to choose a side. It was an easy choice. “When Malcum is stronger, we will send warriors to your fortresses under the earth and help defend them,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. My quest was updated, and some reputation gains were noted in my interface with the dusk elves.

“I will look forward to the day, Lord Tallis!” He clapped me on my shoulder. Well, I didn’t give him a timeline, but I hoped to have some time in the future with a good amount of players in Malcum eager to travel to the Endless Dark and battle the dark elves. I smiled to myself as this all seemed to easy as I created some quests for my NPCs.

The dusk elf left in a much brighter mood. I moved to my stables and talked with the elf sisters about the new horses under their care. They said our horses were superior to the ones on which our new orc cavalry rode. In my mind, it made it more imperative to annex the orc clan in order to strengthen my army.

I talked with Tanguin, and we firmed up our plans for the war. We would take most of our forces but leave enough behind to defend Malcum.

I decided to spend my afternoon enchanting. I got two simple recipes from the player auction house.

Enchant Weapon +5% speed

Enhance Weapon +10% damage

They were beginner enchantments, and the materials were cheap to buy from players in bulk. I could practice, create better weapons for my warriors, and level up two of my enchanting skills.

I didn’t know that I could critically fail to enchant and destroy the object. A city guard watched as his spear turned to dust before him on my first failure. At least my failure rate was only around 10%. Once I reached level 7, Persephone said my failure rate would drop to around 1% for the basic enchantments. It cost me around two silver in materials for the tier 1 enchantments, so I got 50 enchanting attempts for a single gold.

A long afternoon of enchanting got my enchanting to 5 and runic script to 4. I went to the auction house and got a few skill books. I spent the first part of my evening utilizing them. My enchanting skills now looked better.

Enchanting

7

Chan

Enchanting: Runic Script

6

Ag

Enchanting: Ritual Magic

3

Stam

The problem was leveling my enchanting ritual magic. Skill books were rare, and there were no recipes for using the skill. I found Grinder eating at the inn. Six empty plates were in front of him, and more were being brought out. I told him my problem, and he thought for just a moment.

“Tallis, I can go city hopping and see if I can locate more skill books in auction houses you are not connected to or NPC shops. It shouldn’t take too long. Give me a few days,” he grinned at me as he started in on a roasted chicken.

“Grinder, buy as many skill books as possible if the price is low enough. We are stockpiling them for a library.” I tried to give him ten gold, which he refused. He received a minor repeatable quest for skill books in service to Malcum.

I returned home and sat with Jaesmin for a long while, chatting about the town. There have been very few problems so far. The new school was completed, and the children in the town would be starting tomorrow. Vivale, Curraen’s wife, had recruited two new arrivals to help educate the children. The young rabbit girl, Bella, had protested going to school. Jaesmin said she was whining the entire time the building was going up. We laughed at that. Jaesmin went to sleep, and I continued drafting our future manor.

When morning came, I paused my work on the manor. I desperately wanted to incorporate enchanting into the building. What effects could I add? I needed all my enchanting skills to reach level 7. When Jaesmin came down, I went with her to the wall and helped build for a short time. Besides my summon stone spell, I really was not needed for the simple wall construction. I emptied my aether pool, creating as much stone as possible, much of it in place.

I returned home and marked off the wall that would surround my new estate. I confirmed the structure and grounds would fit and then went and practiced enchanting. When my aether pool recovered, I visited the wall construction and made as much stone as possible before returning to enchanting. This was how my next four days proceeded. I would refine my drafting plans for the manor at night. Create stone for the walls and practice enchanting during the day.

Finally, Grinder returned with the four novice enchanting ritual magic skill books that I needed! I paid him the coin through his protests and rushed home to study them. After four hours, I had reached my milestone and looked at my trio of enchanting skills.

Enchanting

9

Chan

Enchanting: Runic Script

9

Ag

Enchanting: Ritual Magic

7

Stam

My plans had been completed two nights ago, but I refused to finish them. I just tweaked things here and there, delaying until this moment. I wanted to incorporate building enchantments into my residence. It took a few hours, and I was going in somewhat blind on my first effort, but finally, I was done.

Very Rare Lord’s Manor, 500,000 health, Requires Masonry Structures 43, Woodcraft Structures 23 (Bonus +10% to the productivity of subjects, +10% experience to subjects within 1 mile of structure) (Effect: Palace Guards 6, Spawn Rate 1 every 12 hours, Level 50)

Yes! A success! I had modeled the enchantments after the guardhouse plans. At least what I could remember of them. I had a minor spawn building for Palace Guards. When we built the guard shack using better materials, the guards got a 10% level boost due to quality construction, increasing from level 22 to level 25. If I could do the same for this building, then I could have six level 55 guards patrolling my estate. The building was large, and it would take days with everyone focused on building it.

Tomorrow, Tanguin had reminded me, was our march to the orc clan. The day after, we would start gathering materials for the manor. I talked with my elf lumberjack and Sanso about beginning to stockpile the highest quality materials. The regular bonuses were also exceptional, and increasing those would make Malcum that much stronger. I wanted to know if the NPC's cities benefited as much from buildings as I was getting.

The palace guards were mob NPCs and wouldn’t leave the grounds, but palace guards were considered elite boss mobs according to Black Beauty. She was the first guild member I found. I showed her the plans with pride and then asked her to collect the enchanting materials for the building. According to her, an elite boss mob should be equally difficult to two or three average players of their level.

When Mad Dog stopped by to see the plans he joked that I could have the guild hall and he could move into the Lord’s Manor. I wished I had my enchanted building skill when I drafted the guild hall, but that building was done, and the time crunch wouldn’t allow a rebuild.

The time to redraft the Very Rare Lord’s Manor was 20 in-game hours. I had spent about 60 game hours on the first draft and wondered how close I had been to an epic building. Mad Dog guessed I could sell the Lord’s Manor building plans for 100,000 gold—or more. It was a structure with benefits that the filthy rich players would covet. He warned me unnecessarily that it would make other players covet Malcum once they appraised the finished building.

I spent the evening drafting other minor buildings for which Breda requested plans. We were receiving a steady trickle of new citizens. The guards escorted the new arrival to our master of guilds, who interviewed them, documented their skills, and then made recommendations to Breda on what accommodations they should receive. Then Breda consulted with Kytalia to fit them into the town’s economy. It was a seamless operation, and I had to do nothing with it except draft the plans for the buildings and then help build those buildings as rapidly as possible.

The exciting thing was my upkeep deficit was slowly decreasing against income, and we were building a coin reserve. Of course, the NPC auction was closing in five days, which would wipe out my savings.

I slept well that night, excited for my first military action but wanting to be well-rested. I would be a spectator. Tanguin would lead one hundred and fifty giantkin, twenty orc cavalry, six elven scouts, and six angelkin captains across the plains. Kytalia, Mad Dog, and I would join the sortie. That would leave Malcum well-defended, with Grinder and Black Beauty remaining behind to send me messages if something came up.

The force was arrayed at the west guard tower in the morning, and we moved out to conquer the orc village.