BECMI Chapter 414 – Fed by Dungeon
Sif had generally been keeping a low profile overall, although her talent with a blade had been noticed and commented on. It hadn’t given her any lasting fame as yet, simply remarked on as a curiosity, although those who had hunted with her knew she was a master of squad tactics and taking down foes. She’d only had to put up with rival clans from further north raiding once or twice, and had proven to be a deadly and canny foe against such men looking to steal wine, women, and cattle, as it were, the Erto raiders trying to punish the tribes who had spurned Grimr’s worship by stealing away their wealth with proper force of arms in the Northman tradition.
That such behavior generally resulted in the slaughter of most of the raiders at the hands of outraged Bolle tribesmen did slow things down, but infighting among Northmen was just as endemic as going viking for additional wealth and glory.
Funnily enough, the dragons of the Firering Mountains didn’t bother the Bolle tribes, but would occasionally raid into the Erto lands further north and east for food and plunder. It was widely known that the mysterious and dreadful Lady Edge wouldn’t take action against humans who chose to take vengeance against dragons who laired in her burning domain, but those brave enough to venture into a land where the only sea channel was steaming year round, and you could always see dragons in the sky above, were few and far between.
The world of Nown was still reeling on its axis, what was south now west and shifting north every day, although at a declining rate. Whole nations were falling under the ice and cold, prompting mass migrations, while Immortals made once-frozen lands bloom with unnatural speed, ready to receive the explorers digging out from under the catastrophe that the Doom of Darkmoor had set into motion. The edges of continents had risen and fallen with the waves, and the schemes of many folk and Immortals had risen or gone under with them.
Civilizations fell, much knowledge was lost, but certain legends and necessities survived.
The worship of Master Shef the Innkeeper and Doro the Explorer somehow spread like mad during these times, crossing nations and boundaries. Shef’s promise of good food, good company, and safety against the dangers of the night struck chords wherever his people set up shop, and His Temple-Inns often became the heart of new settlements, while Doro’s mantra of ‘To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before!’ resonated among the adventurous and those who preferred to rely on themselves, instead of the Immortals who had caused this tragedy and done so little for them as mortals suffered.
Pursuit of the Great Map of the mortal world and beyond was a given among those who followed in Emeril’s old footsteps, and the fact it was obtainable by being worthy of being Marked only made it better. Secrets of the world literally no other mortals knew were available to those of the Faiths, and the fact that explorers and innkeepers actually worked together really well was a nice synergy.
The Great Map awaited the intrepid and the adventurous!
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Every Inn devoted to Master Shef, Master Lalo’s Immortal identity, had a private room with nothing in it, save the same repeated Runes and Patterns on the floor and walls. The Runes were quite beautiful, spare and aesthetic while being repeated in great symmetry, looking more like ornamental artwork for some purpose than anything else.
As unerring homing points for Teleport spells, or a fast and easy location fix for the Mirror of Mental Prowess located deep below the Castle, their usefulness was unmatched in moving things in and around the world quietly and in volume.
Or when delivering mail, among other things, something else the Inns also became famous for.
When you’re fighting a new Immortal-derived Dark Age coming on, pretty useful, too.
Regardless, Drakkunport, so named because you could always see dragons out there on the opposite shore from it, had an Inn, and said Inn had a room, so it was easy to enter the city precisely as needed, and skip the boring overland walk and checking in at the gates.
I Glamoured my scarlet skirts and blouse to reddish-brown leathers, browned my skin lightly, and led Sif out of the room after a polite thirty-second wait.
The proprietress of the place, Mother Namra, was waiting in the hall. She was a stout matron in a white shirt and checkered apron, with dirty blonde hair, wide shoulders, and intense blue eyes that could totally skewer a rambunctious Northman and send him skittering back to his chair.
Also a Mystic of some ability who could toss said barbarian thirty feet through the air and out the door, too.
“Lady Gina,” she greeted me discreetly. “And this is?” she asked, turning her attention to Sif behind me.
“Sif Peladottir. You’ll be seeing a great deal of her in the future. Thor still at the forge, or stop in for lunch yet?” I asked of her, tying back my newly brown hair with a simple leather cord.
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“Word is he got a special commission for armor from some southerner with more gold than sense… or maybe just some appreciation for the lad’s hammer,” was the confident reply.
“Gold profit made selling smithwork goes towards Karma,” I said in an aside to Sif, who raised her eyebrows. Given how rapidly her skills could rise, that could be a pretty steady source of Karma now and in the future, basically guaranteeing that she could reach the Apex even if she never gutted another minotaur or jotun again.
Slow as heck compared to the constant slaughter she was pretty capable of, however.
“That sounds useful. Has he got the standard kit going?” she asked, interested now. She was a very accomplished smith, it was part of her Sage of Swords skill requirements, and the best pure sword-smith in the game because of her Natural Swordsman Talent.
“Working on it. Like you, he’s got Levels to make in order to refine and make the really good stuff. My aid is minimal at this point. People want to see you earn your stuff, not have me dump a thousand goldweight on you and tell you to start forging away.”
“To be fair, Lady Gina, they wouldn’t turn down a thousand goldweight, either,” Namra said over her shoulder back to me as she led us away.
“That is also true,” I admitted, coming out over the common room and heading down to the floor crowded with hungry patrons. “Looks like you’re going to need to expand soon again, Namra,” I noticed.
She smiled hard. “That is a GOOD thing!” she said under her breath, her eyes flashing with pride.
We attracted attention, because Sif was a tall and very good-looking redhead if she kept her Cursemark concealed, and elves weren’t at all common in this area now, clearly from overseas, which meant I was an explorer drawn here by word of the Dungeon. A lot of eyes from a lot of distant places noticed us and weighed our appearance, while those who knew me called out greetings, and I answered in kind.
Drakkunport saw basically every adventurer who came through the area to visit the Castle Dungeon. There were no permanent buildings outside the Dungeon, every single attempt to make them having been flattened with some impressively large lightning bolts from above after exactly one warning from a booming draconic voice from the sky. There were some large tents that basically stayed up all the time, along very closely watched parcels of lands and paths, subject to being flattened by a landing dragon and whatever was within confiscated if they deviated.
There was one Gold Dragon on permanent duty at the temporary settlement of Doomroot that had grown up around the entry to the Dungeon. Ancient Tzatchum watched over the only Teleport Seal that could bring people there from afar, with its partner being here in Drakkunport, and stayed in the only permanent stone building in town. He’d been given the job because he was genial, chatty, and didn’t mind interacting with humans and other bipeds, while his hoard was kept carefully succored from them. Attacking him started a rain of Called Lightning of tremendous power, generally had a dozen dragons coming down to obliterate the offenders within a minute or so, and had never been successful.
As an Inn of Master Shef, here was good food, comfortable lodging, security against violence and theft, and a lot of interesting people from all over the world. There was nothing like this Dungeon anywhere else, and it had already long surpassed the limits of Castle Darkmoor, which it was obviously the successor of.
As a matter of fact, there was a fairly complicated set of tests and traps you could go through on level Seventeen, the Traveling Chambers, and if you passed, you could access a passage to a subset of the Dungeon that faithfully replicated the entirety of the known map of Castle Darkmoor… although the number of adventurers around who actually recognized them was down to one hand, since most had headed to the Far Shore if they were from Darkmoor, or fled home over six decades ago to escape the Doom and largely found enough dangerous shit to fight against that they never came back.
Sif’s eyes looked over the Inn with great interest, finding hints of modern technology generations beyond what she’d grown up with on all levels. The woodwork was just so much better, she could see indoor water supplies and plumbing, finer metalwork, advanced lighting with magic, clear glass, and the place lacked much of the stench of human sweat, waste, and dirt that would normally accompany a public place like this.
She’d been to local villages, not Drakkenport, so when she stepped outside, she was startled to find herself on a stone street, and not a stretch of beaten dirt smelling of horse and human dung laying about, or having urine pooled in the alleys, or trash heaped about for someone else to take care of.
“You do this?” Sif asked, as I paused to let her take in the buildings with stone foundations, neat and level roads, steep roofs to shed stone, glass windows, strong doors, curbs, gutters, brickwork, and fences, all things the generally organic outer villages of the Bolle tribes did not have… but desperately wanted.
“This must be where they made the well pump at?” Sif asked me as we started down the sidewalk, looking down at the shaped stone under her feet. I caught the flash of ire that she didn’t have her Tremblesense developed adequately, either.
“We have to be careful of the technology we introduce, or there might be a random tsunami wiping away the port, but yes. Mechanical tech powered by hand doesn’t stir up the Immortals so much as steam power, which leads to bigger, badder things. The steam hammers in the forge are about as far as we want to push things, and they only make mass-produced household goods, not anything important or dangerous.”
“Using magic instead of fuel?” Sif asked rhetorically, eyeing the large smoking chimneys visible over the buildings around us.
The Inn itself was a fairly large and sprawling thing, with four different attached eateries in the cardinal directions, long and short-term apartments separated, and even some individual cabins for the picky and private. A nearby set of courtyards were also available for groups putting their money together, and support services for adventurers were located on the nearby streets within short walking distances.
The southernmost of the Inn’s eateries was mostly for the locals, with good, healthy, and basic fare at a fair price. The eastern one was the busiest baker in town, with all kinds of bread, selling hundreds of loaves a day. The north and west catered to the wealthier, such as adventurers and local merchants and minor nobility, with one serving fare of the land, and the other of the sea, and both with a view of the Ringlands of Fire across the waters to the northwest.
Money from the Dungeon fed the town, and they knew it!