Dungeon’s Path

Ace finished reading the system message and sighed. He has been in the middle of a town hall of sorts and now everyone is panicking. Not those from the inner circle, of course, but the regular townsfolk, adventurers, and merchants certainly were.

Ace pauses as he realizes he had fully changed how he thought about people. Merchants? Townsfolk? It felt like he was larping at some Ren Faire. All it was missing was a person selling whole turkey legs.

Ace banged his fist on the table, appreciating why judges would have gavels. “Shut up! We are not in danger! I’ve talked to people from across this entire area, what I assume the system is calling a community, and we’re fine.

“While settlements opposite of us aren’t as strong in many ways and their dungeon sucks compared to ours, they’re keeping an eye on things. However, I will make a heavy bid to get more people to join us. We’re still gathering supplies for the rebuild. That means we can easily fit in the extra people during the rebuild.

“More importantly, I’ll try to poach as many healers and rangers as possible. The healers are obvious enough. You can never have too many at this point. As for why rangers? Well, with this warning, I’m going to get Jim to set up a patrol of the community.

“We can not ignore the rest of the nearby settlements. It seems the system won’t let us, even if we could legitimately survive as a single town in the wilderness. Besides that, though, the quest is more important in the short run.

“There is nothing we can do in the short run to improve our safety or attract more people. However, the quest represents an easy way to improve our situation. They knew just a bit more about magic than we do, which is perfect!

“If they were miles ahead of us, it would be hard to figure out their stuff. But they’re not impossibly advanced compared to use. Rather, they are almost equal to us and likely only had magic a bit longer.

“Besides that, their place was a planet spanning city. The system had to do something to support their infrastructure that it didn’t do for us. This is a chance to claw back some of our tech! Or at the very least, start on the inevitable path.

“Right now, we don’t even have the tools to make the tools needed to make the tools that make some of even our decade old tech. If we can even skip a few steps, it will greatly assist us. Besides, we don’t know what will work with magic. Does a steam engine work anymore or does magic make fire too unpredictable or water strange? We don’t know and this is a chance to find out without spending way too much of our time.”

Of course, despite being able to come up with a pretty solid plan off the top of his head, that didn’t settle the crowd. In fact, Ace ended up having to call the meeting early as nothing was getting done. This led to a more private meeting of just those from the inner circle.

Jim, in particular had something to say about the system announcement. “We need to get as many non-humans as possible. Right now, we’re mostly humans with a smattering of wolfkin. It would be to our advantage to equalize those numbers.”

Kelly, “I am interested in learning more about our new neighbors on this small planet of ours. However, why the focus?”

Jim, “Humans are good at human stuff and given enough time, we’ll get back what we’ve lost. So, having more former programmers or some such won’t help. However, even if the non-humans we end up inviting match that type of background exactly, they’ll bring their own uniqueness.

“Though most importantly, we need to start off strong as an integrated town. While humans are common, once we get access to the greater universe we will need experience with non-humans. Better to start now while the stakes are restricted to the local area.”

Ace, “True enough. Besides, even among humans, it sounds like there is a large amount of variance, definitely more than many people on this planet would accept. Though going by what we learned when you first showed up”, he nods towards Camila, “The people we’re likely to find will be more folk.

“Which is both good because our people are already used to such people, but bad because it doesn’t really stretch things. It would be nice if we could invite a group of humans that don’t match what people pre-system would accept as such.”

Camila sighs, “It might be my people that end up causing the most trouble in the upcoming event to invite the refugees. While your people certainly have some that are bigoted, the folk have nearly inborn problems with some of our kind. If they knew of us being here, any deerkin you might ask to join will react with instant refusal.

“As the animals, so follow the kin. Not, mind you, that we would act like wolves to the deerkin. Only the most heinous would break the rule on not eating fellow sapients. And unlike our animal counterparts, the kin are all omnivores, even if we enjoy the diet of our animal counterparts.”

Ace frowns, “That is a potentially worrying fact. Is it something exposure will dampen or is there no helping it?”

Camila shrugs, “You can definitely work your way through it. Our problem isn’t going to be that. Rather, just knowing of our existence may guide people away from joining us from the get go. There were traders from all the kin, with those entering the territory of those that naturally disliked them covering up to prevent the reaction. Of course, the guards of any proper settlement will check everyone with such a disguise, but that’s alright as long as they don’t spread things.”

Ace, “Okay, it sounds like it isn’t as bad as some humans’ reaction to spiders. The fact it seems to be inborn is a little troubling. However, despite that all, you will be one of the people that comes with me to help convince others to join us.”

All around the room people react to this with Jay speaking up. “I respect my mother’s diplomatic abilities, but that seems like a bad idea if we’re trying to pull in as many people as possible.” And a bunch of other people agree with him.

Ace shakes his head, “We aren’t going to earn their trust if we hide the fact that there are wolfkin living here. While pure coincidence, our town’s very name implies a deeper connection. If anything, the other kin might directly ask about. There isn’t any escaping the fact we’re Wolf’s Rest.”

That puts a lid on the others’ complaints. None of them had really thought about it, but it wouldn’t be surprising if an outsider thought that the name came from them providing a place for the wolfkin or some such. Any act to try and hide them, even by simply not mentioning them, would be seen as deceptive.

Ace nods, “You see it now. We have to be open and honest with what we’re doing. Just because we invite them, doesn’t mean they have to accept and once they do? There is nothing saying they have to stay in our town.

“Though we do have one important factor in our favor. With the dungeon, we don’t have to worry about how strong someone is. Not to say we’re going to invite the weak, but when we invite the strong, we can include their family without fear. It is possible to even invite entire groups if it comes down to it.”

Jim, “In fact, we should try to. Not only does that provide a personal stake in staying with us. We also need more regular people. At the moment, we are a town of adventurers. Even the crafters delve, which isn’t a bad thing.

“However, it would be nice to have full-time smiths, cooks, and so on. A proper base of normal people will be important to our town. They might not be strong enough to even beat the kobold boss, but their skills in crafting and providing whatever service will make up for it.”

Doctor, “We really need pure healers. I know that the town’s opinion of people like that isn’t exactly all that high, a certain lady causing more than a bit of bad blood. However, it will be important going forward for there to be people that are basically ritual healers. Those that don’t just cast a spell and quickly seal a wound, but can stand over a person, channeling magic for hours on end to take care of tricky situations.

“Whether that means regenerating a missing limb, curing a magic disease, or breaking a strange curse. Right now, we have healers that are specialized as combat medics. That is really useful in the dungeon, but there is a reason that pre-system we had doctors that specialized in very specific fields of medicine.”

Ace sighs, “I’m slightly afraid it will be hard to get those that aren’t combat focused, even when scooping up entire groups. After all, just consider the Sela family. We’ve tried to find the rest of them and they aren’t anywhere we have access to. The system has done something to split up combat and non-combat focused people, even within families.”

Camila nods, “I talked with many wolfkin here and in the center settlements. Those that are focused on stuff like crafting or farming over combat? Besides children and the elderly, they have not found any of their family that would be on the other side of the divide.”

Susan, “And I’ve done some looking around myself because there are more than a few looking for family. OG”, who looks away and sighs, “Is always the first to welcome me back after going out. One question was always on his lips. Did I find his sister?

“The answer is always no. My theory is that the system has separated families in such a way that people strive harder. Not because it wants us to connect with other ‘communities’. Rather, to make sure people focus on advancing instead of protecting their family. Because I could totally see more than a few of you being perfectly fine slowing your growth to be with family.”

No one can really say anything against that and so things settle down into deciding what kind of people to invite first. At first, most of them were thinking of focusing on snapping up the strongest, but Ace and the Barrais disabuse them of that notion. While it might be tempting to target the strongest, there was likely a problem with them. After all, despite being so strong, their community still fell.

Not that they would turn such people down, but Wolf’s Rest would be focusing on crafters, growers, and gatherers. The dungeon might provide all the basic and some very much not basic materials, but they should set up their own resources to pull on. Just the modifiers a proper farmer can add to yield and growth would allow a much smaller number of devoted farmers. But they did need those farmers in the first place.

And even if they don’t need the farmers to grow massive fields of wheat? Well, mystical herbs, magical trees, and so much more is now possible. Just getting someone on growing trees, cotton, and bamboo specifically to have the various forms of paper would be such a boon.

In particular, a person focused on fast-growing trees would be spectacular. Would the forced growth provide the best wood for furniture and such? Absolutely not. However, it would burn just as well and paper doesn’t need furniture grade wood.

Though Doctor had a different opinion on that front. He felt that getting someone good at slowly growing the best trees would be more useful. After all, they can harvest as much wood from the dungeon as they could want. To him, it was more important to focus on quality since the dungeon could provide quantity. In the end, he managed to win enough people over to his side that at the very least, they would be looking for both.