While Vee, Reginald and Alforde debated the strengths and weaknesses of the perks they’d been offered to improve Crestheart, trouble was brewing elsewhere in Oar’s Crest.

Normally, Sacre and Don Curlytail – the bosses of the two biggest gangs in the city – had a tacit agreement to give each other plenty of space and avoid serious conflict. Oar’s Crest was plenty big enough for the two of them, and fighting one another would only get in the way of what was really important: squeezing as many fleurs out of the regular citizens as possible.

However, in recent months, the normal alley scuffles and midnight brawls between the members of the gangs had gotten more serious and a good deal nastier. The [Healers] and [Doctors] had their hands full treating broken limbs, serious cuts and other injuries as they became more common. Most nights saw businesses that were all paid up protection-money-wise get robbed, and fragments of their shattered windows adding to the litter on the streets. As the conflict grew more heated, people started whispering that fearful word: war.

No one could remember the last time such a thing had happened, but breathless rumors and panicked prayers raced throughout all of Northtown just the same. Before long, the streets were empty well before dark as people took care to avoid getting caught up in something rough and ending up as collateral damage.

The council was powerless to stop things from escalating further. Like everyone else in the city, all they could do was keep their collective heads down and hope that tensions would start cooling the way that they always did.

They might have, too, if Christopher ‘Walnut’ Ryding – Sacre’s [Left Hand Man] – hadn’t gone missing one foggy morning while out on a little job.

***

“We might as well close up for the day,” Vee said as he looked down at the street outside the dungeon and saw that no adventurers had bothered coming to make their run attempts. He couldn’t blame them for staying away: the city was dangerous, and most people were doing the smart thing and letting the gangsters brawl it out uninterrupted. Even adventurers weren’t foolhardy enough to go wading through a gangland rumble just for the chance to make a few fleurs by challenging a dungeon.

With no business to attend to, Vee and Alforde decided to go and look around Westown a little bit. Ironically*, the abandoned forges and workshops near Crestheart were currently some of the safest places to be in the city, as the fiendish inhabitants had mostly moved out of the area thanks to pressure from the medium section of Vee’s orchestra. The [Ghost Maestro] didn’t recall having given them any orders to do so, and chalked the development up to the same sort of gain of sentience that had affected the heavy section. The medium section hadn’t yet taken names though, so it seemed like the process wasn’t quite complete. Vee resolved to keep a closer eye on them and the light section as well, and continued to give them all as much refined ectoplasm as they wanted.

One freshly cleared building was right behind Crestheart, and Vee, Alforde and Reginald decided to start their exploration there. After Alforde went inside with Hammy and confirmed that it was free of fiends, Vee walked through the door and was stunned to see how well-preserved the interior was.

The first room looked like it had been a show room of sorts in happier times. There were shelves on the walls and plenty of open space for people to wander around and browse. A few dusty mannequins lay on their sides, too, and Vee directed members of the medium section to pick them up and take them to his lab. With a bit of fiddling, he’d be able to animate them and turn them into something useful. They were too frail to make good combat minions, but Vee had another idea for how they might be to serve Crestheart: selling consumables to adventurers inside the dungeon. Counting coins and exchanging them for goods on a predetermined list wasn’t too complex, and Vee was confident that he could muddle through it with the help of books that were easily obtained from the local library. If the mobsters don’t burn it down with all their fighting.

The trio made their way down a short, narrow hallway and found themselves in what was unmistakably a forge. There were four big workbenches, and at the end of each of them was a fireplace big enough for Vee to stand comfortably. There weren’t any tools to be seen, but there were plenty of racks and other things where tools would have been kept.

“What do you think they used to make here?” Vee asked as he hopped back down to the ground and brushed dust from the sides of his coat.

“Weapons and armor, probably,” said Reginald. “Most of the shops here were used for that kind of thing.”

Vee looked around and smiled. “Reckon we can use any of this stuff or sell it? The benches look like they’re good quality, and we might be able to get a decent amount of fleurs for them.”

Alforde reached down beneath the nearest workbench and tried to lift it, but it was fastened to the ground and despite the armorsoul’s great strength it didn’t budge. “I…don’t think I can break it free. Can you use [Recycle Materials] on it? We could use the parts for your lab if nothing else.”

Holding out his hand and wiggling his fingers, Vee tried to get the skill to work but found that it refused to activate no matter how many times he attempted it.

“I don’t control the building,” Vee said.

“Sure you do,” said Reginald. “It’s not like anyone else is out here cleaning buildings up. You remember what the bank said. If you can get rid of the fiends and ghosts, it’s yours.”

“I didn’t do anything though,” Vee said. “It was the medium section that got this all cleared.”

“But they’re your orchestra. Surely that counts for something?”

“If I gave them the order directly, maybe. But I didn’t, so as it stands right now I think the building belongs to them. [Recycle Materials] is pretty picky as far as what it’ll let me break down. I’ll talk to my fiends about transferring ownership of the building to me and then I’ll try again.”

Calling the medium section over, Vee tried to explain what he wanted them to do. However, they didn’t seem to understand and after several fruitless attempts, Vee gave up for the moment. He’d work it out later.

A search of the building’s storerooms revealed that there weren’t any undisturbed piles of material to harvest either. Darn.

*Or not, depending on which definition of irony one prefers.

***

From the abandoned workshop, Vee and Alforde explored a handful of other buildings that were close by. None of them turned up anything particularly promising. One looked like it had once been home to an [Apothecary] or [Potion Seller] at some point. It was full of barrels.

“Alforde, can you open one of these up for me?”

The armorsoul did just that, opening the barrel as easily as a person might open a jar of jelly. He looked inside.

“It’s filled with some kind of powder,” he said as he stepped out of the way so that Vee could take a look for himself.

Vee stared down at the substance inside the barrels. It was gray and ashy now, but there were different hues that gave him the impression that there had once been plenty of colors.

“I think these were flowers, or herbs or something,” he said as he reached down into the barrel and scooped out a handful. However, the desiccated remains were so fragile that they disintegrated as soon as a breeze blew through the room. Vee shook his head and knocked the last fragments off his hands.

“Worthless,” he said.

The next building looked like it had been a [Carpenter]’s workshop, given the scratches, dents and saw marks on the workbenches inside. There were a few bent pieces of wood here and there too, but Vee didn’t see an immediate use for them and so left them alone.

Vee turned around and looked at one of the fiends from the medium section, who’d followed him into each building and made a point of staying no further than a few feet away from Vee as the [Ghost Maestro] walked around and explored. It was a little obnoxious, to be honest. After all, it wasn’t like the fiend’s kin were going to leap out of the shadows and attack or anything. And even if one did, Alforde was right here with Hammy ready to swing.

“Do you have a name?” Vee asked. “What prompted your section to start clearing these buildings out?”

No response. Unlike the heavies, the medium section fiends still seemed…well, fiendish. They were docile and followed orders, but if he hadn’t been standing in a building that they’d apparently cleared out, Vee would have never imagined such that such a feat was even possible in the first place.

“Why don’t you see if Do can talk to it?” Reginald asked. “It’s better than waiting around for the mediums to start talking properly, right?”

Vee took out his ghost baton and summoned his [Dungeon Maintainer].

Do appeared quickly and chattered with the medium section fiend once Vee explained what he wanted to know. However, while the language barrier had been successfully overcome, the ideas underpinning Vee’s questions were still beyond the medium fiend’s burgeoning intelligence. According to the [Dungeon Maintainer], the only thing remotely resembling an answer to why the buildings had been cleared was “Rash on”, which…didn’t really make any sense at all.

That was fine. Vee could wait for the refined ectoplasm to slowly work its magic. It wasn’t like there was any pressing need to start using these buildings for Crestheart’s benefit or anything. Especially not right now while Sacre and the Don were duking it out.

Still though, Vee found himself excited by the prospect of converting all these abandoned buildings into something useful. Perhaps he could entice some of the city’s merchants to set up shop nearby, and increase the amount of foot traffic near Crestheart. More foot traffic meant more buzz and awareness about the dungeon, and he might even be able to sell some merchandise like Joleimna’s sugary replicas of Reginald. He was technically entitled to a cut of those profits, right?

Maybe with enough time, he could even get the barriers pushed back a little bit and let people come and go from Westown as they pleased instead of having to return to Northtown after sunset.

[Ambition +1]

Walking back to the tower, Vee was pleased to see that the light section’s efforts to remove the trash from the street were coming along wonderfully. There wasn’t a speck of garbage anywhere around the dungeon, other than the pile in the back where it was all collected. Even that was slowly shrinking, thanks to the fact that the slimes would eat anything and Vee was so eager for them to grow that he fed them no fewer than five times a day. The sidewalks themselves were still stained and grimy, but that was a solvable problem as well. Seeing the changes brought a smile to Vee’s face. It felt good, knowing that he’d been responsible for making a tiny part of his new home a bit more beautiful.

[Citizenship +1]

***

The sun set and Vee, Alforde and Reginald returned to the office to tuck in for the night. Vee stationed his entire orchestra around the tower, with orders to alert him if any wild fiends tried to do something like attack the building.

“I think I’m going to join them,” Alforde said. The armorsoul slung Hammy over his broad, spiky pauldrons and went down the stairs. “It might be kind of fun to see how much stronger I’ve gotten if any fiends do decide to attack.”

“Be careful,” Vee called as his friend clunked down the stairs.

“I will,” Alforde called back. “If anything, you should be worried for their sake, not mine.”

Vee put Reginald down on the desk and ran his hands through his hair as he looked out at the city skyline. From here, it didn’t even look like anything was wrong. He almost wondered if they should have returned to Sculla’s boarding house that night. Maybe the conflict between the gangs had already burned itself out.

He hoped so, anyways.

Never one to turn down a good opportunity to lose himself in brooding thoughts, Vee wondered how the people he knew in town were doing. They didn’t have the luxury of a dungeon and a tower to go hide out in, and Vee kicked the wall, suddenly ashamed and frustrated that he hadn’t offered shelter to more people.

“Something on your mind, boss? You look pretty sour,” Reginald said.

Vee shook his head and left the hat on the table as he went down the stairs and into his lab. Sleep was as far away as could be and he wanted something to distract him from his inner monologue which was none too favorable towards himself.

The medium section had stacked the mannequins on the far side of the room, and Vee dragged the smallest one over to his makeshift workbench. It was rickety and had nothing on the ones he’d seen earlier that day, but it did its job as Vee began to weave ribbons of ectoplasm into the mannequin’s joints so that it could move. He'd handle the actual animation process another time, but for now it felt good to bend, twist and wrap the ethereal goo into the proper shapes.

“It’s been too long since I did this seriously,” Vee muttered to himself as the pieces intended for the mannequin’s knees broke and faded away due to a clumsy twist.

Eventually though, he got all the joints fitted and tested his handiwork. When he was satisfied that the future shopkeeper would do what he wanted it to, Vee moved on and repeated the process for the second and then the third mannequin after that. Focused as he was on his craft, Vee worked throughout the night and didn’t stop until the first pink rays of sunrise appeared over the horizon.

Character Sheets:

Vee Vales:

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 21

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 8

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 2

Might: 8

Wit: 28

Faith: 16

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 9 (+1)

Plotting: 10

Charisma: 3

Devious Mind: 12

Leadership: 9

Guts: 3

Intimidating Presence: 4

Citizenship: 5 (+1)

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 17

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 10

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 10

Additional Class: Clunker (Vee Vales), Level 5

Might: 29

Wit: 10

Faith: 24

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 6

Endurance: 9

Intimidating Presence: 8

Heart of a Champion: 2

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 2 (+1)

Vigilance: 2 (+1)

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 33

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 6

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 2

Might: 1

Wit: 27

Faith: 3

Ambition: 23

Greed: 18

Deceptiveness: 31 (-1)

[email protected]$: $%

[-------------------------]

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 2 (+1)