Teemo’s Ascending, looks like it won’t take too long? Just a couple days, I think. It doesn’t give a time, but I can guess from the progress bar.

I wonder how much I can change before Teemo wakes up? I hadn’t realized how much I was spending on spawning things when fighting Neverrest. Now that I have my delvers back, but don’t have that threat looming, my mana is starting to pile up quickly.

First thing, hmm… I need to get the tunnels into gear. There’s that glowing moss in most places now, so I’m pretty sure I can actually get delvers down to adventure in there, too. I upgrade the slime spawner a few times, and it actually starts spitting out little blobs occasionally, instead of the bigger pools that are the oozes. Thankfully, still no little faces on them.

I figure they’ll be good for general encounters, and they move a lot faster than the oozes do, too. With faster slimes, I think I can actually maintain some more mining nodes, so I start sprinkling them around through the tunnels, too, instead of just being mostly near the surface.

I upgrade the spider spawner also, which actually maxes it out! That big ol’ spider lair sure looks the part now. Good luck to anyone trying to find my secret base. The spider spawner also spits out… something kinda ugly.

It’s an aranea, and it makes me think of a pug with too many limbs: ugly, but kind of in an endearing way. It also has little grabbers on the pedipalps, so looks like it’ll be able to manipulate things, too. It’s about the size of a large dog, so it’ll probably be able to do similar things as the ratlings.

It takes a few minutes to collect its bearings, before skittering off, and I let it. I have things I need to do over in the crypt complex, and I actually need Coda’s help, along with the ratlings.

I know what I want to do with my undead. While my manor is more for noobs, and the tunnels are being set up for more mid-level groups, I want the crypt complex to be for higher-level adventurers. But I also don’t want my undead to just be marching across the grass to the mausoleum to get into the complex. So I’ll need to dig.

And that’s where Coda comes in. Well, kinda. He’s not exactly going to be good at digging, but he has his sonar to make sure the ratlings dig where they need to, and don’t collapse anything.

They start off a bit awkwardly as he learns how to listen for the higher pitch of areas that are bearing loads, and then be able to tell the ratlings where to dig, but I’m confident in him. It’s a long way to dig, but I’m not in any specific rush.

I doubt they’ll finish the tunnel before Teemo’s done ascending. That’s a lot of rock to get through.

Right, speaking of Coda’s job, I really should upgrade the belfry and the garden there. I made it a ‘garden’ a while ago, but it’s about as much a garden as my little signs are libraries. The bats just drop seeds all over the place, either from eating, or from the inevitable aftermath of eating, and delvers just pick up what catches their eye, with or without some free fertilizer.

I want to get a good underground garden running soon, too, but I figure I should make sure I know how a normal garden goes, first. The upgrade costs a decent bit, but not really that much with how much mana I have coming these days. Planter boxes line the walls of the belfry now, and there are even some on the outside of the various windows and what have you.

Nothing else changes yet, but that’s fine. The bats are still asleep at the moment. Coda was sleeping too, but I woke him to get him to at least get some preliminary sonar scans going. I let him go back to sleep and keep a bit of an eye on the ratlings. They’re making pretty slow progress, so I doubt they’ll be able to get into trouble before Coda can return and check with more sonar.

I decide to go see what my aranea is up to. Once I find it, I’m still not sure. It’s managed to make itself a little hiding space above the front porch in the crawlspace there, and it has a plank of wood, and a bit of charcoal. It stares at the board for a few minutes, before crudely scrawling something on it, attaching a bit of silk, and dangling the thing down to be seen from the porch.

Kil fiv ratz

What?

Rhonda

“Ratkin dwellers? Interesting.” Old Staiven strokes his narrow beard as he finally gets some free time to ask his young apprentice how being an official guide in the dungeon went. A ratkin himself, he can’t help but be a bit prideful that his kin are the first dwellers in the strange dungeon.

Rhonda nods vigorously, excited to be able to finally tell her master about the trip! Lucas, her spider, is less excited about the nodding, as it forces him to cling onto the large hat or be thrown off. He chitters at her once she stops, and she bashfully doffs her wide mage hat and sets it aside.

“But that’s not even the best part! The dungeon has a scion it’s training to be an Enchanter!” She starts digging through her pack to find her notebook as her master raises an eyebrow.

“An Enchanter? Already? Which scion is it? Maybe that quatl, or the bat?” Rhonda shakes her head, despite it being mostly obscured by her pack, and speaks. The words are muffled, but clear enough to Old Staiven. He might look old… and he is, really, but his ears still work just fine.

“It’s a crawling hand! Freddie said it was acting weird for a hand, mostly ignoring us except for when we were in its way in the enchanting lab. Ah-hah!” She pulls herself from her pack, her notebook held high in triumph.

Old Staiven is glad he’s had practice with apprentices, or else he would be grinning at the goblin for her excitement. Her growth has been remarkable. She’s still a bit shy around people she doesn’t know, but get her interested in something, and she’s quite excitable. He just has to play the long-suffering master to help her temper that.

He speaks up as she starts searching through the notebook. “Ah, so you saw it at work? And it wasn’t hostile? Crawling hands usually cause no end of mischief. Why, one time, one managed to get into one of my bags of holding while on an adventure. I think I still have that bag around, somewhere. I never did get the nerve to check what actually happened in there to produce that kind of noxious smoke…”

Rhonda shakes her head, still looking through her notes. “No, it mostly ignored us! Hehe, it slapped at Freddie’s ankles when he was in the way at one point, but other than that, it just was working on something. I was hoping you could tell what it was… here!”

She smiles up at him and offers her notebook, and the notes catch Old Staiven’s eye immediately. He accepts the book and starts slowly looking through the notes. “Interesting… It looks like some kind of spatial enchantment.” He holds the book for her to see, and points out the various reagents that were on the table at first.

“These, and a few other reagents and formulae, can be used to make a bag of holding, and other demiplanar items and magics. I wish you could have gotten ahold of its actual writings. It’s changed its focus once you started watching. See these?”

He again points out the list of reagents she noted down. “These are usually used in various movement magics. These three, and a bit of honey or web, will get you a slowing spell. Those one there, and some oil, will make a greasing spell.” He squints his eyes at one of the noted ingredients.

“‘Unknown yellow fluid’? You should know the difference between direwolf piss, frog bile, and lemonade, Rhonda,” he admonishes her, a bit surprised at her failure. She shakes her head.

“It wasn’t any of those! It had a simple cork, so I would have been able to smell if it was the bile or urine, and it didn’t have the little floating pieces for lemonade. I was hoping you’d know what it was?”

Old Staiven strokes his beard again as he mentally goes over yellow fluids used in movement enchantments. “You didn’t mention any glowing, so probably not fermented sunbeam. No bubbles, so not a sulphur elemental… heh, you’d have been able to smell that anyway…”

“Oh, it did have a faint glow. Not much, but a little,” she offers, trying to remember anything she didn’t write down. In fact, she quickly takes the notebook back and puts that in, before giving it back to her master.

“Only a slight glow? Could be distilled moonlight, but that’s a pretty advanced reagent to get ahold of…” He looks out the window, just barely able to see the spire of the belfry for the strange dungeon. An even stranger idea starts worming its way through his mind.

“You said it’s quite the peaceful dungeon?”

Rhonda slowly nods. “Yes? I mean, Freddie and I fight a bunch of things every time we go, but it’s not actively trying to hurt us, I think. Mr Tarl said it’s ‘cooperative’, but not a ‘toy box’.”

Old Staiven smiles at his apprentice. “I think we should go take a visit together, then. It has either already figured out how to distill moonlight, or it has some component I haven’t heard of. Either way, I think it will be enlightening for the both of us!”