Years End

Chapter 12

The days until year’s end seemed to fly by, only one potion request coming in from Elim. I was worried when I saw it was an anti-toxin, but he sent me a text about drinking something funky and assured me he was fine, and that the move was going well. I was relieved and grateful to have instant communication options at my disposal. I didn’t even want to think about having to use mundane communications for things like that.

I was less relieved to receive a points award notice.

Tanner Leeds (NN) +1

I knew there was no one inside the dungeon so I checked outside but found nothing. Normally I’d have been elated but not being able to figure out what had triggered it was disturbing. After a few minutes of thinking and checking alternatives I considered an odd possibility.

Elim,

Did you kill someone named Tanner Leeds? I got a notice and points for it but can’t find a body on my end.

-42

I’d been worried when it popped up that he was in a fight of some kind, but no potion requests came through after the first. I checked his status to make sure, but everything indicated that he was fine now, relaxed even.

Mistress 42,

Apologies, I did kill a man by that name. He gave me the poisoned drink I mentioned.

I absorbed the answer but didn’t need much time to think about my reply.

Well,

Fuck him for poisoning you. You can hide the body in storage if you need to.

-42

I felt it was a succinct expression of my feelings on the point. Elim wrote back quickly.

Thank you,

I’ll keep your suggestion in mind.

Gratefully,

Elim

Presented with new information I felt curious and checked Elim’s alignment as well as the hounds. The hounds were Chaotic Evil, like myself and Elim was Lawful Good. I hadn’t really expected anything to change since the last time I looked but like finding out he could give me points I needed to start being more cautious of complacency. It could have turned out that working with me would change his alignment over time or immediately if he did anything that wasn’t Kosher with the forces of order, law, or whatever they wanted to call themselves.

I also had to admit that I was a bit hopeful that he could help me out with the issue I had with killing someone of my own alignment. If it turned out that it was the killers alignment that mattered I’d be free and clear if I could add some good aligned creatures to my lay out. As it was, a pure neutral aligned person was absolutely useless as a gauge.

Loophole or not, points were points and I felt like giving him a generous bonus for supplying them to me. At the very least I figured I should come up with an offer that would let his mother gain access to communications system we enjoyed.

It would make it possible for Erica to communicate with Elim if something happened. Or if they just wanted to chat. It was a good idea in my book but I decided not to broach it to him until he was done getting moved. Things like that could be stressful after all.

With most of my mana free for use I made good progress enlarging the levels of the first three stacks, sneaking in a few exterior plots here and there. Things were going well enough that I allotted myself some time to work on the skeleton breakroom as I enlarged it for the new additions.

By the end of the year I had a full complement of human skeletons representing the base and prestige classes. While I worked, I received a prompt I hadn’t seen before.

Visitation request

Sender: Agony

The sender is a verified entry on your friend's list

Do you permit Agony to visit? Y/N

“WOOOT!” I shouted and the skeletons all looked up in surprise from there game of cards. I immediately authorized it and five day countdown appeared to let me know when he’d arrive. I couldn’t have been happier if I tried and bounced in place.

“Miss- Mistress 42?” Henry asked, worry clear in the tone of his thought. I’d been working on altering their breakroom to make it more aesthetically pleasing with my art tools. Their taste ran toward gothic crypts, so I was adding arches and fancy columns along with things like brass plaques to mark which alcove belonged to who.

“I have a friend coming over later!” I said and Henry nodded, pulled down suddenly to rejoin the game by one of the new additions. Since I hadn’t needed to backtrack in coming up with designs, I’d completed a full set of human skeletons. Felicity Dawn Hyoid, the martial artist, was the one who pulled Henry down.

While Henry, Aaron, and Christopher hadn’t had a problem with the idea of using a common last name decided by base class. It was the new prestige class holders that had wanted prestige classes to get individual last names. I was probably going to have to dig into vertebrae and the like when other races were added but didn’t mind it anymore. It wasn’t really all that much work to figure out names, at least not since I’d stopped feeling self-conscious about my choices.

“I’m going to do some work outside, let me know if anything comes up!” I said and the table of skeletons gave me a distracted send-off. They had never heard of chips for gambling, so I’d carved some out of stone and painted them to reflect values. A move which had resulted in much more intense games. I wasn’t sure what the chips represented other than points among them but figured they would have more fun if I didn’t poke my nose in unnecessarily.

Once I was outside, I took a look at the entrance of my dungeon and cringed. I’d been making purchases but hadn’t done anything with it aesthetically, so it was still just a collapsed shed. I had five days before Agony would arrive and got down to business to create some curb appeal. I swept the debris away immediately and got to work.

I took a solid block of stone and carved it into an archway before placing it. It was simple with a bit of fluting but already an improvement. From there I carved a pair of statues and placed them on either side of the entrance. They weren’t likeness or even particularly attractive, just first pass proportion carvings so they looked more like crude chess pieces than anything.

I was out to get everything I wanted to do places and fix the proportions rather than complete it. Finishing would take weeks even with my magical abilities, but I wanted Agony to get a sense of the big picture at least. I was going for a mixture of ancient design elements, using the goddess Lorrel as my muse. Elim had said the mountains were named after her so it felt like a more natural fit. According to the encyclopedia, she was a goddess of battle frenzy, passion, and fertility.

‘Mother of Legions’ was another of her names as she was said to have given birth to countless offspring between herself and the other gods. Unlike most of the gods I’d found by researching them when they appeared in her entry, she wasn’t a modern god of the world. She was born in between the primordial gods and the modern ones, from the mingled blood of the fallen during the cataclysm that wiped out the primordial ones and most of the modern gods.

I’d fallen in love with her image, a rabbit-eared woman who rode a black goat horned bi-corn. Most people considered it the evil equivalent of a unicorn, but it was just the male. The single-horned females were attracted to and rewarded virtue. The males could sense vice and viciously slaughtered those with malicious intent toward their herds.

The reputation for evil came from the young males who were forced out to find new herds or who failed in a challenge against an older male. Intelligent enough to converse but too haughty to do so, many of them got into trouble with local populations. Their ability to sense evil intent resulting in them attacking, seemingly at random to those unaware of their ability, people who were helpless against them.

Especially unfaithful or abusive males of any species.

They had a sore spot on that topic since they had to fight for the right to care for a herd of their own. It wasn’t uncommon for them to brutalize the corpse of such a person and tear the genitals off. My statues were a mirrored image of Lorrel on a rearing Bicorn. After some playing around, I settled on using the actual proportions for a Bicorn as the bases for the statues.

With that done I created a plaza in front of the entrance with smooth but unpolished marble and bought five titles worth of board steps. I created six stone dais’s where bicorn statues would eventually go and added them as place holders. There would be a Bicorn on both sides every two tiles when it was finished. I didn’t place any rough statues for the moment since I hadn’t made up my mind about how they would be posed.

I copied and placed some of the wind-carved stone labyrinth tiles to create a barrier, making the staircase the only entrance to the plaza. It looked good but was little more than a thin wall I’d have to backfill later. Trying it out I floated up the stairs to the entrance but felt underwhelmed. The entrance being on the same level as the plaza didn’t sit right with me, so I raised it up a tile and added another broad set of steps leading up to it.

With the design improved I felt better but wasn’t happy and recessed the entrance and statues. Carving into the stone around it I blocked out something like a triptych with scenes from what I’d read in the encyclopedia. The largest one that went above the entrances was of her birth where she rose from the blood of a battlefield.

I played with the stone a bit to work in what would look like a natural band of pale orangish-red. The list of dead gods was long, so I made a to-do of picking a top ten list and placing them later. To the left was her with a child on her hip and a spear in the other hand with more children clinging to her and standing behind since I adored the ‘Mother of Legions’ name.

The final one on the right as her standing dominate over the corpse of the ‘Root Eater’, the monster that once threatened the tree of creation. Her mythology stated that each time it was killed, it laid an egg like a monstrous phoenix and that she would have to fight it again in time. A task she took up to protect her offspring which made up a large portion of creation.

It was all gesture drawings for the moment, but I planned to make proper images and turn them into stamps later. I’d also need to do that for repetitive design elements. Things like pomegranate, rabbits, and anything else that was symbolic of her mythology that would look nice carved into a wall.

I did another float up to check the aesthetic and still wasn’t happy. I recessed the carvings slightly then created a carving of a roof and columns so it would look like the builder had protected the more delicate stonework from the wind and infrequent rain. After two more floating checks from the stairs, I felt like I’d done enough with the entrance, but was still displeased with the plaza.

Nothing in my store looked like it would fit so I stopped trying to find something premade. Under ‘magic goods’, I found a stone that would produce water and felt inspired. Starting from a block of stone I carved out a fountain with a pomegranate carved at the top from red marble. Into the crown of the fruit, I placed the stone. It took a few minutes for a trickle of water to escape but it flowed slowly all the same.

Since the fountain lacked chemical cleaners it was going to get gross if I just left it to fill and did nothing. Looking around I found a stone of purification and bought four of them. One for the pomegranate and one for each of the tiers below it. Since the water was flowing from the pomegranate it might not stagnate, but I was concerned about other issues like insects. They bred in still pools as far as I knew, but I was no expert even before magic entered the equation.

I created a pattern on the inside of the tiers and placed the stones and some similar but non-magical crystals. I didn’t want to deal with idiots digging the stones out to keep for themselves. Checking my clock, I noted that it had taken eight hours to set things up, but I finally felt satisfied with the layout. It also made me hate even more deeply the mining theme I’d used for the first three stacks, but I resigned myself to that.

I’d have to manufacture all of the needed design elements before I could justify an overhaul. Something my heart craved but my brain knew wasn’t a priority. Once the year rolled over, I needed to figure out how to draw people in and keep them coming. A task that I couldn’t push back on the list just to suit my need for design coherence.

I would, however, have to have Elim find me some pomegranate trees to plant along the staircase leading to the plaza. Expanding the space, I added in stepped planting boxes but ran into an issue with how to water them. I didn’t know much about the plant but figured a fruit tree of any kind needed moist soil but not actually dripping wet. Wet soil would rot roots outside of very specific cases if I wasn’t misremembering.

A water stone in the bottom of the planter might have worked but I didn’t want to soak it and kill the roots. Replacing them wouldn’t be an issue, but I didn’t like the idea of messing it up when I could just take a bit more time to plan it out. I also needed to get my hands on the plants themselves so that was another good reason to give it some time.

I almost wrote Elim to add to his list of things to buy for me but then remembered he had his own problems for the moment. There was nothing I needed with any sort of urgency, so I closed the text, deciding to wait a day or two to let things settle down. With my mind made up, I got back to work. I took a look at my map. I still had ten tiles’ worth of exterior space to work with but decided against it.

It would be easy to overdo it by spending too much time all at once. Instead I did a run-through of my interior. Caught up in the frenzy of freshening up my dungeon for company I didn’t notice how time flew. I was in the lava break room as the day came to an end and the year-counter ran out.

I hadn’t known what to expect, but in the next instance, party banners appeared and little fireworks went off in the air causing both hounds to bay with excitement.

Congratulations on Surviving, Newbie!

The banners read and before I could really absorb what had happened, I received congratulations texts from Agony, Mephesto, and Steve. I didn’t respond to them right away, still taking in what had just happened. I’d made it, I’d survived, and now I had a whole new year to look forward to trying to survive again.

System Notice

New Year’s Tithe Amount: 50 pts

A year where I was really going to need to focus. Fuck.