Lena

Jason entered the Studio with a sheaf of papers in hand. "Lena, we need your input," he called out on his way to one of the restored benches. With the Rangers no longer camping in the Studio's Entrance Hall, Lena had restored it to the oval waiting room look, only now the crystal pocket door leading into the rest of the dungeon had a decorative frame made of copper laced through marble.

Lena plopped her toon down beside him. "What's up?"

"We've got them to agree to a non-aggression pact that includes recognition of your sovereignty over the Studio and letting us actually leave here to trade with them. They want to post guards on us to enforce that, and we're trying to get them to agree that those guards would also protect us. Would you be willing to provide those guards a fall back position within the Studio and offer one of the members of the Lotrot military an employment contract?"

Lena took a moment to think that over. "Kargerran or Vi, yes. I think Vi would be the better choice, but I like the morals that Kargerran's displayed. Regardless, they're on the limited employment contract, and that is not negotiable. Also, if it's Kargerran or Vi, you can throw in the shooting range level as their territory and an allocation of 500 MPP with an MPR allowance of 100 points. They can add crystals to the level to improve that, but their MPR will not exceed 1000 and their pool won't change. If you need the wiggle room, you can start them up to that 1000 mark, but any higher and I'm concerned about what they could mass produce."

"How about starting with a lower mana pool?" Jason asked.

Lena made a squished up face, then relaxed to a frown as she said, "Don't go under 300 or it'll take them months to make any substantial changes without tapping the level's Zone Core, and I'm not sure I want them to know about that just yet. You can sweeten things with my assistance with any major structure changes, but while they're in the Studio, they are subject to our laws."

Jason shuffled through the papers, making notes off to the side every now and again. "Alright. Next up, the crafting studio: Gilvillian's pushing for the crafts to include forges for smithing, gold smithing, and glass blowing, with room for a few different types of apothecaries, carpentry, and stone working."

That was much easier to agree to. "I'll need someone to walk me through each of the different crafting needs, but I also intend to have furnaces for metallurgical experimentation and kilns for potters and glass annealing. Any common materials have to be provided by the crafters, and sufficient samples of any special materials need to be provided to the Studio for us to recreate what they need."

Jason scratched the side of his nose. "We do not want to fuck up their economy so dungeon provided materials should be limited."

"Okay," Lena said. "In return for providing the research materials for the special mats, they get to have unlimited access to those materials for experimentation purposes only, meaning the end products of their experiments cannot leave the dungeon. Is this Zarabelkami chica pretty sharp?"

"Do you mean her wit or her merchant skills?" Jason answered with a small smile. "Because both, yeah. Why?"

"Maybe make it part of the agreement that the merchants and anyone who normally supplies their ingredients get some input on what materials we can provide the crafters and at what prices or value equivalences."

"Price fixing?" Jason asked.

"My folks got into the community supported agriculture movement because they felt that farmers need to be fairly compensated for their labor. As far as I'm concerned, that also goes for wild gatherers, hunters, ranchers, all of the people who produce the goods that people depend on for basic survival. Just because we *can* run them out of business doesn't mean we *should*."

"I wasn't judging," Jason said, his tone mild.

"You like economics and stuff, what do you think about my stance?"

"I think we don't have enough information about the current market conditions, so erring on the side of not rocking the boat till we know more is to our benefit."

Lena's expression underwent a complicated series of changes before evening out. "Okay. Anything else?"

"I think that works. Where would you place the crafters if the military gets the shooting range level?"

"I'd build them space here on the Entrance floor, just like I'd move the military level portal to this hall."

Jason rose. "I think that takes care of everything up to now. Hopefully we'll bring you a contract to accept before the light starts fading again."

*~*~*

Jason

At the end of the day, Jason had a formal contract agreed to by the representatives of Lotrot that promised they wouldn't have to worry about being attacked by the city. He would have called it a treaty, but this Tapestry system treated it the same as it had the contract that made him Lena's Liaison. That left them to come to terms on a military liaison and supplying materials for experimental crafting.

That last one seemed a point of conflict among the Lotrot representatives, so Jason had laid out what Lena had told him she was comfortable with and asked them to shelve that topic until they had a unified goal.

The problem with the military liaison came down to Talon Commander Muglibaum's insistence on Corporal Baline for the position and Lena's flat refusal.

The five of them sat at the table in the kitchen that evening. "I get it that Baline's an ass, but why is he a sticking point?" Jason asked.

Lena leaned back, her toon partially phasing through the chair back. "I don't care as much about his attitude as you seem to. I care that he's fruiting terrified of me and this dungeon. If he's got anything more than muscle in his head, I haven't seen it, and I'm not willing to trust someone who's been trained to respond to fear with aggression as their eyes in the dungeon when he can't keep his fear to himself."

Jason sighed. "I guess that's fair, but what about giving up on pushing for Vi or Kargerran?"

Lena's toon straightened back up. "How about they put forward five candidates, we give them a week in the dungeon, and at the end, we eliminate two then they pick from the remaining?"

"I'll try to swing it, but no promises." Jason rubbed his face. He watched Candy sketching away at something for a moment before asking, "What are you working on?"

Candy didn't bother to look up. "I'm trying to come up with different ways I can experiment with mana to discover how it interacts with matter and energy. Aaron's discovery earlier today is making me really want to spend time with a mage to figure out what safety precautions they take with spell chucking."

Rob tensed up. "What happened in this 'discovery'?" he asked, looking at Aaron.

"Calm your tits, Mother Goose, no one got hurt," Aaron said, shooting Candy an exasperated glare. "Lena mentioned the Zone Cores this morning, right?" At Rob's nod, Aaron continued. "I started putting together an ecosystem in my territory, using the Zone Core for my level — it's just plants at the moment — and the Zone Cores move slower, about at the rate of MP recovery, I guess? Anyhow, I started to move through a part of the territory that the core was seeding with plants and got a warning about introducing foreign materials to the process."

Before Rob had a chance to speak, Jason asked, "Did the warning say anything about why that's a problem?"

Aaron sighed and rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder. "The core said that it could cause anything from making the process fail to destabilizing the zone."

Lena spoke up. "I poked the Tapestry more about that, and so did Candy. With what we got back, the core was talking about Aaron's level only. We figure we're being overly cautious, but until we know more when you guys do make updates to your levels, we'd like to make sure the levels under construction are cleared of all people and critters."

Jason, Aaron, and Lena looked toward Rob. While obviously not a happy camper, Aaron's brother stayed silent.

Candy, still without looking up, said, "Speaking of critters, we can summon a bunch of strange things. Aaron's probably the best one to work on categorizing them, but he'll need some help with the critter wrangling."

"Hey! Before we get to that point, what are the ethics, here?" Lena asked.

Candy glanced up for that. "What do you mean?"

Aaron said, "We're talking about living creatures. Rodents, rabbits and snakes for the most part, yeah, but we need to figure out a few things before just summoning them. You know, things like: why to summon them in the first place, what do we do with them once they're summoned, and what steps do we take if we decide they aren't good for the dungeon. What's available right now mostly falls under the Local categories, and 'dire cat' is the only monster at this point, but that's not going to hold true for the future unlocks."

"So we don't summon anything," Rob said.

Candy shook her head. "That's part of the whole point of these dungeons. When I was heads deep in the interface, what I got is that these things are the testing grounds for evolutions and adaptations. If we don't spawn new life, fail safes in the zone will, and it will be random. Most likely, it'll be stuff we've already unlocked, but it could be anything, including making chimeras out of any living thing in the dungeon."

Lena frowned, her gaze unfocused.

Aaron said, "You didn't say anything about that before."

Candy set her pen down and leaned back, not quite glaring at Aaron. "Am I the only one that can query the Tapestry? Hells bells, the more we all try, the more we'll understand from it!"

Jason turned to Lena, but her toon was as good as a statue made of light at this point. "Looks like we lost Lena there. Candy, Rob and I have been handling foreign relations so why don't you catch us up to speed on this querying the Tapestry thing?"

*~*~*

Lena

Lena verified Candy's assertion through her own prodding. By the time she was ready to return to the conversation, she realized Candy was in lecture mode. Not being particularly patient with her cousin's inability to distinguish relevant information from unnecessarily accuracy, Lena let one part of her attention essentially make a transcription of the lecture to skim later.

The rest of her attention she divided between analyzing her Zone Cores and organizing what she now knew about zone management. The books she had abandoned making earlier seemed like a good place to put her notes, writing with her [Applied Color Theory] skill.

Being able to make the words appear as fast as she could think them meant that Lena's tongue in cheek titled Dungeon Master's Primer was filled up before Candy got half way through her lecture on [Tapestry Synchronization], apparently the next skill tier of [Tapestry Reading].

In reviewing her notes, Lena came up with more questions, making sure to record the ideas she got as answers to her queries. During the midst of that study/query cycle, someone entered from the Lotrot entrance.

Lena had already closed and barred the door from the Hall into the rest of the dungeon. She would much rather frustrate intruders than send them through the trap field that was the rest of the floor, so she didn't feel the need to raise an instant alert with her friends.

The first person through was very different. Cloven hoof, thick leg, shaggy brown and tan fur coat. The shape of the upper part of the creature's leg seemed more disc-like than cylindrical, more like a quadruped's rear thigh, and the joint in the middle of the leg was hinged more like an elbow than a knee. The fur remained long as it went further up the creature's body, but took on a more silky, hair like appearance. Their torso, arms, and hands were human-like with the exception of the hair-fur. The creature's head reminded Lena of Bambi, only larger and with a more pronounced lower jaw. The dainty antlers growing just over half-round fuzzy ears led Lena to the conclusion that this was one of the parandrians, and a stag. Or was that buck?

The parandrian took a quick look around, stepped back through the portal, and then returned, walking backward and dragging another humanoid body along. He was followed by two more parandrians, one without antlers and the last with longer, but still dainty, antlers. They were each dragging a corpse.

The first corpse was slender with long, long pointed ears: elf? The second and third corpses looked like earless versions of the elf in miniature, at least for their top halves. Their bottoms were goats from the neck down.

The parandrian without antlers stepped farthest in, made an X with her arms over her chest and bowed. In a sonorous voice, she said, "May these rogues feed the dungeon, and be remade into more honorable creations."

Lena popped her toon into the room. "What the what?"

The two parandrians with antlers took a step back, hands moving to the hilts of sheathed long daggers while the female parandrian's hands came off her shoulders, still cupped, and took on a glow that changed from pale cream to fiery red.

Lena shook her head. "That won't do anything. But why are you dumping bodies in my hallway?" She was glad at the moment to lack a physical body. She was sure the shock of seeing her first dead people would have left her trembling, but using her toon meant she could pretend to be less shaken.

The female parandrian closed her fists, snuffing out the glow, then, carefully, bowed again. "Are you the Champion of Order given the care of this dungeon?"

"There is a precedence to answering questions, and you being the intruders means you answer first," Lena said.

The two stags in the back mimicked the doe's(?) posture. The doe straightened up, the stags still following suit. "These three came through our camp sentries speaking of how they intended to force the Champion of Order to turn over the care of this dungeon by capturing the Champion's companions and holding the threat of death over them. Such hubris toward the Grand Tapestry cannot be permitted, thus we have punished them. Dungeons are sacred places where the wrong can be made right and the deplorable revealed for expulsion from the Tapestry's protection. Thus we present their bodies that they may be purified."

Lena pulled the bodies into the stone floor, along with the blood pooling under them. With her toon still facing the location of the fallen creatures, she let her voice echo from the walls. "I am the Traveler the Tapestry made into the consciousness of this dungeon, and, yes, I do have the Design of the Champion of Order. I appreciate that your actions have protected my friends."

Lena wasn't sure she believed them, but she figured appearing to take the parandrians at their word was more likely to get them to leave peacefully than asking for proofs.

The doe's expression softened. "My apologies if this is your first introduction to violence, Design Lead Lena Marie Weston. It was not our intention to paint you with first blood without warning. We will consult with our Wise Ones for the proper path from here."

The trio departed at that point. Lena tripled checked that the Entrance Hall was closed off and shifted her attention back to the kitchen.

"Guys? This is officially not Kansas anymore." With that lead in, Lena interrupted Candy's lecture and then went on to explain what just happened.

*** *** ***

Congratulations! Absorption of new creatures has allowed your Zone Core (Research) to unlock the following new creatures:

Elf (Planes), Taurgonaut (Gidataur)

Sapient creatures created through Zone Management may now be granted access to Class Patterns for:

Mage, Thief, Scout, Merchant, Farmer, Runner, Con Artist, Poacher

*** *** ***

From the stunned expressions on her friends faces, Lena guessed they just got a similar message.