The sewers were the ideal place to set up shop: they were largely uninhabited by anything but spiders, rats, the occasional squatter, and if you had the right type of magic, you could find long-forgotten, and massive underground tunnels, rooms, ancient cathedrals belonging to covens of dead cults, and little pockets of dwarf civilization fighting with little pockets of goblin civilization.

Once upon a time this had probably been someone’s bomb shelter, which transformed with the expansion of the anomaly into a massive subterranean hall. Once upon a time perhaps a dwarf king had called it home, or it simply transformed with a mysterious look to it, but no real history behind it. It was a feeling you sometimes got in places of the United States, after coming back from a trip to Europe or Asia.

The place was damp with the constant drip drip of water coming out of what used to be the Niagara River, the smell of mold, and sported colonies of glowing mold splattered here and there.

Several workstations now sat in that enormous, empty room, where the walls rose up some forty feet and were bathed in a weird haze. Light streamed down in thick syrupy rays from a couple of places where the walls had been broken out, and in that light danced all manner of bugs and dust.

Around the workstations sat dozens of gnomish, packed shoulder to shoulder. A murmur of conversation buzzed all around, with chuckles here and there, with the occasional ‘Ooohhh!’ of sudden inspiration. They also darted glances around to the corners of the room, where motion could be barely seen. They tried to ignore the periphery of the room, generally.

Some had hold of a bracer, others a codpiece, and they were noting down, sketching down the design parameters, scribbling out mistakes, calling for materials. Buckets of steel dross, crates of copper, ingots of iron and other materials were being brought in by a team of golemites, orcs and dragonites. The muscle brought in more work tables, more stools, more boxes of tools with gnomish hissing at them to be careful, crates of this and that: ignition bandage the crate might read, or eldritch catalyst, or echocrystal shard.

And they brought clay. Tons of clay.

One team of gnomish was in the process of erecting scaffolding to allow them to put in a ventilation chimney for the gigantic kiln. They’d already piped a chimney from the other smaller kilns, but this new one stood about eight feet high and ten feet across.

Two fae and one gnomish stood at the entrance, supervising the placement of materials and telling them to beware the oozes.

One gnomish in particular was staring at a helmet shaped like an upturned flower pot, painted with magic and bearing a strange eye shape. That helmet floated atop a pile of greenish purplish glop, which quivered and burbled. It couldn’t make any sounds presently other than bloop and blop, but in another few minutes one of the design and prototype teams returned the breastplate. The ooze schlumpfed into the armor, and the red gem at the center lit up.

“Thank you. We find speech to be one of the core requisites of reasonable intelligence.”

“I quite agree with you,” one of the three leaders said. She detached herself from the other two, who were supervising the placement of incoming freight. “Now, we have had our up front payment of two thousand gold pieces, but that will only cover the initial week of paying salaries and lining up wholesalers. We will need something in the vein of two to three thousand a week if you’d like everything to remain running smoothly.”

The one that called itself Oozymandius nodded its helmet. “Understood. Once measurements are taken and specifications are recorded, I can take to the dungeons once again for the needed funds.” It slid over to the wall, where puddles of gray and black slimes and puddings sat quivering, and reached down into the depths. It came back with another handful of gold pieces. “This is another fifty gold, I believe.”

Harriet the Enchanter nodded sharply. “Quite right. Don’t misunderstand, Oozymandius, I believe you intend to pay, but unless I have two thousand gold a fortnight, we’ll see about stopping production.”

“And we will see about making sure the two thousand gold is in your hands by the end of each fortnight. Time is quite a new concept, so we will require an instrument by which to keep track.”

“I’ll have a calendar drawn into the ledger,” Harriet the Enchanter™ said. “The ledger will need to be made of some proper material, or enchanted against acid damage… that’s neither here nor there. My second question is in regards to the… other occupants.”

She gestured to the edges of the room.

For there were oozes of all varieties. Slimes and jellies of all sizes and colors, some of them drawn up into mounds, others flattened out into puddles. Sickly yellow-green puddles only a few feet across, big bulky masses of quivering grayish matter, some nearly invisible except for the dust not floating through the air where they stood.

“The armor, you see–“

“I understand the purpose of what my people are to be constructing.”

“I misunderstood the direction of your question.”

“Quite all right. Can we be certain these other occupants won’t attack and eat any of my people? You are reasonably intelligent due to the helmet… they are not.”

Oozymandius turned to behold the gelatinous cubes, nearly invisible, stacked into a Q-Bert pyramid in the far corner. “Ah.”

“Yes… if you should like, I can make arrangements for them to be fed as well.”

“Presently many of them are in torpor from consuming a large meal. You understand the term?”

“Quite sluggish, as they’re digesting.” Various different organic things were currently floating in several of the transparent slimes and puddings and oozes. One had a tree sticking out of it, while another had something that resembled a mostly-eaten baguette floating within it.

“Just so,” Oozymandius said. “Use the fifty gold to purchase some cheap livestock, if you would. And impress upon your staff the need to create copies of this helmet before more armor. You see-”

“I understand the need,” Harriet said.

“You seem more than reasonably intelligent,” Oozymandius said.

“I appreciate the compliment.”

“We will see about rustling up some food and a bit more money with only these two pieces of armor. The sewer rats should pose little to no threat, though they pay little. I suppose that would be too good to be true, as the saying goes. Or that I cannot have my cake and slowly consume it at the same time.”

Harriet waggled a clipboard with a piece of marked parchment. “And I will see about putting these helmets together with all available alacrity.”

“Alliteration absolutely appreciated. Thank you indeed, Harriet the Enchanter Tee Em. We hope to make you and your people a great deal of coin.”

“And we hope to make your brethren reasonably intelligent,” Harriet said. “I would offer to shake your hand, but–”

“Ha. Ha. We do not presently have hands, and touching you would be a dangerous proposition. I should hate to damage the one responsible for raising my kind out of the primordial swamps. Think nothing of it. We will see you later, alligator.”

“After while, crocodile.”