“Well,” Mercy starts, “I can confirm there's a potential bond here. If it wasn't for your lair bullshit I'd call shenanigans on a tree this young having the connection to natural magic that's needed.” She favours you with a smile.

“This is going to take me a while. If you have any other projects on the go now is a good time. Maybe like telling Charlemagne that we decided on a party tonight?”

You nod and leave her to it, leaving the grove and heading towards the arena. Until the away teams return with wood you can't create the second floor and you're reluctant to dig into your stone and metal reserves for the same reason. Which really only leaves you with sixteen animal hides and your less physical resources.

The hides are easy. The goblin village was burnt to cinders during Feathers' duel with the monk, so you drop ten of the hides in the middle of their village, which should be enough to get the tents fixed up at least. The remaining six you drop in the kobold village instead. Maybe they'll use them as doors, maybe as beds. Maybe they'll just give them back to the goblins. You don't know and honestly don't care overmuch. That's the good thing about minions, on the whole. They're perfectly capable of looking after themselves.

So, you muse, that leaves Fame and Animus.

You're still not sure what Animus is, or why it was split from Fame. It's clear that it's a more direct reward for defeating Heroes, but at the same time seems to have fewer directly helpful purchases.

Your Fame menu still contains upgrades like 'Empower Minion', 'Champion Minion', and 'Incite Teamwork'. Things that, you suppose, could almost be seem as corruptions of the story that you and your lair is building. It's not too hard to imagine a Hero such as Brok to retell the story to another hero and say

“Well, of course I was having trouble with the kobold – she was breathing fire!”

From there, if Fame can be considered your story, then spending fame on further upgrades is... influencing your story?

You shake your head. There's no proof that Fame is anything of the sort. It's just how the gods see fit to name things. Be famous, get powers that make you more famous.

Animus however...

'Animate Trap', 'Manifest Worker', and the much woollier Area Designation that you've managed a few times now are the expenses you've already seen from the list that is still mostly greyed out. But now there's options such as 'Loot Point' and 'Designate Drop' which you don't understand and which seem to have variable costs, 'Clutter Room' which you understand but don't understand the point of, and the prohibitively expensive and greyed out 'Entry Quest' for five thousand Animus.

You shrug and head to the dining room, which one of the kobold workers is industriously scrubbing the soot from.

I mean... they're creepy and crap guards... but maybe that's not what they're for?

You think about it for only a second longer before you hit the 'Manifest Worker' button, and then a second time. This time, you're able to watch the process of your new workers appearing. They seem to rise from the floor like it's water, dirty stone dribbling off their new bodies and revealing a grey robed and somewhat androgynous goblin and a strange creature you haven't seen before. It's body is small, smaller even than Sapphire, reaching only around a foot tall – although it stands in a perpetual slouch and could have been taller if it had stood straight. Purple skin sits in ugly looking folds over a thin body, and instead of a robe it wears only a grey loincloth. Most interesting however are the pair of large, bedraggled looking wings on its back and the short horn nubs on its forehead.

Some sort of demon?

The goblin immediately gets down on its hands and knees and starts scrubbing at the soot alongside the kobold. The demon-thing drags its body around like doing so is the most degrading thing it has ever done, a nasty sneer on its face as its wings heave it into the air. Its flight is erratic enough that you would have thought it drunk if you had not just witnessed it form out of your will and... presumably the soul-stuff of Heroes.

It flutters over to the small crater left behind where the unnamed kobold fell and starts waving its arms around. You do your best to put the foul sounding chant it utters from your mind as you turn back to your menu.

Next on your list to try is 'Designate Drop' for 'Variable Animus'.

Now, you're not an idiot. You know what those words mean and what that normally means for mobs. What you don't understand is why it's in your menu. If anything, surely the Heroes should pay for the privilege of getting more out of your bodies than before! But you also like to try to avoid being a fool, and it's not like proving your suspicions correct will make you be attacked more than before. So you fire up a designation and are met by a strange sense of displacement. On one hand, you're still sat in the mess hall. On the other, you're looking at a list of everyone currently in the lair, those out gathering greyed out. On the third, you're given an out of body experience that seems pretty insistent that it's going to point at the nearest living thing.

You try pointing it at the goblin you just manifested, only to be met by an error message.

Invalid Target

OK then. The same message comes up when you point it at yourself. It's when you zoom it into the kitchen and it points towards Charlemagne that you get your first positive hit.

Designate Appropriate Drop?

And then a selector.

5 Animus: Poor Drop

10 Animus Common Drop

25 Animus Uncommon Drop

50 Animus Rare Drop

100 Animus Epic Drop

500 Animus Legendary Drop

Warning! Epic and above Drops are limited to Fate Touched minions!

Well, you have ninety seven Animus left and a willing...

“Hey, Charlemagne?”

The goblin in question sticks his head around the kitchen door. “What? Oh, it's you sir. Did I hear Mercy right earlier? You wish for a party this evening?”

You nod at him. “Nothing fancy. I think she just wants in on the ale that we got.”

“'Nothing fancy' he says. Oh very well, I shall put the Jambe de Mille-pattes vol-au-vents to one side.”

You eye him for a moment, but you're not sure if he's being serious. Or what a jam duh millepate is.

“Yeah, you do that. Anyway, you mind if I use untested lair mechanisms on you?”

It's the goblin's turn to raise an eyebrow. “Will it hurt me?”

“I doubt it.”

“Will it interfere with my endless cooking duties?”

“Shouldn't do.”

“Then do what you need to do.”

With a lackadaisical salute the goblin returns to the kitchen.

You decide to start small, and hit the 'poor' button.

Charlemagne stiffens for a moment before pulling his hat off and staring at it for a moment. He turns to go back through the door, but you observe him through your out-of-body-eye as he stops himself and gets back to work on what looks like a stew. He hesitates again while working and adds a small pinch of something black and glittery.

You target him again and hit 'Average'

Warning! Prior Drops Detected! Automatic Probability selected, this may be edited in the Animus Menu.

This time he stops for longer, before he reaches behind him and grasps at something. Moving the eye around you can see a small bottle of something has appeared on his belt. He brings it to his nose and takes a tentative sniff, and then a sip. He makes a face and replaces it.

But a small cut on his shoulder heals before your eyes.

You grin. You're starting to see why you may want to do this.

Throwing caution to the wind you hit 'Great', and watch with some amazement as the knife in the goblin's hand seems to buck and grow. Where you suspect it started life as a piece of scrap off-cut, sharpened by the goblin chef, now he wields a proper blade – a cleaver with a tapered end, several inches thick for most of it's length and nearly a foot long.

Charlemagne holds it like a longsword. He lets out a whistle as you disengage yourself from the menu, and by the time you're blinking yourself into a single point of view once more, he's stood before you.

“Do you know what you just gave me?”

You shake your head, but can't keep your eyes from roving over the cleaver blade and hat. “Just 'Thematic Items' and what I could gauge from your reactions. How are they?”

The chef snorts and holds the sword and potion out, before bowing his head. “Look for yourself.”

Chef's Hat

Hat, Poor

This small, dirty chefs hat is nevertheless useful for the Hero on a budget! The wearer will instinctively know how to get similar flavours to exotic spices using nothing but local ingredients!

Warning; may lead to ingesting oddities including but not limited to: eyeballs, spleens and dead flies.

Health Potion

Potion, Common

This common healing potion is capable of closing both moderate wounds and small town doctor businesses!

The Chef's Cleaver

Knife, Rare

This small blade is perfectly suited to the cannibal-in-combat! Ever-Sharp and Bleeding enchantments make even small wounds worrisome, but it's the Ailment-Transfer enchantment that makes this an assassin's weapon! Unused ailments on this victim when a killing blow is landed are stored in the blade to be unleashed in the next blow! Even better, those who dies of ailments can be butchered in order to store those ailments too!

You're forced to let out a whistle of appreciation yourself when you see the description on the blade. Charlemagne grunts.

“Yeah yeah, it's very impressive. But this means Heroes are going to come and kill me, specifically.”

You nod, “I understand that. I do, and I'm sorry it will inconvenience you.”

The goblin eyes you. “I'm hearing a 'but' there.”

You nod again. “But Heroes were going to kill you anyway. And death isn't permanent any more. And, you know – You get a cool sword.”

His mouth twitches. He tried to school his features but after a moment gives up and lets out a giggle that sounds totally out of place coming from the weathered goblin.

“Yeah, yeah I guess so. Thanks boss. If nothing else, these will actually make me a better cook.”

You grin at each other like loons for a few seconds before he grunts. “Ech, out of here. I have a party to cook for.”

Still grinning, the goblin retreats to his kitchen. The sounds of chopping and the sizzle of cooking meat follow you as you head back into the arena. Charlemagne must really like his new toys to break into the actual meat rather than bug-flesh. Bug just doesn't fry the same way.

You spin up your menu once more and set it to 'Loot Point'. The same cost menu as before appears, but everything is blanked out due to a single blinking notification that refuses to go away no matter where you point your gaze around the large room.

Warning! No Viable Container!

Well then. That puts paid to that. You haven't exactly been telling your minions to fill your lair with chests or anything. You shove the menu to one side and walk down to the jail. From the sounds as you approach, Amanda is crying. You wince. You haven't really been thinking about her with everything else going on, just assuming that she'll be fine. You change course towards her room, but stop when another voice speaks. The low tones are unmistakably Feathers. The sobbing peters out. More quiet words.

You're a coward.

You enter the farthest cell and use the last option that jumped out at you.

Clutter Room

Room Type: Jail Cell

Size: Small

Cost: 5 Animus

You hit accept and watch with some interest as the room shifts around you. A wooden bench forms against the far wall, with a ragged blanket on top. Iron shackles snake into existence underneath and you check your stockpile in worry, but it doesn't seem to have taken any of your limited supply of metal. Another set clang as they strike the wall above. A thin layer of dust and cobwebs come into being with a soft noise like gentle rain, and then a rattle behind you, in the corner across from the door, a full sized human skeleton shudders into place before slumping over and going still.

Well then.

As you turn to examine it, your other menu leaps to the fore.

Valid Container Found! Place Loot Point?

You hit yes, of course, selecting poor for 5 animus.

The skeleton doesn't change, nor react like Charlemagne did, but then it would be odd if it had to be honest. However your perception offers you some more information.

Resource node

Poor, Bone

Drops: ????, ????

Well, you know what to do with those. A single punch is enough to collapse the skeleton into a pile of dust, a single long bone, maybe from the leg, rolling free.

Resource node (1/1), Party Entry

Poor, Bone

Drops: Bone, ????

Your eye twitches. Where a nice, logical, happy little countdown should be, indicating the next time you could break the skeleton for resources, and thus give you a way to mine for... probably nearly any resource from the safety of your dungeon...

Well, it wouldn't be your home if it wasn't unfairly skewed towards the Heroes, would it?