For the next several days Holly walks me through the finer points of running a dungeon. We spruce up the entrance door with some inlaid designs from my star chart, and add lights to the first chamber and entrance corridor. Another design from the probe gives me a light that runs of lightning magic which I embed in the walls along the top of the corridor. The most important thing she teaches me is how to portion out loot.

"Loot is the collective name for the rewards a dungeon gives to adventurers for defeating monsters." Holly explains. "The drive to earn loot is the most important motivating factor that keeps humans coming to your dungeon."

So what kind of things should I give out? Do humans like sand?

"Humans like gold, silver and copper. In that order." Holly scoffs. "They also like weapons, especially enchanted ones. They will take just about anything in the hopes it might be valuable, but giving out good loot sparingly is important for a healthy dungeon-town relationship. If you give too much, really strong adventurers might show up and just take over, you only want to give out enough to entice the adventurers near your level. What kind of metals do you have available for transmutation?"

Let's see... copper, silver, gold, iron, tungsten-carbide, aluminum, palladium-

"Hold a moment, when did you get a sample of gold? and I don't even recognize those last three" Holly scrolls through something on her magic screen.

The probe has all of those things inside it, usually only a little bit of each though. There's also tin, zinc, neodymium, cobalt...

"Those must be useful for something, but for now just make the gold, silver and copper coins. One of your cybrats is only worth five to ten copper coins, the cybratlings might be a silver. For the boss give five silver, and every once in a while a single gold piece. In the kingdoms around here a gold piece is worth ten silver coins, and a silver is worth one hundred coppers. If they kill the worms you can throw them a few extra coppers."

So I just give out coins?

"No, that's just the basics. You will also want to give them equipment unique to your dungeon. Try grabbing one of the weapon patterns you have and combining it with a monster pattern."

All I have is the club and the catch-pole so I try combining the club with my Dire rat pattern. The result is a somewhat battered looking club bound with leather strips instead of iron. The Ratcatcher Cudgel gives a small bonus to dexterity and increases damage on sneak attacks. Since I'm not actually using my basic Dire Rats anymore I try the combination again using the Cybrat pattern instead, creating something much more interesting. Jet black. Slow ripples moving across its' surface. The Cybrat Suppressor gives a much larger bonus to sneak attacks and can be activated with mana, causing it to sprout shiny black spikes which cause bleeding and slashing damage instead of bludgeoning.

Combining the Cybratling with the catchpole creates a Cybrat Abductor, which can extend like the cyberntic rat tails to nearly twice their normal length before slowly reeling back in. I tweak both the Suppressor and the Abductor with different metals and find that the tungsten-carbide works well for the tips and striking surface while aluminum makes a high quality handle. The basic Cybrats will have a chance to drop the Suppressor while the Cybratlings will drop the Abductor. The Cybrat King will have a chance to drop either one. I try to combine his pattern with a weapon and just get weird stuff like cudgels that break into lots of pieces when activated and a catchpole with way too many hooks on the end.

I do practice runs dropping loot for my various monsters for a few days before Holly comes back from her daily flight to give me exciting news. The merchant caravan is headed back our way, and they brought a lot of friends with them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hadiq the merchant, often called Hadiq the Heartless, rides at the head of the caravan as is his right. One of the guards rides with him while the others ride with his two porters on the other two carts in his small train. He glares sullenly at the camels pulling him through the desert, trying not to look back at the others following in his wake. It took two days to cross the desert and arrive in Antakya, one of the three large cities along the coast of the Sultanate, and then three days of waiting for Reaver to meet with him. The slaves crammed into the cage behind him whine and cry incessently, just adding to the pounding headache behind his eyes.

Hadiq glances back and quickly averts his eyes after spotting the man called Reaver, reclining in the cusioned seat atop his camel. A northerner by his reddish brown hair and pale skin, he is influential in the Sultanate underworld of the Dark Guilds. The fat merchant has had many dealings with Reaver's guild in the past, transporting slaves into the Dead Kingdoms on his behalf. Hearing about the new dungeon he insisted on accompanying Hadiq on his next trip to the north to check it out. Two days of travel in the man's company is the source of his headache, due to the man's general instability and power.

Behind the merchant's carts a column of motley soldiers slog through the sand with great determination. As the lowest ranked initiates of the Sand Vipers guild Reaver ordered them to come along for the purposes of training. Midway through the first day of marching one of them asked for a rest. Reaver killed him on the spot and ordered the rest to continue at a run until he told them to stop. Three more fell to exhaustion on the second day of marching while two were caught complaining too loudly. Reaver told him to expect at least ten to "drop out" before they make it to the oasis, but the dogged pace of the remaining recruits shows a drive to prove him wrong. There are forty-four recruits in the group, along with Reaver and his team of three lieutenants, and a cart of their own with four servants and assorted luggage.

Reaver's team are nearly as terrifying and unpredictable as their leader. Magnus, son of Magnus, a great bear of a man wrapped in a fur cloak despite the heat and carrying his spiked shield and axe. Hadiq has been told Magnus is from a tribe the northerners call northerners (though they call themselves southerners, and that is patently ridiculous), with hair the color of flax and pale blue eyes. Despite his brutish stature the warrior is incredibly vain and carries a hand mirror so he can catch any hair out of place and touch up his war paint.

The second on Reaver's team is Jelai, a woman of the Sultanate, and a skilled Wood Mage. Her appearance is a mystery as she is covered head to toe with woven straw painted with tiny runes, hung about with hundreds of satchels containing seeds and powders. Any mage is bound to be a bit cracked in the head but Jelai's tendancy to whisper to her potted bonsai tree is unsettling to say the least.

The third and final member is a dark skinned man from Nuba named Vulutussiranamaa, though the others always refer to him as Vulu rather than risk mangling his name and earning his ire. Vulu is soft spoken and comparatively normal looking with his plain peasant clothing, but his single-minded obsession with training his body means he has little interest in associating with the others in camp. He carries no weapon and wears no armor.

Reaver (the only name he will give) is, as mentioned, a northerner with reddish brown hair, cropped short on the side where a large scar cross his skull from brow to the base of his neck. He shaves his face but for his large mustache, the tips waxed and curled into two sharp points. From his clothes and grooming many have thought him a dandy at first, his scar and his weapon the only sign of a dangerous man. Indeed Reaver is friendly and gregarious to everyone he meets, right up until he shoves a knife through your ribs for an insult. His fencing rapier doesn't seem like a weapon suited for a dungeon delver but before forming a dark guild he was a rank C adventurer, more than capable of killing everyone else in the caravan at once in a straight fight. His lieutenants were never officially ranked by the guild but Reaver claims they are the equivalent of D-rank guild members, verging on C.

Hadiq urges the camels faster as the oasis ruins come into view. As the merchant train and the wearing recruits make their way into the ruins a far off shadow observes them from its' hiding place among the dunes. Reaver stands from his camel and happily turns to his guild members with a broad smile.

"Well my little fishies you've impressed me!" He beams, "I expected at least a few more of you to pop your clogs on the way in. Well done. Vulu, Magnus, Jelai, we're going in now. The rest of you have an hour until we get back, there had better only be forty of you left or I'll pick the dropouts myself. Remember fishies, only the strong survive. Impress me!"

The guildmaster skips merrily down the steps with his team in tow as the tired recruits draw their weapons and eye one another warily. Hadiq sighs and tries to direct his caravan as far away from the impending carnage as possible.