“Hey Telar,” says Teemo, deliberately waiting for her to start to take a sip of her tea before he speaks up. She jerks to a more attentive position and looks around, but doesn’t bless him with the spit-take he so desperately wanted.

“Voice Teemo!” she says as she stands and gives a small bow, which makes her miss him rolling his eyes at her formality. “What can the Dungeoneer’s Guild do for you? I’m still working on that information packet you asked about. I just need Inspector Tarl to check it over,” she says, still uncomfortable talking with me.

I don’t get the feeling she’s scared of me, at least. It feels more like she’s scared of her boss, or scared to mess up the account of some bigwig client. I can spot the extra books on her desk that look to be about etiquette with dungeons. While I’m playing Sherlock with her and her desk, though, Teemo sticks to the business of why I asked him to talk to her.

“Do you know anything about scythemaws? Or tunnel horrors?” he adds, liking my name for them a lot more than the colloquial term for them.

Telar’s eyes widen a bit. “Tunnel Horrors? I’m sorry, I don’t, but they don’t sound pleasant. Has something happened?”

“Eh… more that something is going to happen. The Boss has been exploring outside his new expansion, and around Violet, and has been seeing a lot of signs of scythemaw activity, but no scythemaws. As far as we can tell, the various caves between the aquifer and underswamps are their breeding grounds. The markings and such are pretty old, too, so we’re expecting them to want to use those grounds fairly soon.”

Instead of answering, Telar starts digging through scrolls and books, mumbling to herself. She opens up one of the books about talking to dungeons and seems to be referring to it as she scribbles something illegible, and then she’s off to look at a map one of the ratkin sold her, looks like.

It’s quickly apparent that, though she’s taking the question seriously, she’s also taking her duty to her guild seriously. Notes are written, scratched out, rewritten, references pulled out, put away, pulled out again…

“Now I understand why you try to stay away from bureaucracy, Boss…” mutters Teemo before turning to leave. Yeah, I don’t think we’re getting any answers from her today. Maybe go check and see if Yvonne is having any luck with her guild?

Teemo’s not about to turn down a chance to go hang out with Yvonne… and come to think of it, I haven’t visited the Delver’s Guild yet. The birds on expedition don’t count. It doesn’t take Teemo long to get to the guild and slip inside. Right now, it looks a lot like a tavern, and is fairly busy. Looks like a lot of various parties are either winding down after some quest, or winding up to go do one.

Oh hey, I even see the trio over there. I resist asking Teemo to go see what they’re up to, as we’re here on business, not simply exploring. He heads up the nearby stairs to what seems to be rooms for sleeping, so he heads for the stairs to go further up. He’s stopped by a boot landing right in front of him, quickly followed by a second boot and a voice connected to the person in the boots.

At first, I think he’s a tall goblin, but the features just don’t add up. Goblins almost have little fangs that don’t pass their lips, but orcs have definite tusks, for starters. He smiles at Teemo.

“Ah, You must be Teemo! At least I hope you are. I don’t usually let rats stay long, heh.”

“Uh… yeah, I’m Teemo. Is Yvonne up the stairs?”

He nods, but doesn’t step aside just yet. Instead, he kneels and offers a finger to my Voice. “I’m Karn the Slight, leader of this guildhouse. It’s nice to finally meet the Voice of Thedeim.”

Teemo slowly reaches out and shakes the finger, after I prod him to. “Uh… thanks?”

Karn stands. “Did you spot that group downstairs? The ones that recently escaped you?”

Teemo nods. “Yeah, they made it through the gauntlet and earned their freedom. I thought they were from a different guild, though?”

Karn sighs. “They were, but they were declared dead when they didn’t come back. So I took them in. There’s no bad blood between you, is there?”

Teemo shakes his head. “Nah, they’re fine. They were obnoxious at first, but Thedeim was able to beat some humility and cooperation into them.”

Karn laughs and steps aside. “That’s what they said, too, hah! I just wanted to take the chance to verify that with you. Library’s on the third floor.” With that, the orc heads down the stairs. Wait… wasn’t he at the bar when Teemo came in?

“...I’m pretty sure he was, yeah, Boss.”

Then I think you might not be the only one around with shortcuts. Teemo doesn’t dwell on that, and instead heads up the stairs, only to find Yvonne glaring at the full shelving.

“Something wrong?” asks Teemo, and Yvonne turns her glare on him for a moment, before she softens and slumps slightly.

“Yes. Karn does his best to buy everything about monsters, delving, geography, and more. He wants to make sure his delvers are armed with knowledge as well as weapons and spells. The only problem is he hasn’t had a guild librarian since he started.” She waves a frustrated hand at the books. “They might be in even worse disarray than Neverrest’s books!”

Oof, don’t say that where Honey can hear. She’s liable to pull out her own secret raid boss mode and take over the place. Teemo laughs, and after relaying my joke, Yvonne joins in.

“But seriously, Teemo. It’s a disaster! I’m pretty sure I can find what I need, but it’ll take time.”

“You have your nights pretty free, Yvonne. Maybe you could start organizing the place?”

“Oof… that’ll take a long time to do.”

I think she could get Honey to help. I think I can keep her from obsessing over the library here if I keep reminding her about our library, not to mention her research lab. The ratlings should be able to make a card catalog, too, so people can actually quickly access what they need.

“The Boss thinks you can get Honey to help at night, when her other duties won’t demand her attention. It’ll still take time, but not nearly as much.”

Yvonne smiles at that idea. “That’d be nice. Once it’s organized, I might even act as the librarian here at night; reshelving books, putting new ones in their proper place, and making notes about the gaps in the knowledge kept here.”

“Cool. I’ll help you find the thing on scythemaws today, and we’ll see about making this an actual library maybe tomorrow.” With that, the two get to work, and I turn my attention to trying to prepare for the scythemaw problem.

Probably most pressing is making sure my spiderkin are going to be alright. Aranya is working with them to ensure they have most of their residences built more towards the ceiling than the ground. I think Folarn was more inclined to fight any scythemaws that try to start trouble, but after Aranya told them about how much of a fight just one gave Tiny, they seem to accept that discretion can be the better part of valor at times.

I’m glad, because I’m still not sure what to actually do about the impending scythemaw invasion. On the one hand, sure, they’re big and dangerous. They even count as delvers, so I’d get boatloads of mana from killing them.

But I don’t really want to kill them. Killing one that’s chasing someone: sure, self defense right there. Killing a bunch of them who are just looking to make babies: not so much. Besides, I don’t know what they might be keeping at bay. Big predators tend to be a good way to keep other things away. The scythemaws are scary, but seem to mostly keep to themselves.

I don’t want to go and destroy the ecology in the caves just because I’m scared of an overgrown alligator/insect thing. People may have killed wolves for the threat they pose, but people also domesticated the things also for the threat they pose.

Which is another opportunity, too. I’m pretty sure actual alligators like to lay their eggs on the shore and then just wait for the babies to come back to them. We might be able to steal a clutch or two to try to raise. That’s a lot of mights and maybes, though. For all I know, they give live birth by the babies eating their way out of their mom! Hopefully not, because ew, but I’m pretty sure at least one insect does that, and the scythemaws have those big bug mandibles. I dunno, still not a biologist.

No, I’m an engineer! So how do I build a solution to this? I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as a salmon slide thing that lets them get around dams so they can spawn, not that that is a simple thing in the first place! Even if I do dig out a bypass for them, I think they actually need dry land to do their thing. There will probably be fighting for mates, fighting for good spots to make a nest, fighting for everything, really. Somehow, I doubt their courtship involves just peacefully making the best wall-marking to attract a mate.

Still, might as well get that project at least started. I’m hopeful Yvonne will be able to say we have plenty of time to make the bypass, but I seriously doubt we’ll be that lucky. And I do mean we. For me and everyone in my dungeon, it’ll be simple enough to just get out of the way and clean up the mess after, like dealing with gigantic army ants.

But Violet is going to be in some serious trouble. She’s been working on getting her centipedes to dig out a proper core room for her in the ceiling, instead of the little space Teemo made for her. She seems to find the place weird to be in, which I don’t blame her for. Everyone else just goes through them in a couple minutes at most, but she was planted in one for a while. She's technically out of the inflated space now, but it will take her more work to get a proper sanctum made.

But all her spawners and nodes are on the floor. And she seems to be just off the main path of the migration/breeding ground. Thankfully, she’s not panicking, which is great. She seems to be taking it as the proof of the wisdom of getting her core up off the ground and hidden. She seems confident I’ll be able to keep her safe.

So that makes one of us.