Forge of Eternity: Alpha Testing, page 25
“Wipe that stupid smirk off your face,” Quickhand glared down at the shaggy-haired mage next to her wagon, “I haven’t signed anything yet. Adventurers, meet in my office. Everyone else is dismissed, but don’t leave the site. I don’t imagine this is going to take very long.”
Dean’s self-assured smile had turned into a sullen scowl before he turned and stalked back into the small office building behind the foreman. We had to wait for the crowd to part before we could start in that direction, and I took the delay as an opportunity to fill in the group on my plan. We conversed via party chat to avoid giving any details away to the halflings.
Amalie: Don’t mention we completed the quest until I give the word. Follow my lead here.
Amalie: I’m going to lay some of our cards on the table and hope it works out in our favor. I think I have an angle we can use.
Deacon: Which cards, exactly? Anything you tell the foreman you’re also telling the other faction.
Amalie: I know that. I’m not going to say anything Dean isn’t already aware of in some way.
Goodwin: He knows there’s something powerful, but we didn’t have specifics at the time.
Deacon drummed his fingers against the hilt of his longsword, considering. He nodded, stony brow furrowed as he looked around the group. Everyone else nodded as well and we made our way toward the cigarette-scented building that served as the foreman’s office and warehouse. Dean leaned casually against a wall of boxes at the far end of the room, the foreman sat in her chair near the desk on the adjoining wall.
“I’d tell you to make yourselves comfortable, but I really would rather you didn’t,” she said, swiveling the top part of the chair around to face us. “Let’s get straight to business. This young man here has offered me a veritable pot of gold to sell my mine to him. Apparently, the mine is tainted and it can’t be safely worked anymore, in addition to the recent pest control issue. Few people in this land would want a tainted mine, so I’m skeptical when I see someone else coming in with a competing offer. What makes you want this mine so much?”
“I don’t want the mine,” I said, shaking my head.
“Then you just wanted to waste my time, is it?”
“No, nothing like that. I don’t want the mine, I want access to what’s under the mine and tainting the ore,” I clarified.
“If I sell you the mine you get that too. The mine isn’t just tunnels and equipment, it’s the rights to everything else within,” the halfling explained with an irritated edge to her voice. “Why not just bid against the current offer and make things simple for me?”
“I don’t have a pot of gold to offer you, but I can give you something more. You currently possess the rights to something powerful and you’re throwing it away for a single one-time payment. My faction, Meritum, can provide you with a steady stream of adventurers willing to pay for the privilege of exploring in your mines. Join up with us, you keep your land rights and gain our resources and protection. You could turn this little spot into a town in its own right.”
“Pure fantasy,” Dean said, standing up straighter and holding his arms out to the side. “I’m offering you a very generous amount for a resource that’s useless to you and most of the world. Adventurers can handle a little mana taint so it’s worth a bit to us. This group just told you they don’t have the money to compete with that. They’re trying to bargain with promises.”
“You’re trying to say it’s both valuable enough for you to purchase it, but not worth exploring other ways to profit from it?” the halfling leaned back in her chair and took a long drag from her cigarette holder. She closed her eyes and let the smoke out slowly before continuing. “What’s down there that you all are so interested in?”
“Ferventus thinks there’s a dead god down there for them to free and save, right Dean?” I asked, sticking my tongue out at him when the foreman turned his direction. The mage winced at my words but stayed silent, so I continued, “Dean’s faction wants to buy it to try to dig up another deity. They’re wrong though, there’s something more down there. There’s a dungeon. Meritum can set up a guild shrine here and train up new recruits in the dungeon below. You can see the business opportunities there, I’m sure, and it will give you a place of honor in the faction.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of training grounds referred to as honor before,” the small woman cut back, but there was a smile in her eyes. “Then again, there are stories of such places of power attracting adventurers in the days of old when the curse was more common.”
“I’d like to remind you that they haven’t even asked what the offer price is for the land yet. If they’re so broke they won’t even entertain buying it outright, how can you expect them to pay you anything worthwhile for usage over time?” Dean’s expression was deeply sorrowful and sympathetic, his eyebrows and cheek lines accentuated to an unnatural degree. He must have been pouring on his illusion magic to make himself look more sincere. I briefly wondered if he was doing anything negative to my appearance at the same time, touching my face unconsciously. Foreman Quickhand looked between us in silence, then closed her eyes again in thought.
“If I may,” Gavin stepped forward, bowing deeply, “I would like to point out that the cause you champion, to carve out a place in the world for the halfling peoples, would benefit greatly from such a display as presiding over a place of power such as this.”
I saw right through the flowery language and gritted my teeth, hoping he hadn’t just hurt our case. Gavin just unashamedly offered the foreman “exposure” for her cause as a potential benefit of taking our offer. Every freelancer and entrepreneur in the world could smell that bullshit from a mile away, so I hoped the concept was still foreign to the people in this game. The foreman looked him up and down, then closed her eyes as she leaned back in her chair. It was silent for several more minutes before she opened her eyes again, sitting forward and upright.
“Dean,” Foreman Quickhand turned to him with narrowed eyes, “I’d like you to inform your benefactor that I appreciate the offer but this land is not currently for sale.”
Persuasion increased to level 2!
The mage opened and closed his mouth several times before nodding and leaving, closing the door with exaggerated care as he maintained eye contact with us. As soon as the door closed, Deacon walked over to where Dean was before and reached his arm out with surprising speed. A moment later Dean appeared, robes clenched in Deacon’s fist. The large stone man dragged the mage to the door, tossing him outside before slamming it shut and leaning against it. The foreman gave a nod of approval and looked back in my direction, silent as we made eye contact.
“Thank you for putting your faith in Meritum,” I said, bowing slightly. “You won’t regret this decision.”
“Bullshit, I regretted the decision before I made it,” the halfling foreman snorted. “You just happen to represent something better than an outright sale of my property. My team here is dedicated, but I really don’t want to make them all move again to learn another trade right after getting good at mining. Tell me, how do you expect things to work here child?”
I smiled through the emotional haze of my debuff. “Well, to start, we’re going to need to build a faction shrine to link up with everyone else. Then, I’m going to call in some reinforcements to secure this place. In the meantime, we have to make this spot defensible while the shrine is under construction.”
“I’m pretty big on protecting what’s mine, and we have some defensive contingencies in place, but is that something you expect we’re going to need?”
“Absolutely,” Goodwin spoke up, “Ferventus is probably going to try to take this mine by force. They’re not exactly subtle when they want something. I’d expect at least a small raid tonight, if not a full siege.”
The foreman cursed, slamming a fist on the desk. “That would have been nice to know before agreeing to this.”
“Might not be a problem. How many players can we expect?” I asked, crossing my fingers for a small number.
“Well, there was Lottie’s party, the party coming in from somewhere else, and another party out on a quest nearby due to come back today,” Goodwin counted out on his fingers as he spoke. “I’d say twelve and sixteen depending on party size.”
“Okay, that’s more than I was expecting, but maybe with just a bit of help from the Stathmore Miners here,” I said, turning to the foreman with a hopeful smile.
“That’s going to be a problem with the mine full of locusts,” Quickhand tapped her cigarette holder against her lips, spilling ash onto her already grimy clothes. “I’m not keen on my workers dying if it can be avoided. Perhaps selling to them is the better option…”
“We’ll take the front line of the fighting, that should minimize your losses,” Deacon offered before she could continue down that line of thinking.
“That’s fine and all, if you think you’re able to both defend this place and clear out the infestation at the same time. I, however, have considerably less faith in your abilities.”
“Which is fair,” Deacon said, keeping voice was even-tempered despite the tension I saw in his jaw. “So you’ll be glad to hear that we’ve cleared out the locusts.”
“So you did?” the foreman looked skeptical, “toss me your access bangle.”
Deacon complied and Quickhand brushed aside a stack of papers, revealing a ring of runic markings on the desktop. I focused on the symbols, trying to intuit their individual meanings. The best I got was a “tip-of-the-tongue” feeling of vague understanding, an itch in my mind that I knew I wouldn’t be able to scratch without more information. The halfling placed Deacon’s bracelet in the center of the ring, then traced a symbol at the corner of a blank page with a quill. A moment later, the quill pulled itself from her fingers and began writing across the page. The writing was indecipherable, the blocky script stacking tightly into the page in rectangular patterns. When the quill stopped moving there was still a good several inches of whitespace remaining on the page.
Foreman Quickhand snorted a laugh. “You did a hell of a lot more than just clear out a small infestation. By the gods, I didn’t know those buggers could spread so fast. Here’s your pay. Normally I’d take out the cost of the equipment you destroyed, but I’m going to write it off since the task was significantly more difficult than initially assumed. We would not have been able to handle that ourselves without someone getting badly injured or killed.”
Quest Complete: Pest Control
Reward:
41 Gold pieces (even distribution set by party leader)
reputation with Stathmore Miners
Tradeskill assistance from the Stathmore Miners has been unlocked
New Quest: What’s Yours is Mine
Summary: You have convinced the Stathmore Miners that your intended faction has more to offer than the gold offered by Ferventus. Help them maintain control of the mine and connect up with your faction.
Objective:
Build Faction Shrine 0/1
Maintain Control of Mine until Shrine is Complete 0/1
Successfully negotiate Stathmore Mine’s addition to Meritum’ holdings 0/1
Reward:
Experience
Reputation with Stathmore Miners
Reputation with Meritum
“Now that all that nasty business is taken care of, I think we need to put some defenses in place here.”
“Actually, the faction shrine should come first,” I pulled out a scroll from my inventory, unrolling it across the small work desk, “we’re going to need quite a bit to get started here. I can provide some of the arcane elements, carving and infusing the runes, and Gavin can give a bit of assistance for the divine integrations afterward. We’ll need a blacksmith to handle some of the physical sculpting and a hefty amount of gold and silver.”
“By the gods, child!” the foreman pointed to a section of text indicating the material needs. “This is over a week’s haul of silver and more gold than I think is reasonable to part with under any crafting circumstances.”
I made eye contact with Deacon. “We’ll supply the gold and silver, you just need to provide the crafters.”
“And training,” Deacon said, crossing his arms. “If we’re providing the materials I’d like to be involved in at least watching this get made. We have our own crafting needs as well.”
“If you’re looking for skilled labor in metalworking I have a few hands I can dedicate to your efforts, both for the initial shrine elements and for future training if you desire.”
Deacon relaxed at that, nodding. “Thank you, when can we start?”
“As soon as you help my people set up our defenses. It’s just after midday and based on your assumptions we don’t have much time to prepare. Connecting with your faction is important,” the halfling woman looked back at the shrine instructions and shook her head, “but we’ll need the time to build this in safety. We have most of a week’s supplies, so we can afford to delay the shrine if needed. Secure the perimeter and we can start working as early as this evening. Follow me, I’ll get you in touch with the defense team.”
I scooped up my scroll and followed along as we made our way out of the office, excited to begin our first steps toward securing this settlement. While this was going to be a big investment of time and effort, there was even more work on my plate to make sure it was worthwhile in the end. My excitement gave way to a bitter feeling of apprehension as I realized that I had to make a call.
Deacon - Hard Labor
“Okay, so we heat the metal, but not enough to melt it, then just whack the shit out of it with a hammer?” I asked, trying to follow the halfling’s actions between the forge and the anvil. “I feel like I’m missing something.”
“You’re missing about five to ten years of training with a master in the craft,” Tack glared at me, “now keep the bellows going while I work, yeah?”
“You’re supposed to be teaching me so I can craft gear for my group, I feel like you’re just using me for manual labor.”
“It can be both,” he flashed a rare toothy smile in my direction, “normally I need to gather a full crew to cycle out on the bellows. This is much more efficient. I promise you’ll learn something useful about blacksmithing and a little leather-working today. But for now, talking time is over, let me focus.”
I stopped pressing the issue for the moment, but I kept my eyes on the metalworking. The bellows weren’t hard to work solo, considering they were designed to be halfling powered, so it was more tedious than anything else. In fact, despite the heat of the room, this was probably the easiest job available. Amalie logged out after the foreman divided our efforts across the camp, and her avatar was busy refilling expired or depleted mana cells alongside Gavin for some sort of equipment. I wasn’t paying attention to the specifics after the first few minutes of extensive warnings. Goodwin, Phelyya, and Uri were cutting trees into huge logs, hauling them up the switchbacks to rig as traps. There was a group of halfling miners directing them to prearranged areas where supporting hardware was already installed into the mountainside. When properly set up, logs would roll down from the inclined side of the path and send anyone caught in the way sailing over the edge while triggering other nasty surprises.
They weren’t kidding about having thought about defense, though I was curious how the halflings were going to haul tree trunks up for the traps on their own if we weren’t here. Tack pulled a glowing hunk of metal out of the forge and hammered it into a curved shape about the length of his forearm, bringing my attention back to the task at hand. He’d done this several times already it was starting to take on the shape of a wide, curved blade somewhere between a dagger and a short sword. After a moment, the distinctive angle and profile of the weapon seemed to click in my mind.
“You’re making a kukri aren’t you?” I asked, trying to remember how he’d turned the rectangular ingot into its current form.
“Yeah, we’re going to be making maybe five or six so our members with the most melee fighting experience can put them to use,” Tack wiped sweat from his forehead using the back of his arm. “A few still have weapons and armor from before. Everyone else is going to be stuck swinging mining equipment around but they’ll manage.”
“What do you mean before?” I asked. After getting no response, I changed my line of questioning. “Shouldn’t we be making arrows instead? Something with range?”
“Sure, we can just throw them at whoever comes to attack us. Let’s get right on that,” Tack said, snorting and shaking his head. “The traps on the road in are more useful than exposing archers to possible return fire and, with the height advantage, dropping large rocks or large dangerous things is more effective. We’re making weapons under the assumption that our enemies have gotten close enough to do us real harm and we’re fighting from within the mines.”
My eyebrows raised at that. “You’re taking things rather well, considering you’re preparing to fight against unknown odds in cramped tunnels armed with a crooked knife.”
“We assumed somebody would come by and claim the mine was rightfully theirs by some ancestral claim, or a nearby town might get greedy if it started producing well,” Tack said, returning the metal to the forge. “I guess most of us are actually a little relieved someone might be making a move. Especially since it might let us keep what we’ve built instead of getting chased off again.”
“Again?” I asked. “Chased away from this mine or somewhere else?”
The halfling’s jaw clenched, expression shifting from his standard detached boredom to something darker. That was twice he’d clammed up. Apparently, the past was a sore subject. He remained silent, so I didn’t press despite my curiosity. Tack finished working on the blade a few minutes later, setting it off to the side near a few other finished items before grabbing another ingot. He repeated the process a few more times while I worked the bellows, loaded the furnace, or handled any number of tasks he directed me toward. The whole time I kept my focus on what he was doing and trying to force a new skill into my brain.
