Sprucing up the Place

Chapter 46

For a week, I spent my time diligently working on my dungeon. That was a lot of hours put in, since I didn’t need sleep, but I did take breaks. I knew the hounds wouldn’t have minded not seeing as much of me. The problem was that I would start to feel withdrawals if I didn’t get in some time with them every day.

Likewise, I made a point of visiting the Necropolis every couple of days. Since I’d sent out the text about calendars and holidays, they’d all turned a little more talkative with me. At least in a casual sense. Unlike before, they’d even approach me to chat of their own volition.

Feeling cheerful, I took a stretch break. I didn’t have tendons and bones but twisting myself into a horrifying pretzel every once in a while felt nice. There was even the occasional satisfying pop sound, though I had no idea what generated it.

During the week, I figured out the floorplan for the green stack and placed it. Of course, it needed fine-tuning and decoration still, but I wasn’t worried. I had a much larger tithe to contend with this year, but at least I wasn’t up against the clock.

It was better to take my time now and get everything ready. Once that was done, I could start luring people to their doom. An activity I still felt sick to my stomach or equivalent viscera about. Despite that, I still hadn’t developed suicidal levels of conscience over it. I would live.

The only significant change I was still trying to work out the kinks on was the green stack boss room. I’d made up my mind to push back the skeleton boss room by at least one stack. The new one centered around an exciting type of monstrous bats. The colony was a mated king and queen serviced by non-sapient drones.

It was weird to take in, since I wasn’t aware of mammals having such an arrangement. The only one that came to mind was naked mole rats, but I didn’t think that was quite the same. This had more of a bee vibe to it.

Weirdness aside, I was having a pretty good time setting up their environment. I’d made the entire section of the layer leading up to it like swiss cheese. Random holes winding through the stone. Most weren’t big enough for even a halfling to navigate, but the bats could use them just fine.

It wasn’t necessary, but I also added some flying insects. Of course, monsters didn’t need to eat, but it gave the drones something to do other than roost and await an adventure. In support of the insects, I added pools of water and plants that worked for them and the environment.

A chiming sound caught my attention.

[Hey 42!

I’ve got some time off next week. How about I come to visit?

Talk to you later,

Agony]

[Visitation request]

[Sender: Agony]

[The sender is a verified entry on your friend's list]

[Do you permit Agony to visit? Y/N]

“WOOOT!” I shouted happily, making happy little loops. The skeletons all looked up in surprise from their games. I’d been working on altering their breakroom to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Their taste ran toward gothic crypts. With respect to that, I added arches and fancy columns.

“Miss- Mistress 42?” Henry asked, worried. It seemed the sound I made didn’t translate as joy automatically.

“I have a friend coming over later!” I said, and Henry nodded. He seemed like he would say more until he was suddenly pulled down to rejoin the game by Chris. It was a very detailed but probably inaccurate version of Settlers of Catan. I’d constructed it from memory and a fair bit of ad-libbing. Interestingly, Chris was addicted to it, or possibly just the wood for sheep joke.

Weirdly, no matter what game the Skeletons were playing, they bet on it with poker chips. A move that had resulted in much more intense games. I wasn’t sure what the chips represented other than points among them, if anything. Despite that, I figured they would have more fun if I didn’t poke my nose in unnecessarily.

“I’m going to do some work outside. Let me know if anything comes up!” I said, and the table of skeletons gave me a distracted send-off. Since I’d spent time alternating between buying tiles for the interior and exterior, I had a lot of surface area I could play with. Unfortunately, it was also the section I’d been neglecting. My focus had reasonably been on the interior defenses and aesthetics.

The entrance to my dungeon was still the lackluster stone mockup it had been before. It wasn’t doing anything for me, but I couldn’t exactly come up with anything I preferred. Not at the moment anyway.

I didn’t spend a lot of time doing it anymore, but I’d kept up exploring the remaining natural tunnels that hadn’t been absorbed into my dungeon. I’d found some rusted-out remains of the former mining operation. The highlights of which were a mining cart and some track for it. I debated for a few minutes while I played with upgrading and altering the aesthetic of the items.

In the end, I decided to use them to enhance the mining aesthetic of the top layer. I added a winding path of track along the central tunnels. Several mining carts in various states of disrepair followed. If someone were enterprising, they’d help move gathered materials.

Next up was paving the area around the entrance with stone slabs. It probably wasn’t how they did things locally. I didn't care though, ores or whatever had been mined would have been heavy. I felt it was sensible. You wouldn’t want the wheels of the transport wagon digging in and getting mired while loading.

By the time I was done, I’d added weathering and some random bits like wheel ruts. It painted a rather dull but reasonable picture. Fortunately, it wasn’t my only surface project.

Since finding out the mountain range's name, I’d read up a bit on the goddess Lorrel and fallen a bit in love. According to the encyclopedia, she was a goddess of battle frenzy, passion, and fertility. A fun mix of things to have in one's portfolio.

Her appearance was that of a rabbit-eared woman wielding a spear who rode a black goat horned bi-corn. The image seriously had some heavy metal album vibes to it. I could get behind that. Everything about her seemed absolutely fun.

Even the bicorn she rode turned out to be hilarious. Most people considered it the evil equivalent of a unicorn, but it was just the male of the species. The single-horned females were attracted to and rewarded virtue. The males could sense vice and viciously slaughtered those with malicious intent toward their herds.

A situation that apparently came up a lot since every part of a unicorn was magical. Their entry stated they were exhaustively hunted. The only silver lining was the success rate was low.

I made a mental note on the subject. I wasn’t near their natural habitat, but I wouldn’t let any stupid chuckle fucks hunt them if it ever came up.

Despite being pissed off, I got my mind back on track. Buying a couple of surface tiles, I performed a little experiment. They led off to the side from the area I’d already purchased. A shallow dead-end canyon a little ways from the mine.

I was happy to find it was an interior tile when I tried to buy the mountain area. I’d been hoping but not sure how it would be counted. So my concern it didn’t connect with the main body of the dungeon internally was fortuitously unfounded.

It wasn’t expensive to connect the two areas. It was faster not to have to match the interior and exterior in lockstep for stuff like this.

I took a solid block of stone and carved it into an archway before placing it. It was simple, with a bit of fluting, but already an improvement.

Next, I carved a pair of statues and placed them on either side of the entrance. They weren’t a particular likeness, or even attractive, just first pass proportion carvings. They looked more like crude chess pieces than anything.

The point of them was to get proportions and placement established. Details and other things would come later, after I’d worked out what I was doing. Finishing would take weeks, even with my magical abilities.

My goal wasn't a finished temple but an intelligible first draft. I wanted Agony to get a sense of the big picture when he arrived. If I could manage that, I'd count it as a win.

I was going for a mixture of ancient design elements, using Lorrel as my muse. After some fussing over the placement, I decided to move on to the next task. It didn’t feel right, but I needed to let it go. I knew that leaving the design alone to marinate for a bit was better than spending hours retouching.

Done with the entrance, I created a plaza in front of it with smooth but unpolished marble. Having it level with the path leading in was boring, I decided. So I bumped the entrance and floor of the plaza up five feet above their original level.

Feeling pleased, I cut a broad and deep set of steps leading up. I went with six sets of three steps with a stone dais beside them where Bicorn statuses would go. Like the other humanoid statues at the entrance, I made crude equine mockups and placed them.

Feeling pretty good, I decided it was time to give the design a test. So I floated away until I was around a corner and couldn’t see it before sailing back. Pretending I was coming on it by chance like an adventurer would.

As I approached the entrance, I felt underwhelmed. But, of course, a certain amount of that was to be expected dealing with a rough draft. The problem was worse than that, however. The design was lackluster. Plain even.

Unhappy, I recessed the entrance and statues. Then, carving into the stone around them, I blocked out something like a triptych. A set of three scenes from what I’d read in the encyclopedia entry about Lorrel.

I didn’t have extensive knowledge of the local gods. Just what I’d picked up when I fell into a research link hole while looking up Duello and company. Unlike most of the limited pantheon of gods I was familiar with, she wasn’t a modern god of the world. Instead, she was born between the primordial gods and the modern ones. Her birth was from the mingled blood of the fallen gods. Ones who perished during the cataclysmic battle.

I played with the stone to work in what would look like a natural band of pale orangish-red. It would look compelling for blood without being gory. I cut in vague outlines rather than anything concrete. The list of dead gods was long, so I made a to-do of picking a top ten list and placing them later. I set this image above the entrance.

Origin story established, it was time to figure out what the second panel would be. She had a lot of lore, but my goal was to hit the major points. Her secondary title, ‘Mother of Legions,’ caught my attention.

She was a goddess of fertility, after all. In fact, her entry suggested she got around a lot more than any I was familiar with. According to the encyclopedia, she was credited with countless offspring. Both between herself and the other gods or sapient archetypes of animals.

I cocked my head at that. It reminded me of how many older earth cultures personified animals. Interesting, but not something I could afford to focus on at the moment.

I roughed in her holding a child on her hip with one arm and her spear in the other. A bunch of circles behind her represented the gaggle of kids I’d add later. That left one panel to go, but I already knew what it would depict.

The final one on the right was her standing dominant over the corpse of the ‘Root Eater,’ the monster that once threatened the tree of creation. Her mythology stated each time it was killed, it laid an egg like a monstrous phoenix.

That created a cycle where she would have to fight it time and again. A task she took up to protect her offspring, which made up a large portion of creation. The clash itself had consequences, though.

It wasn't an entirely happy story. The root eater was stopped, but other monsters might be born from severed parts like the Basilisk. I shuddered at the memory of that creature, glad it was dead.

Once the triptych was done, I did another float-up to check the aesthetic and still wasn’t happy. So I recessed the carvings slightly, then created a carving of a roof and columns. It would protect the more delicate stonework from the wind and infrequent rain.

After two more floating checks from the stairs, I felt like I’d done enough with the entrance. But, unfortunately, I was still displeased with the plaza. Nothing in my store looked like it would fit, so I stopped trying to find something premade.

Under ‘magic goods,’ I found a stone that would produce water and felt inspired. Starting from a block of stone, I carved out a fountain with a pomegranate carved at the top from red marble.

Into the crown of the fruit, I placed the stone. It took a few minutes for a trickle of water to escape, but it flowed all the same. Since the fountain lacked chemical cleaners, it would get gross if I left it to fill and did nothing.

Looking around, I found a stone of purification and bought four of them. One for the pomegranate and each of the tiers below it. Since the water was flowing from the pomegranate, it might not stagnate, but I wasn't going to risk it.

I was concerned about insects. They bred in still pools as far as I knew, but I was no expert, even before magic entered the equation. The point was, I didn't want to create a mosquito hatchery in the plaza.

I created a pattern inside the tiers of the fountain and then placed the stones and some similar, but non-magical crystals into it. Hopefully, it would make them look uninspiring. I didn’t want to deal with idiots digging them out to keep for themselves.

Checking my clock, I noted it had taken eight hours to set things up. Not an inconsequential chunk of time, but I finally felt satisfied with the layout.

It was funny how a bit of motivation could free the creative juices.