Mary had finally succeeded with her spies, the lankmar-rats as she called them or man-rats as they called themselves were slightly bigger than their progenitors and had distinctly bigger skulls. Currently she had two varieties, one, with a humanoid build and the second and more numerous looking much like any other rat but equipped with better hands. She sent them off in two purpose built catamarans to establish themselves in Port Salvage and Drakoton. She informed them of her plans to further evolve them so that they would become a dual natured race capable of assuming either form.

The current version of her sea wyvern was coming along nicely, they were nocturnal, rather unintelligent but fast agile swimmers and reasonable flyers. The electrical generation she had added allowed for reasonably accurate discharges via their silver horns.

Then she busied herself with the sunken pirate ships, she enveloped them slightly securing them to sea floor before moving the smallest into the lagoon and then raising it above the waves. It took her two days as after all she interspersed this boring task with many other more interesting things.

« Hey Trish, I’ve just noticed something funny, here let me show you. Nice heh! where do you think that tiny scrap of divine mana came from? »

Trisha felt giddy, it was as if she’d just drunk a shot of hundred proof spirits. “Wh-What, how...” she spluttered and joined Mary in searching for the source. It surprised them but the amount was miniscule, not particularly refined and thus really not very useful. It would seem that her rats and octopi worshiped Ocidon as their god and she got a – commission – yes commission as their creator.

Oh well, back to work ... Mmm maybe that would work.

* * *

Vinculus the Red wincing internally at the cost threw a great party to welcome his recovered people back to Port Salvage, free booze, food and doxies for all his people.

At least he had been able to snap up a prize on his way back from Drakoton, the merchantman was frankly a tub but it would do admirably to transport troops. Pity none of the crew and passengers had survived but his men had been unhappy and that meant vicious. None of the survivors of the boarding had had an easy death. At least it had calmed his lot down.

Now he was watching the results from the balcony of his mansion, he could see at least one body in the street. In any other town the watch would be out putting down the riot, here, why the locals simply battened down the storm shutters and hoped to ride out the festivities intact.

This was his town.

* * *

Rafael sourly perused the document on his desk, it was a report from his counterpart in Drakoton and it had only arrived a week after Ms Silvestre had the news. Three notorious pirate leaders and five of their known lieutenants were hanged the rest of the pirates were branded as first offenders and released.

The mercenaries were each fined a silver guilder and released, the adventurers received an apology – an apology – and were released. Danilus was going to be unhappy. Then just two days later a ship believed to be the Red Terror called and took the pirates away. Danilus was going to be very unhappy.

Rafael went out of his way to locate Drina and addressing her as the Voice bowed slightly and apologised to Mary for the – to him – unforeseen happenings in Drakoton.

Drina grinned, then sighed and looked resigned, he was just starting to feel worried when one of Drinas huge young cats deposited a decapitated rat body at her feet with a pleased sounding miao. The girl started to pet and scratch her pet obviously not looking forward to disposing of the corpse. Rafael chuckled, picked up the body and strode away under Drina’s grateful gaze.

He was right Danilus had not been pleased, he had been rendered speechless. “You mean they released close to one hundred and fifty pirates with no more than a brand that everyone knows can be removed at any temple of Vortexius Blackbeard for a prayer and a modest donation of no more than a handful of copper bits?” he finally managed.

* * *

Sildanus and the other members of the Shark’s bane were soon directing operations at the top of the sea mount they had discovered, the seagrass field was mostly a thing of the past and the workers and specialists they had hired had quickly levelled the ground and the first two buildings of the settlement were nearing completion. These were the inn, as yet unnamed as was the settlement and the Adventurers guild hall.

Their first visitors were a band of dwarves that arrived in a large green tinged diving bell. They bargained for the purchase of a plot of land on the edge of the hill to build a dock tower and a series of caverns for their community. Sildanus after consulting with his friends and partners decided to accept the proposal and soon the underwater mountain was host to numerous dwarves liberally covered with businesslike enchantments allowing them to exist underwater while the bell made many more appearances.

Massina and Harmanus also met Pete while they were out for a relaxing swim, Massina noticed him first, she sensed another mage and discovered a very large octopus. She alerted Harmanus and they prepared for combat but were astounded when Pete spoke to them.

“Hey no need for that, I’m friendrry, I’ve just come to check out the new town.”

Massina was rendered speechless, and more so after she inspected Pete. This was the first octopus she had come across labelled Mage lvl 5.

“Are there any more of you in the area, we’ll have to alert the settlement to avoid misunderstandings,” said Harmanus.

“Just a few of us at the moment, I just came to see what a town rrooks rrike, we rrive in caves rrower down, I thought I might fetch the wife for a rrok too,” Pete replied.

So Massina and Harmanus escorted their new acquaintance to the new settlement where they astounded everyone with the very articulate octopus they had found and after he left promising to fetch the wife for a look soon the settlement gained a name. New Town was born.

* * * INTERLUDE 1 * * *

It took Creevar’s Killers five days to locate the new entrance to Hell’s Mouth and a further two for Zashaan to gather the scattered searchers and relocate their camp half a days march to the North.

The entrance wasn’t much, just a half-meter wide passage hidden behind an outthrust rock. The passage itself was long and straight, it looked to be new and was protected by a few reasonably sophisticated but classic traps that Zashaan easily detected and disarmed.

Their reception was hot when they finally reached the end of the almost kilometre long passage. The room they arrived at contained a mix of skeletons – not all humanoid – and magic throwing imps.

They were never in any danger, it just took time to deal with the sheer number of monsters occupying the rather dilapidated first level. The second level was virtually deserted with just the end room having a challenge.

Hells’s Mouth was growing frantic. He finally managed to reach the surface from his new rather Spartan level and collapsed the two floors below his new third level. Arbogar carried an exhausted Hell’s Mouths gem into the furthest point in the new level.

Once again Creevar’s killers felt a dungeon’s domain dissipate, this time accompanied by rumbling and rocks falling from the ceiling. They fled a potentially collapsing dungeon and gathered outside the entrance.

Harrassan regarded his friends and shrugged his shoulders.

“This wasn’t the same dungeon we fought last time, this dungeon is a much better match for the description Creevar gave us. What’s going on?” queried Zashaan.

“I don’t know, I will pray to Creevar for an answer tonight, will you join me?” stated Sreecator.

* * * INTERLUDE 2 * * *

The last step was the opening of a kobold sized crawl way from her heart chamber that terminated halfway up a cliff out of sight of her dungeon’s entrance, she was never going to be without an escape route again.

A fortnight later all her surviving original kobolds had names and had evolved. She was able to summon assorted beasts and scattered the peppery smelling herb Darkmoon had found around her dungeon. The real find was the saffron plant, that one she held back from growing thinking it too valuable for her current setup.

Then she had a visitor, to wit a rather unhygienic goatherd with fourteen equally rank smelling goats. She ordered one of her new kobolds – no need to give away information about flying monsters – to take a couple of jackals and give him a good scare and maybe a light wound or two and take her toll in the form of a goat for her defenders' pot.

Rosht had been delighted to find a new stream and had followed it to a cave he didn’t remember. He followed the stream into the cave and his eyes widened at the sight of a starbell growing by the stream in the cave. He cut the stem taking the flower and all the leaves he could see being careful to leave the roots. He had just carefully placed his prize in his pack when he heard growls and saw a kobold armed with a flint tipped spear charging him accompanied by two distinctly oversized jackals.

Rosht joined his goats and fled thanking Plutonis that kobolds disliked the sun. Rosht hurried South heading for his village mourning the loss of one of his charges but grateful to be alive and unhurt. And that starbell was worth more than two goats.

Two days later after leaving the goats in the care of his nephew Rosht arrived in Arsouk and rather hesitantly entered the shabby local office of the Adventurers Guild. The clerk behind the reception desk listened to his story and inspected the starbell while attempting to hide his distaste of the smell wafting from Rosht. There was indeed a good chance that the herder had found a new dungeon. A previously unknown stream and cave, kobolds and jackals working together and a mana rich starbell so Fredar sent his current runner to fetch the local guildmaster.

Guildmaster Burritis agreed to buy the starbell as otherwise it would lose most of its virtue and organised a party from those local adventurers present at the guild. He sent the ad-hoc group off with Rosht before authorising the finders fee.

* * * INTERLUDE 3 * * *

Dawn was breaking when Mary arrived at the beach and set up her fishing gear – what there was of it – and then she was engaged in one of her favourite pastimes. The shark was irritating, fun to get on the beach but she never quite knew what to do with the things.

This time however it helped her level up! She had noted the blue dot in the corner of her eye and when she triggered it she was informed that her Oceanic Ranger subclass Scholar was now lvl 5. She swiped the box away and determined to study the beep things later.

Soon her catch bag was full and Dancer showed up expecting to be fed. He was and not just by her, the local gang of regulars had sort of adopted Dancer.

When she was packing to leave one of the regulars, Mac, approached her and rather hesitantly said, “sorry if this sounds stupid, but that gesture you made after you landed that shark, are you starting to see – blue boxes with bizarre messages?”

Mary blinked at him and froze for a moment, “Um – Yeah...?”