Civic Planning

Chapter 27

Wanting to get things moving I decided to send out a text alert to the skeletons to inform them of the general plan. What I didn’t expect was the enthusiastic surge of volunteers to run shops. My original plan had been to create a new group of skeletons with NPC classes relevant to the jobs. Now I was looking at a list of names of skeletons that I genuinely didn’t want to disappoint.

Thinking about it for a while I decided to split the difference. It was a little expensive to replace them, but I had more mana now. I’d add the NPC’s where needed to fill personnel holes or skill deficits. I went into my communications interface. I created a contacts list and labeled it ‘Villagers’ before adding the names. I sent them a list of the businesses I considered important and asked for suggestions.

After some back and forth I had a more complete list and set up design meetings. I dropped Chris a note and he agreed to let me remotely looking through his settings. I knew of more options that could work to hide a skeleton's true nature. I just needed something that would work for a full day rather than a momentary ambush.

Illusion of Life

This ability hides the necromantic status of a creature and grants an illusionary appearance. It will fool the sense of most who come in contact with it. It can be seen through with certain magical abilities and by high-level spell casters.

The option looked perfect, but it required that I upgrade Chris to enable it. I hesitated, but not for a serious reason. I knew he was going to lord being the first to get it over the others. Despite myself, I was laughing, knowing that’s why I’d picked him. He was fun to watch when he was excited and always up for taking a risk if there was an interesting reward.

Instead of giving him a warning I opened a view of the necropolis commons. He was sitting in a corner playing dice with friends when I went ahead and paid for the upgrade. Violet sparkles seemed to rain down over him, but I didn’t see any visible changes. His companions all scuttled back in surprise while he looked at the sparks in confusion.

Pleased with my prank I went ahead and enabled “Illusion of Life” and was greeted by a selection window. My orbs blazed brightly in surprise as I was greeted by an image of his living appearance. Gaunt, hollow-eyed, and scared with rotten teeth. He looked all of twelve with a brutally thin body and small build, but he was listed as fifteen.

My hands shook as I reached forward to touch the image though I knew it wasn’t tangible. I’d known he was a slum kid of some kind. It was in how he talked about things and his almost prideful attitude about his illiteracy. Even so, I’d pictured him differently. Like one of the Hollywood movie urchins with a heart of gold living by his wits. He’d seemed much too clever to have lived so rough as the boy I was looking at.

With an effort, I pulled my hand back and hugged myself. Seeing what had been and feeling bad about it wouldn’t change anything. I needed to focus on the present and I forced myself to focus on the new set up screen. That had been Chris’s natural appearance before his death, but the ability allowed me to edit it. Most of the options were to make him look horrible or frightening in some sense. Several allowed me to change his appearance to a healthy one though.

I didn’t enable any of them and called Chris instead.

“Mistress, weird shits happening!” Chris said, his enthusiasm stinging a little now.

“I gave you an upgrade, that was the sign that it went through,” I said and flinched back as he whooped. It didn’t do anything to help since the communication was mental, but old habits died hard.

“Yeah, so look… To run a shop, I’m going to have to give you a living appearance. Do you want to look at how you used to-”

“Awe, do I have to? I want to look cool,” Chris said immediately.

“My options are kind of limited, but I'll do what I can,” I offered, and he nodded.

“Oh, ha, right, this is a call. Yeah, that’s something I guess,” Chris said, not as happy now but not sounding upset either. I felt relieved and a bit ashamed of myself like I’d looked away from a refugee support commercial. The effects of poverty weren’t any easier to look at just because I wasn’t human any longer.

“Okay, I’m going to activate it now,” I said after making the adjustments. I put a full-length mundane mirror on the wall where he was and then activated it. He did a double-take before inspecting himself.

I expected that disabling the injuries would make him easier to look at. I didn't expect the near 180 that resulted. His skin became clear and his face shape altered. Years of abuse, general violence, and malnutrition peeled back. Under all of it was a pretty young man who might well have been mistaken for a Christmas elf on my homeworld. His features were delicate but his cheekbones were sharp emphasizing large eyes.

It was astonishing to see the difference and I said nothing as he continued to look at himself. The illusion produced rags for clothes and an indifferent style for his chestnut hair. He didn't seem to mind much, linger on the inspection of his eyes.

“Cool, I got to keep my color,” He said as he inspected his eyes. They were violet just like the flames that came from the crystals in his eye sockets.

“You had fun with my face though. Who am I supposed to look like?” He asked and I felt my orbs flicker. He didn’t recognize it as his own, but I couldn’t blame him.

“Chris, all I did was disable the damage. This is how you’d have looked healthy,” I said, and his eyes widened in disbelief. He made a complicated expression then smirked.

“As if I wasn’t lady killer enough. Thanks, mistress,” He said cheerfully but hung up the call a moment later.

I didn’t know what to say so I chose to say nothing. I closed the window as Chris turned away from the mirror, a cocky grin to match is usual mental tone on his new face. The other skeletons were milling nearby, eager to talk to him and find out what was going on. I could have sent a text to explain but I decided to let Chris have some fun and do it himself.

A complicated feeling swirled around in my head. I had to remind myself that reset and my first design appointment were approaching. I needed a distraction and more work was my go-to as usual. I started mapping out a street diagram in chalk in an empty layer. It would make it easy to see how they fit with each other visually and gave me a place to store the competed ones. That idea snowballed. Soon I was setting in a strip of road and sidewalk as visual aids. It left me a little irritated that I couldn’t work on the surface.

It would be easier and lead to fewer changes later. The problem was that Mira and Hetcha would likely be terrified. They didn't know what I was and that type and level of power would be strange. I fought down my unkind feelings on the point. They were my guests.

I moved into the chamber where I planned to store building materials and got to work. The last of my day’s mana went to buy surface plots. I prioritized buying a straight line cutting through the heart of the protective stone maze. It would add days to how far ahead I got a warning about intruders.

I watched the roll over hit, and I noticed I wasn’t alone. I found Dawn lurking near the room's entrance, clearly impatient for her appointment. I’d put out a general list of jobs related to the planned stores and services. She was the only one who responded to the position of the guilds master.

“Mistress,” Dawn said, bowing a little.

“Dawn, thank you for taking the job,” I said. I was happy to work with her and opened a design window to show her some sketches I'd made. They all tended toward rustic luxury hotels in design and she looked at them curiously.

“Your sensibilities are… different from what I’m used to,” Dawn said after studying the designs.

“How so?” I asked. The skeletons had looked at the farm funny when I showed it to them. None of them had been forthcoming about why though.

“These…Corridors? Normally one room just opens into the next, and there aren’t so many,” Dawn said as she pointed at the hallways in the guild. I wasn’t up on anything medieval when it came to practical architecture so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. I hadn’t thought of hallways as a profound deviation in design.

“I wasn’t aware. How do bedrooms usually work?” I asked and she paused, clearly trying to figure out what to tell me.

“Well, usually only a high-ranking noble would even have one. Also, beds are larger and shared, even for nobles. For peasants its normal to sleep on pallets on the floor in places like halls or at pubs. Inns usually have an upstairs with some partitions. You still fit as many in as you can,” Dawn said and I was starting to wonder how they hadn’t all died of the common cold.

Thinking back to how devastating influenza was in on my own world I took the unkind thought back. They likely did suffer extensively because of overcrowding and poor hygiene. My being an elitist asshole about it wasn’t going to help anyone.

“Okay. Let's separate the administrative part from the adventurer's temporary quarters,” I said. I altered the design so that there was a front lobby with seating, a reception desk, and a large backroom behind it.

“Through this door can be a general work area, to the left can be filing storage and a small reference library. To the right will be your office.” I said, eliminating the hallways and lowering the number of rooms.

“There should be somewhere to receive monster parts,” Dawn said, pointing at my too office like set up.

“That’s better done on the side. A guild official can run it and issue a receipt to be claimed at the guild when the bounty is turned in. I don’t want people hauling carcasses through a common area,” I said, thinking it would be hell on the flooring. I sketched out a new building to put beside the guild where that could be done. It was like a glorified barn. It would have facilities for butchering large prey along with smaller creatures. Unfortunately, I didn't know what those looked like so it was empty.

“I’ll put the dorm over here, it’s a free temporary housing building,” I added, sketching something simple.

“Why not let the inn’s handle the adventurers?” Dawn asked, still looking at my dorm design.

“Lots of reasons, but to support newer adventurers or those who arrive low on coin. Having a free option will keep things more orderly,” I said. Dawn thought about it for a few minutes while perusing the design before tilting her head. A gesture I was starting to associate with her having an idea she wasn’t sure about.

“How about a limit for the free stay, say about a month? If they can’t make enough to afford the rent by then, they shouldn’t be part of the guild,” Dawn said. I nodded, that was plenty of time to arrive and get their feet under them.

“But the rooms are too big, weirdness or single rooms aside. Make it as wide as a bed and maybe a bit longer. They should only need a wardrobe, weapons rack, and locking chest,” Dawn said, and I felt that was a little spartan.

“How about this?” I asked and drew a desk. It was suspended by chains at the front corners and could be folded up into a shallow cabinet.

“They can eat or do paperwork in their room without it taking up too much space,” I said. Even cheap hotels usually provided a desk and a chair in my world.

“That’s fine,” Dawn said, seeming a bit impressed by the idea. There were likely similar ideas floating around in this world. Yet this was the first time she’d seen the fruits of my world's tiny home design fetish. I also lifted the bed up so that drawers and the locking chest could be fit under it rather than taking up floor space.

When the design phase was done it took an hour to complete the build. The construction was fast but mixed with walkthroughs at various stages. A process that Dawn invited a friend to join in on. Icarus Bramble Patella was one of the first of the halfling fighters that I’d summoned and modified. I hadn’t realized that he and Dawn were friends, but it was nice to see. He was part of the Iron Shield team for league and they’d been giving Dawns team a run for their money.

“A good fireplace and a small bar would make it more comfortable,” Icarus suggested.

“Your right, it doesn’t feel…like someplace the living would make right now,” Dawn agreed, and I looked around. They had a point. It still had a plush hotel lobby feeling to it, which was foreign to both of them.

“I think it would be better to move the offices upstairs,” I said. An open lower level would be nicer.

“I’d have to see it,” Dawn said so I increased the height of the building by a story and a half then put in the loft and stairs. Heading up the view of the lower floor was impressive and at Dawn's request, I added a small lounge near the rail. Heading outside then back in, we all felt that the new layout made the building feel impressive.

Happy with the guild the next two parts of the project were up. The dorm and monster butchery were quicker to put together since both had fewer details. The dorm came first and there would be two, but they would be identical. As such, I didn’t feel like building both and decided to wait until the next refresh to copy it.

There was only one thing Dawn and I couldn’t come to a final agreement on. In both dorms, there would be bathrooms, bathing facilities, and a steam room. The baths and the steam room would be on the ground floor, but each story would have its own set of restrooms with sinks. I could bend on a lot of points but that wasn’t one of them.

How I was going to go about setting up the toilets and the waste system wasn’t nailed down yet. That wouldn't stop me from spreading better hygiene practices. Adventures traveled so they seemed the best ones to get the ball rolling.

“Sorry, it’s part of a side project,” I said, and Dawn shrugged. She was conservative about adding weirdness to things. Even so, she seemed to accept that I had a reason for this bit. We moved on to the butchery which was the quickest part structurally.

“You’ll need to consult an expert about the interior set up Mistress,” Icarus said. What I'd built amounted to a huge barn. My only real artistic contribution was a small office area in a corner next to the receiving doors.

We all came up blank for what all would be needed beyond that. I'd have to send another text around looking for someone who knew how to run it. I also needed to figure out how anything from the dungeon or outside would be brought in. Unless space bags were a thing, it would be difficult for adventures to bring anything back.

I hadn’t seen anything like dimensional items in my store, but it made sense. Storage wasn’t something I had to worry about. Like the communication items, I didn’t need them. They were convenient for me since I liked interacting with the outside. That didn't make them dungeon critical items though. I’d have to look at my loot payouts and see if I could tweak them a bit so that something like it would drop.

“Did you want to upgrade now or later?” I asked her. It made sense to upgrade the people who would be running the shops as they were completed.

“Now’s fine I suppose,” She said and I paid for the upgrade. Gold sparks surrounded her instead of violet. I had her look at the interface and make decisions about her appearance. Unlike Chris, she’d had some scars and a flat nose from getting hit and having it heal wrong, but nothing sever. She opted to keep her scars but fix her nose. Her eyes were a honey gold color and her hair was black. Icarus whistled appreciatively when the process was complete.

"You look very much the wolf," Icarus said and Dawn blushed. I didn't get the phrase but assumed it was some kind of compliment.

“It’s odd, I still feel like I did before, but I see a normal body,” Dawn said, flexing her hands.

“Thank you, Mistress… I’m going to have to pester Henry to make me some clothes,” Dawn added wryly. Her eyes on the ragged outfit the illusion had produced.

“Let me know if your uncomfortable, I can disable it. Also, feel free to request changes to the guild. You might see things you like in other buildings as they're added,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t be too uncomfortable.

“I will, thank you,” Dawn said before taking her leave. Icarus went along with her and I found myself alone for a while. My next appointment was scheduled for an hour later, but I decided not to call them early. It wouldn’t hurt to spend a little time on my other work in the meantime.

Now that I had more mana, I could accelerate my overall schedule and invest in more things with mana upkeep. My entry level’s replenishing harvestable items cost me ten mana per day. I should have invested more for things like advanced traps but had been hesitant. The issue of potential collapse had made me wary since the payment came at the end of the day rather than at the start. If I forgot and overspent, I was screwed.

I shivered a little, feeling the shopping monster creep up on me. So many lovely things to buy, and all that mana just waiting to be spent.