Beastborne

by James T Callum

  He was going to see Durvin, but then he spotted a banner of raven black hair. Whether it was his heart or his head, Hal adjusted his course and followed after Noth.

  74

  Halfway there, Noth spotted Hal. It would be hard not to. Half a dozen people called his name and started to approach him. As the Guildleader he was ultimately the one that would need to make the decision on a hundred different tasks.

  There was a moment of panic in Noth’s golden eyes when she saw him. She steeled herself and turned, waiting for him. But, Hal noticed, not moving any closer.

  With promises of getting to their questions later, Hal managed to stave off the rush of his guildmates and reach Noth.

  “Did you find Rondo?” he asked.

  Noth’s brow furrowed in confusion. “No, why- Oh. No, he was busy working on some preliminary plans for the settlement. I figured it would be best to leave him be.”

  Letting the obvious lie slide, Hal nodded. “Since you’re no longer pressed for another task, I’m about to go visit Durvin at the site of the wall. Want to join me?”

  “Of course,” she said, trying to force a smile.

  They turned around and headed out of the ring of wagons and proceeded south toward the gap. Already a sizeable force of sturdy dwarven silhouettes could be seen in the shadow of the sheer cliffs that bordered the settlement and formed its narrow entryway.

  “You know, Noth, if I make you uncomfortable or something… you can just say you’d rather be somewhere else.” Hal said. Gotta rip it off quick, just like a band-aid. He reminded himself. “I don’t want there to be any weirdness between us.”

  The cold began to bite at them as the sun slowly sank in the west. A frigid wind whipped through the valley, making them shiver. Noth gave him a sidelong glance. “I… you don’t make me uncomfortable, Hal. At least, not in the way you’re probably thinking. You did nothing wrong, okay? Let’s just drop it for now.”

  As much as he wanted to know what the problem was, Hal decided she was right. There were too many issues to deal with at the moment. “It’s paused,” Hal explained. “Until the Settlement is on more stable footing. But we will talk about it.”

  Noth swallowed hard and nodded.

  While they walked, Hal told her about the buildings they had access to and his theories about there being either a Building or Construction crafting skill.

  They had nearly made the mile-long hike when Noth said, “It sounds like the Town Hall isn’t going to provide that much of a reprieve from the Morale issue.” She tapped a finger to the hollow of her cheek in thought. “But at the same time, it’s necessary for advancement. And it might be the only thing standing in our way from Settlement Level two.”

  “Right, but it is expensive and takes a fair amount of resources to build,” Hal added. “Not that I’m disagreeing to its importance but it’s one of the reasons I went out in search of Durvin. I need more information about how large the entry into the Settlement is and if he had any knowledge of the skill that’s used.”

  Tilting her head, Noth looked at Hal curiously. “I was nowhere near Durvin.”

  “I know.”

  “Yet you came to me.”

  “I did.”

  Narrowing her eyes to dangerous golden slits, she let out a snort of annoyance and turned her attention to the sound of dwarven voices bickering. They were nearly at the gap.

  “Everything depends on how this all works and the System wasn’t kind enough to provide that level of detailed information,” Hal went on. “If I have the manpower to spare, I’ll make a Town Hall. I’m not sure why we’d need the storage though. We have a Guild Bank and the Guild Chests for that.”

  “Oh, that’d be because the Guild Bank takes time to retrieve and store probably.” Noth shrugged. “Imagine trying to remove five tons of stone from a small box. It’s not very easy. For that alone, the Town Hall might make it faster for us to build, if only because we can access our materials a bit quicker.”

  He didn’t even think of that. “Not to mention multiple people trying to take various items out. Even with access to all three we would quickly have a bottleneck,” Hal reasoned. “Just another reason to build the Town Hall.”

  “Oi! Boy!” Durvin bellowed. He strode across the rough ground at a pace that a dwarf simply should not be able to. His short, strong legs pumping, Durvin met them just outside of the ring of hammers and steel. “I got meself a whole mess o’ questions fer ye.”

  Hal motioned for him to go on, and the dwarf took out a many-folded piece of parchment. “Yer gap? It’s small fer a dragon’s arse but wide enough to be lettin’ our enemies in like a black flood.”

  “How wide?” Hal asked.

  “Me Engineers put it at about two-hundred an’ fifty yards,” Durvin said somberly.

  Crossing his arms, Hal went over the mental math. If each section of the wall would be built in 30-foot segments - or 10 yards in this case - then that meant they would need a minimum of 25 wall sections built. But there was something else that drew Hal’s attention as he parsed Durvin’s words.

  “Why’d you say Engineer like that? Is that a Class?” Over time, Hal had picked up that people slightly stressed more important words. Whether it was the System alerting him to it, or his own understanding growing, he didn’t know.

  “Ye bet yer keister it is!” Durvin said, one fist on his left hip as he flapped about with the parchment in his other hand. “They’re the ones gonna be designing the improvements for the dang-blasted thing.”

  “So they generate Research Points?” Noth asked, her interest clearly piqued.

  Despite everything that the System had shown Hal, all of which he shared with Noth, nothing mentioned how to actually gain Research Points. The only thing Hal knew was that if they were to gain any, it would be at a severely reduced rate.

  “Don’t ye doubt,” Durvin said as a way of acknowledgment. “They ain’t got much to do now, granted. So I’ll put ‘em to work buildin’ unless ye got yer leader hat on so tight it’s cuttin’ off blood flow to yer noggin’ and yer wanting to give the honor yer dang self.”

  With a chuckle, Hal said, “No, no. That’s quite all right, Durvin. You seem to have everything well in hand here, so let me ask you a question. Building takes a specific crafting skill, right?”

  “Aye, that it do.”

  “Could you share with me some of the details of that and the skills of your dwarves?”

  Durvin turned his bronze gaze onto Noth. He hiked a callused thumb Hal’s way. “The boy’s becomin’ more o’ a leader every durned day.”

  Apparently, the System agreed.

  Your Leadership has risen to Level 26(31).

  +1% Party damage (+31%).

  +2% Leadership efficacy (+62%).

  Over the next hour, as the temperature dropped and the sun fled behind the sheltering mountain range to the west, Durvin went over every detail with Hal.

  As it turned out, the name of the skill was Construction. And, as Hal guessed, it was a crafting skill. Most of Durvin’s folk had a few Levels in the skill, which made them quite a bit more useful than he thought since having even a single Level allowed them to supervise those without any Levels in the skill.

  As a result, the dwarves could oversee any fledgling builders - with more than a few among their surly ranks, Durvin admitted - to get them on their way to their first Level.

  Prior to that first Level being gained, each person’s CP rate was reliant upon their supervisor. Supervisors with higher skill, and most notably a higher skill in Instructor, could improve the process.

  Durvin was a bit fuzzy with the details, interjecting a lot of “durned stoneheads” and “dagdamora!” into the mix.

  “Turns out,” Durvin said, as he walked them over the ground the dwarves were readying for the construction effort. “Ye need a Settlement to have any real chance o’ Levelin’ yer Construction. Me highest.” Durvin pointed at a blonde-bearded dwarf with his beard tucked into his wide leather gird
le bellowing at a couple of other dwarves. “Only has four Levels in Construction. He’s been doin’ this a long time, boy. Got a few gray whiskers in that long beard o’ his, don’t ye doubt!”

  Hal was about to ask how much CP the man had but thought better of it and said, “What’s his name?”

  “Donks Hammertoes,” Durvin said, watching Hal curiously.

  As they passed by the dwarf, Hal cupped his cold hands around his mouth and did his best to match Donks’ bellowing. “Donks! How much CP you got?”

  The dwarf started, as did the two others nearby. As one they turned to Hal. Without missing a beat, Donks replied, “I got about four-and-a-half!” He immediately went back to berating his fellow dwarves.

  Durvin eyed Hal with a look of respect.

  Clan Bouldergut Reputation: +500.

  “And that’s the best we have, right?” Hal said, looking to Durvin. Both Noth and the dwarf glanced at each other then back at Hal.

  “Aye. Most only have a point or so, not much we can do about it ‘cept send ‘em to work.”

  “We could build the Town Hall,” Noth suggested. “It would take about half of our raw wood but we have the materials. If Donks was on the team and every other builder was at least a single point of CP that’d give us roughly eleven. Even at ten points, it would take just over a day and a half to build.”

  Hal was smiling and nodding along, thinking along the same lines.

  75

  [Construction Progress]

  Town Hall

  Lumber Delivered: 8/12t

  Dressed Stone Delivered: 3/8.4t

  Worker Limit: 8/8

  CP Cost: 350 (+25% From advanced materials).

  CP Generation: 23.27 (+75% Morale & Founder’s Day).

  Completion Time: 2.45/15.04 hours.

  Hal winced at the nearby sound of stone being chiseled. He knew he should have gone to bed shortly after talking to Durvin, but he couldn’t. There was so much to do.

  Thanks to his Improvised Crafting trait, he could swap one material for the other. Normally, as Donks explained it, such a thing required a high Construction skill.

  As it was, the Town Hall would receive further bonuses for using [Lumber] and [Dressed Stone] instead of raw wood logs and rough stone.

  It would also look a lot better, and that would provide a larger Morale improvement. Something the Settlement would sorely need.

  The added time would actually take them just over a day to complete. The dwarves could only work 12 hours at a time, and only then because Hal had such a high reputation with the Bouldergut clan.

  His original idea of having multiple crews working on the Town Hall was impossible. At least at their current Settlement Level and the dwarves’ Construction skill.

  Even if he didn’t need every able-bodied person working on something, himself included, it was not possible to assign different groups of people to the same construction project.

  His best guess was that it would require a level of coordination beyond their capabilities at the moment. Something he understood, even if he didn’t like it.

  While it would have been nice - and likely a good Morale boost as well - to dedicate to a few buildings at a time, getting them built in record time, it would make things too easy.

  And since when did Aldim ever make anything easy?

  He was lucky enough that the dwarves could work 50% longer than the others.

  Normally, it was a typical 8-hour workday. If he forced people to work longer, they would gain a Debuff that led to an even sharper Morale penalty after 3 days. But with the dwarves, he had a full week before their Morale would drop.

  While he was more than happy about the Morale boost, it was a temporary thing. And one that Hal knew was going to have a massive crash in under three days.

  A large part of that, he learned, was due to the wagons. While they had been part of a caravan before, they never had to worry about Morale until arriving at the Settlement.

  Placing the Manaseed and changing the Settlement to an outpost changed everything. Hal couldn’t keep everybody sleeping in the wagons forever, something he knew without needing a notification to tell him that most people were growing sick of.

  He didn’t blame them. After weeks of hard travel, the wagons - despite their comforts - were stifling and lacked any semblance of privacy. Now that everybody was expected to work and contribute to the Settlement, sleeping in wagons packed like sardines wouldn’t do.

  Luckily, the Morale penalty wouldn’t hit until they slept four days in the wagons. That gave him enough time to come up with an alternative strategy. One he would need to come up with quickly. The massive 50% Morale penalty was not entirely from being an outpost style Settlement.

  That contributed, but the main reason was they lacked any sort of home. Nobody wanted to sleep in a box that swayed with the gentlest of breezes. And the Shiverglades were fairly windy by Hal’s reckoning.

  Worse, the cold was a growing issue.

  From the way the skies had been blanketed all day and the lack of starlight at night, Hal guessed it was only going to get worse. The dwarves worked by torchlight and with large iron braziers but it wasn’t a proper solution.

  They could scarcely go through so much wood and fuel to keep the fires lit for the entire Settlement.

  Building with proper materials of [Stone Bricks] and [Lumber] added Insulation and improved a building while adding to its CP cost. It made a large difference with the Town Hall, and its Morale boost would be sorely needed.

  A Bunkhouse would be easier to put up and take fewer materials overall but it had a fairly massive Morale penalty for anybody who slept inside.

  “It’s a lucky thing that the Morale isn’t cumulative for the whole Settlement,” Noth said at Hal’s side.

  They stood beside a brazier going over Durvin’s plans by the firelight and overseeing the construction on the Town Hall. The dwarves had wanted to start right away and wouldn’t hear of sleeping until they had put in their work.

  Hal groaned at that thought. “I’m thankful that Donks pointed that out. I might have gone a little insane trying to figure out how we could fit nearly a hundred people into a single Bunkhouse.”

  Noth’s tinkling laughter grabbed Hal’s attention and wrenched his eyes to her. She cleared her throat self-consciously once she noticed and said, “Imagining everybody packed in one building....” She shook her head. “Dwarves, karaks, our Barbarian friend, all under one roof?”

  An answering chuckle bubbled out of Hal at the strange imagery. He could just see it now, everybody kicking and biting to get an inch more legroom.

  “If I had taken the time to think about it,” Hal said. “I don’t think I would have been worried for long. It would make absolutely zero sense if every Bunkhouse that was made dropped the Morale another twenty percent.”

  Noth motioned to the parchment that showed several diagrams. One was of a few Bunkhouses set up on the higher section to the north. A temporary sort of work camp that, for one reason or another, just didn’t sit well with Hal.

  On another section of the parchment was a set of Shacks arranged in something closer to a neighborhood. It was hard to deny that they looked better than the Bunkhouses.

  Over time, that was the way Hal wanted to go. But a Bunkhouse took fewer materials and less time to construct.

  “What we really need is more time,” Hal muttered to himself.

  “We could send some Rangers out to scout-”

  Hal was shaking his head. “I already thought of that. For now, we need everybody who can lift a plank, cut a tree, or mine stone to do that. We simply lack the time and the manpower to do much more. The amount of CP we make now is much higher but in a few days it’s going to tank.”

  “And you have the unenviable position of choosing to reduce the effect of Morale, or to use our rare boost to go all-in on the walls,” Noth reasoned. “You do have a council of friends who might be willing to help you decide.”

  “I do,” H
al agreed. “But in the end, it still falls to me to make the choice. I’ve heard all the arguments for and against already. Each wall section that gets constructed is thirty feet long, and the gap that needs to be filled is seven hundred and fifty feet wide.

  “That’s twenty-five wall sections that need to be built in seven days. Even if we opt for the Earthen Bulwark instead of the Palisade, that’s three hundred CP per construction.”

  Noth nodded along, following his logic. “And with each construction able to use ten dwarves at once, we would need many times their number to construct it all in tandem. There is a fifty percent bonus to CP generation due to Morale, yes?”

  Looking up from the parchment, Hal nodded. “That’s right.”

  “And if Donks Hammertoes is an outlier instead of the norm, the average dwarf is likely to have around one-and-a-quarter to one-and-a-half CP generation. So ten would have roughly twelve. Add in the Morale bonus at the moment and that becomes eighteen.”

  “Right,” Hal said, turning his attention back to the working dwarves. One of them banged his thumb with a hammer and was cursing up a storm of typical dwarven insults that were just innocuous enough to apparently slip past Aldim’s language motherflorking filter. “If that was the norm then each Earthen Bulwark would take about seventeen hours to complete. Since we can’t have more than one team working on the same thing - or anything else in their downtime - that’s one day and a third of work for one Earthen Bulwark.”

  “Do we have the materials for it?” Noth asked, tapping her cheek once again with a finger as she mulled over the problem.

  “The bulwark only takes a ton of stone and two of wood. Then again, with our Settlement type that’s a little more. Since I used Lumber here, we still have twenty tons of Raw Wood to use. And even then that’s not enough. Not for twenty-five sections. But we have the stone.”