by Brian Simons
“What’s this, you’re taking prisoners too? You backstabbing Rogue.”
Daniel froze. His face went white. “Why would you say that?” he asked.
Coral wondered, of all the NPC insults to hurl at him, why would calling him a Rogue get under his skin?
“Ya killed me, that’s why! Come on,” Wenda led the way into the mountain. “I know why you did it, I’m not daft, but it hurt like a—”
The thundering sound of hundreds of dwarves in hard-soled boots echoed through the cavern. An army of men and women in plated armor and metal helmets crashed through the tunnel and spilled out into the open area outside the mountain’s entrance.
“Yer too late!” Wenda yelled. “The elves retreated.”
The dwarves continued, ignoring Wenda’s admonition. “Fine,” she muttered, “keep watch in case they come back. Suit yourselves.”
The hollowed out area at the base of the mountain was twelve feet high. The trail through the mountain was flat and extended a quarter of a mile before it ended in two sets of stairs carved into the rock. Wenda took one of the staircases up several flights. Coral’s thighs burned from the ache of climbing so many steep steps. Finally they arrived at a small landing with a single wooden door. Inscribed on a nearby plaque was “Mr. Ashor Hammergeld, Mayor.”
A man with short white hair and small half-spectacles opened the door slowly. He was short, even by dwarf standards. His white moustache connected with his sideburns, but he had no beard.
“Mayor,” Wenda said, “we have some uninvited guests who brought an unsolicited gift.”
The Mayor studied each of their faces in turn. “Tell the guards to prepare a cell and meet me here,” he said. Wenda nodded and left.
“The elves have never been good neighbors,” the Mayor said in measured words. “I will turn this one over to the guards who protect our mountain.” The Mayor walked inside his office and sat behind a large wooden desk covered with papers and small measuring tools.
“Mr. Mayor,” Daniel said, “might we interrogate the elf? I would like to report back to the Regent of Havenstock about the elves’ military movements.”
“Why?” the Mayor asked. It was a good question. With how hostile the Regent was toward the dwarves, Coral was curious how Daniel would handle this one.
“The elves are a threat to everyone these days,” Daniel said. “I’d like to learn how to help others meet that threat.”
“Others like dwarves?” the Mayor asked.
“Others like everyone.”
“You speak of elves, yet you have one in your party.”
“Sybil is an exception,” Daniel said.
“I want nothing more,” Sybil said, “than to destroy the elf queen.”
“You understand Sybil_in_Shrouds is not the only exception,” the Mayor said turning back toward Daniel.
Was the Mayor saying that there were elves who opposed Queen Sivona? The first group who opposed her were cast out and sent to live in The Ersatz as drow.
“Interrogate your prisoner,” the Mayor said. “You have until morning, then he is ours.” The Mayor placed his elbows on the desk and touched the tips of his fingers together. He peered at Daniel over his small spectacles. “There is something else you could help us with.”
“Yes?” Daniel asked.
“This incursion by the elves threatens the safety and stability of our home. So too does the presence on this mountain of a powerful creature. Hiber lives near the mountain’s top. The only just ending for him is death, but we have been unable to execute his sentence.”
“What did Hiber do?” Coral asked.
“The real question is, what didn’t he do?” the Mayor asked. “Will you help rid us of this problem?”
“Yes,” Daniel said.
“Good,” the Mayor replied. “Our army is busy preparing to defend our mountain. Take your prisoner to his cell and ask him your questions.” The Mayor pointed to the door to his small office. Two dwarven guards stood there with simple chainmail vests and halberds.
“Mr. Mayor,” Coral asked, “why now? Why did the elves suddenly attack?”
“Our mining sites have always been open to the friends of our kingdom, including peaceful elves and peaceful humans,” the Mayor said. “Some of the mines possess unique and powerful resources. Queen Sivona has demanded that we close those sites to everyone except her loyal subjects. I, of course, refused. So long as we control the mines, we will not let them become a weapon held unilaterally by one race. She knew I would not agree to her demands. I believe the demand itself was a pretext. She will now wage a war to conquer the mines.”
Coral nodded. The Regent and the queen seemed to be playing from the same playbook. “What would happen,” she asked, “if an invading force captured one of those sites?”
“My people would never stand for that,” the Mayor said. “It would cause an all-out war that would drain lives from both sides. As a leader, it is my duty to avoid that outcome.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Coral said.
“I also know,” the Mayor continued, “that our people will fight to the death rather than become enslaved to the elvish queen. She has made her intentions quite known. While she wants the mines, she doesn’t want her people to stoop so low as to labor in them.”
The Mayor’s eyes darted to the door behind Daniel and the others. “Ah, your escort has arrived.”
Daniel and the others followed the guards through narrow passages carved in stone, prodding their captive along as they went. They arrived at a small room with a large metal hook embedded in the ceiling. The room had no furniture, no shelves, no decoration. The elf’s hands were bound in rope behind his back. The guards looped another piece of rope around that knot and tethered it to the hook in the ceiling.
“You watch him all night, now,” one guard said to the group. “Elves are wily, be alert. In the morning we’ll string him from a tree as a sign to the other elves to keep out.” The guards left them alone with their prisoner.
“Exactly the kind of thing,” Sybil said, “that I don’t want Farah exposed to. This game is not suited for a thirteen year old.”
“I’ll take the first shift,” Daniel said. “You guys should go explore the mountain.”
“Good luck,” Coral said, as she left the small stone chamber with Sal and Sybil.
The stone-hewn halls were lined with offices, armor storage rooms, and catapult garages. Each corridor led to another stairwell that led the adventurers further into the underground heart of the mountain. In the lowest level sat an antechamber filled with mining supplies, and beyond that, an actual mine.
“Gear up!” Sybil said and grabbed a pickax from the wall. “Ore is something we can easily sell, and it stacks, so while we have access to a mining site we should make the most of it.” She walked over to a dwarf that had a huge pickax of his own slung over his shoulder. After a short conversation, Sybil walked off into the distance.
“I’ve never been mining before,” Coral said.
“It’s easy,” Sal said. “I mean, it’s actually pretty hard. It gets tiring, and repetitive. But it’s conceptually easy. Just swing your pickax and when you see a resource come loose, pick it up.” Sal grabbed a tool and walked off.
“Excuse me,” Coral asked the dwarf foreman, “where do I begin?”
The man looked her over. “Just starting out, eh? Start with clay. There’s a spring over there if you want to mix it with water to make terra cotta, and a kiln for baking it. Once you graduate to metal ores, there’s a forge and an anvil.”
“Quite the full service mine,” Coral said.
“Not all mines have hotspots like these,” the dwarf said, “but this mine is larger than most. It provides many a young dwarf their first taste of skilling and keeps our army with the metals we need to arm all levels of fighters.”
Coral swung her pickax at a mound of clay. A piece broke loose, which she put into her inventory bag. She kept at it, amassing more and more clay.
She improved to Mining 3 before her back started to ache. Out of curiosity, she went to the spring the dwarf had pointed to and mixed her clay with water. With an armful of terra cotta, she wondered what to do next.
Sybil said she could sell what she mined, but with her new Garmenter skills, she might be able to do more. She used a skill point to unlock Earthenwear.
>> Congratulations! You have unlocked the Basic Earthenwear skill. You are now at Earthenwear 1.
Within the Earthenwear skill, there were different tiers of items she could create, just as there had been with Skinweaving. Basic Earthenwear was now unlocked, but she would need to spend skill points to unlock the higher tiers.
Current Earthenwear Level: 1
Earthenwear (Basic):
Items created with this tier of Earthenwear may provide special passive properties depending on the materials used.
Earthenwear (Standard):
Items created with this tier of Earthenwear may provide special transport properties depending on the materials used. Earthenwear Level 8 required to unlock.
Earthenwear (Advanced):
Items created with this tier of Earthenwear may provide special combat properties depending on the materials used. Earthenwear Level 16 required to unlock.
Within each tier, she would need to spend skill points to unlock specific types of armor. She spent one point to unlock gauntlets and got to work.
It was messy at first. The clay was slick and wet. Terra cotta lodged under Coral’s fingernails as she shaped the red clay into gauntlets. Maybe she should have picked something easier, like a helmet, but it was too late. She had already spent the skill points, and now it was time to see this experiment through. She placed her creation in the kiln, and brought it back out, completed.
>> Mud Mitt. Not for catching ground balls. Strength +1. Durability: 5/5.
>> Congratulations! You have improved your Earthenwear ability to 2. +2% additional crafting speed when crafting Earthenwear.
The stats on these gauntlets were disappointing. It was some consolation that she had leveled up her ability, but the early stages were always the easiest to power through.
“Excuse me,” Coral asked the dwarf foreman, “what is the hierarchy of materials here?”
“Well,” the dwarf said, straightening out his shirt and adjusting his posture. He looked like he had practiced his whole life to deliver this list.
“In this site, we have: clay at mining level 1, copper at mining level 5, tin at mining level 10, iron at mining level 20, mythril at mining level 40, and — get ready to be impressed — qualia at mining level 100.”
“What’s that last thing?” Coral asked.
“Qualia is a putty-like substance used in creating, well, anything. In theory, its applications are limitless. Legend says that items made of qualia retain unique characteristics from their creator. Very few people have high enough magic levels to shape the material. I’ve never known a crafter to have any use for it.”
He’d never met a crafter like Coral. It seemed perfect for creating Earthenwear armor using her new orcish skillset. At Mining 3 though, she’d have 97 more levels to go. There simply wasn’t time for that. “I can’t mine qualia yet. Is there any other way to obtain it?”
“Qualia is only found here on Hiber Mountain, but you can always trade up at the Ore Shop,” he said. “Think of the mining level requirements as points. If you want qualia, you’ll have to trade 100 clay for it, since clay requires only level 1 in mining. If you wanted to trade copper, you’d trade 20 copper for one qualia.”
This was going to be exhausting, but Coral vowed to get some of that qualia. She mined clay until she reached Mining 5, then switched to copper. It took an hour to get 20 pieces of copper, but she had done it. She traded it in for one piece of qualia.
She tried to manipulate the putty, but saw this prompt right away:
>> This activity requires Standard Earthenwear or higher.
This meant that she couldn’t use the qualia. Not yet, anyway. She would need to advance to Earthenwear 8, then spend points to unlock the Standard tier, then spend more points to unlock gauntlets there.
Sybil and Sal would be busy gathering ore they could sell, which made Coral a little uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure she could sell the qualia, especially if so few players had the skill to manipulate it. She did know, however, that it was rare, and that it might have special properties. It was a gamble, but she was committed to seeing this through.
She swung her pickax at the clay over and over and over. She periodically visited the spring, mixed clay with water, shaped it, and fired it up in the kiln. She had a growing pile of mud mitts in the corner. After another hour, she had improved to Earthenwear 5.
A guard walked into the mine and called for OgreEater, inviting Sal to take his shift watching the elf they had captured. Soon Daniel came into the mine and picked up a pickax. “The elf wouldn’t say a word to me.” He shrugged and started mining clay further into the mine.
Coral wasn’t in the mood to chat. Lifting the heavy tool and thwacking it down into the clay mound ahead of her was exhausting, and she needed to stay focused on repeating the task efficiently. If she lost time between each step of gathering the resource, wetting it, shaping it, and baking it, she might come up short in the end.
Two more hours went by. Coral’s pile of clay gloves was higher now. Daniel looked at it askance, but didn’t say anything. He was probably wondering what she was going to do with all of those gauntlets, considering they wouldn’t stack in her inventory. If Coral had the skill points for it, she might have unlocked the other items in Basic Earthenwear and made full suits of the armor. She only had six points left though. She’d need two to unlock the Standard tier, and two for each item in it.
This also meant she was stuck with gauntlets. The only items she could unlock in a Standard tier were the ones she had already unlocked in the tier below.
Sybil was the next to leave the mine. When Sal returned, he just shook his head and went back to work.
Finally, Coral reached Earthenwear 8.
>> Congratulations! You have improved your Earthenwear ability to 8. +10.5% additional crafting speed when crafting Earthenwear.
That was only half the battle though. She spent the next hour amassing 20 more copper ores to trade for one qualia. This brought her up to Mining 10, so she moved on to tin. After another hour, she had 20 tin, which she traded for two more qualia.
Four qualia in hand, she unlocked the Standard tier and gauntlets. She could finally get to work. The qualia had the consistency of silly putty. She flattened out the first piece and tried to curl it around to form a cylinder. Her goal was to add finger coverings to this. She wasn’t able to get the edges of the qualia putty to smooth back into each other though. It remained a sheet rather than mold into a tube.
Puzzled, she moved on to another piece. She pulled it apart into five smaller chunks and tried to form fingers, but she had the same problem. She balled up the five pieces in her palm, figuring she would start over. The five didn’t meld back into a larger piece though. It seemed that once it was separated, it didn’t rejoin.
Coral took the putty to the kiln and put a small piece of it inside. When she pulled it out again, it was exactly as it had been before. The kiln didn’t affect it at all. She went back to the lead dwarf.
“What gives?” she asked. “I’m a Garmenter capable of making Earthenwear armor, but this qualia doesn’t seem to make anything.”
The dwarf shrugged. If there was a secret to crafting with qualia, she wouldn’t learn it from this NPC.
After all that. Coral had spent hours grinding away in this mine and all she had to show for it were four useless pieces of qualia.
“Coral_Daring?” a dwarf called from the front of the mine. “It’s your turn with the prisoner.”
“Great,” she said, leaving her pickax on the tool rack and heading out of the mine. The dwarf led her to the prisoner’s room.
Sy
bil stood inches away from the elf, her eyes trained on his. “He’s a stubborn one,” she said. “None of us have gotten a word out of him.”
Coral sat on the ground, cross-legged, and stared up at the elf. His hands were tied behind his back. The rope behind him hung from the ceiling like a vertical leash, keeping his radius of movement tight. He just stood there, trapped in the middle of the room.
“I take it you don’t plan to tell me the queen’s grand plan either, right?”
The elf just stared at the ground.
“Will you at least tell me your name?” she asked. There was no response. “I’m Coral.”