by Aleron Kong
Despite only knowing one rank of the Fortify Health enchantment, Richter wasn’t daunted. The health boost was trivial when compared to his hundreds of health, but for many of his villagers, one ring could increase their HP by more than 5%. Even better, the effects stacked if they wore multiple rings. Richter felt good knowing that every item he crafted and enchanted was helping to make his people stronger.
Enalise told him that the true power of Crafting frequently lay not in enchantments but in the materials used. The more powerful and unique the material, the better. Richter immediately thought about the pitted iron sphere that had been found in the rock giant’s chest as well as the remains of the abyssal tree they had fought. Sion had brought it back in pieces and they had found in its center a gnarled heart of black wood. It gave off a palpable heat when he placed his hands on it, and it triggered his identify Talent.
You have found:
Heart of an Immature Gobrit Tree
Durability: 105/105
Item Class: Unusual
Quality: Immature
Weight: 1.7 kg
Traits: This is the heart of an immature Gobrit Tree. Abyssal power still thrums within it. Planting the heart will grow another Gobrit Tree. It is also possible its energy could be harnessed for other uses.
He had hoped that either would inspire him to make something, but apparently just looking at objects was not how it worked. Unfortunately, he just didn’t have the time to invest into playing with his new subskill. The initiate rank perk of Unconventional Materials let him sub out one item on a Template. He tried using a wooden ring just once, but the item exploded, sending splinters into his face. Since he had been hunched over it at the time, the little boom had rung his bell. After that, he decided to wait a bit before experimenting again, or at least until he got some appropriate headgear. Enalise, of course, did not know about his subskill, but she did tell him after his mishap that even with a successful design there was no guarantee that a Template would be produced. It was actually extremely unlikely that one would be. A Template guaranteed that every time one followed a certain series of steps, they would realize a specific outcome. Without a Template, even if Richter did the same process twice, it might not work a second time, something that interested and frustrated him at the same time.
He promised himself that he would devote more time to his Crafting skill after the battle, but there were still many other matters to attend to. A wonderful surprise was that the journeymen Hisako had promised to lend to the Mist Village as her part of their trade treaty arrived. In typical fashion, she had gone above and beyond. Rather than simple journeyman, four more Professionals took up residence in the village. There was a Bowyer named Kureigu to provide ranged weapons, though he preferred to be called a Fletcher for some reason. She had also sent for a Farmer to further help the yield of the crops, a Crafter who was more than happy to sit with the scribes and add more Templates to the village library, and most importantly, another Engineer!
Roswan and the gnome Lezli were actually getting along well, though the mustached elf looked pained most of the time. When you added in the new sprite Engineer, they were able to get some serious building done in just a few days!
Each skill rank in Construction that a person reached let them lead a team of five unskilled workers without letting the final quality of their building suffer. At the fourth rank, for instance, each journeyman could run a crew of twenty people and the edifice they constructed would still be as strong and high quality as if they had built it alone.
Highly skilled builders could also bring other people that had the Construction skill under their umbrella. Each of these builders could have their own teams, making the lead builder a foreman and each builder under them a crew chief of a sorts. Each rank after novice let a builder bring in a crew chief that was equal to or below their level in the skill. As a journeyman, that meant Roswan could have three crew chiefs at his rank or lower. Lezli and the sprite Engineer, nicknamed Nitrohawk, were both journeymen as well. They could still serve as crew chiefs for the mustached elf, though they were effectively treated as the next rank down, apprentices. That meant each of the crew chiefs could field a team of fifteen people.
With all three of them working together, they were overseeing sixty workers per project. They were able to squeeze a few more workers into the building crew, because two of the other villagers were initiates in Construction. There were Talents that Professed Engineers could buy to increase the maximum number of workers or crew chiefs, but neither Engineer had purchased any of those yet.
Richter also got to know Lezli much better over the next few days. Having her in the Job of village Builder was an education, whether you wanted it to be or not. The blond gnome talked non-stop, which seemed a bit manic to Richter. There was no denying though that she was insanely organized. Her binders of notes were even thicker than Randy’s.
She cornered him during lunch one day and what she taught the chaos seed, in exacting detail, was that each construction project had a specific number of Building Points that were required to complete it. Someone without the Construction skill could add, at most, half a Building Point, or BP, to a project for each work day. Each novice in Construction generated one Building Point for eight hours of work. Initiate ranked builders generated two points, apprentices three, journeyman four, and so on. These points were further increased by the fact that each level someone obtained in Construction increased their building speed by another 2%. Put another way, a novice with skill level two in Construction would generate 1.04 BPs/day, while an apprentice with skill level twenty-eight would generate 4.68 BPs/day.
With all three journeymen pitching in, the building crew was now generating 89.7 BP/day at baseline. It was a serious improvement over the previous builder team where Roswan had been the only journeyman and they had only generated 13.4 BP/day. Basically, they were rocking and rolling! Erecting buildings was not an exact science, of course. The number of Building Points required for a specific edifice was based on an ideal scenario. Being interrupted by inclement weather and workplace injuries, as well as running out of raw materials and making sure that the materials were always close at hand and of good quality, all affected the speed at which a building went up, to name a few factors. Of course, this also assumed that everyone was paying attention and didn’t make stupid mistakes. Even in a world as magical as The Land, human error was inevitable. Dwarf, elf and gnome error seemed a sure thing as well. Still, there was no denying how much faster things were getting done now!
Roswan was munching on some eggs while Lezli explained all of this to Richter. When the chaos seed asked why the Engineer hadn’t ever explained any of these things before, the elf just shrugged his mustache and replied, “Grrmmm.” Richter rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to Lezli.
The blond gnome woman showed him how the village’s City Mechanics further increased the building crew’s effectiveness. The Productivity bonus the Mist Village enjoyed was staggering at this point! The settlement’s three ranks in Morale added 20% and the village’s Loyalty added a whopping 70% now that the village had reached the fourth rank, Trusting.
As icing on the cake, because Lezli had accepted the Job as village Builder they could count on another +6% to village Productivity applied to building projects. When you factored in the 11% bonus from Richter’s eleven skill levels in Administration, that gave a final boost to Productivity of 107%! His village was producing 185.7 BP each day!
The first project the construction crew tackled was the Townhall. Lezli also taught Richter that it frequently cost a lot less Building Points to repair a building than to build it from scratch. The Goblinhold that had been transported along with the Dungeon was the goblin equivalent of a Townhall and, thanks to Richter’s Limitless ability, could serve the same function in the Mist Village even though it wasn’t a goblin community. The building had suffered a great deal of damage when it was teleported though. It was also almost worthless in its current loca
tion outside the village walls. Those two factors had made Richter worry that the Goblinhold was a lost cause and that it might be a better idea to just build a new Townhall from scratch.
Lezli wouldn’t hear a word of it though. The fiery little gnome had just taken it as a challenge and had come up with a plan. The first problem she addressed was the Goblinhold needing to be moved inside the village walls. She examined it closely and found two stress points that let her break the structure into sections. After that, she rolled the three large pieces into the village on cut logs. It cost ninety-eight BPs to accomplish that feat, but it still saved time.
While a level one Townhall made of wood cost five hundred BPs to erect from scratch, the repairs only required one hundred and forty-one. Including the time required to move the Goblinhold, that still meant they spent less than half the time it would have taken to do as Richter had suggested. He was reminded of the true secret of any leader’s success: hire people smarter than yourself, then stay the hell out of their way.
The Townhall was finished in two days.
The speed they were building even let Roswan slink off to the Dungeon every night to keep playing with his new Specialty. The overall BP could have been even higher if Richter had personally gotten involved. His Administration skill had a subskill called Lead from the Front. It meant that any project he was directly involved in got a boost to Productivity. At subskill level five, he could have boosted Productivity by another +5%. His own skill in Construction was a paltry level four though, which basically made him a grunt. He decided that the boost to construction speed wasn’t worth sacrificing the eight hours of his day that could be better spent enchanting.
There was another option to improve production time, but he quickly discarded it as well after talking to Randolphus. He could have had his people work longer than an eight-hour day. Time and a half or even double time would have drastically increased the speed buildings went up, and if only done sporadically could be accomplished without any ill effects, especially if Richter paid the workers overtime. If it occurred too often though, there would be consequences. One such problem was that the overall quality of the building might suffer, decreasing its durability and maybe even the perks it gave the village. It could also have rather quick effects on village Morale and long term could even decrease village Loyalty. When Richter heard that, he decided they were building fast enough.
As soon as the Townhall was finished, more functionality became available on Richter’s interface. Even better, it let him assign a Town Administrator, a Job that the chamberlain readily accepted.
Congratulations! You have filled another Job. Ran’dolphinius is now the Town Administrator! As his Administration skill is even higher than yours, your settlement may now benefit from his skill level of 41!
+41% to village Morale, Loyalty and Productivity!
Know This! You have assigned a Specialist Spy with a Focus in Counterintelligence as your Town Administrator. For choosing such a uniquely suited individual, the following benefits are now in effect:
1) Espionage from foreign settlements is 10% less effective per Townhall level
2) +10 Espionage Points generated by Townhall per day per level
3) Every Diplomat allotted to your settlement allows you to name an equal number of Spies
As soon as Richter finished reading the prompt he was already envisioning double O’s making people disappear. Even though Randolphus was a Professional Spy, he still hadn’t really thought too much about espionage. It just didn’t fit with his idea of his bucolic village and the monster-filled forests that surrounded it. He definitely didn’t want to be the fool that ignored such an important part of his nation’s security though.
A thousand questions went through his mind, but the first was what exactly constituted a Diplomat and a Spy. Luckily, Randolphus was close at hand to explain. Both roles were village Jobs. Unlike other Jobs, they did not directly affect his settlement. Instead, they allowed the men and women assigned to the roles to act on behalf of the village. It also allowed them to use Diplomatic and Espionage Points respectively. As leader of the Mist Village, Richter could expend points from either set as well. Now that Randolphus was Town Administrator, he could do the same. Outside of point usage, Diplomats were public figures while the identities of Spies remained secret for obvious reasons, but if either were caught doing things the settlements they were assigned to found objectionable it could cause a serious hit to the Mist Village’s relationship with that community. That was why it was so important to pick the right person for those Jobs.
Diplomats could gradually improve the relationship between two settlements. They also provided valuable intelligence information and could help gain favorable terms in any treaties. In addition to the tasks they could complete, they enjoyed a limited amount of diplomatic immunity. Depending on the situation, Spies could embed themselves in other civilizations and use Espionage Points to make their missions more likely to succeed. They could develop assets, steal technologies and perform any number of other missions.
Randolphus told him that although his Spy Specialty was heavily synergistic with the Job of Spy, anyone could fill the Job, though of course some were better suited than others. The newly designated Town Administrator said he already had his eye on a few possible candidates for the positions and would prepare assignments for all of them.
As interesting as all that was, what had Richter doing a fist pump was the 41% boost to Morale, Loyalty and Productivity! His village was now benefiting from Randy’s one hundred years of experience serving as the palace chamberlain in Law. During that time, the Spy had advanced his Administration skill all the way to level forty-one! The bonus wasn’t enough to increase the village’s Morale or Loyalty in rank again, but the Productivity buff was immediately useful. When the +6% bonus to Construction Productivity from having Lezli accept the Job as village Builder was factored in, total village Productivity increased to +137%, yielding 212.6 Building Points a day!
Richter had promptly given Randolphus a high five, and asked why they hadn’t done this before. The chamberlain either ignored his liege’s sarcasm or didn’t get it. “My lord, it was necessary to wait until you reached the initiate rank of your own Administration skill, and to speak plainly, you have never expressed a desire to be involved in the day-to-day business of running the village. This slowed your progression.”
Richter’s mouth twisted ruefully at the recrimination. The man wasn’t wrong.
“Also,” Randolphus continued, “I have served several lords before you and have learned that asking for more power can be an easy road to the hangman’s noose.” His gaze grew intent and serious, “When I swore my loyalty to you, I meant every word, my lord. I am honored that you would trust me with the role of Town Administrator, and I hope you know that I would never seek to betray you.”
“Unless it conflicts with that one Vow you made before that you can’t tell me about,” Richter couldn’t help but adding.
With an unwavering gaze, Randolphus simply answered, “Yes.”
Richter heaved a heavy sigh. That secret Vow was like an invisible wedge between them. Wedge or not though, it was becoming increasingly clear that the chamberlain might literally be indispensable at this point. Also, the only reason Richter even knew about the Vow was that Randolphus had told him about it. The trained Spy could have just lied or obfuscated the truth. Instead, he’d been straight up with Richter. Also, for whatever reason, the Universe had made them Companions. That meant their goals aligned, at least for now. Richter felt that that had to mean something.
“Do you wish to remove me from my position?” the Spy asked quietly, interrupting Richter’s reflections.
“No,” the chaos seed had replied firmly. Then the two of them shook hands and got back to work.
The Townhall opened up a host of other options for Richter. After reading the list, he realized Randolphus was right. He had been an absolute fool for not building a Townhall first!
/> Know This! You have built a fully functional Townhall (Goblinhold) (Level 1). Your settlement will now enjoy the Building Bonuses from having such a building. It is only due to your Limitless ability that you may use a goblin building in this capacity. Truly you are fortunate, for you will now benefit from both the human and goblin settlement bonuses.
1) Can assign the Job: Town Administrator
2) Diplomacy Points can now be collected. Max: 1000 DP/Foreign Settlement
3) The max level of buildings in your settlement has increased to the level of your Townhall +1 (Current Max Building Level: 2)
4) You may now institute taxes with decreased Morale and Loyalty Penalties
1-5% Taxation = No Penalty
Each 1% increases Penalty until reaching 10% Taxation = -50% Penalty
>10% Taxation = Full Penalty
5) Increases Loyalty and Morale by +1/day (Max Change: +1,000 Points each)
Can now know daily rate change in City Mechanics
6) Informs the ruler of the settlement as to average change in settlement Mechanics (Morale, Loyalty, Health, Commerce, etc) on a day by day basis (base without changes)
Loyalty: +1.03
Morale: + 1.2
Health: – 0.02
Commerce: ---
Corruption: ---