Orconomics: A Satire (The Dark Profit Saga Book 1)

by J. Zachary Pike

  “There goes another one,” the man told Gorm as the sculpture’s eyes flared again.

  “Another what?” Gorm asked, against his better judgment.

  “You can’t really tell. Could be a man, could be a Shadowkin. Don’t matter. They’re off to meet the Master.”

  “That’s people dying?” Laruna stared at the crimson light.

  “Just one,” said the man. “Oop. And another. And there’s another!”

  “But—”

  “There goes another,” said the man, flashing a grin that displayed as many gaps as teeth. “Name’s Ignatius. A humble priest of Mordo Ogg, at your service.”

  “Gorm Ingerson. Ever hear of an Orc named Magrash?”

  “Old One-of-each? Course I know him. I—oop! We got a fighter.”

  The lights in the shrine were glowing steadily, becoming more crimson with each passing second.

  “Sometimes they don’t want to go wherever it is they’re off to,” said Ignatius with a chuckle. “They try to fight old Mordo Ogg. He don’t much care for that, does he? There it goes.”

  The lights winked out. A moment later, they resumed their irregular flashing.

  “I can see why this square is so empty,” said Niln.

  “Ye were saying?” Gorm prompted Ignatious. “About Magrash?”

  In between particularly interesting flashes from the shrine’s eyes, Ignatius informed the heroes that One-of-each Magrash was generally to be found at Moira’s, a tavern just outside Sculpin Down’s West Gate. Gorm thanked the priest, and the heroes hurried from the square.

  Moira’s was marked by a simple sign painted with a white tree. Inside, the fire hissed and crackled as it died in the heap of bricks that had once been a fireplace. Several figures were bent over lonely tables, nursing beers and drowning sorrows.

  Gorm and the other heroes sat at a big table in the back corner and ordered a round of drinks and an assortment of breads, cheeses, and dried meats. Gorm taught Gleebek the proper way to make a sandwich, which is to ensure that the meat is thicker than the bread. Kaitha and Laruna compared wines, and found them both lacking.

  The atmosphere was lackluster and the food worse, but the heroes were enjoying themselves nonetheless, glad to be done with training for the day.

  Heraldin, however, found a thrones board and started setting up a game between himself and Gaist. “I think you’ll find that I’ve some new tricks, my friend. Your move first this time.”

  Gaist glanced at Heraldin, advanced a bannerman, and turned back to staring into the center of the room.

  “Haven’t you had enough of that game?” asked Laruna.

  “I’ll be finished once I’ve tasted victory,” said the bard, advancing his own piece. “I think tonight is my night. I’ve figured out the trick.”

  “Oh?” asked Niln.

  “Yes. In thrones, if you move atop an enemy piece you kill it, but if you leave it only one safe move, it becomes your own. At first, I thought I should just steal all the pieces I could, but that left me with too few moves, and Gaist just took them back. So I killed all the pieces I could, but clearing the board gave him enough maneuverability to steal my pieces. The trick is knowing when to steal a piece, and when to go for the kill.”

  “Seem like you’re learning something after all,” said Gorm.

  “I’ll have you know I pick things up rather quickly, If I do say … if I … I …” Heraldin trailed off as Gaist advanced a knight. “All right, why would you move there? What are you doing now? How does that even make sense?”

  Gaist’s stoicism had a hint of smugness about it.

  It was more than a little amusing to watch the bard learn his place, but Gorm was here on business. He looked around the tavern. A few Orcs stood about the bar, green-skinned and square-jawed, and Gorm quickly saw that one of them was Magrash himself.

  It was hard to misidentify One-of-each Magrash, a wrinkled, gray-haired Orc with an eyepatch that kept slipping because one of his ears was missing. Only one tusk protruded from his lower jaw. His left hand was a metal hook. His right leg ended in a peg.

  “I found my source,” Gorm told the other heroes. “I’ll be back.”

  “Look who’s splitting the party,” said Kaitha. “And I thought you were pro.”

  “Ha! Right,” grinned Gorm.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Niln. “Is there some sort of problem?”

  “No, no,” said Gorm. “I ain’t splitting the party. She’s making a joke, lad.”

  “So splitting the party is bad, then?” said Niln.

  “You never split the party,” said Laruna.

  “It’s right in the Heroes’ Guild Handbook,” said Jynn.

  “Someone always wanders off to grab something shiny or test a lever or something, and the next thing you know they’re coming back with some horrible monster following them,” said Kaitha.

  “Usually when you’re in the middle of a massive fight with something else,” said Gorm.

  “If they come back at all,” said Heraldin.

  “I remember in the Tomb of the Horortep, a rogue snuck off to grab a statue he saw, and wound up sprinting back with three stone golem guardians on his heels while we were trying to get over a pit trap,” said Kaitha. “Lucky for us, the pit was deep and golems have poor balance.”

  “I got a story that will top that one when I get back.” Gorm laughed.

  He made his way across the bar. The air was thick with smoke from the back kitchen. The Orc’s one good eye was filled with mistrust and apprehension as Gorm approached.

  “You One-of-each Magrash?”

  “If I wasn’t, that’d be a good name for me,” said Magrash. “Who wants to know?”

  “Nobody in particular,” said Gorm. He dropped a coin purse on the table as he sat down. “Just someone looking for information.”

  Magrash looked back at the table where Kaitha and the others were laughing at some story or another. “I don’t want no business with heroes,” he said.

  “Look, ye can see I got more than enough muscle back there to get my answers,” said Gorm, “but doing things that way means paperwork, and guild reviews, and all sorts of other hassles. I’d much rather ye take this here thirty giltin, answer a few questions, and get back to drinking. But it’s your choice.”

  Magrash further scrutinized the party. “You got a Goblin with you.”

  “That’s me squire.”

  “You the one who sent the Elven guardsman to the healers?”

  “I … he didn’t go to … How did ye hear about that?”

  “It’s all over the city. Is it true that you did it because he insulted the Goblin?”

  “Look, I don’t need that getting around, not anymore than it is.”

  Magrash’s demeanor warmed noticeably. “What do you want to know?”

  “I’m looking for info on the Leviathan Project.”

  Surprise flashed in Magrash’s eye, but he recovered quickly. “Let’s talk outside,” he said, nodding toward the door.

  The alley out back of Moira’s was illuminated only by the full moon. A light flared in the darkness as Magrash lit a cigarette.

  “People hear you talkin’ about the Leviathan Project to me, and I’m going to get my noncombat papers revoked,” said Magrash.

  “Why?”

  “You can’t be an NPC if you used to work for a villain,” said Magrash. “Run around with a bloodthirsty warband of Shadowfolk all you like, and they’ll take you with open arms. But lift some boxes for a Lightling that’s gone foe, and twenty-five years later you’re still unclean. Oh, hang on.”

  Magrash hobbled over to Moira’s back door and stomped on a thick, meaty tentacle. Something beneath them shrieked in displeasure as the rubbery appendage retreated through a sewer grate.

  “Thrice-cursed Krakens,” Magrash grumbled as he hobbled back. “Sure, they’re cute when they’re the size of your hand and they’ll sit on the shoulder, but people always dump ’em down the sewer on
ce they start going after cats. And then who do you suppose has to deal with them? The lowly sewer worker, that’s who.”

  “There’s more than one of them in the sewers?” Gorm asked.

  “There’s far more and far worse than those watching from the water,” said Magrash. “Heroes clean the sewers out every few years, but new critters come up from the depths or down from the top all the time. Still, monsters are better than taxpayers, right?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Both will try to squeeze the life out of you, but you can take an axe to the monsters. Ha ha! Sorry. Little civil servant humor there. What were you talking about?”

  “I didn’t know the Leviathan Project was run by a villain.”

  “Not just one. All the big wizards from back then: Detarr Ur’Mayan, Teldir of Umbrax, Aya of Blades, Win Cinder, Az’Anon.”

  “Az’Anon the Spider King?” A chill ran up Gorm’s spine at the thought of the dark wizard who had ended his career.

  “Well, they called him Az’Anon the Black back then,” said Magrash. “It was before his trip to Nagarok, when he was just one of the five on the Leviathan Project, or so I hear.”

  “Ye didn’t work on the project, then?”

  “No. Had a brother who was on it, working for Detarr Ur’Mayan. He’d tell me about it and try to recruit me. Back then, I was a warrior with my tribe, and we raided the Lightling towns from the Eboncrags down to Knifevale.”

  “So can I talk to your brother?” said Gorm.

  Magrash shook his head with a sigh. “He got killed. Was on the first floor of the tower when Johan the High-and-Mighty came to chop off Detarr’s head. Bloody hero didn’t even care about the Leviathan business either. He only wanted that fat queen of yours to marry Handor instead of Detarr’s boy.

  “I figured it was only a matter of time before the heroes came for my tribe too. Put in for my noncombat papers the next day. Thought I’d be safer.” Magrash gave a dark, mirthless laugh. “See how well that turned out? I was just One-eye Magrash before I started working the sewers.”

  “Know anyone I could talk to who worked on the Leviathan Project?” Gorm asked.

  “I can give you a name, but if it gets out he was on the project, both he and I are as good as hung.”

  Gorm nodded. For NPCs, guilt by association was a capital offense.

  “Head to Bloodroot,” whispered Magrash.

  “Bloodroot?”

  “It’s a town up by the border with Ruskan. Old beet-farming village. It used to be called the Baetwolds till a tribe of NPC Orcs took it over. Look for Ghabrang. He’s your Orc.”

  “I may do that,” said Gorm, hoping he’d never have to. “Any chance ye know anything about how the Elven Marbles got wrapped up in all of this?”

  Magrash snorted. “The stolen burial stones? I don’t know what they’d have to do with Project Leviathan. The noctomancers collected a lot of random stuff for the project. Why?”

  “They were stolen. Er, again. We’re on a fetch quest for ’em.”

  “I did hear they went missing on the road from Scoria. Usually, that’s a very safe road.”

  “Ye know somethin’ else?”

  Magrash considered Gorm carefully. “Not for sure. But I did hear that a band of Lizardmen drove some omnimancers out of an old tower out by the Sudden River a couple of weeks ago. That’s just a few days off the road to Scoria. Sounds like something they could have done.”

  “Probably coincidence,” said Gorm.

  “Could be,” said Magrash. “But a lead’s a lead.”

  Gorm tossed the giltin to the Orc with a word of thanks.

  His mind raced as he headed back into the tavern. He’d never suspected a connection between Detarr and Az’Anon, aside from the hero who slew them, but apparently they had collaborated with the most evil wizards of their time for art theft. And now someone else wanted the stones, though all of the wizards that Magrash had mentioned were long dead. Was someone starting the Leviathan Project again? Would that even matter? For all Gorm knew, the project was an underground museum putting Orcish relics on exhibit.

  The other heroes were still comparing tales of past quests when Gorm sat down at the table.

  “I’d blasted both of his legs and one of his arms off, and we planned to just leave him, right?” Laruna was saying. “So we started to head out, and the crazy blighter starts true forming!”

  “What’s true forming?” Niln asked amid the heroes’ laughter.

  “Oh, you think you’ve defeated me,” mimicked Kaitha, “but now let me show you my true form! Har har har!”

  “For some reason, I let you break my Human body and trash half of my lair before I really started fighting! Bwa ha ha!” said Laruna. “Gods, it’s annoying.”

  “So what happened?” asked Niln, interrupting the heroes’ mirth.

  “What?” asked Laruna, wiping a tear from her eye.

  “With the warlord in the volcano? What happened when he true formed?”

  Laruna looked uncomfortable. “Oh, er, he turned into a two-story-tall demonic slug, ate our rogue and our priestess, and crippled our fighter before we put him down.”

  The laughter at the table withered into an awkward silence.

  “That’s horrible,” said Niln eventually.

  “That’s professional heroics,” said Gorm darkly. “Kill and loot until you’re killed and looted.”

  “Yes, well, it’s risky, but the work we do is important,” said Kaitha.

  “We’re keeping the world safe,” said Heraldin.

  “Are we now?” asked Jynn. “It seems to me the Dwarf had the right of it. In the end, this is all about gold.”

  “It’s about keeping citizens safe,” said Laruna.

  “Then why is the Myrewood infested? Why isn’t the Underdim cleared?” asked Jynn. “Why is nobody killing the impoverished monsters? Because it’s for the gold.”

  The horrible silence returned, leaving each hero to think of the implications of the wizard’s words.

  Gorm shook his head. “Wasn’t always this way. I took me first jobs for free. Me master in the Brotherhood was a hero, and he worked for almost nothing. Saved a whole city for supper once. Things should … if they could just go back to the way they was …” He trailed off into silence.

  “They can’t,” said Jynn. “Surely you’re familiar with our gross domestic product.”

  “Of course I am. Why do ye think I’m drinking imported?” said Gorm, shaking his tankard at the noctomancer. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “No, I mean our GDP—the total value of everything that’s made or done in the Freedlands. It’s a big number, but if you break it down, four out of every ten giltin are linked with professional heroics.”

  “Forty percent of the economy is loot?” said Kaitha.

  “Loot, or plunder funds, or weapons and armor manufacturing, or potion brewers, or inns that cater to adventurers, or hoard-appraising, and so on,” said the noctomancer. “There’s a lot of work done and products sold to support questing heroes. If we stopped, what happens to the workers and the sellers? They’d lose everything. They’d starve in the streets.”

  “You think it would be that bad?” said Laruna.

  “Is there a good way to be bankrupt?” said Jynn.

  “Morally,” suggested Heraldin.

  “Professional heroes defend a portion of the population from poverty, at the expense of other parts of it,” said Jynn.

  “That’s not why we’re here,” said Niln.

  “Well, I’m here because your mercenaries strong-armed me into joining the guild. I’d never have been a bloody hero otherwise.”

  Everyone stared in shock at Jynn’s forthrightness. Gaist gently took the wizard’s tankard away.

  “Sorry,” mumbled Jynn. “But you know it’s true.”

  Doubt was creeping into the heroes’ faces. Even Niln was faltering.

  Gorm could feel them slipping off course. “Well, it don’t have to be,” G
orm said. “It don’t matter how we got here, or what the whole economy is doing with gross products, or anything. What matters is what we do, and why we do it. Maybe we can’t save the world, but maybe we’ll make the world a tiny bit better.”

  He could see a spark of hope retuning to the other heroes. He nodded to Niln.

  “Oh, er, right!” said Niln. “I know we didn’t meet under the best circumstances, but I know we are a part of something bigger than a few gold coins. Bigger than any of us. We can accomplish great things, my friends.”

  Gorm raised his tankard. “To saving the world.”

  The other heroes raised their drinks as well and toasted to heroic deeds, and a measure of mirth and happiness returned as they drank.

  Gorm drank as well, and smiled and laughed with them. But the joy didn’t return for him. All he could think of was why he was really on this quest: for the money, and for the fame, and for the past he so desperately wanted to bring back.

  Poldo stood a few feet from the table, clutching a packet of charts and drawings. He absently fidgeted with his spectacles and groomed his mustache. He was always nervous when meeting with Mr. Goldson and Mr. Baggs, but they weren’t the only important figures sitting at the table a few feet away. King Handor sat at the table, flanked by Johan the Mighty—the champion of Tandos—and Weaver Ortson, the grandmaster and high councilor of the Heroes’ Guild.

  The dinner was ostensibly a casual evening wherein the king was hosting some old friends. They sat in comfortable leather chairs before a cozy fire in an old study high in Castle Andarun. While the meal was certainly informal, Poldo noted that conversation turned to business before the end of the soup course.

  “We have heard that Your Majesty was considering a tax on loot by professional heroes,” Baggs said with a disarming smile.

  “If by considering it, you mean I’m days from enacting it, then yes,” said Handor.

  “But, sire,” Goldson said. “Surely that will jeopardize much of the prosperity we’ve all worked so hard for. Poldo, the charts, if you will.”