by Tom Larcombe
“Alright, we've all got some coin from some of those encounters?” Cooper asked.
Once again he got a bunch of nods.
“Then let's go check out that inn, shall we?”
He got a couple of audible cheers and the rest of the men were grinning as they headed off to the east.
Eddie's Inn, eh? Cooper thought. Not the most original name, but we'll see what it's like.
He led the squad into the inn where they took over a table. It was only a few moments before a young, attractive server arrived to take their order.
“What'll you have?” she asked.
“What's available?” Cooper replied.
“Ah, new in the area? Well, for breakfast we can supply stew, eggs to order with venison strips on the side, or porridge. All of them come with bread so if you all order food I'll just bring you all a loaf to split.”
Voices rapidly started calling out orders, all of them wanting the fresh eggs. Cooper raised a hand and glared around the table.
“One at a time, you guys. You know better. Miss, start with him,” Cooper said, pointing at Campbell.
Their order was rapidly placed, all of the men asking for beer or ale to go with their food. The drinks arrived quickly, but the food was longer in coming. While they waited, the front door opened and a short, broad man entered.
Actually, I don't think that's a man. That looks like the classic depiction of a fantasy dwarf, Cooper thought.
He took a table, only to be joined a minute later by a man and woman who came down the stairs. The woman looked like she was barely awake, while the man seemed a bit more alert. Cooper listened closely.
“So Eddie, what's on the schedule for today?” the dwarf asked.
“Well, that readout suggests that we'll get to town once we've got another fifteen to twenty houses built. Since we've got the hand carts and oxen now, I was thinking we'd bust our butts building houses, see if maybe we can't get the settlement upgrade by tomorrow? Paul's almost done with the leather worker building, so that'll take care of the other one. Oh yeah, and I've got to spend an hour or two training the fisherman on using the net.”
A distinctive scent caught Cooper's nose as the man lifted his mug and took a long drink. The server had come by with mugs for them without even asking for their order, so Cooper figured they were regulars.
He raised his hand and motioned the server over to him.
“Is that coffee I smell?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Did you want some?”
“Depends, do you have cream and sugar?”
“Sorry sir, no cream, but we can do a sweetened coffee with honey. It's very good from what I've been told.”
Once again, the voices around the table surged, and a minute later the server came back with coffees for all of them. As Cooper took a drink he sighed happily. A couple of minutes later, their food came out and he stopped paying attention to anything but the fresh food.
This is almost as good as that damned burger I loaded from template last night, he thought. I could get used to eating like this.
~ ~ ~
Eddie noticed the new faces eating breakfast and when he finished eating his own he walked over to the table where they were.
“Hey, you guys new around here?” he asked.
Every eye at the table turned to look at him, but only one of them answered.
“Yeah, just showed up today,” that man answered.
“Well, I'm Eddie. This is my inn. I've got one question for you. Were you sent here by an incredibly hot Nordic looking blonde? If I'm right, you'll know who I'm talking about.”
One of the men at the table paled, while the one who'd been speaking simply nodded.
“Yes, she dropped us off to the south of that crossroads just this morning. I'm Cooper, by the way.”
“Well Cooper, she asked me to direct you guys to some level appropriate areas for you. Levels three through nine in your party? Also she said to remind you to remember your reports.”
Cooper nodded.
“Two ways to do this then,” Eddie said. “I can give you verbal directions, or if you've got some extra coin you can go across the street and get a map of the area after you eat. I'd recommend you go to the Rat Woods first. Packs of rats, but if you ransack their nest after you kill them off, you'll find some coinage. Sorry, it's not so cheap to stay in this area, yet.”
“Good, someone who's got a clue,” Cooper said. “Expenses matter when you aren't funded from elsewhere.”
The last sentence had seemed to be directed more at the other men at the table than at Eddie, but he still nodded.
“Yup, definitely. Once you get a few levels there, there's also a dungeon that's a little more loose with its coin.”
“Oh hell yeah, Coop. Good call on this,” another man at the table said.
“Shut up Campbell, we're talking here,” Cooper replied before turning back to Eddie.
“How much coin for the map?”
“Probably a silver or two, at least if you tell him that both Eddie and Tiana's benefactor sent you,” Eddie said, gesturing towards Tiana to show who he was talking about.
Cooper glanced over at the table where Jern and Tiana were still talking.
“Priestess then?”
Eddie nodded.
“Yup, and if you're close enough to the temple you can benefit too. That's the living building right near the crossroads. Adds to defense and healing rate, plus a few other things, when you're within a mile of it. I recommend you set your spawn points there also if you haven't yet. It's got a bonus to respawn time as well.”
Cooper's eyes went wide.
“Well, I figure if She sent you, She'd want you to take advantage of her temple, right?” Eddie said, shrugging.
Cooper nodded.
“Okay, we'll do the map then if it's that cheap. Rat Woods you said?”
Eddie nodded.
“Yup. Sorry, I gotta go. I'm trying to get this settlement up to Town level sometime soon. Got a lot of work to do for that.”
Eddie noticed Cooper staring as he gathered Jern and Tiana from the table and headed for the door.
“Alright, I told you Freyja was sending a group, right?” Eddie said.
Tiana nodded.
“That's them. Something weird about them, they seemed nice enough though. But they're only levels three through nine? They obviously haven't been adventuring as a group very much yet. Not our business though.”
“We can keep an eye on them if you're worried, Eddie,” Jern said.
“Nah, I'm sure we'll hear if they're causing trouble. Let's just let them be otherwise. We've got work to do. I'm thinking that if we buckle down and do as many houses as we can for a day or two, then we'll have enough people registering as inhabitants to get the Town upgrade. I think we're only fifteen or twenty away and the crews have been doing five or six a day by themselves.”
“Alright,” Tiana said. “You think we can increase that number substantially on our own?”
“With the level of materials we've got coming in now, I'm sure of it,” Eddie said. “The three of us alone can probably get three a day done, four or five if I pick up another helper for the carpentry aspects of it.”
“Didn't you have other things to do today?” Tiana asked.
“Yeah, but I'm hoping Griff can get a hold of the fishing guy and have him meet me for lunch. I already asked him to do that. I'll take a little bit of a long lunch on the lake, teach him to use the net, then eat while he learns and I just give pointers. You're both welcome to come along if you want.”
Jern's face took on a hint of green.
“No thank you, if you need me after lunch I'll be at the inn,” the dwarf said.
“I'll think about it,” Tiana said. “Now, we'd better get to work if we're going to meet your rather optimistic goals.”
They continued down to the crossroads. Eddie stopped in at the town hall and took a risk by turning up the construction speed setting. There were only a
few other settings he could currently manipulate, but he thought with just these two turned up he wouldn't be causing any problems. He'd experiment with the settings for the smithy and the inn later on. He wasn't going to do a damned thing with the one he thought referred to Old Jeffries' shop until after he'd run the man out of business. Those were the only other three he could currently do anything with though, so he settled for just construction speed and food production getting boosts and hoped the construction speed being turned up didn't take away from the food.
When he got back out of the town hall, Tiana was just emerging from the temple, having checked in with her acolytes for the morning. Jern had already headed north along the road and when Eddie caught up to him the dwarf was already getting ready to do stonework on a house.
Eddie looked around and shook his head. There were piles of stone and lumber in the intended building plots for the seven or eight sites north of him along the road, and that was just on his own side of the road.
“Alright, let's get to it,” Eddie said, then pulled out a house blueprint and read it, immediately sharing it with Tiana and Jern.
~ ~ ~
Eddie took a break half an hour before lunch. He needed to check on one thing before he started teaching the fishermen how to use the net. A quick trot back to the town hall let him check the readouts. Sure enough, as houses were completed, the second number under the population count was dropping. He assumed, now, that those were potential inhabitants that just didn't have housing yet. Some quick mental subtraction told him that they only needed twelve more houses before the population would qualify for that of a Player Town instead of a Player Village.
By the time he got back to the current building site, Griff was standing there with a woman at his side.
“Eddie, here's our fisherman, or fisherwoman I should say. She's the only one who had any clue about it when I asked around.”
“You're willing to learn net fishing?” Eddie asked.
“If it lets me feed my children, yes. I've got pretty much the opposite of a green thumb, can't raise a plant to save my life, or feed my kids. So hunting and fishing is what I used to do. My daughter can grow some plants, but she's only ten and it wouldn't be right to expect her to feed the whole family.”
“Her father?”
The woman shook her head.
“Dead, years back. He stumbled on a bear while hunting and...”
She trailed off and stopped.
“Okay, you ready to learn?” Eddie asked.
The woman smiled and turned to Griff.
“I told you he wouldn't care if it was a man or a woman,” Griff said.
“I'm glad you were right.”
Then she turned back to Eddie.
“I know you're Eddie, everyone around here knows that. I'm Eydis.”
“Nice to meet you. Let's head for the lake,” Eddie replied.
As Eddie started walking, Tiana stepped up alongside of him, hooking his arm with her own.
“I'll take you up on your invitation,” Tiana said. “It's a nice day for a boat ride.”
I'm noticing a pattern here, Eddie thought. I think Tiana might be a little bit possessive.
He chuckled mentally, thinking that a 'little bit' might be understating things. He didn't mind in the least, although he wished she'd trust him more.
When they reached the lake, he pulled out the spear.
“You'll need this if you take the job. It controls the boat. You control it mentally while holding the spear, just by thinking of what you want the boat to do. I'll show you how that works also, now let's get in the boat.”
After they were in, and Lucky had run off to hunt on her own in Rat Woods again, Eddie pulled out the net and laid it out hanging over the side. He tied the rope he had on the net to a piece of wood that jutted above the side of the boat.
“That's so we don't lose it, it's the only one I've made so far. I'll get more made eventually, but I can't guarantee when,” he said.
Eydis nodded and seemed to be making an effort to remember everything he said.
“Now, I'm going to hold the spear, look at a point on the lake, and think that that's where we want to go,” Eddie said.
The boat pulled away from the dock smoothly and started sailing. When they reached the point he'd thought about he handed the spear to Eydis.
“Where do you think we'll find fish?” he asked. “I want you to look at the spot and think of the boat moving there while you hold the spear.”
The boat took off, but less smoothly this time. Eydis kept blinking as though she couldn't believe what was happening, but once she started to accept it, the motion of the boat smoothed out.
It ended up stopping near the tree that had fallen into the water on the shore of Rat Woods. A very familiar place to Eddie since that's where one of the clusters of zombies they'd had to kill for the quest had been.
“You know, you're probably right and there are fish here, but I think that with a net we should try a different spot. Don't want to snag branches and rip the net,” Eddie said.
Eydis blushed, but started looking around again. The next spot was another familiar one and Eddie suspected that the zombies had been eating the fish that showed up at these spots. They were now outside the little cove that had a group of rocks just outside of it.
“This looks better,” he said. “Let's see what we can catch.”
He got ready to cast the net. Leaving the rope tied to the spur of wood on the boat made it slightly more awkward, but not horribly so and he really didn't want to lose the net. He could tie it to his wrist instead, but somehow the spur seemed safer to him.
“First you clear the net,” Eddie said, demonstrating.
“Then you load the rope, like this. After that you load the weights, like this. Finally, you cast the net itself.”
Eddie demonstrated and the net pancaked out, hitting the surface of the water almost completely spread out.
“Now you just wait until it's had long enough to sink to the bottom, then you pull it back in,” he said.
Pulling hand over hand on the rope, Eddie realized that Eydis was going to need some gloves, or she'd slice her hands up on a good catch. When Eddie pulled the net in, he had eight fish in it, which he moved to a storage basket he'd put on the boat.
“You want to try or do you want me to show you how again first?” he asked.
In the end, it took less time than he'd thought it would for her to catch on to the process. He'd loaned her his own gloves when she tried herself and told her they'd get her a pair to use after they were back on shore.
His lunch was only extended by about half an hour in the process of teaching her the net variant of fishing and Eddie was sure that she had a decent fishing skill already for her to have caught on so easily.
~ ~ ~
Eddie was working on the fourth house of the day in mid-afternoon when his notification light started flashing. He immediately pulled it up, expecting an advance in carpentry. He stopped dead when he read the notification though.
Success:
You have completed the Hidden Quest: Developmental Issues (4/5)
For being the first player to build a Leatherworker and Town Hall in: The Meadowlands. You have been awarded 10,000 Experience and five hundred Gold Pieces. You have unlocked the quest: Developmental Issues V
Developmental Issues V:
This quest is all about developing: The Meadowlands.
To complete part V of Developmental Issues you must build both of the following buildings plus begin construction of a Stronghold for the area.
General Store
Tavern
Rewards:
+ 25000 Experience
+ 1000 Gold Pieces
Increased reputation and renown with inhabitants of: The Meadowlands
Eddie whooped out loud and when Tiana came rushing over to see what had happened, he set his screen so she could see it.
“Oh, well that's worthwhile,” she said. “It loo
ks like we can't put the general store off any longer though.”
“I'm more worried about the stronghold. What, exactly, does the game consider to be a stronghold. Does the fort we already built count, or does it need to be more than that?” Eddie asked. “Anyhow, I guess Paul finished up the Leather worker's building while we were here and got the actual leather worker into the place.”
“Yeah, you want to go check it out?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“When we're done here. I'm pretty sure we can finish this one and one more today. I really want the settlement level to go up.”
“Why's that?” Tiana asked.
Eddie blushed.
“Well, like you pointed out the other day I'm running my own money down by doing this. I want to get the taxes set before the next market day and start using the money from the taxes to pay for all of this construction.”
“Ah, now I understand. I get it though, you don't want to eat too much of your earnings continuing to develop. There's always a chance that new developments can end up being a flop instead of making you more, so better to make sure they pay for themselves,” Tiana said.
“Yeah, pretty much. Although I was thinking more short term. With people still coming from Brightport I'd run out of funds pretty quickly if I tried to pay for everything myself.”
“More people from Brightport?” Tiana asked.
“Didn't I tell you what Bjorn said?”
“No, you didn't. What did he say?”
“He told me that there were lots of other people up in Brightport that wanted to come here. Some of them were even going to try to make it on their own and others were waiting for Bjorn's next trip.”
“Why all the people wanting to come here?” Tiana asked.
“I don't know, Bjorn just said something about a town somewhere getting razed. That happened even before the goblins attacked here, but a lot of the refugees went to Brightport and have been barely surviving there. They think they'll have a better chance to get back to a normal life here instead.”
