God of Gnomes

by Demi Harper

  Somehow sensing the direction of my thoughts, Ket chipped in with another piece of ‘motivating’ advice.

  ‘Just remember, Corey: if you don’t continue to improve your base, there’s no way you’ll have the resources to defeat Grimrock. Everything we’ve done up till now will have been in vain.’

  ‘Thanks, Ket,’ I said. ‘You always know what to say to cheer me up.’

  ‘Any time!’ she said brightly, moving away to examine the in-progress gnomehomes. The gnomes ignored her, as always. I couldn’t help but feel a little envious of their capacity to do so.

  My mood was eased somewhat when I realized the two gnomes I’d sent to scout, Swift and Cheer, had returned once more. This time, the pair were covered in mud and leaf mulch from the surface, and both of them were bearing armfuls of mushrooms – species I hadn’t seen before. They dumped them in front of the shrine-in-progress.

  I moved to inspect their finds, dubiously at first, then more enthusiastically when I saw they’d actually brought me potentially useful items.

  There was a red, fan-shaped mushroom made almost entirely of gills, and a purple-gray one whose cap was flat as paper. Then there was a tiny white one small enough to fit in the palm of a gnome’s hand, as well as a slender one with a dark cap, draped in a bizarre veil-like white net. There was also a pale, velvety-looking lilac mushroom that looked so soft I wished I could touch it, as well as a pale, green-tinged specimen that looked similar in shape to the edible ones already growing on the walls around the Grotto.

  The strangest-looking member of the batch seemingly had no stalk; instead, it was perfectly spherical. Its lumpy skin was grayish with a ring of dark brown on the top, making it resemble an eyeball. A giant, dirty, pupil-less eyeball.

  I used Insight to examine each of the fungi more closely, adding their blueprints to my repository. The eyeball-like specimen was called a puffball mushroom, and according to the Augmentary it would emit clouds of dust-like spores any time it burst.

  That could come in useful in a fight.

  I turned my attention to the green-tinged mushroom, which naturally turned out to be called a Death Cap.

  Ominous much?

  Needless to say, it was deadly poisonous when eaten.

  After examining the others, most of which were disappointingly void of special properties, I turned to a suspiciously cheerful-looking specimen called a redcap. This one had a pale-colored stalk and – you guessed it – a bright red cap spotted with white. I was no foraging expert, but there was no way this thing was edible – at least more than once.

  It wasn’t long before Granny came marching over and began sifting through the pile of strange fungi. Her frown – a constant feature since the first moment I’d laid eyes on her wizened old face – actually eased somewhat as she examined the scouts’ finds. In fact… was that a smile I saw as she held the red and white specimen up to the light to better examine it?

  Her smile dropped immediately as the two scouts began to mutter among themselves. Before I could intervene and send them off on another fetch quest, Granny rounded on them both with a face like thunder.

  Of course, I’d yet to experience thunder myself, but Ket had explained the concept to me. It was basically a skyquake, fierce and unpleasant to behold – much like Granny’s wrath.

  The scouts fell silent, but it was too late: once incurred, Granny’s displeasure could not be curbed until it had run its course. And so the two intractable females hung their heads and scuffed their feet as the elderly gnome gave them a piece of her mind – several pieces, in fact, judging by the length of her tirade.

  When Granny was finally done, she pointed at the nearest gnomehome-in-progress, down at the base of the hillock. Swift rolled her eyes, while Cheer went one better and kicked moodily at the dirt. Granny placed both hands on her hips and raised one eyebrow; the two young females hurriedly turned and scurried off down the slope, faster than I’d ever seen either of them move before.

  When Swift and Cheer reached the partly-built gnomehome, they exchanged sulky words with one of the builders, who directed them toward the lumberyard. With much muttering and foot-dragging, the two former scouts trudged over and began reluctantly hauling freshly sawed boards from the lumberyard to the new dwelling.

  I thought about using Scout to send them off to the surface again, but decided to leave them be. Again, I didn’t want to waste what little mana I had on something that was potentially of no direct benefit to the settlement. Besides, their latest haul was surprisingly impressive. May as well quit while I was ahead, at least for now.

  Back at the altar, the two mushroom farmers were already beginning to harvest spores from each of the new specimens, and an hour or so later, every last patch of soil around the edge of the Grotto had been converted into an improvised mushroomery.

  The temptation to help grow the new fungi was strong – I was getting pretty close to tier seven, and it would be nice to get that final push from any new Faithful I’d potentially gain – but I held myself back, conserving mana, still unsure as to the most effective and efficient way to prepare our settlement for the upcoming assault.

  My Augmentary dinged, and Ket announced, ‘Corey – the shrine is finished!’

  Finally!

  I pulled up the construction page in my Augmentary and scanned the new options until I found the one I’d been waiting for.

  Barracks I

  Tier 2 building

  Houses up to 40 gnomes. Unlocks military vocations, and facilitates basic combat training.

  Materials required: Boards x 60, Bricks x 1850

  Let’s get this thing built, pronto!

  But to my dismay, the ‘Barracks’ option was gray, not white, meaning I couldn’t actually select it for construction. It took me a moment to realize the obvious.

  Bricks. It requires bricks. I can’t build it yet because I don’t have a brickyard. Damn it!

  After a little more silent cursing, I figured I should probably take a look at my other new construction options. It turned out there were only two that were currently available to me:

  Stables

  Tier 2 building

  Provides housing for up to 10 mounts.

  Materials required: Boards x 120

  Mounts? What the hell was a mount? Perhaps it was something to do with breeding. How did gnomes breed, anyway?

  Ugh. That’s not something I want to think about right now. Back to the buildings, please.

  Whatever a ‘mount’ was, I didn’t have it, so there was no point building something to house it.

  What else was there?

  Armory

  Tier 2 building

  Provides warrior denizens and their mounts with weapons and armor.

  There they were again! Those pesky mounts. I’d have to ask Ket about that when the barracks was eventually completed.

  An armory, though; that did sound useful. But there was no point in building it before I had any warriors to equip, was there? I reluctantly moved past it and onto the others.

  In addition to the stables and the armory, there was also the option to construct a mess hall, and, for some bizarre reason, a brewery. The latter seemed impractical to say the least, and the mess hall wasn’t an option right now either; like the barracks, the mess hall required bricks, a resource to which I did not yet have access.

  As frustrating as this setback was, there was no sense in dwelling on things I was powerless to change. I closed my Augmentary and took my first look at the newly completed shrine.

  It was… fine, I supposed. It didn’t look much different than it had earlier: an additional ring of stones around the original altar, with a shallow ditch in between.

  Gneil and the other five worshipers were doing their usual victory dance around it. They shuffled forward merrily in single file, hands on the waist of the gnome in front, kicking their legs out to the sides in a distinctly un-rhythmic rhythm and looking from above like some kind of giant discombobulated caterpillar.


  If I’d had a head, I would have shaken it in bemusement at their antics.

  Just like when the altar had been completed, a couple of the remaining few non-Faithful gnomes risked Granny’s ire and wandered over from their tasks to see what was going on. When they laid eyes upon the decidedly underwhelming circle of stones that was my new shrine, their eyes widened and they dropped to their knees.

  A green aura of Faith enwreathed the two gnomes, and blue lines of worship-fueled mana began to flow from them into my gem. I expected this would be enough to push me into tier seven, but sadly not.

  My mana, on the other hand, was replenishing fast. Gneil and the other five celebrating gnomes – the ones responsible for the shrine – now sheepishly joined the two new Faithful in worship, and the contents of my blue globes inched upward even as I watched. Eventually, I had recovered three full globes, with the fourth already beginning to fill right before my eyes.

  Remembering what Ket had told me about assigning full-time worshipers, I re-opened the Augmentary and examined the nearest gnome’s Vocation options. Sure enough, there were a couple of new additions to the list.

  Acolyte

  Vocation type: holy

  Pre-requisite: shrine

  An acolyte spends their days in dedicated worship of their chosen deity.

  High Priest

  Vocation type: holy

  Pre-requisite: shrine

  A high priest is a settlement’s spiritual leader, inspiring acolytes and denizens to even greater feats of worship.

  I could now officially designate Faithful gnomes to spend their time worshiping me! Up until now I’d been expending mana on ‘miracles’ that would encourage them to do so, or relying on chance and hoping for the mood to take them. These new holy vocations would vastly improve the situation.

  Without hesitation, I assigned Gneil the vocation of high priest, and promoted the other five worshipers to acolytes.

  Gneil immediately climbed to his feet and stood atop my shrine. With gestures that were no doubt meant to be grand, but looked to me like he was waving away wasps from in front of his face, my newly appointed high priest began to exhort the worshiping acolytes to what I presumed were ‘greater feats of worship’.

  To my delight, my fourth mana globe began to fill even faster – the benefit of having an official high priest to lead the worshipers’ prayers, I assumed.

  As for the two new converts, I assigned each of them the builder vocation, and immediately set them to work constructing the brickyard – as soon as I’d selected the brickyard’s location, that was. I decided on an area between the gnomehomes and the new shroomtree field, directly across the stream from the lumberyard.

  The new builders marched over and began clearing the ground, making it ready for construction. As always, Ris’kin bounded over to help remove any stones or objects that were too large for my diminutive workers to safely handle.

  It was maddening having to wait for these buildings to be finished before I could start training my gnomes in the art of combat. However, it took the edge off to know I now had dedicated acolytes who would work in shifts to ensure I had a permanent, steady supply of mana.

  ‘Ket,’ I called.

  ‘Hmm?’ She zoomed over to my side.

  ‘Let’s go play god.’

  The gnomes could take their time building for now. I had creatures to evolve.

  Twenty-Eight

  Playing God

  I worked through the night.

  Well, I say ‘worked’, but imbuing monsters with mana to make them bigger and stronger for the upcoming battle didn’t feel like work – not least because some of them ended up growing in varying and unpredictable ways.

  The process of Evolution proved much more erratic than when I’d used the ability on Ris’kin. While upgrading my avatar had allowed me to select specific attributes to splice and enhance – much like the Creation process itself – using it on regular god-born creatures was essentially random.

  Oh, it started off well. First, I evolved the original boulderskin in the lake cavern; a couple of mana globes and an extra Creation slot later, and it was almost as big and mean as the evolved boulderskin at the Sinkhole. I couldn’t wait to see it in action against the kobolds. It would probably run rings around those red-scaled mongrels.

  To help make sure of this, I moved the two whipfish from the tunnels into the lake cavern. The creatures would take position on the cavern ceiling during a fight and immobilize the enemy with lightning-fast strikes of their lash-like forelegs. (Ket had also explained the concept of lightning to me. It sounded awesomely terrifying. I couldn’t wait to witness it for myself.)

  When they arrived, I focused on the nearest whipfish, activated Evolution, then did the only thing I could: crossed my metaphorical fingers and hoped for the best.

  Here we go!

  I was distinctly unimpressed. Physically, the whipfish hadn’t changed at all.

  Annoyed, I prepared to shove more mana into the creature to try and force a more tangible result when Ket suggested casually, ‘Before you do that, why not take a closer look?’

  ‘What do you m— Oh.’

  I used Insight on the whipfish to bring up the creature’s blueprint. When I analyzed the modified streams of symbols, I realized that while the whipfish hadn’t changed visibly, it was in fact far more deadly in its new form. The venom imparted through those whip-like appendages would now not only paralyze the whipfish’s victims, but also deal poisonous damage, causing the victim harm with every second it spent coursing through their veins.

  This was a huge improvement.

  ‘You know, Corey,’ said Ket, ‘each time you evolve a creature, that new blueprint is added to your Augmentary. In the future, rather than creating a basic version and then evolving it later, you can now simply use the new blueprints to create the evolved version instead — at the same cost in mana, of course.’

  ‘Now you tell me,’ I grumbled. I checked my Augmentary; sure enough, when I cycled through the blueprints, there were new entries for the evolved boulderskin, as well as the newly venomous whipfish.

  Useful as this new information was, the fact remained that I had only two Creation slots left to me. As this was not enough to create a new, readily evolved whipfish, I decided to continue experimenting with my other species, and hopefully gather one or two new blueprints in the process. With the basic whipfish, its evolved counterpart, and the boulderskin, I left the lake cavern with the certainty that it was now impassable to kobold raiding parties.

  Next, I moved along to the first of the three tunnels that connected with the one leading to the Grotto – which I now thought of as The Passage – and turned my attention to the forrels.

  Given that they’d been my first ever creation, I felt something of a soft spot for the squirrel-fox hybrids. Not only were they sleek and aesthetically pleasing, they’d also proved their worth in the defense of my Sphere, fighting viciously and shrewdly in their packs of three. I was eager to see how the vagaries of Evolution would further improve their effectiveness.

  Selecting the nearest gray-furred forrel, I activated Evolution and released three globes of mana. I watched excitedly as the forrel’s physical appearance immediately began to change.

  My excitement rapidly changed to horror as the forrel ‘evolved’.

  It rose to stand on two legs, ducking its head and using hand-like forepaws to groom its twitching whiskers. When it lifted its head again, I saw the forrel’s fox-like canines receding, becoming blunt and flat – all except the front pair on the top and bottom, both of which elongated into absurdly overlarge incisors.

  ‘What… what the hell is that?’ I moaned, staring with dismay at the overgrown rodent morphing into being before me.

  ‘You used much more squirrel blueprint than fox to create this batch, remember?’ said Ket, sounding as though she was trying not to laugh.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, in terms of evolution – as in, natural evolu
tion – an organism’s features will adapt to make it better suited to survive its natural habitat. Those teeth, for example. Perfect for gnawing.’

  ‘But there’s nothing down here for them to gnaw! I need them to hunt! To tear flesh from bone, and instill terror into the hearts of our enemies!’

  ‘Yes, but their original blueprints don’t know that, do they?’

  I stared at Ket mutely. She sighed. ‘Think about it. Look at your other creations. The logical evolutionary forms for the boulderskins make them better suited to resisting attacks and hunting prey. Likewise for the whipfish. And that’s exactly what’s happened here. Except the squirrel’s natural ‘prey’ is not the living, breathing kind; it’s nuts, and fruits, and vegetables. The forrel’s new form reflects that.’

  ‘So the squirrel part has interfered with my Evolution process—’

  ‘—because the squirrel is not a natural-born predator,’ Ket finished. ‘Far from it, in fact. They’re more cute than deadly.’

  I looked down on the decidedly non-predatory new forrel with disgust. It didn’t look remotely cute to me. Its monstrous incisors were a dirty orange color, and its multi-jointed fingers were overly long and just a tad creepy. What use would this thing be in a fight?

  I almost growled in frustration. An examination of the evolved blueprint revealed that the upgrade had dramatically enhanced the squirrelly god-born’s sensory perception. According to the Augmentary – and the Augmentary was never wrong – this forrel could now use its teeth to probe unfamiliar objects, and would be able to sense texture, density and even temperature with those grotesquely large incisors.

  ‘Such a useful skill in a combat situation!’ – said no one, ever.