[Dwarves, of course,] the core, Hebron, speaks into our minds. [But our fortress was overrun by the horde while they were busy carving decorations into the walls. I had to reabsorb those decorations after they all died to repay my debts. Even the kitchens, the tables and chairs, all the barrels and vats.]
“There aren’t a lot of dwarves in Tempest these days,” I say. “That I know of, at least. If you get enough energy, would you be able to spawn more dwarves?”
[Yes. Sapients are expensive, though.]
“An Epic ranked party will find us soon. And when they do, you don’t want them to see the Empty Halls so empty. You want them to see the ruins of a lost dwarven civilization. Maybe you can’t bring back the dwarves yet, but can you bring back something of what they’d made?”
[Yes.]
A list of options and prices appears in my third eye. Decorations, furnishings, equipment, spawners… Creating functional equipment is expensive, but ones that are broken and decayed are pretty cheap. That would still be better than seeing empty room after empty room.
Of course, Hebron’s essence reserves are drastically low and only now starting to tick up with the presence of me and Rowan. It will need to effectively take out a loan from Corwen to be able to afford any of this, but as this is a new vassal, it’s also in Corwen’s best interest to get it up and running before a rescue party finds us. With the budget from the loan Corwen is willing to give, I could just buy back everything but the dwarves themselves.
“Can we bring the traps at the door back at least?” Rowan asks. “There’s monsters out there still and I’d rather not just hope they don’t notice us here.”
“That’s a good place to start. Let’s see. Twelve spear traps, yes, there we go. And they come with a convenient lever to disable them for visitors, too. Oh, and not to forget the doorbell, either.”
I have absolute confidence that if this dwarf town is restored, it will repay that loan in short order and quickly start making pure profit, a good share of which will go to its new liege.
“Restore all decorations and interior furnishings. And make them look a little more worn. That brand new door is more ‘weird’ than ‘cool’. You’ve got the whole vibe wrong. You want people to feel awe! This place should look as ancient as it is, just built like it could last forever.”
[Conceptual correction accepted. Reconstructing interior.]
Patterns bloom upon the walls around us as the stone ripples for a moment and plaques appear. Names and faces of dwarves long past appear much like the family tree mural in Corwen’s central tower, minus the tree.
Rowan goes up to the wall to take a closer look and reads off some of the words. “Ruby. Spawned in 99. Died in 100. Slate. Spawned in 100. Died in 100.”
“Seems like 100 was an inauspicious year for this Hearth,” I say.
The dungeon has suddenly become a lot less boring, so we go out and explore. The core room door looks considerably more timeworn now, though with my [Psychometry] I can tell it’s only cosmetic. Once outside, it vanishes behind a relief of dwarves getting trampled by an elephant-like monster.
Rowan scrunches up his face as he looks at it. “These dwarves were not great warriors.”
“The monsters on this layer do not mess around…” I say.
They might have carved their entire history into the walls. Images depict dwarves doing things, making things, and getting killed by monsters without a lot of images of great victories over monsters.
“Corwen really paid for this?” Rowan breathes, looking around.
[I am now massively indebted to Corwen, but its Chosen is certain that we will make far more profit this way. I do not understand, but I will obey.]
The dwarves that used to live here really liked grapes. Really, really liked grapes. There are carvings depicting grapes everywhere. These extinct peaceful wine dwarves maybe should have spent a little more time making weapons.
The layout of the ‘maze’ has not significantly changed, though enough of it is different that I may as well start over on my map. It’s just a lot more coherent when there’s actually something to see, and many of the rooms have changed shape and size. Dead ends have become living quarters, and rooms with many exits have turned into dining areas, kitchens, and workshops. Now there’s plenty of indication that people used to live here and what they did.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
All the equipment for winemaking is here. Including tubs where dwarves stomped grapes with their bare feet in order to make their wine. The stone reliefs make that process quite clear. I really hope they thoroughly washed their feet first.
On one wall of the dining hall, there’s a relief depicting a giant cluster of grapes in which each grape contains a smaller cluster of grapes. I wonder if they might have started etching even tinier grapes into the grapes in the grapes if they hadn’t all been killed because they were too busy carving grapes.
Since we have actual beds available now, we go to pick out one of the rooms in the living quarters to use so long as we’re here. They’re all identical with a bed and dresser, aside from one larger room full of decorations that probably belonged to someone important. A huge ornately carved stone dresser takes up half of one wall. I’d feel weird sleeping in an opulent noble’s room while Rowan is sleeping in these worker bedrooms and I really don’t need that as it’s not like we’re going to be staying here for long.
“You really should just use the fancy room,” Rowan says. “You’re basically in charge here, at least right at this moment.”
My eyes fall upon an object sticking out from beside the dresser. “Why is there this unlabeled lever in the fancy room?”
“There’s probably a secret closet or something,” Rowan says.
“Rowan, please hand me the staff and step out of the room,” I say.
Rowan complies, somewhat puzzled. I reach in with the staff carefully and nudge the lever. With a shunk sound, spikes emerge from every angle to skewer anyone hapless enough to have been in the room when the lever was pulled. I almost lose hold of the staff and quickly pull it back. After the lever is released, the traps reset. Spikes smoothly slide back into their hidden positions, waiting out of sight. That big dresser is full of spikes, not clothing.
“Uh…” Rowan sways on his feet, eyes widening at the display. “Alright, let’s not sleep in the fancy death trap.”
I carefully close the door and mark my map with a warning on this room. I pull out a blank piece of paper, write ‘Danger - Trap’ on it, and pin it to the door. “There we go, a fair warning to anything that comes in here capable of reading Common.”
“If something gets in here that can’t read Common, we’ll have more problems than poorly written signs on doors.”
I nod in agreement. “Let’s keep going, and not pull anymore mysterious levers.”
We find the modest workshop where the dwarves here made things that weren’t grape-related. Judging by the various fixtures we’ve seen throughout the complex, I’m guessing they once worked with brass and bronze here. Fortunately, I encounter no ominous levers that might flood the workshop with lava for no good reason. I haven’t done enough metalworking in this life to make good use of the equipment here, so I saved some essence in selecting the option for a workshop that needs a lot of love to restore. That won’t be a problem once we get things going. I just didn’t want it to look empty.
In the deepest parts of the old fortress sits an odd machine with a square platform. A pedestal next to it has system display (as a glass screen rather than in my head) with a lever on one side.
This is a dwarf spawner. These dwarves are apparently not born, but made from whatever materials are thrown into the spawner. I guess whatever is tossed in gets disintegrated and a brand new beardy pops out if the essence cost is met, no messy biological steps necessary.
I drop in some various items from my bag and nearby decorations to see what happens, and the class of the spawned creature changes to whatever aspects are predominant. Lockpicks would spawn a Rogue, a hammer would spawn a Crafter, and so forth. We do not have nearly enough essence to spawn a single dwarf even if we pooled every scrap we have.
“More complicated items are worth more,” I say. “Essence goes into items while they’re being crafted. I’m guessing if I made a bunch of stone knives, that would be worth more than just throwing in stones and would result in a dwarf that already knows [Stoneworking].”
“I suddenly realize why the place was so empty,” Rowan says. “All their crafted things went into the machine for more defenders.”
“I bet a high enough level statue of a dwarf would be the right amount of essence.”
“What are you betting? I left my coin purse at the hot springs. And anyway, any dwarf that gets made by you would be cursing their maker for his [Stoneworking] skill level.”
“I’m not a Legendary sculptor, but I’m sure I can manage something. The machine doesn’t seem to be picky about what goes into it so long as the total essence is high enough.”
They were dwarves. They might have been sissy pacifistic wine-loving dwarves, but they were dwarves nonetheless. They’d probably still be good at crafting things that aren’t grapes. Having a dwarf buddy would be very cool and we might as well get started on rebuilding the population.
I put away my notebook after marking the dwarf spawner on my map. “That about covers it. Let’s eat some more grapes and get some rest. Tomorrow, I want to scout the outside a little. See if we can find something other than grapes to eat, no matter how amazing they are, and maybe even gather some crafting materials. I don’t know if we can build up the essence to spawn a dwarf by the time a rescue party shows up, but we don’t really have anything better to do in the meantime but work on our skills and try not to die.”
After testing the essence value of every item in easy reach, I’m already starting to work out the math in my head just how much crafting I’m going to need to do for this.
Is deciding on what to do for the next few days really “long-term”? I suppose it’s still in the range a child would have. Planning a week ahead is long-term for a typical eight-year-old.