Dungeon Life

Chapter Two-Hundred Eighty-Eight

Looks like everyone will be home in about a week. Well, probably not Tarl, but everyone else. I’m looking forward to it. Leo and Honey haven’t been home in forever, feels like, and Queen and Thing seem pretty eager to get back to their home labs, even if their latest titles suggest they should be out and about, saving lives.

Personally, I’d love to see those titles gather dust, but I’ll probably need their medical talents again eventually. I even have projects that will hopefully not involve surgery and triage, and not just for my Enchanter and Alchemist. Those two I want to have look into the composite armor more, and see just how much they can enchant it, especially with full access to my nodes and plenty of time.

Leo, I want to organize more expeditions to keep an eye on the forests and mountains around me. Seeing the Southwood get to patrolling his borders makes me realize the fog of war has probably crept back in around my own territory. Poe does a great job still, but having them work together gets me so much more information.

And speaking of information, Honey is going to have a field day when she gets back. She apparently gave some of her bees standing orders to keep an eye on the library and report to Poe if anything happens, and it looks like something has happened. There’s a new librarian! She looks every bit the shy nerdy scribe according to the reports, and also looks good enough at tending books to not just go and reorganize everything on the first day.

In fact, she seems gearing up to do the opposite. Yvonne has been working to implement a version of the dewey decimal system and impose order, which has been slow going, but effective. I don’t remember the specifics of all the categories, but the basic concept of organizing by categories and using numbers to make it theoretically infinitely expandable is easy enough to remember. Actually putting the numbers on the books is a bit more difficult, but Honey’s bees are able to write clearly at a small scale. It’s not laminated printer quality, but it’ll definitely work.

While I don’t exactly have projects for Aranya, Yvonne, Ragnar, and Aelara, they’re still intending on coming home at the same time, and bringing the kobolds with them. If those four aren’t careful, maybe I will be able to rope them into something to help out the kobolds. Or maybe my antkin, come to think of it.

The kobolds are still arguing a lot about what they specifically want to do, but Aranya is feeling pretty confident they’ll want to join with the ratkin or spiderkin, with only a few expected to want to live on the surface. Sure, they’d like freedom, but the surface is so open and scary! Underground might also be scary, but at least it’s a scary they understand. So yeah, with the kick in the pants of having a deadline, it looks like most of them are deciding to give me a chance.

I wonder if they’ll want to help with the antkin, or maybe feel special kinship with them. My newest enclave is still trying to find its proper place, with the progress bars stagnating at about the 25% point. I’m pretty surprised about that. They seemed pretty on the ball to me, but that’s way earlier than the spiderkin were having problems.

It’s not too difficult to see why, though. My ratkin and spiderkin seemed to have a pretty good idea of what they were when advancing, but the antkin are having a bit of an identity crisis. While they seem pretty interested in the idea of interacting with outsiders, they are all over the map on how to actually do it.

They’ve basically split into factions, though I haven’t been able to identify any leaders among them. Maybe that’s why they’re having troubles? The leaders of my other enclaves don’t seem too worried, but I still think I should see if there’s anything that can be done, so I ask Teemo to pop in and see if he can figure out if anything is wrong, or if I’m reading the room wrong.

“At least it’s cooled off in there a bit by now,” comments Teemo as he makes his way to the enclave. After their initial construction blitz with forming magma, they’ve eased off a lot on building, letting the heat slowly dissipate. I wonder if they’ll try to tame a couple tundra wolves or something. I’m pretty sure that’d be a solution that flies in the face of the laws of thermodynamics, but what is magic for if not at least mocking the natural laws behind their back?

Whatever long term solution they come up with, they don’t seem to have one yet, or at least not one Teemo notices as he starts wandering the enclave. The larger central receiving room is a lot less busy than it was, with most of the magmyrm having split into tunnels for their own little factions.

There’s a ranching faction who seem to be mostly concerned with domesticating… basically every denizen they can get their little pincer-hands on. The tunnelbore ants aren’t a surprise, they were using those from day one to expand and shape the colony, but they’ve also picked up several slimes, a pair of wyrms, and what looks like a swarm of spiders. I imagine they were using the wyrms to help with construction, but I don’t know what they have planned for the slimes. The spiders are easy enough, at least: they’re also after silk.

I doubt they’re going to be able to compete with my spiderkin. In fact, judging by the simple toga-like robe they’re wearing, I’d say the spiderkin have already been by to clothe them in the basics. Still, more clothing manufactury is not a bad idea.

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They might not be looking to make clothes, though. The next faction Teemo looks in on are clearly the ones from my medical brigade. My antkin seem inclined to make their own bandages and trade for clothing. I also see what the ranchers might want the slimes for, as the medics definitely have a few domesticated healing slimes tucked away in little alcoves, idly bubbling in contentment.

They also have surgical tools, which I’d bet they got from the ratkin. We still don’t have medical grade steel, but a little bit of magic does the trick to close that particular gap. They also have a lot of carvings on their walls, ceilings, and floors. Teemo even spots a room with what amount to rows of shelves detailing the anatomies of my dwellers, as well as the more common delvers.

While the medics look like they want to take a scientific approach to healing, the alchemy faction is looking to blend it with magic, a lot like Queen runs her own lab. They also have carved shelves, but this time full of alchemical formulae or diagrams of plants and critters, and how to extract whatever bits they need.

They are probably the ones most using their affinity, at least so far. They’ve made little bunsen burner things that simply have a small blob of rock instead of a burning flame. They use their magic to turn it to magma, and have all the heat they could ask for. It looks like they’re studying the go juice right now. It works differently on delvers and denizens, so they’re probably taking advantage of their transitional state to see if they can get anything interesting to happen. Nobody seems to have exploded, so at least they seem to be following good lab safety guidelines.

From the fusion over to pure magic, there’s an enchanting faction, too. They’re definitely taking more after Thing’s lessons than Queen’s. They’re also the only ones I’ve seen that are using carved tablets to store information, instead of leaving it immobile on whatever surface is convenient.

That’s probably because they’re also carving their runes into other tablets, and realized they could make their text mobile. From what Teemo can understand, they’re working on a cooling enchantment, and a different form of a durability enchantment that would be good for roads. I guess they must have been hanging out with Coda some, too.

Which leads me to the last faction: the engineers. They’re working on defenses, and it looks like they remember helping set up the lava labyrinth. At the moment, they’re working on prototyping axles, gears, and other assemblies, making sure they’ll handle the loads of whatever they need them for. I bug Teemo to look over their designs, and though he can’t make heads nor tails of it, it looks like they want to use a lot of resetting pit traps with a drawbridge to secure the entrance to the enclave.

It reminds me of some of my designs for defenses in Dwarf Fortress, though they’re missing the large serrated disks. Probably for the best, honestly. Those kinds of traps are pretty messy in the game, and I don’t imagine they’d be any less so in real life. I’d rather not have to deal with invaders being splattered all over every surface. Besides, pit traps are a lot less lethal, and I imagine the medic faction would have a problem with the more lethal options.

Unfortunately, while the factions themselves seem pretty stable, the memberships are constantly changing. I don’t think anyone is trying to specifically be a part of all of them at once, but there’s definitely a lot of turnover between them. The medics seem the most stable, but also get the fewest recruits. Medical knowledge is a lot to take in, so a lot of the magmyrm never even make a serious attempt at it.

“Well, that’s a mess.”

Yeah. And you didn’t see any leaders for the factions? I could have missed them.

Teemo shakes his head. “Nah, Boss. You think leadership’s holding them back?”

It seems like the most obvious answer, right?

“Sure, but what’s the obvious solution? There’s a lot of groups wanting to do their own thing, so we probably shouldn’t just put one of them in charge, right?”

I chew over the situation, feeling like something about it is familiar. Is there an overarching theme the antkin can unite behind? On the surface, there’s not a whole lot to go on. Ranching, Medicine, Alchemy, Enchanting, Engineering. Some will make things, but not all. Some are more of a service, some are more magical, others more scientific…

Hmm.

“Feels like you’ve got something. Care to share with the rest of the class?”

Pft, you already know what I’m thinking of if you’re putting it that way. They’re all trying to learn in their own fields. It’s like a big disorganized school. Well, a disorganized college. Some have already chosen their majors, others are still trying to figure it out.

Teemo nods at my train of thought. “So organize them like a big school?”

Couldn’t hurt. Five colleges, each headed by a Dean, with a sixth acting as Headmaster. Probably pull that one from the undecided, so nobody gets too much power. It’d allow for ties, but that’ll just mean they need to argue it out more.

Teemo hums as he processes the basic idea. “That sounds like something they can work with. And if it doesn’t work, Aranya’ll be back before too long anyway.” He heads off to suggest it to the ants, and they’re pretty eager to try it. They’re all smart enough to see something needed to change, but couldn’t think of anything that would still let them have their burgeoning identity.

I chuckle to myself as they get to work, jokingly calling it Antpimple Academy in my mind. Teemo perks up at that, making me quickly respond.

Don’t you dare suggest that name to them!

My Voice chuckles. “Who, me? I’d never! That’s a terrible name anyway. It should definitely be Ratblister instead.”