With the gnome gone, I'm conflicted as to what I should do next. I could try to finish up my second floor or at least the rough outline of it. Or I could start digging out an area for the gnomes to settle in, even if it is temporary. After all, I'm pretty sure the gnomes will take up my offer, it is too good to turn down. So to prepare for their arrival, I should pick a location and excavate it so they can set up the start of their new village there. If they are unhappy with the spot or if they find a better place somewhere in my dungeon, I could always dig out a new room and repurpose the old excavated room.

Thinking that, since I have no idea how close the gnomes are since I've forgotten to ask the old gnome, I'll better get started with the excavation of the new village. They might just arrive in as much time as a couple of hours. Granted, it might also be a couple of days, weeks or even months but still, might as well get started.

First off, a village is all about location, location and location. There should be plenty of space, access to fresh water, plenty of natural resources such as wood and minerals and plenty of food or ways to get food. So with all this in mind, I get to it.

The entrance to the new village will be situated on the western wall of the safe room so I start there with my digging. For now, I keep the same dimensions as all of my tunnels on that floor. If I find out at a later date that there's a need for bigger tunnels, I can always dig another, larger tunnel alongside my entrance tunnel. After the tunnel is sufficiently long, around fifty metres or so, I start digging outwards, upwards and forwards, slowly creating an increasingly bigger area.

As far as how big an area I need to dig, I can only guess until the old gnome returns with the survivors. For now, I'll have to guess a bit as to how many there are and how much space they would need. If I were to go with an average of around 500 people that live in a medieval village, I could start calculating how much space such a population would approximately need. Say a family counts at least four people. In fact, most families were larger in the dark ages since it was, as a farmer, quite useful to have many children to help you work your land. But still, just to be on the safe side, let's work with a family of four. Even though they are gnomes and thus all presumably quite short of stature, I should not underestimate how much space a family needs to comfortably live. After all, bad living conditions can and will lead to morale problems and will thus lead to friction. So, around 500 gnomes divided by at least four gnomes per family equals 125 gnome families. Just living space alone for each family should be... let's take a 7x7 metre area for now. That comes down to...where's a calculator when you need it.

Sod it.

I'll just start digging and see how much space I end up.

I'm feeling rather sciency lately. I have a nice idea of how this space is going to look like. First, I start out with digging out a hexagonal shape that has a diameter of 800 metres.  At the six points of the hexagons, I shave off some more of the outer walls so they bend around and because of this, each shaved wall if viewed from above, looks like part of a circle.

Along the outer wall and to finish off the circles at the points of the hexagon, I dig a bunch of ditches. Next to three of the six outer walls, I dig more ditches that run parallel them. I make sure they are connected to the circular ditches so that when I fill them with water, they are all connected. When looked from above, the entire floor looks now like a benzene molecule. At the 'carbon' atom furthest away from the entrance, I dig a channel that will take the water away from the room, thus making it flow. At the 'carbon' where the entrance is, I create two waterfalls to feed the ditches.

 I now have plenty of space and also access to fresh water. Due to the proximity of the entrance and thus the proximity of the forest, I have no need for creating my own wood supply. Minerals are something they can go and look for themselves, after all, they are gnomes and thus most likely know how to create a proper mine. That leaves me with food.

As far as food goes, I intend to partially solve this by populating the streams that line this room with plenty of fish. I also intend to make the fishies respawn fast so that they are always in abundance. Other foodstuffs might be harder though. Funnily enough, my Yetis never brought back any soil. Never asked for any and they are not really big initiative takers.

Also, I never dug up any fertile soil since the tunnel I dug to the entrance come out of the hard rock and snow of the mountainside. Guess that the only thing I can do to rectify this is by sending out my two adorable yet slightly dimwitted terror monkeys and hope they bring back something nice. Would be even better if I can get them to bring back some seeds for edible plants. Would be even better if they can find me some wheat but I don't hold high hopes for that.

Looking through my list of available animals, I'm confronted with the lack of diversity in aquatic animals that I have access to. Looks like my best option for populating my streams will be trout. After all, the only aquatic animals that I have are trout, seals, moray eels and bobbit worms. And considering that moray eels are nightmare fuel... I'm reluctant to use them for such an environment. Seals are an option but they flourish in deeper waters, filled with fish and kelp. Besides, I would feel horrible if the gnomes were to club them to death all the time or something like it. Although, I have heard that sealskin is really good for making cold resistant clothing... No, let's stick with trout for now.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

After a while, one of my yetis returns with a big scoop of soil in each paw. As soon as the Yeti crosses the threshold and enters my dungeon, he unceremoniously drops his load. Thankfully, any staining is prevented by absorbing all of it.

All of a sudden, my mind and vision are flooded with... stuff.

 Congratulations!

New items, resources, organisms and plants have been added to your collection.

Items:

Rusty iron nail and broken mithril chainmail link

Resources:

Fertile soil (clay, sand, silt and humus)

Organisms:

Earthworms, fire ants, dung beetles, springtails, earwig and centipedes

Plants:

Grass and grass seeds, wild garlic seeds, bluebell seeds, fern and fern seeds and spores of forest mushrooms (Penny bun, honey fungus and fly agaric)

All of this will certainly help.

In fact, I'm already getting bright ideas. If I remember correctly, the honey fungus and the penny bun are edible and can thus provide some food for a new village. To start off with my mushroom farm, I create a plain, box-shaped room that branches out of one of the 'carbon atoms'. With the room dug out, I fill the entire floor with humus and add in a bunch of pine logs and branches. With the room good to go, I create two clouds of spores, made from both edible species, and basically make them explode a bit so the spores cover the entire floor of this room. Thanks to the fact that mushrooms don't need light to grow, I don't even need to add in a light source.

Light...source.

I knew I was forgetting something. To me, it looks like my new village area is brightly lid, but that's because of the way I 'see'. To any other person, this village area would appear to be pitch black. To remedy this problem, I create a setup similar to the one that I used in the big snowflake room. With that done, the village is now lit up with the thousands of tiny light squares.

Not much after I fixed the lighting situation, my other Yeti returns with a whole lot of goodies in his arms, which it unceremoniously drops in a pile on my dungeon floor.

Congratulations!

New items, fauna and flora have been added to your collection.

Items:

Blueberries, blackberries, shiny and nearly perfectly round pebble and fresh deer dung

Fauna:

Honey bee

Flora:

Blueberry bushes, brambles and rye

I wonder as to what goes on in the head of my Yeti's. I mean, why would anyone ever think it is a good idea to pick up deer dung when tasked with gathering foodstuffs. Is it because they are related to monkeys that they share their enthusiasm for excrement?

Anyway, this allows me to create more and a larger variety of foodstuffs.

Berries and rye. To bad that they didn't manage to find regular wheat since, if I recall correctly, rye takes more work for the same amount of nutritional value.

I create two new rooms, each one on a different 'carbon atom'. To make sure everything that I will plant that will grow properly, I liberally coat the floor in fertile soil. Since both berries and rye will need water to grow, I dig a small irrigation channel that will provide the fertile soil with plenty of water. The last thing that every plant needs, is a source of light. Something that sends out photons, preferably with a frequency that places it in the red or blue colour zone of the visible spectrum. Since the plants can also use some heat, I coat the ceiling of the rooms with a layer of dark stone and cold-fire ice, thus creating a mirror-like surface that will reflect any and all stray light. The light and heat in question will be provided by four huge stone braziers that are fueled by mana to prevent a buildup of smoke, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

With the basics set up, I plant the rye in neat rows by creating a bunch of rye seeds already in the soil. This way, I don't have to till the freshly created soil and thus save some time. Granted, the moment the gnomes harvest the grain, they will have to till it but at that point, that shouldn't be my problem anymore.

For the berries, I divide the room into two halves with on one side of the room a bunch of blueberry bushes and on the other side a bunch of brambles. Since the brambles are more of a safety risk than the blueberries, I make sure to place them at the back. This will hopefully save a lot of work for the seamstresses and will also ensure that the blueberries don't get smushed all the time by stumbling gnomes.

Plenty of space, access to fresh water, access to a variety of food and access to raw resources. The only thing I'm still missing is safety/defences but that is something I'm planning on doing when the gnomes are actually here.

All I can do now is wait and see if they show up.