The plan couldn’t be simpler.
Pipeleaf was harvested in stages as the leaves ripened: by mid-fall, the fields would be empty. Once picked, the leaves had to be cured for several weeks, first on open-air racks and then in specialized barns. Once the curing process was complete, the leaves were twisted into ropes, and the ropes coiled inside baskets or barrels for transport. Pacifica had told me that we were about three-quarters of the way through the curing season. Most of the smaller plantations, including her parents’, had already handed their entire harvests over to the merchant vessels that ran up and down the river. The larger, wealthier plantations, however, produced enough that they offloaded it in stages — meaning they’d still have pipeleaf on hand, either in the final stages of curing or already packed for transport.
So, to get the powdered pipeleaf we needed to set up my formation, the goblins would sneak into Planter’s Bend, onto one of the larger plantations, and steal me what I needed. Pacifica had identified the wealthiest man in town as the mayor, Karlus Presdjees. It was his family’s plantation, in fact, that gave the town of Planter’s Bend its name. I figured he could spare us the leaf without too much pain. The Presdjees plantation was riverfront — it had its own dock and everything, which gave us an easy way in and out. We’d obviously be doing this at night, when the goblins’ [Night Vision] gave them the advantage. I’d mutated a tree trunk into a serviceable dugout canoe for the heist team, which so far included Nar-shesh and…
Yeah, just Nar-shesh. New agenda item: assemble a heist team.
“Hey, everyone,” I announced to the goblins. “I’m looking for volunteers for a potentially dangerous mission outside the dungeon.” I then briefly explained the plan, and why I needed the pipeleaf — to lay down an [Azoth-Gathering Formation], at as large a scale as possible, thereby increasing the amount of azoth I had to work with and loosening the primary bottleneck on my ability to defend us. “Again, I want to stress that this is not mandatory. You do not have to volunteer, and deciding to sit this one out will not cost you any face or goodwill. Anyone who is interested, though, can speak to Nar-shesh, who’ll be taking point on this.”
I decided not to actively observe the goblins as they deliberated. It wasn’t as though I could entirely tune out anything within my domain, but I could at least try to give them some small amount of privacy. Plus, they would be more reluctant to give me genuine feedback if they thought they were constantly being surveilled and monitored. I wanted to avoid that: one reliable sign of a toxic organizational culture, and therefore a doomed organization, was that internal channels of communication were stunted or actively suppressed.
I was reluctant to send any goblins away from the dungeon for an extended period of time while they were still so low-level and defenseless. The obvious solution would be to beef them up with [Empower Minion], but I wasn’t going to do anything that even looked like pushing minionization on them — especially with [Mutagenic Domain] exposing them to risk of random mutation every time they levelled up. I wondered, was there a way to unlearn or remove skills?
Still, getting my magical power-generation infrastructure online was an urgent enough priority that I’d had to push past that reluctance. In addition to the pipeleaf heist, I’d asked Teekas to escort Immir-shesh and his sister Enshunna as they searched the forest for the other materials I needed for [Azoth-Gathering Formation]. She wasn’t specced for combat, but I figured that anyone who stumbled across them wouldn’t know that — all they’d see was “Lv. 10,” which was pretty scary compared to the average levels I’d seen of the villagers when they’d showed up with torches and pitchforks. One of the materials required, a specific kind of ochre clay, couldn’t be found locally — eventually, they’d need to venture far outside of my domain to gather it, a journey of a week or more. I needed more minions, and stronger minions, to protect such an expedition.
Ergiza was excused from resource-gathering on account of needing to care for her baby. Instead, she’d posted up in the cave with the blackboards — I’d started thinking of it as “the laboratory" — discussing how we were going to integrate the azoth-gathering formation into the dungeon. This doubled as a crash course for me in basic geomancy and occultism. Formations weren’t reducible to anything as convenient or simple as magic circuit diagrams. I mean, fundamentally that’s what they were, but their function was impacted by any number of environmental factors. Ergiza would need to conduct some surveying of the area to finalize our plans, but the process of placing the power-generating array for maximum effectiveness was simplified considerably by the fact that we didn’t have to fit it to the landscape — I could fit the landscape to us.
Her tutelage hadn’t yet been enough for me to wholly digest the knowledge that [Formations-] had deposited in my head, let alone improve the skill to regular [Formations], but it was still productive. I could feel my understanding growing. Besides all of that, I just liked learning new things! It was a rare bright spot in what had, so far, been a pretty stressful reincarnation. Maybe eventually she’d even teach me how to do some of her weapon enchantments.
Elsewhere, I noticed Nar-shesh trying to get my attention, and spun off a parallel awareness with [Walk and Talk] to answer him. “What’s up?” Standing with him were Sarsu, Harig, Kizurra, and a middle-aged goblin woman I hadn’t spoken with before. “Is this my crew of daring thieves?”
“Yep, these are your leaf-rustlers,” he confirmed, indicating them with a wave of his arm. “Plus, I guess sending those humans packing must have impressed them, because they’ve also all volunteered to get minionized.”
“Oh! That's unexpected. Are you sure?” The last question was directed at my potential new recruits.
“Don’t make a big production out of it,” Kizurra said with a sneer.
“Be more respectful to the realmheart!” Sarsu smacked the back of his head.
“Oh, you wanna go, old man?” Kizurra snapped, whirling on him — only with fists raised, I was pleased to note, and crossbow still slung safely over his back. “Touch me again and you’ll learn all about how much respect I have for my elders.”
“Hey!” Nar-shesh said sharply. “Both of you shut the fuck up. You’re embarrassing me.” That got both of them back in line. He pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. “Anyway, I thought they should probably get raised a few levels before we leave for the mission. Give ourselves the best chance of success, and all.”
Hm. I supposed he had a point. The increase in power and available skills could be the difference between life and death. Four goblins, all level 2 or 3… so about ten levels. I expected to see one mutation out of a batch that size, based on my earlier experiments. I’d need to stay ready, in case that mutation’s emergence was as traumatic as Teekas’ had been.
Still, I was excited! There remained various ethical problems with this situation that I couldn’t see a way to get free of, but I at least had the informed consent of the goblins. I wondered what skills they’d gain access to, and what the mutation might be. I hoped it would be something cool and useful, something the goblin that got it would like. I hoped, at least, that it wouldn’t be something [Fungus]-themed.
“Okay!” I said, trying not to sound too inappropriately peppy. “I can do that right now, if that works for everyone.” They all indicated that it did, so I hit them with some rapid-fire [Bind Minion]s and started levelling them up.
“Wait, is that it?” Sarsu asked, sounding a little panicked as he stared at his own system menu. “Shouldn’t there be a ceremony or something?”
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“Nope!” I said. “Moonlight’s burning, we don’t have time for that.” Even as I brushed him off in the moment, though, I considered his question. The idea of dressing up what was, for me, a purely professional and transactional relation was distasteful. Minionization’s significance was only, and should only be, practical.
But, as with the mutation question, weren’t my minions entitled to their own perspective? Even if I wasn’t interested in being cast in whatever role their social scripts assigned to me, insisting that my feelings about the situation were the only important ones felt… well, a bit tyrannical. I couldn’t my-way-or-the-highway my way to a revolutionary future — I’d just end up reproducing the same shit I was fighting against. Plus, if the monsters were coming to this with pre-existing cultural assumptions that I knew nothing about and wasn’t necessarily willing to meet, having some sort of ceremony for minionization could probably help everyone come to a shared understanding about what the relationship meant.
Devising such a ceremony would have to wait, though, until we weren’t in a state of impending crisis. Or if we were ever not in a state of impending crisis, I guess. Man, this shit sucked!!
The levelling concluded without anyone’s teeth falling out, for which I was thankful. “How’s everybody feeling?” I asked. “All good? Any surprises?”
“My feet feel weird,” Harig said with a frown. They tapped a heel on the cavern floor experimentally. It made a distinctly un-fleshy sound. This prompted the other goblins to gather around and observe as they pulled one of their moccasins off to reveal that their foot had turned to stone. Or, it had some sort of stony armor on it, at least. I watched as Harig wiggled their toes. There didn’t seem to be any loss of mobility, though it did make an audible grating sound. “Huh,” they said, knocking their stony skin with their knuckles.
“That’s a good omen, right?” Sarsu said. “A stonefoot goblin, in our tribe. The Mother is smiling on what we do.”
“I’ll go tell Abzu,” the goblin woman whose name I still didn’t know said. “He’ll know if it’s a good omen or not.” She darted away in a hurry to go find the old man.
The mutations were supposed to reflect my dungeon mythos, but I didn’t really get how turning Harig’s feet to stone did that. Was it just because of the [Earth]? All the caves? “Is this, like, a known mutation?” I asked. “You’re all talking about it like it’s something you’ve heard of.” By this point, the rest of the goblins, drawn by the commotion, had gathered around and were looking excitedly at Harig’s mutated feet.
“Yeah, stonefoots show up in the histories now and again,” Nar-shesh said. “It’s a warrior’s blessing. Lots of tribes rose to power with a stonefoot war-chief.”
“Huh. How does that work?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem like it would make you much better in a fight, is it just symbolic?”
“No, it’s practical,” Nar-shesh said. “What they do is, it gives ‘em a special skill, and they-”
Harig crouched and leapt into the air, their feet easily clearing the heads of the goblins crowded around them. As they fell back to earth, streamers of glowing azoth trailed from their feet. When they landed, a shockwave blasted out from the point of impact, knocking the nearest goblins off their feet and sending the rest stumbling back.
“-Yeah, that,” Nar-shesh finished.
“I see,” I said. “Okay, new rule, everyone! New rule! No using area-of-effect skills in the dungeon while there’s other people in the area of effect! Harig, be more careful in the future. Someone could have gotten hurt.”
Harig managed to look contrite for a moment before their younger sibling, who was as one might expect going not only ballistic but downright intercontinental in response to all of this, physically clambered up their body and wrapped around their head while babbling a rapid-fire stream of excited questions and pleas for them to do it again.
I supposed this answered my question of where the mutation had come from, mythos-wise - it was a [Goblins] thing. Just looking at the name the system had given me — Planter’s Bend Goblin Warren — it was obvious that it already considered them a major part of my dungeon schtick. Which, y’know, fair enough — they were. I hoped the system wouldn’t try to lock me into being The Goblins DungeonTM too rigidly, though: the revolution was supposed to be for everyone.
“Well, I guess once everyone’s ready you can just head out,” I said to Nar-shesh. “It should just be a straight shot down the river and then back up again.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, a little distantly. His eyes were on the others, still collectively marvelling over the small miracle of stone feet. I didn’t think he was jealous — some other emotion, probably. After a while, he gave a small smile and shook his head. “Thanks, Persephone,” he said. “We all owe you a lot.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. I felt uncomfortable accepting gratitude for doing the bare minimum that people owed to each other — if I’d even done that much. “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you, and all.”
He snorted. “Yeah, tell that to the humans,” he said. The humor in his tone failed to entirely conceal the anger underneath. The fingers on his blackened right hand disappeared into his pocket, but my domain proprioception told me they were clenched into a fist.
“Nar-shesh,” I began, cautiously. “I’m telling you this not because I don’t trust you, but to make sure that there are no misunderstandings between us. I don’t want any diversions on this job. No killing, unless there’s no way around it.”
A muscle in his jaw flexed, then relaxed. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Quick and quiet. In and out.”
I refrained from making a ‘that’s what she said’ joke. “A day of reckoning is coming,” I said instead. “But it’s not here yet. Before anything else, we need the power to make them take us seriously.”
“That day is coming, though,” he said, a small challenge in the words.
“Oh, it’s coming,” I said darkly. “And when it gets here, it’s gonna hit like a motherfucker.”
----------------------------------------
“Enshunna!” Teekas hissed urgently. “Don’t... move...”
She should have known something was up. Should have known it was too good to be true. Should have, especially with [Awareness], seen this coming. But she hadn’t, and now they were all in immediate, serious danger.
The foraging expedition had been successful beyond their wildest expectations, at first. The woods, already dead and brown for the winter, should have had little to offer. As Teekas, the arrogant weaver-magician Immir-shesh, and his sister Enshunna had ventured south from the dungeon, though, they’d found more and more signs of unexpected, unseasonal life. Amidst the cold-withered carcasses of nightdew fern, green fronds uncurled as though it was early spring and not almost winter. Fruits and nuts hung from tree branches, well outside those species’ growing seasons.
They’d been happy to write it off as good fortune — especially when they found the first three-star catblooms. The small white flowers were a crucial ingredient for Persephone’s [Azoth-Gathering Formation], but one they’d had little hope of finding with winter so close. The trail of floral breadcrumbs had led them further and further south, the woods growing deeper and deeper around them. The trees grew towering, the underbrush thick and tangled.
That was what had caused the first stirrings of concern in Teekas and the siblings. Even the human lands they’d travelled through to reach the dungeon still bore the marks, albeit faded over decades, of long habitation by the goblins that had once called them home: clearings that had once been gardens where squash, beans, and maize were grown; coppiced trees, their stumps crowned with the long, straight shoots that found countless uses in goblin industry; open tracts in the forest, cleared by fire to promote new growth and provide habitats for game animals.
Here, though, there was none of that. It was as though the last goblins to walk these woods had done so not decades but centuries ago — if they’d ever been here at all.
They had pressed on, despite their growing unease. Persephone’s instructions had been clear and emphatic — however much they could bring her of the reagents she needed for the formation, she needed even more than that. And more they found: three-star catbloom, vitae truffles of shocking size, the pine-galls of the red warrior fly. They’d filled baskets, then satchels, then pockets when all other vessels overflowed. All the while, the night air grew thicker and heavier. Then Enshunna had spotted the biggest spray of catbloom they’d seen yet, a jubilant fountain of night-blooming white between two roots of a towering tree.
That had brought them to the present moment, and the present danger.
Behind Enshunna, many-legged body coiled around the tree’s mossy trunk, a monster-beast peered down at her. Its slit-pupiled eyes glowed green in the night, lit by the guileless curiosity of a predator. Its status bar read Lesser Woodland Tatzelwurm - Lv. 9.