Milo

As we walk through the hilly terrain labeled as a safe zone, I trip, and fall. Me being the unlucky bastard I am, I fell off a drop off, right in the mouth of a cave…

I jump to my feet, and wipe the blood from my nose, and slowly slide into the cave. Theo follows behind me. We walk in, and Theo grunts, and rubs a hand along a wall.

I turn, and bring my torch close, but as it draws near, Theo slaps it away, and says. “Dumbass. Gonna get us both killed.” his gravelly voice echoes throughout the cavern.

I raise an eyebrow, but copy his actions, and pull away, my hands covered with a thick, black dust. “Coal?”

He nods. “That torch in here, at all, was dangerous, as it could light natural gasses but much less that close…”

I nod as understanding dawns. “Isn't this stuff kind of expensive? I don't really know what it's used for other than heating buildings.”

Theo nods. “No ones quite sure why, but the southern merchants will buy it for shit tons of money. Then they ship it off to their distant lands. No doubt it will bring in quite a lot of money, and trade for your town. People will probably try to set up a town down here.”

I nod. “Well, more money is always a good thing.”

Theo grimaces, but doesn’t respond.

He steps deeper into the cave, and returns with a green rock. “Copper too. They will surely set up mining operations down here. You’re probably going to have to deal with shadow guilds, or gangs forming.”

I grimace, but nod with understanding. “I'm glad we were the first ones to discover this, so I can preemptively speak with my secretary, and put restrictions on the trade of coal.”

They quickly leave, and inform the others who have no serious thoughts on it. Other than Luther who was very interested in the location of the cave.

As we make our way out of the cave, I quickly find my way to the secretary.

“So… Gertrude….” I dig deep into my mind to remember this poor old lady's name. “The seventh floor of the dungeon is a safe area. It has large quantities of coal, and copper, and I want to set up restrictions on trade, allowing me to profit, everybody else to profit, and to restrict the construction of shadow guilds, or gangs.”

She nods and sighs. “First of all. You really need to get some law enforcement. You are technically a Baron, because of all the land you own, so your word is law here. You need to get some guards, or law enforcement.”

I nod, “Do I have enough money in the coffers to fund that? I know that you’ve payed two guards to collect taxes from people leaving the guild, but other than that i'm unaware of how much funds we can allocate to that.”

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“Well…” She rolls a pen in her fingers. “You aren't really spending your funds on much in your territory to be honest.”

I grimace, and agree. “True. What should I spend it on?”

She puts up a finger, and as she speaks she raises another finger for every point she brings up. “Waste, food, and water management, as well as the construction of roads, you should start putting together some basic amenities, like housing, and we probably want to hire a city planner, because this dungeon is very profitable so your city in time should grow quite large, and we want to lay a good foundation, security, defenses as we are right on the edge of Orc territory. I’d need time to come up with more, but those are the big ones.”

I gulp. “How much of that can we actually afford?”

She sighs. “You’d be surprised. We aren’t making absurd amounts of money, but enough we should be able to hire the city planner, some security, build some roads, and with the addition of large scale mining inside the dungeon, we could have a rapid explosion of income. I recommend we put a 10% tax, one everything piece of mined ore coming out of that dungeon.”

I nod. “Let's enact that tax on mining immediately, and then I'm going to have you… do all that. Also, give yourself a raise, a large one. I also want some money set aside for me, separately. I want to start my own mining company, and as I'm the first one to discover it, I should be able to do so quickly.”

She nods, “I'll begin registering you right now, but you can begin some informal mining inside the dungeon, as soon as you want, you just won't be able to sell large quantities of it. Also, we need to construct a bank, a full scale city is moving tremendous quantities of money through it, and keeping all of that in a safe somewhere isn't very safe at all.”

I nod, “Ok, priorities, set up tax, build bank, hire security, set up coal mining business.”

She quickly agrees, and begins to work, rapidly writing contracts. She gives me some coin, and tells me to find some suitable miners, and get them down there.

I nod, and quickly begin looking for labourers. I find a group of 20 or so people, who have little experience with mining but I also find someone who has a background in coal mining to act as the foreman, and I pay a small party of adventurers to escort them down there. They agree, to a couple copper per day, of work, with a bonus, of an extra copper per pound of coal found.

They will have to set up camp down on the safe floor as I cant keep paying people to bring them, up, and down, in, and out of the dungeon, every night. So they bring enough rations to last them a couple weeks, as well as tents, and mining gear, all paid for by me.

All in all, the prep cost me about one gold, and I would be losing maybe a silver or two per day until they started getting coal, up, and out of there to sell.

When I return to Gertrudes office, she hands me two contracts. “First of all, I want you to promote me to a city official. It won't have a huge upgrade, in pay, but it means that I can write these laws, and contracts, and put them in place myself without making you come in here for every little thing.”

I nod, and without a second thought sign it, and congratulate Gertrude on her promotion.

Secondly she hands me another contract. “Sign right there, and you will officially be the owner of Milo’s mining company. Also we need a name for the town.”

I sign the other document quickly, and try to hand it back to her. “Keep it, put it somewhere safe, it registers you as the owner of Milos mining company.”

I nod, and tilt my head. “And for the name… Questford. I think it holds some significance as this dungeon is a perfect training ground for young adventurers.”

She nods, and scrolls it down on a piece of paper. “Fine by me….” she mutters, and sweeps the paper away into a vault under her desk.

She turns her attention back to me. “I should be able to hire the city planner, but I'm going to leave security up to you. Remember, avoid just mercenaries, we want people who won't just take any bribes.”

I gulp, and nod quickly. “I'll be off to find that…” I quickly turn, and leave her office. “Maybe I can ask Ivan…”