True to Helen’s word, the knights were ready by the time John was done with the tree. He, however, still had to take time to care for his plants, the chookers and deal with the land sale contract sent over by the Baroness. It wasn’t until an hour later that the five knights, BR, and he made their way to the new location by portal. Upon their arrival the knights spread out to examine the area, while John opened the staircase that led down to the Ley Line Tap for BambooRooster. Once the gnome was situated, he began the tedious task of preparing new buildings; fortunately, he had blueprints of the originals so he wasn’t starting from scratch.
By the time lunch rolled around he’d set up a house, the barn, the chooker coop, and not twelve but twenty-four greenhouses; though he had plans to construct easily that many again before he logged out for the night. Satisfied, he lay down in the virtual world and sat up in the real one where he quickly went through his small exercise routine and took care of his bodily needs.
Wandering out into the kitchen area, pulled out a frozen meal, and popped it into the microwave. While he waited he brought up the virtual reality overlay of his headset and began browsing the forums; something he knew he should have been doing more of.
There were plenty of threads and topics, but many of them were hidden behind paywalls and didn’t really look relevant to him anyway. Of the free topics, there were only a handful he actually bothered to read. Of the topics the most interesting was the bit about attributes; apparently there was a soft cap of one hundred in any attribute, but that could be extended by taking one of the Enhanced Attribute feats, which (according to the feats’ texts) would allow you to grow the specific attribute by another hundred.
So when Helen told Axia that not everyone needed a strength of one hundred, she was referencing the soft cap, he mused as he moved on to look at more threads.
Another interesting one was on hiring NPC workers; it turned out that the bonuses from Overseer fell off if you were away from your workers for more than eight hours. That was good to know, though he figured it wouldn’t be a problem since he always left his avatar logged in anyway and rarely took trips more than a few hours long.
He paused to consider once more whether he really wanted to hire people to work for him. It wasn’t a bad idea, and there’d always be call for lower level ingredients; for training new characters if nothing else. While high tier crops would bring in the most money even mid-tier plants would be good. He also needed to find someone to take care of animals and maybe someone who could cook and brew; having those last two ‘in house’ would increase his profit margin by a fair amount.
The microwave beeped, probably for the fifth, or maybe sixth time, and he realized he’d gotten lost in the weeds. Closing the virtual overlay, he took out his food and quickly ate it, then got back to browsing.
If he was going to have employees he needed to get them from somewhere, and he doubted Runic Rock had an abundance of people who weren’t already employed or working in some way; that meant getting them from another village, town, or city. Given what Grandma Loren had said about the inner parts of the empire bein insular, he wondered if it was even possible to recruit from there. He could, of course, pivot to recruiting players, but he didn’t have a lot to offer them; it’d be just as easy for them to start their own farm or get their own animals and he wasn’t keen on paying real money to anyone.
“What’s got you looking so annoyed?” Came his father’s voice, and John swiped away all the virtual overlays to see his father popping his own meal into the microwave.
“Just trying to figure out a staffing issue,” he replied. “I could hire players, but they’ll want pay in real money, which is more expensive for me than paying in in-game cash. I could hire NPCs but I’ll have a harder time finding them, and I don’t even know where to start.”
“What do you need employees for?” Derrick asked.
“Well, apparently I can take a feat tree that allows me to share some of my bonuses with people who are working for me, so I’ll be able to play both wide and tall. Also, I need someone to take care of the animals because I’m not specialized in it; it’d also be nice to have a cook and a brewer in house, though I suppose I could do without those if necessary,” the younger man explained.
“Have you considered joining or founding a guild?”
“What?”
“A guild, you know, a place where people of like mind get together to help each other out?”
“I know what a guild is,” John said annoyed. “I was just surprised.”
“I know!” his father replied cheerfully and John made an exasperated noise. “Anyway, a guild with people who want the same thing and support each other wouldn’t be a bad idea, would it? While being independent and reaping all the profits for yourself has appeal, it also has the downside of having no support from… well… anyone you can’t pay or who doesn’t owe you for something else. Like, for instance you’ve got some knightly order protecting you, right? But they’re probably not there because you’re paying them are they?”
“No, they’re there because I made a contract with their god, and technically they aren’t even required to protect me, just the tree,” John admitted.
“Right, so they’re protecting you pretty much out of the goodness of their hearts, so it might behoove you to find some other type of protection or support. A guild doesn’t have to just be people making products, if you have the members pay some kind of dues you could hire people to protect investments, do the selling and haggling for you, even find people to work for you; not to mention someone to do all the paperwork that comes from being part of a guild and someone to figure out taxes and such,” Derrick said, punctuating his points by waving a fork he’d pulled out of a drawer.
“You make it sound more like a company than a guild,” John noted.
“Guilds are the precursors to companies and unions. Why do you think they’re a staple of medieval stories? Sure, you might have a dozen stone masons in a city, but they’re all part of the Mason’s guild, which helps them and takes care of things political, religious, social, while making sure they get fair compensation and are held to a certain standard,” his father explained as he removed his own meal from the microwave. “And if it helps you to think of it in terms of a company, then do so. You want to farm, that’s fine, you can do that, but it’ll be easier if you’re under someone else’s umbrella. Someone who will take your product and turn it into profit by connecting people with other specialties and making sure everyone gets a fair slice of the pie.”
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“How would I even go about setting up a guild?” John wondered.
“Well, I’d start by finding people with the same idea or goals, and pitching it to them. Or perhaps find an already forming group and suggest that if they included you that you could offer them something useful; like land right next to what’s about to become a commercial hub. Guilds always need someplace to set up after all,” his father suggested.
John mulled that over for a minute. “Alright, I can see the benefits, but what downsides would I be looking at?”
“Slightly less short term profits, you’d have to actually interact with people and you’ll probably need to learn to make spreadsheets,” Derrick rattled off and his son groaned.
“Why does it have to be spreadsheets?!”
“John, spreadsheets are love, spreadsheets are life!”
“I hate you.”
“Love you too!” his father replied as he picked up his meal and wandered back to his room.
John watched him go with a less than amused look, then brought the virtual screens back up and navigated to the forums once more, now looking for guilds that might fit the criteria.
—
Logging back in some time later, John found everything pretty much as he’d left it, with the only exception being the small gazebo-like construction the knights had thrown up. Seeing that everything was in order, he got back to work, and within a few hours had the second set of greenhouses completed. Stepping back from the final one he took a long moment to consider. It might be better to have some materials imported and have someone with an actual profession rebuild them; it would obviously lead to better quality and possibly bonuses for the things grown inside. He decided to ask someone about that later, perhaps one of the knights? Elenia could probably point him in the right direction.
Next on the agenda was the walkways; he wasn’t going to spend time schlepping through mud again, no thank you. A few hours later saw that project finished as well, and he then took the time to connect the house’s basement to the tap room, where BR was still working diligently at the construction of the device in question. That had taken up most of the rest of the day, however, so he put his avatar to bed, and logged off a little early to get some extra sleep.
When he logged in the next morning, BR was waiting for him.
“All done,” the gnomish player said.
“Great!” John exclaimed. “Should we go test it?”
“Sure, but don’t blame me if your core breaks.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t. How many cores can it actually hold?” John asked as they started walking toward the stairs down.
“Depends on the size of the cores. At the size we normally find? About three hundred or so? Smaller cores would fit more, but the only way to make them smaller would be to refine them, and in that instance it may be better to combine them back into bigger cores,” the enchanter explained.
“That seems like a lot,” John said with slight skepticism.
“Well, the tap is a yard to a side, which means the surface area of the top is a square yard, if you convert that to square inches it’s approximately one thousand two hundred ninety-six. Each core is approximately one and a half inches in diameter, let’s assume they take up four square inches each, so divide that number by four and you get a little over three hundred; but things rarely work out perfectly, so might as well just call it three hundred and take any extras as a bonus,” the gnome explained.
“Huh, I guess that makes sense,” John admitted as he spun out a ball of light so they could see their way down the dark stairs. A moment later they were in the tap room, and he could see the finished product. The nebula marble had been etched and chiseled with esoteric patterns, all of which had been filled in with what appeared to be iron.
“What rank is it?” He asked.
“I managed to eek out Good, which is why it’s lined with iron. That should last a year before it burns away entirely, at which point you’ll need an enchanter to refill it; you can get it touched up before that though, and give that you’ll be running items from it constantly I suggest you do,” the enchanter explained, and John Inspected the device.
[Ley Line Tap]
* Type: Device
* Description: Made from a cubic yard of Nebula Marble and lined with iron, this device is capable of taping into a Ley Line and extracting mana. This device may be attuned to nearby enchantments to feed them mana. Because this enchantment was crafted by someone with the Enchanting Master feat and the Born Enchanter racial trait its efficiency has increased by 50%.
* Enchantment Efficiency: 150%
* Enchantment Lining: Iron
* Enchantment Duration: 1 year
* Mana Regeneration: 4.5% of maximum every hour.
“Four point five percent charge rate isn’t too fast for the core, right?” John asked, slightly concerned.
“Nah, cores don’t break if you fill them quickly, only if you drain them too fast. According to my books the limit for safe drawing is one tenth the core’s capacity at once. Given the size of your core you shouldn’t have much problem,” BR replied.
John nodded then called the core out of his inventory and placed it gently atop the tap. Immediately it sunk into the stone as the carvings warped around it to make space. Mere seconds later it began to glow with a faint internal light.
“Looks like it’s working,” John said happily, then willed four gold out of his inventory and handed them to the gnome who returned the smile.
“What’s next?” BR asked.
“Temperature control for the house and chooker coops. While you do that I’ll find someone to build better greenhouses,” John replied.
“Didn’t you just build those?” the gnome asked, incredulously.
“Yeah, but I just realized that if I don’t have them rebuilt before we put enchantments in, I’m going to have to pay for them twice, and that’s dumber than building them just to tear them down,” John explained.
“Alright, I’ll give you that,” the enchanter agreed. “Heating and cooling enchantments shouldn’t cost much, let’s call it a silver per room?” BR Looked uncertain.
John shrugged. “Your guess as to actual pricing is as good as mine. How much does iron cost?”
“It’s pretty cheep thanks to all the iron items they pull out of the dungeon, so like, maybe ten coppers a pound? Though that’s probably way cheaper than anywhere else.” BR said.
“So let’s call it twenty coppers per pound of iron you use, and fifty coppers for every hour of work?” the farmer suggested.
“Less than I’d like, but a hundred percent return on the cost of iron is probably more than most people would expect,” BR grumbled. “But yeah, that’ll work until we know the actual value of things.”
Satisfied, John shook the other man’s hand, and they both returned to the surface.