A few moments ago in the negotiation chamber.
My eyes widened a bit in surprise hearing Alesandro translate those last few words from the display that the was using. I found it hard to believe that the dungeon who had acted against the kobolds would agree so easily to what it had indicated it was not truly willing to do, there had to be some condition that it hadn’t mentioned yet, as this thought crossed my mind, the dungeons display cleared of text and was replaced with one word. Alesandro, took a breath from his seat as he finished his translation spell yet again, and spoke the word, “However.”
The pause from the dungeon at this point caused everyone’s happiness at the success of our “negotiation” to go on hiatus. Obviously the dungeon had agreed in theory to the kobolds want of a haven, the kobolds had in turn agreed to let other races visit the dungeon and for us to return to Soria unharmed, but so far the dungeon hadn’t demanded anything yet. The display cleared yet again, before new text was shown for Alesandro to translate. Alesandro then translated the new text the dungeon had displayed to us, saying, “In order for the kobolds to not irritate the dungeon accidentally, at least two kobolds would need to be taught the same trade language that the dungeon itself was learning. Also, as the dungeon wasn’t yet fluent, his teacher would need to remain at the dungeon until someone could come to replace them.”
I groaned, this meant the dungeon was demanding at least Alesandro’s presence until a larger group could arrive, that could take anywhere from 90 to 120 days, depending on how long it took to muster that group. Then some additional text came on the display for Alesandro to translate, making my heart clench, what would the dungeon request in addition to a language tutor for himself and the kobolds. Alesandro then cleared his throat before speaking the new translation, “For the mental health and general well-being of the language tutor to be maintained, the dungeon would strongly prefer if up to three additional people remained with the tutor, and to act as advisors to the dungeon as it develops itself.”
That last addendum was both painful and yet also an interesting opportunity, the dungeon itself was seeking advice as to how best develop for presumably non-violent interaction. I myself as the leader of the group could not in good conscience stay, but we would have to see who else would like to remain with Alesandro for up to four months before we could bring people to replace them. I took a quick look at the others with me at the table the dungeon had constructed and nodded my head, the others took a few more moments to agree to my nod, as I was about to speak, the display for the dungeon changed yet again, reminding me that despite the fact that I couldn’t sense the dungeons presence it could both see and hear everything in this room, nerve wracking that was. Alesandro translated the new text for us all and said, “The kobolds will be responsible for providing whatever additional food that was required for the group that would be staying behind with the dungeon.”
That condition at least alleviated some of my worries, that those behind wouldn’t have to be out hunting and gathering food whilst kobolds of dubious temper were out there with them. I glanced over to my left at the kobold elder and she nodded her head firmly despite her age at this condition, banishing the last of my worries like awakening after a bad dream. We would still need to discuss who would be remaining behind with Alesandro, but there was definitely hope at this juncture. The dungeon once again cleared the display and changed the text once again, Alesandro somewhat tired after using his translation spell for several candle marks, finally smiled as he translated, “We are all agreed, we will adjourn for now, the changes needed for the kobolds will take until dusk the after tomorrow. During that time, the dungeon will also construct living quarters for the group staying behind.”
I let out a sigh of relief, it was almost the end of the midday candle mark and although I wasn’t certain about my fellows, but I was quite hungry. The group of kobolds walked out together with their elder, a slight swagger visible in their step, although the attitude displayed by all except the elder and the former captive Ssylasss was irksome, it wasn’t entirely out of line, as the negotiations were a roaring success from their point of view. Overall the negotiation didn’t turn out too bad on our part either, I wasn’t entirely sure how the dungeon was going to enforce good behavior, but we would have to see. Serena’s summons led the kobolds back out of our defensive line as I walked up the wall over to where Karl was on watch and asked him if anything had occurred whilst we were all occupied.
Turns out a kobold had thrown a spear at a rabbit and missed, which nearly led to Alexio shooting him, fortunately Karl managed to avert disaster, but still it was closer than it probably should have been. I came down from the wall and went get some trail bread, the rest of the group came over and started eating their own rations whilst I collected my thoughts before I summarized our morning negotiation with the dungeon, I couldn’t let Alesandro’s throat wear out completely. After nearly a quarter of a candle mark going over our morning, the overall attitude towards the end result of the negotiations was fairly positive, even if some of us had to remain behind. Although the discussions regarding who was going to to remain with Alesandro were somewhat tense, by the time the sun was setting we had decided that Serena, Timoteo and Rhys would stay with behind with Alesandro.
I really would have preferred for Serena to head back to town so as to placate Ramirez, however, she proved herself more stubborn that the rest of us. She also indicated that she was the only one of us who could notice subtle magical effects before they struck another member of the group, which was certainly a valid point. Timoteo insisted on staying as well, since he had both previous experience with the dungeon and also because he was a hunter who could help provide food for the group without relying fully on the kobolds. Rhys and Elis played a gnomish gambling game that I had seen them play a few times, although I wasn’t too certain of the rules. Rhys won and insisted on staying with the dungeon, both because he didn’t want to weigh us down with a dead mule, and because we all agreed that one of the gnomes would give us a good non-magical perspective of the dungeon and that they had at least some interactions with kobolds in a non-violent manner.
The afternoon had been nice and quiet, Karl saw several groups of kobolds take over from those who had been maintaining their watch over us. The tension though was enough to make us fairly nervous despite the lack of hostile activity from the kobolds, which hadn’t helped our discussions at all. We decided to have a hot meal after we had finally selected those who would be remaining behind with Alesandro, the stew was a little bland, but it was filling. A quick discussion with Maxim and we decided our bet from earlier was void this time around as Rhys wasn’t going to be traveling back with us. As I went up the wall to have a talk with Karl, he indicated to me that he was quite happy that he wasn’t the one going to be staying at the dungeon as he doesn’t like being enclosed spaces for very long.
I was a bit surprised by that confession from him as he is a seasoned dungeon delver, turns out most of his delving was done at the dungeon of the Jungle Botanist, which had only a few enclosed areas. The good news is he was ideal to lead us back to Soria safely, hopefully we would be able to get back to town before Ramirez decides to call in the legions to get his grand-niece back from the clutches of the kobolds, that would be a bit embarrassing considering our current agreement with them and the dungeon. Hopefully the kobolds don’t change their minds or screw things up like that kobold throwing his spear this morning, it would be difficult to get past them, and I am not really sure what the dungeon would do if either party tried to renege on the agreement.
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Earlier that afternoon shortly after the group of kobolds and their elder returned to the village in front of the entrance to James’s dungeon.
I, Ssylasss was relieved that the negotiation with the elves and the dungeon had gone as well as it did. After the elder returned to her place at the main cook fire, she told everyone what had been agreed to by us and the elves. Then she made me less happy by telling me I would be one of the two kobolds to learn to read and write the elvish trade language. She also chose one of the smarter younglings who had more patience than most of his hatch mates. Hopefully, after we learn the annoying elves language we won’t need them to talk to the dungeon anymore. It was a revelation watching the dungeon write words on the wall like that for the human wizard to translate, if we could understand the dungeon without the need for that human, our lives in the dungeon would be much better.
The other kobold tribes that stayed in their own dungeon, certainly were not able to communicate directly with the dungeon like we would be able to once we learned how to read and write the elvish trade language. The elder was quite wise to see the benefit of agreeing to the condition the dungeon set out, as it allowed us the flexibility of being able to communicate with both the dungeon and the elves, in a controlled fashion as opposed to needing to constantly leverage the parley sign. Other tribes that we had heard of that traded with the gnomes generally didn’t learn the gnomes language, the gnomes learned ours. Perhaps the gnomes thought us too stupid to learn their language, who knows, this dungeon didn’t seem to think us lacking in that regard.
The group of elders maintained a wary eye on the doors that covered the opening to dungeon, and wondered what the dungeon was doing that it needed two days to complete to make the dungeon more suitable for our eggs. I was hoping that the dungeon decided to keep the puzzles and traps so that we could test the younglings wits against the dungeon, but I was going to have to wait and see, it was going to be a long two days. As I was pondering what the dungeon would be doing for its side of the agreement, the elder had me go over and check the ogre, to see how its recovery was doing. Turns out that the poultices were helping it with the pain, although the ogre was frequently looking over at the covering which hid the thunder and fire weapon the dungeon had used, obviously not fully ready to trust that the dungeon wouldn’t use it again. Seeing the wary looks the ogre was giving it, reminded me of my own nerves and made the scales between my shoulders itch.
When I reported the ogres condition to the elders and both his and my wariness regarding the weapon, she told me that it was because of that weapon that she was willing to agree to the dungeons conditions without any real hesitation. She said that if the weapon was used to protect us in future it would be a great boon of living in this dungeon, and she too was living in anticipation of what the dungeon had decided to do for us. At the elders behest, a hand span before nightfall, I sent one of the younger hunters to remind Sselsdons change out those watching over the elves, as we didn’t need any kobolds forgetting their duty due to boredom.
The night was quiet for us, the elders had several of us starting to pack up our village, we didn’t know if we would need to move entirely, but better to be ready than not. It was more of the same the next day, more packing. We didn’t dismantle the huts but we packed everything else over the course of the day. The whole village was both nervous and excited, we were all wondering what the dungeon was doing, we couldn’t hear anything from behind the doors, and that made it all the more mysterious.
The morning of day the dungeon said it would be ready for the kobolds to move in, at the camp of Felipe’s group behind the defensive wall.
Last night the opening for the negotiation chamber was closed, even Serena didn’t notice when it happened, frankly that made us all even more nervous for the group staying behind at the dungeons behest. It had indicated that the are the kobolds wanted would be ready for them to move in by dusk, and that those of us staying behind could also move into the area prepared for them at the same time. The rest of us nervously prepared to head back to Soria, as Karl kept an eye on the kobolds watching us. A candle mark past the noon mark, the kobolds left their posts and returned to village. I had Karl follow them after a short while, and from the looks of things they were holding to the agreement, so far.
Just before night fell, there was another disturbance at the back of the canyon and a new opening large enough for two people walking side by side opened up, next to the display, showing a brightly lit hallway with another door on the right side of the hall ten paces in. As we were all quite curious as to where Alesandro, Serena, Timoteo and Rhys would be staying we all made our way over to the door at the end of the hallway. As we approached the hallway we could all feel a breeze coming from the door, I glanced over at Timoteo, and he shook his head showing that he had no idea why there was a breeze coming from the doorway either.
When we turned and entered the doorway at the end of the hall, we nearly tripped over each other in shock. We had entered a grand sitting room oriented to the left of the doorway. It had twenty large comfortable looking chairs each with their own side table, scattered about the room in small groups of four chairs each. The walls had what appeared to be glowing seashells lighting the room, almost six paces above the ground.
What truly shocked us however was at the end of the sitting room, at the end of the room that was deepest into the mountainside, was a view of a valley with clouds in the sky, light glistening off of the snow on the opposite mountain. It was completely incongruous, there was no banister preventing anyone from falling, the breeze we felt didn’t appear to come from that end of the room, but from down the hallway that led past the sitting room to another hall that had four doors, fairly spaced apart and another room that opened up after that. All the magicians went to the end of the sitting room to look at the view, to our collective amazement, Serena reached out and touched to view.
It was another display, like the one the dungeon had been using to communicate with us, but this one was larger, and covered the entire wall at the end of the room. As we were just coming to grips with that, an eagle flew past the valley screeching as it did, clearly showing that this wasn’t a still image, but somehow being shown to us with both sight and sound. The sorcerers and wizards were all shocked, even the highest level scrying spell, will only provide remote sight, an additional spell had to be cast to provide sound, and that spell only worked within a certain distance with no obstructions.
For a moment all our magic users except Serena turned to me and looked as though they wanted to beg me to stay at the dungeon in addition to those already selected. Frankly at this moment I didn’t really blame them in the least. Timoteo cleared his throat, and we turned to him wondering what he had to say, to which he then pointed his arm further in saying, “there is more to inspect, and based on what Dimitri and I experienced before, there are more wonders to see.” That statement set off most of us like a fox in a hen house, and what astounded all of us was that the dungeons presence wasn’t in any of the rooms at all. Those of us leaving in the morning were going to have quite the tale to report to Ramirez and the guild when we returned.