1        Soul Bound

1.3      Making a Splash

1.3.2    An Allotropic Realignment

1.3.2.25 Dener time

They met up with Alderney outside Tickton, on a newly paved extension of Ozieri March that, when finished, would run all the way through the derelict Spettro part of Basso and east to the Stadia, where it would join Mud Road. Mud Road went from the Mercato business district all the way to the City’s southern entrance. After Kafana had been killed by a group of players from The Immortals guild, known as the Brute Squad, a special event had triggered which resulted in the Mud Road ending up fully paved by adventurers seeking event contribution points. Would it be re-named? Perhaps, but she doubted it - people didn’t like change, even when change would be an improvement. What was the saying? “There’s nothing so permanent as a temporary solution.”

Alderney: “Bungo, have you got enough data yet, to decide which of the three designs we’ll be constructing?”

Bungo: “They’ve all got drawbacks. The conservative choice is the gated courtyard model, like they have in parts of Mercato and the Boemo. Good safety against anything less than an armed mob, because all the doors and windows face inwards. Unsafe streets and no community spirit beyond individual buildings, for exactly the same reason.”

Tomsk: “What about the commune?”

Bungo: “Put big walls around the whole area, and then fill the inside with gardens, shared kitchens and Roman baths?”

Tomsk: “It works for the Scorpioni Den. Show them paradise, something to be proud of owning. And then guard the exits so thieves and vandals think twice about targeting it.”

Bungo: “The predictions are bad. We’re going to have a mix of vessels rich with gold from adventures, local residents we’re re-housing, who were so poor they had to live in leaky roofed shacks, and skilled workers attracted by opportunities to work in businesses catering to adventurers. They don’t yet have enough in common to fight to protect each other.”

Alderney: “Walls won’t stop determined killers with climbing skills. It would take magic to keep our vessels safe from retaliation by thugs and Guild enforcers.”

The paved section of road had finished now, and they were walking along an old narrow track that wound its way around piles of rubble that might once have been houses. A fox poked its snout out of one pile to observe them as the group passed and she watched it watching her. She flicked on her Truesight skill and gently reached out to it with her healing senses. Three adult foxes (two sleeping) and five tiny bundles of mana pulsed beneath the pile - a vixen guarding her kits with the aid of her tod and an older vixen. The aunt of the kits or their grandmother? Kafana couldn’t tell without hairs to cast a spell with, but she marked the den on the Womble’s shared map - people weren’t the only residents who’d need rehousing.

Kafana: “Bungo, which of the three groups does your simulation predict will be the outlier? The group least likely to contribute to making a community?”

Bungo sounded both peeved and fascinated, like the answer he’d been given was an inconvenient one, that wouldn’t go away despite any triple checking and fiddling with the model’s parameters.

Bungo: “The vessels. You can’t build a community without kids and grannies. The simulation starts well, because there are currently only 2,000 adventurers in the city, and many of those will probably continue to stay in lodgings or with allied NPCs. But in a few months time, Torello will be trying to house at least ten times that number of adventurers - more than half the current population of the Ghetto. Even if you try grouping the players by guilds or professions, when the questing spirits are not in control the vessels have no incentive to socialise with the local residents they outnumber. They don’t have children they need to babysit or educate, and they know they might at any point be called upon to move permanently to a different city with better quests. It becomes a commuter belt or winter vacation town. Hollow in spirit. A dead tree with no roots.”

The road ahead was starting to feel familiar, and Kafana caught a flash from a dream she’d shared of Vessel-Kafana. Something about giggling at Vessel-Wellington as he’d raised a stick like a conductor’s baton, and together they’d used reality magic to carefully flatten a wide area into a strong stone slab. Laying foundations?

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Bulgaria: “Funny you should mention a lack of children. That’s where we’re heading. My irregulars have claimed an empty building near our warehouse as a temporary clubhouse and headquarters. Planchet brought word that the orphans are planning to take advantage of the area we’ve cleared for phase one of our Basso Renewal Project, before we ruin it by filling it with ugly things, like homes and halls and sparring rings.”

‘Ruin’ it? Ah, the perspective of youth. If you want to see the obvious, ask a child.

Kafana: “So what’s the solution? If we’re trying to demonstrate to arlife viewers that you don’t have to be powerless, that you can take an active role in shaping your own community and its future, a dying tree that’s propped up only by intervention of external authorities is the last thing we want. We need something better than the current status quo, and something that the people themselves will spread and support, even without adventurer magic and money.”

Alderney: “I like the third model that the SimTorello fans on the Burrow came up with - the arcology model. Multi-entry glass domes with ecotecture structures for rainwater capture and temperature control. Control dominance and lines of sight using transparent split level communal spaces, with roof level walkways spanning neighbouring buildings. You could have the walkways retract or switch where they connect to, like the magic bridge between Libri and Mercato.”

Wellington: “We don’t have the mages for complex permanent active wards like that. Even Grand Master Poggio just repairs the ancient bridges - building new ones on that scale is beyond him.”

Tomsk: “I like the open feel and communal spaces, but without a way to detect and deter malicious intruders, it would provide less physical safety than either of the other two models.”

Bulgaria: “I’m more worried about the looks and technology. Questing spirits will be at ease there, and appreciate having sinks with taps and toilets that flush. But the Covadan are going to find glass dome covered courtyards as alien as lightsaber wielding space elves. Glass is expensive here.”

Wellington: “Actually, they do have sabers enchanted with Zer rune based illumination effects. I examined a pair of them in Lord Landi’s family vault.”

Bungo: “You can make me a lightsaber? Seriously? I want one! What about elves?”

Bulgaria: “Well, XperiSense have drawn upon a variety of European mythologies, including those which inspired Tolkien’s legendarium such as the Norse álfr and the Celtic aes sídhe. However none of the races in Soul Bound corresponds exactly to the common elvish trope. The ill-copied legends and traveller’s rumours frequently contradict each other but from what I’ve gathered so far, my best guess is…”

They spent the rest of the journey bewitched by Bulgaria’s voice as it transported their imaginations back to a time of near-immortal Zeradan shape shifters sacrificing themselves to defend the forest homes of ethereally beautiful Droadan maidens; of ginormous honour-obsessed Krevadan warrior bands betrayed by secretive scaly Racadan cultists; and of great machines constructed over generations by strictly ruled Moradan artificers preparing for a doom thrice predicted by half-wild loner Lunadan hermits.”

What a pity, she mused, that adventurers were so unreliable. Even animals made better parents. Weren’t Romulus and Remus, the twins who founded Rome, adopted by a she-wolf who spent a decade raising them in a cave? Wouldn’t it be great if each arcology community were stable enough to do the same? Not like a single wolf going years without roaming but collectively - acting like a fox’s den run by an extended family of cousins and uncles, able to collectively adopt some orphans, or take them on as apprentices. The thought appealed to her.

Bulgaria and Tomsk would be the sort of uncles who acted as role models, teaching and protecting them, while Bungo and Alderney would be the cool relatives, creating fun games and surprising gifts. But what would she and Wellington do? She wasn’t ready for the responsibility of children, even virtual ones, and the orphans deserved more than improved housing - they needed homes and people who loved them and would always be there. People who treated them as individuals rather than as replaceable biological units defined entirely by the labels attached to them. “Orphan, cute - now available in lots of five.”

She shook her head. It didn’t feel right, and she didn’t know enough. She should ask an expert, if she got a chance. Nicolo, perhaps? He lived in the orphanage, and she’d walked through his mind when healing him from the trauma of his parent’s death. He might be only eight years old, but he was astoundingly bright and she’d trust him to keep things confidential if she asked him to. After all, he’d trusted her at the funeral of his brother, Antonio, when she’d confirmed she knew a secret about Antonio and then asked him to let her hold off on telling it to him, until she judged the time was right.

Ugh. The secret was that Antonio had been spying upon the Wombles for Kullervo, the man who’d killed her body and then gone onto to use diabolical magic to capture and torture the intangible spirit that players found their consciousness connected to while waiting for resurrection. She still got nightmares about it and, though she’d come to understand Antonio’s reasons and forgiven him for the betrayal, the thought of telling Nicolo about it made her stomach clench. Nicolo loved his brother, and Antonio had only done it because of a debt he’d incurred in order to rescue Nicolo when Nicolo had been bound in servitude at a brothel, trapped by those greedy to profit from his heartbreakingly pure voice and delicate looks. Would knowing the secret shatter the heroic view of his brother that Kafana had seen in his memory? Would Nicolo feel stained and guilty, responsible at second hand? She didn’t want to find out, but she’d made him a promise. She would have to tell him. Some day.

Just, please, let it not be today?