I had already spent some time putting together options for businesses and corresponding signs, with a few contingencies. I was not an artist and the signs were trash tier, but they still worked. Apparently the most desirable locations in an outpost were those that converted the raw materials in the area into something useful, like the facilities for armorers, smiths and artificers that we had explored during the prior week. The magic artificer shop adjacent to the Treefort had been snapped up immediately and the new inhabitants had already made some progress in setting up their operations. I didn’t expect to be able to compete with the caravan members for any of those locations, but from what I had read some of the less desirable facilities could take years to be occupied in a newly opened outpost.

The bookstore on the other side of the Treefort was much less desirable and was fortunately unclaimed when I arrived. This was lucky for me, since the bookstore had a second floor apartment that I could live in after claiming the building. I planned to move in immediately, as the location near the Treefort would allow me plenty of opportunity to stop by the hidden bolthole without raising any suspicions. I was also definitely hoping to get a job at the magic artificer, as it was by far the best location to support my goals to push forward with my interest in firearms and related equipment. Magic artifice could also support passive, technology based defenses that would prevent me from suffering the typical fate of a glass cannon.

I put the crude sign for my new bookstore onto the plaque on the front of the building and my name appeared in the lower section of the plaque as the owner. My next stop was the building on the opposite side of the alley running behind the magic artificer and the bookshop that would be my new crash pad. The map that I’d used for the bonus quest had this as some kind of cafe / retail space. This seemed really impractical and unnecessary for a frontier town and the location wasn’t very good for foot traffic, but controlling it would be helpful for me and I had an idea: Board Game Cafe.

I didn’t know anything about starting a cafe, but it was a contingency that I rolled into when I saw that the initial caravan was chock full of fae. The fae are famous for loving games, right? Also, I have seen enough isekai to know that if you don’t have special powers you need to either start your fantasy commerce empire with either board games or mayonnaise. I mean occasionally you see someone go with manga or something, but board games and mayonnaise are the two mainstays. Since I could serve mayonnaise and sell board games in a board game cafe, it was a surefire hit. I was serious about the boardgame cafe though. I had seen and enjoyed them myself in the past and they are a generally low labor and low startup cost venture. This was great for me because I didn’t have any money and I wasn’t planning on working that hard at the cafe.

I actually also wanted to start a cryptocurrency exchange, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that without computers. If I am honest I probably couldn’t figure that out with computers, though I knew where I could find some good programmers to help me out. With my dreams of launching Queakerscoin out the window, I headed over to the magic artificer shop to see about a job after claiming my board game cafe.

I have never liked asking for work and I have never been very good at it, but I needed access to the magic artificer in the town. I knew that I was going to need to be tenacious and willing to play the long game for this opportunity. I also planned to lean into some of my actual work experiences and open with an offer rather than a request. I did a little light reconnaissance on the magic artificer shop while I was claiming the bookshop and I was pleased to find that the new owners bore a strong resemblance to what I would have called brownies based on my limited experience with folklore. It wasn’t entirely clear that the fae type creatures that I had observed arriving really had the characteristics with which they were associated in tales from Earth, but the elves certainly seemed spot on and I figured I would proceed, with caution, along this premise until I had better information.

I passed the Treefort on my way and I snuck in to load some of the less conspicuous materials, munitions and small devices that I had going spare into my bag. The game plan was to do some initial bartering, offer to hire one of the brownies to help me run my board game cafe and then hit them up for a job that I would then parlay into a more of an apprenticeship in the coming months. In legends from Earth brownies preferred dealing with “mortals,” so I was hopeful that this was a viable plan, but I was determined to make this work no matter the obstacles.

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When I entered the magic artificer’s shop, I was quickly surrounded by no less than fifteen brownies. I tried to seem relaxed, but for a moment I was worried that I was going to be on the receiving end of a fantasy style River City Ransom beatdown. Fortunately, no beatdown followed, as the brownies were ecstatic that I came. They really did like dealing with mortals and when I introduced myself as their neighbor they felt that hospitality was in order. After downing a tiny mug of milk and honey, we got down to business.

They were in fact quite interested in the random assortment of materials and gadgets that I’d snuck out from the Treefort. There were even more of the tiny elves surrounding me now and they were passing around the items that I shared with general interest. A small hammer that was apparently used for fine metalwork and had some desirable magical properties got some “oohs and ahhs” as it circulated, tipping me off to the fact that I likely had something good there. After about fifteen minutes of this chaos interspersed with light conversation, it became clear that an older looking brownie named Galan was running the show.

I gave Galan the hammer as a gift and asked him to make an offer on the rest of the items on account. Galan looked like a tiny elf just like the rest, but his face had some wrinkles, though without being careworn. His eyes had a twinkle that spoke to his intelligence and I figured that I had bought all of the goodwill that I was likely to with what I had to offer. The time had come to be bold. I explained my concept for a board game cafe to Galan and suggested that we could team up on the opportunity with some of his less experienced clanmates helping to fabricate games and staff the cafe on the off hours that I planned to have it open.

There was an uncomfortable pause in the conversation following my suggestion and I prepared to get out the couple of board games that I had “borrowed” from the hotel to demonstrate the concept for them, but I never got that far. I would later learn that Galan often let long pauses fall in conversations and I never did figure out what it meant. Of course, I later learned that Galan was north of five hundred years old, so a few long pauses were maybe just to be expected. At any rate, I needn't have worried about Galan's response. He was down. Everyone there was down. It was like a little party of excited chatter, people sharing ideas and others clamoring to participate for like five minutes after Galan got off pause and agreed to my proposal without a single question.

In the brownies I had found the ideal audience and partners for my board game cafe and Galan was so taken with the idea that he offered to assign his youngest daughter Lierin to the project. Lierin was extremely capable and for a brownie that was saying something, so what actually happened was that I became a silent partner in my own brownie run board game cafe from that point forward. Though, I didn’t find that out for at least another week. I decided to press on with the final phase of my current plan, but with how well things were going I also decided to take it up a notch.

I explained to Galan and the by now thirty or so brownies that had gathered in the shop, that I really wanted to learn more about magic artifice and that I need a strong career track to support my party. I suggested that I could work at their store part time at a reduced rate of compensation in exchange for some basic lessons in magic artifice. I also suggested that I could employ some of the brownies in their off hours to help me out at my bookstore. Seeing how many brownies there were, and somehow more just kept appearing, at the last second I sweetened the pot by also providing any brownies that wanted to work at either the bookstore or board game cafe access to the back rooms and upper floors of each, with the exception of the apartment that I was going to take for myself on the second story of the bookstore.

The brownies were not creatures that could easily be tricked. They were themselves tricksters by nature, if generally good hearted ones. They were known as the crafters of the fae and to be helpful to humans unless crossed. Crossing a brownie was thought to be a source of bad luck from the folklore that I remembered. Anyhow, my luck continued to hold in this encounter as the brownies really did prefer to have mortals around and they had their own legends about how having a human around was good luck. There was also a fair amount of approving chatter about having someone around that could reach the top shelves in the store without a ladder. With the brownies all in as my partners and employers, my plan was starting to look much more achievable.