This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“Well,” said Alfric. “In theory, it makes the most sense to do adjacent hexes in order to minimize travel time. The original plan called for making a base in the middle of nowhere, then doing dungeons in roughly a spiral, which would mean there’s always only six miles of travel between dungeons.”

“Assuming a straight line seems unwise,” said Priya.

“Approximately six miles,” said Alfric. “But it seems pretty clear that we’re not doing it that way, so… Sorry, just going by the old plan, rather than the new one.” He wanted to go look at the reports, but the conversation was feeling like molasses, the kind that was nearly impossible to leave without rudeness.

“The new one where we don’t push ourselves too hard?” asked Verity.

Alfric nodded. “Yes. Besides, between the wardrobe and the dagger, there’s not as much benefit to a spiral pattern.”

“I’ll grab the book that has the reports,” Priya finally said. “If you’re looking for the ones that Vertex submitted, they’ll be the most recent ones for Traeg’s Knob and Pate’s Knob.”

“Just those two?” asked Alfric. She kept saying ‘Vertex’ rather than ‘The Vertex’, and he wondered whether she was making a mistake or if they’d dropped the article from the name.

“Just those, in the week they’ve been here,” said Priya. “They might have done more and not put in reports. There’s no need to write a report.”

“The League gives special allowances for advancement, and reports are one of the metrics,” said Alfric.

Priya blinked at him. “Does it?”

“It was offered as an incentive five years ago,” said Alfric. It seemed difficult to imagine that she didn’t know this, but if she was a retired or semi-retired adventurer who had landed in this position by virtue of her skill in a dungeon… well, her core competence was probably not in administration. “From what I understand, report rates had been abysmal, and they thought it would be better for everyone if they had more of them.”

Priya shook her head. “Idiocy. Leverist idiocy.”

“If the incentive is there, I’m going to do it,” said Alfric.

“They should be instilling values in the Junior League,” said Priya. “We’re all supposed to be in this together, helping each other because it makes the world a better place for us all. And instead, we have the leverists putting in one of their levers, and of course the result is a spate of low-quality reports put in only because people are hoping to get something from it.” She waved a hand, perhaps sensing that Alfric wasn’t a receptive audience for a rant against the leverists. She picked up a big book from back in the recesses of the open room, then returned to them. “It’s not to leave the premises, so you’ll have to read it here. It’s an entad. You can add your own reports, and they’ll become a part of it. The index at the start updates itself.”

Alfric nodded and moved over to the book. It was larger than the party’s storage book, with a metal frame around the outside that seemed like it was adding quite a bit of undue weight. He placed it on the table next to the kitchenette and opened the cover, which showed him the index.

“A wortier worked on this?” asked Alfric. He was looking at the circles at the top of the index page. “A very, very skilled wortier?”

“Yes,” said Priya. She’d come over to look at the book with him. “I came out of the dungeoneering game with rather a lot of money, and I spent some of it here. The book itself is nothing special, it just eats up the dungeon reports, corrects some spelling, and makes it all in the same font.” She leaned past Alfric and pressed one of the circles, the one labeled ‘Places’, and the index rearranged itself, listing out the roughly hundred hexes in this region of the Greater Plenarch province. But it wasn’t just the index that was rearranging, because the page numbers had changed as well. The entire book had been rearranged by placing a thumb against the circle.

“I’ll leave you to it,” said Priya. “I’m past my normal time here; you were lucky to catch me when you did. If you ever need anything, at least between sunup and sundown, there’s a bell you can ring, there on the mantel.” She pointed, and Alfric saw a brass bell he hadn’t noticed before. “I don’t always drop what I’m doing to help out, but I do come eventually, in a half hour to an hour. Make sure you have someone here. If that bell gets rung and there’s no one to meet me, I will find out who rang it, and they will wish they’d had a bit more courtesy. It was nice to meet you. Give your mother my love the next time you see her.”

“I will,” said Alfric. He wondered whether his mother knew that an old friend was working here, and decided that she probably had known. Both his parents had deep connections. And given that this woman ‘just happened’ to be here when she did administration for seven regions of the province, well, Alfric wouldn’t be terribly surprised if this meeting was because of a favor changing hands. Not help, per se, but something like it.