This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

It’s not like the payout was all that great either. We had thirty rooms total, which stretched us to our limit, and we got fifteen entads, only three of which were any good, and none of which we’re planning to keep. Ectad junk. A handful of eggs. Some seeds. More than enough to pay our way, but not a big contribution to the endgame. The whole team is feeling sour, and they wish that I had undone it, but I’m far more burnt than they are. We handed most of the stuff off to the counterparty and let them deal with it.

We started out with great equipment and a clear plan, and now it’s just a matter of going through the motions. We’ve got enough now that we can live in relative comfort, not that it was ever in question for me. One of the things they don’t talk about in Junior League is how to deal with problems in the party, and half of me wants to go see a cleric about it, though I’ve got no clue which one.

And that was it, all there was for that entry. It was as though Lola had gotten bored halfway through.

As a dungeon report, it was basically useless, saying nothing about the general character of the dungeon and very little about the threats that might be found there. It likely wouldn’t have been all that useful to Alfric, given how much higher their elevation was and the difference in what they were bringing into the dungeon, but part of the point of dungeon reports was to get a sense of the range of probabilities. You weren’t supposed to read just one of them, you were supposed to read a bunch of them and then get a general sense of the dungeon’s shape. Sometimes there were commonalities. A report like this though, one that detailed nothing, was worthless for that purpose.

As insight into the party, the dungeon report was revealing. It was hard to know whether the things Lola had said were accurate, especially since she must have known that Alfric would be reading it, but all the same, it had the ring of truth. Lola was tricky in that way though, an accomplished liar who knew that people would more readily believe her if she offered some vulnerability or let them in on a secret, or simply told them what she thought they wanted to hear. He had seen her do it with others, and she’d talked with him about it. She just didn’t take lies and manipulation all that seriously. Everyone lied, in Lola’s opinion, and everyone manipulated to some degree or another. It was normal and natural to her. Alfric hadn’t agreed, had never agreed, not just because of how he’d been raised, but because it seemed normal and natural to him that people should say what they mean and mean what they say. All of it called into question the report, naturally.

If it had been Alfric in her position, he’d have worked out some kind of monetary exchange with Josen to compensate for the loss. It was the loss of entads, payment to the clerics, and labor for remaking mana constructs, measured against the labor for Alfric of another dungeon. It seemed there was likely some kind of equitable exchange to be had there. It was the sort of thing he’d suggest to her, if they were still on speaking terms.

The second entry from Lola, for Traeg’s Knob, was much less illuminating. It had been similar to their experience, with a wet place and mostly natural interior, though they’d faced tougher monsters and more rooms. It was a bit of a surprise just how similar they’d been, but based on the timing, Lola’s party must have done Traeg’s Knob within a day or two of Alfric’s.

Alfric took some time to read through other reports, but most of them were terrible in one way or another, either sparse on details or with far too much in the way of extraneous details. It did seem like Pucklechurch was a more difficult place than most expected it to be, and Alfric supposed that was due to a higher concentration of magic there, from either the artifacts that had been left there or the leyline that had once run through it. Pucklechurch was a place of power, but an old and weak one.