Lewd Dungeon, Book 42 Prologue

Prologue – Trade Chat

(Adventurer’s Guild Official Forums, Miami Branch)

SunnyBunz, MightyMouse, ImAPally, DontYouWantMe, AsaAkiraIsBae, BestGirl, LatinHeat, Salty, Backpage, Craig34, l33tpally, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, RedFox, Kimiko, DonnyJuan, Crusader, BadCompany, HurricaneGal, Ambassador, Scholar, Righteous, Id10t, Satyr, DarkEnchanter, RangerMiguel, ScoopGirl, VenusFlyTramp, MagicMike, TsundereHealer, Max, LightningLegacy, SwiftTaylor, Domino, Bacchus, Aegis, Temptation, and Lord_Kickass are in the chat.

LightningLegacy: The Lower City reputation quests are a bit of a grind, but I’m actually enjoying them.

BadCompany: That’s fair. Depending on the quest, you have to do a lot of things differently. It isn’t just ‘go and slaughter these monsters’ kind of things. My team got sent on an information-gathering quest, looking for blackmail material that could be used by one house against another.

DarkEnchanter: There are resource-gathering and crafting options, as well. I’ve learned several new enchanting recipes from working quests in the Lower City.

Craig34: Of course, there are still combat quests. Some are open combat, like taking on a gang moving into a territory, but there are some assassination quests, as well, where you either need overwhelming firepower, or you need to get clever.

BadCompany: There’s the escort and defense quests, as well, for those who don’t like being ‘bad guys’.

Id10t: Can people who are afraid of being bad guys really make it that far in the dungeon? I mean, just getting through the Black Temple, especially if you don’t have a follower of Kuronoth in your party, is going break many ‘good’ types.

Satyr: That’s true. Our Priest converted to Kuronoth’s faith a while back. Been so long that I forgot that without someone with his faith to open the challenge rooms, you have to participate in the trials at each shrine, or give up on the challenges, which means you not only give up the challenge rewards, but the final battle is harder.

Domino: Man, I’d forgotten about that. And the trials are all just as twisted as the challenge rooms, right?

DontYouWantMe: Different kind of fucked, but still twisted, yeah. I remember that one of the early ones involved you basically living through a tactical RPG setup, where you couldn’t move when it wasn’t your turn. But one of the later ones forces you to ravish some women for the amusement of the crowd, I believe.

SunnyBunz: Yeah, no righteous types are getting through that without taking psychic damage.

MagicMike: And a group that has picked up a follower of Kuronoth isn’t likely to be one of the ‘pure and holy’ types, to begin with.

Scholar: Well, only by the standards of most Earth religions. And even some of those don’t have a problem with conquerors, well, conquering the vanquished.

l33tpally: Fair enough. But for most of us Americans, good people don’t go to the Forbidden Chambers.

LatinHeat: Or, if they do, bad things happen to them. Like with Crusader’s group.

Crusader: I’m just glad I don’t have to stay in Swamptown anymore. Pregnancy and ‘eau de swamp’ are a horrible combination.

Backpage: Oh, yeah, you were the paladin of Pofmis that tried to break the dungeon, and wound up fucked because of it.

Crusader: Don’t remind me.

Righteous: So, when Pofmis fell, what happened to you? According to everything I heard, every follower of Pofmis in the galaxy ended up enslaved.

Crusader: My… husbands kept me from that fate. They held me down and refused to let me enslave myself to them, until the compulsion passed. I follow Libertas, the Roman Goddess of Freedom, now.

Scholar: Huh. On brand, considering what Pofmis used to be, but Libertas is definitely a lesser-known goddess. At least, today. She was the idea behind the Statue of Liberty, though.

HurricaneGal: Hey, don’t know if anyone else noticed, but another group of ‘tourists’ from Bluemountain came through the portals the other day. Tier 2s, from what [Appraise] told me.

Backpage: I mean, Tier 2s coming through the portal is a change of pace, but there’s usually a few groups come through the portal every week, when they want a change of pace from that Black Knight dungeon, or whatever it is called.

HurricaneGal: This group is different, though. One of my friends is the number 2 in the Swamptown office of the Guild. She said these ones got a quest, making them cross the entire continent to get to the portal, so that they could dive the dungeon.

DonnyJuan: I’ve visited Bluemountain. They have airships (about 10 mph sustained speed), but not anything more than that, and long-range teleports are expensive. Even if they caught a ride on an airship, that’s a long trip. Longer, if they rode horses, or were on foot. That’s one hell of a trip. And even if they didn’t pay for faster options, that’s one hell of an expense.

AsaAkiraIsBae: Which means they were offered a payout that was worth the cost, both in time and money. You have any details for us HG?

HurricaneGal: Well, my friend didn’t divulge any personal information, obviously, but she said that there’s a chance that Temptation was using them to test other parts of the dungeon.

Salty: Like when he asked for volunteers to help design a floor of the dungeon?

HurricaneGal: Not quite. She was under the impression that the goal was for them to take a look at the ‘Shatterchain’ side of the ‘No Man’s Land’ floor.

BestGirl: Man, I forgot that even existed. There’s really no point in going that way, now that we know what Khav-Szarol is like, and how that part goes.

Craig34: Well, about half the regulars in Swamptown have slaves in their party, since it is a good protection against some of the effects in the dungeon, especially that floor that strips everyone who isn’t a slave, thrall, or follower of Kuronoth. Plus, it helps… settle issues when you’re going through the Black Temple.

HurricaneGal: That matches what my friend heard. Apparently, the ‘minimum qualifications’ for the job was for no one in the party to have owned a slave before. Which is what clued my friend and the local bossman that Shatterchain might be the true aim of the quest, despite the listed target being in the Lower City.

TsundereHealer: But why go through all that, and not just grab someone to test it here? Or tell one of his followers on Bluemountain to test things?

RangerMiguel: It may have to do with why the events surrounding the recent Divine Trial were handled the way they were.

ScoopGirl: What do you mean?

Temptation: He means that there are limits to how much gods can interfere with the free will of mortals without suffering the consequences. For instance, I can truthfully say that the three divine messengers who put out the Divine Trial had no prior knowledge of the dragon, or where it would be released, but did have enough foreknowledge of something coming to prepare the language of the Trial accordingly.

Temptation: Likewise, I can say with complete sincerity that no god or dungeon on Earth was involved in the dragon’s capture, and the one who delivered it was no follower of any god on Earth, and had been given a legitimate delivery quest through the local adventurer’s guild and received fair pay for their service. The first infringement upon free will in the whole affair (other than the dragon being sealed in the first place) would be the declaration of a Divine Trial, but all the necessary work had been done ahead of time so that the three messengers had no prior knowledge of the threat, and could not be blamed as the cause of it, satisfying the System’s criteria for a Divine Trial.

Crusader: In other words, you paid an adventurer from another world to deliver it without revealing you’re a god, so they did it of their own free will.

Temptation: The first time I had any contact with the individual, even through my aura, was when they came to use the portal to get to Earth.

Salty: Which wouldn’t keep you from posting the job at the Adventurer’s Guild.

Temptation: Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.