Peek: Calm Seas

Coming to Fourdock was a mistake. Jondar Helmsplitter should have known something was up when he saw the proposed pay for himself, but he let himself be blinded by the gleam of gold. He thinks it's an understandable weakness to have, but it's also the only weakness he hasn't ruthlessly drilled out of himself. Too slow? Footwork and running regimen. Foes too strong? Practice and get stronger to use a larger axe. Getting hit too often? Get stronger still and wear proper armor.

But greed is a more insidious weakness, arguing that it's just the natural state of things. That, and it's not a weakness that can be overcome with sweat. He's going to need to take a long look at himself once things calm down around Fourdock, to try to figure out how to resist the allure of a pile of coins.

There may be a solution to that here, but it's also located in the place that makes being here a mistake. There is something off about the Fourdock dungeon, Thedeim. He's tried to tell the Earl about it, but he's convinced a butler is manipulating the dungeon. He's heard rumors about spies and assassins 'retiring' to being butlers, and though he's not sure he buys it, there's no way even a master spy could manipulate a dungeon. They just don't think like people do.

But someone like the Earl will never understand that. They're used to dealing with manipulators, and to be fair, a dungeon being manipulated sounds plausible to those who've never spent much time in one. But he has spent time in them, a significant portion of his entire life has been inside dungeons, and this one is off.

Some of his delvers clearly feel the same, though it might be a stretch to call them his. He's Guildmaster in name only, with the Earl being the one to actually set policy. It's Jondar's job to enforce it. And in that enforcing, he can see the sort of adventurers the Earl has invited. Most are just like him, chasing after a fat purse. Unlike him, they are still blinded by the pay, willfully ignoring the signs that something is going on, accepting that Thedeim is a toybox at heart, even with the encounters.

But a few groups are able to see the strangeness of the encounters, the deliberate design to not kill delvers, even while challenging them in each battle. It's training delvers, for some reason! Jondar has no doubt in his mind that, if the dungeon decided it didn't want delvers to survive, they wouldn't. The denizens are too organized, the synergies to good for it all to be an accident.

And that's without worrying about what else the Earl is up to. He's not so blind that he can't see the shadowy ties with the thieves guild, though he's not so stupid to actually say anything. In a fair fight, he'd give himself pretty good odds of dealing with the entire guild all on his own! The problem is that those sorts never fight fair, and if he gets their attention, the best case is that the Earl simply fires him and replaces him with someone else. More likely, he'll go to bed and never wake up.

But what can he do? He needs to do something, because he's growing less and less certain that the Earl will come out ahead with his schemes. At best, even if the Earl wins, he'll still be a puppet of a Guildmaster. At worst, he'll be dragged down as the plots crumble. He needs an out, but he has no idea where to find it.

He can't very well go looking very hard, either, or else the Earl or the thieves will notice, or Thedeim will notice, and he's not certain which would be the worst to find out. Most of his delvers wouldn't understand his position, either. But... maybe one group will have something for him.

Of all the parties that came to join the Calm Seas, he was most surprised to see Noynur's group. Most would look at the hulking orc and think him simple, but Jondar knows he at least as strong in mind as he is in body. Someone like that should have been able to see the signs of something being weird about the guild the Earl wanted to found. So Jondar can only figure he must have wanted information for something. The obvious would be information on the Earl. There's a lot of nobles who would pay for something like that.

But, though Noynur has a quiet reputation for seeking knowledge, he has exactly zero reputation of being a blackmailer or an information broker. So if not the Earl, what would Noynur be after?

He must have figured there was something off about Thedeim, too. And if he knows... maybe he'll know a way for Jondar to get out of this situation he's in. Now he just needs to find a way to talk with him that won't make him too paranoid to answer.

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Inspired by ID Dragnil, who wanted to see an outside adventurer guildmaster's take on Thedeim. Not the most outside, but it did make me think about what Jondar might think about this whole situation.