Peek: The Dungeoneer's Guild

Jarsto frowns to himself as he looks at the dossier on his desk.  Unlike many in the guild, he doesn't mind the bureaucratic upkeep required for the guild to run smoothly.  He's actually quite good at it, if he does say so himself, and it makes him happy to be able to look over the numbers and ensure they add up

His frown is from what the numbers are already implying, and he hasn't even opened the report yet.  While he doesn't doubt that it will have numbers to explain the oddity, they're going to have to be some interesting numbers indeed.

The elf sighs and opens the folder, knowing that just staring wont force reality to bend to his whims.  Even an Archmage would have trouble with something like that.  He skims the first few pages, the summary of the previous year of Fourdock.  Hullbreak is unchanged, unsurprising.  While the dungeon stretches the definition of simply belligerent, it has never made any moves to send hostile expeditions and tip over into murderous.

Neverrest, however, is murderous, and it seems the quarantine is still in effect.  It hasn't started starving, it seems, but that should only require time.

The Southwood is still a toybox out in the middle of nowhere, and Jarsto wonders how it came to be so pacifistic.  Perhaps the local wildlife is simply strong enough to count as delvers?  He's hardly an expert in how dungeons actually work, so all he can do is guess.

With his foundation for the town refreshed, he takes a breath to steel himself for the reports from this year.

Ah, a new dungeon.  That alone makes the thickness of the rest of the report make a lot more sense.  Dungeon germinated in an abandoned mannor, the inspector was able to inspect it very early in its life, too.  It hadn't even claimed the entirety of the house by the time he found it.  Jarsto nods in approval of the efficiency as he continues reading reports.

His approval quickly turns to confusion, and he doublechecks the dates on the report, and skims the dates for the rest.  They all seem to line up, at least as a timeline goes, but as he takes the time to truly read the reports, he wonders what has been going on in Fourdock.

Unauthorized delvers, local urchins.  Not especially concerning, but their claims of the progress were concerning.  The follow-up inspection confirms the growth and multiple scions, as well.

Next report mentions odd behavior of bird denizens.  The official inspector is off to inspect Hullbreak at the time, which is unfortunate, but reasonable.  How could the inspector anticipate what seems to be an explosive growth rate for this dungeon?  Adventurers are hired, expenses look appropriate, no definitive reason for the temporary shift in behavior is found, but dungeon seems to be shaping into a cooperative one.

A cooperative dungeon in that area would certainly be a blessing for the locals.  With the two nearest dungeons being unsuitable for delving, and the toybox being so far away, a cooperative right on main street could be a gold mine.

The next official report details enough change that it could have easily been an entire year, but seems to have been just a couple weeks!  Territory expanded, new spawners claimed, scions created and upgraded, and a strange and unique encounter involving a maze made of bramble bushes?  Core likely moved, secret war room, secret alchemy lab... is this dungeon older than it appears?

It wouldn't change much with the fees and whatnot, but it would help explain the rapid growth.  Dungeons do occasionally spawn cloistered and can take a long time before they actually expand, instead simply getting to know their small territory and developing themselves a bit.  He makes a note to inquire about that when he sends the official receipt of the report, and resumes working through the pile of paper.

His suspicions of the age only gains more evidence in his eyes as he finds the dungeon has expanded down and it now a deep dungeon.  The quake was fairly minor, all things considered, and didn't seem to require any additional explanation in the report, save that it happened.

The dungeon has gained a resident already?  A kobold, according to the report, so likely gained access via the new tunnels from the expansion.  The kobold appears to be, not exactly hostile towards delvers, but also not exactly welcoming.  Seems like she's content to just quietly live in the dungeon.

Oh dear, Neverrest is making moves to attack the new dungeon?  He eyes the rest of the report with concern, wondering if all those dates he skimmed earlier were listing violet incursions from Neverrest.  Still... he's not aware of any requests for assistance with the hostile dungeon, so they must have things in hand.

He blinks at the next report and checks that he didn't skip a page or ten somewhere.  No, everything seems to be in order.  In a matter of days, the young dungeon formed a plan, recruited local adventurers and actually *subsumed* Neverrest?!  There's no doubt in Jarsto's mind now that the dungeon was cloistered for at least a decade before being discovered.  There's no way a fresh dungeon would be able to make a plan, somehow negotiate without a Voice and actually succeed in subsuming a dungeon like Neverrest.

It also gained a new resident, one of the adventurers.  The details are sparse, but apparently the dungeon was only able to save her from death by making her a resident.  It's clear something happened, but considering the careful wording of that section, it reeks of legal talk.  No thank you.  He'll send a notice to the legal department to take a look, but he's staying well out of anything like that.  It has nothing to do with the accounting, so he's more than happy to leave that mystery to the people who get paid to look into that sort of thing.

As far as he's concerned, Neverrest is subsumed and this new dungeon has control of the territory, which is all he needs to know.  The rest of the report is almost a comfort.  While the details are complex, they're the kind of complex he enjoys, and he's happy to lose himself in the checking of the details of the aftermath of something like that.  Things are accounted for, the new dungeon designates a Voice and also gains a Conduit from the subsuming, both things that are nice and predictable.  It even names itself, just lending further credence to the cloistered theory.

There's even a second new dungeon?  It's located rather deep, and it seems Thedeim has taken it as a prodigy, and even calls it Violet.  Thankfully,  the growth for the new dungeon seems to be proceeding at a more reasonable pace.

What's less nice and predictable is the ending notes.  While the accounting year is over, time continues to advance, and it seems the winter months will not be quiet for this Thedeim.  There has been a change in the status of Hullbreak harbor, and though it happened after the official end of the accounting period, the ending note is very appreciated.  It's having mana issues, and Thedeim is intending to help.  There's also a note about tunnel horror migration/mating season, but the elven accountant doesn't pay it much mind.  Something like that will be more of a local problem than one the guild at large has to worry about.  The locals might be able to make some decent coin from the information they can glean from it, but that's for their taxes and records, not the Guild's.  Well, at least until the Guild pays them for official access to that information.