Fantasy Economics 101 - Chapter 18

Necessity is the mother of invention

His Imperial Majesty's Secret Service, like all effective clandestine organizations, had its fair share of secrets. Secret code words, secret protocols, and even secret handshakes, though those were only popular with the agents of the lower rungs of the hierarchy. In stark opposition, there were secrets only the more established and well-informed operatives were privy to, such as the locations of various supply caches, safe houses, and even so-called 'red manors'.

While the name might've brought ideas of brightly colored mansions to mind, reality naturally found a way to be a lot less amusing, and considerably more sinister. A 'red manor' was the Imperial Secret Service's code word for a concealed site where they could operate without any prying eyes upon them. Most of these were outwardly inconspicuous; an abode at the edge of a small village that just happened to have an extensive basement, or an abandoned villa in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by rumors about bandits and evil spirits dwelling within.

However, even among these 'red manors', not all of them were made equal, and some of them were rather more specialized than others. Special, secretive complexes that held captured spies, dissidents, and other enemies of the state who couldn't be dealt with openly, and thus getting 'spirited away' by the Secret Service. They would live out the rest of their short lives in these unseen prisons and torture facilities before their inevitable demise. It was distasteful work, but an essential part of running an empire, and someone had to do it.

Raol, being an infiltrator, wasn't too familiar with the operations of these 'red manors', but through decades of service, he had found out about the existence and locations of many of them in the Eastern parts of the Empire, now Monarchy. As expected, the Wish Incident and the political and economic turmoil it left in its wake greatly affected the Imperial Secret Service as well. Many of their facilities had been abandoned during the years following the Wish, and since the Eastern lands of the Monarchy were considered to hold little strategic value, the majority of them were never reoccupied. In fact, numerous 'red manors' of old no longer even showed up in the ledgers in Luteanum, considered to be lost, ruined, and forgotten for good.

Some of them certainly were. Due to the changed landscape and his information being hundreds of years out of date, the first few facilities Raol tried to find had proven to be either elusive, erased from the face of the Monarchy, or repurposed by the locals, making them unsuited for his plans. It took him nearly a month, spent traveling less-trodden roads in secret while avoiding the curious gazes of the locals and the common routes of the adventurers on their way to their hunting grounds. He wasn't entirely alone though, as Ayanga, the small white snake had accompanied him on his travels.

While he was away, returning only once a week at best, the rest also weren't resting on their laurels. The dwarven alchemist, and his team of surveyors, miners, and architects temporarily settled down in New Reedcourt's adventurer's guild. Middy himself, true to his word, worked with Elkayla on creating a more durable and reusable medium for the summoning ritual, and while progress was slow, the initial prototypes were showing promise. In the meantime, the ghostly necromancer was tasked with creating larger and more robust summoning rituals, as the current one could only create small monsters, like goblins and horned wolves.

Werdner was initially quite displeased by this arrangement, but he couldn't hide his interest in the research, and after only a few short weeks, he'd already come up with a ritual circle that could, theoretically, summon even a Tralok. In other words, even while Raol was shopping for the perfect site to start his business, things were proceeding without a hitch in his absence.

Of course, there was one thing that absolutely required his presence, and so whenever he returned to the cottage, Raol spent most of his time summoning goblins, slaughtering goblins, and burying goblins. Even so, accounting for the amount of gold Werdner's and Elkayla's research consumed, they barely broke even.

However, after over a month, his efforts finally bore fruit, and Raol and company were ready to set up shop at the foot of the mountains, a little over a day's distance from New Reedcourt. They set out in the evening, and the moon was high in the sky, lighting their unbeaten path in the middle of the early-autumn forest.

"Are we there yet?" Werdner groaned as he weaved between the branches overhead.

"Stop asking. We'll get there when we arrive," Raol hissed, and the woman in his hands let out a soft giggle.

He was leading the group while holding Elkayla in his arms, her hands clasped behind his neck for stability. The hermitess was wearing her veiled hat and britches from the last time they traveled together, and after half a night of trekking through the wilderness, she took the skeleton up on his joking offer to carry her. Raol didn't mind it much; as an undead, he didn't grow tired from physical effort, so it made little difference how much he was carrying. If anything, her weight helped to balance out the large pack on his back, carrying their camping supplies and other necessities, making it easier to walk on uneven ground without fear of falling over backward.

"Why couldn't we do this during the day?" Middy grumbled, then stumbled back as he nearly hit his head on a low-hanging branch. "Ack! I-I mean, don't take me wrong, I'm no stranger to hiking in the countryside, but this is ridiculous!"

"Are you a fool, dwarf? Do you expect me to expose myself to sunlight for your convenience!? Don't you know that the rays of the sun are the natural enemy of all undead?"

"Really?" Raol stopped and turned a curious glance at the ghost floating under the canopy. "I never had any trouble with that."

Neither could he remember hearing about something like this in his previous life. In fact, he could clearly remember seeing skeleton workmen hired from the Necromancers' Guild working on the imperial highways, regardless of the weather. On second thought, he considered, maybe those undead just lacked the ability to complain. He was never particularly interested in the trivia of the necromancer's craft, so he couldn't know that his guess was closer to the truth than he could've imagined.

However, even if he intended to ask the necromancer for clarification, Werdner's sudden outburst dashed any such possibilities.

"It's because you're weird! You are the single weirdest undead being I've ever seen in my entire unfortunate existence, and I once created a dancing golem out of horse bones with my very hands!"

This time, even the dwarf stopped wiping his forehead and turned a skeptical gaze at the spectral old man.

"Excuse me, Mister Werdner…" Elkayla raised a hand and parted her veil to take a good look at the ghost, and tentatively asked, "Could you… repeat that? Please don't laugh, but I swear I thought I just heard you say that you made a dancing undead."

"I just said that!" Werdner scoffed, and seeing the incredulous gazes, he rolled his eyes and descended from the air. "It was for an experiment, to test its autonomous learning capabilities!"

The silence in the air was almost deafening, until the dwarf jokingly asked, "Did… you put it in a dress?"

"You dare make fun of me, wretch?! I let you know, it was a legitimate experiment published in the Journal of Post-Mortem Studies, the most prestigious internal publication of the Necromancers' Fellowship Association, widely cited among my peers!"

Another round of silence surrounded the group, and this time it was broken by Elkayla.

"Was that a yes or a no?"

"I didn't hear a 'no' in that," Raol joked, though, without lips, it was impossible to see his grin. "I bet he dressed up in one of those ballet dresses, too. A pink one, for good measure."

Middy barely stifled a laugh at the mental image, further infuriating the old necromancer.

"Silence, fools! I did no such thing!"

The startled dwarf skipped ahead, nearly stumbling on a rock jutting out from the soil, while Werdner glared at the skeleton. Raol held the eye contact for a while, and then lightly shrugged. It made the bag on his back clank and jingle, while Elkayla let out a startled yelp as she nearly slipped out of his hands. The sudden motion made the small white snake hidden under his tunic poke her head out of his collar, and after bouncing left and right a few times, she dived back into Raol's clothes and went back to sleep. In the meantime, the skeleton reaffirmed his grip and glanced back at Werdner. At last, he offered an olive branch.

"Don't worry, old man. We're not judging you. Everyone has one or more strange hobbies, right?"

"Certainly," Middy agreed with a hearty nod, only to then sidle to the side when Werdner's glare turned to him.

"All of this talk is meaningless! How did we even get here?!"

"On our feet," Raol said, sans a cheeky grin. "Well, most of us." He let the jest linger for a breath's time, then added, "On a more serious note, we're getting close to our destination."

"It's closer to the town than expected."

The hermitess's comment made him shake his head and point his chin in the direction they were originally heading.

"It seems that way because we're cutting through the forest using the path I broke the other day. If the adventurers had any common sense, they'd use the road branching off from the old mill upstream the river, but starting from the cottage—"

"Hermitage," Elkayla cut in.

"… But starting from the hermitage, it would've been an even bigger detour for us."

"How close is 'close'?" Middy asked, and when Raol looked over his shoulder at him, he found the dwarf sitting on a fallen tree trunk and picking thistles off his trousers. "As I said, I'm no stranger to a good hike, but my feet are getting a bit sore."

"Hmpf," the old ghost harrumphed and folded his arms with a disapproving frown on his brows. "I would also like to know for how much longer we must travel on foot."

"You don't even have feet, old man."

That was arguably a low blow, but Raol didn't pay much attention to the angry necromancer, as Elkayla tugged on his sleeve, and it didn't take him long to realize she was asking him to let her down. He did so, and after straightening her clothes, the young woman gestured towards the still-sitting dwarf.

"I'm feeling fine now, so if Mister Middy's legs hurt, you can carry him instead of me."

"What?" the bearded man's mouth hung open in shock, and once he made sure the hermitess wasn't just teasing him, Raol shrugged his shoulders once again.

"I'm an equal opportunity mule, so might as well."

"No way," Middy declared and jumped to his feet, pulling his wide-rimmed hat over his head so hard Raol was afraid it would tear. "D-Don't take me wrong, Sir Raol! I'm not afraid of your bony visage or anything, but my pride would never let me be carried like some damsel!"

"Does that make me a damsel?" Elkayla asked, and the skeleton nodded without a shred of hesitation.

"Certainly. You should make sure you wouldn't catch the eyes of any passing dragon, or you might just end up locked in a tower."

"That's such an ancient stereotype," the dwarf muttered under his nose, but nobody was paying him any attention, especially since Ayanaga decided to show up again. She slithered out of Raol's tunic, and draped her serpentine body around his neck, as if declaring that, now that Elkayla was off, it was her turn. The hermitess didn't seem to mind and gently rubbed the head of the strange snake before the group ended their unplanned break and started moving again.

Once again, Raol led the party, following the signs he left behind during his first foray, and before long, they found themselves looking at a sheer cliff. He gestured for his companions to follow after him, and after another half an hour, they finally reached their journey's end in the form of a stone structure seemingly carved out of the cliff face. Before they even got close, Middy was already getting excited, and not just because it meant he could finally sit down again.

"Oooh? Is that dwarven craftsmanship I see there?"

Middy ran ahead, and by the time the rest of them caught up with him, he had already taken out a small tool that looked like a sextant mounted on a right-angle triangle ruler made of a matted yellow metal. He placed it against the smooth, if partially moss-covered stones of the wide archway forming an entrance into the depths, like a huge yawning mouth.

"Hah! My gut was right! Based on the joinery here, this was built at least five centuries ago, during the Marble Renaissance Era of the Mountainhold!" He made a few more measurements while Raol carefully put down his bag, and then turned a curious eye to the skeleton. "I thought you said we were heading to some old human hideout. Why are we in front of an abandoned mine?"

"It might've been a mine at one point or another." Raol walked up to him and put his hands on his hip bone as they both beheld the foreboding entrance leading into the mountainside. "I don't know anything about its history, but back when I was alive, this place was used by His Majesty's Secret Service, and I doubt anyone else knew about it."

"There certainly doesn't seem to be any sign of habitation," the spectral necromancer noted as he floated over their heads and took a closer look at the top of the arch and the lichen covering it. "It also needs maintenance."

"Obviously. It's been abandoned for centuries," Raol spoke brashly and walked inside, and both Middy and Elkayla hastily followed after him. "The inner parts are slightly better preserved, but…"

"Wait, Mister Raol," the hermitess cut him short, skipped back to the bag previously carried by him, and soon returned with a portable lamp. "We can't see in the dark like you do."

"That might not be enough, Lady Elkayla," Middy spoke with a self-satisfied smile and pulled out a pair of round stones from his pockets. They were fastened in a cradle of strings, and when he wound one around his hand, it soon let out a bright white light. He smiled at the hermitess and offered the other stone to her. "Luckily, I came prepared."

"Oh? Is it dwarven magic?"

"Alchemy, my lady. Alchemy," Middy declared proudly. "It only lasts for three hours without recharging, but it should be more than enough. It also doesn't let off any harmful gases."

"Speaking of which, you should probably carry the lamp, just in case there's something dangerous in the air." Raol pointed at the bright red oil lamp, and then his own missing nose. "I self-evidently wasn't bothered by such things, and I couldn't smell anything either, but it might serve as an early warning."

"Please, Sir Raol!" Middy shook his head and pointed at the entryway. "This is a dwarven mine! Or, at least used to be one, at one time or another. We don't take the topic of ventilation lightly."

"You're aware that this place hasn't seen any maintenance for centuries, right?"

"Are you questioning the quality of dwarven craftsmanship? Those are fighting words, you know?" Middy patted his beard, but then Raol remained silent, he hastily cleared his throat. "I'm kidding, of course. There's no reason for us to squabble over something like this… but what I said about our craftsmanship still stands."

"Stop dallying around, and come inside already!"

Werdner called out to the rest from deeper inside, and after fastening the lightstone onto the hermitess's hand, and lighting the lamp, just in case, all of them headed deeper into the deserted facility. After a few dozen steps, the smooth walls, a continuation of the façade, gave way to much rougher stonework. There was no visible scaffolding in this section, though at some places there were stone columns seemingly embedded directly into the walls.

"Mister Raol? What did you say, what was this mine used for?" Elkayla asked as she curiously touched one of the pillars, but the skeleton waited until they reached the first larger chamber before he answered.

"It was a prison."

Just as he said that, a line of roughly constructed holding cells came into view. There was a broken table on their left, with rickety wooden chairs standing around it, untouched for who knew how many years. It was the guard station, where the agents in charge of this 'red manor' would spend their shifts, looking after the prisoners. Behind it, the remains of the collapsed cells; their thick wooden frames still holding strong, but the cheap iron bars and doors had already rusted beyond any use.

"I accidentally broke that one," Raol pointed at the ruined heap of rusty scrap metal, and the snake draped on his shoulders let out an odd sound, as if chuckling at his sheepish tone. "I tried to open the cell door when I came here the first time."

"It's not like we can use them, so it's no big loss," Middy noted with audible disinterest, more focused on whatever traces of dwarven architecture he could find on the walls and ceiling.

"Ah! This place!" In stark contrast, Werdner was unusually excited as he flew back and forth across the chamber. "It is filled with the scent of death and decay! Oh, if only I found it myself! I couldn't imagine a better environment for a dedicated necromantic workshop! A laboratory, even!"

"Sure, but it's not going to be either of those."

Raol's dismissive comment made the old man fume, but when he moved to the back of the chamber, everyone followed after him. From this central room, the facility branched out to numerous tunnels and smaller spaces. More holding cells. A makeshift barracks, its furniture in even worse shape than the table and chairs seen before. A torture chamber, though with most of the implements already taken, leaving behind only tools whose purpose is best left unpondered.

Most of these were visibly later additions to the original mineshafts, characterized by even rougher carving and wooden supports.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Elkayla asked as they were making their way back to the first chamber, and Raol could perfectly understand her apprehensions.

"It's the best way to avoid getting busted," he said as he came to a stop and pointed at the various features of the facility. Of course, he forgot that, unlike him, the others could only see in the direction their light stones were pointing, but nobody brought it up. "If we set things up here, we can control the in-flow of the workers, while also maintaining a defensive position in case things get out of hand. Speaking of which, can we add an emergency escape route to this mine?"

"Sir Raol, you're putting the cart before the horse," Middy chided him and crossed his arms with a frown. "This mountain home needs quite a lot of work before it could be usable. We also need to inspect the deeper shafts."

"I know, I know, but… My plan should be workable, right?"

The dwarf and the skeleton locked gazes, and after running his fingers through his beard a few times, Middy nodded.

"It would take some time, but it should work."

"That's what I wanted to hear!" Raol rubbed his palms, looking every bit like an evil mastermind hatching a nefarious ploy. In fact, such comparisons weren't too far off the mark.

"But… do we have to live here? I don't like how dark and cramped this place is…" Elkayla mumbled, sticking close to Raol's side. Middy let out a hearty laugh and waved at her with a wide smile on his face.

"Worry not, Lady Elkayla. You're in good hands here, and I don't mean those bone knuckles over there." He let out another snicker and showed off his rough palm. "Alchemist I may be, but I have completed my mandatory apprenticeship in the Hall of Architecture! I'll get my boys, and by the time we're done with the living quarters, you won't ever want to leave the warm embrace of the mountain ever again!"

Before he could get more into it, Raol also raised a palm and shook his head.

"No. Those can wait. First, we need to make a profit, so the dungeon's tunnels and chambers should take priority."

"Are you still calling it that?" Werdner floated in from the side, shaking his head. "I tell you, it's a mistake."

"What? It's what this place is, so it's only right to call it a dungeon," Raol insisted, but the old man only scoffed at him, and the rest of his companions didn't seem especially convinced either.

"To be fair to Mister Werdner, people generally don't associate dungeons with riches," the hermitess commented, and the dwarf nodded in agreement.

"Or monsters. Dungeons are places where people generally don't want to go."

"That might be what people think now, but give it some time, and they'll surely associate all of those things with our dungeon."

"Hah! Sure! As if you can just change what the word 'dungeon' means just by insisting! Once a fool, always a fool!"

Raol glared at the ghost, but didn't argue. Instead, he slowly shook his head, scratched the chin of the little snake trying to cheer him up, and defiantly whispered, "You'll see."

These were the less than illustrious beginnings of the world's first capital-D 'Dungeon', yet another grand event no history book would even write about. Nor would the people arguing over the naming conventions could fathom the wildfire they were about to start. But as they say, even the greatest inferno often starts as but a humble spark