The Shop, continued
Dec. 8th, 2008 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerMonday dawned grey and drizzly. I wasn't looking forward to the new mission, especially with Liliana not there to be moral support. I did get my wish though; first thing that morning, I found a grubby envelope thrust through my letterbox. In it was a key to the shop door. I had control of it all. Not that I wanted it.
I took the bus to avoid the weather. Nick and Taz were waiting outside, despite the fact that I was a full twenty minutes early. I did my first ever solo shop-opening, and we all trooped inside.
There was a new building on my menu when I started up the game: crystal miner. So we were going to be using the stuff, and I was prepared to bet we weren't going to be making dreamcatchers. My settlement was on the western edge of the map: I was sensing a definite progression eastwards in this group of missions.
The hermit was all excited. Apparently there was a fully operational ancient weapon somewhere on the map, the first he'd encountered. It was, of course, being guarded and used by a large bandit gang, whose swivel-eyed representative promptly showed up and demanded three hundred gold splonders by way of tribute. A timer started counting down from ten minutes. I had the money, but it never pays to parker up too eagerly. I started my settlement in the usual way, giving particular attention to the stone quarry, and sent the knight off to do some exploring. (In the earlier missions I'd had a special explorer character to do this for him, but somewhere among the updates he'd been retired. Just as well; he was no use for anything else, and I could only keep track of one idiot at a time.
The bandit camp was itself surrounded by hefty stone walls, and the weapon perched on a rocky outcrop that took it above the battlements. As I approached a couple of squads emerged from the gate and came at me, so I beat a fairly hasty retreat. No sense in getting killed this early. Oh, but look, over here to the north. Crystal deposits. Would you believe it.
The timer was running low. I let it get to the last five seconds before I sent the money, by which time the taxes from my burgeoning township had almost doubled it. There should now be a respectable pause before the next demand. There are those who say that you should never pay anyone Danegeld, and that works when it's your band of axe-waving thugs against his band of axe-waving thugs, but when the other guy has a bloody laser cannon trained on your navel I tell you what you do, you pay the Danegeld and you pay it with a smile. And you work like stink on your own laser cannon.
About this time I started getting petitions from the neighbouring villages, who were likewise being kept under the thumb and soaked for regular tribute. I sympathised, and promised to look into the matter at my earliest convenience. Given that the earliest convenience was, I believe, a hole in the ground, I thought that was fair.
I wondered about calling and seeing how Liliana was. Maybe that would look peculiar, two days in a row. She didn't need me bothering her. Unless she did, and I was being insensitive. How do real people do these things? They don't even seem to think about it. Or maybe they do, and they just conceal it better. Ah, Mister Bandit, how nice to see you again so soon. Another three hundred? Oh, make it four? I'll think about it. Give me ten minutes. Oh, you have.
The idea of the ever-increasing tribute, of course, was to keep me from ever having enough money to train soldiers. Fortunately, it wasn't going to work. I promoted the knight, slapped a couple of smithies and a barracks down in my standard pattern, and set out to claim some of the outlying territories, several of which looked to have been used by the bandits for target practice. This weapon didn't devastate whole swathes of land, but created roughly circular barren patches. They didn't re-green, from the look of things.
I claimed two territories in a row. The next one in line was the one with the crystal outcrops. The timer ran down. All right, Mister Bandit, here you go. Don't spend it all in one place. Hopefully that would be the last time.
"Phone for you, boyo." It was Nick, brandishing a mobile. "Lil."
I would never in the world have thought of calling her Lil.
"Hello?"
"Hi," she said, still sounding teary but a bit stronger. "I just wanted to say sorry if I was a bit abrupt yesterday..."
"You were fine," I said.
"And to ask you if you'd like to come to the memorial service. It's just a short--I mean, we can't have a proper burial because--"
Because they couldn't find anything to send back. "When is it? I mean, yes, of course I'll come, when is it?"
"Thursday evening. St. Jerome's, it's just down the road from us. We don't--I mean, Roger didn't reckon church that much, it's mainly for his mother's benefit and--sorry, I'm rambling. Eight o'clock. My--our--my place afterwards for sherry and so on."
"I'll be there." Presumably the mother-in-law had also insisted on the sherry thing afterwards. I couldn't see it being Liliana's thing, and it certainly wasn't mine, but
"How's the mission?" she said, in a let's-change-the-subject sort of voice.
I gave her a brief outline.
"Well, something like that was bound to be next, wasn't it? Are you getting the walls up?"
"Oh yes."
"And the other reason I rang was to remind you that it's lunchtime and to go and have a break. Nick can fill in for you, I happen to know he plays these sort of games a lot."
So did I, but I thanked her for the suggestion and handed the phone back to Nick, who listened for a while and then said okay and bye and hung up.
"Off you trot, then," he said, and I made my escape. I honestly hadn't realised it was that late. Time flies when you're being threatened by hairy psychopaths with advanced technology.
It occurred to me as I was finding an unoccupied bench to sit and eat my sandwich that Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula hadn't shown up today. Presumably it was he who shoved the key through my letterbox, but apart from that, no sign. Maybe this was how his people honoured the dead. Although on the evidence in the game, they didn't that much. Just stepped over the bodies and carried on.
What would Roger have made of the setup here? I was willing to bet he didn't know about it. He'd never been seen anywhere near the shop, and none of us had ever been invited to the homestead. Till now, that was. How would he have reacted if she'd told him her boss was a little man from a computer game, sent to our world on a mission to feed us properly?
My big sandy-haired Roger-simulacrum, who seemed to have acquired an Allan Cuthbertson moustache, smiled pityingly and looked at me as if I was crackers. I chucked my paper bag into recycling and went back to work.
"This bugger wants money," Nick said as I walked into the office. "Do I pay him?"
"Have you got a stone wall around the settlement yet?"
"Ah. No."
"Then pay him at the last minute. Better still, I'll do it."
We swapped places, and he went back out to the shop. I should have mentioned the wall. I quickly slapped the last couple of stretches in place, but the timer was already running out, so regretfully I paid another whack of Danegeld. The knight was due for another promotion, and thankfully Nick had not neglected the armed forces. I had three squads each of swordsmen and bowmen; not enough yet, but a very good start.
The walls went up, as did an outpost in the territory with the crystal. I planted two of the new miners' huts.
It was time to make my stand.
I took the bus to avoid the weather. Nick and Taz were waiting outside, despite the fact that I was a full twenty minutes early. I did my first ever solo shop-opening, and we all trooped inside.
There was a new building on my menu when I started up the game: crystal miner. So we were going to be using the stuff, and I was prepared to bet we weren't going to be making dreamcatchers. My settlement was on the western edge of the map: I was sensing a definite progression eastwards in this group of missions.
The hermit was all excited. Apparently there was a fully operational ancient weapon somewhere on the map, the first he'd encountered. It was, of course, being guarded and used by a large bandit gang, whose swivel-eyed representative promptly showed up and demanded three hundred gold splonders by way of tribute. A timer started counting down from ten minutes. I had the money, but it never pays to parker up too eagerly. I started my settlement in the usual way, giving particular attention to the stone quarry, and sent the knight off to do some exploring. (In the earlier missions I'd had a special explorer character to do this for him, but somewhere among the updates he'd been retired. Just as well; he was no use for anything else, and I could only keep track of one idiot at a time.
The bandit camp was itself surrounded by hefty stone walls, and the weapon perched on a rocky outcrop that took it above the battlements. As I approached a couple of squads emerged from the gate and came at me, so I beat a fairly hasty retreat. No sense in getting killed this early. Oh, but look, over here to the north. Crystal deposits. Would you believe it.
The timer was running low. I let it get to the last five seconds before I sent the money, by which time the taxes from my burgeoning township had almost doubled it. There should now be a respectable pause before the next demand. There are those who say that you should never pay anyone Danegeld, and that works when it's your band of axe-waving thugs against his band of axe-waving thugs, but when the other guy has a bloody laser cannon trained on your navel I tell you what you do, you pay the Danegeld and you pay it with a smile. And you work like stink on your own laser cannon.
About this time I started getting petitions from the neighbouring villages, who were likewise being kept under the thumb and soaked for regular tribute. I sympathised, and promised to look into the matter at my earliest convenience. Given that the earliest convenience was, I believe, a hole in the ground, I thought that was fair.
I wondered about calling and seeing how Liliana was. Maybe that would look peculiar, two days in a row. She didn't need me bothering her. Unless she did, and I was being insensitive. How do real people do these things? They don't even seem to think about it. Or maybe they do, and they just conceal it better. Ah, Mister Bandit, how nice to see you again so soon. Another three hundred? Oh, make it four? I'll think about it. Give me ten minutes. Oh, you have.
The idea of the ever-increasing tribute, of course, was to keep me from ever having enough money to train soldiers. Fortunately, it wasn't going to work. I promoted the knight, slapped a couple of smithies and a barracks down in my standard pattern, and set out to claim some of the outlying territories, several of which looked to have been used by the bandits for target practice. This weapon didn't devastate whole swathes of land, but created roughly circular barren patches. They didn't re-green, from the look of things.
I claimed two territories in a row. The next one in line was the one with the crystal outcrops. The timer ran down. All right, Mister Bandit, here you go. Don't spend it all in one place. Hopefully that would be the last time.
"Phone for you, boyo." It was Nick, brandishing a mobile. "Lil."
I would never in the world have thought of calling her Lil.
"Hello?"
"Hi," she said, still sounding teary but a bit stronger. "I just wanted to say sorry if I was a bit abrupt yesterday..."
"You were fine," I said.
"And to ask you if you'd like to come to the memorial service. It's just a short--I mean, we can't have a proper burial because--"
Because they couldn't find anything to send back. "When is it? I mean, yes, of course I'll come, when is it?"
"Thursday evening. St. Jerome's, it's just down the road from us. We don't--I mean, Roger didn't reckon church that much, it's mainly for his mother's benefit and--sorry, I'm rambling. Eight o'clock. My--our--my place afterwards for sherry and so on."
"I'll be there." Presumably the mother-in-law had also insisted on the sherry thing afterwards. I couldn't see it being Liliana's thing, and it certainly wasn't mine, but
"How's the mission?" she said, in a let's-change-the-subject sort of voice.
I gave her a brief outline.
"Well, something like that was bound to be next, wasn't it? Are you getting the walls up?"
"Oh yes."
"And the other reason I rang was to remind you that it's lunchtime and to go and have a break. Nick can fill in for you, I happen to know he plays these sort of games a lot."
So did I, but I thanked her for the suggestion and handed the phone back to Nick, who listened for a while and then said okay and bye and hung up.
"Off you trot, then," he said, and I made my escape. I honestly hadn't realised it was that late. Time flies when you're being threatened by hairy psychopaths with advanced technology.
It occurred to me as I was finding an unoccupied bench to sit and eat my sandwich that Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula hadn't shown up today. Presumably it was he who shoved the key through my letterbox, but apart from that, no sign. Maybe this was how his people honoured the dead. Although on the evidence in the game, they didn't that much. Just stepped over the bodies and carried on.
What would Roger have made of the setup here? I was willing to bet he didn't know about it. He'd never been seen anywhere near the shop, and none of us had ever been invited to the homestead. Till now, that was. How would he have reacted if she'd told him her boss was a little man from a computer game, sent to our world on a mission to feed us properly?
My big sandy-haired Roger-simulacrum, who seemed to have acquired an Allan Cuthbertson moustache, smiled pityingly and looked at me as if I was crackers. I chucked my paper bag into recycling and went back to work.
"This bugger wants money," Nick said as I walked into the office. "Do I pay him?"
"Have you got a stone wall around the settlement yet?"
"Ah. No."
"Then pay him at the last minute. Better still, I'll do it."
We swapped places, and he went back out to the shop. I should have mentioned the wall. I quickly slapped the last couple of stretches in place, but the timer was already running out, so regretfully I paid another whack of Danegeld. The knight was due for another promotion, and thankfully Nick had not neglected the armed forces. I had three squads each of swordsmen and bowmen; not enough yet, but a very good start.
The walls went up, as did an outpost in the territory with the crystal. I planted two of the new miners' huts.
It was time to make my stand.