The Newt and Demon

Your timing is suspiciously aligned with when I create a new potion, Theo said.

He took a seat in his lab, gazing out the window as the voice of Fenian echoed through his mind. The telepathic link was like the Tara’hek’s version, but different enough to render it cumbersome. The entire experience reminded him that the officials from Qavell hadn’t contacted him in some time, and the last time he tried to establish communication, they didn’t respond.

I’m a man of many talents, Fenian said. Excellent timing is one of them.

The traders are flowing south like a tide, Theo said. Migrants and adventurers, too. Why do I have the feeling that you have something to do with the whole thing?

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Fenian said.

Even through the communication crystal, Theo could spot a lie. The Elf had something to do with the merchant’s war, but that was for the better. If Fenian dismantled that establishment, everyone in the kingdom would benefit. Fenian Feintleaf was a strange trader. He seemed more interested in seeing Broken Tusk built up than making a tidy profit, although he also did that. He was Theo’s link to the outside world, possessing a magical transportation that made long distances irrelevant. There had to be some limitations, but the alchemist never pushed him on the subject.

Potions, Fenian said, repeating his earlier sentiment. If I know you, you have none in your stockpile.

Theo stopped himself from rising to the comment, clearing his throat and letting out a breath. Just a few things. The art of alchemy takes time to perfect, Fenian.

Naturally, Fenian said. Well, I’m dropping off an order soon. The winds have turned in my favor and I have gold reserves again. I’ll buy every potion you craft.

It was hard to think about the trader going broke. He seemed to pull gold from nowhere, but that was a childish thought. The Elf had holdings somewhere, some investment he called on. For a few weeks, Fenian was transporting people vast distances to avoid the rise of the cults. According to the rumors, those cults were put down and order had been restored. Only now did Theo think the cults were a ruse, something designed to hide the merchant’s war.

I have some new ones, Theo said, confident that he could brew massive quantities before the trader arrived. Some strange, some useful.

Perfect. See you soon, Fenian said.

Without another word, the connection was severed. The items Fenian coveted the most were obvious. Restoration potions and stat-enhancement potions. Those were the easiest to sell. Theo refused to sell the trader his bombs, any bombs, based on how dangerous they could be. There was also an experience boost potion he could make that was illegal, so he avoided the truffle’s properties altogether.

Fenian is coming to town, Theo said, tapping into his Tara’hek power.

Sweet! I bet he has my order, Tresk said.

Something about the way her voice came through let him know she was already in a dungeon. Excitement flooded his body as he realized she was over that hump.

Theo had a plan for the day’s work, but a few items he wanted to create were novelty items. He rummaged through his supplies and located a few things he’d need for the day’s brewing. Tresk always kept a store of [Marsh Tubers] nearby, and the alchemist was intent on extracting the [Solidify] modifier property. He usually had enough [Manashrooms] to brew at least 500 mana potions, but he sat on a surplus. He prepared both ingredients, filling his fermentation barrels before stepping back to inspect the barrels.

[Enchanted Alchemy Fermentation Barrel]

[Alchemy Equipment] [Enchanted]

Epic

Created By: Sledge

Modified By: Zarali

A 200 unit capacity barrel capable of fermenting any reagents placed inside. Placing a mote with the mash is required for the process to take effect. Additional motes and mana may be required over the course of the fermentation.

Effects:

Creates a fermentation reaction when reagents are placed inside with a mote.

Speed of fermentation is greatly increased, depending on the strength of the mote.

Enchantments:

Siphon Power

Distribute Power

Crafting Speed

Crafting Effectiveness

Alignment: Drogramath

Although Zarali had made modifications to the barrels, the description only confused him. Siphoning and distributing power were hard to understand, but speed and effectiveness were simple enough. He set the [Alchemical Grinder] to the side and inspected the barrels. Instead of introducing a mote to kick off the reaction, he tried adding his Drogramath-aligned mana. It wasn’t like his practice with Xol’sa. The mana flowed on its own. He felt something drain inside him as he filled both barrels, nodding with some satisfaction as the contents of each barrel bubbled.

The plan was to begin by targeting 2 variations of his standard health potion. The first was easy enough. Using the [Manashrooms], he would extract the [Mana Bloom] modifier property. It was a simple property, adding a mana bonus to regular potions. His second plan, involving the [Marsh Tuber] would extract the [Solidify] property, which would allow him to turn his drinkable potions into small, chewable pieces. He’d cut those up, experimenting on if the system recognized them as individual things, then Fenian could sell them as a novel way of restoring health.

“Like pills,” Theo said, securing the lids of both barrels. Sometimes it helped to bring his thoughts out.

Theo rummaged through his reagents, trying to find something that stuck out to him. He’d cultivated [Mage’s Bane], but was reluctant to distribute anti-mage potions. That seemed more like a weapon than anything to him, so he skipped those. A creature called a Fade had attacked town recently, and Tresk was more than happy to collect their hard carapace. While he had never made a potion out of the hard shell, his intuition said it was a better version of the [Barkskin] property.

Managing the garden outside was becoming a chore, but Theo didn’t trust anyone else to take care of it yet. He went outside, chatted for a short time with Azrug, and worked the garden. The [Mage’s Bane] got a corner of the greenhouse, while the [Spiny Swamp Thistle] took up a majority of the space, even after the expansion. Propagating the tuber-bearing thistle plant was easy enough. The alchemist could cut one section of a single root, store it in a cool dry place for a few hours, and it would be ready to plant once again. Everything moved faster in Broken Tusk.

Theo returned to the lab and set two stills to work, processing their full capacity of [Spiny Swamp Thistle Root]. He filled the last still with the [Fade Carapace], and left the lab to take care of some chores. It was a bad idea to neglect his [Governance Core]. He made good time to the mine, passing by Perg’s tannery to spot her dead wreath, then by a small cluster of houses meant for the miners and their families. Nira was working the massive smeltery building, as she always was. The sound of pickaxes striking stone met his ears even before he spotted Dead Dog Mine. Gridgen, the taskmaster for the operation, was taking a break outside.

It had become a habit for Theo to pick plants everywhere he went. During his trip to the mine, he stuffed as many [Mage’s Bane] and [Stone Flowers] into his inventory as he could spot, relying on his [Drogramath Alchemy Knife] to reveal the location of hidden herbs. Gridgen seemed in good spirits, smiling as he spotted the alchemist. The man was more weather-worn than most in Broken Tusk, his pale skin a tapestry of hard labor and scarce meals. He was a Human, although what that meant here was often foggy. His particular brand of Human came from cold northlands, among the bear-like people called the Toora.

“A visit from the boss,” Gridgen said, laughing. He slapped Theo on the back.

Unlike when Theo first arrived in town, the friendly slap on the back didn’t move him at all. He stood firm, bolstered by his attributes. He smiled back.

“Everyone happy?” Theo asked.

“More than happy,” Gridgen said. “I have a few new workers. We added another house to the miner’s village. Dead Dog Mine is spitting out copper and iron faster than we can mine it. Walk in, and your pockets fill with ore. Not really.”

Theo laughed. He had a purpose for his visit. Deeper was better with mines, if he took the hints from Zarali correctly. Mining manually downward was going to be an issue, especially if the stone regenerated. The alchemist needed to know the current layout of the mine and how to exploit the [Dissolve] property to create new caverns.

“I’d like a tour of the mine itself,” Theo said, clapping his hand over the man’s shoulder. Gridgen only came up to his chest, and the alchemist found himself constantly stooping to be at eye-level with the smaller races of the world.

“Might be a tight squeeze for you,” Gridgen said, nodding.

Gridgen handed him a lantern and Theo stooped even lower, crossing the threshold of that timber-braced entrance. The inside was exactly what he expected. Rough-hewn walls with men and women of all races hitting pickaxes against the walls. When they struck a nugget free, it vanished. The mine was upgraded with [Automatic Deposit], which sent the nuggets straight to a [Dimensional Storage Crate] outside. The most surprising feature of the mine was that it was massive. At first, there was a single sloped path that led down, but it quickly forked off. Those forks had forks, and so on, until the mine turned into an ant’s hill of confounding passageways. Without his excellent memory, Theo would have gotten lost.

“This is the deepest point?” Theo asked, pressing his hand against the cold stone. Gridgen nodded, and the alchemist held his hand out. After a moment, the miner understood he wanted the man’s pickaxe.

“Does the base stone regenerate?” Theo asked, slamming the pick hard against the wall. Despite inadequate space, he brought a sizeable chunk of stone down with a single hit. Gridgen yelped in surprise as sparks showered them in the darkness.

“In some places, but mostly no,” Gridgen said. “We’ve been digging this tunnel for a while.”

Theo inspected the slab he dislodged from the wall, finding that it was just poor quality stone. The nuggets in the mine were perfect quality, which just went to show how this place was enhanced by someone. Who that was still eluded him, but he had theories.

“What do you figure the next tier of metal is?” Theo asked. “Copper, Iron, Steel, Silver, Gold?”

Gridgen shrugged at that, setting the lantern down on the ground. “I worked for silver mines and copper mines, but never gold mines. Everyone targeted the precious metals for coin minting, but we never hit incidental veins.”

Incidental veins meaning veins of iron that sprung up near copper. Theo figured that much from the context and nodded. Gridgen was getting at the fact that they were looking for silver veins in the mine, but even veins was a bad way to describe it. They were more like points where the nuggets would pop into existence, clusters that the miners could reliably expect to regenerate.

“How dangerous is it to dig deep?” Theo asked.

“Fairly dangerous,” Gridgen said. “You can hit a cavern. Filled with monsters and all kinds of nasty things.”

That was easy enough to understand. Theo thought about the defenses in his town, spotting a weakness born of his thoughts to secure the mine. The town had a single wall, and unlimited angles of approach. If the mine were to hit a cavern that contained monsters, it made sense to limit the approaches to one. An idea swirled in his mind and he looked around at the hard stone around him.

“This stone won’t regenerate?” Theo asked.

“We dug this tunnel a few days ago,” Gridgen said. “Seems to be holding.”

“Perfect. I have an idea,” Theo said, gesturing for the man to follow him up and out of the gentle slope of the tunnel.

Once they were up in the fresh air and bright sunlight, Theo went over his concept. “I have a potion that should dig the tunnels for you. I haven’t brewed it yet, but I’m certain it will work. Don’t dig more than one exploration tunnel at a time, and branch everything off that one tunnel you showed me. Dig a large area out in that tunnel, enough for us to mount a defensive point—stuff like metal gates and artifices–then use my potions to dig deeper.”

“Magical digging?” Gridgen asked, leaning on his pick and grinning. “You think potions solve everything, don’t you?”

Theo nodded. “Sometimes I’m wrong, but it often works out. You understand what the goal is, right?”

“To avoid monsters and find silver?” Gridgen asked.

“No,” Theo said, smiling. “To find both. I don’t imagine many people would be insane enough to look for those caverns, but I’m interested in farming them out.”

Theo’s mind shifted. Gridgen mentioned something earlier that he had riddled out through something Zarali said. He took a breath, stopped to collect his thoughts, then continued.

“Coin minting,” Theo said, nodding. “Tell me everything you know about minting currency.”

Gridgen stuck his hand into a sack hung from his belt, digging around for something. He withdrew a single copper coin and held it up. “Somehow you’ve stumbled on someone who knows a lot about something for no good reason. Well, I worked as a porter for the royal mint for a time. Not the mint directly, but the mine that supplied the mint. What is this coin made of? Why does it have any value?”

Theo understood the concept of a currency backed by a precious metal, but here that made little sense. A copper bar wasn’t worth a copper coin, and a copper coin contained less copper than the bar. That was a mystery that he never gave much thought, chalking it up to some system-related backing of the money. When the alchemist was given the first bit of information regarding a topic, he could extrapolate to the end with little effort. This one was more simple than he thought.

“Magic,” Theo said, shrugging. “The coins have some kind of magical use, and are soaked in the stuff.”

“That’s how the royal minter explained it,” Gridgen said, flipping the coin in the air and catching it. “They have some secret process to press a piece of copper with magic. He said it was extremely dense. As in, there’s more magic in a copper coin than in his mana pool. And he had a lot of mana.”

“There’s the question, though,” Theo said, tapping his chin. Coins had mana, but what did that matter? “What’s the point of the coins?”

“High-level crafts,” Gridgen said, shrugging as though everyone knew that.

“How do we make a mint?” Theo asked.

Gridgen blustered, looking at Theo as though he were a crazy person. “You’d need a lot of ambient mana. And a specialized building. What’s wrong with your face? What’s the look for? Theo?”

Theo had fallen into thought, his mouth hanging open as he realized the implications. The mine already produced copper, and it would produce silver. They had more ambient mana than they knew what to do with. That’s what Zarali was doing. Her long-term plans fell into his mind in an instant. She was accumulating mana in her enchanting building as a test, not just to satisfy her enchanting needs. Perhaps she was hanging on to the idea until she was certain it would work, but the alchemist had no such reservations.

“I’m going to brew you some potions to help you find silver,” Theo said. Without waiting for a response from the man, he sent a message through the town-wide messaging system.

[Theo]: Aarok, Throk, report to the mine. Not an emergency.

Gridgen explained how impossible what he wanted to do while they waited for the two men to show up. Aarok arrived with Luras after a few moments, they must have not understood that it wasn’t an emergency. Throk came shortly after. Theo explained what he wanted. A defensive point in the mine to bolster against the possibility of a cavern breach, and adventurers to man it.

“I can build an iron gate easy enough,” Throk said, waving him off.

“More than happy to spare a few adventurers for the effort,” Aarok said. “Sentry duty, right?”

“Exactly,” Theo said.

Theo went into detail on his plan. This was the first step in a long journey for Broken Tusk to mint their own currency. It was a chance to claw independence away from Qavell, and each man standing there on that hill were people he trusted with his life. People who wanted nothing more than to transform their little town into an independent nation-state. The one thing they needed more than anything else was money. Enough spiritstone coins to gain some amount of independence and stop paying the absurd taxes to the crown.

Currently, Broken Tusk owed taxes every month. It was raised recently to support the war effort. Property was taxed 15% on its value, exports 20%, and sales 15%. That meant if they exported anything from the town, they owed 35% of the value of the item to the crown. Luras, Aarok, and Throk were on board, but Gridgen had his reservations. He simply didn’t believe they could gather enough energy to produce the coins.

“Well, you’ve gone and ruined my surprise!” Zarali shouted from down the hill.

All eyes turned to her. The Dronon woman was stomping up the hill, hands on her hips and a grim look on her face. “I’m not even done testing the quality of the mana,” she said, letting out a huff.

“It’s pure enough, isn’t it?” Theo asked, excitement flooding his body.

Zarali’s posture straightened, a smile spreading across her face. “Of course it is, brother. We just need the building, the metal, and someone with a [Minter’s Core].”

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