Chapter 5: Chapter 5 Lordship

Chapter 5 "Lordship"

The next day as I was leaving my house I noticed a bundle by the door. I unwrapped it and it was another gift.

Uncommon Cleardusk Plains Lion Hide Cloak, +3 Speed, +3 Agility, Durability 40/40

It was well-made and fairly thin and unencumbering when I moved with it on. I put it in my bag and noted to Simba to remind me to wear it when I was not working.

Today I wanted to survey my property. With the game interface I was able to clearly walk my boundary. I marked off the foundation for the inn I planned to build and a fence for some live stock and a small stable. I had been gifted five chickens but I told a young girl in the village if she took care of them she could have the eggs. I then expanded my map to the village. There were twenty five structures in town. Most dotted the large dirt road that ran down the center. A few were slightly further out with small fields or fenced in areas. There were 53 people in the village including myself, twenty-two women, seventeen children and fourteen men. It was mostly a barter economy right now but I hoped to change that. I needed to go out into the world and bring back goods and coin. I needed to level as well. I decided to form a hunting party with the village militia to hunt the plains lions. With three archers and myself I figured we could be effective. Then I made plans to pave the central road through town. A quarter mile stretch ten yards wide. It was a project that I hoped would raise my skills to get my stats up to survive better. Finally at night I worked on my carving skill. I started carving other items as well, people, dogs, bears, horses, cows among them. And that is how I divided each day evenly into thirds.

Our first few hunts went well and I was even offered a quest.

New Quest: Lion Trouble, Reduce the threat to the village of Malcum by killing 20 lions close to the village, rewards: improved standing with villagers, 1000 experience

For the next week my days passed. Our hunting group did well except for the day we came upon 3 lions together. We tried to retreat but they pursued us. I was able to hold the attention of two of the beasts while I directed the archers to bring down the third. I was under half health when the archers were finally able to help me. In all we killed 33 lions, 48 plains deer, 7 giant porcupines and 86 badgers in the week by hunting 8 hours each day. I got 15 lion pelts for trade into my backpack, 21 deer hides and 164 pieces of various jerky. The jerky gave 10-18% stamina and health regen varying based on the meat it came from. The giant porcupines made excellent arrow shafts and greatly improved the hunting party’s damage. I choose not to learn the bowmanship skill since I was already pushing skill cap. The village larder was also well stocked with meat now. The new town store’s basement held the surplus. I also unlocked the leadership skill. I ended up taking it ignoring my prior planned commitment to skill acquisition.

Leadership 1 Tier 1 Unlocked, +1 Charisma, +2% to defense and attack of everyone in your party if you are the leader, you can lead up to 5 men times your level

I managed to raise the leadership skill to level five in the week of hunting. My axe skill improved to 5 and axe: two handed to 7. That was all fine and good but I also leveled to 5! Ten stat points went to magic and two went to constitution. My four skill points went into woodcraft so I would not error again assigning to a secondary skill!

My progress on the central road in the week basically had me just hauling sand and small stones from the river. I noticed some beasts on the other bank in the trees and I had two militia archers start guarding the shore. It seemed like a wise move and I was not surprised when they obeyed. My laborer stat went to 9 and my masonry leveled as well to 10.

I was surprised that my effort in carving got my skill to 9 as well. I had planned to stock piling the carvings for sale but ended up giving them all to the village kids.

It was a great week all things considered. The only interesting thing for the week was the world notification that a player named Grinch had become the first player to make ‘master’ level in a skill. That meant the player had reached level 43. It didn’t state which skill it was but did note he received a 5 gold reward. That got me thinking that there rewards for milestones. I asked Simba but he was not aware of any and perhaps they were hidden and only awarded when someone reached the milestone.

I was ready to start mixing mortar and hauling paving stones up from the river for the road. I was admiring the road so far when Gwen approached.

“Tallis! The road you are building is a great addition to the village. It will eliminate mud in our homes on rainy days and makes traveling from house to house quicker. But why would you invest so much of your personal time and effort on such a project? Don’t get me wrong, the town folk are pleased. And the meat you harvested will help greatly in the coming winter.” Gwen finished and handed me a sandwich and skin of water. I held off on my answer and ate the sandwich. I think she knew I was not being rude just gathering my thoughts.

“Gwen, I am hoping to make this village strong. I hope to attract new citizens to grow and strengthen the community. I want to do my best to protect these people as well. My next two projects will be guard towers, one on the river bank and the second over looking the plains. Unfortunately I am almost out of lumber and I am not strong enough to harvest trees across the river in lieu of the beasts.” I finished my response and shoved the last bite of the sandwich into my mouth. It was a grilled marinated venison with some bitter greens and sweet paste. It gave me +40% stamina regen for 2 hours.

“Yes your efforts have attracted new villagers. Two families will be here soon. Both family are farmers. I have given them a dozen acres each to the south of Malcum. But more importantly your efforts have spurred the current villagers to work harder. Before you arrived everyone was doing just what we needed to survive, now the village is working together. People feel safer, people are happier, people are contributing more. And I wanted to ask you something important. We held a meeting last night while you slept, all the adults in the village. We want you to take on the mantle of Malcum’s governor.” She finished even tone and serious the entire time. Her bright blue eyes looked at me expectantly.

“Gwen I do not wish to take the village from you. I…” I started but she cut me off.

“Non-sense. I am an getting on in age and you have done more in the weeks you have been here than I have managed in the last two years. After the loss of the men across the river I have not been able to attract new settlers and our population was dwindling. Please accept.” It was almost a pleading request.

It was a lot of responsibility. I was just beginning to think of these computer A.I.s as something more than programming. My ultimate goal was to get back to the real world. I needed to amass a lot of wealth to do so. I was hoping this village would serve as a strong base of my operations but I planned to leave regularly to quest. “Gwen I would happy to govern your village and promise to do my best to provide a good quality of life for the people.”

I notification came up.

You have been named the governor of Malcum by unanimous vote of the entire village. Having accepted this position you are taking on the responsibility of the populace. The title of governor is changed to title of lord due to the fact the populace loyalty to you is at 97%. A new menu is now available in your interface to manage the village of Malcum. Experience Reward: 50,000 (note as you upgrade your village you will earn more experience)

Congratulations, You have reached level 6, you earned 6 stat points and 2 skill points

Congratulations, You have reached level 7, you earned 6 stat points and 2 skill points

Then a world message appeared.

A player has earned the title of Lord. He is the first to gain rule over a population in the game of Open World. He has been rewarded 5 gold for his accomplishment.

You have earned the right to rule: Accolade Right to Rule I, 100 experience

You have earned the right to rule: Accolade Right to Rule II, 200 experience

You are reading story Town Builder at novel35.com

Well damn, levels, money and world acclaim. Works for me. Gwen then produced a dark worn wooden box and handed it to me. I opened it to see what was inside. There was some parchments and coins. The parchments were for the village. As before one was a map and the second a proclamation naming me governor of Malcum. There was only 1 gold, 23 silver, and 167 copper in the box. Guess the village was poor. I would have to remedy that. The 5 gold coins from my achievement were already in my bag of holding in my bag of holding having appeared there instantly.

I allocated six stat points to magic and six to stamina. My stamina was causing an issue as it was low. For now the constant meals balanced it out but if I was adventuring alone… All four skill points went into Masonry.

I didn’t notice as I was reading the map and proclamation, but the villagers had gathered around me. I was taken aback when I looked up they started clapping with smiles on their faces. The map and parchment dissolved and integrated with my interface. I guess I needed to say something. “Thank you for this great honor.” I paused. “I will make sure to protect you and do my best to provide for you. We will build Malcum into a thriving community that will be a haven for you and your descendants.” That was enough, I was a man of few words. They clapped loudly and moved off to prepare a celebration. I went to house with Simba following.

At my kitchen table I sat and opened my new interface. “Ok, Simba. Guide me through this.”

The general screen had the village stats and there were a bunch of tabs. The village stats:

MALCUM

Population: 53

Size: Village

Wealth: Extremely Poor

Ruler: Lord Tallis

Sovereignty: None

Banner: None

Exports: None

Imports: None

Simba explained. “You can select the population to see a break down by race, sex and ability.” I selected it and saw we had many people with novice skills but only a few experts. We had five experts in cooking, two in tailoring, one in life magic and one in farming. That was pretty weak. Simba added, “People can also hide their skills from you so your list may not be accurate. The size of your village is determined by population. When you reach 250 people it will be upgraded to ‘town’. If you fall below 10 people it becomes a ‘settlement camp’. If it reaches 0 it becomes ‘abandoned ruins’.”

The tiny cat seemed to take a break to lick his feet. I opened the map tab to see what I was dealing with. The map displayed the familiar village to me. There was a shaded green area around the village that extended out about 200 yards from the farthest building. The outlining farms barely fit in the green shade. Then a yellow buffer of 400 yards surrounded the green, the rest of the map was tinged red except for the road south which was a darker green. Simba looked up. “The green and yellow are your village’s area of influence. The green area is considered a ‘safe’ zone while the yellow is not. To reduce the yellow area increase guards or build buildings with security ratings. To expand your influence you need to increase population and build more buildings further out from the village center.” I noticed that the river was also red and was concerned about this.

As if reading my mind Simba added, “Any area of your control that touches a red region can be attacked by wandering monsters and beasts.” Shit, so the entire river was a potential avenue for an attack. “You will need to build docks to change the river area to green and the far shore will become yellow when you do.” I mumbled thank you to Simba. Hmm. Maybe I could build a building across the river to get some of the forest into a green zone to gain lumber. “Yes that would work.” Simba added intruding on my thoughts. Now finished cleaning, rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, stretched, yawned but continued.

“Your wealth is reflective of the ruler of the village. You.” Six gold makes me extremely poor. Got it. “Sovereignty is the nation you belong to. Currently no nation claims this village so you have none. This is good and bad. It means you have no taxes but also no allies for protection. Your banner is the flag of the village. It is usually the crest of the ruler.” Cool, I could make a crest! “The top tab shows your buildings and their health, efficiency and you can select each one to see who owns and lives there.” Simba waited while I went through the buildings.

Almost all the buildings with people had over 95% health due to my efforts. Half the buildings were abandoned though. “The next tab is your administration tab. Here you can set tax rate, laws, military service requirements, tariffs, restrictions, and policies.” It was very confusing and I thought best not to alter anything just yet.

“The next tab is for you to manage your military.” I opened it and knew I had minimal guards. They were all listed as militia and I knew they actually all worked other jobs in addition to rotating guarding the village. “The next tab is for diplomacy.” It was completely grayed out. “You do not know of any other population centers yet so that is why there are no options.” Huh, needed to correct that soon.

“The next tab is for trading but since you produce no goods and import no goods it is also grayed out.” The final tab is for recruitment of new villagers.” I clicked on it and a list of NPCs was displayed. I scrolled down, there were thousands! “Recruiting new villagers is done weekly, well weekly in real world time. Your recruitable number is equal to your village size modifier multiplied by your quality rating. Quality ratings range from -10 to +10” Let’s see here…village size modifier for a village is 2 and my village quality was a 1. So two? Didn’t Gwen have more than two new village farmers coming?

“Some recruits will have families with them, “Simba added answering my question. And to answer your next question the repairs and new town store just brought your village up to quality 1 from 0.” So if any size city or town falls to 0 quality it would not be able to recruit new citizens. “Recruitment happens every 28 days in game. Or every week in the real world. You can bid on a number of NPCs equal to your allotment. You can outbid anyone up until the auction ends. If you have any available slots left you can use them to bid on other NPCs in the remaining hour. When the auction ends your NPCs will travel to your town square and start integrating into your village. If you have a translocation stone in your village they will arrive immediately, otherwise they will take up to a period of time in game to arrive.

There will also be a chance they could be detained or killed on the way” I was playing with the sorting options for the NPCs. Each NPC had the following details, name, age, sex, race, family, temperament, primary skill, secondary skill, and tertiary skill. Some had no skills listed, some, one skill listed, others two skills, others had three skills. Skills were noted as Novice, Expert, Master and Grand Master.

The only Grand Master was 79 year old human male in chaos magic. He was also a master in both destruction and darkness. I didn’t think he would be able to help me grow my little village. The question is what did we need most? One of the abandoned buildings was a smithy. We had no blacksmith in town.

I filtered and there were seventeen master smiths. Two had sanguine temperament which meant they were optimistic and social. One was a beastman: cat with a family of 3, the other was a Centaur with no family. I bid 1 copper on the beastman. The entry was highlighted and the countdown timer showed next to his name, 20 days, 4 hours, 23 minutes, 11 seconds. I guess that is when the auction had one hour to go. Since I was the first player to gain access I was the only one biding. Simba intruded, “Yes, only players bid. The remaining NPCs are assigned randomly to cities based on need.” I was holding out hope no one else would unlock this in the next 20 days. So my other recruit.

I sorted for master and sanguine personality. I then deselected some of the races; undead, shades, goblins, kobolds and orcs. I still had 943 that matched my criteria! Ok what did we need most? A lot of the list had weapon skills. That would be a smart move. I was not sure how much racism played with NPCs in Open World. My entire village was human and the only other race I had encountered was the elf trader. The village seemed very amiable towards him so maybe there was no racism? Maybe I should add more beastman cats to help the blacksmith’s family adjust? Did a game A.I. even need to adjust? I was waiting for Simba to answer my question but he seemed asleep. I narrowed my search to just masters of the bow. How come if there were so many masters and we just had two farmers coming with novice ability? Simba muttered, “Because after players get their pick the remaining pool of NPCs are drafted by the settlements under A.I. control based on their population and quality. Meaning Gwen essentially picked close to last.” Huh, that made sense. And now I was picking first!

The best new NPCs went to the strongest locations. But then I would be throwing a wrench into the system. There were no catmen master archers with sanguine personalities. There was a giantkin: storm, which intrigued me. He had the secondary skill of fletcher at expert level and the tertiary skill of blade: two handed at expert as well. No family though. But this…Galana, oh it was a female, was only 28. She seemed an expert fighter with ranged specialization. Also being a master in the bow she could probably train others. I bid 1 copper. Looking at the clock I had spent nearly four hours in the interface. Now I had to wait 20 days but I was going to try my damnedest to raise my village quality before then to get a few more bids in. The party was in full swing and I went out to join it. Had to bond with my people!

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