While the foreman led me around the fort and showed me what was where, I called my friends over. I suspected it might take us more than one day to figure out all the castle’s settings.
“… and it’s all surrounded by a fortress wall with a moat outside it,” Raidohelm said. “Decide for yourself what to fill it with. I recommend something rotten, if you have a lot of enemies. The bridge raises, and from it the road leads to the jetty and the mine. If you want to put a road anywhere else, your builder will be able to do it. Thankfully, we have plenty of stone.”
“How many sentients can the castle accommodate?”
“Even the jungle had to give up some space. There’s easily enough room for ten thousand. What you have here is basically a small town.”
The boys and Irita joined me. We walked all around the fortress and explored every last room of the castle, and then the work began… Bomber went to fetch Patrick and he and Irita enthusiastically took to sorting through items and filling up the new clan vault. Crawler, now with ownership rights, dove head first into learning the control panel and shouted in glee:
“Scyth, we can choose what the serving girls look like! I mean, set the hiring criteria!”
“I want in on that!” Bomber shouted from the end of the corridor.
“Any preferences for cuisine? The castle has its own tavern, we can keep it for officers and hire a grand master chef!”
“Holy cow!” Infect yelled through my comm amulet. “I’ll be damned!”
He stopped, saying nothing to explain his surprise.
“Alright, we need to get some people in the town, feels kind of deserted,” Crawler said. “Scyth, how about some crafting grand masters? If we offer them a stall and accommodation, they might move here.”
Time flew by in happy turmoil. I don’t know when or how they got there, but soon the castle grounds were filled with cobolds, troggs and the cultists of Morena who had returned unnoticed from Shad’Erung. Several were having a lively chat with a lost dwarf miner by the city wall. A miner who was, judging by the earsplitting snoring, asleep, but somehow still actively involved in the conversation.
In a third-floor corridor of the castle, I ran into a handsome man in a frock coat.
“Elvish wine, sir…” he said, presenting me a tray of full wine glasses.
I took one reflexively and thanked… um… Butler Roberts. That had to be Crawler’s work already.
“Would you like lunch in your chambers, or..?” Roberts raised an eyebrow.
“Or! Where do I go?”
“Follow me, sir!”
On the way, I found out where, in the butler’s opinion, my chambers were. We turned at least three times, then went down a level and met Ryg’har the shaman, who barked joyfully:
“May the Sleeping Gods never wake, chosen one! Nature has purified herself! Life has returned to Kharinza!”
“What do you mean?”
“The great dinosaur has become your battle companion!”
At first I thought the shaman had been living under a rock, but he continued his thought:
“Now Kharinza is full of animals! They have returned, chosen one of the Sleepers!”
“No way!”
Leaving the impassive butler with the kobold, I ran into the yard and took flight. As I flew over the fortress wall, I saw that Ryg’har was right: mobs had settled in Kharinza. I doubted it had to do with the castle. It was more likely the Montosaurus’s absence. He’d already disappeared before, but the undead had occupied the island then, whereas now… A family of level 6 boars peacefully grazed at the foot of an acacia. I smiled: now the workers could level up on their own! This was a full-fledged sandbox for them! Mobs meant loot, which meant resources for leveling up crafts!
Returning to the castle, I didn’t bother looking for the internal tavern or the butler, but went straight to the castle’s heart instead. There, at the center of a room with walls reinforced by Corrupted Adamantite, the fortress control crystal glimmered. We hadn’t yet arranged our traps and guards; the castle was weakly defended for now.
I opened up the control panel and mentally thanked Kusalarix for the royal gift. The dwarfs had built us a maximum-level fortress with a unique design. Even Pecheneg’s castle was built to house only twelve hundred sentients. Raidohelm was right; they’d built us a whole town.
Welcome to the Kharinza fortress control panel, Scyth!
Owner: clan Awoken.
Level: 10.
Population: 1978/10000.
Structures: Castle, Vault, Taverns (3), Storehouses, Portal Hall, Stables, Barracks, Houses, Cemetery, Merchant Stalls…
I skimmed through the tabs and found what I was looking for: Defensive Artifacts. The tab wasn’t empty; it already contained our Flesh-Eating Tree Protector. I went through the various categories until I reached the one I needed.
Add new defensive artifact in the Forcefield Dome category?
I accepted, then watched as a hatch opened in the foot of the pedestal containing the controlling crystal. I took out the defensive artifact, which looked like a cut glass egg, and triumphantly placed it inside.
Righteous Shield
Divine artifact.
Unique item.
Creates an impenetrable stationary magic bubble with a set radius. The effectiveness of the defense drops in proportion to the size of the bubble.
Fed by mana battery crystals. Ability to transform 10% of absorbed damage into mana to maintain shield.
Requirements: level 3 clan fort.
The hatch closed. Something rustled and clicked within the pedestal, and I heard a sound like the hum of high-voltage wires. It got louder, then hit a
