CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Eight

After breakfast, the trio left the guild hall through the door from Nacho’s kitchen and went straight down the south side of town. They passed another collection of tents on their walk to the southern edge of the limestone cliffs, where they stopped to peer over and wince at the hundred foot drop to the trees below. It was a bit of a trek, but it was time to delve deeper into the Dark Buggy Darkness.

Nacho put his hands on his hips and swayed side to side to loosen up, preparing for the descent. “We have about a square mile of livable space up here, spanning from the northern wall to the southern edge, and from the eastern limestone slope to the western cliffs.”

Reuben wasn’t in his chainmail, instead opting for jeans and a thick coat from Costco, but he still wore his combat boots… as well as his leather Helm of Helming. Just like the rest of the team, he kept his armor and weapons in Storage Slots for ease of travel. “Fun fact—not sure where I picked this up—but a square mile is equivalent to four hundred and eighty-four football fields, or two-point-five million cows packed together.”

“Ugh.” Brie was also dressed in Costco casual. “You can translate miles into anything except kilometers, can’t you?”

“Forty-four thousand, six hundred and a half humpback whales,” Reuben stated helpfully.

“Moving on,” Brie stated sternly, rolling her eyes as Nacho and Reuben fist-bumped. “Thankfully, you put the guildhall in a good, defensible location. I think we should also plan to put in a marketplace on Main Street. We could build houses above the market stalls and save on square footage, which would also help protect the merchants against thieves. Walls and housing are going to be our biggest cost and necessity.”

Nacho could only sigh in light frustration at the incomprehensible number of credits they needed to accumulate. “It’s just too bad that you can’t store other people in your Storage Slots.”

“I would sleep so good in there,” Reuben adamantly agreed. “I just know it.”

“Eh… not me.” The cook itched his nose as he thought about being trapped in storage at the mercy of another person. “Yep. Definitely too creepy to put any real thought into, Reuben. Where do you two want your house?”

Brie clearly had given the concept some thought, though she hadn’t planned out everything. “Being right against the wall would give us the best view; we’re not ready to build the wall yet, and it probably doesn’t make much sense to only build a single home. Guild members will be paying a credit per square foot of house. If we share walls, we get discounts. Believe me, I’ve read up on all of this. The best plan is to build a neighborhood off the southern end of the guildhall. Oh, and put in a cobblestone street, so it’s not so muddy this spring.”

Nacho felt his heart drop as he realized why he was really holding back on starting the project. “If we start building houses and streets… everyone is going to have an opinion. We need to figure out what to do about the eastern slope before we do anything, even announcing the project. Even then, there will be much… discussion. By that, of course, I mean complaining.”

The Healer agreed easily, both of them sharing a shudder at the thought of trying to appease hundreds of opinionated people. “You know what they say: Opinions are like elbows. Almost everyone has at least one, it's pointed, and it can hurt when it’s thrown around.”

Nacho had heard a different quote, but decided not to share it in polite company. As if summoned to fight him due to his thoughts on nice people, the Bills came ambling over. Both were wearing thick leather coats with Wasp Bear-fur collars and cuffs. Old Bill had killed the Wasp Bear, and the cook had to admit that the black and yellow fur looked fashionable when paired with black leather.

The hard-edged man plucked off his Kansas City Royals cap and waved at them. “I heard that, Reuben. I also heard about you finding that Costco. You know, before all this fantasy game nonsense, I bought all my clothes from Costco.”

“Figures,” Brie grumbled softly.

Nacho muttered in reply, “Still don’t see what’s wrong with that.”

“I bet you already know the truth of the matter.” Young Bill’s coat was open enough to reveal a flannel button-up. “It’s not fair if you use guild money to build your house, or even a bunch of houses. We need to vote or something. I vote for walls. We need walls first. The tents are cold, but if people don’t like it, they can build their own houses, like we did. Also, I told you to call me ‘Scrubz’. I was weak and joined in. I want to have a reminder of that.”

“It’s not up to a vote. It’s whatever is going to keep the most people safe, and the final say is Nacho’s to make, Scrubz.” Brie squared off with both men, not backing down an inch as their glares intensified. “Before you get all worked up, we have money regularly coming in, and we are actively gathering more for these projects. Even now, Taye, Kristie, and Abby are in a dungeon earning credits for the guild, because they believe in what we’re doing.”

That was true. Nacho was constantly being spammed with notifications of a slow trickle of incoming credits. In fact, during breakfast, a pair of players that had gotten an early start from Heartbreak Ridge turned up in Nacho’s kitchen. They had informed the trio around mouthfuls of breakfast that Taye and the gang had come across more Pizza Roaches, as well as something called a Weiner Wolf.

Reuben had laughed at the news and quipped, ‘It looks like they’re going to be fighting monsters based on the Costco food court for a bit’.

Nacho shook off the memory, focusing on Young Bill—no, Scrubz—who had lost a little bit of his scowl. Reuben turned on the charm and raised his hands in a soothing gesture. “We were just about to walk over to the eastern limestone,  and we’d love your input, Bills. Double Bill, double the fun. That’s what I say, anyway. As you know, the northern wall helped resolve our main security issue, but let’s go take a gander at the eastern slope.”

“Gander… do I have recipes that would work on goose?” Nacho muttered to himself as the five of them walked past tents to reach that section of their town. The air was cold, but the smell of the various fires made it seem warmer somehow. At the edge of the eastern slope, the rock was only twenty feet high: a major problem. The Bove had scrambled up the slope and battered right through the wall. If that monster could breach their defenses, others could as well. How soon? Impossible to tell.

Old Bill grimaced as he eyed the open area. “We spent fifteen thousand credits on that northern wall, and that basically cleaned us out. We needed it; you’re right about that. But an eastern wall? Why? How many people are gonna try and scramble up twenty feet of limestone to get to us? We have guards.”

“Exactly.” Brie motioned at him with a ‘and that’s my point’ open-palmed gesture. “Our public works projects have kept us safe, and now I’d like to focus on quality of life. You know, at some point, even you are going to want to upgrade your shack.”

“Our shack is fine!” Scrubz’ retort came out far more heated than anyone else had expected. It seemed that when he was around Old Bill, the younger one thought he could get away with being a little more of a pain in the butt. Oddly enough, it evened out, since Old Bill became less of a curmudgeon because the next generation of bitterness had spoken.

Brie didn’t back down. “It is fine. For now. But the Store is a good place to buy buildings. Most everything else is terrible, but the guildhall has worked out very well, as has the north wall. Back to our mutual problem: we need walls, and we need housing. More than that, we need to put credits toward upgrading people’s Skills, and to level them up. That’s the most important thing we can do.”

“Our taxes shouldn’t go to other people’s levels and Skills,” Old Bill grumbled darkly. “This might be a new world, but I’m a red-blooded American. You work hard, you should be able to keep what you earn.”

Nacho kept quiet. This was exactly one of the discussions he’d rather not be having. At least they got a discount for being a guild—ten percent off buildings, building supplies, and various other Store items. Reuben saw the conversation going off the rails and decided to intercede. “Let’s not go down that rabbit hole. At this stage, we need to get the most bang for our buck. Ideally, we’d build an eastern wall along with some housing and line it with a nice cobblestone street. The guild has about twenty thousand credits to spend, and this is an important upgrade.”

As the Guild Leader, Nacho saw the logic of not building a freestanding house for Reuben and Brie; that would empty their meager savings. If they bought housing for a bunch of people instead, they could use guild money—then an idea hit Nacho. “You mentioned this last night, but what if we create a wall that is housing? We put a little street out front, which would work well, since the Store is offering a sale for double square footage for streets. Buy one section of cobblestone, get another section free.”

Old Bill scratched his grizzled beard. “You know… that’s not a bad idea. If you can snap the neck of two chickens with one motion, why use two motions to snap those necks?”

Scrubz decided that he hadn’t complained quite enough, but he could see that the argument wasn’t going his way. That meant it was time to steer things how he wanted them to go. “The north wall is five thousand feet long and three feet wide, twenty feet high. For twenty grand, we couldn’t do the entire east side, but… we could get started. Maybe make the rooms twenty-five square feet each?”

“Not that it matters in this case, but how tall do you think ceilings are in your typical house?” Nacho tossed out the question and wasn’t expecting the vitriol it earned him.

Old Bill practically spat the answer. “A boy your age should know that. Nine feet tall.”

“A boy my age. Interesting.” Nacho tossed around the idea of slipping some poison into the old man’s fried chicken the next time he came in for waffles. Arsenic was cheap from the Store, just one credit for the ingredient. “Moving on… we could game the system. We pay for apartments. Two apartments stacked on top of one another, and boom. We earned a wall in return. We can’t do the apartments on the north wall, because I’d imagine we’ll be facing actual siege equipment at some point. But that’s not the case on the east side, thanks to the twenty-foot slope.”

Reuben’s face glowed as ideas began to flow. “Gaming the System? Is there any better phrase in the English language?”

“Free pizza is canceled.” Old Bill’s scowl lessened as they flinched away. “Love that phrase. Can usually make any teen wince, just like that. Now, I don’t agree with Nacho and Brie on much, but I like the sound of this.”

Nacho surveyed the eastern edge of the Armor Mountain with a critical eye. “Let’s simplify the math. If we do square rooms, twenty-five feet times twenty-five feet is six hundred and twenty-five square feet per apartment. We can use arrow slits on the eastern side of the apartments and windows on the western side, along with a door. Ten apartments will cost us six thousand, two hundred and fifty credits. Stone walls a foot thick will give us two hundred and seventy feet of wall. But we’re only paying for the square footage, and we can stack another ten apartments on top of them.”

Old Bill pointed to a small grove. “We’ll need to clear those trees, but that’ll be easy enough, and we could use the wood. Can’t burn it right away—too green—but we can add it to a wood pile we’ve started on the south side of the guildhall. Meantime, we got the southern sun warming us up.”

Nacho remembered another little cheat. “If we put a little alley between apartments, five feet or less, the System would give us a discount for any section of wall there. We could do something with that… maybe we can have more windows, so they’re less boxy.”

Reuben crossed his arms. “This makes me think of my terrible Minecraft houses. We could put little fountains in the courtyard that don’t work, and we can figure out water at the same time, for—you know—showers and toilets.”

Brie kicked a rock down the slope and refused to look at her husband. “We agreed not to dwell on toilets.”

“Not going to dwell,” Nacho hastily agreed. Suffice it to say that no one was happy with the current bathroom situation. This late in the year, everything was either dried-out, soggy, or pine needles. After coffee, it was almost always straight to the Store for the other most common daily purchase. For those that could afford it, that meant Epic toilet paper.

When buying buildings in the Store, there were several design applications, and Nacho was able to share the view with Reuben and Brie. That function was only so easy because they were in the same party. Including Old Bill and Scrubz was initially harder, but Nacho took the time to find the parameters to include them—only possible because they were guild members.

The five of them came up with a square design, basically a one-bedroom apartment with a bathroom and no kitchen. Setting the apartments to six hundred and twenty-five square feet was easier to orchestrate, and stacking the apartments would give them at least eighteen feet of wall, though probably closer to twenty feet, all told. They opted to make the roofs flat, though they’d need to account for adequate drainage. Ladders in the front would let people climb up to the higher apartments, as stairs were not an option due to space requirements.

They spent some extra money on an archway and gate farther down the eastern cliffs, not wanting the entrance to have a straight shot to the kitchen. That was a basic premise of medieval sieges. A stronghold had to make it difficult for enemy troops, both when they were outside the walls as well as if they managed to get in.

Dividing twenty thousand by six hundred and twenty-five gave them thirty-two apartments, though with all the extras the team wanted, they couldn’t afford all of them in one go. They finally agreed on twenty homes, which became forty apartments.

Nacho felt like a wizard as he waved his arms and directed reality to be altered in front of him, creating ten stacked apartments on one side of the gate and ten more on the other. He grinned when he noted that putting a five-foot alley between the houses did give them a discount. He had been worried that particular feature wouldn’t be the same in this life.

The system only charged them twenty-five credits for a wall a foot thick, ten feet high, and five feet wide. The System must have been feeling especially generous, because pavement on the alleys was added for free. Nacho included the option to allow minor changes by the resident at their own expense, such as purchasing custom stone floors or tiles in the apartments if they wanted.

Before finalizing the purchase, the five of them double-checked all of their math. If each apartment was twenty-seven feet long, including the two feet of wall on either side, and they built twenty apartments, that meant they would gain five hundred and forty feet of protective space in all. However, adding in the eighteen small roads gave them another ninety feet.

The guild balance bought a twenty-foot gate, assisted by a few direct donations from Nacho’s current team, and then they were out of money to do more. All told, it was only a tenth of what they needed, but they had forty new homes complete with plumbing for guild members, including one very happy newly married couple.

Nacho gritted his teeth and added seven hundred feet of cobblestone road, five feet wide, in front of the twenty apartments which connected to Main Street and took them to the front gates. Thanks to the discount, it only cost one thousand, seven hundred and fifty credits. He decided to dub it the ‘eastern road’, which wasn’t very creative, but it was very accurate. The new homes became the ‘Great Wall Apartments’.

Standing back, he appraised his work. The apartments looked like row houses in a big city, but those little alleys made all the difference, breaking up the monotony of the apartments fairly well. Like with his guildhall, creating something from nothing was satisfying. He took a deep breath and nodded appreciatively.

In a very real sense, the work of rebuilding their demolished civilization had just begun.