Re: Chapter 006 - The Underground City
Albricht had produced one of the nubs of chalk he had rattling around in a chestpouch. He found a relatively flat stone wall, and began scratching out a series of figures and calculations in neat, straight columns. His gnarled hand deftly guided the chalk as he added, subtracted and emgified* across the stony surface. Once in a while he'd stop and place his hands on his hips, apparently thinking. Those watching might believe to actually hear gears turning inside his head and lazy tendrils of smoke climbing now and then from his overly large ears.
"Well lads, if I figure right there should be plenty of coin for the items we've found. The thing is," he leaned in conspiratorially, "Timmy said that the vendors might not even accept our metal depending on their state of mind. Now I'm not one to cheat these folks out of earning a living, but the only outfit I've seen down here that actually deals in coin are the Brothers of Madura... That's probably why the High Priest offered us so much, where else is he going to spend it? At any rate, we should try to keep our hands on as much of this treasure as we can, and perhaps spend a little to commission our own vault constructed. That way we won't be so bogged down with bags of jingle as we go about dealing with the crypts below the city."
"So let's get squared away. We're in no hurry, there's no time nor calendar clause in our contract with the Gormies, so let's figure out how to secure our fortune, and then let's set about getting to work below. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to me that anyone in the city believes there's anything beyond Cynodecia and the narrowing world above, so we can't commission a message to my folk and at least get something moving forward for a water pumping system. Also, I've been thinking that in order to make deals and trade eventually, we'll need to get these people sober... somehow. A different food source would be a start, but beyond that I'm out of ideas for the moment. Any ideas?"
*Emgified: Higher dwarven mathematics that combines multiplication and division plying the mystical geometrical properties of a secret underdelver polygon called... you guessed it... the heptahaptoblaptofedzemgigon
OOC: Not to bog things down, but maybe a montage of us getting it all done and then proceeding henceforth and furtherfore.