Downtown Druid

Dantes sat in the center of the Undermarket, in a small shack made of living wood that he’d willed to grow into the proper shape, with Celeste sitting next to him idly shifting her form to pass the time. There was a line of men waiting to reach him, most wearing rags, and a number of them even less than that. He was guarded by his six men from the surface, all of whom were well fed, dressed, and armed in sharp contrast to the line moving toward them.

Another man, a gnome with a scraggly beard, stepped onto the small wooden box provided for those his size and looked up at Dantes.

“Uh, I heard you have food.”

Dantes reached down and pulled a small bag from behind himself. It was filled with edible mushrooms, fruits and veggies.

The gnome reached for it, and Dantes pulled it away. “Promise on your name that you’ll owe me a favor.”

“I swear it, on my name as Tiltz.”

Dantes shook his hand and celeste placed hers on top of the handshake. Dantes felt something pass between the three of them, and then took the gnome’s hand and pricked his finger, letting a single drop of blood drop into a sack of seeds behind the counter.

“What the hells!?”

“Just needed a drop,” he handed the gnome the sack of food and he took it and ran quickly away to hide and eat it. He was probably safest eating it right in front of Dantes, but so far their paranoia had kept any of them from coming to that conclusion. Dantes called up the next person, a young half-orc with a bit of halfling in him, and started the process over again.

He’d been growing sustainable food down in the Pit since he arrived, making sure that his gardens were full of food. He’d done the same on the surface when he was there, he’d even been having rats and pigeons begin to seed the area around the Pit, slowly turning a mess of concrete and dirt into a thriving garden. He’d realized during the Plague that Serpica had spread that the largest weakness Rendhold had was its inability to grow its own food in a crisis. Sure there were some farms near the city that it owned, but what they could produce was dwarfed by the city’s size. As such a large amount of the food was imported. His investment had proven wise, as now that there was a threat of invasion, the drops of food into the Pit had been cut off completely. It was a dreadful time, and a perfect one for him to take advantage of.

It had been easy to recruit Celeste to his effort, she would’ve likely helped just for the love of the game, but had held out for promises of food for her and the other changelings. He didn’t mind that, he likely would’ve helped them out anyway. As he bled the young orcs finger into his bag of seeds he sent a silent command to them.

“Hold.”

He had multiple bags that he’d been rotating. One with the seeds of trees, one with seeds small enough that one could barely notice them, and one for thorned plants. He had big ideas for all of them. Of course, he may only be using them to defend Midtown at this rate. He cast his mind to pigeons he’d been holding at the edge of the city. They launched themselves and began flying in wide circles. The outskirts had already been cleared out, with the majority of men and women that lived outside the main walls flooding into them. The streets were filled with tent cities and squatters, but luckily for them there were a lot of new places to stay since the plague had wiped so many people out. Those that he and his people knew, he found places for. His talents made it very easy to find places for people when he needed to.

The pigeons fanned out further, and he had them move to the very edges of his locus. He could see, through its eyes, clouds of dust on the horizon. He’d already known they were close based on the whispering of incoming merchants trying to make a final gold or two before the city fell under attack, but it was different seeing that cloud on the horizon. There was a finality to it.

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Dantes sent a different pigeon toward Argenta in a pre-arranged signal. Rendhold’s navy had already begun to engage the Viscent Navy in battle, harassing them in the hopes of reducing their numbers as much as possible before they arrived. The tactics were all above Dantes’s understanding. His largest fights had involved dozens, not hundreds. In spite of that there was one rule he knew that solidified his idea that he could win the war himself. If the enemy had no one left that could fight, then you win.

…

By late evening, the cloud of dust that Dantes had been watching had become an army that spread across the horizon. Thousands of men had begun to mass less than a mile from the city, lighting fires that seemed almost like stars against the dark plain upon which they were spread. Dantes had sent his vermin to take a closer look.

Most of the men were wearing gray cotton uniforms that reminded Dantes of their sailors. Many men wielded simple spears, but several also had bows and he noticed quite a few wielding firearms as well. There were mages marked with sleeves of dark blue on their uniforms. It seemed silly to him to make it so clear who the largest threats were, but perhaps the status it afforded them made it worth it. The officers were obvious as well, with most of them wearing a kind of curved sword at their belt. Nearly all of them were human, with just a few half-elves and half-orcs mixed in here and there. Frasheid was a mainly human kingdom, so that made sense, but the lack of mutts bothered him at some gut level. They didn’t bring their slaves to war, as had been rumored, but that made sense to him. Why waste a valuable resource when you can use those too poor to own the slaves to fight instead?

There were a number of horses, but they were mostly hauling wagons rather than being ridden by anyone expecting to fight. He took note of what each of them was carrying, finding mostly cannons and provisions.

After taking his preliminary look at the Frasheid soldiers, Dantes shifted to looking at Rendhold’s defenses. All of the homes that were outside the city walls had been abandoned aside from a few stubborn men and women that would soon find themselves dead, or worse. The guards were on the walls, most of them wearing their signature chestplates with their swords at their sides. Dantes noticed a large number of them were holding guns with sharp blades fixed to their tips making them appear like oddly shaped spears. The mages of Rendhold were also obvious, as they were mostly young men and women who looked absolutely terrified to be where they were. They worked on arcane sigils and runes that they drew or carved into the stone of the walls as guardsmen stood around, ready to defend them from any threats. In spite of the recruitment drives the guard had been engaged in, there were easily three times as many men gathering outside of Rendholds walls than were inside. ȑ�

The walls themselves were still being shored up by men and women in chains, those natives that had broken the law and been pressed into forced labor for their crimes. In the past Dantes had been envious of them as he’d served his seemingly unending sentence in the Pit, but watching them lift heavy stones, carry munitions, and toil away drenched in sweat he felt only pity.

Dantes shook his head, and shifted his attention back to the Frasheid camp. While his eyes were closed he started to sketch out a map of their camp while having some rats and roaches search for any of them that might be discussing what their exact plan was. He wouldn’t help directly until he had some guarantees, but indirectly it made sense to at least give whatever information he could to Argenta to pass on to the guard.

He eventually found a large tent with several white and gray haired men smoking tobacco.

“Easy campaign boys. We set up the artillery and bombard them until the walls fall. The city is a cesspool of the sick with hardly any forces of their own. Once we breach the walls, we’ll loot the damn place like the filthy old pirates we are.”

That drew a chuckle from the rest of them.

“As long as we can get in before Viscent arrives… I don’t want to share with those short fucks.”

“They volunteered for the hard job. Rendhold’s Navy isn’t something to trifle with. As long as we get in first we can do whatever we want and blame the men’s enthusiasm on hurting any of the things we already agreed they could have. We’ll just have the diplomats sort it out. Then we can take all this loot back home, support the men putting down the revolt, and take our usual turns with Franklin’s wife.”

Another round of laughter.

“Ah, fuck you ya old bastard. You couldn’t even find it under that gut, much less put it in my wife.”

Dantes opened his eyes, sensing someone approaching from outside the audience chamber. One of the bouncers walked in holding a letter that he handed to Dantes. It was sealed in wax with an intricate letter ‘A’ in black ink. He broke the seal and opened it.

The Finger aligned with Godfrey has played his hand.