“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” ― Anais Nin

  I’d spent some time, while awaiting the return of the hawk-eagle, trying to decide which way to go, from both a broad philosophical perspective and in a literal sense. I had only so much time and mana in the day to develop my presence; did I want to continue extending my surface reach, likely finding more ruins, or did I want to drive deeper into the sky island itself to increase my levels and my mana flow? Clearly, at some point I’d want to do both, and I could likely afford to adopt a long-term perspective, but priorities are important to provide some structure.

  I suspected I’d go in and out of both modes, but I needed to try to be a little analytical here. The various quests I’d been assigned generally seemed to favor a surface expansion. Most of the dungeon quests didn’t seem to care much whether I expanded out or down, as long as I was expanding, and the scholarly quests were mostly the same. The naturalist quests called for attention at the surface, and while archaeology involves digging, in my experience it was likely most archaeological evidence would be no more than 10 meters deep.

  That’s where I got hung up, though, because this was not the same as Earth, and I was less clear about how things worked here. Humans tend to favor a surface occupation on mostly level, fertile ground adjacent to water sources, but I’d gotten some indications that there were subterranean races, as well as surface races with very different preferences and requirements. What would it mean for archaeological survey, other than that the survey my bird was undertaking was likely to be biased towards specific kinds of settlements? I heaved a mental sigh and decided that while the hawk-eagle carried out a systematic surface survey, I’d best try to at least sink some test pits deeper into the bedrock of the sky island, even if I didn’t know what I was looking for, necessarily.

  That did require a bit of forward planning, though, as I didn’t think that carving a deep pit directly below my main dungeon area would necessarily be the best idea. I’d hate to undermine some critical structure and drop myself into a rubble-filled collapse; nor did I want to simply open a clear pathway to my dungeon to any residents in the deeps below. My knowledge of fantasy tropes and my old D&D days suggested that the deeper you went, the more dangerous the monsters you might encounter.

  For that matter, I also assumed that any subterranean civilization would more likely be under the main part of the central mountain, rather than out along the edges; my brief attempts to look out from the cliff suggested at least a slow taper to the island, with the widest portion at my current surface level. What that translated to, broadly, was a survey plan that had me pushing narrow 1m X 1m tunnels east towards the island center with 15-meter drops at regular intervals every 50 meters. I’d add rockfall traps that should make sealing the tunnel easy above each of the vertical drops.

  Even at this narrow gauge, that was a lot of stone to remove, not to mention the delays I would generate if I found anything interesting to explore along the way. I decided I would intersperse the development of my second floor with this odd subterranean exploration, alternating days to maintain interest. At this stage, I figured that I could probably get through about two vertical steps each day – 100 meters towards the center and 30 meters down – if I was diligent and didn’t hit any delays. I could also use the excavated tunnel as a base for expanding future floors – the 15-meter vertical intervals should work for that, and if I decided I wanted more vertical space that wouldn’t be tough to adjust. It would, of course, be handy if I had access to a skill enabling me to search out voids in the rock, but until/unless I got one of those, I’d just have to dig blindly in the direction I thought most likely to yield results.

  Unsurprisingly, the first day’s excavations along those lines yielded almost exactly nothing. There were no cultural remains, no open spaces, no evidence of mineral wealth, and no signs of life larger than microbes. The only thing it did yield was a couple of blueprints for new kinds of stone. Well, that and a new trap for the deadfalls I established – these dropped roughly 5 metric tons of granitic rubble down the 15-m vertical drop, and should, if my math was correct serve to fill the bottom of the 1m X 1m drop for about 2 meters deep while incidentally squishing anything in the zone at the time. These had a pressure trigger at the bottom of the climb but could also be manually triggered.

  Blueprint Acquired: Diorite

  Blueprint Acquired: Tonalite

  Blueprint Acquired: Tunnel-sealing Deadfall Trap

  ********

  The following day, I went back to developing my second floor. Aside from the paddock on the northeast and the warehouse/sky pier on the west side, I had a series of other empty rooms to fill. I had roughed out a group of them spiraling out from the stairs, beginning on the eastern side of the original three rooms, clockwise towards the south and west, until they abutted the warehouse space, along with a few more running from the north side of the warehouse connecting back to the pathway to the paddock. Taken together, that left me with the two central rooms flanking the staircase landing (and its secret library), five rooms between the right room and the warehouse and two more between the warehouse and the paddock approach. So, nine rooms to try and flesh out.

  I decided that if I wanted to stick with my theme, I’d need to mimic some of the outbuildings, at least roughly. On this particular day, I turned the rooms to the north, between the warehouse and the paddock into a kitchen and a farrier’s shop – each manned by some skeletons. There were five lesser skeletons in the kitchen, armed with throwing knives and heavy crockery, and with pots of olive oil kept warm – to be heated to scalding temps should visitors make it well into the first floor; I’d put them in basic white linen clothes. The farrier’s shop had only three skeletons – two greater cavalry skeletons standing in as the farrier and an apprentice, along with a greater warhorse skeleton. The farrier had a cavalry sabre, as well as a blacksmith’s apron I’d shaped out of leather (acquiring a blueprint in the process); the apprentice had only a hoof knife and a blacksmith’s hammer I’d built from the ground up, while the horse skeleton had shoes on its rear hooves.

  I spent some time making each room reflect its functionality – adding a basic wood-fired oven and cookfire with a sturdy table, and heavy shelves filled with pottery, as well as some dried herbs in the kitchen; the farrier had a small furnace with an anvil and an array of simple, appropriate tools on a wall rack. I’d even added a small pile of caltrops twisted together from black iron horseshoe nails to be strewn before invaders. I’d kept the lights dim in these rooms, both to boost the ambiance I was shooting for and to make it easier for intruders to overlook traps and details like these caltrops. There weren’t any traps in these two rooms, but neither was there much valuable loot; the cavalry saber presumably had some value, as might some of the working equipment in either room, but not a lot. I added a few silver spoons to the kitchen and gave the farrier a braided gold armband (wedged between its arm bones to prevent it from flying off) to make them worthwhile to fight.

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  Blueprint: Blacksmith’s Apron (boiled leather)

  Blueprint: Horseshoe Nail Caltrop (black iron)

  Blueprint: Blacksmith’s Hammer (Steel)

  The following day was again spent driving a narrow tunnel eastward and down, with traps again introduced at the vertical drops. These next two drops got another form of new trap, with a pressure trigger embedded in obvious handholds on a slime covered cliff wall coupled with a single, 2-ton granite block deadfall. The precautions might be unnecessary, but better safe than sorry. Frankly, this excavation wasn’t turning up much of interest so far, so creating new traps gave me something interesting to do at intervals.

  Blueprint: Climber’s Deadfall Trap

  Otherwise, the only thing of interest that turned up in the day’s excavation was a small deposit of zinc blende. I had no particular need for zinc ore, but it might eventually become useful.

  Blueprint Acquired: Zinc Blende

  The next day, I turned my attention to the rooms south of the second-floor landing, deciding that three of them should reflect the main manorial household (the entry room, and the two bedrooms), and the other two (closest to the warehouse) could be the tannery and chandlery. That would leave the two original rooms flanking the landing to represent either smallholders’ dwellings or something else. I started with the tannery and chandlery – again staffing them with lesser skeletons and outfitting them with appropriate gear. The five skeletons in the tannery had butcher’s aprons (a thinner version of the blacksmith’s apron) and long, wicked-looking skinning knives and the room itself was fitted with a variety of stretching racks, ceiling hooks, and stone vats of an acrid tannic solution I produced from tree bark (mostly silver-needle pine and brown walnut) as well as bins of coarse salt extracted by boiling tree roots until a blueprint was acquired. I’d set one of the skeletons to the task of hurling loose salt in the faces of intruders while the rest attacked.

  Blueprint Acquired: Butcher’s Apron

  Blueprint Acquired: Coarse Vegetable Salt

  The chandlery had only three lesser skeletons, again in butcher’s aprons and armed with knives. One was tasked with pitching bubbling hot tallow at intruders using a large ladle I’d developed, starting from an oversized spoon. The other two were simply set to use their knives on intruders from the outset; though I’d cheated and given them larger knives that suggested a role in the initial butchering of cattle, rather than the smaller blades traditional for wick trimming. I didn’t really expect any intruders that got this far to have much trouble with these skeletons, though I did want to establish the theme. I even had the skeletons produce some candles by dipping simple dried-grass wicks into the tallow and hanging them to dry. I’d even incorporated some sandalwood incense into some larger examples, setting them as fancier versions, likely for use in a religious rite (and coincidentally as minor loot for intruders).

  Blueprint Acquired: Wooden Ladle

  Blueprint Acquired: Butcher’s Knife

  Blueprint Acquired: Basic Tallow Candle

  Blueprint Acquired: Sandalwood-scented Temple Candle

  As I worked my way around to the remaining three rooms in the circuit, I developed some second thoughts. Really, what I wanted was for the visitors to my dungeon to encounter the manor last, after working through the skeletal warhorses. I put those rooms aside and cleared a large space on the far side of the paddock space, planning out a full-scale recreation of the main manor house.

  Pausing there, I went back to pursuing my central tunnel and shaft approach. Taking another day, I drove another 100 meters towards the mountain center and another 30 meters down. At the base of the final drop, I did, to my own surprise, run into an existing tunnel – albeit a small one. About 12 meters down, the shaft I was driving was intersected by an unlit tubular tunnel about 50 cm across that rose at a roughly 15-degree grade as it ran from south to north. I didn’t get to explore it very far, being the end of the day, but it was unclear to me how it had been produced – at the very least, there were no obvious tool marks, though there was a kind of smooth, spiraling groove that might have indicated some sort of large bore drill.

  Sticking rigidly to my plan (unusually so, frankly), I went back to my construction project, saving the exciting exploration of the unknown tunnel for a later visit. Over the next two days, I roughed out the basic walls and layout of the ruined manor house, recreating its original form as best I could. The decorative elements and fine points of the recreated furniture were almost certainly off to some degree, but the apparently hasty abandonment of the original meant I was hopefully not too far off. As for the main attractions, I had to consider the creatures I wanted to add and the loot I wanted to provide.

  Some things were obvious enough – the main room on the first floor held several greater skeletons to represent the primary residents. There were two male and one female greater skeletons (I doubted anyone would bother to check the iliac notch, but osteology training is tough to break), plus two lesser skeletons acting as servants. Two of the greater skeletons were armed with cavalry sabers and the third had a short-hafted cavalry spear – almost a javelin, really. All three had leather greaves and helms; two had leather cuirasses, while the spearman had a mail shirt. The lesser skeletons were unarmored but were each provided with a pair of throwing knives and a set of linen clothes. The dining room had no monsters in it, aside from a Lesser Mimic at one end of the table, pretending to be a chest full of dishes. The only loot worth speaking of was the silverware, as I’d mixed a couple of silver spoons in with some other utensils I’d shaped from pewter. I’d gone with simple earthenware bowls for the most part, though I had mounted a couple of imperial majolica plates on the wall as a decorative touch.

  The upstairs, accessed by a central staircase, opened into the two sleeping spaces. The child’s bedroom likely needed something more impressive than a child-sized Lesser Skeleton and its two “pet” horned rabbits, but unless I got blueprints for something more appropriate, there wasn’t much I could do. It felt odd to arm the “child” but I provided it with a scaled-down saber, suitable for training with. No armor, other than a child-sized helm. I’d recreated the zinc-lined chest and provided copies of the books, the clothes, and the rag pony. To make it worthwhile, I’d replaced its button eyes with ones made of polished mastodon ivory. Don’t know if adventurers would recognize their potential value, but that isn’t really my responsibility.

  The parents’ bedroom, or so I thought of it, held a bed with small side tables, along with two chests. One was, again, a Lesser Mimic (though I doubt adventurers would be fooled after encountering several others), and the other held a selection of simple garments, a leather pouch with 20 small silver coins, and a gilded leather book. Sadly, I didn’t have anything appropriate to put in the book, but I didn’t want to leave it blank. Deciding the Romans were the closest analogy for the Aubesan Empire, I transcribed an English translation of The Georgics, by Virgil. It seemed appropriate for what seemed like a moderately wealthy farmer. I’m confident that the agricultural practices described aren’t going to be an exact match for local practices, but I also doubt anyone will ever read it and find out. The original Latin would likely be even more obscure, but I’d only ever read it in English.

  I’d left a small mana lamp on one of the side tables, and the other held a less ornately bound book – Seneca this time. I figured On the Shortness of Life would seem appropriately ironic in this context. Interestingly, these didn’t seem to register for the transcription quest – I'm assuming because I tend to think of them as classic literature, rather than non-fiction. I had, of course, made copies for my own hidden library at the same time.