I walk Richard back to the council tent, shifting back to my normal form as we go. The council members seem fully spent when we enter… naked, on the ground, and fccid, my working women cleaning up and getting dressed again… slowly, teasing the menfolk while they do.
I look at the gnome, “So… did they pass muster?” Two on one, and the guys are down, so I'm pretty sure….
“Oh, yes…” he takes a deep breath, “I'm going to take advantage of this positional perk.” He lets out a contented sigh, “Will I need to worry about them spreading disease?”
I shake my head, “Nope, they're magical creatures,” they mostly are, but it's really because I tossed Dey Disease on them all along with all of the basic stat boosting spells, Resistance, Dey Poison, and Heroism. If they manage to get infected (which will be rare with the boosts), the disease will never progress to the point where they might pass it on. They'll technically never be rid of any such until I cast Remove Disease on them or something, but they're effectively immune to all diseases and poisons… which also means they won't be drugged or drunken, ever. They're also extra good at their jobs, of course, and will be able to fight OK in a pinch.
“That's good…” the man looks a little blissed out. Heh. “Can I get a little more variety, though? Like some gnomes, dwarves, elves, halflings…”
I consider: I did run across an Alter Other spell in the Library… it should be in reach. I mentally call one of the dies over, and try it… and my subject shrinks down into a gnomish dy. The real gnome smiles, and I leave him be.
I let the dies finish dressing, and take them all to the bordello. I take a brief tour… because that's all that can be taken of the building. It's a very simple wooden building… a big main room, a half-dozen private bedrooms with simple beds and straw mattresses (good for a roll in the hay, and little else)... and that's it. I shift a couple of the girls into different apparent base races: I have the gnome already, so I change one to an Elf, one to a Dwarf, one to a halfling, and one to a half-orc. Then I let the Madam I built for the purpose organize the girls for cleaning, working, and whatnot, leaving them to it…
…because I have a ritual to perform.
It's a pretty easy one, actually, but takes a while for full effect. Were I using the Druid ritual, it would be a full twenty four hours of chanting and dancing or some such rot… but with this one I just need to chant for fifteen minutes. Of course, with the Druid ritual, I’d get the beast at the end of that twenty-four hours, while with this one I may need to wait a week. Still… I'm going to have a Griffon coming to roost soon: Should make a decent status symbol.
That done, I make suitable crafters (and Clerics to sustain them) and get them working on an exotic riding saddle, an exotic military saddle, saddlebags, and silken ceremonial barding for my new pet. Why? The military saddle will help keep me from falling off, the saddlebags will make a nice decoy if anyone tries to rob me, while the ceremonial armor will look nice (I want to ride in style) and will be suitable for enchanting after I cast Masterwork Transformation on it. I can afford it, although admittedly most of it won't be ready when my new pet arrives (the standard exotic saddle should be, however, which is why I included it).
As I'm finishing up, the party leader approaches me, “So, Marty… think this pce is stable enough? We need to contact the guild to register the dungeon and to get them to establish a guildhall here.”
I consider that, “And I can't Shadow Walk anymore, which means it's a long trip,” about two weeks each way with our Fly speed, one if we Hustle.
“Right,” Roger nods, “So it's going to take…”
“A day each way,” I interrupt, thinking, “assuming you're all okay hanging out in my Keyhome without me while I run the distance.”
The halfling flies up to my eye level, “You can go that fast?”
“Yes, kind of.” I consider how I want to answer, “I, personally, am inexhaustible and don't need to sleep, so I can run ft-out forever with no real consequences beyond boredom. I can change my form, so if I take on the form of something that can move quickly and combine that with the Haste spell I have running, then I can get from here to more civilized nds in about twenty hours… the same for getting back.”
“But none of us would be able to keep up, so we'd need to ride,” our party leader rubs his chin, “how big would this form be?”
I shrug, “Hard to go wrong with a Dragon. I was thinking about a Young Brass so as not to mess with my perspective too much, they're around my size. Why do you ask?”
He waves his hand, “That won't work, then. I thought that if you were going to be big we could just ride you to keep you company and be there if something goes wrong, but you'd need to be bigger than a horse to carry us all, so…” he shrugs.
I consider, “I can go Huge readily enough: A Very Old Brass dragon would fit the bill… I could have someone craft a howdah for me, then I could carry you all… the howdah would take a while to make, though.”
Roger nods, “That would be perfect. We don't need to keep to any specific schedule, so the… how long, do you think?”
If I drop Crafter's Fortune on the minion running it once a week, with the other buffs… “Seven or eight weeks.”
The halfling sets himself back down on the ground, “the two month dey isn't a big deal, and is much better than hoofing it through the wilderness with a cranky Wesley. Please get started on the howdah when you can.”
I nod and start the casting of the various spells to make and buff the minions I'll need. Thinking about it, I also start on the minions needed for nursing the newborns of those who do not elect to stay female after the babies are born. Almost any woman can do the job if they're willing to put in the work - aunt Wanda told me ALL about making milk, and is quite frankly probably the world's foremost mostly mortal expert on the subject - but an earlier start is better. So I summon up a bunch of female Clerics by way of the Temple(Acrolyte) option (quietly setting them up with some unusual domains I ran across in my library: Agriculture and Sustenance, both of which have nice options for feeding people at first level), and walk them through what they'll need to do. It's actually remarkably simple (while still being difficult): They “just” need to milk themselves for several minutes every couple of hours even though they're not producing milk… for a few months. It also helps if they think about babies a whole lot in a loving way, hang out around babies, find volunteers to suck on their taps, and so on. Eventually their bodies will get the idea and start producing milk with no pregnancy required. It also helps if they eat certain things… but these dies will be surviving on magical sustenance, so that barely matters.
That said: As the milkmaids only need to support themselves with magic, and can do so with their domain powers… they have free spell slots for helping out other people. Which means I have them get started on a chapel, which I build by way of a “Magic Shop” spell I ran across in the library. It does… well, what it says on the tin: It makes a shop. A simple twenty foot square structure with a sturdy door, two windows (with shutters), a sign outside, a counter top, dispy shelves, a workbench, two stools, and a writing desk… plus some spells to make it reasonably secure. Not warm and comfortable, but an Endure Elements spell from me solves that. I make a dozen such (they're free for me), and set the signs to match the holy symbol they all have. It's not one I recognize, a simple humanoid line drawing, with the right half being male and the left half being female. It must be for a really obscure deity if I don't recognize it… but then, I am pulling these summons by way of a spell that doesn't exist in this reality so… I suppose it makes sense.
Thinking about it, these girls are a lot more space efficient for how many others they can support than are the existing clerics, and one of their two domain powers can even be used to stockpile trail rations, so I dismiss the other Acrolyte builds and spam these ones, setting up enough excess capacity that they'll be able to stockpile progressively more travel rations as time goes by. It cuts the ‘support crew’ down to just one Acrolyte per six workers, frees up their spell slots for use in other things, AND lets them stockpile trail rations in case the dungeon goes down… or just cover for a famine if we can't get supplies for the real people.
I go ahead and walk all the Acolytes through the milk regimen… I mean, milk is yummy, they can make cheese from the extra, it's fun watching them work, and I'm sure they're going to be a hit around here.
