READ WEBNOVEL Chapter 1 Becoming Hawkhurst
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
—Mike Tyson,
From a pre-fight interview
“Apache! Your nameplate has a title!” Charitybelle laughed and pointed to the space over my head.
Forgetting I couldn’t see my nameplate, I stupidly looked upwards at nothing except the waning yellow crescent of Laros in the sky.
Charitybelle read my nameplate out loud. “It says, ‘Lieutenant Governor of Hawkhurst.’”
I noticed the transformation in my girlfriend’s nameplate. “Your update says you’re our governor, and it must be true because you’re grinning like a politician.”
“Oh, you behave.” Charitybelle playfully slapped my chest.
Our new titles went unnoticed by the non-player characters who didn’t see nameplates, but when Fabulosa brought drinks and toasted the settlement, she addressed Charitybelle’s new title. “Top of the morning, Guv-nah!” Her faux-British accent carried so much lilting southern twang I spilled my ale and snorted with laughter. Sometimes, we laughed with our friends—other times, we laughed at them.
We closed our settlement ceremony with a bonding pledge. Greenie proposed it to prevent sabotage against Hawkhurst, and Ally agreed it should be compulsory for all citizens. Starting a settlement extended our necks enough—we saw no reason to allow traitors to work against us. After everyone made bonded promises to be loyal to the settlement, the gathering deteriorated into drinking, eating, singing, and socializing.
Festivities didn’t last long without the circulation of ale, and the defenseless kegs soon fell to the energy-starved dwarves. By then, I’d become dizzy with drink.
The party’s hum of conversation lingered when partygoers, unladen with drinking cups, began poking through the torodon carts. Someone untacked the animals from their collars, and the animals grazed nearby.
The roundhouse’s construction started that afternoon. Our citizens showed a disinclination to waking up covered in dew any longer than necessary.
Instead of questioning whether dwarves could erect structures under the influence of alcohol—or if two kegs amounted enough to exert said influence—I followed their lead and helped unload the carts. What else could I do? The timber looked heavy, and the dwarves looked scrawny. It seemed a wonder they could lift anything at all.
Charitybelle went straight to organizing things with Ally, Yula, and Greenie. Her dad’s military experiences rubbed off on her, making me want to follow orders. But I’d barely gotten used to being part of a community—what did I know about leadership aside from corny speeches in old war movies?
Would I earn respect by pitching in with the grunt work with the troops or hanging back in a managerial position? Until I learned what lieutenant governors did, I went with my gut and tried to earn my keep. I hopped onto the cart and handed lumber off to the other workers. At least the elevation made me more visible to everyone.
Unfortunately, the dwarves had to tell me what to do throughout every step of the enterprise. I even had to admit that my inebriated efforts weren’t an inspiring example.
Ally meandered over when she saw us sorting through and unloading the wood from the carts.
“Heavin’ already, eh?”
I struggled for balance as the cart shook from citizens unloading it. My inebriated state didn’t help. “We’ll need more than a flag to claim this ground. It’s not like there’s anywhere to go for an after-party.”
“True enough, L.T. But yer handing folks the wrong planks. Stacking them now only creates an obstacle.” With a drink still in hand, Ally bellowed instructions. “Pull the posts first, lads. Then, stack the base wall stones. If ye can’t find gloves, take care handling the posts—that’s newly hewn timber. Even with our callouses, we’re prone to splinters.”
A dwarf named Mack stood straight, balled his fists, and shot back at Ally. “Ye need not tell me that! I’m the one who hewed ‘em!” He thumped his chest and gestured indignantly at the pile.
Ally answered loud enough for the entire crew to hear. “Ye can fault Mack for every lance in yer mitts! I wondered why the battens felt as coarse as lava rock. Dija burnish ‘em with yer backside then?”
A chorus of laughter peeled through the workers and spectators alike.
In my drink-ridden haze, it took me a second to realize that L.T. had become my new nickname. As lieutenant governor, they regarded me as someone with authority, and I wasn’t sure I’d be good at it. Either way, getting used to so much responsibility would take acclimation.
Mack returned to his work after a defiant wave. His rebuke served as a fresh reminder that it wasn’t wise to heckle Forewoman Ally Ironweave. Her mettle as the crew chief came from wrangling construction projects long before Hawkhurst graced the interface map.
A light tap on my lower back prompted me to turn to Greenie, who stood behind me. A new moniker graced his nameplate—Chamberlain Esol of Hawkhurst.
“Excuse me, Vice Governor. Governor Charitybelle would like to speak to you.” Greenie spoke as if he administered a high state function though the setting resembled a backwoods barn-raising.
His pomp killed my buzz, and I still thought of myself as an American and unbeholden to traditions like titles. “Oh, no, Greenie. I’m not having any of that. I’m Apache, and you can call me Apache. We aren’t letting silly formalities infringe on our friendship.”
Greenie stiffened and smiled uncomfortably.
I patted him on the shoulder. “And don’t worry—we won’t need fancy titles either. You’ll always be Greenie to me.”
He didn’t look pleased about my intended break with tradition but recovered as I followed him from the cart. “Why, thank you, sir—that is quite a relief. I apologize for the formality. I thought a measure of officialism might be appropriate for a meeting about our settlement’s poor efficiency.”
Poor efficiency? Who could be more efficient than dwarves building their own home? I caught sight of Charitybelle as she approached. I gestured to Ally, bossing about the dwarves. To me, everyone seemed busy. “Greenie tells me you’re worried about efficiency?”
I looked to Fabulosa and Yula for clues, but the pair preoccupied themselves with another conversation, probably about patrols. It seemed like a discussion to get in on before they agreed to rotations.
Charitybelle cocked an eyebrow. “Building efficiency. You haven’t checked your game prompts, have you?”
I opened my user interface and searched through my alerts. I’d dismissed the notifications earlier when the line for ale formed. The queue for alcohol got so long that I double-fisted drinks. It’s how I’d become tipsy by the time people began unloading carts.
After skimming the congratulations message, I spotted links to new interface tabs. The first new interface window featured a building status monitor.
Building Status
Roundhouse
Remaining Build Time
Efficiency
Workers
1.5 days
104 percent
28
These numbers looked promising. One and a half days didn’t seem so bad. Twenty-seven workers seemed about right, too.
None of it explained why Charitybelle seemed so annoyed.
I dismissed the window and opened another new window for a settlement interface.
Name
Hawkhurst
Level
1 (33/50 population to next level)
Location
1.1, -15.2
Government
Economy
Exchequer
Dictatorship
Subsistence
0 gold
Patron Deity
Favor
None
None
Officers
Governor
Lieutenant Governor
4
Charitybelle
Apache
Morale
48 percent (worried)
Powers
None
I’d already fortified myself for an onslaught of governing issues. City management games offered many ways to play, and players juggled many issues at once. The Book of Dungeons fell in line with its predecessors, so Charitybelle asked me to manage the town’s priorities so she could draft blueprints.
Time sped up when I closed my interface. I answered Charitybelle’s question with mocking assurance. “Of course, I checked the interface, sweetie!” I’d slurred a little, and her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“You just checked them right now, didn’t you?”
I tossed my hands up in defense. “I got caught up in the party. What’s the big deal?”
She sighed. “You’re drinking as much as the dwarves, unloading the cart, and helping with the roundhouse.”
I shrugged my shoulders, not seeing the problem.
Fabulosa arched an eyebrow. “I don’t reckon he’s helping that much.”
Charitybelle raised a finger at Fabulosa to show she wasn’t helping. She hugged me. “The interface shows 28 workers. But we have 28 dwarves, and Ally isn’t a worker. Snow White does not hi-ho her way to the goldmine with the dwarves—she keeps a tidy house. And that, my dear, is who you are. You need to be our Snow White.”
“What? Why can’t I help?” I raised my hand in protest so quickly that I almost fell from the cart. I ignored Fabulosa’s chuckles while regaining my balance.
Yula didn’t show even a hint of a smile, but her expression rarely wavered from grim determination. I drunkenly wondered if orcs even had a sense of humor.
Charitybelle sighed with patience so maternal that it made me uncomfortable. It reminded me that I was acting immature. Girls had a way of doing this. Being called Snow White especially vexed me—a nickname Fabulosa would inevitably remember to press my buttons.
“Sweetie, you can help, but eat your vegetables first. Lieutenant Governor isn’t an honorary title. You said you’d run the town while Greenie and I make blueprints. That means getting a grip on town management before charging into the macho world of construction. Or do you already have plans to fix our morale?”
Details from the camp’s character sheet caught my attention, including its well-deserved classification of dictatorship. But the settlement’s low morale status sharply contrasted with my own lying eyes. By what metric did the game rate morale? Two freshly slain kegs of ales lay upended beside barbequed leftovers. Recently emancipated dwarves sang while raising their new home on a sunny, wind-swept meadow. It made no sense. “How is this supposed to be bad morale?”
“Check your numbers.”
I opened the interface morale tab, freezing time.
Morale
48 percent (worried)
Factor Events
462 percent
Factor Security
43 percent
Factor Culture
50 percent
Factor Health
49 percent
The numbers looked like standard civilization ratings. The problematic figure rested at the top—morale. I close the window. “Why is our morale so low? Is something else affecting the averages?”
Charitybelle corrected me. “Those aren’t averages, they’re factors.”
“It seems like it ought to be averages.”
“The average amounts to 151 percent, not 48. In a metagaming way, it allows for exploits. Systems using averages let players ignore factors by inflating one number.”
I grunted, making a pretense of following her. The ale had buzzed me too much to bother with the math, so I trusted her assessment.
“You can check each factor by focusing on them. Like the tabs on the settlement page, each opens another window.”
“Factors of factors?”
Charitybelle nodded. “So, do you see our problem?”
This job sounded more complicated than I anticipated. I froze time once more and studied the interface. The first panel listed recent events. Emancipation from the goblins acted as a huge variable, but the influence of events decayed daily at 10 percent. Every event diminished at the same rate, normalizing at 100 percent. Negative factors, such as Brodie Anvilhead’s death, became less of a drag to our spirits as days elapsed. It made sense.
If the factor of the recent events totaled 462 percent today, then tomorrow, it registered at 416 percent. That change dropped our morale from 48 to 44 percent.
Thankfully, building efficiency listed morale as only one of three variables—and the other two would remain rock solid. Even so, tomorrow’s workforce will be slower than today’s balmy rate of 104 percent. Charitybelle wasn’t wrong to be concerned.
I studied the morale chart. Our settlement’s low-security rating involved factors including military might and external threats, but a low crime rate buoyed the lagging figure. We’ll probably maintain an excellent crime record, as there wasn’t much lying about to steal. I wondered if regular scouting reports might settle everyone’s worries about the camp’s safety.
Morale’s next factor, culture, needed an explanation. Religious, artistic, and educational structures might raise it, but I had no illusions that theaters or schools registered at the top of the to-do list for buildings. A tavern might help if we filled it with singing dwarves, but would they sing without a steady supply of alcohol to catalyze the merriment? Universal freedom at Hawkhurst remained the only factor increasing our cultural rating. Charitybelle might run a dictatorship, and Ally cracked the whip, but we had plenty of personal liberty.
And a health rating factored into morale, and the low number wasn’t surprising, given the dwarves’ physical condition.
Health
49 percent (deficient)
Factor Diet
130 percent
Factor Fitness
39 percent
Factor Rest
120 percent
Factor Comfort
80 percent
Upon closer inspection, the interface projected trends and predicted tomorrow’s efficiency. Our group’s fitness increased by 1 percent daily while diet and rest dropped twice as fast. Worse still, the stat for comfort dropped 5 percent every day. While the dwarves recovered from captivity, living outdoors these past few nights took its toll. At least, the daily 5 percent drops would cease after we erected the roundhouse.
The new information gave me a better grasp of our camp’s situation. But it didn’t add up why Charitybelle wanted me to do this stuff. The suspicious side of me wondered if she felt I needed something to make myself feel useful. If the interface froze time, she could do everything herself without affecting her design workload.
But maybe therein lay her motive. This responsibility involved me with the community, perhaps drawing me out of my shell. If she wanted us to build the town together, I had no objections.