Today's Earth date: April 16, 1992

We expect to catch up with the kids sometime tomorrow morning. If this wasn't the Cuts, we'd keep looking in the dark, but that's pointless down here.

When I told Horcus about how I might live in an actual castle, he said he had been thinking about where he wanted to live. In his mind, a castle is too boring and too cliché. He wants something bad ass like the Fortress of Solitude. And he is completely committed to the idea.

Dude, I get the appeal, but you're going to need groceries.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

Wayne likely overpaid for Tulip's building, but her landlord knew that Wayne wanted that specific property and leveraged it against him. Fergus was grumpy about it, throwing in how much Wayne spent on Skulduggery attacks as well, but he didn't moan about the deal for long.

Later, Margo helped the Zeroes pick out the right locksmith and builder to secure the building. Wayne didn't yet have the time or budget to give each station the Perris' vault treatment, but he didn't want a half-dry-rotted door with a wiggly lock to be only the barrier between the train and some rapscallions looking for a payday.

Fergus also disapproved of Wayne's use of the word "rapscallion," but he wasn't there to continue complaining.

At any rate, Wayne replaced all the doors and boarded the windows over. While they were at it, they replaced Tulip's door. It wasn't in much better shape than the shop door downstairs had been, and Wayne was technically her landlord now. That was the least he could do for a little old lady tenant.

Wayne was a bad landlord, though. He wasn't charging Tulip rent, which made him a good landlord in another respect. After musing on the strange circular notion of good and bad landlords, he taught Tulip how to use the Comms Panel attached to the station door. The portal itself would be invisible when Wayne chose to close it or the train left the station, but the Comms Panel would remain. She was welcome to send a message if she needed something or if she had news about Luke.

"You guys about done?" Wayne asked via Voice. Fergus and Sammy were across town stocking up on local wines, loading it directly onto the train with the Goods Storage gate.

"Good timing. Let us hop on, real quick." After a brief pause, Fergus said, "Okay, go."

Goods Storage.

As Fergus and Sammy stepped out into the empty storefront, Wayne realized that the Zeroes were abusing the hell out of this strange train system, and he loved it.

Anything that utilized interdimensional space was super broken in Wayne's mind, and he meant that in the context of games. Wayne being the only person in this world to have access, he had what was akin to a cheat. That's how big the advantage was, hence, broken.

And he felt that way when all he had was Goods Storage. The system's choice to make Goods Storage a part of a train system broke Goods Storage even more. The rules for how all those things worked made it too easy:

Party members entered and exited the train with the Board command. They could use Board anywhere in town limits to get on, but their exit would always be the station door associated with their present station. Those were the doors that could also support Comms Panels, making them more or less permanent, static gates.

If the train was at a different station, say in Iomallach while Wayne was in Ventuls, he could not use Board or the station gate to get on the train.

But he could use Goods Storage to access a storage container as long as he was in a town, regardless of the train's current location. So Wayne could hop on the train through a Goods Storage door, and then exit the train out the current station gate, wherever that might be.

And they could seemingly buy as many Goods Storage cars for the train as they wanted, each with its own dedicated gate access from anywhere in town and each capable of remaining open indefinitely. That mechanic turned the train system into a hub for gates all over the world, and Wayne planned to put one in every town.

Then only he, and people he agreed to help, could instantly travel what would have taken months across land and sea. Yeah, super broken.

The rest of the party was similarly enthusiastic about the convenience. Hector and Sammy had both mentioned feeling homesick for Cuan, which got Wayne and Fergus talking about taking a ship from Bata to Cuan with the sole purpose of setting up a gate there. Once the party was on the free continent, any return to Cuan would be incredibly far off, likely the end of the journey in its entirety, actually.

Feeling a bit giddy, Wayne opened his system to review the status of his train. They were already out of train bucks from the Earth Temple crawl, but Wayne was happy with the cars they had:

4-6-2 Pacific Engine

Lobby Car (Board Entrance)

Passenger Car (Multi-Cabin)

Wayne's Car

Fergus's Car

Hector's Car

Armond's Car

Margo's Car

Sammy's Car

Vanilli's Car

Goods Storage (Iomallach Gate) [incomplete]

Goods Storage (Vientuls Gate)

Restaurant Car - Wine

Restaurant Car - Dining

Restaurant Car - Kitchen

Restaurant Cold Goods Storage

Goods Storage (Library)

Cold Goods Storage (Vanilli's Workshop)

Goods Cargo (Wagon Storage)

Putting all of this together gave Fergus a childish thrill as well. He likened it to play-acting at being a god. With a simple wish, an entirely new car would come into existence. Seeing that much space and material come from nothing, and then walking all eighteen cars from end to end, was a surreal sense of wonder.

They opted not to put a quick-travel point in Mudsville, however. Though they very much wanted one, their best idea for where to hide the gate was Kenny's shed. Securing it any better than that just wasn't possible without brand new construction. Maybe someday, but for now, a station gate on the side of Kenny's shed was fine.

The Comms Panel would be out in the open, but Wayne and Fergus expected minimal tomfoolery for anything on Kenny's property.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Wayne was so engrossed in reading his system that he didn't notice Armond come through the station door at first.

"Haven't seen a lot of you recently," Wayne said. "Hope you let yourself relax a bit."

Armond laughed, sheepishly. "I ended up working, and that's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"What's on your mind?"

"I've been putting my new skills Diagnose and Treat Disease through their paces. That kind of turned into me treating half the town. But those skills, Wayne, they're amazing. Healing Feeling, one of the spells I got from Tunnels & Trolls, says it cures "any kind of disease" in the description, but it actually only works on communicable diseases. Have the flu? I can help you. Have cancer? Healing Feeling won't do anything."

"Treat Disease is better?"

"I haven't found anything I can't Diagnose or resolve with Treat Disease. Then with my healing spells on top of that? The only things I can't help with are things like missing limbs."

"But Vanilli can," Wayne said, guessing at where this went next.

"If he's up for it, I'd like to think about doing something like this regularly, but there's a lot to figure out before we could give anyone else the Kryss treatment. What I'm thinking is more like a traveling clinic. Set it up in a train car and use that Goods Storage trick to let people in."

"Like house calls?"

"Not quite," Armond replied. "I spent my first day here sitting on a bench outside of a bar. Ended up with a line of people down the street. I'd want access to be closer to that. Show up, open the door, and anyone who wants to come in for help can just do it."

"Our train is turning into quite the destination," Wayne mused. "Sammy pitched us on opening a restaurant on the train."

"Really?"

"Yeah, and it's happening. Fergus is more excited than Sammy, I think. But we zeroed out our train bucks with those cars… Hang on one moment."

Wayne opened his Train menu again. "We have a multi-cabin car that we don't need. We'd have to renovate, but would you be okay with that?"

"I wouldn't mind having a project, actually."

"Done."

Wayne relocated the car via his system menu to not be immediately after the Lobby Car. If Armond was helping sick kids, Wayne didn't want to have to stumble drunk through that scene to get to his car whenever he hit Board.

Standing outside the Iomallach station gate in a dusty warehouse, Wayne addressed the Zeroes.

"Billium said our rooms would stay available, so is anyone opposed to putting the Iomallach Quick Gate in the house while we're in town?"

"I'd prefer it that way, to be honest," Margo said. The rest of the group nodded their agreement.

"Easy enough. I'll share a message when that's done so you can start using it. Otherwise, please enjoy your down time."

Once the rest of the group dispersed, Wayne and Fergus walked across town to knock on General Poltur's door. They sat in a waiting room for the better part of an hour before she appeared with a freshly shaven head and called them in.

"I only have a few minutes, so be quick," she barked.

Wayne was hoping that some of the tension between the Zeroes and the Iomallach Defense Force would subside while he was gone, but that hope was clearly wasted.

"We promised to apprise you of any new ratman activity or intelligence we might discover." Fergus said. "We're here to make good on that but can come back another time if that's better."

"No, I have time for this."

Wayne summoned every point in strength he had to keep from rolling his eyes. Two seconds ago, she barely had the time to look at them, but now they had something she wanted. He sat back while Fergus summarized the Earth Temple crawl, focusing mostly on the basement areas looted by rats.

Poltur listened carefully but didn't move. Not even a nod.

"Thank you for the report," she said

"We heard there were no enhanced ratmen in the recent attack," Fergus began. "Is that true?"

"You misunderstand how this works," Poltur said. "You give me information. I don't give you information."

Fergus closed his eyes and sighed. "If what we heard was accurate, then a sizable force of ratmen is still unaccounted for. We thought we should give you that information too."

"Laszlo routed them already," Poltur said, standing to hold the door open, not so gently encouraging the Zeroes to leave. "He was here while you were off playing in the woods, and so was I, for that matter. Iomallach is safe, and I am under no obligation to justify my judgment to you."

"Well, this was lovely," Fergus said, standing. "We should meet like this more often."

"Fergus…" Wayne cautioned, speaking under his breath.

Neither Fergus nor Poltur said another word, and Wayne got his friend out the door before they changed their minds about that.

On the street, the old scholar was not so quiet. "The gull! The unabashed, unashamed, gull!"

"We knew a reception like that was a possibility."

"Dislike us? I mean, fine. Not everyone can have great taste. But to ignore intel like that? It's unconscionable."

"We did what we could," Wayne said. "Let's get you something to drink then head back to the Blackwell's."

Wayne and Fergus divided the research of the Bata desert into two broad categories: recent happenings in the area and the oldest history they could find. Fergus liked to begin a project with that kind of split to facilitate discussion. He argued that approach encouraged depth from the start without sacrificing breadth. Even such a loosely defined expertise as new or old made it easier for two researchers to make connections between ideas.

Fergus believed those two assigned specialities would encourage the most active discussions.

On Earth, Wayne's research experiences were all solo projects. In college, that research produced papers. In his professional life, that research turned into reports or presentations.

When it came to collaborative research, Fergus had more experience by far. His approach seemed to work well, but Wayne had a feeling a great deal of that success was more from the person than it was the method. He found it hard to imagine an approach where collaborating with Fergus produced anything but good results.

For this project, Wayne took the more recent end of the timeline. Presently, he read a collection of news stories from the city of Bata.

"I need you to sanity-check me," Wayne said.

Across the table, Fergus lifted his head from his book.

"There's an article in here about the orcs that live in the Bata desert. Apparently, the tribes organized and established some kind of unofficial treaty."

Fergus nodded. "Yes, I heard something about that."

"This says they call themselves 'Dorcs.'"

"So?"

"On Earth 'dork' with a K is a cheesy insult."

"I don't believe that's a joke," Fergus said. "I'm pretty sure I heard that. If nobody messes with them or the desert, they keep to a rough border and don't bother anyone."

"And we signed up to do a bunch of research in that same desert. If there's a peace between people and orcs…"

"The desert is a big place," Fergus said. "Maybe we can avoid them. If we can't, we'll move on."

"Oh."

"You were already imagining everything going wrong."

"Yup."

Fergus kept his head down and said, "That's the beauty of freelancing. We can drop a job if it's not worth the trouble. Simple as that."

Wayne sat back, and the tension drained from his body.

"You didn't consider that option?"

"Not even for a second."

The old scholar chuckled. "Glad to be of service."

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