Khenal
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Chapter Three-Hundred Ninety-Eight
🕑 Added 2025-09-30 01:58:57 +0000 UTCTempting as it is to immediately go play with my new toy, I should make sure things are going smoothly before I get nice and distracted. It only takes me a few moments to look around and see the kids have already left safely. I can only assume Freddie and Rhonda are off to the adventurer’s guild, or maybe to Miller. Pul should be at the thief HQ reporting in, too.
I can also hear a lot of the delvers still here murmuring about what just happened, and the rumor mill grinding away at someone falling to their death. That’s good. It’ll probably be a few hours, maybe even a day before the Earl confronts me about his son. Right now, the rumors are about Larrez, a young guard. It’ll take a bit of time for them to plausibly put the dots together about Rezlar.
I mean, they know right now, I’m sure, but they have to act clueless for things to play out the way they want them to. So I still have plenty of time to kill, and killing it with dinosaurs sounds like a good plan to me! I check back in with Rezlar before I do, and am happy to see him peacefully reading a book and munching on… huh, is that the cobblebread from that bakery?
Man, sometimes I miss eating.
But seeing as everything seems to be in order, I’m free to do this quest from Order and get me some dinosaurs! I even make sure to shake and rattle the quest, or at least try to. Anything to get Order’s attention to make sure he gets as much info as possible from me doing unspeakable things to the system.
I take a moment to appreciate the non-elemental spawner, all empty and inert. Hard to imagine it’s a very serious bug in Order’s addition to the system. It really doesn’t look like much.
But Teemo and I both know we’re going to see some fireworks once we do this. He carefully enters the spawner and sets the bit of amber inside, and skedaddles quickly. At least it doesn't go off automatically.
I focus on the spawner and the amber, and my concept of a dinosaur, and feel my mana start to react and move. It doesn’t take much to make it click, surprisingly. If this was a physical thing, I’d stumble from having put more into it than needed. But no, it clicks together like it was destined to, and I wince as information floods my mind.
Is this what it’s like when I talk about technology to Teemo? No wonder he tries to ignore me when I get going, this is unpleasant. Of course, Teemo can at least rub his temples. The only temples I have are the types with worshipers in them, and it’d be awkward at best if I tried rubbing them.
I do my best to focus through the pain, as I have a lot of work still to go. I know a lot about dinosaurs now, way more than I did before. I think some of the pain is from a bit of dissonance between what was accepted truth back home, and the dinosaurs I want. Like brontosaurs not holding their heads high because of the blood pressure needed. But my brontosaurs are going to happily put giraffes to shame.
There’s a lot of little details like that to sort through, but I can mostly push through it. Because I need to define some bonuses. I can give them basically no bonuses and make them cheap to spawn, but then my glorious dinosaurs will be as tough as paper. No no no, extra toughness and hp, penalty to speed. There are fast dinosaurs, sure, but as a whole, they get by on being big and tough.
Oh, magic resistance, too. It severely limits their magic potential, but I think it’s a fair trade. It’s also a good way to differentiate them from dragons, who are kinda busted in all categories. I tinker a little with the sliders before locking them in: big, strong, slow, magic resistant. Yeah, that looks great.
Now to organize. Whoof, how to organize this whole mess… At least it makes more sense now that bees and hornets are in the same spawner. Flying striped stinging insects should share a spawner, no matter how different they actually are. Well, this is my spawner, I’ma organize it how I like, because as I’ve said many times before: I’m not a biologist.
Where to start… well, why not with a classic? The stegosaurus is an icon, so I’ll start from there… and let’s focus on this spawner being about ones with nasty tails. With that thought, things start flying around as they organize, and I see the ankylosaur lumped in there as well. Interestingly, the stego is already breaking the rules by being the magic focus for that classification, but I like it. The thagomizer on the tail and the plates along the spine are good for channeling whatever affinities get added, so that’s cool.
Massive is another easy category to add, and things shift and organize into a new designation for that. The aforementioned brontos are there, as well as titanosaurs? Were those a thing, or was that just from a game? Either way, it’s in there now. Triceratops also get lumped into the massive category, with options for being a stepping stone to something bigger, or specialized into magic to use those horns like big ugly unicorns. Or tricorns, I guess. Man, it’s tempting to set my spawner for something massive, but where would I even put one of those things? I shrug and put it aside for now. I’m not here to make something reasonable, I’m here to make dinosaurs!
One more major category that’s simple to define are the bipeds. I’d call them featherless bipeds, but with how aggressively humans aren’t allowed to exist, I wouldn’t want my spawner to just vanish from existence. There’s a lot of my personal favorites in here, from the little compys to a whole host of different raptors, carnotauros , allosaurs, and the big boy T-Rex. Very tempting.
With most of the dinos sorted, it’s looking a lot like the last two are going to be pretty simple to organize. Fliers are the first, and are a pretty eclectic mix, and include the only dino with feathers: the archaeopteryx. Mostly it’s different flavors of pteranodons, but they’re still pretty cool.
Which leaves the final set: the aquatic. I think Hullbreak is going to have fun picking out what line to follow once he gets it. From the classic Nessie pleasiosaurs to the gator-ish mosasaurs, and even a few tanky-looking fish, there’s a lot of choices for my favorite sea dungeon.
And a choice for me. What do I set my own spawner to? I want them all! No way will they all fit, though. Much as it pains me, I set aside the massive category for now. Maybe I’ll eventually have room, or convince Teemo to make me an expanded space underground to house them and have my very own little hollow earth, but for now, it’s just not feasible.
I also set aside the special tail group. There’s definitely some cool dinos in there, and some of the resource specialized ones look really powerful, but I want something else. Even if the idea of walking mining nodes sounds cool.
I can also easily eliminate the aquatic dinos. I could claim the underswamps for them, but I’d be forcing out the scythemaws, and that’d just be rude. Besides, they’re for Hullbreak to play with, and maybe Violet, if she expands out into either the ocean or the aquifer lakes.
Which leaves two: the fliers and the bipeds. The bipeds are there because… I mean, of course I want a T-Rex! And raptors! So many clever girls! But the tactical advantage of having some flying dinosaurs is hard to ignore. Right now, my fliers are good for intel, but can only do some light support, and even that’s because they can carry hands to lob spells.
My dire ravens can carry people down to the ground safely, but they just don’t have the range and capacity for transportation. I might not need it against the Betrayer, if it’s really under the ocean and apparently somewhere in the mantle, but the tactical point still stands. Air superiority is not an advantage to lightly ignore.
Though on that same note, bipedal dinos will be hard to beat in a melee. If fighting the Betrayer goes anything like fighting the Maw, it’s going to be combat in tight confines, and with my slides and wyrms, I have… ground superiority, I guess? It’ll probably have some kind of answer to those sorts of tactics, but having raptors to prowl the tunnels would be nightmarish to deal with.
…and I’ll be able to have a T-Rex scion. That’s definitely a point to consider, too.
I take a look at the prices, wondering if that’ll make the decision any easier, but it doesn’t. My dinos are expensive. They’re not dragon expensive, but that’s the only category that regularly costs more. They’re a bit easier on the old wallet if I specialize for resources instead of a variety of combat, but I don’t think I’ll be taking that path for whatever dino I pick.
For one, specializing fliers for resources would be stomping all over the niche of my ravens, and biped resource dinos would be ones to hunt for their hides, horns, claws, and such. It looks like they’d be really strong for classes like druids and shamans and the like, but it just feels wrong to take the first set of raptors this planet has ever seen, and tell people to come kill them for their bits. Besides, the combat bipeds will still be great for weapons and armor, they just need to be properly dressed in the field for people to have access.
I agonize over the decision for a few more minutes before accepting the inevitable. The fliers might be the better tactical choice, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart wants raptors and a T-Rex. I take the time to even plan out the progression, starting with a compy swarm as the initial spawn, with velociraptors as the final. I don’t care if they’re supposed to be the size of a chicken and about as smart, my velociraptors are the size of people and clever enough to work doors, thank you very much.
The spawner is going to be pretty spendy, but I think it’ll be worth it. I spend the mana and stand back, watching with rapt attention as the mana swirls and soon settles. Before the first compy swarm emerges, my new scion squeezes out of the spawner and stands in all her tiny-handed glory! I resist the urge to ask her to roar, and Teemo fills the silence with a low, impressed whistle.
“Wow. I mean, I knew they were big, but wow.”
She takes a few moments to identify Teemo, and gives him an awkward bow, which he waves off. “Nah, no need for that. I’ll explain things to you here soon, once Boss gives you a name.”
I can feel the confusion through the bond, but I already have a name for her.
“Sue, hmm? Sounds simple at first, but the context is all about discovery and learning. And trust me, around the Boss, there’s a lot of discovering and learning to be had,” explains Teemo, and I pat the bond with Sue before letting Teemo get her oriented. Things are going to be a bit more interesting for her first couple days than with most of my scions, but that’s sometimes just how life works.
I chuckle as the quest pings complete, and settle in to accept the incoming reports from Poe and Zorro. People are starting to move, even if it’ll probably be a day before they come to me. I’ll be paying close attention, ready to shift my plans if I need to. People are hard to predict, and might pull something crazy out of nowhere. I’ll need to be ready to react if they try anything unexpected.
Comments
William Anderson
TYFTC!!!! FUCKING DINOS!!!!
architectural engineer
ithought it was the compies that were chicken sized and velociraptors the size of small ponies
Marrowtooth Rattel
Velociraptors were the smaller guys, utahraptors are the ones the size of humans
