First, I checked on the fly situation. The population had more than tripled, which might or might not be enough. I'd keep an eye on it.
Next, I checked on the spider. It had spun a web across one of the little shelves in the second room. There was a glittering figurine behind it. I focused...
Minion: Snow Spider
- Home: Web
- Food: Not Assigned
- Water: Available
- Condition: Comfortable
I focused on that "food" option. Spiders that made webs ate what they caught, I was pretty sure.
Snow Spider's Web:
Foreign Creatures: Eat / Release
Dungeon Creatures: Eat / Release
Add Category
Add Category. Dungeon Minion Fly
Adding Category...
Category: Dungeon Minion Fly Added
Set Dungeon Minion Fly to Eat
Category: Dungeon Minion Fly Set to Eat
I turned the spider's information over a few times, but didn't find any way to make it part of a group, or a swarm, or whatever a bunch of spiders was called. Finally, I put together a script to tell any Snow Spider Minions in the room to reproduce if the Snow Spider Minion population was under a threshold. I set the adult threshold to 5, the spiderling threshold to 25, and... I couldn't remember how many baby spiders came out of an egg sac. I set the egg sac threshold to 25 as well.
After taking care of the spider, I took a look at my other new minion: the mountain mouse.
I found it burrowed into one of the pine straw decorations, next to the new bumblebee queen, who had already constructed a few wax cubbies and begun to lay her eggs in them. Much to my surprise, it wasn't hungry.
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That may have had something to do with the pine cone decoration it had built its nest next to, and that it was busily nibbling on. I checked the pinecone decoration and with a bit of fiddling and a few simulations, realized that it barely cost more dungeon mana to maintain five pinecones than to maintain one - and that each pinecone had enough food to keep two mice happy and comfortable for a day. So I made a cluster of them, all linked together, to take advantage of that efficiency.
I summoned another mouse, then crossed my nonexistent fingers.
Reproduce until there are twelve mice in this nest.
Something clicked into place. The mice vanished into their nest and I stopped paying attention to them. I didn't need to see that.
I doubled back a moment later to check their settings, and saw that they'd been relabeled as a Family of Mountain Mice with their population capped at twelve mice. Then I hurried my attention away from where my two mice were busy making more mice.
I checked on my bats, and they were less hungry and more happy, so that was good. I set the population cap for the colony to six and, ah, enabled reproduction, then spent some time spawning more flowers and dung decorations and increasing the fly cap.
Finally, I ran out of busywork, and could no longer ignore the itch to increase my security.
I singled out one of my edelweiss minions in the second room, and thought upgrade. Light impurity.
---
Greyex slept deeply that night, and in the morning, got to work. He used handfuls of grass and leafy twigs to clean up after his sick kobold, jumped up and down until the cold stiffness of sleeping on the ground had passed, and spent some time licking the wet wall to take care of his own thirst. Then he set off.
First, he foraged for food. It was still cold enough, at dawn, that things like bugs and lizards would be slow - they were always slower when it was colder - and he was hunting for two. After ten or so attempts, he managed to catch a single entire lizard and five lizard's tails. He crammed the tails into his mouth and carried the squirming lizard back to the shelter.
Taaku was asleep, but Greyex shook its shoulder until it twitched and hissed.
"Open your mouth," Greyex ordered.
Obediently, the kobold opened its mouth. Greyex put the struggling lizard in the kobold's mouth.
Taaku swallowed. The lizard-lump wiggled its way down its throat. The kobold went back to sleep.
Greyex straightened up and looked for building materials. He needed a sleeping platform, and walls, and something like a roof, and stuff to make more rope, and - well. He collected up bits of wood and long grass and vines and whatever else looked like it might be useful, and while he did, he inspected every bug he found and put the ones that were probably safe to eat in the bag tied to his waist.
---
Surveillance Tower Twenty-Seven bustled with activity. Apprentices either sat at their observations stations taking notes, or they ran up stairs and down halls with orders or baskets and boxes of supplies. Gardner aggressively shoveled soil in the garden. Mrs. Lawson baked bread and travel biscuits. Doreen presided over her granddaughters, spinning thread and mending sheets and blankets that had sat for months, never before a high priority.
Tower Master Hudson kept himself out of the details. Micromanaging the Tower would do nothing but slow everyone down, and he knew adventurers. Low Flow could be there any day - or they could be two months late - and whenever they arrived, they were going to need to be convinced to respect his authority.
Which was why he was standing outside in a sunny spot collecting heat mana, and light, and wind. Journeyman Mage Avery stood beside him, clutching his own focus, collecting - collecting something that Hudson wasn't collecting.
"Avery, what mana are you collecting?"
"Shadows, Master," Avery said. Hudson glanced over. He was standing in the shadow of a tree.
"Good choice," Hudson said. "A few shadows in the right place at the right time, and you can work wonders."
They continued collecting mana in silence, side-by-side, preparing for the future.