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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 96, Square Meals
🕑 Added 2022-04-18 15:51:23 +0000 UTC~~~~
Alfric had thought that his aunt Penelope might want to talk about the so-called ‘bastlefolk’, but he hadn’t realized just how much she had to say on the subject. She was one of those guild members who didn’t comment on guild messages all that much, and from what he’d reviewed before coming to Plenarch, largely just posted minor encouragements and other cursory engagement that served more as proof-of-life than anything else. There was no guild thread for her work with the bastlefolk, though there might have been one in the archives somewhere, beyond Alfric’s admittedly light searching.
“You said, earlier, that you would bring in any dungeon babies that you found,” said Penelope once the food was on her plate. “I do find that heartening, as I know some see it as a burden, and in many cases, not a burden they’re willing to take on.”
“It seems sensible to me,” said Alfric. “If we accept that the dwodo and feil are people, then we need to also accept that bastlefolk are too.”
“Ah, but it’s hard to say what’s sapient and what’s not,” said Penelope. “We’ve taken in thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of babies, and much of the time they’re simply unthinking things, incapable of reaching maturity, occasionally incapable of sustaining life for longer than a week. That’s with entad and clerical assistance, mind you. The grimness of the task cannot be overstated, and the ratios, I believe, are part of the reason we’re having trouble becoming part of ongoing conversation.”
“Mmm,” said Alfric. “You’re wondering why people aren’t talking about this more, you mean?”
“You were in the Junior League,” said Penelope. “And you’re in the League now. How often does the issue come up?”
“The broad issue, or the narrow one?” asked Alfric.
Penelope gave a little laugh. “And what are those, to your way of thinking?”
“The broad issue is the sapients or potential sapients created by the dungeons,” said Alfric. “Or even broader, the moral position of humanity when compared to the dwodo, feil, and — kind of incidentally — the bastlefolk. The narrow issue is just the babies.”
“And?” asked Penelope. “How many times, in all your repeated days, did they come up?”
“Not often,” said Alfric. “In Junior League it was just a day spent on the subject, mostly talking about how incredibly rare actual sapience was, and how dungeon madness is incurable. The upshot was that it doesn’t really matter. I don’t think I spoke about it with anyone in the proper League, though we had a discussion within the party after fighting roughly humanoid creatures.”
“Much of what gets taught in the Junior League is how to deal with the bad feelings,” said Penelope. She ate a small bite of the entad-created meat. “They don’t want their little dungeoneers to be traumatized.”
“Most people just don’t think about it,” shrugged Alfric. “Which is probably not what you’d prefer, but —”
“Have you heard why I stopped doing dungeons?” asked Penelope.
“No,” said Alfric.
“I was younger — much younger, this was nearly forty years ago — and had already set myself up for life.” Penelope sighed. “The same as you’re attempting to do now, I suppose. I had done hundreds of dungeons, nothing compared to your mother, but by the standards of the common dungeoneer, enough that I was a dyed-in-the-wool veteran. I had slewn all sorts of creatures in that time, and pulled all sorts of bastles out whenever I could. I had a huge pile of entads and a large house bought with the money. It was the good life that I had always dreamed of, and I kept my drive in a way that many others did not.”
“Do you mind if I listen in?” asked Mizuki. She’d been seated with Pek on one side and Alfric on the other, and apparently her conversation with Pek had run dry.
“Not at all,” smiled Penelope. She’d barely touched her food, and Alfric had been focusing on eating as he listened. He was more interested in the biographical details than anything she had to say related to philosophy. “At any rate, I hope the scene is set. I was at the highest heights a dungeoneer can dream of, in the relative prime of my life, thirty years old and not feeling an ounce of decline. And then we went into a dungeon and found a nursery. We heard them before we saw them, the squalling of three dozen babies. We’d been in the dungeon for five hours or so at that point, which meant that they had gone that long without food, without a change of diapers, without attention. And there was something about it, perhaps that I had children of my own, that hit me differently. I scooped all those babies up, against the objections of my party, left to go get them help, and quit being a dungeoneer that very day. That was the start of the institute in Dondrian, those thirty-seven babies pulled from a single dungeon.”
“And … what happened?” asked Mizuki, leaning over slightly to speak past Alfric. Penelope was at the head of the table, which made this slightly less awkward.
“I ran myself ragged trying to take care of them,” said Penelope. “I bought a space to keep them all in, bought cribs, hired on staff … and watched as they struggled with living in our world, eventually dying one by one. A cleric of Qymmos can tell you many things about a person, but diet is especially difficult for them, as nutrition is apparently enormously complex. Some of the bastles are created needing specific diets, foods that are vital for them that only the highest quality of entad can produce, if it can be figured out at all. A druid can help,” she nodded in Isra’s direction, “but only so much.”
“They died,” said Mizuki. “The thirty-seven babies.”
“It took four years for the last of them to perish,” said Penelope. There was sadness to her, but also a firmness that reminded Alfric of his mother. “They grew but never developed. And they were so human too, which isn’t important to me now, but was at the time, little too-pink babies with over-large eyes. The last of them, Keif, was three feet tall with all his baby fat, incapable of any apparent thought at four years old, no sounds except his piercing cry.”
“Sorry,” said Mizuki. “But if you’re trying to pitch us on something, I don’t know that this is the way to go.” She casually used a fork to pierce a piece of food on Alfric’s plate, stealing from him without even looking. Alfric couldn’t decide whether this was annoying or endearing. She had gone exotic on her choices, and now wasn’t eating all that much of what was on her plate — multi-colored pasta and fish from the deep sea.
“I was hoping that Alfric in particular would empathize,” said Penelope. “He’s been the talk of the guild lately, in one way or another, and he’s got a strong sense of morality. He shows more dedication to disclosure than perhaps others do. Alfric understands that doing the right thing is difficult but necessary, and unlike some, he’ll follow through on the difficult things. And you, Mizuki?”
“Um,” said Mizuki. “I mean, yeah, I can see where you’d have to take a baby out of the dungeon, or take care of it until you could pass it off to someone. But …” She trailed off, and Alfric hoped that she would think before forming her next thought. “I can also see why people don’t do that. It’s a hassle. For us, it would be about four hours of our time, maybe more, and trying to take care of a baby that we don’t even necessarily know is going to survive even with a lot of help, or which won’t become more than a meatloaf — that’s what my grandfather said, that babies were kind of like meatloaf for the first year or so, not interesting or even really people yet, a bun that got done baking outside the oven — and in the wild or on farms it’s different, a deer is still pretty much a deer when it’s born, outside those first few minutes, and a kitten can move around almost at once, they don’t take long to be tiny cats, so human babies are kind of an aberration.”
“There’s a risk that all your efforts are for nothing,” said Penelope, which was a generous takeaway from Mizuki’s rambling.
“You think it’s something like one in a hundred?” asked Mizuki. “Babies taken from dungeons that become, um, actual people?”
“Less,” said Penelope. She seemed not to mind that this made her case much worse.
“I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “It seems like you’re coming at this from a place of compassion.”
“But you disagree?” asked Penelope.
“I don’t think she disagrees,” said Alfric. “She just thinks of it maybe in terms of costs and benefits.” He gave Mizuki a look and she raised an eyebrow. It would have been rude to talk over party chat in front of his aunt, but he wanted to reiterate that they were guests. While losing their housing for the night seemed quite unlikely, there was no need to be rude to their host.
“Mmm,” said Penelope. She looked around the table. “It looks like we’re all done here. Who would like to retire to the sitting room for dessert? I picked up some lovely khyon from the store, it won’t take but a moment to prepare.”
The clearing of plates took some time, and they slowly moved into another room, one that had a sunken seating area that encircled a fire pit. Fires were a big thing in Plenarch, Alfric had noticed, with the smell of smoke almost ever-present. Hannah had said it was because the city had an almost endless supply of driftwood that washed up against the nearby shore, directed there by the waves from a huge stretch of ocean, but Alfric suspected that there was more to it. Perhaps in the beginning it had been because there was a ready supply of wood that wasn’t good for building, but eventually it had become a bit of a cultural thing. The fire pit in this room, for example, certainly wasn’t fed by driftwood, and the deeper Alfric peered into the flame, the more certain he was that some kind of entad was responsible. The flame repeated itself, roughly once every minute, like someone stuck humming the same handful of lines from a song.
“You were saying that it was, perhaps, not worth it,” said Penelope once they had seated themselves. She’d handed out their dessert, which was something with crunchy breading and a gooey interior, soaked in a sugar syrup that was then dusted with tiny pink flowers. There was a skewer for eating it with. Alfric found it a bit cloying, but it was also delicious.
“I don’t know,” said Mizuki. “It’s … I mean, it must cost a lot, to keep all those babies that don’t end up becoming anything.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Penelope. “But with entad support, the costs can be brought right down, and it’s only a matter of labor, which largely comes from volunteers. I do have to say that I’ve heard the objection before, that my money would be better spent on, say, helping human children in need.”
“Yeah,” said Mizuki. “The thought crossed my mind.”
“Inter takes care of human children,” said Alfric. “Taxation funds orphanages, where necessary, and by historical comparison, it’s largely not necessary.”
“I guess it’s not really about the money,” said Mizuki. “Or the labor, or whatever. It’s more a feeling that, um … I don’t know. It feels like it’s way out at the edges of what compassion should demand of a person? My grandfather used to say that there was only so far your morals should extend in the service of others.”
Penelope raised an eyebrow. “An uncommonly bold sentiment.”
“He was from Kiromo, at a time when things were bad there,” said Mizuki. “When he was in his twenties, he had a choice between trying to stay, which seemed like the right thing to do but also like it wouldn’t have affected all that much, or leaving to start his own life somewhere else. He thought you didn’t need to give your heart and soul for someone else, even if they were suffering. You have a duty to kindness and compassion, but there are limits to that, I guess. I don’t know, he’d have said it a lot better.”
“And you think that it’s beyond the bounds of moral necessity to make sure that the bastlefolk have a home?” asked Penelope. She glanced briefly at Willam and Pek, who were now sitting beside each other. There were other conversations going on around the fire, and Isra was deep in conversation with Pek, who had resumed using his human disguise. Isra’s makeover hadn’t gone unnoticed by Alfric, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Mizuki shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable with being the focus of attention. “I’m not really the deep thinker of the group,” said Mizuki.
“I’m only trying to understand where you’re coming from,” said Penelope. “Obviously I have my own stance on the issue, and I’ve spent a good deal of my money and my life on this project. My ulterior motive for offering you room and board was to have this conversation, but of course I don’t want to press too hard.”
“Sorry, aunt Penelope, but I’m not sure I understand what you want,” said Alfric.
“Mmm,” said Penelope. “I would like the ideas and ideals I hold dear to be spread far and wide. I plant seeds that take a long time to grow, I think that’s the only way that true change can come about. It’s as your friend said, some people will see a baby in a dungeon and think about the odds, then decide that it’s not worth the ‘hassle’.”
“I don’t think I meant it like that,” said Mizuki.
“I’m not going to last forever,” said Penelope. “The truth is, the homes we’ve set up have been using the largesse from my dungeoneering days for decades now, and they will for decades to come, but not in perpetuity. We’re at the point now where we’re doing our best to hold ground, rather than advancing.”
“Ah,” said Alfric. “And you’re hoping for some new blood?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “But first I need to convince you of the rightness of our cause, and then after that, as your friend says, the necessity of it.”
Alfric felt something in the pit of his stomach, an uncomfortable sense of dread. “I’m not on a path to become a great dungeoneer like my mother was,” he said. “Or like you were. We’re barely doing a dungeon a week.”
Penelope nodded. “As much as I refrain from offering my input in the guild, I do read all the messages. I know your position.”
“I’m saying that I won’t have the same kinds of funds that you’ve had,” said Alfric. “Not unless things take a turn for us. And … I’m not sure that I have the same drive to clear a full dungeon as often as I physically can.” That was difficult to admit, but it was a conclusion he’d been coming to for a while and felt inescapable. It wasn’t simply that he’d never match his mother’s pace, it was that he didn’t actually want to. The theater had been a brutal amount of work. “If you’re looking for someone with deep pockets, I don’t think that I can be that person.”
“Hmm,” said Penelope. “I’m looking for someone who can take up the mantle when I’m dead and gone. I have another four decades in me, at the most, but perhaps less based on how things go in our family. My mother made it to one hundred and fifteen years old with all the finest entad assistance and clerical aid, but those last five years weren’t kind to her. Age is inescapable. Whether you have the money or not is less important than being a stalwart ally, and if you have no interest in the institution, I’m hoping that you will at least consider a role as an advocate. As you get older, if your interest in the dungeons holds, there might be a place within the League for you, and that’s a place we need allies.”
“This is a lot to think about,” said Alfric. “I don’t know what I’ll be doing a year from now, let alone ten years.” The same uncomfortability was there, the obligation pressing down, an offer that he really should accept but didn’t quite want to. He didn’t know much about his aunt’s work, but he had always felt that it was good that someone was doing it.
“I’m working on a book,” said Penelope, briefly turning away. “If possible, I’d like you to read through it. Your parents have mentioned that you’re a reader?”
“Books are where all the good information is,” said Alfric. “And I thought you already wrote a book? On the bastlefolk? Or will this have a different focus?”
“Did you read the first book?” asked Penelope. “It was published some thirty years ago, and while I made sure it was a large print run, there was never anything like a demand for it.”
“I haven’t read it, no,” said Alfric. He had intended to, but kept putting it off, and he’d have had to request a copy from his parents, which would also have to be done through the guild channel. Alfric worried that would look too much like he was trying to gain favor, which was more or less what it would be.
“It got a review in one of the major Dondrian papers,” said Penelope. “It was called a ‘self-righteous screed’. It’s been some time since then, but I still remember so many turns of phrase from that review. It took another ten years after publication for me to realize that they were, in fact, right.”
“And the new book is … better?” asked Alfric.
“It’s more personal,” said Penelope. “It’s an oral history of the bastlefolk, in their own words. I’ve been collecting stories for quite a while now. I think when I started, I had somewhat the wrong idea about things, and collected the wrong sorts of stories — stories about the prejudice and disfavor, the alienation of living in a culture that typically sees ‘your kind’ as something that’s killed for valuable loot. Or more than that, the alienation of a world not built for you. And it is an unkind life for the bastlefolk, largely because of the attitudes that people have, even if they’re not outright hostile — more rare, nowadays, thankfully. But the stories that work, those that touch people, tend to be more gentle. I don’t like the term ‘humanizing’, but it’s a good one, in this case.”
“I’ll read it,” said Alfric. “In an undone day, most likely. Let me know when it’s ready for review.”
“A copy of the provisional manuscript will be sent tomorrow,” said Penelope.
“Do you … call for people to stop doing dungeons?” asked Alfric. The first book had done that, he knew.
“It’s something that I go back and forth on,” said Penelope. She tilted her head. “Where do you stand?”
“Respectfully, I’m going to keep doing dungeons,” said Alfric.
Penelope nodded. “There is no argument I could possibly make that would change your mind. And, given that, if I tell you to do something that you clearly are never going to do, all I’ve done is made myself easy to ignore. So I think, depending upon the audience, a soft approach is sometimes best. You’ll have to tell me what you think though, how swayed you are, and how swayed your peers might be.”
“I can do that,” Alfric nodded.
“And if you have no interest in the cause, no feeling that this is a right and proper thing to devote a bit of your time, effort, and money to, then perhaps you can guide those who might be amenable toward me,” said Penelope.
“I can,” nodded Alfric. But his heart sank, because the problem wasn’t one that could be solved, not even if he fully agreed with her.
The conversation moved on to less important things, with Isra asking about Verity’s upcoming concert, and Mizuki asking all kinds of vaguely insensitive questions about the oddities of the bastlefolk, but Alfric’s mind was on the base question.
The world depended upon the dungeons. Ectads lasted a long time, but they wore down eventually, and the only place to get ectad materials was from the dungeons. Entads could last forever, but there were various sources of erosion of the global supply, both from those bound to people who would eventually die, and from the simple wear and tear that many entads went through over time. Lastly, there was the issue of the bastles and clandes, which were perhaps not quite as pressing, but they were one of the bounties of the dungeons, new species of plants and animals, the most useful of them providing for new crops or domesticated animals, albeit on the scale of decades.
And henlings! He’d nearly forgotten about them, though the haul he was due to sell the next day was, in essence, a henling, depending on how many hairs you wanted to split. Many people had homes that were nearly filled with things that had come from dungeons in one way or another, whether that was as whole pieces or from reclaimed wood or textiles. It was rare to find clothes that properly fit a person in a dungeon, but it wasn’t so rare to find clothes that could be altered to fit, or taken apart so that the largest pieces of fabric could find a new home in a quilt or a mixed-fabric dress.
The material considerations were too great, and it wasn’t simply a matter of greed. Lives would become demonstrably worse if the dungeons were shuttered. It was nice that this was a clear and obvious answer to any call to stop going into the dungeons, because it meant that the situation didn’t need to be looked at much more closely. If someone like Penelope came along and said that the dungeons needed to be closed down so that suffering wasn’t created whenever someone went in a dungeon, people could simply say ‘oh, so you want us to die of heatstroke in the summers and freeze to death in the winters?’ Alfric supposed that if there were no dungeons, people would find other ways to adapt to a life without ectads, but he couldn’t imagine a place like Pucklechurch being settled, not when it got so cold in the winters. They would have to heat their homes with fires, but so much smoke seemed like it would be a problem, let alone how many trees would have to be cut down.
If you really cared about the bastlefolk, either as they currently existed or as they existed in potential, you obviously couldn’t stop people from doing dungeons, but you could make dungeoneering better for them in various ways. Dungeoneering was only lightly controlled, largely to encourage people to do it as much as they wanted without restrictions. If potential dungeoneers were vetted a little better, and given some amount of schooling before they could go into the dungeons — nothing like the full Junior League experience, just two weeks or so — then you could teach people what to do with potential bastlefolk, among other things.
But the Junior League did exist, and it largely avoided talking about the bastlefolk, except to say that thinking creatures were so rare that they were mostly not worth talking about. Alfric had cause to wonder whether that was motivated by a desire to get people into dungeons or simply reflected the common thinking of the people who had made the Junior League happen.
He wasn’t sure that he was going to help his aunt Penelope, or whether he was going to contribute to the cause in any meaningful way. He would read the book if she sent it over, and give some advice, if there was advice to give, but she was looking for someone who would do more, someone to run the organization, or at least provide it with material support. It seemed to Alfric that it would be better for these efforts to be led by one of the bastlefolk, but there were so few of them that perhaps none of them had either the inclination nor the aptitude. There was also the issue of funds, which would surely become a bit of a problem when dealing with hundreds of dungeon babies, and perhaps that was the most important thing he might bring to the table — if the dungeon party ever really got up to speed.
“Lost in thought?” asked Mizuki as they retired to their rooms for the night.
“Yes,” said Alfric. “Penelope gave me a lot to think about, and so I am.”
“It was interesting to meet the bastlefolk, I thought,” she said. “They’re very different from each other. Though it does make me think twice about going down into the dungeons.”
“Does it?” asked Alfric. “That’s, ah, an alarming thing to hear.”
“Nah, I’m not thinking about quitting, not for this, I was just thinking about what it’s going to be like next time we’re down in a dungeon, if we come across something that looks like a person.” She sighed. “Though Willam was saying that looking like a person isn’t even really that important, because the only reason a thinking creature would look like a person is because that’s what's off floating around in the world. So I don’t know. Maybe there are lizards that are perfectly capable of thought.”
“They’re called dragons,” said Alfric.
“You know what I mean,” said Mizuki. They had reached the door to her guest room, a square divided into four parts so that it could serve as double doors. “I’ve got a big bed in my room. I know you took the little room, but there’s no reason we couldn’t share.”
“I don’t think it would be proper,” said Alfric.
“Oh come on, like you really care about that?” asked Mizuki. “We live together. We’ve slept in the same bed before.”
“No, thank you,” said Alfric.
“Suit yourself,” Mizuki shrugged. She went into her room as though it had been a simple, careless offer, nothing more, and he was left to continue down the hallway to his own tiny room, one that was apparently the room of last resort in the house.
The bed was sized for a single person, and the room was only just barely big enough for the bed. Willam and Penelope had both apologized for it, asking whether they might find him some better accommodations for him, or whether one of the house’s occupants could give up their room for the night. Alfric had been gracious and understanding, as he normally tried to be, and it wasn’t a big deal either way, since he was only using the room for changing clothes and sleeping.
Mizuki was always more flirtatious in undone days. There was something about knowing that she’d have no memories that she felt was liberating, even if she had accepted that it was best to treat the undone days as being ‘real’. With the work that Alfric had been putting into carpentry, something he had only middling aptitude for, there had been plenty of time the two of them had spent together, sometimes with her acting as his assistant. She had been putting in work, which Alfric both appreciated and found a bit surprising. She also talked almost constantly, which Alfric appreciated a bit less, and found not at all surprising.
There was a bit of a sticky ethical question with regards to Mizuki, which mostly had to do with how much he should be reporting to her. Obviously if there were any sustained physical intimacy, he would need to say that, but the flirtations had not yet risen to that level, and the brief lingering touches and excuses for physical contact could be brushed off. Their eyes met locked sometimes, and she would grin at him in a knowing way. If he reported all that to her when the day was undone, he worried that he would just be reporting on his own feelings, and if he wanted to do that, he could do it without the undone days. Still, she was skirting the lines of disclosure, and sometimes it felt like he was too.
The right thing to do was to maintain a completely professional relationship with her, but the right thing to do was hard sometimes.
Tomorrow they were looking to make good on the windfall of the dungeons, and Alfric wondered how much of those funds he’d feel obligated to put towards which causes.
Comments
Keifru
Alfric working his wood with Mizuki hanging around, oh my!
