Vaudevillain

Riptide brought Dextra down after the fight finished, the surfer using his power on a flat piece of wood from the construction. The two landed on the hilltop next to Merla. Stepping off the board, Dextra smoothed out his dress.

“It seems you had an interesting fight.”

“You said it,” Oro replied.

“The good news is we shouldn’t have to face something like that again, now that I’ve bought the land,” Dextra said.

“Good news implies bad news,” Nikola said.

“From what I can gather, we’ll still have to fight monsters every once and a while.”

“That’s what defenses are for, right?” Rampart said.

“We don’t even need to develop this place, though,” Merla said. “Aren’t we here for special materials, and that’s it?”

“Like whatever’s under this hill,” Sweet Dream said.

The group turned to look at her.

“What? You all saw the way that mud giant acted. It ignored everyone and made a beeline for the hill. Plus, this is the only rocky area in this forest.”

“She’s got a point, dude,” Riptide said.

“Which means we need to develop the land to get at whatever’s under the hill,” Dextra said.

“That’s going to take time. Time we could spend doing other things,” Rampart said.

“Yeah, dude. We still got a scheme to plan,” Riptide said.

“Right, but we need to find more materials to expand Skyline,” Dextra replied.

Oro stepped into the conversation, “Let’s split the work up. Dr. Zlo can work with half of us to make his plan while Dextra works with the other half to develop Skyline.”

“Yes, you will all obey me!” Dr. Zlo commanded.

“Looks like he’s on board. I volunteer to join him,” Oro said.

“Riptide and I should too,” Sweet Dream said. “Since we’re part of his team and all that.”

“Yes, glad to have more minions aboard!”

“Nikola, Shizuka, would you be willing to stick around while we gather materials?” Asked Dextra.

“As much as I want to follow Cass around and mess with him, exploring this area is too good to pass up,” Shizuka answered.

“Yes, the ground shall reveal its secrets to us, and we shall use it to grow our power,” Nikola said.

“You went a bit too far into the cackling baddy, Nik,” Shizuka said.

“Really? Darn. I was going for megalomania.”

“I’ll stick around here,” Rampart said. “Ever since Zlo showed me his idea for a monastery, I’ve been itching to get it started. Expanding Skyline is the first step in that.”

“I’ll stick around here as well,” Merla said. “And I’m sure Titan would join you guys to plan the scheme.”

“That leaves Jack, who’s still up in Skyline,” Nikola said.

“I think she needs to be part of both groups,” Dextra said. “I need her for planning, and I’m sure Dr. Zlo needs here to help design his inventions.”

“That you even suggest I need help is an insult!” Dr. Zlo said, bringing a hand to his chest as if stabbed.

“Come now; you don’t expect to do everything by yourself. Like you said, you need minions.”

“Blast, caught in a trap made from my own words.”

“Alright, we’ve got our groups,” Merla said, stopping the banter before everyone lost focus. “What’s our first step, Dextra?”

“The land is already ours; the next step is to start building. Which reminds me...” 

Dextra opened his menu and navigated over to the faction tab. He invited everyone in the group to join Menagerie. A flash of light signaled the others, and everyone opened their menus to accept the invitation.

Next up was creating the internal structure, and Dextra had to admit, Vert provided many useful tools for the job. The faction tab held a drop-down list of items, each one related to running Menagerie. The index held guild roles, members, finances, and locations, with each selection bringing up lists of its own.

Dextra selected the first in the list, roles, and explored his options. As he picked it, a pop up appeared.

This is the first time you’ve used the faction mechanics. Would you like to go through the tutorial?

Yes                            No

Dextra pressed yes, seeing no harm in accepting. The game highlighted the Roles selection, and a text box appeared to explain.

This is the Roles tab. Here, you can create various seats of office in your guild.

Next

Dextra clicked the next button, and the tutorial continued, opening up the Roles tab and highlighting another drop down list.

This is where you can find the list of roles in your faction.

Next

The next box highlighted the only role in the list at the moment.

This is the administrator role. Administrators have access to everything inside the faction. Be careful who you give this to!

Next

Dextra went through a few more boxes, learning how to create new roles, edit existing ones, and assign roles to players. Once the tutorial went finished with Roles, it moved onto Members.

This is the Members tab. Here, you can view all the members in your guild, assign roles to them, and invite or kick players.

Next

There wasn’t much to go through in the Members tab. Assigning roles and inviting players was pretty straightforward. Dextra did like that the list of players could be sorted by various tags according to role or date joined. It made searching much more manageable. He moved onto the finances tab.

This is the Finances tab. Here, you can view the group finances, assign tax rates, budget cash to members, and access the global stores.

Next

This tab would be something Dextra worked on later with Rampart. It was a given that players would need to pitch in with funds to keep Menagerie running, and the tools Vert gave looked immensely useful. There were options to take a cut of money from trades, create a recurring flat tax, and assign different taxes to different roles. Worrying that he would get bogged down in all the details, Dextra rushed through to the Locations tab.

This is the Locations tab. Here, you can see all the property your faction owns and hire various NPCs to work the locations.

Next

“Oh, that’s interesting,” he said.

“What’s that, Dex?” Shizuka asked.

“I’ve been looking through the faction options and found the tab for locations. All of my previous purchases are listed as mine, for now. If I don’t claim them in an hour, they’ll get put on the market.”

“Makes sense,” Sweet Dream said. “Vert can’t just kick players who built bases before the changes.”

“I mean, they could,” Oro said. “But doing that would make even more players upset.”

“What about this place?” Rampart asked. “What can we do with it?”

Dextra looked through the list of locations until he found the one they were looking for, “Here we are.”

Right now, the land was named a string of numbers. Latitude and longitude, according to Dextra’s power. He selected the option, changed the name to something easier to find, and then went through the NPC options list.

“Since we’re in the wild, our choices are limited. We can hire mercenaries for a few thousand dollars a day, but labor is harder. We can hire loggers and miners, but construction won’t come out this far.”

“So…” Oro said.

“Loggers and miners need housing, and we can’t have them commute from Skyline. We’ll need to build our own houses first.”

“Welp, let’s get to it,” Shizuka said. “Can’t be that hard to build a simple house.”

“Wait, do the mercs come with housing, or do we need to build something for them as well?” Rampart asked.

“We can hire them without housing, but it costs more,” Dextra answered.

“Alright. What do we start with?” Shizuka questioned.

“Loggers,” Nikola answered. “If we get them, we can build cabins for the others.”

“A good a start as any,” Shizuka said.

“You two work on that, I’m going to make an observation tower,” Rampart said.

“I’ll join you.”

The monk started making his way to the top of the hill, Merla following behind.

“Whatchu gonna do, Dex?” Shizuka asked.

“I’m going to spend a few minutes assigning roles to everyone. I’ll join you when I’ve finished.”

“Righty then,” Shizuka slung an arm around Nikola, “ready to cut some trees?”

“While I loathe menial labor, if  a small amount of effort leads to greater rewards, I won’t hesitate.”

“That’s the spirit!” Shizuka said, clapping Nikola on the back.

Dextra watched the two leave before turning back to the faction menu. First, he created the various roles in the guild. He gave Rampart and himself the leader role, which had all the permissions of an admin but couldn’t disband the faction or kick other leaders. Next, Dextra created various roles for the other positions everyone talked about days past.

The PVP leader was able to assign others with the PVP role and see the members list. The PVE leader had the same options but with a PVE role. Dextra would talk with Rampart about assigning budgets later on. Next, he created generic roles for finance, members, and locations.

Dextra noticed something interesting when making the location role. From what he could tell, locations could blacklist specific roles. The player whistled as he realized the possibilities.

“Dr. Zlo?”

“Yes? Dextra?”

“I’ve just learned that we can blacklist roles from locations. I believe this info will be useful for you when crafting your scheme.”

“Wait, that’s awesome,” Sweet Dream interrupted. “You’re saying we could give people in the faction roles for hero and villain and blacklist players from areas?”

“Exactly.”

Dextra quickly created a role he named “schemers” and assigned it to Dr. Zlo.

“I’ve given you access to a role that should let you make the changes yourself. Please, don’t abuse it.”

“Don’t worry, that’s not any fun,” Dr. Zlo replied.

Satisfied with the answer, Dextra turned back to the faction tab and made a few more edits. He added a description of Menagerie in the bio box under the name and added a few rules the faction would have to follow. Once finished, he closed the box and headed over to Shizuka to help build some housing for their loggers.

And after the loggers would come miners, and then Menagerie could really start building. Especially if Dextra’s hunch was correct and the mine held some Phlebotinium.