Chapter Three-Hundred Thirty-Three

The Tree of Cycles came out even better than I had hoped.  I hadn’t even been able to decide on a name, but now the huge thing is there, it has one all the same.  I think Order might have done it, or maybe it’s just something that happens.  I dunno, and honestly, I don’t think it matters.  What matters is that it’s there.

And that I vastly underestimated how much it would cost to actually populate the entire area.  The First Mate couldn’t have been more right when she said I was off in my numbers.  The raw surface area for delving is… hard to explain.  I can look and see I have literally billions of square feet of surface area, but numbers kinda stop having meaning at that kind of scale.

I mean, I knew a cubic mile was big, but I definitely failed to comprehend it.  And that doesn’t even count the area below for the roots.  With the pre-drilled paths, the shaking wasn’t too bad, but wow are those things deep.  And they don’t even go a quarter as deep as the tree goes high.

With it finally there, though, it’s all hands on deck to do everything that needs to be done.  Teemo is running to and fro, relaying orders and coordinating with Leo, Poe, and Goldilocks to get things up and running with minimal fuss.  My Warden and Marshal help wrangle all the chaos, while Goldilocks is showing to have a natural talent for smoothing out the inevitable bumps in the road when it comes to getting things done.

So I need to make sure they actually know what needs to be done, which means I need to know what needs to be done!  I’ll definitely be upgrading a lot of spawners here very soon, but first, I make sure I have the four seasons properly organized.

Spring is the first season most of the delvers will probably visit, since it’s the one outside the cemetery gate.  While I don’t exactly have a fence around the Forest of Four Seasons, I do think most people will want to enter through there, or maybe head out and enter through Summer after a little trek through the woods outside Fourdock.  Either way, I have my plans for Spring.

My undead are going to be a major attraction in spring, though I need to upgrade the zombies and skeletons to keep up with the planned difficulty.  Undead don’t typically scream Spring to most people, but my undead are nice and green, with the zombies sporting plenty of mushrooms, and the skeletons having a good coating of moss and a few vines.  I expect those themes will only grow stronger as I upgrade, too.

Bees are going to be a big part of Spring, though I think they’ll be more in the tree than on the ground.  I’m probably going to get the Royals soon, and let the spawner sit at max for a while longer than I have before.  I’m trying to keep the enclaves in rough order of me getting the spawner, so I really should get birdkin, snakekin and… slimekin?  Whatever comes from a slime enclave, first.

Summer is going to be under the purview of my fey and my bears, though I also expect to have some of the soil elementals and living brambles, too.  I wonder if the bigger fey will want to ride the bears like the smaller ones like to ride the bees.

Fall is for the foxes and I think I want to redirect most of the snake spawns here, too.  Spiders should work great here as well.  The leaf litter makes it difficult for anything with legs to be sneaky, but slitherybois can slip through without a peep, and even the bigger ones can hide under a bit of detritus.

Winter is the wolves’ domain, and I think I’ll let a few of the basilisks play there, too.  I should also see if there’s any good options for my birds, or maybe try to get some mittens for my arcane hands.  The wolves are going to do great, but I want to make sure they have enough support to keep the delvers challenged.

The dreamblooms will be a feature all over the forest, they seem to do fine even in the winter areas.  The bees will probably also be all over the place, especially the armory ones.  The tree hasn’t even been there an hour, and the different bees are already building their forts in ways to take advantage of the terrain and weather.  Delvers are definitely going to have their hands full trying to deal with the different bees.

But that’s just not going to cut it for all my seasons.  First thing I need to do… I need to make some more lairs.  The spider lair is great for numbers, but that’s just one of my spawners.  I’m also probably going to move it into the root system, but that can come later.

For now, I move the fey spawner into the canopy of the Tree of Cycles and upgrade it to a lair.  Where it used to look like a little collection of miniature ye olde houses, the new one looks like a tiny elven city.  I’m sure there’ll be larger spots added as I keep upgrading it, and Titania is already having the fey work on making a proper castle for her, though made of living wood rather than stone.  And with it upgraded to a lair, the numbers are growing quickly.

Next up: plant lair.  Poppy probably deserved to get the upgrade first, but I’m just going down the list.  Her garden practically explodes in growth, though she still wrangles everything to give her plenty of room for her own experiments.  I wonder if it’ll ring the entire tree by the time I max it out?

A bee lair is next on the docket, and I set it against the trunk of the tree, right where a nice thick branch sticks out to give the huge hive all the support it’ll need.  It’ll probably grow at least a bit once I get to the Royals, but probably not increase in size too much.  I hope, at least.

A wolf lair is also needed, which expands from a couple caves into a small complex, as well as a nice thicket for them to hang out in, too.  The winter wolves aren’t opposed to the cold, after all, so they’ll need a bit of room on the surface.

The new bear lear, er bair lair, er bear lair is mostly underground, and I’m sure it’s going to expand a lot as I keep upgrading.  Maybe it’ll make a little hill for the bears as it goes, instead of just going down.  If the bears keep getting bigger, they’re going to need a good way in and out, so more and bigger entrances are probably in the future.

A fox lair is a must, too.  While the foxes will be mostly in fall, I don’t doubt they’ll want to play in the other seasons, too.  Their lair is looking a lot like the wolf one, just on a smaller scale.  I would call the wolves more majestic and the foxes more cute, but they both can be fun to watch then they think nobody’s looking.  Definitely going to need to upgrade the fox spawner more, but that will wait, I think.  All these lairs are adding up in cost, and I’m still not done with the ones I need.

Like the snakes.  They get the honor of being the first one I move into the roots of the tree, and I boost them into a lair also.  It probably has the least obvious difference out of all of them.  I guess snakes don’t need a whole lot.

I hem and haw a bit on the next lair, but they really do need to both be upgraded if I want them to be prevalent in two places at once.  The mausoleum my skeletons and zombies are in grows as I make them both into lairs, gaining quite the crypt underground, and interestingly, spreading quite a bit of garden space through the open grass of the cemetery.  Grim looks pretty satisfied with it, so that’s nice.  I wouldn’t want to mess up anything in there.  There’s even a little crypt that pops up just outside the gates into spring, giving them easier access to the forest.

And… I think that’s all I should do, at least for now.  The spawn rates are way up now, and they’ll only go higher as I keep upgrading.  I might need to make a couple more lairs, like the birds and bats, but I think I’ve hogged enough of the ally pool for now.  I’ve taken quite the bite out of it, and though I think the denizen density will be lower than I’d prefer, the whole forest shouldn’t feel abandoned anymore.

There’s still a ton of work to be done, too, but I think it’s work that can mostly wait.  Probably the most urgent thing to tackle next, aside from the Earl showing up, is to try to get some kind of OSHA compliance going with the branches.  Sure, they’re nice and thick, easy for several people to walk on side by side, but people will definitely still fall off.  For now, I’m moving the living vines into the treetop to lasso anyone who slips, and probably set the widows there to catch people, too.

The best answer might actually be to give the vines the spatial affinity like I’ve been wanting, though I can’t afford that right now.  Still, it’ll be a lot safer and not even mess up the aesthetic if my vines can effectively scoop falling delvers into a shortcut instead of just letting them plummet.

For now, people will have to settle for being caught by a spider or a vine, and hopefully won’t put up too much of a fuss when it happens.  I expect the veterans to be the ones who make it up into the tree, and they shouldn’t be freaking out, no matter what keeps them from falling.

I hope Tarl comes back soon.  While I know Berdol and Olander can inspect the whole forest on their own, I feel like he’d get a particular kick out of the new expansion.  For now, though, I let things start to settle in the forest.  I’m going to need to do a lot more to get it up to my standards, and that doesn’t even take into account what I’ll need to do to move my core.  I like the little Sanctum under the manor, but I really do feel like I’m outgrowing it.  Queen and Thing’s labs are pretty cramped, and Coda’s workshop isn’t even technically part of the little complex!

But once in the roots, we should have plenty of space to expand.  Teemo’s already plotting the route there and Coda is working to dig out the initial space we’ll need.  Once things settle a bit, I’ll make the move.  For now, I watch everyone work and encourage them as they go.  Things are pretty hectic at the moment, but honestly, when are they not?