My second life as a dungeon

During Liz’s training, a few days after the contracted party finished delving the sixth floor Simmond was going over some paperwork. It was mostly just looking over a few adventurers that wanted to go up a rank to make sure that they had done enough to deserve it. Although he also had to sort out spreading around that the dungeon had started to produce ores for any adventuring miners.

The first task didn’t take him long as this group had been around for a while now and he knew they were good enough to be silvers so he easily approved their request. The next task also didn’t take long, all he had to do was write up a quick letter to some close branches before giving it to his secretary to mail out. All that was left was to finally name the village, just calling it ‘the village by the dungeon’ was both long and incredibly vague, so requests had been slowly piling up over the past month. 

He had been putting it off for a while because he didn’t really see the need but he had to admit that it was starting to get annoying to not have a proper name for the village. Another reason was that, if you included the adventurers, the village now had enough buildings to house more than five hundred people so it was officially a village now. The only problem was that Simmond was absolutely terrible at naming things and he knew it. 

Instead of trying to figure out a decent name by himself he decided to ask the other villagers and see if any names stuck out to him. With this in mind he slowly stood up, grabbed his cane that he didn’t really need but wouldn’t go anywhere without, put on a leather coat to block out the wind and left the guild house, waving at the staff. The weather outside was really nice, it had started to cool down recently as autumn approaches but it was still warm enough that Simmond could have gone without the jacket and still be comfortable. 

It was a bit cloudy that day but enough sunlight got through to make it not gloomy. The village had been built next to the dungeon instead of around it so even though the guildhouse was the first thing to be built, and therefore the closest to the dungeon, it was on the edge of the village. As you went further away from the guildhouse the newer the buildings were so the first houses Simmond went up to were built to temporarily house the settlers while the permanent houses were built.

Once those were built the settlers moved out of their temporary housing and the buildings turned into lodging for any passing adventurer that was staying for long enough to not want to stay in an inn. There were three of these buildings and they were all pretty much identical to each other. They were three floors tall, the top two floors containing four reasonably sized bedrooms each while the bottom floor had the usual kitchen, dining room and living room.

A foyer protruded a metre out of the right half of the building so that the entrance could be on the street without making it feel claustrophobic. Stone was pretty hard to come by here but it was still needed as a foundation so each building had seven pillars of stone brick. Two of them made the foyer and a third was placed where the wall met back up with the building. The other four were placed at each of the corners.

The stone pillars were then connected by two sets of wooden planks with about a three inch gap between them to put in some insulation for when winter started to freeze the air. There were plenty of windows to let lots of natural light in during the day. Each building could house up to twenty four adventurers, although its ideal occupancy was about sixteen each.

Simmond knocked on each one and was always greeted warmly but every time he asked about what to name the village they came up blank as they were either not planning on staying in town or just weren't invested enough to actually think of a decent name. He was expecting this so wasn’t too upset as he moved on to the next neighbourhood and walked by a group of children playing together.

The next set of buildings housed all the builders and lumberjacks. The ones that moved here by themselves lived with some of the other workers while the ones that decided to move here with their families got their own houses to live in instead. These houses were made similarly to the adventurer’s housing but only had two floors instead of three, took up a bit more space and had a garden attached to the back of it.

In total these workers took up ten houses but that number was steadily growing as more people were joining the village. This time when the branch leader talked with them they had a few ideas about what the village would be called but nothing really stuck out to him. A few of them asked if he would like to stay for some tea but Simmond was technically busy so had to decline but still promised to come back later when he was free.

He also asked if there were any problems at the moment but other than a few people getting sick and a few injuries from the attack last week, both of which were easily taken care of by the healer, there were no issues. As Simmond went to the next neighbourhood he thought about what reasons people would have to move away from their relatively safe home to live in the middle of nowhere where everyone could get killed by a group of monsters.

The most common reason was that their home was just too crowded so they had nowhere to live or couldn’t find a decent job so decided to try their luck out here. Another reason is some of these settlers had had a falling out with their family, didn’t want to stick around and decided to move out here. Some wanted to experience some adventure before settling down but didn’t want to actually go on an adventure.

A few came in search of treasure and fame as it was impossible to tell what would happen in a new settlement. The least common reason was that some of these people were minor criminals that fell in with the wrong crowd and just wanted a new life, most people had pasts that they didn’t want others to know so it was easy for them to hide their crimes without being suspicious.

This didn’t mean that they could just come here and continue being criminals without fear from the law as the village had quite a few guards that kept an eye on everything. In some aspects it was even harder to get away with crime in small villages as there were fewer suspects and everyone knew everyone else. Luckily for Simmond no one had tried anything yet as it would mean extra work for him and getting a new village settled was always headache after headache even without having to deal with criminals.

Simmonds' train of thought ended when he finally arrived at the village centre, which is where the families with nowhere left to turn to wound up. Some of the buildings here were identical to the ones in the previous neighbourhood, except they all housed families. There were a few buildings where the ground floor was a little shop where people went to buy and sell certain miscellaneous goods and the owners lived above the shops.

Most of them had taken all of their belongings, left their home and tried to use any skills they possessed to make a living in a new village. Once again the residents didn’t have any great ideas but a common thread was starting to form. One was that quite a few people thought it would be nice to name the village using the old tongue. The other one was that since the main thing that is slightly unique about our village is the dungeon so our village name should have something to do with it.

Next Simmond reached the current outskirts of the village where the farmhouses and guardhouses were. The farmhouses were the same as the other buildings except they were attached to huge plots of land, some of which had a few fast growing plants growing while the others were still trying to work the land ready for spring before winter comes and freezes the land and makes it unworkable.

There were two guardhouses on opposite ends of the village and they were made entirely of stone. Since the guards had their own houses to live in, the guardhouses were mainly only used for storing all their equipment and for training. There were a few guards still training but Simmond didn’t want to interrupt them so he just went around the farmers’ houses.

Once again no one had a good idea for what the village should be called but the threads Simmond had started to see were solidified. It was getting late so he headed back to the guildhouse before thinking about what he had learned on his walk. Almost everyone agreed with using the old tongue but no one could think of what was unique about the dungeon. Luckily part of the contract Liz had signed with the guild made it so that Simmond knew what type of dungeon it was so he had an idea.

Most of the people saw the dungeon had different themes on each floor and just thought that it was a Biomes dungeon when it was in fact a Planets dungeon instead. To be fair it would be hard to tell the difference before the dungeon got to her tenth floor as the floors but some people could already tell as a Biome dungeon would mess around with the horizon and make it shorter.

Knowing this Simmond found a dungeon that translated between the current and the old language before going through each word. Dungeon translated into Dùn, many was mòran and finally planets turned into planaid. Once he put them together Simmond got Dùnmòranplanaid, or dungeon of many planets in the old tongue. He thought this was too long though so he shortened it down to Dunmoraid.

The next day Simmond sent out a notice around the village explaining the name he suggested and what it means. Everyone that cared liked the name so everyone agreed to call the village Dunmoraid and held a festival in celebration.