Tunnel Rat

Burnock Shadowforge turned the heavy metal gear over and over in his hands, looking for flaws. The gear was several hundred years old, maybe a lot older. A skilled dwarf could tell by the amount of oxidation on the inner groove of the gear. Very slight, but it was there. He took a hammer and steel chisel and tried to put a dent in it. The steel chisel blunted without putting a scratch in the gear. This was a size 7, #fourteen hardened dark iron gear. This gear was used in hundreds of different dwarven machines. Millions of this type of gear had been made by dwarven mechanics. But not out of this material.

The hardening process had been a secret of the Shadowforge clan and their engineers. It made their metal stronger, their picks better, and their machines needed less repairs. This monopoly had let his clan expand their mining operations in many places, but especially under this city. Deep copper and dark iron had flowed like a river out of their mines. They had been a rich and respectable clan!

That all ended, so the clan elders say, the day that the old city went away. Details were sort of sketchy on the why of it all. Humans and Elves were having a war with each other, and the Light and the Dark were involved. Dwarves stayed out of it. They didn't care about the property topside. Dwarves had built their own part of the town deep in the hollow mountain that loomed up next to the human’s coastal city. Trade was good. The humans always needed metal, and dwarven stone smiths found a lot of work building the ever-expanding city.

At some point, the human mages had done something wrong, or maybe the elves had used a spell that should never have been used. No dwarf trusted elves, so they mostly blamed them for what had happened. If you were topside and could see it, you were dead. All the dwarves knew was that one moment they had a city inside a hollow mountain, and the next moment there was a tremendous light that blinded or killed anyone near the surface and scooped away a good chunk of the mountain.

The city was gone, along with a huge amount of earth under the city. Whatever had hit the city had been so powerful that had carved it a giant sphere out of the mountain, and everything all gone away. The only thing left was one tower of black rock, comically sitting on a perfect pillar of stone nearly a half mile tall, holding it above a perfectly shaped hemisphere of nothing. The city was gone, and a good chunk of the coastline. The seas came pouring in, creating a perfectly round bay whose edge was now under the overhanging cliff of the mountain. The old city of the humans, Sartothra, was gone. The dwarven city of Hollowmount was nearly destroyed, with its buildings knocked flat and too much light pouring in. The damned tower was still there, a mystery that was never solved. The seas all around it were filled with creatures that destroyed any ship that approached, and something in the tower destroyed airships that floated too close.

But the worst hit were the clan holdings, down low near the mines. The earthquake that accompanied the destruction collapsed mineshafts and tunnels and destroyed the dwarven enclaves. 90% of the Shadowforge clan was killed or never returned. And the secret of hardening dark iron had died with them. His clan, like many of the dwarven clans, went from wealth to poverty in the span of a day. Hollowmount was never truly rebuilt. The remaining dwarves and refugee humans built what they could to survive, and the bay was perfect for large ships to stop and shelter from frequent storms. The city of Shadowport was built on the rubble of Hollowmount.

And today, some snot-nosed human had wandered into the guildhall and sold machine parts no one had seen in ages. Machine parts made by his clan. The kid had only been a member of the miner's guild for a couple of days and could barely haul a sack of ore. What the hell was he doing stealing his clan's property and running around their old mines? Because Burnock knew that was where he'd found these.

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He'd sold deep copper ore along with the machine parts. That gave Burnock a rough idea of the area. And it wasn't good. That part of the deep-down was avoided by anyone who wanted to keep breathing. It was filled with poisonous mushrooms, copperheads, myconian monsters, and layers of soft earth that shifted too easily. 'Shakytown' they'd called that area. Start swinging some picks and making some noise, and it was even odds over whether you died from some critter or the ceiling fell in on you.

But that made a bit of sense, that the boy found those parts there. It might not have always been so treacherous, or the clan wouldn't have put in the mines there. But now it was avoided, and those parts had sat for ages. The appraiser had bought them for a fraction of their value, paying in weight of metal as they bought everything. The real value was to a mechanic with older machines.

Burnock called in his cousin Shifty. He'd had another name once, but the clan had taken it away when his fingers were caught taking money that didn't belong to him. So now he was missing a joint on his right index finger, and his name was Shifty. No one in the clan would deal with him except Burnock. Shifty got a bit of coin now and then in exchange for doing things Burnock didn't want traced back to him. It was an arrangement that worked for both of them.

"Get an adventuring party together. The type you like. Then find out where the kid goes, and track him back to the old areas he found. I want to get in and claim them before someone else finds out.

Shifty smiled. He liked 'adventuring'. Almost anything could happen. "And when we're done getting the info?"

Burnock held up his hands. "I don't need to know. I'm hiring you to follow a clue, and hoping to reclaim clan secrets. You handle it your way."

"Sure cousin, I'll handle things my way."

Samantha found a very depressed Sydney sitting at her desk and angrily typing. Normally Sydney typed with one hand and drank her coffee with the other. Today her cup was empty. That was a very, very bad sign.

"Everything Ok?"

Sydney slowly turned. "You know it isn't, and yet you say that hoping I'll give you some clue. But I'm on to you! "

Samantha took the empty cup, walked quickly away, and brought Sydney two fresh cups. She looked at them, drank one down, and held the other as she stared at her screen. "Thank you. I'll kill you last since you know how to bring me offerings."

"Lemme guess? You missed him?"

The second cup of coffee was empty in two sips. Sydney rubbed at her eyes with the palms of her hands. "Yep, he knew just when to log in. After sixteen hours of waiting for him to log in again, it happens 23 minutes after I've gone to bed. I slept through the alarm for 7 minutes, and by then, he had been in the simulation we set up, had eaten the bacon and cheese dip, and went onto the main game. How the hell is he doing this?!!!"

Samantha got herself a cup of caffeine and sat down. "Don't fret too much, hon, you got some clues, and they helped. Two days from now, we'll have his approximate location."

Sydney spun her chair around. "HOW!?"

"I've been going through the programming of the MKVII pods. They have scheduled times to check for updates. The next time our guy is in the pod, and it sends us his medical files, the pod will ask for any updates to programming, and the new update I wrote will load."

Sydney just stared. "That's too simple; I’m not sure if I should kiss you or hate you. Why didn't I think of that."

"You were too busy setting traps with cheese dip."

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