The air grew cooler as Alex followed the HUD’s dotted line, slipping deeper into the grid of the Undercity — the name everyone apparently used for the tunnels below Alpha Base. Down here everything was straight lines and right angles, with main passages wide enough to drive a truck through, spotless concrete floors and overhead LEDs spaced so evenly they were probably measured out with a laser level.

  He loved the village above, but he also loved it down here.

  After a day of pretending to be a medieval peasant walking down dirt village streets and sitting in buildings with smoke-stained rafters, this place felt like a hidden cheat code: the real world of Dungeon Inc. tucked away beneath the pretend one.

  Alex smiled as he walked through the branching corridors and tried to figure out which of the village's buildings were above him as he went. He was literally sneaking around under a medieval town, walking through a secret sci-fi bunker only the staff knew about. Younger Alex, the Alex who grew up on video games and movies, would have died for this.

  He glanced at the notification on his HUD again:

  He assumed most people grabbed their weekly pay right away, but had forgotten when he arrived the night before and had awoken to this reminder.

  He had no idea what to expect, or how much. He’d looked over his contract more closely during his week back on Earth, but it felt like his pay was so dependent on ‘Field Bonuses, Renown Bonuses, Show Residuals, Herobook Revenue Share, etc. etc. etc.,’ that he could hardly make heads nor tails of it. Based on the examples in the contract it seemed to add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he had a hard time believing that.

  One of those line items listed as part of his pay was a “weekly stipend” in local currency. It was supposed to be enough to live off without making them look rich on camera. The rest of their in-world money on Earth-3 was supposed to come from looting dungeons.

  The dotted line on his HUD pointed him toward a section of tunnel with a wooden sign that looked medieval from a distance and corporate from ten feet away:

  COIN OPERATIONS — QUARTERMASTER

  It had a small queue that moved fast enough and everyone followed the same procedure. State your name, sign the screen, receive your package.

  When Alex reached the front, the clerk, a middle-aged woman with the dead-eyed efficiency of someone who’d done this job since the dawn of time, glanced up and looked him over long enough that it became slightly uncomfortable.

  “Name?”

  “Alex Mercer,” he said.

  She tapped a small tablet screen bolted onto the counter. “New adventurer…” she said in an exaggerated, mock-excited voice as she tapped something onto a keyboard below the counter. “Stipend category 3. One moment.”

  A mechanical clunk sounded behind the wall. Something whirred.

  The wall behind the woman was covered in various sized doors. After a few moments a smaller door swung open and a small drawer slid out. The clerk reached in with two hands and, grunting slightly, lifted an oblong canvas pouch.

  She set it on the counter in front of Alex with a loud THUNK. It was the size of a large brick and tied off with a very rustic braided twine. It looked medieval-ish. It also looked… dense.

  The clerk nudged it toward him. “Weekly stipend: two hundred seventy-seven silver.” Alex’s eyes flew open. That was a lot of silver.

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  He hadn’t really spent any money in the village yet, so didn’t know the local economics, but he was pretty sure that Dungeons Inc. had built everything using a typical roleplaying model. As a long time DM, he could think in those terms.

  Okay… in Waterdeep terms this is 27 gold… I could stay at The Yawning Portal for a couple weeks, buy a fancy cloak, maybe a weapon. It was almost enough to convince a Waterdeep fence to appraise a possibly-cursed item. Whatever you spent it on, 27 gold is VERY comfortable pocket change to walk away from a quest with, as a beginner.

  He lifted the pouch.

  Or tried to.

  It came off the counter, but slipped back down with another thump. He hadn’t been expecting the weight. “Holy! This has to be at least ten pounds.”

  “Nine and change,” she said, already typing the next name. “Next.”

  Wait “Sorry, but is this like a starting bonus?”

  The clerk just looked at him with that long uncomfortable silent look for a moment before finally answering, “That’s your weekly stipend.”

  Alex blinked. Every week?! If this was one of my players in Side Quest Heroes, it would represent a mid-level adventurer’s paycheck. It’s like being a level 5 with a day job.

  It was a lot. What he didn’t know was how expensive things were here on Earth-3. The only example he could think of was from the Silver Gate the previous night when Tomwell had charged a nearby table two silver for a huge pitcher of ale. That meant the local economy seemed to parallel the D&D framework that he was already familiar with.

  Someone behind him coughed politely, bringing Alex back to the moment. He looked from the canvas bag back up to the clerk. “Okay, but… what am I supposed to do with ten pounds of coins?”

  “It’s compact enough that you could tuck it behind your belt, I suppose.”

  Alex waited a moment, trying to decide whether that was a joke.

  “I meant on a more permanent basis,” he said.

  “Just store it.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to store it.”

  The clerk paused, finally looking at him properly. “You didn’t requisition a chest?”

  “No?”

  She released a well-practiced sigh and tapped a few keys on her hidden keyboard. “Do you want a staff chest or a personal chest?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Staff chest is communal-access, for teams, or groups or families, what-have-you. The personal chest only comes with one lock and is a little smaller.”

  “Personal.”

  “Of course.” She typed a few more things. “You’ll get a HUD alert when the chest is ready.”

  Alex stared at the pouch. “And until then I’m just… carrying this around?”

  She watched him for a few moments and then made an exaggerated gesture of stuffing something behind her own belt. “Next.”

  Alex shook his head and picked up the bag. It’s not that it was super heavy… just unexpectedly heavy for its size.

  It hung from his hand like a medieval kettlebell as he left the office. He tried tucking it behind his belt as he walked down the corridor but it nearly dragged his pants down when he let go.

  “I knew that was a stupid idea,” he muttered, as he followed the dotted line on his HUD back down another corridor.

  He had one more stop to make before heading topside for Reach’s first Self Defence class of the weekend.

  Alex shifted the coin pouch from one hand to another, grunted under his breath, and followed the line through the Undercity.

  ***

  People, especially those from the first few rounds of Arrivals, like to imagine Alpha Base as a camp. Temporary. Flexible. A place that could be packed up and moved if needed. That illusion lasts until you start counting mouths.

  We passed one thousand residents this quarter. Not adventurers—people. Carpenters, costumers, farmers, med-techs, scientists, producers, craftspeople, animal handlers, and actors who never break character because the village depends on them not to. Then there are the Spouses and children. We have a school now and three bakeries, clothiers, blacksmiths, fletchers, and one grocer. And guards and security personnel. I could go on.

  Heroics may pay the bill for all this, but you can’t run a town on it. It takes planning, inventory, infrastructure, redundancy, and the quiet understanding that food arriving on time matters more than dramatic entrances and monster trophies on the wall of the Silver Gate.

  As Chief Factor, my job is not to inspire. It is to ensure that arrows are replaced, boots are resoled, grain is stored against bad weather. To ensure that people get paid and have the resources they need, when they need them.

  Adventurers like to think dungeons are what keep this place alive. They’re wrong.

  Logistics is the real monster. I simply make sure it’s on a leash—and that everyone remembers who’s holding it.

  Private ledgers

  COIN

  Agnes Cho, Chief Factor, Alpha Base

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