A low rumble echoed through the dark woods, it had a rhythmic beat, and while most of the animals were merely scared, to the elves it represented a much bigger threat, not one man,  woman or child was left without a hint of worry.

The source of the small tremors could be easily followed, next to the village, in a small makeshift ritualistic area near the temple. As one got closer they would feel that strong ‘gravity’ effect felt from the presence of a god who was not holding beach their power.

One elf made a silent prayer, while hearing the “BANG BANG BANG” that was causing tremors over the entire region. Could his friend truly defeat the beast? Or was today her doom?

At the middle of it all, there was Lektoria Koreh Tellur. Banging her hands against the monolithic stone table, going “PIE PIE PIE PIE PIE” like a petulant child while waiting for her dish to be served. Sure she could summon pies with her own magic, as she had done in Haven, but like, it didn’t taste as good if it was made from your own divine essence, she was hungry for the real deal, and this elf teasing her with the promise of pastry better deliver the goods.

Up above in the tree house city of Sanctuary, Pebble was running herself ragged trying to make the perfect pie. Or even just a pie. Because it had been all of a day since she had managed to make the one that leveled her up, and recreating that, especially with the intense stress and head pounding petulant command of a goddess, was turning out to be a nightmare. She’d comandered every oven, and gotten all hands on deck, and still, the bakery was filled to the brim with ones that weren't just quite right.

Jeon, ever the unhelpful god, sat at a table just outside the bearkery, silently laughing to himself as this all went down, watching as Pebble churned out more pies in the span of an hour than she had in all of her experiments combined. A thing she was mainly doing because he kept shaking his head solemnly at her latest attempt. It was a cruel cruel thing to do, and a cruel cruel thing to have encouraged his fellow devine to do, but there was an end to this, and end that came in a little notification in Pebbles mind thanks to the amount of grinding she’d been tricked into doing.

Everyone else was suddenly kicked out of the bakery by Pebble and her supportive if confused friends. Free from distraction, other than the goddess, the level 5 [backer] focused, and put all her efforts into one final dish. A humble apple pie.

There was a tense hush outside of the bakery as the elves waited nervously, and then a silent intake of breath when Pebble emerged holding a pastry in her hands. She looked at Jeon, who’s eyebrows raised a little before he nodded, and the elf let out a sigh of relief. Then Jeon smirked and delivered one twist to the proceedings by pointing out simply that “now you better run along and present it before it gets cold”

THere was a pause, and then pebble cursed loudly and started running, drawing the masses of elf kind in her wake as she sprinted down the bark roads of Sanctuary to its lower floor, then grabbed a vine and went swinging down it to the forest floor.

A multitude of elves went swinging down after her, while one and his redwood deer took the new stairs Jeon had added to the trunk after laughing at the elve’s animal hauling strategy. 

With the masses in her wake, the elf sped through the woods with skill-powered stride, only to slow as she approached the sound of the banging dinner bell. She caught her breath, steeled herself, and thens stepped into the clearing, still steaming pie held in hide covered hands and held in a stone pie tin.

Lektor's eyes widened, the little scamp had actually done it, she would not have guessed, the humans at Haven would have failed her pie quest for sure, despite their magical martial arts. As she sniffed the air the whole of the forest was able to calm down, the constant earthquakes coming to a sudden halt.

Yet, this also meant all of the goddess's focus was now directed at pebble, the full gravity of her presence now pinpointing at her, along with a glowing stare of her red eyes. Instead of being armored, the goddess wore a party dress with a tiny hat held by one of her cat ears, it was all overwhelmingly golden.

"Come on, come on. Don't freeze in place now, it's just a few more steps and your quest is over."

The elf took a deep breath, approached under the gaze of god, goddess and kin. Then whens he got close she instinctively knelt before the goddess as she raised up the desert as an offering and said with shaky breath “I p-present  to you, oh, goddess, [the perfect pie]”

Lektor stared, rubbing her chin. “Hmm… Guess you did not spec into the [humble] stat, eh?” she let out a feline-ish crackle and then picked the pie, summoning forth silver tableware, picking up a slice, and then scooping a bit with her fork, she would sniff at it, stare at it, and finally, took it into her mouth.

Immediately, the goddess’ ears went up, her eyes widened, and her face gained a dark red blush, her wings extended even, and only until she swallowed she relaxed again. “Holly molly. HOW” she picked up the rest of the pie slice with her hand and then ate it all in one gulp. “THIS IS GREAT. You must truly be the best baker in the world… and the only one, so far, but STILL.”

She stood up and straight up jumped over the counter, forcing the elf to her feet so she could give her the proper compliments. “Damn, I did not even prepare a proper reward for you, though Jeon warned me I should, I expect your pie to be trashy, no offense, like, rubber milk and poisonous thorny berries pie, not this golden apple pie.”

Then it clicked on her. She did have one reward, it was a bit excessive, but the pie was excessively delicious too!

[Quest Complete: “The Primordial Pie”]

Reward:
4 golden coins
Set of silver tableware
[color=purple]CROWN OF THE UNDERWORLD[/color]
Deed to Impyra, Fortress of the Magmatic Ocean
10 [Throwing Rocks +1]


Title Acquired:
Queen Pieapple I

Job Acquired:
[Monarch - Level 1]


New quest acquired: 	

[“Down Under” : Settle the hold of Impyra deep in the underground caverns.]

“Oh wow, you’ve out done yourself. And me. Love all those notifications I am sooooo stealing them” Jeon called over to Lektor, before starting out a round of applause for the actual triumphant elf herself that was quickly picked up by the rest of the elves, first hesitantly, and then with growing genuine enthusiasm for the triumph of their friend and comrade.

Pebble’s mouth just kinda worked over and over as the notifications pinged in her mind and the quest rewards tumbled down out of thin air into her lap until she finally found a question to start: “W-what am I? What is a [Monarch]?”

The comment brought Lektor straight out of the pie zone. She looked very bothered. "Oh Jeon, did you make the elves here into a bunch of hippie anarchists?" She said in mild annoyance. 
"Sigh. So… a king, queen, monarch… uh. How can I explain, hmm, you make the rules of the place you own, it's like your home, but your home is an entire city, and the people within it are your property. They will give you a part of the money they make, you will define what they can or cannot do, and uh, they are also supposed to fight for you if anyone wants to be the monarch instead of you."

“They're a nomadic tribal society, and didn't really think they needed any kind of complex societal structures. Besides, I have been focusing on teaching them way more important things. Like how to make booze!” the god defended his choice of teaching methods and priority, before tossing the goddess a stuffed wineskin to give her something to drink along with her dessert. This had basically no skills or skill put into making it, so it was practically moonshine, but it still did the trick.

“Money? Property? City?” Pebble murmured as the god and goddess spoke, ever so confused as she looked down in her lap and noticed something that was kind of familiar: the crown. After a moment of admiring it, she pulled back the hood of her cloak, then reached up and pulled off the little bramble tiara she wore. It was nothing special. Stag’s one with antlers and Fern’s one of thorns were more impressive. All hers had only a little pebble at the forehead. She set it down, and hesitantly put the crown in its place on her brass skinned brow.

And it felt right.

Suddenly, as she put up the brass crown, with rubies and amethyst decorations, a lot of information was relayed to her. For one, she had an exact replica or the map of the underworld memorized, then, she could perceive some simple facts about her realm. Her city would have exactly one building at the beginning, Impyra Keep, a series of towers custom made to survive the heat and make the elves comfortable within, but it could be easily expanded with simpler constructs and cheaper materials, not unlike the tree town of the undead where she had acquired the cookbook.

Her mind wandered to her own bakery in Sanctuary, and in the project of Impyra in her mind a bakery was formed at a convenient location, where she could use the magma vapours of the underground to make up for a lack of wood. Instinctively, she knew how much stone, iron-wood and mushroom stems she would need to make the place, and that she would need someone of the class [baker] to run in. Of course, she could fill that spot easily. And if she did, she would be able to produce enough Firebread (a recipe made of flour from local plants) to feed about 10 people. Of course, agriculture could be improved, housing could be improved, routes could be created and more workers could bring more grains which would feed more workers. Of course people wouldn't just go about working for any random monarch, she would need prestige, thankfully, her being the baker at the bakery alone was a big source of prestige for the town, given her achievements as a baker, including making a pie worthy of the divine.

As she was lost looking at the mental spreadsheets delivered by the crown, the other elves would stare in mild shock as from the place where she put the crown a change started to happen thought her body, her skin gained a pinkish hue, while a vibrant color of polished marble spread from the root of her hair all the way to the tips. 

There were gasps among them, and then her friends pushed forwards to the newly crowned queen’s side 

“Pebble. Speak to me. Are you alright?” Fern shook her friend as Stag followed close behind and Bark hobbled after bringing up the rear, all three crouching down beside here

“Huh.. oh… yeah… also its Pieapple now apparently” the [Monarch] murmured, before adding “oh, and, we have another quest, to find somewhere called Impyra in the underground”

“Oh no, not there again” Stag bemoaned

“Compared to the tree, it was kinda nice. Safe, just dark. Plus we have fire this time” Fern replied, their twin responses making it ever so clear that there was no question about them coming with her.

“Ah well, I guess this will be goodbye then, if you're settling so far away” Bark said sadly, leaning of a walking stick next to Pieapple 

“Huh? What? No!” Pebble said, shaken out of her reprieve by this admision, before insisting “We’ll… we’ll figure something out. I promise”

As the [adventurers] broke into planning and/or examining Pieapples other rewards, and the other elves sort of semi dispersed into smaller groups to chat themselves now that the bit worth gawking over was over, Jeon sauntered over to Lektor.

“Sooooo, poaching my people now are we? And my high level [adventurers] too! For shame” he said to her, tongue firmly in cheek

Lektor had a guilty face, cheeks stuffed with pie. “I thought it was a nice prize, plus I had made it clear I wanted more folks down there.” her tone was a bit muffled, then she swallowed. “Plus, its not like they will stop being adventurers down there, it's a good spot to prepare new grounds for adventurers towards the north, and, well… I might have a proposal to make up for it.”

She hummed. “It's a bit hard to describe, but I noticed that a girl named Lorelei has been around, have you ever seen her? In particular, her strength and fighting style?”

“Hmmmm,” he tilted his head away and gave it a thing before remembering
 “ooooh yeah. That girl with the cat ears. She helped them get the recipe book you know” Jeon replied, before tilting his head back towards her and asking “what about her?”

“I taught her a bunch of cool moves in my little secret monastery.” Lektor said proudly. “But apparently she forgot half of them already, that silly cat. Aaaanyway, the point is, maybe you’d like to have a look around that monastery? I am about to kick out all but the best and wisest from it, as I am about done with babysitting humans. This creates two opportunities for adventures in the north, both on those going out, with the will to be heroes or new kings of their own, and within the temple, as I am sure a group of uh, overly powered animal people with magical powers would be good material for adventurers.” she always felt out of her depth, yet excited, when talking about the whole adventure business with the other god.

“Oh? Inviting me back to your place, are ya kitten?” Jeon teased,  before actually addressing “but for real, that is for sure something I wanna look into. Been hanging around these woods for long enough, and it’ll be nice to take a trip out and see some of the other stuff that’s out in the world. Go to interesting places, meet interesting people, that’s my whole deal after all”

He leaned back and looked at an elf who had totally not been listening in with their long ears and added “and don't you worry, I’ll be back. Besides, you’ve been able to handle yourselves just fine for a while now. Buuuut I’ll leave you with some extras to tide you over, don’t you worry”

Then he turned back to Lektor “So yeah, sound fun, aaaand I can spread the good words of adventure and levels, what more could a guy want?”

Lektor clapped her hands. “Right. I need to go back home and get all ready for this, and overlook the elves on their way down… and actually finish the building I just gave the deed of to Pieapple, uhm. I need to do a lot. Thankfully, it's like, miles of deep forest, a whole ocean canal and then more forests, a steep climb, then a cold desert, before you arrive at my place, so I should have the time to overlook all that before you arrive. Feel free to take the scenic route though.”

Jeon had a good laugh at her selling a deed to a house she hadn’t even built yet before reassuring her that “yeah don’t worry, I will. Plus I need to tidy up around here before I head out too, so don’t push yourself too hard, kitten. Maybe give them a few more tools for their trip, stuff like that. How big a trip is that gonna be for them, do you think?” he asked, while gazing over at the crew who were arguing about whether they could safely have Doe carry Bark all the way through the underground or not.

“The underworld is smaller than the overworld… but uh… do they know how to preserve food for a few, uhm… weeks? Months?? Uhhh…” Lektor may have forgotten one little crucial step, but surely, something could be worked out… surely.

[hider=prestige]
Darkwood [Adventurers] Guild:
Start:4

+1 prestige: playing a significant role in the post
+1 prestige: +10000 characters
+1 for colab
+5 for clearing a quest

End: 12

[/hider]

[hider=might summary]
Lektor
0 MP / 1 AP

-1 AP: The crown of the underworld. A metallic relic that lets one take stock of their resources and see building projects.

0/0 remain

Jeon: 0mp/3ap 

none spent

[/hider]

[hider=summary]
Lektor arrives and demands pie.
Pebble makes apple pie.
It's a good pie.
Lektor gives her a small reward: “A kingdom in the underground”
She is now queen Pieapple I
She gets a crown that lets her take stock of her kingdom’s resources[/hider]