Why are you special?

The me in my bungalow starts reading through details on how dungeons work. There's got to be a better way to handle this than just evacuations after smashing the heart.

I also check with my siblings Water, Air, and Earth: They're willing to give me some time to sort out this tangled mess before they raise armies and simply terminate the problem. So I have a little while...  mostly because it will take them some time to gather, equip, and direct their armies, but still, I have a bit of time.

Bad idea to dawdle, though.

And of course, I need to set up meetings with the other heads of houses. I will want to get David set up as a lord here, and that means getting most of them to side with me.  Which should theoretically be straightforward, as I fully intend to break the food monopoly. I'm going to have to in order to kill the local dungeon without killing everyone here… and it needs to go.

But to sort that….

I summon a few Trumpet Archons from Summon Monster IX, and Fabricate up a set of invitations for the other house heads… on engraved platinum sheets. I am going for extravagance… because only someone ludicrously wealthy is going to have good odds of breaking a monopoly when the business literally rules.  I hand the invitations to the messengers, give them directions, and head to the area I designated to set up.

It's a nice intersection in the middle of the city… as neutral of an area as I could find that's still within the city walls. Of course, I'm using my technically not magic spells to do everything. First up is Guiding Star.  Normally it's a very low value spell: It makes the spot "very familiar" and lets you know the direction and distance to the spot you cast it for as long as the spell lasts: It's basically an anchor for directions.   Next up is Create Greater Demiplane twice: Once to create a small area off plane, a second time for the Portal option, to open a nice little wormhole back to where I started… which requires I be "very familiar" with the spot… which was my only reason for casting Guiding Star.  Two more castings to use the "Structure" option to make myself a nice fairy-tale castle and the "Bountiful" option to give it a thriving natural ecology with trees (bearing apples, pears, pecans, walnuts, and other fruits and nuts), streams (no fish, but a nice supply of fresh water), bushes (with lots of blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and others), vegetables (radishes, onions, potatoes, carrots, and more), and "grass" that is actually ripe wheat.  It's a fun effect: each ten foot cube of the place can support a person for a day… and it'll grow back in 24 hours… and at twenty ten foot cubes per caster level, this one casting can support some four hundred or so people.

It's a pity leaving it here will encourage people to be lazy, but it'll make a nice backdrop for the meeting.

I also use more castings of Create Greater Demiplane for the Seasonal option (to match it to the local area's day/night cycle), Shape (so folks walking off the edges just sort of loop around to the other side), Magic (for the dead magic trait - people can come and go, but everyone here will be just people; no spells or magic items… well, unless they have an "out" from the dead magic planar trait, like I do, but that’s extremely rare), and minor positive dominant (so any living creature here gets a little fast healing… and undead slowly melt).

… and my invited guests won't be here for hours.  Of course.  They'll come on schedule, hopefully.

I take some time to secure the gate: Fabricating up an Adamantine door, with a Superior Lock (very hard to open for most with a Disable Device DC of forty - I also make the key, of course) also of Adamantine, and I lock it up, making sure to add an Arcane Lock spell to push that difficulty class up to fifty.  That should keep most folks out.  A few castings of Summon Nature's Ally IX get me some Storm Giant guards, which I set to watching the door.  They're nice, muscular, twenty-one foot tall human-shaped brutes that come with breastplates, greatswords, and composite longbows sized for them.  Without magic to fight them, they'll slaughter most things even if I don't buff them.

Which I don't do: I don’t care about anything on this plane: They're just there to look impressive.

I then spend a few hours spamming Create Greater Demiplane to expand it (and with it, the food production), periodically popping back to the real world to refill Wanda, and also collecting several dozen of my captured golems from earlier and depositing them on the demiplane as well. It doesn't take long for me to get the place big enough to support the thousands of people in the city… I'll go ahead and keep this place around as a contingency, but just fixing it for everyone is not my plan. l want to respark trade, which will permit them to largely fix things themselves... but to get to a position to do that, they need to know I can handle it, one way or another: This is to demonstrate one possible path.

Once I'm satisfied that the place is large enough that everyone who sees it will be clear that I can provide for the city, I return to reality, and find my messengers are back… and all but one accepted. Nice.  I figured an invitation that's valued at five hundred crowns just for the material would do the job.  I imagine sending literal angels to deliver the messages helped too.

While I wait, I amuse myself by focusing on watching Wanda feeding hundreds of people her milk. She is such a good cow… and so jiggly… hmm… oh and that guy has a big rod… hmm….

Time passes quickly enough, and soon yes, the noble house leaders come - not in person, but at least their representatives. Money talks, and those platinum sheets I used are decently expensive gift; a pound of platinum in each, so they're valued at five hundred crowns just for the material. Pocket change to the ruling council, but it is still attention grabbing that I'd simply toss money at this.

When the courtiers gather in their clashing brightly-colored outfits, I nod at them all, and address them, as I unlock the door, "Welcome! Thank you all for coming," and I focus on Diplomacy. It's just shy of mind control at my skill level, "You can call me Sunflower; I have a few things to discuss. Come…" I step through, and let the disposable minions follow me.

What? That’s the sort of representative you send to a no-name meeting. Sending someone hard to replace is foolish in this world. It might be a trap: They could be killed, interrogated, or mind controlled to become enemy agents. If you send disposable know-nothing agents? You just need to make sure they're telling the truth if and/or when they return… also clear them of any hostile magic, but that’s technically optional.  After some trust develops you can send actually important people. But for now, these will do.

Now, none of these guys are over third level, but they do a good job of seeming unimpressed by the gateway, and the farmlands beyond… but I have a very high sense motive skill check. I can tell that all the fresh fruits, nuts, and veggies are making their mouths water.

I continue speaking as I lead them down a raised stone walkway towards my castle, "Now, I'm sure you've all noticed by now that the dungeons don't reach here..." all of them are carrying at least a minor magic item or two; I presume communication items, primarily, "... so you can be assured that all that you see is quite real. I am planning on breaking the Thatchers' stranglehold on the city's food supply, but there's a few steps I need to go through, and a few things I want, before then… and I'm going to need a little help to get it all right."

I check… yeah, they're hooked. Eyes riveted on me. Perfect, "One of things I'll need to make this happen is a seat on the council; after all, if I'm not at least as high ranked as the Thatchers, I can't sell without their permission. Also, I need control of a gate if I'm going to kickstart trade back into existence, which will be good for everyone… and to keep it running, I'm going to need your masters to quit doing the 'all merchants carry contraband' thing at the gates." Yeah, I'm about as subtle as a wrecking ball. But that's OK - it's a really big carrot.

As they murmur among themselves, I add, "Oh yes, and feel free to harvest as much food as you can carry. I'm sure you want samples of my wares."

Oh, forgot something… I cast a Time Stop to give me a bit, then Greater Teleport into a dining hall in my castle and cast Bountiful Banquet, then return and let time resume, "But come, let's have dinner first…." I lead them all to the banquet hall where I just made the food, and we all sit down to eat… and everyone approaches me one at a time with the same half dozen questions.

I love the Diplomacy skill, but I hate diplomacy.