Converting new minions and upgrading your base

You stand back in the altar room, the cultists from Broadbridge now lined up and ready to formally pledge their allegiance to your dungeon. You're a bit curious what will happen: this is your first time accepting human NPCs into the fold. Well, there's only one way to find out; you signal for the first cultist to step up. She removes her hood to reveal a mousy, thin brunette woman shaking with what looks like a mixture of excitement and anxiety. An encouraging shove from the cultist behind her sends her half-running, half-stumbling in front of the altar, and as she places her jagged dagger on the altar a burst of flame envelops her, to the shocked gasps of the audience.

After a few moments of confused and anxious murmuring from her comrades, the flames part to reveal the cultist has been reborn a new woman. She stands completely nude, with spurs of bone pushing her feet up to form natural high heels, scales under her gravity-defying breasts that accentuate their form, and leathery wings hanging from her arms. Small, curved horns protrude from her red-skinned forehead, her shoulder-length hair is now jet black, and a heart-shaped tail sways behind her. She experimentally wraps herself in her wings to form a sort of daemonic dress, then unwraps herself again and spreads her wing-arms wide to bare her form.

"Behold! I have been given the master's blessing! My faith has been rewarded, and I have been chosen to ascend to become a higher being!" She speaks with newfound confidence, inspiring awe from the other cultists as they collapse to their knees facing you. Ugh. Shame that the transformation couldn't do anything to fix the way they talk. In any case, you're relatively pleased by the outcome, although you don't have any real need to sample the goods for the moment. No doubt she'd be thrilled, though; maybe some other time. If nothing else, the seductrixes—the rather appropriate name apparently given to her new daemonic form—will make for some nice eye candy, and no doubt you can come up with some use for them with all the adventurers that run about in your dungeon from time to time.

Lastly, you're curious how she actually performs in combat. After ordering the cultists to make some room for you to test out your new minion, the two of you rush at each other and slash simultaneously. Apparently she fights much the same way that you do in melee: her fingernails can extend into long, thin, bony claws. Her wings also serve as a sort of makeshift shield: they're surprisingly tough and don't seem to feel any pain. They are not, however, much use for actually flying: they might let her clumsily glide but that's about it. In any case, the result is about what you could've hoped for: she's significantly more useful than she was as a weak, knife-wielding cultist, but she still can't hope to take you on in melee despite it being her specialty and not yours. When you're done testing out her abilities, you give her rump a squeeze, earning a confident and seductive grin, and send her off to the side to continue with the process.

You don't really get why these humans worship daemons, but hey, might as well just go along with it. After seeing your new minion's "ascension" the other cultists are practically tripping over each other to be next. They envy her looks, her power, her confidence, and her general daemonhood. One by one the female cultists burn away to be replaced by gorgeous seductrixes, each a little different than the last. When the first man steps up, surprisingly late, you aren't quite sure what to expect. Whatever you thought could happen, it certainly wasn't to see more or less the same outcome... at least until you notice an extra addition in front of her still very functional slit. While you aren't sure how you would feel about being in that position, the new daemoness seems to be thrilled with the matter, and grows erect with a roar of triumph before being practically mobbed by her new sisters in service.

Seeing this, the remaining male cultists seem to come to a decision, and the converted daemons steadily trickle into the orgy forming off to the back of the room. When the last cultist has finally been converted, you quickly head off to find someone to attend to your rigid member while you decide how to accommodate these new underlings into your your dungeon. A few minutes later, you're sitting on your throne with Ari gently riding you in your lap while you lazily page through diagrams and menus.

You end up deciding to spread the seductrixes through the dungeon much like you've done with the fallen ones. They're your first dedicated traditional melee fighters, and currently your best, not to mention their generous assets might distract some of the less professional adventurers. You also hope that spreading them out will limit the distractions inevitably caused by their presence on day-to-day operations. In the end, you've settled on housing them in a few dorms for them at various layers of the dungeon, with their respawn set near the end.

Next, you augment your defences with a large cavern area after the crypt/mushroom split and before the pit. It has multiple layers with ledges running along the sides, while a few stone bridges held up by stalagmites serve to create a maze of winding passages up and down. More stalactites and stalagmites, as well as random pools of still water, make the cavern an absolute mess to navigate: hopefully an ideal location for the seductrixes, fallen ones, and imps to swarm, harass, and confuse adventurers already tired from the previous rooms. As an added benefit, this gives you a lot of room for future three-dimensional expansion of your dungeon using the caverns as a hub. It also fits nicely with the theme of the mushroom cave, and you scatter a few (purely cosmetic) glowing mushrooms as well.

The final touches are finished just as you and Ari climax from her slow ministrations, and you clean both of you off and give her a peck before heading off to other errands, thinking over medium-term strategy as you go. You're going to need to cause a ruckus again sooner or later, even if you somewhat dread doing it: you're already starting to run out of space again, and there's a lot of fame still between you and the next dungeon boss rank. That means that you need to feel confident in your ability to rebound from a nasty invasion, which means you need to finish turning the sisters, which you want to delay until the altar upgrade. With that as your next priority, you head to the library to find Mariel in her favourite armchair, reading an ancient-looking tome with a rubbing of the altar on a table in front of her. She's so lost in her work that she doesn't hear when you enter, so you walk up behind her and, feeling mischievous, grab a few handfuls of tit flesh. "Guess who?"

You earn a giggle for your troubles. "You know, that isn't how you're supposed to do that."

"So how's the research going? Any progress on the engraving?" You switch to massaging her shoulders, and earn an appreciative hum for your efforts.

"Yeah, I think I'm starting to figure this system out. It's a really strange system, like nothing I've ever seen. When I tried just translating the words it was nonsense, but I'm starting to think the letters aren't in order. It's some sort of code, or at least they don't write things in the same way we do... mmm, that's nice, keep rubbing right there."

"Any idea how long until you can crack the code?"

"Maybe a week, two at most. I'm feeling good about this."

"Great job, I look forward to seeing the results." You retract your hands only to be greeted by a pout from her turned head. With a sigh and an accepting smirk, you relent and reward her with a few more minutes of shoulder rubbing before you're granted permission to be on your way.

Last but not least, it's time for the more interesting base upgrades. First off, your summoning circle has reached the required outsider count, so it's time to see what your efforts have been rewarded with.

Unique Structure: Summoning Circle (Level 6)
Level 6: Can summon moderate angels and daemons, as well as groups of minor daemons with lieutenants.
Upgrade to Level 7: Cause an angel to fall.

Not the greatest change since it's pretty rare that you actually summon new outsiders, but it's hard to complain when the next level is so easy to achieve from your current position. With all the other unique structures gated behind requirements you haven't met yet, the last stop is your fame.

Fame: 4021
Recent Activity

• Encountered rival adventurer (x3): +30
• Completed a quest (rank 16): +800
• People are talking about you: +65
• Defeated an adventure (x23): +115
• Absorbed a faction (x57: faction size): +570
• Favourable deal with another faction leader (x10: relative strength): +500
• Defeated members of an attacking hostile faction (x26): +260
• Routed champion of an attacking hostile faction (level 8): +400
• Routed boss of an attacking hostile faction (level 10): +500
• Defeated members of a defending hostile faction (x12): +60
• Defeated boss of a defending hostile faction (level 12): +300
• Recruited members of a hostile faction (x35: recruitment count): +350

On one hand, you're generating a lot more fame recently! On the other hand, the rapidly ballooning costs means this is unfortunately nothing compared to the cost of your current wishlist items. In particular, you're probably going to need to make yourself a lot more notorious to adventurers if you want to rake in the sort of fame needed to promote to boss: there's only a bit of chatter and a few low-level adventurers crashing your place at the moment. The most interesting thing is, based on the quest reward, that you apparently get fame for things done by 'Adam the Adventurer' as well. It isn't enough to make it your primary source of fame, but hey, you aren't about to complain about a bit of extra help.

For now, you dump 3300 fame to get daemonic liegelord up to rank 10, and then dump a few hundred more into increasing your worker count. Now that you're picking up in minion recruitment and more of them can use tools, you really need to increase the number of craftsdaemons you keep on staff as well as harvesters to supply them. Construction has also been dragging on, so you toss in another few workers and a researcher as well, all-in-all costing you another 750 fame to quadruple your labour ****. At the end of the shopping spree you have 1 fame left and are 'only' 10,000 fame from your goal of a promotion to boss rank.

Last but not least, the levels you gained as Adam actually resulted in a new feat for a change.

Azazel, Level 15 Lesser Incubus
Attributes
STR 36, DEX 45, END 34, CHA 59 (+5), MAN 67 (+2), APP 48 (+1), PER 38, INT 55 (+2), WIT 49 (+2)
Skills
Lore 32 (+2)
Feats
Silver Tongue – You are unusually persuasive to anyone who is not currently hostile.

Unfortunately between the fact that your levels are based on how you solved problems and your choice of a social transformation, your combat skills are really starting to stagnate. No more excuses and fun: the next upgrade you get is going to be a pragmatic combat upgrade for a change. With that all done, there's nothing stopping you from a week of relaxation and laid-back bossing until it's time to go to the ball and execute your first-ever heist.