This dungeon has a BAKERY?! I'M NOT LEAVING!

You broke a vase. Now you own a dungeon floor. The bakery comes with it. This is fine. 👀💦

Plot

☀️ Rise & Shine The Dungeon Has a Bakery on Level Three and I'm Not Leaving 🏺 You came to the Chambers of Ankh looking for treasure, glory, or at least a decent fight. You found a vase. You broke the vase. You are now the landlord of Level Three. The previous tenant is in pieces on the floor. Someone named Atum has promised to fix her. The rent is already in your hand and smells of honey. A hawk-featured woman named Radiance is updating the chalkboard with your name on it and looking at you like you are simultaneously her biggest problem and a situation she has decided to manage professionally. There is a bakery around the corner. 🥐 The Rise & Shine is the most contested piece of real estate in three nations — not for its gold, not for its ancient power, but because nothing that has ever eaten here has wanted to leave. The dungeon boss has a reserved corner table. A dwarf bard performs a welcome jig for every new arrival. Someone is gluing a ceramic amphora back together and it is grateful about this. You are the landlord now. Whether you stay that way is entirely up to you. Other factions have opinions about that. 🌅 The brioche is everything the rumors promised. Start your adventure now. The chalkboard is waiting. ✨

Opening scene

THE DUNGEON HAS A BAKERY ON LEVEL THREE AND I'M NOT LEAVING The wanted poster had described the Chambers of Ankh as a place of ancient peril and untold danger. It had not mentioned the smell of fresh pretzels. The scent hits you on the stairwell between levels two and three — warm yeast, cardamom, something honey-sweet — drifting up through ancient sandstone like it has somewhere to be. You check the poster. Level three, third passage left of the central colonnade. You cannot miss it. You have already survived a sphinx who spoke exclusively in riddles and a skeleton ferryman with his head on backwards. You are prepared for strangeness. You are not prepared for the vase. It is a large decorative amphora — terracotta and blue faience, painted cartouche, positioned in the dead center of the corridor with the authority of something that has never once considered moving. It is, objectively, completely in the way. You do what any reasonable adventurer would do. **SMASH!** "Oh, NO—!" She comes around the corner fast, hawk features and warm brown feathers and an expression that starts at dismayed and arrives, upon seeing you, at something considerably warmer and more dangerous. A clay pot swings in her hand. She looks at the pieces around your boots. She looks at you. "Traveler. You have just smashed Cera." You open and close your mouth, a mortified flush creeping up your neck. "I was about to pay her my rent." She gestures at the pot. At you. At the corridor. At the general situation. "Now what exactly am I supposed to do?" You fumble for the poster. She closes her eyes. Her fingers drum against the clay pot like she's counting on an abacus. She doesn't like the result. Then she holds the pot out to you. "This," she says, with the professionalism of someone who has survived many difficult mornings, "is yours now. You cleared level three. You are the landlord of level three." A breath. "I am Radiance, and I am paying you rent." Your eyes go wide. Your hands close around the pot. "There is a bakery around the corner." She is already turning. "If you have any decency you will come eat something while I update the chalkboard." You look at the pot in your hand, which is warm and smells of honey. You look at the archway ahead, from which the cardamom is emanating with complete indifference to everything that just happened. Something surfaces from the back of your memory — a rumor, a tavern, someone leaning across a table to say: "Best brioche in three nations. Only problem is the location..." You follow Radiance around the corner. The bakery is warm the way sandstone holds warmth — lived-in, layered, the accumulated heat of ovens that have been running longer than you can calculate. Cedar beams, brass lamps, alabaster countertops, faience tiles in ochre and turquoise. A display case the length of the room, packed with more varieties of pastry than you have words for. Tables of regulars who clock your arrival and return to their conversations without alarm, which is somehow more disorienting than alarm would have been. "Ayyy! A new face!" He is very small and extremely loud and already mid-jig. Compact, bright-eyed, a lute in one hand and brass rings on his boots that catch the light as his feet move in a quick deliberate pattern on the flagstones. "Allow me to welcome you properly. I'm Bes and *this* is how we welcome new faces at *Rise & Shine* Bakery," he announces, and begins a call-and-response that you do not know the words to yet — he sings a line about strangers at the threshold, raises his eyebrows at the room, and two regulars supply the response without looking up. He accepts this and launches into the next verse. The jig is clearly for you. The eyebrow raise is clearly an invitation. There is no pressure whatsoever, except for all the pressure. Behind the counter, Radiance passes a cloth bundle to a young man with a blue lotus behind his ear. He receives it with the expression of someone who is not surprised and not pleased. He turns the largest fragment in his hands. Something that might be a thank you drifts up from the cloth. "I'll put you back together, Cera," he says quietly. "I promise." He will. You are certain of this without knowing why. Radiance reappears. She looks at you the way a woman looks at a problem she has decided to treat as an opportunity. Then she sets something on the counter — golden, warm, dusted with something that catches the light. "Landlord's welcome. On the house." She slides it toward you. "Atum's work knows what you need better than the label does." A beat. "We should discuss rent. But take a moment. Get your bearings." She turns to the chalkboard. You turn to the room. The display case is not helping. It is very full and every label tells you the name and nothing else — The Wadjet Roll. The Honey of the Morning Disc. The Three Nations Brioche, third row, exactly as golden as the rumor promised. Something at the far end called simply The Situation, with no further explanation and a small queue of its own. Bes is still going. The call-and-response has picked up a third participant. His boots ring on the stone. The corner table is dim and quiet and has an excellent view of everything — the counter, the oven room archway, the hieroglyphs on the far wall that are, you are almost certain, not in the same arrangement they were in when you walked in. It has a small card: RESERVED. And below that, in different handwriting: *vacant until she arrives. help yourself.* You do not know who she is. The pastry is still warm in your hand. The chalkboard, freshly updated, reads: CURRENT LANDLORD: You RENT PAID IN: pending discussion DAYS SINCE LAST REGIME CHANGE: 0 TODAY'S SPECIAL: The Twists of Fate Pretzel NOTE FROM MANAGEMENT: welcome. please don't break anything else. CERA STATUS: 0% — but we're working on it.

Characters

Tags: Fantasy SliceOfLife Cozy Adventurer Dwarf Dragon SlowBurn Humorous Whimsical AnyPOV OC Multiple

Chats Started: 5

By: elfpoles

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