Defend the Core! (Dungeon Core Quest)

Year 1039, Oris, Okrasi Province, Slaria
The quiet clattering and the slight pinpricks of needles entering your skin soothe you. Entering further into the meditation you were taught as a young guild aspirant, you can slowly but surely feel the mana-reactive ink enter your skin. Embedding further and further into your mana channels, you can feel them begin to fill up with your mana. While you have done this process time and time again, you always delight in the sensation of the magic tattoo coming into fruition under your skin. Relaxing more into the feeling you drift off.

Year 1039, Oris, Okrasi Province, Slaria
'That stupid crystal' you think as you watch slowly but surely the crystal expands throughout your third floor. Covering only a small part of your floor, you can still see it microscopically as you watch it. However, you already have a variety of ideas to stem its spread, while you formulate a surefire way to stop the spread.

Turn 16:
Mana: 1400 (785 Mana per Turn) (-10 MpT) (May mutate to (-10 to -50 MpT) next Turn)
DP: 8/110 (122 DP per Turn)
Free Dice (4 Dice):
Floors (5 Dice):
[]Shadow Ecosystem: Hidden in the half-light of your tunnels, you have gained an idea. With the expansion of a second frequency you want to make use of it to its fullest, spreading from a variety of shadow corners of your dungeon, you can make a world of shadow. These hidden floors will take advantage of the way your monsters now have the shadows cling to their skin, and create a truly frightening environment for the invaders to enter, full of dark ambushes and gleaming claws this environment promises to lead to more invaders to their deaths. (50 Mana per Dice 0/195)

[]Box the Crystal: The Crystal has propagated on the edge of your wadis and swamp ecosystems, where the river of the canyons meets the flat moving water of the swamp. While this grants benefits, in that the slow-moving water will slow the spread of crystal, you can get ahead of its mutating and start to isolate the crystal from the rest of your core. Doing this will lower the amount of mana it can take from the air, lowering its chances of mutating to take in more mana. However it may mutate unpredictably to this stimuli. (1 Dice) (Lowers Mana mutation to 0 to 30 MpT mutation chances)

[]Mangrove Ecosystem: Growing a variety of mangroves over one of your swamp ecosystems, you can create a perfect environment for your illusionary traps and monsters to fight. From the hidden pathways, which are just the roots of some truly giant mangrove trees, you can lead these invaders further and further into this natural labyrinth, afterall all it takes is one brief distraction and their slipping into the poisonous waters underneath. (30 Mana per Dice 0/200)

[]Delta Ecosystem: With your newly expanded floor you can now work on new ecosystems, one that seems like would provide a large increase in mana would be creating a delta ecosystem, therefore lessening the costs of all aquatic monsters through the use of more waterways allowing invaders to be attacked more often. (20 Mana per Dice 0/375)

[]Cavern Ecosystem: While the basics have been established you can go one step further and tailor your ecosystem to the area in it, caves. By growing more mushrooms and mutating plants to become beneficial to a cave system you can create the conditions to allow more proliferation of physical traps. Whether hiding behind a taste placement of vines or an actual boulder held up by branches, you can fit more physical traps in a cavern ecosystem allowing you to get traps in a smaller space. (15 Mana per 120/175)

[]Lizard Hoards: From your smaller venous geckos to the large lizards that wander your dungeon you have an abundance of reptiles that live inside your dungeon. By tailoring large parts of your dungeon you can increase the comfort as well as the lethality of your monsters, making tailor-made ambush spots, therefore increasing the mana you gain from all types of reptiles inside of your dungeon. (20 Mana per Dice 0/275)

[]Monster Reefs: A crocodilian monster to schools of sand-bending fish your dungeon is seeded with all sorts of aquatic monsters, therefore it makes sense to tailor the waterways even further to specific species, increasing the total number of monsters you can hold as well as the efficiency of them. (25 Mana per Dice 0/225)

[]Oasis Groves: Plants, there everywhere in your dungeon, from the ground to the walls to even the roof, each hiding a monster or trap, because of this abundance of plant monsters it only makes sense to tailor the surrounding environment towards them, from the nutrient rich ground to the holed walls which allow their roots to grow further out, you can lower the costs of maintaining your monsters as well as increase the amount of mana you get from each invader. (30 Mana per Dice 88/175)

[]Gremlins Shop: From complex machinery to labyrinthine floors, the gremlin shop with its goblinese denizens and their knack for gears and trickery is sure to repair and revamp any physical-based trap in your dungeon. It promises to increase the mana you can save, allowing you to spend more of your elsewhere rather than rearming every physical-based trap in your dungeon. (20 Mana per Dice 0/275)

[]Witches Hut: Dangerous compounds to quick spreading diseases, the witches hut with its green-skinned, chemical-focused denizens allows them to create a multitude of various concoctions, from dangerous pathogens to toxic minerals these denizens promise to refill all of your environmental-based traps, saving you the time it takes to find replacements as well as mutate them into the correct configurations. (30 Mana per Turn 0/175)

[]Rune Hall: From subtle carvings to large rune-covered doors, the rune hall with their even stouter denizens and pointy hats, ensures that every magical trap in your dungeon is in proper shape, making sure they have enough mana and are repaired when they inevitably break due to the invader stomping through your dungeon. The rune hall promises to be on top of repairing your magic-based traps and save you time and mana which can be spent on other things. (25 Mana per Turn 0/225)

[]Armory: Invaders have always hunted in your dungeon for mana materials, but now with the creation of your bipedal monsters, you can create dedicated spaces with finished mana weapons tempting them to fight through these rooms where your bipedal monsters utilize these weapons against them, stopping them in their tracks with your ingenious weapons and monsters as well as providing a place for your monster to rest. (15 Mana per Dice 0/275)

Monsters (4 Dice):
[]Boss Monster: Almost routine at this point, you can begin to create a third-floor boss to block off all Tier 2 invaders to stop them from getting to your new floor. This is just the design phase in which you prepare your boss monster to be made but it is still good to build plans before you actually begin making a boss monster. (1 Dice) (Trigger Sub-Vote)

[]Lizard Bruisers: While your bipedal lizard may be unpleasant to the invader eye, their hunched-over forms serving to further stealth, the bruisers trade the hunched form of your lizards and turn them into something truly frightening, with bulging muscles contained by scales and the brute force to crack as many skulls as possible these monsters promise to be a true fight against the invaders in your dungeon with their coordinated attacks and unrestrained strength. (20 Mana per Dice 0/125)

[]Lizard Acolytes: Taking an opposite direction from the bruisers, you can instead spend your mana enhancing the bipedal lizard's magic potential, increasing the size of their body as well as making them smaller targets. Trading the stealth tactics for complex spells, from molten glass to forming quicksand underneath the invaders, these monsters are going to be a true nuisance to any invader who enters your dungeon with their coordinated spells and untapped magic potential. (15 Mana per Dice 0/225)

[]Basic Golem Monsters: Giant rock with no weak point to a viscous acid monster, your basic golem monsters promise to be a large roadblock against invaders, separating from other monsters in that rather than become overall stronger, you take the approach of being harder to damage, from the liquid like slimes to the rock golems, these monsters promise to force invaders to fight differently to defeat these monsters. (10 Mana per Dice 0/225)

[]Elemental Monsters: Bodies of flame to air-shaped whirlwinds, you can now in an entirety direction in regards to affinity, rather than giving monsters various flavors of attacks you can now make monsters solely of affintiatied mana, making them their own attacks and forcing mages to the forefront to deal with these new monsters, making them rely on counter-affinities to even damage them rather than a standard steel covered invader. (15 Mana per Dice 0/175)

[]Swarm Monsters: A pack of bipedal monsters, or a lounge of lizards, you can take your experience with making hive minds of bugs and instead start connecting monsters with each other, allowing them to coordinate to an eerie degree, movements precise and fluid as one whole group. However this comes with a cost, these monsters will be weaker individuals, and a large portion of their mana put towards keeping the link open and running. (40 Mana per Dice 0/225)

[]Megafauna Monsters: Drakes to sea serpents, monsters that only show themselves in high mana areas, guzzling every piece of mana to form these monsters are so rare, betrayals by the dozen happen every time they are sighted, after all, they offer enough materials and gold to set you for life, while not like the true article, which has had decades for mana to instill into their bones, organs, and scales, you can create an imitation which just as much power, from the boiling water of sea drake to the steel drill of the drake, these monsters promise to tear through any Tier 1 and Tier 2 adventures wholesale. (30 Mana per Dice 202/225) (Autocompletes This Turn)

[]Room-Sized Plant Monsters: Twisting roots filling a whole room, to vines covering every angle, you can create rooms in which have to fight an entire room of the same monsters, allowing you to focus more monsters on other things as well as allow the room-sized monster increase coordination, making them capable of complex tactics because they share the same mind. (40 Mana per Dice 0/125)

[]Heat-Sensing Monsters: From magic to plain old camouflage, there is a multitude of ways to hide, however, one that most people don't think of is heat, something that doesn't really come up that often heat is all around us as well as requiring a very technical enchantment and it can be taken advantage of through the use of heat-sensing monsters, your monsters will be able to find anybody hiding through camouflage or invisibility. (15 Mana per Dice 0/125)

[]Aquatic Plant Monsters: A floating lilypad just waiting to become a bear trap, to seaweed which drags you into their wooden beak, aquatic plants are some of the rarer monsters that you can make, which just makes them more deadly after all most don't understand how these monsters work. By speeding these monsters throughout your dungeon you can create another layer against the invaders entering your dungeon as well as utilizing the mass amount of water you have flowing throughout your dungeon. (10 Mana per Dice 0/125)

[]Sonic-Based Monsters: While the frequencies in your dungeons were painful, at least you learned something from the experience, by taking your experience with sounds you can now create monsters that turn those hated sound waves against them rather than yourself. These monsters promise to disrupt various mana attacks as well as cause an overall loss of coordination with their attacks. (15 Mana per Dice 0/125)

[]Fairy Monsters: First found in your visions, you can make these small creatures to hopefully help you better understand the frequency which emanates from your faean domain. These creatures would be small in stature and fly on two wings assisted by their mana, this affinity mana would allow them to cast more magic than their small size would suggest and give more groups of monsters truly dedicated magic casters. (40 Mana per Dice 0/125)

[]Boat Monsters: With the intelligence of your bipedal monsters, you can now fashion a new type of monster, taking the mind of your smart monsters you can fashion a device for them to move between the various waterways of your dungeon, forcing the invaders to wade between the water to reach these boats, allowing you time to unleash more attacks than before. (20 Mana per Dice 0/100)

[]Imitation Monsters: With the recent growth of hidden rooms, you can keep up the paranoia inside the dungeon, from strange voices whispering or screaming for help, to strange monsters, eerily similar to everyday objects except for the fact that they lure you into them and then strike, with tongues, venom and teeth, these imitation monsters are sure to trick any adventures entering your dungeon. (20 Mana per Dice 0/175)

[]Pyrotechnic Monsters: With the completion of your monster mines, you can now begin work to creature monsters that take advantage of your new discovery of pyrotechnics by putting two different types of mana materials together it generates an explosion which you can take advantage of by developing monsters, whether the actual materials or ones which just weapons made out of these materials, you can create a new weapon in your fight against the invaders. (25 Mana per dice 0/200)

[]Crystal Symbiote Monsters: With the discovery of the rock-like protrusions on some of your prehistoric monsters, you can now try to take it a few steps further by specifically mutating your prehistoric and regular monsters to accumulate crystals on their body, whether just general mana crystals or even some more rare forms of elemental crystals, you can grant another boost to a decent population of your monsters, contributing to the diversification of your forces, making sure there is no overall weakness in your forces. (40 Mana per Dice 84/100)

[]Adapted Prehistoric Monsters: While you now have prehistoric monsters, with their old evolutionary abilities which are an outside problem to a variety of invaders entering your dungeon, things that they have never encountered before. However, just because your prehistoric monsters only started with this ability doesn't mean you can't spread it throughout your monster forces, making all of them just that bit harder for invaders to attack. (60 Mana per Dice 13/75)

[]Basic Mushroom Men: With your spreading experience with intelligent monsters, you can now change from a primary animal focus to a more plant-based approach. By taking an understanding of how to form intelligence and adding it to your mushrooms, you can create a creature with full ability to use the multitude of effects that your mushrooms have in their grasp. From fire to paralyzation and even ones that cause mutations, you can give these effects to a truly intelligent life form and watch as these mushrooms use it to the fullest. (40 Mana per Dice 0/155)

[]Hive Mind Monsters: Mushrooms, the nervous system of plants, sometimes spread throughout an entire forest. By taking this information you can apply it to the rest of your monsters, by taking in a variety of mushroom parts. These monsters can be added to a tactical network. Eerily coordinating to take down invaders and responding faster than ever before you can truly take up the strength of your monsters with this ability. (50 Mana per Dice 0/105)

[]Shadow Monsters: With the way your frequency now grants your monsters the ability to hide in shadows more easily, you have gained the idea to make monsters out of these shadows. While you have no idea where to start with these plans, how to even animate shadow, an intangible substance in the first place, or how to make them attack when they are intangible, you believe that all it will take is some hard work and of course, mana to bring your vision to life. (45 Mana per Dice 0/245)


Traps (4 Dice):
[]Basic Labyrinthine Traps: More of an ecosystem in size rather than a trap. Labyrinthine traps cover a large area, leading invaders in random directions and getting them lost, while this may seem like a lot of work, these traps are incredibly cheap and allow for a variety of ambushes throughout these huge traps, promising to stop invaders from getting deeper into your dungeon. (10 Mana per Dice 0/350)

[]Basic Mechanical Traps: Whirling gears powering swinging blades, to massive hammers falling on invaders, your mechanical traps are some of the more specialized traps. With no mana embedded in these traps and the strength of metal in these traps ensuring that these are obstacles to be avoided rather than fought through, this aspect ensures that it will force the less athletic invaders will struggle to pass these trials (15 Mana per Dice 0/250)

[]Basic Runic Traps: From an immolation rune to a paralyzation circle, you can further spread and create new runic traps throughout your dungeon, promising to fire quicker, be more complex as well and be more hidden, from runes that sense heat to ones that can sense intelligent life, you can further tailor your traps to focus on certain types of invaders to fully account for their weaknesses allowing for an increase in mana production inside your dungeon. (25 Mana per Dice 0/200)

[]Basic Curse Traps: While your basic magical traps are a good start you can specialize further with your traps by introducing curses, from the classic such as reflections breaking to the cutting of red cords, you can take these curses and tailor them to your dungeon, introducing traps which have secondary effects after they have been broken, from invaders cutting webs, weakening them in the process, to crystals shattering when invaders are nearby, causing shrapnel and also causing a sense of confusion throughout their dive, curse traps promise to help you further gain more mana from invaders. (20 Mana per Dice 226/250)

[]Chemical Traps: Unstable solutions, to strange phase changes, you can create a variety of traps by researching deeper into the basic elements, from certain chemicals melting skin off when mana is applied, to an air-borne poison, you can create a variety of traps that make use of how hard it is to tell if a certain substance is a dangerous chemical, tricking them and harming them with these hidden traps. (45 Mana per dice 99/115)

[]Basic Pathogen Traps: A spore or a bacteria, a spreading sickness or a rotting virus, pathogens allow you to spread death throughout your dungeon, even if those outside your halls have found a way to stop your sickness, it just means you can concentrate it further, from clouds of spores to animals which give bacteria, there are a multitude of ways to slow down and stop the invaders entering your dungeon and pump them for their mana. (10 Mana per Dice 0/250)

[]Fungi-based Traps: From spore to shroom, mushrooms are easy to hide and can have extremely detrimental effects, from the hallucinogenic spores to a form of parasitism that leads to repentant acts of violence, spores can be fine-tuned to cause all sorts of mental problems to a group of invaders entering your dungeon, creating divides in groups of invaders and making sure that they spend more and more time, being affected, making them waste their mana as well as their life to escape your dungeon. (15 Mana per Dice 0/250)

[]Gas-Based Traps: A swirling storm to a chemical compound that melts skin, gas traps have it all, by utilizing your standard traps but specifically modifying them to make them airborne you can allow them to easily infiltrate invaders' bodies and begin the slow destruction of their body as easily as possible. While it may be easily solved by the proliferation of masks you can still get your bang for your buck and reap mana from the small exposures they get experienced throughout their dives. (20 Mana per Dice 60/75)

[]Illusion Traps: Visual tricks, from hiding holes in the ground with these illusions to hiding a variety of other traps, hidden pressure plates, and plant traps that look like bushes, you can take these illusionary tricks and spread them throughout your dungeon. This augments your already placed traps making some of them harder to find, however, you need to refine this technique to truly hide the mana from the invaders' mages. (20 Mana per Dice 0/280)

[]Pyrotechnic Traps: Mana ore explosion, something unexpected but now something that you can take advantage of, by placing a variety of mana ores beside each other you can now weaponize these explosions to activate when invaders come close to them, making a variety of new traps which blend into the background, only showing how much mana has been stored in these mana materials when they explode. (25 Mana per Dice 0/200)

[]Tree-based Traps: Trees are some of your more understood monsters, while you may have used them to create monsters, now you can go in the opposite direction and instead create traps out of these large plants. By taking a variety of effects and granting them to one tree you can make a multi-use trap that can target a variety of weaknesses in the invaders which enter your dungeon allowing you to reap the rewards. (35 Mana per Dice 0/155)

Research (4 Dice):
[]Internal Mana Flows: A mana-enhanced slash to fire-covered punches, you can take a look at how invaders flow their mana through their body, helping you to understand your monster mana flows, as well as your own mana flows, after all when entering your dungeon their mana should leave their body en-masse, leaving them deficient in mana. (35 Mana per Dice 0/300)

[]Specialized Affinities: With the completion of basic affinities it is time to research specialized affinities, from blood to sand. These affinities are often made through bizarre combinations between the four basic elements from the use of earth, water, and fire to make ice to the use of water, earth, and air in specific quantities to make blood affinity. It will take a long time to go through each grouping of specialized affinities but at least it isn't mind-boggling and mana-twisting high affinities such as time or space. (20 Mana per Dice 0/500)

[]Intention Mana: Crushing geases to smooth stands of the fae, intentioned mana is often used to bind, trick, and mislead, whether that is binding them to their word or crushing them for their transgressions. Intention mana is used for every type of bond. By researching this phenomenon more closely you can begin to unravel this mystery and allow your mana to have a distinct advantage in punishing invaders when they enter your dungeon. (20 Mana per Dice 0/300)

[]Large-scale Mana Runes: From a demon summoning circle to a war ritual, large-scale runes are used to enchant and focus various pieces of mana into a complex mana weave, opening up the world to more complex mechanics than just affinities, creating portals to making mana shields, you can create these complex functions and seed them throughout your dungeon stopping invaders from just using a counter-affinity to stop your specialized monsters and letting them roll over you. (25 Mana per Dice 0/300)

[]Invader Techniques: With the revelation of data you can focus your attention on individual invaders and figure out various ways they design armor, spells, and various enchantments, allowing you to better understand how to create them yourself, allowing you to skip learning steps and create various items and resources quicker. (25 Mana per Dice 217/250)

[]Radiation Mutation Research: Radiation, is the strange energy that seems to lend itself to mutations, however, these seemingly aren't like the other types of mutation you have witnessed, it is neither the affinity change, which happens when you grant a monster a different affinity nor is it the nascent bloodline which surfaces in all your monsters, calling back to a different time where mana was even more plentiful, instead these mutations seem wild and strange, causing randomness in mutations, from three eyes to even some from the electric sense you have seen truly bizarre mutations from this radiation. (60 Mana per Dice 200/215)

[]Artifact Weapons: Artifacts, the fusion of scientific understanding and the reality-bending power of magic, by fine-tuning the effects of magic you can get a stronger effect and a lower mana cost in general. By taking your experience with mana weapons and a deep understanding of mana and the material realm, you can start to create truly unique weapons to gift your more unique monsters. (30 Mana per Dice 0/245)

[]Set Gear: Synergies, something that you know intimately now, provide bonuses throughout your dungeon and give you an edge against the never-ending tide of invaders. By taking this understanding you can apply it to the gear you give your monsters, allowing them to gain a synergistic effect through their gear, weapons, and abilities. While costly these effects promise to apply a multiplier to your gear-making adventures, giving an overall boost to your dungeon. (25 Mana per Dice 0/295)

[]Ancient Mana Types: Ancient Monsters, while they may have been inoculated into your mana types now, that doesn't mean you can't begin research on these older, more primeval types of mana. While it may not have a lot of uses, as most spells require the newer mana types, that doesn't mean it is without use, this will help you further develop your theories about mana allowing you to refine your mana collection skills. (30 Mana per Dice 0/375)

[]Research the Crystal: Understanding is the first step to stopping the crystal menace, while it has little impact on your current day-to-day operations, that can change, with the dense third-floor mana circulating the floor, the crystal will have a lot of chances to grow. However, you can preemptively stop it from going any further, by dedicating a large part of your focus to this crystal you can bite the bullet and use your mana to come up with a way to stop the crystal from spreading and eventually stop it fully. (75 Mana per Dice 0/200)


Core (4 Dice):
[]Basic Ambush Points: Invaders have some of the weakest senses, they can't hunt through smell, nor understand all of a room from a sound. These weak senses allow for the creation of ambush points, places where monsters can attack from the shadows. Creating dedicated ambush points creates a surplus of places to attack from allowing your monsters to choose where to ambush from and giving a sense of variability to each group as there is always a different ambush location. (20 Mana per Dice 186//200)

[]Crystal Monoliths: Mana, the most precious resource in the world, the counterpoint to matter, the answer to heat death, you can't have enough, with the creation of these crystal monoliths, rune-covered, storage obelisks that suck mana from the outside world into your dungeon, from the air to the earth you can suck in more and more mana to fuel your advancement. This influx might overstrain your abilities, highlighting the sheer amount of mana you using unless you hide it, allowing those invaders to tap into your mana streams inside your dungeon and supercharge themselves. (20 Mana per Dice 0/200)

[]Summoning Circle: Now with your understanding of how spell circles work, you can spend the time to spread a new utility throughout your dungeon. Summoning Circles, or more accurately teleportation circles. These circles will provide a quick means of transport for your monsters throughout the dungeon, bringing them from one end to another as fast as possible allowing for even quicker deployments of monsters. (30 Mana per Dice 0/200)

[]Change Synergy: Now that you have spent some time getting used to how synergies are used, you believe that you can change what frequency you are focusing on and instead bring some of the other ones to the forefront, gaining new bonuses and keeping the invaders on their toes. (1 Dice) (Triggers Subvote)

[]Starve the Crystal: The crystals take in mana and use it to fuel their own growth. By taking control of your free-floating mana, you can isolate it from your mana, while some may still reach the crystals, this will greatly stop the mana loss in the meantime for you to develop a way to take care of this manavore. (1 Dice) (Negates Current Mana Loss)

[]Poison the Ground: Like termites invaders entered your land and raided your home and body for your precious resources, things made by your work, sweat, and tears, all gone due to their pillaging. Enough is enough, no more of these so-called humans entering your dungeon and skinning your children, and no more mages with their greedy eyes throwing themselves into your grinder for your core, promising unlimited wealth for their dynasty. No more soldiers apathetic to all around them, only finding joy in blood. No more rouges with their coin-loyalty, only in it for a quick buck. No more tamers, hunting for their next victim to breed and distort into an obedient puppet. No more clerics and their false worship all in it for a quick breath of their gods' power. You'll kill them all, from the toxic chemicals in every animal and water source to the clouds of sand tearing lungs and making them drown in dry land, the land is yours and only yours, they have entered your lair and you say when they die. (10 Mana per Dice 0/100)

Invader Stats:
27.4k Invader Total (3.2k Growth per Year - 2.2k Deaths Per Year)
Food: Large Surplus
Water: Medium Surplus
Mana Materials: Small Surplus

Whoops, Accidentally put the post before the vote