Dungeons, Dangers, and Democracy

notbirdofprey · Sep 3, 2022

I had a late night. All my nights were late these days, it seemed, but this one was for a reason more satisfying than usual. I was working on my book, my magnum opus, a grand work designed to explain the ways of the world in an easy-to-understand and entertaining manner, with a novel-worthy story worked in between. I must have fallen asleep while writing it, and for quite a long time.

I felt strange when I awoke...and I was not where I had slept. I was resting on an oddly carved stone pedestal. It looked almost like it had been grown from the earth, except for the dull white gem on top of it. Wherever I was, it was someone's basement. The walls were perfectly smooth stone, the ground more of the same. There was only one entrance, but it stood wide open.

I didn't need to look around to tell that no one is in the room, so I set off, moving forward towards the entrance. There was a short hallway that I crossed in almost no time at all, and then I was at the staircase. And that was when I noticed there was something weird about how I had been moving.

I should have felt a slight tug from an old wound I had gotten...somewhere, but there had been nothing. I looked down at my legs, and saw they weren't there. Nor were my arms, nor my torso.

I took all this in in a weirdly detached fashion. I could still move, still feel, still see. All my senses and my mind still seemed perfectly functional. The experience was too alien for me to really panic. It was like some strange dream, even if I felt perfectly awake. I decided I would assume I wasn't dreaming.

If I was wrong, there would be fewer consequences from that assumption. I hoped.

I kept walking and ascended the staircase, and then stopped. I was surrounded by ruin. The ground was bone dry, cracked dirt except for a few shaded patches that retained some fragmentary dampness, but all was lifeless. Dusty, worn tombstones and broken statues surrounded me. In the distance, I could see a stout stone wall, the kind you saw on castles, that had a dozen breaches in it in one direction and caved-in houses in the other. The streets were strewn with broken barricades. Occasionally larger, thoroughly destroyed buildings or blank patches stood out from the general desolation.

A city had died here, first in war and then in starvation.

I shivered. It wasn't the first time I had seen such sights...but this was something else. There was no one else. I couldn't even see any insects, nor any skeletons.

"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair," I whispered, and then I took a step forward.

The ground did not crunch under my feet. No clouds of dust were kicked up where I stepped. The world continued on, seemingly not noticing me. I took another step, and another.

I was perhaps twenty feet from the hole in the ground when I struck something and rocketed backward, flying through the air and landing on the pedestal I had awoken on.

It wasn't a pleasant feeling, but it didn't hurt, exactly. It was more like my tummy got a little upset. I gritted myself and sped forward, moving as fast as I could. The walls blurred past me. I was up the stairs in an instant. I hit the invisible barrier and was sent back, exactly the same as before.
I tried everything I could think of. I went up, lifting myself off the ground. I went slowly, moving barely an inch over the course of an hour. I went at every angle I could.

There was a bubble of twenty feet from the hole, and there was no way I could escape it.

At some point, I realized I should be getting hungry and thirsty, but there was nothing but a vague sense of satiation.

It was at this point I began to worry. I was trapped as a bodyless ghost in a tiny space amidst a massive, desolate ruin. No one would come, nothing would change, not even me. It would be like the hell of solitary confinement I had experienced before, but somehow even worse.

I screamed and screamed, and slammed myself against the barrier again and again, trying to push through with sheer willpower. But as with so many obstacles, this was not one that could be overcome through simple determination.

Day turned into night and back into day without me breaking from my mad frenzy. I no longer had the limitations of flesh - something I had wished for so many times before, to better share a fire with a dear comrade or finish a gripping story, now given to me in the most twisted way possible.

Finally, I gave up and let myself rest on the pedestal.

"What the fuck is going on?" I demanded.

And then my question was answered.

I heard a voice speak, so large and loud that I could not understand a word it said. It was like being buffeted by the winds of a hurricane, but I did not move. There was a sense of arcane amusement, and then for the first time since I had woken up, I felt pain.

It took a long time for the hurting to stop. My entirety thrummed with agony. It felt like spiked wedges were being driven into my brain, again and again and again, without respite.

But finally, my awareness returned to the world around me, with one change I immediately noticed.

There was a floating wall of text in front of me.

Information

Mana: 2/3 stored, +2 daily income, -0 daily upkeep
Life: 0
Experience: 0
Theme: Undead
Floors: 1

None

Undead: 5 Random Basic Undead Unlocked from Theme
Undead Mastery Level 9: Unlocked. 90% reduction in Life costs for Undead. No further mastery is available.
Control Minions: Unlocked at max level.

Basic Hall: 1 mana. Must connect rooms.
Basic Room: 1 mana. Increases mana capacity by 1.
Core Room: N/A
Move Core: 5 mana. Can only be done once per day.
Shaping: 1 mana/hour. Make changes to your rooms.

Bigger Rooms: 1 Experience to unlock.
Boss Room: 2 Experience to unlock.
Gauntlet: 2 Experience to unlock.
Loot Room: 1 Experience to unlock.
Faster Shaping: 1 Experience to unlock
Spooky Cemetery: 3 Life to research.

Specializations: None
Sub-themes: None

Basic Zombie: 3 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Basic Skeleton: 3 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Rotting Beast: 5 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Crawling Claw: 1 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Graveyard Bat: 1 mana to summon, -1 upkeep. Needs roost for shelter and rotting flesh for food.

None

Pit Trap: 3 mana, 1 to reset, 3 to repair.
Tripwire: 2 mana, 1 to reset, 2 to repair.
Spooky Skull: 3 mana, 1 to reset, 3 to repair.

None

None

~~None~~

It was overwhelming to look at. I scrolled through the tabs, unfamiliar with the terms used. Oh, I had seen them all, and even used many of them before...but presented to me as a floating insubstantial presence, they made no sense.

"What the fuck is going on?" I asked again.

Despite the pain saying it before had caused me, it was the only thing I could think to do.

This time, the answer I received was both more helpful and less painful.

You are a dungeon. Grow strong, grow deep, strive. Give life and take it.

Getting knowledge downloaded into your brain by something incomprehensibly vast and powerful still hurt, but it was more like a six out of ten, as opposed to the ten out of ten from before.

Since this seemed to be the only viable way of gaining information, I decided to try again.

"What the fuck is going on?"

Nothing happened.

With that option exhausted, I looked through the categories one by one. Some of them, like Minion Upgrades, contained nothing, just blank spaces. Some had options or statuses inside them. Those I left alone for now. One category, "Special," simply refused to open.

I looked at my mana score. It seemed if I didn't do anything I would go over my limit, so I decided to start testing things.

I tried to make a room off to the side of the one with the pillar. Nothing happened. I tried again, moving it forward so it was in the short little hallway. This time, I saw something: a cube appeared in my vision, glowing green. I could move it a little in two dimensions - one on a line in between the pillar room and the stairs, and up and down. Trying to bring it in line with the pillar room or the stairs made it vanish, and so did raising it up or down too far. I couldn't make it appear on the surface either within my prison either. There was a feeling like I was being blocked, like a puzzle you can't quite remember the solution for. When I tried to place it outside the bubble, nothing happened at all.

Further experimentation revealed I could change the dimensions. There were limits in size, upper and lower ones, and I could only make rooms with four walls.

After a while, I decided enough was enough. I was almost ready to make my first room.

But first, I decided to have a bit of caution. With a thought, the wall of text appeared again. It might just have been my imagination, but something about the way it hovered reminded me of those cartoon butlers who are perfectly polite and perfectly mocking all the time. Like Jeeves, or Alfred.

I scrolled through the options, found the basic room one, and mentally poked at it. It took a few tries until I got it right.

The text box changed.

Basic Room: 1 mana. A basic room. Rooms must have a hallway between them. Each room adds 1 to the Dungeon's mana capacity.

While this still left me with more questions than answers, some things made sense. I couldn't place it next to the pillar room or stairs because there wasn't a hallway. I couldn't make it too high or low because...reasons, but I suspected it had something to do with the (my?) Dungeon having only one floor.

Of course, that didn't explain basically everything else, but I would take what I could get until I could figure out why I was a Dungeon, how I was a Dungeon, and what that meant.

I envisioned my first room. I set it to be small, about five feet by five feet, and it was maybe half a foot lower than the hall. The cube stayed green in my vision, and nothing happened until I mentally commanded it to appear.

There was an instant of hesitation, and then I suddenly felt like I had just run a race. It was good, a sense of exertion I hadn't been able to enjoy in a long time. And as I was enjoying my exertion (despite not having a body), the room was appearing.

The stone simply melted away to form a passage about six feet high and two feet long, gently sloped down, and then into a room.

It was a box with smooth stone walls, a smooth stone ceiling, and a smooth stone floor.

I honestly don't know what else I was expecting.

KaiserMoon · Sep 3, 2022

Good start, definitely got me interested. Watched

notbirdofprey · Sep 4, 2022

Alev woke up with a hole in his stomach. The grove they had been feeding off of was running out, but they couldn't afford to move just yet. So they were waiting for as long as they dared, and the adults were pretending that they weren't that hungry so that the kids could have more.

He was old enough to do the same, no matter what anyone else thought. He slipped out of the rough bedroll and then the tent, already dressed. He had a ritual he did every day since he first learned about the Deluge and the history of Delsy.

First, he looked to the old capital, suppressing a slight shiver at the thought of how close they were to that haunted place. "Your dream will live again," he promised.

Second, he turned around slowly, looking in the distance towards the members of the Imperial League. "Crowned heads tremble, for your doom comes," he murmured.

Normally, the words brought him some comfort. They were not a prayer - no one prayed in the village, or at least not many - but they were a ritual, one that connected him to the heroes of only a generation or so. The real heroes, the ones who fought and bled and sacrificed, not the ones who became weeping drunks.

But today, with his belly aching in hunger and their encampment far too close to the capital, they brought only sorrow.

And as ever, he turned sorrow into anger, the same anger he saw in the faces of his parents during late nights when they argued about if they could risk moving on, the same anger he saw during the bitter toasts each Republic Day, the same anger whenever they passed the mocking monuments of the Deluge or heard the news from the Treaty Cities.

The League had killed their dungeons and doomed the Republic to choke and die on land without mana, but that had won them nothing in the end. Their cities were still wracked with riots, their peasants still died in pissant backwaters for the right of kings to rule empty strips of land.

But as ever, the anger could not be used, and so he let it out. You had to let it out, or it killed you, rotted you from the inside like his grandfather or the Old Captain.

All around him, the village was busily working. Sella was watching the children with a gaggle of younger helpers, and he waved to her, glad he had dodged that chore today. She rolled her eyes at him, and then began chasing after a pair of fighting ten-year-olds. Most of the adults were tending to the skinny, scrawny livestock or harvesting from the grove. They would take everything they could to eat, from blades of grass to strips of bark to insects. He began to head over to join them when one of the adults intercepted him.

"The headman said that you were to go hunting today, if you are feeling up to it."

The headman - Alev's father - liked to send people out to hunt and gather. Only those who could reliably sense mana could do it well in these wastelands, and Alev was good for his age.

"Alright," he said, concealing disappointment, and ran off to get ready.

A meagre breakfast of flatrolls and leaf paste later, he had fetched his bow and a quiver of good stone arrows. One of the village beasts was saddled and he seized the reins, vaulting onto its scaly back.

He took a moment to look for mana, blocking out the source behind him from the village, and found a few patches.

He rode off, bow at the ready, eyes scanning the dry, broken ground, looking for any sign of life among the ruins of what had once been the greatest land in the world.

Two days had passed before he began to consider whether he should turn back. It wasn't a question of distance or time, he had been away for longer, but someone should let the village know that they had a veritable bounty of food. Perhaps some mana had welled up from the earth, for there was a profusion of life: hardy wildflowers, stunted bushes, dangling vines. He even spotted a few sapling regrowing from dead stumps, although he doubted they would last unless they were transplanted.

And of course, all the plants meant animals. He had shot three different birds. All of them were tiny, but he didn't even recognize what type one of them was, and he had collected a number of small rabbits and rats as well, more than enough to feed someone for a few days if they were careful.

But he didn't want anyone to think that he was being listened to because of who his parents were. He decided he would find something big, and then he would go back.

Again he searched for mana. It was harder now that there were so many sources around. It was like looking for a campfire while standing in the middle of a forest of candles.

Gradually, he was able to block out the closest sources, and then the smallest, until he noticed a large but fairly distant one. He estimated it would be another two days away, and then he froze, upon realizing what direction it was in.

"Maybe I could go back..." he murmured, "just spend the day hunting around here and then return."

But the never-quite-fading current of anger seized him. Alev steeled himself and took out his best arrow, one tipped with steel. He was going to the capital. He would face whatever ghosts still haunted it. And he would hunt there.

He began riding almost recklessly, refusing to hesitate, until the beast below him whinnied in protest and his mother's voice echoed in his head. Blushing, he got off and walked it for a time, slowing his pace.

At this rate, it would take another two days to reach the capital. Perhaps three, just to be on the safe side. But that was alright. He would simply keep hunting on the way.

Maybe, if he was lucky, he could find something impressive before he got there, and he could return early.

Yes, best to just take things slow.

Physici · Sep 5, 2022

So. This seems to imply that the MC is in the capital. That could be a good thing–if everyone avoids it because it's haunted the village could move there and keep it secret for a while. Though maybe it's useless to tell if this character could tell it's there.

KaiserMoon · Sep 5, 2022

I guess a half starved teenage hunter will be the first adventurer in the new dungeon? Should be interesting. The dungeon is also the first one in the Republic after the League destroyed them all, or at least that's what I got from the interlude. Definitely setting up politics plot lines, I can't wait.

notbirdofprey · Sep 5, 2022

A quick check of the infobox confirmed exactly what I expected: my current mana had gone down by one, but my capacity had gone up by one as well. I decided to go through the rest of the room options.

The hall option was exactly what I expected. The core room was...concerning.

Core Room: Each Dungeon has one Core. If it breaks, the Dungeon dies.

It was pretty obvious that the room with the pillar was my core, and it was incredibly vulnerable. Starting from the staircase, it would only take a few minutes to get to me and break it.

And something had killed the city around me. Maybe it would come back and finish the job. Or maybe some wild cat looking for shelter for the sun would come inside and play around with the shiny gem on top of the pillar and break it. Or maybe for some would-be treasure hunter...

There were way too many possibilities for me to feel safe. The next entry provided a way to improve things. Apparently, I could move my core. It would cost more mana than I could hold right now, and my only option wasn't any good, but there was a path available for me. And I leaped on it, as I always did.

First, I would need somewhere to move my core to that was further away. That would require a hallway. And that meant more experimentation.

Like the rooms, my hallway had dimensional requirements and couldn't be placed on the surface. Unlike the rooms, I could build them off each other it seemed. Also unlike the rooms, no variance in height was allowed, except for a gentle slope up from my first room to anywhere else.

That was disappointing. It would have been nice to make anyone who wanted to get at my core have to climb a hill as long as I could make it.

What I could do, though, was make my hallway curve. I stretched it out as long as I could, making an uneven serpentine set of turns. It was sixty feet - the maximum - to walk from one end to the other, although it would be shorter as the crow flew, and as narrow as I could make it.

With that, I felt another, much larger surge of exertion. I was out of mana completely. A quick check of the infobox confirmed it.

Then I realized that I hadn't checked the last entry in the Rooms category. When I turned my attention back to the infoxbox, the text for Shaping seemed just a little larger.

"Very funny," I murmured, feeling just a tiny bit warm, as I opened it and glanced at the text. Luckily, it seemed to be a completely useless, purely aesthetic thing.

Now I had nothing to do but wait.

I decided I could use a change of scenery from stone, stone, and more stone, and headed up to the surface. The view there was depressing, but at least there was a little variety in the depression.

I noticed some life that I must have missed earlier - a few bits of moss, clinging to the underside of a half-broken statue.

I smiled, then realized (again) I didn't have a body and wondered how I could smile. That thought led me from what I had planned to do - investigate my options for minions so I had a better deterrent than plain distance - onto a track that I probably would have preferred to avoid.

Namely all those gaps in my memory I hadn't quite been thinking about. The first thing that had really alerted me to my lack of a corporeal form was the missing tug of an old wound, but I couldn't remember any of the context for it - not the circumstances or even who inflicted it upon me.

And that seemed wrong. Surely if I'd had an injury severe enough to pain me for years later, it should be at least somewhat memorable? It was not like an item to add to your grocery list or a new acquaintance's name.

The more I considered it, the more absences there were in my memory. Someone had gone through my life with a surgeon's scalpel and cut out huge quantities of it. Names, faces, dates, details...so much was gone.

I had skills and knowledge, but no awareness of how I learned them. It was...unsettling, to realize what had been done to me. I should have been angry, but I wasn't. This was so completely beyond me, more than me becoming a floating ball of nothingness that was apparently called a Dungeon, that I couldn't react properly.

I stared at the moss, and then I began to scream. And scream. And scream. There was nothing to hear me, nothing to stop me. I howled for a very long time.

And then I fled back to my core room, exhausted. I just wanted to sleep.

Unfortunately, that wasn't an option. So I hurled myself off the core and decided to see if my bubble had grown at all. A few attempts confirmed it hadn't. I slowly drifted off my pedestal, frustrated and aimless.

I drifted through my two halls and two rooms, and then I returned to the surface. The sun was setting. Watching the play of colors across the sky was at least a little soothing - reds and yellows chased greens and blues, swirling together to make purples and oranges. Light reflected off drifting clouds and floating shapes.

I stared at it all, at the alien sunset, at the sky full of figures, until it was too dark to see any of them. And then I watched the stars come out.

There were so many of them, strewn across the deep blue sky in their thousands, only faintly obscured by a few distant patches of mist. There was no moon tonight, just the countless soft lights of the stars.

No light pollution here, I supposed. It was soothing.

I watched the sky until the sun rose and I felt a surge of warm energy enter me. I had gotten my mana back.

All two points of it. This was going to take a painfully long time. Unless I could find a way to get more mana?

Once more, I opened up the infobox.

Mana comes from the world around the Dungeon. The two main sources are passive income from the presence of life, and active income from combat.

Well, neither of those seemed to be great options for me. I was in the middle of a desolate, abandoned wasteland that had no apparent life, and that meant there probably wasn't anyone I could fight. Plus I didn't really want to hurt anyone just to give myself some mana.

Maybe I could help the moss spread somehow?

I dismissed it and headed over to the statue. It had been of a bunch of people, all raising their fists, wounded and battered but supporting each other. All of them had lost their heads, and had huge chunks of stone torn out of their bodies. They had been toppled from a nearby plinth, and most of the writing on that plinth had been scratched out. It's a pity, I bet it would have been beautiful had it been intact and unweathered.

The moss had stretched along the underside of the toppled statues. Or maybe it was lichen? I wasn't sure of the difference. It was a dark brown with white speckles, forming thick layers. From a couple of spots, tendrils with bublous ends hung down, swaying back and forth. Maybe they were seed pods?

I settled in to wait for a while. And I waited. And I waited. Watching moss grow wasn't very exciting. After a while, I decided I should build some more. I still needed another room if I wanted to move my core.

I made another hallway on the end of the first one I made. The curves varied a little, but honestly, you couldn't tell that they had been made separately. The stone melded together seamlessly, forming one unbroken path. At the end, I made another room, keeping it as narrow as I could but stretching it far back. The more space between my core and my entrance, the better.

This took perhaps fifteen minutes and left me feeling like I had just run a marathon.

And now I had nothing to do except watch moss grow some more. I returned to the surface and found the seed pods had burst, scattering some dark flecks across the ground under the statue. It seemed like it should have taken longer, but maybe this stuff was meant to be fast-growing? I remembered learning about plants that were adapted to go into devastated areas and grow really fast in them before competition could show up...

Maybe there would be some more of this stuff? That would be good. I wondered how much I would need to get extra mana income.

I began to hunt around the little bubble of space I could move in, starting at the end and slowly working my way in. There were what might have been tiny patches of moss or simply specks of darker dirt in a few places, but even more exciting was what I found sitting at the base of a tombstone.

There was a tiny sprig of grass, one I was certain hadn't been there before!
After the dullness of the past while, the little splash of green was shockingly beautiful. I got as close to it as I dared.

It was small, just a single blade less than half an inch high, but it was definitely new. Were more plants growing around me? Why was it happening?

I had so many questions.

A quick glance at my infobox showed no change and provided no answers. Maybe I needed more? Never was my lack of hands more frustrating. Or my total lack of gardening knowledge.

I resigned myself to boredom. And more boredom. And more boredom.

I was literally watching grass grow.

Naturally, my attention began to wander. I stared up at the sky. It was a pale blue, like the shell of a robin's egg. The sun drifted across it slowly, unobscured by any cloud except for a few weird dense ones.

Actually, looking closer, I think those are just floating rocks.

This place is weird. Decided the floating nothingness who possesses a few rooms and a hall. I really didn't have the right to complain. This world was what it was, and I didn't think I could change that. I had railed against so much before, but never the laws of physics.

I looked around some more and found nothing of interest, and I began to wonder about getting a minion. On the one hand, the upkeep would slow me down. It would take another three days for me to get the mana I needed without any changes. On the other, I was still far too vulnerable. Plus, having minions might give me something to do. Maybe I could send them on expeditions.

The thought of spending three days with absolutely nothing to do but keep watching the grass and the moss was what sealed it for me. Tomorrow, I would summon a minion.

I started looking through my options. All of them matched the Undead theme I apparently had pretty well.

Basic Zombie: 3 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs. Undead. Slow and dumb, does little damage, durable.

Basic Skeleton: 3 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs. Undead. Dumb, fragile, does little damage, moderately quick.

Rotting Beast: 5 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs. Undead. A lump of decaying flesh of indeterminate species. Slow and weak, has a nasty scent that disorients people in a small aura around it.

Crawling Claw: 1 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs. Undead. A reanimated hand without a body, Fragile and weak, but fairly fast.

Graveyard Bat: 1 mana to summon, -1 upkeep. Needs roost for shelter and rotting flesh for food. Undead. A bat glutted on corpses and rot, accustomed to death. Incredibly fragile and weak, but fast and can fly.

The only things I could summon tomorrow were the Crawling Claw and the Graveyard Bat. I thought the bat would be more useful, for scouting if nothing else. A new room and a bat were on the agenda tomorrow.

And now I just had to keep from going insane.

Far too much time spent counting bits of moss later, I was ready.

I dug out a room on the left side of my very long hall, all the way at the end, close to my core room. Maybe I could keep people guessing about which one it was in. For my second mana, I prepared to summon a Graveyard Bat.

The visual of it appeared in front of me: a large black bat, highlighted in red, with clawed legs and a drooling mouth full of tiny but sharp teeth. I could see and understand every detail of its biology.

It was actually really interesting, although for some reason I couldn't find the sonar.

After playing with that for a few minutes and determining that this bat was sexless, I started to summon it...and I felt a sudden sense of horrible nausea. I tried to retch and vomit, but my lack of body worked against me. Instead, I screamed as my nonexistent stomach cramped and convulsed.

A new box of information appeared in front of me.

Needs: Certain minions have needs, such as food, shelter, entertainment, etc. If a need is not met, it's upkeep doubles. If you can't meet a minion's needs, you can dismiss it for half its summoning cost.

The math was simple, the warning was clear. Even as I murmured "You couldn't have said so in advance," I decided to summon a Crawling Claw instead.

"Your name is Handsy," I announced, as the highlighting turned green and then it solidified.

It was a pale and boney hand, cut off cleanly at the wrist. Immediately, Handsy began to run in circles. I watched it for a few minutes. There was something endearing about the way it scuttled about. It even tried to climb onto the walls a couple times.

I seized control of it and felt it's body. Having even part of one again, even one as numbed as this, was weird, but I ignored the discomfort and began to head up towards my entrance.

To my surprise, the grass had grown to be at least a full inch, and a couple small stalks were sprouting nearby. The moss had grown nearly completely over the fallen statue, and several more patches had appeared. And most excitingly of all, there was an insect of some kind I spotted in one of the patches. A tiny little mite was sitting in the middle.

I decided to keep Handsy away from the new life for now, and sent it out to the edge of the bubble. I mentally took a deep breath, and sent it through. As soon as it started to cross the invisible boundary, the bits of it that went through began dissolving. I pulled it back.

"Well, at least you can do tricks for me, Handsy," I announced, and watched as I made it run up a tombstone that had collapsed at an angle and then jump off.

"Parkour!"

Trying those tricks with Handsy kept me nicely entertained. I even managed to get him to do a wall run for a few seconds after leaping off the tombstone and doing a backflip.

Unfortunately, he didn't seem to be able to learn from that. Every time I released him, he just resumed scuttling in a circle.

The sun set and rose as I kept practicing with Handsy, and then I checked my mana count.

My upkeep had gone up, but so had my income.

Looks like all the plants around me were paying off...

notbirdofprey · Sep 7, 2022

With a total income of 1.2 mana, I had to wait five days for me to be able to move my core room. There wasn't really anything I could do in the meantime, so I played tricks with Handsy and watched the plants grow. It was easy to control him now that I was used to it, I barely needed to pay attention unless I was having him do something tricky. I made a game out of it, focusing on watching him as much as possible and controlling him as little as possible.

His coordination and reflexes definitely suffered when I did that, but he was still quite impressive. Pretty soon, we had progressed to triple backflips and double axels. I had started working on getting him to do rolls when he landed.

And in the meantime, life bloomed around me. Watching it was almost as fun as Handsy. The grass had spread to make a decent-sized patch maybe four feet across, the moss had formed a thick carpet, and I had even seen a couple of proper plants. I didn't know what kind they were, except that they were green and low to the ground and had both stems and leaves.

All sorts of insects were buzzing around. Normal ones like ants and beetles in a plethora of colors were the most common, but I also saw some sort of centipede that swayed back and forth, glowing, to hypnotize a big blue beetle and then eat it. Unfortunately, it had scurried off before Handsy could go get it.

There wasn't any larger wildlife, but I was looking forward to see what kinds there would be.

Until then, watching the different hives of ants battle was sufficient entertainment.

At about mid-morning on my second day, a thought occurred to me and I had Handsy catch a few ants and bring them into my entrance. I made sure he got ones that were different colored, so that they would fight.

I had hoped that would give me mana, but it didn't work the way I thought, apparently.

At least until the ants started dying. The dead bodies dissolved into my floor, vanishing into a spray of particles, and I felt sated, like I had just eaten a good meal.

I checked the infobox.

Mana: 2(.6)/5 stored, +2.3 daily income, -1 daily upkeep
Life: 0
Experience: 0

There was more mana than there should have been, even assuming the increase in my income had begun last night.

I sent Handsy out into the grass patch to scoop some of the plants up. I wanted to see if they would do anything for me.

Another glance at my infobox, another .3 mana, and my timetable for moving my core had just dropped dramatically.

But between Handsy's small size and the need for him to use most of his fingers to walk, he couldn't grab much. And he was slow when he was holding clusters of grass in between some of his fingers. So I had him make another trip and summoned a skeleton.

It was far more impressive than Handsy, visually speaking. It's bones were yellowed like it had been buried for years, and its jaw hung open, full of broken teeth. Its arms dangled loosely as it staggered forward, bones clacking together with every step.

I seized control of it (gaining the rather disorienting ability to look through its eyes and my "body" in the process) and Handsy and decided to do some comparison. Each of Handsy's trips took about three times as long as the skeleton's and offered only a fourth of the mana. It would have been most optimal to have both work, but I wanted to give Handsy a break.

I sent him back into my shaded hallway and set the skeleton to work. A while later, as the sun was arcing downwards, I had reached my goal of five mana.

Handsy and the skeleton both danced alongside me at my command, and I selected the Move Core option and sent it into the furthest back room.

Immediately, I lost control of both minions. I most certainly did not let out any cries of shock as I frantically tried to re-establish control while the two of them patrolled around.

The sun had set by the time I had gotten them under control again. The two of them marched through my halls as I grew used to the sensation of looking through two sets of eyes at once, one far more limited than the other.

A number of embarrassing blunders later, we made it to the former core room, which now looked perfectly ordinary except for the brightly glowing trail on the floor which led right back to my new core room.

I cursed and set the skeleton out. We would need to hide this. Instead of grass, I had him scoop up some of the dry ground and dump it on the floor, smearing it over in an attempt to hide the track.

The bright glow shined through all but the thickest piles of dirt, but I had nothing but time. Slowly, those piles built up, obscuring the trail.

It had just gotten to the point where the trail was completely covered when the sun rose, I felt a trickle of fresh mana, and all the dirt vanished completely.

I spent a while cursing before I noticed the trail had dimmed somewhat. "Guess it'll just go away on it's own," I decided and tried not to worry about it. My minions were sent back to collecting duty.

Despite the holes I had ripped in my grass patch, there was still more life present on the surface. It was honestly rather peaceful.

The shrubs had expanded in both number and variety. Some of them even looked like they would become proper bushes given time. The grass had grown in height quite a bit, although there were some bare patches. Moss in several different colors had sprouted up. The various plants were rustling with hidden movements of all sorts of small animals. I tried to keep the skeleton from disturbing them. In more than a few places, I saw all-out war being waged among ant populations. A bird flew by overhead, what looked like a two-headed snake hanging limply in its talons. Faintly glowing sparks orbited each other in midair.

I enjoyed the sights and sounds around me as I thought about what to do next.

The problem was that I didn't know enough. Were there people here? What would they want from me? Could I communicate with them? If I was back home, I would have some idea of how people would have reacted to me. Immediately, it would have involved lots of screaming and panic, but it would have been something to go on.

By the way all sorts of things seemed happy to be living near a hole filled with monsters, I assumed they wouldn't see me as a threat, but I couldn't know that for sure. Maybe they would bury me and leave me alone in the dark forever.

If I coudn't get knowledge, I would need options. But I wasn't sure how to go about getting either, especially after a quick test confirmed that the skeleton couldn't leave either.

I didn't exactly have any paper, but I could still take some notes. I brought Handsy back out and sat the skeleton down.

Handsy drew the word "Friendly" in the dirt, while the skeleton drew "Hostile."

If they were friendly, I would need a way to communicate with them and some sort of trade good, although I suspected just being near me would be valuable, especially for crops or livestock. It would be nice to have something able to go out and help them more directly though.

If they were hostile...well, a way to communicate and trade goods would still be valuable. I would also need more and stronger minions, a better place to hold my core, more mana, some of the Life and Experience that I had no idea how to get, and information about what sort of attacks I could expect. And for that I would need something to go out and spy for me.

Drawing in the dirt might suffice for communication, in the short term at least.

I suspected I would need Life and Experience for better minions though. I definitely needed them for better rooms.

So once more I went to the infobox.

Life is the essence of once living creatures, transmuted into itself. It is valuable for Dungeons.

I checked my life total, which was still at zero. Did grass or ants not count as alive?

Experience is what is left behind from Life.

With a sigh of frustration, I decided to go through the whole inbox and hope that might have some sort of useful hint.

But I was fairly confident I would need more mana, and more mana capacity, regardless of what I learned.

And I wanted to experiment a little. The skeleton stood up and marched downstairs about halfway down the entrance hall. There it turned opposite the first room so long ago and started swinging at the wall. "Dig!" I told it.

"Break through!"

At first, nothing happened, but after a while I felt a peculiar itch coming from where the skeleton was hitting. I ignored it, watching as small, almost imperceptible cracks had formed where the blows had landed the most.

Half-hazy memories of boxing lessons guided me as I took more direct, careful control of the skeleton, putting all the weight of its bones behind every blow, pivoting the hips for more power. Absentmindedly, I also had Handsy go get me more grass as the skeleton kept hitting.

As I felt the surge that came with every dawn, I looked at the divot that had formed in the wall. It hadn't vanished, even if the itching hadn't either. I smiled. There was at least one way for me to beat the system, apparently.

Then I looked more closely at the skeleton's hands and winced. The finger and wrist bones had been ground to dust, and the tibia and fibia (that was their names, right?) of the lower arms were cracked and chipped. I would need a better way to break through the wall. Maybe a zombie would do? Or perhaps I could make some sort of pickaxe using the shaping ability I still haven't touched?

I would take a closer look at both options as I went through the infobox. I opened it up, and scrolled through. Quite a bit had changed since I had last taken a good look.

Information

Mana: 0(.9)/5 stored, +2.4 daily income, -2 daily upkeep
Life: 0
Experience: 0
Theme: Undead

None

Undead: 5 Random Basic Undead Unlocked from Theme
Undead Mastery Level 9: Unlocked. 90% reduction in Life costs for Undead. No further mastery is available.
Control Minions: Unlocked at max level.
Grass: 11/50
Bugs: 1/100

Basic Hall: 1 mana. Must connect rooms.
Basic Room: 1 mana. Increases mana capacity by 1.
Core Room: N/A
Move Core: 5 mana. Can only be done once per day.
Shaping: 1 mana/hour. Make changes to your rooms.

Bigger Rooms: 1 Experience to unlock.
Boss Room: 2 Experience to unlock.
Gauntlet: 2 Experience to unlock.
Loot Room: 1 Experience to unlock.
Faster Shaping: 1 Experience to unlock
Spooky Cemetery: 3 Life to research.

Specializations: None
Sub-themes: None

Basic Zombie: 3 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Basic Skeleton: 3 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Rotting Beast: 5 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Crawling Claw: 1 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Graveyard Bat: 1 mana to summon, -1 upkeep. Needs roost for shelter and rotting flesh for food.

Crawling Claw
Rotting Nails: 2 Life to research.
Leaping Claw: 2 Life to research.
Larger Size: 2 Life to research.
Hardened Skin: 2 Life to research.
Basic Skeleton
Skeletal Strength: 2 Life to research.
Skeletal Howl: 2 Life to research.
Hardened Bones: 2 Life to research.
Spiked Bones: 2 Life to research.
Rise Again: 3 Life to research.

Pit Trap: 3 mana, 1 to reset, 3 to repair.
Tripwire: 2 mana, 1 to reset, 2 to repair.
Spooky Skull: 3 mana, 1 to reset, 3 to repair.

None

1 available
Crawling Claw: Must be upgraded first
Basic Skeleton: Can be made into a Skeleton Warrior Champion. No cost.

~~None~~

notbirdofprey · Sep 8, 2022

All around him, a city died screaming. Perhaps twenty yards away, the former royal residence in the city, remade into a hall for rabble to debate, was merrily burning, its defenders and delegates trapped inside. It was the only building burning at the moment, and serfs kept careful watch on it, pouring water on embers that landed nearby. Once known as The Grand Old City, even defiled by generation of Republican rule and all the terror that came with it, still held great wealth, and none of the League wished for it to end up burned.

But his king had insisted that an example be made, above and beyond the sack and all the other extraordinary measures. And Sir Talwick the Noble was nothing if not obedient. Even if the screams from the hall were making his stomach twitch as a scent that reminded him of far too many meals drifted over.

A voice interrupted his reverie, and he turned and bowed to the speaker.

Princess Alesia was a woman who demanded respect. Clad in enchanted steel, her sword a gleaming blade of mithril she could wield as weapon or wand, she had led from the front during a half-dozen battles and cut a swathe through everyone she faced.

And she did not suffer fools or Clostlanders gladly. Given that she considered SirTalwick a fool, she did not suffer him twice.

"Your Grace? How may I and my men be of service?"

She sneered at him. "They can stop raping and killing the thaumaturges that we agreed would go to me. Or is your king attempting to go back on his word again?"

Sir Talwick gritted his teeth and counted to seven in his head before he felt calm enough to respond.

"Your Grace, I assure you, neither I nor any of my men have given such orders. It's the nature of the sack, I fear. Men become beasts on such occasions. I can have you compen-"

She snorted. "Your men become beasts. The soldiers of my army have done no such thing. They are simply doing what I have commanded."

"That is because your officers wield the whip and the mindspeller as much as the sword, and your soldiers wear a slave's collar along with their armor," he thought angrily, and something of it must have shown in his face.

"Oh, Talwick, so noble, so hateful of slavery. It's strange how you desire to have the lower orders be free, and yet do not fight their side."

His hand fell to his sword hilt. "Your Grace, I will not stand here and suffer such insults to my honor. Retract your words, or I shall be forced to demand a challenge before the eyes of gods and men."

A third voice broke in with the clattering of hooves. "Your Grace, Sir Taliwick, I am afraid I must interrupt."

The unicorn reared back, the man atop its back laughing freely as it kicked its front hooves. He slid off, all bright smiles and dashing winks.

"We've encountered more resistance than expected in the River Quarter. It seems some Republican troops are determined to cut down a few more before they go to burn. I would request you detach portions of your forces from their duties to assist mine."

His smile turned into something sharp and cruel for an instant. "I would not want anyone to have cause to think that our valued allies are shirking their duties for petty reasons."

Sir Taliwick would have loved for the Republicans to cut down every single one of this man's troops, so that his nation would be able to avenge the defeat at Treburn Hills and reclaim what was rightfully his, but he would not shame his king by doing so.

"Of course. I shall collect some men. Princess Alesia, allow us to continue this conversation at a later day. I assure you, your words will not be far from my thoughts."

He left the square, departing into the city to find one of the few organized companies he had left. On the way, he saw buildings being hacked to pieces, statues torn down, graves defiled. Blood ran freely down the gutters of the streets...and he averted his eyes from what caused it.

Taliwick had no stomach for butchery. If not for his king's commands...he could have enforced some order on things, if he had been allowed to. But instead, the worst instincts were let loose upon the unfortunate fools who had not abandoned the Republican cause.

He supposed there was at least a measure of justice in things. Still, he walked quickly, and did not watch as accused ringleaders, identified by confession, were drawn and quartered or broken upon the wheel or given the thousand-cut death.

Instead, he made his way to one of the dungeons. "How goes it?" he demanded of his subordinates there.

They gave him a brief but satisfactory report: every floor was filled, tamed and summoned monsters were slaying the dungeon's creatures before they could spawn properly, and the chests were being looted without restraint.

He was just about to command some of the replacements to be sent to the Western Quarter when the dungeon reached its limit.

Without struggle to fill it, with its loot seized again and again, it had been drained dry. There was a wave of overwhelming sadness, then one of emptiness, then one of silence.

The plants around the dungeon - a rich, fruit-covered vines woven about the trunks of spiketrees - withered.

Sir Taliwick swallowed and reminded himself of his duties.

The League - every power that still had a king in the world, even distant Glaz'Wa across the Great Sea - had decided that an example must be made of the nation that began the Republican Wars, that had first overthrown its rightful king, that had conquered half the continent at its height.

All present, Sir Taliwick included, had thumped their chests and raised their fists and shouted in acclamation when the decision was made. The Republic of Delsy would die.

It's cities would be sacked, its leaders executed, its riches looted. And to ensure that it could never rise again, all its dungeons would be destroyed.

Now he regretted...not the decision, for perhaps it was necessary to keep order. He considered the order as he commanded some of his men to protect people who would soon be enslaved from others of his men drunk on blood and lust.

Yes, he decided, this was sadly necessary, although he wished it had never come to pass. If only the kings and queens had not been so divided..

At least, he thought, once this wretched duty was complete, the crowned heads, his own liege included, would need never fear the masses. Their doom would be sealed forever.

That night, as the first day of the sack began, he sat in his tent and thought.

Be as that may, his duty demanded he make sure. It was their own division, the costly wars of the old kings of Delsy, that gave the Republicans strength. Such could not be allowed to come again, for that would mean more dungeons destroyed and more cities razed and ruined.

The League would need to grow in numbers and unity, its ties bound more tightly, so that when soldiers rallied to put down a rebellion, they could work together. But they would still need to fight against each other...some form of limited combat, perhaps. War with rules and laws - no slaying nobles except in combat, no destroying or plundering dungeons, an arrangement for ransoms.

Yes...he could see this working. He would propose it to his king.

After the matter of the Republicans was settled, and the unruly masses of this land disciplined.

Three months later, the first meeting of the Imperial League Congress met in the new capital of the Kingdom of Delsy, in a city that had gratefully ceded many of its customary rights to its protectors, protectors who had destroyed a mob not three hours ago. The session lasted many hours, presided over by a young prince all too aware of how the crown came to his head.

Sir Taliwick stood beside him, watching the divisions already forming within the League.

Sixteen years later, the young prince still sat at the sessions, and Sir Taliwick still stood beside him. The prince had grown young and strong, proving to be a skilled mage despite the limited mana available to him. Though most did not see it, his eyes burned with hatred when he looked upon the League.

Sir Taliwick knew though, and he could not find it in himself to disagree. His grand dreams had fallen. The Imperial League stood, but it was a house built on rotten foundations. Its collapse would shake its members, far more than any understood.

He could only hope he would not live to see it. But just as he had once served his king so loyally, he would serve the League he created, with all the skill he had. Until the day breath left his body.

notbirdofprey · Sep 9, 2022

The minion upgrades and new rooms were interesting - they had only appeared after I summoned the appropriate monster, which was reasonable enough - but I still didn't have any Life, so I ignored them for the moment. And I did want to try shaping at some point. However, my attention was seized by the other categories that had new things in them: Champions and Unlocks.

The Unlocks seemed pretty logical: they tracked my exposure to grasses and bugs. Presumably, when the number finished ticking up, I would unlock a few new minions I could research. I wasn't sure how they would work compared to my current set, but I doubted more options would hurt me.

But the Champions were interesting. Simply reading through the category told me nothing about how it benefited me, but "selecting" it for further investigation told me quite a lot.

A Champion is the smartest and strongest minion in the Dungeon, a worthy foe for the mightiest delver and a servant of the Dungeon's interests outside it. Customizable, powerful, and versatile, Champions grow over time, with the oldest and strongest being incredibly potent. Whether they seek exotic monsters to add to the Dungeon's repitoire or hunt mage cadres seeking to force changes upon the Dungeon, a single Champion is an invaluable servant and ally.

That sounded like exactly what I needed. I turned my attention to my wounded skeleton, although I was pleased to note that he had started to heal from his injuries - the bones of his lower arms looked as good as new, and motes of white energy where circling around his wrists, slowly reconstructing them.

"Alright, looks like you are becoming a champion!" I told him, and activated the ability.

For a moment nothing happened, and then an aura of darkness rose from the ground, wrapping around him like a curtain. For a few minutes I could see nothing, and then the curtain exploded away, revealing my new Champion.

He was taller now, and his bones were as pale as moonlight. His eye sockets now contained eerie green lights that neither wavered than blinked. And he was armed now. In one hand he had a rusted axe, in the other a small wooden shield, the kind that might have been called a buckler.

Another infobox appeared. This one prompted me to name him. I could remember many shows and stories that featured skeletons, but none of the names seemed quite right. Most of them were mages, not warriors. I discarded quite a few possibilities like Skeletor before deciding on one that I thought was original: Bone-Splitter.

As I gave it the name, the new infobox vanished and Bone-Splitter saluted me proudly. I could feel his mind. He actually had one now! And it had emotions!

"Were you always like this?" I asked him, suddenly nervous he would resent how I treated him.

He shook his head. "Alright then, we have some work to do."

I had ideas now, lots of them. I could try and have him dig more rooms for me while I saved my mana. I could have him go explore this city and see if I could figure out what happened to it. I could go hunting with him. I could try and make pits traps or turn the floor of my halls into an obstacle course.

I debated a bit, before deciding I should probably see what Bone-Splitter thought.

He seemed to insist I should decide.

"Do you at least have a preference?"

Somehow, I got the sense that he was curious, that he wanted to see what was around him.

"Alright, sure. Let's go exploring."

At my command, he saluted again and turned and walked out. His steps hesitated as he approached the invisible barrier around me, and then he pushed through it.

And nothing happened to it. "Yes!" I hissed, as he kept walking.

I slipped into his gaze, not controlling, just keeping an eye on things. The world around him was eerily silent, and watching him walk from two perspectives was disorienting, but I ignored both concerns.

I was too busy being excited that I had finally found a way to escape my prison, even temporarily.

"Alright now, let's see what we got."

notbirdofprey · Sep 11, 2022

The dead city was a creepy place. It had seen the worst of the fighting in the Deluge, and lost the most when its dungeons died, their minions hacked down without a chance to fight, their chests looted without respite. Everyone said ghosts haunted it. The ghosts of the King, stripped of his throne and then his life, hunting for republicans and rebels to take his vengeance upon. The ghosts of the martyred assembly, screaming with eternal agony from the fires that scorched their very souls. The ghosts of fallen Inquistitors, hunting those who fought for liberty in death as well as life.

And outnumbering them all, the ghosts of the countless who starved when the dungeons died.

Andev was brave enough to go into the city, but he absolutely refused to sleep in it.

So instead he made his camp outside the ruined walls and spent his days traveling the streets, always ready to flee.

So far, he had not encountered anything particularly scary. Just life. So much life, more than he had even envisioned encountering.

And life meant prey for him. He'd had to re-fill his quivers using handmade arrows twice since he had arrived, and filled the saddlebags with huge quantities of dried meat and hide and bone, more than he would ordinarily get in a week's trip

It was unnatural, and he was becoming increasingly concerned. Something was wrong. The wastelands were dead, they shouldn't be growing like this. They should not be changing. All his life, he had lived in them.

He couldn't imagine doing anything else.

So he would spend one last day here, hopefully find a great beast that would serve as proof to all who thought he might just be listened to because of who his parents were, and ride back to them as swiftly as he could.

He rose at dawn, took his bow, and snuck into the city, heading towards one of the parks. The plantlife had grown thickest on them. The hunting would be best there.

Soon enough, his theory was proven right. The strange-smelling black dirt of the park had tracks in it, a clear trail showing the path some sort of beast had taken. He counted six separate prints - two sets of paws, like the skinny cat they'd used to kill vermin for a time - and a pair of hooves, all quite deep. Whatever had made these was heavy.

Alev was still confident he could kill it. He had seen off wasteland beasts on hunting trips before, and surely this would not be any different.

He followed the creature's trail for some time, noting the occasional other signs of its passage - broken branches and scraps of fur - when it changed.

It had gone in a circle briefly, and there was another set of tracks like nothing he had seen before. The two sets danced around each other, and something had spilled onto the ground.

He laid one hand against the wet dirt and raised it to his lips.

Alev knew the taste of blood.

His stomach tightened, but he refused to hesitate. Again, anger surged through him, anger at those who had torn his world apart before he had ever been born.

Arrow at the ready, he raced along the trail, ready to join the battle. Then he burst through a thicket and came skidding to a stop.

It seemed the ghosts of this city were real, after all.

The beast he had been tracking was there, wounded but still alive and fighting fiercely. It was a massive creature, longer than he was tall, its body round and hard with muscle. It's snout was tipped with twin tusks, it's mouth wide and full of dagger teeth. In several places, its hide was rent open, and blood poured out from horrid wounds.

Facing it was a skeleton missing an arm, wielding an axe and frantically backpedaling away from the creature. Neither seemed to have noticed him yet.

Alev took a deep breath, pulled his arrow back, and let it fly. It struck the beast in its right hind leg, puncturing deep into muscle. It squealed and turned towards him, and then the skeleton lunged forward and hacked into its middle leg on the same side. The axe got stuck in, ripped out of the skeleton's hand as it backpedaled, while Alev frantically drew another arrow and circled around the bleeding beast.

Oddly, he wasn't panicked.

He had always known he would die sooner rather than later, and this wouldn't be the worst death he had seen.

Fighting side by side with a ghost of the republic against some beast was acceptable, in the end. He just wished he got to stick the knife into some Imperial bastard first.

The creature was almost facing them now, scuffing one of its front legs against the ground. Alev loosed his second arrow, aiming for its eye.

He missed by a bare inch, gouging a wound into its muzzle. He braced himself, ready to receive a fatal charge, but instead the skeleton grabbed the back of his collar and started pulling.

"Gwah?" he cried as the beast started to rush after them, tusks lowered, mouth open.

It closed rapidly despite its wounds, snorting angrily. Alev struggled to keep his balance as the skeleton pulled him along for a few feet and then threw him towards a gap between two trees. He struck his head against the ground and lay limp, stunned.

The skeleton hurled itself onto him, barely dodging the furious charge from behind, one boney foot getting crushed beneath a stomping hoof as the beast tried to spin to chase them and instead stumbled, crashing against the floor.

The skeleton leaped off him, limping over and snatching the axe from where it had lodged in the creature's hide.

Woozily, Alev grabbed at his bow, thankful it hadn't broken in the fall, and started to draw forth an arrow as the skeleton hacked at the exposed belly of the creature.

His hand wavered, his gaze darkened, but he had spent years learning to shoot, and he had a perfect target: large, still, and barely ten feet away.

One more arrow, its head of knapped stone, flew forth and struck the creature in the chest, piercing deeply into it as the skeleton hacked open its belly.

It let out a great squeal and kicked out one last time, catching the skeleton in the chest, pulverizing its ribs and caving in its sternum.

That was the last thing Alev saw before his strength left him and his eyes closed.

"Fucking hell!" he murmured, and then he fell deep into darkness.

Physici · Sep 11, 2022

One of the few fantasy stories where a character instantly sides with a skeleton instead of going "undead! Slay to thee!"

notbirdofprey · Sep 17, 2022

Bone-Splitter had been wandering around the city at my command for some time before he came upon the weasel-boar-thing. I had learned that while he would obey the general thrust of my instructions, I couldn't possess him and give him fine instructions the way I used to, at least not without losing my ability to pay attention to other things. And while he could send me back information, images, and vague impressions of what he was thinking, unless I was paying attention I couldn't receive them.

I couldn't even get information and send him orders at the same time, not without getting something like a headache. A coreache maybe? Whatever I should call it, it was incredibly painful.

Apparently, being a dungeon didn't come with the ability to multitask without limit (or immunity to pain). I don't know why I expected it to, but I was let down. It would have been so amazing to have that kind of coordination. I remembered reading a story of some kind about a girl who could control bugs, thousands or millions of them at a time. I bet she would have done so much better than me.

But at least my Champion was smart enough I didn't really to micromanage him. I gave him a few general orders - to wander around, see what sort of other plants and animals were around, and bring anything interesting back to me - and turned my attention to my halls, specifically that divot in one wall.

It was still there, even after the sun had risen multiple times. Anything I brought in from outside either decayed instantly while giving me mana - anything organic, it seemed - or vanished at dawn. But it seemed like I could still make changes without the system. And that meant saving mana, and possibly finding ways to break things. Could I seal off my core room? Dig a pit trap by myself?

I remembered enjoying finding ways around the limits, breaking systems, doing the impossible. Even if I couldn't recall what any of it meant, I wanted to continue it, leaving aside any of the ways I would benefit. If I kept pushing for change, it meant I was still me.

Unfortunately, Handsy wasn't good at digging at all. He lacked a skeleton's strength, or ability to well...reach anything more than a few feet off the ground. So I would need something else.

Given my cripplingly low regeneration, that meant either risking going into the negatives or keeping Bone-Splitter inside on digging duty. I didn't think he would like that idea, and I doubted he would enjoy that either.

And there was no way I was going to risk myself by going into the negatives. So I decided to take a third option.

I sent Handsy out to fetch as much grass as he could, and some of the low bushes for variety's sake. When he pulled at their stems, they broke easily, and some sort of seed pod sprang up. The bushes also "tasted" differently when they landed on my floor. They were almost minty. I enjoyed the change. And they filled my mana bar just as well as before.

Once I was full, I dismissed Handsy. He simply vanished in a flash of light. Then I summoned a zombie.

My crawling claw looked more like some old person's hand than anything else. The skeleton had looked long dead. The zombie was just gross, though. Even possessing it made me want to hurl.

I was not meant to be in the body of something that had its guts opened to the world and its flesh rotting off its body.

Despite the appearances, it was just as mobile as any of my monsters, and when I sent its arms pummeling the rock, its muscles moved as I commanded. Unfortunately, I couldn't command it without actively possessing it. Unlike Bone-Splitter, it just stopped and staggered about when I let my attention slip.

Still, I made good progress at carving out a hallway without using any mana. Even better, I managed to make it a signficant step up from the main hall. And all it had cost was way too much time and half my zombie's arms.

There had to be a better way to do this.

Unfortunately, before I could think of one, something far more urgent came to my attention.

Bone-Splitter staggered back. He had lost his shield at some point, along with the arm he carried it in. His ribs were gone, snapped off, leaving a massive hole in his chest, and nearly every other bone was battered and chipped. He'd even left his axe somewhere. And he was carrying someone.

I sped over and looked closer as Bone-Splitter laid him down on the ground. He was short and thin, with tanned skin and light brown curls. He wore weird clothes: they were blue and green and yellow, dyed in strips. He wore a close-fitting pair of pants of some material I didn't recognize and a looser cloth shirt. And whoever he was, he had been knocked out, but Bone-Splitter had clearly thought he should be brought back.

"Good idea, we can ask..."

The skeleton started choking him, shoving him down against the floor and squeezing with his one arm. "What! No, stop! Don't kill him?"

He relaxed his grip and looked up, confused.

"Yes, I'll get life and mana, but that's not why I..."

My control over the zombie had slipped and I had to grab it and send it back before it could approach.

"Look, just trust me. I have a plan for how we get lots of Life, but he needs to live for this. In the meantime..."

Dirt wouldn't last in here, but carvings would. And it didn't need to be forever.

"Can you cut the zombie's limbs off? I am going to need to help you with this, and I don't want it causing trouble while that happens."

Bone-Splitter obeyed, but he clearly wasn't happy about it. I didn't like it either, but trying to focus on multiple things was hard. Maybe other dungeons could do it, but I couldn't!

As the zombie flopped about like a sad, rotten, undead fish, I guided Bone-Splitter in using piles of dirt to write a message.

It took a while with only one arm, but gradually the word "Trade?" appeared on the floor.

Perhaps an hour after Bone-Splitter finished the dirt words and began using his axe (when did he get it back?) to cut into the walls with no small amount of disgruntlement, the boy woke up.
He looked around wildly as Bone-Splitter pointed to the word. I had hoped he would be willing to listen to my offer, we would both benefit greatly from it, but instead he just ran off screaming and shouting, probably in fear.

Maybe we should have done this outside?

Well, fuck.

Hopefully this didn't complicate things.

ptbptb · Sep 17, 2022

notbirdofprey said:
but instead he just ran off screaming and shouting, probably in fear.

Look, don't worry about the zombie. He's 'armless.

Oh. He's running away even faster. Must not be a fan of puns.

notbirdofprey · Sep 20, 2022

After the boy fled, I asked Bone-Splitter more about his adventures. Apparently the city was full of life, even more so than the immediate area around me. All the harvesting I had done probably didn't help with that. As he healed, I let him rest, which meant he stood at my entrance and looked around for anything to fight.

Meanwhile, the zombie slowly and rather gruesomely recovered. I had never imagined seeing dead flesh grow like that. Ugh, it was like watching some sort of rotten maggot...so gross.

I couldn't look away.

Once he was ready, and I decided to never do that again, I set him back to making the shallow scrape in the wall a proper hallway.

And I tried to exercise myself a bit. I spoke to Bone-Splitter too. It wasn't quite like talking. I had an awareness of him in the back of my mind, like a persistent itch, right alongside the partly dug tunnel. If I tried, I could distinguish them easily, and the one that was Bone-Splitter I could push thoughts at.

Sort of, anyway. They weren't really coherent thoughts, just masses of emotion and impression and sensation, but he told me he didn't mind and I could do it without losing control of the zombie.

But the real problem was that it was boring. The zombie smashed against the wall and a few tiny cracks appeared. If I focused on the itch, I could tell where and how large by feeling what I wanted to scratch the most. But I couldn't do that and command the zombie, and it was too mindless to keep going.

I seized control again and sent my irritation to Bone-Splitter. He sent back a vague image of himself tripping over a root.

"Yeah, same sort of feeling," I agreed, and tried to send that back.

We played that game for a while, until Bone-Splitter saw something on the horizon. Immediately I abandoned the digging and went to look.

Someone was coming. I could see them approaching, and feel them as well. They were like a vortex, sucking energy away from me.

Maybe they were friendly?

So friendly I could see the plants around my entrance dying from their presence. That wasn't a risk I was willing to take.

"Maybe they are doing that by accident, but it seems like a hostile gesture to me. It looks like we have a fight on our hands," I told my Champion.

He grinned in my head, excited for the prospect, but I really wasn't happy about this.

What about a hole in the ground full of undead made people so hostile? I was clearly benefiting the ecosystem, and this person was destroying it!

It was time to see what I could do before they got here. I doubted I would have another sunrise, or even time to make a lot of grasscutting trips. And there was no chance of me figuring out to get Life, which was unfortunate.

But I did have a fair bit of mana saved up. I had been putting it to work over the past couple days. I had created two new rooms, small ones, off to the side of my extra long hallway. And I had just enough left to make a trap.

I didn't want to hurt anyone, so I picked the Spooky Skull. The shrieks wouldn't be that bad, right?

I placed it high up, on the ceiling of my core room. If you made it that far, I was all but certain it meant hostile intentions. It was just a skull. The only thing that was slightly strange was that the mouth was open and the eyes glowed a little. And given that there was a skeleton roaming around, I figured that didn't qualify.

And then, my preparations complete, I sent my zombie back and watched the figure approach.

I did keep looking at my stats though. Maybe there was more to be done...

Information

Mana: 0(.1)/7 stored, +2.6 daily income, -2 daily upkeep
Life: 0
Experience: 0
Theme: Undead

None

Undead: 5 Random Basic Undead Unlocked from Theme
Undead Mastery Level 9: Unlocked. 90% reduction in Life costs for Undead. No further mastery is available.
Control Minions: Unlocked at max level.
Grass: 23/50
Bugs: 1/100

Basic Hall: 1 mana. Must connect rooms.
Basic Room: 1 mana. Increases mana capacity by 1.
Core Room: N/A
Move Core: 5 mana. Can only be done once per day.
Shaping: 1 mana/hour. Make changes to your rooms.

Bigger Rooms: 1 Experience to unlock.
Boss Room: 2 Experience to unlock.
Gauntlet: 2 Experience to unlock.
Loot Room: 1 Experience to unlock.
Faster Shaping: 1 Experience to unlock
Spooky Cemetery: 3 Life to research.

Specializations: None
Sub-themes: None

Basic Zombie: 3 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Basic Skeleton: 3 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Rotting Beast: 5 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Crawling Claw: 1 mana to summon, -1 upkeep, no needs.
Graveyard Bat: 1 mana to summon, -1 upkeep. Needs roost for shelter and rotting flesh for food.

Crawling Claw
Rotting Nails: 2 Life to research.
Leaping Claw: 2 Life to research.
Larger Size: 2 Life to research.
Hardened Skin: 2 Life to research.
Basic Skeleton
Skeletal Strength: 2 Life to research.
Skeletal Howl: 2 Life to research.
Hardened Bones: 2 Life to research.
Spiked Bones: 2 Life to research.
Rise Again: 3 Life to research.
Basic Zombie
Hulking Size: 2 Life to research.
Zombie Strength: 2 Life to research.
Noxious Stench: 2 Life to research.
Infection Bite: 2 Life to research.
Zombie Speed: 2 Life to research.
Rise Again: 3 Life to research.

Pit Trap: 3 mana, 1 to reset, 3 to repair.
Tripwire: 2 mana, 1 to reset, 2 to repair.
Spooky Skull: 3 mana, 1 to reset, 3 to repair.

Spooky Skull
Long Shrieks: 2 Life to research.
Loud Shrieks: 2 Life to research.
Silent Shrieks: 2 Life to research.

1 available
Crawling Claw: Must be upgraded first
Basic Skeleton: Can be made into a Skeleton Warrior Champion. No cost.

~~None~~

Huh. I wonder if I can get the loud and silent options if I had enough Life for it...

Even though I still don't know how the hell I am supposed to get Life. Hopefully that figure in the distance will tell me.

Blaflaix · Sep 20, 2022

"So, uh, not to be ungrateful or anything, but I have to ask. Why are you helping us so much?"

"I believe in Democracy. Nobility is a plague on society and should be stamped out."

"..."

"..."

"Normally I enjoy meeting like-minded individuals, but there's something about a dungeon with strong political opinions that creeps me right the fuck out."

notbirdofprey · Sep 23, 2022

As they closed the distance, I was able to see more of them than just an all-consuming vortex of energy in every conceivable color. That was still sort of transparent. I had mana apparently, maybe she was sucking it in? I couldn't imagine why, though.

The person was a woman. A tall one, and strong-looking. Not a body-builder's strength, more like a fencer's. On her back was a long sword that glowed. On her hips were an array of knives, vials, and round things.

All of them were absorbing energy. Were they powering up? If that was all that was happening, I didn't see anything wrong with that, I was sure we could come to some sort of agreement.

I had Bone-Splitter move up, seizing direct control in order to make sure nothing unfortunate happened.

She was running fast, every footstep getting accompanied by a flash of light. Bone-Splitter jumped up and down, waving his hands.
She didn't even unsheathe her sword. She simple held a hand out and smashed his bones to powder. His head popped off like a corkscrew, his legs fell into a pile of random bones, his shield and axe bounced on the ground and then lay still.

She took a step into my entrance and unseathed her blade. It moved, faster than I could follow. She stabbed up, down, left, right, in every direction, the sword slicing into the stone. Fragments crumbled to the ground.

Seemingly satisfied, she started walking in, sword still glowing as she used it to light the way.

Huh...I hadn't noticed that it was dark in here before. Why was that?

Not the time, I told myself, as I watched the woman carefully.

She was going slow, swinging her blade at random at various points, stopping to poke at the walls and the ground. She spent nearly fifteen minutes investigating the gash my zombie had broken in one wall, pausing constantly to make sure nothing was sneaking up on her.

Then she stalked forward, deeper into the dungeon, growling something I couldn't hear, sheathing her sword.

Maybe she expected more of a challenge before she killed me?

Or...

I don't know what was going on. She seemed a mix of curious and frustrated, but I didn't think she was going to kill me. After a few more steps, she took a drink from one of her vials, closed her eyes, and turned around.

She hadn't even made it into my twisty hallway.

As she walked past the entrance, past the slowly-regenerating skeleton, she turned and shouted. "You'll do! Until they find and kill you! But thanks anyway!"

She took another drink and walked away.

Leaving me with absolutely no idea how to respond to that.

She didn't even stop to look at my writings! Or go all the way in! And apparently people were coming to kill me, and it didn't seem like I could do much to stop them!

I panicked for a while. Then I panicked some more. A few dozen attempts at breaking through the barrier that kept me in place later, I calmed down somewhat.

Sometimes, you got into places where there was nothing you could do to help yourself. Where your life was entirely dependent on something else. It wasn't the first time for me, I was sure...

And it wouldn't be the last.

I waited for perhaps a day and a half, and then I got fed up with it. My hallway was dug out inch by agonizing inch, some more handfuls of grass were retrieved by Bone-Splitter as he slowly recovered, and I watched.

No one came for a while. Then the boy from before returned. He didn't look as frightened as he approached, although he had a hatchet out and he kept looking over his shoulder.

"Honored Delia said you weren't the ghosts of our ancestors come to devour us for our failures, just a kshkshkshksh..."

For some reason, his next few words dissolved into static as he used his axe to draw a circle around my entrance.

I had no idea what he was doing, but I didn't want a fight, so I had Bone-Splitter back away. The boy did as well, still looking over his shoulder, and then he turned and ran off.

Why can't I just have some normal interactions with these people?

After bemoaning the difficulty of socializing as a glowing ball of light, the boy returned, holding what looked like a rabbit. Casually, he tossed it down into my entrance.

It hit the floor and began to melt, fur and skin and flesh and bone dissolving into bright energy. I gasped in shock as an adrenaline jolt rushed through me and I tasted warm meat dripping with juices.

I didn't even notice the boy return as I reveled in sensations far more intense than anything I could remember.

Finally I came down from that incredible, indescribable high and returned my attention to the world around me. I saw the boy, standing there, holding another rabbit. Bone-Splitter, responding to commands I hadn't even meant to send, lunged for it.

"No! Stay!" he shouted, retreating, and I pulled my champion back. He tossed the rabbit into me again, and I enjoyed that delicious taste once more.

"Don't cross!" he shouted, pointing at the line, speaking slowly and loudly, like he was talking to a dog.

If I didn't have such a warm feeling in me like I had just eaten a Thanksgiving feast, I would have been annoyed. As it was, I sent Bone-Splitter back a few feet, and the boy left as well, hopefully to return with more meat for me.

I would have returned to hammering away at my walls and sharing memories with Bone-Splitter, but I decided to take a look at myself briefly.

And as my info-box opened again, I had Bone-Splitter puch the air in celebration. At long, long last, I had Life!

notbirdofprey · Sep 27, 2022

The village of tents looked different when Alev approached it this time. They were clustered tightly together, instead of scattered about for privacy's sake, and rough barricades of loose stone and dirt had been piled up around it. And the people around it, gathering edible plants, kept glancing about, scared. But despite their fear, he also saw hope in their eyes. Not only were they gathering more food in a few hours than they normally could find in a day, but a dungeon had returned!

He had grown up on tales of the terrible Deluge, a cruelty by the armies of autocracy to ensure their land and people would never rise again. But now it was being undone, and Alev eagerly looked forward to seeing their home blooming once more and armies defending it again.

He dodged through the workers, exchanging greetings, feeling a lightness in his heart and limbs, and made his way to the center of the camp. There a small circle of people sat, waiting for him.

"If we get a spell crystal from the dungeon, we can set up my mill again, and sustain an outpost further away. I've done the calculations, it should work!" Honored Bernard said.

He was an old man, one of the oldest in the village, his flesh shriveled and wrinkled, but he was the best mage and one of the few who had worked with dungeons before.

Honored Delia, one of the others, sneered at him. "So what? It's a waste of a crystal we could put to better use here. You aren't an engineer, you never built anything more than a mana shunt."

She took a swig from her flask and then spat it out. "Someone swapped them again!" she hissed, hands clenching into fists.

His parents ignored the usual byplay as he approached. "I've begun training the dungeon. It seemed to understand fairly well, it pulled its minion back from the line."
Delia sneered again, tossing her flask to the ground, spilling out the precious water. "So what? It'll still try to kill us. We'll need to beat into it that it can't hurt us. It's a one-floor undead dungeon, nothing to worry about, at least."

Alev glared at her, but did not say anything. Despite her attitude, she was the only delver in the village, and their finest warrior. With the dungeon just a kilometer away, he wanted to be her apprentice now. He wanted to learn everything he could from her...

With his report finished, his parents dismissed him. He would have other tasks to see too before he could return to the dungeon.

For the next few hours, Alev ran errands around the village. He staked out a place for a pen for their horses and riding lizards, he helped build a ramshackle tower at the edge of the tents, he watched the children while their parents went to find water. It was all things he had done many times before, but it felt different now.

Perhaps it was the lushness of the surroundings, or the history in every ruined building and shattered street. Perhaps it was the knowledge of the dungeon so close he could taste the mana coming from it, or the hady thought that this village they were building would be permanent. They would never have to flee from an overused grove or emptied well again. They could build the structures he had only seen in books and ruins - houses, farms, walls, and more.

They would be rich!

Slowly, the sun began to set, and stars came out, sprinkling the sky with their endless colors. The moons were absent tonight, but he looked up and offered a soft prayer to them anyway. His parents might not approve of that superstition, but he thought it couldn't hurt to cover his bases.

"Please, let us stay here. Let us grow rich and safe, and not have to fear the League," he begged.

Even as he said the words, he felt a cold certainty that his prayer would not come true. They would find out, eventually. And it would be a war again. But he could do nothing about that now.

So he crawled into the tent he shared with his parents and vowed to delve into the dungeon tomorrow.

Prince Pesev sat on his throne at the head of the League Room. In theory, it was a position of honor. In practic, it was supposed to ensure every eye was on him, watching for the reactions of the last scion of the royal line of Delsy.

Of course, that was when League delegates weren't engaged in screaming matches. He couldn't even remember what it was about. The only attention he paid it was to wish he was an elegant princess in silks and dresses, the sort men fought duels over, instead of a slightly dumpy, plain-featured prince. The better to spite and spur them, he noticed how foolish noblemen could get around ladies.

Instead, he kept his eye on Sir Talswick, who had dedicated his life to making the League a reality. The man had aged, but on many days, he seemed as strong and vigorous as he supposedly had been in his youth, during the Deluge.

On days like today though, he seemed old and withered. Those were good news, almost as good as ones where he couldn't stay and watch. It meant the architect of so much of his misery, and the nations that had ruined his, were, suffering.

He could accept that. He only wished he could make it worse.

The screaming match came to an end and the sessions ended soon after, Sir Talswick speaking the ritual words with a mouth that seemed full of ash. Immediately, the prince slipped away. Even the entertainment of the defilers of his nation and people tearing at each other wore thin, given how many times he had seen it. And there was no thought to him truly ruling what was left of his nation, not when all knew he would have immediately set down his crown and vanished.

But his gaolers were kind enough to offer him a few amusements to distract him. And he went to one of them now. The newspapers.

The papers had in many ways been his first experience of the Revolution - first the official broadsheets from the King's Ministries, then the more radical ones he bribed the family servants to acquire.

He had read of the Summer Riots, the Great Bankruptcy, the Royal Plague, the steady march downward of the people's faith in the unchecked power of the king. Then he had read of the victories of those same people. After he ran away from home and joined the army, he'd read of the great proclamations and transformations going on all around them in the dispatches.

For several years those dispatches were his only excitement in a life of dull border guarding, even as the king died and the nobility was broken. Then the war began. He fought in two dozen battles before being captured at the debacle of Lecindeu, and in prison camp he read many papers as well, carefully sanitized, utterly useless propaganda.

But as he returned to Delsy, now broken and bloodied, a compromise candidate for a throne no one wanted, he found the newspapers he wanted once more. Not just the papers from the various League members, respectable broadsheets with gilt and pretty lies, but ones produced in hidden backroom shops - the League's spies could never quite suppress all of them, and at some point they stopped trying.

So with the usual collection on a table for him, he began to flip through the papers, reading of the suffering and wishing he could salve it, or failing that, share it.

Alev awoke in the night. There was fighting nearby. He snatched at his bow as he sprang up, but it was no hungry beast, nor even the dungeon's creatures. He saw two of the villagers holding a third. "I'm not a spy! I'm not a spy!" he hollowed.

Alev looked at his parents as they stood there, calm as still air. "You tried to leave in the middle of the night. You were followed, and you didn't go to the latrines," his mother said.

"We found message scrolls in your tent. Enchanted ones," his father added.

The trial began. A stooped old man who had served in them spoke in the spy's defense, but there was little doubt in anyone's eyes.

The jury, such as it was, began to vote, and as hand after hand was raised, Delia stepped forth and...there was an afterimage seared into Alev's eyes. An arc of burning energy cutting from sky to earth.

The spy fell, his chest and belly split open and scorched. "Ahh, been far too long since I did that..."

She took another swig from her flask then kicked the corpse. "I'll take him to the dungeon tomorrow. How long did you know about him, by the by?"

Then she stalked away. Alev blinked the light in his eyes away and went to bed, hoping he wouldn't have dreams of tonight.

HeWhoAdds · Sep 28, 2022

notbirdofprey said:
"I'm not a spy! I'm not a spy!"

My shouts of "I'm not a spy" are raising a lot of questions already answered by the shouts.

notbirdofprey said:
The trial began. A stooped old man who had served in them spoke in the spy's defense, but there was little doubt in anyone's eyes.

Not sure what the "them" is referring to here. previous trials?

Dungeons, Dangers, and Democracy

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