Titan of Steel (Dungeoncore)
- Thread starter We Just Write
- Start date
- Original Novel Fantasy
Grosstoad
Birdbrain - Dick - Rules-Lawyer - Creeper
- Location
- East of Sun, West of Moon
Bureaucracy, much like democracy, is a horrible, terrible thing... Until you consider the alternative.
Except it takes even more time and effort to accomplish that, and you've got to worry about plucky young adventurers finding out.
And then there's the paperwork to keep yourself connected to your agents doing all the string-pulling to ensure that everything goes according to plan.
Keep it at 1:1. At least that way it's obvious when the assassins are after you.
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Sure, I guess? Not like I'd be inclined to stop you.
The Concert Titan
As Gart crested the hill, he came face to face with the absurd sight of six people pushing a Dungeon up the other side.
The Dungeon itself was obviously mature. Its ground floor was made mostly of wheels and axles, and a stair-step motif decorated some of the armor panels covering its upper flanks. Yet it was barely five floors high in total. If it was one of the legendary Titans, it must have been the runt of the litter.
Still, that left each of the pushers bearing the weight of a building. Clearly, something more was afoot, even if these were Adventurers; there were plenty of people in the caravan of wagons and two-wheeled clockwork vehicles behind it, and their involvement wasn't necessary.
As if to demonstrate, one of the pushers stopped and held up a hand. A woman with wings fluttered out of of the caravan to relieve him, and he fell back and climbed into one of the wagons.
The dungeon barely slowed its climb during the exchange.
Gart turned around and didn't stop running until he reached the village.
Aniva funneled one last burst of her mana into the Titan's rear engine as it crested the hill. Then she heard the clutch pop and the Titan accelerated down the far side. A great cheer wafted up the path behind her, but she kept her eyes on the Titan until it came to a stop a few hundred feet short of the crossroads. A few more Groupies joined her to watch it settle. Backs were slapped, congratulations exchanged. Then everyone got to work.
A dozen diggers got to work on a pit, joined by a couple of Clockwork excavators from the dungeon. Cyclists took reams of leaflets from the printers' wagon, then fanned out through the local road network. Other workers marked out avenues, erected tents and, when the first cyclist returned with brewery recommendations, sent out a convoy of freshly unloaded wagons to purchase beer.
Meanwhile, the lazy and exhausted were treated to the rare sight of a transforming Titan. Armor plates folded up to form a deck twice as wide as the Titan's body, and struts materialized to support them. The stair-step decorations detached and slid into place as actual staircases. When the pit was finished, the Titan rolled itself astride it and lowered its bottom four decks below ground. Then the wheels came off and carried the drivetrain up a ramp to the deck, where the scraps rearranged themselves as railings and benches.
The real show, if anyone had been there to see it, unfolded below ground. The great tubes of the engines themselves crawled through the halls and assembled on the second deck. Then the floor above them slid aside an elevator lifted the newly built pipe organ into view.
As the console wove itself together, Aniva swooped in and seized the microphone that came with it. As the last pusher, she got the honor of performing the sound check.
"Testing, Testing." The Titan blasted her voice from the tallest pipe. Then she leaned over the console, pulled out a few stops and hammered a chord.
Gart was at home, trying to decipher a copy of the "concert programme" leaflet, when a strange melody rippled over the hills.
"Oh."
The last few fans filed onto the VIP deck, handing their mana beads to the box-equipped Clockwork Clerk on top of the stairs. Another swung the gate closed at the bottom. Meanwhile, a third Clockwork Clerk prodded the last of the previous crowd towards the Loot Deck's exit, almost stepping on a little girl as she dashed back for one last souvenir. Behind them, the murmuring crowd hushed themselves as a man came up the stage elevator - a technician, it turned out, to check the connections between the instruments and the magical amplifiers.
Down below, Gart drained the last of his beverage and palmed the pad to order more. It flashed red, indicating that he'd hit his limit.
"No fair," he complained to the Groupie next to him, "How come you got to order a third?"
"The Titan knows my limit," the Groupie replied with a chuckle. "Most people don't have the mana reserves to pay for more than two beers."
"I guess I'm out then, see you tomorrow."
Gart made to leave, but lingered in the doorway for a moment as the band began to play upstairs. A local act, if the glowing sign above the bar was to be believed. Gart didn't, honestly; although the tune seemed to be a variation on a hometown ballad, he didn't know of any local that skilled with Electric-tier instruments.
He slipped into the crowd on the lawn in front of the Titan. He recognized about a quarter of them - half local and half from the Titan's caravan. The lawn had a scattering of Adventurers as well, but most of the unfamiliar faces seemed to be pilgrims from the lake towns. He guessed that about a third of them were there for the music, and the rest came for the opportunity to see or even enter a Titan without fear.
Gart pushed through the turnstile at the exit - fortunately, they only made you pay beads on the way in - and the sense of crowding eased. He appreciated the wide lanes of the temporary town that had sprung up - lodging, shops, cycle rentals and the all-important bead makers without whom nobody could enter. He was just about clear of the town, too, when he heard some chanting from the final alleyway.
"3, 2, 1, go!" followed by the pop of a teleportation spell.
Naomi flashed in less three strides from a hulking Clockwork. She snapped out a shield spell with one hand, while working up and firing a rust ray with the other. The ray caught it in the knee, but it still made a final lunge before Boaz got behind it, punched his battle-pick through its hull and wrestled it to the ground.
Naomi kept the rust ray on target, corroding through its chest plate and locking up its control gears, while Boaz turned his attention to the bin it dropped, and looted a few garments. Satisfied that the threat was neutralized, Naomi turned her ray on the steel floor when someone grabbed her wrist.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Naomi had half a mind to put an energy bolt through the stranger's head with her free hand, but tradition stopped her. Assuming he weren't flagrantly violating one of the laws of Adventuring, he was trying to save her life.
"Who are you?" Boaz asked.
"Call me Bubs, the bouncer. Congrats on scoring a backstage pass, but you really shouldn't go any further."
"Why not?" Naomi asked. "For a high level dungeon, this place is barely defended at all."
Bubs winced. "You're telling me you didn't even notice the main defense upstairs?"
Naomi did a quick scrying, then reported, "Upstairs is just a concert, and about four minions."
"It's a concert with a bunch of Groupies in the audience. These Groupies follow the Concert Titan around the land and hang out inside it a bunch. You know what that makes them?"
"Adventurers," answered Boaz, "probably really strong ones."
"Yep," said Bubs, "But also music fans. If something stops the music, they get really mad. Now guess what happens if you breach the lower deck?"
"Err, the music stops?" Naomi guessed.
"Smart gal, got it in one. The exit's over there. Keep the shirts if you want."
Boaz unfolded one of the t-shirts he'd looted, black with white block letters on the front. It read, "I raided a Titan and all I got was this lousy shirt."
As the sun set and the last of the festival-goers trickled out of the lawn, the Concert Titan assessed its gains. Nearly fifty thousand mana in beads, seven probable new Groupies, topped off mana batteries, twenty-seven barrels of beer and improved elevator blueprints from a visiting Tinker. Outside of its influence, the caravan also seemed fully replenished.
It also counted its losses. Fourteen hundred and eighty mana in renovations, twelve of its bicycles lost in action, and one Heavy Lifting Clockwork totaled by invaders. Altogether, a major improvement over its inbound situation.
It still felt a twinge of embarrassment. It always took pride in rolling into town under its own power, even if it needed to tap its Groupies in the middle. If only the eastern pass hadn't been blocked by heavy snow, it would have arrived at this junction with about four thousand mana to spare.
Tomorrow, though, it needed to pack up. While the pilgrims could keep profitably trickling in for weeks, the firstfruits had already been reaped, and so the enterprise's further income would be much less. That'd still be fine for the Concert Titan, but not so much for the caravan.
The wanderers that made up its core audience were already growing restless. Too much more delay and they'd move on themselves. Or they'd get too comfortable and the caravan would leave them behind. And the local food-distribution network had already run out of cheap reserves, forcing the caravan to cart in grain and beer from ever further away. For the sake of the party, it must move on.
It examined its map of the region, freshly obtained from a wandering cartographer. One town looked particularly promising - a trade junction at the base of a river delta. At 94 mana per mile over level ground, and allocating nine thousand mana to refill its emergency reserves, it should be able to reach the junction with several thousand mana left.
The Concert Titan piped a sigh through the smallest tube of the grand organ. For all the work it put into moving, the best parts of its world tour were the short periods where it could bury its wheels.
(Fin)
The Dungeon itself was obviously mature. Its ground floor was made mostly of wheels and axles, and a stair-step motif decorated some of the armor panels covering its upper flanks. Yet it was barely five floors high in total. If it was one of the legendary Titans, it must have been the runt of the litter.
Still, that left each of the pushers bearing the weight of a building. Clearly, something more was afoot, even if these were Adventurers; there were plenty of people in the caravan of wagons and two-wheeled clockwork vehicles behind it, and their involvement wasn't necessary.
As if to demonstrate, one of the pushers stopped and held up a hand. A woman with wings fluttered out of of the caravan to relieve him, and he fell back and climbed into one of the wagons.
The dungeon barely slowed its climb during the exchange.
Gart turned around and didn't stop running until he reached the village.
Aniva funneled one last burst of her mana into the Titan's rear engine as it crested the hill. Then she heard the clutch pop and the Titan accelerated down the far side. A great cheer wafted up the path behind her, but she kept her eyes on the Titan until it came to a stop a few hundred feet short of the crossroads. A few more Groupies joined her to watch it settle. Backs were slapped, congratulations exchanged. Then everyone got to work.
A dozen diggers got to work on a pit, joined by a couple of Clockwork excavators from the dungeon. Cyclists took reams of leaflets from the printers' wagon, then fanned out through the local road network. Other workers marked out avenues, erected tents and, when the first cyclist returned with brewery recommendations, sent out a convoy of freshly unloaded wagons to purchase beer.
Meanwhile, the lazy and exhausted were treated to the rare sight of a transforming Titan. Armor plates folded up to form a deck twice as wide as the Titan's body, and struts materialized to support them. The stair-step decorations detached and slid into place as actual staircases. When the pit was finished, the Titan rolled itself astride it and lowered its bottom four decks below ground. Then the wheels came off and carried the drivetrain up a ramp to the deck, where the scraps rearranged themselves as railings and benches.
The real show, if anyone had been there to see it, unfolded below ground. The great tubes of the engines themselves crawled through the halls and assembled on the second deck. Then the floor above them slid aside an elevator lifted the newly built pipe organ into view.
As the console wove itself together, Aniva swooped in and seized the microphone that came with it. As the last pusher, she got the honor of performing the sound check.
"Testing, Testing." The Titan blasted her voice from the tallest pipe. Then she leaned over the console, pulled out a few stops and hammered a chord.
Gart was at home, trying to decipher a copy of the "concert programme" leaflet, when a strange melody rippled over the hills.
"Oh."
The last few fans filed onto the VIP deck, handing their mana beads to the box-equipped Clockwork Clerk on top of the stairs. Another swung the gate closed at the bottom. Meanwhile, a third Clockwork Clerk prodded the last of the previous crowd towards the Loot Deck's exit, almost stepping on a little girl as she dashed back for one last souvenir. Behind them, the murmuring crowd hushed themselves as a man came up the stage elevator - a technician, it turned out, to check the connections between the instruments and the magical amplifiers.
Down below, Gart drained the last of his beverage and palmed the pad to order more. It flashed red, indicating that he'd hit his limit.
"No fair," he complained to the Groupie next to him, "How come you got to order a third?"
"The Titan knows my limit," the Groupie replied with a chuckle. "Most people don't have the mana reserves to pay for more than two beers."
"I guess I'm out then, see you tomorrow."
Gart made to leave, but lingered in the doorway for a moment as the band began to play upstairs. A local act, if the glowing sign above the bar was to be believed. Gart didn't, honestly; although the tune seemed to be a variation on a hometown ballad, he didn't know of any local that skilled with Electric-tier instruments.
He slipped into the crowd on the lawn in front of the Titan. He recognized about a quarter of them - half local and half from the Titan's caravan. The lawn had a scattering of Adventurers as well, but most of the unfamiliar faces seemed to be pilgrims from the lake towns. He guessed that about a third of them were there for the music, and the rest came for the opportunity to see or even enter a Titan without fear.
Gart pushed through the turnstile at the exit - fortunately, they only made you pay beads on the way in - and the sense of crowding eased. He appreciated the wide lanes of the temporary town that had sprung up - lodging, shops, cycle rentals and the all-important bead makers without whom nobody could enter. He was just about clear of the town, too, when he heard some chanting from the final alleyway.
"3, 2, 1, go!" followed by the pop of a teleportation spell.
Naomi flashed in less three strides from a hulking Clockwork. She snapped out a shield spell with one hand, while working up and firing a rust ray with the other. The ray caught it in the knee, but it still made a final lunge before Boaz got behind it, punched his battle-pick through its hull and wrestled it to the ground.
Naomi kept the rust ray on target, corroding through its chest plate and locking up its control gears, while Boaz turned his attention to the bin it dropped, and looted a few garments. Satisfied that the threat was neutralized, Naomi turned her ray on the steel floor when someone grabbed her wrist.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Naomi had half a mind to put an energy bolt through the stranger's head with her free hand, but tradition stopped her. Assuming he weren't flagrantly violating one of the laws of Adventuring, he was trying to save her life.
"Who are you?" Boaz asked.
"Call me Bubs, the bouncer. Congrats on scoring a backstage pass, but you really shouldn't go any further."
"Why not?" Naomi asked. "For a high level dungeon, this place is barely defended at all."
Bubs winced. "You're telling me you didn't even notice the main defense upstairs?"
Naomi did a quick scrying, then reported, "Upstairs is just a concert, and about four minions."
"It's a concert with a bunch of Groupies in the audience. These Groupies follow the Concert Titan around the land and hang out inside it a bunch. You know what that makes them?"
"Adventurers," answered Boaz, "probably really strong ones."
"Yep," said Bubs, "But also music fans. If something stops the music, they get really mad. Now guess what happens if you breach the lower deck?"
"Err, the music stops?" Naomi guessed.
"Smart gal, got it in one. The exit's over there. Keep the shirts if you want."
Boaz unfolded one of the t-shirts he'd looted, black with white block letters on the front. It read, "I raided a Titan and all I got was this lousy shirt."
As the sun set and the last of the festival-goers trickled out of the lawn, the Concert Titan assessed its gains. Nearly fifty thousand mana in beads, seven probable new Groupies, topped off mana batteries, twenty-seven barrels of beer and improved elevator blueprints from a visiting Tinker. Outside of its influence, the caravan also seemed fully replenished.
It also counted its losses. Fourteen hundred and eighty mana in renovations, twelve of its bicycles lost in action, and one Heavy Lifting Clockwork totaled by invaders. Altogether, a major improvement over its inbound situation.
It still felt a twinge of embarrassment. It always took pride in rolling into town under its own power, even if it needed to tap its Groupies in the middle. If only the eastern pass hadn't been blocked by heavy snow, it would have arrived at this junction with about four thousand mana to spare.
Tomorrow, though, it needed to pack up. While the pilgrims could keep profitably trickling in for weeks, the firstfruits had already been reaped, and so the enterprise's further income would be much less. That'd still be fine for the Concert Titan, but not so much for the caravan.
The wanderers that made up its core audience were already growing restless. Too much more delay and they'd move on themselves. Or they'd get too comfortable and the caravan would leave them behind. And the local food-distribution network had already run out of cheap reserves, forcing the caravan to cart in grain and beer from ever further away. For the sake of the party, it must move on.
It examined its map of the region, freshly obtained from a wandering cartographer. One town looked particularly promising - a trade junction at the base of a river delta. At 94 mana per mile over level ground, and allocating nine thousand mana to refill its emergency reserves, it should be able to reach the junction with several thousand mana left.
The Concert Titan piped a sigh through the smallest tube of the grand organ. For all the work it put into moving, the best parts of its world tour were the short periods where it could bury its wheels.
(Fin)
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- Location
- In The Shadowbear Slave Camp
Okay, this is fucking adorable.
Also, I can't help but think of this:
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Nice! Any preferences for what I name the threadmark series?
I'm probably going to edit the remainder into the same post; it's shorter than I thought it would be.
Muses are funny. I spend four days trying to scrape together a few hundred words of MWC, then suddenly I get a thousand words of unplanned fanfic out of nowhere.
...and done.
Muses are funny. I spend four days trying to scrape together a few hundred words of MWC, then suddenly I get a thousand words of unplanned fanfic out of nowhere.
...and done.
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We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Certainly a very interesting way for a Titan to go about getting the Mana they need. Tempted to make this canon and have them trundle into my newly-founded nation sometime.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
It might just be a relatively recent Titan, or even one that normally stays on the outskirts of Dragon territory and is thus mostly unknown.
Or I just write could wave his author bat and retcon it in. It's not like this setting has a large mass of established lore to be upset by minor retcons.
It's a good Titan, and despite the seemingly odd theme is actually quite plausible in the setting described thus far. Personally I think it needs more crazed drummers and guitar solos, but that's just me.
Or I just write could wave his author bat and retcon it in. It's not like this setting has a large mass of established lore to be upset by minor retcons.
It's a good Titan, and despite the seemingly odd theme is actually quite plausible in the setting described thus far. Personally I think it needs more crazed drummers and guitar solos, but that's just me.
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So a Daemonic Dungeon. I'm thinking keeping people trapped in constant agony for magical power somehow.
- Location
- Boston
Replace "paperwork" with "blackmail", and it solves all your problems. Leaving a paper trail is the most pants-on-head-retarded way of running a secret society. With blackmail, everyone under your control knows that if they rat out the others, the others will know, and will run their name through the mud, with facts to back it up. In the end, no one will listen to them, and they'll be written off as crazy conspiracy theorists. That way, everyone keeps everyone else in line, like a bunch of lobsters in a bucket. Mutually assured destruction keeps would-be whistleblowers nice and docile. Making sure that no one in the group knows who the ringleader is, if one exists at all, ties up the last few loose ends that would otherwise lead to collapse. And hey presto! You're done. Now you can take over the world, with the greatest of ease.
Setting up a shadow cabal or secret society is like tying a complex knot: if you slip up once during construction, the whole thing falls apart. If you do it improperly, it'll gradually loosen and grow unstable over time. Do it right, though, and it'll be self-reinforcing.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
Wouldn't work long-term, the people would either grow inured to the agony or just shut down and die. Good and bad are relative; if someone is exposed to pain for long enough, the pain becomes the new normal and stops being processed as pain, or their brain just shuts down and they die.
You can only hurt people who know what not being hurt feels like, so the dungeon would have to intersperse its agony with periods of not-agony, ideally pleasure, if it wants the agony to remain agonizing.
Even then, many people would eventually shut down at some point, either totally to the point of death, or becoming empty, mindless shells.
In short, it would need a constant supply of new people as the old ones would eventually break, though perhaps not often.
The problem with conspiracies is that every additional person in the know is an additional point of failure. This is why large scale conspiracies tend to fail; only one person needs to fuck up in order to bring the whole thing down.
Successful conspiracies are almost always the ones kept to a very small group of people, as in less than a dozen. You can extend this with careful compartmentalization, but even then there are limits.
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- Location
- Boston
..pretty sure this failure criteria is exactly what I was trying to address with my post: the perfect conspiracy is one where no one is in the know except you, and no one knows who is in the know.
Meh, whatever. Let's just drop this, it's going off-topic.
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- Location
- [Classified]
Hey write, remember the crossovers I talk about planetary annihilation/dungeon core. Now, i want a omake of the MC got the abilities of the commander chassis. Thes Looks on the grand dragons getting kick by a small dox to the atlas titan(it's a giant bot with six legs and two meaty fist capable of smashing dragons face.)
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
If you want it, write it yourself. Surprising as this might be, this story actually isn't intended to be a totally one-sided stomp.
Common Adventuring Gear, Dungeoneering Survival Tips
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Excerpts from the Fourth Edition Starting Adventurer's Guide To Not Dying Horribly
Common Adventuring Gear
Some new Adventurers think that all you need to go Dungeon-Diving or Monster-Hunting is some armor, a weapon, and maybe a few snacks. This is most emphatically not the case, and most Adventurers who go delving while so poorly equipped will wind up dead the first time they go somewhere the Dungeon doesn't want guests. Below is a list of some basic equipment that will greatly increase an Adventurer's life expectancy, and isn't too hard to find.
Basic Magic Primers
Put quite bluntly, most people can muster at least a bit of magic with some practice. It won't be anywhere near as impressive as what a veteran Adventurer can muster, but learning a few spells gives you much better odds of getting out of a tight situation. Chapter two of this book contains instructions for four extremely basic spells that can easily save your life several times over, listed as follows.
-Smokescreen: If you need to get out of a fight immediately, filling the room with opaque smoke can make it a lot easier.
-Healing Light: A basic healing spell, but still one that can save your life if you find yourself bleeding out. Also prevents infections.
-Repulse: A simple pulse of force that shoves away anything you aim it at, which can help with getting nasty monsters out of your face.
-Theme Ping: This spell tells you the theme for the Mana of whatever you point it at, which can give you a decent idea of what sort of abilities they might have. Also useful for spotting disguised Daemons.
Still, don't stop there; pick up a couple of additional primers of starting Magic to increase the range of spells you can cast, and practice each to the point you could cast them reliably while panicking and in extreme pain-because you just might need to.
Mana Beads
It's a simple fact of life that Adventurers often cannot hold enough Mana internally to see them through a full Dungeon Delve. Fortunately, external means of Mana storage are fairly easy to come by, with the most convenient being Mana Beads. Mana Beads are often sorted by color, with those closer to purple holding more Mana-and being MUCH more expensive. All known colors of Mana Bead are listed below, along with the amount of Mana they contain.
-Black: 5 Mana
-Red: 10 Mana
-Orange: 15 Mana
-Yellow: 20 Mana
-Green: 30 Mana
-Blue: 40 Mana
-Purple: 50 Mana
Note: Most spells used by Adventurers use tenths of a Mana Unit to operate, if that.
Other Useful Items
There are some other things aside from those things that can greatly increase an adventurer's life expectancy, but which don't fall into either of the above categories. These can generally be split between consumable and non-consumable items.
A brief list of some consumables Adventurers could find useful for not dying is listed below. This list solely focuses on items an Adventurer could plausibly acquire on a tight budget.
-Grenades: If you open a door and find yourself unexpectedly face-to-face with a large number of monsters who want you dead, an effective way to deal with the problem is to toss an explosive device into the room and then slam the door. That said, this is terribly rude if the Dungeon is currently playing fairly with you.
-Detoxification Potions: Venomous Dungeon monsters and other toxic hazards are fairly common threats, which can easily prove fatal if left untreated; a detox potion doesn't work on all poisons and doesn't totally prevent damage in some cases, but it does work well enough that it can save your life if you take it quickly.
-Warp Tags: By far the cheapest and most accessible of teleportation magic, Warp Tags are keyed to a single location on creation. When activated, they will instantly transport the user to the pre-set destination, being consumed in the process. Cheap Warp Tags are usually limited in range, restricting the Dungeons they're useful in, but if you need to be out of a dangerous situation immediately there are few better options.
WARNING: some Warp Tags require the user's Mana to activate; don't rely these ones, as they can't save you if you're beaten down and drained of Mana. ALWAYS get a Warp Tag with an integrated Mana Bead; even a Black bead can provide more than enough power for a 100-mile hop. Trying to save money here could cost you your life, and you only get one of those.
In addition to consumables, here are some other items that can greatly improve a new Adventurer's chances of getting out of a Dungeon alive. Since these pieces of equipment can be expected to have a fairly long service life, less emphasis on affordability was placed.
-Protective Eyewear: You do NOT want to be blinded, particularly by getting nasty stuff in your eyes. A good pair of goggles can stop that from happening. Try and get ones that won't fog up if possible, since obstructed vision is always something you want to avoid, no matter the source.
-Good Boots: Another part of your body you really don't want suddenly damaged is your feet; a spike through your sole is both agonizing and largely immobilizing. Again, in a Dungeon you will often need to run from danger, which damaged feet make much more difficult. A properly reinforced set of adventuring boots is designed to prevent such damage from occurring.
-A Light Source: Dungeons are sometimes dark, and non-Dwarf Adventurers can't usually see in complete darkness. As such, having some way to illuminate your surroundings is highly recommended.
Dungeoneering Survival Tips
First and foremost, the majority of Dungeons want Adventurers to challenge them, at least to a degree. They want you to delve in and claim treasures from their depths, but they also want you to prove yourself strong enough to carry those treasures. The reason for this is quite simple; Adventurers are part of a Dungeon's reproductive cycle, not only acting as pollinators when they travel between Dungeons, but also acting in a seed dispersal role. Dungeon seeds are the main vector for both of these roles; those small gems all over Dungeon treasures are there for a reason, after all.
When you're in a Dungeon's comfort zone, excessive paranoia about traps and such usually isn't necessary. At that point, it's not really a fight as far as the Dungeon is concerned, so they will usually 'play fair', marking traps in such a manner as to subtly indicate them to a perceptive Adventurer, or having monsters not go for the kill right away. As long as you show that you are a skilled, competent Adventurer, you'll probably be fine.
Not going in properly equipped and prepared usually means the Dungeon will take a rather dim view of your competence right off the bat. In that case, you'll need to work your butt off in order to prove them wrong. If you don't prove the Dungeon wrong, you will either be hauled back to the entrance by the Dungeon's minions if they're feeling merciful, or killed if they aren't.
That said, if you go too deep into a Dungeon, it stops being a matter of proving yourself worthy to act as a seed-bearer, and starts being a case of desperate self-defense on the Dungeon's part. Thus, the single most important survival skill for any Dungeon-Delver is to recognize when you are leaving a Dungeon's comfort zone. In some cases, this is blessedly simple, with a sign clearly indicating that going beyond a certain point forfeits one's life. In other cases, the Dungeon is capable of outright telling you to back off, either directly or by speaking through a minion. The ONLY times when you should attempt to 'clear the Dungeon' past this comfort zone is if either said Dungeon has given you explicit authorization, or if said Dungeon has been actively causing harm to the region around it.
In the extremely hazardous cases where the end of a Dungeon's comfort zone aren't clearly marked, there are some other indicators which you can use to identify the point at which you should REALLY TURN AROUND AND LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.
-If the frequency of found treasure abruptly drops off, TURN AROUND
-If monster types that previously retreated when non-lethally defeated start suddenly fighting to the death, TURN AROUND
-If puzzles are replaced with concealed deathtraps that go off without any form of warning, TURN AROUND
-If there is a sudden lack of explorable, rewarding side-paths, TURN AROUND
If you don't follow this advice, you will in all likelihood be attacked by dozens of monsters at once coming from both in front of you and behind. If this happens, it means that you have officially gotten to the point where the Dungeon does not feel safe allowing you to continue living. Turning around is no longer an option. Your only choices are as follows: teleport out if possible, win the stupidly lopsided fight you just found yourself in, or die a gruesome death. In almost all scenarios, it will be either Option 1, or Option 3.
If you absolutely must Adventure in a Dungeon beyond their comfort zone, you must do so with the understanding that the Dungeon will be doing EVERYTHING in its power to kill you. This is ONLY a good idea if, as mentioned earlier, the Dungeon is causing severe problems for those living nearby (examples: monster raids, releasing deadly plagues). Regardless, you should go in with at least fifty other Adventurers for backup, check every single surface or object for traps, and get ready for the fight of your life. If you happen to kill the Dungeon in question, don't forget that the Dungeon's inhabitants keep existing when the Dungeon dies; they might try to ambush you on your way out.
Common Adventuring Gear
Some new Adventurers think that all you need to go Dungeon-Diving or Monster-Hunting is some armor, a weapon, and maybe a few snacks. This is most emphatically not the case, and most Adventurers who go delving while so poorly equipped will wind up dead the first time they go somewhere the Dungeon doesn't want guests. Below is a list of some basic equipment that will greatly increase an Adventurer's life expectancy, and isn't too hard to find.
Basic Magic Primers
Put quite bluntly, most people can muster at least a bit of magic with some practice. It won't be anywhere near as impressive as what a veteran Adventurer can muster, but learning a few spells gives you much better odds of getting out of a tight situation. Chapter two of this book contains instructions for four extremely basic spells that can easily save your life several times over, listed as follows.
-Smokescreen: If you need to get out of a fight immediately, filling the room with opaque smoke can make it a lot easier.
-Healing Light: A basic healing spell, but still one that can save your life if you find yourself bleeding out. Also prevents infections.
-Repulse: A simple pulse of force that shoves away anything you aim it at, which can help with getting nasty monsters out of your face.
-Theme Ping: This spell tells you the theme for the Mana of whatever you point it at, which can give you a decent idea of what sort of abilities they might have. Also useful for spotting disguised Daemons.
Still, don't stop there; pick up a couple of additional primers of starting Magic to increase the range of spells you can cast, and practice each to the point you could cast them reliably while panicking and in extreme pain-because you just might need to.
Mana Beads
It's a simple fact of life that Adventurers often cannot hold enough Mana internally to see them through a full Dungeon Delve. Fortunately, external means of Mana storage are fairly easy to come by, with the most convenient being Mana Beads. Mana Beads are often sorted by color, with those closer to purple holding more Mana-and being MUCH more expensive. All known colors of Mana Bead are listed below, along with the amount of Mana they contain.
-Black: 5 Mana
-Red: 10 Mana
-Orange: 15 Mana
-Yellow: 20 Mana
-Green: 30 Mana
-Blue: 40 Mana
-Purple: 50 Mana
Note: Most spells used by Adventurers use tenths of a Mana Unit to operate, if that.
Other Useful Items
There are some other things aside from those things that can greatly increase an adventurer's life expectancy, but which don't fall into either of the above categories. These can generally be split between consumable and non-consumable items.
A brief list of some consumables Adventurers could find useful for not dying is listed below. This list solely focuses on items an Adventurer could plausibly acquire on a tight budget.
-Grenades: If you open a door and find yourself unexpectedly face-to-face with a large number of monsters who want you dead, an effective way to deal with the problem is to toss an explosive device into the room and then slam the door. That said, this is terribly rude if the Dungeon is currently playing fairly with you.
-Detoxification Potions: Venomous Dungeon monsters and other toxic hazards are fairly common threats, which can easily prove fatal if left untreated; a detox potion doesn't work on all poisons and doesn't totally prevent damage in some cases, but it does work well enough that it can save your life if you take it quickly.
-Warp Tags: By far the cheapest and most accessible of teleportation magic, Warp Tags are keyed to a single location on creation. When activated, they will instantly transport the user to the pre-set destination, being consumed in the process. Cheap Warp Tags are usually limited in range, restricting the Dungeons they're useful in, but if you need to be out of a dangerous situation immediately there are few better options.
WARNING: some Warp Tags require the user's Mana to activate; don't rely these ones, as they can't save you if you're beaten down and drained of Mana. ALWAYS get a Warp Tag with an integrated Mana Bead; even a Black bead can provide more than enough power for a 100-mile hop. Trying to save money here could cost you your life, and you only get one of those.
In addition to consumables, here are some other items that can greatly improve a new Adventurer's chances of getting out of a Dungeon alive. Since these pieces of equipment can be expected to have a fairly long service life, less emphasis on affordability was placed.
-Protective Eyewear: You do NOT want to be blinded, particularly by getting nasty stuff in your eyes. A good pair of goggles can stop that from happening. Try and get ones that won't fog up if possible, since obstructed vision is always something you want to avoid, no matter the source.
-Good Boots: Another part of your body you really don't want suddenly damaged is your feet; a spike through your sole is both agonizing and largely immobilizing. Again, in a Dungeon you will often need to run from danger, which damaged feet make much more difficult. A properly reinforced set of adventuring boots is designed to prevent such damage from occurring.
-A Light Source: Dungeons are sometimes dark, and non-Dwarf Adventurers can't usually see in complete darkness. As such, having some way to illuminate your surroundings is highly recommended.
Dungeoneering Survival Tips
First and foremost, the majority of Dungeons want Adventurers to challenge them, at least to a degree. They want you to delve in and claim treasures from their depths, but they also want you to prove yourself strong enough to carry those treasures. The reason for this is quite simple; Adventurers are part of a Dungeon's reproductive cycle, not only acting as pollinators when they travel between Dungeons, but also acting in a seed dispersal role. Dungeon seeds are the main vector for both of these roles; those small gems all over Dungeon treasures are there for a reason, after all.
When you're in a Dungeon's comfort zone, excessive paranoia about traps and such usually isn't necessary. At that point, it's not really a fight as far as the Dungeon is concerned, so they will usually 'play fair', marking traps in such a manner as to subtly indicate them to a perceptive Adventurer, or having monsters not go for the kill right away. As long as you show that you are a skilled, competent Adventurer, you'll probably be fine.
Not going in properly equipped and prepared usually means the Dungeon will take a rather dim view of your competence right off the bat. In that case, you'll need to work your butt off in order to prove them wrong. If you don't prove the Dungeon wrong, you will either be hauled back to the entrance by the Dungeon's minions if they're feeling merciful, or killed if they aren't.
That said, if you go too deep into a Dungeon, it stops being a matter of proving yourself worthy to act as a seed-bearer, and starts being a case of desperate self-defense on the Dungeon's part. Thus, the single most important survival skill for any Dungeon-Delver is to recognize when you are leaving a Dungeon's comfort zone. In some cases, this is blessedly simple, with a sign clearly indicating that going beyond a certain point forfeits one's life. In other cases, the Dungeon is capable of outright telling you to back off, either directly or by speaking through a minion. The ONLY times when you should attempt to 'clear the Dungeon' past this comfort zone is if either said Dungeon has given you explicit authorization, or if said Dungeon has been actively causing harm to the region around it.
In the extremely hazardous cases where the end of a Dungeon's comfort zone aren't clearly marked, there are some other indicators which you can use to identify the point at which you should REALLY TURN AROUND AND LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.
-If the frequency of found treasure abruptly drops off, TURN AROUND
-If monster types that previously retreated when non-lethally defeated start suddenly fighting to the death, TURN AROUND
-If puzzles are replaced with concealed deathtraps that go off without any form of warning, TURN AROUND
-If there is a sudden lack of explorable, rewarding side-paths, TURN AROUND
If you don't follow this advice, you will in all likelihood be attacked by dozens of monsters at once coming from both in front of you and behind. If this happens, it means that you have officially gotten to the point where the Dungeon does not feel safe allowing you to continue living. Turning around is no longer an option. Your only choices are as follows: teleport out if possible, win the stupidly lopsided fight you just found yourself in, or die a gruesome death. In almost all scenarios, it will be either Option 1, or Option 3.
If you absolutely must Adventure in a Dungeon beyond their comfort zone, you must do so with the understanding that the Dungeon will be doing EVERYTHING in its power to kill you. This is ONLY a good idea if, as mentioned earlier, the Dungeon is causing severe problems for those living nearby (examples: monster raids, releasing deadly plagues). Regardless, you should go in with at least fifty other Adventurers for backup, check every single surface or object for traps, and get ready for the fight of your life. If you happen to kill the Dungeon in question, don't forget that the Dungeon's inhabitants keep existing when the Dungeon dies; they might try to ambush you on your way out.
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
I'm not sure if this was ever answered but how do the feral Gremlins feel about our titanic MC? Obviously they're not his servants anymore since they're feral but what does that mean for their relationship?
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
They think he's dead. And the Titan doesn't know they survived either. Still haven't figured out what the response will be when they meet up again.
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
Personally, I wouldn't think there would be many negative feelings on either side. They got hit by an attack that should have killed them both and the Gremlins decided to hide, which was in-line with the original plan.
You aren't truly prepared unless you have a backup light source that you can activate in total darkness.