You have awakened.

Your soul is strong and fate smiles upon you, granting you Life as a Dungeon Core.

You must choose a single Core Archetype of [Rare] or below to gain your Name, shape your first Dungeon Chamber and unlock Core Attunements.

My mistake was obvious, in hindsight. Even as I read the full missive I realised where I had gone wrong but I did not yet understand the scope of it. By exercising my will for the first time, I had Awakened. Before I had simply been born like any infant but was not yet a person, an individual, an entity. I was Tabula Rasa, a blank slate taking in my environment and being shaped by it. I had not so much as a Name to identify myself and I had consumed the entire lasting legacy and experience of a sapient individual. At the time, I simply viewed the lesson as an amusing anecdote, a simple mistake with no lasting repercussion. I accepted the missive and began to browse my choices. They ran alphabetically and though I could tell that there were many missing I simply assumed as any Dungeon would that they were simply missing some environmental requirement. I could hardly choose to be a Volcanic Dungeon without a volcano for example and so was unsurprised to find it missing.

It was a vast and varied selection nonetheless. I could be a font of corruption, blighting the world with my mere presence. I could choose to do so as a twisted hive, sending forth drones to sack the world and guard my halls in thick, poisonous clouds, as a subtle, seeping psychic resonance that ensnared the very minds of interlopers to drive them mad, to rewrite them to my whims and serve my ambitions.

The latter I rejected immediately, having almost suffered such a fate myself I had no desire to do likewise to others. In fact, none of the various corruption archetypes attracted me at all.

Nor did those that shaped my nature to that of a Temple, either with myself as a center of worship nor as an object of it. I wished to build grand edifices it was true, the grandeur attracted me but I had no desire for apotheosis real or pretended. I was a Dungeon Core, reality was already mine to play with. Likewise I ignored archetypes that would turn me into a mausoleum or necrarchy. I had already stumbled across one corpse so these seemed a natural shortcut to greater things, consuming the ancient dwarf and observing my immediate surroundings made clear some ancient cataclysm had no doubt provided a glut of the dead to fill my halls. Yet this did not appeal either. The dwarf’s experience had provided me with an appreciation for life.

A locus of industry appealed, oh yes, but it did not sate. So too did the form of forgotten repositories of ancient lore and knowledge. I hungered both to exercise what I had learned and my greed for new knowledge itched and squirmed to refuse but I did not desire either for their own sake. The fires of industry did not appeal to me for their own sake, nor did stacks of scrolls and secrets. I did not wish simply to know or to build, endlessly without cease. It was a start however that helped me narrow my search.

While I searched my light continued to spill from my Core. My magic had eaten a way through the pile and air flowed across my surface once more, dim and distant in a way I found most relaxing. A Dungeon needs an entrance, it’s Core cannot stand to be forever sealed away from the world. It is our greatest weakness, yet I cannot find it in me to resent it. Were we not connected to the world we would have no source of novelty in our eternal existence. I suppose in a way that need is a strength too. It was this that led to my final decision, for where my light fell I expanded freely. Each chamber was claimed without thought or care, without difficulty. I had discovered something before I even had a name that many Dungeons never gained the chance to discover - the cap upon our total rooms and floors may be bypassed for the cap is a limit on what we can create, not what we can own. I had claimed several dozen chambers and four additional levels when my view of my choices was obscured by another popup.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

This Cavern has been claimed by the Warlord Gitsnik Hammerfetish.

Attempting to contest this claim will notify Warlord Gitsnik Hammerfetish and be seen as a hostile act, pitting your strength against each other.

Do you wish to continue?

I froze at a new sensation. My light had stopped as some impermeable barrier, one my innate knowledge recognised as a border between realms. It was rare to encounter as a Dungeon unless breached, invaders seeking to master the Dungeon and wrest it’s control away room by room until securing victory by claiming it’s Core. That was a fate I had no desire to invite.

I declined the attempt almost instantly, feeling the edges of my domain carefully. Where this portion of dwarf hold had fallen, it was recognised somehow as separate but outside it’s crafted walls apparently laid some great cavern. That cavern was the dominion of some sapient Warlord it would seem and yet…

The popup had not stated a domain. It had specified the cavern had been claimed, not that it belonged to the Warlord. This spoke of contest and raised a perplexing question - whom did this Warlord claim ownership from? Or what?

My greatest fear was that I had been borne bordering another Dungeon. My innate knowledge was not complete, I did not know much of what would happen in such an event. But I knew, deep in my Core, a few small certainties. Against this Warlord Hammerfetish or his opposition I had not yet any defence beyond their ignorance of my existence, that a Core was a mighty resource to any who could claim it, and that I had no love within me of strange neighbours...and this creature's name was strange indeed.

Congratulations! You have selected the Core Archetype Bastion of Artifice [Rare].

Your domain will be a fortress of invention and mastery. While this Archetype grants no direct control over it’s created monsters and residents, those within your walls find inspiration at every turn. Additionally, the cost of creating and processing resources is halved and automatically gain the blueprint of any defensive device created within your walls for free.

Once per core level, you may bestow a sapient resident of your Bastion with a Muse, allowing you to shape and guide their creations.

Gain 2 Schema Slots and 1 Schema of [Uncommon] or Below

Instantly I felt complex runes and seals form within me, at my very core. Directly at my center they formed, forming an interlocking and overlapping series of rings. From within I felt a connection form, a tiny opening form within me that began to leak mana into me, bound and defined by my new nature. The mana I had worked with before was rough, raw, elemental but this was refined, purified and shaped to a purpose. I knew already that it was suited to creation, production, invention and discovery, to recording what I learned, to fortification, entrenchment, to defence and strategy. Uses for these purposes would come easily to me, as it did to my thoughts, but to others it would be poorly suited. No overt penalties yet but I had decisions still to make.