Dungeon Cores are beings born of mana and circumstance. As we take our first steps into the world, freshly born and imbued with only the most basic knowledge of how to function, we rely on our own reserves. We are born full and must, as I so recently had, choose what we will become and gain our Name before our rift forms. Even for entities so intertwined with magic, an unbound rift would ravage our fragile gemstone forms.

Had I been born in less unique circumstances, less interesting surroundings, perhaps I would have avoided my third and most serious brush with death. My first word, spoken in horror, exhausted my reserves completely. The experience is...surreal. The short trickle of mana of my newly formed rift was just enough to keep me alive, unthinking but not unthought. My Name, Sedurzefon, beat at the very center of me - it bound that new mana to a form best suited to me, in my Name, and swelled inside my Emerald form. The seals that defined my being thought Me and so I was. To this day I do not know how much time passed in that selfless span. I am aware of the passage of time in my memory, I felt it go by but in that span there was no thought to mark it.

Perhaps too if my mana had been full, if I had not expended it to right my Core Room and process the memories of that long dead dwarf then my Guide's manifestation would not lie shattered upon my floor. When my fugue lifted, it took me long seconds to process my loss. My loss of self, my loss of the Guide, my loss of time...It was longer than it should have been before I appreciated what I had gained. Not just another set of harsh lessons but also my own source of mana, freedom however slight from the need to consume matter and fallen foes, and access to my own stats.

Sedurzefon, The Emerald Fountain Core Dungeon Minions Level 1 Bastion of Artifice Floors: 5 Rooms: 76 Favoured Minions: 0/1

Mana: 15.7/50 (+0.3/s)

Dungeon Points: 0

Named Locations: 2/2 Bosses: 0/5

Traits: Voracious Innominate, Heir In The Cradle, Dungeon Archivist

The Glorious Constructs (CONDITIONS UNMET), Tasglann Nilavarai (LOCATION UNDEFINED) Warning! You have no Minions! Geas: Dungeon Conservator Infamy: 0. The World is oblivious to your existence. Expeditions Locked

I imagine for a normal dungeon, the first time they opened their status there was less to process. I had gained traits, one apparently potent enough to come with a Geas. I had not so much as tailored my own Core Room and already the hand of Fate had placed its will upon me. A Geas is blessing and curse both, earned by Dungeons over the course of our lives by our actions and intents. They guide and shape us - to follow a Geas is to reap rich rewards, to turn from it can bring ruin and devastation upon a rebellious Dungeon. In rare cases like that of The Mourngates, it was possible to free oneself from Fate by defeating and surpassing the Geas -

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I paused. Ah, it would appear I had learned something.

I turned my attention to the shattered tablet, beautifully polished and deeply veined serpentine cracked and rent upon the basalt floor. The fractal runes I'd seen before ran through the four fragments, each graven mark taking the space of another. It was so richly wrought that even the finest powder was the same - each tiniest shard of that wondrous slab carved into so finely that the more I focused my attention the less stone there was, seeming to have been etched so finely that what the words were really carved into was each other...

I was drawn in, enamoured by the elegant depth. I knew what I was looking upon now, the true nature of my Guide. This was no mere instruction manual of tricks and stratagems, this was the history of my kind. I dove into the script, each rune more minute than the last, each slender cut lined with a million others...thousands...hundreds...dozens...one...

I was blinded. I can only describe it as the most magnificent flash of light when I finally comprehended that single rune. Leshalinod, I read, the Dungeon once known as the Mourngates, a Red Star Garnet with eleven rays of palest rutile. In that isolated glyph lay yet more, its whole history laid bare before me. I had gleaned its Name, could find it again, could learn of it and its experiences. There was a path to it and from it back to me, narrow and dark with my own bright light at the end. It stretched towards me...

I returned to myself, reeling and exhausted. Motes of mana hung in the air, in a fine line towards a broken pebble. Not the bright green of my own make but...brown, a colour that should have tasted to my senses of mud but instead evoked...loss, memory, commonality and...chromium. A hard but brittle metal, resistant to corrosion and...

Common to both emerald and garnet. Leshalinod. Somehow that ancient fallen core had made a connection to me through its rune, through my Guide, through time and space. The motes dissipated, the link breaking. I was exhausted and knew I had expended all my mana, the cost much higher than I could have paid even at my fullest, as I was now. Full to bursting with a strange, metallic mana; familiar and alien. A gift from one core to another, shaped and processed through our common elements to a form I could receive.

I had much to absorb and process, the experience so profound and solemn and beyond my comprehension. I knew I was the beneficiary of some great working but what that was or what it meant...was truly beyond me. I was humbled and moved but very carefully not overwhelmed, gently extricated and replenished from my wanton plunge into the serpentine chronicle. I owed my antecedent a debt that could never be repaid, only honoured for though I had not fathomed its legacy I knew in some indefinable way that Leshalinod was no more.

Exercising my will, I rose from the floor on a rising column of basalt. It glowed silver as it grew, bright and hissing where I turned my boon to solid stone. At the base an octagon of onyx expanded, twenty five centimetres tall precisely and five thick, the hollow behind it a pristine bowenite of deep forest green, coruscating patterns formed by imbued calcite. Atop my pedestal, I raised a short lip of viridescent obsidian, layer by layer to reflect my light back to my core. Beneath me sprung a gentle font of clear cavern water, glittering with silicates. It poured into the basin below, reflecting my Core Room in flickering greens of all hues. I capped the eight walls with black bronze, applied a century of flowing water to the basalt plinth, edges smoothed and polished to a brilliant sheen.

The detritus of my birth was raised from the floor, tools restored, ingots and gems returned to their rightful place. Every speck of dust I consumed, barring those from the guide - those I was careful not to turn my focus upon. I made whole the walls and ceiling, raised the flagstone beneath my fountain a step, burnished the brass, moved the workbenches to array against the walls. It was small, for now, enough space for a handful of artisans to work directly in my influence. In the neighbouring chambers I lit braziers with nether-cap charcoal, leaving them skewed and broken but taking from them anything I deemed of use.

Finally, to honour my beneficient procursator I banded myself with eleven rays of rutile, meeting directly before my rift.

It was simple work and cathartic. I felt more right, more firm in myself as the changes I wrought began to complete. The glow of my will faded from a bright silver, taking on a verdant hue the more I worked. As the rays met at my focus, I took a moment to simply be, to consider carefully before taking my next steps. I had encountered many dangers already, the worst entirely through my own naive hubris and carelessness. The Warlord lurked somewhere above but I had time. My infamy remained at 0, the world entirely unaware of my existence.

It was time to examine my schema; and meticulously plan my first minion.