I had limited time and resources to effectuate the changes to the Dungeon that I wanted. My current mana stood at an even 50, equivalent to a little more than eight days of mana generation minus the cost to fix the dungeon and the silverium coins (costing 2 entire mana each!). I also had six Demesne Points.

I wanted to get the low-hanging fruit out of the way first, before doing the radical things. That meant fixing the dungeon rooms.

First up, the Dart Trap Room. To improve basic functionality, I needed to fix the trigger and the firing of the darts. I had thought about how to solve this for a bit before deciding that the best way would be to simply separate the darts from the skeleton entirely, thus making sure they had room to fire properly. But if the darts were separate, then that made them more obvious. What I needed was a dynamic setup that had slightly different results each time. That required randomization.

The thing about randomization was it was actually a little bit hard to get true randomization. Most early computers couldn’t generate random numbers; in order to do it, programmers had to use a “seed,” which was usually the computer’s internal clock. Funnily enough, I did have a clock in my dungeon–the moss clock. That clock even kept working while I was locked-out.

Huh, I just now realized that the moss clock was visible to delvers who came to the basement of the shaft. That could have been embarrassing (or funny). I could make a sundial and use that, but then nighttime would always have the same trigger conditions. Wait! There was another timepiece I learned about–the pendulum!

Okay–first up, the Bridge room.

I deleted the rock-fall trap and made the roof solid again. Then I started to create a pendulum made of steel that hung from the roof. The wire needed to hold a lot of weight, and I wanted it strong enough to withstand attacks by delvers, so I made a steel cable. Threading the steel down the length was slow and tedious. I made a very large, very heavy, steel ball at the end of it, with its center about at the height of the goblin leader’s head. I added spikes all around the ball so it looked like an oversized medieval mace. I tested the pendulum and after some adjustments (and wall repairs), I got it right. The ball swung from near one side of the shaft to the other in a slow loop of death. Frankly, it was meant to be more scary than deadly, as it could easily be bypassed by simply crawling under it (although it would seem much more perilous when swinging parallel to the bridge).

With the “Deathulum” set, I moved on to the next part. On the far side of the bridge, I made a new wooden door with a keyhole, just like the one to the Skeleton room. That was it for the bridge room, for now.

Next, I switched my focus to the Spider Pot Room. I was a little bit lost on how I could improve this and, considering how much I needed to do, figured I should only make a few light touches. To another one of the pots, I added another spider and key; I also added just a key to another otherwise empty pot.

Now, I returned to the Dart Trap Room. I thought this room needed a total revamp, so I wiped it clean of the skeleton, the ring of keys, the trap, and even the moss (I probably shouldn’t have rebuilt the room just before–oh well). The very first thing I did was put another door with a prominent keyhole in the exit.

Then, I made a new skeleton, this one lying on the floor near a side wall, as if he suddenly fell down. I added leather armor padding to cover the skeleton’s chest similar (but not exactly the same) as what the goblin leader had. I wondered if I could forcibly deteriorate the leather so it would seem really old and the answer was ‘yes.’ I added nearly worn-away leather boots and a hat too. Then I made a very rusted–yes I could do that too–short sword lying near the body. Finally, I added several steel flechettes, about four inches long, that were embedded in the remains of the leather armor, the top of the skull, and even the floor. The ensemble gave the impression that this guy was a fighter who had been hit and killed by the steel darts.

For the next phase, I laid several dart trap shooters into the ceiling. I set them to have several launchers all in a line, arrayed diagonally to the walls of the room and starting in the far corner near the skeleton. The first row had three holes for flechettes, the next four, and so on, covering about a quarter of the ceiling. In total, there were six different launcher sets. Very close to the corner, I set an iron plate with a hook into the wall, and hung a key ring that had four keys, similar to the previous version. I used Trap Creation and set the launchers to fire one of their darts when the key ring was removed from the hook.

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All that was left to do was to set the trap’s trigger conditions. For that, I needed another door–no, a portal!

I expanded my demesne off to the side a bit and carved out a new room. This would serve as the antechamber to my dungeon. In both rooms, I carved shallow alcoves that would house the portals necessary to make the link. Then, I reached for Tenebrous Portal and willed a portal to fill the alcove in the Dart Trap Room. An arched stone entrance appeared that looked same to the one I had absorbed (albeit with a different size). The cost for creating the portal was 11 mana. I repeated the construction in the mirror space in the new antechamber. But it wasn’t complete; I needed to connect the two halves. Tenebrous Portal gave me an instinctive understanding of the process. I reached with my will towards one of the portals, and began to draw out of it a connection much like one pulls putty. The portal gave me a similar sticky, even gunky sensation as I pulled, as if it was gum that was trying to stick to my very will. Ew. I carefully, but quickly, pulled it towards the other portal and when it met, it attached with a splorch.

The portal didn’t turn on automatically, there was a mechanism within the construct (inscrutable to me) that allowed the portal to be turned on when it had enough mana. I pushed the required mana into the portal to start the process. I pushed a bit of mana into the connection, then a bit more and a bit more than that. After another 11 mana, the portal was fully prepared.

I mentally commanded the portal to turn “on.” The spaces in-between the black frames of the portals shimmered into an black iridescent film, so thin that it seemed two dimensional to my senses. I turned it off. I turned it on again. I turned it off again. I had a fully operational portal!

Tenebrous Portal 2 obtained.

That was surprisingly easy.

Anyways, I checked everything over and all of the pieces were finally in place. It was time, my beautiful, beautiful friend, Trap Creation.

I mentally prepared myself for my biggest challenge yet. I started with the dart tubes in the ceiling of the Dart Trap Room. For each tube in a row, I assigned a number. For example, the first row contained a set of three tubes, so I gave each the number 1, 2, 3. I did the same for all six rows, but varying the order of numbers as randomly as I could.

Then I went to the pendulum and shaft, and set Trap Creation to divide the circle the pendulum swung around in into eight zones. For each zone, I mapped a conditional connection to one of the numbered tubes in each dart trap. So for example, zone 1 of the pendulum was connected to row 1, tube 1, but so was zone 4 and zone 7. In this way, the launchers would only launch the dart in the tube with the corresponding number.

I then made conditional connections between the zones, the various keys in the dungeon, and the keyholes of the relevant doors. Continuing my example, zone 1 connected one key in the Spider Pot room to the keyhole of the bridge door and one key on the key ring to the Skeleton Room door. Each zone had a different combination, but I did keep some consistencies: the door key to the exit door of the Dart Trap room would always be one of the keys on the key ring; the keys for the other two doors would always be split between the two rooms.

Trap Creation was starting to strain to keep all of these overlapping connections, but I tamped down and held everything together in my mind while moving to the next part. Focusing as much as I could on the portal, I then pushed the skill to make a connection between the portal and the pendulum’s circle. I finally issued my order for the trigger condition–whenever a person exited the “inside” portal, Trap Creation would check the position of the pendulum ball and whichever zone the ball was “most” in would trigger the matching conditional connections. Trap Creation settled in and everything clicked into place.

Trap Creation 5 obtained.

Trap Creation 6 obtained.

Double Success! I was over-the-moon that my plan had worked–I could kiss Trap Creation!

I basked in my glory for a few minutes. The dart trap and the key combinations were now pseudo-randomized.

But then I checked my remaining mana and saw I was low again. Damn, that portal had been so expensive--

--and so worth it.