‘Now for the last Huge room. What should I do?’ Doyle moves his view back to his new forest. ‘There aren’t that many places to carve into. Maybe the tree bark?’
Doyle thinks of a couple other things but none of them satisfy him so he goes through the whole room, piece by piece. The wood platform was a suitable place to carve something. Trees he had thought of already and didn’t want to. Dirt and clovers aren’t the most permanent of things to carve. The ceiling was already scheduled for his sun carving. He paused on the walls, but they didn’t serve much of a purpose except to hold up the roof. A good purpose, but they covered that already. The last piece of the room was almost glossed over, but good thing it wasn’t.
‘The cliff! I want people to climb it already so a little bit of enhancement isn’t out of place. The question is, what do I want to enhance? As it is, the cliff serves one major purpose. To prevent easy access to the herbs above. Thing is that I don’t want to make it impossible. That would be too easy, just making the cliff mirror smooth would prevent a large percentage of people from climbing it early on.’
‘Besides that, I don’t want there to be a right way to climb it. The cliff should be just that, a rocky wall. How can I improve upon that? It already is just that.’
Doyle settles down and considers the cliff for a while. The difficulty of the cliff comes from both the climb and the possibility that a kobold comes along and throw rocks at whoever decided to climb said wall. Unlike the boulder walls in the earlier rooms, he made the cliff look more like one of those rock climbing walls you find in fancy gyms. Rougher of course so it wasn’t too obvious but anyone that had seen one would notice this similarity.
‘I really can’t think of anything right now but I also want to carve something in it.’ Doyle sighs, ‘for now I should keep it simple so I can easily change it later if something comes up. That and this is only the second floor so I shouldn’t really do anything too fancy yet.’
Without a plan, Doyle carves into the cliff face. He wanted a cliff that was cliffier. A line over here to make it sharper. A Gentle curved arc that almost seems to grow off of a protruding rock. Scratching a pre-existing line deeper to enhance a shadow. Doyle even adds on more material to certain parts to match other parts.
He doesn’t go fast, in fact it could be seen as quite slow. Night passes before he finishes with it. As Doyle pulls his view back, he is greeted with an impressive sight. The cliff hasn’t grown taller or even shifted around all that much, but at a special level something has changed. He can’t put his finger on it, but he really wants to see the first party to experience it.
After that, the rest of the carving to do in the room is easy. The lights become a single sun analog and the wooden platform doesn’t even have what some would consider a carving. Just a simple crosshatch pattern on the surfaces people would walk on. It doesn’t even need his skill to do its job. The pattern itself will provide enough traction. While Doyle considered making the edges slippery. He decided that the trust of those diving his dungeon is worth more than the hilarity of the first few people falling off the edge.
‘Now I can work on the monsters!’ Doyle rolls back and closes all his views for a moment. He sighs and then opens up an overview of the second floor. There are already a pair of goats hanging out in the farm so that was eight points accounted for. Eight points out of 2200, so nothing too serious.
The entrance room he had already earmarked to be empty, so he skips it. In the next room he has a bunch of boulders, a mint plant, and a rabbit warren. Simple and clean, so Doyle wants to keep it that way. Goats wouldn’t be able to make full use of the terrain, so that means kobolds. Two of them with daggers like in his vine room seemed appropriate.
They could hide behind the boulders however they liked and keep anyone who made it through the first floor on their toes. Though he left off giving them any armor. ‘Wait, no. Even with two kobolds, there are still over two thousand points left. Let’s throw in a third kobold.’
Next is a small room and Doyle decides to give the assassin vine another chance so throws one in the lower right corner. With that placement, people won’t have a chance to avoid it.
Then Doyle is onto one of his fancy large rooms with a boulder wall. There are rabbits and horned lizard dens in place along with some sage and mint sprinkled in. His choice was already predetermined here. Seven goats to make the room somewhat spicy. Then for even more flavor Doyle drops down another kobold to act as a goatherd. They get a big ol’ shillelagh to wield. Doyle had always liked the word, though it was basically a fancy Irish way to call a walking stick mixed with a club. With that done because he already knew what he was going to do with the other, Doyle just mirrored the monster layout down to the other large room below it.
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‘Hmm, that brought me down to only 1586 points left to spend. Heh, only. Over fifty percent more points than I had to spend on the first floor and I am complaining. Now though, I can play with my new monsters.’
Doyle backtracks to the long hallway. Specially made for his axebeaks, there isn’t really anything else he can place there. ‘The question is how many to place in this and the next long room. They cost ten more points than a kobold with a better stat line. Dumb as a rock, but that shouldn’t matter.’
‘Hmm, this first room is longer than the next so I think spreading them out a little might be an excellent way to introduce them. One right at the start that people can see even if they don’t enter the room. Two more about halfway back so they don’t build up too much speed. Finally another axebeak at the very back which can really get going.’
‘Now for the second room I think a couple more birds will work. Three halfway back and three more at the back. Mostly because I don’t really know how well they will work. Do they really need all that space to get up to speed? Whatever, I will see once someone gets here.’
Doyle shifts to the huge room with the ramps and looks it over. ‘Simple enough in theory. Kobolds can hide behind the boulders if I want. Axebeaks have the ramps to run down. Hell, goats can climb up and down the boulder walls to mess with people. Though I think I will keep the goats out of this room.’
‘There are lizards so I might as well put down a couple groups of axebeaks. Two at the top of the first ramp and two more at the next will cover that. Have to set down rules though so they don’t bother the kobolds. Though speaking of kobolds I want a handful in this room. Three on the second ramp and six at the very top.’
‘Have I put in any normal ranged weapons yet? Hmm, no, no I haven’t. The first floor has the mages which is nice but if my only ranged combatants are magic based, it will be easier to counter. [System, how much would a goat leather sling cost and how would the ammo work?]’
{Goat Leather Sling; Temp 3, Loot 24
Ammo based weapons come with five uses worth of ammo. You may purchase more with varying cost. A sling can add five additional uses for a single point.}
‘Fair enough. I bet it says uses because of things like guns with burst fire modes. What good would five bullets be when a gun shoots them in bursts of three or even five? Though with a gun, only five shots isn’t exactly all that much. A sling on the other hand is perfectly fine. If the adventurers are fast enough the kobolds in the middle might not even get to use all of them.’
‘Now how many of those kobolds do I want to arm with the slings? The three in the middle get a single sling because they have little time to use them, but what about the back six? If I give too many of them slings, it wouldn’t be all that fair. Let’s go with giving half of them slings and of course all of them get clubs.’
‘That is the ramp room done so now I get to play with the forest room. Though there isn’t much to play with, all things considered. There are 656 points left to work with and I want to spend most of that on kobolds. I am thinking ten as that would leave me enough points for 39 goats. More than enough to for the farm and to keep the kobolds here company.’
‘The real question is their load-out. Three mages with one of them as a healer will work for this floor. Ice magic again though because forest and fire aren’t the best matches. Going to suit them up in helmets and tunics. The rest of the kobolds will be melee. I did just get slingers but, well, a dense forest isn’t the best place for ranged combat.’
‘Of those seven melee kobolds I am tempted to make another leader. However, I don’t feel I can really get that done properly yet. The first floor leader, I must admit, is a bit of a folly. Not that I will admit that to Ally. Instead of a leader I will place another goatherd with just a shillelagh.’
‘Three of the remaining kobolds get to duel wield daggers. In a dense forest such a short-range weapon will be of benefit even if they can’t use their only skill with them. They also get tunics and helmets to go with that, to keep them light on their feet. The last three will go club and shield with a full load-out of armor to guard the mages. That will be costly at first but worth it for the last fight of this floor.’
‘With those 39 goats I can place, I want one up on the plateau to go with the horned rabbits up there. Eight more with the goatherd, all helmeted with the horn covers of which half will be half spiked. And actually I think I will also give that gal a sling. I know I said a heavy forest isn’t the best place. But if I have the herd move about the room, she might end up in place to hit a climbing adventurer.’
‘That still leaves me with 30 goats and a need to connect my farm with the last room. I won’t have to replace the goats there as often, but as time goes on wipes will happen more often. I don’t want to connect it through the shortest path of the long hallway. That would work, but I want the goats to cycle through occasionally to feed the axe beaks on something besides lizards. I guess I will need another hidden hallway coming off the first large boulder room. It can come off of the top right of that room.’
‘Then after that the rest of the goats get to be tossed in the farm. Not all 30 of them, though. I want some space to start the farm going as I will need young goats growing up so things don’t get cleared out too easily. Maybe place down 16 more but reserve the 56 extra points for goats.’
‘Now to set up the hidden hallways. I must admit the idea of some hidden mechanism got me excited, but now that I have stewed on it I don’t think I will. It is possible, but I want to save stuff like that for hidden doors that I want people to find. For this I will just use a dungeon rule. That and the hallways can be much smaller. Only goats should ever enter them so I have no clue why I placed human sized tunnels to start with. Oh well, that should do for the second floor. I wonder how Ally will judge it?’