The Green Dungeon

“…I love the colour green. Verde. Vert. Whatever you want to call it. It’s the green colour. You know the one. It’s such a free and resilient colour. Tenacious. Alive. It is simply beautiful. I fell in love with it when I first saw colour. I know not quite as exciting as you’d expect, but I am in a forest, surrounded by plants and all things green. How could I not fall in love with it?...” Ramblings of a certain dungeon.

            Deep in a forest, far from sea or plain, few roads passing through its territory, stood a tree. This should come as no surprise, as trees make up a forest. And it is not this tree which is of interest, though if you have an interest in trees maybe you could have found something interesting in this tree, though perhaps not, as I myself do not know enough of trees to say what makes one interesting and another dull. What is interesting, at least for this story, is what lay beneath the tree. Eventually found by its roots, and close enough to the surface to become part of an anthill, lay a gem. Not any ordinary gem, though again I know some people who would claim no gem is ordinary, but you have to break some eggs to make an omelette, so I’ll be stepping on some toes to tell this story, but in this case, it is a slumbering dungeon heart.

            Now while dungeons are far from rare in this land of ours, there seems to be quite a bit of misinformation about what a dungeon heart actually is. Not that I myself am certain either, but I can tell you that like any other living thing they are tenacious and adaptable, it is how we can have so many different kinds of dungeons. They seem to feed on the things around them, but not only feed but also amplify the things around them. Those that live in their domains will find themselves shaped by the nature of the dungeon, as the dungeon’s nature is shaped by what is around it. When the dungeon heart is removed from its dungeon, if it has had sufficient time to grow and develop, then like a fish taken from water it will flounder. Too sudden a shock will weaken it incredibly, if not completely destroy it. It is why the more a dungeon grows the more fiercely the creatures living in its domain will fight to defend it. Many are even unaware that they are being influenced by the dungeon. It is an interesting area of study that many a magician and scientist have disagreed on the exact way that a dungeon’s atmosphere and creatures impact it and… I’m sorry. Yes, sorry. I’ll continue with the story. Sorry. I see not everyone appreciates using their brain here in Jardspiik.

            Where was I? Ah yes, the Green Dungeon, the Worldtree, the Realms of the Fey, it has many names, but just as humble a beginning as any other dungeon. Maybe humbler than others even. But yes, at the roots of a tree a gem was eventually uncovered by ants. Now it had been in contact with the tree for some time by the time the ants discovered it… How do I know that? I asked the dungeon of course! I was just in the City-Beneath-The-Boughs and met a curious fellow there whose people I couldn’t place. It was the dungeon’s avatar and as we got to talking, he, it… frankly I’m not sure, but anyways it told me it's story! Why? Well…

-After many interruptions the storyteller finally managed to return to the story he was telling-

            AS I WAS SAYING! … You’ll let me continue now? Thank you… Ah, my mead has gone dry someone care to refill that while I get back to the story? Thank you miss, I see some of the Jardians are as kind and beautiful as the tales tell. Now where was I? Oh yes, the ants found the dungeon heart, and after that the growth began. The heart was moved to the ants’ queen’s chamber and its influence seeped into the eggs as they were conceived and grew. The ants changed. The dungeon had been absorbing some of the essence from the tree before this so the change was mostly to make them more plant like. Their chitin became bark-like, and they grew stronger and larger. The ants did well with the changes, and as they brought back many different things to the nest for the dungeon heart to influence and be influenced. Dead foes and food, all kinds of things. Eventually an imposter, a parasite, found it’s way into the nest and the first of the Green Dungeon’s denizens were destroyed. The growth it had encountered faltered for a time after that, though perhaps we should be glad as insectoid dungeons are frankly disgusting.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

            The dungeon’s growth went back to relying on the tree. It continued to grow slowly until a spider made the now empty anthill it’s lair. While the spider didn’t offer much to the dungeon, but an influx of prey boosted its growth, and when the spider laid eggs, they received the boon of being born in a dungeon. Many of them left after hatching, but enough stayed to attract a mole that cleared out the ant hill, now spider’s nest, once again, but in doing so connected the dungeon to a larger group of tunnels. Moles and worms and bugs were now coming more frequently into its domain. Still near the roots of the tree, but now in contact with all kinds of animals it continued to grow.

            Finally, a family of rabbits made a nest beneath that tree. The dungeon’s growth really took off then. Perhaps you’re familiar with the woodland hares? Well camouflaged and surprisingly tough hides? Pretty popular among hunters to use as cloaks? Now ringing any bells? Well, the creatures came originally from the Green Dungeon. After the rabbits had stayed for a while a fox sniffed out the nest and dug it out to get at the rabbits. The jewel for the first time was exposed to the sunlight.

            Crows love shiny things, as we know, and one carried the dungeon heart up to its nest. Its eggs hatched the green corvids. Nasty smart birds those. And their feathers are practically leaves, almost impossible to see and known to be thieves! The nest was still in the same tree as it had been attached to before, but it was finally in contact with something that was a bit more intelligent than a rabbit, not that rabbits are stupid, for those of you that love rabbits, but compared to a crow their dumb as a rock. Anyways the dungeon heart stayed with the crows for a good long time and while there the green corvids really began to spread just like the woodland hares. Along with this spread so did the influence of the dungeon.

            Owls began to become strix. Foxes became kitsune. Raccoons became tanuki. Lightning bugs became will-o’-the-wisps. You get the idea… The dungeon was beginning to grow in power and take form. Many of you probably don’t know what this means. Dungeons start changing things slowly, but as they grow in power the things they change and how much change occurs increases. Eventually the forest kin were born. Pixies and fairies. Leshy and spriggans. Dryads and mandrakes. The list goes on. But since the dungeon was deep within the forest it was able to grow without any sort of real threat. The creatures that grew were smart, but not quite the same as you and I and other peoples. There are some peoples that originally came from dungeons, dwarves for instance, but the dungeon usually had input from a pre-existing people and those people were influenced by the dungeon’s domain until they became what they are today. Not so with the Green Dungeon. In fact, many of the fey lack the same bipedal body that many of the peoples have. It wasn’t until the dungeon came into contact with the intelligent peoples that the fey began to take the shapes they have today.

(Sigh) I can see I’m boring some of you yet again, back to the story I see.

So, the domain of the forest grew and grew. Until it came into contact with another domain. It is actually a little surprising that it didn’t come into contact with another dungeon or domain before that, but it was fortunate enough to have time to establish itself before brushing up against a serpent’s lair…”