Dungeons can vary greatly in difficulty. Most have a fairly basic layout at the start and grow more complicated the deeper they go, but do not become complacent. Some dungeons are crazy from the very first level. Other dungeons hide their traps behind a veneer of normalcy, springing danger upon the cautious and death upon the complacent.

- An excerpt from "A Beginners Guide to Dungeoneering"

Opening the portal to the physical realm was simple enough. Well, according to Violet it was simple, all I felt was a rush as something pushed past me and through me. It was only this weird sensation that led me to look down.

I am embarrassed to say I went several minutes as a ghost and did not notice. Well, I guess now Violet and I have a family resemblance, I was merely a bit of a darker purple.

Getting over that shock with more of the ease I’ve been experiencing since dying I actually took a solid look through the portal to the physical world. On the other side was a forest, it had a decent variety, but was no rain forest. There was a flow of water leaving from below us, maybe 10 meters down so we must be on a cliff along which it flowed. I tried taking a peak around the edges of the portal and instead felt an enormous amount of pressure on my head stopping me from doing so. Not a solid thing, but like water pressure a thousand feet below sea level. I looked to Violet for an answer

You’re stuck in here till you're stronger, She said. It’s a defense mechanism, stopping dungeon chosen from going out when they are weak and getting killed or even simply lost. As the dungeon grows you will grow strong enough to defend yourself and will be able to feel the dungeon’s pull from an even longer range.

I can’t fault there being measures to defend us, even if only from our own idiocy. So as I can’t stick my head around the edges of the portal, is there any way of getting a better view?

Violet smiled, well you could always walk around to the other side of the portal, but I can also rotate the portal a bit or even make it a sphere so you can look through any portion of it. The sphere even allows you to cheat a little and you can stand inside of it and at least feel like you are outside for a while.

She demonstrated both rotating the portal so it moved around, dragging the portal all around us so we could see, even bringing it over head for a moment. After the demonstration Violet created the sphere. Stepping inside the sphere felt great, felt like I was outside and free. I don’t think I’d been dead for long, but this still took some pressure off my mind.

After enjoying my momentary mental vacation I started actually paying attention to the surroundings instead of enjoying the sunlight. My assumption about being on a cliff had been incorrect. While we were 10 meters above the water we were on a land bridge over the river, not the cliff that made up the riverside.

Thank you Violet. It was nice to be outside for a bit, so to speak. So, we can see the outside, now what?

You are welcome, she said politely. As for what we do next, hopefully we design an interesting dungeon. This is the point where a dungeon core just builds a cave and accepts all the monsters in it. So I will have to rely on you, what do you think would attract people into the dungeon and make it stand out from other dungeons.

I thought about it for a second. If I was going to do this I’d do it right. The irritating voice had been right that I wanted to create, and this was an utterly prodigious opportunity to create. I did not want to waste this, and particularly not with mediocrity.

I voiced my thoughts carefully. People are attracted to what they don’t have so we just need to figure out what they’ll need when they get here. If we were in a desert we could be an oasis dungeon or in the arctic we could provide shelter. Here it is less obvious. In such a forest food, water, and even shelter can be easily attained.

If we can’t provide a need we can try and provide a want. It’s a lot harder to figure that out what people will want as everybody is different. With the system people already have magic which many people want. I’d love to provide excitement or adventure but again, somewhat taken by what just happened. What is no longer here are cities, but I am not doing a city dungeon, that is just boring.

She cut me off at this point. You are making some large assumptions Jack. Perhaps food, water, and shelter are possible, but many people will know how to gain those? As you noted, the cities are gone and people were used to them and what they were able to provide. They will receive some basic help during their orientation, but they will not be experts. The test is generally aimed at learning how to use magic and surviving in a fight. Some trainers may teach outdoor survival but the test can be passed without it.

We can provide food and water, and possibly materials for shelter. It may be possible for our entrance to be a shelter. The vast majority of the dungeon floors should be dangerous or it would leave the core unprotected, and could even draw the ire of the gods.

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I stared at her. Violet, I am beginning to think you could create a unique dungeon even without my help.

I disagree, she responded, I drew ideas from what you said and tried to find ways to make what you said work. Besides, I have not noted on how to provide food, water, or shelter, just that it is likely to still be needed and to be possible for our abilities.

She had said that dungeon fairies adapt and become more like a normal person. Well, as you are thinking like a human let’s try thinking like a dungeon. You said that dungeons build a dungeon based on what is around them, we’re on top of a land bridge, let’s make a dungeon of only land bridges. A maze where the paths can go over and under each other would make it unique, we might even have two separate biomes.

She pondered the idea for a moment. That would largely rule out being underground, it could be a field dungeon or we could manipulate gravity to suspend it midair.

I froze for a moment trying to process what she had said. Wow, just when you start to think you know a person they spring something on you. Hold up. You can manipulate gravity?! First off, wow. You are way more powerful than I realized. Second of all, how much can you manipulate gravity, since that gives us more options that could be utterly amazing.

Violet took a moment to formulate her response. Within the dungeon my abilities to manipulate the environment are beneath only the gods. As for how much I can manipulate gravity, I am not fully sure, let’s start our dungeon and see.

I guess even Violet didn’t know everything, or perhaps she simply thought a demonstration would clarify her powers more thoroughly than a lengthy explanation. She started off by drawing violet light through the core into a smaller point in front of us. From that point she started drawing lines in the air, creating a virtual model of the dungeon envisioned. She was even thoughtful enough to have miniature versions of us by the model’s core to show how it would appear at full size. The land grew from the virtual core and I could see them rising up and over one another, splitting apart, and joining together the floating maze resembling a funnel cake or a poorly woven basket.

The maze floating had brought a new idea to the forefront of my mind. Hey Violet, if you can control gravity to such an extent why are we making the dungeon in a disc?

I am growing it in a disc because a singular line of land bridges I mentioned that within the dungeon my abilities are nearly equal to a god, my power on the other hand is nowhere close. As a young dungeon my dungeon can only be a certain length from me before it collapses into the void.

I meant that if you can control gravity why not make the dungeon into a sphere? We’re already going to have a floating dungeon, made entirely of floating walkways, and mess with gravity, why not change the shape while we are at it.

After a moment of contemplation Violet started crumpling the shape she had started with into a ball. This gave her much more room, and more dimensions to grow the dungeon and from the crumpled ball more branches of light spread out. It looked impressive, but I soon realized a major issue.

Violet, if anybody comes here with a ladder or even a grappling hook they can just climb straight through the dungeon.

This time violet found a solution to the issue on her own, perhaps her inherent love of caves being a boon.

I believe you are right, and changing the direction of gravity would be a minor inconvenience at best. Perhaps we can stick with gravity and shape as the oddness and utilize a cave as the shape, at least for the first floor.

She drew more light from the core into a second image which had almost the same layout but all the pathways were now swollen and almost touching. The miniature models of us were moved inside a tunnel and I could see how the previous paths were hollow like veins to the core’s heart.

Caves seemed the way to go. I guess natural dungeon cores have a good direction for evolution after all, just lacking a bit of imagination. Violet dismissed the first image and we discussed different traps and ways of confusing people and making the dungeon more different and dangerous.

The most notable change was reducing the number of tunnels and increasing the size inside even further. We had stumbled upon the idea of letting them walk on any point of the tunnel, from the walls to what was formerly the ceiling. We had to make sure people would be able to walk on either side of the cave without hitting their heads.

This allowed us to have the tunnels be even more confusing if people didn’t stick in a straight line, they might end up confused which way was towards the core and which was away from it. This allowed our traps to be slightly more odd.

I had talked Violet out of more deadly traps for the first level but shown that we can simply confuse them. We had pitfalls from one tunnel to another. If encountered they could take a person further from the core. The confusing thing was that some of them took a person closer to the core.

It was like a game of Chutes & Ladders, but you weren’t sure which was the chute and which the ladder. Admittedly it was mostly chutes, but I insisted on the ladders so people might lose their direction of which way was in fact going towards the core or even try to take a short cut and go the wrong way. In addition a chute or ladder might not be direct to a tunnel but might go around to the far side and drop a person off there, with the darkness and control of gravity they wouldn’t know.

We had tunnels with floating rocks to block line of sights and normal boulders which would roll around with near normal gravity to crush the oblivious. I didn’t stop her from being deadly here as it was a rolling boulder, even ignoring the reference it would be embarrassing to get hit by one as they were loud and could be easily avoided by going up the sides of the cave. The ones rolling in a circle were easier as you have to literally walk into them to get hurt, so you just need to walk forward at the right time to avoid it completely and if you stop you wont be in any danger at all.

Some amusing ones were the gravity traps. We had traps that would push everyone to one side of the tunnel. We had traps that would drag everyone to the center of the tunnel. Traps where gravity increased, weighing everyone down. Traps where gravity came from the front or back launching the party away. Some triggers were obvious and some more hidden, but a clever person could even use the traps to their advantage.

As a last minute realization I reminded Violet about lights as our dungeon was completely without illumination. I suggested glowing lights as they fit our theme and she modified that into the lights quartz set in the walls. Even making it fairly fragile so as not to be removed by dungeon-goers, attempting to remove it would end up breaking the quartz and causing the light to go out.

For the final room we put large floating rocks that a party member had to utilize to get to the center. The center would be where the core was and later the entrance to the next level would replace the core in the center position. The rocks spun on their own axis and circled the center at varying speeds at varying ellipticals. According to Violet it might have to be changed depending upon what we used for a boss. I realized that I had gotten so caught up in making a killer maze, pun intended if not super literal, that I had forgotten dungeons always have monsters. Well, we had our direction and simply had to go with it, one step at a time.

Welcome to the system.

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