Look… look around you.

Oh, my brothers and sisters. My cherished clergy. My good and faithful flock.

My Devoted.

What do you see?

I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you what I see.

I see trains that cross the continent, polluting neither earth nor air.

I see golems tending our fields, ceaselessly, tirelessly. Automatons working deadly jobs without question, without hesitation. I see a life of luxury for every man, every woman, every child.

I see cities raised from the rubble. Great and towering citadels of glimmering sapphire plumbed and powered and cleaned, and all without even a hint of labour.

Oh, my friends. From the ruins of the old world, I see salvation.

And not just salvation. Progress.

No longer are our waters tainted. Are our fertile lands polluted. Are our people driven to illness and frailty and death.

And I ask you-I ask you but one question. One, simple question.

Whom must we thank for this?

My comrades, I see portals that connect the world, faster than the strongest planes of old. I see great arms that cut down our foes. I see stalwart armor that protects our kind from harm.

I ask you-whom must we thank for this?

MY KINDRED! MY FELLOW BLESSED!

I SEE MY OWN PEOPLE RAISED UP FROM THE DIRT, AND MUD, AND EXCREMENT! I SEE THE WOUNDED RESTORED! I SEE THE SICKLY CURED! I SEE MY FELLOW MAN GIVEN IMMORTALITY AND ASCENSION!

SO TELL ME!

Tell me, my Devoted, tell me.

Whom must we thank for this?

-Raphael, Pith of the Platinum Host addresses the New European Assembly.

~~~

Title: Knossos the Elaborate.

Also known as: The Labyrinth, The Dungeon and The World Titan.

Activity: Constant.

Area: Worldwide.

Bio: Knossos, the 5th Titan, is without doubt the most esoteric of its brethren. It is also unquestionably the one responsible for the greatest societal change, even more so than Chelm. Unlike the other Titans (even those such as Sothoth and Dainsleif, whose physiologies are particularly unusual) Knossos has no true physical form. Or at least, if it does, none have ever laid eyes upon it. Instead, Knossos is a living, thinking, evolving dungeon. The specifics of the Titan’s Blessing are largely unknown. However, its behavior is exceedingly well documented.

Knossos interacts with the surface world via a system of entry “portals,” known as Maws. These Maws appear in seemingly random locations across the globe, even in the highest mountains and the deepest depths of the ocean. However, Knossos is not a globe spanning, subterranean megastructure, as none of its Maws actually physically connect to anything. Underneath the Maws lies nothing but dirt and soil. Instead, entering one will teleport an individual to Knossos’s true body which exists in, according to Thinkers, multidimensional space.

The Maws of Knossos may take any number of forms, such as a quaint inn, a dank cave entrance, a door within a large tree, and even a golden portal in the clouds, just to name a few. All Maws share one thing in common. The first “room” within the Maw will always have the way forward sealed until the entry portal, whatever it may be, is closed to the outside. Once it is closed, re-opening the portal will see all previously within it vanished. For those inside, the delve begins.

Upon entering the portal, delvers are transported to the true body of Knossos, and begin their test in earnest. For that is what Knossos is, ultimately: a test. Unlike other Titans who seek only to destroy, Knossos destroys the weak and rewards the worthy (or perhaps, the lucky). Knossos’s tests constitute a series of rooms and floors. A delver progresses linearly through rooms in a floor, and then downwards to the next floor.

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The appearance and architecture of Knossos’s rooms is effectively limitless in variety. Trap rooms may test agility, stealth or perception. Puzzle rooms may test intellect, wit, and the ability to think quickly under pressure. Combat rooms may test delvers against any number of foes, from armies to single combatants. Not all rooms fit within these parameters. Some rooms may test all of the above. Rooms may repeat thematically, but no two rooms have ever been recorded as exactly identical. The Vault of Glass keeps a record of all rooms encountered by the Delvers Guild. Some examples are described below:

-A room with a large, seemingly bottomless pit at the center. Delvers may cross the chasm via a network of small stands sufficient only for a single foot. One cannot breathe in this room without clapping.

-A room shaped like a large manor house. The way forwards, through one of the doors in the house, is barred. The house is filled with antique furniture. Upon retrieving the key in the basement of the house, items of furniture within the house will attack.

-A room filled with four adversaries: a knight, a thief, a mage, and a gunslinger. Killing one of them will revive all those already dead. The only way forward is to kill all of them at once.

-A room shaped like an opulent bathhouse. The bath house is massive, seemingly endless, and filled with nude humans. The bathgoers will attempt to seduce delvers who encounter them. However, upon copulating with them, a party member will be turned into a member of the bathhouse. The only way out is drowning oneself in the waters.

Rooms themselves, within a floor of the dungeon, are inconsistent. Some delvers may face only a single room before reaching the end of a floor. Some may be forced to traverse tens, or even hundreds of rooms. More confoundingly still, rooms may demonstrate any manner of esoteric effects. It is well documented that the deeper one delves, the more the dungeon exhibits temporal dilation effects. Some rooms on lower floors have been known to dilate time to such an extent that decades of travel and struggle undertaken within the dungeon occur in only seconds upon the surface world.

Before they leave a given floor, and indeed in order to do so, all delvers must first face the Champion. The Champion is a particularly difficult test, the penultimate challenge of a floor. It may be a puzzle, or trap, but it is more than often a single, particularly strong, monster. Once the Champion has been defeated, delvers are faced with a choice. Either continue the delve to the next floor, or exit the dungeon. Those who choose to exit will reappear in the initial room of the Maw. Those who continue will face greater tests.

Knossos become progressively more dangerous as one descends floors, to the point of testing even the bravest, strongest, and most experienced Blessed in the world. But this is nothing compared to what one faces once they reach the fourth floor, and the exotic floors begin.

Delving into the fourth floor is lunacy for all but the strongest Blessed. It takes an Immortal, a Godkin, to even survive the first of the exotic floors. For, at this point in the dungeon, there are no rooms. That is to say, there are no discrete, physical, areas in which a test may take place. No, now the tests take place in cities, on continents, in whole new worlds. The exotic floors are responsible for Knossos’s most notorious moniker; The World Titan. These worlds are never re-used.

To the chagrin of thinkers and delvers alike, it is devilishly difficult to draw distinct conclusions, or even generalities, about the nature of Knossos’s tests. Many floors do appear to follow a general theme, but these themes can be as concrete as ‘plants’ or ‘dragons’ or as abstract as ‘greed’ or ‘time.’ Some floors seem to follow no theme at all. As such, the only true way to become a more capable delver is to learn to survive in incredibly dangerous situations, regardless of specifics.

Ironically, the Labyrinth itself is not the greatest danger presented by The World Titan. After all, if one wishes to be safe from Knossos, one need simply not delve. No, the greatest threat it poses is Overflow. If Maws are not regularly delved within, they will begin to spawn the creatures within their depths onto the surface world. This has led to certain sparsely populated areas of the world becoming thick with wild, dangerous monsters.

Personality: Knossos’s personality is unknown, as its behavior is near indiscernible and its “brain,” if such a thing even exists, has never been seen. Perhaps, like Chelm, it is an inventor and the dungeon is its greatest creation. Perhaps, like Dainsleif, it is obsessed with the idea of testing the worthy and eliminating the corrupt. Perhaps, like Beelzebub, it enjoys watching those who undergo its tests suffer. Or perhaps, like Sothoth, it is only interested in perpetual expansion. Conjecture as to the Titan’s true motives and desires is pointless.

What is highly relevant, however, is addressing the Titan’s impact on society. This can be summed up with a single question, and a single answer. The question is, why would anyone choose to delve, to risk life and limb within the body of Knossos? And the answer is simple: Entropy. Entropy is everything to the New World. It is the ultimate energy source; clean and potent and perpetually storable. It is what powers our great cities, our transportation, the golems that work our fields. It may even be consumed by the Blessed in return for increased Attunement.

Entropy is better than oil. More valuable than gold. All aspects of our society are built on it. Beauty and magic and power, all rolled into one. And the strongest Entropy crystals grow only in the Dungeon. But Maws do not last forever. They are constantly changing, arriving and disappearing, preventing cities from being built around them and requiring the successful delver to be always on the move.

Many, even outside of the Devoted, revere Knossos above all other Titans. But make no mistake. Knossos is not a God. And if it is, it’s not a benevolent one. It may come bearing gifts, but it demands a steep price for them in turn. The lives reaped by the World Titan are done so out of sight, and thereby out of mind, but it is just as much a killer as any of its brethren.

Delve with caution, for Knossos is unkind to the unprepared.

-Excerpt from A Treatise on the Nature and Manner of Titans for Internal Circulation by Chief Chronicler Axio.