Milly Geoffreys
Human, Female, Bookkeeper
Location: On the dirt road leading outside of her border village and towards the Capital City of Triestwald
“Milly!” Frederick, her husband, called out from the door to their house. “Where are you going? It’s the middle of the night!"
She keeps walking, her feet bare, ignoring the outcries of her husband. Cupped in the hands held to her chest was the wooden coin left behind by her father’s ghost, the one thing leading her to go outside and brave the dangers of the night.
Something felt… off with that encounter.
Something unexplainable — that’s for sure — but also something tangible.
She needs to see his grave. She needs to make sure.
Milly clutches the coin tighter to her chest, afraid to loosen her grip, worried that it would disappear had she let it go even at the slightest.
She hears heavy footfalls approaching, a coat being placed on her shoulder from behind her. Her husband's face appears in view, panting heavily at the rather short burst of energy he took to catch up. He takes a few breaths in before speaking up.
"Whatever it is you're doing, you best do it with a coat at the least." He looks up, glancing at the milky white dots in the night sky. "We haven't gone for a midnight stroll in a long while, huh?" He nudges her with his elbow, a pair of boots in his hand.
Milly stops for a moment to stand still, her husband crouching in front of her and putting it on her feet for her before they continue walking.
"So…" Frederick began after a moment of silence, his arm looped in hers, "What brought this about? Needed a breath of fresh air? Did the baby kick too hard?”
"No, it was none of those things," she replied, still holding tightly to the wooden coin, "I know it sounds crazy and stupid but…"
"But what?" he asked, looking at her from her side.
She considers for a while but decides against telling him. Not at the exact moment, anyway.
He relents, seemingly accepting her lack of a response. His worried look doesn't go away, however, still eyeing her every now and then as they walk through the forest.
Milly continues looking ahead, her mind going at a thousand paces a minute as she considers every possibility.
Ultimately, she cannot shake the reality of the situation. The rapid beating of her chest tells her all she needs to know. The wooden coin, her evidence.
She knows what she saw.
I’m coming, Papa.
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Cryer-Oak
Stone Goblin, Female, Inventor
Location: In the Deeper Chambers of the 4th Floor of the Tomb of Stone Dungeon, The Mausoleum
Reaching deep into the oversized pocket of her bandolier, Cryer-Oak pulls out a handful of dried Boomshroom shavings and throws it into her mouth to coat it with her saliva, rolling it into a ball as she does. After doing so, she brings her blowpipe to her face and takes one of the boomshroom pellets out of her mouth, inserting it into her blowpipe, holding out the lit Sparkflower in front of the hole pointing outwards.
She takes aim at one of the skeletons shambling towards them off in the distance, a bow held in its hands.
She blows hard, the boomshroom flying out of the blowpipe with speed. The Sparkflower works as intended as the explosive projectile blows up upon impact, the spores far more potent with the Sparkflower rather than the lit torch, knocking the archer backward and onto the floor as their skeletal body collapses apart.
Quiet-Leaf rears his club back from in front of him, swiping through three skeletons in front of him, their bodies erupting into shards and dust, choking the air in front of him. He roars triumphantly before charging forward.
Tiny-Red, seeing that the ogre had begun his Berserker Rage, follows in the charging oaf’s shadow, bashing his magical shield against the heads of any skeletons that the Berserker missed, clearing space for us to follow.
Sweet-Dirt lags behind the party, keeping an eye out for the Nitchwits that could try to sneak up from behind us. She’s not as active whenever the party has to clear rooms due to her abilities being more focused on dealing with bosses or tanky monsters, so she deals with any of the tiny ones that get close instead.
But without her, Cryer-Oak wouldn’t have been able to contribute as much as she could’ve.
A dust devil forms in front of her and snakes toward her, separating the two of them from the boys up front, the dust devil growing larger as it closes the distance between them. Cryer-Oak backs up, walking into Sweet-Dirt’s back, the both of them bumping into one another and stumbling slightly.
“Sorry!” Sweet-Dirt called out as she turned around to apologise before noticing the dust devil, her eyes narrowing.
With extreme dexterity, the Elven Assassin jumps into the air and holds onto a stone brick sticking out of the wall, a tendril of purple darkness roped around her hands as it shoots out and latches onto the unseen Mausoleum Worker, clearly hiding above them and having been the one responsible for the approaching flurry of wind.
She yanks hard, pulling the old man out from his hidey-hole, screaming as he fell with a sickly thud. The Assassin lets go and lands back down on the ground, pulling out her dagger to finish the job.
The old man’s face remains one of abject horror as the blade digs deep into his heart.
The magical whirlwind vanishes, the dust it had picked up settling into a thick blanket right where it once was.
The air is quiet except for the deep breaths of the party and the violent thrashing of Quiet-Leaf, the Ogre Barbarian swinging his club in the air in front of him out of frustration, not entertained by the lacking amount of skeletons he could shatter into pieces.
Encounter Vanquished!
Monsters Defeated:
Tiny-Red:
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* Skeletal Warrior {x3}
* Undeath Practitioner {x1}
Quiet-Leaf:
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* Skeletal Warrior {x13}
* Skeletal Archer {x2}
Sweet-Dirt:
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* Nitchwits {x23}
* Mausoleum Worker {x1}
Cryer-Oak:
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* Skeletal Archer {x8}
* Skeletal Warrior {x1}
BESTOWING EXPERIENCE POINTS {Equal Party Share}
A rush of energy enters Cryer-Oak’s body as she puts out the Sparkflower, the power from the experience gain fading quickly as it rests in her chest.
“HP?” Tiny-Red’s voice echoed, looking back at us as he tried to calm the ogre down, tapping the large figure’s shoulder to get his attention.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Not a scratch,” she replied, patting her body surprisedly as she walked closer to the boys, “That’s new.”
“Same here!” Sweet-Dirt said, following behind.
“No fair!” Quiet-Leaf groaned with a huff of breath, pounding the bones of one of the skeletal bodies into a fine powder with his club, a crater left behind where his heavy hits landed. “No good-good fight!”
Tiny-Red jumps up to reach the ogre’s face to slap it. The Berserker stopped flailing and moving about, his large hand touching where he was hit. Tiny-Red opens his mouth to shout as he looks up at the ogre. “Get it together!”
The ogre looked shocked, still holding onto his face before becoming more sedated, his expression looking like he was lost in his own thoughts as he looked down at the ground.
“Good,” Tiny-Red said before he turned back to us. “Evaluation and how we can improve, go.”
After a moment of thinking passes, Cryer-Oak responds, “I think our new formation worked out better than before. But maybe I can try climbing onto Quiet-Leaf’s shoulders so that I can be more useful, y’know? Help take some of the burden on our big guy over there.”
“For the last time, Cryer-Oak, we’re not letting you put yourself in danger. You’re one of the two Inventors we have here in Earthen-Home, we can’t risk it.”
“But—”
“—No buts,” he interrupted, clearly done with the topic. Turning to look at Sweet-Dirt, he continued. “What do you think we can improve on?”
Sweet-Dirt shifted where she stood, squirming at the leader’s eyes. “It wouldn’t hurt to let her onto Quiet-Leaf’s back, would it?” She looks to where the ogre is, sitting down against a wall. “I don’t think he’d mind.”
“Oh my— Will you people please think for a second?!” Tiny-Red erupted, his hands brought to his face as he pulled down on it, making him look a bit scary before he let go and continued. “We’re not professional dungeoneers — we’re not even dungeoneers in the first place! We’re just a scouting party! We’re not here to clear shit, we’re just here to map the way to the core! If you guys just listened—”
Before he could finish speaking, a meaty hand grabbed him from behind and lifted him into the air.
Quiet-Leaf scowled as he turned the human in his hand to face his grisly face, opening his mouth to speak.
“Be. Quiet. More coming.”
That shut him up.
And with that interaction came more shambling corpses from deeper within; this time ghouls instead of skeletons.
“Battle positions!” roared the ogre, lowering the Defensive Magician down, everybody in the party getting into the triangular formation.
With her natural goblin hearing, Cryer-Oak could hear the human quietly mumbling under his breath.
“That’s supposed to be my line…”
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Frederick “Fred” Thume
Human (Fae-Blooded), Male, Cook
Location: Standing before the village graveyard entrance, behind the tall iron-wrought fences outside of the graveyard proper
“What do you mean your father’s gravestone is gone? Isn’t it that one over there?” Frederick asked his clearly delirious wife.
“No!” She seethed, her eyes signaling her furious ‘pregnancy temper’ appearing soon. “That’s the one behind his! Papa’s one disappeared!” She looked around. “Some of the other villagers’ gravestones are gone too!”
“What do you mean they’re gone? Who’d even take that many gravestones, for the Divines’ sake?” he asked incredulously.
“I don’t fucking know, Fred, but I know what my fucking father’s grave looked like!” She looked to be about ready to rip her own hair out. “Get over that damn fence right now or so help me I swear to Freya she’ll end up losing her status as the War Goddess!”
“Okay, okay! I’ll figure it out somehow — just relax, honey!”
He takes a cursory glance at the fences.
It’s too tall for him to grab onto the pointy bits at the top, and he’s always been a bit weak in the arm department. Maybe he could dig under it?
No, that’s a stupid idea, you moron! Think, Fred, think!
Looking more thoroughly, he sees that one of the trees growing right outside of the leftmost and nearest corner of the fenced perimeter has a thick branch that reaches over the fence. He turns to look at his wife.
But how do I get her over there? I can’t just leave her out here alone, even if she will kill me if I don’t do as she says. Who takes a gravestone anyway? It’s called graverobbing, not grave-stone-robbing.
He opens his mouth to speak.
“Can’t we just wait ‘til morning?”
“Frederick.”
“Alright, alright, fine.” He points at the tree. “You’re going to have to hide while I go over though, is that okay with you? Will you be—”
“—Just get over it already!” she screamed, a few birds flying out into the night from the disturbance.
“I am on it, dear! Just relax, please!” he loudly whispered, looking around them to keep an eye out for anything approaching from the darkness.
Her eyes began to get teary-eyed, her eyes already red from her crying back home, her sad ‘pregnancy’ stage returning to the fore as she spoke, “I’m— I’m sorry, honey, I’m just so stressed right now and I don’t know what’s happening with Papa, and— and…”
He embraced her in a tight hug, speaking as he did, “I understand, honey. We’ll get through this together, okay?”
She sniffles a bit, a few tears making their way down her beautiful face, his hand wiping them from her cheeks as he plants a kiss on her forehead.
A part of her forehead felt cold to the touch.
That’s weird.
“Okay, let’s go to where that tree is, yeah?”
“Okay...“ she replied after a moment, rubbing her runny nose free of the mixture of her snot and tears before breathing in deeply, her nose doing that weird noise where it sounds like she was breathing in more snot.
Gods, I love this woman so much.
He holds her shoulders to comfort her as they walk to the tree.
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Grimm
Location: Inside his dungeon’s highest floor, inside the cenotaph that houses his core
Grimm peered at the ghostly levitating orb of swirling hues. Something both light, dark, and everything in between. He wondered what it was.
He knows it is a core — that much is obvious to him — but why is it that it binds him to this place?
He remembers a time when he wasn’t so limited in his endeavours, free to walk wherever and whenever he liked and do whatever.
...But why is it that he doesn’t remember anything past that?
A sharp pain erupts from his head once more, causing him to change his current musings to something else.
It always returns whenever he thinks too hard about the past.
Seeing that he’s unlikely to learn anything new, he returns his focus to the graveyard outside.
More graves have been cleaned and tended to, so that much is a welcome change, but he is only one man, after all. He can’t do this alone.
He thinks back to the blue boxes that appeared once he’d arrived in this place.
DUNGEON ABILITIES
Burial | Rite of Passage | Remembrance
He reads each of his ability’s descriptions, glossing over them to see if one of them could help with his current predicament.
Burial
Description: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Everything that comes must pass.
Allows the Dungeon Core to bury anything that is dead in its domain, bringing the Spirit of the creature to the highest floor of the dungeon, The Graveyard; making it their final resting place.
Unless the Entity already has its own marking for their grave to take with it, a Normal quality gravestone will be erected where their Spirit now resides, involving a short and simplified engraving of their life story.
MP Cost is equal to the buried Entity’s level as a percentage.
Rite of Passage
Description: Arise once more, for your duty is not yet over.
Allows the Dungeon Core to summon a Spirit through their grave marking.
MP Cost is equal to the Spirit’s level as a percentage.
The spell will decrease the Dungeon Core's maximum MP equal to that same percentage for however long it is maintained for.
Remembrance
Description: One last chance.
Allows the currently alive loved ones of a Spirit to enter an Instanced Room by interacting with the Spirit’s grave marker.
This Instanced Room is tailored to the Spirit’s wishes and will be where the interaction between both parties will take place.
After the interaction is deemed over by both parties, the interaction will then end.
This interaction is not repeatable.
EXP will be provided to the Dungeon Core by the loved ones. There is no cap for the EXP provided, as it is the loved ones’ choice to give as much as they’d like.
This ability costs no resources.
He hums to himself as he thinks, still unsure as to how he can find more help with tending the graves.
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Frederick “Fred” Thume
Human (Fae-Blooded), Male, Cook
Location: Standing in front of a random grave inside the graveyard proper
“What in the hells?” Frederick muttered as he looked below him, at his feet.
Singed grass in odd patterns; where the gravestone once was, all that was left was a hole that looked to be particularly like where the base of a gravestone was meant to be.
“What is it?!” his wife asked, a mix of being on the verge of tears and an expression he likened to what she’d look like if she was about to rip his insides out on her face. “Speak louder, damn it! I can’t hear you!”
He turned to face her, his coat wrapped around her as she hid behind a particularly large bush. “The grass is singed!” Frederick shouted out as quietly as he could, “And I see what you mean by the other missing gravestones!” He walked around a particularly large hole in the dirt, most likely what was a literal stone as a grave marker.
“Get to Papa’s grave, hurry!”
“Just wait, my dear! The singed grass looks really weird…”
“Frederick!”
“Fine, fine! I’m making my way to his.” He walked to where his father-in-law’s grave was.
“It’s not that one, Frederick! Go to your left!”
Oops.
“That’s his, that’s the one! What’s it say?” his wife asked.
Now that he finally had a chance to look closely, the swirling patterns of the singed grass looked like…
“Elvish?” he mumbled.
“What? Speak louder!”
“You do read Elvish, correct, my dear wife?”
“I’m a Bookkeeper! Of course I do, you buffoon!”
“Then you’re going to have to read this for me because I have absolutely no clue what it says.”
Milly growls in frustration, yanking at her hair.
Welp.
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Cryer-Oak
Stone Goblin, Female, Inventor
Location: In the Deepest Chambers of the 4th Floor of the Tomb of Stone Dungeon, The Mausoleum
Spitting out a few more Blowshroom pellets out of her mouth at the surrounding ghouls, Cryer-Oak looks down from where she is sitting.
She’s never been this high up before, the ogre seeming to be enjoying their combined power when together.
In the corner of her eye, she sees Sweet-Dirt fading into the stony background of the chamber before suddenly leaping forward at a ghoul’s back, penetrating her dagger through its rotting skull with a gross sound.
Cryer-Oak shoots another pellet at a ghoul, the loose skin of its face blowing off and being thrown against the wall to its right.
“Good-good shot, little goblin friend!” The ogre said before he roared with a laugh, loudly clapping with his meaty hands, a ghoul’s face crushed with every impact of his claps.
I fucking love this.