Jungle Rocks Dungeon, foot of Mount Gursway, 16th day of Sol, 1661
It had taken a day, but now the bare rooms were finished. It was finally time for Jessica to start decorating. Leaving the first hundred metres or so for later, she started from what would be the entrance to her first real room. She had found a small, underground river and diverted it as the start of her water management. This stream now entered a deep pond, allowing her Dungeon to continually claim a small amount of resources from it.
She had already scored gold, silver, copper, tin, and the occasional sapphire, plus various aquatic plants, and animals. In addition, she was able to claim extensive deposits of limestone and a couple of patches of Marble that were just on the edge of her area.
*Hey, Fancy? Mount Gursway, was that a volcano?*
“No. It IS a volcano.”
*Great, so Monty and Sara are going to be able to add lava features?*
“Yes.”
*OK, that explains the marble.*
“Umm, why?”
*Marble is formed where limestone has been heated.*
“Right, I think I knew that.”
Jessica created a curtain of water, running from the ceiling of the cave and covering the room entrance. Not heavy enough to do more than make any delver damp, the judicious addition of luminous dungeon moss allowed for what Fancy called ‘Delver Management’.
“If you can start getting the delvers to adjust to you, you begin to control the situation. So, the curtain of water, followed by a room well-lit with dungeon moss, will encourage them to extinguish any torches and rely on your illumination. This way, you can start to play with light levels to hide things from the party and they won’t automatically notice. They will become complacent.”
Jessica completed the decorating of the caves and established her new Core Room. It was here that she came to understand her dungeon instincts better. She found that once she had declared that the new room would be her Core room, she could not proceed until she made the passage to her room larger. It ended up having to be no smaller than a half metre diameter crawl way, but she made sure this passage still dropped a kilometre in height – mostly straight down. Fancy taught her about exclusion areas, and how once Delvers were inside of her Dungeon, she would not be able to make certain changes close to them. She came up with a massive dead fall over this final passageway, that would see anyone attacking her Core Room buried under tonnes of rock. Simply releasing her control would force the massive spikes of rock to fall, where it would punch through the thin ceiling over the final shaft and drop down, completely sealing the shaft - and squashing anything in it. Pulling the lever at the bottom of the shaft would also drop the spike. A hidden lever would open the door to the core room – a minute after also dropping the spike of rock.
“Are we right to reposition my core, Fancy?”
“Yes, just remember to finish clearing what you want from the surface before you do.”
“Yep, just clearing the last of it now.”
Jessica had an extra 20,000 mana points from the absorbed Jungle.
She had also collected over 600 different species of plants, 200 species of trees, 120 ferns, 40 mammalian species, 100 bird species, 40 reptile and amphibian species, and an amazing 1,000 different insects, including over a hundred butterfly species and nearly as many ant species.
The one that shocked her the most, however, were fungi. She identified over 2,000 different species of fungi in this approximately 20 square kilometres of jungle she absorbed. There was an underlying fungal network linking most of the trees and bushes across the area, it was called mycelium, she remembered. Lastly, a small stream just intersected the edge of the area, giving her a few dozen different aquatic species.
She picked up an additional two hundred subterranean species from the natural caves in her area of influence.
This all increased her list of available species for her Dungeon by a factor of 10.
“All right, I’m moving my Core now.”
A moment later, Jessica appeared in her new Core room. A few moments later, there was a ‘pop’ sound and Fancy appeared.
“Nice. Good attention to detail. I like what you’ve done with the place.”
Jessica’s core turned a little pink.
Fancy noticed and fluttered over to Jessica, giving her core a hug.
“I keep forgetting how young you are. Let me say again that I’m really impressed with how well you’ve handled it all. You’ve accomplished more in a few days then some cores do in a couple of years. You’re also handling everything with a lot of maturity. It’s good that you’re keeping busy, as this helps, but if it just gets all too much, talk to me. We’ll do something else for a change and have a stress break.”
Jessica sighed and agreed.
Next, she started stocking her Dungeon with flora and fauna. The dungeon versions of the plants and animals were sustained by the dungeon environment, so she didn’t need sunlight. Fungus, especially mushrooms, started to grow throughout her rooms, adding variety. Dungeon moss sprung up, providing a low level of illumination throughout the first floor. Dungeon varieties of plants started to appear. Next, small insects and other creatures started to take hold, rounding out the ecosystem.
Dungeon monsters were added to the mix. In her first room, she installed a Goblin camp. The four, half-metre tall creatures were armed with nothing more than sharpened sticks, each with a fire-hardened point. They had a small camp in the north-east corner of the room where she hid some treasure. A forest of edible fungi rounded out the room.
She found the treasure fascinating. She was able to mint her own coins! The standard single copper piece seems to be about 20 grams, about 2/3 of an ounce. She also could produce bronze, silver, gold and crystal coins. The coins had an image of her entrance on one side and either a generic treasure chest or an image of the monster that dropped the coin on the other. At the moment, the entrance image was just a small hole in the ground, but she instinctively knew that it would change as she reshaped her entrance.
For her second room, she grew some of the dungeon spiders to about the size of a head and gave them a paralytic poison. They hid nicely among the cave formations.
In the second half of the third room, she grew another fungus forest. She created some Mobile Mushroom Warriors and armed them with bronze weapons.
For the fourth room, her fake Core Room, Jessica was inspired by some truly bizarre little larva she absorbed from a cave. They built a silk nest on the ceiling and suspended little threads of silk like fishing lines. On the thread were little beads of glue and venom. An insect would blunder into the thread and get stuck, poisoned, and then eaten. They scaled up to about a metre long very well. She was sure they’d find the Dungeon Delvers tasty little treats.
An overhead spring dribbled into the pool of water in the fifth room, with some giant frogs in the pool. Following the theme, giant millipedes lived in the next cave, and a hunting party of Kobolds occupied the seventh.
Room 8 looked to be empty, but there was a hidden chest at the bottom of the pool.
Room 9 was a favourite. Scattered across the ceiling of the room were stalactites. Some, however, were monsters pretending to be stalactites. They had a long ‘tongue’ that they used to haul themselves up to the ceiling, leaving behind a carefully placed item of ‘treasure’. This was stuff that they would normally pick up from their victims, but for dungeon monsters, Jessica could assign it as loot. The delver would spot the ‘treasure’ on the ground, stop, bend over and grab it. The monster would let go of the ceiling and drop on the delver, skewering them and sucking them dry and then haul themselves back up using their tongue, and start again. Most of the monsters were small, with a single copper coin as the bait, some were larger, with a bronze coin, but there was a lone ‘giant-sized’ monster which had a silver coin.
The last two rooms on the level, Jessica filled with giant leeches and mosquitoes. She filled both rooms with a third of a metre of mud, slime and brackish water – forcing any delvers to wade through the swamp.
Lastly, traps were added. Two pit traps, a quicksand trap, an arrow trap, and a nest of lilia traps in the spider room.
The rooms were finished. Water management complete, monsters spawned, treasure assigned, decorations decorating and Jessica was ready! She felt a ‘click’ and a message popped up ‘Dungeon passed Quality Control checks, please install entrance.’
*Fancy? Just got a message that we’re ready to install the entrance!*
Fancy looked a little uncomfortable, stealing glances at Jessica’s core.
*Fancy? Something wrong? Has my awesomeness Dungeon Building Skills – hey that would be DuBS, wouldn’t it? Nah, awesome Dungeon Integrated Building Skills – Dibs! Sorry, got sidetracked. So, has my DIBS made you feel all inadequate or something?*
Fancy sighed and said, “Just wasn’t sure how you’d take this, but can we do a complete walkthrough first? I’m probably going to suggest some tweaks that probably should be done before we open.”
*Hey, literally, you’re the expert. You know, you went through that 3-day training program, got given your official box of crayons and everything!*
Fancy gave Jessica a dirty look. “For your information, it was a five-year diploma course.” Fancy went to her knapsack that she’d put taken off after she’d teleported to the new Core Room, and pulled out a small wooden box. Opening the box, she pulled out a bright red crayon. “The crayons I had to buy.”
Fancy fluttered across to Jessica’s crystal and drew a smiley face on it.
“There, much better.”
After a small pause, Jessica burst out in laughter and said, *I’d be honoured for your help.*
Four hours later, Jessica finished up the last of the minor corrections.
“Jessica, really, this was amaaaazing!!! Most of the corrections were exactly what we’ve been trained for. Until you get an avatar, you won’t really be able to picture things from the point of view of the Delver. So exact positioning of monsters, traps and stuff are likely to be a little bit imprecise. Reinforcing everything with dungeon stone, except those spots where deadfalls break through, will just lower maintenance. Dropping the potency of those spiders will help to keep the overall rating for the first level low enough. Have we talked about how you’re going to grow from now on?”
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*No?*
“Right. Your influence is on its way to expanding back to about two and a half kilometres, but you’ll find that the expansion will slow down until it finally stops around at around three kilometres. You’re close to your maximums now.
“Once you actually open, you will advance to a Level 1 Core. This will allow you an extra kilometre of so of influence. Every room and monster will increase your mana regeneration, based on level, which is measured in mana per minute. This is used for you expanding and restocking your dungeon. From this point on, you will find everything to take a lot more mana to do. Becoming a Level 1 Dungeon Core gives you so many advantages, but it makes expansion a lot more expensive. No, I don’t know why, well, that’s not true. Why is so you can get your first level built, but how, no-one knows.
“Right, you grow your Level by Dungeon Points. In the same way, every room and monster gives you Dungeon Points, but these are measured in DPs per month and are about a third of value of what these give per minute for mana regeneration. In addition, having Delvers in your Dungeon will give you additional DPs, about a sixth of a point per Delver per level per hour.
“So, if you have four, level 10 Delvers in your Dungeon for three hours, that will give you four by ten by a sixth by 3, or about 20 DPs. That’s 4 x 10 x 1/6 x 3 which is 20. Followed that?”
“Yep.”
“A Delver dying in your Dungeon will immediately give you 20 DPs per level.
“So, with 12 rooms and about 140 levels of monsters, you are going to passively generate about 150 mana a minute, plus your base rate.
“Gaining 100 DPs will allow you to progress to a level 2 Dungeon Core, then 200 to level 3, 300 to level 4, 400 to level 5 and 500 to move to 6th.
“Having other creatures die within your Dungeon will also get you points, plus you get some bonus stuff for absorbing new patterns – rocks, equipment, plants, animals, and the like.”
*So, what goodies do I get for advancing my level?*
“What, isn’t it enough to know that you will allow your Fairy to grow?”
*No. Come on, give up the goss.*
“Goss?”
*Goss. Gossip. The good, juicy bits of information.*
“Oh, the ‘goss’, right.” Fancy rolled her eyes. “Once you get above level 2, you can gain access to different types of magic. From level 3, you gain the ability to have more dungeon levels. From 5 you start to get dungeon skills, like being able to construct teleportation gates, allowing you to greatly increase the number of Delvers you can have pass through your Dungeon. Also, you get the ability to have more than once instance, or copy, of your dungeon level. This allows you to host multiple delver parties at once.”
Fancy went through the first 20 levels of the Dungeon Level table with Jessica, so she knew what came where.
*What are the types of Elemental magic? Does it follow the standard mage categories?*
“Yes, Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Dark and Light are the six basic elements and Death and Life are the two advanced ones. Then there are the four non-aligned types of magic, Illusion-Mental, Space, Time and finally Void.”
*Will my previous attunement to Fire and Air limit what I can do now?*
“Hmm, that may explain why your crystal is yellow in colour. But to answer your question, sort of.”
*Well, that makes it clear.*
Fancy snorted. “You may find certain types of magic will take less mana to use, while certain others may be unaffected or slightly more expensive, but no dungeon has been recorded without the ability to use all types of magic - eventually.”
*OK, let’s do this!*
Jessica formed the image of her entrance – a large, natural looking cavern in the side of a small mound. The entrance had a rough-hewn pillar on each side with a rough lintel across the top. Carved into the Lintel was the dungeon name, ‘Jungle Rocks’. Inside the entrance was the required ‘preparation room’, to allow the Delvers to prepare for their dive into the dungeon. This then led to her first real room.
Her crystal shook and a clear, bell-like tone rang through the whole dungeon. She was open for business!
She called up her Basic Status screen and her Dungeon screen:
Jessica Fortier (Basic Status)
Dungeon Name:
Jungle Rocks
Mana Recharge per min:
Alignment:
(unaligned)
Base/Current Recharge:
10/161
Level:
1
Recharge from rooms:
12
Used/Current DP:
100/2349
Recharge from creatures:
139
DP Points Next Level:
300
Mana:
324/450
Extras from harvests:
20096
Jessica Fortier (Dungeon Status - Private)
Dungeon Radius (km)
2.70
Dungeon rooms:
12
Max Radius: (km)
4
Current Delvers DP/Hour
0
Dungeon Area: (sq km)
21
DP’s per month
50
Dungeon Influence: (sq km)
22
Maximum Dungeon Level
1
Skills:
Basic Dungeon Operation (BDO)
Magics:
(none)
*Why do I have levels pending?*
“That would be from all of the stuff you absorbed. Anything not of your dungeon will give you at least some Dungeon Points. Animals give the most, then plants and finally earth. How many points do you, wait, I can just look.”
“…”
Jessica added another tick to her list.
With a breathy exclamation, Fancy said, “OK, that’s higher than I expected. Bring up your General Status screen and mentally select the ‘+’ next to your current level. There’s no advantage in holding off from advancing your Dungeon level as soon as you can. Have you given any thought to what order you’ll get elemental magic in?”
*I’m assuming Earth would be best to get first, then maybe Fire, Air and then Water? Finally finish off with Dark and Light?*
“That’s the standard recommendation, but it would depend on how you view your Dungeon looking as you grow it. Do you want to be known for your Monsters? Traps? Puzzles?”
*I’d really prefer to keep everyone guessing. So, mix and match?*
“The magic gets used in three ways. Firstly for traps, then for monster powers and lastly for forcing mutations of your monsters. So, fire is actually the most useful for traps, and I think you’d benefit from picking that first. But then, if you went for Dark and Light, you could start producing some really unique monsters.”
*How would I go about doing that?*
“Well, take a monster then inject mana into it, like 2 parts dark and one part fire, or something and then command it to evolve. A lot of times the monster is just going to explode, but if you get the ratios and amounts correct, it will spawn as a higher level monster.”
*So, why dark and light after fire, then?*
“Dark will tend to give stealth and invisibility traits and light will give speed and protection traits. These will be the fastest paths to strong monsters.”
*OK, I’ll trust you on this, so Fire, Dark, Light, Air, Water and finally, Earth.*
Fancy had a huge smile on her face and said, “Yes!”
*So, let’s get the first few levels under our belt.*
Jessica selected the ‘+’ and she advanced to level 2. When prompted, she selected ‘Fire element’.
*Oh, Fancy, are you OK?*
“Um, yeh? I feel fine.”
*It’s just that you look a bit swollen.*
A puzzled looking Fancy answered, “Swollen? No, I’m fine.”
Fancy finally figured out what Jessica was saying. With a stamp of her tiny foot, Fancy said, “Bad core! I’m not swollen, I’ve grown! I increase by about 10% for every level you get. You’re the one that gotten fatter! You increase by about 20% per level.”
Jessica laughed, then said. *So does that mean I’ll end up bigger than you?*
Sounding quite grumpy, Fancy said, “Yes. Usually somewhere about level 16.”
Jessica gave herself another tick.
*Right, more levels to do!*
She selected it again and advanced to level 3. She got a notification, ‘You have been awarded Illusion Magic.’
Selecting it a third time, she advanced to level 4 and selected ‘Dark element’.
Selecting the ‘+’ for the final time, she advanced to level 5 and got a bunch of notifications. You have been awarded the skill ‘Instances’. You have been awarded the skill ‘Create Teleport Gates’. You have been awarded Space Magic.
She called up her status screens again:
Jessica Fortier (Basic Status)
Dungeon Name:
Jungle Rocks
Mana Recharge per min:
Alignment:
(unaligned)
Base/Current Recharge:
80/241
Level:
5
Recharge from rooms:
12
Used/Current DP:
1500/2370
Recharge from creatures:
139
DP Points Next Level:
2500
Instances
2
Mana:
691/1536
Extras from harvests:
20315
Jessica Fortier (Dungeon Status - Private)
Dungeon Radius (km)
3.07
Dungeon rooms:
12
Max Radius: (km)
11
Current Delvers DP/Hour
0
Dungeon Area: (sq km)
46
DP’s per month
50
Dungeon Influence: (sq km)
49
Maximum Dungeon Level
3
Skills:
BDO 2, Instances, Teleport Gates,
Magics:
Dark, Fire#, Illusion, Space
(Magics marked with a # will operate for 5% less mana)
(Magics marked with a % will operate for 5% more mana)
“Right, we’ll quickly go through the screens. The Basic Status is, basic, but two items to mention are ‘DPs from Delvers’ and ‘Extras from harvests’.
“DP’s from Delvers gives you an approximation of how many Dungeon Points you’ll get each hour, when a party is delving. It’s only an estimate, and tends to over-estimate at that, but still reasonable. The ‘Extras’ are tied back to stuff you absorb, and acts as a bit of an emergency fund. It looks like you’ve been saving it so far, and that’s smart. They don’t wear out, so feel free to just keep putting them aside for a rainy day. Have those been increasing?”
*Yeh. I think part of it is that I’m still rapidly expanding my influence, but would the way I handle that stream also affect this?*
“Stream?”
*Yeh. There’s a small stream that I captured for water management and set it up, so it runs into a pool first. The cave captures anything solid in the stream, allowing me to absorb it and the pool allows anything solid to sink. I’m getting some metals, precious stones, organic matter, and so on. Not a lot, but a little most hours.*
“Ah, yes, that would do it. Smart. So does that mean your DP counter is slowly ticking over as well?”
*Yes, about a tenth of the number of ‘Extra’ points I also get as Dungeon Points.*
“Good on you, although that will slow over time. You get the most from unique species, so as you ‘find’ all available local species, the amount you get will slow.”
“Also, don’t extend your area of influence beyond 7 kilometres yet.”
*Why?*
“Let’s not create problems with your siblings. We need to ‘butt’ your area up to the other two around the middle point. Then, as you all expand, that middle point will stay stable. Once you touch, you’ll all be able to control that middle ground. We’ll use us three Assistants to coordinate that. We’ll each stand a hundred metres before the midpoint and then each dungeon will be able to sense us. Once the three of you get within about 20 metres of each other, you’ll be able to communicate and form a contract to not impinge on each other. You can then expand as much as you want, as it will automatically stop 10 metres from the other’s territories. You will each be able to then extend a tunnel from your territory to each of the other two dungeons to allow trade. Actually, we’ll see when we go to establish the connections. There are a couple of other ways to do things, we can see what makes the most sense then.
“Lastly, don’t initiate your instances yet. There can be a couple of very bad problems if it’s not done ‘just so’, so please, please, don’t try it on your own.
“I’m just going to skip over to the other two dungeons and make sure the other assistants are all on the same page.”
“OK. I’ve updated the Dungeon map with the changes we’ve made and installed it in the new Core room. The old Core room’s been reabsorbed.”
“Thanks.”
Second version of Jessica's Dungeon - level 1 [https://images2.imgbox.com/d9/7f/XipZcqYD_o.jpg]