Little Lost Dungeon

[Merior]

You are going to be the best dungeon ever!

You're sure of that through and through, with every gram of your crystalline substance and every point of mana you possess. All thirty of them. That has to be a lot, right?

Sure you might only have existed for a few minutes at most, and you haven't actually gotten even a single room yet, but that doesn't matter. You know that you're a Dungeon Core, you know that the Great Game of the gods means that you're supposed to build a dungeon, and you're certain that you're going to be the very very best.

There just seems to be once teeny tiny problem.

You're lost.

Well, not lost per se. More kind of displaced? Or maybe locationally deprived?

It's definitely not your fault.

You are Dungeon Core after all, with instincts and shards of knowledge about the Way Things Work, so you didn't really see the point of the tutorial. It seemed boring, even though being told how to call up blue boxes which told you stuff was neat, so you sort of ditched it.

In hindsight you aren't completely sure that you were you were supposed to be able to just leave the tutorial like that. It had just explained how to check your own [STATUS] and was going over the (obviously tremendously powerful) traits that a Dungeon Core, such as you, had when you left.

You had definitely meant to leave. It wasn't that you'd poked at the wrong thing and triggered an aspect of your [Wandering Door] trait to whisk you sans dungeon, not that you'd yet made one, to a 'random location'.

Really, if the gods didn't want you to wander off then they should have made the tutorial more interesting.

It had been pretty scary and you weren't even sure you were in the same dimension any more. You mean, a brave and strong Dungeon Core like you wasn't scared of anything… even if it did sort of make you want not to do that again any time soon.

(Or maybe ever...? There was these weird things there and you're sure at least one tried to sneak a peek up your [Inventory] as you passed above them!)

As it is though, like any Core which hasn't settled down, you're in an Instance Space which is only tangentially related to a physical location. It is only due to your [Dimensional Affinity] that you have any idea at all of what Instance Space is, but that isn't too important.

What is important is that it's where the main body of your dungeon is going to sit and that you need to set an entrance for yourself to access an actual world. You're not sure what an entrance actually does, apart from the obvious, but you feel it's a Very Important Thing so you want one for that reason alone.

A little messing around, and a mere six of your mana, gave you a pleasant surprise though. Not only did a big blue box appear informing you that you had developed a [Least Scrying] skill (Skills were a good thing, right?) but you actually got a sense of several different places where you could put your entrance.

This was your first big choice in life and a formative one. You knew, just knew, that your choice now would give you great shiny stuff and opportunities to develop in different ways. However you also knew that, unlike most lesser Dungeon Cores, it wasn't necessarily permanent.

The first option was obviously a special place. There was salt water present along with a whole load of metal. Metal was good, metal was shiny, and it just had to be some sort of abandoned treasury. That meant that you'd have some good bait treasure early on to attract adventurers with rather than trying to work out what was valuable and hope that you worked out how to make more of it.

The second was a little odd, but might be good. It was some sort of ruin, or a nearly ruined building, and setting your entrance there would tell you a lot about building stuff in general. However, and this confused you, there seemed to be a lot of people passing nearby regularly. You were guessing, but it might be a haunted or cursed ruin in the middle of a town.

The third location was even more confusing. Lots of people, some violence, and lots and lots of bad emotions such as feeling trapped. Desperate people would make for a great surge of initial delvers, but the presence of lots of books made you cautious. If not for those you'd have thought it a prison.

Why do decisions have to be so hard!

oOo​

Where do you place your entrance? (Pick one)
[ ] The "Treasury"
[ ] The "Ruin"
[ ] The "Prison"

 

[Merior]

[Reserved for future use.]

 

[Merior]

STATUS <UNNAMED DUNGEON CORE> LVL 1 (0 EXP) HEALTH 100 (100) MANA 24 (30) [ Newborn ]

TRAITS [ Blissful Ignorance ] [ Dimensional Affinity ] [ Race : Dungeon Core ] [ Wandering Door ]

SKILLS Least Scrying (LVL 1; 0 XP)

 

[Biigoh]

[X] The "Treasury"

 

[Latewave]

High School confirmed.
[x] The "Prison"

 

[shanagan]

[x] The "Prison"

 

[Biigoh]

/me praises the Dungeon Core.

 

[MizMahem]

[x] The "Prison"

 

[Biigoh]

The "Treasury"
- Docks or something involving Ships of some kind

The "Ruin"
- Warehouse or perhaps a building that is closed/empty for some reason

The "Prison"
- High school

I picked the docks because ships... and who doesn't wanna see a sea-faring piratical Dungeon? :3

 

[Robotninja]

[x] The "Prison"

 

[Seventeen]

[X] The "Ruin"

 

[Gaemnomut]

Awww, that was adorable.

[x] The "Ruin"

 

[DIT_grue]

[x] The "Ruin"

 

[shaderic]

[x] The "Prison"

So, a port, what's either an abandoned house or a construction site, and a high-school.

This ought to be good.

 

[The Shadowmind]

Is this an original setting, or potentially a crossover?

 

[macdjord]

The "Treasury"
- Docks or something involving Ships of some kind

Click to shrink...

Something about the description of this one makes me think Worm for some reason. (And ruined buildings and a high school that feels like a prison would fit, too, if all 3 choices are the same reality.)


[x] The "Prison"

 

[The Shadowmind]

Something about the description of this one makes me think Worm for some reason. (And ruined buildings and a high school that feels like a prison would fit, too, if all 3 choices are the same reality.)


[x] The "Prison"

Click to shrink...

Same. The Prison made me think of Winslow, and the Treasury the Boat Graveyard. But maybe I just have Worm on the brain.

 

[Tavarokk]

[X] The "Prison"

 

[Anaja]

[X] The "Prison"

 

[Robotninja]

A new Merior quest? Awesome.

Even if it is SFW.

 

[Happerry]

[X] The "Treasury"

 

[Alexander]

[X] The "Prison"

 

[Merior]

[X] The "Prison"

oOo​

Making an entrance was a very important thing.

You somehow knew that you wouldn't need the help of the blue boxes, nor make use of a skill, to do it. Whenever you thought about the idea though you felt a shiver of anticipation run over your facets. This was going to be your entrance, the place where your personal [Dungeon] first touched the world, and the first thing that delvers would see as they approached you.

Once you had set the location you would be able to do so much more. Even decorate it to make a better first impression. Although you were torn between wanting to make it be scary and the idea of making it as pretty as could be.

Just to lull delvers into a false sense of security.

Really.

Taking a metaphorical breath you forced yourself to focus on the task at hand. There were a series of mental contortions that you had to go through, pushing out the sense of ownership (MINE!) at the weak point that you'd chosen. You were pretty sure that most Cores wouldn't be able to feel what was happening, just blindly following their instincts, but you definitely could.

A narrow needle of your will twisted, following the path of least resistance as you pushed it forward, until it finally lodged where it needed to be. On a whim you trickled a little mana into [Least Scrying] and you felt how the tip of the 'needle' had found its way to a basement door, making the feel of young people nearby somewhat muted by distance but still present.

With an almighty SHOVE you forced the 'needle' to widen, changing from a hair thin thread linking dimensions to a breach between the world of would-be delvers and your still undefined instance. It didn't want to open, not when there was nothing on the other side except for you, but you strained until something snapped.

Unfortunately the effort of breaching the Dimensional Wall like this wasn't without a cost. The strain sent a crack propagating across your surface, doing horrible things to your lovely shiny looks.

Ouchie...

If you could have whimpered then you would have. Pain was bad! Why didn't someone tell you that?

A quick check of your [STATUS] had the blue boxes showing you that you'd lost a little health and gained an [Undungeoned] status effect. That didn't seem like a good thing and you decided to get rid of it as soon as possible. And, maybe, work out how to heal because you had realised that you didn't like even an ignorable amount of hurting.

Another quick pulse of [Least Scrying], aimed at the area beyond your entrance, revealed a surprising amount of information as trying to use it through a dimensional wall had substantially reduced what it could tell you.

You were in the basement of a startling large building which was a 'high school' of the subtype known as 'Catholic'. There was some sort of shrine within it, but as there was no [Holy Power] present you could only guess that it hadn't been properly dedicated yet.

Maybe it was a new addition?

There were classrooms and book rooms and grass outside and classrooms everywhere but, far more importantly, there were young people in all of them. You lost track of how many people after you realised that there were over three hundred of them.

That was over ten thirties! That was wonderful!

So many potential delvers and you were sure that nobody would mind even just a few of them falling on your first floor. Right?

Resisting the urge to spin, spin, spin! in happiness you forced yourself to focus properly. You were, after all, getting ahead of yourself as you didn't have any sort of first floor yet.

You could feel how so many options had now opened to you that you had no idea how to pick between them. Most of all you wanted, you needed, to be able to receive delvers. However you were smart enough to realise that it wouldn't be the best idea to just slap down a ten foot by ten foot room then putting in it a chest and a single orc to guard it fr-

A sudden chill ran through you as you realised something. Carefully you checked your [Inventory] but, nothing had suddenly appeared in it since you last looked. It was utterly empty and you had no patterns at all.

Not for traps, not for monsters, not for treasure, and not even for cosmetic decorations!

Obviously you'd need to sort that out as soon as possible.

Whimpering to yourself, the pain from the crack along your surface not helping as your dream of immediately making a powerful dungeon fell apart, you tried to think about what to do...

oOo​

What will you work on? (Pick three actions.)
Multiples of the same action are allowed. Rolls will be involved for success.)

[ ] Absorb ambient [Decoration] so your rooms will fit the building.
[ ] Absorb the basement room your door obstructs. (Count as two actions.)
[ ] Conceal your entrance. (Requires success on: Absorb ambient [Decoration].)
[ ] Eavesdrop on some of the classes. (Counts as three actions because boring...)
[ ] Eavesdrop on the young people in the building.
[ ] Examine one of your traits or skills in detail. (Must write-in which.)
[ ] Figure out active [HEALTH] recovery.
[ ] Figure out passive [MANA] respiration.
[ ] Practice one of your traits or skills in detail. (Must write-in which. May cost mana.)
[ ] Scry for information on the building. (2 Mana)
[ ] Scry for a [Poor] quality [Monster Pattern]. (2 Mana)
[ ] Scry for a [Poor] quality [Treasure Pattern]. (2 Mana)

 

[Merior]

STATUS <UNNAMED DUNGEON CORE> LVL 1 (1 EXP) HEALTH 90 (100) MANA 22 (30) [ Newborn ], [ Undungeoned ]

TRAITS [ Blissful Ignorance ] [ Dimensional Affinity ] [ Race : Dungeon Core ] [ Wandering Door ]

SKILLS Least Scrying (LVL 1; 1 XP)

INVENTORY Empty.

 

[Robotninja]

[X] Absorb ambient [Decoration] so your rooms will fit the building.
[X] Absorb the basement room your door obstructs. (Count as two actions.)

I hope we can make demon minions for the catholic school.

 

[Biigoh]

[X] Plan Bii
[X] Absorb ambient [Decoration] so your rooms will fit the building.
[X] Figure out active [HEALTH] recovery.
[X] Figure out passive [MANA] respiration.

Oh noes, the pretty core got hurt....

 

[Gaemnomut]

Oh man, this is going to be great, we really are the cutest bestest of dungeons.

[X] Absorb ambient [Decoration] so your rooms will fit the building.
[X] Absorb ambient [Decoration] so your rooms will fit the building.
[X] Conceal your entrance. (Requires success on: Absorb ambient [Decoration].)

Being able to hide ourselves seems like a good start.

 

[Latewave]

[X] Absorb the basement room your door obstructs.
[X] Eavesdrop on the young people in the building.

 

[Anaja]

[X] Absorb ambient [Decoration] so your rooms will fit the building.
[X] Conceal your entrance. (Requires success on: Absorb ambient [Decoration].)
[X] Figure out active [HEALTH] recovery.

 

[shanagan]

[X] Absorb ambient [Decoration] so your rooms will fit the building.
[X] Conceal your entrance. (Requires success on: Absorb ambient [Decoration].)
[X] Figure out active [HEALTH] recovery.