The Living Dungeon

[rdanhenry]

Done for the May/June Lite Challenge, this map was created on the inspiration of this picture:



What I ended up with was this (well, this final version adds a secret door where I missed adding a door in the original):



And here is all the lore I wrote while the map was in progress (edited at last):

“So, you are thinking of heading out to Aklov’s Masterwork, are you?” the grizzled old bear of a man questioned his way into a group of adventurers who realized that they had probably been talking too loudly for a quiet inn. “You know why they call it the Living Dungeon?”

“Every delve needs a colorful name?” guessed the little “scout”.

The man laughed. There was humor in his laugh, but darker currents underneath. He had scars that suggested that he’d only lived to show them by giving back far worse.

“There’s some truth in that, but it’s rather more literal than that.”

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed an androgynous humanoid who was as beautifully handsome as handsomely beautiful. “It isn’t one of those ghastly giant monsters that you have to go running through the guts of to kill, is it? That’s so nasty! I’d rather raid the Crimson Hells.”

“No, no. Not as bad as that. It isn’t some huge monster that you run through like a dungeon crawl. It is an actual dungeon, stone floors, walls, and ceilings. Mostly. There’s creatures inside and treasure, too. It is alive, though. A living, thinking thing that lies immobile in the earth, just waiting for you to come inside and feed it.”

“Feed it?” the hairy one that was as wide as he was tall asked. “I thought you said it wasn’t a beast.”

“It is not. As I said, it is truly a dungeon, but to stay at full health, it needs to gather outside energies to fuel its functions. It cares not whether you kill the inhabitants or they kill you. Either way, inert organic matter will be left available for what passes for the dungeon’s digestive functions. It’s all analogies to biological processes we don’t much understand. I’ve seen a shiny silver and white city on another plane where they claimed to understand the innermost workings of life. Me, I spent my education more in learning the ways of death.”

“I can respect that,” the hairy one said. “It just wants some corpses, then? We can provide those. We just want to loot them before the dungeon does what it wants with them.”

“One way or another, if you enter Aklov’s Masterwork, you will surely provide corpses. If you live, you should be well supplied with treasure. Optimistic fools of all kinds go in, carrying their own little treasures. They pile up in time, until someone succeeds in removing them.”

“How do you know all this?” asked the mysterious man in black, dark except for the shine of his polished metal buckles and his intense eyes.

“How do I know? From experience. Aklov was a crazy old wizard three hundred or so years ago and he made the Living Dungeon as a final go at a lasting legacy. So many have gone in, heroes, mercenaries, drifters, wandering encounters, bands of bandits, gobs of goblins, shambling beasts, and curious little cats. Some of them come out again. Actually, I think those that live there are free to come and go. Intruders have to go through to the rear exit in order to depart, to ensure a good bit of nourishing violence.”

The feline female, last of the group to address the stranger, asked, “This cat is not so little, but she is curious. What else can you tell us? And what is your price?”

“No price. I invested wisely after I made it out alive. A few other profitable ventures and a few more investments resulted in my being one of the richest men in the wooded hill country. I can’t tell you much of value. It has been too long, much probably will have changed. There are analogies to a normal living thing in that place, but it is all analogies, not exact matches. Watch out for the acid pit. That is likely still there. I cannot offer much in the way of theory or even technical observations. I was not the brains of the outfit, I was the brawn.”

“And the brains?” the “scout” asked.

“Only two of us made it out again. The other is known as Mad Bloody Axe Phillip the Bone-Bedecked, so you might guess he was brawn as well. Last I heard, he was settled into life as a supervisory pillager with the Ouskvin raiders. He’d tell you the same as I, the one thing you need to be clear on before you go in. The only way out is through. Don’t think you’ll be able to retreat halfway in. That’s what happened to us. We ran out of healing potions, buffing herbs, and raw spell power in the middle of the dive. We’d gotten used to hit-and-retreat tactics and did not come adequately prepared nor did we nurse our resources. You need to do both if you hope to fare better.”

The man turned to go, but added a few more words as he went.

“If you do manage to do so, look up Darin Trollwreaker when you go by Ravensburg. I’d like to hear what the old place is like these days, and maybe you’ll even have learned a few of its secrets. I’ll throw the survivors a celebratory feast.”




Once they were down the stairs at the end of the entrance hallway, the walls changed. The entry looked like a little castle gate, the interior walls and floor had been smoothly worked and fitted stone, but once the real interior was reached, it was all a bit rough-hewn. The floors were basically smooth, but the walls and ceilings had only been roughly carved from the native stone. Even the occasional crack in the stone had not been plastered over.

This was not entirely unexpected. The little sage in the pricey little village styled Wyvern Heights had told them as much, for a fee he justified by referring to the outlandish rents he 'had to pay' to be close to his research subjects (what exactly he was researching in a luxurious hilltop settlement for the elite, he was rather vague on). Aklov, it seemed had wanted to keep to the theme of his "living dungeon" by making the appearance more "organic" and less "engineered" by leaving it as rough as was compatible with assuring a functional delve. Moisture gleamed on many of the walls, the dampness contributing to the sense that they were in a creature of stone.

So far, the fighting had been easy enough. They had encountered a couple of silvercats that probably wouldn't have fought if they hadn't been cornered and some Blood Horde goblins that probably would have fought if the intruders had been trolls with blatantly magical weapons. The Blood Horde was fierce and savage, but they were still just goblins, and there hadn't been that many. Now, they sought the source of the sound they'd been hearing almost since they first entered: a steady, rhythmic throbbing.

Beyond a door, they found the source of the sound. A large mass of metal pulsed with steady movement and the noise of water being moved through pipe. It was a pump system of some kind, though more complicated than any the adventurers had ever seen. They had no immediate chance to study it, however, as from around the other side of the great machine slithered a thing that was not a wolf, was not a lizard, was not a bird, and yet was not a fire-spouting stag, but somehow suggested all of these at once...





“The road to the Living Dungeon goes straight through the woods, a low wall to either side, but the whole gradually lowering compared to the surrounding landscape, for the entrance to the Living Dungeon is not raised above the land, but allows one to walk straight into the underground interior. Because of this design, you must beware ambushes on the road. The wood folk are not above ambushing and looting those they regard as suicidal in the first place.”

“Ambushes in the woods,” the stout, hairy one said with a roll of his eyes. “That’s a revelation.”

The look that the little sage gave in response was probably meant to be withering, but he was a little scholar and possibly the only one in the room who hadn’t met something that made “if looks could kill” a non-hypothetical, so it was ineffective.

“I am aware that being attacked while traveling through a mysterious forest is not uncommon, especially for individuals in your profession. However, this particular journey moves it from the realm of likelihood to near-certainty. Terrain provides an advantage to the attackers and the regularity of would-be dungeon-looters along the route ensures that lookouts are kept steadily on watch.”

“In that case,” the “scout” asked, “would it not be prudent to walk along the edge of the embankment rather than down on the road, only descending once we reached the dungeon entrance?”

“That would make ambush somewhat more difficult, but if you are unfamiliar with the risks of the local flora, it might make a more hazardous approach. There are sinister plants and fungi that threaten the unaware. Old magic protects the roadway, but once you depart from it, you are at risk. There may also be snares and traps set by the wood folk. These also are rapidly undone by the protective spells on the road itself, but without that protection, you must judge whether your skills would make the risks less than those of accepting attack from above.”

The sage scratched his head and creased his brow for a moment, then brightened.

“Ah! Even if you travel the forest itself, you are likely to be ambushed from above. The tree folk are quite adept at perching in trees and moving from one to another without descending. It is probably best to stay on the road.”

The feline looked up from where she had seemed to be napping, eyes shining.

“If we stay on the road, it is just forest all the way to the dungeon?”

“Yes, although above the entrance itself, you will find a flowering meadow. It is possible that the dungeon has some control over this meadow. It was Aklov’s conceit that this meadow, with its long, flowering grasses, would exist as the dungeon’s hair.”





A few dozen wood folk lay dead behind them. Before them was the entrance to the Living Dungeon, like the gate of a little castle buried in the forest soil.

"It does not look like anything special," said the mysterious man in black. "I mean, it looks a little like a face, but that's only because we are naturally inclined to see things as faces. A circle, two dots, and a line are all it takes."

A low, rumbling laugh came from the yawning entrance.

"Perhaps there is more to the things of this world than their superficial appearances. I like to think that I am at least a little bit special."

The eyes of the androgynous humanoid widened. "So, it is true! You do speak!"

"On the occasion that I have something that I wish to say. You are welcome to enter, but you do so at your own risk. A living dungeon is still a dungeon, full of peril and promise. If you are worthy of the rewards, that should be warning enough. I have spoken."

"Any hints about what's inside you at the moment?"

There was no reply.