I have an option for the bat, but I have no idea how it’d apply to a bat.

Mount Expedition

How’s a bat mount an expedition? It’s a bat, not an archeologist. Well, one way to find out. Mount that expedition, my bat! Oh, number to send. Uh… three? It accepts three. Good. Where to? That’s a good question. I already know basically everything in my reach. It’s kinda cool, actually. Outside my walls, though… it’s still a mystery. Wait… can they actually go outside? Bats! Your expedition target is across the street, past the main gate!

And off they go, huh. Cost a bit of mana, but not too bad. The little guys do that bat flutter over the top of the gate and vanish from my awareness, and now I see I have some Denizens on Expedition. At least it looks like they should be back in a few minutes.

Is it a few minutes, yet?

How about now?

Still no?

Ah, there we go! Welcome home, bats! What news do you bring of the world outside the walls? A bakery? Seriously? I’m a dungeon with a bakery across the street? I’m not sure what I was expecting, but a bakery was not it. Well, that fully confirms I’m in a town. I just hope the whole ‘town around a dungeon’ thing works better than it did in the first Diablo game. Yarnam? No, I think that was Bloodborn. Tristram! Or something like that, anyway. Well, as long as nobody goes and tries to jam my core into their face, it should go well, right?

Either way, I want more info, so I start sending out expeditions with my bats, keeping them in groups of three for just because. I also give them larger areas to identify, which takes them longer, but doesn't cost me extra mana. I guess it’s because it technically leaves me vulnerable to have them out for too long, or leaves them vulnerable. While they explore, I look in on my library and see about sketching out a rough map.

And I immediately run into a problem. I can only put words on stuff in my library. Or numbers. Or drawings, wait what? How can I draw a lightning major, but not a wall?! Queen, do you have any ideas? Nah, she’s busy organizing her ants and following the list of combinations on my paper.

Do I need a map room? That seems kinda… specialized. A whole room just for a map? None of my room options were for a map room. I focus in on one of the little chambers that doesn’t seem to be in active use by Queen, and see what my options are.

Armory is a bit beyond what I can actually use right now. Maybe if I get carpenter ants I can give them little spears, heh. Garden? Yeah, don’t need that any time soon. Prison? That sounds like it could be interesting, but I don’t need another complicated project. I’m still growing my maze. Workshop sounds cool, but I still don’t have anything that would work in it.

War room? Why would I need a war room? What does a war room even do? I don’t have wars to plan. I don’t need to push figurines around a… map? Is that what the war room does? Because a cartography room would be too easy? It’s also not exactly cheap, even as a little ant chamber. I mentally sigh and spend the mana.

A little bit of leather pops up in the new Secret War Room. There are two dots. Dungeon. Bakery. Well, at least it’s some kind of map. It doesn’t even have a compass rose to say which way is north. As my bats start to come back, though, more dots appear. Looks like I’m smack dab in the middle of a commercial district. Am I not the first dungeon here?

Elf guy did say he didn’t want to lose me as a dungeon. It could also just be luck in my spawn, though I don’t know why someone would leave an abandoned manor with a big yard to just stay abandoned for… however long it takes a dungeon to happen. I doubt just any old random ignored basement can suddenly become a dungeon over a weekend.

Most of the dots are pretty boring and probably not much use to me. Tailor. Cartwright. Haberdasher. Apparently the town is big enough to have someone make a living making hats, so that’s cool. Alchemist. Enchanter. Oh hey, a church. I wonder if it’s the Shield one that Freddie goes to. I wonder if Rhonda is apprenticed at one of the magical places, too.

I don’t get any shop names, though, and I don’t know if that’s because bats can’t read, or if I need to upgrade the war room to get more details. Either way, I probably shouldn’t spend any mana on it just yet. The maze is hungry, and nobody has come to visit in a while. I should double check my scions.

Tiny is doing great. There’s a small grove of trees growing near the center of the maze, and he’s webbed it up good to make his nest. He hasn’t gotten much bigger just yet, but I haven’t been able to spare him much mana for it. He’s still listed as a guardian, which I’ve taken a closer look at. Basically, if he’s in his guardian area, he buffs my stuff and gets some good buffs himself. I don’t have any numbers to go by, aside from his level (Lv 8 now, by the way), but I can see him moving quicker in the maze than not, so his transfer is complete.

Teemo is being the best sneaky rat, and seems to be teaching my other rats things. He’s still a scout, and making various paths all over the place, which seems to let my other rats get to where they’re getting to quicker. I had considered making him electric, but I want to wait until I get venom for him instead. I named him Teemo, he should be able to do poison stuff. The packrats have been occasionally getting electrified, too. Queen must be doling out bottled lightning outside her ants occasionally. Fine by me. Faster packrats means faster accumulation of goodies for Delvers.

Speaking of Queen, she got a title that I wasn’t expecting. I had put her around the core to be a new guardian, but I guess I should have expected she’d become my Alchemist with what I’ve been having her do. I definitely appreciate the discount on upgrading the lab. For her latest project, I actually had Teemo grab a potion out of one of the chests. That cost me about twice the mana I would have gained if a Delver took it, but I want to test something. Now I have an actual Alchemist, I wonder if Queen can analyze stuff. This trial and error stuff is taking up way too much paper to keep track of. If I can get me some healing ants, or maybe healing spiders, that’d be cool. They could even weave their own bandages!

Poe is keeping a good lookout, and I might send him on an expedition come daylight. If Tiny is lord of the maze, and Teemo lord of the house, then Poe is lord of the yard. He’s been coordinating with Coda and Fluffles to keep the moles and gulls at bay. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets some title of his own soon, too.

Fluffles has been growing well, thankfully not as well as Tiny. I do want him to be able to get into all those nooks and crannies, after all. He also seems to be specialized in force magic, by which I mean picking up and moving things without hands, which is fitting, in retrospect. I’ve seen him snag a gull out of the air and bring it down for vipers to bite. If he keeps catching things like that, maybe I should get a jail soon.

Coda, the bat scion, has been mostly occupied with tending the maze and most of the nodes outside the house. He has also been sure to keep the sonar bats on a good rotation to keep helping Poe scan for moles. He’s probably my least effective combatant out of my scions, but he’s doing a great job with the nodes and maze. I’ve been getting steady discounts on growing and upgrading everything out there, and I’ve even seen him getting seeds from the expeditionary bats. So maybe I should get a garden or greenhouse or something, actually.

Finally! Someone’s at the gate!