There are typically two types of self-inflicted undead. Liches and vampires.

Both have the same root cause. They are caused by living creatures – typically sapients and disproportionately humans – who fear death. Who fear aging and dying so badly they are willing to turn into “abominations”.

The biggest difference between the two is that typically vampires are vain enough to want to “look good” in their new life. They modify their bodies and even their souls in an attempt to hide decay. To look attractive to the species they abandoned despite losing their ability to mate with them. Your humble researcher “Cal” thinks this should be considered madness – their vanity serves no purpose but whatever I’m not a sapient psychology expert or anything.

Typically liches are better necromancers and vampires are better soul surgeons. True Vampires are known for modifying any undead they create in their own image – creating lesser vampires or thralls.

Either way as a dungeon it is hard for us to create a vampire for this very reason – a vampire modified their soul and body before they died and used a bunch of spells on themselves that are hard to perform on others.

As a final note, vampires are some of the most varied of undead as every true vampire modified themselves in a potentially different manner to achieve their perfect cursed immortality – some even messed up enough to have crippling side effects. I’ve heard some can’t handle sunlight or garlic or even need to attack and drink the blood of living creatures just to stay alive! Those are all failures however, the really strong and skilled vampires have none of those random and arbitrary weaknesses.

Excerpt obtained from the dungeon website “Calthoughts/undead.dcs”

After finishing the colossus roach commander, Innearth finally had a moment of calm. Everything slowed down after what felt like months of ramping up. It “settled”.

Some time was spent relaxing – watching adventurers, tweaking minor things in his dungeon, idly flipping through sites on the internet.

After a few short days of this Innearth was ready for his next plan.

Innearth: Hey doc, You mentioned “playing about” with undead?

ZeMadDoctor: Ah! Finally ready are you? Of course, of course. Just let me finish a few things and free up some more attention. I’ll be with you in a moment.

…

ZeMadDoctor: So let's talk about undead! Arguably more niche than living monsters. Easier in a way! But dependant upon a third party so harder to expand with initially. We can shape the soul and body separately. Deaths have gotten less common once my dungeon became more established… so I’ll bring an existing thrall over to give examples with.

Innearth: Actually I’m interested in undead because I want to set up a resurrection system. I feel like that’s an important thing to note…

ZeMadDoctor: Oh! …alright. Life based resurrection right? That’s…harder. Give me a bit to think.

ZeMadDoctor: So I’ll see about getting an old acquaintance in here as well and then we can start.

Innearth: I just want to learn about souls.

The Abyss: Hey! We having an undead party? Glad to be had! Glad to be here!

ZeMadDoctor: Please feel free to jump in if you have anything to add.

Doc seemed to be more experienced with the chat system than Innearth. He had created a mini group chat out of their current conversation, added Abyss and set up a stream of a closed-off section of the facility so they could see all in less than a minute.

ZeMadDoctor: What undead have you experimented with so far?

Rather than responding normally, Innearth found his little undead island in the magma halls and showed off death knight silver and an array of undead animals patched up with death mana and deathly armour.

ZeMadDoctor: Oh! Perfect place to start. So everything seems to be a weak souled undead with straightforward attachment and vessels. Sapient ghosts are where this starts getting fun let me bring one over and I can show off some of the differences.

At the experiment area in the facility, a portal opened and out stepped a gaunt figure of swirling black robes carrying a pitch black scimitar. Two hollow red eyes stared out at the surroundings as it floated into the center of the room silently.

The Abyss: Woah! Anyone going to mention that portal? Look at that. Neat open and close. Open in such a short amount of time no demons poured through. Masterful.

Innearth: …it’s a bit more impressive than that. This whole area is in the void. That portal wouldn’t have created any demons either, Doc’s gotten pretty good at making them since you last saw.

The Abyss: …so that’s new. Once again making little old me feel inadequate.

ZeMadDoctor: We’ll give you a tour after this. Anyways, sapient undead.

ZeMadDoctor: Soul magic is…not actually death mana related – but necromancers are typically the only who go about dabbling in it and it does help quite a bit. Any vampires or higher undead like that were designed creatures using a variation of soul magic to achieve their strength.

The Abyss: Oh! I got this. Soul magic is done with your soul…Its magic performed by your soul and interacts well with other souls. Let me let you two in on a secret. From the perspective of soul magic your influence counts! Isn’t that neat? Its not just your real soul locked in your core.

Innearth found that less surprising than he would have after learning the specifics about dungeons… but hated to take anything away from Abyss’s explanation.

The Abyss: Technically most – if not all – soul magic uses pure mana. The soul holds pure mana after all with no affinity clouding its form. All that means is there’s no soul mana. As far as affinities are concerned souls don’t exist.

ZeMadDoctor: …alright that’s news to me. I thought soul magic was anything that interacted with a soul – like the spell where you infuse a soul with death mana to convert it into an undead soul.

The Abyss: That…is technically correct hence my “most”. Soul magic is magic cast by the soul or interacting with a soul – true. All of the common high level soul spells are pure mana.

Innearth started linking some skills he used daily – linking them to soul magic. Knowing his inventory and influence were both a part of his soul helped him confirm some things. Adding and removing stuff from his inventory, expanding his influence, creating dungeon flesh and dungeon activated traps, the act of creating floors, even giving life to monsters – all the “instinctual” magic he did all fell under the soul magic umbrella. It was magic but was it a spell? Were they all spells in a soul magic manipulation system? Or…

Most of these “spells” don’t seem to cost anything other than my time and effort. I guess expanding my influence uses mana as I vibrate it on the edge of my influence…and I guess splitting floors is related at least in part to environmental mana…but other than that I haven’t even noticed minuscule amounts of mana for any of these actions?

Is all this “racial soul magic” that us dungeons can do even magic? Is it less a spell and more just us moving our soul about like most fleshy-creatures move their bodies about?

The Abyss: Soul magic is hard. More accurately non consensual soul magic is hard. As far as a soul mage is concerned, its much easier to attack someone’s body with standard spells than it is to attack someone’s soul – especially as the system likes to protect souls for “whatever reason”.

The Abyss: Because of this, the number of natural soul magic monsters is incredibly rare and you won’t find any schematics for dungeon versions – even if a few dungeons have created them.

The Abyss: Basically, to reiterate its inefficient to attack with soul magic – soul magic is more useful for self modification or modification of a soul you have control over. Using death mana to change the alignment of a soul gives you some of that control… hence necromancers being more likely to experiment with it – they have test subjects other than themselves to work on.

ZeMadDoctor: That…thanks for the history lesson. Do you know how to make a vampire or something? I was just going to show Innearth here how to give an ethereal ghost “kinetic interactions” with the soul magic I figured out. I did add you as an expert so if you have more to offer?

The Abyss: Sure! One second… if you are interested.

The Abyss: I’m going to show you how to modify a soul after the fact. You’ll need to be the one to turn them undead for this to work – I can’t share some I have floating around sadly.

Innearth: Alright…My dungeon doesn’t have many deaths so I have no clue how long it will take to get my own version. I think you joined after the fact? …but I was hoping to set up a resurrection system – do you have any advice for that?

The Abyss: Ah! Short-term resurrection like what high-level priests from the holy mother’s faith can do? That’s a pretty simple high-level technique that works better the higher a level they are.

The Abyss: Let's see. I don’t have a life affinity so I can’t help set it up… but typically their spells consist of: #1 grabbing any souls and holding them for a few seconds in case they drift away. #2 a strong life mana (or similar) effect to heal a body back to full even if its been broken really badly. #3 a rough soul magic punt to the soul making sure its shoved back into the healed body. #4 a hint of mental mana to try and wipe some of the trauma of the “almost death” away.

ZeMadDoctor: They are cheating with faith-based divine spells anyways. Death mana is good at interacting with souls. However grabbing onto a life soul with it will convert it into an undead before you can move them about easily.

Innearth: So I have to use my influence to move the souls about without using death mana?

The Abyss: Yeah…or create a monster that can do that for you… but I have no clue where to start on that.

The Abyss: Anyways! Continuing the lesson – lets show off some manipulations. While vampires are off the table, I’ll show you how to make a lich which is just as good.

The Abyss: First off, lets take a simple enough undead soul and pull it apart so we can see what’s inside.

Abyss began streaming a section of their dungeon where they proceeded to “unravel” an undead soul. Death mana went in and pulled out in a wrenching twist. Like death mana was a hand reaching through a creature’s mouth and pulling out its organs, streams of soul stuff slipped out and hung in the air.

Certain sections of this soulstuff were then highlighted helpfully on the stream as the lesson continued. Abyss pointed out ways to recognize what section was responsible for what – it was almost as if this soul was a body with ghostly organs.

That…wasn’t completely accurate but it was close enough – the “organs” if you could call them that were all fluid and metaphysical things. They overlapped each other or were connected magically across distance…so not too far off some dungeon monster organs now that Innearth actually thought about it.

This whole soul dissection was anything but “non-violent” – a soul not under Abyss’s control would be clenching itself together constantly fighting this “opened like a clam” sort of inspection with every part of its being.

As is, the mutilated soul steamed and dripped ectoplasmic chunks and whisps towards the floor below nearly constantly – death mana pulled the largest chunks back and shoved them into the undead soul occasionally the semi-fluid materials sort of scrunching into each other once more. Not melding or reattaching…scrunching in an unnatural way.

Doc took this moment to start showing off his method of grafting ethereal kinetic frameworks into chunks of soulstuff – Abyss let go of the test subject letting it slowly retract and heal into a uniform shapeless blob once more.

Doc spoke of matching clips of pure mana with the intent of interfacing and walked them through his rough stapling into the soul he had been doing up till now. Abyss started pointing out how to pick the best places on the soul to attach stuff to and showed off a method of pulling the soul out into a thread and back into itself. Intent and aspects of soul and…Innearth started to lose the conversation.

Individually every part they were talking about made sense – but they kept making leaps and connections to concepts he had never heard of and Innearth started to feel…left out.

In hindsight death mana wasn’t the best idea for keeping someone living alive – he had only latched onto it initially due to hints at soul magic being needed and necromancers being the ones good at soul magic.

And so, as the expert and intermediate student talked about higher and higher-level concepts Innearth began to try and learn his own way.

He needed to follow along with them to get any real understanding but he also…didn’t care as much for the death portion. He just wanted practice with soul manipulation.

To start his self-study Innearth began making something Abyss had mentioned out of hand – a soul crucible.

There were dozen of wild monsters dying every hour in his whimsy floor – and of these incredibly small whisps Innearth began collecting. He turned them undead to prevent them from disappearing and created a simple sort of container to hold them in – a relatively large 50cm wide death mana crystal.

Souls shoved into this container began to fight each other – some attacking and almost consuming each other growing slightly bigger and slightly more defined even as their opponents became flakes of undead soul too small to maintain themselves and soaked the crystal warping its outer face.

Lines of red death mana splashed the side of the crystal-like blood repeatedly as undead souls fought.

Slowly the results of this experiment began to solidify. The strongest soul reached some critical point and began to slow its growth – no longer able to grow in size no matter how many whips it consumed.

Technically this was both a standard way necromancers created strong lieutenants…but technically it was also incredibly inefficient. If Innearth really cared about undead the hundred or so zombies he could have made from all those whips would have been slightly better than this one soul a couple times stronger than most.

Doc and Abyss were now creating some high-level design of a ghastly creature made from what used to be an elf soul each – soul stuff ripped out into wings and then sewed and warped into a ghost that looked like a bird.

Instead of attempting this deathly creation, Innearth began to build up a flesh golem. He surrounded the large soul gem with cosmic void and after a brief tempering started sticking monster parts to it. Monster parts from hundreds of dead wild monsters most still fresh and undecaying. He sewed flesh together with mana even as he attempted the more difficult task of sewing the soul to the body lines of soulstuff being dragged out and about the mass around it.

It was almost sad that this wasn’t really Innearth’s invention. It had been done before many times if Abyss was to be believed…But it was still novel for Innearth if only for how different a process it was from normal.

Steadily the flesh golem grew until it reached a “massive” 5m tall – it was hard to take sizes seriously after making the colossus, but this blob still towered over the typical adventurer.

Somewhere along the line Innearth began raiding his farm for death mana adjacent parts. Poison and blood. Decay and bone. These materials were technically safe to use in living monsters but had a high chance of clashing with life mana and adjacent affinities.

Sadly this wasn't Innearth’s invention. It was an incredibly common method of strengthening undead that Abyss had mentioned…and a relatively rare but still well known undead monster – but Innearth still found himself enjoying the process even if just for the change of pace.

Somewhere along the lines, Abe snuck in a stuck a top hat onto the flesh golem as a joke – but Innearth ended up actually liking it enough to leave it on. His whole aesthetic changed in that moment – and Innearth began creating a place for it.

Despite having made it in the facility and despite the effort and mana that had gone into this monster…it wasn’t quite as strong as a facility creature demanded. It might be a common enemy in a room – something to slow a transcendent down for a second or two…but it sadly wasn’t strong enough to be noteworthy.

No what Innearth ended up doing was creating a new room in the hardmode magma halls to mirror the ones in the easier zone.

A wall was weakened to paper-thin consistency in a place with lots of traffic and high chance of being broken – Innearth was, in essence, retconning this undead boss into the zone – and a few minutes of theming later, he was done.

Right up until the top hat the monster was going to be called “fleshy fear” pending a much better name from FED…but in that moment the flesh golem became Tom. It just seemed like a tom.

This right here was the point a wild connection was made between portions of Innearth’s split attention. His mind christening the flesh golem as Tom met up with his mind trying to make a resurrection system and melded.

…

Going backwards in his timeline a few days before this flash of inspiration Innearth had begun brainstorming resurrection.

…he had only latched onto death mana initially due to the hints at soul magic being needed and knowledge of necromancers being good at said soul magic.

The closest example of his current goal he could see was the hydra and its minions. They were bound and couldn’t die so long as any of them were still alive.

Innearth just wanted a less permanent version of this spellwork.

…He pushed the hydra to fight more and more aggressively in the silver planes. It was hard to kill after all and if it managed to ascend there might be something to help Innearth see what was happening.

A less accurate but still valid system was the one currently employed by the crystal treant. It summoned minions that could die but maintain memories and share them with future generations…Innearth wasn’t quite sure how the process worked but it was easy enough to study the results.

Trying to use either of these as inspiration he tried for the second time to “just make a circuit” to do the job for him. He wanted a skill to collect and revive souls. Simple enough right? He was even willing to throw a massive amount of mana and time at the circuit to reach this goal – beside his constant upkeep he had no other responsibilities.

Now, these days when “trying to design a skill”, all Innearth had to do was start thinking about it.

Depending on how hard he focused he could get a sense of how difficult it might be or if something was possible – sometimes ideas would even start appearing in his core at this moment, viable solutions from nothing.

The real moment the circuit sense started pulling its weight was when he started trying to actually make a circuit. He would see bad connections or shapes, get a sense of what a change would do before he made it, he could even see potential pathways and leaps he could do to make a circuit better extending off into nowhere.

Dungeons didn’t experience this phenomenon and when he had searched initially back in his R3 days he hadn’t known what it was…the internet and more importantly translated sapient knowledge was more forthcoming.

This mastery sense was showing him among other things what other dungeons had done before. Each memory of a circuit that did what he wanted was a circuit some dungeon had made by accident or iterated on long ago.

It was also better letting him see the long list of rules that circuit building followed…what it wasn’t doing however was telling him how to make anything that hadn’t been made before.

No dungeon had made a soul-capturing circuit.

And simply wanting a random circuit to do the job wasn’t enough either.

Even though he had a goal – to collect and revive souls – and even though he was framing it in a way the circuit system should understand – “a skill to collect and revive souls”…the sense was silent.

The worst part of this was that if there was an actual soul mana this whole problem would be trivial. His experience and circuit sense would let him swap a few fire cores in a fire control system for soul ones and the problem would be solved. A circuit for water collection could be modified easily enough…a circuit for element extraction or heat gathering – Innearth had enough experience to modify any of these skills to suit his needs if only soul mana existed.

…

The next cheat Innearth attempted to use was throwing dwarves at the problem – more importantly throwing the runesystem at the problem and seeing if they could come up with a solution.

There was a similar sort of limitation here – dwarves didn’t have a rune to reference someones soul even if they had runes that interacted with them. There were runes for {self}, {friend}, {enemy}. There were combined runes for {living+creature}, {undead+creature}, {demon+creature}. There were simple descriptive runes…but trying to describe a soul as {ethereal+body} or {commonbetween+{living+creature}+{undead+creature}} didn’t work.

It was probably possible but as far as Innearth’s dwarves were concerned nothing came to mind. They just weren’t experienced enough, their own “runework sense” not telling them the solution.

It all just felt so frustratingly arbitrary. It felt like some massive oversight – why wasn’t there a soul rune? Who was in charge of making runes and why hadn’t they made this one! It would be so helpful for necromancy.

And why is it so hard to describe what a soul is? It's right there! I can see it, right there in my influence. It's like a blobby eitheral liquid that fills living creatures!

…Innearth researched something he should have looked at initially. If necromancers can perform soul magic they have to be doing it some way. If they don’t use runes or soul mana what are they doing?

…

Well…it turns out part of the reason this was all so difficult was due to information suppression. Necromancers themselves nearly always hoarded knowledge and performed strange rituals using multiple spell systems to reach their goals…but more importantly, there was a third-party meddling.

The largest faith on the planet – the church of the holy mother – burnt and stamped out any knowledge of necromancy and to a lesser extent soul magic wherever they found it.

Considering Abyss confirmed their divine spells are using soul magic it seems awfully hypocritical of them.

Sure some of these referenced tomes and guides to soul magic are written on dried human skin because said necromancers thought it “easier to find than paper”…but that’s no reason to burn it all. Its immensely inconvenient right now.

Either way, the most important hint Innearth found at this point in time was that most – if not all – necromancers used a form of chanting or enchanting in their rituals.

Enchanting…necromancers…flesh golem… Tom… Tom!

A flash.

This didn’t happen often but separate threads of Innearth’s mind were suddenly thinking the same thing and almost slipped into each other.

I just have to create a monster that can enchant things. A crystal gnome as you were. Why has it taken me this long to think of this???

Enchanters performed some similar actions to runesmiths…Honestly, there was a massive amount of overlap between the two in terms of results. The real difference however was how they approached things and what type of results were easier for them.

The example Innearth remembered reading about was creating a sculpture of a bird out of stone.

Runes could easily shape stone into a couple simple shapes – a pillar, a wall, a boulder you name it.

To make an exact replica of a bird they could see about copying an existing bird or bird statues form – shaping the new statue to be perfectly identical to the reference easily enough.

They could also combine a long series of modifications to make a steadily more and more accurate example.

Something like an initial boulder of stone with two pillars coming off it. Two diagonal cuts per pillar to shape them closer to wings. Dozens of defined scoops of material out of key parts. Dozens of additions afterwards.

This sort of shaping usually gave blocky representations of results unless a runesmith made literally thousands of small modifications.

In comparison, an enchanter would find it slightly harder to shape stone. It would take slightly longer, take more effort to make a wall or boulder.

In exchange, if they wanted to make a bird statue there wasn’t a lot more effort. They simply had to describe their desired bird. “Feathers from tip to tail. Sharp pointed eyes and beak. As typical a bird as possible”.

All this was to say an enchanter could simply write [soul] and use the inherent description of a soul contained in the language used to write that word. Enchanting was much much better at describing and defining things than runesmithing.

To create this crystal gnome Innearth focused first on form. To pack enough magic and capability into a being so small the best option was to make something bigger and then shrink it down afterwards – happily, now he had shrinking mana instead of void mana to get this right and non-squished.

A crystal dwarf was the base but a series of minor body modifications were made to shape it closer to the gnomes Innearth had seen. To hint he was planning on shrinking this creature and hopefully increase the strength of it Innearth embedded small shrinking mana materials throughout the crystal flesh.

For this circuit Innearth went vague – incredibly vague sadly the goal was the circuit to take as much from the body as possible and so instead of hundreds of mini cores Innearth gave the creature a modest tier 11 core in the chest and only a dozen minor ones throughout the rest of the body.

In the arms small T1 nodes of kinetic, crystal, laser and water were placed linking straight from the core to its wrists.

Instead of a single void claw to carve runes with Innearth made his “claw” a pointed straw and built the monster like an ink quill.

He found a unique material that dyed anything it touched a brilliant turquoise and mixed it with some mundane oil in the creature’s belly. Then, a simple enough muscle-based suction method was used to pull liquid up tubes and down each arm to drip out of the claws like inky venom.

Innearth knew the small circuits he had run down the arms would help manipulate and then set the ink at the end and after some more cosmetic changes Innearth was ready.

A brief amount of time to print and shrink this design later and Innearth was given life to his hopefully newest brand of permanent crafters.

Unlike the big creatures with dramatic slow activations this small monster was nearly instantly alive and wandering about – getting into anything and everything before Innearth had even noticed they were alive.

The best way to describe this dungeon creature was that they were a hyperactive mute.

They made nearly no sound and upon attempting to mentally communicate not a single peep was generated from their mind.

What they lacked in mental communication they more than made up for in text, for this was the manner they were most comfortable communicating in.

They would scribble strange spiky looping script while infusing mana and then write quick sentences and even whole paragraphs in an unknown language. This second "script" slowly shifted and translated itself into dungeon script powered by the first enchantment.

Questions, responses to Innearth’s questions, sometimes the hyperactive creature was just labelling things – Innearth found them writing down what everything they saw was leaving untranslated scribbles everywhere.

After a few minutes of frantic movement, the crafter was finally still enough for Innearth to begin explaining what he wanted from them.

They sat unmoving as he talked and then remained still and silent for so long, Innearth wondered if he had broken them. The only sign the crystal gnome was still alive was a single arm writing empty words beside them – a script without ink or mana as they thought through the problem he had presented.

Minutes turned to hours and despite Innearth’s sense of time becoming more and more skewed, waiting for the gnome to respond began making him impatient.

Over 30 straight hours was how long it took for the gnome to finish thinking. They started suddenly – as if awaking from a nap – and moved towards a wall twitching as if silently mumbling to themselves.

After staring at the wall for a moment, they began to write.

That’s…a fun job. Fun, Fun, Fun. Okay. I can see how to do what you want at least in part – by that I can imagine a lot of the steps separately but no matter how much I think I can’t imagine it being nearly as strong or good as you like.

Like hey! I can enchant something to capture a soul in a small range and hold it safely – that shouldn’t be too hard nope!

It could be in a locket or something pulling the person wearing it into the inside as soon as they are in danger of dying.

...

Problem with that, is the soul will start decaying pretty quickly outside of a proper body. You know resurrection tends to decay a soul right? It will drop in strength at least for a time. A death penalty if you were, until "it" regains its previous strength.

I can also see about healing them but that’s a bit of a worse process…Maybe we get a tiny piece of them first like some blood we can use to revive them from afterwards? That's probably the best option.

...

Problem with that is it's going to take literally forever to work. Regrowing a whole body from some blood will take months to years and by that point the soul will obviously have disappeared.

It will also need a lot of script…like more than you want to have adventures carrying around with them.

...

The best option would just be to heal the body as it gets injured but you mentioned these “void whales” I can’t imagine making anything to protect someone from getting eaten.

...

What do you say? Should we try your impossible request? I don't want to get your hopes up but I will see what I can do.

Before responding, Innearth tried to get the attention of several drunk ascended dwarves before giving up and commanding a relatively strong “non ascended” dwarf to come over to the room.

He then reached out to get permission from every single one of his friends before returning to the gnome.

Okay, All I really need from you is a way of interacting with souls and whatever else you think you can manage easily. Here’s what we have to work with okay?

I can make invincible containers for these items. Souls should pass through cosmic void just fine and hopefully they will be protected from damage – not sure how long it will last inside a whale's mouth no matter how much tempering I do... but it's more than enough to start.

Amy will supply ambrosia. Lots and lots and lots of ambrosia. That should prevent souls from decaying. It should also help heal bodies with an insane efficiency and will even keep their minds relatively healthy through the process.

Depending on what’s easier, Fed can slow down the time for each soul until the body is ready or Abe can speed up the growth of a body.

All the items we give adventurers need to do is capture and transmit their souls – we can mess around with tagging along with mental connections or linking magic like the soul bonds I have…worse case Doc said he can supply small portals to physically link the distance.

Queen…wanted to be included so she’s providing test subjects in the form of willing ascended monsters to act for the trial run.

You and this fine fellow can work together to cover each others weaknesses and enhance each other's strengths…

Innearth had the dwarf step forward at this moment to make it obvious who he was talking about.

After all this I’m hoping I can give life to the device we are making.

Worse case it will just help regenerate ambrosia used for healing, best case I’ll be overlapping my own circuit spell into this ritual.

This is definitely possible, no need for a defeatist attitude at this point!

The gnome looked shocked at the deluge of information – at the overload of resources being given. At the center of the room the dwarf started to clue into the importance of his new task and a visible light began rising into his eyes – they sparkled at the idea that he was special and a part of this. At the idea that they were building something important.

Innearth let the two dedicated crafters begin their own brainstorming session that delved into lighthearted arguing. The gnome kept labelling the dwarfs tools and changing stuff while the dwarf kept trying to do everything themselves.

Somehow the two managed to work things out and a true ritual began taking shape. The very center the very core of this creation was a simple electrum metal box – mental gold and life silver hammered and folded into a container before being covered in enhancement runes.

This box held a solid hundred page manuscript of rules that was the true brains of the situation. The most important part of the project the magic designed to move souls about and collect them through micro portals.

This box was then embedded into a solid crystal pyramid – 20x20m wide at its base the pyramid sharpened up into a point almost 30m tall. Inside this solid block of crystal Innearth dug a circuit – it was easier to turn the box into a sort of node and turn its contents into an effect that was then enhanced than another interface but this is where everything started getting weird feeling. Innearth was making a circuit that kept feeling different and changing like a living creature. The mana was much looser in a ritual. More fluid. More dependant upon their actual goal than usual.

Around this pyramid a large cosmic void tub was formed – it had a diameter of 32m and flattened off just above the top of the pyramid. The tub was both protection and more importantly a body that was slowly filled with dense regenerating liquid mixed with ambrosia.

…so much ambrosia.

Around this giant tank were a series of pods – 64 of them wrapping around the entire length at a variety of sizes. They ranged from 1m wide at the smallest to 8m wide at the largest – enough to fit even the largest of sapients that Innearth hosted.

But sapients despite being the focus weren’t the only thing Innearth built for. The whole top of the tank was covered in a dome 32m in diameter and built specifically with the resident dragon in mind.

All these tanks were obviously for adventurers’ bodies to form and heal in and were filled with solid ambrosia then surrounded by entropy fields to speed the whole process up.

Branching out from the center were solid pipes connecting the pyramid to the pods and as his two crafters focused on laying repeating runes and looping script Innearth had an idea.

It was a wild sort of idea. A stray thought that his circuit sense was silent but almost hopeful for.

Innearth got Amy to make ambrosia cores. She had been on board with this project as soon as he described the barest hint of it to her and was more than willing to help.

She filled self contained balls which were blasted with pure mana straight from Innearths filters – and these became nodes in his circuit. Ambrosia nodes and cosmic void nodes were placed and conformed to existing rules or broke them – circuits were not used to being fed such strong mana types by someone who knew how to use them it was like bringing a bunch of power tools to an arts and crafts session.

Straightforward circuits with powerful fuel.

They were designed to heal and grow and aid the whole process – designed to utilize the ambrosia in as efficient a manner as possible.

All that was left at this point were the soul capturing items. Innearth wanted bracers instead of lockets – more annoying for the gnome to enchant but easier to attach to adventurers and less likely to fall off.

A round band of silver with blue script and topped with a single cosmic void “gem” encased in blue crystal for aesthetic and tempered for safety.

Innearth could make them relatively cheaply all things considered, and dozens were made to start. Doc was fine with giving each a portal point and the majority of the work was done by a trio of three gnomes – Innearth had started making more and sending them about the workshop.

The soul collecting, clone growing and more importantly “adventurer reviving” machine was done. Was given life. Was tested out on various ascended monsters.

Innearth was ready to open up the planes and ready to unveil this system. Ready to see if his setup worked.

Fed had something to say for the theming however.

Fated Eternal Design: WOAH, WOAH, WOAH. Do you know how much of a waste simply opening the door and saying “there you go” would be? No! Please, look how much work you put into it. This needs to be a crowning gem. It needs to be shown off in all its glory!

Fated Eternal Design: Don’t worry. Give me a bit I’ll set up a proper unveiling. This device has an important point in the facilities story now. This…this is what the researchers were trying to build! This was the pinnacle of their achievements! Maybe they made this machine…they made this machine but were killed by demons before they could protect themselves with it!

Fated Eternal Design: …maybe – OH. You gave life to it right? It probably shows up as a plant or something? Let's customize its analysis and say “after sitting dormant for years the world tree finally revived it”. "Its unique existence was finally complete centuries after the facility was abandoned"…

Innearth: Alright, You can give it a story. Don’t take too long this time okay? Amy worked really hard on this I'm sure she will want to see the results.

Abe: Lol Amy worked hard. Yeah I'll agree with that. She really was MVP this time around – I just threw some speed fields on.

Fated Eternal Design: Of course! You can count on me!