In the world of Unexpected Circumstances – Oceanis.

The underwater gate was established at the agreed upon time and place. The first person – being – through was the representative of the Oceanis Adventurer’s Guild. Hir – hir for hir was a egg laying hermaphrodite – looked something like a twenty meter long cross between a sea cucumber and a boneless eel with three multi-jointed limbs emerging from just behind hir’s gills, each limb ending in three fingers.

Silverfin blinked in surprise, “welcome to Midgard.”

Hir looked around with interest taking in Silverfin and his scanty entourage, not missing Jezebel and her two chief cohorts lurking in the background.

The details of the contract between the Oceanis Adventurer’s Guild and Antonio’s dungeon were confirmed, access to the dungeon for the one and access to Oceanis for selected accredited individuals of the other. The representative of the dungeon was introduced and Isabella went through the gate behind Glow at Darkening.

Isabella was so excited; she was on a new world and working for her mama and papa. The deep ocean felt different but nice, her flanks rippled with light. She used all her senses to examine her surroundings.

« Um, Glow where and when do you want me to set the portal. »

“Follow me youngster, we are close,” hir replied.

Glow at Darkening led their visitor to the local edifice selected to house the dungeon’s portal, it was sited at the end of a row of four nearly identical fortified buildings, fortified as in designed to keep things in.

Several representatives of the local guild and the world in general were also present. There seemed to be three races, Glow at Darkening represented the most numerous, then there were some very sharklike beings that seemed to be uncomfortable at this depth and the third were very squidlike but in Isabella’s opinion severely deficient in tentacles, honestly only six, and oversupplied with eyes, three!

Isabella flashed a welcome at the waiting dignitaries and jetted into the building.

The leader of the deep-sea people observed the exuberant youngster, poor thing only two eyes and what would anyone want with ten tentacles. Rippling Orange Highlights flickered a brief ripple of color in answer to the youngster’s rippling greeting before turning his attention to Glow at Darkening who was representing the mid-sea people.

Isabella rejected the dome as too small, after some discussion the assembled dignitaries asked for the portal to be established at the end of the row in the open and so it was.

* * *

Fluorescent Purple Highlights had been sidelined. His superiors had exiled him from his office and post for the day while they made nice with visitors from Midgard so as to gain access to a new dungeon.

Now he was back at his post of controller of dungeon access. He was horrified; those incompetent idiots had left a huge dungeon portal in the open, completely unprotected. Anything could come through. At any time!

Purple started firing off orders, then after a second look he sent a most urgent summons to his architect and defence experts to come up with an upgraded and much enlarged containment dome. Within the hour Purple had a small army on hand keeping an eye on the portal while his specialists laboured around the clock to design a suitable defence dome to contain the threat.

During this time three parties of adventurers ventured into the new dungeon, one, the weakest group simply didn’t return, the remaining two parties both lost members but came back laden with unusual treasures. The fact that two Veteran rated parties lost members sent his defence experts back to the drawing board and caused the small army present to grow by a third.

There was another hiatus when an Elite party lost two members during their delve as the defences were once again upgraded.

After two weeks of frantic efforts the dome was finally being constructed. Purple remained apprehensive until the dome was finally completed three weeks later. In that time the Adventurer’s Guild had flatly banned parties that didn’t contain at least two Veteran rated adventurers from attempting the Luso dungeon. Their best group had also failed to complete the dungeon losing the famous godlike adventurer and mage Silver Mantle the reckless.

So finally after five weeks of frantic efforts Purple finally got back to his office and found a folder with nearly fifty pages of dense text of instructions regarding his latest headache he skimmed it checking that all the highlights matched the instructions regarding all the other gates and portals he was responsible for. It was not surprising that he missed the two little sentences that made this portal different from the others.

So when two months later Baltazar, the correctly accredited ambassador and representative from Antonio and the Luso dungeon to the Oceanis’ Adventurer’s Guild the defences didn’t see anything more than a dungeon monster that looked like a somewhat deformed deep dweller only four times larger than any deep dweller had any right to be. They reacted with violence.

Baltazar had been very wary as both Antonio and Jezebel had warned him to keep his guard up and get back alive whatever it took. He had like all Antonio’s magic capable monsters and dungeon born been studying Silver Mantle’s spell books and Antonio had provided him with a couple of enchanted items copied and developed from recent loot.

Baltazar transited the portal with shields active and was almost immediately attacked with spells and missiles. His shields fluoresced and he instinctively struck back with his ready spells and triggered his laser as he swung round and expelled ink and jetted back to the portal. He dumped two mines from his storage as he went loosing flesh, tentacles and blood as his defences collapsed under the relentless attack from the crumbling dome.

Baltazer came through the portal in shreds but still alive. Antonio, though furious first saw to saving his employee and friend. Then he sealed the portal. Antonio then checked once again on Baltazar and called his lawyer. The result of that call was the complete removal of the portal from Oceanis.

Fluorescent Purple Highlights was horrified, one monster, one! And the strongest defence dome he had ever known was reduced to rubble and the monster had nearly won. If the thing’s defences had lasted just another thirty seconds it would have been free to go where it willed.

His army was assembling when the portal, once again in the open ocean winked out and was no more. Purple was distinctly relieved and sent a report on the day’s occurrences to Glow at Darkening.

Glow at Darkening was annoyed, what had he done to deserve such incompetent subordinates but maybe it was just as well that something that powerful was prevented from entering Oceanis. And anyway it was only a dungeon monster. And anyway, they were made to be killed. It would only need a little pressure to be applied to the local Guild office to get the dungeon to open again. It was after all the most powerful and almost the most profitable dungeon he had on his books. No one would care about a contract with a dungeon anyway.

Glow was to find that Antonio did not agree with him.