Arc 2 Opening Chapter 1, Part 2: Blackmoss (Gunny PoV)

An old road overgrown with bushes and even a tiny tree meanders through a narrow mountain valley. At one side in the mountain the stone suddenly moves, forming a small alcove. Magic symbols appear and a portal opens. Three dozen silver foxes and ten lizardpeople come out. One of them is obviously much more powerfull and experienced than the others.

"OK, exactly as planned - team two, you go right and look for anything to sample in this valley. It leads to a larger valley in a few hundred meters, try to find any burrowing animals there to capture. The rest of you follow me to the abandoned mine at the end of this road."

Jogging on Gunny and the four lizards accompanying him reach the ruins of an old palisade about ten minutes later. Three old and partially collapsed wooden buildings stand as anchors to several wooden palisades that form a barrier around an old mine entrance to the side of the vale that has also become larger in this area. An old sign over the large gate gives the name of the settlement: "Blackmoss".

Carefully they are picking their way through the ruins.

Strange - why are the palisades double-sided? you can't go up from the inside of the camp, you'll have to enter them from the buildings. That isn't very effective to repel monsters attacking the camp...

The five lizards pick their way through the main building toward the mine entrance, occasionally taking a rusty weapon or other equipment lying around into their bags. They soon enter the mine and are only a few meters in when Gunny suddenly stops.

Huh? Only a short tunnel to a room six by six meters? What kind of mine is this? Wait a second - STAIRS???

There is no way to take mine carts up or down stairs - even the rails from the entrance terminate in this room after only three or four meters length. That doesn'...

Oh my god - this isn't an abandoned mine, it's a dead dungeon that had used a mine template for environment. That's why the palisades were both directions - to contain the dungeon as well as defend to the outside.

This changes everything - what we could learn here about the way dungeons are contained and destroyed...

"Change of plans. You" the gunny points to one of the lizardmen that stand behind them. "You are now leader of team three. You run back to find the other team, then take two of them as your new team members. Team two is to continue their task with only three people, and you will take the other two to the buildings out there. Take whatever you find from the equipment left as samples, but not only item samples - try to map the entire buildings and how the structure is laid out. Any maps or scraps of parchment or whatever recordings might be left also have priority."

"The rest of us will continue here, we need to get as deep as possible in the time we have."

On his way to the stairs the Gunny looks at a place with rough stone instead of ground - that must have been the place where the floor node once was, and the adventurers seem to have hacked it loose and taken it. The group goes down - no resistance so far, and no dungeon mana around either. This dungeon is truly dead from what he can see. The stairs end in a small room with an exit on the other side, behind whic the tunnel takes a sharp turn right. Whatever contents were in this room they are now trashed, with a few bones of something doglike lying around.

Slowly the group continues on. "six meters wide on the first floor, nine or ten here - the former core of this dead dungeon must have been very low ranked. Still - if you see anything standing out, please say so."

On the third floor gunny passes a room of the usual 36 square meters before finding something different. A large hall shows again a number of dog-like skeletons, but also a number of cores lying around - and everything overgrown with a strange black-colored moss.

[Identify objects] [Identify plants]

Identification successfull for: Strike Hound Skeleton

Details This is a skeleton of a long-dead Strike Hound

The Strike Hounds are bred and trained by the Dverolion Empire to be their first-strike cannon fodder agains both enemy armies and on dungeon assaults.

They are agressive and fast breeding, making them ideal for such tasks but more or less useless for anything else than fighting and sometimes guarding.

Hints Could be animated with between two and five ranks of boneswarms to be a [Very Low] ranked skeleton.

Black Moss

Details This is a moss-like plant of black color that seems to have no need for sunlight to grow. Instead it can grow on earth alone.

Hints This plant seems to have degraded from a more potent version. Your skills in the area of flora-knowledge are not high enoug to guess its origin.

Beast Core Type: Roamer (Strike Hound), damaged

Details A beast core can give an animal or animal spawn a number of skills depending on type and on animal, and enable it to learn from experience. It can also enable a rebirth magic while maintaining most of the experience and memory (depends on corst of rebirth magic).

Roamer type cores give skills for travelling and fighting depending on the animal (grazer or hunter), with usually neutral behaviour and average aggression.

Spawns with Beast Cores can become Floor Bosses, but have to move deeper if they level up. There is a 50/50 chance for the Dungeon Core to absorb the Beast Core on death of the spawn. If the Beast Core is not absorbed, the adventurers might claim it as loot.

Hints Natural breeding has a 40% chance of granting an animal a beast core on birth.

If a core is damaged by more than 50%, all rebirth rituals will end with an experience and memory wipe - it's cheaper to get a new animal with a core by breeding Objects 1x damaged 76%, 1x damaged 62%, 1x damaged 57%

Beast Core Type: Challenger (Badger), damaged

Details A beast core can give an animal or animal spawn a number of skills depending on type and on animal, and enable it to learn from experience. It can also enable a rebirth magic while maintaining most of the experience and memory (depends on corst of rebirth magic).

Challenger type cores give skills for fighting and often cause a high aggression in the animal, resulting it leaving its area to seek out foes.

Spawns with Beast Cores can become Floor Bosses, but have to move deeper if they level up. There is a 50/50 chance for the Dungeon Core to absorb the Beast Core on death of the spawn. If the Beast Core is not absorbed, the adventurers might claim it as loot. Hints Natural breeding has a 40% chance of granting an animal a beast core on birth.

If a core is damaged by more than 50%, all rebirth rituals will end with an experience and memory wipe - it's cheaper to get a new animal with a core by breeding Objects 7x damaged 95%, 4x damaged 60%, 2x damaged 35%, 1x damaged 15%

Beast Core Type: Hoarder (Badger), damaged Details A beast core can give an animal or animal spawn a number of skills depending on type and on animal, and enable it to learn from experience. It can also enable a rebirth magic while maintaining most of the experience and memory (depends on corst of rebirth magic).

Hoarder type cores give skills for fighting, travelling and gathering and often cause a defensive aggression in the animal that is only triggered if its lair or its hoard is threatened.

Spawns with Beast Cores can become Floor Bosses, but have to move deeper if they level up. There is a 50/50 chance for the Dungeon Core to absorb the Beast Core on death of the spawn. If the Beast Core is not absorbed, the adventurers might claim it as loot. Hints Natural breeding has a 40% chance of granting an animal a beast core on birth.

If a core is damaged by more than 50%, all rebirth rituals will end with an experience and memory wipe - it's cheaper to get a new animal with a core by breeding Objects 1x damaged 90%, 2x damaged 75%, 1x damaged 50%, 1x damaged 25%

"OK, this looks as if that black moss is what named this dungeon - take several samples. Add that strike hound skeleton there - it seems to be the most intact, make sure to get every bone. And all the cores, no matter if damaged or not. One of you then hurry back to the entrance with the full bags - if team three is already back hand them over, otherwise deposit them at the gate where they can't be missed and return here."

"The rest of us will slowly continue deeper while you're doing that."

The three lizards continue to the other end of the hall where a small opening leads to the third and last room on this floor. Stairs on the other end of the room lead farther down, but in this rooms there are the broken remains of a node.

Hmm - the first two floors the nodes were carefully hacked loose and completely taken - here they have only smashed it. Why weren't they interested in this one?

"Collect the pieces - having even a broken node to analyse should help the General, he can't destroy his own nodes after all."

Continuing down to the fourth floor they see something more like a dungeon. Gunny stops at the entrance to a 6 by 6 meter room that has exits on all four sides.

"OK, Lecture time my friends. If the General's plans succeed and he can hide his fifth entrance, then we will need people who can travel into the unknown and know how to handle caverns and labyrinths. So I'll use this opportunity to explain the basics to you."

"In any natural cave and in simple labyrinths the easiest rule to find your way around and back is to always go left to the first left way that continues. That way if you need to run back you'll always know to alway go right and you'll be back at the entrance."

"That will not help you with a dungeon designed by the General or anyone else who knows how to design around that simple method. So you'll always mark the way you came from with a symbol you know and that preferably points toward the exit. If you get into a loop and see that symbol again coming from a different tunnel, then you don't make a new one but mark the tunnel where you previously entered and the one you returned from with a circle or a similiar symbol."

"Before entering a new room - ah perfect, you're back and we're four again - before entering a new room you'll have to check if there might be anyone in an edge you didn't see from outside. No one in this case. The room also contains nothing new for us, just debris - but it has three other exists."

"You - mark the entrance as explained, just use the soot from that broken torch there. The rest - check each exit before continuing. What is on the other side?"

"The opening on the other side to our entrance shows to tunnels branching left and right, the two openings to both sides show a room each. But only one of those rooms has a further exit. This is a case where we don't use the 'go-left-rule', but only because we are four. One stays here to watch the other two exits we know nothing about, the other three follow me to check the room to the right where we know it's a dead end."

The room is filled with bones and debries and black moss like the other rooms, the gunny just takes another beast core before marking the entry to the room with an X and continues to the left exit and the other hall. Another abandoned hall and a short winding tunnel later they find the former noderoom of the fourth floor.

Again the node has been carefully taken from here. And the further exit on the other side of the room is full of rubble. Damn it - that looks like stairs down, and completely blocked - we have some tools for mining and digging because we expected a mine, but not enough for that mess.

"Looks like the way down is blocked - too bad. Let's check the last section of this floor. We have taken three hours so far - and the General expects most of the surfacers to need one or two days to block his first four exits. We should have more than enough time for the rest of this dungeon especially with the further floors blocked."

"Are you sure? Didn't I hear that one of the exits is only ten kilometers from a large city?"

"Yes - ten kilometers by boat, and if they come too early then the naga will put holes into the boats from below. That would reveal that the General has Naga available and we hope that it is not needed, but we have a reserve. And I know where the physical entrance is - if everything fails we can travel there on the surface."

Better not tell them that this travel would take several days and I'm the only one who could survive it due to them requiring mana to live, and there is no mana outside the dungeon...

But I hoped to get more from this dungeon...

"Let's check those two tunnels that get off from the first room."

...

"Gunny, that is the first trap I've seen in this dungeon."

"Yes, some sort of ballista at the end of the left corridor. Anyone coming into this area would have been a target and the spear could have travelled the entire fifteen meters to the other end of the corridor. But it doesn't look like anything special - I could easily build a better spear thrower with a bit of time and materials. It's too broken down, no need to take its parts. Let's check where the other end of the corridor leads to."

"Gunny, there is Mana around here - it's not the Mana like from the core - it feels foreign, but it definetely is dungeon mana."

"What? Why didn't you tell me before?"

"It wasn't anywhere else - it's very faint and I can only sense it since we went along this corridor. It comes from whereever we are going."

"Is it hostile to you or can you use it?"

"We are recharging our mana need, but it still tastes wrong somehow. It should not be a problem however."

"Then let's continue on to find this mana source. It could be very valuable."

The four lizards continue to the end of the short corridor where another opening leads into another trashed room. Once again a quick search only found a few more damaged cores, bones of strike hounds and black moss. A few discarded weapons show that there have been humans and dwarves fighting here, but it seems their bodies were taken when the adventurers left, only the corpses of hounds were left to rot.

The black moss seems to be more abundand in this room, but identification showed no difference to the smaller samples collected in the earlier floors. The other exit from the room comes up to a wide but short corridor that ends up at another staircase. This time however the stairs look more substantial.

"The first four floors all used something like a mine as environment, including iron rails on the ground even if we never saw a car on them and wooden reinforcements and torches and so on, including simple stairs of the same. These stairs look better, and they seem to go deeper than the usual five meters dungeon floors are distant to each other. I can't even see the bottom because the stairway turns around itself at least two times."

"Be more carefull when we continue, the environment will be different and if there is mana left then some of the traps might still be operational down there."

The group goes down the stairs and end up at an hallway that would have fit into any king's palace. The hallway is not only six meters wide but also six meter high instead of the usual two to three meters of a dungeon floor - no doubt the reason why the stairs were covering ten meters in height difference.

The walls are precious marble and covered with nice geometric patterns while both sides of the hallway hold stone and marble statues of adventurers and monsters in fighting positions, usually with the adventurers loosing. The hallway is at least twenty or more meters long and in the distance there is a slight glow around something like a pedestral or a throne or so.

Slowly the lizards move on, checking the good quality of the statues to all side. There are two openings at both sides just short of the stairs, two more about halfway through the hall and perhaps (difficult to see in the light of their torches) another pair near the end of the hallway, behind the statues there.

Magic Formation Triggered

Save checks failed

Rankdown state applied, [1:00:00] one hour countdown

15 Point Rankbonus lost from EP/HP/AP/SP

Rankdown State (Magic Trap Formation) [Limited]

Trap Details

This trap is based on a magic formation placed on the floor, it has no physical elements to see or disarm.

Anyone stepping on the formation has a chance to see the magic activating in time and a chance to resist its effect based on trap rank as well as target rank. If this fails, a state is applied to the target and the trap is disabled until recharged.

Trap state effect All those who are affected by the state imposed from the trap will loose one rank of their current maximum rank.

This will loose them part of the rank bonus going to their Endurance, Health, Astral and Soul Powers.

Any skill, spell or ability that is higher than the new reduced rank is also reduced. This includes a level and attribute loss if those values are too high for the reduced rank.

Trap abilities and restrictions Affects all within 5m range

Invisible Magic Formation Limit 1 per floor

"What did the rest of you loose? It shouldn't be much because we are too weak compared to our maximum ranks."

"Three points, Health is now 18/18 instead of 21/21" "Same here" "Yes" "Yes"

"OK, but that would be a nice trap for the General to have - especially for such a low floor number. We have to see if we can copy or take it - after all the adventurers were able to take several nodes by hacking them off the floor."

The middle area of the hall is the biggest mess Gunny has seen in this dungeon so far - easily three or four times the bones, debries and damaged cores of any other hall in this dead dungeon.

That Black Moss looks even more healthier and better than the ones on the floors above. I wonder...

"Ouch!" When the gunny approaches one of the larger patches of Black Moss, he is suddenly attacked by a splash of water. The Black Moss turns weaker, more like the other samples they found above and he decides to check the rest of the moss from a distance.

[Identify Plant]

Black Moss (Charged)

Details This is a moss-like plant of black color that seems to have no need for sunlight to grow. Instead it can grow on earth alone.

If both Mana and Water is available for the Moss to draw on, it can charge itself with a weak water bolt to be released at touch or approach.

The water bolt will do 5 regular damage plus 3 acid and 3 toxic damage. It recharges once per battleturn if water and mana are available.

Hints This plant seems to have degraded from a more potent version. Your skills in the area of flora-knowledge are not high enough to guess its origin.

OK, that seems more like a dungeon plant - but still no idea what it was. The samples seem to be identical after they loose their charge.

"OK, let's continue - where is the mana coming from?"

"It's coming from the middle left opening of the hall."

"Let's check there first - if anything is dangerous here it's the things that are still powered by that mana, and that means down that way."

The four lizards approach the opening, but while Gunny goes on the other three suddenly stop. Gunny doesn't see this as he continues.

"A trashed secret door at the other end, but this room is clean - only a glowing mark on the wall, but no fighting happened here. Hey - why are you standing there? Come in, we have work to do."

"We can't. We cannot enter that room. We do not want to be near it if possible at all."

What? But why? [Identify Formation]

Repulsor Formation

Room Rank [Limited] Placement Cost 5 MP

Description This formation forces all spawns and swarms to leave this room, becoming roaming monsters of this floor.

Roaming monsters can add themselves temporarily to any room with adventurers inside to fight them, otherwise they have to leave a room they were not assigned to within a minute of entering it.

Limits One per Floor Abilities works on all spawns and swarms, regardless of type or level

"That explains the effect."

Ten minutes later Gunny has checked the other five halls. All six rooms to the side of the main hall have that repulsor formation despite it being only allowed once per floor. And at the end of the hall is a fake node with a fake core - enough to draw adventurers deeper into the hall, until suddenly all repulsors were switched on and the spawn from six additional rooms were forced into the hall, resulting in the higher number of corpses and cores there.

"OK, since I'm the only one who can enter the side rooms, I'll try to loose or destroy the repulsor on the room where the mana flows from. You " pointing to a lizardwoman "will watch me and the other opening of the room while I'm doing that. If there is something coming out, warn me. You other two will try to pry the stone plate with the [Rankdown] trap loose. If we can take it with us it would be perfect, but I don't want to trigger such a trap whenever we go through here carrying the loot. If you finish that before I've cleared the repulsor, then try to get that fake node and fake dungeon core as well as collecting whatever damaged cores are under that pile of corpses."

It takes the four about one and a half hour to hack the stone plates loose, but nothing disturbs them. The stone plates with the repulsor formation and the trap are placed next to the stairs and the group continues on, finding another clean room with a repulsor and finally the core room.

Node and core are broken and trashed, but have not been removed. The group approaches and checks - the core is completely broken, the node about half-way cut to get to the core inside it. The Lizardwoman speaks.

"The mana comes from the node, not the core itself. It looks as if there is a crystal inside."

Gunny answers "That was probably the dungeons floor crystal - we know they store mana to prepare for larger floor excavations, and this dungeon must have been preparing for the next level. After the core and the node were broken it has slowly lost its ability to store that mana, releasing it into the dungeon - but not enough to be detected outside, the moss has probably absorbed everything it could get from it. OK - the node is halfway loose already and another dungeon core to analyse is a very good treasure for us. Let's start hacking it loose."

Another two hours of hard work later the final connection of the node cracks - but no one expected what follows.

The entire dungeon wavers for several seconds - as if watching something through hot air. And then all wall decorations and floor stones and anything connected to them just vanishes. They are now standing in a room that has walls of a strange black stone. All walls are only roughly formed and show traces of simple excavation - only the debries that was already loose still remains.

"Ow - that stone gives me vertigo from just looking at it. What is that and what happened? Wait - Booble said something about the dungeons stabilising their zone. When we broke the connection between the corenode and the floor, that effect must have been cancelled - and the environment was part of that stabilisation, so it vanished as well."

"Let's take the parts and get out of here before anything else happens."

A few minutes later Gunny stares in horror at a sheer 10 meter shaft in the ceiling of the corridor.

"What? The stairs were part of the environment and also vanished, leaving only empty shafts? How do we get back up ten meters of sheer rock?"

[Ping]

You have a new Quest Abort Gathering - Return to Dungeon

Details A Paut'a has almost captured a Silver Fox Guard, and the elves are approaching the entrance in force. You have 20 Minutes to return

Hints I think the elves will take a few minutes to prepare for entering, but don't waste the countdown.

Rewards 20 XP

"Oh Shit"