2.2.4 Mapping Hell, Second Half (Sky Arrows PoV: Dark Sage Park Lumberman)

The way turned into a natural cave instead of the stairs of the upper floors, and Corvin, Park and Samantha slowly made their way farther down. In the cavern room at the end they found only a single extremely large crab charging them, only to be obliterated by an overpowered void bolt cast by Park. It's obvious that the [Dark Sage] is currently not in the best mood.

They stand in a rather large, wet and natural looking cavern, with the floor's node just a few meters ahead. It's a regular node, so Park doesn't even need the crystal to check for the core node, this dungeon has to have at least one more floor.

[Floor Details]

Floor Details Floor Number 4 Floor Name not set Details not set

Floor Environment Water Cavern Environment Rank [Limited] Details A natural cavern with some flow of water in it, usually an underground river.

Allows placement of water-based spawns and traps. Floor Effect Defender's Advantage Effect Rank [Limited] Details Whoever is in a room gains a bonus +1 to physical protection against any fighters entering the room.

"This floor will probably be something for fighters - a floor effect that will increase the armor of the spawn, with spawns that were selected for an already existing armor. I never heard of that floor effect before however, it is probably something modified down from an higher-ranked effect." Park tells his friends about the analysis.

"Let's go back, we now know what we wanted to learn here and we still need to find a way back to the stairs up on floor 2. I can't believe a [Limited] dungeon floor has tricked us into losing our position."

The three quietly ascend the floor again, arriving in the final room of floor 3. Claudia just finished administrating a bandage to Holgur. "Hey guys, while we were waiting I had Holgur and Lerin try out the treasure chest in the alcove there. The trap has triggered the half-life-message for both of them, which means they will now count as escapees when we leave. The chest contained just the usual random floor treasure of a dungeon, nothing special. It lies there" she points a bag in one of the corners.

She then continues "The node is a rare one that is usually found much deeper into a dungeon - which is also why it is almost useless. It creates silver, but its energy and matter limits are so low that it can barely create tiny grains of silver. Some people will probably still use it as they have no chance to get to deeper levels where those silver nodes usually are. It's probably here to help with the spawning of silver foxes. Other than that, this is basically a floor end room" she guestures around.

To the north is another alcove with an outhouse instead of a treasure chest. With the corridor to the lower floor at the south that means the only entrance to the room is to the east. Claudia continues "Somehow we must have gotten turned around because we got here from the east despite always going north from the entrance. I had some inkling that we went in the wrong direction in the room before this one, but I thought it was a failed direction sense due to the misdirection effect of the floor."

"Good work" answers Park "I had the same feeling, but as you I had thought it was caused by the [Misdirection]. That means there is something else around here that can mess up our direction senses, something that even got us into the wrong floor without an outward sign. Let's try to retrace our steps."

The six adventurers and four tamed beasts make their way back east through the only corridor that leads to the node room.

Combat Initiated

Dark Sage Park Lumberman, Tamer Claudia Pekarest & tamed beasts, Shadowhand Samantha Swiftblade, Fighter Corvin Omklen and Citywatch Recruits Lerin Airleaf and Holgur Moog

vs.

Silverfox A, B, C, D, E and F

The Silver Foxes have surprised the Party

"What the fuck?!?!?"

Despite having a surprise attack the silver foxes fail to do much damage. Corvins platemail protects him from two attacks and the other foxes only get in minor bites before they are killed with quick strokes.

Victory Result

No XP due to excessive rank difference between the party and the spawns.

Silver Fox Cadavers can now be taken as loot.

"Claudia, why didn't you tell us that the dungeon respawned the foxes here??"

"There was no Lifeforce wave at all, this can't be a respawn." Claudia defends herself from Corvins accusation.

Lerin interjects at that "Are we lost again? Did we get to a new room while trying to retrace our steps?"

"Everyone calm down" Park takes control again. "The dungeon details still show nothing of a broken or mutated status, so there has to be an explanation for this. Wait a moment - the statues are gone...

Oh shit, I knew that there was something funny about the way the conditions of the stoning trap were phrased. It's a prepaid respawn. The dungeon creates a group of foxes and has them stoned. While the timer runs, it spawns another group preventing the original foxes from de-stoning.

Then adventurers come and kill the second fox-group. Since the adventurers are alive as well, the stoned foxes remain stone - until the adventurers leave. Then five minutes later they become alive again, effectively respawning without spawning costs because those costs had been paid long before."

Corvin continues from there "And since the Systems [Party Rules] only prevent a higher number of spawns at the same time but specifically allow for respawning, the dungeon has effectively a lot more spawns without the common compensating LifeForce recharge to the adventurers as well as an additional blockade of fights for adventurers on their way back after a delve."

"And as we have seen this can even add more confusion to the question where we are because we remember which rooms were cleared and which not. This dungeon might not have broken the system rules yet, but it bends them into pretzels to get every advantage possible." Samantha adds as well. "Park, please dispel the last illusions here in this room. We need to find out how we were tricked to get here."

One minute and four dispels later Park groans again. "Gates! Magic gates hidden behind illusions of regular corridors."

"Yes," Corvin remembers "the dungeon has far-reaching gates hidden behind illusions for its four entrances, so it shouldn't have surprised us to find hidden gates connecting points inside its floors. We came from that direction, so this gate should get us back to the second floor - anyone wants to guess where the gate in the south alcove leads?"

"No" Parks stops the discussion "If that gate in the east gets us back to the known rooms on the second floor, then after that we will only follow the physical corridors until we have the positions of all gates. We can't get a correct map if we continue to jump around."

Five minutes later the party stands in the entrance room of the second floor where the stairs go up. After a bit of reorganising Park starts again. "OK, let's begin mapping for a second time. The room to the north of here has a gate in the north alcove that ends in the west alcove of an unknown room on the floor below, and a regular corridor going west. We will now follow that corridor and map only floor 2 until this map is complete."

The room to the west of the gate had only one quickly dispatched silver fox. Dispelling the illusions the group finds another exit west and two alcoves, one with a regular treasure chest and one empty. The stone column in this room is massive and doesn't vanish on dispelling. Samantha approaches the empty alcove with a suspicion that proves correct when she finds a trapdoor. Safely triggering it she looks down into it.

"Hmm - seems as if gates are not the only way to get down by surprise, this pit is deeper than a simple pitfall, it seems to go down to floor 3. It's one and a half meter wide and long - difficult but not impossible to climb back up depending on what is below, but it's to dark to see. One moment."

She takes a small pad of oilcloth from her backpack, ignites it and drops it down the pit. "Yes, about five meters down and looks like one of the regular corridors down there."

The party continues exploring to the next room to the west, where the dispel of the column shows another set of stoned foxes waiting for them to leave to respawn. Dispelling the illusion to the north, another gate is revealed, prompting Park to comment "As you can see a dungeon can't really mess you up if you work methodically and reveal all hidden traps and gates before continuing. Next [Dispel Illusion]"

Lerin and Claudia are checking the newly revealed gate so they only see a very strong flash from the side before a string of curses and profanities erupts behind them. Turning around they find all their comrades temporarily blinded by the flash that came when Park dispelled the illusion to the west.

Claudia can't help but snicker after she checks that there is no more danger "You had to tempt fate, didn't you Park? I remember someone telling us years ago to never get complacent or it would bite us in the back. Who could that have been, someone with black skin and blue hair if I remember correctly..."

After a few minutes of healing and cleaning their eyes Park checks the now empty alcove to the west. "That light was not magic, I would have detected that. There is some form of alchemical residue on the entire back wall - that must be the leftover of whatever has created that light. It might be something for D'vol and Cleev to check, or it would probably best if Orven hires an alchemist to check this."

"Correct, Park" Gunny smiles "I really like flashbangs, and my secondary class Alchemist came through for me on that one."

The physical way now goes to the south, where they find another gate and the floor's node after killing the single defender. Park approaches the node and accesses it.

Node Access Menu Rank [Limited] Type Matter: Silver Matter Storage 100/100 Matter Creation 2/hour Node Creation Options Tiny Grain of Silver Cost 20 SP, 10 Matter Effect silver grain (value 10 copper) 1 Silver Coin Cost 200 SP, 100 Matter Effect coin (value 1 silver) Small Silver Bar Cost 2500 SP, 500 Matter Effect Silver Bar (value 10 silver)

"Like the one on the floor below this is also a silver node. And like you said Claudia the [Limited] floor rank places too extreme limits on storage and matter creation for it to be really usable. But it probably gives the core a discount for the silver foxes so it is of some value, even if only a cheaper respawn of the lootable silver foxes. Let's continue."

An hour later the party comes to a stop in the south-east room and Park summons up their results. "nine rooms on floor 2, arranged in a 3 by 3 grid pattern. Eight of those rooms make a loop, with the ninth room being the floor-end-room with stairs down in the south-west. Five gates are scattered among those rooms, and everything else but this panel in the east alcove here is already known to us.

Any chance finding out what it is, Sam?"

"Five differently colored lines around a metal token glued to the wall. It looks like the token from the first chest with three stars on the visible side and completely black. When I touch the token, one of the lines seem to light up for half a second. Let me experiment a bit."

The others settle down for a few minutes while Samantha touches the token and the lines. Sometimes the lines light up, and sometimes they hear a curse and see Sam wiggling her fingers. The entire process speeds up more and more, until suddenly the token drops into her hand and the lines vanish. She adresses her friends "That was a test of both [Body-Flexibility] and [Mind-Power]. I had to remember a sequence of lights that got longer and faster with each try, and touch the same sequence before the time was up. A failure gave a small zap that is harmless for high-ranked adventurers, but could become problematical if repeated by [Limited]-Rank people. After I succeded with a ten-signal-sequence, I got the token with the number 5 on the other side and the wall went dark."

At that Park calls everyone "OK, now let's go down to floor 3 and see that we can map it as well. And once we have all gate positions we'll check where they go."

Mastermage Orven Windrider, Rivansea Dungeon Councillor and Guild Leader Travellers/Adventurers Guild

Nine hours after they went into the second floor, Orven watches Park Lumberman and his companions climb back up to the first floor. All members of the first party are overloaded with corpses of silver foxes.

They look tired and a bit frustrated - something on the delve wasn't as easy as we assumed. Of course not - we never had a dungeon with four magic portals on its first floor, so we can assume things are different below as well.

"Welcome back - did you get to the core floor?"

In a very frustrated tone Corvin answers "No, we spent nine hours in Mapping Hell. The others will get there tomorrow - unless that dungeon has some other surprises for them as well."

At this Park sends the other Sky Arrows away "Go back to the inn, I handle the rest. And lighten up, you can get extra wine for your share of the loot. Orven - is there some place where we can talk about it in peace?"

"Follow me" Orven leads his old comrade from his adventuring days to a sideroom of the first floor. "This room is another mystery, because it contains symbols of Bareen on the walls. It is not a shrine, but priests have confirmed that Bareen has really blessed these symbols, and no one knows how that is possible. But for now it is empty and has no purpose. So what can you tell me about the dungeon?"

"It survived the energy cycle. The title it activated makes the second and third floor a lot worse, and it activated it directly after we understood the problem of the second floor." Park takes a flask from his backpack and draws a good drink from it. "It isn't broken, but it bends the system rules to get the maximum effect possible from it - we'll have to set the minimum safe level for adventurers to seven or even eight for the second floor."

"What? Usually someone is mostly safe if he has three levels more than the floor number, why do you need that high a safety limit?"

"Look at this corpse, the only spawn type on the first two dungeon floors. Somehow the dungeon modified the loot option to be used with spawns, and that gives all spawns an extra level beyond the regular floor base. Additionally the second and third floor are interconnected with magic gates that are hidden behind illusions like the entrances themselves. You have to give both floors the same safety limit due to that.

The second floor has nine rooms in a 3x3 pattern with five hidden gates, the third floor sixteen rooms in a 4x4 pattern with seven gates hidden behind illusions. Some illusions hide an alchemical flash that blinds you if you look at them, while other illusions hide needle-throwers that you need to look at to evade them when you dispel the illusion. Adding to that..."

Orven listens to Parks story of the first evaluation and mapping expedition. The most important thing is that the core survived without going dormant or mutating - if it is exceptionally strong that is rather an advantage in the long term, especially after we control it.

"I think I got the important parts, the rest can wait until you turn in the maps and the detailed descriptions. I had someone patch up Lerin and Holgur and asked them to wait before leaving, so that we can check if the dungeon has any special reaction to the first ranking escapees from its limited floors. If it is as cunning as you describe it, it should realise that it needs to get to floor 11 to solve his experience blockade. Let's go to the Rivansea entrance to check."

The two old adventurers walk the thirty meters to the entrance gate where the two recruits wait for them, now properly patched up. Orven orders them to leave and return to the city for rest, then waits if the dungeon reacts to them leaving.

About one minute later a LifeForce wave passes them and Orven begins to speak "That wasn't something special, it felt as if it was a regular respawn-effect. A bit large for a respawn of floor two and three, but you already explained the extra respawns. So..."

At that another tiny LifeForce wave passes them, quickly followed by a third one before a really big fourth wave passes them.

"OK, the last massive wave had to be the creation of a new floor - but what were those two tiny waves before that? Park, you are absolutely right that this dungeon does things differently than we are used to. Any Idea what that could have been? It has to have used up all energy left from the cycle as well as everything it gained from your delve."

Park only shakes his head "No, I assume you're right about the first and the last wave. But I have no idea what the other two tiny waves could have been. I'll now let you handle your administrative tasks, the day was especially long for me with all the dispels."

One hour later Orven leaves the dungeon and approaches the tent where the new Dungeon Council had its temporary seat until the buildings are finished.

"Greetings, fellow councillors. I bring good news as we seem to have a real treasure of a dungeon at our hands. At a first calculation a complete clearing of the second and third floors should net loot for a value of around one gold, about twenty times of what similiar floors on other dungeons yield. And that is without using the nodes, which are rare silver-nodes on both floors, nodes that are usually only found much deeper in other dungeons.

The reason for this is that the dungeon uses the loot-modification in really excessive numbers. That of course also means that we need to make sure our adventurers and other collectors are strong enough to handle the added levels, but this should only be a minor administrative restriction..."