Dungeon Life-Chapter Four-Hundred Eleven

Tarl, Berdol, and Olander stand near the trunk of the Tree of Cycles, all of them nicely warmed up by the encounters. I could have probably tipped them more toward tired, since I don’t expect any actual fights with my denizens, but it’ll probably be better for them to still have energy for inspecting the spawners. And for probably a few fights. I can tell them about the new denizens all I want, but it’ll be better for them to actually experience them fully.

Berdol is inspecting a few of his blades, his metal affinity letting him float them before him as he scrutinizes them. “I can’t believe you brought in a basilisk specifically to ruin the temper on my blades,” he grumbles, much to the delight of Teemo.

“Gotta keep you on your toes!” he exclaims from a root, grinning evilly and hamming it up a bit. Olander chuckles and nods his agreement.

“It’s a good lesson to learn, at least. I know of a few metals and enchantments that hold up well to heat, and a few for cold, too. I’m sure it’ll only be a matter of time before his winter wolves start trying to embrittle your blades.”

“Don’t give away the Boss’ secrets, Olander!”

Tarl smiles as he watches the banter. “That’s your job, right? You did bring us here to show us a few things we’ve never seen before.”

“I guess, yeah. You guys all ready, then?”

All three nod, so Teemo makes a shortcut for them to the roots, and leads them through the twisting tunnels that naturally formed around them. “So as you can see, this area isn’t really set up for delving. Not even a little. Boss has a few ideas for things down here, but they’re… impractical, even for him.”

I’d argue, but making a hollow earth filled with dinosaurs, even abusing spatial expansion with the plants, seems really complicated to make work right. For one, the roots need a good anchoring in the earth, and if I go hollowing things out, the whole tree could tip over! Spatially expanding the tunnels could solve that, but the kind of scale I want… I’ll probably need much stronger plants for that.

“So what are gravity constructs?” asks Berdol. “I looked at known construct affinities and didn’t see anything about gravity. Not a surprise, since you invented it, but I’m still curious how they’ll even work.”

“Well, they look a lot like clockwork beetles with the initial spawn, and congregate in swarms. Boss wants to make them combine to do different things, but that’s hard to explain without showing it. So… I guess first I’ll introduce Doppler."

Olander twitches as the skittering of Doppler and his poppers fills the tunnel, but my scion takes the time to stop just around the bend to compose himself and his swarm into a bipedal form, before walking into view. I think he looks cool, with the poppers clearly visible making up his shape, yet also looking like a cohesive whole. He gives the inspectors a wave before he speaks. “Hello gentlemen.”

Berdol pauses in preparing to make notes while Tarl snatches out his voice recording stone. Olander’s eyes widen in disbelief, and he’s the first to recover enough to talk. “Did… you get a second Voice?!”

Teemo laughs for me, and Doppler manages to smirk at them. “No. Teemo is the only Voice of the Composer. But with what he likes to call sonic affinity, I can speak for myself, without having a clearer understanding of what he’s thinking.”

Berdol slowly scribbles a few notes. “So… kinda like Poe?”

Doppler nods. “Yes, though his speech is because of what a raven can do, rather than utilizing an affinity.”

Tarl slowly puts away his note stone before he responds. “So gravity and thunder affinity?”

Doppler nods once more. “Yes. He created the spawner to allow his other scions the ability to speak on their own, using the poppers as an intermediary. I believe his main goal was in freeing Teemo to do more than translate in the Lecture Hall all day long.”

“Which I appreciate, by the way. Just because I can repeat what Thing and Queen are saying, doesn’t mean I want to try to teach what they’re doing.”

“So… utility, then?” asks Tarl.

“Yeah,” answers Teemo. “He’ll probably specialize it for magic once it gets there, and aim for support and interference. The poppers are versatile,” he explains as Doppler lets his form collapse, then reshape into a large facsimile of Teemo. “The later spawns will be specializing what poppers they control, but we’re pretty sure Doppler will be able to use them however he can imagine.”

Olander looks fascinated as he approaches Doppler, reaching out to pull a popper from the mass. “Interesting. I once delved a dungeon with slime swarms that did similarly, but they didn’t have nearly this kind of cohesion. Why do you call them poppers?”

Teemo grins as Doppler triggers the one in Olander’s hand, creating a loud bang and a disorienting pulse of gravity. Olander stumbles a bit, and Berdol looks queasy, but Tarl seems to be weathering it just fine. Probably a combination of not being very close, and being strong enough to deal with it.

Stolen novel; please report.

Olander laughs after he regains his balance. “Hah! Interference, he says! I’m looking forward to seeing them work together with your other spawns! Fighting basilisks with these little things going off will be quite the experience!” ꭆ𝓪ＮÒʙƐS

Tarl rolls his eyes as Teemo snickers. “You’re actually looking forward to that, aren’t you?” he asks his fellow inspector, who vigorously nods.

“Of course!”

Tarl shakes his head before focusing back on Teemo. “Where does Thedeim expect to deploy them?”

Teemo shrugs. “Probably all over, though it’ll depend on how few he can pare them down to and still be a swarm. If he reduces them too much, they just kinda scurry around, trying to get back to swarm numbers. Doppler can get them into individuals, but that’s not really viable for sprinkling around the place. For now, they’ll probably mostly be in the labyrinth and the forest.”

Tarl nods as Berdol writes that down. “At least Thedeim hasn’t figured out how to get swarms down to individuals in general. I’ve never seen that before, but he has a habit of doing things that are supposed to be impossible.”

My Voice puts on an innocent smile. “What? Boss, breaking things? He’d never!” He actually manages that with a straight face, though none of the inspectors are buying it. Instead of trying to convince them, he changes the subject. “Speaking of him definitely not breaking things… a while ago, he got a quest directly from Order to break a spawner.”

Tarl keeps his face carefully neutral while Berdol looks confused. Olander, though, looks concerned. “To break a spawner? From Order himself?”

Teemo nods and waves it off like it’s no big deal. “Boss calls it bug testing. He got halfway there a while ago, and we showed it to Tarl,” he says, throwing him under the bus as he continues. “But only recently did he manage to finish breaking it and create a new type.”

All three look surprised, just to different degrees. Tarl looks like he really needs to reevaluate what the word ‘impossible’ means, Berdol looks like he knows it’s significant, even if he’s not positive why, and Olander’s flabber is well and truly gasted.

“That’s…!” he manages to cut himself off, probably because both Teemo and Doppler are both grinning at him, daring him to say that’s not how it works. Instead, he takes a moment to center himself, and tries again.

“How?”

Teemo accepts that and resumes leading the way deeper. “He’s pretty sure Order is patching it, so it probably won’t work again, but basically you make an elemental spawner without an element. It takes a bit of finagling to do, but it’s not that hard. Since there’s no such thing as a non-elemental, the spawner’s a dud. But it still has the potential to spawn something, you just have to give it a seed and a concept.”

“Like a literal seed?” asks Berdol, and Teemo shakes his head.

“Nah. Well, maybe, but a literal seed would probably make it a plant spawner or something. Boss wanted to make something new, and he knew what kind of thing he’d need to bring the concept to life. So now there’s a new creature type: dinosaur.”

Berdol scribbles that down. “What are they?”

“Similar to dragons, but that’s like saying dragons are similar to lizards. They have scales, they’re generally tough and strong, and are pretty magic resistant, though slow. There’s a few speedy ones, but they’re fast in spite of being dinosaurs, not because of it. There’s a bunch of different variants, but they’re usually pretty big, too. There are flying and swimming types, and Boss is actually expecting Hullbreak to get a spawner of a swimming variety before too long, also.”

He rounds the bend and shows the spawner, complete with compies running around, and Sue relaxing on the far side of it. “Boss went for bipeds, which are generally fast and dangerous, skirmish fighters that get in, attack, and get out, though the later types will definitely be able to wade into a proper melee if they want to. These are compies and they come in swarms, too.”

Berdol scribbles notes while Tarl looks around, but Olander has already spotted Sue and is trying to stay very still. Teemo notices and smiles wide. “And of course, Boss has a scion. He’s pretty sure it’s a scion exclusive, too. Sue, would you introduce yourself?”

Sue rumbles in answer, making Berdol and Tarl both freeze as well, and making Olander’s grip on his glaive tighter. When did he even draw it? Sue slowly stands from behind the spawner as Olander slowly steps in front of the other inspectors.

Instead of roaring, she simply nods at them, even giving them a wave with her tiny hands. “She’s a Tyrant Lizard King… or Queen, I suppose. Boss says the short version is just a T-Rex.”

“There is nothing about her that’s short,” comments Tarl.

“Except her arms,” follows up Berdol, his eyes widening when he realizes he said that out loud. Sue, for her part, chuffs in laughter before settling back down, letting the compies swarm over her again.

Olander snorts and relaxes, though he doesn’t put away his glaive. “Will all the spawns be like that?”

Teemo shrugs. “Kinda. Powerful legs, sharp teeth, sharp claws, that sort of thing. Sue’s the biggest thing Boss’ spawner will make, but there are way bigger options out there. Boss doesn’t have room for them, but a dungeon like the Southwood might.”

“With the same teeth and claws?” asks Tarl, looking concerned.

“Nah. But at that size, big stompy feet are already enough. And don’t forget how tough they’re gonna be.” I really should suggest the large quadrupeds to Southwood. I dunno if he has the income to support them, but they’d be really cool to see in his expansive territory. And like Teemo said: big stompy feet. He can specialize them for resources like most of his other stuff and still have some stuff to deal with threats.

Olander eyes Sue and the compies, and I can see the eager look in his eyes. “Are you going to mix the poppers with the… compies, you said? The distraction and disorientation would go well with an offensive swarm.”

Teemo chuckles for me as Doppler summons more poppers, letting them mingle with the compies. “That was definitely one idea. You guys want to test them out?” Olander smiles at Berdol and Tarl, making the former put away his quill and clipboard and draw his floating array of daggers, while the latter sighs and draws his own weapons.

“I’d say you have a problem, but at least you love your work,” he quips, though he can’t hide the excitement in his own eyes. Much as he likes to try to be aloof at times, he enjoys a good delve just as much as Olander.

I sit back and watch, taking notes of how they counter my new denizens, and just how my new spawns handle fights. Sure, I have stats and stuff, but just like the inspectors need some hands-on data, so do I. And what the data is telling me is that the delvers are going to have a lot of fun once I get the poppers and compies distributed.