Dungeon Lord- Ancient Traditions

by Hugo Huesca

  Energy Drain: Active. Very Low.

  Dungeon Vision - The Dungeon Lord can watch any location in an owned dungeon they are currently inside.

  Energy Drain: None.

  Dungeon Lord Mantle - The mantle is the heart of the Dungeon Lord and represents the Dark pact made in exchange for power.

  -It allows the Dungeon Lord access to the Dungeon Lord status and powers, as defined by the Dungeon Screen.

  -It allows the Dungeon Lord to create and control dungeons, as per the limitations of his Dungeon Screen.

  Energy Drain: None.

  Improved Reflexes - Allows the owner to experience increased reaction time for a small burst of time.

  -Basic status elevates his reaction speed to a degree dictated by the owner’s Agility, for a duration of 3 seconds per use.

  Improved Metabolism - Reduces the energy costs of all talents by 25% - the caloric requirements of the user are increased by the same amount.

  Resist Sickness: Basic - Allows its owner to resist disease and sickness.

  -Basic status allows the owner to resist non-magical sickness as if they had Endurance of 15 and were in optimal conditions (clean, well-fed, rested).

  Spellcasting: Basic (IV) - Domains: general. Forbidden: Healing - Represents the owner’s magical ability.

  -Basic status allows the caster to use and learn all basic related spells of their domain. Extra ranks improve each individual spell’s characteristics, such as range or damage.

  -Efficient status grants the owner 1 extra basic spell.

  -Allowed spells: 1 basic per day + 1 basic spell due to Dungeon Lordship

  Energy Drain: Active. Varies per Spell.

  Ancient Lord Aura - The owner creates an aura around him that enhances allied beings inside its area of effect. Affected beings can use the Dungeon Lord’s Spirit as their own while this aura is active. Their physical attributes are also bolstered +1 while this aura is active. If the creature is a minion of the Dungeon Lord, they are immune to fear while affected by this aura.

  Duration: 1 minute.

  Energy Drain: Activated. Moderate.

  Pledge of Armor - Any armor that the Dungeon Lord wears is considered magical, as if it had a minor protection enchantment. This bonus stacks with any protection enchantment the armor may have, or any other similar defensive enchantment. Magical armor can deflect spells of similar power-category, as well as normal weaponry.

  Restriction: Selecting this talent locks out the Pledge of Bloodshed advancement option.

  Pledge of Muted Armor - The Dungeon Lord’s Pledge of Armor is upgraded with new effects. Upon falling unconscious or being otherwise impaired, a team of four rescue drones is generated around his person. The rescue drones will stop at nothing to drag the Dungeon Lord to the nearest safe location, but they lack defensive capabilities. In addition, the Dungeon Lord can hide his armor’s magical output at no extra energy cost.

  Energy Drain: Low. Passive.

  Spell List

  Minor Order

  Eldritch Edge

  Murmur’s Reach

  Dungeon’s Message

  Stone Pillar

  Fog Cloud

  Alarm

  Smudge

  Hogbus’ Tremor

  Identify Magic

  Break

  …

  Increasing attributes and skills was harder the more ranks you had in one, and access to the better and most powerful talents was locked until you had enough ranks. Raising Brawn or Endurance could take months of exercise, so Ed tried to grind them hard during his day-to-day activities, and in the meantime he hoarded as many experience points as he could.

  Maintaining speed was easier once the wagon was already moving, so soon enough Ed could focus on other things. His body ached with the need to lie on his back and sleep for a while, but he fought it off. Yumiya could have briefed the minotaur, but Ed’s Charm attribute and leadership skill didn’t increase while he was resting either.

  “As a dungeon Boss, you have one main objective: protect the Scrambling Tower above your dungeon,” Ed told Mohnuran as the wagons rolled through the tunnel. He had to raise his voice over the screech of iron on iron and the chatter of the Haga’Anashi as they briefed the other bandits on their new responsibilities. “As long as the tower is up and working, the Heroes of the Inquisition can’t get to you. So they have to send real people, flesh and bone, to do their dirty work first.”

  “It’s true, then,” Mohnuran said, scratching his patchy chin with a dirty fingernail. “You can keep the Heroes out of your territories with those towers of yours. Of course, we’ve heard the rumors, but it was still hard to believe. The Bandit King told us it was a trick—that you and the Heroes are allies. That people had seen you fighting alongside them before.”

  Ed grinned. Mohnuran wasn’t telling the entire truth. The Haunt had interrogated other outlaws before, and from their disjointed stories Ed had slowly pieced together that the Bandit King believed Lord Wraith was himself an artificial Dungeon Lord—either the Dark’s response to the constructs of the Inquisition, or a trick of Heiliges to maintain control of Starevos.

  “A way to create artificial Dungeon Lords would be fantastic,” Ed conceded. “I could sure use the extra hands. Sadly, your former King was mistaken. Flesh and bone, like you said.” He reached for the flask tied to his belt and took a long swig of the bitter Vigor concoction. A rush of energy traveled through his veins like an electric current, washing away the numbness of his brain from lack of sleep. It was like injecting caffeine straight into his heart. Not really healthy at all, and the need to rest never really went away—it merely lost its edge of urgency.

  Ed’s friends had all different theories on the Bandit King’s claims. Lavy thought he was an idiot who had managed to survive long enough to amass lots of experience points by sheer luck, and now he commanded other idiots to increase his personal fortune and cared about nothing else. Alder, on the other hand, believed the King knew his claims made no sense, but they were a way to legitimize his unlikely play for control over Starevos by weakening a strong competitor.

  Ed couldn’t care less about the Bandit King or his goals. He had bigger fish to fry, like the quickly approaching Endeavor—only a few months away now—or the never-ending hordes of Inquisitors and adventurers testing his dungeons all over Constantina. And, of course, there was the looming threat of the kingdom of Heiliges and the ever-swelling ranks of its army, which would disembark straight onto the docks of Undercity about a year from now. In the meantime, the Heiligian navy maintained a blockade on Constantinian waters, keeping trade and resources away from Undercity’s reach. Only pirates and smugglers had the skill to avoid the blockade, and the pirates were led by the mysterious Pirate Queen, who was an ally-by-necessity of the Haunt at best, and a rival for control of Undercity at worst.

  Pirates, Inquisitors, rival Dungeon Lords, angry Dark demigods, Heroes, monsters, adventurers, and entire armies. Some days Ed remembered that he and his friends had almost gotten themselves gutted by batblins when he’d first arrived in Ivalis. He found it hard to believe how high he had gotten in the “things that wanted to kill him” scale.

  That’s as good a way to measure progress as any character sheet, he thought.

  “What happens if the Inquisition sends more forces than we can manage?” Mohnuran asked, bringing Ed back to reality. “Are we expected to fight to the death then?”

  Ed told him, “A single Scrambling Tower is more valuable than a group of murderers and outlaws, so I expect you to do all you can to protect it, within reason. Use your discretion, Mohnuran. If the Inquisition sends overwhelming forces, then retreat through a tunnel and we’ll send you to bolster another dungeon. But running away from a fight you know you can win goes against the minionship pact.”

  “Glad to clear that up,” the bandit said gruffly.

  “Make no mistake, you are also an important resource. I won’t throw your lives away if I can at all help it.”

&n
bsp; Until the Heiligian army arrived, the Inquisition had to make do with limited forces. Historically, that didn’t matter—the Heroes were unmatched at killing Dungeon Lords. But to clear a dungeon protecting a Scrambling Tower, the Inquisition had to send men it couldn’t use elsewhere. If they invested too much manpower in one raid, Ed simply ordered his minions to retreat through a secondary tunnel, collapsed its entrance, and built a new Scrambling Tower where the Inquisition’s presence was weak.

  When the Inquisition responded to that new dungeon, Ed then had a shot to retake territory the Inquisition had previously conquered. Sometimes that meant his minions would run away from a dungeon into a new one, only to leave the next day and retake the first.

  This was the dance between the Haunt and the Inquisition. Ed was fighting a bitter war of attrition, investing huge amounts of resources to buy time for his forces to grow strong enough to challenge his enemies. At the same time, the forces of the Inquisition also grew in number and strength by the day—slowly Portaling powerful Inquisitors and griffins from all over Heiliges into Galtia to wear the Haunt down and stop it from spreading all over the kingdom.

  “We’re cogs in your war machine,” Mohnuran said, almost too quietly to be heard over the screech of the wagon. “You’re using bandits to bolster your own forces. That thing you said before about protecting this land from outlaws was just an excuse.” The minotaur grinned bitterly. “Dungeon Lords turned out to be just like the captains and noble-lings that hired my services before. Who knew?”

  Ed grinned as well. “Glad to clear that up.” He didn’t care at all what the bandit’s opinion of him was. Half his minions thought of him as a tyrant-in-the-making already, and he wasn’t sure he could challenge that belief.

  The accepted penalty for banditry all over Ivalis was death. Corrective prisons or anything of the sort didn’t exist, so Ed would have been well within his right to hang every single bandit as soon as he caught them. Dead men, though, were no use to anyone.

  Well, maybe necromancers, but they had more than enough corpses lying around the crypts of Undercity.

  Instead, Ed found a way to give the prisoners a chance at redemption that also served the Haunt’s dire need. The exploding collars were undeniably a tad Darker than he liked, but it was the only way to keep them from ending the minionship pact when they were in a dungeon too far away for Ed’s minions to recapture them.

  It was entirely possible that, if they survived their five years of forced service, they’d become upstanding members of society afterward. In the meantime, the Haunt would do all it could to train them, teach them discipline, a trade, and so on. One could argue that, by capturing these outlaws, Ed was doing them a favor. It was for their own good. He was the good guy for sure!

  “What’s so funny?” Mohnuran asked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ed said. “Just recalled an old inside joke.” He rubbed his forehead to clear his mind. “By the way, in the future, refer to me as Lord Wright. This is not a friendly relationship we have.”

  The minotaur lowered his head, giving Ed a good look of his horns. The one to the right was pierced with a silver ring. “My mistake. I’ll make sure to keep that in mind, Lord Wraith.”

  The further they went down the tunnel, the air became colder and more humid. Ed’s back began to ache with the constant effort of maneuvering his wagon, and a fresh layer of sweat formed on his forehead. The wagon in front of him disappeared down a bend, and a symbol to a side of the railway let Ed know it was time to pull on the brake lever next to the main one. The wagon that followed after them did the same thing about a minute afterward.

  “I wouldn’t want to be around if someone fails to stop in time,” Mohnuran muttered to himself.

  “It rarely happens if you know the signs,” Ed said. So far, most of the accidents had been due to Monster Hunters getting drunk and racing each other. There had been plenty of broken bones, but no deaths yet. The drones took care of any damage to the carts and railway afterward, but it took time for them to arrive to the accident area.

  The kaftar in front of him were slowly maneuvering each wagon through a wide archway made of polished stone at a spot where the railway of the secondary tunnel joined a new one. It took about ten minutes for Ed to bring his cart through the entrance.

  “Wetlands,” Mohnuran whispered as he craned his neck upward to gaze at the inner workings of one of the Haunt’s main arteries. “You’re carving Starevos from the inside out.”

  “This is an artery,” Ed said. “In time, it will rouse this dead kingdom back to life, stronger than ever.”

  The tunnel was wide enough to fit four railways with space between them for drones to work maintenance. Solid stone pillars rose in the middle up to the vaulted ceiling where they joined archways that helped support the colossal weight of the world above, like the skeleton of some gargantuan, hollow worm that extended through the underworld right beneath the feet of the living above. A strong, cold air current shook Ed, and the wailing of the wind rose to a haunted cry. Rivulets of rainwater flowed out of holes atop the walls and down drainage ditches to the sides of the flat floor, forming small twin rivers that flowed out of view as they headed toward the sea.

  Some sections of the walls were dressed in murals affixed with rabbit-skin glue and lacquered in wax to protect against water damage. The artwork was rough, similar to the obscene style of the drones, yet man-made. The artists, it seemed, enjoyed imitating the grotesque techniques of the Haunt’s drones. The scenes depicted events from Starevos’ history before Heiliges had conquered it: legendary battles, forgotten gods, and detailed drawings of otherworldly sea monsters that hunted distant waters with sleek cannons affixed to their smooth gray backs. Proud purple banners hung from the ceiling, engraved with the silver blazon of Constantina’s coat-of-arms and the Haunt’s lasershark over it. Runes of alarm, wards of protection, and a myriad other functions were carved in silver and brass, and if a person’s Perception was high enough, they could see the deadly traps hidden in every corner, such as the tip of envenomed darts glinting from tiny holes in the walls, or the almost invisible parting of a wall where a hidden kill-zone hid in case of an invasion.

  The series of railways extended beyond view and led straight into the Haunt itself. The smell of magic, like charged ozone, permeated it all, mixed with ground limestone and humidity.

  “Welcome,” Ed said proudly, “to the Gray Highway.”

  3

  Chapter Three

  Burdens of the Mantle

  In the vastness of the Gray Highway, the iron scream of the carts sliding across the rails was more like a sharp whine. Mohnuran worked the lever while Ed gave his body a rest, allowing the underground breeze to cool the sweat from his face and shoulders.

  The cart passed through several sections of the tunnel still in progress. Teams of drones worked on the walls or the pillars, dancing and biting and muttering annoyance in their indecipherable angry language.

  “Who are you building this for?” Mohnuran asked all of a sudden. The minotaur hadn’t said anything for a while, deep in his thoughts.

  Ed raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “The Bandit King has a vague idea about your resources,” Mohnuran explained. “Enough to challenge a city, maybe. This… highway… is meant for a real army, not a couple hundred kaftar. So it makes sense you’re building it for someone else—someone that can use it to its fullest capacity. Perhaps the Lotians? Wetlands, maybe those rumors that you’re working with the Heiligians aren’t so stupid after all. As soon as their army steps into Starevos they’ll simply take this tunnel from you— there’s no way you think you can oppose them with your forces. Perhaps you’re building it for them.”

  “Nice try,” Ed said, trying his best to force down a small grin. His Dungeon Lord heart, the Mantle, boomed in his chest with the overwhelming desire to gloat, to show Mohnuran just how wrong he was. Instead, he took a deep breath and cleared his mind. Kes would kill him if he
went around revealing military plans to lowly dungeon Bosses. “You’re right this is built for an army, but you’re wrong about who it is for. I don’t care about the Lotians, and I am fighting the Heiligians—that much you may know, since you’ll soon fight them as well.”

  “Then for whom are you making all of this, Lord Wraith?” Mohnuran went on, squinting. “Does the kingdom of Akathun have an army?”

  The impulse to gloat finally became too much to bear. “The army that will move through this tunnel is not born yet,” Ed said mysteriously. “You’re a curious one for a bandit, Mohnuran.” The Dungeon Lord waved at the other rails, where the captured bandits listened grimly to the Haga’Anashi as they explained the duties of the minions’ new life. “Your friends here are worried—rightly so—about what tomorrow holds for them. Not you, though. You’re worried about a tunnel.”

  “What are you implying, Lord Wraith?”

  Ed smiled. “I’m merely impressed, is all. We’re always looking for capable people in the Haunt, Mohnuran, I just didn’t expect to find one leading a ragtag group of almost-starved outlaws. Maybe we’ll have a better position for you after you prove to be a capable Boss.”

  The minotaur’s expression was hard to read—given that he had a bull’s head, Ed wasn’t surprised. “Hm. I’d like that.” The bandit relaxed his massive shoulders. “Just tell me one thing,” Mohnuran said. “How do you keep it from collapsing it over our heads? I’ll admit the thought intimidates me.”

  Ed smiled as if flattered. “My Highway is a single dungeon,” he said, making a wide gesture with his arms as if he wanted to hug the entire structure. “That’s the secret. It’s connected to a powerful ley line and has a throne hidden deep underground in an impenetrable location. Do you understand my genius now? The magic of the Mantle keeps the entire structure standing, and it benefits from my dungeon upgrades.”