Regnark told them a little about what to expect when they got there. “One of my charges used to be a bit of an historian and liked to regale me with useless facts and trivia about the places we visited. Most of it was useless drivel to me, but the history of these Deadlands actually stuck with me for some reason – probably because it has a major influence on the state of the land around there today.
“I won’t bore you with the specifics – not that I could remember them, anyway – but suffice it to say that the small villages and towns inside the Deadlands are…unique…and can be as dangerous as the rest of the surrounding environments. Essentially, most of the people that founded the different towns centuries or more ago were exiled from another Kingdom to the far west for some reason or another, and they stopped in the Deadlands to settle down and survive. It is that unsavory heritage of theirs that exists still today and is what makes them just as dangerous – at least to your wallet – as all the land surrounding them.”
“How do they survive if everything around them is dead?” Eisa asked, echoing the thought inside Fred’s mind.
“That’s actually the unique part of the towns and the land directly around it. I’m assuming – based on a lot of the information I’ve learned over the last few days from Fred regarding Dungeon Cores – that the Dark dungeons around here knew they needed humans nearby to grow and expand; as a result, they somehow limited the expansion of the Deadlands in certain areas, which are instead lush, vibrant environments with nutrient-rich soil and almost perfect growing conditions for planting crops. They aren’t particularly large in terms of size, but the yield from those plantings is more than enough to support the towns that exist out here – and the Adventurers that use them as staging areas for Dark-dungeon diving.
“You’ll see it when we get to one of these towns; the dividing line between the actual Deadlands and area around the towns is dramatic, to say the least.”
Fred thought about these “exiles” that Regnark had mentioned and wasn’t quite sure what that meant. For his own Guild and the townspeople of Gatecross, they had essentially been exiled from the Craytion Kingdom, but that didn’t necessarily make them dangerous.
“No, they’re nothing like that,” Regnark told him when he asked about them. “They were exiled because they were the ‘unsavory’ elements of society: Thieves, murderers, or – even worse – thieving murderers. Even today, these towns still take in exiles because it takes a certain kind of person to live in a land where stepping outside the boundaries of the town brings to you a land of death.”
“Is it…safe? That doesn’t sound like it would be prudent to even spend any time in a place full of thieves and murderers,” Eisa asked.
Regnark grunted out a laugh. “That’s the thing – if you’re an Adventurer, you’re perfectly safe. Your money, though – not necessarily. While these towns might be full of people who would – anywhere else – slit your throat and take all your money without hesitation, they also know that their continued existence is dependent on the custom they get from Adventurers visiting. Though they can grow enough food to survive, there is very little else that they make themselves, and getting any sort of merchant to brave the Deadlands to trade with them is expensive. Therefore, they want Adventurers to come and spend their money – and come back again in the future; they won’t kill you, but your wallet won’t thank you because they charge an extravagant amount just to stay there.”
“If it’s so dangerous and expensive to even visit, why do people even go there? When I had been with my…previous group, we were able to safely – and relatively cheaply – stay near the Craytion Kingdom and delve through many of the dungeons near there, so I’ve never been to a Dark dungeon before,” Eisa continued to ask, the confusion about the whole situation obvious in her voice.
“Normally, you’d be absolutely right. There are much safer and less expensive alternatives, and most people never set a foot inside of a Dark dungeon their whole lives. However, for those whose goals include becoming fabulously wealthy rather quickly – few do, of course, but there are some successful ones out there – then there is no other place in the world to make some ‘easy’ and quick gold.
“The Dark dungeons, you see, don’t just drop copper, silver, and gold – they drop a wide variety of alchemical components. Not only that, but their environments themselves are full of exclusive plants that can be harvested, metals that can literally be scooped out of the walls, and – in some of the higher-Rated ones – there are unique weapons and armor that drop from some of the harder monsters that you can’t find anywhere else.”
“Why doesn’t everyone just come here and delve through the dungeons, then?” Fred himself asked, beating Eisa to it.
“Because they are dangerous. As you could probably guess, there are undead roaming the rooms of the dungeons…but there are worse things…”
“Like what?” Eisa asked.
“Let’s hope you never have to find out,” Regnark told her as he shuddered at some memory.
They were silent as they finished their walk, each thinking about what they would encounter in the Deadlands – and whether they would find the Guild and townspeople alive.
Part III – The Deadlands
Chapter 19
The Deadlands were exactly what Regnark described, but Fred thought he had failed to mention how alive they seemed at the same time. Sure, the trees that faced the border between the land of the Dark Dungeon Cores and the Plains of Grass were dead, but they were also visibly growing. Large, bone-white, skeletal-looking dead trees reached to the sky without a single leaf or greenery on them; while they looked like they were ready to collapse from the brittle appearance of their dried-out trunks and branches, they were in fact quite sturdy – and were constantly being altered by new growth from the depths of the earth.
It was relatively slow in terms of speed, but it was still visible to anyone looking at them for more than a few minutes. First, the longest and topmost branches of the trees would periodically break off a portion of its length and drop them to the featureless dirt ground, where they would be dissolved and absorbed; at the same time, the trunk of the trees were very slowly – but visibly, when you stared at them for a minute or two – growing upwards. It was a unique cycle of dead growth that Fred had never seen nor heard of before.
The dead forest was thick and – despite the lack of leaves – it was difficult for Fred to see more than 100 feet ahead. That was fine, though, because Regnark seemed to know where he was going.
“The town locations are strangely regular in their distance from each other; it makes more sense to me now, however, after learning a little from you about how these Dungeon Cores operate. Since they essentially created the places inside the Deadlands where humans could live, they could dictate where the towns would be allowed to exist,” Regnark told him after Fred had asked about how he seemed confident in his ability to find a town.
Apparently, if you walked exactly five miles from the border with the Plains of Grass, you could stop and turn either due north or south – where you would eventually run into one of the locations set up for human habitations. The Deadlands were quite vast, as well, so depending on where you entered, you might or might not encounter the same town on subsequent visits.
Fortunately, there didn’t need to be any type of measurement of the distance they walked, because Fred could pinpoint exactly where they needed to go because of his Territorial Sight. When he focused on it, he could sense the Dark Territories all around him – as well as their respective dungeons – pressed up against each other without even the tiniest gap; when he ventured out further with his Sight, he could see a large, oval-shaped break in the territories at some distance to the northwest, as well as one a bit further to the southwest. He had no desire to walk farther than necessary, so he pointed in the direction of the one closest to their position.
Honestly, Fred wasn’t sure what they would do when they got there. It would be extremely lucky if the fi
rst one they came to would possess any information about those they were following, because it all depended on a few factors. One, if they had entered the Deadlands nearby instead of far to the north or south; two, whether these “unscrupulous thieves and murderers” would even give them the information they sought; and three, whether or not – as much as he wanted to believe otherwise – his Guild and the Gatecross townspeople were even still alive.
There were countless dangers that Fred and his friends had encountered or narrowly avoided on their journey so far, and it was quite possible that they had been stuck out on the Plains of Grass at night – and there wouldn’t likely be anything left of them by that point. Granted, based upon what Regnark had said, the dangers of the Plains were a bit more common knowledge than some other things Fred didn’t know about previously; added to that, it was unlikely that the Earth Cores had been organized enough to assault the large group when they initially left, because Deecy had mentioned that it was only a day or two after they had left the ruins of Gatecross that the first elements of the Earth Cores’ retribution arrived.
So, they had a lot going for them, but there were still plenty of other dangers – like the undead roaming the Deadlands…kind of like the giant Undead Bear they encountered shortly after crossing over into Dark territory.
Undead Bear (Level 8)
Vitality: 345, Undead Regeneration
Attack: 55, Jagged Claw Swipe, Putrid Bite
Defense: 70, (+95% Dark defense, -70% Light defense, -20% Fire defense)
The massive 12-foot-long form of the bear hadn’t necessarily been hiding, but it was so still that they hadn’t even noticed it before it moved out from behind a tree and attacked. Fortunately, Regnark was faster; he pulled out his massive two-handed sword from the back-sheath that Fred had Conjured for him and swung it out in a single smooth motion, slicing a great furrow in the side of the Bear’s face.
There was no blood or even any indication that the undead creature felt it, however, but that was to be expected with an undead. Fred backed up along with Eisa and Deecy at the Bear’s appearance and he looked around, making sure that the undead monster was the only one around. I’ve got to pay more attention; I’m so used to relying on my Territorial Sight to warn me of danger that I forgot that I can use my eyes. He didn’t feel too bad, though, because no one else had noticed it – not even his Dire Wolf companion.
“It’s not my fault; I can usually detect things from a far distance away through my form’s excellent sense of smell, but I can’t with these. Sure, they smell like rotting flesh, but so does everything else in this place.”
Only now – strangely, in the middle of a fight – did he notice that Deecy seemed to be pawing at her nose every once in a while, as if she was trying to remove something that had gotten inside. While he could smell the dead and rotting environment as well, it had to be exponentially worse for the Dire Wolf.
“Save your, uh—” Regnark started to say as he deftly dodged a powerful claw swipe from the Undead Bear— “Mana, or whatever it is. Just use your low-cost Fire spells or if you have anything with Light, that would be better.” He slashed again with his sword, removing a large chunk of the Bear’s decomposing shoulder in the process. When Fred looked at the furrow on the side of its face from Regnark’s initial attack, he could see that it was already starting to close up and “heal” itself.
Following his advice, since it appeared as though the big man could handle himself quite well going toe-to-toe with the massive bear – which looked a little funny, as Regnark was almost the same size and covered in bear fur as well – Fred and Eisa looked at each other and said at the same time, “Lightscythe.”.
Lightscythe 1 – 0/1000
When activated, the Lightscythe spell will send an arc of bright light towards a target, originating at the caster’s location, and it deals light-based damage upon contact. Lightscythe also has a chance to blind a target temporarily.
Power cost of Lightscythe: 15
Light damage: 5
Blind chance: 15%
Blind duration: 3 seconds
Maximum range: 20 feet
Diverting around the battling pair to attack from two different sides, Fred and Eisa started launching Lightscythes safely from behind a tree 15 feet away – and the result was quite dramatic. While they didn’t do a lot of initial damage, wherever the sharp arcs of light impacted the Undead Bear, the flesh was gouged deeply – and didn’t repair itself. Fred threw a Flamestrike in there as well and noticed that it had the same result of preventing regeneration but didn’t do nearly the same damage as the light-based spell.
Their attacks seemed to tick off the massive bear and it turned toward Eisa, before Regnark activated his new Focused Irritation ability and brought its attention back onto him. The big man’s speed in avoiding attacks – especially when he was relatively rested and not almost out of Stamina – was completely at odds with his bulk, and he deftly avoided the clumsy-looking strikes of the Undead Bear. While he couldn’t do more than slice off chunks of its flesh here and there – which were eventually growing back – he was more than capable of holding its attention.
That wasn’t quite true, of course, because Fred had seen some of the abilities Regnark possessed from his Berserker class – but he wasn’t using any of them for some reason. I’ll have to ask after this is over.
The fight was over sooner than he thought it would be, as less than 30 seconds later – and an expenditure of only about 200 Power from both Fred and Eisa – the Undead Bear fell at Regnark’s feet, without ever actually landing a blow. A decent-sized blob of Dark Mana seemed to seep out the top of its “re-dead” corpse and pool on top of it – and then the body itself started to melt into the ground, similar to the pieces of branches from the nearby trees that fell off and were absorbed.
Regnark re-sheathed his sword on his back after making sure there weren’t any pieces of rotting flesh stuck to it, before turning to Fred and the others. “Sorry, I forgot to mention that the Deadlands are filled with these types of things. That was why we needed to make sure we had enough Power to fight them off before we got here. The bodies don’t stay around long before they are…um…hmm…I guess the best word would be ‘recycled’. Just as the trees are constantly ‘growing’, these undead tend to spring up everywhere with no discernable pattern; we might walk for an hour without seeing one, but then we might come across a few dozen grouped up together. This is the only place I’ve heard of that does anything like this, which is another reason this place is so dangerous.
“We need to be at our strongest as we move through, so if we come across these individual undead monsters, only use what you have to – because right around the corner could be something worse or more numerous,” Regnark warned them.
That explains why he hadn’t really been using any of his abilities, Fred reasoned. As for Fred, the Power that he had used would regenerate in a couple of minutes, and he knew that Eisa was the same way; Stamina took a little longer to regenerate in comparison, he knew, so it made sense not to waste resources when it wasn’t needed. Fred was just glad they had Regnark around who could distract the undead while they finished it off.
The corpse of the Undead Bear finally disappeared into the ground completely and Fred walked over to the glob of Dark Mana and reached out to absorb it. Just as soon as it was sucked up into his hand and turned into Unconverted Mana, a prompt flashed across his vision.
Absorption Complete!
You have absorbed (85) Unknown Element Mana from Undead Bear (Wild)!
Unable to absorb Unknown Element Mana…switching it to Unconverted Mana
You have absorbed knowledge of (1) Blueprint!
Blueprint absorbed: Undead Bear (Level 1 Base Cost: 50 Dark Mana)
Unknown Element type…please obtain correct element Core to place this blueprint in your dungeon.
What? Fred was confused, as this had never happened before. “Deecy, what’s going on?” he asked the Dire Wolf usin
g his Mana Communication skill. He then explained exactly what had occurred.
“Do you remember me telling you that you could acquire blueprints for creatures that weren’t dungeon defenders? You never had a chance to do it before, since you were fighting Nature and then Earth defenders, but since this creature isn’t connected to a specific dungeon, you acquired the blueprint for it. Of course, you can’t actually create it unless you have a Dark Core…”
“Deecy, you know what that would mean, right? I’d have to end up killing another Core, and that is something I think I’d like to avoid right now,” Fred Communicated back. The prospect was intriguing, though; the major problem with acquiring access to the Dark element – other than the fact that it would mean the death of another Core – would be the fact that he would end up making even more enemies out of another elemental faction. It was bad enough that the Earth faction – and the Nature faction, once they figured out what to do after the loss of their local army – was out to exact retribution on him and his friends; the last thing he needed was to add something to that ever-growing list of enemies.
His own goal of revenge was looking more and more like an unobtainable dream; he was having enough trouble just barely surviving against some of the lower-Rated dungeons nearby that he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to go up against the “Supreme Council” of powerful Cores. And what exactly do I want to achieve out of my revenge? Do I want every single member of this lofty Supreme Council to be destroyed? He froze, bent over in the act of absorbing the Dark Mana, as he finally considered what he wanted.
Dungeon World 3: A Dungeon Core Experience Page 16