Grrl Power #1179 – Fantababble
Magic in and of itself doesn’t have an ethical preference in the Grrl-verse, but it is a force of nature which is also a tool, in that sapients and even some sentients can manipulate it. This also includes vast, incomprehensible entities of ambiguous… evolence. (You know, ben/mal.) Usually, the vaster the entity, the less direct effect it has on The Weave, or at least, the less focused its effects are, while at the same time tending to be far more widespread. This is especially true for the more incomprehensible entities, almost by definition. After all, if you can detect their direct meddling, it’s far easier to figure out their end game, and they are necessarily more comprehensible.
Deus’s other point is basically “There’s no such thing as that one thing because if that thing is like another thing then we call it another thing.” Except that it kind of means that there is such a thing as that thing we call another thing, so maybe instead of a thing, we build another thing?” So… Kat had a good idea maybe?
I’m still working on the vote incentive. Spend all Sunday on it. I honestly don’t know why they take me so long. I think shifting between simplified comic art and the more painterly stuff is part of it? I’ll keep at it and try to have it ready by the Thursday comic, and I’ll start on the next one right after. I think I know what I want to draw for that one, just have to figure out who to put in it.
The June vote incentive is finally up! Maxima is prepping for her night out.
And in the Patreon variants, she gets (un)dressed and takes a look through all the makeup options.
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If Dabbler or Sydney get to help program the dungeon, regardless of alignment, they’re definitely putting in a back door. Leave the entry-level grinding and farming for troop training and noobs enthusiasts, and keep a secret entrance for the A-team to pop directly to the core, snatch the top-tier items, and get back into the field. Especially if those items may needed during an active fight and can’t be stored long.
Wouldn’t that mean that the boss-level monsters can get out the back door.
Locks and such may not hold over time, and a determined adversary.
while its a game mechanic, then again so are dungeon cores, it makes sense they would install level gates *warp points, or whatever you want to call it* if its a big multi-level dungeon.
to use an example, remember Phantasy Star Online *the old Dreamcast one…and arguably the start of the decline of this franchise according to some*, but I digresss.
imagine if to get down to the dark level you had to every single time grind your way down through all the levels above it. It would get annoying for the players. So makes sense if you made a real one of these that you’d install a portal system to get to the levels you want.
Although this depends on a detail we haven’t gotten yet. Are the one’s installing the core the ones building the physical structure that will be the dungeon or does the core also warp the area around it into a labyrinth all on its own.
if the former they can install them before hand, if the later they may need to first delve as the first explorers/cartographers and install such gates where they feel they make sense and are safe spots in the dungeon to do so (don’t want a portal that becomes a camping ground for a smart/hungry monster).
That’s usually how those things work: you first have to reach certain levels the hard way before you can bypass the crap
Dabbler would get sidetracked at the words “back door”.
For the record, “Dabbler, are you ready to go?” is in fact a rhetorical question.
Deus’s semantics notwithstanding, the answer is quite obvious to me… building a source of mystical healing energy which doesn’t produce dangerous monsters would be like trying to produce a mechanical power plant which doesn’t produce any heat. Magical power obviously would arise mostly from moral and ethical conflict, just as physical energy usually comes from friction and similar destabilizing forces. You quite literally can’t make your omelet without breaking any eggs; if no atoms are split and no souls are flensed, then you’re not liberating any usable kinetic or metaphysick forces that you could harness to perform any sort of work.
Deus is answer feels more correct. It wouldn’t be called a dungeon. It would be the holy sanctum of “Giant Strawberry Clan” Or Enchanted Dryad Forest of Endless Orgies or The Midnight pit of Funky jazz beats.
the issue seems to be from a physics stand point what they want is for the theumian field which in their universe is a force of physics/dimension of reality same as gravity, strong force, weak force, electromagnetic, and whatever is wobbling muons if that pans out.
concentrating it, as in tapping into it should only produce a force, like electricity, heat, and light. They want more mana as a wide free source of energy. But their method for doing so is also causing complex and dangerous life forms to just..manifest in the area as well. They clearly went with it and took advantage of it, and wouldn’t be surprised if a number of paranormals on the council originated that way given this page implies sapient beings also do manifest in these dungeons like goblins.
imagione if an electrical plant caused sand golems and acid slimes etc..to just pop up around the plant. We could have gotten used to it and wrote it off as a side effect of producing power and stopped questioning it, like how with gravity we don’t question why a greater force of attraction doesn’t increase the rate of speed between two bodies, it just became, “that’s just how it works” (and I’m sure the math adds up, for a casual high school student we ended up shrugging it off).
so between using it and it happening everytime they just stopped questioning it, even though it really shouldn’t if all they are doing is producing power from a force of nature.
Deus’s examples are the now raw mana power versions, but focused and refined versions. More a filter than anything, like only letting the indigo light band through and reflecting the rest back, but the raw unfiltered light shouldn’t be making butterfly people who eat eyes.
@Will’s argument still allows for ethical, friendly, dungeon core residents.
Say you have a dungeon core in China/North Korea/wherever where visitors are given free food, health care and access to news and entertainment from across the world. There would be a constant stream of conscripted soldiers sent in to try to destroy the core and make sure nobody is taking advantage of those things.
In Order of the Stick, Serini Toormuck made a ‘good’ dungeon called Kraagor’s Tomb, full of all sorts of monsters (including mimics like Mimi and a beholder named Sunny) that were there voluntarily for a very good purpose which was vital to protecting the entire universe in which OOTS is set.
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1283.html
it is however worth noting it was pointed out that the monsters had to be carefully divided by compatible species as despite their shared goals some would turn on each other regardless out of their natures, or harm each other accidentally in some cases.
As it also was in the old Dungeon Keeper game.
You build the first defense line with flies. Then those spiders walk in.
It doesn’t mention conflict as part of the mana equation- just the way the dungeon concentrates mana as a way of manipulating the environment to make more. So a “good” dungeon might or might not siphon and concentrate mana they way the Twilight council wants, or it could, but they KNOW a standard dungeon does. Plus making a “Farm” core could provide ingredients for what they want to make, but going by how Dabbler reacted to the question I don’t think she has encountered many if any “good” dungeon equivalents, so their knowledge on how to turn any potential crops from such a thing into what they want is thin on the ground.
It is more practical to create a low level dungeon with monsters that can be easily contained then try for an experimental easy to harvest version with ingredients they don’t know how to turn into useful potions and such. It would be a good research project for the future.
So, mana is conscious suffering, just like soylent green is people. Got it.
Not suffering necessarily, but conflict of some sort. “Energy creating energy”, to quote the Crossgen Comics from which I originally got this idea. A good example of a non-horrific method of doing this would be the myth of Valhalla, especially as presented in the Dungeons and Dragons outer plane of Ysgard – people fight to the death constantly, then immediately get resurrected, keep killing each other over and over throughout a day-long endless battle, and then that evening they all go to a big meadhall to sing songs of each other’s glory and drink each other under the table. Constant conflict, but all in a spirit of sporting, fun, and athletic competition. Like a Team Fortress 2 lan party, only with less risk of hurt feelings.
Not suffering necessarily, but conflict of some sort. “Energy creating energy”, to quote the Crossgen Comics from which I originally got this idea. A good example of a non-horrific method of doing this would be the myth of Valhalla, especially as presented in the Dungeons and Dragons outer plane of Ysgard – people fight to the death constantly, then immediately get resurrected, keep killing each other over and over throughout a day-long endless battle, and then that evening they all go to a big meadhall to sing songs of each other’s glory and drink each other under the table. Constant conflict, but all in a spirit of sporting, fun, and athletic competition. Like a Team Fortress 2 lan party, only with less risk of hurt feelings.
Not quite.
I would assume magical monsters would be hostile to humans in the same way a bear would be hostile to humans. The humans are in their territory and might taste good wiith ketchup. Just because something wants to kill you doesnt make it evil.
Alignment: Neutral hungry.
The alihnment of most monsters in my D&Dcampaigns
reminded of the horror movie trope “the ever hungry predator”, where the movie tries to have its monster be an animal but also for the sake of suspense and a body count behave like a slasher villain; which means having a creature that never stops hunting and eating, even if its only the size of a person (see every other dinosaur movie post Jurassic Park with “raptors”) it will still keep hunting down one person after another in a span of only four hours in universe, killing and feeding on like ten different people.
Then here’s a question why don’t they just combine all the different cores like the forest core, farm core and a valley core to yield all the benefits they want? And do they even need a dungeon core if all those different cores could yield the same effect without having to fight some dragons zombie or lovecraftian monster made out of people?
We don’t know if the other set ups concentrate magic like dungeon cores do. It would be a reasonable assumption but it could be more complicated. For example someone else commented that you could consider the monsters neutral-ei there are “good” equivalents that Deus mentions and presumably evil ones like Mordor or some cursed place created by evil gods or hostile magic users, then dungeons, that produce magical wild animals would be neutral.
In that model, directing the energies to create the specifically beneficial or harmful effects could impact the dungeon’s capability for affecting the ambient magic levels, and in any case to get the materials they need to make the potions and such, they might NEED to make a normal dungeon, making a magical farm would be cool, but it won’t help if the super carrots don’t work for making the potions they want.
I mean, it technically answers the question, but the actual question they need answered is “why does it have to be a dungeon if you want to get the ingredients for high-quality healing potions or other epic loot?” Why can’t you produce magic healing herbs with a “farming core”?
it sounds to me like the difference is mutation. If you plant a vitality crystal in your fields you can increase crop yeild but only of what you planted there. If you want magical plants you need a raw mana leak, but in this universe raw mana manifests monsters. So even if it was a small one, like plant a vitality crystal alonside a raw mana crystal in that field while you may get your magical herbs you may also get mandragora, vampire vines, skull cabbages, earth bending gophers, fraggles, some treants and alraune by the edge of the field if it was a big field, or the worst case living scarecrows and field spirits looking for blood sacrifices.
a good with th bad. want special magical ingredients well all this other stuff you have to fight is also going to show up.
funny enough this one is a classic, a farmer wanting high yield and healing herbs to grow on their land planting a magical rune stone in the nearby forest. However this also resulted in horrid things haunting those woods and crawling around the property at night.
Deus specifically said that it doesn’t work that way – magic doesn’t have an innate preference for evil monsters, and the entity creating the core can influence what it creates.
Dabbler is implying and the last few pages the mages here stating that for what they want on this deal, the increase mana density, goes hand in hand with the formation of a dungeon full of monsters *note I have not said the word evil. Only aggressive monsters. A manifested monster that just attacks out of instinct isn’t evil, its just autonomous or animalistic.
what Deus is describing seems to go against the premise and Dabbler is saying there is a logical fallacy here, so I am expanding on that, because what Deus is describing sounds more focused less wild. A more controlled result. Although they can possibly control the level and possibly what sorts of things could potentially appear to some degree.
So for Deus its like *what is a tree* kind of argument. Lots of different things are called “trees” that aside from being plants are unrelated to each other (fish is also a common example of this logic argument). There are surface similarities, but deep down are totally different.
in this case, an area is being enchanted, has thick mana, and there is a device at the center behind it.
Deus is saying bey are the same but called different things because they look different *the dog breeds types of analogy, look different but genetically are all just dogs*, while the mages and Dabbler’s side is more the trees and fish analogy, there might be a surface similarity in what Deus is describing, but when you get down to the core they are fundamentally different so not the same thing,
So postulation, if what Deus is describing can’t manifest monsters but also can’t provide raw dense mana then its not the same thing on the fundamental level.
So summarize him, Deus would be saying the are the same thing because they enchant an area with thicker mana in the area *even though his examples would imply a specific “color” of mana to use a gaming term.
Dabbler also didn’t even consider a ‘Farming Core’ until Kat suggested it, that’s why she is trying to ‘solve magic’
These cores are starting to sound like demenses and manses from Exalted.
I think I see the logical fallacy Dabbler is hinting at. In this meeting it was implied a dungeon core’s primary function is to create an area of high mana density, its basically a power plant of the free floating energy variety you just need to have the tools or knowledge to tap into it. The dungeons are created as a secondary effect, but what they produce was found useful so either the people who first made and refined the dungeon cores never thought to find a way to hack the magical system to get the power without the dungeon and monsters manifesting or worse case scenario whatever system is in place that governs magic has these two effects so tied together that unless you specify a specific magic type or reduce the range and power to near useless for wide scale use you will end up with a seeds of ruin kind scenario where the area around the focal point starts to attract spirits, monsters, manifest distortions in the environment etc.. so safe version, condense mana crystals and refine as a focal point in a safe deep buried location, hence a dungeon.
However was Deus is describing while also condensed mana or mana crystals are very specific creations. They don’t just make wide dispersed raw mana anyone can draw power from and use. A heart of Yggdrasil or Hamadryad core etc…increased life energy, it increased the vitality and fertility of plants and animals in the area. You can’t *with any ease* like draw that energy to yourself and use it to make a fireball, you’d have to put it through many additional filters *losing much of the mana in the process and probably using more than you’d gain* to filter out the life energy aspect to use it for anything else.
same with a death stone, mermaid’s tear/prism, etc… shorter range, and the mana is being turned into a specific kind of mana/magical energy. its just now raw.
So the system they found to create widely dispersed mana also came tethered with *a labyrinth of monsters will also manifest around it*. Which Dabbler and Kat are right to be suspicious of. Its not like every time someone casts a spell it requires a summoning of a tiny monster to do it or risks that. So something extra is at work, they’ve just gotten so used to it they stopped questioning it (plus the monsters were found to be useful for spell components).
Imagine if creating a wide electrical field caused ghosts and evil spirits to manifest and distort the land around the power plant into a maze. Aside from religious institutions likely shutting down progress, the opposite direction effect would end up being, we’d stop questioning it if we couldn’t stop it and make the best of it.
but we know that just producing energy from a fundamental force of nature shouldn’t do that *at least not in such a dramatic and short timescale*
(putting aside the hypothesis *or theory, haven’t checked lately* that aside from blocking cosmic radiation that Earth’s electromagnetic field played a part in the spark of life more directly).
but that’s hardly respawning dragon-slime-golems level of changes to the area.
on the author commentary, that does answer my question, which even after I wrote a deviantart blurb on I was like, no, we can’t consider this a dungeon.
DaveB’s words
Magic in and of itself doesn’t have an ethical preference in the Grrl-verse, but it is a force of nature which is also a tool, in that sapients and even some sentients can manipulate it. This also includes vast, incomprehensible entities of ambiguous… evolence. (You know, ben/mal.) Usually, the vaster the entity, the less direct effect it has on The Weave, or at least, the less focused its effects are, while at the same time tending to be far more widespread. This is especially true for the more incomprehensible entities, almost by definition. After all, if you can detect their direct meddling, it’s far easier to figure out their end game, and they are necessarily more comprehensible.
So yeah, this makes sense otherwise we would be calling entire pocket dimensions, planets, even universes dungeons.
My own example is Rokonaka sleeping at the center of Other World and her power filtering out and spreading out in layers creating different netherworlds and zones till the wider outer layers of that reality being your floating islands and continent worlds in dense clouds magical reality where mana is dense.
but by that same logic we could have said.
*Tenchi Muyo* the distorted space of Tokimi’s palace, or the entire planet of Jurai being influenced by Tsunami’s giant tree avatar on the planet.
*Slayers* their entire multiverse around the Lord of Nightmares (although she does make gods and monsters manifest)
or even the entire universe in both the Lovecraft mythos as the dream of Azathoth, and the Lord Dunsany universe around Mana Yood.
or the numerous *this world has a giant *insert anything from giant robot to demons to gods to baby celestial etc..* at its center and that power is causing the life on the planet to be what it is.
The Civic Virtue core that creates honest politicians of different sorts, who kill and eat the crooked politicians. See, the residents are monsters, all paying homage to Evil Good Lord Deus.
But then you have all the ‘anti-cannibal’ wackos start to come out of the woodwork and all hell breaks loose.
All the while, the ‘smart’ politicos are making money off the mess because after all, money is FAR more important than laws, lives or souls. Think I lie? Just ask most of the modern GOP in the US along with a bunch of US Supreme Court justices. Money talks and bullshit walks.
The fallacy is in the nature of the wildlife. You “should” be just as capable of creating a core that produces magic plants and, idk, mana dense cows or turtles or something instead of predators capable spilling out in search of additional territory. The exception to this is if magic sentient or attached in some way to the sentience of mortals. In that case it would expect that “great rewards” must come from “hard work” and “risk”, and so spawning the required plants would require spawning dangerous wildlife alongside them.
The fallacy is in the nature of the wildlife. At least theoretically you “should” be just as capable of creating a core that produces magic plants and, idk, mana dense cows or turtles or something instead of predators capable spilling out in search of additional territory. The exception to this is if magic sentient or attached in some way to the sentience of mortals. In that case it would expect that “great rewards” must come from “hard work” and “risk”, and so spawning the required plants would require spawning dangerous wildlife alongside them.
someone last page of comments said something like the magic being an AI.
We have seen (and use in our own settings) magic systems that are artificially produced, multidimensional machinery and all that, entities at various levels of godlike power creating the very rules of magic for an area of varying degrees as well depending on the setting. But the idea is either the entity or a kind of *watcher/observer/mind of magic* was put in place to regulate and control the system as intended.
and what the system makes and does depends on why this entity or group created magic in the first place. In some cases its as a game, magic creates monsters, trials, puzzles, maze like dungeons, sky temples, etc… because the system is set to propagate and alter a world to become their new LARPing playground. One its magiformed *terraformed but with magic* a planet then they go down in avatars and enjoy the new fantasy setting arena.
but if magic were made to do that and locals could figure out how to tap into and harness magic *Star Ocean game world example* then the codes are linked and any attempt to even increase magic power on a smaller scale triggers the magiform function so it starts to change the environment per its programming.
IMO, the relevant question is whether dungeon monsters are intelligent. If they are, then this entire plan is evil, because it boils down to “repeatedly kill intelligent beings and take their shit”. That’s not ok no matter how asshole-ey those intelligent beings are.
Meanwhile, if they aren’t intelligent, then they can’t possibly be either good or evil. Like, if you walk up to a bear and it eats you, that doesn’t mean that the bear is evil, and it doesn’t mean that nature is evil for producing the bear. The bear doesn’t have the capacity to understand good and evil, so it can’t be judged on that scale. Similarly, if you walk up to an unintelligent dungeon monster and it eats you, that doesn’t make the monster or magic evil. It just means that high-magic areas produce magic-infused ecosystems, and the apex predators of those magic-infused ecosystems tend to be both dangerous and aggressive.
Or possibly, dungeons tend to produce creatures that feed off the magic produced by the dungeon, and the creatures that successfully survive in dungeons are the creatures that are most able to take territory and drive off or kill competitors.
If the Core (dungeon or otherwise) is creating a Magically sustained rapidly evolving self-contained ecosystem, there will be a similar arms race amoung the inhabitants. Which will result in “creatures” that are considered “monsters” in any other ecosystem. And the reason why certain forms keep occuring is parallel evolution. We see this not infrequently IRL where the same structures keep getting evolved again and again. Even on unconnected branches.
Which is why arachnids keep evolving into crabs, because it works so well in so many aquatic ecosystems. “In fact, it’s happened so often that there’s a name for it: carcinization.” And that is a quote from June 2023 Scientific American.
Seems to me that an accumulation of magical potentials would get exploited long before it reached a big beefy stage unless there was something nasty there to prevent it. Or in layman’s terms:
It’s a matter of risk vs reward. The point at which it becomes worth the effort, someone nearby will snatch up those resources.
I still say a dungeon core is alive and would inherently put down defenses to keep itself safe and by doing so create an environment where monsters tend to flourish through natural selection. defenses could be anything from magical plants to entangle and or distract to monster species to defend key areas. But in doing so would create environments which would allow monsters to flourish.
Perhaps other kinds of dungeons produce things that are not obviously “magic”. Like creatures or things that are very powerful, but which don’t register on any sort of “magic detection” spells or devices. For instance, what if the earth is a kind of dungeon that produces supers? (Note that the existence of villains implies that this would be a neutral dungeon). Or, maybe there is a good dungeon that occasionally spits out powerful, semi-sentient orbs, in order to help certain wise but quirky young people achieve their full, heroic potential.
The blurb kind of goes over large power entities that could alter things on a large scale but not really be dungeon cores. The Earth producing supers due to some entity inside the core is the premise of some comics, as well as producing magic for much the same reason. Seen three versions. One where the Earth formed around a cosmic being and thus produced metaphysical mutations during periodic heart beat bursts…also mass extinctions for the same reason, or something inserted it’s self deep in the ground altering life on the surface and especially in proximity of it’s impact point. And the third which is like the first except the Earth is basically a cosmic egg.
To pun, or not to pun, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of humorous ninjas,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of haters,
And by opposing end them: to try, to weep
No more; and by a weep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To try, for fun,
For fun, perchance to Pun; aye, there’s the rub,
For in that fun ‘er death, what puns may come,
When we have signed off this internet,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes Hilarity of so long life:
For who would bear the Chips and Scones of time,
The bold Pander’s wrong, the ronin’s Constantly,
The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay,
The insolence of Office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’punworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodice? Who would Quarrels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No witty returns, puzzles of skill,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than cry to others of whom we know not?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And comment sections of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their Comments turn awry,
And lose the name of Humor. Laugh you now,
The fair Pander? Lawyer, in thy Hall
Be all my puns remember’d
Be all my puns remembered, the dad jokes with the cringe and let me be visited by ninjas accordingly. The rest is silence.
I very much want to send ninjas after you for this but I’m too danged impressed.
I am nowhere near a press, but this made an impression.
I too am impressed, yet pressed for a press to express. And were I to try, a press of ninja would attempt to leave impressions on me.
nah, they’d just pressure you with depressing presentations until you pressed stop.
You are all deeply evil and I am sending ninja hit squads to each and every one of you even if what you are doing are not technically puns. :)
*shakes fist*
So, it wasn’t more fun than you could hire someone to shake a spear at?
My personal theory is that dungeon cores don’t trend evil, but they have an instinct to challenge intruders before allowing them to partake of what they provide.
So,what will Dabbler do the next time she gets asked another question like in the previous comic?
Again no one asks ‘What could go wrong”?
Eh, what’s the worst that could happen?
There is a philosophy for engineers called “Worst Case Scenario” that asks that exact question: “What could go wrong, and if it did what’s the worst that could happen?”
I used to do this when designing safety systems for race cars, it’s why there are crumple zones around the driver’s compartment of my T-bucket to dissipate impacts from reaching the driver.
The Tarrasque may go on a rampage.
Then Maxima may be known as Destroyer of Mosques, Slayer of Tarrasques, and General Hater of Queues.
I think Sydney would hold the “hater of queues” title.
On second thought a Tarrasque would probably not be a big threat as it would be possible to evacuate people in its path. It would be way worse if a lich got loose and started infecting everyone with a undeaf plague, starting with the supers.
Is an undeaf plague one where everyone gains extraordinary hearing, and has to go through life knowing exactly who hasn’t washed their hands at the restaurant and what’s happening in all the surrounding apartments at all times?
I honestly like that we can’t edit or delete posts in this comment section. More fun this way.
a good pair of hearing aids can get you up to the clatter of every dish in the room. don’t ask me how I know.
please…. i want to be undeaf. where is this litch? and what price would he charge?
You don’t find him, he will find you. Or he will send his lawyers if he is the lawfull evil type. The price is eternal service in his undead and undeaf hordes.
its too quiet around here so that is tempting.
There is another question that isn’t being asked and I am surprised at myself for not asking when this topic first came several weeks ago…
is this the first dungeon on Earth?
The twilight council knows what they are, how to make them, and possibly some member species originated from them. We know some member species are alien/interdimensional like demons and possibly fairies/elves. So could have seen these dungeons on other planets/other planes etc..
however this Twilight Council is specifically dealing with the US government and been asking for some time for permission to allocate some land for this use.
so has the Twilight Council in other countries or in the past created dungeons on Earth? Or member species before the council was a thing like a smaller personal dungeon made by a wizard’s guild, witch’s cover (see underground witch’s tower from Hilda sort of concept), or Minotaur’s labyrinth, underworld of undead etc…
but the basic question, are there already other dungeons on the Earth, but because Archon is a branch of the US military does not have access to them?
Like what would be keeping Deus from having one made in Galtyn?
or another government wanting to consolidate any powers it can with supers on the scene, upping their magical potential in other words.
Of course, we have dungeons here in Europe. What do you think is where all that mythology comes from?
I’m sure they also have dungeons in Asia. I’d be surprised if there isn’t some Chinese guy who claims “My dungeon is older than yours!”. And the middle east, well, they have the oldest of everything cultural.
I do not know enough about African culture to make an educated guess.
Of course, where do you think all the kings and barons kept their enemies ?
Giving Dungeons the “Alignment Chart” treatment:
Most D&D Dungeons are either CN – no rules, inhabitants are ‘savage’, so it’s OK to kill them, take all you can get – or CE – no rules, inhabitants are actively trying to kill you and take your stuff, kill them first and take theirs.
CG – Farmers’ Market – free marketplace, buy and sell what you want, beware pickpockets, con artists, and shady deals.
NE – Strahd’s Castle, or the Sea Witch’s Cave – filled with riches and power, but Malevolent Powerful Entity rules there. Steal from them, or deal from them, or end up their prisoner.
NN – Fangorn Forest – Take what you want, do what you want, the inhabitants are peaceful and don’t want to get involved in outside affairs – until something makes them mad.
NG – Rivendell – Benevolent Entity rules this paradise. Has foibles, but if they consider you a friend, anything you need is yours.
LE – Mad Scientist’s Lab – This house of horrors most resembles the original definition of “dungeon”. Creatures of all kinds (including people) are held prisoner here, and “harvested” for valuable components. Wonder where witches get “basilisk tears” and “hydra blood” for their spells? These guys. Right here.
LN – The Great Library – While not a great place to find spell components or potion ingredients, this is the ideal place to find the spells and potion recipes themselves. Every book imaginable can be found here, but Woe to they that damage a book – the Librarians here are quite strict…
LG – The Authorities – These offices are filled with Agents that work day and night, and are ever vigilant. They can find just about anything here, but The Are Rules To Be Followed, and you are breaking them just by being there…
a nice cross section of specific results. Generic dungeons however I think for any setting we can throw into a few basic types which those fit into a few of the categories.
Elemental: A temple, dungeon, or maze that centers around a central elemental theme *fire, water, ice, for example* the specific details will vary and will usually cross into one of the below as well.
Natural: This can be a cave system *rock, lava vents, ice caves,* an enchanted hedge maze, the inside of a gargantuan tree, and so forth.
Manmade/Looks Manmade: These have a very wide variety ranging from ruins overtaken by monsters to hellish nightmare dimensions with a theme.
-the former usually being castle ruins, catacombs, run down buildings in more advanced settings *derelict space ship can even count*, sewers etc..
but those can also apply to the hellish nightmare world which are usually pocket dimensions or locations within a location *like buildings in the other world or Hell*, but in either case are many layered labyrinths of twisting tunnels that happen to have the themes of human structures but unreasonable layouts and themed monsters.
*common examples: the castle tower and stone catacombs, hospitals/Asylums, giant libraries, haunted mansion, the toy/doll house, the circus tunnels *AKA The Fun House*.
Also, you can tell Dabbler is distracted in P1 – no cleavage is showing.
Also, Deus is confirmed an Alvin and the Chipmunks fan.
He was the voice of Alvin :P
or just nightcore.
check it out on youtube, it basically is speeding up and changing the vocals of songs to more high pitched. it really works for some. there is also anti-nightcore that does the opposite and slows down songs, although most doing this just call it the spooky version of songs.
By the time you get the July votecentive posted it will be more than halfway through August, just skip July and call it August or September.
It’s not just a free vote incentive, the NSFW versions are the basis of the paid Patreon tiers which is how Dave gets paid for doing this comic.
Opus was just meaning the name
ALSO (sheesh!), the other name for ‘rose’ might be pronounced ‘rose’, if it were a homophone for ‘rose’.
That’s it, I’m going to bed.
rows, roes, roze, rhoze, rhose, rozh?
The simplest answer lies in Newton’s Laws of Motion. “Every action has an equal yet opposite reaction.” Dungeons are made to generate beneficial alchemy ingredients, this in turn creates beings hostile to the ones who want to harvest the beneficial ingredients. Can’t have one without the other.
Good = Benevolence
Bad = Malevolence
Neutral = Meh-levolence
Canadian = Eh-levolence
Nice
Puns = Buh-nevolence or Pan-derviolence.
the Judge says… Indeed.
Oh I’m gonna be sending some ninja violence to you brichins!!!!!
*shakes fists again*
OK, the Nightcore quip made me laugh.
magic is as magic does
The so-called monsters, in fact just mana-infused animals whom used to evolve with the extra resource of powers to be the best at survival. They are not evil, just take a different evolutionary path. Therefor a Dungeon is just one another habitat, even if it’s a slightly unnatural one.
More to the point, if you actually had a “good dungeon” full of druid-monk guys that happily give out magic produce, said magic produce would be cheap. You don’t need to worry about the risk of breakouts, and you don’t need adventurers or teams of superheros to collect stuff. All of that translates directly into lower market prices. Presumably only the evil reagents are expensive enough to bother building your own dungeon over, for that reason.
Anyone else getting a ‘roto-scope’ Ralph Bakshi vibe from this look?
So the naked dryad in panel five is telling me to rake off my shoo?
I figured it was a survival mechanism; a core can’t survive for long unless it has stupidly aggressive defenses, like hordes of nasty monsters defending it.
Prefacing with magic is real. It could literally be any reason. I like to believe that alignment of the creatures within the dungeon is one part of it and two, dungeons are semi-sentient or at least instinctive beings. They generate items of value within themselves to attract adventurers. Anyone that bleeds or dies within it becomes part of the dungeon and feed it.
I like these unshaded pages way more
I’d just posit the Dungeon Core has TWO effects: One, raising the background mana level of the area/world, and TWO, creating an area of random magical monsters and plants that can be harvested for various purposes.
It’s entirely like the other kinds of magical ‘cores’ don’t actually do EITHER effect. The leaking mana doesn’t leak, it increases the local fertility of the place in a harnessed, predictable manner, and what results is also predictable. you’ll get some of the components you want, but not all of them, there’s not enough magical chaos to do so!
So, the chaotic element of the Dungeon Cores is necessary, and that kind of Core does exactly what has been described. Deus is right, the reasoning was just not taken out far enough.
I’m guessing INTENT plays a major role. If you moosh a bunch of mana together in order to get a Dungeon Core, the result attracts monsters and grows weird plants. If you gather a bunch of mana together to make a Forrest Heart, the result attracts fae creatures and magical herbs.
I always figured the monsters were a form of self protection/preservation. The core settes and grows, and the monsters are just it’s guards.