The small lavender crystal shimmered with iridescence in the morning light. It wobbled slightly in the soft bed of moss at the entrance to a small cave nestled in dense foliage. A symphony of birdsong, ape calls, insect trilling, and gentle breaking surf on a distant coastline serenaded this world’s newest arrival.

Charlie didn’t rouse from slumber in any normal sense. One moment they were asleep and the next they were wide awake. Everything felt alien, turned upside down. Charlie tried to “look” one direction and their mind was assaulted by hundreds of images. Sensations rushed through Charlie’s consciousness unfiltered by sensory organs, haltingly nostalgic, yet dramatically unfamiliar.

If Charlie had still possessed a stomach its contents would have been spread out over the moss they were resting in. Unable to physically react to the spinning world in a physical manner, a wave of disassociation crashed against Charlie’s psyche. Charlie attempted to let everything in, attempted to not be overwhelmed, but they had no natural mechanism to halt the torrent of information streaming into their mind.

Charlie rode waves of images, sounds, scents, and everything in between. Charlie sorted the images and forced that stream of information into one portion of their mind. The other sensations followed suit, adding one flow of after another as Charlie rebuilt their sense of perception.

It was discombobulating. Not only could Charlie sense everything in their sphere of influence in every way imaginable, but they had no orientation or modulation. Sounds came from all directions in every pitch and volume. Images floated in Charlie’s mind’s eye, flipping, rotating, and twisting without a horizon or even sense of dimension. Scents and tastes co-mingled evoking strong memories from Charlie’s past. This is my mind. I will bring order to this chaos. This is unacceptable!

Charlie did not know how long it took, but they managed to marshal their discipline and enforce their will upon the data. Everything became oriented around the focal point of their mind. Charlie learned how to focus their attention on a particular area within their influence. Charlie turned off the tactile, taste, and scent inputs. Sound and sight would be enough to get a start.

Charlie finally found the notification queue and focused on it, arranging all of the starting notifications so they could make appropriate decisions. Informative notifications could simply be absorbed, like the many streams of sensation, they existed as data that could be parsed. However, notifications that required action were best dealt with through contemplation and consideration, not instinct.

The first notification was one that Charlie had been expecting. They already had the perfect name picked out.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _?

Charlie focused on the blinking series of dashes. I am the Lurking Lair. I will be a dungeon unlike any other.

The blinking name field shrunk down and was replaced by Charlie’s status sheet, with the name filled in. Charlie took a moment to pour over the information. It didn’t exactly feel like reading, but it was a fair approximation.

Biographical Information:

Name: Lurking Lair

Level: 0

Experience: 0

Race: Dungeon

Class: Unavailable – Requirements not met

Alignment: Neutral

Languages: Common

Stats:

Influence: 1,000 ft. radius

Durability: 900/900

Mana: 24/24

Strength: 0

Dexterity: 0

Intelligence: 26

Spirit: 26

Charisma: 11

Luck: 13

Movement Speed: 0

Resistances:

100% Mental Resistance

90% Magic Resistance

90% Physical Resistance

Aspects:

None

Skills:

Creation Magic 1, Natural

Spells:

Level 0:

Summon Dungeon Monster:

- Type: Instantaneous

- School: Creation

- Sub-school: Dungeon

- Mana Cost: 5+ 10 per level of caster

- Casting Time: 1 minute

- Duration: N/A

- Range: Sphere of Influence

- Components: None

- Effect: Summon a monster, restricted to your sphere of influence, related to your current terrain, alignment, and class. This monster will be summoned at the same level as the dungeon, but can progress independently. This monster will be entirely under the influence of the dungeon that summons it and can be directed by the dungeon at will. If a monster’s full lore is known the dungeon can elect to summon a monster of that type, if not the summon will be random.

Summon Dungeon Familiar:

- Type: Ritual

- School: Creation

- Sub-school: Dungeon

- Mana Cost: Entire Mana Pool

- Casting Time: 1 Hour

- Duration: N/A

- Range: Sphere of Influence + 1 mile

- Components: Concentration

- Effect: Summon or Re-summon a dungeon familiar related to your terrain and alignment. This familiar will be within 5 levels of the dungeons level, but can progress independently. This creature will be Bound and will follow the Bind ability rules, regardless of the ability that has been selected. Upon completion of casting, you will be required to select the class type of the familiar. At initiate level in Creation Magic you may select one of the following options:

1. Warrior: Focused on physical attack and defense. High Strength and Constitution, low Intelligence and Charisma stats.

2. Caster: Focused on magical attack and defense. High Intelligence and Spirit, low Strength and Constitution stats.

3. Rogue: Focused on sneak attacks, infiltration and evasion. High Dexterity and Luck, low Spirit and Strength stats.

4. Support: Focused on altering combat and non-combat circumstances through buffs and debuffs. High Luck and High Spirit, low Constitution and Dexterity.

Abilities:

Select 3 starting abilities to activate them.

1. Bind: Create an inviolable bond with any living creature. This bond allows for mind-to-mind communication within one mile and will allow you to resurrect the creature if it dies. This bond allows compulsion of the creature with a successful willpower check. These creatures will be free to exit your sphere of influence. This bond cannot be broken once established.

2. Consume: Devour deceased or helpless creatures within your influence to gain their strength. Gain 10% of the creatures experience, a 25% chance to gain a skill the creature possessed, and basic lore on the creature consumed.

3. Assimilate: Devour deceased or helpless creatures within your influence to gain their strength. Gain 1% of the creatures experience, 2.5% chance to gain a skill the creature possessed, and full lore regarding the creature. This will allow you to summon an approximation of the creature with an appropriate level spell.

4. Mana Osmosis: Dungeon influence will spread with the expenditure of mana and mana recovery will increase by 1% of total radial feet of influence per hour. For every 1000 points of mana spent on spells, the radius of the dungeon’s influence will increase by 1 foot.

5. Influence Infusion: Directly infuse influence into terrain, vegetation, and creatures. Infusing objects within the dungeons sphere of influence will have a 10% chance to awaken a dungeon monster, bound upon birth. Influence infusion directly increases the radius of the dungeons influence when used on terrain. This ability can only be used once per day.

Traits:

Magical Construct: Strength, Dexterity, and Movement Speed set to 0. Constitution stat x100 becomes starting durability score. 90% Physical Resistance, 90% Magic Resistance, and 100% Mental Resistance.

Dungeon Loremaster: Can gain any skill, but can only use dungeon appropriate skills, i.e. magic and knowledge-based skills. Non-dungeon appropriate skills will be gained with no level or aptitude, but can be taught to creatures with high enough levels of aptitude.

Sphere of Influence: Dungeons have mana sense and can perceive all elements within their influence throughout the sensory spectrum. Dungeon influence naturally expands at a rate of 1 radial foot per day.

So many options! Time to make some choices. Which starting abilities do I want? Which ones will work the best with my plan? If I hadn’t thought this through, it’d probably take a while. The Lurking Lair spent the next few minutes looking over the abilities. It was fun to extrapolate what types of growth paths they would offer and what environments each ability would perform best in.

The spells took care of basic monsters to populate the environs of a dungeon. If the Lair’s starting location had been near a city, Bind, Influence Infusion, and Mana Osmosis would have been perfect. It would be invaluable to lay in wait and slowly grow in strength before revealing the dungeon’s existence to an unsuspecting populace. Alternatively, a spawn location in a desert where low level creatures would be rare and high level threats the norm would require entirely different starting abilities, more along the lines of Consume, Assimilate, and Influence Infusion.

The Lair had asked for rainforest or jungle start to facilitate their designs with ability selection in mind. An odd ability combination was part of the Lair’s plan. Picking Bind, Consume, and Assimilate, the dungeon radiated satisfaction. You don’t need to focus on influence expansion if you’re going to be mobile from the start. Time to move onto the next part of the plan.

Looking around their meager sphere of influence, the Lair checked to assure that there were no immediate threats in the small cave. A 360-degree view of everything within the sphere leaped into life around the center of the Lair’s mind. Where the influence ceased all information abruptly halted. It was an odd feeling, but no less so than adjusting to the data in the first place.

The cave was small, moist, and filled with vegetation. Insects crawled over rocks, along the moss, and in between the bats hanging from the ceiling. Lush ferns and tangled vines covered most of the entrance to the small hideaway from view. A wonderful interweaving of wild animal sounds made its way into the Lairs senses, but nothing had stepped a foot across the threshold. Nothing stirred.

No immediate threats, I am good to move on to phase two. I wonder if I get experience for killing the bats and insects? If I do, maybe I should summon a monster right away? Nah. Stick to the plan and get this out of the way. The Lair focused its attention upon the summon dungeon familiar spell and began to concentrate.

While concentrating, the rest of the world dropped away and only the clear, perfect focus of a singular mind devoted to a task enveloped the Lair. This was the peace that they had been seeking. The opportunity to devote themselves wholly to a task, to self-betterment. Once the hour was up, only noticeably apparent from the notification requesting the class selection of the familiar, the Lair felt revitalized and clear headed.

I would have preferred a familiar that I could reasonably hope could carry on a decent conversation, but that isn’t in the cards today. The Lair selected “warrior” and released the spell, watching the representation of their mana pool, a small beaker filled with opaque blue liquid, drain completely. There was no corresponding sensation, which was unexpected; the Lair had assumed that using mana would produce a feedback.

The Lair waited patiently for their mana to recover and their new familiar to arrive. The Lair knew that a typically being recovered at the rate of 5 mana per hour, all of the other rules had held true up ‘til this point and the Lair had no reason to suspect otherwise. However, the dungeon race bonuses and the Lair’s lucky roll on the Spirit stat would vastly improve their mana regen rate. The Spirit stat increased mana regeneration by 1 for every point of Spirit above 10. In the Lair’s case, this meant a rather incredible 21 mana per hour. It is a good assumption that dungeons need the bonuses they get in order to defend themselves, so it’s not a dramatic rate for other dungeons, just compared to other races. The 0 movement speed would a real punch in the gut if I couldn’t think outside the box.

The Lair didn’t feel the ground shaking, but they heard the birds spook and burst from the trees heralding the approach of something large. Branches on the forest floor snapped and a terrible crashing echoed from the dense brush. Something was coming.