Dungeon Life

Chapter Two-Hundred Seventy-Eight

I’m not the only one around here doing some renovations. Violet, Hullbreak, and the Southwood all get working on their own projects as I let the forest of four seasons get settled. Southwood designates a bear scion and offers me a trade, which I’m surprised to see. I thought I’d need to send Teemo to talk to the Stag, or at least Leo or Honey, but it seems that allies make trading things a lot simpler.

He wants some extra mana to make sure he won’t have troubles paying for his bear, and trading me the climate control ability will definitely get that for him. I take the climate control, but I still don’t trade for a bear of my own yet, nor a fox, but they’re near the top of my list. I think once Leo, Honey, and Thing head back, I’ll do the trade then so they can all travel home together. I’m pretty sure the Stag is still hanging out with little Vanta, who seems to have accepted the name now he’s had some time to chew on it. So yeah, once they’re ready to head home, they can check in with the Stag and have the trade waiting for once they pass through the Southwood.

As for the Southwood’s bear scion, he’s still getting used to the new responsibilities, but I can feel the Southwood getting more information about beyond his borders now, so it looks like it’ll be slow and steady. I bet the Stag is going to ask Leo and Honey details about scouting, probably once Vanta’s borders stabilize. There’s also more of the Southwood’s denizens wandering around Silvervein, ensuring the Shield followers won’t be the only line of defense if anything nasty shows up.

Closer to the homefront, Violet has her expansion going now, too. Coda and Slash helped make what I’m thinking of as a water main from the sewers down to her territory, though they put it pretty high up. It’s not like sewer water will help her bunnies or ore nodes. But it gives her a proper expansion path, which she eagerly takes. Her new denizens are interesting, too.

The first is an alligator spawner, or crocodile? I think she technically only has caimans, right now, which I’m pretty sure are their own thing separate from crocs and gators. I would complain, but I still remember how I changed Neverrest’s wasp spawner to bees, despite how much difference there is between the two bugs. Either way, she has moderately-sized bitey lizards wandering the sewers now.

I think Nose and Legs are already looking for ways to make the water main a bit more accessible so the things can possibly come populate the rest of Violet’s territory, but it’s not a big rush. I’m kinda glad there’s not a lot of ways to travel down to Violet from the sewers, thanks to her other spawner: decay elementals.

The fresh spawns are called putrid oozes, and they look like a slime mold made from sewage. Yeah… not difficult to see why adventurers tend to stay out of sewers. As much as I don’t really like looking at the things, they’re shooting Violet’s mana up quick. Right now, I think she’s turning the sewage straight into mana, but I can also feel her poking through her own options and thinking about the other things she could do with it. I even manage to give her a quest to decide what to do with the sewage.

And she’s also still following my lead and making new scions for each spawner. Her names for them are still pretty simple, but Teeth for the small crocodile and Slimy for the elemental gets the point across. Slimy is taking to the sewers well and is more than happy to deal with the new flies and rat invaders in the sewers. The caimans can help out with the rats, too, but I think Teeth wants to get down into Violet’s territory for delving and sink her teeth into the stoats that go after the bunny nodes. Violet deals with them well enough for now, but a few teethy things couldn’t hurt.

And how could I almost forget she’s chosen her Voice? I was kinda hoping for Cappy to be her Voice. The potential for jumpscares alone would have been amazing. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to go out and talk to people and dungeons far away, so I can’t really blame her for not choosing him. Nose wouldn’t have been terrible, but he’s out on expedition so often now that he’d rarely have the chance to talk to anyone. Legs is more of a homebody, but he’s also probably the least social of her scions. So yeah, it’s not really much of a surprise that she’s chosen Onyx to be her voice. The little shadow spirit is already in the spawner, ascension bar ticking up. I wonder if she’ll have a large change like Fluffles gaining wings, or if she’ll be basically unchanged, like Teemo.

Not to be outdone, Hullbreak got his expansion, too. I think if he stretched, he could have gotten all the way to the stony beach I invaded him from, so long ago, but he wouldn’t have had much leftover to actually build with. Instead, he’s claimed some cliffs not too far away. It’ll take some work to make them a place to actually delve, but he’s already testing those waters. His crabs are having a go at the cliffs below the waterline, and even after he upgrades the spawner to get more of them, I don’t think they’re going to quite be cut out for the job. They’re making some progress, but it’ll take a long time before they have anything suitable for people to delve in.

He’s old enough to not get the free spawner or two, so I think he’s mulling over a new spawner and maybe a new scion to help with it, but he hasn’t made any decision on it just yet. Personally, I think he should use water elementals. He has to have access to them by now, and they should be pretty easily able to dig out a cool oceanside cave. Still, he hasn’t asked for advice, so I’ll refrain from giving it, even if I really really want to. He’s a smart dungeon, I know he’ll figure something out.

He also has new invaders, which seem to be evil seagulls. They try to snatch up catches from the fishermen, or snap up fish and denizens that get too close to the surface. They can’t take anything big, but they are very annoying. The Quartermaster is marshaling the troops to counter them, so I don’t think they’ll be too much of a problem for much longer.

My own new invaders have shown themselves, and they’re rather insidious, especially considering what I want to do with the big tree. I’m getting boring bark beetles. I don’t mean boring as in uninteresting. I mean boring as in holes. Holes are not good for trees, generally speaking. Thankfully, my chosen spawners are perfectly suited to thwarting the things. My bark pixies might look cute, but so do ladybugs, and just as the ladybugs have a voracious appetite for aphids, my pixies have an unquenchable desire to eradicate the bark beetles.

The living vines, on the other hand, help heal the trees and plug up the wounds, ensuring nothing happens to the lumber. I’m definitely going to want to make a lumber node later. For now, I’ll leave it alone until I can talk with the Southwood about what kinds he wants, and what kinds I should use. I think I might focus more on firewood and wood for making charcoal, and he can have the more structural timbers, but we’ll have to hash that out later.

My new scions are stepping up, too. With the climate control option, I designate both summer and winter quadrants, and Titania and Poppy leap at the chance to get the bounty of fancy wild seeds into the ground. The little pixie even starts commandeering my fruitbats to ensure they grow healthy and cost me just a song to officially designate. Poppy also gets a few fruitbats, but she’s more interested in wrangling a couple ratlings to help her plan out the central tree. Thumbs and garden tools are going to be a big help for her project. I don’t know if she managed to hear me musing between willow and yew, or if that’s just the actual best choice, but either way, she’s growing a few small saplings of each in the central area.

I mean, even sapling is a bit grandiose for what they are right now, but they’re growing quickly, even the yew. I don’t know if she’s going to hybridize them or maybe graft, but either way will need her to grow them a bit first. I really hope she can somehow magically hybridize them, giving the elegant beauty of a willow and the twisting branches of the yew. I bet if she can’t on her own, Thing and Queen will be more than happy to help with alchemy or enchanting.

Even with Poppy boosting the growth of the little trees, she has plenty of time to promote growth elsewhere, too. I think she’s taken some inspiration from the hedge maze, and wants to make the sections of the forest similar to that, but on a much grander scale. I think that’ll work perfectly, too. There won’t be Tiny hunting people in the forest of four seasons, but that just means they can focus a bit more on the encounters.

I need to work on the encounters more, too. It’d be easy for me to make the whole place a wonderful little hiking trail with nodes and such, but I can’t forget that I want to make a dungeon crawl for the stronger delvers around here. I think it’s time to take a good hard look at my spawners and see what I can to do give the people the fights they crave.