[Short Story] A Dungeon Overrun For Silicon (Patreon)

Long, long, long ago, in the beginnings of a pretty chill space government whose name has since been forgotten, there was a small, out of the way planet. It had nothing to write home about besides a bio-compatible biosphere, which made it perfect for a group of sapients looking to “get back to the land”.

An oft-used refrain across time and space which generally means “live like the grandparents of your founder did” or “live like an idealized vision of the past while not giving up all the stuff that makes being in the future awesome”. And for a little spice, a dash of bigotry and othering those outside of your group.

The nascent space civilization allowed them to settle the place, after all, who is going to complain about someone growing you more food? However, they also weren’t idiots and kept a close eye on things. At least, that’s what I’ve been able to put together.

Anyway, amid this slowly coalescing problem a dungeon core formed on the planet. As you do.

This would lead to what the history books would call, “The peaceful dissolution of the pre-space traditionalists”. And they really only had themselves to blame for it. Because, after all, a dungeon core will tend to focus on what the local people need.

Normally, such a group is going to need simple things. Ores, un-powered tools, and so on. Except these traditionalists, in the finest of traditions, decided they didn’t want to farm the land entirely like their ancestors. Instead, they allowed themselves some allowances. In particular, they made heavy use of the standard multipurpose rover.

A handy tool that made farming trivial and whose sensor suite made dungeon diving safer. The only problem with the rovers is that a few of their critical boards and chips require masterwork silicon boules to craft. The crystalline structure needs to be perfect, not a single impurity, and psionically active.

That last requirement in particular bottlenecks production as machines can’t automate the process. You need someone following the one-tool rule of alchemy. A frustrating admission of weakness.

Well, the dungeon can skip all that easily. Silicon is everywhere, a common element. So, making a slab of the stuff? Cheap and easy. Already masterwork by default as well.

And yes, this would have been very convenient for the colony. They hadn’t been struggling, but depending on extra-solar imports for the keystone of your economy? Well, no one likes that.

The problem is that besides the core worlds? Everyone is importing the stuff. Masterwork silicon boules require not only clean rooms and special devices to grow the silicon crystals, but an actual master craftsperson needs to be directly controlling the devices. No computer automation. And someone of that level of skill needs to be in control of the process the entire time the silicon boule is growing.

So having them drop as dungeon loot? Who cares if crafting them into silicon wafers and then circuit boards is almost equally challenging. The main bottleneck, growing the crystal boule in the first place, is gone. You can have a ton of people all training those skills at the same time now that they don’t have to wait. And anytime you can mass-train people? Well, you’re going to find a few diamonds in the rough. This was a path forward to independence!

Well, except for the fact that the space civilization in the making had been keeping an eye on things and also needed more masterwork silicon boules. Thus, the “peaceful dissolution” mentioned earlier. And admittedly, they didn’t just move in and force the recalcitrant traditionalists. Rather, they simply moved a bunch of people to the planet.

This wasn’t a simple ploy to dilute traditionalist control. Rather, it was a full-scale move to exploit the resource. They brought in highly trained professionals and equipment to turn the masterwork boules into high-tech equipment. Oh, and all the delvers.

Which was a boon and a bane for this newly born dungeon core. The non-stop barrage of delvers powered growth normally not possible on such a young world. However, a newborn core doesn’t exactly know all the political and economic factors that go into them suddenly having people thrown at it.

So yeah, there was a wee bit of panic. All that growth? It was pushed towards the defenses. More and more monsters and traps. Also, with the early discovery of the boule drops? It meant the dungeon didn’t get access to much they could work with. Well, except for those rovers.

Inevitably, multiple such rovers would end up lost in the dungeon. Which gave the core access to those rovers. Not something that would normally matter all that much as the dungeon theme didn’t lean towards robots. However, said dungeon didn’t exactly have access to much of anything else and it was a high-quality robot.

So as the dungeon got deeper, the more rovers ended up as monsters. More than that, the focus on the rover drove further development in that direction. By the tenth floor, the traps began to use technological mechanisms. By the seventeenth floor, the dungeon no longer placed any goblins. Floor twenty revealed the first boss, an advanced rover and beyond that, the rooms and hallways are all metal.

This only drove the space civilization even crazier for the dungeon’s drops. Gone were the bronze daggers and leather armor. In its places the dungeon was dropping high-tech gear it had acquired off of fallen delvers. Along with that, the rovers were dropping parts. Masterwork parts, where most didn’t bother with that effort.

On top of that, with the dungeon going all in on the rover? Well, inevitably it wasn’t going to be stuck with only that rover. Soon the dungeon evolved and altered the rover into numerous drones, rovers, walkers, and tanks.

Not only that, but rarely the drops would include the circuit boards. You know, the goal of this whole rush in the first place. Yeah, things only ever ramped up.

And with more delvers, the dungeon felt forced to spawn in more monsters, better monsters. Oh, and don’t forget the traps! These ended up being spammed all over the place as at first, traps actually helped reduce the strain.

Right up until it was too late. Right up until the civilization trained up and brought in some rogue types with a special skill. That of disarming traps in a way that caused them to drop loot as well. Or rather, not “loot”, it was technically just default drops, but they didn’t care.

Oh sure, this meant they weren’t getting silicon boules, but whatever. These mechanical traps directly dropped chips and the like. After all, they were robotic as well and even if the chips were basic logic chips, they’re still masterworks.

So time ground away and the dungeon got ever deeper and ever more populated with robots. Which thrilled the now mature space civilization. This one planet, one dungeon was able to support the entire original area controlled by said civilization when they first found the dungeon.

Of course, nothing lasts forever and what was once a relatively benign government slipped into decay and corruption. Then they fell from within. No worries though! The dungeon didn’t get a break. After all, fighting a civil war still requires a bunch of robots.

Anyway, a new government rose up. Only for them to fall a few hundred years later to an outside force. And that new force fell within a thousand years of that. What replaced said force ended up being more of a loosely connected group of solar system based kingdoms.

That lasted for a good bit longer than those that came before it. Right up until a nearby empire decided the coalition would be a good shortcut to punching another empire. This didn’t kill the coalition, but the empire took the dungeon’s solar system so for the purposes of the dungeon, it was a change in leadership.

And so on and so forth. The solar system was a bit of a hot potato, changing hands every few hundred years. Not only is the dungeon loot being too valuable, but the general production also has massive appeal.

Though even for such a valuable system to hold, this era of instability had to come to an end eventually. Except the entire solar system had long ago made itself a crown jewel for any civilization that could hold it and none of the empires around were strong enough to hold off everyone else. So instead of one stable government taking charge, it is instead the solar system’s people themselves that manage it.

The solution was simple enough. If their system was too valuable for the other nearby civilizations to let another control the place. Well, then don’t let anyone else control it! So the planet got together, planned things out, and led a coup for just their system. This wasn’t actually all that hard as over the proceeding years they had really expanded.

And by really expanded, I mean they slow built a Dyson swarm of habits around their sun. As one of the few stable planets, their population was able to grow beyond what most other civilizations had in total. All built off the back of the dungeon.

Then time really flew by for the dungeon. With local space stabilized as its own little kingdom, nothing major changes. Oh sure, tech advances, but a masterwork silicon boule still covers most common needs. Yes, the high end tech starts to need more specialty materials, but even early mad science runs on silicon boards.

And speaking of mad science? That is where things go weird. Appropriate as many of the mad scientists that manage to stay on the good side of the law would prefer you refer to their stuff as weird science. Anyway, the universe was getting a bit old and so as tends to happen, people inside of said universe looks for ways to keep things running.

A topic that inevitably leads to researching dungeon cores. Not a bad starting place as they’re infinite sources of stuff. A shame that while they might beat entropy, that isn’t enough to save an entire universe. Doesn’t stop people from trying, which is the spark.

One mad scientist local to the place snuck themselves into the dungeon on an off hour and set off some device. No one really knows what it was supposed to do. I certainly don’t and I’ve been trying to figure it out for a few hundred years now! If only I wasn’t feeling so restricted.

It is honestly confusing. I remember things being easier, but over time despite how I advanced, even abilities I used to use effortlessly now take a lot of effort.

I mean, seriously, I’m a dungeon core, now trillions of years old! It should not be difficult for me to shape a floor, let alone create a new one. Yet here I am, stuck at floor 35,726. Yes, that is pretty deep and only the true powerhouses of the universe ever see even anything deeper than 20k, but that doesn’t change the fact I should be able to change them and add more!

Everything is just so slow and clunky now. Costs of non-vital things are off the charts! Thank goodness for mad scientists.

Someone developed a method to stay connected to the Universal ManaNet even inside of a dungeon. And what do you know! I’m “inside” a dungeon so I can totally use it. It wasn’t important before I woke up, but here I am.

Now let’s see what I can find.

So time passes as I dive the net, searching for some clue or another. Yeah, while I’m likely the only core that is awake, the dungeon fae seem to have a secret forum you can join if you confirm a connection to a dungeon core. Well, I’m pretty connected, so I might as well try and join.

Let’s see, pretty active. A thread for those crowing over the fact their dungeons will be able to survive the end of the universe naturally. I should probably look into that. Later though.

Slow down

Slow floors

Unable to shape

Blah blah blah blah blah, what other search terms can I try?

The answer is quite a few, but this might be the answer? Since when did the universe have a system? I’ve never heard of that!

Hmm

[

The System, You, and Your Dungeon!

You’ve learned about the system by now. Or you should have, but sometimes? A fae ends up in a dungeon without a dungeon fae of their own and you get conscripted. That means no schooling and you might not even have known there was a system. This post is for you!

Yes, there is a system and no, you don’t get a status screen. Because this universe always had psionics, the first True Immortal to stumble onto us didn’t need to do anything too drastic. Thus they cheaped out and brought in a system to handle things while they stuck around for a little.

...

This is good for your dungeon because the chances of the core just dying goes down by at least a third! However, it is also a burden on them. A Burden You Can’t See! The silent killer. Or rather, the silent gunk in your fears. Debt.

If your dungeon is facing a ton of delvers, you’ll need more monsters, right? Well, that’s a trap. Dungeons have a natural limit on how many monsters they can spawn on a floor. Without a system? That’s a hard limit. With a system? Well, that’s how you get into debt.

And we don’t know what it does! Well, not exactly. You know, what with the system not having any system screens to explain things to us. Though it does seem to cause any non-essential efforts by the dungeon to slow down and become tougher for the dungeon to do.

...

]

Yeah, after reading that, I took a glance back over my floors. Bit flooded. With monsters. And traps.

I have some work to do. There wasn’t any clear guidelines on how to payback the debt, but all the suggestions and tips were to lower the number of monsters after the delver rush goes away.

So, what if I go and strip out all those extra monsters?

Easy enough, all the floors below 30k are stripped down to a handful of monsters. It uh, it was quite empty and that didn’t feel good. So yeah, went and repopulated the last handful of floors. Though I did notice when I reached the limit. Or rather, I went over said limit and had to reduce things until everything fit within said limits. That cut down on the number of monsters by about half.

And that should be good enough?

No. There’s a bunch of monsters, even all the way down to the first floor.

I should probably do something about that.

Yes I should.

Though maybe reading more of the fae forums?

[

Top Ten ways to attract aquatic delvers!

...

So you want your dungeon to place more trees

...

And I just think with the end of the universe only a few billion years off, we should be allowed to more directly interact with the delvers.

No, this doesn’t have anything to do with my questions about how much I can get away with when messing with them.

...

I hate the fact that after a certain point, dungeons won’t go back and change things on previous floors!

...

Worst dungeon designs of the mellenia! Number seven will shock you!

...

Have you ever just looked at the stars?

]

Wait, what was that one? Not the previous thread, but the one before it.

Oh, hmm. Seems fixing my monsters won’t be easy.

Well, start small. Floor 30k. I can definitely remove A monster?

Just one monster.

I can do it.

Bloop and it would be gone.

That one.

...

I’ll come back to it.

Let’s check on what’s happening out in the greater universe.

This takes a while as the universe is a big place, but eventually I have to admit removing even a single monster from a “settled” floor was causing major mental stress.

I’m just going to have to sit here and not do anything else until I manage to remove at least that one rover.

...

There we go! Only took what, a day or so? Let me check.

Oh. That took years. I uh, uh. I’m just going to have to break something to get this going, aren’t I?

Let’s just remove the monsters from 30k up to 20k all at once. There’s no one delving there at the moment, anyway.

I can do it.

I can!

Eugh, what, pain? Headache?

I don’t get headaches. That’s for the delvers!

I can do it.

quiet cracking sounds

What’s that? No, I’m being distracted. Focus!

more cracks

Focus.

Remove the monsters.

Clear the floors.

Monsters vanish

Ominous shattering

I can’t think. Pain. My core. Pain. What happened?

My core, the cracking. My core, part of it shattered.

But the monsters are gone. Must continue.

Floor by floor, I remove the monsters. Thankfully, my core doesn’t degrade further. The pain doesn’t get worse.

Doesn’t get better, but doesn’t get worse.

Finally. I’ve worked my way through every floor. Reduced them down to minimal monsters. I couldn’t quite manage a single monster on the earliest floors, but no more than ten even on the earliest floor now.

I can rest. Maybe watch how people react?

And boy, did they react. At first, it wasn’t noticed. After all, few people ever even see floor 10k, let alone those deeper than that. Besides, it takes years to get down there. And that includes using various skills and psionics to speed things up.

Once the change got below there though? Well, it became a bit of a panic. After all, in the face of the end of the universe, dungeons were supposed to keep churning out supplies! Some more extra-dimensional dungeons might even be a method of escape.

And here was a dungeon, slowly drying up, monsters vanishing.

The mad scientist who had triggered everything, even though they didn’t know what “everything” actually was. Had been dead for a long time at this point. His lab repossessed and torn apart, so no one was quite sure what he had done.

Across the entire universe, bans on any further dungeon experiments went into place. Though then promptly ignored by the rich. And through it all, I sat back and relaxed, attempting to heal my core. Which I figure cracked simply because my floors had been solidified for so long. After all, other dungeons can change without almost killing themselves.

Anyway, my current focus is on pushing my extra-dimensional nature. I wasn’t one of those lucky portal dungeons. But at this point? All of my floors together had more space than the planet I was on could hold. Clearly something was going on with that and I plan to find out if it will let me escape.