The Daily Grind - Chapter 370 (Appendix) (Patreon)

Okay, now the book is done. Just so everyone knows, there'll be a two month-ish break for The Daily Grind, before book six will start up again. I will be back, I'm not done, and I'll probably post other stuff in the meantime.

Also, if you don't normally read appendix chapters, you might want to at least look through this one, because it has character stuff in it too. Because I'm me, and I can't just write a normal appendix.

And also, thanks so much for reading.

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Roster :

As the Order of Endless Rooms expands, tracking our membership numbers becomes increasingly difficult and more defiant of simple spreadsheets.

Recently, the decision has been made to create a clear distinction between members of the Order of Endless Rooms, and the much more nebulous role of Order-affiliated civilians.  While life is messy, and more than a few non-members live in the places we operate out of, and often contribute in their own way, no one will be counted as a member unless they explicitly and intentionally decide to be.  Being a member of the Order is a responsibility, and while it’s nice to have companions and friends that help us in our daily lives, no one should have that responsibility imposed on them unwillingly

Affiliated civilians are still people who are under the Order’s umbrella in many ways.  We support them materially and emotionally, they are eligible for voting on Order directives, and they tend to have access to the same information we do about magic.  But they don’t work for the Order directly.

To that end, the separation is by Order members (all of adult maturity), followed by affiliated civilians (both adult and non-adult maturity with no current division for infants), followed by non-sophont life.  The majority of civilians, especially nonhuman ones, live within Townton, but there will not be listings for place of residence on this chart, due to the existence of teleportation, especially logisticors, rendering that annoyingly moot.  Order members are listed both by species and primary role, though for this chart, roles no longer subdivide by species;  affiliated civilians and non-sophonts are listed by species.

Order Members - By Species :

Humans - 527

Camracondas - 63

Inhabitor | Human - 3

Inhabitor | Dog - 1

Strider - 14

Ratroach - 34

Stuff Animal - 1 

Infomorph | Assignment - 18

Infomorph | Navigator - 45

Mimic | Obligate Friend - 2

Mimic | Shifter - 2

Camille - 2

Chanter - 2

Umbral - 4

Arcane-Enabled Digital Intelligence - 1 

Drone - 30

Order ‘Working Animals’ 

Infomorph | Authority - 68

Paper Dragon - 4

iLipede - 34

Mongausse - 1

Order Members - By Dedicated/Primary Role : 

Paladin - 4

Recovery - 71

Response - 326

Ethics Oversight - 12

Delvers | Officium Mundi - 9

Delvers | Winter’s Climb - 6

Delvers | Route Horizon - 28

‘Delvers’ | Clutter Ascent - 6

Delvers | Ceaseless Stacks - 6

Research - 92

Rogues - 21

Schooling - 55

Outreach and Distribution - 20

Shield - 28

Misc Staff | Lair - 21

Misc Staff | Officium Mundi External - 8

Townton | Civic Staff - 21

Townton | Development - 10

Total Membership - 743

Affiliated Civilians - Adult - By Species :

Human - 110

Human | Pillar - 1

Camraconda - 22

Inhabitor | Human - 2

Strider - 5

Ratroach - 162 

Infomorph | Assignment - 1

Infomorph | Navigator - 6

Chanter - 298

Umbral - 733

Ratling - 16

Mimic | Oilslick | ‘Undetected’ - 1

HVACnid - 2

Drone - 18

Dog - 1

Affiliated Civilians - Non-Adult Maturity - By Species :

Humans | Child - 14

Humans | Adolescent - 36

Dungeon - 1

Camracondas | Adolescent Analog - 40

Ratroach | Adolescent Analog - 43

Ratroach | Child Analog - 2

Crow-Wasp - 1

Frog-Dog - 3

Stuff Animal - 28

Infomorph | Assignment - 6

Infomorph | Navigator - 120

Chanter | Infant - 60

Necroad | Non-Communicative - 66

Necroad | Communicative - 6

Crocamaw - 26

Ratling | Adolescent - 16

Affiliated Civilians - Non-Sophont - By Species

Paper Dragon | Stage One - 8

Paper Dragon | Stage Two - 1

Mongausse - 1

Potted Plant - 19

Shellaxy - 22

Step Shell - 3

Raincloud - 1

Vending Machine - 1

Displacer Cat - 1

Catalogue - 1

Pillboar - 1

Species XII-I (Goat-Swan-Powerdrill Demon) - 19

Camcondor - ~5

Comments :

On the surface, it might read as entirely neutral the number of ratroaches that are active members of the Order.  After all, a lot of people have interacted with Arrush or Keeka or Ishah, and found them to be mostly held back by incomplete language knowledge more than anything else.  And that’s a problem that can be solved.  But the truth is, those three are older than basically every other ratroach by a wide margin.  Now, it would be wrong to say we’re taking advantage of the ones that join us, but there is definitely a sense from many of them that they’re lunging to make themselves useful, and only coming to understand that they don’t need to do that after they’ve already emplaced themselves in roles that they genuinely do not want to leave.  As mercenary as this might sound, it may be helpful to find small jobs for new ratroaches to do as a way to ease their anxiety until they can acclimate.  -Connie C., Recovery-

Potted plants are listed as non-sophont because their intelligence caps out at ‘incidentally sarcastic’.  Guys mostly know what they’re doing, and they’re being playful or sassy or whatever on purpose, but it’s like a dog playing tug of war with you and their favorite rope.  It’s just easier to project onto them when they’re some kind of spreading crawl of vines, I guess.  -Momo, Witch-

The decision to include the new drones in the adult sections and not the ‘working animals’ part of the Order specifically is because they do have a very interesting form of intelligence.  Narrow, yes.  Limited, also yes.  Different, certainly.  But denying that they’re people capable of making choices would be cruel when their choices are clearly and precisely communicated.  And what are we if not a place for people who are different to work together, after all?  Besides, humans pack bond with anything, why should we deny another species that does the same back? -Davis, Research-

Man it’s weird seeing the disparity in even the creations of the same dungeon.  Like, yeah, the paper drakes (dragons?) were technically a Dave OC.  But look at the gap between a camraconda, and even the other green-orb life of a 2.0.  Or, more cool and interesting, the gap between the flying goats, and the pillboar!  The goats are violent, loud, violent, angry, and violent.  The pillboar likes jazz, and splits slices of pizza with people that wanna hang out with him.  And yet, they seem to both have the same general capacity for thought in terms of planning and communicating.  It’s just… one of them is terminally chill, and the others are constantly at risk of having Cam launch them into the fucking sun. -Elenore Chase, Knight-

It doesn’t seem fair to list the dog that has strange opinions about anime, but not even give the cats we have a tenuous alliance with a place on the non-sophont list.  -Ink, Townton council member-

Early on, it scared me.  The list feels scary, because it feels like it does what the Beautiful One did, and takes away me.  But it’s not, really.  It’s everyone bragging!  Together!  Look at how many of us there are, and we can all be better, and the Beautiful One and everyone like her is stupid for not believing.  -Cheha, Townton resident-

Holy shit we have so many people.  When did that happen?  And why do I feel like I know all of them? -James Lyle, Paladin-

A lot of those umbral in Townton are part-time.  Still sorting their heads out, making a choice.  But we still had to drop everything to get a totem’d housing setup done to cover the five hundred people no one told us to expect.  I’d bitch about it, but I know where I work and probably should have seen this coming.  -Bill-

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Species : 

The Order contains a number of species that aren’t human.  This is part of what gives us our greatest flexibility and strength, and also the reason our medical branch has to play continual catchup.

The following is a list of sophont species within the Order, and a short description of their important characteristics.  Sophont here being defined as species that have a potential level of intellect, emotion, and self-awareness that makes them recognizably ‘a person’.

This list also omits species that have a small number of members and no clear way to meet more.

Camraconda :

Camracondas are broadly snake-shaped and average about eight to ten feet long.  Their bodies are predominantly composed of cables made up of a pseudo-organic rubber and copper (called settlement) with the majority of their heads being different forms of security camera embedded in the cabling.  Hardened pieces of settlement act as skeletal support within their bodies.

Internally, camracondas have a slightly limited but active set of organs.  They do have a dense concentration of cabling in their heads that is likely the brain, though it diverges greatly from what we would consider human-normal.  Lungs and a heart are more recognizable, with camracondas needing to breathe to maintain function.  The oddest organ is their stomach, which is only loosely similar to the human counterpart.  In short, a camraconda stomach is a matter annihilation engine that has a limited set of things it can process.  Because of this unique organ, camracondas do not produce waste, though if they eat something they can’t ‘digest’, they do suffer for it until it can be expelled or removed.  Camracondas also have a gland that produces a paralytic venom, which is expelled through their fangs with pressure and intentional effort. 

Camracondas are sexually dimorphous, and have functioning primary sexual organs despite being unable to reproduce in any way.

The species has the unique ability to stop things they are looking at, as long as they are focusing on it.  This usually, but not always, results in a ‘pausing’ of momentum, and is exceptionally useful for stopping a threat, or preventing a wounded individual’s condition from worsening.   Additionally, camracondas can derive sustenance through observing security footage, though this isn’t popular as it ‘tastes’ like wet newspaper.

Individual camracondas vary in size, head format, and also basilisk ability.  While the average camraconda is roughly 150-200 lbs, the largest outlier weighs in at almost 2,000.  There is also an outlier in the freezing ability who takes momentum rather than pausing it, which appears to be an experiment by the Office, and is ‘worse than useless’ according to the camraconda in question.

Not our first friends from outside, but I think this was the moment I knew that things were gonna get really weird, and stay that way.  -Dave-

The physical and medical details are all correct, but what no one tells you is that dating a two hundred pound snake means sometimes you’re going to be too trapped to hit your alarm in the morning.  -Deb, Medical-

Also our fangs grow back if we break them carving stuff!  Make sure to mention that it hurts a lot!  Also yeah humans are really easy to pin once you’re in bed with them.  -Frequency-Of-Sunlight, Knight-

Being the outlier is often inconvenient.  Sometimes, though, it is hard to not question why the Office experiments with our form so dramatically.  The different types of gaze are mostly mild tweaks, you can almost see the iterative notes Officium Mundi was taking.  But there is no such bridge between the rest of my people, and me, and yes I am comforted regularly regarding this, but it is difficult to not feel strange about it.  Also fitting in elevators is difficult.  -Ink-And-Key, Researcher and Coterier-

Ratroach : 

Ratroaches are humanoid creations of the Akashic Sewer, designed to look like a mix of rodent and beetle while actually containing genetics from neither.  Their heads are often heavily chitin-covered and have angular muzzles, and the majority of them have bifurcated rodent tails.  The average ratroach is four to five feet tall, and weighs around seventy to eighty pounds, though ones that have been modified with shaper substance in the Sewer itself are often larger and more dangerous.  The average ratroach has three to five arms, with at least one of them being placed badly.

Ratroach bodies are in opposition to themselves.  Chitin and hide do not naturally fuse correctly, leading to infections and damage.  Their antennae are too sensitive to properly be used for sensory purposes without pain, their mouths and throats are shaped in a way that makes talking more exhausting than physical exertion, and their bodily fluids are all corrosive once out of their body.  Chitin and bone is too brittle, muscle doesn’t develop properly, and eyesight is hampered by mismatched forms of eye attempting binocular vision.

In short, ratroaches are created badly, on purpose.  They experience intense pain for the majority of their lives unless there is some outside intervention, requiring either purple orbs, or a rebuild of their bodies with shaper substance, in order to live healthily.

Ratroaches are sexually dimorphous though they lack noticeable secondary sexual characteristics, and capable of reproducing within their species.  A process which is fatal to the mother without outside intervention.

Mutations or outliers are common in ratroaches, with commonly observed iterations being digitigrade legs, prehensile tails, retractable claws, and nictitating membranes on some of their eyes.

And if we change enough, and kill the Sewer, one day we can change all of this and be something different forever.  -Smoke, Recovery-

It’s so fucking cool how quickly everyone around here, including me, went from ‘wow those guys are gross’ to ‘oh hey cute bug-rats’.  They’re like a walking reminder that we’re all just people.  I’d love to get one of them in me, if you know what I mean.  -Marlea, Knights-

Ratroach bodies hurt more than people think they do.  They hide it.  Constantly.  All the time, the newer ratroaches in the Order are lying to us, because they don’t want to be seen as weak and disposable.  But the pain never stops, even if there’s tools to treat it.  Reshaping everyone should be a top priority, because let me tell you, being your own nightlight isn’t worth it.  -Reed Moshofsky, Research-

Our name is the thing everyone argues the most about, and that’s very funny.  I think it’s because of James.  But no one asks if the Order should rescue ratroaches, or give them homes, or spend priceless resources fixing their bodies.  Instead, they ask if the name ratroach is painful, and if they should stop using it.  I keep saying that the name human means ‘dirt person’, and everyone seems fine with that, so I think I can handle being told I have two kinds of skeleton as part of my name.  -Arrush, Knight-

Inhabitor : 

Inhabitors are roughly one pound of black liquid that pools at the base of the brain of an inhabited body.

Generated by imbibing a specific potion, the process of an inhabitor’s creation kills the drinker, and replaces them with an inhabitor.  The inhabitor maintains the memories of the victim, and can mimic their emotions and thought processes to an extent, but is a distinct and new individual.

Inhabitors do not seem to have a limit to what species they can occupy, and maintain a baseline level of intelligence and the ability for speech even when placed in animals.  They learn quickly, and while they begin life without any emotional experience, they are not emotionless, just generally used to hiding their emotions.

The physical form of an inhabitor produces a semi-physical effect that continually regenerates the body they are in, as well as boosting its reflexes and strength.  This effect only persists for as long as the inhabitor is alive.  Aside from this difference, an individual inhabitor is functionally a member of the species it is occupying.

There are regular conversations about hypothetical situations where more inhabitors might be created.  From volunteers on their death beds, to animal subjects, to simply using the potion as a weapon against people we intended to kill anyway.  I do not agree.  I do not think the world needs more of us.  -Bea, Research-

There are regular conversations about how to safely make more inhabitors, and I’m partial to the idea of making mundane copies of bodies using the duplication ritual, then hooking up to ‘yourself’ with a skulljack, and seeing what happens.  Worst case, you chicken out and there’s no downside.  Best case, there’s someone new who gets you in an academic way.  No one likes my idea though, they think it’s ‘unsettling’.  -Mars, Research-

Strider :

Striders are Officium Mundi creations composed of a stapler central body with either one centrally located eye, or two smaller eyes on either side, and six to eight multi-jointed pen legs.

Varying in weight and size, striders appear to grow both physically and mentally over time.  Though an intentional block by the dungeon prevents them from expressing themselves clearly in many different forms, there are workarounds.

Striders can produce paperclip ‘webs’, and they are capable of moving rapidly along lines of paperclips, both their own and mundane versions.  This motion defies physics in at least a small way, but is convenient for letting them get around without being underfoot for the much larger members of the Order.

While timelines are difficult to construct, it is estimated that striders require ten to fifteen years to develop higher level intelligence.  It is also known that not all striders will go through this process, with the majority remaining mentally static.

Striders lack most internal organs, but still breathe enough that they can use Climb magic.  They also have organic tendons and muscles that supplement their more dungeon-granted mobility.

:) -Rufus- 

I’d like to say that knowing they can be people has stopped us from getting in fights with them.  But half the time, it feels like the smartest ones are still on a bloody crusade.  -Anesh Patel-

There’s a serious case to be made that we should forget harvesting yellow orbs from these guys at all, and switch to the protocol we use for chanters or stuff animals.  Treat them as children, and totally disregard their magic source.  Maybe start collecting them in comically large sacks to bring back to the Lair and be held in a cultivated habitat until they can develop thoughts.  But that falls apart the more details we get about what makes them develop intelligence, and also it really is hard to be perfectly pacifist toward them when the average strider thirsts for blood, ichor, coolant, or whatever else an Order delver has as their bodily liquid of choice.  I think that’s all the liquids?  I’ll check the manual.  -Chevoy, Research-

Fun fact!  Strider legs actually work as pens if they’re removed, though obviously damaged ones.  They can regrow their legs too, it just takes a while.  Obviously this is a horrible source for pens in basically every way, but it’s one of those things that makes me wonder if the dungeon found a workaround for making its own pens by outsourcing that to a biological process.  Maybe striders were where OM’s pens and paperclips came from, to save whatever mana a dungeon uses.  Just a thought!  -Momo, Witch-

:( -Meredith-

Stuff Animal :

A creation of Clutter Ascent, stuff animals are an amalgamation of ideas from a variety of small animals.  Squirrel, raccoon, mole, crow, pigeon, salamander, frog, and spider have all been observed so far.  Stuff animals average two feet tall, and though their growth patterns are currently still unknown, they are growing over time.

Unlike the conceptually similar ratroaches, stuff animals are less a collection of parts, and more the aesthetic ideas of their component animals blended together.  A stuff animal that incorporates both raccoon and frog biology, for example, might have smoother amphibian skin but a pointed mammalian muzzle.  Because of this, stuff animals are often very different from each other in shape and appearance.

Internally, however, stuff animals are remarkably consistent.  Their skeletal structures have variations to support different body shapes, but all follow the same general pattern in doing so.  No matter which component species they draw from, their internal organs are all uniform.  They are all warm blooded, and mammalian, even if they don’t appear to be.

Other common details include a sharp capacity for learning and growth, dexterous paws of some variety, and eyes that are usually colored blue or red and very lightly luminescent.  Stuff animals are created with roughly equivalent maturity to a human child between the ages of five and eight, and like a human child, they are capable of developing and maturing over time, especially with social contact.

Stuff animals have the unique ability to produce a protective field that coats those they consider friends or loved ones.  The field muffles damage, and recovers its own strength over time.  A single stuff animal’s friendship is enough to prevent harm from roughly one strong punch before needing time to restore itself, while active familial love from a dozen stuff animals creates a field that can stop multiple bullets before losing effect.

This is an unconscious effect that they have no control over, and as such, care must be taken to prevent abuse.

Abuse is the word for it, yeah.  Much like with Ben not knowing who his real friends are, this is the kind of thing that could seriously hecker up a kid that has it.  It took us a long time to decide to even put this here, because… well… it’s scary, right?  A lot of these kids are in school now, with people their maturity, who are gonna learn about this.  And kids are bad at being chill about superpowers!  This is going to cause problems, but we all know it’ll be worse if we try to hide it forever.  So be nice!  Or else you’ll hear from me, and then Alanna, in that order, got it?  -Sarah Moyle, scowling-

I wish that home had waited for me to learn that being spider-traited is okay, so there could be more spiders-kind.  But it’s okay, I’m not mad.  I can pick up so many things.  -Fredrick Umbra Armillery, Gardener-

If you hurt these kids I’ll kill you.  -Kiki-

Stuff animals are one of the more common species that we handle fostering for, right behind humans actually.  Might be cultural, but they seem to default to not caring about the species of their foster siblings or parents, though they take a lot of patience because they’re kind of all hyper-energetic troublemakers.  Definitely a good thing that our standard foster arrangement is five-parent homes, because a couple of these kids can very rapidly exhaust someone.  -Juan, Recovery-

Obligate Friend : 

Created by Winter’s Climb, obligate friends are biologically identical to the dungeon’s interpretation of an average member of a copied species.  This means that, for example, if only the single-limbed umbral visited the Climb, a hypothetical umbral-shaped friend would always be that form.

Aside from that oddity of their creation, obligate friends produce a localized memetic field that makes everyone believe they have known them for a significantly long time, and believe they are currently friends.  This is an unconscious effect and cannot be turned off, though it can be focused on and amplified through the friend using the proper behaviors to play into the effect.

As soon as someone leaves the radius, they become capable of becoming aware that something was wrong, and lose the implanted memories of past friendship, but do not automatically recognize this.

Continued study of the effect has shown two things of note.  One, some species are immune to it, as are people immune or resistant to memetic effects.  And two, at a certain point of actually considering oneself a friend to an obligate friend, the effect stops producing false memories, instead just emphasizing the memories that already exist.

Obligate friends also feel a strong predatory sense, though this isn’t an enforced behavior, and can be intentionally suppressed, or treated with certain mundane medications.

I know it’s supposed to be sad but I don’t know why Ben didn’t just make friends on the internet where you’ll never meet them because everything is so far away.  That’s what I did, and I’m bad at making friends!  -Smoke, Recovery-

Ah, the perfect spies!  Right up until they leave the room, and then they’re like anti-spies.  -JP, Rogue-

Recovering the information about the friend that blipped itself out of existence in the middle of our expedition was tricky.  A couple assignments, mostly Planner, knew there was a little gap, but the antimemetic hole was tough.  Or so I am told, I’m not an infomorph yet.  Anyway, we didn’t include that memory bomb thing in the file because there’s no way to tell if that was the friend, or the Climb, and we can’t exactly ask Ben to detonate himself to see how it goes.  Still, gotta be careful on the Climb when we meet these guys.  Lead them on, let them come to us, so that the dungeon doesn’t just nuke them.  -James Lyle, Paladin-

Dunno if I like being this, but I dunno if I’ve got a choice, so I guess I’ll suck it up.  JP’s attempt to get me to transform into a camraconda didn’t work, and I don’t really feel like risking shaper surgery.  Smoke has a good point, I guess.  Maybe I should work less and just hang out online more.  Do I need a fursona for this?  No one will explain this to me.  -Ben, Rogue-

Chanter : 

Chanters are heavily shelled hexapeds with a softer monotreme body.  Their legs are plated in a similar material to their shells, rising up at a sharp angle to a single joint.  They have two smaller limbs extending forward from their body that have four fingered hands with slightly reduced dexterity compared to a human.  Their faces are visible under the front curve of their shell, and are more elongated oval profiles compared to a human face, with tall flat eyes, lacking pupils, that glisten under light.

Chanter biology is surprisingly straightforward.  They are, for many intents and purposes, biologically similar to a venomless, furless platypus.  The same organs, and the same biological functions, including reproduction.  Their shells and leg plating diverge from this, with the material being something closer to the answer to the question ‘what if tortoise shell could be very sharp’, but it doesn’t fundamentally change the way their bodies work.

Chanter life cycle is known mostly through unreliable status quo notes, but it appears they mature quickly under certain forced conditions.  Natural maturation has thus far been observed to take longer than the notes imply.

That, however, is where the simple part ends.  Chanters are some of the most magically dense sophonts in the Order, with three known separate effects.

First, chanters produce an aura that stimulates plant growth.  This effect strengthens with the health of the chanter, and is additive with others of their species.  The effect does not seem to produce matter, but instead massively speeds up natural processes, including the flow of nutrients and water.  It also protects against certain damage, which has the side effect of allowing plants to grow out of season.

Second, chanters are empaths.  Very powerful empaths, both receivers and broadcasters.  Collectively, they share emotions, and produce a field in a radius of those emotions that is experienced by anyone within it.  Learning from the chanters has given us the information that there are three layers to this; a single shared bubble that is their general vibe as a group and that seems to extend their collective range; a more active layer that is used for constant communication, still shared but less powerfully sending a singular emotion; and a short range form of their chant that is used for individual communication and local expression.

Finally, chanters are known to have a ‘loot drop’ on death, providing whoever kills them (even indirectly) with progress toward something like a class level.  The amount of progress is tied to how much magic that the chanter themself has taken in during their life, which is the second part of this third magic.  Chanters that trigger other dungeon loot drops consume a part of the magic, which also strengthens their first two abilities.

Figuring out how we could speak to each other was a massive effort.  But the first time we spoke as equals was worth every single moment of work.  -Indira Mahasahra, Recovery-

Out of every magical power that we have, I think I prefer the one that gives us a constant supply of fresh bell peppers.  What does this say about what I have become?  -Cam Marselli, Knight-

The children are growing roughly at the rate that humans would, barring the shell development.  Which appears to be similar to teething.  Pain management should be explored, beyond what I can provide when I have time.  -Mercy, Medical-

The Chain Breaker is a problem and a menace and a constant source of existential terror for me for a lot of reasons.  But… she, or Rhonda-as-her, helped us rip a whole species out of the dark and let them be people again.  So… thanks I guess.  Yeah.  Thanks.  But maybe next time just ask us first or something?  -James Lyle, Paladin-

I’ll see what I can do.

Umbral :

Composed of a flexible translucent material, umbral mimic the appearance of moving shadows, while actually being mostly non-magical in composition.

Umbral are a unique shape, standing on average seven feet tall and over most humans.  They have six legs with two joints each, supporting themselves much like a crab.  From that base, their body is a sturdy central torso with its own membrane, and either one or two ‘limbs’ that rest wrapped around that point, making their standard shape much bulkier.  These limbs are generally shaped like multi-jointed arms with large hands, capable of fine manipulation but hampered by their size.

The upper part of an umbral splits into multiple tendrils, each of the ten to twenty strands prehensile, flexible, and tipped with various different shapes or even manipulators.  They do eat, and their mouths are located near the point where their torso splits into tendrils.  Their eyes are rings of color that show up on their body, usually red, green, yellow, or blue, and contrast sharply with the colors of their body.

There is a core of denser material within umbral, which acts as a skeletal structure.  It is a similar visual consistency as the rest of their body, and is hard to identify unless an umbral is actively injured.

They are proportionally strong due to their size, capable of lifting or throwing heavy objects with the same force as a human of equal muscle mass.  Umbral diets are flexible, with them capable of subsisting on even dirt.  However, they have a sense of taste, and a preference for many human foods, especially spicy ones.  Despite the fact that their optimal diet would be a small amount of industrial sapphire.

Umbral are from a dungeon that has a specific magic system apparently designed to spark conflict.  ‘Defeating’ an umbral grants progress toward new spells, though that defeat does not need to be violent. 

As an active effect, umbral are capable of flattening themselves into an almost two-dimensional shadow on a surface.  Their mass is compressed during this process, not shunted out of our reality, and so they are still vulnerable to being injured.  They also become almost immobile while flattened, though they can be moved.

Umbral, despite appearing to be shadows, are not affected by the spell Smoke Salt.

And how easily you reveal the most dangerous secrets about us.  -Terror-

Umbral are cool!  They’re different to all of us, and similar to all of us, and sometimes both at once.  And maybe this is me being silly, but I think I can tell that a lot of them need a friend.  They remind me of a lot of things, and I want to make them comfortable.  -Keeka, Recovery-

The entry is correct, but it ignores how many umbral are dismissive and unpleasant toward the… variants… with a single arm.  Knowing what we know now, yes, we could say that the dungeon is just experimenting with form.  That we’re all the same.  And even at the time we should have said that maybe we should have had more important problems than privately reinventing racism for each other.  I think that, whatever we are, our minds might be more based on humanity than some of us would prefer.  There are only two futures for us, that I can see, and the bad one, I think we could have gotten to whether we won or lost our own fight.  -Ash, Townton resident-

If anyone wanted to know, umbral do experience lust, and for those of us who have taken the opportunity provided by the Order to descend into hedonism, you’re welcome to come visit and find out.  -Nyct, Medical-

I’ve got not fucking idea how to season whatever an industrial sapphire is, but I’ll give it a shot, sure.  Maybe I can make some kind of pretentious looking sparkling drink, serve it in a flute glass like I’m catering a gala.  Don’t write this part down, but I’ve been looking for an opportunity to make practical food art, and doing it with crushed gemstone seems easy.  -Nate Marsilli, Chef-

Crocamaw :

Crocamaws are creations of the Verdigris Venture, though they have not been encountered by Order delvers yet in their native environment.  Human sized scaled bipeds, reports tell us that crocamaws exist in the full range of maturity, including intelligent adults, but all current Order members are adolescents, due to the circumstances of meeting them.

The defining feature of a crocamaw is their mouth, which, in a resting standing pose, extends ninety percent of the way down the length of their body.   They have an incredibly fine control over most parts of their mouth, and their teeth are both naturally sharp and regrow quickly.

With the exception of their heavy facial feature, clawed digits, and scaled skin, crocamaws met closely share most of their biological traits with the bearded dragon, albeit scaled up.  They are cold blooded, and require careful management of body temperature.  They are also massively allergic to capsaicin, to the point that in a high enough concentration, it will kill them by liquifying their body.

It is unknown if crocamaws can reproduce naturally, or are only created by the dungeon.  They do, however, possess both primary and secondary traits, with female crocamaws having slightly smaller mouths and more patterned and textured scales, as well as more angular eyes.

As with most Garden life, crocamaw bodies destabilize when they take too much damage.  It is possible for them to survive serious injuries, but the injuries are made worse by further massive trauma of body parts sloughing away.  If they do survive, they are capable of regenerating to a surprising degree.

Also similar to Garden life, successful and meaningful encounters with a crocamaw have a chance to spawn a spell slot coin.  This includes powerful emotional moments, both positive and negative.  It is unclear if the coins produced are tied to the moments or encounters that produce them, but so far, the drop rate is 80% level 1, 12% level 2, 6% level 1 modified, and 2% level 2 modified.

I miss when you fuckers asked for easy things, like an entire vegetarian sub-menu, or raw gemstones.  Don’t make it spicy?  Am I a joke to you?  -Nate Marselli, Chef-

I feel a strange kind of kinship with these people who I have only ever really met in brief moments around my new home.  Something about having the majority of the people I compare myself to leading to the thought of ‘like them, but bigger in some specific way’.  The world was never made for strange sizes, but we’re here, and it’s going to be okay.  -Ink, Townton resident-

All the crocamaws we have in our community are young, even for their species, and they seem aware of this.  None of them have ever known another crocamaw to die of old age, so their dungeon and their own community can’t be that old, but they’re all basically teenagers.  And it’s a weird thought, because the spell used to capture and control them doesn’t care about age, until it clicks that they were meant to be lifetime slaves to the Mormon delvers they were paired with, and I have to get my authority to force my blood pressure back down.  -Deb, Medical-

Their mouths are so cool!  They can fit so many straws in them and still talk and they aren’t like crocodiles at all but they feel like living pebbles!  -Banana, Lair resident-

It feels like a lot of people think the crocamaws are kids, which is weird?  I hang out with a few of them, and they’re quiet if we’re not alone, but they just need some time, you know?  If you treat them like people and give them a little time to get used to you, they’ll start talking and never stop.  Lavant.  -Morgan Williams, aspirant-

Assignment :

The first known form of infomorph, assignments are created by letting a compulsion from an Officium Mundi purple orb persist, feed, and develop into a person.

Assignments begin life essentially as curses, taking shape over time based on their original directive, and the mind or minds of the people they live within.  They must have a thinking mind to reside in, as without someone to think them, an idea cannot keep living.  Over time, an assignment develops personality traits that often mirror what their hosts believe would be their own personal idea, though within three months they are capable of making their own choices when hosted within at least one adult.

Assignments feed on structured information, other infomorphs, or more purple orbs.  While they often have names that echo their origins, they are not limited to a certain type of information because of it.  Changes in information, especially in disparities of knowledge between multiple hosts, are powerful sources of food especially for young assignments.

As a species, assignments do not have biology, being contained entirely as mental constructs.  However, they are capable of projecting manifestations of themselves.  These manifestations almost always take the form of various warped and impossibly sized sea creatures, and are capable of physically interacting with the world, including by eating, though the mass from consumed food seems to simply vanish.

An assignment’s manifestation can be damaged, which harms all future manifestations until they have healed, a process that requires further feeding.  Manifestations are strengthened by an assignment having more hosts, or more constant food sources.

As infomorphs, assignments are capable of altering memories and behaviors of their hosts and others physically nearby, though their method of doing so is easily noticeable.  They are also, so far, the apex predator of the infomorph world.  Though they might struggle with some forms of construct, very few things can resist a strengthened assignment.

And sometimes we’re confused all the time and scrambling to figure it all out and even though there’s a ton of fun stuff going on, life is just really weird!  But I’m told that’s ’the condition’, so whatever El means by that is probably true too.  -Speaker-

I still think I want to try body swapping with one of them at some point, just to see if it would work.  But I also don’t want to just perish, and there are other people that say the same, so perhaps not yet.  -Knife-In-Fangs, Knight-

Sometimes I wonder what the world would look like through eyes that saw memory and not map.  How would the mountains look?  How would cars feel?  Who would I be if I were something else?  -Amelia, Scout Team Spectacle-

I like assignments because they’re scary but also nice.  And it reminds me that I can be nice, even if I’m scary.  I don’t know.  Is that bad?  -Nipi-

There is quite a lot of discussion about our creation these days.  If I may weigh in?  I rather like having been created.  Do it again.  -Moon, Recovery-

Navigator : 

Similar in many ways to assignments, navigators are formed by fulfilling the destination of a Route Horizon map seed, and then holding on to the mental framework of the navigator long enough for them to make a decision regarding their existence.

Navigators experience the world as a series of maps, journeys, and landmarks.  They are uniquely capable of finding things that they do not already know exist, though creating a ‘trip plan’ in this way incurs a potentially paracausal cost of obstacles and problems along the way.  The older and stronger a navigator gets, the more they are capable of offsetting this cost, and the farther they can seek from.

Older navigators are capable of manifesting similar to assignments, but where assignments manifest independent bodies, navigators wrap themselves around their current host in the shape of wings, feathers, and eyes.  Their form is consistent, though changes in detail when they switch between hosts.  A navigator can bond with multiple people, but lives within only a single mind at a time.  Like with assignments, navigators can eat, and the mass from their food appears to be removed.

When not manifested around a person, a navigator can freely move through the world as a simple dart of light, usually orange in color.  They are limited in this form, but still capable of sensory input and speech.

Navigators derive strength and sustenance from completed travel and exploration.  Specifically, from the process of overcoming difficulty during those trips as well.  This is why teleporting does not help a navigator.

Sometimes I see how happy the new people are and I wonder if I had been a different shade of orange when I was made if I wouldn’t have been so… evil.  Maybe it’s nominative determinism, but I crave the timeline where I was powered by road trips and not accounting.  -Debt, Townton resident-

You forgot to include the part where navigators are absolutely capable of having sex!  Put that in there!  This matters!  To… to me.  This matters to me.  For reasons.  -Alanna Byrne, Response-

Sharing a mind with a navigator is a unique experience, even among our merry band of unique experience enjoyers.  It’s difficult to tell a human how this might feel, but imagine having a roommate that is powered by the sun, and who is constantly trying to remove the roof to get a better view.  I’m sure the feeling went both ways, too.  And yet, the things we were capable of together were… exhilarating.  Two might be the limit for every mind we’ve met so far though.  Not unless we want to start getting noise complaints.  -Moon, Recovery-

Sharing a skull with a navigator has been the strangest addition to a family I never even knew I could dream of having.  It doesn’t make all the walking any easier, but it triggers that little switch that we had to dust off that makes a lady happy when she spoils her grandkids.  -Dorothy, Townton resident-

_____

Ongoing Projects :

The Order of Endless Rooms has, to say the least, a lot going on.  Dungeon delving and dramatic rescues, however, are only a small part of it.  In fact, while critically important, delving is more a means to an end than the goal itself, and the majority of the Order’s time, money, and magic goes into projects designed to improve the world around us.

This list compiles the large scale initiatives that the Order is currently undertaking.  If it included the smaller one to three person things that Research is currently working on, it would be the majority of this document.  Instead, this is any project that: requires a large number of people, operates on a timeline longer than a month, could be expanded over time in the event of success, and most importantly, both reflects and impacts the culture of the Order of Endless Rooms.

Many projects have reference titles that don’t always match their colloquial names.  In the event that there is a common shorthand, that name will also be listed along with the reference title.

Rapid Response (Response) :

Overview - Response is an attempt to address issues of underserved communities and police brutality by circumventing the need to involve the police in an increasing number of disputes. On a more diplomatic level, Response also aids local police departments by easing the burden of addressing certain concerns such as mental health crises or search and rescue, freeing up police time and resources. Daily activities include taking emergency calls, and moving to assist civilians where possible. Response is not a legally recognized agency, and has no authority to make arrests, nor does it have an investigative branch; instead, the primary goal in any interaction is deescalation, prevention of harm, and addressing root causes of issues.

Area of Operations - Response has the capacity to operate globally, and occasionally does so, but due to limitations on the spread of information and the amount of responder time and teleport capacity, the majority of activity takes place across the western half of the US and Canada, parts of northern Mexico, and, for unknown reasons, two rural areas of the Jailin province of China.

Primary Assets and Allocated Resource - In terms of finances, Responders and hotline operators are given a 20 point increase over Order UBI for salary.  Additionally, Response has access to a steady supply of telepads and shield bracers to facilitate smooth operations, as well as multiple potion types for training and safety.  Response also heavily uses the Winter’s Climb spell Mesa Oasis for addiction treatment, and oxygen potions support that use. Other dungeontech in use includes multiple methods of inducing calm, translation and communication tools, and a number of mild conveniences like a wallet that can spawn car keys.  Response is also one of the largest points of anchor for authority-class infomorphs, and Responders are the most likely individuals to pair with a living drone.

Income and Asset Acquisition - Response generates no profit due to its nature, and instead entirely draws resources both mundane and magical from the Order’s other sources.  Efforts are underway to convince local governments in heavy-operation areas to reallocate portions of police budgets to the Order, but nothing relies on this.

Staff and Recruitment - Response hires outsiders regularly in batches, ensuring that new recruits have acclimated and will perpetuate their service culture before hiring anyone new. Internal applications are accepted at any time.  Despite a currently majority-human roster, Response is happy to have anyone who wishes to join, regardless of species.

Impact - Due to the number of memeplexes of varying sorts throughout the world, Response’s effect on the Order’s public image has been somewhat muted.  However.  For the places where Response is most active, the name of the Order of Endless Rooms, and the image of the blue orb patch, is rapidly becoming synonymous with reliable, rapid, and compassionate help.  Similarly, the presence of infomorphs, camracondas, and even ratroaches, is working to acclimate civilians in areas of heavy operations to the presence of nonhuman life.  Beyond the diplomatic, Response currently fields upwards of a thousand calls a day, and has had a meaningful positive impact on tens of thousands of lives.

Future Projections - Response is on track to continue expanding as fast as new recruits can be trained and culturally adapted, and is capable of absorbing and putting to use an impressive quantity of resources as soon as they are available.  The main future change to Response is emphasis on training for large scale deployments in the event of natural disasters, catastrophes, or dungeon attacks.  Though that last one might need to become its own division.

Outbound Aid (Distribution) :

Overview - The Order of Endless Rooms has two different ways to cure cancer.  Hoarding that is unacceptable, and the distribution office is the tool by which those cures are handed out. Daily activities include identifying and selecting patients to reach out to, making arrangements with hospitals, and continuing medical tests on long term effects.

Area Of Operation - Global, primary headquarters on the second floor of the Officium Mundi External branch.

Primary Assets and Allocated Resources - Distribution receives an average of 500 anti-cancer purple orbs and 11,000 doses of the lung purification potion each week.  Language orbs or .mem files are available on demand for outreach agents, but the majority of travel and shipping is mundane.  When operating in dangerous parts of the world or while moving large quantities of cures, shield teams are also deployed as security.

Income and Asset Acquisition - Distribution offers cures at no cost to any patient that cannot afford it.  The lung potion specifically is never charged for, while the anti-cancer orb is priced at ‘one percent of total net worth’ for anyone that is not below the poverty line.  In many cases, insurance companies have been known to pay out as if the treatment was a billable line item, leading to a steady stream of funding that is cycled back into the costs for travel, food, and lodging for distribution agents.

Staff and Recruitment - Short term assistance is often brought on from among patients cured for help with cure delivery.  For permanent positions, contact Justine in her main office.

Impact - Especially since the lung cancer cure has become available, the number of people helped has spiked.  To date, almost six hundred thousand cures have been distributed.  It is difficult to overstate how many lives have been changed, all flowing from a small group of dedicated people performing a coffee ground ritual, and running blenders in the Lair’s basement.

Future Projections - Planning for the next orb, spell, or potion, is impossible.  However, at the current rate, especially with the potion production curve being predictable, we can expect to deploy nine hundred thousand cures next year.

Bright Future :

Overview - This project is the broad umbrella for the collection of teams that are converting reliable magical effects into competitive commercial and industrial businesses and profitable solutions.  This includes preparation for regulation, competition, and active resistance, as well as negotiation with industry leaders, and the foundation of businesses to act as arms of the Order and its philosophies.

Area Of Operation - Varied by individual operation.  Broadly speaking, global.

Primary Assets and Allocated Resources - Three major projects are currently underway, respectively utilizing the Winter’s Climb spell Thermodynamic Tunnel, making large scale use of the logisticor teleportation dungeontech, and employing a large quantity of emerald computer chips from Officium Mundi.  Smaller projects, or those that are less likely to result in immediate success or world changing results, include the development of a space elevator using copied dungeontech, the safe use of Route Horizon omnibeans to combat food scarcity, the use of Stacks generators for rapid structural frame construction, and the use of Manipulate Asphalt to establish the world’s most effective road maintenance company.  In addition to access to these magical resources, an investment of cash and other mundane resources is constantly provided to encourage experimentation and development, even of ideas that dead end.

Income and Asset Acquisition - Currently low or non-existent, though there are multiple high potential avenues upcoming.

Staff and Recruitment - Individual sub-projects handle their own recruiting.  See attached list for a full breakdown.

Impact - At present, the largest impact is that our collaboration with a major electrical company has allowed us to prototype and develop what amounts to a ‘free energy’ facility.  The Order’s control of the critical piece of magic to make it work, as well having shared ownership of the general design, has already let us offer it as part of the diplomatic attempts to secure recognition on a global stage.

Future Projections - Disruptions of multiple industries are forthcoming, especially energy production and global shipping.

Collective Education (Greenway, School) :

Overview - As the Order’s dependent population of younger and less mature individuals grows, it becomes important that we are able to provide a stable education for them.  Skill orbs and .mem files are amazing, but they don’t actually teach some of the critical underlying skills that are both needed to thrive, and incredibly difficult to package into a skulljack transmissible format.  Greenway Primary School is our answer to that.  Focusing on critical thinking skills, learning how to learn, and adapting to new social situations, the program is modeled in many ways after the Montessori plan, with different strategies and lesson plans adapted based on current research on child developmental psychology.  Separated into three classes for different strata of relative maturity, staff focus on tailored lesson plans over testing.

Special Notes - Nonhuman life does not map perfectly to human child minds. Camracondas, even ones that are less mature, still know bizarrely specific things in high level fields. Still, our own research shows that socialization, structured learning, and the availability of adult teachers, all work to improve their quality of life. Similar studies with the ratroach population are underway, and lesson plans involving their species are modified to have a focus on managing trauma, and learning to process emotions and accept help and social contact from others.

Area Of Operation - Greenway Park, located in Oregon.  Due to the initial success, a second site in Townton, Tennessee, is being considered for development next.

Primary Assets and Allocated Resources - Funding for a high ratio of staff-to-students, as well as for a high quality facility and the maintenance for it.  While it isn’t expected to be able to scale up well, the Greenway facility utilizes multiple targeted green orbs to assist with cleanliness and time management.  A number of authority larvae are allocated to the school program as well, as part of the slow development of a space that uses magic to enhance learning, rather than replace it.

Income and Asset Acquisition - None.  While Greenway did inexplicably qualify for state accreditation as a private school, the only potential source of income would be parents of human children that have enrolled them with us.  And we aren’t charging anything.

Staff and Recruitment - Teaching staff are predominantly externally recruited, while other important positions are drawn from both internal and external sources.  There are deliberately a number of nonhuman teachers and counselors, to reinforce that the mixed species environment of the student body is a deliberate choice.

Impact - The existence of a structured space for lower-maturity dungeon life to have an opportunity to both learn, and have a social childhood, has been immediately and powerfully influential on the development of many ratroaches, camracondas, crocamaws, stuff animals, and more.  While most human students are already benefitting from clear improvements in learning patterns, the largest gains are in the kids who needed more than just a safe place, but a place that encouraged them to push their comfort zones and actively engage.

Future Projections - It is not an exaggeration to say that there is no way to predict what the future generations who grow up with this form of education will look like.  The methods have existed in human societies for some time, even if their availability has been low, but the presence of magic, nonhuman life, and the sheer quality we can provide with our resources, means that nothing like this has ever existed before.  We can talk at length about opening more schools, especially as more people join our collective, but we can not guess at what the ten, twenty, or thirty year impact of this form of education will be.

Alchemy :

Overview - Utilizing the ability to grow more of the ‘sap of the tree of knowledge’ with magical means, the alchemy department is responsible for the production of known potion types, and the refinement and development of new recipes.  Currently this is our source of multiple key pieces of the Order, including exercise potions, lung cancer cures, and the occasional recreational draught.

Area of Operation - The Lair, recently expanded to Townton

Primary Assets and Allocated Resources - Every week the replication ritual has one run dedicated to making more of the dungeontech plant pot that grows anything planted in it into a succulent.  This works on sap from the ‘tree of knowledge’ that was taken from the Guild of Alchemists, taking roughly one week to grow a single fruit that can be used for the same effect.  Each copier run can make four pots, which are added to the alchemy production line and increasing the number of potions and tests that can be made each week.  Aside from that, funding for materials and equipment is sourced on demand.  Additionally, an ongoing supply of Climb wands for the spell Harvest Procession, and scheduled Breath fillings, are being developed to supplement sap harvest.  A population of lab rats for testing purposes are also kept.

Income and Resource Acquisition - Low, but not non-existent.  Recently contact has been made with customers that used the Guild of Alchemist’s products for cosmetic reasons, and since most of those people have more money than sense, sales have resumed of any potion that is deemed harmless to create a supplemental income line.

Staff and Recruitment - Contact Davis or Red at the Lair for recruitment.  Staff for alchemy is internally sourced only, and involves more use of blenders and spreadsheets than it does chaotic experimentation.  Anyone with a great idea for a potion may submit it, and expect that it will not work the way they think it will.

Impact - Outsized.  Alchemy is responsible for safer potions in multiple important ways, the creation of new potions that expand our knight’s capabilities, and the ongoing study of the underlying principles that guide the process of potion magic emergence.  If alchemy vanished from the Order tomorrow, the loss of exercise potions alone would devastate our ability to rapidly prepare delvers and responders for action.

Future Projections - It is only a matter of time before the next potion that works is discovered.  While the expansion of production on known potions is valuable, the limits of this form of alchemy are not yet known, and so it is hard to guess where it might go from here.  But at the very least, simply having more cures for cancer will be increasingly valuable up until the tipping point of making more than the global rate of the disease.

Comments : 

It is sobering to look at the list of our most important operations, and see how many of them may as well be large red numbers in a ledger.  -Karen Ward, Recovery-

Response that helps people, mostly human people, and Response that fights dungeons, are different Responses.  But we also aren’t.  It’s very confusing sometimes, even if I know every part of every task.  It feels sometimes like we know that we shouldn’t have our warriors and helpers be the same group with the same name, but then we do our drills together anyway.  But at least there’s plenty of friends.  -Ishah, Response (Dungeon Reaction)-

Taking Townton off the list is a great call.  I dunno what Townton is, exactly, but it’s ours.  And man oh man do we do a lot of work there.  But you know, more work than you can sum up with a project header.  It’s easy to say yeah, we’ve got good ol’ Bill and a big magic stoplight that we assigned to the Relocation business, but it’s a bit harder to list off all the things good ol’ Bill does for checking foundations, hooking up plumbing to orange totem apartments, spacing out green orbs, feeding camcondors, welding mailboxes back together, installing commercial kitchens, and fixing windows.  Someone should list that though.  Maybe give Bill a raise too.  -Bill-

The space elevator is going to work eventually, I know it.  -Chevoy, Research-

Response pissing off the police is nothing new, but lately it’s like they’ve kind of just glossed over our existence.  Individual cops acknowledge us, and half the time tell Responders to fuck off or get arrested, usually by screaming.  But the departments just can’t track what we’re doing.  At least, not in the US.  Some kind of memeplex, but not one we’ve really listed before, maybe.  I’d say it was helpful except we actually need them to do the investigation and arresting for things like actual battery or murder. -Harvey, Response project head-

Alex puts our coterie on Response rotation sometimes, and I believe she is deliberately antagonizing either myself, or anyone who is intimidated by myself that we are inflicted on.  Good, then, that most Response deployments are nonviolent.  I am an excellent climbing obstacle for small children.  -Ink-And-Key, coterier-

The process of alchemy fascinates me, largely because it is deeply stupid.  Some of my foundational knowledge was chemistry, and physics.  Alchemy is neither of those.  Maybe it is the defiance of the Office that guides me, but I enjoy the chaos, and also the slow teasing out of threads that show it was never so chaotic at all. -Paper-And-Words, Researcher-

Still can’t get over that we made a school that kids want to go to. -James Lyle, Paladin-

In case no one spotted it, all of these projects rely on the existence of the duplication ritual.  Because all of them need either magic, or money, and we print both of those with coffee grounds.  Calling it a point of failure is a mild understatement.  -Sarah Moyle, Just Hanging Out Really-

If you’d told me I’d spend my old age as a lunch lady I’d think you were making fun of me.  But these kids are a delight, even if there’s some picky eaters in there.  -Marjorie Chase, Greenway Primary staff-

Weird that we don’t have an entry for knights or paladins?  I guess it’s because they’re not ‘making the world better’, but… aren’t they?  Isn’t that what they all do all day?  I guess I’m mostly asking because I want to know what the process to join actually is.  -Morgan Williams, Aspirant-

The space elevator isn’t gonna work, but I’d kinda like to know why.  -Mars, Research-

_____

Known Extranormal Organizations

The Order of Endless Rooms is not the first on the scene when it comes to dungeons, magic, or the use of either to try to influence the world.  While getting accurate information is challenging, the following is a record of groups that have been encountered, or are known to exist, by the Order of Endless Rooms.

Status Quo (OA-1) :

Membership : 40 at peak, mostly operatives

Location : Pacific Northwest, United States.  Headquartered in Oregon.

Status : Questionable.

Details :

The group that we refer to as Status Quo was a pro-mundanity paramilitary organization dedicated to using their dungeontech in service of maintaining current trends in political and financial power.

Their specific method involved the kidnapping and harvesting of ‘life force’ in the form of blood from any active delver they could find, in order to produce more dungeontech for their own use or stockpile. In order to avoid attention, families and those close to their victims had soft antimemetic effects used on them, before being relocated to other parts of the world where they wouldn’t ask questions.

This Status Quo also enforced a policy of choking dungeon entrances when they found them, which appears to have led to the deaths of the dungeons after a period of five to ten years.

There is a high likelihood this group was younger than they believed themselves to be, and was formed artificially by an outside source. Their belief that paranormal events were focused in the Pacific Northwest directly contradicts reality, and might have been unnatural. Similarly, their belief that delvers only ever come in trios has since proven incorrect, though mostly in the sense that they found correlation and not causation.  Due to these obvious errors in their methods and mindset, it is difficult to trust any of their documentation, including whether or not they ever even encountered the dungeons they claim to have killed. 

Status Quo was encountered twice by the Order of Endless Rooms, the second time ending in the death of the remainder of their membership.

Comments : 

The first time I killed a human was when these people tried to annihilate my home for the crime of being different.  I barely remember what they look like, because of what our assignment protector did to them at the end.  But I remember the taste of blood, and the desperation, and I do not think I will pity these monsters. -Spire-Cast-Behind, Paladin-

The fact that we now know another squo used antimeme traps on their documents means we probably screwed up a lot of the files these guys used when we stripped their office.  So that sucks.  I’d say we should build a time machine but I keep having to stop people from trying so I know I don’t mean it. -Reed Moshofsky, Research-

It’s a weird causal loop that we call them Status Quo. That is what they are, sure, but would we have come up with that name if we didn’t have the warning from Curious?  Whatever, either way it doesn’t stop the nightmares, does it?  -Momo, Witch-

I still have no fucking clue why they were talking about when they said Nike has a dungeon.  They don’t.  I know they don’t!  I’ve checked!  But it’s such a silly lie to tell, especially if you’re trying to recruit James of all people.  -JP, Rogue-

Status Quo (Oversight) :

Membership : 90 at peak, even split between support staff and operatives

Location : New York, United States

Status : Eradicated.

Details :

This iteration of Status Quo was a pro-mundanity human-supremacist paramilitary organization dedicated to using their dungeontech in service of safeguarding the rest of humanity from anything out of the ordinary.

Their methods involved the kidnapping of delver groups, sacrificing them to their other prisoner species, and then harvesting the second set of  prisoners for specific powers funneled into their agents. To prevent notice, they employed a series of infovore antimemes that covered for the missing people, though they worked with far less finesse than the previous Status Quo.

They also employed a policy of locating and damaging dungeon entrances with a reported high rate of success at finding their prisoner’s dungeons, and while the exact details are unknown, something about their method caused rapid death of those dungeons.  Attempting to understand or recreate their methods from their documentation has met with a series of antimeme traps that has caused gaps in potential understanding, but work is ongoing.

Despite being an entirely unaffiliated group, the Order still refers to them as a Status Quo, due to close similarities in tactics and ideology. Other similarities include their misunderstanding of where the dungeon phenomena was geographically centered, their apparent newness despite a belief they were an older organization, and their fanatical devotion and readiness to use violence.

They were aware of the pillars, as well as  Harlan’s Wolfpack, possibly due to both party’s repeated activity in  New York.

Status Quo was encountered three times by the Order of Endless Rooms, the third time ending in the death or defection of the remainder of their membership.

Comments : 

Basically, this is an example of what happens when opsec goes wrong.  You can blame magic and fate and pillar bullshit all you want, but a lot of people showed up to their house at the same time, all ready to start shooting.  That doesn’t happen unless you fuck up.  A lot.  Same shit when they walked into our trap gunning for the chanters.  Yeah, they’re fascists, whatever, fuck em.  But they’re also a crystal clear look at what happens if a group that never stops pissing people off slips up in this world.  Take notes.  -Nate Marselli, Human Bookmark- 

We can say whatever we want about defying fate.  I know someone who is quite fond of saying that luck is just the odds when someone is taking it personally.  But sometimes it does feel personal, and it was because of this group that my own path intersected the Order for the first time.  I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we could have met without the genocide. -Cam Marselli, Knight-

RIP in pepperoni, bozos. -Prince-

It is unfair and infuriating that they had an orbital laser.  Because our magic can’t get past a certain height, so what makes these idiots so special?  It’s also stupid because if you can put magic in space you can do so many better things than harvesting living people for skill levels, and maybe I’ve just been with the Order for too long, but I can’t really understand how someone could actually be that shortsighted and stupid?  I guess they can’t, since they’re all dead now. -Chevoy, Research-

Status Quo (Gatekeepers) :

Membership : 10 at peak, with an addition 10-20 auxiliaries.

Location : Saskatoon, Canada

Status : Disbanded.

Details :

This iteration of Status Quo was a pro-mundanity human-supremacist paramilitary organization dedicated to using their dungeontech in service of safeguarding the rest of humanity from anything out of the ordinary.

The smallest Status Quo encountered so far, their methods were similarly reduced.  They used direct violence against dungeon life, and delvers that they couldn’t recruit.  Due perhaps to their low numbers, they did draw delvers into their orbit, apparently by fabricating conflicts with local dungeon life to obfuscate their own agenda.

Despite being small, the Gatekeepers create a lot of questions in their wake.  Their use of shield bracers and other leveler items implies a tie to the OA-1 Status Quo, and yet, there is no record from either group of that connection.  Their outsized impact on local government implies backing that cannot be located.  And while they lack records, interviews with survivors have shown that they believe they know how to kill dungeons in a way very similar to OA-1.

The Gatekeepers encountered the Order of Endless Rooms once, after which the surviving members were moved to a facility in Townton for physical recovery and deprogramming.

Comments : 

They were bad fighters.  All of the shadow they cast on the umbral, all of the fear tactics, all the recruiting and planning, it’s all bullshit.  They sucked at their jobs, and the only reason they looked like such a threat is because they were mostly killing unarmed civilians.  If we hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t need this entry, because the umbral would have torn them apart. -Evans, Shield Team 3-

Really don’t like that these guys exist everywhere!  We should have some kind of hunter-killer team just for squos.  Maybe call it ‘Responsibility’ to mess with James. -JP, Rogue-

The Guild Of Alchemists :

Membership : 10-20, with 10 additional contracted combatants

Location : Utah, United States

Status : Disbanded

Details :

The Guild of Alchemists was a capitalist cabal focused on the production and sale of dungeontech consumables to a select clientele of the wealthy.

Their primary method was using their main resource, which they called the Tree of Knowledge, to produce potions. The process involved a large amount of trial and error to find workable formulas, and while it wasn’t their first option, they did use unwilling human test subjects before finalizing their discoveries.

Additionally, they employed a military contractor for both bodyguards and wet work, using a portion of their potion supply to enhance a small group of soldiers to be mentally pliant and physically more deadly.  While they were a serious threat when encountered, today, an Order knight would easily be a match for one of these ‘nobel’ mercenaries.

Ideologically, the Guild of Alchemists was rather splintered, being a business first and brotherhood second. Some of their members were invested in research and building a utopian future, while others were motivated by wealth and luxury, and at least one was a double agent.

At some point, it is known that they were contracted by the CIA (or another group posing as the CIA) to develop an infiltration potion, which they eventually declared as a failure. Their failure became the anti-depression potion, which they sold a number of before being stopped, as that potion was actually killing and replacing the user.

The Order had multiple simple dealings with the Alchemists to purchase their works, before discovering the effects of the anti-depression potion. After that, there were attempts at negotiation, which led to internal fracturing in the Guild. The last interaction the Order had with the group was to accept a formal surrender, which included seizure of assets, and a commitment to rehabilitation.

Comments : 

Do you know what single thing makes me grind my teeth to powder?  That if we had less pride, we could have been so much more than we became.  Of course it is right to seek a perfect future for humanity - others too, now - but God, if we could have done it without getting stuck up our own asses, just imagine.  Thinking we were superior hurt people.  And even if I am only mercenary about the process, if we had never done that, what would our contact with the Order have looked like?  Buy some clay pots, raise the amount of  sap we grow, trade potions for a place at the table, keep experimenting to find the things that change the human condition?  I suppose things might look a lot like they do today.  But maybe Euphrates would still be alive.  Is that good?  It’s hard to tell anymore.  I never knew any of them as much as I thought I did.  -Amelia ‘Red’ Marguerite, Alchemy Department-

I was sulking too much at the time and missed my window to get a ‘sorry I nearly replaced you with a pod person’ card.  So in a way, I also have big regrets.  -JP, Rogue-

We never did figure out some mysteries about the Alchemists, even with several of them hanging around with us in some way.  But it’s not a priority these days, and I think a lot of it really is down to them using flowery language for mundane things.  I mean, they called themselves the Guild of Alchemists, it’s no wonder JP had them on his investigation list next to a faction from a video game.  -Anesh Patel, Research-

Harlan’s Wolfpack :

Membership : Minimum 15

Location : Unknown

Status : Active

Details :

Harlan’s Wolfpack is a mercenary group known to take contracts for active combat, with an open acceptance of dungeon-based life and tactics.

Their exact protocols aren’t known, but what is clear is that they use seed rounds to constantly purge their own non-critical memories, and this appears to be intentional. Possibly an addiction. Their membership as a result cannot be trusted to be the same people from encounter to encounter.

They are heavily armed, including having ownership of at least one attack helicopter. Also in their possession is at least one logisticor.  They use seed rounds excessively, so even small arms fire from them has potential armor piercing or demolition capability, and they are known to have tattoo-based magic as well for summoning personal constructs.

Ideologically, the Wolfpack appears to be convinced that their violent action is needed in order to kill the world’s monsters. How they define a monster is unclear, but conversation with Harlan has made it clear that they put themselves on the list, even if they are near the bottom.

An encountered problem is what they refer to as ‘red-lining’, where members of the Wolfpack dump too many memories and begin to lose group cohesion and loyalty. Ideological drift at an accelerated rate.

The Order has encountered Harlan’s Wolfpack multiple times; as enemy combatants, in a neutral diplomatic context, during a dungeon incident, and also by outright hiring them.  The Wolfpack is currently in operation, though their base of operations is unknown.

Comments : 

This might sound weird but hot damn I love working with the Wolfpack.  No one in the world cares less about who you are than these people, and they back that fact up by offloading memories constantly.  I actually got a discount on our next contract by letting them farm our friendships for more seed rounds.  I don’t think it’ll work the way they think it’ll work, but it was certainly novel.  -Ben, Rogue-

You know that thing where your mom says something painfully evil to you, and then if you bring it up a day later, she pretends she doesn’t know what you’re talking about, and gets mad at you for blaming her for something she doesn’t remember?  Yeah.  Imagine that but for people with swords and guns.  I met the one that mutilated me, in Springfield.  They thought it wasn’t their fault, because they’d dumped the memory into a bullet months ago.  I hate these people, don’t make me work with them again.  -Ann, Knight-

Wolfpack’s memory bullets are a really cool look at how a single magic can shape a subculture.  You know, if we ignore everything else about them, etc, etc.  The neat thing is that you can kind of see how a place could work with the condition, if it was just a little better.  A world where people can stop themselves forming bad routines or habits, where the worst traumas can be surgically removed, even just where people have a little more personal control over their emotions.  We talk a lot about not wanting to mind control anyone, but our emotions do it for us a lot of the time, and yeah, the Wolfpack swung too hard in the opposite direction, but I see what they’re going for, you know?  -Thermoclese-

No one tell Harlan we would have paid them a billion pounds just to hold a logisticor long enough to copy it.  This way is funnier.  -Anesh Patel-

If you were thinking of asking me if this is an effective form of therapy, then you don’t need me to tell you that it isn’t.  -Lua Calloway, Recovery-

Priority Earth :

Membership : 28

Location : Alaskan wilderness

Status : Disbanded, Absorbed

Details :

Priority Earth was originally an environmentalist group with an apparent focus on using dungeontech in targeted strikes to achieve their goals of ecological protection. At a certain point in their history, a memetic attack used on them inflicted a portion of their membership with violently white supremacist beliefs, leading to them purging their own ranks of both other ethnicities, and women.  This also precipitated a change in their behavior, and the beginning of overt terrorist action that we now know used the language of ecological protection as a smokescreen while they targeted people based on their imposed belief system.

Priority Earth’s previous methods included deploying biological semi-infomorphic plant life in order to disrupt coal burning power plants. It seems like this was a first attempt at the tactic, and the effectiveness was surprising even to them. Their attacks caused a complete shutdown, and the generation of a subtle and potent memeplex in the area, but notably no actual loss of life.

The violence from Priority Earth stopped abruptly, due to a change to some of the dungeontech they had in use, and the creation of an emotionally dulling field around their camp.  Suddenly lacking the ability to feel anything except for specific emotions, the membership of Priority Earth was given time and intellectual perspective, and was capable of breaking the hold of the memetic weapon that was used on them.

Following this, they began recruiting again, with the majority of the old guard planning what amounted to suicide, and the transfer of both assets and responsibility once they believed the new recruits were ready. 

Priority Earth encountered the Order of Endless Rooms before this could happen, and their organization was officially disbanded as they were folded into the Order’s ranks.  The majority of former members currently live in Townton, and many are part of the ecological planning team.

Comments : 

Really not happy with the hentai plant that puts people in slime pods.  Really glad they don’t remember how to make those.  -Yin, Rogue-

When you just see it like this… it’s bad.  It’s bad, man.  And it’s hard to think you’re the victim when you know you only got targeted for being in the game to begin with.  -Buddy Oak, founder and former member of Priority Earth-

The existence of memetic weapons of this variety is a nightmare.  The Order is uniquely lucky, with people in our ranks that can protect us, but the idea of something that can simply rewrite human minds to whatever ideology the attacker wants?  That is beyond disgusting.  I would rather be shot in the head.  -Karen Ward, Recovery-

Let’s not forget how badly we handled this, either!  Yeah, sure, in the end it was worse than we thought, but we tried to feed them to the FBI.  What the fuck, right?  One dead investment banker and we side with the people who tried to break up the Order multiple times?  That’s some unexamined bias right there.  -Momo, Witch-

Nate took me camping once, and that was enough to understand the base ethos of this group.  The world is so much more than the buildings and streets.  It is wild out there, but I understand seeing value in that wildness, and wanting to protect it.  -Knife-In-Fangs, Knight-

Arkists (Mormons)

Membership : 12,000 - 24,000 civilians, 300 - 500 active members.

Location : North Smiths, Utah

Status : Active

Details : 

Originally thought to be a schism within the Mormon Church, the ‘Ark’ program is actually more like one of the Order’s projects.  Operating with mostly full knowledge and financial support from the Church itself.

Nicknamed Arkists, the group is focused on using the Pylon Motoric as a ‘fallback point’ in preparation for what they believe is a coming Biblical apocalypse.  They believe this in part because some of their members are shapeshifters from the Pylon, but by all accounts, many of those shapeshifters are more active believers in the faith than some of the humans.  So it’s a mess.

While they employ magic from both of their dungeons, they keep knowledge of the twin nature of the local dungeons separate in most of their members.  Internal dispute has also led to repeated shifts in who they give magic to, and why.

The Order has an active treaty with the Arkists for dungeon access, which we regularly ignore, because they ignore the part of the treaty that says they won’t use magic to indoctrinate children, or kidnap and mind control sophont dungeon life.  Their own slow development of their magical potential, mixed with the fact that they often put experienced members into stasis along with groups of civilians they take into the dungeon, means that there will be an eventual point where the Order will have the option to force the issue.

Currently the Arkists are active in the area around North Smiths, Utah, and having moved the majority of the local Mormon population into their dungeon stasis storage site, has begun moving outward to other cities.

Comments : 

I know I should hate them or something, but… thanks for not just killing my parents.  -Lincon, survivor-

They can say whatever polite words they want when we have our meetings.  I’ve seen what they’re willing to excuse, and I’m not happy.  -Simon, Paladin-

Something a little creepy about being in a cold war with a religion.  Feels too real, you know?  Like we’re supposed to do dungeon stuff and deal with wizards and dragons and probably vampires eventually, not do negotiations with guys that actually believe in a normal god, right?  -Momo, Witch-

We aren’t immune to the sensation of spirituality.  I should know, I was a form of priestess for a long time.  And I wouldn’t want to be either, I find it to be a unique feeling.  But I do believe this expression of it is unhealthy.  The use of magic to mutilate oneself, instead of to build yourself up, feels alien.  Wrong.  What has been done to these children, crocamaw and human alike, is wrong.  If I learned one thing from my origin, it is that no one should be forced to be something they do not want.  -Watcher-Under-Stone-

Northern Oklahoma Proud Grandparents Adventuring Society (‘The Society’, NOPGAS)

Membership : 55

Location : Northern Oklahoma

Status : Active

Details :

Founded as a mundane group, the NOPGAS was originally intended as a place for grandparents - or sufficiently old humans - to socially mingle, and have a group that they could safely travel or attend craft classes with.

The society has a very long history, its membership having waxed and waned over the years.  But at some point, one of its members whose name is now forgotten, changed.  That person, who we now know as Kiki, stayed with the Society after she failed to die of old age, slowly changing the membership as her presence added and revealed more magic in the world.  Perhaps because of Kiki’s presence, or perhaps because more capability creates more opportunity, the members of the Society began to have adventures that were significantly more risky and chaotic over the last two decades, resulting in their current status as ‘like the Order, but on average, older’.

The Society knew of two dungeons, at different points, and delved them actively.  One has been confirmed dead, the other has been rediscovered but has limited access windows.

Current members of the Society tend to be grandparents, usually upwards of sixty years old.  They are universally in excellent health due to Kiki’s healing and possibly extra dungeon effects, and are expected to live for another fifty years unless killed.  Membership also includes one cat, who is smart, and difficult to question.

The NOPGAS is an emotional and personal ally of the Order, with both groups maintaining the same general goal of a kinder and better world.  Also at least one Order member has a grandparent in the Society.  While the Grandparents Society doesn’t have the same ambitions as the Order of Endless Rooms, many of their members are excited by contact with us, to the point that many of them have begun introducing their families to members of the Order, or to Townton in general.

The Society is currently active, and will remain so.

Comments : 

What do you mean the cat is hard to question?!  -Banana, Student-

Well, it had to happen sooner or later.  We finally met people who aren’t assholes.  And two months too early for me to win the betting pool!  Thanks, Alex.  -Zhu, just happy to be here-

When we met them, the first time, I… this is hard to explain.  I’m different.  I know I am.  Learning to say different and not wrong or broken or ugly or… it’s hard, I am a work in progress.  I know most humans don’t like me.  But when we met the grandparents, they wanted to talk to me.  They asked very personal questions, they teased me about who I was dating, they… they… treated me like I was normal.  Or something better, maybe.  They wanted to know about me, and what I was, because they thought I mattered, and I will never forget that.  This is what I want to be if I get old.  -Arrush, Knight-

Yeah it’s me.  Hi.  My grandpa apparently never thought I’d believe him if he told me he was a delver, and was planning to have me inherit a bunch of cryptic magic puzzles when he died.  My grandpa, in case you’re squinting and putting it together but not wanting to say it yourself, is a bit of a bastard.  Anyway, once he knew I was a delver too he got really excited and started sending me the puzzles one at a time so now my life is an ARG and somehow that’s the least weird thing going on right now.  -Vex, Undecided-

Pact of Pillars

Membership : 7 Confirmed, 2 Previous (Deceased), likely more, unknown number of auxiliaries.

Location : Everywhere

Status : Active

Details :

Previously thought to be a category of entity, the Pact of Pillars is actually a secondary organization composed of a certain type of entity.  Those entities (colloquially called pillars, even when that isn’t really true) are incredibly dangerous, and are capable of a lot of things that are currently beyond the abilities of anyone else, especially the Order.

The Pact of Pillars, specifically, is a group of pillars working together to attempt to slow, divert, or survive a predicted global apocalypse.  The exact nature of what they fear is unknown, but indications are that rather than being a single massive catastrophe, it will instead take the form of an overwhelming buildup of smaller events until a tipping point is reached.

The Pact operates by making use of a loophole in their inability to act outside of their specific pillar ideologies, by provoking each other into direct conflict at times and places where they believe others are more suited to act.  Their often conflicting natures appear to make inter-group communication sparse.

In terms of methods, the Pact of Pillars appears to operate on the assumption that any cost is worth it in pursuit of their goals.  To that end, everything up to mass casualties, including civilian ones, are on the table for them.  Even the ones that don’t specifically like it are unable or unwilling to find other ways to work.

Pillars have also been known to recruit or create agents to work for them, such as the Last Line Of Defense’s ‘daughters’ in the form of Camilles, or the Long Arm Of The Law’s controlling of members of structured law enforcement.

The Order of Endless Rooms has encountered multiple pillars at different times, almost always in opposition, sometimes leading to casualties.  Current efforts are underway to make peaceful contact with the Chain Breaker, and to restart conversation with The Right Person At The Right Moment.

Members of the Pact of Pillars should be considered incredibly dangerous under any circumstances.

Comments : 

James thinks that these guys all picked names that mostly reach for the best of humanity, but I think James is forgetting that they’re all shapeshifters.  We have no way of knowing how many of the pillars started out as kids.  And honestly, what kind of high schooler wouldn’t pick some edgelord name like ‘Necessary Evil But In Japanese’?  I can’t even lie to you and tell you I wouldn’t have done it myself.  But I can say that I have a theory about why some of them are so emotionally unstable, and it’s not just because they’re fighting their own brains. -JP, Rogue-

Two dead.  Impressive for people who don’t die.  Like how Blitzkrieg got cut in half and didn’t stay down.  But we know one thing that works on them.  Magic.  They’re strong, but camraconda gaze slows them down.  All we need is to find the right magic, to make sure they don’t come back.  And when we do, I’m going to kill her again for taking my brother away.  -Frequency-Of-Sunlight, Knight-

I think we met one of them once, actually.  The one called Walkabout, that’s only sort of mentioned sometimes.  They were cool?  Ran into them on a hiking trail and we all just talked for a while.  It was back before we adopted Nipi, and Path thinks that was on purpose; they didn’t make us do anything, just helped us figure out what we wanted while out in the middle of the forest.  So I guess what we’re saying - what Path wants me to say - is that if we have to pick one pillar to leave alive or something, maybe pick Walkabout.  -Daniel and Pathfinder, Knights-

People talk about these guys like they’re all that, and then you hear that they’re weak to camracondas and also maybe you can shoot them, and you wonder what the big deal is.  Then?  You stand in front of one, and you understand that they’re holding back.  Half of me wants to call it hippie bullshit, but it’s not, is it?  They don’t want to be what they are.  So they hold back, all the time, so they don’t lose whatever’s left of a person in there.  And no matter what we write down, none of us know what’s going to happen when one of them snaps.  -Simon, Paladin-

Dungeons :

The Order of Endless Rooms has access to, and in some cases operates as the sole caretaker of, a variety of dungeons.  This section will not go into detail about the magic each dungeon produces, instead focusing on an overview of dungeon composition, personality, and wildlife.  In every case, this is meant to be a broad look.  Even the dungeons that are new, either to us or to actually being dungeons, have a lot going on.  Listing all of it would be impractical.

“Dungeon” is the term used to describe a locus of magic.  Current understanding is that they are created by an inverse of the process that makes entities like the pillars, with a place ‘coming to life’ in some way.  The physical space of a dungeon is almost always either extradimensional or twisted in such a way that the ‘inside’ of a dungeon can be hundreds of miles across.

While dungeons are almost universally dangerous on a human scale, they are not instantly lethal.  Entering one is likely to be a risk, possibly a fatal one, but to date no dungeon has just dumped a potential delver into lava on entry.  Knowing what we know now, it seems likely that they are designed or forced in some way to be surmountable challenges.

Dungeons are aware and thinking, though their thought processes do not mirror human standard.  Examples of actual conversation with a dungeon are limited, but they appear to take much longer to build up momentum in terms of focusing on new ideas or thoughts, and iterate repeatedly on those same ideas once that momentum is developed.  Dungeons aren’t ’problem solvers’, essentially.  They are problem generators.

And yet it is the official stance of the Order of Endless Rooms that we think they’re cool anyway.

Officium Mundi (The Office) :

Status :

Active.  Known to continually experiment and iterate on both wildlife and magic.

Entrance :

Three known, two located, one accessible.  The main entrance is the east facing stairwell door on the fourth floor, and opens on a weekly rotation for a very narrow window of time that undergoes time dilation for those inside.

Demeanor :

Indifferent.  Appears to be engaged in a detente with the Order.

Primary Magic :

Officium Mundi’s main reward is magic that produces passive effects, mostly focused on an individual person, some focused on a specific place.  The rewards regularly follow patterns based on bureaucratic or legal definitions.  All of Officium Mundi’s rewards have multiple alternate uses, none of which are explained by the dungeon.

Additional Resources : 

An explanation of everything the Office contains and offers would take its own manual.  The short version is simpler.  Gemstone computer chips that grow their own programs.  Coffee based rituals that allow for duplicating or transmitting matter.  Dungeontech items that, despite being fragile, span a massive range of convenient magics.  Stat boosting coffee.  Non-stat boosting candy.  And on top of that, a self-restoring source of mundane furniture, clothing, and computer hardware.

Geography : 

The Office is, at minimum, forty miles deep, with at least three ‘floors’.  Exploration has been limited due to the fact that the Office is one of the densest dungeons the Order is aware of.  Even a hundred feet of progress can see multiple skirmishes, traps, hazards, or even simply walls put in the way of deeper exploration.

In general, the Office makes heavy use of cubicles to create its environments.  Beige and grey are common colors for the majority of the Office, and permutations on cubical layouts create hallways and pockets of space filled with desks, filing cabinets, water coolers, and potted plants.  The average snapshot of Officium Mundi will be recognizable as having taken parts from a modern day office space, even if the deeper one goes, the more those pieces are rearranged in increasingly elaborate patterns.

A seeming favorite pattern of the dungeon is the use of cubicle walls to form overhead archways, which then become increasingly claustrophobic until hallways are slowly turned into tunnels.  In the other direction, cubicle pods stacked on top of each other and often half-collapsed regularly form towers that stretch up toward the distant overhead ceiling.

Officium Mundi has several distinct biomes, starting with fields of seemingly mundane cubicles that continue to warp and shift the deeper one goes.  The ink ocean is a biome composed of a miles-long beach with multiple towers on its shore, facing an unknown size lake of printer ink.  The grasslands are a place where the normally hard-packed carpet is instead sprouted like grey wheat, with almost no walls but instead pieces of oversized furniture poking from the ground like boulders.  The canyons are a region where the dungeon seems to have been cut open in places, thousand foot drops revealing darker and more cramped lower spaces that are known to be more lucrative and equally more dangerous.  

The bathrooms are one of the less explored biomes, and consist of hundreds of floating platforms and flowing water suspended in a column that likely connects different actual floors.  The executive offices are parts of the dungeon where cubicles give way to full spaces with doors, secretary spaces, and hostile rooms.  Storage or janitor closets lead to tunnels that cut through major barriers that separate regions of the Office.  Even the overhead ceiling has its own entire ecosystem living on the backside of the suspended tiles and lights a hundred feet off the ground.

And of course, the break rooms.  Areas of the dungeon that are brightly lit, lined with coffee cup mines, often home to various roving life, and are themselves mobile, being one of the few parts of the dungeon that actively shift themselves slowly over time within the rest of the architecture.

Officium Mundi is many things, but lazy is not one of them.  It is incredibly large, and regularly shifts what it is doing with that space, forcing any delver that wants to go deeper to be prepared for anything.  

Inhabitants : 

The creations of Officium Mundi are as varied as its biomes, but broadly fall into three different categories.

Puppet life is the most dangerous, being technically intelligent, but absent an independent personality.  Controlled by the dungeon (while inside the dungeon), puppet life sometimes has the ability to take control of other wildlife around it, has no problem using the dungeon’s own magic offensively, and is lethally hostile to intruders.

Examples of puppet life include the laser-beam-armed 2.0s, the incredibly hard to fight tumblefeeds, camracondas, displacer cats, and some (but not all) stuffed shirts.  Of these examples, only camracondas and displacer cats are known to change significantly if removed from the dungeon.

More general wildlife in the dungeon includes creations like striders or tapiers, creatures composed of parts made from office supplies like staplers, tape dispensers, computers, and more.  The average Officium Mundi life is smaller than a human, but trends toward inorganic composition that makes fighting them without equipment challenging.

Wildlife in the dungeon is very often hostile, but not always.  This hostility is almost always driven by hunger or territorial instinct in some way, rather than malice, though that does not make these creatures any less dangerous.  Loud noises in the otherwise quiet dungeon are likely to attract swarms of dozens or even hundreds of smaller life forms, and while the average delver can likely fight ten staplers, they cannot fight a thousand.

Wildlife also regularly produces individuals that exceed the average intelligence of their species, forming individual personalities.  These individuals will often seek each other out and form their own kinds of teams, but while they can be communicated with and interacted with in positive ways, that isn’t a guarantee, and many of them are happy to ambush and rob delvers, even if they’re much more likely to show restraint.

The final form of life is more difficult to describe, but broadly, is entities that fill an ecological niche and do not react to delvers at all.  Decision trees, while their denizens are happy to trade with us for purple orbs, ultimately do not care if we are there.  The same is true for iLipedes, who are always passive, or at most curious, regarding interaction with delvers.  This form of life, unlike the second category, also never matures or grows beyond incredibly limited intelligence.

There are some outliers that are currently uncategorized, like the living wi-fi or radio signals that blanket regions of the dungeon, but understanding them is more a matter of time and investigation, rather than them being impossible to comprehend.  One thing about the Office life is that it is, universally, possible to understand.  Sometimes, like with camracondas, part of that understanding is being able to say ‘this part is where the dungeon steps in and powers things’, but all Office life still follows clear patterns in their biology and behavior.

The Office is also the source of assignment-class infomorphs, through a likely unintentional application of the purple orbs it produces as a loot drop.

Officium Mundi also produces a large amount of flora, often composed of paper or ink in different forms, though there are some unique examples.  Some plants are known to be able to ‘grow’ skill orbs, and can do so even if planted outside the Office, though the orbs they grow on Earth are stunted.  A large portion of the flora is dangerous in various ways, either too sharp or too volatile to be safe for anyone’s home garden.  Potted plants, notably, are not in this category, and are instead classified as wildlife.

Memetic Effects / Memeplexes : 

Officium Mundi uses its puppet life to deploy ‘totems’ both internally and in the mundane world, that have destructive effects on memory and record relating to anyone inside the Office.

The Order of Endless Rooms has ways to protect against or mitigate this effect, and it takes a reasonable amount of time measured in days rather than hours to take hold.  But someone who gets lost in Officium Mundi will not have help coming, because the dungeon will make them forgotten.

Comments : 

Describing the impact of this single dungeon is easy!  It’s everything.  Any world where we didn’t find it is a world where there’s no Order.  No other dungeons.  No any of our nonsense.  It’s not just the copier ritual, it’s that everything starts from here.  And it’s the only one I can’t go near.  It wasn’t even the dungeon itself, just one of its creations, doing her own thing.  But it doesn’t matter.  I know I’m being silly, but it doesn’t matter.  It took my best friend away from me in a way we’re still trying to put back together.  It took so much from me, and I’m still afraid of it happening again.  Maybe some day I can go back and see it the way I did the first time I walked through those doors, with the curved horizon and the fake ringworld look, and I’ll think it’s the most beautiful nonsense in the world.  But not yet.  -Sarah Moyle, Having A Great Time Thanks!-

Sarah’s being nice.  Fuck this place.  If Dave made a new dragon and it ate a hundred people, we wouldn’t pretend Dave was blameless.  The dungeon let that thing hurt us.  Maybe it’s why the Order exists, but it’s also where half the nightmares come from.  I’ll delve it, but I know how ugly it really is.  -Alex Wolly, Paladin-

Logistically the lynchpin of Order operations, though with enough logisticors stockpiled we can likely survive its loss if it were to happen.  I’ll admit that I’m biased, for multiple reasons, but I have a fondness for the cold calculation of the place.  -Karen Ward, Recovery-

Hey, everyone fill out my poll on the discussion server!  Does anyone not have trauma related to this place?  -Taste-Of-Air-

:(  -Rufus-

I see.  This was your dark place.  You won’t go back.  I will go instead.  I like the strange plants. -Rise, Delver-

It’s easy to hate things.  I think I’ve had enough of doing that for my life.  Maybe I won’t end up being quite so free from adventure and danger as I had expected, but I do still wish to be soft.  And I have a spot in my soul for the place that made me.  After all, if it hadn’t, what would I be?  And at the end of the list where we decide if things are good or bad, Officium Mundi did give me a self that can love and be loved, even if it took too much work to get from the start to here.  -TQ, Knight-

I think if you’d told me this was the center of the operation when you hired me, I wouldn’t have said yes, which probably says more about me than I want it to.  I was willing to join an independently wealthy secessionist militia, but would have been gun shy about the infinite office full of staplers.  -Evans, Shield Team Captain-

God I fucking love this place.  I love the stupid giant roombas, I love the magical overhead projector rituals, I love the caverns full of crystal water cooler tanks, I love the madness of it.  The danger of it, the exploration, the thrill of adventure, especially adventure that brought me closer to the strongest people I know.  Dungeons are a lot like natural wonders.  And just like natural wonders, you gotta be careful or they’ll fucking kill you.  Sometimes they’ll do it anyway even if you are careful.  That’s why we gotta keep going back.  Because someone has to face that danger, and I’d rather it be someone who loves it than someone caught up by this bullshit we call daily life now.  -Alanna Byrne, Response-

Look, I know there’s feelings and shit mixed up in this, but look at this from my perspective.  I’d just gotten hired, and was planning to take it easy and whip the kitchen into shape while spying on everyone, and then one random Tuesday James decided I should cater a safari into the fractal cubicle terror vortex.  What I’m saying is that we need actual pictures of dungeons framed at the Lair, to acclimate people.  Okay, no, that’s not what I’m saying, but I can’t say what I’m saying here.  -Nate Marselli, Rogue-

It is on my list of top five best smelling dungeons.  -Smoke, Recovery-

Akashic Sewer (The Sewer) :

Status :

Active, currently contained as part of suppression experiments.

Entrance : 

The Akashic Sewer is capable of moving its entrance within the boundary of the high school it is attached to.  The entrance manifests as a rusted security door with chipped blue paint, and will often be at the end of halls or stairs that did not exist before the entrance was placed.  The Akashic Sewer is a hunter-class dungeon that seals its entrance behind delvers, forcing them to progress through it until an exit can be found, at which point they are deposited through the same point of entry.

Demeanor : 

Violently hostile to life, including its own creations.  The Sewer is confirmed to actively communicate with some of its created life, and intentionally makes creatures that feel pain so that it can inflict that pain on them.  The most recent ‘reward’ the Sewer has begun creating is a parasitic life form that creates perverse incentives in its users.  It is not a kind place.

Primary Magic : 

The Akashic Sewer’s primary magic is personal and passive, taking the form of Lessons that offer growing stat boosts as an individual learns more in a specific category.  Lessons are incredibly powerful compared to most dungeon rewards, and appear to be a mistake on the Sewer’s part, as it previously killed the majority of its own delvers before it could come to realize that once a delver has acquired a single Lesson, there is no reason to ever return.

Additional Resources : 

Shaper substance is the term for the most powerful alternate resource.  A mildly radioactive mint-flavored fluid that allows for almost complete reshaping of a person’s body.  Comes with massive and painful backlash, which can be mitigated with education, planning, painkillers, and prepared support.  Other resources include a number of aggressive fungi and fluids that have unstable properties and are currently undergoing study.

Geography : 

The Akashic Sewer is constantly rebuilding itself, but is currently one of the smallest known dungeons.  The majority of it is empty dark halls lined in pipes and concrete, occasionally stopping at a room or containing an inset door to a side area.  Occasionally, dirt and clay gaps have been dug out of walls, leading to burrows and dens that dungeon life resides within.

Previously, these halls led in an almost straight line to an exit, with branches going functionally nowhere.  Now, the dungeon has begun creating more variants of rooms, iterating on ideas like bottomless pits, flooded areas, or points that require climbing surfaces made out of school furniture.  Branches still exist, but tend to loop back to the main tunnels rather than extending forever, which makes exploration more feasible.

The Sewer seemingly intentionally uses powerful smells offensively throughout its layout.  Rot, waste, and the overwhelming smell of Axe body spray in the flooded areas, are intermixed with more ‘pleasant’ smells like freshly cooked meat to create a deeply dissonant sensation while delving.  Delvers are advised to wear filter masks at all times.

The method of accessing the Lessons the Sewer offers involves finding places where questions - often disturbing but always academic and coherent ones - have been carved or written on the walls, and answering them correctly.  These questions are often contained behind locked doors, which themselves require accumulated kills to open.  Killing anything in the Sewer, or made by the Sewer, rewards points toward unlocking these doors.

Additionally, the Sewer has begun creating athletic challenges that generate a third type of reward, which is used to open the parasite ‘eggs’.  These eggs, and the Lesson lockers, both only appear at the final part of the dungeon, which is a large arena space in which the local life will challenge the potential delvers to some form of life or death event.  Usually direct combat.

Inhabitants : 

The Akashic Sewer has a wide variety of life forms, all of them dangerous.  Many of its inhabitants are chimera-style creations like ratroaches, including that species, as well as the more suicide bomber style crow-wasps, the ambush predator of the labratoad, and likely more.

In addition to that, the Sewer is fond of using rat parts in various permutations to create dangerous life forms.  Bulbous small quadrupeds with chemical blood that explode when killed, or hydras made out of bone and scaled up skulls, for example.

The majority of the Sewer’s life is non-sentient, instead being mindlessly aggressive.  However, some of the chimera life forms are capable of independent thought and emotion, created specifically by the Sewer as an internal supply of victims.

It is important to understand that while there are many ratroaches spawned by the Sewer that are capable of feeling, this does not mean they are safe to approach.  The self-aware ratroaches that survive the longest tend to be the ones that are willing to behave extremely violently.  Always approach with caution, even to the ratroaches who can be confirmed through emotion-based magic to be approachable at all.

Memetic Effect / Memeplexes : 

The Sewer does not employ memeplexes, but does utilize an infomorph variety called ‘factals’ that latch onto pieces of information and obfuscate or destroy it across all sources.  They struggle to damage living memories, but are especially effective at destroying records of names.  This can go as far as mild alterations to numbers and statistics, as names purged from a roster have the final count adjusted to account for their absence.

Comments : 

What am I supposed to say?  ‘Too many bugs, 0/10 stars’?  I don’t want to be glib.  This place is monstrous, and I don’t even know where to start in trying to fix it.  -James Lyle, Paladin-

I don’t know which part is worse, the river of hot meat, or the carpets of ceiling maggots.  Oh wait, I figured it out.  It’s that I have to compare those two things at all.  That’s the worst part.  -Thermoclese, Research/Delver-

The shaper substance is from here.  It could have fixed us at any time and it didn’t.  But it’s kind of funny that the Order stole us, and the tools to fix us, from the same place.  I know what a job is like when you want to take it from someone new and show them how to do it right.  -Glow, Townton resident-

Still think we should just blow up the building.  What’re they gonna do, sue us?  -Morgan Williams, Aspirant-

There are mushrooms at the bottom of the rivers that taste like fish!  I like the fish out here better.  -Kalik, Townton resident-

I wish it were possible to explore here sometimes without the constant violence.  It’s far worse than most other dungeons; the Sewer hates us.  But the Sewer also made novel forms of fungal life and who knows how many substances with unique properties.  Rescuing its created victims is a top priority, yes.  Retrieving Lesson books is a secondary goal, yes.  But it would be nice to be able to take samples in peace and not need to worry about being eaten by a giant rodent skull.  Also it smells bad.  If no one has said that yet. -Paper-And-Words, Research-

Clutter Ascent (The Attic, Clutter) :

Status : 

Active.  In communication with the Order.  Friendly.

Entrance : 

The upstairs ladder to the attic of a suburban home, as well as recently a second similar entrance to the apartment of paladin James Lyle and family.   Entrances are always open, and unobstructed.

Demeanor : 

Friendly, curious, and experimentative.  Many of Clutter’s creations are terrible ideas from a social or safety perspective, but it is easy to understand why someone who is both young and reaching for ways to help would find them compelling.

Primary Magic : 

Personal, shared, and passive.  Clutter Ascent produces lockbox ‘traps’ that, upon finding a solution, reward a ‘relationstick’ which allows two individuals to share an abstract resource.  Special books produced by the dungeon allow for connections to be split or bridged in novel ways.

Additional Resources : 

Minimal, unless you need mundane garden tools or non-existent board games with pieces missing.

Geography : 

Clutter Ascent is currently less than a mile across, making it the smallest known living dungeon.  Its space is taken up primarily by the kinds of mundane objects that you could find in a suburban attic or storage space, such as old furniture, tools, stored decorations, or containers of books, bedding or mementos.  This material, however, is often arranged into intentional mazes, with high walls and multiple layers for anyone who is light enough to not cause a collapse if they attempt climbing.

Currently Clutter contains three unique biomes.  The labyrinth section, which is the connective tissue between the castle region and the swamp.  The castle region is a pillow fort scaled up to the size of a circus tent, with its own internal space and even multiple floors.  Primarially made of soft blankets and pillows, it is absent even the normal risk of lockbox traps from the rest of the dungeon.

The swamp, in contrast, is a little sharper, but still lacks truly lethal threats.  Rainbow water flooding depressions in the floor, the swamp contains bookshelves and cabinets that grow thicker and more rough, like oddly shaped trees.  This region also has ‘hot springs’, with two currently known pools, both of which apply a cosmetic but permanent transformation to anyone that bathes in them for more than half an hour.

The Attic also appears to love sunsets and the cast light of sunbeams, which appear everywhere in its interior, even in places with no windows.  A known effect of these spaces is that resting or napping in a sunbeam is supernaturally rejuvenating, though it can’t heal wounds or disease.  Yet, at least.

Inhabitants : 

The Attic is populated mostly by stuff animals, which seem to appear at a rate of one or two a week.  Currently, stuff animals are created with intelligence roughly approximate to a five or six year old human child, and the Order’s standing policy is to fold them into fostering homes as soon as they are found.  Stuff animals can learn quickly, but don’t mature on their own, defaulting in isolation to a mindset of almost playful ‘predation’.

The Attic has made two other known life forms so far.  Flashlight snakes, which are actually capable and willing to harm unaware delvers, and reside in the trees of the swamp, and a single living raincloud.  As Clutter Ascent seems to understand that the raincloud (May) is being kept alive only through deliberate effort from the Order while we look for a long term solution, it has stopped making new life forms for the time being.

Memetic Effect / Memeplexes : 

Clutter Ascent previously employed a memeplex that created a sensation of dread in anyone attempting to enter it.  This is now defunct, and appeared to have no physical source.

Comments : 

Developmental psychology would say that Clutter Ascent is on the autism spectrum and strongly noncommunicative.  But measuring a dungeon like a human child is idiotic.  Instead, let us look at the known differences and similarities.  Clutter is more than capable of making choices for herself, as evidenced by the massive disparity in behaviors compared to other dungeons.  However, Clutter’s decisions are often slow to be implemented, and are based off information that isn’t internalized in the same way as even an exceptionally young human might.  Everyone’s favorite dungeon seems to view the world as a series of collected ideas, with each idea processed almost without context until delvers interact with things inside of her and bring context with them.  She is kind, because she has seen us being kind, but her idea of kindness is based on almost completely abstracted ideas of connection, memory, and history.  Clutter does not plan in the way we do, instead, she begins to set ideas in motion, and commits to them, with only some understanding of the long term implications.  Far from being callous, this is instead an expression of earnest engagement with emotional truth in a way that is legitimately too pure for a human to manage.  Pure in the sense of being distilled, not morally righteous.  Clutter Ascent is, to sum it up, different from us.  But she is like us in many of the ways that matter most, and we are learning from each other every day.  -Connie C., Recovery-

Your honor I love her.  -Sarah Moyle, president of the Attic Appreciation club-

I like to believe, in my darker moments when I need something to believe, that if I had never met any of you, I might have met Clutter.  I think that she could have broken my reality with the same unintentionally brutal efficiency, and I like to have faith that I could have learned the same lessons.  -Cam Marselli, Knight-

I love how her magic is zero-sum, but it’s also secretly not.  It’s equal, but not equitable, because people generate and need things in different amounts.  With something super abstract it can get hard to tell, but there’s plenty of people with ‘perception’ or ‘observation’ that have figured out that if one person has more senses, it doesn’t give those senses to the other person, just muffles them for you and boosts what your friend does have.  Same thing for using tools, like, the reflex coffee doesn’t stack on one person, but it kinda can when you’ve got two!  The magic is trying to be fair, but there’s no rule that says we have to be fair back.  -Anesh, Research-

You know what I’ve got to say here.  -Kiki-

Not the home-lived-in, but the home-always-waiting.  It makes me feel complicated, and confused sometimes.  I don’t think it loves me like any of the people out here do, not really.  But I do think it loves me.  And I think I love it back.  And Rufus says that it is trying that is important and so I am trying my best, and sometimes I show the Attic the plants we are growing and I think it likes them.  -Fredrick Umbra Armillary, botanist-

Route Horizon (Horizon, The Route)

Status : 

Active, currently semi-dormant.

Entrance : 

Stretch of freeway leading out of Townton, Tennessee.  The entrance threshold is an archway of scaffold and road signs, though historical investigation has shown that the road signs were added after the scaffold, with no record of that part ever having been constructed.  Entering the dungeon does not require a vehicle, but does require the correct mindset - even momentarily - of running away from something.

Demeanor : 

Route Horizon is one of the more complex dungeons, at least as far as is known.  It is protective of its “sibling”, Officium Mundi, and willing to take overt action to protect the other dungeon.  It is also actively dismissive of its own creations, seeming to mostly feel deliberate apathy toward the life it has made.  It is also willing to kill in its own defense, and specifically, kill civilians.

Primary Magic : 

Personal, projected, has a mana pool.  Route Horizon’s only known reward requires multiple parts to make work, but once running, is a steady source of utility.  Most of its spells are focused on the materials of motor vehicles and roadways, or the concepts of travel and motion.  There are outliers, but those themes dominate the known spellbook.

Additional Resources : 

Various forms of gasoline are found with the Route, all of which have beneficial effects on the vehicles or drivers of those vehicles that use them.  The most common is one that heals the consuming vehicle.  While attempts to game this effect have mostly failed, it is still incredibly useful from a sustainability angle.  The Route also produces enchanted car parts that are more durable than their mundane counterparts and add magical effects to any vehicle they are installed in.

Geography : 

Route Horizon is massive.  Easily thousands of miles across, possibly more, with spatial distortions around its non-paved areas that obfuscate the true size.  It has two false suns that hang overhead providing light and heat, and a day-night cycle that operates on its own internal logic.

The majority of Route Horizon is either paved highway road, or it is sandy dirt and the occasional rock stretching on around the road.  This environment goes on for so long in places that not having a vehicle makes delving functionally impossible.  Even points of terrain, such as areas where the road winds past rock cliffs or over canyons, do not change the distances involved.

However this is not everything.  Points of interest dot Route Horizon, both near the road and in the deep desert.  Parking structures packed with derelict cars and security beasts hide car parts and Velocity gears.  Gas stations have buried tanks of magical fuel and their own internal mazes required to get access.  Occasionally, billboards on the roadside mark points where the road diverges in space, creating ‘checkpoints’ for drivers that will want to make a quicker exit later.

And out in the desert, mechanic caverns act as spawning areas for the living cars of the dungeon.  Webs made out of powerlines stretch for miles and act as the nests of the tanker spiders.  Old and weathered farmhouses and barns sit in the middle of nowhere waiting to be poked through for small rewards.  And train tracks cross back and forth over the dry dirt, constantly being created by one form of life and fed on by another.

Travelling the Horizon is an exercise in enduring boredom.  As with driving in general, it’s mostly long stretches of nothing followed by brief bursts where everything is trying to kill you all at once.  It’s just a little more literal here.

Inhabitants : 

The Horizon has relatively little life compared to other dungeons, but what it does have can largely be split into two categories.

Vehicle life is scaled to hunt down cars and trucks.  It starts large, and gets larger, with actual trains being something that’s been encountered before.  These life forms are all predators, and while it’s unclear if they’re being puppeted like with Officium Mundi’s most hostile life, it is clear that they will all aggressively target and hunt delvers when they spot them.

The other variety of life is anything that can’t cross massive stretches of road.  Usually the metal security constructs in various buildings, or the camcondors that soar overhead, this style of life behaves more like animals, despite their often magical abilities.  Sometimes aggressive and often territorial, it is possible to navigate through encounters peacefully simply by keeping your distance and making no sudden moves.

The Horizon is also where navigators originate from, but despite forming from loot drops when native life is killed, almost nothing that lives in the Horizon uses navigators itself.  The exception is the train construct, which has a host of possibly hundreds of the infomorphs around it.

Memetic Effect / Memeplexes : 

The Horizon has a focused memeplex that covers most of the United States and parts of Mexico that prevents the sharing of information about itself.  An individual becomes inhibited from telling someone else about any given fact in the Horizon unless they actually believe the other person already knows.  So while teams of delvers can discuss and plan uninhibited, they would find it difficult to do so with new members or outsiders.  This effect can be circumvented through sufficient abstraction or coded language, by having an assignment or authority screen from the relatively weak effect, or by simply making the information public.  The Order avoids this effect predominantly due to the fact that all information about the Route is on our public server, which means everyone knows about it, creating a ‘default assumption counter’ to it except in niche circumstances.

Comments : 

And what a horizon it is.  -Sunrise-In-Clouds, Delver-

I learned to drive here.  I don’t think I should use that skill anywhere else though.  I don’t think most humans would appreciate it.  -Arrush, Knight-

The mixed magic system is kinda frustrating, but this was the first place that gave us a mana pool.  It’s a mana pool that means I have to go outside to recharge it, but whatever.  We can copy the spells a billion times and that’s sorta all that matters, but I’m still waiting for one that lets me fuse with a car like in that one anime.  -Momo, Witch-

I am serious, no one expand their Velocity pool until I figure out what the secret bonus gland it installs in you is doing.  -Deb, Medical-

Big points to this place for making me into a car girl.  I don’t really care about cars that much, outside of dungeon nonsense?  But now that I know how to talk about engine assemblies and scrounging through junkyards, I’ve got this magical way to connect to a bunch of people like it’s a cheat code.  You tell a fifty year old guy that you’ve got a project car, and that’s it, you’re getting a free coffee out of that conversation.  -El Chase, Knight-

Love a dungeon that disguises how many biomes it has!  I still need to see the engine caves, but just from what we do know, it’s got three kinds of buildings, those isolated farms in the middle of nowhere, trains (love a good train!), cliffs, overpasses, and El says there’s cities deeper in!  But it all takes so long to get anywhere, everyone thinks it’s just road.  If the world doesn’t end I’ve got a petition from the navigator union to take two months in there to see all of it.  -Harriet, Knight-

Winter’s Climb (The Mountain) : 

Status :

Active.  Editorializing.

Entrance : Unique among actively delved dungeons from the Order, the Climb makes its own threshold for its entrance.  Creating an archway out of what looks like ball lightning, the Climb will lash out and draw in anyone that gets near the point of its illusory form on Earth.  The facts that it seems annoyed with us sometimes, but also keeps letting us in, makes it likely this process is autonomic.

Demeanor : 

Harshly hostile, mildly sarcastic.

Primary Magic : 

Personal, projected, has a mana pool, repeatable.  The Climb gives a progressively deeper mana pool of Breath the farther up it you go, as well as giving a delver more spell slots.  Finding the books for those spells is up to you, however.  Spells from the Climb are often heavily themed around temperature, weather, physical struggle, and the use of ice or snow to create things.  The dungeon also produces wands that store, modify, and amplify its own spells.

Additional Resources : 

The Climb contains a number of unique plants, some edible, that aren’t native to Earth. It also produces large quantities of gold.

Geography : 

The Climb is a mountain, or series of mountains, of unknown size and height.  The slopes begin relatively easy to traverse, but quickly become perilous and steep, with constantly shifting high winds and snowstorms adding to the problem.  The Climb is one of the few dungeons where the ambient temperature is itself a threat, starting out at 3-5 degrees Celsius, and dropping consistently from there the farther up one goes.

While the Climb has points of interest, such as shattered frozen lakes or even buildings, it doesn’t exactly have noticeable biomes.  Instead, the degree of problem posed by further progress continues to rise the farther in - and up - a delver gets.  Slopes become switchbacks, rocks that are almost steps become slanted cliffs, and the storm goes from light snowfall to spikes of razor sharp ice targeted on heat signatures.

There are points of interest though.  Caves set into some of the cliffs that hide strange dungeon art, or puzzles leading to spellbooks or troves of gold.  Buildings, often looking like university buildings, contain areas that can be secured for resting, though they often have their own form of traps that lean on gravity and water manipulation.

The Order has never gotten past the ten thousand foot mark of ascension, as no matter what ‘map’ the Climb puts delvers into, that point is always met with a thirty foot gap in the air before the next slope continues.  Like someone cut straight through the mountain and it forgot to fall.

Inhabitants : 

The standard life of the dungeon behaves quite a lot like semi-intelligent wildlife.  Creatures made out of snow or wood will harass delvers, but ultimately back off if they don’t manage to take down anyone in a team quickly.  Ambushes are frequent, but can be completely nonlethal if caught early.

The dungeon does produce several oddities though.  The snow creatures are actually made by living wood figures in the dungeon itself, with their bodies looking like wooden skeletons and their behavior being a constant slow shaping of more snow beasts.  The dungeon also has bears in it.  As far anyone can tell, they are normal North American brown bears.  Which is odd for a dungeon located in Australia.  This is also the dungeon that produces obligate friends (originally called third men), and these creatures will gravitate toward the delvers they appear near, seeking to drain resources and cause mild friction, though so far, never actually engaging in violent action.

Finally, this dungeon’s form of dragon act as guardians for blank spellbooks.  They are incredibly dangerous, looking like a cross between a riding lawnmower, pieces of stone garden ornaments, and a snake.  With a breath weapon that inflicts emotional overload on anyone that observes it, the ability to escape a fight by flight and return to ambush a party later if they think they’re losing, and general heavy durability and bulk, this incarnation of dragon are very dangerous for an unprepared party.  They will also attack on sight, but spend most of their time sleeping, and so don’t tend to see delvers often.

Memetic Effect / Memeplexes : 

The Climb produces a persistent effect that blankets most of Australia, and makes planning for the Climb more challenging.  The more time someone is exposed to the memeplex, the more likely they will forget various forms of equipment or options they have, with a heavy focus on scrambling plans and memories relating to communication gear.

Plans made outside the effect maintain mental momentum when someone enters the area, but it is helpful to have an authority or assignment deliberately shielding against it.  Like with the Horizon, the effect is ‘weak’, but is also so subtle that it is hard for even infomorphs to notice it unless prompted.

Comments : 

The ultimate team building exercise!  Unless you hate the cold!  But seriously, this place is neat.  We’ve been trying to map out the different places it lands teams for a while, and I think we’re onto something with how the different names it calls you when you exit are part of the cause.  My team always gets the same map, for example, but it does change when we escort new people.  Or if someone who’s done other stuff in the Climb joins.  If it’s true, this means there’s a ‘pure snow’ version of the Mountain in there, just for groups that are only first timers.  I wonder if it’s better, or worse?  -Ethan, Delver-

Saying ‘some of the plants are edible’ feels like someone really wanted to gloss over the fact that some of the plants create stable high yield plasma cells as just, like, a fruit.  Oh, those ones aren’t the edible ones.  Don’t eat those.  -Mark Diaz, Knight-

The Climb likes to show us its fanart about some kind of cycle of destruction and recreation.  The imagery is all over the place, if you look, but I think we might have found the first example for the Order anyway.  Half the time it’s easy to play it off like it’s the Office or something, randomly spawning posters or whatever.  But if you look?  All the doodles and carvings and murals, they’re all about an age before this one, and how this era of magic is heading for a collapse too.  Don’t like it!  I don’t believe it, but I also don’t like it!  -Alice Dell, Scout-

I’ll take the magic, but I’m not going back in the damned cold.  You people are insane.  Adventure in something normal, like the sentient angry parking garage.  -Azalea, Delver-

Oh, this one had a weird interaction with the domain magic my girlfriends and I use!  It’s not a big deal, it’s just that the spell backlash isn’t just in our bodies, it’s in the domain sphere too.  Just a little bit!  But it’s still cool, and probably means we should figure out how to get people into our dungeon soon, huh?  -Astra, Delver-

Ceaseless Stacks (The Stacks, The Library) : 

Status :

Alive, but mostly dormant.

Entrance : 

The back stairwell door in a northern Texas small town library.  Open for a brief window weekly.  Similar time dilation to Officium Mundi makes other entrances suspected.

Of note is that the mundane structure of the library that surrounds the entrance is identifiable as “dungeon” to known methods, though whether the Stacks created the building around its entrance, or simply took it over, is unknown.  It is likely to be the latter though, as dungeons aren’t known to create ‘themes’ from scratch.

Demeanor : 

Unknown.  Appears apathetic to delver engagement.

Primary Magic : 

Personal, passive.  There are four known loot drops from various sources within the Stacks, and two suspected additional ones.  All of them improve learning rate in random fields within their purview, and intentionally or not, they also offer a relative boost to other forms of magic within those same fields.  There is no known upper limit on learning ranks.

Additional Resources : 

The Ceaseless Stacks has a number of material oddities that are currently being studied for practical applications, including large amounts of liquid paper, and too-wireless computer hardware.  It is also a source of magic items that can produce a variety of balanced local area effects.

Geography : 

The Stacks’ main terrain is bookshelves, usually not floor to ceiling but often tall enough to completely block lines of sight.  Rows and aisles within the Stacks are mostly spatially accurate, but dead ends show up frequently where they shouldn’t, as do staircases.  Aisles between bookshelves can run for hundreds of feet, sometimes with curves that obfuscate their true length.

The other common area that shows up in the Stacks are mezzanines or small balconies.  Often containing information desks or other computer stations, arranged piles of books, seating, and various forms of lighting, these spaces are placed in otherwise open areas with larger staircases leading up or down into other parts of the dungeon.  Typically it is difficult to visually understand if there are additional stairs past the first level, as even in open air areas the dungeon places lighting fixtures and glass mimicking windows to create optical illusions.

Because of both of these features, determining how large the Stacks is has been a challenge.  As with the Office, expeditions deeper into it encounter progressively denser challenges, which slows progress.  It is entirely possible that the dungeon is only a couple miles across.

The biomes of the Stacks are varied, but often the shifts in the local spaces are difficult to notice.  The dungeon changes the material of its shelves constantly from place to place, with multiple colors and styles of wood, plastic, and metal all being used.  Wrought iron display stands and brightly colored plastic shelving are both used, sometimes directly next to each other, though within an area the decor of the dungeon tends to be homogenous.

When the shape and function of the spaces change it is easier to notice.  Lakes of white liquid paper create white noise that masks other sounds around them, swamps where the shelves grow like trees have floors pitted with sinkholes of soggy paper, and spires of stacked books that rise through open spaces between floors stand unnaturally sturdy and act as nests for various dungeon creatures.

Beyond that, there are also two kinds of ominous floating stone object that should be watched for.  Twenty foot diameter globes show up in places where multiple paths through the shelves converge and are often home to some of the more dangerous creatures of the dungeon.  And the toruses are usually hidden behind secret passages through the shelves, and provide a source of the dungeon’s magic items.

The Stacks also regularly employs open-ended puzzles that test knowledge of language and cryptography, as well as patience for searching a potentially dangerous dungeon for keys, with its most powerful artifact so far having been kept behind a heavy door locked with what amounted to a magical crossword.

There is one additional biome known to exist deeper in the Library’s lower levels, that seems to be some form of aquatic area.  Humidity and the sound of rushing water can be heard, but all discovered access points are cramped and dark choke points, so exploration has yet to commence.

Inhabitants

The Stacks produces a wide range of life, the majority of which is hostile well beyond territorial instincts or hunger.

Library wildlife tends toward dormancy until disturbed, with only a few creatures inside the dungeon participating in its ecosystem.  Life forms are most often constructed out of paper or ink, and while some of them display tactical intelligence, attempts at communication consistently fail.  Most Stacks life is venomous.

Dungeon life from the Stacks often display secondary abilities beyond simple durability and toxicity, including the magic of the librarians to alter positions, momentum, and even near-future events based on their storytelling.  The interdictionary and the ‘midnight baroness’ (or globetrotter, due to their natural habitat) are another pair of dangerous examples, with both of them capable of creating spatial twists that cause all hallways to lead back to the same point.  Though one uses this to stall, while the other uses it to keep prey in a fight.

Not all life in the dungeon is hostile, however.  While communication as equals remains out of reach, there are some Stacks creatures that behave with either predictable neutrality, or even affection, toward delvers.  The hermit-crab like step shell is an example of an often friendly bit of life from the dungeon.  And while the ink crows are never happy to see someone, they’re also never violent.

Overall, the Ceaseless Stacks is an example of one of the more wild dungeons that the Order regularly delves.  It is also one of the only ones that might be making intentional puns, but it could be a coincidence that it has a paper tiger in it.

Memetic Effect / Memeplexes : 

The Ceaseless Stacks does not appear to employ memeplexes.  However, this is unverified, and a local and possibly former delver has informed the Order that dozens, perhaps hundreds of people have died in the dungeon.  And there are no records of those missing persons.  But ongoing tests have shown no degradation in records regarding the dungeon, its dangers, or the people that have died or been lost in it.  It is possible that whatever memeplex effect is at play is intermittent, or working on a different angle than is normal for dungeons trying to mask their presence.

Comments : 

Would you believe me if I told you that it never occurred to me to stop working at the library?  The… the normal library.  Not the Library.  You know.  It’s just, sometimes I’ll hear other delvers say things about their pasts, their lives, and I think to myself, you poor bastards, for it to get this bad.  But sometimes I can see it.  Sometimes I step into the Stacks, and once we’re past that defensive perimeter of the world’s most toxic fanfiction, I look up at these spaces, all glass and flickering lights, all those books, even if they’re not real books, they might be, and they’re just waiting there to explore.  And I feel like I could do this forever.  And I think, if I didn’t already feel that way when I walked into my library, then I’d understand a little bit more when someone says they’d rather be dead than give this up. -Vadik, Delver.  And also librarian.-

Before I was reshaped, I loved the Stacks because it smelled nice.  Now, it smells… different.  Less overwhelming?  Almost choking a little.  But underneath that, it’s still nice paper and old leather and everything is clean.  Oh!  Maybe now I can tell everyone I know what nostalgia is! -Arrush, Knight-

It is easy to entice me into this place because I feel smug satisfaction every time I solve a puzzle and when I solve the puzzles here I am also rewarded with maps and orbs. -TQ, Knight-

It was a week after I got hired that someone asked if I wanted to go on a dungeon delve.  And then a month before I actually got to, just cause no one wanted me to die I guess.  That was nice.  Anyway, it was a Climb delve, and I think I split the time there between nearly dying to the cold, and complaining about the cold.  After, half our team swapped to a warmer dungeon, even Summit, which feels ontologically incorrect, but I don’t know assignment biology.  Anyway, every time Shallah and I get in trouble in the Stacks, we just say ‘at least it’s not cold’, and somehow it all just feels better.  Love the Stacks for that at least.  Love Shallah for different, non-Stacks reasons!  -Jesse Porto, Delver-

Watcher-Under-Stone says I can’t visit yet, but this is the one I want to go to when I’m ready to explore.  It’s hard to separate wanting to go because I think I have to, and because I want to, but the Library feels perfect for me.  It isn’t very good at making people rich or powerful like the others, but it is pretty and everyone says it smells good.  It can be where I start.  A dungeon just for being in a dungeon, for fun.  That sounds nice.  -Lavant, aspirant-

Pylon Motoric (Pylon, Pylons) :

Status : 

Active, actively communicating with its own created life.  Paired with Verdigris Venture in a way unique to both dungeons.

Entrance : 

The Pylon has a minimum of six entrances, likely more, in the form of elevators or contained stairwells, scattered throughout North Smiths, Utah.  Its entrances are split between itself and Verdigris Venture, with each dungeon being the one that all entrances lead to at any given time.  The entrances are always open to one dungeon or the other, with the Pylon consistently being located downward.

Unlike other dungeons, the rate that time passes in the dungeon compared to outside while the entrance is open is variable, and not tied to whether the entrance is open.  Actual factors are unknown, but time dilation never exceeds a four to one ratio, so an hour long delve can translate to anywhere between fifteen minutes to four hours outside. 

Demeanor : 

Pylon Motoric is one of the more complicated dungeons.  It appears to have active plans that include cooperation with humanity, and the ability in some way to communicate these plans to its native life.  None of its plans are overtly hostile, barring deception, but the collateral damage caused by its influence is difficult to ignore.

Primary Magic : 

Personal, passive.  The Pylon’s system of providing levels to physical actions is almost always useful in some way, though it becomes more useful if a delver has foreknowledge and can focus those levels where they want.  The Pylon’s milestone system functions like a tech tree in a lot of ways, with any single entrance into the dungeon only being capable of unlocking a single milestone.  Certain milestones, usually lower value ones, are often given priority.  And more complicated or rewarding milestones are gated behind multiple requirements before they are even an option.

Additional Resources : 

The Pylon is a source of renewable metal, technically, but that is practically unlikely.  The most important thing it generates are ‘cars’, which are really just car shaped chassis, that produce magical effects when their internal controls are properly used.  The majority of these cars with known effects are transmutative in nature, and extracting some of them from the dungeon is a high priority.

Geography : 

Pylon Motoric, at least near its various entrances, is a series of mostly concrete parking structure towers.  A given tower can be upwards of a mile tall as determined by triangulation, but that is deceptive.  Within a tower, ramps and corridors can be spatial distortions that lengthen the actual on-foot traversal space required.

The interior of the towers is filled with parked vehicles, usually in the designated spaces, but with enough of them in odd positions that blocked paths and intentional obstructions are common.  The concrete of the walls is not uniform, often taking on incredibly elaborate geometric shapes, while the floors tend to remain smooth unless they are actively damaged, or trapped.

Looking down from the side of a tower, it is possible to see relatively clearly into other nearby structures, and to the rooftops of the structures below.  The dungeon is heavily covered in dark smog, so long distance visibility is limited, including both up and down.  It is possible the dungeon has further layers in both directions, with the rooftops of the shorter visible structures leading to depths that have their own layer of rooftops below.

Exits from the towers are common, with skybridges between them often being larger than their mundane counterparts.  Individual towers will regularly have elevators that are not connected to the dungeon’s breach back to the mundane world, though they appear inoperable so far.  Exterior stairs also exist, but often curve around their buildings, and do not extend more than a few floors, though they do appear to usually skip the spatial distortions that the larger ramps tend to have.

Despite the smog and lack of natural light, the dungeon is not absent plant life.  There are multiple forms of moss and crawling ivy that grow within the dungeon, though they tend to be focused inside individual structures, with the majority of structures being barren of greenery.

At least one structure within the dungeon, several miles from any entrance, is occupied by the Arkist faction, where they are stockpiling supplies and humans in stasis against their predicted end of the world.  This structure is guarded, and while it is not a heavy guard by the Order’s standards, it is more practical to simply avoid it during delves.

Finally, the dungeon’s tethering to the Garden has created a situation where there are occasional breaches between the two.  These breaches last for hours, sometimes days, and act exactly like stepping into the other dungeon, which means they do trigger milestone acquisition.

Inhabitants : 

Pylon life is mostly animalistic.  Often aggressive, but rarely actively spiteful.  The majority of life that the Pylon creates appears to be ambush hunters, both its sophont and non-sophont life forms.  There is no visible ecosystem within the Pylon, but interactions between native life is not uniform.

The Pylon does not appear to make puppet life, with even its most complex and intelligent creations being engaged with by the dungeon as partners, or perhaps civilians, rather than tools.

Many species within the Pylon have their own forms of magic, whether that is the alternate form of basilisk that the barriconda produces, the kinetic stockpiling of the rat goblins, or the incredibly effective shapeshifting of the oilslicks.  The Pylon seems to have a tendency to pair more flexible or potentially dangerous magics with higher intelligence, with creations like the tooth-filled parking cones or the exceptionally belligerent rubber pangolins lacking any kind of innate magic.

Due to the crossover with the Venture, it is also possible to see foreign life in the dungeon, though this tends to be uncommon the farther from a breach you are.  Venture life that has entered the Pylon does have its own milestones associated with it, with the magic of both dungeons becoming ‘sticky’ at the intersection of their spaces.

Memetic Effect / Memeplexes : 

The Pylon and Garden collectively emanate a memeplex that actively rewrites the minds of people within them, causing a sense of paranoia and disgust at the thought of sharing information with anyone that does not already know about the dungeon.  As with the Horizon, this can be circumvented by simply creating a default assumption of dungeon knowledge, but unlike the Horizon, this effect is only localized in its process.  It progresses almost as a form of precise schizophrenia, with unshielded individuals becoming more and more resistant to discussing the dungeon, even with other delvers, the longer they remain within the radius.  Fortunately, that radius is only about three miles from every dungeon entrance.

Comments : 

Oh boy!  I can’t wait to level up in swallowing!  How often, seriously, am I ever going to need that?  Answer without saying something Youtube would censor you for.  -Juan, Recovery-

What an excellent example.  The dungeon has I think tried to fill in gaps as it goes, and so its system has strange wrinkles and ridges and is also maybe stupid.  It won’t cover everything cleanly.  But it is trying anyway.  I would respect it if it had not given me ranks in blinking, which I think is linguistically wrong.  -Velocity-Of-Wind, Researcher-

Is it bad that part of me wishes the levels in inputting were actually making me better at video games, and not just better at pressing the buttons?  Because I have to relearn my own stupid fingers every time I get another one and Dawnners is kicking my ass at Guilty Gear in the meantime.  -Morgan Williams, Aspirant-

This place is so unnerving to move around in.  It’s got my least favorite things from a bunch of other dungeons, just turned down a lot.  It’s not the Sewer, but it stinks.  You don’t have to be totally silent, but every step is way louder than you think it should be.  It’s not the Climb, but it is chilly and you do have to climb too much.  I dunno, the magic is great, but this is one of those times I wish I could do it as a navigator so I don’t have to actually feel all of it, you know?  -Max, Response-

I like the rats from this one.  They feel like us, only without a lot of the pain.  And if they ever start delving, I will finally not be the shortest in every group!  -Ishah, Knight-

I am a rat from this one!  I do not miss it.  Cold and hungry in the Place.  Could be worse.  Like it out here better.  -Annabell, recent ratling immigrant-

Verdigris Venture (The Garden, Venture)

Status : 

Active, paired with Pylon Motoric.

Entrance : 

See Pylon Motoric’s entry.

Demeanor : 

Unknown.

Primary Magic : 

Personal, projected.  Many of the spells that the Garden produces are almost all of minimal use, unless a caster is willing to invest significant time into improving them.  But with that time, their potency expands significantly.  Spells from the Garden do not have an easily understood consistent theme, with effects from matter creation to transmutation to teleportation all showing up in a lot of different forms.  This confusing mix is made even worse by the fact that higher advancements of spells often add whole new effects.

Additional Resources : 

Minimal, and mostly mundane.  The Garden doesn’t appear to produce magic items, and while it has plant life, most of that plant life is mundane or mimicking those same mundane plants.  Several points in the Garden offer endless sources of clean water, but there isn’t a good way to extract it even if that were required.

Geography : 

The Verdigris Venture is divided into cells of space, each one between a few hundred to a few thousand feet across, ranging in shape from rectangular to octagonal.  The dungeon has an open sky, often clear blue or covered in a sunset, though it is universally perceived as being at ‘the wrong angle’.  Despite having sunsets, there is no sun.  The true size of the dungeon is unknown.

Inside a cell, the Garden maintains curated environments of ground cover, fresh barkdust and topsoil, and a number of cultivated plants.  Structures and statuary are common, often in clean lines that leave plenty of open space.  Paths of gravel or asphalt tend to lead to different gates, and the walls around the individual zones are composed of brick or other stone, with gates being made most commonly of wrought iron.

Between its cells, in the gaps where the walls don’t perfectly line, up, the Garden is filled with massive and incredibly durable tangles of vines.  These vines have thorns that are capable of slicing through most Order armor without effort, and while it is unknown if they are in every gap space between the walls, they are in most of the ones that have been found.  Climbing over walls is possible, and in many cases even easy, but it is difficult to tell if a wall is fully fused with the neighboring region, or if it will have a potential hazard in it, until you actually get to the top.  Delvers are advised to exercise caution.

While the Garden has not been explored deeply enough to find clearly definable biomes, it does have certain features that show up with regularity.  Tunnels beneath an area, mostly dirt but held up by roots and sometimes wooden supports, and consistent sources of treasures.  Gazebos are common, and their presence almost always signals that a cell contains a puzzle in it somewhere.  Fountains, specifically large fountains, are often central to the cells they’re located in, and are gathering points for dungeon life.  And the occasional cell that appears more like a cultivated field or community garden has been known to appear, usually with a scarecrow somewhere in it.

The divided cells of the Garden aren’t statically placed.  At irregular intervals, even when observed, clusters of the dungeon will shift or rotate, which rearranges which gates in the walls match up to which cells.  This motion sometimes is a cluster of three to five cells rearranging, which is easy to feel, but there are also very large ‘bands’ within the dungeon, composed of estimated hundreds of cells, that are on loops.  Their movement is less noticeable, though still possible to catch if a delver is standing at the edge of a cell when it starts moving.

Inhabitants : 

The life of the Garden spans a wide range of attitudes and forms, but broadly, falls into one of three categories.

Wildlife contains creatures, sometimes very large creatures, of limited intelligence.  Garden life bears similarities to Earth life in some ways, but while the dungeon makes use of recognizable features like fur or hooves, it isn’t specifically creating chimeras like other dungeons are.  The life forms it makes are often hostile, especially on first sight, but with enough peaceful exposure, some of them can be calmed down and even domesticated.  So far, none of the life in this category has been observed to grow in intelligence as other dungeon life has been known to, but it is still early.  This category contains the often relaxed ‘pillboar’ life, which is neither a boar nor a pillbug, and also the more dangerous winged goats that, despite looking far more humanoid, are far stupider and more aggressive.

The sophont category for Garden life is limited to one known species, the crocamaws.  The members of this species currently under the care of the Order all talk about their home as being semi-aquatic, and farther into the dungeon than we’ve managed to get so far.  There may be other species, however, and the presence of one means that we should always be careful to check whenever possible.

The final category is something that appears unique to the Garden, and is ‘ecological niche fillers’.  Often completely harmless, the Garden has produced a wide range of life that fills the roles that mundane insects do, though they are quite often strange.  Pollen flies, trowel worms, and more, all serve no defensive purpose and seem to exist just to naturally keep the garden spaces curated.  Samples of this form of life can be taken for study, and none of the smaller creations have ever been venomous or poisonous to any of the Order’s species.

The wildlife of the Garden contains a unique weakness to capsaicin, with concentrated pellets of it being destructive to them.  This also applies to crocamaws, and they should be treated as effectively having a fatal allergy at all times.

Life from Pylon Motoric will sometimes cross the breaches between the two dungeons, and is much more likely to wander deeper into the dungeon than the reverse situation, making encounters possible even when a breach hasn’t been located.  As with the inverse, the magic of both dungeons sticks to migratory life, which make it possible for delvers to secure spell slot coins or even spellbooks by engaging - peacefully or otherwise - the creatures that have crossed over.

Memetic Effect / Memeplexes : 

The Garden shares the same paranoia-inflicting memeplex as the Pylon.

Comments :

Okay, no, the ecosystem creatures aren’t poisonous, sure, I’ll give you that.  But holy shit, the pollen flies are definitely capable of triggering seasonal allergies, so start sucking down benadryl before you go delving if that’s a problem for you.  -El, Knight-

Yes, I am stubborn.  Yes, I am foolish.  Yes, this problem persists by my own will alone.  Yes, no one has said these things to me, I say them to myself, stop worrying.  All of that is irrelevant to just how satisfying it is, to have at least one dungeon that is consistently and comfortably wheelchair accessible.  Is it so much to ask that there be magical places that can be visited without the need to climb stairs?  The Venture says it is not.  Even the gazebos will frequently have gentle slopes.  This one, I think, I like.  -Indira Mahasahra, Recovery-

One day I will make it back to where I was stolen from.  I want to feel the water there again, and know if the faces I remember are still alive, and be who I was before I was kidnapped.  And then when I go home maybe some of them will want to come with me.  -Lavant, Lair resident-

The scarecrows are pretty harsh critics.  You can game their poetry contest with a haiku, but they actually know that haiku is supposed to be more than just syllable count, so maybe study up on your historical poetic forms before a delve.  -Alanna Byrne, Knight-

The sunsets are nice.  More dungeons need sunsets. -Fredrick Umbra Armillery, Gardener-

I don’t really want to go back, and some people think I’m weird for it.  It isn’t bad, but it isn’t nice, and I don’t care about it.  It’s just a place, it doesn’t like us, it didn’t help when I needed it to, or when I was crying, or when I was taken.  I just don’t want to think about it, because it isn’t home anymore, and I don’t remember if it ever was at the start anyway.  -Manon, junior scout-

Compiled Wastes (Wastes, Other Office)

Status : 

Active.

Entrance : 

Confusing.  Always open, the elevator at the back of a Saskatoon office park building takes delvers either in a group or alone into the first floor of the Wastes.  Whether it goes up or down is based on factors that are currently unknown.  Nor is it clear if there’s a difference.  Reports say it doesn’t change once it picks, but how does it pick for groups?  A very confusing threshold.

Demeanor : 

Unknown.

Primary Magic : 

Personal, spatial.  Clearing floors of the Wastes by reaching the exit leading farther into the dungeon creates a tattoo on the neck or closest analog.  The tattoo is paired to a magical demiplane, a bubble of otherwise unconnected space that can be accessed by regularly spawning portals, and each floor cleared adds both a portal spawn condition, and another item or space to the demiplane.  Items in the demiplane can be magical in their own right, and are often not tethered to that space.

Additional Resources : 

Practically none.

Geography : 

Exploration thus far has been limited, but the short version is this.  If Officium Mundi is a corporate ideal of an office run rampant, then the Compiled Wastes is the actual sensation of having to work in an office that kind of sucks.

Hallways are cramped, doors are frequently stuck or blocked, vents produce smoke, lights flicker and fail, and the environment shows a number of forms of ‘damage’.  Rooms are often filled with cubicles and desks, packed so closely that it impedes movement, and the doors or halls between areas regularly have fallen shelving slowing progress.

While there has been no observation of unique biomes, certain repeating elements include:  rooms where the lights will regularly go completely out for stretches of time, rooms with massive floor to ceiling windows covered entirely in ash or dirt, and rooms with uneven floors that shift underfoot as progress is made.

It is also known that the dungeon will ‘hide’ secret rooms inside seemingly empty parts of the map, which require breaching the drywall of the dungeon’s construction, and tunnelling through insulation and cabling to reach.  These appear to consistently add to the power of whatever demiplane reward is granted, though the rooms themselves are so far entirely devoid of anything of value.

Inhabitants : 

The life in the Compiled Wastes is almost entirely hostile, with individual creatures being willing to tackle suicidal odds to have a chance at injuring delvers.  The single exception to this is the living cardboard boxes, but they may simply be biding their time.

Life in the Wastes will often have semi-physical qualities to it.  Toxic PowerPoint presentations that slide across the walls, or the ghouls that linger in the dark areas and aren’t real until the lights are out, for example.

Reports from other delvers indicate that lingering on a floor for too long begins to draw surviving life toward them, and also increases hostility.  The Order has yet to test this, but unless someone wants to test this, delvers are advised not to linger.

Memetic Effect / Memeplexes : 

None known.

Comments : 

Out of the two dungeons in Saskatoon that we know about, I think I like this one the least, and I’ve only been in one of them.  It’s not bad, it just… it really does remind me of being at work.  All the tiny problems you notice over time getting bigger and bigger until it feels like the walls are crumbling and no one’s ever going to fix the AC, you know?  Also the reward is cool, but it feels like the tattoo part is only there to discourage experimentation and that sucks.  This dungeon just isn’t as fun as I want it to be I guess.  Is that bad?  Is it bad that I think dungeons should be fun?  -James Lyle, Paladin-

Usually I offload anything that involves spreadsheets onto someone else, but we all have to help with tracking the rewards for this place, and it is… insane?  It’s a nightmare.  We know one constant reward, and everything else is based onnnnnn… what?  How many desk fans you kill?  How fast you go?  Who’s with you?  If you look at the bathroom doors for too long?  If you cough at the wrong time?  How am I supposed to figure this out without metamagic?!  -Reed Moshofsky, Research-

I hope my demiplane gets an ice cream machine.  That’s kinda it, I’m just into making ice cream right now.  -Sunrise-In-Clouds, Delver-

It would be nice if mine could give me something for clothing, if we are… wishing for things?  Everyone else can just buy clothes, and I have to bother people for mine.  Magic for that would make me feel better.  -Arrush, Knight-

The only upside to this place is that there’s no time dilation.  Or at least, not most of the time.  So teleporting out is on the table, and that means you can be a little more daring.  Not too daring though, or you’ll get melted by the giant eyeballs that sometimes float past the windows.  -Knife-In-Fangs, Knight-

Excuse me the what.  What in the Junji Ito is going on in this place?  I’ve gotta get a delve slot in here.  Is there, like, a plucky group of ragtag adventures in that city that needs a new problem?  -Momo, Witch-

Stratified Underburbs (Underburbs)

Status :

Active, mobile, predatory.

Entrance : 

Unknown.

Demeanor : 

Hostile.  Known to attack mundane locations and devour them, converting all structures into the Underburbs style and leaving a blank space on the map that locals quickly forget about the nature of.  These attacks seem to be assisted by delvers within the dungeon, who are actively rewarded for their parts.

Primary Magic :

Personal, passive.  The Underburbs gives skill points for kills, as well as surviving various potentially lethal situations.  These points can be redeemed for skill ranks that function seemingly identically to Officium Mundi ranks, or for power ranks, as long as the bearer has the proper crystal from the dungeon.

Additional Resources : 

The Underburbs produces a semi-unique type of magic item in the form of furniture that has various effects.  These effects are strongest on individuals currently using the furniture, but so long as the piece of furniture is in a room and in use in some way, the effect spreads to encompass the area, if in a weaker form.

Geography : 

The Underburbs is minimally explored, but appears to predominantly contain a series of suburban roads and homes.  The entire known dungeon is dark, with regular weather patterns of glowing fog that provide illumination even as they limit vision range.

The Stratified part of the name comes from the fact that the dungeon exists in tiers, with massive portions of the dungeon being on layers of dirt and concrete and overlapping each other.  It may actually have a sky somewhere, but the majority of the dungeon is suspected to be ‘underground’.  Or at least, under a layer of the dungeon.

The Underburbs contained a large number of traps that cause, and areas where anyone present will passively pick up, diseases and infections.  These range in threat from mild inconveniences to potentially quickly lethal problems, and also include long term or permanent chronic illnesses.

Inhabitants :

The life forms of the Underburbs show no desire for communication or negotiation.  They are universally hostile, with those that do speak primarily engaging in mimicry, and those that do think seeming to use that intelligence only for tactical planning.

The upper end of the scale of life encountered so far are forty foot tall living electrical pylons, which can electrocute and potentially kill anyone who observes them and is noticed.  Beetle-like creatures the rough size and shape of RVs, as well as massed clusters of powerlines formed into floating balls, have also been observed.

The dungeon also fields large quantities of more expendable life in the form of either canines, or twisted mimicries of human children.  These tend to appear in packs or swarms, and will alert other life to the presence of delvers if not dealt with quickly.

Almost all life in the Underburbs is infectious in some way, with the same gamut of diseases as its traps and danger areas.

Mental Effects / Memeplexes : 

When the Underburbs attacks a region of Earth, any territory claimed by the dungeon is rapidly forgotten by anyone local.  This only seems to extend to residents of the area, but also includes forgetting any victims of the attack to the degree that the Office erases its own victims.

Comments : 

Fuck this place.  No further notes.  -James Lyle, Paladin, official statement for the Order of Endless Rooms-

I have some further notes.  Apologies to James.  The Underburbs acts like a very lazy predator, from our study of its patterns.  I think it overeats, because it doesn’t speed up after an attack, even the one where we stopped most of it.  It doesn’t need to do the damage it does, it’s just an awful thing that hurts people and places.  But I feel so twisted looking at its records, because no matter how horrible it is, it never tortured its own life like my origin did.  I know it’s just two different forms of evil, but it hurts to think that the city-devouring monster might like its weapons more than the Sewer would like me.  -Ishah, Knight-

One thing that’s hard to explain when standing at the edge of the invasion line is the fog.  It glows.  It’s the only light in the dungeon, apparently, but I wouldn’t know.  But out here, it mixes with streetlights and the moon and car taillights, and it ends up being… mmh… thicker?  You don’t see things moving in it until they’re right on top of you.  But when it drifts away in a breeze, then you hope your eyes dilate back fast, because you’ve been staring at a glowing wall for the last twenty minutes.  Wondering why something that pretty is working for something that brutal.  -Rada, Shield Team 3-

Other dungeons have made magical furniture too, but this is the only one that seems to make it as a category of dungeontech.  However, it also seems to favor making antimemetic chairs.  Make it stop doing that.  -Paper-And-Words, Research-

Magic :

The Order of Endless Rooms has limited access to a growing list of different types of magic, with some of them being significantly less limited than the others.

The following section is an attempt to explain, in clear language, the various forms of magic that we use, test, and live with.  Some specific magics are so unique that they cannot be replicated, and those are not listed.  However, the majority of magics are at least harvestable from a dungeon, even if not in large quantities.

This segment is sorted by source for the magic, beginning with dungeons of origin.  When applicable and relevant, information will be listed regarding accessible spells or regularly used copied rewards or items that are part of the Order’s armory.

Officium Mundi :

Yellow Orbs :

The most common form of magic and the origin of the Order. A yellow orb can be broken (cracked or popped, in the vernacular) to add a skill to the user’s mind. This knowledge does not mix with normal memories, but blends organically over time when actively used.  Yellow orb information survives multiple forms of memory loss, though the context and blending process does not.

The nature of what a ‘skill rank’ is has not yet been determined.  The first rank in any given thing is always a substantial and noticeable boost in knowledge and ability, but ranks beyond that are more difficult to understand.  Copied yellow orbs provide the same skills, but with diminishing returns for repeat users, and a soft cap of ~%200 of the original.

These orbs can also be absorbed to provide ‘uptime’, during which the condition of the body will not change unless acted upon by an outside force. This can delay otherwise fatal injuries, or avoid the need to eat, sleep, and breathe for a while.  However, the more magically dense an individual is, the less uptime an absorbed yellow provides.  Absorbing a yellow orb requires conscious effort, with a mindset of reflecting upon the nature of time helping the process.

Additionally, yellow orbs are the source of most dungeon life, and can be used to create new life from inanimate objects. Note : yellow life, once created, follows the guidelines of what has come before. As an example, after Pendragon’s creation, creatures that are similar enough to a paper drake tend to shift and grow along the same path.

The Order has a stockpile of yellow orbs, and there is a system in place to copy all size one and two orbs that are acquired before cracking them, leading to the gradual discovery of increasingly useful skill ranks.  As skill ranks are usually granular and niche to the point of uselessness, this process is important to long term development.  The full list of available yellow orbs would triple the length of this document, and is stored elsewhere.

Blue Orbs :

Dropped from broken dungeontech, blue orbs can be broken to solve a problem. Most of them also provide a skill rank as well, suspected to be due to the nature of the items they are retrieved from. The problem solved is consistent in copied orbs, but if the ‘normal’ problem is unavailable, they will shift along predictable lines until they find something to change.  

Blue orbs can also be imbued in combination with yellow orbs into mundane objects to create dungeontech.  This process alters the item to follow what is commonly called the ‘one hit point rule’, making the new object fragile, but giving it an ability that often breaks physical laws.  Imbuement works best on common office or workplace items, with larger orbs allowing for more flexibility and reach.  While yellow orbs are limited, a functionally infinite supply of blue orbs for testing is now available.

While copies of a blue orb will always solve the same problem and give the same skill rank, both of those traits are shuffled randomly if the orb is used to imbue dungeontech.  This randomization occurs at the point of imbuement, meaning that copied dungeontech will always drop the same blue orb.

Blue orbs can be absorbed for limited-cast spells, often ones that are linguistically abstract, which always cause organ and nerve damage with repeated use.  Absorbing a blue orb requires conscious effort, and works best when the user conceptualizes either the orb, or themself, as a tool.  An abbreviated list of commonly copied blue orbs follows, separated by use case.

Blue Absorb Spells : 

Move Person :

10 Charges per orb.  Moves someone, including the user.  There is a safe limit to how far it can go, with that limit coming sooner if you are moving someone else, moving someone unwilling, or moving through barriers or doors. The move is effectively a short range teleport, and does not actually cross the intervening space.

Repair Glass : 

22 Charges per orb.  Restores glass to any previous configuration. Can be used to fix windows or lightbulbs, but with enough exertion, can also turn glass molten again assuming it ever was. Works on plexiglass for some reason.

Collect Moisture : 

6 Charges per orb.  Pulls moisture toward a point. Not actually useful in most conflict situations, but incredibly valuable for fixing water damage in damaged structures. Excluding people from the effect actually makes using it easier, as attempting to take moisture out of a living person makes the spell painful to cast, at minimum.

Refit : 

12 Charges per orb.  Shapes a piece of clothing or armor to fit the chosen person. Does not work on most animals, does not add or remove material. Does work on various wearable dungeontech, retaining its magic, and not destroying imbued items.  Refit is a key player in outfitting nonhuman members of the Order, or just human members with big arms. 

Manipulate Asphalt :

14 Charges per orb.  Allows moving and shaping of asphalt.  The amount of asphalt controlled reduces the amount of force and fine manipulation that can be applied, and as with many blue absorbs, concentration and visualization help dramatically.

This orb is actually mostly sourced from telepads, with nearly-depleted original style telepads being destroyed to produce copies.  As the Order’s supply of that style of telepads is finite, the supply of Manipulate Asphalt orbs is expected to drop in the future.

Separate Alloy : 

9 Charges per orb.  Splits an alloyed metal into its component ingredients with an almost perfect purity. Will always attempt to ‘pull’ the smaller components out of the larger mass, which can often cause severe damage, intentionally or not.

Move Brick : 

20 Charges per orb.  Moves an amount of brick.  Unlike Move Person, the material being moved actually does cross the intervening space, and builds kinetic force.  The amount of brick that can be moved depends on the distance, but the spell can handle several tons of uncontained material.  Moving brick out of a structure is orders of magnitude harder, but ripping a single chunk out of a wall is possible.

Signal Emergency : 

4 Charges per orb.  A required absorb to be on hand in key parts of the Order’s operations, especially Research.  This spell contacts someone, possibly several someones, who do not currently know that an emergency is occurring, and informs them of key details.  Depending on the range, nature of emergency, and focus of the caster, this can also contain steps to being taking to mitigate the emergency.

This is a size two orb, and is only available by request from departments that require it.

Blue Problem Solvers :

Pursuit Shaken :

Disrupts attempts to establish surveillance or plan an investigation regarding the user.  Testing has shown this does not work on documentation that is considered beneficial, such as someone’s stored Order profile, but will delete police records, and disrupt other government plans in minor ways that could lead to a person through the Order.  In frequent use by rogues.

Banking Managed : 

A variant of a fairly common solution seen among blue orbs, this particular orb is used largely because ‘managed’ means something different than any of the other verbs the blue orbs used.  Specifically, this orb will set up a bank account and provide documentation to anyone who doesn’t already have one, which makes it ideal for camracondas, ratroaches, or anyone else that isn’t a legal citizen and needs to order things off the internet.

Pests Removed : 

Clears a building, or area around the user if outside, of pests.  This includes most bugs, uncontained rodents, and some types of fungus.  The pests in question are not destroyed or killed, and are instead moved somewhere nearby, though never into another building.  In use in Townton for initial sweeps of buildings slated for recovery.

Orange Orbs :

When cracked, orange orbs provide legal licenses and permits, which are inserted into government systems seamlessly and without suspicion.  These permits are not paired with any particular skill knowledge that a person has, they simply provide the legal right to do something. They are also potentially negative, and are capable of giving both military and marital status, both of which can cause problems for a person.

Orange orbs can be installed into ‘totems’ that create predictable and repeatable spatial warps. This is considered the most valuable use case of an orange orb, as it allows for mass replication of usable spaces.  Orange totems are in use to provide housing solutions to both the Lair and Townton, with plans for continued deployment in the future

When absorbed, they add repeating tasks that spawn various materials upon completion.  These tasks do not have any requirement or time limit, and do not decay if left undone.  Once completed, the task will have a cooldown before it can be started again, but the actual task itself can be done over any length of time.

Like other orbs, absorbing multiples is difficult, though with orange orbs it is next to impossible to have more than one.  Absorbing an orange orb requires conspicuous effort, and is assisted by conceptualizing the orb as a job to be done.  Orange orbs are not often copied for absorption, due to their value as totems, but they aren’t entirely unavailable.  A list of orange orbs for absorbing as tasks is as follows : 

Absorbed Orange Tasks : 

Task : Break twenty bricks

Cooldown : Six days.

Reward : One mountain bike.

Task : Pull one hundred and twenty six weeds.

Cooldown : Nine days.

Reward : A one inch cube of diamond.

Task : Travel to three distinct cities

Cooldown : Forty days.

Reward : Eighteen tungsten rods, ten centimeter diameter, one meter length.

Task : Read two million three thousand six hundred words.

Cooldown : Three days.

Reward : Six hundred two hundred mg ibuprofen delayed release capsules, in a nondescript bottle.

Task : Generate polaroid pictures of six recognized monuments.

Cooldown : Twenty two days.

Reward : A forklift (model is inconsistent, but never exists on Earth prior)

Green Orbs :

When a green orb is broken, it enhances the area it is in.  That area’s size increases as the size of the orb does, beginning at a room or small building, and progressing to larger structures, or regions.  The effect also increases with the size of the orb, but testing shows that the effect is more potent the smaller an area it covers.

Green effects span a wide range of beneficial options, including speeding up or enhancing production, manifesting fresh materials or goods, adding extra spaces, improving local materials, and creating extra time every day for certain activities.  More esoteric effects include making intrusion more expensive, or preventing lethal accidents.  Testing has shown that any given green orb has an ideal expression of its ability, and depending on the space it is used in, will be more or less powerful as it approaches this ideal.

There are actually two separate types of green orb, with the distinction being that some produce one time effects, usually in the form of manifesting a new space, or a value increase, and some produce ongoing benefits.  Telling which is which is impossible until something would take a space below the new minimum instituted by the orb effect, i.e., removing objects from a room with a value bonus until it is worth less than that bonus will return or generate new objects.

Greens work on both dungeons, and on the demiplanes produced by the Compiled Wastes, though the latter is painful for the user.  Their effect on dungeons is often noted to be of relatively high power, indicating that either the dungeon amplifies the effect somehow, or more likely, different areas or regions of a dungeon have unseen boundaries that contain the effect, just like if it were cracked in a building as opposed to outside.

Green totems create exclusion fields, and require a source of blood to activate.  The totems tend to adhere to rooms or structures, as the cracked effects do, but specifically physically or metaphysically push something out of the area.  Whether this is the ability to observe a space, or the ability for a certain type of material or object to enter it, green totems scale up the force they project to match resistance, and no upper limit has been found.

Absorbing greens or making life with them is banned, due to the risk of mental control from Officium Mundi.

Purple Orbs :

When cracked, purple orbs improve the body a person is currently using.  These shell upgrades come in two forms, though which one is not advertised; either they produce persistent effects that bolster specific aspects of a body, or they make physical alterations to a body that seamlessly become natural for it.  The second type is genetically stable, for any species that reproduces.  Many purple orbs with persistent effects have timers or cooldowns, and each one works independently of the others, often with different styles.  For example, two orbs might say ‘once per year’, but one counts its own cooldown from January 1st no matter what, and the other only starts the timer when its own condition is used.

Purple orbs adjust their effects for different species, or even for disabilities in individuals within a species that would cause upgrades to be incompatible.  Additionally, in the increasingly more likely case where multiple people are acting as a hive mind or gestalt using the skulljacks, the purple orb will treat the complete person as one body; meaning that the effect will vanish when they are not connected, and reappear when they are.

Purple orbs can be used to create assignment-class infomorphic life in the form of mental compulsions.  In their nascent form, assignments manifest as very obvious but impossible to disobey compulsions, and are employed by various Officium Mundi life offensively against delvers.  An assignment will naturally fade away in about a month unless fed.

Totems for purple orbs project memeplexes.  Physically located areas within which specific information is suppressed or destroyed.  These types of memeplexes are akin to rough terrain for infomorphs, and can be hazardous to them.

While a full list is not currently available, the Order has duplication packages for purple orbs that include a wide array of defensive and health effects, including : increased immune response, fewer broken bones, increased blood production, digit regrowth, increased muscle durability, reduced injury from impact and puncture wounds, and of course, a cure for cancer.  For ratroaches specifically, pre-reshaping orbs for lung growth and pain management are available.  For camracondas specifically, orbs for reduced lens irising friction, increased tail length, and increased slithering speed are available.  

Red Orbs :

Dropped by disarmed traps in Officium Mundi, red orbs provide emotional resonance ranks when cracked. This does not change a person’s emotional state, instead it allows for better complex processing of the associated emotions, leading to better self-control, and an internal sense of understanding.  Emotional resonance ranks are often esoteric, but overlap far more often than other ranks, and Order members with high quantities of specific emotional ranks often report a growing sense of being grounded in the moment while experiencing those feelings.

Absorbing a red orb grants limited use spells that divine specific pieces of information from targets. Much like blue orbs, using these causes headaches and eventual organ damage, and as with all forms of absorption, a finite number can be taken in by any given person.  Though they do not overlap with other orb colors.  Absorption requires a mindset that is difficult to naturally produce, and is instead artificially induced using hypnotic suggestion.

Red orbs can also be crafted into totems that broadcast information of a specific type to every conscious mind within their range.  A growing understanding of the patterns these totems use has allowed for the creation of specific useful constructs, as well as deliberately not useful totems that can be used as mental ‘flashbangs’.  As it turns out, having the total knowledge of the orientation of every chair within a hundred miles dumped into your head is a little distracting.

Rituals : 

A number of the cubicle towers in Officium Mundi contain overhead projectors which are the focal points for different expressions of ritual magic. By tracing a design in specific dungeon-sourced coffee grounds, and activating the projector, an effect is applied to the objects on its surface. Projectors can be moved, but only function on higher levels of the cubicle towers within Officium Mundi.  Testing is ongoing to find if building a similar tower on Earth would work as well.

The coffee required to run the rituals is also discovered in the cubicle towers, and respawns at regular intervals, allowing for farming.  Pure dungeon coffee is not required to run the rituals, and it can be mixed with mundane coffee grounds to stretch farther, though uniformity in the blending is obviously a concern.

So far, rituals have been discovered for duplicating, upgrading, and emailing the contents of the target zone.

The duplication ritual is far and away the most useful single thing the Order has access to, and its rules are both straightforward, and obtuse.  It can copy magic, but certain types of magic require higher ratios of dungeon coffee.  It can copy compressed spatial areas, but nothing magic in those areas will come out magic.  It can copy living things, but if they aren’t fully within the projector envelope, it will only copy part of them, which is obviously bad.

And finally, some objects simply will not copy.  Though this happens in two distinct ways.  Artifact-class objects, such as the Nokia or the Maker Tablet, lock up the ritual.  It will not engage when those are within the envelope, the coffee will not be consumed, nothing will happen when the switch is thrown.  Meanwhile, the inhabitor potion, and the death-reversal pills recovered from a Status Quo, simply don’t appear at the point of copying.  These conditions hold true for other rituals as well, in the same pattern.  Either the ritual doesn’t work at all, or the ritual ignores certain things.

Skulljacks :

Less a specific magic, but still from the Office, skulljacks are an organic cybernetic that allows for mind-to-machine or mind-to-mind interface. They use standard Ethernet cables, and have a litany of specific corner cases in how they are used.  The majority of useful applications are enabled through custom made or grown programs, and personal wi-fi hotspots.

Skulljacks are critical for the creation of .mem files, which range in utility from sharing experiences, to fully packaging decades of knowledge about specific skills, to creating emotional amalgams that allow for mutual understanding in a new and unique way.  Skulljacks are also capable of causing gestalts, with multiple minds that are networked together without any precautions quickly becoming a single mind.  This has both benefits, and obvious perils.

The perils are exacerbated by the fact that skulljacks spread instantly to anyone without one should a skulljack bearer bring a connected Ethernet cable close to the proper spot on another person.  So far no species has been discovered that doesn’t react to this process.

Skulljacks are usually composed of keratin, or whatever the relevant material would be in a nonhuman, and are generally safe from infection.

Enhancement Coffee :

A specific subset of the dungeontech discovered in Officium Mundi is a series of coffee machines that produce coffee which improves the function of the body in one way or another.

There are three of these in the Order’s possession currently, which can improve reflexes, speaking ability, or decision making respectively. The coffee effect lasts for about five minutes per cup, and is at its best if the coffee is still hot.

Cold coffee, including intentionally iced coffee, has the opposite effect. Drinking too much of any given kind of coffee will cause unconsciousness, and sometimes memory loss, though the exact amount that is ‘too much’ seems to be relevant to the caffeine tolerance of the drinker.

Comments : 

The Office consistently offers new ways of using its magic.  Though maybe that’s a bad way to look at it.  It’s more like there’s always been a million things to do in there, and the easy ones are appealing enough that I think a lot of people would stop looking.  We still don’t know if you can make a yellow totem, even with our forms of divination.  We don’t know if there’s some secret new way of using the orbs that we haven’t even found yet, either.  It’s partly an exciting frontier, but it’s also just a tad bit like staring at the periodic table and thinking that there’s elements missing, but no way to prove it.  -Anesh, Research-

I have a fun fact to share!  Over sixty percent of the Order’s supply of magical coffee is used entirely to create copies of the anti-cancer orb!  This was the fact that gave me a clawhold into understanding just how many humans there are, which is a scary fact, but also a fun one too in its own way.  -Smoke, Recovery-

What I like about the skulljack is that it has a form of momentum that other things don’t.  If we lose the dungeon, somehow, then we can still make something useful with what we have.  I’m pretty sure I can figure out a way to install a firewall in a brain, too, which should be useful.  -Virgil Thomasi, Research (Archived Comment)-

What doesn’t the Office do?  Oh yeah.  Tell us how to use anything.  Well.  At least it never poisons food.  That’s nice enough.  -Tylor Kroll, Delver-

There is something unsettling about the purple orbs that other species do not have to contend with.  They assert, with authority, that the body I am in is my own.  And while I do not carry the same burden as my siblings, I still find that strange.  If the Office were the only dungeon, it would be worse, but because different dungeons disagree on definitions for many things, I think I could live with it.  -Rho, Rogue-

Clutter Ascent : 

Relationsticks :

Produced by puzzle boxes within the Attic dungeon, relationsticks can only be activated by two individuals applying pressure at the same time.  This breaks the stick, often in the form of a small wooden dowel, and creates a blank magical tattoo on both users.  Early forms of the relationstick made this process mildly painful, but current drops do not.

The link between two people can be filled, and activated, by sharing a strong emotion.  Which is to say, both individuals must experience a parallel sensation during the same event, or regarding the same object.  Attempts to force this connection, including with skulljacks, have universally failed.  However, this does not mean that being connected via skulljack doesn’t work, only that it doesn’t work if you are actively trying, or even thinking about, a relationstick connection.

Once filled, a connection provides two pieces of information to the bearers.  A vector, and an aspect.  Pairs with an open connection can share the aspect between themselves at will, provided they fill the requirement of the vector.  Vectors are often simple things, such as line of sight or having heard the other person within the last minute, but they can be more esoteric.  One example is the vector of having been separated, with the connection only working if the pair had been in different countries within the last week.

Aspects span a wide array of traits or attributes, and are largely divided into either stats, or resources.  Sleep, satiation, hydration, even general health, are all sharable from different relationsticks.  As are various forms of strength, speed, perception, and durability.

An important factor of relationsticks is that they are technically zero sum.  In order for one member of a pair to gain hydration, the other must be dehydrated.  This is something that can be worked around; in this example, if only one user has access to water, there is an obvious behavior pattern that creates value out of nothing.  However, relationstick bonds are an implicit act of trust, as they cannot be turned off, and either party can pull from their connection at any time as long as the vector is open.

Linking Books : 

Currently there are only two variants of this style of magic item, but more are expected in the future.  Linking books are produced by Clutter Ascent, and they expand in some way the method of connection for relationsticks.

The most powerful of these is classified as an artifact, and expands every connection by one.  Which is to say, if whoever is holding the book has two open connections to other people, those two people can now effectively extend their connections to each other.  This process is lossy, but any vector within the web can be used.  This book is a key part of the avatar program, a method of temporarially empowering a select number of individuals during times of crisis.

The other book allows for people within its web to ‘borrow’ their connection aspects against their future selves.  This debt begins to be repaid after a few minutes once the borrowing process is stopped, and saps the stolen aspect over time at a strength relative to the amount borrowed.

Linking books can stack their effects with each other.

Comments: 

Zero-sum for people with zero-creativity!  Most of us aren’t even using our biceps, but someone can put that might to work!   Also, as I’ve learned from my beefcake of a girlfriend, you can totally pass off strength to someone else so that your workout routine is deliberately harder, which I guess makes it… better?  Look, all my muscles come from running away from things in dungeons, I don’t actually know how to ‘do a workout’.  -Sarah Moyle, Girlfriend-

Been part of two avatar deployments at this point, and a bunch of practice.  It’s something that I guess should make me feel weak, but… nah.  I’ve seen the aftermath of what it looks like when the paladin gets in fights, and if he needs me to sit on my ass at a potluck while he does his thing?  I will be so good at sitting on my ass and adding to the pool.  -Stephen Taylor, Lair resident-

It is more understood now than when I began trying, but not everyone sees the world the same way.  The relationsticks do have a bias.  The Attic sees the bonds of emotion in a smoothed out, equal way.  And that is, at the end of the day, admirable.  But it also means that there are precious few moments that can be snatched between parents and children, or teachers and students.  Though while it may be some time before my daughter and I ever feel the same well enough for the bond to acknowledge it, I don’t think it’s an impossible feat anymore, and I look forward to the day that comes to pass.  -Karen Ward, Recovery-

Akashic Sewer :

Lessons :

Lesson books are single use dungeontech that instill a passive effect in whoever opens the book first.  This effect comes in two parts; first, an academic subject (including various athletics) that must be studied, and second, a passive stat boost for each threshold of study met.

Progress is tracked in terms of ‘things learned’, though this often runs into issues with what that means, and how flexible reality is.  Pure experience in a subject, such as communication, often adds points to an ongoing Lesson without the bearer able to explain what they have learned.  Office yellow orbs add large spikes to relevant lessons, while Library orbs simply improve natural learning.

While the formulas for determining how much progress is required have changed over time, current Lessons follow a predictable pattern, starting at one hundred, and adding one hundred times the current tier to the last requirement each time they advance, as well as resetting progress.  So, one hundred, two hundred, four hundred, seven hundred, eleven hundred, etc.  This pattern is disrupted by multiple other magics, including having other Lessons, which dramatically increases the multiplier, and utilizing reading potions or being within a green-orb enhanced space that buffs reading speed or comprehension at the time that a Lesson is first activated, which reduces the requirements.

Lessons can be copied using the duplication ritual, which puts all users of the same book into a ‘class’.  These classes must advance together, and will only show progress for information or experience that is shared among all members of the class.  Adding someone new to an ongoing class freezes progress until the new member has caught up, or enough new information has been learned by all members to overtake the old progress.

Upon hitting a threshold of progress, bearers of Lessons will be mentally transported to a nightmare hellscape classroom, and directed to choose from one of three stat upgrades by a figure colloquially called ‘the teacher’.  The stats available are consistent between different versions of Lessons of the same subject, and some subjects will have stats available that overlap with others.

Lessons can technically be harvested without combat, and often identified before use with iLipede help.  While supplies are limited, it is useful to know what stats are available from a given Lesson ahead of time for planning purposes.  As such, a list of known subjects, their stats, and any known quirks, is as follows.

Known Lessons :

Basketball

Stats : Agility, Aim, Coordination

Note : This includes both the actual playing of the game, as well as history, statistics, and even sportsmanship.

Baseball

Stats : Aim, Coordination, Patience

Note : The only other sport discovered so far, works very similarly.

Computer Science 

Stats : Study, Energy, Composure

Sex Education

Stats : Health, Seduction, Pleasure

Note : One of the Lessons with an advisory attached, as Seduction leans on the potential territory of mind control.

Biology 

Stats : Toxicity, Endurance, Instinct

Note : The trait of Endurance only triggers when a bearer needs to endure, providing minimal benefit otherwise.  Though it does amplify many purple orbs that deal with healing or recovery.

Communication

Stats : Empathy, Charisma, Reputation

Note : One of the Lessons that has an advisory regarding its stats.  While Charisma might be just a matter of charm, Reputation looks like it leans on mind control, and even Empathy can be intrusive at higher levels.

History

Stats : Solidity, Malleability, Memory

Note : Two of these might seem contradictory, but in practice they seem to work well together.  Malleability improves things like muscle or settlement elasticity and helps a lot with cramping, but it also improves mental adaptability.  While Solidity makes a body harder to damage in general, and mentally, improves an ability to essentially stand up for oneself.

US History

Stats : Materialism, Toxicity, Energy

Note : In other cases, we’ve seen more granular versions still contain overlap on the stats.  The fact that this one doesn’t could mean something, or it could just mean that the overlap itself is a coincidence.

Social Studies

Stats : Perspective, Hostility, Judgment

Note : Judgment as a stat does not make one more judgemental.  Instead it safely improves cognition while making choices, making users feel as though they have more time when presented with options.

Home Ec

Stats : Timing, Enthusiasm, Materialism

Note : No one is willing to test what Materialism does.

Earth Sciences

Stats : Solidity, Endurance, Desire

Chemistry 

Stats : Pleasure, Coordination, Proprioception

Reading 

Stats : Understanding, Memory, Timing

Writing 

Stats : Study, Understanding, Poise

Art

Stats : Desire, Survivability, Strength

Note :  One of the broader categories, Art is a good example of how Lessons don’t seem to actually care how granular they are.  The effects of the stats are just as good for this as for specific art-based Lessons.

Wood Shop

Stats : Strength, Solidity, Utility

Note : Utility does not make a person more useful, it enables them to see how things in the world around them could be useful.  Generally speaking, it improves tool use.

Drama 

Stats : Motivation, Poise, Charisma

Note : This Lesson has a soft advisory for Charisma, as with the others.

Geometry 

Stats : Aim, Interception, Conceptualization

Note : Two of these stats only show up in this Lesson, at least so far, which is an outlier.

Emotional Symbiotes :

The Akashic Sewer also produces egg-like growths within its dungeon that can be opened by completing enough challenges that reward purple sparks.  These eggs contain creatures that are generally non-hostile, and can be considered generally symbiotic with other living creatures.

If allowed to, a symbiote will burrow into the outer flesh of an individual, allowing the body to heal partly over it and sealing it in place.  Once bonded, symbiotes provide physical amplification of a magical nature, but only while their host is experiencing certain emotions.  This is not inherently bad, but does create the conditions for a negative feedback loop, especially as symbiote emotional triggers tend toward anger or hate.

As a baseline example, a Sewer symbiote is capable of multiplying a person’s strength by a factor of three.  More if the emotion is particularly in sync with its needs, up to roughly a factor of six.

Caution is advised when dealing with symbiotes, as while they can be surgically removed, their long term effects are unknown.

Comments :

Everyone who’s taken a mental stat can tell you the same thing.  It’s changing you, sure, but you still feel like you.  It’s just that… the world opens up.  Everything gets brighter, you see the connections, you get it more and more.  I guess I can see how this would scare people, but a lot of the people who’ve said they’re scared by it drink alcohol to make themselves dumber for fun, so I don’t think they even know what they’re worried about.  -Juan, Recovery-

You would think that my own Lesson would synergize perfectly with what I am.  It is bad, then, that I didn’t choose either Solidity or Endurance when I crossed the first threshold?  I knew I was changing, becoming something I didn’t recognize, but realizing that I didn’t want to be harder to kill was a surprise even to me.  And now, understanding my own wants, and seeing clearer paths to attaining them, makes me feel more like a person than I had ever dared to dream of.  I am going to take Endurance next though, so I can keep being that person.  -Cam Marselli, Knight-

I just like knowing what soaps are good for what things.  Utility fills in so many details that humans don’t know they know.  -Arrush, Knight-

Studies are showing that four is the best number for people in the same 'class' of copied books.  Kinda wish I was in the control group though.  Orbs only go so far, and scheduling studying with people around here?  It's crazy.  -John, Research-

Really hope the Sewer can be handled somehow, because I’d hate to never get one of these.  I’ve been saving allocation points since we started that program right after I got brought on, just so I can get my hands on one of these.  I don’t even care what it is!  Because, I mean, come on, right?  It’ll grow with you for your whole life.  If I can afford it, I’ll get two and give them to my kids, and they’ll be superheroes before they’re allowed to drink.  -Bishop, Response-

The parasite issue is overblown.  It doesn’t change your emotions, just checks them.  Mine doesn’t make me angry, I’m just an angry person.  If anything, learning how to control that anger because I can’t make mistakes with my new punching power is making me a better person than I ever was before.  -Simon, Paladin-

If Alanna’s gonna make me go to school then I should be allowed to have a Lesson, even if I’m not eighteen.  You can’t make me learn things before I get to have the magic that wants me to learn things, that’s stupid.  -Rae Byrne, Lair resident-

Route Horizon : 

Velocity Magic:

The primary type of magic offered by the highway dungeon, Velocity spells require a multi-step process to acquire and cast.

Within the Route, various damaged pieces of maps can be found in several different permutations.  Scraps of guidebooks, travel brochures, even seemingly hand-written instructions for finding locations.  These maps do line up to Earth’s geography, but that is largely irrelevant.  When two pieces of map that overlap or intersect are correctly matched to each other, the holder is instantly bestowed with a new spell.  

At their acquisition, these spells give knowledge of their name, function, and cost, but there is no way to reference this later, so taking notes is advised.  During this process, the bearer will experience a vision of a blank globe with a lit section for their map segments.  Copies of the same map scraps will always produce the same spells.

In the event that there are three map pieces that intersect, there are limited options.  The first two pieces form the foundation for a spell, with different combinations forming different - though still consistent - magic.  Holding an additional intersecting piece and conceptualizing the internal map will absorb the scrap and add it to the base spell, enhancing it in some way.  So far, these enhancements are all in terms of scale, not flexibility.  However, a single person cannot get two different spells from intersecting map pieces.  One must be picked.

There are a lot of unknowns in this system, including what happens if two spells have their lit sections of a spell globe grow to meet.  So far this has been a moot point, however, as the globe appears to be a 1:1 recreation of Earth’s surface, and the scraps often cover a few square miles at most.

Velocity magic is powered by Velocity, a unique mana pool that has its capacity acquired by finding and activating dungeon reward gears from Route Horizon.  Copies of gears work, but experience a form of diminishing effectiveness.

Velocity is named as such because it recharges through experiencing velocity in a vehicle.  The more control of the vehicle a person has, the stronger the recharge.  The faster a vehicle is going, the stronger the recharge as well.  Velocity requires more effort to continue to recharge the more a caster already has.  In general, at highway speeds and in full control of a car, a caster can expect to refill their first five points of Velocity within a minute, with the next five points requiring fifteen minutes, and the next requiring an hour.

Unlike some magic, Velocity is present in the body.  Increasing capacity grows a new gland within a person, which appears safe, but does fill with an unknown fluid as Velocity is charged.  This is also present in infomorphs, but only while they are manifested, and is why their Velocity resets if they shift forms.

There are a number of spells actively in use, though only some of them have their maps on file for copying.  These singular ‘legacy’ spells are mostly held by prior members of the Horizonist cult, and are not listed here.

Velocity Magic Spells : 

Pave :

3 Velocity, Instant, ~20 meter range

Strikes a target with kinetic force.  Amount of force scales up with the physical strength of the caster, but has a baseline it won’t drop below.  Can be aimed with just thought, but accuracy destabilizes within 5 meters using that method.  More effective while aimed along a limb.

Bones Of Flashing Metal : 

3 Velocity / minute, Ongoing, Personal

Saps personal physical momentum in exchange for bone (or closest analog) durability.  Or, enhances personal or controlled vehicle acceleration in exchange for bone (or closest analog) durability.  Direction of exchange is decided on cast.  Works on a personal scale, so while it can cause an unpleasant pressure, there is no serious repercussion for using the spell while in a vehicle to enhance durability.

Dial Breach :

6 Velocity, Instant / Seconds, ~10 meter range

Takes control of the settings on a sound system.  Can only change settings that can be physically adjusted, i.e., with dials or switches. 

Exhaust Torch : 

1-3 Velocity, Instant, Close

Causes the caster’s next exhalation to be a puff of flame.  The size and heat of this flame scales up with the amount of Velocity used, and cannot burn the caster.  It can burn the caster’s stuff, however, so caution is advised.

Mutually exclusive with A Hood And Cowl.

Can be enhanced to accept up to 6 Velocity, with a continued increase to the size and heat of the flame.

A Hood And Cowl : 

9 Velocity, Fading over 25 minutes, Personal

Improves perception and cognition in a way that specifically allows the caster to compensate for the downsides of taking actions while at high speeds.  Doesn’t nullify inertia, but does allow for subconscious adjustments to behavior that reportedly reduces the severity of the feeling.  Definitely helps while driving, but works for passengers, and helps with both carsickness, and seasickness if that’s an issue.

Mutually exclusive with Exhaust Torch.

Can be enhanced to last for an additional ten minutes with a slightly stronger effect.

Enriched Gas :

The Horizon also produces multiple forms of gasoline that can be acquired from various sources.  In order to be effective, these require a combustion engine, that is powering a device intended for travel.  This remarkably specific need means that while they still burn like gasoline, they cannot apply their magical effects to generators or engines in stationary machinery.  However they do work on vehicles that have been damaged beyond mobility, but still have engines, even barely functional engines.

At present, there are four known types of enriched gas. Repair is the most common effect, essentially acting as a healing potion for vehicles that burn it.  Following that are two forms of protective gas, one that prevents injury to the inhabitants of the vehicle including being thrown free during a collision, and one that works similarly but only for the driver.  Finally, there is a charging effect, restoring both the current charge and physical condition of batteries within the vehicle (batteries within the vehicle, not just those the vehicle is using).

Enriched gas is physically indistinguishable from most unleaded gasoline, and must be carefully labeled and stored.

Comments :

Legacy spells is right.  When I return to the Earth, don’t you bury me with my globe.  Give it to one of the kids.  I bet one of them can find a use for being a petrolkinetic.  -Dorothy, Townton resident-

You guys have no idea how infuriating it was to have to fucking drag James and Anesh to the magic.  The Horizon is my dungeon.  I mean, like, it’s special to me, not that I own it.  But I still hate the way it cuts us off from sharing stuff.  Anyway, I don’t think we’re done finding out more about its magic.  It hid the basic spells behind that much bullshit, you really think it stopped there?  I bet there’s another layer.  Probably obtuse and stupid and it’ll send my girlfriend into some kind of witchcraft-induced isolated madness for a week.  -El, Knight-

Cowl also overcompensates for lag time on artificial or prosthetic limbs.  Even after a year of using them, my arms still require focus.  But with Cowl active, I can drive and it feels fluid, in a way that only my natural body has ever been.  How strange, that this dungeon of machinery and passively hostile nothing, is the one that makes me feel integrated.  -Sunrise-In-Clouds, Delver-

Storage time on the gasoline is an issue, as it decays in the same way mundane gasoline does.  As with many useful things, stockpiling is pointless; the Route teaches us what we should have already known.  That you cannot merely hoard wealth, you have to use it for something.  -Texture-Of-Barkdust, Recovery-

Hey did anyone else know that the fire breath scales by size?  -Dave, Knight-

I’m not saying that anyone tried drinking gas.  I’m just saying it doesn’t work.  -Alanna Byrne, Knight-

We knew, and know, just so little about this place.  I know it’s beautiful and worth protecting, but I look at the entries just in this document about the Office, and I wonder how many secrets the Horizon has successfully hidden just by sticking them in the desert behind a bunch of caltrop lines.  Is there a way to find maps easier?  Is there a way to unequip spells?  Does it have its own artifacts like the Office and Stacks do?  I wasn’t going to leave anyway, but the more I start to feel like I’ve found an actual place here, the more I realize there’s never going to be a shortage of things to do in this dungeon.  -Kirk, Delver-

Winter’s Climb :

Breath Magic:

Winter’s Climb’s main magic is in the form of a variety of spells, cast using Breath.  Breath as a mana pool is expanded by making progressively more progress up the Climb itself, with every thirty feet giving one point, and every thousand feet giving one spell slot.  The spells are acquired by accepting them from the spellbooks found throughout the Climb.

Breath recharges over time as an individual breathes, making it unusable by most infomorphs.  It also recharges slower in individuals that require less breathing to sustain themselves.  Using Breath to cast a spell drains both oxygen and heat from the caster, relative to the amount used.  Twenty is the upper limit of a safe amount for an unmodified human before hypoxia begins to be a problem.  Methods such as the oxygenation potion can be used to extend this.

Climb spellbooks are reusable indefinitely.  However, when damaged, the Breath cost of the associated spell goes up.  Also, the same spell cannot be selected twice, even if there is an open spell slot, and a better version of the book available.  Climb spellbooks are also one of the most magically dense objects that can still be copied by the duplication ritual, requiring nearly pure dungeon coffee to do so.

The Climb also sometimes produces blank spellbooks, often heavily defended.  When touched for the first time, these books will ask the one that made contact what skill brought them to that point, and offer three mundane choices.  If a user has Office skill ranks, their list of options will populate with most of their other magic as well, which can also be selected.  Once an option is picked, a new spell will form in the book, based in some way off the selected option.

Winter’s Climb Spells :

Thermodynamic Tunnel

5 Breath, Permanent, Line of Sight

Links two points in space in a way so that heat is constantly shifted from one to the other.  The tunnel is one way, permanent, and relative to the Earth.

Fractal Avalanche

2 Breath, Seconds, Personal

Splits the caster into multiple mirrored copies of themself, performing similar physical actions and recombining when the duration expires.  Angle and direction can be changed freely across copies.  Copies are physical extensions of the caster, and are not individual people, only their own body repeated.  The mirrored copies vanish if heavily damaged or killed, with the spell ending if there is only one of the cast remaining.  Breath is automatically spent to extend the time of the spell at a rate of 1/10 seconds as long as copies persist.

Iced Veins

1 Breath, Instant, Close

Converts cold or frozen water into blood.  If used while in contact with a living organism that uses blood, the created substance can be safely made inside the organism.  The colder the water used, the more control over the outcome, with ice automatically matching the blood type of the recipient.

Mountain Of The Self

10 Breaths, 20 Breath / Second, Instant (Inaccurate), Personal

For roughly half a second, nothing can kill the caster.  Existing momentum continues, but new inertia cannot be applied.  Force that comes in contact with the caster is repulsed directly back at its source, they become completely non-conductive (to anything they do not wish to conduct), and thermally neutral.  Functionally, invincibility, but only for a moment, and at a massive Breath cost.

Mesa Oasis

8 Breath, Days, Touch

Converts an addiction or compulsion into an increased thirst.  Thirst lasts roughly one week, and is longer and more serious for more severe addictions.  Does not work on compulsions such as a gambling addiction, despite the colloquial terminology.  

Reaching Frost

3 Breath, 1 Breath / minute, Sustained, Personal

Forms a limb out of ice. Ice is created from nothing, and is real. More Breath can be used to alter the size, strength, and sensitivity of the limb, with the caster capable of tactile sensation and proprioception at ten Breath spent.

Cloud Prowler

9 Breath, 2 Breath / hour, Hours, Line of Sight

Summons a snow cat.  Providing snow or ice while the spell is cast makes it larger and reduces Breath upkeep.  Lasts slightly more than an hour, with the option to provide Breath to maintain it. Each caster’s cat is unique to them, and maintains memory between summonings.  The cat can’t really fight, it’s just a cute, perfectly normal cat, with one exception.  Summoned cats also have their own personality and may not specifically like their summoner.

Worldwalker Piton

3 Breath, Seconds, Personal

Prevents the caster from tripping, losing traction, or falling for ten seconds.  Focused on the feet, and technically capable of allowing someone to walk up a vertical wall.

Frost Vector

5 Breath, Instant, Touch

Removes friction from between a surface and one object until contact between those objects is lost.  ‘Surface’ has to be something large enough to support standing on by the caster, but the other object can be anything, including anything the caster is wearing.

Survival Flare

18 Breath, Seconds, Close

Pulls nearby heat into the targeted object within line of sight and within a few feet, cooling the surrounding area and potentially damaging or igniting the target.  Builds slowly, but lasts for a few minutes consistently.  Not for personal use, as the spell cannot be dismissed once activated.

Process Procession

8 Breath, Seconds, Close

Effect : Upon cast, the magic waits for the caster to take an action that could be loosely described as ‘crafting’, or perhaps ‘productive’.  After the first minute, whatever action was taken is looped six times without the caster being involved.  Small deviations like pulling from a depleting supply of materials work without issue.  At the end of the loop, Breath can be expended to repeat it another six times without the initial performance.

Harvest Echo

22 Breath, Instant, Touch

Effect : After cast, if a plant or fungus is harvested (usable parts removed, plucked from the stem, uprooted, etc)  by the caster, then an exact copy of the target is created out of ice nearby.  If ice is already present, then the ice will instead be transformed into an actual organic copy of the target.  Effect persists until the magic is used, seemingly indefinitely.

Altitude Adapt

41 Breath, 1 Breath / 8 Minutes, Sustained, Personal

Effect : Caster grows wings.  The type of wings seem to vary, but are consistent to each caster.  Bird and bat wings are the only variants seen so far, but with multiple patterns and colorations.  The process of growth is abrupt, violent, and painful to the user, and the breath cost risks lung and brain damage without careful medical supervision. Dismissing the spell causes the wings to break from the body, but not vanish, and they are made of real meat and bone.  The spell aids in flight as well, as these wings allow for gaining altitude when they shouldn’t actually be able to ever do more than permit a controlled glide, but the assistance isn’t strong enough for a takeoff from a standing position.  It is, however, enough for long term sustained flight.

Tautological Necropocentrism

3 Breath, Seconds, Personal

For two minutes, causes anyone perceiving the caster to contextualize them as dead.  The fact that they are walking around and talking does not change that they are thought of as dead.  Friends will think of them as having died at the moment the spell was cast, and will experience the emotional impact of that false event.  Because the caster is dead, most suspicious activities do not register to anyone perceiving them, because they are dead, and dead people do not do things.

Rot Eyes

9 Breath, Instant, Personal

Effect : Gives the caster knowledge of the location, health, and about one good wiki entry worth of information on every fungus within ~20 feet.

Frostwake

2 Breath, Seconds, Personal

Effect : Accelerates the caster, but only through water, ice, or snow exclusively.  If used while in water, the magic massively drops the temperature of the liquid moved through.  Can attain speeds of up to 20 MPH over normal personal movement rates, but with the exception of preventing harm from the substance moved through, there is no safety measure built in.

Cathedral Sanctum

181 Breath, Permanent, Surrounding Room or Small Structure

Effect : Generates a parallel copy of a room or small building, complete with any furniture that has been in place for more than a few hours.  Only the caster of the spell can enter the created space, with all other living beings or inanimate objects not carried by the caster being shunted into the mundane version of the space instead.  Multiple Sanctums can overlap, with different casters all moving to their own spaces.  The entrances are tied to the normal entrances of the building or room, and if the structure is moved, the Sanctum moves with it.  Should the structure be destroyed, the Sanctum persists for one week afterward, though there is no known way to enter it except for via telepad.  The Sanctums are ‘where they are’, for the purposes of most magic, allowing things like Logisticors to be deployed from within them.  Material spawned by the spell cannot be removed from the area.

Flare Calculation

10 Breath, Permanent, Personal

Effect : Makes a single mathematical process easier for the caster only.  This does not change math itself, nor does it actually grant any real skill that can be built on.  It just makes it artificially easier to derive answers when using a single specific formula.  Unfortunately, it won’t work on broad process descriptors such as “addition”.

Winter Wroth

4 Breath, Instant, Close Line of Sight

Effect : Inflicts a wound as if from a sharp blade at a range of roughly five feet, but only works on living things that aren’t suspicious or acting to defend themselves.  The wound can be targeted visually, and is deeper the lower the ambient temperature is.

Call To Blood

1 Breath, 3 Breath / Second, Sustained, Personal

Effect : Despite the grim name, what it actually does is act as a dowsing rod for where a specific person was last injured, and more specifically, bleeding. Categories of person do not work, the caster must be envisioning a specific individual including their name in order for the spell to take hold.  The effect creates a physical pull toward where, geographically, the target last shed blood, and if the caster moves to within five feet and also visual range of the exact site, the pull will move on to the next most recent spot while continuing to mentally remind the caster of the last location.

Note : The casting of this spell is especially pleasant and nutritious to navigators sharing mind space with the caster.

Updraft Gradiant 

6 Breath, Several Minutes, then 1 Breath / Minute, Sustained, Personal

Causes the caster to float roughly a foot off the ground.  Stays relative to the ground, does not provide any form of innate propulsion.

Liminal Echo

20 Breath, Variable Duration, Close

Creates a slightly abstracted scaled down model of the local area out of snow.  Detail and duration depends on how much snow or cold water is provided for the spell to work with, with the upper limit being several hours reaching a half mile radius.

Tenebrous Camp

10 Breath, 1 Hour, 4 Breath / Ten Minutes, Line of Sight

While active, pulls in smoke and ash within a roughly ten meter diameter, compressing it as needed to fit within the small area of the spell’s center.  When the spell is triggered by the caster, or when the duration expires, the compressed smoke detonates with extra force.  This creates a loud noise, but is not enough to directly harm anyone that isn’t standing directly inside the effect.

Climb Wands :

Occasionally found within Winter’s Climb, wands come in the form of almost any mundane object.  They are capable of two unique things; accepting and storing Breath aspected to a single Climb spell, and casting that spell under certain trigger conditions while modifying it in some way.

Climb Wands drop orbs (colloquially referred to as ‘storm orbs’) that can be used to refill Breath, or to imbue new wands in a process similar to creating blue orb items.  Wands are more durable than their mundane counterparts, but tend to take excessive damage from heat or fire.

The most common form of wand that can be reliably created is one with a small reservoir for Breath, and a simple impact trigger that causes the spell to be cast by whoever is holding the wand.  Importantly, spells do not need to be fully cast into wands, and Breath can be drip-fed by multiple different casters, so long as they each have the spell in one of their slots.

Wands created by the Climb regularly have esoteric effects that cause multiple confusing interactions with a variety of known spells.  Wands that extend the range of spells in various ways have been found, as have those that both reduce or increase the cost and effect of spells.  

While exploration of the potential of wands is ongoing, and often facing the obstacle that imbuing wands ourselves cannot yet replicate the weird options the Climb can do, the one thing that has never shown up is a wand that converts one spell type of Breath into another.

Comments :

The Climb spells are already pretty powerful.  The fact that some of them say they’re permanent, and seem to mean it, is wild.  The weird thing is, the wands don’t do much for me, personally, if you know what I mean?  Like, they’re great as tools, but not really if you’re in a fight.  It’s too much to keep track of.  -Alex Wolly, Paladin-

The storm orbs are on my list of top five best smelling dungeon objects.  -Smoke, Recovery-

Reusable, reliable, legible, perfect for actually equipping a squad if you want to know what your soldiers can do.  So of course it’s the one people gripe about the most.  Get your snow shoes and stop whining.  Also stop asking me to turn shed wings into soup, you’re all fucking nuts.  -Nate Marselli, Delver-

The snow cats do not technically die when they despawn, and have no loot drops, but purple orbs experience a disruption in function.  This is unlike any other interaction with the Office magic, and if the cats know the reason, they aren’t speaking to it.  -Bea, Research-

A lot of the spells from the Climb feel sorta like they want us to get off the Climb.  Like they’re made for gardening or knitting or having a pet and staying home, right?  It’s hard to not project ideas of what dungeons ‘want’ when we’re in them all the time, and I know it’s probably wrong, but… I dunno, it just seems like the Climb is trying to be cozy sometimes.  -Ethan, Delver-

Is it bad that most of us want to talk about the cat?  I just really like the cat.  James keeps his up all the time now, since he got all those Pylon levels in breathing, and it’s really cute and it also tolerates me!  I think we should make permanent wands for the cats.  That’s my petition if we survive the end of all things.  -Sarah Moyle, running out of glib titles-

Ceaseless Stacks :

Learning Orbs:

The majority of magic from the Ceaseless Stacks comes in the form of orbs, similar in color and composition to those of Officium Mundi, but with a different spread of effects.  Each color of orb discovered so far grants a number of ranks in a field, which improve rates of learning about or with that field, as well as offering secondary synergistic bonuses to relevant magics.  Each rank has been estimated to be roughly a thirty percent boost to understanding, with other magics that have numerical grades following this pattern when relevant.

Yellow orbs are the most common, found as loot drops from slain dungeon life, and offering species ranks, usually specialized to a very specific mundane life form.  Blue orbs, found in the dungeon within nests or dens, provide flora ranks, which work the same but for plants.  Green orbs are located in water features inside the dungeon, and provide material ranks, arguably one of the more useful types as they can be used to minorly enhance learning mundane skills if tools of the appropriate material can be sourced.  And purple orbs, found so far only buried within the Library's swamp biome, contain tool ranks.

Larger orbs are equally likely to contain either more ranks, or less granular ranks.  As with Officium Mundi orbs, Stacks orbs can be absorbed by a delver, though unlike their counterpart, their effect is uniform.  Offering a near-identical version of 'uptime' provided by absorbed yellow orbs, with different focuses on mood and cognition for each color.

Similarly, unlike its comparative dungeon's orbs that can produce totems of varying effects, all Stacks orb-using constructs have the same effect, depending on the orb.  Referred to as generators, these constructs must be tuned to broad categories of thing, and then fed an appropriate orb that matches that category, at which point, they will begin spawning iterations of whatever the orb would otherwise give ranks in.

In a way, this is a flexible way to identify many types of orb.  And due to quirks in how the generators reabsorb material, it is a quick way to use copied green orbs for constructing building frameworks. Additionally, it is important to note that animals generated by yellow orbs are not thinking creatures; they operate on looped behaviors that mimic reacting to some stimuli, but are devoid of actual feeling or thought, as far as can be determined by multiple methods.  

It is suspected that two additional orb colors exist, to match the six from Officium Mundi that share so much in common already, but they have not been discovered yet.

Logos Statues:

Within the Ceaseless Stacks, small patches of living ink can be found on a variety of surfaces.  Often moving in swirling patterns, equally often concealed, these patches form words in various languages.  If a delver near the ink speaks the word aloud in another language, effectively translating it, then the ink will migrate to the delver's skin where it will remain as a tattoo until used.

Also within the dungeon, in concealed rooms that require unlocking hidden passages to reach, there are floating stone torii, paired with a single nearby book on a pedestal of some sort.  The book will contain a seemingly random short sentence, with certain words missing from it.  Any delver who stands at the book and recites the words of their own living ink tattoos that match the proper speech structure of the missing words will have that ink fill in the blank spaces.  When all spaces are filled, the torus will activate, producing a small statuette, and erasing the used words.

Logos statues can be activated by applying pressure, which damages them significantly, or through speaking the words of the sentence that composed them, which still causes cracks but less severely.  They will continue to function while damaged as normal, until pieces begin to break off, at which point they will cease working once their current activation is ended.

A given logos statue produces a localized effect that imposes a magical condition around itself.  These effects are symmetrical, which as we all know, makes them completely fair.  There is no way to opt out of, or exclude someone from, a logos statue once it has been used.  Their duration tends to be relevant to whether they are actively being used, with the effect fading rapidly if it is not engaged with.

Due to their size and often odd shapes, logos statues are not often copied.  However, as living ink is often acquired in batches of three or more copies of a given word, it is possible to produce multiples of useful statues, or to iterate on ideas.  Several statues have been saved for future use, as their effects are potentially unique and powerful.

List of Available Logos Statues :

Tyrant Breaking Tongue : 

When activated, causes all arguments made in its area of effect against authority figures or established ideas to stick more firmly within the minds of anyone who hears them.  The memories of those arguments have a persistent and long term modification made to them that consistently draws thought back to them, forcing introspection, even if the effect never enforces compliance or belief.

Skirmish Winner Seizes Blades :

When activated, creates a zone within which anyone currently winning a fight (an actual fight, though training exercises and sparring matches do count) may pull weapons from within the zone.  The longer a fight persists, the larger the zone becomes and the farther weapons may be pulled from.  Weapons are grabbed as if there is no material impeding motion, and pulled out of nowhere, without crossing intervening space.  This does allow someone in a dominating position to disarm their opponents by repeatedly taking their weapons and discarding them.

Beloved Winner Seizes Momentum :

Causes anyone who an audience within the zone sees as victorious to build up a form of persistent improvement to their actions. Small subconscious changes to personal movements and thoughts, as well as to the environment around a person, cause things to work slightly better for them as long as they are performing the same thing they ‘won’ at.  The size of the audience, and the scale of perceived victory, influence how long the effect lasts and the strength of it.

Broken Winner Seizes Recovery

Heals anyone perceived as victorious based on the size of the audience, and the severity of injuries sustained in the process of attaining victory.  Has a larger zone size compared to other tested statues.  Unfortunately, the nature of the statue's effect means that the less severe the injury is, the less proportional recovery actually occurs, making this sadly less useful than hoped as a sports safety device.  Copies remain in storage for future use regardless.

Comments : 

Of course we have bets going on what the last two orbs are.  It's pretty long odds, because most people have kind of assumed that the pairing of animal, vegetable, and mineral is person, place, or thing, and the tool ranks hit at least one of those.  But if you want to get in on throwing away your extra orbs directly into the enormous bucket that I've set up for when I win, you're welcome to pick something else!  Smoke-And-Ember thinks that it's tool, weapon, clothing, which actually would be pretty good.  Arrush just stared at me and asked why I think the first three are connected, and then sidetracked any betting by learning how to play twenty questions for an hour, so that was fun.  But also he might have a point.  Anyway there's three to one odds on orange orbs being building ranks if you want in on this.  -Vadik, Delver-

The statuettes are an existential horror waiting to happen, and I say that as someone who has helped make several of them.  Oh, we dress it up with nice words about cognition and focus, and we did get rid of the one that chained everyone's motions to the best dressed in the room.  But the short version is, they impose narrative laws on our world.  And as much as our world can seem quite mad at times, the truth is, we are all more free than we understand, and the logos statues show that off by imposing new boundaries, very abruptly.  -Amelia 'Red' Marguerite, Alchemy Department-

The learning buff for material ranks is kind of overstated.  You do sorta learn faster if you, for example, are trying to pick up swordfighting with a sword made out of industrial sapphire.  But it's not that much, which means it might be confirmation bias.  We're still studying the effect and Research kinda needs more sociologists.  But in the meantime check out my sweet sword!  It’s technically edible now that there’s umbral here!  -Mars, Research-

Very rude.  You can learn about plants, animals, rocks, even screwdrivers.  But no orbs for learning about civilizations, and that's what I need most.  Sometimes I don't think dungeons think that much about dungeon people.  -Cheha, Townton resident- 

So hey, does anyone want to pretend to know why it gives species ranks in animals that are really, really extinct?  Also, followup question, how long before I walk into the Research basement to find out that someone's trying to use a generator to bring an extinct species back to life?  Please don't Jurassic Park us, is all I'm saying.  Also I know the generator spawns are sterile.  Jeff Goldblum would have something to say about that though.  -James Lyle, Paladin-

I really just want to see a dinosaur!  -Keeka, Recovery-

Pylon Motoric

While the Pylon’s transmutation machines are a form of magic, so far, none have been extracted from the dungeon, and their effects are of minimal value inside the dungeon.  In that regard, Pylon Motoric has one extremely useful magic, which is gained in an only slightly awkward manner.

Whenever an individual leaves the Pylon, the dungeon will award them with a ‘milestone’ based on progress or accomplishments made within the dungeon.  These milestones can be as simple as entering the dungeon for the first time, as dangerous as capturing dungeon megafauna in a nonlethal trap, or as esoteric as going on a delve on your birthday.

Each discrete delve only awards a single milestone, and if the requirements for multiple milestones are met, the dungeon has a consistent priority order to which one is awarded.  Similarly, some milestones have requirements of other milestones, and possibly other personal factors.  The value of individual milestones varies, but each one always provides the same reward.

That reward is in the form of AP (suspected to mean ‘ability points’, but of course, there is no way to confirm this).  Whenever an individual with free AP takes a physical action, an AP will be automatically spent to level up that action.

Each level improves a person’s ability in abstract and obfuscated ways. It does not actually improve someone’s skill, instead applying a persistent effect much like an ongoing purple orb would, altering the world in real but often small ways in order to make actions better and more effective.  The effect of levels is most obvious to the individual when they are compensating for known problems, but that is not the only boost, and so far, no action levels have been reported to cause detrimental effects.

Levels in an action require progressively more effort to achieve, with the fifth level being the one commonly agreed to be the threshold for where deliberate effort is required.

The following paragraph, and the list of links, is considered a cognitohazard for anyone who has not delved the Pylon before.  This information is not critical, and can be useful for experienced delvers, but it has the potential to influence levels in a negative way.

The single largest issue with Pylon Motoric’s reward structure is that AP expenditure is both automatic, and counts effort made on autonomic processes, even to resist those processes.  This means that it is incredibly likely that most individuals will find their first several levels will come in the form of breathing, blinking, or glowing.  Eventually, this issue smooths out, as casual breathing won’t expend too much AP, and also by acting quickly a delver can cause the expenditure to go to other actions anyway.  But the frustrating fact is, knowing about this characteristic of the dungeon can often cause delvers to reflexively attempt to refrain from breathing, blinking, swallowing, or other autonomic processes; which instantly counts the resistance as an action, and expends AP.

The full list of what actions are viable is still being explored, and the dungeon has a number of additional quirks, such as folding all forms of swordfighting into the action of ‘bladeworking’, but splitting chopping, dicing, and slicing in the context of kitchen knife work into different actions.  Punching or striking is compressed into ‘boxing’, and all forms of button presses seem compressed into ‘inputting’.

One of the most interesting things about Pylon levels is that they show up for spellcasting from other dungeons.  Often in a different format, spellcasting levels have been observed for Officium Mundi’s blue orbs, Route Horizon’s Velocity magic, and Winter’s Climb’s Breath magic.  In addition to boosting the spells, this carries the implication that it is possible for those spells to have effort applied to their use, which is rather important.

Finally, as the Pylon is paired with the Garden in physical space, their magic systems are also paired.  At five levels in an action, a link becomes available, which is aspected as soon as a Garden spell is equipped, permanently buffing the Garden spell.  It is unknown if further levels offer different, stronger, or even more links, but every five levels is the hypothesis.  The buffs from these links usually takes the form of either reducing needs while studying the spell, or adding new ways to advance the spell outside of studying.

A list of milestones and links follows, with milestones clumped by relevant requirement chains.  A number of milestones are known to exist from contacts with local delvers, but lack names or values.

Milestones

Initiation Crossing - 1 AP - First delve into the Pylon.

Sustained Crossings - 3 AP - Fifth delve into the Pylon.

Initiation Sisterhood Crossing - 4 AP - First time through an inter-dungeon breach.

Furtive Crossing - 1 AP - Exit the dungeon within one minute of entry.

Initiation Mercurial Acquisition - 3 AP - Acquire 3 or 5 (unconfirmed) milestones in one day.

Initiation Skirmish - 1 AP - Survive a fight within the dungeon

Sustained Skirmish - 1 AP - Survive an unknown number of fights within the dungeon

Amber Bitterant - 2 AP - Kill 10-14 living traffic cones

Middling Amber Bitterant - 4 AP - Kill 22-30 living traffic cones

Low Rhetoric Resolution - 2 AP - Nonviolently end a hostile encounter.

Slick Rhetoric Resolution - 3 AP - Engage in diplomacy with an oilslick to mutual benefit.

Initiation Abduction - 1 AP - Remove an unwilling living native from the dungeon.

Initiation Exodus - 2 AP - Remove a willing living native from the dungeon.

Wilding Watcher - 1 AP - Encounter mid-sized or larger dungeon life without hostility

Wilding Searcher -  1 AP - Encounter three types of mid-sized or larger dungeon life

Low Wrangling Resolution - 1 AP - Disable a hostile opponent nonlethally and through grappling.

Snare Wrangling Resolution - 2 AP - Disable a hostile opponent nonlethally and through traps.

Low Visionary Apprentice - 1 AP - Copy an image of a piece of dungeon graffiti.

Low Visionary Practitioner - 1 AP - Copy images of seven pieces of dungeon graffiti.

Crafted Visionary Apprentice - 2 AP - Create drawn or painted art of a piece of dungeon graffiti

Early Machine Attunement - 3 AP - Activate a transmutation car for the first time.

Marking Revolution Lasting - 3 AP - Complete a delve on a birthday.

Unknown - X AP - Reach the top of a structure

Unknown - X+ AP - Reach the top of a structure within a time limit

Unknown - X AP - Kill 3 / 9 / 27 ratlings

Unknown - X++ AP - Solve a graffiti hunt.  Possibly apocryphal. 

Known Garden Spell Links :

Breathing > 20% reduced oxygen required while studying spell

Walking > 20% reduced motion required while studying spell

Swallowing > 20% reduced hydration required while studying spell

Blinking > 20% reduced sleep required while studying spell

Knitting > Knitting and related activities do not break study ‘focus’

Running > Spell advances every 40 consecutive minutes spent running

Boxing > Spell advances every 2 total hours spent sparring

Weightlifting > Spell advances after a ‘completed set’, maximum once per spell.

Comments : 

I remember being pissed at the first breathing level.  And then feeling exceptionally shitty for that because, like, half my friends are ratroaches, and maybe not every dungeon needs to be about my magic.  Or about me at all.  And also there are Climb spells so I’m kinda just an idiot and an asshole.  -Momo, Witch-

Our chart of known milestones is unfortunately slim despite many delves so far.  The scattershot nature of Order delve teams when not given objectives has left us with holes in our information, and the nature of the Pylon to give smaller rewards means we have likely earned several important milestones without realizing.  Should anyone wish to assist me with planning tactically efficient runs as part of the process of accelerating the Order into a 10AP minimum, please contact me the usual way.  -Planner, Knight-

Slithering and coiling shouldn’t be different things!  -Resplendent-Pine-Smoke, Lair resident-

We still don’t even know if you can add links after you apply one to a spell.  If that’s the case, then it’s going to be a giant pain to manage, and the need reduction ones aren’t as good as they could be.  But… well, at least we keep finding new Garden spells, so waiting doesn’t feel too bad.  I think my brain got damaged hanging out with Planner all the time, I should think this magic is really useful but instead I’m trying to draw up a logistics flowchart in my head.  -Ben, Rogue-

Verdigris Venture

As with the Pylon, the Garden contains one kind of magic, intertwined with its partner dungeon.  The links have already been mentioned, which leaves the actual meat of the magic to explain.

Garden magic comes in two parts.  Slot coins, and spellbooks.  Coins function as consumable dungeon rewards, with each one permanently adding an open Garden spell slot to the user when broken.  Despite being metal, the coins break easily when effort is applied, though accidents are unlikely.  Coins are of different levels, with lower levels being dramatically more common, and some coins contain modifications that change the way the slot they produce functions.

Once a spell slot of the appropriate level exists, a caster can spend a set amount of time studying a spellbook to equip that spell.  Each spell has its own requirement for time and level, and once the spell is cast, it is consumed and removed from the casters spell list.  The books are not consumed by this process, and can be reused indefinitely.  Spellbook is also a slight misnomer, as they have been known to come in the form of both audiobooks and braille-style texts.

Studying, in this case, refers to the act of focusing on the material of the spellbook.  This material is, bluntly, gibberish.  And while studying, a caster is incredibly limited in their options for distractions.  Should focus be lost for more than a few seconds at a time, the process is aborted, and the timer reset.  Any given studying session cannot have a total distraction time of more than ten percent of the spell’s requirement without resetting either.

After a spell’s study duration is complete, a caster can choose to continue focusing.  Doing so restarts the timer, and if completed again, will add a ‘+’ to the spell in their list, referred to as advancing.  Each advancement to a spell improves its quantitative values, with enough advancements to many spells also increasing their level (which requires the higher level spell slot be open) and adding qualitative changes.  Many of these higher level changes are known to be incredibly potent, but require hours, sometimes days, of study, for spells that will be consumed after a single use.

Spells that are equipped are placed into slots of the lowest possible appropriate level based on an unknown system of logic that does not appear to be random.  Spells that are cast without deliberate intention begin with the most advanced spell of the proper name and work down that list, though focus can select from among differently advanced spells.

Both coins and books come from the same sources, either being found in the dungeon, or from successful encounters with Garden life.  Kills are the most likely resolution to produce rewards, but peaceful interactions work too, and long term relationships or moments of emotional potency are both potential sources of spawned loot drops even for dungeon life that exists outside of the Garden.

One known synergy beyond Pylon links exists.  Officium Mundi red orb interrogation effects can be used on spellbooks themselves, to permanently reduce the study time for the user.  Each interrogation only works once, and there is a soft cap of ~20% in total reduction.  Still, as there are spells that can require over an hour, 20% is not to be ignored.

Once a caster has a spell slot, they can study any spellbook.  However, if a spell of a higher level than a caster has available slots is studied, it will result in intense pain before the spell vanishes from their list without effect.

On the following list, spells are annotated with T, A, and B, to denote text, audio, and braille, for which versions of their sources the Order possesses.  For reference, the highest coin level available is three.

List of Garden Spells:

Saint’s Wrap (T, A)

Level 1, 8 Minutes

Spawns a towel.  Advancements consistently improve thread count, softness, and durability.

Seize Seat (T)

Level 1, 14 Minutes

Creates a three legged stool.

+4 Creates a four legged backed chair

+8 Adds cushion

Charm River Transformation (T)

Level 1, 5 Minutes

Transforms a frog into a bat for roughly one day.  This works on normal frogs both alive and deceased, on origami frogs both mundane and alive, and on the labratoads in the Akashic Sewer.  In that last specific case, removal of their frog side seems to break them out of direct control of the dungeon.  All Sewer delves are recommended to have at least one use of this ready to go.

+5 Allows the caster some control of the variety of bat.

+10 Increases to level 2, and makes effect permanent.

Mindful Reverberation (T, A)

Level 2, 20 Minutes

Causes the caster to firmly and honestly believe the next audible statement they make.  This effect is a one-time application, and a person’s mind can be changed through mundane means such as therapy and simple conversation afterward.  This effect also does not change any existing beliefs, which can cause severe distress and self-loathing in casters that add contradictory beliefs.

Appointed Arrival (T)

Level 2, 9 Minutes

When cast, the caster’s next step (or discrete forward motion such as a slither) will teleport them toward a targeted point.  Each advancement increases the distance the spell can cross by ~20 feet.

Jester’s Sip (T, B)

Level 1, 12 Minutes

Transports targeted liquid at a ~5 foot range into the caster’s stomach (or relevant related organ).

+3 replicates the sensations of taste and temperature for the ‘consumed’ liquid.

Smoke Salt (A)

Level 1, 2 Minutes

Attaches the caster’s shadow to another target’s profile.  The attached shadow mirrors the caster’s movements and behaves as if light sources affecting the caster are at equivalent relative positions to the target.  This effect lasts for roughly one minute per advancement, or until intentionally released.

+8 Allows caster to pin other shadows to themself instead

+22 Increases to level 2 and grants minor control over the movement of the moved shadow.

Jubilant Crossing (T)

Level 1, 7 Minutes

Causes the caster to experience any physical sensations from their target for 15 minutes, plus 2 minutes per advancement.

+6 Increases to level 2 and makes the transfer two-way.

+12 Increases to level 3 and makes the transfer variable based on caster preference.

Bell By Midnight (T)

Level 3, 1 Hour 18 Minutes, RESTRICTED

Causes a touched living target to be placed into a semi-conscious state within a possibly non-real dimensional pocket.  The target can be recalled at any time, and will compulsively follow commands from the caster with the strength of the compulsion relative to the number of advancements in the spell.

+3 Appears to be the threshold for near-total command of short term behaviors.

Breathe Quartz (T)

Level 1, 6 Minutes

Converts an amount of waste plastic into gold.  Plastic must be discarded in some way, does not work on fresh material or on plastic that has not been deliberately thrown away.

+10 Threshold at which the spell can convert a one liter soda bottle into ~.3 oz of gold.

Copper Craft (T)

Level 2, 19 Minutes

Creates a knife, which is mostly mid grade steel and not copper as the name would suggest, with a leather wrapped handle.  Technically, the leather qualifies as vegan, which is an interesting quirk of the magic, but not the main effect.

+3 Increases the level to 3 and allows the knife to cut radio and wi-fi signals, disrupting any signal that would follow a path along the ‘cut’ for the next five minutes.

+6 Increases the level to 4

Amber Icon (T)

Level 2, 18 Minutes

Produces a beverage, complete with thick glass mug.  The drink is described as savory, almost like a thin curry, and so far has not been repulsive to any casters of the spell.  Each advancement improves the nutrition of the drink, and the durability of the glass.

+10 At this point one cast is enough to provide a full day’s nutrition for anyone in the Order.

+26 Increases to level 3, and now spawns two copies of the drink.  If two separate individuals consume the majority of these drinks, a secondary effect activates, causing the two to feel a strong sense of companionship and personal bond with each other.  This is both self-reflective, for example allowing an individual to remember their drinking partner in positive ways, but it is also mind control.  Voluntary, self-inflicted mind control, but casters should be aware of this aspect.

Island Valiant (T)

Level 1, 31 Minutes

Causes the caster to have a powerful understanding of a one inch diameter sphere somewhere within ~1 foot of themself.  This understanding includes awareness of chemical composition, active physical effects such as inertia or radiation, and some magical effects such as the presence of Officium Mundi green orb passives.

+1 Increases the level to 2, and now provides the caster more detailed information regarding elemental and chemical composition even if they lack the foundational knowledge to translate the spell’s information at the first level.

Altercation Imp Ward (T)

Level 2, 22 Minutes

After being cast, for roughly the next half hour, the next time something would unintentionally injure or damage the caster, the physical world will be minorly rearranged to mitigate that damage, possibly to the point that it misses entirely.  Unintentional is a flexible word here, unfortunately, but it does work on weather within dungeons such as Winter’s Climb.  However, part of rearranging the physical world is that the spell is perfectly capable of adjusting a shield bracer to intercept exactly what is needed to protect someone.  This can be good, but is more likely to open up an unwanted vulnerability, especially because it can affect shield bracers that simply happen to be near you and not worn by you.

+1 Increases level to 2, and changes ‘unintentional’ to ‘indirect’, which is of dubious utility.

Wrought Leaf Migration (T)

Level 1, 38 Minutes

When cast, causes the primary manipulation limbs of the caster to become stretchy for about ten minutes.  This flexibility allows for an extension to about three times the normal limb length, and uses natural muscle strength to apply uniformly across the stretched limb, allowing for semi-prehensile motion even when an arm is extended to over five times its normal length.  On camracondas, this affects the jaw and mouth.

+4 At this threshold the spell’s stretching is about ten times normal length, with no loss of strength

+6 At this threshold, stretched limbs are strong enough to make near-right-angle turns without  loss of strength.

Visiting Tongue (T)

Level 2, 20 Minutes

Conjures a fireball which is then propelled at a target with significant physical force.  The fire itself is hot, but dissipates almost instantly upon contact, and the spell cannot be held by the caster for utility.  Advancements increase kinetic but not thermal energy.

Daring Cloud Acme (T)

Level 3, 1 Hour 8 Minutes

Summons a winged spear, composed of a durable and polished teak shaft and a sharpened silver spearhead.  This spell has not been tested thoroughly at present, but it is known that the sharpness and durability increases with each advancement.

Brief Contact (T)

Level 1, 18 Minutes

Temporarially animates a statue.  The target must be made of stone, and will be granted artificial articulation for the purpose of following simple commands from the caster, though nothing beyond moving or making contact.  Advancements improve mass limit.

+6 At this threshold, statues with other materials in their composition can be targeted

+15 Increases level to 2 and allows for delayed commands to be obeyed.  Also at this point, each further advancement increases the duration of the spell.

Granted Eyes (T)

Level 1, 6 Minutes

Allows a target within ten feet to share vision with the caster, seeing what the caster sees.  Each advancement improves duration, and range.

+19 Increases level to 2, and the spell now mitigates disorientation, including across species boundaries.

Informal Pagoda (A)

Level 1, 15 Minutes

Spawns a brief newsletter regarding the local area of about a few city blocks if in an urban area, or a few square miles otherwise.  Newsletter will default to providing information about a single recent event, and semi-reliable gossip regarding interpersonal relationships.  Each newsletter contains about two thousand words of text, no matter how many actual facts it provides.

+3 Increases level to 2, changes newsletter to a four page zine, and expands scope to include multiple events of random impact and ‘interviews’ detailing the feelings of people within the area on them.  Not, importantly, people who were present, or affected by, those events, but people who are currently in the spell’s area.

Aspire To Shape (T)

Level 4, 41 Minutes

According to the source of the spell, casting it heals the caster’s head of injury but not illness, with each advancement improving the speed of healing and the farther from the head it reaches into the rest of the body.

Tether Together (T)

Level 4, 1 Hour 12 Minutes

Creates a spherical zone focused on the point of casting that contains an area, with each advancement making the zone larger.  The spell remains active until the caster drops it or dies, and while it is active, no living person can exit the zone, including by teleportation.  Though new people can enter from outside.

Breaking Forge (T)

Level 3, 48 Minutes

Spawns a sword.  Specifically in the style of a European double-edged arming sword, composed of steel, with a cord wrapped hilt.  The sword weighs slightly over six pounds and is created with an effective edge.  Each advancement slightly improves the quality of the sword itself, as well as making its edge unnaturally persistent.

+12 Increases to level 4.  Effects unknown.

Rat’s Ground (T)

Level 1, 15 Minutes

When cast, the spell persists for several minutes, during which time if the caster attempts to block something, whether it is a strike, projectile, or even something like a moving vehicle, the spell will activate.  Upon activation, the caster is repositioned and given proper momentum and a cognitive boost, to ensure that they properly block their target.  This effect is actually very minor, unless the block would have been otherwise impossible for the caster to manage, in which case the effect is amplified heavily.

+4 Increases to level 2, and applies the amplification to blocks that are unlikely, not just impossible.

+8 Increases to level 3 and the repositioning now scales up in range with advancements, and does not cross intervening space, becoming a teleport and not just a movement.

Acquire Scoop (T)

Level 1, 13 Minutes

Creates a spoon.  The spoon is composed of stainless steel, and in the style of a modern American soup spoon.  Advancements improve the texture and durability.

Languid Pool Transformation (T)

Level 1, 6 Minutes

Transforms a bird into a different bird for roughly one day.  This only works on living mundane birds, or on dungeon life that actively incorporates avian traits, such as crow-wasps or the Garden’s species XII-I.  The transformation is harmless, though disorienting.

+9 Allows the caster some control of the variety of bird.

+22 Increases to level 2, and makes effect permanent.

God’s Braid (T)

Level 1, 7 Minutes

Creates a length of spooled rope.  The length starts at five feet and adds a foot per advancement.  Each advancement also reduces fraying.

Linger In Moonrise (T)

Level 3, 48 Minutes

Makes a living touched target photosynthetic for twenty minutes per advancement.  This photosynthesis is unnaturally improved, and one hour of exposure to direct sunlight will provide for half a day’s worth of nutrition, while also managing the negative effects of not eating such as excess stomach acid.

+8 Increases to level 4.  Effects unknown.

Comments : 

This entire magic system is a microaggression against my species.  -Zhu, Knight-

Dira would probably have something useful to say about accessibility features in dungeon magic, and that’s cool and all, but I’m just kinda into the idea that I can listen to audiobooks while I’m driving the Horizon, and it works.  Kinda sucks there’s no driving Pylon levels.  As far as we know, anyway.  -El, Knight-

It’s kinda cool that a lot of these are permanent.  Like, turning stuff into gold or summoning swords or whatever, and it just works and sticks around.  Because of The Ongoing Curse, I get stuck doing a lot of advancement testing on these, but I actually kinda like it just because they’re so flexible.  Other dungeons have themes, and I feel like there’s definitely one here, but until we start seeing the shape, it feels like a very wild frontier.  Which is what I tell myself when I have to test summoning rope in fifty different permutations.  -John, Research-

Jubilant Crossing is an incredible tool.  I am aware of… well, let’s be direct here, shall we?  It’s an exceptional sexual modifier, isn’t it?  Feeling what your partner - or partners if you stack it - is feeling is exhilarating.  Now that we’ve cleared that up, I’d like to talk about some of the other uses.  As a tool for health and medicine, it is stunningly useful to be able to pinpoint aches and pains.  Even for my specific branch of healing, pain has a way of making everything harder, and being able to truly understand a person is key to beginning to help them.  For planning out ratroach reshapings, too, there’s a similar application.  But the most important is during those surgeries.  Because at the third level, the caster’s discretion allows them to swap sensations, and taking away someone’s pain at the most important time in their life can mean more than I think a lot of us have the words to express.  -Lua Calloway, Recovery-

This kind of magic ruined our lives.  But… not really.  I mean, my parents were already ruining my life before the magic for other reasons.  The Church didn’t need to force me to be a delver and use magic to make me feel like I hated myself, they did that already.  It’s hard.  It’s real hard.  Especially cause I’m fighting my own brain to think it.  But I think I like how many little fun ways there are to fmess around in this list, right?  -Lincon, Delver-

Very fascinating how many ways there are to experience another’s life.  I should expand the body exploration club’s scope.  -Follower-Of-Horizons, Scout-

Compiled Wastes

Demiplanes

The Compiled Wastes is largely unexplored, both as a dungeon and a source of magic.  What is currently known is that for every floor of the dungeon an individual delver progresses through, they are granted two rewards.  A new piece of a personal demiplane, and a new entrance to that demiplane.

Entrances, often called slips, spawn under certain conditions around the delver.  They persist indefinitely until used, with individual entrances capable of appearing multiple times as their cooldown refreshes.  By default, each one can only be perceived and used by the bearer of the demiplane, though different forms exist that allow for bringing in other people.

Demiplanes themselves exist surrounded by nothing, which is often very disorienting.  Each addition to the demiplane can be in the form of either terrain, an object, or both.  Terrain is always contiguous with itself, which can lead to a fairly mishmashed appearance.  Objects often have one or more magical effects, with one of the more common known ones being respawning after being removed.

Anything brought into a demiplane that isn’t specifically allowed by a slip or an object will be removed the next time the demiplane is unoccupied.  It is unclear where the matter goes, as it could be either ejected somewhere unknown, or destroyed entirely.

It is advised that demiplane holders do not ever fall off of the terrain of their demiplane.  Safety precautions can be found in the attached handbook.

Comments : 

You guys haven’t gotten too deep yet, so you haven’t started to see the really weird stuff.  Usually demiplanes start off with some basics, and it’s pretty common to get something that protects you, something that lets you add to the demiplane, and some kind of bed or bed-shaped object.  But after that, it stops making sense pretty fast.  Joob has this metal antenna-tree thing that I guess is some sort of infomorph beacon.  I’ve got the ability to park a vehicle in a magical garage that lets me swap parts out with a touch.  I used to know a guy who had a printing press that just kept running off copies of the last book he read.  It gets sorta wild at deeper floors.  -Tylor Kroll, Delver-

The demiplane resets, which is good, because it’s got a finite amount of air, just in case anyone needed to be told there were even more safety concerns.  -Mark Diaz, Recovery- 

Have I complained about how much of a pain in my multiple new tails it’s going to be to chart this?   I think I did already.  I’m doing it again.  -Reed Moshofsky, Research-

I want to visit here soon.  I’m getting better, but I think I want a place no one else can ever touch where I can hide when I need to.  -Glow, Townton resident-

Stratified Underburbs

The magic of the Underburbs allows for anyone with skill points from the dungeon to spend them on crystals to gain skill ranks, or power ranks.

Skill ranks function identically to Officium Mundi skill ranks, and appear to stack naturally with them as well.  Power ranks are harder to quantify, but seem to generally provide physical empowerments.  Both are gained by mentally pushing skill points into the crystals that are found within the dungeon by destroying magic items or furniture, or as loot drops from any deceased non-Underburbs life that had skill points.

The skills or powers of each crystal are consistent between use, as is the cost.  Additionally, one person can pay a portion of the cost, and allow another to finish it to get the reward.  A single person cannot activate the same crystal more than three to five times, at which point even paying the entire cost will not give them a reward, but does prime the crystal to reward the next person who touches it.

The loot drops of Order knights who fell defending against the Underburbs, while they manifested as Office orbs and not crystals, still contained the Underburbs crystal effect.  However, the effect is corrupted, causing garbled information about the reward, and pain to the user, though the rewards do properly work at a reduced rate.

The loot drops of Underburbs collaborators are the only ones known to provide power ranks.  The trigger for this difference is unknown. Testing on prior Underburbs victims who dropped crystals has revealed that they provide skill ranks, not power ranks, so the conditions under which a power rank manifests are undetermined.

The Order of Endless Rooms has a standing policy of not using the loot drops of sophont enemy combatants, to avoid perverse incentives.  The skill crystals from magic items and furniture are available for use, but are mostly only good for advancing specific Sewer Lessons.

Comments : 

Actually kind of annoying that the power ranks are off the table.  We use greens from Office camracondas, and I know, for a fucking fact, that the Underburbs traitors are worse people in every way than that.  Personally?  I think it’s okay to admit that some people don’t deserve to have whatever magic they leave behind respected.  It’s okay to say that some things are bad without turning into a monster.  -Nate Marselli, Rogue-

As with purple orbs, power ranks adapt across species, but so far in a purely beneficial way, even for ratroaches.  The next time the Stratified nightmare surfaces, in addition to firebombing large portions of its interior, we should attempt to find ways to ethically generate more power rank crystals.  There will be plenty of skill points to invest with which to share the effects, due to the firebombing.  -Spire-Cast-Behind, Paladin-

I actually think the screwdriving skill is a great way to kickstart dumbass newbies on construction sites.  Makes ‘em start thinking with their brains.  -Bill, Recovery-

Unnamed Umbral Dungeon 

Shadow Magic

Named for its primary source, shadow magic is mainly gained by defeating umbral (or any resident of their dungeon).  Other methods exist, and are currently being explored, but have minimal information.

This defeat does not need to be lethal, and in fact, is ultimately far less effective when it is.  Sports, games, and even elections, all count in small ways, and progress adds up over time without decay.

Once enough progress is made, the next time a caster or potential caster sleeps, they will trigger an advancement.  Upon next waking up, they will be presented with three choices for spells, with one of the choices being seventy percent likely to be a spell currently possessed.  Once selected, they will have that spell indefinitely.  If no choice is made within a few minutes, one will be made for the caster.

Each shadow spell a caster possesses has a number of daily uses equal to the total value of the advancement where it was picked.  So, the first advancement would give one daily use, the second would give two, and if the first and second both select the same spell, that spell would have three.

Shadow spells can be gifted to other people, even non-casters.  This consumes a daily use, but does not reserve it.  Access to the spell will stay with the target until they use it, and a spell can be donated to a single person up to the daily uses.  So, if a caster has three uses of a spell, they can give anyone else up to three casts of that spell.  The caster’s uses will continue to regenerate normally, but anyone who is gifted a spell has it only as a single use, as with a Garden spell.

Importantly, while umbral as a species cannot gain shadow magic, they can have it gifted back to them.

Shadow spells tend to fall into a few broad categories, with a focus on temporary physical enhancements, automatic defensive spells, summoning consumable objects or materials, and mobility options.  A full list of spells is not currently available, as there is currently no framework for arranging trades, and shadow magic is often personal to the caster.

Comments : 

I am increasingly annoyed that I have more of my own people’s magic now than I ever did when I was fighting to keep control of it.  -Terror-

I fucking hate that it took you guys six fucking goddamn minutes to figure out an entire piss shitting layer of this that we never got after almost a dozen advancements.  Do you have any idea how hard level ten was to get?  And you’re just playing Catan and flopping into knowing the secrets of the fucking universe.  God, I’m angry.  I’m gonna go see if Terror wants to fight me to the death to blow off steam.  -Jessica Jubilance Joy, Status Unupdated-

TQ says I’m not supposed to think of myself as having material value, but he does it all the time, and I like having the material value of being able to give people something that makes the Climb spells safe.  Which is good for everyone, because I don’t want to be cold, or useless, and this way I can avoid both!  -Cheha, Lair resident-

Two advancements so far just from patrolling Townton, it’s been under a month, and already I don’t even know what counts.  -Cam Marselli, Knight-

Orphaned Magics

It is an unfortunate fact that a number of dungeons that produced various magics are either lost or deceased.  In some cases, these are focused on singular people, and will have a short segment.  But two cases of orphaned magics have become critical parts of the Order’s operations despite lack of access to their origin dungeons, and have more detailed explanations contained here.

Birthday magic has three known users still with the Order.  It provides passive physical and mental buffs similar to purple orbs but of much less power.  Except that each buff increments every time the user ages.  This age is tied to the day of their birth, and ignores time dilation from dungeons.

Enhancement magic has one surviving user, who is with the Order.  It creates specific conditions for actions, which then apply projected bonuses to those actions or the area around them, similar to Pylon levels do but much more focused.  It is known to have come in orb form.

Duelist magic has no users, and one paladin who is the beneficiary of it.  It allows users to create conditions for duels, and power in presumably various forms is moved from the loser to the winner.  The dungeon of origin is assumed alive, but unknown.

Area ritual magic is a form of magic that was possessed by the second Status Quo, and allowed for prepared spells to be applied to demarcated areas within sight of the ritual's point.  The source of this magic is lost, and only one example remains in the Order's control.  That example is a ritual point on a low orbit satellite, capable of applying a 'food cooking' spell to everything within its marked range.  Due to the distance of the satellite in question, it is possible for the spell to be tuned to over a hundred square miles, though there is only a single use of the spell available to the Order.  'Food cooking' is also a process that is capable of starting structure and wildfires, and so this is actually an incredibly dangerous orbital weapon.

Resistance Programs were sourced from an unknown internet based phenomena, possibly a dungeon.  Each program is stored on exclusive hardware that it cannot be moved off of, and must be run from its medium.  Programs require varying levels and types of computer processing power to function, and once run, provide whoever started the program with a percentage resistance to a specific thing.  After testing, it is strongly advised that no one have more than 30% resistance to anything for safety reasons.  Resistance programs for venom, wood, hammers and heat are all small enough to be copied.  Programs for lightning and drowning exist, but cannot be copied.

Memory bullets are known to come in multiple forms, and Harlan’s Wolfpack is known to have them.  The Order only has a single type, 9mm.  These bullets can be ‘fed’ a memory from anyone holding them, consuming the memory and adding an effect to the bullet.  For the one the Order has, this effect is usually explosive impact power, and occasionally a mild secondary effect based on the memory fed.  If a ‘loaded’ memory bullet kills a target (within vague bounds of what this means) then multiple empty memory bullets will spawn around the body.

Logisitcors are interlocking series of brass gears that can be tuned manually, or fed coordinates in various forms, before being activated.  When activated, they gradually exchange a bubble of space thirty meters in diameter around themselves, with an equal bubble at the target point.  Everything inside is moved without issue, though the process does damage anything the edge pushes through such as buildings.  The edge of the bubble is not sharp, but moves with inexorable force until the process completes.  The walls of the bubble are technically ‘portals’ to the exchanged location until the process is complete, but anything moving through them risks damage.

Blueprints are a two-stage magic item.  First, the blank page must have an architectural draft of a building drawn on it.  Then the building must be constructed, from the blueprint.  As the building is declared complete, the blueprint finalizes itself, adding several abilities to the physical blueprint object, with controls to adjust their intensity on the page itself.  Each ability requires power from the blueprint, and the amount of power available is determined by both how closely the constructed structure matches the diagram, and how complex and detailed the diagram and finished product are.  While it is known there are other forms of this magic item, the Order only possesses one medium sized structural blueprint.

Doorstops are items from an unknown source, found in use by the Saskatoon iteration of Status Quo.  Taking the form of small metal diamonds that adhere to surfaces if held against them, they are especially attracted to doors.  When placed on a doorframe, they prevent anyone from thinking about the room they are in, and the door they are attached to specifically.  The individual who placed it can remember placing it, which makes them uniquely capable of pushing back into the room, but without some kind of help, they will still have trouble perceiving the door.

Oklahoma orbs are a series of loot drops from the wildlife of a deceased dungeon in Oklahoma.  They take the form of crystal clear orbs, and sometimes cubes from larger life.  When cracked, as with other orb-type rewards, the Oklahoma orbs offer a momentary choice of three colors, and then provide a ‘focus rank’ in either studying, planning, or executing in a skill.  Skill types seem to match Office-style skills, though tend to be less granular.  Whichever focus is picked boosts that aspect for a user significantly, while mildly detracting from the others.  If three copied orbs are cracked and split across all three fields, it results in a mild bonus to each part.  Cubes work much the same way, but instead affect a physical space, and apply focus to speed, safety, and cost for anyone practicing their specific skill inside of their zone.  Again, overlapping all three types provides a mild bonus to each aspect.

Leveler Items :

Levelers are dungeontech originally sourced from the first Status Quo, that grows in power over time.  Leveling up discrete abilities, and unlocking new abilities at set levels.

Duplication ritual copies will start with only a single ability at level one.  They also improve faster, requiring fewer uses to level up, which takes an investment time when low-level recharge times are high.  Status Quo versions of these items appear to have started with higher levels and other quirks due to the blood magic used to produce them, and tracking those original items is no longer done, as Order versions are beginning to eclipse them.

Each leveling item can also be imbued with a single blue orb effect, which adds an additional ability.  The same ability will always be applied for each item, no matter who performs the enchantment.  Those abilities are marked.

The following list is formatted as follows : Unlock condition, uses to level (increase per level), recharge time (improvement per level), maximum stored charges (increase per level).  All numbers are for Order-made copies, unless one is unavailable.

Bracer (Colloquially, shield bracer)

-Stockpile “Bladed Weapon Impact” : Always Available

100 (+300), 12 Hours (-30 Minutes), 10 (+5)

Creates a highly visible dome of light in a grid that negates the energy of an incoming attack of the set type.  Bladed weapons by default.  The dome forms .835 meters away from the center of the bracer itself, unless a shift is required to fully cover the wearer.  This means that attacks originating within that range are not protected against.  The dome lasts for up to three and a half seconds, which makes it less useful against sustained attacks, gas, or fire, but is more than enough to stop any physics-based threat.  The long time allows for manual use of the bracers with some reliability, but bracers under level 8 in this power should not be depended on for field work.

At Level 8, unlocks the ability to toggle this to be automatic.

-Battlefield Alteration : Unlocks at Stockpile Level 3

500 (+50), 4 Hours (-10 Minutes), 5 (+1)

Changes the designated attack for Stockpile.  Attacks must be things that have passed within the range of the bracer to have blocked, and are occasionally asyncronatic with each other (You can select ‘car’, but not ‘bullet’, you must select individual caliber of bullet.  Selecting ‘gun’ will stop being physically struck with a gun, not being shot.)

At level 3, unlocks the ability to toggle this to be automatic

-Fake Stockpile : Unlocked via blue imbuement

75 (+60 (+15)) 6 Days (-3 Hours 15 Minutes), 2 (+4)

Confirming that the shield bracers actually are making a record of the things that they block with the Stockpile effect, this allows the wielder to project an illusory version of anything that has been previously blocked.  Visual only, range of ten feet, has visual distortion problems with larger things like ‘vehicle impact’.  Uses whatever is currently set as the stockpile.

Greave

-Knight’s Stance : Always available

500 (+300), -/-, -/-

While wearing the greave, the wearer experiences a passive correction to their stance to prevent tripping, being off balance, or out of position.  This correction appears to cap out at half a degree or one millimeter of shift for each level.

Also somewhat uniquely, this power does not use charges, and continues to level up as it is worn, equating to what appears to be one point per hour worn.

-Armorer Vault : Unlocks at Knight’s Stance 20

200 (+100), 4 Hours (-10 Minutes), 10 (+5)

When triggered, manipulates the body into a strike using the greave as the intended impact point, generating a set amount of force regardless of the strength of the wearer.  Can target any point up to three meters away, and the effects of the motion will not cause physical harm to the wearer.  The impact can still cause pain or injury.

-Snap Descent : Unlocked via blue imbuement

100 (+200), 8 Hours (-8 Minutes), 15 (+1)

Accelerates the wearer into the ground, assuming they are not in contact with the ground.  Acceleration is equal to .3 g’s per level, with the force being kept from injuring the wearer, but not anything on their person.  Roughly half the force of the final impact is also buffered against.

Bracelet 

Note : Due to the incredibly long times new copies take to unlock new abilities, copies of bracelets are low priority.  Advancing a single copied bracelet at a time using the Crown is now an option, and is being attempted at least once to determine values.

-Bind Firearm : Always available

10 (+5 (+1)), 250 days (-8 Days), 1 (+1)

Connect the bracelet to a discrete projectile weapon, allowing use of further abilities. Weapon must use some form of explosive propellant, with any other conditions unknown.

-Cluster Shot : Unlocks at Bind Firearm 3

300 (+40), 30 Hours (-22 Minutes), 10 (+1)

Fires three rounds from the bound weapon simultaneously.  Uses loaded ammunition, and fired rounds ‘shunt’ each other away from overlapping in space after fired, but generally hit the same target within ~1 inch.

Certain level thresholds are known to add one to the cluster.

-Munitions Dump : 

Fully reloads the magazine of the bound weapon with the most common last loaded munition.  Material appears to be created from nothing, but will not duplicate anything below an arbitrary quality.  

Eventually unlocks the ability to toggle this to activate automatically when ammunition is depleted.

-Friendly Fire :

Causes the next shot made with the weapon to be physically incapable of interacting with anyone thought of as friendly, or a noncombatant.  This includes for potentially useful or nonlethal means (pushing someone, e.g.,)

-Bind Arbalest : Unlocked through blue imbuement

10 (+5(+1)), 2 Years (-26.5 Days), 1 (+1)

Binds a bracelet to a projectile weapon that uses purely mechanical force to fire.  Tested with a bracelet that had lost its bound gun, so it is still unknown if you can have two weapons bound at once.  Doesn’t synergize with cluster shot unless there is actually a way for multiple shots to be loaded, does work with munitions dump with no changes.

Glove (Left)

Note : While Melt Iron has now been unlocked organically, Annihilate Bone has not, and so its ‘pure’ stats are omitted.  

-Break Wood : Always Available

100 (+100), 2 Days (-20 Minutes), 5 (+2)

When triggered, checks if the next object the glove comes into contact with is wood.  If it is, the applied force is magnified, with none of the extra force affecting anything that isn’t the wood contacted.

-Shatter Stone : Unlocked at Break Wood Level 5

100 (+100), 2 Days (-20 Minutes), 5 (+2)

When triggered, checks if the next object the glove comes into contact with is stone.  If it is, the applied force is magnified, with none of the extra force affecting anything that isn’t the stone contacted.  Applied force is focused in a way that makes it likely for the stone to break into small pieces at high speed.

-Melt Iron : Unlocked at Shatter Stone 8

100 (+100), 2 Days (-20 Minutes), 5 (+2)

When triggered, checks if the next object the glove comes into contact with is iron (including primary iron alloys such as steel).  If it is, the applied force is highly magnified and converted to heat, with none of the heat affecting anything that isn’t the iron contacted.  Heat is self-sustaining for one second per level.

-Annihilate Bone

When triggered, checks if the next object the glove comes into contact with is bone.  If it is, one ounce per level of bone is removed.  From existence.

-Evoke Quill : Unlocked by blue imbuement

50 (+150), 12 hours (-15 Minutes), 10 (+2)

Used while holding a writing implement, can create a written message as if sourced from that implement on any surface at a range of 10 feet plus 1 foot pre level.  Tests show this doesn’t deplete ink from pens, or require a literal quill.  If using something like a pencil that would commonly break when trying to write on brick, the message just won’t show up, or will only get through a letter or two.  Maximum message length is twenty characters, always at size 10 font.

At level 2, adds the ability to write a single pictograph instead of characters.

Brooch

-Purify Food : Always Available

20 (+20), 2 Days (-2 Hours), 10 (+10)

When triggered, removes contaminants including harmful microbes from target amount of food.  The range for this one is weird, but seems to follow the rule that it easily scales up in size if you’re hitting the same type of thing.  For example, you could purify a hundred pounds of lettuce, but only twenty pounds of mixed salad, and half that if you add chicken.  Additionally, this works on water, and will purify up to 14,000 gallons of water with a single charge.

-Bind Processor : Unlocks at Purify Food Level 10

5 (+5), 60 Days (-2 Days), 1 (+1)

Binds the brooch to a processor.  Specifically, any machine that uses an external power source to modify food inside of itself in some way.  Blenders, ovens, mixers, all valid options.  The binding does nothing on its own.

At level 3, unlocks the ability to automatically activate other abilities on material in the processor under targeted conditions.  Will continue to operate without a wearer/wielder.

-Extract Potassium : Unlocked by blue imbuement

50 (+180), 3 days (-3 Hours), 4 (+12)

When used and directed at food specifically, removes all potassium from that food and deposits it in a pile on the nearest flat surface.

If Bind Processor is available, can be set to automatically work on any food run through the processor, which reduces the cooldown by 25%.  If Bind Processor is operating automatically, this reduces the cooldown by a further 10%

Hair Pin

-Index Documents : Always Available

20 (+30), 20 Hours (-22 Minutes), 10 (+3)

Organizes a set of up to 3+level documents into the most efficient pattern, first based on existing organizational systems, and if those are not available, then on the mindset of the user.  A “document” can include multiple pages or pieces of similar media, but if used on a single document, it will sort the pages.

-Complete Document : Unlocked at Index Document 5

10 (+10), 14 Days (-40 Minutes), 3 (+1)

Fills out a document with missing information, using all available information the user has access to.  Will not editorialize.

Earring

Note : While Optical Invisibility has now been unlocked organically,  Perfected Strike has not, and its ‘pure’ stats are not listed.

-Avoid Hostility : Always Available

300 (+200), 3 days (-15 minutes), 4 (+1)

When activated, the wearer appears to become more difficult to detect by anyone who means them legitimate harm, and harder to target.  This obfuscation of targeting seems to be increased with the ability level, and extends to both mundane and magical effects, including both aiming at with a firearm or acquiring personal information with a red totem.  The effect lasts roughly five minutes per level of the power.

At level 7, this unlocks the ability to be set to automatically activate when needed, though activation is on a hair trigger.

-Optical Invisibility:  Unlocked at Avoid Hostility 4

70 (+190), 6 days (-20 minutes), 9 (+1)

When activated, warps light around the wearer such that they become mostly invisible to the human eye.  This only affects light in what is commonly considered the visual range, and can be bypassed by seeing in infrared, microwave, or any of the other common options available to the Order.  Lasts 3 minutes plus thirty seconds per level.

-Perfected Strike :

When activated, the user’s next attempt to strike something will be automatically corrected to maximize the force of impact or the damage done to the target, as well as correcting to be closer to where the user wanted the strike to land.  This does not function for any form of strike that does not have continuous contact with the user, such as a gun or a thrown weapon, but it also does not require actual personal violence to trigger and can be used during construction to properly fit lumber cuts.

At level 5, this further changes to include a potential causal violation, allowing strikes that could not have hit to make contact, temporarily altering the current position of the user with no drawbacks as long as it is within roughly two inches per level.

-Perfect Color Match : Unlocked by blue imbuement

50 (+400), 6 Hours (-35 Minutes), 10 (+1)

Changes the color of one worn primary garment to match either another primary garment, or the skin, hair, or eyes of the wearer.  “Match” in this case means a copy of the color in question, not sartorial pairing.  Targets are mentally selected on use, and if left unselected, randomly picked.  Cannot change eye, hair, or skin color.

Crown

Note : The crown is too large to copy, despite best efforts, and so the statistics here are for the only iteration in the Order’s possession, not estimates of a theoretical clean version.

-Spirit Ignition (Level 5) : Always Available

610 (+480 (+30)), 4 Hours (-3 Minutes), 3 (+.25)

At present the Order of Endless Rooms is unaware of what, exactly, the crown’s single ability is actually doing.  We can confidently state that the following are effects, but whether they are the purpose is unknown.  The list of known interactions and effects the crown produces:

Improves ability to focus

Adds one charge to absorbed blue spells

Adds one point to ongoing Sewer lessons (this does not give associated knowledge, only ups the number)

Reduces chronic pain

Aids with drawing circles freehand

Helps with light or noise sensitivity

Helps with generalized anxiety disorder

Compacts stored Velocity (Reduces the amount available to be used, but making whatever spell it is used on more potent.  This compacted Velocity cannot be intentionally selected or even sensed by the user.)

Returns stored Breath (Oxygenates blood, boosts heart rate, clears sinuses, warms skin.)

Helps with absorbing yellow, red, or blue orbs

Extends duration of many active potion effects

Increases desire to write or consume poetry

In humans and ratroaches, causes the production of pheromones that are highly attractive to : Most species of moth, some species of butterfly, and every ratroach so far.

In camracondas, causes the user to smell faintly of cherries.

Prevents acne for a period of 1-3 days

Improves transfer rate for relationstick aspects

In ratroaches, causes the body to purge most stimulants.

-Infusion Following Praxis (Level 3) :Unlocked via blue imbuement

225 (+185 (+10)), 4 Hours (-8 Minutes), 3 (+.5)

While this effect likely does something to mundane material, it has not been extensively tested. Instead, it was quickly discovered that Infusion Following Praxis, when used on a leveler item, accelerates all of that item’s cooldowns by two days.  Due to this, a 12x acceleration can be applied to any single leveler item in the Order’s possession, allowing for rapid testing, or bringing high value items like gun bangles to combat readiness.

Alchemical Potions :

Originally, the material required to make potions was only available through a single small dungeon-origin tree previously possessed by the Guild of Alchemists.  Currently, however, the Order has one dungeontech method for growing more of the ‘sap’ that is the key ingredient in all potions, as well as another method for enhancing its output.  At present, sap production is orders of magnitude higher than when the tree was first acquired, allowing for high quantities of potion production and experimentation.

”Potion” as a term refers to any liquid produced by mixing sap with other materials.  These potions cause various effects, and work on a user as soon as they are imbibed, though digestion is not required, and aerosolized versions also work.

The following is a list of all potions currently in rotation, and some notable archived or experimental recipes.  This list has been streamlined from its previous form to include only a potion’s main ingredients, relative sap cost, and final effect.  The inhabitor potion has been omitted.  Potions are listed in their common use names where they have them.  The Guild of Alchemists’ habit of bad latin is available in the historical archive.  The first portion of this list is potions in mass production for strategic use, the second portion is potions with limited or dangerous uses that do not have maintained stockpiles.

Potions : 

Exercise Potion

Ingredients : Wood pulp, water, stick deodorant

Sap Cost : Low

Effect :

A one ounce dose compresses ~36-72 hours of natural at-rest recovery and hypertrophy of the muscular system into a 20 minute span of time.  The sensation of recovery is frontloaded, causing relief to feel close to instantaneous, though the effect does continue for the full duration.  Only affects muscles, sinew, and cartilage, and only functions on damage self-inflicted through the heuristic of ‘exercise’.

Oxygenation Potion

Ingredients : Hard water, oak or elm sawdust

Sap Cost : Low

Effect : 

A one ounce dose causes the blood of the imbiber to remain at an oxygen saturation level of 98% under normal conditions, dropping to an absolute minimum of 87% should the imbiber’s lungs entirely cease and the imbiber be completely submerged in water.  This lasts for exactly two hours and one minute, and cannot be extended by drinking additional doses while under the effect.

Reading Potion

Ingredients : Milk, ink, raspberry syrup

Sap Cost : Moderate

Effect : 

A one ounce dose causes a marked improvement in reading speed and comprehension, as well as focus while reading.  Effect lasts for forty minutes per dose, and does not appear to have negative side effects for drinking multiple doses at once to extend time.  Also causes reduced focus on non-reading topics.

Skin Potion

Ingredients : Goat Heart, Water

Sap Cost : Moderate

Effect : 

A four ounce dose removes blemishes, unwanted moles, acne, small cuts and scrapes, and visual indications of bruising from skin.  A sixteen ounce dose can cause skin that has cracked or been damaged by disease to also recover.  Potion encourages tightening of loose skin, leading to reduced wrinkling, especially around eyes, hands, and stomach.  Potion also causes others to perceive skin as healthy and attractive, which lasts for one week after imbibing.

Dreamers Draught

Ingredients : Espresso, orange juice, gunpowder

Sap Cost : High

Effect : 

Creates two doses. The drinkers of each dose will, the next time within forty hours that they enter REM sleep at the same time, find themselves occupying the same dream.  This induces a form of lucid dreaming, allowing for communication and interaction.  This also partially assists with REM sleep and rest.

Ghost Juice

Ingredients : Water from multiple sources, sparrow blood, cane sugar.

Sap Cost : High

Effect : 

A one ounce dose confers twenty minutes of effect, and can be stacked indefinitely with minimal side effects.  Allows the imbiber to exercise manual control over how corporeal their physical body is, including allowing objects to pass through them without harm, or to move through solid walls without issue.  This effect extends to objects the imbiber has been in continuous contact with for at least one hour, such as clothing, but any break in contact loses this ability.

Lung Purifier

Ingredients : Unleaded gasoline, powdered tobacco, distilled water

Sap Cost : Low

Effect : 

A half ounce dose restores the imbibers lungs to full working capacity, removing scars, blockages, toxins, and cancer.  Cannot heal wounds directly, but presuming someone can survive a lung puncture long enough for it to stop bleeding, this potion can then handle recovery.

Sprint Potion

Ingredients : Wood pulp, apple, copper

Sap Cost : High

Effect : 

A two ounce dose modifies the primary mobility limbs of the drinker to be highly durable, function with fewer resources, and be capable of sustained motion for the next twenty minutes.  In fact, not moving quickly causes restlessness and itching.  Strengthening of the limbs allows for high speed running (or slithering) for sustained periods without exhaustion.

Posture Potion

Ingredients : Sugar, paprika, graphite, water

Sap Cost : Low

Effect :

A four ounce dose causes the drinker to automatically adjust their posture on whatever furniture they resting on for the next day.  Adjustments are optimal for preventing muscle or joint damage, and generally reduce pain and cause the user to feel more energetic after sitting or laying for long periods.

_____

Feast 

Ingredients : Water, citric acid, silver

Effect : 

A one ounce dose alters the metabolism and stomach acid of the imbiber, allowing them to process food at a rapid rate.  For the next eighty minutes, anything consumed will be digested thirty times faster than normal, with the body attempting to maximize its nutritional and energy value, while avoiding weight gain, heightened cholesterol or blood sugar, or nausea.

‘’Hand Grenade”

Ingredients : Black powder, water

Effect

A one ounce dose will, for six minutes, cause heightened temperatures across the body, with increases scaled up depending on how hot an area already is.  During this period, the body is modified to withstand internal temperatures up to 300f.  At a threshold of 220f, any significant impact will cause a detonation on the scale of two pounds of TNT, though with a dramatically increased thermal output.  This drains the majority of the heat from the body.

This is, almost always, lethal to the imbiber.  It is not advised to use this elixir without a way to mitigate the effects of an explosion inside your own body.

Hardening Potion

Ingredients : Iron oxide thermite, shredded wheat, water

Sap Cost : Moderate

Effect : 

A quarter ounce dose will render the imbiber’s outer layer of skin heavily resistant to impacts for a period of six minutes.  It will also reduce the ability to feel strong emotions, and while this can promote clear thought during a crisis, it does not appear to improve logical reasoning skills.  The amount of water used can, within certain bounds, increase the potency of both effects.  This substance can also be consumed in aerosolized form to prolong the effect as long as it is continually inhaled, though the longer the effect persists, the longer aftereffects will last.  Aftereffects include stiff skin, light sensitivity, lack of sensations of taste and touch, and occasional heart failure.

Repeated use of the hardening potion will cause a process - known colloquially as ‘galvanization’ - that extends the duration of both effects.  The extended duration is of lesser potency, but the amount of time it persists after potion use is stopped has been observed lasting up to three months.  As such, its use by knights is suggested to be limited to emergency situations only.

Fertilizer Flask

Ingredients : Soil, chocolate, ice

Sap Cost : High

Effect : 

Drinker’s skin begins producing a highly potent plant fertilizer.  Fertilizer contains unique proteins that accelerate plant growth by a significant margin, but cause serious skin irritation to humans and potential infection in ratroaches.  Refinement in progress.

Batch 84-2

Ingredients : Sand, clay, pine needles, grape juice

Sap Cost : High

Effect : 

A dose alters the drinker’s body to shatter any glass or quartz they come into contact with.  The effect is loud, violent, and dangerous.  Refinements in progress.

Batch 67-9

Ingredients : Red wine vinegar, paper, shredded cotton.

Sap Cost : Moderate

Effect : 

Drinker’s lungs are altered to process and modify any breathed gasses into carbon monoxide.  Modification happens on exhalation, so the first  breath in is never lethal, but the sudden presence of a high amount of carbon monoxide is incredibly dangerous, especially without control over the process.  Refinements on hold.

Batch 25-4-8 (Glow-Up)

Ingredients : Powdered keratin, calcium, water, algae

Sap Cost : Low

Effect :

A one ounce dose causes the imbiber’s hair, nails, lens ridge, and skulljack clip to become smoothed and opalescent.  Active luminescence lasts for twenty minutes, but the smoothing is a permanent change, though it does begin to degrade naturally once the potion effect ends.

Batch 27-1 (Dessert)

Ingredients : Calcium, iron shavings, sugar, water

Sap Cost : High

Effect : 

A four ounce dose causes the drinker’s saliva to taste like high quality vanilla flavored whipped cream for about an hour.  This is not a physical change to the makeup of the saliva, so it does not eliminate any corrosive effects that an individual might possess.

Batch 111-4. (Nighteye)

Ingredients : Camraconda venom, lemon juice, pulped oak bark, water

Sap Cost : Low

Effect : 

A one ounce dose causes the drinker’s eyes to glow with internal luminescence for approximately one hour.  This light does not provide any additional vision to the imbiber, but also does not block sight.  Light can be of several different colors, and manifests differently in different species.

Stun Potion

Ingredients : Camraconda venom, sparrow blood, vanilla extract, water

Sap Cost : Medium

Effect : 

A two ounce dose causes the imbiber to secrete a paralytic neurotoxin through their skin or other external membrane.  This toxin is nonlethal, and does not affect the imbiber of the potion, until the potion effect wears off.  At which point they will be coated in a layer of paralytic neurotoxin.

Batch P-12-2

Ingredients : Lemon juice, charcoal, polished marble (not consumed)

Sap Cost : Low

Effect :

A four ounce dose causes the user’s hair to produce thin woodsmoke for roughly two hours.  The smoke is described as smelling of mesquite or cedar, and does not appear to cause any detrimental side effects to the hair such as being on fire normally would.  An imbiber that has a large amount of body hair, or fur, will produce proportionally more smoke without an impact to the duration.  Similarly, someone with no hair at all will experience no effect.

Comments :

Memory bullets have a depth to them, but playing in that depth means eating your own memories and shooting people so we don’t know that much.  But we do know you can recover a memory from a .mem and a skulljack!  It just won’t ever work again; the bullets only want your memories.  Also, never use these if you host or are an informorph.  That’s a big no!  Very bad!  But past that… well, we’ve only got one fireball gun, and I think we need artillery more often than we like to admit.  Also?  I know.  I know why Harlan and their wolves use these.  It doesn’t feel good, it feels like nothing.  And if I didn’t have people-reasons around me, then maybe I’d listen when that nothing called.  -Shallah, Delver-

The work of alchemy being placed on a list of secondary considerations is offensive and pitiful.  Our groundwork has paved the way for what has become the lynchpin of the Order’s daily operations.  Where would things be, without exercise potions for recruits?  Without the oxygenation potions for Winter’s Climb magi?  Without Red’s cure for cancer?  Whole divisions turn on our progress in streamlining processes and testing new batches, and you put us here, as a footnote?  -Nile, Alchemist-

I have a list of potions ranked by taste.  -Smoke, Recovery-

You know, when I’m working on Climb projects, it’s a lot and we know the dungeon has secrets, but I kind of have a direction to point in.  I can see how much work it might be to just figure out a new wand, but it’s understandable.  Then we hit the orphaned magics section, and I get wanged in the face with a dozen different things that all probably have the depth and scope of studying a whole dungeon’s magic system, except all we have are fragments.  Even for the potions, and there are so many potions, we have one tree from one dungeon we’ve never seen.  If this is what archeologists feel like, staring at bits of clay pot and bone and trying to map out a city, then I think I have a new understanding and a fair bit of sympathy.  -Anesh Patel, Researcher-

Sometimes, when the night is quiet, when my family is asleep, when the wind is right and the stars call to me, I think about this list.  And I can feel it, on the very edge of something that lies between my manifestation and my heart.  A direction.  A compass point, angled toward one of these lost specimens.  I never see it when I wake up, only in that space between dreams.  But I think that won’t last.  I think one day, I will know how to read that compass, and that one day, these mysteries will be tourist destinations, and I think on that day I would delight in tricking Daniel into being a tour guide with me.  -Pathfinder, Knight-

Birthday magic would have been so cool.  So cool.  Do you think it would work better on younger people, or would I just have extra years to enjoy it?  I know we think that dungeon is dead but come on, we should try to find it anyway, right?  Who wants to go on a road trip?  -Frequency-Of-Sunlight, Knight-

While Cathedral Sanctum obsoletes it to a degree, the doorstop is an excellent secondary security measure for logisticor operations.  And there should always be secondary measures.  -Karen Ward, Recovery-

I’m working on imbuing the levelers with storm orbs, Oklahoma orbs, and Stacks orbs, just in case any of those work.  Do we have any bonus ways to enchant shit? I’ll do that too!  I wanna see if the extra abilities eventually unlock more extra abilities.  -Momo, Witch-

Shield bracers, even at the barest level of useful… uh… level… are some of the most important tools Response gets.  Yeah, people can get violent sometimes.  Yeah, actually being a Responder means sometimes you can’t talk someone out of some dumbass ideas.  This job can be dangerous, and we know it.  But you know what?  Civilians aren’t fighters.  If someone’s mad enough to take a swing at you, and a goddamn glowing golden shield pops up like Gabriel himself decided you weren’t getting punched?  Most people chill really, really fast.  Twenty five maximum charges and only two new ones a day?  That might sound like nothing to the delvers that strap on six of these things at three times the levels we use.  But for Response?  That’s all we need to have a safe shift.  -Harvey, Response Knight-In-Command-

I’m so primed to think that I’ll be stuck somewhere without communication now that I have a couple dreamer’s draught vials as part of my standard carry.  Alanna and Arrush have the pairs, in case one of them is stuck with me.  I keep waiting for another Underburbs, but… it just hasn’t come up.  I also always carry a primed memory bullet now, too.  In case I need it.  If I repeat this process enough I’ll double my body weight in niche gear.  -James Lyle, Paladin-

The blueprints are a big challenge, but one that I’m excited to slam headfirst into, now that we’re with people who see the future of it.  Worst case scenario, you just turn everything to zero and have a building.  Best case?  Well, we don’t even know the best case yet.  Townton’s gonna have some great stuff in it though, before we’re all done.  -Buddy Oak, Recovery-

I wish to say that I do not see how an internet dungeon could exist.  However I am aware that many people likely said the same thing about physical dungeons.  Conversation with Follower-Of-Horizons and his scout team have led me to instead hypothesize that an operating agent, potentially a dungeon but not specifically, has or had access to the internet at some point.  If there exists a dungeon with internet connectivity, there would be value in making use of any time dilation for computational means.  -Second, undecided-

Can’t wait to learn what’s secretly wrong with the leveler items!  I know it’s going to be something obtuse, probably when they get to negative cooldowns.  -Nik, Research-

To me, this whole section asks one single question.  The most important question, really!  Every one of these little things, whether they’re mission critical tools or tiny quirks only one person has, they’re all calling out to me.  And they ask, together… what comes next?  What’s the next dungeon going to look like?  What weird powers will our next enemies, or even allies, be carrying around?  How is the world going to change, how is civilization going to change, how is life going to change when even one thing like these little doodads becomes commonplace?  The Order moves slow sometimes on integrating new magic, and maybe too slow if we’re being honest.  Our abstract time limit means that we’re gonna have to reach a little farther, be a little more reckless with the really potentially dangerous stuff, if we want to compete.  But no matter how quickly we start loading everyone up with .mem files or turning logisticors into the ultimate shipping network or discovering the principles of incredibly niche beverage mixing that we call alchemy but definitely isn’t really alchemy, it doesn’t change the most important fact.  I am constantly, endlessly, hopelessly in love with magic.  I love the surprise of it, I love how stupid a lot of it is, I love working out ways to turn it to our needs anyway, I love how it fixes problems, I love how it lets me cause new problems for assholes, and I love how weird it is.  I love magic.  And when the question is implied, I mouth along with it, because you know what?   I also want to know what comes next.  -James Lyle, Paladin of the Order of Endless Rooms-