Dungeon Core for Hire by Davis Deck

Author:Davis, Deck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

Macro activated: Open sub-tunnel TS-T-W1.

Chapter 12

I hoped this would work. Making changes to a tunnel or chamber wasn’t allowed if players – or NPCs apparently – were in it. However, this wasn’t a modification. The hidden door had always been there, it had just remained closed until I gave my command.

Or so I thought.

Even though I had given my command, nothing happened. Was opening the door classed as a tunnel modification?

Surely not. The function of a door is to open, and the act of doing so isn’t a modification at all. If the game had decided to argue that point, I’d have filled Phil Handlemass’s email up with so many complaints he’d have to take a day out just to delete them.

I started to think I was just going to have to throw my monsters into W1 and see how they fared.

Then came a rumbling sound.

A small alcove opened in TS-T-W1. Right now, the three apprentices were at the end of the tunnel, maybe fifty yards from the W1 chamber. Master Morai was urging them on, and their fellow apprentices joined his calls.

But the alcove I had just opened revealed a new passageway lit by a golden light. At the far end of it, inside a tiny chamber at the end of a small corridor, was a loot chest.

Knee-high, made from varnished oak with straps of steel running across the top and sides, holding its structure together. The chest was open just a crack, almost as if it was smiling. Soft, golden light sneaked out from the chest and illuminated the chamber with a tempting glow.

Come and look at what’s inside me¸ it seemed to say, in admittedly creepy phrasing.

The three students started to look conflicted. One of them toyed with the collar of his mage robe, while another was clenching and unclenching his fist, his gaze fixated on the newly revealed chamber and its glowing chest that promised untold riches.

One of them headed toward it.

“Laurent, no!” said the boy with the burned leg.

Laurent didn’t answer. He crossed the threshold of the new tunnel, drawn onward by his greed. The tall girl followed behind him.

“Claire!”

Neither Laurent nor Claire answered the boy with the burned thigh, and they shuffled on down this new tunnel, getting ever near to the riches of the giant glowing chest.

Morai’s voice boomed out. “Here, Bernard. Now.”

“But master…”

“Now!”

Bernard limped along the tunnel and entered chamber W1 and joined his master and his classmates. This chamber was unlike any I had made in my earlier attempts.

The W1, N1, and E1 chambers were where I had focused most of my dungeon aesthetic efforts. Different types of dungeon decorations could produce different debuffs – or even buffs – on the right people. In my tunnels, for instance, I was one day hoping to be able to place decorations that gave adventurers a bravery buff, because I felt that overconfidence would make them more prone to activating a trap.

In the three chambers connected to my dungeon heart, I needed a different effect.

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