One of my players burst out with a gem at our most recent game session.
The players started to talk about staying in the dungeon, protecting it from other adventurers, and otherwise ensuring they maximize their loot without letting anyone else get any.
"Is this how dungeon monsters get started?"
Pretty much.
Step 1 - find the dungeon.
Step 2 - start to exploit its treasures.
Step 3 - worried about rivals, you start to camp out at the dungeon, set traps, ally with monsters in the dungeon to help you protect it, etc.
Step 4 - you finally move into the dungeon full time. You can only protect so much, so you start locking doors, setting traps, blocking off passages, and creating your own little patrol area/safe zone. You stay there with your magic items and treasure.
Step 5 - Other adventurers finally show up, and you instantly and suspiciously attack them. They're clearly the other adventurers come for your stuff that you've feared this whole time. They're after your stuff and that of the other monsters whose loot you covet for yourself.
Final stage - Before you know it, you went from "Borriz Borrizman, bold dwarven delver!" to "that crazy dwarf in Room 23."
So if you ever wondered about the Lich-King down on level 11, well, he started as an adventurer and just didn't leave. Now he's down there, and yes, he does regard all of the treasure in the whole damn dungeon as his. That's why he moved into the dungeon into the first place, to protect it from you!
Thanks to Aaron, Borriz's player, for this eminently logical train of thought.
I thought the Final Stage was going to be "Borriz looks in a mirror and realizes he's become an orc!" Not a bad idea for those "mythic underworld"-type cosmologies: stay in a dungeon too long and you literally start to take on monstrous features until you actually become one!
ReplyDeleteThis also supplies an explanation of why dungeons get tougher as you go down. Every denizen is trying to fight their way down to the lich-king at the bottom, while simultaneously keeping others away from what they've already gained. The stronger ones get the farthest, and keep the weaker ones back.
ReplyDeleteMonsters really do get promoted to their level of incompetence... ;)
DeleteThis really made me laugh - it can totally be used to justify oddball NPC's living in the dungeon with their paranoid delusions.
ReplyDeleteIn all seriousness, after my players were recently robbed in town while they were adventuring, their first thought was to haul their loot back to the dungeon and find a place to secure it. They're teetering on the edge of becoming one.... of them!
One other bit in the Black City, many adventurers who refill their canteens from polluted water sources get infected with 'dungeon madness' and eventually become berserkers; long infection mutates them into worse things.
At the beginning, town is safe. Then they start screwing that up with rigged gambling rings, selling cursed items as magical, pickpocketing failures, etc. Then only the dungeon is a safe place to live. That's when they realize the orcs had the right of it in the first place.
DeleteThis is much more wonderful than the "goblins come from spores in the dungeons" conceit I read about recently. Though I do like the idea that some of the odder creatures come from exposure to radiation from being under ground for too long.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of them changing into monsters. Just becoming dungeon dwellers. That's why there are so many NPC parties there - they aren't competition, they live there. :)
DeleteBrilliant! I love the concept :D
ReplyDeleteAlthough David Larkins' idea I like even more ;). Stay for too long in the dungeon and get transformed in a monster!
If you really want to stretch your imagination ... most of the magic is remnants of super-science.
DeleteMagic spells are controlling spirits/magical forces (nano clouds) with right rituals in ancient language (command codes).
Rogue nanites, wild code, are hiding underground. Prolonged exposure for them contaminates both body and mind.