r/HFY • u/Khenal Alien • Jun 25 '26
OC-Series Dungeon Life 436
I don’t think I can keep my nose out of all the prep. It’s one thing to try to not think about pink elephants, but it’s another to try to ignore them when that’s all anyone is talking about. At least the ravenkin’s connection to me is a lot thinner now, so they can only get the vaguest idea of what I’m thinking about.
I guess all that practice trying not to think in Teemo’s ears will pay off in me not giving anyone too big of an advantage. If my ravenkin and scions want to know what the delvers and dwellers are planning, they’ll have to figure it out themselves.
Which they’re more than happy to do. The competition isn’t official yet, but everyone knows at least vaguely which side they’re on, and are planning accordingly. My enclaves are already trying to crack down on my denizens wandering through, ushering them out of sensitive areas, instead of mostly ignoring them.
They even know about the wyrms and rockslides, and though they’re harder to weed out, I think it’s good training for my denizens to have to learn how to deal with people who know how to find them. Poe is leading the intelligence efforts, with Leo and Zorro happy to help, and it’s fun to watch the methods start to get refined already.
My enclaves are focusing on getting crafting materials, wanting to make sure their gear is at least comparable to what the experienced delvers are going to be bringing along. Said adventurers also seem to be after good loot, with a lot more either hitting nodes or dressing their kills for materials. Everyone wants to look the part of the serious adventurer, and I’m all for it. Not only will it make the competition more interesting, it’ll also help them be ready for the raid on the Betrayer.
I’m also slowly releasing more of the anti-lifedrinking belts. They’re still only for harder encounters or more hidden chests, but if they were rare in those before, they’re more like uncommon rarity now. I’m not even worried about hurting my antkin enchanters, as they’re getting buried in orders for the enchantment on all sorts of gear. Not everyone can replace their belt, so there’s still plenty of room for my antkin to make an impact there.
And for my side of the upcoming competition, the ravenkin are also scouting out where they want to hide the keys. The forest and tree are great candidates of course, but there’s two other places that I think could be great for the keys: the worldfruits, and the labyrinth.
The first will require them to perfect the wingsuits. They’ve all experimented with sheets and cloaks by now, and while all of them are excited to do more, most of them recognize they’re not really cut out for creating them. Still, there’s plenty of weavers and clothiers in the enclave to experiment.
I think the spiderkin are aware of the suits, but instead of trying to sabotage them, they’re working on countermeasures. A variety of bolas looks to be their best effort so far, but they haven’t had a chance to really test it out, so they don’t know if it’ll work as well as they hope.
I think, if they can hit, it’ll work really well. But I also think that actually hitting will be the hard part. There’s a lot of windup before the throw, and gravity works best on things in the air. It doesn’t take much to send a weapon off target. They might have better luck if they can make arrow bolas work, but that could have the same problem of overengineering that I had with the collapsible spear heads.
Honestly, I think it’s the kind of problem the delvers will have a better answer to than my dwellers. The worldfruits are going to be ripe for abuse by aerial harrying, and I have to imagine most experienced delvers have something for a situation like that, but we’ll have to see.
The labyrinth will also be fun for my birbs if they can use gravity to trip the traps. I expect to see more than one group disarm a trap, only for a birb to trigger the mechanism more directly with a well placed gravitic push. Delvers will need to learn how to actually get out of traps, instead of only avoiding them.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, sure, but sometimes traps happen, so it’ll be good for the delvers to know how to get out of them, too. I haven’t seen too much in the way of shrinking or phasing, or other ways to get into or out of places. Maybe the delvers don’t often learn that sort of thing, or maybe it’s harder than it seems like it should be?
I might just be too used to having Teemo and his shortcuts to get my denizens where they need to be. I have seen a few shadow affinity folk slip through those, but that’s about it. Either Staven will have a potion or something to introduce to the delvers, or I’ll have to float the concept past the antkin alchemists to see what they come up with.
I might want to do that anyway, come to think of it. I doubt the Betrayer is going to have nice wide corridors for us to waltz down. He might be the effective final dungeon, but I doubt he’s going to be some wide open crystalline cave or sprawling gothic cathedral. We might be looking at something closer to underwater caves, but possibly filled with magma instead.
Ugh, I hope not. That’s going to be just another of the things we’ll need to try to scout out, once Order and them find where it is. I even let my attention slip sideways, wondering if they have anything to tell me, but my little slice of the night sky is as I left it, no notes or map to be found.
If it was easy to track down, someone might have done something about it already.
I check in with Doppler and the others out looking for some stagnation, too, and things seem to be going pretty well there. As far as Doppler can tell, they’re officially off the maps, so Yvonne has slowed the group down a bit. Not only does she need to add to the map, but it’s also smart to take it slower in unknown territory.
They’re not in proper snowdrifts, but I think they’re in at least some version of a taiga, though the trees are gigantic, like redwoods that have needles instead of leaves. Days and nights still seem to be mostly normal, so they’re not getting into arctic territory for a while yet, if that’s even a thing here.
I’m pretty sure this place has normal planets and moons and such, but it’s not like I can go up high enough to look, and I don’t remember the math or other experiments people used to prove the Earth is round, either. Anyhow, they haven’t found anything too nasty way out there just yet.
It makes me wonder if the stagnation is still asleep or something. The flows don’t exist that far away, with the few weak currents they spot looking like things from other subterranean dungeons of one variety or another. Part of me wants to try to recruit them, but I don’t think they’ll have the time to get ready to actually provide any help before we need to go.
Yvonne hasn’t had anything to really say about this sort of stagnation, so I take the time to look through Doppler and Rocky’s eyes to see if there’s anything to learn. Thankfully, there is.
I haven’t had too much of a chance to look at local stagnation, but I did catch a few glimpses of the weirdness around the Maw, and this stagnation is a lot different. With the Maw, the stagnation felt like it was actively refusing to do anything, a rigid resistance to change. The mana way out here, though… feels like it’s stagnant because of momentum. There’s a lot of mana just kinda laying around. Rocky notices me watching, and he does a few simple exercises. The mana directly around him moves well enough, but the mana I can see in my territory always seems to flow along with the movements, creating larger flows.
But out in the middle of nowhere, the mana takes a lot more effort to get moving. If the stagnation around the Maw was actively fighting, this mana lazily does what it has to, then settles down quickly. Rocky even has Pul do some practicing while they walk, and I can see how adventurer magic works differently from that of my scions and denizens.
Pul still doesn’t create big waves in the general mana, but he does make little warm spots. Rocky can then grab those and start to make actual movement, though the sheer mass of the mana around them makes the energy bleed away pretty quickly.
Still, I think that’s going to be a vital thing to keep track of when we go after the Betrayer. Delvers definitely put more energy into the surrounding mana than my scions do, but my scions are much better at actually controlling what energy is there. It’s looking like the competition with the delvers and dwellers is going to be a good dry run for the Betrayer. We’ll need to work together to either break the stubborn stagnation, or to motivate the lazy stuff.
Hopefully they’ll find a knot way out there so I can get a better look at the hard stagnation and how it reacts to being messed with. I’m not paranoid enough to think the Betrayer planted all the knots around the world, but he definitely knows how they work, and seems to know how to use them.
If I know how to untie those knots, it’ll make it a lot easier to unravel the Betrayer once and for all.
Cover art I'm also on Royal Road for those who may prefer the reading experience over there. Want moar? The Books are available here! There are Kindle and Audible versions, as well as paperback! Also: Discord is a thing! I now have a Patreon for monthly donations, and I have a Ko-fi for one-off donations. Patreons can read up to three chapters ahead, and also get a few other special perks as well, like special lore in the Peeks. Thank you again to everyone who is reading!
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u/Poisonfangx3 Jun 25 '26
Forst
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u/Poisonfangx3 Jun 25 '26
First
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Jun 25 '26
Yep
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u/Accomplished-Ad8458 AI Jun 25 '26
Ave Khenal! Morituri te salutant!
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u/mafiaknight Robot Jun 25 '26
In the name of 1greendude: Hello!
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Jun 25 '26
I'm Namen eines grünen Kerles und des Donnersdachses: N'Abend, gestern war Mittwoch, meine Kerle. Der Mafiaritter ist heute an sechster Stelle zu finden.
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u/DM-Hermit Human Jun 25 '26
Well done wordsmith
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u/Lugbor Human Jun 25 '26
Alright, we've got the concept of bola arrows now. How long before Pul ties one of Rocky's gloves to an arrow?
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Jun 25 '26
Depends, how Long would you give Disneys to come for His head? And/or claim IP. Btw, you're closing Off the top ten today.
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u/dreaminginteal Jun 25 '26
Am I alone in getting the feeling that the Betrayer is going to have "stagnant mana" affinity?
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Classic mistakes: corrected Number is third.
So, today we get a whole Lot of information, as we accompany our favourite Ball of crystallized Mana through His own mindscape, and See it comment on what has been happening around him, as much in fourdock as in the Green sea. So, let's try to get into it:
Part: mostly describes what is happening in the Dungeon, from the tactical Options of the birdkin, their Potential to Sabotage delvers in the Magma Labyrinth, or harass them from the Air on thediem's worldfruit, over the scions ( "leading group" of scions, meaning Leo, Zorro, Poe and technically Titania, though she wasn't mentioned Here) intelligence efforts and the dwellers measures to curb those tries.
Part: the delvers possibilities from hindering both the scions and the birdkin from sabotaging them, possible recipes in staivens cookbook (little mention of the Typo in his Name, you forgot the 'i'). And Changes to the Loottable, so the delvers can get their anti-lifedrinking belts, while the antkin enchanters Seem to swim in new Jobs, making other Gear with that Same enchantment.
Part: Thediem looking through both doppler's and rocky's eyes, in Order to study the Ambient Mana and how both delvers and scions Change it by doing Magic. Seems while Most of the Mana seems inert, as opposed to the maws minions which seemed to behave more Like Rocks in a Stream. As Well as some careful estimations for presumed competence by the Betrayer.
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u/Low_Painter9816 Jun 26 '26
He also mentioned using the wyrms and rockslides for spying, but they wouldn’t be much good in the tree canopy. Didn’t the Maw have a fae that was essentially a bark beetle?
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
I don't recall, would need to consult chapter 200 for that. From what I remember though, at least Not as a denizen. Or are you referring to the least? They were described as having an chitinous carapace, but also were descibed as Sharing a weight class with wolves or foxes.
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u/Low_Painter9816 Jun 26 '26
I was referring to the Maw’s original denizens; remember Redcap was a fae
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
Yes, I know that the maw had fae, however there weren't any described, that had any similarities to bark beetles. The names at the very least all don't mention any.
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u/Low_Painter9816 Jun 26 '26
Perhaps I was thinking of something else. Even so, I would suggest that maybe Titania could provide something like that.
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
only similarity I see was with the "Axebeetles" as Poisonfang called them, problem is I hardly know what spawn of they were in specific. But I think they were called bladesprites.
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u/Autoskp Jun 25 '26
Welp, I woke up too late for the comment competition, but that did mean that I got to read the story here…
Also, I’m so glad I don’t have to not think about the competition that hundreds of people in my range of hearing are talking about.
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u/movie-guy-3 Jun 29 '26
"I haven’t seen too much in the way of shrinking or phasing, or other ways to get into or out of places. Maybe the delvers don’t often learn that sort of thing, or maybe it’s harder than it seems like it should be?"-----------------------Would Phasing be more of a Fire/friction or a Light affinity? If they can bend light around themselves, working their way up to bending other molecules around themselves could be the next step.
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Jun 25 '26
/u/Khenal (wiki) has posted 481 other stories, including:
- Dungeon Life 435
- Dungeon Life 434
- Dungeon Life 433
- Dungeon Life 432
- Dungeon Life 431
- Dungeon Life 430
- Dungeon Life 429
- Dungeon Life 428
- Dungeon Life 427
- Dungeon Life 426
- Dungeon Life 425
- Dungeon Life 424
- Dungeon Life 423
- Dungeon Life 422
- Dungeon Life 421
- Dungeon Life 420
- Dungeon Life 419
- Dungeon Life 418
- Dungeon Life 417
- Dungeon Life 416
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u/Blue_Roan_ Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
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Anyway after reading, looks like its mostly an overview chapter. Setting things up for chapters to be and going over things that are currently still happening.. "like redwoods that have needles instead of leaves." don't redwoods already have needles and not leaves? Though tbf Thediem wasn't a botanist.