The Dungeon Fairy: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 1) by Jonathan Brooks (read novel full .txt) 📕

She couldn’t put her figurative finger on it, but despite all of her schooling telling her it was the perfect plan for steady – and safe, I can’t forget that – growth, now that she was able to take advantage of that plan…she instinctively knew it wouldn’t work as effectively as she had thought.  How could I have been so wrong?  Was the information I was given at DAPS just incorrect…or has my status as a hybrid Assistant-Core changed things?

Tacca didn’t know, precisely, what the reason was for the difference, only that quite a bit of what she had been taught didn’t quite match up to the reality of being an actual Dungeon Core.  Nor could she pinpoint even how she knew or what the differences were, only that having her Fairy mind full of supposed facts conflicted with what she could sense in her new form.  It wasn’t all wrong, certainly, but she was beginning to think that her unique situation had changed the rules.

Well, there’s no way to know exactly how different it is until I get through all of my choosing.  With that in mind, she pulled up her first choice: her initial creature….

Chapter 10

Dungeon Creature Selection:

(Species Master List)

Amphibians

Animated

Beasts

Bipedal

Birds

Dragonoid

Elementals

Fish

Fungi

Hybrids

Insects

Plants

Reptiles

Slimes/Oozes

Undead

There were literally tens of thousands of choices for an initial creature, which made the selection process a bit daunting for new Dungeon Cores.  Each category of creatures, such as Birds or Plants, had potentially hundreds of different creatures to choose from.  Plants, for example, had anything from mobile Treants to crawling Twirling Vines to the immobile Giant Flytraps.  From there, even when the initial selection was made, there were Variants that could be chosen – such as the Earthen Sludge Ooze from Jeremy’s dungeon – that mixed up the variation even more.

Tacca had been told that the sheer number of choices meant that it was extremely rare for two dungeons to have the same sort of creature, let alone the same Variant.  The likelihood of similar selections increased as the dungeon expanded and grew, when they could choose more creatures for their dungeons, but that didn’t change the fact that most brand-new dungeons were relatively unique.

Originally during her school exercise, Tacca had determined that a Gnoll Scout Variant – in the Bipedals category – would be the perfect choice for her.

Gnoll Scout

These humanoid-looking hyenas have excellent hearing and sense of smell, though their eyesight has a lot to be desired.  Like many Bipedals, Gnolls can use weapons of almost any kind, though the Scout Variant prefers to use bows or crossbows to attack from range, though they can easily use the sling they originally come equipped with.  That’s not to say that they cannot be forced into a melee role, but they suffer from a penalty to their attack damage and defense rating. 

Cost (Level 1): 100 DF

Control Requirement (Level 1): 4

Creation Time (Level 1): 35 Minutes

Equipment: Sling (Ranged Attack +2), Basic Leather Cuirass (Physical Defense +2)

Physical Attack: 2

Ranged Attack: 4

Physical Defense: 4

Ranged Defense: 2

Elemental Resistance: 0

Specials: Bonus to sensing those hidden by invisibility spells and effects

Overall, the Gnoll Scout was a good mixture of attributes that didn’t seem that powerful, but when you considered the ranged aspect of its attacks it worked quite well with the right combination of traps.  Being able to attack from range was something of a rarity except for a few specific creatures, and most of them were quite a bit higher in cost.  There were some in the Plant category, for instance, that could shoot out poisoned thorns that inflicted a bit of damage – but they were immobile, had horrible defense, and as soon as a Raider closed with the Thornthrowers they were basically useless.

The Gnoll Scouts, on the other hand, could be equipped with melee weapons, and though they weren’t as effective with them they could at least defend themselves.  For their cost of 100 Dungeon Force, they were also inexpensive enough during the starting stages of a new Core’s existence that they could be produced rapidly and in enough quantity to present a significant threat to any Raiders coming inside her dungeon.

Why such a basic creature type when she could potentially have something even more powerful?  Such as the Dragonling Variant that her former Core, Jeff, had chosen that could fly and breathe fire?  Well, there were three main reasons for that: Cost, Time, and Control Limit.

Firebreath Dragonling

The fire-breathing Variant of the small winged lizard, the Firebreath Dragonling, is a powerful creature that can attack from the air, staying at a slight range to attack.  Its fire-breath attack can burn targets up to five feet away, though its razor-sharp claws can be employed to attack in a direct physical altercation.  While it’s highly maneuverable in the air, if the Firebreath Dragonling is grounded, it suffers from a penalty to both its attack and defense. 

Cost (Level 1): 1000 DF

Control Requirement (Level 1): 20

Creation Time (Level 1): 7 Hours

Equipment: N/A

Physical Attack: 5

Ranged Attack: 12

Physical Defense: 5

Ranged Defense: 8

Elemental Resistance: +50% Fire, +50% Air

Specials: Flying

Fire-breath attack that can effectively reach up to 5 feet with a 2-foot spread

First, the Dragonling Variant that Jeff had chosen took 1,000 Dungeon Force to create – which was also the maximum that a brand-new Core could hold at one time.  After a few Core Improvements, that amount wasn’t as significant because more Force was available, but initially it was entirely too much to waste on a single creature.

Second, the time it took to create something like that was measured in hours instead of minutes. The Gnoll Scout, for example, required 35 minutes to create; the Dragonling – 7