Chapter 17: Placing Plants – Chapter 17

With Ally’s confirmation that everything is alright Doyle gets down to spreading the dirt around. Almost every room gets a good hand length of soil along the bottom along with any nooks and crannies being filled in. The only exception being his core room and the medium size room right above it which he leaves dirt free and the long room. That hallway gets jam packed with the stuff. Even beyond that he shifts the stone around to make some places on the ceiling to put dirt in for when he places the vines. He piles the dirt up along the walls in some places so high as to block vision from one end of the room to the other.

That done Doyle turns back to Ally. ‘I placed all the dirt and it only took me half a day. Crazy long when compared to the fact that all the stone for the rooms took a few hours but I guess that’s my life now.’ Ally claps her hands, ‘wonderful! Time for planting and sowing. You have only a few choices for flora but what you do have is a nice selection. If I remember correctly, the three normal plants you have are shrubs, vines, and clover. Now you don’t need my advice for this but shrubs are good for breaking up your large rooms. Vines can block sight and mess with ranged attacks. Finally clover just goes everywhere on the floor that you have dirt but no other plant. Your walls look nice enough but mud floors isn’t attractive to adventurers.’

‘Before you go off to do it know that when creating your plants you have some control. In your patterns it just lists the plant or animal. Don’t assume this means you just throw energy at the creation skill and boom, you have a shrub. There is a large amount of control on how old what you create is, the coloring, and with more levels in the pattern the species.’

‘For instance, you have shrubbery at level two. With that you just have one species available and the ability to make it a brighter or darker shade of green than natural. As people track in miscellaneous seeds and bits of greenery, you will collect more shrub species and level the pattern up allowing for a more diverse dungeon biome.’

‘Anyway, got a bit sidetracked there. Creation of life is a bit harder than rock or air. With the system though you have a shortcut. Use the database skill and select the pattern you want to create. Oh and that was a request for you to do that. Easier to explain with a visual.’

Doyle bobbles, ‘okay let’s start with the clover as I have to place that everywhere. [Dungeon Pattern Database]’ This does nothing though. He tries it again only to notice something important. It was already active. His status screen and the list of patterns are still on display off to the side as he had never closed them. ‘Okay, just ignore that. [Select clover].’

Front and center a new window pops up for him and Ally to look at. On it are a couple of images and a barebones stat panel. They ignore the images for the moment and focus on the stats.

{Species: Clover

S[3] A[20] C[10]}

Despite only having three stats it has amazing values in two of them. Doyle quirks his core to the side, ‘what’s up with the crazy agility? None of my monsters have a value greater than ten.’ Ally shrugs, ‘It is just the difference between what is being represented. If you check the images above while there is a picture of a single clover the main image is of a field of the stuff. The image of a singular clover is for messing around with the looks of it.’

‘What the stats are for is the field though. Agility is so high because it is a plant and not something like a large tree. Think about it, when you step on grass does it not just spring back up afterwards? And the constitution comes from how hard it is to kill a whole field of clovers. The only stat that has anything to do with one piece of clover is the Strength. In fact, the only reason it is so high is because of the roots.’

‘The stats don’t actually matter much and can be ignored until the system decides whatever your dealing with is a monster or sentient. For now, play around with the design of your clover. This specific species should be the one native to wherever you came from. A good starting point but maybe add a splash of color or something?’

Doyle focuses on the image of a single clover. A little misleading as it includes not just a leaf but one flower as well. His focus is enough to bring up a display reminiscent of some 3d modeling program. Not as powerful though as he gets the feel that he is quite limited in what he can do. What he can do is shift the color a little. There is a little mark on the leaf which is a bit lighter. Doyle expands the area it covers and lightens the center even more. Now each leaf will look like they have a small dot. Besides that Doyle notices the flowers have a chance to turn a bit pink. Instead of making it a chance he just cranks it up so about one in five flowers are a bright pink.

Ally nods at his changes, ‘good now don’t even think of touching the other plants. You can go back and change them later but if you make your dungeon look like some alien landscape, it might hurt you. For the moment the clover will add a mystique to the dungeon and it is well within the realm of possibility. Oh, and your assassin vines are matched to the current vines you have. While changes to foliage and critters costs nothing, messing with monsters does.’

‘Anyway, now that you have the clover figured out just confirm this variant is your default clover type.’ Doyle complies, ‘[Make this the default clover]’. With that the image of a field of clover shifts to be populated with the new type. The lighter dots on the leaves creates an interesting look to the field. However the weird part is that the pink flowers are not evenly spread. Instead, they are clumped up in groups of ten to over a hundred blooms. The effect looks quite striking to Doyle though he has to wonder about the behavior.

Ally glances at the field, ‘very nice. Humans will love it. Now for the easy part. Since clover is a normal type of plant, you will not be placing each leaf yourself. You can of course but that would be stupid. Instead, just imagine where you want it in a room and clover will fill the space. In fact, once you have it placed I advise you to put down a rule to keep the place filled. Otherwise after a few fights your rooms will end up like mud pits and that doesn’t even come close to what happens when a fire mage comes through.’

‘Oh, and that rule is only temporary. Once enough energy has been absorbed by the clover to make it real, the stuff will grow back just fine on its own. When a floor is clear of adventurers, the plants will grow back at a faster speed. You still need to worry about animals but I have advice for that as well. Now spread the clover and I guess the rest of the plants as well. You will feel a change once you place it. That is natural and we can talk about after you finish.’

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Doyle quirks his core to the side, ‘it’s the change of my quintessence to world energy isn’t it?’ Ally holds both hands up, ‘well yes, but once again we can talk after your done. Not much we can do until it finishes and that should be around when you’re done with the plants.’

Instructions over Doyle refocuses on his dungeon as a whole. Clover is easy enough. Mass select all the dirt areas and point his creation skill at it. Starting with the center large room plants spring up through the soil and grow to maturity. In a wave the clover spreads outward until it covers every nook and cranny of the floor. Next up is the bushes. The medium-sized rooms don’t need it and he has other plans for the long room but the rest get at least one planted to break up the terrain. Especially the two by three room next to his core. He has plans for that one and plants a couple rows of bushes which are all trimmed up.

Last thing for him to place are the vines. Mostly he keeps them out of the rooms, instead planting them in hallways. Doyle actually ends up adding some more dirt in them so he can give the walls a bit more cover. However the main center for his vines is the long room. With plans of this being the place he keeps a couple assassin vines there needs to be a massive amount to provide cover. Vines on the walls, vines creeping across the ground, vines hanging from the ceiling. He just coats the place with them.

And all the while this is happening he can feel a foundational shift in his dungeon. With the clover placed Doyle felt his quintessence drop as another energy takes it place. In fact, for each drop of quintessence a flood of world energy inaduates him. This feeling of change lasts even beyond placing his last vine so he waits another moment for it to finish. Ally however notices when it is done first and attracts his attention to his status.

{Name: Doyle Huxley

Race: Dungeon Core (Strange Caverns)

Soulbond: Ally Huxley

Paths: [21] Dungeon Core 1/1

Level: 0

[2] S[8] A[7] C[10] I[12] W[9] P[5] D[14] K[20] L[16]

World Energy(/R per hour): 31,200/1000(250)

Skills: Territory Control lv4, Dungeon Rules lv2, Universal Deconstruction lv2, Dungeon Pattern Database lv9, Creation(Energy Powered, Pattern Based) lv4}

In place of quintessence he now has world energy and its regeneration rate is much greater. What hasn’t changed though is the overflow. The amount of stored up energy is still much greater than the pool should be able to hold. Doyle doesn’t even have to ask about it though as Ally explains.

‘Normally when you overfill an energy pool something happens. On the low end of the scale the excess just dissipates. Too much though and you’re liable to burn yourself or have some other nasty side effects happen. However as a dungeon who isn’t open to the outside, yet this is delayed. Once you do open up the energy will burst outward alerting those in the know to your presence. There is no stopping this. Until you do open up, there is a limit to how much territory you can control and none of your monsters are expensive enough to use it all either.’

‘Using too much would be a bad thing on more developed worlds anyway. There are tools to detect a new dungeon and the less energy one puts off the tougher, stranger, or annoying it will be so they send out the A team right away. On the other hand when a dungeon bursts out so much that even the nearby farmers notice it likely only those farmers will care. You don’t have to worry about this too much but you never know what someone might learn in a tutorial. Anyway, now that you have plants down we are onto critters.’