Chapter 33: Chapter 32: The presence within

Let’s assume that you are alone on a very small island and that you have to fight a swarm of ants.

They’re unusually aggressive beasts and are very intent on crawling up your legs and nibbling on the tasty fruit that you hold in your hands. Running away isn’t an option, as the island is too small. So what remains then, is to fight.

But how do you fight ten-thousand ants at once in a limited space? Even the largest man would be swarmed by them. Even with his massive arms and legs, he could only ever squish a comparatively small amount of them. But the tide of ants would just keep coming despite his best efforts and he would soon be swallowed whole.

Dungeons face this very problem, but with people.

In each of the four central cities, there is one core dungeon at its heart. These dungeons can expect thousands of intruders every single day in a non-stop flow. It is as if our island, from the metaphor before, wasn’t an island, but rather, an ant-hill in the middle of the ocean. Even the most powerful dungeon would have difficulty fighting five thousand adventurers in one room at the same time. There is simply too much to target and too much to watch out for.

Instead, they have solved this dilemma with incredible elegance and with a solution that also benefits us greatly as adventurers as well.

— ‘Instancing’.

Low-level dungeons are always a consistent space. Floor one is floor one and you and I can walk into it together from outside and then shake hands when we get through the door. Floor two, floor three, all the same. It’s as if we were anywhere else in the world and in a dungeon, this could unfortunately mean that we would fight over the scarce resources there.

High-level dungeons, however, employ 'instancing'. Instancing is still a field of research with many questions open and very few answers so far. We simply do not know how it is that a dungeon can field such powerful, world-altering magic.

What is instancing, you ask?

Imagine our metaphor from before. Imagine if our man could simply carve his foot through the sand and let in the tides to create small channels of sea-water.

Now, the ants, being funneled, can only attack him in small groups and he can, with much more rationale and overview, combat the encroachers.

An instanced dungeon is separated by party-space. This means that adventuring party ‘A’ and adventuring party ‘B’ could enter the dungeon at the same time and both would be on floor one, but they would be on their own version of floor one and be unable to see, or aid, the other group.

But, it also means that everyone gets their own slice of the pie.

It is true, organic dimensional magic. Dungeons truly are incredible places.