The Dungeon

A dungeon starts as a single room and grows outward in random directions until it reaches its size. Deeper dungeons grow larger. Every room can always be reached, but the shape is never predictable.

Every card belongs to one or more decks, such as the main dungeon, a mine or chasm, or a laboratory, so cards only appear where they belong. The theme narrows the choice further: a crypt favours certain rooms and certain enemies.

Far enough from the entrance, a hand-built section may appear: a boss chamber, a puzzle, or a place with a story to tell. The rest of the dungeon stays unpredictable around it.

Rivers and swamps may flood. Flood severity determines how many rooms are affected and how deeply. A mildly flooded room is cold and uncomfortable; a heavily flooded one may be dangerous to stand in. Flood water can spill from a flooded room into its neighbours, spreading the hazard outward from the source.

Enemies caught in rooms that flooded do not simply survive in the water. They drown and rise again as undead, so a flooded dungeon can hold very different creatures from a dry one.

Rooms and items gather dirt too. A dungeon sealed for generations shows it: streaked walls, coated items, and floors marked by whatever lived there. Stained rooms affect comfort, and enemies that hunt by scent may be drawn toward the filthiest areas.

The dungeon does not hold its breath while the seeker deliberates. Enemies move through their turns, fire burns lower, flood water rises, smoke drifts, and nests breed new creatures, all on the same clock of world turns. Standing still does not stop the dungeon.

Some cards carry a living quality that changes them as the dungeon turns. A lit torch burns through its fuel while held or placed on the board, and when the flame dies it is spent. Torches last twelve world turns and lanterns last fifty. Enchanted light sources hold their magical quality even when exhausted, and can be relit with the right recipe. Raw meat spoils gradually, turning rotten once its freshness is gone. Organic materials decompose more slowly, taking eighty turns before they become Rot. These changes happen whether the seeker watches or not.

Not every container is what it appears to be. In the oldest dungeons, a few chests and other containers look ordinary and still hold their contents, but they are not safe to open. A seeker who reaches into one of these will find it reaching back. The container becomes the creature it always was, its items still in its possession. They can only be recovered once it has been defeated.

Vines and roots smother the room's ordinary uses. While the growth remains, the room offers foraging, root gathering, and clearing instead of its normal actions. Clearing requires a blade. A size 4 room takes four attempts, with each attempt removing 25% of the growth.

Cracked supports and shifting stone warn that the room may fail. Its normal actions remain available, and a hammer can be used to shore it up. Each action taken while a character occupies the room carries a 3% chance of collapse. A collapse opens the Tremor encounter, whose response costs 5 Health.

Fallen masonry blocks the room's normal uses and makes it impossible to camp or sleep there. The rubble can be searched for stone, or dug out with a pickaxe. Once enough work has been completed for the room's size, its normal actions and resting options return.

Nests and vermin occupy built indoor rooms. The nests may be searched, but the room cannot be used for camping or sleep until the infestation is destroyed with a blade. While a character remains inside, the infestation has a 10% chance each action to place a Rat in an empty part of the room.

Mushrooms and mycelium thrive underground and in suitably damp places. The bloom can be harvested for mushrooms or scraped away with a blade. While occupied, it has a 5% chance each action to leave the character Spored and a 3% chance to spread into a suitable neighbouring room.

Every Excavated Dugout made by a player begins Unstable. The new shelter can be used normally, but shoring it with a hammer is the only way to remove its chance of becoming Collapsed.

The room keeps its normal actions and adds Mine Ore Vein. Each attempt costs 1 Action Point and 1 pickaxe durability, with a 45% base chance improved by Mining proficiency and room improvements. A success yields the named ore and removes one portion. A vein holds between three and eight portions, whatever the room size.

Works like an Iron Ore Vein and yields Gold Ore.

Works like an Iron Ore Vein and yields Silver Ore. A collapse hides any vein and blocks mining until the rubble is cleared.

Unstable stones block the room's normal uses. The scree can be searched for Stone and Flint Stone, or cleared with a pickaxe. While a character remains there, shifting stones have a 5% chance each action to deal 2 damage.

Strong wind leaves normal location actions available, but prevents camping and sleep. Ranged attacks made from the room deal 25% less damage. A hammer can build a windbreak and make the location calm enough to use normally.

A pickaxe can extract stone, flint, or valuable ore without replacing the room's normal actions. Each successful attempt removes one portion. A location contains one portion for every point of its size.

Broken trunks and branches block the room's normal uses. Fallen timber can be salvaged for wood and planks, or chopped through with an axe.

Heavy webs block the room's normal uses. Cobwebs can be gathered, and a torch or blade can clear the obstruction. Each action spent in the room carries an 8% chance for a Giant Forest Spider to emerge.

Restless spirits leave normal location actions available. Each action spent in the room carries a 10% chance to drain up to 2 Mana and a separate 5% chance for a Barrow Wisp to appear. A light source can lay the spirits to rest.

A forest of at least five connected rooms keeps up to five Forest Herbs cards, spread across its rooms. Hares, Goats, Stags and Does graze on them and keep away from nearby predators. A herb that is eaten grows back after two dungeon turns.

Wolves and Feral Hounds hunt the grazers inside the forest and can kill them while no hero is present. A lost animal returns after 20 turns for a Hare, 24 for a Goat or Doe, 35 for a Stag, and 30 for a Wolf or Feral Hound. The Crowned Briarhart and the Alpha Wolf behave as they always have.

Entering a room where a hunt, a flight or some grazing recently took place can show traces of it. Ordinary combat comes first when a hero or survivor shares the room with a creature.

The closer your dungeon lies to one of these sites on the region map, the likelier it is to hold it. Starting right on top of a site gives roughly a 65% chance, falling to nothing a short distance away. Only the nearest site can appear.

A beast is the strongest enemy the dungeon can hold, given the beast's name and title and made four levels stronger than the dungeon around it. It counts as a unique creature. Its kind, whether wolf, bear, troll, ogre, drake, spider, or golem, is set when the region is created and never changes.

An artifact is a heavily enchanted, socketed item that carries its own name from the region's history. Its bonus depends on its kind: ember, arcane, and storm artifacts grant strength; frost, ward, stone, and shadow artifacts grant defence; vital artifacts grant health.

A dungeon that holds an artifact guards it. Every enemy there is two levels stronger than usual, with no outward sign of it, and each room without a trap has a 40% chance of gaining one.

Artifacts and beasts are hidden on the region map until someone tells you where they are. People who trust you may share what they know, and the site then appears on your map.

A settlement that fell in the region's history is hostile. Its dungeon fills with enemies and traps like any other. The ruin of what was there before remains visible in the location cards, but everything alive in it has turned.

A settlement that survived the apocalypse is a very different place. No enemies wait in its rooms. Instead those slots fill with items, events, and containers. Three to five people live there instead of the usual one to three. The dungeon is not safe in the way an empty room is safe; it is safe in the way a place with people in it is safe.

Climbing a tower normally takes the Tower Warden Key, dropped by one particular enemy. A peaceful tower has no such enemy, and its stairs are never locked. The inhabitants of a surviving tower have no reason to keep you out.

Whether a settlement fell is decided by the region's history when the world is created. It never changes: a fallen village is fallen every time you travel there.

Carry a Map to open the dungeon map. Select your current room there and choose Place Claim Marker from its panel. This action is available only in the map UI. Placement costs 50 unspent experience and creates an unfinished marker in a free side slot. This cost is not refunded. A character may have only one unfinished marker in the dungeon and only one active base at a time.

The unfinished marker is a container. Search it and place the chosen cards inside. It requires 2 timber, 2 masonry, 1 textile or leather, and 1 light source. A card is accepted only when it fills an outstanding requirement, and one card cannot satisfy two requirements. Inventory and equipped items are never selected automatically.

Donated cards can be retrieved until construction is complete. Building costs 1 Action Point and consumes the required cards inside the marker. The owner may instead destroy an unfinished marker. Destruction removes the marker and permanently loses every card stored inside it.

A completed Claim Marker remains in its room. Search opens any remaining contents. Interact opens base management. The marker room becomes the owner's return point when that saved dungeon is entered again.

Territory expands through open north, east, south, and west connections. A frontier room must be discovered, connected to an owned room, and clear of living enemies. Expansion spends gold and unspent experience. Its cost reflects room size, distance, utility, hazards, and hostile spawn strength.

A living enemy makes an owned room contested. Regeneration, services, production, construction, improvements, and resident management stop there until the enemy is defeated. Visitors can enter claimed rooms but cannot use the owner's territorial benefits.

Claimed rooms can house purchased residents when capacity permits. These residents defend connected territory and favour contested rooms. A resident that is killed leaves remains and stays on the roster marked Dead. It no longer counts against the room's capacity and cannot be dismissed. A claimed room named for its trade provides its service across the whole base while it remains secure, so a Forge, Smithy, Blacksmith, or Workshop room serves every room you own. An installed workstation serves only the room it stands in, and it still serves when carried or set down elsewhere.

Location upgrades are built from placed cards, and no claim is needed. The Location Upgrade panel shows each direction with the card its recipe needs. Clicking an empty position finds that card in your Equipment, and choosing Drop places it. A position accepts only the exact card named, never a broken or spent one, and placing or taking back a card costs no Action Points. Once every required position holds its card, the upgrade costs 1 Action Point, consumes the placed cards, returns any card in a position the recipe leaves open, and changes the centre location without removing side cards, installed improvements, containers, or territorial ownership.

Character death abandons the base and removes purchased residents without refund. Construction and old claim markings remain in the dungeon. A later character can reach the site, establish a new Claim Marker, and reclaim the abandoned rooms from a new frontier.

Built interiors, ruins, mines, and dry caves support floors and walls. Forest, swamp, open water, and other wild ground do not. The room must be clear of living enemies. A wall also needs a suitable location on the far side of the passage, so the edge of the map stays open ground.

Each room holds one structural project, separate from any location upgrade running there. Choose a recipe, and a wall direction if you are building a wall. Starting the project, depositing resources, and taking them back cost no Action Points.

Each recipe accepts its own resources. You select the exact unequipped cards to deposit, and the project keeps those cards until it is finished. Withdraw them one at a time, or cancel the project to get all of them back. Anything that no longer fits your pack goes to a free side slot or the room's storage.

Completion costs 1 Action Point and consumes the deposited resources. The terrain, the room, and the passage are all checked again at that moment. An unfinished project gives no insulation and blocks nothing.

The deposits belong to the character who started the project, and only that character can add to it, withdraw from it, or cancel it. Once that character dies, anyone may finish the project or recover its materials.

Anyone with a working equipped pickaxe can demolish a finished structure from the room they stand in, from either side of a wall, and during combat. Each hit costs 1 Action Point, the pickaxe's stamina, and one point of its durability. A structure yields nothing when it falls. A damaged wall blocks the passage exactly as a whole one does.

A wall blocks movement in that direction for you, for anyone else, and for the enemies and residents who would otherwise wander through. Blocked movement is refused before traps spring or opportunity attacks land. Teleports and dungeon entrances keep their own rules.

Ghosts and other incorporeal creatures drift through a wall as though it were not there. They still cannot enter a locked room, cross deep water, or squeeze into a room with no space left, and the wall itself is unharmed. Its card detail names the ability.

A wooden floor adds 2 to the room's insulation for temperature, and it warms whoever stands there whether they own the room or not. The benefit ends the moment the floor is destroyed.

Territory connects through open passages. Walling off a claimed room's last route to your base suspends its connected benefits while you keep ownership. Break the wall down and the room rejoins the base.

Some dungeons are generated with floors and walls already in place, in stone or timber according to the rooms they divide. Generated walls never cut off a route that was the only way through, so every room you could reach before remains reachable.

Some generated walls are hidden doors. A hidden door is always stone and blocks its passage like any other wall. Walking into one tells you the stonework is uneven. A wall that stands between you and a skeleton key you need is always a hidden door, and other hidden doors are found in dungeons as well.

Examine Walls on the location card costs 1 Action Point in any room with a wall. Roll a d6. A result equal to or below your Perception plus 1 finds the loose stone of every hidden door in the room. A failed search finds nothing, and you may search again.

Once found, Push Stone on the location card or in Improvements costs 1 Action Point and opens the passage for good. A pickaxe also breaks a hidden door like any other wall.

A skeleton key cannot open a lock on the far side of a wall. The key is kept and no Action Point is spent.

A Troglodyte, Forest Goblin or Thug that has lived 100 turns, or has lingered 50 turns in a suitable room, can found a settlement there. Troglodytes use caves and underground caverns, Goblins the Abandoned Hunters Camp and Forest Clearing, Bandits a Bandit Camp or Abandoned Watchtower. The founder becomes the settlement's leader: a Troglodyte Elder, Goblin Chieftain or Bandit Captain.

A camp earns 1 point each turn, a Village or Stockade or Roost 2, and a Goblin Warcamp or Bandit Keep 3. Points pay for upgrades and works. A Den, Burrow or Barracks, made from a captured room, raises new members: a Troglodyte or Goblin every 25 turns, a Bandit every 20, while fewer than 6 (Troglodytes) or 8 (Goblins and Bandits) belong to the settlement. A settlement with no living members earns nothing, and can raise a new member only after 100 turns.

Leaders stay inside the settlement. Workers stay home too, and speed building: every two living workers cut one turn from each building turn, up to two. Hunters count double when taking rooms, while workers and leaders count for nothing. Hunters are Troglodyte Hunters, Goblin Raiders and Bandit Marksmen. Workers are Troglodyte Workers, Goblin Scroungers and Bandit Fences.

Members move through open passages to rooms beside their territory. Capturing a room costs the settlement 20 points and takes ten turns of occupation by one attacker, or five by two. Hunters count as two attackers. A player or a living resident of a player claim pauses the takeover. If all attackers leave, their progress is lost.

When a room falls, its player claim ends and its installed player improvements are destroyed. A room holding your Claim Marker can fall too: every marker in it is destroyed with everything donated to it, and if it was your core marker your base is abandoned. Kill or drive out the occupiers, then reclaim the room with the normal adjacent-room claim action, or place a new Claim Marker there. Reclaiming removes the works they built, but a location they converted remains until you change it.

An enemy of experience level 1 or higher sometimes becomes inspired, with a 2% chance each turn per level, to a maximum of 20%. For 15 turns it can climb onto smaller cards in any room, so a full room no longer traps it. It does not chase you. Members marching on a room can always do this.

A Troglodyte Camp grows into a Village. A captured cave becomes a Den. Troglodytes, Hunters and Workers are raised in the proportion 3 to 2 to 2.

Players in a room with a Stench Totem suffer 6 less Comfort and recover 1 less Health. A Midden Heap costs 4 Comfort and 1 Health recovery. A Skull Cairn costs 5 Comfort and makes resting restore 2 less stamina. A Bone Drum Circle lowers stamina and mana recovery by 1. Carved Soapstone Figurines cost 5 Comfort and Bone Effigies 6. Mushroom Beds earn the tribe 1 more point each turn, and a Brood Pit brings a new member 8 turns sooner.

Troglodytes drop Carved Soapstone Figurines and Bone Effigies. They cost you 10 and 12 Comfort while carried, at most 30 in total, and sell for a little.

A Goblin Hideout grows into a Stockade and then a Warcamp. A captured Ancient Pine Grove or Forest Clearing becomes a Burrow. Goblins, Raiders and Scroungers are raised in the proportion 3 to 2 to 2.

Goblins hide Goblin Snares and Tripwire Bells in their rooms, two to a room. A snare can wound you and cause bleeding, and goblins never trigger their own. You can find, disarm and collect them like any trap. A sprung snare is set again after 15 turns. A Goblin Hoard in a Warcamp takes 5% of your gold, at most 25, each time you enter its room.

A Smoke Rack lowers stamina recovery by 1 and Comfort by 2. A Mask Pole costs 4 Comfort. A Spit Roast earns the tribe 1 point each turn, and a Warg Pen brings a new member 8 turns sooner. Goblins drop Goblin Mask Charms, which cost 6 Comfort while carried, Goblin Ears and Snare Wire.

A Bandit Camp or Abandoned Watchtower that is taken over becomes an Outlaw Hideout, then a Roadside Roost and a Robber Keep. A captured field, plains or meadow becomes an Outlaw Barracks. Thugs, Marksmen and Fences are raised in the proportion 3 to 2 to 1.

A Lookout Post spots you when you enter a room within 2 rooms of it. The gang members within 5 rooms then converge on your room for 10 turns, at most 30 turns in all. Afterwards the lookouts need 20 turns before they can raise the alarm again. Leaders and workers stay home.

A Toll Barrier takes 10% of your gold, at most 25, when you enter its room. Having paid, the gang leaves you alone for 40 turns: its members do not attack and the lookouts stay quiet. Killing a gang member ends the truce. Without gold you get no passage.

Each gang member you kill adds 1 to the gang's bounty on you, and the Captain adds 3. The bounty fades by 1 every 50 turns. At 3 or more you are wanted: entering a room within 3 rooms of a settlement raises the alarm as if a lookout had seen you, and a toll no longer protects you. At a Toll Barrier you can buy the bounty off for 40 gold plus 20 for each point. If you cannot pay, the barrier refuses you.

The Robber Keep and Outlaw Barracks may hold a Bound Traveller, up to two at a time and one to a room. Cutting a captive free pays you 40 gold. The gang remembers: you gain 2 on the bounty.

A Gallows Tree costs 6 Comfort and 1 Health recovery on rest. A Fence's Stall earns the gang 1 more point each turn. An Armoury Rack brings a new member 8 turns sooner. Bandits also set Arrow Traps in their rooms. Their loot is Hangman's Rope, which costs 8 Comfort while carried, Outlaw's Marks and quivers of metal arrows.

Place faction loot in a room's upgrade slots and the room becomes a hall that recruits that faction. A Totem Warren, from a Cave or Underground Cavern with a Carved Soapstone Figurine, Bone Effigy, Stone and Skull, hires Troglodytes, Hunters and Workers and needs the Beast Master perk. A Goblin Warren, from a Forest Clearing or Abandoned Hunters Camp with a Goblin Mask Charm, Goblin Ear, Snare Wire and Branch, hires Forest Goblins, Raiders and Scroungers. An Outlaw Lodge, from a Bandit Camp or Abandoned Watchtower with two Outlaw's Marks, a Hangman's Rope and Nails, hires Thugs, Marksmen and Fences. A Warband Hall, built on a Lodge with a Bone Effigy, Goblin Mask Charm, Outlaw's Mark and Goblin Ear, hires all nine. Leaders cannot be hired. Halls cost Comfort (8, 4, 0 and 10 respectively), and hires cost the usual resident price.

A bandit Toll Barrier takes one Outlaw's Mark in place of gold and gives the same 40 turns of passage. Three Marks buy off a bounty. A barrier that only taxes gold, such as a Goblin Hoard, ignores Marks.

A Forest Warden's Post in the forest pays gold for Goblin Ears and Goblin Mask Charms. A Road Reeve at Mountain Edge pays for Outlaw's Marks and Hangman's Ropes. Faction loot can also be offered at a shrine, and crafted into traps, masks and scrolls.