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The modern Legion was built to fight against the Dungeon. It is an engine of war capable of traditional battle, but it excels at one thing. At the only thing that matters. Keeping the Dungeon contained.
Centuries of blood and sweat have given birth to arguably one of the most formidable professional armies on this planet, and woe to any who draw their ire.
Excerpt from The Beasts of the Dungeon.
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2025-11-21 07:30:55 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Home is not a place. Home is people. Without people a building is just a building, but with them a tent can feel like a castle.
Excerpt from The Beasts of the Dungeon.
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Marcus strained against mental exhaustion as he scraped the last few drops of magic from his reserves, space twisting and depositing their small group up the hill. The Eastfort spread ou...
2025-11-18 07:26:36 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
We are not immortal. Sometimes new Archmages forget this. I did. There was so much power at my fingertips, so much strength as the material world unfolded in my mind, and it made me arrogant. Reckless. But remember that we are still flesh and blood, or the Dungeon will remind you in my place.
Having said that, we are Archmages. Desire it enough, will it enough, and even Fate itself can be made to bow.
Excerp...
2025-11-14 07:59:47 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
I was a baker, once. It required rising so early that I used to joke about waking the sun with the light of my oven. I didn’t like it, but it was a living. My father had done it, his mother before him, and my children would have continued that lineage had fate not intervened.
Now I rise early to slay thousands and bathe in the blood of a million more. I would give anything to go back to my bakery, to tell that idiot Hadrian that his eyes...
2025-11-11 07:32:21 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Calamities. The Emperor warned me about them. I trained for a thousand hours to fight them. I had a dozen potions and nine summons. I expected the fight of my life. I expected to be challenged, to improve, to receive a glimpse of what I would one day be capable of.
I killed it in fifteen minutes, and the beast didn’t touch me once. What a disappointment.
Excerpt from The Beasts of the Dungeon.
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2025-11-07 07:49:40 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and epub versions below.
There is nothing at the bottom of the Dungeon. It is a self contained ecosystem that supports life, which is being driven upward for unknown reasons. There is no answer, there is no solution. The Dungeon simply is, and we are fools for thinking we can control it.
Excerpt from The Beasts of the Dungeon.
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“You’re saying we should hunt the Calamity,”...
2025-11-04 07:35:07 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
“What to talk about? Should I expand on the virtues I brought to this land? Should I glorify my reforms of the army? Perhaps it will be the sheer grace I showed my husband, a man who I did not know? Or is it perhaps my willingness to allow the King to believe he runs this country, while it is widely known I am loved by all?”
“I’m going to remove your writing privileges.”
“Do it, coward.”
“I wan...
2025-10-31 06:38:56 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
The bush mage insisted I write in this infernal contraption. I have thus threatened a scribe into my service, and have eaten one of his fingers when he attempted to change my words. Vess has told me to write of my experience with my summoner, so as to create a ‘legacy that any future Archmage would hesitate to cross’.
If I must speak, I will speak my truth. The Unborn still elude me, their delicate shells going uncrunched between my te...
2025-10-28 07:35:22 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
When my summoner first laid eyes upon the Dungeon, he did not speak. He would later, confirming a lack of spatial magic, but not in that first moment. He just stared, and I could almost see the Dungeon imprint onto him. I could see how fascination was born, examined, and ultimately discarded.
Let this be a warning. He is powerful, he is an Archmage, and he has no qualms about killing. But it is the—often unintentional—loyalty he inspir...
2025-10-24 06:34:37 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
“So I just… write in it?”
“If you want.”
“Aren’t you supposed to write in it?”
“Not really. And I’d like to see them try to force me. I have several good comebacks, the least exciting being impromptu flying lessons.”
“But what if I don’t want to write in it?”
“Then don’t.”
A conversation faithfully transcribed into the Beasts of the...
2025-10-21 06:39:40 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
I can’t do this. I didn’t w- There was a Hound shaped like an ant the size of my torso, and they wanted me to reanimate it. Bring it to life. They’re insisting that I’m the Archmage of Necromancy, that I could raise an army capable of holding back the Dungeon, but this is insane. Madness.
The Dungeon can’t be beaten, and I can’t stand my creations. I can’t stand how they stare at me, how their bodies are bereft of souls, how ...
2025-10-17 06:46:58 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Dungeon breaks. They are, bar none, the greatest threat to the Empire. Calling it a break is perhaps a misnomer, since the Dungeon does not change, but five hundred years of history compels me to adhere to the name.
It is a phenomenon that has yet to be fully explained, but the consequences are clear. A rapid tide of monsters floods upwards, climbing up and up until they break through to the surface. Hounds, Burrowers, Champions and Calami...
2025-10-14 10:58:41 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Horned Earth Serpents. Beasts that do not fall under the Calamity category only because they are not unique. This does not make them less of a threat, even if their well-documented weaknesses allow for more reliable extermination.
Think of a worm. A worm so large it could swallow horses whole, then imagine it is horned like a bull. Imagine it glides through rock and stone using instinctive earth magic, and simultaneously has a hide capable...
2025-10-10 06:57:32 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
“I have seen it. I have seen the blue sky. One more push, past the humans and their armies, and we can be free. We can settle and build homes for our children to sleep in. Beds for our parents to lie on. One more push, my brothers and sisters, and then we are home.”
This speech was overheard by Irona, someone whose ears I trust over my own, between a Champion and his party, Elven in nature. Too tall to be natural, too strong to be mort...
2025-10-07 06:35:57 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Food. In the end, it's all about food. No one can eat gold, water is plentiful and literally falls from the sky, so food is the ultimate restriction on population expansion. Magic and organization has seen to it that only every fourth person needs to be a farmer, but farmers need farmland.
And where is the most fertile, desirable land? Near the Dungeon. Crops grow quickly, grow healthy and plentifully, and the area is mostly flat. Better f...
2025-10-03 06:31:37 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
The Hounds hunt, the Champions scheme, but it is the Calamities that kill. An estimated thirty percent of deaths during a dungeon break can be directly linked to their actions, and at times it is much, much higher. Calamities are walking, moving horrors of our world, and Archmages are needed—if not technically required—to kill them.
There have been many. In recent times our Empress, Izzolma Mediciios Calluma, has personally slain seven...
2025-09-30 06:56:26 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
This is the first, and perhaps most important, chapter of the Beasts of the Dungeon. It concerns the Hole, the Great Depth, the Dungeon, and its many other names. If you are reading this, you have been granted access to the unrestricted version of the book, and every other variant will begin with a basic introduction concerning our defenses.
The Dungeon is growing worse. The Empire was founded when three Archmages, including our first Empe...
2025-09-26 06:32:40 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Champions are not civilized beings. They may look like us, or the long-dead Elves, or any of the other extinct sapient species, but they are not. Their minds have been poisoned by the Dungeon, and even those who can still speak a language are consumed by hatred. By rage and hunger.
This does not mean they are like the Hounds. Champions are not animals, and studies have confirmed they hold great similarity to us. It is likely they are the o...
2025-09-23 06:50:36 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and epub versions below.
Burrowers are one of the greatest threats to fortifications built to defend against the Dungeon. Worms as large as trees, and often about as smart, joined by aggressive moles as numerous as ants. Tunnels large enough for Hounds to travel through spread in their wake, and earth mages spend millions of hours each year to ensure the networks they create are sealed shut again.
If a Burrowers tunnel is found, fill it with fire. Fill it with roc...
2025-09-19 06:24:12 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
The Hounds are what many experts consider the drags of the Dungeon. Its foot-soldiers, though that ascribes a level of sentience to the Hole it has never shown. The Hounds come in many forms, from flying felines to six-legged hares, but all are highly aggressive. Not individually dangerous, and none exceed fifty Imperial Kilograms in weight, but they often travel in large numbers. Beware the long Hound, for they are never alone.
Remember; ...
2025-09-16 06:34:27 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions are below.
The Academy. Inside yet separate from the castle. Bustling with activity but almost entirely self-contained. Hosting them in the castle meant the students couldn't just come and go, only the weekends having opportunities to enter and leave. Both screened, both long, annoying and invasive. Most mages tended to stay unless leaving for Academy business.
And why wouldn't they? The vast majority of them hadn’t been in a castle before, let alone one th...
2025-09-12 06:54:56 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Marcus quietly closed the door, honestly curious if the two he was here to meet would notice him. They didn’t, though the four farmers-turned-mages-turned-herbalists certainly did. They bowed stiffly, glancing at their superiors with widening eyes. One made to interrupt them, but Marcus waved the man down.
“Wrong!” Gretched snapped, whacking Kleph’s hand. The druid scowled at her, but the old witch spoke before he could. “Wrong, wrong, wr...
2025-09-09 06:33:02 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions start below.
Marcus opened the door to find Elly already seated at their usual breakfast table, head in her hands and not moving. He shook his own head, walking up and filling a cup of water for her. “Drink.”
“Uggaban,” she murmured, waving her hand vaguely. “Bisnnish.”
“An excellent point. Counter argument, being hungover is solved by drinking water and eating breakfast.”
Elly shook her head, flinching, and spoke after she’d dow...
2025-09-05 06:19:58 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Marcus closed the door with a little more force than necessary, causing the room to freeze. Not, however, for nearly as long as he’d like, and the four demons inside promptly went back to doing what they were doing.
Which… No. He wasn’t even going to accept the visual stimulation of what in all the Hells those four were doing to one another, and that was that.
He let power flood his veins, causing the four to stop more permanently thi...
2025-09-02 06:38:52 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Marcus watched through the window as Redwater slowly came alive, the morning sun just peaking over the horizon. A trio of Royal Guards marched along the wall, new recruits without their face-obscuring helmets, and soldiers guarded the gatehouse.
Eight months hadn’t been enough to rebuild the order, and in another eight it probably wouldn't be done still. Under his father they had expanded year after year, talent drawn from all corners of the Kingdom ...
2025-08-29 06:23:14 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Vess looked up from where she was tending to a bed of purple roses, the little things more poisonous than most actual poison. Made for good trading, though these days she spent more time on the mortal plane than her own home.
She shot one last look at her stone cottage before standing, smiling at the woods next to it. Rather beautiful, for blood-trees, and dangerous enough they kept most everyone away.
Then she gave in to the tugging on her soul,...
2025-08-26 06:36:19 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
There were a hundred things he could ask. A thousand. Details about their apparent near extinction as a species, about the how and why of the invasion, about morality and the future and the why. But he didn’t.
“What did you see?”
The Archmage sipped at his tea. “I shall assume that you mean what I saw during my own awakening as an Archmage. I had, even when I was young, been attuned to matter. Water to ice, ice to steam, st...
2025-08-22 06:48:25 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Marcus blinked into wakefulness, briefly surprised to find he could blink, before an undescribed feeling of wrongness washed over him. Eyelids falling inwards, not held back by the eyes they were supposed to serve. Still held in rough shape by their muscles, but wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wro-
He grasped to the right, finding Elly’s forearm by pure luck. He’d known she was there, her signature was unmistakable, but while he wa...
2025-08-22 06:47:08 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
Stars. How little he knew of them, how few he’d ever seen, yet how many of them there were. Like a tapestry of endless light in an infinite void. Xathar didn’t seem to care, and with a wave his guards stood down. Turned back to the fighting, which now that the Archmage had idly killed several hundred of their soldiers looked significantly more even-sided.
A short burst of humor threatened to rise up with him dismissing his guards again, bu...
2025-08-22 06:45:52 +0000 UTC View PostPdf and Epub versions below.
“Shit,” Marcus muttered, Xathar rapidly gaining speed the moment he’d mounted. “Shit shit shit.”
The army was nearly as panicked as he was, thousands of soldiers rushing around in barely controlled chaos. Captains bellowed as soldiers moved, the clank of metal becoming a rising tide of noise.
“Another battle, bush mage?” Xathar asked, tone overjoyed. “Excellent, excellent. They shall taste the fury of my hooves.”
...
2025-08-22 06:44:55 +0000 UTC View Post