It was amusing to me that I now found myself in one of the class “tropes” of dungeon core stories–the “missing-in-action” fairy.

  It went something like this: the witless dungeon core and its helper fairy would spend some time doing exposition by dialogue–the fairy explaining mechanics, for example. Then, the fairy would conveniently disappear, whether it was leaving the dungeon to visit family, go back to fairy school, scout the area outside, or just take a nice long nap. The dungeon core would be left alone to do all the actual dungeon crafting. When the dungeon was finished, the fairy would conveniently return and provide lots of compliments.

  Quinn’s second set of eyes had brought many insights and raised many issues. I did not have solutions to everything at the moment–skeleton room–but I knew–knew–exactly how I wanted to design this room.

  The “Grand Staircase.”

  The layout of the room was simple. In front of the entrance portal was the lower floor. To each side was a staircase wide enough for a small car that ran along the entrance wall to a corner landing. They then turned and continued upward along the side walls before reaching corner landings again Finally they continued their final set of ascending stairs to a central galley landing in the middle of the far wall, directly across from the original entrance. I added balustrades made of thick stone to further give a small sense of grandeur.

  Next, on the right side, I added eight large windows above the staircase, leaving a similar sized space in the middle of the wall empty. Each window was about three feet wide and double that in height, with a half-round casing at the top. I then split each window with vertical and horizontal grilles. I filled the resulting panes with the best clear glass I could make (courtesy of bits of debris from the dwarven brewer’s bombs).

  Behind the windows, I created a small gap, about a foot wide backed by simple, flat, walls. On these walls, I would put lots of glowmoss to create light sources to stream light through the windows. But then I thought about using my new method here, too.

  I picked one of the backdrops to a window at random. Then I pushed Landscape into and onto the back wall. But I went beyond even that. The tablet I had made for Quinn, it had the ability to produce light too. So I mixed in Interface too. I pushed more intent so that the stone itself would act as a light source and then pushed even more, trying to make it brighter.

  The result was that the stone wall glowed. It was the stale, white glow of a florescent ceiling light in an office building from the 90s, that loud in-your-eyes brightness. It was perfect.

  I copied the method to all the other windows. Now, light shone through both sides of the room, filling the room with a lot of light.

  For the two central spots where I didn’t make windows, I recessed the walls to create two alcoves large enough for someone to comfortably stand in.

  My discussions and review of the dungeon with Quinn, and even my abilities, had made me realize that my conceptualization of things was too narrow. For one thing, Quinn was right that low level monsters were not helpful, even in number. But she was also a little bit wrong–a lower leveled monster that did what it was designed to do really well was not a waste of resources.

  Secondly, my concept of monster design was far too limited. ‘Undead: skeleton’ was so clear, so obvious. It brought forth the image of the classic human skeleton monster with glowing eyes, with a fighting style that aped a living human’s. My own assumptions about what the monster was like wearing side-blinders–I only saw a narrow path of similar monsters doing similar things. The Grotto Serpent was just the beginning.

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  It was time to completely break the mold.

  I brought up an empty Interface screen to act as my CAD. I weaved into it my intent, building out a model of my design piece-by-piece, each one having a purpose. Bones of a skeleton as the building blocks, but not designed to fit into a skeleton. Taken. Re-appropriated. As if built by a necromancer-cum-mad scientist.

  Three bones for legs, each elongated beyond human standards. There were no knees, but each leg ended in three feet splayed equally out. The monster would be able to move, but only barely, because it didn’t need to move much.

  The body was a mishmash of bone parts, fused together in a chaotic form. A large U-shaped bone plate for armor in the front was the main feature. I knew I didn’t need to worry about having functional mechanics for the monster; there was magic for that. So I added another long, hollowed out bone laying horizontally out beyond the defensive plate–a gun barrel, a bone gun barrel.

  Next, I made the feeder belt and box for the ammunition of bone bolts with the bolts being sized similarly to a 50 cal bullet.

  Finally, it was time for the piece de resistance: the skull. No ordinary human or animal skull would do. It had to be something bigger, more dramatic. A dinosaur skull. I picked triceratops as a base, but shrunk it down to a more appropriate size, so the monster wouldn’t fall over due to being top-heavy. I morphed the skull too. I moved the eye holes towards the center of the front of the skull, merging them into one, big eye hole. A triceratops cyclops.

  With the physical design done, I turned towards sketching out the sigil array for the new monster. I had decided on level 3 for this monster, which meant two skills. As Quinn had rightly pointed out, this seemed under-powered for the delvers that were coming. However, the two skills that I had in mind were the keys to making the monster punch above its weight.

  I played with the sigil array for quite some time. It wasn’t exact, but close enough that the system would iron out the kinks in the creation process based on my intent. Once I was satisfied with everything, I didn’t waste any time and pushed mana into creating my new monster.

  It materialized on the galley on the right wall. Three bone legs acted as its tripod to give stability, a center mass that was fronted by a bone shield and a gun barrel. A sling of ammo of bone bolts going from the gun to the ammunition box attached underneath like a uterus. The entire thing was topped with a big cyclopean skull with menacing horns and a single glowing red ball of energy for an eye.

  My inspiration for the monster came from an episode of a T.V. show from the eighties. In it, the protagonist had to find a way to get past a machine gun that had a motion-detecting sensor (which he did with an army helmet and a stick). Of course, automated turrets became ubiquitous, even sympathetic, pieces of pop gaming culture later. Most gamers from Earth would know how to deal with them, but I hoped that the people–especially certain goblins–of this world weren’t.

  A delver coming into the Grand Staircase would be put under a relentless assault by an enemy with ranged fire. There was no easy access to the galley either, meaning the Bone Turretor was protected from a melee rush. The only problem for it was that it couldn’t “see” the whole room; a delver rushing towards it would get underneath the gun’s rotation.

  That was what the second Bone Turretor I placed in the galley on the other side of the room was for. The crossfire would also make the room even more deadly.

  With the monsters done, the room was functionally complete. I was quite satisfied with the result. I was almost empty on mana, though, which meant it was time for a refill. I had a couple ideas on how to fix up the old dungeon too.