CAV
Caverns
Stone and Dark
Natural rock formations, tight passages, and the creatures that make their home in places sunlight has never reached.
Every room in the dungeon holds five cards: a center location that defines the space, and four side cards arranged to the north, south, east, and west. The location is the room itself: a ruined corridor, a flooded chamber, a moss-covered crypt. The side cards are what the room contains.
A side card can be almost anything the dungeon has prepared: an enemy, an item, a weapon, a piece of armour, a scroll, a container, a trap, a key, an event, or the stairwell down to a deeper level. When you enter a room for the first time, you see the location and the four possibilities arrayed around it. What any one of them is, you will only know when you move toward it.
Movement costs Action Points. Each adjacent slot is one step. Before you can strike a melee target, you must close the distance to it. Every card in the room sits at a distance from you, and that distance matters for both combat and spells.
Doors can sometimes be forced. Some openings require a key before they will yield. Some containers set off a trap the moment you try to see what is inside. The dungeon's hostility is often passive, built into the structure rather than expressed through an active guard.
The four ways out of a room are shown as a rosette of headings, each lit in gold where the way is open and red where it is locked. A witch rod held in the hand recolours one of those headings violet, marking the way towards water or towards enchantment.
Each dungeon is born with a theme. The theme biases which enemies appear, which locations fill the rooms, how large the map tends to grow, and what the dungeon feels like to walk through. No two themes produce the same kind of danger.
Natural rock formations, tight passages, and the creatures that make their home in places sunlight has never reached.
Flooded rooms, soft earth, and the slow rot of things half-submerged. Movement is harder and the risk of cold is real.
Stone tombs, burial alcoves, and the long-dead who did not rest easily. Undead are common and the architecture is deliberate.
Long connecting passages between other spaces. Enemies that roam corridors can cross distances quickly and catch the unwary.
Larger spaces built for a purpose: audiences, storage, ritual. The contents reflect their original purpose in corrupted form.
Shored tunnels, ore deposits, and the remnants of an industry that ended badly. A sub-dungeon accessed from within another dungeon.
Scrolls, stacked shelves, and the scholars or constructs left to guard them long after the scholars' masters ceased to exist.
Grander than the crypt, and built for rulers rather than servants. The defences are proportional to the honour once paid here.
Vertical architecture with tight landings and old magical experiments still running on the upper floors.
Vaults, strong-rooms, and the considerable hazards placed between the entrance and anything of value. The loot tends to justify the danger.
No two dungeons are alike. Each one grows at random, fills with rooms, and may then receive a few hand-built sections.
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.
Once a dungeon is built, locks and their matching keys are placed. Locks come in four tiers of difficulty. The most demanding locks guard the deepest or most valuable rooms; the simplest lock might secure only a minor side chamber.
Each lock's skeleton key is placed closer to the entrance, never behind the lock it opens. The result is that deeper progress always requires decisions made in shallower ground. A seeker who clears every room before descending will have collected whatever keys exist. A seeker who rushes may find a locked door and no recollection of where the key might have been left behind.
A standing wall never keeps a needed key out of reach for good. If a wall blocks the way to one, that wall is a hidden door that can be found and opened.
Every main dungeon has an exit, such as a stairwell down to the next level. The exit can always be reached, however deep it lies.
Sub-dungeons, such as mines, chasms, and laboratories, work differently. They are smaller, branching spaces accessed from within a main dungeon. They have no exit of their own. To leave, a seeker must find their way back to the entrance they came through. Sub-dungeons tend toward specific resources (ore from mines, arcane discoveries from laboratories) but they are easier to get lost in.
Before you arrive, every dungeon has already aged: floods have spread, ruin has crept in, and whatever lived here has left its stains.
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.
Some rooms bear a condition around the edge of their location card. Conditions change what can be done there and may offer resources, prevent rest, or become dangerous if ignored. The location information card explains every condition currently present.
Removing a condition takes one successful action for every point of the location's size. Each attempt costs 1 Action Point and wears the required tool by 1 durability. Progress remains in the room between visits, and the location shows how much work is complete.
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.
A finished Excavated Dugout, and every room of an Abandoned Mine, may hold an ore vein: 10% Iron, 8% Gold, or 7% Silver. An Abandoned Mine room that already bears another condition never holds a vein. A Dugout keeps its Unstable condition beneath the vein, and shoring it up leaves the vein in place.
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.
Every region carries its history: named beasts that claimed territory, and artifacts that fell with their bearers. When a dungeon begins close enough to one of these sites, the history reaches into the present.
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.
When a dungeon run begins at a village or tower, its character is determined by what happened there during the apocalypse. Not every settlement fell. Some endured. The dungeon reflects which.
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.
A discovered, claimable room can become the heart of a persistent dungeon base. The room must be free of living enemies when the claim begins and when its marker is completed.
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.
A room can hold one floor, and each passage between two rooms can hold one wall. These are built through Improvements and take no claim, no furniture slot, and no improvement category. They never enter your inventory and cannot be picked up.
| Structure | Materials | Pickaxe hits to destroy | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wooden Floor | 4 timber resources | 3 | +2 room insulation |
| Stone Floor | 4 masonry resources | 6 | Stone footing |
| Wooden Wall | 3 timber resources | 3 | Blocks its passage |
| Stone Wall | 3 masonry resources | 6 | Blocks its passage |
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.