Dungeon 24: Heaven

I came in late to the party for Dungeon 23, and as a result, I decided to not participate. But with a new year, I have decided to try it out this time. I have been kicking around the idea of Heaven for a while now, and this is my motivation to actually get on the project and start building it out. I won't be making a post every day, but will instead document my rough notes on Twitter and then write up a proper post here on Mondays when I have something more substantial to share. 

For this initial post, I would like to set the groundwork for my sketched-out thoughts on the world, the rules underpinning the dungeon concept, and the local environs of Heaven and the city surrounding it, Ikuun.

The World

Everything that is known is situated within a hollow sphere. At the center of it burns the sun, providing light and heat for the world below. Fantastically huge sections of black fabric orbit the sun, blocking its light and providing a rolling reprieve to the world in the form of night. There are orbs that hang in the sky on their own path around the sun, known as the moons. And the fabric itself contains lights, emanated from the gravity-defying cities of some unknown people who live in eternal darkness. On a relatively flat plain or from a high vantage point one can see the entirety of the world around them, and nowhere is unknown.

Below the ground, in the deepest places of the world there exist solid metal surfaces that repel all attempts to breach them. Scholars have mapped these points and plotted them with regards to the sun and believe that this metallic membrane is the shell of the world. What lies beyond it no one can know, and many of those scholars believe that reality itself terminates at the shell.

Dungeons

A dungeon is created by the backlash of great trauma or suffering propagating through superspace, the psychic layer of reality where all minds meet. This trauma creates an open wound, which manifests in physical space as an anomalous location linked to the mind of its creator. The environs of the dungeon are set at the time of creation, the appearance and configuration of each dungeon is unique to the triggering event. Like any wound, the dungeon bleeds, drawing aether from superspace and leaking it into the physical world. The flow of aether lures out superspace thought-forms, manifesting as monsters to the eyes of humanity. These creatures come to the wounds for the sublimating aether, which they find intoxicating.

The aether bleed dissipates quickly, limiting how far the monsters can roam, but that range is generally sufficient to be a problem for humans, and so dungeon delvers seek to find the dungeon core and close the wounds to banish the monsters back to superspace. Dungeon cores have no consistent form, but any who see them immediately recognize them for what they are. To heal a dungeon a human must carry the core out, collapsing the structure and plugging the hole but leaving behind a scar in the form of a ruin, an echo of the dungeon that persists.

Dungeons are not without their upsides. As constructs of pure aether, they contain objects of incredible potential to magic-users. Treasures recovered from a dungeon can be broken down into raw aether, siphoned off to power greater magics, or form the core of an enchanted object that supplies its own power. These otherworldly items are of great value, and there exists an entire economic scheme devoted to plundering a dungeon for all it is worth before the core is finally claimed. Even then, some remain unhealed, as the monsters produced by a dungeon have value all their own. Their parts, if properly preserved, are used in various alchemies, cooking recipes and the creation of terrible hybrids that sell for fortunes to those with the means and need.

Heaven

The most majestic and terrible dungeon in existence, Heaven was formed from the trauma of a god tens of thousands of years ago. The god and their trauma are forgotten to history, but Heaven remains. The tower rises up above the clouds, high into the sky and piercing the sun itself. Sprouting from the scorched dust-dunes of the Pladimere Desert, Heaven can be seen from any point in the world with a view of the sky. Heaven’s construction, like most dungeons, obeys no rules, with some sections bulging out while others narrow down to almost nothing. Trees jut from the walls in places, others are pocked with crystal growths and flags of unknown nations fly from others, mere specks of color from the ground.

To those on the world below, the most important aspect of Heaven is the water. Water pours from different levels, from various different openings. The lowest outflow, issuing from the third floor, is what fills the basin around Heaven’s base and creates the First Oasis. This water supplies both the city of Ikuun and the Uundori River. More water pours from higher levels, but wind generally disperses it across the Pladimere and beyond, and rain falls from Heaven for hundreds of miles around the tower itself.

Heaven has not been explored to even the most minute degree. The lowest floors are the most well-known, with maps of them existing for those with the coin to pay. Most delvers enter through the ground floor, flush with the glittering oasis surrounding it, but entrances to higher levels exist, and every year daring inventors construct flying machines capable of reaching new heights. But monsters swarm to Heaven like nowhere else in the world, and what is known about those higher floors is hard-won and scarce. Most expeditions do not last very long, and the majority of them are quick and quiet, seeking only to plunder what treasures they can before escaping the ire of Heaven’s inhabitants.

Ikuun

The oldest city in the world, grand beyond measure, destroyed and rebuilt more times than anyone can say. The sprawl of Ikuun is centered on Heaven, occupying the banks of the First Oasis and snaking along the Uundori River for some distance. Even in the baking white dust of the Pladimere, the waters of Heaven provide sustenance for millions of people. Since the very beginning of recorded history, humans were drawn to Heaven, the sun-piercing pillar undeniable in its attraction. Mass migrations have occurred countless times, leading waves of humans to the base, the travel taking so long that those who began the trip were lost to time by those who finished. Hundreds of towns and cities were founded by these migrants along their trips, all a shadow of the splendor of Ikuun, blessed city at the foot of Heaven itself.

Water is the only thing that sustains human life in the Pladimere, and so Ikuun and its people are completely dependent on the water from Heaven’s third level. The First Oasis teems with fish and millennia have been spent channeling the fresh water into countless artificial rice paddies, greenhouses, hand-carved terrace farms and aquaculture arrays. On the opposite end of the spectrum, dust mites make up the rest of the Ikuunian diet, as the dunes teem with hordes of the knee-height arachnids, making them a plentiful source of sustenance.

Dust is the main problem in Ikuun, as the Pladimere is made up of nothing besides dust with the occasional raised rocky bed. Not sand, but instead the dust of life, made up of dead skin, hair and the feces of uncountable mites, the Pladimere is deadly beyond measure. A dust storm can clog the airways, coat the lungs and render anyone without sufficient protection unable to breathe in a few short minutes. Shifting and unstable, the dunes collapse regularly, and the sanitation forces of Ikuun are locked in an eternal battle with dustfalls. Protective clothing is always required in the city outside of the popular domes and covered streets where people can live without fear of a dust storm. While not carnivorous, mites are aggressive and those who stumble into alleys claimed by the animals are quickly torn to pieces.

Ikuun is where empires go to die, each one in turn believing that they will seize this jewel and hold onto it forever. Each time they have been wrong, but none have ever learned the lesson. Currently rulership falls to the Four Winds Alliance, a fraying union of three different nations and one government in exile that has relocated to Ikuun. After defeating the revolutionary forces that had wrested Ikuun from foreign control thirty years ago, this uneasy friendship has settled into bickering over who gets what from the divine city. The citizens of Ikuun are used to such matters, and life in the city goes on as it ever has, but beneath the surface those same defeated revolutionaries prepare to strike again, dreaming of a free Ikuun.