"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers." -- James Thurber

Things were getting increasingly pressed for time, and while I appreciated the changeup from my rather isolated explorations, it did mean I needed to run through my priorities and make myself a general to do list. Some things were time sensitive and needed to come first – most notably, generating a space for the Redcrest tribe and working with the Dungeon priests. I felt bad for making Hakdrilda wait, but as she was going to be here for a longer time, she kind of got bumped down the queue.

For similar reasons, I was going to need to put a hold on further explorations of the gnomish city and the various surface finds identified by the hawk-eagle. And relaxing days of nature observation for the naturalist quests were just going on indefinite hiatus; I'd look forward to getting back to them at some point, but it wouldn't be any time soon. To be honest, I was distressed to have to cut my archaeology short, and I had to remind myself both that there wasn't any immediate deadline, and my field season could run just as long as I wanted it to – seasons and funding were no longer a concern.

Fortunately, some of these tasks I could work on more or less simultaneously. Having kept Lukash up for several hours simply reviewing aspects of his people's living situation, I'd decided to start their space as a third-floor cavern, opening out on the cliff face below and to the north of the warehouse/sky pier. That made it simple to divert the second-floor stream through the paddock into a central gallery cave, pooling into a shallow pond near the opening to the sky and flanked by simple stone homes inset into the side of the large chamber. That both gave them a water source and connected them (for mana flow purposes) with the larger dungeon. Some of the houses dangled from the cavern ceiling, others were built into the walls, and the few public structures that served mostly as central meeting and worship spaces were erected on the floor of the cavern flanking the stream and forming an open plaza centered on the terminal waterfall. It all felt a bit reminiscent of the cliff dwellings of ancestral Puebloan peoples crossed with the nests of cliff swallows in their more organic curves. Being erected for a defensively minded, flighted community, it also lacked external stairs and ladders but included a broad array of perches. Interior furnishings would need to come a bit later, as would some of the more function specific construction – kitchens, cold storage, etc. I'd also want to work on the aquatic inhabitants of the stream and pond; I wasn't going to feed them all, but I could at least stock some fish and other potential food items.

Luckily, while much of this initial construction was taking place – largely through the steady removal of stone to open the central space – I could focus more intellectual functions on the dungeon priests, and to a lesser degree, Hakdrilda. Lukash had left as soon as the sky had lightened, clearly feeling the time pressure on his people. Hakdrilda had apparently completed her setup late into the evening of her initial settling in and had not arisen until comparatively late the next morning.

The dungeon priests, on the other hand, were up nearly as early as Lukash, and began their briefing for me while nibbling on what looked like uncomfortably hard scones with some fruit jam and mugs of some mild stimulant that was neither coffee nor tea, by the look of it. I didn't know if that was evidence of some sort of monastic lifestyle, but it seemed like a matter of long habit, in any event.

Throg kicked off discussion following a truly impressive yawn. **Well, Vay, I know you're about to be much busier than you have been, so unless you have specific concerns to address, I'd like to start by giving you an overview of our God and their connection to this world, as well as our understanding of the function of dungeons in the maintenance of our world, followed up by what that should mean for you, specifically. Feel free to interrupt with questions, but be aware that will tend to slow things down – alright?**

**I'll try to hold my questions as much as I can, then. Please, enlighten me, because this still all feels very new. We had gods in my old world, but they weren't actively participating in society, as far as I could tell – and I didn't entirely believe they were real.**

Throg cocked her head at that notion, bemusedly, then shrugged. **I can't really wrap my mind around that either... a world where gods don't participate actively, huh? We don't interact directly with our God all that frequently, but each of us in the priesthood have done so at some point.

In any event, the God of All Dungeons is a bit out of the ordinary, as you might guess. Most of the sapient species of this world have their own pantheons, and frequently there are gods specific to particular regions or even polities; in some instances, it's difficult to distinguish between nature spirits, ancestral spirits, and minor deities. It seems that the boundary is somewhat flexible, and deities may increase or fade in power, generally in correlation with the amount of worship or opposition they generate. Despite multiple apparent attempts by so-called God-Emperors, there are no recorded instances of individual mortal sapients achieving apotheosis. The theoretical feasibility remains unclear, but generally everyone tries to stop individuals who want to become gods – they tend not to be good people, after all.

Given that the vast majority of dungeons are subsapient, and thus functionally incapable of worship, the God of All Dungeons seems to draw its power, as do most evil deities, primarily from the beliefs of people who don't actually worship it, but who believe it to both exist and to be a powerful force. The God of All Dungeons does, obviously, have some active believers (as do most evil deities), but not enough to explain its observable power. Unusually, the God of All Dungeons is generally perceived as a neutral deity, unconcerned with things beyond its specific area of authority; similarly, dungeons are seen as dangerous (which they are), but also important to the proper functioning of society (which they are in ways both obvious and less so) – and as such, warrant a deity. The unusual part in all of this is that across all known sapient species, there is only the one God of Dungeons, whereas there are literally dozens of gods from different pantheons with overlapping areas of authority. Theologists argue about why that is, but it's a generally accepted fact.

In any event, the God of All Dungeons regulates the generation of new dungeons, provides rules for the growth and delving of dungeons, and mandates their access to/provision of materials and inhabitants. Some of this is handled directly by the God, but some of this is left largely in the hands of the dungeon fairies, or even the Adventurers' Guild (in descending levels of authority).

Now, as an article of faith, our understanding of the role of dungeons is that they are critical to the proper flow of mana in the world. As you have likely gathered, the more you grow, the more mana you are pulling from the surrounding region, clearing it of its existing affinities, and recirculating it in a pure form into the environment. As such, you prevent the toxic build-up of affinitied mana; that will tend, as a consequence, to limit the appearance of blighted regions and truly destructive monsters on the surface.

Dungeons aren't truly immortal, of course, and the God of All Dungeons will tend to create new ones to balance the loss of existing ones, or to help clear regions of high mana density that verge on being problematic. As such, dungeons can be found in every habitat and non-sapient dungeons nearly always demonstrate connections to their surroundings – the only universal is that a certain base level of mana is required and that dungeon density reflects the availability of ambient mana. They are, therefore, more common in places with high mana densities and/or high populations of higher tier creatures/people. They are typically valued beyond that for the resources they generate, as well as their ability to restore areas laid waste by magical events (albeit generally slowly).

The vast majority of dungeons are subsapient, with at most a low cunning driven by an inherent need to circulate mana that has come to be known as "The Hunger" among dungeon theorists. This drives growth generally, but when mana intake is insufficient for whatever reason, it spurs a hunger within the core – pushing them instinctively to expand, draw in living beings (and especially upper tier beings), and eventually to kill and absorb them. Failing that, dungeon breaks occur when the mana costs are too high, and dungeon creatures are sent out into the wider world to secure needed resources for the dungeon – typically in the form of captive or deceased people and creatures– or simply to be killed and thereby remove the mana cost for their maintenance.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Sapient dungeons like yourself make up only about 2% of all dungeons. Divinely placed dungeons comprise less than 0.5% of all dungeons but are uniformly sapient. Other sapient dungeons range broadly but are mostly made up of older, more complex dungeons that are presumed to have grown to meet some basic threshold requirements. Sapient dungeons, mercifully, tend not to have breaks, largely because they are smart enough to recognize the risk that generates and patient enough to plan around their needs. Divinely placed dungeons sometimes receive external support from their deity, but usually only if they need it to complete the function they were created to complete.

Attempts to remove all dungeons from a region have been made before, but never with long-term success. New dungeons will tend to spawn in such areas at an increased rate and frequently with nastier, more aggressive tendencies in response. Or perhaps, those tend to be the ones successful at surviving local pressures. If the gap lasts long enough, there are also negative effects on the region and population as a result of distorted and tainted mana flows. Mostly no one tries it anymore, and the deliberate, sanctioned destruction of dungeons is quite rare – mostly in response to poor behavior on the dungeon's part, but sometimes to remove access to their resources from an enemy. More commonly, individual bad actors among the delver community will occasionally destroy a dungeon, typically under commission by renegade wizards of one ilk or another – dungeon cores being the basis for the most potent forms of mana storage.**

I blessed my eidetic memory in passing - that was quite the information dump – albeit all things I had a vested interest in knowing. To be fair, some of it I had gathered already from the legal codes and works on geopolitics I'd been given. I'd guess almost all of it will be covered in the books Norfoth had given me, but I hadn't really had a chance to go through them yet. In any event, I thought I'd begin with the most obvious question.

**Is there any chance that the God of All Dungeons is the one who placed me here?**

Throg shook her head. **No, my God does not, to my knowledge, create sapient dungeons directly, though it does often form close bonds to those dungeons it created that develop sapience at a later stage. In any event, it was directly conveyed that you were not one of my God's creations. The God of All Dungeons is probably almost as curious as you are to find out which deity put you here; the appointed seeress of my church was only able to determine that it wasn't one of the major active pantheons, nor any of the local minor deities. She was practically tearing her hair out by the time we departed! That still leaves a lot of more obscure deities, of course, but placing a dungeon should be a major undertaking for any of them – given the amount of divine energy it would cost.**

I threw in my own thoughts on the subject, trying to get some feedback on how reasonable those ideas were. **I've been assuming that the deity who put me here would have some obvious connection to the sky island. Do you know which deities have ties here? Or would be linked to the creators of the sky island? I'm assuming from context clues that Mayphesselth doesn't have ties to a god she thinks might be responsible. And so far, I've only found remains from the Aubesan Empire, and some older ones that might be attributable to gnomes...**

The dungeon priest's yellow eyes glowed within her pensive face as she pondered that idea. **Well, it's as reasonable a guess as any, but I don't think the Gods of the Aubesan Empire are any different from those of the current Aubesan Kingdom, and those have been ruled out. There are a few, poorly studied draconic deities, but we checked those too (as best we could, that is – dragons and divination magic don't really mix). I don't know that we checked any gnomish pantheons, since there aren't many gnomes in this region, nor are they commonly associated with sky islands. That will be something to check, at least...**

I tried again. **Would the deity who placed me share my same affinities for air, life, and death?**

Throg sighed. **They might? But It's not something you can count on. They are just as likely to have chosen you because your affinities reflect what is needed, or your affinities may simply reflect your existence as a reincarnator on a sky island. It does work that way sometimes, but usually the mission is more obvious in that case – there's a church of light where their God placed a light and dark-themed dungeon below their main cathedral in order to train paladins, for instance. The connections there are pretty clear.**

Still throwing out options, I said, **I was a scholar of archaeology in my former life – that's kind of tied to history and knowledge... Could those be a factor?**

Throg thought that one over for a moment, before smiling ruefully. **I just don't know. I doubt you were a random choice, so that is likely to tie into your mission, but whether it reflects the nature of your patron deity is less clear. It could be a god of knowledge or time, but I don't see why it would be. I'm sorry.**

I heaved a mental sigh. **No worries. You've already been a big help. Just being able to rule out some obvious possibilities is a good step in the right direction. And if you can narrow it down further while you're here – all the better! I take it you're not the diviner in your party?**

Kraal interjected with a croaking laugh, **No, that's me, kind of. Indraheera's our best diviner, but she's a bit frail for a journey like this one. I'm really more of an enchanter, but I have an array of tools intended to help me identify at least some aspects of divine influence. My preliminary readings are picking up divine influence clearly enough, but it's not a pattern I recognize off hand. I'll have to try filtering it for various racial and affinity markers to see what sense I can make of it...**

Sounds like divine spectroscopy – who knew that was a thing! I fought down my curiosity in an effort to keep my focus on more immediate concerns. **Well, I'll await your findings eagerly** I said, a bit bemusedly. **In the meantime, is there a particular way your visit is intended to go; I know we got a bit sidetracked with all the visitors. I mean, having had a couple of dungeon inspections so far, it's clear that they, at least, are working from a pretty standardized script.**

Throg and Blorg shared a sort of amused look – Kraal being too involved in gazing into some largely crystalline device to notice. Blorg chimed in for the first time in the conversation. **Well, there are some things we're supposed to cover with you, but in general you can expect a more, shall we say, free form experience.** Its form rippled here, as if for ironic emphasis. **Honestly, sapient dungeons are pretty rare and most of them were already well established before achieving sapience.. They tend to be wildly different from subsapient ones (and each other, for that matter), so there's no standard procedure. We're here to provide some basic background information, answer questions you might have, express our greetings to your patron deity, if possible, and offer what assistance we can towards your central mission. As good priests, we're also here to put in a good word for our own deity and hopefully set you up with an entry shrine**

**An entry shrine? What would that be? I mean, I understand the individual words, and you're certainly welcome to place a shrine to the God of All Dungeons, if that's all it entails.**

Blorg burbled happily, **Well, we did bring a number of fairly standard offerings, and that's the biggest one. It's basically a simple carved stone structure, generally placed at the entrance to any willing dungeon. Usually, they include two simple open spaces below a sculpted set of hands cupping a dungeon core – our standard holy symbol; adventurers seeking good will from the dungeon will make a simple offering in each space – one goes to the dungeon and the other to the church. With divinely sanctioned dungeons, there's a third space for the patron deity, normally with their holy symbol, and each space gets its own sigil. I doubt I need to say this, but attempting to steal offerings to the gods is distinctly frowned upon. Generally, they'll be removed directly by the gods at unreliable intervals, so just ignore them. If/when you figure out your patron deity, you'd simply add their symbol and add some mana to establish a connection to their domain.

The guild will typically add their entrance/exit tracker to the shrine as well; it basically serves to indicate that the dungeon has been vetted by both the secular and clerical authorities and should help convince most visitors to trust that standard rules apply for both you and them... There's no need for you to take it particularly easy on them just because they donate, but those who fail to donate and register are typically assumed to be accepting increased difficulty levels. Just use your judgement as to whether they're too poor to make an offering, too foolish, or just looking for a harder challenge.**

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