67. Drunken Decorating

While Amanda's class and the first floor limitation of Grim Oubliette sound almost tailor made to fit together, it would mean moving everyone else up a floor to unlock City of the Disparate up there too... and you really can't be bothered. Not when Heroes could strike at any moment. Besides, maybe something even better will come along if you let Amanda have some leeway over the design of floor two?

Mind made, you select the City option, and watch. The changes, to start with, are subtle. A shimmer rolls through the air like you're gently lowering yourself into water, as cracks in walls smooth out, and dust is whisked away. What follows is far more noticeable, with wooden support beams growing out of the floor like flowers, moulding themselves around doorways. Several torches push themselves from the walls, and then both get a heavy dose of carving, leaving the torches shaped like snarling beasts and grotesque faces. Splashes of colour mould themselves into abstract patterns, which, if you squint, could be landscapes.

The closer you get to Goblin Town, the more the colour fades to browns, creams, and greens. The torches become positively demonic in their mien. Or at least, they would be if you knew for certain that demons don't tend to look like children pulling faces, but still.

In the other direction, abstraction seems to be the order. You gaze tracks across the arena towards the Kobold Village, where whole murals leap into place, depicting what may well be evens from the dungeon's history. Over there is what is clearly a depiction of several kobolds killing a giant centipede. Over there are numerous faces with curling runes above them – The naming, perhaps?

You pull your gaze away as another notification leaps up in front of you. Like the others, the writing isn't ready formed, but forces itself into existence.

You frown a little at the new options. Free clutter is good, you guess. If the mess hall is anything to be believed, then it will just fill the rooms with everything they need to function as intended without anyone having to actually do anything. But you've not heard of the other options before. Even as your confusion registers, the notification has coughed up two smaller pop-ups that are filling with more information.

That is definitely not how notifications used to work.

After a moment, a third notification shudders into existence.

Well fuck that.

With barely another thought, you hit clutter grove as your choice. That's where any demons are likely going to live, after all. Best to keep them happy where possible.

Seeing as you're not actually sure where the stairs to the next floor have appeared, you walk towards the entrance to your lair and, when they don't appear, you head into the newly cluttered goblin village.

The first thing you notice is the huts. Fur, wood and even small amounts of stone have sprouted huts and tents where before there was small fur nests. They're far from large, but each one could now perhaps hold two goblins instead of one. Extra fire pits have appeared, filling the air with smokeless warmth. Barricades made of what look like wood and stone offcuts along with sharpened sticks have grown from the cliff walls and around the entrance, supported by squat towers of the same construction. A small stone well now sits on the second level, with a wooden bucket and rope to reach the water you can see below. The otherwise unused space near the top of the cavern has gained several tables and chairs, and a rack of stone tools. An art station? Something to maintain the fiction that the carved torches were made by your minions? The final change you can see is around Feathers fur-nest. The walls of the cavern have grown out around it, with the skin of some beast hanging to cover the way in. Inside seems mostly unchanged, but there is space for her to store things if she wishes. From your lofty position you survey the town, and it is a town now, not just a collection of sleeping spots.

It's almost enough to make you question it.

It is enough for you to question it. Why are you getting all of this for free? Or, even if it wasn't free, for the cost of a Hero or two? This kind of architecture would have cost you... gods, you don't even know. A few dozen furs, more wood that you've ever had, another water element or enough stone to connect the well to the spring room.

You gently shut your mouth as you try and do the maths.

Then you remember that there's two more rooms left.

It's too much! Where is this coming from? Surely this can't be the way it's meant to work? You got your claimant crystal from a Hero. Are they meant to fight each other to the death to build their homes?

Memories struggle to rise, like bubbles in molasses, but try as you might they refuse to crystallise and leave you with a vague feeling of disquiet. Until that too vanishes beneath the swamp that is your memories.

What were you thinking about again?

You shake your head, and leave the goblins caves behind for the kobold village. Your path is waylaid however when you reach the three way fork that sits around the pillar that you embedded the remembrance plaque into. Because behind it, in the small room that you placed in a fit of mad fancy, are the stairs.

New floor. Clutter. New floor...

In the end, seeing what else has happened on this floor wins out by a narrow margin. If only because they look like a lot of stairs, a narrow stone spiral staircase leading up into the roof.

Although after all of that, the kobold village is almost disappointing. Two wooden posts carved with more abstract patterns now mark the village edge, and the wooden bridges you placed are now rope and board constructions that look far more rickety than you would trust to hold a warrior in plate armour, but that's it. No fires, no watch towers. You wonder, briefly, if the goblin town was an aberration, until something catches your eye. Or rather, doesn't. You can no longer see the caves that you placed for the kobolds to live in. Just rough, cracked rock wall that the moonlight is casting into dark shadow.

Moonlight?

You look up, and the cave roof is as solid and cave-y as ever, yet still; unmistakable, pale moonlight seems to filter in from some unidentifiable source. The shadows cast by the stones and bridges are almost solid black, and plenty large enough to hide a kobold with a knife. You shiver, and reiterate your thoughts from the last time you came through here. Fighting the kobolds in this room would be a nightmare.

Still, you have exploration to do, and a touch of liquid courage still burns in your veins (Not hurt by the fact that last you saw, the kobolds were all occupied and loyal to you), so you head in to the dappled darkness.

Armed with the knowledge that you build this place, it doesn't take you long to find the entrance to one of the caves you placed, and it's here that you see the rest of the changes that cluttering has wrought. The cave itself is hidden in a split in the rock that you are forced to wriggle slightly to get to. A Hero would be forced to enter on their hands and knees and again, anyone in heavy armour would be at an even greater disadvantage. Once inside, the cave has grown from a simple room into a branching twist of tunnels and small, bulbous openings. While tall enough to a human to stand upright, you wouldn't want to try and swing a sword in here. Picking one of the branches at random, you set off to see where it leads.

Fifteen minutes later you have come to two conclusions. Firstly, fuck this place. Secondly, you are very lost.

Fifteen more minutes later, you emerge back into the main cavern, from the other side, with several more constructive conclusions. The tunnels in and around the kobold village are a maze, with no dead ends and no distinguishing features, but once you start marking off tunnels it's not too difficult to find your way out. The kobolds are probably going to love it, you have a vague recollection that their species has abnormally good spatial memory because they often live in places exactly like this. Any Hero who enters while there are kobolds inside... are probably not coming out. And the goblins are one hundred percent not allowed in here any more, for much the same reason. You don't have enough minions to waste them with senseless days starving to death while they fail to find a way out, and you don't trust that they'd learn from the first time.

With that series of revelations, you leave kobold village behind you and head towards the Grove, the area where you have the least idea of what cluttering could have been done.

The first thing you note as you approach is the smell – fresh and clean like a forest glade without the sour tang that the cycle of life and death tends to taint such places with. The second is the light splash of water.

As you round the corner of the winding tunnel that leads to the grove, your clawed feet bite into soil. It's as if you've stepped out of the cave entirely. A lush carpet of grass stretches from wall to wall, fading out underneath the demon trees that scatter the area. Thick fern patches sit around the walls, disguising the harsh border where stone meets earth and extending out into the open areas, mingling with the tall grass. Several large stones have burst from the floor and you leap onto of one for a vantage point. The height allows you to see the source of the water noise. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's water. A thin stream burbles as it splashes from a small hole half way up the eastern wall, and culminates in a pond in the centre of the room, near Stumpy who is currently waving some vines at you. The whole room is suffused with the same moonlight that you saw in the kobold village, and you feel... inexplicably at peace. Maybe the demons can live somewhere else. It would be a shame to despoil such a nice place. Although, if mercy is anything to go by, they won't all be slavering monsters of desolation and corruption.

Overall, you're not sure if you're missing something, or were just uncommonly lucky with the cluttering of the other two rooms providing tangible benefits, but you'll take it.

Which leaves only one thing to do.

Sober up, send the mooks out for resources, and have a look at floor two.

There is an updated map on the way if you like that sort of thing, but I wanted to get the rest of the floor mostly tidied up and put away first.

A huge thank you to my patreons NA, Lictor Magnus, Spockk Kirkk, Un Casualsniper, and Tyrant615