Crafts and Trades People of the DungeonVerse

One must first consider the warning tale of Eyan Collinner. Young Eyan was a journeyman of the Tailor's Guild and desired to not spend his main young years trapped in long thankless toil to the guild. It is quite normal for an aspiring craftsman or tradesman to spend a decade or more as a journeyman, climbing through the ranks and playing the game of guild politics. Then, if he had made enough pants and enough proper pleats, made the right friends, and made no serious enemies, he might have made the rank of master by his mid to late 30s. What a droll existence, he would think.

Then there were the great heroes, men and women who went into the dungeons, faced troubles and trials there, and emerged with wealth, power, and respect. There were master swordsmen barely into their twenties, grand master men-at-arms who had just entered their thirties, and there was something else, those masters of the blade, the adepts who turned arcane thought into sorcerous reality lived long lives, their youth not fading, and they were unbothered by sickness, disease, even hunger seemed to have less of a hold on them.

So, Eyan made a plan to dive the Gyre. He equipped himself with the best he could scrounge up. Padded doublet, canvas reinforced tunic, stout boots, and a heavy cloak. He armed himself with a short sword and a brace of daggers and thought himself ready for the Gyre. The next party that entered the Gyre found his remains. Young Collinner had not run afoul of a monster or a trap. He fell, impaled himself on a stone spire, and bled out on the rock.

Of Dungeons and Designers

Things happen faster within the boundaries of a dungeon, and this effect is magnified by the relative strength of the dungeon core and proximity to the core. The very air is permeated with the magical essence of the Core, coursing through the matrix of the dungeon as it cultivates its living breathing power. Sentient beings both add to this flow, and they take it into themselves, a mutually beneficial system. Talents, skills, and abilities are easier to advance and grow in the dungeon, because of this phenomenon. Wizards will construct their towers and sanctums in places of high essence to replicate this effect, and many will have geomantic patterns and mandalas around said towers to concentrate the essence for a greater boon.

Without this effect, magical research would take lifetimes to complete.

Within a dungeon, an aspiring wizard might conjure a new spell on the fly. The nervous kid still wet behind the ears might emerge a tried and tested warrior whose skill and confidence are beyond their youth.

The same applies to non-magical and non-combat skills. The problem there is functionally two-fold, craftsmen and artisans aren't dungeon crawler material, and how does one practice jewel cutting or carpentry in a dungeon?

1. The Shops

The Perrenian Necrohol contains many former workshops. A crafter might enter the Gyre, make it to the Necrohol, and in a great show of luck, discover a shop that is aligned with their specific crafting skill. They can remain in the shop, making use of piecemeal supplies, damaged tools, and inconvenient working spaces, and use their crafting skill. This would be a time of trials sort of experience, with the cook making do with Kitchen Nightmare type sabotaged gear, an armorer having to work with an anvil that isn't level or hammers and tongs that are the wrong size or have some other defect. As they make their skill checks (with suitable negative modifiers) they can level their skills up easily, assuming they pass the skill checks and don't quit, or have enough critical failures that the workshop becomes non-functional.

2. The Wights

An unlucky would be adventurer who makes it all the way to Understone might end up being the prisoner of the Wights, the preferred people of the Gygaxian Gyre. The Wights are a pragmatic lot, and they always have things they can do with prisoners. For the most unlucky and slave labor or the butcher's hooks. The more lucky might find themselves as house slaves, playthings, and in this specific instance, indentured craftspeople. Having someone with a specific crafting skill is a valuable find, teaching someone to use a spear, or long knives is one thing, but teaching cookery, sewing, knitting, brewing, etc, is something else completely.

The Core likes art, so Understone supports a community of sculptors, painters, poets, and musicians. The artists captured from the raids or even abducted from the surface are tortured and forced to hone their skills. When they become masters and grandmasters, some have attained station in Understone itself and never leave. This is often where human-wight hybrids come from, you know, other than the other way, with the screaming and crying in the dark tunnels.

3. A Well Placed Wish

The Other Council has an eye, or eyes, for aspiring artists, artisans, and craftspeople.

Should one of these rising stars come under their notice, they might be visited by one of the secret council members and offered an internship. This isn't being plucked away into the Necrohol, or deposited in Understone, this is something far more valuable. Beyond the different regions and zones of the Gyre, there is the Fortress at the Heart of the World, and through its luminous stone gates is the Alcazar of the Dungeon, where its champions and the avatar live. Outside of the fortress is the Deep. The Deep is a terrible and wondrous place, enormous fungal trees grow in a forest, shedding different shades and colors of light from their bioluminescent flesh. Streams cross this strange land, and none of them flow with water. The streams are made of health potions, mana potions, wine and liquor, effervescent pools of beer, and other strange fluids. There is a township around the Fortress, where a small population of people live. They have pastoral idyllic lives among the glowing forest, tending alien livestock, minding exotic gardens, and carrying out their trade and craft. Unlike the Necrohol, all the workshops have the very best of tools and equipment.

Skills rise here with meteoric speed.

The danger comes from spending too long in the Deep and becoming part of the dungeon. Some artisans have fallen so far into their craft that they spend years lost in the Deep and shed their humanity. No longer mortal creatures they are as much a part of the dungeon as the champions, and they continue their craft, but their audience is now the Core's avatar, its harem, champions, and guests.

Those who avoid this trap can return to the surface and their old lives, their memories altered so they only remember the Deep in their dreams. Their skills remain, and they quickly become the best in the land, unrivaled in ability.

4. The Tournament

Dungeons are sentient entities. They aren't creatures or living, lacking those biological urges and prerogatives. They are competitive, territorial, and scheming. One of the areas that these self-aware sapient glowing rocks have agreed on is the interest and amusement of organized competition, especially that of the Tournament. A competition that is not to the death, not based on killing and death, is fascinating to them. Those things are still of interest, and there are Dungeon Blood Sports where groups of people in a dungeon might go missing because the respective cores have had them abducted and carried to a common ground where their avatars and champions of the dungeons gather to watch and bet on human bloodsport.

Yes, the dungeons will at times abduct sentient beings to put them in swords and sorcery cockfights.

But that is a digression and a potential submission for another time. The crafting tournaments are more to the dungeons' liking because the contestants are making things, and dungeons live to make things. A contest where skilled participants make brand-new things, the cores shudder in delight. To the winner, the new things made become part of their portfolio, allowing them to make them as well.

While in the contest, the contestant's skills advance at near maximum speed, allowing for them to have breakthrough moments of creativity and capability.