Dungeon Tokens

Purpose:

Dungeon Tokens exist as a new form of dungeon loot, not just as a lure to draw new victims in, but also as a tool to allow said heroes to advance deeper into the dungeon. Killing a hero nets a large upfront reward, sending one running gives a negligible reward, but keeping heroes in the dungeon and engaged draws the best overall reward. The one-time boost from a slain hero is limited because it's a one-time thing, and too many deaths can cause the dungeon to get a bad reputation and less foot traffic, or a bad reputation and an escalation in hero power level, or the Numinous Road changing something to directly impact the fate of the dungeon.

Example - In the Gygaxian Gyre beyond Understone, there is a Great Gate complex and then the Fissure. The Fissure is a terrifying vertical drop of several hundred feet and is incredibly dangerous to attempt to descend. Sure, a party can rappel down the face, but that means carrying that much rope and climbing gear through the Gyre without losing it or the people to use it. One of the encountered mobs in the area of the Fissure are giant bats, and some giant bats will drop a Batwing Token. If a hero crushes said token they gain a one-time use Feather Fall spell effect and can gently float down to the bottom of the Fissure into the Depths.

Abilities and Limitations:

Tokens are low-power and utilitarian items. The most common abilities they have mimic low-level spells, especially the sort of spells that a wizard might find really useful, but they don't memorize because they are not directly useful in combat. There are also tokens that grant healing powers, remove status ailments, and boost stats a small amount for a limited time, such as a +1/2 to strength for a scene/encounter. The least common tokens are summon spells and grant the user control of a dungeon monster for an encounter/scene. Mid heroes use the monsters for combat, low heroes summon the female monster girls for inappropriate encounters, and high heroes use the monsters for their innate abilities and knowledge.

Tokens cannot create mid or powerful spells, so things like Fireball and Animate Dead are right out, rule of thumb is cantrip to level two spells. Tokens cannot replicate greater restorative items, so they can heal and counter things like being poisoned but cannot remove a magical curse. When used for summoning monsters, the monster that appears is equal to or lower than the summoner's level, so no newbs calling S tier dungeon monsters to help them win a fight.

Creation:

Dungeons attach tokens to the mobs it generates. It takes very little effort to create the physical token itself and then imbuing it with a single spell worth of essence is a trivial matter. This is actually much easier and more economical than the essence required for more standard loot drops of precious metals, dungeon coins, and gear. Heroes also tend to be favorable to getting a spell item, they are easier to carry and can be sold for a good price as opposed to mobs that drop low-tier equipment or gear.

Problems and Difficulties:

Being made of a clay-like material, tokens are not very durable and are easily damaged. A damaged token has a chance of activating its spell without a target. It can also simply go up in a puff of non-elemental damage as the essence pattern inside fails. Tokens also degrade over time and distance from the dungeon that created them and are functionally a long-term perishable local good. 

On a player/economics side, there will very much be a market for tokens in the cities near the source dungeon. There will also be plenty of counterfeit tokens circulating in said market. Unless the buyer has an ability to access and inspect essence, they wont really be able to tell if a token is real or not, and by the time a character could inspect the essence of imbued items, they are already past the need for something as basic as a token.

Usage and Sentient Culture:

Tokens are not a hugely common resource, but they are persistent. Younger dungeons will make use of them for their essence economy, useful when they are relatively weak. Elder dungeons will use them as keys to puzzles and challenges in their depths because they keep things interesting, and keep said challenges from being impassable.

What is more important is that the dungeons predate all modern civilizations in Cridhedun, and are of unknowable age. The early DungeonVerse existed in a Gift Economy where the dungeons gave challenges, supplies, and rewards to sentient beings for entering them and allowing the dungeon to cultivate their natural essence. Functionally, the dungeons were ranching sentient beings to benefit from their essence plume. Loot and rewards were part of the exchange, albeit one that only one side was aware of. The youngest dungeons have survival goods as their loot drops, food and water, tools, and the like. The early dungeon and the beings around it tend to be low sophistication, low energy, and low potential, but they grow.

The basic dungeon token is a coin. Its not metal, and its value is in its essence, but it is still a coin. It can be assumed that the gift economy of the dungeon in giving out tokens, food goods, and the rest could be the basis for currency and barter economic systems in the DungeonVerse. One side of a dungeon token has a glyph or rune that gives a general idea of what the token's power is. The other side has a dungeon specific pattern, and this is actually where the essence is bound within. This matches to coins having a ruler, monument, or other creature on one side, and having a seal or emblem on the opposite side.

Cridehedun has not seen a dungeon scroll based fiat currency, but what an idea, eh?