Of Monsters and Mana
A treatise on the fundamental nature of mana, magic, and monsters in the DungeonVerse
Mana
Everything in the DungeonVerse reduces down to mana. Call it what you like: essence, mana, anima, pneuma, vril, orgone, odyllic energy, psi, erg, whatever. Its all the same thing, the fundamental energy of existence. Like in quantum mechanics, and the differentiation of matter and energy, everything is made of mana. The entire ecosystem of the DungeonVerse and the Numinous Road is a non-sentient magical organism that is moving mana around through a series of processes that create more matter, more magic, more monsters, and more heroes. It is not a zero sum game, but rather a middle finger to the basic law of thermodynamics. Mana builds and grows on itself, and thus, the DungeonVerse grows and builds on itself.
This is the main purpose of the Dungeons. Like organelles in a cell, or organs in a body, the dungeons take in the ambient mana of the world, condense it, refine it, and repurpose it into the things the dungeon wants to create. The Numinous Road is somewhere between the lymphatic system and the circulatory system. The flow of mana, unbound, through the DungeonVerse is through this system. The Numinous Road is 'known' and there are some who think they understand it, and they call it things like Ley Lines, dragon lines, devils triangles, and all the rest of that familiar body of work. Being functionally a massive unimaginable non-biological entity, this all works together. Weak dungeons are slowly fed from the Road, until they reach the point of maturity, and then functionality. Settlements appear near and around these points, acting like islands in the ocean. It isn't that the surface races can't create a non-dungeon-centric culture and economy, it is that the ones that do are massively outperformed by the dungeon-centric cultures and are assimilated, or wiped out. Dungeons also are constantly churning out new races, new demihuman species, entirely new ethnic groups. These groups rise and fall, some becoming established and surviving outside of their parent dungeon, and others only lasting a generation or two before either failing, being scrapped by the creator, or being assimilated by other races.
Orcs are some of the most prolific assimilators. Many animalistic races that falter can find themselves scooped up and welded into the Orkish genome, giving rise to horrific tribes of greenskins that have monstrous appearances. Orcs that assimilate porcine races become piglike, orcs that assimilate chiropteran races get bat ears and bad eyesight.
Humans are not far behind, as dwarves, halflings, giants, shapeshifters, swanmay, and the rest are the results of human assimilation of dungeon species.
Cultivation, Resonance, and Ascendance
Mana is not just a Lego or building block, that would be too simplistic. Rather, mana is a whole spectrum of energy and intensity. The majority of organic life can only interact with the most basic and simple level of mana, and this is expressed in the continuance of biological life. Consumption, digestion, reproduction, excretion, photosynthesis, metamorphosis; this is all powered by the lowest level of mana. This is important for a single specific reason. As mana rises in purity and density, it becomes increasingly dangerous to mundane biological life.
States of Mana
At normal levels, mana is nearly imperceptible, like trace gases in the atmosphere.
At the basic level of condensation, mana becomes a gaseous material that is visible to the senses. In low concentrations this is the profound feeling encountered in 'spiritual locations', or the the emotional awe and wonder experienced in monumental locations. At higher concentrations, mana can be seen, smelled, and felt like a fog or mist. The most commonly used term for this is Mist, sometimes spelled with a y, or academically as mistant.
Mana can be forced down into a liquid state, which functionally is 'highly enriched'. This state is rarely encountered as liquid mana quickly sublimates back into a vapor as soon as it is no longer under the influence of what it keeping it liquid. This material is toxic to most mortals and animals. Those exposed to it can suffer from mutations, uncontrolled magical abilities, cancerous growth, and death. Animals who are exposed to a limited but steady stream of liquid mana can quickly become Monsters or Beasts and are no longer harmed by this mana concentration. (More on this later)
Mana can also crystallize and become a solid, stable material. Depending on the structure and resonances of the material these mana crystals can be benign, strange, or lethal. Clathrates are crystallized mana, created by the same mechanism as stalactites or karst cavern formation. Dungeon cores are also functionally mana crystals, but they are noted for the complexity of their formation.
Purity, Density, and Corruption
The most faced issue with mana is corruption or the amount of resonance it carries. Mana drawn from a volcano is just FILTHY with fire and stone resonance/corruption. It can't really be used for anything other than fire or earth magics, and the more of this mana that is absorbed by a creature/magic user, the more this elemental essence builds in their bodies. For Beasts, this is increasing mutations that give them related elemental traits. For magic users and mana manipulators, this means their mana pool is slowly decreased as they are acclimatized to using that specific type of mana, and have a reduced ability to access and use mana.
The counter to this mana corruption is purification and condensation. Expelling the corruption of mana is a rigorous process, and most serious and higher-tier magic users will come up with a skill that allows them to intake mana, and expel corruption. In the basic fantasy genre, respiring mana is handled by resting and sleeping, and expelling corruption is handled by the normal excretion process, but this is only accepting the lowest tier of mana density and purity, sub-mist levels. This is fine and is perfectly viable outside of the DungeonVerse, but within the DungeonVerse, this process is a cul-de-sac in magical development. There is only so much mana a being can passively absorb, and only so much corruption they can passively remove.
Cultivation is the meditative action of condensing personal mana and removing corruption. Each magic user and mana manipulator will have to find their own method of handling this. The process requires an introspective step where internal mana is contemplated and moved around into increasingly efficient and complicated patterns. Mandalas, fractals, whatever, work for the mental manifestation of this process. As the mana is refined and processed through the cultivation process, the corruption is removed, and an outlet is required. Many mana refinement techniques overlap with hygiene or purification rituals, where the corruption of the mana is leached from the body as sweat, slime, some sort of viscous mess, or however else it would be expressed.
This applies to ALL mana manipulators.
Beasts have the easiest time managing corruption, as their beast breathing technique allows them to respire to replenish their mana, and likewise expel corruption. The side effects of this are condensation and crystallization of elemental corruption and mana, creating mana stones inside the body. As the beast becomes more powerful, the number, size, and potency of the cores they contain increases. These naturally forming non-crystalline cores are an important part of the magic economy as they are used for performing magic rituals, powering magical devices, and spell circles, and being used as mana batteries for magic users. A Beast that kills and eats another beast will consume and assimilate the dead beast's cores into their own, increasing their own power greatly.
Humanoids and sentient beings generally do not have the ability to follow the Beast Breath path to dealing with mana and corruption and require meditation, and other practices to either pro-actively purify mana before absorbing it, or refining it and expelling the corruption. As mentioned above, there are rites and rituals, practices, and traditions that exist to assist in the process. Most sentient humanoids only reach a limited level of mana manipulation, and only the highest tier of users have to actually face and deal with mana corruption, and learn to condense and refine their mana. These individuals will undergo their own limited metamorphosis, becoming High versions of their previous race. This generally comes with an increase in stats, lifespan, and a general immunity to age, disease, and other ailments. Once a mana user reaches the general vicinity of being an arch-mage they really no longer require food, water, or even air to survive as they are sustained by their mana supply, and ability to respire from the environment.
The dungeon cores are the largest consumers, refiners, and purifiers of mana in the DungeonVerse. Veritable mana engines, they consume ambient mana, drawing it into themselves, where it is condensed, refined, and then circulated back out through the expansion of the entire dungeon. The inefficiencies in mana flow mean that the dungeons both draw in raw mana and then expel steady flows of superior mana. This fosters the growth of mana-rich areas, which in turn become the cores of entire biomes. The dungeon's solution to the problem of corruption contained in mana is solved very easily. The gemstones, ores, treasures, traps, and monsters, all of them, are made primarily from corruption removed from mana.
In the dungeon ecology, the things desired by adventurers are functionally the waste product of the dungeon. Earth-corrupted mana is easily condensed down into stone, metal, gems, and the like. Other mana corruption powers traps, feeds plant growth, and all the rest. The dungeon doesn't care about what loot it takes from fallen adventurers other than the patterns of the gear they are carrying, or recruiting the individuals to join the dungeon. The presence of adventurers in the dungeon generates mana, using their abilities generates mana, when they kill monsters it generates mana, and when an adventurer is killed it generates a lot of mana.
In the case of Terrasquestone, the dungeon core is constantly consuming the mana generated from the day-to-day activity of the city. That particular dungeon has the highest level of mana available to any core in the DungeonVerse.
Of Animals and Beasts
Animals have no special protection from the toxic effects of mana exposure. Animals that survive in mana-rich environments will undergo a monsterfication process and become Monsters or Beasts. There is no difference in the terms, but a mana-infused creature has its resistance to mana poisoning increased, and eventually, they will become manavores and subsist on respiring or consuming mana and mana-rich prey. Being Beasts, they start gaining monstrous abilities, mutations, regeneration, and innate magic powers, on top of massively increased stats, indeterminate growth, and functional immortality.
There are three sources of new monsters and beasts in the DungeonVerse: dungeon manifestation, mana exposure, and magic spells.
Dungeon Cores experience animals and sentient beings as templates and patterns that they can fiddle with and then create. True sentience takes time as creating a new being doesn't instill memories, experiences, skills, or any of that. The first few generations of any creature are animalistic and feral until they start building some basics. The dungeon can reabsorb the older monsters and then use them to create new versions, and if a monster or being can start generating mana stones, their memories and experiences can be shared through successive generations through artificial mana stones. This is a feat unique to dungeons.
It is speculated that all of the sentient races initially came from different dungeons. The elves apocryphally claim Elminduil as their progenitor or at least those who follow the dungeoncentric model of the universe. The majority claim divine creation by nameless ancient elfin gods.
Normal creatures and races who spend an extended amount of time in a mana-rich area and survive can undergo a monsterfication process where they functionally become a new race or species. The accumulation of mana over time will create stronger and stronger versions of these creatures. Humans who linger in mana-rich mountains might turn into dwarves or giants. Then, as time passes, they lean deeper into the mana corruption steeped change and hill giants become mountain giants, and then there are storm giants with innate magic. The same with animals. Chimera, manticores, basilisks, cockatrices, perytons, and all the rest were at one point normal creatures. Generations later a loose flock of chickens is a self-sustaining population of cockatrices infesting a broad swath of hilly grasslands.
There are a few limitations on mana-enhanced monsters, namely mana leak and the facts of being a manavore. As a creature makes the transition to Beast, and then beings the process of ascending through the tiers of being a monster, it requires ever greater amounts of mana to sustain itself. While these creatures will engage in the process of eating, this is drastically less effective than their normal mana respiration. The corollary to this is if the Beast is consuming something else with a very high mana concentration. Large beasts can sustain themselves on a diet of lesser beasts, consuming their mana as they consume their body. If a beast herbivore eats sentient or magic plants, the same process occurs. This is limited though. As the beast reaches pinnacle levels of power, it has to enter a cyclical nature of spending large amounts of time in dormancy while it replenishes its vast mana supply. This can see truly enormous monsters being biomes unto themselves. Then, for a short time, the monster can become active, burning off its stored mana to fulfill some other purpose. The most common purpose tends to be reproduction, but some monsters follow their mana-corrupted natures. An ancient flame dragon will sleep for centuries and then wake for a few years with the overwhelming need to burn everything it can to wallow in the raging torrents of flame mana.
With mana leak, a high mana density monster is going to be very uncomfortable in reduced or low mana areas. When exposed to this deficit of ambient mana, they will start leaking their own mana. They cannot bring in more than they use, and the process of expelling corruption will also start bleeding normal mana. The beast will then either fight to return to a more mana-rich area, be forced into an unnatural dormancy to reduce their mana usage, and leak
Of Class holders and Heroes
'Class Holders' are leveled beings who have gained access to mana manipulation. The most obvious are the magic users, but the physical adepts are using mana just the same, but not at the level of refinement as magic users. This becomes the great distinction between the common sentient being and the adventurer, the manipulation of mana. As the ability to refine mana increases, and physical and magical abilities increase, there are other side effects. The leveled individual is able to increase their stats above the species/mortal limit. They also become almost completely immune to diseases, poison, and gain limited but increasing damage resistance.
Humanoids who become mana users don't have the same problems as Beasts, as they do not require vast amounts of mana to support a supernatural body and host of abilities. They can go about their lives in a relatively normal fashion without major changes in diet, or dealing with cycling through active and dormant periods. What they do have to worry about is depleting their mana supply and being unable to restore it quickly. In regular areas, restoring mana takes time. The more potent the class holder, the greater their mana density and purity, and the longer it takes. For a high-level archmage living in a mundane city, it could take days or even weeks to replenish their reserves. Having a tower at a focal point of ley lines can be reduced to days. In a mana-enriched environment like deep in a dungeon, a full recharge might take hours.
Dungeons have a contentious relationship with class holders. The average sentient being only generates a little mana, but a class holder generates a lot more. High-level class holders generate a ton, and the amount that they shed inside the dungeon enriches the dungeon in the same way that the class holders benefit from cultivating their mana in the dungeon. Killing them brings a sharp spike of mana intake, but too many dead and the number of adventurers might drastically increase (the Numinous Road applying a correction to an overzealous dungeon) or drastically decrease (heroes deciding to not plunge into a suicide pit).
The Center of Reality
In the system of Corwinian Mechanics, the DungeonVerse is the center of reality, and all other realms and manifested echoes. This doesn't mean these worlds aren't real or invalid, they are just not the prime. As the great mana engine that is the DungeonVerse churns, it casts out patterns, echoes, and seeds that bloom into new realms and worlds where entirely different histories unfurl.
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