Olden Era Fan Codex / Factions
What you do not see is the part that matters.
Dungeon is the dark-elven civilization of Jadame's interior plateau and the cave-systems beneath it. The faction's elves are not exiles in the way that later ages will tell the story — in Olden Era they are simply the elven lineage that stayed underground when the Sylvan line emerged into the canopy, and the cultural split has had perhaps two thousand years to harden. The Dungeon elves consider themselves the elder branch and the Sylvan elves the apostates; the reverse is also said, with feeling, in the forest.
Dungeon society is matriarchal, mercantile, and tolerant of expertise from non-elven members in a way the surface factions usually are not. Its cities are run by houses, each with a sphere of influence — assassination, sorcery, slave-trade, smuggling, scholarship — and the houses arbitrate among themselves in a formalized way that outsiders mistake for chaos. The faction's magic emphasis is shadow, illusion, and direct-damage sorcery; its philosophy of war is that a battle decided before the first stack moves is a battle worth fighting.
In Olden Era, Dungeon is a rising power. Two of the major houses have begun to extend their reach to surface raids in earnest, and a third is quietly funding scholarly exchanges with Necropolis that the Temple has not yet noticed. The faction is not unified, but the houses agree on one thing: the next age belongs to whoever owns the dark, and they intend to.
For players, Dungeon is the high-skill burst faction. Squishy but fast, magic-heavy, with the highest tier-seven damage output in the game and a tier-six that can end a fight in one round if positioned right.
A vertical city built down the wall of a great cavern, lit by phosphor-lichens and the occasional cold-flame brazier. Houses occupy distinct strata: the upper galleries hold the scholarly and mercantile houses, the middle the military and the magical, and the lower the smuggler-runs and the slave-markets that most surface diplomats prefer not to discuss. The central structure is the Mirror Hall, where the matriarchal council convenes around a black-glass disc said to be older than the city itself. Defenses are illusions, choke-points, and the simple fact that no surface army knows where the entrances actually are.
| Tier | Name | HP | Att | Def | Damage | Speed | Growth | Special | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Troglodyte(Infernal Troglodyte) | 5 | 4 | 3 | 1–3 | 4 | 17 | Immune to Blind; lightless eyes never falter. | Tradition |
| 2 | Harpy(Harpy Hag) | 14 | 6 | 5 | 1–4 | 6 | 9 | Flying; Strike and Return without provoking retaliation. | Tradition |
| 3 | Evil Eye(Beholder) | 22 | 9 | 7 | 3–5 | 5 | 7 | Ranged; no melee penalty; gaze ignores cover. | Tradition |
| 4 | Medusa(Medusa Queen) | 28 | 9 | 9 | 6–8 | 5 | 4 | Ranged; Petrifying Gaze with 20% chance to stone the target. | Tradition |
| 5 | Minotaur(Minotaur King) | 60 | 14 | 12 | 10–14 | 6 | 3 | Unfailing Morale; never rolls negative on the morale chart. | Tradition |
| 6 | Manticore(Scorpicore) | 100 | 16 | 14 | 14–20 | 7 | 2 | Flying; Paralyzing Sting halts target's next action on a 20% roll. | Tradition |
| 7 | Black Dragon(Abyssal Dragon) | 300 | 28 | 28 | 40–65 | 13 | 1 | Flying; Two-hex breath; immune to all magic; Hate Seraphs. | Speculated |
Warlock
Ysolde took her surname from the vault where she completed her novitiate, and she has not been back to confirm whether the masters who tested her are still alive. She prefers conversations to negotiations and negotiations to battles, but is fluent in all three. Her familiars rotate; she will not say why.
Shadow Adept
Khethrin was raised in the under-temples of an order that does not, officially, exist, and has never once volunteered the name of his teacher. He walks soft on stone and softer on carpet, and his lieutenants have learned to count him into the room before they say anything sensitive. He is, by his own quiet account, very tired.
Overlord
Vraxis inherited his iron collar and his command on the same evening and has worn both without complaint since. He is brusque with rivals and patient with the minotaur captains, who consider him one of the few outsiders worth obeying. He keeps a tally of debts owed to him and is famously prompt about collection.
Witch
Sevra trained in a sisterhood that takes its members' voices on the night of their oath, and conducts its rites in a sign-language no outsider has been taught. She speaks now through a slate she carries at her belt, and her handwriting is neat enough to be considered a discourtesy. Her wards do not argue with her, and her enemies find out why.
Dungeon is the offensive magic faction. The hero's spellbook does more work than the army in most fights, and the army is built to enable that — fast units that screen and disrupt while sorcery deletes the enemy line. Tier-six (the shadow-knight equivalent) is the swing piece; positioned correctly it can wipe a flank in one round. Tier-seven dragons are pure damage. The weakness is durability: every Dungeon unit folds under sustained pressure, and Rampart or Temple armies that survive the opening burst tend to win the long fight. Pick fights you can end in three rounds; avoid the rest.
Temple. Cold contempt traded both ways — Temple raids the spur-passes when it can, Dungeon raids the chapter-towns when it must.
Sylvan. The unresolved family argument — Dungeon claims elder status, Sylvan claims fidelity, neither claims the other.
Necropolis. Quiet correspondence — Dungeon scholars and Necropolis liches share libraries and avoid the topic in public.
Hive. Cold competition in the dark — scouts encounter each other underground and rarely both come home.
Rampart. Professional mutual undermining — literal in the case of the foothill tunnel-wars.