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Big Things Coming, as they say

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some sketches

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The Grinding Wheel

And so it is that we come to the namesake of this journal, once the foundations of the systems by which the world work have been laid out. At some point in the endless cycles of adventure and respite a young adventurer reached the apex. Yet, instead of risking it all for the chance for glory that lay at the top of the Endless Dungeon, she decided to settle down in the settlement around Anchor 33.

The halfling woman, stout of stature and of heart, turned the spoils of her adventures into the means to help others on their way. Establishing a tavern for weary adventurers to rest from their travels and as a hideaway from the reset, she sought to give back to people rather than throw all her earned stuff away.

The Grinding Wheel, she called it. The irony was certainly not lost. One thing, she decided upon the building of the tavern, was that as much as she could do by hand, she would. Foundries produced fantastic things of endless variance, and yet she found the things lackluster; mass produced, soulless, stale. A Kitchen Foundry could produce lavish meals, yet every one was the same. Pristine drink with no variance. Beautiful and so dreadfully bland.

So she works without Foundries. Or, at least with as few as she can get away with. Domesticated Monsters provide some stuff, crops provide the rest. It takes more time and effort than just throwing an artifact in a foundry, but by her estimation the effort makes the results more valuable. Not just hers, but the Grinding Wheel had become somewhat of a popular destination for adventurers wandering through, so whether it be pure curiosity or legitimate interest, business is business.

With business comes problems, however, with one night in particular becoming something to remember. A decently busy night, right before reset, and a couple parties of adventurers had gotten into an argument of sorts. Words escalated to actions, and with prides on the line a pair of mages stood face to face. A Duel, the stakes simple: All the other party's stuff. What wasn't known was that one of these mages had just leveled up and obtained a new spell. Summon Semi-Lich, they had written, a variation - or perhaps a misspelling - of the more commonly known Summon Demi-Lich. A word, a flourish, and a heart's beat later, The wall of the Grinding Wheel burst inwards as a Skeletal Semi-Truck barrels its way toward the opposition, and towards its unsuspecting owner.

And as the Redneck Reaper closes in on her, all the halfling has time to think is: I should have disabled PvP.

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Addendum: Adventuring

An aside to the previous entry: While Adventurers are indeed the main vector for the continuance of the natural cycle, not all People are Adventurers, and not all Adventurers remain Adventurers for all time. As mentioned earlier, Stuff is good to be exchanged for goods and services, but who is that Stuff exchanged with?

Several avenues of occupation lie ahead of the common person, and while Adventuring is the most common, mercantile, craftwork, entertaining, hospitality, farming, ranching, and even those who prefer to not work at all are found around the common Anchor settlement.

Merchants accept Stuff in exchange for already crafted Things and various sundries. They usually end up using that Stuff to purchase more goods to sell, with some small amount going toward Leveling up. Craftspeople operate Foundries, assisting Adventurers in crafting Things. As a Craftsperson levels up, the quality of the Things they are able to produce increases.

Innkeepers are another popular profession. Adventurers need a place to rest as they travel from Anchor to Anchor, and Innkeepers are often regarded as a jack-of-all-trades Craftsperson. While basically all Crafters specialize in a single type of Thing that their Foundries produce, Innkeepers have less specialized, lower quality Foundries that can produce a large range of Things, from food and drink to potions and curatives, even some simple adventuring supplies. While not a Class in practice, Showmans and Bards frequent Inns, putting on performances and busking for a paltry sum of Stuff.

Farming and Ranching are difficult professions, as the lack of space to cultivate large-scale farms is a challenge that few are able to adequately overcome. Usually found on the outskirts of the larger Anchor settlements, the crops grown on these farms and the products yielded from the domestic monsters are made of denser Stuff than their appearance would suggest, and while not as dense as an Artifact, can be used in lieu of one for lower tier Things.

At the end of all of this, there are those who don't care to work or to adventure, and are content to live out their days in peace and comfort, relying on the kindness of their communities for their support. Plenty of Adventurers come and go and many are of a charitable persuasion, resulting in plenty of Stuff to go around for those who do not adventure.

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Basic Concept: Adventuring

All life is in a balanced and delicate ecosystem, though it may not look like it from an outsider's perspective. While things don't really 'Grow Old' or 'Are Born' or 'Die' in the sense that earthlings know, there is a cycle, and the main vectors of that cycle are Adventurers.

The Reset occurs. Dungeons form. Monsters coalesce. Artifacts congeal. Adventurers venture forth, delving the dungeons and claiming the Monster's stuff in addition to any Artifacts they come across. Some die in the process, returning their Stuff into the system. The ones that don't die bring Stuff, Ephemeral and Hyper-Dense, with them to be absorbed to Level Up, exchanged for services, and forged into Things. Now, while Things don't immediately return to Stuff if their wielder perishes, the Things do lose some integrity, bleeding out trace amounts of Stuff with each death. Eventually, the integrity of the Thing will degrade to a point that it will not be preserved upon the person's death, and thus Things also return to Stuff to be reused in the Reset.

Adventurers push into deeper and further territories, with ever increasing dangers and rewards, and the cycle continues. Some die, Things break, some grow stronger. Up and up the power grows, until finally the strongest adventurers are brought to the Terminus. Past Anchor 55, this structure always generates in the same spot, an obsidian tower that pierces the perpetual storm clouds in a blood-red sky. Ominous in every sense of the word. Commonly referred to by adventurers as 'The Endless Dungeon', Terminus is named as such because it is where Adventurers go to die.

No one is safe from hubris, No one is immune to delusions of grandeur, And for those Adventurers that make it that far, the Endless Dungeon might seem like an approachable and surmountable task. None have found the end. Days spent climbing its' heights and plumbing its' depths only to be whisked away in the Reset. The layout changes each Reset, but the structure remains, and dozens, hundreds, thousands of adventurers have met their end in its halls. Thus do all adventurers return their Stuff to the cycle.

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Mechanics: Combat

People fight. It's the way of the world. But whether you're fighting over who has to pay the tab at the bar or you're fighting a Leviathan are two different matters with at least two different solutions. Combat comes in a couple of different forms here, with martial being far more common.

When a Person goes head to head-like-appendage with a Monster, combat is as simple as swinging a weapon around. Skills imparted by one's Class help with the dispatching of Monsters, as well as Spells wielded by Magic-based Classes. Like the evolution and fusion of classes, what Spells and Skills are available to a person seem to be based solely on the strength of their Concept of that ability as well as the whims of the powers that be. Sometimes a misspelling can lead to a wonderful discovery.

After martial combat with Monsters, the next most common form of combat is martial combat with other People. There are a few different rules when it comes to People fighting People, though those rules vary from fight to fight. Before an engagement begins, parties must be assigned, and the conflicting parties must declare stakes, even if the stakes are as simple as 'I'm going to beat you to a pulp'. Once stakes have been declared and parties assigned, combat proceeds as it does against Monsters, usually to the tune of swinging weapons around. However, People and parties outside those declared at the beginning of the engagement are powerless to intervene in the conflict; the world itself prevents breaking the rules.

Because the process of engaging with other people in combat is quite tedious, only those with true and deep grudges engage, resulting in most of the combat between people ending up extremely violent and destructive. In order to prevent unneeded damage in public spaces, a new form of combat was developed: the Mini-Game. Coming in several different forms, but all some sort of competition between parties, the Mini-Game has proven effective in diffusing tense situations and preventing many deaths, as the same stakes can be declared as in martial combat, but without all the hassle of cleaning up afterwards.

Mini-Games are usually reserved for preventing public combat, and as such it is up to the discretion of the owner of the public space whether or not Mini-Games or martial combat is the preferred method of problem solving.

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Intermediate Concepts: Classes

The Soul comes in a variety of shapes and forms, referred to as Classes. While the body that surrounds a Soul is not greatly affected by the Class of that Soul, the abilities and functions of that body are.

As a Soul gathers large quantities of Stuff, a process may occur wherein the Ephemeral Stuff within the Soul ‘hardens’ and becomes Realized Stuff. This Realized Stuff settles into the Soul in patterns and shapes based on the Class of the Soul. This Stuff helps to augment the capabilities of the person to whom the Soul belongs, up to a maximum that is determined once again by one’s Class.

Basic Classes fall into three categories: Strength-Based, Agility-Based, and Magic-Based. Fighter, Rogue, Mage. A small amount of specialization exists within these few selections, but typically the capabilities of people within the same class are similar. Once a Soul is filled to the maximum with Realized Stuff, it can change to a different Class, starting from zero on the new Class, but retaining certain enhancements from previously mastered Classes.

Mastering Classes can allow the Class to evolve into a more powerful form, with new skills and buffs to attain. Fighter evolves to Warrior, Mage evolves to Wizard, Rogue evolves to Thief. Additionally, Mastering certain Classes allows for the fusion of those Classes into more complex forms. Fighter and Mage fuse into Spellblade, Fighter and Rogue fuse into Duelist, Mage and Rogue fuse into Ninja. Those Advanced Classes can also fuse into more and so on and so forth.

A comprehensive list of classes is forthcoming, but new Classes are being discovered all the time, as it seems that as long as a person can conceptualize a fusion between two or more classes, the world itself shifts to make that concept a reality. Or so we think.

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Mysteries: Anchors

Pillars made of a slightly iridescent stone engraved with strange marks. The pillars stand approximately 3 meters tall, one meter wide and deep, and are impervious to any physical damage. Within a wide radius around the pillar the Reset seems to have no effect, and a lesser effect on the borders of that radius. Much like the Soul the Anchors aren't made of Stuff, are not Things, and have existed as far as any records show.

The radius of protection is variable from Anchor to Anchor, with the only correlation seeming to be the size of the settlement or city around the Anchor, though whether this is confirmation bias or not has yet to be determined. Anchor 1, the High City, has a radius several miles wide, while somewhere like Anchor 35 is a settlement less than half a mile across.

Since the landscape is constantly changing, maps are near useless. The Anchors, unaffected by the reset, serve as anchors not only for the settlement around them but as anchors for travelers to navigate towards as the location of the Anchors remains static across Resets. Most adventurers bring along an Anchor Compass, a Thing that can attune to the signature of 'nearby' Anchors, providing a direction for them to travel through the wilds.

The Anchors are numbered based on their distance to Anchor 1 and the further away from Anchor 1 you travel, the more treacherous and wild the land and monsters become.

The lands around Anchor 1 are lush and vibrant plains and forests, further out the land becomes rocky highlands, mountains, deserts, and badlands and blasted wastes at the furthest reaches. Similarly, the depth and complexity of dungeons increases as you travel further out, as does the density of the Artifacts contained within.

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Mysteries: The Soul

Outside of Stuff and Things, one major aspect of the world is the Soul. Differentiating Monsters from People, intrinsically tied to Stuff yet not made of Stuff itself, seemingly eternal. The Soul contains all the information that makes you you.

Neither Stuff nor a Thing, the Soul is a collection of mysterious matter that can store Stuff, process Stuff, and transfer Stuff between other Souls. It has also been observed that the Soul has the ability to condense Things into portable forms upon the death of the body to which the Soul belongs.

The body that forms around the Soul seems to be consistent to the person that they were and have been. It has also been proven that a person has an amount of control over their Soul, as people have been able to change their appearance between Resets, but remaining recognizable from the unique signature of their Soul.

Souls come in a variety of shapes, referred to as Classes. As a Soul transmutes Ephemeral Stuff into Realized Stuff, the capacities of the Soul and the body to which the soul belongs are enhanced and expanded, the enhancements being determined by the Class of the Soul. A Soul can change Class, though usually the accrued Realized Stuff is incompatible with the new Class, and so when changing Classes a portion of Realized Stuff is lost.

Upon death, a person’s body returns to Liquid that quickly evaporates to Ephemeral, the Things in their possession are drawn into the Soul, and the Soul is drawn back to the nearest Anchor, where it waits until the next Reset to be reconstituted at the cost of some of the Realized Stuff within the soul along with an amount of Ephemeral Stuff within the Anchor itself.

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Basic Concepts: Things

As adventurers delve dungeons and reap the spoils of Artifacts, those Artifacts have to be processed in order to utilize the vast amounts of Stuff contained within. Technology has been developed for just such a purpose: turning Stuff into Things.

Things cover a wide variety of products, all created from processed Stuff. Weapons, Armor, Spellbooks, Dungeoneering supplies, even down to food and drink are all some examples of Things. The method of processing Artifacts into Stuff into Things is referred to a the Foundry Process. Merchants often own a specific type of Foundry, usually specialized to one type of Thing; Blacksmiths use a Weapons Foundry, Alchemists use a Potions Foundry, Taverns use a Consumables Foundry, etc.

Foundries operate with two inputs: an Artifact to process, and Ephemeral Stuff for fuel. Most merchants require the adventurer who is buying to offer up their own Stuff as payment, as well as the Stuff to operate the machinery. Within the Foundry the Artifact is rendered into Dissolute Stuff and kept in a closed system until the forging is complete, the denser the Artifact the more Stuff is produced. The Stuff is then processed by the Foundry, more Stuff making more powerful and effective Things.

Certain experimental Foundries have been developed that can produce Things far more powerful than the amount of constituent Stuff would usually allow, but it comes with the drawback that it often produces Things of a far weaker nature than the input would suggest.

Dissolute Stuff is highly volatile and any leaks in the Foundry will cause the Dissolute Stuff to mutate into different forms, often harmlessly back into Ephemeral Stuff but sometimes into various forms of Solid Stuff and rarely into a dangerous amount of Chaotic Liquid Stuff.

Being forged from Stuff, some Things attempt to bind themselves to nearby Souls. Upon death, when a Person’s Liquid Stuff dissipates, the Things in their possession retreat within their Soul, to be drawn back out when the body is reconstituted at the next reset. The process costs some integrity of the Things, so while it is a boon to not lose all of one’s Things at death, those Things become less effective and more prone to failure.

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Basic Concepts: The Reset

The world is an incredibly volatile place, full of adventure, treasure, and danger. Scattered throughout the world are naturally occurring structures called Dungeons, which contain valuable Artifacts and deadly Monsters. Every week at midnight on the first day of the week, the world shifts and changes. Old Dungeons are lost and new ones are formed, filled with new Artifacts and new Monsters for intrepid adventurers to challenge and discover. This Event is called the Weekly Reset.

None know why this happens, or if there is any way to prevent it, but there are havens from the Reset, places unaffected by this phenomenon. Referred to as Anchors, most of civilization is built up around these monoliths. When the Reset occurs, all the Stuff in the world outside is melted together into a grand chaotic maelstrom, shuffled together, and eventually settles down according to the density and form of the Stuff, Solid to Solid, Liquid to Liquid.

All in all, the Reset takes about 30 minutes, during which time any sane person would be safely indoors at an Anchor Settlement. Those people who are unfortunate enough to find themselves away from and Anchor at the time of the Reset will cease to be as their constituent Stuff is caught up and dissolved within the Reset, while their Soul returns to the nearest Anchor to await reconstitution. Immediately after the Reset, the bodies of any Souls waiting at an Anchor are reconstituted using a mixture of the Realized Stuff within the Soul and a reserve of Ephemeral Stuff within the Anchor itself.

Monsters who find themselves in the presence of an Anchor for an extended period of time are spared from the refresh of the Reset and will eventually become 'Domesticated'. Domesticated Monsters lose much of their violent and volatile nature, and are used for a passive source of Stuff for the Anchor Settlement's citizens to use.

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Basic Concepts: Stuff

The world and everything in it is comprised of a fundamental matter called Stuff. Stuff comes in many different forms, densities, and shapes but it is Stuff all the same.

The different forms Stuff takes are as follows:

Solid Stuff

Liquid Stuff

Ephemeral Stuff

Of these, each can be subdivided into a few categories. Solid Stuff: The material that forms the physical world. Comes in several densities.

Hyper-Sparse: Mostly unnoticed as it forms the atmosphere we live in. Also utilized heavily in spellcasting.

Sparse: Generally speaking, this is everything. Rocks, Trees, Oceans, etc.

Dense: The Stuff that forms Dungeons. Much like salt naturally settles into cubic shapes, Dense Stuff settles into Dungeons.

Hyper-Dense: Within Dungeons, the Densest Stuff settles into Artifacts.

Liquid Stuff: The stuff that Living Entities are comprised of. The primary difference between the categories of Liquid Stuff is the presence of a Soul.

Ordered: In the presence of a Soul, Liquid Stuff coalesces into sentient beings; People, as they are often called. Mostly bipedal. Two arms, feet at the end of legs, hands at the end of arms, head on top of a torso to which the arms and legs are connected. Beyond that, size, shape, skin materials, colors, textures, and any other qualifier you can think of are wildly varied. Chitinous Insectiods, Cloud-Clad Celestials, Earth-skinned Terrans, and many more populate the world.

Chaotic: Bereft of a soul, Liquid Stuff gathers together into alien and unfocused amalgams of squirming, writhing Stuff; Monsters, we call them. There are near to no concrete forms that Monsters can take, but more often than not they are disorienting and confusing to the sight; Quite literally hard to look at.

Ephemeral Stuff: When a Monster perishes, either by the hands of a Person or by natural causes, the Liquid Stuff that makes it up evaporates into Ephemeral Stuff. The Stuff then dissipates into the environment until it condenses back into Liquid Stuff, or until it is absorbed by a Soul. Once inside the Soul, it can be used for three primary purposes. Currency, Conversion into Dissolute Stuff, or Transmutation into Realized Stuff.

Currency: Self-explanatory. For rendering services one expects compensation, and that compensation often comes in the form of Ephemeral Stuff.

Dissolute: Ephemeral Stuff can be used to power Foundries that render Artifacts into Dissolute Stuff. This highly volatile form is only good to craft Things. The denser the Artifact, the more Stuff it yields.

Realized: Ephemeral Stuff can undergo a 'hardening' process and attach itself to the Soul, thereby enhancing the abilities of the Soul to which the Stuff is bound. Commonly referred to as 'Leveling-Up', the shape and Class of a Soul determines how Realized Stuff can be applied.

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Under Construction

Currently assembling my lore and worldbuilding posts in one place that I can easily link to