A blast from my past, Dungeon Keeper II, popped up on Steam, super cheap and about $5 US, so yeah, went all in and been having a blast, regardless of how dumb the Imps’ AI is and the primoridal graphics of the game.
But something put me on a tangent. Or rather, a couple of things.
First, the Portal Gems that, collectively, seal the Under Realm off from the Overworld and keep the Dark Races separated from the Light Races, except the Light Races (Humans, Dwarves, Giants, Elves) are just as corrupt and malevolent as the Dark Races and yet can pass between the ‘Realms’ without issue, and individually can grant extreme magical power and even extended lifespans, restoring youth or kindling sorcerous power in even the most mundane individual.
Fight your way through all of the Overworld’s Champions, assemble the Portal Gems, you can disable the barrier and the Keeper (The Player) can finally step onto the Overworld and take the battle to the Races of Light and the Gods themselves directly.
So let me break this down into some less chaotic Krenk-isms …
- Mana as the source of Life.
Regardless of the type of magic, it is all powered by Mana. This energy flows freely through-out the world, both Under Realm and Overworld, and in areas where it becomes extremely dense, can create both solid objects, namely ‘Mana-Gems’ that form in specific types of rock that, so long as the Mana continues to flow freely and in heavy enough concentrations, will continue to ‘bud’ out from the formation and can be harvested.
It also allows for the creation of sentient, if not sapient, life-forms, such as the Imps that the Dungeon Keeper uses to expand and improve the natural caves and caverns into their Dungeon, and also alters other life-forms, both sapient and sentient, into new configurations, namely the Dark Elves from the Light Elves, Orcs from porcine ancestors, Dwarves from Humans and so forth (in the setting, one of the theories as to why Dwarves are just the ‘Imps’ of the Light Races is they’re Mana-mutated Humans due to their extensive kingdoms beneath the mountains and long centuries of being the sole mining operation in the Overworld, but Bullfrog went belly-up before they could put out their ‘definitive’ guide and its just been headcanons ever since), as well as both creating and feeding the subterranean ecology of the Under Realm. Whole wars in this setting have been fought over a handful of Mana-Vents where the Mana is forced up in a condensed form, but without the conditions to form a Mana-Gem Vein or similar hyper-condensed variant, and as the Keeper progresses, pulling more and more Mana behind them to fuel their campaign, the Under Realm wastes away and becomes uninhabitable behind them, as the constant flow and saturation of Mana was what allowed life to thrive in a lightless, nutrient-poor environment.
Mana altered and mutated life to the point it created an ecosystem that was entirely dependant upon it, and when that Mana is redirected or goes away, the entire Under Realm begins to collapse in a matter of days.
- Mana as Currency
Mana, forced up through certain rock formations and in hyper saturation, creates the fabled ‘never ending gem deposits’ that have made both Keepers and Heroes wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and also resulted in crippling wars that have toppled whole dynasties, yet their actual worth may be in what they are. These gems appear to be solidified magic, while also having the appearance, and presumably the attributes, of semi-precious gemstones/minerals.
While they’re easily accepted both in the Under Realm and the Overworld as a form of currency, from memory the Mana-Gems also would gradually lose their ‘charge’ unless exposed to Mana, and couple be expended by magic users, be they Priests, Sorcerers, Warlocks, Vampires, Heroes or Keepers, to cast a spell, although it would take a significantly large Mana-Gem to cast a truly deadly spell, apparently something the size of a Human’s fist was required, after which point the Mana-Gem would dissipate as the condensed Mana that made up the Mana-Gem was drawn upon and unravelled to cast the spell.
In both the Under Realm and the Overworld, gold is the preferred currency of choice, but Mana-Gems were also highly sought after and a ‘fresh’ Mana-Gem was worth several times its weight in gold, both for their beauty, and their utility to the magically trained. Dwarves in particular lost their old Kingdom because they had found a method to both harvest Mana-Gems, and then by creating artificial Mana-Vents, were able to both keep the Mana-Gems charged, and in the latter days of their time as a dominant political force on the surface, fuse these Mana-Gems together into truly gigantic forms that they could then use for herculean acts of magic, given that the Dwarves of the Dungeon Keeper setting were almost always magically ‘Nul’ and could not use magic directly, having to use magic ‘second hand’ through wands, staves and enchanted items, rather than using spells, either ‘divine’ or ‘sorcery’, like Humans, Elves, Orcs and Dragons could. And unfortunately, in this setting, Dragons may not be that big, but they are very smart, they like gold, they love magic and gems, and the Dwarves couldn’t stop boasting about their great wealth and unnaturally large stones, and in a cataclysmic battle, both the majority of the Ancient Dragons and the supposedly unbreachable Dwarven Kingdom were shattered when the artificially-enlarged Mana-Gems exploded and dropped the actual mountain down ontop of what remained of the Dwarven Kingdom, leaving only small outposts and mining crews, and merchant groups on the Overworld, as the sole survivors of their kind.
And it struck me how genius that was to use a slowly-depreciating but highly valuable and slowly renewing item as currency, in addition to the standard precious metals such as silver, gold, platinum etc. You can’t normally hoard the stuff, so sitting on a mountain of Mana-Gems is only a short-term gain since in a few years, if you don’t have safe and reliable access to the Under Realm, they will eventually dissipate and you’re left with nothing. This forces people to use them quickly despite them being worth significantly more than standard currency, and the longer they’re in circulation, the less valuable they become. But a skilled enchanter or sorcerer could take a handful of Mana-Gems, use them in a ritual and give a sword the ability to burst into flames on command for months, if not years, or to imbue light into an object to create an odorless, heat-less light-source, quite useful for heading into a mine that might have explosive or flammable gas in its depths.
Its very similar to the Teef system that Warhammer and Warhammer 40k Orks use, which is literally their teeth, or rather, the teeth of any Orc smaller or less Orky than they are. Literally punch them in the mouth, collect the ‘Teef’, and use them quickly, because Ork Teef rot quickly once removed from the gums, and the bigger the Teef, the more they’re worth to another Ork.
The problem with Teef, is that even the Orks can’t quite explain why they use them, they just ‘do’, and have a tendency to either eat or kill anyone who annoys them by asking such ‘Umie’ questions in the first place. Mana-Gems, however, work in a way that actually got my creative juices pumping quite a lot. They work a lot like the ‘Special Ammunition’ from the Russian Fallout game, the one in the underground train tunnels? My brain is mush right now. They’re worth quite a lot more than what else you might have to trade, but they’re also incredibly useful if you find yourself in pinch and need a lot more OOMPH than what you and your equipment can normally bring to bear.
I just … I want to bring this into my table top games now. That there’s alternate forms of currency for the players that might be both more valuable, and volatile, than just ever-increasing sacks of gold and platinum for their omnisexual murder-hoboing in the general direction of the enemy, and how that would affect the economy and social structures of a setting. Yes, a tavern-keeper might accept a Mana-Gem from you as payment for room and board, but its significantly less valuable to them than, say a Mage, or an Enchanter or a Priest, who could use it both as currency and a potent source of portable Mana to fuel their magic with. But unlike coins, which are minted, stamped, can be tracked and whose value is subjective to in which nation, and what other nations might think of that nation, a thing like a Mana-Gem is universally valuable regardless of location because getting down into the Under Realm is both incredibly hazardous and knowing where to find a Mana-Gem Vein, and how to harvest them without ruining the Vein in the process, is a hard won and bitterly hoarded secret by both Dwarves and the denizens of the Under Realm.
What are your thoughts? What would you do with such a ‘reward’ or ‘treasure’, rather than a handful of mundane coins or similar pay-off from an adventure or bounty?