Dungeon Keeper Jumpchain

change mercury drawback to more general fanfic

add gem seam or scattered gold seam perks.

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Dungeon Keeper

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Welcome Jumper…

Your benefactor has entrusted me with the task of giving you a proper introduction to the joys of evil.  For the next ten years, you will learn to loot, maim, torture, burn, pillage, and most importantly, rule over a well-organized dungeon from which to begin your conquest of this land.  Know that you will face opposition at every turn, from both rival keepers and the sickeningly cheerful forces of good who would see the world kept in its current disgustingly pristine state.

To do this I will grant you the greatest tool of evil in this world - a Dungeon Heart, within which your soul will be contained for the next ten years.  Your physical body will be stored away, as a Keeper's only presence in the world is the Heart through which his will is made manifest.  But beware, should your Heart be destroyed you will be banished from this chain, your dreams of conquest ended like so many failures before you.

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Your age and gender are irrelevant as you will be what amounts to a giant magical rock for the next ten years.  Should you take a certain drawback, you will retain your body and may choose either for free.  Though I'll warn you now, while the tightly-fitting garb of a Dark Mistress is a perennial favorite it's not a look every keeper can pull off.

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You enter this world on the fringes of Goodly territory.  A few unaligned creatures eke out a poor living here, perhaps you can recruit them?  On the horizon you can just barely make out the signs of civilization, a small and poorly defended kingdom who has yet to notice your presence and would make for an excellent first conquest.

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Your education is paid for with a grant from the gods of evil, in the form of 1000 corruption points.  While there are as many approaches to perpetrating evil as there are keepers, I've prepared a wide assortment of course material for you to peruse.  You receive one evil elective for free, and may choose one course from each of the higher tiers to learn at half-price.

If you'd like a bit of a tutorial before getting your feet bloody, we can give you a few years of memories from this world.  You'll remember rising through the ranks as another Keeper's minion before their untimely demise, freeing up a spare heart for you to claim for yourself.  If you're feeling confident we can jump right into the bloodbath, and you'll get your soul shoved into a Dungeon Heart with no extra additions to your memories.

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Evil electives

100cp - Foundations of evil

Any fool with delusions of grandeur can dig out a pit and fill it with minions, but building a true fortress of evil requires vision, persistence, and perhaps the enslavement of a few master architects.  Putting in the effort to learn how the best fortresses in history were made have ensured that the dungeons you build are both sturdy of construction and efficient in layout.

100cp - Infernal performance

A large part of evil is showmanship, and you have the required charisma and hellishly good looks to wring the greatest of emotional responses from your actions.  Be it a dramatic reveal of an important hostage or simply sitting on your throne giving orders, you're sure to impress your flunkies and unnerve your foes.

100cp - Twisting the knife

You are really, really good at hurting people.  Physically, emotionally, even socially.  Whether it's an old wound or a secret shame, the more you know about someone the better you are at twisting the (sometimes metaphorical) knife for best effect.

100cp - Geomantic web

A dungeon is not just a place from which to launch attacks upon the forces of goodness.  Through the dungeon heart, a Keeper becomes mystically connected to his claimed territory.  You'll learn to draw upon the simplest of benefits this offers, the rapid absorption of ambient mana to recharge your reserves.  The larger your territory, the longer your reach, and the more magical energy that will be drawn into your dungeon heart.

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An introduction to abomination

200cp - Monstrous legions

It's a point of contention among Keepers, which is better?  A frenzied mob of evil descending upon the forces of goodness, stained with blood and caked with gore?  Or those same minions marching in lockstep, arrayed in matching uniforms beneath banners that bear your heraldry?  Some creatures are so mindless that they cannot even comprehend moving in any way but the former.  My training can fix that, ensuring that any creatures who obey you will always follow at least the spirit of your orders, even if they can't understand the letter.

200cp - A big guy for evil

While personally brawling with goodly foes is generally beneath most Keepers, it does have a certain visceral appeal...and being a Keeper is all about being visceral.  To ensure that your chosen vessel can properly bear your evil might, I shall impart onto you an ancient process that causes your invading spirit to greatly strengthen whatever new bodies you inhabit.  Oh?  How curious.  It seems that any other effects you may have that improve your physical abilities will also carry over to whatever bodies you take possession of in the future.

200cp - Devilish details

While dark and dank may suffice for the common rabble, great Keepers require suitably grandiose lodgings to show off their wealth and power.  Make doing so easier by acquiring the ability to slowly alter any property you own to better reflect your personality.  Watch colors slowly shift to match your preference and fixtures become personalized in shape and form.  The effect is only skin deep, so while a poorly constructed home may look impressive, it's still as rotten on the inside as its owner.

200cp - Do not fail me

When a Keeper's attention is elsewhere, the minions will often start slacking off.  With only a few brief trips to the torture chamber and some unlucky volunteers, I can show you how to whip, beat, and brand some longer-lasting motivation into your minions.  Regardless of morale, fatigue, or the mistaken believe that they can get away with misbehaving at your expense, only the most degenerate or insane minions will ever shirk their duties or create trouble among the ranks.

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Corruptive core

400cp - Doors that lead elsewhere

Magically speaking, here and there are rather relative concepts, so why not take the easy route and build a dungeon that's here, there, and a little bit of somewhere else?  While one cannot breach hellish boundaries with mere stonework, an auspicious floorplan can evoke the environments of other worlds through well-established principles of magical sympathy.  If built precisely, the barriers between dimensions can become thin indeed within your dungeon, making summoning, teleportation and other exercises in dimensional manipulation almost effortless...and much more hazardous for your enemies, their own such spells at the risk of going awry in the worst ways and possibly drawing the ire of things best left undisturbed.

400cp - Now hiring

They say that everyone has a price.  It's true!  I'll teach you how to quickly ferret out the cost of someone's loyalty, whether it be in coin or something else.  This extends to even the most exotic of creatures, monsters, and fiends, giving you insights into their behaviors and a mystical sense for how to deal with more esoteric employees.  Practicing this talent on more unusual creatures requires seeking an audience with them in the first place, so I'll also throw in extra training to improve any magic you have that creates, summons or binds new minions into your service.

400cp - Home is where the Heartless is

Outside of the inherent magical abilities a Heart offers, many Keepers never explore the extent of the connection between them and their dungeon.  Look closely, and you will see how your spells do not suffer many of their usual limitations when cast within your territory.  Range is no longer an issue, a spell may target anything within your territory, appearing out of thin air from any point you designate.  If a spell requires line-of-sight, you are always considered to have it.  Duration?  The Heart can maintain otherwise temporary spells permanently on your behalf, though they will be constant drain on your mana intake for as long as they are active.

400cp - Dark corridors of the soul

A Keeper and his dungeon is inseparable.  If not, then they obviously weren't much of a Keeper, now were they?  The amount of magic energy you can store increases with the size of your borders, and as your territory grows so does your spiritual presence.  The weight of so much mana grants your soul great solidarity making it much more resistant to damage or manipulation, and making it nearly impossible to budge from its current container.  This deep connection also means that it is impossible to distinguish between a Keeper and his dungeon, making it impossible to magically locate his position when he is within his claimed territory.  Note that while having a planet-spanning dungeon may allow you to store nearly godlike amounts of mana, your own skill limits how much of that mana you can control at one time.

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Honorless roll
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600cp - Fishing for kings

Drawing power from the dark gods, their corruption spills forth from the dungeon heart to warp and pollute the surroundings.  This is normally outside of a keeper's control, but perhaps because of your unique nature that is not a limitation you suffer from.  Upon all terrain claimed by your Heart's influence, you can set any mundane environmental condition you wish.  From searing heat to freezing cold, eternal night, soupy fog or unending storms in any combination across your entire territory or selectively in defined locations.

600cp - Plutomancy

Mana is the currency of magic, the rarefied dollops of energy that mortal wizards can grasp and make use of.  Penny-pinchers that they are, wizards use rituals, focusing items, rare reagents and a hundred other methods to stretch their budget.  You have a simpler method open to you - bribery!  Valuable materials like gold or gems can be converted directly into mana, fueling your spells with material wealth.  Do note that this talent cares more about the metaphysical idea of wealth backed by mass consciousness rather than any market price, so more expensive but less esteemed materials will only give a fraction of a fraction of the mana that gold would provide.

600cp - Runic floorplan

Reaching quite high, aren't you, Keeper?  This is a truly demanding practice that will strain your resources and ingenuity to the limit.  If your dungeon is large enough and your skill up to the task, you can craft its structure to emulate a magical item on a massive scale.  With only careful construction and a trickle of mana, a spell can be applied to your entire dungeon and anyone in it.  The effects can be selective in what they apply to, and are nigh-impossible to resist or dispel.  As an example, you could have everyone who dies within your territory immediately rise as undead under your control.

600cp - Break down, build up

From target practice to arts and crafts, there's all sorts of deliciously evil things one can use defeated foes for.  If you'd rather they amuse you over the long term, I can impart unto you secrets of the psyche and corpus that will allow you to find the weaknesses of even the most devout and idealistic souls...and exploit them to twist someone's mind like a pretzel.  This is not a quick process by any means, and isolation from anything that contradicts what new traits you wish to import is a must.  But with enough time you can tear someone open and pluck out even the most deeply-held beliefs and personality traits before stitching them back up with a new loyalty to your cause.  Oh, I suppose you could speed up the process with magic that directly alters the mind or other such things, but where's the fun in that?

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Items/Warehouse attachments

(Free/mandatory) - Dungeon Heart

If you survive to the end of this jump, a room will be added to the cosmic warehouse to hold your Dungeon Heart.  It remains under your control, but your life will not end if it is ever destroyed.  The heart chamber itself can be used to store gold and your imp workforce but nothing else.  After arriving in a new jump, you can choose to detach the heart from your warehouse, placing it in a location of your choosing.  It can be attached to another property you own if you wish, which automatically counts as claimed territory.  If destroyed, the heart chamber in your warehouse requires a month to regenerate a new heart.  Details of how a Heart works post-jump are listed in the notes section.

	50cp - The shape of my heart
	Normally taking the form of a crystal phylactery or a fusion of muscle and stone, your Dungeon Heart may have a non-standard appearance for a small surcharge.  The heart cannot be reduced below a meter square in size, nor can you shrink individual pieces to be smaller than a fist or scatter them far and wide in an attempt to hide it.  It also must remain a physical object, but otherwise anything from a floating constellation of rocks to a cage of screaming souls with plenty of special effects is possible.

	50cp - Dungeon rooms
	You may purchase duplicates of DK rooms and access them from your warehouse, or have them remain connected to your dungeon heart if you choose to remove it from the warehouse.  The rooms have the size of an average two-story home, and besides their normal functions they can be used to store things in line with their function - books and media can be stored in the library, weapons in a training room or combat pit, pets in a lair, etc.  You may purchase this option multiple times to gain different rooms, or to increase the size of an existing room.

	50cp - Imp swarm
	By default, a Heart can maintain four imps with only a trickle of mana.  Your heart can now maintain twenty for the same effort, and will replace slain imps at a rate of one per minute.  Each imp also starts off much more competent than usual.  You may add another twenty imps to your starting workforce with each additional purchase.

	50cp - Crates of doom
	A dozen small crates stamped with random icons sit piled in your workshop or a corner of your warehouse.  Each is a trap or door of some kind, and placing it in a location will cause it to open and install itself perfectly.  Traps and doors are powered by mana, working autonomously as their design dictates as long as they are fueled.  Spent crates are replaced after 24 hours.

	50cp - Tile patterns
	Ordinarily, the land your imps claim are marked with very plain tiles highlighted with a color of your choice.  Now you have the freedom to redesign them, to intimidate, amuse or arouse.  The tile's own magical nature interferes with other effects, so no flooring your dungeon in explosive runes or mimetic kill-agents.  Your reinforced walls and ceilings as well can have designs and artistic themes of your choosing, but on extremely durable materials these changes are only skin deep.

50cp - Underworld pet
You gain a (mostly) harmless mini-version of a dungeon minion as a pet.  They're shrunk to about a foot in height with any powers proportionately reduced but not removed, a mini-warlock can still throw tiny fireballs.  They are not particularly intelligent yet cartoonishly evil in behavior.  The pets do not count as companions.

100cp - Terrain tiles
Now this is just cheating - isn't it wonderful?  Fifty blue tiles and ten red tiles, each about one meter square.  Placing these tiles on claimed terrain causes that little piece of land to behave as if it's covered in about a foot of water or lava, with those creatures crossing over them affected accordingly.  They have no effect unless placed, and can be moved easily.

200cp - Mana vault
This cracked tile oozes with power.  Placing it anywhere in your territory will provide a large boost to your mana intake.  With some tinkering, you may be able to modify it to draw out other kinds of ambient supernatural energies from places of power in other jumps.

200cp - Sailor fuku
What a strange bit of otherworldly garb you’ve found, I wonder where it came from.  It shows more leg than most overworlders are comfortable with, perhaps that is why people find it very hard to recognize you for who you are while you wear this.  The effect is broken if you display any unusual abilities or tell anyone your identity.

200cp - Portal room
Installed in an annex of your warehouse or placed somewhere outside, this room allows you to summon forth copies of creatures from the Dungeon Keeper setting in future jumps.  Those summoned are phantasms and not living creatures, but will behave as if they were and will expect payment, housing, and the construction of certain rooms within your dungeon as usual.  They do not count as companions and cannot be made into one.  If not dismissed, they will vanish when you leave the jump.

	-300cp - Extended catalogue
	But perhaps you wish for a wider pool of minions?  Empowering the portal with even more corruption will allow you to stand upon the threshold and call out into the ether, touching the minds of creatures within the jump you currently occupy that match your desired criteria.  Communication will be established through which you may barter terms of service, and if accepted they can be pulled through the gate to your location or left where they are.  The prerequisites for calling creatures not from the DK setting are as varied as the creatures themselves.  Those summoned are the real individuals you contacted.  You cannot use this option to recruit creatures from past jumps.

300cp - Completed research
This thick tome holds detailed mechanical and arcane notes that will teach you how to build and use all the spells, rooms, traps and mechanisms within the Dungeon Keeper series.  This also includes the personal spells used by individual units, from the lightning used by dark mistresses to the tricks imps use to dig and reinforce walls.

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Companions

300cp - Subordinate Keepers
You may import or create up to eight companions.  They receive 600cp, a free elective and their choice of discounted courses as you do.  Created companions can be any of the standard DK units, either standard minions or a hero unit turned to your service.

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Drawbacks

You may, of course, want more CP.  You really should, as greed is an excellent virtue for a Keeper to cultivate.  And the dark gods do so love the fallout that comes from giving people exactly what they ask for...You may take a maximum of 600cp worth of drawbacks.

+000cp - Keeper Mercury
Instead of the original Dungeon Keeper setting, you enter the Dungeon Keeper Ami fanfic.  You arrive just after Ami bonds to one of Keeper Metriande's inactive Dungeon Hearts under Horny's watchful eye.

+100cp - The very rock yawns in anticipation.
Everything just seems so slooooow.  This doesn't change the speed at which things happen, only your perception of how time passes.

+100cp - Micropiglets stalk your dungeon
Beware!  Tiny bristly boars no larger than a housecat plague your dungeon.  They gnaw on everything in sight, and you'd best regularly sweep rooms and check mechanisms to keep the damage to a minimum.  Micropiglets die easily to any competent minion, or less easily to a squad of imps.

+100cp - Bedrock bedlam
Chunks of bedrock are everywhere.  They cannot be mined out or moved, and you must build your dungeon around them.  A poorly-placed chunk of bedrock may disrupt some perks that rely upon a precise dungeon design.

	(+100cp) - Bedrock barriers
	The Lords of the Land have discovered a magical method to conjure bedrock, and have lined their fortress foundations with the material.  There will be very few approaches your troops can take when assaulting them, and all of them will be watched and guarded.  Naturally, when a Lord of the Land is slain or all hope seems lost, the local wizards will undo the spell to prevent these sites from being used by you.  You will never be able to steal this spell for yourself.

+200cp - Gremlin riot
Traps just don't seems to work for you, they jam up, explode, or fall to pieces after a single hit.  It doesn't matter if it's mechanical, magical, or just a pit hidden under palm fronds, anything that would let you cause some hands-off hurting just won't function.  You'll be relying entirely on your own spells and creatures to do damage to intruders.

+200cp - Is there a draft?
You know what's an easy way to keep intruders out?  Doors.  Do you know what this drawback prevents you from building?  Oh yes.  Wood, steel, magical force-fields, even concealing illusions.  All are forbidden.  From your dungeon entrance to the heart chamber to the treasury, you'll have nothing but open doorways that cannot be closed off or barricaded.  There must, in fact, be enough man-sized openings that someone could just waltz in from outside and make their way to your dungeon heart if not intercepted.

+300cp - There's a word for keepers like you...
Strangely, your dungeon heart seems limited in the kinds of minions that it can form bonds with.  No other creature will heed your summons or be turned to your service through torture, and even mercenaries will not work for you.  Even automatons and conjured creatures will not function for you, with Imps and being the only exception.  While having an army made up entirely of Dark angels may not seem like a drawback at first, keep in mind that the more powerful the creature, the more resources are required to both attract and hold them to your service.  Pick one of the following groups.

(Beetle, Spider, Firefly, Goblin)
Extremely cheap and equally numerous, yet weak and barely intelligent with no talent for spellcasting or industry.

(Demon spawn, Hellhound, Tentacle, Salamander)
Decent fighters, some of which can traverse deep water or even lava.  Even without opposable thumbs they're actually smarter than goblins.

(Dark elf, Black knight, Dark angel, Dragon)
Immensely skilled and powerful fighters with some spellcasting ability.  All of them are expensive to attract to your service and train.  They are also prideful, demanding high pay and excellence from the Keeper they serve and the Dungeon they live in.

(Skeleton, Ghost, Vampire)
The undead cannot be hired, only created.  You arrive with a few of each and the knowledge of how to make more.  Undead require no food and a minimum of creature comforts.  Vampires are talented spell researchers, but the undead are all inept at mechanical work.

(Warlock, Troll, Bile demon, Rogue)
Warlocks specialize in all things magical, trolls and bile demons are highly skilled mechanics, and rogues can sneak about to reveal enemy traps and pick locks.  However none of these minions are particularly skilled combatants, so careful training and cunning tactics are paramount to use them to win battles.

(Dark mistress)
Outside of frenzied combat, there's really only one thing these ladies are good for.  Don't worry, I won't judge.

+300cp - Don't call me horny
You have a horned reaper.  It's angry.  At everything.  Forever.  So angry that no method or power you have can calm him.  You can't get rid of him, and if killed, he'll re-spawn within the hour.  If the reaper discovers the re-spawn function, he'll be ecstatic.  It means he can fight as much as he wants without dying.  It also means he'll expect you to provide him with endless bloodshed.  If you don't, he'll become SO INCREDIBLY ANGRY that it becomes impossible to restrain or confine him for any meaningful amount of time, and he'll take out his frustration on whatever is closest - which will probably be you.   Taking this makes the reaper an exception to the 'There's a word for keepers like you...' drawback.  If the reaper is still alive at the end of the jump, and if you're feeling incredibly masochistic, you may take the reaper on as a companion.

+300cp - Dungeon Keeping 101
For the duration of your stay here, You will be under three restrictions.  Firstly, no warehouse access.  Secondly, all out-of jump perks that speed your recovery of MP or increase the amount you can hold are suppressed, along with any perk or trick that can conjure wealth.  Thirdly, while you do have all your other perks and powers, they can only be used if fueled by the mana provided by your dungeon heart.

+400cp - Are you sure you haven't been playing populous?
Normally, the amount of mana flowing into your dungeon heart depends on the size of your claimed territory, bonuses from unusual terrain and any temples you may construct.  Now it will also depend on your reputation among the denizens of this jump.  Be obscure or well-known but considered weak, and the flow dries to a trickle.  Be infamous and feared, and the trickle becomes a flood.  Manage your image carefully.

+400cp - Laughter of the gods
The suffering of others amuse the dark gods to no end, but they were feeling a bit bored until you came along.  Across the underworld, whispers shall reach the ears of other Keepers, whispers of great wealth, arcane secrets, infernal favor and many other such things will be found through your destruction.  There will always be one Keeper or another at your throat, and if you slay him, another will be inspired to come after you.

+600cp - Class is in session
It would hardly be fair for you to do battle against rival Keepers and heroes alike with all of those exotic powers gathered from other worlds.  The dark gods do love an unfair fight...but only when the game is rigged in their favor, so they'll be sealing all that extra power away until your ten years are up.  No powers, no warehouse, only your inherent cunning and ruthlessness to see you through to victory.

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NOTES

What is a Dungeon Keeper?
How do hearts work?
And what changes post-jump?

The canon nature of Keepers and Hearts is somewhat vague.  You also may or may not consider the spiritual successor 'War for the Overworld' to be part of DK canon or not.  Without more information, this jump must make assumptions about several details of the game, and how they are translated into the Jumpchain.

For the purposes of this jump, the Dungeon Heart is considered to be similar to a lich's phylactery in D&D.  Whatever form a Keeper takes, the Heart is an item through which he works his will and maintains a hold on the mortal world.  The in-game ability to manifest the 'hand of evil' to slap creatures and move items, is considered to be a power granted by a Dungeon Heart.  Along with consuming gold to instantly construct and deconstruct rooms, use Keeper spells (and considering the narrator's announcements and warnings) an awareness of damage to your dungeon and the general state of your minions.  In other jumps, a Heart does not corrupt the land unless you wish it to.

Post-jump, the jumper retains all the abilities the Heart grants in-game, even if the heart is in a closed warehouse.  He is still under the normal restrictions regarding whether or not these powers can effect a minion/foe/prisoner, as well as the requirements for claimed territory for some of those powers to work upon.  Imported property from other jumps, the warehouse, sufficiently large vehicles and any pocket dimensions or such you have created is automatically considered claimed territory, from which imps can begin expanding your area of influence once again even if the heart remains in the warehouse.

If your dungeon heart is destroyed, any claim you've staked on territory not purchased with CP is lost, along with the ability to re-claim territory until a new Heart appears in your Warehouse.