The Heart Grows

Dungeon games? Yeah, they're a good way to waste a few hours. The trick is to know the map and plan appropriately. Of course, it doesn't matter if you get beaten. You revise your plan for that map and do a bit better next time. Man, it'd really suck to wake up as a dungeon heart in a fantasy world you know nothing about, barely able to even work out how to control your dungeon. Lucky that wouldn't happen to anybody, huh? What with only having one chance at getting things right, you'd have to plan extra-defensive

A small warning here. This story deals with a dungeon that acquires its minions by turning various sapients into them. Once minions of the dungeon, they are mentally at the beck and call of the dungeon. This means that the story does explore that power dynamic from the PoV of someone trying their best not to abuse his power and people who find themselves being affected by their new position in both mental and physical ways.

This story should be getting chapters published weekly. I have a comfortable buffer set up and on top of the weekly writing I am committing, a commissioner has donated two monthly writing slots to ensure this remains on a weekly schedule.

There will be a stat block at the beginning of every chapter bar the first, and a handy map at the end.

All my works come with a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. This means you are free to download, publish, and even make derivative works of my writing so long as you include this license, attribution, and don't sell the works. Keep it free!