No Need for a Core?

The first serpentine dragon form he was going to work on was a variant of river drake. Preferring as always to grow and change existent creatures rather than make new ones from raw mana, Mordecai sent his mind searching among the small creatures that had become part of their ecology. Snakes were obvious choices, as well as most lizards, but less reptilian creatures could work as well.

True Dragons were not mammals, birds, reptiles, or any other common animal type. Yet all of those and more were capable of becoming draconoids, and the draconoid races often had some potential to evolve into True Dragons. So what made the difference? How did things that were not related species become related species like that?

As far as Mordecai could tell, it was a case of a faith-like interaction with a concept that every sentient race held. It reinforced itself as well, for True Dragons certainly would always claim that they could recognize another True Dragon compared to a mere draconoid, and for something like this they counted as being on the ‘mortal’ side of the equation. It probably didn’t hurt that the primary creator deity of this reality was a dragon, creating a very strong focal point of the concept of dragon.

It didn’t take him long to find a selection of animals that resonated positively with the concept he had in his mind, and he drew those creatures to the fifth floor. It didn’t matter that they were not all the same species, the transformations would fix that. Changing a creature was magnitudes easier than creating one, and reforging them into being the exact same species was only a little harder than starting with the same base.

The biggest issue with starting from scratch was not the physical structure, that was only a little bit harder than creating some of the items available as treasures. No, it was holding everything together at the same moment and filling it with synchronized animus and spirit while kick-starting every single chemical process at once in proper harmony. He had vague memories of having tried this before, just enough to have been left as a warning of ‘don’t do this’ by his more complete self.

Oh, if he wanted constructs or something relatively simple, creatures that had animus but not true life and spirit, those weren’t too hard. The bookwyrms and biting words were examples of that. Though creating constructs might become harder soon if his suspicions were right. Well, he’d have to wait and see on that.

These thoughts only took a portion of his concentration as he reworked his volunteers to match his vision. For these river drakes he used a classic sea serpent/leviathan model, a long sinuous body with various frilly fins running along its length, a narrow head and snout with sharp teeth at one end and a flat tail for speed and maneuverability at the other. But that wasn’t enough to make them a real threat to travelers, even if they were three feet long.

The first customization he made was some minor chameleon abilities. Nothing magical in this case, just the same ability to subtly shift the structure of their scales to reflect different colors of light that many normal creatures had, if slightly more efficiently designed. The effects were enhanced by the fact that the waterways were going to be filled with floating motes of light, making it hard to accurately measure depth and distance by vision alone.

And of course, any quality drake needed an important draconic feature, a Breath Weapon. In this case, he gave them a powerful, narrow jet of water that could pierce many materials as well as potentially knock foes back.

Now for mobility. They were already great swimmers of course, but he wanted more than that. He’d already made sure their scales and skin wouldn’t dry out easily, now he gave them a minor flight ability. It was closer to being a magically enhanced jump with a little bit of levitation for extra distance, a soft landing, and just a tiny bit of mid-air guidance. They could do this from water or land, and they had the sharp teeth and powerful snake-like musculature to act as constrictors, though they were too small to do so to a typical humanoid. Their land speed was pretty comparable to most snakes as well, though their side fins interfered somewhat.

There was a final important touch that wouldn’t affect anything in the immediate future but would come into play when they had more levels. These two to three-foot-long drakes were juveniles for the species he had designed, and he would be creating habitats for their later life stages as the dungeon gained more levels, and eventually some spawning grounds back in the hidden pools along with a way for them to get there in their adult forms.

Mordecai now turned his attention to the second serpentine form he wanted for this floor. Winged Serpents. Oh, not actual Couatl, these were not divine creatures after all, but he modeled them on the famous celestial serpents, giving their snake-like bodies both rainbow-colored feathers and scales as well as growing a pair of powerful, wide wings. They wouldn’t be able to soar the skies elegantly, but what they needed was maneuverability and the ability to leap upward in a quick burst.

Instead of free-roaming creatures like the river drakes, he made these pack hunters, and created a special mushroom for their nests: These were low, squat structures that grew from the ceiling, with a structure that was soft enough for tunnels to be chewed into it, but with enough tensile strength to continue to cling to the ceiling so long as the tunnels were not excessive.

From either these nests or from the tops of the mushroom trees they could keep watch for potential prey, and called out to each other with ultrasonic cries to communicate, the tones too high for most creatures to hear. They also used a separate set of clicks in that range for echolocation, allowing them to ‘see’ no matter how dark their environment was.

In order to capitalize on this, he gave them a pair of abilities. The first was a simple globe of darkness spell, about 40 feet in diameter that they could cast on an area about once an hour. This was readily countered with any sufficiently strong light-themed spell, but it could still cause problems for unprepared groups.

The second ability was related, but not so easily countered. Once a day, they could release a billowing cloud of dark ‘smoke’ from underneath their scales. This was a chemical reaction instead of a spell, and was a strong irritant to most species, creating effects not unlike that of pepper oil. The combination made it hard to see them and was extremely distracting, but also shorter-lived than the darkness spell. This was generally going to be used to enable the winged serpent to escape when injured.

Their primary combat ability was a poisoned bite. These were ambush predators, and typically would dive in on prey and deliver several bites before retreating, and would repeat the tactic as needed. And for a final touch, he gave them a razor-sharp tail tip, more than capable of flaying flesh and enabling them to eat prey in pieces, unlike a snake.

Now, he knew what he wanted to do for the two ‘warring’ factions already, but the ‘wildlife’ didn’t feel quite fleshed out yet, and he wanted to nail that down first. Well, he had water and air covered, and the warring factions would cover the surface of the land well enough, so why not something from underground?

While snakes could fulfill this role too, Mordecai felt that it would be overdoing it at this point. And definitely nothing plant-like, he’d done enough with the mushroom already. So a burrowing animal of some sort. Hmm. Let's see what his options were.

Well, no burrowing birds, he already had a flying challenge in a dense forest, he didn’t need more. Rabbits and polecats have been used in other levels already before even considering what his warring factions were going to be like. In the end he had two choices he liked, and decided that the mammal would probably work better with the warring factions, so he developed the other into a proper predator instead.

Not that it wasn’t already, but it was a little small for humans, and he could make some other improvements as well. Mordecai began channeling magic into a selection of trap door spiders to enlarge them to about the size of a horse and set to work ‘improving’ them. The first step was to make their poison more potent, namely into a mix of paralytic agents and digestive enzymes. Then he enhanced their silk weaving abilities, giving them different web types by adding ‘normal’ webs, thrown net-webs, and the ability to lay out sensory threads on the ground in addition to using webbing to reinforce their lairs and create the trapdoors.

Of course, having them only use ground lairs would be boring. So Mordecai made sure they could dig into some of the larger mushroom trees to create lairs there too. Getting through this floor was going to require some proper paranoia. Now, while both the river drakes and the feathered serpents were going to be able to come in great numbers, the giant spiders were tougher foes, so he was going to limit them to hunting in pairs. This still wasn’t normal spider behavior, but that would help make things creepier and keep people on their toes.

He had a nice selection of fungal hazards and dangerous creatures, so now it was time to start working on the two war camps and their denizens.