Dungeon Day 261 to 343

  The Ogre and Troll hills, as Dan referred to them, would now be the Rolling Hills zone. The zone was going to receive three major changes from Dan. The first one was adding more hills to the northern part of the area. He didn’t want to cover the entire region because it was a nice spot for things to roam about, but he wanted to give the area some more hills. He did add a few more hilly areas throughout the entire map, but that northern part received the most.

  The second change, and the one that changed the landscape the most, was making the hills a much more forestry area. He had gotten a rather bare-bones zone in terms of trees, and he wanted to give the lumbering forms of its future inhabitants some cover to hide behind or use as weapons.

  Dan left the non-hilly parts of the area alone since he liked the contrast it would make. The only part of the no-hilly area he added trees to was where the giants would live, but he was getting ahead of himself.

  Finally, the third and last major change in the Rolling Hills was moving the caves where the giant, ogres, and trolls had lived. The movement wasn’t problematic since only one of the caves had a truly major change in location. As for their new locations, well, they were more centralized on the map, and one was placed behind the other in a straight line but with large chunks of distances between them.

  After moving the caves, Dan worked to make them nice and hideable. He even went as far as to make a strong but simple enchantment over their entrances to make it seem like there was rubble and dirt. That specific thing was meant to stop adventurers from finding them, which would be an essential aspect of the hills area. In fact, Dan went so far as to make sure there was one Beast Lord near each of the caves to make it so adventurers focused on that instead.

  The other change he made to the caves was bringing them further down in the ground. He wanted to make it hard for adventurers to find the future living areas of the trolls and ogres, and the last thing Dan wanted was some pesky earth mage to find them. Dan had even held back from enchanting the new huge caves underground because he doubted any D rank earth mage could easily find them. The caves were now two or so miles in the ground, which was a distance no normal D rank mage could easily cover.

  With those very specific changes done and spending a good chunk of mana, Dan moved to plan out the zones story. He already had a good idea of how the entire thing would go, but he found through previous areas that it was good to properly work through his ideas.

  The story would start in the very southwestern corner of the Rolling Hills. There, a family of giants would live in a small forest, and Dan promptly created their giant wood cabin. He had always been fascinated by supersizing normal things, and making the very rough-looking structure was very pleasing. He made plates and cups that could easily fit your average human and the walls were made out of entire tree trunks.

  Everything in the cabin had to be large since the giants would be like twenty feet tall, at least the parents would be. Their child would be more like ten feet tall because he was still young, maybe in his early teens in terms of giant age. Either way, the family of giants was friendly and lived peacefully, at least until the fire nation attacked. Okay, maybe not the fire nation and more like the ogres and trolls attacked.

  Dan wanted to recreate the original story of the hills area, but with some twists. In this case, the twist was that the ogres and trolls had united and created the Troger Clan. The leaders of the said clan had stumbled upon a powerful shard, but one which killed any of their kind that tried to absorb its power. To that end, the greedy clan, still wanting to gain the power of the shard and use it to take over the world, had raided the nice family of giants. They had outnumbered and overpowered the giant parents with magic and proceeded to take their young child.

  Of course, the parents had tried to search the hills for their child but had been rebuffed by the large number of ogres and trolls. So, that’s when adventurers would come in. The two giant parents would ask adventurers for help retrieving their son.

  However, unlike other areas where adventurers could more or less progress the zones by working separately and only coming together during the final boss fights. In the Rolling Hills, Dan wanted to do something different, and he wanted to make adventurers work together from the very beginning. As a matter of fact, the entire area was a group project where no one team of D rankers could advance, no matter how powerful they were.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Dan wanted to show adventurers that no matter how strong one got, they would not always come out on top. It was an important lesson to learn that sometimes, they had to work together to accomplish a common goal.

  With that in mind, the progression of the zone was fairly simple as long as adventurers could work together.

  After they entered the zone they would be prompted to find the giant family. There, they would be tasked with finding and retrieving their son while stomping out the clan.

  It was at this point where the camps for the ogres and trolls came into play. Adventurers would only be able to find one camp at a time, starting with the “weakest,” at least when compared to the other two camps. This camp would still be hard, and without working together, adventurers would not be able to overcome it.

  First of all, there would be patrols plus a large number of enemies in the camp itself, along with a boss. So, not only would adventurers need to eliminate patrols, but they would have to find the camp, even if it wasn’t hard. Then, they needed to raid the camp and neutralize the enemy. It would be a large-scale assault that would require a united effort to complete. However, if adventurers managed to clear the camp, the patrols would stop, and they would gain ground. Additionally, they would find out that there was a secondary camp, and since the young giant wasn’t at the first camp, it made sense for it to be in the second.

  Upon defeating the first camp, the illusion over the entrance to the second camp would fall, and new, stronger trolls and ogres would be found in patrols. They wouldn’t patrol the first camp's lands but their own section of the hills area. And yes, that meant that while the first camp was active, the second camp and its stronger enemies would not spawn, something that would occur with the third camp as well. Because, of course, after clearing the second camp, their spawns would stop, and they would find out there was a third, and this time, final camp.

  Once again, the adventurers would find themselves pitted against stronger opponents and would have to work together to raid the final camp. And to make sure they gave their best effort, Dan would have “notes” in the second camp stating the young giant was in the third camp. Additionally, he would make sure to add information about the attempts of a ritual that the clan of ogres and trolls was attempting, making it so adventurers would be on a timer.

  Naturally, the ritual was the way for the ogres and trolls to merge the shard with the giant and have it absorb its power while also gaining control over him. The ritual would be on a timer, which was the time before Dan reset the dungeon. This meant adventurers had until then to raid the third camp and stop the ritual.

  Obviously, Dan wasn’t going to make it easy, and they would find the two true leaders of the clan and a large number of minions. However, they would actually have to make it to the camp to begin with. Dan wanted to make sure he challenged the adventurers, and if they didn’t plan a proper raid, they would find themselves in various predicaments.

  Honestly, they didn’t even have to try too hard, and as long as they had a decent semblance of a plan, Dan would push them just enough to make sure they knew their planning was not for nothing. His plan was to lay out a multitude of what-ifs that minions would follow. This included straight-up flanking and crushing advancing adventurers to moderately harassing them. In the end, it would all depend on how well adventurers coordinated and planned.

  If the adventurers managed to stop the ritual, then nothing crazy would happen, and they would be given their rewards. Dan’s plan for the Rolling Hills only involved two internal scenarios. One was the adventurers saving the young giant, and would simply reset to its base upon a dungeon reset. The second scenario was triggered when the adventurers failed their mission.

  If the adventurers didn’t save the giant, the ritual would be completed, and the following reset would continue the storyline. This would have the young giant having grown up and using the powers of the shards for its own purposes, like maybe taking over the town. And that was just one interaction. Dan had plenty of other scenarios and interactions planned out that he would be able to implement without much work. For example, if the adventurers didn’t save the giant and also failed to stop the final green-skinned boss, then both might go after the town for an ultimate doom scenario. However, Dan could instead have the giant target a different faction, like the druids, or even make it a trifecta battle between adventurers, green skins, and the giant’s forces.

  Either way, Dan had plenty of possibilities that adventurers would explore as they completed or failed to complete certain zones. The number of mixes and matches Dan could accomplish wasn’t infinite, but there would undoubtedly be enough to keep adventurers entertained until he acquired his next dungeon floor.

  Feeling like he had nailed down the Rolling Hills story fairly well, Dan decided to get started on actually implementing the damn thing. He still had plenty of monsters to create and dungeon settings to set up.