So for those who haven’t read this: GRAPHIC ARTIST GOTTEN: [7th Laboratory Dungeon Idea]
This is a dungeon I’m working with alongside @Orsome and @fatock that is a mini-raid-rush dungeon. In other words, each floor is designed like a mini-cult; qualify the objectives to reach the boss.
This is the official Lore that goes along with it. It’s lengthy but lmk if it looks good so far!
WARNING ** Light gore and contains slight sexual references
LORE
Once upon a time, there was an war called the Conquest. It was essentially like a Warring States Period; guilds were competing with each other to claim the New Land, a strip of land recently discovered by their lord, Oryx. Among them was King Alexander, the leader of one of the smallest, yet most powerful guilds out there. But as he went out to conquer the sea, his ship crashed. He was the only one(seemingly) saved by Thessal. Over the months of his recovery, he and Thessal gained romantic feelings for each other. But he knew that he had to conquer the New Land so that his men’s sacrifices wouldn’t be in vain. So reluctantly, he set out, with a promise to Thessal that he would one day live, reign, and conquer the world.
He’d send an arrow into the sky for every year he had been gone. Thessal smiled.
She’d be waiting for that arrow, alright.
So flash forward a few weeks. Alexander finally finds a large island which he washes ashore upon. On there, he is greeted by pirates who he kills quickly. This earns him the respect of the islanders, who bring him to the village. He stays there for awhile so that he can get his bearings and directions to the New Land. During his time, he is helped by another potential explorer, a beautiful redhead(Lust) who develops feelings for him and eventually confesses it one night. Although Alexander tries to keep loyal, eventually he can’t resist and he and the redhead have a one night stand. Ashamed of what he did, in the morning Alexander left the island in shame, unaware that Lust herself was now pregnant(Envy) and unhappy. He set out on his ship, unaware that a boy with a bird was following him, the same boy who brought him to the village(Pride).
So Alexander is on the seas again, deciding finally to return to the homeland so he can bring his guild along. Along the way, he gets pickpocketed by a young man(Greed), but the young boy emerges from the ship, much to the shock of Alexander, and catches him. Rather than punishing him then and there, Alexander takes pity and still feeling repentant, decides to spare his life and enlist his help. The three go and try to convince Alexander’s guild, which has fallen into disarray due to one of the leaders(Sloth) Alexander had previously appointed purposely purging members for his own pleasure while doing nothing to stop it. In rage, Alexander kills him, which causes shock among the crowd, but simultaneously unites his guild as they remember Alexander’s leadership. Together they set out for the New Land. However, halfway through the journey their rations disappear completely, and Greed goes down to investigate.
However, he once again encountered yet ANOTHER stowaway(Gluttony). But once again, Alexander decides to take pity on the young lad, and instead enlists him as a navigator. Feeling regretful for eating all the rations, Gluttony tells the people who spared him that he will scout ahead and warn them of danger. So in a small raft, Gluttony goes ahead. 3 days pass before Gluttony’s raft reappears, with his dead body inside. There are no marks or signs of torture, but one slash with a stake impaled : “THIS LAND IS OUR LAND”.
In anger, Alexander pursues even further north, being sure to keep Gluttony’s body on the ship before he can have a proper burial. Full speed ahead, the ship catches flame. A legion of dark entities stands on the shore, and at the front, is the darkest commander of the Crusades himself, Wrath. Known to work directly under the Void Entity, the one being predestined to defeat Oryx himself, Wrath was rather a surprise.
“Alexander, you have gone too far!” yelled Wrath from across the sea. His voice was booming, and shook the sea to the point where tsunamis started to form. “Leave now, or end up like your young friend!”
Quivering with rage, Alexander asked with a cold, metallic undertone, “Why did you kill him?” Wrath stared back at him. “Sorry?”
Unable to control his rage, Alexander screamed yet again, “WHY DID YOU KILL HIM?!”
To this, even Wrath stepped back a little. In his many years of leading the Crusades, he had finally met a leader worthy of his title.
But Wrath knew he was far more worthy of his. With a mighty grunt, he threw his hook onto the galleon and forcefully yanked it onto the island, causing all its occupants to fall aboard. The battle had begun.
Greed was the first of Alexander’s to fall. He took ammunition from fallen bodies, enemy or not, and brought them back to Alexander and his men. Unfortunately, from one of the bodies, he had taken a live Rock bomb, and it exploded. War knew no sides, and neither did the bomb; it killed everyone within a 5 tile radius. Before dying, Greed smiled. “It looks like he got the best of me… after all.”
Wrath was unstoppable. A true menace on the battlefield, he made the Marble Colossus look like a toy. Ripping through enemy and using multiple hooks at once, it seemed like nothing could stop Wrath. Except for Alexander, of course. The battle between them was immense. Through it all, Wrath still said the same things.
“Turn back now! The New Land is NOT worth conquering!” Wrath yelled as he took out his 5 swords and started attacking Alexander with all of them at once. “It’s dangerous, and we never should’ve come here!”
“Then why are you still here?!” Alexander screamed as blocked and parried another strike.
“It was our mistake! Our master himself said so! Whatever resides on this New Land, it’s nothing- NOTHING, like we’ve seen before! As far as I know, only Master himself might have enough power to stop it. It’s something… something… even Master himself is afraid of.”
Alexander stopped. The Void Entity… afraid of something? Everyone knew what the Void Entity was. Allegedly the one being who could stop Oryx, for millenia Oryx and the Entity had been at each other’s throats. But rumor had it that the Void Entity was gaining power - at first Alexander thought it was because of Wrath and the Conquest, but come to think of it…
As Alexander stood there in thought, Wrath seized the moment, rushed at Alexander, and threw his sword into the ground.
As soon as both of them saw the feathers popping all over the place, it was too late to stop it.
Pride lay in a broken pile, impaled at the end of Wrath’s sword. He looked up at Alexander and smiled.
For once in his life, Alexander was shocked. Appalled, even, at what had just happened. He lent down and held the child’s hand as he slowly died. “Why… why did you do this?”
And for the first time, the child spoke, even if quietly. “You gave us hope. You saved us when no one else would. And now it’s time for me to save you….”
He never finished the sentence.
Alexander stood up, his eyes dark.
“Is this what you want?” Wrath had found his voice. “Your people, your arrogance - all will fall around you because of your hubris. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?!” It was Wrath who had now begun to tremble in anger.
Alexander deadeyed his opponent. “No.” He picked up his sword. “But you won’t be there to see it.”
With one mighty sweep, Alexander swung his sword. Wrath jumped away. But it wasn’t him that Alexander was after.
His sword safely in the hook, Alexander pulled the hook towards him, and Wrath was brutally split in half by the very sword he killed Pride with. He looked at his quiver. One arrow left. Shooting it in the sky, Alexander fell on his knees, and looked at the sky.
“Damn it.” He said to no one in particular. “Damn it all!”
Indeed, an awful voice hummed.
And the arrow was the last thing Alexander saw.
The good Doctor had just finished seeing one patient, and was in the process of heading home when a young brown haired girl barged in, sobbing, with what appeared to be a young red haired woman slumped over her shoulder. Once the Doctor put everything aside, he laid out the woman on the examination table and brought the girl into the other room, asking to explain what happened.
Apparently, the girl’s mother had been suffering from severe depression for a long time. The absence of a father had truly taken its toll on her. She had tried her best to cope with the grief and the longing she felt for her now-gone partner, but it had been too much. In the evening, when her daughter came back after yet another day of being bullied, she was not having a good day; this event just plummeted even more. Panicked, she rushed to the Doctor, who thankfully was present.
The Doctor, after hearing all of this, pressed his face into his hands. This girl was too young, far too young, to go through this trauma. And the woman - why, the woman was in the prime of life! It was horrible - just horrible, what had happened to her.
He knew her from the old days. She was intelligent, sharp witted, and was ready to sail the seas. Had it not been for that… that ALEXANDER - she might as well would’ve been the greatest explorer ever.
Damn the Conquest.
“Please, can you revive her?” The girl asked, now finished with her crying.
And how could he say no?
For awhile, he let the girl live with him. She was dutiful, diligent, and had inherited a great sense of intelligence from her mother. She no longer went to school due to the bullying; no one believed that she was truly the daughter of Alexander. Instead, she was always interested in learning whatever the Doctor was doing, and although initially he was annoyed, eventually he grew to love the girl and treat her as his own daughter. As for her deceased mother, the Doctor stored her body in the Cryogenic Freezer. Somehow, he thought. Somehow, I will make this girl happy again.
But after the 132,469th attempt, the Doctor slammed the table in frustration. Thankfully, the girl was sound asleep. This isn’t working! He had tried everything. From lab rats to snakes, nothing could seem to prolong life from its dormant or deceased state! One experiment ran off to a nearby lab, the other one escaped to an insect nest, and the list kept going on and on. This is hopeless. HOPELESS! The village always praised him as a man of remarkable skill. Able to cure any disease, free. Because that’s what he was meant to do - save lives, not take them. And that was what he wanted to do to help this little girl.
Just then, there was a knock on the door. “Solomon,” the Doctor said, looking at his best friend. “Come in, come, come.” Solomon walked in robotically. That’s strange, the Doctor noted, Solomon doesn’t move like that. “Are you alright? Can I get you something to drink?” The Doctor asked with uncertainty. Solomon looked up and the Doctor flinched.
His eyes were purple.
“You want to revive that young girl’s mother, hmm?” Solomon said in a voice so unlike his.
And as reality changed, the Doctor saw everything warp.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” he yelled, as he ran for the door as Solomon laughed. It was a horrible, metallic cackle.
The girl was still inside.
He couldn’t just leave the bodies there.
After that arrow struck him, Alexander knew he didn’t have long to live. He took the bodies of Greed, Gluttony, Pride, and Wrath as a trophy, loaded them onto a smaller makeshift boat, and drifted off. Where the boat would go, he’d never know. He just knew that he’d have to make it somewhere.
Somewhere.
Finally, the boat reached a shore. It looked nothing like the mainland. It looked more like…
Alexander’s remaining eye opened wide. He had a sickening feeling.
I’m so sorry, my love. He fell to the beach.
I’m so sorry.
“So, these are the bodies?”
Oryx was in the newly designed Laboratory of the Doctor, now known and feared as Dr Terrible. After the entity that overtook his friend Solomon took over him, he had killed the inhabitants of the island, possessed by the same negativity, except for the girl - when she fell against the table, eyes open with fear, he could not kill her, to which the entity who possessed him agreed.
She’d be useful later.
This was the 7th one out of multiple he had built: the Mad Lab and The Nest were the only two still active. The other 4 burnt down due to unfortunate circumstances.
Oryx examined the freezer. Sure enough, there were all the bodies in their restored state: Lust, Wrath, Pride, Greed, Gluttony and the newest addition: Sloth. He turned to the 7th sin, the only one still alive: Envy, who was shivering. She hated her village, but to go this far…
Still shivering, Envy nodded reluctantly. All 3 turned to the figure behind them, who stepped out, his massive scars and a missing eye overshadowing his once handsome features.
Envy hated this man. She despised him so much, even more so than the One inside him.
He had been overtaken by the same entity that possessed the Doctor, and now worked alongside Oryx to destroy the Void Entity so that Oryx could finally expand across. To put the 7 Deadly Sins in 7 different beings and end the Conquest once and for all so that no one else would ever dare fight after - it was a genius plan that was nearly foolproof.
“Now,” the deep voice growled behind them, “Awaken.”
On cue, all eyes of the frozen bodies opened at once. All were purple.
“We have a job to do.” Omnipotence Laughed.
And it was the worst sound to be ever heard across the realms.
TL;DR - Alexander made a couple of bad mistakes and failed to conquer the holy land, but inadvertently allowed Oryx to win the War by allowing the one being who could oppose the Entity to come with him in a bid to end the Conquest, by creating the 7 Deadly Sins.
