DELVE: The Dark Sea Expansion (Sneak Peek) (Patreon)

With Feast & Famine out and introducing Food mechanics into the DELVE series, The Dark Sea finally has all the groundwork in place so lets have a look at what to expect.

Down below the lowest cave there flows an ocean of liquid night. A place so low that even the gods don’t know what creatures call it home. A place so deep and forgotten that, had it not been for the greed of dwarves, we might have never known of it. We might never have set into its depths and discovered the ancient things that dwelt there. Might never have given them the chance to rise from their cthonic ocean. 
But we did. 
And we cannot undo what we have done. 
- Diary entry from a Dwarven Submariner, 
found in the remnants of their vessel.


The Dark Sea expansion introduces a new layer that your hold discovers after they've reached a certain depth. Upon discovering it the caverns open out into a vast underground sea with its own unique events, monstrosities, relics, and more. And while most sensible dwarves would take one look at the night black waters and turn back the Under-King has unfortunately tasked you with getting to the bottom of it both in the literal sense and the discovery sense.

To do that you'll be given a bunch of new rooms and units as well as mechanics for underwater building. To accentuate these, there are new Flooding mechanics where Liquid no longer flows then seeps away. Now when Liquid flows, it has a value which determines how many squares it will fill when it comes to a stop meaning whole sections of your hold can end up underwater if you aren't careful. To prepare against Flooding you'll now have access to pipes, pumps, and water tanks which let you drain and move Liquid as needed. 

Which will probably come in handy in a Steampowered expansion... I can see how Dwarf Fortress has been expanding so much all these years...

But while all that is still in development, I've started on my favourite part of the DELVE games: the Monstrosities. These new traits are designed to create aquatic beasts, creatures that rise from the darkest depths to wreak havoc on your dwarves.

While these are still in need of testing, I'm pretty excited by the weird and awful powers. My goal is to have them mix with the ones from the base DELVE game and all future expansions to create a massively varied selection.

Even during development, I love seeing what monstrosities can be made. So lets share. With the table above, draw 3 cards and comment below your weird monstrosities :)

I drew 4, 6, and 10 which are:

Camouflage, Shell, and Burst

The names it could have are: 

Krik'arak the Unbreakable Beast

Hundrog the Swollen Shadow

Krik'arak the Swollen Bastion

etc.

I like the last one so:

Krik'arak the Swollen Bastion
This horrific crustacean cannot breathe on land but through some twisted joke it has found a way to bring the ocean with it. It's bulbous shell guards a tightly compacted store of water that Krik'arak breathes. 

If that fact that the beast's near impregnable shell wasn't enough, it also has the ability to blend in with the stone around it. Creeping along cavern ceilings and walls with nary a sound. Looking up into the darkness, the only clues to its presence are that the ceiling may look lower and there'll be more drips than usual.

When slain, the beast's shell splits open, flooding its predators in one last ditch attempt at vengeance. 

----

I'm not looking forward to fighting that thing.

So let me see what you come up with and let me know if you'd be interested in more Monstrosity bios like this :)