Peek: Spawners

One of the first things any Dungeoneer or Delver learns about a dungeon is that it has monsters.  While some are more monstrous than others, they are all still classified as such, from little pixies to drakes and wyverns.  The second thing one typically learns about a dungeon is that a lot of a dungeon's monsters follow a theme.  If a dungeon has pixies, it has or will have eventually brownies, sylphs, pucks, and potentially elves.

Yes, elves.  Every race is represented in the ranks of the Dwellers of various dungeons.  Well-established dungeons may even have multiple Enclaves of Dwellers.  And, while it logically follows that each race has a corresponding spawner to trace their origins to, not every spawner has a race that corresponds to it.

For example: dwarves are the pinnacle of earth elemental spawners, but few other elemental types have intelligent races representing them.  Elemental fey, on the other hand, are represented almost fully, and are the wide spectrum of elves.  An interesting exception to this rule is the gnomes, who are from earth affinity fey, as well as illusion and a few others.

Most spawners are fairly obvious in what intelligence they can potentially produce.  The various beastkin hail from various beast spanwers, as an example.  Ratkin, birdkin, wolfkin, and more trace their roots back to their respective spawners.  But as I said: not all spawners are known to produce intelligent life.

Even the ones that do, may never actually do so.  Perhaps a dungeon simply stops upgrading the spawner, for whatever arcane reason it has.  Perhaps a dungeon is a particular nuisance and is starved before it can upgrade, or it is consumed by a rival dungeon instead.  Whatever the reason, few dungeons ever manage to create intelligent life.

Still, they have the potential to, and the spawners that have never made intelligence draw the imagination of researchers.  What would an intelligent slime look like?  How would they behave?  Are they even possible?  Is the lack of an intelligent race of slimes because they can't exist?  Or is it simply because they are relatively rare, and no dungeon has upgraded its slime spawner high enough?

Another spawner that has never produced true intelligence is the undead spawner, in its various forms.  This one is also interesting because clever undead are well known.  Ghasts and ghouls have been observed coordinating and planning attacks on parties in a dungeon, or even various groups outside when the dungeon is murderous.  The lich scion is a staple of dungeons with undead, and the rotting masters of the arcane are among the most deadly things a delver could encounter.

And yet there's no undead Dweller.  With how common undead are in dungeons, this is generally considered to be proof that truly intelligent undead simply don't exist.  Which is a relief, honestly.  Undead are naturally opposed to life.  A murderous dungeon with truly intelligent undead would be even more of a blight than even an ordinary muderous dungeon!

-Excerpt from Dungeon Basics, written by Ryndal Windstrider

So, to pull the curtain back a little more and directly answer Michael Schiff's question: Yes, every spawner can produce intelligent Dwellers, but not all have actually been taken to that point.  I won't list all of them, because there's an almost unlimited number of spawners.

Thank you again to everyone for your support.  The previous Nudge post still has a lot of interesting questions, so be sure to take a look if you're able!

Khenal