In earlier ages, magical authority was concentrated within elders and familial lineages—learned slowly, guarded jealously, and passed on to future generations behind closed doors.
In darker centuries, practitioners were driven underground, hunted not for what they could do, but for what they were. Entire bloodlines vanished during these periods of persecution.
It was only in the aftermath of the very bloody War of The Nine Thrones that the West finally began to understand one simple truth: magic does not disappear when forbidden by those in power. The Colleges we know today were born not from idealism, but out of the wreckage of conflict.
Each kingdom, seeking stability amid prolonged chaos, began to formalize magic as a state-monitored necessity. Each state cultivated its own sanctioned discipline of magic, refined and bound to crown and charter. Rivalry was inevitable, but so was progress.
When the Western Empire finally rose and old borders were erased, five Colleges survived where kingdoms did not. Their rivalries persist today—though they are now regulated, codified, and, when required, cooperative.
The five orthodox Colleges recognized by Imperial Accord are the:
Spell-Mages of Valcross. These are the most visible heirs of the old traditions. They wield bounded spellbooks—finite, deliberate, and precise. Their strength lies in versatility and repeatability. While their spells may not be as flashy or grand as those produced by some of the other schools, their versatility has ensured their continued relevance while the influence of other colleges wax and wane.
Hex-Mages of Blackreach descend from practices once deemed heretical. They are powerful mages who work with decay, malice and erosion. Hex-Mages remain under close scrutiny by the other Colleges and are widely distrusted among the general population.
Conjurers of Kharos animate raw mana into forms. Illusions, constructs, golems, and engines of will. Their creations are not alive in the mortal sense, yet neither are they simple tools. Conjurers stand closest to the boundary between craft and creation, and it is no coincidence that Imperial law concerning them is the thickest of all.
Enchanters of Lumnara, my own order, concern themselves not with fire or flesh, but with influence. We bend probability within minds, weave power into objects, and shape emotion as others shape stone. This practice is often mischaracterized as mind control. It is not. Rather, it is the structured influence of perception and choice. Enchanters understand how people choose and what they can do to influence those decisions.
Finally, there are the Sorcerers of Astaraea, known by many as Diviners. They do not predict the future exactly. They collapse it. By reading potential and understanding how to narrow probability, they specialize in making one outcome more likely than any other. Fate, it has been observed, proves remarkably cooperative when approached with sufficient discipline.
Each College claims primacy and each can make a compelling argument for it.
Either way though, history suggests that the Empire endures not because one path is supreme, but because none are allowed to stand alone.
Annotations on the Western Arcana,
Arch-Lecturer Iseval Thorne,
Enchanters’ Collegium, Third Circle
They think I enjoy this.
They see the neverending obstacle course, the extra laps, the way I reset the drill whenever I see someone coasting. They feel the burn and the way their lungs rattle by the end of every session and decide I must either be ruthless or trying to prove something.
They are partially right.
But the real truth is simply understanding how the ANIP amplifies effort. Tenfold, by the current estimates. That means every lazy movement is magnified just as much as every honest one. If they give me seventy percent, the system gives them seventy percent—scaled up and locked in. If they give me everything, it does the same. The math is unforgiving.
And because of that, so am I.
Every repetition I demand here is one less mistake later. Every minute they curse me on the track is a minute they’re not bleeding out in a forest or frozen when something with too many teeth decides they look edible. I cannot choose their battles. I cannot stand between them and what waits beyond the gates.
But I can make sure their bodies don’t fail them first.
They don’t need to like me. They don’t need to understand why I push until form breaks and then rebuild it again. They only need to still be breathing when it matters.
If that means I’m the villain of their training arc, so be it.
I’d rather be hated on the field than remembered at a memorial.
Personal Training Journal
Captain Mira Vance
If one insists on naming the greatest spells ever wrought, they will inevitably point to some apocalyptic working—a city erased, a god bound, a continent scarred forever. These are impressive, certainly. They are also failures of imagination.
The truth is less dramatic, and far more enduring.
For tens of thousands of years, our histories record the same cycle: arrival, devastation, adaptation and, inevitably, war. Whether it was new races emerging onto the world stage overnight or hordes of monsters spilling from hidden places. Our world is a porous destination for a much broader multiverse and every single newcomer has had to fight for their place.
What finally broke the cycle was not a weapon, but the largest cooperative initiative in world history.
Scholars of the Eastern cultivation paths and arcanists of the Western Colleges did what no battlefield ever achieved—they cooperated on a solution. Together, they designed a spell not to destroy enemies, but to organize the world’s population against the incursion of future threats to civilization. A lattice of perception and record, bound to the mind, impartial and inexhaustible.
Thus was born what we now simply call the System.
Its genius was restraint.
The System does not grant power indiscriminately. It recognizes individuals, assigns structured paths—classes, as they are colloquially known—and records action with unerring accuracy. Deeds are measured. Kills are counted. Contribution is quantified. What once dissolved into rumor and hero-song became ledgered fact.
From this emerged the Adventuring Guilds—not as random mercenary bands, but as civic instruments. Local leaders define the needs of the local community and the System formalizes that into local quests. Adventurers act. Results are verified. Rewards are dispensed. The chaos of past ages was finally taken in hand.
This was the first spell ever cast that scaled beyond kings, beyond empires, beyond lifetimes. A spell that did not demand obedience, only participation. It turned survival into a profession, heroism into infrastructure, and desperation into purpose and it has no upper limit to the number of people it can help.
Monsters still appear in the wilds. They always will.
The difference is that now, we have a unified system to deal with those threats.
On the Architecture of Survival
Arch-Lecturer Iseval Thorne
Enchanters’ Collegium, Third Circle
The East doesn’t think about power the way we do.
On Earth, strength is something you have and apply; like a tool you can draw on.
In the East, strength is something you carry with you. It’s cultivated slowly, folded into breath, posture, and habits. They do not spend hours in the gym, there are no obvious banners to announce it. Back home, you know who to avoid generally by how they look. In the East though, you have to be more careful, power is often not translated into muscle size and sometimes you only discover you’ve pissed off the wrong person when it’s too late.
Their cities are full of objects that should not work. I have personally witnessed a stone that drinks heat and gives light; a charm that calms the mind better than a week of rest; and armour that provides heat when wet. Possibly the strangest thing is that none of it is rare or unusual to even the most base farmer of the Empire. It is simply part of their infrastructure.
What struck us most throughout our travels though, was the attitude.
People in the Eastern Empire generally don’t rush for very much. They don’t chase numbers or milestones like we often do. Instead, they chase perfection. I asked a woman who was making the most incredibly intricate rugs how long it took to master her craft and her answer was simply: it will take as long as it takes. She did not yet consider herself a master, despite her advanced age and the obvious mastery she wielded in her craft.
We brought back wine, stones, charms, and stories.
What we could never bring back is their mindset. I felt more peace in the Empire than I’ve ever known before, but it would take many years of dedicated practice to walk their path and I just don’t know that I have that kind of patience.
Eastern Expedition Journal
Wylder Company, Captain
Rowan Wylder, Fighter
Dungeon Inc. staff at Alpha Base like to say our primary goal on this new world is discovery.
And there is a lot of effort put into discovery. This world is full of wilderness, ruins, monsters, and also enormous kingdoms and empires with trade routes and long history. It’s exciting. We are often mapping out places no one has mapped before. I never really understood humanity’s need to explore the unknown before coming here; but now it’s in my blood.
Valentina has been great. She listens to us and, in her own way, takes care of all the adventurers, making sure we have what we need. It is ultimately self-serving I suppose. She wants to build an entertainment empire. But I think we are lucky that she firmly believes that taking care of all of us is the best way to ensure she gets what she wants. That matters.
Still, she isn’t the one who worries me.
There are others above her. Executives who rarely come to Earth-3 and who only look at this world as a resource engine. Ore veins instead of mountains. Biomes instead of homes. Lumber instead of wilderness. Under the surface of our little Medeival village, there is a lot of prep work going into supporting a very different future. A secret foundation being laid for what comes next.
I don’t think most adventurers see it yet. We’re too busy surviving the next run, chasing the next contract, celebrating the wins and enjoying the celebrity back home that comes along with it all.
I love Dungeon Inc. and the show we are facilitating with all our work here. I only wish it could always be like this.
But once the company decides it has everything in place to facilitate resource extraction at the level they are clearly planning… I don’t know how long the show can continue once that all starts.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Personal Journal
Iron Fangs
Elira Renaldi, Ranger
As previously discussed, the current multi-team format has reached its natural ceiling.
Audience engagement data continues to show further fragmentation with every new cohort. Too many parallel arcs have ultimately diluted emotional investment, complicated recap narratives, and limited the effectiveness of long-term branding. In short: viewers want depth, not the sprawl that is a natural result of the necessary build up of people resources in this new world.
To address this, we will be transitioning Dungeon Inc. into a guild-based structure at the start of the next season cycle.
Under the proposed model, all active teams will be consolidated into a fixed number of officially sanctioned guilds. Each guild will serve as a stable narrative pillar with distinct visual identities, defined ethos, consistent leadership, and predictable internal rivalries rife with storytelling threads. This change will enable Marketing to focus spending, tighten branding, and build a recognizability that extends beyond individual personalities.
In parallel, we will be introducing a formal adventurer ranking system, graded from F through A-class, based on performance metrics, survivability, contribution value, and audience response. Rankings will be visible, dynamic, and narratively reinforced. Progression will feel earned. Regression will feel consequential.
New cohorts will no longer be assigned arbitrarily to a newly formed team. Instead, each intake cycle will culminate in a draft event, with guilds selecting recruits in a televised, sports-style format. This gives us:
- A recurring tentpole episode with built-in stakes
- Clean onboarding for new viewers
- Immediate emotional buy-in for new trainees
- Organic rivalry that will arise between guilds
From a numbers standpoint, projections are strong. We expect a measurable lift in retention, improved episode-to-episode continuity, and a significant increase in ancillary engagement—merchandise, social discussion, and cross-platform clips. Most importantly, this framework scales forward, not outward; allowing us to grow the brand without destabilizing it further.
There have been suggestions that our long-term value lies elsewhere, especially as our numbers have further fragmented over the past six months. I disagree though—not philosophically, but practically.
What we have here is a renewable resource engine: stories that replenish themselves, talent pipelines that generate loyalty, and an audience that invests not just in outcomes, but in people. This is the kind of asset that compounds without the need for significant resource investment.
I’ll circulate implementation timelines and branding mockups by end of week.
Internal Memorandum
From: Valentina
To: Executive and Strategic Oversight Teams
Re: Structural Realignment — Season Transition Proposal
Back on Earth, managing a roster of security personnel is pretty straightforward compared to the planning and learning that goes into the same job on a new world. The closest equivalent would be moving teams into a new theatre of operations where they’ve never operated before, like a desert, or jungle environment.
But then add fucking monsters.
Things my teams rarely had to deal with on Earth: Teeth, claws, aggressive wildlife.
Things my teams never had to deal with on Earth: Corrosive blood, spatial distortion, reality-adjacent biology, and creatures that shrug off standard ammunition.
At the end of the day, my job doesn’t change. You identify threat vectors, adjust tactics, do what you can to keep your people alive.
But the keeping people alive part has become significantly more difficult in this new world.
We’ve dealt with predators that have natural, phasing camouflage. Swarms of small bird like creatures that seem to share a single distributed intelligence. Plants that paralyze through scent. Monsters the size of RVs. And creatures that I’m not even sure can be killed.
Every playbook we brought with us broke within the first month.
The terrain is alive. The ecosystems are hostile by default. And the apparent existence of magic introduces failure modes we don’t even have language for yet. I had to watch one squad wipe because physics stopped working the way we expected it to. That doesn’t happen on Earth.
The one constant is people.
Panic looks the same whether the threat is a bomb or a basilisk. Leadership matters. Discipline matters. Clear comms matter more than firepower. The teams that survive aren’t the ones with the best gear—they’re the ones that adapt fastest and stop thinking that they’re in an sort of control of this situation.
We don’t win by dominating this world. We survive by respecting how little we understand it, and by making sure the next team knows what not to assume.
That’s the real mission right now.
Everything else is just containment.
After-Action Notes
Lt. Kazemi
SHIELD – Operations Team Command
We’ve received formal notice from SCRY regarding the transition of the show from the current group-based setup to a new guild-based structure next season. PILLAR will be responsible for ensuring the implementation is completed by launch date. I am still waiting on the confirmed date requirement but whatever date they throw at us, we aren’t going to have long to pull this off.
Keep in mind, this will not be a refit of the current team houses. These dwellings, and the land they sit on, will not be big enough for our new requirements.
New directive: nine Guild Halls, purpose-built and permanent.
Each hall must function as both operational headquarters and public institution. We have our architects working on plans now, but required elements identified so far include:
– Public-facing reception and gathering spaces on the ground floor
– Offices and conference rooms suitable for command-level coordination
– Dedicated training rooms capable of supporting full guild rosters up to 50 individuals
– Vaults with layered physical and technical security
– Possible expanded residential wings with surplus capacity for future growth – We may forgo this and start with the more scalable solution of providing adventurers with homes in the village; in which case there will be a set number of rooms for visitors and temporary dwelling instead.
– Exterior grounds sufficient for drills, sparring, and future growth.
All builds must incorporate full covert infrastructure: concealed camera networks, maintenance corridors, controlled-access points, and direct connections to the Undercity tunnel system. Ensure you reiterate to the new team members that we have a strict NO visible hardware policy, including zero architectural tells. If a visitor can identify a technological element, we have failed our mandate.
This probably goes without saying, but the timeline is going to be aggressive. These halls must be complete and operational for the new season unveiling. Expect overlapping build phases, extended shifts, and the introduction of supplemental labor. I am initiating requests for additional hands through approved off-world contractors and vetted local artisans.
At this stage, existing team houses will remain intact. First, the locations of these current buildings will be too small for the new Guild Hall concept buildings. Second, demolition and rebuild of 27 buildings would introduce unacceptable disruption to both production and local stability. It would likely put too much pressure on our current timelines as well.
That leaves placement as our first critical decision point.
I need proposals on my desk by end of week. I’m looking for new ideas, or feedback on the following options:
- Guild Row — a unified district at the village perimeter, designed as a formal civic frontage with shared visual language, controlled sightlines, and scalable expansion. May include a new style of boulevard type road. This would likely require us to dismantle the southern defensive wall and push the village footprint in that direction.
- Distributed Halls — individual guild placements throughout the village, each embedded within a separate neighborhood to project presence and territorial identity. I’m not sure we even have the free space for something like this…
Don’t count on a cookie cutter system. I anticipate that the insides will be quite similar as they all have the same needs, but I was told that the building styles will be variations on a theme so that each guild can push their own unique stylings.
Before I hear any complaints, keep in mind that PILLAR exists to make this show look good. It’s why we’re here and aggressive timelines are nothing new.
Internal Memorandum
PILLAR Division
(Provisions, Infrastructure, Logistics & Land Asset Regulation)
From: Halden Pike, Chief Works Officer
To: Build Leads and Site Supervisors
We are entering the most significant structural shift Dungeon Inc. has undertaken since launch. It is critical that we properly transition our viewers through this change and our success or failure will hinge on our narrative clarity. That responsibility sits with you.
Effective immediately, the writing staff is tasked with developing foundational concepts for nine new Guilds. These are not strictly team rebrands, although do consider pulling fan favourite team elements through into their new guilds.
Our new guilds will be institutions of this world we are building—each with a distinct identity, philosophy, and visual language that can sustain storytelling into the future.
It will be your jobs to get your teams working across the following spectrum:
- Guild Identity & Branding
For each guild, develop a clear thematic core. Name, ethos, color language, iconography, and tone, etc.. How does this guild see itself? How does it want to be seen by others? How does it differ from the rest at a glance? - Guild Hall Concepts
Work in parallel with what PILLAR is building. Propose architectural personality, interior mood, public vs. private spaces, and symbolic elements that reinforce each guild’s identity. Think about how these spaces will read on camera and how they will evolve as the guilds grow. - Narrative Justification for Consolidation
We need clean, credible in-world logic for the transition from teams to guilds. This includes institutional pressure, adventurer ambition, audience-facing explanation, and character-level friction. Identify multiple narrative entry points—some collaborative, some resistant. - Story Trajectories
Outline potential arcs for each guild across short, mid, and long term horizons. Rivalries. Internal politics. Splits, mergers, scandals, legends-in-the-making. Nothing is too large or too small at this stage. Broad strokes matter. So do details. - Easter Eggs & Deep Cuts
Comb through existing reference material—logs, side content, throwaway dialogue, background assets, even production notes. If something can be elevated, echoed, or paid off through this new structure, flag it. This is the moment to reward long-term viewers. - Adventurer Ranking System Integration
We will be implementing a visible ranking system in parallel to the guild work. Rankings will be from F through A-class. I want proposals on:
-Criteria for initial placement
-Mechanisms for advancement and regression
-How rankings are earned, lost, contested, and defended
-Narrative weight versus mechanical transparency
This system must feel fair, legible, and emotionally consequential without becoming reductive.
To support this, you will all receive access to an internal ranking form. Complete it. Rank every current adventurer based on your understanding of performance, potential, and story value.
Pitch Summit
We will be holding a full-day, in-person pitch summit in the auditorium on Wednesday. That gives everyone three days to pull your best ideas together. Attendance is mandatory. Expect to be in the room until we have a first-draft framework for the entire initiative. Phones off. Laptops open. Breaks will be scheduled. Meals will be provided.
Come prepared. Come opinionated. Come ready to argue your ideas.
This is not an incremental development. This is a reset of the board. Come prepared for such.
Internal Memorandum
From: Valentina
To: SCRY Team Leads
Re: Guild Initiative — Concept Development & Pitch Summit
For a place no one chose, Alpha Base couldn’t have landed in a better spot. Alpha Base sits on top of the spot where our portal into this world first opened. The location was completely accidental, but somehow we landed in the perfect location for our needs and right in the middle of abundance.
You can stand on the town walls and look in any direction and, other than our people, it’s empty land for 100 km at least. That would be unheard of back home. Here we have space to breathe but apparently we are relatively close to a major east/west trade route, which provides us access to the rest of the world.
The land here is fertile and full of abundance already. There are rivers everywhere, including a large one that curls around the northern rise like a moat beneath the palisade wall there, then drifts off toward the lake to the east of town. To the west, the land rolls on and on, open and workable. We’ve been moving farmers onto that land over the past year and now there are dozens of crops being produced and fields of cattle and pig.
The forest is another story.
To the northeast it just keeps going. Practically forever for all we know. The trees are the size of skyscrapers, but twisted like a licorice stick. You start walking under those trees and they can make you forget the sky even exists. The ground is covered with ferns that seem to come in every colour of the rainbow. I don’t know what sort of biology led to that, but it’s something to see.
Back home, there are very few wild places left and they are shrinking fast. Here, the wild doesn’t care that we arrived. We’re not pushing it back and it's not retreating.
I don’t know how long we’ll be here, or what this place will look like in a few years once more people arrive and the company starts its resource harvesting plans in earnest, but for now, standing on the ridge at dusk, looking out over water, fields, and forest all at once, it feels like we landed in our own little nirvana.
Personal Journal
Sergeant Frank Rellan
SHIELD