Remodeling: your first dungeon level

You and your champions stand near the front gate of your dungeon, the rest of your underlings, minions, and lieutenants in a huge mass nearby. Lilia stands holding the nude dark elf's lead, her seductrixes seemingly content to watch what's about to happen, while Rishukan and Baelzann are doing their best to quell the unruly lot they're in charge of with the help of the shappazus. You aren't quite sure what modifying the floors is going to do to the existing structure, and don't fancy accidentally killing most of your defenders just before a group of adventurers wanders this way.

1,000 fame spent with the press of a button, your fame menu closes and another opens in its place.

Level Designer
Name: Unset
Dungeon level order: 2/2
Assigned underlings: None
Assigned challenge: None
Assigned level boss: None
Assigned natural features: None
Assigned traps: None
Assigned treasure: None
Entrance: Only by portal (requires portal control room - OK)
Exit: Only by portal (requires portal control room - OK)
Theme: None
Confirm?
Yes (0 fame)/No

More fame costs? Although who knows what causes them, given they seem to be zero at the moment. You change the order to 1/2, seeing as the other level—the one that exists by default—includes your living quarters. The change invalidates the portal settings, seeing as apparently you need a dungeon entrance portal to set your first floor as being accessed by a portal. Makes sense. As a bonus, this should resolve your issue with adventurers finding their way past the locked gate overland: a rather embarrassing security oversight to have persisted as long as it did. You order your abishai to build one on the edge of your territory and they dutifully walk off, then you open the menu up again. The error is now gone, leaving you to resolve other options.

Next, you select the theme, but are met with a sound you haven't heard in months. DEE-OO. "Dee-oo!" The fallen ones shout out in response, Rishukan even joining in with the cacophany. Great, just great.

Error: Cannot designate a theme without at least one assigned underling type.

That's neat, although it would've been nice if it hadn't led to the current ruckus. You assign the seductrixes to the level, and now the theme menu opens up:

Level Designer: Theme
Blasphemous Cult – A lair where daemon-worshipping mortals summon, attend to, and sacrifice themselves for outsiders.
Dark Depths – A place of sheer cliffs and uncertain footing where flying monsters can pick off the unprepared.
Palace of Pleasure – A den of debauchery where lust daemons seduce one another and any who enter.
Select one (1000 fame)/Cancel

Palace of Pleasure sounds hot, but you're here to build a dungeon, not a brothel. The cliff theme reminds you of the chasm in your existing layout, and while you're fond of it it's taught you that as adventurers get more powerful they get more and more ways to bypass this sort of obstacle. Blasphemous Cult, on the other hand, sounds perfect. It fits the seductrixes' origin, it matches your vision for your dungeon, and hey, having a bunch of humans bowing and scraping to you will do wonders for your ego. "Good thing we saved that fame," you squeeze Ari to your side, "looks like everything's more expensive than it says." You confirm the choice, name the level the "Halls of Desire" in a nod to the other layout, and confirm your choice.

Select Location

You see an overlay of the space you have available, and decide to nestle it near the bottom of your current territory. Now that you can connect things via portals you needn't worry so much about the awkward layout of your cliffside territory, and can instead just space things apart so as to maximize room for expansion. The moment you've confirmed your selection, all of the seductrixes save Lilia vanish in a cloud of smoke, confined to their new home.

New Summoning Options Unlocked
Depraved Maniac: Melee cultist who fights with a knife. Empowers nearby casters and daemons when slain. Exclusive to Blasphemous Cult level theme.
Twisted Zealot: Summoner cultist who can summon minor daemons and transform other cultists. Exclusive to Blasphemous Cult level theme.
Horned Daemon (Elite): Powerful, hulking male daemons whose curved spines forces them to walk on the knuckles of their huge hands. Effective as melee shock troops.

Neat, now you won't even need to go on a recruiting drive to find NPCs who want to become daemon worshippers. You head to the portal and teleport into the new level. The seductrixes are in a large clump crammed into the small room, looking somewhat annoyed at the lack of space.

You begin to draw out a layout for the diggers to carve out, and soon enough they leap to work. Rather than the rough hewn stone walls you're used to, the workers carve out smooth stone, with glowing runs along the top and bottom of the walls and occasional statues of daemons or of robed cultists. While they work, you look through your new options for what you can place on the level.

Like before, you can designate traps, place treasure, and place natural features. However, it seems as if the actual system for doing so has been made much more explicit. Treasure grants a fame bonus for every adventurer who arrives at the level while the treasure is reachable and has not been looted. Beneficial natural features, such as health fountains which can be used or mines which can be looted, grant fame whenever they're used. Traps cause a fame penalty after a limit determined by the level's size, forcing you to be a bit more economical with how you place them.

The horde of abishai have already successfully carved out most of the main foyer, and start to work on the side rooms you've designated. The dungeon level you've designed is relatively simple: a long, wide halfway leads from the entrance room to a large central area. That area splits off to rooms on either side, with a mana fountain on the left and a health fountain on the right, each costing half of the water spring which used to be by Zalreanne's old cottage. The room containing the mana fountain also has a secret door concealed behind a sliding daemoness statue, which can be moved to reveal a chest full of gold coins which are set to automatically replenish from your treasury after the group who loots them leaves the level. The final room lies on the other side of a long hallway opposite the entrance and holds the portal to the next level.

Next you investigate the challenges section. It seems it allows you to add various twists to the level, the first of which is free and the remainder cost increasing amounts of fame to add. For now, you add the Blood of the Faithful twist, which allows you to designate doors as being locked until a certain percentage of the human cultists have been killed. You set the boss room to require 50% progress, and each of the other two rooms to require 25%, meaning a group can either try to rush through the area or spend a little more time in exchange for gaining access to healing. Finally, you set an explosive fire trap on the door to the mana fountain, a contact poison trap on the treasure chest, and then scatter three fire jet traps throughout the floor.

There isn't much work to be done cosmetically, given the theme has already done an excellent job of setting the decor. You add beds to the side rooms and seats and tables to the main room, seeing as your underlings will need to live here even when adventurers aren't invading. You also add a few more statues, paintings, and tapestries just to fill in places you feel are a little bare, and end up with a satisfying aesthetic with surprisingly little effort.

Last but not least, it's time to designate the dungeon boss. The menu offers you numerous riddles, puzzles, and other non-combat challenges, but you scroll past them for now, preferring to design a more straightforward level for now. It seems you need to designate or summon a lieutenant to be the level boss, so you step out to speak to Lilia.

"Master?" She looks questioningly at you when you approach.

"Lilia, you've done an excellent job as a lieutenant thus far. How would you like to be this dungeon's very first level boss? You'd need to retire your job training my pet," you motion at a scowling Zalreanne, "since you'd be confined to the area, but you'd become more powerful and be in command of the level."

"If my lord pleases, it would be an honour." She gives a deep bow, so you lead her into the new level and designate her the boss with an appropriate scenario.

Assign Level Boss
Lieutenant: Lilia (seductrix)
Scenario: Fell summoning ritual: when in combat, the boss can occasionally call cultists and daemons. Any cultists killed during the fight will increase the boss's power until combat ends.
Confirm?
Yes (500 fame)/No

You confirm your changes and the seductrix in front of you is surrounded in a red glow, which parts to reveal her significantly taller and with runes carved all across her flesh. She vanishes in a puff of smoke and materializes in the boss room that's currently under construction. Everything handled, you leave the abishai to their work as the seductrixes explore their new home. Outside, you designate a new portal at what was until recently the main entrance to your dungeon. Might as well make use of that stuff while you're still working on the layout, after all, rather than just letting adventurers who defeat the second floor end up right in the tower and thus the middle of your base.

"Alright, that's all the redesigning for today. Every minion and underling still here, head back to your usual posts. Rishu, take over managing the dungeon's new pet now that Lilia has a new assignment. See you all tomorrow." With that, you head to the tower and up to the summoning room, your champions in tow.

Between the sorceress no longer being able to use her powers and the latest tower upgrade you now have a steady flow of mana. Unfortunately the sorceress' contract consumes a fair bit even when inactive, but that's a problem for another time. For now, you've accumulated more than enough spare to start using your new summon options, so you use the magic circle in front of you to summon first the one type of cultist you unlocked, then the other, and finally the elite daemons. Each one in turn gets designated to the new floor as soon as it's summoned.

"Well, that should be enough work for the day. The builders will probably take a while to finish everything off, and in any case I'm beat. Pool time? Pool time." Your group heads back up to your living quarters.

"We should really get some angel minions now. I really want to see what we can build with them." Mariel's creative side has evidently been sparked by the renovations.

"Tell you what, you can help me build that level when we get there. Sera, Ari, do you two want to help?"

"Oh god, no. I'll tell you if I think something is badly designed, but don't ask me to pick the colour of the drapes." It's always a bit surprising to you how different the two near-identical-looking fallen angels are.

"Same for me. It's kind of fun watching you build it, and I can tell you what adventurers will expect, but actually building a dungeon feels a bit weird to me. I guess adventuring never really leaves you. Anyways, enough talk about work. Let's relax!" Ari jumps up on your back and wraps her arms around your neck, so you carry her the rest of the short walk to your quarters, an angel in each arm.