The Delver

That first crew took off from the garden immediately, but they survived. A few weeks later, the world learned treasure was part of the deal when druids quelled the giant spiders and emerged from the ruin. They hunched a bit with aching necks from the weight of the gold hanging around them. 

“Dungeon delver” is a novel profession. For the last twelve years, young adults have abandoned generations of tradition to pile into wagons and seek the Dungeon. It’s not something they’ve totally figured out; the occupational skills of monster fighting and trap disarming are still in flux. A new delving tactic seemingly emerges every day, and academia is also catching up with the times. For instance, three months ago an arcane university released a paper defining the most recent classification of monster: the “Aberration.

All Part of the Job

Consider: a cervine teenager insists an overhead shirt will work on him. He instantly pokes a hole in its front, and his mother consults a tailor, of course. A hapless mole floods the basements of an entire city block. A mason patches the hole, a plumber drains the water. Buxom fairies lure the men of a town to congregate in a grove of glowing trees that didn’t exist just yesterday. It’s time to seek a delving crew. 

People are coming to terms with the Dungeon’s presence in the world, but everyday heroes are still the hot new thing. Kids in homemade costumes stomp through their basements on pretend delves, and designers capture the common aesthetics of their gear in exotic fashions. 

Commoners are fascinated by delvers, but merchants are fascinated by the loot they carry. New underground tunnels send the scent of gold wafting out, and lords with domains tormented by monsters offer handsome rewards to anyone who can help. A secondary service industry has sprung up around delving crews, catering to a sudden explosion in demand for sturdy rope and healing potions. 

Surviving Together

Delvers seldom work alone and those who do rarely succeed. To explore the Dungeon efficiently, beasts and their human brethren form nimble teams known as “crews.” Delving crews are large enough to cover the breadth of skills necessary for the job, while still keeping each share of treasure worth the risk. Four seems to be the magic number in this balancing act, and it’s the standard size of a delver crew. 

When most imagine a delving crew, a bruiser, a master of magic, a sharp-eyed specialist, and a medic come to mind. This stereotype is rooted in some truth, but most crews are an exception in some way or another. Crews are as diverse as their delvers, but they share some traits. They live and work together, and most become inseparable friends. Love can blossom within a crew, and the gossip columns of rat newsletters drip with rumors about which renowned delvers are hooking up. 

Wheels on the Home

The first “delver wagon” emerged about two years after the Dungeon’s appearance. To empower the constant travel of delving, an ex-carpenter enlarged the cabin of a storage wagon and fortified its walls to repel monster attacks. The prototype was too top-heavy, and crews still visit the tippedover skeleton of the first wagon in northern Vinyot. However, the improvised fortress started something big. Wagons have since become a core part of the lifestyle. 

Today, shipwright companies manufacture rugged, modular parts that fit on standard wagon models. These are a distant cousin to the farmer’s rickety town-runner. The horse-drawn homes are larger, sturdier, and more flamboyant than their predecessors.

A crew’s wagon is a specialized tool that evolves to meet specific needs. Most feature at least one weapon of eyebrow-raising destructive power on its roof. As a crew grows in experience (and budget), more magic trinkets and special functions are fitted to the frame and body. Over time, they become equipped to meet any danger their owners expect to face. 

Beyond combat tools, delver wagons put the trappings of comfortable living in a compact and mobile home. Complex machinery furnishes hot water and cool air. Even the simplest delver wagons are equipped with collapsible beds and a working stove. 

To accommodate furniture and haul more loot, many wagon cabins are bigger on the inside. Clever new applications of magic (and escalating expense) expand their interiors without affecting their overall size. A modest wagon hatch can lead into a spacious receiving room with lofty ceilings and plenty of room for activities .

Wagons in the Train

In the profession’s early days, traveling separated delvers from their families for months at a time. They rarely saw a familiar face, and monsters sprung deadly nighttime ambushes. Entire crews disappeared without any way to retrace their steps; any traveling along were usually lonely and in constant danger. 

These days, delvers form caravans to secure mutual protection with a rotating watch. This cooperation means that the crew’s families can share in the nomadic adventure without the terror nightfall once brought with it. The world’s roads are bustling with tiny moving towns from the west shores of Vinyot to the east edge of the Beylik desert. 

A Pick and Mix of the Reckless

Delvers are difficult to stereotype; seeing the world and getting rich quick appeals to every class of people. The only job qualification is having the courage to face mortal danger and still come back for more. In the Dungeon, desperate poverty can find wealth, and hubris can end a prestigious family line with one kicked tripwire. Everyone is the same underground. 

The Classroom of Peril

Into Business for Oneself

Trapdoor in the Cell Floor

Unwasted Riding Lessons 

From the Bethel to the Dungeon 

Knowing One’s Place (or Making It)

Crew leaders and caravan chiefs understand a good reputation makes a delver’s work bearable, and that a bad reputation risks making it impossible. The public seeing delvers as heroes (instead of outlaws) allows caravans to travel without the harassment of local governments and nobility. This freedom also makes a scout’s leads easier to come by. Publicity is a crucial function of the caravan. New gold—and its dangerous owners—have brought change to every aspect of society, and not everyone has stars in their eyes about it. Some see crews as nothing but packs of criminals who know too much about violence and too little about anything else. The politics of maintaining freedom of movement and the favor of the public is a tightrope stretching to infinity. 

Seeing Oneself

Chic Out of Reach 

A Party, But a Hurricane 

Tastemakers 

Delvers on Delvers 

Dungeon Scouts

"Did you think you were just going to stumble through the gates of a monster-filled town every month or two? The world isn’t doing that bad. Have a seat, I’ve got something you might want to look into."

Behind a successful delving crew is a crucial part of the Dungeon delving mechanism: the scout. A scout is the hand that points toward a hidden fortune, waves off any risk that outweighs its reward, and holds a palm out for its share of the loot. Delvers have made peace with the cost; buying a lead is usually worth it for the scout’s particular skills. From the Dungeon came delvers, and from delvers came scouts. 

Collect, Curate, Confirm

Scouts collect rumors. They twist their ears toward crowded taverns, gossipping merchants, and the whispers of half-trusted colleagues. Most threads aren’t worth pulling—after all, every beast has an uncle with a story about the ghoul who stole his moonshine. But scouts see every rumor as a ticket to Varasta’s most dangerous lottery, and the jackpot makes it worth scooping up every single one. 

Scouts curate what they hear. Bookworms and hedge mages can suss out facts, but a scout’s broad base of knowledge is the best tool of all. They break apart what’s known, what’s assumed, and what’s a local myth. Successful scouts are discerning ones. Without good instincts, a scout is doomed to obscurity. 

Scouts confirm the nature of the lead. This doesn’t always require seeing the hole firsthand, but forewarning is what gives a lead value. Some scouts travel to an entrance personally for confirmation, but others keep safe while trusting a surveyor to make the journey (and leave them to risk being melted by a cube of slime). Either way, the goal is rock-solid information that prepares delvers for what lies below. 

The Dungeon Lead

The culmination of a scout’s work is a precious masterpiece of a document: the lead. A typical lead is an envelope thick with the promise of good information and sealed with the scout’s picto. Inside, a handwritten dossier details key information a crew can use to find the Dungeon and close it at its source. Sharper leads have a map and descriptions of the kinds of traps and creatures that might lurk within. However, every lead features an estimate of what treasures a crew might drag out with them. Surprises are part of the job—the world is an unpredictable place—but leads are often the line that separates a rich crew from a dead crew. 

For their take, a scout usually asks for 25% of the gold and items won from a lead. At the highest echelon of delvers, brought in when things get strange, an artifact is often worth more than incidental stacks of platinum. The terms of their leads might have some extra conditions, such as the temporary right to use an item found on the job. Savvy scouts forgo the money altogether, when the potential magic in a Dungeon is life-changing. 

“Why should I give a quarter of the loot to some stranger who didn’t even go in?” 

Delving is a business, and businesses have expenses! Leads guarantee a number of benefits: 

• Leads are exclusive. Dungeon Scouts don’t double-sell their leads, which ensures multiple crews aren’t bumping heads. In the early days, leads were a free-for-all, and that came with unfortunate consequences. Delvers threatened to become their own worst enemies and scouts remember that time. No one wants to go back to that arrangement. 

• Leads are timely. Civilians are often in real danger from what storms out of the Dungeon. If a crew waits to stumble on one through happenstance or rumor-mongering, they could be too late to prevent tragedy. The most effective heroes let the scouts do what they’re good at, which lets delvers do what they’re good at. 

• Leads allow downtime. Finding the Dungeon could mean traipsing down every side road and through every hamlet of the Beast World. Chatting about local rumors with the first Alley farmer is charming and folksy. After the 50th conversation about noises that came out of a well one time, the novelty wears thin. By working with a scout, a crew still has time to tinker with the wagon, flirt with each other, and refine their ki techniques. 

Gladhands, Diviners, and Scholars

Every scout is a little different in how they gather leads, and each does so for their own reasons. Some are social butterflies who rely on a large web of contacts, exchanging favors or gold for rumors of Dungeon trouble. They expand this network whenever possible. Gladhands keep a lot of friends, or lacking that, a lot of money. Wealth is persuasive in its own way. 

Meanwhile, a spellcasting scout knows the divinations necessary to find credible leads. Powerful mages make good partners, but a life secluded in a seer’s tower can make negotiations troublesome. Masters of the arcane rarely bother with worldly affairs, but they’re just as intrigued as anyone by the new cosmic force underneath them. This sort of scout is more likely to ask for specific samples, artifacts, or curiosities won from their leads. 

Other scouts rely on more mundane scholarship in their approach to finding leads. By consulting maps and historical records, deductive minds can find the discrepancies between what was, and what is. Historians, cartographers, and huntmasters have become the allies of delvers across the Beast World, and work with crews to discover new information to unravel the Dungeon’s mysteries. 

The most shrewd scouts might negotiate for the most dangerous trade of all: a favor. 

Delver-Scout Dynamics

Repeat business is the only way for a scout to establish themselves. Crews and scouts grow together, and climb the ladder of prestige together. As a crew’s power grows, a scout’s network does, too. As their relationship gels across multiple jobs, a scout becomes more exclusive. Eventually, a superstar scout works alongside a single famous crew. Combining scouts and delvers always creates a unique relationship. 

The interplay between crews and scouts is often strictly business. Merchants and nobles are most likely to treat the Delve as a side business, a diversion for when they aren’t running trade empires or governing their land. They use proxies and surveyors, and prefer to manage others rather than dirtying their own boots. 

Some scouts stay with the caravans they lived in while they were delvers themselves, living vicariously through their leads. Most scouts once had their own crews, and even their own scouts. They remain part of the world they’ve come to love, and view their clients as peers and work buddies. A retired delver is most likely to scout their leads firsthand, rather than rely on hired help. 

Older scouts use their experience to mentor crews cutting their teeth on their first delves. These might be veterans of the Invader War or retired adventurers from before the Dungeon’s appearance. Such a mentor often has unique insight about their leads’ surrounding regions, as they’ve seen the world through a delver’s eyes before there was even a word for such a thing.

Built by Reputation 

A Dungeon Scout sells information, but what gives their work value is their word. Feeling out the profit and challenge of a delve is more art than science, but crews stake their lives on these predictions. Bad judgment tarnishes a scout’s reputation and wards off repeat business. An unreliable scout’s unclaimed leads pile up and eventually bury them. The bright side is, they usually come at a bargain! 

If a scout deliberately deceives a client, they risk... extrajudicial retribution. Dungeon Scouts rely on the faith of delvers in their collective work, so they function as a kind of self-policing guild. They operate through peaceful means… mostly. This patience has a limit, though. Scouts don’t tolerate repeat offenders or threats to their profession. At the same time, crews known to lie about their spoils are shut out from working with scouts and other delvers. Their world is competitive, but people talk. 

Where Scouts Dwell 

Most caravans have at least one full-time scout, and larger ones keep several in permanent residence. Caravans are the perfect place for scouts to build rapport with their regulars. However, keeping in touch with a network of connections is tough from a moving office. 

Some scouts travel independently and meet up with caravans whenever they cross paths. Some scouts have their clients come to them, as life on the road isn’t for everyone. 

Urban taverns popular with delvers often even have a permanent table for scouts to confer with clients. Bustling market squares are a common place for scout relationships to start. Urban scouts are starting to cluster together in brick-and-mortar agency offices. These are usually converted bars or repurposed storefronts in the dense heart of the city. Multiple established scouts share a hive of hired aides and surveyors on a single hectic, open floor. Newsrats are known to hang around scout offices hoping to catch a scoop. A delving crew is sure to find a lead here, if they can get someone to sit still for long enough. 

Rich scouts turn the relationship on its head, hiring subordinate “retainer crews” who trade direct loot for an assurance of gear and a salary. Results, so far, have been mixed. For whatever reason, these crews tend to find less loot and more danger. 

Delvers & Power

This section outlines the life of a typical delver at each tier: their notoriety, wealth, and general vibe. 

Level 1-2:
Students, Squires, and Dreamers

Crews don’t typically join a caravan until 3rd level. The main reason is simple economics: wagons are expensive. However, baby-delvers start their adventuring careers once they find a focus for their martial discipline or magic power (that is, the level they choose a subclass). Hatchling adventurers pursue local jobs that help them realize their skills and pocket enough coins to spring for a secondhand beater wagon. 

Their first brush with mortal danger brings them to 3rd level, and an aspiring delver stands at a crossroads. Some who were just about to strike out and find a crew will completely change course once they face an early grave with their name on it for the first time. Others learn the rush that all delvers get when they walk away from a life-or-death situation.

Level 3-8:
The Everyman Delver

Once a crew has a wagon and something to pull it, they start the grind in their new life on the road. On average, a delver spends the first five or six years of their career at this level of notoriety. By 4th level, a third of all delvers have left the profession altogether, and by 9th level over half will have died or retired. It’s a tough job. 

At this stage, a delver is building the undercarriage of their wagon and their personal fortune. A crew discovers their first rare magic item around 5th level, but every member will already have one well-suited to their role. 

This is when reputation completely transforms. The majority of delvers are between 3rd and 8th level, so this part of the journey is a climb from obscurity to becoming a friend of the caravan. Every job leaves behind a grateful community that remembers the danger it was spared from. However, delvers at this level are famous because they are delvers, not for their specific accomplishments. Even by 8th level, a crew is the bread and butter of fame, not the main course. 

Magic users graduate from their mentor’s tutelage between 5th and 7th level, depending on their particular experience. Fireballs and lightning bolts aren’t uncommon among delvers, but once a spellcaster starts opening doors between dimensions, their talent attracts attention. For martials, around 7th level a drunk will think twice before starting a bar fight with them. A sparring circle starts watching a fighter or monk at this level, and by 8th they’re the one in charge of drawing up the workout plan. 

At 3rd level, a crew meets their first Dungeon Scout, who offers some mentorship along with their first lead. That first scout brings the end of their self-doubt about leaving home. When a scout entrusts a lead with a group of ragtag kids for the first time, they are no longer four pals with a cart, they are a delving crew. For this reason, even world-famous Dungeon Scouts love an opportunity to give a new crew their first lead. Smart ones see it as an investment that could pay huge dividends down the line. 

The dungeons at this stage are a menace to relatively few. This chapter of their future memoir is titled something like “Local Heroes” or “Humble Beginnings” or “My Part-Time Job as a Laundry Hauler”. Livestock go missing, then a bethelkeeper’s daughter is kidnapped, then buildings are burning in a small town. At the tail end of this stage, a crew will handle their first delve with life-or-death stakes for an entire city. 

For their take, a scout usually asks for 25% of the gold and items won from a lead. At the highest echelon of delvers, brought in when things get strange, an artifact is often worth more than incidental stacks of platinum. The terms of their leads might have some extra conditions, such as the temporary right to use an item found on the job. Savvy scouts forgo the money altogether, when the potential magic in a Dungeon is life-changing. 

Level 9-16:
Household Names 

When a delver reaches this stage, daily life changes again. Only a fifth of all delvers are still with a caravan by 13th level, dwindling to 3% just two levels later. Typical delvers here have 7 years or more of active experience, but their actual forays into the Dungeon have become more infrequent. Friends start retiring for reasons other than death and dismemberment. Some become Scouts, while others have hit their big score and retired to enjoy a life of leisure. 

Daily expenses are an afterthought; the financial gears in a delver’s head are turning more for investment and large-scale expenditures. Experimental spellcasting, special Dungeon leads, and expensive stuff enter a delver’s life once coins become too heavy to carry out of a delve. The magic items they find become powerful on a worrying level. The Dungeon produces the first trinkets for these crews that are best suited for a lead box forever hidden in a nondescript corner of a warehouse. 

When kids swap stories about delvers, those stories are about crews at this stage. Each delver’s name and past exploits become part of the conversation—a story isn’t just about the crew, but about individual world-class talents. Crews aren’t preventing the apocalypse (yet), but the stakes are high and the rewards are life-changing. 

The spells casually fired off at this level are kept in well-guarded underground vaults in arcane universities. The average reaction to a sorcerer’s spell list transitions, from “Wow! A magic user!” to “I must seek shelter immediately.” Children swarm rangers at this level, begging them to make trick shots at extreme distances. Fighters sometimes take a leave of absence here to command entire armies. 

Members come and go as they get free time. Strongholds need building, cities need governing, and proteges need mentoring. Counterintuitively, delves become less deadly at the beginning of this stage, as an adventurer has more contingency plans for unexpected dangers. However, by 13th level, the trend reverses as threats escalate beyond anything one could prepare for. From here onward, 1 in 10 delvers die on every delve. 

Baby crews chase scouts and beg for leads, but at this stage notoriety attracts a scouts to you. Scouts have their own renown to consider, and there are clout benefits to working with a famous crew. 

A crew settles into a niche here. Their skills refine to solve specific problems. Leads to a dungeon made of locked doors go to a crew of famous safebreaker rogues. (Or a wizard who can cast knock. Life is unfair.) 

Whether slipping into the collective Dreaming or scavenging in the Broken World, crews at this stage also take their first steps into other worlds. Adventures break from the Caravan/Lead/ Dungeon loop as a delver makes important friends and sticks their spoon into hotter soups. 

Level 17-20:
The Room Falls Silent 

This rarefied pinnacle skill is reached only by a few, but these masters of their disciplines still appear in public and continue doing the job. While most delvers retire along the way, almost everyone who can cast 9th-level spells is a lifer. The only thing that stops a delver at this level is death, extradimensional imprisonment, or a househusband who threatens to walk out if they don’t spend more time with the kids. 

There are about 250 active delvers at this level of renown, and another thousand or so scattered in other professions. There are also others, but they’ve left the public eye for one reason or another. For example, most jackals have experience represented by 17 or more class levels, but aren’t included in either of these numbers. 

At this point, every delve nets each crew member tens of thousands of gold, if not more. There are extraplanar vaults scattered across the Astral Sea with these hoards. Some worry about a crew of 20th-level delvers rolling through a city and obliterating its economy. In truth, there are enough people in even a medium-sized community to spread out any negative effects of a huge infusion of gold pieces. It’s also a pain in the ass to carry around a million-gold fortune. Most delvers at this tier don’t. 

The ongoing legend of an artifact intersects with a delver’s life story around this level. It’s assumed that items only a little less powerful than an artifact are carried as normal equipment. The holy avenger is no longer a mythical storybook sword, it’s a tool of the job discussed in the same tone of voice as rope and grappling hooks. 

As of 1365, politics and delving are still separated. The upper crust of Alley lords and the senior boards of Vinyotian trade guilds work regularly with delving crews. In the coming years, it’s likely that retiring delvers will step toward their levers of power, but the profession is still too new for a churn of ex-delver politicians. There are closed-door meetings happening all over the Beast World, as old money debates how they’ll handle this. Time is ticking.