“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

  *Well, Aven, there’re some tough questions in there. As far as hints from the God go, there really wasn’t much. It feels as though I DID have a direct interaction with the deity, but that my memories were edited before I ended up here. I have no real clues about the deity themself – a general sense of a feminine voice, but also the sense that gendering a deity is a waste of time.

  My memories were edited in very strange ways, at that. I have a clear and absolute knowledge of every part of my professional training and career, but my personal life and relationships have been redacted. I’m assuming the deity wants to use my skills and knowledge but doesn’t want me to pine for my past life. To be honest, I’m excited at the prospect of exploring the archaeology of this world; it’s got to be fascinating if it involves things at the level of artificial sky islands. I’ll want to grill you on the basics of the world and its residents, but you’re right – we should start with some basic decisions and work from there.

  In terms of my immediate growth, I think the ideal thing would be to spread along the surface until I reach some evidence of past occupation and then drill down. People tend to create their settlements in predictable places and reuse those spots over and over, so that’s likely my best way to start. That might involve finding agricultural land with access to reliable water, locations suitable for commerce and transportation, or specialized locations exploiting particular resources, just off the top of my head. Probably I should try to assimilate some sort of bird and use it for aerial reconnaissance before going too far.

  I’m reassured that you think I’m not in any immediate danger, though my dungeon instincts are telling me I need to drop at least a couple of levels and add traps and defenses, so that might be something I do sooner, rather than later. I do want to encourage sapient visitors, but for now, you and whatever dungeon inspector I get sent will probably have to be enough. Ideally, the inspector will have some input too as to how I can best encourage more intellectual visitors. Until then, though, I guess I’ll work on some of my more accessible starter quests like you were saying.

  I’m really not interested in killing things, though, again, my dungeon instincts disagree. I’d say I’m generally fine with killing animals, within reason, but I’d prefer not to kill anything with true sapience, except in self-defense. Can I avoid that? Or is it an inherent part of dungeon biology? *

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Aven nodded, bobbing gently in the air and occasionally showing its alarming dentition in rueful smiles. *Sure, Vay, that all sounds reasonable. No, you don’t have to kill intelligent beings to get ahead, though that tends to speed up your growth. It ALSO tends to increase the chances someone will try to destroy you, so kind of a toss-up. Dungeons generally grow through the intake of mana, which you can get naturally through existing mana currents (albeit slowly) or through interactions with living beings, and especially intelligent beings. You’ll gain mana from them passively, just through their presence in your area of control, and more actively when they release substantial amounts of mana to the environment. That can be through the use of their skills and magic, or through the one-time release of mana upon their death.

  For you, ideally, you’d want to encourage visitors who come and stay for extended periods while using their skills at a minimal cost to you; otherwise, if you’re not getting enough mana to support your growth, your hunger will build, and it will become a lot harder to NOT kill people. A specialized library might be ideal for you, but you could also work with a variety of non-lethal training formats or even a puzzle-themed dungeon. Those tend to be popular but require regular changes to encourage repeat visitors and every adventurer expects some reward from solving those puzzles.

  At the moment, you don’t have much to draw adventurers, much less dungeon scholars, aside from your own inherent knowledge, most of which you will have trouble sharing for the time being. I’d start by trying to establish a theme that will be both unique and interesting, functioning to draw visitors and to further your longer term scholarly and divine goals. Possibly you could work on ways to share your knowledge, developing a library or academic setting, starting with some general practices of xenoarchaeology, whatever that is? *

  *Oh, yeah, I guess I never said, did I? Well, archaeology is usually defined as something like the study of cultures through the material remains of prior cultural occupations. All that really means is that archaeologists typically excavate in locations where people used to live and use whatever is left behind to figure out how those people lived, as well as reconstruct as much of their history as possible. Xeno just translates to “stranger or alien”, so xenoarchaeology would mean performing archaeological analysis on the remains of cultures completely divorced from the researcher – in this case, archaeology on a whole new world. It’ll just be archaeology for anyone born here, I’d say, unless they ALSO were dragged over from another world! I’m pretty sure it’s not a common thing, at least.

  Here, it just means I need to locate some ruins from a past occupation of the sky island and explore whatever I find there to figure out whatever I can about the people who lived there. My skills in that area are mostly about mapping, determining a sequence of occupation, and trying to develop an accurate chronology, while also figuring out who lived there, why they came, what they did while they were here, and what happened to them. I’d imagine the dragon might have something to do with what happened to the last resident population, but that’s just a guess and one based on stereotypes from my own cultural legends. *