In a lonesome cabin, far from civilization, Archmage Calamvor was losing his mind. He had searched and searched but the height of his creations, the pinnacle of his arcane career, was gone. Just gone!

  He remembered last night vividly. He had finally cracked the code on how to artificially create a Dungeon Core. He knew it when he saw it after the agonizingly intricate ritual had faded and the Aether had dissipated. He knew he had been right but now the result of all that work was gone!

  What happened next you could probably imagine. Calamvor was old, ancient if you wanted to be precise, and had just experienced a rather nasty shock. So when his heart gave out suddenly, it wasn’t a surprise. Despite his impressive power as an Archmage and despite his many attempts to prolong his life, he could not escape the most natural of endings.

  That, of course, being his old age.

  Unbeknownst to him, deep beneath his cabin where a mouse had carried it in between all of the arcane wards and enchantments that ran the length of the building, the tiny shining Artificial Core sat. It lay as a jewel among the mouse’s other treasures. A thimble here, an enchanted, though partially broken, sewing needle there.

  The mouse in question was grooming itself, quite pleased at having stolen its shiny prize right out from under the giant’s feet. It was, perhaps, more intelligent than others of its species despite having no evolutions to speak of. The Artificial Core simply sat, with no thoughts as of yet, and indeed no Soul to speak of.

  That changed when its creator died. A small portion of the man’s soul, a tiny hint of his Spark’s essence, came to rest within the core. It was enough to ignite instinct but nothing else. It did, however, give the one thing that sets sentient beings apart from others. The ability to become more.

  The core of course could not read any of this, even as the arcane script blazed a path across its newly Sparked depths. It simply acted on its new instincts. Whether it was the remnants of the Archmage’s Spark that it drew from or from the deep intricate tiny, tiny, sigils carved with great care in its depths, the core began to breathe.

  It did not breathe air as it had no lungs. No. It breathed the Maker’s air, the very breath of life.

  Aether.

  In and out, instinctually, as it had no real mind of its own yet. Then it began to take deeper breaths and shallower exhales. Gradually it filled its reserves until they were about to overflow and then it released its breath in a torrent of magical might, albeit quite a very small one. And there, at the bottom of an Archmage’s cabin, in the middle of one of the most dangerous forests in the world, a tiny Dungeon Core claimed its first room and its first servant.