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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/albion.png]]
2''Albion'' is a computer RolePlayingGame[=/=]DungeonCrawler developed by Blue Byte, released in 1995 for DOS, as a SpiritualSuccessor to the Amiga games ''Amberstar'' and ''Ambermoon''. Originally released in German, the game was later translated to English for the rest of Europe.
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4While technically unimpressive, the game featured an imaginative and rich setting combining fantasy and science-fiction elements in an original, if at times slightly confusing way. The story centres around the adventures of Tom Driscoll, a pilot for a [[MegaCorp multinational corporation vast enough to excavate entire planets]], as he crash lands on one such planet. This world, dubbed "the Nugget" by the corporation and called Albion by its inhabitants, turns out to be full of life and inhabited by an alien sentient species as well as Celtic humans. It's also teeming with literal magic. Tom and his fellow crash-landed Terran Rainer Hofstedt set out to find their spaceship, which surely isn't going to excavate the planet to pieces now that it turns out it's actually full of life... [[CorruptCorporateExecutive right!?]]
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6Albion includes a complex back-story and detailed descriptions of the game world. Talking to the right people will reveal much information about topics relevant to the area you're currently in, including their cultures, philosophies, history, and many many more. Only a little of this is actually relevant to the plot.
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8The game features an interesting mix of 2D and 3D perspectives: while most indoor and outdoor places are seen from two ThreeQuartersView, all dungeon crawling has to be done in 3D. Most of these dungeons lack light sources, forcing the party to rely on [[TenSecondFlashlight rather short-lived torches]] to get anywhere, making dungeon exploration downright scary. This is done especially well in the very first planetside dungeon: while exploring the [[NoobCave decidedly unassuming cellar]] of their host house, the main characters suddenly get stranded in almost total darkness, armed with nothing but daggers and knives, hearing only the growls of resident [[OurMonstersAreWeird feral kangaroos]] out to get them. You get treated to some SurvivalHorror right there, if only for a few minutes[[note]]Unless you've found a gun in the prologue. Then you can go VideoGame/{{Doom}} on them right there.[[/note]].
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10JustForFun/NotToBeConfusedWith the setting of ''VideoGame/{{Fable}}'', the miniseries by Creator/AlanMoore, or any of the other [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion_%28disambiguation%29 dozens of fictional and non-fictional uses of the name.]]
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12!!This game contains examples of:
13* ActuallyFourMooks: Used clearly in the outside maps, not always in dungeons, but also more deceptively in the latter. In a dungeon, you might ''see'' four mooks, but when you fight them, it can turn out each of ''them'' is actually a separate battle with four mooks.
14* AIIsACrapshoot: Subverted. [[spoiler:NED]] is doing exactly what it was programmed for - [[spoiler:protecting the company's interests. Acceptable collateral damage includes the destruction of an entire planet full of life and preventing interference with this process by [[MoralEventHorizon any means necessary]], such as slaughtering the ship's crew, should they find out the truth.]]
15* AllInARow: On the 2-D maps; in 3-D, you just get a first-person viewpoint for everyone at the same time so that you can't see any character, as if they all occupied the same point in space.
16* AlreadyUndoneForYou:
17** Drinno, the dungeon under the druid school on Gratogel. If Bero's already gone through the maze, how come none of those obstacles have been removed or show any sign of tampering?
18** Averted in the final dungeon. The last set of doors which all have some sort of security lock have all been opened by one of NED's robots you previously encountered
19* ArcSymbol: The eye of the Goddess is a minor example.
20* BewareMyStingerTail: Iskai characters in your party, like Drirr, may use their tail as an additional weapon slot.
21* TheBigGuy: Drirr.
22* BlackMage: Khunag.
23* BigBad: [[spoiler:NED, the ship’s MasterComputer that’s determined to excavate the planet by killing everyone in it.]]
24* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Tom manages to convice Priver and his crew to spare Albion, and goes to defeat NED with the seed that beging to glow, detonating the core and causing the station to become overgrown. However, when all is said and done, the human characters are stranded on the planet, which will become their new home for a while at least. Still, the planet is saved, and the DDT will most likely go bankrupt.]]
25* BossInMookClothing: Since there are very few actual bosses in the game, some of the tougher monsters are occasionally used as {{Mini Boss}}es of sorts. Best example are the demon-type enemies, which are often tough, resistant to magic, and cast devastating spells. They're a joke if you have [[OneHitKill the Banish spell]], however.
26* CameraPerspectiveSwitch: Indoor and wilderness areas use ThreeQuartersView typical of {{JRPG}}s (the latter use smaller tiles and spites, appropriate for crossing a continent). When you enter a dungeon, however, the perspective changes to a pseudo-3D raycast environment to increase the tension.
27* ClimaxBoss: Pretty much all of them, due to the fact that there are so few bosses in the game, though particularly [[WarGod Kamulos]].
28* CreepyBasement: Quite literally in at least two occasions, and loosely elsewhere. One young boy laments the flying creatures he has to deal with to get beer for his parents... said creatures are four-foot-long locust-wasp hybrids.
29* CripplingOverspecialization: Mellthas is good for exactly one thing: killing demons (granted, this is vital in later parts of the game). He's a good healer early on, and his small fireball is good for ranged support, but by the time Khunag and Harriet join, both abilities will become useless. His main purpose is most likely to balance out Sira's GameBreaker nature, since after he joins, you can't have one without the other in your party.
30* CutscenePowerToTheMax: Late in the game, [[spoiler:Tom is escaping from the Toronto with Joe and they are stopped by an AI body that's about to shoot them. A magic stone Tom received earlier activates and shoots a fireball, critically damaging the robot with a single hit. When you have to face others in combat later, it'll take much more to destroy them.]]
31** The ship's AI specifically refers to this incident later, which it presumably learned from and [[spoiler:beefed up the 'bots]].
32* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: The leader of the Kenget Kamulos turns into an avatar of their God of War to fight you. And, well, then you beat him. Especially humiliating when the Kenget are always going on about their martial superiority, and their then ''god'' is beaten by a party including females, non-humans, and warriors using physical weapons (ie. non-spellcasters), all of which they disdain, plus one traitor of their own people.
33** Which is exactly the reason why the other elders decide to allow the party to leave: there's no way they could punish you without revealing to the entire order that their god has just been bested by impure ones.
34* DisabilitySuperpower: Mellthas can't speak, but it turns out he can communicate telepathically with Sira.
35* DiscOneNuke: At the beginning of the game, you'd have to do a lot of grinding to afford a powerful weapon, but knowing where to look and solving a few puzzles can get you a pistol, which is deadly accurate and kills pretty much anything in one or two hits. That being said, [[TooAwesomeToUse you can't replace the few bullets you find with it until the final dungeon]].
36** Unless after selecting the enemy to attack and before starting the attack round, you switch out the ammo with a shield.
37** Another example is the spell Frost Avalanche, which can be acquired for free on the first island. This spell freezes every monster and the stronger it is, the longer the freeze lasts and the more damage it does, so if you place all your heroes to the rear row of the combat grid and cast this spell, it is basically impossible for monsters to hurt you. Getting the spell at this point is a bit tricky -- you need to leave most combat in the first main quest and solve it to acquire Sira, and then clean up the whole first island for her to reach level 9, but this takes less than 2 hours of real time, and makes the rest of the game very easy.
38* DisproportionateRetribution: [[spoiler: Sira picked her uncle Fasiir as a teacher over her father Akiir. Akiir's response? Arranging for his own assassination, and framing Fasiir for it. Fasiir is locked up, Sira is orphaned, Akiir's best friend is reduced to a nervous wreck for arranging the whole affair, and the player is sent to explore a creepy living dungeon looking for evidence]].
39* DreamIntro: The introduction shows an odd gold-and-crystal humanoid figure flying through a cloud of bubbles that each have an object or concept in them, Albion's logo being the first. The view then leaves the scene and zooms in on a spaceship, eventually reaching Tom's cabin and showing him sitting up and saying "That strange dream again..."
40* DurableDeathtrap: Drinno again. Left behind by a civil war among the druids (the separatist group becoming the Kenget Kamulos), it's full of admittedly mostly magical traps and guardians, almost all of which are fully operational.
41* EldritchAbomination
42** [[GeniusLoci Argim]], at least physically. He's actually quite friendly, but his body is the whole building he "resides in," a single gigantic living organism, with a green energy blob thing as its core that he can communicate through. (It resembles an iskai trii, a semi-telepathic forehead organ.) Those mouths everyone has a trouble identifying are all his. There's a way to destroy the core, and if you do, the entire building 'dies'.
43** The [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Fears]] consist of large hands with glowing eyes on the palms. They're called so for a reason.
44* EleventhHourRanger: [[spoiler:Joe]], who only joins you for TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon.
45* EmotionsVsStoicism: The game's central narrative seemingly falls into the emotions side.
46** A bit less if you read background information. Both emotions and logic breed monsters if left unchecked, its's just that currently the monster of logic (the miner ship) is more dangerous than the monsters of emotion (the demons that run around).
47%%* EmptyRoomPsych
48* EnemyScan: The View of Life spell.
49* FakeLongevity:
50** The Umajo dungeons require you to take a long trips though empty corridors and actually wait several in-game hours to progress. If you choose to search the dungeon for some useful items (and to complete the Stone of Visions sidequest, or play with the demon spawning trap to level up, you will need to go through a series of time-consuming puzzles.
51** The final dungeon of Khamulon will have you spend a ridiculously long time looking for a way out from a nearly endless maze of similar looking rooms, hallways and passages, all crawling with monsters. [[MoonLogicPuzzle To progress, you are needed to lock yourself in a room then accidentally set fire to it, which will cause the floor to burn and collapse, allowing you to jump down the hole, a process which looks so much like a deathtrap.]]
52** To get to the Umajo prison or back, you have to go through an extended desert-crossing simulator. This might be intended to ensure that if you fall for the FalseInnocenceTrick of one of the prisoners, you won't have a save game ready to undo your bad choice, since you'll have saved again in the desert. Either way, it's kind of sadistic.
53* FalseInnocenceTrick: The only thing you can do in the prison in the land of the Umajo is to let free a seemingly very nice lady so that you can feel guilty about it later, when she returns to town and starts murdering people.
54* FetchQuest: One of the weirdest examples ever in Gratogel. In order to obtain free passage to the next major area, you need to fetch a virility amulet for a local leader from the druids. However, the druid dealing with amulets has recently vanished in a deep and dangerous dungeon...
55* FightingAShadow:
56** You fight and defeat a man turned into the avatar of Kamulos, the God of War, who reverts back into his human form at the end. If Kamulos is actually a separate entity (the game is a bit ambiguous about the existence of gods), he probably survives.
57** You can fight and destroy Ned, the powerful android that the spaceship Toronto communicates through. That won't destroy the AI, obviously. And there are secretly a ''lot'' of AI bodies. The actual housing of the AI is indestructible.
58* GameBreakingBug: It's possible to get stuck in Frill's room after Drirr joins you. The bug seems completely random. Also, when entering a 3D area, seeing all 2D sprites (except people) scrambled means that the game is just about to crash. This too is completely random, but is likely to occur at least once per playthrough, and if Murphy's law is any indication, most likely after you've gone a long time without saving.
59* GlassCannon: Iskai, due to their PrehensileTail giving them a significant attack boost, but them having a very limited (and usually poor) selection of armor.
60* GreenAesop: Seemingly the entire point at the end.
61* GuideDangIt: Stopping the assassination of [[spoiler:Herras]]. You have to actually go to [[spoiler:Herras]] and warn him about it - if you proceed with the plot (like the characters tell you to) the assassination will happen off-screen.
62** Just in case anyone misses it, [[spoiler: when Mellthas tells you to go visit his friend Darios (right after Arrim told you about the demons haunting the shrine and you paid Edjir for the information regarding the plot against Herras), DON'T do it. There will be a woman waiting for you outside Darios' house telling you to go straight to Beloveno instead, but she's very easy to miss]].
63** Some of the secret passages in dungeons are ''really'' difficult to find, as well.
64* HeroicSacrifice: Kinda. In Drinno, [[spoiler:Drirr]] will offer to activate a dangerous trap at one point, since he feels guilty about dragging the party into the situation. This will, obviously, knock him unconscious.
65* HollywoodDarkness: Completely averted: the only light in the unmaintained 3D dungeons usually comes from monsters and other nasty things.
66* HollywoodDensity: One of the few [=CRPGs=] where this trope is averted. Gold pieces have a minimal weight, but it is enough to bring the entire party to their knees if they decide to cash their more expensive loot all at once.
67* HopelessBossFight: [[spoiler:The final boss. The AI housing is immune to weapon damage and takes only 1% of magic damage you throw at it, while its own attack KO's in a single hit. Oh and it has 4950 hit points, while your party members have about 100 on average. Fortunately, all you have to do to defeat it is sit tight and suffer for a few rounds, making this battle a ForegoneVictory as well.]] However, [[spoiler:it's actually possible to defeat it using Sira's Thorn Snare and Knunag's Steal Life (the only percentage damage spell in the game; both spells have to be near maximum power to work). You have to cast that about 50 times, and the [[TheBattleDidntCount outcome's pretty much the same]], though.]]
68* HumanoidAliens: The Iskai.
69%%* IdiotHero: Drirr, a couple of times.
70* IntelligentGerbil: Mostly averted with the Iskai. Sure, their basic premise is "cat people," and there's something about scent glands, but beyond that, their physiology and culture is commendably original.
71* InterspeciesRomance: [[MindlinkMates Mellthas and Sira]]. Complete with a PsychicLink.
72* KleptomaniacHero: And how. The game is loaded with all manner of totally useless items that [[ShopFodder you can't even sell]]. You can however fill up your inventory with an endless supply of plates, forks, and drinking cups.
73** Some of the drinking cups from the Toronto can actually be sold, giving you an early advantage. There are exactly four of them (two in the diner one in the hall between the dormitory sections and one in the hangar), they are slightly larger than the other cups, and have a purple-greyish tint that only becomes visible after you pick them up.
74* TheLifestream: According to the Iskai idea of afterlife, after death, they will be reintegrated into the being of their Goddess. They retain some of their individuality based on the lives they've led.
75* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Even more so than usual, since even after spells are learned, they need to be cast a few dozen times before they're more than a waste of SP. [[MagikarpPower Once you do, though...]] Towards the end, the tide turns again, because spell damage will be maxed out, but damage per physical attack won't. But then there are still the [[OneHitKill insta-kill]] spells.
76* MagicVersusScience: The origin of the conflict between Celts and Terran humans is that their respective schools of magic and science are built on fundamentally incompatible concepts.
77** Also partially the source of conflict between the planet and the colony-ship, [[spoiler:although that's revealed to really be more of a spiritual battle of sorts.]] And just *how* that works basically requires you to play the whole game to 'get it'.
78* MagikarpPower: All spells start out kind of weak and need to be practiced to get them to really work as advertised. The more powerful the spell is, the more it is like this; the most extreme example is naturally Goddess' Wrath, which simply destroys all opponents when it's finally learned properly, but is useless for a long time before that.
79* ManEatingPlant: The dungeon traps in the old Former Building. Though it's hard to tell if they are actually plants, animals, or specialized organs of the building itself, though considering that they don't appear anywhere else in the game, it's most likely the latter.
80* MegaCorp: The DDT Corporation.
81* MixAndMatchCritters: While the game is generally pretty original in its exotic elements, warniaks can be described as being kind of like flying scorpion-insect hybrids - except that they're actually vertebrates, adding yet another aspect.
82* NationalGeographicNudity: Female Iskai leave [[MultiBoobage two or all out of their four breasts]] uncovered. This isn't commented on much[[note]]Except for Rainer observing the Iskai have no nudity taboo and Tom saying it's no wonder with this heat[[/note]], nor did it prevent the game's sale. This is partly because of ValuesDissonance. As mentioned above this is originally a German game, and they tend to be more lenient on showing nudity in media.
83* NonLethalKO: Defeated enemies die normally, but party members are merely rendered unconscious by even the most lethal enemy attacks.
84** Except for the first boss, who's nursed back on his feet later. That doesn't mean you don't get to take his equipment though (which includes one of the more decent weapons in the game). Just make sure he doesn't run away before you can non-lethally kill him, though, if you want to loot him.
85* OneHitKill: Several, but they only work properly when sufficiently trained up.
86** Mellthas's Banish Demon/Banish Demons/Demon Exodus (which differ in their range of effect). Only work on supernatural creatures, meaning Fears, Animals, Plagues and Storms, but since these are some of the most serious opponents starting at Gratogel and almost to the end, it's nothing to be sneered at.
87** Khunag's Kamulos's Gaze destroys one opponent.
88** Harriet's Goddess' Wrath destroys all opponents. Just guess how hard it's to get that working properly.
89* OneWingedAngel: The whole "becoming the avatar of Kamulos" thing for the leader of the Kenget Kamulos.
90* OptionalPartyMember: Siobhan, who is also the best fighter.
91* OrganicTechnology: Iskai buildings are made almost entirely out of plants through the use of magic. The Dji-Fadh have perfected this craft into an art form, and heir old guildhouse is [[WombLevel a good example of what happens if their buildings grow out of controll]].
92* OurDemonsAreDifferent: Compared to the options given on that page, very. The "demons" in this game are actually physical manifestations of primal emotions and fears of strong-willed people... and things. And they're practically the only standard fantasy creature used in the whole game.
93* OurSoulsAreDifferent: Played with. 'Soul' is defined as concept used by Terrans to define sentience. The equivalent of an actual soul is the Ens (or life-force... or an idea... it's not that simple).
94* PermanentlyMissableContent:
95** Everything in [[spoiler:the Khamulon]], since you can't return there after you complete it.
96** [[spoiler:Khunag]] will never rejoin your party if you kick [[spoiler:him]] out after [[spoiler:obtaining the High Knowledge]].
97%%* PlanetaryRomance
98* PointOfNoReturn: Once you step into the final dungeon, there's no turning back.
99* PrehensileTail: Drirr and Sira use it as a separate equipment slot for a [[DualWielding second weapon]].
100* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The Kenget Kamulos. Not so much Khunag, though.
101* RareCandy: Sort of. It's not an item, but the island of the Dji Cantos has eight "flowers of the Goddess" patches that will increase a character's stat by 3 if they stand on them for an in-game hour. They need an in-game day to recharge before they can be used again and are permanently exhausted after about ten uses.
102* ReligionIsWrong / ReligionIsRight: Or more precisely, Earth religions were supposed to be a compromise between magic and science. Whether the two deities representing the two concepts, or the supposed Elder God who created them are actual existing deities or simply personifications, is never explained in detail and is completely irrelevant to the plot.
103** Rainer lampshades the irony of Terrans looking down on religion because it's irrational, while Celts diss it as being [[MindScrew TOO RATIONAL]].
104* SapientShip: The Toronto mining ship. NED the computer operates everything and the crew's main purpose is maintenance or operation of individual equipment; the ship itself is described to function similarly to a living organism, settling on the surface of a planet and using a percentage of the mined materials to grow and eventually cover and exhaust the entire planet.
105* ScaryScorpions: Scary Flying Scorpions. Dozens of them.
106* ScienceFantasy: Human characters come from Earth on the mining starship ''Toronto'', and run into magic CatFolk planetside.
107* ScienceIsBad[=/=]ScienceIsWrong: Related to the religion issue above and its MagicVersusScience theme. The Enlightened spend most of their expository speech dissing logic and science; you may just dismiss it as a case of {{Unreliable Narrator}}s, but the game's GreenAesop seems to point otherwise.
108%%* ScienceHero: Rainer, at least sort of.
109* SequenceBreaking: [[spoiler:If you talk to Kariah again after she first suggests that you dispose of Gard and Riko, she will tell you about the plot to kill Herras long before you are allowed to warn him about it (which is directly before the assassination attempt is triggered).]]
110* ShopFodder: Averting the MoneySpider; everything drops exactly what's logical, and even the monstrous animals you can grind in the wilderness [[OrganDrops drop body parts]] that they're mentioned as being hunted for and that can be sold. The Kenget Kamulos drop so much equipment that you can't carry a tenth of it, but if you take the most valuable items, the amount you can carry can be sold for so much money that you can't carry ''that''.
111* TheSmartGuy: Rainer and, later, [[spoiler:Joe]].
112* SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear: Blissfully averted with the one character who leaves for plot-related reasons - you get one last chance to take all their gear. Played straight if you force out one of your characters.
113* SonOfAWhore: [[spoiler:Drirr]] will eventually reveal the reason he's been reluctant to speak about his past is because of this, and because people are less tolerant of such things in [[spoiler:Jirinaar]] than [[spoiler:Beloveno]].
114* StatGrinding: More like skill grinding, but the same principle applies. The flowers of the Goddess allow you to do a form of this.
115* StatusBuff: Sira has one that increases offense, and Mellthas has one that increases defense.
116* StuckItems: And if you screw up, they're potentially stuck for the entire game. At least they're lightweight. In addition, cursed items can't be unequipped until you uncurse them. They're also permanently destroyed if you do, which can actually be a disadvantage sometimes, since some of them have magical charges or are quite potent as equipment. Fortunately, they also break at least as easily as ordinary items, meaning that a cursed weapon will break soon enough and be automatically unequipped, but ready to be used again if desired once it's repaired.
117* SuperpoweredRobotMeterMaids: The Toronto cleaning robots. There is actually some realism in this; ever seen those big honking industrial robots on TV? Now imagine them coming at you with that Hugh-Jass welder. Mind you, the cleaning robots look about as threatening as oversized Roombas. ([[http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/040404 Then again...]])
118* TakeYourTime: It doesn't matter how much time you spend on the Toronto, and later in Jirinaar. The ceremony the Sebainah invited you to will always happen two days after your meeting with her. Bero can survive an infinite amount of time in that little room of his, surrounded by demons and predators. The conspiracy in Beloveno won't go anywhere if you don't talk to people about it. [[spoiler:The latter is the most egregious example: it doesn't matter what you do, and how much time you spend doing whatever you like Herras will live, as long as you avoid talking to one person, who just happens to live halfway between Herras, and the guy who first told you about the plot to kill him. If you do stop to have a word with him, you will immediately be notified that Herras was killed because you weren't fast enough to warn him.]]
119* ThanatosGambit: [[spoiler: The mastermind behind Akiir's murder? Akiir himself. Since he was already dying, he hired an assassin, and bribed an accomplice to frame his rival Fasiir]].
120%%* TimeKeepsOnSlipping
121* TooAwesomeToUse: [[DiscOneNuke The pistol]], if you find it in the prologue. It's stronger than the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Gaze of Kamulos]] and is extremely accurate, but it requires then-irreplaceable ammunition to use. [[spoiler: Eventually, the bullets do become replacable and by that point you will need the firepower of the pistol to even continue]].
122* TouchTelepathy: Happens when Mellthas the mute touched Sira's Trii, and they telepathically come to know one another intimately and fall in love.
123* TransplantedHumans: [[spoiler:Albion's humanoids turn out to be from Earth.]]
124* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: Do NOT strike the finishing blow to Kamulos with Sira's Fungification spell (which would dissolve him) or he won't leave a vital item!
125* WarriorVersusSorcerer: Very interestingly averted. As far as the Kenget Kamulos are concerned, they are ''all'' warriors, and sorcerers are just a better kind of warrior. After all, who is the better fighter, the one who can run up to you and cut your head off with a sword, or the one that can turn you to ash with his bare hands from a football field away?
126* WithThisHerring: Inverted. The heroes don't even know what they get themselves into, so it would be understandable if they don't get any equipment. Instead, you get to find a DiskOneNuke in the PROLOGUE, and in the first town, you even get a full set of rather decent and expensive equipment practically thrown at you by a desperate shopkeeper for an insignificant sum.
127** On the other hand, the Dji Kantos, who give you the big quest, don't have that much to offer. However, you do get to meditate on their island to increase your stats with no effort, which is very useful in the long run.
128* WombLevel: Comes up very soon. Seeing how Iskai buildings are made of plants, it's only logical that this would apply to their dungeons as well. The [[CreepyBasement first dungeon]] isn't so much as [[EldritchAbomination the second]], which is literally alive. And sentient.

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