Let's Try to Piece Together the Outside World!

So, in Dungeons of Dredmor you spend your time in the dungeons, so you see nothing of the outside world, but you are given hints as to what is out there through items descriptions, skill descriptions, and a few other things, this has lead me on a quest to try to figure out what the outside world is like through item descriptions, skills, etc.

I'd like to start by saying that there appears to be a large empire on the outside powered by steampunk or clockpunk technologies, it does not have a name, so I feel that we should call it the clockwork empire, in reference to the game that Gaslamp is working on. Another thing is, is that there appears to be a communist movement within the empire, suggested by the communism skill tree. This movement is either lead by a group of people called the Kanadians, or it is supported by a group of people called the Kanadians.

 

Why not?

 

This was from the original announcement thread; not quite a full reason but hey, new stuff!

 

Well who's to say that the name means it's canon? It's just a homage to the game, never said it was the same universe.

 

Anyway. About the Bolt Council. It appears that they have a monopoly on everything in ranged weaponry that is shot. That being said it appears that there are firearms in this universe (Hinted at by the bullet belt.), but there is no widespread use due to the Bolt Council suppressing their use. This is probably due to the fact that they make their money off of selling bolts and crossbows, why they don't sell guns too, I don't know.

 

Also, you forgot about the randomly scattered cannons you find in the dungeon. And gunpowder. And thrown weaponry, generally grenades.

 

The bolt council does not approve of thrown weaponry, but while gunpowder can be suppressed, removing everyone's hands would be bad for business.

Though I'm sure the idea was brought up during a stockholder meeting at some point.

 

I'd argue that the dungeons are actually more akin to... Hm. Space Hulks from 40k, except instead of ships it's like planets or even universes. They got merged (somehow) so whilst you might have floors or items that could be (COULD) from Clockwork Empires, the rest necessarily isn't. It explains why there's such a wide diversity of items, technology and magic, races, eras of development and so on. These aspects somehow merged together on a planet (Dredmor himself, perhaps?) to form the dungeons.

And you could then draw, from that, that the Adventurer gains powers within the dungeon. So they might not necessarily have magic powers on the surface, but in the dungeon, due to all of the magical, temporal and so-on effects, they gain abilities they didn't have.

Maybe.

 

Actually, the game clearly states that people needed a hero to go down in the Dungeons of Dredmor. Unfortunately that hero is you. The skills appear to just be career choices (vampire, clockwork knight), and don't seem to have anything to do with being in the dungeon.

(quite ironical; "unfortunately" could mean that they don't like you at all, OR that you didn't want to delve into the dungeon)

 

Let's talk about the races. It appears that there are three: the Elves, the Dwarves, and the Humans. From descriptions of traps, ingot grinders, weapons, and booze, we can tell that the Dwarves and Elves have had wars in the past, and also that the dungeon might have housed the Dwarves. Dwarves were apparently on the losing side of the last one which implies that there have been multiple wars, which race won the others? I don't know. The humans appear to have no connections to these other two races though. I would assume that while the Dwarves and Elves warred, the Humans banded together to build the "Clockwork Empire", growing in power without the Dwarves and Elves noticing.

 

Oh, yeah...

 

I always interpretted it as "Unfortunately Superman and Gandalf were busy so you're the only 'hero' available to stop Dredmor."

 

Personally I think it's more likely that a certain undead sorcerer who has access to planeswalking magicks might have a hoarding problem and way too much time and zorkmids on his hands.

Also, why haven't anybody mentioned that the dwarves work exclusively in plastic?

 

That's been explained in item descriptions. The terrible war between the elves and dwarves was one of attrition.

The dwarves started with the best metals: fabled aluminum! When they ran out of that they used steel, then they used iron, then bronze, then copper. Until finally all they had left was plastic.

The reason you don't see many dwarf specific items other than plastic is because craftsdwarfship isn't an amazing thing in the DoD verse. An iron sword made by a dwarf is as good as an iron sword made by anybody, but plastic was something nobody but dwarves worked with. Nobody else was that desperate.

Necessity being the mother of invention, dwarves made some of their most terrible inventions with plastic.

Robots. Made possible by plastic. While most of the parts are metal, plastic insulation was necessary to make them work. In later portions of the war, robots were made with more and more plastic, most notably the not-so-fierce 'Unfriendly AI" which is in fact 90% plastic, with metals only be spared for parts supplying motive force or carrying electric current. The outside was merely painted grey to make it appear as deadly as it's more metallic counterparts.

Plastic Bolts. They look like children's toys but kill elves just as dead as iron ones do when applied liberally.
Few things were as devastating to elven morale, as murder by plastic bolts and toy crossbows.

Traps. Traps. Traps. Those bastard dwarves.

Plastic Arms and Armor. Not such a good idea..... the dwarves did LOSE the war you know?

 

Anyone want to add anything else?

 

Obviously the outside world is a parallel dimension with overlap in Scandinavia as "Viking Lands", "Norwegians", "Swedish", etc. are all in various and sundry mouseover descriptions.

 

Or it could just be that the lead designer is, y'know, danish?

 

I've seen video footage of Nicholas saying (during some presentation he was giving in the first half of the year) that there aren't currently any Dwarves or Elves in the setting, that both races were wiped out in the war that's mentioned in various item descriptions. I don't know for sure if that was truly intended as a canonical definition, or simply his shorthand to nutshell the setting quickly so he could get on to the heart of the presentation, but it was interesting either way. There's a link to the video in one of the forum threads around here somewhere.