I've been thinking about this ever since I started the original game. The hero of Dungeons of Dredmor seems to have a lot of personality just based on his appearance and the highly amusing skill icons, it seems almost a waste that he has no default name or characteristics aside from what's projected on him. Hell, his goofiness is almost a perfect foil to the intensity of the evil Lord Dredmor. So ever since I started the game, I've been running a headcanon of sorts. Basically, I think Dungeons of Dredmor IS just about one guy trying to stop this lich from fully amassing his power and returning to the world. Except, of course, he isn't hero material AT ALL. All he has to his name is a worthless degree in Dungeoneering. So what does he do? He's constantly assaulting the dungeon after switching his major or taking new classes to try and find the magic bullet that will both defeat Lord Dredmor AND prove to his family that he's not a deadbeat. He never really "dies", he just has the crap beaten out of him and he just barely slithers his way back up to plan his next assault. Whenever I'm seriously roleplaying the hero -- that is, I sometimes make intentionally funny-yet-stupid mistakes even if it kills me -- I usually name him "Jake Tallbrow" even though the eyebrow jokes are kind of running thin. The heroine is a kindred spirit he met somewhere along the way. Many of us have that "special someone" who shares a startling number of similarities with us. Maybe even up to and including eyebrows and fashion style. This is her. Between the two of them she is the more rational and cautious and often provides insight or suggestions to him about how to best approach the dungeon. However wherever she's not hilariously inept she makes up for it by being completely psycho. Whereas her distaff counterpart just dabbles in every damn thing he can, she goes completely nuts with whatever her interest of the week is. She'll insist her current path "IS MY DESTINY!" and will react violently to anyone who questions it. She's more than a bit of a handful, with which is why you don't see the two actually fighting alongside each other as often as their strong friendship would lead you to believe. Also every time she loses all her HP and gets her butt kicked, she usually takes a sharp blow to the head somewhere and when she wakes up she's convinced of a totally different self-identity. I don't really have a good name for her. If the hero can be compared to Guybrush, she's thus comparable to Elaine. Despite being nuts, she is smart and often has a plan. She just overdoes the execution. Unbeknownst to either of them, they've both postponed the threat of Lord Dredmor at least just a little bit. The lich finds them so entertaining that he's putting off his invasion plans until he gets bored with the duo.
And they don't really kill Dredmor. They never really destroy his phylactery, so it's basically a game for both them and Dredmor, with him postponing his invasion and instructing his monsters not to kill them but rather throw them out of the dungeon, and with them never destroying Dredmor for good. Skill trees get better over time and there's more of them over time because our heroes can bring practical knowledge to their professors to make those better, and sometimes they give them an idea for a new course when they report what they witnessed in the dungeon; some skills get nerfed instead because professors who heard of their tales decided that these skills are too dangerous for inexperienced people to use. And it goes even further, really. The academy is really a training place for Dredmor's human generals, which is why students of said academy are encouraged to visit the dungeon, and why neither Dredmor nor heroes ever really "win". And Dredmor is postponing his invasion because he wants for his future generals to be as capable as possible; he also isn't fighting them at his full power, but as they become more experienced, he starts using more of his power to challenge them (which is why he got buffed). Chests of Evil were placed here by Dredmor, because he noticed that the weapons heroes kept on bringing from the surface weren't good enough. And the monsters we get instead of weapons are Dredmor's non-human generals, meant as a test for our characters (because he doesn't want weaklings to command his army). Brax was also hired by Dredmor as a means of making things fairer for the hero, which is why he is in this dungeon. He summons Dread Collectors when you blatantly steal his things because Dredmor told him not to tolerate botched attempts at stealing (because those are ineffective evil). Diggle gods were there from the beginning and Dredmor doesn't really mind them, because he thinks his future generals ought to be resourceful and thus able to use any means of becoming more powerful that don't harm them. The same about the Lutefisk god - both him and Diggle gods are "good" and "neutral" sources of power, and Dredmor prefers his minions to know that evil people can't only use "evil" powers if they want to emerge victorious. Krong is also neutral, and Dredmor doesn't really know what he does (other than that he is a fickle god) - only characters with Archaeology know what is going on with Krong, but they don't tell that to anyone because they want to have an ace up their sleeves. And Inconsequentia is clearly good and opposes Dredmor, but since he actions and quests never really have any consequences, he lets her be instead of going on a crusade. Even more, Vaults of Maslech were always there, it's just that they were in a formerly inaccessible part of the dungeon that got reopened when Dredmor ordered his diggles to bring some walls down during his interior dredmorations. And Radiant Wizard is the only really "good" skill tree in the whole game - the reason why our heroes keep on getting weaker when they get better in it is because using a source of pure "good" energy from within their bodies severs their link with Dredmor and leaves them without his energy.
