INTRODUCTION

"Stargate" is the name of a franchise encompassing several long running TV series', inspired by the 1994 movie of the same name. The protagonists, mostly members of the US Air Force, travel in between the stars, fight aliens and uphold the American way of life.

"Dungeon Keeper" on the other hand is the name of a video game franchise that takes place on a single unnamed world and chronicles the struggles of a demon on his way to world domination – who is aided by a wonderfully snarky narrator. To my knowledge there are two games that bear the name with dignity and there is one unofficial sequel by the name of "War for the Overworld", which isn't quite as good as the other two but is still a lot of fun.

Both the first TV-Series and the first game came out in July of 1997, almost 20 years ago, with Stargate weathering the time much better than Dungeon Keeper, the recent try at revival not withstanding. It is maybe not a great surprise that no crossovers exist between these two – but it is a damn shame regardless and it leaves me to write the first...

This story pits a slightly different Dungeon Keeper against the Jaffa, the Goa'uld, the Tau'ri and whoever else he can manage to annoy, blatantly ignoring the words of Richard Ridings:

"Never eat anything bigger than your own head, Keeper."

PROLOGUE

There are a lot of misconceptions going around concerning Dungeon Keepers. Some call us demons. Most call us Evil. Some whisper about dark rituals. About favoured minions. About ascension.

None of that is true. You do not become a Dungeon Keeper any more than a dove becomes a star, or a planet becomes a water flea. You either are a Keeper, or you are not. We do not care about "Good" and "Evil" either. And we are no demons, although we make use of them from time to time.

Keepers are conquerors, plain and simple. Always have been, always will be, and we do what we will to achieve victory. From world to world we travel, to fight all in our path. To crush all opposition, and then move on to the next challenge. From the first time a sentient blinked, back at the dawn of creation, to the last breath of a dying universe, we will be there. We will be there when the stars go out, when the last planets are ground into dust. And when the last star faces extinction, we will be there, on that last world, waging one final war before the end. Some of us believe that he who wins that war will become the god of the next universe, it is as close to a religion as Dungeon Keepers get. Personally, I do not appreciate the mentality that comes with that believe. Or with "believe" itself. I do not need that incentive to stay alive. Nor do I aim to become a god. I am what I am. A Dungeon Keeper. I know what my place is in the universe and I do not seek to change it. All is right with the world.

Well, maybe not this world.

I arrived on this new plane like I usually did. A bright flash, a pause in perception. Then I could feel the beating of my heart again. Next my body materialized and I flexed my muscles. Force of habit.

Most have problems understanding the duality of Heart and Keeper, especially when one is standing next to the other. Do you change between the body and the overview? Do you "zoom in", into your body? Stupid questions, asked by limited beings. Limited concepts brought about by thinking so deeply rooted in convention their minds might as well be travelling on rails. Do they not have a heart themselves? Do they not have a body?

So does a Keeper. The Dungeon, the heart, the physical body, all are one. There is no point where one ends and the other begins, no need to switch, perceptions or whatever else. I see through my eyes when I walk the streets of men, I sense my dungeon, my minions, my domain at the same time. I most certainly do not "zoom".

My last conquest had been satisfactory. A world full of enemies, with abilities similar to my own. They had dug down to challenge me, to rout my forces before I could establish myself, and had continued to fight until the demise of their very last king. I was almost sad to see it all end. But as always, new conquests awaited, and so the ritual of translocation had brought me to this new place.

This time the transfer had seemed a bit more ragged than usual. It happened, I knew. And despite the sadness inherent of seeing a campaign end and then having to start again from scratch, I also had been looking forward to this. The first phase of a conquest was always the most exhilarating. When your power was at its lowest, when you had no minions to defend you, save a handful of Imps, when your Manapool was laughably small. You had to be careful. You had to be sneaky. You never knew what kind of a world destiny had dropped you in, after all. Once, I remembered, I had awoken after translocation, my heart chamber filled with water. Without any Trolls I could not hold back the tide with constructs, and with a dungeon filled with water, I could not attract any Trolls. Not even Imps at first. It had taken me years to modify the spell to create them, so they would spawn with fins and gills instead of lungs, mainly because I had never paid much heed to the water live. I had had no idea how fish even breathed up to that point. When I had finally gathered the resources to build a portal, and modified the process to even work under water, the count of drowned Imps must have been up there in the millions. And then I had attracted creatures I had never seen before. Waterbreathers. Sharks, fish people, mermaids, sirens. The universe was a wondrous place.

Here however things seemed more straight forward. Expand, explore, exploit. When I had gathered what I needed, a place for my first portal had already been chosen and a few hours later, the crystal pillars formed out of the thick solution. Only then had things gone from "business as usual" to "very, very weird".

The portal had ignited, so far so good. Between the four crystal pillars, the darkness had formed, then shot down to crack the bedrock and open the way for creatures to traverse. No doubt some of my more intrepid minions from my last conquest would come through among the first. The riches I left behind were always tempting and always meant that not much of my army remained, all of them going back to whatever place they hailed from, arms loaden with treasure. It was one of the reasons I liked to employ Dark elves. Their minds were skewed enough they took pleasure from combat situations, like others would from a drug high. Some of them always carried over.

But not this time. I had not awaited the first arrival. Instead I had gone back to expanding my dungeon. The usual shape for my capital took a long time to dig out and surveying the area was not always possible before your tunnel net had grown to a certain size. Not all places were suitable either. Once I had arrived next to a rift in between two tectonic plates, and had relocated my heart as soon as I possibly could. Water was one thing, but a chamber full of Magma was... unpleasant.

Again, the place here seemed usual enough. Dig outwards, scout ahead. Be careful, take your time. I needed the Mana and the metals anyway before I could do anything.

Then begin digging the circular hall around my heart. 500 meters wide, 80 meters high. Inner radius: 5 kilometres. The very base of my capital. Thousands of pillars would keep the hall from collapsing, the walls would serve as housing, while the large space itself would be both marketplace and road, assembly hall even and by the time it was completed, I usually had the materials and the Mana to build any room, so to satisfy any creature's desire.

Only one problem: None were forthcoming.

None. Even days after the portal had been established. The darkness wafted around peacefully in the pit, as if ready to please, only it didn't. I had the rooms. I had the requirements. Several times over by now. Even had the gold, having found a small vein by pure accident, not to mention the minute amounts one would acquire naturally just by sifting through thousands of cubic metres of bedrock. And still my dungeon remained populated by Imps alone.

This had never happened before, yet for the time being I remained calm. I was too old, too experienced to fall prey to panic. After a month and a half of no activity however, I decided to act.

More careful than ever before I began to make my way up, scouting the lower depths and the surface of the world. It was possible that this was not a coincidence. Maybe the natives were vary of my coming. Maybe they were blocking the portals somehow.

Another week later, that notion seemed very unlikely. There was nothing on the surface aside from trees and stones and the occasional sheep. So I expanded again. Slowly. Following my usual pattern for the first hundred miles or so, I established more and more citadels, cylindrical holes deep underground, a hundred meters high, the walls of which would house thousands of creatures. Industrial districts surrounded them, together with barracks, laboratories, armouries and pleasure districts. Never underestimate morale, especially not in a protracted campaign.

And still no creatures.

So I changed gear. Facing the very real possibility now, that I would have to face my enemies in person, I would need a lot of Mana. So I needed a lot of Mana Batteries. Those were expensive, bulky, and took time to make but I was in luck here as well. The new world featured trace elements of a metal I had never encountered before, that resonated with Magic an order of magnitude better than even platinum did. It would take awhile to amass enough of it for even a basic Mana Battery, but with the sheer amount of bedrock I was vaporising in the process of carving out my domain, I was bound to collect enough eventually...

It has to be said...

While this is not the first story I have ever written, it is, in a way, the first of mine to be published. Certainly the first to be made available to this large a group of people.

I have chosen this one mainly because out of the lot, it seems to be the most original. If there is a Dungeon Keeper / Stargate crossover out there, I have yet to find it. I think this will take me to interesting places within the show's universe, places that I have not explored before, and I hope I will be able to make the journey enjoyable to you.