“THAT” room is way too interesting a description for a bold adventurer like yourself to pass up. You stride confidently down the ramp. Jimmy’s claws tighten on your shoulder.
There’s some kind of mural on the passage wall, but you can’t make it out, and anyway it looks to have more to do with giant flaming avocados than with, say, wealth and glory. (And a spirit of scientific inquiry, naturally. It’s just that if, in plumbing the depths of the concrete maze, you happen to find some wealth that no one is using…well. Y’know.)
You’re honestly more concerned with what looks like high water marks in the room upstairs. Granted, it had dried out, but it is a basic rule of Dungeoneering not to get trapped by unexpected rising water, and the best way to do that is to know exactly when and how the water rises, and to arrange to be elsewhere. Jimmy, sadly, doesn’t have an answer.
“I’ve never seen it flooded…not personally…but I spend most of my time outside. Between, um, adventurers, I mean. Sometimes that takes weeks. It could flood then, and I’d never know.”
You’d rather like to know how many adventurers he’s worked with, but then you arrive at THAT room. It’s a largely featureless concrete box of a room, with two large pipes, one on top of the other, in the east wall. The pipes dribble rust and the occasional drop of water down the cement, and a metal grill of clear antiquity covers the bottom one.
The hobo sign for “danger,” three stacked diagonal lines, has been chalked beside the upper pipe.
There is also a thing on the floor. It is about four feet long, damp looking, and of a color one might generously call brownish. It has a certain…organic…lumpiness to it. The sort that usually involves time spent in a digestive tract.
You are not a biologist, but you’ve been in enough ruins to recognize an owl pellet when you see one.
You poke it a few times with the point of your walking stick. Bits of fabric and strands of hair fall away, revealing a gleam of bone. You poke again. Oh hey, they wore a retainer. Neat.
“He stuck his head in the pipe,” says Jimmy, sounding deeply discouraged. “That might have been ok, but then he said he saw something and crawled in, and…well. I couldn’t see what happened, but there was a lot of thrashing and screaming and what looked like bone hooks. It’s safe now, though!” he hastens to add. “It hasn’t ever come out of the pipe while I’ve been here. Err. I mean, I probably wouldn’t want to sleep here, though.”
“Fascinating,” you murmur. “What does it live on, I wonder? When it can’t get idiot?”
“Frogs, I think,” Jimmy says. “Big red ones. They’re all over.” He adds reluctantly, “Err…you’re not gonna try to fight it, are you?”
Well…
Slay the beast! Avenge your colleague!
Your colleague was a doofus and you’re leaving this room. Now.
The monster might have treasure…?
You know what never horks up half-digested adventurer bones? Oysters.
Voting ended onFeb 1, 2024