Another day, another Dungeon Too Many.
The
Monarchy ruled the known world. The Old King ruled the Monarchy. His
depredations grew unbearable, slave raids and secret police and torture
gardens and the magickal experiments that would go on forever if nobody
did anything. That's why the Four Adventurers came to the dungeon at
Heart-Of-The-World, to claim the ancient power that would let them kill
the old ghoul and create something better.
- Dacian, Failed Monk and Adept of the Tower of Pain
- Marrow Bone, Green Man and Avatar of the Knacker
The
story began with the Two Adventurers descending into
Heart-Of-The-World. They didn't know how long they had before the veins
and arteries of the underground place collapsed.
They
knew Heart-Of-The-World was a trap. They knew the power it held was the
bait. But if nobody ever survived, where did the stories come from?
The
Two Adventurers walked down a long staircase for what felt like hours.
On one side was a stone wall. On the other, a vast dark space with an
endless pit below. At the bottom, finally visible, was a stone landing. A
platform with a door leading into the rock face. The door was shaped
like a face and there was a membrane over the mouth. The membrane was
torn open, an eight foot rip revealing a corridor beyond. There was a
dangling spike trap poking through the mouth, already triggered. Someone
had been here before the adventurers.
The
hall led into a hexagonal room, with corridors leading deeper into the
dungeon and a pit in the center. A huge cockroach fussed over a dead man
seated against the wall. The second the light fell on the giant bug, it
scuttled toward the pit. Dacian tackled it, pinning it to the ground with the weight of his mail shirt and his body. Marrow Bone, Avatar of the Knacker, identified the beast as a fellow trash eater, a being at the bottom of the world that his powers allowed him to commune with. He spoke to the roach, who signed back in handcommon.
The giant bug warned him about some of the dangers ahead, and gave the adventures a treasure they took off the dead man: an iron flask. Dacian recognized it as a flask for containing Djinn. The gang learned there was a secret trash chute under the entry platform, which led into the mausoleum. The bug scuttled away and the adventurers weighted their options. They didn't feel like climbing down a dangerous drop, leaving the five unexplored doors leading out of the hexagonal room. Each bore an image.
- A man bristling with weapons stuck into his body
- A man sitting cross legged inside a box
- A man reading a book
- A man gazing into a pool of water
- A man lying flat on the ground
The first room they committed to exploring was the reflecting pool. They solved the mirror "puzzle" quickly, smashing their doppelgangers to pieces and lowering the water level a third of the way. The portraits in the gallery gave them the clue they needed to solve the statue puzzle, standing on the platforms and assuming the identities of the missing characters. The resulting identity swap came as a shock, Dacian felt a rush of strength as he gained Marrow Bone's green man identity, and Marrow Bone was wracked by internal conflict at becoming a failed monk. This provoked a momentary slapfight, but thankfully the dysophoric episode momentarily rendered them too uncoordinated to seriously harm each other.
The last puzzle room had a shapeshifting slime creature that offered to lower the last of the water in exchange for sex. It assumed the form of one of Dacian's disciples, who he had intrusive thoughts about. Normally this would have made him anxious, but with the green man's stolen confidence from the identity swap he had zero qualms about fucking a facsimile of an attractive worshiper. The slime lowered the last of the water, revealing the prize: a clay statue in a pile of polished bones.
Dacian touched the statue. The Self tried to possess him. Rather than use the iron flask to bottle the demon, Dacian simply ripped the offending arm off, trapping the spirit in it. He claimed the power of The Self, and got a Tower of Pain major charge in the bargain. He could coerce anyone he pleased, forcing them to either do his bidding or suffer a psychotic break.
Next, the Two Adventurers explored the mausoleum with the inscription of the boxed man over the door. They were disturbed by the lack of cobwebs or dust on the bare stone of the following chamber, and by the epigram scribed on the wall:
The room beyond was cold and damp, as though water were flowing somewhere deeper in the dungeon. Ahead of the adventurers was a stone sarcophagus covered with surgical tools. The adventurers tried to walk past it and it stood up. The tools slid into a series of articulated limbs which emerged from the box. The sarcophagus blocked the passage to the next chamber. The adventurers contemplated fighting it, but its stone shell looked tough. It didn't bother them when they peeked down the trash chute at the other side of the room. At the bottom were a bunch of skeletal arms and legs.
The adventurers had an idea. The roach mentioned that the room with all the blood was full of dangerous horned men that liked to rip things apart. They retreated back into the central room and went into the door marked with a wound man. They went through an arena filled with bloodstained sand and a trophy room full of armor pieces. Dacian took an Eastern style kulah helm to cover his bald head, dumping the skull inside on the ground. The room beyond that was filled with living meat. A trio of horned men were stuffing the corpse of a fourth into a pulsating heap of gore. The monstermen turned and screeched at the Two Adventurers. Dacian used the soul of the Self to compel the beasts to follow him. The duo lured the creatures back to the mausoleum, where they immediately assaulted the animated coffin. The sarcophagus picked up a horned man and began slicing the limbs off him while the others attacked it with their claws and teeth. It punctured the victim's ears, cut out the eyes and tongue, then carried the torso and head to the next chamber.
The adventurers followed the surgical sarcophagus into the next room. It ignored the horned men attacking it and stuffed the dismembered victim in one of an endless row of sarcophaguses, submerging the pissed off horned man in a greyish ooze before covering him up with the lid. The coffin-bot returned to the antechamber. The horned men chased after it but were cut off by a sarcophagus sliding out of a wall alcove, riding a wave of telekinetic force to crush one of them. The other attacked the coffin, clawing at it mindlessly and failing to make any progress. The Two Adventurers levered the coffin open and found it full of a strange gray ooze, suspending a living but comatose body which had suffered the same treatment as the horned man. The third horned man, who hadn't been dismembered or crushed, picked up this guy and ate him. The adventurers filled the iron flask with the weird coffin jelly, then continued into the dungeon.
The long chamber led to a flight of stairs, with a spike pit the adventurers hopped over. At the bottom of the stairs was a massive sarcophagus, open and empty. There was no passage further into the dungeon, this was it. Dacian climbed into the sarcophagus and nothing happened. He told Marrow Bone to put the lid over him. The green man slid the stone slab into place, entombing Dacian. For a moment it was dark, he couldn't see or hear anything. Then he had the impression of a presence rushing toward him. A silhouette inside which there was nothing but a visual blind spot. Dacian reached out and got hold of The Isolation's face, before it could attack him. He had planned on mutilating it, but found that it was already mangled, its face devoid of ears, nose or eyes. Rather than subtracting facial features, Dacian added them, unblocking eyelids and regrowing eardrums.
Marrow Bone opened the coffin. Inside were Dacian and the corpse of a limbless dwarf, fresh facial features frozen in an expression of sheer terror at the sudden inrush of sensory information. A glowing haze hovered over the dead man's body, which Marrow Bone stepped forth to absorb. He gained the power of The Isolation, and with it the ability to become imperceptible to all senses.
Marrow Bone became invisible and went through the portal to the mock jungle. He observed the mutants foraging for food, how they were once humans (and elves, and orcs, etc) but had been transformed by an unknown magickal force. He went through the sheela na gig trap into the vivisectory, using his invisibility to avoid getting lasered. He went right past Faithful Assistant in the laboratory and The Unnatural in the study without being detected, reaching the library with the piled scrolls of unnatural wisdom. He went back into the vivisectory and turned visible, grabbing Faithful Assistant before he could flee or alert his boss. The mage quickly worked out an arrangement with Marrow Bone: he'd give him scrolls full of powerful spells, and in exchange Marrow Bone would leave without killing anyone. He'd even throw in the password to the portal in the mock jungle so that he could get out. This was agreeable to Marrow Bone, who briefly questioned The Unnatural before leaving with his haul.
Marrow Bone left the exit portal open after returning to the vestibule where Dacian was waiting. The mutants in the mock jungle realized the portal was open, and flooded out after him. They were ecstatic to finally be free of that horrible place, and Marrow Bone decided to lead them out of the dungeon. And not a moment too soon, as the veins of Heart-of-the-World began to seize up like it was having a heart attack. The Two Adventurers and their mutant horde returned to the staircase and went back to the surface, before the place caved in on them.
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