Cliches and Icons, Part 2

So, there we were, knee-deep (waist deep for halflings) in gelatinous cube! And suddenly, as we tried to run away, it shlooped up itself into a cube and started advancing on us!

In the distance, we saw another cube form– two of them! We attacked one of the cubes, slowing it down, but we were sure to be devoured in no time!

I tell you, friends, this was not a good situation for us to be in! I leapt on the shoulders of Brother Wesley, yelling at him to run! Mush! Move it!

Fortunately, our quick-thinking dwarven warrior smashed his hammer into the floor, shattering a hole which we could easily escape through.

Unfortunately, the party was split on whether we should climb down the hole and run away down another tunnel of the aquaducts, or let the cubes fall into them.

I didn’t think the cubes would fall in. They’re not smart, of course, but they also don’t need to be smart to be able to ooze right over a hole in the floor.

I had previously treated a half-loaf of bread with poison, so I used my sling to throw it into a cube. It devoured the morsel… and immediately fell asleep.

Success! Now, to make it out of this terrible place–!

In the end, Wesley and I dropped into the hole, with Vorrak and Torendil following. The second cube followed as well, but by then we had a bit of a lead on the monster. Which was good, since the tunnels we dropped into also had cubes, far in the distance.

We ran away and kept running. We ran until we were confronted by another cube, at which point we smashed through the sides of the aquaduct– Wesley and me through the floor, and Vorrak nad Torendil with more “control” over their fates. Wesley and I fell down and down, landing hard in the catch basin beneath the aquaducts.

We slogged around until we met back with our friends. Eventually, we all came to a set of stairs leading up.

These stairs led to a strange necropolis beneath Brighton. Inhabited only by the dead, the city was a concentration of dead men, women, and children– all walking around as if they were alive. Very polite folk, too– aside from the problems we had when I whacked one in the head with my sling (er… Vorrak told me to do it!), they were quite nice to us.

Wesley charmed one of the undead, and I talked to a kid who told us the mayor knew the way out, back to the surface. After a failed attempt to convince some skeletal guards to let us through, I did some makeup and pretended to be one of the dead, and therefore requested an audience as a citizen of the town.

I spoke with the mayor and eventually convinced him to show us to the passageway out. Vorrak tore down the wall, revealing a pair of ravenous ghoulish hounds… who of course attacked us! Vorrak focused on the hounds while the rest of us piled onto the mayor (who seemed to want us all dead anyway). The passageway was brittle, however, and it finally caved in, leaving us in the darkness beyond, and the mayor on the side of the town.

We pressed onward, with Wesley’s light showing the way through the dark.

Eventually, we came upon a set of stairs leading up again. At the top landing, there was a door. I searched for traps and found that only the lock on the door was trapped– but it was magically trapped! Between Torendil and I, we figured out that smashing the lock sent us back to the bottom of the stairs, unlocking it sent us somewhere else, and picking it sent us somewhere else again.

Not having a key, I picked the lock, but had to break my dagger in the process. Bummer.

On the other side of the door was the store-room from the inn! We went right in, and the door disappeared as soon as it was closed. I commented that we were still missing a cat, and then one meowed at me! Huzzah!

The last bit of sleeping poison turned the cat into a purring, sleeping creature inside my backpack, and we scurried off. Through the inn’s common room, which we discovered was quite upscale and, it turned out, was inside Brighton, the city on the cliff above Ashcliff. Well, no matter! The innkeep appeared quite similar to our old pal, but we slipped right out and headed home. Tornedil said something about there being a weird spatial loop that meant every inn in all the worlds are connected and mirror each other, but… I don’t know much about that.

Turned in the cat for the reward (even though it might not actually be the same cat… this one’s a calico, and the other was a tabby). Went carousing and leveling up and shopping!

While we were out carousing, we picked up a rumor of a possible new adventure to explore, but… well, there’s quite a bit of ale to go around when you’re ‘rousing, and we woke up dangling from our ankles, suspended from the cliffs themselves.

I can’t wait to find out how we get out of this one!

This has been the game writeup of our Dungeon World side-adventure, Cliches and Stereotypes, Oh My! We return to the adventures of Gwenn, Firiel, Ordune, Tristram, and Emilien… next week, on Dungeons & Dragons!