The World
The urn
It has no real name. The things that live in it call it the urn, and the people in it have taken to calling it that too.
Nobody comes here on purpose
People arrive through a ring of purple light, one at a time, and wake on the stone without their names. Some of it comes back. Most of it does not. They give each other new ones.
There is no sun down here, so time is kept in beats: the whole place shudders once every half a day. You will feel it.
Creatures are put in too. Nothing down here is a guard. Everything eats, and is eaten, and what is left grows stronger.
The voice
You are not alone in your head. Something speaks to you the moment you wake. It knows the way. It knows the creatures. It has a deck of its own, and it lends it gladly. It goes by a great many names, and none of them is the one you would want.
DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING
IT IS VERY REASONABLE
Gouged into a flagstone on the first floor, by a knife that broke doing it
Floor 1
The first floor
Stone, silk, standing water and bone, and somewhere at the bottom of it, the stairs down. Something is sitting in front of them.
The living
Not many. A patrol came up from the town on the floor below, and could not go back. Talk to them, trade with them, ask them what they have seen.
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Abel
A scholar who came up to study the floor's creatures. His notes are where your Beastpedia begins. He is not well.
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Henry
The patrol's trader. He went at the thing at the stairs on his own once. Every merchant in the urn is called Henry, and he will tell you why.
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Kate
She knits, and mends, and calls you love. Not a fighter. She came up with the patrol, and she is still here.
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Carl
He watches the door. He lived through the thing at the stairs, and nothing has mattered to him since.
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Hollis
He grows the mushrooms that keep them fed. He has eaten so many kinds that some of him is mushroom now.
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Jerome
A man in grey, a priest from the town, come up for one thing he needs. His house has a bed you can rest in.
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Dober
Hiding in the kennels, by a cage with its bars bent outwards. He had a dog.
Written on the walls
Short things, left by the ones who came before you. People read every one.
NOTHING COMES IN HERE.
IT DOES NOT HAVE TO.
Chalked across a threshold, in many hands; the second line in one hand only
HE IS BETTER TODAY
Under a child's chalk drawing of a house with too many windows, and a figure at every one
SAY IT ANYWAY
On the back of a prayer board, the prayer itself cut through with a single line
The Corruption is true release
A page nailed to the stone, with blood dried over most of the writing
Meet what lives here
Every creature of the first floor has a page in the Beastpedia. It is full of spoilers.