LAND OF MAG: GAME

Nothing moves behind you. You come soon to the top of a wide flight of stairs that spiral down clockwise into the dark. Curiously, you descend to a dark landing that smells of filth. The stairs continue down into darkness. Also, passages with arched stone block ceilings and paved stone floors run straight into darkness, left and right.

Left: the passage runs straight for a while. Then torchlight shows the edge of a chamber at the end. The air is still, the place is silent except for your own footfalls and breathing. You pause to listen, then continue into the chamber.

The room is domed, a half-sphere with stone block walls curving up to form the ceiling. There is another opening in the right hand wall. It is dark, but torchlight dimly shows a passage similar to the one you entered by.

Sprawled in the center of the floor is a dessicated corpse and around the corpse are coins ...

The corpse lies chest-down, face-up so it's pretty obvious that death arrived by a broken neck. A lumpy backpack is on the corpse's back and its from there that the coins have spilled. Also by the corpse's hand is the hilt of an old sword, in a style about a hundred years outdated. It seems to be wearing leather armor.

"Broken neck" he says to Dyeuz.

Feeling a bit safer, Urukh proceeds on removing the backpack from the dead man to closely inspect its content.

The backpack contains:
• a folding razor
• a very dry disc of soap
• a shaving brush
• a rolled-up watercolor portrait of a happy family in traditional caftans, standing on the famous Parrot Bridge in Magog (the city above you)
• a spare set of traveling clothes
• some disgustingly moldy jerky

Gathering coins.

Opening in right wall, or retreat to stairs. Those are the obvious exits.

That rightward corridor runs straight into darkness. As you go along the ceiling gets lower and the walls get narrower and the floor seems to upslope. When the passage has gotten quite cramped your light shows a room at the end. A little hunched over because of the uncomfortably low arched ceiling, you emerge into another room. The room is wide as your light can show, the base of the far wall is just seen. The room is square. Its walls and corners arch upward. In the middle is a knee high round wall that contains a shimmering surface. Water? There is an opening in the right wall and another in the far wall.

"Is there an end to this place ?"

Getting closer to the strange surface he examine it for a moment making sure not to touch it.

The surface is horizontal like water within the circular retaining wall. It does not smell like water exactly. It smells like rain after a lightning strike.

The surface shows vague reflections of shapes and figures not in this bare room. The perspective of the reflections is weird and shifting.

In the moments while you gaze on the shimmering pool a thought disquiets both of you: the shambling dead you saw, are they what always happens to a corpse left uneaten by trolls? What of the corpse in the previous room?