LAND OF MAG: GAME

You're in the basement of the dilapidated High Priest's palace. Since Mag vanished and all the old priests died, it's been just a grand abandoned building with a partially-collapsed foyer floor. But you've been told there's something special behind the pile of rubble that you're trying to clear, down here in the basement.

Common practices include cultivation of immense village flower gardens; making idols of Mag; and the grim and gleeful fifths.

The gleeful fifth, or new moon feast, is a gathering and redistribution of local resources. Those who come with much depart with less, those who come with little leave with more. Gleeful fifths displease the kings and queen, who would like to levy taxes to fund the battles in Valley-of-Shields, as well as public roads and palace improvements. Shifting ownership of property makes it difficult for knights to identify who can pay taxes. This problem has been solved by authorizing knights to collect annual tithes from whole villages, at the thirteenth fifth of the year (mid-winter).

The grim fifth is the custom that rather than burying corpses, they are offered to trolls by trollbaiters.

The fields around Yogog are farmed with hoes and adzes, and yield squash, beans, and corn. Ostrich meat is plentiful.

Dirty and disrespected, the city of smelters turns coal and ore into steel that equips daily life and battle's strife. Wagons and boats carry gleaming ingots to Gogog (only some have the special mark that means they're quality, and those are guarded close), and return with northern coal that fuels the smelters. King Yogog is a hereditary member of the Smelters and Forgers - a mere puppet of the senior members, who regulate all parts of life that affect industrial production. Outside the interests of the steelmills, Yogog has little law.

A Spearmaster is a mystic warrior and artisan who has trained in every aspect of their weapon — from selecting and carving the haftwood, to smelting and forging the head, to drilling in proper use of the finished tool. Many also hear the Voice whispering spells to them. Not all choose to listen, because the Voice can whisper plenty of crazy nonsense; and if a spell gets stuck in your head, it's hard to get out.

Born among the red glow of the smelters, Torrhen Thynes grew up in the soot-streaked streets of Yogog, where steel was more valuable than law. His father was a forgehand, his mother a tally-keeper for the Smelters and Forgers, but Torrhen wouldn't follow either path. From the time his father bought him his first tiny, childish training spear, Torrhen knew his calling.

From an early age, he carved crude hafts from scrap wood and begged broken heads from smiths’ refuse piles. When he was old enough, he sought training in the ancient ways of the Spearmasters, learning to shape the wood, forge the steel, and wield the finished weapon with precision and grace. In time, he became a journeyman, his craft earning him respect even among the most jaded.

But then came the whispers.

The Voice spoke to him in the hiss of quenching steel, in the crackling of forge-flames, in the rasp of whetstones on iron. It whispered secrets of power—spells of reach and ruin, of warding and war. But Torrhen was (in his mind) an honorable and civic-conscious individual; he had no use for mad power-grabs or forbidden knowledge.

So for years he ignored the Voice, only telling a select few that he even heard it. Then he met a fellow Spearmaster named Leila Mott, a spirited and tough woman, and the Voice was silenced completely. Their romance was worthy of song, but alas, it was all too brief; Leila was assigned to put down a worker uprising, but she and her team underestimated the "rabble." They were torn apart by the workers, the pieces of their corpses thrown into the forges.

The second Torrhen learned of her death, the Voice returned in earnest.

With his parents also dead (father from a forge accident, mother from a wasting disease), and being an only child, Torrhen had no confidants left to discuss the Voice. Friends? The few he had were deemed untrustworthy.

For six months, he tried to suppress those whispers, but his increasingly tedious duties, the unchanging power structure of Yogog, and the lack of emotional support broke him. After going on a days-long drinking spree, blowing all his silver on whores, and fighting two guards (he doesn't think he killed them, but he's not certain), Torrhen left Yogog, vowing never to return until he acquired enough power to...well, he's not certain. He wants power. He can decide what to do with it later.

And so he finds himself in this basement in a faraway land, looking for anything that'll aid him in his ill-defined quest.

Clearing the rubble reveals a sturdy iron door set in the stone block wall of the basement.

WITH A MIGHTY HEAVE, Dyeusz opens the heavy door. It groans loudly on its hinges.

There is a faint bad smell from the dark opening.

The door leads into a passage about five feet wide and seven feet high; unless any of you are unusually tall, you have head room. The passage has stone block walls and a stone floor, like the basement you're leaving.

How do you proceed?

Pushing forward to the limits of Urukh's torchlight, Dyeusz enters a small circular room with another exit in the righthand wall. The entire floor of the room seems to be covered with carvings. In the very dim light, Dyeusz cannot discern details. The room is eerily silent and feels very peaceful, calm, and safe.

The carvings are intricate and puzzle you greatly. The air in this room is still and the bad odor that you earlier noted is not present; instead there is a "clean" smell here.

The opening in the right wall is about eight feet high and wide. It looks like the opening is at the corner or bend of a passage that leads away to left and right.

What do you do?

You can go RIGHT or LEFT from the opening in the wall. How do you decide?

As you proceed to the left the floor seems to slope slightly downward. You smell the bad smell again. Then your light shows two figures.

The two figures lurch backward and kind of scramble away from you in desperate fashion, departing along the passage that continues on into darkness.

The passage soon forks. Left? or Right? From the left comes a barely perceptible flow of cool, slightly moist and definitely foul-smelling air. From the right you hear a faint indistinct noise.

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.