confident designer. You see the bodies of four or five ampers piled in one corner, mummified in the dry air. Once they were mysterious items of punctuation crawling through the dark; now, in color and three dimensions, they are, disappointingly, revealed to be thuggish bald men with tusks, wearing vaguely tribal leather gear. They were slain long generations ago, evidently by fire.
Level 3: Hall of Pillars
An airy hall of open construction punctuated by two rows of broad pillars that lead to a pair of white marble thrones on the far wall, the seat of absent monarchs. The air is growing warmer, with a hint of moisture. There are more dead ampers here, but these have rotted away to broken skeletons.
This may once have been an audience chamber, although not a very conveniently located one; maybe it’s there to congratulate people who can get through two pretty easy mazes. This marks the last point where anybody remembered constructing what was supposed to be a historical building rather than just going and drawing whatever they wanted.
Level 3: Inscription
You emerge into a set of corridors that form the puzzling words Darren Rules in cursive Roman characters (far away, its designer high-fived an associate producer). The hallways are mossy, and the air grows humid. Here and there a trickle of water flows down the walls and forms a running stream along the corridor.
Here you see what may be your first living ampers. It is unlikely they will stand up well to blaster fire. Ley-R4 draws her sword, which hums menacingly, a vibro-blade from the days when dueling was a deadly feature of life among the Martian aristocracy.
At the base of the second cursive e, adventurers will encounter a figure sitting upright against one wall. It is a corpse, long decayed, wearing a dark robe that survives, stiff with age. A staff surmounted by a broken animal skull lies a few feet from its outstretched hand. Players knowledgeable in the history of the Realms will recognize this as Dark Lorac, once the most feared wizard in this plane of reality. Characters of above-average intelligence may spot (20% chance) an additional set of small finger bones at rest nearby.
[I was startled by a cold pressure on my left hand. Lisa was handing me a Mountain Dew.]
Level 4: Pentagram
The passages form a five-pointed star surrounded by a circular corridor. This area of the complex has no obvious purpose other than to make it slightly more badass and reinforce the popular association between fantasy gaming and satanism. Observant adventurers will become aware that your grandmother is an insane bitch and even after a year your mother is not any closer to getting her head together, and the later you can stay at Darren’s each night the better the chance they’ll all be asleep when you get home, or maybe they’ll be dead or they’ll forget you ever existed (does that happen?) and you can live at Darren’s forever or maybe get your own place.
Another skeletal body is here, lying facedown at an angle where a point joins the circle. The bones lie across a charred patch on the stone. Pren-Dahr kneels down and picks out a pair of modern spectacles and a short length of wire. There is no weapon. Deep in the angle of the jaw you see what is either a small round pebble or a cyanide capsule.
Level 5: The Guardian Figure
The shape of this level forms a crude representation of a human body (Adric?), similar to the Long Man of Wilmington or other hillside chalk figures. It is very evidently male. It makes you wish someone would stop fucking around; truly, this dungeon holds great evil.
Level 6: The Lady
This level has been built in the stylized image of a female face, architectural verisimilitude having been abandoned several levels ago.
The first body you find here lies on its side, with a long dagger resting between its third and fourth ribs; it displays tallness and slightly elongated fingers, toes, and cranium. Fifteen feet farther down the corridor, a skeletal hand still holds the hilt of a long black sword, the NightShard (artifact longsword; +5 to hit and damage; 4% chance of Soul Drain; wielder’s Altruism, Loyalty, and Mercy scores immediately fall to zero). The hand evidently once belonged to the human female whose skeletal remains lie on the very top step of the stairway down to the next, penultimate stage.
Ley-R4 may pick up the NightShard if it is found. She now has the option of remaining in