Endoria, walking away from her job as empress of the galaxy, and returning to terrorizing the unjust from horseback. If she does, she will relinquish her ceremonial blade and the title to Brendan Blackstar, the true king of Endoria.
Level 7: A Giant Penis
Here, the walls form what we just might as well say is an image of an erect phallus. The three disconnected rooms to the west of the main complex were originally thought to be sealed burial halls. It is time for archaeological scholars to admit they represent airborne ejaculate.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Lisa. “Really?”
“What, you never saw that?” said Darren.
“Yes, but I deleted it.”
“I wondered if that was you. Yeah, I put it back.”
“Did you ever think that maybe that was why we got a B plus? Which is why I wasn’t class valedictorian?”
“Did you ever think of getting over it?”
There is one body, that of a large human male dressed in scraps of denim and a canary-yellow shirt emblazoned with the words SOUL ASYLUM. Nearby you find the remains of a fiberglass skateboard, its rear wheels sheared off. Brendan lingers, baffled at his doppelgänger’s choice of weapon.
Level 8: The Antechamber
From the base of the stairway a single corridor zigs and zags, then terminates in a large room, one hundred feet square, empty except for a low square altar built of stone. The only other item in the room is a skeleton wearing the gray cotton fatigues of a senior intelligence officer of the Soviet Union. It rests, propped against one wall, in a sitting position, hand extended toward the altar.
You always thought this was the bottom level, but the altar has been pushed to one side to reveal a set of stairs leading down. You check the tracking device: Mournblade is exactly five meters below you.
Level 9: Adric’s Tomb
The final level is a network of natural stone caves plainly much older than the rest of the complex. You see here the skeleton of an enormous beast, half hound and half dragon, a long row of vertebrae encircling the room.
At the rear of the room is an archway built of porphyry, which any competent mage or an associate producer who could stand to broaden his horizons a little will recollect is the primary component of any portal spell. It is sad that they know this, but they are correct—any player present will see through it to another place entirely, a random location in space and time.
Here you see Adric himself, seated on a black throne and dressed in shreds of chain mail. His skin is pearl white and his mouth sneers, even in his sleep. He is slender and beautiful and tragic, just as he is on his book covers. He is, without any doubt, what Simon looks like in his deepest, most private fantasies. At the sound of a living being on his threshold, he begins to awaken. His eyes, when opened, are green and soulful. The Artifact-class greatsword Mournblade is visible on his person.
This is the end of the Endorian Anomaly module. Any further material included is of abstract interest only. It is here that the players will die, regardless of whether they rule the galaxy and can’t believe they are being knocked off by a pissant artifact on a backwater planet in an unfashionable genre.
“So is this it?” I asked.
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Lisa said. “Simon said he’d put it in a place no one would ever find, but I didn’t understand the scheme exactly. The room runs simulated all the time, and sometimes Adric gets activated and wanders out into the world. Or an amper picks it up, maybe. So the sword is out there, and then very occasionally the wielder runs into somebody and kills them. Or the wielder dies and another creature picks it up and the rampage starts.”
“Why’s it happening more often, though?” I said.
“Simon wanted it to, I guess. He had some theory about the year 2000, how there should be some big computer failure. Probably it just checks the system clock, spawns wandering ampers more often.”
There was a scuffling sound in the corridor outside Adric’s chamber. I whipped the camera around to see what could only be a Dreadwarg, the terror of the First Age. A Dreadwarg looked like a standard wolf, but, like that of Mournblade, its palette was wiped to black.
I was at the controls. Select all Heroes, target the warg as an enemy, attack! Pren-Dahr’s blaster didn’t seem to damage it. Ley-R4 cut at it with