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Encounter Conditions
None
Initial Text
You find an odd picture in the book while you're flipping through. Perhaps it shouldn't be striking, but among a vast array of horrors and hideous deaths, it seems to present a simple mystery.
The hero stands at a dead end where the tunnel is blocked off by a wall. It's certainly worth considering, because the wall seems unnatural at best… probably put there purposefully somehow, at least in the artist's head.
Both the wall and the tunnel are black rock, but the tunnel is made from a porous volcanic rock. The wall, on the other hand, is made of a strangely faceted black stone. You're not sure something like that exists in nature, to be honest, although you're not an expert on such things.
A few facets towards the edges are missing, almost like mouse holes, although you doubt the artist's view of mice matches yours.
Summary of Choices
- See if he sneaks through - Lose all hit points, gain 20 energy of Broken Bone or unlock Forked Intersection, Dark Stone Altar and Gravestone (?) if eating the mushrooms in the Mushroom Forest showed you getting small
- See if he tears it down - Lose all hit points, gain 10 energy of Broken Bone or unlock Forked Intersection, Dark Stone Altar and Gravestone (?) if eating the mushrooms in the Mushroom Forest showed you getting big
- Look for more sketches - Gain 5 XP in Perception
Choice Text and Results
See if he sneaks through
(if you have a bag of mushrooms from the Mushroom Forest choice encounter and got small from eating them)
You find an two page spread of the hero facing the wall. The first shows him eating a toxic-looking mushroom. The second shows him, much smaller, sneaking through a minute crack in the wall.
Unlocks the Forked Intersection and Dark Stone Altar?
(If you got small from eating mushrooms in the Mushroom Forest, but don't have the bag of mushrooms)
You can't seem to find any pictures of him sneaking through. He'd have to be tiny to sneak through that small of a crack.
Admittedly, he was pretty small when he ate that mushroom. Maybe the book just doesn't remember or, in a rational world, maybe the artist just didn't include that reference.
(otherwise)
You find a gory spread a few pages later of the hero trying to force his way through the tiny crack, forcing himself through the other side as something that looks more like salsa than a person.
It seems somehow fitting when your eyes flick open, hazy with the blood covering your floor. You're not sure how anything could make that much of a mess, but it definitely hurts to move.
Lose all hit points.
You've gained 20 energy of Broken Bone
See if he tears it down
(If you have a bag of mushrooms from the Mushroom Forest choice encounter and got big from eating them)
You quickly find a two-page spread showing hero popping a toadstool into his mouth, then crashing through the black rock wall.
It's pretty crazy. Although there are certainly combat drugs (OmniTech Special Forces are very fond of them from what you've heard), you doubt they'd make you grow to massive size or give you the ability to kick through whatever kind of black rock the tunnel is made from.
Ah well, you'll probably have to chalk that one up to artistic license.
Unlocks the Forked Intersection and Dark Stone Altar?
(otherwise)
You look through the book, eventually finding an image of the hero beating his arms furiously against the wall. Flipping through the following pages you find several more as he breaks his arms and slowly wears them down to stumps.The only saving grace is that he doesn't have a face so you can't tell what sort of expression he has while he's doing it.The pain in your arms is a mixture of turning too many pages, sympathy, and a third factor. From what you've seen of the book, you almost have to imagine looking at those pictures broke your bones.
Lose all hit points.
You've gained 10 energy of Broken Bone.
Look for more sketches
You find dozens of pictures scattered throughout the book showing the hero looking at similar walls of volcanic rock. He never seems to pass through, just observe.
Actually, if you put the pictures together just right, it would imply there's a sort of vast, circular wall around something. It's not as though the artist bothered to include a map, so you could be wrong, but it would explain how the poor bastard keeps running into it.
You've earned 5 XP in Perception