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Encounter Conditions
After having killed a Wriggling Form from White Worm Emerging and with Experimental Gourmand active?
Initial Text
The garage shakes around you, streams of concrete dust dancing in the still air as cracks begin to form. A massive bulk covered in pale scales bursts through the floor below you, snapping you up again in its huge mandibles.
The foul tunnel of its innards are clearer than before, giving you time to see the debris pooled in the bile at your feet and strange, almost fungal, growths along the fleshy walls. You can also feel the thumping of a massive heart deeper within the creature, but your view is blocked by a veritable wall of those writhing worms.
Summary of Choices
- Grab some debris - gain blade fragments (once), or 1-2 of: bone flakes, polysteel, worm gastrolith
- Harvest the growths - gain 1-2 stomach fungus
- Push toward its heart - take damage or with Wormslayer and Channeling Matsuo gain Swordbreaker skill
- Retreat - Walk away?
Choice Text and Results
Grab some debris
You find a few pieces of glittering metal before the worm regurgitates you. On closer inspection, they look like fragments of a broken blade.
You found: blade fragments
You've earned 4 XP in Perception
Or, after the above?:
Aside from the ankle-deep bile, there's a bunch of round stones that seem to be grinding everything else slowly to powder. You grab a few things as the worm regurgitates you.
You found: 1-2 of: bone flakes, polysteel, worm gastrolith
You've earned 2 XP in Perception
Harvest the growths
Despite your deft touch, the worm regurgitates quickly after you start prying at the growths.
You found: 1-2 stomach fungus
You've earned 4 XP in Reflexes
Or, with a mushroom spade:
Despite carefully removing the fungal growths with your spade, the worm regurgitates you after only extracting a handful.
You found: 2-3 stomach fungus
You've earned 4 XP in Reflexes
Push toward its heart
You try to push through the reaching worms, but they fight back frantically. After what feels like hours of pushing against the living wall, you're coughed out of the worm in a pool of its bile and your blood.
You take 28 damage.
Or, with Wormslayer:
You cut through the wriggling worms, exposing the thing's heart. It thumps so loudly you can feel your own heart beginning to beat in time.
As you drive your sword into its heart, the blade shatters once again. Jagged bits of chitin and metal slice into the skin of your face as you're washed out of the dying worm in a torrent of blood.
Touching your face, you find there are no wounds, but instead the fragments are growing out of your flesh as though they'd always been there.
You've learned a new Skill: Mandible Growth
Or, with Wormslayer and Channeling Matsuo:
You cut through the wriggling worms, exposing the thing's heart. It thumps so loudly you can feel your bones rattle.
You drive Wormslayer into the heart, shattering the sword and forcing you out of the worm in a torrent of blood. Still, the worms… the sword breaking in your hands… it's like nothing can hurt you.
You've learned a new Skill: Swordbreaker
(Lose Wormslayer)
Retreat
Thankfully only a few of the worms you dealt with before have regrown, so you're able to withdraw safely.