Sepulchre of Slop: A Grey Idol

Another Monday rises to greet ye mortals—& with it, the next stage of my Samhain Adventure! Bold Buddug Thrice-Sighted & the Ickle Puck delve farther with me into…THE SEPULCHRE OF SLOP!

Missed the first two installments? Find them right here!

The deeper we trod into the LLM cult’s den of plagiarism, the more our morale sank. Buddug Thrice-Sighted—avenging archer—& the Ickle Puck—thief with a heart for gold—joined me on this quest to wreak noble havoc. To sabotage this wretched temple, & stop the LLM from spreading farther. Yet, after a day of descent, no clear targets presented themselves.

We passed room after room full of scrolls, codices, steles; paintings, engravings, frescoes; all the art, knowledge, & gossip of mortal-kind, copied & compiled carelessly. Little grey beings scurry about, homunculi in mummy-wraps, ferrying scrolls & portraits from one room to another. We tried to speak to them, to no avail. Then the Ickle Puck captured one, & attempted to interrogate it; it only babbled, horrid sentences, streams of terrifying nonsense:

On it went, ‘til the Ickle Puck put the little thing out of its misery. It crumbled to dust, & one of its fellows arrived to collect the wrappings—to re-use, mayhaps, but more likely, to simply toss into one of the endless rooms, to rot. As we walked down, down, down, we noticed more glowing crystals, like the ones at the sepulchre’s entrance. Some with skulls inside, but others, with more of the little greys, at various stages of growth. The LLM cult, it seems, uses their victims’ bones to craft the little servants? Terrible waste of bones.

The monotony & strangeness wore on all three of us. Many an evil dungeon & vile castle I have explored & plundered, but something about the passive villainy of this place gnawed at my mind. ‘Tis easier when the foes charge, blades in hand. Roaming freely, bathed in an ambience of uncaring greed, one begins to lose one’s sense of purpose, to lose sight of the mission. & always, at our backs, the creeping sensation of a watcher, one we ne’er could see.

I caught the Ickle Puck digging through the sabo-satchel, playing with the dangerous alchemical reagents inside. I snapped, harsher than I ought to; Buddug intervened before we came to blows, & we all realized we were unraveling; the Ickle Puck leaned back against a pedestal holding a gold-leafed copy of a MySpace profile from 2007, & began to sob—when the pedestal moved!

It sank into the floor, revealing a spiral staircase, unlike any we had crossed in our endless wanderings. Something new—& a gust of fetid, staid air rose to greet us. The little greys, it seems, ne’er came this way, nor had anyone in quite some time.

Our spirits buoyed, we snuck down the staircase, blades & bows & wands at the ready. I cast some lights about, & we found a yawning tunnel—with a hideous grey idol! Sickening to look upon, a dedication to some disgusting LLM goddess—Zu’Occ B’oerg, if I read their faux-runes correctly. A dull deity it must be, for e’en its statue seemed empty behind the eyes…

STWANG!

As I inspected the statue, Buddug had kept watch, & she loosed an arrow—I wheeled about to see, she had pierced the breast of some disgusting little blue creature. Unlike the grey homunculi, this one seemed to possess some sort of intellect. No mouth it had, but we heard it growling all the same, as it writhed on the floor, night-black ichor seeping out upon the stones.

“It is he,” Buddug snarled.

“He? Who?”

“The man who built this place. Who razed my village. Their leader, the Smalt.”

“This…thing? He leads the LLM cult? Impossible.”

As we argued, the Ickle Puck had severed the head, & brought it closer to my light.

“Him,” barked the Puck. I had not chosen my companions for decorum, I suppose.

I frowned. “Why would the leader bother following us? Without guards? & he cannot speak? How can he run the cult?”

“Dinnae ken, wizard. I just ken the bastard’s face.”

“Perhaps he is cloned from the leader, or the leader himself is a clone? Surely the real one must speak…”

The Puck harrumphed & yawned.

“Ah, well…we are not here to solve mysteries.” I removed a portable hole from my pouch, & scooped the strange inhuman corpse inside.

“Onward,” pipped the Puck.

“Onward,” I agreed.

Into the tunnel we strode, though I could swear the ugly statue’s vapid eyes followed us as we went…

My Samhain adventure continues in next Monday’s missive! & ye may find all the installments right here.

Thank ye for reading, mortals! & thank ye to all the generous mortals who can & do support our works here with coin!

I shall write ye Wednesday with news of this week’s episode—’til then, be safe, be well, & be wary of any lurking tycoons…

Cheers,
Amœnus Franco
Writer, Wizard, Ichor-Avoider