K.

Room - Miraculous Find - Armour

To the west is a dead dwarf.

Doddot knows this, though she's yet to explore the dark caverns that swell to the west. Her lantern glances off drawn flesh and still-shiny metal.

Nerves steeled to face whatever may have killed them, Doddot sallies forth.

The cavern is nearly empty, though it smells of cool water and furled sod.

Coming to the corpse Doddot realizes two things.

First, that's not a dwarf. It's dwarf-sized, sure, and roughly dwarf-shaped, but it's not a dwarf. In fact, Doddot doesn't know what it is.

Second, that's nice armour. Like, really nice.

She shakes the cadaver out of it like she's shaking a foot free of pins and needles. It crumbles to dust, and so Doddot never again has to ask herself that quailing question of identity.

The armour won't fit her. It's close, but thanks to Hamgard's lovingly and increasingly palatably prepared meals, she's packed on a few pounds.

Shame.

Fortunately, there's an alcove not too far ahead. Excited to see what another enormous tongue might do to the armour, Doddot rushes over to find it empty. A stone alcove, with a stone table... It's disappointing, really.

At least she has a safe place to leave the armour until she's ready to ascend again for one of those meals.

She sets the armour on the table and it transfigures immediately into an altar. A bloom rushes out from the armour, a spindly network of germination beginning to sprawl outward. It is followed by an immense pelting, where the cave grows soft with moss and mushroom.

"Neat. Magic armour. We should get a cleric."

Doddot forges on, bodies swelling into fruit behind her.

The botanist Mage has a cousin devoted as much to plants as worships. Receiving an invite some days later, they hang up their cincture at the monastery and scurry for the Dimmorc hold. The next time Doddot passes the shrine, they look up from tending their mosses to wave cheerily.

To the west is a live dwarf.

Room - Natural Magic - Portal to the Deep

A groovy mural is painted on the walls of the next room, its focal point a glimmering, nose hair-tingling orifice. The Mages confirm it to be a Portal to the Deep, hastily ensuring Doddot that they're not just making it up at her suspicious look. The botanist shows her the page in an old grimoire.

"That's a long list of side effects."

"Oh, not really! It's all hallucinations just... lots of kinds. For lots of different lengths of times. But only six hours, and that's rare. Incredibly rare."

Doddot gives the Mages another suspicious look. The eyes that look back at her are beseeching, coveting the occasional glance at the so-called Portal.

Doddot sighs melodramatically as she heaves into the gleaming tube.

Four hours later, when she finally stops tasting every sound around her, Doddot sits up. It's dark down here, and cold - they have finally escaped the fetal warmth of the sun.

The stalactites are sharp and bone dry.

Not today. Doddot has already done one brave thing today.

Four hours later, when she finally stops feeling the touch of everything she sees, Doddot sits up. The Mages gives her space, quickly hiding their notebooks behind their backs and in their silly, large sleeves.

Room - Empty Caverns (4), Inn, Treasury,

The next room is massive, three standard floors bisected by a huge column. It has all of the hallmarks of a grand stairwell, with the steps long since crumbled away. Murals grimace in the lantern light as Doddot squints at the column. The whole thing is studded with gems. A gentle tap of her pocket pickaxe loosens an amethyst the size of her palm.

If only the rest of this search was so easy, Doddot reckons she'd have already recovered the Void Crystal!

The next few rooms are a breeze - Doddot descends some ladders and hammers them into semi-permanence, peering into fathomless blackness as she considers her options.

The air of the lowest floor is dank and dangerous, though a welcome reprieve from the sickly heat of the molasses above. The rocks around are of primordial strata - under normal circumstances, that'd be her cue to turn back. Typically, special training is required to delve this deep and Doddot is not licensed. Direct orders from the king do offset her concerns of litigation though. The floor above is also cooler, freshly exposed, and safer, but she thinks she hears something rhythmic beating out from the blackness.

Much like Goldilocks, Doddot makes her choice and strides on in prudence. She picks her way vaguely toward that beating heart.

She pretty much immediately disturbs a den of cave penguins, those adorable if ill-tempered denizens of clay-dense caves. Their oily feathers, well-suited for cave and ocean life alike, gleam with aluminum from their enriched diet and their large luminous eyes look dewy with tear. The squawk cantankerously and flood out of the cracks in the cavern wall, eager to exchange vandalism with vandalism.

The Conqueror Worm swallows the whole lot before they can throw their frail, bird-boned bodies against the Kennel in any meaningful way.

The penguin nests are silent.

Doddot sends Hamgard to collect their eggs for omelettes.

Room - Wishing Well, Burrowing Monster

Beyond the catalogued crypt is another normal, generously sized, relatively dry room with a hewn alcove. Doddot frowns in pattern recognition. Surely enough, as she passes the alcove, another monstrous tongue slides out from between teeth larger than tombstones.

Borrowing from the same instinct used to sex chicks, Doddot recognizes immediately that it's a new mouth, distinct from the one on the first floor but no less patient. She does not know if they are connected. She doesn't want to.

Doddot flips a coin onto the tongue, where it lands with a moist plop.

The next room also features an impression in the wall, but even a cursory inspection tells of a different origin. It's a round tunnel instead of a squared alcove. It's been chewn, not hewn. It's sticky with a clear, viscous goo.

Doddot rubs the slime between thumb and forefinger ponderously.

Shuffling from deeper in the tunnel alerts her to an approaching mass. She hits the ground face-first as the annulated body of a massive earthworm breaches into the cavern. Easily two dwarves in diameter and making use of the Pywormagoras principle to extrapolate length, the earthworm is just too fucking big to be comfortable.

Startled by the fire of Doddot's torch searing the tender flesh of its underside, the worm panics. It burrows upward, easily chewing through feet of solid stone in its flight. It doesn't take long for each floor to give way, but it gives the mages enough time to prepare. The worms charges for the escape, the mages charge their spells.

The youngest of them, young Lihloin, swats the annelid right on the nose with an enchantment textbook. A wave of reddish-yellow magic washes over the room, and the worm falls still. Abashed, it coils over itself like an ashamed puppy. It is relocated to the kennel, and Lihloin gets promoted to 'Animal Carer'.

With caution signs erected near the holes in the floor and some planks stretched across them, Doddot returns to the depths.