October 17, 2022.

And then, after many days of searching, the travelers had found it at last, the small wooden sign promising a continuation of their quest. It was smudged with a thick layer of soot, barely visible against the soot smudged across the uneven stone of the tavern wall or the soot smudged on the surrounding buildings. The sign held no words (for as Gobble had explained to them, many of the patrons could not read), but instead displayed a crude engraving of a cock and swan engaged in vicious battle.

“Finally!” exclaimed Kor’tan, the Heqetian pickpocket. The delay had been getting the frog-headed rogue hopping mad, and she had half-suspected this search through the circuitous winding alleyways would never end. It seemed now her pessimism had been misplaced. She snagged a fly out of the air with her tongue, gulping it down with relief.

“At last, indeed,” grumbled Shant, the Damned Baron of Darkness. “We have seeked these crooked streets of the City of Fellflame for many needless and monotonous nights, and I have grown weary of the tiresome repetition of our quest.”

Gobble the Knee Elf (named for its height, which barely reached the level of a humanoid creature’s knee) hopped around and squeaked, in its awful little voice, “Sometimes that’s how it goes! It’s not my fault that it took you so long to find the Cock & Swan! Hee hee! If you had been paying more attention to my directions perchance you wouldst have had more fun! Hee hee!”

The Damned Baron and the frog thief stared at Gobble, who danced from one foot to the other for a great long time. They knew, much to their chagrin, that were they to murder Gobble, their ability to conclude this quest would be severed. Yet, still, they considered it for some time before disregarding the thought and carrying on.

The frog shrugged. “Well, let’s go inside, anyway, and find the guy with the directions. He’s wearing a red shawl or something, right, Gobble?”

“A red shawl, yes! Yes, enter the tavern, hee hee! I will wait out here and keep an eye on these wicked streets for… danger!” Gobble grinned and began slapping its long-fingered hands against its taut, round belly like a drum, then hummed a very annoying song slightly off time.

Shant, the Damned Baron, turned and opened the door without another word. Kor’tan followed close behind. The door closed heavily behind them, and thankfully, Gobble’s terrible song was silenced by its heft.

The interior of the tavern was hot, wet, and the darkness was nearly complete. What little light leaked in through the single window at its front seemed shrouded, as if being filtered through a thin layer of flesh. The air was thick with a reeking miasma of ale and death.

As their eyes began to adjust, the travelers perceived indistinct shapes: perhaps chairs, tables, patrons, all colorless and vague. Only a single point of distinction existed in the tavern, what looked, maybe, to be the back of a man hunched over a table, wearing a red shawl.

“There, the man in the red shawl. Let us approach with caution. I do not like the smell of this place,” Shant whispered into the frog-ear of his companion.

Slowly, the two walked towards the red shawl, avoiding what shapes they could see along the way.

“Excuse me,” intoned Shant, to the hunched form in red. “We seek information, and we have heard that you are he who might hold that which we desire.”

The form didn’t move, react to them in any way. How was it so damnably dark in here, and so damnably hot, so damnably humid… the humidity must indeed have been damaging the wooden floors, because now even they were feeling… soft… beneath the travelers’ feet...

“Hey, buddy, wake up!” shouted Kor’tan. She jabbed at the form with her froggy hand, only for it to pass through the red shawl, into a fold of flesh! And it is only then that the frog thief and the Damned Baron noticed the needle-sharp teeth lining the walls and ceiling, each as long as a man’s arm…! The huge mouth around them began drooling, savoring their imminent demise, and then-

“Okay, so I throw a saving roll.” Max throws a D20 onto the table, pissed off at the mean trick.

Jared, sitting at the head of the table in his dumb little cloak, catches the thrown die before it finishes rolling, grins a shit-eating grin back at Max.

“Oh, no no no. No saving rolls. It’s an instant death. The room is a giant mimic, and it eats your characters, chews them up, swallows them, digests them, then poops them in a big mimic toilet and flushes them.”

Max and Ryan gape at each other. Jared chuckles, satisfied with himself. Ryan spits at him: “What the fuck, man? What do you mean it’s instant death?”

“Gobble tricked you and fed you to a giant monster that looked like a tavern. What do you mean what do you mean it’s instant death? It would instantly kill literally anyone. There were many ways out of this. You could have cast detect life, you could have cast detect traps… ohhh, but you were just sooooo uninterested in playing the game the way I had it set up for you, you wanted to date a dolphin or spend whole sessions in the dance hall or whatever, and now your characters are dead, forever. Oh well!” Jared laughs and starts packing up his dice.

“We were just trying to have fun, you fucking asshole!”

Jared draws his face into a big frown, mockingly, then starts laughing again. He whips his hand out, over the table. Before they can stop him, he’s nabbed their character sheets off, and starts ripping them up, backing away from them.

Max and Ryan both shout “STOP!” at once. Jared rips, keeps laughing, rips, keeps laughing...

Max lunges at him. Jared steps back further, out of his way, keeps ripping, throwing the pieces into the fireplace.

“All gone. All dead. Better luck next-”

But. Ryan has leapt over the table, a single smoothly executed move Jared didn’t see coming. Ryan punches him in the kidney. Jared wheezes, dropping the papers, dropping onto his knees. He drools onto the floor. “Buhhh,” he tries to speak, but can’t make his mouth form the words.

“No saving roll, dickhead?” Max jeers. He kicks Jared in the face with his high tops, breaking his nose and knocking out a loose molar. Blood spurts out of both nose and mouth, spattering against the floor in little red dots. Max steps back, admires his work. He waves Ryan forward: your turn.

Ryan bows in thanks, brings back his leg, trying to deliver another kidney shot; he misses his mark, breaks Jared’s rib instead, which flips inward and punctures his lung. His breathing becomes ragged, and after about thirty more minutes, after a continuous and escalating assault with fists, feet, then a fire poker, a brick, a claw hammer... his breathing stops altogether.