Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapeter 13:Chosen

Maris hated prophecies.

To be fair, when it came right down to it he hated a lot of things. Maybe even most things. The problem with most things was simply that they tended to get in the way of what you actually wanted to do. Most things were, simply, a distraction from ones goals. Which were simple enough. Maris was, at heart, a wizard. Or would be if he had a heart. Which he didn't, but he never let the absence of any major organs worry him. Organs were, like most things, simply another distraction. Like most wizards, all Maris really wanted to do was stay at home and read black and ancient tomes of forbidden knowledge, study the magical arts and learn some new spells. Admittedly most of the ones he ended up learning were explicitly violent. But those were the ones that came in most useful when someone was trying to interrupt. They also came in pretty handy on the rare occasions he ran out of arcane secrets no man was meant to know and had to go out looking for more. This was, he felt, the ideal way of life for any self respecting student of the magical arts. The simple fact that he was dead just meant that he theoretically had more time time to do it than most.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 12: Piety

There were days when Maris wondered if he'd done something to offend some god or other who was even now exacting some tortuous and needlessly overcomplicated revenge. To be fair, in his line of work it was kind of hard not to offend the odd Deity, and there were an awful lot of them to choose from. For a start he was unnatural undead construction of bone and malice, which did tend to upset most of the various life and nature types, as well as a handful of the more boring gods of death. There were just so many of the damn things. More or less every culture had their own version of god for more or less everything, all with their own particular sets of rules and edicts. It was all so terribly complicated. Most of the time you just had to hope that whatever you did that found favour with one lot was enough to protect you from the ire of all the others you'd upset in the process. Or maybe that the gods had slightly better things to do than watch your every movement. Particularly the naked ones.

Of course there were those that might claim that there were no such thing as gods, but they were mostly just followers of Aethistocles, the god of doubt. There were other, saner scholars who questioned the existence of the church of Aethistocles. But that, the high priest would say as they sat back looking smug, was entirely the point.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 11: Smash

"You see, the thing about a Greater Deathhulk is, they're really built for sieges rather than hand to hand combat" Maris explained to the Skittering Rat-Thing that sat next to him on the edge of the pit. He wasn't quite sure where the Rat-Thing had come from. Presumably it had followed him down from the upper levels.

"I mean, sure, they can obliterate pretty much anything in a single punch, but they're a little slow."

A great crash echoed up from the depths of the pit, as if to punctuate this statement

"Gk kggkgkg gk" chittered the Rat-Thing in agreement.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 10: Knotted

There were many bizarre sights to be seen in the depths of the dungeon. Strange and terrible things that sent men mad, dark and wonderful vistas that sung in the souls of those lucky enough to escape them.

The Unclean Rites Of Zod, where the Fungal Formless met to dance under unseen constellations and make sacrifice.... The Razordiamond Cavern, where light itself echoed from the shattering spires of crystal and the Golems that formed themselves from the cast off shrapnel.... The Altar Of Agromishaad, which no man had seen and lived, but which at least one woman had described as overrated....

The sight of a rather bemused looking Barbarian Warlord, tied up with what looked like measuring tape, being led around the traps, past the patrols and into the forbidden depths was, it had to be said, a new one.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 9: Depths

Golric Icecarver stormed down the dank stone corridor, his mighty axe slashing left and right to cut down the hordes of lank haired verminous creatures that leapt from the dark shadows in never ending waves of rabid teeth.

Even in the far off frozen lands the barbarian called home there were rumors of this place. A dark dungeon of terrible perils and fabulous treasures. The whispers and legends had drawn him here, across the frigid seas, past strange cities, over the Mountains Of Terror, through the Forest Of No Return and at long last to the Cave Of Death and it's hidden entrance to this twisted labyrinth of unconquered evil.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 8: Heights

Maris awoke into a new world of pain. Being a skeleton he sometimes thought that being able to feel pain was a little odd, since he didn't have nerves. However such thoughts inevitably led to wondering how one might be able to see without the benefit of eyes, or question the ability of speech in the absence of a throat. Finally of course you started to wonder how it was you could even think without actually having a brain. Usually around this point Maris would find something else to think about, just in case he turned out to be right and couldn't actually think at all.

The eternal dilemma of the walking dead. I think therefore I might not actually be.

It was far to early and he far too powerful a headache to worry about complicated philosophical questions of existence. Well, it felt early anyway. It was kind of hard to tell from his current position Which appeared to be upside down in a mine cart. What was he doing there?

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 7: Hobbies

A thin, dry voice echoed down the musty corridors. A strange constant chattering that pervaded the very air of crypts. At the entrance it was barely a whisper, hardly audible over the sounds of ones own breath. But as you penetrated deeper in to complex of broken, dusty tombs the words slowly began to take on strange, alien shapes. Few could comprehend the mysterious chanting, but most who heard it inevitably succumbed to a rising paranoia. A deep seated dread of whatever unnatural invocation was being performed. Some fled from from the crypts entirely lest the babbling drove them mad. Others rushed ahead into the darkness, desperate to put a stop to the foul sibilant chanting once and for all.

Either way they tended to end up running into one of the many, many traps and ambushes that littered the necropolitan network of tunnels. Maris found the whole thing hilarious. Doubly so since, unlike most who walked these grim pathways, he actually knew what the voice was.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 6: Names

Brodnak looked down at the sodden, steaming pile of bones and rearranged his breaches into a slightly more dignified configuration. He turned to the patiently waiting spectre of death that stood in the corner of the room.

"So boss, what's this all about then?"

It wasn't every day that a walking skeleton got you out of bed first thing in the afternoon and asked you to piss in a sack full of bones. When Maris turned up things normally got more interesting, true. But the greenskin did sometimes wish they were a little less confusing.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 5: Relief

"Aaaaahhhh" Sighed Brodnak contentedly, directing the acrid and brightly coloured stream of urine onto the contents of the sack. The bones hissed softly under the onslaught.

Brodnak Headsplitter was an old drinking buddy of Maris'. Some may wonder how it is a skeletal undead without a single soft fleshy organ could go drinking, let alone get drunk. These people are obviously unfamiliar with Orcish brewing techniques. The simple fact was that, generally speaking, it was only the dead that could actually survive a night drinking with Orcs. Orcs could brew some sort of drink out of just about anything. And, being Orcs, they usually did. Leaves, moss, sticks, entrails, unidentifiable pools of slime, rocks, poisonous spiders.... It all went in. What came out was unpredictable at best, but as any Orc would tell you, that was half the fun.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 4: Meat

The unmistakable smell of roasted meat filled the air of the small room, rising above even the insalubrious stench of Skittering Rat-Thing. The other thing that filled the air was the far less appetizing sound of Skittering Rat-Things eating. Cooked meat might well have been considered a delicacy to the primitive creatures, but they certainly weren't going to let that stop them from stripping the elven corpse as quickly, and most important, LOUDLY as possible.

Maris was fairly glad he didn't have a stomach. He wasn't quite sure how the organ might have reacted to the terrible wet cacophony. Still, it's probably hard eating with your mouth closed when you've got that many teeth.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 3: Abacus

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

A screaming horde of Skittering Rat-Things barreled down the corridor towards Maris

"TALLPOINTYDEATHKILLRUNRUNRUN!!!!!" They screamed in no particular order.

Maris sighed wearily. "one, two, five, ten, twelve...."

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 2: Vermin

Being undead, Maris was quite well acquainted with the futility of life. He saw it practically every week in the faces of heavily armoured idiots charging towards him over a pile of dead Orcs. Or Lizard Men. Or Spider-Bats or Crepuscular Bone Gnawers, or Phantom Maggot Wraiths from the Lesser Plains of Xin or whatever else happened to be in whichever section of the dungeon complex he found himself in. There was a particular moment. Maris had learned to spot it after several years of practice. You had to be quick, because it only lasted a fraction of a second. But it was there. Just as they notice out of the corner of their eye that the guy on their left is having his tongue pulled out the back of his head, the wizard behind them is on fire and something they previously considered dead is launching itself violently upwards through their own spine. Just at this point a look flits momentarily across the hapless adventurers face. A look that says that, in the brief second before they die they fully understand that everything they've done up until this point was actually completely pointless in the worst possible way.

If Maris had a face, that's the look it would have been permanently fixed into.

Doomcrawl Dungeon Chapter 1: Stairs

Maris stomped disconsolately up the stairs from the lower levels. To anyone coming the opposite direction down the rough hewn stone corridors he would most likely have appeared as rather terrifying figure. But that was hardly his fault, it was rather hard to look friendly when you're dead. Not, he thought to himself, that it was the being dead part the was necessarily the problem. No, it was the fact that he was still MOVING that got to people. Had he just lain unmoving in the corridor then no one would give him a second glance (once the first glance had confirmed he had nothing worth stealing anyway), but put his skeletal form in a flowing black robe and send it stomping down a darkened corridor and suddenly everyone cops an attitude.

"In my experience," Maris thought "mortals have an overly propriety attitude to locomotion."