room1/Awakening

Dungeon23

1.1.23 ROOM ONE : Awakening

Waking in a different place came as a surprise. A cobblestone building in ruins with old wooden beams holding mossy slats across for shelter.

Waking in a different body came as a shock. 

A lad with scruffy hair, dressed in dirty ragged medieval clothes holds your head, looks into your eyes, says “Ye’v been shifted. I heard of it from the pedlars. Never thought I’d see it for meself.”  

He has a small campfire lit in the shack and a skinned rabbit grilling on it. 

“I guess you ain’t you no more. Does ye remember anything?”

You remember falling asleep in your room on New Year’s Eve the last day of 2022, slightly drunk. 

“Where am I? Who are you? What is this place?” You ask, sitting up. You have a small hand-axe strapped to a belt on your waist. You are also wearing dirty ragged medieval clothes. 

The lad laughs. “Yer voice is changed too as well as yer eyes. Relax, Traveller. You’re in the world now. There was a war in our parents time then famine then plague. Most everyone dead now. We were brothers before ye shifted. I’m glad of that, we fought, ye wasn’t a good soul before. We argued, should we travel to Port or Fort. Somewhere to trade or somewhere to farm, if we fit in.” 

You ask what we have to trade. 

“We have something of value, snuck away. Now ye’ve shifted we have yer wisdoms. A might good fortune that’s happened to ye. The pedlars said it’s happening to help us through the shift from the world which was to the next one. Mostly we lay low avoiding bandits. It’s lawless now.” 

You ask again what we have to trade. 

“Something special none know how to use no more. The dust. A whole fat pouch of it. Dust started and ended the war and it’s what the war was fought for, so they say.”

You ask, “What is the dust? What does it do?” 

“It does a lot. There’s a song. In water it’s pure, in fire it blows, in sky it flies, in earth it grows. Most people only know how to use it for making water safe to drink or to blow holes in castles. The rest of the song is horse dung.” 

You see the lad has a short-sword partially hidden under a fur-lined animal-skin cloak. 

“We should eat and travel on. Still a long way to go. Seems I won the fight now, we go to Fort and become farmers. Maybe meet us some wives.” 

Beyond the stone ruin are several others. A small village which appears dilapidated by perhaps five or twenty years. Beyond it are barren meadows, an occasional tree. As far as eye can see. If ever there was a road, a dirt track, it has become indistinguishable from the bare and hardened dirt of the landscape.  

“The war, the famine, the plague. We hunt to eat. And are hunted.” 

The lad, your genetic brother whose body now hosts you, says his name is Clay. Your father died in war and mother of plague a year ago. You’ve been through some adventures simply surviving.

Had dealings with the bandits in the woodlands west, originated in a village much like this one in the hills east. Heard rumours of Port south and Fort north where survivors gather. Many similar villages across the dry moor amidst the broken tors. Encountering an occasional traveler or small group. 

You’ve been lucky so far and only needed to kill two people, a bandit and a witch along the way. It was from the witch you got the powder-pouch. 

She attacked having seduced you with her tongue. Luckily your brother was there to save you in time, beheading her moments before she spiked you with her knife. 

Do you agree with Clay to travel North to Fort? 

Or argue you would be better to head South to Port? 

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