Round Prompts+Results

Whether you hardly made a peep, or whether you tried to explode the door off its hinges, either way, the door opens. You might expect a roar of power, from the wizard waking from his terrible sleep…

…. But when you open the door, all you see is a giant metal fang, a huge desk littered with paper, a scaly nose, half-finished inventions strewn on the floor, a bionic eye the size of a truck… Hm. That’s a dragon. A wizard hat-wearing bionic dragon, cozied up around its hoard of legendary prizes, a giant pen trapped in its claw. It’s wrapped up in a blanket that upon closer inspection, is the world’s longest to-do list.

Every person you’ve ever met stands besides you, along with eight other hooligans you’ve never met before. The dragon is curled tightly, and at the end of the to-do list, there’s an item marked “Make sure my dream-ship doesn’t disappear when I wake up.”

It’s not checked off.

It’s not too late to turn back. Will you?

What’s strange about the bedroom is how normal it is. Unlike the sprawling messes of the last few layers, the Bedroom is small. Claustrophobic. There’s a bed, a desk, a mirror. Messy papers of research and blueprints and doodles of the Wife of the Wizard itself. Mostly, it’s dusty and old, yet incredibly well preserved.

This time, there’s an obvious door with an erasable sign that says, “Wizard at Work. Do Not Disturb” and a little drawing that shows a silhouette of a person pressing a finger to their lips. Tacked to that sign is a hastily taped up piece of paper that reads, “DO NOT BOTHER THE WIZARD. PLEASE. BE KIND TO YOURSELF.”

It’s locked, of course. And it’s the wizard’s- who knows what kind of security measures are set up?

Be safe. Be quiet. The tension is palpable.

More. More. MORE. The production hall hasn’t stopped. Neither have the hard-working devil robots, making all manner of things- luxuries for the wizard, ultra powerful weaponry, actual food, and maybe also other random things because they aren’t devils if they don’t get into a little bit of mischief. Problem is, there’s no one to collect these things now, and it just keeps piling up. At the front of the hall, a rude, shouty devil wearing a chef’s coat holds a clipboard next to a sign that says “Hell’s Kitchen”. 

And at the door to the next level….. Wait. Where the fuck is the door? Is it under this pile of offensively large books? Or this pile of ray guns? Or maybe this pile of silky, sexy beards? Once you find the door- and maybe the devil knows where it is, if it doesn’t chase you down for interrupting their work- it should be easy enough to continue. 

“Welcome to the jungle, we’ve got fun and games/We got everything you want...” - Wands N’ Roses 

… And a mild amount of pain (in the ass). This second layer of the Wife is a gorgeous flourish of fucked-up creatures, overgrown flora, and disabled golems that used to be hand-maintained by the Wizard. But over the years, it sort of deteriorated into a mixture of a jungle, an overgrown mushroom biome, and the inside of a hedge, making it difficult to navigate.

And there’s a bigger problem, too. In the journey from The Garage to the Backyard, something (or someone) happened to the gravity. That’s right: There’s zero gravity on this level! Everything is floating aimlessly, and pettily enough, the entrance to the next layer is a weight-activated touchpad. There’s an overgrown maintenance building in the distance… How are you going to get closer to the prize?

The topmost layer of the ship is full of pores- that is to say, it has a magus-powered portal to every place you could think of, a landing dock for roaming space ships, and even regular old hatches for space tentacles to break into. It even has a place for your shoes! However, over the millennia, more and more of these little holes have broken, creating transportation glitches, portals prone to cutting your limbs off, and space hatches that threaten to suck an unwary fool back into the vacuum of space. Worse, despite the falling-apart floor, the Wizard’s always gone above and beyond in his security…. And still lurking in the blurred  cameras and the musty microphones of the Garage is the AI guardian, W4TCHER.

W4TCH3R, like its creator, has always been a little overzealous- and while it welcomes newcomers for trade and entertainment for the wizard, without the wizard there to actually approve of visitors, it hasn’t yet allowed a single person to pass to the next level. However, just like its creator, W4TCH3R does enjoy entertainment and with W4TCH3R guarding the many entrances to the next level… How are you going to get closer to the prize?