You're kidding. You go to the barn.
"Barn" is a somewhat generous descriptor: it's some kind of repurposed ancient structure, all stone arches and ominous manmade escarpments. Branwen has helpfully staked warning signs around its perimeter. They're all different.
"WARNING Beware of Panther(s)"
"CAUTION Psychic Feedback Common"
"CAUTION Do Not Look Into Scallop Eyes Even If You Really Feel Like You Want To"
You give Madrigal a look. "Can't hurt," she says. "Also, don't look into the scallop eyes."
"Why?"
She purses her lips. "Hey, Bran, what's the deal with the scallop—"
"Eyes prick your soul like needles. Holes grow eyes. You see inside yourself. You die."
"Oh," you say. "And people purchase this?"
Branwen shrugs. "Eat one and you trip hard. Or your enemy trips hard. We're here."
The three (?four?) of you stand in front of a featureless stone wall. Branwen kicks precisely at what turns out to be a hinge, and the wall swings open.
Inside it is very noisy, and it smells. You keep your eyes fixed straight ahead, as recommended, and ignore the screaming and the gurgling and the inhuman recitation of "Charlotte Charlotte Charlotte Charlotte Charl—" (the Name Turtle knows your future, Branwen said, and you have absolutely no idea if she was joking). You press your arms to your chest. Branwen strides ahead like she was born here, and Madrigal isn't close behind— though, you note, her hands are balled
The snake tank is in the center of the space. It's circular and stone, with clear viewing panels— glass, you worry, but you're assured it's plastic. There's a thin scattering of sand and dull shed scales at the bottom. It's otherwise empty.
There's no obvious means of escape.
"You sure it wasn't stolen?" you say.
"No visitors."
"Sure it's not just hiding in there?"
"Hiding where? Thing can't go invisible. And you'd feel it, it was still there."
?Likely true, for this one.?
You bite your lip. "Maybe it died and… vanished."
"'d feel that, too. Thing's missing."
"Can't go through solid rock," Madrigal adds helpfully.
?Also likely true, for this one.?
?I could.?
"Hm," you say.
>[1] How'd Branwen get in to feed it? Maybe it left that way.
>[2] You can't tell what's under the sand. Maybe there's some kind of exit under there?
>[3] What was Branwen doing out when she found you and Madrigal? Maybe she'd already caught the scent.
>[4] You know what you can do, probably? You can commune with one of the other creatures in the barn to ask where the snake went. You're pure of heart and stout of spirit, right?
>[5] Snake minds think alike, right? Ask Richard what he'd do if he were to escape. Do not take "I wouldn't be trapped, Charlie," as an answer.
>[6] Write-in.
Richard ought to know, right? For obvious reasons.
?That's discriminatory.?
It’s reasonable.
?Charlie, how should I know. I wasn't here. I don't know the woman. You just assume—?
He could just guess.
?I don't want to guess.?
Come on. If he were stuck in a— a thing, how would he get out? It's just a fun thought experiment, is all.
(He's going to say he couldn't get stuck.)
?There's no conceivable way I could get trapped in that, Charlie. I'm not corporeal.?
Unbelievable. You knew it. You called it. You knew he was going to say that. God. Why is he like this? Does he enjoy being obstinate?
?I won't deign that with a response.?
Good. It was rhetorical. Well, unless he has a response and he's just keeping it from you, which you wouldn't put past him.
?I won't deign that with a response, either.?
"Looks like the scallop got her," Branwen mutters loudly behind you.
See? Look at that. You're being embarrassed, and it's all Richard's fault. He doesn't want that, does he? He wants your reputation clean and shining, for whatever inscrutable reason. Whereas if he tells you, you'll look smart and... perspicacious by saying it out loud. Your reasoning is flawless.
?...?
?Down.?
You stamp the floor experimentally. It's hard stone. Why down?
?It's towards the earth. Don't ask questions, Charlie; it makes you look stupid.?
Good enough. "Um..." you say, as you become aware it's been a conspicuously long time. "I think it went down."
"Down?" Madrigal's been busy failing to tie her bandana around her ears. It's only served to further dishevel her hair. "How? I don't know if you've noticed, but snakes don't typically dig."
"Some do," Branwen says. "But not this one."
"I don't—" You frown. "Well, it dug via, you know, sorcery."
Madrigal doesn't say anything.
"Or maybe there's just some kind of entrance," you amend. "Or hole or trapdoor or so on. Just go with it, alright? Do you have a better idea? Branwen, is there anything under the sand in there?"
She shakes her head. "Never been in."
"Never been— how'd you feed it?"
"Don't need feeding."
?Obviously.?
You frown. "...Okay. So..."
>[1] Get into the snake pen and check it out. Agility may be required. [Roll.]
>[2] The Fen's full of culverts and tunnels and sinkholes (none so large as those in the Flats, though.) You'll surely be able to find a way underground— and it's all connected down there, right? [Roll.]
>[3] So a snake can't dig, not really... but surely some other creature can? Enlist help from Branwen's menagerie. [Roll.]
>[4] If you're desperate, there's a very clean and well-maintained trapdoor all the way back at the Better Than Nothing in town. It'll take a while to get back here, but it's a sure bet.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
>[5] Write-in.
Get underground: 73, 41, 45 vs. DC 65 - Mitigated Success
You could try and get into the pen, but that would require clambering. You detest clambering. And what if there were nothing inside? What then? You'd have to clamber out again, and you can think of nothing so bad.
You'll try your luck in the great outdoors, instead. Anywhere to get out of the stench.
It would make a great deal of sense for Branwen to come along, but she insists on staying back to keep her menagerie in check. Judging by the growing chaos even as you stand there, you can hardly begrudge her this; you and Madrigal set off alone.
Madrigal leads you first on a detour to a shed half-buried, half-hacked in and into the roots of a great mangrove, from which she retrieves two coils of frayed rope, two whistles ("yeah, they work. what, you don't think we're gonna get separated?"), a glorb, a bang stick—
"Whoa," you say. "Planning to kill sharks?"
"You never know. You got your sword? Where'd it go?"
Where'd it go? Your hands are empty. Your back and waist are empty.
?Forgot about it, I expect.?
On certain days, your heart aches for those halcyon days when things didn't just vanish if you looked too funny at them. Not that you intend on telling Madrigal that. "I didn't want it anymore," you sniff.
"For fuck's sake. Take this." Madrigal forces a weapon on you.
"This isn't a sword," you say petulantly. "This is— this is basically a longish knife. It hasn't got a hilt."
"Machete, probably. Take it, unless you've got better plans against sharks, or whatever the fuck is down there."
You take the machete. It's long enough to call it a shortish sword, which you do.
Madrigal packs another handful of (extraneous, you think) miscellanies before considering, unpacking half of it, and repacking it in a separate bag. She hands it to you. "Wear this."
"I only wear real things," you say. The bag plainly isn't— it's been fixed, but not enough to hold a texture. "No thank you."
Madrigal's face is such that you wear the bag. It's heavy. You hate it.
Now resupplied for a proper spelunk, you set off. And walk, and look, and walk, and look, and walk, and—
Has it been hours? It can't have been hours, not possibly. It's been minutes. Twenty minutes. (Even if it has been hours, you're sticking with that.) You have found thorns and thickets and the tracks of something extremely large; in fact, you've been following the tracks, mostly out of boredom (the Fen's diversity tends to get samey after too long). Whatever left them had to have been—
"Twenty feet," you say. "Come on."
"High or long? Long, sure." Madrigal adjusts her rucksack strap. "High? No way, nothing that big walks. That big it swims. This thing walks."
And does it. You could sit down in one of its birdlike footprints. (You do, to illustrate.) In its wake the monster's left splintered trees and corpses— none of humans, thank goodness, but plenty of roadkill. Nothing's worth salvaging.
"You think it had tentacles?" you offer.
"Of course it had tentacles— that's a law, practically. Anything twenty feet long's got to have tentacles out the wazoo."
?It's not a law.?
"But why?"
"Good at strangling? Looks cool? It's just how things are. It's a law."
?It really isn't.?
"What about multiple eyes?"
"Okay, yeah, it also has multiple eyes. Prolly a hundred. Or a thousand, if it's real dedicated."
"And bird feet?"
Madrigal scratches her chin. "Yeah, I'm— I told you, I'm not sold on the bird part. Don't have birds. More like a big fuck-off skinny lizard, I think. Bipedal."
You count this out on your fingers. "So tentacles yes, eyes—"
"Hundred."
"—eyes hundred, bird no, lizard yes? Twenty feet tall maybe, twenty feet long probably, explosion vision no, lust for blood yes, uh—"
"Incomprehensible," Madrigal says.
"I don't…" you shake your head. "That doesn't make any sense. We're comprehending it just fine. And anyways, why'd it have tentacles to look cool if nobody can comprehend that?"
"Also inscrutable," Madrigal says. "That's why we're not scruting it."
?Not a word.?
If Richard says so, that's good enough for you. "That's not a word."
"Fuck you, Charlotte. What are you not doing to something inscrutable, huh? You're not scruting it."
That's logical to you. Is Richard sure it isn't a word? He won't comment.
You walk on in this manner. You find no cave mouths, nor any culverts, nor entrances to bunkers, catacombs, dugouts, dungeons, underground ruins, underground tunnels, or underground passages, secret or otherwise. If you didn't know better, you'd think the ground under your feet was impenetrable, or otherwise infinitesimally thin— if you dared to pierce it you'd pierce directly into the . Is it not a real possibility? Don't answer that, Richard.
You have been walking for longer than twenty minutes, but perhaps shorter than hours. The tracks are getting, improbably, smaller, the destruction less severe. After more than twenty minutes, they stop entirely. The edge of the Fen, you realize, is close at hand: the water is clear and thin, or as clear and thin as it ever gets here.
"You think it entered," Madrigal mutters, "and grew? Or the Fen grew it?"
"The underground exists, right?" you say.
She looks at you. "Yes."
?Yes.?
?You passed by an entire ravine some time ago.?
And he didn't tell you.
?Sometimes I don't tell you things so I can hold them over your head later. Anyway, it does exist. I doubt you could find it again, though, on your own.?
Richard has a tendency to believe he's more subtle than he actually is. This one's outright transparent. "Shoot," you mumble.
?Pardon me.?
"Shoot." You snap your fingers impatiently. "Come on."
?What.?
"Do the—" Madrigal's studiously not looking at you, but also not not looking at you. You switch to an even lower register. "The thing. The magic thing."
?I take offense at you calling it magic.?
?That's offensive, Charlotte. You'd compare me to those.?
"Not the—" You close your eyes. "In— the general kind, not the blood— you're being difficult again. Again."
?No such thing as 'the general kind.' This is a persistent and malformed misconception I have tried time and time again to rid you of, Charlotte.?
?Do be specific.?
Madrigal's not not looking at you harder. You moisten your lips. "Where you— where I— the thing. With the- the fire…"
?You're underwater.?
"With the— up my back? And then I— I say things better, or—"
?I have no idea what you're talking about.?
He must.
?I don't.?
He must. He— there it is, in? on? your spine. Only going down, this time, to your feet— you tremble in waves—
>[-1 ID: 6/10]
?Nothing's happening, Charlie. You're so dramatic.?
You feel heavier. More solid, maybe, more balanced, but mostly heavier, like your calves were swapped for lead replicas, or like gravity increased fivefold, or like the mud you're ankle-deep in (it is the Fen) refuses to let you go.
Madrigal is now looking at you properly. "Okay," she says. "What is wrong with you? You can't tell me this is normal."
"Quicksand," you say convincingly.
"You're in mud."
"Quickmud," you say convincingly, and at that moment begin to sink. Into the quickmud, you guess, though you hadn't known that existed. Up to your ankles rapidly becomes up to your thighs.
"Holy shit!" Madrigal explodes, all probing forgotten. "Shit! Fuck! Where's my— hold still, okay; don't thrash! Thrashing's worse! I've got rope—"
You hadn't thought to thrash until just then, but her mentioning it reminds you you probably should, right? You're in quickmud. That's what one does. It's traditional. So you wave your arms a little, and yell, but it rings hollow— firstly, your top concern is frankly the state of your coat (it's white!), and secondly, you're not frightened. You should be, but— it feels good, actually. It feels right. You should be in the earth, entombed forever, sleeping for ten thousand…
You're up to your chest. "Fuck!" Madrigal abandons the search for rope and throws her sack aside, choosing instead to lean as far out as she can with her arm. "Grab me!"
You grab her politely. She strains to lift you, but you don't move— if anything, you sink further. Shoulders, now. (Your coat!) "Shit! Just— don't let go! I'll think of…" Madrigal's knuckles are white. "Don't let go!"
Neck. You think Madrigal might cry, and can't feel good about it. Lips. The mud tastes sweet. Nose, ears, eyes—
You sink wholly into the mud, hang for a moment in damp liminal space, and drop out into a stone-lined underground tunnel. (You assume that's what it is. It's dark.) Your coat is very clean. Above you, the mud is soft and yielding and stretchy. Madrigal's fingertips scrabble against it, as if through a cloth sheet; you can just make out yelling. And then, all at once: her arm bursts through, the yelling for a second becomes clear ("CHARLOTTE!!"), you feel weightless, but really normal, and— the mud dries and hardens.
Around Madrigal's arm. It dangles there pale in the dark. You assume it's dead, cut off, for one awful second, and then it moves.
THE FOLLOWING IS AN ESSAY ABOUT WHAT A QUEST IS AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR DROWNED QUEST TO BE A "QUEST." IF THIS DOESN'T INTEREST YOU YOU'RE WELCOME TO SKIP IT. BUT I THINK IT'S PRETTY RELEVANT AND INTERESTING!
do stem, at least in part, from the format. What is the format?
eventually acquire a small handful of abilities similar to what you might see in a LitRPG. This is part of a reason I think many RR readers would love quests if they checked them out! I'll eventually recommend some completed and ongoing ones I'm a fan of. But I digress...
quickly. I know many webnovels are also written quickly, but quests are even quicker than that: they have to maintain a consistent and rapid (typically daily) schedule in order to maintain voter interest. I usually wrote for a month and took a week off as a break-- in that month, I usually pumped out ~25 updates. By the later threads, I was hitting 1,500 - 2,500 words an update easily, meaning one RR chapter every day. This means that QMs don't have the luxury of mulling things over. Whatever they write is what they write.
unedited. They have to be: the voters start interacting with it immediately, and you can't go back and substantially change the text they voted on, or they'll be justly unhappy about their loss of agency. The only time you do go back and fix things is when they're so egregiously upsetting that the players demand a retcon. (This is bad!) The most a typical QM can do is kind of patch up the plot holes and the weird loose threads later. Success might vary. I think I do a pretty good job of this, but mostly because DQ took so long to write that I had plenty of time to cover my tracks!
improvised. Not entirely-- any competent QM will have some plot points they want to hit, characters they want to show up, and so on. But the way everything plays out is up to the players and their choices. If they weren't, it wouldn't be a very good quest! Add on unexpected write-ins and literal RNG from dice rolls, and as a QM you have to be ready for anything. This has the knock-on effects of:
oddly paced. While the QM might have an idea of how long a given scene will last, it's the players who ultimately decide who to talk to, where to go, and how long to spend on everything. This also means that quests tend to be more continuous, narrative-wise, as opposed to a traditional novel that relies on timeskips between chapters. If you timeskip too hard in a quest, the players will get hot and bothered about all the choices they missed out on making!
narratively . When anything could happen, anything will happen-- and unless the QM is doing some heavy-handed railroading, every quest will go off in directions nobody expected. If a quest appears to follow a traditional narrative structure, it's either 1) very short or 2) has the QM sweating their ASS off behind the scenes making it all work. Guess how hard I sweated my ass off with Drowned? It's gone. My ass. But you won't start seeing the structure for a while, because this is a difficult and learned skill!
really really really hard to get it to be excellent. I think that's pretty cool, too, but of course I'm biased.
Did you actually read that big essay up there?