Brombrent sat at the bar of the inn, a half drained glass of weak ale before him. The dismayed throngs of players behind disappeared into a dull droning. His entire focus was upon the man beside him.

"I swear," he repeated, flailing his arms about in an exagerated fashion. "Yesterday, we got down to the 5th level of the King's Dungeon. The toughest mobs we came up against were gobo slingers." The man paused to down the rest of his ale before resuming his tale, "we came into this room. It was dark; the walls were covered in strange glowing runes. In the centre was a chest, it was more like a stone box actually.

"One of my guys. H-he went over to the box, the next thin we know he's down. His health critical. This giant scorpion had appeared out of nowhere. We tried, man," his fists balled tightly into fists. We tried best. But we couldn't get to him in time! This was supposed to have been a game; a God damned game!"

Brombrent was quiet as his companion struggled to regain control of his emotions.

"It was all we could do to keep that monster at bay. We couldn't keep it up for much longer, we barely damaged that thing and it kept whittling our health away, I thought we were goners. We'd used most of our potions just to get that far! But then this woman appeared, she practically one-shotted that beast!" He ordered another drink.

"After the battle, she gave us a few potions to heal up. She said we were lucky she was there, that we had gotten ourselves into a pretty isolated part of the dungeon. She'd only known about it since she had been part of the beta. She also said that the stone box the monster was guarding contained a part of some key."

"Did she say what this key was for?" Brombrent finally spoke, his voice unlike what you'd have expected from him. Calm, cool and almost lyrical.

"No," The man sobbed.

"Did you get her name?"

At this point the man was only capable of shaking his head.

"Thank you for your time." Brombrent stood, swiping his had before him as if trying to bat away some imagined fly. A small pouch of coins appeared in his hand which he then placed on the counter in front of the man, before turning to leave the bar.

A key, hmm? Could that have anything to do with the land below? He didn't know, but he was determined to find out the secrets of this game they become ensnared within!