RESPONSE LEVEL: 5

***

[b]Lucien![/b]

Whoever made this place (if it was made at all, and not just spat up from the depths of the Heart fully formed; if it is not some trap, designed by a blind idiot predator to lure delicious adventurers inside) was really interested in three things: books, squids, and books being held by squids. The motif is everywhere; verdigrised tentacles weave their way between damp, overstuffed shelves, and vast beaks loom above doorways.

There was also an infestation of giant, barnacle-infested crabs. Emphasis on [i]was[/i]; their mottled shells lie broken on the ground, each one easily half the size of you, crushed and corroded. Someone fought their way through here.

There are signs that the stacks have been rifled through, now that you’re looking more closely. Books lie discarded everywhere, though here and there are neat stacks, carefully aligned: [i]The Cup of Fortune; The Cricketer’s Cup; Cuprum Tools of the Meronni; Owl Be Back: The Daring Adventures of Lucien Roue, Continued.[/i] Wait, what was that last?

You pick it up and flip through it idly: it ends with Lucien Roue walking up a stairway in the Tyrian Spire, setting off a trap, taking a holy pie to the face, and falling down the stairs screaming through a burning throat and trying to claw off his skin until an errant spur of weathered stone breaks his spine.

...charming!

There is an epilogue in which the Vainglorious Witch, the Drowned Seeker, the Promised Conductor and the Grail Questor set your body out on a spur of driftwood and set it alight from afar.

And that’s when the terrible, terrible noise comes from below.

***

[b]Ailee![/b]

When you pull Jackdaw up from the water, she’s too heavy. Dangerously so, in fact. But you put your back into it and haul her up into your arms. She feels like she’s made of lead. Waterlogged or not, she [i]can’t[/i] be this heavy.

Though, really, thinking about it, this isn’t [i]that[/i] bad. You were worried, like, a shark made out of trash would burst out of the water and try to tear your head off. More stupid parlor tricks from a stupid garbage goddess.

When Sasha runs, you’re pulled back onto the shore without a hitch, right up until Sasha hits a hard stop.

***

[b]Coleman![/b]

It’s something like a lobster, but put back together wrong, and with quite a few replacement parts. It’s the size of Sasha and then some, and it exploded up out of a hole in the floor, dragging its exoskeleton along the wet tiles. Exoskeleton, armor, shell— it has something fastened all around it, splintering rotten wood and cannons and salt-swollen ropes.

It fires a cannonade that brings Sasha down to one knee, a barrage of fire from one side of its body, belching out acrid smoke. It opens its mouth, showing a nightmare throat full of pincers and spines (so that fish or kobolds can’t swim back up and out) and screams: a terribly, horrifically [i]person[/i] sound. Those eyes, too, rolling and crying thick salty tears— each and every one of them is a [i]person’s[/i] eye.

Take Damage.

[hider=The Wreck][b]Rotten Armor[/b] — if the Wreck retreats inside its shell, it cannot take damage or suffer Cuts unless the shell is destroyed.

[b]Wet Powder And Hateful[/b] — if the shell is destroyed, there will be a massive earth-shattering kaboom, causing extreme damage both personal and environmental. The Wreck will, miraculously, be unscathed.

[b]Claws That Catch[/b] — the Wreck is [i]Melee, Dangerous,[/i] and can snap anything between its claws.[/hider]