Delver of Dungeons

[Author's Note: This is a game! Please be sure to click "Start Game" in the sidebar at right. And make sure you go through the character creation section before returning here to start the game proper!]

Mechanics inspired by sexybjgal's "Attaining Tenure" on this site.

Cover image from InCase's excellent webcomic "Alfie."

You sigh deeply and push the parchment away from you. You've done the math numerous times (even paid someone else to do it for you, once). You've run the costs in every different way you can think of, and there's no escaping the inevitable conclusion: you're never going to be able to live the life you want without 1,000 gold marks.

1,000 marks! To someone who grew up as poor as you did, that feels like...an almost insurmountable amount of money. It's more than many people see in a lifetime. Which, of course, is why you need so much to "retire" and live the kind of life you've always dreamed. Luxury, security, some kind of passive income stream...the opposite of how you grew up, basically, living on the streets and scrounging for every meal.

It's not an impossible dream - you're sure of that much. People have risen from lower circumstances than yours to higher stations. The ones who did it ages ago, of course, are the heroes of story and song now; the people who founded kingdoms, or won wars, or attained everlasting fame. But there are more mundane versions of such people still around today: adventurers. Mercenaries, though it's not polite to call them that. The people who are willing to hunt down a vicious beast that's too much for the local constabulary, or chase a fugitive into a canyon, or venture into an ancient tomb and plunder its treasure for themselves. If the old heroes were mighty warriors and wizards of extraordinary renown, well, sellswords and hedge witches have enough skill to earn some coin.

It's a high-risk, high-reward lifestyle, but you've been saving your pennies for a few years now and you've finally managed to get the equipment you need to put your training to use. You've found a couple companions, as well: your friend Samanza, a brash, rough-and-tumble woman you met here in Murchen, and someone she brought to you as a potential recruit for this venture, a woodsman named Grigor. Together, you're calling yourselves The Sentries of Steel. It's a pretty good name, you think. Makes you sound like a hardened mercenary company without sounding too menacing, like you'll get run out of town when you introduce yourselves. Of course, you won't get run out of Murchen. You've lived here for the past few years, scrounging whatever you could after your parents died, and people know you and Samanza here. You'd have to screw up pretty bad to get kicked out of here! But other towns...well, that's a different question. Adventurers have only their reputation to trade on when they get to a new place, and not everyone likes armed strangers showing up suddenly on their doorstep.

Thinking about the risks of what you're about to do, you take a deep, steadying breath. Lots of adventurers do die in horrible ways...but the ones who live through the experience do tend to accumulate a lot of gold. Enough to retire, hopefully, to a secure estate in the country or a nice little townhouse in some city, somewhere, and live off your savings and investments. If you can just make it to 1,000 marks.

Your reverie is interrupted by a knock at the door of your small, dirt-floored little hovel. "Um, hello?" a female voice calls out. "I have dinner for Alex. Are you home?"

You get up and head to the door. That'll be your food - you have a standing order for dinner from the Hub of Grub, a (stupidly named, in your opinion) inn in Murchen that prides itself on delivery services for anyone in town. They're a little late today, but maybe something's wrong - that certainly doesn't sound like Boris, the surly man who usually brings your food.