Dungeon Crawl: A Grimdark Dark Fantasy Novel of Monsters, Mercenaries, and One Last Contract

Roll for initiative.The Seven-Year War is won. The reward is one last contract: follow the dead warlord's trail into the Whispering Veil and take back the crystal he stole - the one holding the captain's daughter's soul.The trail ends at the Maw of Ages. The door is already open.THE PARTY: A captain with a debt. A shield-sergeant who believes in doctrine. A priest the church threw away. A blood-witch the dark respects. A thief who opened the Celestial Vault and took nothing. A ranger who takes everything.THE DUNGEON: Six levels, and every one of them is an organ.THE SKIN - Entry halls with a pulse. Constructs grown from the last fifty men who tried this. The corridors are warm. They shouldn't be.THE GULLET - Flood channels on a schedule. The schedule changes when it learns your pace.THE BONEFIELDS - Ten thousand sarcophagi. The wards face inward. Do the math before you wake them.THE VITALS - A labyrinth that counterfeits your trail marks in your own handwriting. Your dead are down here. They've been restored. That's not a mercy.THE SPINE - A mile-deep stair past shelves of harvested souls. Some of them know your names.THE HEART - The thing you killed in the forest, waiting at the bottom, patient as an appointment. And beneath the floor: the reason all of this exists.WANDERING MONSTER: The Gelatinous Cube. It cannot be killed, bribed, outrun, or reasoned with. It does not kill. It consumes. It is never in a hurry. It has all the time in the world.WARNING: The dungeon learns.A classic Dungeons & Dragons style adventure module play through presented as a fully realized novelization.