jamieproctor.ca

It was the greatest show on earth.  It was the highest-stakes gambling history had ever seen.  It was the ruination of nations, the menace of all men, the last-ditch absolutely-desperate attempt by the greatest powers of human history to come together and solve a problem that had defeated all of them alone.

A tall serious man with tall serious hair climbed to a tall serious podium.  Six dozen translators watched him like hungry hawks.

He coughed.

He snorted. 

He spat, then cleared his throat.  “’Scuse me.  The bidding for the first Interintraglobal Proposal to Permanently Solve All Parking Issues is now open!”

Paddles flew.  Spittle sprayed.  Blood was shed. 

“Applesoft bids to replace the north pole with a giant helicopter that will fly cars around, instead of letting them clog the highways!” screamed some nerd in a t-shirt.  “Seven septillion dollars!  It’s the future”

“Exxon-Mobil-Standard-Nestle will drain the entire Atlantic for use as garage space!” hollered an emaciated and wan-faced old coot, driving his cane deep into the spine of the CEO in front of him.  “Imagine the amount of space that can be reclaimed in the suburbs!  A hundred billion trillion million dollars!”

“McDonalds will donate one out of every seven hundred pennies we make for one year towards funding solutions for individuated parkers in need of parking,” wheedled a sack of flesh in a half-sack suit.  “No charge…. Although we WILL be wanting tax rebates for our time and charity and effort.”

“I will pave the entire horizon of the Earth for one hundred dollars.”

That got people’s attention, and as sure as if a giant drain had opened up in the floor all other noise swirled away into nothing.

“How?” asked the auctioneer.

“The power and wonder of imagination,” said the bidder serenely.  He was an older man with an older man’s beard and a warm smile somewhere in there. 

“How much again?”

“One hundred dollars – in advance, if that’s alright.  Oh, plus expenses.”

“Sold!  To the old coot!”
“Constructioneer, if you please,” he corrected.

“Sold to the constructioneer coot!”
“Ah, much better.  ”

***

The one hundred dollars were crisp and clear and as freshly-made as a dewy daisy, and the constructioneer took them down the street to an orphanage and purchased six children at a nickel each.

“No bulk discount?” he asked. 

“Each of our children is a priceless little tootsie-angel in their own special way,” declared the manager.  “And we don’t do refunds either, so no bitching allowed.”

“No worries, no troubles, it’s fine.  C’mon kids, we’ve got a job to do!  Have any of you ever wanted to be construction workers?”
Feet were shuffled, eyes were averted, no hands were raised. 

“Perfect!”

***

It was a very simple procedure.

“Up and at ‘em!  Just a little hike!  You can be malnourished later, we’re almost there!  Last stretch!  Don’t lag too far behind, Suzy!”
“Stacey.”
“Sure!  C’mon!  C’mon!  C’mon!  We’re here!”

It was an unpretentious little hill at the edge of a modest little parking lot – wedged full of cars criss-cross-cranny-crammed atop one another, naturally.  The spring thaw had been unkind to it; and most of it was exposed sand, mud, and sad. 

“Alrighty.  Back to back, please.  Wait, you too, you two.  And you other two!  All of you!  Back to back to back to back to back to back now, chop chop!  There we go!  Now hold this in your left hands – your LEFT hands.  I don’t care if you’re a southpaw, Andre.”
“Why are we holding lumps of asphalt?  And it’s not Andrew, it’s And-”

“It’s fine!  Are you all ready?”
Vague mumbles.

“Good!  Are you all steady?”
Shrugs and nods.
“Great!  Are you set?”

Noncommittal noises.

“Now hold your pointer finger on your right hands across your eyes and block out the horizon in front of you GO.”

They did.  And the constructioneer chuckled warmly. 

“Excellent!  Now hold your asphalt that’s in your LEFT hands up behind your right fingers.”
They did.  And the constructioneer giggled happily. 

“Wonderful!  Now drop your right hands.”
They did.  And the constructioneer chortled merrily. 

“Beautiful!  Now drop your left hands.”

They did.   And the asphalt wasn’t in their hands anymore.  It was very, very, very, very, very far away. 

“And we’re done!” said the constructioneer.  And he laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed until his cheeks and his beard and his warm smile were all red as a cardinal’s crown.

***

Reconvening the delegates of the first Interintraglobal Proposal to Permanently Solve All Parking Issues took more time than expected.  For one thing, many of them had already gotten up to leave.  For another, every single axis surrounding the planet was now covered in pavement

“I have paved the horizon, thus circumferencising the planet with the aid of six nickel-priced children and their imaginations,” said the constructioneer proudly.  “Well ahead of time and very under-budget.  Please shower me with applause.”
The sound of vigorous clapping echoed throughout the vast halls.

“Alright that’s enough.  Now, my expenses: everything.”
“I’m sorry?” asked the auctioneer.

“Everything.”
“All the… money?”
“No, everything.  Everything ever.”

“But… but… you said that the children only costed you a nickel each!” exclaimed a vice-president with an unearthly wail.

“A nickel each for the children,” corrected the constructioneer, kindly but firmly.  “The imagination of a child is priceless.  And I will be reimbursed as such.  Really, I’m within my rights to demand this six times over.”

“We shan’t,” said a president. 

“We won’t,” said a prime minister.

“Nix,” said a premier.

“Oh yes you will,” said the constructioneer.  “After all, you only have a few minutes left.”
“I hardly think losing out on a little sunlight will snuff out the planet in a few minutes,” said the world’s most famous political cartoonist, with the world’s most derisive snort. 

“That won’t be the problem,” said the constructioneer.  “But you’d better hurry if you want a spot.”

And he smiled his big warm smile. 

Thirty seconds later every human being on earth with a driver’s license was dead.  Primary causes were road rage, pedestrian collision, parking-lot fistfights, and ferocious rear-enders. 

***

The constructioneer dug up the horizon’s pavement and put some tulips in.  He felt he owed it to the neighborhood. 

“I want to be a doctor,” said Julie.

“I want to be a writer,” said Tim.

“I want to be an economist,” said Larry.

“I want to find dinosaurs and giant apes and forgotten peoples and evidence of aliens landing on the planet in younger days,” said Montgomery. 

“Write something shorter in the text box that makes more sense,” said their teacher, unscrewing the lid on her third thermos of ‘tea’ that morning.

So Montgomery wrote ADVENTURER on his what-I-want-to-be sheet, and he received a B- for it. 

***

When Montgomery was seventeen, a passing hurricane kept his family grounded on vacation.  Into the storm shelters they all went, and as the wind whined and wailed and roared outside he gazed hungrily at the sheets of rain that tore and ate at the forests beyond the reach of the emergency lights. 

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I will find my dinosaur.”

“That’s nice,” said his mother.  “Now pass me the can-opener.”
“We’re all going to die,” said his father. 

And Montgomery was right and his father was wrong; for everyone lived until the very damp dawn of the next day, when Montgomery prowled the surf and the wreckage and the foliage for hours and hours and hours and at last – triumph of triumphs – he pulled aside a half-fallen tree and was eyeball to eyeball with the beady red-ringed and brown-eyed stare of a dinosaur, crouched protectively over its nest. 

“Hello!” he said.

“AIIIYK!” the seagull said.  And it bit him. 

***

When Montgomery was twenty-one, he spent his summer hitching illicit rides on cargo ships carrying containers of anything to anywhere for anyone.  It was cheap, even if it was a bit lonely and most of what he saw was empty blue. 

“Somewhere out there, or maybe in here,” he told the crew he negotiated and bribed and wheedled with, “is a giant ape, unknown to the world.”
“Yuh,” they said, counting the money.  “Yah.  Yep.  Uh-hm.  Yes.”

So Montgomery took this as permission and scanned the horizon with binoculars and prowled the decks with powerful microphones and tapped on every wall for secret compartments and poured over shipping manifests and once or twice cracked a container open for a quick peek inside. 

He found furniture.  He found timber.  He found metals.  He found plastic shaped into funny little animals.  He found more water than he could ever have imagined in a million lifetimes.  And at last, as he stumbled back to his berth exhausted and empty-handed, he pulled open the door and there before him, rising up to the ceiling and staring back at him with the calm gaze of those who have every right to exist, was a great hairy ape the magnitude of which he’d never seen; stooped, broad-shouldered, heavy of gut and impossibly bipedal. 

“Gracious god,” said Montgomery.

“Wrong room,” said the able-seaman, and slugged him amidships.

***

When Montgomery was thirty-six he spent the last of his grant on a mad dash to the wilds of Papua New Guinea, where he annoyed many people by talking to them very loudly and slowly instead of using any form of interpretation.  This approach, the final step of his self-published ‘Montgomery Method,’ did not produce results. 

“I was so sure,” he sighed, “that it was maybe this time.  Oh well, perhaps the next.”

So Montgomery went home on an economy flight that stopped over for sixty hours in a place called Burnside, where he was turfed out to make his own way for the time being.

“Is there a hotel you could recommend?” he asked the flight attendant.

“Eh,” she replied. 

From street to street he wandered, but the only places he could find were murderously wealthy, with entire lobbies and carpets designed entirely to warn prospective guests of the price ranges at work within their walls. 

“Needs must,” he muttered.  He thought far back to his childhood, and the wise things his mother and father had taught him.  He girded his loins.  He consulted a map.  He even – god forbid – asked directions.

And so it was that he found a hidden place unseen by human eyes in many years, cobwebbed, abandoned, and forgotten.  A place to rest, and more besides.  This was what he had sought and failed to find in New Guinea – in Egypt, in the Andes, in the Rockies, among the shallow waters of Greece and in the burning deserts of central Australia. 

Montgomery’s subsequent paper, On the Rise and Fall of the Burnside YMCA: an Archaeological Microstudy of a Vanished People, was surprisingly well-received.  He still got in a lot of trouble about the grant money, though. 

***

When Montgomery was fifty-five, he spoke with conspiracy theorists and alternate historians and people with little divining rods.  He read self-published books.  He analyzed ancient folktales.  He read the interpretations of old petroglyphs, and then reinterpretations of those, and reinterpretations of THOSE. 

He also looked at many blurry photos of things in the sky that looked like trashcan lids.

Finally he left his home without notice in the dead of summer and stepped off the plane into a flat dry heat that smelt like burnt lightning.  He hired a car, he hired a driver, and they slept in shifts as they went for miles and miles and miles off the road, into the dust and the crags of the badlands, into sunlight so hard it hurt. 

After a week they found nothing and turned around and as Montgomery stepped out of the car with a full bladder, town nearly back in sight, his urine washed the dust from an innocuous-looking stone and revealed something that he’d been looking for without knowing for half a lifetime. 

The meteorite was small and crushed and old, very old.  And of course it was contaminated by lots and lots of human DNA.  But it was still laden with little funny things that could’ve been maybe trace fossils left by bacteria or maybe traces of extraterrestrial sugars or maybe not, and that stirred up the whole damned panspermia debate in astronomy all the hell over again. 

***

When Montgomery was seventy-seven, one of his organs protested unexpectedly and took the rest of him on a short and eventful if well-trodden journey, and he entered the most mysterious land of all.  His funeral was a little muddled – which his family agreed he would’ve wanted – and the burial happened more by luck than design.  In the milling mob, some few of his old classmates found each other.

“Bit of a surprise,” said Julie.

“Him going first?” asked Tim.

“No, it taking so long.”

“Well, he got plenty of exercise,” said Larry. 

“Not much of that for the rest of us – least of all an economist,” said Julie.  “How’d you stay so trim?”

“Oh, I gave up on that after undergrad.  Went into forestry.  I climbed more than I walked for thirty years.  At least a doctor gets to sit still now and then, eh?”
“Flunked medical school, got into politics, still a sitting senator,” said Julie.  “But yes, I do get to sit all I like.  Sometimes more than I’d like.”
“I should be writing this down,” said Tim. 

“What, you going to use us as material?”
“No, no, as affirmations.  Had a nervous breakdown halfway through my second novel, got into psych work.  Don’t have the biggest degree but it helps the community, you know?”

“Yeah,” said Julie.

“Yeah,” said Larry.  “Never know where life’ll take you, huh?”

“Seems so,” said Tim.

They watched the funeral some more.  One of Montgomery’s grandchildren had found the headstone and was trying to get it to stand up straight as two aunts directed him. 

“You know,” said Tim, “I have the feeling it all mostly worked out for him like he planned.”
“Yeah,” said Larry.

“Yeah,” said Julie.  “Do you think HE knew?”
“Oh who the hell could say for sure,” said Tim. 

The tombstone fell over again.

“Lunch?” asked Larry. 

“They hired a food truck,” said Tim.
“Good,” said Julie.  “My feet hurt.  Let’s go for it.”

So they did. 

Evening’s meal was done and the company-bench had been cleaned and put away in the hall.  The children’s dormitory had been sullenly silent for an hour now.  The last of the surly-lynxes had grumbled themselves to sleep in their dens.  And every single adult was inside and locked up tight and trying to sleep because if anything bad happened they didn’t want to see it coming.

Except for Shorr, the storyteller.  Because she’d woken up a few hours ago, had evening’s meal as her first, and was wandering to the edge of the holdfast, looking for her treestump.

There were several to choose from, but she played favourites.  And maybe it was a little fussy of her to put stock in such things when the light was almost gone from the edges of the hilltops, but her job was stressful and such things that comforted her were things that she insisted on doing.  If they were good for her and harmed nobody, they were good for everybody.  So said her mind. 

That said, she hoped she found that stump soon.  It was getting dark and oh ow ow ow there it was.  Her toe resented her for that.  Well, the rest of her would appreciate its sacrifice.  And none too soon; there was more dark than sky now. 

Shorr sat down on her stump, which by now was as polished and gleaming as if her behind were the world’s softest velvet.  Time has a way of smoothing things like that.  She knocked out her pipe on her boot and she lit it and stared at it and then put it out.  She’d promised her daughter she’d stop. 

So instead of smoking she sighed, and scratched herself, and into the gathering, thickening, smothering dusk she spoke stories. 

She told the tale of Toll the Gecko and the wind calmed.

She told the tale of Little Gret and the bushes ceased whispering.

She told the tale of the Four Brothers and Three Sisters and the glint of light-on-tooth just beyond the edge of sight ducked backwards, slow but sure.

And then she told the tale of the Lost Sun and how the Moon saved her, and the sky was lightening itself already, and her throat was sore, and she was alone in that little shallow valley while everyone else was asleep. 

Shorr’s throat reminded her of her pipe, which reminded her of her promise to her daughter.  So she didn’t smoke, but went and sat by the well and drank it down, down, down instead, cool and crisp.  And she drank more, because her throat was still sore, and a little extra, because it was even worse now, and by the time her daughter was up (first from the children’s dormitory and indeed the whole holdfast to wake, as usual) Shorr was on the ground, coughing and wheezing and making noises that were probably curses but were awful jumbled and came out as mostly-snorts. 

***

A little wheezer was nothing to a child.  To an adult that had gotten it before, less than nothing.  Even an elder who’d escaped the bug for all their years would be at most abed for a few days. 

Shorr had never had it before, but she was strong and healthy and so merely lost her voice for a few evenings, which would be long enough to see the holdfast torn down to shreds and shards and stones. 

Most of them dealt with this by not thinking about it, the oldest solution.  But four of them didn’t have that luxury, so they gathered in the cozy comfort of the decisions-cabinet (one window wide open, to catch the breeze) and drank tea and argued while Shorr dozed in the corner.  It was midday, and she was well tuckered. 

“Troublesome,” said Killy, the firmsmith.  She tapped her giant scarred fists together in the little pat-pat-pat that meant she was thinking.  “Maybe if Nnon sang for the night instead?”
“No,” said Nnon, the singer, and she packed a lot of scorn into that syllable.  “Don’t be dopey; they can’t stand me.  Song is for the songbirds, and those are for the daytime.  Perhaps Shorr could be given emergency medicines?”

“Absolutely not,” said Pruut, the bloodfixer.  “Look at how limp and listless her face is.  I’d have to pack her full to the gills with fillypowder to wake her throat up enough to rasp, and then she’d be sleeping THAT off for half a week.  Borrowing from Petra to pay Polly won’t do us any good.  How about her apprentice?”
“Oh no,” said Killy.

“Definitely not!” said Nnon.

“Might as well give it a try,” said Grar, the charcoal-cutter. 

The others grumbled at that, but it was Grar’s turn to hold the Myturn stick and so they agreed that this was more or less a fair gamble.  Besides, it wasn’t like there were any other ideas coming.   

***

Fli was Shorr’s apprentice in storytelling.  She had a lovely smooth voice that she could make a tree blush, a calming presence, and a firm, reassuring presence.  And she climbed up a tree and refused to come back down. 

“Get down here,” said Pruut.  Besides her, Killy gave the tree another shake.  No good; Fli also had a grip like a barnacle. 

“I shall not,” said Fli politely. 

“Your teacher, your family, your friends, and your fellows have all agreed on this and think you can do it,” said Killy. 

“Nothin’ doin’,” said Fli serenely.

“If you don’t get down here,” said Nnon, packing her voice full of civic pride and determination, “the entire holdfast will end up torn to bits.”
“Maybe they should climb trees too.”

“Get me my sawblades,” said Grar.

“Oh, FINE,” said Fli in bad grace, and down she came. 

“Good,” they all agreed.  And that was just fine until evening’s meal was over and someone asked the question ‘where’s Fli?’ and nobody could answer it. 

“Let’s get her,” said Grar.
“We can look for her or we can find trees for everyone,” said Pruut. 

So they found trees for everyone, and that took a long time they didn’t have, so they were all too busy to notice when Shorr’s daughter walked down to the holdfast’s edge. 

***

Shorr’s daughter walked the path much less surely than her mother, but also more quickly.  Short legs stride fast. 

She took the longest and windingest way possible down to where the ferns grew and the waterfalls grew quiet and plunked down on her mother’s stump, which she recognized from being shown and also because it was as smooth and seamless as a marble from overuse. 

And she said “hi.”

Nothing said hi back.  Darkness does not say ‘hi.’  But there was heightened attention paid, just past eyesight. 

“I’m five years old,” she told the darkness.

The grass breathed in and out, slow and low and steady. 

“Wanna hear a story?  Mom told me stories.  I like the one about the fish.  See, there’s this big fish.  It’s the biggest fish, and it eats anything it wants, and everyone was frightened of it, but then it ate so much it couldn’t fit in the water anymore and the sun baked it and and it stopped working totally and then it was dead.”

The wind rose, dropped, dipped and twirled, then settled into a state of confusion. 

“And she told me about the rabbit-person.  And what the rabbit-person did for breakfast.  See the rabbit person was hungry but was lazy and the rabbit person told her family she was sick and they all brought her food and she ate all of it until they had no food so then then they brought her hot peppers and she ate them and they said it was medicine and they brought her live bugs and said they were medicine and they brought her a biiiiiiiig rock and said it was medicine and she swallowed it and you know what happened?  It stuck.  It stuck in her butt.  Now rabbits have heavy butts and that’s why their back legs are so big and strong.”

Shorr’s daughter frowned for an instant.  “Mom always tells me the stories about people eating too much.  I’ve heard them too many times.”

The shadows lightened a little.  Maybe. 

“Wanna see what I found in my nose?  Here, look.  Look.”
The wind came back, fierce and quick. 

“Okay!  Okay!  Stop it.  Stop!  Don’t DO that.  You know, you know that one time the wind didn’t ever stop blowing?  It did that.  Back in the old days it blew all the time and there was no earth, or water, or animals, or plants, just big bugs with big bug wings.  And they flew everywhere.  But the mosquito queen said she could outwail it, since she was the biggest bug, and she tried so hard with her wings that it broke the wind into little pieces and everything fell down to the ground.  But it shriveled her up.  That’s why mosquitos are so small, and why you should let them have a little blood.  I don’t like that.  Mom says it’s okay to swat them after the first one.  The first one gets blood for being polite.  Are you polite?  Mom says I need to be more polite.  She always tells me the stories about people being polite too.”
Something settled in the brush, far away yet closer than it should be. 

“Okay your turn.  I said your turn.  Come on, I told you three stories in a row.  It’s your turn now.  That’s only fair, right?  Mom always tells me the stories about people being fair too.  Like the story about the old flatsmith with the crooked myturn stick, that always came rolling back to her whenever she made a decision, so it was always her turn even if everyone else watched the stick very carefully.  So she got to do anything she wanted and nobody could do anything they wanted, until her apprentice took a rock, and she reversed the crook in the stick, so no matter what she did it wouldn’t come to her and it rolled away and everyone made decisions one after another except her.  But they didn’t do anything to her, they just made everyone else happy and that made her mad.  I don’t know why that made her mad.  Are you mad?  I don’t think so.  Can you tell me a story?  It’s fair.  Come on, be fair.  It’s fair.  Come on. Come ooooon.”
It was fair. 

So it told her a story. 

***

There was rushing water, and breezes in branches, and pebbles in sand, and bright eyes and brighter teeth, and the sort of urgent, thoughtless patience that formed something more complicated than an imagination. 

***

“Oh,” said Shorr’s daughter.  Except it was more of an exhalation, because syllables seemed too clumsy and indirect for this conversation. 

And she listened.  And she talked back, and in what way she wasn’t sure.

Then it was later and she was gently being picked up by someone and put in her bed even though it was just getting bright out. 

***

Fli was up in a tree, but a different one.  She came down with much protest until someone told her a child without a name had done her job for her, then she came down with much muttering until Killy picked her up and put her in the decision cabinet with Shorr for the rest of the morning.  She was a lot quieter after that. 

Shorr, by contrast, had her voice back by that evening.  She brought her daughter with her, and let her choose the stump, and sat there and for the first time in years she didn’t say a thing all night. 

It was interesting.  And a lot easier on the voice too.  So she brought Pruut, and Pruut brought Killy and Grar, and Nnon brought herself, and well, by then everyone knew about it.  

So everyone came down for the evenings, and some of them stayed till sunup and some of them went to bed early.  Who can say how much anyone learned.

But they all understood one another better.  And that’s important too. 

It’s a pleasure to meet you.

Feeling’s mutual!  Thank you so much for inviting me for this chat today.

You’re a busy institution; I wasn’t sure you’d have time for this. 

Nonsense!  I haven’t been asked to chat in ages and ages and AGES.  Everyone just wants to kick in the door and get it done, you know?  Happy to have a conversation for once.  Love it.

Then let’s get started, shall we?  Introduce yourself, please.

Hello!  I’m the Plundered Tower on the Edge of Darkness, and I’m a dungeon! 

Now when you say ‘dungeon,’ this brings to mind a wide array of possible meanings.  Please describe which of them you feel identify with personally, if that’s no trouble.

Certainly!  I’m not a dungeon in the traditional sense of being a jail you throw prisoners into – although I certainly contain a few of those, let me tell you!  Rather, I am a dungeon as the place of excitement and intrigue and reward and mystery, existing just one possibly-perilous journey away from a conveniently homely settlement.  More specifically, I’m an overgrown and ruined watchtower some six stories high (and my lesser outbuildings clustered around my base, which are in greater disrepair than myself) left to moulder for centuries, signifying that this place was once considered ‘civilized’ and other such concepts and has now been overcome by the forces of entropy and barbarism.  I’m an ironic mirror held up to the follies of empire – and as such, a subtle advocate for its benefits and a warning against its enemies!  Devious, aren’t I?

Indeed.  What are those enemies?  Are they represented within you?

Oh, of course – I have a wide variety of inhabitants, all of them symbolically rich.  For example, my gatehouse is full of gigantic rats and there’s a huge centipede in my belfry.

Ick.

Oh yes, that revulsion is the entire point!  See, these are household vermin… but on a scale fit for a nation!  My infestation with outsized pests represents the disrepair that the household of humanity has fallen into in my immediate vicinity, and thus expunging them through violence is transformed from the simple killing of animals into a heroic deed akin to cleansing a poorly-maintained house for the benefits of its hapless inhabitants.  A blade-as-a-broom, you could say.

That doesn’t sound like quite the kind of heroism most would sign up for.

Well of course – that’s why it’s all symbolic, to suck people in.  It’s like my biological metaphors for societal outgroups.

Pardon?
I call them BMSOs!  It sounds cute, and it’s a lot simpler than remembering what the hell they’re called.  Kobolds, goblins, trolls, apemen, lizard people, troglodytes, cannibals, gnolls, orcs, hobgoblins, goatmen…nobody can keep all that straight!  And most of them are basically the same anyways.  They’re really just dehumanized embodiments of those that fall outside the boundaries of the society represented by both my original state and the humble little hamlets that adventuring groups come from.  Their bizarre but ultimately superficial quirks hide this ugly symbolic reality behind a façade of manly slaughter and pulp.

What kind of superficial quirks?

Well, there’s a few kinds.  There’s the trivially obvious stuff, like the visually bizarre, biologically gross, and standard slurs – stuff like making them ugly and bestial and caricaturized and making it clear they’re all stupid and filthy and live only to destroy.  That’s easy, and the physical aspects can be used as little motifs to make killing them interesting – orcs having light-sensitive eyes, for instance, not only marks them as disturbing and antithetical to diurnal hominids but also rewards clever adventurers for using terrain, time of day, and careful use of supplies against them!  That’s the sort of shtick that gets people invested – and that kind of thing can be useful in ANY monster, not just the BMSOs.  It can get really complicated with the big ones.

Give me some examples of those – do you have any inside you?

Oh yes; every dungeon needs a big showy finish, or at the very least a motherlode where the danger and potential for reward meets a fever pitch.  That’s where you put your showstoppers.  I’ve got two, an evil wizard and a juvenile dragon.

Which is your favourite?
Oh gosh that’s always such an unfair question – I love them both, of course!  But in different ways, you know?  An evil wizard is like French fries: they’re welcome EVERYWHERE, no matter what.  Cave in a hillside?  Evil wizard, mixing foul potions.  Tower on a cloud?  Evil wizard, besetting the countryside with magical storms.  Magical castle inside a glass orb in a dungeon embedded beneath the continental crust?  Evil wizard trying to erase the concept of free will and become a god and also maybe cross-breeding an owl and a bear.  So versatile, so simple – the concept of an old guy who can command and the universe obeys him, wrapping up the concepts of knowledge and social hierarchy in a single robed crazy bearded scrawny man.  Mine’s a necromancer, I think.  He’s raised the captain from his crypt underneath the tower as a wight-lord, and most of the dead guards from the bonfire-grave as horrible cinderwraiths.  Bless his crooked nose and cracked heart. 

And the dragon?

Well, they’re classic.  Can’t have a dungeon without a dragon – some big ugly monster that loves treasure is a MUST, and if it’s a literal dragon that’s just all the better, the bester!  Also they’re sort of fun because they embody a societal vice but externalize it as originating from OUTSIDE the society.  See, a dragon’s about lustful greed, wrath, pride, and usually a good pinch or three of sloth – but it lives by itself in a cave and indulges all of those just by existing,, which it then inflicts upon the countryside.  All at once it warns you that These Things Are Bad but tells you that their REAL cause is people like you becoming akin to stuff from Far Away, rather than any inherent flaws within your home or town or kingdom or whatever.  And of course they breathe weird nonsense.  Mine’s a juvenile mauve drake, so it spits flans. 

That sounds delicious.

Oh no, they’re molten flans.  Six hundred degrees inside, animate, try to ooze inside your orifices.  There’s a surprising amount of monsters named after foods.

Is there any particular reason for that?
Oh, some.  But not all.

You’ve lost me.

There’s lots and lots of detail within me, but it’s sort of selective and fixated on particular KINDS of information.  Like, I can tell you that molten flans were created by an anonymous mad wizard, and I can tell you that you can find one to six of them 20% of the time if you linger in my ruined kitchen.  But I can’t tell why the hell they’re called flans.  Similarly, I can tell you there’s a tribe of 32 BMSOs lurking in my old stables, where they build crude altars of horse bones to worship my mauve drake whenever they see it fly out to prey upon the cattle of the villagers, and I can tell you they have 2 shamans and 1 chieftain with a magical axe and fourteen women which are noncombatants for some reason and eight young which frankly are just bait to rationalize child-killing as morally and biologically logical, and that their altars contain a single rough-cut agate apiece worth a specific monetary value (more if it’s cut properly; gets people invested in their treasure beyond just looting it).  But I can’t tell you why they’re worshipping the dragon, or what’s led them to take up residence here specifically, or why they’re so fixated on kidnapping and sacrificing villagers every full moon.  The traps are where it REALLY sinks in: I’ve got a secret door behind a bookcase in the captain’s quarters that leads to a secret passage that has another secret door in it (press the discoloured flagstone three times) that leads to a spiked pit and if you pull the eighth spike in it a secret door opens in the pit’s wall to a treasure chest.  The treasure is a cursed necklace.  I have no idea why any of that makes sense. 

I see.  Speaking of treasure, you seem to have an awful lot of it for a long-ruined tower.

Oh, absolutely.  Treasure goes where danger goes, so that sort of thing just happens – basically every inhabitant I’ve got is a magpie, inadvertently or deliberately.  The drake is greedy and hoards anything shiny; the wizard uses obscure and obscenely lavish implements in his blasphemous rites; the BMSOs are festooned with crude trinkets from their victims despite having no concept of money; my graves are filled with valuable pieces of armour and coin just ripe for robbing.  Hell, even my weathervane has an emerald stuffed in the eye of the manticore that decorates it.  Sometimes there’s an explanation, sometimes it’s just…there.  The explanation for each given item of value is nice if it’s there, but it’s not as important as the underlying assumption at work: that places outside your home are dangerous but full of value and that those that dwell there either don’t recognize it or are morally unfit to be its custodians or have stolen it from the deserving folk who are just like you.  Or all three.  Usually it’s all three.  Anyways the important part is that people come to me seeking violence and financial gain. 

And what do they do when they’re done?
Wander off, usually.  That’s the thing about adventuring: nobody really PLANS to retire; they just keep going until they just lose interest.  I’ve seen a lot of folks loot me top to bottom before going home, swearing they’ve got to do this again next week, then never ever coming back.  But there’s always some oddballs that get addicted.  They don’t come back again, though.  They usually just move on to other dungeons.  Fine by me; that’s when I get refilled. 

Are you acquainted with these ‘other dungeons’?  How do you get along with them?

Oh yes and it depends, respectively.  I’m what you call a ‘starter dungeon.’  Just a little bit of danger from a little bit of nasty a little ways away from a little town that’s facing a little bit of a problem from it, filled with a little bit of treasure. 

That’s a lot of diminutives.

It is, but I am!  And I like that, and I take pride in it.  No matter who you are, everyone’s been in a starter dungeon.  Nobody moves on to the Doom-Mines of Far Low Deep Kruuk without passing through me first and finding the ancient rubric in the wizard’s chambers that leads you to its hidden back entrance.  And they know it, and they appreciate it!  Me and Doom-Mines, we’re like THAT, you know?  Just like THAT.  Tight as thieves.  Specifically, thieves stuck inside a magical chest of devouring teeth. 

Are there any other starter dungeons near you?

No.  Not really.  I mean, not that it’s worth knowing.  The Forest of Fruundy doesn’t count.  Is it a dungeon if it isn’t a series of discrete rooms, I ask you?  You know what that place is?  A bunch of random nonsense stapled together with no organization.  Anyone could go anywhere in there and just do ANYTHING.  No rhyme no reason no sense no ORDER.  Stay the hell away from that place.  UGH.

Well, thank you for-

I think it has elves.  ELVES.  In a FOREST.  There’s traditional and there’s unimaginative and tell you what I don’t NEED to tell you what THAT is. 

-spending some time so generously with us today-

And a UNICORN.  What good is a unicorn?  They won’t fight you unless you’re a jackass.  The kind of jackass we don’t encourage, at least.

…Is there anything you’d like to say to all the prospective adventurers out there?

Not even any good treasure on ‘em.  Huh?  Oh.  Yes.  Live nobly, fight constantly, loot everything, and bring your friends.  And tell them to bring theirs too.  Always room for more.

Thank you.

Thank YOU.  Mind the trapdoors on the way out.  They’re under the flesh-eating fungus.