jamieproctor.ca

Business

>Experimental NORPUL Drill Project Discovers Giant Man Wrestling a Snake on a Boat Underground

South African-based oil firm NORPUL’s latest test drilling has uncovered something more unusual than a hoped-for new oil field: a vast river stretching far beneath the surface of the earth containing a giant man wrestling a snake on a boat.

“This isn’t exactly what we were expecting, I’ll admit,” said Tychus Ooley, 52, the company’s CFO. “For one thing the river is water rather than oil, and for another the man and snake both appear to be of unreasonable size. But after the third borehole turned up the same thing, we had to admit that they do both seem to be real and down there, and quite active.”

Whether or not this will placate NORPUL investors hoping for a surprise windfall in the third quarter remains to be seen; for now, everyone’s equally in the dark.

CORRECTION: it has been brought to this publication’s attention that the giant man and snake are not in the dark, as the boat is aflame with radiance.

Opinion

>The Giant Man Wrestling a Snake on a Boat Underground is a Unique Opportunity

I’ve been around the block a few times – in the past decade alone I’ve worn the hats of snake-wrangler, independent surgical supplies contractor, volunteer alderman, homesteader, scholar of the law, author of eighty books, owner of my own publishing house, manufacturer of the world’s only ‘do-it-from-scratch’ printing press, bitcoin rancher, and self-taught AI philosopher – and I think I’m more than qualified to say this: the giant man wrestling a snake on a boat underground has the potential to change everything. He’s not just the past, he’s also the future. We need to invest in him immediately. You can do that by buying as many NORPUL shares as you can like a good little sheep, or you can forge your own path: where there’s one the giant man wrestling a snake on a boat underground, there have to be more – it’s statistically guaranteed. This morning I put out a patent for the world’s first solo-operated giant man wrestling a snake on a boat underground detector, drilling, and excavator. There’s a whole new field of untapped potential beneath our feet, and the government hasn’t yet had a chance to legislate the future out of it. Phone me to learn more.

Broth Allen is an independent business-owner, landlord, political commentator, investment expert and free-thinker who has run for mayor sixteen times.

News

> NORPUL ‘Sun-Road’ Exploration Draws Criticism

Allegations have been made raising concerns that NORPUL’s continued drilling into the ‘Sun-Road’ cavern – the titanic river stretching from one side of the planet to the other containing the giant man wrestling a snake on a boat discovered earlier this year – may be motivated by the desire to acquire the giant man’s possessions, an act several legal experts imply could be construed as illegal under some circumstances.

“It’s clearly his giant, radiant, bejeweled and gilded boat,” said Harvey Foschlorps, 46, professor emeritus of law. “Unless it belongs to the snake. But that seems unlikely. In either case, it’s preowned and not abandoned. Attempting to remove the immense wealth coating it would constitute a crime by any reasonable definition of the term.”

NORPUL’s legal team have issued a comprehensive reply to their critics as of this morning, stating that their intentions within the ‘Sun-Road’ are purely exploratory in nature, advance the cause of science, are motivated by the humanitarian imperative to make sure the giant man is not in physical distress or danger, and are taking place in a realm far below the legal jurisdiction of all nations that rest atop the earth’s crust.

Science

> NORPUL Stocks Soar Following Analysis of ‘Sun-Barque’ Samples

Further analysis of scientific specimens gathered from the subterranean boat inhabited by the giant man wrestling a snake has confirmed that the vessel is not merely coated with gold, but 25-karat gold.

“It turns out there’s a purity beyond one hundred percent,” confirmed Doctor Dwaven Deebles, 39, NORPUL’s chief scientific advisor, “and it’s all down there. Exciting stuff.”

Gold wasn’t the only discovery of merit made.

“The ‘jewels’ coating the boat appear to in fact be self-contained, faceted chunks of plasma whose internal temperature ranges from five to fifteen million Kelvin,” continued Dr. Deebles. “That’s pretty hot!”

When asked for potential applications of a source of extreme heat that violates all known laws of thermodynamics and physics, Dr. Deebles halted the interview pending consultation with NORPUL’s board of directors.

Opinion

>The Giant Man Wrestling a Snake on a Boat Underground is a Parasite Upon the Greater Wealth of Humanity

Gold is the king of the metals; the material manifestation of all humanity desires; and the irreplaceable and necessary yardsticks that allows mankind to determine the value of all other things in existence. It’s finite in quantity, and inevitably accumulates in the grasp of those with the wit and skill and greatness to master it. The giant man wrestling a snake on a boat underground has none of those things – he is clearly unconcerned with any worldly matters save his pseudo-solipsistic insistence on serpentine gymnastics – and is selfishly inhibiting the circulation of humanity’s vital essence within the world-spirit of the economy. As he sees his possessions as worthless, we are not required to indulge him in educating him otherwise, quod erat demonstrandum. Any claims of so-called ‘looting’ of his subterranean barge are absurd qua absurd, ipso facto not theft presto.

To those who would argue otherwise, I have but two words: cee lavee.

Ronc Toole is a political independent and the only member of his graduating class with great enough foresight to invest in gold rather than wasting his time on degrees.

Entertainment

> Giant Man Wrestling a Snake on a Boat Underground Gets a Makeover

Ouch! It seems even a multi-millennia-long workout plan doesn’t protect you from the carelessness of strangers – everyone’s favorite multi-story hunk, the giant man wrestling a snake on a boat underground, has been spotted sporting a nasty shiner after a fancy-pants new Barque Retrieval Vehicle swung a little too low today while harvesting and popped him right in the left eyesocket, swelling the poor little thing shut tighter than Harmonica Lippz’s Oscar dress! Still, some people can make anything look good; in our opinion, more purple just highlights his strong cheekbones. And a good thing too, because now it looks like the snake has really wrapped him up good on that side. Stay strong, buddy!

Local Events 

>Sun Fails to Rise

Residents in the East Ward today were surprised to see that despite low cloud conditions and minimal light pollution, the sun did not rise, causing consternation among many.

“Frankly, that’s unusual,” said Erst Polt, 73. “I can’t remember the last time that happened, and I can remember quite a bit.”

Others interviewed were less concerned.

“If you ask me, the sun has been lazy for years now,” said Finnicus Mince, 62. “Nobody shows up on time to work anymore, and when they do, they’re rude and don’t listen to you.”

“I’m pretty sure most people think the sun’s supposed to rise every day,” said Troncisco Wisp, 36, “but if you do your own research it checks out. Eclipses and UFOs and chemtrails and stuff happen all the time. I asked ChatGPT and it says the sun’ll come back tomorrow.”

As of noon, the sun remains absent.

Life

>Today’s Horoscopes

Sorry – no horoscope today! There’s a really big snake filling most of the sky right now, so even though there’s no sun and all the stars are (presumably) out we can’t see a danged thing to predict! Instead, we wish all our readers a safe and happy Tuesday – no matter what signs they may fall under!

Business

>NORPUL CEO Announces New ‘rent-a-sun’ Subscription Model

“As the sun is now gone, it falls upon us to provide affordable and high-quality sunshine for all, through the dispersal of the jewels of the sun-barque – once owned by the late giant man wrestling a snake on a boat underground – by the most equitable and fair means available,” announced Florn Gronch, 55, owner and founder of NORPUL. “Bidding will start at noon tomorrow, opening minimum of one trillion.”
When asked what would become of those countries unable to purchase access to sunlight, Mr. Gronch explained that they would perish in the dark due to their phrenological shortcomings, a statement that has been criticized as controversial and potentially unscientific by some experts.

NORPUL stocks are expected to rise tomorrow morning.

Resource Evaluation: Star System MW-28PBD-3, ‘Dweedle’

Introduction

Star system codename Dweedle contains nine planets of discernable interest, along with significant quantities of planetoids, planetids, planetesimals, and planeters, but no planeterns. The following is an overview of Dweedle’s star and planets in terms of atypical or noteworthy features as they pertain to pursuing avenues of resource exploitation.

Description

Dweedle ‘S0L’

A modest yellow dwarf star inhabited by a typical array of hyperpyrophiliac superprocesses running within the star’s core. They have made no objections to our explorations in standard supralegal symbolism or otherwise, as is – again – typical. Aside from any long-scope hyperspatial turbation emitted by their activities, they might as well not exist.

Output is typical in all spectrums, from visible to invisible to susceptible. No trace of ‘star blight’ in corona. Vaccination against abstraction is up to date.

Dweedle-1 ‘M ERC7’

A small rocky planet immersed in the perpetual center of a Twainsmith-style spatial fold approximately 1.5 kiloeons in timebreadth. This is most easily explicable as the planet having been transposed into its current near-star and deeply inhospitable orbit by a Main Long ‘Watchmaker’ type astellar entity as some sort of experiment/prank/punishment/self-martyrdom/other. Judging from the flavour of the suturing this appears to have happened at least sixteen million lightyears away and seven billion years in the future, so there is no present cause for alarm or mediation.

In its current state it would be a modest fit for stellar extraction dockyards, provided the facilities were buffered against both extreme temperatures and metaphysical ‘doom cramps.’

Dweedle-2 ‘V N05’

A middling rocky planet possessing a superheavy atmosphere after suffering billions of years of drive-by antisiphoning operations by vacuum traffickers looking to skim a little extra off the top of their paycheques, as can be transparently verified by the most cursory of research into local shipping records and law bleepers. Fossil and temporal evidence suggests a single native species consisting of one autochthonous entity that was driven to extinction one billion years ago after its bulk circumvented the planet and it attempted to eat itself.

The cleanup to make anything worthwhile here would cost more than any potential profit. A dump it has become, a dump it will remain. At least the pressure and temperature will do the work for you.

Dweedle-3 ‘arth’

A middling rocky planet covered in volatile hydrogen dioxide whose unstable crust and erosive atmosphere are matched by its preposterously rickety local life, which have clogged all of Dweedle’s intra-system communications frequencies, bands, wavelengths, and tripfonts of grunge-grade or lower with useless drivel.

There is absolutely nothing here of any value. Luckily the chance of sporogenesis appears extremely low.

Dweedle-4 ‘M4 RS’

A modest rocky planet with pleasantly red surface and a light carbon dioxide atmosphere. The surface shows subcrustal canalization and buried jungles carved from rust, indicating past ‘doodling’ by hyperdimensional rubberneckers with access to basic retrocasuality engines and too much nontime on their parahands.

The near-ephemeral atmosphere provides high annual radfall, which would make this an excellent place for growing cheap and bountiful tumorous-qualia infrastructure, as long as you don’t mind working with biocode and exporting carbon all day.

Dweedle-5 ‘J0V E’

A large gas planet – the largest in Dweedle – currently in the throes of a multi-million year ‘civic disturbance’ (a war by any other name) between the north and south poles of its magnetic field using ever-advancing methods of causing maximum entropic termination to the enemy, the latest of which appears to be using the larger of the planet’s moons as staging grounds. The most prominent casualty of this beyond the escalatingly-absurd width of the planet’s magnetosphere is a multicentury-long ‘blood storm’ marking the exponentially-increasing spread of an Absolute Kill Zone which will reach the core and detonate the entire planet within the next thousand years, entirely saturating Dweedle with magnetoid querks and antipathic vibes fatal to most conventionally physics-based objects, concepts, and forces.

A diplomatic solution would be costly and probably impossible. A duplicitous solution only barely less so.

Dweedle-6 ‘S4T R N mk II’

A large gas ‘planet’ that has in historic time taken the place of the preceding (smaller, ice planet) S4T R N by infesting its core with intergalactic missile-spores, hollowing it out from the inside using an abrasive and rotational digestive system , and exploding the last remnants of its host outwards in a gory ring of ice shrapnel that now orbits its slayer’s gas corpus. It is currently sleeping off its meal and is projected to be in a snacking mood in about two hundred million years; ravenous and roaming by a billion.

If you can find a QhD with enough funding to get industrial-strength temporal wrapping on a research base and keep it running for the next galactic year, they might eventually learn enough to come back and ask you for more funding. Otherwise, this is dangerous AND useless.

Dweedle-7 ‘UR @ N0Z’

A large ice giant with a pronounced list due to the centrifultimate struggle between its rings, its dark rings, its nonrings, and its unrings, all of which share the same spatial location but occupy different perceptions and emotional states. Otherwise unexciting.

An exposure therapy clinic could charge through the nose here, but the necessary telescopes required to fully focus the ring system onto a single client would be ruinously expensive in upkeep even if its clientele were wealthy enough to buy nebulae on crednought. Furthermore, parapsychomathematical forecasts warn of an irreducible 0.3% chance of ‘selfification,’ and any patient wealthy enough to afford such a clinic doubtlessly possesses a personality incompatible with being transposed into a fifth set of planetary rings for a time beyond measurable boundaries of infinity plus !one!.

Dweedle-8 ‘N3T TUN’

A large ice giant.

It’s much too smooth.

Dweedle-9 ‘ N ’

A muddling nonplanet deformed of a rigid and sour muucaV bubble erected over a desynthesized unaggregation of anti-anti-anti-matter, upheld in context through Main Short philosophical counter-abstraction. Its inhabitants may have autoannihilated, placed themselves in defensive paraexistence, or have cocooned themselves as part of a joint dissolution towards Main Median; no clues are available without more intrusive probing, which would cause Dweedle reality to no longer be compatible with continued reality. Comprehensibly dangerous.

Don’t think about it and don’t think about not thinking about it.

Analysis

Dweedle has dwindled from its peak population of six inhabited stellar bodies down to two-ish and counting plus/minus one, due to a combination of ill fortune, carelessness, greed, and blind idiocy both from without and within the system. None of these diminishments has freed up resources, presented new opportunities, or opened up new spaces; on the contrary, they have frequently consumed them or replaced them with catastrophic detriments. Any conveniences it offers are almost inevitably beset with vexing complexities, costly externalities, and in the single case where no obvious barriers to exploitation were present (Dweedle-4, ‘M4 RS’) the net benefit was a small-scale tumour-export business… in a system with a minimum of two apocalyptic clocks (Dweedle-7, Dweedle-9).

Conclusion

Dweedle is eminently unsuitable/contaminated and should be avoided with prejudice by any and all entities with any sense, commercial or otherwise. Nothing of value is present.

I was fifteen years old and me and my first girlfriend had just split up the day that dad showed me the way. He walked upstairs (stomped, really – he never did figure out how to use a staircase), took one look in my room, and told me “c’mon.”

So I c’moned all the way downstairs and out the door and into the truck and down the way and by the park and down the trail all the way down to the old quarry, where we took a path behind a pine tree that went further then it looked, and he showed me the pit.

“Dump it in there,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“You know what.”
And I supposed I sort of did, because there was only one ‘it’ that mattered right then and it was squatting in my chest and sort of pulling me down in a way that had nothing to do with gravity. So I walked up to the edge of the pit and I shut my eyes and I threw it away.

There was a little whoosh of moving air, a distant bump from something bouncing off hard-packed dirt. That was it.

I felt light again. I felt right again.

“There ya go,” said dad. He patted me on the back and let me take the wheel on the way home and we ordered pizza.

“Remember that,” he told me. “Whenever you need it.”
So I did.

***

I got carried away at first. I think dad knew that’d happen, but he didn’t say anything. Didn’t raise a brow or lift a finger when I went out there after I blew an exam, got in a fight, broke up with my second girlfriend, sat with the dog when we put him down, said something I regretted to a friend, all in eight months.

I think dad also knew I’d lay off eventually. And I did. When I went out there the day after I got wasted and put a dent in the truck I felt silly, standing there with a little twist in my stomach and walking in circles around the pit, thinking about weight and pressure and wondering how many mistakes like that I’d have to pull together to make one failed exam to make one half-strangled conversation you’d been putting off for days and never practiced right to make one dying old dog.

It wasn’t good math. No good at all.

So I went home, and like, I felt a bit lighter in a different way. Sort of. And dad never said anything about it, and I thought that was pretty okay. I mean, if it WASN’T he wouldn’t have said anything either, but he’d have looked at me different. I’m pretty sure. I’m pretty sure.

I was pretty sure he’d talk to us when he had those extra doctor’s appointments too.

***

So after that I visited the pit a lot. One BIG trip after the news finally broke – mom saw a piece of unopened mail from the hospital, which finally brought the whole thing  out – and then a steady never-endy stream of little ones, drip drip drop, because every time he stepped out of the truck and went indoors and I saw the gravel stuck in the tires and the pine needles in his soles I knew he’d been to the pit. Which was what made me go there. I wonder if I ever rebounded on him like that, backwards? Who knows, he never talked to me about it. I never talked to him about it either. Why would we? We had the pit. And a year and a half in, I made one more big, big, big trip, still in my good rented suit, and I felt my shoulders lift so much higher that it felt like they must’ve been around my elbows before, bending me double with all sorts of things I had no business thinking about.

I sighed, deep and relieved, and just over my own breath I heard a little soft rattle and I looked down at my still-shiny rental shoes and there it was, a little dribble of everything I’d just thrown  away, oozing free of the rim of the pit.

I still don’t know what happened to those shoes to this day. No clue. They weren’t there after six years, I tell you that much.

***

Those six years were awful.

I mean, they weren’t that bad.

Good things happened, right? I got a dog. I broke up with a girlfriend and stayed friends. I finished school. I got a good job. I got engaged. I did a lot. A lot of good things.

It’s just that all the other things, well, I had nowhere to put them. I could feel them stuck in my chest in the day and rattle loose with my breathing at night. I could feel them swelling like nodules under my armpits and against my throat. I could smell them sour whenever my deodorant ran thin and I needed a shower.

So when a friend of mine had an accident at a stoplight involving someone who didn’t like stoplights and my fiancé asked if I wanted to talk I told her no thanks, got in the truck, and took a drive that was longer than it had been last time.

The brush was overgrown too. Nobody went to the park much anymore. But the pine was still there. And the pit. But not my shoes.

I listened to the pit. Something was sloshing around down there. Too close. Too close.

That was okay. I’d thought ahead a little this time. I had a shovel. And a rope.

So I measured out ten paces and started digging and I didn’t stop until I felt a bit sick and the air hurt to look at and the rope was taut and dangling above my head, and I crawled out covered in dark earth and sweat and feeling like the heaviest thing in the whole world.

Then I stood there, and I let it fall away and knew I’d done the thing right. Heard nothing but the wind, no impact.

***

It didn’t last as long as the first one. I didn’t think back then that I’d put it together wrong – I still don’t. I think I just had more on me, and it was heavier. That six year weight, plus well, kid problems are smaller than adult problems. They pack closer together, keep down well.

So after it filled up I dug another pit.

Then another.

And then, well, after the divorce, I filled two in one year. And then I saw a buddy at work – known him for years – and he was going through it too, and.

Look. The whole point is you don’t talk about any of it. You don’t have to talk about it. But you can SHOW someone, right? Dad showed me.

So I showed him. And yeah, they fill faster with two people, but they dig easier too. One of us tied the lines and ran the bucket; the other shoveled. It worked pretty well.

Then we heard of a buddy of his. Good guy. Childhood friend. His mom passed, you know, and he didn’t know what to do, and we couldn’t tell him. But we could show him.

And he knew how to work a backhoe.

***

We had to get permits at some point. That was the closest it came to ruining the whole thing, to putting words around it all. So we showed the guy at the county office, and he showed his boss, and in the paperwork everything’s not THERE but it’s worded so you can see the shape of where it would be if we said anything. Which we didn’t.

You don’t have to look hard to see it anymore anyhow. The park’s not much these days, but the old parking lot is full day in and day out. Backhoes, drills, dump trucks. Guys with shovels and levels and ropes and wheelbarrows. All of them trudging in like death warmed over, walking out with bright eyes, straight backs, high shoulders, a different set of regulars for every day of every week. The pine’s gone, but the trail is wide – and paved and fitted with streetlights, after the tire ruts from the heavy machinery got so deep you almost couldn’t walk it without planks and guardrails at noon, let alone after dark. You can hear the engines running all day and all night from the highway, wheezing and beeping and groaning. The guys at their controls drink coffee to keep awake past midnight, then clock out at daybreak in time to drop their burdens in the new pits and head home to sleep it off.

There’s been buzz about making them wider. We’ve already had to cut down half the trees already, we can probably get an actual quarry going. Maybe work our way into the backwoods. Gets harder and harder to keep everything unstated at that size, but you know, it’s an investment in the future. If you build it, they will come.

I’m not sure how deep they are. I’ve never looked in any of them.

An antiquated yew, gnarled and knobbly.

Some untended goats, grazing happily.

Long, waving grass mixed with tenacious shrubs, green and yellow in the midsummer evening’s sunlight.

Beautiful, rugged karst topography, with a commanding view of the surrounding lowlands.

Six feet of water-carved limestone, rich with age.

An overhang, slow-shaped by erosion to shrug water off to either side and send it streaming down the rest of the cliff face in little vertical rivers.

Six partially dismembered carefree travellers, careless trappers, careworn woodcutters, and careful hunters, dangling from exposed yew roots and already missing their most delicious and fatty parts.

A yawning portal into the stone of the plateau, formed by the dissolution of softer rock and tremendous amounts of time.

Small trickles of wall-borne moisture caused by evaporation, condensation, and complicated thermal interactions between the depths of the cave system, the flow of outside air, and the rise and fall of the sun as it penetrates the cavern’s mouth.

Two slivers left behind by Kwarl in bygone days, embedded at the terminus of a now-aged crevice in the wall and very very demonstrably sharp enough to cut stone.

Forty-three giant bats, sleeping calmly among the stalactites and dreaming of giant mosquitoes and/or a world free of giant white nose syndrome.

A long guano-spattered slope that is steeper than it looks and is covered in loose scree that is less solid than it looks.

A drop that is exactly as steep as it looks.

A scad of small metal climbing pitons, hastily hammered into the wall of the shaft and already a little looser than they should be.

One hundred ninety-six and three quarter humans, two hundred forty-nine deer, seventeen horses, three dozen oxen, innumerable sheep and goats, and a single careless giant bat, all skeletonized and heavily dismantled, most with their long bones smashed for marrow.

Surprisingly large fungal colony feeding on bone detritus, rendered obscure by the discreet nature of its fruiting bodies as opposed to the hidden pervasiveness of its roots.

A hidden squeeze in the wall that leads to a cramped cell containing a nest made of half-rotten pelts, a stack of gnawed bones, a little shrine to a broken tooth of the Lime Beast, and the still-leaking body of Morribo Henk, unasked-for worshipper of unwholesome things and scavenger of his own kin.

A trailing dribble and splatter of fresh blood from an unwisely uncleaned unsheathed blade.

Open gallery with uneven stone floor clogged with fallen stone, illuminated by sunlight filtered through small brush-choked ceiling openings that dapples beautifully all over the dried leaves littering the floor.

Alcove catching the last rays of the sunset, containing the fresh body of goatherd Treb Porf, arranged peacefully with its remaining (left) hand crossed above the remnants of its breast and the open abdominal cavity covered with an impromptu blanket of discarded shirt.

Two purposefully discarded backpacks, laden with bulky supplies, perishables, and heavy clothing.

Gaping sinkhole, worn heavily by claw marks around its rim and filled with the quiet sound of tiny waves splashing in the scant airflow descending from the gallery.

Thousands and thousands of gallons of water, devoid of light and filling a sump that forks in several directions.

A dead end.

A dead end.

A dead end with Kwarl’s name carved on the wall.

A dead end.

A very dead end containing the very dead body of scout-at-arms Blort MgGort.

A swarming colony of stygobite fish that can’t believe their luck.

A tiny airbell, illuminated by a single patch of glowing fungi surviving on whatever scraps float up from the rest of the sump.

A mercifully dry and air-filled twisted meander – low-ceilinged, uneven-floored, and absolutely crammed with stalactites and stalagmites to the point of nigh-inaccessibility.

Dormant nest of one million seven hundred thousand ninety-eight thousand six hundred and thirty-one gigantic troglobite fleas, slipping back into slumber after consuming the vital fluids of seven hundred and sixty-two of their crushed brethren.

One discarded and sodden boot, absolutely encrusted with gigantic troglobite fleas desperately trying to suck any drop of blood they can find to reach equivalent value on expended energy awakening from dormancy.

Flat corner housing a midden filled with dry excretions and quicklime-rimed pellets, each containing coarse-turned-fine dust that once was hair, feathers, or other keratinous matter.

Subterranean vault, ceiling raised high by ancient waterfall that choked its own exit and moved on, floor eaten deep into the very guts of the plateau.

Jagged, ragged cliffs, conspicuously speckled with worn footholds for long, lunging legs.

Geodesic hollow of the Lime Beast, formed of ancient reefs and weathered by unsapient habit to be as smooth and round as a potter’s masterpiece.

Wilderanger Clorice Hummli, soaking wet with stagnant cave water, blood, sweat, and tears, torn of shoulder and arm, weaponless, squireless, and shaking from their toes to their teeth.

Kluus the Lime Beast, six foot at the shoulder and sixteen feet from nose to haunch, five-legged, mare-faced, sabre-fanged, bear-clawed, moon-eyed, coat armoured and crusted with ancient stone adhered to its exoskeletal secondary ribcage, mouth still fragrant with primate blood, currently supine with a sword jammed through its gullet out the back of its skull and directly into the limestone behind it.

A boulder long-ago displaced by a tiny amount of force transmitted over an incredible number of year, perfectly choking a narrow vent.

A hundred-and-six foot vent, untouched even by dust.

Catacomb of the Lime Beasts, seventy former, one current, eighty still encrusted and waiting undreaming in their slaked lime lacunae.

Tomb, ripped open and contents consumed to the last.

Hidden compartment in the bottom of tomb, half-exposed by ancient bearlike clawmarks

Small stone ring that is much larger on the Outside than it seems on the outside.

Hundreds of feet of deep-rooted limestone, sinking far past the soil of the valley floor and merging with its bedrock.

Subterranean temple to Kwarl, geologically compressed from former height of seventy feet to current height of seventeen inches.

Thousands of feet of solid stone.

Kwarl.