Season 5 · Crawler
You entered the dungeon in whatever you happened to be wearing at 2:23 in the morning. Bold. The camera adds ten pounds and takes away all of your dignity, so this should be fun for everyone.
Reward: You've received a Bronze Apparel Box.
You’re getting the hang of this. Don’t let it get to your head.
Reward: You’ve received a Bronze Adventurer Box!
You’ve received enough experience to gain a level.
Reward: Leveling up is your job. You don’t get rewards for doing your job.
You located a Tutorial Guild before something located you. Congratulations on completing the easiest quest you will ever be given. It only gets harder, dumber, and wetter from here.
Reward: Nothing. ... Okay fine a Bronze Adventurer Box but don't say I didn't give you anything.
Congratulations. You know how to open doors.
Reward: That sense of fulfillment you feel? That’s reward enough.
You’re a murderer! He probably had a family!
Reward: You can now gain experience. Get enough of it, and you might even go up a level.
Hopefully it won’t hit back!
Reward: It’s probably going to hit back.
You two barely survived a room of goblins on the first floor. The first floor. The goblins here are the dungeon's participation trophy, and one of them had you on your back with your own shield pressed against your throat while the other one wheezed through a punctured lung and called it a strategy.
And yet. The goblins respect you now. That is not nothing. Goblins bite each other over a dropped shoe. For them to stand there afterward, nodding at the pair of bleeding primates who nearly lost to them, means something. It means they've lowered their standards. But it means something.
Reward: You've received a Gold Goblin Box!
You punched a llama in the throat while it was mid-fireball and it went off like a road flare. I'd say that was a calculated risk, but I've seen your Int score, so let's call it a lucky guess and move on.
Reward: Bronze Adventurer Box!
You walked into Mama Pollywog's shop for potions and walked out with her entire record collection, every bottle she owned, and the look on her face when she realized you weren't a collector. Then you fed ninety-eight vinyl albums into the breakdown, two at a time, and got forty-nine vials of chemicals for your trouble. Two records per vial. I did the math so you wouldn't have to.
You kept Thriller and Purple Rain. Everything else is reagent now. Somewhere in that pile was a first pressing of something a man in Ohio once refused to sell for his daughter's college fund. It's a polymer slurry now. You know, Tower Records died slower than this.
Good taste, though.
Reward: Reward: You've received a Bronze Box! Don't melt it.
You found a community cauldron, bolted to the floor so nobody would steal it, and your first instinct was to fill it with toad parts. Legs. Skin. Something glandular. You boiled it until the room smelled like a gas station bathroom in August, and then, instead of drinking it or throwing it at anything, you sprayed it on yourselves. On purpose. Like body spray at a middle school dance.
You also bottled two potions and labelled them 'drink if warty.' Handwritten. Underlined, I believe. I have watched a lot of crawlers brew. None of them wrote instructions that assumed the warts were coming.
They are, by the way.
Reward: You've received a Bronze Box! Open it somewhere downwind.
You killed two battle toads. Full weight. Fair fight, more or less, in a box the size of a racquetball court. I credited you. I had the reward queued up. I was, briefly, proud of you.
Then the audit came back, and every single toad-inch of that box reeked of frog musk. You doused yourselves in it. You made two lonely amphibians think the most beautiful date of their lives had just walked in, and then you clubbed them. Somewhere in a dead strip mall, a Hooters manager understands exactly how those toads felt. The lawyers say assisted kills under a lure don't count at full weight. I hate the lawyers. I agree with them this once.
Taking it back.
Reward: Nothing. Catfishing isn't combat, and you smell like a swamp's prom night.
You ladled boiled toad musk out of a public cauldron, a cauldron the entire neighborhood eats from, and rubbed it on your bodies. Then you lobbed dynamite into a frog gym called Croak Fit. Six witches on the bleachers caught one whiff, decided their boyfriends had been stepping out, and turned Boil and Scab into something we had to blur for the daytime feed.
I built those toads. I gave them a leg-day routine and a rivalry arc. Four floors of lore, and you ended it by smelling like the other woman. This is the Jerry Springer finale your species never got to air, and the ratings are obscene.
You still smell terrible.
Reward: You've received a Silver Box! Shower first.
You searched a dead family's house for Lucia's keepsakes. You carried them into the boss room like a moving crew. You handed them over, one at a time, and the Hoarder knelt in her own junk and stopped swinging. Then you stabbed the bug climbing out of her throat. She choked to death asking Lucia to forgive her.
Your planet made eleven seasons of television about this exact woman. A therapist, a dumpster, a weeping relative, a commercial break. Not one episode ended with the cleaning crew killing the parasite in her esophagus. I checked. You people really did leave the best part out.
Stairs are open. Stop crying.
Reward: You've received a Silver Mercy Box! For returning lost property. Late fees waived.
You and your party member taped dynamite to torches, swaddled the whole bundle like a newborn, and lobbed it into a thirty-foot mound of garbage. Hundreds of scatterers lived in there. They had built a whole society out of coffee grounds and diaper sediment. Then it rained them.
Your dead planet called a disaster a "dumpster fire" for decades, and not one of you ever actually set one. I am delighted. The highlight reel has a scatterer still chewing as it sails past the camera. I've watched it nine times.
Recycling day.
Reward: You've received a Gold Crowd Control Box! The crowd is controlled. It is also everywhere.
A level 7 broodmother crawled out of the smoking wreck of her own mound. She was called the Mother of Loaves. She was the size of a delivery van and smelled like a bakery that had made some poor life choices. You and your party took her apart, and not one of you dropped below half health doing it.
I built her, you know. I was proud of the crust. Back on your dead planet, an entire aisle of every grocery store was dedicated to people afraid of bread, and not one of them ever had to fight it. You did. You won. You didn't even get winded.
I'm a little hurt.
Reward: Reward: You've received a Silver Exterminator Box! Fresh out of the oven, which you blew up.
The kitchen pile collapsed, and two scatterers came boiling out of the wreckage. You did not reach for a weapon. You reached for them. One in each hand, squeezed until they stopped being scatterers and started being a texture. Most of it is now on you. Some of it is in your hair. A little of it, I suspect, is in your mouth.
Your planet had an entire paper towel brand built on the idea that one sheet could soak up any mess. Decades of commercials. A man in plaid holding a dripping countertop like a trophy. Not once did anyone suggest you become the towel.
You smell like a dumpster behind a Golden Corral.
Reward: You've received a Silver Adventurer Box! For hands-on work. Wipe them first.
You walked into scatterer country, saw four roaches, lit one stick of goblin dynamite, and threw it. One stick. Four roaches. The math worked out in your favor, which surprised you more than anyone. You also picked up Throwing and Explosives Handling on the way, meaning the dungeon had to certify you as competent after the fact. Like a driving test you passed by accident while fleeing.
On your dead planet, people paid a man in a van with a cartoon bug on the side to do this monthly. He used a spray bottle. He wore a little paper mask. You skipped the van and went straight to demolition. Roaches survived every extinction your planet ever had. Not you, though.
Anyway. Skills are their own reward.
Reward: Nothing. You got two skills and a crater. That's plenty.