This post is brought to you by #dungeon23, my latest TTRPG-world obsession. The challenge asks you to create a 365-room “mega dungeon” one day at a time.
Early in the process of considering what to do for a dungeon, I decided to fixate on two scary things I’m kind of obsessed with: spree killings and the American public school system. Prompt #12 on McCoy’s list is “childhood,” and this resonated with me. The result is the work-in-progress ‘K-12’, an endless warren of classrooms, destructive delusions made manifest, and demonic teachers in service to a warlock determined to build the most inspired staff in the universe.
The dungeon23 prompt and the energy surrounding the hashtag has led me to consider worldbuilding shit in a way I rarely do: as spontaneous, almost random generation loosely moored to a theme. This poem (which will probably be followed by some others) is based on K-12’s vibes.
Atmospheric Noise
Angband was an old computer game
Reb and Vodka binged,
where they would purge
a fantasy setting of evil
over 100 levels.
While save scumming one night
they fell into a slipstream,
a reality trap, an
entangling something
(and experts say that
something is usually not nothing
especially when it isn’t
nothing, ain’t
nuttin’, nada.
But i don’t talk no double
negatives.)
The courses of their directionless lives were about to change from
‘correspondence’ to
‘for credit hours’
through the abjuration of ADHD.
Just google “Does your child "Save Scum" in video games?”
I’ll wait.
Anyway,
our young, overdiagnosed, over everything
protagonists fell through fire,
darkness, night & fog
until (predominantly)
white shores,
that became
a dungeon—
one paid for by arcane taxes and ley levies—
filled with levers & Levi’s.
A network of barrows, of tombs.
Of lonely tomes randomly housed
in bookshelves, each volume
a lore-trine reeking of pungent detail,
each begging for a piercing gaze.
please.
please.
A touch is even more coveted.
Reb’s got a fast hand,
spontaneous, leaping,
leafing, folding, unfolding
a Yearbook
in the midst of this action-packed delve.
Laminated pages dance
in the low light;
students, names,
options,
{-[-targets-]-}
shift with
cootie catcher finesse.
Shadows are a guidance
counselor over-shoulder
quarterbacking.
And golly, there’s
spells slinging,
bullets falsetto singing,
Malebolge ringing
male bulge bulging
. . . awareness . . .
fury, sound
sonder is a temporally-unlocked 1990s Nokia
that doesn’t ever trumpet
intimate human contact,
but chirps sometimes,
annoying as shit.
School is
shit. School, a prison
somewhere in *irith Ungol’s bowels.
(Where?)
No one can say with certainty.
Reb is constantly looking up,
throwing #2 daggers
at descending spiders,
looking down
where Kender gardeners
or Kindergarteners
or kinder gardeners (read: wormfood)
are underfoot slash
Underhill comma Mister.
Now,
the noise, lads,
it’s constant in this sanctioned + liminal space
of orcs, elves, dwarves
intermingling
like different Species do;
this is not a race, take it slow.
Enjoy the fungus
the ancient rattling bones the
feeling of opening a door up to surprise gelatin, Cosby
kids dying in mass kids
in black masks
black is the color of Vodka’s trenchcoat
which has 2 shotguns in it, and 2 days rations of
anachronistic pocky, which is a throw-forward to
dystopic times when Child Protective Services from beyond the Hedge
will take kids and put dummies in their place
and the children better like it, will like it.
Pixie stix in mouth, Reb moves to investigate
excavation sounds coming from the pit
below a classroom, where the afterschool activities
include weaving uniforms out of
silken promises made in haste (or jest): career, “worldliness.”
All noise.
Perlin Noise, a computer algorithm,
can be used to generate worlds from random seeds.
Every creative cumshot a Rorschach
to imprint factions, peoples
and city-states onto.
In brain storms that precipitate my worldbuilding,
a similar birth of
images from noise can sound (and look) like
the splatter of Cobain’s final note,
like the n-word shouted at black skies,
silverware falling down stairs,
like the scratch of pencils writing,
the dread sabre rattle of pencil-writing discourse.
I process this grey racket as ambience, atmospheric noise,
a muzzle for more disruptive intrusive thoughts.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Vodka takes a swig of himself,
cocks shoddy,
repels into pitch black
on the back of a coerced drider
dressed like a bellhop who jumped Jim Crow
or maybe just shorthopped, fuckin’ spade.
Reb follows suit.
A who’s who of frightening encounters
assails the boyish duo on the way down.
Every bat, every vampire, calling all skeletons.
Their descent has a “dark Battletoads” flare to it,
weapons igniting the umbra while the vital solutions
found in enemy guts French kiss their ruddy faces like
joyous chemicals turning the friggin’ frogs gay.
Wrath and Natural Selection
just a-frolickin’.
The sound of looms is oppressive as
feet touch floor,
a sweatshop, gift shop.
Somewhere, The Educator looms,
but not here, because
looming in this particular place
has worker connotations.
In this service sector, child laborers
are eaten by machines, YUMMM,
lick chops,
lickity split is the watchword.
An orc accosts Reb,
muscled and rippling,
looks about 6 in all senses—
6 years old,
6 feet tall,
6 degrees from Kevin Bacon
(because orcs are pigs, ha).
A shotgun’s inside voice
is, in defiance of the rules, louder than its outside one.
It says “back up,”
and the orc and gravity oblige,
center mass reels,
acceleration * mass
black mass
turn the crosshairs upside down, unreal
robed priests start getting up,
masses said again, one too many times, jarring (Ozzy in “War Pigs.”)
Every cleric and clerk in here is trained for war, pigs.
Fight back, active shooter.
Fight ensues, heads blown off
and other nuances.
D-eagle. Beretta. Bayonetta.
“Witch time is it?” says a 6 foot tall supersoldier
or supersenior.
I’m not comparing orcs to black people,
you are.
BOOM headshot.
Most of these are defenseless children, AC 10, max.
Unspeakable horror,
but here at Deathtime Network, we spend
24 hours of syndication painting mouths
on things that don’t need teeth
like Hagrid’s fucking book in Harry Potter.
Reb and Vodka are drawing beads
on the glossy, lossy faces of 5 year olds while
they dart between firing positions.
They’re thinking about some Elven analog for Hitler
and his speech (attributed), but crossing out words
because allegories are bullshit, unlike Scattergories.
Reb is trying to kiss Vodka on the mouth in the End of Level room,
drink him—some Hard Lads shit—
while Vodka calls him a “fucking girl”
(Secrets found: 1 of 2).
Reb and Vodka are covered in gore.
There are pieces of the enchanted staff strewn about,
but not
quite
the ones they need to
break the spell of
edumacation.
Midjourney Images Used (prompts in italics)