Elementary, My Dear School
A faint smell of chalk dust, pencil lead, and industrial-strength disinfectant tickles your nostalgia bone as you tunnel into a room lined with desks and lit by humming fluorescent light bulbs. You've apparently tunneled into some sort of underground school, but the students sitting at the desks don't look like your classmates from grade school, unless your classmates from grade school were made of shadow and flame and had giant horns and flaming whips. I mean, I'm not going to make any presumptions, here, lest I make a pres out of u and mption. Anyway, it's clear you've delved too greedily and too deep.
A larger creature of the same sort stands in front of one of the desks, looking down her nose through a pair of giant horn-rimmed glasses and berating one of the students. "Mr. Rog," she says, "this book report is simply unacceptable. It's clear that you did not read the book at all; it doesn't even look like you watched the movie! If you don't apply yourself and study hard, YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"
You wait until the recess bell rings and the room empties, then stay to help the creature with his homework. You can't help yourself -- he's just so cute, with his satanic cloven hooves and his flaming whip of death. As a bonus, you get to read his textbooks, which contain all manner of eldritch knowledge about which man was not meant to know about which, jerk.
 | You acquire an effect: Arcane in the Brain (duration: 5 Adventures) |
Occurs at Mt. Molehill.
Notes
- This adventure is triggered by landing on floor -6 for the second non-combat adventure in the Path of the Mole.
References
- Mr. Rog, with his cloven hooves and flaming whip of death, plainly has the first name Bal.
- This refers to the scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring where Gandalf proclaims "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" to the Balrog during their fight on The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm.
- "[The Dwarves] delved too greedily and too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled, Durin's Bane" is a line from Fellowship of the Ring describing the awakening of the Balrog.
- Things about which man was not meant to know are common in the Cthulhu mythos.
- The last, tortured, sentence refers to the old joke:
- Freshman: Where's the Library at?
- Senior: Here at Harvard we don't end our sentences with a preposition.
- Freshman: OK, then, where's the library at, asshole?
- The comment about not making any presumptions to avoid making a pres out of u and umption refers to a similar comment about the word assume.
