Now It's Dark
You quickly walk down the hall and turn the corner to see the doppelgänger striding briskly away. You pick up the pace to catch up with <him/her>, but it's evident that <he/she> has no intention of being caught. Soon the two of you are running full-tilt down the Lodge's corridors, sprinting around corners, clattering staccato footsteps echoing on the black and white zig-zag tile.
You race around one corner, then another. Your double ducks through a gap in some red curtains, and you follow <him/her> through, across an empty room, through another curtain, down another corridor...
You're gaining on <him/her>, slowly but surely. Eyes narrowed, teeth gritted, you're determined to put a stop to this once and for all. You've found the clues. You've seen enough. You know who the killer is. This ends now.
You launch yourself at your twin, grabbing <him/her> around the waist and bringing <him/her> down in a diving tackle. All the lights in the hotel strobe wildly, and then cut to black.
| And then... |
When the lights come back, you're standing in the boiler room in the basement of the Great Overlook Lodge. Besides the red glow of the furnace, the only illumination is a bright white spotlight, which shines on three figures: the barman and the midget, standing next to each other in their identical red jackets, and the giant -- who, it turns out, is tall but not unusually so. It must have been the awkward visual perspective after all.
"So," he says, "you've finally figured out who the killer was. It was you. It was always y--"
"Nuh-uh. Nope," you interrupt, hand raised. "Not falling for that one. I'm not the hotel caretaker, and I'm not Special Agent Whosis either. I'm me -- <name> -- and I'm not having any of this. I don't care if this hotel is inherently evil, or if it's full of ghosts, or if it was built on an Indian burial mound, or if it's inhabited by some kind of weird personified spirit of the Evil That Men Do. You aren't going to trick me into being a part of it any longer."
The giant smiles and nods, and hands you a gold wedding ring. "So, what will you do now?"
"Well," you say, "the second thing I'm gonna do is go home and get drunk. The first thing I'm gonna do is burn this effin' hotel to the ground."
You pick up a gas can from the corner of the room and throw it into the furnace, which promptly explodes.
You wake up at your campsite, feeling pretty satisfied with yourself.
 | You acquire an item: gold wedding ring |
When the lights come back, you're standing in the boiler room in the basement of the Great Overlook Lodge. Besides the red glow of the furnace, the only illumination is a bright white spotlight, which shines on three figures: the barman and the midget, standing next to each other in their identical red jackets, and the giant -- who, it turns out, is tall but not unusually so. It must have been the awkward visual perspective after all.
"So," he says, "you've finally figured out who the killer was. It was you. It was always y--"
"Nuh-uh. Nope," you interrupt, hand raised. "Not falling for that one. I'm not the hotel caretaker, and I'm not Special Agent Whosis, and for damn sure I'm not <playername> either! I'm Ed the Undying, you weird ghostly crapjackets, and I'm burning this garbage factory to the mother-loving ground!
The giant shrugs. "No offense intended," he says, and tosses you a gold wedding ring. "It's just a thing we do."
"Yeah, well, here's a thing I do," you reply. You pick up a gas can from the corner of the room and throw it into the furnace, which promptly explodes.
You wake up in your tomb, feeling pretty satisfied with yourself.
| You acquire an item: gold wedding ring |
Occurs at To Catch a Killer with more than 40% Combat Initiative.
History
- Around February 3, 2015, this choice adventure was moved from number 617 to 1056. Also, a typo in the second line of the introduction was fixed (from "and you follow <him/her> though, across an empty room") at some point in time before the choice adventure number change.
