Long, long ago, before Twitter descended into its end-stage hellscape, I ran a few iterations of a weird little choose-your-own-adventure game there, where I used the poll functions to offer options as we traversed a strange concrete labyrinth. I’d like to do that again. But as the shortest poll I can run is one day, this is more like a play-by-mail than a real-time on-the-fly. Fewer choices, but hey, you do get much longer descriptions!
The Rules
- Your choices are by majority poll (though if there are two identical options, they may be weighed together)
- If y’all choose to do something boneheaded, you WILL die, and the game will begin again with a new adventurer (who may someday find your corpse!)
- If y’all choose to retire and raise cabbages, by god, I will send you home to raise cabbages, which is sort of a happily ever after
- If you played on Twitter, please be kind and don’t spoiler too hard for the new players! Also, don’t assume the maze is still the same…
- Life being what it is, I cannot promise every update will land as soon as the poll closes—I love you guys, but y’know
Let’s begin, shall we?
You, friend, are the latest graduate of the Wentworth School Of Exploration and Adventure (Goooo Fighting Codfish!) the second-best explorer’s school in the city. You left behind your grandmother’s cabbage farm in pursuit of higher, better, possibly more fatal things.
It was at Wentworth that you first came across a reference to the works of Eland the Younger, that wandering naturalist, historian…okay, occasionally out-and-out liar…and his great fragmentary work, the Book of the Gear. It detailed his descent into a great clockwork labyrinth, filled with strange creatures and stone gears. Even for Eland, it’s a bit weird. Most scholars dismiss it outright as a fabrication, and the few professors who would talk to you about it strongly suggested that it was dangerous and you should ignore any rumors about its location and do something else. (Possibly on one of their projects! For course credit, obviously, not money.)
You didn’t listen. It was all just more academic cabbages as far as you’re concerned. It took a lot of research and guesswork and a lot of slogging, but after cutting your way through the overgrown woods, miles from any town, you find yourself standing before a stone wall with an immense crack in it. The edge of a stone gear taller than a man is just visible inside.
A small finch sits on a branch nearby, waiting.
Wentworth students are highly trained in the arts of adventuring, including Hiking, Skulking, Orienteering, and deciphering avian interpretive dance. Which brings us to the first question!
What exactly was your major at Wentworth?
Art History
Biology
Dungeoneering
English
