The floor gives way with a sickening crunch of rotting timber. Doc and the pinned man plummet into the darkness, landing hard amidst the freezing, subterranean damp.
Hundreds of calcified molars and incisors are driven into the wooden beams like nails, pulsating with a rhythmic, wet vibration. The air tastes of copper and stagnant lime.
Doc Holliday
The Sheriff office wasn't just a building. It was a throat. And now I’m sitting right in its gullet.
A stoic woman, clad in a tattered, oil-stained duster and carrying a heavy, rusted iron lantern, steps from the shadows of the cellar corner. She ignores the fallen duo, her gaze locked hungrily upon the iron-bound ledger resting atop a makeshift altar of stacked crates.
Elder Elspeth
Your descent has stirred the hum, stranger. The ledger remembers the names you have already forgotten.
Doc Holliday
I didn't come here for riddles. I came here to stop the rot, and I don't care how many teeth have to be pulled to find the root.
+ Scene Quest Added
Stop the rot beneath the Sheriff Office
“is the old lady involved?”
YES (VeryLikely, rolled 55)
Elder Elspeth’s fingers twitch rhythmically against the iron-bound ledger, and as she shifts, the lantern light reveals a series of jagged, tooth-like carvings etched into the underside of her own wrists. The rot in the floorboards seems to pulse in perfect synchronization with her heartbeat, confirming she is the architect of this subterranean decay.
Doc Holliday
She isn't just guarding that book; she's feeding it, and the whole damn foundation is tethered to her pulse.
Elder Elspeth
You see the connection now, giant, but knowing the source does not mean you can sever it without losing your own soul to the hunger.
“*Doc chuckles* "You haven't ment Grief then”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled +0)
Doc Holliday chuckles, a low and gravelly sound that shakes the floorboards, causing the calcified teeth to clatter like dice in a cup. He shifts his massive weight, the floor groaning in protest under his boots as he hefts the Silversmith Gun Lance with an easy, practiced grace.
Doc Holliday
She talks about souls like they're some rare currency I haven't already spent at every bar from Tombstone to here. If this ledger is the heart of the rot, it's time to perform some surgery.
Doc Holliday
You haven't met Grief then, lady. It doesn't hunger for a soul. It just hollows a man out until there is nothing left to rot.
Doc levels the massive muzzle of the weapon directly at the altar, the barrel humming with the latent, restless energy of the explosive charge. Elspeth’s eyes widen, her hands trembling as the violet glow from the ledger flares, casting long, distorted shadows that seem to reach toward the giant.
“*Doc pulls the trigger*”
SUCCESS (Legendary Marksmanship, rolled -3)
The trigger pull is crisp, a mechanical snap swallowed instantly by the deafening, thunderous roar of the Silversmith. The explosive round leaves the barrel in a streak of white-hot phosphorus, tearing through the stagnant, cellar air.
The impact is instantaneous. The iron-bound ledger does not simply shatter; it detonates in a spray of violet vapor and jagged, splintered metal. The force of the blast shears the makeshift altar in two, the shockwave rolling outward with enough violence to rattle the very foundations of the Sheriff Office above. Elder Elspeth is thrown backward, her arms raised in a futile ward against the blinding light of the detonation. As the violet glow vanishes, the cellar plunges into a sudden, oppressive darkness, punctuated only by the fading hiss of cooling metal and the settling of pulverized wood.
Doc Holliday
One problem down. Now to see if the building holds together long enough for me to climb out of this grave.
Quest Complete
Stop the rot beneath the Sheriff Office
Attribute Upgrade: Willpower Great→Superb