Just when I think I’ve seen it all, man, there’s always something new.

I went out to the Ink Marshes today looking for a rare spawn - rumors about a Gray Slime had been circulating, and, with my money situation being the way it is lately, I was interested to say the least. Gray Slimes are known for a couple things - being walking bags of XP and for dropping Slime Cores. Now, I’ve got enough XP for a lifetime, but that second offer, the Slime Core? Too good to pass up. It’s a little precious gem that the Slime’s body forms around, and it’s used to craft all sorts of things: mage staves, orbs held offhand, elemental bombs, and Anti-magic equipment. Essentially the core acts as a conduit for mana, either absorbing or, with a little tinkering, repelling it, making it invaluable for making higher-level mage gear or taking on spell casting enemies. But who cares about that? I’ll never be a mage and I tend to avoid magical spawns as much as I can. What I want out of it is that sweet, sweet selling price. You go to an auction with a high-level Slime Core and they’ll be crawling all over you, trying to scrape and wheedle, make like we’re pals. You must show them no mercy: tell them it’s no deal, not unless they’re willing to pay scalper prices, give their arm and leg and their mother’s jewelry. Then I might consider it. Hey, it’s not a charity I’m running. If they were the ones to catch the Slime then they’d be doing the exact same thing to me, mark my words. You think it’s easy, tracking down a fleeing spawn in the Ink Marshes of all places? I earn my pay.

The Ink Marshes are sprawling, long, and a pretty difficult dungeon overall. Winding corridors filled with stealthed monsters lying in wait. You get turned around a lot if you don’t bring a map, and encounters respawn abnormally quick, so if you’re sloppy that means you’ll get jumped again and again by some real tough customers: Swamp Things, Ropers, and Nuckelavees just to name a few. If they only tried to stab you and left it at that it wouldn’t be much of a problem, but I tend to avoid the place as much as possible since many of its spawns use disease attacks just as much as physical ones, and you do NOT want to be hit by one of those. There’s little the doctor-barbers can do for you when you’ve got dysentery, boils, weeping infection, besides giving you Agarics to chew on. You’re better off going to the church for a few hail mary’s, believe me.

The worst part of the marshes, however, has to be the muck. It doesn’t matter where you step, it's absolutely everywhere. It’s impossible to find stable footing, much less a place to rest. Sodden earth slick with slime and detritus, steaming, foul-smelling swamp that pulls away your boots with every step. Sometimes when it gets really bad you’ll find yourself up to your shoulders in the stuff. The monsters there would be tough enough to fight on a paved street, so you can imagine the kind of difficulty I’m talking about when putting one foot in front of the other is a task in itself. What’s more is that the Gray Slime is a fleeing spawn: it runs from adventurers instead of attacking them. Seems like a dream come true, right? A monster that isn’t looking to kill you? Well I’ll have you know it’s much less pleasant when the monster that’s your meal ticket disappears down a stretch of godforsaken moorland past a group of surly Swamp Things, that really puts a damper on it.

But it doesn’t help anything to complain. With a bit of finagling the marsh is a cakewalk. I show up to the entrance wearing a pair of water-walk sandals with a +2 swiftness bonus - with these things on the Slime is as good as mine. In a holster at my side I've got a repeater crossbow, capable of firing a whole clip of bolts in a matter of seconds. There's also a single-use scroll of Hold Monster I managed to procure, found in a second-hand bookstore. That fool of an owner didn’t know what he was parting with, he sold it to me for a few copper, can you believe it? (Don’t feel bad for old Sulla, he’s a wretched man. Always suspects me of shoplifting, giving me the evil eye, and he uses the slightest opportunity to accost people about the most harebrained kinds of conspiracies. How dwarves lead King Eldric by the nose and all that hokum). It should go without mentioning that I bring along a fully-charged Hearthstone, too. With the spawn rates of mobs there being what they are, it'd be suicide to try and backtrack my way out.

-

I enter the instance and the first encounter is nothing to write home about. A few redcaps wielding jagged shivs look up from a corpse they’re picking at. They start to approach. Now, redcaps are fast but their movements are clumsy: as long as you keep your cool and don’t let them run you down it’s pretty easy to bowl them over. They charge towards me, all it takes is a brisk sidestep and the even downwards motion of my longsword, that’s one sliced clean in half. I swing it to the side and clothesline another as he comes running. The redcap I just dodged leaps at me - I repel him with the pommel of my sword. Now that he’s stunned I strike his occiput, I cave his head in like a bad squash. I make quick work of one I downed, putting it out of its misery with a clean motion across the throat. Like that the first room’s cleared.

The next chamber’s a bit more touch-and-go, but I’ve got it all worked out. With a running start I throw myself into the drink at the center of the clearing. Here, monsters spawn within a certain range of you once a certain threshold is crossed. Since I rush in close to a stand of trees the Nuckelavee that guards the room manifests around a wiry birch branch. It goes right through his fleshy horse torso and out of his human chest, it gives a blood-curdling scream in agony. I walk right up to it and take off its head with one clean strike. Unfortunately, the screams attract a flock of Blood Bats, I hear the dry sound of their wingbeats as they approach. There’s a lot of them. You really don’t want to mess around with those things, especially not when they come in groups. I’ve seen people drained dry by them, all withered and white like a wilted flower, they don’t stop feeding until they’ve drunk themselves sick. Sometimes they won’t even stop then.

I unholster my crossbow and unload it into the crowd. Bolt after bolt goes whizzing through the sultry swamp air, soon replaced by the high-pitched calls of wounded animals. I drop them all but one, who flies towards me, still wanting a taste of my blood. I ditch the crossbow and reach for my sword - a little too late though. It leaps onto me and starts tearing at my cuirass, my blade halfway raised, so I fight just like I'm a young tough again : I tear the bat from my chest and throw it against a tree. While it’s on the ground I bring my boot down, raise it, then stomp on it again and again until it doesn't much resemble a bat anymore. More like fruit preserves, I think.

Not bad for an old man, eh? Well the next clearing gets a little hairier.

The room looks empty so I make my way in, keeping my eyes peeled just in case that Slime decides to show up. Right as I’m getting ready to move on I hear a low growl - I turn my head towards its direction and see a Moor Cat ready to pounce! It got the jump on me entirely. It leaps from its crouched position and tackles me head on, its hooked claws go right through my leather armor and start to dig into my skin. It makes for my throat but I catch the beast with a mean left hook to the nose. That dazes it just long enough for me to shake it off and I dig through the muck to retrieve my sword while it picks itself back up, though I don’t get anywhere with that and pretty soon it's ready to pounce again. There’s no getting my sword back while trying to dodge a Moor Cat, so I start rooting around hurriedly in my bag looking for something (it's like a noblewoman’s purse) - Talaria, no, Agaric, no, Shock Array, I’d rather save that, then I reach my stash of bombs. That will do. As I’m pulling one out the Cat lunges again and I make to dodge, but then! The small of my back cracks, and starts to ache something terrible. My back decides to act up the moment a Moor Cat is pouncing on me! This time it gets me good: a long, mean cut going up my side. Stupid, so endlessly stupid. I mean my body’s slowing down, I can’t be dodge-rolling all over the place, digging through my bag. I knew I should’ve bought one of those utility belts everyone’s going around in now, but the prices are outrageous. You'd think a simple band of leather wouldn't cost an arm and a leg, no?

Well it's on top of me and going for the throat again and I start to wonder if this will really do it - I’ve been in more scrapes like this than I can count, tussling up close with a monster. I get out every time, sure, but I’m getting older, no doubt about it. I can't always count on last minute saves. The Ink Marshes would be a pretty humiliating way to go, though. To think, a veteran adventurer taken down in a sixth-level dungeon. (In my defense the place deserves a much higher difficulty rating. The high encounter rates, disease, and rough terrain alone should serve to put it at level 10 at least, even if the monsters are small-time).

I have these childhood memories playing with insects with the neighborhood kids back in the slums. We’d catch the roaches that infested our rusty little shacks and put them all in a bucket. One kid would elect themself “foreman” of the roaches and dole out discipline to them as he saw fit. “Mr. Roach, I see you’ve been nodding off at the machines again. You know what the punishment is for such irresponsible behavior!”, he’d say. Then he’d reach into the squirming mound and pull out Mr. Roach and take out a little pocket knife and cut the head off the poor sonofabitch. Then we’d watch the headless thing crawl across the floor, we’d follow it everywhere seeing how long it took for it to die, but they never died. Not once did we see one stop in place, finally too dead to walk anymore. They kept on crawling, crawling, until they disappeared eventually between the floorboards and we never saw them again. Anyhow, what I’m getting at is, I must be a bit like one of those roaches. I lost my head long ago but I keep on living regardless. A part of me just wanted to lie down in that marsh that moment, let the water wash over and the monster tear me to ribbons. I always get back up, though. I always do.

The Moor Cat thought he’d got the best of me. He’s lording over me, mouth open, about to bite down. I light the fuse on the bomb in my hand, give the Cat another one-two, then jam the bomb right down his throat. My back’s locked up but that doesn’t stop me - I leap to the other side of the clearing with my fingers to my ears and dive headfirst into the swamp. With a resounding blast the monster’s done for. My ears are ringing, my vision’s blurred, I’ve got this bleeding scar filled with swamp water, and it’s raining dead Cat, but Mr. Roach got away. Once again.

-

I’m chowing down on Agarics like there’s no tomorrow .Doesn’t matter if I start seeing pink Camelopards, as long as it kills the pain in my side. I’ve done some rudimentary first-aid with a tourniquet and some new aseptic cream made from herbs the doctor-barbers swear by. I can’t say I exactly trust their judgement, you won’t find bigger swindlers this side of The Continent, but for infection I figure it's either this or mummy powder and cautery.

With the gloaming setting in came the chirrups of nocturnal birds flitting about the treetops of the marsh. Large clouds were drifting along, diaphanous half-circles like the bodies of man o’ war jellyfish on the surface of the sea. They were lit up from behind by the last flashes of the day - brilliant orange and yellow bands slowly losing ground to night’s ineluctable approach. This is bad news, of course. The marsh is enough of a challenge during the day. At night? Forget about it.

Anyways, the pain is starting back up again and I'm fresh out of Agarics. But I’m finding this Slime, come hell or high water. I didn’t sock a Moor Cat in the face for nothing. I run into some treasure chests on the way but it’s all sixth-level trash, not worth the weight on my back. Things are looking pretty grim, I know this time of night the Hobgoblins come out, and they like to fight dirty. They gang up on you, fling muck in your eyes, kick you while you’re down. Not at all like the Redcaps, who’re as stupid as they are short. Which is to say very stupid. I know in my condition, running into them now would mean certain death. The bastards would probably toy with me too, make it slow.

I'm limping through the swamp and my head is swimming thinking about everything that could go wrong, when I spot it. It’s difficult to pick it out among the shadows but I catch a gray, gelatinous mound moving through the trees. When I see it it sees me, and bolts. And gods, was it fast. Faster than I had accounted for. I set off across the surface of the bog, my footfalls kicking up gouts of inky black water. My sword is raised, I’m running full tilt, the pain in my side couldn’t be farther in my mind as I feel the warm evening breeze in my face. I’m gaining ground little by little, the bastard can’t beat +2 sandals of swiftness, I could outrace the chariots of Elsewhere right now! I take the scroll of Hold Monster from my bag and unfurl it, ready to say the magic words…