Heart of Very, Very Dark Darkness

Heart of Very, Very Dark Darkness

After wandering around the Spooky Gravy Barrow for a while, you come to the entrance to a cave that's even darker than the Barrow, itself. It's so dark that there's no light in it at all. You might even go so far as to say that it's completely dark.

What's it gonna be?

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Enter the cave

Without inexplicably glowing rock:
Darker Than Dark

It is pitch black in here. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

• Stumble around blindly
  

You have been eaten by a grue.

* * * You have died. * * *
Your score is: <HP> out of <?>, in <Total Turns> moves.
This gives you the rank of <Current Level Name>.
Would you like to Restore, Restart, or Quit?

• Leave the cave

You leave the darkness behind.

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With inexplicably glowing rock:
How Depressing

You cautiously enter the cave, holding your inexplicably glowing rock over your head. It lights the way (barely) through a tunnel, and illuminates (barely) a large stone door with a hand-shaped depression in it.

• Put your hand in the depression

• Without spooky glove equipped:
  

You put your hand in the depression, but nothing seems to happen. And in this case, things are exactly as they seem -- nothing actually happens, either.

• With spooky glove equipped:

On the Verge of a Dirge

You put your spookily-gloved hand in the depression, and feel a slight vibration coming from the door. Without warning (though you pause briefly to consider exactly how a door could warn you about something,) the depression glows red hot, the glove smolders and then bursts into flames, and you yank your hand away with a scream. The door grinds open slowly.

The door grinds slowly open.

The door slowly grinds open.

Slowly, the door grinds open.

• Enter the chamber

• Start combat with Felonia, Queen of the Spooky Gravy Fairies

• Enter the chamber (No Other Possibility)

• Start combat with Felonia, Queen of the Spooky Gravy Fairies

• Enter the chamber (Seriously).

• Start combat with Felonia, Queen of the Spooky Gravy Fairies

• Leave
  

You leave the darkness behind. Because you don't believe in a thing called love.

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Don't enter the cave

• You leave the darkness behind.

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Notes

• Occurs in The Spooky Gravy Barrow.
• Once the glove bursts into flames, this adventure will skip both the glowing rock portion and the glove portion, and go straight to the 'enter the chamber' portion.

References

• The name of this adventure is a play on the 1902 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
• "You are likely to be eaten by a grue" and the message following it are a reference to the 1979 Infocom computer adventure game Zork, in which, if one attempted to proceed through a dark area without a light of some sort, one would see the message: "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." If one persisted, one was generally eaten and promptly died.
• The message received when leaving the darkness without fighting Felonia is a reference to the British rock band The Darkness, and their song "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" from their 2003 album Permission to Land.
• The three permutations of the door slowly grinding open alude to the maze of twisty little passages from the game Colossal Cave Adventure.