The Deepest Stratum, Part Two: The Crate in the Pit
Six days ago the excavators left one crate at the bottom of the dig. It was labelled, roped and sulking. YouTube’s diggers had struck an error at its threshold and would not go further. The Keeper set Merritt’s ship on the shelf above it to keep the place, and went back to the upper galleries.
This cycle the crate came up without a murmur. The Keeper finds this more unsettling than any curse.
Inside is a short talk from June 2019. It opens with a reading: a mining engineer, two companions of doubtful character, and a map engraved on a sheet of gold that shows nothing until it is held at the proper angle. Then the archivist turns to a box of cards that claims descent from the old gamebook masters. He asks, with real puzzlement, why it is not simply a book, and he finds in it the unhurried pleasure of reading pulp by lamplight. He also finds that his heart never once beats faster.
It is a modest object to have waited so long. The Keeper has learned, though, that the last thing out of any pit tends to explain the rest. Pulp runs all through this stratum, from the grimy paperback covers to the ship in the stone block and a cliffhanger that had to be ranked again.
The Keeper must also record a stranger fact. With this crate shelved there are no more pending videos. Every upload the channel has made now sits in the archive or carries a label explaining why it cannot. The ledger has no unfinished line. From here the stacks grow only as fast as the archivist films, and the excavators have been reassigned to waiting by the door.
Exhibit Catalogue, earliest first:
- Dungeon Degenerates: The Hand of Doom - Discussion and Look at the Pulp Art Tradition — Bakshi’s Wizards and outsider punk, read into a dungeon crawler’s grime.
- A Brief Look at The 7th Continent and the works of A. Merritt. — a gamebook on the backs of cards, best played over a cup of tea.
- The First Annual Dungeon Dive Game Awards (2019) — Hellboy makes the top five, but only the Kickstarter edition.
- The Sword & Sorcery Saga - The Ship of Ishtar, by A. Merritt — a Viking slave outshines the hero aboard a ship split between light and dark.
- Fortune & Glory - Revisiting a Game I Should Have Ranked Higher — the President is your ally, and his power deletes an enemy outright.
- Gloom and Shadows - a recipe for adventure (Shadows of and Gloom of Kilforth) — damage drains your hit points and your remaining actions with them.
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– The Keeper
Has catalogued every crate in the building and now regards the front door with the patience of a creature that knows more are coming.