Pebbletuck's Perilous Pages

Volume I - The Toad King's Teeth

It began, as all great adventures do, with a stewpot and a misunderstanding.   I, Tillo Merribund—fresh from the dust trails of the hills just outside the grand Kuneirmeru Desert and wearing nothing but confidence and a patchy coat—had heard tales of a sapphire-toothed toad the size of a wagon, ruling from beneath the bog-pits of the swamps several days to the east. They called it the Toad King, and its belches echoed like bells through the fen.   Naturally, I went alone. No great adventurer starts out with a party, of course!   The people of the swamp claimed it guarded a cursed crown left by the last Lichenlords, deep in a stone-ridged sinkhole where the frogs sang backwards and the trees grew backwards and the people spoke backwards (Though I suppose this may have just been a result of breathing too many swamp gases). I brought an appropriate amount of supplies, six days worth of bread—or upwards of two weeks if you only have the appetite of a human—my trusty sling, and a flask of brandied courage (My momma's own brew, it's the best, I tell you!), and I followed the croaks into the dark.   What I found was not merely a beast—it was an empire of toads.   The Toad King himself (name unpronounceable even by my skilled tongue, but I called him "Grubble") sat atop a throne of drowned helmets and broken bones. It looked rather uncomfortable if I may say so myself, and I do! His eyes gleamed blue like embedded gems, and I could feel his power—ancient, sloshing, slippery. Unfortunately, I interrupted his mating call, and diplomacy failed immediately.   Thus begain The Greast Pebbletuck Escape, which involves:

• A slide down a mud chute I called the Gullet of Sorrows
• The accidental summoning of a fungal spirit I so kindly named Dribber
• One (1) weaponized stewpot which I also rode down another mud chute
• And me convincing a frog priestess I was a reincarnated bog-god

  In the end, I liberated one of the Toad King's sapphire teeth and cursed myself mildly for three weeks. My skin grew slick and I croaked in my sleep. But I lived.   And so I wrote.   Tillo's First Rule of Adventuring: If the crown fits, ask what happened to the last guy who wore it!  

Volume II - The Bells of Hollowdeep

Let it be known: I never intended to enter Hollowdeep. The map was upside-down, the lantern was borrowed (badly), and I mistook a dwarven warning rune for the symbol for picnic area.   Thus I descended.   Hollowdeep, as it turns out, is not a mine, nor a ruin, but a bell-forged tomb—an ancient vault where the Vreskan Clan of Deep Dwarves sealed away their greatest shame: the Ten Thousand Sounding Bells that ring with no clapper and call to the dead.   How was I to know that touching the wrong bell would invite the previous occupants back for supper?   As I explored (purely for academic reasons), I encountered:

• Silent servitors, eyeless dwarven shades that drifted between chimes.
• A dining hall laid for ghostly guests, with goblets full of time-frozen bloodwine.
• And a spectral host known as Bromvar the Mouthless (Though he still had half a mouth!) whose laugh shakes the marrow.

  It was a lovely spread—excellent cheese, haunting aftertaste.   Things turned grave when I realized the bells don’t just ring—they record. Every footstep, every breath, every lie. One particularly judgmental bell accused me of cheating at cards in Halberwick, which was both true and incredibly unhelpful mid-escape.   My salvation came when I, in a moment of brave genius (or perhaps desperate flailing), rang the First Bell—a note so pure it fractured the others. The spirits fled, the table cracked, and the entire floor of Hollowdeep collapsed into the sea beneath it.   I rode a soup cauldron out. Again.   Tillo's Second Rule of Adventuring: If the dead set the table, don't stay for dessert.  

Volume III - The Amber Widow

It began with a love story.   A bard in the taproom of Rillwood’s Roost wept as he sang of Lady Irvenna, a noble bride who vanished on her wedding day, her heart stolen by a stranger of shadow and silk. Locals called it a legend. I, with impeccable instinct and an eye for marketable heartbreak, called it “an opportunity.”   The trail led me to Spinleth Hollow, an abandoned vineyard long since reclaimed by thorns and silence. There I discovered:

• Cobwebs thick as tapestries, each catching whispers instead of flies.
• Wine casks brimming with amber-hued ichor, sweet as honey and twice as cursed (Or even thrice, depending on how cursed your honey normally is!)
• And a perfectly preserved ballroom, glittering with crystal... and skeletons still mid-waltz!

  At the center stood the Amber Widow—a strange creature, half spider and half gorgeous woman, a true golden-haired beauty if you didn't look too low! Amber dripped from his spinnerets like mourning veils. She wore a bridal gown that had grown into her flesh.   "Dinner?" I very bravely offered, not a single stutter to be spoken of! She preferred dancing.   I was briefly betrothed.   Escaping her involved disguising myself as a ghostly pageboy, performing six minutes of interpretive mourning and dance, and using a corkscrew to disable her venom gland mid-first dance. I then fled through the fermentation cellars, where I released a swarm of trapped spectral vinters who distracted her with demands for unpaid wages.   Tillo's Third Rule of Adventuring: If she's got eight legs and a wedding dress, say you're already taken!  

Volume IV - The Murmuring Depths

It started as a simple job.   I was hired by the Mirrorwake Divers’ Guild—three gnomes, one oar, and a very unsteady raft—to document a sunken temple below the Stillwater Mirror, a glass-flat lake with no birds above it and no ripples within it. The locals said it reflected the world perfectly. I now know the truth:   It doesn't reflect the world. It reflects you.   Beneath the surface lay a temple built upside-down, every pillar descending like a stalactite into nothing. We entered through an air pocket in a half-drowned archway—and immediately, I heard the murmurs.   Not speech. Not quite. More like… echoes of thoughts that weren’t mine yet. I would think of turning left, and hear the corridor behind me chuckle. I’d remember childhood pies, and a door would open by itself.   In the deepest hall, where the pressure curled our fingernails and our breath felt borrowed, I saw it: a reflection of myself staring back from dry air—blinking in reverse. It smiled. I did not.   Worse still, the reflection began moving without me.   The temple is alive. It records ideas, replays fears, and fights with memory like a sword. I saw reflections of people who weren’t there anymore—divers lost, lovers drowned, one gnome from earlier in the day who was very much still with us… until the reflection opened its mouth.   We lost two oars and our sense of time. I escaped by climbing a ceiling staircase that didn’t exist until I decided it should.   Tillo's Fourth Rule of Adventuring: If the water knows your secrets, bathe elsewhere  

Volume V - The Ninth Door of Kariseth

There are many kinds of traps: snares, spikes, pits, poisoned pies. But the worst sort is the kind you agree to walk into.   I arrived at Kariseth on a dare. A smug elf scholar by the name of Ryelion had claimed he’d found the lost manor of Malaxis the Intervening—a centuries-dead sorcerer-architect who believed reality was negotiable and hallways should be moral tests. Naturally, I thought this was complete nonsense. And naturally, I went to prove him wrong.   Kariseth sat in a thistle-choked valley, a once-graceful manor now half-swallowed by ivy and cracked foundations. There were eight doors at the entrance. Eight, clearly visible, all different shapes, colors, and materials. One was bronze and sweating, one made of living vines, one was made of candle wax and always melting.   I opened the simplest: a weathered oak door with a brass knob.   I found myself in a hallway with fourteen mirrors, a grandfather clock that ran backward, and my own voice narrating events two seconds ahead of me. It was unsettling, but manageable—until I opened the same door behind me and entered a spiral library built around a dry well.   “Ah,” I said aloud. “This house is lying.”   And so began the worst three days of my life.   Every door had a price. Some demanded memories. One required blood. Another asked a riddle that changed mid-answer. And let me be the first to say, that's just not fair! You can't change the riddle answer just because you were losing. The Sixth Door challenged me to a game of chess where the pieces whispered insults. I lost. It laughed.   The Seventh Door was locked, and no key fit it—not even the one I pulled from my own dream in the sleep-room with the whisper-pillow. (That door would later become a wall. The wall would later become soup. I don’t want to talk about it. But I did collect some in my stewpot, just in case. You never know when yocan use a door-wall-soup. Could make a good base for a proper halfling stew.)   The Eighth Door led back outside… but everything was slightly off. The sky was teal. The birds chanted my name. I left, and when I re-entered through the front, I returned to a different version of the first hallway.   At last, I found the Ninth Door. It didn’t exist in the house—not physically. I had to build it myself using broken furniture, regret, and a phrase I overheard in a memory I never lived. The frame was made of despair. The knob was an apology. The door itself was refusal.   When I opened it, I did not go in.   I simply heard Malaxis’s voice say:   “Correct.”   The entire manor sighed. The doors vanished. I woke up two valleys away with a receipt for a clock I never bought and a key labeled “Someday.” Worst of all, he took my money too! I didn't want this clock. It was expensive.   Tillo's Fifth Rule of Adventuring: If a house wants you to learn something, leave before you do.  

Volume VI - The Village With Too Many Grandmothers

By all appearances, it was a haven.   After the debacle at Kariseth (see my previous works, definitely worth buying and reading!), I found myself in need of rest, warmth, and above all else, breakfast. So when I stumbled into the fog-wrapped hamlet of Eldergrove Hearth, I believed—briefly—that I had found heaven.   Every home had a chimney. Every table bore pie. And in every window stood a smiling, gray-haired woman waving with the same, slow rhythm.   “Tillo, dear,” one called.   “Come in for a bit, love,” said another.   “You look so thin. Eat something,” whispered the third—before I passed her house.   They all claimed to be my grandmother.   Now, I do have grandmothers. Four, in fact. Even more if you consider all my friend's grandmothers, and what is a friend for if not to try their grandmothers' cooking? One taught me to shoot a sling, another once bit a troll. I remember them well. None of these women were any of them. They weren't quite right. Something about them being humans and not halflings, I think.   But I was cold. And hungry. And halfling nature abhors an empty plate. So I stepped into the nearest home.   The stew was perfect. The biscuits were herby and tender. The tea tasted of memory and midsummer afternoons I never lived. Every bite was better than the last, and every bite made me more tired.   Then came the second helping. Then the third. By the fourth, I noticed the eyes behind the curtains.   Each home I visited—and yes, I was invited to all twenty-three—had nearly identical interiors. Doilies in the same places. Portraits with my face aged slightly. Hand-stitched samplers that read:

• "Bless this House and this Tillo."
• "Eat Until You Remember."
• "The Grandson Who Stayed."

One grandmother slipped and called me "Ezric". Another licked the spoon after handing it to me. One tried to trim my toenails while I was eating. And worst of all, one forgot the post-meal fourth serving of biscuits! Who does that! That's when I decided to leave.   They did not like that.   I bolted. Into the fog. Through houses. Over teacups. The grandmothers followed—not running, but appearing ahead, holding cobblers like weapons and pies with too many eyes (The limit is 0, if you weren't aware).   I finally made it out by reciting my full birth name backward while clutching my real grandmother’s slingstone. The fog parted. The village vanished.   I was thirty miles away. All my pockets had fresh cookies in them.   I wept. Then I ate one. (They were excellent.)   Tillo's Sixth Rule of Adventuring: If they all know your name and you don't know theirs, they probably aren't actually your grandmothers.

Volume VII - The Hammer of the Heavens

It began with a snarl.   No, not a growl or a purr—a snarl that turned marrow to milk. One head hissed smoke, the other crackled thunder, and the third one (the goat one, if you care) looked like it resented being dragged into this mess. A mated pair of chimeras, one bearing a head of vibrant crimson, the other showing brilliant blues, had nestled atop the crags close to Corinthar—and I, naturally, had chosen that precise place to eat my lunch.   I'll spare you the details of how I ended up wedged in a rock cleft the size of a soup pot, but know this: I was there, in it, when the sky fell.   A shadow—no, a titan—seemed to walk on the very walls with the speed he traversed the rock face, then leapt—nay, he soared—from the crag and grasped onto the great blue beast, hanging from its clawed limbs as it desperately tried to shake him free. A knight clade head-to-toe in burnished field plate, two greatclubs strapped to his back like twin towers—one forged in the deepest green-black of adamantine, the other glimmering with sacred silver! This grand man tangled with the beast even as it soared, threatening to use the winds and earth itself as a weapon against him!   "He's not here to parley," I whispered to myself, yes I did. "He's here to punish."   And punish he did! Sylva, he called himself. A man of few words (almost none, in fact, during the whole fracas). He lunged for the blue chimera—a beast of claw and crackling sky—and climbed its great form until he rode the vile creature through the skies! He soared above his companions who fought so desperately against the red mate, slicing it down as he flew. With hands like siege clamps, he wrenched the creature's wings down, wrapping them inward, and forced the creature into a catastrophic dive.   They fell like wrath incarnate. When they landed, the earth cracked! The snaps that sounded from the beast showed its true fate, and yet, Sylva rose!   While all of this happened, his companions were not idle, no! From the wall's face sprinted a blur—a man running sideways, sideways, with the wind catching his trailing sash! No armor, only calm. Oceanus, Sylva had said his name was. He bore a wave longsword with split fangs like a serpent's maw at its tip—the Viperfang I have endeavored to call it! With every step he took along stone, his strikes flashed, each cut another verse in a deadly rhythm. He carved into the red chimera like a poet correcting a lie!   At his side came a green-skinned juggernaut, bare-chested and roaring, alongside him companion—equally bear-chested and roaring. Turbis and his bear companion, bonded in war, moved like a storm surge—axe and claw ripped flesh from flame! I could feel the chimera falter, its confidence buckling under raw violence and perfect timing.   And then came the light.   Yes, when I tell you it was light, it encapsulated the day itself, grander even than the sun itself! I never saw her face, never heard her name. I saw her brilliant golden glow and nothing else. She left the mountain before I ever met her, but her companions referred to her as an elf druidess, yes truly a master of light she must be! I saw her shine as she changed—wreathed in golden light and warm glows. From their words, I scarcely believe such feats of power would be possible without her support.   Where Sylva was the hammer, I believe she was the dawn after the quake.   And I? I lived. I witnessed. And now I write.   Let no soul call Sylva brute nor beast. He is strength forged into justice. Let no bard forget Oceanus's path of steel, not Turbis and his beast-brother's wrath, not the radiant glory of the sun-druid whose name I shall one day find. These four turned death into memory, and memory into legend.   I remain their humble herald, and this crack in the stone—where I saw gods fall from the cliffs—shall forever be known as Tillo's Witness!   Tillo's Seventh Rule of Adventuring: If someone falls from the sky with arms the size of your head, assume they're on your side—then ask questions!