You have just run your sword through the last of the 6 bandits when you hear a cry for help. You jog over to a large chest. Upon opening it, you find a beautiful girl locked in with a rather large amount of gold.


"You must be Amelia" you say, as you boldly lift her from the chest.


"I am!" she replies breathlessly, "You must have gotten my hidden message! Thank you for rescuing me. The way you challenged all the bandits to a sword fight at the same time was so very heroic!" You lean closer....


You wake up and take in your surroundings, holding a tiny hope that one of your dreams had been reality and not just fantasy. But all you see is your one room hut, mostly empty and worn down.


"Last night it was a dream about escaping from an amazing tower of riddles ruled by an evil magician and today it's a hero rescuing princesses... I must be losing it."  You get out of bed, get dressed and take stock. One bed, a desk with your open pack and a chair by the cooking fire are all the furniture in the room. You slowly re-fill your pack with your cloths and hunting gear. The fire went out during the night leaving the room dank and chilled so, realizing you had no reason left to hang around, you stuff your sleeping sheet into you pack, sling it over your shoulders and head to the door.


Looking out you see the dirt streets and hastily built shacks of the work camp you've been living in the past few months.


Do you:

You head off to talk to the foreman

You quickly walk through the camp towards the mine, looking in the empty shacks as you pass. Now that the mine is running and producing silver, all the temporary staff brought in to dig out the initial tunnels have been laid off. You were one of the last to go as you were one of the most experienced but tomorrow the shacks would all be torn down and only the huddle of nicer buildings would remain to house the permanent miners and those needed to support them.


You arrive at the entrance to the mine and see the Foreman sending the last of his men inside. He calls you over.


"Well, you've done a good job for us but I can't keep you on our books any longer. The mine's bringing up silver and they've sent down  some official to assess our operation. Sadly, that means he will be checking our payroll so there wont be any room for us to hire out side jobs for a few months."


You knew the job was only temporary so you tell him that it's alright and thank him for keeping you on after most others had been laid off.


He hands you a small purse with your pay.


You start to head off when he calls after you.


 "I heard a rumor that another mine might be opening a few days walk north of here... Can't say if its true or not but there may be a few months worth of work up there if it is."


You wave your thanks and head out of the camp towards the road. It takes just over an hour to reach it so as you walk you think back on your recent dreams. In the tower of riddles you hadn't been much of a traditional sword swinging hero but you had shown great wits and intelligence to escape. In this morning's dream you had been a bold adventurer able to take on 6 ruthless bandits at the same time without breaking a sweat. Comparing it to your own life so far, you think its no wonder you're having escapist dreams.


Your name is "Glor". Your mother once told you that traditionally, babies are named after the first thing a father says when a child is born. (This often causes no end of contrived first exclamations from new fathers) Your own father, upon hearing it was a boy, had strode into the room and started saying "Glory be!" (Obviously thinking Glory was a good manly name) Unfortunately, when he saw what a birthing room was like a few seconds after the deed he only managed, "Glorrr..."  Most couples iron over the small details like this and name the child what the parent 'meant' to say, but your mother had a wicked sense of humor so Glor stuck fast.


You grew up in a small section of the city called the "Old Quarter" near the docks and factories. Your family could only be described as the working poor, the people who do all the dirty and less desirable jobs that keep a city running. Your father worked hard and brought in enough money to keep you all fed, but 4 years after you were born, your mother passed away while giving birth to a stillborn child. Your father still worked but as a broken man and you were mostly brought up by friends and their families around the area. Once you hit your teens, you took any small jobs you could get. Cleaning, hauling, and off-loading ships - no job was too humble or dirty. You spent the rest of your time  hanging round the docks and warehouses chatting to sailors about other cities and lands.


Not that yours is a sob story. Many had it much worse than you in those days. Lack of jobs sent more and more people into the Old Quarter and many families didn't survive their first years there. You had good friends and old family ties that took care of you when you needed, so it wasn't all bad.


Once you were old enough you joined a mining expedition and set off into the hills to make your fortune. Well, to dig holes while other people made their fortunes even bigger, but, it was a wage and a start. You had stayed up North since then, taking mine and farm jobs wherever you could. You claimed you were saving your coin and preparing to head back to the city but the years passed and you stayed, doing manual labor in mines. This latest job had brought you the closest you'd been to the city in years, even if it was still days of hard travel away.


Your thoughts are interrupted as you reach the road. You take a good look around but see no-one in either direction. To the North, the road roughly follows the line of the hills; to the south, it disappears onto the plains, where it turns slowly east  towards the city.


You feel an urge to turn south and see the city again. There's certainly been more mining expeditions sent out recently, so maybe things have improved there. The money you just got paid for the months at the mine would keep you going for at least half a year if you're careful.


On the other hand,  if there is a new mine starting North, a few more well paid months away from the city won't change your situation for the worse. You think to yourself one more mine job without a break between would get enough for a years living when you got back.


Should you make you way back South to the city or try your luck in the mine to the North?

You head North.

You turn Northward up the road thinking that the rumors of a new mine are too good an opportunity to pass up, and hey, even if it's false you don't mind spending an extra week or two on the road.


You pull out some of your dried meat and start eating as you walk, thinking you should probably set some traps and snares when you make camp that night to stock up some fresh meat. You spend an uneventful day walking North and see no other travellers. An hour or so before dusk you start looking for a place to camp. You can camp on the roadside, head into the trees to the east for cover while you sleep or walk an hour or so to the foothills west and hope for a spring or cave.

You it would be good to find a cave to sleep in, head West

You walk for an hour west and reach the larger hill. After some searching you find a game trail  that leads to a cave and just have time to build a small fire before night sets in. You didn't find a stream but you're sure you'll come across one tomorrow.


You quickly lay a few snares just out of the reach of the firelight then retreat into the cave for the night.

You morning on the North road

You thought you had heard some noises during the night but there are no signs of other people in the cave. Sadly, your snares are empty too so it'll be another day of dried meat unless you find a traveller on the road today.


You cover the embers of the fire and walk back to the road. Once you reach it, you see a lot of fresh footprints and realize you must have missed a group that passed during the night. The tracks lead North so you follow them for a short distance on the road before coming across their abandoned camp on the edge of the woods.


A quick look tells you they packed up and started their march North again several hours ago.

You follow them and try and catch up

You think to yourself that with the rumors of a new mine opening that it might be best to catch this group up and see if they know anything about it. You set off at a fast pace to catch them up.


By mid morning you see a dust cloud ahead of you on the road so you keep your fast pace up till you get close enough to make out the group.


Its getting close to midday before you get close enough to realize who it is your chasing. Its a group of miners! You quickly conclude that they must be the hired hands sent to get the mine up and running so you approach them to see if you can find out more.


As you catch up to the rear of the pack some of them hail you. You respond in kind then fall in beside the rear couple and start chatting. You learn that there are about 50 of them in the group including all the skilled workers the mine needs but that they would be happy to have you along as an unskilled hand. Its not going to be as much money but they tell you that they have sent their mine guards off ahead to make the area ahead safe so there isn't any way to get ahead and get a better job.

You ask the Foreman to let you sign up as unskilled work and join their group.

You troop into the camp with your new companions and get your first look at your new job site for the next few months. Its a well cleared site around a small mine entrance that couldn't extend more than a few feet into the hill. The guards sent ahead had obviously arrived much earlier than you as the site overseer and his men had readied sheds for your company to sleep in and already had his handful of miners digging and putting up rough timber supports in the mouth of the mine.


You're shown your quarters, a small shed set out much like your last one, bed, desk and fire. You settle in and the next day begin your new job. Since you couldn't get a better position your one of the diggers and carters as the foreman put it. You dig to deepen the mine until your standing in a large pile of dirt, then you or someone else, shovel it into a cart and push it outside to be dumped.

You after a couple of weeks

After a few weeks of hard labor your not sure whether your regret your choice or not but your certainly keeping very strong and fit from wielding a pick and shovel all day. The mine has been progressing well, the main shaft has been tunneled deep into the hills bedrock and side tunnels are being opened to chase the smaller silver seams your crew uncover in the rock.


You're just taking you latest load of rock out in a cart when the foreman approaches you. "Theres a small job available for you if you want to earn some higher pay than you are at the moment, dangerous though."


"What's the job?"


"One of the main side tunnels has found a rich looking vein we want to open, but the rock around it is cracked and weak. The weak stone should only extend a few feet but we need some volunteers to risk mining through it. The pay is more than double what your getting now."

You take the risk and the extra money

You take a proper look at the new tunnel you're to help open up. The stone is very weak and cracked. You and the two other workers start mining, carefully removing the weak stone along with the silver ore and painstakingly placing buttresses and supports as often as possible.


A few days pass and your team is making some good headway. One thing you've decided you like about weak stone is that is easy to mine. Half of it just crumbles out of the wall with a single pick blow, That doesn't reassure you about the rest above your head though.


After a week you're taking a rest at the end of your tunnel. You've made several metres into the stone and it looks like you've finally reached the end of the weak stone. Your buttresses held and you've earned some easy coin.


The Overseer told you after you were done with the weak stone that he might be able to get you moved to some logging duty for a week or two if you wanted, same pay but easier work as an additional reward. Starting today they would be felling the trees that grew near the mine to build more supports for the ever growing maze of tunnels.

You leave the weak tunnel

You start to pick up your gear to exit your tunnel when you feel a slight shaking and see a few small pebbles fall from the tunnel roof.


You feel as if time had slowed around you as you think of the layout of the mine site. Your tunnel had branched far off the main one under the hillside. You can see a small root in the rock wall beside you. Your mind tells you that your seam must have run under the trees behind and to the left of the hill and that they were the obvious choice for the first logging, but all your body is telling you to do is run.


The tunnel is small so you start to run hunched over but as you take your third step you feel a tremor moving up through the tunnel floor.


"They felled the tree right over my tunnel!" you think as a last thump resounds through the walls and the roof of your tunnel crumbles.  Tons of rock pour onto you.


You don't have time to think anything else in your rock tomb.