At the Village
Pick Your Peril: The Hero of Mudtown
(This is part of a series of choose-your-own-adventure articles. If you want to start from the beginning, click here.)
The chill you felt running down your spine is something you cannot shake.
You make your way back to Mudtown. The sun is shining again, the birds are singing, and you’re beginning to wonder why you abandoned your fishing spot. As you round the corner, you see that the village looks just as it did when you left, but you soon realize that a single living soul cannot be seen or heard.
The blacksmith’s forge is completely silent, the tavern is devoid of life, even the fields are empty of any livestock. You search every home lining the stream, looking for clues where everyone might have gone, but your search turns up nothing. You call the names of your family and friends, but nobody responds to your shouts. The entire village is gone, and you have no idea where they went.
After a moment of consideration, it is clear there are only three choices.
It might be that the King has finally lost his patience and rounded up the citizens of Mudtown, imprisoning them at the castle until they’ve worked off their debt. You could make your way to the castle and try to plead your case to the King. If they’re not there, maybe he could provide some knights for a search party. Surely he would want to find his missing peasants, despite their recent debts.
Maybe something spooked your family and forced them to flee to the forest. It doesn’t explain how the rest of the village disappeared, but if there was any danger, you hope that at least your family was able to escape. Perhaps they made their way to the rendezvous point and met up with the band of forest men.
You notice dark clouds drifting towards a nearby bog. The bog has always been known as an evil place to the people of Mudtown. Growing up, you heard stories of the dangers of the swamp, full of horrible monsters, treacherous pitfalls and a corrupt warlock who rules over all of it. Any soul brave or foolish enough to venture into the bog has never returned. If anything nefarious has happened, the bog might be the source.
What will you do?