User:Zzo38/level20.tex

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This is a story typeset in TeX. It is written by Zzo38 and fully in public domain. This story is based on events in a Dungeons & Dragons game, but are also intended to be suitable as a standalone story, too. This may not quite be done satisfactorily, but it can be fixed later on at any time by anyone.

Read it.

Tropes used in Zzo38/level20.tex include:

Some tropes still need to be identified. Where's LNF again?

• Who's on First?: One character is a doppelganger named "Also". This causes much (deliberate) grammatical confusion. This character eventually is out of the story (eliminating such confusion).
• Gender Blender Name/Who Names Their Male Son "Isolde"?: One character is a male human fighter with a woman's name ("Isolde"), who can fight with a staff extremely well, and can beat up everyone extremely well compared to the other characters. He enters at one point during the story and then eventually leaves again.
• The Unpronounceable: The main character is named "Iuckqlwviv Kjugobe" (which, it has been said (by some (not all) people outside of the story), is difficult to pronounce if you don't have four tentacles). This character is part of most of the entire story so far, appearing at least once in every chapter and usually all the time in a chapter.
• Isolde once purchases live eggs and intends to use them to trick a bunch of guards in the castle, either by making them trip over them and having everyone who doesn't trip get distracted by continually laughing at them, or else that all the eggs will hatch at once, causing everyone to just laugh at them too much to do anything else. It doesn't work!
• Even More Unpronounceable: Kjugobe worships the very confusing god "Gxxyuxihuvxi" (a good god, not very well known though; their clerics are monsters only). This name is (purposely) very difficult to pronounce.
• It is decided that Kjugobe needs to defeat Aberration Hater, an evil organization, even though their members are not necessarily all evil. These people will call all of these monsters evil, whether or not it is, due to such thing as Confirmation Bias, misunderstanding, poor sampling, hating them for somewhat legitimate reasons and then being too extreme and wanting to kill them all, being too closed and thinking only of the benefit of humanity and hating some which are mostly better, and other reasons which remain unknown to this day.
• At one point, we need a boat to go faster to outrun another boat; Kjugobe suggests adding more sheets (we all take off our clothing and hang them on the mast).
• The following question is sometimes asked by Kjugobe: "The king is allergic to beholders and wants to destroy all of the beholders in the city. However, only half of them have done anything wrong. Identify the problem." The answer: "There is an odd number of them!"
• A character once anticipates that his opponents have anticipated that he had anticipated that they were making a Kansas City Shuffle. (Confused? Good.)
• Things such as astronomy and mathematics are sometimes used by Kjugobe. Especially with astronomy, timing is involved and critical. Phase of moon? Yes, that can affect things too! Even the day of the week is important. So are the colors of objects, beyond their simple meaning to signify something or to be identified.
• A number of strange spells are involved, sometimes to great effect, but sometimes they simply are not used at all.
• There is food on the table set for two people, neither of whom can eat (for two different reasons; see chapter 27). It is then found to be an illusion; therefore even people that would eat, don't.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": One character is often called "the wizard" (his name is not yet known), even though Kjugobe is also a wizard.
• Evil Chancellor
• Take Your Time: Averted. Timezones feature a number of times in this story. Knowledge of timezones can come in particularly useful at times. Whether it is day or night time also matters (when above ground), how many days pass, etc.
• Footnote Fever: There are at least 56 endnotes so far, one of which is referenced inside of a paper that is inside of the story rather than being the book that contains the story. One of them even has its own footnote.
• Tracking Device: There is one worn by a doppelganger near the beginning of the story; it is removed by displacing it in time. It is (so far) never mentioned again.
• Go To Jail Free: One character teleports into one prison for several purposes, including to get imprisoned in another jail across the street. Some of the reasons for this include: to confuse people (the reason for doing so won't be clear here out of context), in order that another character can get some breakfast, to identify where the death row cells are, to send a note such that the prison warden is aware (even though he isn't the recipient), and other reasons; however this also has some unforeseen consequences.
• We Need a Distraction: Not Throwing the Distraction, but dropping the distraction (right onto the ground). While invisible, dropping a gold coin right on the ground (but making the coin visible); due to the sunlight the guards can see it through the gate and open the gate to pick it up; therefore gate is open and we can pass through. It is certainly worth sacrificing the gold coin for this purpose as far as the author is concerned.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The evil "Human Supremacy Corporation" (even they don't know each other).
• Literal Surveillance Bug: They do use an actual bug; it is an intelligent leech (a wizard's familiar).
• No Name Given/Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Applies to many major characters. Some character's names are mentioned only once and then ignored.
• No Ending: Maybe there will be an ending later, or maybe not. I am not telling!

Author's Ideas

Lists some of the author's ideas about such thing, mainly in order that people can argue about it, and that the author (and others) can be reminded of such thing.

• I imagine that the more major temples of Gxxyuxihuvxi (god of confusing monsters? well, one of them at least!) would presumably be more confusing that minor temples; the more major they are, the more confusing they are (by services, geometry, and other stuff); more minor temples would be more mundane.
• Of course, any people are correct to be cautious amongst such monster character as illithids and so on, but people who want to destroy all monster in general, that's just very bad and evil.
• I should try to put more chess and more mathematics into this story! I like it when mathematics is going to get involved.
• Subpages should probably be added to list characters, Wild Mass Guessing, etc if anyone has stuff to add. Of course add stuff into this page too. Maybe it would need to be moved to main namespace before then? Ask someone knowledgeable about such policies in this wiki.