Dungeon Train: A Lore-Rich Roguelite Adventure

The train is a curious thing.
Some call it mutli-dimensional.
A carriage adrift in liminal space and time.
Others, a dungeon crawler with a view.
An escape from reality.
A madman once claimed it a physics mod.
Sable-built. Endless.
Dreamed up by an award-winning hand.
Does the answer change the ride?
You'll have time to decide. The ride is long.

It wants, I think.
Some say its loot —
infinite, and never the same twice.
Others say a lesson.
A moral, drip-fed
between the characters,
the lore,
the ever-harder enemies.
Me?
I think it only wants
the right questions.

Others.
Or things shaped like them.
They wear the faces of people —
not quite.
Some are kind.
Some would see you gone.
Some never know you were there at all.
You will not meet the same one twice.
Then again…

The old riders call speak of echoes.
Echoes of those who passed before.
Echoes of strangers long gone.
And sometimes —
an echo of yourself.
I try not to look too closely.

Depends who you ask.
Some speak of loved ones.
A place called home.
Other treasure.
Many simply green fields. Lush forests.
Endless desert. The dark depths.
Fewer speak of fire. Of voids without end.
A Kingdom of Candy.
Beyond the worlds boarder.
Escape.

Fewer still speak of the Creator —
The request he makes,
asked only in death.
They say his passion will not let him rest.
That he listens to anyone
with a word to offer.

Some practice ancient rituals
in attempt to reach him.
They speak of "discord linking."
A summoning, of sorts.
A gathering place
beyond the train,
where the living and the Creator
trade words.

They say he answers there.
That he takes every offering —
every idea, every grievance, every prayer —
and folds it back into the train.

If you have a word to give,
speak it.

Personally,
I stopped believing in the destination.
Only the journey remains.
Perhaps that was the point.


~Signed, Faulthurst