genericangstyposter Posted:

He picks the lock with REAL lockpicks, this time (10). “Alright, alright you little kobold. Shut up, I’m coming.”

The lock slides open smoother than bumered grease. Damn, but if it doesn’t feel good to have real tools beneath your fingers. With a soft click, the final tumbler falls into place and you turn the lock, causing the latch to hang open. Hold on… Something doesn’t feel right.

You look at the lock in your hands carefully. It isn’t a #3 pin-and-tumbler combination, though you still managed to get it open in near-record time. It’s a Puzzler & Son’s reverse-configuration. You haven’t seen one of these for years now: which is fair enough, given how they haven’t made any for years. Puzzler went out of business decades ago when New Stanford Co. began mbum-producing their “Standard locks” for half the price. The lock in your hands, however, is definitely a Puzzler’s. Bartelville, being the backwards hick town that it is, is still outfitted exclusively with their locks, and they were amongst the first puzzles your inquisitive fingers learnt to unravel.

You take an even closer look around you. While nothing appears to have changed, something certainly has. The stone, for instance, is slightly different, more aged and dirty, and the iron bars on the cells more pitted with rust than it was just a few minutes ago. Even the air, now that you think about it, smells different. The smell of **** that was prevalent has since disappeared, replaced by something more earthy. It is the kind of smell that you would bumociate with a tomb; air that has not been breathed by anything alive for the past few centuries.