<<set $rooms_explored = 6>>You follow the activity into the next room.\n\nWhat you had seen was a golden retriever being pulled by its feet into a room full of goblins. The dog is swung by its legs and thrown into a wall, which cracks and folds on impact. The dog limply lands on the floor.\n\nSome of the goblins are poking other animals with white-hot irons, while more goblins keep the animals from writhing away from the torture.\n\nOther goblins drool all over the faces of human corpses while penetrating them.\n\nStill more look on while devouring handfuls of dripping meat.\n\nAll of their cackling is underscored by a wailing sound eminating from the hallway you were in before.\n\n[[Investigate the lamentations.|Hungry Ghosts]]\n[[Leave the building.|South Wall]]
You promise the children wonderful carts the likes of which they've never seen, pulled by each of their favorite animals: goats, deer, and oxen.\n\nThey hurry out of the room and, after you catch up to lead them to the exit, all of you escape the burning building.\n\nYou make it to the road and, upon doing so, the building collapses behind you with a deafening bang, the flames briefly stretching high above where the roof used to be. Were you unable to persuade them away from their games, your only children would have perished. You can't imagine the weight of that loss.\n\nYour children now ask about the carts you promised.\n\nYou give them not the different carts you described. Instead, you give them each the same cart, one much grander than what they could have understood or even imagined as they played in the burning building.\n\nThey then played in contentment and safety forever.
As you walk around the familiar countryside, you stop to [[investigate an enormous old building with a thatched roof|North Wall]], as your children take a break from the day's heat to play with their toys under the shade of a nearby tree's many leaves.<<set $children_inside = false>><<set $rooms_explored = -1>>
You shout at your laughing children, imploring them to stop playing and leave the building immediately.\n\nOne of them waves at you and smiles, and then turns around and continues to play.\n\nAs you begin to yell again, you're cut off by a loud bang that accompanies the inferno's intensification.\n\nThe building then collapses on your children.
You beg your children to leave, but they're too captivated by the fire to go with you out the door. Your promises of other games don't impress them, and the building falls down on top of all of you as you campaign to have them follow you out.
You kneel down and watch your children play.<<if $favorite_toys_known>> They're using their goat, deer, and ox toys to make shadow puppets on the wall.<<endif>>\n\nYou spend a few seconds humoring their imaginations and playing along, but you all need to get to safety.\n\nYou promise them even more merriment if they leave with you. You say that they must leave this building immediately, though.\n\n<<if $favorite_toys_known>>[[Tell them there are fine carts pulled by real goats, deer, and oxen waiting outside for them, but only if they hurry.|Skillful]]<<else>>[[Implore them to leave.|Unskillful]]<<endif>>
<<if $rooms_explored gte 0 and (not $fire)>>As you prepare to leave the rotting building, there is an explosion that propels you forward and off of your feet. You catch yourself and turn around to see the building now engulfed in flames.<<set $fire = true>><<endif>>\n\n<<if $fire>>\n\n<<if $rooms_explored gte 1>> The birds you saw inside struggle to fit through gaps in the flaming roof. Their charred wings cannot carry the few who manage to escape. <<endif>><<if $rooms_explored gte 2>> The hiss of smoldering ruins competes with the hiss of the many snakes trying to find their way to an exit. The mice inhale too much smoke to outrun the flames. <<endif>><<if $rooms_explored gte 3>> The smell of burning feces fills the air with a nauseating aroma. <<endif>><<if $rooms_explored gte 4>> Loud, rapid barks come from the blaze.<<endif>><<if $rooms_explored gte 6>> Goblins shriek and try to escape the flames by making a mound of corpses to climb on top of. <<endif>><<if $rooms_explored eq 7>> The ugly ghosts bellow and shake the ground with their screams as they argue over their stacks of waste.<<endif>>\n\nHeat radiates from the doorway and smoke billows out to choke you. Sounds of destruction leak out of the building like a timer for the abode's demise.\n\nYou must get your children to safety.<<else>>Any other observer may deem it strange (even impossible) for a large abode such as this to have just this one door.\n\nIt felt natural.<<endif>>\n\n[[Move to the west wall.|West Wall]]\n[[Move to the east wall.|East Wall]]\n[[Go inside.|Doorway]]
<<set $children_inside = true>><<if $fire>>The burning roof gives the impression that the building was designed to burn down in mere seconds.\n\nYou call out for your children. You hear the sounds of them playing, and look to where the sound seems to be coming from.\n\nThey're inside, enjoying themselves in a small room near the south end of the building. You can see their backlit figures and shadows through small fractures in the wall. They're squealing with delight at the spectacle of the fire.\n\n[[Shout at them to run out of the building as fast as they can.|Shout]]\n[[Run to the north wall.|North Wall]]\n[[Run to the south wall.|South Wall]]<<else>>This side of the building has almost no paint remaining on its doorless façade. You haven't had it decorated in decades.\n\nYou think for a moment of your children and are reassured by the sounds of their play.\n\n[[Move to the north wall.|North Wall]]\n[[Move to the south wall.|South Wall]]\n<<endif>>
<<set $children_inside = true>><<if $fire>>Flames seem to attack you with great prejudice, singeing some of your hair.\n\nYou need to find your children and get out of here.<<else>>Your spouse was always eager to leave this place and live somewhere else.\n\nIt always felt so huge.\n\nYou didn't need to spend so much money on it. Now you know that.\n\nYou planned the look of the home yourself. You didn't know what you were doing. Now the building's pillars are ready to fall apart.\n\nYou wouldn't rebuild it.<<endif>>\n\n[[Move to the north wall.|North Wall]]\n[[Move to the south wall.|South Wall]]
<<set $rooms_explored = 7>>You leave the goblins to their vulgar revelry and follow the sound of alien howls.\n\nYou find the source.\n\nYou peek into a room full of ghastly spectres, their features an amalgamation of every living being imaginable.\n\nWhile their appearances vary extremely, each being unique in their grotesquerie, all of them share the following characteristics: sunken eyes, a small mouth, a slender neck, and a large stomach.\n\nThey fly from dung heap to dung heap attempting to eat as much as they can, but their tiny mouths and long, thin necks prevent them from satisfying their appetite.\n\nMany of them choke on their own gluttony, while others mockingly strike them to dislodge the filth that suffocates them.\n\nThe odor and horror of the situation makes you [[flee the building|South Wall]].
Mahayana
<<set $rooms_explored = 4>>A wild dog runs from one room to the next, chased by the barking figure of an animal that looks similar, but larger.\n\nYou inch closer to the room they entered, hearing the scraping sounds of struggle as you approach. You carefully peek into the room, and you see them fighting over an unidentifiable corpse. They whine and bite each other as a jackal tries to sneak a bite of the corpse in the midst of their distraction.\n\nThe jackal is caught and all three animals chase each other out of the room, with no regard for you.\n\nYou hear a small cry from down the way.\n\n[[Continue exploring.|Weak Crying Animals]]\n[[Leave the building.|South Wall]]
<<if $rooms_explored eq -1>><<set $rooms_explored = 0>><<endif>><<if $fire>>The flames are nearly blinding. However, you clearly hear the sounds of your children laughing nearby.\n\nYou realize the sounds are coming from the next room. You quickly dodge burning beams and hold your breath through the smoke-filled passage to emerge through the door of the room they're in.\n\nThis room is yet untouched by the fire, and the air is safe to breathe for now. Your children are smiling and clapping, amused by the dancing flames and loud percussion of the building's disintegration. They see no danger, and continue to play.\n\n[[Play with your children.|Play]]\n[[Carry your children out of the building.|Carry]]\n[[Run out of the building.|Abandon]]<<else>>You enter the cold abode. Its many rooms are marked by decay, and the darkness of the space is interrupted only by the occassional rays of light punching through holes in the walls and ceiling.\n\n[[Walk down the shadowy corridor.|Birds]]\n[[Go outside.|South Wall]]<<endif>>\n
<<set $rooms_explored = 2>>You leave the winged predators and continue down the corridor.\n\nYou walk down a short flight of stairs into a room with a low ceiling and almost no light.\n\nYou notice that most of the floor, revealed only by what little light can escape the hallway behind your head, seems to be moving like a turbulent ocean.\n\nYou slowly approach, leaving the illuminated stairway behind you. Before you take even three steps, you see a tiny shadow cross just in front of you.\n\nJust as you're thankful that you did not step on the small being, what seems to be a tentacle strikes out from the undulating mass in front of you, grasping what you now recognize to be a mouse.\n\nThe dark sea of motion reacts violently, its focus on the spot where the mouse was dragged to. Your eyes begin to adjust to the darkness, and you see what must be a hundred tangled snakes wrestling to control the tiny mammal and inject it with their venom.\n\nThe disturbance arouses the panic of dozens more mice, who scamper about the floor without direction. The snakes strike out at these new targets, and you quickly retreat to the relative safety of the upstairs hall.\n\n[[Continue exploring.|Insects]]\n[[Leave the building.|South Wall]]
You sprint away from your children and out the door. Just as you are clear of the building, the flames reach higher into the air and there is a loud bang.\n\nThe building has collapsed with your children inside.
You're facing the north wall, which has no door.\n\n<<if $fire>>The building has flames reaching up from every side.<<else>>The building looks as though it could crumble to pieces at any moment.<<endif>>\n\n<<if (not $children_inside)>>Your children are [[playing with their favorite toys|Favorite Toys]].<<else>><<if $fire>>Your children aren't playing here anymore. You must find them, and quickly. This building could come down any second.<<else>>Your children have moved to play somewhere else. Not far, you're sure.<<endif>><<endif>>\n\n[[Move to the east wall.|East Wall]]\n[[Move to the west wall.|West Wall]]
<<set $rooms_explored = 3>>An unwelcoming stench greets you in the next room you examine.\n\nPiles of feces and urine stains furnish this place, with insects of all sizes and incalculable number milling about.\n\nYou can't stand to enter.\n\nA low growl echoes down the hall.\n\n[[Explore further.|Hyenas]]\n[[Leave the building.|South Wall]]
Too young to sit well with quiet moments, your children invent adventures and conflicts for their painted, wooden toys.\n\nAnimals are their favorites. They spend most of their time animating their stiff-legged goats, deer, and oxen. The children's short arms bestow an awkward gait upon these creatures as they hop around the grass and dust.<<set $favorite_toys_known = true>>\n\nYou soon return your attention to the [[north wall|North Wall]] of the building.\n\n
<<set $rooms_explored = 5>>You walk towards the pained utterances.\n\nAt the end of the hall, you find the room the sounds came from. You discover not one animal, but many. Creatures of all different sort lie emaciated all over the floor, their short inhales showing their ribs through matted fur.\n\nThey barely the energy to fight over the small scraps of food in the room.\n\nTheir swiping, batting, and gnawing weakly at each other is briefly interrupted as their eyes shift to someone dragging one of the animals into the next room.\n\n[[Look into the next room.|Goblins]]\n[[Leave the building.|South Wall]]
You pick up one child with each arm, planning to return for the rest as soon as these two are safe.\n\nYou try to hurry to the one exit, but the children you're holding are resisting and the others are trying to hold you back.\n\nYou break free, but you can't manage to fit yourself and your squirming children through the door.\n\nThe building collapses on top of all of you.
Devin Wilson
<<set $rooms_explored = 1>>You make your way into one of the first rooms of the building.\n\nBirds of prey perch upon the sagging rafters. Their waste carpets the floor, and the hawks eye you with great suspicion.\n\n[[Continue.|Snakes and Mice]]\n[[Leave the building.|South Wall]]