Like all newcomers who are called through the summoning circle, your arrival is heralded by a dream. Waking up is a dizzying, disorienting thing... or it would be, if you did. It seems instead that you are swept from one dream to the next.

For everyone else, some time during the night of October 1st is when everyone enters a collective sleep. Do you not sleep? You do now. You feel the exhaustion carry you into a dark, quiet place. No matter how you try to resist, your body will eventually give in no matter where you are. For a time, you rest.

Then, you begin to dream.

The air is bitingly cold around you. As you look around in the dark, the apathetic stars above at last light up some of the landscape before you. You are standing in knee-deep snow. Nothing appears to be in any direction except one, very large landmark.

In front of you rises a modest pyramid. It’s large, but not impossibly so. The stones are frosted. Upon a closer look, they are all cut from ice. Even the door, a crude affair, is encrusted with ice so thick you have to pound the pull a bit to be able to get a hand around it. With much effort, the door opens just enough for you to slip inside to escape the bitter winds.

It closes behind you, and now you are truly in the dark. Night vision or those with heightened senses will find it is no help against this unnatural darkness. You are meant to feel lost, alone, and scared.

Weather you choose to simply pick a direction or feel your way against a wall, the silence is deafening here. You can hear your own blood pumping in your ears (if you have it). Every slight creak of your movements seems like a cacophony.

Then, you see it.

A light.

A bright spotlight, white and sterile, shines down from an unseen source.

However, that is the least of your concern. What it illuminates... now that’s interesting!

It lights up what appears to be a massive statue of a large arctic cat of some kind laying on a plinth. No matter your size, it is much, much larger than you. The head of the great cat gives pause. Instead of a feline face, the the neck ends with a twisted, grotesque mask despite the smile that splits it. It looks like it could burst into laughter at any moment and that might be the worst possibility one could imagine.

Fortunately for you, it doesn't.



Unfortunately for you, it isn’t a statue after all. No, the alarming face turns suddenly to look at you.

It's neck extends much further than it should.

"Hello, weary traveler. Why don’t you stay a while, rest upon my hearth?" it entreats, the mask not at all moving as it speaks. "Tell me, what is your favorite game in the whole, wide world?"

The Labyrinth