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"You there," says a raspy voice that sounds like it hasn't been used much in years. It is the voice of a man, and his accent is lightly French - or perhaps proto-French. "If you have any light, please do not use it! I would not like to harm you."
"I... I don't," you say, wondering quite what the man means.
"Ah, good. Then allow me to introduce myself. I am known in this dungeon as the Night Shepherd. I have a spell upon me that makes me so repulsive to look upon that I kill all who see me, though I wish it were not so. Alas, the spell cannot be broken. I rarely leave my cavern, but travellers such as you chance upon me sometimes." He pauses for a moment and you get the impression he is considering his words. "So it is with humility that I ask you: will you trade with me?"
You take a moment to think about this. As touched as you are by his situation, what could this wretched man, who is so terribly isolated, have that you could want?
"If it helps you to decide," the Night Shepherd adds with impeccable politeness, "I can tell you that this room is a dead-end, and I know you cannot go back the way you have come. I can safeguard you from the danger of going back with a single use of the TURNBACK spell. It is not much, but I don't believe you would have come here if you had known I was here."
You are just thinking sbout how much choice you really have here when Sir Escart interjects, not via your helmet but into the room itself.
"One moment now! You know the rules, shepherd of the darkness: the only way is onward," and at this point you hear the emphatic wooden donk of Escart's cane against the flagstones of Escart's antechamber. "There is no turning back!"
You firmly believe that this is the end of the road for you unless you convince Sir Escart that you should be able to accept this spell. "But Dungeon Master," you say into the darkness, thinking quickly about the cards at your disposal. "I want to follow your rules as I am your guest, but this is my quest and not yours, so I choose on this occasion to disobey." And I hope you do not hold that against me, you add to yourself.
It seems that the Night Shepherd feels brave enough to follow up. "Master, I must speak too! Do you not have a responsibility to all the dungeon's residents, myself included? I am restricted to this space and cannot venture forth to trade easily, not even at night, lest somebody lights my face with a candle or has a wall-mounted torch. Instead, I must wait meekly here until a potential trading partner comes to me, and they do that rarely enough with that Spriggan warning them against me! Because of all this, I have so little to trade, so as I have something to offer this one person, should I not be allowed to trade with what little I have, to help sustain my own existence?"
"Well-I... well..." stutters Escart, quite taken aback by this two-pronged complaint so passionately argued. He hums and haws as his defences crumble and within a few seconds he mutters, "Of course. Dungeoneer, it is your quest, not my own. Night One, if you have nothing else to offer the dungeoneer, then yes, gift them that spell. But not if you have any alternative, mind, now and in the future. Dungeoneer, you may only select one of your items to trade with. I will brook no second attempt if the Shepherd doesn't want what you offer him."
You cannot look at the Night Shepherd to signal your satisfaction due to the darkness, but you smile at the faint glint of a pair of eyes that you spot in the shadows and fancy that the Shepherd does the same to you.
Now that you have a trade on your hands, what items do you have?:
Which will you trade with him?