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3,496 checks

Look at those nubbly thief hands. It's him.

Where else would it get this stuff?

THE LITTLE MAN BOASTS AN ECONOMIC ORDER BASED ON PURE WANT -- GREED AND CORRUPTION AWAIT.

At the centre of the bazaar stands a mound of flesh, rendered in cotton. Reflective eyes, brown fur, a long tail.

Warm expulsions of air on your knuckles, tickly.

Even the cutest and most dreadful of eyes can see how you drench yourself in remorse.

DEPRAVED LUZIAN FILTH.

It looks like a dinosaur rampaged through a shopping mall, and this is its dung.

How are we supposed to know what a monkey thinks 'premium' means, though?

The finger feel of the apology cards suddenly comes back to you.

Legwear? A mask?

No toys, but you know from the cosmonaut figurine that he likes scale models -- the real shit.

Is it a companion that he's looking for?

He glances at the ceiling, eyebrows twitching.

Torn between horror and desire.

Hard to tell what monkey emotions are, but those ear twitches seem relieved.

He is going to fück it, right? Sick. We should wätch.

Out of sight, but you can still faintly hear the choking rhythm of his heartbroken hoos.

It's like if fish could produce a cheese.

You can hear his breath, soft and ragged.

Alpha males of his species are visually distinguishable by their large cheeks. He thinks you fuck.

He's real. Nothing has monkey physics like that but monkey.

You're in a haunted bathroom.

Ghosts! It's ghosts!

Ghost gäng. Huddle up.

Not so fancy now, are you? Take this, nib.

The maelstrom of black markings feels like home now. Almost cosy.

Effortless. Nothing but grim inevitability and dawning madness now.

But did someone sell out Karolina? That you never discovered.

Home gäng... really did us in? After everything?

A single cell of terminal intent.

If they aren't already a bloody mass screaming at existence.

The key slides in. The tumblers are lifted up and fall back into place.

The Honour Stall in Party Alley might be a good first stop.

'Blood Type: Hecatomb'.

Or you have fundamentally misjudged the depth and nature of your friend's malaise.

Oh look. A fresh rung on the 'abject mental illness' ladder. Down we go.

A flatland vertigo takes hold of you as you face the expanse of letters again.

This... is an entirely different beast than the Rezeda cipher PSEUDOPOD left you.

An elite art form, a lesson from the old school of espionage -- though now sadly half-obsolete in the face of ever-improving codebreaking machinery.

Strip away the romanticism. Codebreaking is about rigour. Nothing else.

SCREAM AT IT UNTIL THE WORDS SELF-ORGANISE FROM FEAR.

All minds on deck, gäng. Big thinking required here.

You fall into the rhythm of it, the instances of each letter jumping to your eye one by one as you move through the text.

Take 'H' as an example. In a text with 291 characters, that's about 7%, which is more than double the number you would expect to get if it were entirely random -- 1/26th, or roughly 3%.

There is a structure, but you can only palpate at its contours like a blind woman.

The median of the chains is thirteen.

Steady yourself. You've slipped deeper into the game.

Not for you. For enemies.

The rows bore a hole somewhere in the centre of your forehead.

3,496 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 22 of 70