You are in a very dark, damp space. The floor is squishy and it feels like you are sinking. Something is shuffling very close to you. It might just be your imagination, but things seem to keep poking you, particularly in your meaty middle sections. Out of the corner of your eye you catch a glimpse of what might be glowing red eyes, and the unmistakable glint of slavering fangs.
To the northwest is a crumbling stone doorway through which a dim light is shining.
You had better move; the shuffling seems to be getting much, much closer.
>nw
Hall of Ancient Jokes
You are in an enormously excessive marble temple that was obviously crafted with great care by skilled artisans. Phosphorescent lichens cling to the stonework and provide a dim greenish light. Massive stone columns reach upwards into the inky darkness, supporting the cave ceiling somewhere high above. Ornate carvings of curiously flat-headed figurines are embossed on every available surface; most of the figures depict people engaged in uproarious laughter as though they were literally laughing themselves into a stupor.
Throughout the room, filling nearly every inch of floorspace, are short stone pedestals. Most of the pedestals contain only the dusty remnants of parchments that rotted ages ago. However, scattered here and there are a few scrolls that have somehow survived the ravages of time. A few of them are still readable. Fascinated, you make your way around the vast space and read some of the most awful examples of humor ever contrived by man or beast. Most of the jokes are largely concerned with toilet functions. You can only take so much of the awfulness, and you have to fight back your gag reflex.
In the distance is a golden hued pedestal that seems different from the rest. Carved on its side is a single word: "Aberforth". On it lies a small piece of tan parchment that looks like it still might be legible.
>read tan parchment
"Continue reading at your own risk."
>read tan parchment
Nervously drawing a deep breath, you continue reading. Soon, you wish you had listened to your small inner voice and stopped. The joke contained on this scroll is steeped in ancient evil unfunniness. Just a few words into the body of the joke and you begin to feel the spell withering your body into old age, and yet you can't pry your eyes from the text. By the time you get to "Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo", you are nothing but a dried husk, somehow still supported by your spindly bones. You fall into a dead dusty heap on the floor.
Thousands of years later, a team of flat-headed archaeologists stumble upon the pile of debris that was once you. They take you back to their lab, where they painstakingly reassemble you piece by piece, and erroneously label you as a species of primitive saber-toothed goat. You languish for millenia in a museum, where children point at you and openly exclaim to each other how stupid ancient goats looked. Finally, humiliated beyond your ability to exist, you crumble into a small pile of grey ashes.
***You are dead***
Your score: -5/400
This gives you the rank of mentally retarded baboon.