AFGNCAAP (THE FOURTH DUNGEON MASTER)

TRAPPED ON AN ISLAND (1061~1066 GUE)
The famous adventurer, AFGNCAAP (nameless-ageless-faceless-gender-neutral-culturally-ambiguous-adventure-person), who would later become the Fourth Dungeon Master found a strange book near Aragain during the year of 1061 GUE. This book, which would be termed evil by those who sought to exterminate all magic from Zork, had strange runes of the enchanters on the cover and emitted the faint stench of spenseweed. Unbeknownst to this adventurer, the tome held a curse far more powerful than anything since Megaboz. As soon as he opened the cursed thing, a thundering bolt of lightning surrounded him and he found himself in a new land stranger than any that he had visited before. This island was covered with strange structures and many switches.

The adventurer would be here for quite some time, never seeing or talking to another person for five years, wandering aimlessly, throwing switches and pressing buttons, being forced to listen to the same dreary and boring music over and over again, and only being able to carry pages of colors. The only way to pass the excruciating time in the vile place was to read books, an entire library of books, that only foretold the coming of a new book of magic with more pretty pictures and new, pointless puzzles. This prison threatened to prematurely stunt the new-captive’s taste of adventurer, where he felt he would be doomed to spend eternity.

In 1066 GUE, one of the brave adventurers of the Second Inquisition, who was was dedicated to help better society by ridding the world of magic was Matchlick the Mighty. This hardy adventurer was spent to investigate the same strange book that had been uncovered near Aragain. Upon opening the book, he arrived at the same island, almost immediately noticing AFGNCAAP exiting a round building. Matchlick was the first soul that AFGNCAAP had seen in five years. The adventurer begged Matchlick for help in escaping the accursed island. Fortunately, he carried a few items from his previous Inquisition expedition, one of which was a Frobozz Electric Puzzle Solvering. Using the books in the library as heat to power the Puzzle Solver, he set it on “pointless wandering and clicking” difficulty level. After a short conversation, where Matchlick warned the adventurer that he would be sorry for wanting “magic to live forever,” the Frobozz Electric Puzzle Solver activated and AFGNCAAP was freed from the land.


THE RETURN OF MAGIC (1067 GUE)
On Frobuary 34th, 1067 GUE, AFGNCAAP, without a zorkmid and little idea of what lay ahead, wandered into the historic town of Port Foozle late that evening, hoping to earn a salary from selling Perma-suck machines. After a dramatic encounter with Marvin the Mythical Goatfish at the docks, this luckless adventurer fished a crate marked “Infocom” out of the sea. Within was the battered brass lantern in containing the spirit of Dalboz. When the adventurer brought the old lantern to Antharia Jack, he brought AFGNCAAP into the shop and offered an auto-lighting cigar. When he attempted to repair the broken device, it sparked and effused the scent of spenseweed, before the spirit of Dalboz cried out from within it. After swatting it several times with a racket, Jack, fearing the Inquisition, seized the lantern and shoved AFGNCAAP out of his shop. For the lamp was not just any lamp, but a magic lantern.

The adventurer was not a knave, but a good soul, with an eye for magic and was determined to recover the mystical device. Unfortunately, a bit of unrighteousness was resorted to in attempt to ascertain the lantern. Knowing that Antharia Jack was an honorary Foozle fire chief, AFGNCAAP set fire to a Grand Inquisitor doll and hid in a barrel. As presumed, Jack raced forth from his shop to put out the blaze. Being the only citizen sighted within the square, Wartle and his henchman apprehended the framed arsonist. They brought him to Steppinthrax Monastery for Totemization.

With the door to Jack’s shop unlocked, AFGNCAAP retrieved the lantern containing the banished spirit of Dalboz. Under his urgings, the adventurer descended into the Great Underground Empire via a Secret Entrance disguised as a simple well in the forested outskirts of Port Foozle. AFGNCAAP discovered that magic had not dispersed, but had been forced underground. A glimmer of hope remained in the Dungeon Master, who became a powerful ally on the quest. In fact, being stuck inside the lantern, he had no choice but to become the adventurer’s ally.

Though the Dungeon Master could no longer practice magic, he helped AFGNCAAP advance in the knowledge of the supernatural acts. Together they contacted the enchantress Y’Gael from the Ethereal Plane of Atrii. She informed them that if the Coconut of Quendor could be recovered, along with two other powerful artifacts in Zork’s magic treasury—a Cube of Foundation and the Skull of Yoruk—magic would again flow through Zork. To help with the quest, Y’Gael presented AFGNCAAP with a spell book to fill with contraband magic that had been hidden throughout the Empire, in hopes of spiriting some magic away from the Inquisition.

The adventurer soon met up with three other traveling companions who wished to join the quest. All three were one-time magical creatures who had been stripped of their magical faculties and imprisoned within totems. The three were none other than the beautiful and telepath Lucy Flathead (within the Steppinthrax Monastery), the thick-fitted, all-brawn no-brain brogmoid Brog (within the gates of Hades), and the whiny, neurotic griff (at the Secret Entrance to the Underground), who suffered a dragon inferiority complex and wanted desperately to avoid physical pain. Together, they formed an unlikely band of adventurers who joined forced to recover the three lost relics, destroy the Grand Inquisitor, and finally return magic to its rightful place in the Empire.

The group dynamic was interesting, to say the least; Dalboz was hungry and bitter and betrayed, skeptical as to whether the Grand Inquisitor could even be stopped, and in as foul a mood as any fellow stuffed in a lantern of that size was likely to be. Dalboz oversaw the posse with what limited respect a bodiless voice could command.  Lucy, for herself, was not accustomed to taking orders from a man, and found the arcane nature of Dalboz’s magical knowledge, when combined with the insane nature of his utilitarian uselessness, somewhat aggravating. The griff liked nothing better than to order about Brog, duping him into performing his own share of the work and more, and then blaming Brog when these suggestions backfired. Brog did not mind; he simply liked to talk with the twittering birds and the chirping insects, and instinctively find his way throughout the Underground, as he had since he was a pup. He was content just to look at Lucy, though more than anything he wished he could touch her.

To retrieve the three artifacts, it was necessary to send the spirits of the three totemized victims through three time tunnels, which had been erected back in the days of Dimwit Flathead for the very purpose of restoring magic to Zork. The griff went back in time and recovered the Coconut of Quendor straight from the mouth of the Watchdragon. Brog returned to the White House shortly before 966 GUE, where he descended into the grue breeding ground to retrieve the Skull of Yoruk. Lucy Flathead was sent to Port Foozle in the year 931 GUE, where she won one of the Cubes of Foundation from Antharia Jack in a game of Strip Grue, Fire, and Water.

Meanwhile, Antharia Jack stood in line at the Steppinthrax Monastery expectant to be totemized. Although he tried to escape, his attempts were in vain. The sentence was only suspended when the power was cut, on behalf of AFGNCAAP. Despite the security measures that had been put in place to prevent the closing of all four sluice gates at once, the REZROV spell enabled a loophole to be opened. When all four were shut, the top portion of the dam burst open and water flowed through new, unexpected, yet enormously relevant areas of the Great Underground Empire. Power to the surrounding regions were impeded, forcing the Steppinthrax Monastery totemizing to temporarily be suspended until auxiliary power was found. In the process, AFGNCAAP left a new bridge over the dam. Jack was tossed in the Port Foozle jail.

Following the power outage, riots began in the city streets as people were excited over an alleged magic rebellion and rumors of an adventurer carting the Dungeon Master around in a magic lamp. Yannick sought Antharia Jack and learned the location of AFGNCAAP. The Grand Inquisitor proceeded with Wartle to apprehend AFGNCAAP and the totems just as they emerged from the Steppinthrax Monastery time tunnel. Wartle had the adventurer stripped of his belongings and locked up in the Port Foozle jail in a cell adjacent to Antharia Jack.

The morning of Frobuary 35rd, Wartle stayed behind with a small regiment of Inquisition guards (less than the usual number) while the majority of the troops attended Mir Yannick at the Flathead Mesa. Here the entire population of Port Foozle and the surrounding regions gathered at the long-expected ceremony, where the Grand Inquisition started to announce the radical new mind-numbing technology that would implement his visionary “One Point of Light” program.

AFGNCAAP was only able to escape the prison for two reasons—one, Antharia Jack though the adventurer was crying, which prompted him to toss of a LEXDOM spell (“create lock and key”) scroll to blow the nose with. Second, the Inquisition guards had neglected to retrieve a zorkmid-pressed knife from the adventurer’s inventory. AFGNCAAP cast LEXDOM upon the cell door, drilling a lock and key into the door, but the key was protruding from the opposite side of the door. After sliding a poster under the door, poking the key out with the letter opener so it fell on the notice, and pulling the poster out, the key was used to unlock the cell door.

When the coast was clear, AFGNCAAP used the security system controls to unlock the door to Jack’s cell (31-AB). Seizing the opportunity, Jack busted out and smote the guard, retrieved the subset of the adventurer’s inventory that none of the guards wanted, found a nice new elvish sword, and grabbed his cigar. On his way out, he crossed through the adventurer’s area and returned AFGNCAAP’s inventory.

The proud Jack realized that he had finally become a true adventurer. Before he was able to puff the cigar, the two were interrupted by the door of the walking castle breaking through the jail wall. Jack recognized the castle from the days when it had broken through his own wall, bearing Lucy Flathead away from him. Hoping that he would be reunited with her, Antharia Jack beckoned for the adventurer to follow him inside.

Together they rode to the Flathead Mesa. When AFGNCAAP and Jack arrived, Y’Gael announced herself on a TV screen, instructed the adventurer to place the three magic artifacts into the radio tower, which was the highest point in Foozle, so that and end could be brought to the Inquisition. She presented AFGNCAAP with the BOOZNIK spell so that the quest could be completed. Jack told AFGNCAAP to take the tower and cut the cable, while he would send the Grand Inquisition that way.

In order to bind the high, middle, and deep artifacts together and return magic to the land, each of the three had to be placed in the correct order along the tower. The Skull of Yoruk, being the receptacle of deep magic, went in the glass dome at the bottom. The Cube of Foundation, being the container for middle magic, went in the nook halfway up the tower. The Coconut of Quendor, being the symbol for high magic, went in one of the balls of the wind gauge thingy at the top of the tower. Unfortunately, when it was placed inside, the wind gauge thingy became unbalanced. The Dungeon Master instructed AFGNCAAP to hang his lantern on the opposite side to balance it out. The MAXOV spell, to bind the energies of the different magics, could not yet be cast as the interference of Yannick’s babbling broadcasted over the tower was clouding the spell’s effect. AFGNCAAP cut the wire dangling above with the sword.

It was then that Antharia Jack kicked in which his part of the plan, which was to create a distraction. To the adventurer’s dismay, his clever distraction was to point AFGNCAAP’s presence on the tower to the Grand Inquisition himself in the middle of his speech. Despite the cheering crowds and their support, the Grand Inquisitor’s broadcast was cut off and he immediately came up the tower.

AFGNCAAP quickly cast MAXOV upon the tower to bind the energies. As each magic object carried with it a part of the lost Rune of Abjuration, when the three were recovered and combined according to the prophesy and the wisdom of Y’Gael, the Rune would summon her back down from the Ethereal Plane of Atrii, and their essences would be freed.

Dalboz shouted that he would drop a line from the Ethereal Plane as the sky was suddenly overcast with purple storm clouds. When Yannick reached the tower, he smiled to see the Coconut of Quendor and approached it. He strained to pull it out of the antenna’s compartment. As he did so, a blast of powerful magic hit the top of the antenna. The resultant blast threw AFGNCAAP, the totems, and the Grand Inquisitor from the tower while sending a shockwave of magic across the land. Exposed to the burst of magic energies, the totems sprung back to life. Fortunately, the adventurer was caught by the griff, Lucy was caught by Jack, and Brog’s fall was broken by his head. The Grand Inquisitor was not so lucky, falling to his doom. The burst of magic diffused all of Yannick’s technology—the monitors and the rest of his Inquisivision system, and even the Grand Inquisitor “I am the boss of you” posters supernaturally altered to “Queen Lucy the Levelheaded.”

With magic returned and the Grand Inquisitor's tyranny ended, Lucy Flathead declared herself the rightful heir to the throne. Her first act was to declare the Great Underground Empire open and magic free to all those who desired it. Her second was to name the unknown PermaSuck salesperson as Dalboz's successor, the Fourth Dungeon Master of Zork.

The return of magic inspired droves of adventurers to flock to the Great Underground Empire to scourge its remnants in search of magical paraphernalia, hidden archaic treasures, and general loot. With the restrictions of the Inquisition loosened, the magical creatures of the Empire, including trolls and kobolds, began to venture far from their lairs unchecked. Their breeding was more heavy and abundant than any other period in the history of Zork which would eventually become known as the Great Monster Uprising. The rapid and dangerous spread coincidentally prevented the adventurer population from emptying the Great Underground Empire of all its valuables. In turn, the adventurers kept the monsters in balance, by restricting them from overrunning every remaining corner of human civilization.

In the meantime, the Fourth Dungeon Master would have his hands full protecting the Underground from greedy trespassers, while also quelling a Granola Rebellion.

While this Great Monster Uprising plagued a majority of the era of the Second Age of Magic, Brog and the Fourth Dungeon Master concluded the Magic Wars, an epic confrontation between the Eastlands (the good guys) and the Westlands (the bad guys). No details save a fragmentary mention of this conflict have survived.

At some point following these wars and prior to the Great Diffusion of 1247, the Fourth Dungeon Master passed his staff on to his successor, an experienced adventurer known only by the alias "Detective Softly."