And now that I am basically finishing up the KDD hold, and there isn't any plot to it except for "
clear the dungeon"
, I will give the plot of my JtRH hold:
For section 1, Beethro is accused of not clearing Dugan's Dungeon properly as it was re-infested soon after he cleaned it thoroughly in this hold.
He decides to bring Halph along because he whined and harassed Beethro constantly about becoming a smitemaster just like him when he grows up.
Halph immediately wanders off after Beethro leaves the first room, and Beethro is obviously upset and worried about him.
Beethro eventually comes to the 10th section/84th level unopenable door, with a portable orb the Smitemasters' Guild gave him to get past it and figure out the cause of the repopulation.
As he goes past it, he discovers there's stairs leading to other dungeons connected to Dugan's Dungeon, and Beethro happily exclaims "
wait til I tell them back at the guild!"
In section 2, Halph comes back and Beethro yells at him about running off, and also tells him since he decided to come along he's going to help Beethro clear all the monsters.
Later on in the section, the two meet 84th Imperial Defender (no Negotiator in this particular interpretation), who is sent to defend the Rooted Empire of knowledge from aboveground intruders like the Budkins.
After outwitting the defender, Halph wanders off again in section 3 and Beethro meets 39th Slayer for the first time soon after.
39th Slayer states he was sent to kill Beethro for intruding too far into the Empire's territory, and that he's not actually in Dugan's Dungeon anymore.
Beethro states he can take on the 39th Slayer fine, and the chase begins.
At the end of the section, Halph comes back and Beethro yells at him again about running off, and warns him the Slayer wants to kill Halph as well as Beethro.
Halph promises not to wander off again, and the two work together to lose 39th Slayer at the end of the level.
39th Slayer states he'll be back even though they won for now, in his ever ominous way.
Immediately in the next level in section 4, 39th Slayer tells them not to think they've gotten away and that he's always watching them, and sets up a Messanger system to warn the Empire about the Budkin menace.
In a secret room in this section however, the Messanger system is shown to be flawed and acts like a game of Telephone where the message is not translated exactly as the sender says, and important details are left out.
In section 5, Beethro learns about wubbas, and at the end of the section Halph is shown goofing off and playing with some wubbas.
Beethro yells at him about running off yet again, but very soon after Halph wanders off another time because some more wubbas are blocking him from following Beethro.
Beethro sighs the boy never listens, and then section 6 starts.
In section 6, rock golems are introduced and state they must crush Beethro for being soft and not a rock.
About midway through the section, 84th Imperial Defender comes back for a second round, but Beethro states he knows how to outwit him and if he's done it once, he can always do it again.
Later on at the end of the section, 39th Slayer comes back and states Beethro didn't lose him if he thought he did, and he's got him cornered for good now.
At the very end of the section, Beethro loses the Slayer for a while again, and the Slayer curses him out for another defeat, and foolishly reveals his strategy for next time, which Beethro taunts him about.
In section 7, Beethro meets the Pit Thing for the first time, who prattles on about the Mothingness without explaining what it is, and essentially tells Beethro to jump down a pit.
Beethro yells at him that he's not going to fall for any of his tricks, and he's a seasoned smitemaster and proud of it - he can handle going the long way down.
At the end of the section, 39th Slayer is tired of chasing Beethro and decides to camp in one spot, hoping to nail Beethro then, but Beethro manages to still get past, and the Slayer says he should have stayed longer at the training school and Beethro taunts him about not being as professional as he thought he was.
In section 8, Halph and the Slayer come back, and Beethro tells Halph he can get himself killed for all he cares cause he never listens to Beethro's warnings, and 39th Slayer says the career of Beethro Budkin finally ends with this next appearance of his.
After outwitting the Slayer yet again, the Slayer curses "
Oh, rot!"
and that the next time they meet the design won't be as forgiving.
In section 9, the Slayer angrily states his reputation as a professional is at stake because of Beethro's antics, and Beethro states he's glad to hear it cause he wasn't good at his job to begin with.
There is another room of the Messangers in a secret room in this section where the Slayer's message gets misinterpreted again, and at the end of the section there is no dialogue for losing the Slayer this time.
In section 10, in a secret room, 39th Slayer sarcastically taunts "
Good luck!"
to Beethro, obviously hoping he will get killed in a brutal fashion instead.
In section 11, the Pit Thing taunts Beethro "
Moth'ness Ti!"
without saying anything else in a secret room, and Beethro tells him to shut up.
At the end of the section, Halph is trapped in a room with bombs, and Beethro tells him hopefully this room is a life lesson about why he shouldn't run off if the Slayer wasn't already.
In section 12, Beethro meets his first Tar Technician, who marvels at the beauty of the stuff before crying for help being rescued from it.
When Beethro rescues him, he states he specifically made the tar to be this way, and that he loves the stuff with full passion.
He then explains the Slayer was actually engineered to be a Slayer, and wasn't just trained the way Beethro was, and warns him to go back home while he still can.
Beethro states that this doesn't change the fact the Slayer has been doing a lousy job so far, and that this won't stop him from going further down.
In section 13, the first goblin Beethro comes across his second time around the dungeon basically states "
don't kill me"
, and Beethro states he has to in order to open the green door.
At the end of the section, Beethro meets the Goblin King, who kidnaps Halph and puts him in jail until Beethro pays him 5000 greckles for his destruction of section 24 of Dugan's Dungeon/Neatherville.
Beethro yells he knows he doesn't have such money, and the Goblin King explains he can get the money further downstairs.
At the end of section 14, Beethro learns Mud Coordinators exist in the same way Tar Techinicans do, and there is a debate between the two of which is better, with the Tar Technician pointing out not only did the Mud Coordinator copy his idea with only a small change, he even copied existing tar rooms from Dugan's Dungeon and made only a small change for all the rooms in section 14.
After clearing the majority of section 15 with no eventful dialogue, Beethro comes back to section 13 to meet the Goblin King again, yelling he knew the whole time there wasn't any money down there.
The Goblin King responds he likes to set Beethro up for a joke, cause he hates him as deep as the pits.
The Goblin King then escapes to try to kill the Budkins another day, and Beethro rescues Halph from the goblin jail, where Halph then states he's having second thoughts that Beethro is the good guy after killing all those goblins.
Beethro reminds Halph he's only doing his job as a smitemaster, and Halph then goes "
Hmph!"
angrily in response.
After going back down to section 15, Beethro yells Halph's wandered off yet again, and he's going to get himself killed for sure one of these days.
At the end of section 15 after coming back from rescuing Halph, there are more Messangers sending a faulty interpretation of the Slayer's warning to the Empire.
At the beginning of section 16 in a secret room, the Pit Thing taunts Beethro by pretending to be 39th Slayer and Halph, but Beethro calls him out on it right away, stating he can't actually hear the Slayer coming up behind him, and that Halph is too dumb to act scared in the way the Pit Thing acted.
The Pit Thing states Beethro would scream, and Beethro says he's had enough of his taunts because at least the Slayer is a real physical threat, even if he's poor at actually killing Beethro.
At the very end of the section, 39th Slayer comes back and states he's got Beethro cornered this time, and Beethro points out the rattlesnakes everywhere blocking him from reaching Beethro, and the Slayer states he's a fast learner.
The very next level, 84th Imperial Defender tries to block Beethro from killing monsters for the last time, and if you win against him this level you can actually kill 84th Imperial Defender for good, who will protest it was all a test if you actually decide to kill him, which makes Beethro snap back "
a test of my patience... and my life!"
In the middle of section 17, there is the final instance of the Messangers, where the Slayer's message has been twisted so badly now Beethro is getting help and not the Slayer.
As soon as you start section 18, 39th Slayer is right there waiting to kill you, yelling "
I will not be ignored, Budkin."
At the end of section 18, 39th Slayer states Beethro can't run away from him anymore and actually has to cooperate with him to win these puzzles, and there's no chance he's going to cooperate anytime soon, but Beethro manages to trick him and win.
In section 19, the Pit Thing tells Beethro Dugan has knocked down his Roasted Roach Grill and that he doesn't want Beethro anymore as he's destroyed a place he wasn't supposed to, like the 39th Slayer warned Beethro when they first met.
Beethro asks how he knew, and the Pit Thing states he can listen in on any conversation at will, being the entity of all knowledge.
The Pit Thing then also tells Beethro the Empire is recruiting Halph as he's shown promise, whereas Beethro has just been destroying the Empire's resources non-stop.
In section 20, in another secret room, 39th Slayer taunts Beethro "
good luck"
sarcastically hoping he will die a brutal death, the same way he did in section 10.
At the beginning of section 21, Beethro meets Halph who states the Empire is recruiting him as one of their Architects.
At the beginning of section 22, 39th Slayer comes back for revenge again and states now that he's got brains to make the other monsters smarter, Beethro has no hope of winning now.
Beethro points out he already has experience dealing with both brains and the Slayer, and so the two combined isn't going to make them harder anytime soon.
In the middle of section 22, in a puzzle where you have to kill a serpent with Halph, 39th Slayer states "
that's not fair!"
after the serpent dies, and then states he should get some assistance of his own.
Beethro taunts him that it's because he's admitting he's hopeless as a Slayer, but the Slayer comes right back at Beethro and states that if Beethro can cheat by using Halph and not killing all the monsters by himself like he's supposed to, it's only fair the Slayer can cheat in the same way.
At the end of section 23, 39th Slayer announces that Beethro has breached the majority of the Empire's defenses, and so sections 24 and 25 are on red alert and that he's enlisted the Poppy Brigade to help him kill Beethro.
Beethro states that the Poppy Brigade probably won't be as bad as the Slayer makes it sound, because the Slayer himself has been hopeless at killing Beethro by himself so far.
At the end of section 24 in a secret room, there's a Monty Python sketch with the Pit Thing, and in another secret room the last Messanger of the hold tells Beethro the Slayer sent the message that he's waiting for him in the next section, prepared to do whatever it takes to kill Beethro using the Poppy Brigade to help him.
In section 25, 39th Slayer orders the Poppy guards to kill/seize Beethro, and gets angry when Beethro can kill the Poppy guards with ease, with Beethro pointing out the guards are just as much of a joke at killing him as the Slayer has been in the first room after killing the guards.
At the end of section 25, the Slayer states there's no way out for Beethro this time, and Beethro points out the fuse in the room.
As Beethro approaches the fuse, 39th Slayer begs Beethro not to kill him, and Beethro points out 39th Slayer has been putting Beethro's life in jeopardy since they first met.
39th Slayer states that it's not the same because Beethro is an abovegrounder, but he gets cut short with the realization that killing anybody is still murder, regardless of whether they're from the Empire or the surface.
Before finally killing the Slayer, Beethro points out maybe the Slayer needed to think about that sooner.
After Beethro blows up the Slayer, Halph is shown talking to the pits (you can guess the Pit Thing from context) and then accuses Beethro of being a murderer/serial killer/etc, and Beethro points out it was all in self-defense, and Halph states that it's not an excuse because Beethro was intruding in a place he didn't belong in the first place, like 39th Slayer and the Pit Thing reminded Beethro already earlier.
After Halph runs away, the Pit Thing reveals that it was indeed him talking to Halph, and he was the one who convinced Halph that Beethro was a murderer with no good intentions whatsoever.
Beethro yells at the Pit Thing about brainwashing Halph, and the Pit Thing states that Beethro doesn't have a chance in getting to the Empire with all their defenses, and Beethro states he's going to get there no matter what it takes and finally get some real answers as to why Dugan's Dungeon was re-populated and where in the world Halph ran off to.
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