The Cave of Kasim

A whispered word splits the rock face, and behind it stretches the Cave of Kasim, overflowing with stolen gold, silk, and jewels, glittering in the light of a hundred oil lamps. It is the plunder of forty notorious thieves, piled up to the vaulted ceiling. But the cave is too quiet, the lamps burn without a soul to tend them, and of the forty there is no trace.

A trembling thief who came with you points to the overturned goblets, the half-eaten meal, the sandals sitting in the middle of the floor as if their owners had dissolved into nothing. Something carried the thieves off, one by one, in the dark among their treasures. And the mountain of gold that glitters so temptingly is no longer plunder, but the patient bait of a predator.

You search the treasure chambers, decipher the thieves' code on the walls, dodge the traps the thieves themselves set, and follow a dragging trail of coins deeper into the mound. Along the way you discover that the most alluring chest holds no gold, but something that breathes softly and is waiting for you.

Then the rock face seals behind you, and the treasure comes to life. The Hoard-Devourer heaves itself up out of the gold: every coin a tooth, every jewel an eye, an aberration that disguises itself as riches and hunts greed itself. Will you escape the Cave of Kasim with your lives, or keep the forty thieves company in the belly of the beast?