There was a knock at the door.

Boris did up his robe, tripped over a pile of books, undid the latch. He had to wrench the oak­en por­tal open, as it jammed on a pile of doilies.

A woman in black stood in the frame, grin­ning crooked­ly. “Boris Rhod­of?” she asked, extend­ing a hand. Boris took it, blinked at the strength of the thin fin­gers. He not­ed the woman’s cropped black hair, her belt­ed gun, her back­pack bulging with nets and steel. He swal­lowed.

“Mas­ter Kavanagh, I pre­sume?”

“Call me Stoat. Yes, and...” she said, peer­ing over the man’s shoul­der. “It looks as though you are indeed in need of my skills.” The par­lor beyond was a wreck. Books lay about, open and torn. The shelves were bare. Laun­dry was draped every­where. Any­thing not on the floor had been thrown to it. The man him­self appeared to have raw egg-white behind his ear.

“Well,” said Boris, releas­ing her hand. “I wouldn’t have need of your skill set if the prob­lem could be reme­died with a swat­ter and some harsh lan­guage.” He leaned, turned his head to see around the shrub­bery. A long-nosed neigh­bor, some two rows down and across, was star­ing at the eclec­tic Stoat. Boris ush­ered the cut­ter in, frown­ing.

“Bug­ger me, Boris. Don’t need to act like you’re let­ting in a wan­der­ing whore” said Stoat, mak­ing a face. Boris shut the door, peered through the glass pan­el­ing. “My apolo­gies, Mas­ter Kavanagh. My neigh­bors are of a con­spir­a­to­r­i­al vari­ety.”

“Stoat,” insist­ed Stoat. “And so, what? You’ve hired me as an exter­mi­na­tor.”

“Well, yes” said Boris, turn­ing. “That’s the thing.”

There was a bang from the upper floor. Stoat squint­ed. A crys­tal vase bounced down the stairs, shat­tered on the final step.  Boris flinched.

“They have no reck­on­ing of the seri­ous­ness of this.”

“Tits,” exclaimed Stoat. She lis­tened to fur­ther crash­es and shat­ter­ing. “Sounds like they’re big. How many?”

Boris looked mis­er­able. “I’ve seen just two at a time, but I fear the attic is full. They’ve been…” he said, tug­ging a cig­a­r­il­lo from his robe pock­et. “Lurk­ing up there.”

“Real­ly?” said Stoat, indi­cat­ing the dart.

“Allow me my ironies and my vices, and you’ll get the gold you want, Cut­ter,” said Boris, indig­nant. He clicked a lighter.

Stoat rolled her eyes. “How long’s it been going on? They do sound huge.”

“Not long, but they’ve tugged the hair off the cats. Found a taxi­der­mized ox head in the attic, too.”

“Thought you might have been sav­ing your toe­nails, or some­thing.”

Boris frowned, took a drag. Tiny dox­bells flew from burn­ing straight, scur­ried away on flut­ter­ing wings. “Would you get up there?” he said, wav­ing an arm.

Stoat made a face, pulled off her back­pack. She pro­duced a net with iron beads sewn into the knots. “Let’s see what we’ve got” she said, swing­ing it idly. It clinked heav­i­ly. The stairs creaked under her hob­nailed boots. Boris watched her go.

The boot­steps ceased. “Oh, would you look at you,” said Stoat, above, muf­fled. There was a crash, a squeal, a shout of “oh, bol­locks.” The ceil­ing shook. Boris sighed. He looked around for an ash­tray, found one under a pair of pants. Smoke and fly­ing, liv­ing puff­balls rose from the crushed cig­a­r­il­lo end. Boris sneezed.

Stoat stomped back down the stairs. Her hair was a mess, con­cealed what was like­ly to turn into a black eye. Her net was miss­ing. “These,” she said, reach­ing for her sword belt. “Are the strongest lit­tle shits I’ve ever seen.” She pro­duced the blade, grit­ted her teeth.

An incred­i­ble crash of fur­ni­ture emanat­ed upstairs. “You’re pay­ing me dou­ble.”

Boris pursed his lips, took anoth­er cig­a­r­il­lo from his robe. “Fine, Mer­ce­nary” he said. There was a sound of break­ing win­dow glass. He flinched.

“Just get rid of these awful top­ples!”

Entropy is a pain.

While you’re not look­ing, things fall apart. The for­est will rot or burn down. That cas­tle will crum­ble. Even the moun­tains will be worn down by the force of the world. Your favorite lamp will even­tu­al­ly break. A grim truth, but per­fect­ly nat­ur­al.

Some­times, when your back is turned, entropy grows a lit­tle unnat­ur­al. It’ll grow lit­tle hands and tip your lamp over all on its own.

Topples

Top­ples are entropy incar­nate. These lit­tle mon­sters start their lives as eggs lain in the leaves of pep­perelle, that plant which all the Litorans love to smoke.* When the leaves burn, they hatch. Tiny, innocu­ous puff­balls called dox­bells rise from the smoke, buoyed on fresh­ly furled wings. They fly off; harm­less, even charm­ing. They fly off and grow into top­ples.

A dox­bell will find a nice place to lurk. A cor­ner, a hole in the floor­boards. Some­where with plen­ty of dust and not much light. There, it’ll strike up a pleas­ant life graz­ing on what­ev­er bits of dust, hair, cook­ie crumb, and toe­nail par­ing it can get. When they’re seen, they’re ignored. Just lit­tle dust bun­nies, not much of a prob­lem. Dust­pans ban­ish them by the dozens. Chil­dren squash them in droves. 

There’s a rare dox­bell, how­ev­er, who man­ages to hide and grow. Fat­tened by a diet of lint and bread­crumbs, it will shed its wings and grow strong. It will begin to tip things over. First, a thim­ble off the sewing bas­ket. Next, a salt shak­er off the din­ing table. Then, a lamp off the side table; the cat** off the win­dow sill; the cook­ing oil into the fire. It becomes a top­ple. It begins to destroy every­thing.

If you can catch it in the act when its small, you can squash it with a broom. Once it’s large and knows how to throw things, though, it is time to get help. 

Call the big lad from next door. Maybe he can kill it. Like­ly, he can’t. Grown top­ples are strong, despite their size, and they are awful­ly hard to squash. A year’s worth of hard­ened human detri­tus makes fine armor. If that fails, you get a pro­fes­sion­al. Get a cut­ter. 

 If there’s lots of top­ples, get lots of cut­ters. Kill the top­ples before they knock the house down.

note

Top­ples are the arche­typ­al Lev­el-1 crud­dy mon­ster. Mis­sion num­ber one: Clear the top­ples from the old Mag­is­ter’s tow­er. For bonus XP, get him to stop smok­ing. For bonus gold, get rehired when more top­ples even­tu­al­ly appear from his mass of cats and toe­nail clip­pings. Weak­er kobolds or some­thing tiny can eas­i­ly be reskinned into a ser­vice­able top­ple.

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