Meatgrinder
The Meatgrinder is a collection of impermanent events—things like monster patrols, weather, or bumping into a rival guild. Importantly, the rate at which your light sources flicker and go out is controlled by the Meatgrinder; see Light for more information on light sources.
As you travel, the GM will describe scenes that combine the contents of each room and the results of the Meatgrinder. For example, if the room you enter is a dragon’s lair and the GM randomly pulls a patrol of goblins from the Meatgrinder table, you might find goblins attempting to sneak into the dragon’s lair for treasure—and making entirely too much noise in the process.
When a Meatgrinder event is triggered, the GM should mark it off. If the cards are shuffled and the GM draws the same event twice, nothing happens and the guild has a watch of respite. The GM repopulates their Meatgrinder tables after each City Phase.
The full procedure to create a Meatgrinder for a dungeon level is detailed in Appendix E, see Create the Meatgrinder. Here are the basics.
In general, Meatgrinder tables follow this formula:
Torches gutter (I–V): Torches guttering represents time passing as your light sources grow dim. When torches gutter, all light sources flicker.
Torches gutter events are not marked off from the Meatgrinder. They can occur multiple times.
Curiosities (VI–X): Curiosities are moments of serendipity. “Nothing happens” is a boring result for a random table. Curiosities are an opportunity for a GM to interject color into the black depths of the Underworld. They can serve as inspiration for role-playing exchanges or provide hints about the local environment.
Travel events (XI–XV): Travel events represent things that go wrong during the journey. They might require you to make a hard choice about resource management or ask you to test fate to avoid a hardship. Travel events might prompt Challenges.
Random encounters (XVI–XX): Random encounters are chance meetings with the denizens of the Underworld. These might be friendly encounters with would-be allies, hazardous encounters with hungry animals, or murderous encounters with monsters. Interesting random encounters don’t simply list “monster type.” The best random encounters paint a small scenario that the GM can use as inspiration for a Challenge.
Quest rumor (XXI): Quest rumors lead you one step closer to your current quest. Quest rumors provide hints or directions towards your quest goal. If you’ve already made significant progress on your current quest, this result might even feature the object of your quest.