Once again, story emerges from play

The last session went really well.  Like most sessions, it started with the party being panicky about actually taking some risk in the dungeon, and hunting down more henchmen.  Specifically, P.W.'s player was very nervous, which is funny given that he takes most of the risks.  He's half-suicidal due to his enormously bad stats, but he can't actually manage to get himself killed.

So, first, Mongo's adventure:  He's been wanting to sit in a chair in his luxury apartment, in a smoking jacket, reading a book that is inadvertently upside-down.  The policy of spending gold to get XP means that there's never spare gold - so he had to make do with the tatty smoking jacket and a mysterious evil book.  How that happened, he was busy looking for a book, I rolled d30x100 for the price, and it was expensive.  I didn't feel like role-playing book vendors for the next 20 minutes, so I just gave the thing to him.  Then I tossed in an evil laugh to amuse myself.  Mongo's paranoia kicked in, and he's wondering if the book is evil.  Clearly, it's got to be something, since he's placing so much importance on it - a roll of the dice says "Yes, evil".  The undecipherable evil book is now in play.  No idea what I'm going to do with it yet, but I'm gratified that he didn't just chuck it into the fire.  Not that I'd let that work, anyhow.

P.W. has such miserable luck with reaction rolls that he decided he'd just buy a henchman from the slave market.  How he thinks that decision will turn out well, I don't know...  I forgot to roll a morale check when the whole party was asleep in the red mist, and it was just Krogo and P.W. - if I had remembered, that could have been a TPK if Krogo took out P.W. and went homicidal on the sleepers.  It was late, and I didn't think of that.  But that red mist will be back, again and again and again (at least until they figure out what they're doing to cause it).

Gutboy has been sucking up to his new goddess for several sessions now, and I've been ignoring it.  Seeing as I was lavishing attention on the other two, I had Nisus make an appearance this time.  Reaction rolls said she's ticked off - clearly Gutboy hasn't been spending enough effort praising her.  She needs giant sacrifices, in front of the whole city.  What a prima donna.  Well, now he's got his work cut out for him - it was fun making him think he needed to hunt down a bulette, but I dropped some hints about the giant pillbugs that live in the caverns of the 2nd level, so maybe he'll take the bait and head down.

I think the players are finally at the point where they're going to visit the second level.  That means I actually have to key it... I've got maybe 10% planned out so far, I really need to put some effort into it now.  Fortunately, there's not much left on the book to do - just the index & back cover.  Should have that done in the next 2-3 days, and then off to the printer for a proof.  So I've got a bit of time to key the areas closest to the stairs.