S.A.M.L.A.R.B Spectral Aquisitons of Material Lands And Resources Bureau

Start offloading your whole pathetic life story to the lava in the hopes it gets embarrassed in your company and skulks away

You're not having a good day. Not at all. No one seems to care. No one understands. Hey, this lava here is just sitting unloved and unwanted near a toilet. Maybe it will understand you? Maybe finally you have found a soul with which you can make a genuine connection, something to add some meaning to your life. You decide to offer the lava some information about yourself. Something to get it talking, get the ball rolling. An ice-breaker. It just absorbs the information silently. Hmm...perhaps it wants more? Perhaps it's interested? You tell it something else. It burbles vaugely in response. Oh your God, Sammy Boy, it's listening and it responded. It wants to know everything about you! You tell it more about your life. Well...that's not true. You tell it everything. Every happiness, every sadness, every failure, every betrayal. You realise that, in the telling, there is a lot more bad to outweigh the good but this doesn't matter to you. You have a friend, some one who listens and understands. Lava doesn't judge you or interrupt, it just sits there silently letting you unload onto it. Your silent friend, your good listener, your confidant, your soul mate. It listens to you entirely, absorbing every second of your tale. Your tale ends and you wait for it to respond.

You remain waiting for some time. Oh...oh Samuel. It's an inanimate pool of lava. You thought you'd made a friend with something in literally no way capable of feeling anything. You sad...sad man.

>Lava with an attitude problem? Well, you've got plenty of that to spare. Why don't you smack that lava right back with a bit of your own 'tude. Lay down some hardcore Jive freestyle, Sammy boy.

This lava...this bastard lava has made a damned fool out of you. You thought you'd made a friend, finally, a friend! But no, no indeed not. You had been tricked by the sheer gnawing non-sentience of this lava. It's non-sentient on purpose, you're sure of it! It decided to be non-sentient purely so it could sit there and mock you, sit there letting you jabber at it! Such an attitude on this lava pool! Well...two can play at THIS game Mr. Lava Pool, oh yes they can! No one can throw 'tude around like OL' ACTION SAM!

You cross your arms, glare at the lava and then prepare your most potent of 'tude manoeuvrers. You turn around and ignore it. Give it the reasonably chilly shoulder. Oh yes, that'll have put that lava back in it's place alright. Dick.

> Go further down the hellscape

Well, the loutish lava has been seen to, you should probably head deeper into the Hellscape. An odd sentence and not one you ever thought you'd be thinking. You start marching down the one road leading away from the elevator. The constant background sounds of screaming and shrieking grows louder and, you note, as you walk further through the hell-scape, it starts to gain a certain rhythm. Curiously it starts to follow your footsteps. You look down. The road at some point changed into a path made of stone screaming faces, each one screaming just that wee bit louder when you trod your inconsiderate foot into their rather considerate face. Oh you SWINE, Sammy Boy, these people are just trying to do their scream facey roady jobs and here you are stepping all over them as if they were put there for your stepping benefit. For shame, Sammy Boy, for shame.

The shame burns you, you cover your eyes and weep, running the rest of the way. You reach the end of the path and are informed as much by the sudden and stark sensation of your entire body slamming into a wooden wall. You fall to the ground, the action causing some rather muffled screams as you hit the faces bodily. Sudden curious pain located in your nether back regions. You leap to your feet again, rubbing your posterior. One of the faces seems to have taken the chance to bite your bottom. You feel weird about this. You look at what it is you barged into. Before you lies a large wooden fence and facade in the shape of a cartoon devil, horns and all. It's gigantic gaping mouth is the entrance to what seems to be a forest of tents. It is gated and barred. A sign sits over the horns of the devil-door. The sign reads “Circus Of Hell”, though that has been hastily crossed out with red paint and beneath it another, newer sign reads “Human Resources Department, undergoing renovations.” You turn to the side. In what is clearly a ticket booth with the word “Reception” scrawled hastily over what once said “Tickets” sits a decidedly male cartoon devil wearing a nurse's uniform from the fifties, little hat and all, alongside a curious choice of a pair of Groucho Marx glasses. You blink at it, it blinks at you. You open your mouth and it jams it's fist into it to shut you up. It then screams in the high-pitched voice of a middle-aged male hippy trying to sound like a female pig puppet. “TICKETS PL-NO WAIT THAT'S WRONG. DO YOU HAVE AN APPOINTMENT?!” Even after asking you, it doesn't take it's fist out of your mouth.

You are in Hell, apparently, standing in front of a re-purposed Evil Circus being used as the HR Department of the afterlife. You are speaking to an absurd receptionist. He has his fist in your mouth. What do you do?

Inventory:

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Shard of glass embedded in head.
Blood (Hands)
A sense of smug self-righteousness
Mango Cat Tape

Nightmare Chest:

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An Office Complex in a sea of screaming faces and stars
The Concept of Eternity in an Office Job
Being Called Sammy Boy
Lady Blaze's Bloody Horrible Appearance
Small Fruit
Everything about your current situation
Germans who think they are funny.
Your own body pleading with you to save it as it is consumed by lava.
The Screaming Path that bit your arse.

>Hold on a minute. Are stone heads venomous? Have you been poisoned?! Immediately begin panicking and start begging the devil with his fist in your mouth to check the bite for you.

gently grab this devil by the wrist, then move their arm up and down so your head nods along

> Sign language! Take one of your fists and nod it up and down.

gently grab this devil by the wrist, then move their arm up and down so your head nods along

> Sign language! Take one of your fists and nod it up and down.

A two pronged approach to this problem seems to be the best course of action. Simply nodding your head via devil-wrist-fist manipulation may not get the point across, and similarly shaking a fist may not quite do the job, but BOTH? At the same time?! HOW CAN ANYONE NOT UNDERSTAND YOU THEN? You whip out one hand and clamp down on the nurse-devil's wrist. You whip out the other hand in the shape of your feeble, feeble fist. Shaking commences. You are much too eager about what you are doing. You manage to rattle everything into a stupor. The devil's hand isn't quite filling your mouth so the jerking motion bangs it into the top row of your teeth and then the bottom in a consistent but alternating wave of pain. Top, bottom, top, bottom, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Your waving fist has gone cocoa-bananas. You're smashing it into the top and bottom of the ticket booth at some horrible velocity. You can feel the wood cracking and splintering, some of it coming away embedded in your hand. If you were still able to bleed, your hand would be pissing blood. You feel something slick on your hand. Apparently you are still able to bleed.

You continue your grotesque display for some time, the devil curiously unaffected by what you're doing, until a thought occurs to you...

>Hold on a minute. Are stone heads venomous? Have you been poisoned?! Immediately begin panicking and start begging the devil with his fist in your mouth to check the bite for you.

...What if the floor was made of poison? You take a few wheezing, wet, salivary breathes around the devil's fist. Stay calm, you'll be fine. Stay calm. Stake Calm. Stake. Alm. PANIC YOU WEASEL PANIC. You begin screaming, crying, begging, around the fist of the uniformed bastard in the booth. WHY WON'T HE ANSWER YOU?! DOESN'T HE UNDERSTAND YOU'RE GOING TO DIE?! If this smug git won't give you the attention you need, well by god you'll MAKE him give you the attention you need! You bite down on the devil's hand, hoping the pain will get some reaction from him. It doesn't, despite the fact that his hand is sliced off at the wrist by your passive aggressive jaws. It falls...into your throat. You fall to the ground, hacking and wheezing and coughing. You don't know what's killing you faster, the possible poison or the fist. You suppose it doesn't matter, either way you're going to be d- you died.

You wake up roughly twelve feet away from where you died. You push yourself to your feet. You can see a river of blood and bile rising up around your previous body as it tries to claw away. You can hear chewing. Over a few moments the body is gone...consumed by the faces in the floor. You try desperately not to think about that. Think about what? What are you talking about? You're crazy.

You are in Hell, or the HR Department, it appears to be largely dependent on who you ask. You are standing a few feet away from the receptionist desk/ticket booth. A devil in a nurse's uniform is sitting inside, grinning at you, and missing a hand. What do you do?

Inventory:

SpoilerShow

Shard of glass embedded in head.
Blood (Hands)
A sense of smug self-righteousness
Mango Cat Tape

Nightmare Chest:

SpoilerShow

An Office Complex in a sea of screaming faces and stars
The Concept of Eternity in an Office Job
Being Called Sammy Boy
Lady Blaze's Bloody Horrible Appearance
Small Fruit
Everything about your current situation
Germans who think they are funny.
Your own body pleading with you to save it as it is consumed by lava.
The Screaming Path that bit your arse.
The Screaming Path consuming your dead body.

Note From The Author:

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I'm very sorry for the complete failure of regular updates on here lately, life got a bit hectic and this kind of fell by the wayside. Worry not however! For I intend to return to regular weekly updates of SAMLARB! Though it may be every Saturday rather than every Monday due to time constraints!

>That was all his fault. He did that on purpose. Maybe everything that's happened is his fault too! Look at him smirking at you. Time for Action Sam to throw some 'tude around. Be brash at the scapegoat.

climb through the reception window