Creeping Crud
Wizardry series
If you've never heard of the creeping crud, then it may already be too late.
It has been around for years. It has traveled all the way from the US to Japan. It's poisonous, it smells bad, and just when you think you've seen the last of it, you run into more around the corner. Sure, you're probably thinking that "creeping crud" is merely highfalutin nomenclature for "slime." And you're bragging about how you fought the green stuff before in countless fantasy role-playing games and how you're ready for more. Bring it on, you say. But you couldn't be more wrong.
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For one thing, creeping crud tends to be more of a yellowish hue. And creeping crud is composed of a slightly denser compound than slime and weighs around 0.4 kilograms more per cubic liter. Slime tends to be featureless, but the careful observer will note that creeping crud tends to bear a rough symmetry, like a slug.
The creeping crud has been a mainstay in Sir-tech's long-running Wizardry role-playing game series since its conception in the early 1980s. Since then, Wizardry has manifested itself in more than a dozen different games across many different platforms, including several video-game consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System and even the NEC Turbografx 16 and Sega Saturn. And the creeping crud has been there every step of the way.
It may be argued that the creeping crud, in small groups, really isn't very dangerous. But if you stop to consider just how much creeping crud there is circulating in the world, taking into account every copy of every version of every Wizardry game ever sold, then you'll understand just how dire a threat it represents. Fortunately, the Wizardry series has been on hiatus since the mid-1990s release of Wizardy VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, but with the inevitable release of Wizardry VIII, there will be an inevitable upheaval of creeping crud the likes of which the world has not yet encountered. You have been warned. And doubly warned.
The Fiend
