Shelf
Waiting for the catalogue.
Facing
Nothing yet.
The dungeon is a real library. Every room is one shelf of one bookcase; every monster is a book that stands on it. Everyone gets the same eight shelves per UTC day.
Verbs. 1Attack: read it aggressively (4 to 6). 2Skim: 1 to 2 damage, +2 Attention. 3Shelve: spend 2 Attention to bind a book for 2 turns; likelier when its title sits alphabetically next to the last book you met, because shelves want order. 4Flee: skip the rest of the shelf, taking one parting hit.
Genre decides how a book fights. Textbooks are armoured, Verse crits, Scripture heals itself, Novels summon sequels, Folios dazzle, Chronicles counter a repeated verb, Grammars scramble your keys, Panels hit fast and weak, Treatises drain Attention. Partly legible books are Damaged and cannot be shelved.
Thickness is HP (title and description length, weighted by type). Books published in or before 1970 have seniority and strike first.
Defeated books go in your bag. 5Read one to learn the skill of its genre and heal 3. Reading is free once a shelf is cleared; in a fight it costs a turn.
The last shelf ends with its thickest book. Close it to escape. Dying prints a summary you can copy, and daily runs are kept on a local leaderboard.