Vat Duty

A The cartridge on the Slopbox, and the Slopbox’s first role-playing game. The Tallyman counts the vats twice and gets two numbers, more slop each time, so the Slopwright puts the apprentice on vat duty with a ladle. Mrs Steep makes tea up the attic ladder, the Drawer sells biscuits, soup and tea for buttons, Ferrule watches the trapdoor, and the stairs down start in the oil cellar, behind the Tallyman.

Below are three floors, each a loop of rooms: the larder, the vats and cold storage, with the Big Tin, the Mother Batch and the First Batch at the bottom of each. The fights take turns, and every creature shows what it is about to do, by the tells the codex already files: a Glob squashes down, a pickle jar’s lid lifts, a sardine tin peels its lid back, a Mould swells, a Siphon draws a line, a drain eel goes under, a Cloche opens, a Whisk spins up. A lid found in the larder takes all of a wound-up blow; an acid apron like the skimmer’s turns up in the vats, and the friendly kind of hand whisk in cold storage. Someone has put a Slopaganda poster up on the larder wall. The First Batch is the last thing down there, and the cartridge says no more about it than Skim does.

Like everything else here, it was made by a machine.