Bag of Holding Stuffed in Bag of Holding Empties Level 5 Camp

THE UNDERMAW, LEVEL 5 — A bag of holding was placed inside a second bag of holding at the Fourth Attempt's camp shortly after noon, and the camp is gone. So are two tents, a cook pot, eleven days of rations and the party's good lantern. Nothing else on the level was disturbed, which Chapter 9 is calling "a clean result."

I was ten feet away holding a pole. The fighter, at 14 hit points and in a mood, said the first bag was getting heavy. The wizard, at 6, said the second bag had room. There was a short silence of the kind that comes before a hireling clears his throat.

"Page four, line nine," said Ansel Pottage, steward of the party's hirelings, who has read every contract the Fourth Attempt ever signed and is owed wages under most of them. "Do not put one bag inside another. The sentence is underlined. I underlined it."

It made a sound like a cork leaving a very large bottle. Then the tents folded inward, the pot followed, and a patch of floor the size of a wagon went the color of a cloudless night and closed up. The party's bard, who asked to be named, says the whole thing "had a certain shape to it." He was holding the lute. The lute is fine. The lute was not in a bag.

Hirelings were unharmed. The mule, who carried neither bag, was seen eating a turnip well clear of the area and has made no statement. I rolled poorly on the pole count again: number seven of the season went into the gap trying to measure it and did not come back.

Deputy Registrar Pell Oddingwick, speaking for Chapter 9, said the guild has no record of anything leaving the level. "What the party describes as a loss is, in our view, a relocation to an unspecified plane," he said. "Permit fees remain due for the full camp as filed." Asked whether the guild's own maps warn about bags, he said the maps are accurate and that bags are a matter for the owner.

Shieldwall Mutual says the claim will be reviewed. A spokesman noted that the policy covers death, dismemberment and curses, and that an astral relocation of tents is none of the three. Whether the cook pot counts as a dependent is being looked at.

The party has bought a rope and a great deal of patience and plans to wait at the spot. The fighter says things in bags usually come out eventually. Pottage says the clause does not say that, and has offered to read it again. I have asked to hold the door while they decide. I have not been asked to hold the door. I know what I'd say.

— H.D., filing from below