(This was a vocabulary exercise for English composition. I may have enjoyed myself a bit.)
Nobody knows what menacing monsters lurk in the catacombs, but the rumormongers ply their trade ceaselessly, hoping to elicit a modicum of profit from it somehow. They say there is a panoply of riches hidden in a long-forgotten emperor's tomb. They have heard (from whom?) that the monstrosities with which the deeps are rife, are simply some paltry number of rats and maggots. They decry and deny the existence of the elusive flesh-eating ogres ubiquitous throughout the subterranean passages.
All who listen are fervently hidebound, of course. Who would so promiscuously propagate stories of these demons unless they had seen them with their own eyes? These hawkers of hope spawn a seed of doubt, however, and this chance of success, inchoate, draws them down, down, down, ineluctably, to the halls of the dead—most often to perpetuate their numbers.
Of such stock comes the quintessential treasure hunter, Iowa Smith. Propelled by desire, predisposed to disbelieve in devils, passive under greatest duress, will he be able to find the fabled Treasure of Caligula?
