TUNNELHACK II

The world is in peril once more!
An insidious menace threatens the $major department,
and especially you, a poor $major grad student.

Long ago, your institution made a deal with a 
fiendish monster, called a Bureaucracy. It is said
that it appeared to be benign and helpful at the 
time, but this illusion has long since disappeared.

Every year, the Bureaucracy demands more and more
of the institution's resources, and imposes another
set of arcane restrictions and commands on everyone.
The monster has grown enormous and powerful, ruling
over its hydraulic empire by controlling the budget.

The process by which this vital resource is 
distributed is subject to the cryptic whims of the
monster, but anecdotal evidence strongly suggests
that departments with trendier names get more of it.

Alas, the Bureaucracy does not think $major 
is trendy anymore, and your precious funding 
has dwindled to a mere trickle. Soon, the department
will not be able to afford such luxuries as faculty
or classrooms, and is likely to be replaced by a 
closet in the basement containing a few out of date
books on $major.

Although some of the $major faculty are
protected from the Bureaucracy's powers by a magical
ward called 'tenure,' lately they have begun to
disappear under mysterious circumstances that you
suspect are connected to this change in fortune.

Thankfully, there is a new hope for the department.
The remaining faculty have devised a clever plan.

Specifically, the clever plan is to make you 
go slay the Bureaucracy.

Knowing that you are not especially effective when
it comes to slaying things, having been previously
bested by an exceptionally aggressive squirrel,
and having a rather dim estimate of your chances 
of returning in a form capable of grading papers,
your advisor protested this concept, but she was 
outvoted nine to one.

At least you have some chance. The Bureaucracy is
universally agreed to be very large and slow, so 
it shouldn't be difficult to kill it if you find it.

Based on the faculty's extensive knowledge of typical
monster infestation patterns, gained through many
hours of playing D&D, they have determined that the
monster lurks in a dungeon under the institution
called the "Steam Tunnels."

You've been equipped with the latest in weaponry
and armor available to the department and pushed into
a manhole, instructed not to return without proof
of the Bureaucracy's destruction, in the form of
the funding that you will liberate form its horde
after it is dead.

May the Force be with you.