cthulhu dungeons\portals

[artcowan]

Been playing for about a year now on the base set Pathfinder with several different expansions from original Munchkin to Legends. Love the game, so I bought my own set and went with cthulhu and all 3 expansions. Cthulhu 4 came with dungeons and portals. One of the portals calls for you to draw 2 dungeons and then all players discard a card from their hand to vote and the dungeon with the most gold wins. So here's the questions: Do we have to discard an item....if so does it have to have a value? What if you died last turn and you don't have any cards yet?
FYI the dungeon where you have to give up an item or lose a level is vicious...but made the game interesting.
Thanks for your time, and any other tips or hints about cthulhu would also be appreciated!