Escape From the Secret Tower

General Summary

Kingra, Ryke, C351SL, Mortimer, Dreki, Davkin
Returning from treasure hunting expeditions beyond the Bibliopolis, Dreki met with Procella, Kingra, Ryke, and C351SL at Mortimer's new al fresco café location in one of the library gardens. There they also reunited with Davkin, the druid who tended the library's green spaces.
Dreki had acquired books, scrolls, and items for his draconic employer, the Bookwyrm. But he had also found a thin volume that bore a familiar coat of arms - the purple hourglass symbol of Fastandia, the mysterious mage who had, upon her death, willed much of her collection of arcana to the Bibliopolis. As Procella studied the book, the party caught Dreki and Davkin up on recent events, and Ryke discovered a shared animosity with Hanzo, Dreki's drake companion.
Procella deciphered Fastandia's coded shorthand and found that the book hid within it an extradimensional space, similar in nature to Fastandia's hidden mansion. She spoke the command word: ESCAPE, and the party were sucked into the strange tower.
The hidden tower had six circular floors, and each party member found themselves trapped in one of these chambers, alone. A central column in each room showed a ring of six blue gemstones, and a dumbwaiter at either side of the room allowed them to converse and trade objects.
Each floor was filled with hidden switches, keys and locks, puzzles and riddles, and the party had to use teamwork and ingenuity to solve each room and access a button that illuminated one of the gemstones in the ring.
All of this, it seemed, was an elaborate hiding place for some treasure or artifact. And when all the stones were illuminated, the final guardian of the treasure became known. Each room's ring of gems became a circular portal into a seventh chamber, and a clanking tentacle of brass and gears reached through and attacked. The party fought back the lashing mechanical limbs until they could access the seventh chamber, and defeat the great clockwork kraken within.
As Dreki and Hanzo landed the final blow with their bonded teamwork, the treasure was revealed: the second missing component of the Orrery of the Wanderer! Taking their prize, they materialized back in the library garden to reunite with Procella.
Aside from being slightly upset at missing out on all the puzzles, Procella revealed a theory about the sinister mage who had created this unusual artifact safe: Fastandia's mansion was home to two homunculi that called Fastandia their master, and Procella had learned that homunculi are sustained by a blood-bound connection to their creator's soul. When a creator of a homunculus dies, that homunculus crumbles back to the clay it was formed from. Therefore, she reasoned, Fastandia must still be alive.

Report Date

01 Jun 2022