It's a Puzzle Dungeon!

General Summary

We picked our way through the shadows up to the shrine. We noticed two guards on each side, and at the top were several more of the jaguar guards. When we entered three young women greeted us in that strange bird language. When we answered in Alorian, they switched to our speech. “Why are you here?” they demanded. “We come to face the challenge,” Thor answered. “Are you the challenger,” and he nodded, they turned to the rest of us. Actually, I should say they turned to Lily and I, Cap and Milly were pretty out of it. “Do you accompany him?” “Yes,” I answered. “We all go.” Lily answered similarly. “Very well,” and I noticed the glowing symbol on the forehead of the women brightened and there was a red glow as well as the blue. They each approached one of us and drew on our foreheads three symbols with a blue flame. It burned briefly and then faded to the background. “Stop this nonsense!” a voice bellowed from the doorway. We looked up to see a member of the Rholdamese nobility with the third symbol glowing in red on his forehead. He was flanked by pirates and more jaguar guards. We finally saw what the pirate captain looks like. From the look of his crest, he might be related to Baron Santa Maria. “They go to face the challenge,” a priestess said behind us. “No they don’t,” and he made to draw his sword, but stopped at the cry of the priestess. “This is a sacred ritual,” her voice deepened and took on tones of power. “You would dare to profane it?” The pirate looked around and saw his support melting away from the jaguar guards. He laughed as his hands spread out. “If they wish to die up there, it saves me the trouble of killing them now.” With that ringing endorsement we headed up to the temple.

WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN AT NIGHT?

“You ever notice,” Thor asked as we hiked up the hill. “these sort of things always happen in the middle of the night, after we’ve hiked all day?” “It’s not like we chose the timing,” I grumbled. “I mean we could wait until morning, but that means letting all of those kids die, so it seemed kind of a bad idea.” I practiced waving my hilt around, and noticed it worked great as a blade slicing away everything in my path. I still couldn’t see anything, there was no flame like the raven fairy had, but it was amazing how well it worked. After hiking for an hour, we finally reached the ziggurat. It’s built into the side of the volcano. Inside are murals, similar to those in the shrine, but more elaborate. The bright plumed eagle in colors of read and orange. In Alorian, though Thor swore it was in Imperial, a rhyme said, “Let the one who believes he is worthy walking only in the straight moral path enter.” We slowly walked forward down the dark path, following gently curving stairs, only to tumble a few feet in and land at the base of the stairs of a large room. In the center of the room stood a well wreathed in green flames. Standing in the flames a giant demon taunted us to come greet him. I’m sure that would be great fun. “Ahhh, scraping the bottom of the barrel for sacrifices this year are we?” He slowly looked us over and his eyes narrowed as he saw Lily, “Xarthas sends his greetings. “Yes,” Lily responded, “You seem much punier than him.”

THE SINS OF ENVY AND GLUTTONY

Thor strode across the room, giving the demon a wide berth and threw open the door on the left of the room. The room was empty except for a table set up with a game. A poem told us we needed to place the figures so no one could see the other. I drew a copy of the board on the floor, experimenting with different placements of the figures as Lily and Thor did the same. After a few minutes Thor found the solution and asked us to double check it. Lily and I looked the entire thing over and said, “That’s it.” We carefully placed the statues, and we heard a click and the wall behind us slid down revealing a giant figure eating nonstop. A drawer opened in the table and we found a small statue with the number 27 on its base.
Lily looked over the figure and pointed, “There’s something in its belly! Maybe we need to make it throw up?” “I’m not getting close enough to do that,” I answered. “Stand back, I’m going to force it to throw up using mage hand,” Lili shouted. I stood in the far corner and Thor stood in the other corner, and Lili stood at the far back. The invisible hand moved forward and my only clue it had worked was being doused in the acidic throw-up. “That is gross,” I said attempting to wipe off whatever I can. “I don’t think we can solve this right now, let’s see what one of the other doors does.”

ROCK ‘EM SOCK ‘EM STATUES

I walked back and opened the next door, as I did I noticed a semi-circle shelf with cubbies behind the demon’s fire well. I opened the door and was confronted by lots of numbers. On either side of the door stood red and blue circles. In the back of the room on a platform two statues stood. The first held a giant maul and the second held a scythe. On the wall behind them a giant symbol stood, and the walls on either side held doors. Thor stepped up onto the red circle, and the statue across from him mimicked his movements. I stepped onto the blue circle and it mimicked my movements. As I walked off the circle, it walked off the circle in the back. I looked at Thor, “Are we supposed to fight? I’m pretty sure, doing that will hurt you, and that seems like a bad plan.” “Let’s see if we can open the doors with these robots.” He walked over to the door behind his figure and pushed on the door. It didn’t move. I studied the symbol on the wall, and swung my statue’s maul into the symbol and it sank into the wall. Suddenly, Thor’s door opened. I hurried across and opened the door on the other side. Thor released his statue and walked into the next room. I joined him, Lili watched from the doorway. “Just in case something jumps out,” she said.

THE CLASSIC POTION PROBLEM

At the back were six potions, two are poisons, one is protection from acid, another shrinks you, and the last two are fire protection and the cure for the fire protection. On one side was a wall wreathed in fire, and on the other was a metal face with an open mouth. Etched on the wall above the potions was a poem with instructions, but it had been scratched out partially before we came here. After studying the poem Thor reached out and took the two tallest bottles and drank from them and walked into the wall of flames. “There’s more poetry in here,” he shouted back. “Of course,” I muttered and drank the two potions. As soon as I drank the first potion, I started bleeding and I felt pains all throughout my body, I barely forced the second potion down my throat. My arms were covered in ugly blisters, and I walked through the fire and only felt a brief tickle. I was confronted by five statues of different men. Each statue had three statements at their base, and on the wall I read, “Only one of the best statements is true.” After puzzling over the statues for several minutes, Thor reached out and tried the Domitian key in the lock. Instantly he was consumed in a fire. Everything he had on him was destroyed, and there was just a charred husk laying there. After a moment, the ash settled and there was Thor with not a stitch of clothing on him. I looked at his forehead, and he was missing one symbol. That’s… different. “I think I know which one it is,” I said and grabbed the Augustus key. I’ll just say that was not it, and I am down a set of clothes and quite a few bags. “That leaves Caligula,” Thor said and stuck the key in the lock. A click sounded and we now had a statue with the number 15 on it. I looked down and my blisters were gone. “Lili,” I shouted, “We need you to bring us the fire protection potions.” “While I’m naked and have nothing to lose,” Thor said, “I’m going to go check out that other room. He grabbed the shrinking potion chugged it and climbed through the metal mouth. “There’s a skeleton of a dead sloth in here, and another statue.” “Grab it and let’s go,” I shouted through the mouth. That just sounds weird. “I got it,” he answered pushing the statue through the mouth. This one has the number 3 on it. Thor climbed out and we headed across to the other door. It opened up to a floor of literally lava with a platform in the middle, and another on the other side. “Well, I’m already naked,” and Thor chugged the heat potions and waded across the lava up to his chest. We watched from across, and saw him climb down a ladder. After a few minutes he climbed back up with another statue, but this statue, while it looked the same was much heavier. “Each time I put it down, it would appear in my hand again, only heavier,” Thor said as we looked at him. “There’s a giant three-headed dog sleeping at the very bottom, and in the corner of that room is another statue. I couldn’t carry this statue and climb down over to the dog and get it without waking the dog.” “I got this,” Lili said, and she flew across the room, down the ladder and picked up the statue. We had several statues now, and we headed over to the next room.

THE PUZZLE BOX

We opened the final door in the room with the demon and found a recessed box with several different pieces in it. Three purple blocks, one blue block, one red block, and two green blocks. We all stared at the blocks for a minute, and then I said, “I think we have to move the blocks so they form an outline around the edge.” “That makes sense to me,” Lili said. We started pushing blocks around. Thor shouted encouragement and tips to us, but he couldn’t push the blocks with the statue he was carrying. We got the red block pushed into the corner and we heard a click. We looked up and saw a medallion with four latches, one had just opened up. “I think, whoever is under this when we lock it into place is going to be smashed,” Lili said. “I think you’re right,” I agreed. We slowly worked our way back and forth moving blocks. I looked over the remaining moves and realized Lili was going to be smashed. I shuddered. Sure enough, the last block clicked in place as Lili pushed it and the medallion fell onto him with a large statue of a man holding treasures and untold gold coins fell onto the floor. Amongst it all was another statue with the number 33. “I have an idea,” and Thor puts the 25 statue in the far right slot of the cubbies. “The last guys to come in here gave me one of them and I gave them a hint to solve it all,” the demon said. “I told them the next numbers in the sequence are 39, 45, and 49. Just offering if you’d like some help.” “Yeah, yeah,” Lili said waving him off. Thor went back and grabbed a poison bottle and we all took the acid protection potion, and Lili used mage hand to float the poison over and pour it down the giant creature’s throat. The entire thing dissolved and we were covered in acid up to our knees. It was quite gross. In the middle of all that acid was a statue with the number 1 on it. “I’ve got an idea,” I said and I went into the room with all of the strange numbers. I pried out number 1, and got a statue with the number 1 on it. I continued this with number 3 right next to it. Both statues looked exactly the same, except for the numbers on the bottom. All of the other statues we’d gotten looked different from each other. “That’s not it.” I stepped on the blue platform and used the warhammer to pieces. There was no small statue in there.
Lili looked over the statues we had, studying each number carefully. “I noticed there’s no prime numbers, and no even numbers.” We started putting our statues in order, and figured out we still needed 21. I ran back into the number room and pried out the number 21, and we placed them all in the cubbies: 1, 9, 15, 21, 25, 27, 33, and 35. As we placed the last statue we heard a pop and looked over the green fire was gone and so was the giant demon. In its place was a stairwell going down.

THAT’S NOT WHAT I EXPECTED

We walked down the stairs into a large mostly empty room, and saw a teenage girl at the bottom. “You’re not going to leave me here too are you?” she asked. “Who are you?” Lili asked. “I’m Amara. The raven fairy left me when she found the weapon. I’ve been down here ever since,” she said looking at us with wide eyes. “We’re here with your adopted father, the Cap’n,” Lili said, “He’s sick or he would be here too.” “How do we get out of here?” I asked. Amara’s eyes widened even further when she saw the Unmade Sword, “The raven fairy drew a door with that and flew off with it. I don’t know if it lets many people out. She left me down here with the Undying One.” I could hear the capital letters as she said the name. “You’re not ready to fight me little girl, you’ll never be ready,” a snarl came from the other room.

Report Date

23 Dec 2021