Mel pulls a length of string from her pack and cuts off a ten foot section. She wraps it about the end of an arrow, soaks it liberally from her bottle of Longshank's Old Bootrot Whiskey, and sets it alight with flint and steel.
She hands the makeshift torch to Kazador. "Would you care to do the honors?" she says.
Kazador nodded. ”Thank ye.” Not daring to even breathe, he held his breath as he pushed it forward.
When Kazador's torch enters the depression in the wall and warms it, a grinding sound echoes in the chamber and the wall rises up out of your way. Green mist begins flooding into your chamber. It extinguishes Kazador's torch, leaving you all in pitch darkness.
You can see a door in the opposite wall, not directly opposite you, about fifty feet away. It doesn't have any handle you could feel but it says "Press here" in Dwarvish near a circular marking on the middle of the door.
The magical light is instantly extinguished by the fog!
The light on Fyrtor's sword winks out as the fog rolls over him. He covers his face and though he coughs a bit manages to avoid the worst of the fog's effect.
"Gah!" says Mel. She peers into the room thanks to Fyrtor's spell granting her the ability to see in the dark. "It says 'press here' on that door. Do you suppose that turns off this ... mist?"
She eyes it. "I bet I could hit that from here. Should I give it a try?"
Kelian grimaces at the stench, but makes no comment.
Algric had been silent throughout this, glaring daggers at everyone and everything. This silence was broken by a fit of coughing as he inhaled the fog.
Kazador, for his part, strode through the fog. With single minded determination he pushed his hand into the circular marking.
halved by save so 2.
Kazador moves forward and presses that space on the door. That section of the wall opens immediately, showing you a new room that you rush into hastily.
The new room is cylindrical stone capped by a domed ceiling. As you enter, etchings begin to glow magically on the wall. One shows a bear, another a spear, a third a badger, a fourth a forge, a fifth a house, a sixth a warhammer.
"Interesting," Mel says. She examines the symbols to see if she can identify them as particular dwarven or religious symbols.
Algric stumbles in, coughing and wheezing. This stopped though, as the majesty of the place settled in. The irate dwarf’s anger fled as he stared in wonder.
Kazador looked at the room with tears in his eyes. They had made it...it had cost so much but they ad made it. Truly, a miracle from the father of the Forge himself.
As he come to a stop in the room Fyrtor stops to catch his breath. After a moment he looks around.
He immediately notices the change in Kazador and Algric. Softly he asks, "Kazador, is this a holy place? Is there some special way we should act?"
Mel and Kazador are familiar enough with the worship of Torag to know that the badger, warhammer, and forge are all holy to the Father of Creation.
”Tis a holy place. One where I have never tread before.” He said with reverence in his voice. With that, he silently walked over to the glowing hammer etching and raised his hammer, so that the runic hammer touched the wall.
"Hmm," Mel says thoughtfully. "There are definitely symbols of Torag here: the badger, the warhammer, and the forge. The other signs -- the bear, spear, and house -- have no particular significance to Torag, as far as I know. Perhaps it is another test."
She hesitates a moment, then moves over and gently places her hand on the symbol of the forge.
Muse waits to see what happens to Kazador and Mel before he goes touching his hands or weapons to anything.
You can feel a slight tingling in your hand as it presses against the symbol.
Mel and Kazador stand with their hands against the wall. Everything seems fine.
Kazador could feel a slight tingling as he put his hand upon the hammer engraving. Unable to think of anything else to do he kept his hand there to see if anything would happen.
Nothing happens yet!
Fyrtor hesitates for a moment, but when nothing happens steps up, "you said the badger is a symbol of badger as well right?" Then he lays his hand on the badger with the others.
When Fyrtor places his hand on the third symbol considered holy by followers of Torag, a square stone set in the wall recedes into the wall and descends, leaving a square depression behind with three keyholes in the depression. One of the keyholes is ruby, the other is sapphire, and the third is emerald. Three pairs of side-by-side stone doors also appear in the walls of the room. Each pair of side-by-side doors has dwarvish script over the top and stone masks over the doors.
The inscription over the door reads: "One of these masks always lies while the other always tells the truth. You may ask one yes or no question after which you must choose the correct door."
The inscription over the door reads: "One of these masks always lies while the other always tells the truth. You may ask one yes or no question. They understand you perfectly but they will respond by 'da' or 'ka.' One of those means yes while the other means no but you do not know which means which. Go through the door of the truth-telling mask."
Kazador walked over to the first set of doors. To the first mask...he punched it. ”Did I just hit ye?” If it said yes then it told the truth. If it said no, then it was the liar.
To the second doors he went. He went to the first mask...and punched it. ”With Da meaning yes and Ka meaning no, did I just punch ye?” A straightforward approach from a straightforward dwarf. The rules never said that da or ka had any specific meaning, just that it was all they could say. It was the only solution he could think of.
Three masks are set over two doors. The inscription reads "One of these masks answers truthfully, another always false. A third is as fickle as the wind, random in response. They will answer you "yes" or "no" three times total. Choose your door.
Kazador is about to approach the puzzle with brute force but he remembers that the vault-keepers were a wily old lot of tinkerers, not like the warrior rune-wardens who used and carried the great dwarven weapons. Though he had never been in the vaults, he had seen the vault keepers play kings and castles enough times to know that those old men fully embraced the plodding, logical ways of Torag in their craft. Perhaps to a slightly excessive degree. And his experience with the lock also serves as a reminder of the danger of a brute force solution.
"What do the words say?" Fyrtor asks. He winces when the burn on his cheek flares with pain as he speaks reminding him that he has yet to heal his wounds. "Mel, I hate to ask, but could you heal me as well? If you are too tired I can do it myself..."
Muse translates the words to Fyrtor.
"We've only got one question, so we should talk it out ahead of our asking it . . . " Muse sits abruptly, and begins drawing in the dust with his finger. He stays like that for altogether too long, muttering under breath and arguing with the ghosts. Twelve lines of eight runes later, he stands and addresses the party. "I think I've got it. The first riddle, at least. So, there are four realities we might live in - one where the liar sits above the safe path to the left, one where the liar sits above the perilous path to the left, one where the liar sits above the safe path to the right, and one in which the liar sits above the perilous path to the right. As we must distinguish between these four realities with but one question, the question we must ask is -
'do you rest above the safe path to the left?'"
”So...this reminds me of when I talked to one of the vault keepers. Can’t say I understood it then. But for the first door, I think we should ask ‘Answer yay or nay, would he tell me that this door is the correct one?’ Ye see, if he says yay, then the other door is the correct one and this one is the wrong one. If he says nay, then it’s the correct one. I...think?”
"But there are three doors though," Mel points out. "I think that makes it more complicated..."
" For the first set of doors I think that it should work. For the next sets I'm not sure, but I think it will be a variation of the same. I wonder what happens if you pick the wrong door...."
Kazador asks his question of the first set of masks, pointing randomly to one of the doors in that pair. The mask replies "Nay." Kazador then opens the door he indicated and finds a small closet with a ruby key hanging from a nail.
”Alright! That’s one key. Next door. So we ask ‘ ‘Answer yay or nay, with da meaning yay and is meaning nay, would he tell me that this door is the correct? Any objections before I try that?”
"I don't think we get to choose whether they use 'da' for yes or not; they'll just answer 'da' or 'ka'. One of those means yes, and the other means no, but we don't know which is which."
Mel moves over to Fyrtor, gesturing to Kelian for assistance, and patches up his wounds.
Kazador becomes certain that the words are meaningless placeholders but the Rune Wardens did assign them an arbitrary meaning which cannot be changed by anyone trying to answer the riddle. But Kazador does remember what the old salt said about hypotheticals and trying to build logical, binary switches into the question to cancel out unknowns. He thinks that he needs "da" or "ka" in his question. Maybe his question needs to involve asking the mask whether it would respond "da" to a certain question.
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For what felt like an eternity, Kazador puzzled over the riddles. The first answer came fairly quickly, and the third had to be accomplished through a round-about process of deductions. More about the limitations of the runic defenses than the riddle itself. As for the second...several times he was ready to concede defeat, and to fall back onto elven magic. But, seeing it as a test from Torag, he persevered. Helped in this by the memories of his lost kin, the final seal was opened.
Kazador answers the second two riddles and passes safely through each door to find a small chest containing a jade key and a sapphire key. He uses all three to unlock the next chamber and the door opens soundlessly, revealing a long dark passage ahead. At first, you can see perfectly well. Then you step forward into the passage and now only Kazador and Algric can see the dark passage leading ahead.
”Something tells me we aren’t done yet.” Kazador mused, as he walked into the darkness. ”I hope that there aren’t any more riddles to solve.”
”Would’ya rather it be a test of courage? Or honor, perhaps?” Algric responded. With a hard edge to his voice he added ”Perhaps a test on how fast someone can run?”
Kazador stopped and turned to the archer. The two glared at each other in the darkness, a contest that only they could bear witness to. One dwarf gripped his hammer tightly, and the other held an arrow in his hand. After an awkward couple of seconds, Kazador broke off and continued walking. ”Whatever it is, I hope ye help with the next one.” The warrior muttered, darkly.
The darkness swallowed them both as they went forward.
Mel lets out a short exclamation as her sight suddenly goes black. She backs up a bit.
When Mel backs out of the passage into the masks room, her darkvision returns. Kazador finds his armor suddenly less comfortable and noisier as he walks.
Kazador looked back. ”Ye all coming?” He asked. Algric kept walking into the darkness.
"Um, Kazador, I can't see a thing. Soon as I stepped into the passage it just went black."
Wait a minute. Hold onto me then and I’ll lead ye in. Though ye might want to guard here, incase there is a trap ahead that targets non-dwarves.
After a pause Fyrtor hesitantly says, "Well, we've come this far working together. I'll continue on with you unless you ask me not to."
“I won’t be much help blind - but I’ll come along if you think it’s best.”