Just finished up a graveyard shift today and really tired, and have another one tomorrow. Not really going to be up for a game today. Sorry...
EDIT: If you need to NPC me to keep combat encounters even, just hit things a lot and make liberal use of Arcane Strike, since that doesn't cause wild magic. Fairly simple.
Last edited by NullAshton : 11-05-2011 at 02:33 AM.
P W T I S I T D | PWTISD
R O I A H N E N | ROIAHNE
A S A R L R E F | ASRLEF
K D N A E W A N | KDNAEW
N S T A N A R F | NSTARF
A E I T I N D U | AEITNDU
R S R S T O A E | RSTOAE
E M L S R S E Y | EMLSRY
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Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.
Actually, you have some of the columns out of order; the words will be read left to right in both cases. So you're looking at something more like this:
Also, I believe I should point out the following:
* Every letter will be used once and only once. This means that if you find out the solution to one of the valid entries, you can eliminate the letters that make it up from being included in the others (which will greatly reduce the number of possibilities as you go on). So there are precisely 8 possible destinations for the Gate to take you, one of which is the one you seek.
* You don't need to simply think up the answer and wait a week to try it out; if nothing else that would lead to a very short session if you are wrong. Post ideas here and I will tell you what happens when you try them. This will help you eliminate possibilities as you go on, and with any luck you will have it figured out by Saturday, so we can move on right away. Just don't post a list of a thousand possibilities for me, try to pick ones you think are plausible.
* All valid entries are common English language words; you don't have to worry that the right one is the Latin name for a rare strain of bacteria spelled inside out of anything.
* All valid entries have something to do with the destination in question. So by knowing where you want to end up, you should have some idea of what to look for.
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Terrible avatars throughout the ages! (All by me.)
Okay, we (or at least I) am going about this all wrong. Let's Analyze what we're wanting (at least insofar as my crap ass memory can summarize regarding the specific details of the game).
The gate is a 'porter, and we want it to take us to the location told to us by Spime (Since I missed that session, I can't really recall Exactly where it was). Treasure as a phrase might be worth a shot; but still, what's the name of the location?
Boring Math Analysis Crap:
Spoiler
Update: So, I decided to try and do both things at once. I decided to grab three random columns at a time. From this I'd make 1 letter from 1 column static, then just shift about letters in the other two to see what i could come up with. I also decided to try and eliminate the rare letters (P, H, K, M, etc) first.
Moreover, what I decided to do was just think about what words about places, darkness, and rewards I could find. Here's to a wasted well-spent sunday evening puzzle.
On the left are 8 letter words I got (including Jack's stuff), plus a few more. On the right, despite myself, I saw too many combinations of 4 letter prefixes and suffixes to pass up. On the upside, if POLE STAR works, we can go say hello to Paula, Ness, Jeff, and Poo!
* Every letter will be used once and only once. This means that if you find out the solution to one of the valid entries, you can eliminate the letters that make it up from being included in the others (which will greatly reduce the number of possibilities as you go on). So there are precisely 8 possible destinations for the Gate to take you, one of which is the one you seek.
...
this means that all those duplicate letters you removed DO have a purpose.. you might want to put them back in to the charts
On the left are 8 letter words I got (including Jack's stuff), plus a few more. On the right, despite myself, I saw too many combinations of 4 letter prefixes and suffixes to pass up. On the upside, if POLE STAR works, we can go say hello to Paula, Ness, Jeff, and Poo!
i would like to point out.. for no reason in particular.. that you seem to have missed a word.. *cough*pornstar*cough*
You experiment with the controls for several hours, rotating the wheels to spell common words. Several of them cause the doorway to flair into life, showing different worlds beyond.
Treasure: When you spell this word, a cracking sound is heard, and the portal opens into a vast cavern. The size of it is downright inconceivable, stretching for what seems like an eternity into the distance, with the far walls looking so huge that they resemble a sky and horizon. Looking down from the doorway, you can indeed see treasure miles below you, large gemstones and veins of precious metals embedded in the stone. But you can also see that some of the stones themselves are animate, moving slowly but with all the mass and power of mobile continents. This is the Elemental Plane of Earth, containing infinite wealth, but also creatures as mighty and timeless as mountains.
Infernal: This word opens the gate into a world of horror. You look out from the top of a hill over what appears to be a city on the edge of a river. The river looks familiar to some of you; when you were on Carceri you saw the same greasy greenish waters flowing in the space between worlds. You can see boats delivering people in chains to the city, people with a translucent look to them, some still showing the wounds that caused their recent deaths. The city is a black terrible looking place of towers and chimneys, and looks almost like a malevolent living thing ready to strike. Dark, filthy smoke rises from it, and the wind carries the sounds of screams to your ears. This is the top layer of the Nine Hells, a place of pure evil and perfect order, efficiently processing the souls of the damned to expand its devilish ranks.
Wildfire: A blast of heat accompanies the opening of this portal, and the air around the doorway swiftly becomes nearly unbearable, as the door frame starts to glow red. Madila, who is unbothered by extreme heat, is the only one present who can bear to poke her head through and observe what lies beyond without her eyeballs cooking in her head. She reports a sky on fire, a river of magma, and a distant city that looks to be made entirely of brass. Even the ground seems to be made of solid fire. Despite the heat, creatures can be seen traveling to and from this city, many of them appearing to be composed at least partially of flames themselves. This is the Elemental Plane of Fire, a place of pure passion and emotion, but so hot that even standing there will swiftly reduce most living beings to ash.
Darkness: At last you find a destination that doesn't seem to present immediate danger. The code-word is apt; there is darkness beyond, but the party has plenty of members who can see without light. At first it seems to be a normal land during a still and pleasant night, but closer inspection reveals that it only looks normal through the monochromatic lens of Darkvision; bringing a light source near shows the land itself to be bleached of all color. Everything is black or some shade of gray, from the dirt to the grasses and trees that grow within it. It also appears strangely twisted, as if you are looking at a real place reflected in a black-tinted funhouse mirror. Distant mountains seem to curve and sway, plants grow at impossible angles, and the very stars in the sky (which provide no real illumination) seem to change positions every time you look away. This is the Plane of Shadow, a dark reflection of the Material Plane, and it is your destination. About a half mile away you can see the citadel of the Master Brain, a squat black castle that skulks in the distance, looking grim and uninviting.
__________________
Terrible avatars throughout the ages! (All by me.)
How to Play Rogues Properly:
Spoiler
Like this:
Last edited by Starscream : 11-07-2011 at 10:57 PM.
Oy, I tell ya; getting those first ones made it much, much easier to get the latter ones. (It's much easier when you go from 16 million combinations to 65,000). I do believe these should fill in the rest of the grid:
Phantasm
Seawater
Tornados
Insanity
oh, and, uh, let's do be careful when we open Seawater and Insanity, eh? Don't want tentacles suddenly lashing out at us. from either realm...
Seawater: By this point you have spotted enough of a pattern to step out of the way as the portal activates; however, the expected torrent of water doesn't come. Instead you peer through the doorway and see that you are looking through the surface of a large bubble of air, which seems to be floating in a stationary manner in an endless ocean. It doesn't bob to the surface as would be expected, because there is no surface; just endless sea in every direction, with no up or down beause there is no world on which the ocean rests to define such directions. In the distance you can see other bubbles, some containing reefs or forests of seaweed, or even what may be buildings. But because this is the Elemental Plane of Water, even this amount of solid matter is rare.
Tornados: Just as the last word opened the gate into infinite sea, this one is endless sky. Compared to the other elemental planes, this seems downright hospitable; there is no gravity, and no immediate sign of monsters, although the shapes of birds can be glimpsed through some of the clouds, and their distance and scale is hard to determine. The clouds themselves look curiously solid; on some you can see plants growing and one even looks like it has a well tended garden. What is somewhat disconcerting about the place is the speed; the wind is very strong and the clouds whip by so fast that it is hard to get more than a glimpse of them before they are out of sight. This is the Elemental Plane of Air, and everything in it seems constantly in motion, being blown this way and that by gales that shift and swerve, but never cease.
Phantasm: It takes a second or two to realize that this word has had an effect at all. You peer through the doorway and see nothing but the room beyond, but it looks oddly distant, as if it is right there and yet too far away to reach. Colors are muted, sound seems to be sucked away into nothingness, and the whole place is filled with rolling mist that make it hard to see very far. This is the Ethereal Plane, and things that are solid in your world are nothing more than ghosts here. Ghosts themselves, however, are solid and this is where they and other incorporeal undead dwell, able to interact with the realm of the living only through supernatural means.
Insanity: You get only a brief glimpse through this doorway at what lies beyond; the scene flickers, as if the portal can't decide what location it is pointing at. There is a desert at first, which seems to be covered in bleached bones of all sizes instead of sand, then a swamp that reaks of acid, a forest where the trees whip around in a frenzy during a storm of blood, and even a distant palace built into the ribcage of a still living creature too vast to identify as it slowly walks the terrain while groaning in pain. Every one of these scenes instills within you a feeling of pure dread, as if they radiate distilled hatred and anguish. But as horrible as the sights are, that's not what interupts your observation. Those of you who have the Keys in your posession suddenly are pulled off your feet and sucked toward the portal, as the realm beyond senses the hated presence of pure Law and attempts to consume it and finally bring an end to all things. You grab whatever solid objects you can reach to prevent being pulled through, as the scene shifts one last time to a swirling whirlpool of chaos that resembles a gaping maw. Fortunately, you are able to grab the controls and reset them, closing the portal before you pass the event horizon. You are alive but shaken, as you have looked into the Abyss, and it looked into you.
__________________
Terrible avatars throughout the ages! (All by me.)
The Abyss is far less photogenic then I imagined. Were I a less moral, upstanding, and utterly bonkers old man, I'd have recommended suspending all current activities to actively mine the Earth plane making liberal use of the telekinesis and Wall of Force spells to do so in a safe manner. Thankfully all I care about are books. Shame there's no elemental subplane of paper.
Were I a less moral, upstanding, and utterly bonkers old man, I'd have recommended suspending all current activities to actively mine the Earth plane making liberal use of the telekinesis and Wall of Force spells to do so in a safe manner.
Heck, that's pretty much what the Elemental Plane of Earth is for. Players decide "Hey, infinite loot" and show up with shovels and Bags of Holding. Then the DM makes it abundantly clear why it's a potentially bad idea to invade a place for rocks where everything is made of rocks.
Judging from your new character, you are clearly a Discworld fan, right? Remember how Dwarfs vs Trolls got started. That mountain full of gems you just struck with a pickaxe might only be napping...
__________________
Terrible avatars throughout the ages! (All by me.)
Heck, that's pretty much what the Elemental Plane of Earth is for. Players decide "Hey, infinite loot" and show up with shovels and Bags of Holding. Then the DM makes it abundantly clear why it's a potentially bad idea to invade a place for rocks where everything is made of rocks.
Judging from your new character, you are clearly a Discworld fan, right? Remember how Dwarfs vs Trolls got started. That mountain full of gems you just struck with a pickaxe might only be napping...
As I said, were I a less moral man. On that note, if you would answer the questions in the PM I sent you, I can finish this guy by tonight so we can be easily ready to roll on saturday.
Session closed. Three players present for each part.
Returned to the domain of the Elder Brain after dealing with Spime. It was rather displeased that you chose to trust the dragon rather than obeying its instructions to bring Spime in alive or retrieve her brain, claiming that she may have lied or been under the effects of mind control. It reiterated that you and it are allies only temporarily, and assigned one of its own vassals, a pixie named Oipho, to accompany you, with instructions to either assist you or oppose you depending on how well you stick to your mission.
Spimes information turned out to be good, however, as you soon located the dimensional gate she spoke of. Nesting in the area were two dire rats that had been mutated by the Paragon concoction and discarded through the portal, and were now highly intelligent, formidable, and insane. You defeated them.
The gate was controlled by a puzzle that could set its destination to a number of extraplanar realms. Although some of these were potentially dangerous (and the Abyss openly hostile as it reacted to the presence of the Keys), you found your intended destination, the Plane of Shadow, to be reasonably safe.
Trekking through the dark realm, you came upon the Master Brain's fortress, which was guarded by some Fire Giants on the roof, armed with ballistae and what appeared to be a cauldron of hot oil to dump on intruders. You got the drop on them by teleporting up there, and a fight ensued.
The cauldron was shot, and turned out to contain not hot oil (which some of you wouldn't have even been harmed by), but a captive Black Pudding, which joined the fight and indiscriminately attacked both sides. The giants were slain, and the ooze dealt with by splitting it until it was a horde of weaker beings and then nuking them with fire breath. Damage to the castle's structure occurred during the fight thanks to Rilath and Oipho's use of Stone Shape and Crumble, providing you with an alternate entrance.
XP:
Two Paragon Dire Rats: 1600 xp each
Gateway puzzle solved: 1500 xp each
6 Fire Giants and an Elder Black Pudding: 1200 xp each
Treasure:
The rats and ooze had nothing, but the fire giants possessed the following:
* 6 Large +1 Greatswords (2750 gp each)
* 6 Large +1 Half-Plates (2500 gp each)
* 207 pp, 3867 gp, 6566 sp
__________________
Terrible avatars throughout the ages! (All by me.)
How to Play Rogues Properly:
Spoiler
Like this:
Last edited by Starscream : 11-13-2011 at 12:20 PM.
Session closed. Three players in attendance. Busy all day, sorry this took so long to post.
Entered the fortress of the Master Brain, to find a big laboratory with four giant crystals in the corners. There was also a man with horns and a tail, who was expecting you.
This is Felix, a harvester devil who Madila encountered before back when she and former party-member Therrak were called into the woods by him and a succubus named Bettie. They sent Ornald on a wild goose chase so they could convince Madila and Therrak (a lawful and chaotic being respectively) to give up the first Key in return for vast riches. Needless to say, the PCs refused. A fight ensued, and both fiends were slain (with Felix striking the final blow against Bettie himself, due to centuries of enmity between them, and knowing that she would be punished for dying at a devil's hands).
Now Felix is back, and ready to make another deal with the party. He and his brethren have allied with the Master Brain, and if the PCs say the word they will march on the Elder's forces and take the Key of Earth by force. Then they will aid in acquiring the other two Keys for the party. All the party needs to agree with in return for having the forces of Hell at their beck and call are two things.
1) There are 6 Keys, and only four people in the party. The PCs must therefore allow two devils two possess a Key, and be present at their joining. Thus two devils will ascend to godhood and have a hand in the creation of the next world as well. Felix claims that since the Good deities will still outnumber the Evil, this will still allow them to make the new world a fairly good place, and after all it's not as if the beings joining the Keys have all been good in the past. The PCs present seemed to consider this reasonable enough.
2) The second condition however proved to be a deal breaker. It seems that the proper location for the Keys to be joined is the Concordant Domain of the Outlands, a place where good and evil, life and death, and all the elements are in perfect balance. When the Keys are combined, a massive explosion of pure Law will occur, and only there can it happen safely. Felix however offers an alternative; what if they were combined in the heart of the Abyss itself? He theorizes that this will rip apart the Abyss, destroying it and putting an end to the eternal cycle of creation and expansion. The multiverse will become a place of pure order and control.
Our heroes reject this, as they know that both order and chaos are necessary for freedom to exist. The devil loses his cool at this, saying that the PCs are limited by their natures as mortals, and only outsiders can truly embody their alignments. He says that if no deal can be made, he will release some of the Master's experiments, contained within the crystals in the lab. Felix does so, and flees the room. A plantlike dinosaur, a giant toad, an undead knight, and a living spell all emerge and attack, and are eventually defeated.
The PCs follow Felix and wind up in a room that seems at first to be inescapable. The room is covered in an antimagic field, and there are two doors and two archery targets set up. The field ends right at the doors, but touching one of them causes you to get sucked through, shoot out of the other door, fly across the room, and hit the corresponding target rather hard. Eventually the PCs discover that it's the position of the targets that matters; they can be moved and doing so will change where the object emerges from, even if it comes shooting out of the wall, to unerringly hit the bullseye. After some experimentation they are able to set up an infinite loop that launches a pebble with enough velocity that the magic can't catch up and the doors are reduced to splinters. The party decides to rest there, as the room is easily defensible, and the antimagic will prevent anyone from teleporting in.
XP:
1 Titanic Toad, 1 Topiary Triceratops, 1 Death Knight, and 1 Living Prismatic Spray: 2133 xp each.
1 "Now you're thinking with portals" puzzle: 1000 xp each.
Treasure:
The laboratory had some potions lying around, and some valuable books containing scrolls.
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