Digging For Lies - Ziggurat Rainbow Puzzle

Sound of Azure · Apr 18, 2012

First of all, I'm really pleased with the adventure, and am looking forward to running the party through it in the next couple of sessions. Unfortunately, I've run into a roadblock with this encounter.

Two minor things to start with- the encounter states there are 8 Implanters, but references the basic positions of 10 such creatures. Is 8 or 10 implanters correct? Also, the text describes 7 veils of light when there are only 6. This was probably left over from an early version of the puzzle.

My main issue is this: the text states that the Blue and Orange stones are next to the entrance, but this does not match the map (which has a Blue and Grey-ish coloured stone by the entrance). I've edited a map to change the positions of the red, orange, and greyish stones to reflect the text, but I would like to know if I am on the right track. Perhaps I have simply misread something. Thanks in advance!

RangerWickett · Apr 19, 2012

Huh, yeah, that's an error. I found the original draft from Matthew and it had 10, but I think I changed it to 8 for balance reasons.

There were only ever six veils (called walls in the original text), but I think my brain defaulted to the ROYGBIV spectrum during editing, and I assumed there were seven colors.

I somehow only just realized that the map in the book is wrong. The southeast bridge and east wall should be red, not orange. The left stone on the platform as you come in should be red not gray (well, it actually is orange, but it ends up looking kinda gray, especially if you look at a low-res version of the map, and that's wrong in either case). I've attached the original sketch of the map for that room, which was drawn on yellow paper. I'm sure that probably caused the problem, but it's my bad for not catching the error.

*grumble* I wonder how hard this would be to fix.

Sound of Azure · Apr 19, 2012

Thanks for the clarifications, Ryan. It's really helpful to be able to talk with the creators of the products you're using.

I am slightly colourblind, so I was wondering if there was an issue at my end.

ve4grm · Apr 21, 2012

RangerWickett said:
I somehow only just realized that the map in the book is wrong. The southeast bridge and east wall should be red, not orange. The left stone on the platform as you come in should be red not gray (well, it actually is orange, but it ends up looking kinda gray, especially if you look at a low-res version of the map, and that's wrong in either case). I've attached the original sketch of the map for that room, which was drawn on yellow paper. I'm sure that probably caused the problem, but it's my bad for not catching the error.

*grumble* I wonder how hard this would be to fix.

EDIT: Wrong stuff, because I missed that the text was also wrong.

Ok, so now that my reading comprehension hasn't caused me to misread your post, I've put together a quick hacked map for anybody to use. See attached.

mort655 · May 10, 2012

A question about the Ziggurat in general, is it possible for the PCs to trigger the flood trap without even going to the Rainbow room? It would seem that they could choose to go one way through the "dungeon", get to the portal room, trip the trap, and flee without ever getting to the other side of the ziggurat.

RangerWickett · May 10, 2012

Hm, in hindsight perhaps we should have had some sort of forcefield over the entrance to the portal chamber which could only be deactivated by going to the map room, since that has the clue you need.

If the party goes the east route and misses the clue, perhaps the Voice of Rot could tell them to go back in, because they missed something.

mort655 · May 10, 2012

I like the idea of putting a force field in front of the entrance to the portal room....like a white barrier that would require them to solve the rainbow room in order to remove the barrier.

Falkus · May 10, 2012

mort655 said:
A question about the Ziggurat in general, is it possible for the PCs to trigger the flood trap without even going to the Rainbow room? It would seem that they could choose to go one way through the "dungeon", get to the portal room, trip the trap, and flee without ever getting to the other side of the ziggurat.

That's what happened with my group. They opened the door to the Rainbow room, I described it... then they closed the door and went around through the other passage.

I gave them the vision and the clue when they went into the map room from the other side.

mort655 · May 10, 2012

Falkus said:
That's what happened with my group. They opened the door to the Rainbow room, I described it... then they closed the door and went around through the other passage.

I gave them the vision and the clue when they went into the map room from the other side.

That was something else I was curious about. There's not really a description of the doors to the Rainbow room. What's to stop PCs bashing down the north-side doors and completely bypassing the puzzle?

RangerWickett · May 10, 2012

Normally you wouldn't be able to get into the map room except by performing the ritual (i.e., solving the puzzle) in the rainbow room. Xambria and her crew had a similar reaction to Falkus's group. They saw the weird puzzle, solved it, then realized they'd have to solve it over and over again whenever they wanted to get into the map room. So they said "to hell with this" and just dug through the wall from the false seal room.