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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9754823" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 5: ISLE OF CHALLENGES SHOWDOWNPC Roster: Adrielle, human/merfolk scout 1                     Brendan Conaill, human monk 1                     Kruz Taszan, changeling rogue 1                     Shiroko, snow fox hengeyokai wu jen 1Game Session Date: 7 September 2025 - - -"We've got a new assignment," Kruz told the group as they grabbed a quick breakfast in the dining area of Mrs. Geshuku's boardinghouse."Oh?  What is it?" asked Adrielle."We're going to try out for the Port Duralia Adventurers Guild.  The Silent Sodality thinks it would make for a good cover for Brendan and me, and we were encouraged to have you two ladies join up with us.  We need a team of four, in any case.  Sorry, Hoppy, it's just the four of us."  Hoppy just shrugged, not at all surprised that a group advertising for new adventuring recruits would not wish to include sinborn among their midst, not only because of their generally hideous build, but because their mismatched bodies often slowed them down considerably.  Hoppy's name, after all, came about from his hopping gait as he tried walking with one leg ending in a satyr's hoof and the other a lizardfolk's scaly, clawed foot."Team?" asked Shiroko."Yeah, the tryouts are a kind of obstacle course race, something like that.  Teams of four.  There's an entry fee of 10 gold pieces per team, nonrefundable, and we need to sign up by today because the tryouts are tomorrow morning.  We'll get all of the details when we sign up.""Sounds good," asserted Brendan.They wandered down to the piers and found the signup booth, manned by a small group of Adventurers Guild members.  There they paid over their entry fee, signed a form acknowledging the "Isle of Challenges Showdown" - that was the official name of the obstacle course race - was potentially deadly and the entrants had been made aware of the potential dangers, and were officially signed up as a team of four.  "Now we just need your team name," remarked the Guild member signing them up.That turned out to be a rather difficult decision, and the four mulled it over among themselves for quite some time, to the visible irritation of the Guild member assigned to assist them.  They had been the twelfth team to sign up, so Shiroko didn't understand why they just couldn't be "Team Twelve."  The harried administrator was willing to enter that in as their team name, but Kruz wanted something flashier - or else just oddball and wacky.  "How about 'The Shaken Babies'?" he suggested with a smile."I do not wish to be called a baby," replied Adrielle."How about we cut to the chase and just name ourselves 'The Winners'?" suggested Brendan."That will put us in a poor light if we do not win," pointed out Shiroko.  Eventually, they decided on "The Foreign Four," which the administrator found confusing - he'd thought they'd said, "The Four and Four," and reminded them if they had eight members they'd have to split into two teams (and pay a second entry fee) - and even though Brendan realized while the other three might be foreigners, he wasn't (Shiroko came from the faraway island country of Sokoku; Kruz had been born in the Fairylands and dropped of here in the Mortal World for some reason; and he wasn't quite sure what the deal was with Adrielle but she talked kind of funny sometimes and had some strange ideas about how things worked, so he assumed she wasn't a local either), but he was already bored enough with the whole coming-up-with-a-team-name deal and let it slide.The four were told what time to show up for the Showdown the next morning, and were reminded that while the spellcasters could prepare their normal day's allotment of spells, each member was only allowed to bring along one magic item of their choice.  Adrielle knew she'd be bringing her amulet of Kessaia, which allowed her to switch between her mermaid body and the human vessel she currently inhabited, and Shiroko would likewise be taking her amagasi michi umbrella, which prevented those interacting with her from being able to recall any specific details about her physical appearance (a handy effect for an otherwise human-looking spiritfolk with large fox ears growing up out of her head and a bushy fox tail sticking out of the back of her kimono, especially if she were on the run from a powerful lord from her distant homeland and had no desire to stand out).  Brendan, of course, was taking his only magic item: the skull mask which provided him with full darkvision when he pulled it down over his face (an action which also gave him the illusory appearance of having a skull in place of a normal, living face).  But Kruz had no magic items of his own - his true seeing necklace didn't really count, in his mind, since it was a natural part of his faerie heritage and spent all but a few seconds each day as a discolored birthmark on his sternum - so Shiroko gave him her wand of magic missiles.  If he could manage to use it, so be it, but if not, it would at least be there with the group and the wu jen could fire it off if needed.That all settled, the group went about the rest of their day like normal.  But the following morning, the four were at the appointed starting area for the Isle of Challenges Showdown: a stretch of beach a bit down from the main piers in the biggest harbor of Port Duralia.There were 16 teams of four entered into the Showdown.  Each was grouped together on the beach, facing the sea.  There was a line of floating buoys some distance away, all linked together with rope and apparently anchored in place.  Further beyond that, they could see the small island where the majority of the Showdown would take place.Adventurers Guild pages went down the line, dropping off a wooden box before each team, the bottom side up, upon which was painted each team's number.  "At the starting whistle," proclaimed the proctor of this first challenge, "You will turn over your wooden boxes and determine the command word or phrase that will convert them into folding boats.  Once your four team members are in the boats, you will row out to the line of buoys, which are all in order, and use the small key found inside your boat to open the compartment in your team's buoy to fetch your larger key; this key will open the door on the island with your team's number on it, so you can complete your other challenges.  Are there any questions?"  There were not, so the proctor blew his whistle and the first challenge was on.Turning over their box, the team saw the following phrase:Arranged in a ring around the phrase were the following letters, starting at the top and moving around the circle in a clockwise direction:"Um...what?" asked Adrielle.  She tried reading the sentence inscribed on the box aloud, to see if it caused anything to happen.  (It did not.)"I think the letters on the outside are the clue to solving the puzzle," surmised Shiroko.  "Try deleting the letters in the circle when they appear in the phrase."  The group diligently did just that, wiping wet sand over the appropriate letters in the phrase in the middle, which took them a bit of time.  By the time they had gotten the results from that strategy - which turned out to be a dead end, as it came up with a random string of unpronounceable letters (NOCANATHCOMMANDWOD) - a few of the other teams had figured out the puzzle and were pulling their folding boats into the surf and paddling toward the string of buoys."This isn't working!" grumbled Brendan, wiping off the wet sand.  "Start over!"They puzzled over the possibilities until Shiroko finally decided to try it the other way.  "So, if a letter doesn't appear in the outer ring, we get rid of it from the interior phrase," she decided, doing the obliteration-with-wet-sand trick.  This resulted in a better solution: "SPELLREVELER."  "Spellreveler!" she cried in triumph, only to be deflated when nothing happened."Maybe that's two words," suggested Adrielle."Of course!" declared Shiroko, lowering her voice to say quietly, "R-E-V-E-L-E-R," so the other teams didn't hear her solution.  Sure enough, after spelling out the word, the wooden box unfolded into a wooden rowboat, 10 feet long and about four feet wide.  It had a single pair of oars and there was a small key with the number "12" etched upon it sitting on the front seat.  The four grabbed the sides of their boat and lugged it out to the ocean waves, before hopping in.  "I'll row!" offered Adrielle, the strongest of the four of them.  She faced the back of the vessel and started rowing, while Shiroko sat up front with the key and the two men sat in the back.  The other three shouted directions to Adrielle to get them headed toward the twelfth of the buoys.However, when they got close enough to see the number painted on the twelfth buoy, Shiroko spotted a problem at once.  "It's marked '10'!" she called out to the others.The buoys were all about ten feet apart from each other, all lined up in a row.  "Try the next one!" called out Brendan, and Adrielle started rowing to the 13th buoy.  But it was marked "13.""Keep going!" suggested Shiroko.  "Adrielle rowed the boat further to the right, only to find the buoy marked "3."  There were only two buoys left beyond that one, but Brendan didn't like their odds.  "It's probably the other way!" he suggested, and Adrielle brought the boat around and started backtracking.  There were other teams in their boats rowing up to the buoys, and at least half a dozen of them had already found their team's buoy and were busy paddling off to the distant island."Just keep going!" suggested Shiroko.  "I'll call off the numbers as we get close enough to see them!"  And she did; after backtracking from 3 to 13 and back to their original buoy #10, they passed by 16, 6, 7, 1, 9, 14, 4, 5, 15...."These are all scrambled up!' complained Kruz.  "I thought they were supposed to be in order!""There are only two left," groaned Brendan.  "If it isn't one of those, we'll have to backtrack all the way back to the two at the other end that we skipped."  And that's exactly what they ended up doing, for the last two buoys at the left end of the line were #11 and #8."We suck at this," pointed out Kruz as Adrielle turned the little boat around and headed back the way they'd come.  And to add insult to injury, buoy #12 was the very next buoy they'd have hit upon if they hadn't turned around with two more buoys to check on the right side of the line."This doesn't make any sense," argued Shiroko as she used the key to open the compartment of buoy #12 and extract the much larger key from it; it, too, was engraved with a large #12.  That wasn't the twelfth buoy - it was the 15th!""Yeah, I thought they said the buoys were all in order!""Let's not worry about that now," suggested Adrielle as she rowed the boat around the line of buoys and headed for the island.  It was about halfway there when Kruz slapped himself on the head and announced, "Gah!  They were in order - alphabetical order!""I don't get it," admitted Brendan.  "Alphabetical order of what - team name?""No - spelling out the numbers!" Kruz explained.  "8, then 18, those start with "E," then what was next?  The F's: 5, no wait, 15 first...""Ah...crap!" said Brendan.  "We should have gotten that earlier.""And we took a long time figuring out the command word to the boat," Shiroko said.  "Look: most the other teams are already at the island."Sure enough, there were at least a dozen teams ahead of team 12.  But at least there was no question about where the next challenges were located: there was a large wall, 20 feet high, with 16 doors spaced equidistant along its length, and each door had a large number painted on it, 1 through 16, in normal counting order.  Adrielle rowed the boat to the island and they pulled it up onto the shore.  Brendan was already racing to the door with the 12 on it, but Shiroko, who held the key, said, "Hang on, I want to try something."  Then she said, "R-E-V-E-L-E-R" and the folding boat folded itself back into its wooden box shape.  "We might want this with us in the other challenges," she suggested.  Kruz took it from her and placed it into his backpack as the wu jen went to open the door."Hey, do you think we should tinker with the other doors, so the other teams can't get in?" he suggested.  But he was shot down, with the others pointing out this was a contest to demonstrate their suitability as adventurers, not as contest winners.  "I don't know," argued Kruz.  "I kind of have to assume the Adventurers Guild is looking at the eventual winners as their most likely best adventurers....""We don't have the time to spare," replied Adrielle.  "We've taken too much time on those first two challenges as it is.  Besides, most of the others have already gone into their doors - we'd only be slowing down those who are already behind us."  Kruz shrugged and followed the others through their designated door.The 20-foot-tall fence continued on either side of a long, open stretch of land.  There was a line painted on the grass before them, with four arrows sticking up out of the ground and four longbows laying on the near side of the line.  At the far end, nearly 200 feet away, stood an archery target.  "Archery challenge," surmised Brendan.  "Anybody here good with a bow?"  Nobody had any archery experience at all, but Shiroko picked up a longbow and fitted an arrow to it.  "All we can do is try our best," she suggested.  She fired off an arrow, which didn't come anywhere close to hitting the target, and then moved forward, for she could see there were two other lines painted in the grass ahead, and at each were four more arrows sticking up out of the ground.That turned out to be a mistake.  As soon as her foot hit the ground on the far side of the first line, thick, black smoke started billowing all around the target, obscuring the back half of the course.  "Oops," said the hengeyokai.  "Sorry, guys - I guess we need to shoot all four arrows before we can advance.""Do we each need to shoot at each line, or can one person shoot four times?""I doubt it makes much of a difference, in our case," said Brendan, picking up a longbow and lining up an arrow.  But the obscuring mist effect was still blocking sight of the target, so he had to wait a minute until it had finally dissipated.  Then he and the other two took their shots, nobody hitting the target at all.  "We suck at this," Kruz said again.At the next line, they had a little bit of luck; one of the four arrows hit the outer ring of the target (there was a bullseye in the middle and then two rings around it).  When they advanced to the third and final line and took their shots, they got another arrow onto the outer ring and a third one into the inner ring.  "Now what?" asked Shiroko.  Kruz tried throwing a dagger at the target (he missed), and Shiroko picked up an arrow that had been shot at the target earlier and shot it again at the target; at this range, it was difficult to miss.  There was obviously some scoring system in place, because after less than a minute the entire target section - and the stone wall behind it - lowered into the ground, allowing the team to move through the revealed doorway and into the next section, where their fourth challenge awaited.  Shiroko gathered up all the arrows she could (the ones sticking in the target went away too fast for her to try to remove them), and everyone took their longbows with them into the next challenge.The layout for this next challenge was similar to the last one, with a lengthy stretch of straight corridor flanked on either side by 20-foot walls.  This time, however, there was a 50-foot section of the passageway that was 10 feet lower than ground level, and the lower section was covered in two things: mud and rats.  There were likely several hundred rats down there, a good incentive for the team members not to fall into the pit - it was only 10 feet deep, but it stretched the full width side to side, and it was apparent anyone who fell in was going to look an awful lot like the rats' next meal.  A 10-foot-tall wooden pole stood on either side of the pit, and a bag sat near the pole on the close side.  Over on the other side, the back wall held a door, the exit from this challenge and no doubt the entrance to the next."Obviously, we need to cross to the other side," observed Kruz.  "Let's see what's in the bag."  He spilled the contents of the cloth sack onto the ground, revealing two lengthy coils of rope, one yellow and one orange, a small hand mirror, and four small, thin blocks of wood covered with angular carvings on both sides.Kruz dropped to the ground and placed the mirror on one knee.  Then he tried placing the wooden blocks, one at a time, on the mirror to see if their reflected images made any words.  He gave that up soon enough, but then he tried putting two blocks of wood next to each other.  Sure enough, he was able to make out "YELLOWROPEIS."  "I got something here!" he cried, showing the others.  He set those two blocks aside and tried lining up the other two to make words - and soon came up with "ORANGEROPEIS.""Orange rope is what?" asked Shiroko.Flipping the "ORANGEROPEIS" blocks over, Kruz instantly saw that the other side of the blocks, lined up in that fashion, made no sense.  But by switching their orientation, he soon came up with "ENTANGLEMENT."  Some quick experimentation determined the other side of the two blocks that formed "YELLOWROPEIS" could be arranged to form "SAFECLIMBING.""So, which is it?" asked Brendan.  "One's safe, and one entangles.  But which is which?"  It only made sense to be able to read a full sentence all at once, so they decided "YELLOW ROPE IS ENTANGLEMENT" and "ORANGE ROPE IS SAFE CLIMBING" made the most sense."But what about the mirror?" asked Adrielle."Not needed.  Red herring," replied Brendan, grabbing up one end of the orange rope.  "Attach to the pole on the other end of the pit!" he commanded the rope of climbing, and it unwound to do just that.  "There we go," he announced smugly, holding up his end of the rope to the pole on their side of the pit and commanding it to attach tightly.  "Who wants to go first?"Kruz volunteered.  But only a few feet along its length his hands slipped and he fell off the orange rope, to land with a wet splash in the gloppy mud - at which time he was instantly surrounded by hungry rats chewing at him through his leather armor.  "Ah!  Get off!" he cried, brushing hungry rodent bodies off him as he waddled back toward the near side of the pit.  "Over there!" called down Brendan, and Kruz looked to where the monk was pointing.  There was a group of carved, rectangular indentations along the stone wall, one stacked above the other, spaced far enough apart they served as a ladder of sorts that did not allow the rats to climb up and out of the pit.  But the muddy rogue was able to climb up, and Brendan helped swat the few rats that had made the trip with Kruz as he climbed back up out of the pit.By that time, Adrielle had come up with an idea: by unhooking the bowstring on one side of her longbow, feeding it around the orange rope of climbing and then hooking it back together, she was able to slide her arms and torso through the bow and was now tethered to the rope, unable to fall down into the pit as Kruz had done.  She started pulling herself along the rope, but got stuck a few times.  The others followed her example, but Shiroko called forth her daily unseen servant and had it push the scout along as needed to keep her moving.  The same thing happened with Brendan, and Shiroko soon found out that none of the four of them was particularly adept at climbing along horizontal ropes; the unseen servant did a lot of pushing and pulling to get everyone across intact.  Eventually, they all made it across, but this was another challenge that they all felt had eaten up a lot more time that they would have liked.  Once they were all four back on solid ground, the door magically opened up.  Kruz took a moment to command the rope of climbing to untie itself and coil back up, and he stuffed it back into the sack in which it had originally been stored.  He had taken the mirror and the four little wooden blocks too, just in case, but left the yellow rope of entanglement behind.  (It was on the starting side of the pit, and nobody wanted to waste the time to go back for it.)The fifth challenge took place in a small chamber, this one with a roof above.  The chamber was only 20 feet to a side, with a 5-foot-diameter hole in the floor.  Two everburning torches sat in sconces at opposite corners of the chamber, providing illumination when the door closed behind them once everyone was inside.Brendan pulled his skull mask over his face and used the darkvision it provided to look down the vertical shaft.  "Looks like it's about 50 feet down," he said, judging the distance."The rope of climbing's at least that," Kruz offered.  "If we tied it to one of those sconces....""Better yet," suggested Brendan, pulling out his own (unmagical) coil of rope.  "We can tie this from sconce to sconce, and then have the magical rope drop from its center right down the hole."  He and Adrielle tied his rope to the opposite sconces, while Kruz gave the rope of climbing its orders.  Once it was in place, Shiroko cast a dancing lights spell to illuminate the shaft's interior and everyone climbed down the rope one at a time.  (They weren't sure how much weight the sconces would be able to hold at one time.)  Brendan went first, then steadied the rope while the others climbed down.  The bottom was another chamber the same size as the one they'd just exited, but this one had a door leading to the next challenge.This one was definitely a puzzle door, for it was an otherwise empty room lit by a pair of everburning torches flanking a door with a wheels-within-wheels mechanism in the center.  Kruz tried opening it, and naturally it was locked.  "We need to move these letters into the correct configuration," he surmised.There were 16 letters in a 4 x 4 grid; each letter was on a metal disk that rotated either clockwise or counterclockwise, with four of these letter-disks arranged in a 2 x 2 grid on a larger disk that also rotated; the four larger disks all centered on the overall disk, which itself could be spun in either direction.  "And check this out," pointed out Kruz, turning a small disk with the letter "D" printed on it.  "Turn it sideways, and it looks like an 'A'."  That was true of several of the disks; depending on their orientation, a letter could be an 'N' or a 'Z,' while an otherwise straight line with a bend halfway across its length could, in theory, be a capital "L," a lower-case "r," or a capital "J" - possibly even a sloppy-looking "V".  Several others could be either an "E,", an "M,", or a "W," depending on which way they were turned."They obviously need to line up with the pictures," pointed out Shiroko.  There were four images along the outer edges of the spinning disks, each with a line pointing either across a row or a column of the 4 x 4 grid of letter-disks.  One showed either a frog or a toad; another was a silhouette of a wolf howling at the moon; there was some sort of raptor bird, an eagle, hawk, or goshawk; and the final was a round circle flanked on either side by crescents pointed in opposite directions."That's gotta be a hawk," suggested Brendan, and Kruz moved the discs around until he had four letter-disks lined up that could be turned to spell out "HAWK."  That more or less locked two of the middle-sized disks in place, and the group soon figured out the other words were "HOWL," "TOAD," and "MOON."  Once all of the right letters were in their correct orientation, there was an audible "click" and the door crept open.The next room was another mostly blank chamber with another pair of everburning torches providing illumination and another puzzle door.  The door was a full 10 feet by 10 feet, crafted of a solid block of marble, and had the carving of an elephant facing the viewer straight on.  A series of instructions carved to one side of the elephant gave clues as to how to open this next puzzle door.  Kruz picked up another small cloth sack, spilling out a half dozen stone tiles, each a rounded-edged square with a letter carved on it in the same font as the letter-disks in the previous challenge.  The inscription had six indentations above it - each sized to house one of the letter tiles from the cloth sack.  The instructions were as follows:Kruz placed the six tiles on the floor so everyone could see them.  Shiroko read off the first step, and with some manipulations of the tiles, they were able to spell out "MANOR," leaving a sixth tile that could either be a "C" or a "U."  "It specifies a consonant," Shiroko said, so Kruz placed it in the 5th slot as a "C."  One of the tiles was an "O," and as it could not be turned into any other letters, it was obviously the 2nd letter.  They decided the "past tense verb" in the third clue had to be "RAN," so the leftover tile - which could be an "E," an "M," or a "W" - was placed into the fourth slot as an "E.""Last letter has to be an "A," pointed out Brendan.  "It's the only vowel we've got left."  That left only two tiles: one that could be an "N" or a "Z," and one that could be a "J," an "L," or an "r."  That put the first letter as a "Z" and the third letter had to be an "L."  Kruz place each of the tiles in their appropriate positions."ZOLECA," Adrielle read aloud when they were done.  Upon the utterance of the command word, the marble elephant - a variant of a figurine of wondrous power that took the shape of a 10-foot-cube instead of a little figurine - turned into an actual elephant, who trumpeted loudly and strode into the room, leaving behind a 10-foot-cube passageway into the next chamber.  On a whim, Adrielle said "ZOLECA" again and the elephant reverted to a block of white marble again.  Everyone filed into the next room but Adrielle, who waited for them all to pass and then repeated the command word, reverting the stone block back into a living elephant, which she ushered through the passageway before following it into the next chamber.  As expected, once she went through the short corridor a door dropped down from the ceiling, preventing anyone from going backwards and fetching items from previous challenges.It was quite obvious what the challenge was in this next chamber: it was 30 feet wide, with a metal loop bolted in the exact middle of the room.  Attached to the loop was a thick, metal chain, which in turn was attached to a metal ring around the neck of an owlbear.  The chain allowed the creature to reach anywhere in the middle of the room, leaving a 10-foot area of "safe space" at either end of the chamber where the owlbear, despite its best efforts, couldn't reach the challenge participants."Are we supposed to kill it?" asked Shiroko, frowning at the thought of slaying the beast just to be accepted as Adventurers Guild members.  They all had longbows and arrows, and Kruz held her wand of magic missiles; it would be easy enough to shoot it from out of range of its reach until it was dead."No need," observed Brendan, looking over at Adrielle.  "You're the one who activated the marble elephant," he said.  "Have it go over and step on the owlbear's chain, and then turn it back into a block of stone."  She did so, and the weight of the unmoving block of marble kept the owlbear pinned in place long enough for the contenders to advance across the chamber and open the door on the far side.  Then, once again, Adrielle turned the marble block back into an elephant and had it exit the chamber before she followed.The ninth challenge was a return back up to the surface, for the next chamber had no ceiling; it was a 20-foot-by-20-foot square vertical shaft rising up for 80 feet.  The contenders could see blue skies above, and the branches of an overhanging tree.  Kruz activated the rope of climbing, but it was only 60 feet long: too short to reach the branch overhead.  "We need to get higher," he told the others.  Adrielle commanded the elephant to rear up on its hind legs while standing in a corner, and Kruz clambered up onto his head, but he still wasn't high enough.  Then he had a brainstorm and fished the folding boat box from his backpack.  "What was the command word again?" he called down."Spell out the word 'reveler'," Shiroko called back up.  Once the boat was formed and the elephant held it in place balanced on his head (trapping it between the corners of the wall with his trunk), Kruz was able to climb up the seats like a ladder.  Then, before he could command the rope of climbing to slither up the wall and attach itself firmly to the overhanging tree branch, Shiroko cast a smoke ladder spell that got him even 10 feet closer up the shaft, ensuring the rope had plenty of reach to tie its far end to the branch.  After that, it was simply a matter of each of the four climbing their way up the elephant, folding boat, smoke ladder, and rope, something that took a few of them longer than they would have liked (Shiroko in particular complained that a kimono was not the best garment to wear when trying to climb in such a manner), but eventually they were all back up on the surface once again."Last challenge," pointed out Brendan.  They looked at the set of wide steps leading up to a gong at the top.  There were four steps in all, each divided equally into four sections: one red, one yellow, one blue, and one green, although the colors were in a different order on each step.  There was also an inscription on one side of the steps that indicated what color you needed to be on, depending upon how many people were on the steps at any given time.  (If only one person was on the steps, they had to be on a yellow space, but the yellow spaces were far enough apart that they couldn't just send each person up on the yellow spaces, one at a time - they'd have to switch to blue if there were two people on the steps, or red for three, or blue for all four.)  That was simply an exercise in good communication, with everyone deciding ahead of time which space they'd be jumping to next, and Brendan calling off "Go!" so they all leapt at the same time until they were all at the top."Give it a wallop," Kruz suggested, and Adrielle hit the gong with a padded mallet that had been leaning against it.  Upon doing so, a magic mouth spell activated, congratulating the group on reaching the end and directing them, one at a time, to leap down upon any color space on the step below except yellow.  Kruz did so, leaping down onto a red space and being instantly teleported back to the starting position back on the beach of Port Duralia.  The others followed suit, realizing this would have been their fates had they messed up this last challenge and stepping on a wrong-colored tile at the wrong time.  (There would have been a glitterdust effect in such an instance, indicating a competitor who had screwed up instead of one who had successfully completed he entire course.)The Foreign Four were a bit disheartened to learn they had the longest time of those who had actually completed the course - by a good 10 minutes or more - but took some pride in the fact that at least they had finished; five teams had gotten themselves disqualified, either by messing up the last challenge, refusing to climb the 80-foot-tall wall at the risk of possible death if they fell (not everyone remembered to bring along their marble elephant, folding boat, or rope of climbing), or, in one case, giving up after almost an hour trying to figure out the command word to the folding boat in the first place."We suck at this," Kruz commiserated to himself for a third time that day."Doesn't matter," Brendan reassured him.  "The three quickest teams got some reward money, sure, but any team that finished gets to join the Adventurers Guild.  We're in!""The Silent Sodality will be glad of that, at least," Kruz sighed.And he was right: they were. - - -This went okay, although the players were rather disappointed at their poor showing.  (I was a bit surprised, too, at how long it took them to figure out the first two challenges - that's where they ate up the most time that ended up putting them in 11th place.)  And I was particularly surprised that Adrielle remained at the oars for the whole time they were in the folding boat; I especially made the first two challenges water-related so she could use her mermaid body for a while (and that's why, unlike the "Challenge of Champions" adventures, the "Isle of Challenges Showdown" allowed everyone to bring one magic item each, specifically so she could use her amulet to revert to mermaid form).  I had assumed she'd swim ahead to check out the buoys, as she can swim much faster than any of the PCs can row, and that would have shaved off a good chunk of time, especially when they got one buoy away from their buoy and then switched directions.  But oh well - players always find a way to surprise you.As this was their fifth adventure, everyone leveled up to 2nd at the end of the game session. - - -T-shirt worn: My shirt with sharks I got at an aquarium years ago, since a part of the initial challenges involved rowing across the sea.</blockquote>

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