Carnifex
First Post
I need some help with a puzzle for tonight's game, my d20 Warhammer campaign. The party of three are in the city of Middenheim, where they've been combating the machinations of evil Chaos cultists. In particualar, their main nemesis, a man called Lysaeus, fell to their blades recently, but they didn't realise he'd already deposited his soul in a powerful psychic crystal array he had created. Now, he's a free-willed, bodiless being capable of possessing groups of people around the city (I took some inspiration from Of Sound Mind 
). Currently he can only possess one or two dozen weak-willed people at a time, but his power is growing.
The problem is, that the Chaos Moon, Morrsleib, has just spat out a big comet of warpstone - solidifed dark magic - which will fall in the area of Middenheim, releasing a wave of dark magic that will greatly bolster Lysaeus's powers. Worse, he sent one of his henchmen, a rogue Chaos dwarf sorcerer with great talent for mixing the arcane and the mechanical, to an old observatory in the city that had once been owned by a Celestial wizard (the Celestial order are focused on studying the heavens and making divinations). The observatory still had operation arcane machinery and a large arcane orrery plotting the movements of the moons, comets, planets and winds of magic, and the chaos dwarf reconfigured and corrupted the machinery so that it acted as a huge conduit for his sinister magic.
He then used it to drag the comet off-course, so that it will land right on Middenheim.
The resulting wave of dark magic, death and pain would give Lysaeus enough power to be able to pretty much take over Middenheim and possess everyone there without too many problems, so obviously the PC's wanted to stop this. They turned up at the observatory, fought their way through the dwarf's array of mechanical and alchemical traps and construct guards, and then slew him. The last session then finished.
Now they need to 'disarm' the corrupted orrery and observatory machinery, which is still using the flow of magic to pull the comet off its course. They don't have much time before the ritual is completed and the comet will be unavoidably retargeted to fall right in the city, so there's an urgent need to stop the machinery. Simply attacking it with weapons might work, but the resultant magical feedback would almost certainly kill the one doing the wrecking.
What I would like to do is present the PC's with a puzzle in the form of the orrery that they (the Amethyst wizard especially) need to figure out how to manipulate to stop the redirection of the comet or, better still, push it away entirely from landing anywhere near the city. However, barring just saying 'right, make a Knowledge (Arcana) check - right, okay, you made it, you reconfig the machinery and it stops emitting its magic', I'm at a loss as to how to put this in game. I do know that I want it to be something requiring some though from them to figure out, possibly requiring a small handful of skill checks and with a very real possibility of failure.
Can the enlightened members of ENworld lend their aid to me in my hour of need?
). Currently he can only possess one or two dozen weak-willed people at a time, but his power is growing.The problem is, that the Chaos Moon, Morrsleib, has just spat out a big comet of warpstone - solidifed dark magic - which will fall in the area of Middenheim, releasing a wave of dark magic that will greatly bolster Lysaeus's powers. Worse, he sent one of his henchmen, a rogue Chaos dwarf sorcerer with great talent for mixing the arcane and the mechanical, to an old observatory in the city that had once been owned by a Celestial wizard (the Celestial order are focused on studying the heavens and making divinations). The observatory still had operation arcane machinery and a large arcane orrery plotting the movements of the moons, comets, planets and winds of magic, and the chaos dwarf reconfigured and corrupted the machinery so that it acted as a huge conduit for his sinister magic.
He then used it to drag the comet off-course, so that it will land right on Middenheim.
The resulting wave of dark magic, death and pain would give Lysaeus enough power to be able to pretty much take over Middenheim and possess everyone there without too many problems, so obviously the PC's wanted to stop this. They turned up at the observatory, fought their way through the dwarf's array of mechanical and alchemical traps and construct guards, and then slew him. The last session then finished.
Now they need to 'disarm' the corrupted orrery and observatory machinery, which is still using the flow of magic to pull the comet off its course. They don't have much time before the ritual is completed and the comet will be unavoidably retargeted to fall right in the city, so there's an urgent need to stop the machinery. Simply attacking it with weapons might work, but the resultant magical feedback would almost certainly kill the one doing the wrecking.
What I would like to do is present the PC's with a puzzle in the form of the orrery that they (the Amethyst wizard especially) need to figure out how to manipulate to stop the redirection of the comet or, better still, push it away entirely from landing anywhere near the city. However, barring just saying 'right, make a Knowledge (Arcana) check - right, okay, you made it, you reconfig the machinery and it stops emitting its magic', I'm at a loss as to how to put this in game. I do know that I want it to be something requiring some though from them to figure out, possibly requiring a small handful of skill checks and with a very real possibility of failure.
Can the enlightened members of ENworld lend their aid to me in my hour of need?
