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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 2182893" data-attributes="member: 1210">The Guardian of the Secrets intones, “This you should always keep, for no one else wants it!”Our heroes talk it over for a while, then ask him, “Can you tell us the other riddles before we answer the first?”He nods, and the halflings ask him to do so.  He asks his second riddle: “This stinks when living, but in death smells good.”The third riddle, too, he puts forth: “Weight in my belly, trees on my back, nails in my ribs, feet do I lack.  What am I?”The party huddles and talks.  “The third one is a ship,” Sandy says instantly.  The others agree.  That one, it proves, was the easy one.  The party tosses around various ideas for the other two riddles, and finally they turn to the Guardian again.“We have answers for you, Guardian,” Sandy says formally.“Then answer!  This you should always keep, for no one else wants it.”“Your temper!” cries Achtung.  ”This stinks when living, but in death smells good.”“Toil!” Beau shouts.”Weight in my belly, trees on my back, nails in my ribs, feet do I lack.  What am I?” “A ship!” Sandy exclaims.The Guardian of the Secrets regards them keenly.  “I am impressed,” he declares.  “You have answered two of my riddles correctly.  You may pass the doors at leisure.  But beware- not all is as it appears!”“Only two?” exclaims Beau.”It’s the ‘toil’ answer,” complains Zeke.  “I knew that wasn’t it.”The Chief grunts.  “Jawbreaker told you: pig.  Bacon.”“Can we leave and come back later and still pass?” asks Sandy.  The Guardian nods, and the party decides to go rest at the green pool that makes them feel full.  Perhaps, if it ameliorates their need to eat, they can rest long enough for Beau and Jawbreaker to regain at least some of their vision.***7/20/369 O.L.G., NoonAfter several days the almost-blind halflings are only half-blind.  Tired of waiting, and hoping that half-blind is nearly as good as not blind at all, the group returns to the Guardian’s chamber.  He greets them and again indicates that they may pass any of the doors.  Our heroes examine the graven symbols on the doors again.  The first door is marked with a skull and crossbones, the second with a dwarven rune for water, and the third with an image of stylized coins and gems.  “If not everything is as it appears,” argues Beau, “maybe that one is a trap.”“Well, we should certainly check it out, there might be loot,” Sandy retorts.  “We don’t want to miss the loot!”After arguing back and forth for a while, the party finally decides to open the door.  It is locked, but Sandy takes care of that fairly easily.  The door lead to a 20’ wide passage that is in a shocking state.  About 30’ down the passage, it appears that some kind of catastrophic event must have severely damaged it.  In fact, a deep chasm gapes before the party.   Across it, 25-30’ away, is a damaged section of hall.  It looks as though some sort of geological event must have wrenched the hall apart at some point in the past.The party passes by it easily enough, with Achtung flying two lengths of rope across to the other side and tying them off at the end of the hall, where he finds another thick doorway, this one bound with brass bands.  Soon the rest of our heroes make it across, and then they all gather at this new door.  Unfortunately, it is locked, but not with a physical mechanism of any kind; there is no lock for Sandy or Beau to pick!  Jawbreaker snorts.  “Jawbreaker can break door,” he suggests.  The party again breaks into discussion, stopping for a snack (“Act now, but after we eat” is one of Ezeekiel’s slogans).  As they do, they hear something behind the door, a muffled voice, apparently repeating the same thing over and over.  Pressing an ear to the door, Beau frowns.  “Okay... it’s another riddle... it must be how we get through the door... damn riddles!”  He repeats it to the party: “There are three common words ending in –GRY.  Two of them are angry and hungry.  The third is a common word, and everyone knows what it means.  What is the third word?”*  “Uh, humm,” mutters Ezeekiel.The party puzzles over this one for some time.  Finally, someone hits on it, and they shout it through the door: “AGREE!”There’s an exclamation from behind the door, and then a quiet word, and the doors slowly slide open.“Thank you, oh thank you so much!”  Weeping before them is a half-elven female.  She’s clutching herself, as if astonished at the feeling of her own skin and flesh; for indeed she is.“Who are you?” asks Sandy. “My... sniff... my name is Mys,” she answers.  “I’ve been down here for so long, oh so long!”  She gives out a wavering sigh.  “But now, thanks to you, I’m alive again, I can leave again, oh thank you!”“Alive again?  What do you mean?”“For a long time... Two hundred years?  I don’t know any more... I was some sort of... puzzle creature.  A living conundrum, if you will.  But answering the riddle broke the curse that kept me!  Oh, thank you!”“Hey, were you with a dwarf?  Or have you seen one?”She shakes her head sadly.  “No.  I haven’t seen anyone since I was trapped down here.”  She wipes her eyes, composing herself.The party talks to Mys and discovers that she calls herself a riddle-master.  She is eager to stick with them in this dangerous place; she is somewhat afraid of going it alone until she is in a civilized place.  “The world has no doubt changed greatly since my curse began,” she says sadly.  “All my old friends and most of my family are no doubt dead.”Behind the riddle-master are two open chests.  Looking within them, our heroes see a starry void; but Mys tells them that within is a great reward for each of them that aided in restoring her to flesh.  As each of them reaches in, they find themselves groping around in a cool, unseen space until each of them gets an item.  Their thoughts seem to guide their hands to their rewards.  Jawbreaker, full of larcenous thoughts about treasure, ironically gets a ring of thievery that grants him a +5 bonus to sleigh of hand checks.Ezeekiel gets a +1 evil outsider bane battle axe.Hortense gets a wand of cure serious wounds.Beau gets a an empty sack, but it turns out to be a sack of supplies that will shrink food, drink or smoking materials to 1/1000th of their normal size and weight.  Items within the sack prove easy to remove, as well.  Beau and Jawbreaker soon trade rewards.  Finally, Sandy gets a pair of gloves of the sailor that give him a +8 competence bonus on Profession (sailor) checks.Well pleased with their rewards, our heroes return to the Guardian’s chamber and set themselves against the door opposite the one that led to Mys.  She and the Guardian exchange a cool greeting on the way.The door- this is the one with the skull and crossbones- yields a terrible dragon with a stinger dripping sizzling orange venom and the stink of brimstone around it.  It glares malevolently at our heroes, snarling and hissing, and its terrible stinger darts forward and hits Jawbreaker square in the chest.  The Chief cries out as venom pours into him.  He groans, feeling his chest burn as the poison ravages him!  Then his groan turns into a scream of rage as he flings himself forward and engages it!  Hortense moves towards him as Mys starts singing a song that inspires courage in our heroes.  Beau discovers to his chagrin that this particular wyvern has spell resistance when his magic missile fails to affect the creature.  Jawbreaker hacks at the terrible dragon, but the venom spreading in him burns like fire; even in his rage he can feel it.  His blows do not have the force to penetrate the scales of the beast.  Then its sting and its claws and its bite tear at him, and everything goes black.  The last thing he sees is that stinger, jabbing him in the chest again, and more fire...Our heroes have yet to scratch the monster, but that changes as one of Sandy’s arrows finally sticks in its neck.  It roars defiantly, stinging Hortense as she tries to heal the Chief and interrupting her spell and then springing forward to bite and sting Ezeekiel.  He stoically ignores the pain and slams his axe into the monster, slicing it across the chest.  It hisses at him, but while it is distracted Hortense manages to get a cure light wounds onto Jawbreaker, who struggles to his feet weakly.  His body feels like it’s on fire!  “Poison,” he croaks.  “Help...”Ezeekiel and the wyvern continue to fight it out.  Finally, Ezeekiel hits it with everything he’s got, smiting evil, and it falls, its head nearly severed.“Jawbreaker need rest,” gasps the Chief.  “We rest in other room.”  He can barely breathe.The party retires for a day.Next Time: There’s one more door to be investigated.  Behind it- the halfling prophecy!*Note that this riddle relies on being spoken aloud (rather than written) to have a solution.  This is a very clever piece of misdirection as far as riddles go; this is actually floating around on the internet ether as an ‘unsolvable’ riddle.  Bah!</blockquote>

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