Puzzles Revolving Around Puzzles

Puzzles Revolving Around Puzzles
Date	3/17/24
Storyteller	Doug
Tier	Expert - Hard
Player Characters	Chrysanthemum Lavandula Orchidaceae Delphinium Helianthus, Berta Stormhammer, Kasumi, Sahona Bright-Eyed
Rewards	250 xp, 541 gp, Deafing Music Box, Madcap Top
Result	Success
Author	Sahona
Downtime	5

Log

Apparently some person called the "puzzlemaster" is causing trouble by testing the intellect of people, with dangerous consequences for being stupid. Thankfully I'm the oldest of my brothers, so while I might not be a book nerd like Boophis, I'm wise to the world. I studied five different 5-letter words from Lucky's book of 5-letter words, and it came into play pretty quickly once we got to the location of the box. There was a door blocking our path, needing 5 slots filled in. Chrys tried CHRYS which failed, and so I deployed my studied words and wrote "PLANT" which told us the L in the word was yellow. Apparently that means it's right, but not in the right spot? Anyway we moved some stuff around and got the word "LUCKY", and the puzzleguy showed up to greet us. He thought Lucky would be here, but apparently she was scared it'd be way too dangerous for her? It was pretty dangerous, I guess. He also recognized Kasumi! Solved a "Rubix" or whatever.

Anyway rules are: 5 letters, when we guess it'll tell us how close we are to getting the right letter by color. Black letters aren't in the word at all (X), yellow letters are in the word but not in that spot (-), and green letters are the right letter in the right spot for the word (O). Each letter is worth a point, we didn't get told how many points we needed to win.

We got sent to the actual puzzle box thing by the puzzleperson, with a big answer box thing surrounded by a clock on the floor. It also shot a bright light out of it that hurt us when it passed by, but it also hurt the golems. There were tiny golems by the way, they liked to grab us and latch on if they could, to slow us down and get us hit by the light. The Puzzler was up above watching this, not getting hit by the laser somehow. There were tables in each corner that we could run up to a tiny box on and guess a word at it, and it would tell us how close we were to guessing the word correctly without counting toward our guesses or hurting us. Oh, wrong letters on the big box hurt us, by the way. Dunno how bad, we never got anything wrong.

Anyway we started running around a bunch, guessing letters and fighting golems. Berta guessed STEIN:--OXX, and I eventually guessed CHEST: OOOOO. Chrys was close to the big box already and submitted CHEST which got us 5 points. Oh, and guessing stuff on any of the boxes made the big light rotate more, so we got hurt by it quite a bit. Worth it.

Second word, we had a bunch of golems to fight. Berta started by guessing COINS, XXOXX. As we killed golems we got to guess a single letter on a single spot for free, and the big golems that came later gave us two guesses, but counted as two deaths. Oh, and if four golems died in quick succession the big light would rotate again. Gotta pace ourselves I guess? Dunno why Puzz would punish people for being smart and working fast, is he stupid? Berta guessed EXILE later, XXOXO. Kasumi eventually tried QUITE, XOOXO. Berta risked it with the big box and tried GUIDE, OOOOO, and we were up to 10 points.

The third word is where the big stuff started dropping in, and it got kinda rough. Kasumi had this cool magic combo that made the golems not wanna hit her, and even when they did latch on she could slip outta their grabs no problem. I was doing that too with my giant canine transformation, but I guess her style was cool too. Chrys was doing a bunch of healing, but she was getting swarmed by golems. After a golem died to the light and we found out C was not in the word, I tried SMITE, -XX-X, at Kasumi's suggestion. She later tried HOIST, OXXO-. I tried PATSY at another suggestion, X--OX, and we figured out the word was TRASH, which Kasumi submitted. OOOOO, 15 points total.

Fourth and final word, things got really bad. A second light, slightly smaller, popped up on the other side and joined the spinning. Berta started us off with DWARF, XXX-X, and Chrys tried CRONE, X-XXX. I was trying to protect them from the golems with my transformed shape, but I eventually had like 8 golems around me trying to kill me, including two big ones. If not for Chrys and Kasumi they might've got me too. How is that even part of the puzzle, anyway? Who designs puzzles where you're supposed to figure them out while robots kick you in the leg a bunch? That's stupid. Puzz-stupid's stupid ideas aside, my distraction helped get a bunch of golems killed, which helped us narrow down some letters. We managed to narrow it down to SYRUP, which I submitted. OOOO, 20 points total.

Stu-puzz came down to congratulate us, and Kasumi tried to convince him to do better branding so people recognize his work. Because he's really stupid though, he didn't get it. He invited us to his puzzle house to do puzzles forever though, and after we left we found a really loud music box and this cool top in the trash. I just spun it and it's shooting wine everywhere, apparently the desk person is really upset because it's making a mess, but I can't turn it off.

Attached Note

Upon conversation with this "Puzzle Master," certain details pertaining to the threat of this individual were revealed. Such danger is only posed to those who interact with these puzzles, and permanent harm only comes to those who are brought into the game's demi-plane upon solving those initial devices. As such, simply quarantining and disposing of these items would be sufficient to stop harm from this crazed individual, and it is that recommendation I would make to the council. - Kasumi