The Misadventures of the Missed Adventurers

[narf poit chez BOOM]

ooc:[going now]
after about an hour, jack gets up and the three adventerers troop through the middle door, where they are faced with a simple trap: the walls on both sides of the cooridor are covered with stone blocks, which are covered with spikes. the door slames shut behind them. a carved face appears on the opposing wall and says "you will be presented with 3 riddles and 5 questions. fail at any and die. to answer, say 'the answer is' and then state your answer. the first question is: given the insolubility of oridice, what is the best magical spell for melding it with nydium?"
the three adventureres huddle and jack says "oridice strongly resists magic and combining with other materials, so a spell of magic vulnerability and a spell of solubility would seem nessasary. but the face seems to specify only one spell is nessesary, which seems impossible. what are the properties of nydium? every time i asked my master about it he'd say i wasn't ready. and then he would shudder a little."
narp "before i learned that my capabilities where better spent as a fighter, i spent some years learning to be a scholar. i once found an obscure reference in an old book that simply stated that 'nydium is a dangerious material. nydium is volitile.'"
jack "a spell of characteristic balance then? but the oridice would resist it. perhaps if it was sequenced...if the nydium is magically volitile to, which is the only solution i see, then make that part of the spell the strongest and balance that characteristic first and it should work."
everyone else "ok."
jack turns to face and says "the answer is: a spell of characteristic balance, made so that the part to balance the magical resistances is stronger and goes off first."
the face says "the answer is correct. the first riddle is: what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening?"
narp "this thing is really old, isn't it?"
everyone nearly trips over each other giving the answer.
the face says "the answer is correct"
ooc:[hope you don't mind my sticking words in jack's mouth. feel free to post some rewrites if you don't like them. didn't see any other way to solve a question and a riddle though and i felt i should do a big post. 4 questions and 2 riddles to go. just occured to me that not everyone might have run into that riddle, so the answer is: a human. crawling in the morning of his life, walking on two feet in the noon, the answers i've read say afternoon but it make more sense to me as noon, walking with a cane in the evening.]

[ June 13, 2003, 08:36: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]