The Misadventures of the Missed Adventurers

[narf poit chez BOOM]

ooc:[guess i didn't think to much about that one. D, can you give yourself some offensive spells, please?]
the three adventurers find a room with doors on the left, middle and right. the door over the left has rabbits circling it, the one on the middle owls and the one on the right turtles. Narp says "in classic literature, the rabbit represents speed, the owl represents wisdom and the turtle perseverence. it seems we are being offered a choice of tests. i think between the three of us we stand the best chance at the middle door. what do you guys think?"
D. "i'm just tagging along."

ooc:[ok, just post a preference, then i'll troop our adventures through a door and come up with some problems and a few solutions. i really should have come up with something for the third head, i'm over my allergy attack. D, could you post a few spells for your guy please?]

[ June 13, 2003, 07:26: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Jack Simth]

"We might just learn something from a wisdom test, and that is always valuable. However, if there isn't too much of a hurry...."
Jack sits down and begins reading his newest book.

[ June 13, 2003, 08:23: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[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 ]

[Jack Simth]

ooc:[As long as we don't have others' characters say anything that puts traits on / removes possible traits from the speaking character, it should be OK.]

ooc:[The other way this could be done is for one of us to pose a question that the other's character should be able to answer, and wait for the other to post the response. You are running a fighter-type character, so questions on weapons or armor are appropriet; I'm running a mage, so questions on physics or logic are appropriet. We also ought to throw in imaginary questions (like the nydium/oridice question). Your character is a good target for story-world history, as mine's from a different plane and your's was going to be a scholar; my character is a good target for magic physics, as he's a rather skilled mage. D's is a good choice for a mouthpiece when riddles are posed, as he is a wise and mysterious character, and is thus likely to have responses for them.]

Face: "The second question: What is a cranequin used for?"
ooc:[Question for narp - weapon related; real.]

[ June 13, 2003, 09:42: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

narp "well, a crenequin is a crossbow, so it's used to shoot bolts and kill people. but is that two uses?"
D. "doesn't that make it a weapon?"
narp "your brilliant!"
narp "the answer is: a crenequin is used for a weapon."
face "the answer is correct."
ooc:[don't you just love the internet?]
face "The second riddle is: Think of words ending in -GRY. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is."
ooc:[i use yahoo. but this is solvable, and one of those kick yourself when you look up the answer ones. i actually thought i had solved it, but i hadn't. going now.]

[ June 13, 2003, 10:11: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Jack Simth]

Jack "It is a problem on parsing, with the key problems being the sentences 'There are only three words in the English language.' and 'What is the third word?'"

Jack "'There are only three words in the English language.' could be parsed as 'There are only three words in "the English language".' in order to make it true."

Jack "The other problem is thus: if a word is third, then it is in something; some order; some sentence. However, the question leaves it dangling. As the English Language has no inherent order, third is meaningless in that context, so that option can be ruled out. Likewise, words ending in -GRY have no inherent order; third is again meaningless, so that target can be ruled out."

Jack "The principal of proximity then indicates several options: It could be referring to the third word in the riddle, the third word in the sentence of the question, the third word in the previous sentence, or the third word in the perviously referred to phrase (which incidentally has three words)."

Jack "The third word in the riddle is "words" - this fits every criteria in the riddle, but is rather distant from the question, and thus has a weak fit."

Jack "The third word in the sentence of the question is "the" - which is used everyday, but only as a word, not as a thing. Again, it fits, but is weak, as it can be avoided if one sets their mind to it."

Jack "The third word in the previous sentence is "only" - which isn't used everyday by everyone, and so can be ruled out.

Jack "The third word in the perviously referred to phrase ('the English language', if my parse of the sentence is correct) is 'language'. This is very close to the question, has been directly referred to, and is used everyday by everyone that speaks (which excludes the very young, coma patients, some monks, and a few others, but is good enough for most riddles). Thus, it is 'Language'."

Jack "Does anyone disagree?"

D "Works for me."

Jack "All right then. The answer is 'language'"

ooc:[I looked it up to confirm, but I had it right just from the problem; I've never encountered that one before, but I have fun with deliberate valid-but-not-intended parses of sentences sometimes, and knew what to look for.]

Face "Correct. The third question is: Who finally succeded Emporer Pesci of Mare after his death?"

ooc:[Fake history question - answer however you like - but note we are running low on riddles - we need two more questions (after this one) and only one more riddle.]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

narp "well, lets see...there where heirs, two males, one female, the oldest was insane, second was married but infertile and the third was a drunkard. ordinarily next would be any siblings of the emperor, there was two, the oldest was the chief counciler and therefore neither he nor his children could rule and the second had given up his personal claim to go in the army, which brings us to cousins."
"the second had three children, one had similarly given up his claim, the next was willing but had contracted a nearly always lethal disease, and the third was again insane. next was first cousins, there was one, but she was considered to ruthless and wasn't notified of eligibility. her step-son was eligible, but declined, but his daughter, who had been living on a farm in the outermost borders of the empire, was interviewed and found to be acceptable."
"however, the nobles of the empire objected and thus, for three days, the emporor was the second son of the second brother, who was forced to become emporor at sword-point. he engineered the end of this plot, during which he killed the traterious nobles and then gave the throne to the step-granddaughter of the third cousin, who managed to bring to light certain activities of her step-grandmother and have her imprisoned, thus giving rise to more popular stories. the seconed second recovered but was infirm the rest of his life, during which he became treasurur. so the successer was him."
narp gives the answer to the face.
face "the answer is correct. the next question is: given a spell of conjuration, two disconjoined metals of your choice, a disparate circle of power, an enchanted item of anti-disaperation and a snowball, how do you conjur a griffin?"

ooc:[whoosh. i hope that all make sense.]

[ June 13, 2003, 23:22: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Jack Simth]

Jack "Two disconjoined metals? Normally a standard Griffin-conjouration spell requires three - gold, silver, and platinum, in addition to some obscuration. Ah, I know - anti-disaperation enchantments require that the enchanted item contain an amount of platinum. Then you choose gold and silver for the metals, use the circle of power to evaporate the snowball to provide steam for the necessary obscuration, and use the standard conjouration spell for the griffen."

Jack "Mind you - enough power and you can get past all the requirements, but that wouldn't be any fun."

Jack gives the answer to the face.

Face "The answer is correct. The final riddle is: A man walks up to you and says - 'everything I say to you is a lie.'
Is he telling you the truth or is he lying? Note: there is no third option."

ooc:[Let's see, this is the Last riddle, and we have one more question to deal with, correct?]

[ June 14, 2003, 02:54: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

ooc:[yup, one queston. wise and mysterious? this one to D.]
D. "well, to answer this we must simple take into account the unreliability of humans speech."
D. "the answer is: it's simple really, he was exagerating and getting ahead of himself. he really meant that most of what he was going to say would be a lie."
face "the answer is correct."
ooc:[always seemed to make common sense to me, and i like it better than it's a paradox. or, for another answer, you could say that because he hasn't given any relevant data for you to judge true or false, the statement is incorrect. the statement itself rules itself out as a full statement.]
face "the Last question is: have you now answered all the questions correctly?"

[ June 14, 2003, 06:58: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Jack Simth]

ooc:[The riddle isn't a paradox - the answer to the riddle was that the guy was lying when he said that: If he says "everything I say to you is a lie," then that statement can't be true, as it would imply that the statement made was also false. However, if the statement is false (a lie) then a true statement would be "not everything I say to you is a lie," or eqivalently "Sometimes I will tell the truth"; thus he was lying. However, the spell thinks in binary for that riddle, and exaggerating packs down to Lie as far as it is concerned. To make it a paradox, he would have needed to have said "This statement is a lie."]

D "Well, at the time the question was asked, we hadn't answered the Last question yet, had we? So, technically, we haven't. Does anyone see a flaw here?"

Jack "After we answer we may have a problem - does the question refer to before or after we answer?"

D "Good point. We should qualify it - perhaps 'As of the moment you asked, we had not yet answered the Last question, so no'"

Jack "Works for me."

D "The answer is: As of the moment you asked, we had not yet answered the Last question, so no"

Face "The answer is correct. You may pass."

The door behind the party re-opens, and the wall with the face rises up into the ceiling; beyond lies a doorway. Over the door, an inscription can be seen: Il Labirinto: Oltre quale si trova lo spazio di sosta eternal della sfera difettosa

Jack "I recognize this language - it roughly translates to 'The Maze: Beyond Which Lies the Eternal Resting Place of the Flawed Sphere.' I wonder what it is refering to?"

D "It makes sense that there would be a maze in a labrynth. Do you think there will be a minotaur?"

ooc:[Have you ever heard of the secret of the maze? It's a simple procedure that will eventually solve any two dimensional edge entry edge exit maze that doesn't have odd restrictions (such as one-way doors or one-time passageways or no backtracking).]

[ June 14, 2003, 09:39: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]