DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Fun & Games ETD: Escape the Dream Episode III: The Sixfold Seal

Looking for something that will burn. Thinking the Wizard's study is most likely. Study the painting.

If I can't see anything obvious, I may try an insight.

You study the painting beside the southeast passage: the stone sundial beneath a perfect noon-shadow.

Gypsy Study painting insight
AquaDyne rolled 1d20 and got 17

At first, the meaning seems obvious enough. Sundial. Noon. Shadow. But with the thought of the Silent Crypt still in mind, more details begin to stand out.

The painted sundial is not shown outdoors. It stands inside a cluttered chamber, surrounded by shelves, broken wood, and scattered objects. The light striking it is strangely deliberate, as if someone has arranged the room so that one particular shadow falls exactly where it should.

You are fairly certain this painting is telling you two things.

First, the Wizard’s Study has its own puzzle, and that puzzle has something to do with making the sundial show noon.

Second, your guess about fuel feels promising. If any room in this place is likely to contain old furniture, loose wood, paper, books, candles, or other things that might help make a proper sustained fire, it would be a wizard’s study.

The southeast passage waits quietly beneath the sundial painting.

But I need an 8 to enter this passage...

So thinking about the order of corridors, I think I need to do W (9) before NE (6) and do SE (8) before SW (4). But I don't have the 9 or the 8. Unless the 6 can be turned upsidedown and used as a 9?

Not yet sure about the E Labyrinth (1) or the NW Smoke tunnel (2).

Also look again around the room for anything that might be possible to take with me.. a light (candle) for example?

All the paintings except the ones with 6 and 4 had their numbers installed already. Those were the only ones missing.

When you put the 4 in the crypt square, it seemed to unlock something. The 6 may have just been a way to make the 4's spot not so obvious.

So far you have examined 4 paintings, rolled really well, and have determined game room before bright corridor, and study before crypt.

You still have the rope you found earlier.

There are no candles here, but you recall from your earlier investigation of the Wizard's Study painting that you might find one in there.

Your options at this point seem to be:
- study the other two paintings
- go to the game room
- go to the study
- go to the other rooms that you know are harder

Let's try the study!

You step into the southeast passage marked with the painting of the sundial.

The central chamber smelled of dust and candle wax. This hallway smells of old paper, dry wood, and the faint metallic tang of magic left too long in one place.

The passage opens into what must once have been a wizard’s study.

"Once" may be more ancient than one might think.

The floor is littered with broken furniture: splintered chair legs, cracked shelves, warped drawer fronts, bits of table, and curled shavings of very dry wood. Much of it looks useless as furniture, but very promising as kindling.

Tall bookcases line most of the walls. Their shelves sag under the weight of ancient books, scroll-tubes, ledgers, and loose sheaves of parchment. Many of the books look brittle enough to crumble if handled carelessly.

In the center of the room stands a stone pedestal supporting a circular sundial. It is an odd thing to find indoors. Its gnomon points upward from the center. Around it are carved hour marks, with NOON marked more deeply than the rest.

The problem is immediately obvious.

There is far too much light.

Several bright orbs hover near the ceiling, drifting slowly in place. They shine from different directions, so the sundial has no single clear shadow. Instead, faint overlapping shadows point every which way and nowhere in particular.

On the far wall, opposite the entrance, is a boarded-up window. No daylight enters through it now, but its position lines up suspiciously well with the sundial.

You are fairly sure this room wants one clear light source, from the right direction, and all the other lights either moved, blocked, dimmed, or otherwise dealt with.

For your other purpose, the room is much more cooperative. There is plenty here that could serve as fuel: dry splinters, chair legs, scraps of shelf, curled paper, and perhaps even candles or lamp-stubs if you search the desks and shelves.

The room appears quiet.

The floating lights, however, seem to be watching you.