02 - Room Reclaimers HQ

Moribus uses his knowledge of arcana to try and understand the side with magical writing.

Arcana: 21

Moribus recognizes the magical writing as a cleric spell, but he is unable to decipher it is as he is not able to cast cleric spells.

Moribus gives the cleric scroll to Dwalin.

Dwalin takes a closer look at the scroll, to see what the spell on it says.

Dwalin easily recognizes it as a spell scroll of second level cure wounds.

With the bookshelf being the only thing left in the room, Dwalin walks up to it, skimming over them to see if he can find anything off with any of the books on there.

((Investigation roll: 4))

Dwalin takes a look at the bookshelf, and the books that Duncan has spread out on the floor, but he doesn't find anything that sticks out as potentially important or another clue.

Taking the book the others noted as noteworthy, he thumbs through the pages, with the clues next to him:
(267, 1, 8, 2)
(31, 2, 39, 7)
(151, 2, 43, 3)

He first goes to page 267, and counts the lines of the 1st column. At line 8, he gets the 2nd word: 60
He then flips back to page 31. At the 2nd column, he counts down to line 39 and gets the 7th word from there: 6
Finally, he flips forward again to page 151. The 2nd column's 43rd line's 3rd word is 39.

With these numbers, Dwalin walks to the safe and checks to see if they work.

Precious time ticks down from the timer above the glowing door frame as everyone stands around, unsure what to do next.

Finally, Dwalin asks if anyone knows where the Player's Handbook, from the bookshelf, is. Duncan perks up, and helpfully produces it from one of his pouches.

Dwalin lays the various parchments out on the remaining desk at the north of the room, and compares the number sets on the parchment with pages, columns, lines, and words in the Player's Handbook.

After a minute or so of this, he slams the Player's Handbook shut triumphantly and confidently marches across the room to the safe, enters the numbers 60, 6, 39 in the combination wheel, and pulls the lever.

The safe clicks open, and Dwalin pulls open the door.

Inside, there is a single piece of parchment. Dwalin takes it out and examines it:



Meanwhile, the sound of a chime fills the room once again, as the timer ticks down to 5 minutes.

With his years of experience figuring out legal documents, along with the endless times he had to turn dwarven rune writing to common spelling, Dwalin quickly clears up the messages. It states:
"The exit door from this room includes a magical hidden message"

Kirstin casts detect magic on the door

Kirsten crosses the room and stands in front of the outline of the door. She casts detect magic using the remaining charge left on the spell scroll. The spell disappears from the scroll, and the room lights up with magic around Kirsten, like it did last time.

But, this time, Kirsten pays particular attention to the door directly in front of her, and sees the magical message plainly as the timer ticks down to four minutes and emits another chime through the room:

Kirsten reaches out to the image on the door and presses the letter on the bottom portion:

C-H-O-I-R

The letters appear in the first row, as Kirsten touches them.

Then, Kirsten pushes the enter button.

One by one, each of the letters flips over:

Kirsten explains to the others the game board that she sees on the door, and everyone crowds around to discuss.

Duncan and Dwalin suggest that the solution may be written in the same cipher code as the clue leading them to the game board was written in.

Thinking that is a reasonable idea, Kirsten reaches out to the letters on the bottom portion of the image and keys in the word SLATE, written using the cipher code that Dwalin scrawled on the side of the parchment:

F-B-N-P-A

The sound of the chime rings out again, as the clock ticks ever down to three minutes remaining:

One by one, each of the letters flips over:

Kirsten consults with Duncan and Dwalin once again, and they decide to try entering CHOIR again, but this time coded by the cypher.

Kirsten reaches out and enters

S-Q-T-Z-L

As before, the letters flip over one by one:




Another gong fills the room, as the timer ticks down to two minutes remaining.

Kirsten consults with Duncan and Dwalin on what the word might be. Moribus comes over and contributes his opinions on the puzzle as well. Together, they determine that the word is HOTEL, spelled out using the cypher. Kirsten enters

Q-T-P-A-B

One by one, the letters on the letters on the door turn over. Each one is green.

The door outline shines brighter and brighter, easily seen by everyone in the room, until it is so bright that all anyone can see is the white light of the door. Suddenly, it stops glowing entirely, and in its place is a normal, double door like it was an hour ago when the group passed through the door into this room.

The timer above the door ticks down to one minute remaining, and the chime rings out through the room once again.

Kirsten walks through the door, followed by the rest of the group, and back out to the fresh air of the RR Headquarters.

A large crowd has assembled outside the door to this room. It seems like all of the Room Reclaimers are there: Blue, Leonard, Cardamom, Raisin, Beny, Elle, Peter, and Julianna are all there, as well as a number of people that none of the group has seen before. Among these other people is a young female hobgoblin with hardy skin made red from a life out under the harsh sun. Everyone applauds and beams at the group as they emerge from the room.

Jorl is not present. He's probably too busy tapping his pencil.

Julianna steps forward out of the crowd of onlookers and approaches the group.

"Well done, everyone! That was a close one, but I knew you would all make it through. Welcome to the ranks of the Room Reclaimers!"

Leonard steps forward, behind Julianna, holding what looks like a blue pen.

"If you would each step forward and present your wrist, Leonard will apply your Room Reclaimers mark. While he's doing that, if any of you have any questions, I will do my best to answer them.
We have also taken the liberty of leaving 100 gold in each of your rooms. Call it a signing bonus." She smiles, warmly, at the group.

((Congratulations! You solved my Escape Room Puzzle! Each of you gets an extra 100 gold, and everyone levels up to level 4!))

Duncan strides out of the room, beaming at the groups accomplishment.  After hearing the speech, he walks up to Leonard

That was lots of fun!  Though it felt like a really long hour.  Did you design everything in there?  Were there any artifacts in the room?  Can you bring back the dragon?  I wasn't done talking with him before Kirsten poofed it away...  What are you going to put on my wrist?  Is it going to be stuck there forever?  That sounds like an interesting process, though I'm not sure I'd enjoy having a permanent mark...

Duncan considers the permanent mark on his arm for a minute, and then gets distracted by Tamani's introduction.  Duncan walks over to Tamani with an outstretched arm

"Hello!! I'm Duncan Herrofoot nice to meet you!  Have you worked here a long time?  Do have any artifacts? Can you show them to me?  I tried to convince Jarl to let me help him make money with the pencil but he wouldn't let me even hold it!. So it sounds like you worked with Bruno - why doesn't anyone talk about him? and what's wrong with his face!?!?"

Kirsten gives a somewhat friendly nod to Tamani and looks down at her wrist begrudgingly. She can't help but feel that she should have been the one testing them, not the other way around... For a lack of anything better to do, however, she holds out her arm for branding wondering what will come of it.