This session was held at Will’s house. He, Avery, Trajan, and myself attended in person while Jamie attended via Skype.
Artax’s Tower
First the group had to tackle the riddle of the staircase. They decided to explore it in two groups. One group would consist of Tagenadi, Aldarian, and Amalius. The other would be Torin and Sabriyya. Sabriyya and Aldarian would be tied together with a rope to ensure constant contact between the two groups. The players feared some sort of trap that would prevent them from leaving the staircase once it was entered, so they at least wanted to keep the groups together.
They went up a few flights and began to notice a pattern. Every ten feet of stair there was an upside down torch and every other ten feet there was a window. The window looked out over an extremely cloudy landscape with a few mountainous peaks just visible one or two hundred feet away. Definitely not the plains north of Shalerton that the group entered the tower in.
The group tried throwing stuff out the window and detecting magic, among other things. Tagenadi stuck his head out the first window and Aldarian ran up to stick his head out of the second window. They waved at each other. Aldarian pulled his head back inside and saw a skeleton corpse, previously unnoticed in his rush up the stairs. He alerted the others and they came to look at it.
The skeleton wore tattered, decaying red robes, some boots, and a disintegrated hat or headband of some kind. Around its neck was a leather pouch. Underneath it was an old spellbook strapped to the mage’s belt. On the mage’s right ring finger was a simple golden ring. After careful prodding and poking the party discovered that the ring was magic, but detect magic couldn’t reveal the school of magic. They also opened the pouch to find an ivory carving of an elephant and a silver figurine of Hades, possibly used as a holy symbol. The ring, elephant, and holy symbol were pocketed, while the book was left because it fell apart when it was opened.
Out of ideas on how to proceed in the tower, short of going up it, Tagenadi elected to scout ahead a few floors. He ran up the stairs…and didn’t come back.
Worried, the party discussed plans of rescue, but abandoned them in favor of climbing outside the tower and looking for Tagenadi in the clouds. They then went back and forth between rescuing him and the cloud plan. They were following Tagenadi’s tracks to see if they disappeared at a particular point, when Tagenadi returned out of nowhere upon a firey nightmare steed.
Torin asked, “Whoa! Where did you get that?”
Tagenadi said, “I think I’ve always known how to summon it. But you have to follow me! Once we go up the stairs there’s another window. I made a hole in the wall to make my own window, but then I noticed that the other window had another tower outside of it in the clouds. I threw a rock on the window and I found a wall of force. The walls actually made an invisible staircase that I climbed out on. I walked through the clouds and made it to the other tower. Inside was another room and another riddle. Then I summoned my horse and it brought me back through the astral plane.”
A little concerned for Tagenadi’s sanity while he rode a firey hell horse and spoke of other towers in the clouds, the party decided to send a scout with him first. Sabriyya took the same path with Tagenadi and found his story to be true. The rest journeyed along and they found themselves in front of a door with the next riddle.
Some readers might recognize the staircase puzzle from Nodwick issue #20
Out of Space and…
This thing all things devours,
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers,
Gnaws iron, bites steel,
Grinds hard stone to meal,
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountains down.
___________________
When this thing abandons you,
What is left?
Turn to the gods or your youth is theft.
Thinking the riddle had to do with clocks, Amalius taught a clock related dance to Tagenadi and the newly undead man opened the door. Opening the door took the party to a vast starry landscape. There was no ground beneath them and everywhere they looked was the inky blackness of space or the pinpricks of starlight. No gravity existed and the party quickly learned they could move in any direction they wished.
And in the blackness was a fearsome beast. A shadowy wispy form, half the shape of a leopard, half the shape of a man. Amalius vaguely remembered such a picture from his younger days when he read so many books. This was one of the immortal children of Echidna, the Phane.
The Phane rushed forward and extended his wispy touch to Tagenadi. The knight became frozen in time. Amalius attempted to free Tagenadi from the time prison, but failed. Torin used destructive magic on the Phane, but found its incorporeality and spell resistance difficult to overcome. Aldarian and Sabiryya engaged the Phane directly, finding that it took a significant amount of damage from Sabriyya’s holy scimitar. Amalius overchanneled the hell out of a dominate and trapped the Phane in his psionic clutches.
Tagenadi soon returned and the time bubble around him wore off. Amalius then questioned the Phane.
“You’re one of the other tests in the Silver Tower, correct? How do we surpass you?”
The Phane spoke directly to the minds of the party, “You must defeat me and you have done so. To pass to the final test you must only ask to leave.”
“What can you tell us of the final test?”
“From here on lies only Death and Death is the only answer.”
“Do you know who the skeleton in the tower was?”
“He was another of those who failed to reach the Antenator.”
“And… How’s your day going?”
“Time is nothing here. I contemplate the universe and it is the same as always.”
“Alright then…” Amalius paused then said, “I hate to leave you with nothing after you’ve answered our questions. Here’s a symbol of Hades, so you have something else to keep you company in this place.” Amalius handed the silver figurine of Hades to the Phane.
“Thank you.”
“We’re ready to leave now.”
The Final Test
The party appeared in a large room. The silver walls of the room had drawings and etchings covering them. One side told the familiar story of Thanatos and Sisyphus. Sisyphus tricked Thanatos the god of Death twice, allowing Sisyphus to unnaturally extend his life. After living three times as long as a normal man, Sisyphus was taken to Hell and punished by being forced to push a boulder up a hill for eternity.
The other side of the room told a story the party had never heard of before. That of Thanatos and Anorexia. Thanatos sat upon a mountain when he wasn’t out collecting souls. He often stared down at the village below his mountain. A young girl lived there named Anorexia. She was much thinner than the other girls. Thanatos became obsessed with her due to her similarity to a skeleton. He began watching her whenever he got the chance. Sometimes he swore that she could see him out of the corner of his eye. Eventually she wasted away to nothing and he took her up to his mountain to be his bride.
The Thanatos and Anorexia is something I wrote a while ago to see if I could come up with a Greek myth of my own. The full story is here:
Glory to the Muse, Erato, for she rules this story and its contents of poetry and love.
Long ago, when the immortals still walked the surface of Gaia, the king of the Gods was Zeus. This is a story about the conquest of women and Zeus had many conquests of women, but he is not the hero of our story. Zeus’s father was Cronos, and before Cronos there was Uranos. Uranos, the sky, sprung from the body of Gaia, the earth, and then copulated with her to make the Titans and their leader, Cronos. Before the Titans, and even before Uranos and Gaia, there was Chaos. Chaos had five children, Eros, Gaia, Tartaros, Erebus, and Nyx. Nyx, goddess of night, was the first to gain carnal knowledge of Cronos, the second king of the gods, and from their union the plagues of man were born. The plagues were many but our story concerns only one of them, Zeus’s third cousin twice removed, second cousin, first cousin, and half brother, Thanatos.
Thanatos was the god of Death. You may know Charon whose job was to ferry souls across the River Styx to the land of the dead. It was Thanatos’s job to drag the souls of men to the banks of the Styx while they still clung to their corporeal bodies with every one of their wispy fingers. The ghosts would plead with him, asking to return to their old shells for just a few moments to say goodbye to their families, or for one last night with their love.
Thanatos ignored their cries. He knew it was all lies. He would never allow the wiles of a mortal to ensnare him again. Sisyphus had tricked him, telling a sad story of his children having no inheritance if Sisyphus was not allowed back to life for just a few minutes. Thanatos considered the mortal’s situation for only a moment, in which the crafty Sisyphus threw a length of chain around the god of Death. The vile human being escaped to a second and third lifetime before Thanatos brought him into Erebus’s darkness for good. Thanatos would not be put into chains again. Death would not be imprisoned again. He would continue to bring humans to the banks of the river of Erebus until the end of times. It was his purpose.
There were times of war when Thanatos was rushing back and forth between the surface of the earth and the world below, bringing the spiritual remnants of the casualties closer to their final resting places. There were other times in peace when Thanatos could relax and only had to fly off from his home atop Cloud Mountain every hour or so. It was in these moments of respite that Thanatos looked down on the human race and envied them. They still had occupations and purposes, but the order of the universe did not call them to one thing or another. The mortals of the world chose their place in it while Thanatos was bound permanently to be the caretaker of souls.
On one of those peaceful days, Thanatos looked down on the humans and one of the young girls of marriageable age caught his eye. She was not beautiful like the other girls with silky brown hair and luxurious hips. This girl had hips that seemed no wider than her body and disgusting brown hair with blonde streaks in it. She had a small nose, so she could not smell her future husband’s dinner while it cooked, and she had almost no eyebrows to keep the hot Hellas sun from blinding her. It surprised Thanatos that so pitiable a girl would be left alive instead of abandoned to the wilderness with the other undesirables. Surely, she would never be married to anyone of reputable lineage.
Yet, somehow, the girl interested him. Thanatos put his hand to his ear and was just able to catch her name before the next warm body called for his attentions. Anorexia.
After Thanatos dealt with the screaming and kicking soul he observed Anorexia in her daily labors. She washed her father’s and her mother’s clothes in the river with the largest rock she could pick up, which was not very large. She milked the cows. She fed the chickens. She attended to her younger brother who had a fever as children sometimes do. She did all her chores with a downcast eye and with few words in response when her parents demanded more of her. She was the perfect filial daughter and one of the finest wives if only she weren’t so ugly.
Thanatos took to watching her every chance he got. He spied her from his throne on Cloud Mountain and slowly crept closer for a better look. He was entranced. Her form was thin and damaged just like…Just like the dead. Thanatos knew she was repulsive in the classical sense, but to him, she was beautiful.
His obsession with Anorexia increased. He began watching her as she slept and sometimes coming in close enough to smell her dry and oddly colored hair. She could not see him, for she was not close to death, but Thanatos felt she was aware of his presence. Her joints always made popping noises when he was nearby. She would sometimes stop and stare at shadows. Thanatos wished he could reveal himself to her, but it was not his choice to do so. Being next to her if not talking to her would have to be enough for now.
As the days went by Anorexia grew thinner and thinner. Thanatos thought she might be losing weight because his presence unnerved her, but he also noticed that a little bit of the food she was served always seemed to be put under the table for the dog instead of in her mouth. The bones on her arms and legs began to show and she used smaller and smaller stones to clean the laundry at the river. She was wasting away. Thanatos wasn’t concerned. He was aroused. Her cadaverous body pleased him even more than before. He wondered how far she could go before she would see his face.
Eventually, while milking the cows, Anorexia collapsed. She would’ve lingered and possibly recovered if Thanatos had allowed her family to care for her, but he did not. He gently picked her soul up out of her body and welcomed her into his world. “You have nothing to fear, Anorexia. I have been watching you and I want you to be my wife.”
She said, “Yes,” and Death finally had something of his own.
At the center of the room was a silver sarcophagus. The outline of a noble woman wearing a crown could be seen on the sarcophagus. Upon her torso were these words,
Stab the heart!
Stab The Heart!
STAB THE HEART!
The words were written larger further down on her torso.
The players immediately started thinking that this was a suicide room and the only way to proceed was to stab themselves in the heart. Sisyphus tried to escape death and was eternally punished. Anorexia accepted death and received eternal rewards. The party tried stabbing the coffin, but found even adamantine couldn’t pierce it.
Sabriyya elected to be the first to stab herself, with Torin ready to heal her if the plan failed. Sabriyya laid down on the coffin, positioned her scimitar, and plunged downwards. The scimitar entered her flesh and she disappeared.
Deciding that this was successful, the party executed themselves one by one. When all were done they found themselves before the Antenator, the Three-headed Bodak, Thanatos, Death.
Death and Illusion
They stood in a space with the Antenator before them. It was ten feet tall and all grey. Three heads sprung from its shoulders. It wore no clothes, but had no genitalia. Behind it two upside down torches burned. All but Tagenadi averted their eyes, fearful of the bodak’s gaze.
It spoke, “Xorians seeking my counsel! Hurrrr! If it were within my power I would slay you where you stand!”
Amalius said, “Xorians? What?”
Torin said, “We’re not Xorians.”
“I can recognize Xorians when I see them! Red X’s on their bodies with black armor! You are Xorians!”
Sabriyya said, “No we aren’t! We’re fighting Xorians!”
“So it’s tricks is it? Well I won’t be fooled! I know a Xorian when I see one! And if it weren’t for my godly duty not to slay someone until their time comes, you would already be dead!”
Tagenadi stepped forward and put on the Cap of Hades, “Would a Xorian have this helmet?”
The Antenator bowed low immediately, “A servant of the Lord of Hell is welcome here.” The Antenator shook its heads. “But wait… You aren’t Xorians at all. What was I thinking before?”
Tagenadi said, “No we are not Xorians. We are members of the Alliance that fights the Xorians. Or we were until recently.”
“Yes. The bearer of the Cap would not lie.”
Sabriyya asked, “Why are you traveling south?”
“I go south at the orders of Alliance members who came to me previously. They said I should take the armies of Crux south and fight the Xorian Empire in the east.”
Amalius said, “In the east? But the Xorian Empire is in the west.”
“No. The people who came before definitely said the Xorians were in the east.”
“Great Antenator, I fear that those who came before us may have lied to you. The Xorian Empire is in the west. You first saw us as if we were Xorians. Perhaps similar magic was done to make you feel your previous visitors were Alliance members when they were in fact Xorians?”
“Yes, that is possible. And Tagenadi bears the Cap of Hades, so I must trust what he and his companions say. But who could have done this? Only those with power rivaling the gods can conjure illusions powerful enough to trick me.”
The party congressed and decided on three likely candidates for who tricked Death: Vecna, Sherlock the Warlock, and Blendegad. A strong emphasis was put on Vecna.
Death spoke, “This is most troubling. You must explore who caused this once you leave the Silver Tower. But first, the rules must be followed. You came to visit me. Each of you may ask one question of me. I will answer it truthfully. Then if you wish to ask another question, you must first answer a riddle. All of you may help the current question asker with the riddle, but only one guess is permitted. If you fail, then you may ask no more questions.”
Torin said, “So basically we only lose if we have five wrong answers.”
“You may think of it that way if you wish.”
The Riddles
Though desert men call me god,
Others call me mad,
For I wag my tail when I am angry,
And growl when I am glad.
Cat
Turn us on our backs,
And open up our stomachs,
You will be the wisest of men,
Though at start a lummox.
Books
It has a golden head,
And a golden tail,
But it has no body.
Coin
I go around in circles,
But always straight ahead,
Never complain,
No matter where I am led.
Wheel
If a man carried my burden,
He would break his back,
I am not rich,
But leave silver in my track.
Snail
Glittering points,
That downward thrust,
Sparkling spears,
That never rust.
Icicles
Each morning I appear,
To lie at your feet,
All day I follow,
No matter how fast you run,
Yet I nearly perish,
In the midday sun.
Shadow
One tooth to bite,
The forest’s foe,
One tooth to fight,
As all orcs know.
Axe
As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Every wife had seven sacks,
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits,
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were there going to St. Ives?
One. Despite two of the players being familiar with this riddle, they tricked themselves into thinking the answer was zero. This is because they thought the question was only referring to “kits, cats, sacks, and wives.” Aldarian lost his questions.
You break it even if you name it.
Silence
In Youth exalted high in Air,
Or bathing in the Waters fair;
Nature to form me took Delight,
And clad my Body all in White:
My Person tall, and slender Waste,
On either Side with Fringes grac’d;
Till me that Tyrant Man espy’d,
And drag’d me from my Mother’s side:
No Wonder now I look so thin;
The Tyrant strip’t me to the Skin:
My Skin he flay’d, my Hair he cropt;
At Head and Foot my Body lopt:
And then, with Heart more hard than Stone,
He pick’t my Marrow from the Bone.
To vex me more, he took a Freak,
To slit my Tongue, and made me speak:
But, that which wonderful appears,
I speak to Eyes and not to Ears.
He oft employs me in Disguise,
And makes me tell a Thousand Lyes:
To me he chiefly gives in Trust
To please his Malice, or his Lust.
From me no Secret he can hide;
I see his Vanity and Pride:
And my Delight is to expose
His Follies to his greatest Foes.
All languages I can command,
Yet not a Word I understand.
Without my Aid, the best Divine
In Learning would not know a Line:
The Lawyer must forget his Pleading,
The Scholar could not shew his Reading.
Nay; Man, my Master, is my Slave:
I give Command to kill or save.
Can grant ten Thousand Pounds a Year,
And make a Beggar’s Brat a Peer.
But, while I thus my Life relate,
I only hasten on my Fate.
My Tongue is black, my Mouth is furr’d,
I hardly now can force a Word.
I dye unpity’d and forgot;
And on some Dunghill left to rot.
Pen. This one stumped them for about half an hour. They eventually answered tree. This is a Jonathan Swift poem if you’re interested in reading more stuff like this. I think it’s an amazing riddle. Sabriyya lost her questions.
Weight in my belly,
Trees on my back,
Nails in my ribs,
Feet I do lack.
Ship
The part of the bird,
That is not in the sky,
Which can swim in the ocean,
And always stay dry.
Shadow. This one was asked to Tagenadi. Torin was convinced that egg was the answer, because shadow had been a previous answer and wouldn’t be repeated. The rest of the group convinced Tagenadi that shadow fit better though.
Touching one, yet holding two,
It is a one link chain,
Binding those who keep words true,
Til death rent it in twain.
Ring
Long legs, crooked thighs,
Small head, and no eyes
Tongs. Tagenadi ended up answering chimney. Other answers were suggested by everyone else. Dining hall, ship, table, and heron, but none got all four parts of the riddle. Tagenadi just said chimney to give up as he had no clue. He lost his questions.
And that’s all the riddles! Now for the questions!
Aldarian noticed that he had some power to return from death now. He asked how he could finally come to peace and not be punished for escaping death so many times. Death told him that if he observed the divine rituals and did just work, he would be rewarded. Aldarian lost out on other questions.
Sabriyya asked a series of questions about how to rival Ares in martial strength. She wanted to best him in single combat. She figured out the only way to do that was to take away Ares’ divine strength. This could be done inside Sherlock the Warlock’s tower. Appropriate bait for Ares would be the goddess Aphrodite. The final thing Sabriyya learned was that the best message to send to Aphrodite to trick her into Sherlock’s tower would be saying that Hephaestus couldn’t find her in the tower.
Torin asked if he would ever be king and was answered, “No.” He asked how he could best serve Athena and was told to serve the druids.
Tagenadi asked a series of questions related to defeating Blendegad. He found out that Blendegad was once a man and could be defeated by turning him back into a man. This could be done in a place where magic does not function.
Amalius asked if Denara, Valaria, Hallion, and Procine were actually his wife and children and was answered, “No.” He asked what the phylactery of Amalgami, his evil grandfather lich, was and learned it was an adamantine bookmark.
Torin and Amalius both have questions remaining which will be picked up in the next session. They suggested a few questions such as:
How do we free Tagenadi from his bondage with Hades?
How do we get one of the so far unaligned gods (Poseidon, Hecate, Demeter, etc) on our side in the war?
The precise wording and the actual asking of those questions will have to wait.
GoCorral 
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