(Decided to do a little work on the "Thieves & Adventurers: the T&A RPG" project today. This is a puzzle for use in a sample dungeon design.)
Upon decending the stairs from the previous level, the adventurers discover a large antechamber with many open passageways and one immense closed stone door. The stone door is enchanted and withstands all force thrown against it. (Must have cost the builders a fortune. Something REALLY good must be behind it...) In the center of the room are six recesses in the floor, each shaped identically in an irregular pentagon- more or less like home plate. The recesses are in two rows of three, thus:
1 2 3
4 5 6
Lined up on the left side of the chamber are six statues, life sized, arrange from tallest to shortest: an ogre, an elf, a human, an orc, a kobold and a dwarf. They are dressed identically, each with a hand upraised as if to display something... but their hands are empty.
Thorough exploration of the level will reveal six chambers, each of which contains a weapon carved from stone and a cryptic message. Examination of the weapons and the statues will reveal that the weapons are made to fit into the hands of the statues. Any weapon will fit any statue. The weapons are, again in no particular order, a one-handed short sword, a quarterstaff, a bow, a dagger, a mace, and a two-handed great axe.
In order to get through the great stone door, the players will have to figure out which statue goes into which recess and which weapon belongs to which statue. (Since most of the messages refer to the statues' names rather than their races, they'll also have to figure out which name belongs to which statue.)
The messages (clues) are:
1. "The party arrayed itself for battle. Bollix, the leader, stood in the first position, holding his sword on high. No one wanted to be in front of Fogarty when he cast a fireball. The orc, always last to advance and first to retreat, stood in the back, next to Aster the archer."
2. "The party tried to force the door. Cham, no ogre he, could not even wield a two-handed weapon, much less break down a door. Deryg, the shortest, stood as ever behind Ephraim, but even their combined strength was in vain."
3. "The party loved one another as brothers. Normally elf loathes orc, and orc elf; human and ogre clash whenever they meet; and dwarf and kobold cannot abide together. Yet the mace-wielding cleric healed Fogarty from a deadly serpent bite; the dagger-wielder used his last gold piece to pay Bollix's debt with the blacksmith; and Aster rescued Ephraim's axe from the scorpion pit."
4. "The party defied the traditions and stereotypes of their people. The elf would not wield a bow; the orc would carry no sword; the dwarf feared axes; the ogre preferred bladed weapons to bludgeons such as maces or staves; and the kobold, who despised backstabbers, loathed the sight of a dagger."
5. "The party fell bravely in battle. Last in position and last to fall, the mace-wielder fell across the human's body, who had stood to his left. Cham's blade lay broken before his corpse."
6. "The party was gay. Gay as the day is long. And that's all we're saying about THAT."
(Okay, that last one doesn't really help, but this is for an RPG where sexuality is a prominent feature...)
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