Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mathel]

I certainly hope that's dust of disappearance his showering the ground with there and not just sand

What if it is cat poop? And at the end of the trail, there will be a stash of broken rotten eggs.

First to distract the dog, then to damage its nose.

[Enemy post]

1220

[Egan_BW]

Sure looks like a portal bamboozle to me.

[Rolan7]

Mmnaaaah, I'm sure the floor changing color is completely meaningless 

(I didn't recognize it as a portal effect, but I think you're right!)

[scriver]

Portal bamboozle?

Also did they just leave the bird behind. How rude.

[Cyroth]

The stealth dinosaur can care for itself, no worries.

[Kagus]

I'm curious about the portal bamboozling, since the rat skull is still halfway over the line with no evident pieces missing or changes (except for the scorch mark and steam, apparently WONNNNH is hot).

And if the insides are shuffling themselves around every time someone enters, wouldn't that mean that it effectively doesn't matter which door you go into, if it's going to randomize the content anyways? Which would mean that all the X-ing of the doors is meaningless.

But... It can't be just shuffling the dungeon contents, because the gate cannot be moved.


Maybe they're all red herrings, and the portal trap just opens up into a newly-created elemental demiplane of dungeoneering, while the real dungeon lies underneath/behind the portal they're crossing over?

[Mathel]

The high-stakes kansas city shuffle. None of the doors lead to the gate. Which should have been obvious from how close they are to each other. They have to lead into the same place.
However, the dungeon can't be generated anew every time the line is crossed. It would split parties and when someone reenters the same dungeon, they notice it is different.

If I was going to do this, I would not bet most of my security on a single spell. Sure, I can't move the gate, but I can hide it.
I would make the walls of the real dungeon look like rock, but when someone tries to dig through, it turns out to be only lining iron and a thin sheet of lead. Layered Rock|Iron|Lead|Iron|Rock. So no easy digging or scrying through it.
The gate would not be in the dungeon, however. It would be sealed into a random blind spot of the dungeon wall. Reasonably far from the entryway, so that it is not at the first place adventurers try to dig, but not next to the final chamber.

[Egan_BW]

All the other gate fortresses had some way for one to access the gate, so it just being buried seems unlikely.

[crazyabe]

Is there any reason why it can't be that an entire alternate set of dungeons were dug out, one per "doorway" / "hole in the wall" and set up such that each would send trespassers to its individual dungeon by portal or whatever, with ALL the holes and dungeons leading to nowhere near the gate even if you remove the trap sending you to the dungeon, however were you to go to the entrance portal and disarm the trap portal from "inside", and then walk to where no one would bother to search, ALL the portal'd off dungeons lead to the gate.

[Mathel]

There is a reason for why there can't be a large set of dungeons in regular space. There is just too many doors on a too small a surface for them all to lead to separate dungeons. In fact, forshadowing: Roy notes the very same thing in strip 1203.

However, it is entirely possible that the second part of crazyabe's post is true.

About other fortresses having the gate accesible, I remember that in the Pyramid, it was sealed in a lead column. Accesible but hidden. But there is no real reason for why the gates should be accesible. The whole point is to guard them from being destroyed. So why not just seal them?

[Kagus]

But there is no real reason for why the gates should be accesible. The whole point is to guard them from being destroyed. So why not just seal them?

You're forgetting the drama!

[Akura]

It's also possible that the Gates need some kind of maintenance. I mean, even the gods themselves couldn't really keep the rifts shut, and the Gates are basically just putting duct tape over a spot weld.

[Mathel]

And that is why I am not a bard. Or an evil overlord.

If I was one of those, who were to hide the gate, I would place it in an adamantine sphere, encase that in a lead sphere, then pile a mountain of mostly non-commercial rock. There would be some galena and a small amount of other ores to make it look natural, but not enough to make it a viable mining spot for anything. Then I would have a castle built on top of it and start a city around it. None of the people involved with the castle and city should know that there is something important in the mountain.

The mountain would be created with repeated usage of Wall of Stone.
As a 20th level caster, I could get almost 5,9 m³ per casting. With minimum Intelligence of 15 to cast Wall of stone, I would get 4 of each type or relevant slot, 20 slot total. Filling all possible with Wall of Stone, I could cast it 20 times/day, to build almost 117,9 m³ of stone. If I had any helpers, it could go faster.

I would use galena as the most common ore, so that anyone, who knows there is a gate in the mountain, but not where would be confused if they tried to magicaly search for lead.

It's also possible that the Gates need some kind of maintenance. I mean, even the gods themselves couldn't really keep the rifts shut, and the Gates are basically just putting duct tape over a spot weld.

Possible, though doubtful. The one in the pyramind was in a lead column, while the one in Azure City was in a gem. Both would be pretty hard to get to to maintain. Especialy the one, which was a gem as a part of a throne.

[MorleyDev]

Well if the point wasn't just to contain but monitor the rifts, you'd want them to be somewhere accessible-but-protected. If the only time you'd know the seal was failing was if the Snarl was already breaking through Azure-city-sky-hole-style it'd be already too late to easily reseal them. Keeping them in something relatively small or reachable would let them at least peak their head in every now and then to check in on the world ending abomination.

Also something something plot.