3B - One flew over the cuckoo hut

WuJen calls to the goblin in the cat room "what rooms normally connect to that one?"

WuJen tells everyone in the jail room "those coming with us, stay together. Do not let a door close before everyone is out of the room."

He shouts to the ghoul "I'm sorry, I can't take you with us. It's just too dangerous without a way to feed you." Looking at the ogre he asks "Do you speak Desian?"

((I did a quick look back through this adventure so far, and I think this is the first time we've opened a door into this room. But, we did a lot of rapid door opening. I think Sam would remember if this was one of the rooms we had opened to before.
Assuming it isn't: ))

Sam realized a while ago that mapping progress through this hut with a conventional map wasn't going to be helpful. But, now he's thinking that not all of these doors lead to the same rooms. Sam pulls up a decision tree maker (or similar) and starts mapping out the rooms they've been in so far with brief descriptions and the rooms that each door seems to lead to.

((I'm probably going to make this decision tree IRL... But I'd rather not do it longhand. Does anyone know of an Android app that can handle doing something like that?))

((Here's what I've got so far. GM, please let me know if any of this is wrong.


Making this decision tree gives Sam an idea for something to investigate. He goes back to the kitchen and opens and shuts a door until he finds the dining room. Then, he gets someone (presumably Sun) to hold that door open for him while he opens and shuts each door in the dining room until it seems like he's seen all of the options that door has to offer. He moves on to the next door in the dining room until he has mapped the destinations of all seven.
((I want to start building out the map, but mostly I'm interested in seeing if different doors in a room open to different locations, or if each room opens to the same set of locations irrespective of the door))

"Seems like a sound plan cuz I got nothing. Sorry guys"

As Wujen makes his announcement for everyone to follow, Grant and Krista are perfectly fine with getting the hell out of here and follow with the group. The elf does not respond, apparently too weak to do so, and still locked in his cage besides. The ghoul holds up a hand to his ear and says, "What was that? What did you say? Get closer, I can't hear you!"

The ogre awakens from all the noise and gives a yawn. He says something in Jotun in what you assume is a sleepy tone given the context and appearance. The foreign words sound mean and angry, in contrast to his appearance. He seems to notice people are being let out and he jabs at the lock to his own cage with a massive meaty finger.

The goblin in the cat room doesn't seem to notice that he is being addressed by Wujen from two rooms away as he fusses around with the cats before him. Of course any attempt at speaking with him is cut short as Sam seems to have backtracked through the alchemical lab and pulled Sun to hold open the dining room's door instead. He starts opening doors in the dinning room as he attempts to work on his map. He finds that the doors on one side of the room all seem to go to one of six different rooms while the ones on the opposite side all go to a different set of five different rooms. Some of the rooms are ones that you have seen before while others are not. All told he comes across the following rooms:

(Side A)
- chess room
- sitting room
- some weird upside down room
- broom closet
- guest room
- torture chamber

(Side B)
- library
- wardrobe
- stable
- garden
- wine cellar

((Bold ones are ones you've seen before))

Sam goes through the rooms again stopping at the upside down room.
((What I really want for him to do is scroll through each room and note general descriptions of each from the doorway before moving on to the next. But, in the interest of not forcing the GM to send eight full room descriptions at a time, I'll have him explore rooms in more detail one at a time.))

The room is somewhat disorienting at first because it appears as though the whole room is upside down. Chairs, a table, candles and other things are apparently attached to the ceiling. You feel an almost immediate desire to hold onto something before falling up, but luckily the appearance seems to be only that. Gravity is still holding you "down" despite holding everything else up. Upon the table sits a balance scale, currently upside-down. Also sitting on the table are a series of 8 weights, also upside down. A goblin, looking rather silly in a maid outfit, is standing in the room, right-side up. He grumbles with a feather duster in hand as he stares up at the scale and weights.

Sam notes there are 4 doors in this room, including the one he is standing at.

"Why is this room upside down?" Sam asks the goblin.

The goblin shrugs and says, "To give Booger a hard time? Stupid Baba Yaga always makes everything unnecessarily difficult." He looks up and shouts at the air, "You hear that, you crazy witch? Booger doesn't care if you DO eat Booger. You know Booger can't do this stupid riddle of yours because BOOGER CAN'T REACH THE STUPID WEIGHTS!"

He then says to Sam, "And she makes Booger dress like this! It's humiliating! Then she has the gall to make Booger figure out which of those weights up there is the heaviest by using the scale only 2 times. How is anyone supposed to use a scale they can't reach?"

"WuJen can probably help you reach the scale. What is your riddle?"

" I can certainly get someone up there. The riddle is to figure out which of the 8 weights is heaviest using the scale only twice."

(ooc: I actually even know the solution. WuJen might, he's fairly bright... Assuming the upside down thing doesn't throw it off, and the weights are visually identical.)

(ooc: actually, the visually id ntical thing doesn't apply. Some could be bigger but hollow, or of different yet not apparent density)

As Wujen enters and hears the goblin's complaining, he notices that the weights are labelled from 1 to 8. They appear otherwise identical and fall up towards the table when released as opposed to the ceiling where you all are standing. The goblin can't reach because he is short, but anyone of human size can reach both the scales and the weights with ease.

"Hey by any chance can we go back to the lab room. I'm looking for really hard to find ingredients and this seems like a place some might be."

WuJen looks at the goblin "This is about eliminating choices. First, take two groups of three and weigh them. Either they will balance, and the odd one is one of the remaining two, or they won't balance and you will know which group contains the odd one. Obviously if it's one of the two left out you weigh them to see which is the odd one. Otherwise you choose two of the group that has the odd one and weigh them. Either they will balance, and the odd one is the one you didn't weigh, or they won't and you will now have the odd one revealed directly."

((Who is holding doors right now? I think someone is holding open the kitchen door leading to the dining room, right? And everyone not locked in a cell has left the cell room and is in the kitchen? Assuming that's true, Sam says the next thing. If not, please apprise me of the current current configuration, and Sam will say something different.))
"I'll hold this door, Ichigo. Go into the kitchen and open and close one of the other two doors until you see the lab. And tell me what rooms you see in between so I can add them to the map."
Sam holds open the door to let Ichigo cycle through the rooms the kitchen door leads to.

Booger looks up at Wujen and then looks up at the scale. He then says, "Well, Booger can't do it even if you explain it. The scale is too high. Do it, please?"

Sun is currently holding open the door between the dining room and kitchen. Sam steps back to hold the door to the weighting room while Wujen does his work. It takes a couple of tries but Ichigo eventually finds the lab. Before that he sees the wine cellar and the sitting room. While he does that Krista and Grant hang out in the kitchen. In the holding room, the ogre continues shouting in Jotun as he shakes his cage's bars as the door to that room goes shut, leaving him and the other captives behind.