The door in the Floor

The party took a few minutes to debate before deciding to take the passage that had opened in the floor. After making sure to gather all their gear and equipment, they began the slow descent down the stairs to what lay beyond. As they descended, they noticed how tight the stairwell was; it was almost a tight squeeze for Molsalkisa and Ulnarka. In addition, the walls were glowing a gentle indigo with swirls of orange and green, which caused some minor excitement in Molsalkisa, who started doing some magi-babble about the spellwork for a wall like this almost the entire way to the foot of the stairs.

“Nice to see you getting some fun out of this,” said Yuri as they reached the room at the foot of the stairs and filed out into it. The room, surprisingly this time, was actually kind of barren. Only a few broken pieces of furniture sat in the front corner, and right beside those pieces was a short tunnel leading to a doorway; it was wide and tall enough for Ulnark to walk side by side with someone else without feeling cramped.

After deciding the marching order, where Ulnarka would be the one up front, the party made its way to the door. When they got to the door, there was a puzzle on the door’s face that they hadn’t noticed before getting to the door's front. It was a slider puzzle, suitably mixed up to the point that it was difficult to figure out the intended image upon completion, and the fact that there were eighteen different blocks was not helping.

“What is this?” Asked the Dino women and Ariana and Orania all at once when they took a look at the puzzle.

“A slider puzzle,” said Trisha with annoyance, “these things can be so frustrating! You need to move each block into the appropriate space, but you can only do it one at a time by moving a block into the only open space in the frame.”

“Yeah, a lot of screaming and cursing came from trying ot solve these things when we were forced to deal with them,” said Marsha.

“And to make matters worse,” said Jonah, “the blocks are so messed up it’s incredibly difficult to find a hint of what is actually supposed to be an image. Which means you need to go with the classic fallback strategy…find the edge and corner pieces and set them up first, then slowly fill in the rest.”

“Judging by how mixed up this is, and the fact there are over a dozen different blocks,” said Trisha, “this could take a few hours, even if someone finds a way to cheat to a solution.”

“Let’s think about the themes we’ve encountered so far,” said Jonah, “they could at least give a hint as to what this image is supposed to be.”

“The sea and female capabilities,” said Ariana after a moment of thought, “maybe this is supposed to make a mural of the sea goddess.”

“Alright,” said Jonah, “how about you test the theory?” Everyone moved aside to let Ariana work out the puzzle, with Molsalkisa stepping in at various intervals to assist with something she noticed.

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It took the better part of an hour, but the puzzle was solved, and it was as Ariana suspected. The finished image was a mural of the goddess of the sea on a ship near an island. The moment Ariana moved the last tile into its proper place, the door clicked open with the sound of several locks popping open at once and swung inward. And when it did, a large chamber filled with gold, jewels, various items, and even what looked like weapons and armor was revealed.

“Well, looks like the scholar won’t have a funding issue for a while,” Jonah joked. “Let’s see what we have here, and what we can reasonably make off with. Oh, and let’s be careful; I played some games that were basically dungeon exploration simulations that had monsters and creatures that hid as treasure chests and treasure pieces; there’s a good chance that those simulations were a bit more accurate in a world like this.”

“Agreed,” said Molsalkisa before she held up her spell focus and started chanting an arcane series of words that almost felt like she was saying an unfamiliar poem as she closed her eyes.

While Molsalkisa was chanting, the rest of the party spread out to carefully inspect the room. After a few minutes of arcane chanting, Molsalkisa opened her eyes and gave a quick scan of the room before saying it looked free of anything hiding in the treasure. She then entered the room herself. The size of the room was bigger than she had anticipated.

Trisha was fishing through the coins and gems before she pulled up a pair of bronze bracers that were adorned with blue diamond lightning bolts. She tried them on to see if they fit; they were surprisingly comfortable, and she could feel her storm powers grow stronger and more focused. She had an amused grin, along with a comment about it being just like an RPG. She then took a closer look at her bracers and noticed the lightning was forming a pattern that made a vague outline of a swan penis and gave a comment about how she should have expected something like that. She didn’t notice how her breasts expanded a few cup sizes, with her outfit naturally adapting to the new size.

Marsha dug through everything before bringing up what looked like silver Druid bracers. Giving them a close examination, she saw emerald vines snaking around the bracers in a pattern reminiscent of tentacle porn she had encountered before. She gave a comment about this being a naughty RPG setting as she snapped them on, then started looking for something to help carry more of the treasure. She didn’t notice her bust expand a few cup sizes, with her outfit conforming to the change in real time.

Ulnarka began sifting through everything before pulling up what looked like a halberd made from bluish-bronze and silver. “A mithril-orichalcum Halberd; these are exceedingly rare, and there is a chance it might have a few interesting enchantments on it.”

“More interesting than that set of intimate murals decorating the blade and shaft?” Inquired the twins in unison when they turned to look at it.

Ariana pulled out a set of blue leather bikini armor, with intricate wave art that somehow managed to give off the impression of being erotic. She grinned to herself and didn’t stop to consider the implications of her company as she began stripping off her own attire to slip into the new armor she just found. Then quickly slipped into the armor, which now did a much better job of advertising her figure than her prior attire. The twins and Ulnarka all gave her disapproving looks during the outfit change period that she either didn’t notice or actively disregarded; she would refuse to clarify on that for quite some time after this moment.

Oriana dove into the treasure and came back up with a pair of iron shortswords that had noticeably phallic handle designs, and a composite shortbow that seemed to be made of layered metal components. She spent a little time testing them out to see how they performed in her gel-like hands.

Molsalkisa spent a bit of time looking around before finding a more fetishistic spell focus, as it looked more like a platinum and onyx dildo that was uncomfortably similar to Jonah’s own erect member. The item almost seemed to radiate magic potential. Molsalkisa started muttering about studying approaches to learn the item's true capabilities. It felt like she would be doing that quite a few times during their time in this dungeon.

Jonah spent some time looking through everything. He pulled out a brass-and-silk bagpipe and started feeling a bit awkward. Jonah didn’t like advertising that he had Scottish ancestry, or that he'd been taking lessons in bagpipe since he was nine years old. He also found a set of cooking utensils with a dark red hue to the metal, which made the Dino women, Ariana, and Orania gasp. “Um,” said Jonah, “what metal even is this?”

“Adamantine,” said Ulnarka, “it’s a highly durable metal that is known for being able to bypass the protections of magical weaponry.”

“And I’m holding a set of cooking utensils made from the stuff, marvelous,” said Jonah in a deadpan voice. “Please tell me there’s some secret or hidden door around here somewhere so we can get on to the next room, or at least some kind of magic circle to teleport us somewhere.”

“I’m starting the ritual for that sort of spell now,” said Molsalkisa as she spent some time leafing through her book to find a spell that wouldn’t make everything in the room with magic light light up for her.