The Tower's Telepathic Test

Adventuring On

2020-11-02

Retelling

Our victory celebration was not long to last Fenn spoke about liches and had us aghast Saladbar's passing may be but short-lived And soon once more he would need to be shivved A lich cannot die unless we should trash The place where his various organs were stashed Its essence lives on, floating about Perhaps slowly reconstituting the lout He'd come back undead, which could be our advantage But we didn't know if he'd have more powers to manage But that was a worry for some time from now We wanted to get to Vale's portal somehow The Tower was tall and it looked sealed shut Junihawk flew up it to see what was what Mugs surveyed the Tower from the ground Carefully she scanned as she circled around She found some strange runes that avoided her gaze And asked us to come and help her appraise What words might be upon the Tower's wall But we couldn't make sense of the runes at all In his mind, Hoj spoke the word "friend" to the Tower And his message must have alerted some power "What is the price of a life?" the voice asked It was quite a riddle with which Hoj was tasked Hoj answered the riddle with something like "There is no price I can put on a life that I can give", which was a confusing reply But the woman's voice simply continued to pry "What is the greatest prey?" she then asked In answering this one, Hoj wasn't fast "For me? The souls of the unjust" he finally said The voice then sent one more riddle into his head "When is control forfeit?" she wanted to know Out of Hoj's mouth a strange answer did flow "When love and unity is abound" he began "there is no need for control" his mouth ran What that all means, I still haven't a clue But it sounded too beautiful not to be true This seemed to satisfy the woman's voice And a door opened up and we all did rejoice But all we could see was a long endless hall It seemed like we'd have to go in after all Junihawk returned with some odd information It seemed there were eight more of these large tower stations This one had no openings that she could find And it took far less time to come down than to climb The towers were funky, that we all did admit And from times long ago, we speculated a bit We debated and argued and hemmed and hawed And pointed out how each person's suggestions were flawed We got antsy and itchy and anxious to move But on none of our plans would the party approve And just as it seems we always do in this bunch We made a rash choice based on less than a hunch Like a string of pearls we tied ourselves into a strand In terms of plans, this one wasn't so grand Outside the door we stuck our immovable rod And down a long hallway our whole group did plod The door shut behind us and cut off our rope We shook our heads feeling like a bunch of dopes Ahead of us there was a large empty room Which felt like a place where we'd all meet our doom It was square, with four gates and some small barricades "A gladiator arena" said Juniper, dismayed At the far end sat our sought after portal We hoped what came through would prove to be mortal