[PP-F29] Hark Triton, Hark! | To Shine a Light

[Morningstar 0]

The ship listed to one side, pushed around by brutal waves. Salt foam bubbled on deck, dissolving until again it was replaced by the dark sea. Morningstar gripped the wheel tight, his face drenched by lashing rain. Above, the storm thundered, the boundless wrath of Neptune bellowing through the air. Booming winds crashed against the sails, threatening to rip them to shreds. In the distance, Morningstar thought he could hear a horn. With one hand, he created a visor over his eyes, and once the waves dropped low, he scanned the horizon.

"Look!" he shouted through the storm.

Light broke through the darkness, small and distant. Again, the horn sounded. Star spun the wheel, motioning for Wulfrin to adjust the sails to starboard. If it was as he thought, and the light came from a lighthouse, then there was surely land for them to take refuge on while the storm ran its course. He steered them through great waves, straight towards the flashing yellow light.

 

Hide contents Morningstar | Lv. 76 | P. 42 | True Tier: 8 HP: 860/860 | EN: 122/122 | DMG: 22 | EVA: 4 | ACC: 5 | BH: 47 | LD: 6 | REC: 8 | FLN: 16 | AA | PARA-V notes: // equipped Dying Sun FLN 2, AA, PARA-V Inner Focus EVA 2, REC 2 Sapphire ACC 3, EVA battle-ready inventory Magdalyn's Cuckoo Teleport Crystal Yellow Dragon, Red Tiger HLY 2, AA, FRZ skills   Hide contents STRAIGHT SWORD | RANK 5/5 precision, stamina, ferocity shift: tech MARTIAL ARTS | RANK 5/5 precision, stamina, ferocity shift: aoe COMBAT MASTERY: DMG | RANK 3/3 SEARCHING | RANK 4/5 (5) night vision, detect, tracking, reveal QUICK CHANGE UNHINDERED ENERGIST CHARGE extra (active) SURVIVAL FORGOTTEN KING'S AUTHORITY LADY LUCK DISGUISE data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw== data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw== data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw== data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw== buffs data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw== data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==   Hide contents consumables # # paragon Lv. 5 | Gain additional col equivalent to 15% of EXP earned in that thread. Lv. 10 | +1 LD to looting. data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw== data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==   data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw== data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==

♦ms.

 

[Wulfrin 0]

Their sloop was listing viciously on the choppy waters of The Black. Morningstar, after much debate and ultimately pulling rank, was at the helm. So far the two of them had little luck locating the labyrinth entrance, working on a hunch that the raging sea may have been the key. Now they found themselves trapped in a raging storm that dropped their visibility to basically zero. Thankfully, Wulfrin's tendency to become horribly seasick didn't come with him to the virtual world, though his body felt funky just out of sheer memory. He was positioned just below the sail, at the base of the mast when Morningstar shouted for his attention. With nimbleness akin to a seasoned pirate, Wulfrin scurried up the main mast and pulled a spyglass from his belt.

"Look's like a lighthouse!" Wulfrin shouted, his voice barely able to be heard over the crashing waves and claps of thunder. Morningstar's next instructions were all in hand signals now, a practical solution to their current predicament. Wulfrin hurriedly hoisted and heaved on ropes causing the ship's sails to catch as much wind as possible to shift their direction starboard. The ship lurched as its hull groaned under the stress of the maneuver, and Wulfrin strained to maintain their new course through gritted teeth.

* * *

Wulfrin | HP: 840/840 | EN: 116/116 | DMG: 21 | MIT:55 | ACC:4 | AA  | BH:28 | LD:8 | PROSP:3 | QTY: 2

Spoiler

"Name: Wulfrin
True Tier: 7
Level: 34
Paragon Level: 27
HP: 840/840
EN: 116/116

Stats:
Damage: 21
Mitigation: 55
Accuracy: 4
Battle Healing: 28
Loot Die: 8
Stealth Rating: -5
AA 
QTY: 2

Equipped Gear:
Weapon/Armor/Trinket: 
  - Platinum Longsword | T3 S.Sword | AA | ACC 3
Armor/Trinket: 
  - Dragon's Hoard | Prosp 3 | LD 1
Shield/Armor/Trinket: 
  - Devil's Due | Quality 2 | LD 2

Combat Mastery:
  - Combat Mastery: Damage R3

Combat Shift:
  - TECH Shift

Familiar Skill:
  - Rending Familiar

Custom Skill:
  - Shades of the Gemini

Skills:
  - Battle Healing R3
  - Charge
  - Energist
  - Heavy Armor R5
  - Searching R5
  - Straight Sword R5

Extra Skills:
  - Disguise
  - Forgotten King's Authority
  - Survival
  - Meditation

Inactive Extra Skills:
  - Frozen Hide
  - Brawler
  - Assault Mode

Addons:
  - Focus
  - Iron Skin
  - Precision
  - Rampart
  - Stamina

Mods:
  - Impetus
  - Night Vision

Inactive Mods:

Battle Ready Inventory:
  - Bear Trap x5
  - Crystal of Divine Light x5
  - Imugi's Inspiration | Mass Healing x2
  - Nepent Ovule x1
  - Popcorn | T4 Vitality 2 x1
  - Rhino's Horn x2
  - TP Crystals x1

Housing Buffs:
  - Basic Kitchen: Increase the effectiveness of a single food item consumed in a thread by +1 T1 slot. This can exceed normal Cook enhancement caps. Ex: A perfect T2 MIT food gives 35 MIT instead of 30.
  - Storage Closet: +1 Battle Ready Inventory Slot
  - Living Room: Increases out of combatHP regen by (5 * Tier HP) and decreases full energy regen to 2 Out of Combat Posts.
  - Attic (Storage): +5% bonus col from monster kills and treasure chests
  - Basement: Gain +1 to LD, Stealth Rating, Stealth Detection, or Prosperity to one post in a thread. Can be applied after a roll
  - Master Bedroom: -1 energy cost for the first three expenditures of each combat
  - Master Bathroom: The first time you would suffer DoT damage in a thread, reduce damage taken from DoT each turn by 25% (rounded down)
  - Extended Workshop: +2 Crafting EXP per crafting attempt and +1 crafting attempt per day
  - Ornate Fishing Pond: +2 Fishing EXP per Attempt and additional +1 LD & CD to fishing attempts.
  - Dining Hall: Turn 3 identical food items (same quality, tier, & enhancements) into a Feast. A Feast contains 6 portions of the food items sacrificed. Feasts created this way cannot be used outside of the thread they are created. Limit 1 item created per thread.
  - Mega Slime Farm: +10% EXP to a thread. Limit one use per month. Must be used on a player's first post in a thread. Cooldown begins counting down when used in a post.

Guild Hall Buffs:
  - Trading Hall: Reduce LD needed for Salvage by 5 (10+ for Alchemist crystals, 6+ for everything else). +2 EXP per craft. Rank 9 crafters and Rank 4 merchants/performers receive +1 crafting/identification attempt per day. Rank 10 crafters and Rank 5 merchants/performers receive +2 crafting/identification attempts per day.
  - Treasury: +5% bonus col from last-hit monster kills and +10% bonus col from treasure chests.

Scents of the Wild Totem:

Wedding Ring:

Crafting Profession:
 - Blacksmith[2250exp] R8
Gathering Profession:
 - Fishing[525exp] R5"                                                                                                                            

 

Edited May 30 by Wulfrin

[Morningstar 0]

The foghorn sounded loudly as they approached, drawing the ship in. The rocky waves made it difficult for them to dock, but thankfully, the boat wasn't their own. Morningstar settled for a rough landing, aiming the boat straight for the craggy shore. They collided with a smash, slowing with the breaking of their wooden sloop. Once they were nestled tightly in the rocks, they abandoned ship.

The lighthouse stood tall, casting a glow from up above. They hurried inside the small stone shelter attached to it, desperate to escape the ceaseless storm. As they entered, a new quest was added to their logs.

To Shine A Light flashed before their eyes, with one simple instruction: "find the lighthouse keeper."

Morningstar tapped the blue circle on the prompt and passed through the entrance hall, eyeing the decor as he passed. A painting, which seemingly depicted the lighthouse and surrounding area, hung on the wall. He looked closely at the signature in the corner.

"MG. The lighthouse keeper, maybe?"

He shuffled through the hallway, drying off his shoes and peeking into different rooms before settling on the kitchen.

[Wulfrin 0]

"Probably," Wulfrin replied as the duo pressed deeper into their shelter from the storm. "I've seen enough horror films to know the cardinal rule here: Don't split the party."

Wulfrin marched slowly behind his guild master, his eyes scanning for anything that would pose any immediate threat. Their cursory exploration ended with them in the kitchen, a rather cozy feeling scene despite the raging storm outside. A lattice board supported various herbs against the wall opposite the duo. Wulfrin scoured the cabinets and cupboards, only dried goods and various cookbooks populated the area. Lighthouse is well stocked I doubt he went very far, unless someone kidnapped him. Lastly Wulfrin arrived at the raging fire. On the mantle was a scrap of paper that appeared to be some sort of rushed shopping list.

"Check this out," Wulfrin said as he waved Morningstar over to the island counter. "I found a partial shopping list. These last entries though are definitely word scrambles. I can instantly pick out what the second one is, Cyclops, but I've got nothing immediately on the other two. I also don't understand the camel picture. Thoughts?" Wulfrin pointed out the obvious puzzle placed before them, eagerly awaiting his guild master's two cents.

[Morningstar 0]

He scavenged the opposite end of the kitchen, hunting down any clues that might hint towards the location of the lighthouse keeper. He dug through cupboards, pocketing a bundle of herbs before Wulfrin called back to him. When his guildmate mentioned a shopping list, Morningstar joined him.

"Unicorn," he said, pointing at the third scramble on the list.

The camel struck him as odd. The other two words, bound by mythology, did not have drawings attached to them.

So why a camel?

There wasn't an obvious link between them. Camels were very real creatures, unlike the other two. Notably, cyclops had one eyes; unicorns had one horn. Camels broke the pattern, however. Some of them had two humps, he was pretty sure. But the one on the drawing did have one.

"Dunno what that first word is," he admitted, a little miffed that he couldn't unscramble it. "I figure it's some sort of mythical creature, like the other two. Maybe the camel's a red herring."

[Wulfrin 0]

"Right," Wulfrin sighed as he struggled to come up with a solution. "Alright let's do it the old fashioned way."

Wulfrin spawned a decent sized satchel at his feat and began to dig through its contents. It was his in the field blacksmithing kit that held just about everything he needed to work in the field. He pulled out a soot covered journal and piece of graphite, thumbing past several different diagrams and notes detailing various projects he had been working on until he came to a blank page. He started with the initial scramble of letters. It took several minutes of placing letters in random places, marking out letters from the previous attempt. It was oddly like a larger game of Wordle, at least he had all the letters.

"So only one of these kinda makes sense," Wulfrin remarked as he pointed to result, dromedary. "Do I know what it means or if it's even a word? Absolutely not, but it sounds mythical and almost avian. I'm most likely wrong, but it's the best I can come up with. Given the previous entries, it likely only has one of something. Cyclops has one eye, unicorn one horn, etc."

[Morningstar 0]

"Well, okay then," he shrugged, moving on from the kitchen despite Wulfrin's warning to not split up. "Dromedary it is."

He found himself drawn to a dark room at the far end of the dwelling. It led to the tower, he found. A staircase spiraled up the lighthouse, clearly stopping at the top, where the light was. One step at a time, he ascended.

The gate at the top was already open. He assumed the lighthouse keeper had forgotten to lock it and climbed the ladder, pulling himself into the lantern room. The first thing he noticed was the writing on the ceiling.

What can be found in the sea, but not ocean? What is the same in both music and motion? What is the end of the liar’s paradox? This knowledge will grant you the keys to my locks, it read.

He recycled it in his mind thrice before examining the rest of the rooms contents. He looked outside. The storm raged on, waves slamming against the rocks, thunder roaring up above. He was happy to be inside.

The crunching of glass beneath his feet distracted him from the light itself. He knelt down. He assumed it had come from the lantern and didn't think to check where the break had occurred. Finding nothing else of interest, he started back down the staircase.

[Wulfrin 0]

Wulfrin shrugged in unison with Morningstar as the two were equally stumped on the word scramble. While they had an answer, Wulfrin was far from confident that it was correct. He recollected his things and followed Morningstar up into the lantern room of the lighthouse. Glass crunched beneath their feet as they stepped foot inside. It seems a lantern had fallen and shattered, possibly in whatever had caused the lighthouse keeper's disappearance. Wulfrin clocked the literal writing on the ceiling.

"I'm still working through the other two riddles," Wulfrin said as they descended back down the stairs. "The obvious answer is the letter 'S'. Given how the previous clue we found had a commonality about them, I assume the other two parts might be pieces of a word. First blush says 'mi' for music and motion, but I'm also open to other ideas so as to not stump us."

They were back at the base of the lighthouse tower at this point, with still no real clue as to what they were meant to be doing. Wulfrin's eyes glanced down. To his surprise, a hatch was nested into the floor partially covered by a hastily moved rug. 

"Before we move on," Wulfrin said as he knelt down to examine the hatch, throwing away the rug. "Might want to give this a once over. Looks like we've got a combination lock with four dials. Maybe our lighthouse keeper is down here."

[Morningstar 0]

Morningstar had know idea what the last bit of the riddle was referring to, but Wulfrin's theories for the previous two parts had weight. He knelt down to look at the combination lock. Four numbers were required to open it. With a curled fist, he knocked on the door. "Hello? Any lighthouse keepers home?"

He waited a second. And then another.

Nobody replied.

They returned from the tower with more questions than answers. The next room they found was clearly a bedroom—presumably,  it was the lighthouse keeper's. The bed was made neatly with no indication that anyone had slept in it recently. The trunk at its foot seemed too obvious not to check. He waved Wulfrin over and clicked open the latch. There weren't too many things inside, and what they did find seemed irrelevant. He pulled things out one by one—first a stuffed rabbit; then a dried rose; then a child's drawing—and passed them back to his guildmate. At the bottom of the chest was a book.

"Aha! Puzzled: 20 Unique Puzzle Types and How to Solve Them. Now we're getting somewhere."

The owner had bent the corner of one page, as if to save their spot. Morningstar turned to it, reading the first few sentences aloud. "Use the numbers along the sides of the grid to determine how many black squares should be in the corresponding row or column. For example, a row with the numbers [8 2 1] will have a run of eight black boxes, then two black boxes, then a single one, with any number of white boxes preceding/between/succeeding them. Completing the puzzle will reveal an image.

"Nonograms," he said. "I've done these before."

[Wulfrin 0]

"Cool," Wulfrin said as he looked over the various trinkets passed his way. "I haven't done any before so I'll let you take the lead on this one. I'll keep focusing on the riddle."

Wulfrin made his way over to the bed and sat down on the rather uncomfortable matress. Out came his draft book again this time he turned to yet another blank page and reevaluated their progress thus far, with the new knowledge that they were looking for a combination. The kitchen was easy enough to figure out, considering Wulfrin had laready stumbled on the commonality, all the cretures in the scramble had one of something. Perhaps the dromedary was a one humped camel, considering the one humped camel drawing, but Wulfrin figured he was just grasping.

"The kitchen gave us the number '1', " He thought aloud jotting down a similar note on his page. "Assuming we're looking for another number within the riddle, I think my initial guess of using the letters in the words rather than the objects themselves may not have been too off base. The end of the liar's paradox would be 'x'. Considering the letters I now have, S-M-I-X, I can only really make one number out of that, six. This is of course just a guess."

[Morningstar 0]

Smix was a stretch, but it was better than nothing. While Wulfrin grasped at straws, Morningstar further explored the bedroom. Another book—this time a novel—sat on the nightstand. The title read, "Love Among the Lichens by Scarlett Burbadge." The book was unfamiliar to him, so he wondered if the author was real or fictitious, created quest immersion. He opened it and skimmed the first few pages. It was a romance novel, he gathered. It wasn't his genre.

The desk opposite to him had far more interesting items on display. He sat down and pulled the lamp cord. It illuminated the room well enough for him to dig through the notebook on the desk. It was already open, with a pencil sitting on top. On the paper was a puzzle.

Morningstar frowned. "Weird. This isn't a nonogram."

He gripped the pencil between his fingers, tapping it against the desk a few times. "I've seen one of these before too," he mumbled.

He had, in fact, seen the puzzle; however, the name evaded him. Somewhere in Glyndebourne, ages prior, he had encountered an identical puzzle in a strange old manor. Magdalyn's Manor, he recalled, had been an "escape room" style quest. The goal this time around was different, but the style was similar.

With the pencil, he drew a spiral, following the order of the letters on the page. "Hey, come here for a sec. Help me unscramble this."

[Wulfrin 0]

Wulfrin's attention was drawn from his decoding. He was confident he had two numbers, but without two others to test he had no way to confirm. Morningstar had seemingly uncovered something else and not a nonagram as was previously hinted at by the book. Wulfrin looked it over and instantly it clicked.

"The writing isn't a scramble," Wulfrin remarked, turning to yet another blank page in his draft book. "Pretty sure it's a Caesar Cipher. Could take a minute to decode unless we can find how many times each letter was transposed." Wulfrin sat down and started with the first attempt of 26. Luckily for him the cipher seemed to be fairly easy to crack considering all he needed was transpose by one backward. Each letter stepped back through the alphabet, Wulfrin having to stop and hum the song to himself a few times. He wasn't the best at going backwards through the alphabet.

"Start with R," Wulfrin started reading through his translated notes. "Then use every third letter. Try that on the spiraled letters and see what it spits out?"

[Morningstar 0]

So Morningstar did, and what it spat out was nonsensical at a glance. He scribbled it down in the same notebook as the puzzle, reading it over in his head a few times before sharing with Wulfrin.

rainbowssinsworldwondersheaven. rainbowssinsworldwondersheaven. rainbowssinsworldwondersheaven. rainbowssinsworldwondersheaven.

He picked apart the words. "Rainbows sins world wonders heaven?"

Staring blankly at Wulfrin, he pondered the words. Then, after some time, a lightbulb went off in his head. "Oh, shit!"

He underlined words as he rattled off his realization. "The number of colours in a rainbow, the deadly sins, world wonders, et cetera."

Morningstar dropped the pencil back on the desk and jumped out from his seat. They were making progress, and fast. "I think we've found ourselves another number."

They were still missing some though. Maybe they had cracked the riddle alright. Assuming they had, that left one digit left to find. "There are probably more puzzles in the other rooms. Shall we look?"