Web Warriors: Assault on Neckbeard's Keep IC

"Hm, let's see if that trick I did earlier still works.", Gus says, pointing his hand like a gun at the ceiling."Stop!"

As he commands, glitches fire off towards the ceiling, making a ceiling section unable to move.

"This could be pretty darn useful, I'd say.", he says as he blows away the glitchy smoke from his finger-gun.

Immovable:

"Alright, looks like you're getting the hang of this," Woolie smiles. "Alright, gang, let's quit dawdling. I'd go next, except, uh..." he sighs. "None of my...unique skillset is applicable in this situation. Which kind of sucks, but what are you gonna do?"

Thalia closely examines the panel, to figure out how to finish the code the party received earlier.

Thalia fails to find the obvious latch to open the panel.

"Here, let me have a look."
Kaji heads over to, in fact, take a look.

Meta:

Kaji finds the handle and opens up the panel to reveal a number pad interface. But it seems to be unpowered. Above it are what looks like two light switches pulled down and a lever that looks like it can be pulled outward. Written on the panel you see the words:

"Retrace the past, but know this first:
The Code of the emperor is a tricky number"

Spoiler:

"He was trying to play it off like the Riddler. You know, Edward Nigma? Batman villain? Went with his whole name and all? Although I wonder if he was more a comic, the arkham games, or the old cartoon series fan."

Jonny shook his head with a grumble.

"You all realize if something goes wrong down here there's a good chance we're dead, right? Just bringing in the sunshine over here. Especially since a lot of Batman enemies liked rigging traps into their 'puzzles'. Heck, The Riddler basically set up a trap filled maze for his intro on the show."

He watched with no small amount of worry as the panel opens.

"So... what do we have? An obvious timer? Some explosives? Some mysterious canisters hooked up with carnival colors?"

"The end is the beginning, and don't forget to leave a complement...." Kaji murmurs
"We did the color schtick. What's left is 'up, down, pull', so: 'push, up, down'... it seems too.... simple"
She turns to her companions.
"Having never read a Batman comic in my life, I have to ask: How straightforward is this riddler fellow?"

You recall something of a simple cipher known as the Caesar cipher. That might be your best option.

"Straightforward?"

Jonny frowned.

"The riddler took great joys in finding obscure or esoteric bits of trivia. Obviously they had to tone down some of the bits for the cartoon. So 'What is the shortest distance between two points?' is a good example. In a purely mathematical sense, the answer is a straight line. In a 'real world' sense, on a globe, that's a curved line. The curved line was the answer. Another was a puzzle involving keys. It had to do with music theory, which I really don't recall. Short version, only the key with no 'sharps' in it prevented large blades from appearing to kill our heroes."

Jonny shrugged.

"The whole deal with the Riddler is that he prides himself on being.. smarter than everyone else. And then Batman constantly shows him up. He gets pretty psychotic pretty quickly when he loses his advantage."

Thalia sighs. "'The only key with no sharps?' Out of the 12 major scales, 5 of them have no sharps, and there are 36 minor scales with even more scales with no sharps. If you don't even know that, then you probably might not be the best help in solving puzzles."

"Yeah, and the distance between two points on a globe is still a straight line," Woolie said, "You just, just need to presume you're a ghost, or some kinda Martian Manhunter dude or something, and can therefore fly and pass through the ground. And not have to stop for air, and...stuff." He paused a moment. "Anyway, we know the answer, so let's do this, right?"

AProcrastinatingWriter wrote:"Anyway, we know the answer, so let's do this, right?"

"No we don't. We never used that Ceasar cypher Gus mentioned. There's probably another layer to this, especially if the guy's whole deal is to be misleading."
Hovering over the console, Kaji ponders the new information.
"Obscure trivia... it probably has to do with the number pad and this "tricky number" to be used in the cypher. but what are we decyphering? The code is already readable...."
She pinches the bridge of her nose, frowning. She then looks through her pockets finding... nothing she's looking for.
"Let's see... "tricky".... That might be a reference to... well, TONS of numbers. All irrational and imaginary numbers for one. pi,i,phi.... I don't see a root symbol on this pad so i is out.... irrational ones are endless by definition, so I don't think we'll have to input those....
ARGH! Maybe the number changes with the position in the code, making it tricky in that way! Why is there no notepad in this outfit? You'd imagine quest logs are written down somewhere..."

"I've got a guess, so I'll just push some buttons then, shall I?"
Kaji sits down next to the console and waves towards the digger.
"You guys better head back in, just in case this causes a collapse or something. At least I might be able to teleport back in a case like that."

Jonny's usual enthusiasm is quite visible.

"For the record, I'd be perfectly fine with us declaring this a lost cause and leaving. We're not going to gain a lot of benefits if it blows you up for a wrong entry."

He does blink at Thalia with an impressed expression.

"You know that off the top of your head? Dang Thalia. You a music teacher?"

Woolie sighs before leaving. "Alright, then. Enthusiasm aside, I hope everybody knows what they're, uh, what they're doing? Good? Good."

I am sorry to announce that this game is officially dead. I've gotten myself involved in so much, not just campaigns but school stuff. I can handle being a player in a lot of games, not too much effort needed, but the planning required to keep running this on top of my existing live game as well as the loss of interest in it has left this game in a bad place. I started off with the intention of this being an incredibly silly and fun game where I could be crazy and funny without worrying too much. It kind of became the opposite of that for me. It's been stressful and slow, even by forum standards, and I just can't keep it up anymore.

No harm in it. I'm surprised I manage to balance the campaigns I run with my school work (and soooo much other stuff) and still get good grades and have fun games (unless I'm wrong on that last one) without losing any sleep.

Woolie wraps one of his giant arms around Lapis Lazily's shoulder. "I...I'm sorry, man, I just..." He sighs. "You know, you did a good job. You did a really good job, and I wouldn't have preferred any other DM. I'm sorry we couldn't get this game going like you wanted to. You were...you were fantastic, man, you really were." He blows out a puff of air, looking around grimly. "Hey, man. I had fun. It might have, you know, ended a bit earlier than we liked, but I had a lot of fun! I'd call this game a success."