This past Saturday found me among adventurers for the first time since the Black and White, at a gathering concerning some corrupted Opera House. Upon arriving I learned from Ezra of Chimeron that the adventurers of the Realms had been here before. There is apparently an order known as The Harpers whose purpose is to preserve and protect the power of songs, and keep the sources of that power from becoming corrupted. Despite the existence of this order, there was a song, or being that had become corrupted. It is my understanding that we would come to know the source of this corruption as ‘Christine.’
The Opera House was broken up into a series of rooms, each with its own set of challenges. We started the day silenced, with limited means of breaking this silence, and so in essence our first obstacle was communication.
Room One: Charades
Strewn throughout the room there were a series of cards with actions on them, such as: ‘running’, ‘heralding’, and ‘playing’. Also milling about this room were a series of creatures that I was told were called “notes.” Each note was acting out one of the cards, and in order to disperse the notes in the room we had to match the card to the correct note. After a brief delay (caused by us missing a card somewhere in the room) we were able to disperse all of the notes and progressed onto the next room.
Room Two: Clockwork Combat
The second room was mostly straight-forward by my recollection. We were met by several waves of notes, which functioned as ‘clockwork’. After determining the correct order for hit-locations for each note and dispatching them each several times, we were able to proceed.
Room Three: Lava Room
In the antechamber prior to entering this room there was a sign that displayed a series of music notes. We transcribed the notes and before long were able to enter the next room. This was among the rooms that took us as an adventuring party the longest. We entered a room that was completely flooded with lava aside from a series of stepping stones. The party pushed along, dodging fireballs that flew above our heads and occasionally blocked our path. While many of the group died trying to make it through the room, a small number of us were able to quickly progress to the opposite side, only to be met by a locked door.
While trying to figure out how to open the door more of us died, and we were delayed quite a bit. I made my way to the back of the room, helping move bodies around the room. Somebody proposed we make sure there was one person per stone in the room, to try to open the door so I began to move bodies around jumping from stone to stone. Eventually we were able to determine that the musical notes actually spelled a passphrase that we could use to unlock the exit.
After some more time we finally passed along all of the dead, and were able to escape the lava room. Thoroughly exhausted from all the jumping, we moved on.
Room Four: Silence Projector
This was the room where we were finally able to break the enchantment that had been causing us to be unable to speak. In the center of the room there was a chart puzzle that had to be completed while we protected our ‘thinky’ folks. I was feeling particularly thuggish that day so I left the puzzle work to other, less violent folks.
I recall personally killing close to two-hundred notes, and Grebinar must have managed to take down nearly a thousand. Seriously, he was a music-ruining machine.
OK, well, maybe not. But eventually the puzzle got solved and we were able to move on. Or so we thought. The puzzle was complete and we were greeted from a balcony above us by a woman who spent some time monologuing, in true villain fashion. This turned out to be Christine, the day’s adversary.
Aside from the completely understandable ‘I don’t like many of you,’ I don’t have much recollection of what she said to us (I was too busy trying to help Faelinn get in position to take her out with a well-placed magic missile). Unfortunately, the assassination attempt didn’t happen as she ‘brought down the house’ on us, and by that I mean she dropped a chandelier on several of our heads, killing us in the process. I’d say I was surprised, but what else do you expect from a woman who fills the third room of her house with lava?
Room Five: Pressure Plates
Now that the silence was disrupted, the middle of the day begins to blur together a bit here. If I mistake the order these rooms took place in, please forgive me. I believe we were met next by a room that had several pressure plates, a number of notes assaulting us, and some pools on the ground that affected anybody standing inside them with silence. I believe the solution here was pretty straightforward, and we just needed one person on each pressure plate while we fought back the notes.
Room Six: Note Matching
This room was the low point of the quest for me, and my description will likely be pretty brief as I still get angry just thinking of it. There were groups of notes attacking us, and there was a series of 3 barriers cutting the room into thirds. The notes we were fighting were all resonating at certain tones. I was told that the solution to the puzzle was to kill a pair of notes that were resonating at the same frequency and to set them up at either side of the barrier. The resonation would disrupt the barrier and eventually end it entirely. This room took us a while to figure out, and while I thought we had set this up correctly several times, I was apparently mistaken.
Room Seven: Honor Combat
The next room was a series of honorable combat challenges. A group of notes had lined up in the center of the room, and each had various types of challenges that they would or would not accept. Many of us competed and dispatched shades in these challenges. The fights spread from first blood dagger fights to matched weapons with armor. Once we had dispatched all of the notes we were separated. Those of us who had won fights stood on one side, and those who had not been successful or didn’t try stood on the other.
The unsuccessful group had to pick 5 people to fight for them from among their number, and a victory would mean the rest of them could pass. It took some time, but eventually we completed the challenge and could pass.
Intermission
After the honor combat room we had a brief break for snacks and drinks. This allowed us to communicate a bit over what we could expect for the rest of the day. We discussed a member of the Harpers that had apparently been corrupted by Christine, and developed a plan to attempt to save him. It was also determined that Christine was beyond saving.
Room Seven: The Labyrinth
The next room was pretty straightforward. We were dropped into a room where we were blinded, and had to progress through a type of rope maze. I fell back upon the classic dungeon-delving strategy of “Follow the right wall” and it paid off. After a brief miscommunication regarding direction most of the group had made their way through the maze. After waiting some time for some stragglers (and a distracted Faelinn), we were able to proceed. Christine had apparently showed up to heckle us, and some of our number were there to banter with her.
Room Eight: Red Light!
After besting the Labyrinth and the distractions within, we were met by a line of notes. We attempted to progress through the rooms, and were repeatedly sent back to beginning. The rules of this room quickly became clear to us: there was a special note behind the enemy line calling out ‘red light/green light’. We’ve all played this game before, we know how it goes.
Room Nine: Petiron
Room Nine contained the corrupted Harper: Petiron. He wore a mask that appeared to be tormenting him. He was chained to the floor, and looked to be in pretty rough shape. As we entered we were assaulted by notes. Faelinn and I rushed straight past the notes to Petiron. With my own Force of Will, empowered by the power of the Knights of the Red Branch I tore the mask from his face. Calling upon the traditional power of the Knights of the Crown, Faelinn laid on hands to relieve Petiron of his suffering. In that moment Faelinn appeared to have been consumed by nightmare, but Petiron was saved.
Meanwhile, the notes in this room needed to be killed sequentially but there was a trick. We had 4 notes, labeled 1, 2, 3, and 5. There was a commander leading them. After killing note #3, we were unable to kill either of the remaining two without resetting the batch. Somebody ended up finding the marker for note #4 somewhere in the room, and it was determined that somebody needed to take on the marker and be killed in it’s place.
After finally killing the last of the notes, we had to challenge the commander to honorable combat. A fairly green adventurer that I met that day, named Swoop, challenged him. In a rather long, and extremely carefully fought fight Swoop was able to best the commander. It was a pretty impressive show of patience from Swoop, as the commander seemed to prefer to circle and wait to strike.
We left the room, prepared to face the end of this trouble, minus one Faelinn but plus one saved Harper.
Room Ten: Flight of the Valkyries
The Final room was relatively straight forward. We entered and were met by a group of Valkyries on stage. Many more valkyries suddenly swarmed the room, and there was an extremely hard-fought engagement. The entirety of our party nearly wiped several times. The solution to the room was fairly straightforward, but that certainly didn’t make it easy. Eventually we were able to take down all of the valkyries, scalping them as we did, leaving us only with their leader, Christine. Eventually Christine was taken down, and we were done. The source of the corruption on this Opera House had perished, and our mission was complete.
