The Alcanse Escape Room Experience!: The Lost Jewels of Alcanse #6

Guided by the instructions we, er, found behind the bakery portrait, we journeyed out of town 40 miles, and then cross country 30 miles, and found the ruins of an old manor house. It was mostly empty, but in the coachhouse we found a sort of hallway thing with four doorways facing cardinal directions. Svela cleared away the debris to uncover a very faint circle pattern. Hmm! We waited until nightfall, and in the moonlight, the doorways began to get glow-y and door-shaped…things appeared.

We started with the north door, discovering a room that is not in the real world (but maybe used to exist the past? It’s all very mysterious.) The room had a pillar in the middle, and a light beaming toward a mirror and two levers on one wall. Zyro started to futz with the levers, and lo, suddenly the light changed to a big glowing 10, counting down to…what? We anticipated the appearence of monsters and a big fight, but when it hit zero, all that happened was the door got unlocked again. In the central space, the circle was 1/3 lit up. Guess we solved the first puzzle! Easy peasy.

The east door opened into a room that had a clock, a window to some scene with chirping birds, a dripping pipe, and a smoldering, cracking log on the floor. Huh. Also, the words “Once spoken, I am broken”. And yes, we’re locked in again. So we fiddled with various techniques. Obvious Gandalf-isms (reciting the words) did not work. Announcing the time on the clock did not work. Saying the names of people we knew did not work — and also resulted in darts coming literally out of nowhere to hurt us. After many attempts to figure out how to solve this thing, we decided to silence everything in the room (since they all made some sort of noise). So we each took an element and shushed it….and the door unlocked. Well, then.

The center circle is now 2/3 lit. We ventured into the west room, which had two little stone platforms on each end, but is mostly filled with sand. A message on a bench said: the humble man can go wherever he wants (or something like that). We poked at the sand, and Rolfe pitched a copper out onto it (it did not sink). Then Zyro decided that riddles are stupid, and he cast a spell to let him levitate to the ceiling. He crab-walked across to the opposite platform, and pulled the lever there. Success! The door opened and the circle in the center was fully lit. Remember kids, cheating is fine if it works.

And behold, the south doorway is now looking like a real door. So Bardalph walked over to it, opened it…and found a mirror image of himself standing there. “Welcome to Devil’s Henge,” it said. But it wasn’t really welcoming, since it didn’t move aside and no one can get into the room. If you stand in the doorway, an image of yourself appears and blocks you. Svela tried to open the door with her eyes closed, but still got a solid mirror-image her to bump into. Ouch! The room beyond changed depending on who opened it first, clearly designed to look enticing. But so un-enter-able! How can we solve this fourth (and hopefully final) puzzle?