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Swarmpupa Freuudan, the Megaheals Medic

Costume finished, Psykgi realized belatedly that she was wearing a dress. A dress. It had always been slacks and sweatpants and easy, comfortable things with her. Ma'am, somehow, had a blind spot where clothing was concerned in her efforts to 'improve her troll's lot'.

Psy liked it.

The gamegrubs activated, and Psykgi was unashamedly gawking at the whole thing. This was amazing! Great! She was nervously excited to start her first flarp! She was about to look to Leeroi for guidance when the clouder started speaking. Ooo, how fun! A cult! A leader! A party. Wait, a party? Psy was so delightfully confused.

But no time for questions... she was supposed to be in character. In. Character. Goodness! Such a concept.

Hmm... What would Swarmpupa do? The former murderess turned repentent? Aha! Go to whoever was in charge... which was... that... princess? She followed the very... princessy... seadweller out, only to see them talking to someone. Ah. There. The person in charge. And fake? Well, it was a game, of course things weren't real. But you pretended them to be real, so they became real – like a dream. Actually, Flarping was a perfect extension of the dream like state. She would have to see what Dr. Rensem said on the matter later! She was sure he had!

Swarmpupa considered herself very important after all! She was narcissistic, probably. Probably. Was she doing this right? Psykgi had no idea, so she did it anyway.

”If you know something, it would be better in the long run to say so.” she said to the 'mayor', ”We are seeking a cult, and the faster we find them, the faster we can deal with them for you.” she gave him a smile, feeling the makeup on her face shift with the movement. That was new, too. ”And you do want them dealt with, don't you?”

She gave the princess an achknowledging nod of the head. Swarmpupa, she thought, did not bow to anybody, but was gracious... Right? Was she supposed to be coming up with random details in her head like this? Hmm.

Option A

"Kind of?" Alifax said. Actually he was supposed to be playing some non-player characters later on. He should probably not break the fourth wall enough that it mattered.

You…

Seek out the mayor. As the center of all things going on in this town, he’s the logical first stop and should know about anything strange going on in his jurisdiction.
Spend the day drinking in the inn. Everyone else can do the hard work - you’re sure that they’ll share what they find.
Head to the back alleys in search of lower elements, like hobos! They’re easy to overlook, so there’s plenty of chances that one of them saw something important!
Strike up a conversation with the shadowy stranger in the back of the tavern - you’ve read enough adventure novels to know where this is going.

If you chose…
A) The mayor seems more focused on his reelection campaign than anything else. He’s happy to make small talk until he finds out you’re not eligible to vote in the upcoming election - then he clams up. [Neutral.]
B) You get remarkably drunk. The rest of the party is remarkably annoyed with you. [Mildly negative] // Pulchritude stat: Somewhere around pint three of your drinking adventure, a gorgeous troll appears down the inn’s stairs and joins you at the bar. They are taken with your good looks and quick wit, and invite you up to their room, where sometime between rounds two and four, they tell you everything you need to know. [Tier 1 Reward]
C) The hobo is happy to talk… for a price. 25 beetles later, you think you’ve got a lead on the suspect. [Tier 2 Reward]
D) The shadowy stranger got into town two hours before your party and knows even less than you do about the cult. He won’t shut up about a magical ring of power, and talking to him only confuses you. [Negative]

This time none of the trio needed to hand out tickets - the simulated trolls were already doing that for them. Muttchop Bonemeal and Roach-hat Reynaldo - uh, Reemus Grroou and Adamaz Karoth - were receiving their tickets, which drifted drunkenly from the hobos' respective pockets as Alifax bummed it with the...Superiat.

Alifax continues the story the next night, supervising as the game grubs create a much more lavishly detailed, but also much smaller in scope, setting for the puzzle portion of the event. “You all gather in a private conference room in the inn to share your information again. After a bit of conferring, you come to a conclusion. Several trolls seem to have discovered something interesting three days ago.” As he finishes, the world also finishes constructing itself around him: a conference room with tables and a bowl of grubcorn.

There’s news from the search front. It seems as though your efforts have yielded...uh...a corpse. The most savvy looters have already rummaged through this troll’s things and taken the valuables...but you think your group’s gotten the real goods: a journal! As far as you can tell the body belonged to a woman whose moirail was a member of the cult, and had a pretty good in already. Excellent, you think.

Paging through it yields a lot of interesting tidbits, but there’s also a multitude of strange diagrams and out of place words. Before long the group realizes that the most important information is actually - you guessed it - encrypted. The brunt of it is focused on three specific pages…
[go look at thyPOPE's posts on the front page! it's super word wall-y, sorry sad ]
[it is 8:29 AM EST and PMs have been sent!]

Hints will be posted at around 11PM EST, if you're having trouble. This round will be closed for entry at around 8:00AM tomorrow morning.

Hmmm, these puzzles were quite complex weren't they? Well, no there was always a simpler solution to these things it just took a different angle to solve them. Imaginer sat staring at the puzzles.
Imaginer sat with his fingertips together before looking up at the one who spoke up about the names. "Names you say?" he replied with interest. That could very well have been it! "To me.... it reminds me of a number puzzle, eh, sudoku only with letters," he trailed off for a moment as he thought about it a bit more.
If it looked like one, perhaps it very well was. Hmm, perhaps he could use this as a way to solve the puzzle himself. Trading theories's wouldn't be a bad idea.
"Perhaps, this is just thinking out loud mind you, but perhaps it follows the same strategy?" he gestured his hand to the first puzzle to point out what he meant. "Such as the words that are there cannot repeat per line and only one set of letters per box, maybe that would make the names you were talking about."

Doughnut Delicacy

Cerise frowned at the cryptic messages. She wasn't very good at these, and was way too distracted to like, focus on one! She wanted to look at the body and do cool stuff with that, but instead she was stuck with puzzles. She'd rather let everyone else solve it and just sorta get them to tell her the answer... But she had to at least try.

"There's probably names hidden in the pictures! If we solve it, it'll give us the names, right?" she looked at the color puzzle and went to find some crayons.

As Doughnut scratches the answer to I STAND OUT onto the paper she's been working on, a ticket falls onto her work.

[This puzzle may still be solved for a tier two prize! However, if you want a ticket you'll need to look at the other two.]

Quick errata note:



Someone pointed out a few words that didn't fit the pattern of the rest (which made it infinitely harder to solve those particular anagrams) and one phrase that could've anagrammed to multiple phrases that all fit the pattern. In light of that, I'm posting all the de-scrambled words to compensate for these (as you'll see, the errata are not in the anagrams posted, but in the nature of the words they were intended to be decoded to). There is no significance to the bolding - those are merely the words which were pointed out to me as ambiguous. Sorry for the trouble, and good luck solving this puzzle!

Tai Foon was all of the following: late, arrogant, loud, and, unfortunately, correct. A ticket drifted down next to him for solving the puzzle I HAVE NEVER FOUND PARADISE.


You may also take a tier two prize!