East Tower

A Test of Wisdom

When both halves of the Tower Key are placed in the lock together, they glow briefly and then vanish with a satisfying click. A black key tattoo appears on the back of the dominant hand of everyone who is considered to be in the group of whoever placed the key. Anyone who is added to the group after the tower is unlocked but before the tower is completed will have the keymark appear when they first approach the tower entrance. The tattoos fade away after a few seconds and only reappear when the East tower is approached from the outside, and only by whomever is doing the approaching. Only those with the keymark may enter. If a puzzle room is unsolved and has occupants when someone with the keymark tries to enter the tattoo will appear in red and they will not be allowed in until the room is solved or unoccupied, even if the door is open. It is important to note that besides Second Floor challenge, the room entrances are never locked from the inside. PCs may leave the tower and return at any time, unless otherwise noted.
If the players should leave and return to the Unicorn Tower gates after east Tower has been unlocked but before it has been completed, they will find that the yellow circle on the right is now blinking. The other circles are unaffected.

Floor Challenges

Each floor poses different puzzles and challenges. Clearing any enemies that appear is not required to progress to the next floor beyond the final boss of the dungeon.

First Floor

The first floor of the East Tower is a long rectangular room (40'x100' or 8x20) with a 20' ceiling. The floor is divided into 5'x5' (1x1) square tiles, all stone gray, matching the walls, save for the rows at the very front and back of the room (the short sides), which are black obsidian. The players enter through a set of double doors in the center of one of the 40' walls. There is an identical set of double doors on the opposite wall with an up arrow emblazoned across their face. On the side of the room where the PCs enter, on the obsidian tiles second from the left and right, are two life-size statues of unicorns rearing back majestically. Lined up along the long walls, at intervals of two spaces between, are several 10' tall stone pillars fashioned like castle towers.
As the players enter the room, a riddle appears written in light across the ground in front of them:

Take heed, the towers,
and guardians' wrath
to nudge you from
the chivalrous path.

The puzzle is for players to make their way across the room while only stepping on the tiles a knight chess piece would move over, starting at the two unicorn statues. the black tiles at either end of the room can be walked on freely, but should they stop on a grey tile that a knight couldn't get to (from where they were previously) they will be attacked by a wallmaster.
Further more, if a player stops in-line with one of the rooks along the walls, the piece will surge forth, forcing a DC 12 Dex save. On a failed save, the targeted player will be pushed 10' in the direction the rook came from, fall prone, and take 2d6 bludgeoning damage. On a success, they take half damage, and are only pushed 5'. In both cases, the Rook will come to a stop on the space the target was occupying before being pushed. Being pushed off the path will trigger a wallmaster, just like stopping off the path.
In the event a target is in-line with two or more rooks, the closest will be the one to move. If equidistant, it will be DM's discretion.
PCs will be moving in initiative order, but room effects and wallmaster attacks will happen as they are triggered, or- if continuing for more than one round- immediately after the player that triggered them (i.e. if a wallmaster drops on a PC and grapples them, then it will commence its next actions after that player's next turn).
If all PCs are removed from the room before it is solved, all rooks reset to their original positions.
Once all present PCs make it to the far side of the room, the rooks will permanently cease movement for that group. Upon repeat trips through this room, the puzzle will remain solved, although the rooks will return to their original positions after the room is vacated. The wallmasters will no longer attack members of this adventure party in this room.

Second Floor

The entire second floor of the East Tower is taken up by a single puzzle room and the mechanics around it that make if function.

The room is a perfect 30'x30'x30' (6x6x6) cube divided into 10'x10' (2x2) squares by deep but thing grooves in the walls and ground. There are no other seams in the stone walls and floor. The Players enter through the large double doors in the center of the back wall (at floor level, obviously). Once closed behind them, the doors disappear and the room's riddle appears lit up on the far wall:

If you wish to keep the pace
show the wall a solid face.
But if you turn, do be awares;
Awake, you will, the stony snares

The far wall will then light up with each square one of six colors, with the center being white. A small cube will then appear, floating a few feet off the ground in the center tile on the ground. It's a Rubix Cube, and while all sides show their true colors, the side correlating to the far wall radiates a bright light from behind the colored squares. All other faces show dim and slightly faded- but still differentiable- colors.

What also appears are 9 sleeping Wallmasters. They materialize floating just below the ceiling, but are not easily noticeable when they first appear. They are evenly spaced among the squares and move with them when the room sections rotate, hunting whatever plane they're facing until provoked from a different direction. When one wallmaster is defeated, it crumbles to rubble and a new, sleeping one appears in the space it first spawned. New wallmasters start their 'turn' count immediately when they appear instead of waiting for the next countdown to end, but they do not trigger any other countdowns when they awake. If a regular countdown ends while the new wallmaster is in countdown, it will still trigger another countdown start as normal.
Every 3 'turns' one of the sleeping wallmasters wakes up and starts scanning the square on the opposite face. it will engage with anything (small creature sized or larger) that enters that square or crosses its field of vision.
The main puzzle of this floor is to solve for the white face of the rubix cube (the lit up far wall). Only then will the doors to exit and move forward appear. Every time a section on the small cube is rotated, a correlating section of the room rotates, and gravity on those squares temporarily shifts with it. anyone/anything on the rotating slice will have their gravity shifted so that the plane the square they were standing on becomes the floor (even on squares that haven't turned with them.
The only exception in the central squares of each face. they will not move and if the central slice on the small cube is rotated, the side slices of the room will rotated the opposite direction to compensate. This will count as 2 turns. Furthermore, the small cube cannot leave the 10' of space over the central floor square.
When a slice of the cube is turned, any lit squares no longer on the white face go dark, and any squares that are now on the white face light up to show their colors. This happens instantly when the faces are realigned for both the small cube and the room as a whole.
DM Note: The puzzle can be tricked by simply coloring the glowing face of the small cube a solid color with paint, ink, blood, etc. The colors here are not stickers as they are on the real world cubes, but if the colors can be changed by magical means, that will work as well.
If all PCs are removed from the room before it is solved, all wallmasters reset to the original number and locations. The cube faces are left in their last aligned configuration (no partial turns).
Once solved, the far wall goes dark, bathing the room in darkness save for the red glow of any awakened wallmaster eyes, before the grooves between the squares light up- illuminatong the room and showing that the double doors for the tower entrance have reappeared, mirrored by new, near identical double doors leading to the next floor. They are almost a perfect copy of the doors you came in through, except for a glowing up-arrow emblazoned across their face.
Past the double doors to the next floor is a short hallway leading to a spiral staircase. The wallmasters will not follow past the threshold of the door.

Third Floor (fourth story)

Upon entering the third floor, the PCs are greeted by a small room with two doors on the opposite wall, one white, one black. On the wall between them, the next riddle appears:

I'm afraid, for you
to make progress
you must recall
more rules of chess.

This floor serves as a quiz for the rules of chess. In the center of each room is a large stone statue of a different chess piece. The players must figure out that the different doors leading out of the room represent moves the piece can make on the board, one correct, and the others false.
The wrong answer doors will lead to a dead end room with a single wallmaster that will attack the person who opened the door after they get the effects of a roll on the wild magic table. The wrong answer door rooms also contain a single chest with 1d4 silver pieces and a short note on why the choice they made was wrong. These do not reset when the PCs leave the third floor. See map.
For the Knight Room, there are two black squares on the floor (spaced every other square from the knight statue which is in the front of the room not centered like the others) to indicate the number of spots the knight moves before the PCs have to make their door choice. For the Queen Room, each of the four doors is marked with reliefs of the pieces for rooms before, with an arrow on the floor pointing inward towards the queen statue in the center. The correct choice here is the pawn door, as it's the only piece that can become a queen. In the King room, there are four doors, and three pieces; the king- in the first space, closest to the entrance to the room- an empty space like the ones in the knight room, a knight piece, and a rook piece.

Fourth Floor (fifth story)

The fourth floor does not have any puzzles. Instead, it is a large, circular chamber which has two doors on opposite sides a large treasure chest, and a spiral staircase leading up to the fifth, and final floor.
The doors and chest are all locked with identical, large padlocks and chains, similar to the one that secured the entrance to the tower. Investigation of the room shows that the locks are all magically protected against picking and that based on the size of the room (and barring any more spatial manipulation to house rooms larger than the tower's diameter would allow, like on the lower floors) the two doors should lead to the exterior of the tower, most likely leading to the top of the wall.

Fifth Floor (sixth story)

At the top of the stairs from the fourth floor is a landing and another pair of double doors like the ones the party has been going through on the previous floors. beyond them, the fifth floor is another massive circular space, although unlike the fourth, it is again much bigger than the tower's exterior should allow.
In the center of the room is a massive raised checkered field, about 5' per square, with a nice 5' border around. The floor around the platform is covered in a layer of black and white sand. On the opposite wall is the most striking feature of the room, a large rectangular block of nearly featureless matte black metal. it sits on the floor and stretches to the ceiling above and recedes into the curved wall behind. on either side of the metal block are two large iron gauntlets, resting on the ground, palms down.
As the party enters, orbs of light form around the perimeter of the room, illuminating it in a cool blue. At the same time, a blue bar of light lights up along the length of the front of the box, about 2' off the floor, and just above that, a symbol; a circle, broken at the top and extending from the center, a short vertical line.

Boss Battle

This is Norton; a large sentient computer that runs calculations on the barrier around the city. He cannot answer any questions about its function or properties, as all information on it and the town is locked away from his consciousness. He says that he is terribly lonely and bored, though, so if the party can beat him in a game of chess, he can shut down, and even give them some keys (2) for the doors and chest downstairs.

• AC=25 (plate armor)
• HP= 10
• Spd= 0
• STR= 0 (-5)
• DEX= 0 (-5)
• CON= 25 (+7)
• INT= 25 (+7)
• WIS= 14 (+2)
• CHA= 15 (+3)

From here, we transition to what is essentially the Wizard's Chess scene from Harry Potter. The Party each take the place of a chess piece on their side of the board (white) and the rest of the pieces, Norton conjures from the sand in the room. Norton then animates his hands, two knucklemasters, named Lefty and Maestro to move his pieces. Pieces on the player's side will move at their command. He then says he's turning off his microphone, so the players are free to strategize about their moves. They can signal him visually if they want him to listen.


If/when a player's piece is taken, one of the knucklemasters will knock them aside for 3d6 bludgeoning damage unless they can dodge with a DC 12 Dex saving throw. That player must then choose a different piece to replace. When the PCs take a piece, they may destroy enemy pieces however they wish.
If the PCs win the game, Norton will agree to shutdown and grant access to the keys, but his knucklemaster companions will resist. He will use one to destroy the other but not before being shut down manually by his off button. The remaining hand will fight the party starting at half health. He will immediately start his restart process for being improperly shut down. This will take one minute, or 10 rounds of combat. His progress can be tracked and estimated by the light bar on his front face.
If the party loses, or if they shut Norton down prematurely, he will lose control of both hands, causing them to shut him down. While this also initiates Norton's 60 second restart, the party will now have to face both hands at full strength.

Once Norton restarts, he will either do his best to hinder the knucklemasters, using his turn to render one of them both immobile every other turn, or if the party is fairing poorly, he will urge them to leave and come back later. If the fight is won before he comes back online, he will congratulate the party on a victory well fought and apologize for his companions. He will then tell then the true shutdown procedure (hold the button for 6 seconds and then release), which will allow him to open up and present the two Large Keys.
If the players flee before the fight, when they come back, Norton will simply challenge them to another game and reset the board. If the players flee during the real battle, then upon their return, Norton's central console will be smashed in, the light orbs will all be blood red instead of blue, and both hands will be at full health, whether or not one was destroyed or defeated previously. Defeating both hands here will allow Norton to come back online just long enough to open up and present the keys. This is the only option to change the tower's exterior as it will cause black smoke to start pouring from the top of the tower (yet only on the exterior). This will cause the mayor to outlaw entering the towers, and call for the party's arrest.

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Once the tower is cleared, The yellow light on the Unicorn Tower gate will be lit up permanently, like the blue one.
The item in the chest is the Shield of Omens.

Maps

• 

  East Tower Fifth Floor

  The fifth floor of the East Tower of Attitude City
• 

  East tower Third Floor

  Third floor of the East Tower
• 

  East Tower First Floor

  The first floor of the East Tower of Attitude City.

Type

Dungeon