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Sisyphean Attempts at Self-Improvement #1097360 added September 14, 2025 at 4:01pm
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Giant's Plight
Taking the plunge into the underwater Temple of Riasza, you ride the slide down from the gallery room and into an underwater grotto inside a large coral reef. The large room has a locked door, three chests on the ocean floor, and a mirror that curiously shows a slightly different reflection than what’s actually in the room. You deduce that this is essentially a “spot the differences” exercise, and when you determine that the missing items from the reflection are in the chests, putting them into their proper place allows you to open the door and proceed.
The second room of the temple is essentially a giant sudoku puzzle, where you have to place basketball-sized diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires into a grid of alcoves in a prescribed order, which you manage to figure out in short order. One curious thing about the room is that even though you simply stepped through a doorway from one room to an adjacent one, crossing the threshold actually teleported you thousands of feet farther out into the ocean, and closer to the island surrounded by a storm.
Crossing the threshold into the third room, you’re again transported thousands of feet along the ocean floor, to the point where you’re nearly at the island. This room has a grid of flagstones on the ground, seven of which have glyphs on them, and a sphinx carved out of black quartz with a riddle. Reggie finds out the hard way that there’s a correct order to step on the glyphs on the floor. In the correct sequence, they light up and stay lit. In the wrong sequence, they reset after dealing a healthy amount of psychic damage to whoever stepped on it.
While Reggie is determined to brute force his way through with trial and error, Big-E looks at a message on the wall written in similar glyphs and discerns that it’s a substitution cipher. The group works on decoding the message, which gives you a riddle with a clue to the order in which the glyphs need to be triggered. Spelling out the word “unknown” allows the door to open, and you exit a staircase onto the island which is in the literal eye of the storm.
Traveling to the shrine atop the island, you discover that Riazsa is a Storm Giant Quintessent, whose corporeal form has transformed into the storm itself. She summons a physical body for herself so that you can converse, and you learn that she’s been expecting you. She has foreseen a moment in the future that she calls “The Battle of Kyriel” and acknowledges that it may be a precursor to the end of the world. She agrees to gather her fellow storm giants, as they are destined to fight Ar’unath alongside the other denizens of the Material Plane. She enchants the relic that Azura gave you as evidence that you met with her. Riazsa merges with the storm once again, set to the dulcet tones of Big-E crooning the Garth Brooks classic, “The Thunder Rolls.”
When you go back into the temple’s underwater rooms, crossing the threshold into the sphinx room magically teleports you back to the gallery on the mainland, where you exit the fireplace and notice that all of the paintings you previously used to access the temple are now gone and the keyphrase “rapids” no longer works.
Returning to the town of Norwood, Thogun tries to impress Kinea, but she’s distracted by Big-E giving her the impression that her storm goddess urgently wants her to create a better karaoke environment in her inn. He performs “Knock on Wood” by Amii Stewart and, despite a lackluster performance, you receive rave reviews because you’re in front of followers of Riazsa who know you just met with their goddess. Thogun gives Kinea one of his holy symbols as a gift, and hopes to see her again soon.
You teleport back to Korrigan and end up one cave over from the dragon. When Thogun summons his magical boat and the rest of the group hops out, preferring to take advantage of their remaining hours of water breathing and walk up to Korrigan’s lair from the ocean floor, his frustration gets the better of him and he prays to Kord for guidance.
Still feeling a little perturbed, and frustrated at Reggie for not just having out with it and asking Korrigan for help in the impending Battle of Kyriel, Thogun decides that the best way to enlist an adult bronze dragon’s help is to call it selfish and ignorant, and try to guilt-trip it into agreeing to help. It goes about as well as can be expected, with Korrigan finding the argument persuasive on the merits, but taking offense to the way it was delivered. He still ultimately agrees to help when the time comes, and you make your way back to Harborcrest.
At your home base, you learn that Ezra and the defenders fought off a small contingent of Maurezhi demons that attacked from the woods while you were away. They were instantly repelled, but both Bilnan the groundskeeper and Maza the housekeeper report feeling a strange, disorienting feeling whenever they’re near the southwest tower. Thogun equips all of the Harborcrest hirelings with weapons, while Big-E and Antonio ask your librarian Rupert to find a list of security features that can be added to your keep, as it appears that Bigger-E and his army are headed straight for Kyriel and will likely arrive before the end of the month.
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