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Encounter Conditions
Initial Text
You make your way through the hall, strange shapes and twisted forms confronting you like funhouse mirrors. The confusion consumes everything.
Take, for example, the shimmering wall in front of you. It looks like a warped window, sagged with age, peering over a forsaken moor.
Summary of Choices
- Take a look - get 4 XP in Perception
- Climb in - Fight a Skeletal Rider or (if you ran/lost to the rider before) get black peat and get 3 XP in Will
- Burn it! - Nothing or (with +4 Fire Power) unlocks one instance of Phoenix combat
- Back away - Walk Away
Choice Text and Results
Take a look
You gaze out through the shimmering wall, looking over vast moorlands and into the forest beyond. You feel as though you can see every plant, rock, pond, stream, and peat patch for miles.
Ironically, there doesn't seem to be anything of use other than the peat. But you can see every last damn bit of it.
You've earned 4 XP in Perception
Climb in
You easily climb through the shimmering wall and into the moor beyond. It seems peaceful, almost restful at first, but soon you hear a distant beat like a running… horse?
A skeletal rider on an equally skeletal horse bears down on you in silence broken only by the beat of hooves and the whistling of cold wind through their bones.
(Fight a Skeletal Rider)
(Or, if you ran away from the above Skeletal Rider):
You easily climb through the shimmering wall and into the moor beyond. You go in expecting trouble and end up… "disappointed" probably isn't the right word, but eventually you're able to let your guard down.
It's quite calm in here, really. There's not much around except a bunch of peat, so you grab a handful of the area's sole natural resource.
You eventually end up back where you began without really intending it, but your exploration felt pretty thorough, so there's probably no harm done.
You found: black peat
You've earned 3 XP in Will
With rider's sword and horse skull equipped (this was with the rider out of the painting, which also may or may not be required):
Searching through the blasted landscape, you find an ancient grave. Something pushed its way out, but a strange power still lingers here.
As you don't seem to be in any danger in this strange place, you take a moment to contemplate the power, turning it over in your mind.
You learned a new Technique: Skeletal Mount
Burn it!
With zero Fire Power:
You try several times to light the wall on fire. It seems as though it should catch, but the flames vanish, flickering through into the moorlands.
With 4+? Fire Power:
You set a fire to the bottom of the shimmering wall. It doesn't seem to harm the wall at all, instead spreading over the moorlands like a rising sun.
As it expands, the flame twists and changes, rising up on fiery wings.
Back away
You back away from the moorlands and the shimmering wall. After all, there are plenty of vast tracts of uninhabitable land right here in Metroplex.
See Walk Away