Necropolitans, episode 38: Start by saying hello to Mr Terminal

Security is contextual! Jaal confronts the peculiar magical security system of the Nameless City Episode 038: Start by saying hello to Mr Terminal.

The characters each faced a unique test. The principle behind this was actually pretty simple. The only way to enter the sanctum is through its teleportation, and it first teleports any visitor to a randomly-selected test chamber. Each test is designed to be *impossible* for the invaders, based on their specific biology and capabilities. Here, the most prominent feature is the invaders' total inability to sense magic; they can only attempt this puzzle through trial-and-error, and it would be virtually impossible to survive the process. Even understanding what the chamber *is* would be very challenging for them.

The reason for the randomisation is also simple. It means that if by some chance one of the invaders does manage to make it through, others can't follow them by just following their description of what they did. While I only provided three test chambers, in theory there are hundreds of variations. An individual invader has no idea what dangers or challenges they would face if they entered the chamber.

Since there's no sign the invaders made it into the sanctum, the plan clearly worked.

Direct Links

1. RSS feed for all episodes
2. Episode 001: Character Generation
3. Master list of episodes
4. Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
5. Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
6. Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)

Dangers of the Road

The random encounter has been a Thing in RPGs since at least the early days of D&D. Sometimes this makes more sense than others. Having your night's kip deep in the bowels of an abandoned cathedral crypt disturbed by prowling ghouls makes a fair amount of sense. Running into a manticore as you take the rough cart track from a farming village to the market town, not so much.

Like most parts of gaming, this is fine in moderation and in the hands of a judicious GM who thinks about the context. But that's not a very exciting statement, so let's have a further look at random encounters.