Friday Encounter: The Blazing Pillars

Elder Scrolls Online

Here's a simple puzzle, designed to encourage creative thinking by players, that you can throw in as a random encounter or in a dungeon room. There isn't intended to be any one solution - it's meant to be addressed by thinking in terms of what's possible within the narrative context of the session. Your players may surprise you!

The party should come upon a circle of tall stone pillars - these may be a monument out in the wilderness, or placed in a dungeon room. If outdoors, they should be on a tall hill with little surrounding foliage or rocks to protect the hilltop from the wind. If in a dungeon, the pillars should be in a wide, tall-ceilinged chamber, preferably with cavernous exits to all sides to ensure a draft can pass through easily.

There are four pillars, ranging from ten to twenty feet high; each is five feet higher than the last if one walks in a clockwise circle starting from the shortest pillar. In the center of the circle is a stone platform, fifty feet across, carved with a clockwise spiral. A DC 10 Investigation check will reveal that there is a circular seam in the middle of the spiral, forming a smaller concentric circle fifteen feet across.

Atop each pillar is a shallow bronze brazier, heaped with coals, but these coals are cold and extinguished (they are cool to the touch, indicating they have not been lit in some time). Optionally, the bases of the pillars (at eye level to the PCs) may be carved with designs recalling rising flames and swirling winds, or an image of the four braziers lit simultaneously, if you feel a hint is necessary.

The goal of this puzzle is to light the brazier atop each pillar in sequence, starting from the shortest pillar, moving clockwise, and ending at the tallest, without any of the braziers going out. This is perhaps easier said than done, as the breeze blowing through the circle can easily to extinguish the flames. If one brazier goes out before all are lit, the sequence must be started over from the shortest pillar.

In order to solve the puzzle, the PCs must find a way to light each brazier without the wind blowing them out. They could climb the pillars, but doing so would take time, and the fires might go out in the meantime. They could try to jump from one pillar to the next, but that would create a breeze that could put the fires out. They could use magic or flaming arrows to try and light the braziers from below, but the wind might make aiming difficult. They could try to block the wind, but that might be a daunting task, especially if the circle is outdoors! Just go by what solutions and consequences make logical sense, and use your judgment.

Once all the braziers are lit in the correct order, the smaller circle on the platform recedes into the stone with a rumbling noise, revealing a spiral staircase down into a secret chamber. In this chamber, on a stone slab, is laid a pair of enchanted velvet gloves, their surface embroidered with the images of flames. The gloves are magically resistant to fire; although they feel no different than ordinary gloves while worn, they cannot catch fire by any means, and the hand beneath them will not feel the fire's heat. The rest of the wearer's body remains vulnerable as normal. If this encounter is used in a dungeon, it might be fun to hide treasures or secrets in the same dungeon within fires so that the gloves unlock new options for the wearer.

Alternatively, the DM may wish to substitute another treasure, a clue to an ongoing quest, or a secret passage. Feel free to use whatever would be most useful to your purposes here.