The Trickster's Riddle

[Yerkan of Elish]

I erect a small series of gardens, focusing them around earthworks, vines, and trees with long, thin tendrils. Willows surround a podium in the center, upon which I place a thick book with empty pages.

This shall be the place where people can come and try their hand at the riddle asked by our tawny friend. Among the trees and gardens, there are many places to quietly sit and ponder. The arrangement of the plants and earthworks enables those within the gardens to easily hide themselves and avoid the distraction of other people.

At the base of the podium, the riddle is inscribed in letters that alternately glow with brilliant light and seem to absorb all light into their shadowy crevasses:

Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Mayor
Fuzzy Wuzzy Didn’t Care
Fuzzy Wuzzy – Who Was He?

If Fuzzy Wuzzy Was A Bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy’d Have A Lair
Hunter’s Can’t Surround It – Is It Even There?
And Fuzzy Was Cold – His Cave Had No Hair
Fuzzy Wuzzy – Who Was He?

[Steepest Durin]

Th' Frosted Arboretum an' th' Icy Waste shows pretty well that adamas is cold. An' smooth! I'll go explorin' among th' garden there, lookin' fer a beastie that might make a lair there!

[Diamond Master]

You worm your way through a hole in a buttressed mass of tree roots. Below, you enter a cavern formed from the bulwark of the tree's underground fibers. This place is lined with mirrors of various sorts: the shimmering from bright gems, the glint of glass with painted backing, and the reflection from a shallow lake of cool water in this underground place. In this lake's surface, you can see the entirety of another tall tree. Embedded in the frozen tree is a silver saber, around which the tree has grown for ages. Frost specks the sword, but it still seems sharp, as best you can tell in the rippling reflection.

[Great Thrash]

Th' Frosted Arboretum an' th' Icy Waste shows pretty well that adamas is cold. An' smooth! I'll go explorin' among th' garden there, lookin' fer a beastie that might make a lair there!

Similarly, the Frozen Ocean! No hair there.

[Volatilus]

I'll scout the Frozen Ocean for structures worth mentioning caves, lairs and the like. Can't surround it huh, Ha! We will see about that!

[Diamond Master]

You find a great many of the smallish fierce predators that race the smooth, swooping surfaces of the Frozen Ocean. The predators are crustacean-like, of a hue to match the still ocean. Massive claws, with powerful grips, jut out from their front sections, depositing food into disproportionately large mandibles. Legs scurry away beneath. They scratch away at the frozen surface, seeking an even smaller variety of insect inside: the prey species, which feasts on the increasing entropy of the Universe a bit at a time, converting it into body mass and life but causing the ocean to remain forever crystallized in time. Where the predators have been, the lairs of the prey begin to melt until they are re-inhabited by prey once again.


In addition, the swoops and falls of the ocean produce many natural hollow places and lairs inhabited by all varieties of creatures. None seem to match the description of "mayor" or "uncaring," but their lairs are certainly cold and hard.

[AIiCE]

The mind of a wise old man.

[Diamond Master]

"Methinks this one knows something, this floating orb!! Still wrong though. But close. Very close!"

[Yerkan of Elish]

Mad Arcane Zeus, or, perhaps, following the lead of our new AI friend, the lost and confused mind thereof.

[Diamond Master]

"Nay. Though there's a character worth talking to!"