Right, so, we have two wishes left, good to remember that everyone. Two wishes that we can use for absolutely anything we want, as far as we know. Two whole wishes that-

[X] Just wish to be inside the tower where all the best treasure is. You really have no patience for this puzzle shit, and Makram does still owe you two wishes.

-that we'll never use because this is a board made up of gamers and we will never give up anything valuable.
 
" 'Need'? Hah! Pfhah! Haha!" You're really not as good at the regal scoffing thing as he is. "I'm a dragon! I don't 'need' anything, I want what I want and I take what I want! No I will deign to let you accompany me out of a sense of guilty obligation because you almost ruined my life."

Our internal narration is right, we're not so good at this. We may need to practice :p

The constructs respond in unison once more. "I kill in droves, I raze whole cities. I devour mountains and scour the land clean. And yet I am praised, even worshipped. I absolve your sins but carry them with me, and so persist in the dark, festering, unforgotten. What am I?"

Mmmh. I'm not really feeling the dragon answer? The sin bit is more important, I think, and also Dragons don't stay in the dark festering. We're obviously above that.
 
"I kill in droves, I raze whole cities. I devour mountains and scour the land clean. And yet I am praised, even worshipped. I absolve your sins but carry them with me, and so persist in the dark, festering, unforgotten. What am I?"
Hrm.

I'd like to be able to answer the riddle, assuming it's not one of those "multiple answers, so I can pick whether you're wrong or right" ones, but "rain" or "storm" doesn't seem quite right.

Omegahugger's "dragon" is amusing, certainly.
 
Sounds like "god" to me (small g).
Hmm. "Conscience"? I got nothing :/

Edit: Conquest?
 
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Floods ruin cities. A grand enough flood can consume a mountain. It contains dumped bodies so it can be a case of carrying sins with it, festering, unforgotten. If you get into Christian or Hindu symbolism water could be called an absolver of sins.(Ganges River and/or baptism)
 
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"It's not like I want you to come with me...baka!"

[X] Answer the Riddle yourself.
--[X] Floods
 
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[X] Just wish to be inside the tower where all the best treasure is. You really have no patience for this puzzle shit, and Makram does still owe you two wishes.
 
"Then why, dear master, would you summon a wretch like me? For another wish perhaps?" He adjusts his pose. You grimace.

"Stop that. It's discomforting."

"What is, master~?"
Makram definitely not flexing: "I bet you just can't wait to make use of me eh Master~?"
Eldingar: "why are you like this, what is this power dynamic"
Makram slowly slipping his skirt down one hip: "Mm? Like? Do you see something you like eh Master~?"
Eldingar: "do you just need attention, is that it"
Makram as he pours oil down his nearly naked body: "Pfft as if I cared what you thought."

"You were lis-? Of course you were don't even answer that," you grumble, again. "Those were our style names. You pick one when you leave home and make it longer and longer as you get older and do more shit. Mother's is a couple sentences and Nana Illvithri's is more or less a novel by this point. S'been so long since I've needed to use it it just felt weird to hear it out loud." You pause awkwardly. "So what I'm saying is just 'Eldingar' is fine, no need to be a shit about it."

God it's just like that one tumblr post of "he was an elf lord so powerful and impressive that his first name alone had twenty three apostrophes".

I do like the element of family that's being played up, usually dragons are pretty solitary in fiction but here they're consciously omnipresent and involved, their expectations, their opinions, their plans and all that good stuff. And I kinda love how the stakes are something so mundane as "show up at the family reunion looking like at functional person" but it still feels like a crisis y'know? But yeah something that occurs to me is that Eldingar almost definitely...hrm. I can't recall if it was mentioned but I'd be surprised if he was an only child, or nah his narration probably would've mentioned it. I do imagine he has a lot of cousins that fill a similar role and him being an only child might explain part of why his mother is so uh...herself.

Point I'm getting at is that Eldingar probably has really complicated and unhappy relationships with his generational peers and it hasn't been highlighted but the bones of it are there and I'm both interested and apprehensive to see what gets built on it 'cause this poor blue dumbass doesn't deserve to get kicked down any more. Just, like, bullied a bit.

Plenty of the illustrations you saw gave incubi leather wings. Among... other things.

oh my god

eldingar's got a porn stash of demon hentai some-

oh god we left the demon alone in our cave, he's gonna find our porn stash

The constructs respond in unison once more. "I kill in droves, I raze whole cities. I devour mountains and scour the land clean. And yet I am praised, even worshipped. I absolve your sins but carry them with me, and so persist in the dark, festering, unforgotten. What am I?"

I thiiiiiiink the people suggesting water/rain/floods/rivers are on the right track, especially given the capped well outside and the design etched into the floor. And I think there's something ominous here that Eldingar's not picking up 'cause he's an apex predator shut in so hasn't had his danger sense developed at all. The whole reference to "dark, festering, unforgotten" and the capped well outside lean towards the idea of something tainted, corrupted and toxic being stored out of sight. The water so dark it looks more like oil than anything. The sealed shit near an isolated wizard's watchtower a million miles from anything that could open it. It really evokes the idea of Bad Shit.

Hrm.

[X] Try to trick Makram into solving it by playing on his ego. It's clear the only thing he loves more than putting people down is puffing himself up, and you're such an easy target he might just take the bare hook, let alone bait.

Makram's straight up more worldly than us and I think we are missing some crucial cultural context, 'cause we know jack and shit about and have even less interest in the Sultanate. Plus after all his bullying earlier he deserves to get baited a little.

-that we'll never use because this is a board made up of gamers and we will never give up anything valuable.

Yeah but you want to save the wishes for thematically appropriate moments since the second they're gone, if we don't have a good enough relationship with the ifrit, he's just gonna fuck off. So we need to think about meaningful times to use them, not blow them at the first opportunity.
 
The problem with just wishing ourself inside the tower...

You know what Makram will do, right? He won't teleport us inside, or anything flashy. Instead he'll just answer the riddle so we can both walk in. And then make fun of us for the rest of his life about it.

[X] Try to trick Makram into solving it by playing on his ego. It's clear the only thing he loves more than putting people down is puffing himself up, and you're such an easy target he might just take the bare hook, let alone bait.
 
[X] Try to trick Makram into solving it by playing on his ego. It's clear the only thing he loves more than putting people down is puffing himself up, and you're such an easy target he might just take the bare hook, let alone bait.
 
[X] Try to trick Makram into solving it by playing on his ego. It's clear the only thing he loves more than putting people down is puffing himself up, and you're such an easy target he might just take the bare hook, let alone bait.
 
[X] Try to trick Makram into solving it by playing on his ego. It's clear the only thing he loves more than putting people down is puffing himself up, and you're such an easy target he might just take the bare hook, let alone bait.
 
Eldi doesn't have anywhere near the social chops to trick Makram into solving it, though.

wait that just makes it better to try
 
Yeah but you want to save the wishes for thematically appropriate moments since the second they're gone, if we don't have a good enough relationship with the ifrit, he's just gonna fuck off. So we need to think about meaningful times to use them, not blow them at the first opportunity.
Bah, fine. We'll exercise some self control for now. But I swear I have the right to write in frivolous wish wasting in the future.

[X] Try to trick Makram into solving it by playing on his ego. It's clear the only thing he loves more than putting people down is puffing himself up, and you're such an easy target he might just take the bare hook, let alone bait.
 
[X] Try to trick Makram into solving it by playing on his ego. It's clear the only thing he loves more than putting people down is puffing himself up, and you're such an easy target he might just take the bare hook, let alone bait.
 
"flood", "river", "sea" is along the line of my guesses, but I sorta suspect this is more specific than that and might refer to some worldbuilding that we aren't aware of and "I feel like I'm missing some cultural context here," is exactly on point.

[X] Try to trick Makram into solving it by playing on his ego. It's clear the only thing he loves more than putting people down is puffing himself up, and you're such an easy target he might just take the bare hook, let alone bait.
 
[X] Try to trick Makram into solving it by playing on his ego. It's clear the only thing he loves more than putting people down is puffing himself up, and you're such an easy target he might just take the bare hook, let alone bait.
 
"Very well, Master Eldingar."

"Mmmmhmmmmmovingon."

I guess we're not kink compatable

"This may prove entertaining. So long as you understand that without a wish I am under absolutely no obligation to help you in any way, I will deign to accompany you."

I-it's not like I like you or anything!

You glide along, wings outstretched like the great leathery sails of some nightmare bat. Nightmare bat - does Belial have wings? Plenty of the illustrations you saw gave incubi leather wings. Among... other things. Is that real?

Okay, we're digging the incubi and have some...puerile curiosity about him, woo~

herd of goats (hungry, ehn, not hungry enough)

Hey, goat is delicious, but this might be a hunger to effort ratio, in which case I forgive him.

Ugh. At least Jun-ho would've been someone to talk to. Belial and Issachar might've been too, but they can't fly so you might've had to put them on your back and that's just a nightmare and a half to imagine. Hm. You glance down speculatively at your empty foreclaw. If you were extra careful maybe you could just carry them? That'd be more dignified. You've got a gentle grip, you're sure they'd get off with just some minor bruising. Maybe a lot of chafing in Belial's case, the near-nudist fuck. Is that a cultural thing or do incubi have some excuse like hyper-sensitive skin or something? You should ask when you get back, too.

Woo, we wanna hoard the husbandos already! Also, still thinking about Belial.

a glorious edifice of sandstone and brass inlay that catches the sun just so to make the whole thing glow as brilliantly as any treasure. It must be absolutely glorious at sunrise or sunset - the Sultanate has good taste.

Sweet, new summer home.

"I kill in droves, I raze whole cities. I devour mountains and scour the land clean. And yet I am praised, even worshipped. I absolve your sins but carry them with me, and so persist in the dark, festering, unforgotten. What am I?"


[X] Answer the riddle yourself.
--[X] War.

War kills and razes cities, mines for minerals and scours the land. But war is praised, heroes, and soldiers and the deadly blade, for to kill during a War is no longer murder. But it is still dead, and so the dead are buried, the scars remain, it is a dark history.

Also Eldy thought about a war when he saw the place.
 
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Mmmh. I'm not really feeling the dragon answer? The sin bit is more important, I think, and also Dragons don't stay in the dark festering. We're obviously above that.
In true Tohru fashion I read the first three clues, thought "That sounds like a dragon!" and then proceeded to ignore the following hints that make it clear it isn't a dragon.
 
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