Closed The Forest of Furniture Dormbattle 2022 Team 1

After Opeila directed Team 1 to their escape room, Koko felt her stomach contract as acid rose into her throat. She hadn't thought this through. Sure, she was just with her fellow Slytherins, but she was a prefect, an older year... She was supposed to know what she was doing.

She would glance at the members of her team, only speaking if spoken to, as they made their way to their room. Her feet were weights of iron as she trudged along her path. The stairs from the basements were not friendly at all, and Koko gripped the railing tightly when she was on the stairs. When she was in the corridors, her hands were clenching into fists and then relaxing quickly in a repetitive cycle.

The room immediately seemed a bit daunting. Koko narrowed her eyes at the towers of desks and chairs - it was all so tall. She would have to be a cat in order to get up there without knocking anything over. Maybe one of her fellow students was an animagus. That would be a useful skill.

Koko looked about the rest of the room, noting the ring hanging from the ceiling - What on earth could that be used for? she thought - as her heartbeat slowed from a panicked pounding in her throat to a softer thrum behind her ribs.

That was when she saw the broom, and try as she might, she couldn't have stopped herself from smiling even if she had wanted to.

She didn't say anything, not yet, but more than anything, she wanted to stick out her hand and whisper, 'Up.'

For now, though, she would crouch near the broom - to inspect it - and wait to see if anyone else had any better observations.

Interactions: None, but open (she'll respond when talked to).
Mentioning: Team 1 (not going to ping you guys unless you want me to).

Interacting: Team 1
Action: Walking past Koko Riddle and picking up the book to examine it

Hui Ming approached the escape room with his normal, reserved air. His every instinct screamed at him to keep his head down and get through the task quietly and efficiently.

Unfortunately, that was not a luxury that he could allow himself any longer.

As the upperclassmen filed into the room – thank heavens that Ironwoods was not here, he had still not overcome their less-than-stellar initial encounter – the first-year stalked into the room last, as was his custom. Always be the first in and the last out, and always stay alert and away from possible trouble.

Not that he expected trouble. Of his teammates, one was Prefect Riddle and another was Miss Kennedy from the duelling circuit. The last teammate was one of the older boys from Snape Dorm that he did not quite recognize.

The room was spacey, more than he expected. Perhaps he had thought that an escape room would be full of complicated contraptions, and this one was not. The furniture had all been carefully moved to the side and piled atop each other. Two towers, identical and opposed, with a hard-to-reach peak; with a floating circle in the sky. The Tolkenesque imagery was...

Ming shook himself. Perhaps he was massively overanalyzing every aspect of this problem. He needed to stop

“Let’s get started, then.” He muttered more to himself than anyone else and moved forwards to inspect the only other obvious aspects of the room. His forward movement was matched by Prefect Riddle it seemed, who had had the same thought. Except where he went for the book, she had gone for the broom.

He gave the prefect a small, silent nod of acknowledgement before picking up the book and examining the cover. So much can be told from books that have been handled. How worn was it? Was there any obvious markings on it? What was the title? Was the covering printed, or hand-written.

Lost in his own little examination, he paid no mind to the last two members of his team. Not that he was ignoring them; but merely that he was focused on his own, self-assigned task.

PS: Would appreciate tags when y'all post. It'll help to keep me on top of things

Jack walked with the others to the room called The Forest of Furniture and whistled once they stepped inside. He was amazed at the towers that had been crafted from the piles of tables and chairs and wondered if they were meant to fly up to one or more of them with the broom he saw shortly after on the ground. The empty book had him puzzled, especially since there didn't seem to be any utensils to write in it like a quill or ink. What on Earth were they meant to do here?

The Welsh boy looked at each of the other members of his team who were present. They had quite an assortment from a first year to a fourth year. He wondered what Cash was doing as their team's chosen champion as well. Eventually, Koko went over to inspect the broom. Jack wondered if that had something to do with the fact that she was a Quidditch player and she might have been drawn to it.

Wanting to follow her example and get started himself, Jack hurried over to the ring tied to the ceiling from the string to inspect it. It seemed like it could be untied, but to what end? Was it a magic ring? Were they supposed to put it on?

@Koko Riddle, @Starlee Kennedy, &@Hui Ming

@Koko Riddle @Jack Burnett @Starlee Kennedy @Hui Ming ( @Cassandra Ironwoods)
Round 1

All the teams seemed to start of struggling slightly, but if one thought about it, it wasn't that surprising. Opeila had sent all the teams to go to different rooms where they found some sort of clue, but some really didn't help much at first glance. This team did not get 'coordinates' or names of authors, they got three objects that seemed to have no connection with each other at all.

Perhaps it was the lack of message that made this clue the most difficult of the three, but there was after all more to the room than the three objects they had received. The stacks of chairs and tables had changed the atmosphere of the room quite much, suddenly it seemed much darker than usual. Some of the piles of furniture blocked the light from coming in and threw long shadows- it was really a forest of furniture in a way.

Koko, the Quidditch Player, examined the broom at first, which was not very surprising either. Maybe it was a tool? Maybe it would allow them to get a better view on everything from above? It was no new broom, that much was clear, it resembled one of the old school brooms that some older students were so eager to get away from that they bought brooms for themselves. But perhaps it was better than nothing?

Reminder:
The rounds go the same as the battle of champions rounds, so 120 hours to post. And yes, this will be baby steps, means you make a guess, an action, whatever and it may either be wrong or right.
I have to see how I go on about hints, I'm gonna decide that spontanously and depending on the situation.
Please remember to state actions, everyone You will know when you are making good choices.
Also, a few of you posted after the deadline. As there were not many actions, there isn't much for me to skip anyway this round, but should it happen in the future- If deadlines are missed, the actions stated in that round will be reacted to by me in the next, unless you post again with different actions.
Have fun!

@Koko Riddle @Jack Burnett @Starlee Kennedy @Hui Ming ( @Cassandra Ironwoods)
Round 2

After the first round of what seemed to be confusion it didn't get much better. The three items the team had been provided with didn't seem to serve as clues, at least not at first glance. While Koko had begun to examine the broom, the youngest member of the team, Hui, had picked up the book, that was perhaps the most likely of the three to contain a hidden clue.

But on the outside it was plain black, perhaps a little old looking leather with not even a title on it and if he opened it, he would find yellow, stained but otherwise entirely clean pages. Had Opeila used invisible ink to write down a clue? For sure a possibility, but certainly she would have made sure that the team would be able to reveal the clue somehow.

Jack went to examine the third item, the mysterious ring on the string. If he looked for an inscription, he would find nothing. If he looked at the string, he would find it to be an entirely normal string as it could be bought in a muggle shop- which it was. One of the old belongings of Opeila's grandmother who had been quite fascinated by the muggle way to sew clothes. Now the young Slytherin didn't have much use for these old supplies.

The ring was a simply golden ring that would fit on a slim middle finger. Nothing odd about it.

Reminder:
The rounds go the same as the battle of champions rounds, so 120 hours to post. And yes, this will be baby steps, means you make a guess, an action, whatever and it may either be wrong or right.
I have to see how I go on about hints, I'm gonna decide that spontanously and depending on the situation.
Please remember to state actions, everyone You will know when you are making good choices.
As there were not many actions, there wasn't much for me to skip this round, but should it happen in the future- If deadlines are missed, the actions stated in that round will be reacted to by me in the next, unless you post again with different actions.
Have fun!

After glancing at the broom, Koko thought she might vaguely understand what it could be used for. Since desks and chairs were piled so high, they might be unstable to climb, and since the ring was hanging from the ceiling, the safest way to reach it would be using the broom.

First, though, Koko would ask the others if they had seen anything useful. ‘So… I think we could use the broom to investigate the ring. But… What are your ideas? Does the book say anything useful?’

She shut her mouth quickly after that, already feeling awkward after having said so much. She turned her gaze back to the broom, which seemed to just be a normal school broom - nothing too special, something everyone could fly without too much trouble. That gave her the thought - perhaps they were meant to fly not to get the ring, but to see what else they were missing. Perhaps there was a bigger picture. ‘If it’s okay with all of you, I might fly up a little to see what there is. If anyone wants to join me, let me know.’

She would wait for another opinion before she did anything, but she would share her opinions even if they didn’t amount to anything. Any idea was a crumb, and a crumb could make something bigger.

Action: talk to the others.

Interacting: Team 1
Action: Asking @Koko Riddle to take a look at the book

Ming looked at the cover, before opening the book and looking over it carefully. The pages had no writing on them, which was a little disappointing, but fine.

What struck Ming as odd, however, was that the paper was yellow. Why was the paper aged? If the purpose of the book was to simply serve as a medium of writing, why had Miss Opeila not simply gone out and gotten a new book? Or why had she spent the effort to artificially age the pages.
The smallest of frowns, as practices hands shifted through the book a second time.

At the announcement of the Slytherin prefect, Ming started. It made sense that she would want to survey the situation from above, it might be good to have an alternate perspective of things. That said, she was also the oldest of those present here, and likely the most experienced in magic.

“Prefect Koko,” he said slowly, his enunciation perfect Queen’s English. It would not do to offend her with a careless word. He held up the empty notebook to her. “The notebook looks empty, but I believe there might be a message hidden within it.”

Left unsaid was his suspicion that the hidden message was not behind a magical spell; or at least that the key to the lock would be something in the room and not a spell. For all his overthinking, it would not do to come across as unpleasant.

“Could you perhaps take a look at it?”

Koko voiced an idea to use the broom to investigate the ring, but Jack, who found he could reach the ring easily from where he stood (as confirmed by Opeila OOC) thought perhaps the broom could be used for something else.

"What if someone used the broom to fly up and see if they can make out any sort of formation of the chairs and tables? Maybe they look different from up high. Or maybe from higher up, someone might be able to see something we might have missed."

He glanced over at the first year, Hui Ming, who had been examining the book and found it to be blank. The pages looked aged, though, which suggested it might have contained more than it seemed to. Ming asked the prefect among them to take a look at the book, commenting that he thought there might have been a hidden message in it. Jack almost started snickering at the Ming's perfect diction but managed to surpress it behind a mere smile instead.

Koko responded that she would try and try she did. Jack watched as she used a revealing charm on the book, glad she had thought to try that one first. It was what he himself would have chosen to use, after all.

Meanwhile, Jack returned his attention to the golden ring. After a moment's hesitation, he began to slip it onto his pinky finger. Then he removed it and slipped it onto his ring finger. Then his middle finger, testing each finger on first his right and then his left hand.

Action: Trying the ring on each of his fingers.

@Koko Riddle, @Starlee Kennedy, @Hui Ming, & @Cassandra Ironwoods