A Chunk of Fantasy 2.07 – Roulette Room

“Is it me or does that look like a giant spinnable disk. I’m a gonna go spin it…”
– Last known words of party scout and rogue

The so-called Roulette Room is one of the most expensive traps ever devised. It was made by a group who wanted to test them self and had access to practically infinite gold and resources. The trap is simple yet deadly and amusing at the same time, depending on your luck.

The Roulette Room (RR) is a multipart trap. The first is the room itself. Entering the room without the right deactivation key (a small black ball) or pass locks the doors after 30 seconds with an audible click. Escaping from the room at this point is hard, but not impossible. There are only two doors, the entrance and the exit on the opposite side of the room. The room itself is comfortable and well decorated. It is about 60 x 60 feet with a 15 feet high ceiling. The lights come on automatically after the doors lock or on an easy to speak a command. There is even a switch by the door to activate the lights.

Once the lights are on, the second part of the trap starts up. In the middle of a room is a roulette wheel, with no table, slowly spinning. In one of the pockets lies a small white ball. The roulette wheel has on it 40 slots, numbered from 1 to 40, each with alternate colour bands of red and black. There is no zero slot. The easiest way to open the door is to spin the wheel and roll the key-ball. This will open both doors no matter what number is rolled on. The doors can be picked or broken open, but they are reinforced and it is not an easy task. Closing both doors resets the trap room, cleaning it, restoring it to its pristine condition and turns off the lights.

If the roulette wheel is spun with the white ball, however, the true nature of the trap room emerges. Whatever number the ball lands on, once spun around the edge, decides what the trap the room activates. This is the part that cost the most amount of money as each one of these has to be integrated magically into the system.

As of yet, only the ones who built the trap room and the ones who funded it know what number does what, but a few have been confirmed, such as…

• The room starts to shrink but living being within don’t – Squashing them
• Everything metal becoming highly magnetised
• Liquids boiling – including the liquids in potions and bodies
• Gravity being randomised for every person and object every 10 seconds
• A loud click and a rumbling noise that gets slowly louder, yet nothing happens
• The room starts spinning round and round , as fast as the wheel was spun
• The very air starts to act like a liquid
• Spells cast have the opposite effect
• Clerics are cut off from their deity and can’t heal etc
• Magical effects are negated
• Everyone forgets who they are for 24 hours