I open the door slowly and fully, taking care to show that I have no intention of entering the room. I scan the room once it is open until I spot the warrior upon his perch. Still holding the mysterious pad, I address him politely.

"Thank you sir for your warning, and for thus giving me the chance to speak to you directly. You are the first civil entity I have encountered upon entering this realm, so I suspect that you, like myself, may not be a native of it."

I look toward where the portal lies dormant.

"Clearly this room contains the way forward, but I do not know what is needed to activate the gate. I did, however, encounter this..."

And I raise the pad up so that he may see its luminous surface.

"As yet I can coax no magic from it, but I strongly suspect it is tied to the secrets of this strange place. If you are amenable, then I would welcome you to take a look at this artifact yourself. Perhaps together we can prise the lore from its hidden pages and thus arm ourselves so we are not perpetually at the whims of this curious tower."

I await his response.

It looks like he has approached you diplomatically. If you want to avoid the fight and cooperate with him, that's OK. Otherwise, fire away.

Either way, your turn to begin round 2.

"Antsy's the name. Come near then and show me that devilish device. But if you try anything funny all that fancy talk won't save you, because I'll blow you to pieces. Come in a straight line under the balcony, don't step left or right, or you'll trigger one of those nasty traps I've placed and you will end up on the ceiling." I lower my crossbow, place it on my shoulder and with the grenado still in hand I await his approach.

Your turn.

"I am Wakamura," I respond as I walk directly to the balcony. "I found this in a chest that two thieves were intently, if ineptly, trying to open. They also dropped this."

I show the sigil with the crimson stallion.

"I do not know if this is significant, or if you have encountered the same in your travels here. But I show it to you in case it has some connection to this artifact."

I hold up the pad, facing him so that he can see the flashing "12" on it.

At that moment I've remembered the armors I've passed in the previous room and the fragment which lodged itself into my shield. I've almost completely forgot about this. And by carefully checking the shield I quickly discover that the metal is from the chestpiece of one of those armors, and it still has the blue-outlined crest of the howling silver wolf.
"Maybe these are connected, your stallion, my wolf and the birds on the armors in this room. It could be some kind of a puzzle, and if we solve this, we can activate that portal and get out if this damned place. We should bring the items together near the portal and see what happens. Now stand aside, I'm coming down." Thus speaking I collect my belongings swing down on the rope which I've climbed in the first place and sword in hand, keeping an eye on Wakamura, I begin to take strides towards the closest of the armors.

Sensing that the invisible presence which once ruled this tower has suddenly deserted it, Wakamura folds a giant dragon imbued with all five elements and sends it to nestle in the gateway port. He then invites Antsy to rule this tower together, plundering or enslaving any future travellers who wander in.

Then he folds a kettle and makes some nice cocoa.

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Postscript: This was a fun bit of roleplaying, and I expect it went a very different direction in our case than you expected. A creditable effort nonetheless, and I enjoyed it. Thanks!

I agree sharing the rule of our new kingdom, me as the military leader (I like the title Vizir) and Wakamura as the High Mage of our realm. And they've lived happily ever after... or did they?

Then it is settled, Antsy and Wakamura are the "rulers" of this level of the tower.... or so they think.

GOG, who "won"?

Off topic: It was great, I had a lots of laugh and fun in the process. Whoever you want to win it's ok for me, Sinistar was a great opponent, the three of us could almost write a collaborative novel :)

Great job, you really subverted the whole thing but it was fun... who knows, it could set the stage for a 2 vs. 2 battle where you have to defend the level of the tower that you now control. :)

OK, give me a day to tally up the points.. and also I'm receiving some votes via PM and I'll let you guys know.

After tallying my own points, plus the votes of GOG users submitted to me via PM... the finally tally is:

Blotunga 53
IAmSinistar 51

Extremely close! :)

Either way, very interesting... so Blotunga, contact me as soon as you can with your $5.99 GOG game request!

I'm hoping that we can do this thing again. What would the 2 of you say to the idea of defending your level of the tower from invaders (either NPC or maybe even PCs)? Alternatively, you could try to "invade" other levels to add to your "tower empire"!

I was thinking about even sending you guys the shoddy map I had of your level of the tower so you could study it, know its ins and outs, and maybe even change something around if you wanted to.

Wow, razor-thin! Congratulations to blotunga. He went into it more in the spirit of a duel, as the game was intended, so I feel he deserves the victory as well.

T'was indeed fun, and it would be a hoot defending the tower together from a couple of other live players. :D

Thank you Sinistar! I will wait until the weekend sale to see what's on :), but probably it will be something from my wishlist :). Thanks also to all those who have voted for me!
You were a worthy opponent, it was a lot of fun. And yes, we can continue against other players, or even introduce new characters (for the both of us) if we want :).
Also an idea might be to constrain it into some roleplaying system (for stats and such), but that would need a lot of work from the GM.