Identify Trap Training

[The Creator]

Identify Trap
Rank: "D"
Skill: Skill
Effect: A skill that allows users to identify traps that may have been placed.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: Can be learned by an Animal. Identifying traps is never a sure thing. Instead of a simple/yes no skill check, there are 4 potential outcomes: 1) successfully identify if a trap is present; 2) mistakenly identify a trap where there is none (false positive); 3 mistakenly identify that no trap is present when one exists (false negative); and 4) activate the trap. The Difficulty of finding traps is dependent on the Rank of the Raps. Look in Academia Skills thread found in the Skills and Traits Index for more information. Each time learned user gets 1 die roll to increase the skill.
Limit: ---

00 / 10
64 / 125
Able Learner

I made it to the cliff without much trouble. The entrance was nonchalant, as if it didn't want to be noticed. Of course, given from what I had heard about how badly it had been trapped, it didn't want to be noticed. Not a coincidence. I carefully examined the entrance before squeezing through the crack. I only took one step into the cave before I froze. Thanks to Tasukeru I was able to see a false floor just on the other side of the entrance. Below it was a punji pit filled with sharpened sticks of either wood or bamboo. I was interested in the false floor because that was truly where the trap lay. The unknowing would step on it and fall right through. But how would he or she fall through? And could the floor realign itself after it had allowed its victim to fall through? These are all questions that tugged at my mind. Using Tasukeru's x-ray vision, I would be able to see a little of the mechanism.

As I activated it, I frowned. The walls were covered in some sort of chakra that didn't allow for x-ray viewing. Was Tasukeru really so popular that it was a thought when planning out a trap-infested cave? Apparently so. I would have to do a little more investigating; get my hands dirty. I exited the cave and found a medium-sized stone. Bringing it back to the cave, I tossed it onto the fake floor. Immediately the floor gave way, splitting in half, swallowing the stone up into darkness. There were hinges that spun on either side of the hole, letting the floor twist down to reveal the pungi pit. A terrible smell arose from the hole. Probably dead animals that had wandered in.

I waited to see if the hole would cover itself up. Sure enough, behind the walls the mechanical whirring and clicking of gears meshing together hummed in a muffled tone. The floor halves slowly began to raise themselves out of the darkness, rotating on their hidden hinges, before finally clicking once again into place. Tasukeru didn't see a weak spot, some fail safe that the builder added in so that he could get past the trap without triggering it, and there was always the possibility that there wasn't one.

Using Doton, I was able to pull the stones from the walls that were hiding the gears behind them. Once I had pulled enough to reveal the skeleton of the trap, I saw that it was almost entirely mechanical in nature. What looked like a complex pulley and counterweight system hid in a small gap between the walls and a layer of natural stone which I assumed was the real wall of the cave. The weight on the floor would have to weigh more than the weight, as there was some scale or something there at the bottom, and if it did, it would pull a circular stone up a slope. And then the stone would slowly roll back down towards the base, pulling the gears of the hinges and pulling the doors back into place. It was an extremely simple design but it was the first one, which made me wary.

If this one was simple, did the builder want me to believe that this was only a simple cave?

[Solus]

+10TP

You go to 71 SP

[The Creator]

Identify Trap
Rank: "D"
Skill: Skill
Effect: A skill that allows users to identify traps that may have been placed.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: Can be learned by an Animal. Identifying traps is never a sure thing. Instead of a simple/yes no skill check, there are 4 potential outcomes: 1) successfully identify if a trap is present; 2) mistakenly identify a trap where there is none (false positive); 3 mistakenly identify that no trap is present when one exists (false negative); and 4) activate the trap. The Difficulty of finding traps is dependent on the Rank of the Raps. Look in Academia Skills thread found in the Skills and Traits Index for more information. Each time learned user gets 1 die roll to increase the skill.
Limit: ---

00 / 10
71 / 125
Able Learner

The cave, as it turned out, proved to be a much more inconspicuous threat than I had at first imagined. I had attacked the entrance with an air of hesitant caution but not of fear for my life, which was dangerous attitude in retrospect. Whether for providing the potential pilfer with a spike of cantankerous courage or for simply thwarting his continuous expectations of the cave I cannot say for why the entrance was so relatively perceivable. The trap-master's skill with clockwork machination was only, if anything, an antechamber showroom for what was truly to come.

My momentary master's words, I recollected, were collectively to ensure an air of caution about my adventure. And so it was without that air of caution that I stumbled into my first trap. The hallway gave way to a deliberately carved chamber. The worn faces of lost gods seemed to poke out from the rock with angry, scheming faces. Ivy carved from the stone gave the impression of wandering into an underground jungle. The floor was tiled with and raised in the middle, a square foot each, indiscernible from its neighbor. I did not notice that the room was devoid of critter life.

The tile should have been the first sign. Aside from the entrance being trapped, of course. Even though I set my foot down cautiously, the plate still dipped beneath its resting position. Retracting my foot, dust suddenly settled on my face as the stone around me shook with a grinding force. The entrance to the chamber stood in front of me slanted, the frame suddenly smaller, and the room through the crooked way was unaligned with a dizzying dip on the front-right side. The entire room in front of me had rotated in some odd fashion. What machination could possibly be behind this?

I looked into the room with a furrowed brow, attempting to assess the damage the trap had caused. The room was still intact, almost unchanged, with but a cloud of dust hanging about. What was the secret here? Perhaps some pathway in the stone tiling would lead the pathtaker there unharmed and the room still aligned. There was not a thing to do but test it and the unfortunate truth was that even a test that triggered the trap could rotate the doorway out of place and thus the passage impassable.

And let us say that I entered the room and stepped on a wrong step. I could be misaligned indefinitely. Who is to say that the rotation may be stopped when he inside is sufficiently stuck, only to righted by a secret lever on the other side of the trap. Nay, there must be some way through. As I was taught, all traps have a loophole.

Perhaps you do not think highly enough of the master of this maze. Can it not be that only an amatuer needs such a passageway to skip his own traps? Or that the master needs not enter the cave again?

What madness to think such things, I thought to myself. It would only be the amateur who forgot to make such safe passageways for himself. There must be one, of course. It would be the least probable path, as it tends to be, for that is the one least likely to be guessed by the pilferer. So then, with a renewed courage, I stepped unto the least likely stone. I squeezed myself through the doorway and set my weight upon it.

The loud grinding resumed, and the doorway I was stepping through shrank. Forced with making a rash decision at the sudden lurch of my stomach, I stepped through completely. The doorway, and the one across the path, suddenly vanished. Only stone could be seen on the other side. I frantically stepped off that stone and on to another one only to careen backwards at the sudden change in momentum. The second plate forced to spin round some other axis. I jumped off, gripping the tiny, stone ivy to hold my weight. If I could not figure this out, I would die here.

[Gohan]

At 80 SP+10 TP