Why do we even have that lever?

The owners of the castle exist on multiple planes, or, more accurately, between them. By shifting their mass between this world and its parallels they can walk through walls. Hard surfaces are more of a suggestion to them, really, and architecturally used to break up space the way we might use a fancy screen, or to keep other species out (or, in this case, in).

The maze walls also aren't visible on some of the parallel planes. The occupants of the castle have a betting pool going for what prisoners will try to escape and how far they'll get, and every week or so someone will go down and return the poor lost bastards to their cells.

There's another section for members of their own kind. It doesn't have a maze. It's much crueler to build the walls from something that exists on every plane and keep those used to freedom trapped in a small space.

Why does cancelling this ship's self destruct require solving a Mahjong-based puzzle?

 

Well, it wasn't intended for keeping people in. Not originally. It was built as an amusement for one of the princes, who had pretty severe agoraphobia and couldn't bear the sight of open sky. It got repurposed as a menagerie a generation later, but no one really liked it being underground and most of the animals didn't really thrive without at least some natural light and fresh air. So the animals all got moved into a proper zoo, aboveground, and the king of the time - trying to find a way to save some of the budget, since the kingdom had just pulled through a famine and really couldn't afford to raise taxes on anyone when it was going to lead to civil unrest - decided to repurpose it again and turn it into a dungeon for people who had been sentenced, rather than spend money building a whole new jail. His thinking was that being in a maze would help deter people trying to escape.

It didn't exactly work, as you can see. Especially not after one of the princesses, feeling clever, convinced the king that anyone who did successfully escape the maze should be given their freedom.

Why is this shrine full of automatons that attack anyone who enter it?

 

A long time ago they were shrine attendants, doing the grunt work so the monks could do more on the human end. They follow every word of the religion's doctrine to the letter and have the entirety of its 457 holy texts hardwired into their memories. Unfortunately, there's a tiny, little, oft forgotten, mostly ignored passage that mentions human sacrifices during solar eclipses. A solar eclipse happened and since then the robots have been stuck in "find a human sacrifice" mode. It doesn't matter that the solar eclipse was over fifty years ago. It's in their programming, and until someone can get close enough to reprogram them, that's what they're going to do. If it's any consolation, they think they're preventing the end of the world.

Why do the exits seal and the walls start moving together when you step on that floor tile?

 

That's the fruit squeezer for making industrial quantities of fruit juice. Several tons of fruit are added to the room via the upper entrances, and their weight sets off the mechanism and they get crushed into juice. That's also why there's so many rows of very narrow drains; that's how the juice leaves, while the pulp remains in the room. After a certain amount of liquid is in the tanks, they drop down slightly from their weight and the counterweight moving up puts the crushers back in "open mode" so the room can be cleaned.

Why are you even in there with the mechanism active? Turn it off first!

Why is this temple full of spikes in major rooms, in the way, such as all over the floor?

 

It was a temple to the Goddess of Ice, and the rune-engraved spikes are a rather clever rudimentary mana condenser, channeling the ambient energy of Her divine aura to produce a variety of constructs out of ice. In its heyday, supplicants would walk on raised sheets of ice among gardens of delicate frost flowers, kneeling in supplication before tapestries of tangled icicles. Buuut you know how it is, congregations waning, hard to get butts in seats when the damn kids these days whine so much when they get frozen to the pew, back in our day we called that a sign of Her favor, and long story short She found greener pastures to blight with Her holy frost and most of it melted.

Why is this space station full of narrow walkways over deep pits with barely any handrails?

 

Because SpaceFam, the original manufacturer, was never very good for artificial gravity. It was just strong enough that you weren’t actually floating, and also broke a lot. This new Horizon Space Solutions gravity is much better! Strong and reliable. But retrofitting the station with safety rails after SpaceFam went out of business (shocking, right?) is turning out to be a nightmare!

So why is the combination to this ancient lock written on the key? At first glance it looks like a two factor authentication situation where you gotta enter a combination and also use the key to open the door, but the combination being written on the key makes that all seem pretty pointless.

 

It's not that kind of security feature; it's more like a Captcha. This place used artificial magical servants to do cleaning and other chores, but they kept bumbling into places they weren't supposed to go and causing all sorts of problems. Nobody wants their notes thrown in the trash because the magic Roomba couldn't tell them from waste paper, or hazardous magical components moved around at random because it decided to mop up a half-finished summoning circle. But they needed access to most of the locked parts of the building to do their job, so the owner couldn't just take the keys away. After thinking about the problem for a bit, it occurred to the owner that since magic Roombas aren't much smarter than the electronic kind, they can't work a combination lock. The code was never meant to be hard for a human to figure out, it just had to baffle a Roomba.

Why can I only get through this building by lassoing myself with vines from convenient magic flowers?

 

This is one of those temporary constructions that stuck around longer than anticipated, like the London Eye or the Jobrecht Ogre. The building's technically a botanical aviary still under construction (passion projects, you know how it is) and the pre-existing rickety walkways weren't cutting it. Luckily with a little enchantment some of the intended residents can double for adjustable access (good for cleaning and tinkering with all those delicate, difficult-to-reach glass panels in a way ladders just weren't) and as a carnivorous deterrent to pests. It's only a big problem if you're a slug! Or if you don't like heights, I suppose...

Why are these guard dogs carrying small pouches of coins?

 

Guard dogs? Oh, you must be referring to the banks messenger dogs. They’re a side business, kind of like a mobile atm. Order your money via telegram and it shows up 30 minutes late via trained dog. It was supposed to be a temporary promotion, but people loved it so much that it’s become one of that bank’s main draws.

They’re pretty defensive of their packages and will probably give you one hell of a bite if you’re not the intended recipient.

Why are the city guards so weak that a group of ragtag heroes that’s been adventuring for two weeks can take out a team of them with no trouble?

 

Look, it's been a fractious decade. What with the kind of money to be made in the countless mercenary bands in neighbouring duchies and kingdoms, now that inter-kingdom conflict is ramping up again, all the fighters with any skill or ambition have left for the border or the nearest wealthy noble's estate. The city's strained coffers simply can't match the price, nor the prestige. For real fighters - and for the people who do the real enforcement here - you're better off looking to the rich quarter, where it seems like every mansion these days has its own hired army.

Why does this chandelier drop (when this ornate lever is pulled) to enclose whoever walks beneath it?

 

They used to play this old party game at balls and galas to make the dances more interesting. The name of the game is more eloquent in the original language, and had a pun in it, but the most direct translation, three hundred years and four wars later, is "capture kiss." Groups would dance heavily choreographed dances that took them around the dance floor in intricate patterns, and once in a while the host would drop the chandelier and try to catch two of them in the center. If they caught two, they kissed. I'm told that it was quite fun with the looser social laws of the time, back when kissing a near stranger didn't mean ending up in a fight with their wife. The past truly was a different world.

Why is this castle full of hidden passages, secret hallways, and forgotten rooms hidden behind paintings and statues?

 

Ah. Yes. That. It's rather embarrassing, actually. The castle was built to seat a freshly-appointed duke, allegedly one of the king's bastards he was rather fond of, and there was a whole... Thing about who got to design it and who got to lead the building project.

Then the head architect died rather suddenly- people took to the romantic notion of the land being haunted over the more practical idea that his rival had murdered him in order to take over the project- and after that nobody worked on it longer than a year. Superstitious types got scared off by the rumors of ghosts or the project being cursed, others just got fed up with every new project lead trying to apply his shiny new plans to the existing construction.

The castle was finished, eventually. For a certain value of 'finished.' Some walls don't quite meet up because one architect meant to put a hallway there but the next didn't so the duke's family just put up tapestries and statues to distract from it. Some hallways take circuitous routes to other places in the castle because of several people's designs turning into a mess of bad planning- the so called 'secret passage ways.' The servants use them sometimes when the servant passages are clogged during events and looping around actually takes less time.

Why does this hallway reverse gravity with great force once people pass a certain point, stay like that, and then switch again, causing people and objects to be battered against the ceiling and floor?

 

This whole structure used to be a spaceship! Though most areas of the dungeon are now inoperable from the crash and the intermediary years - thankfully life support is no longer necessary - the gravity generator for this hallway remained miraculously intact. Sadly, the gravity fluctuations it was meant to account for don't occur in its new stationary, earthbound position, and in the interim the mechanism has become very sensitive to any pressure change - incapable of reversing gravity for extended periods of time, but still valiantly attempting to adjust every time its delicate sensors are tripped.

Why does this cloak bind tightly to its wearer, slowly strangling them?

 

That's a children's long cloak, not an adults half cloak, enchanted to be self tying and hard to lose. It's made for kids aged 5-7 so their parents don't have to keep buying them new clothes when they lose them playing.

Kids' necks are skinnier than adults, so it makes sense that when the cloak tried to clasp itself around your neck it cut off your airway a bit. Sorry. It also seems to have bound itself to you for lack of a nearby child. Bundle it up in your bag until you can get it back to the store to deactivate it and it should be fine.

Where did all of these talking cats come from and why do they keep attacking me when I answer their riddles wrong?

 

They're khajit children, mapping approximately to unusually literate human five-year-olds, who discovered a riddle book and are having great fun hassling people about riddles. They haven't figured out yet that human skin is more easily injured by claws than khajit skin-with-fur-on. Sorry. The parents really should keep a closer eye on them.


Who puts spikes all over the floor and floating patches of wall in a castle? Why do you have to navigate this gauntlet of spikes just to get to a damaged mirror?

 

The mirror wasn’t always damaged. It used to be a powerful magical artifact, a portal to another world. It might still even have it’s magical powers. After what happened last time, though, they’re...a bit hesitant to let anyone get near it.

Why the FUCK is there a hidden laser maze in this public restroom?

 

Well, it's supposed to be a system of green and red lights telling people which stalls are in use. However, it was made by an extremely technologically advanced society that uses the same light sources for everything and controls the brightness with computers. Somehow it was decided that the light source intensity would be an unsigned int, because you can't have negative brightness, and now any integer underflow causes lasers. There's been some halfhearted attempts to change over to signed ints, but it'd have to be across the board because everyone is using the same library. It'd probably have to be be a breaking change, too, and there'd be costs to both code elegance and code efficiency, all of which this society finds abhorrent. On the plus side, if you track down the person who made the underflow error, you shouldn't have any trouble getting them executed.

In the meantime, have you tried turning off the lights? The only security for them has to do with spoofing; the disable command is available through the same API as flushing the toilets, just with an extra confirmation dialog. All you need is a modern phone.

 

Well you see, the ship was meant to host the interstellar Mahjong competition, so some bright spark in marketing thought they should make the puzzle the basic password for Everything, surely the enthusiasts would have no problem solving it? They also went with the lowest bidder for their programming. Yeah.

Why does this room feature two statues who shoot you with arrows if you stop looking at them, forcing you to use a Very Specific path to cross it?

 

ah, that's the old courtly etiquette school. all the knights-in-training had to pass through the testing room before they were knighted. you see, as a knight, you don't look away from a monarch, and sometimes this requires you to plot a path where you never look away from either of two monarchs. the arrows aren't supposed to be fired at all -- if they are, the initiate automatically fails. still, they're wearing full ceremonial armor, and if they're looking away they won't be shot in the eyeholes. they'll be fine.

as for why the room is unlabeled: everybody knows you don't just wander around the courtly etiquette school! haven't you noticed that there's all kinds of other dangerous things in there? did nobody warn you before you went in?? I'm so sorry! still, it shouldn't be that hard to get out, even in that room; you just back up and leave. what do you mean you went through. that's a you problem.

why do the guards always walk the same pattern and not seem to care if someone is watching them?

 

They're constructs of some sort following a pre-programmed route! They're intended to reduce the number of actual guards needed, but due to budget concerns there's now only them.

Why does this hotel have spikes on the floor?