Perception Check Time

Take a good look at the below picture. So... do you see it? If you don't, maybe you failed your perception check. I would give this check a difficulty class of only 12. If you see it, go ahead and scroll down below the picture.

If you haven't seen it yet, I will give you another chance. If you are on Discord you can give the command t!dice d20, or you can visit this link, or if you happen to have a 20-sided polyhedral die handy go ahead and roll it. Add your Wisdom modifier to the result.
[If you are not sure if you should have a positive Wisdom modifier, chances are you don't! Subtract 1 from the result]
[If you are 100% certain you should have a positive Wisdom modifier, it is a safe bet that you do not! Subtract 2 from the result]

If your modified result is ≥ 12, you can scroll down and read the rest of this post. If you failed, sorry you will just have to close this post now and keep wondering what the heck I am talking about. I have my ways of knowing if you fail to follow this instruction...

Don't scroll down unless you passed the perception check

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Secret Door

Yes there is a secret door behind the bookcase. The visible door hinges are, of course, a dead giveaway... hence the relatively easy DC12 perception check. Incidentally, if you spotted the secret door without resorting to a d20 perception check, you are probably a dwarf (like me) or an elf! In the earliest editions of Dungeons & Dragons, way back before a "perception check" was even a twinkle in a min-max'ers eye, one of the benefits of playing a dwarf or elf character was that they had a 2 in 6 chance to automatically detect secret doors.

I personally spotted the secret door right away when I visited my sister this past weekend, no doubt because of my dwarven heritage. My brother-in-law is a carpenter and obviously a really cool dude! I say this because I have always personally wanted a secret door in my house, and now my sister has one and I am totally jealous. I failed to take many pictures during this trip because I was too busy having fun, but by George I did thoroughly document this hidden egress into the cavity behind the staircase up from the basement apartment to the rest of the house.

Magical Moving Pictures

By some wizardry I have managed to stitch together thousands of individual paintings of this secret door in use and transmitted them through the ether to an eldritch deity named YogTube that will project them in such rapid succession into your mind that you will be fooled into thinking you are witnessing a moving picture. Observe and tremble at the powers I command!

What Treasure Beyond?

Well hidden behind the secret door is a fantastic hoard of... half-empty paint cans. And a water heater. Okay, maybe Smaug isn't going to come flying out of the halls of Erebor to claim these riches but that isn't really the point! We are talking about a real live secret door here, people.

The Shelf of Secrets

The "book" which unlatches the secret door is not a book at all, but a painted wooden box. The other books on this shelf are older editions which do not necessarily look out of place next to the imposter, but neither are they bound in the hide of demons and written in the blood of virgins so I am only giving this book shelf a 5 out of 10 on the Necronomicon Scale. Here, my sister is disappointing me a little. As a national best selling author who is able to support herself through her writing, she clearly must have sold her soul to the devil. And these are the best musty tomes full of forgotten lore she could muster? Hmm, not sure I have ever used the words "musty" and "muster" in the same sentence before. If only I could have worked in some stone ground mustard. Still I am definitely giving her a pass here because she married a goddamn secret-door-constructing carpenter. Level up, sister o' mine, level up.

Oh look I did take one blurry picture of the rare and radiant maiden the angels call my sister, tickling Thing Two unmercifully on the belly :)

Much love - Carl