Air Temple Puzzle Traps

[SangoProduction]

My players are going to be trying to save the world...or at least, are told that's what they are going to do.

So, I need open-ended puzzle/traps that are thematically appropriate for such a place.

The first thing they'll run across is the "Razor Wind Valley" in order to get to the temple. Winds sweep from one direction in a magically terrible speed, picking up the sharp glass and sands of the valley, and must find a way to avoid getting ripped apart before getting to the other side.

However...that's about all the ideas I have that are thematically appropriate, outside of the boss fight with the Air Elemental. The rest can be made to seem not out of place, but they aren't "Air Temple" material.

I've got a couple that seem like a bit of fun.
The first: A lonely, talking door, whom you have to get to say the password in order to get past it.

The second: A room where the doors locked, and the walls are closing in. In the center of the room, there's (what appears to be) a statue of a demon holding a big red button and a scroll that magically counts down from 10 to 0. Hitting the button resets the timer. When the button reaches 0, the walls reset, and the doors open.
-It's deliciously evil in that the simple solution is just to do nothing - something that is almost never done, so it's so rarely done.

[Honest Tiefling]

A hallway that is unnatural quiet. So quiet that even the character's breathing becomes loud in comparison. And every time they take a breath, they get teleported to the entrance.

That'll teach you for sucking in our air, stupid humanoids. I don't try to breathe you, do I, you uncouth primitive thing!? Stop hogging all of the air.

[BowStreetRunner]

The Cavern of Fogs. The PCs step out of a tunnel onto a precipice and behold an enormous cavern stretching out below them, lit only by the eerily glowing fungus that grows on the ceiling above and some strange light effects from below (radiant fog, lightning fog, etc.). There are gigantic stalactites and stalagmites the size of a castle tower, and deep depressions filled with thick fog. Each is a 50 to 250 foot wide depression which is half as deep as it is wide and filled with a different fog effect (fog cloud, acid fog, radiant fog, contagious fog, freezing fog, lightning fog, mind fog, rusting fog, solid fog, cloudkill, arctic haze, caustic smoke, incendiary cloud, magic miasma, malevolent miasma, obscuring mist, stinking cloud, etc.). There are a handful of tunnels leading out of the cavern besides the one from which the PCs entered, some high up and some down in the depressions, but all are dead ends except one. The entrance to this tunnel is found at the bottom of one of the depressions.

Note that using wind effects to move the fog out of one depression will generally blow it into another depression, temporarily mixing their effects. Treat any fog moved this way as if newly cast by a spellcaster of the minimum level necessary to cast the relevant spell. Furthermore the fog effects come up from the ground in the depressions, steaming forth from the very stones themselves, and will replenish themselves constantly. The newly formed fog will spill down the sides of the depression into the bowl, refilling from the bottom up at 5 ft depth per round. Anyone lying prone anywhere inside the depression will be within the effect of the flowing fog even before the depression refills fully. Treat the ground inside each depression as a magic item that continually produces the relevant fog effect for the purposes of dispel checks, detect magic, and so on.

[SangoProduction]

A hallway that is unnatural quiet. So quiet that even the character's breathing becomes loud in comparison. And every time they take a breath, they get teleported to the entrance.

That'll teach you for sucking in our air, stupid humanoids. I don't try to breathe you, do I, you uncouth primitive thing!? Stop hogging all of the air.

lol. Amazing.

[SangoProduction]

The Cavern of Fogs. The PCs step out of a tunnel onto a precipice and behold an enormous cavern stretching out below them, lit only by the eerily glowing fungus that grows on the ceiling above and some strange light effects from below (radiant fog, lightning fog, etc.). There are gigantic stalactites and stalagmites the size of a castle tower, and deep depressions filled with thick fog. Each is a 50 to 250 foot wide depression which is half as deep as it is wide and filled with a different fog effect (fog cloud, acid fog, radiant fog, contagious fog, freezing fog, lightning fog, mind fog, rusting fog, solid fog, cloudkill, arctic haze, caustic smoke, incendiary cloud, magic miasma, malevolent miasma, obscuring mist, stinking cloud, etc.). There are a handful of tunnels leading out of the cavern besides the one from which the PCs entered, some high up and some down in the depressions, but all are dead ends except one. The entrance to this tunnel is found at the bottom of one of the depressions.

Note that using wind effects to move the fog out of one depression will generally blow it into another depression, temporarily mixing their effects. Treat any fog moved this way as if newly cast by a spellcaster of the minimum level necessary to cast the relevant spell. Furthermore the fog effects come up from the ground in the depressions, steaming forth from the very stones themselves, and will replenish themselves constantly. The newly formed fog will spill down the sides of the depression into the bowl, refilling from the bottom up at 5 ft depth per round. Anyone lying prone anywhere inside the depression will be within the effect of the flowing fog even before the depression refills fully. Treat the ground inside each depression as a magic item that continually produces the relevant fog effect for the purposes of dispel checks, detect magic, and so on.

Interesting. But highly complex to set up, not incredibly interesting to solve, and not really open ended (there's only one answer). The last thing wasn't extremely necessary, but it is a mark against it. You've just got to use wind effects enough times to find the answer.

Hrm, what if there's a riddle that utilizes these cloud effects, and they need to mix these fogs in order to open the door, and another combination the open a secret passage? Anyone got good ideas for riddles?