Help with a riddle

[Red Baron]

I'm trying to make a riddle, inspired by an ancient Vedic riddle:

"Who moves in the air? Who makes a noise on seeing a thief? Who is the enemy of lotuses? Who is the climax of fury?" The answers to the first three questions, when combined in the manner of a charade, yield the answer to the fourth question. The first answer is bird (vi), the second dog (çva), the third sun (mitra), and the whole is Viçvamitra, Rama's first teacher and counselor and a man noted for his outbursts of rage.

The riddle is going to be in an evil temple, so I tried my own variant on it:
“Who sires the mule? Who sired of Ionian iteration? Who flees the night? And who has trespassed in my house? Answer each, and speak My name.”

Answer:

SPOILER: Click to show

Ass + mode + day + us = Asmodeus

I'd like to do one for Dionysius, instead of the above deity, but I'm having a bit of writers block. Would those of you who are linguistically talented offer your 2 cents on how to phonetically break down dionysius into 3 to 4 words that can be answers to "who does x" questions.

[hamurai]

Let me first say I'd never have guessed the right answer for the Asmodeus riddle, only getting #1 and #3 right, but then I'm not a native speaker and didn't understand your "Ionian iteration" at all

But: While the answers help spell the name, the pronunciation would be slightly different unless I'm mistaken? So the riddle might end with "... and know my name".

As for "Dionysius" (not Dionysus? without the second "i"?), it's probably close enough to "die" + "on" + "is" + "us" (if you leave out the second "i" which isn't in the name I know and Wikipedia lists, btw.

So... off the top of my head... a "cube of fate", or "what mortals must do", or "Who has 21 eyes?" --> "die"
"Who is not under is what?" --> "on"
"Who is (the first) half of Isis?" (If that goddess also exists in your setting) --> "is" (if you want to keep the second "i" you may ask to remove a "snake" from Isis, referring to the letter "s" at the end --> "isi")
And you might use the same riddle as above for "us"

Not sure if you're always looking for "Who"-questions here.

[Red Baron]

The head with 21 eyes riddle is very clever and spooky.

Maybe the riddle could frame the name "dionysus" as if it is referring to creature instead of syllables. "A head with 21 eyes, a tail of a snake, ..." refers to dionysius starting with "die" and ending with "s". But I feel that it isn't enough of a clue for the players to guess the name. Maybe I could add "my body contains eyes and yet another snake" to refer to the "ys" syllable and the "s". I think its still probably too hard to guess.

[talysman]

Yeah, you're going to have problems with the name unless you're sure how your players pronounce it and work from there. If they are American, I think most Americans pronounce it like "Die O'Nighsus"... but I believe that "Y" represents a sound like a French "u" or the English word "you". And the "us" would be an "os" in ancient Greek. Also pretty sure the first part "Dio" would be pronounced exactly like the name of that rock singer who died a couple years back. Are your players aware of those pronunciations? Would they be able to figure it out if you went with a pronunciation that didn't match their own? Things could get really tricky, and it might be hard to offer advice on this.

You might be able to get away with Die + Yawn + Isis, depending on your crew. First would work with Raphael's idea. "Who is a cube that holds your fate?" Second could be "Who is the gaping maw that leads to sleep?" Third is "Who is the goddess who stole Ra's name?" or "Who is the goddess who conquered death?" or whatever would work best for your group.

Edit: Sorry, for some reason, I thought hamurai was Raphael. Also, I cross-posted and didn't see you preferred the 21 eyes suggestion. Amend as needed.

[Red Baron]

Raphael seems to change his picture a lot so it can be hard to keep track of who he is

I'm going to go with "yawn", good call on that phonetic breakdown, and I like the "clue" as well. This is for a goat themed temple, so I thought dionysius was a better fit than asmodeus. I know dionysus is not the same as pan, but there is a close association, and dionysius was long enough to make the riddle whereas pan was not.