Throw was the big room I was anticipating the most. Congrats on finding it! There are definitely some highlights ahead, especially in terms of story and atmosphere, but this one is just awesome. Very happy to follow along!
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(Chapter the Fifteenth, continued)
Right, so per Ersebet weâre going to the Dreamlands in our mind:
>ia
âŚ
>vulle
You speak the Word of Trance. The basement walls, without moving, become distant and remote.The Garden (Andrew Plotkin)
You are in a tidily-trimmed garden, surrounded by topiary, flowerbeds, and orderly hedge.Above is a haze-swirled night sky.
Ah, here we are! âŚthough for a representation of Nitocrisâs subconscious, this place seems surprisingly low-key.
>x topiary
The garden flourishes in its neatly-trimmed profusion.>x sky
The stars are veiled by a high shredding haze.
There, thatâs the ominous tone weâd expect!
This place is a little dull and lonely, but maybe we can get some company?
>ulnur
You incant the Word of Invocation. The silence around you takes on an attentive quality; something besides you is listening.You sense a muttering presence in the garden.
>x presence
The garden is eerily silent, but you can sense words resonating in the air nonetheless: IA, ULNUR, VULLE.Behind the silence, a presence mumbles with vague, idiot persistence. You cannot make it out.
Oh, interesting â somehow the presence is keeping track of the words Iâve spoken? Letâs see if we can here what itâs saying, in turn:
>listen
The garden is eerily silent, but you can sense words resonating in the air nonetheless: IA, ULNUR, VULLE.Behind the silence, a presence mumbles with vague, idiot persistence. You cannot make it out.
Oh, those are the same â since itâs an invisible presence, X PRESENCE must mean weâre trying to listen to it (and in fact, presence or no presence, whenever we LISTEN weâll get that handy inventory of what words are currently in effect).
Maybe itâll respond to one of our other words?
>maleth
You chant the Word of Summer. A thick warmth creeps into the air around you. Sweat breaks on your skin.
Interesting, thatâs a more extreme reaction than we get in the real world â I guess things are exaggerated here. Wonder what happens if we try to double up/
>g
You chant the Word of Summer. The warmth rises to a suffocating, stifling heat.The presence fades.
Steam rises up from the flowerbeds, and the air fills with a hot, gasping haze. Within it, the topiary begins to shudder. The ground boils with life.
*** You have been overgrown ***
Ugh, more death by plants (note that the presence, wiser than us, ran away to beat the heat).
After undoing, I master my urge to continue faffing about, and try the obvious thing:
>khion
You intone the Word of Enlightenment. The world takes on a peculiar, hollow clarity.The silent muttering becomes clearer. You could understand it if you listened.
>listen
The garden is eerily silent, but you can sense words resonating in the air nonetheless: IA, KHION, MALETH, ULNUR, VULLE.Behind the silence, a presence mumbles a name with idiot persistence. âMalford,â you make it out.
There we are!
ZOK is slightly different when weâre out here:
>speak zok
You speak the Word of Unsealing. The dream-world flares with grey light and fades. You awaken.>look up malford
You search through the mass of papers, and are rewarded!Malford âthe Warlockâ Cragne, the black sheep of the family. Sheep as in rather dim and basically harmless, despite his self-chosen monicker. Malford desperately desired to create the Word of Chaos, an arcane tool of ruin and decay. Unfortunately for him, his diagram lacked several important hieroglyphs. In trying to complete it, he journeyed unwisely into the Otherworlds. His body was found, mindless and mumbling, in 1850.
You examine the Chaos diagram. Itâs a complex arrangement which defines a word in the system of old Kteh Nyare. However, three key glyphs are missing.
The Word of Chaos â I like the sound of that! Thereâs going to be a bit more work involved in finding those missing glyphs, though. If Malford disappeared plumbing the Otherworlds for them, Iâm guessing VULLE will be critical to the search. I doubt Nitocris will journey any more wisely, but with UNDO on our side at least weâll be luckier.
Letâs try going back to our Dreamland and double-invoking to see if we get a different spirit:
>ia
âŚ
>vulle
âŚ
>ulnar
âŚ
>g
You incant the Word of Invocation again. The sense of listening becomes unbearably intense.The silent voices multiply; they are an increasing pressure in your head. You feel presences crowd around you, tasting your thoughts, fluttering through the fibers of your spirit. Your body begins to slip away from you.
*** You have been supplanted ***
Silly Nitocris â bind, then summon!
What if we double up on KHION?
>say khion
You intone the Word of Enlightenment. The clarity of the world increases, amplifying to an acutely painful pitch.The garden is freighted with numinous meaning now. You gaze around in helpless wonder. Secrets rain down from the sky and well up out of the earth. You do not want to look away, ever.
*** You have gone mad ***
Iâm getting the sense that everythingâs louder here, and whereas repeating a word twice in the real world is enough to give it some real juice, in the Dreamlands itâs more like overloading the magic.
Might as well try some more:
>irnath
You chant the Word of Winter. A chill comes into the atmosphere, like an icy breeze that does not stir the air.>g
You chant the Word of Winter. The chill deepens to a numbing, aching wave of cold.The presence fades.
The chill turns into an icy blast of wind. Leaves shrivel and die around you. The air hurts your lungs, and there is no respite.
*** You have frozen ***
I also try doubling up on ULNAR before VULLEing my way into Dreamland:
>vulle
You speak the Word of Trance. The basement walls, without moving, become distant and remote.You sense invisible eyes upon you. Something is drawn to your disembodied awareness as you hurtle through non-space. Something is drawing closer⌠and it has teeth.
*** You have been rent asunder ***
Well, weâve learned something here, but it doesnât get us closer to our goal.
Thinking of doubling our words, though, we havenât run through the full set in the real world, and that might be a safer set of experiments. We start again, then try to double up on KHION before an invocation:
>say ulnur
You incant the Word of Invocation. The silence around you takes on an attentive quality; something besides you is listening.You hear whispers in the darkness around you. And you understand what they are saying, every voice, every word. You laugh at the simplicity of the secret.
*** You have gone mad ***
Doubleplus magic is still quite reckless even when weâre awake.
I mess around a bit more, then decide first thought, best though â I probably need to be in the Dreamlands for this. Maybe the glyphs are like hidden in the scenery there, I wonder? But the topiary and hedge continue to be super boring. Musing on what else to try, I realize I havenât yet explored what happens if I mess with the sphere before zipping off to sleepytime. Letâs try turning it from new moon to crescent:
The Garden (Andrew Plotkin)
You are in a tidily-trimmed garden, surrounded by topiary, flowerbeds, and orderly hedge.A crescent moon hangs in a haze-swirled night sky.
Aha! The hazy sky was only because weâd set the moon to be new.
When I poke around, though, nothing seems to be any different, except the description of the sky is slightly updated. Half, gibbous, and full are much the same.
Stymied again, I start chanting things at random, in the Dreamlands and in the real world. Surprisingly, a simple set of recitations get me to an unexpected result while awake:
>say ia
You speak the Word of Sealing. It echoes through the room.The grey light flickers to life within the boundary runes. Silence presses in, awaiting your next word.
>say ulnur
You incant the Word of Invocation. The silence around you takes on an attentive quality; something besides you is listening.You hear whispers in the darkness around you. Not with your ears, perhaps, but the whispers are there.
>say khion
You intone the Word of Enlightenment. The world takes on a peculiar, hollow clarity. Every brick is edged with infinite precision; every crack wants to show you its secrets.The whispers are clearer now. If you listen, you can understand them.
>listen
The room is eerily silent, but you can sense words resonating in the air nonetheless: IA, KHION, ULNUR.Behind the silence, whispers lurk. You can make out syllables, fragments of names. But one name is repeated over and over: âJennever, JenneverâŚâ That much is clear.
Thatâs new! Turns out weâve tried various forms of invocation with different seasonal words in effect, but this was our first time trying a naked ULNUR.
>look up jennever
You dig through the disorganized heap, and are rewarded!There are only a few fragmentary notes about Jennever Cragne. She was a summoner of some repute, but âSummoned That from which one Cannot Turn Away,â whatever that means. One torn chart shows combinations of moon and season conducive to summoning. High Summer and the full moon are noted for invoking nurturing spirits. âAnd the Oppositte, if one wishes a Spirit of Intellecte,â it concludes airily.
âŚand hereâs where I start to go off track. I try the summer/full moon combination, but nothing new happens â itâs just a retread of the orchid thing that got us to Margreth. Similarly, the winter/new moon doesnât bear fruit; our old friend Kteh is hanging around but we canât do anything additional with him.
I wonder whether âHigh Summerâ means to double the atmosphere; no success there. I spend a long time trying to see if I can modify the mirror-polishing ritual so that I complete it while one of Jenneverâs combinations is in effect â like, maybe thereâs a hidden spirit thatâs being obstinate, so I need to compel it â which is a pleasingly clever idea that does not pay out, since the presences fade as I shift the moon sign. Or maybe the spirits can only be found in Dreamland? Iâm getting stuck and just start trying stuff â there are presences coming in and out, I hit upon an aroma that might be the same as one of the presences or might be distinct, I try talking to the presencesâŚ
Remember above, how I said Nitocris wasnât that wise, but might be lucky? Eventually my flailing leads me to try using a seasonal word before VULLE â well, actually I double up IRNATH:
>say vulle
You speak the Word of Trance. The basement walls, without moving, become distant and remote.Glacial Cirque (Andrew Plotkin)
You are in a bowl-shaped hollow beneath a towering mountain peak. The lower end is blocked by a wall of ice. The air is achingly cold.Above is a haze-swirled night sky.
The chill turns into an icy blast of wind coming down from the mountaintop. Stones and chunks of ice are caught up in the gale.
*** You are quickly overwhelmed ***
Hey, thatâs new! But a little too cold. Actually letâs start with IA, MALETH, KHION (canât hurt), then VULLE:
>vulle
You speak the Word of Trance. The basement walls, without moving, become distant and remote.Jungle Ruin (Andrew Plotkin)
You are in a mazy jungle of towering, vine-strung tree boles. The air is thick and humid. To one side rises a crumbling stone wall.A full moon hangs in the clear starry sky.
You suddenly perceive a pattern in the foliage.
Someplace new! And thereâs a pattern!
âŚthough of course I check out the wall first:
You stand at the foot of a ruined stone wall, perhaps the remains of some lost jungle ziggurat.
>x pattern
Moldering tree trunks rise all around you.The vines form a pattern, and the pattern forms a name: âShireen Vega was here.â Okay.
Oh thank God. Shireen, youâre our only hope â can you tell us how to get those damn spirits to spill their guts?
The only trace left by this Shireen Vega is an aspect chart, drawn up in careful ink like a homework assignment. The two notable lines are âSummer trance, gibbous moon, invocation&enlightenmentâ and âWinter trance, crescent moon, redoubled invocationâ.
âŚhmm, doesnât seem like it, but weâll give these rituals a try too.
We gibbous up the moon, do a MALETH so we VULLE back to the jungle, thenâŚ
>ulnur
You incant the Word of Invocation. The silence around you takes on an attentive quality; something besides you is listening.>khion
You intone the Word of Enlightenment. The world takes on a peculiar, hollow clarity.With imperceptible slowness, a glyph draws itself across the face of the moon.
>x glyph
Shadows and scars form a glyph across the surface of the gibbous moon.You memorize the glyph; it looks like one of the missing symbols from Malford Cragneâs journal.
Boom!
Those of you good at math will have noted that Shireen gave us two formulas, but weâre missing three gylphs â weâll cross that bridge when we come to it.
We pop back, turn the moon to crescent, IRNATH, VULLE, then double-ULNAR:
>g
You incant the Word of Invocation again. The sense of listening becomes unbearably intense.A new constellation burns among the stars.
>x constellation
The stars are veiled by a high shredding haze, but a crescent moon shines through. A constellation of unusually bright stars forms a glyph above the moon.You memorize the glyph. You now know two glyphs.
Two-thirds done, but now weâre bereft of leads. Happily, I donât spend much time flailing since now that weâre back in the Glacial Cirque, Iâm reminded of one bit of the description:
The lower end is blocked by a wall of ice.
Thatâs interesting!
>>x ice
The end of the valley runs up against a barrier of striated white ice, no doubt the edge of a mountain glacier.
Things that are blocked can be unblocked, it occurs to me.
>maleth
You chant the Word of Summer. The icy chill fades from the air.Meltwater trickles from the glacier. You notice the edge of a stone slab poking through the ice! After several moments, most of the slab is free.
>x slab
The slab has a hieroglyph engraved on it.You memorize the glyph. You now know all three of the missing glyphs from Malford Cragneâs journal.
Yay! Er, that should do something for us, right? Indeed it does, since now when we RECALL MALFORD, the end changes:
You recall the Chaos diagram. Itâs a complex arrangement which defines a word in the system of old Kteh Nyare. However, three key glyphs are missing. You have discovered all three of them.
With the three missing glyphs, you are able to piece together the pronounciation of the Word of Chaos: OGGOTH.
There we are!
(The fact that this word is so clearly âshoggothâ with the first two letters sheared off makes me revisit the others. Ia is of course the opening bit of the âia ia Cthulhu fhtagnâ chant, so a good word to open a ritual. âUlnarâ isnât so far off from âUltharâ, which is where the telepathic Dreamlands cats come from. âIrnathâ is maybe like âSarnathâ, another city in the Dreamlands? Thatâs about as far as I can get, but I suspect there are in-jokes encoded in the others too).
(EDIT: just as I was posting the last entry, I realized duh, ZOK is Zadok from Shadow Over Innsmouth. Was too stuck in the Dreamlands).
Well, letâs give 'er a test drive:
>oggoth
You chant the Word of Chaos. The mountain trembles violently. Splinters of ice fall from the glacier, but nothing worse occurs â this time.
That in no way sounds like a warning:
>g
You chant the Word of Chaos.The mountain jolts, roars, and begins to collapse. You are carried away in a tide of stone.
*** You are lost ***
Letâs try to do this systematically this time â starting out in the waking world:
>oggoth
You chant the Word of Chaos. The walls tremble.A brick cracks off the wall beneath the lunar sphere! Peering closer, you realize it was a false front. A small niche is now revealed, in which is a brass knob.
Hey, we got it right first time!
>x knob
A brass knob is now visible in a niche below the lunar sphere.>turn knob
You hear a clunk. The black bands retract. At the same time, the white sphere itself begins to rotate in the wall. As the previously-hidden face comes into view, you see that it is painted red. When the sphere comes to a halt, a full, bloody disc looms above you.
Thatâs very cool, though Iâm not sure what good it did.
Now, as youâre reading along in the thread, youâre probably going âwhat do you mean, isnât it obvious why this is helpful?â The thing is, though, Iâm editing the transcript into a nice, linear, (relatively) compact writeup. But I actually played this bit over three days â Iâve mentioned that I have a young son, I think, and heâs been going through whatâs euphemistically called a âsleep regressionâ (heâs about to turn one, and from my understanding of the pediatric literature, whatâs going on is that his brain has developed to the point that he gets FOMO).
What that means is that while Iâve typically been getting a solid hour or two a night to play or work on the thread before I decide to turn in, the past couple of days Iâve had to drop the game since somebody woke up crying and isnât going to go back down easy. That happened once soon after I started this section (right about the time I encountered Gretel, I think), and itâs going to happen again soon (like, in narrative time, though actually it just happened again as I was working on this writeup!)
So while from this thread, Iâm sure you have an image of me as a dashing, problem-solving machine, I regret to inform you that for this chapter at least, you must picture a different Russo: a sleep-deprived Russo who barely remembers what he did five turns ago, much less two days ago.
Anyway the important thing for now is that as far as Iâm concerned, this is the first time Iâm hearing about any blood moon.
Now that itâs revealed, the first thing I try â well, is to OGGOTH again because I make poor choices:
The room shakes violently. Bricks begin to crash down from above. Oh dear.
*** You have been crushed ***
But the first smart thing I do is another trip to Hypnosâs realm:
Ruined Garden (Andrew Plotkin)
You stand in the ruins of a long-dead garden. Dry branches rise from the dust and tangle in twisted, unrecognizable shapes.To the south is the shore of a dark, silent lake. The waters do not reflect the reddened moonlight.
A bloated crimson moon hangs in a haze-swirled night sky.
Now this feels like weâre getting somewhere!
>oggoth
You chant the Word of Chaos.The decaying earth collapses beneath your feet, pitching you into the abyss.
*** You are lost ***
âŚitâs like a compulsion, I canât stop.
(to be concluded very soon)
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>s
You set one foot in the water â and it plunges into an unfathomed depth, far deeper than the lake should be just a few inches off-shore. You stumble back, feeling as if you had just avoided a swallowing abyss.
This is within our gift:
>irnath
You chant the Word of Winter. A chill comes into the atmosphere, like an icy breeze that does not stir the air.The water at your feet goes slow and slushy. Ice crackles along the shoreline, and then spreads out across the surface of the lake. After a time, the entire lake is frozen hard.
>s
You set off across the ice.Frozen Lake (Andrew Plotkin)
You stand on the surface of the frozen lake. The ice is rippled and rough underfoot, and hard as iron.The shoreline is back to the north. To the south, a small island projects above the ice sheet.
A bloated crimson moon hangs in a haze-swirled night sky.
>s
Island (Andrew Plotkin)
This is a small island, only a few yards across, near the center of a frozen lake. The black ice seems to devour the reddened moonlight all around. You can see the dead garden far off on the northern shore.To the east, a stairway of rough basalt leads down into the ice.
A bloated crimson moon hangs in a haze-swirled night sky.
>e
The stairway disappears down into the iron-hard ice.
We vaguely hope that nobody in this far realm is engaged in like, agriculture, such that whipsawing through the seasons is going to mess things up for them, but itâs only a vague hope.
>maleth
You chant the Word of Summer. The icy chill fades from the air.A crack lances across the surface of the lake. The ice sheet grinds against itself and shatters, leaving water bubbling in the gaps. The remaining floes shrink; soon they are entirely gone.
>e
The stairway disappears down into the dark water. The thought of immersing yourself is abhorrent.>maleth
You chant the Word of Summer. A thick warmth creeps into the air around you. Sweat breaks on your skin.The lake steams gently, and begins to sink around the island. Stones crackle and dry as they are exposed. After a time, the water is gone, and the lake basin is bare and arid.
>e
The stairway spirals around the island as it descends.Lakebed Temple (Andrew Plotkin)
You stand on a crumbling stone dais at the bottom of the dry lake. Jagged runes are engraved around the circleâs perimeter.The island-peak rises to the west; basalt stairs zig-zag up its face.
Far above, a bloated crimson moon hangs in a haze-swirled night sky.
A scrap of leather is lying at the foot of the stairs.
>x dais
The runes are made of familiar jagged marks. This is a ritual bound â although you would lay no odds what hands carved them. If hands carved them.
Oh, cool â Iâm guessing that with this second bound, we can cast a spell from within this spell!
>x leather
This green leather once bound a journal, but it has been terribly damaged by the water⌠ice⌠heat⌠whatever conditions it experienced at the bottom of the lake. You can barely trace the name âArne Cragnessumâ within one fold of the cover. The pages within have long since disintegrated.
There we go!
Arne Cragnessumâs journal is a tidy volume bound in green leather, with his name inside the flyleaf. It describes his search for the Gates of Slumber and the Unpronounceable Name one must speak to reach them. The last entry talks of ââŚthe Summerlands, in which the Unnameable King lies entombed in stone⌠No mortal may walk those fields and return; but the Summer Isles sometimes impinge on the Dream realm, when the aspects align, and a ritualist may search within his own mind for an echo.â
(Iâm enjoying the different ethnic translations of âCragneâ, by the by â after how tricky it was to get this far, the comedy of âArne Cragnessumâ is especially welcome)
This seems suspiciously easy? We know how to get to the Summerlands, I think â IA, MALETH, VULLE:
Jungle Ruin (Andrew Plotkin)
You are in a mazy jungle of towering, vine-strung tree boles. The air is thick and humid. To one side rises a crumbling stone wall.A bloated crimson moon hangs in a haze-swirled night sky.
A crumbling stone wall, you say?
>x wall
You stand at the foot of a ruined stone wall, perhaps the remains of some lost jungle ziggurat.
A lost jungle ziggurat, you say?
>oggoth
You chant the Word of Chaos. The earth trembles violently.A section of the stone wall collapses with a rumble! Behind it is revealed a rune-carved stone coffin â a long-lost tomb.
>x tomb
The runes on the tomb form a word⌠or something like a word. The syllables grind and crack against each other as you try to assemble them in your mind.After an unmeasured time, you think you have hold of it. This must be the Unnameable Name that Francois Crane and Arne Cragnessum described.
There we are! And when we chant this name, weâll finally pass the Gates of Slumber and enter the true Dreamlands!
>say name
You concentrate and bring forth the Unnameable Name. Even in this dream-state, it scores your gums; you taste blood. But the syllables do not have the sound of magic. They turn flat and vanish with no effect on the world.
Er â or not?
Hereâs where my bad playing circumstances catch up to me. I have no idea what to do next. For a while I wander about, saying the name in random places (if we try to utter it in waking life, weâre told âYou know the Unnameable Name, but you are unable to pronounce it.â) But I quickly get hung up again on Jenneverâs clue:
High Summer and the full moon are noted for invoking nurturing spirits. âAnd the Oppositte, if one wishes a Spirit of Intellecte,â it concludes airily.
I spend a long long time bashing my head against this puzzle again, convinced that this is the last piece I need to crack to figure out. But nothing I do works, and while I do a bunch more OGGOTHing to cheer myself up, finally I give in and get a hint.
I didnât really need it, of course â now that Iâm doing the writeup itâs clear that this is an elegant, well-clued puzzle (no surprise given the author) and I should have already been in the victory lap. After all, Francois told us exactly what we needed to do (or rather, where we needed to do it):
Francois Crane spent his life searching for the Gates of Slumber, which lead to the Dreamlands. âSeek the Temple of the Flame, and beneath a Blood Moon speak the Unnameable NameâŚâ (Francois certainly did like capital letters.)
This must be the lakebed temple â heck, I even thought to myself âhuh, a second bound, thatâs gotta be important.â And I should have had my memory of Francoisâs note jogged, because upon getting stuck I started using the handy RECALL feature to review everything Iâd previously unlocked â except my son woke up again in the middle of that process, and I lost track of which entries Iâd double-checked. Added to that, I think I did a mild sequence-break early on without realizing it â I should probably have gotten Jenneverâs clues about the moon/season alignment right after first unlocking ULNUR, but I jumped ahead to getting the seasonal words and didnât realize that Iâd already âsolvedâ the two spirits it mentioned (the orchid and Kteh).
Iâm a little annoyed at having led myself into frustration like this â I was really really digging this room before getting myself stuck, and itâs a shame not to have solved it on my own â but fortunately, the climax here is great.
We make our way back to the lakebed temple:
>say name
You concentrate and bring forth the Unnameable Name. Even in this dream-state, it scores your gums; you taste blood.An erythraean light flares within the boundary runes; the world outside dims. The stillness of the air gains density and texture, aching in your ears. Once again, the world waits for you to speak.
Itâs clear what we need to do here:
>vulle
You speak the Word of Trance a second time.The world begins to blur.
Stairway (Andrew Plotkin)
You are partway down a long, long staircase of white marble. You can return west or descend to the east.
Is this the real Dreamlands now?
>e
You descend dreamily for a while, turning the key over in your hand.
Yes, seems like.
Bottom of Stairs (Andrew Plotkin)
You are at the bottom of a marble staircase, which ascends to the west.A glowing energy barrier stands to the east. It is closed and locked.
>x barrier
A tall portal of some alien metal stands to the east. It is closed and locked.
âŚwait, what did that say as we were climbing down the stairs?
>i
You are carrying:
an ornate silver key
So this must be the eponymous gate (one of Lovecraftâs major Dreamlands stories is âThe Silver Keyâ, followed by a sequel âThrough the Gates of the Silver Keyâ)
>x key
Cryptically inscribed and ornately engraved: the Silver Key to the Gates of Slumber.>unlock door with key
You unlock the barrier.>open it
You open the barrier.>e
You pass through.Workroom (Andrew Plotkin)
You have entered a circular chamber walled in neat brickwork. The door to the west is closed.The room is quite empty except for a majestic filing cabinet in one corner. The cabinet is closed.
A library book is lying on the floor. You have no idea how this got down here.
And hereâs our reward.
>x book
The Seven Gaunts â a book of Aionist fairy tales, collected by Henry Galtmice. How adorable!The book is brand new. Stamped in the endpaper is the insignia of the Backwater Public Library: two back-to-back crescent moons joined by an eye looking down at an open book.
>take book
Taken.>read it
The book is The Seven Gaunts, edited by Henry Galtmice. You flip through and glance at the story of the sisters who knew a song that nobody else knew.>g
You flip through and glance at the story of a dweller beneath the Earth who gets lost in the Sunlit World.>g
You flip through and glance at the story of the night when everybody danced.
Such a small thing, to have taken so much effort to find!
Our work accomplished, letâs go back.
>open door
It seems to be locked.
The shortcut will be faster anyway:
>zok
You speak the Word of Unsealing. Your surroundings flare crimson, then fade to black.You awaken.
Lakebed Temple (Andrew Plotkin)
âŚ
>i
You are carrying nothing.
Oh, thatâs not good.
Then I laugh out loud as I realize what I need to do. I undo:
>put book in cabinet
You consider the empty cabinet, and then file the book neatly under G for Galtmice. An excellent start for your collection!>zok
You speak the Word of Unsealing. Your surroundings flare crimson, then fade to black.You awaken.
Lakebed Temple (Andrew Plotkin)
âŚ
>zok
You speak the Word of Unsealing. The dream-world flares with grey light and fades. You awaken.Workroom (Andrew Plotkin)
âŚ
>look up galtmice
You search under the name Henry Galtmice, and find The Seven Gaunts, filed exactly where it ought to be! You lift the book from the drawer in triumph.
Triumph it is â even with the gall of having to take that unnecessary hint, and the frustration of having banged my head against already-solved puzzles for way too long, I had a great time here, and hopefully that came through in the write-up. Across all the games of his that Iâve played, Zarfâs puzzles manage the wonderful trick of making you feel completely lost, then utterly clever, then lost again, and when youâre in the groove with them itâs exhilarating (thatâs a little Hadean Lands pun for you) â and even when you fall out of the groove, thereâs still very little like it.
Iâd like to end this update having solved more than one room, though, so letâs wrap up with something a little lighter.
We head back to the basement hub, then go west:
>w
Wine Cellar (Nathaniel Edwards)
You feel cool air swirling around you as you stand in the manorâs wine cellar. Stone floors, stone walls, and dim lighting keep the householdâs dwindling wine collection fresh and oaky.A large wooden wine rack covers one entire wall of the room, but with only a few bottles left on it. You can see a door to the west, but a large wine cask is standing right in front of it, blocking your way. Another exit leads east.
You count five bottles of wine lingering on the wine rack. Each bottle has a different name, all either Italian or faux Italian: the Piccoli Uomini Blu, the Prurito Notturno, the Lettera Segreta, the Isole Perdute and the Testa DâAncora.
Oh man, after the night we had this is the perfect place to wind up.
Nathaniel Edwards has written one other game, a ChoiceScript sports adventure where you play a pitcher! Thatâs entertainingly novel â despite not being interested in sports in real life, Iâm kinda fascinated by the possibilities for putting them in IF, since they can provide a set of non puzzle-y, non fight-y challenges (not to say they necessarily provide a good, interesting challenge â the sailing race I put into Sting is intentionally frustrating, but Iâm not sure I could have made it especially fun even if that had been my design goal).
Those of you who speak a romance language have probably zeroed in on whatâs important here, but letâs jump through the hoops:
>x rack
A wooden lattice about six feet wide that reaches up to the low ceiling. Either stocks were running low or someone had ambitions for a much larger wine collection.>x cask
An over-large cask of wine with a rather medieval-looking wooden tap stuck on its end, the only one of its kind in this cellar. Unfortunately, someone had the bright mind to put it right in front of a doorway.>x tap
A rather medieval-looking wooden tap stuck on the end of the wine cask. Presumably pulling the tapâs handle would pour out whateverâs inside.
Weâll come back to this â the good stuffâs gonna be in the bottles, not this giant tun:
>x piccoli
The label says that Piccoli Uomini Blu is a famously hot wine, and consumers should know before drinking that this yearâs vintage is expecially vegetal.>drink it
You uncork the Piccoli Uomini Blu and take time to savor the taste of a fine wine, straight from the bottle, in little sips until each drop is safely nestled in your stomach.>x prurito
The label advertises Prurito Notturno as being a buttery red wine, with a food friendly flavor.>drink it
You uncork the Prurito Notturno and take a few swigs of the Prurito Notturno and before you know it, the whole thingâs gone.>x lettera
The Lettera Segreta label doesnât describe its contents so much as talk about the wineâs excellent terroir, whatever that means.> drink lettera
You uncork the Lettera Segreta and start to imagine thereâs a crowd egging you on,
chanting âchugâ until another wine is vanquished, lying empty on the ground
before you. You oblige the crowd and wipe your mouth with your sleeve.>x isole
The label on Isole Perdute claims this crisp white wine is the natural choice for any meal or occasion.>drink it
You uncork the Isole Perdute and take a few swigs of the Isole Perdute and before you know it, the whole thingâs gone.>x testa
The label on the Testa dâAncora is written in a language you donât recognize, with lots of Hs and apostrophes. It gives you a headache to even look at it.
Of course â translated from the Italian, weâve got Little Blue Men, Night Itches, Secret Letter, Lost Islands⌠and Anchorhead.
(I love the idea that Cragne Manor exists in a world where Anchorhead is a cross-media sensation, licensed out for Choose Your Own Adventure stories, operas, wineâŚ)
>drink it
After youâve chugged the entire wine, you can hear something metal jingling around in the bottle.>break testa
Among the glass shards of the broken wine bottle, there lies a key with a red triangle on it.>red
A small metal key with a red triangle etched into the handle. Itâs sticky and it smells like grapes.
Huh, not sure what that will unlock, but Iâm sure weâll find out. Now, on to the cask:
>pull tap
You let what seems like gallons of wine pass out of the cask, then close the tap.>push cask
You move the wine cask about half a centimeter before becoming too exhausted to push further.
Not quite done yetâŚ
>open tap
You watch even more wine pour out of the wine cask, forming a gigantic puddle on the floor. Eventually the stream of wine coming from the tap is reduced to mere drops, then stops completely.>push cask
You push the still-darned-heavy wine cask out of the doorway, scraping its wooden supporter legs across the stone floor.
Itâs a good thing Nitocris doesnât really need to breathe anymore, because these fumes would be intense!
The coffee confirms weâre done here â a slightly lighter lift than the work room!
Letâs call it there.
No, wait:
>x me
Have you always had that mole on your back? Huh.
Now we can call it.
Inventory
You are carrying:
a dull machete (smelling faintly of mildew)
a Carfax gig poster (smelling faintly of mildew)
a limp pumpkin stem
some charred newspaper clippings (smelling faintly of mildew)
a rusted toolbox (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a jar of screws (open but empty)
a jar of old keys (smelling faintly of mildew) (open)
a Red Triangle Key
an ornate bronze key
a sinister iron key
a frosty blue key
an intricately folded origami key
a silver and ivory key
a splintery wooden key
a mildewy carpet (smelling faintly of mildew)
an ominous-looking painting
Legends of Lake Champlain and the Hudson River Valley (smelling faintly of mildew)
a small desk key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pink-bound book (smelling faintly of mildew)
a round white wall clock (smelling faintly of mildew)
a small rusty iron key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a 'Pataphysical Approaches to Quantum Superfluids (smelling faintly of mildew)
a black fountain pen (smelling faintly of mildew)
a teapot (smelling faintly of mildew)
a waterproof flashlight (smelling faintly of mildew)
an old paperback book (smelling faintly of mildew)
the slithering vomit bladder of Katallakh (smelling faintly of mildew)
a metal flask (smelling faintly of mildew)
an Allen key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a broken knife handle (smelling faintly of mildew)
a thin steel key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a torn notebook (smelling faintly of mildew)
an Italian magazine cutting (smelling faintly of mildew)
De Zeven Testamenten van de Krijsende Zeeworm (smelling faintly of mildew)
a police report (âFrancine Cragneâ) (smelling faintly of mildew)
a newspaper clipping (âRumors of Decapitationsâ) (smelling faintly of mildew)
a note from a seesaw (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pair of stone earplugs (smelling faintly of mildew)
a shard (smelling faintly of mildew)
a broken silver amulet (smelling faintly of mildew)
Mama Hydraâs Deep Fried Ones (smelling faintly of mildew)
A Culinary Overview of Superstitions in the Miskaton Valley Region by S. Jarret Zornwharf (smelling faintly of mildew)
Hyper-Gastronomy, Exactness, and String Theory: a Theoretical Subdiscipline of Cooking and Baking by Chef Wheldrake (smelling faintly of mildew)
red-rimmed porcelain plates (smelling faintly of mildew)
red-rimmed porcelain cups (smelling faintly of mildew)
a white key (smelling faintly of mildew)
The Lives of the Roman Emperors (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pewter box (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a slip of paper (smelling faintly of mildew)
some rotten flowers (smelling faintly of mildew)
a copper urn (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a silver urn (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a bronze urn (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a key from an urn
some mildewed leather gloves
a gallon jug of white vinegar (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pair of garden shears (smelling faintly of mildew)
a bronze key green from age (smelling faintly of mildew)
a rusty flathead screwdriver (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pair of blue cloth slippers (smelling faintly of mildew)
a trophy for a dog race (smelling faintly of mildew)
a glass shard (smelling faintly of mildew)
a black business card (smelling faintly of mildew)
an aluminum key (smelling faintly of mildew)
loose bricks (smelling faintly of mildew)
a clipboard (smelling faintly of mildew)
some yellowed newspapers (smelling faintly of mildew)
a shard of shattered carapace (smelling faintly of mildew)
an employee ID card (smelling faintly of mildew)
a piece of chalk (smelling faintly of mildew)
The Seven Gaunts (smelling faintly of mildew)
the second candle (smelling faintly of mildew)
the first candle (smelling faintly of mildew)
a book list (smelling faintly of mildew)
a long hooked pole (smelling faintly of mildew)
a grimy rock (smelling faintly of mildew)
a library card (smelling faintly of mildew)
Peterâs jacket (smelling faintly of mildew)
a backpack features guide (smelling faintly of mildew)
a trolley schedule (smelling faintly of mildew)
a Jansport backpack (smelling faintly of mildew) (open)
a hidden pocket (open but empty)
a key pocket (open but empty)
a book pocket (open)
a small blue journal (which you know is a journal because it says âMein Journalâ on the front) (smelling faintly of mildew)
The Modern Girlâs Divination Handbook â Volume Three (smelling faintly of mildew)
a postcard of Big Ben (smelling faintly of mildew)
the diary of Phyllis Cragne (smelling faintly of mildew)
a tiny leather journal (smelling faintly of mildew)
a moldy, waterlogged journal (smelling faintly of mildew)
a soggy tome (smelling faintly of mildew)
a faded delivery note (smelling faintly of mildew)
an old newspaper (smelling faintly of mildew)
Tatooine 1: Anchorhead (smelling faintly of mildew)
a side pocket (open but empty)
a trash pocket (closed)
a pamphlet of home listings (smelling faintly of mildew)
an antique locket (smelling faintly of mildew) (closed)
a cast iron spire (smelling faintly of mildew)
a wad of cash (smelling faintly of mildew)
a repaired page (smelling faintly of mildew)
a large brass key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a filthy rug (smelling faintly of mildew)
Daniel Bakerâs note (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pull-string doll (smelling faintly of mildew)
a label (smelling faintly of mildew)
a giant milkweed leaf (smelling faintly of mildew)
a glass jar containing an insect (smelling faintly of mildew)
a half-full styrofoam coffee cup (smelling faintly of mildew)
a plastic bubble (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a familiar gold wristwatch (smelling faintly of mildew)
a brass winding key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a bottle of Pepto-Bismol (smelling faintly of mildew)
a calfskin coat (being worn)
a trolley pass (being worn)
a gold jacket (being worn)
Edâs coveralls (being worn)
a pair of leather boots
Map (basement):
Transcript:
Cragne session 15.txt (299.7 KB)
Save:
cragne session 15 save.txt (75.3 KB)
Unfinished locations
- Train Station Lobby: locked green door
- Church Exterior: locked door to church
- Shack Exterior: locked door to shack
- Town Square: Navajo-language ring puzzle of doom
- Backwater Library: book collectathon, obtain grimoire
- Drinking Fountain: retrieve our lost ghost?
- Pub: steal the whetstone
- Hillside Path/Carolâs Room: shuttle diplomacy between Christabell and Carol (Christabellâs up)
- Meatpacking Plant: cleaver to cut open dog-thingâs stomach
- Cragne Family Plot: locked crypt, open with white key
- Shambolic Shed: food for giant caterpiller
- Greenhouse: whetstone for machete
- Subterranean tunnel: locked door
- Basement: timestamp for VHS tape?
- Tiny office: locked door
- Sitting room: MURDER EUSTACE WITH LETTER OPENER
- Rec room: locked board game cabinet
- Court: climactic color-animal crosswalk
- Upstairs Hall (N): locked door to the east with a neat family crest, that &@!? armoire
- Hallway (S): locked door to the south
- Pantry: find something nummy?
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Yay indeed! Iâm worried I didnât quite do it justice in the writeup, but this was a great, great sequence.
You definitely should! I cut out a lot of my messing around to keep things reasonable, but thereâs a whole bunch going on here beyond what I included. I think there might be a âbonusâ spirit or two, since when I was messing with different moon/season combos I think I came across some that werenât mentioned in the books (or it could be that they were and I was confused, of course, per my latest updates). Regardless, itâs definitely fun to faff about and find new ways to die.
I forgot to mention this in the writeup, but I wondered whether âKtehâ is just a dumb joke for âkittyâ, a nod to Lovecraftâs love of cats?
Yup, I noticed that too. He left Vienna in the end of the 17th Century, though â he got catapulted forward in time in his journeys â so he would have predated the witch circle there (Iâm guessing the stories about him were still being told, though, so your conjecture could well be right!)
Er, did I do that? On purpose?
Oh, I can totally see why! Feels like Iâve been getting to a lot of the high points lately, so cool to know there are still more to come.
âŚwith that said, Iâm probably going to be dialing back the recently-quite-torrid pace of the thread a little bit, as my testing dance card has filled up again. Still going to make sure I get at least one or two updates a week in, but probably not the every two days pace Iâve been going at (Iâm hoping to get done with this thread by IF Comp since I donât want to have to put the game on hold for two months!)
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I donât think any of the future rooms are big; thereâs maybe 1 big puzzle (youâll know it when you see it, but itâs not as big as zarfâs room), and a few medium puzzles. Youâre pretty far on the aldermen and library books, right? I think the end is in sight! The highlights I was referring to are mostly big story-focused segments with few puzzles.
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A bit of authorâs commentary:
I donât think I had anything in mind for âKteh Nyareâ beyond sharing a syllable with âNyar-lat-hotepâ.
The mirror is a very minor reference to a story called âThe Trapâ (by Lovecraft
with Henry S. Whitehead). The mirror in that story was from the Virgin Islands, and co-author Whitehead was born in St. Croix.
Now that I look at it, âHenry Giltmaceâ would be a better anagram than âHenry Galtmiceâ. Oh well too late.
I suspect there are in-jokes encoded in the others too.
It doesnât go as far as in-jokes. I was just pulling out combinations of sounds that Lovecraft liked to use.
XYZZY gets used as a synonym for the Unpronounceable Name, though.
I rather liked the idea that the protagonist of Hadean Lands would think Naomi was an absolute idiot and deserved to die all those different ways.
My aim was to use the HL magic system for a more experimental, combinatoric-explosion-y puzzle. I always regretted not putting more of that kind of thing in HL. The flip side of experimentation, though, is that âsequence breakingâ is almost inevitable. Or rather, the intended âsequenceâ is pretty soft in the mid-game; different players will stumble onto areas in different orders, and thatâs just the way it is.
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Zarfâs room is great. Being one of the few who havenât cracked into Hadean Lands (walks naked to chants of âshame shameâ whilst battered by thrown rotten fruit) I loved how it felt like one of the best Myst-style puzzles (by way of Lovecraft) where you âlink bookâ to multiple versions of small realms to discover access to more realms. And the âfreeze the lake/melt the lake to go down hidden stepsâ is straight outta Cyan in the best way.
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My one and only interaction with menhirs was trying to bribe a demon to move one out of the way, in the conveniently-named Menhir Room.
I do wonder what the Words of Spring and Autumn might do. Summer is fertility and riot, winter is sterility and focus; they seem like clear opposites and Iâm not sure what the other two points of the diamond would be. Perhaps renewal and decay?
To be fair, it sounds like you need a ritual bound to get the right conditions for magic in this day and age; the era of being able to shape reality with a couple words is long gone. We can forgive Nitocris for forgetting some old, worn-out words that donât work any more.
Thereâs an Ancient Egyptian text called the Sayings of Kha-Kheper-Re-Seneb, from somewhere around 1500 BCE, where he laments that the whole language is old and tired and everything he has to say has already been said before. âIf only I had unknown utterances and extraordinary verses, in a new languageâŚwhat is already said can only be repeated; what is said once has been said.â At the time he was writing it, Egyptian civilization was still doing its level best to emulate a supposed âgolden ageâ a thousand years gone.
The way this room works, Iâm imagining the rules of magic have changed over time and place (given the âdreamâ connection, perhaps itâs shaped by the human collective unconscious?), and the purpose of a ritual bound is to shift to a different set of rules. The rules inside Anaxâs bound donât let the Unnameable Name take effect, but the rules inside the temple bound do. Millennia of magical research in the Egyptian milieu eventually led to Kteh Nyareâs spirit (and Nitocris potentially) hitting the limits of what they could achieve without a fundamental change in paradigm. (See also: the âmodern formsâ of the Seasonal Names.)
I was so sure weâd need to find a way to clear the haze to see the stars. I completely missed that you could just change the phase of the moon to bring in more light.
I admit, all I can think of for ZOK is âxokâ, a picture of Pac-Man with teeth.
I think I might be missing a reference. Does Cragnessum sound like something else?
Oh, right, testa is âheadâ in the sense of the head on your body, not capo. Most of my Italian knowledge boils down to âtry to recognize Latin rootsâ, and caput is the Classical word for âheadâ, but it was displaced by testa in Romance, with caput shifting to mean the âheadâ of an organization (hence chief, chef, capo, captain, etc).
And after drinking five bottles of wine, I think any normal mortal would be significantly impaired in their puzzle-solving skills.
(Itâs possible Nitocris is too. She just uses UNDO after any intoxication-induced mistakes so we never see them.)
I suppose some of the blame also falls on whoever decided to put a ritual bound right inside a doorway.
For anyone who hasnât played Hadean Lands, hereâs what happens if you try to put yourself into a ritual bound:
>sit on bound
The whole purpose of a ritual bound is to separate the actor from the things acted upon. Climbing into a bound is the kind of student horseplay that got your entire academy class a weekâs duty in looking at scary pictures. People whose bones had been accidentally turned to salt or their skin to mercury or what have you. That sort of picture. You stay out of arcs now.
Lab safety is very important!
Iâm afraid I still canât figure out what this is an anagram of. Anyone else in the thread want to help?
Making the potential future epilogue where we go around shouting it in every room even more interesting! After all, isnât that what anyone would do after learning a name of such power? Or at least, anyone who lacks the common sense to stay out of the bound while doing magic?
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Arne Saknussemm, the explorer who blazed the trail in Verneâs Journey to the Center of the Earth.
(If Iâd looked it up I would have matched the spelling better. Iâm afraid I was remembering the terrible 1967 cartoon TV show rather than the book!)
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Oh, that seems fun too â Iâm actually really curious how to story will start to get wrangled together, given the incredible range of different ideas folks have thrown out.
Ah, makes sense, and likewise making the spells Lovecraftianish rather than straight references. I realize I hastily referred to it being a âdumb jokeâ if Kteh was a kitty reference, but to be clear I really love it when there are rock-stupid jokes like that layered into stuff thatâs otherwise very clever and sophisticated (like Henry Galtmice/Giltmace â I flatter myself that I can usually tell when somethingâs been anagrammized, but thatâs really elegantly done).
I think these two pieces actually go nicely together â like usually if you mess up a ritual in HL, you just get a description of something failing or turning to sludge or whatever, which is helpful feedback but not very fun. Positioning the protagonist as someone recklessly delving into much deeper waters than she should be swimming in, and ârewardingâ unsuccessful experimentation with big, lurid deaths makes messing around with only a dim idea what youâre doing more engaging.
(Also, I dunno if youâve been following the internal mythology of this thread, which has gotten a little convoluted by now, but since Iâve decided our Naomi is secretly a Lovecraftian baddy herself, the âyup, Iâm just gonna jump in and start doing dark magicâ vibe fits especially well).
Yeah, and I think it works â certainly it felt very rewarding to feel like I was figuring stuff out without explicitly being led there, like the different season-inflected astral realms. But for all the interruptions, I donât think that out-of-sequence book would have thrown me off too badly.
Oh man, Iâm not going to yell âshameâ at you, Iâm just jealous you still get to play HL for the first time (I think I still need to wait a couple years before I can replay it). And itâs funny, Iâve never actually played any of the Cyan games in any real way (I bounced off Riven when I was high school) but I know Zarf is big into them, so this is an impetus for me to finally check those out in turnâŚ
I was also thinking that part of me wants the full-fat version of this room, spun off into its own game, where you get all four words. My theory was that you could spin fertility/growth out of summer and into spring, while autumn would be wind, change, decay â like you have a dynamic/static axis and a life/death axis, with spring dynamic/life, summer static/life, autumn dynamic/death, winter static/death.
On the one hand, this is a great illustration of how completely persistent this idea is (it goes alongside âkids these daysâ and ânobody wants to do any hard work anymoreâ), but itâs also a great illustration of just how gob-stoppingly old Egypt is. I think I mentioned up-thread that weâre closer to Cleopatra than she was to the pyramids, which never fails to draw me up short.
Oh, thatâs a good observation! I just thought the name working at the second bound was just about reality thinning out as we get farther from the real world, but I like your interpretation better (especially since as you say, in Nitocrisâs idiosyncratic astral realm, magic probably is more powerful).
No, just the idea of like a Norwegian Cragne makes me giggle.
Oh yeah, Iâd forgotten about that! Though possibly Nitocrisâ experience (HL spoiler: and that of the HL protagonist, for that matter) might be different from that of a regular alchemist.
Michael Gentry
1 Like
Read The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers if you want more of this.
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Added to my reading list!
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To quote Gilbert and Sullivan:
MAJOR-GENERAL: [gesturing to the chapel] I come here to humble myself before the tombs of my ancestors, and to implore their pardon for having brought dishonour on the family escutcheon.
FREDERIC: But you forget, sir, you only bought the property a year ago, and the stucco on your baronial castle is scarcely dry.
MAJOR-GENERAL: Frederic, in this chapel are ancestors. You cannot deny that! With the estate, I bought the chapel and its contents. I donât know whose ancestors they were, but I know whose ancestors they are.
Given how few living Cragnes weâve seen, we may very well have inherited the manor already. And with it, plenty of Cragne ancestors!
For one more (lengthy) tangent about Kteh Nyare, the idea of an ancient priest adapting hieroglyphs into a phonetic notation for magic words is really cool to me.
Historically, hieroglyphic writing was pretty static even as the language evolved, and it was not very good for writing anything except one specific, archaic dialect of Egyptian: it never indicated the vowels, for example, for historical reasons. (When youâre first figuring out how to write down words, a picture of a knife on a whetstone seems like an equally good representation of mĂĄĂĄdas âto sharpenâ, mĂĄĂĄdis âsharpeningâ, madsĂĄ âmight sharpenâ, or mĂĄdsiu âsharpenedââand the only thing thatâs consistent between those is the consonants M-D-S, so now you start using that glyph to write those three consonants wherever they come in a word, no matter whatâs in between or around them.)
There were a few experiments with adding more phonetic information, to write the names of foreigners, for instance. But most of these experiments are still not understood by modern scholars and trying to figure out how they worked is an area of active study. And even then, the systems were never especially precise. Hieroglyphs were given to humanity by the gods; who are we to change them? Who are we to introduce a sign for the âLâ sound, even when weâre using it all the time in our current dialect, if the gods didnât make one for us?
Presumably Kteh Nyare didnât especially care about the sanctity of the godsâ works and hacked the system into something he could use to transcribe distinctly-non-Egyptian magic words for his incantations. Who needs Thoth when you have Azathoth?
But, hieroglyphs also had several degrees of freedom, for aesthetic reasons. One reason the system was so elaborate was to look good, and there could be a dozen different ways of writing the same word: an owl means âMâ, a mouth means âRâ, a hoe means âM-Râ, so you could write maar âsickenâ with a hoe, or owl-mouth, or hoe-mouth, or owl-hoe, or owl-hoe-mouth, or you could add in a chisel or a canal, since those could both also mean âM-RââŚwhichever looked best in the context of your particular carving. (And then youâd also add a sparrow at the end to make it clear you meant maar âsickenâ instead of mir âbullâ or mar âcanalâ or whatnot, because sparrows are horrible, wretched things that steal all the farmersâ newly-planted seeds, so you can use the sparrow glyph to indicate âthis is a word for a bad thingâ.)
Which means itâs entirely reasonable that Naomi/Nitocris couldnât figure out the Word of Chaos with some glyphs missing, but once she saw them, she could know exactly where they belonged in the formula.
Now, of course absolutely none of this matters to the actual room or puzzle itself. But it turns out specializing in ancient writing systems gives me fewer opportunities to add interesting context to the game than knowing about the history of Vermont, so Iâm going to use it whenever I can!
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Thanks for sharing this! I only know a tiny bit about hieroglyphs (basically just enough to know thatâs what you say, not âhieroglyphicsâ â I think the latter is the adjectival form, like âhieroglyphic inscriptionâ?) so this is super fascinating, and leads to a satisfying place about how Nitocris figured out the word.
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Some people care a lot about that, and insist you should never say âhieroglyphicsâ as a noun, but honestly I think itâs fine; itâs clear enough what you mean, and if we can say âphysicsâ and âmathematicsâ as nouns, âhieroglyphicsâ should be acceptable too (it comes from the same kind of Greek adjective). So you officially have my permission to use it as a noun if you want to. 
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I thought it was Arne Saknussemm. I recently read Journey To the Centre Of The Earth so it stuck out to me when reading this playthrough. I donât think I figured it out when I played it myself.
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Chapter the Sixteenth: Ewige Blumenkraft
We left Nitocris giddy with newly-(re)discovered magical powers and like five whole bottles of wine. We rejoin her as she continues her explorations of the surprisingly extensive undercroft of Cragne Manor. Previously, weâd unblocked a door from the wine cellar by the simple expedient of emptying jeroboams of wine out of a giant cask, so letâs check out whatâs behind door number 1:
>w
Your ears pop and you stumble as you step across the threshold, reeling in a momentary gravitational slippage.Laboratory (Michael Gentry)
Hard, white light reflected from steel walls pricks painfully at your eyes. Through the glare you can make out the implements of some sort of laboratory, squirming sculptures of metal and glass dripping curdled fluids and spurting foul-smelling puffs of steam. A way out lies east, but otherwise there seem to be no other exits from this place.The author is here, hunched over and fidgeting intently with a roiling knot of impossible space that floats in the middle of the room.
âPerhaps, uh, just correct this typo here . . .â says the author.
Oh my â itâs Gentry His Own Self, the one who put this all in motion some (now) 24 years ago when he decided to write the mother of all interactive Lovecraft pastiches. Given his eminence, we can forgive what looks to be a quite literal author-insert character â quite a lot of meta going around the Manor these days.
(Dare we tempt fate? I think heâs got an account on the boards⌠yes, here it is: @Michael_Gentry. Let us hope we donât regret drawing his dread gaze!)
I attempt to X ME, because Iâm trying to do better on that score, but my finger slips and a bare âXâ defaults to the Anchorhead CYOA book (I miss when it was the real estate pamphlet, but thatâs been long since relegated to the junk pocket). While we waste time, the author starts a conversation:
The impossible spaceâs surface momentarily reflects the blackest, sanity-crushing depths of space.
The author smiles nervously. âSo glad to see youâve made it here at last,â he says. âI knew youâd find your way eventually. I, uh . . . I anticipated it.â
âShould, uh, probably add another synonym here . . .â whispers the author.
Yeah, itâs not especially surprising that you did, inasmuch as 1) if your identification as the demiurge behind all this is correct, you Nitocrisâs coming ahead of time, and 2) if it isnât, well, weâre an adventure game protagonist, we go everywhere eventually.
We correct our mistake, to underwhelming results:
>x me
As good-looking as ever.You bear the trauma of a woman who has been eye to eye with an eburnean pond kraken.
The impossible space briefly shrinks to the size of a grain of rice, remaining the same apparent size only because it is now, somehow, floating only a few inches away from your eyeball.
âWhere was I . . . ah, yes . . . Iâve been, uh, Iâve been working on . . .â He gestures at the impossible space spinning slowly in front of him. âJust a few final adjustments. Essentially done, except for . . . well. But here you are, just in time.â
>x author
He is stooped and cadaverous, yet of indeterminate age. A profane energy animates him, twitching and plucking at his limbs like the palsied hand of an invisible puppeteer.The author licks his bloodstained lips. âIn, uh, in there. It just needs . . . you. Inside. To complete the . . . yes. So if you could . . .â He gestures again, somewhat more brusquely, towards the impossible space. âJust . . . I canât make you. I mean I could, but that would render the whole thing . . . Itâs the interactivity, you see. I canât lead you, I can only . . . anticipate.â
Oh, I see how it is. This author is one of those demiurges â he likes to watch. Where exactly does he want us to go?
>x space
It churns slowly, rotating around an axis that does not appear to align with any direction possible in three-dimensional space, alternating in shape between a pyramid, a starfish, an origami crane come unfolded. It shines like mercury, reflecting the room and beyond the room, reflecting every room in the manor, and the manor itself, and the town beyond the manor, and the world beyond the town, and you realize with queasy vertigo that it does not just reflect these things but it contains them, it contains the world and inside it, the town and inside it, the house and inside it, the room and inside that ? it contains you. It is the universe, and you are standing with your back to its center, staring at the inner surface of its awful, outermost edge.A faint itch tickles your nose, and you wipe away a bright smear of blood.
âAh, yes, youâll, uh, youâll want to watch out for the, uh . . . the hemorrhaging,â says the author. âThough you develop a tolerance, eventually, if you . . . interact with it enough. Assuming your brain doesnât explode first.â You canât help but note the authorâs own mouth and chin, streaked and crusted and black.
âWhere was I . . . ah, yes . . . please, just . . . Iâve been working on this for so long, and it, itâs so close to being finished,â the author says. âI just need . . . and it has to be voluntary. You have to enter it. You have to enter the work, and you have to choose it. Here, just to show you Iâm, uh . . . Iâll just . . .â
You feel a moment of dizziness, and suddenly there is an exit in the east wall. Although, youâre not entirely sure, but . . . wasnât there always an exit in the east wall?
Going in there doesnât seem especially appealing, but at least weâd be away from whateverâs causing these aneurysms, and also away from him (it sounds like heâd still be able to see us, though, like the creepy voyeur he is).
We try to ask him about a couple of things â Anchorhead and, er, Inform 7 â but he waves our questions away, continuing to hector us:
The author shakes his head scornfully. âDonât pester me with, uh, trivialities.â
The impossible spaceâs surface momentarily reflects words written in fire: Now everything relevant is irrelevant.
âWould you just . . .â whines the author. âComplete the work. Itâs the only way to complete all of this . . .â
The impossible space briefly expands to the size of a building, remaining the same apparent size only because it is now, somehow, nearly a mile distant.
Welp, he just created nihilism in one line of code, points for that.
Thereâs not much else here of interest:
>x sculptures
A seemling purposeless tangle of tubes, flasks, burners and bulbs, much of it cracked, blackened, and crusted with old residue. Liquids fizz and percolate throughout, evaporating and recondensing in an endless cycle.âCome on,â pleads the author. âEnter the work. It really is almost finished . . .â
A few more ambient events really donât make the offer more appealing:
âDo it,â whines the author. âStep into the work. You must be curious . . .â
âJust need to correct this typo here . . .â says the author. âBut that would, uh, ruin the pacing . . .â
The impossible space suddenly erupts in a profusion of eyes and hands . . . four eyes, ten hands . . . fifty eyes, a thousand hands . . . all wriggling and twitching and blinking at you before they just as abruptly vanish.
âHurry,â wheedles the author. âGo inside the work. It is so close, so close to being perfect . . .â
Okay, geez, itâs not like Nitocris really needs an engraved invitation to go bounding through strange dimensional gates:
>in
You feel it as soon as you get close to it: the inexorable gravity of the impossible space locks onto you like a manacle around your wrist. It drags you in, inch by inch, until your fingertips break its liquid mirror surface ? and that is when you start to scream.âAh, there it is,â the author whispers. âDonât, uh, donât fight it.â
[press any key]
Topologically speaking, the human body is not a solid object but rather a sort of elongated toroid; turned inside out, it resembles a large, lumpy sausage encased within the thinly stretched membrane of its own intestinal tract. Or so you soon discover.
Mercifully, this does not last. Several moments later, you are drawn backwards through a tube made of yourself and unfolded into a shape more closely approximating normal. You emerge into a space composed of a reasonably navigable number of dimensions, a strange place but somehow familiar . . .
[press any key]
Outside the Real Estate Office
A grim little cul-de-sac, tucked away in a corner of the claustrophobic tangle of narrow, twisting avenues that largely constitute the older portion of Anchorhead. Like most of the streets in this city, it is ancient, shadowy, and leads essentially nowhere. The lane ends here at the real estate agentâs office, which lies to the east, and winds its way back toward the center of town to the west. A narrow, garbage-choked alley opens to the southeast.
âŚwell, it was a fifty-fifty shot weâd end up recursively back at the train station, or here.
Fortunately, I replayed Anchorhead not long ago, so all we need to do is duck around the back of the alley, pull down the fire escape with our umbrella â
>se
âWait, thatâs not . . . no. âConstituteâ? Ugh, letâs try this . . .â
Outside the Real Estate Office
A grim little cul-de-sac, tucked away in a corner of the claustrophobic tangle of narrow, twisting avenues that largely comprise the older portion of Anchorhead. Like most of the streets in this city, it is ancient, shadowy, and leads essentially nowhere. The lane ends here at the real estate agentâs office, which lies to the east, and winds its way back towards the center of town to the west. A narrow, garbage-choked alley opens to the southeast.
Umm, Michael? Itâs fine, just a slightly different c-word. Not worth holding things up over. Letâs get the actual story started â describing the protagonist, thatâs a good way to create identification with the player character:
>x me
âThatâs, uh, well, thatâs . . . but maybe not âcompriseâ, technically. âComposeâ? âIs composed ofâ? Maybe we should . . .â
Outside the Real Estate Office
A grim little cul-de-sac, tucked away in a corner of the claustrophobic tangle of narrow, twisting avenues that largely compose the older portion of Anchorhead. Like most of the streets in this city, it is ancient, shadowy, and leads essentially nowhere. The lane ends here at the real estate agentâs office, which lies to the east, and winds its way back toward the center of town to the west. A narrow, garbage-choked alley opens to the southeast.
âŚfriend, that revision is objectively worse, can we just leave well enough alone? Iâll just grab the umbrella and get things rolling-
>i
âAh, that doesnât . . . it just doesnât quite flow . . .â
And so it goes. You have a hazy sense that it has always been and will forever remain a rainy late afternoon in November. Aside from this, there is no way to measure the passage of time apart from the authorâs voice, an endless, stammering litany of emendations that seems to drift down upon you from the cloud-covered sky. At some point, in the midst of an agonized millennia-long rumination over whether it should be spelled âtowardâ or âtowardsâ, you just stop hearing it.
Anyway, your husband should be back to pick you up in a few minutes. And then the two of you can begin the long, precarious process of settling in.
*** You are trapped here forever ***
Oh lordy â weâre trapped in a deathless limbo of authorial procrastination, writerâs block, and literary constipation.
(Heâs even got me doing the pointless synonyms thing too!)
This shall not stand. We TAKE BACK:
Shuddering in response to the forced time reversal, the tesseract vomits you back out into the Laboratory.
This seems a fun challenge to dig into, but I want to check the coffee first since I think itâll be more satisfying to present it in one chunk, now that Iâve figured out the fail state â sadly, weâre not ready for the challenge yet, so this endlessly-rewritten Anchorhead will need to remain protagonistless for now (and sorry for tagging you in prematurely, Michael!).
Thereâs one more unexplored door â south off the basement hub (thereâs also a hatch downward, lotta exits in that place). Letâs give that a whirl:
>s
Boiler Room (Eric W. Brown)
The western side of this windowless brick room is dominated by a huge boiler connected to a confusing network of pipes that eventually delivers heat to the rest of the manor. Between the unpleasant humming, the smell of fuel oil, and the heat leaking out, the boiler is leaving you feeling a little lightheaded.As noticeable as it is, the boiler is hardly the only item of interest. Crammed around it are many devices, at least four of which are clearly bigger and heavier than you. Next to the open doorway leading north there is a keypunch of some kind. Thereâs a support column in the middle of the room with a framed diagram of some sort on it, and lashed to the column there is something that looks like a wardrobe that someone decided to wrap in copper wire. To make it even odder, there is a little window near the top of its door. Next to it is a mechanism that is a little bit reminiscent of a truck engine, and behind it a machine contained in a casing made from wood. Beyond a heavy-duty table near the southwest corner there is a rough hole in the floor, and the surface of the table is dominated by some manner of control panel. There is a small steel shelf high on the wall way above the table, and a fluorescent work light above that. On the wall opposite the wardrobe there is a painting hanging from a chain.
It looks like the room has hardly been disturbed in decades, and your presence has kicked up a sizable amount of dust. Although there are some cobwebs, you donât see any spiders. Maybe they got fed up with some combination of the loud noises, bad smells, choking dust, and miserable heat and went someplace nicer.
What fresh hell is this? This isnât a boiler room, itâs a whole island from Riven crammed into one room, presumably hidden down here in the basement to avoid the Thereâs Too Much Damned Steampunk tax.
What I discover next jolts me out of my snarky commentary, though â as is my wont, I check out Eric Brown on IFDB (his user name is Fenric) and oh my gosh, heâs the Saugus guy! Remember how, way back in Chapter the Seventh, we talked about the public-library-sponsored ghost story contest in Saugus, MA, that has an IF category? Eric Brown is the guy who started that! He also wrote one of two games in the abortive 2019 Advent calendar festival thing â the other of which, of course, was written by Andrew Plotkin, so itâs fitting that after finishing Zarfâs big, puzzly room last time, it looks like weâve got one more of those courtesy of Brown!
Weâre eventually going to need to get down to brass tacks with all this ironwork, but letâs delay that inevitability with some faffing about:
>smell
The smell of fuel-oil permeates this chamber.>x me
You look like someone whoâs been wandering around a dusty, sweltering boiler room.>x dust
Besides there being enough dust to irritate your throat, you notice that itâs sticking all over your sweat. It makes you itchy and you have the urge to wipe it off.>wipe dust
Itâs pointless wiping it off, as more immediately replaces it.>x cobwebs
The cobwebs are scattered among the pipes and are themselves covered in dust. It doesnât look like any spiders have been here for years.>x pipes
The pipes to and from the boiler form a chaotic tangle that mostly obscures the ceiling. None are insulated and they radiate heat.
This is doing a good job establishing this as a physically uncomfortable place to spend much time.
>x boiler
This is a vintage boiler that youâd guess would have been new in the early 1930s. Itâs bigger than a small automobile and certainly heavier. While itâs clearly not operating at peak efficiency, itâs perhaps surprising that itâs operating at all and producing as much heat as is leaking out into this room, let alone the rest of the manor. It is producing an annoying hum.The boiler is currently switched on.
>turn off boiler
You have no way of doing that, and even if you did you would not want to turn off all the heat in the manor.
All that is true, but I have a pathological need to immediately try to turn off any device thatâs noted as being on (and vice versa).
Thatâs all the preliminaries and incidentals out of the way, so thereâs nothing for it but to start digging into all these machines.
(To be continued tomorrow)
9 Likes
Looks like youâre on the home stretch! This is the last mega puzzle room, everything else is pretty manageable!
2 Likes
(Chapter the Sixteenth, continued)
Guess weâll do these in order:
>x keypunch
(the keypunch)
Looking at it up close it is obviously a mechanical keypunch for the sorts of cards that used to be used for computers. There donât seem to be any computers around here, but you recall that punch cards were invented decades before the first digital computer and were used for other things. It is about four feet tall and appears to be handmade of some kind of heavy metal, with welding done with more enthusiasm than skill. It has a card slot in the middle in which to insert a card to be punched. It has a hex keypad underneath it that allows one to set eight digits of data. Currently it is set to 00000000. It has a handle on the right that can be pulled to make the punching happen.
Ah yes, a hexadecimal keypad, Nitocris is quite familiar with these. Er, so far this doesnât seem so bad, itâs basically just a glorified password machine. We try putting in one of the many cards weâre currently toting around â I pick the black business card Vaadignephodâs goods left as a souvenir after they jumped me in the jail â but nothing doing, we need to do this the right way. Whatâs next?
>x diagram
This diagram is framed and permanently mounted on the column. It roughly shows how the various components in this room need to be connected for the overall system to work, and it identifies each one.The heavy keypunch near the doorway is purely mechanical. It doesnât need to be connected to anything.
The control panel on the table runs the whole system and needs to be both plugged into an outlet for power and connected to the large engine mechanism, which is apparently the overlay engine. The control panel has a slot for punch cards.
The overlay engine needs to be connected to the wardrobe, which is apparently called the faraday cage.
The big machine with the wooden casing is identified on the diagram as the dimensional stabilizer, and it also needs to be connected to the faraday cage.
The faraday cage needs to be plugged into an outlet for power.
While it labels these components and says which is connected to which, the diagram doesnât go into any more detail as to what the overall system is meant to do, but following its logic, connecting the control panel to the overlay engine, connecting the overlay engine to the faraday cage, connecting the dimensional stabilizer to the faraday cage, and then plugging both the faraday cage and control panel into the outlet ought to be enough to make it work.
Ah! Okay, thatâs a little more intimidating, though I appreciate the executive summary at the bottom.
The wardrobe being a Faraday cage is a little confusing â those are usually made of (conductive) metal mesh, which operate as an electromagnetic shield. Wrapping something in wire usually means youâre trying to turn it into an electromagnet (though of course the thing being wrapped would have to be a magnet, which the wooden wardrobe definitely isnât. Still, it might be putting out some other kinds of analogous energy? That âdimensional stabilizerâ is maybe a clue weâre tapping into powers beyond our ken, here).
I think weâre not really going to understand this until we look at everything. Speaking of the cage:
>x wardrobe
(the faraday cage)
The faraday cage is about seven feet tall and perhaps four feet wide. Its door has a crescent-shaped window in it that enables you to somewhat see inside it. Itâs wrapped (as best as possible while still allowing the door, which is now closed, to work) with tightly-wound copper wire. You seem to recall wound copper wire relating more to generators and electromagnets than faraday cages, so clearly this is not a typical model. A row of three lights is arranged across the top above the door: a green bulb (currently unlit), a yellow bulb (currently unlit), and a red bulb (currently unlit). On the bottom there is a receptacle for cables. There is also a power cord dangling from the back of it.>x window
The window is shaped like a small crescent and provides you an obscured view inside the faraday cage.
âŚfolks, I think Nitocris might be eavesdropping on us, since Iâm not sure how else sheâd know about electromagnets. Good think weâve only been saying nice things about her, right?
>open cage
(the faraday cage)
You open the faraday cage.>enter cage
(the faraday cage)
You get into the faraday cage.
Underwhelming but good to confirm thereâs nothing (currentlyâŚ) in there.
>close cage
(the faraday cage)
You close the faraday cage.>scream
That verb doesnât work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.
Just testing the soundproofing!
Letâs check out the wiring:
>x faraday receptacle
The receptacle has two ports for pentagonal-shaped connectors.>x faraday power cord
It is typical of the sorts of heavy-duty power cords that were produced in the 1940s. As it predates the safety regulations requiring the third prong, it just has two.
Two connector ports â right, the diagram said we had to connect the cage to the engine and the stabilizer. Hopefully there are cables (and a power outlet!) somewhere around here.
>x column
This is a rough brick support column roughly a foot square running from floor to ceiling. There is a system diagram mounted on it about five feet up, and a power outlet near the bottom.
Oh, hey â ask and ye shall receive.
>x engine
(the overlay engine)
The overlay engine is a large piece of machinery that at first glance looks as though it could have been pulled out from under the hood of a semi-truck. A more detailed analysis shows that this similarity is cursory and it is really unlike any kind of engine you have ever seen prior. On the bottom there is a receptacle for cables and there is a system cable dangling from the back of it.
This thing looks incredibly complex, but also doesnât seem to have any user-serviceable parts other than more cables and ports (once again, it has two connector ports, and the cable it also pentagonal, natch).
As we poke around, we get this message:
You have the strong feeling that youâre being watched.
Oh lordy, tell me this is timed.
(it isnât, thatâs just a clue to the painting â weâll get to it in a bit)
>x stabilizer
(the dimensional stabilizer)
The dimensional stabilizer is about the size of a large trunk. Its wooden casing thoroughly hides whatever is going on inside, but it has a system receptacle near the bottom, a system cable hanging out of the space right next to it, and a activation toggle on the top near the front edge.The dimensional stabilizer is currently switched off.
Once again this has the standard array of connection ports, but this time we do have something else to play with:
>turn on stabilizer
(the dimensional stabilizer)
You switch the dimensional stabilizer on.
That seems a totally helpful thing to mess with willy-nilly! Of course, the thing isnât plugged in, so I doubt flipping the switch does anything. We still turn it off before we move on, just in case.
The heat in this room is starting to get to you.
Geez, I know, and we havenât even finished looking at everything, much less solved the puzzle.
>x table
(the heavy-duty table)
The heavy-duty table is made of the thick wood typically used for workbenches in bygone days. It has one drawer running its full length, and its surface is nearly covered by a control panel. The portion of the surface that is not covered has a list of some sort written on it.>x list
(the book list (smelling faintly of mildew))
ATTENTION PETER CRAGNEThis is your notification that your status with the Backwater Public Library is DELINQUENT due to NON-RETURNAL.
You are NOT PERMITTED to check out books or to access special library materials until your status is cleared.To clear your status, you must return ALL books you currently have checked out:
To Have, and To Have Knots: An Illustrated Guide Backwater Personalities (1915-1925 edition) The Lives of the Roman Emperors De Zeven Testamenten van de Krijsende Zeeworm Venator in Tenebris 'Pataphysical Approaches to Quantum Superfluids Legends of Lake Champlain and the Hudson River Valley A Rudimentary Taxonomy of Known Scent and Grotesque Reactions Life Beneath Nightmares Buried Tales of Old Vermont The Seven Gaunts New England and the Bavarian Illuminati ANCHORHEAD. A What-do-I-do-now Book Based on the Works of MICHAEL GENTRYâŚHuh, you could have sworn that the list was longer before.
Actually, itâs been a minute since we checked the list â weâve got a bunch of these, with I think only six left to find? Weâre definitely making some good progress here.
>read checklist
The exact text of the checklist is as follows:
Ensure the system is properly connected.
Ensure the door is closed.
Plug in units that need electricity.
Insert desired card and turn on control panel.
Turn on dimensional stabilizer before opening door.
Check status lights before opening door.
Take any other precautions before opening door.
âŚokay, this seems relatively straightforward? âOther precautionsâ and âdesired cardâ presuppose some additional knowledge or context we donât yet have â and we donât yet understand what this thing does â but the basic operations seem clear enough.
>x panel
(the control panel)
The control panel is a mechanism that appears to feature some of the best technology the early 1940s had to offer. An analog gauge labeled the âpower readoutâ takes up much of the right hand side of the panel and has a needle hovering near 0 out of 100. A punch card slot (currently empty) sits on the left toward the bottom, with a round on/off button situated above it. A power cord and a system cable are in the back. Overall there is not a lot of room left on top of the table upon which it is resting (but there is a checklist there plus a drawer beneath).The control panel is currently switched off.
Okay, this all seems as expected.
>open drawer
You open the drawer, revealing the Journal of Edwin Cragne, a C353F128 punch card, a 0B46E931 punch card, an AE9B711D punch card, a 00A02209 punch card and a blank punch card.
My excitement at finding a book â and by Edwin Cragne, no less, who the creepy guy in the town square intimated was still living and anxious to meet us â is counterbalanced by a sinking feeling at finding a bunch of eight-digit hexadecimal punchcards.
Hoping against hope that this works:
>x 00
You canât see any such thing.
Sigh. Weâve chosen the path of pain.
>x 00A02209
It is a typical punch card, a thin piece of cardboard the size of a bank note from a bygone era. This one has the hex code 00A02209.
So yeah, we need to type out the labels in full each time we want to interact with a specific card. After a whole lot of typos, we establish that none of them, blank or coded, have anything interesting about them, and we hoover up the lot.
Checking out the journal (and dealing with additional disambiguation issues there, of course):
This handwritten journal appears to cover a period from September 1939 to May 1943 in the life of Edwin Cragne, a self-styled scientist and inventor. It has a maroon cover and is densely packed with a tight, neat writing and sporadic equations. Portions of it appear to have been written with a particular reader in mind. Other portions appear to have been written only for himself and are in code. However, the parts that are not encoded seem to cover many of the devices in this boiler room, all of which Edwin Cragne apparently built himself. You could consult the journal about them.
Oh, thatâs thoughtful of him! Letâs see what we can find out:
>consult edwin about cage
(the Journal of Edwin Cragne about)
What I for simplicity call the Faraday cage is obviously far more than a Faraday cage. It is the space that is safely overlaid between realities. The effective environment within it is a mixture of the two overlaid spaces. I have mounted lights on it that indicate the level of safety of its interior environment. If the red light is lit, it is immediately deadly and the door should not even be opened. If the yellow light is lit, it is dangerous but some interaction is possible; the door can be opened but it may not be safe to enter. If it is green, the environment is safe, but there still may be other dangers. Be sure to take the other precautions. Also, never operate the system with the door open.
Aha, Nitocris expected as much â this appears to be a crude mechanism for breaching the walls between realities. More concretely, the obvious warning-light system is an obvious warning-light system.
Weâll look up more stuff after we finish exploring.
>x hole
(the hole in the floor)
This hole leads to a space below and is large enough to fit through. Itâs unclear what made it; if it were smaller one would think it were chewed through by rats.
We quickly check whether this is a workable exit â it is, but before we head out:
You can feel the eyes of the painting staring at the back of your neck. Something tells you that you really ought to leave the journal in the boiler room.
Anyway thereâs still plenty to do here, so weâll save the rat-hole for later.
>x work light
(the fluorescent work light)
The work light is little more than an old fluorescent tube suspended among the pipes above the table. It has a pull string dangling down enabling it to be switched on or off.The fluorescent work light is currently switched on.
>turn it off
You switch the fluorescent work light off.
This doesnât really slow us down â maybe because we still have the phosphorescent flashlight â but it does trigger some more ambient messages:
For a moment you believe you can hear something scrambling around near the hole in the floor.
You think you just heard a low growl near the boiler.
Inexplicably the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
There was something that sounded almost like a voice from an area near the painting.
There is some strange banging in the pipes overhead, almost as if something were climbing along them.
For a minute I think the boiler room might have been outfitted with a standard-issue grue, but nope, we remain resolutely un-nibbled however long we hang out (though again, itâs unclear whether thatâs because we brought in an external light source).
Still not done checking out the furnishings:
>x shelf
The steel shelf is placed impractically high up on the wall above the table. You cannot tell if there is anything on it from here.
Unlike all the mechanical-electrical foofaraw, this is an easily solvable problem:
>climb table
You get onto the heavy-duty table.>x shelf
The steel shelf is placed impractically high up on the wall above the table.On the steel shelf are three blank punch cards and a can of salt.
We yoink the lot.
>x salt
It is an ordinary cylindrical container of salt. The label has a dark blue background with âsaltâ in big letters, and a warning that this salt does not supply iodine in small letters. There is a small opening in the top for pouring out some.
Not quite as exciting as the extradimensional hyper-salt from the kitchen, but notably safer for human consumption.
>x painting
This painting is a portrait of a man who from a distance looks a little bit like John Quincy Adams, but far more obsessed and far less sane. He looks extremely fierce and more than a little bit scary. His wild eyes stare out straight ahead in a direct line to the window of the wardrobe, and seem to follow you as you move around.You canât make out the artistâs signature, but it is titled Edwin Cragne, dated 1938, and is fastened to the wall with a support chain.
Oh, thatâs probably why we keep having a creepy feeling of being watched â Captain Sideburns here seems a little intense.
>x support chain
This chain is connected to the painting and bolted to the wall. It is around half a foot long.
Huh, thatâs interestingâŚ
>pull it
It is firmly bolted to the wall, and too strong to break.>pull painting
The support chain is bolted to the wall and it is too strong to break. You can pull the painting quite a ways, though, and you could probably turn it around or flip it.>flip painting
Youâve turned Edwin Cragne to face the wall. The back of the painting is a sign featuring a large symbol that looks a bit like a tree branch angling up to the left.>x sign
This large sign contains a single symbol shaped a bit like an abstract tree branch angling up to the left. It contains no further explanation, and is fastened to the wall with a support chain.
That was unexpected! I wonder if thatâs a kind of protective sigil, like an Elder Sign, and this is the âother precautionsâ the journal mentioned?
After a couple abortive attempts:
>consult edwin about sign
I have studied many different supposed âElder Signsâ and found that in practice most do not work. Only one has proven mostly effective, but there are still many things that do not respect it.
Yup, thatâs one mystery solved!
Weâre almost ready to dive in and starting futzing with stuff, but letâs see if thereâs anything else relevant in the book. We already checked out the entry on the cage:
>consult edwin about keypunch
This is a simple mechanical keypunch for punching hex codes into punch cards. Insert the card, set the hex code, and pull the handle.>consult edwin about diagram
I mounted the diagram on the column so there is no chance of it getting mislaid.>consult edwin about checklist
Look for it written on the table.>consult edwin about engine
This wonder performs the actual joining of the two separate spaces in the one confined area of the Faraday Cage. When connected, it sucks power out of the very firmament of our reality. It is best not to leave it running for too long. I now take the precaution of unplugging everything when not in use.>consult edwin about stabilizer
The dimensional stabilizer is what makes it possible to safely enter and interact with the other reality pulled into the overlaid space. As I have repeatedly shown, without this breakthrough entering such a space is fatal to human life. Donât forget to switch it on., or it will be the last mistake you make.>consult edwin about control panel
The control panel operates the system. It targets the reality to be overlaid by means of a hex code provided on a punch card. Ensure everything is set up properly before turning it on, and turn it off before changing hex codes. If a card gets jammed in it, just keep trying to get it out; usually that will work.
(Entertainingly, thereâs nothing about the roomâs eponymous boiler).
Again, mostly confirmation on what we already know, though the detail about wiggling out the cards is potentially helpful.
âŚright, thereâs no more putting this off, itâs time to get our hands dirty.
(To be continued later today)
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So there is actually a Manor? I never got far enough in to find outâŚ
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