you might enjoy carrying Dr. Peanut around with you, maybe set him down on various surfaces, it’s pretty cute 
3 Likes
(Chapter the Twenty-First, continued)
>se
You make your way into the observatory. Your head pounds with the incoherent horror of the day, but here among the stars there is calm.You carefully sidestep through the maze of cacti you have built.
The Observatory (Joey Jones)
The observatory is a cramped domed room cluttered with all manner of mechanical contrivance. The way out is northwest.At the top of the dome is a large telescope. Immediately beneath it is a huge device of brass and gears and dozens of multifaceted lenses.
To one side of the dome is a worn wooden lectern, set before a large chalk circle.
The device is projecting a star sign upon the walls of the dome.
Joey Jones (@Joey) is a prolific, high-profile author whose career I’ve entirely missed due to it coinciding with my time off from IF. But just browsing his gameography on IFDB, this is pretty exciting stuff: he did an Andromeda game, a like steampunk espionage game… I’ve got some things to add to my to-play list.
One other fun fact, right after I entered my first game in the 2020 Comp, someone wrote me an email saying they dug it but wondered whether I was secretly an experienced author, and specifically asked if I was Joey Jones under a pseudonym.
(I’m not – at least, so far as any of y’all know).
Anyway, hey, we’re in an observatory – for a change, I clearly remember there was one of these in Anchorhead too so I catch the reference! And looks like there’s only one exit, the way we came in, so that’s the end of untrammeled exploration in attic.
>x telescope
The telescope is huge and it juts out of the dome into the night sky. Rather than having an eyepiece, a series of mirrors reflects the output into the device beneath it.
Nice, reflectors are better than refractors as you get bigger – giant glass lenses are heavy and it’s hard to manufacture them without imperfections.
>x contrivance
The device appears to be a planetarium projector. It reflects the stars from the telescope onto a series of mirrors that bounce them through an internal orrery which links them up into star signs to project onto the dark walls of the dome.Sticking out prominently from the device are a crank and a dial for turning, a toggle for pushing, and a lever and a pulley for pulling.
That’s a reasonably high quantity of controls. Hopefully the lectern is simpler:
>x lectern
The wooden lectern is worn smooth at the top. Evidently in the long history of the Manor, many books have been placed upon it.
Does what it says on the tin. What else is here:
>x circle
A chalk circle spreads out on the floor below the lectern, perfectly round. The chalk is accreted upon layer-upon-layer of earlier circles.>x sign
Lines light up novel connections between the stars, making an uncanny new star signs that spread across the walls of the observatory.The Liar is ascending in the house of the Hanged Man.
Huh, we have a protective circle, an empty lectern where a book can rest, and a way to project a star sign… this must be where we perform the ritual to find Peter!
This revelation is exciting but a little disappointing TBH, since I was looking forward to performing the ritual in the Chumbawamba room!
From the church steeple, we learned that Peter’s sign is the Mouth descending and opposing the Hanging Man, so let’s see if we can dial that up. We’ve got a crank, a dial, a toggle, a lever, and a pulley to mess around with, so how hard can it be?
>turn crank
You turn the crank one step, revealing upon the wall the sign of the Adept.>g
You turn the crank one step, revealing upon the wall the sign of the Despair.>g
You turn the crank one step, revealing upon the wall the sign of the Watcher.>g
You turn the crank one step, revealing upon the wall the sign of the Hook.>g
You turn the crank one step, revealing upon the wall the sign of the Needle.>g
You turn the crank one step, revealing upon the wall the sign of the Toad.
There’s a lot of these! Eventually:
>turn crank
You turn the crank one step, revealing upon the wall the sign of the Mouth.
We turn next to the dial – momentarily complicated by the fact that the parser thinks we’re talking about the combination dial on the suitcase we recovered from the train station way back when. Fortunately we can just shove that into the backpack, and try again:
>turn dial
You turn the dial one step, unveiling the sign of the Noose.
Oops! Does that just do what the crank does? Either way we undo so as not to mess things up:
>push toggle
With a squeal, the whole projector swivels to a new position. Now the Tendril is descending above the Nemesis.
Ruh roh, that also creates more disruption than we want. We undo again.
>pull lever
You pull the lever and the projector adjusts its focus: now the Mouth is under the Hanged Man.
Good! What if we do that again?
>pull lever
You pull the lever and the projector adjusts its focus: now the Mouth is opposing the Hanged Man.
Now we’re on to something! We’ve got the right signs, now it’s just a matter of getting the Mouth to descend – and there’s only one more control left:
>pull pulley
You pull the pulley and the projector turns 45 degrees: now the Mouth is in motion.>g
You pull the pulley and the projector turns 45 degrees: now the Mouth is descending.>x sign
You decipher the star signs lining the walls: the Mouth is descending opposing the Hanged Man.
Boom! I think we lucked into that being way, way easier than it could have been, since I barely understand what half of that stuff did. But with any luck we won’t need to select a second star sign anytime soon.
That doesn’t lead to anything visible happening, of course – there’s a lot more we need to do to bring off the ritual – but we check the coffee just out of interest:
>x coffee
The contents of your coffee cup shock you so much that you almost drop it. Instead of organic liquid curves and swirls, the cream forms a weblike pattern of jagged geometric lines that radiate out from the center at irregular intervals like bolts of lightning.According to the book you read, images like this occur when your fate depends on so many separate actions and courses of destiny that it can no longer be adequately divined by a leftover cup of now-cold muck water.
Yeah, this is like the Court but even more so.
…now that I’m writing this up, I realized that I totally failed to X ME in the observatory during this session. Let’s fix that in post:
> x me
As you walk through the observatory, stars twinkle across your skin.
Nice. Anyway, we’ll be back – let’s head out of the Manor and try to swap our fish for some magic beans (we have some new keys, too)
Curiosity Shop (Rachel Spitler)
>give herring to jessenia
Jessenia’s eyes light up. “Oh! Is this–? Did you bring this for the shop?”
(y/n): y
“Haha! It’s perfect! Look at you!” She reaches out; you hesitate, checking the red herring’s reaction, but it seems surprisingly interested. Gently, she takes the fish and holds it up in the air, cooing into its face in puppy-dog tones. Accordingly, it wriggles cheerfully like she’s the best thing it’s ever seen, which (if you’re honest) she probably is. You have no idea what your face is doing.“This is so much better than I expected,” she laughs, lowering the fish. As she does, it suddenly flicks its body in one huge lurch and spits out an object, which clatters to the floor. After a moment’s shock, Jessenia stoops down to pick it up, looking, if anything, more amused than ever. “A funny old key,” she says wonderingly. “Ha! This fish knew what kind of shop it was coming to.” She offers the key to you, grinning. “Here you go – a curiosity, with my thanks. Oh, and a receipt!” Crossing to the counter with the herring nestled under her elbow, she quickly writes one out. “I’ll write a check and register you as a customer first thing in the morning. Come back and tell me if you find out where that key goes!”
(Your inventory became less wiggly, and you got the ancient key.)
>ask jessenia about herring
Jessenia beams down at the herring. “I think I’ll turn that glass case under the counter into an aquarium. What do you think, little buddy? Would you like that?” The fish flaps wildly in response.
Aww, there’s a lot of cuteness this update! I’m glad there’s a happy ending for our fishy friend, though even happier to get one more key:
>x ancient key
A heavy, ancient key of some dark metal. The bow is of coiling, almost slimy-looking knotwork, while the wards are slightly pointed at the ends, like gothic windows. Despite the absence of rust, it gives a sense of having never seen the light of day before now. It feels dirty even after you wipe it on your pant leg.
Now this is the one that I’m pretty sure is going to get us into the sarcophagus downstairs. Let’s give it a test:
Narrow Straits (Mathbrush)
>unlock sarcophagus with ancient key
You press the key into the keyhole on the center of the sarcophagus. You encounter slight resistance.Pushing the key further, you displace a pint’s worth of black slime that wells up and drips down the sides of the sarcophagus. Your hand burns where the slime touches it, but it fades when you wipe it off.
>open sarcophagus
You kneel down in the filth and open the sarcophagus. The pent-up slime spills out and fouls your clothing.The pulsing, withered source of the black slime quivers in the center of the sarcophagus: a repulsive cyst.
>x cyst
A pustule from the proboscis of one of the Lesser Gods, The Cyst is truly the most repulsive artifact contained in Cragne Manor. It constantly quivers and emits a sickly warmth.>take it
You place both hands on the cyst and gently tug it. It separates from the fleshy veins attaching it to the sarcophagus. Ichor spills out of the wounds for a moment before slowing to a drip and crusting over.
Thanks for this, @mathbrush – ugh, this is some queasily disgusting imagery.
(We of course try to eat it too, which makes us one with the Cyst per when we scarfed down the slime a couple updates ago).
What other loose ends do we have? Sticking with the theme of “totally gross”, let’s feed the awful sausage to the terrible centipede:
The Shambolic Shack (Michael Fessler)
>give sausage to centipede
As you bring the desiccated sausage closer, the heaving surface of the soil is suddenly broken by a furiously working set of clattering mouth-parts and probing antennae – followed immediately by the first several inches of a centipede, yellow and chitinous, thick as an elephant’s trunk.Several antennae brush against the desiccated sausage, but soon move on in disinterest. Thoughtfully, you reclaim the rejected sausage. Maybe there’s something you could do to make it even more tainted and disgusting?
Oh, you have no idea of the things we could do to make it more disgusting. Off the top of my head:
>put sausage in gloves
You slide the desiccated sausage into one noxious glove and twirl it a few times. When you extract it, there are already fine strands of fungus spreading across its surface.
I hope the centipede appreciates that in terms of how gross I could make that sausage, this is like a 3 out of 10.
>give sausage to centipede
As you bring the desiccated sausage closer, the heaving surface of the soil is suddenly broken by a furiously working set of clattering mouth-parts and probing antennae – followed immediately by the first several inches of a centipede, yellow and chitinous, thick as an elephant’s trunk.Several antennae strain toward the fungus-wreathed sausage. Suddenly and with a resounding SNAP!, terrifying mandibles seize one end of the sausage. You hurriedly let it go, and watch the tainted charcuterie vanish into the centipede’s maw. The creature’s frenzied motions begin to slow. Perhaps it’s sated for now.
>search wheelbarrow
A battered metal wheelbarrow. Or at least, it used to be when it still had a front wheel. With only a twisted axle remaining, I guess now it’s just a “barrow”. It is full of glistening black soil.A sudden movement draws your attention back to the wheelbarrow. The enormous centipede is lying coiled on the surface of the glistening soil, writhing in unearthly convulsions. As its movements slow, you see a wave of gray fuzz erupt from the creature’s mouth and spread like fire down the length of its body. With one final convulsion, the fungus-encrusted monstrosity heaves itself over the wheelbarrow’s edge, toppling to the floor with a sodden thud. It lies motionless, save for the swaying mycelial fronds protruding from every crack and orifice.
The cute part of the update is over; we’re deep in ICK territory now.
>search soil
You frantically reach into the now-calm soil. At once, near the top, you encounter a smooth object and pull it out of the soil. It’s a spray bottle.>x spray bottle
A plastic spray bottle labelled “Handwavizole: For Rapid Treatment of endomycorrhizi yuggothi Infestation”.
This seems like a well-thought-out way to handle plot complications… There were Fungi from Yuggoth visible from the spacey bathroom accessible via the Meatpacking Plant, but maybe this stuff will be useful closer to home?
>spray centipede
Nope nope nope. Shudder.
Huh.
>x centipede
The motionless fungus-ridden carcass of a giant centipede, festooned with swaying mycelial fronds that protrude from every crack and orifice.
I dunno, seems like he might want to be sprayed? The coffee says we need something else to make progress here, though, so this is the rare multi-step puzzle requiring several items from elsewhere.
We still have more keys, so we’re not done yet!
(OK, more tonight/tomorrow for real, just snuck this one in)
4 Likes
And take him away from his work!? I never contemplated such a thing, but I might need to try to squeeze that in between updates…
2 Likes
he deserves a sabbatical for having completed his big equation (how is he going to publish, I wonder)
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…oh dammit this might be a bug with the coffee, that’s not good : /
I think you have everything to proceed in the Shambolic Shack now?
1 Like
Tsk tsk, some advertiser isn’t being pedantic enough about their binomial nomenclature. The genus should be capitalized, right?
I do actually remember endomycorrhizae from long-ago high school bio classes, thanks to my teacher’s tendency to turn bio terms into names (“Mike O’Ryzee”) as a mnemonic. (Thanks Mr Stone!) Mycorrhizae are the little fungi that help plant roots function, and endo-mycorrhizae are the ones that actually penetrate the roots instead of just spreading across the surface.
Anyway, given the description of the fungus, I’m pretty sure this is Endomycorrhizi yuggothi we’re dealing with. If you spray the gloves, maybe we can put them on without getting consumed, and use them for another puzzle? But I can’t remember any room we specifically need gloves for.
Truly a beautiful pivot from sweet and wholesome to utterly horrifying. I love it.
But consider: a weird dark lens still works even after going through a long series of puzzles (including smashing it out of its box), while a big reflecting mirror destroys the entire ritual if it’s smudged in the wrong way. All in all, reflectors seem a lot more tolerant of adventure-game shenanigans!
This room didn’t really click with me in the same way some others have; I think the first-person interjections (“I don’t know if you were given a description of the manor from the outside”) and emoticons just pulled me out of it too much.
But the wide variety of styles is the beauty of Cragne Manor, and like with the horse bathroom, I will certainly be remembering it!
4 Likes
I’m pleased to see you finally made it to my room. As the penultimate location, most players never make it that far.
I had originally considered doing something more fiendish for the device, like have each lever, pulley etc shift all the star sign elements to different degrees so you had to Rubik’s cube the whole thing into whatever star sign you needed to get (randomly generated at the start of the game). That sort of puzzle would have worked better graphically. As is, the device is just a mild impediment. The sign system has 6400 combinations mostly to discourage brute forcing it.
Haha the opposite happened to Melvin Rangasamy and I after one of the comps when we entered a game under a pair of what I thought were fairly unbelievable pseudonyms (which were also an anagram of our names together) but quite a lot of people took completely at face value.
6 Likes
So with that hint I’m guessing the first four controls each cycle one of the four components (first sign, motion, relation, second sign) and the fifth one, the toggle, resets them all to their starting positions? Makes sense enough to me.
2 Likes
(Chapter the Twenty-First, concluded)
I decide to begin our key-scumming by going back to the start, and this is an appropriate approach in more ways than one. First, because we luck out and can finally open the very first locked door we ran into – the one in the train station lobby – and second, well, apropos of scummy keys:
unlock green door with slimy key
You unlock the green door.
Yay!
>e
(first opening the green door)Station Security Room (Monique Padelis)
As you step into the room you breathe out deeply and relax your shoulders. You realise your body has felt constricted ever since you arrived in Backwater.The compact room smells earthy, as if you’ve stepped into a forest just after the dew has settled. A framed article hangs on the moss green walls alongside a window that lets in a little light. Your eyes are drawn to the two glowing CRT monitors on a desk that runs the length of the east wall. A leather chair sits in front of the desk and most of the south wall is taken up by shelves with labelled VHS tapes. The door to the station is to your west.
Monique Padelis doesn’t have any other info on IFDB, but someone with that same fairly-specific name does have an IMDB page – turns out she’s been in a couple of short films – which means for once Google’s “oh, you typed IFDB, did you mean IMDB?” thing came in handy.
I actually remember to X ME in a new location, for what’ll probably be one of the very last times:
>x me
You’ve often thought of your body as a mere vessel to house your mind, an unfortunate necessity for living in this world. Perhaps that’s why you were always drawn to Peter - like you he could get so absorbed in a book he would forget to eat or sleep.Since stepping into the office you’ve felt hyperaware of the clothes clinging to your body and your paper-thin skin covering your tendons and veins. The scar on your left leg from a football accident seems to throb, and the freckles along your arms remind you of all the sun damage you’ve willingly submitted to.
Some nice embedded characterization here, and yeah, after 4,000 years, that’s a lot of sun damage!
Let’s start with the printed matter:
>x article
(framed newspaper article)
The article is dated 17th October 1995 and has a photo of a man and a woman in high-vis jackets smiling outside the entrance to the train station. The headline reads: SECURITY GUARD KILLED IN TRAGIC ACCIDENT:A security guard was killed yesterday after being run over by a train passing through Backwater train station. Bran Cragne, 34 (pictured with colleague Nadia) was patrolling the platform when he slipped and fell onto the tracks. His wife Barbara calls him a “kind and lovely husband” and his friends at the station say he will be sorely missed.
You skim the rest of the article, which just talks about his life and interests. It seems like an odd article to frame in an office, but you suppose it is in memory to a valued colleague.
A Cragne with a job other than “random occult dilettante hoist on their own petard” or “titan of industry that makes no sense in Vermont”? And he was nice, and in a happy marriage? Must have been adopted.
>x window
A short but wide window frame that can’t be opened. You see dark clouds loom over the hills in the distance: a storm must be coming. You can already imagine thunder striking a tree, branches exploding, piercing you as you walk past. Its probably best to stay protected indoors until it passes.In the top corners of the window there are tiny black specks.
>x specks
You look closer at the black specks in the corner. It looks like paper was stuck to it at some point, and has since been ripped away.
Huh, those are interesting details.
>open window
There is no way to open the window. Probably for the best - you wouldn’t want the fumes of the outside world swirling around in here.>x chair
The studded green leather chair curves round a little to enclose whoever sits there. It looks far too fancy to be provided by station management; someone must have brought it here specially.>>x monitors
Two grey CRT monitors are lined up on the desk. The first one is labelled “Monitor 1 - Platform 1” and the second is labelled “Monitor 2 - Platform 2”. They both show a live feed from the train station.>x monitor 1
You watch the screen for a few moments. The platform is empty; the only movement comes from a tree swaying from the wind on the other side of the track.Suddenly the shadow of a pole buckles for a few moments, warping itself into twisted, jagged lines. Then, like a spring, it returns to its normal form.
>x monitor 2
You watch for screen for a few moments. The way the camera is angled means you can see both the empty platform and through the window of the security office you’re in. You watch yourself stretch. Strange. There must be a time delay, although you don’t remember stretching.
Creepy! Hopefully this office has been deserted this whole time, otherwise we probably gave some lucky security guard a big laugh with the ghost-train shenanigans we got up to at the beginning of this whole odyssey.
>stretch
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.
Aww.
>x desk
On top of the desk rests two monitors. There is also a telephone and various papers scattered on the surface.>x telephone
An ugly beige telephone. The answer machine button is flashing.You roll back your shoulders and stretch your arms. Your bones make a satisfying click.
I can’t figure out how to interact with the scattered papers – I run into what might be a weird bug, where I can’t stash the jail ledger in a pocket or drop it, and the parser keeps preferring that when I try to do stuff to PAPERS – so let’s just assume they’re scenery.
>push button
Which do you mean, mp-telephone, the round button or the triangular button?
Oops! Too many buttons (I think the round and triangular ones are from the broken eyepiece we’re still lugging around).
>mp-telephone
You press the answer machine button and listen to the message.Nadia? It’s mom. Pick up. Please. Look, I just wanted to invite you over for dinner… You’ve been doing so much overtime recently and I’ve barely seen you. You need to get out of the office sometime, it would be good for you. Well…Let me know, okay?
The telephone clicks.
Nadia was the colleague of Bran’s mentioned in the article; sounds like his death might have shook her up, and understandably so.
>x shelves
The wooden shelves are filled with tapes, each labelled with the date as DD-MM-YY. There are too many to check each one.
Er, really, day first? I thought we were in Vermont! Well, when in Rome…
>take 17-10-95
Hm…When was the accident again?
Oh right, this was 1998, articles were rarely bylined the same day stuff happened (and in fact the article says the accident happened “yesterday”):
>x 16-10-95
You find a VHS player by the monitors and press play.The security footage shows platform 2 - you can see the security office you are standing in as well, though the window is boarded up with black paper. As you watch, a man rips the paper down from the inside and presses his nose against the window. The image is a little fuzzy, but he looks like he’s shaking. You watch as the man pulls forward monitor 1 and places something under it. He then wrenches open the door and stalks towards the platform.
For several minutes he just stands there, pacing the platform. A train approaches in the distance, and once it’s a few meters away the man flings himself onto the tracks. Blood splatters the platform, and one of his shoes fly up into the air. The train brakes, but the damage is done.
For a few moments there is no movement on the screen, then a woman runs over to the bloodstain and tries to look under the train. Several other people arrive on the scene, but they just stand around and shake their heads.
Oof, I’m guessing that woman has to be Nadia. There was clearly something going on with Bran that led him to this gruesome end – maybe whatever’s under the monitor will hold a clue?
>look under monitor 1
You pull forward the monitor. There is a little nook behind it.>x nook
A small hole not much bigger than your fist. It looks as if someone has chipped away part of the wall on purpose.In the small nook are a tarnished brass key and a folded up note.
>x tarnished brass key
A tarnished brass key to the shack.
Oh, that takes some of the guess-work out of things!
>x folded up note
A message is written in blue ink:Barbara Ba Ba Ba you don’t understand, you couldn’t understand. The office is the only place I feel safe. It protects me against the sharp realities of the world and you and my superiors want to rip me from it. You don’t understand how many deadly things there are out there. Now they want to remove me from my job, so I have no choice. It is better to go my own way than let some infection spread all over me or lie bleeding and abandoned. I wanted to destroy the key to the shack, but I couldn’t. Just…Don’t go there. Please.
Yeah, Bran does not seem okay, with what sound like lots of premonitions of doom that were somehow linked to the shack. We owe it to him (and our obsessive completionist tendencies) to check it out:
>w
As you walk out of the office you feel a wrenching sensation in your gut, as if some part of you is being dragged out, kicking and screaming. For a few moments everything looks like a threat: the slippery ground, the bending trees, the very air you breathe, carrying God only knows what kind of toxins.
Oh, weird, there’s like some paranoiac bleed-through here. Wonder if that’s what’s hitting Nadia, too? Anyway, zoom zoom.
>unlock shack with tarnished brass key
(the Shack Door with a tarnished brass key (smelling faintly of mildew))
You unlock the Shack Door.>in
(first opening the Shack Door)Inside the Shack (Daniel Ravipinto)
The shadows pool in strange shapes along the earthen floor of the shack, the only light coming from the cracks in the surprisingly high ceiling and through the opened door. Piles of accumulated junk that Peter’s family must have stored here over the decades lie against the inner walls, which have turned grey with either dust or the mere passage of time.One of the shadows at the shack’s far end moves, then separates into a distinct shape, slumped against a supporting pillar. There’s something in here with you.
Hey, Daniel Ravipinto – co-author of Slouching Towards Bedlam, one of the all-time greats (I still have very intense sense-memories of playing that game during in a cold apartment in Boston in late 2003 – huh, you know, we’re just one year off from the STB 20 year, wonder if anyone’s organizing a tribute for it…)
>x me
There’s no mirror, but you can’t imagine you’re looking your best by this point. How long have you been wandering this damnable place by now?
I dunno, but it sure feels like at least a couple of months.
>x ceiling
There seems to be nothing more to the place than what you can see - a junkpile for generations of Cragnes.
I’m not sure how we know this is Cragne-specific junk – maybe we recognize some old Christmas decorations or something? In fairness, demon nutcrackers and ghost-snot icicles are fairly distinctive…
>x shadows
It’s definitely Peter, dressed as you last saw him, though his shoes seem to be missing. He looks awful. There’s blood on his shirt and he looks like he’s been crying. He doesn’t seem to see you.
Ah, geez, I just meant the regular shadows, not the shadowy figure! This can’t really be our Peter, right – just a shadow or echo of him, I hope?
Well, let’s exhaust checking out the mundane surroundings, then see what we can do:
>x junk
The junk ranges from the ancient to the recent, the obvious to the esoteric. And all of it quite useless.>search junk
You can tell already that there’s nothing useful to be found among the piles, nor nothing to be done with them.>touch shadow
You suddenly realize there’s something standing between you and Peter. It’s as if the air itself has become solid. You press forward and encounter resistance, your hand sliding across its surface. Looking closer now, you can see - lines, drawings, figures? a language? - sliding beneath the surface of this…barrier. They move and shift as if alive. You press again, then smash a fist against it to no avail. Peter doesn’t react at all. It’s like he can’t see or hear you.>x barrier
There’s something clearly there, stopping you from getting to Peter. It’s not like you can really see it or anything, but weirdly, if the room weren’t so quiet, you’d almost think you could hear it.>listen
The silence you hear sounds unnatural, as though a tone were missing that ought to be present.
…huh, weird. Sounds like we need to make some noise, and despite our long, long inventory, we don’t appear to have picked up like a musical instrument or tuning fork during our peregrinations – and indeed, the coffee suggests we’ll need to come back. We do see one new event as we fool around:
Peter presses blindly against the barrier, pressing his forehead against the frozen air.
…did Peter just flee here because he wanted to practice miming, and was afraid Nitocris would judge him?
We didn’t get anything out of the shack, so here the trail seems to end – besides solving the Variegated Court puzzle, I’m not sure what else we’re able to solve right now… though with the map pretty much fully opened up and the reading glasses we got from Emmett’s ghost, we should be at least able to find the last library book pretty easily. Let’s do that and wrap up the update.
It doesn’t take much wandering to realize we missed something obvious:
Your reading glasses frost over at the edges. You feel a sharp pain from the cold spot on your shoulder, and feel like there’s a library book you–or Emmett, perhaps–hasn’t read yet from this location.
Drinking Fountain (Lucian Smith)
A public drinking fountain is placed in a nook here, nearly overgrown with ivy. You can return to the town square to the northeast.A ragged hole graces the side of the brick fountain.
Ooops! Looks like we ran out of here too quickly.
>x hole
A ragged hole gapes ominously in the side of the fountain where the secondary fountain used to be.In the ragged hole is Backwater Personalities (1915-1925 edition).
>take personalities
Taken.>read it
You flip through the book, looking at various of write-ups and pictures of men and women in 1920’s garb until, with a start, you recognize the well-dressed ghost, staring at you intently from the page. You read his entry:Emmett Josey - Backwater Librarian
Everyone should recognize our “darkly beloved” town librarian, always ready with a smile and a book suggestion for all who walk in his doors, especially those of our younger generation. What you may not know is that his family has been here for six generations, which is pretty unusual for someone like him! Even more amazingly, Mr. Josey is a college graduate–as were his father, and his father’s father! So don’t be surprised when you go into our beloved library and see this face: he’s an institution just as much as the building is!
…yeah, whoever wrote this was definitely one of the assholes who made like they were friends with Emmett but voted for this Jim Crow BS.
There’s a clipped newspaper article tucked inside the book at that page, which you remove.
A sigh echoes in your head. “That’s all of them,” a voice breathes. “And that’s about all I can do. I wish you luck. Find your husband, even though he’s another Cragne. And beware the Vaadigniphod.” With that, the voice fades away. After a second or two, you realize that your shoulder has warmed up again. You rub the spot absently, almost missing the cold.
I do miss the cold! For all that I thought that chill following me around was annoying at first, Emmett proved to be a dependable ally with a tragic backstory that made him even more sympathetic. Plus ghost + ghoul is a classic team-up combination. Nitocris and I enjoyed our time with him – cheers sir, and thank you for all your help.
One last thing – what was that clipping?
>x clipped
LIBRARIAN DIES IN ALTERCATION IN TOWN SQUARE.
Of course.
…well, now we can claim the grimoire or solve the court, but it feels odd to jump to those endgame puzzles when we still have some loose ends – the centipede, the pub/whetstone/greenhouse puzzle chain, whatever the deal is with Eustace and the rec room cabinet… oh yeah, and the vacuum and dollhouse in the attic. As a result, I wrapped up this play session going around every location I’ve unlocked so far and coffee-scum to see where I can make progress, and nothing jumped out – so I was starting to wonder whether the coffee might be steering me astray as we come close to the end. Based on @Jenni’s comment above, it seems like that might be the case, so we’ll pick up next session back in the shack – though if that doesn’t work, we can always see what trouble we can get into with a tome of eldritch lore…
Inventory!
a clipped newspaper article (smelling faintly of mildew)
Backwater Personalities (1915-1925 edition) (smelling faintly of mildew)
a folded up note (smelling faintly of mildew)
a tarnished brass key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a spray bottle of fungicide (smelling faintly of mildew)
a Cyst (smelling faintly of mildew)
a slimy key (smelling faintly of mildew)
Jessenia’s receipt (smelling faintly of mildew)
an ancient key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a piece of chalk (smelling faintly of mildew)
an old iron key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a bag of peanut (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a pointer thingy (extended) (smelling faintly of mildew)
a yellow sticky-note (smelling faintly of mildew)
Life Beneath Nightmares (smelling faintly of mildew)
a dull machete (smelling faintly of mildew)
a Carfax gig poster (smelling faintly of mildew)
a silver mirror (smelling faintly of mildew)
an antique locket (smelling faintly of mildew) (closed)
a glass jar containing an insect (smelling faintly of mildew)
a plastic bubble (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a gold jacket (smelling faintly of mildew)
a vintage Black Sabbath tee shirt (smelling faintly of mildew)
a jar of peaches (smelling faintly of mildew) (open)
some golden peach liquid
some pickled peaches
a pistachio ice cream cone (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pull-string doll (smelling faintly of mildew)
a copper amulet (smelling faintly of mildew)
an a worn out, decaying picture (smelling faintly of mildew)
Mama Hydra’s Deep Fried Ones (smelling faintly of mildew)
a little stoppered vial of blue liquid (smelling faintly of mildew)
a golden apple (smelling faintly of mildew)
a can of salt (smelling faintly of mildew)
a rusted toolbox (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a round white wall clock (smelling faintly of mildew)
a black fountain pen (smelling faintly of mildew)
a waterproof flashlight (smelling faintly of mildew)
the slithering vomit bladder of Katallakh (smelling faintly of mildew)
a box of Nilla Wafers (smelling faintly of mildew)
some assorted teeth (smelling faintly of mildew)
a bottle of Pepto-Bismol (smelling faintly of mildew)
Daniel Baker’s note (smelling faintly of mildew)
a cast iron spire (smelling faintly of mildew)
an ominous-looking painting (smelling faintly of mildew)
a brass nameplate (smelling faintly of mildew)
a black box (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a rusty piece of metal (smelling faintly of mildew)
a mallet (smelling faintly of mildew)
an enormous dessicated rat corpse (smelling faintly of mildew)
a piece of yellowed newsprint (smelling faintly of mildew)
a golden eyepiece (smelling faintly of mildew)
a stubby pencil (smelling faintly of mildew)
Limerickus Dirtius (smelling faintly of mildew)
some Nilla wafers (smelling faintly of mildew)
a silver urn (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
some rotten flowers (smelling faintly of mildew)
a slip of paper (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pewter box (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
red-rimmed porcelain cups (smelling faintly of mildew)
red-rimmed porcelain plates (smelling faintly of mildew)
a shard (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pair of stone earplugs (smelling faintly of mildew)
a note from a seesaw (smelling faintly of mildew)
a newspaper clipping (“Rumors of Decapitations”) (smelling faintly of mildew)
a police report (“Francine Cragne”) (smelling faintly of mildew)
an Italian magazine cutting (smelling faintly of mildew)
a torn notebook (smelling faintly of mildew)
a broken knife handle (smelling faintly of mildew)
a metal flask (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pamphlet of home listings (smelling faintly of mildew)
a whole large reddish-orange pumpkin (smelling faintly of mildew)
a wine bottle (smelling faintly of mildew)
the first candle (smelling faintly of mildew)
the second candle (smelling faintly of mildew)
a filthy rug (smelling faintly of mildew)
a mildewy carpet (smelling faintly of mildew)
a broken silver amulet (smelling faintly of mildew)
a jar of screws (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a copper urn (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a pile of shirts (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pile of pants (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pile of underwear (smelling faintly of mildew)
a book list (smelling faintly of mildew)
a teapot (smelling faintly of mildew)
a familiar gold wristwatch (smelling faintly of mildew)
photos of you (smelling faintly of mildew)
sketches of your face (smelling faintly of mildew)
A Rudimentary Taxonomy of Known Scent and Grotesque Reactions (smelling faintly of mildew)
a jar of old keys (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
a nasty-looking key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a key from an urn (smelling faintly of mildew)
a bronze key green from age (smelling faintly of mildew)
an aluminum key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a large brass key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a brass winding key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a silver and ivory key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a creased square of paper (smelling faintly of mildew)
a sturdy key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a sinister iron key (smelling faintly of mildew)
an ornate bronze key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a Red Triangle Key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a small desk key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a small rusty iron key (smelling faintly of mildew)
an Allen key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a thin steel key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a white key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a long wooden key (smelling faintly of mildew)
a wad of cash (smelling faintly of mildew)
a big slice of cold pizza (smelling faintly of mildew)
a bronze urn (smelling faintly of mildew) (open but empty)
some mildewed leather gloves
a gallon jug of white vinegar (smelling faintly of mildew)
a pair of garden shears (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)
loose bricks (smelling faintly of mildew)
a clipboard (smelling faintly of mildew)
a shard of shattered carapace (smelling faintly of mildew)
an employee ID card (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)
Peter’s 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) (being worn and open)
a hidden pocket (open but empty)
a key pocket (open but empty)
a book pocket (closed)
a side pocket (closed)
a trash pocket (closed)
a box of vials (smelling faintly of mildew)
a vial of cedarwood extract
a vial of frankincense
a vial of tuberose extract
a vial of geosmin
a vial of musk
a vial of rose extract
a spray decant vial
a vial of vanilla extract
an unmarked clear vial
an unmarked teal vial
an unmarked pale blue vial
a half-full styrofoam coffee cup (smelling faintly of mildew)
a leather cord and pendant (being worn)
a pair of reading glasses (smelling faintly of mildew) (being worn)
a battered yellow JogMaster (being worn)
a label (smelling faintly of mildew) (being worn)
a giant milkweed leaf (smelling faintly of mildew) (being worn as a mask)
a calfskin coat (being worn)
a trolley pass (being worn)
Ed’s coveralls (being worn)
a pair of leather boots
Map:
West Backwater
Cragne Manor Attic
Transcript:
cragne session 21.txt (300.0 KB)
Save:
cragne session 21 save.txt (83.6 KB)
Unfinished locations
- Shack: find noisemaker to pass barrier
- Backwater Library: turn in books and obtain grimoire
- Pub: steal the whetstone
- Meatpacking Plant: cleaver to cut open dog-thing’s stomach
- Shambolic Shed: de-fungus something?
- Greenhouse: whetstone for machete
- Sitting room: MURDER EUSTACE WITH LETTER OPENER
- Rec room: locked board game cabinet
- Court: climactic color-animal crosswalk
- Abandoned Nursery: fix vacuum
3 Likes
Thanks for confirming this – per my note below, I was beginning to wonder if that was what was going on since I’ve been so conditioned to expect at most one foreign object being required per location at this point! This saves me some flailing (and given how complex coding the coffee must have been, and how much work it’s saved me, I can’t begrudge a small bug so close to the end, when there aren’t too many possible places to make progress anyway).
Right, but the slogan is capitalized. Hopefully the marketing team has been sacked!
That is an amazing mnemonic – I remembered mycorrhizae were a thing, but not like, what kind of thing, much less how to spell/pronounce them, so kudos to Mr. Stone on this one! And yeah, per Jenni’s note I was the boy who cried coffee on this one, we’ll make a beeline back and start spraying everything in sight next update (right after we retrieve Doctor Peanut to see what fun he gets up to).
Oh very much so – I was actually gagging a little during that cyst sequence. Nice/awful job, @mathbrush!
Well, yeah, if you’re the one making the telescope, that’s true. But I feel like 9 times out of 10 in adventure games, some baddy’s actually in charge of the astronomy/astrology and you’re trying to sabotage them, so this seems like a feature, not a bug.
Definitely a fair response – honestly I was kind of on the cusp in the early going, though Doctor Peanut’s diligence, once resurrected, really won me over. I’m also I think far enough into the game that an easy, silly room lands like a nice change of pace, where closer to the beginning it would have grated more and prevented me from getting into the overall creepy atmosphere.
Indeed – I did a fair bit of editing to condense the possibilities, but it’s impressive how many different iterations must be possible! And I think simplifying the mechanism was definitely the right call; I forget where I first came across the idea that the climactic puzzles should be a bit on the easier side, to give the player a well-earned victory lap, and this one hit the sweet spot, where it seemed complicated enough to be satisfying to solve, without requiring much note-taking or frustration.
If it’s any consolation, my interlocutor also noted that your pseudonyms tend to be puns, so that weighed against my being a nom de plume – so some people seem to have picked up on your joke!
Could be, though the dial and crank both seemed to change the first sign – could be wrong about that, though.
There are two sets of signs, the crank changes one of them, the dial the other. You got lucky by having the initial state contain one of the signs you needed (The Hanged Man) but the crank would cycle through this second set of signs like Nemesis, Key, and the Baleful Hound.
Almost correct. In fact, the toggle yanks the whole thing into some new random position. I’m not sure why anyone would want to, but touching and kicking/attacking the projector also re-aligns everything (to different randomised extents).
4 Likes
I never get that - maybe because I almost never visit IMDB. Maybe at some point I’ll search for a movie and get asked if I meant IFDB.
2 Likes
I believe he also won IntroComp 2014! I remember that one specifically because it was the first comp I entered, and there was a dramatic reveal at the awards ceremony as “Veronica Devon” pulled off their mask.
A Slouching Toward Bedlam tribute would certainly be cool…
Since READ and EXAMINE are distinct verbs in this game, I would also READ CLIPPED. Maybe we can find out how he died.
I do like our friendly neighborhood ghost librarian, he might be my favorite NPC.
Looking at the room again, I can’t really think of anything to spray except the gloves. But the things we need for other rooms seem to be a musical instrument, a distraction for a bartender, a meat cleaver, a whetstone (from the bar), a letter opener, and a…vacuum thingy. None of these puzzles seem solvable with gloves.
Maybe with the gloves we can pick up the fungipede and show it to the bartender, who will freak out about having that thing in his establishment (what would the health inspector say!) and be distracted enough that we can take his whetstone? And then the whetstone will get us something in the greenhouse, and so on, and eventually we’ll get our husband’s most precious possession.
2 Likes
I looked at the walkthrough and I think we forgot something in the shambolic shack that would be hard to notice without having it pointed out. I think you may have done things out of the order the author intended, so it seemed like you were done. I remember I got stuck here and someone else helped me.
2 Likes
Ah, makes sense.
I mean I feel like that was a staple of late-20th-century tech support – I had a way-past-its-retirement-date computer in the late 90s where I swear a thwack of encouragement helped it successfully boot up – so I appreciate the inclusion.
You said it’d be cool, now you need to organize it!
Glad I’m not alone in liking him! And good catch, I’m usually good about reading (and in the game) but this was an oversight:
May 24th, 1926
LIBRARIAN DIES IN ALTERCATION IN TOWN SQUARE
Local librarian and black man Emmett Josey was found dead next to a
sledgehammer in the town square last night, a victim of suspected foul play. The
sledgehammer has been identified as belonging to the deceased, but why he would
have had it with him, at night, in the town square, has been the subject of much
debate. Responding to speculation that Josey may have been upset by the recent
vote to install a second drinking fountain to better serve the needs of our whole
community, the bill’s sponsor Vincent Cragne (a second cousin to our mayor),
speaking at the bill-signing ceremony, said, “Mr. Josey was somewhat vocal in his
opposition to the bill. But like all of us, he knew that bowing to the will of the
majority is a cornerstone of a democratic society, and informed me personally that
he bore me no ill will.” Despite the unfortunate circumstances, the bill-signing
ceremony proceeded as planned, the only hitch being that Mr. Cragne was unable
to sign the bill himself, due to a recent farming accident that left his right hand
shattered. We wish him all the best for a speedy recovery. The circumstances of
Mr. Josey’s death are expected to remain unsolved.
Oof, “local librarian and black man,” huh? We have a clear sense of the perpetrator, at least.
It’s funny, I’d assumed this whole time the watch was the treasured memento, but yeah, it probably will be something else (the Court tab seems likelier to get us the goat horn).
I appreciate the brainstorming (and @mathbrush’s subtle clueing) to help Nitocris get through the shack! Hopefully we’ll be back on track soon.
2 Likes
How unfortunate, what happened to Mr Vincent Cragne’s hand.
2 Likes
Probably a bad capacitor - happens quite often…
2 Likes
Huh, can hitting a machine actually help with a bad capacitor? I’m mostly a software guy so I don’t know if that makes sense or not.
3 Likes
The best officially endorsed example of violence towards hardware I know of is was with the ill-fated Apple III, with the pick-it-up-and-drop-it solution to reseating chips.
-Wade
4 Likes
Chapter the Twenty-Second: Swap Meet
Last time we knocked a bunch of stuff off our to-do list, largely focusing on unlocking those last few stubborn doors, and found our progress on the use-item-to-get-item track stymied in the Shambolic Shack, as we managed to murder a centipede with fungus but only got a lousy spray bottle for our efforts, which didn’t seem to have any immediate useful applications, and bit of coffee wonkiness momentarily steered us astray.
We pick up re-oriented towards what we need to do next – there’s still something to accomplish in that shack! – and determined to be endgame-ready by the close of this chapter.
But before bearing down to prepare for the final run, we take time for some fun – we zoom to the Science Tower:
>take hamster
(Dr. Peanut (smelling faintly of mildew))
Dr. Peanut snuggles into the breast pocket of your cardigan with an expression of self-satisfied bliss.
…you’re just going to smell like mildew forever now, huh?
We nip over to the nursery:
>drop hamster
What, just drop Dr. Peanut on the floor like trash? That’s horrible! Try putting him onto or into something instead.>put hamster into dollhouse
Dr. Peanut blinks his eyes sleepily and looks around, then takes out a tiny clipboard and pencil and examines his new environment with intense scientific interest. It’s very cute.
Aww, it is!
Now as we move along we’re treated to little ambient details like:
You hear a tiny hamster yawn inside your cardigan pocket.
Dr. Peanut peeks up over the edge of your cardigan pocket and looks around with interest.
You hear a tiny snore from the pocket of your cardigan.
Pretty great!
The Imp of the Perverse seizes me on my way out of the attic:
MASTER BEDROOM (ROWAN LIPKOVITS)
>put hamster on bed
Dr. Peanut blinks his eyes sleepily and looks around, then takes out a tiny clipboard and pencil and examines his new environment with intense scientific interest. It’s very cute.
Guess the cockroach thing was one-and-done, phew!
Well, on to serious business:
The Shambolic Shack (Michael Fessler)
A dimly-lit shack with crude plywood walls. An octagonal window set high on one wall admits a feeble shaft of moonlight. Rickety wire shelving sits precariously in one dimly lit corner, and a battered metal wheelbarrow rests in the opposite corner. A rough doorway leads back out.You can see a fungus-ridden centipede carcass here.
We just can’t quit this place. So, what are we missing?
>x walls
Simple plywood, somewhat the worse for wear, nailed together in a seeming hurry.>x window
Moonlight struggles to make its way through the patina of dirt on the octagonal window mounted high up on one wall.
So far so boring – we can’t reach the window to clean it, and there’s nothing interesting going on with the walls.
>x shelving
Cheap wire shelving that has seen better days. It wobbles to the touch. It appears to be bare.>shake shelving
The shelves wobble but decline to collapse.>push shelving
The shelves wobble but decline to collapse.>search shelving
There is nothing on the rickety wire shelving.
…really not seeing anything else to do with this, either. What did we miss?
>x wheelbarrow
A battered metal wheelbarrow. Or at least, it used to be when it still had a front wheel. With only a twisted axle remaining, I guess now it’s just a “barrow”. It is full of glistening black soil, now calm.>push wheelbarrow
Without a new wheel and axle, it isn’t going anywhere.
I can’t think of why being able to push this out would help us any, and we’ve already got the fungicidal spray bottle that was hidden in the soil here.
Speaking of that bottle, we tried to spray down the centipede, but maybe we can be more specific?
>spray fungus
Nope nope nope. Shudder.
…okay, what are we missing here?
After a few more minutes of flailing, we hit upon the answer:
>search soil
After a few moments of groping, your fingertips slide across a small jagged metallic object. You manage to get a grip on it, and a moment later, you’re holding a tiny brass key.
Two things: 1) this is what, like our fourth brass key? Beyond this tiny one, we have a tarnished brass key, a large brass key, and a brass winding key. There must have been a sale somewhere! 2) ugh, this is my least favorite puzzle type, the do-the-same-thing-multiple-times-with-no-prompting-and-it-turns-out-differently-the-second-time format. Looking back at what happened last time we searched the soil, we were described as frantically pulling out the spray bottle, so maybe the bottle is meant to help if you accidentally put your hands in the gloves? It’s also described as being near the top of the wheelbarrow, which points to the need for a more robust search to plumb the depths. Still, that’s slicing the bologna pretty fine!
Anyway, griping aside, the coffee says we’re good (yay!). So what have we got?
>x tiny brass key
It’s too small to be the key to a door. Maybe a jewelry box, or a cabinet.
A cabinet, huh? I think I know where that would be – and unfortunately that brings us back to the Rec Room, which per our first visit I feel weird about featuring giving the accusations against the author. So I’ll once again bottom-line things: the new key does in fact unlock the board game cabinet, which has a bunch of different games with a description that says there are too many to take in just by looking but you can find specific ones by name. Even after trying obvious options (chess, checkers, Monopoly), slightly esoteric ones (parcheesi, Settlers of Cataan, Trivial Pursuit), and apropos ones (Clue/Cluedo, Arkham Horror) nothing is turning up. I poke around the stuff in the room – billiard table, chair, TV – but again there’s nothing to prompt me to look at a specific board game, so I start engaging in some unfruitful coffee scumming for lack of any guidance.
This also winds up being unfruitful, so I break down and check a walkthrough – turns out if you sit in the chair and watch the TV for a while, you’ll eventually see an ad for a board game. Reviewing the transcript, I think I might have run into a bug since I’d tried watching TV for a couple of turns when I first opened the cabinet, and just got a repeating message about the static making my eyes hurt – or maybe it’s yet another iteration of the annoying puzzle trope I just mentioned?
Regardless, you can find that boardgame, which has an errant component from another board game mixed in, so then you look for that different one, and after following this process five or six times you get to one that has a rusty cleaver in it, at which point the room is done. There are some OK jokes along the way – check out the transcript if you want the details – but between the obtuse puzzle and my ongoing irritation at this room, I’m glad to be finished here.
And good news, I’m in the right frame of mind for what comes next:
The meatpacking plant (Kenneth Pedersen)
>cut dog with cleaver
You take a deep breath and raise the meat cleaver. You carefully cut around the hard part of the stomach, to ensure you do not destroy whatever is in there. After a minute, a plastic bag leans out. You open it, revealing a single sheet of printed paper, which you take. Since you do not need the empty plastic bag, you stuff it back in the dog.
Umm, we do what now? Jeez, Nitocris, that’s pretty messed up, you can just drop it on the floor, or wasn’t there a trash can in the bathroom? …on second thought, yeah, floor would be the way to go.
>x printed paper
A low-quality photocopy of a hand-lettered original, slightly dog-eared. The title, Friends to the Worm Secret Menu, seems to have been written with a calligraphy pen in crude imitation of a fancy letterhead, but the rest is roughly printed in Sharpie:
Eternal Chowder
Drunken Goat of the Woods
Ancestor Sandwich
Fiddleheads Three Ways (SPRING)
Shivering Hill Special Reserve
Aha! None of this seems especially delicious, but we’ve got our next lead:
The Invisible Worm (Sam Kabo Ashwell)
> order chowder
The bartender rummages behind the bar, not looking away from you; there’s the rattle of a ladle on a slow-cooker lid, and you have your chowder a second later. It looks like greasy grey porridge full of colorless lumps, and smells of a fish market.It tastes better than it smells or looks, which is not a high bar.
By the time you’re done with it you’re not disgusted, per se, but you’re grateful for small portions.
This is not starting out especially well.
> order goat
In short order you are presented with a fist-sized round of local goat cheese. It’s about the texture of an Edam or a softish Gouda, except with a brownish, aromatic crust that, the accompanying leaflet explains, comes from being aged in the local wild-grape brandy. It comes with water crackers and five (5) sad-looking grapes.The cheese is excellent: full-flavoured on the outside, soft and creamy towards the center. You sample one grape for the sake of open-mindedness, then shuffle the rest to the edge of your plate.
We’ve probably just done something metaphysically dangerous by nibbling on what’s probably cheese from Shub Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, but at least it was tasty. What’s next?
>order sandwich
The bartender cracks his knuckles and turns aside to prepare your food. This is complicated enough to require his full attention.
Oh, you don’t say?
>take whetstone
The bartender’s back being momentarily turned, you summon your distant experience as a tween shoplifter (lifetime haul: two tubes of lipstick and a caramel Cow Tales), pretend to examine an old photo, and swipe the whetstone from its place on the wall. In this dim light nobody will even notice it’s gone.
Yay! Also, I just this moment learned what a Cow Tales is (apparently like a caramel stick-shaped candy); must be one of those hyper-specific local ones.
We could just ditch at this point, but that might arouse suspicion, so I guess we’re sticking around to try the probably-not-cannibalistic-right? sandwich:
The bartender looks over at you, slaps a plate on the bartop and grunts something that might be “order’s up.” You take your sandwich, and retreat to a table to eat it.
From Hobbing’s Compendium of the North American Sandwich: The Ancestor Sandwich is a true rarity, confined to a scattering of refugia within upper inland New England. The classic recipe comprises pickled herring, shredded kid goat, and wild ramps or similar pungent onions, served on sourdough and sauced with slampery, a bone broth rendered down to the consistency of gelatinous mayonnaise. Seasonal greens or iceberg lettuce are sometimes added, to no appreciable effect. The authors have been unable to personally sample an authentic Ancestor Sandwich; the above information is gleaned from recipe-books and other textual references dating between 1890 and 1935. Personal experiments with these recipes have not been encouraging.
It’s a lot of food. You make a brave go of it, and clean your plate. You might even want it again sometime, if it was about a quarter of the size.
That sounds six kinds of gross, though the “to no appreciable effect” bit won a giggle.
We’re done here, but who knows where our next meal is coming from – might as well wrap up the menu:
>order fiddleheads
The bartender cracks his knuckles and turns aside to prepare your food. This is complicated enough to require his full attention.
Guess this is a second opportunity to lift the whetstone, if we needed one.
Eventually:
“Order up,” barks the bartender.
You receive a heaped bowl of fern croziers, baby fern fronds still curled up like feathery green snail shells, and variously prepared. The pickled ones taste like anything else that’s been pickled; the steamed ones are delicious, crunchy and earthy and fresh; the battered ones taste like fried batter, except that the texture is ever so slightly reminiscent of chewing through the rubbery bones of an alien foetus. There’s ranch dressing on the side.
In summary, it is very good and is done with much too quickly.
Apparently fiddleheads are a real food, and are in fact fern fronds and not like shellfish as I assumed from the name? This description makes them seem surprisingly tasty, modulo the alien fetus bit (of course, Nitrocris does know what that texture is like, she’s been around).
And to wrap things up:
> order reserve
The bartender raises his eyebrows, then presents you with a very small glass of a pale amber liquor. You’re no whiskey expert, but the vapors coming off the stuff suggest that this is oesophagus-shredding stuff.Yup. Tastes a little bit of oak but mostly of paint stripper, gives you a brief head-rush.
Maybe we should stick to the beer moving forward.
Onward! We duck outside and:
>sharpen machete
(with the dark grey whetstone (smelling faintly of mildew))
These days you prefer plastic pull-through sharpeners, but you vaguely remember something like this from your days in scouting. You spit on the whetstone and rub it at an angle against the edge of the machete. You repeat this until the edge feels reasonably sharp against your finger.Then you suddenly remember a particularly annoying scout leader explaining to you, in his condescending way, how a machete isn’t supposed to be sharp like a knife, and how it must be sharpened with a file and not a whetstone. Oh, well. Hopefully you didn’t ruin it completely.
That seems like an awfully specific bit of scout-lore to impart – was there a field trip to the Yucatan or something? – but the more you know, I guess.
We know where this will be useful, of course:
Greenhouse (Petter Sjölund)
>cut roots with machete
(the roots covering the sculpture with the sharp machete (smelling faintly of mildew))
After cutting of a couple of roots from the statue, you realize that you can insert the machete blade under the weave of roots and sawing through it from inside, as if cutting up a fish. A milky fluid oozes from the cuts, as if trying to heal them. When you toss the roots aside, you get the strange impression that the statue is relieved.>x statue
Through a yellow lichen that covers the white stone, two intensely red eyes made of some translucent material glare at you. The beak is open as if uttering a squawk. But the parrot actually looks less hostile since you removed the roots. Still not actually friendly, though.
Let’s see if we can win over the statue, since that’s a normal thing to do:
>pet statue
There is a slight trembling in the sculpture at your display of affection. Or did you just imagine it? Somehow you feel a desire for cleansing emanating from the parrot.
You’re the boss, creepy half-sapient parrot statue!
>clean statue
You scrape off some of the fungus and lichen growing on the sculpture with your nails, creating clouds of spores that sting in your eyes, but you really need some kind of tool if you are going to get it all off.>clean statue with machete
You do the best you can with the tools at hand and clean off the fungus and lichen and bird droppings, occasionally stopping to cough and wipe the spores from your eyes. After that, you don’t want to stop, so you sharpen its beak and improve some of the finer lines on its feathers. Much nicer this way.And to your astonishment, its eyes now look green.
Yeah, the official Cragne Manor drinking game definitely has “spore” as a cue to take a shot.
Last time we tried to climb to the top of the greenhouse, some kind of squawking thing attacked us and drove us back, but maybe we’ll have better luck now? We go up a bunch:
Greenhouse (Petter Sjölund) (top of the tree near the ceiling)
The entire treetop sways from your weight, up and down, this way and that. You are close enough to the glass ceiling to see the blue sky and bright sunshine outside.Something is hidden behind the tightly woven branches and leaves here.
This is where we got dive-bombed on our earlier visit, so yeah, definitely progress!
>x something
As you approach, you hear strange harmonic birdsong, and the leaves and branches part, almost like curtains being drawn, revealing a human-size birdcage suspended from the ceiling.>x cage
It is a wrought-iron cage, large enough to fit a human. It is closed with a small latch. Through the bars you see what looks like a bird’s nest.
Let’s not stop to interrogate what kind of thing typically hangs out in a birdcage big enough for a person.
>open cage
You open the door. A bird’s nest made of dry twigs fills the bottom of the cage. It is full of broken eggshells and small bird bones. Hidden among the bones is a strangely clean and intact small cardboard box.>x cardboard box
It’s labeled “Vacuum Component”.
Well, no ambiguity about what that goes to!
>open it
(first taking the cardboard box.)
You reach in through the birdcage door. As soon as your hand closes around the cardboard box, you hear a soft flapping of wings coming from every direction, accompanied by a strangely beautiful song of hoarse harmonies. Huge white parrots surround you. At first you are alarmed, but their kindly gaze calms you down. The parrots lift you with their beaks - somehow holding onto your clothes everywhere without hurting you, dropping you, or ripping the fabric. They give you a nice tour of the greenhouse, circling the tree and the glass walls. The view is breathtaking, and their song stills your vertigo. They gently carry you down to the ground and let go. Then they are gone.
That’s way nicer than having to climb all the way back down.
[Congratulations! You have reached the peaceful conclusion of this room.]
You open the cardboard box, revealing a vacuum component.
Huh, there’s a non-peaceful conclusion? I’m glad we got this one, it made for a nice change of pace. Anyway that’s one more thing to investigate in the bonus update when I look at folks’ source code.
>x component
A big antique thing-a-ma-bob that seems perfectly fitted to go inside a large, antique vacuum. Or at least you would imagine.
We’re lucky that box had a label, since otherwise I’m not sure how we’d figure out what this thingy is.
Only a few rooms left!
Abandoned Nursery (Harrison Gerard)
>put component in cleaner
You click the component into place. The vacuum is functional.>turn on vacuum
You switch it on, and with a whir, it sucks the cobwebs clean from the dollhouse.>x interior
The interior rooms of of the miniature manor are all mixed up. Staring at the jumble for too long gives you a headache. Now that the cobwebs are cleared, though, you can search the rooms a little more thoroughly.>search rooms
You reach into the dollhouse and retrieve a silver letter opener.>x opener
It appears to be silver and tarnished with age. On one side, the monogram E.A.R. is inscribed in large, cursive letters.
Oddly, those were my sister’s initials too - there was teasing - but clearly this belongs to Eustace (I forget whether we knew he wasn’t a Cragne, but guess it’s his soon-to-be-matricidal wife who’s part of the family).
Sitting Room (Buster Hudson)
>x mirror
(the silver mirror (smelling faintly of mildew))
A heavy silver mirror, tarnished and clearly old. When you glance into it the reflections of the house seem to resolve, the inhuman angles and dizzying design resolving into a more sensible pattern.A faint smell of mildew emanates from it.
Wait, what? …oh that’s the mirror we put in the frame in the closet upstairs. Guess it didn’t leave our inventory when we did that, or we took it back during some off-screen inventory juggling? Trying this again:
>x large mirror
A regal woman with graying hair and harsh features stares back at you.“Have you found my letter opener yet? I must ask that you return it to me immediately,” Eustace says.
>kill eustace with letter opener
I only understood you as far as wanting to kill Eustace.>kill eustace
No. Not yet.
I get the feeling we won’t have long to wait.
>give opener
(to Eustace)
He proceeds to open the letter and read it quietly to himself. Within moments, he is more spirited than he’s been in some time.“Good news! I’ve been accepted to a professorship at Yale, beginning in the spring. We can finally leave Backwater and this wretched house behind us, and start fresh. Isn’t it wonderful?” He needs only notice your reluctant expression for his demeanor to change sharply. “Oh, you mustn’t fight me on this, darling. We can keep the house, if only to satisfy your pride, but moving is not a negotiation. I’ve lived in the shadow of your family and your house and your trappings for far too long. It is time for me to be my own man.”
You try to maintain a stony expression, but his behavior makes it far too difficult. A condescending smile spreads across your lips. “Your own man? Ha! You would never have been granted an interview without my uncle’s influence, nor the time to write all those papers without living off my inheritance.”
He takes several steps towards you. His eyes are darker than usual. His lips curl into a snarl. “Your late father failed to discipline your tongue, as have I since our marriage. A correction in your behavior is long overdue.” Before you can react, his hands encircle your neck and begin to squeeze.
That certainly escalated!
>kill him
You struggle against Eustace’s grip, clawing uselessly on his arms, but he holds you fast. The letter opener. It’s your only chance. You reach towards his breast pocket, fingers brushing against its smooth surface, and at last grab hold.Then you flail.
Slash.
An awkward angle, and you drive it deep into his ear. His hands loosen. He collapses beneath you.
You stagger backwards, clutching your throat and coughing. Slowly, your breath becomes more even and the world returns to focus. Your husband is crumpled on the floor, the letter opener embedded deep in his ear. Blood spills from the wound and pools around his head.
>gloat
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.>x eustace
Your husband is now your late husband. The letter opener is buried hilt-deep in his ear.>take opener
You grab hold of the letter opener and pull. It slides out of your husband’s head with more ease than you expected.
Farwell Eustace, you died as you lived – pathetically and with a soft head.
(I just noticed that we stabbed the letter opener with an E.A.R. monogram into dude’s ear. Should have seen that coming!)
>pull bell-pull
Not yet. She’ll help you clean the mess, but it will require some… persuasion.
Aww, I thought that was going to be a deliciously sang-froid way to close out the scene. Maybe we need to start to hide the body on our own?
>x blood
You don’t like the sight of it, nor the smell.>drink blood
You leave the blood well enough alone. At least until you return with the scrub brush and bucket.>eat eustace
He’s plainly inedible.
Remember, Nitocris, this is somebody else’s memories, not yours!
>x opener
It belonged to Eustace’s father, Eustace Arthur Rolling the elder, who left it to your husband when he passed. Your Eustace was very attached to it. Fitting it should be what killed him.
Maybe we can just go?
>x mirror
You gaze at your reflection, your eyes rimmed red. There’s a spattering of blood on your face and across your dress. Some stains can never be cleaned, once they are too deeply set. In such cases, you must rid yourself of the garment entirely. You should never have become Mrs. Rolling. How ridiculous you’ve been. You are a Cragne through and through, like your father, and your father before him, back to the very founding of Backwater. So, too, shall your son be a Cragne. It is in the blood.And then, you are not you. You are the other you, yourself. You clutch your stomach and heave, ready to vomit, the image of that man lying in his own blood fresh in your mind. You weren’t actually there, right? It was all in your head. Got to be.
You look down and find yourself holding a strange windchime. How did you get this? Maybe Lillian thought you should have it. You doubt you’ll ever really know.
>x chime
It’s a bizarre thing, the width of your two thumbs together and as long as your hand, shaped something like a bookmark and as thin as one, yet it’s intensely heavy - far more than its slight form would indicate. It looks like a windchime or part of some musical instrument. It’s clearly made of metal, but you’re unable to easily identify the kind, for its coloring seems to shift in the light - one moment a solid silver, the next bronze, the next almost golden. Running through the material is some sort of greenish corrosion and stamped or carved into its surface are a multitude of strange, sinuous symbols. You can’t make heads nor tails of any of them. It feels slightly warm to the touch.
Aha! There’s only one place this can go, and we know just what to do with it.
(To be concluded, probably tonight?)
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