Really enjoying your playthrough, if that wasn’t obvious, but I also wanted to admit that I’d never made the headline ‘Vaadignephod’ connection previously. This game contains multitudes upon multitudes.
3 Likes
(Chapter the Fourth, continued)
Before we actually head in, far warning: even by Nitocris’s standards, we are about to encounter some weird stuff. Fortunately she keeps to heart that old adage of Hunter S. Thomspon’s: when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
>w
You pause at the entrance of the real estate office to reread the telegram in your pocket, scanning the curt missive for any additional clues as to what the hell your husband hosed up this time. No dice. A wave of sheer black terror washes up into your pharynx, and you fight it back down.It’s fine. It’ll be fine. You saved his ass that time with the vampire yacht (stupid), you got him and yourself out of the sentient wax museum (so careless), you even… it is not worth thinking about the guy with the drill hands right now. It is never worth thinking about the guy with the drill hands. It’s fine. It’ll be fine.
Your solid gold instincts have led you to this office, which means there’s something you need to steal from inside of it, so you tell your brain to shut its trap, adjust your backpack on your shoulder, and push firmly through the door into the stale chill of the air conditioning.
The woman behind the desk jerks her head up from a pile of papers as you enter, clearly surprised to have a customer. “Oh, hello!” she says. “Can I facts you about a house? Ugh, I mean, are you interested in a Forthright & Rotier property? I mean, they’re all our – we’re the only realtor in – hello!”
Estate Agent’s Office (Jenni Polodna)
The space is dominated by the unexpectedly symbiotic combination of a giant desk and a tiny woman, who together give the impression of being one complete single entity, like a centaur. The surface of the desk is invisible underneath a loose pile of glossy architectural magazines, manila folders, and real estate listings pamphlets. Behind it, a gunmetal-grey filing cabinet lurks unattractively in the far corner. The exit back out to the street is east.A tiny woman is here waiting to answer all of your Backwater real estate questions.
Wow. A list of observations:
-
We now have a telegram, and a backpack! They show up in our inventory, and unlike the aviator goggles from earlier, seem to stick around.
-
Said backpack is probably the convenience @hanon mentioned above, since it’s provided by the author of this room…
-
Jenni Polodna, who is of course one half of the game’s organizing team; seems likely, given her role, that this is a significant room! Besides managing this gargantuan undertaking, she also wrote an installment in the 2012 They Might Be Giants tribute jam thing, which I’ve heard of but never dug into, my exposure to the band being limited to Anna Ng (good) and the Tiny Toons Adventures rendition of Istanbul (Not Constantinople) (also good!)
-
Sentient wax museum? Vampire yacht?
(I’m going to let the guy with drill hands go. Who hasn’t run afoul of one of those).
I guess we’ll start by taking stock of our new possessions:
>x backpack
You bought this backpack specifically to do thefts with, and you love it. From the outside it’s modestly sized and easy to carry, but the inside is surprisingly capacious – you’ve used it to smuggle oil paintings, kayaks, and (best day of your life) the entire contents of a government warehouse in Roswell, New Mexico. In addition to the cavernous main pocket of the backpack itself, there’s a key pocket for your keys, a book pocket for your books, a side pocket for your sidequests, and a trash pocket for your trash. Zippers on all of these pockets let you open and close them at will.In the Jansport backpack are a key pocket, a book pocket, a side pocket, a trash pocket and a backpack features guide.
>x guide
Welcome to the NEW 1998 Urban Adventurer Streetwarrior TRIPLE-REINFORCED Lifestyle Management System by Jansport!Incredible Updated Features:
** Separate zippable pockets let you hide things and reveal them at will!
** Brand new abbreviations: mp = main pocket, kp = key pocket, bp = book pocket, etc.!
** Time-saving upgrade for the adventurer on the go: LOOK IN or PUT [SOMETHING] IN a closed pocket without having to open it first!
Seems super handy! And further indication that we’re in 1998, which is of course the year Anchorhead was released (meaning our library card is expired. Unless the Jansport line comes out a year early, like how car model years always seem different from actual human-calendar years, and it’s the summer of 1997).
We do some stowing and sorting, ending up with this:
>i
You are carrying:
a Jansport backpack (being worn and open)
a key pocket (open but empty)
a book pocket (open)
The Modern Girl’s Divination Handbook – Volume Three
a postcard of Big Ben
the diary of Phyllis Cragne
a moldy, waterlogged journal
a side pocket (open)
a book list
a small, rectangular battery
a trash pocket (open)
a coded telegram
a glass jar containing an insect
a cast iron spire
a backpack features guide
a library card
Peter’s jacket
a half-full styrofoam coffee cup
a repaired page
a waterproof flashlight
a pull-string doll
an antique locket (being worn and closed)
a faint chill (haunting you)
a giant milkweed leaf (being worn as a mask)
a label (being worn)
a familiar gold wristwatch (being worn)
For some reason Peter’s jacket isn’t displayed as being worn, though if we try to wear it again we’re told we’ve already got it on – have no fear, dear readers, we continue to be properly bundled up. I also tried putting the chill in the trash pocket, but alas, we can’t shake it so easily.
>x telegram
NAOMI STOP FORGOT BROWN SHOES STOP PLEASE SEND BY EARLIEST POST STOP LOVE PETERIn the secret code you worked out with your husband, “forgot brown shoes” means “the plan has gone dog-tits-up and I could not be deeper in the crap canal,” while “please send by earliest post” means “invent a pretext and come extricate me immediately.”
So, here you are in Backwater, Vermont, with a missing husband and no idea what to do next. It’s great. Everything’s great.
This seems hard to square with some elements of our backstory, but we’ll circle back to that in a bit. Meantime, this potentially indicates that Peter had some clue that something bad was going to happen to him, rather than it coming upon him unaware as he waited at the train platform as initially seemed to be the case.
(Unless he forgot about the code and really did just need a change of dress shoes, in which case, egg, face, etc.)
Now that we’ve been patting ourselves down like a weirdo, let’s turn to the office and its inhabitant:
>x desk
The surface of the desk is invisible underneath a loose pile of glossy architectural magazines, manila folders, and real estate listings pamphlets.>x magazines
They’ve all got names like “SUPERIOR ABODE” and “SMUGLY MODERN” and “YURT FANCIER.” You know what they mean by “yurt fancier” is “someone who fancies yurts,” but you can’t help feeling like they’re implying the yurt is fancier than you are.(It is; it’s made of cruelty-free faux beluga whaleskin and you, last time you checked, are not.)
Harsh but fair.
>x pamphlets
On the corner of the desk nearest the door is a stack of pamphlets listing all the homes for sale in Backwater. You assume you can take one if you want one.>take pamphlet
You take a pamphlet of home listings off of the stack.>x listing
18 F’tagn Court
|| 8 BR 1 BA || Quiet neighborhood! Completely redone with brand new floors and concrete-sealed basement. Hardly any muttering!36 River Walk Drive
|| 3 BR 2 BA || Great river views and convenient for boating! Trawl for crayfish from the comfort of your living room. Entire upstairs still mostly above water!23 Euclid Street
|| 2 BR 5 BA || An obelisk lover’s dream! Extensive yard boasts a true infinity pool and an impressive collection of garden statuary, including twin sphinxes. Paradoxically nearby to everything!Underneath the description of 23 Euclid Street, someone has scrawled the words “JACKDAWS LOVE MY BIG SPHINX OF QUARTZ.”
Does it say something about me that amongst all this strangeness, the thing that really jumps out to me is the totally inadequate bedroom to bathroom ratio at F’tagn Court?
We’ve put it off as long as we could – it’s time for some socialization:
>x woman
The upper half of her body consists mostly of hair, insufficiently restrained with a blue plaid scrunchie. Twin octagonal shimmers beneath the hair suggest a pair of glasses. Her torso wears a t-shirt advertising the 1996 Muddy Crayfish Charity Run/Walk, sponsored by Forthright & Rotier.The lower half of her body is obscured by the giant desk, but your brain evolved over millennia to handle exactly this kind of situation, so without even thinking about it you assume she has two human legs instead of, say, half a kraken.
>ask woman if she’s half-kraken
You can’t see any such thing.
Given our encounter in the forest, it seems worth checking.
By analogy to Anchorhead, I think I know where to start:
>ask woman about cragne manor
“Oh!” the woman exclaims. “You’re the new wi-- I mean, you’re Naomi Sparradew Cragne! Nice to meet you. I’m Bethany Tross.” She boosts herself onto the desk to shake your hand. “I’ve got a huge file on Cragne Manor. It’s absolutely fascinating. You’re gonna love it.” Lips slightly pursed, she surveys the mess on the desk. “Um. Just let me find it. Jeez. One sec.”Bethany gathers all of the folders on the desk into her arms. “See, I’m getting a master’s degree in local history, and this job is a gold mine for original documents,” she explains. One by one she deposits each file into the cabinet, until only an empty-looking folder labeled CRAGNE MANOR remains. “Huh, it should be…” She flips it open, then with a disappointed look sets it on the desk in front of you.
“Well, ratsack,” she says. “I guess the Cragne Manor file’s off being digitized. Ms. Rotier’s been on this paperless office kick lately, which is weird, because we don’t have a computer.” Her expression brightens somewhat. “Any other buildings you want to know about? I’m not allowed to talk history at home anymore, not since the incident.”
Now that the desk is clean, you notice a paperback book that had been hiding underneath the folders.
Our reputation appears to precede us. What was that about a book?
>x book
A somewhat battered paperback whose lovingly fantasy-painted cover features a corseted steampunk woman embracing a Regency period nobleman – who is also an anthropomorphic lion – in space. “TWIN HEARTS BETWEEN THE PLANES,” raised letters proclaim. “LEELAH VAUGHAN.”Beneath the author’s name, smaller text inside a sunburst informs you that this book was a 1981 Venus Rising nominee for “Best Sexual Tension.” A shelving label for the Backwater Public Library covers the lower spine “[FIC / ERO / ANIMA / FELIS / YIKES]”.
This is it, your instincts whisper. This is the thing you need to steal. Also, look at it. It’s amazing. Definitely steal that.
Thing the first: yikes indeed. Thing the second: this was on our book list, so our yoinking instincts are on target.
>ask woman about book
Bethany looks you straight in the eyes, radiating academic gravitas. “Okay, so, believe me when I say that I don’t normally read sci-fi bodice rippers starring big handsome lion guys.”You assure her that you did not have her pegged as a paranormal romance enthusiast, and she visibly relaxes before continuing.
“It’s research, sort of,” she explains. “See, Leelah Vaughan is the pen name of Stella Archer Cragne, wife of Horace Cragne. This book was published in 1980 – one year before Stella Archer Cragne (here Bethany drops her voice about two octaves) mysteriously vanished.”
>ask woman about leelah
“Leelah Vaughan was the pen name of Stella Archer Cragne, who only wrote this one book before (Bethany drops into Outer Limits voice) vanishing mysteriously. Personally, I think Stella Archer Cragne is a much better nom de plume than Leelah Vaughan, but I guess if you gotta write books about anthropomorphic lion dong, you might as well do it under a dumb fake name. I’ve thought about what mine would be and it’s Felix O’Toole.”>ask woman about stella
“Stella Archer Cragne disappeared on the third of May, 1981,” Bethany tells you. “She told her husband she was going into town to buy a hat for Petunia Cragne’s wedding. The ticket taker at the station confirmed that she boarded the 12:35 train to Montpelier, and after that (once again Bethany drops her voice into Unsolved Mysteries registers) nobody saw her again. Dead or alive.”“Ask me about Stella again if you want to hear all the facts of the case; I’m supposed to practice getting consent before quote-unquote talking people’s ears off. People care an awful lot about their ears around here, if you ask me.”
>ask woman about stella
Holding up her fingers one by one, Bethany cheerfully enumerates the facts of the case. “Fact! Stella had no known enemies; the family liked her – well, except Imelda Cragne, but she was a 102-year-old racist who croaked six months before Stella went missing, so it’s unlikely she was involved.”“Fact! By all accounts, Stella & Horace were one of those boring quiet couples that stay home a lot and don’t have affairs. Fact! I really enjoy saying ‘fact!’ Fact!”
“Fact! Stella left the house with just her wallet and keys. She wasn’t the purse-carrying type, but she owned a couple good-sized bags she could have packed some underwear and a toothbrush in if she’d planned to run away.”
“Fact! The Backwater P.D. searched all of the possessions she’d left behind and none of it was more suspicious than a Jell-O mold. I saw the whole list and lemme tell ya, I have weirder stuff in my pockets right now, including one or two bird skulls.”
>ask woman about bird skulls
“It’s a funny story,” Bethany says. You wait for her to tell it to you, but she doesn’t.
This is an impressively detailed dialogue chain, but I have to say I am thankful it petered out when it did. In fact, there is a lot of dialogue here, which I’m going to somewhat summarize to avoid the thread getting too bogged down. Bethany has a lot to say about many of the Cragnes, though she doesn’t appear to know about Edwin or Phyllis, suggesting that there’s no one unified family tree here. She is full of delightful anecdotes about the crew, which heavily feature arson, meat hooks, &c. Here’s a comparatively mild excerpt (download the transcript if you want the full deets):
>ask woman about petunia
“Did you know Petunia Cragne didn’t call off the wedding after Stella went missing?” Bethany asks you. “She said she’d never get the Old Lantern booked again before November and she couldn’t use the local church because her fiance – Carl Jaspers, petroleum analyst – was a Southern Free Divinarian and everyone in Backwater still worshipped Arga’agna’gath the Uncanny Symmetry. So there were some Scriptural differences. Mostly in Leviticus.”“It turned into this whole family rift and Horace’s siblings still aren’t speaking to Petunia’s siblings. Religion is wild.”
This reminds me of how when my uncle told my grandmother that he was going to propose to my soon-to-be-aunt, and upon inquiry informed her that his intended was a Methodist, my grandma say “Oh,” waited a beat, and then asked “do they worship false idols?”
(My family is Catholic, making this all the funnier. We’re kinda the ones who do that!)
Perhaps we can ask about some more immediately-relevant topics?
>ask woman about peter
“I’m afraid I haven’t met your husband, no,” Bethany says. “I only moved here a few years ago, and he moved away in – I mean, as a historian, I know about – what I mean is, the Cragne family basically is Backwater – so-yes-I-know-a-lot-about-your-husband-and-I-hope-that-isn’t-creepy.” She coughs uncomfortably into some papers, avoiding your gaze.>ask woman about peter
“When you say you know a lot about Peter,” you ask Bethany, “you mean…?”She puts a fingernail between her teeth, looks past you at the far wall, looks down at her papers, then looks you directly in the eyes. “Your safeword is ‘xyzzy,’” she says, then spends the next several seconds patting you on the back while you choke on the saliva you’ve inhaled.
>ask woman about peter
“So,” you say, a little bit terrified but above all curious. “What else do you know about my husband? Besides our various joint sex fetishes, I mean.”Bethany looks up at you, and you read amusement in the lines of her face. “I actually do know something about your husband that you don’t,” she says. “He’s the real Peter Cragne. Which makes the two of you genuine co-owners of Cragne Manor. Wild, huh?”
“What? But…” Your thoughts fall down various pits, each one bottomless. If Archie really is Peter Cragne, then this whole expedition never was a con job – so why the hell did he send you a brown shoe telegram? What kind of trouble is he in?
Bethany observes your reaction and nods. “Yeah, you’re gonna have to ask him what his deal is,” she says, “because I genuinely have no idea. I think it’s hilarious that you didn’t know, though. Classic rom-com situation!”
>ask woman about peter
“I think by now you know everything that I know about Peter Verlac Cragne, and more,” says Bethany.
Things are starting to come into better focus (including lampshading some of the Verlac/Cragne slippage). We’d wondered what an immortal ghoul-queen like Nitocris was doing slumming about in Vermont; it appears she’s pretending to be a con artist named Naomi, who’s using her husband to gain access to the eldritch secrets of his ancestral home. The central remaining question is whether Peter really is a gormless schlub, or is concealing his true identity as our consort Kephren.
(And yes, I know these transliterations of actually-real Egyptian names are horrible, much less press-ganging actually-real historical personages to serve as gribbly monsters. Lovecraft: kinda problematic!)
Wait, remember what we’ve been forgetting to do again?
>x me
You are Naomi Sparradew Cragne, nurse practitioner, born (prematurely) in 1972 to Keith and Esperanza Sparradew of Flagstaff, Arizona, both now sadly deceased.*As a child, your family owned horses, and you definitely know how to ride them, but you injured your hip in a bad fall on some black ice in Boston so you don’t anymore. These days you get your horse itch scratched by volunteering with Stable America, a non-profit that provides riding therapy to trauma survivors.*
You are married to Peter Cragne – entrepreneur, amateur philosopher, and tennis enthusiast – recently returned to Backwater, Vermont after an absence of twenty-three years to inherit the family mansion (such as it is).*
- As far as any of these rubes know.
Yup, all checks out (that stint in Boston might explain our cover-identity’s familiarity with fishermen?)
This Bethany seems like she knows way, way too much, though. Is she onto us?
>ask her about me
(Bethany about yourself)
“Presumably you know who you are much better than I do,” Bethany tells you. There’s something odd in her voice, and you suspect she could say more but isn’t.>ask her about me
(Bethany about yourself)
Bethany stops shuffling papers around on the desk and looks hard at your face. “You really want to hear everything I know about you? Because… I could tell you, or we could just know that we both know what we know and leave it at that.”>ask her about me
(Bethany about yourself)
Bethany takes a deep breath. “Okaaaaaay,” she says. “If you really wanna go, we’ll go.” She makes a valiant but ultimately sad attempt to crack her knuckles before soldiering on.“You,” she says, “are Lucy Claudine Venks, very good at obscuring her birth details, but my best guess is Prescott, Arizona, in June or July of 1971. Naomi Sparradew was your freshman year roommate in nursing school. She had tons of scholarships and was basically getting a free ride while you worked nights at the Waffle House.”
“What I still don’t know,” Bethany continues, “and maybe you can help me with this, is how she died.”
You stare at the tip of Bethany’s nose, not entirely sure whether you’re still breathing. “It was a freak accident,” you say. “One of our bookshelves collapsed and she took a copy of Grey’s Anatomy to the occipital lobe. I didn’t kill her. I liked her. Even if I hadn’t, I try not to kill people, mostly.”
Bethany nods vigorously, smiling wider than you feel is warranted by the current conversational topic. “That’s perfect, that was my theory this whole time! You didn’t kill her, you just took advantage of her death. Very clever. Someday you’ll have to explain how you got away with it, because wow do I have questions.”
“Does that mean you’re not gonna rat me out?” you ask, still tensed for a fight.
“Nope!” Bethany shakes her head. “I’m gonna ask you for a favor instead. Like, the crime kind of favor. Not right now, 'cause I can tell you’re already on a… job… mission? It’ll be later, when you’re all done with your… crime quest.”
You unclench the fist you hadn’t exactly realized was clenched, wincing as sensation returns to your nail-bitten palm. “So, what, we’re just gonna–?”
“You’re gonna keep asking me Backwater real estate questions, I’m gonna keep answering them, and it’s gonna be exactly like we never had this conversation,” Bethany answers. “As though this moment we just shared was an unsettable flag in an adventure game. Like tears in rain.”
“That… okay, that analogy was a weird place for a Blade Runner reference, but I agree to your terms,” you reply. Still grinning, she hands you an IOU.
Whew, she’s none the wiser.
>x iou
It reads: This coupon is good for one (1) crime to be committed at a time and place of the issuer’s choosing. This message will self-destruct as soon as you swallow it, which you should basically do immediately. Have a nice day!Did she… when did she get this printed, exactly? And why?
>eat iou
You tear the IOU into little bits and choke them down as best you can. It leaves you with a weirdly minty aftertaste, a phantom sensation of a lump in your esophagus, and a growing surge of irritation about suddenly having to eat a piece of paper implicating you in a crime you haven’t even committed yet. Oh well, that’s life sometimes, you guess.
Eh, a contract to commit a crime is unenforceable because it’s against public policy, so I think we’re fine to ignore this.
Again, there’s lots more we can talk to her about, but in the interests of not having our immortal ghoul-queen die of old age in the meantime, let’s turn to solving the puzzle of stealing that book, which I stumble upon by accident after inquiring about Bethany’s job:
>ask her about rotier
(Bethany about Forthright & Rotier Estate Agency)
“Great, I’ll show you the folder for that!” Bethany says, turning to search through the filing cabinet.
With her distracted, what else is there to do but:
>take book
Stealing the book while Bethany’s got her back turned is definitely the right idea. When you play the scenario out in your mind, though, it goes something like this:[IMAGINARY SCENE] You slip the book into your pocket. Bethany turns around, ready to drop the folder on the desk, and spots that the book is gone. Her octagonal eyes glow red, and each unruly curl of her hair transmogrifies into a cobra, its eyes glowing red and its fangs dripping venom. “WHERE IS MY BOOK?” she roars, shaking the walls of the real estate office.
The desk grows a mouth and chomps you in half somewhere around the lumbar spine. Your lower half bleeds out on the berber carpet as the desk masticates your torso and eyeballs and hands and other parts of your body you like a lot and use often. With a satisfied expression, Bethany retrieves the novel from the bloodsoaked pocket of your JNCOs. “Now I can finally confess my truth,” she tells your exposed kidneys. “I think reading about lion sex is kind of nice actually.”[END IMAGINARY SCENE]
…okay, clearly this town has got you in a real weird headspace. The point is, you’ll have to find a way to steal the book without Bethany noticing you’ve stolen it, or things might get… uncomfortable.
“Here’s the folder!” Bethany drops the folder onto the desk near Twin Hearts Between the Planes.
“Josiah Forthright was a master hypnotist whose specialty was getting people to desire things that no sane person would ever want,” Bethany tells you. “Then, completely out of nowhere, he opened a real estate office in Backwater, Vermont. It’s sad that he gave up on his dream like that, don’t you think?”
…we’re wearing JNCOs? This really is a horror game.
For want of anything else to do, we ask about the properties mentioned in the listing pamphlet, and get a similar infodump as Bethany pulls more and more folders out of the cabinet:
Here’s Euclid:
“Back in the 70s it was hip to build your pad on top of a transdimensional leyline nexus even though that plays hell with the electrical wiring,” Bethany tells you. “It’s a genuinely cool property, though. I’ve been over there a couple times to check the portals. One of the sphinxes and I get along great, the other one is all pissy with me because I solved all its riddles in three minutes.”
She sighs. “I offered to help it write new ones and, like, centralize a database? But now whenever it sees me it just rolls its eyes and makes fart noises, and I’m all, ‘Real mature, sphinx.’ It makes it super awkward chatting with the other one 'cause they’re only ten feet apart from each other but the house is still really cool. There’s an infinity pool and everything.”
River Walk:
“You know that ad where someone gets chocolate into someone else’s peanut butter and someone else gets peanut butter into someone else’s chocolate?” Bethany asks you. “That is basically what happened with 36 River Walk Drive except instead of a peanut butter cup you have a mostly underwater house and instead of being delicious it is soggy and bad.”
Something odd happens when we ask about the first listing:
>ask woman about court
Which do you mean, 18 F’tagn Court or a forbidden B.U.S.H. topic?
Come again? I can’t indicate the forbidden B.U.S.H. topic, sadly – guess that’s why it’s forbidden, but here’s the blurb on the property:
“Some crazy stuff went down at 18 F’tagn Court,” Bethany tells you. “In fact, there was this huge mess and we had to change the floors.”
“The floors?” you ask.
“You see, his bl-- his blackyard blarbecue got a blit out of hand.” She tightens her lips. “And it, uh, blurnt the floorbloards. So we had to change them.”
You quirk an eyebrow at Bethany and she deflates. “Sorry,” she says, “I keep forgetting I’m supposed to lie about F’tagn Court, and wow am I really not great at it. Wanna know about any buildings where they didn’t find a ton of faceless bodies?”
>ask woman about 18
“Faceless bodies?” you ask Bethany.She tightens her lips and shakes her head vigorously. “Blarbecue! It was a very blad blarbecue. They blurnt the blatwurst and forgot the bluns. Also the potato salad had clams in it, yuck.”
You realize you’re probably much happier not knowing, so you let it drop.
3 Likes
(Chapter the Fourth, concluded)
At each stage, we try to steal the book, but get the same warning. Given the prompt that we don’t want her to detect the theft, and the prominent mention of the way our backpack’s pockets can keep things hidden, I try putting the paperback straight into the book pocket, but that doesn’t work either. To keep experimenting, I keep asking about buildings in the town:
>ask woman about library
Bethany’s features descend into a half-scowl. “Oh, it’s just another boring Andrew Carnegie library, blah blah blah 1908, $5000 budget, snooze me a river of dreams. It’s gross, all the books in there are gross, if you go in there you’ll be gross too.” This unenthusiastic description of a historic building seems out of character, so you cock an eyebrow at her quizzically.Bethany catches your look and deflates. “That crappy librarian is in league with the Badfinger University Shadow Historians,” she explains. “She won’t let me have jack. They’ve got some real good original mystical documents and I want a job there so bad.”
Well, there’s our forbidden B.U.S.H. (the detail about it being a generic Carnegie library is a nice touch). We can ask about it, and get more than we bargained for:
>ask woman about bush
“Badfinger University is five miles up the river from Squahonomie, and their Shadow Historians have been our archrivals for almost a century and a half,” Bethany explains. “Every September our grad students and theirs engage in ritualized academic combat to decide which school has jurisdiction over which historical topics. This year they got almost all of the Cragnes – I was gunning hard for Stella, and I made sure we kept Deuteronomous – but this guy Josh that I hate blew the rest of our points on Jedediah Beaverhat, who is not even real, he’s a pancake house mascot. I kinda think Josh is a mole.”>ask woman about beaverhat
“One legend goes that Jedediah Beaverhat invented the pancake, then he wanted something sweet to go on top of it, so he went into the forest and seduced Maple Kate, who was the half-druid tribal chief of the – ugh, I don’t know why I’m telling you Jedediah Beaverhat stories.” Bethany makes a disgusted face. “He’s not real, okay? He’s not even an authentic local myth, just something the Goldwater Restaurant Group made up in 1953 to trick motorists into stopping for corn syrup.”
(Deuteronomous was the one who built Cragne Manor, I elided the dialogue about him above but check out the transcript if you’re interested).
Here’s the train station:
“Who just found the folder she was looking for? This girl!” Bethany drops the folder onto the desk. Twin Hearts Between the Planes is now completely hidden from view.
“Backwater didn’t have a train station until 1968,” Bethany tells you. “The local business owners were really pushing for one to be built, but the town council elders fought it tooth and nail, because they thought it would attract undesirables – I think we both know what that’s code for – from the city. Then somebody pointed out the undesirables from the city, if you were nice to them and gave them shotguns, would be great allies in the constant war against the even-less-desirables who kept slithering out of the hills on their tentacle legs to steal babies. Backwater got noticeably less racist after that. Also fuller of babies.”
Hey, that’s a heart-warming counterpoint to the typical Lovecraftian fear-of-melanin! Also, notice that first bit?
Twin Hearts Between the Planes is now completely hidden from view.
I think we might have accidentally solved this puzzle. In fact, if we ask about the church…
>ask woman about church
“Absolutely! Let me find that folder,” Bethany says, turning to search through the filing cabinet.>put paperback in bp. close bp.
(first taking Twin Hearts Between the Planes)
You utilize the skills you trained long and hard in the finest shopping malls of the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area. Moving like a rattlesnake (except without the rattling, obviously), you silently slide the lion sex book out from underneath the folders and slip it into the pocket of your JNCOs before Bethany has a chance to turn around.
Lion sex book GET.
You put Twin Hearts Between the Planes into the book pocket.“Another folder found!” Bethany drops the folder onto the desk.
“Most people in town think Backwater Church changes religious affiliation once every seven years,” Bethany says, “but guess what I found out? This whole time they’ve just been worshipping different incarnations of X’n’xa the Inevitable March Towards Death, which technically makes them Episcopalians. Religion is wild, huh?”
Ugh, Episcopalians – even worse than Methodists.
The coffee confirms we’re done here, but because I’m a completionist, I read all the folder’s Bethany’s dug up – once again, I’m omitting most of them but you can check the transcript if you’d like – but there is one discovery of note:
>read station folder
The train station folder is incredibly thick. Flipping through it, most of its bulk appears to be schedules of arrivals and departures, and you’re about to fall asleep when a folded page flutters out from between the timetables. You unfold it and take a look.“Oh, that thing is great,” Bethany says. “It’s a map of a proposed trolley system through Backwater, which wound up not getting built because it turned out the guy who sold it was secretly a bear, and no one knew what to do with that information. The trolley system would have been so cool though.”
>x map
From what you’ve seen of Backwater, it’s not that big, yet the trolley system on the map in your hands is extensive. A forest-green line runs into the woods, while a line as red as raw beef connects the downtown to the meatpacking plant. The church has its own line (gold), Cragne Manor has several (in various shades of purple – also, why?), and Backwater itself is split into “Dangerous Backwater” (orange) and “Spooky Backwater” (blue). Apparently the real estate office is in Spooky Backwater, whatever that means.
This game is already feeling rather big, so I’m guessing this is a fast travel system we’ll eventually unlock.
OK, time to back away slowly, mimesis having taken a few hits if not begun to unravel entirely.
There were a whole lot of takeaways from that, but the one I’m actually going to act on is the reminder to X ME at the new locations. Here’s Outside the Library:
You are standing in the middle of the road.
…yes I am.
And the library:
Disheveled. Exhausted. Not crying yet. Glad to be in from the cold, if only for a little while.
Quite the range of self-images.
This chapter is already long, but let’s stick with our four-locations-apiece plan; fortunately, there’s a small location we can wrap up with, just southwest of the town square:
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.
Lucian Smith won the 1997 IFComp (the 3rd one!) and has only been intermittently active since – a real blast from the past!
This is maybe the shortest location description we’ve seen yet, which makes it something of a palate cleanser.
>x ivy
Thick ivy grows around the fountain, obscuring all but the bowl and spout.>x fountain
An ornate brick drinking fountain, with a spout above a silver bowl, a button underneath, and surrounded by ivy.
Hmm, I wonder…
>take ivy
You pull back the ivy from the side of the fountain, revealing, for some reason, a second fountain.
For some reason? Is the reason RACISM?
>x second
(the secondary fountain)
The smaller fountain is nearly obscured by the disturbed ivy. Its bowl is filled with decaying leaves and crawling insects, and rust covers all its exposed metal. A crumbling sign is mounted in the brick above the spout.>x sign
COLORED
Ah-yup.
For the record, this makes little sense. Jim Crow laws were largely a creature of the South, of course, and were enacted by revanchist southern whites locking in the social and economic marginalization they’d inflicted on Black southerners during Redemption, after the brief flowering of Reconstruction. They were predicated on enforcing distinct social castes in shared public spaces where Black people were an unavoidable part of white life. Certainly there was racism and discrimination in northern states too, but it was largely focused in the job-center cities that were the targets of the Great Migration, and tended to take forms like housing discrimination and exclusion from union membership, rather than following the Jim Crow model. And speaking specifically of Vermont, in the 1900 Census (which was right around the time Jim Crow laws were being passed), out of a population of 343k there were like 800 nonwhite people. Even by the 1960 Census, the numbers were almost the same!
Er, back to the game: poking around at various other bits of scenery and drinking fountain components doesn’t do very much, though we can try to make them work:
>turn on fountain
(the secondary fountain)
The rusty button on the secondary fountain does nothing when you push it.>turn on main fountain
You take a drink from the fountain. The water is lukewarm and vaguely brackish.
I’m unclear on what there is to do here, other than be creeped out at nonfictional horrors, and the coffee confirms we need fresh perspectives from elsewhere, so let’s wrap things up here.
…no wait, one last thing!
>x me
You’re feeling tired, and your hair is a mess.
And in the game!
Our ending inventory:
You are carrying:
a Jansport backpack (being worn and open)
a key pocket (open but empty)
a book pocket (closed)
a side pocket (open)
a book list
a small, rectangular battery
a trash pocket (open)
a pamphlet of home listings
a glass jar containing an insect
a cast iron spire
a backpack features guide
a library card
Peter’s jacket
a half-full styrofoam coffee cup
a repaired page
a waterproof flashlight
a pull-string doll
an antique locket (being worn and closed)
a faint chill (haunting you)
a giant milkweed leaf (being worn as a mask)
a label (being worn)
a familiar gold wristwatch (being worn)
The map:
The transcript:
cragne session 4.txt (115.4 KB)
The save:
Cragne session 4 save.txt (50.4 KB)
Unfinished locations
- Railway Platform: lost and found is locked with a card-swiper, vending machine holds an eyepiece and presumably takes money
- Trail Station Lobby: locked green door
- Church Exterior: locked door to church
- Old Well: lots of stuff that “looks odd” which probably needs the eyepiece to examine, locked well, mysterious sigil
- Shack Exterior: locked door to shack
- Town Square: Navajo-language ring puzzle of doom
- Backwater Library: book collectathon, obtain grimoire
- Drinking Fountain: ???
7 Likes
Thanks for the continued positive reinforcement! And yeah, I’m sure I’m missing a ton of stuff – there are details upon details in this thing (I haven’t been messing with the pull-string doll that much anymore, for example…)
3 Likes
I think the idea is that mysteriis (ablative) goes with de, and vermis (genitive) goes with mysteriis: “Concerning the Mysteries of the Worm”.
Our lovely tome here on the other hand would be “Concerning Mangled Worms”. I had to look up laceris but I think it’s the adjective “torn up” rather than the verb “entice”.
…which is probably fine, y’know. I’ve always wanted to know about mangled worms. We just need to open the display case and we can learn more!
3 Likes
…also, I only just realized. VERmibus LACeris.
4 Likes
You are 100% right – I thought to myself, “wait, shouldn’t vermis be genitive?” but then didn’t bother to check whether the nominative and genitive were the same in this case. In my (very weak) defense, middle-school Latin confined itself almost exclusively to the first two declensions, where nominative and genitive case endings are different, rather than expanding our horizons to the impossibly recondite, far-off subtleties of the (checks) er, third declension.
As to whether laceris is an adjective or verb form, I suspect you’re also right on that score, but I’ll keep hoping against hope that if we do come across a worm somewhere later on, it’ll be more of a sexy worm than a mangled worm.
And well-spotted on the hidden name here! Per @jsnlxndrlv’s comment above, there’s so much stuff in this game, it’s fun to excavate even the tiniest references.
4 Likes
Hey, what is a classics minor for, if not for talking about the grammar of the titles of fictional worm grimoires?
I don’t know if Nitocris had anything to do with worms in Lovecraft’s works (that’s not a corner of the Mythos I ever really touched) but I will continue to believe that our protagonist’s real name is Nitocris Verlac-Cragne and that the mutable nature of reality around Backwater is just a normal thing for her. That poor guard on the bridge was trying to protect our sanity, but little does she know…
4 Likes
Chapter the Fifth – Gotta Catch 'Em All
When we left off, we were just about to wrap up the last little bit of exploration on the near side of the river, then cross over the bridge into the eastern half of Backwater and finally make it to the eponymous manor.
Spoiler alert: that does not happen; rarely has a plan gang as agley as this one.
Here are the remaining exits from the town square:
Due east, an iron bridge crosses the river, and southeast, a walkway leads down to its bank.
The walkway it is:
>se
River Walk (Adam Whybray)
A dirt path along the west bank of the Makaskuta - or Blackgourd - River. The air is motionless and sweltry, the urticariate heat drawing sweat profusely from your prickling glands.Just below you, to your side, the river burbles in vainglorious stupor, foaming in bright patches from the surfacants released from the rotting deposits of the red maples and poplars that line its banks. A single black ash, denuded of leaves, its corky bark blighted with the telltale signs of parasitic infection, quietly interrupts the Autumnal foliage of its deciduous cousins.
The river’s waters slith over rocks as lustrous-gray as seal skin, rending them freshly burnished for the mid-September sun, which casts Her rays in refulgent slats through the rust-honey colored trees. It is though Nature, in celebration of Her own fecundity, has chosen to offer Herself up in Equinoxical sacrifice - the rocks laid out before the blazing altar of the sun.
There is a forbidding sign on the bank of the river.
The way up to Backwater town square is northwest. Following the path north leads under the bridge.
On the Makaskuta river is a buoy.
You can also see a grimy rock, a long hooked pole, a dying crawfish and a soggy tome here.
You know it’s a lot when “fecundity” doesn’t even register in the fancy-words sweepstakes. Speaking of, I learned another new vocab word here: it’s “urticariate,” which means something that causes hives. Hopefully I won’t find too much occasion to use that in the future!
Adam Whybray, besides having an awesome name, has written a Poe parody in Twine; based on this description I’d say he’s got the chops to pull something like that off.
Right, let’s start checking things – wait, what was that?
the mid-September sun
It’s supposed to be summer, and I suppose we’re technically pre-equinox based on this but still, time is proving a slippery business around Backwater.
Anyway, after that detailed description, I’m sure the scenery will be more bottom-lined.
>x river
The river’s name is said to date back to the 17th century, Christened by a local Algonquian tribe after the peculiarly black coloration of the cucurbita pepo gourds that sprouted in the floodplains south of Backwater. Natives believed local Jesuit Ministers to use the gourds in Devil worship and to prevent these rituals from taking place would uproot the warty vegetables and “drown” them in the river.Across the 19th century, the Makaskuta became increasingly inhospitable to life due to the paper mills of Backwater discharging their untreated waste directly into its water - an industry that flourished in the period due to the competing demands of two local printing establishments which specialized in bound volumes of the letters, prayers and instructions of St. Ignatius of Loyola. By the 1870s the river was regularly running the color of strained tomato soup and, according to the 17th July 1874 edition of the Backwater Gazette, stank of “rank putrescence … as though nothing borne of this Earth”.
Only the interventions of the mysterious philanthropist Dr. Elias Saltz, DDiv in the latter part of the 1960s were able to restore the Makaskuta to its once verdant glories. The good Doctor may also be thanked for the introduction of the C. Robustus genus of giant crawfish into the Makaskuta, for which it is now justly celebrated.
The river babbles to itself complacently.
On the Makaskuta river is a buoy.
…I have checked our inventory, and we haven’t suddenly obtained the Blue Guide to Backwater, so where we’re getting this depth of local knowledge from a simple glance over the river is a mystery to me (given that we’re in a Lovecraft pastiche, the answer is probably meant to be “race-memory,” but of course Nitocris is from Africa).
There’s a strong Jesuit vibe here between the mention of ministers and the printing of St. Ignatius’s writings (he was one of the founders of the order), and you might think, Vermont Jesuits, LOL, but I believe that checks out – there was a lot of Jesuit missionary activity in eastern Canada/Quebec and Backwater sure seems like it’s in the northern, more rural parts of Vermont, near the border.
>x buoy
A buoy the color of a Caucasian’s flesh bobs uneasily upon the water. It certainly can’t be for the sake of swimmers since the wooden sign makes it very clear this is prohibited. Perhaps some trappers are marking their catch?>x sign
A wooden sign with a chunk missing from its bottom-right corner is embedded in the mud off the side of the path near the edge of the riverbank. Engraved in the sign is the message “Fishing and trapping allowed. Strictly no swimming.”
It really is a forbidding sign!
No rule follower is Nitocris, so let’s tempt fate:
>swim
(in the pamphlet of home listings)
You are inclined to follow the edicts of the sign. Also, the buoy implies this stretch of the river is being used for freshwater lobster fishing.
…excuse me?
(Trying to swim in the river produces the same result, much more reasonably in that context).
>x trees
The vermillion hue of the acer rubrum provides a startling contrast to the dreary environs of Backwater, like a feather boa round the neck of a New England clergyman. The surface of the dirt path is riven by tessellating layers of crisping leaves. The slender leaves of the populus balsamifera are shaped like the piques of a traditional suit of French playing cards and some are stained with an orange resin from which the “balm of Gilead” is derived.>x ash
The scaly trunk of the black ash is marked by the signs of both fungal damage and the Emerald Ash Borer. Where sections of bark have flaked away from the trunk, weevil-wheedling paths of pale discoloration caused by the larval secretions of this virulent insect can be discerned. Epicormic shoots shamelessly sprout forth from this blighted trunk like unwanted fingers.
Ash trees have a lot of mythological significance – Yggdrasil, the Norse world-tree, is an ash, of course, and on a more modern note, it’s not a coincidence that the eponymous, also axis-mundi-y House of Leaves is on Ash Tree Lane. Wonder if there’s anything up that tree?
>climb
(the pamphlet of home listings)
Little is to be achieved by that.
Find someone who prioritizes you the way Nitocris prioritizes this pamphlet.
(As expected, attempting to climb the ash is no more productive. Just as well since this game is big enough without a visit to Muspelheim).
There’s one last fun bit of the description, let’s dig into that:
The river’s waters slith over rocks as lustrous-gray as seal skin, rending them freshly burnished for the mid-September sun, which casts Her rays in refulgent slats through the rust-honey colored trees. It is though Nature, in celebration of Her own fecundity, has chosen to offer Herself up in Equinoxical sacrifice - the rocks laid out before the blazing altar of the sun.
>x rocks
The rocks glisten smugly.>x light
A small flashlight, with a rubber ring where it screws together to keep the water out.>x rays
You can’t see any such thing.>x altar
You can’t see any such thing.>x metaphor
You can’t see any such thing.
Ah well.
>x rock
A solitary rock squats at the edge of the river bank, sullenly surveying the fresh, water-slick countenances of its semi-subnautical brethren.>take it
Taken.
Yay, a (checks inventory) “grimy rock” – not much that’s more useful than that!
I think we’re done with scenery here, there’s more interesting stuff to mess about with.
>x crawfish
A crawfish of unimaginable proportions skulks in a clump of weedy grass at the side of the path closest to the river. The fact that he is out of the water, just perceptibly twitching like a half-squashed insect and slowly drumming his spiny legs like an office worker pensively tapping his fingers on a desk, is a strong indication that under his hard carapace he is crawling with infection. He is broken, mouldering, no damn good despite his considerable size.As though sensing your judgment, the crawldad’s antennae tremble ineffectually.
…can we get some added specificity on the size front? A crayfish is usually what, like a couple of inches? If this gargantuan exemplar of the species is twice that, that’s noteworthy but I think I can deal. But if it’s bigger than I am that would be helpful context in how I approach things! Better start out politely, given the uncertainty.
>greet crawfish
You say hello to the dying crawfish.>ask crawfish about crawfish
There is no reply.>take it
That’s hardly portable.>touch it
You feel nothing unexpected.>lick it
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.>taste it
You taste nothing unexpected.
This is a very long-suffering crayfish! Once again we’re lucky that Inform’s built-in world model doesn’t include disease, though.
…given how unresponsive he is, though, it might be a kindness to put this large fellow out of his misery.
>kill crawfish
You dare not attempt to put him out of his misery with your bare hands.
Welp.
>kill crawfish with rock
You raise the grimy rock high above your head and bring it crashing down upon the dying crawfish immediately splitting open its carapace revealing diseased creamy flesh the color of cooked chicken. Its eyestalks swivel wildly towards you and its periopods flicker like the eyelashes of a man trying desperately to awake from a nightmare.You bring the rock down again and again, smashing rostrum and cephalothorax to shribbons until all that remains are fragments of shell, with a tail and two front claws emerging from a pulped mound of rotting flesh. The stench is intolerable.
While most of the shell of the dead crawfish is riven into tiny pieces, one especially sharp looking shard stands out from the rest.
>x shard
An especially sharp and vicious looking shard of shattered crawfish carapace.>take it
You pluck the shard from the fishy mulch, being careful not to cut yourself.
Never go up against an adventure game protagonist when an inventory item is on the line. Let’s hope our friend has joined the great crustacean band in the sky.
>x shattered crawfish
The giant crawfish is laid splayed and beaten before you, eyestalks rent from his pulverized body. The opaque milky whiteness of its flesh is a telltale sign of aphanomyces astaci aka “crayfish plague”.The crawfish was clearly a member of some Old Order of crustacean patriarchs, grown huge over perhaps more than a century, year after year shedding his shell for a larger carapace until his metabolism was no longer a match for his hulking ambitions.
Again, this is much funnier when you assume that this massive mollusk is like half a foot at most.
Speaking of inventory items, there’s another likely candidate here:
>x pole
(the long hooked pole)
A long stick of wood with a rusted copper fishing hook of approximately six inches attached to the end of it with thickly knotted twine. This is known to New England lobster trappers as a “gaff”.>take gaff
Taken.
Now, if I know my northeastern fishery-practices as well as I think I do, there should be a lobster pot tethered to that buoy – and this hook seems quite the tool to recover it.
>hook buoy
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.>pull buoy with gaff
You can’t see any such thing.>throw pole at buoy
(the long hooked pole at the buoy)
Futile.
Guess not.
>x tome
A water-damaged and mud-stained book left forgotten on the riverbank by some freshwater lobster fisherman. Emblazoned upon the cover of the soggy tome is the title Padoson’s Rules of Crawfish: A Guide for Men of Maine.The volume appears to be a personal copy rather than a library book. Perhaps the owner had gleaned all he could from the work and made any necessary transformations following Padoson’s advice.
>take it
Taken.>read it
You open to the first page of the book and read…“Crawfish, crawldads, mountain lobsters, mudbugs, yabbies, or however you know these mighty members of the Astacoidea and Parastacoidea superfamilies, have long been kin to the men of the New England, forging communities of inviolable hierarchy below water, much as we build and sustain such communities above. As with men, dominance determines these bio-mythic structures…”
You skip ahead.
“Those crawfish stricken by the plague must invariably fall by the wayside much as the Spartans would throw weak and crippled newborn from the top of Mount Taygete, dashing the runts and striplings upon the rocks below.”
Rhetoric of this nature seems to continue for several pages.
“My father and I would sit together at the bank of the river and while father told me of the venal deceits of his wife we would catch those smallest crawfish - invariably the females of the species - which attempted to escape from the exit hole of the parlor, and father would delight me by cracking them upon his great bony knees. Later, when confronted with the disappointments of my youngest son, I would imagine taking him as my father had done the runtish bints, cracking him with satisfaction upon my own knee.”
You flick ahead to the middle of the book.
“By means of these simple hand-binding exercises you will be able to Set your Claws in Order. While the experience will be painful at first, you must NEVER INDUCE YOURSELF INTO THINKING THAT LIFE IS ANYTHING OTHER THAN PAIN.”
There follows pages of bewildering diagrams which seem to depict men with lobster appendages fighting the Swimmerets of Chaos.
"… until the blood takes the form of a transluscent white gel, which you should then inject … commercial fishing licences … scream in the water like egg-burst women … telomerase now in the DNA of your cells is the Chrysopoeia … baptized by briny Neptune … dying and molting and eating oneself in the charnel house of bloodied bones … "
From hereon in the words become incomprehensible.
Intellectual stuff.
This doesn’t seem to tell us how to directly do anything eldritch and unholy, so it’s actually less disturbing than most of the tomes we stumble across (sadly, it’s not a library book so we’re no closer to resolving that fetch quest).
The coffee indicates we still have stuff we can do here, so I start fiddling about, discovering a few items of interest:
>eat crawfish
You choke back vomit.
Sorry, did I say “interest”? I meant “disgust”. Then there’s this (I was futzing around with the shard and trying to cut everything I could):
>cut chill
Cutting him up would achieve little.
Wait, he’s a he?
>kiss chill
You move your hand into the chill, and feel a faint shudder before it fades again.>take chill
I don’t suppose the faint chill would care for that.
This might be the parser’s subtle way of telling us the chill is a ghost? …we gotta get that looked at.
Later on in my chaotic flounderings, I try to see if I can mess up my game by throwing stuff in the river, to unexpectedly helpful results:
>put all in river
soggy tome: That can’t contain things.
long hooked pole: You fish the Makaskuta with the long hooked pole, thrusting it down into the water beneath the buoy, where it knocks against something heavy and - judging by the feel of its contact against the pole - wooden. You manage to manoeuvre the hook between what you presume to be two planks of wood and then, with considerable effort, pull the mysterious object to the riverbank. It is a freshwater lobster trap!
[snip ten more lines of not being able to put stuff in the river]
Oh, I was on the right track after all! This feels annoyingly guess-the-verb-y, but we solved the puzzle so we shouldn’t be too churlish, I suppose.
>x trap
(the freshwater lobster trap)
The trap looks rather like a rabbit hutch, approximately 600 mm in length, almost cuboid but slightly curved at the top edges so that its width is marginally more narrow at the top than at the bottom, where it measures around 300 mm. The framework of the trap seems to be made of slats of ash, which goes some way to explaining its weight. Along one side of the trap is a wire-frame mesh door attached to the body of the trap with copper “J Clip” hinges, long rusted. The door is held shut at the other end by two thin loops of twine, which are tied tight at a point two-thirds up and two-thirds down the length of the door, opposite the hinges. Along the other side of the trap is a funnel-shaped opening of netting, which grows narrower as it recedes into the trap.The kitchen (the funnel-shaped netting), the parlor (the trap’s second chamber), and the bedroom (the trap’s false exit) are all parts of the freshwater lobster trap.
In the freshwater lobster trap are an employee ID card and an eggbound crawfish.
I’m enjoying wondering where Nitocris came across her surprisingly-robust knowledge of the lore and lexicon of lobster-fishing, but even more excited to find that ID card – I wonder if it’ll get us into the card-locked lost and found at the train platform?
(Also, one more nitpick – isn’t a crawfish way too small to trap in a lobster trap that’s described like this? I feel like this whole location would make much more sense if everything was a lobster instead).
(Just the crawfish I mean, not literally everything).
>x eggbound
The eggbound crawfish is considerably smaller than the tragic, moldering specimen upon the bank - around six inches in length, but with antenna that resemble long curving tendrils, notably large for her size of body. She reposes in the trap’s bedroom, occasionally skittering back and forth like an armor-plated insect.The crawfish’s swimmerets are laden with eggs the size and color of tinned peas. The eggs sway back and forth like grapes upon a vine, wafted by their mother to ensure their aeration.
OK no, I’m right, crawfish (crawfishes?) are small.
We treated one of its ilk abominably, so maybe we can try to make some small karmic amends:
>open trap
(the freshwater lobster trap)
Currently the trap is being held shut by two thin loops of twine.>cut twine
(the thin loops of twine)
Your fingernails are too blunt to cut through the twine.>cut twine with shattered
(the thin loops of twine with the shard of shattered carapace)
You cut through the twine with the sharp edge of the shard of the crawldad’s shell. With the twine no longer securing the door of the trap, it swings open.>take eggbound
With the door to the trap open the eggbound crawfish can leave if and when she she decides. Currently she is likely on guard after the disturbance of the trap being dredged to the surface. She will feed on the remains of the shattered crawldad if she needs to and later care for her young.
Ah, it’s the circle of life, which involves much more cannibalism than I remember from the Lion King (though is cannibalism if it’s eating others of its kind, rather than eating a human? I’m suddenly curious whether there’s vocabulary that helps draw this distinction – anthropophagy/phagous, maybe? – but not curious enough to risk blind Googling in this area).
>take id
(the employee ID card)
Taken.>x it
An employee ID card for Vermont Transit Authority, bearing a blurry ID photo and the name “Veeder, R.”>x photo
It’s… probably a human face? But the picture is so low-resolution that you can’t tell for sure.
I’ve heard (Cragne Manor organizer) Ryan Veeder is probably human, so this checks out. Transit Authority is definitely a sign this is from the railway station!
The coffee indication we’re done here, but let’s check out the bridge undercarriage before tagging all the way back to the beginning.
>n
Under the Bridge (Tenth)
The path along the river gives way to a crumbling stone embankment as it passes below the arch of the old stone bridge. A rusty metal hatch is set into the ground opposite from the river, and towards the end of the embankment, a derelict payphone squats, forgotten, under the shadow of the bridge. To the south, the path continues to follow the river.
My research skills are not sufficient to figure out who “Tenth” is, or what else IF-related they might have done. A personage of mystery!
>x embankment
A once proud part of Backwater’s infrastructure, now crumbling into ruin. The decorative carvings along the sides have worn away to faint impressions, and much of the underside has been patched with lighter-colored concrete.>x hatch
The humidity of the river has rusted the hatch to the color of dried blood, like an old scab on the embankment. Seemingly of the same vintage as the bridge, it lacks any modern logo, markings, or even a handle, though there is an odd rectangular indentation along one edge.>x indentation
The indentation in the hatch is a little over an inch long, about half as wide, and seems too shallow to make a good handle, even if it didn’t look like a jagged-edged tetanus-shot-waiting-to-happen… Which, for the record, it does.
There’s like bespoke manhole-opening tools, I know (…from playing a graphic adventure called Broken Sword, where obtaining said lever-ish thing was a surprisingly big deal) so maybe that’s what we’ll need here?
>pull hatch
Years of neglect have left the hatch rusted shut, and there isn’t even a good handhold you could use to force it open. (Especially not without more up-to-date immunizations…)
Look, game, we both know you’re bluffing with this tetanus BS.
>put pole in indentation
(the long hooked pole in the rectangular indentation)
Even if you could fit it in there, that doesn’t seem like a good use of your resources. (At best, it would get rusty - at worst, it might end up somewhere below the rusty old hatch you haven’t managed to open yet.
So we will need something a bit more specific to open this up.
>x river
The river splashes fitfully against the crumbling stone of the embankment, dark and murky in the shadows. The wrinkled surface of the water yields a rough reflection, an animated expressionist painting of the bridge and sky above.Your eyes are drawn to a dark shape, silhouetted against the sky - While indistinct in in the reflection, it resembles a figure leaning over the railing of the bridge…
>x shape
You’re not sure what you thought you saw in the reflection; A figure, almost like a woman in an old-fashioned hat? But looking up at the bridge, there doesn’t seem to be a person or… anything, really, along the edge of the railing.
Definitely kind of spooky!
>x payphone
The payphone has been vandalized exhaustively over the years; The shelter is covered in graffiti, while the phone itself has been scratched, stained, spraypainted, and used as an ashtray, among other things. While there is a grievous wound where a large piece of the phone was torn out, there is still a coin slot in the upper right, a keypad in the center, next to the receiver, and a coin return in the lower right; Probably about as much of a phone as necessary to place a call.But you find yourself strangely reluctant to touch it, as if you would be disturbing a grave, or a shrine to some nameless Backwater god…
A payphone would be even spookier if this was set in the present day, though of course they’d be less remarkable in 1998.
>x graffiti
There’s no obvious place to start reading; Every inch of the panels are inlaid with high school scrimshaw, but your eyes are initially drawn to a cartoon dagger (or acorn? green pepper?) and the inscription “I don’t ever wanna feel, like I did that day…”
…well played, Tenth. Well played.
There’s a lot of graffiti here, and by its evidence we’ve found the haunt of Backwater’s indie-kids – wait, it’s 1998, alternative-kids:
>g
You’ve already lost track of where you started, and find yourself looking at the phrase “Black Number ONE”, surrounded by tiny skulls and… hearts?
…
Adrift on a sea of outsider folk art, you briefly lock eyes with “LISA LOEB IS A HACK”, and a careless scribble you’d politely describe as “genitals”.
…
Your eyes struggle to find purchase on the maze of scribbles, briefly settling on “For a good time CALL 911”… Sheesh. it doesn’t really work as a prank, or a joke…
…
Maybe scrimshaw was the wrong metaphor… It’s more like the phone went to prison and got all inked up with jailhouse tattoos, such as the letters “AC”, an angry looking lightning bolt, and “DC”.
…
It’s like a message board for bored teens; You’d almost say “a fire hydrant for stray dogs”, but that seems cruel, even given “PEARL JAM”, followed by “Jeremy!” (crossed out), “Black?” (also struck out), and finally, “EVENFLOW” (underlined repeatedly for emphasis).
…
It doesn’t seem like there’s a whole thesis here, but… at least an anthropology paper? You try to focus, finding yourself looking at “WINONA FOREVER”, of which the “NA” has been cleverly scribbled over.
…
If you’ve learned one thing from this phone, it’s to not hang out under a bridge with a bunch of miscreants. That’s how you end up inscribed with an enthusiastic but flawed “ASE OF BASE” logo inside a jagged polygon.
Before this moment, I’ve never thought of an Ace of Base/King in Yellow mash-up, but now I can’t think of anything else (you know, “have you seen the yellow sign?”)
>x graffiti
You must have read everything… Or so you thought, but then you find a whole extra column of scribbles, starting with the phrase “BADMOTORFINGER”, presented boldly and without comment.Trying to make sense of a knot of graffiti, you follow a trail of scribbled stars to the number 258-0987, flanked by loosely drawn stars.
…
The years have not been kind to this phone, nor was the person responsible for a crude horse, dog (or possibly alligator?) inexplicably labeled “SKANK”.
…
Your eyes can’t help but glaze over as you continue to read the graffiti, like a broad, grinning skull, with “666” inscribed on its forehead.
…this goes on for a while longer, and I am into it, especially once we start getting into the Tori Amos and Cypress Hill references, but at least for purposes of the thread we should move on. There was something wrong with the phone, wasn’t there?
>x wound
You examine the gaping wound in the payphone; A final, fatal insult after years of abuse. It seems as though a coin vault or lockbox once fit here, and the edges of the steel faceplate are bent and scraped to suggest it didn’t go without a struggle. The financial motivation is obvious, but it feels like an almost medieval act of cruelty - As if someone tore out its heart, perhaps concerned that the phone might rise again as a vampire?>x slot
Set into a slightly rounded recess in the phone’s faceplate is a thin slot, about the height of a quarter, labeled “5-10-25” and “US COINS ONLY”.>x receiver
An old, battered black plastic handset, connected to the phone by a segmented metal cable that reminds you of a rat’s tail. It is hanging from a metal lever, the unfortunately named “cradle”, like an unpleasant piece of meat on a hook.>take it
You lift the receiver off the cradle, trying to not to think too much about the associations of that word.>x keypad
A fairly standard telephone keypad. The buttons, once silver, and now more of a muted, nicotine-stained gray, include the first nine digits, in rows of three, followed by a final row containing the star, zero, and pound keys:
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
* 0 #Twelve silver keys - Wasn’t that an Elizabethan-era occult thing? Something to do with John Dee, Enochian angels, and other nonsense…
That last bit doesn’t ring a bell, and I’ve actually read a bit of detail on Dee’s magical system (it was for a novel I’ve been working on on and off – turns out real-world occultism is quite boring, though, so this stuff didn’t wind up being that generative). Maybe Dee gets namechecked in Lovecraft’s Dreamlands stories (The Silver Key and Through the Gates of the Silver Key)? Could also be a reference to the Dee-featuring King of Shreds and Patches, a lovely bit of IF by Jimmy Maher.
Anyway, let’s futz around:
>dial 867-5309
The phone hisses and sputters with static, and then, as if from a great distance, a faint voice growls “Please zzZRrt twenty-fiiIEERrve cents before continuUURRRRrroo dial your numMMRRrrrrzzzCHRRt.”
(Sorry).
Right, we forgot a step!
>x return
A narrow, grimy metal flap, stamped with the words PUSH FOR COIN, protecting the small chamber where your change should end up after making a call (though you have your doubts, given the condition of the phone).>push
(the pamphlet of home listings)
Nothing obvious happens.
I can’t quit you, pamphlet of home listings.
>push return
You press on the coin return with your finger, meeting some resistance, but it finally swings inwards with a soft crunch. Something dry and hard tumbles under your fingertip (it’s not a tooth, why the hell would there be a tooth…) but as you jerk away your hand in revulsion, you also manage to fling an old quarter into your palm.>put quarter in slot
The coin disappears into the slot, and down some tiny stairs, by the sound of it. Deep inside, something rattles into place, and the receiver begins to hiss softly with static.>dial 867-5309
The phone growls and hisses, then plays three off-key, piping notes. “The nnNNURRRBRROo have dialed,” a female voice shrieks through the static, “cannot be rrRRAARrrgt this time. Please hang up and trRRAAGRPhd.”
Alas, Jenny will remain uncontacted.
Experimentation discloses that after an unsuccessful dial attempt, we can hang up and push the coin return again, so we haven’t just lost our one shot at making a call, thankfully. I try calling one of the “for a good time, call…” numbers we saw above:
>dial 567-9820
The phone growls and hisses, then plays three off-key, piping notes. “The nnNNURRRBRROo have dialed,” a female voice shrieks through the static, “cannot be rrRRAARrrgt this time. Please hang up and trRRAAGRPhd.”
That was not a very good time at all.
I X COFFEE at this point, and see something new:
The clouds in your cup form a sharknado. Images of strange hybrids mean that some challenges in your current environment can be defeated with what you already possess, while others will require outside assistance.
I was wondering if the coffee got to that level of granularity, so that’s reassuring.
3 Likes
(Chapter the Fifth, continued)
At this point in my playthrough, I was too excited to see what the ID card unlocked so I ran back to the train station instead of messing about further with the phone, only returning at the end of the session – but in the interest of maintaining the Aristotelian unity of place, I’ll pull the relevant bit of transcript up and pretend the time-gap didn’t happen:
Trying to call 911 actually does a require a quarter – boo! – and doesn’t get us much help:
>dial 911
There is an odd squawk of static on the line, followed by a few seconds of quiet hissing, before a distorted male voice begins to crackle through the speaker. It’s… hard to make out, with gaps of silence and bursts of static, but you’re fairly certain it’s telling you that Emergency Services are not currently available on this exchange, and to try your call again shortly… Or that “the throne of heaven sits empty?” Something like that.
There was one more number mentioned in the graffiti, though:
>call 258-0987
As you dial the number, pressing the buttons down the middle row, and then across the next-to-last row, from left to right, you realize that you have made the sign of the cross on the keypad… But upside-down and backwards.It’s pretty typical high-school occult bullshit, but before you can roll your eyes, the phone buzzes to life, and, as if from a great distance, you begin to hear ringing on the other end of the line.
The ring repeats three times, and then stops, leaving you in an ominous silence. Even the restless sound of the river behind you has stopped, and you are suddenly conscious of how, facing the payphone, you’ve turned your back on the water.
>x water
The surface of the river has become completely still, like a mirror; You feel as though you could fall through it, into the blue sky beyond the bridge…The bridge in the reflection is sound and whole, new as the day it was built, and instead of rotting patches of concrete, the underside is covered in a colorful painted mural. Roughly oval in shape, it features a vivid green, eel-like creature with a wavy frill, curled around as though ready to bite its own tail. You don’t totally follow the motto encircling it… Something about the commission of an officer? Or an office? But the words “Croceate” and “Variegated Court” stand out.
You tear your eyes away from the mural, to the railing of the bridge, as a woman leans over the edge, wearing an old-fashioned hat…
“VAAAAAAA!” shrieks the phone, causing you to jump and almost drop the receiver, “DIIIIIIIIIGH…”
You frantically slam the phone back down into the cradle, out of sheer panic, and there is a loud splash behind you.
Ooh, that’s clever, and a bit creepy!
(Another vocab word: “croceate” means saffron-colored).
>x water
The surface of the river is white with foam, and splashes violently against the embankment, as though something large had just dove under the surface…
The coffee lets us know we need perspectives from elsewhere to make any more progress here – I’m guessing a key for that hatch – so let’s bring this spacetime anomaly to a halt and return to the regular flow of the transcript, where we were about to return to the train platform…
(Remainder of the chapter to come tomorrow, it’s a doozy!)
5 Likes
Nice!
Very interesting chapter! I love all the scenery details that you examine, since I so often didn’t.
Regarding the pamphlet, I think the intended purpose of the backpack is to have closable pockets so you can, for instance, throw the leaflet in one of the pockets and zip it up to avoid disambiguation problems (I might be wrong!)
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(Chapter the Fifth, continued)
We make a beeline back to where we started from, with our eyes on the prize:
Railway Platform (Naomi Hinchen)
The clock overhead gives the time as 7:56 am; beneath the clock is a schedule board listing train arrival times. On the platform itself are a wooden bench, a storage locker, and a vending machine.>swipe employee ID
The card swiper flashes a green light, and the door of the locker swings open. Inside you can see a suitcase.
Yay!
>x suitcase
A plain brown leather suitcase. You would recognize it as your husband’s even without the monogrammed initials P.C. on the side. It has a four-digit combination lock set to 0000.>take suitcase
Taken.>unlock it
What do you want to unlock the suitcase with?>the combination Peter clearly would have told us
You can’t see any such thing.>set lock to 1234
You turn the dials to 1234 and try the lock, but it remains closed.
Well I’m fresh out of ideas.
…or wait, didn’t we find a personal memento here way back when?
>x watch
You gave this to Peter as an anniversary present. It seems to have stopped. There is an inscription on the back.>x inscription
On the back of the watch is engraved
N + P
March 19th
(I wondered whether March 19th is when Anchorhead was released, but so far as I can tell it was in May)
And sure enough:
>set lock to 0319
The lock clicks open.
Don’t be a body, don’t be a body…
>open suitcase
You open the suitcase, revealing a mysterious silver box.>x box
A smooth, solid silver box. It rattles when shaken, but has no visible hinges, latch, or any other way to open it. On the top is an embossed image of a train.>x image
The image on the box depicts an old-fashioned steam locomotive with cars coupled behind. You can just make out the words “Anchorhead Express” on the side of the train.
Huh – if we think this box is mysterious, presumably it’s something Peter found in Backwater rather than something we’ve previously seen or talked about.
>open box
You can’t see any obvious way to get it open.
I’ve got an inkling of how we might do this, but let’s be thorough in our investigations:
>shake box
When you shake it, you can hear a faint rattle from inside.>rub it
You rub the mysterious silver box.>eat box
That’s plainly inedible.
The box specifically mentions the Anchorhead Express, and that’s the one train we’re able to summon – and we know that things left on the tracks get somewhat wrecked when it comes by – so we’ve got a theory to test:
>put box on tracks
(first taking the mysterious silver box)
You put the mysterious silver box on the tracks.>u
You get onto the bench.>set clock to 13:30
The clock is now set to 1:30 pm.…
An old-fashioned steam locomotive comes hurtling down the tracks from the west. It appears translucent, almost insubstantial, but the rush of wind and noise created by its passage fills the station: the clatter of the wheels, the chugging of the engine, the clanging of the bell, and the mournful blowing of the whistle. It whooshes through the station without stopping, and then is gone as swiftly as it appeared. In the sudden silence, you look down the tracks to the east, but can see no sign of it.
The top of the mysterious silver box slides open, revealing a bronze coin.
Ha, there we are! I feel clever (though since solving this puzzle just involved combining the stuff we found or could interact with in this one location, besides the ID card, it wasn’t too bad). To the victor the spoils:
>x bronze coin
A tarnished circle of bronze. The heads side depicts a misshapen figure with what look like tentacles. The tails side has a strange glyph which seems to shift as you look at it, but looks almost like an R fused with a V. Or maybe a J fused with a P? No, it’s definitely an R fused with a V.>put bronze coin in vending machine
(first taking the bronze coin)
The coin drops into the slot with a clunk. A plastic bubble falls into the chute.>take it
Taken.>open it
You open the plastic bubble.>x eyepiece
A misshapen golden disc, studded with lenses. It looks like it could fit flush with your eye socket. On its surfaces are a round button, a triangular button, and a small rectangular slot.The golden eyepiece is currently switched off.
I already had an idea for how to power the device – we found this battery in the Old Well, which is where we think we need the eyepiece. And sure enough:
>put small battery in rectangular slot
The battery fits perfectly into the slot in the device, its end now flush with the surface.>wear eyepiece
(first taking the golden eyepiece)
You try holding it up to your eye, but it just falls off. Perhaps there are additional steps.
At first I wonder whether we need to go to the church yard and insert it into our intermittently-real aviator goggles, but turns out the process is much simpler:
>push round
The device emits a high-pitched whine.>push triangular
There is a high-frequency whine, and a thread of light is emitted from one of the lenses of the device. It ignores all conventional laws of nature as far as you are aware, twisting and swirling in complex patterns until fading off only inches from the lens.>wear eyepiece
There’s a sudden pinching sensation as the device clamps onto your face. Panicked, you struggle to remove it, but it won’t budge. You feel a long needle pierce your eye, and then nothing. Your vision is normal once more - better than normal, even. Previously mundane surfaces now shimmer with possibility.
The coffee confirms we’re all done here, so it’s off to the Old Well to test this sucker out!
Here’s what that looks like:
The Old Well (Reed Lockwood)
The trees here gather, black with wet; glimmering fingers hung with ragged matter, huddling beneath a cold and gently weeping sky. Beneath your feet, the damp red felt of rotting leaves slopes down toward a still, murky puddle. Nearby is a well, capped off with crumbling cement. A broken-down section of brick wall waits for raindrops to fall along its spine, and an old, half-dead oak straddles an angular boulder studded with quartz. A path through the forest leads south.You can see a wooden sigil here.
We had identified a couple of bits of scenery that had something ineffably off about them; seems like those would be a good place to start:
>x quartz
Leaning in close to the patch of quartz, your vision swirls. Visions of a strange, microscopic world appear: A shallow pool of aquamarine fluid sits within a vast white desert woven with lavender capillaries, a soft network of exotic flora. Beside the crater, a chrome-plated, cylindrical machine protrudes from the ground.You can see the wooden arch, the mint green arch, the pink arch and the sky blue arch here.
OK, all of this is new! There was something in the book we found here that talked about a small world and like, fairies? But why read when you can poke at stuff:
>x mint green
The mint green arch stands in the languid plain. Through it, you can see glimpses of a blessed forest.A mint green arch.
(You can see all arches discovered so far by typing “x arches”.)
…I’m not really sure where the languid plain or blessed forest are, in relation to what we’re seeing. Regardless, let’s check out that special command:
>x arches
Arches found so far:wooden arch ----> wooden sigil
mint green arch: languid plain <—> ???
pink arch: languid plain <—> ???
sky blue arch: languid plain <—> ???
Let’s check a couple more:
>x pink
The pink arch stands in the languid plain. Through it, you can see glimpses of a howling labyrinth.>x sky blue
The sky blue arch stands in the languid plain. Through it, you can see glimpses of a roiling ocean.
…hmm. Can we check out any of those other geographic features?
>x forest
Peering at the twisted root, your vision distorts, distorts again. Suddenly you see as a forest of gray fungus over rich, piled soil. Strange little bipeds clamber among the stalks, pale with bulbous heads.You can see the wooden arch, the marigold arch, the teal arch and the mint green arch here.
Oh, the forest is the same as the weird root we saw earlier? I guess each macro-scale object translates into a landscape in the micro-level? And we see a repeat arch – mint green – which makes sense, since it connected the plain to the forest.
Let’s check out that “roiling ocean” next:
>x puddle
Kneeling to examine the puddle, you witness a violent sea, plumed with frothing foam. Below the surface, the shadows of sea-life, cresting and rolling their smooth gray bodies.You can see the wooden arch, the teal arch, the violet arch and the sky blue arch here.
And the last one was the howling labyrinth:
>x wall
Your vision zooms in on the crumbling bricks to reveal a howling maze of rust-red crevices, between which swoop screeching black eagles. The red rock is perforated by innumerable cavities in which dwell scurrying insects.You can see the wooden arch, the marigold arch, the violet arch and the pink arch here.
That should be all the landscapes that were mentioned, and in fact:
>x arches
Arches found so far:wooden arch ----> wooden sigil
marigold arch: howling labyrinth <—> blessed forest
violet arch: roiling ocean <—> howling labyrinth
pink arch: languid plain <—> howling labyrinth
teal arch: roiling ocean <—> blessed forest
sky blue arch: languid plain <—> roiling ocean
mint green arch: languid plain <—> blessed forest
So the wooden arch seems to be a special case since it shows up everywhere and always leads to the wooden sigil, and the others all link one of the four micro-landscapes to another (with an arch for every possible connection). Plus the plain has some weird machine in it.
That’s all well and good but it’s not immediately clear what we should be doing here?
>enter mint
You can’t manipulate something that small with your bare hands. Try prodding it with the laser on your eyepiece.
…the what on our eyepiece?
>push triangular
You see a fine, twisting beam of light curl from the edge of your vision and fade into the air in front of you.
Right, the laser on our eyepiece! Prod is the verb here, huh?
>prod mint with laser
I only understood you as far as wanting to prod the mint green arch.
I think we’ve gone as far as we want to with blind experimenting; time to hit the books (specifically the moldy, waterlogged journal we found here on our first visit):
You riffle through the pages; only short passages are still legible:
“… circular golden prosthesis seems to have chosen Mabel … doctor said he can’t remove it without harming the child …”
“… Mabel spends long hours examining stumps and rocks in the woods … and I are most concerned. Mabel’s stories of fairies and HIDDEN LANDS seem more than childish fancy”
(There’s a long section of the book here which is ruined and entirely illegible, although you can make out diagrams and the faded, troubling outlines of strange shapes)
"… constructed the sigil out of sculpted and varnished wood after many … Mabel instructs me on where it should be placed … spirits she is in communication with have constructed various devices at her command … creatures I have dubbed microphids … "
“… Clara still doesn’t believe; threatened to get Pastor Crowell involved … able to dodge him so far … quit my position at …”
“… very concerned but there is no body … up to seven successful SUMMONINGS that have remained docile … we will never know, and quite frankly these studies are more important than that … Each creature must process through three ARCHES, through three HABITATS and stages of development before finally maturing through the ARCH and SIGIL … special GLUE created by that one created via the sequence ->FOREST->(illegible)->CLIFFS …”
“… at Clara’s insistence I have written to the University … fake name … one we have dubbed Moppy is friendly enough and a loyal companion to Mabel …”
“… siphoning off the rest of the inheritance … haven’t seen her in a while … sent an officer of the law to fetch Mabel, but Moppy took care of him …”
(another long damaged section)
“… only Tall Pete is left … lay Mabel in a grave beside Moppy … TERRIBLE LIZARD-BIRD was raised up from the OCEAN - is still out there somewhere …”
“… now I wear the PROSTHESIS; now I can see everything. … breached the walls of perception … I am PRODDING the EGG MACHINE on the QUARTZ OUTCROPPING … dozens of them GATHER to PROTECT me from the LIZARD BIRD … PULLED the ROOF clear off my SHELTER …”
And that’s it. There’s no more. Well, you suppose you didn’t actually expect the author to keep writing right up until the point of his death, but you’re a little disappointed.
This is making a lot more sense now – the arches appear to be a way to access a world of microscopic cryptids (you could almost call them pocket monsters…), some of which are helpful and protective and others of whom aren’t. And they need to mature by moving through three arches and then get summoned through the wooden sigil. Plus one of them creates glue and another’s a scary-sounding lizard-bird?
This is still not a ton to go on – and the question of why we should be futzing with this is not really being addressed – but what the hey, let’s start messing around!
PROD ARCH WITH LASER didn’t seem to work, but maybe we can go simpler:
>prod teal
The teal arch glows, but nothing happens.(“p” can be used as an abbreviation for “prod”)
Well, that’s progress of a kind…
The journal specifically talks about prodding the “EGG MACHINE” on the quartz patch, so that might be where we’re supposed to start:
>prod machine
The chrome-plated machine shivers and lurches, and an egg trundles down its chute and splashes into the aquamarine pool below. The shell breaks apart, the pieces rapidly dissolving, leaving behind only a small, translucent blob.>x egg
A chrome plated cylinder, studded with rivets. A chute extends from one side, toward the aquamarine pool. It is located in the languid plain.>x blob
A nascent, translucent blob of flesh rolls and shivers on the surface of the aquamarine pool. It is located in the languid plain.
I’m not sure why the spirits are coming out of a machine like this, but we’re just gonna roll with it.
The journal also said the monsters mature by passing through the wooden arch:
>prod sigil
The cylinder buzzes, and a tinny recording plays:"This microphid is not yet mature. It is unable to leave the nursery constellation.
Is that Mabel’s voice, or the writer or the journal? Did they also build the machine to mechanize this process? Regardless, this is coming into focus: that reference to the creature needing to pass through three habitats looks like it means we need to move the blob through arches before we can summon it in its mature form.
The glue-y one we’re after comes from ocean → ??? → cliffs, but since that presumably will complete the puzzle, let’s mess around a bit first. Picking some arches at random:
>prod sky
The tiny blob wriggles up onto dry land and passes beneath the sky blue arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The tiny blob emerges in the roiling ocean and transforms into a slightly more robust blob.>prod violet
The blob sinks beneath the surface of the waves, presumably to find the violet arch. It disappears from the roiling ocean.
The slightly more robust blob emerges in the howling labyrinth and transforms into a gas-belching sphere.>prod marigold
The creature descends toward the marigold arch. It disappears from the howling labyrinth.
The gas-belching sphere emerges in the blessed forest and transforms into a perfumed land octopus.>x octopus
This brightly patterned octopoid has settled in among the other little creatures. It emits pleasing scents from the ends of its tentacles. It is located in the blessed forest.
Wow, our little blob is all grown up! I think I’ve got my head wrapped around how this works, now. Now that it’s mature, we should be able to summon it via the sigil, right?
>prod wooden
(the wooden sigil)
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.The colorful, tentacled creature appears on top of the sigil. It is quite happy to see you!
(For future reference, you can use the command “birth” to lay another egg; “forest”, “plain”, “cliffs”, and “ocean” to switch the creature between microcosms you’ve discovered; and “summon” to summon a mature creature into the sigil.)
>hug octopus
You wrap your arms around the perfumed land octopus, inhaling its scent. It flops in what you perceive to be an affectionate manner.
Sorry, Pully, you’re not the best sidekick anymore.
That was great, let’s do it again!
>birth
The chrome-plated machine shivers and lurches, and an egg trundles down its chute and splashes into the aquamarine pool below. The shell breaks apart, the pieces rapidly dissolving, leaving behind only a small, translucent blob.
> p pink
The tiny blob wriggles up onto dry land and passes beneath the pink arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The tiny blob emerges in the howling labyrinth and transforms into a wriggling worm.>p marigold
The little worm squirms its way into the marigold arch. It disappears from the howling labyrinth.
The wriggling worm emerges in the blessed forest and transforms into a drill-headed worm.>p teal
The creature emerges from the loam, headed toward the teal arch. It disappears from the blessed forest.
The drill-headed worm emerges in the roiling ocean and transforms into a bloody nematode.
This fellow is seeming substantially less cute, but we shouldn’t hold that against him.
>p sigil
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.A horrid red nematode squirms forth from the sigil, shedding blankets of mucus. Before you can react, it burrows into your flesh, is gone. Your innards writhe and ache, and a strange feeling comes over you: You can no longer consciously control your own movements! Then why, why, why do you continue to move?
*** Talk about a backseat driver! ***
We should have held that against him! Let’s undo and see if we can discard the nematode in favor of someone friendlier.
…re-reading the moldy book, I’m not seeing anything about how to get rid of a monster. Can we just start over?
>birth
The cylinder buzzes, and a tinny recording plays:“Only one microphid in the nursery constellation at a time, please.”
Can we move it to a different habitat so it evolves into something cuddlier?
>p pink
The cylinder buzzes, and a tinny recording plays:“This microphid is now mature, and will no longer change habitats.”
Huh, not seeing much of a way out of this – thankfully, there’s that TAKE BACK command that’ll just rewind before it gets summoned, I assume. We steer into the skid:
>p wooden
(the wooden sigil)
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.A horrid red nematode squirms forth from the sigil, shedding blankets of mucus. Before you can react, it burrows into your flesh, is gone. Your innards writhe and ache, and a strange feeling comes over you: You can no longer consciously control your own movements! Then why, why, why do you continue to move?
*** Talk about a backseat driver! ***Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, UNDO the last command or TAKE BACK the action that sealed your fate (for when UNDO is not enough)?
> take back
Your fatal mistake wasn’t that long ago! Try UNDO instead.
Umm. We’ve spent a lot of time faffing about here so the undo buffer won’t get us there, I don’t think.
After a bunch more experimentation – and, I confess, peeking at hints to see if I’ve missed something – I’m forced to conclude that there’s no way out; I can just walk away, leaving the evil nematode squirming tinily on the other side of the portal, but that would leave the puzzle unsolved, and without any indication of whether this is an optional side-area or part of the critical path, I’ve gotta assume we’re now a dead woman walking.
(EDIT: There was a way out. Per comments below, just prodding the monster would have shriveled it up with our eye-laser)
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(Chapter the Fifth, concluded)
Fortunately, Nitocris is a ghoul-queen, so she’s used to that – and even more fortunately, I saved right after opening the box, so it doesn’t take too long to retrace our steps, including activating all the habitats and discovering all the arches.
That unpleasant experience was perhaps an indication that we shouldn’t mess around, and just make a beeline for the glue-monster. We know the first step is FOREST and the last is CLIFFS, with a mystery option in the middle, so let’s start running through the options:
>p machine
The chrome-plated machine shivers and lurches, and an egg trundles down its chute and splashes into the aquamarine pool below. The shell breaks apart, the pieces rapidly dissolving, leaving behind only a small, translucent blob.>forest
The tiny blob wriggles up onto dry land and passes beneath the mint green arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The tiny blob emerges in the blessed forest and transforms into a small quadruped.>ocean
The creature saunters through the teal arch. It disappears from the blessed forest.
The small quadruped emerges in the roiling ocean and transforms into a bumpy whale.>cliffs
The whale dives to the violet arch. It disappears from the roiling ocean.
The bumpy whale emerges in the howling labyrinth and transforms into a armored climber.
…not sure there’ll be much glue coming off of that guy, but at least he doesn’t seem too vicious, so let’s give him a try:
>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.A great, armor-plated monster trundles forth from the sigil and off into the forest with hardly a backwards glance.
…well that was anticlimactic.
We try this again, but with PLAINS as the second habitat:
>plain
The creature saunters through the mint green arch. It disappears from the blessed forest.
The small quadruped emerges in the languid plain and transforms into a glassy horse.>cliffs
This horse gallops gaily toward the pink arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The glassy horse emerges in the howling labyrinth and transforms into a slime ape.>x slime ape
An one-eyed ape covered in slime climbs among the crags here. The black eagles get caught in its sticky trail, and it returns to eat their corpses. It is located in the howling labyrinth.
Bachelor #2, come on down!
>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.The cycloptic ape extends its arms over the edge of the sigil, heaving itself into your pathetic material world, dripping gobs of sticky slime across the forest floor. It leaps atop the clearing and onto the well cap. It turns and catches you in its monocular gaze. An understanding passes between you. Maybe even - love? It turns again, bolting into the bushes.
“W-Wait,” you say, but the moment has passed.
Only the creature’s sticky goo is left behind on the well.
Umm, yay?
>x goo
You can’t see any such thing.>x well
An old well cap made of crumbling cement emerges from the forest floor here. Two wrought-iron handles, pitted with rust, emerge from the top. A padlock, also rusted, holds it closed. The entire thing is covered in sticky goo.
I’m not seeing a great deal of utility here – attempts to interact with the goo go nowhere, and we still can’t open or unlock the well. But the coffee says there’s still more we can accomplish here with what we’ve got, so I guess screwing around is the order of the day after all!
To begin with, I started trying to get the lizard-bird mentioned in the book, which seemed to indicate that we should start in the ocean. Omitting the birth bit:
>ocean
The tiny blob wriggles up onto dry land and passes beneath the sky blue arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The tiny blob emerges in the roiling ocean and transforms into a slightly more robust blob.>plains
The blob sinks beneath the surface of the waves, presumably to find the sky blue arch. It disappears from the roiling ocean.
The slightly more robust blob emerges in the languid plain and transforms into a undulating slug.>cliff
The slug inches toward the pink arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The undulating slug emerges in the howling labyrinth and transforms into a spiny snail.>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.The great spiny snail appears here, and slowly inches away.
Much like the armored climber, this one just wanders off. So sounds like we’ve got three categories of monsters here – the nice ones who stick around, like the land octopus, the bad ones that kill us, and the too-cool-for-school ones who peace out as soon as we get 'em. Plus the slime ape, I guess, who’s probably sui generis.
Let’s try again:
>ocean
The tiny blob wriggles up onto dry land and passes beneath the sky blue arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The tiny blob emerges in the roiling ocean and transforms into a slightly more robust blob.>forest
The blob sinks beneath the surface of the waves, presumably to find the teal arch. It disappears from the roiling ocean.
The slightly more robust blob emerges in the blessed forest and transforms into a swarm of burrowing insects.>cliffs
The swarm coalesces upon the marigold arch. It disappears from the blessed forest.
The swarm of burrowing insects emerges in the howling labyrinth and transforms into a colonial beetle.>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.A massive beetle appears on the sigil here, swarming with smaller beetles. It chirps at you before scuttling off into the woods.
…sigh.
Let’s try to do this more systematically. A monster starts out in the plains, then has to move through three additional habitats (chosen from ocean, plain, forest, or cliffs) before reaching maturity. At this point it’s unclear whether order or repeats matter but at worst this means 27 different outcomes, which isn’t too hard to lawmower, especially if we use UNDO to run through the branches more quickly.
I’m just going to pick out some highlights since all this experimentation used up a lot of transcript.
>ocean
The tiny blob wriggles up onto dry land and passes beneath the sky blue arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The tiny blob emerges in the roiling ocean and transforms into a slightly more robust blob.>plain
The blob sinks beneath the surface of the waves, presumably to find the sky blue arch. It disappears from the roiling ocean.
The slightly more robust blob emerges in the languid plain and transforms into a undulating slug.>forest
The slug inches toward the mint green arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The undulating slug emerges in the blessed forest and transforms into a murmuring mound.>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.The murmuring thing clambers from the sigil, eyestalks peering about, murmuring its cryptic chant
Another one who sticks around!
>x mound
This formless creature sits as a wet mound of flesh, eyestalks pointing off in all directions. It lets out a low murmuring from its worm-lipped mouth.>hug mound
You put your arms around the murmuring mound, careful not to crush any eyestalks. It continues to murmur, which you take as a sign that it likes you.
Substantially less cute than the land octopus, but we’ll take it. Speaking of, I resummon our old buddy too – and learn that if we sub in plain for forest as the last step in his process, things end very differently:
>plain
The creature descends toward the pink arch. It disappears from the howling labyrinth.
The gas-belching sphere emerges in the languid plain and transforms into a rolling flesh.>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.An enormous, pulsating ball of flesh appears above the sigil. You sprint off toward the edge of the forest, but stumble and fall. It crushes you to a bloody pulp.
*** Gone is seconds flat! ***
Things don’t go much better if we wrap up with ocean, either:
>ocean
The creature descends toward the violet arch. It disappears from the howling labyrinth.
The gas-belching sphere emerges in the roiling ocean and transforms into a floating strangler.>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.The misshapen polyp appears before you, lashing out with its tendrils. You are caught fast in an instant, thousands of tiny hooks digging into your flesh. It yanks you up, up, until you can see all of Backwater, Vermont and its surrounding territories. Sadly, the view is spoiled by the burning venom coursing through your veins.
*** Looks like you got caught up with a bad character! ***
We got very lucky our first time out.
Here’s another fun one:
>ocean
The tiny blob wriggles up onto dry land and passes beneath the sky blue arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The tiny blob emerges in the roiling ocean and transforms into a slightly more robust blob.>plain
The blob sinks beneath the surface of the waves, presumably to find the sky blue arch. It disappears from the roiling ocean.
The slightly more robust blob emerges in the languid plain and transforms into a undulating slug.>ocean
The slug inches toward the sky blue arch. It disappears from the languid plain.
The undulating slug emerges in the roiling ocean and transforms into a all-consuming blob.>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.A horrid blob of protoplasm bubbles up from the sigil. Within seconds, it consumes the entirety of the clearing, and you with it. Strangely, as your body dissolves, your consciousness remains. As the blob expands across Backwater, you feel other consciousnesses at the edge of your perception. They merge with your own - you are individual, but together. As the creature absorbs Vermont and greater New England, you thrill with ecstasy as more minds are joined with your own. You become reacquainted with old friends and lovers, and even with people you didn’t get along with: the girl who bullied you in high school, your cheating ex. But all is forgiven now as your consciousnesses entwine. The blob expands across every nation of the world, absorbing people of all cultures and creeds, coming together at last in a network of perfect empathy. Animals are here too: you feel the dolphin’s dreams of rolling among the waves, the bee’s duty to its hive, a vast and vastly complex panoply of sensation. When at last the entire world is consumed, you are Earth. You are complete. There is nothing left but to commune with and dream at each other, to put out your pseudopods and explore the stars, singing harmony forever.
*** People may tell you this isn’t the “correct” ending of the game, but really, is that ending any better than this one, as far as fulfilling your character’s goals? You can keep playing to the so-called “end” if you want, but this right here is probably the happiest ending you’re going to get in a game like this. ***
Sorry, did I say “fun”? I meant “horrible and sanity-blasting”, though honestly for Nitocris this is all probably par for course, and I’d bet on her to exert her will to dominate this abominable mega-shoggoth and become the guiding principle of this new protoplasmic universe.
We also get devoured by a swarm of carnivorous shrimp (less interesting than it sounds), torn apart by a human-toothed seal, and ignored by “a clay towers” that turns without explanation into “a swarm of industrious instincts”, as well as a much more comprehensible many-legged beast. Forest-ocean-forest is another eye-popper, though:
>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.A beautiful space whale appears before you, levitating in psychedelic paisley.
“Well met, human,” it says, lights flickering across its patterns. “It is a shame that you are not yet far enough in your evolution - too prone to violence, to selfishness. Someday, perhaps I shall return to you, and we shall ride to glory among the nebulae. So long, my poor friend.”
And with that, it soars skyward, vanishing to a single far-off mote, and then to a mere memory. Not knowing what else to do, you weep bitter tears.
A cosmological shame, but I can’t really contest the judgment.
Forest-plain-forest winds us a new friend:
>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.The ungulate struts forth from the sigil, piping its dissonant tune.
It joins the perfumed land octopus and the murmuring mound.>x ungulate
A hooved mammal stands here, emitting dissonent tones from the many holes in its body.
It’s no land-octopus, though.
Finally, forest-cliffs-ocean hits us paydirt:
>summon
The air above the sigil crackles with energy.A fearsome pteranodon emerges and perches on the handles of the well-cap. It screeches at the other monsters, but they band together to defend themselves. Defeated, it attempts to fly off, but its feet are stuck fast to the well-cap. It screeches and shrieks, flapping its colossal wings, sending clots of leaves and muddy droplets spiraling into the air. At last, the cement cracks, and the top of the well breaks off in the creatures claws as it soars higher and higher. Only the open top of the well remains.
In the chaos, a piece of debris must have hit the golden device, for now it the eyepiece shows only black. With a whine, it falls from your face, sputtering acrid green smoke.
THANK GOD. I enjoyed many of the descriptions here, but ultimately I think this is a pretty bad puzzle? It ultimately was just an overcomplicated way to open up the well, but there was no indication that messing with the monsters was going to accomplish that, much less that you’d need to get the well glued, then summon friends, then bring in the pteranodon, and try to avoid accidentally summoning a game-ending killer monster, all by trial and error (EDIT: per the note above, the “game-ending” part isn’t right and I am dumb).
This only exhausted like 2/3 of the possibilities, but with our eyepiece broken there’s nothing more we can do, even if we wanted to, and the coffee confirms it’s time to move on. Maybe we can at least salvage something of value from all this, though?
>take octopus
You can’t take the perfumed land octopus, it’s a beautiful free creature with its own agency!
A well-earned rebuke, but still a shame.
>d
Circular Room (JP)
You walk into a circular, high-ceilinged room made of roughly-shaped gray stones. This room really looks like a capped well, but its location in the building suggests otherwise.There appears to be a small wad of cash just inside the sunken area.
After the high-falutin locations we’ve been through this session, it’s refreshing to see something so direct – wait, hang on, “its location in the building”?? Have we finally, through a back way, broken into CRAGNE MANOR?
I try going every compass direction – no, there are no other exits, we’re just in a well.
(“JP” is another author I’m not easily tracking down via IFDB or IFWiki or anything else)
>x stones
The irregular grey stones that comprise the circular room have a satiny sheen, appearing almost wet. Their color is soft and quiet; visions of pre-dawn fog in the harbor, spilling out from a river’s mouth. The room itself looks like it spans about 30 feet, and its floor has a wide, round depression in the middle, rather resembling the resting place for a teacup.
…where exactly do you tend to rest your teacups, Nitocris?
>x cash
It smells a little musty and is deeply creased into an almost solid lump.
There’s nothing else here, as far as I (or Pully, promoted once again to lead sidekick in the wake of the land octopus debacle – no hard feelings!) can determine. Given the setup just grabbing the cash seems like it’d be dangerous, so it’s with one hand over my eyes that I type this next command:
>take cash
Taken.
Oh. OK then. And the coffee confirms we’re all done – a room slightly less complex than the one that was gating it off.
We’re coming to the end of the update, and I’ve once again forgot to X ME in the new locations (if anyone ever wants to make a drinking game of this thread…). Predictably, here’s the Old Well:
As good-looking as ever.
It’s the same under the bridge, but you’ll be shocked to learn that Adam Whybray wrote some stuff at the River Walk:
Has it always been this hot? The air is so close it feels like you have to gulp down mouthfuls of viscous soup to breathe. Being outside for… how long? … has caused rivulets of hives to spore in cacographic zigzags along your bare arms. A faint buzzing hums soporifically in your ears. You shiver slightly as though it were snowing. Got to press on.
Got to press on indeed – there’s a whole other half of the town to explore, plus CRAGNE MANOR itself to reach. All of that will have to wait a bit, though, since I’ll be pausing this thread to dig into, and review, the ParserComp games. Hope to see y’all again come August!
Inventory:
You are carrying:
a wad of cash
a golden eyepiece
a moldy, waterlogged journal
a plastic bubble (open but empty)
a brass winding key
a suitcase (open but empty)
an employee ID card
a soggy tome
a long hooked pole
a shard of shattered carapace
a grimy rock
a Jansport backpack (being worn and open)
a key pocket (open but empty)
a book pocket (open)
Twin Hearts Between the Planes
The Modern Girl’s Divination Handbook – Volume Three
a postcard of Big Ben
the diary of Phyllis Cragne
a side pocket (open)
a book list
a trash pocket (open)
a pamphlet of home listings
a glass jar containing an insect
a cast iron spire
a backpack features guide
a library card
Peter’s jacket
a half-full styrofoam coffee cup
a repaired page
a waterproof flashlight
a pull-string doll
an antique locket (being worn and closed)
a faint chill (haunting you)
a giant milkweed leaf (being worn as a mask)
a label (being worn)
a familiar gold wristwatch (being worn)
The map:
The transcript:
Cragne session 5.txt (215.1 KB)
The save:
Cragne session 5 save.txt (51.2 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: ???
- Under the Bridge: rusty hatch
6 Likes
I think that’s right, and I should do more of that - sadly, I’m often kind of lazy, especially when I can get a running gag out of it 
4 Likes
If you want to add something to your post-room-completion activities, in the same category as X ME, you could try pulling the string on the doll a few times. Especially on the frowny face.
As an author, I was wary of the doll’s ability to grok local objects that might slip through programming cracks, so in my room, I had the doll shut off.
As a player, I think the doll has the potential to help you if you’re stuck. You can use it like a radar to ping for loose bits of a room. Or its random effect could help by reminding you of something you’d already mentally filed away. On the flip side, this could be spoilery – but only for the local room. I expect the chance of it spoiling in a way that would actually irritate you is almost zilch. But I warn because the potential is there.
-Wade
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Yeah, I haven’t included it in the write up for fear of it getting repetitive, but if you check the transcript I’ve been consulting the doll from time to time when I’m not sure whether I’m just missing something - in the circular room, for example, which was so sparse I was worried I was being an idiot and overlooking something obvious. It’s a clever little trinket, but I’ve been trying not to overuse it since it could well make exploration less satisfying, as you say.
(Now I’m looking forward to reaching your room and trying the doll to see what you did to it!)
2 Likes
I better quash any expectation, since my room is miles away. I asked Jenni to block the doll. She added a sensible response like, “The doll remains silent.”
-Wade
5 Likes
I have to wonder if trial and error is really the solution to the well puzzle. The fact that so many of the combinations end in a hard-to-UNDO death makes me think that we’re not supposed to encounter them—that they’re a way of discouraging random guessing.
In retrospect, the waterlogged journal does seem to be distinctly hinting that you should summon various creatures, then make glue, then summon the lizard bird, but I haven’t been able to find any clear indication of which sequences you’re supposed to use. The colors of the arches seem like some sort of hint, but if so, I don’t understand it at all.
3 Likes
I really thought there was a way to eliminate a microphid you didn’t want to send through the sigil, but it’s been long enough that the details now escape me.
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…you know, I was thinking the same thing – that this puzzle really only makes sense if you can get rid of monsters who look bad – and looked back over my transcript to see if I’d missed anything obvious, and turns out that while I would have sworn that I tried to prod the nematode with our eye-laser and it hadn’t done anything, actually I’d done no such thing. And when I go back and check, yup, that sees an unwanted monster right off. Sorry folks – have I mentioned that I have a teething ten-month-old, and I’m usually playing late at night? Come to the thread for the snarking and overly-anal historical analysis, not the puzzle-solving acumen.
Anyway so while the puzzle still relies on a bunch of trial and error and is fairly unmotivated – though given that our identity, backstory, and goals shift from room to room that’s probably not worth getting overly precious about – it doesn’t risk locking you out the way I thought it did, nor does it require knowledge from beyond the grave. I’ll edit my posts accordingly.
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