I’m fortunate in that there aren’t too many Daniels—though before we switched to Discourse, I got referred to as “David” surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) often! Now that my name’s on every post, it happens less, so I’m no longer contributing to the David confusion.
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(Chapter the Seventh, continued)
Exiting the jail, we gingerly skirt the paleontological dig/crime scene and head to the northeast:
Hillside Path (Jack Welch)
[ HINT: you can type “hints” for a hint for this location ]You follow a mud-trampled trail, which leads you blindly through a narrow trench bordered by overgrown brambles and shrubs, once smartly trimmed hedges around the Cragne property. The intimidating thorn-studded walls arch over you, all but obscuring the grey marbled clouds overhead.
Turning the corner, you feel the ground beneath your feet suddenly harden. Although the shrubs recede behind you, the shadows deepen as you walk towards a clearing set into the hillside, surrounded on three sides by black cliffs.
As you advance, sound is conspicuous by its absence – gone is the squealchy sound of the muddy trail, the cracking of branches underfoot, and the rustling sounds of trailside wilderness. You are left contemplating the rocky bowl cut into the cliffside, a natural amphitheater.
Or is it? Could this hollow have been worked by the hand of man in some earlier time? How much labor and what dedication would have been required in an earlier era to work the ageless Vermont granite into such a perfect shape?
Your eye is drawn to a raised, brown mass centered before the cliffs; you muse that if the rockface formed a parabola, that mass would be at its focus, like an altar in a cathedral. The earthen lump grows in your vision and you realize that you must have walked towards it, lost in your thoughts. It has already been a long day, and it has barely started.
Up close, you realize that it is not an earthen mound, but a pile of long, rusted iron railway tracks. Tons of them. Stacked taller than you in this remote corner of the estate and forgotten.
You move your head in just the right way and light glances sharply off a glistening corner of track, momentarily blinding you. You rub your eyes reflexively, and when your vision clears, you realize with some embarrassment that a woman sits not even an arm’s length from your face atop the pile.
Three trailheads hold out some chance of respite: north, southwest, and southeast.
You can see a bonnet-clad woman here.
The woman looks into the distance and sighs.
From that mention of the vegetation being now-overgrown hedges from the Cragne property, it seems like we’re at last getting close to the eponymous Manor, but there’s a lot here to unpack before we get there!
First things first, though – Jack Welch is another prolific author from the late aughts and teens who I’ve never played, though he co-authored Rover’s Day Out, which won the 09 Comp. I’m wondering whether the fact that he implemented a special HINT command here indicates that he’s especially solicitous of the player – or that the organizers recognized that this place was especially hard and needed some additional clueing. Guess we’ll find out!
There’s a lot of scenery, so let’s check that out before making eye contact with the woman in a bonnet (maybe she’s a LARPer?)
>x hills
The granite walls are sheer and angle ever so slightly inward, overhanging the clearing; they would be impossible to climb without assistance from the top. The granite itself is fine-grained, but far darker than Vermont granite, is the color of burnt candle wick, all but invisible in this light save for tiny inclusions of reflective, jet-black mica, which impart a numinous glow.The woman slowly ambles around the pile of tracks, staring at her feet.
>x hollow
In contrast to the drive up through rolling green hills studded with pines, endless tracts of lush crop lands, and an endless succession of dairy farms, life seems not to have taken hold within this tiny pocket of the Cragne Estate. It is a world apart, sterile and unchanging.The woman gazes in your direction, but appears to be almost looking through you.
>x vegetation
Nothing grows anywhere near the pile of railroad track in the center of the clearing; perhaps the soil has been compacted by eons of spectators who stood in that very place, watching or taking part in ceremonies, perhaps dancing around whatever had occupied the central place. Or maybe the ground here is just unwholesome, unwelcoming to life, poisoned in some way. Only at the periphery, does nature scratch its way towards redemption of this lost grotto. A somber carpet of flaky lichens and mouldering moss gives way to bent fingers of crippled weeds at the edge of the clearing. Some trailheads leading away are barely distinguishable between snaking tendrils of withered vine and fungus-covered rotting stumps that mark the boundary of the surrounding woods.The woman leans up against the tracks, lost in thought.
>x tracks
Long shafts of weathered, rusted iron, jutting in all directions for a great mound as if dropped like puny sticks from the sky.
Gotta admit, it’s hard to concentrate on the high-quality Lovecraftian prose with this lady making things awkward… We’ll flip our usual approach and chat with her before going back to poking at stuff:
>x woman
“Oh, so you can see me, then, can you?” she asks, taking a step back.“Can you see me?”
>say yes to woman
“How wonderfull!” She sits on a rail jutting out of the pile and pats the space beside her. “Tis a frightfull long Tymme since I did haf the Oppourtunity to speake with One graced with the Seight – no Crâne, then you, but one among our Number. Do then, please, speake to me about yourself.”She pauses for a breath, “Oh, but first, where are my Manners? I do beg your Pardon most sincerely: I am called Christabell.”
She looks at you with anticipation.
[ HINT: you can ask or sometimes tell people about various subjects ]
Angels and ministers of grace defend us, it is a LARPer! And a very good one too, if we can tell that she uses archaic spelling and capitalization just from hearing her talk
(As in some previous conversations, several words are bolded throughout Christabell’s dialogue, indicating topics we can ask about or tell her about – and once again, those don’t come through in the transcript. This is a very long conversation, so I tried to front-load the stuff that’s potentially game and plot relevant, then earmark where I think we’re just getting into flavor type stuff. You still might want to consider skimming the below if you don’t have much patience for archaic dialogue!)
Two can play at that game – let’s see if Christabell has a sense of humor:
>ask woman about seight
You consider whether it is prudent to kick off a conversation with this stranger, secluded as you are in this deathly quiet corner of the Cragne Property, but your gregarious nature carries the day. You reason that she’s only a stranger because you haven’t met her yet, and considering that you don’t really know anything about Peter’s family, maybe it is time to start reaching out a little more. You sit down next to the woman, and she rewards you with a smile and rapt attention.
[ HINT: For short, say “a subject” or “t subject” to ASK/TELL about a subject ]
The term is not familiar to you, so instead you ask, “I never heard of the ‘sight’ – what is it?”
Christabell appears surprised, but patiently replies, “It is a Gifte, which I now presume to be hitherto unknown to You. Let us not make Haste with what does follow, for Experience has shewn me that Understanding may train behind my Wordes.” She pauses for emphasis, “The spektral Seight is the Ability of somme so-favoured by God’s New Grace to see Spirits as Substance. Thus, you are able to see and converse with me.”
“Spirits?” You think to yourself that this conversation just jumped the shark.
You shake your head trying to put her words into some order that makes more sense. “Back the truck up, honey. Spirits? As in ghosts?”
“Not precisely, but on Balance more Reight than Wronge – and whilst you are styll of Mynd to listen, I should add that the Gifte is restricted a lineage, which does fill me with Curiosity.” She looks appraisingly at your face, taking in the features.
“Wait. Ghosts?” you cannot get past the word. You brain doesn’t seem to be working very well just now.
“Indeed.” She places a hand on your shoulder, but rather than the reassuring pressure and warmth of human touch, you feel a wave of coldness wash over you. “Tarry a Moment,” Christabell instructs, “until your Mind ceases its Fievre, lest it berne through the Knotte of reason and unravell you.”
Jeez, she is really committing to the bit.
>a crane
“I suppose you must know the Cragnes; they own all this property and that mansion on the far side of the hill,” you prompt.“I have beheld many of the Crânes, hasting aloung the Pathes, dallying here and there, about their divers Busyness.”
“What do you think of them?”
“To witte, nunne did have Seight of me, thow summe haf talked within my Presence.”
>t crane
“I can’t say too much about my in-laws because almost every time I have brought the subject up, Peter goes silent.”Christabell nods for you to continue.
“But there was this one time – one evening, we were looking through an old leather-bound album of his. I don’t know where it came from, or what became of it, but he was researching something about a remote uncle of his, Verlan Refi-Cul Cragne – sounds French, right? They were fur traders along the Saint Lawrence River in the late 17th Century; most settled near Quebec, but an offshoot worked their way into Vermont.” You pause to rub some warmth back into your hands. “Peter is normally so withdrawn – I was surprised that he knew so much about that obscure ancestor, but once he got going on family history, he was like a thing possessed.”
“No doubt. Many are so-fated.”
“Yes,” you agree. “Genealogy is fascinating.”
Caught up in the conversation, the surrealism of your situation now lands with its full weight and you take a long breath.
“My friend, wherefore doth your Countenance so cloud?”
“I just realized how weird it is to be talking to a ghost.”
“A spirit.”
“Okay, a spirit,” you concede. “Maybe all this hanging around with the Cragnes has rubbed off on me. Maybe I’m the one who has lost her marbles.”
“Nay, your Marbles be firmly within your Skull, and your Knotte of Reason still tightly woven.”
“Mark my words, Peter is going to have a field day when I tell him how my day has gone.”
“That I cannot mark, it being beyond my powers.”
Looks like Nitocris has decided to mess with Christabell in turn – “Refi-cul” is I guess slightly harder to notice as a piss-take than “Natas”, but not by much.
>t yourself
“Well,” you begin, “I am Naomi, and you probably already know my husband, Peter – Peter Cragne.”Christabell shakes her head, “A Crâne? No, I have not the Pleasure of his Acquitenance, or at least not yet. But I am sure there are many Hereabouts unknown to me of Late.”
“Yes, he’s a little introverted, so I’m not surprised,” you continue. “In fact, while he’s met my entire family, I have not even met his parents – yet. No pressure there, right?”
“Assuredly, so.”
“We took this opportunity to shoot up to Vermont and I figure we’ll do the family thing and while we’re at it a little touring around: Ben & Jerry’s, some covered bridges, get a bucket of maple syrup – or however they sell it – and check out some of the mountains. Two birds with one stone!”
“Two with but a single Stoning? Indeed, what you have laid out sounds a fruitful Application of your Labours.”
And here we are laying out yet another of our cover identities. Though I like how Nitocris weaves in some bits of truth, like I’m sure Peter has met all of our family, since we’re the only one of 'em still above the ground.
>a myself
Christabell has to think about that one.“Your Demeanour suggesteth to me summe Affluence, and your Speache conveieth to me an Impression of upstanding Formation. I sense a Dystase for Idleness, but whether you are a Working Girl, I cannot say with Sureness.”
“No – or rather, I do have a job. A nice job. In an office. I do work, that is.”
Christabell continues, “Further, I do aspie summe Resemblance of Visage, but cannot fathom its place in the Lineage.”
>t christabell
You and Christabell chat for a while about names for kids – not that you and Peter expect any, at least for a while – on the other hand, there was that accident the other evening. No matter, you doubt you’d use any of the names that she comes up with.
Well that’s officially TMI – I definitely don’t want to picture where all the tentacles go.
>t peter
“As for Peter, my husband, what you see is what you get: he’s a lovable teddy bear.”“Is he?”
“Yes, but a bit of a workaholic. He puts in a full day, but then he’s up all night with the books. I’ve never seen anyone pour their soul out so much over a job.”
“Into what Sorte of Bookes does he pour his Soul?”
“At this point, he’s management, so mostly going over audit summaries. In truth, he’d rather do the bean counting himself. Crunching numbers floats his boat.”
“I am amazed to hear such Newes as you have to tell; the Worlde is greatly changed since my Youth.”
We’re just making fun of this poor girl now – I am quite sure our husband, scion of a damned family of blasphemers, is not a CPA!
>a spirits
Christabell has apparently been thinking about this subject at length and immediately rattles off an answer. “Spirits are to be knowne by their Properties, of whych are three. Firstly, Spirits are Earthly but insubstantial Continuations of Souls smote by Artifice rather than Nature. Secondly, a Spirit doth find itself bownd to an Objekt and hath not the freedom of Mouvement. Thirdly and finally, a Spirit is by its Constitucion rendered Invisible, therewith accepting of Spektral Seight, which maketh them plainly remarked, but only to those of Lineage.”“So, I take it that you, Christabell, are a Spirit? And that you are bound here?”
“Close, but your Hawrse-shew doth fall awide its Mark – a Spirit I most assuredly am, and you seighted behold me, but 'tis not to this hillside that I be affixed, but rather in some unexpected manner, to this great heap of Iron.”
“How?” you start to formulate some questions.
“Tis a long and painful Story, and more than I can bear to discuss at the Moment.” Cristabel slumps forward, but catches herself. “I am owt of Practice, that this enjoyable Discourse of oures, so appreciated as Respite to my Solitude, has exhausted me to my Core.”
>a ghosts
You rub your temples to dispel the growing headache. “Ghost, spirit – seems like six of one, half a dozen of the other.”“Equateth not these Quantities within the Newe Mathimaticks?”
“Huh? Oh, yes. I suppose. But that’s my point – I say ghost, you say spirit, to-may-to, to-mah-to, what’s the difference?”
“I do see whence your Confusion proceeds. Before my own Deathe, I would not have quibbled, but nowe the Difference is made Manifest. Simply put – and must needes simply prai you attend my Wordes with do Conviction: Ghosts be not real, but Confabulaycion onely; the Sorte told to afrayten Childeren and enjoin theyre Obedience. Any One who maketh the Claym of having one caught Seight, I say is a lying Dog and owt Penance gainst such Sinne.”
“So, ghosts fake, spirits real – is that the gist?”
“You have shivvered the very Shaft of mei Arguement with the whetted Arrow of Comprehencion.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Mei Arguement”??? She’s giving as good as she’s getting. Though this whole “oh, I’m too tired to tell you my tragic backstory” thing suggests she’s focused all her prep on the dialect, not getting into character.
>a mark
“A Mark is a special Touch whereby a Spirit does grant Favour to One still a-live by laying upon the One so-gift’d summe small Splintre of their own Essence. Those haffing the seight will reckognise it a brawnish Stain upon the marked, but Others will not it ken.”“Sounds like an evil cow brand for the soul.”
“The Marking is neither maleficent nor beneficent, it being onely a Reflection of Spirit from whence it doth floe.”
“Why would anyone agree to be marked, though?”
“In a sense, it be a Blessing for it doth warde the One a-gainst depredations of inimickal Spirits and by its Presence exclude unwillful Markings thereafter. More of a Pointe, such Magickal Capacities as possessed the Donor are bestown thereby for exercise upon the Will of the Begift’d.”
Huh, that seems like it might be useful – if it were real, of course!
>a lineage
“Surely, you suspect – your Eyes, your Fayce, your Carriage – all about you I have seen in the Looking-glass. We are of a common Stock, you and I, whence stems your Spektral Seight.”“Because we’re both Cragnes?” you ask.
“Nay, neither, I reckon. No Crâne Blood runs – fynne, I allow, did run, for sayke of Correctness – did run through my Veinnes. My surname is ‘Burt’, in case that catches notice. And if I do not mistake, you have not the Aspect of Fruite fallen from the gnarled Tree of the Crânes – although I did once wot by Providence wot Happenstance, know a Crâne also, a certain Carol, of Our Lineage.”
“Am I a Cragne? No. I married one. Peter is a Cragne – I just married in. We had blood tests and everything. Our kids won’t have two heads. I’m sure he and I aren’t related.”
“Tell me of your Ancestors,” Cristabell asks.
“Going back a generation on my father’s side, he and his dad were carpenters in Lithuania and came to the US in 30s. He had a little shop in Hull…” Cristabell waves you on impatiently; clearly, that part of your ancestry does not excite her. “But on my mom’s side – my birth mom, that is, her family traces back to the UK. My cousin did a school report on our family tree, and I think we go back to the Bassetts on that side. Does that ring any bells?”
“Like a Papist Belfry on the Newe Year.”
“…”
Christabell clarifies, “My owne Mother was but one Generation remouved from Family Bassett. A wealthey Family, they did dwell not far a-way.”
Now we’re taking advantage of the yes-and credo of LARPing to get her to say she’s related to a dog – Nitocris is mean!
>a carol
“Carol. Yes, what to say of Carol…” Cristabell stares into the sky, collecting her thoughts. “I do not Knowe. In different Tymmes, she was many things to mee, and I to her, being related not onely of Lineage but of Minde. She lived not far from here in Manse of Family Crâne.”“Then you knew her in your youth?”
“No, not mine but hers – I had long before met my owne Deathe. In her Youth, she would oft come here and suffer my Companionship; less so, as she did flower to Womanhood, though. I do sincerely avow committing every Efforts and Care to her goode and proper Upbringing and polite Formation, but she was remarkable headstrong and sharp of wit like broken Glass. Even with my Mark set upon her, she did suffer the Corruption and Poyson of that House. I urged her to remain away, but every Summer it did call her back to itself.”
“Is she still there? In the mansion?”
“I need so beleeve, though I have not seen her since her Deathe.”
Anyone want to lay odds on whether this Carol shows up later?
>a gifte
“You mentioned ‘a Gift’ – that’s an odd turn of phrase. A gift from whom?”“Yes, One of the many gifts of Mattanit, one of the ways his new Grace doth manifest.”
>a new grace
Christabell replies, “Has Worde of Mattanit’s Third Covenant not reached All even in these late Days? Why, it is by HIS New Grace that many Myrickles are accomplished, the dead browt to life, the Globe delievered to its righteous End.”>a mattanit
“Who,” you begin, “or what is Mattanit”?Christabell passes her hand five times in front of her heart and replies, “HE is the last Face of God, and blest are we for coming to know him.”
This seems to take some of her strength and she rests her hand on a rail, “I long to say moor, but 'tis so very draining? I haf not such moor straynthe within mee.”
“Mattanit”, as it turns out, is an Algonquin word for evil spirit, so that’s a bit foreboding, not so much for the supernatural oogie-boogies as it indicating we may be about to run into an especially problematic Lovecraftian trope…
>a third covenant
“That sounds kind of creepy. Third Covenant?” you ask.“Certainly,” replies Christabell, her face full of passion but also marked by fatigue. “You surely must knowe the Covenant of Abraham, and the New Covenant of our Lord Jesus Christ?”
“Well? not so much. I’m more of a died-in-the-wool atheist.”
“That Denomination is unfamiliar to me”, replies Christabell. “No matter – all of Christendom profits of this Newe Truth, for Our Sovereign Mattanit says, behold this, the third and finall covenant to serve the End of Tymmes’. This then be mie cleer and onely meaning.”
Housing developments aside, you’re not even sure what a ‘covenant’ is, much less what Christabell is rambling on about, so you just nod “okay” and wait for her to run out of steam.
The first covenant was God telling Abraham that if he changed his name and followed him, God would make of him a great nation; the second was of course Jesus’s new and everlasting covenant. Though the reason you can sensibly number them is that there’s continuity – Jesus said he was an aspect of the Abrahamic God, so this new covenant replaced the old. Does Christabell really think this Mattanit is the same as the Christian God?
>a indian
“Nowe that you do mention it, I am given to refleckt the Oddity that stands in Contrast to Experience of the Past, the Native People being both so numberous and skattered a-far and widely within these Shoures, Mountains, and Playns, each Home to sundry Tribes and Kinships, the Relations betwixt running like Streams o’er these Landes, that not One have I upon layd mei Eyes to sally along these Pathes or threw these Woods, despite my ever-constant Vigil. Strike you not that a Perplexity?”
Umm, bad news about genocide…
Still parsing that sentence, you reply, “I guess.”
Christabell welcomes your remark as a confirmation with a nod and then gestures towards the dark cliffs surrounding you. “Ne’er the Lesse, do I sense they have long dwelt here, in this Place of Power. Though I have not the Seight of them, but not a doubt do I entertain in mind that they are all about us, teeming like bilge Ratts.”
“Yuck.”
“I meant in Numericity, not Demeanour.”
“In my Youth, I did well knowe the Tribes near the Towne of Lin and after awhile, those further owt from not onely our mutual Trade, but in later Tymmes, mei Werke in the Understanding of theyr divers Tongues, Coustumes and Teachings. It was threw them that mei Father did profit summe of their Science, any mei Mother of theyr Wisedom, they haffing made introducion to us of Mattanit and the Third Covenant.”
Sigh, I was afraid this was where things were headed – the Algonquins are the ones who introduced the worship of this bad Mythos deity, replacing the good religion of the white folks. Not my favorite Cthulhu trope! Though to give Lovecraft an iota of credit, while he was a spectacular racist even by the standards of his time (arguably mellowing later in life to just be a really big racist even by the standards of his time), in his stories he typically had the Mythos-worshipping tribes be outcasts shunned by the other, sane native folks. Many of those writing in his shadow have not been so careful, though.
Switching gears, there’s clearly something up with this giant heap of iron, but when we ask Christabell about it, she’s uncharacteristically terse:
“For as long as this great Pyle of Ironne Metall has been here, so have I.”
This is also an intriguing detail:
>a cliffs
“They be nothing like any Marble Granite that I do know, first by their Colour, which is unnatural dark, but also by their Durabilitie. Summe Tymme ago, Men did come with their Tools up from the Crâne Manour, and did try for Dayes to saw and pierce the stony Walls of this Hollow, but theyr Tools dulled, they made not a Scratch upon the timeless Stone here. That crafted in an earlier Ayge cannot be rewrought by too soft Hand of modern Man.”
This is about all of Christabell’s game-relevant dialogue, I think – there’s a lot more about her backstory and history which I found interesting, but it’s long and potentially dry going, so as mentioned, I’ve compiled all that stuff here; if you’re not interested in yet more walls-of-text interrupted by me sharing Fun Facts About Colonization – and I would not blame you in the slightest – I think you can safely jump ahead to the next post.
…Okay, it’s just us cool kids left, right?
>a youth
“So,” you begin, “what was your childhood like?”Pleased to be the center of attention, Christabell reminisces, “My early Youth I did spent in Engeland, Mother’s youngest Daughter, so was coddled. I saw little of Father in that time, him being all-waies at Worke in the Forges of one great Towne or an Other.”
“I did notice the accent,” you add. “Are you originally from London?”
"Nay, never yet Lundon; we did sayle from the Port of Bristoll and came we to the Towne of Lin.
“Never heard of it.”
“No, even in that day it was a Hamlet, somewhat removed from larger Settlements. In later Dayes, I do believe it were better known as Saugus for the River that did nearby course. We were deliwered there by the very Hand of Providence, for Lin was blessed with a River, plentifull Bog Ironne, and no lack of Wood.”
“About when was this?” you ask.
“That Providence delivered us to the Colonie of Massachusetts? That Date I dewe know’th by Hearte: It was the Year of the Lord Sixteen-Hundreds and Fourty-Four, and I was but a Gyrll of eleffen Years.”
“Sorry – did you say 1644?”
“Yes, and I did die in the Year of Our Lord Sixteen-Hundred and Fifty-Three; since whych I have existed as naught but a Spirit.”
She’s clearly done her research – 1644 would have been a couple years into the English Civil War, so a good time to seek new opportunities in America.
(This is a tangent from a tangent, but it’s wild to me how little U.K. info I got in my various U.S. history classes in school – like, we’d get “oh, there was religious persecution” but the fact there was an actual big war happening is important context for understanding how the different waves of colonization happened the way they did! That was even true in law school when we studied the writing of the constitution – after a bunch of independent reading it’s clear that a lot of what the framers were responding to with the various structural safeguards and individual rights they built in were specific perceived abuses in the run-up to the Civil War and Glorious Revolution. Everyone always says Americans are parochial, and in at least this one instance they’re totally right, even when it comes to understanding our own history!)
Er, on a more IF-y note, we were just talking about Saugus! I have to assume this is an in-jokey reference.
>t youth
“All of this is new to me”. You gesture to the surrounding countryside – at least, to where there would be surrounding countryside if you could see beyond the overbearing dark cliffs and creeping dark woods. “I grew up in The Big Apple. That’s where I’m from.”“Whence?”
“The Big Apple. The City. You know, New York. Don’t you say ‘Big Apple’ here?”
“I do not beleeve it be in common Parlance, but I am of late at far remouved from the Tymme of mei Youth and moor a poor Judge of such Thinges.”
“It’s probably a regional thing, like soda and pop.”
(I should make a map of all the different places and regions Nitocris implies she’s from – she must have a game with Peter where she tries to never repeat herself)
>a towne
“Tell me of Lin,” you say.“In that Tymme, the Towne was barely establyshed, us being among the first to settle along the River where the Mill came to be built. The Ironworkes were already conceived of and Fowndacion layd when they did sent for my Father, he being versed deeply in the Arts of Forging and also much skilt in the Emplacement of Edifices for such Worke.”
Are we far from Lin?" you prompt.
“Some many Miles, I do thynk, for we are Nowe ourselves in Vermont, but Lin found itselff within the Governance of the Massachusetts Colonie.” Christabell looks to the distance and adds, “Not all of us did call it Lin – my Mother and Systers – we did know it rather for the Indian Name of the River whereby we were set: Saugus.”
Lynn and Saugus are in fact adjacent towns, and they’re still a more industrial part of Massachusetts (from googling, there’s a historical ironworks that was in operation in the mid-17th century).
>a forges
“It was a Marvell of its Day. I have not in mei minds Eye a simple Forge nor even a Company of Smithies, but an entyre Factorie that did smelt the Earth’s Ores into Pigs and thence crafte them to wrought Werkes putting to shame anything carried on the Sea to us. Even the Masters that did instructe upon a Tymme my Father, they did say howe fynne were his Pieces and I think they did harbour summe not little Jealousy thereby.”“It sounds remarkable,” you add.
“It did make us Prowde, yes, but did become to an Undoing.” Christabell casts her eyes to the ground, and for a moment, she seems less substantial – you have the impression of looking straight through her towards the dark cliffs that frame this hollow. “No more need be sayed upon this dower Subjekt.”
Yet more hinting at Ye Olde Tragick Backstorie.
>a vermont
Christabell replies, “There be not much to say on my Part, Vermont, being far from where I spent my youth. In truth, I never set my Foote here all the Tymme I did live, but onely did come tardily some many Yeares after my own Deathe, and that not of my Volition. Thus, there is little I can add of local flavour beyond the Explorations that you may set upon your own Selffe.”>a massachusetts
She answers you factually, “You do speake of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was settled by the Company of the same Name. I do thynk you harbour some confusion between it and the Plymouth Colony, to hear you speake of it, and that many such Factes do stew about unproductively within your Brains, like Cud recently chewn within Cattel Tripes.”Both Colonies were establyshed considerable Tymme befour I did arrive to the Towne of Lin, and though there were summe Commerce betwixt, I did find them a queer and standoffish Lott."
The current state of Massachusettes is in fact a combination of the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, the latter consisting of the mainland south of Boston and then the Cape Cod peninsula.
The region just west of Plymouth wound up as Rhode Island because a preacher named Roger Williams got crosswise with the Massachusetts religious authorities, and wound up getting sued and exiled. A religious zealot himself, the experience of being persecuted both by High Church Anglicans back in the Old World and narrow-minded Puritans in the New atypically did not lead to him deciding that he would double-plus persecute everyone else when he set up his colony; instead, he realized the dangers the entanglement of religious and civil authority posed to both sides of that equation, and was an important early contributor to the American doctrine of the separation of church and state. I actually have been meaning to read more about him!
3 Likes
(Chapter the Seventh, continued continued)
Eyes somewhat glazed from that infodump, I attempt to take stock by checking my inventory, and notice one interesting change:
a hovering spark (haunting you)
>x spark
Something like a spark of chalk hovers in the air behind you. As you watch, it fades, only to reappear to your right in a wash of cold.>touch spark
As your hand approaches the spark, you feel the warmth draining from your fingertips. You jerk your hand back just as frost begins to form on your palm.
I think this is the spark that we saw infuse frost into the library emblem when we grabbed that book in the jail? I also notice that this has replaced the chill we’d previously picked up in the mausoleum – which is also where we found our first library book! In fact, if we try to examine or do anything to the chill, the action redirects to the spark. Again, I can’t say this makes sense, but I feel like some pieces are starting to click together.
As to the matter at hand, it seems like Christabell is bound to this pile of rusted iron train-tracks (or rather, “bound”, but she’s so deep in-character the distinction’s immaterial). I’m not quite sure how to change that though, and when I check the coffee to see if this is a problem for later, I find a second interesting thing:
>x coffee
This is strange. As you watch the clouds in your cup, they form a pair of daggers that orbit the cup, maintaining a steady distance from each other.You remember that twin objects like this mean you are split between two intricately entangled destinies, and that at any given moment, one of them will be the right place for you to be, but the coffee can’t tell which. Way to drop the ball there, coffee.
This is new, and going a bit over my head. Does this mean I’ve hit a choice point of some kind, maybe freeing Christabell or keeping her bound? Either way I’m not sure whether this means I have what I need to make progress here, or if I’ll have to come back. So there are mysteries upon mysteries, but frankly I’m in the mood for a change of pace, so let’s move on.
>n
“Do endeavour to mind yourself amongst the Crânes!”“I will. I always do.” You shout back, as you walk away.
Front Walk (Matt Weiner)
Cragne Manor looms to the north. Its light gray marble front is marred by a screened-in wooden porch, clearly tacked on well after the manor was built. A gravel path bends around the manor to the northeast and northwest, and the driveway leads south back to town.By the porch steps is a post with a placard reading “31.” A strange little manikin is affixed to it.
Oh my gosh, this is it! Seven chapters and a month in, we’ve finally found Cragne Manor! I’m excited – this wouldn’t be as fun without the buildup.
Matt Weiner’s another fairly prolific author, and I think maybe has done some technical stuff too? I know I’ve heard his name and seen him around the boards. Clearly, at this point I’m mostly relying on other folks in the thread who know more about the current IF scene to fill in details. I did try to bring something to the table by checking out his blog, and interestingly, he’s actually a professor who lives in Vermont!
Well, we’ve finally found it, might as well check it out:
>x manor
Its windows are dark in its light gray front. Marble from the Barre quarry, you think. Was there a legend about a worker who was crushed under a slab, and a stain that would never come out? In this light you can’t see it.>x porch
A brief flight of steps leads up to the porch. The thick screens block any view inside.>x path
The gravel path curves around the manor to the northeast and northwest.>x driveway
The driveway leads south back to town.
Apart from the workman’s comp issue, this doesn’t seem so so bad?
>x placard
It reads “31.” The house address, presumably.
If that’s what the 31 actually mean, I will eat…
>x manikin
A faceless three-foot straw figure in a flowered bonnet and plaid skirt. It looks like a figure from some ancient harvest rite–somewhat like the harvest manikins in Stowe outside such establishments as The Startled Cat, The Buxom Crow, The Ambulatory Barnacle, and Tweebones.
This mannikin’s hat.
>x hat
You can’t see any such thing.
This mannikin’s bonnet?
>x bonnet
It’s kind of cute.>take it
You don’t want to strip the manikin of its clothing.>take manikin
It’s just a piece of local whimsy. No need to bother with it.
Well, I’ll eat something.
The coffee tells us there’s nothing more to do here – sometimes a driveway is just a driveway – and we could check out the house and grounds, but let’s clear the environs first. We head back south…
>s
“I am glad your Pilgrimage does take you mie Waie yet once moor, dear girl!” says Christabell as she prances up beside you along the path.
Jesus lady, give it a rest.
>se
“I shall not keep you further from your most industrious Perambulations,” Christabell jests.“See you later,” you call back to her.
“I do most fervently so desire!”
Good Christ, she never stops.
Outside the Plant (Chandler Groover)
Smoke pours into a bruised sky, rising from chimneys that crowd the Cragne Meatpacking Plant. Its bricks are soot-stained, its stenciled walls weathered by acid rain, and its perimeter circled by dead pigs and cows in buzzing heaps.A hole is smashed into its side.
To the northwest, a hill begins to climb toward Cragne Manor.
Ruh roh.
So a) this is a meatpacking plant, already ominous AF, and b) it’s by Chandler Groover. I don’t think I’ve actually played any of his games, but I know a bit of his reputation – and I’ve played @mathbruush’s Grooverland, and found even the theme park version of his oeuvre kind of creepy. I think we’re in for a treat/will be clawing out our eyes by the end of this.
>x sky
If a butcher took a meat-tenderizer to a ribcage, it would look like this sky.
Oof, starting out strong.
>x chimneys
In certain tarot decks, there is a card with a corpse on the ground, many swords stuck upright in its back. Chimneystacks are not, perhaps, unlike swords. Buildings are not unlike bodies. But whatever the card was meant to represent, you suspect it wasn’t a meatpacking plant.
Now that’s a description!
>x plant
(the Cragne Meatpacking Plant)
Block print, more than twenty feet tall, spells out CRAGNE MEATS INCORPORATED across the building. At least it did, until the elements had their say. And the grease-fires. Now the plant advertises C GN ME TS CO PO ED.>x bricks
You’ve seen grease-traps more hygienic than this building’s bricks. Filthy grease-traps.>x heaps
Some instinct called them to the plant, compelled them to fall in this particular arrangement. Their limbs are like letters, their slaughter grammar. Whatever language they might embody, its blasphemy could never be written. Only erased.
We can leave, right? I’m thinking maybe we leave.
>x pigs
Each pig’s as pale as a drowned cadaver, skin shriveled and stuck to the bones underneath. Their corpses are covered with tiny punctures.>x punctures
Bite marks. Just like human teeth, except too small. And too many.
I don’t like it I don’t like it.
>x cows
More like skeletons than cows. Their jugulars are pockmarked with little incisions, bodies collapsed like juice-boxes sucked down to the last drop.>x incisions
Bite marks. Just like human teeth, except too small. And too many.>x hole
A door used to be here. Apparently it was too small for whatever wanted to get in?or out.
I’d be ready to nope right out of here, but the coffee insists we can get something done here, so I bow to the inevitable:
>search heaps
Flies buzz around your face. You bend down, feel along the ground, shove corpses aside as you dig through their desiccated heaps. They weigh practically nothing, like papier-mâché, but you find one that’s still plump: a sheep with a bloated belly.You pull its body into the open.
I think I mentioned up-thread that I’m a vegetarian, right? So as gross as y’all find this, I’m finding it even grosser.
>x sheep
Its face has been scraped raw: a skull with bulbous eyes in red sockets.They’re eyes you recognize.
You only met her once, but you’ll never forget those bulbous eyes. Old Lorraine Cragne, your husband’s great aunt once-removed (or can great aunts be once-removed?), standing at a cutting-board in the kitchen. She had a rabbit pinned down. She ripped it open. Because, she explained, she could examine its guts to read the world’s hidden language.
Oh, honey – Nitrocris doesn’t need an aunt-in-law to instruct her in haruspicy!
>x stomach
Swollen to three times the normal size.>open it
The sheepskin is weaker than wet tissue-paper. It shreds in your hands, and steaming intestines pour through soggy fur. They spread toward your feet on the ground.Did Lorraine have a seat on the board at Cragne Meats? You can’t remember.
>x intestines
So many flies. Everywhere. They swarm the intestines like fingers following sentences in a book, tracing each loop, every bloody coil. Their buzzing is louder than ever before.
Thanks for this, Chandler. I really appreciate it.
>take intestines
These intestines have fallen in this arrangement because it was meant to happen. Not only their coils, but also the empty spaces between them, seem to mirror other patterns nearby. Lorraine would’ve been able to interpret them. She knew how to read the blank spots in the world.
The Modern Girl’s Divination Handbook did not prepare us for this.
>listen
All this buzzing, buzzing, buzzing is like an old woman rasping, rasping, rasping: What the guts say is what they don’t. What isn’t here, that’s what’s really here. That’s why the suckling came, because its name’s not here. Not anymore. Speak what isn’t here, and it will rise. Yes, we will rise.
Worth a shot?
>speak
(to the pamphlet of home listings)
The pamphlet of home listings does not respond.
Hello, old friend.
>talk to guts
Flies rise at your approach, buzzing around your ears.>talk to flies
The buzzing swarms do not respond.
Well, that doesn’t seem like it’s doing much. Maybe there’s more to investigate before we figure out what we’re supposed to say?
>touch sheep
Liquid seeps from its fur when you apply pressure.
- that’s wool, not fur; 2) ew ew ew ew ew (ewe).
>x pattern
Block print, more than twenty feet tall, spells out CRAGNE MEATS INCORPORATED across the building. At least it did, until the elements had their say. And the grease-fires. Now the plant advertises C GN ME TS CO PO ED.
Maybe this is like a word puzzle? If we look for what got knocked out, though, it’s just a nonsense word:
>raeainrrat
Even thinking the name is too much. Every syllable is a claw inside your skull, scraping the bone like nails raking chalkboards. Something wants out. Something’s already out.Right here, in this hole smashed in the wall.
Reality ripples outward from the hole, impressed by an idea. By the name. Corpses rattle, gyrate like bathwater swirled into a drain. What isn’t here screeches. What isn’t here screams. What isn’t here rises high into the sky, displacing clouds, festooned with carcasses, and crowned by a sheep’s head whose bulbous eyes look to the stars.
It rises. It rises.
What isn’t here, isn’t here now.
Mystery solved! Though thank god they formed Cragne Meats as a C-Corp, if it was an LLC we wouldn’t have had enough letters to figure this out.
So I guess whatever raeainrrat was, it was blocking the way into the plant? I UNDO a couple times to confirm:
>in
When you try to step through the hole, you find its entrance blocked by something cold and wet, humongous and gelatinous. But the hole is just an empty hole.>touch hole
As you reach toward the hole in the wall, you brush something moist.>touch moist
You push your fingers through the air inside the hole. It’s like cottage cheese. Heavy, damp, and clammy slime submerges your arm to the elbow, although you can’t see anything. But you can feel something hard, chitinous. When you remove your hand, there’s no physical residue.
So yup, that was the puzzle. Coffee confirms we’re done here, but unlocking the plant means I’m guessing there are worse horrors yet to come – that’s where we’re headed next.
…but first, as is traditional, the X ME’s I forgot. The hillside path:
> x me
This little weekend getaway with Peter has done you some good. So relaxing.
We’re still messing with Christabell.
And by the plant entrance:
>x me
You’re Naomi Cragne, and that’s enough.
We aren’t, and it isn’t.
Inventory:
a cast iron spire
loose bricks
Tolerating An Asinine God
a clipboard
a black business card
a trophy for a dog race
a half-full styrofoam coffee cup
a glass shard
a familiar gold wristwatch
a giant milkweed leaf
a label
an antique locket (closed)
a backpack features guide
a glass jar containing an insect
a book list
the diary of Phyllis Cragne
a postcard of Big Ben
The Modern Girl’s Divination Handbook – Volume Three
Twin Hearts Between the Planes
a Jansport backpack (open)
a key pocket (open but empty)
a book pocket (open but empty)
a side pocket (open but empty)
a trash pocket (open but empty)
Peter’s jacket
a brass winding key
a suitcase (open but empty)
a plastic bubble (open but empty)
a golden eyepiece
a pull-string doll
a waterproof flashlight
a repaired page
a wad of cash
a moldy, waterlogged journal
a library card
a grimy rock
a long hooked pole
a soggy tome
an employee ID card
a shard of shattered carapace
a fungal powder
some yellowed newspapers
a rusty piece of metal
an aluminum key
a pamphlet of home listings
a hovering spark (haunting you)
Map (just the east side of town, per the previous chapter – I’ll update the west side map once we unlock some more doors over there):
Transcript:
Cragne session 7.txt (122.2 KB)
Save:
cragne session 7 save.txt (55.4 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
- Pub: steal the whetstone
- Hillside Path: ??? something with the pile of iron and the ghost/spirit?
6 Likes
Yeah, there’s definitely a strong style, though I find it kind of unpleasant (“shit tickets”, etc.). Anyway I don’t have much context for him pre-drama, since I had my own IF hiatus from like 2008 to 18 so as soon as I plugged back in, stuff with him was blowing up.
Indeed, I know with IF you never know whether players will be exhaustive so it can pay to build in some redundancy, but I think less would have been more in this case.
I mean, objectively you’re right, but I’m kinda trying to turn the disambiguation thing into a bit…
Well, see the stuff I just posted…
I’m glad you enjoyed that bit – honestly I came close to just deleting all of it, since I’m not sure how interesting it is. But I figure that as compared to the average IFer, I know way less about coding, a normal amount about Lovecraft, and way, way more about municipal government and finance, so might as well lean into my comparative advantage.
More seriously, one thing I’ve realized I’m enjoying about this LP is trying to figure out ways to smooth over the inconsistencies that inevitably arise. Sometimes of course that’s impossible (like with your suddenly-it’s-underground bridge – sorry!) but I’ve been amused to realize that my joke about the N standing for Nitocris, with “Naomi” just one of many cover identities she’s assumed, actually helps the game hold together since otherwise all the radically different backgrounds she shares with other characters wouldn’t make any sense.
For serious – there’s actually even another Michael Russo who’s IF adjacent! He’s not active here I don’t think, lucky for me, but every once in a while I’ll come across a reply to one of Jimmy Maher’s posts, or on one of the 50 Years of Text Games entries while those were running, and experience some Nabokovian existential vertigo at not being sure whether I wrote it or the other guy did.
Anyway, I’m super grateful to y’all for providing additional context for the authors so they get their proper due!
4 Likes
One of the fascinating results of this exquisite-corpse process is how utterly random stuff is, but then it almost goes around the world and back again and starts sort of hanging together and making sense. And it can’t possibly, because that’s madness… I think it plays on the concept of apophenia (I had to look that up) for great effect.
All authors wrote mostly in a vacuum and were welcome to create whatever within some parameters. Also many of us were communicating and supporting each other on the Slack, and we did develop a vibe there and I think we may have imprinted a similar “loquacious improv cosmic horror farce” style. We did eventually test each others’ rooms but rarely did anyone specifically crib from each other - although some may have been subtly competitive to make our rooms the craziest in whatever way we specialized in.
Any consistency between rooms is happenstance, although a few did necessarily communicate for a bit of sanity in the multi-room puzzles, and Ryan and Jenni did provide direction and feedback so nothing broke completely.
I never got far into the Christabell conversation (I think it took the prize for highest word-count in a room) - I love how Mike treats her like a LARPer or a themed character actor in a historical theme park, which is totally right! - but knowing my room and seeing some of the things she discusses about spirits weirdly matches up with things that I did and others likely as well.
The exquisite-corpse allowed this though. We could go as detailed as we wanted without restrictions on breaking plot or “reality”. There’s so much in this game that is both important and improvised and then irrelevant once the player takes a step in any direction. That’s what makes Cragne Manor the Mount Everest/White Whale/Ulysses/Necronomicon of parser games (if I may be so bold.) Even the game itself warns players off, essentially saying “this will drive you mad” which I’m sure was the brilliant intention.
I’m so glad for this let’s play, and hope it doesn’t break @DeusIrae!
6 Likes
Agreed; I was trying to be diplomatic. More seriously, he was my first-ever beta-tester when I was first getting into writing IF (the second being Hanon), so watching the fiasco around him unfold was a very strange experience.
No, it’s fascinating! I find it really interesting to hear from someone who knows about things like this, because it’s entirely outside my wheelhouse and I never would have thought of it. Same with the local history elements. Please do continue with them!
I can’t seem to find the original PM with the room assignment, but it was something along the lines of “design a bridge separating two areas, which can’t be crossed until a puzzle is solved, involving an item from another room”. I showed it to Jemma and we decided that the best type of Lovecraftian bridge is the type made of ancient bones in an underground cavern. Why should Backwater settle for anything less? 
He’s also a moderator here, though I believe he went on hiatus around 2020. I was away at that point (I took a hiatus from IF in general when the pandemic got bad, because the combination of lockdown and applying to master’s programs was taking all of my energy) but before then he was a frequent poster here and we collaborated on various Inform 7 experiments; if I remember right, he’s the reason I ended up hacking the parser to let multiple NPCs give commands to each other.
Maybe it means there are multiple things needed for this puzzle? Most of the rooms only require one thing from elsewhere to solve them, but this one needs two?
4 Likes
Also, I almost forgot—given that the one thing we know about Christabell’s appearance is that she’s wearing a bonnet, I’m now imagining her spirit possessing the manikin somehow. Can spirits do that? Maybe she would know!
2 Likes
This is very true – all the different vague stories about some bad Cragne ancestor at the root of it all seem plausibly like the kind of whispered town legends that would swirl around in a place like Backwater, and the way the train seems to loop oddly around the town, its whistle audible in strange places where you wouldn’t think it should be, makes it seem extra creepy. And there motifs that are generally Lovecraftian but seem to recur more than you’d think they would if folks were just randomly coming up with stuff (there’s a lot of fungus/mold/plant stuff, I feel like?) I definitely see what you mean about the White Whale-ness of the game, am glad you’re digging the LP!
I can’t argue with that – it’s a very memorable set-piece! Thanks for the info about Matt as well; I think I’m starting to get lazy on the author research since y’all are so helpful 
Could be – this is one of the first rooms where I’m really at a loss to figure out what I should even be looking for, or trying to do once I get it (the other one is the drinking fountain). Maybe I’ll get a brainwave while vacuuming later today, or maybe I’ll be back, grimly lawmowering my way through a bloated inventory in Chapter the Thirty-Seventh – that’s the joy of doing this playthrough blind!
An intriguing idea that I just went back to quickly check on – alas, she denies all knowledge about the manikin (I also realized I hadn’t tried to talk to the thing, which I figured even odds would work given the ambient creepiness of such things, but it also plays dumb).
…hmm, you saying the bonnet is the only thing we know about her appearance made me realize that we never actually X’d her – the first time I tried, it kicked off her whole “you can see me?” bit. Here’s what we get if we try again:
When you direct your attention to her, she becomes more substantial, or perhaps
that is just a trick of the light filtering through the passing cover of clouds.Her face is not old, but she is no child. It is rimmed by a bonnet, which you guess is
some pastel color, but rendered grey in these shadows. Her eyes burn with
intelligence below an inclined brow.
So yeah, it’s still pretty much the bonnet.
3 Likes
On a separate note, we should probably be writing down the names and dates of all of these Cragnes. You never know when the names of your ancestors in chronological order will end up being the secret combination to the hidden door in the attic—it happens more often than you’d think!
4 Likes
We actually had a fungal-bloom chat channel on the Slack. From what I remember, Jenni during this process was having to move house due to dangerous mold in her basement that took over a bunch of stored possessions and many people were riffing how they should incorporate that as a creeping terror…and it made way into many bits of prose.
4 Likes
I admit I had totally forgotten that! I’m not sure if the fungi in the Bridge puzzle were actually part of that or just a coincidental use of fungi. Very versatile kingdom, that.
3 Likes
I’ll take “personal visions of hell” for $200, Alex.
Speaking of, I uh played a little more and got to that part y’all have been talking about.
You were not overselling it!
I still need to get out of this little predicament, but coming to the thread in a couple of days:
Chapter the Eighth: Tekeli-li, Wilbur-r-r-r!
3 Likes
Nice!
I don’t think anything after it compares in bizarreness or actual size (this is a large chunk of the entire game), but I think the most expertly crafted and beautiful puzzle boxes and impactful emotional moments still await in the significant future, so there’s a lot to look forward to.
Still, this room is what I think of when I think of this game!
4 Likes
Chapter the Eighth: Tekeli-li, Wilbur-r-r-r
So when we left off, we were about to explore the meatpacking plant, a life choice that we will in no way wind up regretting let’s say three rooms from now. Foreshadowing!
There’s a giant hole smashed in the side of the plant – it occurs to me I’m not sure whether it was smashed by something coming in, or something coming out, which seems like very relevant information? Regardless:
>gird loins
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.>in
The meatpacking plant (Kenneth Pedersen)
You are standing in the center of the main room of the meatpacking plant. An open doorway leads west from this huge room to somewhere darker, while some rickety stairs lead up. A long row of meat hooks are hanging from the ceiling parallel to a bloodstained table. It is not too late to leave yet, by going out the front door.
Hey, an author I know! Kenneth Pedersen, who also goes by Denk, has written a number of old-school inflected games in recent years – the ones I’ve played don’t tend to have punishing mechanics like hunger timers or carrying limits or anything like that, but have the stripped-down prose and puzzle-focused design I associate with older stuff, plus some of them have been in ADRIFT. For all that that’s not my usual preferred style of IF, I’ve mostly dug what I’ve played of his stuff, and especially enjoyed Grandpa’s Ranch, his entry in last year’s ParserComp.
Anyway, one nice thing about his style is that despite my expectations, we’re not being confronted with a grand guignol of horrors or anything, at least not yet.
>x table
This is a very long wooden table running the full length of the room from north to south. It is stained with old blood.>x blood
As this is a meatpacking plant, bloodstains are to be expected. Nevertheless it does freak you out a bit.>x hooks
The meat hooks are rusty, stained and out of reach. They are all empty except for a hook at the southern end of the room, which holds the body of a dead animal, hanging from its legs head down.>x animal
This dead animal is some sort of dog of a breed unknown to you. There is something disturbing, twisted about this dog. It hasn’t been dead for long. Especially you notice its stomach which seems particularly big and hard, as if there is something inside of it.
Like this is icky, but compared to what we had to go through to get in here, could be worse?
On the other hand, there’s this:
x door
The door is ajar, so you can quickly leave this terrible place.
The egress looked like a big smashed hole on the way in, so this actually is the creepiest thing in here!
Anyway, we all know what the puzzle here is:
>open stomach
If you want it open, you’ll have to cut it with something.
Inconvenient, albeit much less gross than the hands-only approach we took with the sheep out front. I try the various cutting instruments we’re toting around:
>cut stomach with spire
The cast iron spire isn’t quite what you need to cut the dog.>cut stomach with glass shard
The glass shard isn’t quite what you need to cleave through this dead dog.>cut stomach with shard of shattered carapace
The shard of shattered carapace isn’t quite what you need to cleave through the meat of this dead dog.
Okay, okay, we need a more bespoke solution. Given the vibe here, I try various SEARCHes, and LOOK UNDER and BEHIND the scant scenery – as well as standing on the table to see if I can abstract one of those nasty-looking meat hooks – but don’t turn up anything, and sure enough, when I check the coffee it tells me this is a come-back-later type situation. Darn, was looking forward to spending more time on the killing floor.
That west-leading door seems a bit creepier than the rickety stairs, so let’s start with the latter.
>u
Dusty office (Matthew Korson)
This must be the boss’s office. A large window overlooks the factory floor. Some shards around the edge suggest that it contained glass once. Pushed against one wall is a small table that might have served as a desk, and next to it stands a metal filing cabinet. Anonymous detritus is scattered at the edges of the room.Everything is covered in a thick layer of dust.
Matthew Korson is another person of mystery so far as I can tell. Anyone out there know the fellow?
…once again, this isn’t as bad as I was expecting?
>x window
A few small shards of glass remain around the edge of the window; otherwise, the frame is empty.>take shards
You’d cut yourself.
Probably smart – given all this dust it’d probably get infected, and we already have a glass shard anyway.
>x floor
It is covered in a thick layer of dust.>x factory floor
Machines line the factory floor below. You can only guess at their function.
…you mean the hooks? We were just down there and those were the only machines in sight. Did Nitocris suffer some off-screen head trauma?
>x detritus
Junk is piled up in the corners and around the edges of the room. It is scattered haphazardly, as if someone has ransacked the place. But if so, it was long enough ago that a thick layer of dust has accumulated. Who knows if anything of value is left?>search it
You rummage through the junk. You find a brass nameplate among all the dust.Dust blows into your face.
>x nameplate
“Charles Cragne, Owner”
This seems like something that could come in handy, albeit in very specific circumstances:
>take nameplate
Taken.>search junk
You rummage through the junk. You find a diagram scratched into the floor among all the dust.The movement raises a thick cloud of dust. You cough.
Okay I take it back, if you have allergies this place is terrifying.
>x diagram
Circles and lines scratched into the floorboards. It almost seems like it should mean something, but you can’t quite grasp it.>grasp diagram
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.
Well, we were warned.
>search junk
You rummage through the junk. You find a broken knife handle among all the dust.Dust swirls into the air.
>x it
A broken wooden knife handle. The blade is long gone, but there are dark stains at one end.>take handle
Taken.
This pile of junk is like Stephen King’s Christmas tree – it just keeps on giving!
(I try to see if I can cram anything sharp onto the knife handle, but get told it can’t contain things)
>search junk
You rummage through the junk. You find a piece of yellowed newsprint among all the dust.The dust you come in contact with cakes onto your skin.
>x newsprint
The article seems to be an exposé of poor working conditions and sanitation at Cragne’s meatpacking plant. You scan quickly through descriptions of horrific accidents among the workers and nauseating adulterants in the meat. One item catches your eye. In a section describing the vermin infesting the plant, the writer mentions a superstition held by the workers concerning a “Boss Rat”. Apparently this rat was three times the size of the usual pests and would direct the other rodents where they may forage. Those that found favor with the Boss Rat were allowed to gorge themselves from the heaps of meat kept in the plant’s storerooms for later processing, while those who fell out of favor were forced to run among the workers’ legs to snatch scraps falling from the mincers. Many workers believed that anyone who saw the Boss Rat would suffer a fatal accident, and the writer notes that several deaths and disappearances that occurred during his time investigating the plant were attributed to that very cause.
Once again, this could be worse? Like, I’ve lived in New York City, seeing a rat three times the size of a normal one doesn’t mean you’re cursed to death, it means you took the subway on a day ending in y.
>search junk
You rummage through the junk. You find an enormous dessicated rat corpse among all the dust.Dust blows into your face.
>x corpse
It’s the size of a large cat or a small dog, but it is definitely a rat. It is completely dried and its tail is missing, but it shows no other signs of decay. Dust is matted in what remains of its fur.
So we’ve solved the mystery of the boss rat, and yeah, I’m not impressed. Heck, if we find a taxidermist in town, this fella could make a nice little keepsake.
>clean corpse
You make a futile attempt to clean the enormous dessicated rat corpse. The dust you come in contact with cakes onto your skin.>x me
There is dust in your hair, dust in your eyes, dust in your nose, dust in your mouth. If you stay here much longer, you may turn to dust yourself.
At a cost to our questionable hygiene, we yoink the corpse and the newsprint for good measure. I try to see if the diagram is like one of those jobbies that resurrects dried-up bodies from their essential salts, but if so it’s on the fritz; putting the rat on it doesn’t do anything. So yes, he’ll be more living-room decoration than sidekick.
>search junk
You rummage through the junk. You find a thin steel key among all the dust.
That’s the last thing we’re able to find amidst the detritus, but there are a couple things left here to check out:
>x table
The only remarkable thing about it is that it is still standing.>push table
It would most likely fall apart, and there is no need to make the mess in here any worse.>x cabinet
The sides are painted exactly the same color as the dust that covers everything in here.>open it
It seems to be locked.
I’m betting we can solve this.
>unlock it with steel key
You unlock the filing cabinet.>open it
You open the filing cabinet, revealing a torn notebook.>x torn
Many pages are torn out, and those that remain are mostly smudged or otherwise illegible. One, however, stands out because it appears to have been pasted into the notebook. It looks like a letter."September 21, 1908
"…les Cragne, Rufous Alderman,
"I was pleased to hear of your success with … of the ritual…
"…Sinclair’s pamphlet will bring unwanted atte… …ven to your remote operation. I hope I need not remind you …tance of … role …
"… can get … blood befo… …crifice must be complete by the coming full moon… Vaadignephod will…
"Yours in fraternity
“… of the Variegated Court”
The facing page contains the notation
“Cattle: 10 gal, 200 / hr, 24000 gal
Hog: 5 gal, 500 / hr, 30000 gal
Man: 10 pt, 1 / day, 10 pt”
Hey, info on another member of the Court – Charles is the Rufous Alderman (rufous means reddish brown).
Also, that is an alarming amount of blood. In the run-up to this blood sacrifice we’re burning through one person a day, no big deal in the grand scheme of things. But looking at the animal side of the ledger, it seems like the slaughterhouse was operating 12 hour shifts, meaning 2,400 cows and 6,000 hogs were getting knackered daily. Even if this is just the big pre-ritual push, that’s an astonishing throughput – the average American eats like a tenth of a cow and a third of a hog per year, and in the 1910 Census, Vermont had about 350k inhabitants, so at this pace this one plant would be supplying their annual meat needs in about two weeks!
And actually, stepping back, why is there a meatpacking plant here in the first place? Most of the major turn of the century meatpacking centers in the U.S. were, logically enough, transportation hubs near the major grazing areas where you can raise livestock – like, Chicago is northeast of the Great Plains and right on the Great Lakes which, post Erie Canal, were an easy way to reach most of the eastern part of the country, or New Orleans, which likewise is near the plains and served by the Mississippi River and its port on the Gulf of Mexico.
Backwater, contrarily, is a backwater, and we’ve seen plenty of indications that it’s located in the rocky, central part of the state; I’d believe there’s some pastoralism based on sheep- or goat-herding, but extensive cattle ranching isn’t likely to be happening given what we know about the environment. Sure, there’s a railroad line, and stock cars definitely brought livestock to the big city-based slaughterhouses, but my understanding is that this was more of a last-mile solution; bringing animals on trains all the way from like Kansas to Vermont just seems cost-prohibitive, doubly so without a major waterway to get the products to market (Lake Champlain is a major potential thoroughfare, but since we’re clear on the other side of the state and presumably at some elevation, I doubt the river is sufficiently navigable to get much shipping there).
From this I think it’s clear that this plant was not an economically-viable concern, at least at the scales that it sometimes operated at (and thinking about the size of the facility and staffing you’d need to make those surge rates work, I’ve got to imagine there are substantial fixed costs preventing them from just dramatically scaling back production outside of blood sacrifice times). I think we heard some local scuttlebutt that the plant’s been shut down for some time, and of course there’s that giant heap of corpses out front, which did not get moved into the stream of commerce, so we can perhaps draw some conclusions: first, the Cragnes were probably operating this plant primarily to enable their blood sacrifices, not to turn a profit – so they must have had some independent source of wealth to subsidize the plant; and second, since they eventually shut things down, either that wealth ran out, or, more disquietingly, they decided they didn’t need to make these sacrifices anymore, perhaps because they got the result they’d been petitioning for.
Bottom line, as we start to check out the Manor itself we should keep an eye out to see if the family looks like they’ve come down in the world, or if they still seem sufficiently flush with cash; if it’s the latter, we should be even more worried than we already are!
…this line of speculation makes me somewhat lose track of the game, so I’m confused when the coffee says I’m not done here yet; I spend a lot of time doing some further rummaging in the junk, messing with the diagram, and doing untoward things with the rat corpse, before realizing I’d neglected to grab the notebook. Once I do that, the coffee confirms we’re good here.
Right, there’s no more putting it off – we go back down, then…
>w
Bathroom of the Meatpacking Plant (Chris Jones)
This is a perfectly normal bathroom. There’s a bathroom stall (which has some graffiti written on it), a urinal, a sink with a mirror over it, and even a shower for those days at work when meat debris happens. Perfectly normal bathroom.You can see a pentagram on the floor here.
I don’t see what I was so worried about – this is the last location in the plant, and once again, no big deal. Perfectly normal, in fact.
There are several “Chris Jones” candidates here and I’m not sure who the author is – there’s the one who wrote the Tex Murphy games, and another who created the AGS graphic adventure creation system, but there’s not much of an IF-specific paper trail, and this is a generic enough name that it could be either of them, or some totally different Chris Jones.
Well, first things first:
>x me
You fight down the urge to compulsively examine the comparative size of your knees in relation to one another. It’s a compulsion that pops up when you’re under stress, has done since the knee fetishist you dated before Peter dumped you in college. You want to look right now but it just feeds the compulsion. No, no, you mustn’t look! You won’t! They’re still the same size, Naomi. Your knees are still the same size.
Okay, so that’s not great, but worst case scenario Nitocris just needs to shell out for knee-enhancement surgery somewhere down the line. Could be worse.
>x mirror
A perfectly normal bathroom mirror: one of those big frameless dealies that they hang on the wall above the sink. In it you can see the bathroom reflected: the stall/toilet, the urinal, the shower, all floating in a terrifying dark void filled with unfamiliar stars. Wait what.There’s a sign on the corner of the mirror that says “Mirror Temporarily Out of Order - mgmt.”.
This is maybe not great, but the endless starry void so far is staying on the other side of the mirror so could be worse?
>x stall
A walled bathroom stall in the corner of the room. Someone wrote “Beware Horse” on the side of the stall in marker. For some reason. Below that, someone has written “Don’t use the shitter, bro!”, also in marker. Pretty wide existential gap between those two graffiti but okay. Anyway the door to the stall is slightly ajar.
Seems sorta gross, let’s leave this for later.
>x urinal
A stainless steel trough in the floor, presumably for pissing into. There’s a blue urinal cake at the bottom. Right about head-height above the urinal, the words “Do Not Shit Here Either” are scratched into the wall. Just below that are the words “stop telling us where not to shit, dude” in smaller letters. And just below that is the word word “No”.So much drama.
We’re learning all sorts of unpleasant things about the workforce here, but could be worse.
>x cake
A small blue urinal cake. It’s basically a post hoc urethral perfuming agent made of chalky poison chemicals fashioned in the shape of a hockey puck.
Poison could be handy?
>take it
You’re not touching the urinal cake.
…I apologize for the following, but how often does Nitocris wind up in a guy’s bathroom? She’s gotta be curious:
>pee on it
Enh, you don’t feel like it right at the moment.
Probably for the best.
>x sink
A perfectly normal stainless steel sink set into wall below the mirror. Looking at it reminds you of how much awful and/or weird stuff you’ve been touching with your bare hands, recently. And how covered in other peoples’ germs you must be at this point. There’s a tap on the back with a handle that turns on the water. Just above that tap handle, someone has scrawled the words “Stop Shitting In The Sink” with a marker.Okay maybe not the best sink to wash your hands in, but a sink nontheless and they’re in short supply in this town.
>wash hands
(in the pamphlet of home listings)
You don’t feel like washing your hands with that. Or can’t. Or both.
>wash hands in sink
You turn the tap and hold your hands expectantly under it. Finally! You can wash your hands!..…but all that comes out is noise. A weird, horrifying and terrible noise from somewhere behind the walls. A long wet meaty sound with some kind of mechanical whine behind it, like a car was trying to peel out on a street covered in greasy bacon. That’s… not a sound that a sink should make.
You turn off the tap (almost pulling the tap loose from the sink in the process, damn thing wasn’t screwed in properly or something) and the horrifying noise stops. Dammit, you really wanted to wash your hands. Well, maybe something else in here works; lord knows it’s been a while since you used a restroom properly.
Umm. At least the noise stopped? Could have been worse!
>x shower
A chrome showerhead hanging from the ceiling in one corner of the room, presumably for the plant employees to wash various species worth of meat and meat byproducts off their filthy bodies. Directly below the showerhead, there is a large metal grate over a drain in the floor. On the wall between, there’s a single shower knob that says “warm”.Above the knob, someone has scratched the words “Don’t Shit In The Shower Anymore Bro!” into the wall. What the hell is wrong with the savages that use this bathroom?
>x knob
They like their showers simple in Vermont.
We are kinda gross and dusty after all that rooting around upstairs, and warm water does sound nice.
>turn on shower
You turn on the water, but all that happens is a horrific banging sound starts up in the pipes. A wet, sloshing banging noise, like a bunch of hams were being tossed about in a washing machine. You remember your Uncle (the plumber, not the one that went to prison) telling you that pipes in buildings would do this sometimes when the air gaps were backed up. But then he also told you to always keep a bucket in your car to shit into just in case a toilet didn’t work somewhere.You turn the shower knob off (almost accidentally unscrewing it in the process, damn thing is real loose for some reason) and the horrible noise stops.
Whew. Maybe we should grab that loose knob so that doesn’t happen again:
>take knob
You unscrew the single shower knob and take it with you. Now the meat-stained workers of this plant will never be clean.Right after you take the knob, a horrific banging sound starts up in the pipes. A wet, sloshing banging noise, like a bunch of hams were being tossed about in a washing machine. You remember your Uncle (the plumber, not the one that went to prison) telling you that pipes in buildings would do this sometimes when the air gaps were backed up. But then he also told you to always keep a bucket in your car to shit into “just in case there’s no toilet all of a sudden”. Whatever that meant. So who knows.
Umm.
[A brief out of character note: this is of course a horror game, but at least in my commentary I endeavor to keep things PG, PG-13, you know, make the thread family-friendly. Fair warning: in what follows, I fall somewhat short of that commitment]
>x knob
You start to turn away from shower, but then a new sound emanates from the bathroom appliance. The new sound is so strange that you pause:“br-rn-nn-nn-nn-nn.”. Like an engine on a car or a lawnmower turning over. “br-rnn-nn-nn-nn-nn”. It’s coming out of the shower. Your Uncle never mentioned this plumbing noise.
You start to turn away from the shower again, and suddenly the noise jumps 50 decibels: “br-RN-NN-NN-NN!!!” It sounds like a car engine right behind you and you whirl. There’s only the shower. But you notice something:
Something is oozing out of the drain. Something brown, and flabby. Meatlike. Something meatlike is backing up out of the pipes like sewage
And it has a pair of LIPS. Big equine-looking lips and gums on a long flabby snout, sticking out of the drain.
“Br-RNN-NN-NN-NN-NN” say the lips and jaw, seemingly boneless, continuing to ooze out of the pipe. Half a head now, the eyeball on one side making a moist popping noise as it clears the drain. It glares at you. “Br-RNN-NN-NN-NN-NN!!”. And then, with a sound like a plunger working furiously on a clogged drain, the meat retracts back into the pipe and it is gone.
You breath again.
WHAT THE FUCK???
WTF IS THIS EUGENE-TOOMS-MEETS-MISTER-ED MOTHERFUCKER???
Any port in a storm:
>enter pentagram
Before you can do that, the wall of the bathroom buckles and then shatters outwards in a shower of drywall and fixtures, as a rolling ball of meat and sinew with four kicking limbs and a frothing toothless mouth bursts forth into the room.You try to run but it’s between you and the door, flailing and frothing. It squirms like a giant boneless worm and then the hoists the top-half of itself upright like a giant sausage with one end tottering in the air. “BR-RNN-NN-NN-NN-NN!” it screams at you from a long, boneless, mane-covered head. That’s when you see the swishing tail.
It’s a horse. A giant boneless horse. There’s a giant boneless horse in the walls. Was in the walls. Now it’s in the room with you , flailing hooves and making noises like a race car engine. What do you do??
Augh it’s worse it’s worse it’s worse it’s worse
>enter pentagram
Oh hell no.
Ugh, of course, we’re a creature of darkness ourself, we can’t take advantage of the pentagram’s protection.
The horse surges forward and flails its boneless noodle-limbs wildly, catching you in the chest with a fist-sized hoof. You’re thrown against the stall; shaking it and throwing the stall door open. You haul yourself to your feet as the flabby bag of horse pulls itself across the floor towards you. What do you do??
That airless, starry void is looking mighty welcoming right about now:
>enter mirror
That’s not something you can enter.The boneless horse shudders. Then it jerks every muscle at once, coiling, then jacknifing up like a sausage being set on one end. It rears above you, hooved forelimbs (or backlimbs, you can’t tell at this angle) pedaling in the air as it snaps and wreathes and tries to stay upright. It totters. The shadow of a boneless horse falls over you.
>push horse
It is fixed in place.
Seriously, game?
The rearing boneless horse falls forward in a graceless jacknife. The fleshy rubbery mass of the thing knocks you to the ground and the breath from your lungs. You try to wriggle free, but there is Only Horse above you. You try to take a breath but there is Only Horse to fill your mouth and nose with. You try to bite, to hit, but there is no space for it. Only Horse.
The last things you experience before you lose consciousness are the sounds of an engine gently revving somewhere on the other side of this horse, and a boneless mouth gnawing on your foot like it was a sugar cube made of You.
“BR-RN-nn-nnnnnnn…”. Then nothing. Only Horse now, in this bathroom. Only Horse.
*** You have been killed by a boneless horse a bathroom, just like that one crazy baglady warned you about, why didn't you listen why do you never liste...... ***
Holy crap.
So of course all the blurry-text that’s been flying around was about this bathroom, so I knew there was going to be something up. But, I confess, I did not have “giant horse-shoggoth in the walls” on my bingo card. This was just – this was a lot.
We’re gonna take a break, then a deep breath, then you’d better believe there’s going to be some UNDOing.
(more to come later today!)
6 Likes
I am so, so sorry.
5 Likes
(Chapter the Eighth, continued)
Okay. Okay. Backing up until before all [gestures vaguely at the above] THAT.
Let’s poke at the least-scary thing in here:
>x pentagram
Just your run of the mill pentagram. About six feet across, artfully carved into the floor. You know. Perfectly normal pentagam. Perfectly normal bathroom.
Still can’t get into it or do anything else with it – probably just an art piece. I guess the stall is next?
>enter it
You’re inside the bathroom stall, which is one of those big accessible ones. There’s a surprisingly clean porcelain toilet sitting invitingly in the center of the stall, with some toilet water in the open bowl.Unfortunately it looks like some jackass has removed and run off with the flush handle dealie that one normally uses to flush a toilet, and you can’t see a lid on the tank, so the toilet looks out of commission at the moment unless you can find a way to address that.
Next to the toilet, there’s one of those grab bars set into the wall. Next to that, there’s a little door to what appears to be a janitor’s closet, if the word “Janitor” on the door is any indication. Next to that, there’s a medicine cabinet. And all around those things are graffiti. Just tons and tons of graffiti.
You can see a pentagram edge on the floor just outside the stall here.
On the toilet are a candle shaped like a human hand and a vintage issue of Juggs Magazine.
So we’ve got pornography (eh), what looks like a hand of glory (useful!), and an in-stall medicine cabinet (gross!). Plus all that graffiti, which in retrospect was pretty clear that there was a bad-news horse in here so we maybe should be paying closer attention to it.
>x graffiti
There’s a giant ham drawn in sharpie dominating one wall of the stall, with the words “That’s a big ham!” right underneath it in bic pen. A couple of lightning bolts, some swastikas made of dicks, and a scrawl near the toilet that says “Help the toilet is pulling me in by the ass and I can’t hold on any more tell my wife I lo” with just a long squiggle at the end leading down to the toilet bowl after that. Buncha’ jokers in this meatpacking plant, that’s for sure.
Add the toilet to the list of things we’re giving a wide berth to.
>x candle
You see nothing special about the candle shaped like a human hand.…what? It’s just a weirdly shaped candle. Lots of bathrooms have candles, to freshen the air after using the facilities. That’s all this is. Totally normal bathroom!
take it
Taken.>light it
This dangerous act would achieve little (maybe), but more importantly you need to use the right thing to do it with.
Oh yeah, we don’t have a source of fire yet - would be handy!
I thought this was a hand of glory – that’s the cut-off hand of an executed criminal that’s been made into a candle, and when you burn it it makes you invisible, which is handy for housebreaking. But maybe it really is just a candle?
>x edge
Just your run of the mill pentagram. About six feet across, artfully carved into the floor. You know. Perfectly normal pentagam. Perfectly normal bathroom.
Pentagram still holding things down.
>x toilet
A standard porcelain commode. Suspiciously clean for a meatpacking plant bathroom, although it’s probably covered in a thin layer of invisible meat debris like everything else in this plant. The bowl is open, containing some toilet water. It appears that the toilet is currently unflushable due to the fact that some obnoxious fuck ran off with the flush handle. Also, there is a sign taped to the toilet that has printed on it: "Caution! Danger! Subatomic structure of toilet EXTREMELY compromised! Localized failure of the strong nuclear force may occur! Use is unadvised! -maintenance, and then farther down on the sign in a different hand: “RIP JON I TOLD YOU NOT TO SHIT HERE!”. Troubling signage, to say the least.On the toilet is a vintage issue of Juggs Magazine.
Yes, this continues to be concerning.
>take water
What, with your cupped hands? Ew.
I… am not sure why I did that. I think this place is getting to Nitocris.
>flush
(the pamphlet of home listings)
That isn’t a thing you can flush. Probably.
I don’t think we need it anymore, but OK, we’ll hang on to it.
>flush toilet
You try to flush the toilet, but someone has unscrewed and removed the little flush handle lever thing. Well what the fuck.Maybe if you had another knob or handle you could put it on the toilet? If, you know, you wanted to. Probably all the employees of the meatpacking plant who’ve been holding it in for who-knows how long would be grateful, if nothing else. Hell, maybe people would even stop shitting in the sink and the urinal.
So seems like once we yoink the knob, we might be able to flee here and like, flush ourself down the toilet? That doesn’t seem great but it beats sticking around to hang out with Boxer-from-Animal-Farm-once-Napoleon-sends-him-to-the-glue-factory over here.
What else we got?
>x grab bar
One of those metal grab bars for people who have difficulties walking or standing, set into the wall next to the toilet.>pull it
It is fixed in place.>push it
It is fixed in place.>take it
That’s hardly portable.>break it
Try “attack the grab bar with something” instead.>attack the grab bar with something
You can’t see any such thing.>attack the grab bar with rat
You attack the grab bar with the enormous dessicated rat corpse for a second, which is fun and gets some energy out but doesn’t do anything for you.
You and I have very different definitions of fun, Nitocris.
…anyway, maybe this will be useful later? Like when I’m holding on to keep from being sucked into the toilet (except maybe I want to be sucked into it?)
>sit on toilet
Close the door first, you fucking barbarian.>close door
You close the stall door, noting that someone has scratched the words “I Told You Not To Use The Shitter, Broseph” into the inside of the stall door. Below that, someone has inscribed the Elder Sign. Okay fine, maybe this isn’t a normal bathroom.
Oh thank Derleth. The whole idea that an Elder Sign can keep Cthulhu Mythos baddies at bay like they’re vampires fleeing the cross is deeply dumb, but this time I’ll allow it, in the interests of not having Shadowfax-on-the-worst-day-of-his-life nibble his way up my legs.
>x sign
(the Elder Sign)
Somebody carved it into the back of the stall door. It’s like a lazy five-pointed star with a flame (or maybe it’s an eye) in the center. Supposedly the Elder Sign is a powerful magical symbol that wards off Eldritch Abominations, at least according to an ancient worm-eaten manuscript that you once found propping up one corner of an old oven at a stoop sale.At least that’s what you recall; the wretched she-harpy hosting the sale refused to come down on the price of a panini press and you ended up walking off in a huff without buying anything at all, including the manuscript. Which in retrospect was clearly the wrong call but come on, who charges “like new” price for a panini press with rivulets of burned cheese all over the sides??
Anyway, there’s an Elder Sign on the door and it’s glowing a little bit. Maybe that means its working?
>touch sign
(the Elder Sign)
You feel nothing unexpected.
Uh oh, if we can touch it, maybe it’s on the fritz? Still, it’s the best shot we’ve got by far.
Let’s see, there’s also the janitor’s closet – unfortunately it’s locked and none of our keys fit it (it also just has the default description so not even worth examining).
In the interests of completionism:
>x juggs
It’s the Virgin Alewives of the Midwest issue, according to the cover. “Oh hey dere I’ve never had a man but I’d sure like to doncha know!” proclaims the woman on the front in big red 80’s font, as she stands there with two strategically-placed giant beer steins and not nearly enough clothing for a Midwest winter.Ooo, it says there’s an article on cornhole strategy, too!
I’m not sure the good folks at Juggs Magazine have done their research, since contra its appealing name, an alewife is actually a rather unprepossessing sort of herring.
(Shout out to the Boston Red Line’s Alewife Station!)
>read juggs for the articles
You can’t see any such thing.
Who are we kidding?
>read it
(first taking the vintage issue of Juggs Magazine)
Taken.Oh hey looks like somebody left a handwritten note tucked in the back of the vintage issue of Juggs. It becomes dislodged by your ministrations and floats gently to the floor of the stall.
You flip through the vintage issue of Juggs magazine. Apparently the cover model’s name is Glinda Shultzpinski. She’s from a town called Cheddar Creek, and her turn-ons include Friday fish-fries, music by the BoDeans, and long walks on the lake. Any lake. Apparently her hometown has like four lakes. Anyway, as the cover stated, she’s allegedly never been with a man but would like to. Dare to dream, Glinda.
I’m guessing this is all really trenchant, culturally-specific humor that folks from the Upper Midwest would find hilarious? Sorry, I can unpack New England stuff all day and now I’ve been in Southern California for a couple decades I’m reasonably conversant on this coast too, but I’m lost when it comes to points inland.
>x handwritten
It has some writing on it in gothic script, which says:Edward! Stop leaving the damn candle on the pentagram when you’re not using the toilet-portal. I’m tired of the meatpacking proletariat falling ass-first into orbit around my [mustard stain] and dying there every week. And I’m already burning through a truly astounding quantity of baby souls to maintain a bathroom in two spacetime locations at once, much less keep a five-million-mile wormhole open for every sausagewright that can’t be arsed to read a sign on the work toilet. So again: keep the candle off the pentagram and don’t open up any more portals!
Also, it is absolutely imperative that you get that demonic monster out of the bathroom pipes before it kills again, lest we be caught. Since it is an unliving abomination that cannot die, I recommend banishment: use the [ketchup stain] spell on the vellum [more ketchup] scroll; it’s on my bookshelf. As my apprentice you should have the magickal skill to cast the spell on the horse without your [whiteout, or possibly mayo] turning inside out.
At any rate I have business in space, but expect my return on the full moon of [mayo?]
I remain,
Konstan[lettuce stuck on the page] Cragne
P.S.: If I find you have touched my journal in my absence, I shall transmogrify you into an abscess on a buttocks. xxoxo be goodOh lord, this bathroom has some mysterious mystical connection to one of your bizarre in-laws. Why are they all so weird and/or evil? And a horse? What horse? What’s turning inside out, now? Demon in the pipes? One thing at least is for certain: Edward (whoever that is) needs to stop eating on the can while reading his mail
This is a surprisingly helpful note! I mean there are some concerning phrases in here about “baby souls” and “five-million-mile wormhole”, but this seems like it’d address our core concern of not getting devoured by the equine answer to the Blob that Ate the Bronx.
There’s still some ambiguity on whether we’ll need to find a way to actually light the candle before the portal will work, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge (or not) when we come to it.
Just a couple last things to try before we unleash the kra-horse. We try to open, look behind, etc. the mirror, to no result. And:
>x void
You can’t see any such thing.
Well, that figures.
Just to put off the horror a little longer, we indulge in some light scatology (I’m sorry):
>flush urinal
It’s one of those water-saver gravity types that you can’t flush. It’s good to see that the owners of this godforsaken and terrifying meatpacking plant are so environmentally conscious.>poop
This is a bathroom with like a half dozen fixtures. Maybe be more specific about where you want to do that?>poop in urinal
Given the angle and what you’re working with, you’d have to press hams against the cold wall behind the urinal to pull that off. Not worth it when there’s a toilet right nearby in the stall.>poop in shower
Judging by the graffiti on the shower, it sounds like you wouldn’t be the first. But there’s (theoretically) a perfectly good toilet for that in the stall.
And after going back into the stall and closing the door:
>poop in toilet
You’d love to. Except the toilet appears to be missing a flush handle. Maybe if you found another knob or handle you could screw in there? You just don’t feel right leaving it to mellow in somebody else’s meatpacking plant, you know?
We’ve run out of stalling tactics, so it’s once more unto the (very disgusting breach). We go back out and grab the knob, and I am so not re-pasting the horse-grate stuff again because it was rough enough the first time. We race into the stall:
The horse moves next to the stall and lashes out with a single hoof through the open door. It catches you square in the chest: you’re thrown back against the toilet, knocking the air out of your lungs and shaking some plaster loose from the wall behind the toilet. The horse rears back the hoof for a second strike. What do you do??
>close door
You slam the door of the stall closed, and see that someone has scratched the words “I Told You Not To Use The Shitter, Broseph” into the inside of the stall door. No kidding. Below that, someone has inscribed the Elder Sign. It is pulsating, faintly, in time with the hideous horse/car noises coming from outside the stall.The stall shudders as the horse strikes the door from the outside. The Elder Sign on the back of the door flashes brightly, and the door holds. Thank fuck some eldritch-horror-savvy meatpacking employee throught to inscribe a protective rune in the here.
Whew, we’re safe for the time being! That Sign might not hold him for long, but with the candle on the pentagram, we should just need to slap the knob on the toilet and flush to zoom out of here.
Oh, erm.
I’ve just been informed Nitocris neglected to put the candle on the pentagram before unleashing liquid-Secretariat again.
This is awkward.
Maybe it’s optional? Like these eldritch rituals are more art than science.
>put knob on toilet
You screw the shower knob onto the toilet where the flush handle goes. You should be able to flush the toilet now.>flush toilet
You flush the toilet! The water swirls and then is replaced! Wee!!
Toilet seems to work normally. Wonder what all the fuss on that sign was about.
This is not super encouraging, but I realized we once again skipped a step.
>sit on toilet
You sit on the toilet.>flush it
You flush the toilet! The water swirls and then is replaced! Wee!!
Toilet seems to work normally. Wonder what all the fuss on that sign was about.The boneless horse oozles and schlorps around the stall, occasionally smacking it with a hoof, still making car engine noises. “Br-RN-NN-NN-NN-NN!”. The Elder Sign holds. For now.
I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but I am starting to get a * little concerned*.
Coffee coffee in the cup, have we made a big fuck-up?
>x coffee
The swirls in your cup form a pear shape, complete with stem. Botanical images mean that while there is much left to accomplish in the present situation, your immediate environment sustains you, and you have everything that you need.
I’d have found that more reassuring if the coffee hadn’t confirmed that everything’s rather pear-shaped right now.
I try waiting like a dozen turns on the theory that maybe he’ll, I dunno, get bored?
He doesn’t.
In desperation, I see if the parser will let me cheat:
>put candle on pentagram
You put the candle shaped like a human hand on top of the pentagram. That doesn’t seem like a good idea but okay.
That worked?
…oh right, the description in the stall specifically says you can see the edge of the pentagram! I guess the candle doesn’t need to be in exactly the middle, and it’s one of your more forgiving sorts of pentagrams. We’re in business!
>flush toilet
You flush the toilet! The water swirls and then is replaced! Wee!!
Toilet seems to work normally. Wonder what all the fuss on that sign was about.
sadtrombone.wav. We are not in business. It really seems like we need the candle lit, but I’m not seeing anything useful in our inventory, except maybe that stupid spark that’s been following us around all day?
>light candle with spark
This dangerous act would achieve little (maybe), but more importantly you need to use the right thing to do it with.
Jeez, I ask you to do one little thing.
Maybe we can, I dunno, fight our way free?
>open door
You briefly open the door to see if there’s still a boneless murderhorse out there. It immediately lashes out at you with many heavy and very solid hooves at your relatively squishy body.*** Yup, still a boneless murderhorse out there. Good to know. Good to know. ***
When I try to GO BACK, though, the game tells me I just need to undo. So maybe we aren’t stuffed?
It doesn’t take me too much more aimless flailing and re-looking at the location description to realize what all of you have probably been yelling at me this whole time:
Next to the toilet, there’s one of those grab bars set into the wall. Next to that, there’s a little door to what appears to be a janitor’s closet, if the word “Janitor” on the door is any indication. Next to that, there’s a medicine cabinet.
Yeah, there was definitely an off-screen head injury when we came into this place – that’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
>open cabinet
You open the medicine cabinet, revealing a cheap lighter, a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and a bloodstained witch-knife.
This all seems suspiciously useful (god knows I’ve developed an ulcer this last half-hour, dunno about Nitocris). We yoink the lot.
>x pepto
A bottle of pink bismuth-subsalicylate. It’s for drinking when your poops are sick.>drink it
Nah, your poops aren’t sick enough for the pink chalk.>x knife
Which do you mean, the bloodstained witch-knife or the broken knife handle?>witch
More properly known as an “athame”, it’s a black-handled witch-knife that sorcerors use in rituals to focus magical energy. And also to shank folks. This one is covered in dried blood, indicating a shanking happened at some point in the past.>shank horse with athame
You stab the boneless horse square in the body-sack. That doesn’t seem to do anything so you stab it again. And again. Then you wiggle the knife around a little in there. Pretty soon you’re elbow-deep in horse, still trying to hit a vital organ bingo, when the thing lashes out at you with a kick and nearly breaks your arm.Okay then, stabbing the horse won’t work. Next plan.
>shank me with athame
Look I know a giant boneless murderhorse recently burst through the wall of a bathroom while you were trying to use it, and I know what that can do to a person psychologically. Believe me I do. But things are’t that desperate yet and you need to stay strong.
Easy for you to say, disembodied narrative voice.
All fun stuff, but here’s the main event.
>x lighter
One of those cheap shitty little cigarette lighters you buy out of a tray at a bodega or gas station, the ones that don’t work very well and have too little fluid. People only buy these when they’re broke, or when they’re so high that they actually appreciate the cliche head-shop clip-art on the side of the thing.The art on this one is of a wizard holding a glowing marijuana leaf up over his head like it’s the frikkin’ Triforce. Damn. That’s actually rad.
I can confirm that this is in fact rad.
>light candle with lighter
If you say so, but this seems like you’re just compounding an earlier bad decision.
Was that earlier bad decision taking a train to this #%@# town? Because I have some regrets.
You flick the lighter a few times over the hand shaped candle. It takes a couple tries but you manage to get a finger to light, finally. One of the candle’s fingers I mean, not your fingers, although it was touch and go there for a second. Anyway the lights in the bathroom flicker momentarily and for a brief moment you hear the sound of frenzied cackling from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Fresh lavender scent though, mmmm.
Then the pentagram suddenly blazes alight with ghostly blue flame! And also something starts glowing in the toilet bowl, in the stall. Weird.
Punch it, Chewie!
>flush toilet
You flush the toilet. The luminiferous æther begins to circle in the bowl under your bum, making alien colors and weird shadows dance along the walls of the stall (and probably also along the bottom of your bum, but you can’t see that so it’s just a guess). Then the walls start spinning. Actually spinning. The meatpacking plant bathroom spinning around you starts to run like an oil painting left out in the sun too long, everything melting and flowing downwards. Downwards and inwards towards the toilet you’re sitting on. Reality itself begins to swirl around you, like æther in a toilet bowl…Suddenly you’re pulled backwards and downwards, by your bum, into the locus of the reality swirl…
You are hurtling bum-first at sub-light-speed through a hyperspace wormhole of kaleidoscopic color-lines, just like that homeless fortune-teller told you would happen one day after she read your palm (and right before she shouted at you about how chemtrails were retroactively changing the spelling of “Campbells Soup”). What a weird coincidence. Anyway, you look over your shoulder and see that you are rapidly approaching a star-filled exit from the wormhole. Before you can react, you are ejected out into a… bathroom stall?
Bathroom of the… Meatpacking… Plant? (Chris Jones) (on the toilet (in space)) (in the stall (in space)) (in the terrifying void full of alien stars (aka “space”))
This is a perfectly normal bathroom. In space. Beyond the visible rays of the life-giving sun, surrounded by strange and distant constellations. There’s a bathroom stall (which is floating in the void of space next to you), a urinal (floating in space nearby), a sink with a mirror over it (yup, both floating in space) and even a shower (space!) for those days at work when you are FLOATING IN THE LIFELESS VOID OF SPACE OH GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN YOUR CHILD IN THIS FRIGID AIRLESS HELL.Actually wait okay, there appears to be air at least, that’s something. And it’s pretty cozy in the stall, to be honest. The toilet itself is a lot nicer here, and there’s an old-timey phonograph and even a fireplace with a hearth on one side of the stall. It wouldn’t be the worst place you’ve dropped a deuce, even accounting for the fact that you’re millions of miles from everything you’ve ever known or loved and surrounded by weird shit. Speaking of which:
There’s some weird shit orbitting the space bathroom-stall: some corpses, a small bookshelf (on which is a book of Unfortunate Baby Names, a mysterious scroll and a small blue journal (which you know is a journal because it says “Mein Journal” on the front)), and what appears to be a… '70s Pontiac Firebird a little farther out, all circling slowly through space.
And the bathroom itself appears to be in orbit around an icy planetoid many miles below you, the curve taking up much of your view in one direction. The planetoid is covered in alien spires and hurts to look at. Otherwise, you know, this is still a perfectly normal meatpacking plant bathroom. In space.
You can see a pentagram (covered in blue flames) floating in the void, not too far from the space urinal here.
It’s all going to plan. It’s all going to plan.
(Still more to come!)
9 Likes
…uh.
When I heard people talking about this room…this is not at all what I imagined.
4 Likes
I’m from somewhat farther south than the target area, but yeah, it’s just a whole bunch of regional references. “Oh hey dere”/“doncha know” (the stereotypical Minnesota accent), the Polish name, towns called things like “Cheddar Creek”, cornhole strategy (that’s a Midwestern name for the game where you throw beanbags at a board with a hole in it)…
The gist being that these are all regionalisms from a place that’s not traditionally considered sexy and would never be the theme for a skin mag.
5 Likes
(Chapter the Eighth, concluded)
Let’s start by checking out the priorities:
>x toilet
It’s like the one on the other side of the magical portal inside the bowl, except the seat is plush which is pretty baller. The toilet is open and has some kind of luminiferous æther in it.>x aether
It’s some manner or other of luminiferous æther, the kind that astronomers and Greek philosophers used to think that space was filled with. They were wrong about it being in space but apparently sometimes it is in toilet bowls? Anyway, it appears to have replaced the normal toilet water. It’s glowing slightly, flickering through a series of sickly alien colors that have no terrestrial equivalent.>take it
You’re not sure how? It’s kind of insubstantial to everything except gravity and light, at least if Newton was right. And even if you could just grab it, that would still require you to stick your mitts up to the elbow into the toiletbowl of a meatpacking plant.>stick my mitts up to the elbow into the toiletbowl of a meatpacking plant
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.
Disproving Relativity will have to wait.
> x stars
(the terrifying void full of alien stars (aka “space”))
You can’t see any such thing.
I gotta stop looking for voids.
>x fireplace
A cozy little brick fireplace with some space logs in it. It’s unlit. Jutting out the front is a part of the fireplace called a stone hearth, which is like a brick of stone that you would set things on to warm them up using the fireplace, without sustaining horrible and disfiguring burns to your extremities by reaching in and out of the fire. Nice feature, that.In the cozy fireplace are some space logs.
>x logs
They’re logs. In space. Well technically they’re in the fireplace but the fireplace is in space, so…>take logs
You would but the space logs are really heavy.>light logs with lighter
You try lighting the space logs with the rad wizard lighter for a while but this tiny little lighter flame won’t get these big ol’ logs a-burnin’. You need to light a larger amount of kindling and toss it in there.>x hearth
A stone hearth jutting out from the front of the fireplace. Traditionally you’d put things that you wanted to heat up on top of the hearth here, which warms up when the fireplace is lit so that you don’t have to reach in and out of the fireplace with your (relatively flammable) hands. It’s an unexpected but welcome bit of old-worldy charm, here in the terrifying void of alien space.
Cozy little setup we’ve got here, though we’ll need to rig something up to get the fire burning.
>x phonograph
An old-timey phonograph, the kind where the sound comes out a brass bell. You’ll have to crank it if you want it to play music, since that’s how these really old phonographs work.There’s an antique wax cylinder loaded on the phonograph; the old kind from before the days where records were vinyl.
>x bell
A brass speaker-bell the size of a tuba coming out one corner of the phonograph.>crank it
You can’t think of why you’d need to do anything with the brass bell. Also it’s heavy and you have tiny baby-person arms. Seriously they’re like angel hair pasta. You tried to do a bicep curl once and your elbow folded the wrong way, and you weren’t even holding a weight. Seriously it’s making you feel tired just looking at the brass bell and thinking of doing something with it or to it.>crank phonograph
You rub your hands together excitedly and lean towards the old-timey-phonograph. Who knows what this antique wax record on it holds? A rare Bach recording? A violin concerto from the turn of the century? Nikola Tesla talking mad shit about Edison and Marconi?? It could be anything! Hands trembling, you grasp the phonograph crank and give it a turn as you listen in anticipation:[Press any key…]
??The opening line of “We Built This City” by Starship ring out from the brass bell of the phonograph.??
Oh God no. It can’t be. On an antique wax recording in space? How? Why? Who would do this?
Okay, screw you, increasingly-intrusive narrative voice, this is awesome.
Incidentally I went to confirm that the opening line of We Built This City is “we built this city” (it is), and here is a list of other lines from this song:
“Knee deep in the hoopla”
“Marconi plays the mamba”
“We just want to dance here, someone stole the stage” (like they slipped it under their trenchcoat?)
“Who rides the wrecking balls into our guitairs?”
This song is even better than I remembered.
>x cylinder
This is how the VERY early phonograph records looked: round wax cylinders about foot tall. Normally with ones this old, they have classical recordings on them, although someone appears to have etched a sonic abomination into this one for some reason.
Yeah, we’re hanging on to this! Taken.
That Starship song reminds Nitocris we’re in space, man, so might as well check out the sights:
>x planetoid
The lower half of your view is the curve of an icy planetoid covered in fluted alien spires that are barely visible against the inky blackness of space. Squinting, you can just barely make out strange, unwholesome shapes bumble-flying among the spires. The flying things must be huge, bigger than buildings. The flying things hurt to look at. The spires hurt to look at. The whole planetoid hurts to look at. There is something unsavory and threatening about all of it.And you can’t shake the gut feeling that the planetoid is somehow looking back at you. Even though that is insane.
>x spires
Miles and miles high, with sharp tower-tips rising like dark fingers into the upper atmosphere of the icy planetoid. They’re made of some kind of black stone and lit with giant lights pulsing a sickly green-purple. They look bruised and unhealthy, and the geometry hurts to look at. Huge flying things bumble between the spires.>x shapes
They look small from here, but based on the distance they must be huge. Bigger than most buildings. They’re shaped a little like loaves of bread, or larvae maybe. Larvae the size of buildings. They are bumbling and squirming through the air between the spires.Huh, wait, are they heading upwards and getting closer, slowly? Well that’s unsettling.
Or we might as well not.
>x journal
It says “Mein Journal” on the front, and it appears to be a collection of folios bound in very soft blue leather. It appears be locked, and has a little keyhole on it.>take it
Taken.>read it
You can’t, the owner locked the stupid thing shut. It’s got a little keyhole on the front though.
Frustrating! None of our current keys do the trick. Let’s see, there were a couple other interesting features around.
>x corpses
There’s a bunch of frozen space corpses in low orbit around the bathroom, most of them in meatpacking employee coveralls. Wow, no wonder they had people stop using the toilet.One corpse’s coveralls has a name-patch that says “Ed” on the front, and “Janitor” on the back. Guess that corpse is named Ed. Was named Ed. Do corpses still have people names? Hmm.On a loop of Ed’s coveralls, you see a pair of keys. Presumably that same corpse is the “Edward” mentioned in that handwritten note you found on the other side of the portal-toilet.
Alas poor Edward, he died as he lived – by which I mean pooping, hopefully not masturbating, though I regret to say we can’t rule that out.
>take ed
He’s hardly portable.>pull ed
It is fixed in place.>give ed a decent burial
You can only do that to something animate.
Dark, Nitocris. Geez.
>just take ed’s keys like an asshole
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.>take keys
You reach up and try to take Ed’s keys. Shit, they’re attached to his coveralls.>take coveralls
You reach up onto the floating corpses and wrestle with Ed’s coveralls, eventually stripping them from his frozen corpse. Turns out Ed liked to freeball it, and now it looks like he’s mooning that icy planetoid the bathroom is orbitting.>wear coveralls
You put on the greasy foodstained coveralls that you stripped off a frozen corpse you found floating in a space bathroom. You nasty, girl. I’m not saying I don’t like it, but you nasty.
This place – or that voice in her head – must be getting to Nitocris!
>x unfortunate names
The Book of Unfortunate Baby Names: Thrill to this hilarious collection of REAL BABY NAMES that REAL BAD PARENTS gave their kids!
All text © Hillbilly Bathroom Laughter Press, 1991>take it
Taken.>read it
John Poopnazi
Flossie Candyass
Elizabeth Dicksmith
Poonpounder H. Washington JonesYeah okay these are pretty bad.
I call shenanigans – those first three parents did nothing wrong, they gave their kids normal names. Blame the assholes on Ellis Island who saddled a starry-eyed immigrant like Jerzy Pabisinski, a proud Silesian excited to contribute to his new country, with “George Poopnazi”.
(You’ll be shocked to learn this isn’t one of the library books we need to collect).
One more bit of scenery…
>x firebird
A 70’s Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am. Cherry red. Floating in space for some reason. It’s too far away from the bathroom stall to do anything to, though. Wait, is it… is it making soft horse noises? What the fuck.
Geez, I was just starting to feel like things were calming down. Whiskey tango foxtrot indeed.
Wait, this is a car making horse noises – were the weird noises the horse was making back on earth engine noises? Is this a case of a car haunting a horse, or a horse haunting a car? WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS BONES???
We saved the best for last:
>x scroll
It says:FORMULAE TRANSLOCATION
To send thine enemies or thineself abroadeEdward, this is the one! Use this spell on the horse! - Konstantin
1: Lite thee a hande of glory and place it upon the pentagram to activate a portal. Use thee a hande or foote or other extremity; a torso of glory or an ass of glory will cause thine spell to fail and possibly thine life to end
2: Fasion thee a mannikin, poppet or figurine of wax, resembling the being to be sent by the Translocation and placeth it on the pentagrame.
3:Wave a stoat or ermine to focus the majickal energies. A live stoat or ermine must be used or else the spell will fail most dysaterously. Edward, I discovered that waving a dead one will do just fine, although you’ll need to drink a Potion of Fortitude first or else your organs will end up outside your body. Yes, even the good organs. To make the potion, mix bismuth and carbonated corn syrup with a small amount of trilobyte milk. - Konstantin
4: Place a virgin on thine pentagram and sacrifice her most vigorously with an athame. It says “her” but honestly either gender will work fine as long as they’re a virgin. Look for people buying Cure albums at the local record store, perhaps. - Konstantin
5: Shout the majick werd “OUTERICA”. The thinge that has been representated with the wax mannikin shalle be most forcifully banishede to the other side of the thy active pentagrame.
At the bottom of the scroll, there’s another note from Konstantin that says "Edward, this is VERY important! You must [ketchup stain] the [mustard] or else [mayo]! This is very important!! You must [more mayo]!! Son of a bitch, was Ed eating a fucking hamburger over this ancient magic scroll?
Once again, Konstantin is coming through in the clutch, though those condimentary redactions at the end are a bit concerning.
>lick scroll
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.>eat condiments
You can’t see any such thing.>eat scroll
That’s plainly inedible.
Come on Nitocris, they can’t be caked on that thick, slobber like your unlife depends on it!
Well, even with these omissions, this is starting to resemble a plan? We’ve got the hand of glory, we’ve got … a wax canister, but still, something of wax, we’ve got a dead rat who might do for an ermine, an athame and a magic word? We still need a virgin, two thirds of a magic potion, and artistic skills in physical media, but I feel like we’re starting to get over the hump!
We grab the scroll of course – that seems to exhaust what there is to accomplish here, but those keys probably unlock the janitorial cabinet, so let’s flush ourselves back to earth.
(Yes, that is a real sentence I wrote while not at all intending to be funny).
You flush the toilet. The luminiferous æther begins to circle in the bowl under your bum, making alien colors and weird shadows dance along the walls of the stall, just like it did back in the terrestrial bathroom. Then the walls start spinning. Then space starts spinning, the stars turning to long streaks of color like a timelapse photo of the night sky. Reality itself begins to swirl around you, like æther in a toilet bowl…
Suddenly you’re pulled backwards and downwards, by your bum, into the locus of the reality swirl, just like before…
You are hurtling bum-first through a hyperspace wormhole of kaleidoscopic color-lines, just in the opposite direction this time. Damn, that homeless woman was on point. Maybe it WAS spelled “Cambells” all along. Anyway, this return trip through the worm-hole takes a little longer, giving you some time to ponder things. Things like… hey, wait, didn’t that handwritten note say these trips through the portal were powered by baby souls? That had to be code for something, right? Like, you using this toilet isn’t somehow using up baby s
They probably just meant baby souls like baby spinach, it’s just regular spinach but small, so like really small souls from flies or torture apologist John Yoo, no big deal.
Sure enough, our new keys unlock the cabinet, and:
>open it
You open the janitor’s closet, revealing a fur coat and a candle shaped like a human foot.
Umm, Ed had fancy tastes!
(I mean because of the fur, not the foot).
Too bad Boss Rat, guess we didn’t need you after all. Still, here’s to what might have been:
>wave rat
You wave the enormous dessicated rat corpse.>take fur
Taken.>x it
The tag says it’s genuine ermine (which you’re pretty sure is a kind of stoat). This is pretty baller for a meatpacking plant janitor.
An ermine is in fact a stoat, which is a sort of weasel. I learned this from the Redwall series of rodent-based fantasy novels, which rolled surprisingly deep on vermin nomenclature.
(Coincidentally, the jam band I was in in college was called Vermin Nomenclature).
>x foot
You’re starting to worry that the candlers who are supplying this restroom are running out of PG bodyparts.
We grab that too (please no butt please no butt). Maybe we can swap it for the hand and something new will happen?
>light foot with lighter
You flick the rad wizard lighter a few times over the foot shaped candle. It takes a couple tries but you manage to get a toe to light, finally. One of the candle’s toes I mean, not your toes, just like when it was the hand candle and arrrgh you know what I mean. The stupid foot candle is lit. Anyway, the lights in the bathroom flicker again, but the cackling sounds more like guffaws this time, and it turns out the foot candle is beach scented instead of lavender.>put foot on pentagram
You try to put the foot-candle on the pentagram but some magical force emanating from the pentagram pushes back against you. I guess you can only have one body part shaped candle on a pentagram at a time? Maybe take the hand candle first?>take hand
Taken. The weird ghostly blue flame on the pentagram goes out. Aw. Also it looks like the luminiferous æther in the toilet just went back to being normal water.>put foot on pentagram
You put the lit candle shaped like a human foot on top of the pentagram. That doesn’t seem like any worse of any idea than the hand-shaped one was, I guess.The pentagram suddenly blazes alight with ghostly flame! Just like with the hand-shaped candle, except this time the flames are green! And also the toilet water appears to have been replaced with a mass of Higgs boson particles that are now swarming around the toilet bowl.
OK, seems like the portal might have revved up again, except now significantly more compliant with the Standard Model since we’ve swapped the Higgs Boson for the aether?
Bottoms up!
>flush it
You flush the toilet. The Higgs bosons start to swirl around the bowl. You think. You’re thinking about them being in the bowl so they might not actually be there. Stop thinking about them. Anyway everything starts to swirl and run just like that time a few minutes ago when you flushed yourself to the space bathroom.Suddenly you’re pulled backwards and downwards, by your bum, into the locus of the reality swirl…
You are hurtling bum-first through a hyperspace wormhole of kaleidoscopic color-lines again, only this time they’re sort of greenish instead of sort of blueish. The crazy homeless lady didn’t mention the color when she was telling you about how you would be flying butt-first through space-time, but so far still accurate (less so her assertions that the Sasquatches controlling the World Bank would eventually reveal the truth about the Beatles. That lady had Opinions.). You look over your shoulder and see an exit from the wormhole, but this time it’s sunny…
Bathroom of the Meatpacking Plant, Lower Cambrian Era (Chris Jones) (on the toilet (on a beach)) (on the beach) (in the Lower Cambrian Epoch)
Well… you’re on a beach. A beach with a toilet on it. I guess that makes it a bathroom, right? Can’t be anything but a bathroom if it has a toilet in it; plop a toilet down in any other room and it’s a bathroom no matter what it was previously. So it’s settled then, this beach is a bathroom. Anyway, next to the toilet is a little table with Ed’s Journal (you know it’s Ed’s journal because it says “Ed’s Journal” on the front), Konstantin’s keys and a half-full can of Dew. To the north there’s a weird moss forest and to the south there’s an ocean.And before you ask, the reason you know this is the lower Cambrian is because of the millions of trilobite and trilobite-adjacent species that are hanging out on the beach and in the water here, including one that is nuzzling your foot (shoo! shoo!). Just a metric pantload of trilobites all over everything. At least… At least this is normal for the Lower Cambrian. Perfectly normal Lower Cambrian bathroom.
You can see a pentagram (covered in green flames) on the beach here.
I guess I didn’t need to be so worried about finding trilobites.
After some disambiguation fiddling where the backpack’s book pocket comes in mighty handy, we check out Ed’s journal.
>take journal
Taken.>read it
It’s not really a journal so much as a small note pad, and it’s only got one entry. But Ed called it a journal, so:Yeah so Konstantin told me to get the horse out of the bathroom but the horse is scary and that Translocation spell is hard. So yeah I think I’m just gonna chill on this weird beach I opened a portal to. It has these weird crabs but that’s probably okay. I’m gonna go back to the Yuggoth bathroom to get Konstantin’s journal though. He told me not to read it but I’m sure there’s some juicy magic in there. I just gotta be careful with the toilet: came out of the can too fast last time, nearly shot right out into space! That was close! But I should be okay this time. Wish I could bring Konstantin’s car-familiar with me to the beach, that thing is sweeeeeet.
Sincerely,
Edw[mustard stain]Oh, Ed.
Welp that explains how he went from a janitor 3/wizard’s apprentice 1 to a frozen corpse 20. That, uh, can’t happen to us, right?
Speaking of journals, I’m betting Konstantin’s keys here will get us into Mein Journal (in fact when we X them, we learn “Mein Keys” is written on them). In fact they do, and we read… and read…
The black death ravages Vienna. Nearly a thousand have died in the last week alone; their bodies bloating in the open-air pits surrounding the city. The citizens hide in their houses as the plague walks the city, and the streets belong to the dogs, the flies and the rats now. By day, at least. By night, murderers both human and inhuman stalk the byways, the beleagured city guard spread too thin to effectively stop every burglar and nightgaunt.
I am rapturous with joy. The coven practices openly now, with no fear that our Sabbath orgies will be interrupted by foolish investigators. Children can simply be lifted from the street and carried away if needed, with the handful of passerby too weak or scared to protest. On this alone I have saved so many silver reichsthalers that I would have spent on sacrifices, previously. And yesterday I openly mocked a Brother of the Holy Trinity in his own church hospital, displaying to him an upside-down cross and also my penis, telling him secret names of Great Old Ones that will burn in his ears and dreams despite his prayers. He cried and tried to throw holy water at me with palsied fingers, but I laughed and rode away on my devilhorse. Life is good!
But I know that this joy cannot last. Just as before, the plague will pass and the city will return to normal. And Karl Denube (that dog of the Habsburgs, curse him) was getting close to discovering our identities at any rate after his raid on our botched summoning. I fear Petra’s carelessness in seducing the constabulary have already given us away. So I must plan an escape before the plague abates fully, but shall enjoy every moment till then.
-Konstantin T. Cragne, Vienna, August 4, 1679, Sun in the house of Cancer
Dear God, the horror – does he really not know the plural is “passersby”?
Damnation and hellfire! The plague isn’t even passed its rounds and the guards have begun to hound our coven again. Perhaps it was the child-thefts, or perhaps I should not have shown my penis to that priest.
No matter. Petra should have half of the Habsburgs" guardsmen ensorcelled by now, which should buy time to move the coven operations to Innsbruck, or Liechtenstein, or Prague, or join with the Paris warlocks. Or even move to London or far-flung Amsterdam.
Anywhere except Bavaria, really. I hate Bavarians so.
-Konstantin T. Cragne, Vienna, September 14th, 1679, Moon in Gemini
We are truly in the kraut, now. Petra’s overzealousness in seducing guardsmen has tipped off the Imperial witchfinders. I warned her that if she kept up we would reach critical mass of love-besotted guardsmen wandering about and pining for her suspiciously, their loins and nostrils enflamed by witch-pheremones. But she did not listen and here we are! Damn Petra, her ample bosom, AND her unquenchable thirst for male validation all three!
The Imperials mean business this time. Denube has arrested half his own police force in the middle of a plague outbreak just because they were mildly ensorcelled with forbidden sex magicks. Clearly he worries more about us than the rioters and nightgaunts, which seems insane at first blush. Although to be fair, we ARE secretly responsible for the rioters and the nightgaunts. And the missing children. And the finger-collecting phantasms that look like men but bark like dogs. And the tentacled wreck that haunts the northern cistern. And the arrival of the plague itself. I suppose I cannot fault Denube’s priorities.
-Konstantin T., Vienna, September 27 1679, Jupiter Ascending thru Libra
I think Nitocris is beginning to like the cut of Konstantin’s jib, though he’s a little slut-shamey given Petra’s kept the guard off his back this long.
Our plans to flee are complicated by the plague curfew, as well as the early snow that is coming (of which I have been informed by the souls of the damned that ride the winds eternally. They are never wrong about incoming Alpine weather, though they will lie right to your face about whether your cravat suits you, the miserable undead shits).
However! I have a plan. A powerful enough translocation spell could move most of the coven and their things, and the spell components are easily sourcable. Most of them. The live stoat may be difficult at this time of year with the countryside inaccessible and everyone dying of the plague, but Jens assures me that a stuffed one will suffice. No matter, even the results of a miscast spell is still better than death by torture at the hands of Witchfinders or that complete ass Karl Denube. Unless the spell turns us inside out, I suppose.
-Konstantin T. Cragne, Vienna, October 9, 1679, Saturn in the House of Sagittarius
The translocation spell was miscast, and half the coven was turned inside out. That was awful. The stuffed stoat didn’t suffice as a spell component at all. I wanted to scream at Jens, except Jens had his ears on the inside of his head and his brains on the outside and couldn’t have heard me anyway. Also I was being flung through space by hideous unknowable forces.
On a happier note, the miscast spell also turned several guardsmen inside out as they were coming to arrest us. After they captured Petra it was only a matter of time before she gave up the hidden orgy room in the charcuterie basement. A dozen city guardsmen and a pair of Imperial Witchfinders broke in right as Jens was waggling that stupid stuffed stoat over the pentagram, and they stood there gawking like provincial idiots at a carnival barker as he botched the incantation.
And then the magical wave it hit them. It was beautiful. I swear, I’ll never forget the stupid look on Karl Denube’s inside-out face as his lungs came shooting out of his backwards mouth and hung there against his chest like a hissing ballsack. Then he tried to flee but just ran straight into a pillar because his eyeballs were facing the wrong way! Ha! What a fool. I’d go back and shit on him, if I had any idea where I was in relation to Vienna.
It’s meadow-y here, and warmer than normal for Austria at this time of year. I don’t recognize any of the mountains. The same moon at least, so I’m not on Aldebaran or Carcosa. In any case, despite not having my grimoires or my devilhorse or my orgies, it is pleasant enough here except for the wolves that are following me.
I remain hopeful.
-Konstantin Cragne At Large, Location unknown, Date unknown
I would give Jens such a beating, if he had not been dead for over a hundred years and also turned inside out. The stupid translocation spell flung me not just through space but through time! I was deposited a league outside of Bratislava, and when I arrived I was informed by the beet-obsessed peasants whom infest the dirt-hovels outside the city that it was the year-of-their-lord 1809. 1809!
My grimoires will all have been seized and burned by long-dead men, or more likely stuffed into Habsburg vaults under the palace in care of some blind and deaf eunuch who navigates the moldy stacks of forbidden books by touch. I hate those eunuchs so. And my poor devilhorse has almost certainly dissolved into astral soup, and I have neither the gold nor the souls to create a new familiar.
The coven may have survived in Vienna (assuming some of them turned right-side-back-in after I left), but I wouldn’t know any of them in this age. And the nearest Cragne stronghold is in Krakow, but who knows if the vaults are still intact or if the secrets were hauled off to some Ottoman shithole after the last Turkish incursion.
My best bet, I think, is to make my way through Brno and on through the Nuremburg road to Brussels, assuming that I can stomach the smells and sights of Bavaria for that long. I dare not try another translocation spell without a familiar or the correct components, and I don’t know the word for “stoat” in the dialect of the local beet-fondlers anyway. They’ve informed me that the road may be blocked by the army of some French commoner who is rampaging across the countryside, but I have never let a Frenchman stop me from doing anything and I’ll be damned if I start now.
-Konstantin T. Cragne, Bratislava, Spring 1809
Hey, Bratislava! I’m half Czechoslovakian – or at least I was, back when that was a country – and while the Czech Republic still gets some love, the Slovaks are pretty underrated, so it’s nice to see them get some attention (I think the last time I saw Slovakia mentioned in a news story, it was because they were holding up one of the Greek rescue packages during the Euro crisis to try to get more favorable loan terms for themselves).
Still stuck in Bratislava, despite best efforts the past two weeks. Still squatting in the burned-out ruins of a hoisery (which is STILL better accomodations than this city’s wretched hostels) as Napoleon’s cannons continue to rain metal upon the city. Increasingly depressed by the lack of quality sausages as compared to my home, compounded by news from a local grocer who informed me that the Holy Empire itself is no more, after Napoleon’s forces took Vienna. I admit to feeling a tiny pang of civic sadness in spite of myself. And also hunger for a decent sausage that hasn’t been adulterated with ratmeat by the hairy, unwashed fingers of inferior Bratislavian sausagemongers.
I have come to terms with the truth that I cannot return to my own time, even if I wanted to. The only entities which could do such a thing are Y-S in his guise as the Opener of Ways, or possibly the **vi *. Unfortunately even thinking for too long about Y-S without a lead helmet can cause madness, and I spoke with the **vi * but he reminded me that I had already sold him my soul several years prior for a larger penis and a more pronounced chin. Alas, my younger self put himself too cheap to market.
On the brighter side, every person or instution that I owed money to or who wanted me dead is either long-gone or now French.
Since I do not wish to die a Frenchman myself, I have decided to Translocate away while Napoleon plays Emperor. I have managed to procure a cage of live stoats from a furrier, and can fashion the wax poppets myself. The sacrifice of a virgin is a bit harder and I may have to settle for the sacrifice of a relatively sexually inexperienced person and see what happens.
-Konstantin T., Bratislava, May 22 1809
…we’re pretty down on Frenchmen for a dude named “Cragne”, Konstantin.
(this concluding post is more than twice the character limit, geez!)
3 Likes
(Chapter the Eighth, still continued)
Tried the spell on a horse as a test. The horse ended up fused with the wall of a milk house two blocks over. I do not think the milk maid will ever stop screaming, which is loud if hilarious. The horse might not ever stop screaming either, which is loud AND hilarious. I joined them briefly, sauntering into the milk house and screaming in time with them without giving the maid any context until she fled. Will tweak the spell parameters and try again on the morrow, suspect that the problem was that the hemi-virgin I sacrificed to power the spell was far more sexually experienced than they claimed.
I must admit that despite the challenges and the noise, Napoleon throws an enjoyable siege. Watching people run screaming from the gunfire in the morning as I cook my coffee over the flames of a burning cottage never fails to put a smile on my face, even if I can barely get anything done in the chaos. I hope his men are in turn enjoying the excitement of the shuffling horrors that I send over the walls and into their tents every night to feed on their screams and genitals.
-Konstantin T. Cragne, Bratislava, May 24 1809
Ha ha that’s so Konstantin.
It took a few hops with the Translocation spell, and another century past, but I managed to escape Napoleon’s repeat attempts to rub his tiny French nutsack all over the continent. In fact, I believe that I’ve found a home here in the Balkans, at least temporarily. It’s no Vienna but this is certainly better than dodging cannonballs daily. And I am beginning to reform my coven by recruiting from the disaffected youths of the city! Despite the barrier in language and custom I get along splendly with the local occult groups as long as I don’t talk about Austria too much in a positive way.
I’ve reformed my familiar in the shape of a large owl with a human ass for a head and moose-deer antlers sprouting from the left and right butt-cheeks. That may sound ribald but I can make assurances that such a thing is fucking terrifying to see swooping down on you in the dark of an alley at midnight, especially when it starts hooting out of its anus.
Starting to feel hopeful again about the future. Strangely grateful to briefly be in a peaceful time where I can rebuild without chaos, which isn’t like me at all, but I’m just very tired of using that damned Translocation spell to run from wars.
-Konstantin T. Cragne, Sarajevo, 25 June 1914
(Take a look at that dateline if you want a dose of cosmic irony)
There is no damned way that they make this shitty little asshead the chancellor. No way. Who would do that.
-Konstantin T. Cragne, Berlin, January 29 1933
For an immortal warlock in thrall to dark powers, you’re all right, Konstantin.
On a steam-ship from London. Bored with Europe, and hoping there are fewer explosions in America. Explosions and wars bore me now.
Crossing the channel from France to England was pure joy, however. It had been forever since I had felt the Faceless Lords of the Night lift me airborn on a broomstick like that; much more pleasant than the Translocation spell. I didn’t even bother to hide from the ships passing underneath, and I even stopped to take a truly epic shit down the open hatch of a surfaced U-boat after stopping for a very greasy plate of spaetzle in occupied France. Wish I could have seen the faces of the soldiers inside as THAT torpedo was delivered.
Corresponded with family in New York via long-range psychic screams, in-between hiding in subway tunnels in London during the bombings. The New York Cragnes speak well of the New Country. Apparently you can just out and SAY you’re a witch these days, and nobody will give a single shit! They just keep drinking. I am excited to experience this brave new world and bilk the gullible drunken fools who inhabit it.
-Konstantin T. Cragne, Mid-Atlantic, June 1944
By the great green balls of Satan’s Fraternal Star-Twin, I am BORED. New York is BORING.
They THINK they’re cosmopolitan, they THINK they’re the best of the world here, but NO ONE who had seen Vienna in full splendor (before Napoleon burned it down, like the great French tit that he was) would think of this as ANYTHING but a provincial backwater compared to the jewel of the Empire.
Oooo, you have tall buildings. A pox on your tall buildings! I have seen the living spires of Carcosa! I have seen the non-Euclidean bones of Sleeping R’yleh rising from the Marianas Trench by dawn! I am unimpressed by tall things, New York! I have seen taller things while pawing through owl shit for bone-omens!
You can’t even make a proper sausage. And when you DO produce one of your shitty sausages for inspection, New York, you immediately cover it with tomato leavings like you’re some kind of simple cretin from Tuscany who couldn’t find real food with both roughly callused hands and a map. Tomato leavings! On a sausage! For shame.
My family is boring me as well. The New York branch is feuding with the Vermont and Boston branches, while the Texarkana branch eats popcorn from the sidelines and sells djinn wishes and leprechaun drugs to whoever’s currently on the outs to keep the feud going. I’ve seen all this before, in the old country. The one interesting thing I have to report is that H promised me a seat on the Varigated Council and enough spell resources to create a new familiar if I were to betray New York and kill L. I’d have to move to Vermont, though. Thinking about it.
Bored. Bored bored boring boredom. Bored.
-K. T., New Ybored, June Whatever, 19meh
Hmm, leaving aside “K.T.”'s too-cool-for-school pose, it’s interesting to note he refers to the Variegated Council, not the Court like all the other documents do. There must have been some linguistic drift over the centuries, since as a 17th-century native he’d be using whatever term was more current in his time.
I never thought I’d come to like it here, but I must finally admit that Vermont is very pretty during the fall. Reminds me of Vienna, and also the orange-and-gold innards of those humanoid creatures from Saturn, the ones that squawk like pelicans when you summon them. They are also very pretty in the fall, although they make a smell like the last hours of a Saxon orgy when you cut them open to get at the colorful innards I mentioned. And it releases an obscene amount of helium in the process. Voice is funny for weeks and your hands are stained saffron for twice as long. I digress.
Vermont. Pretty. Fall. Family. This is my fourth year as the Mazarine Alderman on the Council and I’m still angry about it. I pointed out to H and Z that I helped found the second new council after the fall of the Roman Empire, for fuck’s sake. A Cragne of my skill and stature deserved at least Coquelicot, if not Sarcoline. And it’s not like I asked for Murex right off the bat. So I patiently explained that Mazarine was the Alderman position for fresh-faced toddlers and/or the Irish. When that failed to move them I threatened, and then I begged.
But no, I am Mazarine Alderman in the end, as if I was some assfaced Burgomeister out of Munich with two wooden legs and no dick, and not one of the most accomplished Cragnes of the last five hundred years. I am livid, still.-Konstantin Teufelheim Cragne, Mazarine-bloody-Alderman, Vermont, September 30 1967
Hey, I think that’s why we endured this whole ordeal – that’s one more office of the Court identified!
It hardly seems worth it.
I think a Sicilian clown was Mazarine Alderman once. Hell, I’ve heard of Incan mummies who got buried with their gonads in their mouths and make ball-sounds when they speak that have ended up with better positions on the council than I’ve got. I met a fucking crow once that was a more important Alderman than Mazarine. A crow. It wasn’t even part of the family, it was adopted.
No matter. I have more important things to deal with for now, like finding a source of civilian funds to help create my familiar. The **vi * still refuses to front me cash, just keeps shaking his head when I summon him before pointing at my crotch and my chin, the uppity fuck.
-Konstantin, Still Mazarine, Vermont, October 12 1968
The familiar-crafting has taken longer than expected. This is due to having to be Bob.
I had no social security information or work history when I came to Vermont, and I’ve been told in no uncertain terms not to ensnare the locals with witch-eyes or addictive bodily secretions if I can help it. Or bludgeon too many of them to death for their wallets. Or the tourists either. “Don’t shit where you eat” and all that. The Council has said nothing about skin-wearing though.
Regarding skin-wearing: if you can coil yourself up tightly and flatly enough, you can fit your whole adult humanself into the layer of viscera between the skin and the skeletal muscle of a different human. There’s a sort of bag made out of ligament that you can wrap yourself around, and then you can manipulate the other body by undulating your rolled-up self against it. Conceptually similar to that branch of yoga where your yoga mat is alive and fights you between asanas. Any rate, I needed human money so I captured a man named Bob and started wearing him like a pantsuit. He’s a local boss at the meat-packing plant, but I haven’t been able to work there yet since I had to wait a few weeks for Bob to stop continually screaming into the part of my leg that’s wrapped around his mouth-muscles because it’s distracting. He finally tired, though. I am excited for my first day of work as Bob.
-Konstantin Cragne/Bob, Vermont, May 15 1972
This is… this is still going on?
I was initially very excited to work at the meat-packing plant because I heard they made Viennese sausages. Imagine my rage when I found out what “Vienna Sausages” actually were. No self-respecting Austrian would be caught dead with one of these mixed-meat cigarettes between their lips. I almost burned the whole plant down with conjured hellfire on the spot, but I’m too close to getting my familiar, and if I’m honest I find my bumpkin coworkers conceptually interesting if not intellectually stimulating.
-Konstantin T./Bob, Vermont, May 15 1972
Using the same bathroom as the plebian meatsmiths who wallow back and forth in this factory of lies and sausage failure has become tiresome, so I have fashioned my own lavatory from raw cometary atoms at the farthest reaches of the solar system. There is a fantastic view there of the nemesis rock of Yuggoth which will one day impact and devour the Earth! And a padded seat and a phonograph on which I can listen to my old wax recordings! Also, I added some air so that I can actually listen to music, and so that Bob can breathe.
Afterwards, I made the new restroom translocationally accessible from the meatpacking restroom, and then restricted worker access to the toilet on the Earth side of the portal. This prevents potentially hazardous dimensional leakage, but more importantly keeps the unwashed masses from using my restroom. There have been some complaints from the workers about having to make other toilet arrangements. The complaints did not cease when I pointed out that, historically speaking, shitting into buckets behind one’s place of work used to be considered a luxury. The people of this era are spoiled.
In other news, I have begun work on my new familiar. The pentagram is inscribed, although I suspect that I am a few years out from the other requirements. - K Cragne, Vermont, December 22 1974
So there’s a perfectly reasonably explanation for most of this?
Curse all the gods and the frozen gargantuan mollusc-things in the black gulfs between stars that pretend to be gods! There must be a way to make this work.
The familiar spell is complex, and admittedly I am trying something that has not been done before to my knowledge, but it still should work. All this version of the spell requires (aside from the gold and complex spell-matrices and a few other odds and ends) is at least one being with a soul that will serve as the template for the familiar.
And who among us would believe, even for a moment, that my 1976 cherry red Pontiac Firebird Trans Am does not contain a soul? Who among us could slide gently atop those black leather seats, naked as a newborn babe and twice as hungry, wrap our trembling hands around the wheel and feel the engine turn over and hear the throaty rumble as we rev the gas, and honestly believe that this beautiful machine is soulless?
I knew as soon as I saw it at the dealership. It was those curves. That power. The noise. The feeling you get deep in your genitals when you throw the e-brake while sqeauling the tires doing doughnuts in the crowded parking lot of the Alpha Beta, as the salesman riding shotgun screams like a neutered cat and begs to be freed from the spinning death cage. This is clearly a machine designed by Satan for His Own People. Even Bob loves it, and all Bob does anymore is scream endlessly in his own head for the sweet release of death. I had to procure one of these cars.
More than that. I had to make one my familiar. But I cannot get the thrice-damned spell to work on my car.
-Konstantin/Bob, Vermont, June 12 1975
It was simple, in the end. If my 1976 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am did not have a suitable soul, then I would give it one. All it required was a modification to the old Translocation spell and a suitable partner, which at first proved more difficult than expected.
I thought about using Bob, but his soul is far too soft to reside in my Trans Am. And I thought about Bob’s boss, Mr. Gambretti, but I’ve grown to like the man and respect him as a superior, at least as regards packaging sausages. Who knew that I would ever believe a Genoese could be trusted with machinery more complex than a ball and cup game? American egalitarianism must be seeping into my bones.
A perfect answer for the soul problem walked right onto the factory floor. A bad-tempered racehorse that had been a contender in the Kentucky Derby was sold to us for the purposes of gelatin, and I was given the rendering job. The name of this equine beast was Rowdy Tumnus, and he was in his own way as gorgeous and spirited as my Pontiac. He had murdered his previous owner with a series of kicks to the head, abdomen and groin before being sent to us, and tried to bite the dick off of everyone we passed on the way to the slaughter room. Then he broke free from the restraints twice before we could use the pneumatic gun on him, and in-between the dick biting during one escape he went out of his way to put a hoof through Gambretti’s office window. A horse that would destroy property out of spite! Rowdy Tumnus was perfect.
I performed the spells right in the lavatory (the plebian lavatory, I have no wish to get horse guts on my private fixtures orbiting Yuggoth), which was somewhat private and also had a drain in case the spell went wrong. It went off with only a single minor hitch, and the vicious soul of Rowdy Tumnus was transfered to my Firebird which was parked outside. In turn, the vicious soul of my Firebird was transferred to the body of Rowdy Tumnus. Success! I haven’t been this excited since I let those zombies loose in the brothels of Prague!
-K.T./Bob, Vermont, June 23 1975
This all… this all makes a disturbing amount of sense. Rowdy Tumnus. Sure.
That one hitch I mentioned: during the soul-swap, both the skeleton of Rowdy Tumnus and the transmission of my Pontiac were vaporized for some reason. So I was left with the immortal and still-living fleshy bits of a killer horse flopping about on the floor of the factory’s garderobe, and a muscle-car familiar that is stuck in first gear until I can find a mechanic who can peer into the Astral plane.
Frustrating, but we work with what we have. I spent an hour stuffing the sack-like remains of Rowdy Tumnus down the shower drain, along with the pulped body of a coworker who stumbled upon that grim tableau before being attacked and suffocated by the aforementioned murderous half-horse. Then I drove my familiar home. - Konstantin, Vermont, June 24 1975
Despite my best efforts, I’ve been unable to coax the boneless Rowdy Tumnus back out of the plant’s plumbing for long enough to lead him out of the plant or banish him. Part of this is difficulty securing effective bait; he appears to prefer human flesh to apples or sugar cubes now, which isn’t something that I can just purchase at the local market. At least not the public one.
That being the case, I’ve decided to bind him to guard my private bathroom and sorcerous implements. He seems happy enough in the pipes, and as I have an errand on a parallel timeline in space that requires my attention, I’d prefer that none of the local mullet-wearing peasantry lay hams to my commode while I’m out sorcering. I suspect that Tumnus will end up killing at least a few of them who try, despite my warnings to the plant management. Ah well. I’ve supplied Edward with a Tanslocation Incantation to banish Tumnus somewhere, should the need arise. He’ll have to source most of the spell components himself, but Edward is… well Edward is my apprentice and I’m sure he’ll manage the horse. -Konstantin T. Cragne, October 10 1975
Last page… read again to start from beginning…
That all actually kind of makes sense? Like, this entire ridiculous situation has been explained to my satisfaction. More, am I allowed to say I kinda hope Konstantin is doing a Charles Dexter Ward on our hubby Peter? He seems fun, I think he and Nitocris would get along.
…we were solving a puzzle, weren’t we?
>x trilobites
There’s a huge giant herd of trilobites on the beach here, which is fairly normal for the Cambrian but weird for you personally. One of them is nuzzling your foot".>milk it
What do you want to milk the trilobite into?
Jesus parser, I write MILK TRILOBITE and the question you have for me is “into what”? Seriously?
We do have that bottle of pepto-bismol…
>milk trilobite into bottle
You need something more effective at holding trilobite milk to do that. Maybe try Ed’s half-drunk Dew-can? It was almost empty.
Hint hint.
>x can
It’s half-full can of Mountain Dew. Presumably Ed was drinking it, before space killed him several million years and miles from now and here respectively.>take it
Taken.>drink it
You do some Dew. Augh, it’s warm.
There’s our corn syrup.
>milk trilobite into can
You kneel down towards the trilobite that keeps nuzzling your foot. As you’re searching for teats on an ancient non-mamalian proto-crab that is extinct in your space-time so that you can milk it into a Mountain Dew can that belongs to a dead wizard’s apprentice floating in space in the future, you think back to your marriage ceremony to Peter. You think about the kind of life you expected to have together. And you think about how things have been since you arrived in Vermont. And you think about that for a few minutes, as you gently milk the trilobite into the soda can.
We’re clear that there’s no way that you can actually milk a trilobite, right? They don’t nurse their young. No mammaries to speak of. If we’re massaging it and something clear is coming out, probably that’s lymph. We’re going to drink trilobite lymph.
>x can
It’s half-full can of Mountain Dew that has some trilobite milk in it. Gross? Presumably Ed was drinking it, before space killed him several million years and miles from now and here respectively.>drink it
You do some Dew. Augh, it’s warm.
And milky.
Yay.
Just yay yay yay about all of this.
Can we go anywhere else in this era?
>n
Fuck no, that moss forest is probably crawling with moss-dwelling tardigrades. Just chock full of 'em. Have you ever seen a tardigrade? Go google it, I’ll wait.Yeah I didn’t think so.
Given that the average tardigrade is like one millimeter, I’m gonna say no, Nitocris has never seen one.
>s
You sort of sidle over to the trilobite-filled steaming ocean. Then something that looks like a mantis shrimp the size of a bull moose briefly breaches the water and shrieks at you. So you nope on back to the toilet region, just like this: Nope nope nope. The Cambrian Epoch sure does suck.
Yeah OK fair play on that one.
At least we can complete the potion with what we’ve got here.
>put pepto in can
You pour some of the pepto out, into the can of Dew. This one’s for the homies. The homies with diarrhea.
Then you swish the concoction around for a moment, and it begins to glow! And smell. It smells real bad. If someone told you this was a Potion of Glowing and Smelling, and not Fortitude like the scroll said, you would not fight them.>drink can
You take a sip of the glowing, foul-smelling Fortitude potion and quickly realize that drinking it slowly is the wrong way to do this. So you chug the whole can, only to discover that drinking this at all was the real mistake. It’s sort of lumpy, slick and wriggling under its own power as it goes down. Your stomach instantly rejects the gooey acidic mass, warning you with cramps and reflux that it is having none of this. You argue and then plead with your stomach, pointing out that it is going to be just as bad on the way back up. You also point out that it’s got pepto in it so your stomach should quit whining. Eventually your stomach grimly accepts the task ahead of it and gets to work, which is when you notice that your skin is glowing faintly now.
This is awful, but look, we just need to be done with this place.
That’s everything except the wax effigy, I think, and I’ve got an idea on that. We flush ourselves back to the future by swapping the hand back for the foot, then:
>put wax on hearth
You put the wax cylinder on the hearth.>put unfortunate in fireplace
You put the book of Unfortunate Baby Names into the cozy fireplace.>light it
You flick the rad wizard lighter against the book of Unfortunate Baby Names. After a moment, the book of Unfortunate Baby Names catches fire and then so do the space logs, which flare up into a glorious flame! The hearth begins to warm up as well. Hopefully this isn’t consuming all the oxygen in this space bathroom…The wax cylinder on the hearth rapidly melts into a lump of wax.
Awesome. Space is finally safe from the twisted revenant of the band formerly known as Jefferson Starship.
Grace Slick, thou art avenged!
(I don’t actually know the backstory by which Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship became Starship, but knowing how these things tend to go I’m guessing she got screwed).
>take wax
[Hey! Listen! You can try to sculpt the lump of wax into something with “> sculpt wax lump into something” It may not always work depending on what you’re trying to sculpt, since Naomi is a pretty shitty scultptor. Actually, her abysmal lack of sculpting talent is directly responsible in a roundabout way for her marriage to Peter, but as interesting as that story is (and it is VERY interesting), it’s too long for this tooltip.]
Sadly SCULPT WAX INTO METAPHOR FOR LONELINESS fails to elicit a response, so we just go with the obvious:
>sculpt wax lump into horse
You work on the wax lump for a little bit, and manage to sculpt a pretty good likeness of the boneless, lumpy gross horse that’s rampaging around the bathroom. Granted you were trying to make a horse that actually looked like a horse, but it all came right in the end.
I think that’s everything!
(Except for the virgin, but I’ve an idea there)
FLUSH!
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