I doubt that’s very lucky, unless I’m imagining it all wrong…
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I think the “luckily” there has to be read as sarcastic.
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Day 8, part 1
Okay, let’s start wrapping things up!
First, the waterlogged journal:
>g
(the damp notebook)
October 16 - I think Anita was able to detect my sore feelings about losing the Spookenfest, because she asked me to help her out with a project. She called it a “project” but it’s really a prank. Not a mean-spirited prank, but still.You see, Harlan Waverly has always been kind of standoffish with me, I assume because he disapproves of my vocation. I try to be friendly, but
Now that I think of it, I don’t really try that hard. I don’t think I’ve been rude or anything, but since I get the feeling he doesn’t like me, I try to stay out of his way. Which probably makes him think I don’t like him, which is why he stays out of my way! Wow…
Anyway, Harlan’s fairly cool attitude toward me was a crucial factor in Anita’s project. She showed up at my office after school and said she’d “dug up some info,” then she pulled out this ancient newspaper. It was a copy of her school’s paper from about fifteen years ago. She opened it to a page that was mostly blank space. The heading was “Who’s Your Celebrity Crush?” and the rest of the text was maybe twenty quotes from students, spread out to fill up as much of the page as possible. I guess journalistic standards at the Courtney High Minuteman are roughly on a par with those at the Courtney Herald-Gazette.
Anita pointed at one quote and waited for me to read it: “‘Rosario Dawson.’ - Harlan Waverly.” Which is kind of fun, but I didn’t see why she came to me with this information.
Then, still without saying anything, she produced from her bag a framed signed photo of Rosario Dawson. And then she told me her plan.
She laid out the whole thing with great relish and detail, but it amounted to this: While Anita distracts Harlan, I put the photo on his desk. It’s pretty clever because Harlan has no reason to suspect me, and wouldn’t ask me about it even if he did.
It looks like the next part has dried out enough that you can read it safely.
>g
(the damp notebook)
November 15 - Well, here’s how Anita’s “project” panned out:At the HCAFFE meetup on the 22nd, Anita tossed her lunch box into a tree and asked Harlan for help recovering it. Harlan very patiently acquiesced, and while he was occupied I snuck into the observatory and put the photo on his desk. It was perfect: People were doing enough milling around that, for all Harlan knows, anyone could have been in the observatory. Except Anita.
I don’t know what we were expecting. Maybe we were hoping Harlan would get really mad, or paranoid, and launch an investigation into who gave him this signed photo of his high school celebrity crush. I guess I thought he’d at least say something about it. But he hasn’t. The picture’s still there. He couldn’t have missed it. But he hasn’t said anything.
Oh well.
It’s getting pretty chilly up in Holler County. I’m not looking forward to this Iowa Winter I keep hearing about.
It just occurred to me for the first time: Did Anita really buy a signed photo of Rosario Dawson? Are they expensive?
That explains the photo in the observatory! Looks like there’s more to discover in the journal. I like the Deacon/Anita dynamic here.
Let’s go clean the beach (or try to find crows for peanuts).
Crows are here! They do the same thing as last time. Apparently at some point it can give you a badge. If I don’t see one tomorrow, I’ll read more about it.
No Zuleika today.
But there are…ducks!
>nw
Safe in your goofy-looking waders, you make your way across the stream.Wreck
The trail bends north to southeast around a shallow corner of the pond. An old canoe lies snapped in half on the rocks.Mounted on a post on the other side of the trail is an old birdhouse.
A pair of ducks are enjoying a quiet moment near the edge of the water.
>x ducks
These are mallards, the very generic type of duck that pairs up around this time of year to build a nest and start a family. Mister Duck has a shiny green head and a little white collar; Missus Duck is brown and speckly, and there’s a self-important slant to the markings around her eye.You make a note of your new sighting in your little blue birdwatching guide.
That leaves only the robin left:
The checklist inside your birdwatching guide looks like this:
✓ Bald Eagle
✓ Black-Capped Chickadee
✓ Blue Heron
✓ Bluejay
✓ Crow
✓ Cardinal
✓ House Sparrow
✓ House Wren
✓ Mallard
✓ Meadowlark (Eastern or Western)
✓ Pileated Woodpecker
✓ Red-Tailed Hawk
✓ Red-Winged Blackbird
_ Robin
✓ Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
✓ Rusty Blackbird
✓ Turkey Vulture
There’s a really high chance I saw one early on and just didn’t examine it, so we’ll just keep trying.
Checking in on today’s cryptogram:
>listen to receiver
You bring the receiver to your ear, and it starts to buzz with noisy static.Then a signal fades in, and a chipper voice says:
"Hello! Your secret message for Monday is…
C JCH RTUZ MT MAU ITGMTP CHI ZCEZ AU’Z ATPPLWOE IUFPUZZUI. MAU ITGMTP ZCEZ, ‘CA, WVM ETV GTVOI WU ITLHR C OTM KTPZU. GTHZLIUP MAU GCZU TD FCROLCGGL MAU GOTKH, KAT ILUI DLDMUUH EUCPZ CRT.’
“…End of secret message! Please stay on the line for more information!”
>g
Static pops, and the voice warbles slightly: “Now for tomorrow’s forecast. It looks like tomorrow will be just as sunny as today was. Don’t despair, though: I have some inside information that says every life is entitled to at least a little rain.”The receiver goes quiet for a second, then makes a bunch of clicking noises.
Time to clean the beach!
Beach
A path out of the woods to the west opens up on an expanse of gray sand, descending bumpily into the pond to the east. Off to the side, a pair of wooden poles stick out of the beach, about 36 feet apart. A wooden launch is built into the shoreline, half-swallowed by the sand.The amount of litter strewing the place is still upsetting and embarrassing, but there’s been a noticeable improvement.
>clean litter
Okay, let’s get to it! Here’s your bag!You grab a dirty sock and stuff it into your bag.
You grab a candy wrapper and stuff it into your bag. Today we’ll look at my daily planner notebook. There should be something good in there.
At the top of the entry for March 5, 2017, I wrote the distressing epigraph abandon hope for future plans. Distressing and prescient!
There’s a schedule here for the development of what would become Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing: Two and a half weeks of design, two weeks of scenery, a week of mechanics and cleanup, and two weeks of testing.
Yeah, this was in 2017.
You may recall that I originally wanted to have the seasons change in this game every few real-life days. In my entry for March 6, I estimate that there will be about 48 rooms. The calculations here find that implementing each room in each season would require ~200 descriptions, 200 scenery tasks - but the pond isn’t so crazy.
You grab a busted sandal and stuff it into your bag. That bag is getting heavy!
By March 13, I had general ideas of what all the rooms would look like, and what all the puzzles would be, and I came up with a plan: I’d implement one quadrant of the game map, in one season, every day for sixteen days.
WHAT WAS I THINKING. WHY DID I THINK THIS WAS EVEN REMOTELY POSSIBLE.
The next entry is from March 22. Apparently I’d caught a cold and gave up on Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing for the time being. In fact, I didn’t work on it for another two years!
Now, when someone puts a project “on hold” and then doesn’t return to it for two years, typically what that means is that the project will never be finished. That’s what I’ve understood as the way of the world. I mean, until recently.
You stuff one last disgusting napkin into your bag, and it’s full! Great work! I’ll take care of the bag later.
Speaking of taking care of things later, there’s still some litter on this beach, but it can wait until another day.
Yeah, a 1-2 month schedule for a game of this scope would be very difficult. There’s a lot of content here.
By the way, Ryan mentioned in another thread that each quadrant of the map is demarcated by the ‘listen’ command. Let’s try it while looking for the robin:
From the NW playground to the Wreck, the message is:
>listen
Wind brushes the trees, delivering a message from somewhere far away.
Between Garden and parking lot, we get:
>listen
Warm wind rustles the trees, and there’s a general ambience of peaceful bird-chirpiness and bug-buzzing all around.
The bird sanctuary has its own messages about frog noises. So I try the willow. And what do I see?
Willow
A weeping willow stoops at the edge of the pond. The path from the south stops nearby, where a wooden launch is worked into the shore.A fat robin is poking around in the dirt.
>x robin
This robin’s red breast is a little on the desaturated side. It doesn’t match the vibrant plumage of the virile young robins you see in the movies. But, like any other creature, robins age, and slow down, and go gray.You make a note of your new sighting in your little blue birdwatching guide.
I never thought I’d see the day.
>read guide
The checklist inside your birdwatching guide looks like this:
✓ Bald Eagle
✓ Black-Capped Chickadee
✓ Blue Heron
✓ Bluejay
✓ Crow
✓ Cardinal
✓ House Sparrow
✓ House Wren
✓ Mallard
✓ Meadowlark (Eastern or Western)
✓ Pileated Woodpecker
✓ Red-Tailed Hawk
✓ Red-Winged Blackbird
✓ Robin
✓ Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
✓ Rusty Blackbird
✓ Turkey Vulture
Time to get a new badge when Zuleika returns!
Let’s find another area. I’ll note that the boundaries of the ‘listen’ areas are all streams so far. Footbridge, Creek, and Broken Bridge all have sounds unique to them having to do with water.
On the east side:
>listen
You hear insects droning—but thankfully they seem to be droning far away.
This lasts from the SE playground to the prairie, and extends to the cemetery.
The gate has no sound:
>listen
That’s odd. You don’t hear much of anything.
Finally, in the evil Erica Nailer side:
>listen
As you focus your attention, the world goes strangely quiet.
It looks like we’ve accomplished almost all our goals. Just a few hidden badges left, and cleaning up trash and reading the waterlogged journal. I bet the desk and lockbox don’t have keys.
To finish off the day, I’ll try to find a ‘good’ ending to the CYOA.
I won’t post the first two pages (don’t want to hit the character limit too early). Suffice it to say that we have a mystery to solve, and this time we look for our girlfriend instead of a gangster:
>look up ceres
CERESYou used to spend a lot of time wondering what would happen to Liandra. Would her impulsiveness and her big mouth get her kicked off the force? Or would she shape up, turn into a proper officer of the law, and spend her life filing papers in a cube?
Turns out neither. She’s a sergeant now—technically, she outranks you. But you notice that with some satisfaction that the office of a sergeant on Ceres isn’t quite as nice as that of a senior detective on the Moon.
“Weird of you to drop by unannounced,” Liandra says. “Especially after two years.”
“Eight years,” you say.
She smiles. “Sorry—Two Ceres years. We do things a little differently out here.” That’s a sentence you’ve heard about a thousand times.
If you want to get down to business, look up the brightest asteroid (as seen from Earth).
If you want to reminisce about the old days, look up the spacecraft that visited Ceres in 2015.
>look up vesta
VESTALiandra’s smile invites additional idle talk, but you don’t have time for that.
“I’m looking for a perp. Zisa Cylena. Supposedly she has a hideout in the Main Belt.”
“Why?”
“It’s—” You falter. You were thinking It’s a good place to never be heard from again. Then you realized: She’s asking why you’re after Cylena.
“It’s classified.”
She scoffs. “Didn’t your boss tell you to cooperate with the local authorities?”
“Afraid not.”
“Then why should I raise a finger to help you?”
To say you’ll owe her a favor, look up the term for a small body with an orbit between those of Jupiter and Neptune.
To ask her to do it for old times’ sake, look up the term for an asteroid that hangs out in the L5 Lagrange point of Jupiter’s orbit.
>look up centaur
CENTAUR“It’s like this. If you help me out now, no questions asked, I’ll help you out later—no questions asked.”
Liandra understands what a promise of discretion means when it comes from a lunar police detective. “You’d set aside your principles just because you owe me a favor? I find that a little hard to believe.”
You shrug. “Either trust me or don’t. You know me better than anyone else; you should know whether I’d ever keep a promise.”
“I do know you better than anyone else.” She stares into your soul. “Even after two years.”
Then she swivels in her chair and begins swiping through files. “Cylena hasn’t been seen in the Main Belt for a long time. But I know where you can find one of her contacts…”
Sergeant Liandra finds the file and hands it to you—but when you take hold of it, she doesn’t let go.
“Khama. This ain’t gonna be the last time I ever see you, is it?”
You smile. “Well, you know. It’s hard to say for sure.”
To go follow the lead Liandra gave you, look up the planet with the smallest axial tilt.
>look up mercury
MERCURYYou hear the name “Zisa,” and your ears perk up.
Goldstone is the biggest city on Mercury, and Chicolini’s is the busiest restaurant in Goldstone. It’s hard to keep track of where any given snatch of conversation came from. But you aren’t exactly a lousy detective.
It helps that the person calls out the name again, louder this time: “Zisa! What are you doing here?”
“Frannic! What are you doing here?”
“I’m supposed to be clearing tables.”
You circle the conversation, unable to get a good look at either woman’s face.
“What?”
Frannic speaks up again. “I’m supposed to be clearing tables! But I asked you first!”
Zisa hesitates. “I’m on vacation. Do you know if there’s a place I could crash?”
“Absolutely!” Frannic yells, louder than necessary.
Now you have eyes on them. Zisa glances around nervously—and sees you.
Before Frannic can say another word, Zisa is gone.
To run after her, look up the name of the aura of plasma that surrounds the sun.
>look up corona
CORONAThe crowd outside Chicolini’s is as thick as the crowd inside, but sweatier.
To push through the crowd, look up the part of the sun where nuclear fusion takes place.
To search the crowd, [note to Harlan: figure out a clue for “tachocline”]
>look up tachocline
TACHOCLINEYou scan the crowd carefully. Then you see the back of Zisa’s head: She’s shuffling away, her face to the ground.
To grab her right now, [figure out a clue for “convection zone”]
To follow her, [figure out a clue for “photosphere,” or figure out some better vocabulary terms]
The bluejay emits a squawk of warning.
>look up photosphere
PHOTOSPHEREShe walks slowly, far more inconspicuously than necessary, through the crowd and down the street. She turns down an empty alley. She’s making it easy on you.
When you turn down the alley, it’s empty, except for one obvious exit: a sewer access point. The air rushing through the grate is unbearably hot, and the smell is unspeakable, but you’ve got a job to do. The grate is unlocked; you descend into the bowels of Mercury.
You catch up to her fast, but you know better than to spook her. You don’t know the layout. So you tail her through the stinking tunnels for ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, until the moment when you know she has nowhere to run: You raise your weapon and tell her to freeze.
He yelps and turns around. It’s just some kid.
Which means Zisa is far, far away by now…
THE END
Let’s go back to try the other path:
>look up convection zone
CONVECTION ZONEYou run up to Zisa and grab her—He yelps. It’s just some kid.
You let him go and get moving before he can charge you with assault.
To try to get a bird’s-eye view, look up the name for the average distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Isn’t that AU? Let’s try it:
>look up astronomical unit
ASTRONOMICAL UNITMercury can’t hold onto much of an atmosphere on its own, so cities like Goldstone rely on a network of air conditioning towers to make things breathable, if not exactly bearable. The upper reaches of the towers are off-limits except to maintenance staff, but for a guy with a holobadge they’ll make an exception.
Unfortunately, the towers aren’t fitted with elevators, so you have to stomp your way up to the top. At the balcony, you orient yourself to get a view of the spaceport—just in time to recognize Zisa’s starjet as it slices its way out of the atmosphere.
Well, the next thing to do is to walk back down all those stairs.
To ask around at the spaceport, look up the kind of star that the Sun will eventually become.
To head back to Chicolini’s and find Frannic, look up the astronomer who discovered helium by observing the Sun.
>look up lockyer
NORMAN LOCKYERFrannic won’t meet your gaze—She keeps glancing at the back door of the restaurant. When you look, you see Chicolini himself glaring at the two of you. You shut the door and put a hand on Frannic’s shoulder.
“You aren’t in any trouble,” you say. “I just need some help finding Zisa.”
Frannic stares at her shoes. “Is she in trouble?”
Convincing a suspect’s friend to sell them out always makes you feel sick, but you’re a pro at not showing it.
“I’m afraid so. But it’s the kind of trouble that gets worse and worse the longer she goes on running. Once I get a chance to talk to her, we can straighten everything out.”
Frannic starts chewing on a fingernail.
“Did she ever mention any associates? Romantic partners?”
“I think she had a boyfriend,” Frannic says. “Or an ex-boyfriend. Or an on-and-off thing. She said a couple times that she was thinking of going back to Cthulhu Macula.”
You give her your Stoic Cop Nod, which seems to calm her down. “Thanks, Frannic. Let me go tell your boss how helpful you’ve been.”
Once you’re done mollifying Chicolini, you know just where you’re heading.
Look up the place in the Solar System where you can find Cthulhu Macula.
Hey, sorry to interrupt, but it looks like you’ve been playing for a little over half an hour. That’s great to hear! I’m glad you’re enjoying Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing and I hope you continue to do so.
Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing is designed to be played in short sessions over the course of multiple days, so I feel like I should gently encourage you to find a good place to stop, so you can return to Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing tomorrow, or whenever you have time. But I can’t force you to do anything. Play for as long as you want, and come back whenever you want. All your progress has automatically been saved.
Thanks for playing! Okay, back to the game.
That’s an unusually appropriate place for that message. I thought Cthulhu Macula was made up, but apparently not.
>look up pluto
PLUTOPluto’s reputation, plus its listed radius of twelve hundred kilometers, makes it sound like a dust speck. You can imagine yourself peering over the horizon to see who’s on the other side. But as you approach, it gets bigger and bigger—and faster than you expected. You slow down.
In gravity as tenuous as that of the Pluto-Charon system, it feels inaccurate to say that you’re “settling into orbit.” Instead you think of yourself as easing into a stable driftiness. Then you get to work.
There’s nobody around to ask if they’ve seen Zisa Cylena recently. There’s not enough atmosphere to check for an ion trail. The only thing to do is to to have the computer do an optical scan of each quadrant and check for signs of a landing.
If Pluto is so small, how is this so tedious?
You fall asleep.
Look up the name for the disc of small bodies that lie outside the orbit of Neptune.
>look up kuiper belt
KUIPER BELTAn alert tone rouses you. “That was quick,” you mutter, before you get a look at the computer. The scan is only 15% finished. The alert is an incoming call—way out here?
“Hello?”
“Hey. Are you stuck out here too?” a voice asks.
You search your field of view for the source of the call. Then you notice: Pluto has gotten a lot smaller.
“Who is this?” you bark.
“Hold on.” She opens a video exchange, and you get to see her confident face for an instant before her expression changes to one of deep regret.
“Zisa Cylena,” you say, “You are under arrest.”
This pronouncement somehow seems to make her feel better. “I’m not sure about that, Detective. It looks like your cruiser has a reference engine, same as mine. And we’re both too far away from the barycenter to get any impulse.”
You check your engine: She’s right. You’ll have to hail a tow truck.
“I tried calling for a tow,” Zisa goes on, “but I don’t get any reception out here. How about you?”
You check. Deep sigh. “Nope.”
“Huh. Well, I was hoping I could share this with literally anybody else… But do you wanna hear my plan?”
To disable her spacejet, look up Pluto’s second-largest moon.
To listen to her plan, look up the minor planet (perhaps a dwarf planet) discovered by Michael Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz in 2004.
I wonder if the other ‘voice’ is Anita?
>look up hydra
HYDRA“I’m afraid I have urgent orders,” you say, readying some nonlethal projectiles. “Please don’t move; I’m going to disable your vehicle.”
“I can’t move! That’s the whole point!”
You fire, and the force of ejection knocks your cruiser back. The projectiles seem to move extremely slowly.
Eventually they connect with the spacejet, sending it spinning wildly—toward Pluto. Your heart sinks as the spacejet stabilizes and its reference engine flickers to life.
Zisa grins on the monitor. “Hey, thanks for the assist!” Then she terminates the video. “Be a nice cop and give me a little head start, okay?”
She zooms toward Pluto, picking up speed, and then slingshots out of sight. You set to work figuring out what else you can shoot to move yourself a little closer to that hunk of ice.
To pursue her, look up the hottest planet in the Solar System.
Hmm, let’s try the other option. I try SEDNA, but that doesn’t work. CHAD TRUJILLO and ERIS don’t work. So much for previews and cursory article summaries.
Googling the Wikipedia article for Dwarf Planet and making a random guess, I get:
>look up orcus
ORCUS“Sure,” you say. You have nothing to lose.
“It’s like this: You refuel me.”
You scoff. “I thought you said we were too far from the barycenter for the reference engines to work.”
“No, that’s right. But with the fuel umbilical connected, we turn our ships into a bolas. We’ll be space gauchos!”
She brings up a animated diagram on your monitor. “And then we use RCS to whip each other around until we’re in reference engine range.” The ships in the diagram orbit each other and zoom off into space.
You frown. The physics are suspicious, but they’re also a bit over your head.
Well, we were already stuck the other way. Let’s try Orcus’ moon.
>look up vanth
VANTH“I hope your simulation is accurate,” you grumble as you activate the fuel umbilical.
“Um,” Zisa says. She pulls the diagram off the monitor. “I wouldn’t call that a simulation. More of a rough sketch.”
The fuel lines link up. “Okay, I’m going to thrust myself… Clockwise, I guess.” Her RCS thrusters activate, and the umbilical goes taut. At the right moment, you thrust in the opposite direction, and the two of you are swinging around each other. A bit like Pluto and Charon.
“And then I go in reverse, and you—Now! Now!” You shift directions, and angular momentum brings you a little closer to Pluto. All that’s left is to do the same maneuver six or seven more times.
There’s a note in red ink on this page: What do I do now? Did I win?
Then, in black ink: I couldn’t figure out how to get from here to a place where you and Zisa are in the same spot, so that you can try to arrest her. There was supposed to be a choice between letting her board your ship or you boarding hers, but neither of those things would actually happen.
Just assume that you caught her somehow and look up Johannes Kepler.
Okay, nice getting the game design.
Also, if you like this style of writing and mini-game, some of the Balderstone games are like this. One of them even has a ‘space bounty hunter type person chasing someone across different planets’ setup (or something like that). Does anyone remember which one that is? It was well-developed and fun.
>look up Kepler
JOHANNES KEPLER“Zisa Cylena,” you say, “I’m gonna have to place you under arrest.”
She nods halfheartedly and holds out her wrists. “I want you to know this is all a setup,” she says.
“I will keep that in mind,” you say, securing her handcuffs. “Do you happen to have the Interplanetary Standard Reference on your person?”
“I only had it for about an hour.” She rolls her eyes. “They hired me to steal it from them and give it right back, so they could claim it was lost forever.”
“Who exactly is ‘they,’ in this situation?”
“Solar System administration. The guys on the top floor.”
“And why would they want to disappear the Interplanetary Standard Reference?”
She smirks. “I’m not supposed to know. But I found out, and they found out that I found out, and that’s why they sent you after me. The Interplanetary Standard Reference isn’t just a pretty paperweight. It’s an egg. From outside the system. An extraterrestrial embryo.”
Now you roll your eyes. “Did you finish high school? The Isolation Principle was proven decades ago. Life can’t evolve outside of Earth. It’s just a fact.”
“They sure do say it is. But I’ve seen some stuff that says otherwise.”
“Or you came up with a ridiculous story to distract me.”
“I noticed the media haven’t been informed that the Reference is missing,” Zisa muses. “Is the theft of a simple scientific instrument still classified? Did you get any weird orders from your superiors? Did they maybe hint that it’d be okay to axe me, if that were more convenient than bringing me in alive?”
You can’t answer. Zisa nods.
“Well, what’s too bad for you is, now you have the same information that makes me so problematic. If you let them find out that you know—like, if you put my ridiculous story in your report—they’ll have to take care of you, too.”
“So you’re saying I should let you go, tell my boss I lost your trail, and never tell anybody about this?”
“You can do that if you want. But what I’d really like you to do is help me get the egg back.”
“You know where the Reference is?”
She grins. “Sure I do.”
To let Zisa take you to the Interplanetary Standard Reference, look up the body in the Solar System with the highest albedo.
To take her to jail, look up the constellation that contains the center of the Milky Way.
To let her go and head back to your boss, look up Thomas Jefferson Jackson See.
3 Likes
Day 8, part 2
Let’s try some endings:
>look up jackson
THOMAS JEFFERSON JACKSON SEEYou sit outside Chief Taber’s office. No one’s around, except for Taber’s robotic secretary/printer, who studiously ignores you. The room is quiet.
Then a door slams, and furious footsteps echo down the hall. The secretary, sensing danger, floats elsewhere.
Taber emerges from the hallway and stomps toward you like a bull elephant. “I told you not to come back without Cylena,” he hisses.
“The trail went cold,” you say. “I can’t get any further without some support.”
Taber’s face goes a shade redder. “You won’t get any further, period. You’re off the force, Khama.”
You’re lost for words. This doesn’t make any sense.
Cold hands grasp your shoulders. You turn your head and recognize the brushed steel fingers of a Class F enforcer droid. A dim, distant voice in your head wonders how you could possibly be in so much trouble. Another voice—from deep in the pit of your stomach—tells you it’ll be a long time before you find out.
THE END
Huh, that’s not good.
>look up sagittarius
SAGITTARIUSThe last time Chief Taber shook your hand was when you were promoted to detective. You remember his grip being a lot less enthusiastic then than he is now. You certainly don’t remember your hand hurting so much.
“Excellent work, Khama. Cylena was convicted in absentia; you brought her back just in time for her sentencing hearing. Do you feel like making an appearance, recommending solitary confinement or something?”
“Not especially. Has there been any news on the whereabouts of the Interplanetary Standard Reference?”
“Afraid not. And I suppose Cylena wasn’t very cooperative, was she?” Taber shrugs. “Well, they might get it out of her. I read an article the other day about engram imprinting. Maybe they can, you know…”
Taber twiddles his fingers around, apparently miming the action of copying a person’s memories out of their brain.
If you’d like to tell Taber that Cylena claimed innocence, look up the constellation that contains M44, the “Beehive Cluster.”
To ask about this strange legal situation, look up the constellation that contains the North Star.
To ask for your paycheck, look up the constellation that contains the Andromeda galaxy.
Phew! Lots of options.
>look up cancer
CANCER“You know, Cylena says she was framed.”
“No kidding.” Taber is unimpressed. “Did she say anything else of note?”
“She went on for quite a while. It was a long ride home.”
“Hmm.” Taber taps his desk. “Say, Khama. Do you think—Heck. Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? Would you say that you’re a little bit sick and tired of field work? Do you ever wish you could just hang around the office and order people around?”
To say you prefer getting your hands dirty, look up the constellation that contains the Southern Cross.
To accept the bribe, look up the constellation that contains the Crab Nebula, the remains of a star that went supernova in 1054.
>look up taurus
TAURUSThe text typed on this page has been enthusiastically scribbled over. Below, there’s a note in red ink:
DETECTIVE KHAMA WOULD NEVER DO THAT. He would hand in his gun and his badge and he’d go into hiding until he could prove the conspiracy and then he’d marry Zisa Cyrena!!! WRITE THAT STORY INSTEAD AND DELETE THIS
This is the problem of letting fans write the game, they get too close to the characters.
Okay, let’s go way back and let zisa take us to the standard reference.
>look up enceladus
ENCELADUSZisa is right about at least one thing: There’s a compound on Enceladus that shouldn’t be there. The angles of a white building are barely perceptible against the curve of the icy crater wall.
“I finished reconstructing the floor plan,” she says, and puts it on the monitor. “There’s a way in for you through these heat vents. I’ll just knock on the front door and ask to renegotiate my contract. They’ll lead me here…” She points to a central conference room. “…And you can drop in from up there. Pincer maneuver.”
You sniff. “This wasn’t part of the plan I agreed to.”
“Yeah, man. It’s called thinking on your feet.”
If you want to insist on sticking together, look up the moon of Jupiter that helped Ole Rømer calculate the speed of light.
If you’ll consent to splitting up, look up the moon of Neptune with an almost perfectly circular orbit.
>look up triton
TRITONHot wind stings your eyes, and the air hums with an eerie resonance. The circular shaft is large enough that you don’t have to crawl—you just have to walk with an uncomfortable hunch, on a curved floor.
With no way of referring to Zisa’s schematics, you’ve had to hold the map of the compound and its heating system in your mind’s eye. After this much hobbling through the the maze of ducts, you can’t be sure you have any idea of where you are. Up ahead, the tunnel drops sharply: Is that the third drop you’ve come up to? Or the fourth?
You hear voices through the thrumming, and drop down to press your ear against a vent.
“Why would she come back?”
“She must want more money.”
Both voices, distorted by the wind through the shaft, sound strangely familiar.
“Well, she’s about to be disappointed. What do you suppose would be the best way to dispose of her?”
There’s a pause before the other voice responds: “She’s not stupid enough to think we’d let her live. She must think she has some leverage.”
“I don’t know if I…”
The voices fade away.
To go through the vent and follow the voices, look up the moon with giant craters named Valhalla and Asgard.
To continue through the duct, look up the moon where Verona Rupes, the Solar System’s largest cliff, is found.
>look up miranda
MIRANDAYou slide further down the vent. This drop is steeper than the others…
The air gets hotter, and hotter, and you realize you’ve made a terrible mistake.
THE END
This page has a note in red ink: i was wrong, THIS is TRULY weak
Dang.
>look up callisto
CALLISTOYou drop through the vent onto a plush carpet. If this is the “conference room” Zisa described, it’s a lot ritzier than the one where you used to get briefed by—
—Chief Taber is at the far end of the room, lit up from behind by a holographic fireplace.
You duck behind a tall chair and peer out for a better look. It really is Taber. And he’s talking to… You can’t believe your eyes.
The Chief of the Lunar Police Department is in this room having a conversation with Giyatin Hellestrios, the Governor of the Solar System.
“Every time I turn around there’s some new complication,” Hellestrios grumbles. “I still say we should just bust it open and be through with it.”
“The folks downstairs say it’s very close to hatching on its own.”
“They’ve been saying that for days!”
Taber massages the bridge of his nose.
If you think you should stay hidden, look up the darkest, spookiest moon of Uranus.
If you think this is the time to show yourself, [TO DO: figure out a good clue for Ariel]
Huh, guess it was all true.
>look up ariel
ARIELYou draw your sidearm and emerge from behind the chair. Taber regards you with confusion; then, he shakes his head in disappointment.
“Who are you?”
“Nobody,” says Taber. He draws his weapon and fires at your shoulder, almost shrugging. You fall to the floor.
“I’m assuming you didn’t come alone,” he says, walking over and disarming you. “Is she close?”
The door opens, and Zisa walks in to discover that her pincer maneuver has failed.
THE END
Another death, sadly.
>look up umbriel
UMBRIELYou hear a door open, and a third voice joins the conversation: “How are you, gentlemen?”
It’s Zisa. The gentlemen are not happy to see her.
“Miss Cylena. What a pleasant surprise. Please, have a seat.”
You see her barge across your field of view, ignoring the Governor’s invitation. “So, you keep it up here, huh? Don’t your scientists want to do more readings on it?”
“Please put that down.”
“Oh, come on. I know enough to be careful with it.”
Zisa steps back where you can see her: She’s got the Interplanetary Standard Reference in her hand. The simulated firelight lends it an odd sort of translucent cast.
“Hand it over, Zisa,” says Taber.
“I fully intend to,” she says. “But while I’m here, I wanted to ask: What’s your plan? What happens when it hatches?”
“We’ll make that decision after we’ve had time to study it. It may be in the everyone’s best interests to keep a secret, or it may not. We don’t know yet.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Hellestrios groans.
He snatches the Reference out of Zisa’s hands. Taber takes the opportunity to grapple Zisa.
“I know humanity better than anybody,” the governor spits. “I have to exert every atom in my brain on a daily basis to keep this worthless civilization from throwing itself off a cliff. You slugs can’t handle the introduction of another species. That’s why we have the Isolation Principle in the first place.”
Zisa and Taber seem a bit overwhelmed by all this.
If you think you should stay hidden, look up the moon of Saturn with a thick nitrogen-rich atmosphere.
If you think this is the time to show yourself, look up the moon of Saturn that features a large dark area named Cassini Regio.
>look up iapetus
IAPETUSYou draw your sidearm and emerge. Hellestrios clutches the Reference close to his chest, squinting in confusion. Taber, thinking a little faster, draws his own weapon, keeping Zisa pinned to his chest with his other arm.
“What do you think you’re doing here, Khama?”
Hellestrios barks at Taber: “Who cares? Just shoot him!”
To fire at Hellestrios, look up the largest moon in the Solar System.
To fire at Taber, look up the smoothest moon in the Solar System.
>look up europa
EUROPAYou fire your weapon at your boss. He recoils in pain, relinquishing his grip on Zisa. She leaps toward the Governor of the Solar System and pushes him to the floor, grabbing the Interplanetary Standard Reference out of his arms.
Hellestrios screams in shock, but his voice is drowned out by a high-pitched drone, like the resonance of glass. The Reference glows a bright green: It rises from Zisa’s hands…
…and uncoils, opens itself until it fills the room with its ribbons of turquoise light.
UNSATISFACTORY. it says, into your mind. WILL RECOMMEND RE-EVALUATION IN SIX HUNDRED TWENTY FIVE CYCLES.
Then the light collapses on itself and disappears.
Governor Hellestrios writhes on the floor, clutching his arm and moaning. Zisa picks herself up, dusts herself off. Taber falls into a chair and begins rubbing his temples.
Zisa catches your eye and motions toward the door, but you walk over to Taber first.
“Chief?”
He waves you away.
“Come on, Khama,” Zisa says, and the two of you hurry out of the room.
THE END
There’s a note on this page in red ink: oh wait no THIS is the good ending
Hooray! A good ending.
Unpursued paths:
To fire at Hellestrios, look up the largest moon in the Solar System.
If you think you should stay hidden, look up the moon of Saturn with a thick nitrogen-rich atmosphere.
If you want to insist on sticking together, look up the moon of Jupiter that helped Ole Rømer calculate the speed of light.
To say you prefer getting your hands dirty, look up the constellation that contains the Southern Cross.
I might pursue those tomorrow if nothing happens.
And I need to remember to read that other forum thread to get ideas for the last few badges!
5 Likes
Addendum: Looked up what to do with the rock:
>give rock to malcolm
Malcolm clicks his teeth and looks the rock over with interest. “I see,” he says. “Yeah, I can take care of this for you.”He snatches the rock in his little claws. “Gimme just a sec.”
He rolls the stone over the charred edge of the walkway and jumps down after it.
You hear a short struggle.
Then you hear a sharp crack.
“Heads up!”
Half of the stone flies up from the marsh and lands on the walkway. Malcolm climbs up after it, huffing and puffing.
“There you go,” he says, pushing the hemisphere into your hands. “I figured it was only right that I hold onto the other half. Because of fairness.”
You turn the cracked rock over in your hands: On the inside, it’s full of purple crystals.
>x geode
On the outside, it’s a bumpy rock. But the inside is a tiny cave of glittering amethyst.
4 Likes
Turns out there was more to be found after looking at hints, so have:
Day 8, part 3
The birdhouse GPS leads to the hilltop. I didn’t see any rope there, so I assumed it was a hint to climb the rock. Apparently this is the intended path, though:
>n
Hilltop
A great greenish boulder sits at the crest of the hill. You can get a good view of the pond from up here.
The slope directly to the west is too steep to navigate, but there are downhill paths to the south and northwest. Your cabin is off in the woods to the east.
You can see a ladder here.
>x rope
What are you talking about?
Oh, you know what? There actually is a rope hanging out of a tree just off the path here. Weird.
>take rope
That’s not something you can carry around.
>climb rope
When you take hold of the rope, you feel an odd mechanical resistance, like there’s a servo on the other end of it. A few feet of rope descends from the branches, revealing a laminated card affixed to the cord.
>x laminated
Just to be sure: Are you using a screen reader?
>no
All right. On this card is: another QR code! And it looks like this:
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
█ ▄▄▄ █ ▄ ▄▄▄ █ ▄▄▄ █
█ ███ █ ██▄█▀ █ ███ █
█▄▄▄▄▄█ ▄ ▄ ▄ █▄▄▄▄▄█
▄▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▀█▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄
█▄██▄ ▄▀▄ █ ▄▀ █▄▄█
█▄▀ ▄ ▄ ▄█ ▀ ▄▀█ █
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▀ █▄▄▄▀▀█ █▄█
█ ▄▄▄ █ ▄▄ ██▄█▄▀▀▀
█ ███ █ █▀█▄█▀▀▄ ▄▀▀
█▄▄▄▄▄█ █ ▄▀▀▀█ ▀▄
>scan laminated
You bring up the phone’s camera app and point it at the QR code. The phone immediately interprets the squares for you: “42.5125 -94.1953 PICNIC”
>x gps
The display now reads 42.51047, -94.19164.
>nw
Prairie Area
This piece of land is given over to native prairie, which consists of many different types of grass. The sun makes everything glow, and the gentle breeze makes all the grass sway cheerfully, and I feel a bit exposed out here where there are no walls or trees or anything.
Three paths through the prairie converge here, out of wooded areas in the southeast, south, and northwest. Just off the trail is a patch of bare earth, where the prairie grasses have failed to find purchase.
>nw
Gate
The path through the woods is interrupted by a tall chain link fence, rusted and grown over with ivy. The gate between the southeast and northwest sides of the fence is open.
>x gps
The display now reads 42.51181, -94.19350.
>open gate
That’s already open.
>nw
Lodge
A sleek building of deep cherry wood and pale stone lurks among the trees. Long, dark curtains hang in all the windows. The door is shut.
Well-tended paths lead southeast and west, and a less obvious trail curls behind the lodge toward the northeast.
The bluejay is still here, still watching.
>x gps
The display now reads 42.51250, -94.19436.
>w
Disc Golf Course
Looks like the coast is clear.
The path becomes less distinct as the trees thin out around you. Up ahead is a metal structure that must be a disc golf target. Looking out across the area, you can see three more. Trails lead north, east, south, and west.
>x picnic
Yeah, there’s a picnic table here, too. I didn’t think it was relevant.
It’s just a picnic table. There’s nobody sitting at it. There’s certainly nothing sitting on top of it.
>look under it
You bend down and inspect the underside of the picnic table, where, it turns out, there is a laminated card.
>x card
Hey: Are you using a screen reader?
>no
But isn’t it responsible of me to ask?
>yes
I know, right?
Here’s what’s printed on the card:
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
█ ▄▄▄ █ ▄ ▄▀█ █ ▄▄▄ █
█ ███ █ ██▄█▀ █ ███ █
█▄▄▄▄▄█ ▄ ▄▀█ █▄▄▄▄▄█
▄▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▀██ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄
█▀█▄█▄▄ █ ▄▀ ▄▀ █▄▄█
▄▀▀▄▀█▄▄ █▄▄█ ▀ ▄▀█ █
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▀ █ ▄▄▀▀█ █▄▀
█ ▄▄▄ █ █ ██▄▀▄▀▀▀
█ ███ █ █ █▄█▀▀ ▄▄▀
█▄▄▄▄▄█ █ ▀█▄▀▀▄ ▀▄
>photograph card
You bring up the phone’s camera app and point it at the QR code. The phone immediately interprets the squares for you: “42.5078 -94.1944 LIGHT”
Okay, feels like we’re getting somewhere!
This next one is far away, so I skip getting there:
>sw
Parking Lot
Half crumbling asphalt, half gravel, the parking lot sort of fades into a footpath in its west and northeast corners. Between the lot and the woods to the north there stands a wooden notice board, with a little roof that provides a tiny bit of shade.>x gps
The display now reads 42.50780, -94.19441.>x light
Yes, there’s a light pole here. But it’s daytime, so who cares?The base of the pole is protected by a metal cover thing.
>open cover
Which do you mean, the metal cover, the damp notebook, the logo, the scrapbook, or the photo album?>metal
You open the metal cover, revealing a laminated card.>photograph card
You bring up the phone’s camera app and point it at the QR code. The phone immediately interprets the squares for you: “42.5111 -94.1935 BOX”
The finale takes us out into the pond:
>e
You dip your paddle and propel yourself across the water.Pond (in the canoe)
Tall grasses crowd the eastern shore, their florets waving over your head. To the north is impenetrable forest.>x gps
The display now reads 42.51113, -94.19350.>x box
(the tackle box)
What are you talking about? We’re in the middle of the pond!Well, we’re near the edge of the pond. But still! There’s nothing out here!
Actually, I can kind of see something through the water over there…
It looks like it might be a red tackle box.
>open box
(the tackle box)
The handle of the box is too far down to reach with your human arm, but with the grabber claw, you can grab it easily. You pull up the tackle box—only to discover that it is connected by a heavy chain to something the bottom of the pond. Good grief. I know geocachers hate it when their caches get removed, but this seems like overkill.There’s enough slack on the chain to get the box into the canoe, though. You open it up, revealing: A bunch of pond water.
At the bottom of the pond water is a badge shaped like a skeletal fish. You take it, and then you return the tackle box to the depths.
>x fish
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the shape of a skeletal fish with a mischievous grin. The originators of this badge are in no way affiliated with the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts.>put it on jacket
You pin the fish skeleton badge to your jacket.
On a final note, I saw a hint about looking at the grave (which mentions coneflowers) and putting one on there, so I did that, but there were no new special messages. We’ll see what tomorrow holds… I now have thirteen badges. If the crows, grave, and zuleika each give me one, then I’ll only lack one more badge.
6 Likes
Day 9
I was actually thinking about this game at 3 am last night, after reading in another thread how Ryan said that a lot of the locations were designed to recreate Tarot cards. You can actually, he said, use the tarot names to refer to the objects. So I’m going to try that out a bit today before doing the usual things.
I have a theory on tarot references. First, a sidenote not pertinent to the game. It’s long and just something I was thinking about but literally has nothing to do with the game:
Tarot and religion
Growing up, Tarot and occult practices in general were frowned upon. In my grandparent’s time, our church’s leaders had even frowned on standard playing cards due to the association with poker, so in Utah games like Rook or Uno with alternative decks were really popular.
As I got older, I read the bible numerous times, as well as the extra scriptures my church has (Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price). It’s shocking just how often divination practices are condemned in all of them. You can debate a lot of things about the Bible’s intent, but it’s hard to deny after reading it that trying to communicate with the dead or predict the future through occult memes is considered evil (like Ezekiel 13). On the other hand, using random chance to understand God’s will is okay (drawing lots, for instance).
At that young age, I assumed it was because tarot was evil and doing it would get you possessed.
As I got older, I was struck by a different thought. In my church, we believe freedom to choose is really important. We think everyone existed as angels basically before they were born, and Satan was just one of us. He thought God letting people choose evil was stupid and wanted to be in charge of a new plan where everyone is forced to be good and go to heaven (kind of like that atheism argument where 'if god allows evil to exist, he is not all-powerful). But God said that if people can’t choose between good and evil then being good is meaningless, and he’d take care of all the bad effects of people’s choices through Christ making up for it.
Anyway, it makes sense from this perspective why astrology, tarot, and other divination methods would be associated with the devil. They all have in common the idea that our fate or destiny is not our own, and that we are under the influence of the stars or the cards. Like Caesar said, “The fault, dear Brutus , is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Also, if God is real, his message is the most important, so other people making their own messages and rules for living life to tell others is one of the worst things you can do.
What is the point of this? The point is, in my childhood understanding, I avoided things like tarot symbolism in media because I felt like it was intrinsically evil. Now, I don’t mind it, since I don’t think it’s evil in its nature, just in actually believing in it and using it.
The media I most strongly associate with Tarot is part 3 of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures, where most of the enemies correspond to Tarot cards (including the famous Star Platinum). Adventure Time also did it with the 5 vampires in one of the later seasons. There’s some other media I consumed in my youth that was heavily tarot-themed but I don’t remember what.
Okay, my idea is that a lot of the inexplicable things in the game that didn’t seem directly connected to the story make sense as tarot references.
-The stakes and pins or whatever marking the edge of boundaries: these could be ‘wands’ cards
-The big gun: ace of swords? or wands?
-The lamp that doesn’t do anything: the sun? moon? star?
-the jungle gym: hanged man? (world upside down)
-Harlan: the hermit?
-The se cabin with the couple: the lovers?
-merry go round: wheel of fortune
-the skeleton: death
-Erica: the empress, or the devil (no, wait–)
-Morreg Crecht : the devil
-Head of the fly fishing society: the hierophant
-skylight/roof or hilltop: the tower
Okay, I’ll look closer at the other cards now.
Hmm, maybe harlan is the magician. Who is the fool? Us? Is anita the fool, or the high priestess? What about zuleika and Malcolm?
the canoe (broken or otherwise) could be the chariot.
Ryan said in his post that some things are coded to respond to their name, so I’ll try that out. He also said that a lot of things are made to look like the typical representation of that card, which I’m not familiar with.
I’m not sure if any locations would represent ‘cups’.
Anyway, let’s try reading the journal and cleaning the beach and checking on the status of our badges.
e
Cemetery
An ancient sundial holds court over a collection of sun-bleached gravestones. The steel gate in the entrance to the west creaks quietly.Turtle is here, too.
On the granite slab is a Rainbow Trout Badge.
As promised, we have our badge.
x rainbow
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of an unflappable rainbow trout. It is awarded to the angler who submits the scariest campfire story to the Spookenfest that the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts organizes on the last weekend in September.take it
Taken.
Nice.
Reading the journal:
The notebook’s cover is marred by water damage, and the words “DEACONS - MORRECHT CREGG,” written in marker, have bled down the page. The whole volume is kind of damp and smells faintly of rot, but all the pages with anything written on them seem dry enough to read.
For the first time, it says 'all the pages with anything written on them seem dry enough to read".
g
(the damp notebook)
December 20 - Things worked out such that I’m back in Arizona for Christmas, and probably most of the winter. Been spending a lot of time with my brother. He doesn’t get very excited about cryptozoology, so I let him go on about his bike shop. They’ve been doing well, and his wife wants him to open a second location in Tempe. He said he wasn’t sure it was worth the risk. I don’t know if that’s exactly what he said to her, but whatever he said got her riled up.Lisa usually knows what she’s talking about, though. And Alan shouldn’t be worrying about taking risks. He’s not that much older than I am.
Meanwhile I feel guilty all the time because I’m making no progress in my research, even though there’s no progress I can make down here. I used to be so good at being lazy.
It looks like the next part has dried out enough that you can read it safely.
g
(the damp notebook)
February 1, 2017: I SHOULD NOT HAVE COME BACK TO IOWA SO SOON. It’s so cold. I never thought America could be this cold. I can’t handle weather like this. My body has no frame of reference for the temperatures that it’s being made to endure. It must be so confused.I’ll be okay.
Jewel Pond is closed for the season, not that I was going to go searching for the Morrecht Cregg in this weather regardless. From what I hear, the pond is frozen under a foot or two of snow. But I’ll go back as soon as it’s thawed. I’ve been careful for too long—It’s time to get some real work done.
And that’s it. I’m surprised; I thought there’d be some smoking gun at the end.
No Zuleika today, unfortunately.
nw
Broken Bridge
A stream flows northeast past this spot, toward the pond. It is wide, and slow, and deep. Tiny bugs are skating across its surface. And the bridge joining its northwest and southeast banks has fallen apart.Three stakes are stuck in the ground on this side of the stream.
x wands
Three wooden poles are sticking straight up out of the earth. They’re each a few inches wide and maybe seven feet tall. I don’t know what they’re for.
Ah, they are wands, just as I thought.
The woman under the footbrdige is described as holding a moon-shaped harp. “Moon” works as a synonym.
The throne and oak, someone mentioned, could fit in with The Emperor.
Observatory could be ‘star’.
BTW I found the crows again, and I gave them peanuts yesterday, but no badge:
Playground
This playground is all blackened steel, baking in the afternoon heat: a jungle gym, a swing set, and a merry-go-round. A few dozen crows have claimed the equipment, perching on any perchable surface.The play area was originally filled only with pebbles, but purplish-green weeds have grown in over the sides and up from underneath.
From here, the trail leads south, into denser woods, and to the northeast, where the trees begin to thin out.
x weeds
The pebbles are all black and gray. They used to be confined to a specific playground area, but they’ve spilled out into the surrounding grass, even as weeds have grown in to overcome the rocks. But everything we see is just atoms; any distinction we draw between “separate objects” is merely a convenient formalism.x crows
The crows sit on the playground equipment, occasionally glancing at you and then glancing away, occasionally cawing to each other about nothing(?). They don’t seem to mind that you’re here; they don’t seem to have anything important to do today.
Apparently if you give them peanuts one day they’ll give you a badge the next, but it hasn’t happened yet.
As expected, the creek is the nine of wands:
Creek
A narrow, twisting creek slithers through the woods, drawing a tortuous border between the northeast and southwest. On the far side, nine wooden posts have been hammered into the ground.
x wands
The posts are hammered into the ground in a straight-ish line, as if someone had just started putting up a fence. But why bother, when you have the creek right here?
Let’s clean trash during our Tarot hunt:
Beach
A path out of the woods to the west opens up on an expanse of gray sand, descending bumpily into the pond to the east. Off to the side, a pair of wooden poles stick out of the beach, about 36 feet apart. A wooden launch is built into the shoreline, half-swallowed by the sand.There’s still some trash here and there. It’s not what I would call pretty, but it’s not horrendous.
clean trash
Okay, home stretch. Here’s a bag. There’s your grabber claw. Let’s go.You grab a red Solo cup and stuff it into your bag.
You grab another red Solo cup and stuff it into your bag.
According to my day planner, after basically abandoning the project for two years, I returned to work on Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing on March 24, 2019. I got going really fast: In the next week I did the basic implementation for most of the rooms on the east side of the pond. In April, I was already working on the south side.
You grab a brown styrofoam cup and stuff it into your bag.
In May, I spent a little time in Spokane, Washington. It looks like while I was there I worked on the bird sanctuary and the observatory.
Then—Hey, why’d you stop? Your bag’s not full.
Oh. Wow.
The beach is clean! You cleaned up all of the beach!
It looks great! Awesome job!
Awesome! And that’s interesting that it took like a week per quadrant.
l
Beach
A path out of the woods to the west opens up on an expanse of gray sand, descending bumpily into the pond to the east. Off to the side, a pair of wooden poles stick out of the beach, about 36 feet apart. A wooden launch is built into the shoreline, half-swallowed by the sand.
There’s not a scrap of litter to be seen. Anyone who walked by would think the beach has always looked like this.
There’s an understuffed bag of garbage here, too.
turn on detector
You activate the metal detector, and it peeps a hello.
wave detector
Slowly you pass the metal detector’s sensor ring over the pristine beach. Back and forth. Slowly you walk, from the shoreline to the woodline to the shoreline. Back and forth. Silence.
The machine chirps.
You kick at the sand. Nothing turns up.
You wave the sensor even still more slowly until you have pinpointed the location of something metallic. With your hands you push more sand aside, but you don’t reveal anything.
At least now there’s a hole in the sand, so you know where to dig.
dig
You thrust your shovel into your hand-dug hole and get to work.
The sand is surprisingly deep!
But it is sand, and not hard-packed soil, so I guess it’s not as tough a job as it could be.
Ting! The shovel connects with the piece of metal you detected. You lean down, and fish out: A scuffed steel key.
Then you responsibly fill in the hole you dug.
take steel key
You already have that.
x it
The key is scuffed from spending however long buried in the sand, but you can still make out the number 5482436 etched on it surface.
Whoa! Didn’t think we’d get a new key this late in the game.
What do the key numbers mean?
Malcolm doesn’t respond to showing or asking about the key, or about the tarot cards.
Anyway, I remember people saying you can never unlock the desk, so let’s try unlocking the lockbox:
Inside the Cabin
A shaft of sunlight from the doorway cuts through the dust, failing to illuminate most of the space. To one side is a lounge area with couches and a coffee table; on the other is a spacious kitchen. The two wings of the lodge are divided by a wide staircase that ascends into darkness.
unlock lockbox with key
Which do you mean, the steel key, the dirty key, the shiny key, or the brass key?
steel
You unlock the lockbox.
I wonder what’s inside?
open lockbox
You open the lockbox, revealing a Steelhead Badge.
x steelhead
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a stoic steelhead trout. The Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts never got the opportunity to award it to anyone.
take it
Taken.
Okay, then. I now have 15 badges and I know of two more: giving Zuleika the finished birdwatching guide, and the crow badge. Others have said there are 17 badges. So, we are essentially done with the game. Something’s gone wrong with me feeding peanuts to the crows, so I may not be able to get that one, but the mystery seems solved.
You can’t refer to the gun in the Lodge as a sword or wand, so I guess there goes that theory.
Interesting overall.
Okay! So I guess I’ll just play until Zuleika comes back and stop.
I still don’t know what the key’s numbers are for or which things belong to which tarot card, but I feel like I am now essentially done with the game. I’ll maybe collect the info about each person when I do my final post tomorrow or whenever Zuleika comes back. Fun!
4 Likes
Congrats on (almost) finishing! The tarot stuff is interesting, I didn’t pick up on it at all but it does make sense of some ifd details. It occurs to me that a scheme like this can be helpful with promoting your brain to include non-obvious scenery or puzzles that can really enrich a game, so I’ll need to keep this idea in my toolbox.
It would be fun to try to do a more comprehensive mapping - I’ll say that since my understanding is the fool is specifically someone who waltzes into danger without thinking of the consequences, Deacon (the cryptozoologist) might be a good candidate.
5 Likes
I mean, we found the costume, right? I figure that’s as much of a smoking gun as there could be.
Also idealism and spontaneity in the face of cruel, harsh reality, right? Definitely seems to fit him.
Also, fun fact: tarot cards weren’t originally occult at all. The reason for the four numbered suits (the Minor Arcana), plus a numbered trump suit (the Major Arcana), plus a joker (the Fool), was because it was designed for trick-taking games like modern Hearts or Bridge. It’s really a historical accident that the French suits (hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds) won out over Spanish suits (cups, swords, rods, coins) in the English-speaking world, and now the Spanish ones are only seen in tarot.
But whenever humans get access to some form of randomness, they’ll invent ways to use it for divination—the ancient Greeks, for example, liked rolling on a D&D-style d20 table to get a fortune, known as an “alphabet oracle”—and after French-style playing cards took over the industry, people started attaching occult meanings to the older Spanish-style cards and creating decks with elaborate occult illustrations for fortune-telling. So now tarot cards are used almost exclusively for divination, and French-style cards are used for card games instead.
But in theory, you can still play trick-taking games with a tarot deck if you want, or use a French-style deck for divination! You just won’t get the pretty illustrations (which are definitely occult in origin).
7 Likes
I’ve been reading some of the other threads on the forum, and apparently:
3 Likes
Oh, that makes sense! A lot of this game reminds me of Ascent of the Gothic Tower.
Day 10
Only two things left to do to get badges.
Fortunately…
>sw
Parking Lot
Half crumbling asphalt, half gravel, the parking lot sort of fades into a footpath in its west and northeast corners. Between the lot and the woods to the north there stands a wooden notice board, with a little roof that provides a tiny bit of shade.There’s a black pickup parked here.
Zuleika is here!
>show mask to zuleika
She waves as you approach.Zuleika glances down at your bulky waders but makes no comment.
Zuleika regards the mask suspiciously. Her lip curls. Her nose scrunches up.
“Sorry, I just remembered something unpleasant. From seven or eight years ago. Really weird stuff. Stuff I don’t like to remember.”
Then the cloud passes from her face. “It all worked out fine, though. Don’t worry.”
Taco fiction reference! (there are some weirdos wearing animals masks)
>show muskellunge to zuleika
She valiantly avoids noticing the ridiculous waders you’re wearing.(first taking the Muskellunge Badge)
Taken.You hand Zuleika your Muskellunge Badge and tell her how you found it. She gets weirdly pensive.
“Tunnels,” she says. “Secret passages,” she mutters. “Hmm.”
She hands the badge back to you. “Please be careful with yourself, okay? Don’t let your nose for adventure write a check that your butt can’t cash.”
>show gloves to zuleika
She valiantly avoids noticing the ridiculous waders you’re wearing.“For a Halloween costume?” asks Zuleika. You are forced to admit that the provenance of these furry gloves is somewhat less conventional.
On to the finale:
>show guide to zuleika
She valiantly avoids noticing the ridiculous waders you’re wearing.You present Zuleika with your birdwatching guide, and she flips it open to evaluate your checklist.
Her eyes go wide. “Wow!” she says.
She nods silently for a moment. Then she hands you your book. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
She jogs out of the gazebo, over to the east—toward the parking lot.
You stand alone outside the gazebo.
The wind blows through the trees.
You hear footsteps.
Zuleika rushes back down the path, back into the gazebo.
“Here!” she says. “I found this a long time ago. It’s the award the Courtney Society of Birders used to give to, I don’t know, Master Birdwatchers. So, you clearly deserve it more than I do.”
She presses a pewter feather into your hands.
Woohoo!
I should note that the game uses ‘press any key’ several times during this to indicate waiting. This has happened several times before, both with wasps and when cleaning up trash, I just haven’t mentioned it. Ryan uses it a lot in his games, and I think it works well.
There is no badge from the crows. I fed them peanuts again today after looking at both playgrounds.
Since I’m waiting on that, I’ll hold off on doing any finale write up. See you tomorrow!
4 Likes
Day 10, part 2
On a hunch, I decided to try visiting the playground later in the same day instead of waiting a day to check on the crows.
It worked!
>s
Playground
A little playground has been built on the edge of the pond: A swing set, a slide, and a miniature rock climbing wall.The path winds the long way around the play area; it heads north to the jetty and southwest to a little footbridge.
You can see a Northern Pike Badge here.
>take badge
Taken.>x it
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a smug-looking pike. It is awarded to anglers after one year of active membership in the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts.
>i
You are carrying:
your red jacket (being worn)
seventeen badges:
a Northern Pike Badge
a pewter feather
a Steelhead Badge
a Rainbow Trout Badge
a fish skeleton badge
a Muskellunge Badge
a Mako Badge
a Crappie Badge
a Bluegill Badge
a Salmon Badge
a Smallmouth Bass Badge
a Bonefish Badge
a Largemouth Bass Badge
a Dolly Varden Badge
a Carp Badge
a Walleye Badge
a Brown Trout Badge
some waders (being worn)
It’s all over! I’ll attempt a lore summary post tomorrow.
What a feeling! I thought I’d never feel like I experienced enough of the game to review it. But now, it’s done!
11 Likes
Final plot analysis:
I’m going to search through this post and copy everything we know about different people.
Ourselves
You’re a very patient person. Very forgiving. There’s a certain enchantingness about you. And I can tell that you’re open-minded, which is a quality I value highly in text adventure players.
But I can sense that you have a dark side. That’s okay. I understand that people are complicated. You don’t have to hide your complicatedness from me. Our perspectives may be different, but that’s not a bad thing. It’ll probably turn out to be a good thing, in the scheme of things. I think our skill sets will complement each other nicely going forward.
This is based on our answers to the ‘x me’ quiz, but it points out that my character and the narrator are not the same person. The narrator seems to be Ryan himself, judging from the notebook on the beach and other non-diegetic comments. That explains why, when I decided I liked bugs, the game still reacted to them.
Our certificate of being a member of the fly-fishing association is fake.
Zuleika asks us about ourselves:
"What brings you to the Jewel Pond Recreation Area?”
Should we tell her about the fly fishing?
>tell woman about fishing
Please answer yes or no.> yes
You explain that you’re here to do some authentic fly fishing.“Aha. I should have guessed,” she says, glancing at your fishing rod. “Good luck! But don’t be too mean to those poor fish.”
Overall, the player seems to be an outsider looking in.
Anita Stapella
The note in the NW cabin says that Anita is bringing back the stuff she borrowed and has a brass key. So presumably the things in the SW shed are items that she is returning to the association. If I recall, that includes a lamp, a cooler, peanuts, a nightstand, beekeeper hat, and sunglasses and a scrapbook.
Anita mentions having a dog Tortus which she buried (whose grave we find in the middle of the little pool of water). Anita says that she might not come back, and that Harlan might not either. The line " If this note is the last time you ever hear from me, I want to thank you for everything. You did a good job." makes me feel like they were close, so I suspect she is the red writing on the CYOA story.
The canoe shed has a paddle in it with Anita’s initials:
An aluminum canoe paddle with a rubber grip. The sticker on the shaft has the initials A.S. scrawled on it.
Does this mean Anita had our cabin and shed, and only put stuff in the SW shed to return it to Harlan, and left a note in Harlan’s NW cabin?
But then the photo album was also found in the east shed, and that goes back to 1968, while I remember Anita as being younger.
Actually, we know for sure. The ‘Morrecht Cregg’ guy (hopefully I’ll recall his name as we go) said about her:
- Anita, who’s finishing up her junior year of high school. In contrast to Harlan, she was unsettlingly friendly in a GENUINE way. But, of everyone I met, she actually wanted to talk about the Morrecht Cregg. So now my problem was, how do I conduct a suitably detailed interview with a teenager without also coming off as a creep?
Zuleika says about her:
Zuleika leans against the railing. "When I first started coming here, I would run into this girl sometimes. She had just gotten out of high school. She was plenty friendly, but I mostly left her alone. She clearly was having fun by herself.
“I think… I think she didn’t like seeing me around. When you’ve got your own secret place, you don’t want to share it with some random lady. And I kind of got the feeling…”
She grits her teeth. “It’s a stupid thing to say. But what are you gonna do? Judge me? I got the feeling that I reminded her of herself. We kind of had the same energy. And, when you’re right out of high school, you don’t want to hang around a woman in her thirties who has the same energy as you. The horror of recognition. But, whatever the reason was, she stopped coming around here. That was last summer…”
She also says Anita was the one to hide the lunchbox and seemed pleased with herself for doing so.
That badge was the bonefish badge for the winner of the tetrathlon (canoeing, running, swimming, canoeing).
Okay, and looking at the CYOA path, it’s clear Anita was the recipient:
THE ISOLATION PRINCIPLE
A Science Fiction
Choosable Path
Edutainmentby Harlan Waverly
Beneath this is a note written in black ink: Anita - to start out, look up the page labeled MOON.
Anita’s scrapbook is of course a trove of information. It is a college assignment that her teacher did not enjoy.
It shows her love for her dog (she writes down tons of info and its vital statistics). It describes her history with the fly fishing community:
“On my eleventh birthday I became a member of the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts, because my dad made me. It turned out that I loved fly fishing, so I decided not to quit. The association president, Noah Elsworth, was the kindest non-dog I’ve ever met. In 2014 he made me the Association Events Coordinator, because he knew it would look good on college applications. Mr. Elsworth passed away in 2016."
She makes up fake quotes and misattributes real ones. She mentions seeing the Morrech Cregg twice, once during a potluck and once when hiking. She describes hating Erica Nailer. She also is a photographer.
She was in state academic decathlon (I did that too! First place in the state by a margin of 1000 points out of 10,000!). She doesn’t like sharing a room with the other girls, which I think fits in with Zuleika saying Anita likes to have her own privacy. She has a crush on at least one boy.
Then it describes Tortus’s death and discovery by Harlan, with the dog killed by a hawk (likely). At the end, she graduated.
Jack also wrote about Anita at a storytelling competition:
But did I win? No. Who did win, you ask? ANITA STAPELLA. Not because her story was scary, but because it was FUNNY. The voters ignored the premise of the competition and awarded the prize to probably the LEAST scary story of the evening.
Anita is a good kid. I don’t want to resent her. That’s what’s so helpful about journaling. I can work through all my feelings without anyone finding out how jealous I am of a teenager.
It’s funny now that Ryan has since made a lot of Halloween storytelling games.
Jack also got dragged into Anita’s scheme to give Harlan a signed autograph of a woman he likes as a joke, but Harlan never says anything about it. It seems like Anita often has grand schemes that don’t go over as well as she’d like.
Jack Deacons
We can assume that Jack is the skeleton, since he is holding a badge meant for visitors from far away.
He came to the pond on May 19, 2016.
From the journal, jack came to the pond just to research the Morrecht Cregg. He stays at cheap hotels, so we can assume he has little money, and seems to be at least a bit socially anxious, as his journal frequently comments on worries about what people think of him.
He was inducted into the fly fishing society on June 7, although he didn’t ask to be joined. He was give a certificate and a pin (likely the one we found on his body).
He was warned off for getting close to Erica Nailer’s side of the pond. Nevertheless, he visited there and found a piece of paper detailing the code to get to Erica’s lair. He has a brother named Alan whose wife is Lisa. He left the pond and came back later after winter was over. Then died.
I don’t know that I ever asked Zuleika about him or showed him the journal.
Noah Elsworth and Cynthia
“ELSWORTH” is the name in large letters at the center of the slab. On the left is “CYNTHIA IRENE,” 1930-1998. On the right is “NOAH HENRY,” 1927-2016.
Cynthia’s side of the stone is engraved with a clip art image of a bird; Noah’s, with a flower.
On the granite slab is a pocket-sized book.
Ah, I never looked at the names before. So Noah is the super-helpful ghost guy! He gives us the guide (or maybe his wife Cynthia does?), gives us the badge when we drop off a flower, etc. Wonderful.
The journal says this about Noah:
- Noah, the club’s founder and president, very lively for an 89-year-old. He says he plans to remain president until he kicks the bucket. When I asked about the Morrecht Cregg, he immediately assumed a hokey Wise Old Man persona and started in on the typical unverifiable half-details. A great entertainer and undoubtedly a pillar of the community, but not very useful as an informant.
89? Makes sense that he died. I’ve known a lot of 89 year olds and at that point you read the newspaper every day to see which of your old friends and classmates you’ve outlived.
I thought maybe Cynthia could be the ‘club secretary’ mentioned in the journal but it would be add for Jack to be hitting on her if she was in her 80s (although I don’t judge! My worst ‘hear me out’ is Nancy Pelosi).
Noah inducted Jack into the Fly Fishing society, even though he didn’t ask for it.
Anita said about him:
The association president, Noah Elsworth, was the kindest non-dog I’ve ever met.
The cabin is definitely the Elsworth’s:
Years of neglect have allowed black mildew to cover the logs, except in a few places where the original golden lumber shows through. But the construction shows an attention to detail and a care for appearances that your own cabin lacks. For one thing, it’s considerably less splintery.
Over the door is a wooden placard with the name “Elsworth” burnt into it. The door itself is open.
This explains the two deck chairs and the two nighstands and the framed photo:
The photo depicts a party on the beach, crowded with folks eating and chatting and playing volleyball. Only two people have noticed the camera: The bearded gentleman and his dark-haired wife. Each gives you a private little wave.
Jewel Pond is in the background, glittering in the evening sun.
More little details about them:
>x bed
A double bed, covered in an old quilt and a thick layer of dust.
>x quilt
I know a little about quilts, so I can identify this pattern as a double wedding ring. Not one of the easier ones!
>enter bed
The prospect feels extremely disrespectful for some reason. That’s just my impression; I’m not trying to tell you how you feel. But I am telling you that you don’t get to get in the bed.
The photo album must be his. It shows a bunch of people kneeling around the Fly Fishing stone (although the stone commemorates the date of 1968, the photo was in 1973, so maybe once it took off they went back and memorialized it?). If he was 89 in 2016, that would make him 38 back then (wow, that’s close to my age, nice to think I could be helping people and growing as a person 51 years in the future).
The album also shows him and his wife on the deck, and him with a boy in 1982. In 1986 It shows the bearded man giving a trophy to three younger kids. The 1990 picture is torn out but it has red carpeting in int, suggesting Erica’s lodge. In 1996, he cleans up trash. In 1999 there is a wetlands party with the happy bearded man. In 2005 there is a bonfire with a little girl holding a necklace trying not to lose it. Anita? With a badge? She joined the fly fishing group as a pre-teen and was in college in 2016 so it would fit.
A 2010 photo, though, shows a little girl with a dog and the girl is 11, so maybe Anita was 6 in 2005 and didn’t go to college until 2019 (since Noah’s cabin shows years of neglect and he died in 2016). The 2016 photo shows Noah giving a younger man a certificate. My guess is it’s Jack, who got inducted.
This suggests that Noah owns the eastern shed. Also, Malcolm says about him:
The boss of the fly fishers had a cabin south of the pond. Pretty nice place. Nobody hangs out there anymore, though. It’s too spooky. Still pretty nice, but spooky
Harlan
We saw earlier that Harlan took over the Fly Fishing presidency after Noah died. He also liked Rosario Dawson, but seems to be a bit awkward in social situations.
He owns the NW cabin, and hasn’t been there in a very long time. The room is dusty, and the note from Anita was never picked up. It seems he didn’t want to return either after what Erica did to the dog.
He has a certificate showing he is president:
This document declares that Harlan Waverly is the president of the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts, effective July 18, 2016.
Harlan is a renaissance man of sorts:
- Harlan, a guy about my age. Clearly trying hard to be friendly, in a way that didn’t sit well with me (the horror of recognition). But we had a good conversation, up until I revealed that I’m a cryptozoologist, at which point he discovered a reason to talk to someone else. Later on I found out he’s a scientific type, an amateur astronomer and local historian. Probably the most qualified person around for assisting with my research, and probably the least likely to take me seriously.
If he has an observatory as an amateur, he’s probably wealthy.
Harlan wants other people to learn about astronomy, and made the Edutainment CYOA with Anita’s help.
Erica Nailer
Erica is crazy. She hunts animals (see the stuffed animals in the lodge). She has a lot of guns, including illegal ones, and keeps a snake (enjoys the predator association?). Maybe that’s why vultures hang out by her gate (which seems to have lost its no-trespassing sign). Her phone was active in her house.
Erica threw away her Fly Fishing certificate (which is how we got ours):
>search trash
Are you really going to poke around in the garbage? Without any gloves, even?Well, near the top there’s a likely-looking envelope. You can pick that up without being too disgusting.
Oh, it’s wet. I hate this.
Inside the envelope are a little pin and a (mercifully dry) piece of certificate paper. You can hold onto those, and I’ll dispose of the envelope.
read paper
This document certifies that someone named Erica Nailer is a bona fide member of the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts. It bears the signatures of the association president and a witness.But Erica threw this document away, for whatever reason, so why don’t we put your name on it instead?
She also threw away the Walleye badge, given to new members.
She burned down the sanctuary. In fact, she burned a lot of things. She tried to burn the code to her secret lair, and burned the sanctuary key, which Zuleika says when we show it to her:
“The fire pit up there?” She points northward. “That’s Erica Nailer’s property. Why would she try to burn this key? Why would she have it in the first place?”
Malcolm mentions the burning:
Yeah, someone arsoned the bridge thing. But I guess it got put out before it burned all the way down. There used to be like a, lookout, I guess you’d call it, just past here.” He indicates an area floating in space. “They’d have parties and stuff. I think the fly fishing guys would induct new members here. Or at the cabin.” He motions to the east.
Anita said about her:
“Erica Nailer is a hideous old crone who owns the land on the north side of Jewel Pond. She hates the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts for no reason whatsoever, but someday she’ll get too old to go on harassing us"
We also know that Erica had someone construct the tunnel between her shed and the lodge. Since we see the Morrecht in 2013 in Jack’s notes, that must be the time she started doing it. Since it mutilated animals, she must have done it.
Here’s the note from the tunnel constructor:
Dear Grandma:
NONE OF THIS IS SAFE AT ALL. THERE IS NO EMERGENCY STOP SYSTEM. If you aren’t careful with this equipment, it will SLICE YOU IN HALF.
By signing this agreement, you release me, Griffin Nailer, from all associated liability, in perpetuity, no matter what. It is a requirement of this agreement that a signed copy of the agreement be posted within 50 feet of the death trap at all times.
Sincerely,
GriffinAn illegible scrawl with the initials “E. N.” is signed below.
I guess this show’s that Erica is old. Her portrait didn’t specify:
A woman stands in a vineyard, fondling a clump of grapes possessively. On her other hand, a rust-colored hawk perches on a leather glove. Her dress flows in copious folds to the ground, where an inattentive and vulnerable snail creeps by.
She regards you with pursed lips and arched eyebrows. Despite the power of her position and the contempt in her expression, the shadows beneath her eyes betray deep weariness.
Why the snail?
Zuleika says about her:
She takes a deep breath. “All I know is what I’ve heard. But what I’ve heard is, she owns the land on the north side of the pond. She has paranoid delusions about people trespassing on her land. Probably people really do trespass on her land, but I’m saying I’ve heard that she also has paranoid delusions. Persecution complex. So she does a lot of complaining and sending angry letters, and—Well, I’ve heard about her doing nastier stuff, but since this is all hearsay I probably shouldn’t get into any details.”
She looks around guiltily. “Look, I shouldn’t be saying anything at all. I’m not a mental health professional, so nothing I say should be construed as a diagnosis. Also, this is all off the record, so you better not quote me in anything. I was never here.”
She killed Jack Deacons and kept the coordinates.
Her shed was large and had shears and claws, showing she tended to some kind of plants. Speaking of which, I wonder who is tending the garden?
Her placards are all ‘wine mom’ style, like ‘Wine at lunch is not a crime’, ‘can’t fix stupid’, and ‘v is for vodka’.
BTW, why is Erica’s certificate currently in the trash at the sanctuary? Has it not been taken out for years? It was on the top, too, and wet). And her phone is still around. Weird.
Club secretary
Jack says about her:
- The club secretary, whose name I missed. She said she worked at the Courtney public library, and I went into a fugue state asking about their resources and facilities. I was asking purely out of self-interest, but I think she must have thought I was just being polite. Or trying to hit on her? I gave her my contact information. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.
and later:
I told the association secretary about this and she explained that the woman who owns the land north of the pond is, in her words, a “nutbag” who constantly complains about fishing enthusiasts trespassing on her property, whether or not anyone really does any trespassing. I don’t want to cause any trouble, and like I said: I wasn’t even planning on going there in the first place.
Malcolm
Malcolm is from a different game. He’s thirsty, and he has a crappie badge for catching a crappie. He’s been around long enough to know the association members.
Zuleika
Zuleika is also from a different game (Taco Fiction). She says:
“Nice to meet you. My name’s Zuleika. I come up here a couple times a week to…”
Big sigh. “To relax. What about you? What brings you to the Jewel Pond Recreation Area?”
She was friends with Anita. She spent time under the poetic willow tree and lost her earring, and searched for it with a metal detector. She’s a star trek nerd and knows about Erica Nailer. She’s spent time with Anita. I assumed at one point that she had a mild crush on Anita but there is a moderate size age gap, so maybe it’s just friendship or maybe that’s why she feels awkward.
Remaining crumbs
Walking around the area to see what I haven’t connected yet, I wonder about the junkyard. It’s Erica’s, right? She seems so clean. Why would she…
Wait, the Ford Fiesta in the junkyard had Jack Deacon’s journal in it.
The murdered Jack Deacons.
Well, I guess she’s hiding the evidence.
The playgrounds are odd. Are they maintained by the community? Are we near civilization? There’s a park in the middle of my suburb with a pond that has houses all around it. Is it like that, or more like a ‘drive 30 minutes into the forest’ kind of place? The crossroads suggest civilization isn’t far off:
Crossroads
Three different ley lines meet here: A trail, indistinct but uncommonly straight, running north and south through the woods; a similar trail running east and west; and a broad, grassy road to the southwest, from which all the trees have been cleared away, replaced by a row of utility poles. The electromagnetic influence conveyed by their wires, drawn to the corporeal plane by the intersection of cardinal energies below, is physicalized at the point of convergence in the form of a decrepit phone booth.A cold, wet wind swirls around the booth, caught in an eddy of invisible force.
sw
The road to the southwest is not a road for us to travel. It is a road for electrical impulses, and for geomystical ley line energies.
I’m going to do one more post detailing where all the badges were and speculating who they belonged to.
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Badges
This is the list of badges in the order I got them, and where I found them (I actually wrote this list from the bottom up so apologies if it reads non-linearly):
Brown Trout Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a brown trout. It is awarded to anglers who successfully invite a new member into the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts.
Found on Tortus’s grave south of the pool, accessible by wearing the waders from the junkyard miscellaneous pile.
Must be Anita’s, I presume, or left here by Noah or Harlan in memory of Tortus if the badge was for inviting Anita.
Walleye Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the shape of an eager-looking walleye. It’s presented to each angler who joins the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts as part of the induction ceremony.
So everyone has one of these. This was thrown way in the trash can by Erica Nailer in front of the sanctuary (accessible with the waders from the junkyard miscellaneous pile). Zuleika said that Anita had one (Zuleika, you sure watched Anita a lot!)
Carp Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a surprised-looking carp. It is awarded to the angler who takes first place in the annual talent show of the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts.
We found this in the poetic willow tree’s knothole (accessible with the waders from the junkyard miscellaneous pile). I wonder if Anita was purposely hiding those.
Dolly Varden Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a dolly varden, which is a kind of trout with little red spots. It is awarded to the angler who wins the costume contest that the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts puts on every April 30th (the date deemed by the Association to be the “antipode” of Halloween).
Found inside the payphone coin return slot.
Largemouth Bass Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a cheerful-looking largemouth bass. It is awarded to the angler who collects the most litter (by weight) whenever the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts performs its annual clean-up of Highway 19.
We saw a photo of this cleanup! I could see this belong to Noah, as he was in that photo (although it occurred many times).
We found this on top of the boulder on the hill using the ladder from the sanctuary, accessible by using the waders from the junkyard miscellaneous pile and the dirty key from the firepit.
Bonefish Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a bonefish, with a grin full of pointy teeth. It is awarded to the angler who takes first place in the annual Jewel Pond Tetrathlon that the the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts puts on every summer. The Tetrathlon consists of canoeing across the pond from the beach to the jetty, then running around the southern side of the pond from the jetty to the beach, then swimming across the pond from the beach to the jetty, then getting back in your canoe and paddling back to the beach.
This one was definitely Anita’s, as it was in the lunchbox that Zuleika saw her hiding it in. We found it by being in the canoe (found in the eastern shed, unlocked with the shiny key in the wrecked canoe, reached by getting the waders from the junkyard miscellaneous pile) and canoeing to the NW portion of the middle of the pond where we found a tree and used the fishing rod to CAST and get it.
Smallmouth Badge
This shiny enamel pin is carved in the image of a timid-looking smallmouth bass. It’s awarded to anglers who achieve a score of 70% or higher on a longish quiz administered by the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts. The quiz covers material related to conservation, species identification, and fly fishing safety.
This one was found by digging the dirt patch in the prairie. The shovel is found in the NW cabin, accessible by getting waders from the junkyard miscellaneous pile.
This could belong to Noah, Anita, or Harlan. But there’s another buried badge belonging to Anita, so I wonder if this was hers.
Salmon Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a baffled-looking salmon. It is awarded to anglers who render IT assistance to the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts, such as by setting up the association website or by fixing the association president’s phone.
I have no idea how it got up here.
This was found in a secret compartment found by examining the chimney on the Lodge’s roof. Maybe someone doing repairs thought it would be funny?
Bluegill Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a bluegill with a round chin and a dopey expression. The Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts awards this to anglers under the age of 14 who successfully complete a very easy scavenger hunt. Older anglers are unable to earn this badge. This policy is not universally popular.
Got this through metal detecting in the NW playground and using the shovel (Metal detector obtained from Zuleika). Must be Anita’s, given her childhood experiences. Zuleika comments on it:
You explain that you found the Bluegill Badge by using the metal detector in the playground.
“The playground over there?” she asks, pointing east. You explain that there’s another playground on the west side of the pond. She asks what play features it has.
“Huh. Sounds like a lot more fun than the new one.”
I could see Anita purposely burying it, as a reference to the scavenger hunt nature, since she did that kind of thing.
Crappie Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a crappie, a dopey-looking fish with spiny fins. The badge is awarded by the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts to any angler who catches a crappie.
Malcolm gives you this if you get him cider from the lodge fridge (lodge accessible by using the ladder which is in the sanctuary, accessible with the dirty key from the fire pit).
It’s pretty crappie. I wonder who he got it from? It was under the walkway, so could have been dropped at a party.
Mako badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a grinning mako shark. It is awarded to anglers who visit the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts from far beyond the borders of Holler County, and acts more as a keepsake or token of friendship than as recognition for any specific accomplishment.
Jack Deacon’s badge, found on his body. Body can be found with coordinates from lodge basement (access by entering lodge with ladder. Basement found by examining kitchen). GPS is found in observatory (which can be entered using the shears found in the wasp shed using the veil found in the SW cabin accessed by the brass key in the NW cabin accessed by the waders in the junkyard miscellaneous pile))
This badge helps identify Jack, as he is one of the few outsiders mentioned.
Muskellunge badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a muskellunge, or “muskie,” which is a kind of very long fish with a huge mouth. This badge has been presented by the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts only once. It wasn’t presented in recognition of any particular accomplishment or contribution, and in fact it probably only made things worse.
This was in a pile in Erica’s secret tunnel. To get there, find the damp journal in the ford fiesta in the junkyard and read it every day until near the end. It details a scrap of paper that the author found that has a code. That code can be entered in the wasp shed (reached by wearing the veil in the sw shed which is opened by the brass key which is reached by wearing the waders in the miscellaneous pile of the junkyard) by pushing placards. You can then turn a crank and run to the lodge basement to enter the tunnel.
This is likely tied to the ripped-out photo, as other players have noted, and it seems that Erica and the association did not bond over this badge.
Fish Skeleton Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the shape of a skeletal fish with a mischievous grin. The originators of this badge are in no way affiliated with the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts.
Found at the end of the GPS quest in a tackle box. The GPS quest is done by photographing the QR code in the birdhouse with the phone obtained by using the ladder to enter the lodge. The GPS in the observatory (which can be entered using the shears found in the wasp shed using the veil found in the SW cabin accessed by the brass key in the NW cabin accessed by the waders in the junkyard miscellaneous pile) can tell you where you are, and at each location try X the thing listed on the QR code, even if it isn’t visible.
Harlan had a GPS and the birdhouse was on his side, so he could have set this up, or Anita, but the way the badge is not affiliated with the association makes me wonder if it’s just a community thing.
Rainbow Trout Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of an unflappable rainbow trout. It is awarded to the angler who submits the scariest campfire story to the Spookenfest that the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts organizes on the last weekend in September.
We got this for putting a coneflower on Noah’s grave and checking in again the next day. Appropriate for someone good at telling scary stories! Unless, instead of Noah’s ghost, it is Anita who visits and tends the graves, as she won the campfire scary story competition at one point.
Steelhead Badge
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a stoic steelhead trout. The Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts never got the opportunity to award it to anyone.
Found in Harlan’s lockbox with the key from metal detecting a fully-cleaned beach, which requires the grabber from the wasp shed which requires the veil which requires the brass key from Harlan’s cabin which requires the waders from the junkyward.
Makes sense it is in the lockbox on Noah’s SE cabin counter as it was never used.
Pewter Feather
The brooch is about three inches long, cast in the shape of a realistic feather. The Courtney Society of Birders awards it to birdwatching enthusiasts who manage to see lots of different birds.
Received from Zuleika for finding every bird. I guess we could have lied, here.
Northern Pike Badge:
This shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a smug-looking pike. It is awarded to anglers after one year of active membership in the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts.
Received from the crows after feeding them. It wasn’t there in the morning when I fed them for the third or fourth day, but I reloaded the game in the afternoon and found it then. Other players have speculated that the crows took it off of Jack’s body.
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And with that, I’m done! I feel fully satisfied that I encountered the complete Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing experience.
It’s been fun!
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The fact that Anita and Erica both have VCiCa names meant I couldn’t always keep them straight during the playthrough, so I totally missed connections like Erica having a hawk (that she used to kill Tortus). This really was a wild ride!
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I got a badge today due, I believe, to today being my birthday! When I entered it in the quiz I thought how convenient it was that it was so soon, and wondered if something special would happen. When I loaded the tab this morning, I got this text in the cabin:
You can also see a mysterious package (closed)
And on interacting:
>x packageIt’s a standard cardboard box with a shipping label on it.
>x labelHow odd! The package is addressed to “SAM COLLINS.” Who do you suppose that is?
>open itYou open the mysterious package, revealing a Brook Trout Badge.
>x brook troutThis shiny enamel pin is cast in the image of a brook trout, covered in cute little spots. Every member of the Holler County Association of Fly Fishing Enthusiasts receives this badge eventually.
(I made up a fake name for the game.)
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Whoa! New badge! That’s the first I’ve heard of anyone finding more than 17 badges.
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Zuleika explains this if you show her… something. The GPS maybe, or the badge itself. If I remember when she’s back on Saturday, I’ll find that text again and share it. What I recallis that a guy named Tangler came around and set up the scavenger hunt, but Anita was unhappy about it and kept taking his stuff down, until finally giving in and leaving it alone.
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