Let's Play: Trinity by Brian Moriarty

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

Let’s call this the start of a new session of play, so here’s a save at the start of it.

03.sav (1.5 KB)

I’m going to put the magpie in its cage at the base of the gnomon (the middle of the map where I’m leaving all the portable things to deal with the inventory limit) and head off to the Barrow. This might trap us, since we don’t have any of our useful items on us—but that’s why there’s a save! So that we can go back and grab whichever object we need.

As a reminder, here’s how we get there:

Waterfall

A curtain of water tumbles off the western cliffs into a deep, rocky pool. From there, a mountain stream wanders off into the forest. Footpaths follow the stream east, past a giant toadstool. The white door in its stem is closed.

A flight of stone steps has been hewn into the face of the north cliff.

>n
You carefully ascend the stone steps.

Cemetery

Gloomy statues lie toppled among the tombstones, their broken limbs and heads scattered like the carnage of a ghastly battle.

A granite crypt lies across the ground. Beyond it rises the mound of an ancient barrow. A black tunnel leads north, into the barrow.

Sudden drops fall away on every side but south, where a flight of stone steps descends the cliff.

>n
Barrow

The splinter’s ghostly flicker does little to dispel the gloom of this subterranean passage. Craggy walls bend away to the north and south.

A small hole is visible in the wall.

A clatter breaks the silence! You turn, and watch helplessly as a spiked door crashes down across the south exit.

Something just moved.

You peer uneasily beyond the pool of light around the splinter. Nothing. Then, as your eyes adjust, you descry a vaguely human outline crouched against the tunnel wall.

“Barrow wight,” mutters a voice in your ear.

Now we’re trapped, but hopefully our death will be informative!

>x wight
One of the barrow wight’s eyes dangles from its socket on a moist pink nerve. The other glares back at you from the darkness of the tunnel.

Gross.

>x hole
The hole is quite small.

The barrow wight studies you with its red eye.

>i
You’re holding a splinter (providing light). You’re wearing a wristwatch, and you have a small coin and a credit card in your pocket.

…hm. Is it not going to kill us?

The barrow wight licks a stream of drool off its chin.

Hello?

The barrow wight’s breathing echoes in the tunnel.

The barrow wight sharpens its claws on a rock.

The barrow wight is watching you with interest.

The barrow wight rubs its eye, then turns to squint at you.

The barrow wight growls in its throat.

…are you not going to attack me?

Is there anything we have that’ll be effective against it? Maybe the axe, like in the original Adventure?

It seems we’re just…kind of trapped.

>d
You don’t see any exit that way.

>e
There’s no exit that way.

>w
There’s no exit that way.

>n
The barrow wight covers its eye with its claws and bellows something awful as you pass.

Ossuary

Naked slopes veer upward on every side, forming a natural hollow that is filled to a depth of several inches with human bones. The only exit is a dark opening to the south.

A giant toadstool is flourishing in the rich fertilizer. The white door in its stem is closed.

Huh??

The room description mentions a “craggy wall” to the north, and that’s supposed to indicate that we can go that way??

It seems like the splinter is protecting us from the wight—it’s our light source—and that makes sense enough. But I see now why the door had to lock us in. I wouldn’t have figured this out without brute-forcing every direction!

>x bones
The bones are bleached white from years in the sun. They range from bits of rib and skull to complete skeletons.

>get bones
As you sift dispiritedly through the bones, a skeleton key, still clutched in a long-dead hand, catches your eye.

>x key
Its slender form reminds you of a crooked finger.

Of course, the skeleton would have a skeleton key.

Let’s go back south and…

>put key in hole
You’re not holding that.

Oh, right. This is the sort of game where you also have to TAKE KEY.

>get key
You gently pry the skeleton key out from between the fingers.

[Your score just went up by 1 point. The total is now 27 out of 100.]

Now…

>put key in hole
The skeleton key slides into the hole with a satisfying click.

And because unlocking a door takes several steps, for realism…

>turn key
You slowly twist the key in the hole.

The ground under your feet is moving! You leap out of the way, and watch as a hidden slope opens up beneath the keyhole.

[Your score just went up by 1 point. The total is now 28 out of 100.]

The barrow wight stomps its feet and howls with rage.

So this is how we can leave this area again! We can’t take the key with us, unfortunately, but when we need to use this mushroom, we now have a way to do it.

You slide down into gloom that grows colder and colder…

Ice Cavern

You’re in a vast underground cavern, cold enough to see your breath. Icicles on the ceiling glitter in the light shining in through an opening in the east wall. Beyond it, a curtain of water fills the cavern with its splashing roar.

With a rusty creak, the slope behind you retracts into the ceiling. A clatter and thump fill the cavern with a sinister echo. Then everything is quiet.

Was Trinity the first game to use these bits of flavor text for going from place to place? They’re everywhere here, and I don’t recall them in other Infocom games. They’re a nice touch.

Also, a curtain of water, you say?

>e
You edge your way around the waterfall.

Waterfall

A curtain of water tumbles off the western cliffs into a deep, rocky pool. From there, a mountain stream wanders off into the forest. Footpaths follow the stream east, past a giant toadstool. The white door in its stem is closed.

A flight of stone steps has been hewn into the face of the north cliff.

Aha! So there is an area west of the barrow! This connection isn’t one-way, either; we can come back to the Ice Cavern any time we want, now that we’ve discovered it. (And we can go through that little loop, Cemetery > Barrow > Ice Cavern, as often as we want. Though the door slams shut every time.)

I suspect we’ll need to collect some ice and bring it to the meteorite to cool it down, but there’s no ice on hand. We’ll have to come back here with some item or some more cleverness.

As a reminder, here’s the potential inventory we have to work with:

You see an umbrella, a bag of crumbs, a piece of paper and an axe here.
You put down the birdcage.
You’re holding a splinter (providing light). You’re wearing a wristwatch, and you have a small coin and a credit card in your pocket.

While exploring, though, I had a new idea. Honey is one of the ingredients we need for the exploding potion, and I think I know where to find some!

Under Cliff

Smooth walls of rock vault straight up and then lean inward, forming a natural roof that partially hides the sky. Trails lead out from under the cliff in many directions.

A swarm of bees has staked out this formation for itself by building an enormous hive under the arch. The faint buzzing sound from the hive is magnified by the cliff’s acoustics into a loud, frightening drone.

Bees make honey!

>x hive
The gray mass of the beehive hangs down from the overhanging cliff. A dark opening in the bottom is low enough to reach.

Clearly we should stick our hand in this.

>search hive
Little can be seen from where you’re standing.

No, no, like this…

>put hand in hive
You reach recklessly into the hive, and feel something sticky at your fingertips. Then a sharp, burning pain sears your hand like fire!

Howling with agony, you yank your arm out of the hive and shake a gigantic bee off your swelling hand.

The giant bee spit-polishes its stinger.

Owww!

You hear the bee circling above your head.

Hey! Get off me!

The giant bee evades your flying hands, and plants a second sting right in the middle of your forehead. You scream with blinding agony.

A voice in your ear sniggers, “One more like that, and you’ve had it.”

Owwwwwwww!

But I think I know how to deal with a bee! Because on the way to the waterfall, we passed…

North Bog

A thick, suffocating miasma lingers among the trees; the black earth is squishy with corruption. You can hear dripping liquids and other moist sounds close by.

Paths wander off in many directions. High rock walls curve away to the north and southwest.

A big Venus flytrap is growing nearby. Its crimson jaws are wide open, exposing a cavity that gleams with sweet-smelling ichor.

A flytrap might also be a beetrap!

Buzzing angrily, the giant bee hovers close by.

The sweet smell of the flytrap stops the bee in mid-buzz. Forgetting its anger, the insect hovers above the open jaws, then touches down to sample the glistening ichor.

Click! The flytrap snaps shut. After a few minutes, the faint buzzing dies away.

HAHA!

>x me
Aside from your London vacation outfit, you’re wearing a wristwatch.

>diagnose
You feel much as you’d expect, considering what you’ve been through.

And none the worse for wear; it seems the game isn’t tracking our health outside of this particular puzzle.

>x hand
Your fingers are still there.

>x honey
You can’t see any honey here.

Oh, darn.

Well, second verse, same as the first!

>put hand in hive
You reach recklessly into the hive, and feel something sticky at your fingertips. Without hesitation, you yank your arm out of the hive and find your hand gleaming with a golden handful of honey.

[Your score just went up by 3 points. The total is now 31 out of 100.]

Honey!

>x honey
It’s all over your hand.

>put honey in cauldron
The honey sticks stubbornly to your hand.

>put hand in cauldron
You plunge your hand into the boiling liquid. Ouch!

At least you got that honey off your fingers.

[Your score just went up by 1 point. The total is now 32 out of 100.]

OWWWWWW

(If you eat it, “You lick all the honey off your fingers. Yum.” But then you have to go back and get more.)

This seems like a good place to pause for the moment. What next? Any ideas for how to get some ice, or should we start exploring the mushrooms? And if we’re going for the mushrooms, which one?

04.txt (16.8 KB)

[eriktorbjorn (Torbjörn Andersson)]

@Draconis

Was Trinity the first game to use these bits of flavor text for going from place to place? They’re everywhere here, and I don’t recall them in other Infocom games. They’re a nice touch.

I don’t know if you’d count this from Zork I as a flavor text:

>DOWN
You won’t be able to get back up to the tunnel you are going through when it gets to the next room.

Maze
This is part of a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

Planetfall may be more like it:

>EAST
You walk down the long, featureless hallway for a long time. Finally, you see an intersection ahead…

Corridor Junction
A north-south corridor intersects the main corridor here. To the west, the main corridor extends as far as you can see; a non-working walkway from that direction ends here. To the east, the corridor widens into a well-lit area.

Or Wishbringer:

>UP
With great difficulty, you manage to climb out of the open grave.

Spooky Copse
A copse of willow trees makes this part of the cemetery look really spooky. Narrow lanes wander south and west.

There’s an open grave nearby, freshly dug, with a tombstone erected next to it.

But I guess it was used a lot more sparingly in the smaller games to save space. Usually, an exit in an Infocom game is just a direction and a room, like so:

        (EAST TO LAN-GATE)

To print a flavor text, it needs to specify a function to call…

        (EAST PER SWIM-IN-LWATER)

…and then define it. Which is bound to use up more of the precious space available:

<ROUTINE SWIM-IN-LWATER ()
	 <TELL "You ">
	 <COND (<EQUAL? ,P-PRSA-WORD ,W?JUMP ,W?LEAP ,W?DIVE>
		<PRINTB ,P-PRSA-WORD>)
	       (T
		<TELL "wade">)>
	 <TELL " into the cool, dark water" ,PCR>
	 <RETURN ,IN-WATER>>

I.e. there’s no built-in “print flavor text and move to this room” feature. At least not, I believe, until Border Zone which often uses flavor texts instead of room descriptions, unless you explicitly look. And even there it seems to do it by modifying the standard walking code and re-purposing existing syntax rather than adding something new to the ZIL language. So it comes out looking pretty weird:

      (WEST TO A2 IF HACK-FLAG ELSE
"You emerge from the forest into an open area through which runs
a railroad track oriented north and south. Beyond the tracks, the
ground rises steeply.")

[SomeOne2 (Max Fog)]

Brian Moriarty makes very implemented games, for example for every room there’s a specific response for looking in each direction.

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

As you think about where to go next, here’s the sundial again for reference:

Going clockwise, the symbols are

• Omega (ending)
• Mercury (change)
• Pluto (death)
• Neptune (water)
• Libra (balance)
• Mars (war)
• Alpha (beginning)

We used the omega door to get here, which means we can no longer access it—each door only works once. And we can’t reach the alpha door without crossing the River Styx, which seems like a late-game puzzle. (Maybe the Pluto door will make us suitably ghostly?)

As far as I can tell, there’s no way to guess what you’ll need behind each door, or what order you’ll need to do them in, except trial and error. So, anyone have a preference for which one we try first—or a guess for what might be behind them? I’ve put my best guess at the symbolism in the list, but it’s far from exhaustive (the Mercury symbol can mean the planet, the god, the metal, fluid nature, Wednesday…).

Alternately, any ideas for what else we can accomplish in the Wabe? The main puzzles I can see there are the cauldron (need milk and lizard), the lump (need a way to break off some ice), and the bubble boy (no idea what to do there).

Let me know below!

[Egorf (Nathaniel Brown)]

I don’t know how common it was for one item to be used for multiple puzzles at this point, but I wondered if the axe might be used to inflict violence on an icicle. Or if “icicle” or “ice” are even implemented in the ice cave.

BTW, I love these Let’s Plays; thank you for doing another! I suspect I’m in rare company having never played this myself.

[ramstrong (Harry Hardjono)]

@Draconis

So, anyone have a preference for which one we try first

If I remember correctly, I just did it sequentially on my second run, in my attempt to use the card.

[evouga]

Presumably they are in reverse chronological order, so if Alpha is Trinity, then Mars must be Nagasaki (which I know is one of the game’s destinations).

Castle Bravo makes thematic sense for Neptune, and so does the first Soviet test (RDS-1) for Libra.

Not sure about the others.

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

Trinity being the first successful test, Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki being an act of war, the first successful Soviet test restoring the balance of power, you mean? That all makes sense to me, but what is Castle Bravo? Is that one of the Bikini Atoll tests (so in the middle of the sea)?

[evouga]

Yes exactly. The first hydrogen bomb test (which also was significantly dirtier than expected and irradiated the inhabitants of the surrounding islands). Castle Bravo - Wikipedia

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

@Egorf

I don’t know how common it was for one item to be used for multiple puzzles at this point, but I wondered if the axe might be used to inflict violence on an icicle. Or if “icicle” or “ice” are even implemented in the ice cave.

Not too common yet, but far from unheard-of! Interestingly, you can see quite a strong correlation between object-reuse puzzles and how stringent the object limits were in a particular company’s systems. This was the era where the limitations of the system really show in the games.

So let’s give it a shot!

Ice Cavern

You’re in a vast underground cavern, cold enough to see your breath. Icicles on the ceiling glitter in the light shining in through an opening in the east wall. Beyond it, a curtain of water fills the cavern with its splashing roar.

>x icicle
The icicles cover the ceiling of the cavern, high out of reach.

It’s implemented!

>hit icicle with axe
Nice try. Unfortunately, the axe isn’t long enough to reach the icicles.

Well…

>throw axe at icicle
The axe strikes the icicles and lands at your feet.

An icicle breaks off the ceiling and falls to the ground.

Score!

>x icicle
The icicle looks like a crystal needle, eighteen inches long.

>get icicle
Taken.

[Your score just went up by 1 point. The total is now 33 out of 100.]

Let’s run this over to the crater!

East, east, east…

The warm air makes the icicle glisten.

Northeast…

It’s getting hard to hold the slippery icicle.

East…

The icicle is almost too slippery to hold.

And east!

Crater

A dark cloud of smoke fills the air with an acrid, smoldering stench. Blackened rubble covers the sides and bottom of the crater.

A glowing lump of metal lies half-buried at your feet.

The melting icicle slips from your grasp and shatters to bits at your feet.

Oh come on!

I don’t see any faster route to the crater. It seems like it’s just out of reach: the icicle melts in six moves, and it takes six moves to get there.

But maybe there’s a place we could stop in the middle?

Vertex

The temperature on this tiny platform is well below freezing.

We can reach that in five moves, and then reach the crater in five moves from there. Let’s go back and get another icicle and try that!

Ice Cavern

You’re in a vast underground cavern, cold enough to see your breath. Icicles on the ceiling glitter in the light shining in through an opening in the east wall. Beyond it, a curtain of water fills the cavern with its splashing roar.

There’s an axe here.

>throw axe at icicle
You’re not holding an axe.

Oh. Right. No implicit takes yet.

>get axe
You take the axe.

>throw it at icicle
The axe strikes the icicles and lands at your feet.

You’re showered with useless ice fragments.

Huh?

>get axe
You take the axe.

>throw it at icicle
The axe strikes the icicles and lands at your feet.

You’re showered with useless ice fragments.

Are the icicles gone??

>x icicles
The icicles cover the ceiling of the cavern, high out of reach.

Nope, it’s just a bit more needless cruelty. There’s no in-universe reason why you can only get one icicle, or any indication that it’ll be so. The game just keeps you from retrying the puzzle to make it harder to experiment.

>restore

Let’s try this again.

>throw axe at icicle
The axe strikes the icicles and lands at your feet.

An icicle breaks off the ceiling and falls to the ground.

>get icicle
You take the icicle.

[Your score just went up by 1 point. The total is now 33 out of 100.]

East, east, east!

The warm air makes the icicle glisten.

North!

It’s getting hard to hold the slippery icicle.

North!

The icicle hardens in the thin, frosty air.

South, south, northeast!

The warm air makes the icicle glisten.

East!

It’s getting hard to hold the slippery icicle.

East!

The icicle is almost too slippery to hold.

And at last!

>put icicle on lump
The icicle disappears in a hissing cloud as it touches the hot lump of metal. When the steam clears, the surface of the lump is black and wet.

[Your score just went up by 3 points. The total is now 36 out of 100.]

>get lump
Taken.

[Your score just went up by 1 point. The total is now 37 out of 100.]

SUCCESS!

>x it
The lump of metal is roughly the size and shape of a large grapefruit. Its surface is black and scorched.

Ugh, grapefruit, the evillest fruit in the world.

After carting this back to the bottom of the stairs, and retrieving our axe, here’s the inventory we’ve got:

You see an axe, a birdcage, a lump of metal, an umbrella, a bag of crumbs and a piece of paper here. Inside the birdcage you see a magpie.

You’re holding a splinter (providing light). You’re wearing a wristwatch, and you have a small coin and a credit card in your pocket.

The problems we’re currently facing:

• The bubble boy must be important for something, but what?
• We need to pry open the Wabewalker’s tomb, but we have no crowbar or such
• We need milk and fresh whole lizard for the potion
• We need to cross the River Styx to access the final mushroom

And, of course, there are five other mushrooms that we can explore: Mercury, Pluto, Neptune, Libra, and Mars.

Where to next?

04b.txt (20.2 KB)

[heasm66 (Henrik Åsman)]

Its been a while since I played Trinity but I recommend exploring and mappiing the different mushrooms first. As I remember it some of the vignettes have dependencies between them.

[eriktorbjorn (Torbjörn Andersson)]

Its been a while for me too, but there’s definitely at least one that requires an object from another.

When I first played it I don’t think I even noticed the hints for which doors lead where (the symbols from the sundial appear in The Illustrated History of the Atom Bomb) , so I just explored them at random.

And at least once I spent so much time exploring the land around the giant sundial that I got to see the sun set, which is one of those mental images that’s still stuck in my head from back then.

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

@heasm66

Its been a while since I played Trinity but I recommend exploring and mappiing the different mushrooms first. As I remember it some of the vignettes have dependencies between them.

In that case, that’ll be the next session!

@eriktorbjorn

When I first played it I don’t think I even noticed the hints for which doors lead where (the symbols from the sundial appear in The Illustrated History of the Atom Bomb) , so I just explored them at random.

Oh, I completely forgot that the other feelies exist!

You can read the Illustrated Story of the Atom Bomb here. Looking at the symbols in it:

• Alpha is Trinity, the first successful test
• Mars is Nagasaki, the end of World War II
• Libra is RDS-1, the first successful Soviet test
• Castle Bravo is in the book, but the Neptune symbol isn’t anywhere on it? Am I missing something?
• Pluto is an underground test of some sort; the book doesn’t say which one
• Mercury is something in space; I think it’s the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka “Star Wars”, a plan to shoot down incoming nukes with satellites)
• Omega is Kensington Gardens

There are various other little details in the book that I think are going to be relevant for us. In particular, there seems to be a fresh whole lizard in the Pluto area.

@eriktorbjorn

And at least once I spent so much time exploring the land around the giant sundial that I got to see the sun set, which is one of those mental images that’s still stuck in my head from back then.

You know, I’ve never seen that happen before. Let’s try it out!

[eriktorbjorn (Torbjörn Andersson)]

@Draconis

Castle Bravo is in the book, but the Neptune symbol isn’t anywhere on it? Am I missing something?

This one? (On the shirt of the guy in the back.)

@Draconis

You know, I’ve never seen that happen before. Let’s try it out!

Note that it won’t happen if the sun has been stopped, so you either have to undo that or go back to an earlier save.

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

@eriktorbjorn

This one? (On the shirt of the guy in the back.)

…no?

Wait a sec.

Oh, goddammit. Yes, that one. I just can’t distinguish the purple(?) against the blue.

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

First, for the sunset:

Vertex

The temperature on this tiny platform is well below freezing. But it isn’t just the cold that makes your teeth chatter when you look down that narrow stairway, thousands of feet high.

Far below, the shadow of the structure stretches across the landscape. From this great altitude it looks like a dark finger, accusing a point on the west horizon.

A long metal lever stands at a sharp angle to the platform.

At the center of the platform stands a handsome antique sundial. The circumference is enclosed in a wide brass ring.

>pull lever
As you raise the lever you hear a loud, mechanical groan below your feet. The floor lurches and begins to vibrate again; you feel a momentary dizziness, and a brief gust of wind. Then all is still.

And now we wait!

Every seven turns, the sundial ticks to the next position:

The brass ring on the sundial rotates with a sudden click.

Which means if we didn’t stop the sun, we’d have only seven turns to enter and leave a particular vignette. So we need to use the lever.

If we wait until it wraps all the way around the sundial:

Shadows lengthen in the gathering dusk. You pause to watch as the sun touches the western horizon, painting the clouds with a fiery glow that spreads across the sky.

Wait a minute.

The sky is getting brighter. You rub your eyes and blink as the mountains and treetops magically emerge from darkness, suffused in a golden light swelling somewhere behind you…

Another sun is rising! You turn east and west, gaping with astonishment as the twin orbs rise and set in perfect synchronization. For a moment, both are bisected by the horizon, casting double shadows that cross the ground in fantastic patterns. Then the western sun sinks from view, and the eastern sun rises to command the morning.

Oh, wow.

04c.txt (3.6 KB)
04.sav (1.6 KB)

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

Now, let’s take a look at the mushrooms!

(Side note: trizbort.io updated, and I think I have my settings back to normal, but the maps may look a bit different going forward. Much more configurable now though!)

Since we came out of omega, the next one around the sundial is Mercury, at the Waterfall.

Waterfall

A curtain of water tumbles off the western cliffs into a deep, rocky pool. From there, a mountain stream wanders off into the forest. Footpaths follow the stream east, past a giant toadstool. The white door in its stem is wide open.

A flight of stone steps has been hewn into the face of the north cliff.

A triangular shadow lies across the ground. Its sharp point rests exactly on the open door in the toadstool.

Here goes nothing!

>enter door
You slowly edge yourself through the white door.

[A whole bunch of blank lines]

Earth Orbit

You’re five hundred miles above a sea of ice, hurtling in profound silence over the Arctic atmosphere. Layers of crimson and violet describe the curve of the horizon, blending imperceptibly into a black sky crowded with stars.

The white door drops away behind you.

The total lack of air pressure is making you uncomfortable.

You watch helplessly as the white door dwindles to a distant speck, vanishing at last between the horns of the rising moon.

Hmm. It seems that your blood is beginning to boil.

Oh.

Oh dear.

>x moon
The moon is a delicate crescent, hovering just above the horizon.

Far ahead, a satellite drifts into view.

You lose consciousness just as your internal organs begin to rupture.

Crescent moon, you say?

I kind of imagined that the door would protect us from the vacuum of space, but it seems its powers don’t extend quite that far. So we need some way to avoid exploding long enough to do what needs to be done here.

Second would be Pluto, in the Ossuary:

Ossuary

Naked slopes veer upward on every side, forming a natural hollow that is filled to a depth of several inches with human bones. The only exit is a dark opening to the south.

A giant toadstool is flourishing in the rich fertilizer. The white door in its stem is wide open.

A triangular shadow lies across the ground. Its sharp point rests exactly on the open door in the toadstool.

This one will hopefully be a bit less deadly!

>enter door
You explore the door’s edge with a timid foot.

Underground

You’re in a narrow underground chamber, illuminated by an open door in the east wall. The walls and ceiling are gouged with deep spiral ruts; they look as if they’ve been routed out with heavy machinery.

A large cylinder occupies most of the chamber. The maze of cables and pipes surrounding it trails west, into the depths of a tunnel.

A lantern is lying in the dirt at your feet.

New light source! This should probably shine brighter than a splinter. And taking it gets us another point.

The waterproof lantern is more than a foot long. Its switch is turned off.

Anyway, this cylinder is presumably the focus of the test:

The cylinder is about three feet in diameter and ten feet long. Warnings indicate the presence of radioactivity.

Looks like the directions to go are east and west. Let’s try east first.

You slip through the white door.

Ossuary

Naked slopes veer upward on every side, forming a natural hollow that is filled to a depth of several inches with human bones. The only exit is a dark opening to the south.

A giant toadstool is flourishing in the rich fertilizer.

A triangular shadow lies across the ground. Its sharp point rests exactly on the toadstool.

The white door fades away into the texture of the toadstool.

Oh, it’s that door. Makes sense. Undo. West.

Underground

The cables and pipes lining the tunnel’s walls look like bloated veins and arteries in the splinter’s flickering glow. Deep tunnels bend off to the east and west.

Some careless technician has left a walkie-talkie lying in the dirt.

As you study the equipment you spot something moving in the corner of your eye. It’s… what do you call them?.. yes! A skink.

The skink blinks helplessly in the glow of the splinter, and scrambles away down the west tunnel.

I love the descriptive text. And the skink.

Unfortunately, I think this might be our “fresh whole lizard”.

Taking the walkie gets us another point:

The walkie-talkie has a rocker switch, a numbered slider, a telescoping antenna (now lowered) and a large orange button.

Hm. I’m going to guess these are a power switch, a channel selector, an antenna (raise it to use), and a transmit button (press to transmit, release to receive)?

The cables and pipes lead west, into the tunnel.

Seems clear where we need to go.

Underground

The west end of the tunnel is sealed off with a landslide of rocks and dirt. Numerous cables and pipes emerge from the rubble, trailing away to the east.

The splinter’s feeble glow reveals a narrow crevice in the wall of the tunnel.

A skink is squinting at you from the shadows nearby.

With a nimble leap, the skink scrambles into the dark crevice.

C’mere, skink!

>x skink
It’s too dark to see anything in the crevice.

>x crevice
It’s too dark to see anything in the crevice.

You can hear something moving in the crevice.

Well, I can guess what to do here!

>put lantern in crevice
The lantern won’t fit into the crevice.

Oh.

Well, I can guess what to do here!

>put splinter in crevice
It doesn’t look as if the splinter is going to fit. But you twist it harder against the narrow opening, harder…

Thunk. The soft wood falls to the bottom of the crevice, filling it with pale light.

The skink scrambles out of the lighted crevice, slips between your legs and scurries away into the east tunnel.

First try.

>e
It’s completely dark.

Something is scratching around in the darkness.

Skink!

>turn on lantern
Click. The lantern emits a warm, yellow beam.

Underground

The cables and pipes lining the tunnel’s walls look like bloated veins and arteries in the dancing beam of the lantern. Deep tunnels bend off to the east and west.

A skink is squinting at you from the shadows nearby.

The skink blinks helplessly in the beam of the lantern, and scrambles away down the west tunnel.

I spent a while chasing the skink ineffectually back and forth before realizing…

>drop lantern
You drop the lantern.

Pin it between two light sources.

>w
Underground

The west end of the tunnel is sealed off with a landslide of rocks and dirt. Numerous cables and pipes emerge from the rubble, trailing away to the east.

Feeble light shines from a narrow crevice in the wall of the tunnel.

A skink is squinting at you from the shadows nearby.

The skink scurries away into the east tunnel. A moment later it reappears, blinking helplessly from the glow of the lantern.

With no place to hide, the flummoxed skink runs in circles at your feet.

Aw, poor creature. Here.

>take skink
Taken.

[Your score just went up by 3 points. The total is now 42 out of 100.]

The skink squirms violently in your hand.

It wants to be somewhere dark. I’m guessing this is where our pocket becomes relevant!

>put skink in pocket
You put the skink in your pocket.

The skink squirms uncomfortably for a moment, then lies still.

There, there. Get comfy.

I’m really sorry for what’s probably going to happen soon…

If you take it out of your pocket, you can examine it, but it immediately escapes and disappears into the crevice. So getting this description takes an undo.

It’s a scaly lizard, four inches long, with big eyes and a little pink mouth.

I don’t see anything else we can do here, so I’m going to tentatively mark this area complete! We can’t get the splinter back, but we have this nice lantern to replace it with. Hopefully it won’t run out of battery on us.

05.sav (1.7 KB)
05.txt (15.2 KB)

Next up: Neptune, on the Mesa!

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

Actually, this is the kind of skink we have where I live, so this is what I’ll be imagining.

The five-lined skink lives all across North America, so it’s probably what Moriarty had in mind too. (I have no idea where this particular nuclear test took place, though.) The one that appears in the feelies is greener than this, but you’ve seen me fail at identifying colors once already, so I’ll be sticking with the blue.

[SomeOne2 (Max Fog)]

Hmm, here’s an idea: try dying to the nuclear explosion in every area! It’s an okay experience, IIRC.

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

Just wait around long enough that the bomb goes off? I didn’t see any real urgency in the Pluto area, but maybe if I waste too much time it’ll explode?