Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Prior posts on Avon here.)

Clear progress, and also the distinct feeling I’m sinking deeper.

Scene from Hamlet. Michael Goodman again, from an early 19th century printing of Shakespeare.

To start with, let me mention a location I neglected last time near the ice floe:

You are at a cliff edge. A sign here says:
“YOU CAN CALL SPIRITS FROM THE VASTY DEEP.
BUT WILL THEY COME WHEN YOU DO CALL FOR THEM?”
The only way to go is back to the northwest.

I can’t say there’s one distinct “magical” place but it felt like if anywhere needed a magic word it’d be here, so I tried my various selections and found BRANDY (obtained from Hamlet’s ghost-father) summoned a treasure.

A spirit emerges from the vasty deep, sees your clerical collar, and recognises (as it thinks) its master, the local priest.

“Good Sir Topas, they have laid me here in hideous darkness. The house is as dark as ignorance, though ignorance were dark as hell,” it moans, “but this shall advantage thee.”

“I wish to buy my freedom,” it continues, and, depositing a small object in front of you, the spirit vanishes.
You are at the edge of the vasty deep.
There is a topaz here!

Notice how merely holding the clerical collar (which helped save me from strangulation last time) was enough to solve a secondary puzzle. That seems to be a common thread, with “passive” puzzle solving. However, there are so many parts of the game where I am clueless I appreciate a few puzzles being auto-solved.

Jumping back to where I left off last time, there was a “Moorish gentlemen” who told me to “Go and see my agent, who lives near here” and that “The name is written in code on this paper. You’ll be recompensed.”

I had ASTHMA my first time through; on a second playthrough the paper said OVERSEAS.

I intended to save afterwards, but the game didn’t let me. I took this to be a clue. I decided the use of the paper must be immediately after finding it, and it must be the kind of situation where save-abuse would make the puzzle “too easy”; that is, we’re looking at some way of expressing the answer which involves choosing from a small number of options (rather than so many that it would be impossible to solve the puzzle without realizing the code). This is what led me shortly after to:

You are in Illyria Court. The main street is back to the west, but there are directions to various residences, as follows:
North: Olivia
Northeast: (Sir Andrew) Aguecheek
East: Fabian
Southeast: (Count) Orsino
South: Malvolio.

I realized this fit the prompt; only five choices, and even though a wrong one kills, with only five it’d be an easy save-restore cycle. Based on the author’s previous games (particularly Hamil) I took the message to be a literal cryptogram. OVERSEAS, based on the message length, can only change to Malvolio.

> S
Ah! Othello must have sent you!” says the occupant of the dwelling you enter. “You deserve some sort of recompense for the perils you have been through. But go quickly now!”
You are bundled hastily out into the street, and look about you to see…
You are in Illyria Court.
There is an antique viola here!

Unfortunately, my remaining Eastcheap issues (like the drinking contest, the chickens, and the king splitting his kingdom, the bread-stealing scene) have so far gone unresolved. If I knew for certain the town wasn’t reachable other than in winter, I’d have an easier time, but if there really is a sneaky way to get in (bypassing the drug squad) and potion-warp to spring that could indicate one or more of the puzzles above can’t be solved in the current season.

I did solve one more winter issue, way back at Lady Portia with the caskets. I mentioned that nearby there was a realistic statue of a woman; I noticed, noodling around with seasons, that statue disappears post-winter, so any puzzle has to be resolved in winter.

Given none of my items seemed helpful, I decided to noodle with making a verb list, which I hadn’t done yet. For this game testing is just a matter of typing the verb, if it is understood the game asks (supposing as an example the verb “smash”) “smash what?” If not understood, the game says “I don’t understand that!”

KISS turned out to hit paydirt:

> kiss statue
O! she’s warm. If this be magic, let it be an act lawful as eating. You perceive that she stirs. ‘Tis the lady Hermione, long supposed dead. She drops a necklace of diamonds at your feet and then she leaves.

Oho! We are starting to rack up treasures (the viola and copy of the Iliad and the topaz all count) but I haven’t found a good place to put them yet. This is especially troubling because changing seasons causes them to disappear (I guess laying around for two months is bait for thieves, eh?)

I reached the point I decided I needed to noodle around with seasons some more — note how finding out the statue disappeared helped me solve the puzzle, so information later can help with winter — and I realized, after warping to spring, that I still had some potion left. (Somehow I thought the phial disappeared with the treasures.) So I tried the potion again and…

There is a calendar here, which gives the date as June 24th.

…yes, we can also go to summer. This changes the map yet again.

First off, this resets the witches (again), so you can now get a third item from them. I still haven’t found a use for the non-newt items.

The most obvious thing to me was to try first was to head to the forest which had a Midsummer Night’s Dream reference in the text (“swifter than the moon’s sphere”).

Suddenly … a charm is thrown!
O monstrous! O strange! Thou art changed! Bless thee! Thou art translated!

To put it bluntly, you seem to have had an ass’s head put on you.
You are in the mystic wood.

OK, fair. Nothing has come off the assinating as of yet, other than it looks funny in inventory:

> inv
You have an ass’s head on you, and are holding:
A toe of frog.
A laundry basket.
A shield.
A dog-collar (which you are wearing).
A dagger.
There’s the smell of blood upon your hands.

Note the last line, where our murder of King Duncan to obtain the shield has not gone unpunished. Out, damned spot!

> clean hands
I’m afraid that all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten these little hands. Maybe something else will, if you can find what it is.

Again, I haven’t had the upshot yet (I assume somewhere we’ll find smelling like blood leads to our demise).

Since it is no longer the Ides of March, it is safe to pass through the building where we got stabbed (to the east of the magic forest area), leading to a whole new map section:

My assumption is this area cannot be accessed outside of summer, but maybe we could get here in winter if the bear is somehow manageable. The season gimmick adds the extra complexity that — even given there are no red herrings — some obstacles may be unpassable, and the way to “solve” the puzzle is simply to use a different season.

You are in the Capitol, a large building filled with people in white togas, who are listening to the famous orator Golesinius. For the less patient, there are exits to the west and southeast.
There is a scroll here.
> get scroll
OK.
> se
You are in the centre of a prosperous Southern town. To the northwest is the Capitol and there are roads to the south and east. In the distance you can see the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces and the solemn temples – such stuff as dreams are made on.

Going east from here gets you pummeled by the slings and arrows of fortune, but if you have a shield you can survive.

As you pass down the street a sudden volley of slings and arrows crashes against your shield. You carry on walking, to avoid further outrageous fortune.

The scroll from the Capitol incidentally rotates through a few messages, like “By indirections find directions out.” I suspect this might be a hint for one of the two mazes immediately after. Heading north gets you into a wood (with a paper marked ROSALIND)…

You are in the forest of Arden. High on a nearby tree there is fixed a piece of paper bearing the name ROSALIND.
> n
You are lost in the forest of Arden.

…going east instead goes into fog.

You are in the middle of a drooping fog as black as Acheron (sic).
It is impossible even to see the ground.
> w
You wander about in the fog and eventually blunder over a cliff.

They seem to be entirely distinct mazes right next to each other, and both of them of the “gimmick” variety. Dropping items doesn’t work at all the fog — the game explicitly says you can’t see the ground — and items don’t persist if you drop them in the forest.

Heading south into town there’s a shop with an Egyptian vase, and a barge with the Queen of Egypt.

You are on the barge. Various attendants are busily rushing hither and thither (and back again). There are steps down to the hold and to the north are the docks.
There is an Egyptian vase here!
The Queen of Egypt is here. On a burnish’d throne she sits. Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety.
> n
The Queen does not want you to leave the barge.
“O! never was there queen so mightily betrayed!” she claims. Her attendants bar your exit, but you yourself rather feel that here is your space and that kingdoms are but play.

You also can get bothered by a moneylender:

As you pass the moneylender’s premises, their owner comes out to greet you. Scenting business, he offers to lend you 3,000 ducats until you next meet, the security to be a pound of flesh. Three thousand ducats. ‘Tis a good round sum.
Wilt thou borrow it from the moneylender?

I haven’t tried promising the pound of flesh yet.

That’s enough new events for the moment. Just to recap, we now have three seasons: winter, spring, and summer. Passing through them is one-way. Some events are only available in particular seasons; for example, the statue of a woman and Yorick (the jester) are only available in winter, and the scene where you’re trapped in a kitchen and get attacked by knights only happens in spring. (In summer, the room is locked up again.)

Looking at the meta-map…

…one town seems to be winter-only, and one town seems to be summer-only, with the central area mostly open during all three seasons. There may still be some chunks missing; I highly suspect there’s a way to get past the Undiscovered Country at the river, for instance, which could open up a new section to the south.

Is fall a season too? I’m not sure; the potion does definitely vanish after two uses, so if there’s an extra method of warping time one more time it requires an item later. Honestly, everything’s complex enough to keep track of as it is.