Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued directly from my previous posts.)

My first discovery since my last session was that if I drink the season-changing portion at the Friar’s Cell where it starts, then any items there are safe. I had drunk the potion there right away so had it mentally “discarded”, but I had an intuition later I hadn’t actually tested the room properly. I hadn’t been carrying any treasures because I didn’t have any yet.

A demonstration:

You drink the potion. Presently through all your being there runs a cold and drowsy humour and your eyes’ windows fall like death. In this borrow’d likeness of shrunk death you continue and then awake much later as from a pleasant sleep to see…

You are in a cell, which clearly belongs to some holy man, as you can tell from the religious decoration of the room. The only way out is by a door to the northeast.
There is a phial here, containing a potion of mandragora.
Is this a dagger you see before you? Yes, I believe so.
There is a diamond necklace here!
There is a large laundry basket here.
There is a shield here.
There is a clerical collar lying discarded here.
There is a piece of paper here bearing the word “STANDARD”.
There is a topaz here!
There is an antique viola here!
There is a signed copy of the Iliad here!

The Friar’s room after thus became my home base to stash treasures, even though it doesn’t seem to be the Final destination, wherever that may be. (The laundry basket seems like it ought to hold items for you, but things put inside disappear. They might disappear somewhere useful, but I haven’t work out where that is yet.)

While this was no guarantee yet, the natural gravity of the potion to the room near the hub led me to try to focus on the winter village and see if I could resolve as much as possible without thinking about a season change.

Falstaff statue at Stratford Upon Avon. Photo CC BY 3.0 by Tanya Dedyukhina.

The first puzzle to fall was the drinking contest. I ran across the solution semi-accidentally. I decided eating the bread (the bread where you get locked in the gaol when trying to escape after taking it) might cause an interesting effect, although I wasn’t anticipating it being the full-on deciding factor. Behold:

You and Sir John Falstaff enter into the drinking contest. Your training (eating a loaf of bread) stands you in good stead. “O monstrous! but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!” gasp the spectators, as you drink Sir John under the table.

The landlady, one Mistress Quickly, calls for a celebration, that anyone should take from Sir John the drinking championship of Eastcheap. A case of the finest Malmsey is carried in from a nearby room and you all carouse merrily. Eventually you are pushed into the street in a state of intoxication, where you awake to see that…

You are in Eastcheap. The Boar’s Head Inn lies to your north, the road from the town runs south here, and the street goes east and west here.
The Boar’s Head Drinking Trophy is here!

The half-pennyworth of bread line is from Henry IV, Part 1. I must add I have been very impressed with the author’s ability to shift between Shakespeare plays at will and with very disparate elements still have them make sense together. (The only other game, or rather puzzle we’ve seen this at, is with Cain’s Jawbone, where you had a portion of text that deceptively incorporated bits of Oscar Wilde in order to be confusing as to what character was speaking.) Phoenix games always have had respectable prose but I was worried putting a grandmaster like Shakespeare up might make everything seem weak in comparison; rather, the amalgam becomes something quite readable and new.

As explicitly mentioned in our victory, the “finest Malmsey” has been used, which means our entree into the back door should now be safe.

You are in a storeroom attached to the Boar’s Head Inn.
The only apparent exit is to the south.
There is a wooden spear firmly attached to the wall here.

The spear, being fixed in place, did not seem terribly useful. I ran through my verb list just to see if anything seemed handy. I’ll pause and give you a chance to spot it.

We’re supposed to SHAKE SPEAR. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. (I didn’t really solve it as much as brute force go through my list, but I realized right before I hit enter that this command had to be right.)

> SHAKE SPEAR
A secret panel in the wall slides away, revealing a passage
to the north.
You are in a storeroom attached to the Boar’s Head Inn.
There is an exit south and a secret passageway north.
There is a wooden spear firmly attached to the wall here.
> N
You are in a dark and dusty cellar, whose only exit is back to the south. On the wall is written
KING LEAR WILL SELECT ONE GIRL.
There is a piece of agate here, carved into the likeness of Queen Mab!

Now I discovered once again I was unable to save, which I once again took as a hint. The line about KING LEAR WILL SELECT ONE GIRL must be usable now in such a way that it is a puzzle which of the three that Lear wants you to pick from is correct.

“To which of my daughters, Regan, Goneril and Cordelia, shall I leave the largest share of my kingdom?” demands the king.
GONERIL
“Let it be so,” says the king, who evidently agrees with your judgement.

Your diplomatic acquiescence with the king’s will brings you a reward: “Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear; robes and furr’d gowns hide all.”

This lands you a robe as a treasure.

Goneril has the word ONE in it. Another playthrough gave the clue KING LEAR SPEAKS IN ANGER (pick Regan, an anagram of anger). I’m not sure what Cordelia’s clue is.

This meant I had two of the puzzles down, but I was now stuck in the village because of the stealing bread. I baffled over this a long time. There’s a sign you can see before getting arrested…

You are in the entrance to the town gaol; a large sign here bears the words “IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE, PLAY ****”.
For the righteous, the only exit is back to the north.

…but I had no idea how to fill in the blank (the Twelfth Night quote is “play on”).

Getting arrested takes away all your inventory, so I figured the solution had to be some sort of obtuse command.

You are in a cell in the town gaol. Somebody is whistling “Rule Britannia” outside. There are NO exits right now.

Messing about with the parser, I found that “rule” was an understood verb. (I tried “sing rule” and it got me “You will be able to rule when you become king.”) On a whim I tried a command that was more a statement than a designated action:

> RULE BRITANNIA
Quite so.

As you no doubt know, Rule Britannia is part of a masque called Alfred, written by Thomas Arne (1710-1778). The words were written by James Thomson (1700-1748), and begin

When Britain first at Heaven’s Command
Arose from out the azure main…

Alfred was first performed in 1740 in the presence of the Prince of Wales. Wagner later said that the whole English character could be expressed in the first eight notes. Wagner’s own music was rather more expansive in style.

A little like asking WHAT IS A GRUE? in Zork. Testing out the various words that got mentioned:

> ALFRED
I don’t understand that!
> ARNE
Your cry of ARNE brings the gaoler who is delighted at finding one who recognizes his musical tastes. “We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage. If music be the food of love, play ARNE!”

You join in with him in various ballads, namely settings of “Where the bee sucks, there suck I”, “Under the greenwood tree”, “Blow, blow thou winter wind”, and “When daisies pied and violets blue”. He is then only too happy to give you your freedom.

Groan. But at least I’m through! And I just have the pesky farmer to deal with in the winter town, and I am truly deeply baffled about it.

A farmer is standing here bemoaning the loss of his livestock.

“What! all my pretty chickens and their dam, at one fell swoop?” he mutters. “I asked my keeper, Puck, to get the fox’s earth seen to, but he went away saying that he’d put a hurdle round the earth in forty minutes (and that was hours ago.)”

Still, I managed to hurdle some things I did not expect, so maybe it will fall as well. I’m still leagues away from wanting to ask for help, at least.

This was the charter, the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain;
Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves
The nations not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.