Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous posts on Cornucopia.)

By request, removing a red gem from an idol, as referenced in my last post. Via eBay.

There’s lots of new places to see in this post, but before plowing forward, I wanted to address something I’ve found puzzling: why does the writing seem both good and bad at the same time?

As has already been observed in the comments by arcanetrivia, there’s very loose control of commas. Other grammar conventions at times are followed only approximately.

You are in a room which is wider at the east end than at the west end, its length is greater than its width even at its widest point. Strangely there is a powerful draught blowing from this end of the room towards the smaller end, it is probably something to do with the rooms shape. The floor is covered in gaily coloured tiles; red, green blue and yellow ones. The walls are coloured to match and the whole makes your eyes fairly boggle.

I would love to scribble my red pen over this, but it doesn’t feel awful in the way we’ve seen with other games. It struck me finally that most of the awkward sections work fine if read out-loud. Imagine that this was originally an AD&D scenario (as it may have been!) where the Dungeon Master reads descriptions to the players. (Link here if the embed below doesn’t show on your screen.)

It seems to work, no? The phrase “its length is greater than its width even at its widest point” scans with the eye badly but given the natural pauses and emphasis of a voice, it doesn’t seem confusing. There’s a comma that doesn’t work as written (after “end” it should be a period) but if we think of it verbally, as a shorter pause than a period, it makes sense. Even if none of this text made its way into a real campaign, I suspect the author might have written things down with a spoken cadence in mind. Taking a later clip which we’ll see today:

The murals were painted by an artist who was a master of his craft. They depict the scenes of miraculous healing of beings of many kinds, some quite hideous, some enormous and others quite ordinary. No reason for the healing is shown, but it is obvious a great antipathy existed between some of these beings.

There’s nothing broken in the grammar this time, the parallelism-with-a-break parses well (“some” quite hideous, “some” enormous, “others” quite ordinary) and the final suggestion of “a great antipathy” existing between the beings (without being explicit) is genuinely vivid. Mind you, it still isn’t Emily Dickinson, or to make a fairer comparison, Brian Moriarty, but it works better than your average early-80s text adventure.

Back to the game! Last time I had mentioned a section with a gold door–

>ENTER MIRROR
You are in a small square room, the walls of which are completely blank.
There is a gold door in the south wall.

>OPEN GOLD DOOR
You open the door and a little man rushes out and says ‘Oh thank you very much, I have been stuck in there for ages’. I only came back for this, he says, waving a small box, it should have got me out of there but it seems it is not quite perfect yet. He then turns a dial, presses a button on the small box and just disappears. In his haste to depart a note slips from his pocket.

Now that I had the prototype teleport box, I could escape from this area (with the gold bar just to the south) but there turned out to be one catch: the “little man” swipes the transport box if you’re holding it.

You open the door and a little man rushes out and says ‘Oh thank you very much, I have been stuck in there for ages’. I only came back for this, he says, waving a small box, it should have got me out of there but it seems it is not quite perfect yet. He suddenly looks at something you are carrying and says ‘I lost that sometime ago, whereever did you find it?’ Without letting you answer he quickly snatches it. He then turns a dial, presses a button on the small box and just disappears. In his haste to depart a note slips from his pocket.

Fortunately, avoiding this is a matter of just taking the brown sack from the kitchen area and storing the transport box in there temporarily.

The sack has an interesting side effect.

The small box has five coloured buttons on its top side. They are coloured blue yellow, green, pink and black, there is no indication as to their use. The box has the distinct appearance of being extremely delicate, and probably the slightest bump would damage it.

Note the “slightest bump would damage it” part. Trying to drop the box results in a “sickening crunch” and it stops working. However, having the box in the sack is sufficient to protect it (assuming you need to clear your inventory).

Moving on:

The area is made of a chain of six doors: gold, silver, copper, crystal, oak, ruby. Pressing the blue button on the box advances forwards one; pressing the pink button goes back one. (After ruby, it wraps back to gold.) Green advances two and yellow advances three. The black button goes back to the mirror. This is incidentally the only area I’ve found where any button other than black works.

The “silver bar room” seems to be there for just holding a silver bar. The copper door allows a second entrance into the Magi area (bypassing the dragon puzzle!) The crystal door has some mist and a coin on the ground.

You are in a small square room, the walls of which are completely blank.
There is a crystal door in the north wall.

>OPEN DOOR
The crystal door opens.

>N
The mist in this chamber is so thick it is difficult to see where you are.

>EXAMINE ALL
mist : The mist is very thick but you notice something glinting on the floor.
large coin : The large coin is big, about two inches in diameter, with the wording ‘One Centumbro, 376 FA’ written around its edge. On one side is the face of a peculiarly ugly man, with a self important air, and on the other some kind of tree in full blossom.

The oak door leads to a “Woodland” which is a brand new area which I’ll discuss in a moment. The ruby door goes to a hall where there are three holes which suggest three rods.

You are in a short north-south passage, which is bathed in a bright light from an unseen source. The south end is blanked off. In the west wall are three holes aligned almost vertically. The top hole is just over head height. The middle hole is round about shoulder height. The bottom hole is at about knee height.

I skimmed over it last time, so let me quote the note the man from the gold door dropped.

The folded note seems somewhat cryptic, something about inserting the rod’s in ROD order from the top down. It makes no mention of what rods, but presumably this is some sort of code for them, or where they should be placed.

Including things later in this post, I have an opal rod and a diamond rod. I assume somewhere there is a ruby rod, and ruby goes on top, followed by opal, followed by diamond (ROD). That leaves out the sapphire and emerald rods from earlier in the game, but both of those count as treasures so may end up serving solely as treasures.

Regarding those Woodlands:

You arrive where a pixie is waiting, and follows you around.

You are in an enchanted wood. There are well trodden paths to the northeast and south. There is a small Pixie dancing about your legs.

The text hints the pixie is waiting for you to give something, and it takes the whistle (which I never found useful anywhere, so good riddance I suppose).

>GIVE WHISTLE TO PIXIE
The pixie grabs tiny whistle and gaily scampers off playing merrily on the whistle.

The problem is: I’m not sure why this is useful. The pixie doesn’t cause issues with entering a treehouse, nabbing the opal rod within, and taking another path which leads back to the mirror. I assume this is one of those long-pass puzzles where something you do affects another part of the map entirely.

Speaking of long-pass puzzles, a little aside on something from last time: I had tied a weight to open up a dais floor, but couldn’t jump in the resulting pit. That turned out to lift the random granite block jammed in an arch back at the Magi area.

You are in a small dark room, above you can be seen the trap door you came through and a flight of rickety stairs leading up to it. There is an arch in the east wall leading in to a deeper darkness.

>E
You are at the bottom of a pit. You are standing on a portion of the dais. There are passages to the north and south.

>S
You are in a small grubby chamber which must lie below the huge cavern. The west wall had some writing upon it, unfortunately someone seems to have completely erased it. There is a diamond rod on the floor.

There’s diamond! So I just need to find a ruby (or rhodochrosite, or rubellite) rod in order to bust into the area back at the chain-of-doors.

The last major area I made progress since last time was at the ice area. I had found an ice key, but nowhere to put it. Rather sheepishly, I found it only two rooms away; I forget an EXAMINE ALL. D’oh!

Ice cliff
There is a small keyhole in the cliff face, funny place for a keyhole.

>PUT KEY IN KEYHOLE
Ok.

>TURN KEY
The key turns clockwise and as it completes half a revolution there is a click and a strange door opens in the cliff face. At the same time the key melts away to nothing, you must have been holding it too tight. From inside a voice says ‘Enter Oh Searcher of the Key’.

This leads to an “ice palace”:

The north side includes an “ice door” with a place to put a six-fingered hand.

You are in a Hall seemingly hewn from solid ice, a fantastic feat. At the north end a small passage way disappears into the wall. At the south end two flights of stairs lead up to the southeast and southwest corners. Beside the stairs leading up to the southwest there seems to be a sign buried in the ice. Between the two stairways there is a rounded ice door.

If you remember my item stash (and it is completely understandable if you don’t) I had a mummified hand from back in the magi area, and the game customizes the description if you’re holding the hand.

The imprint looks as though it was made by the mummified hand that you are carrying. It would probably fit exactly.

>PUT HAND IN IMPRINT
As you do this a harsh blue light shines momentarily all round the doors edge, the door then slides quietly open.

The door leads back to the Throne area; that is, this is a way to escape the ice zone without using the teleport box.

The mummified hand has a very different effect if you step southwest instead, to a Hall of Regeneration.

>SW
You are in a hall the walls of which are covered in murals. The theme of the murals seems to be that of severely wounded indeed fatally wounded people recovering in a miraculous manner. The murals also contain pictures of the corpses of many hideous beings, these seem to be an interlinked part of the story. There are doorways to the south, west and northeast.

>EXAMINE MURALS
The mummified hand you are holding gives a shiver. You become so mesmerised by this unexpected movement, that you stand still watching it. The hand grows a new body, it is huge. Standing before you a twenty foot four armed hirsute monster, it finds you a tasty snack. You realise, as you are being devoured, that this is one of the beings depicted in the murals. From your sitting position you can see through a glass screen into a room that looks strangely familiar. On either side of you are further skeletons, they have a somewhat glum look on their skulls just as you do. You are dead and have become yet another trophy for the long departed owners of this place.

I don’t know if this is useful yet or just something to be avoided. The hand does count as a treasure so I suspect it must be kept that way.

Heading a bit further south there are two “stasis rooms” where things slow down followed by a “magic circle”. Inside the circle is a “crystal key”.

You are standing in the centre of a large and imposing hall, exits can be seen on all four sides. The ceiling has a small dome in it which was not visible from the sides of the hall. The floor has an intricate mosaic design which makes up a magic circle. There is a small crystal key lying on the floor here.

>GET CRYSTAL KEY
Taken. As you lift the key an unseen panel lights up in the north wall. It says ‘UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY DETECTED GUARDS HAVE BEEN ALERTED’. As quickly as the sign appeared it disappears. You notice that two things have appeared to the east and west of you.

The “things” are an ice devil and an ice warrior.

Ice devil (gelugon) from the 1970s Monster Manual. Scan from my own copy.

They follow you around and you can use the rune sword to attempt to do battle. As far as I can tell it is guaranteed to be a losing battle if you fight both of them at once; maybe there’s a way to split them? Or melt something helpful? Or trap them at the bridge to nowhere? I don’t know yet.

>KILL WARRIOR WITH RUNE SWORD
A good blow but it is much too slow.
You manage to dodge the Ice devil’s thrust. The Ice warrior completely misses.

>KILL WARRIOR WITH RUNE SWORD
The flat of your sword hits the ice warrior on the side knocking him over, it quickly regains its feet.
The Ice devil strikes you across the back as you attempt to run away. Oh boy that last attack of the Ice warrior’s was really something, what coordination. Oh! by the way it killed you.

One last piece to mention: I said in the comments I hadn’t found a use for LOOK UNDER even though I knew it worked, and Roger Durrant hinted that it gets used early. Poking around I realized the wardrobe that contained the Fabergé egg could be looked under.

Under the large wardrobe you find a plastic bag.

Messing around more, I found WEAR BAG worked in an interesting way.

Have you never been told about suffocating while wearing one of these, if you don’t take it off you will suffocate.

This does not give protection against the spores in the closet (I tried) but it does let you enter the multiverse world with poison gas in the air. You have to be quick, though, due to bag suffocation.

>ENTER MIRROR
You are in a lovely piece of countryside, although the colours are all tinged with green and things seem distorted just like looking into a pool of water. Due to the distortion of your sense of perception you cannot make out any particular direction as being distinguishable from any other.

>OPEN SPELL BOOK
Opening the spell book reveals :- detect magic spell; dispel magic spell; detect illusion spell; detect evil spell.

>CAST DISPEL MAGIC
The illusion reluctantly fades and you find….. You are in a room which is distorted by the strange effect the cyanide in the air is having, the colours are all tinged with green as well. The room has no exits or, apparently, entrances and no use, seemingly. On one wall is a large steering wheel.

This doesn’t clear up the gas. It does let you turn the wheel (and the dispel magic spell doesn’t get burned). However, the wheel must be another long-pass effect, because I have no idea what turning it does (and even, given the possibility of multiple dispel magic castings, if it should be turned more than once).

From a Forgotten Realms comic, via the corresponding wiki.

To give a full list, I need to deal with (or ignore as a red herring):

• The goo at the tree in the garden
• The compost heap at the garden
• The fish at the garden
• The ice devil and warrior
• The hand regeneration, assuming it doesn’t just get ignored
• Figuring out what giving a whistle to a pixie does
• Figuring out what turning the wheel does
• Finding something useful at the just-mist destination of the mirror
• Finding a ruby rod
• Handling the deadly spores in the closet

Based on nothing more than vibes I think we’ve got three posts to go before the end, which means this game isn’t quite reaching Time Zone length but it does tangle on equal ground with such monsters as Hezarin and Avon.