Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous posts.)

“Giza-003 The Great Sphinx” by kairoinfo4u. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Things didn’t quite go down as expected. When I was mapping the ancient caves, I had apparently accidentally looped to a room I had already reached and thought the area was larger than it really was.

I am now marking rooms with treasures in blue.

The only benefit of entering them (as far as I can tell) is getting a moonstone.

This cave is more like a tall shaft. When you look up, you see stars instead of the sun. Exits lead north and northeast.
There is a beautiful pale moonstone here, as big as your hand.

It’s atmospheric at least?

This cave is almost circular, and the walls are painted with an astounded collection of colorful paintings of animals and birds. A cramped passage leads off to the northeast, and some broader paths go to the northwest, southwest, and south.

I’m still wondering if I’m missing something just because of structural solving reasons. That is, the section was relatively tricky to get to; asking the tour guide to take you to the Sphinx really is the only way in (more on that in a moment) hence entering the caves felt like a dramatic “break in” akin to finding the underground in Hermit. I combed over multiple times for missing exits or possible uses of “magic” and no luck.

Somewhat stumped, I decided at least to work out the orientation of the Sphinx with the rest of the map. It attaches to the desert such that there are one-way exits to the north. If you go directly north from the Sphinx you’ll arrive at the temple (the one where going down led to a lyre and a rockfall); keep going directly north and you’ll end up going by the pyramid, and then the tour guide.

Not sure what to tackle next, I tried various attempts at the hungry crocodile. My best guess was taking some “rotting meat” that was up near the base-camp tomb and feeding it. This seemed to be the wrong approach.

You have reached the bank of the Nile, at a narrow cleft in the surrounding rocks. The Valley of the Kings is north of you, and the river bank stretches off to the east. Across the river you can see the modern buildings of new Luxor. A twenty-foot crocodile is resting lazily on the bank, sunning himself. He looks asleep, but his beady little eyes are open.
FEED CROCODILE
Your offering isn’t acceptable.
GIVE MEAT
It’s not hungry.

Just for fun, given I had an “axe” from the fanatic, I tried KILL CROCODILE and died in an unexpected way.

An Egyptian wildlife official appears from behind a rock, where he was studying the migratory habits of the black ibis, and is so furious that he drowns you in the Nile.

Oh dear, I think … I’m afraid … yep, you’ve gotten yourself killed. I could try to resurrect you. Would you like me to give it a try?

As this is a derived-from-Adventure-source game, of course it includes the same resurrection code. It does seem appropriate for an ancient Egypt game, so I tried yes.

Okay, here goes, but remember that I’m not really up on the reincarnation methods of the ancient Egyptians. I never have used that old spell in The Book of the Dead, but it goes something like “Oh King, live foreve…”

****** Ka-Pow! ******

Wow! That was spectacular. A huge gout of blue smoke, smelling of incense, exploded all over the place. I feel a bit dizzy myself. Take a look around, and you’ll see …

You are at the Visitor’s Center in the Valley of the Kings. A dark-skinned tourguide, wearing a bright red fez and a white linen suit, bows and asks, “Where would you like to go?”

I should point out the “live forever” line doesn’t show up in the actual Egyptian Book of the Dead, but it does show up in a book by that name published by the “Supreme Council of the Order of Rameses” in the early 20th century. Maybe that’s where the fanatics with axes come from.

Source.

For more slightly off-canon underworld fun, Grunion Guy (who blogs about text adventures) discovered you can ask the tour guide to take you to HELL.

A dark-skinned tourguide, wearing a bright red fez and a white linen suit, bows and asks, “Where would you like to go?”
HELL
You are standing in the middle of a blazing inferno. Your skin sears, and your hair is begining to burn off. You can see the shapes of other hapless humans around you, and hear their awful shrieks of pain as their flesh eternally cooks in the flames.
GO EAST
This is the shore of a great featureless ocean, an endless sea that stretches out to the ends of eternity.

Exemptus (who has already beaten the game) reports in the comments this is an “Easter egg” and it is possible to escape from Hell, but I’ll work that out some other time. In the meantime I was still trying to make regular progress, and I had still had lurking parts of my map unfinished, so I decided to crunch through.

Specifically, lots of exits that went to “mountains” but I never figured out where the landing points were. I went to the mountains adjacent to the desert (with the assumption they would form some or all of the landing points) and dropped unique objects in every room, plundering even from my already-deposited treasure to have every room uniquely tagged.

I then went to those previously red-marked exits and tried each one, using a saved game in order to make things go faster.

I found that all the red-marked exits went to already-mapped mountain territory. (The hope would be I would find a new set of rooms, but it appears Dian decided not to hide anything this way. I can’t discount the possibility I’ve made a mistake, though; this is a big map.)

I went back and combed over the puzzles I had remaining:

1.) The camel near the base camp, which “spits at you”, and “playfully tries to kick your head off”. He blocks your way east, but you can enter from the other direction, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason to bother. Just like the meat with the crocodile, the carrot seemed to be the most promising, but I got the same responses as before (“it’s not hungry” / “your offering isn’t acceptable”) and that even happened while giving the meat, so this seemed to be barking up the wrong tree.

2.) The door with a seal that has a “dog, with nine little men.” We get stopped with “magic” (a “shimmering figure” and “mysterious force”) and I did test a few items out in case I could WAVE CHARM and get a result but nothing worked. (WAVE gets interpreted as digging by the parser, it’s a little confused.)

3.) The rockfall near the lyre didn’t even like me referring to it as a noun, so likely anything that needed to be done there doesn’t make direct reference (like blowing a horn; and before you ask, playing the lyre does nothing there).

4.) A statue of Ramses I believe I forgot to mention previously, close to the crocodile area, which is blocking a path from a canyon to the east.

You are walking along the base of a sheer cliff. A paved road leads off to the north, and the face of the cliff continues to the east, where it runs against the hills to form a canyon. The east end of the canyon, hardly more than a crevice at this point, is blocked by a monumental statue of Rameses The Great. The only visible exit from this area is back out to the west.
GO EAST
There is no way to get through in that direction.

5.) Any possible other tourist destinations, although I think I may have run the guide dry.

6.) The crocodile from earlier.

I finally looped back to the crocodile, which I will remind you, the game said was not hungry. However, the game also said my offering wasn’t acceptable, and the parser was having the occasional error, so … maybe …?

FEED MEAT TO CROCODILE
The croc snatches the stinking hunk of carrion and waddles off into the river with it, his beady eyes glistening with greed.

You need to use the entire phrase; the two-word command doesn’t work. Usually this sort of moment where you have to contradict a previous parser message to solve a puzzle makes me audibly growl at my computer (see Pillage Village for some of that) but it did seem so appropriate to give the meat to the crocodile it felt worth giving it a few more tries.

Past the crocodile you can walk along the Nile and find a plank (haven’t used yet) and climb up a rockfall which appears to be on the other side of that temple…

A narrow trail leads up to the northwest from here, along the canyon wall. The canyon used to extend north, but now it is blocked by a rockslide. The only other exit goes to the west.
NW
You are on a very dangerous trail, just above the floor of the chasm. A path leads up from here to an awkward clamber, and another trail goes southeast down to the bottom of the chasm.
U
You are inching along an awkward clamber on the wall of a very steep canyon. A steep trail leads up from here, and a dangerous looking trail extends down into the darkness.

…and find yourself in a jungle.

Again, mostly just for the scenery and atmosphere, and dispensing one treasure: a Roman helmet.

You are walking through a humid tropical jungle, surrounded on all sides by waving ferns, tall palms, and clumps of papyrus.
W
You are wandering through the jungle. There is a tumbled mound of rocks here, and next to it a skeleton dressed in the rotted shreds of Roman armor. He was probably trying to mark his path.
A dented, but still impressive, ancient Roman helmet is here.

However, I was again now stuck. It took me a few more beats — mainly because of the sequence I had tested things — to realize while I had tried feeding a carrot to the camel, I did it using the “bad” parser syntax. Heading back with carrot in hand, and using GIVE CARROT TO CAMEL:

The camel takes the carrot as if he’s doing you a great favor. He turns his back on you, kicks a little dirt in your face, and pretends he’s never met you. Typical camel, actually.
E
You are in the desolate Theban Mountains, at a narrow rift. A section of stony cliff has been smoothed off sometime in the past, and a massive door, dark with age, is set into it. The door is held firmly shut by an ancient iron lock.

The key I just have from the outside (it was north of the carrot).

UNLOCK DOOR
The huge door creaks open slowly, its hinges stiff with age. Behind it, to the south, you can see a dark, sloping hallway.
S
It is now pitch dark. If you go on, something may eat you.
TURN ON FLASHLIGHT
The flashlight is now on.
This is the west end of a long sloping corridor. The east end of it leads down into a what looks like a large room. A door in the north wall is open to the bright light of day.

And this seems like a good place to pause for now! It turns out all I was really stuck on was a syntax issue, but that dragged me down for a few hours (at least enough time to get those mountains mapped). I’m hoping I’ll be able to coast to victory next time barring any last moment surprises.