Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous posts.)

Last time I left off on getting immediately killed by a pirate when entering a niche at the train station. Predictably, you can also get killed by waiting for the train in the track while not going west into the niche.

It is now 13:5
There is a rumbling sound and a distant whistle from a VS+EL RR train.

WAIT
It is now 13:10
You have just been run over by a VS+EL RR train.

There are no other exits. I ran through my item list (rope, pendant, charm, keys, can opener, strange coin, beers, tuna syrian, scimitar, disks, plus the random items from the underground I mentioned last time) and while testing the STATUS command I found that eating the tuna syrian maxes out the player’s power.

STATUS
Current power level: 0
Current coordination level: 0
Current magic level: 0
Current wisdom level: 0
Current knowledge level: 0

EAT TUNA SYRIAN
mm..mmm… That sure did taste good

STATUS
Current power level: 100
Current coordination level: 0
Current magic level: 0
Current wisdom level: 0
Current knowledge level: 0

This seemed quite promising, and indeed it allowed surviving entering the niche and not getting killed right away. Unfortunately, the niche has a pirate, a spider, and a rat, and I have yet to take down all three before dying. This may simply be an RNG battle and I need to throw myself at it enough times.

ATTACK PIRATE WITH SCIMITAR
Your attack misses the pirate.
The pirate, with an evil gleam in his eye, strikes and slashes, but you still live.
The giant rat attacks … his teeth make contact with you … you are weakened … but alive
The hairy spider attacks … he gets you … but you are still alive

ATTACK PIRATE WITH SCIMITAR
Though you hit the pirate, it is still alive
The pirate, with an evil gleam in his eye, strikes and slashes, but you still live.
The giant rat attacks … his teeth make contact with you … you are weakened … but alive
The hairy spider attacks … but he misses

I’ve managed to kill two out of the three but not all three. I probably could keep track of STATUS while fighting in multiple runs to figure out the optimal order of killing the three enemies. I’d love to increase my “coordination” stat but the only thing I’ve been able to do is make it go down to -2 (there are two beers, drinking each one drops that stat by 1).

The giant rat circles … He bites you squarely … and you feel the life running out of you

As the darkness of death fades, and the light intensifies, you find yourself falling quickly at first then slower, then slower still until you find yourself looking down on a strange land. Below is a river, a long river, so long that even at this height the river stretches forever. About 1 mile from each bank of the river is a tall mountain range. You slow more until you are about 1 foot from the ground, and then you lite gently on the surface of an eerie world.

Rather than focus on that, I decided to roll with dying and see what would happen. I wasn’t reading closely enough before but it became quite clear the authors have sent the player to Riverworld.

Via Diaspar Books.

Riverworld is a series by Philip José Farmer which technically dates back to the 50s (when he first made some published stories, which were meant to be published, but the publisher vanished into the ether) but is mostly associated with his series of novels starting in 1971. When they die, people are sent to a planet with a seemingly endless river; the first book follows the explorer Richard Francis Burton immediately upon dying, including meeting up with Alice Liddell (of Alice in Wonderland fame); Alice later kills Hermann Göring. The second book involves Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) wanting to build a riverboat.

There are no historical figures here: we’re on a river, and we died, and we need to get out.

There’s some randomization (which I haven’t seen anywhere else in the game); the green position is where I started once, but there seems to be more than one potential landing place. Additionally, there’s a penny, dime, and quarter marked for their locations during one of my visits, but they, too, can be randomly distributed. For example, I found the penny once at the far northwest, at the “dead end”.

Fossils of bones
Molded into the ground rocks around you feet are the fossils of many a human that has been committed to the Riverworld. When resurrection fails, the bones are piled here by others, until they decay, or become fossilized.

NORTH
Thick mist
The ground, and the river, are almost undistiguishible here due to the dense fog that surrounds you. Upstream, you can barely make out what appears to be a bridge heading to the other side of the river.

The game follows the same pattern of “view” rooms (like the Volcano View in Adventure) by adding a Lakeview.

You are on a path that continues northeast and southwest. Directly in front of you is a large lake, that has a mountain range forming its perimeter. The lake is hundreds of feet below you and there is no trail leading down to it. In the middle of the lake is a large tower that stretches up into the clouds. From here you can barely make out the details of the tower, however, you can see that it is silver, and has a platform at lake level.

Weirdly, all the various “environmental effects” like the crows and the rhinos still can appear. I was incorrect before: it seems like these effects literally can happen in any room with no restriction, including in the afterlife.

Riverstart
As the terrain becomes more mountainous, the river comes to its head receiving its waters from the large lake directly in front of you. A low fog prevents you from seeing much on the lake. There is a path here leading to the northeast, and another leading downstream.
A silence of monks noisely passes

To the far northeast (marked in blue on my map) is a shore with a boat. It took significant work to be able to enter the boat; Rob mentioned in the comments the game specifically wants BOARD, and with no noun.

Inside the little boat
You are standing inside the little boat that floats on the great lake at the end of the river. There are two buttons here, on marked “T” and the other “S”, although no explanations are given.

This immediately was followed with more parser suffering as I eventually found the game doesn’t recognize T BUTTON but rather wants “T” BUTTON, with the quote marks there.

PUSH “T” BUTTON
Beep

WAIT
It is now 13:10
After a momentary delay, the boat glides off quietly towards the tower

There’s a prominent tower in Riverworld but it is at the north pole, so I’m unclear if this is meant as a reference. Also, the boat may be a reference to the second book, even though that’s a very different boat.

1975 Panther edition, via Amazon.

The island adds some new fresh hell to the parser battle by asking you to move with “clockwise” and “counterclockwise”.

DISEMBARK
The Silver tower
You have reached the silver tower in the middle of the lake. You are standing on the lake level platform. The platform continues around the tower at this level in both the clockwise and counterclockwise direction. There is a second platform visible high above your head
Resting in the water against the tower is a small boat

If the start point is “south”, there’s a rusted ladder on the “west” side, but the one on the “east” side is solid enough to climb.

Base of a stainless steel ladder
There is a stainless steel ladder here leading up to the upper platform.

U
Top of the stainless steel ladder
You are standing on the upper platform which continues clockwise and counterclockwise from here.

CLOCKWISE
Silver curtain of light
You are standing on the entrance platform that leads into the silver
tower. Inside you can see a large room approximately 10x10x10.

IN
Inside the silver room.
You are standing inside of a 10x10x10 room with silver walls. As you enter, the door behind you disappears. The room is illuminated with an eerie glow. One one wall is a small box with three slots on the top one small, one medium, and one large, and a slot on the bottom.

This is sort of a mini-episode which makes the puzzle straightforward: as you’ve lost all your items held while dying, the only items available are the penny, dime, and quarter. They go in the different slots by size (dime in small, penny in medium, quarter in large, and if you put something too large in a particular slot it won’t fit).

PUT DIME IN SMALL SLOT
Clunk … ding!

PUT PENNY IN MEDIUM SLOT
Clunk … ding!

PUT QUARTER IN LARGE SLOT
Clunk … ding!
There is sound faintly resembling that found in B-movies when the angels appear. There is a deep rumble beneath your feet … In the wall you are facing, there is a slowly widening circle of lights, and as the circle gets larger, the lights in the cube dim, and the hum gets lower but louder. As the lights circumference becomes tangent with the edge of the cube, the wall disappears, revealing a large room outside.

Inside the silver room
You are inside a humming silver cube (approximately 10 feet on each side).

Going OUT leads back to the humming cube. So this resolves the purpose of the humming cube building, meaning aboveground there’s still the mystery of the hen, the bank, and (maybe) where the treasures go.

1986 Easton Press edition, via jwkbooks.

Rob made vague comments that there’s something important with the church, but the only item with a noun even recognized is the box that had the CHEVY key. I tried, from a fresh start, dropping a treasure in the box but doing so just caused the score to drop from 5 to 0 (the triremes charm at the start counts).

Inside the old church
You are standing inside of an old village church. The interior of the church is lit from light filtering through the stained class windows high in the roof. Towards the front of the church you can see a small pulpet, behind which are rows of benches. Immediately in front of you is a small, brown, walnut table, that stands about 3 feet high.
On the table, is a beautiful veneer box, with a slot cut in the top.

SCORE
You currently have 5 out of 750 points, requiring 31 moves
You current classification is ABECEDARIAN.

OPEN BOX
The box is now open.

GET KEY
Taken.

PUT CHARM IN BOX
Done.

CLOSE BOX
The box is now closed.

SCORE
You currently have 0 out of 750 points, requiring 37 moves
You current classification is ABSOLUTE MORON.

There otherwise isn’t any room that seems score-worthy. It’s not a rush at the moment (I’m clearly not deep in the game yet) but it would be nice to be sure about just because of logistical coordination (that is, if I have a big pile of items, where should it go to be most efficient?) One last issue specifically with treasure is that back at the mountain, if you try to go over the bridge the opposite way (the one that signal flags needed to be used to open) you will get stopped if you are holding any treasure. This seems intended to keep treasures from coming out of the cave, but this even applies to any treasures you brought in yourself (like the previously-mentioned charm).

Major mountain ledge
The drawbridge is in the closed position, forming a path accross to Minor mountain

N
A little gnome stops you and says …”You may not leave carrying any valuables. They must be left behind.” Then he disappears.

Next time, I’ll try to deal with the monster trio (which may just be a matter of throwing clones at the problem until RNG goes my way) and get on board the train.