Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Even the winged birds and the two-footed and four-footed, o silvery
Dawn, have set forth following your regulations of time, from the ends of heaven—
For, dawning forth with your rays, you illuminate the whole luminous realm.

— Rig Veda, I.49 Dawn

I was stalled by, once again, spelling. But in a different way this time! (For my previous antics, see my writeup of Circus.)

You see, I was somehow mentally shelving this game having as a three-letter parser, I think because of the spelling “albotross”; ALB was fine for me mentally, ALBO or ALBOTROSS slightly broke my brain. So I went through what turned out to be correct (KILL) but typed it as KILL ALB and not KILL ALBO (whereupon you must specify throwing the knife).

The manual’s hint specified flying; looking at the dead alb– grr, let’s say, “bird”, the game says it has a hole. Miraculously, probably form playing too many Sierra games, I quickly came up with

LIGHT MATCH

MELT WAX

WITH MATCH

which was sufficient to plug the hole.

THE WING IS NOW SUITABLE FOR FLIGHT.

So just to be clear, we’re toting around a dead bird and using it to fly. Sure? You can then go back to the cold lake and fly your way across, but before showing you the next spot, I should mention this is probably the part closest to the Vedas. The gods can “fly like birds” and get constantly compared to them. In a portion on the Maruts (storm deities):

With your chariots fitted with lightning bolts and with spears, whose wings are horses, accompanied by lovely chants, drive here, o Maruts.
Fly here like birds, with highest refreshment for us, you masters of artifice.

In the literature from this period generally there’s enough references to flying and magical Vimānas (flying palaces or chariots) that modern conspiracy theories have developed around them. The 20th century book Vaimānika Shāstra claims the magic is in reality advanced technology; UFO enthusiasts go on to make claims about ancient astronauts and/or aliens depending on their inclination.

My wondering about a random American in the Midwest picking this as a topic could be resolved by this mythology, as it is one of the most famous pieces of cultural lore to come out of the Vedas. It still easily could be by accident but the moment of grabbing a gigantic bird from the sky and using it to fly did feel just a little bit like a moment of the gods (fly, not glide, we’re launching from ground level).

Across the lake is a narrow island. In the middle a soldier blocks the way.

The soldier has armor so you can’t just use KILL; a quick item roll call:

cup with water, knife, matches, shovel, dead bird, two Vedas, coin

I didn’t have the water before, but while frustrated by the bird I tested TAKE WATER at the lake and it worked. The coin came from looking at one of the Vedas (a bookmark, I suppose) and can be given to the soldier who will take it as a bribe and leave. This is followed by the other end of the island, where you can fly yet again.

No more lake: you’ve landed in a desert, which is fairly empty except for a cactus in the center. I tried various attempts to apply the KNIFE to the cactus before simply attempting a DIG instead.

This leads to an underground chamber and the Yagur Veda.

A bit further is a locked door; the game lets you PICK LOCK and specify you want to use the knife. I appreciate the amount of item re-use this has had.

Then comes the last obstacle, a TOMB ENTRANCE with a zombie and some burning leaves. I didn’t have much to work with but I was still carrying water; pouring it led to the leaves being extinguished and the zombie disappearing with the leaves (??).

Finally the fourth book can be claimed.

The locations for all the Morgan games have generally lacked depth, including this one, although somehow the format of a quasi-mystical challenge made it more playable; I had an easier time than Miner 49’er, certainly, and only got stalled by the bird.

Part of the Yajur Veda, via Wikipedia.

I finally made a breakthrough on the mysterious ASD&D. I was poking about in this catalog which has the RPG Wizard’s Domain mentioned, and the name Thomas Johnson. This ended up being a much better lead than Scott Morgan, and I eventually landed on a timeline page which supposedly has a full story:

A Third-Party software house owned by Tom Johnson and run out of P.O. Box 46 Cottage Grove, MN 55016. The company seems to have surfaced in 1981 and disappeared in 1984, shortly after the 99/4A was abandoned by Texas Instruments. Among the dozen or so BASIC and Extended BASIC educational and entertainment products the company manufactured, perhaps the most remembered were Wizard’s Dominion and Entrapment. Wizard’s Dominion was an extremely popular fantasy adventure type game written by Johnson himself. Entrapment, another Tom Johnson creation, was a Mini Memory assembly language coded game that was so well written Texas Instruments had decided in early 1983 to pick it up and market it. Unfortunately, the big “bailout” of October 28th, 1983 took place first and Entrapment never came to market under the TI banner. It did surface through Tenex Computer Express in 1986 however.

The October date is when the TI-99/4A was discontinued.

There’s no sourcing on the connection and I haven’t been able to unearth anything definitively saying Johnson owned the company, but I’ve found enough products with Johnson’s name attached I’m comfortable saying the paragraph is mostly accurate. Previously I speculated

Still, I get the vibe we’re dealing with a 2 or at most 3 person operation here.

which is right, it’s just there’s really only one person (Johnson) who published Morgan’s work.

Coming up: Windmere Estate, for Apple II.

Now the Lord of the Sacred Formulation proclaims the mantra worthy to be spoken,
in which Indra, Varuṇa, Mitra, Aryaman, and the gods have made their home.
Just that would we speak at the rites—the faultless mantra that brings good fortune, o gods.
And if you gladly receive this speech, o noble men, it will attain all things of yours worth winning.

— Rig Veda, I.40 Brahmaṇaspati, Jamison and Brereton translation

Scott Morgan of Eden Prairie, Minnesota produced a series of six games for Texas Instruments computers in 1982 published under the name American Software Design and Distribution (ASD&D).

007 Aqua Base

Haunted House

Miner 49’er

In Search of the Four Vedas (right here!)

Fun House

Stone Age

I am not clear on the intended order. I started with the “beginner” game (Aqua Base) which said at the end to play Haunted House, and the ending of Haunted house said to play Miner, and the end of Miner said to play Vedas, so I’m just following the chain. I should find out at the end of this game whether I’m playing Fun House or Stone Age next.

From the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.

In Search of the Four Vedas is one of the two games (along with Fun House) marked as “advanced” although at least the start of the game is straightforward.

During this adventure you must find the ancient books that your tribe lost many years ago. They contain great knowledge of magic and the past.

Your goal is to find the four Vedas of Hinduism: the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda.

I don’t think there’s world-verse integration like we had with El Diablero; it’s just the four books form the “treasures” of the game and are a little more interesting than the usual *RUBY*, *DIAMOND*, and *GOLD NECKLACE*. I am not sure why a random American in the Midwest latched onto the Vedas as a good goal, but I appreciate the variety.

A 450-year old copy of the Rig Veda written on bark. The Rig Veda is the oldest of the four, with it being passed orally from somewhere in the second millennium BC. It includes mantras which allegedly are linked to the creation of the cosmos.

The action kicks off on a beach next to a lake too cold to swim in.

The anchor can be nabbed, the X can be dealt with later, and tree can be climbed.

The manual hints about flying a bird, and FLY ALB says “CAN’T FLY…YET!” so I assume there’s some way of setting it up. Here’s the remainder of my currently accessible map:

While quite small I already have two of the Vedas! The first can be found by retrieving a rope from a nearby cave, tying it to the anchor, and then throwing the anchor while next to a “very large tree”. This allows entering a treehouse.

The shovel can then be carted over to the beach where the X sits; digging reveals a chest and the second of the four treasures.

That went rather quickly, but perhaps the treasure distribution is “imbalanced” and the third and fourth will raise serious difficult. As things go I am stuck as there is not much to noodle around with. The Rig Veda had a coin inside; a hut had matches, wax, and a cup. Other than those I still have the shovel for digging as well as a knife, but that’s it. There doesn’t seem to be any places for secret exits, and the “albotross” is not cooperating with any verbs I’ve tried to throw at it. My guess is, structurally, the bird takes us to Part 2 and that’s where things get complicated or at least Advanced.

About now is when I’d trudge through my verb list but the parser treats every valid command in a bespoke way, so there’s no way to find out (say) LASSO is a valid word without testing it in context.