Let's >RECITE THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE and Play Hadean Lands

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's >RECITE THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE and Play Hadean Lands

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Nakar: Sep 2, 2002; Ultima Ratio Regum

The most messed up thing about this game is that Forsyth can apparently memorize anything in seconds and appears to have an eidetic memory, yet is still somehow only a schlub on the alchemist ladder. Of course, all this resetting is probably giving them lots of time to get in training.

EDIT: Incidentally, can Forsyth EXAMINE him/herself, either normally or via the oculus (and does the oculus show anything different when under the effects of the fire resistance potion)? How about RECALLing themselves, since they can do so for the rest of the crew?

Nakar fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jun 10, 2018

# ? Jun 10, 2018 04:04

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# ? May 4, 2024 22:12

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Nakar posted:

The most messed up thing about this game is that Forsyth can apparently memorize anything in seconds and appears to have an eidetic memory, yet is still somehow only a schlub on the alchemist ladder. Of course, all this resetting is probably giving them lots of time to get in training.

EDIT: Incidentally, can Forsyth EXAMINE him/herself, either normally or via the oculus (and does the oculus show anything different when under the effects of the fire resistance potion)? How about RECALLing themselves, since they can do so for the rest of the crew?

These are all very good questions, and they should start to get sharper over the next update or two, as we start poking around in places where ensigns aren't permitted.

Well, except for one aspect: I hadn't tried >RECALL SELF previously, but it just gives me the somewhat baffling reply "That's not how memory works." That looks suspiciously like a custom-written generic parser error, and that makes me wonder if I'm triggering a reply that's intended for a different class of game objects.

EDIT: Fat Samurai noted early on that our initial progress was very slow indeed:

Fat Samurai posted:

quote:
After months of diligent practice, you have memorized several common alchemical formulae:
(5 basic formulae listed)

I see that the wizard school is next to a pub.

I mean, maybe the word of entension is way easier than the Lesser Phlogistical Saturation, but there's at least one serious discrepancy here between past and present performance.

ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Jun 10, 2018

# ? Jun 10, 2018 04:25

macdjord: Oct 26, 2013

ManxomeBromide posted:

Hm. Maybe moon-metal is iridium, if it alloys with platinum into a "royal" metal. But iridium isn't a little heavier than silver; assuming rods of uniform size it would be twice as heavy as lead.

Also, iridium is 3 times as hard as nickel. If nickel got a special 'stretching this into wire is hard' message and moon-metal did not, that suggests it is not iridium.

ManxomeBromide posted:

The AI politely informs us that we are idiots. We'll have to >RESET again. After that, let's see how long a chain of operations we can force at once:

Not bad. Not optimal—we travel to the Pyrics Lab before remembering that we need to brew a fire resistance potion—but the job is done.

Which is interesting, since it implies that the goal-solver is, to some degree, working 'bottom-up' - that is, looking at what it has and trying to figure out what it need to do to get closer to the final goal. If I were trying to write such a thing, I'd be working exclusively in a 'top-down' manor, looking at the final goal, considering what is needed to achieve it, then looking at what is needed to achieve those goals, and so on until I got down to things that are immediately possible. (I could probably hack something together in a day or two using Python and the `make` utility.)

Of course, the thing with the pinecone probably explains why they implemented a partially bottom-up solver; with a purely top-down solver, if you asked it to accomplish an impossible goal, nothing would happen, whereas this approach means that it will do what it can up until it hits a point where it actually requires whatever it is that you don't have and can't get. In the context of a game, this 'do what you can before failing' approach is more useful.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

That would be my vote. Using a moon metal wire loop in the ritual, or just having the moon metal on the gestalt shelf, seems likely to give us a stronger lunar ambiance.

I don't think we've found any ritual bounds that are both 'adjustable' (meaning they have a groove around the outside to put wire in) and have a gestalt shelf for the rotor card, though. While we could try just putting a moon metal rod on the shelf, it seems unlikely that that would work - if you could do that, there would be no reason for adjustable ritual bounds to exist.

# ? Jun 10, 2018 04:27

Ratoslov: Feb 15, 2012; Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Could I ask you to look at the rotor card through the oculus in each of it's states? That'd get us some basic information.

# ? Jun 10, 2018 06:37

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Ratoslov posted:

Could I ask you to look at the rotor card through the oculus in each of it's states? That'd get us some basic information.

Absolutely.

Also, everyone: please vote on the two questions at the end of the update on the last page..

# ? Jun 10, 2018 08:23

Ratoslov: Feb 15, 2012; Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Depth and Down.

# ? Jun 10, 2018 08:32

The Lone Badger: Sep 24, 2007

Depth and Up

# ? Jun 10, 2018 09:33

Telum: Apr 17, 2013; I am protector of the innocent! I am the light in the darkness! I am truth! Ally to good! Nightmare to you!

Depth and down.

I do imagine The Lone Badger is right about the coin being the lunar nature we need; I was just trying to come up with a backup plan if that doesn't work.

It's a bit belated for my reaction to the LP, but I'll throw it on the pile anyway: this game seems very cool and interesting! I'm a bit torn between following the LP or stopping to go buy it and play it myself. Problem is I'm generally pretty bad at IF :v:

But Plotkin has provided tons of entertainment over the years, so maybe I should buy it even if just to throw a few bucks his way. Every few years I remember IF is a thing, eventually remember who that one guy is who makes IF I like, I find his website, manage to complete some of the easier games on it, fail miserably with the harder games, and finish it off by reading through Praser 12 again and finding someone else to inflict it on. I love that puzzle. Anyway. Thanks, ManxomeBromide, for LPing this. Hopefully I can learn something from it.

# ? Jun 10, 2018 13:19

Loxbourne: Apr 6, 2011; Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.

ManxomeBromide posted:

I mean, maybe the word of entension is way easier than the Lesser Phlogistical Saturation, but there's at least one serious discrepancy here between past and present performance.

This might just be because the Ensign is now a protagonist and has has undergone Offscreen Protagonist Competency Infusion, but when stuff like this comes up in interactive fiction I always start spamming the X SELF commands just in case there are perception games afoot.

I'm going to vote for Depth and down. I want to know more about this ship; the airlock description seems to imply it exists outside normal space and travels by attuning itself to various destinations. I wonder if being "outside" (or perhaps just sitting in hard vacuum when not rigged to a location) is needed to keep the ritual spaces "sterile" and free from outside influence? I imagine the surface of e.g. the moon would have a rather strong lunar influence.

# ? Jun 10, 2018 13:56

The Lone Badger: Sep 24, 2007

I don't think the people 'frozen in time' have anything wrong with them at all. I think something's wrong with us.

# ? Jun 10, 2018 14:36

macdjord: Oct 26, 2013

ManxomeBromide posted:

EDIT: Fat Samurai noted early on that our initial progress was very slow indeed:

I mean, maybe the word of entension is way easier than the Lesser Phlogistical Saturation, but there's at least one serious discrepancy here between past and present performance.

More likely there's just a lot of basics and prep-work that you have to get through before you start learning your first actual formula. Alchemy is obviously as much a mental art as it is a matter of repeating specific phrases from memory, so we can't assume that all of those months of practice were spent on just memorizing those 5 items.

# ? Jun 10, 2018 15:29

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

There's probably also a certain amount of "we're going to teach you very slowly because we're trying to instill discipline in you" going on here. Presumably you can learn pretty quickly if you don't mind risking everything going horribly wrong.

# ? Jun 10, 2018 16:06

macdjord: Oct 26, 2013

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

There's probably also a certain amount of "we're going to teach you very slowly because we're trying to instill discipline in you" going on here. Presumably you can learn pretty quickly if you don't mind risking everything going horribly wrong.

Plus a measure of 'We could teach you everything you need to be promoted to full Alchemist now.... but then you'd be too senior to be sent to swab the decks, and we do kinda need those decks swabbed. I had to do years of tedious-but-nessisary grunt work before they let me learn the fun stuff, so why should you get off easy?'.

macdjord fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jun 10, 2018

# ? Jun 10, 2018 17:04

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Part 6: A Fish Out of the Sea

Last time we failed to create a Lodestone of Purity, because our contaminating fiery odors interfered with the lunar environment we had set within the gestalt. Several readers came up with the solution to this: we need to add additional lunar elements to the ritual space. The easiest way to do this would be with the silver coin, but it is also possible to use the rod of moon-metal for this purpose.

And that, in turn, raised a question: if you can just put a chunk of moon-metal on a gestalt shelf, why bother with adjustable bounds? That raises a question we can test right now, though. Why bother with the ginger? We've got a Pyrics lab next door. Can we put, say, a burning piece of wood on the gestalt shelf and then remove the contamination by taking it off, or letting it burn down?

Our new resonant oculus suggests an optimization even to that:

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT CEDAR
When viewed through the oculus, the splinter of cedar displays a fiery nature.

Wood is intrinsically fiery. That makes setting up the ritual quite easy, because we can just put the rotor, the coin or moon-metal, and the cedar on the shelf.

quote:

>PUT MOON-METAL ON SHELF
You put the moon-metal rod on the gestalt shelf.

>PUT CEDAR ON SHELF
You put the splinter of cedar on the gestalt shelf.

>SPEAK SIMPLE SEALING
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the simple sealing word.

The arc begins to glow silver around the length of silver chain.

>SPEAK WORD OF ESSENTIAL NATURE
You intone the word of essential nature. The metallic nature of the silver chain rises to the surface, though with an indistinct shimmer.

... but it doesn't work. Let's try it again with the ginger.

quote:

>SPEAK UNSEALING
You let the unsealing mantra run through your mind, clearing away the ritual energy. The bound goes dark.

>GET CEDAR
Taken.

>OPEN GINGER
You pop open the impet, and the ginger aroma rolls out, stinging your nose.

>SPEAK SIMPLE SEALING
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the simple sealing word.

The arc begins to glow silver around the length of silver chain.

>SPEAK WORD OF ESSENTIAL NATURE
You intone the word of essential nature. The metallic nature of the silver chain rises to the surface.

>CLOSE GINGER
You snap the ginger impet closed. Its aroma fades.

>INVOKE MINOR ANIMUS
You voice the Minor Animus, trying not to cough. As the clicks and pops roll on, the chain begins to vibrate, and then writhe back and forth across the bound.

When you reach the final sound, the bound flares and fades. You see that the end of the chain has tied itself into a tiny silver knot.

This, I think, gives us our answer. :eng101:

Different rituals have different requirements for what will count as an appropriate influence. This ritual requires a lunar environment but isn't picky about how it gets it. The contamination, however, it is finicky about and it only works if it's an aroma. We haven't discovered any rituals that require a specific kind of bound, but the adjustable bound presumably would permit those to be executed more efficiently.

They're probably pretty rare, though, since the only bound we've found that requires this is off of the Mechanica lab. This sort of suggests that the wire is created and immediately used each time, and there isn't a stock set of bounds to choose between. Overall the gestalt shelf will be our first resort if we can at all help it.

Also, we now have a Lodestone of Purity. We should try it out. Next door there's a horrific pile of wrecked glassware that was once some kind of elemental earth-based calibration mechanism. Can this lodestone find it for us?

quote:

>EXAMINE DISASTER
Some complex optickal assembly has defenestrated itself off the bench into utter catastrophe. Pieces of lenses, bits of mirror, broken prisms, and shards of who-knows-what lie in a slumped heap on the floor. You feel at once horrified and relieved that it wasn't your fault.

>SWING LODESTONE
You hold the chain by one end, and set the knot swinging. The arc angles sharply towards the heap of glass.

Interesting. You step towards the heap, and move the lodestone slowly over it, keeping an eye on the angle of its swing. Yes�there; a shard of crystal which is not broken at all. You nudge it free of the heap. This must be the elemental earth from the experiment.

>GET EARTH SHARD
Taken.

Very nice! This thing is precious�according to the note we found here, this is the only shard of elemental earth on the entire Retort�and we don't know what we're going to run into. Let's leave it in the Opticks Annex for now.

While we're there, I take some time to point the oculus at various items we have handy.

The rotor has a moonlit night (lunar), snowy day (arctic), windy day (exhilarant), sunny day (solar), and a rainbow (spiritual).
The peppermint is also arctic, so this is the general ice element, it seems.
All woods are fiery.
The fire door key is orderly.
The steel bolt "acquires a colorful fringe when viewed through the oculus, but its symbolic associations are not strong enough to visualize clearly." That's the "not significant" message.

Time to start exploring the rest of the ship. Last time we made it to the Airlock and the Medical Wing before turning back. Now, let us press on, into the heart of the marcher:

quote:

>WEST

Nave
The Nave is the marcher's heart, though the rows of benches are empty now. The seats face a pedestal, on which is a ritual bound and shelf. The side walls boast symbolic frescos; the south wall is a high, ornamented metal mesh�the writ screen�which separates the Nave from the Chancel.

A mural has been defaced with more of those twisted black marks.

The main corridors run east and west from here, and the Retort's entry hall is north.

>EXAMINE MARKS
More twisting black marks crawl up one corner of the mural and across the ceiling. They are as incomprehensible as the first set... although you are left with an itching sense of familiarity in the back of your mind.

>EXAMINE MURAL
The murals depict Alchemical Man passing through the Eight Stages of calcination, dissolution, sublimation and so on. It's wonderfully detailed and you can stare at it for hours, which is of course the point, even though these medieval theories have long since been subsumed into modern alchemical science.

A mural has been defaced with more of those twisted black marks. It's the scene of conjunction, in the southwest corner. (Always a favorite.)

I'm sure it is popular on those long journeys through the Higher Spheres. :pervert:

Will those weird black marks respond to science?

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT MARKS
The symbolic associations of the black marks are as unfamiliar as the script itself.

That's interesting. If they were just soot or something they wouldn't have symbolic resonance. These marks have purpose, but their purpose is as unguessable as the shapes themselves. But they're definitely not just marks. They're a script, and a script referring to things beyond our ken.

What else is here?

quote:

>EXAMINE BOUND
The ceremonial pedestal is carved of serpentine, with an ornate ritual bound on top. The gestalt shelf is a wrought-iron affair on the side. Important rituals are often performed here by the rectors, although of course the Retort's most powerful rituals occur in the Chancel.

>LOOK THROUGH SCREEN
The Chancel is a smaller chamber to the south. You can see another ritual bound there, and other alchemical accoutrements. Of course you've never set foot on that side of the screen. Only the Retort's senior officers and rectors are permitted inside, and they enter from the high wing where scrubs never venture.

Anyone feeling like taking bets on whether we'll ever be venturing here?

I thought not.

The vote last time ended up with us going down first, so I'll start heading towards the staircase. We'll look around as we go.

quote:

>WEST

West Side Hallway
The Retort's main hallway continues from the Nave, to the east, towards the exoscaphe bay to the west. A cross-corridor runs north towards quarters wing and south to the paper garden.

>SOUTH

Paper Garden
The garden is the marcher's refuge of meditation and calm. Paper paths wind among beds of paper flowers; the walls are hung with paper trees beneath a calm blue-painted ceiling. A tiny brick-lined pool lies at the garden's center. The place isn't large, but it doesn't feel small. You've always liked it.

An opening to the north leads back to the Retort's main corridor, and another south to the lower reaches. To the east, a paper arch gives entry to the paper hedge maze. The observatory door to the west is closed.

This place is pretty! It's also chock full of symbolism.

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT FLOWERS
The oculus shows the paper flowers as symbolizing tamed Nature.

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT TREES
The oculus shows the paper trees as symbolizing wild Nature.

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT POOL
The oculus shows the pool as symbolizing a deep, clear lake.

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT CEILING
The oculus shows the painted sky as symbolizing, in fact, the sky.

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT MAZE
The oculus shows the paper maze as symbolizing the necessary mystery of the Retort's operation. You're not sure why it's necessary. (If you knew, it wouldn't be a mystery, you suppose.)

Perhaps. But the Lower Reaches await us. Let's continue.

quote:

>SOUTH

Grand Stair, Top
Two hallways intersect beneath an elegant vault of brick-red tile, which sweeps around to follow a grand staircase down to the lower levels. The garden is visible to the north. To the west is the ornate door of the Birdhouse, which is closed.

The hall to the south is blocked by yet another fracture. The side corridor to the east is much the worse; its far end seems to be on fire.

You see someone caught beyond the fracture: Lieutenant Powes. He appears to be walking towards the Birdhouse door.

>EXAMINE POWES
You recognize Lieutenant Michael Powes, a thin man with a piercing stare. But why here? You know he's Aithery-file, but a lieutenant wouldn't ordinarily have business in the Birdhouse.

>RECALL POWES
Lieutenant Michael Powes is a beanstalk of a man, fair-skinned, with deep-set eyes that always reminded you of a hungry snake. He's Aithery-file, a junior Observatory officer; he spends his days over on the far side of the marcher where you rarely go.

Lt Powes is right here, stuck in the fracture.

Another crewman. This seems like as good a time as any for some self-reflection. There's been a certain amount of speculation in the thread about the nature of this "Ensign Forsyth." We're some lowly swabbie, but we've been cruising around, mastering alchemical rituals in moments, committing results to a flawless memory, and just generally being so sharp that we'd put your average fantasy wizard to shame. This, despite the fact that it took us months of diligent practice to learn the five formulae we started the game with.

More damningly, we remember spending months idly studying the Hermetic Sealing as a distraction from boring lectures, but we could not recall or use it until we studied it after the crash.

Experimental control:

quote:

>EXAMINE POWES THROUGH OCULUS
You peer through the oculus, and see the complex mesh of elements that makes up a human body.

Independent variable:

quote:

>EXAMINE ME THROUGH OCULUS
You peer through the oculus at your hand. Your aura is a recurving, symmetrical mesh of fire, water, earth, and air. Lovely�but perplexing. You know from your lectures that human bodies are indeed a balanced meld of the elements�in the Greek model, at least. But this pattern is far more intricate than old Lieutenant Shoftig's diagrams. Something about the crash must have affected the oculus's vision. (Or... yourself. You hope not.)

What are we, now? Has something made us more than human?

quote:

>EXAMINE ME
Not the most promising Ensign in His Majesty's Navy.

This message hasn't changed since the start of the game. But it's just gotten a :tinfoil:

tinge that wasn't there a dozen commands ago.

Our existential crisis has been happening in front of "the Birdhouse." What do alchemists need with birds?

quote:

>EXAMINE BIRDHOUSE
This door leads to the Birdhouse, the lair of one of the Retort's dragons. It is engraved with a moir� geometric design�something Moorish, no doubt symbolic of the dragon's function. The Birdhouse door is closed.

>OPEN DOOR
You reach for the handle, but your fingers go numb and slide away.

Lovely. With everything that's wrong on the Retort, this one security stricture remains perfectly functional. It's reacting to your psychic signature�an ensign can't just walk into the Birdhouse, so when you approach, the door gets defensive. Yes, "defensive" is a technical term in aura engineering.

Apparently by "bird" we mean "dragon." We're awfully casual about that, though perhaps this is also why we were reluctant to leave the relative sanity of the East Wing.

Before we go down the stairs, let's check out that other hallway.

quote:

>EAST

Burning Hall West
This hall runs west to east, from the grand stairs to the high wing. You've never been inside the high wing, and your chances don't look good today, because it's on fire.

The entire east end of the hall is enveloped in flame. You can't tell what's burning�the walls? the floor? But the heat is intense; you can't go any further.

The thread voted to go through any barriers we encountered with obvious solutions. Fire we can deal with. Let's brew a potion of fire resistance. In fact, let's brew two potions, so that if we spend too much time on the other end of the hall we can get back.

quote:

>BREW FIRE RESISTANCE
You make your way to the Secondary Alchemy Lab.
You take the flask of saline.
You take the impet of peppermint oil.
You brew a bottle of fire-resistance potion.

(You are now in the Secondary Alchemy Lab.)

>BREW FIRE RESISTANCE
You're holding the potion of fire resistance.

You know, normally it's great that you help out like this, but that's a little too helpful. Let's stash it somewhere and try again.

quote:

>DOWN
You drop through the hatch into the crawlspace below.

>DROP FIRE RESISTANCE
Dropped.

>UP
You pull yourself up through the hatch.

>BREW FIRE RESISTANCE
The potion of fire resistance is in the Secondary Lab Crawlspace, as you recall.

Okay, we'll do it by hand.

quote:

>PUT SALINE IN BOUND
>SPEAK SIMPLE SEALING
>OPEN GINGER
>SPEAK COUNTERBALANCE
>CLOSE GINGER
>OPEN PEPPERMINT
>SPEAK ELEMENTARY WORD OF BINDING
You intone the elementary word of binding. The solution steams for a moment, then curdles to a chalky paste.

You recall something about the Blinovna Limitation? The potion of fire resistance already exists; it's in the Secondary Lab Crawlspace.

The what

quote:

>RECALL BLINOVNA LIMITATION
You distinctly recall a voice: "No alchemical synthesis can create two of the same product on the same marcher at the same time."

That's nonsense, of course. You've spent hours in the lab, working with the other apprentices, producing vial after vial of some tedious reagent. There's no such rule. But now you remember it.

We might as well call this the Infocom Memorial Object Limitation Theorem. Most games in the Zork tradition don't really let you actually create or destroy objects in the game world�instead, unique items are move into and out of the gameworld and kept in some kind of "off-stage" area when they don't exist. (For those of you used to modern object-oriented programming systems, objects in an IF game world tend to be completely unique, so each 'class' has exactly one instance, and it's created at program start and never destroyed.)

So, no multiple fire resistance potions. We'll just have to act fast, or, failing that, hope there's an entrance to the Void on the other side. Back to the burning hall, and...

quote:

>DRINK FIRE RESISTANCE
You swallow the cloudy potion. The liquid leaves your mouth feeling slightly numb. Within moments, you feel a prickle in your skin; your hands go cold and stiff, like a long walk on a chilly autumn day.

>EAST
You step into the flames, which feel like a warm breeze on your skin. Your marcher uniform, woven with alchemical virtues to resist this sort of mistreatment, only scorches slightly.

Unfortunately, your possessions do not fare so well. In the heat, the burning splinter of cedar catches fire; the bundle of paper burns up.

quote:

Burning Hall East
You are standing in an inferno. That is, you are at the east end of the hall, which is on fire. Even though you can barely feel the heat, the fire is hard to ignore.

To the east is an obsidian door, a dark rectangle amid the fire's glare. You know this door leads to the high wing and the Chancel, but it is closed and locked.

You see a sheet of paper lying in a niche where the fire is not so intense. Even so, the paper is singed and smoking.

>READ SHEET
"RIESENZWEIG'S INSCRIPTION, to MIMIC THE AURA OF ANOTHER: This is Riesenzweig's translation of a Chinese poem (attributed to Yang Wan-Li). The effect is similar to Oehlke's Inscription. Construct a meditative environment based on the Book of Changes. (One should use the central ritual bound of the house, as the symbolism of this tradition always places the five elements in perfect balance.) Place beads of iron and jade within the bound, and speak a simple sealing. Place burning wood upon the gestalt shelf. Invoke the Name of the Tortoise. Discharge elemental air upon the bound. Close with the Chi Binding."

You memorize the instructions, including the Chi Binding. You also pick up the sheet, but it crumbles to ash in your hands. Fortunately your memory is good.

Oh hey. This looks like just what we'd need to get past the Birdhouse security. Unfortunately for us, the only part of this ritual we know how to get is burning wood.

That's all we can do here. Let's go back to the Grand Staircase and head down.

quote:

You head down the grand staircase. The air grows cooler and quieter as you descend into the depths.

Grand Stair, Bottom
This basement is bare, square, and dank. It has, as far as you are aware, no function whatsoever. (Perhaps every house needs a basement, but the Navy does not stoop to clutter.)

The walls are tile; they arch up to join the grand staircase as it ascends to the main levels. The Barosy lies to the east, through a narrow iron gate with a brass lock. An irregular gap in the south wall opens out into a larger, darker space.

The chamber has been defaced with more of the illegible black marks.

Wait, a bit of clutter after all: a pale yellow bead is lying in a corner.

>EXAMINE BEAD
The bead is ivory, rather larger than your thumbnail, carved in pleasingly abstract swirls. You've seen them used for meditation or just thumb-fiddling; they're supposed to represent spiritual calm. At least according to the knickknack shop owners who sell them.

>EXAMINE BAROSY
The gate is tall and narrow, with heavy bars of wrought iron in an iron frame. It's always reminded you uncomfortably of a cemetary's side entrance. The gate is shut, and the heavy brass lock is locked.

You've never been inside; the room beyond looks like a bare stone tomb.

Note the shift in tone here. Normally, when the marcher has been discussed, we've been talking about it like it's a ship. But both Riesenzweig's Inscription and this discussion of this room are treating it like it's some kind of house.

quote:

>SOUTH

Edge of Chasm
You stand on a broad stone walk, a ledge on the eastern wall of a vast canyon. You are underground; the roof is an arch of stone above you, barely visible. The bottom of the abyss is lost in utter darkness.

The chasm runs north and south, out of sight. The ledge follows it south, but to the north it ends abruptly in a wall of stone. A gap in the wall leads north to the basement. Another passage squirms into the rock to the east.

Boldly into the unknown, you think, even if it's the unknown reaches of my own marcher.

It's a start, kid.

>EAST

Confusing Cracks
You are lost in a maze of claustrophic cracks. You've stopped in a fairly wide space, but planes of basalt close in all around you. You could crawl in any imaginable direction; the largest passage heads back west.

In the center of this space is a thick column of stone, colored an eye-catching indigo. It runs from floor to ceiling.

A chip of basalt lies here. It must have cracked loose from the walls.

You catch a spark of light reflected in the oculus from somewhere.

>EXAMINE COLUMN
A thick column of some indigo mineral hangs down from the ceiling, tapering towards the floor. It's clearly natural, but you're not sure how it could have formed; this is not the domain of flowstone and stalactites. At any rate, it makes a distinctive landmark.

Perhaps that's because in the East Wing, when you went down, you wrapped around. But here, when you go down, you plunge into tunnels carved from the living rock.

Marchers. :stonklol:

There's another one of those sparks. It's being insistent; let's check it out.

quote:

>EXAMINE SPARK THROUGH OCULUS
The oculus reveals a carmine spark floating in the air.

>EXAMINE CARMINE SPARK
You focus on the carmine spark through the oculus. It's just a point of light, but once again, a memory comes clear in your mind�a lesson you've never attended. It concerns the structure of stone. "We are familiar with earth as a pure element in the Greek system. However, minerals need not be considered as imperfect approximations of a Platonic ideal; each has an alchemical structure, and we may discern relations between them. Thus, marble and obsidian are opposites�white versus black, crystalline versus glassy, pelagic versus volcanic. Soapstone and basalt are another light-dark pair. Other opposing pairs rely on different relations. Chalk and flint are found together, but with different qualities. Granite and slate are formed by opposing geologic processes; so too sandstone and malachite. Porphyry and quartz are an interesting case..."

You consider these memories.

That gets filed in our journal as a fact: "The Periodic Table of Stone." Furthermore, now when I use the >PLACES command it will list every room that we have not checked for sparks. Right now that's basically everywhere; I'll do a sweep later.

This room is a maze, though not much of one. Trying to go in basically any direction gives up this:

quote:

You prowl through the twisting passages, but they all seem to lead back to where you started.

With one obvious exception.

quote:

>WEST
Fortunately, the large passage leads you out of the maze.

Edge of Chasm
You stand on a broad stone walk, a ledge on the eastern wall of a vast canyon. You are underground; the roof is an arch of stone above you, barely visible. The bottom of the abyss is lost in utter darkness.

The chasm runs north and south, out of sight. The ledge follows it south, but to the north it ends abruptly in a wall of stone. A gap in the wall leads north to the basement. Another passage squirms into the rock to the east.

>SOUTH
The rock feels oddly unsteady underfoot.

Chasm Rubble
Rubble and fallen rocks litter the ledge here. You can walk north or south alongside the abyss, which waits patiently to the west. But you have an unnerving sense of vertigo. The world seems to sway around you.

A particularly massive slab lies at the chasm edge. Half its length rests on solid(-ish) ground; but the far half hangs out over empty space, quite unsupported.

You see a bronze chime lying on the far end of the slab. It looks very far away; the idea of crawling out there makes you feel even more unsteady than before.

>SOUTH
The ledge seems to sway under your feet, worse and worse as you proceed.

Chasm, at Bridge
The ledge is narrower here; to the south it ends abruptly. To the east you see the entrance to the deep library�a padlocked wooden door set into the canyon wall. To the west, a naked stone span bridges the canyon.

Vertigo assails you. What's going on here? Something must be wrong with the dragon Baros; that's what's supposed to keep gravity stable in the Retort.

The dragon Baros! Perhaps that's the dragon that lives in the Birdhouse. Apparently he provides our gravity. On the other hand, it's also a reasonable possibility that the dragon Baros lives in the Barosy.

Baros is not doing well, though, it seems, because gravity is on the fritz. That sounds like an excellent time to go wandering over a narrow bridge over a terrifying chasm in the middle of a starship.

quote:

>WEST
The waves of vertigo grow more intense as you stumble towards the bridge. The span itself seems to wobble, although you know it is just the unstable gravity throwing you back and forth.

This is a bad idea. You don't think you could get even halfway across, at this rate.

Okay, maybe not.

quote:

>EXAMINE PINE DOOR
The door is heavy pine, rather rougher than the doors in the rest of the Retort. Someone has locked it with a Venture File padlock, which is a violation of six different regulations on library use.

Hm. We have an Alchemy File seal, so we'll need to find a Venture File seal to get in here. Lt. Powes was identified as part of the "Aithery File." With that, I think I have some idea of what the Retort was doing.

:speculate:

I think this is an exploration vessel. Alchemy File does basic research and produces the reagents needed to operate the Marcher. Aithery actually does the operation; they take the marcher through the Aether. And the Venture File is the away teams; they go on the adventures once the Retort has rigged into strange lands.

I don't really have any evidence for this beyond the fact that we seem to be running extensive classrooms inside of the marcher and that there has been no sign so far of any kind of military or even commercial purpose aboard.

And with this flagrant disregard for regulations, I think it's time to wrap up this update. Next Time: From the Chasm to the High Tower, and perhaps this time we'll find the keys to some of these new locks.

# ? Jun 12, 2018 07:07

Fat Samurai: Feb 16, 2011; To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.

I'm enjoying the writing so far. Will we regret burning our cedar?

I mean, giving the way the engine remembers the solutions of puzzles it seems that resetting is mostly painless, but giving up inventory objects for no gain goes against 20+ years of adventure game lessons.

# ? Jun 12, 2018 11:47

Epicmissingno: Jul 1, 2017; Thank gooness we all get along so well!

I'm thinking that our friend Forsyth is some kind of homunculus or alchemical golem, probably with a human mind inserted into it. His more ordered structure than the real humans suggests that his body may be man-made.

# ? Jun 12, 2018 12:04

Nakar: Sep 2, 2002; Ultima Ratio Regum

Epicmissingno posted:

I'm thinking that our friend Forsyth is some kind of homunculus or alchemical golem, probably with a human mind inserted into it. His more ordered structure than the real humans suggests that his body may be man-made.

Is that even possible for the humans on the marcher? Their alchemy seems advanced, but kind of quaint and Victorian-y at the same time. If you could create a creature like that, what use would you have for regular humans on a marcher? Then too, there's some strange purposeful graffiti scribbled in various places on the ship, and it's apparently so unusual or advanced alchemically that Forsyth isn't even sure what its associations mean, so it may well be that somebody is advanced enough. :tinfoil:

Counterpoint being that apparently the marcher has freaking dragons aboard, probably more than one. Maybe an Earth/Fire/Water/Air dragon? Baros being kept in the Barosy seems logical, and that's in somewhat of a low position on the marcher, and it regulates gravity; sounds like an Earth dragon to me. Whatever's in the Birdhouse sounds like an Air dragon, maybe. If that holds, there'd be two others (or possibly three, if it's a five elements situation?). Are dragons natural beings bound to service of the marcher (like an elemental spirit or something), or were they man-made? Until we've actually seen what these dragons are, it might be harder to speculate on how advanced human alchemical science really is.

But if something like that is possible, I'm willing to bet it ain't something the scrubs would be privy to.

# ? Jun 12, 2018 12:58

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

You're the Emergency Alchemical Swabbie. Something goes horribly wrong, you pop up and say "Please state the nature of the alchemical emergency," and you end up fixing the whole Marcher just so you can successfully report that you've polished the calipers.

# ? Jun 12, 2018 15:00

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

You're the ship AI, hitching a ride in poor, recently-dead Ensign Forsyth's brain. Too bad the transfer ritual didn't let you remember that.

(I do like how any self-examination that starts with "Not" means you could be literally anything else)

# ? Jun 12, 2018 15:40

Ratoslov: Feb 15, 2012; Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

I'm willing to bet that while the Dragons really are big old elemental things, they aren't giant lizards what breathe elementally-themed damage and covet shiny objects. If you can get away with a picture of a sky instead of a sky, then you can do the same with a dragon.

# ? Jun 12, 2018 16:01

The_White_Crane: May 10, 2008

Ratoslov posted:

I'm willing to bet that while the Dragons really are big old elemental things, they aren't giant lizards what breathe elementally-themed damage and covet shiny objects. If you can get away with a picture of a sky instead of a sky, then you can do the same with a dragon.

Yeah. Golems is a good guess :psylon:

or maybe just really elaborate origami sculptures with symbols painted on them or something. We had all those paper trees and stuff in the garden.

# ? Jun 12, 2018 16:48

macdjord: Oct 26, 2013

I'd like to go back and
> TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE CHANCEL DOOR
and maybe get a better idea of what is needed to open it. Also, while we're there, we should
> FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU LET THE FIRE RESISTANCE POTION RUN OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF AN INFERNO

I'd also propose a new rule:
> EVERYTHING THAT WE EXAMINE SHOULD BE LOOKED AT THROUGH THE OCULUS, TOO

ManxomeBromide posted:

The what

We might as well call this the Infocom Memorial Object Limitation Theorem. Most games in the Zork tradition don't really let you actually create or destroy objects in the game world—instead, unique items are move into and out of the gameworld and kept in some kind of "off-stage" area when they don't exist. (For those of you used to modern object-oriented programming systems, objects in an IF game world tend to be completely unique, so each 'class' has exactly one instance, and it's created at program start and never destroyed.)

So, no multiple fire resistance potions. We'll just have to act fast, or, failing that, hope there's an entrance to the Void on the other side. Back to the burning hall, and...

It seems like there ought to be more graceful ways of doing this. For instance, add two (identical as far as the player is concerned) copies of each ritual product; if the player tries to make a 3rd, the good ensign 'finds his mind wandering due to the monotony of making something he already has plenty of', and the ritual fails, followed by the ensign wondering why he doesn't use one of the existing ones located at [PLACE] and [PLACE].

# ? Jun 12, 2018 19:12

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

macdjord posted:

I'd also propose a new rule:
> EVERYTHING THAT WE EXAMINE SHOULD BE LOOKED AT THROUGH THE OCULUS, TOO

It sounds like most objects (like the bolt) don't have any special attributes that the oculus reveals. I'm sure ManxomeBromide will note the ones that have anything of note.

quote:

It seems like there ought to be more graceful ways of doing this. For instance, add two (identical as far as the player is concerned) copies of each ritual product; if the player tries to make a 3rd, the good ensign 'finds his mind wandering due to the monotony of making something he already has plenty of', and the ritual fails, followed by the ensign wondering why he doesn't use one of the existing ones located at [PLACE] and [PLACE].

Puzzles get substantially simpler, both to make and to solve, when you don't have to worry about the player making/using up two copies of things, especially if there are limited-use consumables used to make those things. I appreciate constraining the search space even if it's done a bit awkwardly.

# ? Jun 12, 2018 20:18

Loxbourne: Apr 6, 2011; Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.

Dragons in alchemy were weird half-formed mystical concepts that remind the reader just how many hallucinogens those people were playing with, but they all had something to do with spectacular chemical reactions. Particularly ones that had "miraculous" effects (like precipitating a pure substance back out of a solution after a chemical reaction using it, i.e. "renewing" or "resurrecting" the substance).

So I suspect the translation is reactor, probably chemical rather than nuclear, and they are the Marcher's powerplants.

I wonder if the idea of the paper garden is to provide symbolic living things for use in rituals? "Grow" the symbol of a particular plant and use that, rather than mess around with alchemical hydroponics?

PS: I had a look at the 15th century artwork depicting Alchemical Conjuction and...yes, that'd hold the attention of a bunch of adolescent midshipmen. Oh yes. I'm sure the nakedness of the allegorical participants and the enormity of their bodily attributes is entirely called-for by the well-studied processes of alchemical symbolism. It's science, you know!

# ? Jun 12, 2018 22:04

malkav11: Aug 7, 2009

Fat Samurai posted:

I'm enjoying the writing so far. Will we regret burning our cedar?

I mean, giving the way the engine remembers the solutions of puzzles it seems that resetting is mostly painless, but giving up inventory objects for no gain goes against 20+ years of adventure game lessons.

There is no way to complete the game without resetting a bunch, even if you did every puzzle right the first time. Accidentally wasting a reagent might necessitate an extra reset but it's no big deal.

# ? Jun 13, 2018 01:58

Nakar: Sep 2, 2002; Ultima Ratio Regum

We probably will need that cedar back though, just to burn it again. Possibly repeatedly.

# ? Jun 13, 2018 02:41

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

One of the reasons I chose the cedar to burn is that it's one of the ones that is available in basically infinite quantities without resetting; there's a jar of cedar splints, but the other ones are unique. We haven't needed to use the jar of camphrost for anything yet, but it works the same way.

These are both also subject to the Blinovna Limitation Effect, but not by name; they're just behaving like ordinary "collective" objects in an Infocom-style game.

The underlying game engine he's using here does support multiple identical objects; it resolves ambiguities essentially randomly. Due to mostly historical reasons, there is usually still a cap on how many of any individual replicable item there can be.

I mentioned in the OP that I'd be doing a single tech post partway through explaining the various IF technologies that were used to make and run Hadean Lands and their predecessors. A lot of these clich�s within the game ultimately come about because of how the old 80s platforms ended up using their (very scarce) memory.

We don't have to, anymore; none of the major parser systems actually require you do this. But that old engine limitation has ended up literarily useful to simulate.

ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Jun 13, 2018

# ? Jun 13, 2018 04:49

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Part 7: The High Tower

Last time we went to the depths of the marcher, and determined gravity was misbehaving. We have concluded that this is because the dragon Baros is not behaving properly. (That's the same "Baros" as in barometer, by the way; it's the ancient Greek for "weight.") On the way back we pass back through the Paper Garden. There are two obvious exits here we didn't check. Let's start with the observatory door on the west.

quote:

>WEST
(first opening the painted door)
It seems to be locked.

>EXAMINE PAINTED DOOR
The observatory door is painted with Rococo cherubs and maidens, no doubt alluding to the Muse of Astrographerie. (The maidens are all tastefully veiled, to your long-time disappointment.) The door is closed and locked.

Come on, kid, focus. At least you've still got the Nave. The lock here (like the obsidian door at the end of the burning corridor) is simply described as "locked". This isn't a case where someone put a weird makeshift padlock or sorcerous defense on it�the handle just doesn't turn. The Barosy was locked with a big fancy brass padlock, but it's just an ordinary, if formidable, lock.

quote:

>LOOK AT IT THROUGH OCULUS
Through the oculus, the observatory door gives the impression of fulsome Renaissance natural science.

Can we please stop trying to see if the resonant oculus will remove their veils and return to the issue at hand? Go check that paper maze.

quote:

>EAST
You step through the arch. Within moments, you are entirely turned around.

Lost in Paper Maze
This is a hedge-maze, formed of paper screens taller than you. The passages fork and fold in every direction.

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT MAZE
The oculus shows the paper maze as symbolizing the necessary mystery of the Retort's operation. You're not sure why it's necessary. (If you knew, it wouldn't be a mystery, you suppose.)

>NORTH
You turn right, but you only find more pathways.

Lost in Paper Maze
You are surrounded by a maze of tall paper screens, painted to resemble hedges. The passages fold and fork in every direction.

The paper maze is the nest of the dragon Pneuma. Only senior officers are supposed to enter�but you've never heard that the maze was difficult.

>NORTH
You take several random turns. You only become more lost.

Lost in Paper Maze
You are standing amid tall paper screens which form a maze around you. The passages fork and fold in every direction.

This is really much more confusing than it should be.

>WEST
After some blind turns, you catch a glimpse of the archway, and stumble back out into the garden.

That wasn't entirely pointless after all. We have another named dragon�Pneuma. Pneuma apparently does not lair in the Birdhouse, and that's some decent evidence that the dragon Baros lairs in the Barosy. If so, though, we may have a problem. We could see into the Barosy from the marcher's basement, and it was described as "empty, like an abandoned graveyard." Could the marcher's crash be related to its dragons going missing?

More mysteries to ponder. Also, it occurs to me that I forgot to mention one of the meta-commands back in update 5, because it's semi-standard. We can get a listing of all the non-hidden ways to go in any location with the >EXITS command:

quote:

>EXITS
Exits are north, south, and down; the observatory door is west, and the maze is east.

... down?

quote:

>DOWN
You take a deep breath and jump into the chilly water.

Garden Pool
You are floating in a well, eight feet across and perhaps ten feet deep. The water is cold and still. The water's surface is a sheet of light above you, and the base of the well is a circle of darkness below.

In the center of the darkness you see a darker hole. It's an opening in the floor below you, a narrow shaft running downward out of sight.

>DOWN
You kick downwards until your lungs heave in your chest. But the channel's end is still nowhere in sight. You flip around and stretch for the surface.

You can't hold your breath much longer.

There's something down there but it won't let us explore it. Also, jumping in the water would ruin any paper or liquid reagents we were carrying, except for the fact that the fire already destroyed them. Running out of breath doesn't kill us; it just forces an >UP command and takes us to the surface again.

Letting the fire resistance potion run out while in the inferno room, on the other hand, does kill us:

quote:

Your fingers are no longer tingling. Instead, they're burning, along with the rest of you. Your dissolution is brief but extremely unpleasant.

*** You awaken again ***

This is equivalent to a >RESET, but a lot more painful. There's been some speculation already in the thread that we're some kind of homonculus or golem that's borrowing Forsyth's memory and body, and this may be considered evidence of sorts that we've got some way of getting a body back afterwards, too.

"Dissolution" is an interesting choice of words, while we're at it.

Anyway, that was a pretty dumb move, so let's maybe not have done that and move up to the northern wing and the upper parts of the ship.

quote:

>UNDO
Burning Hall East
[Previous turn undone.]

North of Paper Garden is where everyone lives when they're not actively on duty.

quote:

Quarters Access
This wing of the Retort is all quartering and mess. The hall continues north to the elevated realms of the officers. Your lowly domain is to the west. The body of the marcher is south.

A fragment of paper lies in the junction.

>READ FRAGMENT
You don't recognize the handwriting. "...that the form or structure of a thing may be joined to the spirit or essence, thus replicating the thing itself, is the foundation of modern practice. Indeed, historians argue that the 'marriage' metaphor of ancient alchemy prefigures this principle. But to apply it recursively, parsing the structure and spirit of the spirit itself, requires the utmost care..."

You memorize the information, and also pick up the sheet. Just in case.

Could this be a clue as to what we are, or where we got that replacement body? As a rule, Zarf never tells, but he does like to suggest.

quote:

>WEST

Scrubs Country
This familiar, faintly grubby hallway runs west towards the quarters and mess of the midshipmen and ensigns. To the north is a study room for you apprentices; to the south is your wardroom.

Unfortunately, another crack prevents you from proceeding any farther down the hall.

>SOUTH

Under Ward
This closet-sized room is reserved for the rest and relaxation of the ensigns. Normally a few of you are about, studying or eating or (commonly) both; but these are not normal times and the room is abandoned.

Someone has left a tiny recipe sheet on the floor.

You notice somebody's torch-lighter here. Not that any ensign would ever sneak an illicit roll-up.

You can also see two chymic flasks (vitriolic acid and alum) here.

>READ RECIPE
(the tiny sheet)
The sheet describes another formula. The word of anaphylaxis inflames the sensitivity of contrary elements.

You memorize the information, including the word of anaphylaxis. You also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.

>EXAMINE TORCH-LIGHTER
You've lit things with lighters all your life; nothing unusual here. It's a ceramic oval the length of your little finger. When you squeeze it, a little flame shoots out of the end.

>EXAMINE VITRIOLIC
Vitriolic acid is a strong acid produced from sulphur.

>EXAMINE ALUM
Alum is a white, astringent powder.

None of this is immediately useful to us, but it all seems reasonably practical. Meanwhile, across the hall...

quote:

Study Room
This small library is used by the apprentices and trainees to swot up on lecture notes. Introductory textbooks and battered lexicons are heaped up untidily in the corners. The exit is south.

Two papers, a torn sheet and a filthy sheet, are lying here.

A ricepaper ribbon is poking out from under a stack of books.

You catch a spark of light reflected in the oculus from somewhere.

>READ TORN
This is another potion receipt. "A POTION to HOLD ONE'S BREATH: By properly balancing the phlogiston of the lungs and blood, one may retain breath for several minutes without discomfort. Prepare an exhilarant environment; aroma is particularly important for this working. One will also need a paten of exhilarant symbolism, prepared on the gestalt shelf. Place a measure of saline into the bound. Begin with the simple sealing, followed by the Anodyne Evocation. Place a bit of elemental wood upon the paten and ignite it. Conclude with an elementary binding."

You recall, from an unusually digressive lecture, that one never uses the chymic retort for potions intended to be drunk. You're also pretty sure that exhilarant symbolism has to do with wind, air, and breath. Also, for some reason, seaweed.

You memorize the instructions, and also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.

>READ FILTHY
This describes the creation of an alchemical instrument. "TO CREATE A PLANETARY LENS (which reveals symbolic associations of the celestial sphere): This will require two glass lenses of matching curvature. Prepare an environment with lunar influences, ensuring that the atmosphere is free of aromas. Place one lens within the bound, and invoke a simple sealing, followed by a word of essential nature. Let one drop of Java spirit upon the lens, and place the other lens atop it. The Binding of the Celestial Sphere will fuse the lenses and empower them."

You memorize the instructions, and also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.

>GET RIBBON
Taken.

>X IT
The amulet is a small ribbon of ricepaper, painted with I Ching trigrams in the Oriental tradition. (The Empire is even-handedly syncretic�it steals from everybody�and the Navy uses these amulets to set up rituals of Chinese derivation.)

These, on the other hand, sound much more immediately useful, since we didn't have enough lung capacity to reach the bottom of that pool. We've got everything we need to do the breath-holding potion�the "paten of exhilarant symbolism" is almost certainly the paten we found the fire door key on. It had the Chinese symbol for "breath" on it. That said, if "aroma is particularly important" we will need to find something that stinks of seaweed. Let's see if anything else turns up before rushing over to try i tout.

That's all there is to see here in Scrub Country. Let's go rise above our station.

quote:

Officer Country
It is widely rumored that an ensign walking this far up the hall will instantly combust. You still might, you suppose. The officer's mess is somewhere up there, but a fracture prevents you from going any farther.

The senior officers' quarters are east, and the juniors' are west.

That's the Captain leaning against the wall! You freeze in reflexive panic, before realizing that she is behind the fracture, frozen herself.

>X CAPTAIN
Captain Hart leans her burly frame against the wall. She's eyeing the hallway, as if worried that someone was about to walk by�which is absurd, of course. The Captain doesn't worry; lowly officers worry about her.

>RECALL HER
Captain Hart is a dark, burly woman. Her head is shaved clean, and set off by a gleaming, not-quite-regulation gold earring. Ensigns walk in fear of being noticed by her. She looks like she could pick up an errant scrubbie and throw him off the Retort�probably with one hand. (Not true, of course. She'd just frown and a lieutenant would do it for her.)

Captain Hart is right here, stuck in the fracture.

>WEST

Junior Quarters
This long room is the bunk space of the junior officers�"junior" meaning "still above you," of course. The bunks are narrow but fussily neat, with a locker next to each. The exit is to the east.

The largest locker draws your eye: its latch is tied shut with a knot of white cord. A broad sheet of paper is pinned next to the locker.

You also notice a clay tile lying under one of the bunks.

>X PAPER
(the broad sheet)
This seems to be a practical assignment for the junior alchemists. "Today's friendly challenge for the juniors: open your locker! The cord is white-fuse, a material which burns quickly and cleanly�but only when ignited with elemental fire. I've left tomorrow's assignment in the locker, so don't dawdle." You recognize Sergeant Brooks' handwriting. He really treats the juniors much more kindly than the swabbies, doesn't he.

Printed on the back of the sheet are the formal instructions: "IGNITING ELEMENTAL FIRE: Fire is the only pure element (of the European tradition) which cannot be refined from mundane matter. It must be ignited, and only phlogisticated gold can support its combustion. If one has a source of elemental fire, igniting a new wick is simple; but if not, the procedure is arduous. One must place the phlogisticated metal in a vapor crock with a bit of camphrost and burning blackwood�the only flame hot enough to begin the reaction. Seal the crock. Once the camphrost's vapor pressure has built to the flash point, the metal will be ignited."

You memorize the instructions, and also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.

>X CLAY TILE
This is a small clay tile, embossed with a labyrinth figure.

>LOOK AT IT THROUGH OCULUS
Through the oculus, the tile's maze is redoubled into a infinite regression of forking paths.

Well then. This is a lot to take in. The Captain's gaze does not burn us to ash. She got caught in the same disaster that hit everyone else. And somehow, Sergeant Brooks is the one giving orders to the proper officers, too. This kind of thing makes me wonder what this marcher is really for. It seems like some kind of traveling university, with the alchemists mostly here to learn to be better alchemists.

Also, we now have a recipe for elemental fire, and it looks really straightforward. The only item that isn't already just sitting in the Pyrics Lab is the phlogisticated gold, and that was in the Materials Store. Our list of Things To Try Immediately keeps growing.

Time to check out the less junior officers.

quote:

Deck Suite
This looks like a comfortable place to drink tea. It must be a lounge set aside for the deck officers�the three important enough to rate private staterooms. The three doors are marked with the symbols of Venture (north), Alchemy (south), and Aithery (east). All three are closed.

A locked cabinet hangs on the wall.

You notice another aromatic impet nearby. It's labelled "kelp".

Prying into the business of your superiors, now. Maybe there's hope for you, kid.

Jackpot! Every discussion of breath-related atmospheres so far has mentioned seaweed. With this kelp impet, we can surely make the breath holding potion.

quote:

>OPEN CABINET
The cabinet is locked with an Aithery File lock.

>X IT
The cabinet is a squarish compartment of some anonymous alloy. It is locked with an Aithery File lock.

Three doors. Let's check them all and read all the papers.

quote:

>NORTH
You open the door, and discover another Hadean landscape.

This world is dark, layered with black dust�not the common stone-grey of most Hadean lands. The sun is a blinding pinprick on the horizon.

>CLOSE VENTURE DOOR
You shut the door on the Hadean land.

>SOUTH
(first opening the Alchemy door)

Master Rector's Quarters
This is where the Master Rector of The Unanswerable Retort sleeps, and presumably where he incinerates anybody who sniggers at his title. You can't see any scorch marks, but that just means he's tidy.

In one corner is a compact writing desk, with a couple of sheets of paper stacked on it. You see a rough sheet and a fine sheet.

>READ ROUGH
"BRODZIK'S INSCRIPTION, to RENDER ONE'S AURA IMPERMEABLE TO HARM: Invoke an environment of spiritual peace. Begin with a quartz token in the bound; this represents the ka soul. Invoke the Ka Sealing. Place a bit of orichalcum into the bound, representing the ba soul. Speak a word of anaphylaxis. At this point, but no sooner, add a strengthening element to the atmosphere. Close with the Binding of Antipathy, to repel harmful influences. Touch the token to a subject, and his aura will be nearly invulnerable for a few moments." Then, on the back: "Spiritual environment: meditative symbols on shelf. (Rainbow!)"

You memorize the instructions, and also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.

>READ FINE SHEET
The paper describes two mathematical structures: an isomorphic group and an idempotent group.

You memorize the information, including the two formulae. You also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.

One for two so far. Brodzik's Inscription should protect us from the aura vortex, but we're missing the Ka Sealing and the orichalcum. (The rotor has a rainbow setting, and the citronelle oil from the tutorial adds a strengthening element.)

One room left, and by process of elimination, it must be...

quote:

High Tower
You have found Captain Hart's private quarters. In marcher lore (though never in the Captain's presence) this hallowed spot is called the High Tower. It looks disappointingly un-medieval, though: spartan decor, a bunk of regulation width and crispness.

Some small clay disks are strewn on the bunk. They have designs imprinted on them�are these reverse molds for the Retort's file badges? The Venture, Alchemy, and Medical molds are visible.

Another cabinet hangs on the wall. This one has no seal or keyhole, but an alchemical symbol shines on the cover.

A shiny sheet of paper has fallen near the cabinet.

>READ SHINY
It appears to be a research note. "THE PHLOGISTICATION OF ELECTRUM REGIUM: Phlogisticated gold is well-known, but it is not the only metal which may be alchemically charged. Electrum regium (an alloy of platinum and moon-metal) is by far the easiest; unlike gold, it may be phlogisticated with a simple laboratory procedure. Place a rod of electrum into a catalytic environment, and seal with a simple sealing. Pour yang oil over the metal and invoke an elementary binding." Then, on the back: "While phlogisticated gold is commonly used to support elemental fire, recent research indicates possible substitutes. Electrum regium is the most promising. While it does not survive the usual camphrost procedure, phlogisticated electrum regium can be ignited directly from an existing source of elemental fire."

You memorize the instructions, and also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.

>EXAMINE CABINET
The cabinet is a squarish compartment made of plate rutilum. (Fancy. Or perhaps practical; rutilum is supposed to have spiritual qualities.)

The cabinet is closed. The alchemical symbol for attraction shines on its surface.

>OPEN CABINET
You pull on the cabinet, but the cover is stuck tight. The symbol must be holding it closed.

>GET MOLDS
Venture File clay mold: You pick up the Venture File clay mold.
Alchemy File clay mold: You pick up the Alchemy File clay mold.
Medical File clay mold: You pick up the Medical File clay mold.

Oh man, we're going to have so much fun with these, at least once we figure out how to get up to mischief with them.

That wraps up the northern and upper wings. Where do we end up if we keep going west from the Nave?

quote:

Scaphe Arcade
You are in a pleasant red-brick gallery edged by a row of wooden columns. A heavy steel portal in the west wall is the access to the marcher's exoscaphe. It's currently closed. A valve wheel is mounted next to the portal.

The arcade runs north towards an overlook window. There is a corridor to the east. You also see a crawlway hatch in the floor; it's open, but it seems to be flooded.

You notice a small brass cube lying by a column.

>EXAMINE CUBE
It's a tiny brass measuring block, meant for a balance scale. The number "27" is engraved on one face, along with a mark certifying precision.

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT CUBE
When viewed through the oculus, the measuring block displays an orderly nature.

>NORTH

North Arcade
This is the north end of the gallery. A long window in the west wall overlooks the exoscaphe bay. You can see the 'scaphe itself on the other side, hooked up to the portal you saw back south.

To the north is a massive door of pale marble, outrageously carved. The door is closed.

Perhaps the door has suffered some damage. A chip of white marble is lying loose on the floor nearby.

>EXAMINE DOOR
The door to the north is an imposing marble slab, carved with cherubs and incongruously cheery grapevines. You've always wondered if this part of the marcher was taken from a decadent bathhouse somewhere. Not that decadent bathhouses are part of your life experience. Be that as it may, the door is firmly shut.

Decadent bathhouses might not be part of our life experience, but this is, like, the third most outrageous decoration we've encountered just in the past hour, at most.

quote:

>OPEN DOOR
You tug on the marble handle, but the door is locked.

No fun.

quote:

>LOOK AT EXOSCAPHE
Through the window, you see that the bay roof is badly damaged. Chunks of brick vaulting have fallen away, leaving a wide crack, through which shine the brilliant forbidding stars of a Hadean land.

Pieces of roof have fallen on the exoscaphe itself. It's hard to tell, but it looks like the 'scaphe's upper dome is also cracked, and the rest of the hull is battered and dented.

Important facts: the marcher as a whole is on a Hadean land right now, and our lunar rover has taken some damage and maybe isn't completely Hades-worthy. The lower levels might be OK though.

quote:

>SOUTH
>EXAMINE VALVE WHEEL
The valve wheel is marked "Emergency Bay Pressurization," and is also marked with the shorthand symbol of Pneuma.

Sounds like the dragon Pneuma is responsible for keeping the air breathable. Let's see what's reachable without its help.

quote:

>WEST
(first opening the heavy steel portal)

Exoscaphe
The exoscaphe is a vehicle for exploring hostile lands. From the inside, it's more like being in a spherical steel tank. A windowless tank, at that. Presumably there's a better view from the pilot's dome; but the hatch above your head is closed.

A circular bench runs around the perimeter, broken only by the dark engine compartment to the west and the exit portal to the east. The portal is open. You see a small emergency lever next to it.

A cabinet is fastened to the wall. Its latch is tied shut with a knot of white cord, much like the one you saw on the locker.

On the bench are a crumpled sheet and a horn coin.

>EXAMINE LEVER
This hand-length lever is marked "Emergency Exoscaphe Pressure Equalization".

If the upper dome is open to vacuum, pulling this lever is probably a bad idea.

quote:

>READ CRUMPLED SHEET
This explains the Binding of the Celestial Sphere, which is used in rituals involving astrological constructs.

You memorize the information, including the Binding of the Celestial Sphere. You also add the sheet to your bundle of paper.

>EXAMINE HORN COIN
It's a coin, crudely carved of animal horn. The symbol of an anchor is cut into one face.

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT IT
When viewed through the oculus, the horn coin displays an anchored nature.

That's a new nature, and that's also the final component we need for the Planetary Lens.

We've finished our circuit. It's time to put our new knowledge to use. The three rituals we can perform right away are the breath-holding potion, the planetary lens, and elemental fire ignition.

We create the breath-holding potion in the Nave with no difficulty:

quote:

>OPEN KELP
You pop open the impet, and the kelp aroma rolls out, salty and faintly rotten.

>PUT PATEN ON SHELF
You put the porcelain paten on the gestalt shelf.

>PUT SALINE IN BOUND
You locate a beaker in the clutter, pour a measure of saline into it, and place it within the pedestal bound.

>SPEAK SIMPLE SEALING WORD
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the simple sealing word.

The arc begins to glow golden around the beaker of saline.

>SPEAK ANODYNE EVOCATION
You begin the Anodyne Evocation. The rhythm beats in your chest and blood. Slowly, the liquid in the beaker begins to effervesce.

>PUT ELEMENTAL WOOD ON PATEN
You put the splinter of elemental wood on the porcelain paten.

>LIGHT ELEMENTAL WOOD WITH LIGHTER
You hold the torch-lighter to the splinter of elemental wood. The elemental wood catches quickly, and burns with a yellow flame.

>SPEAK ELEMENTARY BINDING
You intone the elementary word of binding. The liquid in the beaker roils, bubbles dramatically, and goes abruptly still. The splinter of wood, equally abruptly, is extinguished; the bound emits a bright pulse of light and vanishes.

The bound fades. You lift the beaker and gently decant the clear potion into a fresh bottle. You set aside the empty beaker.

>CLOSE KELP
You snap the kelp impet closed. Its aroma fades.

Looks like an exhilarant environment produces a golden glow. Now off to the Opticks Annex, where the lenses await us and where we've already prepared the necessary lunar environment:

quote:

>PUT CONCAVE IN BOUND
You put the concave glass lens into the tabletop bound.

>SPEAK SIMPLE SEALING
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the simple sealing word.

The arc begins to glow silver around the concave glass lens.

>SPEAK WORD OF ESSENTIAL NATURE
You intone the word of essential nature. The glassy nature of the lens rises to the surface.

>PUT JAVA SPIRIT ON CONCAVE LENS
You place a drop of lubanja onto the concave glass lens. It spreads into a fine film across the surface.

>PUT CONVEX ON CONCAVE
The silver light ripples as you push through the arc. You place the convex glass lens against the concave glass lens; the curved surfaces adhere on their delicate film of solvent.

>SPEAK BINDING OF THE CELESTIAL SPHERE
You begin invoking the Binding of the Celestial Sphere. The sounds seem distant and foreign, but you speak them precisely. The lenses glow as if in silver moonlight.

When the light fades, the lenses have fused into a single opalescent glass�a planetary association lens.

Great, a new tool, so now we have to examine everything three times. :jerkbag:

Quit your kvetching, kid, test it out on stuff that's nearby.

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH LENS AT MOON-METAL
You peer at the moon-metal rod through the lens, and perceive an association with the Moon.

Checks out.

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH LENS AT ROTOR
When viewed through the planetary lens, the rotor card resembles a Hadean land.

... if you say so. Maybe because it's turned to moonlight? Time to throw some more fuel on the speculation fires:

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH LENS AT SELF
You peer at your hand through the lens. Okay, that's not what you looked like the last time you played with this sort of lens. The human body is Gaian, or it should be�you don't recognize these associations at all. Something about the crash must have affected the lens's vision. (Just like the resonant oculus? Maybe it is you, after all.)

Not only are we non-Gaian, we correspond to no planet whatsoever. Are we extrasolar in origin or do we need to be transdimensional before the planetary sigils stop making sense?

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH LENS AT KELP
When viewed through the lens, the impet of kelp oil is surrounded by faint planetary echoes, but the associations are not strong enough to visualize clearly.

Most things aren't horologically significant enough to register on the lens. But you know what is? That safe in the Main Store, with the combination lock made of astrological signs. Let's see if we can use this like some kind of safecracking stethoscope.

quote:

>GO TO MAIN STORE
You make your way to the Main Store.

Main Store
This is the general storeroom for the Retort's laboratories. Shelves begin here and extend to the east and west. However, a fracture to the east blocks a large part of the room. The door to the south is open.

You recognize a figure to the east, beyond the fracture. It's Ensign Ctesc. He is moving towards you�or would be, if he were not frozen in place.

A steel safe is set into one wall. The safe is closed and locked with a heavy combination lock.

The nearest shelves are mostly empty, but a rough diamond and a length of silk cord are within reach.

>EXAMINE LOCK
The safe is a plain steel block set into the wall. The combination dial shows the thirteen Zodiacal constellations�slightly quaint, but the Service is slow to change a good thing.

The safe is closed and locked.

>EXAMINE CTESC
It's Sydney Ctesc�an East Empire name, his family is from out that way. He's an ensign in Alchemy, same as you, though a year senior. Short, quiet, studies hard.

You see something, a sequence of symbols, scrawled on Ctesc's hand. And his attention seems to be directed towards the steel safe.

>LOOK THROUGH LENS AT CTESC
Through the planetary lens, you can see the Zodiacal associations stream from Ctesc's hand towards the safe. The symbols are: Libra, Ophiuchus, Taurus, Scorpio.

That'll do. Once we enter the code...

quote:

The safe's lock clicks and releases!

You open the safe, revealing an orichalcum rod.

>LOOK THROUGH LENS AT ORICHALCUM
You peer at the orichalcum rod through the lens, and perceive an association with Vulcan.

>X ORICHALCUM
Orichalcum, or quickcopper, is a brittle metal with a fiery, rose-pink luster. It's one of the rarer alchemical metals; this rod is half the length of your finger, but it's still more of the stuff than you've ever handled before.

I must admit, I was hoping orichalcum, as "quickcopper", would be liquid at room temperature, but it seems like it's just some wondermetal. This isn't enough to let us complete any individual rituals, though we can still mess with it.

Our last remaining ritual to try is gold ignition, to get some elemental fire to go with our wood and earth. We have the phlogisticated gold rod already, and everything else awaits us in the Pyrics Lab.

quote:

>PUT GOLD IN CROCK
You put the phlogisticated gold rod into the vapor crock.

>EAST

Pyrics Store
This is a tangle of storage racks, mostly empty. The Pyrics Lab is to the west.

On one rack you notice a jar of camphrost lumps.

A lead rod lies on another rack.

A stack of firebrick in back serves as a crude ritual bound, complete with gestalt shelf.

>GET CAMPHROST LUMP
You shake a lump of camphrost from the jar.

Wisps of blue vapor steam from the camphrost.

Camphrost sublimates in air. I'm pretty sure this stuff is what we'd call camphor wax. Let's get it into the vapor crock before it turns entirely to vapor itself.

quote:

>WEST

Pyrics Lab
Waves of heat fill this room, radiating from a massive brick kiln and the roaring gas burners that fire it.

The lab door to the south is open. A storage area lies to the east.

A table at the other end of the room supports a glass vapor crock. The crock is open; it contains a phlogisticated gold rod.

You also see a jar of cedar splints on the table. Next to this are five splints of assorted woods: swamp pith, green linden, blackwood, winter-oak, and maple.

>PUT CAMPHROST IN CROCK
You put the lump of camphrost into the vapor crock.

>LIGHT BLACKWOOD WITH LIGHTER
You hold the torch-lighter to the splinter of blackwood. But the blackwood refuses to catch light.

... this presents a problem. Does the lighter only work on elemental wood or something?

quote:

>LIGHT MAPLE WITH LIGHTER
You hold the torch-lighter to the splinter of maple. But the maple refuses to catch light.

Not a great start.

quote:

>LIGHT WINTER-OAK WITH LIGHTER
You hold the torch-lighter to the splinter of winter-oak. The winter-oak catches quickly, and burns with a yellow-white flame.

>LIGHT GREEN LINDEN WITH LIGHTER
You hold the torch-lighter to the splinter of green linden. The green linden catches quickly, and burns with a dim red flame.

The camphrost is nearly gone. The vapor drifts from the open crock.

Better. I get the feeling this camphrost will fizzle before we're ready to start the procedure, though. (It's not really a ritual. This isn't a bound, and we aren't sealing anything.)

quote:

>LIGHT SWAMP PITH WITH LIGHTER
You hold the torch-lighter to the splinter of swamp pith. The swamp pith goes up in a bright flare; you snatch your hand away. Within instants, the swamp pith has been entirely devoured, and its flame winks out.

Yikes!

We'll have to try something that burns more vigorously than our little cigarette lighter. The parser's disambiguator has a suggestion, what with us being in the Pyrics lab.

quote:

>LIGHT MAPLE
(in the gas burners)
You hold the splinter of maple to the gas burners. The maple catches quickly, and burns with a yellow flame.

Promising. Very promising indeed.

quote:

>LIGHT BLACKWOOD WITH GAS BURNER

You hold the splinter of blackwood to the gas burners. But the blackwood stubbornly resists catching light.

Give me more power, Forsyth! More power!!

quote:

Burning Hall West
This hall runs west to east, from the grand stairs to the high wing. Except the high wing is on fire at the moment.

The entire east end of the hall is enveloped in flame. You can't tell what's burning�the walls? the floor? But the heat is intense; you can't go any further.

>DRINK FIRE RESISTANCE
You swallow the cloudy potion. The liquid leaves your mouth feeling slightly numb. Within moments, you feel a prickle in your skin; your hands go cold and stiff, like a long walk on a chilly autumn day.

>EAST
You step into the flames, which feel like a warm breeze on your skin.

Unfortunately, your possessions do not fare so well. In the heat, two chymic flasks and the torch-lighter shatter; the potion of breath holding explodes; the bundle of paper and the Chinese amulet burn up.

Burning Hall East
You are standing in an inferno. That is, you are at the east end of the hall, which is on fire. Even though you can barely feel the heat, the fire is hard to ignore.

To the east is an obsidian door, a dark rectangle amid the fire's glare. You know this door leads to the high wing and the Chancel, but it is closed and locked.

>LIGHT BLACKWOOD IN INFERNO
You hold the splinter of blackwood to the inferno. But the blackwood stubbornly resists catching light.

It's no use, Ekachloride, I'm givin' it all she's got!

... well, that's two out of three, at least, and the breath-holding potion has opened up at least one obvious additional avenue for exploration. There are other avenues available to us as well.

Next Time: We will, at minimum, finish our sweep of the easily-accessible parts of the marcher. We can start bypassing the barriers that remain to us, as well. The floor is open for suggestions on how to do this, or on how to get that blackwood to ignite.

ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Jul 16, 2018

# ? Jun 14, 2018 08:18

Ralphomon: Feb 14, 2014

I will admit I hadn't thought about lighting the blackwood with the inferno.

# ? Jun 14, 2018 11:41

Loxbourne: Apr 6, 2011; Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.

Like calls out to like - try igniting the elemental wood and using the flame from that to light the blackwood.

Well, we're still alive. The Anodyne Evocation resonantes with our body and we apparently need to breathe. I am wondering if we're some kind of emergency construct; it wouldn't surprise me if we found our own body somewhere in a fracture or perhaps the Exoscaphe. Either dead or perhaps comatose, having used an emergency ritual to project our spirit into a haemonculus. A nice touch having the kelp in a wall cabinet. It was presumably there as a survival kit in case of a decompression or hull breach.

That black script makes me suspect Something is Up. I'm having tremendous fun exploring this vessel and its inner workings, its a wonderful new environment to play around in. The writing does an excellent job of suggesting this all makes sense to the crew. This whole thing is giving me flashbacks to that "one moon, circling" TNG episode.

# ? Jun 14, 2018 12:12

The Lone Badger: Sep 24, 2007

Ralphomon posted:

I will admit I hadn't thought about lighting the blackwood with the inferno.

What about the kiln?

# ? Jun 14, 2018 12:34

Sydin: Oct 29, 2011; Another spring commute

I've been quietly lurking this thread for a while since I haven't had much to contribute, but would like to at least chime in that has been a fascinating read so far.

Loxbourne posted:

Well, we're still alive. The Anodyne Evocation resonantes with our body and we apparently need to breathe. I am wondering if we're some kind of emergency construct; it wouldn't surprise me if we found our own body somewhere in a fracture or perhaps the Exoscaphe. Either dead or perhaps comatose, having used an emergency ritual to project our spirit into a haemonculus. A nice touch having the kelp in a wall cabinet. It was presumably there as a survival kit in case of a decompression or hull breach.

I get the sense we're something more than an alchemic construct, or at least one simple enough that it could have been created or set up by the crew of the Marcher. Alchemy is very bound up in planetary cosmology but our body has no association to any celestial body, or at least not to one we recognize. That strikes me as very, very strange. The only other objects we've seen so far on the entire Marcher that we couldn't decipher even with the lenses were the weird black scrawlings, so they're probably linked to us in some way.

# ? Jun 14, 2018 18:54

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

We have a personality, judging from the snide comments we make to ourselves periodically. Maybe this is what you get when you try to transfer the metaphysical properties/essence of the marcher itself into a person? The question then would be, why/how was this done? Though if this theory is accurate, then I would expect changes made to the marcher to affect ourselves as well somehow. Maybe not anything as prosaic as opening doors, but if we could fix a fracture or otherwise effect repairs, or interact with the black text somehow, that should affect us directly.

Another amusing possibility is that this is a simulation used as a crash-course and test of alchemy skills. But that seems unlikely if only because it would require an "it was all a dream" twist.

# ? Jun 14, 2018 19:34

Ratoslov: Feb 15, 2012; Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

I gotta admit, I'm hoping Forsythe ends up walking in the footsteps of their predecessor, the great sage of alchemy Threepwood, and performs an entire complex ritual using only jury-rigged fakes instead of actually appropriate ingredients. Every cook makes substitutions.

# ? Jun 14, 2018 20:39

macdjord: Oct 26, 2013

> EXAMINE GRAFFITI THROUGH PLANETARY LENS
> EXAMINE PEOPLE THROUGH PLANETARY LENS

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

We have a personality, judging from the snide comments we make to ourselves periodically.

Those seemed to be our mental impression of the Sergent.

# ? Jun 14, 2018 23:57

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Ratoslov posted:

I gotta admit, I'm hoping Forsythe ends up walking in the footsteps of their predecessor, the great sage of alchemy Threepwood, and performs an entire complex ritual using only jury-rigged fakes instead of actually appropriate ingredients. Every cook makes substitutions.

If this is the ritual I'm remembering right, he did at least keep the BHT intact.

... perhaps the reason Monkey Island™ is so inaccessible is because you need to use a marcher to rig to it.

# ? Jun 15, 2018 04:00

Nakar: Sep 2, 2002; Ultima Ratio Regum

Forsyth appears to have a personality and memory, and these are things which they at least seem to believe are real. So if we are a construct of some kind, we're one that definitely believes ourselves to be a scrub sub-junior alchemist on the Retort who knows and has had interactions with and memories of the crew and day-to-day operations of the... ship? House? Place?

Basically, there appears to be something wrong with our body, but not (entirely?) with our mind. Forsyth has in the past used lenses to check their planetary alignment and found them to be Gaian, so the fact that this is no longer true either means that Forsyth's body has changed somehow, or that Forsyth's mind is not in Forsyth's body, but is in somebody's. :tinfoil:

# ? Jun 15, 2018 05:23

whitehelm: Apr 20, 2008

Nakar posted:

Forsyth appears to have a personality and memory, and these are things which they at least seem to believe are real. So if we are a construct of some kind, we're one that definitely believes ourselves to be a scrub sub-junior alchemist on the Retort who knows and has had interactions with and memories of the crew and day-to-day operations of the... ship? House? Place?

Basically, there appears to be something wrong with our body, but not (entirely?) with our mind. Forsyth has in the past used lenses to check their planetary alignment and found them to be Gaian, so the fact that this is no longer true either means that Forsyth's body has changed somehow, or that Forsyth's mind is not in Forsyth's body, but is in somebody's.

I'm thinking we're some other being entirely that has access to all of his memories (like Blick Winkel from Ever17). That would explain why we can learn rituals and things so much faster than him, and why we're able to keep memories through resets. This may be a similar process to how we're getting non-Forsyth memories from those specks floating around.

# ? Jun 15, 2018 10:19

bewilderment: Nov 22, 2007; man what

This is a good as heck LP for a game I would never have actually played myself.

Out of interest, do the standard joke commands like xyzzy and plugh do anything?

# ? Jun 15, 2018 10:51

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# ? May 4, 2024 22:12

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

The transcript of the next update's playthrough, without commentary, weighed in at one hundred and fifty kilobytes. I'm working everyone's comments and requests into the playthrough, but sometimes it may take an update or two to actually have suggestions appear in play.

Also, I had to divide the update in two, even with my editing. For the sake of my own sanity I won't be updating the Alchemy Journal after the next update, but it should be all caught up after the update-after-next.

# ? Jun 16, 2018 07:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's >RECITE THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE and Play Hadean Lands

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