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

«‹›6 »

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Glazius posted:

Well, they are Hadean lands. If a persy suit lets you visit them, clearly it must be short for that most famous and constant visitor of those lands, Persephone.

Inevitable in retrospect. I'd been trying to think of alchemical stuff, but this is clearly what it must be.

# ? Jun 30, 2018 03:29

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 5, 2024 01:06

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Part 15: Venture File

We've been everywhere on the Retort except for the Deep Lab, which requires getting Baros operational.

Well, we won't let that stop us. Let's go Venturing.

quote:

>BREW VACUUM POTION. DRINK IT

We aren't restricted to the Retort anymore.

quote:

>CREATE VENTURE FILE SEAL

Might as well wear the traditional badge.

quote:

>GO TO AIRLOCK
You make your way to the Airlock.

Airlock
The airlock is a stumpy cylindrical chamber, ten feet long and ten feet across. It is used whenever the Retort is rigged into a non-Gaian land. The chamber walls are bare steel. At each end is a circular slab of a door. The inner door to the south is open; the outer door to the north is closed.

The pressurization lever on the wall is pushed down.

>CLOSE INNER DOOR
The inner door is massive but well-balanced. It swings shut with a muffled whoomp.

>PULL LEVER
The lever seems to be locked in place. You're not sure what's wrong with it.

>X IT
The airlock's master pressure control is a clunky iron lever set in the wall. The shorthand symbol for Pneuma is engraved above it.

The lever is currently pushed down. You know that pulling it will depressurize the airlock. Not that you've ever been allowed to do anything that interesting.

Oh right, Pneuma is still not operational. Well, we've got other options.

quote:

>PERFORM GLASS PERMEABILITY

There are some big windows looking outside, too.

quote:

Portico
You stand in the foyer of the marcher. It's wide and comfortably appointed, with lounging seats and potted tropical ferns. The Retort likes to look its best for visitors.

The main doors to the north are closed, however. A broad window in the east wall reveals the reason: the world outside is a Hadean land, grey and lifeless.

The Nave is south, and a narrow dark doorway opens to the west.

>RING CHIME
You tap the bronze F-sharp chime. Its bright resonances fill the room�and then shift to a steady, sustained hum.

>PUT CHIME IN WINDOW
You press the chime against the window. The glass vibrates, and the bronze sinks slowly into it�not like metal into tar, but like a knife sliding between infinitesimal layers of glass.

When you draw your hand away, the chime remains suspended in the glass. Its vibration continues at a steady pitch.

>GO THROUGH WINDOW
You press your fingers against the glass. You feel a steady vibration... and a yielding, as the glass slides through your flesh. It's rather unnerving, and you push the rest of your body through as quickly as possible.

The vacuum plucks at your clothing for a moment, but the only other sensation is a nagging dryness in your sinuses.

Unfortunately, your possessions do not fare so well. In the vacuum, two chymic flasks boil away.

... whoops. >UNDO, drop the chymic flasks, try again.

quote:

Hadean Plain
You stand at the edge of a Hadean land now. Grey lifeless dust crunches soundlessly beneath your feet. The sky is black; the stars are glorious. And you have no more protection than the potion you drank.

Behind you are the comforting walls of the Retort. The airlock is a heavy circular door in the south wall; it is closed. To the west, you can see the broad window of the portico. But to the north and east, the Hadean plain stretches away towards jagged foothills.

Your first Venture walk. You're a real marchman now, aren't you, swabbie?

The vibration of the bronze F-sharp chime continues.

Nice! This also gives us our first look at the Retort from the outside.

quote:

>EXAMINE RETORT
The Retort, from this outward view, is a tidy white mansion in a colonial style. (Though the paint must be some refractory alchemical compound, to survive so many foreign environments.) It stands south and west of you. The airlock door to the south is closed; the portico window is to the west.

Less like a starship from out here. Well, let's go exploring.

quote:

>NORTH
The hills to the north look impassable. But you can make out a pass opening to the northeast.

>NORTHEAST
You hike up towards the pass. Your feet kick up dust which falls behind you, never trailing in the nonexistent air.

Hadean Land, in Canyon
You are working your way through a narrow canyon. Angular grey mountains loom above you, and stars shine down on it all.

The canyon zig-zags down to the southwest. To the southeast, it slopes more gradually, opening onto another dusty plain. A twisted metal shape is visible across the plain, but you cannot tell what it is.

You also see an opening in the canyon wall to the northwest. It might be some sort of cave, but if so, it is very dark.

Dark, hm?

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT CAVE
The oculus shows the dark cave as associated with time.

Yeah, going through there will take us back to the Void. No thanks.

quote:

>SE
You continue down out of the crags. The shape grows as you approach, becoming a twisted metal hill by the time you reach its foot.

Hadean Land, at Wreck
You stand at the foot of a wall of metal. It's not a simple construction; it leans inward here, outward there, tracing an irregular shape that looms over the dusty plain. Perhaps it's broken, for debris is scattered around.

Mountains rise all around, forming a jagged grey bowl which cups the metal wreck. You can see the canyon pass to the northwest.

A hexagonal outline on the wall, to the east, might be a door. If so, it is closed. A small black knot, a tangle of strokes, is drawn on the hexagon.

Next to the hexagon, a small circular arc is incised into the metal.

A small puddle of mercury gleams in the dust.

>EXAMINE WRECK
The metal heap, or wreck�shape�towers over you. Pieces lean dizzily outward, or inward; you have no way to understand whether they were built that way, or twisted in some unimaginable catastrophe.

I have a couple of theories about what happened to the Retort. One of them is that while we were traveling through the Higher Spheres�hyperspace, if you will�we somehow collided with or had our space-folding creases cross with the similar drives of this other ship, leading to a catastrophic result for us both. There might be alien survivors. Argy might have been one of those survivors.

But that's not the only interesting thing here. We need that mercury for the Dragon Fulcrum. And there's some black marks here, too, like on the Retort.

quote:

>EXAMINE KNOT
The knot of script is no more comprehensible than the markings you've seen on the Retort. Except that there's something about it... again, that itch of familiarity.

You stare harder. It's...

comprehension

That meant something. You don't know what, except that you're lying flat in the dust and you can't remember falling. The hexagon is blank now; the script is... somewhere in the back of your head... You can remember the glyph now. You roll over and push to your feet, hoping that you've gained something besides permanent brain damage.

As a member of Alchemy File, we were not pre-warned about what tends to happen to ensigns who go on away missions. :ohdear:

It's a little odd that "remember" was italicized like that. I think this is prompting us to enter a command...

quote:

>REMEMBER GLYPH
The glyph is a multidimensional structure�a surface which is curved back on itself, but with no edges. The glyph burns in your memory like something startling you have always known.

That sounds like a Klein bottle. Also, REMEMBER is a synonym for RECALL, and this is, in fact, recorded in our alchemy journal as a formula.

Let's also snag this mercury while we're here. We get some sass from the parser if we ask about planetary associations:

quote:

>GET MERCURY
You glance around for a container, and settle on a broken saucer-shaped bit of ceramic. You gently scoop up the mercury droplet.

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT MERCURY
The droplet of mercury acquires a colorful fringe when viewed through the oculus, but its symbolic associations are not strong enough to visualize clearly.

>LOOK THROUGH LENS AT MERCURY
You peer at the droplet of mercury through the lens, and perceive an association with Mercury (obviously).

There isn't really anything left obvious for us to do here for now. Let's head back to the Retort and make use of this mercury.

quote:

>EXAMINE MOUNTAINS
The mountains loom to the north and west, jagged grey shapes against a sky of stars. The opening of the canyon is visible to the northwest.

>NW
You hike up back towards the pass.

Hadean Land, in Canyon
You are working your way through a narrow canyon. Angular grey mountains loom above you, and stars shine down on it all.

The canyon zig-zags down to the southwest. To the southeast, it slopes more gradually, opening onto another dusty plain. A twisted metal shape is visible across the plain, but you cannot tell what it is.

You also see an opening in the canyon wall to the northwest. It might be some sort of cave, but if so, it is very dark.

>SW
You trudge back out of the canyon. When the Retort appears from around the last bend, it is a breath of relief. Or would be, if you were breathing.

Hadean Plain
You stand at the edge of a Hadean land now. Grey lifeless dust crunches soundlessly beneath your feet. The sky is black; the stars are glorious. And you have no more protection than the potion you drank.

Behind you are the comforting walls of the Retort. The airlock is a heavy circular door in the south wall; it is closed. To the west, you can see the broad window of the portico. But to the north and east, the Hadean plain stretches away towards jagged foothills.

>WEST
You slide back through the vibrating glass.

Home sweet home. We need to make a bound of mercury, so that means we'll need to go to the Mechanica Lab's adjustable bound. Along the way...

quote:

Lab Hall Northwest
The laboratory hallway runs east and south from this junction. Another corridor runs west, towards the rest of the marcher.

To the north, the door to the Main Store is open.

Graffiti has been scrawled on the wall here. The black marks are curiously twisted; they hint at meaning, but... wait.

... have the black marks changed?

quote:

>EXAMINE GRAFFITI
Twisting, involuted strokes of black are scrawled across one wall.

You stare at the black script. It's definitely familiar now; something like an echo in the back of your mind. It's something about the root, the entry point, gaining entry...

Comprehension blasts you. You gasp and clutch at your head, but the pain is entirely metaphorical, a shift of context worse than any headache... The black marks represent a sequence of geometrical transformations. They mean radix access, the passage of the root. You stare at them, blinking tears from your eyes, until you have them memorized.

>RECALL RADIX ACCESS
A sequence of outward geometric relations, forming a pattern which you can barely hold in your mind's eye.

Maybe the marks haven't changed. Maybe we have. The fact that these marks are associated with the alien wreck and that we only now understand them implies that, whatever we are, we're more terrestrial than not.

Onwards to the rest of our materials, and finally to the Mechanica Lab's bound!

quote:

Materials Store
You are in a small storage area. The Mechanica Lab is back to the east.

To one side stands a heavy table, upon which is another ritual bound. This one is adjustable; it is currently empty.

There's another cabinet here. It is open but empty.

An untidy storage bin contains two stone chips (obsidian and sandstone) and a broad quartz prism.

A crumpled recipe sheet is lying by the ritual bound.

Someone has dropped a standard glass chime, the sort used in musical rituals. It's marked as being in the key of H.

You can also see a moon-metal rod, a flask of lubanja, and a rutilum Alchemy File seal here.

>PUT MERCURY IN GROOVE
You try to coax the mercury droplet into the groove, but it just rolls off. Surface tension! You give up and scoop the droplet back up.

Curse you, physics! :argh:

I guess we'll need to make an amalgam�a mercury alloy with some other metal. You might think that this would require some special equipment or procedure, but we totally do not. Thanks, physics! :keke:

quote:

>PUT GOLD ON MERCURY
Tilting the saucer, you dip the plain gold rod into the mercury. The mercury coats the metal, forming a silvery amalgam. You twirl the gold through the droplet until all the mercury is absorbed.

Now we have a gold amalgam rod. To get that into the adjustable bound...

quote:

>EAST. PUT AMALGAM IN DRAWER. TURN CRANK. GET AMALGAM WIRE. WEST.

Okay. Now we're ready to do this.

quote:

>PUT AMALGAM IN ARC
You carefully press the length of gold amalgam wire into the groove. It forms a complete circuit around the arc.

>PUT GRANITE IN ARC
You put the chip of granite into the adjustable bound.

>SPEAK GRENDEL'S SEALING
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone Grendel's Sealing.

The arc begins to glow silver-grey around the chip of granite.

>PUT VITRIOLIC ON GRANITE
You carefully drip vitriolic acid onto the chip of granite. The stone hisses and spits, and seems to absorb the acid.

>SPEAK DRACON
You rumble your way through the Dracon Invocation. But the words are not true.

>SPEAK RELATIVE ANIMA
You raise your voice in the Relative Anima. The chip of granite shifts slightly, but there is no other effect. The ritual bound slowly fades.

Hrm. I guess that note with the dragon fulcrum had scratched out "the dragon's name" and tried to draw some mess of black marks. Do we have any formulae that are a mess of black marks?

quote:

>SPEAK GRENDEL'S SEALING
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone Grendel's Sealing.

The arc begins to glow silver-grey around the chip of granite.

>PUT VITRIOLIC ON GRANITE
You carefully drip vitriolic acid onto the chip of granite. The stone hisses and spits, and seems to absorb the acid.

>INVOKE ALIEN GLYPH
You visualize the alien glyph as clearly as possible. The stone does not visibly change, but you have a peculiar notion that it has changed shape inside.

>SPEAK RELATIVE ANIMA
You raise your voice in the Relative Anima. The chip of granite seems to revolve in place without moving.

The silver-grey light flares and fades, and you see a symbol gleaming on the surface of the chip of granite.

>GET GRANITE
You pick up the chip of granite, careful of its inscribed leverage symbol.

All right. Now we can perform the dragon subsumption ritual. We need to drop the anchor in some dragon's lair, do a small ritual, then lead the active dragon to the target. Based on the dragon priority, we'll try to have Syndesis subsume Baros.

Also, based on the comments regarding our judgement of our crewmates, the votes were for mercy. It turns out that if we change our perspective to the less hostile ones, the descriptions of the crew change within the room itself:

quote:

The Captain is standing here, gazing moodily off down the hall. She looks nearly human like this; it's rather charming.

quote:

You see Lt Anderes here. She is scowling at the shelves�although, as you recall, she scowls at everything.

quote:

You see Lt Powes crouched over a shelf. His expression is wary, but intent; whatever he is doing, he has no doubts of his aim.

quote:

You see Ensign Ctesc standing here. His normally placid face is illuminated by eagerness�an intensity that he does not show to others.

Before we drop the anchor, there's one last set of marks next to Baros. Let's go read them.

quote:

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 involuted black marks. They hint at meaning, but... wait.

Your eye is drawn to a pale yellow bead lying in a corner.

>X MARKS
Twisting, involuted strokes of black are scrawled across one wall.

You stare at the black script. It's definitely familiar now; something like an echo in the back of your mind. It's something about a vibrating film of quicksilver...

The pain of comprehension is less severe now, but it still nearly drives you to your knees. The black marks describe the activation of machinery. The mechanism of command is a circular mark on a wall�like the one you saw outside the Retort; but the circle in your mind is filled, or covered, with liquid metal. One concentrates on a sequence of geometric transforms, and the metal resonates in response.

Well, we can't try that this run; we turned the mercury into a solid amalgam to make the dragon fulcrum.

quote:

>WEST
(first opening the engraved door)
You make your way to the Portico.
You take the flask of muriatic acid.
The orichalcum rod is gone; you used it in a ritual in the Chymic Lab. You don't know where to get another one.
(While trying to create copper percalcinate, to create the aura invisibility, to open the engraved door.)

(You are now in the Portico.)

Oh right. We haven't reset since visiting the Chancel�we've burned up the orichalcum to impersonate the Captain.

quote:

*** You awaken again ***

quote:

>PERFORM DRAGON FULCRUM
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of saline.
You make your way to the Nave Crawlway.
You take the vial of highlime.
You make your way to the Deck Suite.
You take the impet of kelp oil.
You brew a bottle of vacuum protection.
You drink the potion of vacuum protection.
You make your way to the Chasm Rubble.
You make your way to the Scaphe Arcade.
You set aside your possessions for a moment and dive for the bronze B chime.
You make your way to the Herbarium Nook.
You take the pinch of zafranum.
You make your way to the Under Ward.
You take the torch-lighter.
You make your way to the Exoscaphe.
You take the horn coin from the bench.
You make your way to the Nave.
You conjure an attraction symbol onto the bronze B chime.
You make your way to the Chasm Rubble.
You use the B chime to attract the bronze F-sharp chime.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of sand from the rack.
You take the brass coin.
You make your way to the Secondary Alchemy Lab.
You conjure a permeability symbol onto the bronze F-sharp chime.
You make your way to the Portico.
You strike the bronze F-sharp chime and set it into the window.
You push through the glass.
You make your way to the Hadean Land, at Wreck.
You take the droplet of mercury.
You push through the glass.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
You make your way to the Storage Nook.
You take the rutilum Alchemy File seal.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
You take the phlogisticated gold rod from the cabinet.
You draw the gold rod out into wire (losing its phlogistication).
You apply the mercury to the length of gold wire.
You lay the length of gold amalgam wire in the bound groove.
You take the chip of granite from the storage bin.
You make your way to the Under Ward.
You take the flask of vitriolic acid.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
The length of gold amalgam wire is already in the bound groove.
You conjure a leverage symbol onto the chip of granite, using the alien glyph.

(You are now in the Materials Store.)

>GO TO BIRDHOUSE
You make your way to the Materials Store.
You take the long quartz prism from the storage bin.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of muriatic acid from the rack.
You make your way to the Main Store.
You recall the combination, and unlock the safe.
You take the orichalcum rod from the safe.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You brew a vial of copper percalcinate.
You take the flask of mineral oil from the rack.
You make your way to the Mechanica Lab.
You take the nickel rod from the counter.
You draw the nickel rod out into wire.
The phlogisticated gold rod became the length of gold wire, which became the length of gold amalgam wire, which is still in the groove (in the Materials Store). You don't know where to get another one.
(While trying to create sublime spirit, to create the aura invisibility, to open the engraved door, to reach the Birdhouse.)

quote:

You draw the gold rod out into wire (losing its phlogistication).

quote:

*** You awaken again ***

quote:

>CREATE SUBLIME SPIRIT
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of mineral oil from the rack.
You make your way to the Mechanica Lab.
You take the nickel rod from the counter.
You draw the nickel rod out into wire.
You head to the Materials Store.
You make your way to the Storage Nook.
You take the rutilum Alchemy File seal.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
You take the phlogisticated gold rod from the cabinet.
You make your way to the Pyrics Lab.
You take the splinter of blackwood from the table.
You take the splinter of winter-oak from the table.
You ignite the blackwood splint from the winter-oak.
You place the phlogisticated gold in the vapor crock with camphrost, and ignite them with the blackwood splint.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You brew a vial of sublime spirit.

(You are now in the Chymic Lab.)

>PERFORM DRAGON FULCRUM
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of saline.
You make your way to the Nave Crawlway.
You take the vial of highlime.
You make your way to the Deck Suite.
You take the impet of kelp oil.
You brew a bottle of vacuum protection.
You drink the potion of vacuum protection.
You make your way to the Chasm Rubble.
You make your way to the Scaphe Arcade.
You set aside your possessions for a moment and dive for the bronze B chime.
You make your way to the Herbarium Nook.
You take the pinch of zafranum.
You make your way to the Under Ward.
You take the torch-lighter.
You make your way to the Exoscaphe.
You take the horn coin from the bench.
You make your way to the Nave.
You conjure an attraction symbol onto the bronze B chime.
You make your way to the Chasm Rubble.
You use the B chime to attract the bronze F-sharp chime.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of sand from the rack.
You take the brass coin.
You make your way to the Secondary Alchemy Lab.
You conjure a permeability symbol onto the bronze F-sharp chime.
You make your way to the Portico.
You strike the bronze F-sharp chime and set it into the window.
You push through the glass.

Unfortunately, your possessions do not fare so well. In the vacuum, the vial of sublime spirit boils away.
You make your way to the Hadean Land, at Wreck.
You take the droplet of mercury.
You push through the glass.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the plain gold rod.
You make your way to the Mechanica Lab.
You draw the plain gold rod out into wire.
You apply the mercury to the length of gold wire.
You lay the length of gold amalgam wire in the bound groove.
You take the chip of granite from the storage bin.
You make your way to the Under Ward.
You take the flask of vitriolic acid.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
The length of gold amalgam wire is already in the bound groove.
You conjure a leverage symbol onto the chip of granite, using the alien glyph.

(You are now in the Materials Store.)

quote:

Unfortunately, your possessions do not fare so well. In the vacuum, the vial of sublime spirit boils away.

quote:

*** You awaken again ***

Take three.

quote:

>CREATE SUBLIME SPIRIT. DROP SUBLIME SPIRIT. CREATE DRAGON FULCRUM. GO TO BIRDHOUSE.

quote:

Birdhouse
The Birdhouse is a circular chamber with no roof. It's not open to the sky; it just goes up forever. The door to the east is open. You also see a cracked flagstone with a gap leading to a crawlspace below.

The name comes from a ring of metal pylons that take up the center of the room. You can see the fanciful resemblance to a birdcage, although they don't imprison anything.

The dragon Syndesis is a mandala of alchemical runes inscribed across the curving wall. The circles rotate majestically, shining with violet-red radiance.

A fragment of paper lies to one side.

As you enter, the chip of granite begins to shine with a silvery light.

>DROP GRANITE
Dropped.

Finally. Interestingly, the autosolver seems to be calling out that we use the alien glyph to make the dragon fulcrum. Now let's go to the Nave and perform the Dragon Subsumption Procedure. This, interestingly, is not a ritual, but we treat it like one.

quote:

>RECALL DRAGON SUBSUMPTION
"If one of a marcher's dragons becomes disorganized, the vessel is in serious danger. As an emergency measure, the faulty dragon may be subsumed into an active one, transferring its functions. The composite will be unstable, but may suffice to rig the marcher to a safe berth.

"Place a fulcrum in the active dragon's lair." (A footnote here: "Any lair will suffice, in fact; the fulcrum merely provides leverage.") "Prepare an orderly environment and use the Marcher's Invocation. Follow with a symmetric sequence to indicate a forward transition (active dragon consuming damaged one). Conclude with the Dracon Invocation. This will summon the active dragon; one can then translate it to the presence of the other. Warning: do not allow the dragon's presence to cross the fulcrum node!"

>PUT KEY ON SHELF
You put the thick key on the gestalt shelf.

>SPEAK MARCHER'S
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the Marcher's Sealing.

The arc begins to glow smoke-grey.

>SPEAK SYMMETRIC
You begin reciting the values of the symmetric sequence. After a few minutes and a bit of counting on your fingers, you reach the end (which is of course the same as the beginning).

>SPEAK DRACON
You rumble your way through the Dracon Invocation.

A sense of pressure builds in the air. You feel something move, in the distance. The bound slowly dims.

Whirling violet-red runes slide into the Nave from the western hallway. You recognize the dragon Syndesis, come in answer to your summons.

The mandala drifts across the murals and settles on the ceiling.

Syndesis is now following us around the way Argy did. If we go to a room with a crewmember in it, they'll speak the same lines they did when Argy gave them brief animation, too.

But that's not what we're here to do.

quote:

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 involuted black marks. Something about a circle filled with liquid metal.

Your eye is drawn to a pale yellow bead lying in a corner.

Syndesis silently arrives.

>EAST
(first opening the iron gate)
You make your way to the Master-at-Arms Quarters.
You take the flint key.
You make your way to the Bottom of the Grand Stair.

You open the gate.

Barosy
This is a long, dim chamber whose walls are immense stone slabs. It's like a burial chamber, but with no smell of decay. There is only a sense of weight and time.

The iron gate stands open to the west. You also see a crevice between two slabs to the north; it looks wide enough to wiggle through.

The dragon Baros is a mandala of alchemical runes inscribed across the entire end wall of the chamber. They still look lifeless and inert.

A fragment of paper lies nearby.

Syndesis drifts into the room.

>WAIT
Time passes.

Syndesis is being drawn towards Baros.

>WAIT
Time passes.

Syndesis slides towards Baros, faster and faster. At the last moment, Baros seems to crumple, break apart, and be drawn into the violet-red heart of Syndesis.

You hear, smell, see a confusion of smells and sounds and colored light.

*** You awaken again ***

That sounds dramatic, but we no longer seem to consider it a disaster. Interestingly, also, if we now recall the alien glyph, its description has changed. Before, it was described like this:

quote:

The glyph is a multidimensional structure�a surface which is curved back on itself, but with no edges. The glyph burns in your memory like something startling you have always known.

But now it's described like this:

quote:

The glyph is a multidimensional structure�a surface which is curved back on itself, but with no edges. The glyph feels familiar, no longer startling.

We're getting acculturated to the alien symbology, it seems.

Let's check on the dragons. Baros first:

quote:

Barosy
This is a long, dim chamber whose walls are immense stone slabs. It's like a burial chamber�an empty one, now that the dragon is gone.

The iron gate stands open to the west. You also see a crevice between two slabs to the north; it looks wide enough to wiggle through.

Lt Powes is sitting in a corner, back to the wall, arms around his knees. He is staring into the dimness, a narrow smile on his face.

A fragment of paper lies nearby.

Hmm. Powes is here now, and if we look at him we have two new descriptions for our possible attitudes:

quote:

>EXAMINE POWES
Your perspective shifts.

Powes has the look of a man whose plans are launched and cannot be called back. He has committed himself to someone's downfall. You hope that whatever he gains is worth the inevitable cost.

That changes his in room description to this:

quote:

Lt Powes is sitting in a corner, back to the wall, arms around his knees. He is staring into the dimness, wide-eyed, as if struck by a shock.

But kindness remains an option:

quote:

>EXAMINE POWES
Your perspective shifts.

Powes has the look of a man whose plans are launched and cannot be called back. He has committed himself to someone's downfall. You wish him luck in making some profit from it.

Powes was previously in the Pyrics Lab, and now there's just a shadow there, as before. Examining the shadow with the oculus tells us much more about the situation, though:

quote:

"Powes' depredations, we find, have been calculatedly random�not so localized as to implicate any particular superior officer. Instead, the result has been a steady decrease in the Retort's overall operational efficiency. The Ministry has not yet acted, but if this continues, they will.

"Lacking evidence of wrongdoing, the blame will inevitably fall upon Captain Hart. Thus we must assume that the Captain is Powes' target. She would not face marchcourt for running a 'scruffy ship', but she would likely be transferred to a lesser command.

"I extended my search, and discovered lengthy correspondence between Powes and Captain Mehta of the Lightfire. Captain Mehta is in the offing for a favorable command, and so we must assume..."

The rest of the crew remain as they were. Meanwhile, Syndesis is multitasking, and it shows up it its appearance and resonance:

quote:

The dragon Syndesis is a mandala of alchemical runes inscribed across the curving wall. The circles rotate majestically, shining with violet-red radiance (and hints of brown-gold).

quote:

The oculus reveals Syndesis as a web of occult relations running throughout the Retort. It looks healthy now.

The architecture of the marcher is still somewhat fractured. But you can see patches covering the worst holes�by the secondary alchemy lab, the chymic lab, the opticks lab, and the deck suite.

Syndesis has absorbed Baros; you can see its associations as well. These include stabilization in the chasm and in the crawlway beneath the garden and Barosy.

That should let us reach the Deep Lab.

quote:

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.

The area seems stable now.

>WEST

Canyon Bridge Span
You are standing on a stone bridge that crosses the canyon. The span feels very narrow now. A little light reaches you from lamps along the canyon wall, but none penetrates the depths below.

The east end of the bridge debarks at a ledge. The west end dives into a narrow gap which opens directly into the canyon wall.

>WEST

Deep Lab
This chamber looks like a natural cavern, squared and smoothed with the crudest of tools. Stalactites hang from the roof; flowstone drips down the walls. An uneven passage runs east.

In the center of the chamber is a boulder. It is inscribed with a ritual bound in an archaic, almost crude style. A smaller slab serves as a gestalt shelf.

No new prizes here.

Let's go check out that tunnel leading north from the Barosy.

quote:

Barosy Crevice
You are crawling along a tight passage through the bowels of the Earth. Or some world, at any rate. Some light leaks in from the Barosy, behind you, to the south. To the north it only gets darker.

The gravity feels normal now.

>NORTH
You push forward until the crevice widens. You see light ahead.

Garden Crawlway
You are at the west end of a low corridor, but the way east is fracture-blocked. Light spills down from an opening above. There's a wide crack in the south wall, although it looks like it narrows ahead.

The gravity feels normal now.

>UP

Paper Maze, Center
You have found the heart of the hedge maze: a circle of paper screens. A single opening to the west leads back to the labyrinth. You also notice an open hatchway which leads to a crawlspace below.

The dragon Pneuma is a mandala of alchemical runes inscribed on the screens. They still look lifeless and inert.

A fragment of paper lies by the hatchway.

Good morning, Pneuma. You're next. :getin:

# ? Jun 30, 2018 09:23

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

I knew it! It's the "Night Terrors" scenario, with us working with the survivors of some deeply alien aliens to get out of a mutual jam. Their ship seems to be in rather worse condition than ours, but their survivors are able to move? Perhaps the player is an attempt by BOTH sides to produce an entity that can still operate in the fractured environment.

Still no explanation for that hint about ships leaving echoes or alternate possibilities behind them when they rig/jump, but perhaps we'll get there later. I have a feeling the day might eventually be saved by ourselves, either as the original or a functional echo.

And why have all the helmets been removed from the suits? This looks increasingly like Powes tried to arrange an accident to discredit the Captain but catastrophically overdid it.

# ? Jun 30, 2018 10:32

Rockopolis: Dec 21, 2012; I MAKE FUN OF QUEER STORYGAMES BECAUSE I HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH MY LIFE THAN MAKE OTHER PEOPLE CRY

I can't understand these kinds of games, and not getting it bugs me almost as much as me being weird

What happens if you let a dragon cross the fulcrum?

# ? Jun 30, 2018 12:09

macdjord: Oct 26, 2013

ManxomeBromide posted:

No new prizes here. Let's go check out that tunnel leading north from the Barosy.

No new prizes, but we should be able to get the chime on the bridge ourself, without the making brass attractor first, saving us... I have no idea, but I'm certain there's something valuable consumed in that ritual path.

# ? Jun 30, 2018 15:05

Dybael: Jul 11, 2017

Ooh, so the smudged knot on the faded paper with the dragon fulcrum instructions WAS an attempt at transcribing the alien graffiti. Is there a different message if we look at the paper now that we (kinda, sorta) understand alien glyphs?

# ? Jun 30, 2018 15:17

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

Something I don't understand: why can't we just do the Great Marriage over and over again to repair all the dragons?

# ? Jun 30, 2018 17:23

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Something I don't understand: why can't we just do the Great Marriage over and over again to repair all the dragons?

The first time we attempted it, we were interrupted because the marks in the Nave came to life. After we repaired a dragon, we were not interrupted and attempting it visibly did something in the Chancel and then fizzled.

macdjord posted:

No new prizes, but we should be able to get the chime on the bridge ourself, without the making brass attractor first, saving us... I have no idea, but I'm certain there's something valuable consumed in that ritual path.

Gravity was working, there, just very inconvenient (it's on the far side of a precariously balanced slab). The metal attractor ritual consumes the zafranum, but we don't presently have any other uses of that. But we only need glass permeability in the first place because the airlock is broken, so fixing Pneuma should remove our need for either one.

You're on the right track, though. With Baros fixed, we can do something differently and save a use of elemental earth.

Reagent economy is about to become a big thing, but we've got some exploration to do before it really takes off.

# ? Jun 30, 2018 18:58

hyphz: Aug 5, 2003; Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.; Unlockable Ben

So, I actually had a look through the source code (it's in a printed book with a note telling you not to OCR it, and it's also bound so that it won't lie flat on a scanner, so I guess he really didn't want people using it to make mods or clones, which makes sense)

* Most of Andrew Plotkin's games have comedy debug messages (see https://tcrf.net/A_Change_In_The_Weather ) but Hadean Lands stays serious throughout, perhaps because it's so bloody massive. There's a few weird ones, though:

pre:

Understand "formula" as a formula when the item described is not xyzzy.

* Annoyingly, there's a ton of fun cheat commands for debugging.. but they're all in conditional compilation.

* There's evidence that at some point you could trace a goal "hypothetically" - that is, you could think about how you'd do something but not do it. That's all commented out. But it looks like it was done relatively late, because there's tons of "if the goal-state is not hypothetical.." tests left in the code.

* Even though Inform 7 was a necessary tool, there's chunks of code in Inform 6 embedded in it.

* Every action is divided up into steps of three types: "get object", "go somewhere" and "do an action".

* If you say GO TO THE VOID, the game doesn't bother working out how to get to a void entrance because it assumes one is always available. It just teleports you into the void and resets instantly.

* There is a limit to the number of tasks it can trace. If it goes too high, it'll stop with "This has become too confusing, so you stop."

* Beyond that, every single action in the game has a goal rule describing its prerequisite actions. Every one. They're not automatically calculated or anything. They're all written - although maybe not by hand.

* To be able to tell you what happened to each object, objects are never removed. Instead, they're "retired", and a "fate" is stored for them. There's even a fixed list of fates: ritual, alchemy, drinking, burning, burning out, applying, dissolution, wrecked, transformation, vacuum, water, aeroclave, incineration, dropping down the chasm, dropped in the maze.

# ? Jul 1, 2018 19:09

Glazius: Jul 22, 2007; Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.; Clapping Larry

What are the odds that two random travelers would collide in the infinity of space? I half-suspect one of the crew's horrible secrets is that they were trying to make contact for some non-officially-sanctioned purpose and things went wrong.

# ? Jul 1, 2018 21:38

macdjord: Oct 26, 2013

Glazius posted:

What are the odds that two random travelers would collide in the infinity of space?

Empirically? Between 1-in-3 and 2-in-3~ IIRC, we've heard of 3 marchers so far; one has never been mentioned as having had a collision, one both did and did not suffer a mysterious accident of some sort that might have been a crash, and the last one - our own - did in fact crash into something.

# ? Jul 3, 2018 00:07

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Part 16: Strange Aeons

With Syndesis repaired, we have an easy route to fix the other dragons. We can reach the Barosy for free, and can just drop our dragon fulcrum there and then lead Syndesis to any other dragon we want. Unfortunately for us...

quote:

>PERFORM DRAGON FULCRUM
The glyph that you have learned no longer seems to work.

...the fulcrum is picky about reuse. We'll need some new symbols. On the other hand, we've got the radix access pattern which might get us deeper into the alien wreck.

quote:

Hadean Land, at Wreck
You stand at the foot of a wall of metal. It's not a simple construction; it leans inward here, outward there, tracing an irregular shape that looms over the dusty plain. Perhaps it's broken, for debris is scattered around.

Mountains rise all around, forming a jagged grey bowl which cups the metal wreck. You can see the canyon pass to the northwest.

A hexagonal outline on the wall, to the east, might be a door. If so, it is closed.

Next to the hexagon, a small circular arc is incised into the metal.

A small puddle of mercury gleams in the dust.

>GET MERCURY
You glance around for a container, and settle on a broken saucer-shaped bit of ceramic. You gently scoop up the mercury droplet.

>PUT MERCURY IN ARC
You tilt the mercury droplet against the circle. It sticks to the metal, and slowly spreads out until it reaches the edge. There is now a perfect circle of quicksilver, mirror-flat, clinging to the wall.

>SPEAK RADIX ACCESS
You begin running through the radix access geometric sequence in your head. The quicksilver circle vibrates in response; complex ripples refract across it.

When the sequence is complete, a metal panel neatly and silently rotates, hiding the quicksilver circle from view. Instead, a small niche is now visible, containing a vial of black oil and another knot of marks.

>EXAMINE OIL
This elongated vial contains an opaque black oily substance, which seems to quiver of its own accord. Something in the back of your mind tells you that it is polar, like a liquid magnet.

>GET OIL
Taken.

>READ KNOT
You glare at the knot, willing understanding.

comprehension

This symbol resembles the first, but it comes with a new image: the black oil, magnetic oil, flowing over indigo stone. An indigo stone column. A familiar column, in a twisty maze of underground cracks! It must have magnetic properties, which the alien oil will respond to.

Somehow the alien writing, behind this locked door, knows things about our marcher. Well, it's not like we have any other leads.

quote:

>GO TO CONFUSING CRACKS
You push through the glass.
You make your way to the Confusing Cracks.

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.

>PUT OIL ON INDIGO
You splash the black oil onto the column. It drips... upward.

The fluid flows up the violet stone, clinging in fine inky trails. The marks slowly resolve into the familiar (if you can call it that) alien script, which spirals up the column. The strokes spread across the roof and disappear into a gap to the southeast—a passage you had not noticed until now.

>SOUTHEAST
You follow the trail of script.

Dead End Passage
The passage ends here. You can return to the northwest.

The trail of black marks ends here as well, swirling back on itself across the ceiling. The marks hint at meaning, but... wait.

>EXAMINE MARKS
Twisting black strokes curve up the passage and wrap themselves into an obscure mandala around the ceiling of the dead end.

You concentrate on the black script, fishing for the echo of meaning. Something about the core... travel to the center, or from the center...

Understanding hits like a migraine. You memorize caudex access, the passage of the spine—another sequence of geometric transformations.

Well, that's useful. Let's try that at the wreck.

quote:

Hadean Land, at Wreck
You stand at the foot of a wall of metal. It's not a simple construction; it leans inward here, outward there, tracing an irregular shape that looms over the dusty plain. Perhaps it's broken, for debris is scattered around.

Mountains rise all around, forming a jagged grey bowl which cups the metal wreck. You can see the canyon pass to the northwest.

A hexagonal outline on the wall, to the east, might be a door. If so, it is closed.

A small niche has opened next to the hexagon. It is empty.

>SPEAK CAUDEX ACCESS
You begin running through the geometric sequence in your head. When you reach the end, you feel slightly dizzy, but there is no other result.

>CLOSE NICHE
It is fixed in place.

However, the quicksilver is covered up and we can't get it back.

quote:

*** You awaken again ***

Go back to the wreck, put the mercury back in the arc, and try again...

quote:

>SPEAK CAUDEX ACCESS
You begin running through the caudex access geometric sequence in your head. The quicksilver circle vibrates in response; complex ripples refract across it.

When the sequence is complete, the panel silently slides up, hiding the quicksilver circle from view. Then, more slowly, the hexagonal door begins to move. It only slides about halfway open, but that is enough to enter.

>EAST

Strange Airlock
This chamber is not hexagonal, but it reminds you of a hexagon in all directions, if that makes sense. Perhaps it doesn't.

Strange as the architecture may be, an airlock is clearly an airlock. The outer door to the west is open; the inner door to the north is closed.

A small knot of black marks is drawn in the center of the inner door. Next to the door is another small circle. This one contains a film of black liquid.

>READ KNOT
You stare at the knot, willing understanding.

comprehension

This third symbol brings you a new image: a sheet of paper, buried in rubble. Again, the scene is familiar... a crack in a wall... the crawlway under the Nave. You do your best to memorize the paper's exact location.

This leads to my other theory of what has happened to the Retort. I can maybe gloss over the previous knot, which knew about the indigo column, as being some kind of generally occurring phenomenon, but an alien wreck has no right to actually know about what is buried where in the Retort's wreckage.

So my alternate theory is that this vessel was sent to us as a sort of life preserver or care package by natives of the Higher Spheres. A more superstitious time might have called them guardian angels. As for us, who knows their possible purpose?

quote:

>NORTH
(first opening the inner door)
You're not sure how to open this door either.

Well, we have two obvious things to try...

quote:

>SPEAK CAUDEX ACCESS
You begin running through the caudex access geometric sequence in your head. The black circle vibrates in response; complex ripples refract across it. But when the sequence is complete, the ripples just fade away.

>SPEAK RADIX ACCESS
You begin running through the radix access geometric sequence in your head. The black circle vibrates in response; complex ripples refract across it.

When the sequence is complete, the inner door begins to slide aside. Simultaneously, behind you, the outer door closes. Both move in silence—of course—and in moments the way inward is clear.

No vapor rushes into the airlock; you are still in vacuum. But an intangible strain seems to pervade the space from the open door. Your bones and teeth ache.

That's not ominous at all, and we certainly haven't already been warned about anything just like this.

quote:

>NORTH

Bent Chamber
This chamber has odd angles, but you're pretty sure they're not all intentional. The walls look crumpled and the ceiling is bent downwards. Hallways may have once run in several directions, but the only one that remains wide enough to pass is to the east.

The airlock door to the south is open.

The ache in your bones becomes worse—horribly worse—and the lights go dim and red. Or a dim red vapor is bleeding into the world. Perhaps your sight is failing. Perhaps everything else is.

*** You awaken again ***

Perhaps not the best way to get back to the Nave, but as long as we're here, let's see if the graffiti in an alien airlock knew what it was talking about.

quote:

Nave Crawlway
This was once the north end of a crawlway, but the passage has collapsed, leaving only this small space. Debris is heaped up to the south. Light slants in from a gap in the ceiling.

You see a vial of white powder lying in the rubble. It's labelled "highlime".

>SEARCH DEBRIS
You locate the correct slabs and dig between them, trying to disturb the earth as little as possible. After a few moments, the corner of a dirty sheet of paper becomes visible. You work your fingers in and yank; the sheet falls to the floor.

>READ DIRTY
You pick up the sheet. It's a potion receipt. "A POTION to RESIST FOREIGN AITHER: The most hostile lands are those where the very processes of life alter. This potion allows your body to adapt to these conditions—for a time. Like many life-sustaining concoctions, this begins with an exhilarant environment and a beaker of saline. Use the Hermetic sealing. Add a measure of zafranum to the arc. Ensure that the atmosphere is filled with an exhilarant aroma; tinct it by igniting the zafranum. Speak the Anodyne Evocation; place a sample of salt on the gestalt shelf; close with the Chi Binding."

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

That might have been useful about three turns ago, though we wouldn't have been able to create it—it requires the zafranum that we used to get through the Portico windows. If only Pneuma were fixed! Then we could take the airlock and have zafranum to spare for aither resistance.

But we've been reading more alien writing. We have more options now:

quote:

>RECALL GLYPH
Which do you mean, the first alien glyph, the second alien glyph, or the third alien glyph?

>RECALL SECOND GLYPH
The glyph is a multidimensional knot of curves and gaps. The glyph burns in your memory like something startling you have always known.

>RECALL THIRD GLYPH
The glyph is a multidimensional helix which bends back on itself without end. The glyph burns in your memory like something startling you have always known.

With these in mind we should be able to create two more dragon fulcrums and feed the two remaining dragons to Syndesis. The Barosy will make a helpful fulcrum point.

quote:

>PERFORM DRAGON FULCRUM. GO TO BAROSY. DROP GRANITE.

quote:

>PUT THICK KEY ON SHELF. SPEAK MARCHER'S. SPEAK SYMMETRIC. SPEAK DRACON.
You put the thick key on the gestalt shelf.

You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the Marcher's Sealing.

The arc begins to glow smoke-grey.

You begin reciting the values of the symmetric sequence. After a few minutes and a bit of counting on your fingers, you reach the end (which is of course the same as the beginning).

You rumble your way through the Dracon Invocation.

A sense of pressure builds in the air. You feel something move, in the distance. The bound slowly dims.

Syndesis silently arrives.

Unfortunately, the cheapest way to Pneuma is to cut through the underground passage, but getting to that takes us through the Barosy, which leads the Syndesis directly to the fulcrum...

quote:

You can also see a chip of granite (with leverage symbol and glowing) here.

Syndesis drifts into the room.

Sudden electricity arcs between the dragon and the glowing chip of granite! The runes whirl out of control; the pebble goes dark; and—oh dear—everything else goes dark as well.

*** You awaken again ***

Let's try that again.

quote:

>CREATE LODESTONE OF CENTRALITY. PERFORM DRAGON FULCRUM. GO TO BAROSY. DROP GRANITE.

The parser then flips out at us on the way back to the Nave to summon Syndesis.

quote:

>GO TO NAVE
Which do you mean, the Nave or the Nave Crawlway?

>NAVE
Which do you mean, the Nave or the Nave Crawlway?

One's only real hope here is to pick the crawlway and go up, or walk there by hand like a chump. That also said, we need to visit Pneuma by hand anyway, to make sure that it uses the Lodestone of Centrality to reach Pneuma.

quote:

>WEST. SOUTH. EAST.

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.

Syndesis slides into the room behind you.

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.

Syndesis arrives a moment later.

You allow the pendulum to lead you through the maze.

Paper Maze, Center
You have found the heart of the hedge maze: a circle of paper screens. A single opening to the west leads back to the labyrinth. You also notice an open hatchway which leads to a crawlspace below.

The dragon Pneuma is a mandala of alchemical runes inscribed on the screens. They still look lifeless and inert.

A fragment of paper lies by the hatchway.

Syndesis slides into the room behind you.

>WAIT
Time passes.

Syndesis is being drawn towards Pneuma.

>WAIT
Time passes.

Syndesis slides towards Pneuma, faster and faster. At the last moment, Pneuma seems to crumple, break apart, and be drawn into the violet-red heart of Syndesis.

You hear, smell, see a confusion of smells and sounds and colored light.

*** You awaken again ***

Three down, one to go. Let's take the easy route back to where Pneuma was to see what's changed.

We find Lt Anderes there, and we again get two possible descriptions and text based on how many times we've examined her.

quote:

>GO TO BAROSY. NORTH. NORTH. UP.

quote:

Paper Maze, Center
You have found the heart of the maze: a circle of paper screens. A single opening to the west leads back to the labyrinth. You also notice an open hatchway which leads to a crawlspace below.

With the dragon gone, the illusion of a hedge maze has faded. It's just a paper room.

Lt Anderes is here, poised as if stepping out of the maze. Though she is still caught in mid-movement, her stance crackles with energy.
[ALTERNATE TEXT: Lt Anderes is here, poised as if stepping out of the maze. Her body is tense, her stance pugnacious.]

A fragment of paper lies by the hatchway.

The two perspectives available are these:

quote:

Lt Anderes and her partners have been a step ahead of the rest of the marcher, this entire journey. If only they'd managed to get clear before their thefts spilled over into disaster.

quote:

Lt Anderes and her partners have been a step ahead of the rest of the marcher, this entire journey. You can't help but be impressed.

That means her shadow should be at the Mechanica Lab, where we'd previously seen her. We do find a shadow, and the oculus gives us additional context...

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT SHADOW
The shadow forms words when viewed through the oculus. But the text is longer than before:

"I have evidence that Jana Anderes is guilty of graft. She has been slowly removing rare reagents from storage, transporting them off the Retort when in home port, and profiting from their illicit sale.

"This much I knew weeks ago. It has taken me much longer to confirm who Anderes is working with... for I required the hardest of proof. I am now convinced that Captain Hart is involved in the crime. She must have discovered it—and rather than bringing Anderes to marchcourt, decided to let the business continue under her own thumb.

"Needless to say, we cannot bring this to light until the Retort reaches home port. But we are becoming critically short on certain supplies, and I fear for the safety of the marcher."

So, the Captain is being targeted by Powes, is in love with somebody, and was conspiring with Anderes to sell off the alchemical supply stores. This may explain some things about how poorly the Retort is being run.

With Pneuma fixed, the airlock should work, too. Drink a vacuum potion, head to the airlock, and then...

quote:

>GO TO AIRLOCK
You make your way to the Airlock.

Airlock
The airlock is a stumpy cylindrical chamber, ten feet long and ten feet across. It is used whenever the Retort is rigged into a non-Gaian land. The chamber walls are bare steel. At each end is a circular slab of a door. The inner door to the south is open; the outer door to the north is closed.

The pressurization lever on the wall is pushed down.

>CLOSE INNER DOOR. PULL LEVER.
The inner door is massive but well-balanced. It swings shut with a muffled whoomp.

You pull the lever. Air hisses out of the airlock. After several long moments, the sound fades—all sound, in fact.

The vacuum plucks at your clothing for a moment, but the only other sensation is a nagging dryness in your sinuses.

>NORTH
(first opening the outer airlock door)

Hadean Plain
You stand at the edge of a Hadean land now. Grey lifeless dust crunches soundlessly beneath your feet. The sky is black; the stars are glorious. And you have no more protection than the potion you drank.

Behind you are the comforting walls of the Retort. The airlock is a heavy circular door in the south wall; it is open. To the west, you can see the broad window of the portico. But to the north and east, the Hadean plain stretches away towards jagged foothills.

We can now reach the alien wreck without needing to make the metal attractor chime or the glass permeability chime. That should let us get further into the ship.

But before we do that, we use the third alien glyph to create another dragon fulcrum, put it in the Barosy, and then head up to the Aithery, where Aistheta waits.

quote:

Syndesis slides towards Aistheta, faster and faster. At the last moment, Aistheta seems to crumple, break apart, and be drawn into the violet-red heart of Syndesis.

You hear, smell, see a confusion of smells and sounds and colored light.

*** You awaken again ***

If the pattern continues to hold, then one more crewman will have moved and left a shadow.

The pattern does continue to hold—it's Ctesc who's moved. The shadow tells a more harrowing story than usual.

quote:

"The situation is most disturbing. It appears that Sydney Ctesc has indeed been reaching for advanced alchemical knowledge. But worse: he is gathering it by means of a subtle chi-ritual, extracting knowledge directly from the mind of another. And worse yet: his target is Captain Hart!

"Such rituals are of course dangerous to both parties. I do not believe that Ctesc has yet lost control of his alchemy. But a failure could occur at any time. I must insist that Ctesc be taken into custody."

Cripes. The Retort is going to end up some kind of dark legend of mismanagement. We do get to pick our reactions to him, though, as usual:

quote:

Ensign Ctesc is leaning against the handrail. He should not be up here. Of course, neither should you; but Ctesc made it here first, and perhaps for better reasons.

quote:

Ensign Ctesc is leaning against the handrail. He should not be up here; but, of course, neither should you. And trespass is the least of Ctesc's sins.

And the detailed descriptions:

quote:

Ctesc must have found what he was looking for. You can't help but envy him that. But you also can't help regretting the tragedy that it has led him into.

quote:

Ctesc must have found what he was looking for. You can't help but envy him that. Whatever crimes he committed along the way, he was reaching for the stars.

Syndesis also is looking to be in good shape:

quote:

The oculus reveals Syndesis as a web of occult relations running throughout the Retort. It looks healthy now.

The architecture of the marcher is still somewhat fractured. But you can see patches covering the worst holes—by the secondary alchemy lab, the chymic lab, the opticks lab, and the deck suite.

Syndesis has absorbed Pneuma, Aistheta, and Baros; you can see their associations as well. These include active control paths to the air-pumps in the airlock and exoscaphe bay; alignment repairs in the garden maze and the cracks by the chasm; stabilization in the chasm and in the crawlway beneath the garden and Barosy.

The repair of Aistheta has produced "alignment repairs" in the garden maze and the Chasm's Cracks. That means they're no longer mazes to speak of:

quote:

Paper Maze, Interior
The hedge-maze is just a few symbolic forks and blind alleys. You can see the center to the east, and the exit archway to the west.

Access to Pneuma's old lair is now even more free than it was after fixing Syndesis and Baros. Meanwhile, in the Cracks...

quote:

Confusing Cracks
You are in a wide space within a maze of basalt blocks. Claustrophobic cracks lead in many directions, but the most promising ones run west and east.

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.

>EAST
The layout of the passages seems obvious now. You pick your way forward.

Dead End Pit
You've come to a dead end, a shallow pit of basalt. The only way out is west.

A pale green bead is lying at the bottom of the pit. It looks like jade.

Jade!

We've been hoping to find this since almost the start of the game. I sthere anything else here?

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS
You peer through the oculus. Everything acquires a colorful, hazy fringe.

The oculus reveals a hyacinth spark floating in the air.

>EXAMINE HYACINTH SPARK
You focus on the hyacinth spark through the oculus. A new memory comes into focus. "...and when she looked into their shadows..." That's all you overheard.

You consider these memories.

Way ahead of you, hyacinth spark. But if we hadn't thought to do this before, the game is polite enough to tell us how to find some backstory.

The last thing we've unlocked was from Pneuma: there was an issue by the Exoscaphe. What's changed?

quote:

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 BAY
Through the window, you see that the bay roof has been damaged and hastily repaired. Chunks of brick are clumped hither-thither at the top of the vault, as if an invisible hand were holding them in place.

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.

That's a step forward. Meanwhile, in the main entrance to the exoscaphe...

quote:

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

>TURN WHEEL
The valve turns stiffly. You hear air whistling through the pipes—faintly, and then louder, as the pressure in the bay increases. After a time, the whistle drops to a hiss, and then stops.

>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. You recall that 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.

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

>UP
(first opening the small hatch)

Exoscaphe Dome
If you were piloting the 'scaphe, you'd sit in this seat and work the controls, peering out through the glass dome around you. The vehicle looks to have fallen on rough times, however—or vice versa. The dome is cracked and the controls look dead.

The only exit is the hatch in the floor, which is open.

A dessicated sheet of paper and a thin key are visible under the console.

>GET THIN KEY
Taken.

And now, since we didn't have to introduce a pressure differential, we can take the thin key out and actually get into the Tertiary Lab.

quote:

Lab Hall Northeast
This is the northeast corner of the laboratory hallway, which runs south and west. The lab stairwell opens to the southwest, but a fracture prevents entry. The Tertiary Lab is to the east; its door is closed. The Pyrics Lab door to the north is open.

The Captain is standing here, gazing moodily off down the hall. She looks nearly human like this; it's rather charming.

>UNLOCK TERTIARY DOOR WITH THIN KEY
You unlock the pine Tertiary door.

>EAST
(first opening the pine Tertiary door)

Tertiary Alchemy Lab
This is the Retort's fanciest lab, all shiny and new. Of course, the rectors usually have it reserved for fancy shiny work.

The center of the room is a dais, built with a ritual arc in bright platinum inlay. The door to the west is open.

You notice two vials here: a blue vial labelled "anti-Tellurian distillate" and a pale-gold vial labelled "nickel".

A bound with an intrinsic platinum inlay—this is the last thing we needed to perform electrum phlogistication. "Anti-Tellurian Distillate" should serve as counter-Gaian precipitate without consuming elemental earth or orichalcum, and the vial of nickel might get us two doses of sublime spirit if we need them.

That's quite a find, but it doesn't get us any new map. Let's make the aither-resistance potion and see what's in that alien craft.

quote:

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

>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 HERMETIC
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the Hermetic Sealing.

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

>PUT ZAFRANUM IN BOUND
The gold light ripples as you push through the arc. You strew the zafranum threads around the beaker.

>LIGHT ZAFRANUM
(with the torch-lighter)
The zafranum threads flare up and vanish. A puff of pungent yellow smoke rises, and then swirls around the beaker.

The aroma of zafranum melds with the smell of the ocean, provoking images of sea-travel and distant lands.

>SPEAK ANODYNE
You begin the Anodyne Evocation. The rhythm beats in your chest and blood. Slowly, the liquid in the beaker turns a deep, sparkling blue.

>PUT ROCK SALT ON SHELF
You put the lump of rock salt on the gestalt shelf.

>SPEAK CHI BINDING
You begin the Chi Binding, paying proper attention to your tonality. The sparkling light within the solution brightens, and then disperses. Its color deepens to a startling indigo.

The bound fades. You lift the beaker and gently decant the indigo potion into a fresh bottle.

Now what's an apprentice going to do with that, I wonder.

Watch and learn, Sarge.

quote:

>GO TO WRECK
You make your way to the Nave Crawlway.
You take the vial of highlime.
You make your way to the Nave.
You brew a bottle of vacuum protection.
You drink the potion of vacuum protection.
You make your way to the Airlock.
You close the inner door and depressurize the airlock.

Unfortunately, your possessions do not fare so well. In the vacuum, the flask of saline boils away; the torch-lighter shatters.
You make your way to the Hadean Land, at Wreck.

Hadean Land, at Wreck
You stand at the foot of a wall of metal. It's not a simple construction; it leans inward here, outward there, tracing an irregular shape that looms over the dusty plain. Perhaps it's broken, for debris is scattered around.

Mountains rise all around, forming a jagged grey bowl which cups the metal wreck. You can see the canyon pass to the northwest.

A hexagonal outline on the wall, to the east, might be a door. If so, it is closed.

Next to the hexagon, a small circular arc is incised into the metal.

A small puddle of mercury gleams in the dust.

The saline and the torch lighter shatter in vacuum, but the aither-resistance potion survives. Apparently those vials are made of sterner stuff.

quote:

>EAST
(first opening the outer door)
You take the droplet of mercury.
You apply the mercury to the circular arc.

You invoke the caudex pattern to open the outer door.

Strange Airlock
This chamber is not hexagonal, but it reminds you of a hexagon in all directions, if that makes sense. Perhaps it doesn't.

Strange as the architecture may be, an airlock is clearly an airlock. The outer door to the west is open; the inner door to the north is closed.

Next to the door is another small circle. This one contains a film of black liquid.

>SPEAK RADIX
You begin running through the radix access geometric sequence in your head. The black circle vibrates in response; complex ripples refract across it.

When the sequence is complete, the inner door begins to slide aside. Simultaneously, behind you, the outer door closes. Both move in silence—of course—and in moments the way inward is clear.

No vapor rushes into the airlock; you are still in vacuum. But an intangible strain seems to pervade the space from the open door. Your bones and teeth ache.

>DRINK AITHER RESISTANCE
You swallow the indigo potion. The liquid seems to boil in the back of your throat. Your vision hazes blue, and the ache in your bones fades to a chilly numbness.

>NORTH

Bent Chamber
This chamber has odd angles, but you're pretty sure they're not all intentional. The walls look crumpled and the ceiling is bent downwards. Hallways may have once run in several directions, but the only one that remains wide enough to pass is to the east.

The airlock door to the south is open.

>EAST

Ruined Hallway
This hall runs east and west, but to the east the walls are crushed together like a paper sculpture.

A wide trapezoidal window is set into the north wall. It looks like ordinary glass, although you suppose one never knows.

>LOOK THROUGH WINDOW
You can see a chamber on the other side. There's a smudge on the far wall which just might be another knot of marks.

Do the aliens have anything else to say to us? Can we read it from here?

quote:

>EXAMINE KNOT
You can't see any such thing.

Hmm. Well, windows don't generally stop us.

quote:

>PERFORM GLASS PERMEABILITY
You invoke the caudex pattern to open the outer door.
You close the outer door and pressurize the airlock.
You make your way to the Chasm Rubble.
You make your way to the Scaphe Arcade.
You set aside your possessions for a moment and dive for the bronze B chime.
The pinch of zafranum is gone; you used it in a ritual in the Nave. You don't know where to get more.
(While trying to create the metal attractor, to retrieve the F chime from the slab, to acquire the bronze F-sharp chime, to create the glass bypass.)

(You are now in the Scaphe Arcade.)

However, we're back in a situation where we're resource-constrained. We need that zafranum for the aither-resistance, so we need another way through windows or another way to get that F-sharp chime.

Next Time: All the dragons are repaired. We know how to reach the Chancel. It's time we took stock of our capabilities and plot the rest of the way to the endgame.

ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Jul 4, 2018

# ? Jul 4, 2018 03:02

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Small patch update to the past: the "thing we were warned about earlier" actually should have been part of update 14, and ended up on the cutting room floor while I was organizing the transcript. The Lecture on Aither Poisoning was already part of the alchemy journal, but I've now re-added the text to the Antechamber section in Update 14, where it belongs.

# ? Jul 4, 2018 03:16

Rockopolis: Dec 21, 2012; I MAKE FUN OF QUEER STORYGAMES BECAUSE I HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH MY LIFE THAN MAKE OTHER PEOPLE CRY

I can't understand these kinds of games, and not getting it bugs me almost as much as me being weird

Welp, should have expected crossing the fulcrum would zap us.

Maybe the bits of our marcher that the aliens know about are actually bits from their ship that got merged in by the crash? Very Philadelphia experiment.

# ? Jul 4, 2018 03:24

rchandra: Apr 30, 2013

It's interesting how this part of the game presents different challenges based on your dragon order. I did Aistheta first and had immediate jade and easy Pneuma, but took a long time to get reasonable access to Barosy.

# ? Jul 4, 2018 03:38

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

It feels unwise somehow to have Syndesis performing the work of all of the dragons.

This update also involves an awful lot of back-and-forth between the Retort and the alien wreck. It's a damned good thing the game has an auto-solver built in, else this would be horrifically tedious.

(By the way, you have a "previuos" which should be "previous" in the update)

# ? Jul 4, 2018 03:38

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

rchandra posted:

It's interesting how this part of the game presents different challenges based on your dragon order. I did Aistheta first and had immediate jade and easy Pneuma, but took a long time to get reasonable access to Barosy.

It is. I'm dedicating most of the next update to the effects that dragon priority has on the game.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

It feels unwise somehow to have Syndesis performing the work of all of the dragons.

Our alchemy journal does say that the result is "unstable"—but it also says that it should hopefully hold together well enough to rig the marcher to a safe berth.

...and our game-compiled list of unopened doors does in fact include the main gates of the Portico, which are only viable when the Retort is rigged to a Gaian land...

# ? Jul 4, 2018 04:08

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

Break the glass, perhaps?

# ? Jul 4, 2018 05:01

The Lone Badger: Sep 24, 2007

ManxomeBromide posted:

Our alchemy journal does say that the result is "unstable"—but it also says that it should hopefully hold together well enough to rig the marcher to a safe berth.

I think that's if you lose a dragon, not all of them.

# ? Jul 4, 2018 05:06

Glazius: Jul 22, 2007; Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.; Clapping Larry

Ratoslov posted:

Break the glass, perhaps?

I would love if this was actually a solution. Spend all this time messing with alchemy, sometimes you just need physics.

# ? Jul 5, 2018 04:17

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Part 17: Puzzles and Dragons

Hadean Lands isn't really formally divided up into a series of levels or acts, but there are a number of events that change the nature of our environment or task sufficiently that they make plausible breakpoints.

Act I is a linear series of tasks that introduces us to the Retort and the alchemical system generally. One could claim that this ends as soon as we brew the fungicide and escape from the Mechanica Lab into the broader eastern wing of the Retort, but I think it makes more sense to gate this on opening the fire door and gaining access to the Nave. In Act I our immediate tasks are overcoming barriers that are holding us in place.
Act II is an open-ended exploration of almost the entire marcher, discovering the sparks, learning a lot of alchemy, and collecting the pure elemental substances. Act II ends when we perform the Great Marriage in the Nave. In Act II our immediate tasks are performing rituals for practice and using them opportunistically to overcome barriers that hide additional knowledge more than additional map.
Act III opens by tasking us with performing the Great Marriage in the Chancel instead of the Nave. However, our ability to reach the Chancel consumes the resources we needed to take there, so Act III becomes a cycle of exploration of the alien wreck, restoration of the Retort's core functions, and exploration of what new possibilities are enabled by the restoration of those functions. Act III ends when we perform the Great Marriage properly in the Chancel.
Act IV is the endgame. It ends when the game does.

Planning our way into the Chancel

For the moment, the core functions of the Retort are not catastrophically failing. We've been warned that the results of dragon subsumption are unstable, but for now, we've got one computing server that's multitasking all the functions of the usual four. Is this enough to get us into the Chancel to let us perform the Great Marriage? First let's add up what we need. (I am not here considering any object that is not consumed by the rituals.)

We need the Fire-Devourer to bring the rest of our materials safely to the Chancel. This requires elemental fire.
We need Obsidian Solvent to corrode open the door to the Antechamber. This requires fluorspar, a chip of marble, and elemental earth.
We need an Aura Impersonation inscription to defeat the Chancel defensive stricture. We have two rituals that purport to do this, and we have only performed one of them. The one we have performed requires orichalcum and elemental water. The one we have not performed requires only elemental air.
The Great Marriage requires one each of elemental earth, air, fire, and water.

At the beginning of Act III, we were able to reach the Chancel but that consumed all of our elements but elemental air. By restoring the functions of the dragons, though, we have resolved our resource constraint issues:

In repairing Pneuma, we got the thin key and thus access to the Tertiary Lab. This includes a platinum-lined bound which grants us the ability to phlogisticate electrum and sustain a secondary source of elemental fire, freeing up what we need for the fire-devourer.
By repairing Baros, we got access to the Deep Lab, which should let us create a Perfect Diamond, which should let us make obsidian solvent without consuming our elemental earth.
Repairing Syndesis got us an extra bubble to store elemental air, and repairing Aistheta got us access to a jade bead. These two things combined let us bypass the Chancel restriction without consuming all of some element we need.

Each of those steps is minimal and necessary, so from here we can see that reaching the Chancel with what we need to perform the Great Marriage requires all dragons to be repaired or subsumed—and doing that requires us to collect three alien glyphs from the wreck. In this way our ultimate goal in Act III is bound up with the other two things that we're doing during the act.

Dragons and the plots on the Retort

Now, while we were doing all that, we also learned, one character at a time, that all the malfeasance whirling around the Retort involved Captain Hart. However, we never got to see Captain Hart herself, because only three dragons actually needed repairing. We can check in on her without rewinding all the way back to Update 12, though. We had to recite a symmetric sequence when we performed the dragon subsumption ritual. When we reversed that to an antisymmetric sequence in the Gaian Precipitate synthesis, we got Counter-Gaian precipitate instead. What happens if we reverse it in the dragon subsumption?

quote:

>PUT THICK KEY ON SHELF. SPEAK MARCHER'S. SPEAK ANTISYMMETRIC. SPEAK DRACON.
You put the thick key on the gestalt shelf.

You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the Marcher's Sealing.

The arc begins to glow smoke-grey.

You begin reciting the values of the antisymmetric sequence. After a few minutes and a bit of counting on your fingers, you reach the end (which is of course the inverse of the beginning).

You rumble your way through the Dracon Invocation.

A sense of pressure builds in the air. You feel something move, in the distance. The bound slowly dims.

Syndesis slides in along the wall.

So far so normal, but if we then go to the Aithery, once Syndesis approaches Aistheta something else happens:

quote:

Syndesis slides towards Aistheta, faster and faster. At the last moment, Syndesis seems to crumple, break apart, and fly into the heart of Aistheta -- which flares to yellow-white life.

And when we go back, it's performed all the subsumption on its own:

quote:

The dragon Aistheta is a mandala of alchemical runes inscribed on the dome just overhead. The circles rotate majestically, shining with yellow-white radiance (and hints of sea-green, violet-red, and brown-gold). The dragon has wakened.

I like how when we merged Argy in, the dragon being awake got an exclamation point in the description, but now it's just an afterthought.

Captain Hart is now in the otherwise empty Birdhouse, as we'd expect, and she gets a friendly or unfriendly reading as appropriate:

quote:

Captain Hart is nearby, standing with her arms crossed and a patient expression on her face.

The Captain has flung herself into this situation for her own reasons, and you're not about to accuse your superiors of bad judgement.

quote:

Captain Hart is nearby, standing with her arms crossed and an exasperated expression on her face.

The Captain has flung herself into this situation for her own reasons. But you wish her timing had been better.

The Captain's shadow is where she was last time, in the Lab Hall.

quote:

"I have confirmed that Captain Hart has been conducting a covert affair—with a junior officer, no less: Ensign Sydney Ctesc.

"Ctesc has apparently been delving into restricted alchemical texts; the Captain has both encouraged and helped to conceal these activities. The specter of a 'love potion' must arise in these situations, but I do not think that Ctesc's research has managed anything so fantastical. The Captain must be honestly smitten. It is a breach of her discipline that I could not have imagined.

"The danger of Ctesc's work has not, I think, escaped her. The messages I have intercepted imply that she fears some alchemical disaster, but not an imminent one. I am not so complacent, however. —N"

Each character is associated with a dragon, appearing in the lair once that dragon has been subsumed:

Captain Hart is in the Birdhouse when Syndesis is subsumed.
Lt Powes is in the Barosy when Baros is subsumed.
Lt Anderes is in the Center of the Paper Maze when Pneuma is subsumed.
Ensign Ctesc is in the Aithery when Aistheta is subsumed.

In our playthrough, Ctesc stole knowledge from Captain Hart, Powes targeted her, and Anderes collaborated with her because we had Syndesis subsume everyone. When we reversed the subsumption procedure and fed Syndesis to Aistheta, the Captain was revealed to be involved with Ctesc.

There's never really a reason to reverse the dragon subsumption procedure, so under normal circumstances there's always going to be one character who's at the heart of all the intrigue on the Retort. By mixing and matching, though, it's possible to produce more complicated results.

Dragon Priority

When I called for a vote on dragon priority, Syndesis ended up winning with the highest priority. That let us then subsume the dragons in the remaining priority order. However, this was not in fact guaranteed; results of dragon repair and subsumption aren't symmetric.

The basic function of dragon subsumption requires you to visit two dragon's lairs on a single reset. With no dragons repaired, this is impossible, because resources are too tight to meet the entrance requirements of more than one at once:

Aistheta requires the lead increase or decrease inscription, which in turn requires Gaian or counter-Gaian precipitate, which in turn requires elemental earth and orichalcum.
Baros requires the clock tincture, which requires both sublime spirit and perfect mud. These require elemental earth, water, and fire.
Pneuma requires the lodestone of centrality, which requires elemental earth, elemental fire and orichalcum.
Syndesis requires aura invisibility (or, after the Great Marriage, aura imitation). Invisibility requires orichalcum and elemental fire (for the sublime spirit), and impersonation requires orichalcum and elemental water.

The limiting factor here is usually orichalcum; only the Barosy does not require orichalcum, but it requires every elemental substance that any other dragon might need.

However, as the dragons are repaired, these requirements are lessened.

Fixing Aistheta first grants free access to Pneuma's lair by fixing the maze in the paper garden. With this, you subsume any dragon but Pneuma by putting the dragon fulcrum in Pneuma's lair, and you can subsume Pneuma by putting the fulcrum anywhere else and then just walking directly to Pneuma's lair.
Fixing Syndesis first, as we did, is a bit more involved, but just a tiny bit. Syndesis grants access to the quarters of the Master-at-Arms, and this lets us get the flint key which grants access to Baros with no ritual requirements. Once we've used the flint key to make it to the Barosy for free, we can proceed in any order much like the Aistheta case.
Fixing Pneuma first produces the most difficult path to the first dragon subsumption, but it does still allow any order. Fixing the Exoscaphe Arcade means that we can collect the thin key from the exoscaphe itself, and this grants us access to the Tertiary Lab. The Tertiary Lab has a vial of pre-made anti-Tellurian Distillate, which lets us create the lead weight decrease inscription with no cost in orichalcum or elemental earth. We can then use the lead weight decrease inscription and the dispersal brush (which requires no special reagents) to snap the counterweight in the Observatory. This, in turn, lets us reach Aistheta by spending only reagents unlocked by Pneuma's repair, which leaves us enough left over to reach any other dragon as well.
Fixing Baros first actually removes our freedom to select dragon order. The Baros repair lets us create the perfect diamond, but it turns out that the perfect diamond cannot be used to create Gaian precipitate, perfect mud, nor the lodestone of centrality. What we do have, however, is the ability to reach both Pneuma and Baros's lairs with any item that lets us reach one. This means our first subsumption must be Pneuma, using the lodestone of centrality and the Barosy fulcrum like we did in the main text. With Pneuma repaired we then have free access to Aistheta as before.

So of all the dragon priorities, Aistheta first produces the easiest Act III, and Baros first the hardest—with Baros, we need to solve all the puzzles that we did for Pneuma and use the roundabout method to subsume Pneuma. For the others we just need to figure out one trick and then repeat it three times, and with Aistheta there's not even a trick.

Syndesis is special, it turns out, because of something we won't see until Act IV. I'm very glad you all picked Syndesis as the top-priority dragon.

That leaves Pneuma. The Pneuma-first path is dramatically different from all the other paths, and while there's some nasty puzzles that you need to solve to get your second dragon working, it actually lets you skip some otherwise mandatory puzzles:

Performing the Dragon Subsumption requires the dragon fulcrum, which requires quicksilver and an alien glyph, both of which require you to leave the Retort.
Learning the Dragon Fulcrum and the Dragon Subsumption Procedure requires you to make it to the Antechamber and the Chancel, which means you need the obsidian solvent ritual.
Executing the vacuum-support potion synthesis requires the Greater Phlogistical Saturation.
Both the rock-solvent ritual and the Greater Phlogistical Saturation require you to open the lead-lidded safe in the Storage Nook, which requires the lead weight decrease inscription.

With any initial dragon but Pneuma, opening the lead safe requires us to come up with the initiative to produce counter-Gaian precipitate. With a Pneuma-first run, we can simply use the anti-Tellurian distillate directly.

Not only that, in a Pneuma-first run the airlock is always available and functional, which means that we can get the quicksilver and alien glyphs without needing to create a glass permeability chime to walk through the Portico doors, which in turn also means we don't need to bother with the metal-attractor inscription. We'll still face the problem we're currently facing—the foreign aither and a window that blocks our path in the alien wreck—but a bunch of initial hurdles vanish, replaced with the work required to reach the Aithery without locking out our abilities to reach other dragons.

# ? Jul 8, 2018 08:14

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

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

It feels unwise somehow to have Syndesis performing the work of all of the dragons.

This is presumably the alchemical version of re-routing through that one cracked crystal, cap'n.

Am I right in understanding the order of dragon priority actually changes the crew's motives? So there's a different reason for the disaster depending on which dragon is ascendant? Depending on how the endgame will work, we might have a rough time explaining that to any Marchcourt of Inquiry...

I'm not clear on whether this is an in-game thing (altering the crew's follies based on their symbolic associations) or an out-of-game way to reset the mystery for multiple playthroughs.

# ? Jul 8, 2018 15:11

Nakar: Sep 2, 2002; Ultima Ratio Regum

Loxbourne posted:

Am I right in understanding the order of dragon priority actually changes the crew's motives? So there's a different reason for the disaster depending on which dragon is ascendant? Depending on how the endgame will work, we might have a rough time explaining that to any Marchcourt of Inquiry...

I think they'll have many, many more pressing questions for (and about) Forsyth than that.

# ? Jul 8, 2018 15:32

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Loxbourne posted:

Am I right in understanding the order of dragon priority actually changes the crew's motives? So there's a different reason for the disaster depending on which dragon is ascendant? Depending on how the endgame will work, we might have a rough time explaining that to any Marchcourt of Inquiry...

I'm not clear on whether this is an in-game thing (altering the crew's follies based on their symbolic associations) or an out-of-game way to reset the mystery for multiple playthroughs.

On any given full playthrough—resets included—once a character's relations with the plots on the Retort are set, they're fixed. When we fed Syndesis to Aistheta it didn't retroactively link Powes and Anderes to Ctesc the way they'd have been linked had we run Aistheta all the way through.

# ? Jul 8, 2018 18:51

Digamma-F-Wau: Mar 22, 2016; It is curious and wants to accept all kinds of challenges

I had a dream last night inspired by this game and it was really loving weird but unfortunately I don't remember most of the details
e: the weirdest part would probably be that it segued from an equally weird and equally "I don't remember much about it" dream about the IDW sonic comic

Digamma-F-Wau fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jul 9, 2018

# ? Jul 9, 2018 22:29

rchandra: Apr 30, 2013

The Ayshkerbundy posted:

I had a dream last night inspired by this game and it was really loving weird but unfortunately I don't remember most of the details
e: the weirdest part would probably be that it segued from an equally weird and equally "I don't remember much about it" dream about the IDW sonic comic

>RECALL DREAM

# ? Jul 9, 2018 22:35

Rigged Death Trap: Feb 13, 2012; BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

rchandra posted:

>RECALL DREAM

***You Awaken Again***

# ? Jul 10, 2018 00:31

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Part 18: An Incomplete Understanding

Last time, we made a plan. Let's carry it out.

quote:

*** You awaken again ***

Step one is to get the obsidian solvent without using up our elemental earth. First the easy bits...

quote:

>CREATE BAMURIATIC. FIND MURIATIC. TAKE IT. FIND MARBLE CHIP. TAKE IT.

And now for the perfect diamond that should be able to substitute. How did that go again?

quote:

>RECALL PERFECT DIAMOND CREATION
"A DIAMOND PURGED of EVERY FLAW: This ritual requires an environment influenced only by living stone; the deeper and purer, the better. Place a diamond within the bound and employ a phlegmatic (passive) sealing word. Sound a note in the mode of ostension. Place elemental earth upon the gestalt shelf, to serve as a template. Speak the Crystalline Tempering. This will bring the structure of the diamond as close to perfection as mortal substance can sustain."

Well, that all seems simple enough except for the "mode of ostension."

quote:

>RECALL MUSIC THEORY
"Music is the most complex of ritual elements; one might well call it 'obfuscated.' We begin with the nursery-school lessons: the pitch A is associated with iron, the color red, the liver; B with bronze, orange, the stomach; C with brass... yes, you can all chant along. But this is simplified to uselessness. What of non-classical metals? We now associate C-sharp with rutilum, F-sharp with aluminum, G-sharp with nickel. Researchers have invented entirely new scales to deal with the spectrum of aither-metals. Then the Eastern Empire uses the well-tempered scale; thus while F-sharp is the mode of extension, G-flat is the mode of ostension, G-natural is intension, G-sharp is paratension, and H�yes, there's an H�is the mode of recension..."

I take that back. That one's simple too; there was a glass G-Flat chime just kind of lying around in the east wing hallways.

quote:

>FIND DIAMOND. GET IT. FIND EARTH SHARD. GET IT. FIND G-FLAT. GET IT.

An environment influenced only by living stone is a little oblique, but there's no real ambiguity about what it is.

quote:

>GO TO DEEP LAB
You make your way to the Deep Lab.

Deep Lab
This chamber looks like a natural cavern, squared and smoothed with the crudest of tools. Stalactites hang from the roof; flowstone drips down the walls. An uneven passage runs east.

In the center of the chamber is a boulder. It is inscribed with a ritual bound in an archaic, almost crude style. A smaller slab serves as a gestalt shelf.

This should do just fine.

quote:

>PUT DIAMOND IN BOUND
You put the rough diamond into the stony bound.

>SPEAK PHLEGMATIC
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the phlegmatic sealing word.

The arc begins to glow gloomily around the rough diamond.

"Gloomily" is a new adjective. Here's hoping that's super-earthy the way "crimson" in the Pyrics lab was super-fiery.

quote:

>STRIKE G-FLAT
The glass G-flat chime rings sweetly, and you let its resonances fill your mind.

The diamond darkens, absorbing light.

>PUT SHARD ON SHELF
You put the shard of elemental earth on the gestalt shelf.

>SPEAK CRYSTALLINE TEMPERING
You recite the Crystalline Tempering. The diamond darkens further; the elemental shard begins to vibrate on its shelf, emitting a faint, high-pitched hum.

Then, with an almost audible shock, the ritual closes: the diamond emits all its stored light in a blinding flash. You blink away tears, to find that the cloudy crystal is now flawless and bright.

Now that's a nice trick, swabbie.

It sure is, Sarge. Now to create our solvent with it.

quote:

>GO TO CHYMIC LAB
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.

Chymic Lab
This wide room is dominated by a huge glass retort. You've practiced many chymical rituals in this apparatus. Hanging above the retort is an instructional sign.

The lab door to the east now opens onto the hallway, as it used to. The only other exit is the hatch in the floor, which is open.

A supply rack holds three chymic flasks (sand, vinegar, and muriatic acid), neatly lined up.

Two papers, a folded sheet and a wrinkled sheet, are lying here.

You can also see two chymic flasks (saline and vitriolic acid), a dried mushroom, a brass coin, and an impet of citronelle oil here.

>PUT MURIATIC IN RETORT. PUT BAMURIATIC IN RETORT. SPEAK HERMETIC.
You pour a measure of muriatic acid into the retort.

You empty the vial of bamuriatic acid into the retort. The acid mixture fumes acridly, and turns slate-grey.

You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the Hermetic Sealing.

The retort's equator begins to glow pearl-grey around the reservoir of grey acid.

>PUT PERFECT DIAMOND IN RETORT
You drop the perfect diamond into the retort. The bound's pearly light ripples.

>SPEAK WORD OF ANAPHYLAXIS
You intone the word of anaphylaxis; it makes your mouth itch.

The diamond fizzes and dissolves. The grey acid solution darkens and thickens until it is black as ink.

>PUT MARBLE IN RETORT
You drop the chip of marble into the retort. It dissolves instantly into the black reagent.

>SPEAK BINDING OF ANTIPATHY
You begin invoking the Binding of Antipathy, forcing out the bitter phrases. The black reagent seethes, and then begins to bubble slightly.

By the time you have finished choking out the formula, the black solution has quieted. It seems less viscous now. You tap the solvent into a fresh vial�which doesn't dissolve, you are happy to see, so you've probably gotten the ritual right.

Looks good! That's step one complete. Step two is to get two units of elemental fire. To do that, we'll have to perform the electrum phlogistication ritual, and to do that we'll need some yang oil and some electrum.

quote:

>CREATE YANG OIL. CREATE ELECTRUM ROD.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of mineral oil from the rack.
You make your way to the Herbarium Nook.
You take the sprig of honeysuckle from the herb shelf.
You make your way to the Pyrics Lab.
You take the splinter of swamp pith from the table.
You take the splinter of green linden from the table.
You make your way to the Under Ward.
You take the torch-lighter.
You make your way to the Mechanica Lab.
You take the platinum rod from the counter.
You draw the platinum rod out into wire.
You lay the length of platinum wire in the bound groove.
You brew a vial of yang oil.

(You are now in the Materials Store.)

You take the length of platinum wire from the groove.
You take the moon-metal rod.
You draw the moon-metal rod out into wire.
You splice the length of platinum wire and the length of moon-metal wire into an electrum regium rod.

(You are now in the Mechanica Lab.)

We need a catalytic environment, and since we no longer have any platinum to work with, we'll have to do it in the Tertiary Alchemy Lab.

quote:

>GO TO TERTIARY
(the spare lab key)
The spare lab key is in the Exoscaphe Dome, as you recall. You head that way.
You make your way to the Scaphe Arcade.
You repressurize the Exoscaphe Bay.
You make your way to the Exoscaphe Dome.

Exoscaphe Dome
If you were piloting the 'scaphe, you'd sit in this seat and work the controls, peering out through the glass dome around you. The vehicle looks to have fallen on rough times, however�or vice versa. The dome is cracked and the controls look dead.

The only exit is the hatch in the floor, which is open.

A dessicated sheet of paper and a thin key are visible under the console.

This is your periodic reminder that even after decades of refinement parser input can still be frustratingly picky. This won't be the last time we struggle with the parser this update either.

quote:

>GET IT
Taken.

>GO TO TERTIARY LAB
You make your way to the Tertiary Alchemy Lab.

Tertiary Alchemy Lab
This is the Retort's fanciest lab, all shiny and new. Of course, the rectors usually have it reserved for fancy shiny work.

The center of the room is a dais, built with a ritual arc in bright platinum inlay. The door to the west is open.

You notice two vials here: a blue vial labelled "anti-Tellurian distillate" and a pale-gold vial labelled "nickel".

Okay. Now we can do the actual ritual.

quote:

>PUT ELECTRUM IN BOUND
You put the electrum regium rod into the catalytic 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 green around the electrum regium rod.

>POUR YANG OIL ON ROD
You empty the vial of yang oil onto the electrum regium rod. The oil sinks into the metal, giving a flush of richer gold to the electrum's sheen.

>SPEAK ELEMENTARY BINDING
You intone the elementary word of binding; the syllables snap cleanly away.

The green light flares, focusses, and bursts as a shower of sparks from the electrum rod. When your eyes clear, the rod looks no different, but its sense of imbued energy is palpable.

All right. Now, the note we saw that taught us about electrum phlogistication noted that it did not survive the usual camphrost procedure. Are we going to take some random sheet of paper's word for this? I think not.

... but we will save first so I don't have to burn a reset.

quote:

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.

Lt Powes has vanished. Only a shadow remains.

Within the kiln, half-obscured by rippling heat, you can see a porcelain paten.

A table at the other end of the room supports a glass vapor crock. The crock is open and empty.

You also see a jar of cedar splints on the table. Next to this are four splints of assorted woods: blackwood, winter-oak, maple, and elemental wood.

>PUT ELECTRUM IN CROCK
You put the phlogisticated electrum 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 silver coin and a lead rod lie on another rack.

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

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

Wisps of blue vapor steam from the camphrost.

>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.

Lt Powes has vanished. Only a shadow remains.

Within the kiln, half-obscured by rippling heat, you can see a porcelain paten.

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

You also see a jar of cedar splints on the table. Next to this are four splints of assorted woods: blackwood, winter-oak, maple, and elemental wood.

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

>LIGHT WINTER-OAK
(in the gas burners)
(first taking the splinter of winter-oak)

You hold the splinter of winter-oak to the gas burners. The winter-oak catches quickly, and burns with a yellow-white flame.

The lump of camphrost is shrinking visibly. The vapor drifts from the open crock.

>LIGHT BLACKWOOD WITH WINTER-OAK
You hold the burning splinter of winter-oak to the splinter of blackwood. The blackwood catches quickly, and burns with a star-blue flame.

>PUT BLACKWOOD IN CROCK
(first taking the burning splinter of blackwood)

You put the burning splinter of blackwood into the vapor crock.

>CLOSE CROCK
You close the crock and seal its lid.

>WAIT
Time passes.

The camphrost is nearly gone. The vapor accumulates in the crock.

>WAIT
Time passes.

The blackwood flares up. Then, with a violent hiss and an electric-blue flash, the camphrost vapor ignites.

In the brief flare, the splinter of blackwood is extinguished; the lump of camphrost vaporizes; the phlogisticated electrum rod melts.

At this point the only thing left in the crock is the splint of blackwood. No melted electrum or anything.

quote:

>RESTORE
Ok.

Now let's do the obvious thing. We'll ignite the phlogisticated gold as usual, and then...

quote:

>LIGHT ELECTRUM WITH GOLD
You hold the flaming phlogisticated gold rod to the phlogisticated electrum rod. The electrum begins to glow�not the dull red of heating metal, but with an inner lucence. The golden light seems to throb, and unfurl, and expand, all at once. Heat presses against your face as you peer into the flame.

You pull the gold and electrum rods apart. Golden elemental flames now burn steadily on each of them.

That's step two. Step three is to get two units of elemental air.

quote:

>GO TO OPTICKS CLOSET
You make your way to the Opticks Closet.

Opticks Closet
This closet is sometimes used for storage, but the whims of marcher scheduling have left it empty at the moment.

In one dusty corner you notice a fist-sized glass bubble, which is rather dusty itself.

>GET BUBBLE
Taken.

>GO TO SCRATCHED BUBBLE
The scratched bubble is in the Medical Workroom, as you recall. You head that way.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
You take the long quartz prism from the storage bin.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the impet of citronelle oil.
You make your way to the Main Store.
You recall the combination, and unlock the safe.
You take the orichalcum rod from the safe.
You make your way to the Library.
You take the rotor card.
You make your way to the Opticks Annex.
You conjure an impermeability symbol onto the long quartz prism.
You make your way to the Medical Wing Hallway.
You apply the impermeability symbol to yourself and stride through the cloud.
You make your way to the Medical Workroom.

Medical Workroom
This side room is equipped for routine medical workings. You see a white workbench with a ritual bound and gestalt shelf. The only exit is back west.

You see a small clay disk on the floor. It looks like another reverse mold�this one is for Aithery File.

You also notice a fist-sized glass bubble with a valve on it.

You can also see a ragged sheet and a narrow sheet here.

>GET BUBBLE
(the scratched bubble)
Taken.

>WEST

Medical Wing
This would be a waiting room, were it not as cluttered as every other part of the medical wing. The uncomfortable-looking chairs are outnumbered by the obscure-looking equipment.

You know that the open glass box is an aeroclave. Next to it rests a heavy steel tank, a pressurized container of elemental air. A miasma gong hangs by the door.

You see a workroom to the east, and a very dark doorway to the west. A passage south leads to more of the medical wing, but a fracture blocks it.

You can see a crusty scalpel and an impet of eucalyptus oil here.

>PUT DUSTY ON NEEDLE
You press the bubble onto the needle valve. The valve emits a sharp, rising hiss; you can just see the jet of elemental air, like a heat-ripple inside the dusty bubble. After a few seconds, the valve shuts off, and you remove the fully-charged bubble.

>PUT SCRATCHED ON NEEDLE
You press the bubble onto the needle valve. The valve emits a sharp, rising hiss; you can just see the jet of elemental air, like a heat-ripple inside the scratched bubble. After a few seconds, the valve shuts off, and you remove the fully-charged bubble.

Not really any surprises or puzzles there, just a bit of care taken to ensure that we don't get locked behind the vortex too soon.

Step four: Make or get everything else we need to reach the Antechamber and perform the Great Marriage.

quote:

>CREATE FIRE-DEVOURER. CREATE EPHEMERIS BILLET. FIND ROSEMARY. GET IT.

Step five: Get the aura impersonation symbol working without consuming our elemental water. We'll do this by using the jade-based inscription instead, which uses one of our elemental air units instead. We can spare an air bubble. The rest of the material components are trivial too.

quote:

>FIND JADE BEAD. GET IT. FIND IRON BEAD. GET IT. FIND CEDAR SPLINT. GET IT. FIND TORCH-LIGHTER. GET IT.

This actually failed too. :rant:

It knew the jar of cedar splints was in the pyrics lab, but it wouldn't let me get one with >GET IT because it's only moving individual splints into the game world as-needed.

The less obvious requirements for this ritual are these:

quote:

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.)

"Based on the Book of Changes"�there was an amulet with I Ching symbology on it, but it's not clear whether or not that counts as meditative. I forgot to make the resonant oculus after the reset, but what the heck, the oculus is trivial to create.

quote:

>CREATE RESONANT OCULUS
You make your way to the Mechanica Lab.
You take the glass loop.
The moon-metal rod became the length of moon-metal wire, which became the plain electrum regium rod, which is now in the Pyrics Store.
(While trying to acquire the moon-metal rod, to set up an appropriate environment, to enchant the resonant oculus.)

(You are now in the Mechanica Lab.)

OK, that one is on me, for using a consumable to create the lunar atmosphere. Let's do this more sustainably.

quote:

>FIND SILVER COIN. GET IT. GO TO OPTICKS ANNEX. PUT SILVER COIN ON SHELF. PUT GLASS LOOP IN BOUND. SPEAK SIMPLE SEALING. SPEAK RESONANT TONE. SPEAK SYLLABLE OF COUNTERBALANCE.

There. Now then.

quote:

>EXAMINE RIBBON
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.)

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT RIBBON
When viewed through the oculus, the Chinese amulet displays a spiritual nature.

"Spiritual" should be close enough to "meditative." Off to the Nave ("the center of the House") to execute the ritual.

quote:

>PUT RIBBON ON SHELF
You put the Chinese amulet on the gestalt shelf.

>PUT IRON BEAD IN BOUND
You put the iron bead into the pedestal bound.

>PUT JADE BEAD IN BOUND
You put the jade bead into the pedestal 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 indigo around the jade bead and the iron bead.

>LIGHT CEDAR
(with the flaming phlogisticated gold rod)
You hold the flaming phlogisticated gold rod to the splinter of cedar. The cedar goes up in a bright flare; you snatch your hand away. Within instants, the cedar has been entirely devoured, and its flame winks out.

quote:

>UNDO
Nave
[Previous turn undone.]

>LIGHT CEDAR WITH TORCH LIGHTER
You hold the torch-lighter to the splinter of cedar. The cedar catches quickly, and burns with a dull orange flame.

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

>SPEAK NAME OF TORTOISE
You call out the Name of the Tortoise in a firm voice. The splinter of cedar flares up and is abruptly quenched. The smoke whirls into a vortex around the iron and jade; the beads roll towards each other.

>DISCHARGE SCRATCHED ON BOUND
You twist the bubble's valve, and carefully vent the elemental air over the iron and jade. The beads are now clinging tightly together.

>SPEAK CHI BINDING
You begin the Chi Binding, paying proper attention to your tonality. The balance of the five elements comes into focus in your mind.

Spectral voices are chanting in unison, somewhere in the distance. (Song Dynasty rituals always unsettle you.) Slowly, the iron melts into the jade. When the binding is complete, the bound snaps into darkness; but a small symbol shines on the jade bead.

Great. Let's try it out.

quote:

>FIND CAPTAIN
(Captain Hart)
You make your way to the Lab Hall Northeast.

Lab Hall Northeast
This is the northeast corner of the laboratory hallway, which runs south and west. The lab stairwell opens to the southwest, but a fracture prevents entry. The Tertiary Lab is to the east; its door is open. The Pyrics Lab door to the north is also open.

The Captain is standing here, gazing moodily off down the hall. She looks nearly human like this; it's rather charming.

>TOUCH JADE TO CAPTAIN
You press the jade bead against Captain Hart. You feel nothing, but the symbol distorts, absorbing the imprint of her aura.

>GO TO CHANCEL
You extinguish the fire with the bottle of fire devourer.
You apply the obsidian solvent to the obsidian door.
The jade bead is already inscribed with the imitation symbol.
The jade bead is already imitating Captain Hart.
You apply the imitation symbol to yourself and open the gate.
You make your way to the Chancel.

Unlike with the moon-metal case for the resonant oculus, the autosolver will use an inscription symbol we've already created. Now let's try the Great Marriage again.

quote:

>PERFORM GREAT MARRIAGE
The Great Marriage requires your full attention; you can't go through it by rote.

Well, okay.

quote:

>PUT THICK KEY ON SHELF
You put the thick key on the gestalt shelf.

>SPEAK MARCHER'S INVOCATION
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the Marcher's Sealing.

The arc begins to glow smoke-grey.

>PUT EPHEMERIS ON SHELF
You put the ephemeris billet on the gestalt shelf.

>WAVE ROSEMARY
You wave the sprig, and inhale its fresh, resinous aroma. The air seems to sharpen.

>PUT FIRE ROD IN BOUND
The grey light ripples as you push through the arc. The elemental fire leaps from the rod; you pull the cold rod back. The flame whirls unsupported in the center of the arc, slowly dimming into an indistinct haze.

>PUT AIR IN BOUND
Which do you mean, the scratched bubble or the dusty bubble?

Even here, at the end, the parser betrays us.

quote:

>DUSTY
You twist the bubble's valve, and carefully vent the elemental air into the bound. It whisks around the arc, and joins the thickening haze.

>PUT WATER IN BOUND
You crack open the capsule, and pour the elemental water into the bound. The sparkling drops never land on the workbench surface. Instead, they whirl around the arc, and slowly fade into the thickening haze.

>PUT EARTH SHARD IN BOUND
The grey light ripples as you push through the arc. The shard of elemental earth does not fall. It hangs in the center of the circle, spinning and spinning, until it blurs into the thickening haze.

The whirling haze in the bound slows. It is more difficult to see, now; not dissipating, but developing an aching lucent clarity. The space above the pedestal seems more transparent than air.

>SPEAK DRACON INVOCATION
You rumble your way through the Dracon Invocation. There's no sense of resistance, though. It's like spinning a wheel that's not touching the ground, and when you're finished, nothing has changed.

I suppose it was too much to ask that the alien wreck's inaccessible room was some kind of red herring.

# ? Jul 10, 2018 03:19

Glazius: Jul 22, 2007; Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.; Clapping Larry

Well, poo poo. So much for that note about it being the center of the universe.

# ? Jul 10, 2018 04:15

The Lone Badger: Sep 24, 2007

I think the place is right but the final invocation is wrong. We need another alien glyph.

# ? Jul 10, 2018 04:22

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

*wacky trombone noises*

# ? Jul 10, 2018 04:38

rchandra: Apr 30, 2013

After all you've been through together, how can you not use the polished calipers for your ordered environment? (yes, I waste many keystrokes by remaking that each reset - especially as I couldn't figure out a way shorter than "perform basic tarnish. touch pin to calipers. get calipers" )

# ? Jul 10, 2018 05:50

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Part 19: The Flowering of Knowledge

Last time, we performed the Great Marriage in the Chancel, but it didn't work:

quote:

You rumble your way through the Dracon Invocation. There's no sense of resistance, though. It's like spinning a wheel that's not touching the ground, and when you're finished, nothing has changed.

The Lone Badger gets very close to the right of it:

The Lone Badger posted:

I think the place is right but the final invocation is wrong. We need another alien glyph.

This idea is based on our attempt, back in update 15, to create our first dragon fulcrum. If we used the Dracon Invocation instead of an alien glyph, we got this message:

quote:

You rumble your way through the Dracon Invocation. But the words are not true.

However, there's a closer match than this. I didn't actually try this in the LP until just now, but if you attempt to perform the dragon summoning as part of the emergency dragon subsumption without placing the dragon fulcrum at all, you get the wheel-spinning message exactly.

The problem isn't the truth of our words, it's a lack of leverage. We'll need to create and place a fourth dragon fulcrum.

While the ultimate goal was thus slightly off, the proximate goal is nevertheless spot on: we need another alien glyph. And that means we need to check out that bit of writing we couldn't quite make out, behind alien glass.

quote:

*** You awaken again ***

Let's take stock of our situation there. We're blocked from proceeding further into the alien wreck because we need zafranum to create the aither-resistance potion, but we also need zafranum to get the materials we need for the glass permeability inscription.

We don't really have a lot of clues for how to proceed, so let's flip the question around. What can we do now that we couldn't do at the start of Act III? What new abilities has repairing the dragons gotten us that we have not yet used?

Well, the Tertiary Alchemy Lab had some high-end reagents and we haven't used any of them yet.

quote:

>GO TO TERTIARY ALCHEMY LAB
You make your way to the Scaphe Arcade.
You repressurize the Exoscaphe Bay.
You make your way to the Exoscaphe Dome.
You take the spare lab key.
You make your way to the Lab Hall Northeast.
You make your way to the Tertiary Alchemy Lab.

Tertiary Alchemy Lab
This is the Retort's fanciest lab, all shiny and new. Of course, the rectors usually have it reserved for fancy shiny work.

The center of the room is a dais, built with a ritual arc in bright platinum inlay. The door to the west is open.

You notice two vials here: a blue vial labelled "anti-Tellurian distillate" and a pale-gold vial labelled "nickel".

The Anti-Tellurian distillate presumably can stand in for the Counter-Gaian precipitate. That means that we can create two lead weight modification inscriptions as long as one is a weight decrease.

The nickel, on the other hand, is consumed only by the creation of sublime spirit. That also requires elemental fire, but as we saw last time, we have two units of that now too. This means that we can now create clock tincture and aura invisibility on the same run. That might have been handy while we were performing dragon subsumptions, but it seems less promising now.

We might be able to have some fun with that lead counterweight in the observatory, though.

Before anything else, though, let's learn from our previous mistakes.

quote:

>CREATE DISPERSAL BRUSH. CREATE RESONANT OCULUS. CREATE PLANETARY LENS.

That done, now let's start by breaking the chain.

quote:

>PERFORM LEAD WEIGHT INCREASE. GO TO OBSERVATORY.
You make your way to the Secondary Alchemy Lab.
You take the sprig of rosemary.
You make your way to the Under Ward.
You take the flask of vitriolic acid.
You take the flask of alum.
You make your way to the Main Store.
You recall the combination, and unlock the safe.
You take the orichalcum rod from the safe.
You make your way to the Opticks Lab.
You make your way to the Main Store.
You take the length of silver chain from the shelves.
You make your way to the Pyrics Store.
You take the silver coin.
You enchant the lodestone of purity.
You make your way to the Opticks Lab.
You use the purity lodestone to recover the elemental earth.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You brew a vial of Gaian precipitate.
You make your way to the Exoscaphe.
You take the horn coin from the bench.
You make your way to the Nave.
You conjure a ponderosity symbol onto the chip of granite.

(You are now in the Nave.)

You head to the Deck Suite.
You take the impet of kelp oil.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of saline.
You make your way to the Pyrics Lab.
You make your way to the Secondary Alchemy Lab.
You take the impet of ginger oil from the side table.
You take the impet of peppermint oil from the side table.
You brew a bottle of fire-resistance potion.
You drink the potion of fire resistance.
You make your way to the Pyrics Lab.
You reach into the kiln and take the porcelain paten.
You take the splinter of elemental wood from the table.
You make your way to the Under Ward.
You take the torch-lighter.
You brew a bottle of breath-holding potion.
You drink the potion of breath holding.
You stash your possessions, swim through the flooded crawlway, unlock the observatory door from the inside, and then retrieve your possessions.
You make your way to the Observatory.
The breath potion has worn off. You suck in a startling gasp of air.
The fire-resistance potion has worn off.

Observatory
This is the observatory, the Retort's guiding eye. The dome overhead is set with windows, and each window shows a different sky and a different array of stars.

One level above you, an ironwork bridge crosses the dome, north to south. A ladder descends at either end, but only one of the two is lowered, and that one is obstructed by a fracture that cuts off the north side of the dome. The south-side ladder is folded up under the bridge; its counterweight hangs near the floor.

The door to the east is open. Open alcoves to the north and south house additional equipment, but again, the north side is fracture-blocked. You also see the flooded crawlway hatch at your feet.

In the center of the chamber, beneath the bridge, stands the compass pedestal with its capsule of elemental water.

>TOUCH WEIGHT WITH GRANITE
You carefully lay the ponderosity symbol against the lead. The symbol flares brightly and transfers to the counterweight.

The cable vibrates with sudden strain, and then emits a portentous creak. You jump back just as it snaps. The counterweight, now freed, slams to the floor and lies there like the corpse of Atlas.

The shock has evidently been too much for the jammed mechanism. The cable whips up and out of sight; the folded ladder, in reaction, unfolds segment by segment until it reaches the floor.

>EXAMINE WEIGHT
A massive block of lead is lying here. You see a ponderosity symbol glowing on the weight's surface.

Well, it broke loose.

quote:

>GET IT
A team of Hibernian marines couldn't pick up the lead weight right now.

Okay, maybe not. What if we get rid of the ponderosity symbol?

quote:

>BRUSH SYMBOL
(with the dispersal brush)
You brush the feather across the counterweight. The ponderosity symbol blurs and fades away. You see no other obvious difference, but the weight shifts just a little on the ground.

>GET LEAD
The counterweight is too heavy to carry.

Well, all right. But we could push it around on its chain when we put the gossamerity symbol on it, and we still have the anti-Tellurian distillate under our hat. Let's see if we can start carrying around a giant chunk of lead about the size of our entire body.

Swapping out the ingredients does mean we'll have to re-do the ritual, though:

quote:

>FIND ROSEMARY. GET IT.
The sprig of rosemary is in the Nave, as you recall. You head that way.
You make your way to the Nave.

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.

The murals are badly cracked. One to the southwest has collapsed entirely, leaving a ragged gap which leads down into a crawlspace.

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

You notice a fresh sheet of paper by the pedestal.

You can also see a torch-lighter, a splinter of elemental wood, a porcelain paten, a flask of saline, an impet of kelp oil, a horn coin, and a sprig of rosemary here.

Taken.

>PUT HORN COIN ON SHELF
(first taking the horn coin)

You put the horn coin on the gestalt shelf.

>PUT GRANITE IN BOUND
You put the chip of granite into the pedestal bound.

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

The arc begins to glow slate-blue around the chip of granite.

You wave the sprig, and inhale its fresh, resinous aroma. The air seems to sharpen.

You intone the word of essential nature. The mineral nature of the chip rises to the surface.

>PUT ANTI-TELLURIAN IN BOUND
You empty the vial of anti-Tellurian distillate onto the chip of granite. The indigo-blue liquid swirls around the pebble for a moment; then the vortex tightens and is absorbed.

>SPEAK BINDING OF CELESTIAL SPHERE
You begin invoking the Binding of the Celestial Sphere. The sounds seem distant and foreign, but you speak them precisely.

The blueish light flares, drawing together the mineral and celestial principles you have assembled. When it fades, a symbol shines on the surface of the chip of granite.

>GET GRANITE
You pick up the chip of granite, careful of its inscribed gossamerity symbol.

Simple enough. Unlike the cases like the moon-metal rod, this actually changes our Alchemy Journal; we now have two entries for the lead weight decrease inscription, marked "(with distillate)" and "(with precipitate)".

quote:

>GO TO COUNTERWEIGHT
The counterweight is in the Observatory, as you recall. You head that way.
You make your way to the Observatory.

Observatory
This is the observatory, the Retort's guiding eye. The dome overhead is set with windows, and each window shows a different sky and a different array of stars.

One level above you, an ironwork bridge crosses the dome, north to south. A ladder descends at either end. One ladder is obstructed by a fracture that cuts off the north side of the dome. The other, thankfully, is now within reach.

The door to the east is open. Open alcoves to the north and south house additional equipment, but again, the north side is fracture-blocked. You also see the flooded crawlway hatch at your feet.

In the center of the chamber, beneath the bridge, stands the compass pedestal with its capsule of elemental water.

The counterweight lies here, looking massive.

That is indeed how lead often looks, even though we've been working with multiple metals with a greater density than lead this run.

quote:

>TOUCH GRANITE TO COUNTERWEIGHT
You carefully lay the gossamerity symbol against the lead. The symbol flares brightly and transfers to the counterweight.

The counterweight shifts a little against the ground. It no longer seems as immovable as it was.

The eyes of Ensign Forsyth are sharp indeed. In fact, this even is reflected in the room description now:

quote:

The counterweight lies here, looking less massive than usual.

And now we can have some fun.

quote:

>GET COUNTERWEIGHT
You lift the counterweight. It's still heavy, and it retains a massy inertia that makes it feel like it's floating in molasses. But you can carry it.

One of the earliest space opera series was the Lensman books, by E. E. "Doc" Smith. In those, spaceships were able to break the lightspeed barrier and generally accomplish all the necessary space opera things because it was possible to retain mass while cancelling inertia. Here, we seem to have managed the opposite trick.

quote:

>GO TO F-SHARP CHIME
The bronze F-sharp chime is at the Chasm Rubble, as you recall. You head that way.
You make your way to the Chasm Rubble.

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.

A particularly massive slab lies at the chasm edge. Half its length rests on solid 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.

If we try to >GET CHIME now, we'll end up performing the metal attractor synthesis, which consumes the zafranum. We've been trying to avoid that, so let's look at this situation more carefully.

quote:

>EXAMINE SLAB
The slab is at least fifteen feet long, and more than a foot thick. The upper surface is worked flat; it must have been part of a bridge or balcony, somewhere above you, before the catastrophe. Now it lies precariously balanced on the edge of the chasm.

You see a bronze chime lying on the far end of the slab. It looks very far away.

>PUT WEIGHT ON SLAB
You put the counterweight on the near end of the slab, where it won't unbalance anything.

Can physics succeed more cheaply than alchemy?

quote:

>GET CHIME
You step out on the slab, and kneel at the balance-point. Unfortunately, the lessened mass of the counterweight is insufficient to anchor things. You can get a few inches closer to the chime; but it's not enough.

Perhaps we should physics harder.

quote:

>BRUSH COUNTERWEIGHT
(with the dispersal brush)
You brush the feather across the counterweight. The gossamerity symbol blurs and fades away.

The counterweight shifts slightly, settling into the slab with renewed force.

>GET CHIME
You step out onto the slab, and kneel at the balance-point. The counterweight seems to be holding it steady, so you slowly stretch forward...

You are keenly aware of the empty abyss directly below you. But as you crawl forward, the slab does not shift. You keep your movements steady, and after what seems like hours, your fingers meet bronze.

You grasp the chime, crawl backwards, and roll off the slab onto solid ground. Whew.

We've done it! Now we can just create the tools we need and head into the wreck.

quote:

>CREATE AITHER RESISTANCE
You make your way to the Nave.
You take the flask of saline.
You take the impet of kelp oil.
You make your way to the Mechanica Lab.
You take the lump of rock salt from the counter.
You make your way to the Herbarium Nook.
You take the pinch of zafranum.
You make your way to the Nave.
You take the torch-lighter.
You brew a bottle of aither resistance.

(You are now in the Nave.)

>CREATE VACUUM POTION
You take the flask of saline.
You make your way to the Nave Crawlway.
You take the vial of highlime.
You make your way to the Nave.
You take the impet of kelp oil.
You brew a bottle of vacuum protection.

>PERFORM GLASS PERMEABILITY
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of sand from the rack.
You take the brass coin.
You make your way to the Secondary Alchemy Lab.
You conjure a permeability symbol onto the bronze F-sharp chime.

(You are now in the Secondary Alchemy Lab.)

>GO TO WRECK
You drink the potion of vacuum protection.
You close the inner door and depressurize the airlock.
You make your way to the Hadean Land, at Wreck.

Hadean Land, at Wreck
You stand at the foot of a wall of metal. It's not a simple construction; it leans inward here, outward there, tracing an irregular shape that looms over the dusty plain. Perhaps it's broken, for debris is scattered around.

Mountains rise all around, forming a jagged grey bowl which cups the metal wreck. You can see the canyon pass to the northwest.

A hexagonal outline on the wall, to the east, might be a door. If so, it is closed.

Next to the hexagon, a small circular arc is incised into the metal.

A small puddle of mercury gleams in the dust.

>EAST
(first opening the outer door)
You take the droplet of mercury.
You apply the mercury to the circular arc.

You invoke the caudex pattern to open the outer door.

Strange Airlock
This chamber is not hexagonal, but it reminds you of a hexagon in all directions, if that makes sense. Perhaps it doesn't.

Strange as the architecture may be, an airlock is clearly an airlock. The outer door to the west is open; the inner door to the north is closed.

Next to the door is another small circle. This one contains a film of black liquid.

>NORTH
(first opening the inner door)
You drink the potion of aither resistance.

You invoke the radix pattern to open the inner door. The blue haze in your vision darkens; your teeth feel numb.

Bent Chamber
This chamber has odd angles, but you're pretty sure they're not all intentional. The walls look crumpled and the ceiling is bent downwards. Hallways may have once run in several directions, but the only one that remains wide enough to pass is to the east.

The airlock door to the south is open.

>EAST

Ruined Hallway
This hall runs east and west, but to the east the walls are crushed together like a paper sculpture.

A wide trapezoidal window is set into the north wall. It looks like ordinary glass, although you suppose one never knows.

As long as we're here, maybe physics will solve our problems here, too?

quote:

>BREAK WINDOW
The glass won't break.

Oh well. I hope it is glass, and not some kind of wacky transparent aluminum or something.

quote:

>RING CHIME
You tap the bronze F-sharp chime. Its soundless vibration runs through your fingers.

>PUT CHIME IN WINDOW
You press the chime against the window. The glass vibrates, and the bronze sinks slowly into it—not like metal into tar, but like a knife sliding between infinitesimal layers of glass.

When you draw your hand away, the chime remains suspended in the glass. Its vibration continues at a steady pitch.

>NORTH
You slide through the vibrating glass.

Ruined Chamber
This chamber is empty and derelict—cracked, crooked, uneven. The only exit is a dark gap to the east; you can't tell if it's the remains of a hallway or just a hole in the wall.

A wide trapezoidal window is set into the south wall. The F-sharp chime is embedded in the window.

A small knot of black marks is drawn on one wall.

>EXAMINE KNOT
You gaze at the knot, willing understanding.

comprehension

This fourth symbol brings you a new image: the black magnetic oil flowing over ceramic shards. You recognize the debris which lies outside the wreck.

All right. That's a good hint, but unfortunately, we'll have to reset the world to get that magnetic oil again—opening the airlock is irreversible and makes the radix access locker inaccessible this reset.

quote:

*** You awaken again ***

Recreate our tools, go to the wreck, and...

quote:

>GET MERCURY. PUT IT IN ARC. SPEAK RADIX ACCESS. GET OIL.
You glance around for a container, and settle on a broken saucer-shaped bit of ceramic. You gently scoop up the mercury droplet.

You tilt the mercury droplet against the circle. It sticks to the metal, and slowly spreads out until it reaches the edge. There is now a perfect circle of quicksilver, mirror-flat, clinging to the wall.

You begin running through the radix access geometric sequence in your head. The quicksilver circle vibrates in response; complex ripples refract across it.

When the sequence is complete, a metal panel neatly and silently rotates, hiding the quicksilver circle from view. Instead, a small niche is now visible, containing a vial of black oil.

Taken.

Now then. We've known about the ceramic shards, because we've been using them to ferry mercury around all game. What secrets do they hide?

quote:

>EXAMINE SHARDS
A few shards of ceramic lie around the wreck, as if they had fallen from it. None of their shapes look meaningful.

>PUT OIL ON SHARDS
You look for a large bit of ceramic, and pour the black oil onto it. It flows off in inky streams, which branch and ramify in the Hadean dust.

For a moment you are looking at familiar—that is, familiarly strange—twisted black markings. They refer to calyx access, the flowering of knowledge... not a physical transition, but a pathway of communication. It has the odor of dragons about it.

Then the oil sinks into the dust, all at once, and is gone without a trace.

Radix, caudex, and calyx are all Latin words for parts of plants - root, trunk, and bud or husk, respectively. When the words are imported into English, calyces aren't quite flowers, but they're close. They're, for instance, the part of the hibiscus we actually make the tea out of.

One of the things I like about the alien alchemy is how their formulae seem to be entirely built out of mathematical transformations. Terrestrial alchemy is sometimes similar—we've got the symmetric and antisymmetric sequences, for instance, which seem to involve reciting series of numbers, while the alien patterns involve visualizing geometrical transformations—but the human experience of alchemy is much more visceral.

It seems like, at some level, alchemy in Hadean Lands is about managing an evolving series of precisely calibrated symbols to represent and induce changes within the world itself. While the alien techniques revolve around mathematical transformations that can be, presumably, generated to order, the human alchemies rely on less precise methods for producing the results. By combining a rare spice's odor with the scent of the sea, for instance, we get a sense of distance and foreignness that is called out in the ritual description and which is representing the foreign aither that this ritual will let us survive. And here, it is paying off because the geometric transform we have learned smells like a dragon. Do dragons really have distinctive odors? One hasn't been described until now, but that's how our alchemically trained mind is interpreting the equivalent patterns we have just been taught.

At this point, there's only one dragon left. Let's see how Syndesis reacts to calyx access.

quote:

>SPEAK CALYX ACCESS
You run through the calyx access sequence in your head. Syndesis's runes quiver in response. You have a sudden sense of the Retort's operation: the routine maintenance of coherence and integrity, air and light, structure and position, weight and gravity.

A thought flows from the dragon to you: "Marcher systems are alive; transition may now be possible. Please attempt reanimation procedure in the Chancel. Extended status report via memory dump, this location."

You catch a glint of light in the oculus. You're pretty sure it wasn't there before.

Man, when an alchemical dragon does a memory dump, it means it literally.

If we didn't have the oculus with us, we'd instead be hinted to bring one in with this:

quote:

You sense... something... radiating from the dragon, although you can't see anything.

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS
You peer through the oculus. Everything acquires a colorful, hazy fringe.

The oculus reveals a colorless spark floating in the air.

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT SPARK
You focus on the colorless spark through the oculus. A new memory comes into focus. "The pylons in the Birdhouse exhibit traces of oxidation. Marcher transit in this state is risky. Recommendation: inscribe an intensional ballast and place it below the Birdhouse."

And then: "An intensional ballast may serve to support a failing alchemical construct, though only in the direst emergency, for the results are uncertain and of limited duration. The ritual is simply a refinement of the universal tarnish cleansing. Add zafranum after the lubanja spirit, and conclude with the Greater Phlogistical Saturation instead of the Lesser. The brass token will then be able to infuse phlogiston, at need, directly into the nearest construct."

You consider these memories.

Hey, yet another use for zafranum! Now, what did we need for the universal tarnish cleansing inscription?

quote:

>RECALL UNIVERSAL
"UNIVERSAL TARNISH CLEANSING: The basic tarnish rituals employ the law of similarity; a steel token removes rust from steel. To prepare a token that will work on any corroded metal, one must prepare a catalytic environment, rather than a fiery one. Place a token of brass or steel in the bound and begin with a simple sealing. Recite the categorical imperative; pour a drop of Java spirit upon the token; conclude with the Lesser Phlogistical Saturation."

Seems simple enough. And it looks like the Sergeant wasn't just messing around when he was having us fix tarnish back before the accident. Phlogiston infusion remains an important technique throughout one's career.

It's also worth noting that we didn't actually need to get into the room behind the window to learn calyx access; we only need radix access to get the polar oil, and that's available as soon as we complete the Great Marriage once. That means we can check in on the active dragon before the systems are all operational:

quote:

You run through the calyx access sequence in your head. Syndesis's runes quiver in response. You suddenly sense the routine maintenance of coherence and integrity, along with weight and gravity.

The dragon is reaching out, trying to assess the damage to the Retort, but you can tell that it lacks the capacity. It seems only dimly aware of your presence.

This was a check after Syndesis had subsumed Baros. If I then check in on a still-inactive dragon, like Aistheta...

quote:

You run through the calyx access sequence in your head. Aistheta's runes seem to quiver in response, but there is no other effect.

It's a bit of a sequence break, but not much of one. We need the fourth alien glyph to create the final dragon fulcrum, and the sigil for that is behind the glass.

Let's see what this Intensional Ballast is all about.

quote:

>FIND BRASS PIN. GET IT. FIND LUBANJA. GET IT. FIND ZAFRANUM. GET IT.

We could make some platinum wire and make the ballast that way, but why bother when the Tertiary Lab is right here?

quote:

>GO TO TERTIARY LAB
You make your way to the Tertiary Alchemy Lab.

Tertiary Alchemy Lab
This is the Retort's fanciest lab, all shiny and new. Of course, the rectors usually have it reserved for fancy shiny work.

The center of the room is a dais, built with a ritual arc in bright platinum inlay. The door to the west is open.

You notice a blue vial labelled "anti-Tellurian distillate".

Wait, weren't we supposed to get a key first? And weren't there two reagents here? Apparently the autosolver will, of its own accord, use the vial of nickel shards here in preference to destroying the nickel rod, and we needed that nickel to create the sublime spirit to check on Syndesis.

Just a curiosity, though. Let's move on and do the ritual.

quote:

>PUT BRASS PIN IN BOUND
You put the brass pin into the catalytic 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 green around the brass pin.

>RECITE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
You intone the categorical imperative. The metallic nature of the brass pin extends smoothly and clearly into a general class.

>PUT LUBANJA ON PIN
You carefully drip lubanja onto the brass pin; a cleansing solvent quality adheres to the metal.

>PUT ZAFRANUM ON PIN
The green light ripples as you push through the arc. You sift the zafranum threads onto the brass pin. They dissolve into the metal, lending it a clear green tint.

>SPEAK GREATER PHLOGISTICAL SATURATION
You begin the Greater Phlogistical Saturation. The tonal vowels and labial stops require all your concentration, but you manage to hold them in place.

The energy pulses and converges. The green light goes blinding-bright, drawing together the blended aromas and the words that you speak.

When the light fades, a symbol shines on the surface of the brass pin.

>GET PIN
You pick up the brass pin, careful of its inscribed fixation symbol.

Syndesis told us to put this below the Birdhouse. Do we now have a use for that empty dead-end room?

quote:

>GO TO BIRDHOUSE
You make your way to the Birdhouse.

Birdhouse
The Birdhouse is a circular chamber with no roof. It's not open to the sky; it just goes up forever. The door to the east is open. You also see a cracked flagstone with a gap leading to a crawlspace below.

The name comes from a ring of metal pylons that take up the center of the room. You can see the fanciful resemblance to a birdcage, although they don't imprison anything.

The dragon Syndesis is a mandala of alchemical runes inscribed across the curving wall. The circles rotate majestically, shining with violet-red radiance (and hints of sea-green, yellow-white, and brown-gold).

A fragment of paper lies to one side.

>DOWN

Birdhouse Crawl
This space must have been a crawlway, but it's entirely fallen in now. You barely fit, and there's no space to wriggle in any direction but back up.

As you enter, the brass pin acquires a hazy glow.

That looks very promising indeed. With this, and the fourth alien glyph we learned from the process of learning calyx access, we should be able to perform the Great Marriage to full effect, as advised by the remaining dragon itself.

Next Time: We don't quite do that. But we make do.

# ? Jul 11, 2018 06:53

PetraCore: Jul 20, 2017; 👁️🔥👁️👁️👁️BE NOT👄AFRAID👁️👁️👁️🔥👁️

Wow, this game is fantastic! I just read the thread over a day and I'm hooked.

I'm kind of curious, though: what do you think Forsyth looks like? Of the four other crewmembers we see, 2 are women, including the Captain herself. Clearly there's a mix, and we don't get any physical description of Forsyth, other than that their alchemical associations are not what one would expect for a human but match that of a homunculus. I don't really expect for there to ever be a 'reveal' about what Forsyth looks like because it seems to me they're probably supposed to be a blank slate for the player to project onto.

# ? Jul 13, 2018 03:39

malkav11: Aug 7, 2009

Yeah, parser IF protagonists are pretty commonly blank slates unless of course the game significantly revolves around their specific identity (e.g. Varicella).

# ? Jul 14, 2018 00:45

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

Part 20: The Center of the Universe

Last time, we repurposed one of our first rituals to become an "intensional ballast"—some kind of emergency power source for a malfunctioning marcher. Syndesis suggested we put it below the Birdhouse, and when we were there, the pin acquired a hazy glow.

quote:

>EXAMINE PIN
It's a short, straight bit of brass, no longer than your thumb-joint. A tiny symbol shines from one side: the alchemical sign for fixation.

The pin has a vague hazy glow about it.

When we leave...

quote:

The brass pin is no longer glowing.

...so location does matter, as opposed to just letting it pass through.

With the intensional ballast and the fourth alien glyph, we really have everything we need to perform the Great Marriage properly in the Chancel. Let's get to work.

quote:

*** You awaken again ***

First, our basic toolkit.

quote:

>CREATE OCULUS. CREATE PLANETARY LENS. CREATE DISPERSAL BRUSH.

But we've been forgetting to do something, pretty much since the first dragon was repaired.

rchandra posted:

After all you've been through together, how can you not use the polished calipers for your ordered environment?

This is an excellent point.

quote:

>PERFORM TARNISH CLEANSING
Which do you mean, the basic tarnish cleansing inscription (with the brass pin), the doubled tarnish cleansing inscription (with the brass pin), or the universal tarnish cleansing inscription (with the brass pin)?

>BASIC
You make your way to the Secondary Alchemy Lab.
You take the brass pin from the side table.
You take the sprig of rosemary.
You take the impet of ginger oil from the side table.
You conjure a basic saturation symbol onto the brass pin.

(You are now in the Secondary Alchemy Lab.)

>TOUCH PIN TO CALIPERS. GET CALIPERS.
You carefully lay the basic saturation symbol against the calipers. With a loud crackle, the symbol discharges. Sparks dance over the calipers; the tarnished brass flakes and vibrates. Within moments, the calipers are gleaming brightly. The alchemical energies fade, leaving a perfectly polished instrument.

Take that, Sarge, you think, with some smugness.

Taken.

And, indeed:

quote:

>LOOK THROUGH OCULUS AT CALIPERS
When viewed through the oculus, the gleaming calipers display an orderly nature.

With that crucial task done, we may now proceed with the original plan. First the ballast:

quote:

>PERFORM INTENSIONAL BALLAST
You make your way to the Pyrics Store.
You take the flask of lubanja.
You make your way to the Herbarium Nook.
You take the pinch of zafranum.
You make your way to the Scaphe Arcade.
You repressurize the Exoscaphe Bay.
You make your way to the Exoscaphe Dome.
You take the spare lab key.
You make your way to the Lab Hall Northeast.
You make your way to the Tertiary Alchemy Lab.
You conjure a fixation symbol onto the brass pin.

(You are now in the Tertiary Alchemy Lab.)

Then the fulcrum:

quote:

>PERFORM DRAGON FULCRUM
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of saline.
You make your way to the Nave Crawlway.
You take the vial of highlime.
You make your way to the Deck Suite.
You take the impet of kelp oil.
You brew a bottle of vacuum protection.
You drink the potion of vacuum protection.
You make your way to the Airlock.
You close the inner door and depressurize the airlock.
You make your way to the Hadean Land, at Wreck.
You take the droplet of mercury.
You close the outer door and pressurize the airlock.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
You make your way to the Storage Nook.
You take the rutilum Alchemy File seal.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
You take the phlogisticated gold rod from the cabinet.
You draw the gold rod out into wire (losing its phlogistication).
You apply the mercury to the length of gold wire.
You lay the length of gold amalgam wire in the bound groove.
You take the chip of granite from the storage bin.
You make your way to the Under Ward.
You take the flask of vitriolic acid.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
The length of gold amalgam wire is already in the bound groove.
You conjure a leverage symbol onto the chip of granite, using the fourth alien glyph.

(You are now in the Materials Store.)

Wait, no, not then the fulcrum, we need that phlogisticated gold rod still to light our electrum and create the fire-devourer! Once we've done that, then we can create the gold amalgam wire and thus the dragon fulcrum.

quote:

>UNDO
Tertiary Alchemy Lab
[Previous turn undone.]

>PERFORM GOLD IGNITION. PERFORM ELECTRUM PHLOGISTICATION. LIGHT ELECTRUM WITH GOLD.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
You make your way to the Storage Nook.
You take the rutilum Alchemy File seal.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
You take the phlogisticated gold rod from the cabinet.
You make your way to the Pyrics Lab.
You take the splinter of blackwood from the table.
You take the splinter of winter-oak from the table.
You ignite the blackwood splint from the winter-oak.
You place the phlogisticated gold in the vapor crock with camphrost, and ignite them with the blackwood splint.

(You are now in the Pyrics Lab.)

You make your way to the Mechanica Lab.
You take the platinum rod from the counter.
You draw the platinum rod out into wire.
You head to the Materials Store.
You take the moon-metal rod from the storage bin.
You draw the moon-metal rod out into wire.
You splice the length of platinum wire and the length of moon-metal wire into a plain electrum regium rod.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of mineral oil from the rack.
You make your way to the Herbarium Nook.
You take the sprig of honeysuckle from the herb shelf.
You make your way to the Pyrics Lab.
You take the splinter of swamp pith from the table.
You take the splinter of green linden from the table.
You make your way to the Under Ward.
You take the torch-lighter.
You make your way to the Tertiary Alchemy Lab.
You brew a vial of yang oil.
You phlogisticate the electrum.

(You are now in the Tertiary Alchemy Lab.)

You hold the flaming phlogisticated gold rod to the phlogisticated electrum rod. The electrum begins to glow—not the dull red of heating metal, but with an inner lucence. The golden light seems to throb, and unfurl, and expand, all at once. Heat presses against your face as you peer into the flame.

You pull the gold and electrum rods apart. Golden elemental flames now burn steadily on each of them.

At this point, I do something a little odd:

quote:

>DROP ALL

From here on out—at least until I create the Dragon Fulcrum and thus will never again need to leave the Retort—I don't want to be carrying around anything that might be destroyed when the autosolver decides that what we need is a dose of hard vacuum.

Anyway, creating the fire devourer should free up the gold rod for use in our dragon fulcrum.

quote:

>CREATE FIRE DEVOURER. DROP IT
You make your way to the Secondary Alchemy Lab.
You take the flask of rubbing alcohol.
You take the impet of ginger oil from the side table.
You make your way to the Tertiary Alchemy Lab.
You take the flaming phlogisticated electrum rod.
You make your way to the Pyrics Store.
You brew a bottle of fire devourer.

(You are now in the Pyrics Store.)

Dropped.

... or not. :argh:

We could >UNDO here and force it to use the gold rod instead by doing the ritual by hand, but we don't really need to do that. Gold is not the only metal with which mercury will spontaneously react.

quote:

>FIND MERCURY. GET IT.
The droplet of mercury is in the Hadean Land, at Wreck, as you recall. You head that way.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of saline.
You make your way to the Nave Crawlway.
You take the vial of highlime.
You make your way to the Deck Suite.
You take the impet of kelp oil.
You brew a bottle of vacuum protection.
You drink the potion of vacuum protection.
You make your way to the Airlock.
You close the inner door and depressurize the airlock.
You make your way to the Hadean Land, at Wreck.

Hadean Land, at Wreck
You stand at the foot of a wall of metal. It's not a simple construction; it leans inward here, outward there, tracing an irregular shape that looms over the dusty plain. Perhaps it's broken, for debris is scattered around.

Mountains rise all around, forming a jagged grey bowl which cups the metal wreck. You can see the canyon pass to the northwest.

A hexagonal outline on the wall, to the east, might be a door. If so, it is closed.

Next to the hexagon, a small circular arc is incised into the metal.

A small puddle of mercury gleams in the dust.

You glance around for a container, and settle on a broken saucer-shaped bit of ceramic. You gently scoop up the mercury droplet.

>FIND LEAD ROD
The lead rod is in the Pyrics Store, as you recall. You head that way.
You close the outer door and pressurize the airlock.
You make your way to the Pyrics Store.

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.

You can also see a bottle of fire devourer, an impet of ginger oil, a plain electrum regium rod, a silver coin, and two chymic flasks (rubbing alcohol and lubanja) here.

>PUT LEAD ROD ON MERCURY
Tilting the saucer, you dip the lead rod into the mercury. The mercury coats the metal, forming a white amalgam. You twirl the lead through the droplet until all the mercury is absorbed, and the rod is entirely white.

All right. Is the autosolver smart enough to use our new amalgam rod?

quote:

>PERFORM DRAGON FULCRUM
You have not made the gold amalgam rod, yet.
(While trying to create gold amalgam wire, to set up an appropriate environment, to create the dragon fulcrum.)

No. However, it is apparently smart enough to not attempt to draw the gold rod into wire while it is alight with elemental fire.

quote:

>CREATE WHITE AMALGAM WIRE
[I understood the command "CREATE WHITE AMALGAM" (that is, create the white amalgam rod); but not the word "WIRE" at the end.]

This is both a necessary and a mean trick. We've never created the white amalgam wire before, so the autosolver doesn't know about it. But not only does it not know about it, it does not permit the parser to know that the item can possibly exist. It was technically possible to do this in Inform 6, but it was extremely difficult to do so and could require manually extending the standard libraries. In Inform 7, conditional acknowledgement of the existence of words and phrases is trivial and available at the lowest level. This allows commands like >REMEMBER FORMULA to ask "which do you mean" with the automatic parser disambiguation message and list exactly and only those formulae that you have already learned and encountered. (As we saw back in Update 11, XYZZY and PLUGH are treated by the game as being special formulae in their own right. The game turns out to have special logic to exclude them from the disambiguator lists.)

At any rate, we'll need to set up the white amalgam wire by hand.

quote:

>GO TO MECHANICA. PUT AMALGAM IN DRAWER. TURN CRANK. GET WIRE.
You make your way to the Mechanica Lab.

Mechanica Lab
This workshop features two of the more mundane devices of the alchemist's life: a hand-cranked wire-drawer, and the wire-splicer wheel.

The lab door to the north is open. The crawlway hatch is open. You also see a small storeroom to the west.

Lt Anderes has vanished. Only a shadow remains.

An extremely corroded cabinet is fastened to the wall. It is closed.

To one side, some supplies are lying on a counter: a nickel rod, an iron bead, and a lump of rock salt.

You notice a fresh sheet of paper by the door.

You slide the white amalgam rod into the groove, ready to be drawn into the device.

You begin hauling on the crank, and the white amalgam rod is slowly drawn into the device. Soon wire begins spooling out onto the counter.

After several minutes of sweat, sore hands, and metallic creaking noises, the rod is entirely consumed. The white amalgam wire falls free, into a loose coil.
Taken.

>WEST

Materials Store
You are in a small storage area. The Mechanica Lab is back to the east.

To one side stands a heavy table, upon which is another ritual bound. This one is adjustable; it is currently empty.

There's another cabinet here. It is open but empty.

An untidy storage bin contains three stone chips (obsidian, granite, and sandstone), a broad quartz prism, a long quartz prism, and a fluorspar crystal.

A crumpled recipe sheet is lying by the ritual bound.

Someone has dropped a standard glass chime, the sort used in musical rituals. It's marked as being in the key of H.

You can also see a rutilum Alchemy File seal here.

>PUT AMALGAM IN GROOVE
You carefully press the length of white amalgam wire into the groove. It forms a complete circuit around the arc.

Now that the environment is prepared, maybe now we're OK?

quote:

>PERFORM DRAGON FULCRUM
You have not made the gold amalgam rod, yet.
(While trying to create gold amalgam wire, to set up an appropriate environment, to create the dragon fulcrum.)

Okay, fine. We'll just do the whole thing again by hand.

quote:

>FIND VITRIOLIC. GET IT. FIND GRANITE. GET IT. GO TO MATERIALS STORE.

And now create the fulcrum by hand for the final time. If we need to do it again, it should remember that we used lead and since nothing we know how to do consumes lead, we should be fine.

quote:

>PUT GRANITE IN BOUND. SPEAK GRENDEL'S SEALING. PUT VITRIOLIC IN BOUND. SPEAK FOURTH GLYPH. SPEAK RELATIVE ANIMA.
You put the chip of granite into the adjustable bound.

You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone Grendel's Sealing.

The arc begins to glow silver-grey around the chip of granite.

You carefully drip vitriolic acid onto the chip of granite. The stone hisses and spits, and seems to absorb the acid.

You visualize the fourth alien glyph as clearly as possible. The stone does not visibly change, but you have a peculiar notion that it has changed shape inside.

You raise your voice in the Relative Anima. The chip of granite seems to revolve in place without moving.

The silver-grey light flares and fades, and you see a symbol gleaming on the surface of the chip of granite.

>GET GRANITE
You pick up the chip of granite, careful of its inscribed leverage symbol.

All right. Now to collect the things we need to perform the Great Marriage in the Chancel.

From the mundane...

quote:

>CREATE EPHEMERIS BILLET. FIND ROSEMARY. GET IT.

... to the more exotic.

quote:

>FIND GOLD ROD. GET IT.
Which do you mean, the plain gold rod or the flaming phlogisticated gold rod?

We've done so much at this point that the parser has to make sure that it doesn't need to remind us that we haven't consumed the elemental fire on the gold yet.

quote:

>FLAMING
The flaming phlogisticated gold rod is in the Tertiary Alchemy Lab, as you recall. You head that way.
You make your way to the Tertiary Alchemy Lab.

This is where we dropped all our stuff, before, so we wouldn't lose anything to vacuum. Now that we've created the fulcrum, we don't need to worry about that any more.

quote:

>GET ALL

After this, we collect the elemental water, earth and the two bubbles of elemental air the same way we did in Update 18, and also create the Perfect Diamond so it will be ready when we need to create the obsidian solvent. Back in update 18, this is where we could just enter the command >GO TO CHANCEL, but we've got to place the fulcrum and the ballast first.

And here we hit a nasty puzzle that only shows up if Syndesis is the final dragon. You may recall that we were to place the ballast in the Birdhouse Crawlspace. However, getting to that crawlspace requires opening the aura-locked door, and we can't actually do that with the resources we have to spare:

Using the aura invisibility inscription, like we normally do, uses up our last unit of elemental fire.
Using the traditional aura impersonation inscription uses up our only unit of elemental water.
Using the newer aura impersonation inscription uses up a unit of elemental air that we cannot spare—we need one unit to defeat the Chancel's strictures already, and one for the Great Marriage.

Those first two also end up requiring the use of orichalcum, which we had to consume to sneak past the angry vortex guarding the supply of elemental air.

To solve this puzzle, we have to notice the behavior of the intensional ballast. It starts glowing when it's in the right place, and stops when it leaves. This is pretty close to what we'd seen with Dragon Fulcrums. When we brought a fulcrum into a dragon's lair, the fulcrum began to glow, and it would do this even if the dragon that should be there was dead or absent.

If we explore the Retort with ballast in hand, we find that it behaves similarly, in places near but not at each dragon's lair:

The Barosy Crevice, just next to the Barosy, gives our pin its glow as well.
The flooded walkway under the Observatory also does this. This is presumably Aistheta's.
Lastly, it gains a glow not far from Pneuma but only when swimming in the garden's artifical lake. We don't need to dive, like we do for the Observatory, either.

Baros was second on the dragon priority vote, so we'll place the fulcrum and ballast where Baros would have wanted it.

quote:

>GO TO BAROSY
You make your way to the Master-at-Arms Quarters.
You take the flint key.
You make your way to the Bottom of the Grand Stair.
You make your way to the Barosy.

Barosy
This is a long, dim chamber whose walls are immense stone slabs. It's like a burial chamber—an empty one, now that the dragon is gone.

The iron gate stands open to the west. You also see a crevice between two slabs to the north; it looks wide enough to wiggle through.

Lt Powes is sitting in a corner, back to the wall, arms around his knees. He is staring into the dimness, wide-eyed, as if struck by a shock.

A fragment of paper lies nearby.

As you enter, the chip of granite begins to shine with a silvery light.

>DROP GRANITE
Dropped.

>NORTH
You squeeze into the crevice.

Barosy Crevice
You are crawling along a tight passage through the bowels of the Earth. Or some world, at any rate. Some light leaks in from the Barosy, behind you, to the south. To the north it only gets darker.

The gravity feels normal now.

As you enter, the brass pin acquires a hazy glow.

>DROP PIN
Dropped.

The most interesting thing about this final puzzle is not that it is unique to Syndesis but that it was accidental. In a hint thread on a different forum, Plotkin appeared and commented on the situation after the players had resolved it in the manner we just did above:

Andrew Plotkin posted:

No, the intended solution is to put it under the Birdhouse; the bug is that this is not possible!

I don't want to rewrite either the text or the code because of it. One (minor) theme of the game is symmetry-breaking; this situation accidentally fits in with that. Which is interesting, and the ways that you have found around it are also interesting. I decided that it is not a net loss to the game design, so I'm leaving it.

And so it has been left, and so here we are working around it.

That "minor theme" of symmetry-breaking is also most certainly there; go back to update 17 and look at my outlining of the puzzle structure and you'll notice that the various dragons do similar things when you fix them, but that there's also some minor variation across them and then one enormous outlier. But which dragon is the "enormous outlier" ends up changing depending on which thing you're tracking at that time.

The time for theory, however, is over. It is time for practice. We are finally ready.

quote:

>GO TO CHANCEL
You make your way to the Pyrics Store.
You take the bottle of fire devourer.
You make your way to the Burning Hall West.
You extinguish the fire with the bottle of fire devourer.
You make your way to the North Arcade.
You take the chip of marble.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You take the flask of muriatic acid from the rack.
You make your way to the Materials Store.
You take the fluorspar crystal from the storage bin.
You make your way to the Chymic Lab.
You brew a vial of bamuriatic acid.
You brew a bottle of obsidian solvent, using the diamond.
You make your way to the Charred Hall East.
You apply the obsidian solvent to the obsidian door.
You make your way to the Dead End Pit.
You take the jade bead.
You make your way to the Mechanica Lab.
You take the iron bead from the counter.
You make your way to the Nave.
You take the Chinese amulet.
You conjure an imitation symbol onto the jade bead.
You make your way to the Lab Hall Northeast.
You touch the jade bead to Captain Hart.
You make your way to the Antechamber.
You apply the imitation symbol to yourself and open the gate.
You make your way to the Chancel.

Chancel
The Nave may be the heart of the Retort, but the Chancel is its soul. The Master Rector performs the marcher's most crucial rituals here. The ritual bound is a low pedestal of chased rutilum, with a shelf beside it.

The rest of the room is rather emptier than it looked from outside. To the north is the writ screen, and the Nave beyond it. To the south, the circular gate stands open.

A crisp sheet of paper is pinned next to the screen.

Here we are—the center of the universe. And we know what to do.

quote:

>PUT CALIPERS ON SHELF
You put the gleaming calipers on the gestalt shelf.

>SPEAK MARCHER'S INVOCATION
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the Marcher's Sealing.

The arc begins to glow smoke-grey.

>PUT BILLET ON SHELF
You put the ephemeris billet on the gestalt shelf.

>WAVE ROSEMARY
You wave the sprig, and inhale its fresh, resinous aroma. The air seems to sharpen.

>PUT ELEMENTAL FIRE IN BOUND
The grey light ripples as you push through the arc. The elemental fire leaps from the rod; you pull the cold rod back. The flame whirls unsupported in the center of the arc, slowly dimming into an indistinct haze.

>PUT WATER IN BOUND
You crack open the capsule, and pour the elemental water into the bound. The sparkling drops never land on the workbench surface. Instead, they whirl around the arc, and slowly fade into the thickening haze.

>PUT AIR IN BOUND
You twist the bubble's valve, and carefully vent the elemental air into the bound. It whisks around the arc, and joins the thickening haze.

>PUT EARTH SHARD IN BOUND
The grey light ripples as you push through the arc. The shard of elemental earth does not fall. It hangs in the center of the circle, spinning and spinning, until it blurs into the thickening haze.

The whirling haze in the bound slows. It is more difficult to see, now; not dissipating, but developing an aching lucent clarity. The space above the pedestal seems more transparent than air.

>SPEAK DRACON INVOCATION
You rumble your way through the Dracon Invocation.

A sense of pressure builds in the air. You feel something move, in the distance. The bound slowly dims.

Syndesis slides into the Chancel, through the writ screen; across the ceiling; towards the pedestal. It seems to move slowly, but you have no sense of time to react.

The dragon is above the pedestal now. The whirling haze rises to meet it. Then the rotating violet-red runes begin to descend, one by one, loosed from their circles, free in the darkening air.

Blood, incense, ruin, screams.

*** You had awakened ***

Something was different. Where are we? Given the shift in tense, when and who are we?

quote:

You were buried in wreckage
Weight pressed down on you. You could not make out what had fallen—broken beams, chunks of ceiling tile—but it hurt. You hurt. You tried to shift; the only way out was up.

>RECALL
Your spinning mind was only able to catch the simple sealing word.

>EXAMINE SELF
That was no time for that.

>UP
You pushed debris aside. A chill bled into stale, hot air. You bled too, and wrenched your body free.

... are we in fact still Forsyth?

quote:

You have crawled into a ruined corridor
The light has nearly vanished. The dimness and vertigo have rendered the laboratory corridor of the Retort nearly unrecognizable.

Your cleaning work in the alchemy lab... no. Not important. Where could Ashe... could the Captain be? Not looking for you; whatever you've shared, whatever she's thought of you, the marcher takes precedence. She'll have gone for the Aithery, or for the Chancel.

You've seen the way out of here.

Given the reference to the cleaning work in the alchemy lab, we are probably still Forsyth, and based on the rest of it, apparently we were the person that the Captain was involved with. This is the final working-out of the relationship between the dragon revival order and the situation that was happening on the Retort. Each plotter has somebody else associated with them—Hart is in love with someone, Powes is plotting revenge on someone, Ctesc and Anderes each have an accomplice—and whichever dragon is the final active dragon determines which character Forsyth is associated with.

Beyond that, the message varies slightly depending on whether we were looking upon that character fondly or harshly. Had we most recently looked upon the Captain disapprovingly when performing the Marriage, this message would instead be:

quote:

Your cleaning work in the alchemy lab... no. Not important. Where could Ashe... could the Captain be? Not looking for you; you've never deluded yourself that she shared that much of herself with you. She'll have gone for the Aithery, or for the Chancel.

At any rate, we know what needs to be done.

quote:

>OUT
You have made your way along the corridor, scrambling over fallen debris. And a few human forms, but none of them breathe.

You've recognized the hand of Sergeant Brooks protruding obscenely from under stone. You've passed it by.

Alas. We'll never be able to show off our pristine, shiny calipers after all.

quote:

You will reach the Nave
The Nave will be as dark as the rest of the Retort; moth-flickers of phlogiston will dance in the lamps. The floor will be clear now, the ceiling whole; but the walls will be dense with black, alien markings. You will not recognize them. You will not understand how they got there.

The marcher will be abandoned, as far as you will be able to see.

You will barely have learned the rudiments of alchemy, but the ritual bound will be unscathed. Surely there will be something you can try.

There was only one thing our whirling mind could recall in the chaos.

quote:

>SPEAK SIMPLE SEALING WORD
An apprentice bringing a marcher back to life... it should not be possible. But you will have a notion, a fragment of memory, that help will arrive. Repairs will be made.

*** You will begin ***

[In the course of this game, you reset the world 31 times—3 involuntarily.]

Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, or UNDO the last command?
>

And with that, we have ended where we must—at the end, which is also the beginning, which is in the future.

My personal theory about this is that the bulk of the game took place with us as a homunculus animating the frozen body of Forsyth in a series of transition echoes. Every time we altered something major about our situation—performing a marriage, or repairing or subsuming a dragon—we actually were transferring to a different echo. This is why we picked up alchemy so fast—we're farther from the material world so the ideas are absorbed rapidly—and it's also why the Blinovny Limitation exists. When we perform alchemy as a being in the Higher Spheres, we're not just creating a fire-devourer potion. We are creating the Platonic ideal of one, and so there can't be multiples of it. The fractures we kept running into that weren't part of Syndesis' failure were simply the points where the echo ended.

Meanwhile, the reason those echoes were alive in the first place is because some external force is trying to recover the Retort after its disaster. Either the Navy determined a transition failed, or the aliens (whose writing is more prevalent here at the end, mind you) are doing their best to help us resolve things. By performing a repair and placing an intensional ballast in the Higher Spheres, the terrestrial Forsyth will hopefully have their work amplified or improved. Perhaps the dragons—or at least Baros—will be in better shape than they otherwise would.

Part of my evidence for this is that the intensional ballast is, strictly speaking, optional. If we don't place it, the final reply is significantly more uncertain:

quote:

You will have no assurance that this can possibly work. An apprentice bringing a marcher back to life... but still.

Only our last half-dozen moves actually had any physical effect, but it's not like everything that came before didn't matter. The ephemerality of success is a theme that's not uncommon for Plotkin's games, but here, at least, we are at least assured:

We have made a difference.

# ? Jul 15, 2018 04:03

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

And that wraps up the LP, several times faster than I feared that it would take! Thanks to, in no particular order:

TooMuchAbstraction and macdjord for helping proofread some of the drafts pre-post, including catching one place where I had accidentally edited out a crucial clue;
Everyone in this thread who'd played before and pushed me to unearth corners of the game I'd never considered, including at least one Hero of the Dissolution;
David Welbourn and Carl Muckenhaupt, whose writings about the game served both as a framework for discussing the broader context of the plot and as a useful checklist to make sure I didn't miss any major optional background;
Everyone else in the thread, for coming along on the journey.

I've done the final updates and edits to the first two posts—I'm more relieved than I care to admit that the completed alchemy journal can in fact fit in one post—and over the next few days I'll be doing a final proofreading pass and then sending it off for archival.

ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Jul 15, 2018

# ? Jul 15, 2018 04:11

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

Congratulations on finishing the LP, and thanks for showing it to us! Things got pretty metaphysical there at the end. Did that section, from being woken up under a pile of rubble, have any interactivity to it, or was it basically a "cutscene" with only one allowed command per section?

I'm not personally a huge fan of stories that end without any remotely clear resolution, or at least explaining what the heck is going on, but I guess Plotkin does love his mysteries.

# ? Jul 15, 2018 04:25

ManxomeBromide: Jan 29, 2009; old school

It is basically a cutscene, but it's not being a dick about it. It only really makes sense to use >RECALL after you get to the Nave, but you can do it at any time. Your alchemical journal is empty at that point too, except for that one formula. I don't really begrudge it that, though—given the circumstances, Forsyth is rattled and acting on instinct. (Not to mention that this Forsyth isn't the literally superhuman alchemist we'd come to know and love. :v:

)

# ? Jul 15, 2018 04:45

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 5, 2024 01:06

macdjord: Oct 26, 2013

\o/

Odd ending, but absolutely a worthy game.

# ? Jul 15, 2018 15:51

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

«‹›6 »