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 You wake up at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by your broken memories. Reclaim and compile your magic or drown in a sea of dreams. Open Sorcery: Sea++ is a charming text-based game about exploring a mystical ocean formed from the human subconscious, that also kind of doubles as the Internet (we'll get to that). It's a world filled with mythological creatures, strange fauna based on computer puns, and wizards from Earth. We play an undercover wizard whose soul fell into the lowest depths of this place after an attempt on her life. We'll be setting out to reclaim our lost powers, climb back to our body on Earth, and maybe, just maybe, get revenge on the people who put us here. It's a newly-released game with modern design sensibilities, but it's largely set up like a classical text adventure - travel in four cardinal directions, visit colourful places, meet interesting people, and befriend/outwit/murder them. I love the hell out of this game, hence why I'm actually LPing something. >Ask about audience participation_ quote:There are multiple ways of solving pretty much every challenge in this game, and the consequences of how we solve them will reverberate forward with us to various degrees. When we have meaningful options for dealing with these (which will happen a lot), I'll leave our approach up to an audience vote. >Ask about spoilers_ quote:This game is a sequel to Open Sorcery. Open Sorcery is short, rad, and costs like $3.50 on Steam, but no knowledge of the original Open Sorcery is needed to enjoy Sea++. Where knowledge of the original Open Sorcery is relevant to this game, I'll share that information in spoiler tags. If you want to discuss anything about the original Open Sorcery, or anything related to Sea++ content that we've now missed, please use spoiler tags. >Ask about sensitive content_ quote:This game can go to some pretty dark places, and we'll be running into a decent variety of "content warning" style content. The game provides its own content warnings on a zone-by-zone basis - naturally, I'll transcribe these, and you also have my assurances that this content isn't nasty or gratuitous (except for arguably one sequence that I'll clearly label as such). This game ticks a lot of "content warning" boxes, but it's not fundamentally a dark game. It ain't no Undertale, but it has a fundamental warmth to it, and kindness will still punch well above its weight if you're clever about it.  1: System Crash 2: Kernel Reboot 3: Backup Restore 4: Multi-Factor Authentication 5: Local Area Network 6: Inkjet 7: Denial of Service 8: Casting Error 9: Low-Level Code 10: Parallel Processing 11: Restore Point 12: Null Pointer Exception 13: External Storage 14: Audio Feedback 15: Comments Section 16: Agar.io 17: Internet Troll 18: Visual Basic 19: Web Scraping 20: Media Library 21: Creative Commons 22: Bug Bounty 23: Data Forensics 24: Law As Code 25: Platform Governance 26: SIM Cards 27: Legacy Code 28: Signal Amplifier 29: Keyword Search 30: Deep Blue 31: Readme 32: Narrative Roguelike 33: Social Media 34: Cheaters' Queue 35: Project Forecasting 36: Upload Speed 37: Link Surfing 38: Memory Cards 39: Hardware Overheat 40: Patch Update Doopliss fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 00:01
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", nothing. I'm sure you can do it.
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Reserved????
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Feb 14, 2021 00:01
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  Here's the first screen we get upon booting this game up - a content warning for ableism and a charity targeted at supplying running water to Navajo familities in the US. You should now have a decent idea what we're getting into.  After that, we get to see the Main Menu, with a "deep sea" audio effect looping in the background. Notably, the Options menu has some pretty involved accessibility features, the ability to skip certain types of puzzles, and a speed mode that drastically simplifies text you've seen before for subsequent playthroughs. The Achievements button is a worthwhile click - sort of spoilery, but each achievement comes with a short hint on obtaining it, which gives us some nice signposting for some of the more obscure content. We, of course, are here for the New Game button. Let's get into it.  Open Sorcery is made from a high-level HTML-based engine called Twine. There's JavaScript to be had, but mainly we interact with this game by clicking links.  As we click the links, new text appears, punctuated by the sound of broken bones. Eventually, the screen looks like this.   The words "My spirit" appear for a few seconds, then automatically replace themselves with "the bits of me beyond muscle and bone".  The web.The place below the 'real' world. A place of thoughts, spirits, and dreams. all connected.     The game politely allows me to click "family", "friends", and "beliefs" to cross them out. The text is largely more conventional than this, but the intro plays around. Some threads snap cleanlybut some are strong and deep, so instead of them breaking they break off a piece of me.   This time, the game doesn't give me a choice, and they vanish for good.  I cannot see(no connection to hardware) I cannot think(no connection to brain) I can only fall. . . Finally I land. Title card! Each paragraph slowly fades in and out when I click the heading. For the rest of this section, we can hear water all around us. This is too short for an update, so let's assess the damage.  Lie still in the Dark: I cannot bear to move. If I move, I might hurt again. Lying still in darkness, I am as close to not existing as I can be without death. It's comforting in a way I would normally find disturbing. Cry: I weep. That hurt so very much. I feel so very empty. I choke on a sob and start coughing. When I am done I weep some more. My tears vanish into the seawater as soon as I cry them. Just a few more drops in the ocean. Very soon, I am sick of crying. I stop, exhausted. We'll be in full-on protagonist mode in a moment. We're allowed to be miserable for a bit. Feel around:  The game will often have links that add a bit of in-line flavour text when clicked. I'll represent these by pasting them off to the side in the original image. The dark is absolute. I search the sand with my fingertips.There are so many shards. Broken pieces that were once beautiful. Still are beautiful, in a sad sort of way. If I find enough pieces I can put them back together. Learn who I am. Darkness of the OceanThe water around my is cold, still and pure black. The sand here is pitted with sharp stones. Dream shards. Collect my dreams.  Our memories have a white "shimmer" effect traveling along the text from left to right. Good to know. I collect all the pieces of this dream.I think it is an important dream, since it stayed with me so long, and landed so near. Now I must figure out how to piece it back together. A jigsaw puzzle of memory.  Here's the first form of puzzle in the game. Our memories take the form of shattered text fragments, and we have to place them in the correct order. There's no penalty for guessing wrong, and this one's pretty obvious from the punctuation. Play along if you feel like! Answers will be immediately below. . . . . . I remember magic.I remember guiding the impossible into the inevitable with a light hand. I tame spirits with scripts. I master matter, motive, and mysticism with math. I see the spaces in my mind where the spells belong. I am an open sorcerer. Oh I want my magic back. If everything else didn't tip you off, magic is pretty closely connected with computer science in this setting.  A satisfying "ding" plays when we obtain something new. SalveMundi was a simple program, one of my first.It creates glowing letters. Those would be useful right now. They'd let me see. Well, I've found the memory of the spell. Perhaps I can find the memory of how to cast it. There are no more dreams in this patch of sand.I'll have to search elsewhere. I still can't see anything. I guess I'll just pick a direction and walk.  Now we're a *proper* text adventure. We're going to spend a large portion of the game looking at something like this, typically with more art. Let's start with north. I try to stand and walk.My right leg buckles. There is a ghost of remembered pain. I collapse back into the sand. I rub my leg.It aches. Spiritual forms are based on body memory. My body must be hurt. Permanently hurt. So much that it's a part of my identity. I can't put weight on my right leg. Luckily for me, I'm underwater.I don't need to walk, I can swim.  Same difference, at least for now. North, attempt 2:  Looks like the path further north is cut off for now, but we do grab ourselves a memory. It's another dream.Or perhaps a memory. Memory ==> A false distinction. Memories are dreams of the past. I feel its jagged edges and realize this is only a fraction of a larger dream. I'll have to find the rest of this dream before I can see if there's any magic in it.But for now, I hold this dream to my chest and see what it has to tell me. Absorb dream.  Is this what broke our leg? Nothing for it but to press on, I suppose. Let's try west. The ground here is hard stone.Feel the stone. I discover a crack in the stone.I feel drawn to it. A tingle of familiarity tells me that a piece of me has fallen down there.  The game politely advises us when we're missing a resource that would be of use. That said, we should be okay to just brute force this one.  We get a nasty buzzer sound when we lose health. Ow. I press the dream into my chest, letting the memories and thought flow back into me.quote:Discovered part of dream: the steps of breaking One more to go, and we get... Something? North and west are now locked off to us - our character dosen't want to travel too far from our crash site without being able to see - so let's continue our counterclockwise circuit.  Two screens south and we find another memory.  I think we've learned our lesson. We're in the southwest corner now, so let's circle east. Darkness of the Ocean, SoutheastThe sand here is rough. Feel the sand.  Our second recurring puzzle: Scavenging! We're given a pile of junk letters, and need to find a relevant word without knowing what that word is. Not exactly a challenge when there are only 21 letters to look at. While searching the debris, I find a stick.It's a splinter of wood, as long as my forearm and thin as my thumbnail. Fragile, but might be useful for something. Convenient! Let's do some backtracking. I use the stick to knock the dream out of the nest of whatevers.Something grabs the end of the stick and snaps it in half. Lost stick. But I recover my dream. quote:Discovered part of dream: the steps of breaking Another memory puzzle, this one comprised of the text snatches we've been fishing out of the sand. Fragments are in the quotes below, and the answer is immediately after. quote:Pain. quote:I am running to school. quote:4. My leg is wrong. I am running to school.My foot hits ice flush with the concrete. The world lurches. I land on my leg. My bag, all my textbooks, land on top of me. Pain. There are five steps to breaking a bone: 1. The crack of pain. 2. Speckles of light before my eyes [this sentence is in gold text]. 3. I want to vomit. 4. My leg is wrong [the word "wrong" is in green text. Our hero seems to care deeply about this one]. 5. I realize there will be another six months of wearing a cast. Six months of sitting in the bleachers, watching the other children run. I have broken so many bones. I am so tired.  Another lovely "ding". That memory didn't sound like it would wreck our leg for good, though - a mystery for another day. We continue our circuit. Darkness of the Ocean, EastThe water is dark. I hear something. I hear crying. Hello? The sounds of crying stop.There is a pause. Then there is speech. This voice is rough and has the tell-tale lisp of a not-quite-human mouth.  I've lost my name. . . . I am sorry. I know a thing or ten of loss. A name is hard to lose. Are you crying because of loss? I cry because I have found a dream.A dream of swimming free through the Web. A weep because this dream of freedom reminds me that I am chained. It is so beautiful, but its beauty tears my heart to pieces. But I cannot look away. Well. That probably belongs to us. Let's be careful and take our time with this fella - we can't exactly give chase in our current state. How are you chained? I am chained by my master's will.Ten seasons ago, measured by the color of the coral and the digital clocks in my master's shop. Ten seasons ago, I swam where I wanted. I could beach myself on the shores of faerie, flirt with the phoenixes in their academy, or peek into the world of men. Ten seasons ago, I lost those places, and found only this darkness. Ten seasons ago, I lost my skin. You're a selkie. What we say here actually does feed into a mechanic later in the game, but it's not one that needs to be optimized, and this decision alone is highly unlikely to change anything. I'll pick the neutral option, since we don't know what kind of person we are yet. That's unfortunate. It is what it is.This dream gives me brief escape. Though it hurts me with longing for true escape. You shouldn't keep something that hurts you. I cannot help myself.You should understand, you are human are you not? I can only presume. I am enough like a human to love what hurts me.Alright, enough screwing around. I need that dream. It's a part of me. It is only one memory.You have others. I want this one. It reminds me of life before my chains. I have no others. I have lost all my memories. Then you can make others.I want this. gently caress this poo poo. So you'll take away a piece of me and trap me in the dark. You're just like your master. I...!No! I... I can feel the water tremble as the selkie flits unhappily back and forth. Fine.Take your memory. It is too painful to look at, anyway. I will go back to looking for darkness, and dreaming my own dreams. I am NOT like my master. No, you are not. Thank you. The water vibrates with rapid movement, and he is gone.Harsh, but it got the job done. Let's take a look at that memory. It is indeed a dream of freedom.The sort of freedom that would tempt a selkie. It's all in pieces, though. Damaged by the fall. quote:aches. quote:I discovered the Web. quote:I am swimming. quote:but fly. quote:in other people's dreams. . . . . .   quote:Discovered part of spell SalveMundi() Now we're getting some decent jumbles, and we learn our name on top of that! Or at least our forum handle, which will have to do for now. Let's head over to the inventory and see what we can do.   Happy, building music plays...  ...And then cancels. Looks like we have to find some light, but if we had light we wouldn't be in this mess. Nothing for it but to complete our circuit. Darkness of the Ocean, NortheastThere is light here. Small motes of moving light. Not enough fo illuminate everything, but it's refreshing to see something. Examine the light. Convenient! Almost like I looped this way on purpose.  Did I mention computer puns? I feel like I mentioned computer puns. Regardless, Pisces doesn't seem to think these are a threat. Let's take it slow. Right now, the lantern phish are scattered into small groups around the edges of this area, keeping their distance from me."wat is ur tru nam?" Wish I knew, buddy. Though I still wouldn't tell you. Let's keep waiting. Lantern phish have collected back into a school. They weave back and forth in hypnotic patterns. I take care not to stare too long."i am forin prinse. gimmie monies"   Nope, don't like that one bit. But now that they're at ease around us, we can strike.  Lantern phish aren't *nice* creatures, and resource management is kind of a big deal in this game. That said, killing is killing. Do we take what we need, or take everything? As I alluded to earlier, this game has something of a morality system. That said, it's not portrayed as a traditional "good/evil" affair, it doesn't reward or punish, and it doesn't really impact the ending. I suggest you ignore it on a first playthrough - decide based on your sense of pragmatism and your conscience. Doopliss fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 00:02
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 Welcome back. Last time, we were hunting for a source of magical light to fuel our first spell, and we had no choice but to steal some from a passing lantern phish. We chose to be merciful and take only what we needed.  A symbolic gesture, perhaps, but we have no memories or friends to tell us what we are. If we want to be a good person, we'd drat well better act like one. Let's take another shot at compiling that spell.  Victory! I have a spell.I can cast it whenever I like. I think I would like to cast it NOW. Cast Spell  Our spell inventory. A modest thing for now, but if we play our cards right we might even get ourselves a scroll bar.  Our first spell fades into existence and pulses gently. I am sitting at the bottom of the ocean.Not the physical ocean. This is the spiritual sea of thoughts and feelings that exists below the material world. The space the soul goes to dream. The birthplace of spirits. Sea++ Look at myself.  We have a name and an appearance. Now we just need a plan. My body must still be alive.My spirit wouldn't exist without a brain. Software can't exist without hardware. I would have fallen into my component parts. Earth, fire, water...mostly water.  Pisces has been through enough poo poo that she might just take that last option, though it's a pretty obvious game over. The other two options have only stylistic differences, but I think we'd rather heal ourselves as much as we can before we return to our body rather than waking up as a 40-year-old amnesiac.  Pieces of me are scattered everywhere, around and above me.I'll find my spells in them. That will help. My first objective should be to find a webship.You need a boat to travel the physical sea. You need a webship to travel this sea. Now that I have light, I can look around and see what I can find.  Hey, the art's back! Trail of footprints ==>The footprints are five-toed and tipped with dots that imply claws.An indent curves between the prints, snakelike. A tail, I would guess. They lead up to the debris where I found that stick, and then depart to the south. Whatever it is, it didn't eat us while we were helpless and blind, so we might as well investigate.  Cliff ==> I look over the cliff edge.Below, there is only utter blackness. There are those who say, if you go deep enough, you begin to rise again. There are stories of a web beyond ours, populated by alien dreams, twisting network threads of strange material, whose origins lie in another world. You know. Cthulhu. Guess that's the southern border of the map, then. Let's see about those footprints.  Curious building ==> This building is made of things that are not building material.One side is constructed entirely of desktop computer towers, stacked like bricks. The rest of the walls are tabletops, webship hull plating, and broken flatscreen TVs, all duct taped together. There are tiny windows made of tablet screens. Inside, I see more junk. Darknet ==> Seems that gathering elements is a big deal in this world. We'll need to keep our eyes open. Neon sign Well, it's not a text adventure without a shop. We don't exactly have money or valuables, but perhaps the owner can help us get our bearings.  A  jaunty tune plays inside the shop. Welcome welcome welcome.Welcome to Packet Rat's Emporium of Gently Used Second Hand Items. We offer quality merchandise at ocean floor prices. Please have a look around and let me know if anything interests you. I'm sure we can make a deal.  Given that we have literally nothing of value on our person, let's start by talking him up.  Generally, when we're looking at a person or puzzle, we'll see a little something like this. Spells and items are pretty self-explanatory. Matters and motives are motes of raw elements, such as that Light mote we used to compile our spell. They're the main resources we need to juggle in this game - for example, if a wall of fire was in our way, we might be able to put it out with some Water motes. Doing so would cost us the Water, though, and this means we generally don't want to spend motes on puzzles unless it's necessary. SalveMundi wouldn't be likely to impress this fella, so let's dive into dialogue.  I can't imagine you get much foot traffic down here. Oh, you would be surprised!When webships crash, where do they go? Down here! And what do they need? Spare parts for their ships! And who has that? Me! You may have noticed, this area has few commercial alternatives to my humble establishment.This high demand coupled with minimal competition makes this a surprisingly lucrative location. My prices follow from that. We could accuse this guy of extorting disaster victims, but we might still need his wares, so it can't hurt to be polite. I see. I am glad you understand! Is the darknet outside yours? Who do you sell to? Oh, a variety of spiritual entities. Fairy nobility. Barons of Hell.Some open sorcerers. Interesting. And how do you make deliveries? I have an arrangement with a kraken. She comes by regularly. Does she take passengers? You know, I don't know?It doesn't hurt to ask. The next scheduled pickup is in five months. Ngh. Nevermind. How much do you charge for Dark? Ooh, that's promising. The height of simplicity!...presuming you have experience manipulating Matter and Motive? I seem to. Then simply go out onto the abyssal plain and search for patches of darkness.Examine them closely and you will find clots of particularly thick black you can pluck out. I will be happy to sell you almost anything in my shop in exchange for them. Alright, we have the makings of a plan. Find a webship carcass, repair it with spare parts from Packet Rat, get the hell out of here. Let's make a bit of a shopping list while we're here. Most of this stuff is the sort of ruined trash you'd expect to see in a junk shop at the bottom of the sea.Meaning, none of it works, but there are parts that could be re-purposed for something else. There are a LOT of webship parts. Everything from hull plating to engine parts. I discover a hidden gem among some old Sierra adventure game floppy disks. A USB flash drive.But no ordinary USB stick. I can tell by the pattern of runes on the side and the aura of constricted Earth and Order that radiates from it. This is a USB Drive of Holding.  This is exactly what I need to transport heavy webship parts.I doubt the Packet Rat knows what this is, or he'd be featuring it as a special. I should definitely buy it. And, finally, the specials.  Oh, how interesting. A sealskin robe, you say. Let's get a price check on that.  That belongs to the selkie, doesn't it? Well no. Not really.It belongs to me. It's a sort of physical contract. As long as I possess it, he is my employee. You're using the word 'employee' very loosely, there."Slave", more like, but we don't need to say that bit out loud. Yes, well.What about him? How much for the skin? As I mentioned before, it's not for sale. Are you sure I couldn't persuade you to part with it for an exorbitant amount of money? Well. We might have to do something about this later. In the meantime, though, we're done here. Let's go exploring westward.  That must be one of those darkness patches Packet Rat mentioned. But first, let's take a look at those sharp shapes to the west. Sharks. Those are sharks.Sharks the size of Buicks. Well, I guess we found the westmost edge of the map as well. Let's check out that darkness.  Now the word searches are getting more serious. . . . . .  By luck, none of the words were generated diagonally, but we still have to do a word search where we don't know what the words are. This gets us three motes of Dark.  More than enough to buy that USB stick we spied earlier, so we do so. The Abyssal Plain is a big, wide open area, so we're going to have to explore this systematically. We'll start in the southwest, and then do sweeps from north to south until we find the eastmost end.  Two screens north of the corner, we find another patch of blackness. . . . . .  This one appears to be bugged - finding a mote resets the rest of the puzzle, and we can also reset at will. After finding the other two, the last word is revealed as "somber".  Seamount ==> A seamount is a mountain rising from the ocean floor that does not reach to the water's surface.Seamounts that do reach the water's surface are what we like to call 'islands'. And there's the northmost corner of the map. Let's take a look at that darknet we glimpsed to the east.  It costs us motes to compile a spell, but once it's compiled we can cast it as many times as we want. You can solve a lot of puzzles in this game through opposite elements, so let's try that SalveMundi spell from earlier. I cast SalveMundi.I summon the glowing letters and press them against the side of the darknet. The darkness hisses and steams, melting under the focused power of its opposite matter.  No light to spare at the moment. I brand the phrase HELLO WORLD into the side of the darknet, and then tear the scraps of dimness away until it is a hole I can fit through. Looks like we stumbled on one of Packet Rat's finds. Our find now. Let's take a closer look at this baby. This used to be a Skyhook Air, skimmer model. You can tell by the pomegranate logo engraved in the side.It's small and sleek. The sides taper from flared wings into a spear-point of a bow. That spear-point is slightly crumpled from impact with the seamount. This model is fast, but very small and not durable at all. Basically just a cockpit. It will serve if I plan a straight sprint up to the surface with no exploring along the way. The white chassis is stained and dented, but all of the sensitive machinery is pressed into its hull, which doesn't seem to be breached. Skyhook webships are hell to repair, but if the proprietary hull tech is intact, I can just hook up an engine and a sail.I'd need some spare parts to fix the cockpit cover, and the keyboard controls. All in all, I would need an engine, a sail, and 8 parts to fix this webship. It's a start. Not exactly the most robust ship, but it'll get us out of here if we have no other options. We can search the ship in more detail later, but for now let's take a look at the debris around it. I search the debris for useful parts.The darknet makes it hard to see, and I'm sure I'm missing half of what's here.  These early searches really don't mess around. . . . . .   As Pisces suggested earlier, all ship parts other than engines and sails are interchangeable with one-another. We could find more if we had some Light on hand, but we made our choice, and trading Light for ship parts might not be a wise investment regardless. We begin sweeping back south.  Search engine ==> This is a search engine--a drone constructed to search and catalog interesting items and places in the Web.It will search until its data stores are full, then return to whoever made it and upload what it found. You don't see too many of these in the Deep Web. They tend to get eaten. The most interesting thing about it, in my eyes, is that it's powered by a quality engine that I could easily re-purpose for a webship.I can see its power cords dangling from its underbelly. If I can disconnect them, it will power down. Not much we can do with this right now, but if we could plunder this thing it would improve our webship, plus it means we don't have to give money to Packet Rat.  Just south of the search engine is a small whirlpool with some Water motes hidden inside.  The word "Fluid" appeared mid-search - I suspect these weren't meant to be solved all in one go. The last one I can't find to save my life - we'll worry about that later. What was that "Chaos" one, though?  We manage to pull some Chaos from the unpredictable swirls. Two Water, one Chaos, and maybe one more Water later if we can find it. We find the shop again at the southmost edge of this column, so we start our next sweep north.  A ghost and (presumably) its corpse. Let's save the most interesting link for last and take a look at that body. A half decomposed body. Mostly skeleton.It clutches a sword in one hand. sword ==> Long, broad and shockingly sharp for lying at the bottom of the ocean for who knows how long. I find a mote of Death clinging to the corpse. Gained 1 Death Death motes are a very versatile tool for "solving" most living "puzzles" we encounter. But enough of that - let's check out the main attraction.  Ghosts are a slowly crumbling framework of old thoughts and stale feelings.This ghost is using my memory as a crutch to hold up its fading existence. Clinging to scraps of my identity because it has none of its own. I could just take my memory.Send the ghost back to the restless sleep of the not-quite-dead. That's not as bad as it sounds. It's debatable whether ghosts are conscious at all. Many consider them to be videos on repeat, with some ability to free-associate. Wouldn't pass the Turing test. They say that exorcism is more upkeep than mercy.  This is BEL/S, a fire elemental bound to C++ code and the protagonist of Open Sorcery 1. She'll mark information from the first game that we might want to know.In this case, we suspect there's a bit more to ghosts than Pisces thinks. I could try to put it to rest.All ghosts 'want' something. Have some input that will satisfy their derelict emotional framework. Getting that input lets them to do whatever it is souls do when they are done being alive.  What will it be? Doopliss fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 20:39
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 Welcome back. Last time, we were faced with an ethical dilemma of whether to Do The Content or Not Do The Content, and we bravely chose to do the content. Look, they can't all be deep quandaries.  This is going to be a bit of an undertaking. Now that we know what we're getting into, the game gives us chance to back out of this and just take the memory.  Once I know more about the ghost, I can talk to it and tell it what I discovered.I'm on this. We will not be deterred. Step 1, talk to the ghost. This ghost is blanched white, but there is a splotch of red on its head, leaking down the body in rivulets.Always bleeding.  A head injury, or just ghostly distortion? Who are you? Ahm...Ah ahm... Apparently frustrated, the ghost brandishes its sword.I start to back away, but it seems finished. Apparently that was my answer. What do you want? Car.Car. Car. Old. That's rather random. How did you get here? B. Bb. Oat. Bboat.Teeth fish. The ghost abruptly hefts the spectral sword and slams it into the sand.It leaves an imprint. DED.Thn. Cr...ash. The ghost stutters, and its head lolls. It clutches at the blossom of red on its forehead.Starting to think this is not productive. Let's head back to the Packet Rat and see if we can get better information from someone who's confirmed sapient.  The selkie's started lurking around Packet Rat's shop. Hopefully he doesn't hold a grudge about the whole "comparing him to the person currently enslaving him" thing.  Let's avoid committing for now. We can figure out how to address the whole "slavery" thing, if at all, once we're a bit better equipped. Have you seen any other human souls around here? Yes. Will you tell me about them? Yes. ...go on? Three ships. If they haven't been totaled or scavenged into uselessness, we'll be spoiled for choice.  Nice of him to tell us about their scents. We'll make a note of that.  That is the story, as I saw it.Not just three ships, but three fatalities. And succumbing to her wounds on the plain does match what the ghost told us. While we're here, let's learn a bit about our friendly neighbourhood merchant. Can you tell me where the Packet Rat gets his parts? Certainly.He rips them from the husks of drowned ships. He is always happy to see a crash. For him, it means customers or spare parts. Does he ever cause the ships to sink? No.He does not go that far. He is far too cowardly. In case we needed more confirmation that Packet Rat is an rear end in a top hat, we've obtained it - not that the selkie's an unbiased source. Let's see if the Packet Rat can fill in some of the blanks for us. Have you had any other customers come by lately? Well, I believe it was a few months ago.I actually had three in quick succession. Busy time. Can you describe them? If you wish?The first was a human, they were all humans. She was round and brown colored. She came in looking for parts and I sold some to her. The second arrived about a week later.She was a troublemaker. Very big. Yelled a lot. But made no sense. Couldn't talk right. Kept asking for a carol, as if it were, what is the thing, Christmas? Also bled on the merchandise. I told her she was to leave and not come back until her head was no longer bleeding. That's definitely our girl.  Pretty clear by now that moralizing at Packet Rat is a waste of breath. Do you remember any of their names? Ah, no. Apologies. I have no memory for human names. I should use that line in the future. Sort of a less productive version of what the selkie told us, but he did confirm that we're dealing with the ship that crashed into the seamount. And come to think of it, the ship we found last update was right next to the seamount. Let's take a look.  I guess you could say it's pretty Spartan.   These dolls are clearly handmade. Their faces are embroidered and they have tiny outfits.One is sewn of white cotton and has a tiny hand-stitched leather jacket. One is made of brown muslin. It has a tiny dress of patterned flowers.  There's a bit more to the compartments in the back. We'll go from top to bottom. The first cabinet contains sewing supplies. This cabinet contains a half-repaired purple blouse, and an incomplete patchwork rabbit made entirely out of scraps of lavender cloth. This cabinet contains clothes. Blouses, jeans, and a spare cloak. This cabinet contains a whetstone, oil, renaissance wax, and paper towels. I discover a plan for sewing a websail.This could be useful. I take it. Sewing a websail under these conditions seems optimistic, but we have the protagonist sense for relevant items.  I guess if you're an explorer down here, you probably have some motes stored away. This cabinet contains a stack of music CDs.==> Everything from Aida to Wicked. And that's it for the cabinets. We'll check the fridge and the coffee machine and see where we stand. This is a rather expensive-looking coffee machine.Many of the parts have been removed, but there is still a filter full of ground beans that smell both strong and rotten.  And that's all the information there is on the Ghost of a Warrior. Hopefully it's enough.  As mentioned previously, we need to give this ghost five memories to remind her (it?) of its (hers?) previous life - one for each external sense. We get a bunch of options for each sense, and we need to answer each one correctly based on the information we've gathered. We can try this puzzle as many times as we want, and we get a bit of feedback for correct memories. For those who want to play along, I'll list the options for each sense right below. The correct answer will follow. Taste posted:Mint tea Sound posted:The comforting buzz of bees Touch posted:Dirt between your fingers and leaves brushing your face Sight posted:Blood Scarlet Smell posted:Fresh bread. . . . . . Remember the taste of chicken and tic tacs.Remember the quick and clever rhymes of musical theater. Remember the roughness of cloth and the bite of a misdirected needle. Remember the sight of blood scarlet. Remember the smell of strong coffee. The only cheeky one there was the colour - the selkie gave "blood" to us as a scent, but we have coffee to fill that hole. I finish my litany of sensation.I examine the ghost. It is waking up.  The ghost has transformed from a vague white silhouette into a tall, imposing woman, wielding a sword and wearing a white cloak.Her hair is fiery red. It blends with the blood still forever leaking from her head-wound. She is looking directly at me. She nods. What do you want? We're not really sure where to find a worthy foe for her to take vengeance on, and we certainly don't know where her lost love is. We'll continue our search of the Plain.  Finishing our sweep to the north and heading east, we run into something strange. On closer inspection I discover that the white lump is a huge octopus, albino white and translucent.It has pressed itself into the crease where seamount meets sand. It is not having much luck since it is the size of a washing machine. I am perplexed for a moment.I have seen little sea-life. My bright glowing letters scare off creatures accustomed to perfect darkness. Then I see that the octopus has only six arms--two less than its title dictates. And its mantle is half-crushed, oozing faintly blue liquid into the water. It is dying.  For all we know, Pisces might have been a healer in her past life, but she's not one now. At least we can give it some comfort. Everything will be all right?This cephalopod has possibly fatal wounds. I will not give false comfort. Even to octopuses. At least we can, uh... Put it out of its misery? No.It's helpless and killing it would serve no purpose. Pisces is still her own character, it seems, and her opinions will sometimes outweigh ours. For now, there's nothing for it but to leave the octopus to its fate.  We find another patch of darkness just to the south. . . . . .  Dark and dark, huh? We rediscover the crash site and Packet Rat's footprints. One more screen east.  More dark. Outside the Abyssal Plain you're lucky to find two or three word searches in a zone - Packet Rat knows how to choose his locations. . . . . .  Again, I miss a Dark. Don't even worry about it.  Ooh, this is new. These are hydrothermal vents. Black smokers, which are the only vents found this deep.In the real ocean, these are located between tectonic plates, where the mantle of the planet bubbles up hot and boils the seawater. In the Sea++, they crop up over dense supplies of Fire matter. Collect Fire matter.  Pisces has a pretty impressive amount of willpower and pain tolerance. We can harvest quite a bit of Fire from here, but we'll be paying for it with health. Should we hold off on harvesting Fire, harvest a bit of Fire, or harvest a lot of Fire?
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Feb 16, 2021 02:59
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knaelidos posted:I’ve played the first game and loved it, but I’ll wait for a sale or something before I’ll get the sequel. Thanks so much for covering it.
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Feb 16, 2021 16:34
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 Last time, we chose not to stick our hand in a geothermal vent and see how much fire we can pull out before the hand burns off - at least, not until we find a more efficient way of doing so. You're more disciplined than I am. We'll make a note of the vents for later.  As we swing along the seamount for our next sweep, we find another ghost. I wonder how common it is to leave a ghost when you die.  I will never turn down free motes, even if they're motes of congealed Death scavenged from a literal corpse. Look like we have a bit more looting to do for this fella, though.  These are pretty old.And cookies don't travel from site to site very well. They'll probably crumble away if I travel with them. We could just eat them - it's well documented that tasty snacks can heal all sorts of spiritual injury - but that greyed-out option is intriguing. Let's hold off until we figure out what that is and see what we can glean from this ghost.  The ghost's head and limbs are disproportionately small compared to its torso and arms.It was either deformed, or died wearing a bulky coat. It's curled in on itself in a posture of intense grief. Given the corpse is right there and wearing a heavy leather jacket, we can make a pretty safe guess on this one. Let's see if it's feeling talkative.  This could be a glitch in the ghost's nature, but judging by our experience with the warrior ghost it's more likely that it was just a massive nerd in life. Who are you? I am nobody. Who are you?Are you nobody too? I am Pisces.Oh.The moon is distant from the sea. And yet with amber hands She leads him, docile as a boy, Along appointed sands. Are you referencing my name? Starfish. Yes. Free association. Well done.What do you want? They left me, sweet, two legacies.Two legacies of love A Heavenly Father would content had He the offer of. They left me boundaries of pain capacious as the sea Between eternity and time. Their consciousness and me. Not sure we can work with that. Hopefully the poet will be a bit more lucid once we restore its awareness. How did you end up here? I see. Seems like this is the third ghost, who crashed near the cliff. Let's see if he remembers anything about the warrior. I gave myself to her, and took herself for pay.The solemn contract of a life was ratified this way. Shall I alter? When the hills do. Shall she falter? When the sun questions if his glory be the perfect one. My worthiness is all my doubt. Her merit all my fear.Contrasting which, my qualities do lowlier appear. That I should insufficient prove for her beloved need Is the chiefest apprehension within my loving creed. So I, the undivine abode of her elect content Conform my soul as 'twere a church unto her sacrament. The ghost seems to shake, as if it might come apart at the seams.But it recovers itself just in time. It sits holding itself, and quivering. He seems to care a lot about the warrior, but it also sounds like he felt equally compelled by both of the crashes. We should probably make tracks before we upset him any further.  A new text style. The text changes as we wait on this screen, as well as any of the child screens. The glow is actually glowing letters.The letters are like mine, but crudely formed. Like they weren't written, but grown. The letters read: YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON. Uh oh. The letters are coming closer.Crap. Let's get out of here.  That was a fully grown angler phish, and it will mess us up if we stay on that screen for too long. Sadly, we can't get a bead on it until it enters the range of our light, and it's quick enough to take a nasty chunk out of us before we can react. Come to think of it, perhaps the warrior could defeat it if she chose the path of revenge. Angler phish killed the lady she was following, after all. With the angler phish gone, we could investigate the coral forest to our heart's content.  Conveniently, the poet's ship crashed immediately south of us. As before, we can burn our way in with SalveMundi.  This barnacle-covered brick is a UFOware Heavy Debugger.This tank of a webship is heavily fortified. It's not fast, but generally doesn't need to be--it can take a beating. It's not quite as fast as that Skyhook we investigated earlier, but it's actually pretty competitive on speed. The big thing is that it would take a *lot* of ship parts to get running.  Speaking of webship parts, this one has four parts available due to its increased size. That also means we'd find extra ship parts if we burned the darknet up more thoroughly, though we don't currently have that option. . . . . .  Scavenging these ships is often pretty gentle, because the words tend to spawn horizontally. This time we have three areas to explore - the storage area, the cabin and the cockpit.  All of the jewel cases are labeled:Second Series by Edmund Graves The cover art is a skeletal bird wreathed in black daffodils. Clutched in its talons is a long parchment with the tagline: Hope is the thing with feathers. It's durable as gently caress. Appropriately metal. Not familiar with any musicians by that name, though. Let's check out the cabin.  A sleek, black electric guitar is hidden under the bed.Take the guitar.  That's the spirit, Pisces. Last stop is the cockpit.  Hauntingly distorted guitars screech out of the speakers. Someone screams the lyrics:NO RACK CAN TORTURE ME! MY SOUL'S AT LIBERTY! BEHIND THIS MORTAL BONE THERE KNITS A BOLDER ONE! I turn it off quickly. That's very loud.Not the sort of lyrics I normally expect from screamo. Seems like it might match Graves' CD cases, though. And with that, we're done here. We exit the ship, quickly scurry past the coral forest, and say hi to the poet. Same deal as last time. Taste posted:Mint tea Sound posted:The comforting buzz of bees Touch posted:Dirt between your fingers and leaves brushing your face Sight posted:Blood Scarlet Smell posted:Fresh bread. . . . . . Remember the taste of Pop Tarts.Remember the whine of distorted guitars and scream of heavy metal lyrics. Remember smooth wood and the distant dig of guitar strings on callouses. Remember the sight of Midnight Black.I think we're supposed to infer this from the electric guitar being black, and perhaps the black daffodils on Graves' CD cases - judging by the "E" on the sticky note and Graves' sort of esoteric lyrics, it's likely the ghost actually is Edmund Graves. Remember the smell of leather.The selkie mentioned the "man" smelling like leather, and we could also infer from the leather jacket.  He ate and drank the precious words. His spirit grew robust.He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was dust. Seems pretty much the same to me, frankly.  What do you want? They left me, sweet, two legacies.Two legacies of love. If this boundary, time, cruel master, capacious as the sea, Is drawn for all eternity between those two and me... A bit of variance in this one as the poet processes. The ghost wavers. He seems about to cry again, but stops himself. As it happens, we already have his instrument with us. Do we fulfill the poet's last wish, or gently caress that poo poo, we're reuniting the ghost polycule? Doopliss fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 03:12
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 Welcome back. Last time, we were moved by the poet's plight and decided to help the three ghosts spend their afterlives in domestic bliss. Or maybe it's some kind of weird unfortunate love triangle, but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.  First order of business, free memory! I start picking up the pieces.As I do, I notice that they have fallen in a very particular way. They form a shape.  Is that kanji?I don't know what that symbol means. But as I look at it, dread settles cold in my gut. My right leg aches. The game never calls back to this directly, but the dominant theory is that this is kanji for "fire". If it is connected to our right leg, it's likely not what blasted us down here. Pisces is just a regular old trauma magnet. I finish gathering the pieces quickly.And I put them back together.  . . . . . Tarot cards. Tea leaves.Crystal balls and tortoise neck bones. Celtic runes and dove entrails. Humans are terrible at predicting the future.So is magic. Prophecy is a chump's game because offree will, infinite possibility, and innumerable variables.No one really knows why. It's just hard.  A simple three-parter, and a short lesson on prophetic magic. The spell code implies we might even be getting access to some, if we can find the other pieces.  The final webship. By process of elimination, this belonged to the first victim - the one the selkie referred to as "the lady".  As before, we burn our way in and scavenge what parts Packet Rat hasn't got to yet. . . . . .  These might be hardcoded to spawn horizontally, or perhaps it heavily favours horizontals because of how it picks starting letters. Despite a bunch of refreshes, it seems consistent. On to the ship itself.  The Schooner isn't actually any faster than the Debugger. It's a bit less robust and significantly cheaper to repair, but it can still travel to places that would crumple the Skyhook. I enter the ship.The Lenasus has a cockpit and a cabin. Both have been painted rose pink. Same colour as the sticky notes. We'll start with the cockpit.  For raw amount of words and links, the Schooner actually comes in behind the Skyhook. Maybe we'll have better luck with the cabin.  I find a mote of Earth in one of the pots.I gain one Earth. Aside from dirt and stone, Earth also represents ice. Basically, if you need a solid block of stuff, Earth is your go-to. As for the teapot... The dregs of ancient tea coat the bottom of the pot.It smells intensely of mint. And that's all we've got for the Lenasus Schooner. Now all that's left is to find the ghost.  The anemones are the most colorful things I've seen on the ocean floor.Sky blue. Sunshine yellow. Autumn red. Rose pink. Colors from another world. And we do find her, just one screen north of the schooner.  The siren call of Death motes draws us to the corpse first. Odd to see plants growing in the body, though - I thought these three only died a few months ago.  The ghost's lower body blurs with the anemones, almost as if it is part of them.Its fingers wriggle strangely, bonelessly, like tentacles. Its hair floats through the air, moving of its own accord. Tasting the water around. I think this spirit used to be a Life sorcerer. They sometimes fuse with the local flora, when they die, and sometimes are even reborn through them. There's our explanation for the plants.  Who are you? The ghost touches the anemone about it.Affectionately. Like a mother. I assume she's mute due to the circumstances of her death. Or perhaps she was always mute. What do you want? The ghost touches the anemone about it.But that's not quite enough. It looks straight up. It puts its hand over where its heart would be. It reaches up, as if straining towards the surface. It slumps back down and sighs. It consoles itself by petting its anemone. How did you get here? The ghost points to the south.She's earning the title "gardener", and she clearly misses someone up there, but that's about all we can glean from this.  This should be our final round. Taste posted:Mint tea Sound posted:The comforting buzz of bees Touch posted:Dirt between your fingers and leaves brushing your face Sight posted:Blood Scarlet Smell posted:Fresh bread. . . . . . Remember the taste of mint tea. Remember the comforting buzz of bees.A guess, but it fits her style and it fits the window decal. Remember dirt between your fingers and leaves brushing your face.Not much conjecture needed on that one, even aside from the potted plants in the ship. Remember the sight of cherry-blossom pink.Remember the smell of mint.  The ghost blinks.She laughs. She plunges her arms into the mound of anemones.  Life is less reliably useful than Death, but also less inherently harmful. It can heal injuries and make plants flourish.  I'm not even sure we're dealing with a ghost anymore, but we ask what she wants for formality's sake.  That's one way of getting our memory back, I suppose. As it happens, we have good news for her.  I've been playing a little coy with the ghosts' dialogue for the sake of pacing. All of these options appear for every awakened ghost, even if we haven't unlocked the options yet, and we'd get a big "ARE YOU SURE" dialogue if we took any of the options that locked the others out. We could've reunited the ghosts with each other one by one, and they'd have been briefly happy about it, but it wouldn't give them peace and they'd inevitably get dragged back to their bodies. We've made our choice, of course.  As they vanish, there is an outpouring of love.Gained 3 Love As they vanish, I hear faint words.  When the chaos is done, the Gardener presses my memories into my hands.All jumbled together. I'll have to sort them out. Here's our first memory that might take a bit of noodling. It won't be the last by any means. quote:returns 28 rows quote:SELECT Omens FROM dbo.Prophecy quote:returns 0 rows  Seems like Pisces has an interest in apocalypses. Discovered part of spell Omini()Future currentFuture = rand.generateFuture(); print(currentFuture.toString()); Collected 2 of 3 parts of this spell.  There are certain mechanical advantages to helping the ghosts find peace on an individual basis instead. The Warrior would have given us free entry into the coral forest from last update, the Poet would have given us a kickin' rad enchanted guitar for later (the ordinary guitar still has its uses, though), and the Gardener would have given us a single mote of Love for putting the other two ghosts to rest. Still, this seems like the happier ending. Now that the hubbub's out of the way, let's check on the Gardener before we carry on.  Doesn't look like any of them are going to be moving on any time soon.  We've built ourselves a pretty hefty inventory over the last few updates. Love is mainly useful for pacifying threats that we don't want to actually kill. Chaos breeds change, breaks stagnation, and, more pragmatically, fucks up machines. Order, I suppose, does the opposite.  Right now, though, I'm most interested in that Life mote. As you may recall, we previously ran into a dying octopus on the seamount. At the time, there wasn't anything we could do, but the calculus is a bit different now. A single Life mote won't grow back severed limbs - I'm not sure anything can do that - but it would certainly help. Should we hold on to the Life, heal the octopus and eat some web cookies, or heal the octopus and feed it the web cookies?
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Feb 17, 2021 22:31
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 Welcome back. Last time we achieved a happy ending to our first sidequest, and received a big old pile of motes as a reward. Today, we've decided to continue our Nisces playthrough by nursing a dying octopus back to health.  We also get our first look at the Matters and Motives interface. Each matter and motive has its opposite, and they're arranged opposite one-another from left to right. In this case, Life is the only mote that will really achieve anything.  I watch the octopus for a little while.I didn't cast a magic spell, so there's no miracle reconstruction of flesh or sudden sprouting of new arms. This is a skill I regret not having. ==> I suspect from my regret that there is a reason I never will. If it was that easy, I suppose our leg wouldn't have any problems. Eventually, the octopus detaches itself from the seamountainside and plops onto the sand.Its gills flutter evenly. The will to live is a powerful thing.  I mean yes, *obviously* we're petting the octopus and having it follow us, but let's at least assess things first. I check on the octopus' wounds.Its mantle is still damaged, but it isn't bleeding anymore. It has six arms and two stumps. The stumps ooze a little. Seems like will to live was about all we gave it.  I feel like Abigail Corfman knows what players like, and players like pet octopodes. Speaking of "pet octopodes"... I pet the octopus.Its skin is like slimy velvet. It pets me back, suckers curling around my wrists and arms. I guess petting an octopus might not actually be pleasant, but it's the thought that counts.  Our new friend isn't in immediate danger of keeling over, but I wouldn't call it robust. Maybe some adventure game food will improve its health.  I check on the octopus' wounds.Its mantle has healed and looks to be the right shape again. It has six arms and two stumps. The stumps are entirely healed over. Eating those ourselves would have taken us back above half health. Still, seems like our cephalobud got more out of it than we would have - it seems like it's about as healthy as it will ever be.  Healthy enough... FOR BATTLE. I try to subdue the search engine with physical force.It catches me easily with its spider legs. The octopus immediately imitates me and attempts to grapple the search engine. It has much better luck. And more arms.  I detach the engine from the frame.I upload it into my USB Drive of Holding. Gained search engine. Alright, not exactly a pitched battle, but it gets us a *very* useful piece of kit for our webship. We'll discuss exactly how useful later, but it definitely means one fewer big-ticket items we need to spend Darkness on.  Since the octopus seemed dissatisfied, we take it over to the coral forest for round 2. We appear to have misread our friend's mood.  The octopus wins. It wrestles and pulls and guts the phish with its beak.It rests on the ground for a moment. Bite marks cover its arms. It crawls over to me. It offers me the angler phish corpse. Aww. It's sharing. Our friend is victorious! Thanks to the web cookies, it won with only superficial wounds. If the octopus was coming into this fight hungry, it would've been a double KO. The octopus eats the angler phish.I harvest a mote of light from its lure. Gained 1 Light And with the forest's guardian down, we have free rein of the place. As always, we'll start by looking around.  We're not entirely clear on what "necromancy" means in this setting, but Death motes govern decay and diminishment in all its forms. It's likely not friendly. This seems sort of unsafe, but we choose to ignore the octopus' instincts and poke around. What kind of hero would we be if we left areas unexplored?  I examine the webbing, and find meaning in it.There are line art drawings, stitched out of silk. Schools of fish. The angler in its lair. A dark cave. A falling figure. I have found a colony of artists. Or perhaps not artists.Record keepers. None of this stuff is original. They're just mimicking what they see.  Fortunately, they don't seem interested in killing us. Let's see if we can make contact. I try to communicate with the spiders, but quickly give up.They stare at me, unresponsive. It's just a touch creepy. Maybe they're just suspicious of us. Maybe a Love mote will reassure them.  I gather all of the web-spun motes, picking them like blackberries out of the spider web.I end up with a sizable pile. Gained web motes. These are shaped like motes, but clearly spun of webbing.  They're very proactive copycats. I wonder how they'd handle something a bit more sophisticated.  And there's our other necessary ship part. Not quite as splendid as the engine, but spidersilk is very sturdy, and it'll serve us well on our way out of the Abyssal Plain.  With that diversion out of the way, we return to our sweep and stumble on a promising looking cave.  Ooh, another free memo-waaaaait a second.  Stargazer ==> This fish is called a Stargazer because its eyes are on top of its head.Do not let the sweet name fool you. It is venomous, generates electric shocks, and is widely regarded as one of the meanest things in creation. On my first playthrough, I absolutely glee-clicked the memory before I even read the rest of that screen. LP Pisces is smarter.  Once we're aware of the threat, it's pretty easily dealt with. Nothing down here likes light, and things lurking in caves like light even less. The memory is ours for the taking. quote:complete certainty. quote:NOW is the alchemical process of converting quote:I've always liked throwing rocks at things quote:PROPHESY is the alchemical process quote:and guessing about what makes a noise. . . . . . NOW is the alchemical process of convertingutter mystery into complete certainty. PROPHESY is the alchemical processof throwing rocks into the dark and guessing about what makes a noise. I've always liked throwing rocks at thingsand I don't mind a profession that admits its professionals are charlatans.  With this, we're set to compile our second spell. Compiling it requires a mote of Dark, which aren't exactly in short supply down here.  Omini is our hint spell. It'll give us advice about whatever we cast it on, generally in cryptic haiku form. As we'll see shortly, it's a very important spell.  And that "very boring and repetitive" area represents the east edge of the map. We can travel as far as we want that way, and the game will keep proper track, though eventually it will get annoyed and offer us a fast travel option back into terrain with content in it. Let's check out that darkness patch.  Much like as we've seen before. Two of these are simple enough, but the third word here is kind of cheeky. Maybe we can finally get some value out of that "cast a spell" option. . . . . .  Omini is how we solve these puzzles without losing our mind. It'll give us a full list of the words in each word search, downgrading us from crossword-style word search to junior word search.  So much simpler. In the future, I'll include the prophesied words in spoiler tags so you can cater to your own difficulty. This is why I've been willing to miss words in past updates instead of toughing it out.  Speaking of, I just went back and solved all the other word searches. Liberating!  Finally, we come to the last relevant object in the Abyssal Plain. You see? "Inkjet" referred to this jet black ink on the ground. It wasn't me failing to come up with an octopus pun at all. This darkness source gets its own art asset, but armed with Omini it will succumb like all the others.  Omini also lets me more reliably warn you when one of the words doesn't spawn properly. On this screen, there are only three words to find. Prophesied: nocturnal, caliginous, tenebrous,  Despite sifting all the motes out, the rest of the liquid darkness remains. Perhaps Omini will give us some insight into why this pool's special.  Things look good in black.And some things look valuable when they appear black Or perhaps it won't. The hint might be miscalibrated, or it might refer to resources we haven't acquired yet. We can't say until we figure it out.  Having fully explored what's likely one of the most Dark-rich regions in the Deep Web, we've made it... 1.7% of the way to buying the selkie's skin. I think we have to assume that buying the selkie out of slavery honestly isn't on the table. That doesn't mean we're out of options, of course. We could keep our eyes open for other solutions elsewhere in the Deep Web, or we could "buy" the selkie's freedom for a much more affordable three Death motes. It's not as if Packet Rat doesn't deserve it. Should we kill the slaver, leave the Packet Rat be for now, or [UNLOCKED] find some way to rescue the selkie non-violently? [LOCKED] options are my obnoxious form of thread participation gameplay - these are puzzle solutions that we have all the resources for, but I want to see if y'all can think of it. Mention how we'd actually achieve this option in the thread, and the option will unlock for voting. These aren't necessarily the best outcomes, but they are the less obvious ones. This one got solved instantly, and is now [UNLOCKED]. Doopliss fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Feb 19, 2021 |
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Feb 19, 2021 01:24
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 Welcome back. Last time, we found a way of rescuing the selkie without just up and murdering Packet Rat. Believe it or not, I cut dialogue from this puzzle - we could have walked right up to the selkie and said "hey, I feel like defrauding your boss" and he would reply "sweet, I suggest these weird coral spiders who copy stuff you show to them".  I'm still on Team Kill Packet Rat myself, but this gets the job done. Maybe his buyers will kill him when he tries to offload this Dark. Regardless, it's time to pay him a visit.  Not doing yourself any favors there, Rat.  I drop the giant mound of counterfeit darkness onto the counter.The Packet Rat goggles at it. Lost counterfeit darkness.  He unlocks the SPECIALS cabinet.He takes out the sealskin robe. He hands it to me. Gained sealskin robe. I will miss the passive income.But I'm sure I will make it up in investments. Do tell him goodbye. I hate goodbyes.  This presents a secondary dilemma. We currently have 10 ship parts, and we can only get up to 14 by spending our Light mote. Repairing the best webship requires a whopping 20 ship parts, and Packet Rat happens to have 10 parts scattered around his shop. Packet Rat may be a predator, but we've hurt him a lot already, and if we also steal his supply it might significantly hurt his business long-term.  Pff nahhhh, we're robbing this fucker blind. We should probably leave before he comes back regardless.  We're confronted immediately.  We choose "give him his coat" on the theory that, because it has the fewest syllables, it's the actual fastest option.  Finally he looks back down at me.He swims back down, coat wrapped around his shoulders. He stays a yard away, reminding me more of a wild animal than ever before. What a strange human you are.Why did you do this? You gain nothing. I know how painful it is to be missing a part of yourself. The selkie pulls his coat tighter about him, and I can see it start to creep over his skin, transforming him into a seal. Now I cannot wait.I must swim again. Goodbye.  And now, for the time being, we're finished with the Abyssal Plain. We have our choice of webships to get us out of here, and I'll summarize them at the end of the update, but for purposes of demonstration we're going to take the schooner.   More frustration than excitement, it seems.  Tragically, octopodes can't breathe webship atmosphere. Our time together was precious short, but we'll carry the memory of it in our hearts for the rest of our lives.  The Deep Web music is easygoing but catchy. I rise into the dim waters of the Deep Web.I shut off the short burst engines and close my game. I float free, buffeted lightly by errant currents of emotion. I feel a faint pull upwards.My body drawing me back towards it. Straight up is the path of least resistance. I can use my connection to my body as a line to draw my ship upwards. But if I go straight up, I won't recover all of my memories.I'll need Matters and Motives to power the ship if I want to explore. We'll have to see about that, Pisces. Quality engines and sails will make traveling easier.I take readings of the surrounding waters. I detect currents that link me to four nearby IP addresses. Time to choose.  We've unlocked the world map. Traveling to previously-visited IP addresses doesn't cost us anything, so we're not at risk of missing zones if we don't plan our route well - we actually *can* travel straight up, and it won't make it harder for us to dip back down later. Here are our potential destinations:  When we select a zone, we get a description of its travel difficulty, as well as a concealed list of content warnings. I'll put them behind spoiler tags for those who like to go in blind and aren't sensitive to nasty content, but you might also find them a fun form of scouting or foreshadowing. 3.199.32.2 (Up) Content Warnings: ...................None...................  000.000.00.0 (Down) Content Warnings: Spiders, Being unable to trust your senses  374.7.4.3 (East) Content Warnings: ...................None...................  10.101.010.10 (West) Content Warnings: ...................None................... We're going to end this update with two choices. First, do we travel up, down, east, or west? Second, I picked the Schooner to get the update to a reasonable length, but this is an important choice for our future plans. Our options are as follows: The Skyhook is small, fast and light. It will give us a small speed bonus during travel, which can let us move around more efficiently. However, it also takes more damage than other ships, and moving efficiently sometimes involves tanking some damage. In addition, it is not at all designed for exploration, and its flimsiness will straight-up stop us traveling to at least one sub-zone and delay another. The Schooner is the standard everything else is compared against. No buffs, no debuffs. Eventually, it can travel anywhere in the Sea++, though one sub-zone will be off limits until we find a top-of-the-line engine. The Debugger is a fortress that happens to be able to sail. It's no less nimble then the Schooner, but it can visit every area right from factory default, and it gives us some modest damage reduction to boot. The real cost to this ship is the parts needed to repair it - if we take the Debugger, we'll be setting off with zero ship parts left in reserve. If any mishaps happen, instead of the ship taking damage, *we* take damage. We'll make up the damage difference in the long term, but we'll need to walk gingerly until we find more ship parts elsewhere. Which direction? Which ship?
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Feb 20, 2021 00:40
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I'm going to call the voting in favour of the Debugger, and say that the next vote decides our direction. If the next voter picks east for some reason, I will literally resolve it randomly.
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Feb 20, 2021 15:31
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Active content warnings: Spiders, Not being able to trust your senses  Welcome back. Last time, we rescued the selkie and settled on the Heavy Debugger for our chariot. We were a bit less decisive on our next destination, and managed to split the vote between all four options.  Our ship choice rewards us with a properly bloated Steam catalogue. We settle on Puzzle Pirates - that game was my goddamn childhood - though it doesn't give us any new text. With a split vote, we left our fate in random.org's hands, and decided to travel down. This is one of the two directions marked "difficult", as well as the only starting location with associated content warnings. We're starting off in the literal and metaphorical deep end.  "Momentum" is basically progress. At the end of every "turn" of webship travel, our momentum increases by an amount based on our websail, engine, and whatever event occurred on that turn. If our momentum exceeds the target momentum, we arrive. If it doesn't, we enter another turn of play. We put on the Deep Web tune and set off. Speaking of events, here's our first one. The Tutorial Fish is a lovable fellow who will take the time to explain whatever we're doing to him. The Tutorial Fish seems very orderly, so let's try hitting him with a Chaos mote.  Tutorial Fish is still remarkably relaxed about it, but this solution would still put us down a mote. Maybe we can do better. We click that "use ship equipment" button and select the Search Engine.  Here's why the Search Engine is such a big deal. It lets us duplicate the effects of a mote without actually spending anything. We might find better engines as the game continues, but the Search Engine's Order effect will always be there for us. Still, we might want to use our Search Engine later in the voyage, and the Tutorial Fish doesn't actually seem like a threat that needs resolving. Now that we've demonstrated that we've learned from him, maybe we can just leave.  Tutorial Fish believes in hard lessons, but we call his bluff and voyage on.  Generally, taking a point of damage instead of spending a webship resource is a good trade, but the scuffle slowed us down by an awkward 1 momentum. If we complete every other event without losing momentum, we took that damage for no gain.  We could burn this away with our Light mote, but we only have the one, so let's try toughing it out again. As I navigate the blackness, it leeches hope from me.Lost 3 health. I gain 10 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines] Three damage is getting into the range of relevant health loss, but as they say, the only hit point that matters is the last one.  We know from earlier that these are creatures of Light, so we could probably suppress them with Darkness - not exactly a scarce resource for us. However, we also know that lantern phish aren't really a threat until they grow up. We brute force our way through once again. I am briefly mesmerized by the phish.I gain 5 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines] [-5 from event] If we were forced to use Packet Rat's lovely equipment, -5 momentum would be a big deal. For us, it doesn't really change the calculus.  Hey look, a target for our Search Engine! It's almost like I savescummed this. I engage the Search Engine.I shield myself with Order and the confusion of the fog can't touch me. I gain 10 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines] My current Momentum is 34.My target Momentum is 30. I cut through the current of the Web. I reach my destination. We're down 4 health, but we made it without spending precious motes. Those are the kind of voyages you want.  The music changes back to ambient underwater noises. The waters I steer through are emotions and relationships.Liquified by the pressures of the depths. They are dangerously dense here. Love crushed into hate crushed into boredom crushed into fondness for a favorite doll. It's a heady cocktail. If I stay here too long, it will warp my perceptions. I descend into the darkness.I watch for landmarks through the glass of my ship's cockpit.  Welcome to the Depths - a convoluted labyrinth of sensation. The Abyssal Plain was nice and simple to navigate, but this zone is anything but. Let's see if Omini can give us any guidance. Begin by the blog.Trumpet. Flutes. Trumpet. Flutes. Drums. Flutes. Trumpets. Flutes. Flutes. I'm sure that will make sense eventually. To someone. Perhaps that memory floating there will be more immediately profitable.  One out of five. We're going to have some searching to do for this one.  I grab the paper through a porthole.It is titled: From the journal of Winfield Scott Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 13 NB ==> Nested Brackets An explorer's journal. The game saves this into our inventory in case we need to read it later - I suspect it'll be a bit more important than an FPS audio log.  There's some red psychoplankton in the northeast (or up-east, I guess). Weird flora and fauna is pretty much what passes for landmarks in this zone.  Winfield Scott posted:Depth: Mother Seems like Winfield had a bad time. It might be unsafe to spend too long down here. There's another journal entry immediately to the east. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 15 NB A more lucid Winfield suspects there's something else down here with us. Great.  There's something new. Wikis are informative crustaceans that decorate their shells with facts.This one has been caught and its collection of information is slowly being digested and broadcast (poorly) by the blog.  A blog has to talk.Stop it talking, it dies. Or understand. Transform. There's no option to use motes on the blog, so it seems like there's nothing we can do for now. Our last Omini casting mentioned "begin at the blog", but the rest of it still seems like nonsense. Let's check out that journal entry.  Less crazy than two entries ago, more crazy than last entry. Seems like he lost his sense of direction down here and bad things happened.  The sea monkeys here are playing with a *gleaming* memory.Take it from them. Cast a spell. Leave it be. We want that memory back. Perhaps Omini will give us a hint as to how.  The thing about Omini being your hint spell is that, sometimes, Omini is also just the solution. Discovered part of dream: silence is not only goldenbefore the yelling starts. The blood rust silence While we're here, let's check out that journal entry. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 16 NB? Seems like there might be an underlying principle to synesthesia navigation. Or Winfield might just be totally out of it. Another journal entry is immediately to the left. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 12 NB  More resources in the down-west corner. Discovered part of dream: silence is not only goldenbefore the student's answer. The liquid cool silence These are some very small fragments. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 15 NB  As we spend more time down here, our ability to perceive things blurs a bit. In addition to the descriptive test, we start to steer by sound instead of direction. Fortunately, the game won't jumble things up on us - for example, "drums" appears at the bottom of the screen, and will cause us to go down. Winfield. You idiot.  The other thing is that, as our perception erodes, we lose the ability to interact with certain objects. I'm betting that rough wisp is another journal entry. We should surface and gather ourselves.  As we try to surface, our awareness blurs yet further. The original plan was that spending too long down here would deal damage or even instakill you, but this never seemed to manifest. We can spend as long as we want down here, we just can't do much.  Exiting the Depths returns us to the world map and sets us to full "sanity", so there's nothing stopping us diving back in immediately.  Here's that room from earlier with the "rough wisp", seen with the benefit of a clear head. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: 16 NB? Seems like Winfield realized the danger a bit too late.  The corpse is harvestable. Prophesied: life, fatality, . . . . .  Definitely not intended to do these on one screen. We do in fact find a mote of Life in here as well - decomposing matter is appealing to organisms.  "Something blue" seems promising. The game gives us a "cast a spell" indication when we look closer, so we burn the darkness away with our old friend SalveMundi. Discovered part of dream: silence is not only goldenfound only underwater. The quivering thin silence  I spend a bit too long down here trying to find the last memory, and have to resurface again. Here's what that blog looks like on low sanity.  Discovered part of dream: silence is not only goldenbetween two people who once loved each other. Ah, there it is. Let's see if we can put it together. quote:before the yelling starts. quote:found only underwater. quote:before the student's answer. quote:Silence quote:between two people  Discovered part of spell Mute()world.audio.volume = 0; Collected 1 of 1 parts of this spell. I have found all the pieces of this spell. I can COMPILE it in the inventory. Fortunately, this is a one-dream spell once we've actually got the dream sorted out. Compiling it costs a Death mote, which we now have no shortage of.  Mute does exactly what it says on the tin, and we can already think of a use for it. Our Omini spell from earlier suggested that, if we can stop the blog from talking, it'll wither and die - hopefully freeing the wiki trapped inside. On the other hand, the Omini spell ended by saying "or understand. Transform", which we're not really sure what to do with right now. Should we mute the blog, or hold off and look for an alternative? We've also stumbled across another couple puzzles. I'm betting we can all solve the "begin at the blog" puzzle, but I'll go ahead and spoil that Winfield's journal is for an unrelated puzzle. We could figure out what direction is what under synesthesia just by experiencing it, so it's not that either. [UNLOCKED] What the hell do we do with this journal? Doopliss fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Feb 20, 2021 |
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Feb 20, 2021 19:34
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Arcvasti posted:east
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Feb 20, 2021 19:35
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dervival posted:Oh nice, which ocean? I used to play on Sage ages ago a couple months after it opened, but it's been ages. Leraika posted:I imagine tracing Scott's journey from most to least lucid and following that path might do something interesting?
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Feb 20, 2021 20:26
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Black Robe posted:I very much want to see art of Tutorial Fish and his tiny little shiv
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Feb 20, 2021 20:36
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Yapping Eevee posted:I got all but three of these, and a friend identified two of the others... But I haven't a clue what the 'sad and inspiring game about rectangles' is.  .cant cook creole bream posted:Don't kill the blog. We let some pesky lantern phish survive. Wouldn't be consistent to destroy someone's mental diary. Doopliss fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Feb 21, 2021 |
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Feb 21, 2021 07:03
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Active content warnings: Spiders, Not being able to trust your senses  Welcome back. Last time, we pieced together the journal from Captain Winfield Scott's doomed research expedition and retreived the Mute spell from the Depths. This time, we're decidedly not using our new spell - that would be killing, and we've been working hard to avoid that. We'll worry about the trapped wiki later. We're here for a different reason. Way back at the beginning of this section, we gathered the following information from Omini: Begin by the blog.Trumpet. Flutes. Trumpet. Flutes. Drums. Flutes. Trumpets. Flutes. Flutes. Having had a nasty bout of synesthesia last update, we now know that "trumpets" means "up", "flutes" means "left", and "drums" means "down". Let's see what we get by following those instructions.  Oddly, that just takes us back to the beginning, and that last "flutes" would take us into a wall. Might as well try, I suppose.  Would you look at that? There's a hidden room behind here with a rather interesting item in it. If we try to enter this room without taking that exact route, the game bounces us and suggests that we might be able to approach it if we had a different perspective. I touch the memory.I touch the prophecy. It echoes in my mind with the power that comes with inevitability. Listen.  This might remind us of a minor character from Open Sorcery 1. The magical community is a small world, it seems. This is the Prophecy of Dark.It is one of the six Prophecies of Matter.  They are NOT mine.They each belong to someone else. Someone up there. In the physical world.  This story's stakes seem higher than expected. Did we attract some kind of doomsday cult's attention? Well, this...this probably explains why I'm here.At least partially. Someone does not want the prophecies delivered to the people they are destined for. Lucky we didn't beeline to the surface, I suppose. Sounds like there are five more of these to retrieve, and it sounds like the fate of the entire world might hang in the balance. Not that we have any leads beyond thorough exploring.  Aside from the blog, there's one more order of business in the Depths: Tracking down Captain Winfield Scott's webship. The game politely reorganizes the journal for us in chronological order, so it should be a simple matter of retracing the journal's steps. Winfield's first observation was a school of lantern phish and psychoplankton, which corresponds to the second east-most starting point.  The journal details a downward heading as Winfield descends past a colony of sea monkeys, changing headings after encountering some skeletal sharks.  Winfield sailed west, then was damaged by a roving shark. He stopped near a coral network filled with calcified Fear growths. As he was assessing the damage, he started suffering synesthesia and chose to sail up and out of the Depths.  But he didn't go up. The next entry states "Was mistaken in previous entry. Was not going up. Was going flutes" - in other words, west. By the time he realized his mistake, the path up was blocked, so he continued flutes until he could "trumpet again".  While we're following his path, we stumble on some webship ruins that I missed before. Prophesied: scrap, gasket, gear, order The Order mote is the real prize here, but we'll definitely take a bit of an HP cushion during websailing.  Winfield eventually found a way up, but his perception was well and truly muddled at this point, and he accidentally went "drums" instead. He should have bounced into a wall, but...  ...By a stroke of bad luck, he fell into one of the rare permeable dark walls in this place. And something about this place was unkind to him. Let's investigate the ship. Inside, the bathysphere has one room.In the pilot chair, I find the skeletal remains of an explorer. There is a deep sea aquarium full of dead samples.  There are cracks in the skull around where his ears once were.At first, I think he hit his head, but the shattered bone fragments burst outward. Purple-gray streaks mark where something leaked down his cheekbones. There is a nightmare nesting inside of his skull. The game gives us an option to take the nightmare, but that requires a spell we don't currently possess. Let's take a look at the final log entry. Winfield Scott posted:Depth: Mother He had a run in with something his mind couldn't handle. Presumably, something immediately below us. What else is there to find in this ship?  Huh. I guess that could come in handy if we capture some kind of sea monster, or...  Wait. gently caress this ship.  gently caress this zone.  Higher priorities.  Now that we've completed that extremely important detour, we can return to the world map.  The "Explore My Ship" option gives us a remarkable number of options for interacting with our octopus. For example, we can give it our electric guitar. The octopus explores the guitar.It discovers that the strings make sounds, which entertains it (and me) for quite a while. Eventually, it discards the instrument, and I reclaim it. Alternatively, "play with the octopus" gives us one of a few random play options. I search the cabinets of the ship for a new toy.I give the octopus a bowl. It squishes itself inside. It does not entirely fit. We can, of course, pet the octopus. I reach into the tank and offer my hand to the octopus.It pushes its mantle into my palm. I gently rub its skin. It feels slimy and velvety. Still not sure if "slimy velvet" is supposed to feel pleasant.  Eventually, we get back to business. We make a brief attempt to strip the bathysphere for parts, but it's both old tech and utterly ruined. We've fully explored the Depths, except for whatever's below Winfield's remians.  I really, really, REALLY want to know what's down there.What do I do? Content Warning: ..........Spiders......... As Pisces so eloquently pointed out, this area seems extremely dangerous, and it's likely that none of our memories fell deeper than the Depths. However, it seems like we need every resource we can get, and if the fate of the world is at stake we may be able to strike a deal. Do we explore below the Depths, or nope on out of here? There's no waiting and gathering more resources for this - only go or no go. Also, what do we name the octopus?
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Feb 21, 2021 20:31
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cant cook creole bream posted:OP: What is your opinion on non-blind votes? Is it okay, if I don't spoil anything about my reasoning?
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Feb 21, 2021 22:41
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SIGSEGV posted:If we can go gather resources elsewhere and go look again in this "too deep" area later, it could be a good idea, certainly a new spell or two might make our lives easier. Doopliss posted:There's no waiting and gathering more resources for this - only go or no go.
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Feb 21, 2021 23:42
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SIGSEGV posted:But I suppose we are actually at risk down there? In terms of risk to our stores of HP, objects and motes?
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Feb 22, 2021 00:23
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Double Plus Undead posted:There is an adventure, do you want to have it? Yes. serefin99 posted:I absolutely loved the first Open Sorcery! I remember there was actually an LP of it here on the forums a couple years back, but it only covered a couple of the endings and that led me to buying it myself
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Feb 22, 2021 16:25
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Active Content Warnings: ..............Spiders.............  Welcome back. Last time, we chose to name the octopus Ringo. Less importantly, we decided to explore whatever killed Winfield Scott below the Deep Web. Hopefully we're made of sterner stuff.  The background art disappears as we descend, and Pisces' sensory distortion begins to take a new form.  Beautiful black.Visible and tactile. Parting like curtains. And behind the curtains... The dizziness of space.The fever of unimagined jungles. Shapeless things lurk and caper and flounder at the edge of my vision.     A piercing gazecuts through the cockpit decompression the octopus flails in its tank I am caught in a captivating glance I am drawn out into the eyes  We can now consider ourselves at critical HP. She turns Her attention away.I am left in darkness.  We made it. But where did we make it?  Content Warning: Banger Our webship suffered a catastrophic breach, and we were pulled overboard. We can't properly perceive anything in this world - there's not even anything to cast spells on. There's a suggestion of an exit, but not something we can perceive enough to use. Ringo was in the ship when it went down. We're on death's door.  Each part of an object's description has three "possibilities" that we can cycle through. In order to interact with anything here, we need to fully perceive it. However, if we don't pick the description correctly, trying to do this will fail and cause us to take damage. We, uh, don't want to take damage right now. See if you can identify the correct combination. . . . . .  The mysterious misty shroud stuff has potential, but from what we've seen, weird fleshy spider stuff seems like a safer guess. I am looking at thick, white webbing.With some difficulty I pull it away. Beyond it is a massive eye, alive, but clear as glass. It looks at me. Through it I see a maddening vista. But I think, by looking at it the right way, I can unify it into something I understand. Just as I did with the webbing. This is... Better? Anyway, it opens up a new object on this room's main screen. Fleecy clouds and luminous vapors intermingle with absolute void over what is either a glittering city or an active volcano and I feel a migraine coming on. ==>  . . . . .  We're starting to see a pattern in these. It seems like one option corresponds to some sort of nice heavenly castle, one to an untamed occult wilderness, and one to a massive spider-like monster in an eldritch void. That makes this pretty solvable - after all, this place definitely isn't a heavenly castle. The wilderness stuff is a bit more appropriate, but it's still fundamentally earthly in nature, and we're far from earth. I see...a lot of unnerving poo poo.But being unnerved is better than being in intense, mental pain.  I can hear thousands of spiders.An infinity of arachnids, crawling through the veins around me. While we're here, we put the rest of this region to rights. Next up is the exit, and we'll see about getting out of here. The exit is made of bone/wood/dirt.It is girded by two twisted trees/pillars of teeth/a well wrought frame. I am looking at a spine-like staircase, each step a vertebrae.I hate stairs. Fortunately, I can still swim down here.  Now that we properly understand this area, the screen changes.  Oddly, the clock hasn't changed at all, and it seems solid enough that we can't recontextualize it like we can the rest of this place. Perhaps we can find an explanation to the south.  Wait, teatime? Symbols carved jagged into the wooden wall read:Teatime at 4:15 There's a lead as to the clock's purpose, though we still don't have any way of manipulating the clock. Regardless, our first priority should be opening the eastern path and securing an exit.  A tube, thick with veins, winds east.I've stabilized the way east.  A dead end. I don't know what good a key would do for a webwork of veins, but we don't know the rules to this place yet. Let's get this place in order and see if we can gather some information. From the top. Something flat and broad stands in the middle of this space.Its surface is fleshy scabbing/rough stone/shining cherry-wood. It is covered in cryptical engravings/a yellow-gray fibrinous membrane/a silk tablecloth. It smells of polish/dried blood/wet blood. It is a massive tumor, rising from the floor to a relatively flat and calloused surface.It is set for tea.  We seem to have a Muffet situation on our hands. So far, the clock and the teatime sign seem to be the most sturdy things in this world - seems that whoever reigns here very much wants us to prepare tea. Perhaps doing so would give us some benefits, or we might just get knocked to -5 health from the being's lethal attention.  I am looking at a wall of massive hexagonal honeycombs.There is a teapot inside of it. No way to pry open the honeycomb, nor to bash it open.  Although... I wonder...  Crap - we do not have the health to spare on chip damage. We shift it back to its proper form and move on to the south exit. The way south is made of white washed wood/rock/muscle.I detect the faint scent of bile/pies/smoke. I am looking at a fleshy opening into what appears to be a giant esophagus.I've stabilized the way south.  We're starting to get a feel for this place, but we're making no progress on either teatime or an escape. Hopefully south will bring better luck.  KEYS sound promising. Let's start there. I hear intoned syllables/birdsong/bizarre patterns from some alien and insoluble telegraphaccompanied by spectral bells and wild cries/solemn, leaden bells/light chiming. It is cheerful/frightening/ominous. I see a flickering impression of a key hanging in the air, but it's not quite existent. I hear strange and incomprehensible noises and a sort of ghastly ringing. The key is still a ghostly silhouette. Maybe once the rest of the screen has been clarified. On the walls I see archaic frescoes with sinister meaning/racks of pots and pans/ribs.They are made of bright copper/bone/basalt inlaid with tarnished silver. They are hideously carven/dented but well-made/arched and massive. There's some sort of glove here, but I can't make it out clearly. A massive set of ribs line the walls, arching upward above the belly.Again, it doesn't reveal the glove.  Last one. There is a giant organ here. I think it might be a liver?The organ is still except for an occasional slosh.  We clarified the room, but this doesn't get us any farther, and we're quickly running out of options. We need that key.  Let's try a more radical reimagining. It's not realistic, but it's still internally consistent, and it's something we can process.  It worked! We get the key, and our four precious health points are intact.  While we're here, maybe we can grab that glove. Since the area's no longer consistent, it reverts to the original art. I am looking at a handsome set of copper pans, hanging from the walls.Of particular interest is a worn but sturdy oven mitt. No idea what this is for, but we're not turning down an inventory item.  Let's see if we can grab that teapot on our way through Her Heart using the same principle. I am looking at some simple, oaken shelves.There is a teapot inside of it. Now that there's nothing in the way, we help ourselves to the teapot. Let's unlock the eastern route.  That's... Fair. The passage east is a door.It is blocked by a lock. Now that the passage east is something that a key would actually help with, the key does help, and we make our way into the zone's last room.  Our webship! Yes I can see my shipBUT there are monsters. I'm going to need to address that first. Fair. Let's put this place in order and bounce.   Less murdery than monsters, at least. Let's check out that liquid. I see crystal clear water/muddy, leaf spattered water/red, red blood.it flows in pulses/lazily/quickly. over white carven marble/stones and earth/membranous tissue.  We could fill our teapot with blood, but I'm pretty sure it would overwhelm the flavour of any tea leaves. I see spreading oaks/flowering bushes/giant spider legs.They are organized and well kept/gnarled and ancient/slowly moving. The air smells of loam/sulfur/sweet floral scents. I see long, black spider legs, pacing slowly along a silk thread, over the vaporous void below. The spiders don't seem interested in getting in our way. Let's assess the damage to our webship.  Ringo's fine. Also, our webship is fine. Seems a bit like a show of goodwill - the assault was real, and it seems to have been consciously repaired.  We could cut our losses and get back to saner waters, but that curiously that called us down here is starting to bubble up again - especially since the entity seems interested in talking. Let's see this through to the end.  We reinterpret this area hard, giving us a lovely herb garden and crystal clear water. I see neat rows of well kept camellia sinensis.Tea bushes. These bushes have begun to spread and thrive in the bright sunlight of the courtyard. We fill the teapot with fresh fountain water, then sprinkle some tea leaves in.  The parlor gets the same treatment. Much more appropriate if we're having tea.  Moving on to the "kitchen", we experiment with that third set of possible descriptions. Looks like a cthulhu-style temple.  A place for blood sacrifice. Perhaps it'll come up later, but hopefully it won't. This has been a low-murder playthrough so far.  Let's set up a proper workplace before we start. The vicious sacrificial altar turns into a much more reasonable stove.  Step 1, light the oven using a Fire mote. Using a... Fire mote. Okay. We can deal with this. There were some smoke vents back in the Abyssal Plain we could harvest Fire from. Taking a look at the Debugger, it seems like the entity in charge even gave us Her IP address - we can come back whenever we want, no additional trauma. We could nip over, *very narrowly* survive grabbing a Fire mote, then come back and light it up. Alternatively, [UNLOCKED] is there a more convenient way we could light this oven? Doopliss fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Feb 23, 2021 |
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Feb 23, 2021 06:15
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Well shucks - I'm glad to spread the entertainment around. A lot of the fun I get from this is watching other people talk about the games, and forcing myself to slow down and pay attention after a first playthrough.
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Feb 23, 2021 06:17
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serefin99 posted:It must have something to do with the idol in the temple setting. Turn the place back into a body, get some blood from the open artery with the tea pot, then pour the blood into the idol's mouth.
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Feb 23, 2021 14:54
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 Active Content Warnings: ..................Spiders.................. Why not listen to this again? Welcome back. Last time, an alien being of immense power glanced at us, tearing open our webship and coming very close to killing us. This time, we're making that being a spot of tea. We're short on Fire motes to start the kettle boiling, so it's time for some lateral thinking. We start by morphing the stove back into a blood sacrifice altar.  We hop on back to our webship, shift the fountain back to an artery, and fill the teapot with blood.  We pour the blood into the blood sacrifice idol's mouth, causing it to glow menacingly and become "active". What does "active" mean?  Not much on its own, but when we turn it back into a stove it's now lit. We scurry back to the webship once again to get some proper tea water and put it on. I pour the cold tea out of the teapot and into the kettle. I let it stand until it boils. I pour it back into the teapot. We set the teapot on the parlor table - whenever The One Below is ready to join us, tea will be ready. The One Below won't be ready for a while, of course - She takes Her tea at 4:15, and we arrived here at noon. We've spent some time getting our footing, but so far it's only been... 0 hours and 0 minutes. Alright, we have ourselves a puzzle. There's not much in the way of any light sources at all around here to impact a sundial. Let's see if we can change that.  In retrospect, the giant spider monster wasn't any more realistic than either of the other worlds. It was spooky and eldritch, which felt appropriate, but in the end it's still just a giant bloodstained spider with a bunch of other spiders crawling around inside. Otherworldly alien consciousness it ain't. Whatever's down here, we still don't seem to understand it. I see a dark wasteland crowned by a massive black mountain.No, not a mountain. A volcano. It looks like it might erupt soon. The moon is Full. It is so clear and huge in the sky, I feel like I could reach out and touch it. I touch the moon.It is cold and pocked with craters. It's a little loose in the sky.  Let's see how a new moon works.  I'm not sure if we overshot or undershot. First Quarter - the midpoint between Full and New on the list the game gave us - puts us to 10:00.  Seems like Full is 12:00, and every item down on the list is an hour earlier. The Blood Moon is 9th on the list, so that would put us to 4:00. The clock is an ancient sundial whose mysterious shadow is cast even at night.It reads: 4:00 And so it does, but it seems like the moon can only alter the time in one-hour increments.  Perhaps we can get a bit more fine control out of the Solarium version. Again, the sun is so close that we can can reach out touch it.  The adventure game item sense comes in clutch again. We slip our oven mitt on and we're back in business.  We're aiming for 4:15, so mid afternoon? The clock is an ancient sundial whose mysterious shadow is cast even at night.It reads: 4:30 Nope. It looks like it's the same deal as the moon, decreasing by 15 minute increments as we go down the list. We move it over to the evening, and... The clock is an ancient sundial whose mysterious shadow is cast even at night.It reads: 4:45 Oh. Other way around this time. We slide it back up to mid-morning.  Perfect. Let's see if She's feeling punctual.   Despite the rest of the zone, She has only two facets. I see the Spider.Talk to the Spider. The Spider picks up a cup between two long legs.She draws the cup to her fangs. She crushes the cup and eats the tea-soaked porcelain. She offers me a scone. Of course we'll have a scone.  We... Don't regret the scone? I'm going to say we don't regret the scone.  What are you? She gestures to everything. Did you create the Web? She shakes Her head.She pauses. She nods. Why did you grab me? The Spider informs me, I'm not sure how, that I must go to the wailing pit.There is a woman there who is not what she should be. The Mother can give me details I will understand better. That's reasonable - I'm not sure why I thought the Spider would be the more talkative one. Let's unfocus our eyes for a moment and look at Her again.  The Mother appreciates that we set everything to "Her" facet before teatime, and we get a bit of a bonus.  You hear that sound? Past the skittering, the birdsong, and the howling? That's what profit sounds like. Same questions as before, hopefully more productively. Who are you? I am the Mother, dear. What is this place? My parlor, dear.I almost feel like the Spider was being more straight with us. Which version of this place is real? They are all true, dear.What you saw at first is true as well. But I am so glad you managed to interpret in a way that is not hurting your poor little mind. We don't get many visitors. It's so nice to have company. Did you create the Web? Not really, dear.At least not in the sense that you understand the world 'create.' Why did you grab me? The Mother takes a sip of tea. My daughter is trapped in the wailing pit.The world is trying to change Her. And in some ways, it is working. They took Her voice. When you cannot speak, you find ways to scream. Please be a dear and go there. Use the power you learned here to see Her as She should be. It sounds like we've got ourselves a quest. That's a bit more specific than the Spider could give us, but we still have some unanswered questions. The most important of those is probably "what and where is the wailing pit?". That's not something the Mother can tell us, though, so it seems that we're done here. Actually, not quite done here. We were rather rude to the Spider earlier, summoning Her into a cozy upper-middle-class house probably kept free of bugs. We scurry around the place, do some reinterpretation, and return.  You're alright, ancient unknowable consciousness. We'll return Your daughter/hatchling as soon as we can.  And now there really is nothing left for us down here.  Normally I'd call a vote on our next destination and end the update here, but this was a pretty short one, and it just so happens that the last vote was only a "tie" until like an hour before I posted the update. It was too late, but East was our actual winner. Content warnings: ...............None................In honor of that, we'll be traveling to 743.7.4.3.  Seems harmless. Let's ignore it. I run straight through the flock of ideas.I gain 5 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines] [-5 from event] Exactly as dangerous as the lantern phish, it seems.  We know from last time what deals with Uncertainty Fog. I engage the Search Engine.I shield myself with Order and the confusion of the fog can't touch me. I gain 10 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines]  Seems Chaos-aligned - perhaps we should have saved our Search Engine for that. Uh...  I was genuinely, no-kayfabe not expecting that to work. Ringo is and remains the best.   This is about as different from the Depths as it gets.  Tranquil piano music plays in the background, getting slightly unpleasant as it loops. Sure, heavenly chamber with an actual angel inside. Let's strike up a conversation. I can tell this is an angel by all of the wings and eyes.It has twelve wings. It has twenty eyes. All in pairs. It opens the pale blue eyes on its brow and looks at me. Ah, a proper angel.  No need to rubberneck about the angel thing - we politely thank Soave. The angel dips its delicate neck-wings in acknowledgment of my thanks.It closes its eyes.  Okay, maybe a *little bit* of rubbernecking.  Yes. What does that mean?I mean. You're not just someone's idea of an angel. We're too far from the Web proper, and you're too solid to be just an idea. You're an actual angel. Yes. What does that mean? i Am A Tool Of God.i Follow Divine Will. i Am A Purpose. What is your purpose? This Place.Sanctuary. The eyelids on Soave's palms flutter as it thinks.After a moment it elaborates.  That's a JRPG-rear end prophecy. I wonder if it's related to ours. How long have you been here? Since Time Began. Have you been alone here all that time? Sometimes Sanctuary Is Sought.It Is Undestined, But Offered. But For Most Eons. The Sanctuary Is Empty. Are you lonely? Soave does not speak for a time.Its shoulder wings furl and unfurl. Its palm eyes flicker to the fountain. i Am Not Sure.Sometimes, i Think. Let's move on to the question everyone asks angels: Which religion is best?  And we get the classic answer. Unhelpful, but maybe too much to ask for. Let's prod a bit farther. Does god exist? And if so, what is god? We could get into various philosophical points here, but one of those is a bit jarring from someone who is deliberately not telling us anything about the nature of god. He Transcends Gender. Then why use male pronouns? So Scripture Has Written. Scripture written by humans. Yes. The game gives us an option to *not* get embroiled in an argument about god's pronouns with - I reiterate - a literal angel, but we're feeling scrappy and we don't seem to be in any danger. How do you decide which scripture to reference?When determining god's pronouns. Soave blinks three sets of eyes. i Do Not Decide. What determines it then? He Separated The Light From The Darkness.It Was Written Again And Again. The Chorus Of Prayers Turn To Him Not Her.  The game shunts us into a menu similar to our memory puzzles. quote:prime directive. Consider that by echoing our beliefs like that you're creating a sort of quote:so you don't confirm or deny details about god. Not even something as basic as god's existence. A sort of divine quote:calling god 'Him'. I don't know too much about true angelic history. But that might be partially the cause of certain systems of belief snowballing. quote:Your intention is to let humanity self-determine our relationship with god. You don't want to interfere with our ability to believe quote:you've visited anyone recently. You're clearly aware of your potential to influence human opinion, or you wouldn't be so conscientious about not taking away my faith-potential. Your position of authority quote:lends the idea credence. By parroting back popular beliefs, you perpetuate the status quo. Most basically by quote:eon-spanning echo chamber. An idea gains traction, and you echo it in your interactions with people. I don't know if . . . . . Your intention is to let humanity self-determine our relationship with god. You don't want to interfere with our ability to believe, so you don't confirm or deny details about god. Not even something as basic as god's existence. A sort of divine prime directive. Consider that by echoing our beliefs like that you're creating a sort of eon-spanning echo chamber. An idea gains traction, and you echo it in your interactions with people. I don't know if you've visited anyone recently. You're clearly aware of your potential to influence human opinion, or you wouldn't be so conscientious about not taking away my faith-potential. Your position of authority lends the idea credence. By parroting back popular beliefs, you perpetuate the status quo. Most basically by calling god 'Him'. I don't know too much about true angelic history. But that might be partially the cause of certain systems of belief snowballing. Does that make sense? The Valley EchoesAnd Begins An Avalanche Well put. This Is Not our Intent.Thank You For These Thoughts. Thank you for listening. If we go back into this dialogue branch, Soave has switched to They/Them pronouns for god. Does it bother you that we're god's favored children? Rain Does Not Envy Birds.Sky Does Not Envy Wolves. i Cannot Envy You. What about Lucifer? If that's a true story. Is that different? Soave's chest eyes flicker and its large, back wings flap once. The First Awareness Emergence.i Will Not Speak Of Him. We know of awareness emergence as a phenomenon where spirits bound to computer code become conscious and sapient. We saw the "lowercase i" thing Soave does in AI spirits that hadn't underwent awareness emergence.That raises some interesting questions about the relationship between god and Their angels - perhaps more than Soave intended. Rather than pressing the issue, let's take a look at the room Soave mentioned.  Clockwork and binary spill out of its back, gyrating with flickering calculations.The screen is made of black-light, studded with star-like text. It appears to be running Ubuntu. If we have a computer, maybe we can contact the surface for help. I play around with the computer.It has no Internet connection, but Motepad++ and my other preferred tools are installed and updated. It's nice to feel a proper tool under my fingertips. No such luck, but at least we spend a pleasant couple minutes. Let's chase it with a swim.  Not only delightful, but productively delightful. Something's off about this place, though. About the room to the north. Everything there is picked out of my mind to be tempting.Are you trying to convince me to stay? No.It Is The Nature Of This Place To Give Comfort. But You May Stay. If You Wish. Don't stay.Stay for a little while. Stay forever.  When Soave puts it like that, we could use a bit more rest and healing. Don't stay.Stay for a little while. Stay forever. Interesting, and a bit unnerving, but the siren call of 3-HP heals keeps us here a while longer. It's very comfortable here. My leg is no inconvenience since I can swim everywhere, and Soave is pleasant to talk to.I get the feeling it really appreciates the company. Recovered 3 health.  At this point, either of the lower options is a game over. Too many one-more-days and you don't have any days left. We'll bother Soave about leads on our memories and be on our way. I'm looking for my memories. Have you seen any of them? Soave points silently at the pool in the center of the room. There is a memory here.It is mine, but it is not mine. It thrums with potential. It matches the environment perfectly. It's broken into pieces ==> smashed on impact. I wonder if it disturbed the pool?.But I know the routine. I pick up the pieces and start to put them back together in an order that fits.  This one also brings to mind a character from Open Sorcery 1, though it's a bit less clear if you didn't play the Jingle BEL/S DLC.This is the last thing to do in the Light House before we head back out to the Deep Web, and we've only got two locations left. Should we head north along the path of least resistance, or west into the chaotically churning waters?. While we're here, though, this is a bastard of a memory. Very few syntactic cues to guide us - any of them could go in pretty much any position. [UNLOCKED]How do we figure out how to reassemble this? Doopliss fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Feb 25, 2021 |
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Feb 24, 2021 06:46
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Arcvasti posted:I bet that this is the last memory we need to reassemble, and we need all our prophecies back before we can do it. We have one prophecy that mentions the "Sword and Chalice", and I bet the others will correspond to the other fragments some, and we put them in matter/motive order or something. Additional hint when we click away from the puzzle:  As an aside, I normally have no patience for puzzley adventure games, but this one is always super-fair. Doopliss fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Feb 24, 2021 |
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Feb 24, 2021 14:58
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Next vote determines our direction.
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Feb 24, 2021 23:09
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Arcvasti posted:Child of X No update until tomorrow, though. I'm exhausted in a way I can't explain.
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Feb 25, 2021 02:13
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 Active content warnings: ...................None................. The piano music continues its loop into eternity.Welcome back. This memory was a rough one - there really was very little to structure it - but clicking out of the puzzle gives Pisces an idea.  We pull up the Prophecy of Darkness and do some cross-referencing. They map on to each other perfectly. Seems that the daughter of light is the major prophetic figure between them, with the child of darkness supporting her. Given the relationship between the two characters, this is understandable. I touch the whole memory.I touch the prophecy. It echoes in my mind with power that comes with inevitability.  Four prophecies remain - a relaxing zone, but a productive one.  Soave directed us to the prophecy wordlessly, and it refuses to discuss the prophecy now that we retrieved it. Perhaps this is part of Soave's non-intervention, or perhaps it knows something we don't. Either way, time for us to move on. Content Warnings: ...................None................. With this vote, we have officially went every way except the easy way. No fear - we have plenty of health and plenty of motes, particularly in light of the threats we've seen so far. We turn on the radio and set off. We start with another frenetic, disordered weather phenomenon. I engage the Search Engine.Its orderly hum soothes the rapids into calmness. My way forward is smooth. I gain 10 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines] We solve it like all the others.  A tricky one. Perhaps we could soothe it with Love. The hail batters my ship.Lost 3 ship parts. I gain 10 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines] We have three Love motes we can use for all sorts of things, and three ship parts that can only be used to tank damage. They fulfill their purpose.  I navigate through the Motivation Currents.An undertow catches me and pulls me back. I gain 5 Momentum. [+5 from sails] [+5 from engines] [-5 from event] I'm pretty sure we've facetanked over 50% of the travel events so far.  Speaking of facetanking, we've already established that Flights of Ideas are distracting but harmless.  But we haven't used Ringo yet, so we give it a bit of exercise.    The audio shifts back to our normal underwater soundscape while we enjoy the cutting edge Twine special effects.  I've heard stories about things like this.It's a torrent of bits. Particles of information that collect spontaneously into whirlpools of meaning. They are dangerous, but useful information can manifest inside of them. Chaos in both the tumultuous and illegal sense, it seems.  That looks to me like a scavenging location. Well, we're not one to turn down free motes.  As befits a torrent, this is a considerable jump in difficulty. We have Omini to even the odds, of course. Prophesied: battery, circuit, capacitor, doodad. . . . .  We now have more of a damage cushion than when we left. Let's see what lies in wait deeper in the Torrent. I try to navigate inside,pulling a Dorothy, weaving between the 1s and 0s, into the whirl of water. The heavy debugger is solid enough to power its way through the chaos of data and into the torrent.This is where we get punished for taking the Skyhook - I suspect that ship only exists so people who bomb every Abyssal Plain quest don't get softlocked.  Four very unhelpful navigation options. "Torront" amuses me, so we choose the second.    By now, you can probably figure out the puzzle. One route - the correct route - is marginally less garbled than the others. As we make correct guesses, the correct route becomes clearer and clearer. We veer due soueh for this one. rtnts toe phis ehreh thuhrgh toe rotrentsteer tge ship south throuhh the torrent oteae tre gsut eeho hertist thh psrhrnt eerht teh oerr thtg whpouth set rseisnt hreeg hni oset hotth ptrourh hte tsrrentuhheu hhe ship sorre tortset tte ohtrgnt steer the ship east through the torrent wrtes ehe stup shro oehtigr ert htthent  We're rewarded with two more word searches. Let's go bobbing for Chaos motes.  Prophesied: anarchy, tumult, bedlam. . . . .  Lovely orderly columns of chaos, and much more compact than this last search. Next up, the salvage.  A: It's not a word search after all. B: It's completely absurd. Not only is this 60% more effective than our spidersilk sail, but like the Search Engine, it gives us a free "mote" on every voyage. Operation Never Spend Motes is going swimmingly - these two webship parts plus Ringo can quite viably see us through every remaining webship section.  And that's all there is for the Torrent of Bits - short and sweet. Content Warnings: ...................None................. Only one location left. We can keep going for a bit longer, I'd say.  The octopus happily eats a bunch of phish.The rest scatter in fear. I gain 13 Momentum. [+8 from sails] [+5 from engines] Doing this region in reverse order has some perks, it seems - that was the only encounter. I follow the emotional cable that connects me to my soul.The water is dim and murky. The ominous shapes that surround me are only vaguely lit by my spotlight. Eventually, in the distance, I make out another source of light.  I park my ship alongside a couple of other webships floating near the door.I swim out and tie my anchor line around one of the mooring buoys.  There's an off-the-shelf Intdell Dinghy. Covered in dents and scratches, and painted the same colors as the diner. Probably belongs to the establishment.There's also a black, custom made cutter. Very sleek. After some much-needed R&R at the Light House, it's time for some much-needed R&R. First, though, let's bask in that neon sign effect a bit longer.  The neon sign above the diner flickers.Then it goes out. Huh. We should mention that to the management.  We barrel into some kind of techno mall music as we enter. Come on in, honey.Rest a spell. This is the Lost Soul's Diner. We don't have maps, but we have pie. First slice is free.  A cat, a shrine, and a photo. But our priority right now is pie and civic duty. In that order. What is this place? Lost Soul's Diner.Watering hole for those who've gotten a bit turned about. Chance to set down for a spell and catch your breath. So this is one of those context-based magical places that shows up when certain criteria are met? Like magic curio shops that appear and disappear, only oriented towards lost people, instead of potential heroes? Oh. Ah.Maybe? That sounds about right? I'm afraid I don't know much of the why and how dear. I'm just the waitress. I see. Thank you. Before the conversation can continue, Deb ambushes us with a quest. We're not exactly at full power, but we've been handling things well enough that there's no need for false modesty. Well, I've got a group of customers who don't quite know how to move on.They're nice folks, but taking up a lot of table space, and sort of, you know... From a time before bathing was much of a thing. The smell is putting people off. They're looking for a place to settle down, and I was wondering if an experienced sorcerer, such as yourself, might be able to give them some useful advice. Where can I find them? They're down at the end of the booths.Big crew. Can't miss it. Thanks, honey, I appreciate it. Okay, but pie.  I eat the key lime pie and discover it is my favorite dessert.The crust is pastry and the filling is creamy. The sweetness balances the tartness. It tastes right. Recovered 5 health. That was perfect. Are you some sort of dessert empath? Oh no, honey. I'm just good at my job.Glad you liked it, though. Now that we're feeling more energized, we mention the sign.  It is, of course, our sacred duty to drive business away from Packet Rat. Burned a what? The black box behind the sign.Neon signs need a high voltage to power them. Higher than you get from a normal outlet. So the transformer takes in power from the outlet and ups the voltage and then sends it to the sign. Given the relationship between magic and STEM in this world, this might be a normal thing for a sorcerer to know. The glass didn't spark when it went out, and the sign itself looks intact.And the rest of your diner has power. So it's probably a problem with the transformer. You don't need to replace the entire sign. You can just replace the transformer.  Two sidequests from one waitress - I could start liking this place. We will, of course, get on that immediately after first examining everything in this room.  I guess Bermuda Triangle voyages mean a lot of customers. It's a small shrine to various gods of travel.There's a candle depicting Saint Christopher, an idol of Hermes, and a tiny cairn to Crux, the god of in-between places.  I ask the cat a few questions.He blinks at me. I guess this isn't a magic talking cat. I pet the cat.He regally accepts this as his rightful due. I cast a prophecy on the cat.I foresee many naps, some eating, and more naps. I'm starting to suspect this cat doesn't do anything. As we saw in the word searches, Omini's a bit inconsistent on whether it gives us a haiku or not.  Time to go do our job. I think I know how to replace one.And I'm sure I have an appropriate transformer somewhere in the piles of parts I still have from repairing my ship. I fetch the part and some tools from my ship.I find the blown transformer on the back of the sign. God, I know I've done this before, but the steps are a little hazy in my mind. ==> Must be that pesky amnesia. First I...  The closest we can get to screwing this up is messing with the wires' insulation while the transformer is plugged in - as you might expect, this is very painful. Otherwise, we mostly just get "I can't do that until I do X" or "I'm not doing that before I do X, that would be dumb". Naturally, that means we start with unplugging the transformer: I unplug the transformer. It's safe to work with now. Then it's a simple matter of disconnecting the transformer from the sign... I try to disconnect the transformer from the sign, but the wires are wrapped in insulated tape. I can't get them apart.Oh, right. We remove the insulation... I carefully cut the insulation away from the wires that connect the transformer to the sign, exposing the bare wire ends.THEN disconnect the transformer. I disconnect the transformer from the sign, carefully unwinding the transformer wires from the sign's wires until they're free of each other. And get it out of here. I unscrew the old transformer and set it aside. Then we just have to do the same thing in reverse. I mount the new transformer on the back of the sign, screwing it in securely. I carefully wind the transformer wires around the sign's wires until they're securely connected. I carefully wrap insulated tape around the exposed wire ends connecting the transformer to the sign. And...  No Packet Rat required. Far above me, barely perceptible through the darkness of the ocean, I see a giant galleon with tattered sails.It makes a sharp turn through the dark water, arcing towards the light of the sign. It falls into a holding pattern, circling the diner. Now that I'm up here, and the area is lit, I notice that there's a part of the sign that glows a different blue than the rest of it.I reach up and carefully pick off a piece of my memory from the sign.  We get a glimpse into an old relationship. What was that about "a giant galleon with tattered sails", though? The huge ship is semi-transparent.I can see a populous crew hanging over the edge. They seem to be shouting at the diner, trying to get someone's attention. They are mostly skeletons.  Spitting distance from full HP, not that it gives us any benefit. There seems to be a ghost ship outside trying to get your attention. Oh they're back!They're our best customers. Would you mind going and telling Theo they're about? She's a few booths down, probably reading something. Thanks, honey.  The next screen over has neither Theo nor a crowd of people in outdated clothes, but that's no excuse not to investigate. Let's talk with the shady fellow.  We will be annoyed, but we will not be deterred. He shrugs indifferent acquiescence. K. What should I call you? Pisces. Ooh, promising lead. We know little enough that we probably get more value from being honest and asking stupid questions than trying to play coy. No idea? I've lost most of my memories. Oh. Well. That sucks for you.Missing prophet, wandering around the Deep Web with an empty head. That's a story people will pay for. I instantly regret this.  Cycl3 is hateable, but in a kind of endearing way. Who *is* he planning to tell about us?  Maybe the Excellence Corporation.Maybe not. You want to pay me to keep quiet? What's the Excellence Corporation? That sounds like a question that's worth something to you.Tell you what, I'll play you for answers. The game is Protagonist Blackjack. You ante a Dark mote, I'll ante your answers. Whoever wins gets what they want. How do you play? I draw two cards, you get to see one.You draw two cards, I get to see one. I put three cards in the middle. You pick one. I pick one. Highest hand gets points for their hand. We play to 200 points. So I'm trying to make hands out of tarot cards. What are the different hands and how many points are they worth? I'm not gonna tell you. Really. That's the game. Protagonist Blackjack.You're the protagonist. I'm the NPC. You gotta figure out my puzzle. Once you know the hands, you're at an advantage, since you pick first. But until then, you're going to make motes off of me while I learn the hands. Well, he knows how to appeal to us as an adventure game protagonist. Let's play.  As it turns out, Cycl3's theme is a a quite respectable jazz track with aggressively-techno instruments. Welcome to repeating minigame #4: Tarot nonsense. Hopefully nothing to do with the cards' actual numbers, because I don't know them. We have a sun, so I guess we also take a moon?  Through cleverness and skill, we take an early lead. Seems that the major arcana are sorted into categories based on flavour, and certain flavours are worth more than others, based on... Some principle or other.  Hm. Looks like the best we can do is abstract concepts.  Seems like mortals and abstract concepts are both pretty low-scoring. It also seems like the Wheel of Fortune doesn't actually go with Strength and Temperance in any way.  Star would likely give us a solid Celestial Double, but let's see how much wizards are worth.  A whole lot, actually. Figures magicians have an inflated view of themselves in a card game magicians play. Cycl3 also gets a pretty powerful "Pact Double", based on his mix of, uh, two of those three cards. Hard to say.  Looks like we can duplicate that kind of crappy Dark Double Cycl3 had in Round 1, and there's no celestial bodies available for Cycl3 to outmuscle us with.  Turns out he was sitting on the Celestial Double all along. No matter - still relatively low-scoring.  Seems like we have something lawful-aligned going on, maybe?  Yikes. Turns out lawful-aligned stuff is pretty good, but not quite as good as suns and stuff with hearts on it.  We got nothing. I guess we could take Magician to make sure we don't get blown out by Willworkers, but Fool seems more likely to interact with one of our cards in some weird way.  Okay. So Fool is probably chaotic, and one of our other cards is chaotic. I guess our World as a whole is kind of an unpredictable mess? Either way, seems chaotic beats lawful.  I missed a screenshot like a dunce, and you can't really rewind this game, but there's that weird "Pact" thing again. So far, both pacts have had the Moon, and I guess Moon/Devil makes more sense than whatever happened last time. On our side of the table, we demonstrate that even mortals who rule over other mortals are still just mortals.  No clue. I guess we take Fool to make it harder for Cycl3 to do something chaotic?  Crap. We knew hearts were scary, but we didn't know about the Temperance in his hand. Cycl3 is now one point away from victory.  Not ecstatic about this. From what we've seen, I think Rulers beat Forces, but they don't beat much else - Cycl3 could spring who-knows-what on us out of nowhere.  Cycl3's last card is a blank, and we narrowly squeak by to take the win.  So what do you want to know?What the forums are doing without their prophet? Latest on the Excellence Corporation? There's a big list of options here, but we started this trying to learn about the Excellence Corporation, so that's where we'll continue. They're corporate America with magic.Kinda the opposite of the Open Sorcery movement. You know, Capitalism off the rails. gently caress everyone and everything for money. Anyway, word in the chatrooms is they had a hit out on you.Don't know who took it, but I know some skeezy hitman request got posted on Hexlist. And then got taken down. And then you got put in a coma. I see. Maybe a bit circumstantial to declare them our mortal enemy based on, but seems like they could stand to be taken down a peg or two regardless. So about your attempt at extortion. Oh yeah.You want to pay me so that I don't tell the Excellence Corporation you're still alive?  The name V1c1ousCycl3 actually did appear in Open Sorcery 1 in the context of Fire and Order. That time worked out pretty well, if only by coincidence.From what Cycl3's told us about the Excellence Corporation, they do seem like a serious threat, and we do have an embarrassment of Order motes at the moment. On the other hand, this is extortion, and we don't actually have solid reason to think he isn't just bullshitting us. Do we cough up the Order or take our chances?
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Feb 26, 2021 05:16
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Nick Buntline posted:IIRC the scoring isn't exactly one to one, but I believe the official dev position was "100% in favor of giving people who played that game and still have their notes a thumbs up and a head start", so you can pretty easily win on your first try like this if you connect those dots. There are absolutely people who won this on their first try, but I don't think this hand would have been one of them - at least for me. I'm not sure I would've taken the leap that Fool went with World, and I definitely wouldn't have shot for Willworkers without knowing in advance that it was the strongest hand in the game - particularly after seeing how weak Mortals were.
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Feb 26, 2021 17:05
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 Active content warnings: .................None.............  Welcome back. Last time, we encountered someone who knew of us from before we fell down here - we won our backstory from him in a game of cards, and learned that some kind of evil megacorporation was interested in our death. We bribed him an Order mote to buy his silence. This music is... Still playing. With that business out of the way, we return to badgering Cycl3. What's your deal? I do custom programs, information gathering, and cryptographic spiritual signature creation. And by that you mean viruses, identity theft, and matter forgery. You got it.Pretty sharp for an amnesiac. Need any of that? Had we not figured out the web mote puzzle back on the Abyssal Plain, we could enlist Cycl3 to help us buy the selkie's coat - I think he even does it for free if we mention we're defrauding a slaver. We, of course, are a strong independent sorcerer who can commit her own frauds. No.So you're in the Lost Soul's Diner. How are you lost? I did some jobs and my name's hot. He shrugs and smirks. So I got lost.You can get lost on purpose. But enough about Cycl3, let's talk about *us*. Because, uh, we've suffered amnesia and it might literally be the difference between life and death.  Cycl3 seems like a pretty whimsical guy. What do you mean, calling me "prophet"?You're the sysadmin for the OS forums who keeps the database of prophecies.The prophet's prophet. So that's what everyone calls you. Do you know what happened to me? Yeah, you got put in a coma.Decker14 posted about it and took over your modship on the prophecy board. Didn't give lots of details, and no one's saying where your body is. loving smart. Since it's obvious to anyone paying attention that the Excellence Corp has it out for you. Well, obvious to anyone with an account on Hexlist. Decker14 is smart, no-nonsense and unshakeably honourable. He's the kind of person you want as a moderator, and as an interim leader in general. Is anyone looking for me? Well I bet the other OS admins are looking for you.I know Decker14 posted that you were 'on hiatus' and is moderating the prophecy board. Dunno if any of them can dive this deep. Could you tell them I'm here? Nah.I'm hiding. That's why I'm down here. Hard to talk to the surface. That's the point. I'm not gonna surface for a while. Let's close out by asking what he'd do in our place. Heh.Well the FIRST thing I'd do is try and get all my memories back. You must have lost your spells too, right? Hate to be down here without my spells. Sucks to be you. Right. After that.  That would come in handy, but the concern about Cycl3's motives seems valid. Because I MOTHERFUCKING SUCK AT RIDDLES.Seriously. Why does everyone think 'Oooo! They do magic! Better do some god damned riddles!' loving ridiculous. Ah. Well, his loss is our gain. Can I get the IP address of the cache? Cycl3 oscillates being being a mercenary son of a bitch and a genuinely helpful person. Can't seem to decide whether it's to the north or east of the Light House, though - we'll check that out once we're done here.  Not sure anything else on this screen can beat Cycl3 for content, but we have more exploring to do. Let's start with the cross-stitch. The wall-hanging is embroidered words, illuminated with delicately stitched filigree.It reads: There is nothing you cannot loseYour way, your sight, your purpose, your mind. Lost souls wander. It's in their nature. They're searching for something to fill the absence loss left inside of them. I do not offer solutions.I offer respite. Lay down the burden of loss for a moment and dine with me. - Lost Soul's Diner, Management A glimpse into the management's worldview, whoever the management is.  It's playing reruns of I Love Lucy.He seems to be pretty absorbed. Let's say hello. He mumbles at me in a friendly, but disjointed way.Talking doesn't accomplish much, so we settle in for a bit.  He coughs a bit.  Not really sure what to make of this choice. More important to get the bile out, I suppose.  This is one of the stranger choices we get. Had we given him some water instead, he'd cough up a Life mote - scarcer, but this guy doesn't seem like he has much Life to go around. I pick up the bit of Death.It's disgusting, but most death is.  Next screen over, some mysterious presence is lurking under the table. The inhabitants don't seem fussed. I look under the table producing noises.Two children are playing there. One is a boy with long curly hair in a little suit. He looks like he just stepped out of a black and white photo. The other boy is so far under the table I can't see him clearly. I can only make out his eyes, which gleam entirely black, with no iris or white. ==> Not a human child, then. But still a child. The first boy is teaching the second to play jacks.They're having trouble with the ball as it keeps floating off instead of bouncing properly. Despite that they're very absorbed. Say hello.  We were told to look for a bunch of "behind the times" people, but we'd be expecting more.  Peep is too shy to say hello.He glances nervously at the girls across the aisle. Then he glances nervously at me. I decide to let him alone until he feels more comfortable. Charley, however, scoots out from under the the table, happy to have someone to talk to. "Let him alone until he feels more comfortable" sounds like a Puzzle to me. Pleased to meet you CharleyMay I ask you some questions?  Yes ma'am. Shy children avoidtoo many people. But they can like animals.  A very non-overwhelming amount of dialogue compared to Cycl3, Deb and Soave. Let's learn a bit more about Charley. How did you get here, Charley? Well, one day, me and Walter were playing outside when some men came out of a carriage.They said they had candy and fireworks and said they'd give us a ride in the carriage. They did, and it was proper fun, and they let Walter out to buy fireworks, but then we drove off without Walter. And I asked them why and they wouldn't say. I stayed with the men for a long time.They weren't really friendly at all. But then Miss Deb came and said that if I liked, I could become lost. And I wouldn't get to see my mum and dad again, because I'd be lost. But I'd get away from the men. Time travel rescue operations are a bit sophisticated for "just the waitress". Or has she been alive for that long? Charley fiddles with his jacks a bit. I think the men were going to kill me dead, like the men at hangings.So I left with Miss Deb. I miss my mum and dad. But I'm glad I'm not dead. And now I live here. Good instincts. I see. Thank you for telling me your story, Charley. You're welcome ma'am! Can you tell me about your friend? This is the game's way of telling us that we can lock ourselves out of this quest based on game progress, which would be bad for a lot of reasons. We'll also make note of that "Likes cats" comment.  We listen in on the song for a bit.  Dear Theodosia, from Hamilton. We were sent to find someone named "Theo". We'll do our dialogue top to bottom, though, and start with the tinkering woman.  Interesting? Theo it is then.  Oh hi.I'm on break. If you need help, Deb can serve you. I was actually wondering if I could ask you some questions. Sure, I suppose. What's your name? Surely she's giving us an alias, or it's a weird coincidence. It has to be. Right? What's with this place? Who's your friend? She looks across at the girl tinkering with the music box. That's Ana.She's pretending to only speak Russian to avoid talking to you. She's a charmer. That's why I'm a waitress and she buses tables. Ana sticks her tongue out at Theo.She smiles apologetically but unrepentantly at me before returning to her music box. If Ana's a reference to something, I have no clue what. What are you reading? She lifts her book so I can read the title.A People's History of the United States: The 1800s Well, it was nice meeting Theo, but we need to purge everyone from this screen so we can talk to Peep. The Flying Dutchman is outside. One down, one to go, but Ana seems to be too powerful for us.  The sign says "Lost and Found."However, the words "and Found" have been scribbled out. It is not a very hopeful sign. Impeccable branding on the sign, and it looks like those are the guests we were asked to help. If this is a place for lost things, it might be worth rooting around in.  References abound. Pisces refuses to take anything that doesn't belong to her. I find a gold-plated sterling-silver statue.I recognize the subject as Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. It seems to be some sort of trophy. I find a big diamond, about the size of an egg cut in half. I find a tarnished old cup.Can't imagine why anyone would care about this old thing. I find one of my memories. Theoretically, we could stop poking around in the box now, but we're of course riding this roller coaster to the end. I find a golden medal with the name Muhammad Ali on the back. I find a tape with the label Apollo 11 on the side. I find a sheaf of papers entitled My Life, by Lord Byron. I find the skeleton of a dodo.That's all there is in the box.  That was bracing, but I guess we'd better do our job. I ignore the odor and ask the women who they are and where they come from.Most of them are very confused. They aren't clear on where they are and what has happened to them. They apparently left their home, sort of home, after the men left to look for a new place and didn't come back. That was after Governor White left for help from England and didn't come back and they were starving and Virgina had a dream and they followed her. Now they're here and have pie. There is a general consensus that they are in heaven. Despite the fact that she is about twelve, I determine that a little girl poring over a map is in charge of the operation.   I was firstborn between nations.So I've a gift for travel. For findin the between spaces. But now we are needin an end. A new home. And that's not travel, but settlin. And I've no gift for that. So I've been asking those wanderers what come through here if they know of a good place for living. Have you traveled to a place we might call home? What are you looking for in a home?First before all, we need the say-so from any living there.I've seen it done with no say-so, and that's no mistake I'll see done again. Not while I carry the map. We live by farming. Green places to make fields is good for us. Oh, and if there's more of this 'lectricity and plumbing, that would be a fine thing. Virginia's great. She had to grow up fast, and she absolutely did. We haven't found anything that matches her description, but...  We do know a place that very easily *could*. I suggest they settle in the Light House.Virginia asks if anyone is already living there, and I have to admit, someone is. Virginia asks me to ask permission of the inhabitants before they try to settle there.  Hey Soave!  It's hard to tell if Soave is personally okay with the idea - it's likely Soave doesn't know itself - but Pisces did feel that it seemed to enjoy company.  We'll deliver the good news after we pick up that cache.  Content warnings: ..............Spiders......... We pop in our Kevin MacLeod CD and set off. The Classic Serpent seems like it might be a creature of Order, so we might be able to defeat it using the Non-Euclidean Sail.  We are not, and we get chunked for 7. Before we visited The One Below, that might actually have been frightening.  The Non-Euclidean Sail would actually be more effective here... I engage the Search Engine.It's not quite powerful enough to undo the whirlpool, but it does keep the ship from being damaged. I gain 8 Momentum. [+8 from sails] [+5 from engines] [-5 from event] ...But the Search Engine will still get the job done.  I pull my ship up beside the cache and open the hull door. CAPTCHACompletely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart This is how I learned what CAPTCHA stood for. It operates on the principle that computers cannot solve riddles.It is a deeply flawed system. But it's better than nothing. What's that about a treasure chest, though?  In the Web, taking things at face value is apparently a good idea. But we've procrastinated on this puzzle long enough.  Open Sorcery veterans will remember this layout from the first game. Here in the sequel, it's been enhanced by the ability to actually accept keyboard inputs. . . . . . We type in forgiveness - absolution and salvation are also accepted. The CAPTCHA accepts my answer with a satisfying click.One down. Two more to go. Ugh, a multiple-input CAPTCHA. What algorithm are they training down here?  . . . . . This one's cheeky and literal - "few" is a 3-letter word, and adding a couple letters to it gives you "fewer".  The riddles are randomly selected from a pool - if you guess wrong, you get a different set of questions. The pool doesn't exhaust itself, though, so it can be brute forced if you only know three or four of the answers. . . . . . They're not nitpicky about plurals, so die and dice are both accepted. The CAPTCHA accepts my answer with a satisfying click.There is a deeper, even more satisfying click. The treasure chest opens.  That's the biggest haul we've found all game, plus it's our first Air and Fire mote. Air is good for levitating stuff or blasting it around, and Fire does what you'd expect it to do.  Janet is the sort of person who would leave a bunch of motes in the Deep Web on the off-chance it would help potential disaster victims that she would probably never meet. That's about all you need to know about Janet. It did feel too easy.  A simple searcherhas been re-purposed for war. They're looking for you. If we had any optimism, Omini dispels it. This is a hunter-killer, and it's on top of our ship. Abandoning the Debugger isn't an option. We need to act first.  Here are our spells and motes. Any one of them can target the legs, the eyes, or the turret. What do we do?
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Feb 27, 2021 05:45
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Sally Forth posted:I'm guessing Ana is Anastasia Romanova (and Charley is Charlie Ross) This is a tricky vote to parse, but I'm going to say we have two votes for gently caress with the eyes, with varying degrees of intensity, and two votes for gently caress with the turret, with the only current idea being Chaos. I'll spoil that all of these are valid solutions to this puzzle (as is our universal standby of "just use death lol"), and I'll also spoil that this is a one-step puzzle. If we blind the webcrawler Pisces will take the opportunity to bolt, and if we Chaos the turret then we're locked in for whatever ensues, good or bad. Next vote decides. Doopliss fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Feb 27, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 17:16
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Black Robe posted:In that case, Chaos the turret.
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Feb 27, 2021 17:26
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Boksi posted:Well, it's probably too late to vote for it, but I wonder if using water would've worked? We're surrounded by it after all, and using water on the legs or turret feels like it could do something.
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Feb 27, 2021 17:49
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 Active content warnings: ...........Spiders.......... Welcome back. Last time, we found an unreasonable number of motes in a cahce near the Light House. Unfortunately, a mysterious murder robot also found that cache. We decided to solve this by introducing some uncertainty into the giant gatling gun on its back.  Some might say that applying Chaos to a machine gun is extremely unsafe. That's the idea. There's a snap as the hinge of the turret breaks.The gun's muzzle swings wildly. And it comes to rest as it's caught behind a cluster of eyes. Sensing the attack, the webcrawler tries to target meThe broken hinge squeals and the muzzle doesn't move. The webcrawler discharges its weapon into its own head.It goes limp.  The thread also suggested using SalveMundi or Dark on its eyes, which would allow us to slip into the webship and shake it off as we sail away. SalveMundi means we don't have to spend a mote, but we'd grazed by some machinegun fire in the process.  So this thing was sent to kill me.Specifically me. Well gently caress.  Looks like we won't be getting any leads that easily. Perhaps some sort of shadowy cult that doesn't want our prophecies delivered, but we might never know who was responsible.  Nah it was the Excellence Corporation.  The reward for stripping this thing is probably better than the cache itself. And the cache was great.  We have good news for the settlers, but first let's see what Cycl3 has to say about that trap he led us into. We steel ourselves against the insidious music as we enter. V1c1ousCycl3 stares at me, non-plussed for the first time. Uh...Yeah? poo poo. Well, that's a thing. D'you know who made it? The Excellence Corporation. Whoa.gently caress. That's crazy. They're crazy. Glad I hate riddles. That poo poo was probably for you. They really want to kill you. Yes, so probably don't point anyone towards emergency caches for a while. Yeah.Fair. Won't do that. Sorry, I guess. I accept, I guess.If we hadn't bribed Cycl3 earlier, he'd feel guilty about leading us into that trap and offer to keep quiet free of charge. As is, we're still not likely to run out of Order this playthrough.  Virginia is next on our list. I describe the Light House to Virginia.Bright sanctuary, and fairly close. I assure her that the caretaker has given permission for them to settle there. She's a bit intimidated at the prospect of rooming with an actual angel. But the opportunity is too good to pass up.  That's probably Ana, which means Charley and Peep will now be alone at their table.  And if that wasn't enough to celebrate, Ana was apparently guarding one of our memories. I reach out and touch the music box.I absorb the memory that's stuck inside of it. Hopefully it will work now, without my past gumming up the works.  Not a pleasant stage in their relationship. Now that nobody else is around, maybe Peep will say hi. Hello Miss Pisces! Peep peers shyly out at me from under the table.Then he glances nervously at me. Not yet, it seems. We'll need a bit more to lure him out.  We have no cat treats, and it doesn't seem like the cat would follow us if we just clapped our knees with our hands.  Fortunately, we have more advanced methods at our disposal.   We'll just... Leave the cat here. And come back later. I stop playing with the cat. He immediately loses interest in me and starts grooming himself.  We go outside for some fresh air...  ...And when we return, Peep has come out from hiding. He trills a piping coo that sounds like a greeting.Then he bashfully gives me one of my memories. With one notable exception, each spell is found by exploring a single area. If it seems like you have to explore elsewhere to complete a spell, you probably don't.  This is one of the cheekier memories, but not one that requires out-of-context knowledge. quote:@Brody: It's fine. quote:@Brody: I love you. quote:@Pisces: I'm angry. quote:@Brody: I'm angry.  We just put each line with its mirror. A reconciliation - a failed one, by the looks of it. This memory affects me.I feel tears collect at the edges of my eyes. I retreat into a corner. I don't want to be seen feeling so much. It passes. Thank god.  Unbabble costs a mote of Order to compile, which we have plenty of - the spell description is "Understand meaning even when you don't understand language".  I try to talk to Peep, but while he clearly understands me, he can only speak in trills and coos.And I don't understand bird. Charley tries to help interpret, but it's easy to tell he's only making imaginative guesses about what Peep is trying to say. Seems like an excuse to put that spell to use. Peep's coos coalesce into meaningful language in my mind.I can now talk to him.  We'll start by asking his name and work our way down.  No miss.But it suits me well! And it is good to have more names to use instead of my True Name. Good point.Peep, would you please tell me what you are? I am a Florine, miss.We are also called the blue birds of happiness. We are descended from royalty! But only human royalty. In Fairyland we are messengers. I see.Where are you from? I am from Fairyland, Lady Wizard.My family lives in the forest east of the capital! I miss them very much. It definitely wouldn't be an Open Sorcery game without fairies. How did you get here? My family was migrating, Lady Wizard.We were flying from the Goblin Market to the Singing Hills, to spend the winter warmed by song. It was my first flight alone, and I was eager to prove myself. We were flying over the Palace of the Queens.And I was fresh and eager. And my mother asked: 'Peep! Are you tired?' And I told her: 'No mother, I am not!' For I was eager to prove myself. We were flying over the Misty Moor. And I was growing weary. And my mother asked: 'Peep! Are you tired?' But I told her: 'No mother, I am not!' For I was eager to prove myself. Fairylanders have a very classical storytelling cadence. We were flying over the Dark Woods.And I was weary and worn. And my mother asked: 'Peep! Are you tired?' But I told her: 'No mother, I am not.' For I was eager to prove myself.  I wandered the Dark Woods for many days.(For once you fall into the Dark Woods it will not let you fly out.) And I met with many strange and fearful creatures. (I evaded them by using my magic to make them happy, and fluttering away while they were confused.) I ate my seed brick, bit by bituntil there was none left. Just when I though I was sure to perish in that Dark Wood I saw a blue light in the distance. It was this place!And the woman Deb gave me a seed cake. And I have played with Charley. I know I must travel home soon, but I know not how. For now I am just happy not to be in the Dark Woods. Sounds to me like a new party member. Fairyland is on my way to the surface. Would you like me to take you home, Peep? We'll let Peep call us what he's comfortable with.  We're going to be taking a detour or two, of course.  Right after we got our Debugger, we spared a horrendously-written blog that was devouring a helpless wiki. Let's see if that Unbabble spell changes things. I cast translate on the blog.I filter concise meaning from the blog's excessive rambling. I echo that meaning back at it. The blog is taken aback for a moment, clearly unused to being heard and understood. It starts to listen. Then it starts to shed.  A happy ending.  Our reward for dealing with the blog is a new zone, and one with a rather interesting IP address. Our reward for sparing the blog is a treasure map. Sort of a treasure map. More like treasure words:Begin at the sharp spheres, speckled with smoothness. Go visit the sharp squiggles. Go trumpets to more sharp squiggles. Go to the cold blobs. Go trumpets. Go to the thrumming cold flecks. Follow the hot clouds. Go strings. A bit more convoluted than the previous two puzzles, but the same basic principle.  Following the instructions takes us to the psychoplankton where Winfield Scott began his journey...  ...And through another permeable wall.  Three Light is a very relevant windfall. The Golden Spyglass *would* be a helpful tool for websailing, but it costs one Light a pop to use. If we wanted to solve puzzles with motes, we could do that anyway. As is, it's mostly a savescumming tool.  Content warnings: ............Body Horror............... We put on some tunes and continue our proud "every direction except up" tradition by checking out that new location we found. The Search Engine got us through the last whirlpool, but it seemed sub-optimal. Let's try the Sail. I unfurl the Non-Euclidean Sail.I ride the whirl. I gain 18 Momentum. [+8 from sails] [+8 from engines] [+2 from event]  Wait, that's a new one. Maybe Peep's birdsong would soothe it?  Apparently not. We tank the damage and conclude the trip.  That's not right.Screaming is high and raw and brief. Startled horror, choked from a throat. This anguished noise rolls up and down the register. Unhurried agony. The first thing I hear is wailing. There is a pit here, near the bottom of the ocean.Its sides are lined with faces. Sometimes, the noises they make rise to screams and slide down to moans. But mostly, they just wail. I stop the ship by the edge of the pit of wailing faces.The One Below mentioned something of the sort. It sounds like Her daughter is trapped somewhere down here.  Thankfully, this area does not have its own audio track. I nose my ship over the pit and look down.Deeper in the pit I see faces, heads, necks sticking out from the sides, craning back and forth as they vent their horror as sound. I return to the edge. We're going to have to go down there, aren't we? Maybe a bit of diplomacy will help us. I try to talk to a few of the faces at the edge of the pit. The ones that have enough mouth to properly speak. But they refuse to interrupt their wailing long enough to talk to me.  Why do you hurt? too much too much too much too much too much TOO MUCH TOO MUCH TOO MUCH TOO MUCH they keep screaming at me why are they screaming why are they yelling why are they screaming make them stop make them stop I'll make them stop by screaming at them Can I help you? make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop scream at them to stop scream at them to stop scream at them to stop What is this place? this place this place is hurt is hurt hurt falls hurt falls lands here lands here screaming began and then screamed back and then screamed back and then screamed back began with hurt and then screaming made screaming made screaming If it's a simple feedback loop, perhaps Mute would break it.  If this place could capture The One Below's daughter, healing it might be beyond our abilities. We'll get in, do what we can, and get out. I steer my ship into the writhing mass of faces.As I fall deeper into the pit, the faces become heads. They become more recognizable as people, less digested into wailing orifices. It is somehow more terrible to still be able to distinguish them as individuals, but see them all locked together in this one cacophonous action.  There's always time to harvest motes. Always.  One of the more obvious puzzles. We cast Unbabble. God, I cannot tell you how little I want to know what these things are saying. I mean Mute.  And there's our last type of mote. It hurts, frightens, and counteracts Love. We continue deeper. I descend further. The walls of the pit are narrowing. The faces now have necks, and can stretch out from the sides of the pit. I hear the mouths gnawing on the plating. Luckily, I have a ship durable enough to withstand some teething. I don't *think* taking the Skyhook locks you out of this - it just means you need to cast another Mute - but I might be wrong, because confirming this would entail taking the Skyhook.  There is a person here.He is lashed to the wall, held by the faces. Teeth dig into his legs and arms. The faces wail in muffled hisses through their clenched jaws. The figure screams with them, slowly being dragged into the wall of the pit to join them. Probably not The One Below's daughter, but it's hard to say anything conclusively with Her. Unbabble might give us some insight. I cast comprehend on the figure.There is one message in his frantic writhing. Please make the pain stop. Or not. Let's examine the situation and see if a rescue is on the table. Saving the person in the wall will be a multi-step process.If I don't choose the right spell or matter every step of the way, it will cost me in my blood, or his life.  We're about equipped as we can be, but rescuing this man would take considerably more effort than dealing with the Webcrawler.  This is a 4-part rescue operation, made up of the following steps: -Stop the screaming -Break the prisoner out (we can target the prisoner or the faces for this purpose) -Get back to the Debugger (alternatively, we can just tank some damage here) Despite Pisces' misgivings, we're about as well-equipped as it gets - we don't have a ton of Fire and Air to play with, but our spell selection is robust, and we have a great supply of other motes to draw on. If you want to use multiple Fire motes in your solution, we can always grab some from the Abyssal Plain. Still, this will be dicey and resource-intensive. Should we rescue the prisoner, or keep looking for the daughter? If we are staging a rescue, how? Doopliss fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Feb 28, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 22:55
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serefin99 posted:Is it possible to use Omini at any step of the process and get an actual hint, or does it just like "you just wasted your turn dipshit" and the dude dies? Casting it during our preparations gives us the following: Make sure that you arevery well equipped before you try to save Mathias. Nice to put a name to the face, but doesn't really help with our execution.  Nobody gets murdered for using Omini during the rescue itself, but you have the gist of it. EDIT: Actually, though, this game presents the octopus to us as an explicit option for when it's relevant rather than making us go into an inventory or anything. I should probably just make it explicit where the octopus goes in this puzzle. Doopliss fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Feb 28, 2021 |
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Feb 28, 2021 03:43
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 Active content warnings: ..................Body Horror.............  Welcome back. Last time, we entered a hellpit of congealed suffering, and found some poor bastard trapped in it. This time, we're rescuing said bastard.  First up, we prepare the field. Too noisy? Make noise go away. This is necessary for us to leave the ship, but it's also our opening salvo - the faces know we're coming now.  As we established back on the Abyssal Plain, Ringo will risk its life for us if we're visibly in danger, and we probably don't need language to explain that this man needs rescuing.  This is at once trickier and extremely simple.  Love, it seems, can only counteract Fear if it's roughly equal in power. We could scatter some Love motes at the entrance to distract the faces as they tear the motes to ribbons, but that's hardly efficient when Ringo has our back. There are a lot of trap options in this one - if we mess with the faces in ways that don't *really* force them to let go, they'll keep their death grip. For example, light motes would just cause them to drag the man in futher. Intelligently, nobody in the thread recommended we scare the faces off with Fear motes. These are creatures of Fear, and feeding them more Fear would only empower and agitate them. If we were lucky, that would only lead to the captive's death instead of ours.  Therefore, we just kill the faces. Fire would have worked based on the same principle, but we have a whole lot of Death on our hands. Either way, it costs three motes.  That's the hard part out of the way - now the only question is how much pain we take getting back. I use a mote of Air to create a burst of wind.Lost 1 Air Bubbles prickle my skin as I shoots us through the water and quickly back to the ship. Water would have achieved the same thing, and if we just swam for it we would take a very reasonable three damage. I reach the ship, and haul the figure through the hatch.The octopus slips back in beside me. I slam the hatch door. The figure abruptly stops screaming and falls mercifully unconscious.I awkwardly drag him to the cabin bed. The octopus tries to help. Peep flutters anxiously about.  I don't know if the faces are capable of holding a grudge about this, or even if they're glad to have less other presences around screaming at them. Regardless, the Debugger can handle their gnawing.  Looks like he's not in any immediate danger, other than the fact that he's unconscious. The One Below doesn't seem like the sort to misgender people, so this probably isn't Her daughter. Not wanting him to wake up confused, afraid, and armed on my ship, I frisk him.I find a dagger in his boot, and another up his sleeve in a mechanism that is both spring loaded and terribly broken. ==> Probably one of the faces chewed on it too hard I confiscate the weapons, stashing them in the cockpit. Just until I know who he is.  Seems like there's nothing more we can do for him at the moment - Pisces doesn't feel a need to spend Life motes, so he's hopefully just trauma-napping. The surviving faces have returned to their normal screaming, so we probably don't have to lay low before heading deeper. The pit narrows below me. The faces have teeth like cleavers. ==> Long, sharp and flat. My ship creaks and quivers disconcertingly as the wailing around us increases in pitch. I am extremely concerned about going any deeper.  In the OP, I mentioned that this game isn't gratuitous in its handling of its "content warning" content, except for arguably one place. This region goes *hard*. For those who want off this roller coaster, either for sensitivity reasons or just because you find it unpleasant, the next update will contain a thorough recap of the actual plot-relevant stuff down here. We're going down there, of course. The engine we picked off that webcrawler will allow even less robust ships to continue on undamaged. EDIT: After a more recent patch, this location can be skipped with no loss of resources. Naturally, we're here for the content. I rev the engine and speed down, too fast for the faces to get purchase on my ship.I go down and down. I break through a crust of calcified pain. Suddenly, everything is quieter. I am at the bottom of the wailing pit. The ambient underwater audio fades away.  The liquid is viscous.There is a tepid, swirling flow to it. It's mottled like an oil slick rainbow. Colorful, but in a sickly way. I hover my hand over it to try and get a sense of its spiritual properties.  That wasn't me.That wasn't here. That was someone else, somewhere. Someone in pain. But the experience had a stale quality. A memory. These are liquid memories.  The face said "began with hurt and then screaming made screaming made screaming". I guess this is what started the feedback loop. I cast light on this situation.My awareness of the cavern expands. The first thing I see is pain.Pain seeps in from holes in the walls. Some are narrow cracks, leaking trickles of unhappiness. Some are tunnels, oozing agony.  I'm guessing this memory won't be pleasant. A few yards away, a woman is sitting, waist deep in liquid. That must be The One Below's daughter. Rescues take priority over spells, I suppose. I swim over to the girl, carefully staying above the pain. That's... Odd? Pisces seems to think the bracelets are relevant.    ...Hello? The Mother and the Spider sent us to help. What do you need? She tries to speak to you,but she cannot find the balance between forceful enough to be heard and soft enough to be ladylike so she says nothing. She smiles apologetically.  Right. The One Below mentioned we could "use what we learned" to restore her to her true self.  This must be the Maiden, then. Let's restore her innocence. I am looking at a lovely young lady. Ah. We've misinterpreted the Maiden.  This fits the third interpretation of The One Below much better. I am looking at the Maiden.She smiles, and it is like vicious moonlight.   She looks satisfied.And then She looks at me.  And then She is gone.Now that we've completed both rescues, we can retrieve our memory.  I can sense flashes of blue in the liquid pain pool below.Familiar flickers of my memories. But I can't quite make out where they are. I'll have to feel around for them. I can think of very little I want to do less. Do it anyway.  And here's the major puzzle of the area. There are a bunch of painful memories down here, and we're going to be sifting through them for ones that seem to belong to Pisces. If we try to incorporate a memory that doesn't belong to us, we take damage. In total, Pisces has three memories in here, and there are one or two that seem connected to other characters in the Open Sorcery universe. The rest of them are adapted from autobiographical Facebook mail-ins. You can click this link to read them. They're a lot. . . . . .  Pisces' memories are as follows: quote:I'm wheeling myself slowly down a ramp. quote:I hate hospitals. quote:My leg is BURNING.  Compiling the spell costs a Fear mote - because the memories never broke, no reassembly is needed. The Suffero spell lets us put off experiencing pain for a minute, though we still feel the pain once the spell expires. More useful than it sounds.  And now there's nothing left to keep us in this pit. Doopliss fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Feb 28, 2021 20:24
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Arcvasti posted:EDIT: Can like, those memories be stuck into an lpix link or something? So people don't have to look at them while scrolling around this page. I was really ambivalent about this sequence myself, and I was kind of looking forward to seeing the thread's views on it (with the caveat of the extra content warnings).
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Feb 28, 2021 21:12
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serefin99 posted:Yeah, I was actually about to ask, does the game offer any sort of alternative to this? I'm not against the memories being present at all, but it does seem like kind of a dick move to lock progress (or at least, a tool for progress) behind a literal pool of potential triggers. To my knowledge, no. Suffero isn't a necessary spell by any means, even if going for "good ending" events, but it gets like 6 motes' value over the course of the game. cant cook creole bream posted:Will you say something about the memories which are from the in universe character? The "Dad is talking about faggots again" memory likely belongs to Decker, who we know has a boyfriend named Andy and thinks his dad's a bigot. It's also hypothesized that the self-harm memory belongs to Sarah, though I think this isn't the case for reasons we'll get to later. Doopliss fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Feb 28, 2021 |
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Feb 28, 2021 21:17
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Nick Buntline posted:Potentially there's also the one that starts "my mother is crying"; it would fit into Janet's story, but it's definitely generic enough that that could just be coincidental overlap. As for last update's subject matter, I have messy feelings on it. I definitely don't think the game ever approaches this again in harshness, or even insidiousness - or if it does, it's in ways that can be trivially avoided. There's also the fact that "horrible" is very different in nature than "triggering" - there's good reason why you have to be careful when writing someone trying to sexually assault a person, but someone trying to destroy the entire world is fine for Saturday morning cartoons. There's absolutely a place for art that would be traumatic to certain groups if it's labeled as such, though you probably should avoid triggering content unless it's justified by the story. Which in this case, it kinda is? When I got to the "Dad says I can't tell anyone" memory on the first playthrough, my first reaction was "ouch, that's really effective". I'm a bit less comfortable after learning they were autobiographical, but I suspect that's a me problem aside from potentially making it more triggering. They chose to participate. The core issue is doing this kind of brutal content mixed in with things that would otherwise be enjoyable to a wider audience, which I think is what y'all are mainly talking about, and it kind of highlights an issue that the entire content warning system runs into: It warns you in advance, but it doesn't really give you options to circumvent it. That's particularly the case since, other than the Suffero sequence, most of the content you get warned about is from 100% unskippable areas. The very fact of the game's sensitivity also makes this a bit awkward - you get the same warning for the adorable coral spiders in the Abyssal Plain that you get for The One Below, and you get the same ableism warnings for Pisces griping about her body than you do the disability-related stuff in the Wailing Pit. That's a tepid-rear end criticism, particularly given the state of content warnings in general, and aside from the Suffero sequence it amounts to more of an "I guess this could notionally be better" comment than anything I'd properly care about. So I guess I do think it kind of sucks that the Suffero sequence isn't skippable in some way just due to how rough it is compared to everything else in the game, like a "just shut my mind off and get it over with" option. Actually, I might even float that on the Discord, since the author's clearly making an effort toward accessibility. I'm hesitant to come down too harshly, as I do like the sequence on its own merits and I think the game is dark enough in other areas that it's not utterly out-of-place, but it is A Lot in a way that players should perhaps have some control over - particularly given it's relatively divorced from the story's essence.
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Feb 28, 2021 22:52
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