Part 38: Day Three- Page 38
Kacie posted:
We've got that oily lens-like object in our trench coat - try putting it in the telescope slot.
Zoe posted:
Try this, but first while we're in the attic, do we have any keys we haven't tried yet or anything we can use to clear the blockage in the keyhole?
Well, let's take a look.
>look into keyhole
The keyhole is dark, as though blocked by something.
What do we have that could poke in there?
>i
You are wearing a silver locket, your trenchcoat, your clothes and your wedding ring.
The pockets of your trenchcoat contain a keyring, on which are four keys (a small copper key, an old-fashioned iron key, a key to the house and a key to the cellar), a jewelry box (which is closed), the Cryptical Haermoniacon, a letter opener, an animal's skull, The Compleat Manual of Wardes and Seales, a puzzle box (which is open but empty), a strange black disk, a strange metal flute, a styrofoam cup, a newspaper, a family album, your umbrella, a torn journal, a book of matches with six matches left, a flashlight (providing light), a lantern, a bundle of soggy pages, a towel, a typewritten notice and an old tin (which is closed).
>take opener
Taken.
>look at letter opener
It's a rather ornate thing, with a silver hilt and a slim, sharp tip.
That should do nicely.
>poke keyhole with opener
That's not a verb I recognise.
Oh God.
>stab keyhole with opener
That's not a verb I recognise.
It's... A VERB SEARCH!
>put opener into keyhole
The tip of the letter opener bumps against something, and you hear something clatter to the floorboards on the other side of the door.
Oh, that wasn't so bad.
For those not in the know, a Verb Search is like an anoying mini-game for text adventures. Some of the... No. Most of the time the programer has given the game a limited vocabular making some action damn near impossible. I seem to remember one game dedicated to just finding the right verb to do the simplest things. Like "Go West" wasn't enough, it had to be "Enter into Western Door."
Luckily, we've been dodging the bullet with Verb Searches, because Anchorhead is actually a good game, with a nice vocab and very few traps that make it unwinnable.
>look under door
Dropping to your hands and knees and placing your eye close to the crack beneath the door, you can make out a dim light coming from somewhere up above, and a great deal of dust on the floorboards. You can also see an old-fashioned brass key lying on the floor on the other side, just out of reach.
Uh...
I think the game is unwinnable, now.
>restore
Ok.
Time to check out that Telescope.
>kick contraption
Violence isn't the answer to this one.
>open contraption
That's not something you can open.
DAMN YOU VERB SEARCH!>push contraption
You bear down on the contraption, and suddenly it sinks downward, almost causing you to tumble. With a ratcheting shriek of rusted springs, the contraption unfolds into a rickety ladder, dropping down into the hallway below.
>down
The ancient rungs creak alarmingly as you descend.
Upstairs Hall
A rickety wooden ladder stands here, descending from a three-foot by three-foot square of darkness in the ceiling.
>n
Library
>e
Study
A dark, narrow corridor gapes in the wall to the southwest, partially hidden by the marble fireplace.
>enter fireplace
Narrow Corridor
>west
Narrow Corridor
The walls are bare wooden slats, patched with crumbling plaster and spiked with bent, rusted nails. The passage, no more than two feet wide at its widest point, bends and twist at confusing angles, making it hard to tell which direction you're heading in.
A thin beam of light slants through the dusty air, coming from a small hole half way up one wall.
If memory serves, this should be the Bedroom hole.
>look into hole
(the small hole)
Standing on tiptoe and placing your eye up to the hole, you see the children's bedroom. Through some strange trick of the angle, you appear to be looking straight down at the bed from the middle of the ceiling.
>nw
Narrow Corridor
>se
Observatory
Dominating the center of the room is a large mounted telescope, pointed almost straight up through the skylight.
Good. My map still works. Sometimes, with these Mazes, it feels like it randomly shifts.
Also, I don't think Miranda looked into the Telescope first time through here.
>look into telescope
The swirling hole in the sky fills the telescope's field of view, turning silently as you watch. The upper depths of the maelstrom are too dark to see, though occasionally you make out sparks of green energy as they arc across the gap.
>look into slot
The rectangular slot is empty.
>put opener in coat
(first taking the letter opener)
You slip the letter opener into the pocket of your trenchcoat.
Ha ha. Uh... I forgot that the Letter opener was only taken out before I resotred the save. Miranda just pulled out the opener to put it back into her coat.
>put lens into slot
(first taking the strange black disk)
The strange black disk drops neatly into the slot.
They say it's not healthy to look into the sun with a telescope,
Also the sky should be over cast,
But... What the heck. What harm could it do?
>look into Telescope
For a few moments all you can see is a murky, swirling blackness; then patterns of colors begin to emerge, like the rainbow sheen of oil on water. The black disk grows translucent, stars become visible through the swirling haze, and then...
Dear Christ.
Dear Christ, you can see it.
The comet, roaring silently through the endless void, streaking toward Earth, and it's alive, this thing that is coming is ALIVE, tendrils that must be hundreds, thousands of miles long streaming before it, reaching out to grasp and strangle and devour whole worlds, and it is coming here, it is coming to Earth, and its great, lidless, red-rimmed eye rolls over in a vast lake of vitreous fluid, and it
looks
at
you
...you wake up some time later, shaking your head. You're not sure what, exactly, you just witnessed; whether it was a genuine astronomical phenomenon, or a hallucination, or the actual form of some Dark God from the Outer Reaches, come to devour the world. You're not even entirely sure you remember what it looked like. The only thing you can clearly recall is a single name, pulsing in your brain like a bruise:
"Ialdabaoloth".
And that's all.
Your score has just gone up by five points.
Ghostwoods posted:
Find the way in through the north wall of wine, maybe?
Yyyyyeah.
Yeah, let's get away from here.
>se
Crawlspace
>e
Attic
>down
Upstairs Hall
>w
Upstairs Landing
>d
Foyer
>w
Dining Room
>nw
Pantry
>d
Cellar
>e
Wine Cellar
All of the racks are dust-covered and empty except for one against the north wall, which contains some forty or fifty dark bottles.
BurningStone posted:
Was it possible to get past the wine rack without seeing Michael do it? If you lose track of him in the house, are you stuck?
Just getting into Day 3 allows you to look closer at the bottles, but you would have to have guessed where Michael went without spying on his first. Even then, it's not easy to see him in the cellar the first time through.
>look at bottels
You can't see any such thing.
>oops bottles
Row after row of smooth, dust-covered glass. The wine inside is dark and murky, reminding you, somewhat irrationally, of blood.
There are five bottles in the third row from the bottom that have been handled recently; the fingermarks are clearly outlined on their dusty labels. One label is partially torn and the other is all but faded completely, but at a quick glance you count a Pinot Noir, a Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Cheval Blanc.
Five important Bottles. Hmmm... Interesting.
>look at label
Which do you mean, the wine bottles, the robust Pinot Noir, the light Cheval Blanc, the vintage Cabernet Sauvignon, the bottle with the torn label or the bottle with the faded label?
>faded
This bottle is so old that the label has almost faded beyond legibility, although from what you can make out it is probably a fine Merlot. A raised letter "C" has been stamped into the bottom of the bottle.
>look at torn label
The label on this bottle is partially torn away. There is a raised letter "E" stamped into the bottom of the bottle.
>look at Cabernet label
A vintage Cabernet Sauvignon from 1734. A raised letter "H" has been stamped into the bottom of the bottle.
>look at Cheval label
A light Cheval Blanc, 1886. There is a raised letter "M" stamped into the bottom of the bottle.
>look at Pinot label
A robust Pinot Noir, vintage 1651; obviously one of those collector's items that just keeps getting more and more valuable as long as you don't open it. A raised letter "W" has been stamped into the bottom of the bottle.
C, E, H, M and W. Doesn't spell any words that I know.
What do you guys think?
Think in Bold.
Items
In Trenchcoat
