Part 2: There and Back Again
Part 2: There and Back AgainWelcome back! Last time we cleaned some brass calipers despite being trapped in some kind of horrific reality fracture. Today we will actually escape the lab.
But first, a confession. You don't actually have to use trial and error to work out which impet of essential oil to open for the tarnish cleansing ritual. The Alchemy Journal doesn't start empty, and it can also be interrogated with commands. Remember how when we found the instructions we were invited to >RECALL various facts?
quote:
>RECALL
You have learned one ritual:
basic tarnish cleansing inscription
After months of diligent practice, you have memorized several common alchemical formulae:
the Lesser Phlogistical Saturation
an elementary word of binding
a word of essential nature
a simple sealing word
an unsealing mantra
You have picked up assorted facts:
the work assignment
the resinous note
a lecture on aromas
>RECALL BASIC TARNISH CLEANSING INSCRIPTION
"FOR THE CLEANSING OF BRASS TARNISH: Prepare an atmosphere of fiery principles. Place a brass token within the bound, and seal it. Speak a word of essential nature, so that the properties of brass may be evoked. Compound the atmosphere with a resinous note. Then intone the Lesser Phlogistical Saturation to complete the token's investment. Place token directly on tarnished item."
>RECALL THE LESSER PHLOGISTICAL SATURATION
The Lesser Phlogistical Saturation is a knot of breathy syllables. It has to do with reversing processes of tarnish and rust.
>RECALL AN ELEMENTARY WORD OF BINDING
The elementary word of binding is frequently used to make simple chymical compounds.
>RECALL A WORD OF ESSENTIAL NATURE
The word of essential nature is used in rituals to invoke the principle of sympathy.
>RECALL A SIMPLE SEALING WORD
The simple sealing word creates a boundary circle around a ritual space. Most alchemical procedures begin with a sealing word.
>RECALL AN UNSEALING MANTRA
The unsealing mantra isn't an alchemical formula. It's just a way to divert your mind from a ritual in progress, breaking open the bound and dissipating any energies.
>RECALL THE WORK ASSIGNMENT
"Ensign Forsyth: When you're finished scrubbing, get these calipers freshened up. You should be able to handle the ritual. See me afterwards."
>RECALL THE RESINOUS NOTE
The Sergeant left you a scrawled note along with the tarnish recipe: "Resinous note—wave the rosemary, swabbie."
This is all either useless fluff or things we've seen before. This, on the other hand, is very much not:
quote:
>RECALL A LECTURE ON AROMAS
You dimly recall taking notes on the uses of aroma in alchemy. Perfumes influence a ritual by adding elemental principles of the atmosphere. You might open an impet of ginger essence for a fiery ritual, or mint essence for a cooling effect. Citronelle is strengthening, seaweed has... something to do with breath... it was a tedious lecture.
Okay. That dealt with, let's actually try to get ourselves out of here. Let's poke around the lab more carefully.
quote:
>LOOK
Secondary Alchemy Lab
The lab is unsettlingly dim, but familiar enough: rough wooden walls, the broad stone surface of the workbench. The lab door is to the north; it's closed.
Some kind of fracture blocks the east side of the room from you.
On a side table, you see two impets of essential oil (peppermint and ginger (open)). Next to the table, an iron panel is set in the floor.
>X PANEL
You've seen the iron panel before, of course. It's some kind of service hatch. But it's apparently been shut since forever and a quarter. It's faintly rusty around all its edges, and the steel bolts that hold it down are worse.
>OPEN HATCH
You twist at the steel bolts, but they're rusty and they probably haven't turned since the Retort was built. The panel isn't moving anywhere.
>X WORKBENCH
The workbench is a broad slab of bluestone, chipped and scarred. A bound is incised in its surface—the circular arc that contains and constrains works of alchemy.
The workbench bound is empty.
You notice a worn steel bolt lying under the workbench.
>GET BOLT
You reach down and pluck the bolt from the floor.
Hmmm. If a brass pin will clean brass calipers, will a steel bolt...?
quote:
>PUT BOLT IN BOUND
You put the steel bolt into the workbench bound.
>SPEAK SIMPLE SEALING WORD
You take a breath, trace the bound in your mind, and intone the simple sealing word.
The arc begins to glow orange around the steel bolt.
>SPEAK WORD OF ESSENTIAL NATURE
You intone the word of essential nature. The metallic nature of the steel bolt rises to the surface.
>WAVE ROSEMARY
You wave the sprig, and inhale its fresh, resinous aroma. The fiery reek of ginger seems to shift to a cleaner, more gentle scent.
>INTONE THE LESSER PHLOGISTICAL SATURATION
You begin the Lesser Phlogistical Saturation. The sounds try to bend and smear on your lips, but you are on your guard, and you hold clearly to the formula.
The energy slowly converges. The orange light flares, drawing together the blended aromas and the words that you speak.
When the light fades, a symbol shines on the surface of the steel bolt.
>GET BOLT
You pick up the steel bolt, careful of its inscribed basic saturation symbol.
>TOUCH BOLT TO PANEL
You carefully lay the basic saturation symbol against the steel bolts. The symbol discharges with a loud, crackling buzz. Sparks fly across the surface of the iron panel, and the bolt-heads rattle as their rust sublimes away.
The display of alchemical energies slowly dies away, leaving the hatch and its bolts bright and clean.
>OPEN PANEL
You twist at the first of the steel bolts. It's still tight, but it reluctantly begins to turn.
After several minutes of scraped and reddening hands, you've loosened all of the bolts. You lift the hatch open, and peer down into a dim crawlspace.
Not only that, if we check our Alchemy Journal...quote:
>RECALL RITUALS
You have learned two rituals:
basic rust cleansing inscription (with the steel bolt)
basic tarnish cleansing inscription (with the brass pin)
quote:
>DOWN
You drop through the hatch into the crawlspace below.
Secondary Lab Crawlspace
You are in a low, dimly lit corridor that runs from east to west. A hatch by your (ducked) head opens to the laboratory above.
To the east, the crawlspace is interrupted by another fracture—or perhaps the same one you saw in the lab. But this is different: you can see a figure caught behind the fracture. You peer closer in the gloom...
That's Lieutenant Anderes, apparently frozen mid-step. What's she doing down here? And why is she carrying an alchemical reagent jar?
A chymic flask rests nearby; it reeks of rubbing alcohol.
>X FIGURE
Jana Anderes is a pinch-faced lieutenant in the Lumber Department—or, as it's officially named, Stores and Supply. You've occasionally dealt with her when you're sent to fetch this or that from the marcher's storerooms.
Now she's sneaking around in the crawlways... or she would be, if she weren't frozen in a fracture. Escaping, like you, from the Retort's catastrophe? But her attitude is somehow furtive, rather than uncertain.
Anderes is carrying a reagent jar. You can't make out its label, however.
quote:
>X FLASK
You are tediously familiar with this alcohol solution; you've scrubbed enough things with it.
Poor students. Just treated like glorified janitorial staff. Still, it might come in handy.
quote:
>GET IT
Taken.
>W
Mech Lab Crawlspace
The crawlspace runs west and east from here. There's another closed hatch above you. It's even rustier than the last one.
To the south, a few steps lead down to a dark doorway.
Hm. Well, let's see where we can go before bashing our heads against new barriers, even if we've got a pretty good idea of what to do about it. Let's go through that doorway. Unfortunately for us, that's not a dark doorway because the lights aren't on, but because it leads into an abyss of utter nonexistence:
quote:
>S
You step through the doorway, feeling blindly downward with your foot for the invisible floor...
Void
Something is wrong. Something is missing.
You are adrift, without referents. You never found the floor. You can't remember where it was supposed to be.
Something is drawing you in.
*** You awaken again ***
Secondary Alchemy Lab
The lab is unsettlingly dim, but familiar—in fact, exactly as it was before: rough wooden walls, the broad stone surface of the workbench. The lab door is to the north; it's closed.
Some kind of fracture still blocks the east side of the room from you.
On a side table, you see a sheet of instructions, a sprig of rosemary, two impets of essential oil (peppermint and ginger), a pair of tarnished calipers, and a brass pin. Next to the table, an iron panel is set in the floor.
A worn steel bolt is lying half-hidden under the workbench.
...You fight off deja vu. Everything is back as it was when you first awakened in the lab. The hatch is rusted shut, the supplies on the table are untouched. What in the name of... what has just happened?
What has just happened is that we have just learned the >RESTART verb. In most parser games, RESTART is a complete reset of the game state, undong all your progress. In Hadean Lands, it represents traveling to this location or several others like it throughout the game map. This resets the game world but not our progress. Our Alchemy Journal is untouched. We still know everything we've ever found out, and that has two important consequences.
First, it means that the game engine knows which puzzles we've solved and will solve them for us to get them out of our way if needed:
quote:
>DOWN
(first opening the iron panel)
You take the steel bolt.
You take the sprig of rosemary.
You take the impet of ginger oil.
You conjure a basic saturation symbol onto the steel bolt.
You lay the steel bolt on the hatch.
You pull the hatch open.
You drop through the hatch into the crawlspace below.
Second, if we ever end up learning new rituals or facts by experimenting with things we destroy, we need not worry because those facts will remain with us. We are free to experiment and don't need to bother with savescumming unless we're being exceptionally destructively systematic about something.
Anyway, now that we've done that, let's get back to where we were and actually check out that other corroded hatch.
quote:
>X HATCH
It's another service hatch, leading to another lab. But if the last hatch was rusty, this one is a disaster—the bolts are indistinct lumps of corrosion.
If you have your bearings right, the Mechanica Lab is above you.
Time to turn our bolt into a miraculous alchemical rust-cleaning machine again. We can't just make it happen with >UP though, because we have never gotten this particular hatch open. But we have performed this ritual before, so we can do that and its prerequisites in a single command:
quote:
>PERFORM BASIC RUST CLEANSING
You make your way to the Secondary Alchemy Lab.
You take the sprig of rosemary.
You take the impet of ginger oil.
You conjure a basic saturation symbol onto the steel bolt.
(You are now in the Secondary Alchemy Lab.)
Automatically fulfilled prerequisites can include getting to the appropriate lab. If you need special lab equipment to do a ritual (in this case, we need the "ritual bound" that holds the bolt), any prerequisites for reaching that equipment will be folded into the command resolution AI.
Oh yeah, also, before we go...
quote:
>PERFORM BASIC TARNISH CLEANSING
>GET PIN
>TOUCH PIN TO CALIPERS
Imagine if we managed to singlehandedly resolve a massive crisis that had crippled the entire marcher, and didn't clean those calipers like Sarge asked. We'd never hear the end of it. Punishment details for months on end.
Back once again to that rusted hatch and...
quote:
>TOUCH BOLT TO HATCH
You carefully lay the basic saturation symbol against the iron panel. The symbol discharges with a muted buzzing sound. Sparks fly from the bolts, and a bit of rust sifts down, but the charge doesn't seem to be sufficient this time. This hatch is going to require something stronger.
Well then. Time to start exploring the rest of this. Hopefully we can make our way into a lab that will let us get out into the marcher proper, or that has the equipment or reference material we need to learn how to open really stuck doors.
quote:
>W
Crawlspace Bend
The crawlway bends here, running from east to north. Another hatch is set into the floor; this one is already open.
A moldy sheet of paper is lying here. It looks like another alchemical recipe.
>READ PAPER
"REDOUBLED TARNISH CLEANSING: Deeply corroded metal may not yield to the basic tarnish removal ritual. In such cases, one must locate a more potent resinous element. Rather than the common rosemary or lavender twig, try a branch or cone from an evergreen tree. It may be necessary to crush the element to release its full effect."
You memorize the instructions, and also pick up the sheet. Just in case.
Oh, okay, or someone could have left those instructions for us rotting in a basement corner. That works too.
Let's finish exploring this crawlspace.
quote:
>N
Chem Lab Crawlspace
The crawlspace ends here. The only way back is to the south. You're pretty sure that you're under the Chymic Lab now.
You see one last hatch in the ceiling. This one is not rusted in the slightest. In fact, it looks like someone recently oiled it. Unfortunately, whoever it was also affixed a heavy brass lock.
Another stray flask is sitting on the ground. This one is labelled "lubanja".
>X LOCK
The brass lock is a common planetary combination affair. It's jammed through a hole drilled in the hatch coaming, though, and that can't possibly be Service standard. Somebody added this, and fairly recently, it appears.
>X LUBANJA
Lubanja, or Java spirit, is an essence distilled from the resin of certain Indonesian trees. It is an excellent solvent of substances which resist water.
Neat. Not immediately useful, but neat. We've only got one unexplored, unblocked passage left to us: the hatch that led down out of the crawlspace bend.
"Wait," I hear you ask. "Down? Aren't we in the basement crawlspaces already?"
Well, yes, but:
quote:
Herbarium Nook
You are in the Retort's herb-house. (Odd to reach it from the sub-basement; you usually come here through the upper laboratory floor. But that's a marcher for you.) A short ladder leads up to the ceiling hatch through which you entered.
You seem to be trapped in the east corner of the greenhouse. The main space, with its trays of sun-lit herbs and vines, is blocked off by another fracture. Only a few bits of herbage remain within reach.
A shelf holds a small bin labelled "mustard seed". Next to the bin are a pinecone, a dried mushroom, and a sprig of honeysuckle.
You notice a few orange threads lying in a crack in the floor.
"That's a marcher for you," our hero thinks. It's worth noting that the marketing material doesn't describe The Unanswerable Retort as a "marcher." Only people in-universe seem to do that. It calls the Retort an alchemical starship. Perhaps these reality fractures are less completely out of left field than we would consider, out here.
In other news, hey, check it out, a pine cone! Just we we need for that Redoubled Rust Cleansing ritual! What are those orange threads, though?
quote:
>X THREADS
These look like—yes—it's a small quantity of orange zafranum, an extraordinarily expensive spice. Whoever spilled this was very careless.
That's kind of a more venal sort of irregularity than the reality fractures, but in some sense that—and the giant brass combination lock—are even bigger mysteries than the cosmic disaster.
Next Time: We actually make it into the Mechanica and Chymica Labs.
From Last Time: When we were fumbling a ritual, the actions we took and the formulae we pronounced were described as inert or even recalcitrant. Furthermore, when we sealed the ritual bound, the colors were different.
Bonus Trivia: Several elements of this universe are things that exist in our world but ended up being given different names. Orange zafranum is one of those things. Lubanja is another. What are they? Warning: Don't just google these directly, because all you will find are spoilerrific walkthroughs for this game. I have a very good idea of what orange zafranum is, and a plausible but not very firm hypothesis about Lubanja. So let's hear it: what are these substances, and why did they get these names?