Part 3: Wherein Local Wildlife are Exploited for Fun and Profit
Well, it sounds like the people have spoken. We'll be doing the pun escape first. I'm kind of glad you voted for it (and suspected you might), because it's the least obvious of them all and a lot of people probably never knew it existed in the first place. Since we'll most likely be coming back to this part of the game a few times, I'll try to skip past or avoid as many irrelevant things as possible so we can highlight them better later. This first area actually has like twice as many rooms as we're going to actually see this update.Chapter 2: Wherein Local Wildlife are Exploited for Fun and Profit
Last time, Malcolm had just broken free of his petrification and was getting re-acquainted with the land of Kyrandia. We didn't accomplish much; we went home, found our jester's staff, and had a nap. Now, it's time to move.
Right. Before we go though, there's one last thing in here we should have a look at.
More Malcolm backstory! Let's have a look inside, shall we?
Apparently Malcolm had white hair as a child, too. Which is strange, because his hair was brown in the intro, when he was in his teens. I suppose he must've dyed it.
Okay, that's a little unexpected. Apparently, Malcolm is royalty?
There's Malcolm's mom...
... and his dad. I guess that explains why even as a child, Malcolm was wearing the motley and ended up court jester despite his spotty criminal record.
And there's Kallak, Brandon's grandpa. Malcolm doesn't trust him. For good reason, I suppose, given that he and the other mystics locked Malcolm up in that castle for almost twenty years.
Alas, the poor royal couple. You know, the ones that Malcolm murdered. Which makes him a kinslayer in addition to a regicide.
The handsome prince Brandon, protagonist of the first game. Even as a kid he looks like a dweeb.
Ha! The seeds grew so quickly, they knocked over the tub with Kallak inside!
This is actually a hint for a puzzle we will not be bothering with in this update. It's for a different path. All right, that's the end of the album. That was kind of strange. Malcolm really doesn't like Kallak's side of the family for some reason. Oh well, back to the task at hand: getting off Kyrandia.
Before we do anything else, we need a disguise. People around these parts still remember Malcolm, and his costume is not exactly subtle. There are a couple different disguises you can get in this game, but we'll get the most basic one. To do that, we need some sesame. Where are we going to find sesame?
Remember the mushroom-shaped building just outside town?
Ahh. Smell that dairy air.
That's not the pun we came here for. The dairy is conspicuously absent any cows, but there's a huge bag of seeds sitting right there.
We can get unlimited seeds from the bag. We're going to need a whole bunch of them (nine in total), but we can't carry that many plus everything else we need, so I'm just going to come back here periodically whenever we need more.
Seeds in hand, we're back at the dump. The first half of our disguise is right here. Do you see it?
We use some sesame to lure the squirrel closer to us, and get some Here Boy points as a side effect. Now that the little critter is within arm's reach, we can...
... put our nut-on-a-string to good use. How, you ask?
Hypnotize it, of course!
I can't believe that old trick still works! I love this guy!
Hypnotizing the squirrel makes it safe to pick up. If you think there's anything weird about carrying around stunned wildlife in our pockets, well, we're actually going to need to do this two more times. Yes, this escape method requires a grand total of three paralyzed squirrels to pull off. Unfortunately, the game won't let us carry around more than two at a time, so we need to use one of them up before we can move on. As luck would have it, we can do that right now.
Perfect. Rodent-based headwear is all the fashion these days in Kyrandia. The squirrel is the first part of our masterful disguise. Following this, I went back and forth and hypnotized another two squirrels and stashed them away in our pants.
We're back at the bath house to steal ourselves the second half of our disguise. The door is locked, but perhaps we can just pick the lock with a nail like we could the other ones?
Not quite. The coin mechanism is too far down to access. How can we extend the range of our bent nail?
By tying it to the other end of the nut-on-a-string, of course! This also gives us some MacGyver points. The bent nail-on-a-string easily unlocks the door to the bath house, and in we go.
(Music: Public Baths)
If we'd gone in here without wearing the squirrel on our head, the attendant would've recognized us and bad stuff would've ensued. Now, the text is kind of covering it in that picture, but there's a leather jacket hanging in the window there, just waiting to be stolen.
Leave those clothes alone!
The attendant may not recognize us, but he's not going to let us just nick people's clothes. What we need is a diversion.
For instance, tampering with the temperature controls!
You're not messing with those controls, are you?
So what if I am?
Not that simple, unfortunately.
Do you have a problem with lying?
Gunther appears to offer a useful hint. Turns out, it's almost that simple after all.
All we need to do is lie to the bath attendant when he asks whether we're messing with the controls.
You're not messing with those controls, are you?
Hey, what's the ruckus?
The attendant is momentarily distracted. While his back is turned, we swipe the leather jacket from the window and make it out of here post haste.
The squirrel hat was enough to fool the bath attendant, but it's not going to cut it with anyone else. The jerkin completes the disguise.
Perfect. Like a completely different person. Now we can go wherever we wish with no risk of being discovered. Right now, that means the Fish Cream Parlor.
(Music: Fish Cream Parlor)
It's time to clear the place out.
Hmm. Maybe this squirrel will get the attention of these weirdos.
Kyrandian squirrels are vicious killers. Releasing one in the parlor should be enough to get people's attention. Of course, it's still stunned; using the nut-on-a-string (now bent nail-on-a-string, but it works as if it was either item) will unhypnotize it.
Okay, little buddy. Do your thing!
I'm not sure if that's a Sam & Max reference. Hit The Road came out the previous year and the devs must've played it.
And where'd everybody go?
What? I didn't see anything.
If we weren't wearing this magnificient disguise, the clerk would freak out right here and throw Malcolm out. That would be bad, because we need to get this guy to make us a sandwich. A fish cream sandwich, because apparently that's a thing in Kyrandia.
He wants a sandwich.
Malcolm is still set to "Lying", so that's what we're doing.
We sent four dozen to the castle already.
Well, he wants one more. So, where's my, er, his sandwich?
Can't you get some more?
I can't leave the store. You bring me some eels, sesame, and cream, and I'll make you a sandwich.
Well, we need that sandwich (you'll see why eventually), so we need to find some ingredients. We already know where to find sesame. The dairy should be able to produce some cream for us, if we can only get the cows to come home. As for eels, we'll worry about that in a minute.
Back in the dairy. You see that mechanism on the left there?
Must be the food gauge.
We need to fill that hopper up with enough feed so that the cows will come back and start producing some cream for us. The cows won't eat plain sesame seeds - we need to get those suckers to sprout.
The frog we displaced earlier contains an endless supply of water. All we need is a bottle to keep it in.
Pouring water on the seeds creates small sesame sprouts. For some reason sesame grows unreasonably fast in Kyrandia, but hey, we're not complaining. We need five of these to fill up the hopper.
Toss them all in, and...
The cows are home, and the container on the right is filling up with cream.
Malcolm is certainly not above petty vandalism.
Delicious cream. We'll snag some more sesame from the bag before we go, and we're two for three. Next, we need some fish.
What we need is in the town hall. The door is locked, but we can lockpick it same way we did with the toy factory.
I think I remember. Wasn't this the Voice of Reason? What's it doing in here?
I have no idea what Malcolm is on about. This statue is apparently called the Voice of Reason, but that's all we really know about it. It has not appeared in any of the other games and it's not important now, so let's just ignore it. The door in the back is likewise locked, and can likewise be lockpicked.
Welcome to the town hall basement. There's a weird rug, a spare bottle, and most importantly - a tiny little brook.
Time to fish! All we need is a fishing implement, and we just happen to have one on hand.
That bent nail-on-a-string sure is doing some good work. What a versatile tool. Fish in hand, we can get that sandwich. All we have to do is dump a sesame seed, the eel, and the bottle of cream into the hopper there.
Instant fish cream sandwich! Seriously though, fish cream? I can barely imagine what that must taste like. Malcolm, care to have a bite?
Are you nuts? Not a chance.
Malcolm has approximately thirty responses if you try to use the sandwich on him, all amounting to some variation of "jesus christ get that thing away from me". I can't say I blame him.
This update is running long already, so I'm not showing them all off right now. Maybe later. Now, you might be wondering why we went through all this trouble just to get a disgusting sandwich, since nothing in the game has prompted us to procure one. We're kind of doing things out of order, but it's all about to pay off.
Back in the cellar. Let's have a closer look at that rug.
Clicking the green apple makes it light up. After that, click the red apple on the other side of the rug, and...
(Music: Darm's Hut)
Hey, it's Darm and Brandywine, our pals from the first game! Well, Brandon's pals. Probably not Malcolm's. The disguise is working out for us here, too. Darm doesn't seem to recognize us.
Hello there, sonny. Did you bring me a sandwich?
As a matter of fact, we did!
Ah, thanks! What a wonderful new tradition.
Darm has been sufficiently buttered up. If you don't give him a sandwich, he won't talk to you about anything else. He doesn't have a lot to say to us even now, though.
Darm always liked my jokes. I never forget a good audience member.
Perhaps a good old whip of the jester's staff will put him in an even better mood.
Stop it! You're killing me.
Click Darm three times with the staff, and...
Darm gets up to leave, giving us a few Mischief points and leaving us alone with Brandywine.
Oh shit, Brandywine sees through our meticulously tailored disguise! She doesn't really seem to care, though. Okay, so at this point, if you keep talking to her, she will give you a few clues for a different escape method, so I won't show it now. To enable us to do the pun escape, we must offer her a bribe.
A stunned squirrel, to be precise.
What.
Hey, what do you know, it actually worked!
And so, Malcolm clicked his 'eels together, wished really hard, and was whisked back home to Kansas. I mean, to the Isle of Cats. Presumably by the sheer force of how awful that pun is. The Isle of Cats is actually where we needed to go, though in this particular path it comes kind of out of left field. Next time, we'll try to figure out what the hell we're doing next.