Part 5: Wherein the Mystery of the Mirth Cones is Resolved

Music: Timbermist Woods (Tindeck)

Last time, we ambled aimlessly around Timbermist Wood, collecting a panoply of the finest bounties the forest has to offer: flowers, nuts and precious gemstones. We also had our first run-in with Malcolm the jester, who sealed off our progress with a wall of ice. Today we're going to start solving a few puzzles and see if we can't break that ice.

The first puzzle we need to solve is to get that quill for Darm. Our best lead on a feather to use as a quill is the wounded songbird we found, but it's being entirely uncooperative, and the only person in Kyrandia who knows squat about songbirds is approximately two hundred years old and spent most of the brief conversation we had with him coughing his lungs out at us. But as it turns out, his rambling did contain the one obscure clue we need to proceed. Have you figured it out?



Music: Deadwood Glade (Tindeck)

If you would harvest, you must sow. We visited Deadwood Glade earlier, but lacked the means to do anything interesting. Now that we have some seeds - specifically an acorn, a walnut, and a pinecone - we can get sowing. Of course, to do this, we'll pick the one spot in the forest that looks as far from arable as possible to do this. At least it has a convenient hole already dug for us, saving us the effort of trying to hunt down a shovel. Let's plonk the walnut in there and see what happens.

I hope this is right...



Upon placing the walnut in the hole, the ground shakes briefly.

Wow! Did I do that?

I'm not entirely sure what kind of plant we're expecting to have sprout from just tossing a walnut in with a pinecone and an acorn, but let's not stop now. The pinecone goes in...



... and finally the acorn. The order actually doesn't seem to matter.

Here goes... I wonder what sort of fertilizer would be best? Hey, something's happening!



Wow, did I do this?



Of course, the horrible mutant walpinacorn talks. Why wouldn't it? It also has the same voice actor as Malcolm and Herman, again.

Video: Pseudobushia Hugiflora (Youtube)

Hello. Are a nut tree or what?
If you must know, I am a Pseudobushia Hugiflora! You don't happen to have any manure, or a couple of old fish? I'm ravenous.
Uhm... sorry.
That's okay. I'll get my roots going. Hey roots, wake up! Time to go to work! I'm starving up here!
Aren't you going to give me something?

Whiny and entitled. That's the Brandon we know all right.



Suddenly, the game makes a bizarre effort to be self-aware and poke fun at the genre. Personally, I think the joke falls a bit flat here, but at least they tried.

... I am instructed to: Thank you for "Restoring Life to the Deadwood Glade" and to "Express our Appreciation" and so forth, and so on, and "In Token of which," I dust you now.



You got it in my nose!

I sure hope Brandon isn't allergic to pollen. Hey, something's changed.

I feel different! Am I stronger now, or what?
I suppose that's up to you. I've done my part, so if you don't mind, I'll get back to my own problems. Come on, roots! Let's get going!

Getting a face full of nut pollen has unlocked the top jewel in the Royal Amulet! However, it's not entirely clear what it does just yet. Let's give it a try. We click on the jewel...



... and some yellow sparkles appear. I don't feel like we've learned anything.

Gee, this could come in handy if I get hurt.

This is the only hint you get as to the function of the yellow spell. As it turns out, this is the spell of Healing. It's not clear how Brandon knows this, but now that we have it, we can put it to some good use.



... he'll have to give me a feather, won't he?

Sterling logic, Brandon. Let's do it!



Hey, we did it!

Music: Birdsong (Tindeck)



And with that, the songbird ditches Kyrandia forever, leaving behind a single red feather.

Hope this qualifies as a quill.

It damn well better. We went through a lot to get our grubby paws on that. Is this what it's like every time anyone in Kyrandia needs to write something down? No wonder that was the only songbird left. We waste no time ferrying this over to Darm.



Music: Darm's Abode (Tindeck)

Why did I want it?

You are the Master of Scrolls. Write him one to aid his quest.

So that's what the sign was all about.

Of course! You'll need a... Magic Scroll!



For mystics with no magic left you all seem to have an awful lot.

Malcolm's hold grows ever stronger and soon no spells of ours will work.



It's kind of easy to miss, but the scroll is sitting on his desk now as an item we can pick up. When we do, Darm continues talking.

Good. You have the scroll.

She kind of makes it sound like we did something impressive rather than pick up a roll of paper that was like, right there.

Next you'll seek another tool.

Another tool?

We're not done?

He must find his birthstones.



You mean BIRTHSTONES.

Never change, Darm.

The seasons have their gems. Place each in order on a plate... or something like that.

Actually, if you could change to be a little more useful, that would be great.

What are my birthstones, and what plate?

Summer is the first. I think I hid that one somewhere near...



I summoned all your stones, but my spell has gone awry. You will have to choose from whatever lies about.

Fantastic. You're very helpful, Darm. Before we try to figure out what he's on about, let's see what that scroll does. Darm and Brandywine have been hyping this thing up quite a bit, so it's got to be something cool.



... something cool, indeed. It makes the air slightly colder. I'm sure that'll be very helpful to us in taking out the massive wall of ice that's blocking our progress.

All right, now that we have the scroll, let's tackle this "birthstones" malarkey. According to Darm, we need to place gems associated with the seasons in order on a plate somewhere, starting with summer. There are four seasons, so we probably need four gems. Haven't we seen four gems and a plate somewhere recently?



This looks like it'll fit the bill. We even have four gemstones in our inventory! We don't really know which gemstone matches each season, but it can't hurt to just try one, right? That garnet looks like it might be summer. It's all bright and red and stuff. Let's try it on the plate. What's the worst that could happen?



Uh oh. Not only did that not work (Brandon's feigned understanding notwithstanding), we lost our garnet. Maybe peridot is summer?



Oh god our precious fortune. We can try the remaining two gemstones in our inventory, but the same happens to them, too.

This is not fair! I'm getting tired of this.

Clearly we're missing something. Randomly burning gemstones is not working out for us. We need to apply some logic to this. Are there any stones we've seen that we didn't pick up?

Actually, there are several. For starters, there's that ruby we couldn't get because it was guarded by a vicious tree-snake. We still don't have any way to stop the snake from biting us, but we do have something else that might help us out. We reload our save to get our gemstones back, then return to the ruby tree grove and provoke the snake into biting us again...



... and just like before, we have the ruby, but we're poisoned again and will die if we start moving around. This time, however, we have the Healing spell.



Amazing! The effects of the poison are gone!

I actually think this puzzle is a little clever, even though the first time you fail at it you run the risk of getting stuck with a bad savegame. Rather than find a way to prevent the bad situation from happening, we have to let it happen and fix it afterwards. Now we have a ruby. Next, there's a stone we actually clicked on earlier, but couldn't pick up. Remember the spring where we got the tulips and the amethyst? When we examined the brook, Brandon said this:

That big rock on the bottom looks pretty.

If we go back there and click it now...



It's beautiful...

... we find that the pretty rock is actually a sunstone. Before talking to Darm, it's impossible to pick this up, even if you know it's there. Clicking the brook will just make Brandon examine it ad infinitum. The game is trying to gate the birthstone puzzle so you don't complete it before the quill quest, but this feels like a pretty dumb way of doing it. There's absolutely no visual cue that there's even anything in the water, by the way. Again, click everything, even if it doesn't look like an item.

Well then, are we ready to do the birthstone puzzle? Not quite. There is one thing I have been intentionally ignoring so far throughout this playthrough: any generic wooded area has a chance to spawn a random gemstone at various points in the game. We've seen two of them already... the sapphire and the amethyst appear randomly and we just happened to find them. The only fixed one is the peridot, which always appears alongside the little falling leaf animation. More of them have actually spawned by now, I've just been ignoring them since our inventory space is limited and we haven't needed them before now. There are actually twelve gems in total.



First, we're going to clean up our inventory a bit. We can't carry all the gemstones at the same time, so I'm going to drop all my gemstones on the ground in front of the altar. I'll also discard Kallak's note; we don't need it anymore. All that's left in our inventory now is an apple, a tulip, and the scroll. Now let's randomly run around in the woods looking for precious stones.



First, we find a topaz...



... and a pearl.



We still can't take the emerald, but sitting nearby is an aquamarine.



Going all the way back past Herman's bridge finds us an opal...



... and an onyx.



This diamond brings our total to the full twelve.



That's quite a collection we've gathered, all just lying around in the woods. Darm said something about a spell that was meant to summon the birthstones having gone awry, which I suppose is meant to explain why there are gemstones lying everywhere. Are you guys ready to solve a completely idiotic puzzle? I know I am!

We have twelve stones, and we need to choose four of them to sacrifice to the altar, in the correct order. We need to start with summer, but which is summer? Or fall, winter, or spring, for that matter? We haven't seen anything that links specific stones to seasons.



Solve your birthstones quest! Then return here.

Darm is as useless as before and won't tell us anything either.

Maybe the Google spell can help us. There are many sources on the Internet about birthstones, but they don't all agree with each other and the origins of the whole concept of gemstones corresponding to seasons or months is dubious to begin with. Some websites list months or zodiac signs, not seasons. At least one source did list ruby as the gemstone corresponding to the season of summer, so let's try it.



No go. We can start jamming gems into the plate at random again, which will launch Brandon into another parade of disappointed complaints as his riches turn into ashes:

Why am I doing this? This is depressing. What do I have to do?

We can clue this one out, though; Darm said he hid the summer birthstone, and the only stone we have that could have been said to be hidden is the sunstone, which was at the bottom of a brook. Onto the plate it goes.



What's so hard about that?

Not bad. Sadly, this puzzle is about to board the nine o' clock express to Bullshit Central. We need to put three more gems onto the plate, and we have no idea which gem corresponds to which season.

All right, I'll level with you, folks. This puzzle can't be solved by logic. There aren't any clues in the game that will tell you what the other birthstones are. I briefly considered the idea that this might actually be some good old-fashioned copy protection, where the puzzle can only be solved by consulting the manual. That practice was actually fairly common back in the day. Unfortunately, the manual doesn't say anything about birthstones, and the CD-ROM version doesn't have copy protection.

Looking up the order online won't help either: the order is actually randomized each game. As far as I can tell, you are expected to solve this puzzle through sheer trial, error, and savescumming. I shouldn't have to tell you why this is bad game design. This barely qualifies as a puzzle. Perhaps you can begin to see why this game isn't fondly remembered alongside its contemporaries.

I'll spare you gifs of randomly trying stones and seeing what sticks. The correct order in my game turns out to be sunstone, garnet, peridot, ruby. I think the sunstone and ruby are always the first and last stones respectively, but the middle two are randomized.

Yes! I placed the last gemstone...



Good job, I guess. Do we get anything out of this?



Oh! What's that?

... it's a flute. Hardly seems worth the effort, to be honest.

A flute? Watch out, Malcolm!



Not even Brandon is impressed. Well, now that we're done with the quest, let's go back and tell Darm about it.



... and I received a flute.

Excellent, Bandon... have you practiced yet?

My name is Brandon sir...



Even Brandon has had enough of Darm's senility.

... and I have not tried playing the flute.

Zanthia knows Alchemy. She could change your name. She lives just across Shadowland I think... or did she move?

Forgive him please... he tries hard.



I knew there was something important in there. Wait, what's this about a labyrinth?

Be very cautious! There are horrible beasts in there!

You're really not selling me on this plan, Brandywine. But I suppose we must. Unfortunately, that flute we just got is exactly what we need to break Malcolm's spell.



Great! That last note shattered the ice! I didn't think my playing was THAT bad.

Isn't that convenient. With the ice shattered, we won't need the flute anymore, so I'm just going to leave it on the ground. Sadly, this means there's no longer anything keeping us out of the next area...



... the Labyrinth. It sure is nice with a change of scenery, though. Next time, we'll have a look inside, and I will be seriously reconsidering doing this Let's Play.