Chapter 1: Initial Exploration

» Awake.

Uhhhhh…

Your head is killing you, but at least the room’s stopped spinning.

—

» Stand up slowly so as not to fall over and put hat back on head, but slightly askew in a relatively sexy-yet-trying-too-hard manner. This is vital.

You push yourself up and make sure to re-adjust your hat accordingly. An adventurer who isn’t dapper isn’t an adventurer at all. It is the finest hat around, and you’ve had it as long as you can remember… though at the moment you can’t remember anything. Like your name. Or where you are.

—

» Stroke hat lovingly.

You wouldn’t dare! A true hat stroke can only be given in the comfort of one’s own home at the end of the day. An adventurer never removes his hat on the job.

—

» Commit idolatry with that idol over there in the most suggestive way possible. And, uh, examine surroundings.

You examine the cave you’re in. Some sort of ornate door is beside you, and a dark passage a little further. At the far end of the cave is a strange wall with runic markings, and on the floor is a circular indentation. Behind you is a pile of rocks and rubble – presumably from a cave-in, which would explain how you got knocked out, and why you don’t seem to remember anything.

A one-eyed idol sits in an alcove between the two passages. You feel an urge to suddenly worship it, but it’s a little bit too creepy. Besides, you always feel guilty about selling precious artifacts after you’ve grown attached to them.

—

» Enter the door.

You move to enter the door, but it refuses to open. In fact, you’re not really sure how to open it. Overly-elaborate markings line it, with images of strange eye-people kneeling and all that sort of archeological crap. In the center is a big giant sun drawn as a spiral. Upon closer inspection, the spiral seems to be a deep but narrow indentation, and the outside end of the spiral has a funny looking hole in it.

The eyedol examines the door too. It is kind of wigging you out.

—

» Punch idol in the nose to establish superiority.

The eyedol doesn’t appear to have a nose. Its entire head appears to be one big ol’ eye. Still, he’s asking for a serious poking.

Smile, motherfucker!

Huh?

The room suddenly begins shaking. What kind of lousy adventurer are you?! You never pick up an idol without being prepared for the ancient countermeasures!

You quickly put the idol back, twist its eye back into the horizontal position, and move to the other side of the room. The shaking stops. You apologize and promise to leave it alone.

…For now.

—

» Stick a small thin object in the hole part of the spiral and move through the spiral, following the curves. See if that does anything.

You don’t have anything to stick in the hole. You adventure pack appears to be empty. You must be a pretty terrible adventurer to go adventuring without anything in your pack.

—

» Step on that floor panel. Thing.

You hop up and down on the depression a few times, but nothing happens. Aside from the weird symbol in the middle and the generic markings around the sides, it’s just an odd part of the scenery, you figure. It’s easy to figure things like that when you’re a shitty adventurer.

—

» Acquire a stone around the size and weight of the idol from the nearby rockpile, then swap it with the idol

You ready your new plan for action.

Success! You are the best adventurer ever!

—

» We check our backpack out of some misplaced sense of hope.

You stuff the idol into your backpack and figure you might as well see what else is around here.

Your pouch is pretty empty but there are a few things around.

INVENTORY:
– Ancient Eyedol: some kind of weird idol with a eye for a head.
– Bottle o’ Whiskey: Score! You forgot all about this!
– Dapper Dan Men’s Pomade: Only the most dapper of fellows carry this. You’re proud to have it.

You notice your most trusted possession appears to be missing. Curious.

—

» Use IDOL on FLOOR SCENERY OBJECT (et al)

Well, that didn’t work.

You figure you should just wait until you see somewhere the idol fits.

—

» Examine runed wall.

The Runic Wall has four markings on it: An eye, a lightning bolt, a sun, and a raindrop. There are circular indentations until the bottom three. This is pretty par for the course in terms of mysterious ancient caves.

—

» Enter dark cave.

You enter the dark room, ignoring the fact that this room happens to be darker than the last despite both being part of a cave without a light source. Across the deep pit you can see a tiny spot of light, but aren’t close enough to investigate.

Hey look! It’s your whip, your most trusted possession! …And it’s hanging from a pole in the middle of an abyss. Hrm.

—

» Swing across the pit with your trusty bullwhip.
» Once we have swung across the cliff, maintain our grip on the whip and yank it from the pole.
» Use the pomade to stick the whip to your left hand.

This is a terrific plan! Well… maybe not the pomade part. That stuff is pretty slick, and you don’t want to be falling down into your doom – do you now, butterfingers?

You ready your jumpin’ stance. You practiced this obsessively in front of the mirror. The only thing worse than an undershot jump is an unstylish one.

Woohooooo!

JUMP SUCCESS! You keep a steady grip and snap the whip off the pole. You got your whip back!

—

» Check that source of light down there to your left.

You think you can see something… it’s almost close enough to reach…

You got the nifty rod!

—

» Zap the wall with the rod.

Tap tap. Nothing happens.

—

» Go back to the other side.

Woohooooooooooo!

—

» Walk back to the starting room and place rod in the floor panel thing.

Ting ting! Nope, no luck here. There doesn’t appear to be a place for the rod to plug into, actually. The whole surface seems very smooth and continuous without any real gaps or edges.

—

» Pssh, use rod on the door, like we tried to do with the stick.

Hrm…

A-ha! It fits in neatly.

You spin the rod around, hearing the clicking of machinery in the walls around you.

Whirr…

You discover a ladder in rather shitty condition. Nobody’s been down here for a while, you guess.

—

» Go up the ladder!

Well, what do we have here?

—

» Weight lift the anvil.

The anvil is waaay too heavy for you to lift, shove, or lean into! You’re an adventurer, not an archaeologist!

—

» Hammer time!

You pick up the hammer. It appears to be tied to the anvil with a steel cord, but there’s plenty of slack.

—

» Read notes on desk.

They have kind of stuck themselves together. It is pretty damp in here. Still, you can read most of them.

—

» Wind up the thing on the mantle.

Wind wind wind. It appears to be a music box of some sort. It’s playing some very simple yet pretty music!

—

» Look up chimney.

You check out the fireplace. The fire’s burning quite excessively despite no apparent source of fuel. You think you see something…

Agh, you can’t reach it! It’s just too hot to touch!

—

» Whack it out with the hammer.

WHANG! The hammer connects hard with the grate as you swing with all your might. The whole room shakes with the force of the blow.

The grate explodes off its hinges and falls onto the floor. The object is propelled out as well.

—

» Inspect object.

It appears to be a medallion with a little scribbling of a lightning bolt on it. You stick it in your inventory.

—

» SAFE BEHIND PICTURE!!! LOOK AT IT!!!

You take down the painting and check out the safe behind it. The existence of the safe does not surprise you; safes are practically the reason people buy paintings these days anyhow.

It has a now-familiar indentation on the handle.

—

» Glare the safe open. And, if that somehow fails, poke it with the statue.

You give that ol’ safe a good glaring. Nothing happens but you feel a lot better.

You poke the safe with the statue and the eye sticks into the handle.

—

» Whack the handle with the hammer.

It doesn’t stretch that far. Whoever tied this thing in must’ve been really paranoid.

—

» Turn the eyedol? Or take it out and use the rod.

You no longer have the rod; it was taken away with the door. But turning the eyedol turns the handle along with it!

The mechanism unlocked, you turn the handle and open the safe. Inside is a scroll of paper, two coins, and a strange device. You decide to read the paper and stuff the rest into your bag along with the eyedol.

You wonder exactly what creatures this ‘Les’ fellow keeps talking about.

This is your inventory. It currently contains a lightning medallion, a bottle of whiskey, a strange device, a creepy eyedol, two coins, a music box, and a tin of Dapper Dan Men’s Pomade.

—

» Examine electronic gadget on right wall

You check out the gadget. It appears to be a monitor of some kind, with a control knob. The display is dark. There is a place for something to be put at the bottom.

—

» Hammer the cable.

Clang! No luck. It’s quite a sturdy cable. It may breakable, but bludgeoning it won’t snap it.

—

» Look out the window.

It’s hard to see anything; it’s built pretty high up. You can see a rocky ground and wall, and some kind of circular shape on the floor. Hard to say what it is, though. The light source is higher up.

—

» Press buttons randomly on device.

There are only two buttons on it, and a 4-character display. It appears that pushing the right button adds 7 to the ones column, and the left button moves all the numbers one place to the left. Pressing both resets the display.

The display currently reads 0070 due to your button-mashing.

—

» Examine who’s on the painting.

You examine the painting closer. It is a fellow with a funny flat hat and a rather magnificent beard.

There is some writing at the bottom of the painting.

—

» Kiss painting.

You feel a strange urge to… no, nevermind. It was nothing. You hope we can move on and not discuss this further.

—

» Also, you should examine the coins!

They have a similar eye-symbol on them. They appear to be worth 3 and 5 units respectively. You guess you have 8 eye-dollars or whatever currency these are.

—

» Enter 5224 on the device.

You aren’t sure how to do that with the annoying button system. You are going to have to logically hash this one out!

It appears that pushing the right button adds 7 to the ones column, and the left button moves all the numbers one place to the left. Pressing both resets the display.

The display currently reads 0070 due to your button-mashing.

—

» Go for it one digit at a time – right five times, left twice, right three times, left once, then right twice.

You reset the puzzle, then press right five times [0007, 0014, 0021, 0028, 0035]. You press left twice [3500]. You press right three times [3521]. You press left [5210]. You press right twice [5217, 5224].

The machine lights up! The display reads “PWER” and the buttons cease to work. Electricity sparks along the side of the knobby thing at the top of the machine.

—

» Try to stick it into the wall or something…

You press it against the wall. It sparks with electricity. Perhaps this is supposed to power something else up? You wonder what it could be inserted into.

—

» Use oil on fire

You pour a bit of oil on the fire. FOOM! Wahahahahaha!

That didn’t help at all, of course. If you want to put the fire out, you’ll have to think of some other way. The oil is now in your inventory.

—

» Apply PWER to base of panel on wall under window

The top of the device fits neatly into the base of the panel. It lights up.

You hear a noise behind you.

Huh? There’s nobody there.

—

» Go down the ladder.

There’s nobody here either.

—

» Grab the key from the puddle on the left, then use it on the drawer upstairs.

You got the rusty key! It’s a bit… well, rusty. It won’t be fitting in anywhere. You’ll have to clean it up somehow.

—

» Take the rocks!

Only two more rocks fit in your bag. It’s getting a little full.

—

» Quick! Wind the weird eye music thing and point the idol at the darkness! (just in case)

You play the music at the darkness for no particular reason. Nothing happens.

—

» Put the lightning coin thing in the hole.

You put the lightning medallion into the slot on the runic wall. Nothing happens. Perhaps you need to do something else to the medallion first?

You put it back in your inventory.

—

» RUN UPSTAIRS AS FAST AS WE CAN!

You don’t see anything looking at you, but you head upstairs anyhow.

What a mess this room is now. I hope you’re proud of yourself.

—

» Use oil on key, use key on drawer.

You oil up the key. It shines just like new!

The key now fits perfectly into the drawer. Ka-click!

Instead of opening the drawer, the entire drawer and wall section slide to the left.

You figure you might as well check out this new room.

Huh. These caves make no sense. This room hardly looks like a cave at all.

There is a ladder, a set of what appear to be lightbulbs strung across the center wall, a hatch, a vending machine, a sink/mirror, and a bucket. Oh, and of course, the giant-ass vault door looking thing in the middle of the floor.

You feel somewhat smaller, as if someone suddenly realized you were out of proportion to the environment.

—

» THROW BUCKET AT VENDING MACHINE!

You huck the bucket at the vending machine. It bounces off harmlessly. The glass must be plexiglass or some shit like that. You have a lot of fun though!

—

» Get the note, read the note.

You grab the note from behind the vending machine and read it. It is decidedly less humourous than the last ones. Part of it is missing and has been ripped off.

—

» JUMP-KICK THE VENDING MACHINE!

You don’t really want to beat up the vending machine any more. You can see that there’s something in it, though. Some kind of can.

—

» Open the hatch in the middle of the wall.

You find a ball of rather thin string.

—

» Turn the valve on the dome thing.

You turn the valve clockwise. Nothing seems to happen. After a moment, the valve slides back into place on its own, with a ‘chk’. It appears to have reset itself. You try counterclockwise but the same thing happens.

—

» Take the string, go up the ladder. We will need a magnet, then we tie the string around it and lower it down the sink’s drain, there we will find a key to unlock the vending machine.

The ladder isn’t even close to the sink! Nor do you see any magnets around. But you do take the string and check out the ladder.

It appears that there is a metal hatch at the top of the ladder that the wires from the floor run into.

—

» Fill the bucket with water, toss water into the fire place.

You twist the knob and fill the bucket. Woooooosh! The water is a little gross and dark-looking but that’s okay.

Splash! The fire extinguishes with a steamy hiss.

Light shines down from above.

—

» Check the price for the can in the vending machine, buy it with the appropriate eyedollar coin
» Try to tie the string to the coin before putting it in the machine, so you can possibly recover the coin.

You check out the vending machine. The only thing in there is an unlabeled can, costing 11 eyedollars. You only have a 3 and 5 coin. Fortunately with some clever thinking you can use one coin twice!

The unlabeled can falls out. You take it.

—

» Tie string to ladder

Um, okay. You do this.

The string is just kind of hanging out there.

—

» Examine mirror!

You examine the sink and mirror. The sink has a hot and cold handle, both turning inwards. Written on the mirror is HCCHCH.

Huh?

—

» Examine self more closely, in hopes that we are not an elder god.

You wave hi.

—

» SMASH THE MIRROR

You are beaten to it.

—

» Put bucket on head for protection, run screaming to other room.

You quickly back away from the thing. It writhes around on the floor, watching you. You don’t want to get any closer if you can help it, bucket or no.