Chapter 4: Somewhere New

..gnh..

..Hrm?

You awake in a strange room. Well, no stranger than most. But an unfamiliar one.

You have a killer headache, and can’t seem to feel your right arm. You appear to be hooked up to some kind of machine in the wall with tubes or some sort. Beside you is a table with a note and a pen. There’s some kind of marked-up drawing on the wall, and a familiar bag in the corner. Your backpack is gone, and…

Sonuvabitch took your hat!

» Detach these insidious wires. No one’s getting a brain-scan on Adventure Guy!

You snap the wires off furiously. Adventurers don’t need… whatever this is! Wires are for schmucks!

As you pull them out, the wires seem to wind back into the machine. You climb off the apparently-makeshift bed.

» Check to make sure your right arm still exists.

Of course it is, it’s just numb agai—

Oh.

» Read note.

You read the note. The penmanship is… pretty awful. It seems whoever brought you here is coming back soon, though.

There’s a pen beside the note.

» Check the bag.

It’s the goddamn tiles again. Maybe whoever took your bag didn’t have any use for it. You certainly didn’t.

» Check the machine.

There’s a set of nine Roman numerals on the buttons, a blank display panel, and five small holes where the wires wound back into.

» Make sure we still have all our items

Nope, everything was in the backpack. You’ll need to get that back as well. Hat is first priority, of course.

» Plug the bottom two wires into us again and press the top three buttons (I II III) on the machine.

Plug them into yourself?! Whoa, whoa, whoa, you don’t even know what this thing does. You do punch some numbers though; they just show up on the screen.

» Press button IV.

1234 is now entered. There’s no “okay done” button or anything to see what happens, although it doesn’t look like there’s room for more than four digits.

» For a short period of time, mourn and reminisce about the good times you used to have with your right arm.

All those good times climbing ladders… never again. Aw.

Well at least you and Stumpy can have some more good times now, you guess.

» Exercise trust and wait for your mysterious benefactor with awful spelling to return.

Tum te tum. You waste a few hours.

Nope, the dude isn’t coming back.

» Grab the pen btw, we may need it.

You throw it in the bag with the tiles, but don’t grab the bag yet. Not really very convenient to drag around for no reason.

» Take a closer look at the chart on the wall.

There are eight circles in a row. One has a smiley face by it, one has a sad face, one has an exclamation mark, one is X’d out, and four have question marks. You’re not sure what to make of this.

» Look out through door.

There’s a second room over thisaway. here. It appears to be quite the gale outside.

» Flip the fuck out!

This is all pretty fucked up but you’re actually feeling reasonably chill about this.

» Look out window.

You peer out the window. Nothin’ but rain and thunder far as the eye can see.

» Examine panel thing on the wall next to the door.

It says “Perimeter Locked Down. Weather Conditions Hazardous.” There’s also a big X symbol below, apparently indicating that nobody’s getting past while it’s stormy out.

» Try to get book.

You’re not really tall enough.

» Examine thing in the carved part out of wall.

It’s some kind of cassette. It is unlabelled.

» Play a haunting tune on the piano with one hand.

It’s kind of tough just with the one hand.

» Unplug the piano after playing it a bit.

» Check to see if there is any music recorded on the keyboard.

There are no buttons on it except the keys.

» Also try to replay the music box music on above mentioned instrument.

Your memory is pretty good but it’s not that good. Besides, you don’t really know much about music.

» Use the keyboard to knock down the book. Tuck it between your left arm and your body.

You think you might have been able to manage this, but the keyboard can’t really be unplugged in any way so far as you can tell.

» Grab the bag and swing it at the book in a attempt to knock it down.

Just barely hit the shelf! But you knock it down.

Boy this piece of shit is real heavy! You decide to take a look-see.

This is the most incomprehensible book you have ever looked at. And every page looks almost the same!

» Take off the bandages

Well okay. Here goes then.

GASP

There is a socket and a bunch of wires sticking out.

» Pull the paper with the 8 circles on it down from the first room’s wall.

You pull down the paper. Something appears to have been written on the back.

As best you can tell, “Calms Guy” is on page 2248.

You flip to the appropriate page in the big book. It’s… almost completely bare, save for one repeating line.

» Play FACADE.

All right. Time to try this out.

You play F-A-C-A-D-E once, then repeated, as directed by the page. The music echoes through the wall speakers.

The storms outside seem to let up.

Light shines in the window.

The sign on the door panel changes, and the shutters slide up.

» Put in 2 2 4 8 on the machine thing we were plugged into.

You enter II-II-IV-VIII.

» Check the pages surrounding 2248. Specifically 2245, 2249, and 2251. While you’re at it let’s take a look at 1124.

Checking the surrounding and other pages you find more generic sheet music.

» Try to connect our wires with the wall wires, by either pulling the wall wires into us, or pulling our wires out and connecting them with the wall wire socketthingies.

You get a bit of a painful shock touching your own loose wires, but you can pull the other wires out of the hole. You are a bit reluctant to connect yourself to this machine again, not knowing whether you can trust whoever put you there, but you are curious enough to risk it and see.

The machine’s wiring crackles as you pull it out and press the end against your open socket. You feel rather charged up!

» Mourn the loss of our hat.
» Make a paper hat from the strip on the floor or by tearing a page out of the book to temporarily replace our old one.

You pledge a vow to recover your dashing hat no matter the price. However, before that time comes, there is still adventuring to be done, and no adventurer can be without a hat! Your new paper accomplice will do nicely for now.

» Unplug ourselves. Then run outside and scream “FREEDOM!” before examining our new surroundings.

FREEDOM

The shutter door leads to a thin ledge in the cliff face. The path ramps downwards, and then through another open shutter-door.

You find yourself in a room with some kind of square contraption in the middle. There is also a familiar door here. On the wall is some kind of sliding handle, and there is another switch by the vault-type door. There is also some kind of extended claw gun looking thing leaning against the wall.

Something smells like it’s burning.

» Insert clawgun into right stump.

It interfaces pretty well with however your wire system works. You become… Adventure Guy With Claw.

Lightly tap all switches and the door’s bolt. One or more of them is probably red hot.

Everything seems pretty room temperature. Whatever this room is was certainly built better than that oven/wire set up. What kind of person even hooks up a random purposeless burning wire chain thing anyways!

As you touch the handle, the hatch in the center of the room opens. It closes again as soon as you let go.

» Try to open the door to the right. If opening the door fails, push the handle to the right then try opening the door again.

Yup, opens reeeeal good. Whoever went through it last left it unlocked behind them.

The sliding switch appears to bolt and unbolt the door.

» Unfold paper hat and use the chart as a guide for turning the sliding handle.

You are… reluctant to lose another hat. Fortunately you can remember the patterns of circles on the paper just fine.

This room again? Looks like you’re back to the rest of the facility.

» Call out for Dr. Scruffopopulos!

Scruffles does not appear to be around anywhere. Actually you hadn’t seen him for a while, even before passing out.

» Go back to the room where we lost consciousness before turning into a cyborg.

Nothing unusual here.

» See if the fire in the room through the mirror has burned out yet.

Yup, looks like it’s gone out. You decide to take a look-see.

The flame-retarding gunk has been burnt away by the overpowering flame you started up. The cocoons appear to have been burnt away, leaving some toothy skeletons.

» Can the anvil be unfastened? Is there anything underneath it?

There’s a panel underneath it, but the anvil appears to be permanently attached to it.

» Have we looked underneath the floating stones?

No, but upon further review they appear to be fastened to the ground when not floating. Huh.

» We should get the leash from glass wall room.

It’s really more of a piece of tough cord, but you grab it anyhow.

» Check the underside of the broken table in the cabin.

Nothing’s there. Seems like it’s just an ordinary table… that got broken in half somehow.

» Open the cupboard…?

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This thing again!!

» TEAR IT APART WITH YOUR CYBORG HAND/GUN THINGY.

Oh no you don’t, eyemonster thing. Not this time. This time you have a claw arm that is juuust big enough to grab underneath your fancy little eye there.

And the claw arm has a ‘spin’ function.

So why don’t you just…

Stay…

PUT.

You’ll deal with this thing later.

Meanwhile you have some pressing puzzle shit to deal with.

» Make squares (and protrusions) by copying the tiles we have using the gel-like stuff in the box with the handle in the kitchen.

This is probably doable. Now that you’ve got warm, malleable black clay, you stuff it in the the weird lidbox thing and…

Ka-squish! Apparently this this is a press for making square-shaped things.

You make one plain black tile, with a lump sticking out from when you pressed the wooden spoon against the gel and left a mark.

» Take something white-ish and stuff it in the analyzer so it gets mushed. See if it gives white mush. Repeat until recieving the desired result. Make white tiles.

You come up with a solution for not having white clay on the fly—you could grab the white clay dishes from the cupboard, toss it in the analyzer until it is destabilized or whatever that thing does, then take the clay and—

» Start with P.A.L.’s skull.

Ummmmmm.

Okay. Uh.

You try and wipe that rather creepy thought from your mind and take comfort knowing that that particular course of action is not yet necessary.

» Try to converse with the eyemonster.

It just waggles around flipping out. Occasionally it SKREEs at you.

» Poke the thing from a distance.

ew ew ew it’s all greasy and gross and slimy and stuff

» Also you can make a queen piece by taking the pawn one and rotating it 4 times to get the print needed for the queen.

You mark the gel press with the pawn piece four times, creating all eight lines the queen piece requires. Then you add black clay and create a black queen tile. Progress at long last!

» Pull the wires on our stump. If we feel a tugging feeling in another part of our body, where do we feel it?

When you touch the socket your hand just gets an electric shock.

» Look for people!

There doesn’t appear to be anyone around.

» The bishop can be made by simply rotating the rook piece.

You mush the dishware in the upper shelves in the analyzer and get yourself some nice, malleable white clay.

Despite some misgivings, you are able to press the intrusion into the gel without messing up the square shape of the gel press.

Bam! A white bishop tile has been created! Now that you have all the right clay, it should be no problem to make the rest of the molds.

» Find something really icky and throw it on the creature.

You’re not sure you want to torment this thing needlessly.

» Use the two colors of clay to copy each piece in the other color.

You have a bunch of wacky shenanigans involving clay spluttin’ and gel pressin’.

Your set of six important tiles is complete! Plus the four you started with, the lumpy misfit one, and the pen you swiped!

You place the tiles in the spaces corresponding to the chess board.

WHOA YOU TOTALLY HEAR LIKE WHIRR-CLUNKING AND STUFF, PUZZLE COMPLETE

You investigate the kitchen, where the whirr-clunking came from, and see that the fridge has receded into the wall. A doorway is visible. You opt to take it, seeing no other options.

The stairs wind around and lead you to a door. You can’t see much, but you can feel some kind of wheel.

You turn it and a door slides open. The room is rather chilly, and frost seems to float in the air above you. You also see… there…

there is… uh…

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

» PANIC!

This seems like a pretty good idea. You book it for the stairwell.

The monstrous creature slams the wall behind you.

You race out of the kitchen as tentacles slither up after you.

» Grab eyemonster with claw. Bring it to its mommy.

Maybe you can pacify it by bringing it the small one? Worth a shot, anyhow. You frantically plug the clawgun back into your socket, maintaining the grip. The oculoid is freaking out.

You bring the creature down, nervously standing in front of the great beast thing. The eyemonster is seriously flipping out and totally trying to latch onto you with its tentacles.

run flee run hide get out get away

SHIT SHIT NOT A GOOD IDEA

bad bad bad bad bad bad bad leave run run run run bad

The monstrous oculoid knocks you into the corner of the room, but cannot seem to actually get at you because its teeth are getting in the way. It can’t seem to grab you, and isn’t using its tentacles to grab you either. You’ve got a very brief respite in this nook but you won’t be safe for long. What do you do?

no no bad leave run flee flee bad run

» Poke it in the eye really hard.
» Punch it in the eye.»
» If possible, shoot the claw at the big one’s eye.
» Just release the little one, then make a run for it.

You’re not sure you can get close enough to hit it in the eye without getting near the teeth, but you drop the little oculoid to free up your arm, then launch the clawgun into its eye. It recoils in SKREEEEEEEing pain, covering its eye with some tentacles.

» Move quickly along the wall until you reach the sewage door. Enter the sewage door.

You book it across the room, outpacing the little oculoid. The big one is hot on both your heels.

Predictably enough, it doesn’t open, no matter how hard you pull. It seems to be frozen solid in the frame, though, rather than just locked. Can’t worry about it now, got to get away!

» ACTION ROLL under the giant monster’s teeth

You dive under the charging oculoid, its massive teeth narrowly missing you.

You are briefly run over by its trailing tentacles. You feel an overwhelming sensation of anger and blind rage.

The little oculoid has booked it out of the room already. You crawl out and follow it.

» Try to communicate with your cool new oculoid buddy!
» Investigate these newfound communication abilities.

You recall experiencing very strong raw emotional feelings whenever the oculoid was attached to you. It must be hiding again, though. It was just ahead of you, but is now gone.

» Cabinet?

You pop open the rather suspicious-looking cupboard door and find the critter somewhat squished in. It eyes you suspiciously for a moment.

» make a SKREE noise.

SKREEEEEEEE

It jumps out of the cupboard and out the door. Looks like you scared it off.

» Follow it! It obviously is like any other animal and is more afraid of us then we are of it, as such we can make friends with it!

You follow it to the living room, where it is quite clearly hiding under a cushion. Time to turn a fresh leaf with this weird little critter.

You flip the cushion and stand still as it SKREEs at you. It doesn’t immediately run, possibly hoping to scare you off.

You remain still. It closes its mouth and stares at you, warily. Time to try getting closer.

Taking a few steps closer, you hold up your one hand to reveal that it is empty. It skrees curiously, then catches itself and shouts at you loudly.

You reach to pat it on its grey mouth-tentacle things, but it recoils backwards into the couch seat. You withdraw your hand somewhat. It seems to be quite protective of its mandible-ys.

Lacking anything else to touch, you finally just decide to pat it on the eye/head/whatever. There is a tentative moment as you wait for its reaction.

It skrees quietly and nuzzles into you. Its tentacles brush against you somewhat and you get another flash of blurry emotion.

safesafe

» Name it Skree.

You name your new friend Skree.

» Go open the square protrusion in the incinerater room and look inside.

It only opens when you hold the !!! handle, perhaps as some sort of safety mechanism to make sure you can’t get too close. You can’t get a good look down from where you’re standing. Skree is very nervous about approaching this room.

» I say we train it to switch the freezer switch/button/level while we distract the biggun.

You attempt to tell Skree to make the room downstairs colder. It reacts happily to your emoting of ‘cold’, and nervously to your emoting of ‘heat’.

Whoa! Sounds like someone downstairs is getting crabby.

» Look down stairwell… (the one behind the fridge)

The wall is cracking rather heavily. You’re not sure what consequences this will have, but Mr. Angrypants down below is certainly getting impatient with you.

» Coax Skree into room by thinking happy thoughts (possibly of cold?). Once Skree is fine with being in there, see if when Skree touches the handle the thing opens.

Skree refuses to go anywhere near the room, despite your attempts at assurance.

» Go back to the piano and plug it in, begin playing music with Skree!

You cannot get Skree to the piano room. It refuses to pass through the hatch room.

» Go and examine the bottom floor of the house, check the computer to see if someone accessed it and forgot to log out!

Nope. You’re still going to have to figure out where Dr. Feringus would have left her password. Perhaps that notebook from your bag …

» See if the lever turns.

Yup. The hatch seems to only open if it is set to the bottom position and being held; when cranked towards the top the room feels warmer and the smell of burning metal increases significantly.

» Test Skree’s reaction to the following mental images…

You pick up Skree and concentrate as best you can on a number of images.

» …oculoids.

There is possibly a hint of sadness, but it’s hard to tell. There’s little response.

» …humans.

Fear.

» …the big oculoid.

Immense fear. A touch of sadness as well, perhaps?

» …the scientist.

You can’t seem to get across the idea, but thinking of a labcoat fills Skree with even more fear.

» …the stone ring.

You aren’t sure exactly what feeling you get about this – Awe? Reverence? It’s very strong but very passive.

» …the things that were probably oculoid eggs.

Thinking about the cocoons gives Skree a feeling of great sadness.

» …the various symbols found around this place.

Thinking of the ever-present eye symbol gets no reaction. Perhaps it is a mundane sign?

» …lightning, storms.

Excitement.

» Hug Skree, communicate that you agree about sadness, communicate that you feel ashamed over being human!

This is a bit too complicated for Skree. You don’t even know if you are human or not anyway!

» Take Skree to the stone circle.

Skree starts jumping around and flipping out. He seems excited! You figure you can leave him here for a bit while you look around.

» If the water is turned off, turn it back on again…

The water had been on – you turned it off to get into the magma cavern, then back on after you left.

» Check up on Skree again.

Skree is hanging out in the living room. He seems all right. Probably a good time to figure out how to close off the fridge stairway before anything…

Hm? The walls are shaking a bit again.

Oh holy shit what the hell was that??

» Investigate!

You take a quick glance at Skree as the dust settles. All right then. Time to man up and face your fears.

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEholyshit.

The kitchen is destroyed. Most of the floor is gone, including the loose tools like the converter and gel press as well as half the oven. The room is seething with leaking gas and frost. No running any more – this thing is pissed; there’s no way you’re going to be able to hide from it now.

Skree launches his own battle cry. Time to deal with this bitch.

» Our hat is pointy. It has a giant eye. There is only one possible course of action.

You toss your papery hat at the monster’s eye, knowing it isn’t strong enough to seriously damage it. The attack gives you an opportunity to do some real damage, though.

» Kick it in that… thing that looks like a spine.

You dive into the creature’s open mouth. So long as you’re quick enough to get past before it bites down, you can…

POW! You smash the monster’s spine with a powerful kick, though you don’t snap it. The beast lets out a mighty SKREE, angrier than ever; it is wounded but alive. You feel yourself becoming more and more entangled, however…

Skree jumps down from the ceiling and tackles the creature in the eye, knocking it loose from the walls. You suddenly remember there is no longer a floor.

uh oh

Ker-splat.

The monster is vanquished. You are covered in eye-goo, but rather fortunately alive.

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