Adventure Gamers - Forums

>show him locket
(first taking the silver locket)
The bum makes no move to take the locket, but he stares at the boy’s picture inside with something akin to fear. “Ayuh,” he whispers hoarsely, “that’s him, so it is. That’s the boy. That’s William.”

In the distance, you can hear the lonesome keening of a train whistle drifting on the wind.

>ask him about grandfather
You can’t think of anything to say about that for the moment.

>ask him about amulet
You can’t think of anything to say about that for the moment.

>ask him about cellar
The bum perks up. “More whiskey?” he asks greedily.

EDIT: Deleted the previous dialogue, this is the true one. I’m playing the game online because it’s much easier to copy and paste than in WinFrotz, but apparently I forgot to save after giving the bum the flask yesterday. Not that it makes much difference, he now recognizes the locket and wants more whiskey.

>fullscore
You have so far scored 13 out of a possible 100 points; you have merely scratched the surface of evil.

The score is made up as follows:

    2 points for finding the house keys
    2 points for showing the keys to Michael
    2 points for finding the journal
    2 points for finding the diary
    1 point for finding the safe
    2 points for opening the safe
    2 points for giving the bum whiskey

  13 total (out of 100)

wilco - 04 October 2016 09:04 AM

Maybe we need to give more booze to get him to sleep. lets explore the other place

>e

We can only go se, not e. My mistake, I’ll change the map.

>se
The old man waves good-bye. “Don’t be a stranger,” he calls.

Wharf
The gentle creaking of hawsers and the hollow slap of water beneath the wooden pier provide a faint counterpoint to the endless, rhythmic surging of the sea. The fishing industry (like the paper industry) has all but died away in Anchorhead; nonetheless there are still a few boats tied to the pier. A path leads back through an opening in a chain-link fence to the northwest; otherwise, it’s just you and the ocean.

An old, discarded tin of fish oil sits at the end of the pier.

>x tin
It’s dented and rusty, and you can barely make out the words “Skagen, Denmark” printed along the side. The lid is closed.

>x pier
You needn’t worry about that.

>x boats
The few fishing boats that remain look barely sea-worthy, held together by barnacles and old habit.

>x ocean
The sea is the color of old pewter, surging and chopping restlessly beneath the clouds.

Another wave crashes against the rocks, sending a cloud of spray into the air.

>get tin
(slipping the book of matches into the pocket of your trenchcoat to get a hand free)
Taken.

>nw
Vacant Lot
The old man looks up at you with fawning admiration.

You can also see a flask (which is empty) here.

>w
The old man waves good-bye. “Don’t be a stranger,” he calls.

Riverwalk

>w

Town Square

A damp newspaper lies on the curb, fluttering slightly in the wind.

>get newspaper
(slipping the keyring into the pocket of your trenchcoat to get a hand free)
You pick up the newspaper. It’s the “Weekly Arkham Herald”. Anchorhead, apparently, is not large enough to warrant its own newspaper.

>read it
The front page story is about Jeffrey Greer, 8 years old, who was abducted from his home at #11 Mill Town Road last night. Little Jeffrey is the latest victim in a series of abductions that stretches back for years, one every six months or so, and that authorities believe is the work of a single perpetrator. Local police had hoped to prove that Edward Verlac had been behind the kidnappings, but were unable to obtain a confession or any hard proof. Edward Verlac was convicted of murdering his wife and two daughters, one of whom was 15 months old, in January of this year; he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and incarcerated in Danvers Asylum, where he remained until committing suicide last March. This latest kidnapping, occurring after Edward’s death, seems to have cleared up any lingering suspicions that he might have been the culprit.

Anyone possessing information regarding the whereabouts of Jeffrey Greer is strongly urged to speak to the authorities as soon as possible.

>n

Whateley Bridge

>n

Narrow Street

>w

Junction

>n

Mill Road
The road carries you across a desolate heath of gray, windswept grass. To the south, the black, jagged outline of Anchorhead’s steep roofs and sharp, leaning gables cuts across the horizon. The road forks here to the west and east, heading across the railroad tracks in one direction, out toward the seashore in the other.

>w
As you cross the railroad tracks, the air becomes warmer, more dingy, and slightly more difficult to breathe.

Entrance to the Paper Mill
The road turns southwest here and runs squarely through the front entrance to the old paper mill. A gate of heavy iron bars blocks the only opening into this charred fortress, although an overgrown path leads around the wall to the south. To the north, a rutted lane threads its way past a row of dilapidated shacks.

>x bars
The gate, a twenty-foot high barricade of narrowly spaced, thick, black, iron bars, is designed to roll horizontally, sealing off the entrance to the mill compound. It is currently shut and locked. There are no guardhouses, no buzzers or intercoms, no apparent means of getting in or letting anyone inside know you want in; just this implacable gate in an unscalable wall.

wilco - 04 October 2016 12:17 PM

can we open the tin can?

Oh sure! And put it in our pockets, I suppose.

>open tin
You open the old tin, revealing a smelly quantity of fish oil.

>x fish oil
(the fish oil)
It’s a viscous, nasty-smelling goo, made from and made for feeding fish. Not very appetizing.

Flakes of ash drift gently down from the sky like gray snow, coating everything with a thin layer of soot.

>s
The path curves southwest, leading you into an overgrown area behind the mill.

Bare Foundations
The foundations of an older structure lie crumbling in a sunken square of ground, hidden away behind the imposing shadow of the mill wall. Weeds push up through cracked and buckling slabs of concrete; twisted rebar and rusting pipes poke up like the legs of dead insects. The ruins are surrounded on all sides by dense thickets, although narrow, overgrown trails lead northeast and southeast through the underbrush.

In the distance, you can hear the lonesome keening of a train whistle drifting on the wind. You look to the east in time to see the train go by, rolling southwest past the mill toward less melancholy climes.

>x ruins
The broken rubble is all that remains of whatever building once stood here.

>x thickets
The thickets are full of painful thorns and appear quite impenetrable. They are also very deep; there’s no telling what could be hidden—or what could be hiding—in their brambly depths.

The cold wind cuts through your clothes, chilling you to the bone.

>x trails
You needn’t worry about that.

>se

Railroad Tracks
The trail heads up a short embankment and emerges from the thicket alongside the railroad tracks. The tracks run down from the northeast and past the mill, continuing southwest but slowly curving westward until they cross the Miskaton River some miles outside of town. From the embankment you can look out over the entire heath: jagged, shadowy rooftops to the south; the oily ribbon of the Miskaton to the west; and to the east, the lighthouse sentinel and the leaden waters of the Atlantic beyond.

With a last, mournful groan of its whistle, the train disappears from sight.

Shanty Town
The road peters out at a wide clearing of rutted mud, flanked by uneven rows of decrepit, clapboard shacks. The town is quiet, almost deserted; only a few bits of loose tarpaper blowing listlessly in the wind betray the overall stillness.

Flakes of ash drift gently down from the sky like gray snow, coating everything with a thin layer of soot.

>x houses
All peeling paint, broken glass and missing shingles, the houses are poorly built and teetering on the verge of falling apart completely. They are arranged in a vague suggestion of rows on either side of the mud clearing, numbered #1 through #12 with those cheap little nail-up plastic numbers you can buy at hardware stores. Presumably, these denote each shack’s “street address”.

>knock on #11
After a moment or two of silence, you hear a furtive rattling, and the door opens a crack to reveal a woman’s pale and haggard face. She stares out you with a mixture of trepidation and mistrust.

A gust of wind blows your hair into your face.

>x woman
She is pale and thin from lack of food. Her hair is prematurely gray. The dismal poverty and constant fear that she has lived in all her life have leached her body of its youth, leaving her aged before her time, stooped and scarred with worry. She clutches a tattered shawl, its fabric the faded color of old dishwater, close around her throat, and she watches you the way a wounded rabbit might watch a potentially hungry cat.