Adventure Gamers - Forums

>ne

Deep Street (jammed into the car)
We are jammed into the car with our knees almost at our chin, looking out through the bulbous little windshield. The motor is growling like a housecat with pneumonia.

This road descends steeply from southwest to northwest, passing between white concrete buildings to provide access to the marina — the Fish Market, the Docks, and a bar or two. The street is in deep shadow, protected from sunlight from almost any angle by its narrowness and by the height of the walls.

We can go northwest, southwest to the Roundabout, east, and west from here.

The car is making an unpleasant raspy growl.

>nw
Since there’s no way by road, we’ll have to leave the car here. It is a moment’s work to find a parking spot. We switch the ignition off.

We open the door of the car.

We climb out of the car.

Fish Market
Not very fishy at the moment, in fact: all the real trade happens in the early morning; then there is a period of tourist trade when the seafood sale tails off and most of the purchases are of polished conch shells and starfish; and then a little after noon the area clears out completely, leaving only briny rivulets on the concrete.

A tall, stern woman is standing in the middle of the market. She wears the black caped uniform of an Authenticator, and a monocle just like mine. And I don’t think I want her to see us.

Just east of here is a rusting corrugated tin building, which was built to house various possessions of the fishermen.

I had my doubts from the start but as soon as we found that funnel I was sure the sag-thing wasn’t going to work…

Is this the difference between easy and hard? That hard doesn’t give us as many alternative options like here and maybe with those body parts earlier?

TimovieMan - 21 March 2021 04:51 AM

I had my doubts from the start but as soon as we found that funnel I was sure the sag-thing wasn’t going to work…

Is this the difference between easy and hard? That hard doesn’t give us as many alternative options like here and maybe with those body parts earlier?

I guess so, I don’t know. Some puzzles are different too.

About the fuel, I think it’s a safeguard for players who turn the chard into a car in the garden, find fuel and pour it into the car. They will lose the fuel when they have to turn the car into a chard again and let the mechanic take care of the oil. But there are also two ways to get oil (the fossil and the soil in the garden), so maybe I’m wrong.

>e
While the Authenticator’s back is turned, we slip inside…

Tin Hut
Most of the light in here comes from circular windows punched into the tin walls just under the ceiling. From the inside, the building looks both larger and more sound than it appears from outside: there are plenty of sturdy struts supporting the roof and keeping the walls upright.

Various tarpaulin-covered masses fill the room.

A trap door is set in the floor.

Sometimes smugglers and forgers have been known to stash things in here, since the building is close to the docks but rarely attracts the interest of customs officials.

We catch our breath and look over our belongings to see if anything suspicious is showing. The E-remover and the monocle might be a little too conspicuous.

>x trap door
It is a wooden door set into the floor. The hinging mechanism is designed to keep the door closed if possible, perhaps as a safety feature so that people won’t fall into an open hole.

>open it
We open the trap door.

The trap-door makes a creaking noise and slams shut again. They must prop it open when they use it.

>x tarpaulin
From the shapes visible under the blue plastic, it appears that they are probably tables and stalls, buckets, signs, and other necessary features of the fish market when sales are in progress. There’s a flattish area we could probably scramble onto.

>x roof
The struts form a dull but sturdy lattice of metal, supporting the corrugated metal roof and walls.

>prop open trapdoor with arm
(first taking the arm)
We prop the trap door open with the arm.

>put monocle in backpack
The monocle is in the backpack already.

>put e-remover in backpack
We put the E-remover into the backpack.

Ominous sounds come through the windows, but we’re at the wrong angle to see out.

>scramble onto flattish area
We identify the sturdiest-looking part of the construction and clamber onto it.

>x flattish area
From the shapes visible under the blue plastic, it appears that they are probably tables and stalls, buckets, signs, and other necessary features of the fish market when sales are in progress. There’s a flattish area where we are currently standing.

>z
Time passes.

>z
Time passes.

More racket comes in through the windows.

>x trap door
It is a wooden door set into the floor. The hinging mechanism is designed to keep the door closed if possible, perhaps as a safety feature so that people won’t fall into an open hole.

>enter trap door
We get off the tarpaulin-covered masses.

Crawlspace
An awkward, low, concrete-lined crawlspace beneath the tin hut. It smells somewhat like animals; in spite of this it clearly gets a bit more use than anyone would like the customs officials to know about.

The trap door, wedged open by an arm, admits the only light.

The only significant thing down here is a crate.

>x crate
We see nothing special about the crate.

>open it
We open the crate, revealing a watch, a band, and a single discarded leaflet.

>get all
watch: We take the watch.
band: We take the band.
leaflet: We take the leaflet.

>x watch
An (apparently) valuable watch with diamonds set in the face.

>x band
A paper strip used to keep printed materials together before distribution.

>x leaflet
It’s a subversive tract attacking the state’s line on punishing people with inanimate status. It quotes the official state justification (from the days when they bothered to justify it at all) as follows:

There are those who argue that it is just as inhumane to make a man inanimate as to kill him. And indeed it is a form of execution, in that the man is wiped out and some other thing replaces him. Execution, that is, in every detail but one: it is reversible. Many men have been executed in error, going innocent to the electric chair or the noose, and once dead they can never be retrieved.

The personality of a man made inanimate, however, stays behind in the changed object, ready to be retrieved should new evidence come to light; and until that date he is harmless to society, and costs almost nothing to store (as compared to the costs of prison guardianship and maintenance).

It follows up by discussing the problems with this argument: the tendency of objects to “fade” over time so that their original form is completely lost; the fact that an inanimate object can hardly direct its own appeal proceedings; the strong words against this kind of punishment in the Geneva Conventions.

>u

Tin Hut
Most of the light in here comes from circular windows punched into the tin walls just under the ceiling. From the inside, the building looks both larger and more sound than it appears from outside: there are plenty of sturdy struts supporting the roof and keeping the walls upright.

Various tarpaulin-covered masses fill the room.

A trap door is set in the floor, propped by an arm.

>close backpack
We close the backpack.

>w
I don’t think we want to show off the leaflet around the Authenticator.

>put leaflet in backpack
We open the backpack.

We put the leaflet into the backpack.

More racket comes in through the windows.

>w
I don’t think we want to show off the E-remover, the monocle, and the leaflet around the Authenticator.

>close backpack
We close the backpack.

>w
I don’t think there’s anything showing that should get us into trouble. Timidly we open the door; the Authenticator has her back to us. We slip out. She makes one more turn in place — monocled gaze sliding across us without stopping — and then she strides away to the north.

Fish Market
Not very fishy at the moment, in fact: all the real trade happens in the early morning; then there is a period of tourist trade when the seafood sale tails off and most of the purchases are of polished conch shells and starfish; and then a little after noon the area clears out completely, leaving only briny rivulets on the concrete.

Just east of here is a rusting corrugated tin building, which was built to house various possessions of the fishermen.

We can go north, south, southeast to Deep Street, and east to the Tin Hut from here.

>n

Docks
Here are some dozens of boats tied up: some of them are small to medium-sized fishing craft, some tourist boats for trips around the island, some merely ferries to the deeper harbor where the cruise ships anchor.

To the east, up a moderate rise from the sea-level docks, is the imposing exterior of the Customs House. The classical look is only a little undermined by the public-service posters along the front. There passports are inspected and cargo passed under authentication, foreign items renamed or confiscated, and suspected smugglers interrogated.

Immediately west, a sign advertises a pub called the Counterfeit Monkey.

>x sign
In the picture, a villainous man threatens a cage full of tiny primates with a primitive Victorian letter-remover. In the background is an enormous bag of cash.

>x boats
I know nothing about boats. You, on the other hand, appear to have an unnerving awareness of which of these craft are here on legal business and which are engaged in some form of smuggling or refugee-assistance.

>x customs house
The building itself is not especially grand, but you have never been on the good side of the people who work there, and that gives you a perfectly justifiable dislike of the place, and the sense that it’s larger than life.