Adventure Gamers - Forums

>x barrel
It’s a weathered oak barrel. You can’t tell what’s inside it, if anything. On the barrel you see a hunk of meat and a vulture.

>x vulture
A scrawny black bird, with a bald head, sharp yellow beak and white-tipped tail feathers. Its head is buried in the putrifying piece of meat on the barrel, and its tail waves provocatively in your face, just below the window.

>x saloon
Looking out the jail cell window, you can see the saloon across the street. The light is on in the upper story window.

>x dog
A mangy old mutt well past his prime.

>x office
A one-room jailhouse is fitting for this jerkwater town. There’s a big, wooden desk in the middle of the room. Just behind the desk is a fancy cabinet, with real glass in the door. Next to the cabinet, a large, framed picture of the sheriff stands on the floor. To the side of the desk, there is a weird-looking contraption: clearly, some sort of steam boiler which is connected by pipes to a strange-looking machine. On the opposite side of the room, two swinging doors lead back to town; a small bell hangs on a hook attached to the door. Flash’s empty dog food bowl is nailed to the floor just in front of your jail cell.

>show berry to muddy
Muddy takes a look at the berry and says, “Mohs gah! Where’d you get that? I reckon it’s a Peruvian Snoozeberry. I ain’t never seen one of them around here.”

“Are you making that up, Mud?”

“No, for real. Whatever you do, don’t eat it—you’ll sleep right through your hanging.”

“Yeah,” you reply, “I wouldn’t want to miss that.”

Flash starts to rub a flea but then decides it to be too much work.

>x desk
A beat-up old wooden desk with time-worn corners, and a pitted, scratched surface.

>x bell
A shiny silver bell with a black handle. It is hanging on a small hook by the doorway.

>x portrait
A bombastic portrait of the sheriff, who is dressed in a Napoleonic uniform save for the ten gallon hat. In the background, dogs play poker.

>x contraption
All bronze and shiny, with lots of pipes, rivets, and flanges, the word “Protocappuccinomatic” is engraved on the main body of the machine. The device stands about five feet high and must weigh a ton. A sturdy iron pipe runs from the machine to the boiler.

>x cabinet
(the cabinet)
About three feet tall, and made of oak. The cabinet’s top is covered with circular stains from drink bottles, but the rest of the cabinet is in good shape. Its door covers the front of the cabinet and opens on brass hinges. The contents of the cabinet are recognizable through the cabinet’s uneven glass. Despite the distortion, you see what looks like a gun belt some kind of shiny yellow object. Maybe gold, you think, hopefully.

>i
You’re carrying a berry, an empty can, a spoon, a spur, a pamphlet, a tin, a harmonica, your pocketwatch, your hat, and a scrap of paper. You are wearing your pants, overcoat, left boot, and right boot.

>wake pastor pete

Suddenly, Pastor Pete leaps up and rants, “There shall be an ACCOUNTING and it shall come swiftly, and with little notice, most likely in a four hour time slot in the morning, but perhaps in the late afternoon or evening if they’re running late. THE WAGES OF SIN shall be entered into the ledgers, in duplicate, after first deducting the withholdables of sin and carrying over any offsetting credits from previous GOOD WORKS, and taking into consideration the INFLATION of EVIL, the DEVALUATION of MORALS and the exchange rate with PAGAN BELIEFS”. He then collapses on the bench again and falls fast asleep.

Pastor Pete throws his head back, howls, and stands on the bench. He chants, “Blessed is the terribly, terribly DISMAL. How glorious in unpleasantness, how lovely in loathing, how simply pleasing in depravity. In the whole world full of pain and suffering and plagues, not to mention sock monkeys and advertising, how refreshing is the endless potential bounty of disappointment. How much more character we might build were we but marginally more afflicted by adversity, we can only pray. Let us extol the joyfulness of misery and cheer the horrifying facts underlying the production of sausages, and revel in the lack of things we have to celebrate!”

Pastor Pete dives onto the bench and is soon lost in dreams again.

>pull tail
Nothing obvious happens.

>get feather
You pluck a feather from the vulture’s tail. The bird twists its head momentarily to glare at you before plunging back into its task of devouring the rotting meat.
[Your score has just gone up by one]

>push bird
That warn’t be neighbor-like.

>hit bird
You reckon violence usually is the answer, but maybe not just now.

Muddy closes his eyes and rubs his temples.
 
>show feather to bird
“Squaaaarrrrrkkkkk!”

>throw berry at bowl
Your throwing arm ain’t been any good since the accident with the musk ox and the hedge clippers.

> tickle paster pete with feather

> take gray tube from socket
> put berry in gray tube
> blow berry at bowl

>tickle pastor with feather
That ain’t no verb I got knowledge of.

>take gray tube
You yank the gray tube out of the stool’s socket, lose your balance, topple to the side and plant your face smartly in the prison floor. Muddy looks away in embarrassment.

>put berry in tube
You drop the berry into the gray tube.

“Oh, I get it!” nods Muddy, “You’re making some kind of berry gun. I seen the Injuns do something like that, except you ain’t got no darts in there to blow at people.”

Muddy cracks his knuckles loudly.

>blow berry at bowl
The berry hits the food bowl, then bounces away out of sight.

Muddy seems lost in thought.

Ha! guess I should have thought of getting down from the stool first

Ok, so let’s get a new berry
> put gray tube in socket
> get on stool
> take berry
(can we take more than one?)
> take berry (do as many time as we can)
> go down
> take gray tube

There’s quite a few things we can shoot
> blow berry at dog
> blow berry at portrait
> blow berry at bell
> blow berry at cabinet (maybe that can break the glass?)
> blow berry at bird

>put tube in socket
You flip the stool over and wiggle the hollow gray tube into the empty socket. It fits perfectly and remains in place when you let go of the bar, but you think you could yank the gray bar out again if you needed it. You now have a stool with three even legs: two wood, one metal.

Muddy looks around the sheriff’s office.

>get on stool
Muddy holds it steady as you climb up. Your head is now even with the top of the window.

>take berry
You pluck a plump juicy red berry from the part of the vine growing outside the window.

>take berry
You already got a mighty nice one.

Muddy leans against the wall and sighs.

>down
You jump down to the ground again.

Flash half opens one eye and looks at you and Muddy.

>get tube
You yank the gray tube out of the stool’s socket.

Muddy hums “Camptown Races”, singing the “Doo-Dars” off key. The effect is annoying.

>put berry in tube
You drop the berry into the gray tube.

>blow berry at dog
The berry hits Flash, then bounces away out of sight.

Muddy counts the number of stars he can see out the window, divides by the number of bars in the jail cell, and takes the natural logarithm. “Yup,” he says, “that’s what I thought.”

>undo
jail cell
You done backtracked some.

>blow berry at portrait
Hardly a test of your aiming abilities.

Halfway between the door to the outside and your jail cell, the sheriff’s invention rumbles for a moment and then stops.

>blow berry at cabinet
(the cabinet)
Child’s play. Your grandmother could hit a cabinet.

>blow berry at bell
Ding! The bell is hit so hard that it spins around on the hook several times, clanging like a church bell on Sunday.

The amoeba-like mass of fat and fur known to you as Flash leaps immediately to his feet, saliva dripping from his toothless jowls. He lunges like a champion fencer for his food bowl. His leash snaps taut, pulling the lever away from the front door and towards the strange machine.

The boiler hisses and gurgles, steam jets from the rivet joints in the pipe that connects to the machine, and the machine itself vibrates and rumbles for a minute. A white cup drops from a chute and brown liquid squirts from a nozzle and fills the cup. The smell of fresh coffee pervades the office.

Finding no food in his bowl, Flash snorts perfunctorily and resumes his former position, pulling the lever back to the middle position.
[Your score has just gone up by one]

>put tube in socket
You flip the stool over and wiggle the hollow gray tube into the empty socket. It fits perfectly and remains in place when you let go of the bar, but you think you could yank the gray bar out again if you needed it. You now have a stool with three even legs: two wood, one metal.

A fly buzzes past your ear and lands on the ceiling.

>climb stool
Muddy holds it steady as you climb up. Your head is now even with the top of the window.

>get berry
You pluck a plump juicy red berry from the part of the vine growing outside the window.

>down
You jump down to the ground again.

Pastor Pete bounces from wall to wall. He screams, “I cried unto thee, OLD PORK CHOP, and you looked upon my doleful case and set before me a charger of mustards gathered from all lands. The sweet mustard of the orient, the bitter mustard of the desert, the piquant and creamy mustards of the plains, and the chewy, almost TAFFY-LIKE mustards that crop up from time to time by mail order. All these you set before me, and yet not a bowl, not a teaspoon of MINT JELLY. The truth is evident in the absence of evidence itself, you are no Pork Chop but a Lamb Cutlet, and trying to lead me astray. The condiments have betrayed me and led me down the path of devious hoofed meat. But I rejoice, for I know that dessert is around the corner, and ever your aftertaste shall perish in the SHERBET of EQUANIMITY!”

Pastor Pete crumples onto the bench and resumes his previous position as if nothing had happened.

>get tube
You yank the gray tube out of the stool’s socket.

Muddy scratches his arm.

>put feather in berry
That can’t contain things.

Well, no point wasting a good berry!

>blow berry at machine
Child’s play. Your grandmother could hit a machine.

>blow berry at cup
The berry splatters against the side of the cup, and its juice dribbles downwards.

Muddy jumps up, claps you congratulatorily on the back, and you nearly swallow the metal tube still held to your lips.

He beams, “That were a one in a million shot, Rick!”  Muddy strokes his chin and wags a finger at the cup, “Now, if we can only get the deputy to come back and drink some coffee, he might be a whole lot more cooperative, I reckon.”

You sure like the way Muddy thinks.
[Your score has just gone up by one]