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xyzzysqrlWell, I didn't intend to leave a gap that big between updates. With the weather getting colder and darker, and the woof marathoning TV shows right next to me and all, I've gotten very tired and distractable. Just straight-up feeling exhausted and achy a lot of the time. Still, let's see if I can clear this today and stamp the seal of success on another mystery!
Where were we... ah yes. What was in the box?
Inside the safe deposit box was... Josiah's journal! Yes! Not his little note book, not any of the bunches of bundles of writing he left laying around, but his actual journal! And of course it is sealed with a puzzle lock. Can you actually buy journals that seal with puzzle locks? I kind of almost want one. Not that I would write in it. I have Livejournal.
Now, you might remember a few entries back when I was all "Huh, this says "To Open Journal - Becoder is in the rrivet. (2 to the right)", what the hell does that mean?" Eekay over on the Dreamwidth journal specifically pointed this line out, and I was like "huh." and thought no more of it. Then I woke up this morning and actually said aloud "DECODER IS IN THE TRIVET, you goddamn moron." and so I think we need to drive out to Mrs. Sheldon's place and inquire after the trivet that was loaned to her.
Of course I have no idea who Mrs. Sheldon is, but she lives up at "Twin Elms", which is not on my folding pocket map. I drive around for a while and find the correct place, and am informed that of COURSE I can have the trivet, if I run a little sidequest first. *sigh* Okay. Go get Mrs. Sheldon's bridge cards back from Mrs. Jakowski at the telephone company. This of course is not on the map. So I drive around until I find it and talk to her, and she has those bridge cards and SHE wants raffle tickets from the ORPHANAGE so I drive out THERE and they want me to go buy toys for orphans.
TOYS FOR ORPHANS.
...anyway around that point I start running low on both gas -and- money. Nancy only has 20 cents left and a half tank of gas. This means naturally she'll have to deliver telegrams. Which will cost more gas money, eating into my profits. Smash the system, y'all.
So I deliver telegrams to:
Seymour at the Bleinheim nursery, who is expecting a Mr. Martin to stop in and who gets bitten by a plant as I leave...
Camp Director Alice at the local summer camp, who is having trouble keeping that wacky joker Jason out of the lake...
Mr. Jones at the dairy, who tries to tip me with a glass of "fresh squeezed" milk...
Rebecca, at Sunnybrook Farm...
And of course the entire time I'm pumping gas into the car and looking for somewhere to buy toys. There's even a game-over screen attached to all this, as Nancy pops a flat tire from driving around too much and then I forget to tighten the nuts when I put on the spare, careening her car off the road and wrecking it. I did not -kill- Nancy this time however. Maybe I can get through this without any deaths and regenerations.
After second-chancing, I go to the gas station and get her spare fixed. This costs two dollars, which I don't have. So instead I do a nuts-and-bolts filing minigame. It is exactly as exciting as the phrase "nuts-and-bolts filing minigame" would have you believe. All the joy of being unpaid labor, with the added bonus that if you ever, say, mistake a "small" bolt for a "medium" bolt, the boss comes by and dumps everything out of all of the drawers and makes you start from scratch. Anyway I sort the nuts, bolts, screws and washers by size and that's enough to pay for the repair.
Then I drive out to the general store, where I find a vending machine that sells toys for 25 cents each. At this point I begin compulsively keeping and reloading saved games to use as little gas as possible. Because oh god I'm never doing any of this crap again if I can help it.
... Back to delivering telegrams!
Dr. Bob, at the Observatory...
Ms. Temple, at the Lowood Academy, which Nancy identifies as formerly being the "Brewster Academy"... it's an in-joke.
Dr. Aikerman at the Deer Mountain Resort...
Old Mr. Johnson at Old Mr. Johnson's Farm, who tips us with "Buy low, sell high". No wonder this country went into a great depression.
Anyway at this point I have JUST ENOUGH to buy all those toys for the orphans. So I do. Frantically. At it turns out I don't need to buy five toys, because Slapdash Scramble counts as a toy and not just a pony. Huh, ponies are toys? Who knew? So we take those back to the orphans and we get clearance to pick up the raffle tickets from... Phelps Print Shop.
"Wonderful." Nancy deadpans. This is even starting to break -her-.
Down at Phelps Print Shop, the owner is just leaving. He can't print raffle tickets, he needs to go catch a 19-inch largemouth bass to win a bet with his brother. "Give me your fishing equipment and I'LL catch a 19-inch bass for you!" Nancy pleads. Well. Okay.
So we go down to the river and my skull starts to vibrate and make a noise like VRRRRRMMMMMM-OOOO-PWAAAAH and my entire head just DETONATES like a watermelon and pieces SHOOT ALL OVER THE LIVING ROOM and PSYCHIC ENERGY FLOWS OUT and EVERY DEVELOPER INVOLVED WITH THIS ENTIRE CONGA-LINE OF USELESS INANITY gets a HUGE NOSEBLEED.
Okay and I catch a fucking -fish- and take it to the -guy- and he gives me -ten dozen tickets- and I have no idea what to do with these anymore. Let me read back up this transcript. ...Yadda yadda... right, the telephone lady wanted these. Off to the telephone company, where I get the cards, then to Twin Elms, where I get the TRIVET. YAY.
"Now do be off." sniffs Mrs. Sheldon. "I'm expecting guests, and your dress is... well."
"I like this dress." Nancy sads. "It's very flouncy." ...Aww. I like flouncy too, Nancy.
With that ENORMOUS TIMEWASTING LOAD OF CRAP out of the way, let's look at the trivet!
Yeeeeeaaaaaaah that clears everything right up.
It actually takes me a while to work this out. It took about as long as it took to run the entire telegraph route, in fact. And you guys could not possibly work it out, because it's based on information I accidentally did not give you because this locking mechanism is -insane-. As it happens, the footsteps, the rain, the door, the swords... all of that are part of that really deranged radio play that I listened to, the one about the wereboar. If you spend six minutes listening to the record and mark the sound effects up as you listen, it goes, like...
Horse hooves - G
Two crashes of thunder - O O
Rain squall - D
Door slam - F
etc, etc, until it spells "GOODFELLOW". How do I know this is right? Well, Josiah played Puck at one point, and "Robin Goodfellow" is another name Puck uses. How would I know it's right if I didn't know that? WHO KNOWS! Either way, that's how you open the journal. What? No, you don't have to rotate the cypher or anything. Why, that would be -silly-.
Inside the journal is a list of ham radio frequencies labeled Flute, Thisby, and Pyramus. These people know Josiah as "Puck", and he gave them specific cues and they're to give him particular responses when they hear those cues. I don't know the cues... but I did notice that Topham has a big book of Shakespeare on his desk. Probably Crowley's. Good thing I have access to a secret passage that'll let me sneak into his house, huh?
Inside Josiah's house I'm nearly trapped by Uri the cat, who meows incessently at Nancy until I toss him his mousie. Poor Uri. It's not your fault your face looks that way. Let's see... Pyramis' cue is "Thou speak'st aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night.", Thisby's is the famous "If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here while these visions did appear.", and Flute's is "Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be.".
Then it's down the passage again, through the inn, out the front door, and off to the barn. Time to repair that radio! In goes the quartz, and I start callin' people up. Nancy has to do something I kinda hope nobody ever has to do for me: Contact all his friends who know him by some other name and explain that he's kind of dead. It's a sad moment for everyone, and hits... kinda close to home I guess.
Anyway. Flute's reply is "Leave by road when owner is in, because then there will be thieves about." Uh-huh. That's about what I expected. Hobo language!
Thisby, meanwhile, replies with "The authorities are alert for bad water, so do not go this way!" ... She seems genuinely baffled by this.
And finally, Pyramus replies with "A barking dog would do well to hold his tongue in a dangerous neighborhood." He finds the whole thing irritating.
Okay! To the big clock, where I punch in the codes for each of these sayings. The final code is "Bottom".
Bottom of what? Uhm. ... I read back again. "Bottom's cue is in note to Gloria". Right! To the Inn to ask about that note! WE'RE SO CLOSE, GUYS!
Except... Emily's in her room and won't let us at the letter to her mother. Ffffff. Okay... uh. How to get Emily out of her room. I talk to Jane. Nope. I talk to people on the phone. No. ... I ponder. She was really freaked out about people watching her. Maybe there IS something in the secret passage I missed. I go back down and really scour the place, and find something I missed before! Pulling one of the lamps opens -another- secret passage that leads to the wall behind Emily's room. Which is now empty.
I have no idea and there is no explanation for how that cause and effect lines up, but fuck it, now I can do what I came here to do. The note from Josiah is very polite, and... let's see... "I mean this from the BOTTOM of my heart: You are a kind lady who sparkles like good water and makes me think that the sky's the limit." BOOM. That's the final cue. OFF TO THE CLOCK AGAIN.
The clock takes that solution, and out pops...!
...a board game?
W... well, that's novel. OKAY. I play a board game. Against myself. Except of course it's not -really- a board game, it's a really creative logic puzzle. I -like- this one. Can you solve it?
When that's solved, out pops... a golden golf ball. I'm supposed to take it to hole six of the golf course and hit a hole in one. ... sigh. Okay, down THERE I tromp... How is the golf course gonna know how many hits it takes me? Is it staffed by MAGIC ELVES? Apparently it is, as when I put the golden ball down it folds up a brick on the course border so I can hit straight to the hole. That's... interesting. Anyway my prize is... a second safe deposit box key! For... another safe deposit box? He had TWO?
On my way back to the inn, Jane stops me. Nancy -has- to go talk to Emily. Emily is completely freaked out. She took a nap, and when she woke up, one of the pearl necklaces she thought had been stolen was wrapped around her hand. She must be freaking out. Having a nervous breakdown.
Emily, have you ever heard the term "Gaslighting"? No, it hasn't been invented yet. Look, stay cool. One more trip to town and this will all be over. Emily, however, yells at Nancy to just go home. Jane seems to agree, that Emily's clearly psychotic and suffering. Nancy should -totally- go home.
Nancy is totally not going home. TO THE BANK. Where, yes, it IS a safe deposit box key. Inside is the last will of Josiah Crowley, and his other most prized possession, a picture of Gloria. And her old friend, Jane.
The woman in the photograph is -not- the Jane Willoughby at the inn.
Uh-oh.
Whoever "Jane Willoughby" is, she's a very fast driver. Nancy has to chase her all over town at high speed. But when Jane heads for the state line, Nancy uses the knowledge from hours of delivering mail to every person in town to get ahead of her, cut her off, and...
Nancy: "After I slammed her off the road, the story became clear. The imposter confessed to being a woman named "Marion" who intercepted the letter Emily wrote to Jane after her mother died. She was trying to trick Emily into thinking she was crazy, into selling the inn and giving her all the profits... not to mention stealing Emily's valuables. Josiah Crowley really DID leave lots of money to practically everyone in town, but the motherload went to Emily. She had enough to run the inn as long as she wanted, and hire anyone she wanted to work there. Richard Topham tried to contest the will, but that never amounted to anything. Dad says there was some evidence he faked up a copy, but nobody could actually prove that. As for me, I got a lifetime pass to come back and have cherry pie any time I wanted to."
Bess: "I lost track of why you were telling us this story, Nancy."
Nancy: "Oh! Right. It's because..."
George: "Yes?"
Nancy: "The reason I've never learned self defense is because I own a car. If I need to defend myself, I can just run people over."
George: "...wha..."
Nancy: "Wow. I could actually really go for some cherry pie right now, come to think of it. I'll see you girls later!"
Bess: "George?"
George: "Yeah, Bess?"
Bess: "Let's not ask Nancy about her cases any more."
George: "She'll tell us anyway, you know."
Bess: "I'm trying not to think about it."
THE END. No moral.
Next time... well, I'm putting the Hat on hold again, so I can play through the entire Assassin's Creed series in preperation for AC3 coming to the PC at the end of November. So, uhm... I may have thoughts on that! I might not.
Either way, I hope you enjoyed!
Where were we... ah yes. What was in the box?
Inside the safe deposit box was... Josiah's journal! Yes! Not his little note book, not any of the bunches of bundles of writing he left laying around, but his actual journal! And of course it is sealed with a puzzle lock. Can you actually buy journals that seal with puzzle locks? I kind of almost want one. Not that I would write in it. I have Livejournal.
Now, you might remember a few entries back when I was all "Huh, this says "To Open Journal - Becoder is in the rrivet. (2 to the right)", what the hell does that mean?" Eekay over on the Dreamwidth journal specifically pointed this line out, and I was like "huh." and thought no more of it. Then I woke up this morning and actually said aloud "DECODER IS IN THE TRIVET, you goddamn moron." and so I think we need to drive out to Mrs. Sheldon's place and inquire after the trivet that was loaned to her.
Of course I have no idea who Mrs. Sheldon is, but she lives up at "Twin Elms", which is not on my folding pocket map. I drive around for a while and find the correct place, and am informed that of COURSE I can have the trivet, if I run a little sidequest first. *sigh* Okay. Go get Mrs. Sheldon's bridge cards back from Mrs. Jakowski at the telephone company. This of course is not on the map. So I drive around until I find it and talk to her, and she has those bridge cards and SHE wants raffle tickets from the ORPHANAGE so I drive out THERE and they want me to go buy toys for orphans.
TOYS FOR ORPHANS.
...anyway around that point I start running low on both gas -and- money. Nancy only has 20 cents left and a half tank of gas. This means naturally she'll have to deliver telegrams. Which will cost more gas money, eating into my profits. Smash the system, y'all.
So I deliver telegrams to:
Seymour at the Bleinheim nursery, who is expecting a Mr. Martin to stop in and who gets bitten by a plant as I leave...
Camp Director Alice at the local summer camp, who is having trouble keeping that wacky joker Jason out of the lake...
Mr. Jones at the dairy, who tries to tip me with a glass of "fresh squeezed" milk...
Rebecca, at Sunnybrook Farm...
And of course the entire time I'm pumping gas into the car and looking for somewhere to buy toys. There's even a game-over screen attached to all this, as Nancy pops a flat tire from driving around too much and then I forget to tighten the nuts when I put on the spare, careening her car off the road and wrecking it. I did not -kill- Nancy this time however. Maybe I can get through this without any deaths and regenerations.
After second-chancing, I go to the gas station and get her spare fixed. This costs two dollars, which I don't have. So instead I do a nuts-and-bolts filing minigame. It is exactly as exciting as the phrase "nuts-and-bolts filing minigame" would have you believe. All the joy of being unpaid labor, with the added bonus that if you ever, say, mistake a "small" bolt for a "medium" bolt, the boss comes by and dumps everything out of all of the drawers and makes you start from scratch. Anyway I sort the nuts, bolts, screws and washers by size and that's enough to pay for the repair.
Then I drive out to the general store, where I find a vending machine that sells toys for 25 cents each. At this point I begin compulsively keeping and reloading saved games to use as little gas as possible. Because oh god I'm never doing any of this crap again if I can help it.
... Back to delivering telegrams!
Dr. Bob, at the Observatory...
Ms. Temple, at the Lowood Academy, which Nancy identifies as formerly being the "Brewster Academy"... it's an in-joke.
Dr. Aikerman at the Deer Mountain Resort...
Old Mr. Johnson at Old Mr. Johnson's Farm, who tips us with "Buy low, sell high". No wonder this country went into a great depression.
Anyway at this point I have JUST ENOUGH to buy all those toys for the orphans. So I do. Frantically. At it turns out I don't need to buy five toys, because Slapdash Scramble counts as a toy and not just a pony. Huh, ponies are toys? Who knew? So we take those back to the orphans and we get clearance to pick up the raffle tickets from... Phelps Print Shop.
"Wonderful." Nancy deadpans. This is even starting to break -her-.
Down at Phelps Print Shop, the owner is just leaving. He can't print raffle tickets, he needs to go catch a 19-inch largemouth bass to win a bet with his brother. "Give me your fishing equipment and I'LL catch a 19-inch bass for you!" Nancy pleads. Well. Okay.
So we go down to the river and my skull starts to vibrate and make a noise like VRRRRRMMMMMM-OOOO-PWAAAAH and my entire head just DETONATES like a watermelon and pieces SHOOT ALL OVER THE LIVING ROOM and PSYCHIC ENERGY FLOWS OUT and EVERY DEVELOPER INVOLVED WITH THIS ENTIRE CONGA-LINE OF USELESS INANITY gets a HUGE NOSEBLEED.
Okay and I catch a fucking -fish- and take it to the -guy- and he gives me -ten dozen tickets- and I have no idea what to do with these anymore. Let me read back up this transcript. ...Yadda yadda... right, the telephone lady wanted these. Off to the telephone company, where I get the cards, then to Twin Elms, where I get the TRIVET. YAY.
"Now do be off." sniffs Mrs. Sheldon. "I'm expecting guests, and your dress is... well."
"I like this dress." Nancy sads. "It's very flouncy." ...Aww. I like flouncy too, Nancy.
With that ENORMOUS TIMEWASTING LOAD OF CRAP out of the way, let's look at the trivet!
Yeeeeeaaaaaaah that clears everything right up.
It actually takes me a while to work this out. It took about as long as it took to run the entire telegraph route, in fact. And you guys could not possibly work it out, because it's based on information I accidentally did not give you because this locking mechanism is -insane-. As it happens, the footsteps, the rain, the door, the swords... all of that are part of that really deranged radio play that I listened to, the one about the wereboar. If you spend six minutes listening to the record and mark the sound effects up as you listen, it goes, like...
Horse hooves - G
Two crashes of thunder - O O
Rain squall - D
Door slam - F
etc, etc, until it spells "GOODFELLOW". How do I know this is right? Well, Josiah played Puck at one point, and "Robin Goodfellow" is another name Puck uses. How would I know it's right if I didn't know that? WHO KNOWS! Either way, that's how you open the journal. What? No, you don't have to rotate the cypher or anything. Why, that would be -silly-.
Inside the journal is a list of ham radio frequencies labeled Flute, Thisby, and Pyramus. These people know Josiah as "Puck", and he gave them specific cues and they're to give him particular responses when they hear those cues. I don't know the cues... but I did notice that Topham has a big book of Shakespeare on his desk. Probably Crowley's. Good thing I have access to a secret passage that'll let me sneak into his house, huh?
Inside Josiah's house I'm nearly trapped by Uri the cat, who meows incessently at Nancy until I toss him his mousie. Poor Uri. It's not your fault your face looks that way. Let's see... Pyramis' cue is "Thou speak'st aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night.", Thisby's is the famous "If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here while these visions did appear.", and Flute's is "Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be.".
Then it's down the passage again, through the inn, out the front door, and off to the barn. Time to repair that radio! In goes the quartz, and I start callin' people up. Nancy has to do something I kinda hope nobody ever has to do for me: Contact all his friends who know him by some other name and explain that he's kind of dead. It's a sad moment for everyone, and hits... kinda close to home I guess.
Anyway. Flute's reply is "Leave by road when owner is in, because then there will be thieves about." Uh-huh. That's about what I expected. Hobo language!
Thisby, meanwhile, replies with "The authorities are alert for bad water, so do not go this way!" ... She seems genuinely baffled by this.
And finally, Pyramus replies with "A barking dog would do well to hold his tongue in a dangerous neighborhood." He finds the whole thing irritating.
Okay! To the big clock, where I punch in the codes for each of these sayings. The final code is "Bottom".
Bottom of what? Uhm. ... I read back again. "Bottom's cue is in note to Gloria". Right! To the Inn to ask about that note! WE'RE SO CLOSE, GUYS!
Except... Emily's in her room and won't let us at the letter to her mother. Ffffff. Okay... uh. How to get Emily out of her room. I talk to Jane. Nope. I talk to people on the phone. No. ... I ponder. She was really freaked out about people watching her. Maybe there IS something in the secret passage I missed. I go back down and really scour the place, and find something I missed before! Pulling one of the lamps opens -another- secret passage that leads to the wall behind Emily's room. Which is now empty.
I have no idea and there is no explanation for how that cause and effect lines up, but fuck it, now I can do what I came here to do. The note from Josiah is very polite, and... let's see... "I mean this from the BOTTOM of my heart: You are a kind lady who sparkles like good water and makes me think that the sky's the limit." BOOM. That's the final cue. OFF TO THE CLOCK AGAIN.
The clock takes that solution, and out pops...!
...a board game?
W... well, that's novel. OKAY. I play a board game. Against myself. Except of course it's not -really- a board game, it's a really creative logic puzzle. I -like- this one. Can you solve it?
When that's solved, out pops... a golden golf ball. I'm supposed to take it to hole six of the golf course and hit a hole in one. ... sigh. Okay, down THERE I tromp... How is the golf course gonna know how many hits it takes me? Is it staffed by MAGIC ELVES? Apparently it is, as when I put the golden ball down it folds up a brick on the course border so I can hit straight to the hole. That's... interesting. Anyway my prize is... a second safe deposit box key! For... another safe deposit box? He had TWO?
On my way back to the inn, Jane stops me. Nancy -has- to go talk to Emily. Emily is completely freaked out. She took a nap, and when she woke up, one of the pearl necklaces she thought had been stolen was wrapped around her hand. She must be freaking out. Having a nervous breakdown.
Emily, have you ever heard the term "Gaslighting"? No, it hasn't been invented yet. Look, stay cool. One more trip to town and this will all be over. Emily, however, yells at Nancy to just go home. Jane seems to agree, that Emily's clearly psychotic and suffering. Nancy should -totally- go home.
Nancy is totally not going home. TO THE BANK. Where, yes, it IS a safe deposit box key. Inside is the last will of Josiah Crowley, and his other most prized possession, a picture of Gloria. And her old friend, Jane.
The woman in the photograph is -not- the Jane Willoughby at the inn.
Uh-oh.
Whoever "Jane Willoughby" is, she's a very fast driver. Nancy has to chase her all over town at high speed. But when Jane heads for the state line, Nancy uses the knowledge from hours of delivering mail to every person in town to get ahead of her, cut her off, and...
Nancy: "After I slammed her off the road, the story became clear. The imposter confessed to being a woman named "Marion" who intercepted the letter Emily wrote to Jane after her mother died. She was trying to trick Emily into thinking she was crazy, into selling the inn and giving her all the profits... not to mention stealing Emily's valuables. Josiah Crowley really DID leave lots of money to practically everyone in town, but the motherload went to Emily. She had enough to run the inn as long as she wanted, and hire anyone she wanted to work there. Richard Topham tried to contest the will, but that never amounted to anything. Dad says there was some evidence he faked up a copy, but nobody could actually prove that. As for me, I got a lifetime pass to come back and have cherry pie any time I wanted to."
Bess: "I lost track of why you were telling us this story, Nancy."
Nancy: "Oh! Right. It's because..."
George: "Yes?"
Nancy: "The reason I've never learned self defense is because I own a car. If I need to defend myself, I can just run people over."
George: "...wha..."
Nancy: "Wow. I could actually really go for some cherry pie right now, come to think of it. I'll see you girls later!"
Bess: "George?"
George: "Yeah, Bess?"
Bess: "Let's not ask Nancy about her cases any more."
George: "She'll tell us anyway, you know."
Bess: "I'm trying not to think about it."
THE END. No moral.
Next time... well, I'm putting the Hat on hold again, so I can play through the entire Assassin's Creed series in preperation for AC3 coming to the PC at the end of November. So, uhm... I may have thoughts on that! I might not.
Either way, I hope you enjoyed!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 06:53 am (UTC)It got real bad for a while. Too many gamers keen on being Stabby McShankadude, all at once.
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Date: 2012-10-29 10:53 am (UTC)Jamming my face -really hard- into the previous games is my way of saying "Please do not tell me all about the awesome plot twists in your new game please."
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Date: 2012-10-29 05:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 06:58 am (UTC)*reload save*
Yes, that is exactly the path I ended up taking. Nicely done!