![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlNo goofy filler. Let's go straight to the cut.
The problem with running off to save Grace from the evil secret voodoo base is... we're not actually sure where said voodoo base is. We can listen in to the Rada drummers and be absolutely certain that some trouble is going down tonight, because they keep drumming "CALL CONCLAVE - TONIGHT - HOUNFOUR" but we can't shake them down to find out where the hounfour IS. So we wander in a big circle around Jackson Square, and then we head into the cathedral. It IS the oldest building around.
Gabe checks inside the church, up and down the pews. He ducks in back, into that priest storage room. (...storage room for priests to use, not a room where they store priests in stacks.) He even takes a breath and braves somewhere he's never been before: The confessionals.
Oh hello. Gabe sticks a finger in the knothole, then tries shoving the snake rod in. What do you know, the entire confessional goes down like an elevator.
Welcome to the first way to lose the game forty minutes from now. If you just walk out of the elevator and don't come back, you are completely boned when you can't get back to it later. Why?
Because of this. So we plant the tracker in the confessional, and tuck the snake rod under the bench, and NOW Mosely can actually get to us in our future hour of need. You know you've got it right when the elevator doesn't stick around when you leave.
Yes, amazingly this actually means you did the RIGHT thing. SIERRA! Okay, where are we? We're in the SECRET HIGH TECH VOODOO BASE.
The voodoo hounfour is, naturally, an outer wheel and an inner wheel because once you latch onto an overlying theme it's really hard to let it go. Thus why I've been titling all these posts with nonsensical quotes from Gabe that usually didn't even make it into the writeups. Along the outer wheel rim are a bunch of rooms, and in the center is a bigger room we'll cover in a bit. Let's work around the outer area first.
This room, for example...
This room is yet another couple ways to fail this sequence. Here you can take some masks and robes. Remember, you need one for Mosely too when he shows up. Grab two masks and two robes, or you've doomed yourself. (This caught me out my first-ever playthrough. I was unhappy.) Gabe selects a wolf mask for himself and a boar mask for Mosely.
(As a side note, one of the mythological ways to contract lycanthropy (or werewolfism) is to wear the skin of a wolf. No foreshadowing here. ... Yeah, that's right, Mosely becomes a wereboar.)
That's room 7. We came in at 6. Let's keep going. Room 8 is locked with a keycard slot. Number 9 is an empty guest room. (Gabriel seems startled that voodoo practicioners still need bathrooms. "How HUMAN of them!" Yes, Gabe, EVERYBODY poops.) Door 10 is full of live animals in cages. ... Let's not think about that.
Door 11 is, again, locked. Door 12, empty guest room. Door 1? Locked again. Man, we have got to get a keycard or something. Behind Door 2...
OH SHIT. RUN. Gabe scrambles back out into the hallway in a hurry. ...wait a moment, though. That was a keycard on Dr John's wall there. ... hmmm. Well. Let's keep going around and we'll work that out shortly.
(Ways to die: Approach Dr. John, talk to Dr. John, linger too long in Dr. John's room, do anything involving Dr. John.)
Onward! In the next room -- oh dear, this is Malia's room. And Gabe hears someone coming. He dives behind a dresser and watches as Malia stomps over to a screen and summons up Tetelo for a chat. The subject? Him.
Tetelo rages that it's inevitable. Gabriel WILL betray Malia, because that's how it happened to her. Malia argues that people can change. Tetelo argues they really can't. It ends with Malia shouting that she can't and won't do this anymore, and locking herself in the bathroom.
Circumstances have really conspired against Malia here. I wonder how many times the romance/betrayal/murder cycle has played out over the years.
The next room (4) is VERY important, as Gabriel walks into what looks like your average office building. And what's this here?
A record book. A quick flip through reveals all kinds of things the FBI would love to know about, and also...
A bunch of rada drum codes. These would be useless without a drum, though... and here's where I take over, just to get us through this bit a little faster. In the center of the hounfour is a big room full of all kinds of weird tribal stuff including, yes! A bunch of drums.
(Way to screw up and die: Futz with the drums aimlessly until Doctor John, or "Brother Eagle", comes out to see WTF is wrong with you.)
So what we do is: Play the "Summon Brother Eagle" beat. Run like hell. Hope we don't bump into Doctor John in the hallway. (Ways to die: Bump into Doctor John in the hallway.) Go into his room and grab the keycard before he gets back. (Ways to die: Be in his room when Doctor John gets back.) Then we hide in a guest room until we hear a door close elsewhere in the complex.
Whew.
With that done, we have access to the locked rooms of the hounfour. However, there's only two we actually care about. There's room #1, which contains...
...all the money in the goddamn world, in bills and bags and bullion. Gabriel is not strong enough to carry multiple gold bars in his coat (and besides, it's about letting go) so instead he stuffs the lining with all the bills he can cram in there.
Eh, the family castle REALLY needs repairs. I think we're good. The rule is "trust your instincts and hunt monsters", right? I'm sure Wolfgang would've told us not to take huge piles of money if it was something that came up often enough to have a RULE about it.
Rationalization is fun.
Anyway, behind door number 8 is the OTHER thing we care about in here.
Rada drums boom through the hounfour. Whatever we're gonna do, we have to do it pretty quick.
Okay, we've found Grace. Seconds later the door swishes open and Mosely sneaks in. He saw Gabe duck in here and hurried over. That means that as long as we're in here with the keycard, that door ain't locked. Gabriel tries to wake Grace, but she's in some kind of deep mystic trance. With no idea what else to do, he thrusts the talisman at her and she comes to. The three of them fill each other in, and then it's Plan Time.
As near as Gabriel can figure, their only winning move will be to keep Tetelo from making an appearance, which means not letting Dr John drug Malia and start blowing powder around like he did back at the swamp ritual. Grace will pretend to be unconscious, and she can keep Malia locked down with her Tai Chi if things get bad.
Everybody gets in costume.
Doctor John shows up to growl at us. (Ways to die: Not having done that last bit pretty quick. Doctor John will kill the hell out of you if you aren't all dressed up, or if one of the two isn't dressed up.)
Then, it's off to the conclave.
Here's hoping everything goes off without a hitch.
NEXT TIME: Spoiler - There is a hitch.
The problem with running off to save Grace from the evil secret voodoo base is... we're not actually sure where said voodoo base is. We can listen in to the Rada drummers and be absolutely certain that some trouble is going down tonight, because they keep drumming "CALL CONCLAVE - TONIGHT - HOUNFOUR" but we can't shake them down to find out where the hounfour IS. So we wander in a big circle around Jackson Square, and then we head into the cathedral. It IS the oldest building around.
Gabe checks inside the church, up and down the pews. He ducks in back, into that priest storage room. (...storage room for priests to use, not a room where they store priests in stacks.) He even takes a breath and braves somewhere he's never been before: The confessionals.
Oh hello. Gabe sticks a finger in the knothole, then tries shoving the snake rod in. What do you know, the entire confessional goes down like an elevator.
Welcome to the first way to lose the game forty minutes from now. If you just walk out of the elevator and don't come back, you are completely boned when you can't get back to it later. Why?
Because of this. So we plant the tracker in the confessional, and tuck the snake rod under the bench, and NOW Mosely can actually get to us in our future hour of need. You know you've got it right when the elevator doesn't stick around when you leave.
Yes, amazingly this actually means you did the RIGHT thing. SIERRA! Okay, where are we? We're in the SECRET HIGH TECH VOODOO BASE.
The voodoo hounfour is, naturally, an outer wheel and an inner wheel because once you latch onto an overlying theme it's really hard to let it go. Thus why I've been titling all these posts with nonsensical quotes from Gabe that usually didn't even make it into the writeups. Along the outer wheel rim are a bunch of rooms, and in the center is a bigger room we'll cover in a bit. Let's work around the outer area first.
This room, for example...
This room is yet another couple ways to fail this sequence. Here you can take some masks and robes. Remember, you need one for Mosely too when he shows up. Grab two masks and two robes, or you've doomed yourself. (This caught me out my first-ever playthrough. I was unhappy.) Gabe selects a wolf mask for himself and a boar mask for Mosely.
(As a side note, one of the mythological ways to contract lycanthropy (or werewolfism) is to wear the skin of a wolf. No foreshadowing here. ... Yeah, that's right, Mosely becomes a wereboar.)
That's room 7. We came in at 6. Let's keep going. Room 8 is locked with a keycard slot. Number 9 is an empty guest room. (Gabriel seems startled that voodoo practicioners still need bathrooms. "How HUMAN of them!" Yes, Gabe, EVERYBODY poops.) Door 10 is full of live animals in cages. ... Let's not think about that.
Door 11 is, again, locked. Door 12, empty guest room. Door 1? Locked again. Man, we have got to get a keycard or something. Behind Door 2...
OH SHIT. RUN. Gabe scrambles back out into the hallway in a hurry. ...wait a moment, though. That was a keycard on Dr John's wall there. ... hmmm. Well. Let's keep going around and we'll work that out shortly.
(Ways to die: Approach Dr. John, talk to Dr. John, linger too long in Dr. John's room, do anything involving Dr. John.)
Onward! In the next room -- oh dear, this is Malia's room. And Gabe hears someone coming. He dives behind a dresser and watches as Malia stomps over to a screen and summons up Tetelo for a chat. The subject? Him.
Tetelo rages that it's inevitable. Gabriel WILL betray Malia, because that's how it happened to her. Malia argues that people can change. Tetelo argues they really can't. It ends with Malia shouting that she can't and won't do this anymore, and locking herself in the bathroom.
Circumstances have really conspired against Malia here. I wonder how many times the romance/betrayal/murder cycle has played out over the years.
The next room (4) is VERY important, as Gabriel walks into what looks like your average office building. And what's this here?
A record book. A quick flip through reveals all kinds of things the FBI would love to know about, and also...
A bunch of rada drum codes. These would be useless without a drum, though... and here's where I take over, just to get us through this bit a little faster. In the center of the hounfour is a big room full of all kinds of weird tribal stuff including, yes! A bunch of drums.
(Way to screw up and die: Futz with the drums aimlessly until Doctor John, or "Brother Eagle", comes out to see WTF is wrong with you.)
So what we do is: Play the "Summon Brother Eagle" beat. Run like hell. Hope we don't bump into Doctor John in the hallway. (Ways to die: Bump into Doctor John in the hallway.) Go into his room and grab the keycard before he gets back. (Ways to die: Be in his room when Doctor John gets back.) Then we hide in a guest room until we hear a door close elsewhere in the complex.
Whew.
With that done, we have access to the locked rooms of the hounfour. However, there's only two we actually care about. There's room #1, which contains...
...all the money in the goddamn world, in bills and bags and bullion. Gabriel is not strong enough to carry multiple gold bars in his coat (and besides, it's about letting go) so instead he stuffs the lining with all the bills he can cram in there.
Eh, the family castle REALLY needs repairs. I think we're good. The rule is "trust your instincts and hunt monsters", right? I'm sure Wolfgang would've told us not to take huge piles of money if it was something that came up often enough to have a RULE about it.
Rationalization is fun.
Anyway, behind door number 8 is the OTHER thing we care about in here.
Rada drums boom through the hounfour. Whatever we're gonna do, we have to do it pretty quick.
Okay, we've found Grace. Seconds later the door swishes open and Mosely sneaks in. He saw Gabe duck in here and hurried over. That means that as long as we're in here with the keycard, that door ain't locked. Gabriel tries to wake Grace, but she's in some kind of deep mystic trance. With no idea what else to do, he thrusts the talisman at her and she comes to. The three of them fill each other in, and then it's Plan Time.
As near as Gabriel can figure, their only winning move will be to keep Tetelo from making an appearance, which means not letting Dr John drug Malia and start blowing powder around like he did back at the swamp ritual. Grace will pretend to be unconscious, and she can keep Malia locked down with her Tai Chi if things get bad.
Everybody gets in costume.
Doctor John shows up to growl at us. (Ways to die: Not having done that last bit pretty quick. Doctor John will kill the hell out of you if you aren't all dressed up, or if one of the two isn't dressed up.)
Then, it's off to the conclave.
Here's hoping everything goes off without a hitch.
NEXT TIME: Spoiler - There is a hitch.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-10 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-13 01:05 pm (UTC)Awwww, now you've ruined the surprise for me!
no subject
Date: 2016-02-15 02:44 am (UTC)Mosely is from Daggerfall?
Also, I'm going to disagree with your earlier assertion that Day 9 was the most Sierra day.