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xyzzysqrlWelcome back. Last time on Nancy Drew Battles The Scarlet Witch, we discovered an enormous trove of information and then I didn't do anything with it because the game crashed on me. Also I kinda hope we're near the end, because I'm running out of "Scarlet" jokes.
Today I'm going to do two things: Call everyone I can think of and do the Temple Games. I'm gonna start with the games in the temple, because Henrik is super-insistent about them and because they've sat untouched for a long while now.
They're not going to be interesting to screenshot and they're going to involve running all over the damn museum, I can feel it. Here goes.
First off is... yes, a trivia quiz. What city did Pacal rule over? Who was his mother? And so on and so forth. Get question, run off and learn answer, come back, input. Second is a game where you roll dice made of corn to move little warriors. If you land on your enemy's warrior, they die gurgling and screaming. You know, for kids. Third is glyph-matching, of course. You KNEW there was gonna be glyph-matching. More running all over the museum.
Completing those three gets get into the next level of the pyramid, where there are -- you got it. More minigames, like...
Throwing a ball through a hoop repeatedly! Every time, the little figure moves around. If you get it wrong, it resets to the original position and you start over. If that's too hard for you, you puzzle-solvin' pansy, how about watching a slideshow?
From there you move to solving a 3D maze game which is at ... slightly-sub-Doom levels of 3D rendering. All realtime though!
And then another trivia quiz. This one is interesting because as "S.J." notes, the answer to "What is the name of a Maya matchmaker?" isn't in the museum itself, only in Henrik's notes. With that done, Nancy's card opens the door to level 3 of the pyramid of puzzles. Down here are such tasks as figuring out how to set a Mayan calendar to a specific date...
Matching the various gods and goddesses to their mythological task... And finally, this quiz.
...Uh. You know, earlier a friend and I were talking and he noted that there was a distinct lack of "soup cans" in this game so far. I would argue that this puzzle gauntlet is as close as we're getting to that. Even so, it doesn't have a lick on the bichromatic puzzle-shitting otters of Castle Malloy or the display-rack of soda cans in Ghost Dogs, y'know?
This was back when Her Interactive took the idea of Educational But Fun Puzzle Games For Girls very, very seriously. I respect that.
We're gonna have to go see Henrik to make any progress there, so it's off to the hospital again. Henrik ... has no idea at all. What he DOES know, however, is WHY he hid the Pacal carving.
...well that's just great. We're going to need the six pieces of jade to make a key apparently? But now that we know that... has he been stealing mexican jade from all over the world to make this key? Are we actually WORKING for the bad guy here? I'm starting to feel uneasy about this.
Let's start calling people on the phone. First we try Frank Rose, but he's out of the office and won't be back for a while. Damnit. I REALLY want to see if he knows Pru Rutherford, to say nothing of getting Joanna reinstated now that we have PROOF she wasn't involved with stealing this jade.
Next up, a call to Bess and George nets me a new phone number: The Hardy Boys! They're visiting Bess after another case sent them driving cross-country, and they're delighted to hear that Nancy is stuck in on one as well. The detectives natter shop talk for a while and pass over the number to their car phone for Nancy to call if she feels like she needs some advice.
I love when those two do crossovers.
Next we call the Cultural Center again to see if there's any progress. There's none on getting a picture or anything, but someone at the Center does have the bright idea of sending the shipping container to Nancy so she can see if there's any clues there. That gets shipped out express. It's something, right?
From there I'm reduced to dialing Henry Daddle from Henrik's notes on the off-chance he'll be someone helpful. As it happens, he DOES remember the jade carving his great-grandfather bought. He gave it to his daughter Penelope. Why doesn't Nancy call her about it? So he gives the number, and Nancy gets dialing.
It turns out that NOBODY calls Penelope 'Penelope Daddle' anymore. Her name is Poppy Dada, and Nancy perks up. The artist? Why yes, as it happens. They chatter on for a while about this and that... Poppy is briefly worried, then thrilled by the idea that her or her father might be wanted by the FBI, and Nancy has to let her down with a "Not THAT kind of detective." It turns out that Poppy incorporated the jade into that painting Nancy saw at Sinclair's office, "Deadly Midnight Snack". She covered it in shoe polish and stuck it on there as a statement.
Nancy is horrified, but Poppy explains that her work is all about GROWTH and CHANGE and EXPRESSING THE LIFE AND DEATH of things. If that jade carving didn't change, it would be STATIC. If her ART didn't change, it would be NOTHING. Just MERCHANDISE, like Sinclair thinks it is. So Nancy should go up to that painting, RIP THE JADE RIGHT OFF IT and stick something else in there! Something SHE feels goes with the piece in an organic way! Don't be shy, Nancy, ENGAGE with the artwork! Express the feelings a detective has towards a rubber shark! She can only make the art MORE ART!
Just don't let Sinclair see her do it.
Poppy Dada, everybody.
So it's back to Sinclair's office, where he has a big plate of cream filled cookies. When Sinclair ducks out of the office for a minute, Nancy rubs the shoe polish off the jade carving, pries it off the canvas, and splats a cookie in its place.
It's organic, y'know. ... Let's leave very fast.
The only thing I can think of left to do is to try to get in contact with those smugglers. I'm not entirely comfortable with that, but let's see... To the office. Ham radio. Turn it o--
...it blew a tube, apparently. Remember when radios had TUBES? Ha ha! Neither do I! But the museum does. There's another radio tucked in a display case, as part of an expedition exhibit. Nancy goes and borrows a tube from that one, since it doesn't have to work if it's going to sit in a locked display case forever.
Okay. Radio on. Uhm. "Tune to 2050" for the real frequency, so we do. A voice says "Ocho, tres, dos, siete, uno." 83271. Take the last three numbers (271) add a zero (2710). Add all five digits... 21, add THAT to 2710... 2731.
Okay, punching that in gets me... a spanish voice asking for my transmission. I HAD NOT THOUGHT THIS FAR AHEAD. What do I send, uh. Password. Right. Coatl. ...in morse code. Fuck. Lots of booping ensues. This is an interesting version of morse code because you can send a BACKSPACE somehow in case you make a mistake, but whatever.
Next... okay, they want another transmission. Let's try "Leche", send the thing, the coast is clear. And then... something about pronto and... er. Vacas, the payment is already sent?
Hopefully that actually did it. Now I only get spanish for "This channel is not taking transmissions" when I try to do something with the radio. Back to the hotel, sleep... and yes, there IS a package for Henrik the next day!
What the hell? That's... not looking like Mayan jade. It turns out the jade is INSIDE this thing: You have to set the eyes so they're all crossed and it pops open. I did this by accident because I thought it looked funny.
Back at the hospital, Henrik's remembered a couple things. For one, he hid the Pacal carving in the replica tomb at the bottom of the temple. For two...
...who could possibly be afraid of coatimundis? They have adorable woobly noses. Huh, oh well.
So it's on down to the 'tomb' and...
There's the jade carving, right where Henrik said it would be. (We also get a free glowstick for doing all the quizzes and stuff. Hey, free glowstick!) We call Frank Rose to let him know that we've got the carving, and he agrees to let Joanna go back to work.
"I'm so glad this case is closed! Where did you find it? Who's responsible?" Rose demands.
"...Mr. Rose... I can't give this carving back yet. This case is far from closed." Nancy admits.
"What are you talking about? Why not?"
"Do you trust me?" Nancy asks.
...and he does. Of course he does. Thank goodness, and he has Pru's phone number via her donations to the museum. We dial that up and Pru is willing to send along something better than a photo -- her insurance company had a replica of the necklace made, and Pru couldn't BEAR to wear the dreadful thing. So she mails that along.
Meanwhile, Joanna's back at the museum! She gives Nancy a security code so she can start unpacking the crates in the back room, and what do you suppose it opens? A box addressed to Henrik, with ANOTHER jade piece in it. Meanwhile, in the shipping room, Pru has come through--
--but sorry, Pru, it's not the rubies we care about. That's 5 out of 6 jade pieces we need. As for the last piece?
... I was gonna say "We'll deal with that tomorow" and end, but c'mon, let's get this done. I wanna see what happens. The thing is, I have NO IDEA how to make a casting. I spend half an hour wandering around the museum, and eventually end up looking at this thing.
I didn't realize this was interactable until now! Nancy shoves the nozzle in the foam packing material, it goes SKOOOOUUUSH, and within minutes we have, like... a foamcore jade... thing? I guess? I don't know! Let's just go with it!
Then we reassemble the key...
And we're set! Uh... let's see. In Henrik's notes, there's a reference to needing the date he ascended the throne, which a museum exhibit tells me is "6 Lamat". We help ourselves to some calendar stones from another exhibit, because at this point why not, and socket them onto a spindle on the monolith. Stick the key in four times, once on each side...
...Well, isn't that something? Except... all the pages of the manuscript she's holding are blank. It's a fake? Nancy is just coming to the conclusion that the REAL manuscript is somewhere else in the tomb when she's shoved face-first into the mummy by...
Yeah this really doesn't surprise me. He's been stealing jade since he learned that this thing could open, and he wants something new to sell on the black market -- like that manuscript!
He seals Nancy in, and she snaps that glowstick and notes there's not really much air in the tomb. So it's a timed mission as she pries open the mummy's mouth, extracts a small stone brick, fits it into a socket which opens a trap door revealing the REAL manuscript and a small key...
...socket that key in and... we're out!
Back in his office, Sinclair opens the manuscript and his face falls as he finds nothing but blank sheet after blank sheet...
...okay that last one is funny, but how did you ALL KNOW I WAS HERE? Apparently Henrik's memory FINALLY came back and he bolted from the hospital to let everyone know. They decided, instead of helping me out of the monolith, to form some kind of impromptu greek chorus. Also... what about the smugglers? What about Henrik's part in all this? What... nobody cares? Uhm okay.
As usual, Nancy wraps things up...
Henrik's translating them, naturally.
(Also his smuggler nickname was Big Bunny? That was a thing, I guess. Maybe I didn't ask the right questions to get that info.)
Joanna legit didn't know this, but they patched it up by contacting various people and returning all the jade plus the manuscript and stuff to Mexico, who promptly gave it back for museum display. Joanna's been trying to double-check her sources ever since to make sure the Sinclair situation doesn't happen again.
And of course, Poppy's artwork has taken a startling new direction:
...And that was Secret of the Scarlet Hand, everyone!
I admit, I kinda rushed the ending because of fatigue. I'm not concentrating so well, so I'm calling a bit of a blogging hiatus.
I'm gonna laze around, play Dragon Age, try not to think of my father (who is incidentally doing better, responding well to chemotherapy, so he MAY have more than six months. Over a year, even, if it keeps up this way!) and revisit Maryland in January. After that I'm going to ease back in, but I really don't want this journal to be like...
*video game post*
"WELL DAD DIED"
*video game post*
"I AM HAVING COMPLICATED FEELINGS"
*video game post*
...So... things may be sparse. I'll try to keep y'all up to date on the events of my life though.
Love and cherish all of you and happy holidays from me.
Today I'm going to do two things: Call everyone I can think of and do the Temple Games. I'm gonna start with the games in the temple, because Henrik is super-insistent about them and because they've sat untouched for a long while now.
They're not going to be interesting to screenshot and they're going to involve running all over the damn museum, I can feel it. Here goes.
First off is... yes, a trivia quiz. What city did Pacal rule over? Who was his mother? And so on and so forth. Get question, run off and learn answer, come back, input. Second is a game where you roll dice made of corn to move little warriors. If you land on your enemy's warrior, they die gurgling and screaming. You know, for kids. Third is glyph-matching, of course. You KNEW there was gonna be glyph-matching. More running all over the museum.
Completing those three gets get into the next level of the pyramid, where there are -- you got it. More minigames, like...
Throwing a ball through a hoop repeatedly! Every time, the little figure moves around. If you get it wrong, it resets to the original position and you start over. If that's too hard for you, you puzzle-solvin' pansy, how about watching a slideshow?
From there you move to solving a 3D maze game which is at ... slightly-sub-Doom levels of 3D rendering. All realtime though!
And then another trivia quiz. This one is interesting because as "S.J." notes, the answer to "What is the name of a Maya matchmaker?" isn't in the museum itself, only in Henrik's notes. With that done, Nancy's card opens the door to level 3 of the pyramid of puzzles. Down here are such tasks as figuring out how to set a Mayan calendar to a specific date...
Matching the various gods and goddesses to their mythological task... And finally, this quiz.
...Uh. You know, earlier a friend and I were talking and he noted that there was a distinct lack of "soup cans" in this game so far. I would argue that this puzzle gauntlet is as close as we're getting to that. Even so, it doesn't have a lick on the bichromatic puzzle-shitting otters of Castle Malloy or the display-rack of soda cans in Ghost Dogs, y'know?
This was back when Her Interactive took the idea of Educational But Fun Puzzle Games For Girls very, very seriously. I respect that.
We're gonna have to go see Henrik to make any progress there, so it's off to the hospital again. Henrik ... has no idea at all. What he DOES know, however, is WHY he hid the Pacal carving.
...well that's just great. We're going to need the six pieces of jade to make a key apparently? But now that we know that... has he been stealing mexican jade from all over the world to make this key? Are we actually WORKING for the bad guy here? I'm starting to feel uneasy about this.
Let's start calling people on the phone. First we try Frank Rose, but he's out of the office and won't be back for a while. Damnit. I REALLY want to see if he knows Pru Rutherford, to say nothing of getting Joanna reinstated now that we have PROOF she wasn't involved with stealing this jade.
Next up, a call to Bess and George nets me a new phone number: The Hardy Boys! They're visiting Bess after another case sent them driving cross-country, and they're delighted to hear that Nancy is stuck in on one as well. The detectives natter shop talk for a while and pass over the number to their car phone for Nancy to call if she feels like she needs some advice.
I love when those two do crossovers.
Next we call the Cultural Center again to see if there's any progress. There's none on getting a picture or anything, but someone at the Center does have the bright idea of sending the shipping container to Nancy so she can see if there's any clues there. That gets shipped out express. It's something, right?
From there I'm reduced to dialing Henry Daddle from Henrik's notes on the off-chance he'll be someone helpful. As it happens, he DOES remember the jade carving his great-grandfather bought. He gave it to his daughter Penelope. Why doesn't Nancy call her about it? So he gives the number, and Nancy gets dialing.
It turns out that NOBODY calls Penelope 'Penelope Daddle' anymore. Her name is Poppy Dada, and Nancy perks up. The artist? Why yes, as it happens. They chatter on for a while about this and that... Poppy is briefly worried, then thrilled by the idea that her or her father might be wanted by the FBI, and Nancy has to let her down with a "Not THAT kind of detective." It turns out that Poppy incorporated the jade into that painting Nancy saw at Sinclair's office, "Deadly Midnight Snack". She covered it in shoe polish and stuck it on there as a statement.
Nancy is horrified, but Poppy explains that her work is all about GROWTH and CHANGE and EXPRESSING THE LIFE AND DEATH of things. If that jade carving didn't change, it would be STATIC. If her ART didn't change, it would be NOTHING. Just MERCHANDISE, like Sinclair thinks it is. So Nancy should go up to that painting, RIP THE JADE RIGHT OFF IT and stick something else in there! Something SHE feels goes with the piece in an organic way! Don't be shy, Nancy, ENGAGE with the artwork! Express the feelings a detective has towards a rubber shark! She can only make the art MORE ART!
Just don't let Sinclair see her do it.
Poppy Dada, everybody.
So it's back to Sinclair's office, where he has a big plate of cream filled cookies. When Sinclair ducks out of the office for a minute, Nancy rubs the shoe polish off the jade carving, pries it off the canvas, and splats a cookie in its place.
It's organic, y'know. ... Let's leave very fast.
The only thing I can think of left to do is to try to get in contact with those smugglers. I'm not entirely comfortable with that, but let's see... To the office. Ham radio. Turn it o--
...it blew a tube, apparently. Remember when radios had TUBES? Ha ha! Neither do I! But the museum does. There's another radio tucked in a display case, as part of an expedition exhibit. Nancy goes and borrows a tube from that one, since it doesn't have to work if it's going to sit in a locked display case forever.
Okay. Radio on. Uhm. "Tune to 2050" for the real frequency, so we do. A voice says "Ocho, tres, dos, siete, uno." 83271. Take the last three numbers (271) add a zero (2710). Add all five digits... 21, add THAT to 2710... 2731.
Okay, punching that in gets me... a spanish voice asking for my transmission. I HAD NOT THOUGHT THIS FAR AHEAD. What do I send, uh. Password. Right. Coatl. ...in morse code. Fuck. Lots of booping ensues. This is an interesting version of morse code because you can send a BACKSPACE somehow in case you make a mistake, but whatever.
Next... okay, they want another transmission. Let's try "Leche", send the thing, the coast is clear. And then... something about pronto and... er. Vacas, the payment is already sent?
Hopefully that actually did it. Now I only get spanish for "This channel is not taking transmissions" when I try to do something with the radio. Back to the hotel, sleep... and yes, there IS a package for Henrik the next day!
What the hell? That's... not looking like Mayan jade. It turns out the jade is INSIDE this thing: You have to set the eyes so they're all crossed and it pops open. I did this by accident because I thought it looked funny.
Back at the hospital, Henrik's remembered a couple things. For one, he hid the Pacal carving in the replica tomb at the bottom of the temple. For two...
...who could possibly be afraid of coatimundis? They have adorable woobly noses. Huh, oh well.
So it's on down to the 'tomb' and...
There's the jade carving, right where Henrik said it would be. (We also get a free glowstick for doing all the quizzes and stuff. Hey, free glowstick!) We call Frank Rose to let him know that we've got the carving, and he agrees to let Joanna go back to work.
"I'm so glad this case is closed! Where did you find it? Who's responsible?" Rose demands.
"...Mr. Rose... I can't give this carving back yet. This case is far from closed." Nancy admits.
"What are you talking about? Why not?"
"Do you trust me?" Nancy asks.
...and he does. Of course he does. Thank goodness, and he has Pru's phone number via her donations to the museum. We dial that up and Pru is willing to send along something better than a photo -- her insurance company had a replica of the necklace made, and Pru couldn't BEAR to wear the dreadful thing. So she mails that along.
Meanwhile, Joanna's back at the museum! She gives Nancy a security code so she can start unpacking the crates in the back room, and what do you suppose it opens? A box addressed to Henrik, with ANOTHER jade piece in it. Meanwhile, in the shipping room, Pru has come through--
--but sorry, Pru, it's not the rubies we care about. That's 5 out of 6 jade pieces we need. As for the last piece?
... I was gonna say "We'll deal with that tomorow" and end, but c'mon, let's get this done. I wanna see what happens. The thing is, I have NO IDEA how to make a casting. I spend half an hour wandering around the museum, and eventually end up looking at this thing.
I didn't realize this was interactable until now! Nancy shoves the nozzle in the foam packing material, it goes SKOOOOUUUSH, and within minutes we have, like... a foamcore jade... thing? I guess? I don't know! Let's just go with it!
Then we reassemble the key...
And we're set! Uh... let's see. In Henrik's notes, there's a reference to needing the date he ascended the throne, which a museum exhibit tells me is "6 Lamat". We help ourselves to some calendar stones from another exhibit, because at this point why not, and socket them onto a spindle on the monolith. Stick the key in four times, once on each side...
...Well, isn't that something? Except... all the pages of the manuscript she's holding are blank. It's a fake? Nancy is just coming to the conclusion that the REAL manuscript is somewhere else in the tomb when she's shoved face-first into the mummy by...
Yeah this really doesn't surprise me. He's been stealing jade since he learned that this thing could open, and he wants something new to sell on the black market -- like that manuscript!
He seals Nancy in, and she snaps that glowstick and notes there's not really much air in the tomb. So it's a timed mission as she pries open the mummy's mouth, extracts a small stone brick, fits it into a socket which opens a trap door revealing the REAL manuscript and a small key...
...socket that key in and... we're out!
Back in his office, Sinclair opens the manuscript and his face falls as he finds nothing but blank sheet after blank sheet...
...okay that last one is funny, but how did you ALL KNOW I WAS HERE? Apparently Henrik's memory FINALLY came back and he bolted from the hospital to let everyone know. They decided, instead of helping me out of the monolith, to form some kind of impromptu greek chorus. Also... what about the smugglers? What about Henrik's part in all this? What... nobody cares? Uhm okay.
As usual, Nancy wraps things up...
Henrik's translating them, naturally.
(Also his smuggler nickname was Big Bunny? That was a thing, I guess. Maybe I didn't ask the right questions to get that info.)
Joanna legit didn't know this, but they patched it up by contacting various people and returning all the jade plus the manuscript and stuff to Mexico, who promptly gave it back for museum display. Joanna's been trying to double-check her sources ever since to make sure the Sinclair situation doesn't happen again.
And of course, Poppy's artwork has taken a startling new direction:
...And that was Secret of the Scarlet Hand, everyone!
I admit, I kinda rushed the ending because of fatigue. I'm not concentrating so well, so I'm calling a bit of a blogging hiatus.
I'm gonna laze around, play Dragon Age, try not to think of my father (who is incidentally doing better, responding well to chemotherapy, so he MAY have more than six months. Over a year, even, if it keeps up this way!) and revisit Maryland in January. After that I'm going to ease back in, but I really don't want this journal to be like...
*video game post*
"WELL DAD DIED"
*video game post*
"I AM HAVING COMPLICATED FEELINGS"
*video game post*
...So... things may be sparse. I'll try to keep y'all up to date on the events of my life though.
Love and cherish all of you and happy holidays from me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-12-16 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-16 01:26 am (UTC)*video game post*
"WELL DAD DIED"
*video game post*
"I AM HAVING COMPLICATED FEELINGS"
*video game post*
I don't know why but this cracked me up. I would totally still read your journal if it was like that. <3
I am in full support of you taking the time that you need, though. Have a good whatever-the-end-of-December-is-typically-like-for-you.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-16 06:39 am (UTC)I hope you have a good time of it too between LARP seasons!
no subject
Date: 2014-12-22 01:44 am (UTC)But yay for Nancy solving the mystery! I fear that why the chorus was waiting to welcome her after she escaped, instead of HELPING HER ESCAPE, is a mystery we'll never know the answer to.