By Ilmari
What was my goal again? It seems that for a couple of posts I’ve just been going through various parts of Xanth, without any clear idea where I am heading. There was some sort of prize I was supposed to find out, and I had to look for the Good Magician Humfrey… Really, neither of these plot points have had anything to do with the challenges I have been facing.
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| This one’s the next one in line |
Bridge. A troll demanding a toll and threatening to eat us, if we don’t give it. A staple of adventure gaming from the start. We didn’t have anything to give him, but he was willing to let us pass, if we just did him a favour: find a small key he had lost somewhere in his apartment.
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| The troll disappeared. What if I just went forward? |
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| Seems to be working… |
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| …but finally Nada objects. Well, at least I found a hose here |
The troll lived under the bridge.
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| I’d expect more mold |
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| Nothing in the living room, so let’s go to the troll’s lab |
The key I was looking for could be seen at the bottom of the well. Seeing that I had a hose and there was a sink, it seemed clear I was meant to raise the water level in the well. I couldn’t attach the hose directly to the faucet, but I could put it in the sink and open up the faucet with one of the coloured buttons on the wall. With the well full of water, I could swim at the bottom of it and take the key the troll wanted.
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| This doesn’t sound good |
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| No, this does not definitely sound good |
As a “reward” for my help, the troll gave me some puzzles to solve. This was an even worse fate than the maze in the previous post. At least I had three options to choose from.
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| Fill the tray with Tetris-blocks |
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| Slider puzzles |
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| Matchstick puzzles |
I tried all the three options, and matchsticks were the easiest. Even so, doing a dozen of those in a row took some time. After that feat, the troll let me go and even gave me a crowbar as a gift.
I had entered the lair of Com-Pewter, a recurring villain in Xanth series (well, at this point in the series it had been reprogrammed to be good, but that’s not so important). Originally meant to be a machine for recording the history of Xanth, it had a structural flaw and became able to shape its immediate vicinity with its printouts.
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| 5 CAPs for the first person to spot the reference |
The evil machine set up another game for me (great). It would give a description and a word, and from a given set of letters, I had to choose the one, which with the letters of the word made up a new word matching the description. All the words could be found in my Com-Pendium of Xanthian things, so the game was mostly just a case of perseverance.
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Let’s go through one example. The Com-Pendium mentions asparagus spears, so the letter I need is S
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| I find it here |
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| And put it in here |
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| Repeat ad nauseam |
With the tenth iteration of this game, the Com-Pewter asked for a word that required T for an answer. Unfortunately, there was no T in the tile set. Then again, I had both a tea bag and a golf tee in my inventory to use as a supplement. Like a bad loser, the machine decided to cheat and altered the reality so that I would resign from the game.
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| Grundy is influenced by a flu virus |
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| The lessons you can learn from this game |
Grundy managed to reinstate me back in the game, but I still had to defeat Com-Pewter. Luckily, I had just received something to do that.
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| So this is how you make computer viruses |
Another challenge passed! Next time…
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| …it’s the region of Air! |
Session time: 2 h 5 min
Total time: 11 h 50 min
