Walkthrough for SPECULATIVE FICTION by Diane Christoforo and Thomas Mack (This walkthrough is by us, that is. But we wrote the game too.) RORY: Hi, everybody, and welcome to the annotated walkthrough for Speculative Fiction! Whether you're stuck in the game, or just curious to see if you missed anything, we hope this walkthrough will be a fun and educational experience! I'm Rory. I play W.D. in the game. MARTIN: And I'm Martin. I play the wizard. RORY: The wizard doesn't officially have a name, but we like to refer to him as Bill. MARTIN: I prefer Frederick, but we're never going to agree on this one. Anyway, let's get started. You begin the game in Not a--- RORY: Wait. We should explain how this works, first. This walkthrough is divided into a number of parts. In Part 1, we'll try to determine who we are, why we're here, and what our goals are. In Part 2, we'll do a general exploration of the game map, and pick up any freely-available objects. In Part 3, we'll solve the easier puzzles. These are pretty straightforward. You'll need to bring a few objects to the right location and combine them. In Part 4, we'll solve the harder puzzles. These puzzles have multiple stages, require timing, or both. In Part 5, we'll solve the endgame. Now, the endgame _is_ timed, but it's also pretty simple, so this bit shouldn't take too long. If we have time, in Part 6 we'll talk about interesting actions you may want to try, some of which will be hazardous to Bill's health, or to W.D.'s. I should mention that this walkthrough will strive to be pretty thorough - we'll mention actions a player might take even if they're not strictly necessary - examining objects and such. MARTIN: But then you'd miss out on all the behind-the-scenes gossip. PART 1: WHAT IN THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE MARTIN: We begin the game in Not a Dungeon. Your first goal is to figure out what's going on. > x me MARTIN: Ok, that's kind of a strange description. You get told that your body is unconscious, but you're giving commands to someone or something. Let's see what else is in the room. > x vase > take vase MARTIN: We'll need this vase eventually, so we're going to take it now. RORY: I really hate that vase. MARTIN: I know, but we need it for full points. RORY: Bleh. What else is in this room? > x tapestry > x inscription RORY: This is just flavor, but it lets you know a little bit about the backstory. Let's check out the body. > x body RORY: That's the same description as "x me". So who's driving this thing? > look in mirror RORY: And there I am! Aren't I awesome? MARTIN: As a side note, "x you" also describes W.D. Let's examine Frederick the wizard some more. > x robe > look in pockets > take wand > x wand RORY: Yay! Magic items! > wake wizard MARTIN: Now you have some more idea what's going on. Your mind is inside W.D., giving him directions. The vase and the wand are the only objects you can get in the room, so it's time to escape. > x door > open door RORY: W.D. can't get through the door, because he's a bird. On the other hand, he's a bird. > x window > fly out window RORY: And with a big WOOOSH, W.D. is free. "d" doesn't work to get out of the room initially, but once you've escaped for the first time, you can use "u" and "d" to go between Not a Dungeon and Castle Gate. MARTIN: I have to say, this was probably the hardest scene in the game for me to film. You'd think lying there would be easy, but it's really hard to be still! At least Fred's only supposed to be unconscious, so I could still breathe. RORY: There was that one session where you kept laughing. MARTIN: You examined the tapestry thirty times in a row! Maybe Frederick was having a funny dream. RORY: Well, his brain is in W.D.'s bag, so I don't see how - MARTIN: *cough* Anyway, we eventually got the scene filmed. At this point, W.D. is in Castle Gate and ready to explore the game world proper. RORY: Unfortunately, W.D. cannot break down the doors of the castle, so the relevant thing to see here is the tree. > x tree > climb tree MARTIN: This brings us to the top of the tree. You can see a fair amount of the map from here. > x stall > x castle > x magic > x farm RORY: This area's here to give you a feel for the map. Note that when you examine the magic shop, W.D. says, "We should go there to ask for advice." MARTIN: There's one other thing here. Don't forget the note. RORY: Right, right. > take note > read note RORY: So one of those pesky tree-climbing humans has left a treasure hunt for his girlfriend. We'll be following it later. MARTIN: Fun fact: the models of the other game locations which you can see here? Ken in costuming made them. He makes dollhouses as a hobby. He's working on a replica of the whole game world now. RORY: Wow. I didn't know that. Cool. MARTIN: Yeah, I learned a lot of neat things about the crew while waiting to film my scenes. RORY: I kind of regret not being able to hang out with people more, but I was on camera basically the whole time. Anyway, we should probably take a break from the shop talk. People are trying to win this thing. So! Mel will give us advice, so that's where we should head. > n MARTIN: Now we're at the south part of Big Street. Mel's is off of the center section. You'll notice there's a beggar here - > x beggar RORY: But we're going to skip the beggar for now. At this point, it's not entirely clear what we're up to. We'll come back once we have a reason to bug this guy. > n RORY: This is Big Street, Center. It is the greatest location in the game, because it contains Sandie's Hot Meats. Tragically, we need to skip it for now and go to Mel's. > e MARTIN: The room description of the magic shop starts to explain what we're doing: "We're here to ask Mel for a Midas potion." RORY: Now, the very first action you take in the magic shop is going to be intercepted by a cut-scene, so we'll just look at the room again. > l RORY: And here's your plot dump. Now, that was a lot of text, so let me summarize: 1.) Bill the wizard has been embezzling and just got caught. 2.) The treasurer has to go find the king to get Bill executed. 3.) Bill needs to fill the treasury back up before that happens. 4.) If we get Mel lots and lots and lots of money, he will sell us the ingredients to make a potion that turns all the fake treasure in the treasury to gold. 5.) Profit. MARTIN: I think that's the first time I've seen one of those lists where the item before "Profit" isn't "???". RORY: Well, it's, "Get Mel lots and lots of money", which might as well be "???" MARTIN: I guess it wouldn't be a game if it were obvious. So, there are a lot of things going on in this location. First, Mel speaks Raven. He's the one NPC you can have real conversations with. > ask mel about money > ask mel about wizard > ask mel about wand > ask mel about potion RORY: Some of these are hints, and some are just flavor. If you haven't already tried waving the wand, you should do that. About half of the responses in "ask mel about money" actually correspond to things you can do in game. He also has opinions on many of the other NPCs. MARTIN: Including a backhanded compliment about poor Frederick. Sniff sniff. RORY: Also, this is where we'll come back to in order to cash in completed puzzles. It's also where we'll make the Midas potion. That will be later, though. MARTIN: There are also several items in the shop. The cockroaches are there to look cool. The trinkets we'll deal with later. We can take the balloon now. Then we'll head off to the southeast corner of the shop. RORY: Yeah - now that we know the plot, we're going to do a rapid-fire run through of the map, taking objects and looking for puzzle pointers. PART 2: RUN AROUND THE MAP AND TAKE STUFF > take balloon > se RORY: The alchemy bench is full of items which aren't nailed down. We'll take all of them. > x dye > take dye > x clear > take clear > x book > read book > read page MARTIN: There are three bottles of blue dye, but we're going to solve the puzzles in an order such that we only need one. You can come back here if you use up or destroy a bottle. (Or you can just take all three at once.) Also, we don't need the whole spellbook; just the relevant page. RORY: The solvent actually works, if you're wondering. The prop for the spellbook is now blank due to an accident with the "clear fluid". MARTIN: Rory carefully neglects to mention who caused the accident. RORY: HEY GUYS I SPILLED THE SOLVENT ON THE BOOK. ::cough:: > nw > w > s MARTIN: We're back at Big Street, South. Let's check out the beggar in more detail. > x beggar > x cup > look in cup > x strange > take strange RORY: Okay, so the beggar can hear us, but not see us. He's got some kind of rare coin, but we can't get it from him yet. > n > x stall > x sandie > x pans > excitement pan > ask sandie about meat MARTIN: Sandie can't speak Raven, but she does know who we are. There are a couple of NPCs who know that W.D. is a special raven and will treat him a little bit more like a person. > take salt RORY: There's salt and pepper here. I'm cheating a bit in that I know we'll need the salt and won't need the pepper. But hey, that's why you're reading a walkthrough--- for the delicious cheating. There's infinite salt here, but you can only take one packet at a time. If you use it up, you can come back to Sandie's to get another packet. MARTIN: I need to interrupt for a minute and put a plug in for Alessandra, here. She plays Sandie, and she was an absolute _delight_ to work with. She's professional, she's funny ... if you are trying to write a female character in your game and you need someone, I really recommend her work. RORY: I have to second that. We tried to get her in here to help with the walkthrough, but she's got a gig as an evil sorceress in a dungeon crawl right now. MARTIN: The salt is the only thing we really need here for now, so it's off towards Moneyville. > n RORY: This area is _mostly_ a hub. There's one thing to check out: > x cord > pull cord MARTIN: Well, that's exciting! We'll be back to deal with the cord in more detail later. Conveniently, we've been moved to the Bank Lobby. > x forms > x poster > x man > take poster MARTIN: All humans look kind of alike to W.D. RORY: Which is speciesism. MARTIN: Anyway, we can take the poster. It describes Two-Handed Bart, horrible bank robber. RORY: "Horrible" because he's bad at it. MARTIN: What? No, no, the fact that he robs banks is horrible ... er, moving on. > e > x teller > ask teller about loan RORY: The teller doesn't speak Raven. If we want to communicate with her, we'll need another way. > x chandelier MARTIN: Here's the cord we saw outside the bank earlier. > x cord RORY: We'll see the cord in the guard tower too. It's the bank's alarm system. > break cord RORY: But we can't do anything about it from here. > w > n MARTIN: This is the Stock Market. There's an auction going on. > x auctioneer > x coffer > x merchants RORY: There are also a lot of animals. > x animals > animals, hi RORY: Some of the animals are pretty nervous. MARTIN: If you stick around for a few turns, you can watch the auctions going on. For now, there aren't any objects we can take. > sw > w RORY: Mindo Street lets us get into the guard tower, and also has a cool statue. MARTIN: I hear the statue is actually modeled after the father of one of the writers, as a sort of cameo. RORY: Really? I heard it was the set designer's ex. MARTIN: Huh. Well, it's someone. > x statue > x plaque RORY: Cute. Time for the guard tower. > n > x bell MARTIN: Here's the last part of the alarm system. If you try to ring the bell from in here, you just annoy the guard. > x guard > x mustache > take mustache RORY: Sound sleeper. MARTIN: Yeah, that's artistic license. I tried that thing on. It _hurts_. > x wastebasket > take vellum > read vellum > x signature RORY: Apparently Bill the Wizard was up to something other than just embezzling pre-game. MARTIN: This letter relates to a mysterious device which we'll see in a few turns. > x tunic > take key RORY: I'm now going to show you the evidence cabinet and then walk you through two ways of not opening it. > x cabinet > x crack > look in crack MARTIN: You can't examine the scrap and the device without opening the cabinet, which you can't do yet. > x lock > break lock RORY: That's Failure 1. > unlock lock with key RORY: And that's Failure 2. > give key to guard MARTIN: Say it with me, folks: "We'll be back to deal with this later." We're giving the key back to the guard now because he's the only person who can open the cabinet. > up RORY: Now we're at the barracks. We can finally take some more objects. > x blanket > take blanket > take bit MARTIN: Mmm, a smelly blanket. > x guard > x forms > x stamp RORY: The signature is, in fact, the treasurer's. > x guard > x tunic > take pouch > open pouch > take florin RORY: They really don't hire the guards for their alertness, do they? MARTIN: The guy's been stamping paperwork for sixteen hours. RORY: I guess. As we learned with the guard downstairs, tunics contain exciting objects. This guard has ... A SINGLE FLORIN!!! Our first real money! MARTIN: Don't try to turn the florin in to Mel, though. We'll need to turn one florin into many before we have anything worthwhile. RORY: Off to the last few game locations. > d > s > w MARTIN: Ah, the sea. > take rod > x rod > wave rod RORY: The fishing wand generates a variety of forms of bait. > eat RORY: We're going to eat the bait to get rid of it for now. Our props deparment failed to get us duplicates of some relevant items - there's only one "salt" and one "faery coin" and one "bait", so you won't be able to get another one until you dispose of the first one. MARTIN: Yeah, in an ironic twist, it turned out a certain someone was stealing from the props budget... RORY: Legally, we can't mention her name, but YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Also it rhymes with "Mendolyn". > x scarecrow MARTIN: The end of that description is not a typo. > x hat > take hat RORY: For convenience, you can refer to it as a hat. MARTIN: So what's up with the circle and the barrel? > read sign > x circle > x barrel > take fish > enter circle > take fish > eat fish RORY: I would like to point out that I am claustrophobic and this was not fun to film. I'm going to go get some air. Martin, you deal with this bit. MARTIN: Ok. So W.D. is trapped in a magical cage. > x cage > open cage > e > z > z > z MARTIN: It doesn't open on its own. (We filmed a scene where if you waited for twenty turns, a fisherman would come and throw you into the ocean. That got cut for being too gruesome.) Violence turns out to be the solution to this one. > break cage > break cage > break cage MARTIN: W.D. can break out in 1 to 3 turns, so you may have to try multiple times. Now we have a treacherous source of fish. > exit circle > e > sw MARTIN: Hey, Rory - we're at the Farmland. You can come back. Rory? Hrm. From the farmland, we can go into the cottage or over to the barn. There's also a hedgehog. > x hedgehog > hedgehog, hi MARTIN: The hedgehog and W.D. can understand each other, but communication is still difficult. The notable thing here is that the hedgehog is hungry. > s MARTIN: If you've played the Introcomp release, you probably remember the cottage. In the full game, there's a second room further to the south. First, let's check out the fireplace. We can ignore the farming tools. > x fireplace > x chimney > take brick > take parchment > x parchment MARTIN: If you remember all the way back to "ask mel about money", he does happen to mention insurance fraud. > x scarf > take scarf MARTIN: Fashion! > w > x basket > x lever > pull lever MARTIN: W.D. has a serious egg problem. > take egg MARTIN: Really serious. > pull lever > pull lever > pull lever > pull lever > take egg MARTIN: _Really_ serious. There are an infinite number of eggs and W.D. has infinite stomach capacity. Hm. Is Rory back? No? Rory got _really_ sick doing this scene. Rory does not have infinite stomach capacity. > e > n > w MARTIN: This brings us to the barn, which is the final location in the main map. Here we have a beautiful, brand-new building, which we now know was just insured for some amount of money, hopefully a large amount. Our path is clear. RORY: I'm back! I brought coffee. I got you a latte. MARTIN: Thanks, Rory. Also, good timing. I was just about to start solving puzzles. RORY: Awesome. Time to burn down the barn? MARTIN: Time to burn down the barn. PART 3: TIME TO BURN DOWN THE BARN, AND OTHER SIMPLE PUZZLES RORY: If you've jumped straight to Part 3, we're at the Barn. > x hay RORY: This hay is very dry. It would be a shame if something happened to it. MARTIN: Now, we don't directly have a fire source, but if you examine our vast pile of objects, we do have an explosion source. RORY: (If you haven't already waved the magic wand to get a faery coin, you should do that now.) > wave wand > take coin > x coin > x salt MARTIN: Faery coins explode if you put salt on them. We have salt. Now, it's not a very big explosion; don't go thinking you can blow off the castle doors. But this hay is quite dry ... > put faery on hay > put salt on faery RORY: And now we _leave_. MARTIN: If you're feeling suicidal, you can stand there and watch W.D. burn to death, but we like winning. RORY: And in case you're worrying that I have a poor charred stunt double somewhere, _that_ scene was CGI. > e MARTIN: In your playthrough, we encourage you to stop at Farmland and watch the barn burn down, but we're going to get a move on. RORY: This next bit is different from Introcomp. In the initial release, there was an insurance salesman at the stock market who you could turn the policy into. Now you'll need to turn it in at the bank. > e > n > n > n > e > e > give parchment to teller RORY: Yay money! MARTIN: I'm going to walk you through giving the check to Mel now. This will teach you about buying ingredients. After this, we'll just hold them till the end. > w > w > s > e > give check to mel MARTIN: Now you've gotten the right to buy one ingredient. For full points, you'll need to buy all seven. You can win the game starting with the four-ingredient potion. RORY: If you are playing the game on your own and not just following the walkthrough, we recommend not buying any ingredients until you've given up on puzzles. MARTIN: Right. The five-ingredient potion needs a different set from the four-ingredient potion. So you don't want to buy three ingredients and then realize they're only useful if you manage to finish all seven puzzles. > buy ingredient > midas potion RORY: We're actually saying "Midas potion" here because that backs you out of the buying dialog. We've successfully gotten the check out of our inventory; we'll buy all seven ingredients at once later. MARTIN: Now we'll do Puzzle 2: The Riddle Trail. RORY: This is the puzzle connected to the red note. Each note clues a location in the game. You go there and get the next note. Repeat. > read red note MARTIN: We're told to go to the left elbow of Blue Fever's brother. If you'll recall, Blue Fever is mentioned on the plaque underneath the statue on Mindo Street. > w > n > w > x left elbow > take violet note > read violet note RORY: We saw forms in the bank. > e > e > search forms for x1-fsb MARTIN: The treasure hunt involves a couple of uses of "search X for Y". RORY: This is about two hundred commands too late, but if you haven't tried "ABOUT" by now, it points you to"ABOUT VERBS", which lists some verbs you might not otherwise think to try. > take green note > read green note RORY: There is only one place in town that contains pans of meat. You'll notice the note doesn't specify which kind of meat is the favorite, but there are only three options. MARTIN: Also, it's the pork pan, to save you two commands. > w > s > look under pork pan > take yellow note > read yellow note RORY: I am sorry to say that the only purpose the Exploding Cockroaches serve in this game is to point you back to Mel's via this note. MARTIN: Yeah, this was a missed opportunity. One of the script editors said there were plans for a big bug race, but, you know, budget issues... > e > search trinkets for cedar > take cedar > open cedar > take ring MARTIN: We're bad people. RORY: It's in a pile of things in a store. What's to say someone completely innocent didn't buy it by accident? Also, yeah, we're bad people. > give ring to mel MARTIN: Might as well get rid of the ring, since we're right here. RORY: We actually talked about this at the cast party and we decided that Mel is totally on to you and just doesn't care. MARTIN: Well, Mel is _actually_ good at magic. What's going to happen to him? Maybe he'll have to turn a couple of guards into toads or something. RORY: All right. Time for the last two simple puzzles. Conveniently, they both involve the same location. Off to rob the bank. MARTIN: It's funnier if we do it in the other order. RORY: Hm. Good point. Okay, Puzzle 3: Two-Handed Bart. > w > n > e MARTIN: We're back in the bank lobby. > x poster > x man RORY: W.D. thinks the guy looks a little like Two-Handed Bart. MARTIN: He's _not_ Two-Handed Bart, but that's irrelevant. RORY: The poster describes Bart. He's got shiny hair, a handlebar mustache, and a green scarf. Our man has a hat on, a wispy mustache, and no scarf. So we need to fix that. > x scarf MARTIN: Hm. It's yellow. Wrong color. > x dye > dye scarf > give scarf to man RORY: Okay. One down. He's got the wrong kind of mustache, but we can fix this. > x mustache MARTIN: ... W.D. may interrupt you here. > x mustache > wind mustache > wind mustache RORY: You may have to wind it more or fewer times to get it into the right shape. You want the handlebar mustache. > give mustache to man MARTIN: We're nearly done, but we have to get rid of the hat. Disambiguation here - you can refer to his hat as "fedora" and skip the "do you mean the unhat or the hat or the fedora or the ordinary man" ridiculousness that you get sometimes. > take fedora RORY: He won't let us take the hat. This is okay, though, because we have the essence of anti-hat. > put unhat on man RORY: Okay, now we're good. We just have to summon the guard ... > w > pull cord MARTIN: Now we need to collect the reward. > w > w > n > show poster to guard RORY: More treasure for us! And now we're in the right place to start robbing the bank. > x evidence > look in crack MARTIN: You can see there are now more things in the evidence cabinet. Who knows where Two-Handed Bart has gone? RORY: All right. We need to blow open this cabinet. Where have we seen explosions before? > s > e > s > get salt > n > w > n MARTIN: Darn you, Mendolyn! All right, we've gotten more salt from Sandie. > wave wand > get faery > put faery in crack > put salt in crack RORY: Now in some sense this is Failure #3, because the door stays on, but it alerts the guard, which is good enough. > z MARTIN: Come on, man, wake up. > z RORY: Now we have one turn to grab things. > get scrap from cabinet MARTIN: You can duplicate these steps and try to grab the device, but we're not going to do that here, because it doesn't actually work. The device is too bulky and the guard will notice you. There's another way to get the device, which we'll talk about in the next section. RORY: I dropped that thing on my claws at least twice. MARTIN: Hey, it was an authentically heavy prop. No cardboard boulders for us. RORY: Oy. Anyway, what the heck does this scrap even say? > x scrap MARTIN: Hey, some bozo tried to rob the bank! RORY: Hey, look! A note! We don't need to speak People if we have a _note_! MARTIN: Hey, Rory, do you like crime? RORY: Hell yeah, I like me some crime. Let's robbinate. > s > e MARTIN: Now, as you may recall from the previous puzzle, _there is an alarm system_. > break cord RORY: But I'm awesome, so whatever. > e > e > show scrap to teller MARTIN: And now W.D. is the King of Moneyville. Good job. PART 4: THE HARD PUZZLES RORY: Technically, you can win the game now; four puzzles is the minimum necessary. You can skip down to Part 5 if you want that. But now it's time for the good stuff. MARTIN: Puzzle 5: Robbing the Blind involves several parts and requires doing a timed event correctly. RORY: So we have this blind beggar in Big Street, South. He can't see you but he can hear you. So you need to make a really loud distraction so that you can steal the coin without him noticing. MARTIN: Now, there is a place in the game that's very loud. It's the one place in the game where "listen" does something special. > w > n > listen RORY: As W.D. says, the stock market is a zoo. Somewhat ... literally, I guess. These animals would be _really loud_ if we could get them to the beggar. MARTIN: We have a bunch of barely controlled animals, and we need to get them from Point A to Point Not A. We need to startle them, and then nature will take its course. RORY: Its chaotic, chaotic course. MARTIN: Right. Everybody loves a stampede. So we need a loud noise to startle the animals. RORY: Hey, wait, you're going to send them on the wrong track. You can't use the coin-and-salt trick here. The coin isn't actually loud. It's just bright. MARTIN: Ah, yes. You want less "explode" and more "pop". RORY: We're going for the balloon, if that's not clear. MARTIN: But you also shouldn't try to pop the balloon yourself. Standing in front of a stampede when it starts isn't very safe. (Feel free to try it and then "undo", if you like.) RORY: Now, you need someone _else_ to pop the balloon for you. MARTIN: Someone who might pop the balloon accidentally. RORY: Right. Someone kind of ... pointy. MARTIN: DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN! RORY: ... > s > w > w > sw > ask hedgehog about stampede MARTIN: Okay, asking the hedgehog about a stampede won't really work. You can't actually get a word in edgewise with the hedghog. RORY: I think you mean _hedgewise_, amirite amirite? MARTIN: Did you get an Irish coffee, by any chance? RORY: Hey, it was funny! MARTIN: Reader, I know this is text, but I promise you I'm glaring at Rory. Anyhoo, no matter what you try to say to the hedgehog, he just obsessively asks for food and tells you how pointy he is. > hedgehog, go east MARTIN: And you can't give him orders. > show balloon to hedgehog RORY: But he _does_ like toys. MARTIN: We don't want to give him the balloon right away, because he'll be completely engrossed once he gets it. So let's go drop the balloon where we need it, and then come back. > nw > e > ne > drop balloon > sw > w > sw RORY: All right. The hedgehog won't do anything we want. I guess we're forced to _listen_ to him. Let's feed him. > wave rod RORY: You may recall that the fishing rod creates insects. Hedgehogs are insectivores, if you didn't know. You can also give him fish, but the fish are a pain to get. As soon as you wave the fishing rod, the hedghog will snarf the bait. > nw RORY: And he'll follow you. You'll need to keep feeding him every few turns to keep him following you. > e > wave rod > ne MARTIN: Now we've dragged the hedgehog to the stock market. He will start playing with the balloon. Now you need to book it to Big Street, South. The hedgehog will pop the balloon in a random but low number of turns. > sw > s > s RORY: From here, wait until the stampede actually hits this location... > z > z > z MARTIN: You may need more or fewer than three turns. RORY: Then grab the coin! > get strange > n RORY: Yoink! MARTIN: If you don't want to try to time your waiting, you can also just type "get strange" repeatedly and when it works, it works. RORY: The kid who plays the hedgehog was eight, in case you were wondering. So the screechy singing is authentic. MARTIN: He was a good kid. He was just really boisterous. RORY: And we'd like to point out that no actual animals were harmed in this. Just fake ones. We hear that our hedgehog actor went back to school and has been excitedly telling everyone that he got flattened by a cow in his first acting job. MARTIN: Now it's time for Puzzle 6: The Mysterious Device. RORY: If this phrase means anything to you, this is Speculative Fiction's version of the Babelfish puzzle. MARTIN: The puzzle has a lot of steps and it's easy to break things at any step, so be prepared to restart it a lot. RORY: You shouldn't have to undo or restore save games. But you might find it easier to "undo" than to run back to grab items again. MARTIN: First, let's grab the device. We know from an earlier puzzle that you can drop a faery coin and some salt into the crack in the evidence cabinet, and that will cause a guard to open the cabinet for a turn. But the device is big and bulky, and the guard will stop you from taking it. RORY: So we need to get the device "legitimately." We've been carrying around this vellum page which is some kind of requisition form for the device. > n > w > n > show vellum to guard MARTIN: The guard isn't impressed. And he tears up our form. That jerk! Frederick tried this trick a lot, though, so we'll just get another one. > look in wastebasket > take vellum > read vellum > x signature RORY: The major problem here is the signature. Even W.D. knows it's a bad forgery. Even the idiot downstairs knows it's a bad forgery. We gotta do better than this. Let's start over. > x clear > pour clear on signature MARTIN: Now we have an unsigned sheet of paper, and a very sleepy civil servant with a stamp. > u > put vellum on stack > z > take vellum > read vellum MARTIN: That's better. It's an official stamp! Who can disagree with an official stamp? > d > give vellum to guard RORY: I feel like many problems in this world were caused by the city guards not caring. MARTIN: Nononoo. You're looking at it wrong. Many problems are _solved_ by the city guards not caring. Besides, there's that one guard from the ransom job. He knows it's not really Two-Handed Bart. RORY: Maybe Bill and him will team up in the sequel or something. MARTIN: Speculative Fiction 2: This Time It's Personal. RORY: Yeah, so we have this device. > x device > x tray > push green button > push blue button > push red button MARTIN: Oooh, oooh, maybe it's an instruction manual... > take pamphlet > read pamphlet MARTIN: Er, well ... kind of. So the device needs: 1.) Some wool 2.) A bottle of blue dye, in the bottle 3.) An unbroken egg You put objects in the tray and press the blue button to load them. Then you press the green button to get money. RORY: Well, we have wool. > put wool on tray > push blue button MARTIN: And we have blue dye. > put blue dye on tray > push blue button RORY: Now we just need an egg! This puzzle is easy! RORY AND MARTIN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. MARTIN: Okay, as you may recall, W.D. is basically a black hole when it comes to eggs. So we have to somehow get an egg into this machine without W.D. being able to eat it. RORY: Let's go back to the egg dispenser. > s > sw > s > w MARTIN: We already know he immediately eats the egg. Maybe we can put the egg into a container? > put vase in basket > pull lever MARTIN: Okay, the egg breaks, which isn't useful. However, you'll notice W.D. can't get the egg while it's inside the vase, which is useful. RORY: The machine won't accept a broken egg, so let's get rid of it. > break vase > z > z > z > z > z > take vase RORY: The vase is magic. It reappears five turns after it disappears, so you can MARTIN: Maaaaaybe we can cushion it? RORY: What do we have that's soft? We just used up the blanket bit. MARTIN: And the whole blanket wouldn't fit anyway. Hey, you know what was soft? That scarf we gave to Two-Handed Bart. RORY: But Two-Handed Bart got disappeared! MARTIN: But his stuff ended up in the evidence locker. RORY: So ... back to the salt mines? > e > n > e > n > n > take salt > n > w > n > wave wand > take faery > put faery in crack > put salt in crack > z > z > get scarf MARTIN: Phew. I'm tired just reading that. RORY: But we have the scarf! > put scarf in vase RORY: Note that the scarf is still sticking out a little. So if you are doing this puzzle before the ransom puzzle, you can get it back out. MARTIN: The vase is notable in that it's "very narrow". W.D. can't get his head in there. RORY: And once there's an egg in there, he'll be too blinded by its holy egginess to think of tipping the vase over. MARTIN: You're forgetting your own lines, Rory. W.D. tries to tip over the vase but the egg gets stuck. RORY: Grrr. I resent the implication that birds are this stupid. MARTIN: Hey, I spend the whole game lying on a stone floor. RORY: What about the endgame? MARTIN: Okay, okay, two minutes of glory. ANYWAY... > s > sw > s > w MARTIN: Back in the Pantry. > put vase in basket > pull lever RORY: Now we have a vase with an egg in it, and W.D. can't get at the egg. MARTIN: But there's going to be a problem at the other end. We'll have to take the egg out of the vase and then W.D. will eat it. RORY: So we'll have to keep him from getting at the egg a different way. MARTIN: To get the egg initially, we had to put it into a container. To get rid of the egg, we'll have to put W.D. in a ... container. RORY: Let's go back to the device. > take vase > e > n > nw > n > take device > s MARTIN: The device is too heavy for W.D. to carry. But he can push it. > drop device > push device s > push device w MARTIN: This has got to make an extremely strange sight for any passerby. "Hm, there's a bird pushing a metal box and frantically trying to stick its head in a vase." RORY: I really hope I get cast in a dramatic role someday. > take scarf MARTIN: We'll need to remove the scarf from the vase or else the device will reject the egg. > put vase on tray > get device > enter circle > drop device RORY: We'll also need to remove the vase from the egg. W.D. is ::grumble:: apparently too "bird-brained" to think of this one himself. MARTIN: Note the timing here. You have to take the fish the turn before you free the egg, or else W.D. will have time to eat it. > take fish > break vase MARTIN: Sproing! Now W.D. can't reach the egg, 'cause he's in the cage. > push blue button RORY: Of course, W.D. also can't reach the button that will get rid of the egg... MARTIN: Ha ha, but Frederick the wizard, tool-using mammal, will save the day! > push blue button with wand RORY: Now the egg's gone and you can get W.D. out of the cage. > break cage > break cage > break cage MARTIN: At some point, the vase will reform itself. Surprise. It's magic. > push green button > take counterfeit > exit circle RORY: Regardless of what the machine says, Mel will accept this money. MARTIN: In theory we could go get another egg and another bottle of dye, but the blanket represents the only wool in the entire kingdom, so we're done here. RORY: We're ready for the last of the pre-endgame puzzles. Puzzle 7: Playing the Stock Market. MARTIN: This is a two-stage puzzle. In the first stage, you'll need to crack the mystery of the merchants and successfully buy a stock. In the second stage, you'll need to artificially inflate the price of the stock you just bought. RORY: It's now finally time to deal with the merchants. > e > e > ne MARTIN: The merchants are immune to stampedes, by the way. A wizard did it. RORY: But not you. You're incompetent. MARTIN: Mel probably did it. RORY: If you haven't already examined the merchants... > x merchants RORY: ... will cause W.D. to assign them names. You'll need to be able to disambiguate them. MARTIN: Here we have eight merchants, and an auctioneer selling stock in various animals. If you wait for enough turns, you'll see that different stocks sell for different amounts of money. Every bid doubles the price of a stock. Bidding starts at one florin. You have one florin. RORY: Each merchant cares about a different attribute. You'll need to figure out what each merchant likes and dislikes, and then pick a stock which no merchant wants. You'll be able to buy that stock for a single florin. MARTIN: The auctioneer randomly selects animals, but will never select the animal that's the puzzle solution. You can, however, suggest stocks to him with "search coffer for ". > search coffer for dog RORY: You may have to enter this command a couple of times; the auctioneer only takes suggestions right as one auction is ending. "dog" isn't the answer, by the way; it's just an example. MARTIN: You can bid via "buy certificate with florin", but any other merchant can outbid you. > buy certificate with florin RORY: If you examine the individual merchants, you can get a vague hint as to what they like. > x rupertina > x sunshine > x fnyrx > x elspeth > x percival > x demonspoon > x rombert > x hortensia RORY: Also as another hint, two of the merchants care about the attributes of the animals themselves. The other six care about attributes of the _names_ of the animals. MARTIN: So this is mostly a word puzzle. RORY: For the record, we didn't know about any of this ourselves. The writers gave us a list. MARTIN: There are some _hilarious_ outtakes of the merchants trying to remember their lines. RORY: "One!" "Four!" "Six! No, wait, three! Wait, do I even like cows?" MARTIN: The crew laughed for a good five minutes. ALESSANDRA: What's up, home fries? RORY: Alessandra?! You came! MARTIN: I thought you were filming! ALESSANDRA: We had to wrap early. Fatal bug - turned out you could "take" the dragon. MARTIN: Ooooh. Classic blunder. RORY: Hey, now that you're hee, want to read the merchant list? ALESSANDRA: Uh, sure. Lessee... One only likes land animals (including amphibians) One only likes animals with legs One only likes animals who don't have any doubled letters in their names One only likes animals with five or fewer letters in their names One only likes animals with nine or greater letters in their names One only likes animals with an even number of letters in their names One only likes animals whose names cannot be beheaded to form a new word. "So crow is bad because if you take off the c you get row, but dog is good because if you take off the d you don't get a word." One only likes animals whose names cannot have their third letter changed to form a new word. "So dog is bad because you can change the g and get dot, but snake is good because snike or snoke or whatever aren't words." ... What? RORY: Thanks, Alessandra. ALESSANDRA: Was this from the stock puzzle? I didn't really see it because I spent the whole time in Big Street, Center. MARTIN: Yeah. I didn't really see it either. I just heard about it later. RORY: We should give them the actual answer. MARTIN: Right. Alessandra? ALESSANDRA: Okay, wait, I lost my place ... Ah. You know from the two lengths that you want an animal whose name is between six and eight letters. From the even merchant, you know you want a seven letter name. From the land animal and leg animal merchants, you know you want a sea creature. You also know it must have a doubled letter, that it must form a new word if you change the third letter, and that the last six letters must spell a word. The answer is herring. MARTIN: Okay, knowing all that, you still have to enter the right commands: > search coffer for herring > give florin to auctioneer > z RORY: I think we may have said this before, but you can only suggest a stock right as one auction is ending, so you might have to time the "search coffer for herring" command right. Nothing bad happens if you try it at the wrong time; it just doesn't work. MARTIN: Ta-da! Now you've done part one of the puzzle. ALESSANDRA: That was part ONE? MARTIN: Well, in some sense that was part 2. Part 1 was getting the florin, although that isn't too hard. ALESSANDRA: Clearly I missed a lot by staying in the meats stall. RORY: Once you've bought your share of Consolidated Herring Securities, the merchants go off to have coffee and the auctioneer sets up a stock ticker. Now you get to play with another mysterious device. MARTIN: Right. The stock certificate you have now isn't worth anything. You'll have to hack the ticker to convince the auctioneer that it's valuable, and then sell it back to him. > x ticker > push red button > push yellow button > z RORY: Pushing the red button spits out some mysterious text, and pushing the yellow button causes the stock ticker to start displaying stock values. If you wait a few turns, you'll see it rotates through the same five stocks. > x panel > open panel MARTIN: Inside the device you'll find six colored wires and six places you can plug those wires in. ALESSANDRA: I'm getting a headache. Goodnight, guys. RORY: Aw. MARTIN: Any time, Alessandra. RORY: Again, aw. All right. Let's finish this puzzle. > disconnect black wossname > z RORY: You can see the stock ticker's display has changed. If you push the red button again: > push red button RORY: You can see that's changed too. MARTIN: The wires somehow connect the incoming stock data to the external display. RORY: Where the "incoming stock data" is coming in through magic or something. > disconnect brown wossname > connect black wossname to brown receptacle > connect brown wossname to black receptacle > push red button MARTIN: You can see the ordering of the alphabet has changed. So now the input data's been warped and the ticker's displaying a different set of stocks. RORY: According to the notes which the writers gave us, the device is using a six bit input - each of the letters and numbers corresponds to a six-bit number. By swapping the wires around, you change what letters and numbers the device displays. MARTIN: You can keep changing wires and checking the red button until you get the alphabet in an order you like. But here's the answer: > disconnect black wossname > disconnect brown wossname > disconnect red wossname > disconnect orange wossname > disconnect yellow wossname > connect orange wossname to yellow receptacle > connect yellow wossname to orange receptacle > connect black wossname to red receptacle > connect brown wossname to black receptacle > connect red wossname to brown receptacle MARTIN: You can leave the green wossname - er, wire - in place. RORY: At this point the ticker will tell you that CHS (Consolidated Herring Securities) is up 37, um, units. > give certificate to auctioneer MARTIN: And ... that's the seven main-game puzzles. RORY: LET'S TAKE THIS TRAIN TO THE ENDGAME. PART 5: THE ENDGAME RORY: Okay, so there's one and a half endgames. First we have to give all the ingredients to Mel and go make the potion. This part is not timed. > sw > s > e RORY: Back to Mel's. > give sovereign to mel > give sack to mel MARTIN: Once you give Mel four treasures, which will be now if you're following the walkthrough, Mel will unlock a secret trapdoor in the floor. This will let you go down to the "sekkrit laboratory" and make the potion. RORY: Mel unlocks the trapdoor at four treasures because that's the minimum you need to make a potion which won't get you killed. So you can stop at four or keep going for more points. MARTIN: We, of course, want more points. > give banknote to mel > give reward money to mel > give strange coin to mel MARTIN: Make sure to check the recipes before you start buying things. > buy all ingredients RORY: If you haven't solved all seven potions, you can do "buy " with a specific name. The page you got from the alchemy bench will give you the list of options. Or "buy ingredient" will _also_ give you the list of options. MARTIN: Now we'll save our game and go downstairs. I'm specifically suggesting saving now because you can get different endings depending on which potion you make. > save > whatever pick a save name > d RORY: And now we're in the secret laboratory. > x sign RORY: Did we mention to save your game? > x pot > x liquid MARTIN: Here we have the potion-o-matic. Now. Do NOT add anything to the pot that is not part of one of the potion recipes. You won't get it back and you'll ruin any potion you have in progress. > put kidney in pot > put whiskey in pot > put starmetal in pot > put ash in pot > put blood in pot > put runestone in pot > put fur in pot MARTIN: Alternatively, use "put all ingredients in pot". RORY: Nearly there... > press sigil > i MARTIN: There's a potion! W.D. will tell you to go back to your body. Well, W.D. will tell you to tell him to take him and your mind back to your body. > u > w > s > s > u RORY: Oh no! NOT ANOTHER CUT SCENE! MARTIN: And now we're at the "real" endgame. This part is timed. You'll only need three turns to finish, though. RORY: Now, if you don't have a valid potion, you are going to die. I hope you saved when we told you to. MARTIN: We start at the bottom of the tower. The treasurer will take a few turns to get the lift started. W.D. can just fly up. > u > n RORY: Everything in the vault is a mess. > x logs MARTIN: These are the logs which Frederick the wizard put here so that the Perfectly Foolproof Illusion could have some objects to work on. RORY: Now, you have two options. One, you could: > pour potion on logs RORY: ... and watch that ending. Or, you could "z" until W.D. says "Uh oh. They're here." Then... > pour potion on treasurer MARTIN: Obviously, the latter option only works if you have the full Midas potion. RORY: You'll get a winning ending with "pour potion on logs" for any potion that required at least four ingredients. PART 6: CRAZY ACTIONS YOU SHOULD DO SO SOMEONE SEES ALL OF THIS TEXT DEAR GOD WE INTENDED FOR THIS GAME TO BE SHORT MARTIN: Once you've won, you should check "AMUSING" for some random fun things you can do in the game. RORY: My personal recommendation is that you put the costuming parts on "Two-Handed Bart" one at a time and pull the cord after each one. You can't actually make that puzzle unwinnable, so the guards get more and more ridiculous as you summon them over and over. MARTIN: I also like trying to go back to the barn after you've burned it down. RORY: Try having W.D. drink the potion as soon as you make it. MARTIN: Oh, that's a good one. He'll run through all the puzzles you've solved, complaining about each one. RORY: Try popping the balloon in the stock market if you want to watch me die. ::sniff:: You're not that cruel, right? Also, if you wait while the hedgehog plays with the balloon, you can see him try to befriend it. MARTIN: Oh, oh! Goofy endings. I think the five-ingredient potion is pretty exciting. RORY: SO MANY EXTRAS. MARTIN: Yeah, that was exciting to film. Also, if you do have the full Midas potion, you could try pouring it on the other people in the room. RORY: I find the "pour potion on guard" ending pretty funny for W.D. MARTIN: You can also get killed by going to the endgame and just waiting until the treasurer has you executed. That ending kills Frederick but not W.D. Or you can do "pour potion on wizard" if you hate us. RORY: I guess in some sense that's the ending we deserve for all the havoc we wreak, but come on man, it's funny! MARTIN: Hm, random things to try. Oh, if you break the alarm cord and then wait around, a workman comes and repairs it. That's actually a cameo by our Executive Producer. RORY: Oh, and W.D.'s girlfriend does not actually appear in the game, if you're wondering. MARTIN: Well, I've finished my coffee (thanks again, Rory!) and you've finished the game, so I think that's time to call it a day. RORY: Yeah! Thanks again for playing! We hope to see you in another game!