Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

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Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

Postby katreeny » Sat Feb 09, 2008 1:29 pm

Odyssey begins with a diary found in a Pennsylvania farmhouse. The first few posts of the diary tell you that you are reading the thoughts and impressions of a Writer who is doing it all by experiment and guess but has quite a lot of talent. You can read the whole diary at once, or you can slip it onto a pocket to re-read later.

Underneath is a leather-bound book, unlabeled. You open the book and see a linking panel to what appears to be a dock attached to a lagoon in the middle of an ocean.

When you link there, you find that you are on a floating dock tethered to a lagoon formed by the crater of a long-extinct volcano. In the distance, you can see two more old volcanoes. The one straight ahead of you is taller, and appears to have something built on it. The one to your right is more eroded, and you can see what appears to be a large cave. The only other thing of any interest is a tall mast anchored in the rock and the box built around it at about chest height. The box is locked by a mechanism of sliding wood attached to wooden hammers. (Those who have played Myst IV will recognize it as similar to the gate lock Achenar built in Haven). After some investigation, you work out how to configure the mechanism to unlock the box.

A hatch swings open, revealing a button. You press it.

Soon, you see a catamaran sailing towards you from the big island. If you've read far enough into the diary, you'll recognize that this must be Lagoon, the home Age written by the diarist.

The catamaran stops at the edge of the dock, and you get in. You now have a choice. The big island, or the island with the cave?

Katreeny (there is more - a LOT more. None of it except comments in the diaries reference any of the MOUL or other Cyan Ages.)
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Re: Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

Postby katreeny » Sun Feb 10, 2008 7:12 pm

Assuming you decide to go to the big island...

You steer to the big island. As you draw closer, you see that it too has a cave, though it doesn't seem to be as large as the one on the small island. You sail the catamaran in to a cave lit partly by sunlight and partly by lamps. There's a dock to your right, with a ladder up to what appears to be a stone shelf formed from the rock. As you bring the catamaran into the dock, you hear a click and a soft hum. When you investigate, you find cabling that leads out to cave mouth.

You climb up to the rock shelf, and see a door in front of you and a pile of rope and assorted other bits and pieces in a corner. The door is locked by a combination lock showing five different geometrical figures. It would take far too long to work out the combination for the lock by selecting at random. The figures change each time you press one, so you can't tell if the combination needs the right figures in position, a particular order of pressing them, or both.

You go over to the rope. It's not terribly bright here, but a scrap of paper under the piled rock and cloth catches your eye. You pull it free, to find a list of numbers. It must be the combination to some other lock.

With nowhere else to go, you get back in the catamaran and head over to the smaller island.

Entries from the journal Show Spoiler
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Re: Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

Postby katreeny » Mon Feb 11, 2008 6:09 pm

When you reach the smaller island, you find that, like the big island, there is a large stone shelf that acts as a dock. The catamaran sails to the dock and settles into its charging area, just as it did on the big island. You climb the ladder to the shelf, and see three doors, each one with a lamp set beside it. There's nothing else to see: the mysterious diarist has left this particular part of her domain in good order.

The door nearest the catamaran - and furthest into the cave has an inlaid floral decoration. Each petal can be pressed, and so can the central part of the flower. Yet another combination lock that you can't open. Like the door in the big cave, all three doors are polished metal, with no ornamentation apart from their locks. The flower is a dark red metal, with five petals and a round golden center. It's pretty, but you can't do anything with it.

The central door has an alphabetical code lock. Although you play with it for a while, you can't find any combination that works. Like the door back at the big island, it would take far too long to try every possible combination for it - with seven letters for each slot and seven slots, you'd be here forever. You really hope that the slip of paper with the numbers that you found will open something that will help you here. You can't go anywhere else, and you have no way back to the farmhouse where you found the linking book.

The door nearest the opening to the cave does have a numerical code. You try the numbers on the paper and find to your relief that they work. You hear something click, and a panel slides back to reveal a handle of the same metal as the door. You pull the handle back, and the door swings open to reveal a dimly lit storage cave. Before going in, you check the back of the door. To your relief it has a simple handle. You won't need to mess with the code if it swings shut while you're in there.

The storage area has shelves around the walls. There isn't much in there - some cushions, canned food and bottled water (this could be useful if you're stuck here for too long). At the back of the storage cave, you find another leather-bound book.

This time you open it cautiously. It's another linking book. There's nothing on it to say where it is, or what it leads to. The linking panel shows a sofa sitting next to a free-standing door that doesn't look like it goes anywhere.

If you've read the diary, you might suspect that this is one of the diarist's experiment ages.

With no better choice right now, you take a deep breath and put your hand on the linking panel...

Another excerpt from the diary Show Spoiler
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Re: Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

Postby katreeny » Fri Feb 15, 2008 8:25 pm

You find yourself standing on rock in the middle of a heavy fog. There's nothing growing on it, and nothing living except you. Immediately in front of you is an old fashioned sofa with its back to you. Beyond that, you can see a door frame with an open door. It's not attached to anything. The fog swallows everything else.

To your right is a cliff with shelves jutting out from it as though they were formed from the rock. The shelves are empty and the top of the cliff vanishes into the fog.

Behind you, you can go a few steps before reaching a deep chasm or possibly the edge of the Age. You can't see anything beyond it except fog. (If you were to fall, you would find yourself linked back to the Age link-in point - but you don't know this). To your left, there's a small shelter that appears to have been formed from the stone.

Periodically, the whole Age shudders, as if it's not quite stable, and you hear a creak of overstressed stone.

As you explore the Age you find the solution to all the doors you've seen in Lagoon, and some that you haven't seen. You also find tables, chairs, and an odd contraption that looks as though it's meant to be a generator although it isn't connected to anything and doesn't do anything when you try to work it out. There are tree like shapes formed from the stone, a bed that, like the sofa, hasn't been there long enough for the dampness to damage it, and stained glass designs that seem to have been pulled from the stone.

What there isn't, is a way out of the Age.

Eventually, you work out that it's more or less square, and the experiments are scattered randomly on it. Three sides have sheer drops into the fog, and the fourth side is mostly sheer cliff except for the section with shelves.

Hoping that the shelves will take your weight, you start to climb.

Some distance up, you find a linking book, but it doesn't go to Lagoon. Instead, the panel shows a shelter like the one near the link in point.

With the hope that there might be a linking book there to get you either back home or back to Lagoon, you use the book.

More from the diary Show Spoiler
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Re: Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

Postby katreeny » Sun Feb 17, 2008 6:51 pm

You find yourself near the top of a mountain, in heavy rain. The shelter, small though it is, is open, so you hurry in to get away from the rain.

Inside the shelter you find a rough cylinder built up from the rock, with a plastic toilet seat set on top of it. When you open it to look down, you can see the red glow of lava a long way down. This has to be the diarist's Bathroom Age.

There's also a water tank - stone - with a pipe leading into the cylinder, and a pull-chain. When you pull it, it - yes - flushes. After a while, you hear hissing as the water is turned to steam by the heat of the distant lava.

There's a small box that would be on the left side of someone sitting on the toilet. You open it to find several rolls of toilet paper, and a notebook. The notebook has a few disjointed comments in it, but you can't make sense of them. You guess that the diarist must have been making notes, so you put the notebook in your pocket to use later. You're starting to suspect that the diarist is at best rather eccentric.

There's nothing else to be found in the bathroom itself, so you resign yourself to getting soaked and go back into the rain. Since there doesn't appear to be anything else man-made that you can see, you start by exploring around the bathroom.

Behind it, you find stone shaped into a chest, complete with a hinged lid. The back of the bathroom roof projects far enough out that whatever's in the chest won't get soaked when you open the lid.

You open it and peer inside. There's more toilet paper in there, and a linking book. The linking panel takes you to somewhere dark.

You sigh, and link.

Last of the diary Show Spoiler
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Re: Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

Postby katreeny » Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:21 pm

To your relief, the link takes you to the small island in Lagoon. The catamaran is still there.

You use the codes you found in the Experiments Age to unlock the flower door, and find another storage area. This one is packed solid with non-perishable food. Canned food, rice, pasta, coffee... Obviously the diarist expected to be here for a long time.

The middle door opens to a small alcove that holds a single pole with a button like the one on the lagoon dock. You guess it's another signaler for the boat, since the pole seems to go up through the stone to where a radio signal would actually carry.

You get back into the catamaran and sail back to the big island. With the code that you found in Experiments, you can now open the door.

It opens to a stairwell that glitters with multi-colored light. As you climb the stairs you see glowing crystals set into the walls, and the dark stone is polished until it's smooth and gleaming. You climb the long, curving stairwell until you reach another door.

This one is polished silvery metal, but with a multicolored 64 point compass rose design set into the door. You realize that you didn't see anything on the Experiments Age like this. You take the notebook you found in the Bathroom Age, and flip through it again. One cryptic comment catches your attention. "Fibonacci clockwise."

You look at the compass rose again and press the diamond-shaped north point. It clicks softly and rises. Taking north as zero, you carefully count a Fibonacci sequence around the compass rose, pressing the appropriate points. As you press the last one, you hear a latch move, and the door swings open.
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Re: Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

Postby katreeny » Sun Feb 24, 2008 1:26 pm

The room beyond is large and dimly lit. You can see windows on either side, but heavy shutters beyond them block daylight out. In front of you, there's a large lowered section shaped into a more or less circular seating area covered with cushions. The wall opposite the door has shelves like the ones you climbed in Experiments. The ornaments on the shelves look like treasured mementos rather than anything intrinsically valuable.

Near the outer window, you find a lever that opens the shutter, letting sunlight spill in. Now you can see that the window has an intricate stained glass pattern although it doesn't look like traditional stained glass. You cross to the other side of the room and open the other window, which looks out over a crater lake.

The shelves don't have much on them at all - some framed photos of attractive scenery, crystal sculptures that have an organic 'grown' look, and a few miniature dragon figurines.

You move through the archway into the next room.

This is a kitchen and dining area. You open the shutters on the inside and outside walls, then investigate. The dining table is a slab of rock that stretches over a lowered section like the one in the living room behind you. It's polished stone, with a checkered cloth haphazardly thrown over it. There's no dust, and no sign it's ever been used.

The kitchen section has shelves with crockery and silvery set neatly, other shelves holding pots and pans, and a basin with two levers and a faucet. The red lever does indeed produce hot water - hot enough to steam - and the blue one has cool water. There's a small stove which appears to simply be hot. Boxes on the shelves hold food, but not very much, and beside them is a book with a cover that says "Garden."

You open the book, and find several linking panels, one showing a grove of apple trees, another showing a field of berry bushes. Others show plants you don't recognize, but which have familiar-looking fruits.

After your experience with Experiments, you're a little reluctant to link away until you know more about the diarist, so you let the book lie. (You could link there - more on that later).

A heavy curtain separates the kitchen and dining room from the next room, which appears to be another living room. This one is more subdued than the first room, and instead of shelves has a single low table under the outside window. Instead of an inside window there are glass doors leading out to a patio.

You open the shutters, and go out onto the patio. It's got a pale green all-weather carpet on it, and stairs lead down to the lake. There's a beach there with black sand. Tucked in between the stairs and the crater wall you find an old-fashioned washing machine with a mangle, and strung lines for hanging clothes. The washing machine is powered by cables running down from the roof of the patio, which you guess must have solar panels on it.

The washing machine is empty, and there are no clothes on the lines. The beach is smooth, as though no-one's ever walked there before. The walls of the crater are too steep to climb, so you go back up to the second living room.

Another heavy curtain hides a door with yet another strange lock. This one has a panel of stained glass forming a series of swirls in to a clear center.

You check the notepad again. "Red. No, blue." Is written on the last page. "Blue" is underlined. You look back at the stained glass panel. Every color except blue has two swirls. You reach out and carefully trace the blue swirl from the outside to the center.

You hear a soft hum, and the door slides back into a recess in the thick stone wall. Beyond is another glittering stairwell with those crystal lights set in the wall to light it.

At the top of the stairs is another door, this one - thankfully - open. You've had enough of doors with peculiar locks. The room beyond is a bedroom.

Here, the shutters are open, letting you see the large roughly circular nest in the middle of the room. The pillows and covers are in disarray, the first sign that someone actually uses the place. Hand-made quilts drape the bed-nest, rumpled and tossed aside. Blue gauzy fabric drapes from the ceiling to hooks set around the room, giving the impression of being inside an exotic tent.

There's another door beside the stairwell, as well as the one on the other side of the room.

The door near the stairwell leads to a bathroom with a pool almost as big as the bed filled with steaming water. The water circulates in a gentle flow from the bedroom side to the kitchen side. Shelves along the wall hold towels, brushes and soap, and a gilt-framed mirror hangs from the wall above a hand basin. On the far side of the bathroom, another door opens to a toilet very similar in design to the one in the Bathroom Age.

There's nothing in either room that you wouldn't expect to see there, so you return to the bedroom. The draping actually hides nooks holding hanging areas for clothes and some chests which hold tee shirts and more... personal clothing.

You move to the other door, which is also open.

The room beyond is a study. Except for the windows, the walls are lined with shelves, and the shelves are filled with books. Some are ordinary books, although it's obvious the diarist's tastes are wide ranging and eccentric. Others are empty, intended as either diaries or Age books. A large section of shelf under the inner window acts as a desk, with a cheap plastic stool beside it.

The desk holds a cracked mug with an assortment of pens, more of the blank books and several linking books, each neatly labeled. "Bazaar", "Materials", "Klein". There's also a belt lying on the desk with a peculiar clip that holds another book, this one labeled, "Lagoon". You wish you'd had that one earlier. You open the Lagoon book, and see the lagoon where you'd first linked in the linking panel. When you turn the page, you see the storage cave on the second island. There is no link direct to the home island.

You put the belt on, thankful that it fits. You still have no way to get home, but at least you can come back to the Lagoon age if you find yourself somewhere unpleasant.

Under the belt is another book. This one is another diary, although it's undated. You skim through it, before adding it to your collection of items to read.
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Re: Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

Postby katreeny » Sat Mar 01, 2008 8:12 am

You find nothing else about the diarist in the study. There are no more notes about any of the Ages that you can find, and no more linking books. This bothers you - a place someone has used as their home should have more personal things scattered about.

You decide to investigate the other Ages you can visit. Perhaps there will be more information there.

(It makes no real difference which of the available Ages are visited in which order - all of them will provide hints allowing you to learn more about the diarist.)

The Lagoon diary Show Spoiler
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Re: Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

Postby katreeny » Sun Mar 02, 2008 10:08 am

Garden Age

(Each of the Garden groves have a linking book hidden in them somewhere and at least one artefact left there by the diarist. Each book links back to the smaller island. If the player hasn't found the Relto-esque book back to Lagoon yet, the books will need to be found.)

The first linking panel in the Garden book takes you to a grove of apple trees. They look as though they were deliberately planted, but they're in a deep valley that doesn't appear to have an exit. High cliffs that would be far too dangerous to climb surround the valley, and a few streams trickle to a clear pool in the center.

At one end of the valley, you find signs of an old camp fire. There's a half-burned sheet of paper in the ashes. It was written on, but all that's readable now is a cryptic phrase. "member not to eat the".

As you explore the grove, you find stones that must have fallen from the cliffs. There are some substantial rock falls at the cliff edges, and some have exposed small caves. One looks like you might be able to reach it.

You scramble up the fallen rock, and find that the small cave holds a wooden box. When you open it, you find a linking book back to Lagoon.

**

The second Garden link takes you to another pocket valley, this one with citrus fruit trees. Instead of a lake, this valley has a river running through it, narrow enough to jump over, but steep-sided and fast-flowing. It vanishes into a cave at one end of the valley, and comes from a waterfall at the other.

Here, the only trace of the diarist is a basket filled with overripe fruit that she must have collected then decided not to take back with her.

You find the linking book back to Lagoon hidden behind the waterfall in a shallow cave.

**

The third Garden link takes you to a steamy, tropical pocket valley. Huge mango and tropical fig trees grow between banana trees and pineapple bushes. You find a cave deep enough to be cooler than the stifling outside air. Here, there's a blanket laid on the cave floor, some cushions, and a small notebook. In the notebook you find diagrams of the hearth in the diarist's home, the plumbing arrangements, and a sketch map of a hidden passage off the study that leads to the water tank and outside hearth, and to a room labeled "make lock I can't open".

The linking book for Lagoon is hidden in a wooden box nestled between the branches of a massive fig tree near the center of the valley.

**

The fourth Garden link is to a valley of plants that appear to grow something similar to a breadfruit. It's hot, but not as steamy as the tropical valley. Here you find a key on a string that's snagged on one of the trees. You pocket it and keep looking until you find the linking book tucked inside a large woody gourd hanging from one of the trees.

**
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Re: Odyssey - a potential GOW storyline

Postby katreeny » Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:04 pm

Materials

(this is another multi-link age with a number of small enclosed areas, each with a linking book hidden somewhere in the area. Again, without the Relto-type Lagoon book, the linking book needs to be found to return to the small island).

The first link takes you to a narrow valley. A waterfall thunders down at one end, and a narrow chasm opens at the other. The river swirls and eddies around rocky obstacles in the valley, and gold nuggets lie in the water.

A flimsy rope ladder allows you to climb from the link in point on a rock shelf part way up a cliff down into the valley, where you find a cave behind the waterfall with a small pile of collected nuggets, including one that's been carved into a stylized tree. There's also a rather battered teddy bear that looks as though it's been well-loved.

On the other side of the river, near where the river leaves the valley in a drop that's on the scale of the Eder Gira drop, you find a pile of stones marking a stone box. Inside is the linking book back to Lagoon.

**

The second link takes you to an enclosed cave. In the dim light of the fire marbles/glowing spheres you can see diamonds glittering in the walls. The uneven floor is littered with rock, and near one of the diamonds you find a small pick. Scratch marks on the rock near the pick tell you that the Writer has been carefully working to free the diamond without damaging it.

At the far end of the cave from the linking panel, you find a small pile of diamonds, and a sheet of paper underneath. The paper is a diagram of a complex lock requiring a key and something else to open. You can't read the requirements other than the key - they've been scribbled out.

The linking book back to Lagoon is near the link-in point, behind a pile of rubble.

**

The third link also opens to an enclosed cave, this one with emerald-studded walls. One of the cave walls hides a tunnel that leads to a smaller cave, this one holding a torch with worn out batteries, a lap desk you can't open, and a torn piece of paper showing part of the mechanism to open the hidden door in the Lagoon library.

If you went to the fourth Garden link, you can try the key you found there, but it doesn't open the lap desk.

The linking book to Lagoon is under the lap desk.

**
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