  
NightFloyd Transcript:
Like ClubFloyd, the idea behind NightFloyd is that a group of people meet online to cooperatively play a game of interactive fiction. ANOTHER WARNING! A lot (most!) of the transcripts contained on this site are, shall we say, family-friendly. This is not one of those family-friendly transcripts. Just so we're clear. |
|
ToyShop & Floyditorium
|
#ClubFloyd Discussion
|
||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Cover art: [LINK]" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "load sleepmask invisibleparties" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | Floyd | Floyd | Floyd | An old resolution: no dealings with the Three Rebeccas. But Floyd | clade-mates must be civil, and civility made you careless. More Floyd | importantly, Jave was going to be there: Jave, who you haven't managed Floyd | to see in close on a year, as though the ways were twisting against Floyd | you. And they don't have any good reasons to want to fuck you Floyd | over, so you should really give them the benefit of the doubt, right? Floyd | Floyd | But as you cross the threshold of the tangle, every sense screams Floyd | trap. Of fucking course. Floyd | Floyd | Invisible Parties Floyd | An Interdimensional Romance by Sam Kabo Ashwell Floyd | Release 3 / Serial number 140807 / Inform 7 build 6L02 (I6/v6.33 lib Floyd | 6/12N) Floyd | Credits, help, further information: see ABOUT. Floyd | Floyd | None Know The Hour Floyd | Feels like the apartments of a well-off academic couple who entertain Floyd | a lot. Lots of one-of-a-kind furniture in nice old wood, very full Floyd | bookcases, art conspicuously esoteric and ethnic. Would feel kind of Floyd | crowded if it wasn't so unnaturally tidy. More, similar rooms Floyd | sprawling out through odd-angled spaces. Floyd | Floyd | It was themed as a maybe-the-apocalypse party - a small joke on the Floyd | difficulty of scheduling social events in a multiverse. There's a Floyd | mushroom-cloud cake (already partially eaten), a planet-shaped Floyd | piñata, Floyd | and a glittery banner declaring HAPPY END OF DAYS. A few of the guests Floyd | are costumed. Floyd | Floyd | Becky Baumgartner is seated - enthroned, really, like a heavy-handed Floyd | neoclassical allegory - with a snow leopard draped at her feet. She Floyd | cocks her chin up at your approach. Floyd | Floyd | Orient yourself. Picture the woven ways as ground underfoot, and Floyd | they'll become walkable. The tangle extends to the north, south, east Floyd | and west. [You can turn off exit notifications with EXITS OFF, or Floyd | get a listing with EXITS.] Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW asks, "oh. It's a map, is it?" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Quite possibly." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "about" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > ABOUT Floyd | Floyd | [Invisible Parties was made for ShuffleComp in April/May 2014, an Floyd | event that randomly assigned songs to authors to inspire games. It was Floyd | originally published under the pseudonym Psychopup. The work was very Floyd | loosely inspired by Symphony 10: Could This Really Be The End Floyd | by Emily Wells, from the album The Symphonies: Dreams Memories & Floyd | Parties; the song was suggested by Jennifer Earl. (Actually, this Floyd | was sort of a cop-out, because I was already familiar with the song, Floyd | owned the album, and had seen the artist play live.) Floyd | Floyd | Thanks are due to Matt Weiner and Doug Orleans for first-round Floyd | testing, to Neil Butters, Jacqueline Lott, Emily Short and Caleb Floyd | Wilson for second-round testing, and to Jason Dyer, Dan Shiovitz and Floyd | Carl Muckenhoupt for brainstorming post-comp improvements. Floyd | Floyd | Finally, thanks to Bedlam Coffee, Drip City Coffee Company, Floyd | Fremont Coffee Company, the Red Door, the Cyclops Café & Lounge, and Floyd | Anna Armstrong; because I would never get a writing project finished Floyd | if I did it all at home. Floyd | Floyd | Complaints, bug reports, comments to magadog@gmail.com . HELP may Floyd | also be of interest.] Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Haha. I've never thought to credit the coffee shops I've worked at." | ||
| Zach says, "Or the coffee" | |||
| Stew says, "indeed" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "i" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > I Floyd | Floyd | As for your resources... well, physical things don't always translate Floyd | reliably world-to-world, and walkers tend to be wary of them. Most Floyd | learned skills rely too heavily on specific circumstances that rarely Floyd | obtain in other worlds. The range and life expectancy of a wayfarer Floyd | are circumscribed by gifts, talents in the bone, uncannily Floyd | irrespective of culture, climate or metaphysics. Gifts are inborn, or Floyd | hard-bargained from subdivine powers. Floyd | Floyd | You are a Warrior, a Forager, a Textual Critic and a Troublemaker. Floyd | [To use a gift, USE GIFT or just GIFT. You can EXAMINE gifts for Floyd | more information.] Floyd | Floyd | > | Stew says, "I don't drink coffee" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Oooh. I like gifts." | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "dance" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > DANCE Floyd | Floyd | Not the place, not the mood. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "xyzzy" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > XYZZY Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Boo" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Lies. It is ALWAYS the place." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x gifts" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X GIFTS Floyd | Floyd | You can't use multiple objects with that verb. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x warrior" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X WARRIOR Floyd | Floyd | With the warrior gift, you win fights. People often describe it as Floyd | innate skill, and that's partly it, but it's something more than that; Floyd | it also, somehow, shields you from the kinds of bad luck that get even Floyd | the strong and experienced killed. It is not something to be relied Floyd | upon, given that it makes you neither bulletproof nor inexhaustible, Floyd | but it's one hell of an edge. Floyd | Floyd | For some, the talent manifests in sublime grace, a whirl of dancer's Floyd | rhythms and brush-stroke arcs. It does not work that way for you. Floyd | You're more about short stabbing motions, nasty little twists and Floyd | locks, low defensive stances, staying in cover, controlled fire. Looks Floyd | like a dog's breakfast. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x me" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X ME Floyd | Floyd | Worlds change wayfarers to a certain extent, and you're used to that. Floyd | But a tangle is a messy superposition of many worlds, so it's liable Floyd | to be more abrupt. Watch yourself. Floyd | Floyd | A politely-deployed tangle will often have a sort of foyer, a Floyd | not-too-outlandish area in which guests can orient themselves. With a Floyd | discreetly-positioned mirror. Yeah, you look pretty close to your Floyd | default: soft butch woman, five-three-ish, strong but totally Floyd | non-graceful, spiky hair dyed crimson. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW asks, "er, where did 'x warrior' come from?" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Crimson. With the blood of our enemies." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "I presume warrior is one of the gifts." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "And also forager, textual critic and troublemaker." | |||
| DavidW asks, "What gifts? What?" | |||
| DavidW asks, "What part of the game did I miss?" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Inventory" | |||
| Zach says, "The last bit" | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x hair" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X HAIR Floyd | Floyd | Now is not the time to be worrying about it. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "More lies" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "It is crimson, with the blood of our enemies. Or something." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x forager" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X FORAGER Floyd | Floyd | One of the most common gifts, if only because those without it tend to Floyd | die off fast. A forager can find food and water if there's any to be Floyd | found. You know, somehow, which berries are best left uneaten, which Floyd | meat is full of hookworm, which water is a cholera vector. Floyd | Floyd | The forager gift is often given as the reason why so many of the Walk Floyd | are ravening foodies. You're doubtful of the correlation, yourself: Floyd | travel's reason enough. But a professional-quality meal does Floyd | seem more enticing when you've been living on grass seeds for a month. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW asks, "hold on. May I write down the inventory esp since it's bizarre?" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Ok." | |||
| DavidW says, "ok, continue" | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x troublemaker" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X TROUBLEMAKER Floyd | Floyd | It's called trickster by some, and the stories that feature Floyd | it usually depict someone with a pathological need to start shit, who Floyd | glories in shit-starting for its own sake, even at vast personal cost. Floyd | Yeah, there are people like that all over, and the ones who have the Floyd | gift are fucking awful. But you're not, by inclination, Floyd | someone who lives to make trouble. Not since you were younger Floyd | and more confused, anyway. Nor do you create trouble by accident, at Floyd | least not any more than the average person. What the gift Floyd | does is to make the trouble you start highly Floyd | effective; if any potential exists for a riot or a fist-fight or Floyd | a shouting-match, you can pretty much ensure it'll be an epic Floyd | one. Which may have something to do with this whole business, come to Floyd | think of it. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Oh man." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x critic" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X CRITIC Floyd | Floyd | Some gifts are of, well, fairly marginal utility. You met a guy once Floyd | whose only talent, other than wayfinding itself, was juggling. He Floyd | could juggle pretty much anything he could lift one-handed, mind you, Floyd | and had thought of several unexpected applications, but it didn't go Floyd | all that far. Floyd | Floyd | Textual criticism is a good bit more useful, because - like most gifts Floyd | - it's truly cross-cultural, which means that you can read, say, a Floyd | pamplet of pornographic 18th-century French political satire, or an Floyd | oral history of land rights among indigenous Tasmanians, or a zine Floyd | circulated among otaku in 1980s NorCal high schools, and you will Floyd | actually grasp all the layers of meaning. Floyd | Floyd | Apart from making grad school embarrassingly easy, it's very useful Floyd | for grappling with the otherwise-incomprehensible peoples that Floyd | populate odd corners of the ways and worlds - as long as they're Floyd | literate, or willing to tell you stories. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "We're a violent fellow" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "SAVE" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "cf4" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > SAVE Floyd | %% Enter a save filename to write: Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > SAVEOk. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "One second :D" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use trouble" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > USE TROUBLE Floyd | Floyd | There's nothing you really need to deal with here. You need to work Floyd | out the bounds of this place, see if Jave's really around. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Oh fine." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "undo" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | Floyd | > UNDO Floyd | Floyd | None Know The Hour Floyd | [Previous turn undone.] Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW asks, "what about the critic gift?" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "We just examined it." | |||
| DavidW says, "I missed it." | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "l" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > L Floyd | Floyd | None Know The Hour Floyd | Feels like the apartments of a well-off academic couple who entertain Floyd | a lot. Lots of one-of-a-kind furniture in nice old wood, very full Floyd | bookcases, art conspicuously esoteric and ethnic. Would feel kind of Floyd | crowded if it wasn't so unnaturally tidy. More, similar rooms Floyd | sprawling out through odd-angled spaces. Floyd | Floyd | Becky Baumgartner is seated - enthroned, really, like a heavy-handed Floyd | neoclassical allegory - with a snow leopard draped at her feet. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south, east and west. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x becky" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X BECKY Floyd | Floyd | Tall and solid, with acres of jawline, Becky Baumgartner has always Floyd | put you in mind of a matron of the Roman Republic: soft-armed, but Floyd | with bones you could anchor ships to, and a sense of unaffected Floyd | superiority that could anchor small planets. She says little and Floyd | emotes less, but when she does she damn well means it. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "What is meant by 'tangle'? I thought we were inside a house or mansion." | ||
| Zach says, "But it's only some sort of multiverse traveling metaphor" | |||
| pollux says, "It seems like it's not a real house or mansion, but rather, a weird multidimensional space created to appear like one." | |||
| Stew says, "Yeah" | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x leopard" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X LEOPARD Floyd | Floyd | Holy fuck but these things are huge up close. It looks... lean, alert, Floyd | not a zoo animal. But of course it's completely relaxed. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "pet kitty" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > PET KITTY Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "pet leopard" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > PET LEOPARD Floyd | Floyd | It tenses up ever so slightly at your approach, and you think better Floyd | of it. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x cake" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X CAKE Floyd | Floyd | It represents quite an impressive feat of construction, though you Floyd | suspect the central column of hiding supports. The icing is the most Floyd | striking feature, a beautifully-brushed grey that somehow suggests Floyd | fiery destruction glowering from within the choking dust; the effect Floyd | is spoiled somewhat by the parts that have been cut away, revealing a Floyd | nondescript white sponge. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "fight leopard" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > FIGHT LEOPARD Floyd | Floyd | Wanton violence wears one out, and makes one feel like an ass. Floyd | Purposeful violence is another matter. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "eat cake" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > EAT CAKE Floyd | Floyd | It's just a dry old sponge with fancy icing. Not worth the hassle of Floyd | working out which part to hack off. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "lick cake" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > LICK CAKE Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x piata" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X PIATA Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | Emily says, "it's meant to be a pinata, I believe, but the mud is making it look funny" | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x earth" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X EARTH Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x planet" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X PLANET Floyd | Floyd | A crude papier-mache globe, with green blobby continents looking Floyd | rather crowded for space. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "smash planet" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > SMASH PLANET Floyd | Floyd | You're not generally squeamish about symbolism, but for some reason Floyd | the thought of it makes your skin crawl a little. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says (to Emily), "oh" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x banner" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X BANNER Floyd | Floyd | HAPPY END OF DAYS, in a cheerful font with little rainbow-reflective Floyd | sparklies all over it. Mass-produced, evidently, which raises a Floyd | question or two. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "Sorry, but with games like this, I need to go ultra-slow, at least at first." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Sure" | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x guests" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X GUESTS Floyd | Floyd | They're mostly between twenty and forty, predominantly white or East Floyd | or South Asian, about three-quarters female, above-average queer Floyd | quotient. Slightly-tweedy business-casual. It's very tempting to Floyd | assume that this represents the Three Rebeccas' clique, if they even Floyd | have such a thing. (Or what they'd like their clique to look like. Or Floyd | some version thereof skewed towards you.) Floyd | Floyd | A handful of them are in fancy dress: two of the Horsemen of the Floyd | Apocalypse are necking in the kitchen, and you count two Jesuses and Floyd | one Antichrist, all women. Best concept is definitely Loki, a Floyd | cheekbony young man with a plush wolf on one shoulder and a plastic Floyd | snake on the other. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x jesus" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X JESUS Floyd | Floyd | They're mostly between twenty and forty, predominantly white or East Floyd | or South Asian, about three-quarters female, above-average queer Floyd | quotient. Slightly-tweedy business-casual. It's very tempting to Floyd | assume that this represents the Three Rebeccas' clique, if they even Floyd | have such a thing. (Or what they'd like their clique to look like. Or Floyd | some version thereof skewed towards you.) Floyd | Floyd | A handful of them are in fancy dress: two of the Horsemen of the Floyd | Apocalypse are necking in the kitchen, and you count two Jesuses and Floyd | one Antichrist, all women. Best concept is definitely Loki, a Floyd | cheekbony young man with a plush wolf on one shoulder and a plastic Floyd | snake on the other. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach asks, "East Asian?" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Darn, no individual descriptions." | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x loki" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X LOKI Floyd | Floyd | They're mostly between twenty and forty, predominantly white or East Floyd | or South Asian, about three-quarters female, above-average queer Floyd | quotient. Slightly-tweedy business-casual. It's very tempting to Floyd | assume that this represents the Three Rebeccas' clique, if they even Floyd | have such a thing. (Or what they'd like their clique to look like. Or Floyd | some version thereof skewed towards you.) Floyd | Floyd | A handful of them are in fancy dress: two of the Horsemen of the Floyd | Apocalypse are necking in the kitchen, and you count two Jesuses and Floyd | one Antichrist, all women. Best concept is definitely Loki, a Floyd | cheekbony young man with a plush wolf on one shoulder and a plastic Floyd | snake on the other. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x wolf" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X WOLF Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "Only Becky is individualized, I guess, here." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x furniture" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X FURNITURE Floyd | Floyd | The furniture is evidently the result of long, dedicated and tasteful Floyd | (but not over-planned) questing in antique shops and odd corners of Floyd | the world; congruent styles and colours (lots of weathered-brick red Floyd | and teak brown), but just mismatched enough to let you know. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x art" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X ART Floyd | Floyd | A trio of Central African masks. An outsider-art-ish scene in coloured Floyd | pencils, with hundreds of naively drawn figures with horribly Floyd | distorted heads. The head of a steel drum, intricately cut out into Floyd | birds and tree-branches. A frame drum the size of a truck wheel, with Floyd | a raven and an eagle in solid panels of red and black. A fetish of Floyd | dark wood, vaguely human but almost completely obscured by the narrow Floyd | iron wedges pincushioning its body. A set of clay cylinder seals, Floyd | framed behind glass. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl > smash glass, take seals, run away. | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x bookcases" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X BOOKCASES Floyd | Floyd | There are a lot of coffee-table books in here, largely in the field of Floyd | Photogenic Anthropology. A lot of hardcore-scholarly Upside treatises Floyd | on magic and liminology, of the kind that walkers largely ignore. The Floyd | complete Book of Eight Houses, including apocrypha. A bunch of things Floyd | with hand-tooled leather covers. If there are any paperbacks in the Floyd | house, they're not where visitors can see 'em. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Oh my, so fancy" | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "read book" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > READ BOOK Floyd | Floyd | There are a lot of coffee-table books in here, largely in the field of Floyd | Photogenic Anthropology. A lot of hardcore-scholarly Upside treatises Floyd | on magic and liminology, of the kind that walkers largely ignore. The Floyd | complete Book of Eight Houses, including apocrypha. A bunch of things Floyd | with hand-tooled leather covers. If there are any paperbacks in the Floyd | house, they're not where visitors can see 'em. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, ""photogenic anthropology" <3" | ||
| DavidW asks, "What does liminology mean?" | |||
| Zach says, "Oh yeah, nobody wants to look at ugly natives" | |||
| Emily says, "things pertaining to thresholds and transitioins" | |||
| genericgeekgirl | the study of "in-betweenness" | |||
| Zach says, "Like being "in-between" jobs" | |||
| DavidW says, "huh. I once played a god of polarity in an RPG and the term never came up." | |||
| DavidW says, "I suppose we should either converse with Becky or explore." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Sounds good." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "talk to becky" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO BECKY Floyd | Floyd | There are a number of questions that occur to you, but "What the Floyd | everliving fuck is going on?" seems to cover most of it. Poor Floyd | diplomacy, possibly, but playing nice seems moot at this point. Floyd | Floyd | "Forgo her." Floyd | Floyd | "That's not a - wait, what?" Floyd | Floyd | "Jave. We object to the match. Forgo her." Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "I repeat, "What the everliving fuck is going on?"" | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "becky, what the fuck" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > BECKY, WHAT THE FUCK Floyd | Floyd | It takes a little work to bring your temper down. One of the Floyd | consistent points of the Sheaf clade, and of clades in general, is Floyd | that nobody gives orders. Oh, there's an unspoken hierarchy, and Floyd | leaders of various kinds, but... outside a life-and-death situation, Floyd | even the appearance of a command is a room-clearing insult. Floyd | There's a lot of "If you could" and "Would you mind please", which Floyd | drives you insane at times, but apparently you care about the Floyd | underlying premise a great deal. Hunh. Floyd | Floyd | "What's the idea here? If I say no, you... what does this place Floyd | do, anyway?" Floyd | Floyd | "A monkey trap. You are only held here by holding on. Let go, get Floyd | out." Floyd | Floyd | "Hold on, and... what? Wait until the trapper shows up?" Floyd | Floyd | A languid blink. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Hooray, that worked" | ||
| genericgeekgirl dies. | |||
| Stew says, "this is too weird for me" | |||
| Zach says, ">FREE MONKEY" | |||
| DavidW says, "There's too many unknowns in this setup." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "blink" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > BLINK Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | Stew says, "sorry for not attending" | ||
| DavidW asks, "What's a clade, for starters?" | |||
| Stew says, "this just is too unexplained" | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "talk to becky" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO BECKY Floyd | Floyd | "Jesus shit, look: one, this counts as an attack on a clademate and Floyd | I'll fucking wreck you for it, two, what the fuck makes it Floyd | even slightly okay for you to decide who I see, and three... what's Floyd | going on here? If it's let go you want, why is there no way out?" Floyd | Floyd | With an expression that says enough, she stands, walks, and Floyd | fades away into nothingness. Floyd | Floyd | Shit. Okay. Take stock. The Rebeccas, taken together, are not just Floyd | walkers but weavers: they can not only traverse the ways and worlds, Floyd | they can... take bits out of them, temporarily rearrange them into new Floyd | ways and worlds. It's a rare gift. One of the things that can be Floyd | crafted in this way is a tangle, a bounded array of tightly Floyd | finite worlds that complement one another, packed very closely. This Floyd | is not a stable arrangement, and they're usually set up as spectacles, Floyd | exhibitions of craft and talent. Extremely elaborate party tricks. Floyd | Floyd | But they're unstable. Imperfect. Whatever they've done, you can get Floyd | around it. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says (to Stew), "It's probably a real English word, just not in common usage." | ||
| Emily says, "it's like a clan" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "It's pretty common in biology. A cladogram is like an ancestral tree, so.. yeah, what she said." | |||
| Stew says, "things make a little more sense now" | |||
| Stew says, "I just had a really weird nightmare when I took a nap earlier today so I'm not exactly in the most optimal mood for IF of this nature" | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "becky, fuck this shit" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > BECKY, FUCK THIS SHIT Floyd | Floyd | You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "And now we know what a tangle is." | ||
| DavidW asks, "So the 'weavers' made this temporary reality, there's no obvious exit, but we can sorta find or make an exit?" | |||
| DavidW says, "Becky left." | |||
| Zach says, "Aww" | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "l" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > L Floyd | Floyd | None Know The Hour Floyd | Feels like the apartments of a well-off academic couple who entertain Floyd | a lot. Lots of one-of-a-kind furniture in nice old wood, very full Floyd | bookcases, art conspicuously esoteric and ethnic. Would feel kind of Floyd | crowded if it wasn't so unnaturally tidy. More, similar rooms Floyd | sprawling out through odd-angled spaces. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south, east and west. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "Guess the leopard went with her." | ||
| DavidW says, "I vote north." | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to None Know The Hour, east, Floyd | west and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x tree" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X TREE Floyd | Floyd | You don't quite recognise the species, but you've seen its kind. Hard, Floyd | slow-growing wood, waxy leaves, branches spreading wide and airy. A Floyd | tree to survive drought. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x people" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X PEOPLE Floyd | Floyd | A conspicuously mixed-race group; maybe a third each of unambiguous Floyd | white and black. Dressed for a hot climate that's rough on clothes. Floyd | There's some low-key chatter and occasional trips to the cooler or the Floyd | fire, but your general impression is of a pride of very well-fed lions Floyd | taking naps. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x cooler" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X COOLER Floyd | Floyd | Big, beaten-up-looking coldboxes, stacked densely with beer and large Floyd | water-jugs. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Stew makes several stilted attempts at a goodbye, then opens a window and climbs out of sight down a ladder. | DavidW says, "After examining everything, please try climbing the tree." | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "talk to people" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO PEOPLE Floyd | Floyd | They're not really here; they're drawn from the worlds, somehow, Floyd | though whether they're facsimiles, composites or projections of real Floyd | people isn't clear. You could make light conversation with them, Floyd | manipulate, harm; but you'll never be able to learn anything important Floyd | from them, or understand them as individuals. Frankly, it gives you Floyd | the creeps. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x leaves" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X LEAVES Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "yeah, most of this is set decoration." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "drink beer" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > DRINK BEER Floyd | Floyd | You crack open a can of cold beer. It's recognisably beer, and fairly Floyd | cold. In this heat, that makes it ambrosia. It's really rather good: Floyd | the Rebeccas can't be accused of scrimping on their parties. | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x creeps" | |||
Floyd | Floyd | > Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X CREEPS Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "I suspect only the tree itself is important." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "take water-jug" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE WATER-JUG Floyd | Floyd | Real, solid, but still just a shadow-trick. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "If anything in this location is." | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "drink beer" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > DRINK BEER Floyd | Floyd | You crack open a can of cold beer. It's recognisably beer, and fairly Floyd | cold. In this heat, that makes it ambrosia. May as well take advantage Floyd | of it while it's available. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "drink beer" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > DRINK BEER Floyd | Floyd | You crack open a can of cold beer. It's recognisably beer, and fairly Floyd | cold. In this heat, that makes it ambrosia. You're maintaining a nice Floyd | even buzz. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "The beer was real!" | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "drink beer" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > DRINK BEER Floyd | Floyd | You crack open a can of cold beer. It's recognisably beer, and fairly Floyd | cold. In this heat, that makes it ambrosia. You don't appear to be Floyd | getting any drunker. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "drink beer" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > DRINK BEER Floyd | Floyd | You crack open a can of cold beer. It's recognisably beer, and fairly Floyd | cold. In this heat, that makes it ambrosia. You don't appear to be Floyd | getting any drunker. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x boulders" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X BOULDERS Floyd | Floyd | Great rocks, from about the size of a house down to that of a desk, Floyd | are strewn about the slope seemingly at random: stacked on one Floyd | another, jumbled in heaps, or standing like lone monoliths. They're of Floyd | the same red, grainy stone as the hillside. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Oh well" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Now we climb the tree, fall down and break our head open." | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to tree" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO TREE Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "climb tree" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > CLIMB TREE Floyd | Floyd | Given less pressing circumstances, of finding a comfortable perch and Floyd | retiring there with a six-pack and a book would be magnificent. The Floyd | thought occurs, not for the first time, that the Rebeccas are wasting Floyd | their talents on petty revenge. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x sun" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X SUN Floyd | Floyd | The sun's a deep, peachy colour, beginning to shade towards red. Some Floyd | optical illusion - dust in the atmosphere? - makes it seem gibbous on Floyd | the lower side. There are not enough clouds for a truly spectacular Floyd | sunset, but the warm red glow still paints a third of the sky. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x thornveldt" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X THORNVELDT Floyd | Floyd | A rambling, broken landscape, dry and rocky. "Rocky" undersells it, Floyd | really: the landscape is rocks, into the cracks of which some soil and Floyd | thorn-trees are jammed. From your high vantage, you can see a very Floyd | long way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "take sun" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE SUN Floyd | Floyd | Real, solid, but still just a shadow-trick. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x blankets" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X BLANKETS Floyd | Floyd | Old, worn-out looking blankets with a vague institutional flavour, or Floyd | else brightly-coloured patterned cloths. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x meaty" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X MEATY Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x things" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X THINGS Floyd | Floyd | You can't use multiple objects with that verb. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "x the thing" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X THE THING Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "I'm thinking this location isn't important now, but might be later on." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Hm. One of our directions here is "outside"." | |||
| DavidW says, "yeah, I vote trying outside." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "outside" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > OUTSIDE Floyd | Floyd | You try and walk outwards, and - oh, unpleasant. There's a Floyd | way out there, no question, the ways are the loom-strings that hold Floyd | the weave in place - but the whole thing's wound so tightly that Floyd | they're constricted. Floyd | Floyd | A really strong wayfarer, on a familiar way, might be able to squeeze Floyd | out. But the Rebeccas, for all their other gifts, are in your Floyd | estimation rather unexceptional walkers. So, there needs to be a trick Floyd | to loosing them, or another exit. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Oh, ok." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "let go" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > LET GO Floyd | Floyd | That's too abstract. You need a more concrete course of action. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "get out" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > GET OUT Floyd | Floyd | You try and walk outwards, and - oh, unpleasant. There's a Floyd | way out there, no question, the ways are the loom-strings that hold Floyd | the weave in place - but the whole thing's wound so tightly that Floyd | they're constricted. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "tickle out" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > TICKLE OUT Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "tickle me" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > TICKLE ME Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW asks, "North again, perhaps?" | ||
| Zach says, "I'm OK with any directions" | |||
| genericgeekgirl asks, "You don't want to explore the other directions here?" | |||
| DavidW says, "I'd like to know if the place has an edge." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | You're unable to pass. But this is a completely different feeling to Floyd | reaching the edge of a space. The tangle extends further in Floyd | that direction, and its makers certainly traversed here. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl asks, "Try east and then west?" | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "sing" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > SING Floyd | Floyd | You don't have much of a voice, and this doesn't seem like the place Floyd | for it. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Despite having a map in front of me, I thought north was back to the other room. Fail." | ||
| DavidW says, "sure, east is fine." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "cry" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > CRY Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "I beg to differ." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south, east, west to Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Aww" | ||
| Stew arrives, full of fun and funk. | Zach says, "Finally some dancing!" | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "dance" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > DANCE Floyd | Floyd | The dance is a simple one, and allows for a wide range of Floyd | permutations: geriatric shuffles, elaborate moves from young Floyd | show-offs, artless enthusiasm from very small children and the Floyd | embarrassingly middle-aged. The overall effect is chaos, and you take Floyd | a few bumps before deciding to stick to a vaguely rhythmic head bob. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "\o/" | ||
| Zach says, "Hooray, chaos" | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | You try and walk outwards, and - oh, unpleasant. There's a Floyd | way out there, no question, the ways are the loom-strings that hold Floyd | the weave in place - but the whole thing's wound so tightly that Floyd | they're constricted. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "bob" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > BOB Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x lime" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > X LIME Floyd | Floyd | Not the citrus lime, but the linden or basswood, a beautiful, Floyd | densely-foliated tree that, later in the summer, will be clouded by a Floyd | sweet clean fragrance and much-frequented by bees. This one has been Floyd | trained so that the lowest boughs clear the dancers' heads, while Floyd | still allowing climbing. A number of the musicians have been hoisted Floyd | into the lower branches and are playing overhead. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "cut strings" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > CUT STRINGS Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "My map has these squiggly lines leading to "OUTSIDE"?'" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "(with the quotes)" | |||
| DavidW says, "This lime is climbable, supposedly." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "climb tree" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > CLIMB TREE Floyd | Floyd | Which do you mean, the dancing lime or the greenery? Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "lime" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > LIME Floyd | Floyd | If you were here to enjoy the party, that's exactly what you would be Floyd | doing. But this place isn't designed for your enjoyment; they would Floyd | probably send wasps. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "climb greenery" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > CLIMB GREENERY Floyd | Floyd | Real, solid, but still just a shadow-trick. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Fine." | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x accordion" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > X ACCORDION Floyd | Floyd | A group covering a wide range of ages, musical proficiency and stages Floyd | of drunkenness. The music is of a kind that mostly accomodates this Floyd | and staggers onwards, though. They're dressed in a motley of red and Floyd | black. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "smell" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > SMELL Floyd | Floyd | You smell nothing unexpected. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "listen" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > LISTEN Floyd | Floyd | Folk music of the livelier variety. The band are more enthusiastic Floyd | than talented, but it all comes together well enough. It's mostly Floyd | accordion and drums, and there're some pipes in there too. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "l" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > L Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south, east, west to Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "Assuming this is the 'B' box on the cover art map, we probably can't yet go north or east yet." | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Correct, sir!" | ||
| Zach asks, "Back west and west?" | |||
| DavidW says, "I noticed on the cover art that the P location has an exit rectangle in it, suggesting that's the starting location." | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to None Know The Hour, east to Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May, west and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | Stew says, "well" | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | A rough-plastered room that you suspect of being in the back of a pub Floyd | somewhere. Deep in the night. A patchy assortment of people are Floyd | sitting silent, a respectful distance away from the open coffin laid Floyd | out on a table. Floyd | Floyd | There's a single sprig of frangipani in the corpse's buttonhole. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south and east to Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock. Floyd | Floyd | > | Stew says, "I am so lost here" | ||
| Stew says, "and frankly I'm having flashbacks of my nightmare from earlier today" | |||
| Zach says, "So is the PC" | |||
| DavidW says, "It's making more sense to me." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Oh my god. I read that as butthole." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x coffin" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > X COFFIN Floyd | Floyd | For a moment you have the crawly suspicion that it'll be you in the Floyd | casket, but as it turns out, no. He's not old, not young. White, Floyd | shortish, wearing a dress suit grown a little ratty. His face won't Floyd | stick in your memory, and you suspect that he's not the point of this Floyd | exercise. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Eww" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x frangipani" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > X FRANGIPANI Floyd | Floyd | Five waxy petals, white blushed with gold, and an impossibly Floyd | voluptuous, nocturnal perfume. Floyd | Floyd | The plant seems like a dinosaur, too lumpen and exotic to live, yet it Floyd | grew everywhere in Masdita. On one of the long evenings lazily Floyd | searching for a safe route out, hoping not to find one, she tried to Floyd | arrange as many as possible of them in your hair. Your hair was far Floyd | too short, and frangipani blooms have no real stem to speak of, so Floyd | every time you moved your head half the flowers would escape, but the Floyd | fragrance clung until the next day. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "Take it, please." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "take flower" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE FLOWER Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "take frangipani" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE FRANGIPANI Floyd | Floyd | You run a wistful finger over the frangipani. Keepsakes are not Floyd | something that anybody gets to keep for long in the Ways - for that Floyd | matter, practical equipment doesn't have much of a lifespan. That's Floyd | never more true than in the constant transition of a tangle; little Floyd | point in hanging on to it. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "smell it" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > SMELL IT Floyd | Floyd | You smell nothing unexpected. Floyd | Floyd | > | Stew says, "honk!" | ||
| Zach says, "Hmm, I wonder how our gifts will be used" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x buttonhole" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > X BUTTONHOLE Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "hm." | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "enter coffin" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > ENTER COFFIN Floyd | Floyd | That's not something you can enter. Floyd | Floyd | > | Stew says, "buzz!" | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "close coffin" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > CLOSE COFFIN Floyd | Floyd | It isn't something you can close. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "people" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > PEOPLE Floyd | Floyd | That's far-off, and not all ways are alike. You'll have to go step by Floyd | step. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "pray" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > PRAY Floyd | Floyd | A good portion of the mourners are doing so. It feels disrespectful to Floyd | fake it. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "enter coffin" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > ENTER COFFIN Floyd | Floyd | That's not something you can enter. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "rest head" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > REST HEAD Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | Stew asks, "why assume we were going to fake it?" | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "l" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > L Floyd | Floyd | No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | A rough-plastered room that you suspect of being in the back of a pub Floyd | somewhere. Deep in the night. A patchy assortment of people are Floyd | sitting silent, a respectful distance away from the open coffin laid Floyd | out on a table. Floyd | Floyd | There's a single sprig of frangipani in the corpse's buttonhole. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south and east to Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "I'm guessing we can't go north, but might as well try it." | ||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "So we never pick up anything? I guess that rules out looking for bizarre keys. Physical ones, at any rate." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Possibly." | |||
| genericgeekgirl asks, "South, I guess?" | |||
| DavidW says, "I think this location is the first 'S' in the map." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Yeah." | |||
| DavidW says, "yes, please." | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Under My Roof Floyd | Middle-class living-room, with couches. The teenagers variously Floyd | slouched around the couches and the floor are clearly the occupant's Floyd | spawn and comrades thereof. Big blocky stereo from back when CDs were Floyd | new and exciting. The air's full of the reek of cheap weed, half-empty Floyd | drinks are scattered over every surface and niche, and over at one end Floyd | of the couch there's a couple pointedly making out. Floyd | Floyd | Jave is sitting in a big armchair, blonde-dreadlocked, entirely Floyd | comfortable but a little apart from the group. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to No Place To Rest Your Head, south Floyd | and east to None Know The Hour. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "Be on the lookout for any location where one of our four gifts might have a result." | ||
| Stew says (to floyd), "x jave" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > X JAVE Floyd | Floyd | Yeah, holy fucking shit, those are some masterful blonde Floyd | dreads. Given how long they must have taken to cultivate, and that Floyd | your first impression of them isn't greasy louse-farm, she Floyd | has to have at least five years on anyone here. Which, now that you Floyd | consider it, is probably about right: the others have body-language Floyd | with the slight, self-conscious deference due to the Older, Floyd | Unfathomably Cool One. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Hmm, I wonder if we could have used our text gift on the books in the first room" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Good idea." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "I'm happy to explore what we can first, though." | |||
| Zach says, "Sure" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x dreads" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > X DREADS Floyd | Floyd | Yeah, holy fucking shit, those are some masterful blonde Floyd | dreads. Given how long they must have taken to cultivate, and that Floyd | your first impression of them isn't greasy louse-farm, she Floyd | has to have at least five years on anyone here. Which, now that you Floyd | consider it, is probably about right: the others have body-language Floyd | with the slight, self-conscious deference due to the Older, Floyd | Unfathomably Cool One. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "talk to jave" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO JAVE Floyd | Floyd | You start, and... it's not that you can't make sounds, or articulate Floyd | your mouth. It's not even that you can't form thoughts into words. But Floyd | the process that connects the two parts doesn't work - what comes out Floyd | is a garble, uninflected even by emotion. Jave attends closely, but Floyd | without comprehension. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl asks, "There exist dreads that *aren't* greasy louse farms?" | ||
| DavidW says (to ggg), "It's a game." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x teenagers" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > X TEENAGERS Floyd | Floyd | You estimate the age range to be between fourteen and twenty, with the Floyd | mode about sixteen; this is unreliable, though, because everybody's Floyd | trying very hard to look older than they are, principally through the Floyd | medium of dirt. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "In the dreams of hippies, yes" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "take weed" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE WEED Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x couple" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > X COUPLE Floyd | Floyd | You estimate the age range to be between fourteen and twenty, with the Floyd | mode about sixteen; this is unreliable, though, because everybody's Floyd | trying very hard to look older than they are, principally through the Floyd | medium of dirt. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "jave, pass it to the left" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > JAVE, PASS IT TO THE LEFT Floyd | Floyd | You learned some basic operational sign-language from her in the Floyd | Lacmore Slope, and you can still remember parts of it, but it's not Floyd | exactly a language designed for emotional nuance. Or anything much Floyd | beyond commands, really. Floyd | Floyd | Acknowledge? Floyd | Acknowledge. Floyd | Area is dangerous but no imminent threat. Floyd | Acknowledge. (There is no sign for "well obviously," or even Floyd | "yes, I know.") Floyd | Regroup. Floyd | Negative. Impassable terrain. Floyd | Hold position. Floyd | Negative. Area is dangerous but no imminent threat. Floyd | Floyd | Not the reunion conversation you had in mind, but it makes you feel Floyd | better anyway. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Man. You are good at this." | ||
| Zach says, "heh" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x stereo" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > X STEREO Floyd | Floyd | From an era when everybody felt the need to own gigantic hi-fi tower Floyd | speakers, then play recopied tapes on them. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x drinks" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > X DRINKS Floyd | Floyd | An ill-conceived assortment of pre-mixed, syrupy Floyd | cocktails-in-a-bottle, cheap beer, and - oh, god, tequila shots. You Floyd | didn't know tequila could come in plastic. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "make out with teenagers" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > MAKE OUT WITH TEENAGERS Floyd | Floyd | They're not really here; they're drawn from the worlds, somehow, Floyd | though whether they're facsimiles, composites or projections of real Floyd | people isn't clear. You could make light conversation with them, Floyd | manipulate, harm; but you'll never be able to learn anything important Floyd | from them, or understand them as individuals. Frankly, it gives you Floyd | the creeps. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "manipulate teenagers" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > MANIPULATE TEENAGERS Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Aww" | ||
| Zach says, ">BUY THEM BEER" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, ""You didn't know tequila could come in plastic." Clearly we have never been to university." | |||
| DavidW says, "Most of the people are, I guess, like dreamers who are dreaming. They're not really here." | |||
| Stew says, "hmm" | |||
| DavidW says, "Becky and Jave are exceptions." | |||
| Stew says, "well I must go now unfortunately" | |||
| Stew says, "some thing has come up in RL" | |||
| Stew says, "people are hollering at me" | |||
| Stew says, "see you later" | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "take beer" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE BEER Floyd | Floyd | You reluctantly snag a wine cooler. You don't appear to be getting any Floyd | drunker. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Stew makes several stilted attempts at a goodbye, then opens a window and climbs out of sight down a ladder. | DavidW says, "If we go east, we can try to use critic on the books." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Ok." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | None Know The Hour Floyd | Feels like the apartments of a well-off academic couple who entertain Floyd | a lot. Lots of one-of-a-kind furniture in nice old wood, very full Floyd | bookcases, art conspicuously esoteric and ethnic. Would feel kind of Floyd | crowded if it wasn't so unnaturally tidy. More, similar rooms Floyd | sprawling out through odd-angled spaces. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock, south, east Floyd | and west to Under My Roof. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use critic" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > USE CRITIC Floyd | Floyd | So many books here, grabbing one at random wouldn't reveal all that Floyd | much. Consider them as a corpus. First, presentation: these are a set Floyd | of books selected for their effect on an audience. Fiction forms a Floyd | minority, is entirely hardback literature, often collector's editions. Floyd | A great many gorgeously expensive coffee-table books, mostly with Floyd | anthropological overtones: portraits of modern African scarification, Floyd | street food scenes across the worlds, confiscated prison weapons in Floyd | the West 1800-1960. The liminology section is dense, technical, and Floyd | tightly organised, suggesting expertise; the magic stuff, on the other Floyd | hand, leans hard towards the esoteric and apocryphal, scholarly works Floyd | jumbled up with mystic ravings - so, either one person with very Floyd | different approaches to neighbouring subjects, or, more likely, at Floyd | least two contributors. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "tl;dr : this is two collections in one room." | ||
| DavidW asks, "East, I guess?" | |||
| Zach says, "Sure" | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south, Floyd | east, west to None Know The Hour and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "i" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > I Floyd | Floyd | You are a Warrior, a Forager, a Textual Critic and a Troublemaker. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Zach says (to Floyd), "use warrior" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > USE WARRIOR Floyd | Floyd | There's nothing you really need to deal with here. You need to find Floyd | Jave. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Huh" | ||
| Zach says, "Oh, we can order them around" | |||
| genericgeekgirl asks, "Hm?" | |||
| Zach says, "Jave with our sign language" | |||
| DavidW says, "I think we go lucky that the order was treated as an attempt at sign language." | |||
| DavidW says, "er goT lucky" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "It does say, though, that it's used for "commands"." | |||
| Zach says, "ITYM mad skill" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use forager" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > USE FORAGER Floyd | Floyd | You spend some time considering setting up fishing lines with wire Floyd | from the party lights, or using lights to draw in fish and spearing Floyd | them with... well, you can always make up a spear somehow or other. Floyd | Given the waiters, the question is largely academic, however. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Hee." | ||
| DavidW says, "Troublemaker might work here. People do fight at weddings." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "SAVE" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "cf5" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > SAVE Floyd | %% Enter a save filename to write: Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > SAVEOk. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use troublemaker" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > USE TROUBLEMAKER Floyd | Floyd | Weddings of this sort are big concentrations of extended family who Floyd | may very well not like one another; a great deal of money is riding on Floyd | the thing, and a lot of people are going to get drunk. It would not be Floyd | excessively hard to torpedo the entire thing. It's not clear how that Floyd | would help you, though. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Oh, all right." | ||
| DavidW says (to author), "True enough" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "But it might be generally worth trying them all out in different situations. But I think we have three more rooms that we can access." | |||
| DavidW says, "South, please." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Wedding on the Water, east and Floyd | west. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use troublemaker" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > USE TROUBLEMAKER Floyd | Floyd | You've got enough of a sense of the rules that you could play Floyd | spoiler if you had to. But you're not sure you want to end this game Floyd | without Jave around. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Ah." | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x game" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > X GAME Floyd | Floyd | (the board game) Floyd | The board takes up about half the table's real estate, and is clearly Floyd | a map of a city - maybe Renaissance? There's a scoring track around Floyd | the outside, and a number of areas set aside for little stacks of Floyd | cards and particular tokens to stipulate special things, and a whole Floyd | lot of coloured cubes positioned across it. Every player has a hand of Floyd | cards and other cards in front of them, a little stack of cardboard Floyd | coins, and their own brightly-coloured set of tokens in front of them. Floyd | (You're red.) Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "take cube" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE CUBE Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "I guess that also means I can't eat it." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x cards" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > X CARDS Floyd | Floyd | The board takes up about half the table's real estate, and is clearly Floyd | a map of a city - maybe Renaissance? There's a scoring track around Floyd | the outside, and a number of areas set aside for little stacks of Floyd | cards and particular tokens to stipulate special things, and a whole Floyd | lot of coloured cubes positioned across it. Every player has a hand of Floyd | cards and other cards in front of them, a little stack of cardboard Floyd | coins, and their own brightly-coloured set of tokens in front of them. Floyd | (You're red.) Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use forager" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > USE FORAGER Floyd | Floyd | There's nothing you really need to deal with here. You need to find Floyd | Jave. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x red" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > X RED Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x shelves" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > X SHELVES Floyd | Floyd | You crane your neck to read off titles. Pandemic. Arkham Horror. Floyd | Illuminati. Twilight Struggle. Gloom. Betrayal at House on the Hill. Floyd | Risk. A ratty old printout of Metrofinál. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl asks, "Can we critic at games?" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use critic" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > USE CRITIC Floyd | Floyd | There's nothing you really need to deal with here. You need to find Floyd | Jave. | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "use critic" | |||
Floyd | Floyd | > Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > USE CRITIC Floyd | Floyd | There's nothing you really need to deal with here. You need to find Floyd | Jave. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Nope." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "play pandemic" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > PLAY PANDEMIC Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "They stink!" | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "cheat" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > CHEAT Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "flip table" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > FLIP TABLE Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "look under table" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > LOOK UNDER TABLE Floyd | Floyd | Real, solid, but still just a shadow-trick. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "West, I suppose" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Function Floyd | Paneled ceilings, carpet tile, decor that's dead inside. A table of Floyd | snacks and a sad-looking punchbowl. The non-smell of recycled air. Floyd | Party decorations from a party store. You've never had a job in a Floyd | context remotely like this, so it seems unlikely that they're Floyd | constructing this out of your memories. That plastic-y air smell is Floyd | too solid. Has to be something else. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to None Know The Hour, east to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends and west. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x snacks" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > X SNACKS Floyd | Floyd | You see nothing special about the buffet table. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "eat snacks" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > EAT SNACKS Floyd | Floyd | You take a small nibble of something that doesn't look too offensive. Floyd | Appearances prove deceptive. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use forager" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > USE FORAGER Floyd | Floyd | Hah. Yeah, if you were sticking around that's not a terrible idea. Floyd | Food's bad enough here. But you need to get to Jave first. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x decorations" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > X DECORATIONS Floyd | Floyd | A few helium balloons already beginning to deflate, some Floyd | hologram-sparkle streamers, an unused stack of conical hats. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "smell air" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > SMELL AIR Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x hats" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > X HATS Floyd | Floyd | A few helium balloons already beginning to deflate, some Floyd | hologram-sparkle streamers, an unused stack of conical hats. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "drink punch" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > DRINK PUNCH Floyd | Floyd | You ignore the punch and seek out the least offensive of the lagers. Floyd | You don't appear to be getting any drunker. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl asks, "West and then back to Jave?" | ||
| DavidW says, "ok" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Granite and Glass Floyd | This is a home, you think, but a home out of a spy movie or a Floyd | photoshoot, not intended to be lived in by humans. Ceiling and floor Floyd | are vast oceans of polished black granite; the walls on two sides are Floyd | sheer glass, so the overall effect is of being between two crushing Floyd | plates. There is no clutter at all, each item of furniture spaced out Floyd | from the others like a piece in a gallery. The guests are beautiful in Floyd | a marble-and-porcelain, expensive-tailor manner; they aren't so much Floyd | mingling as posing in groups. Floyd | Floyd | There'll be a garage somewhere, and a ridiculous prestige car, and the Floyd | road out. Floyd | Floyd | Beside the mantelpiece of a wholly decorative fireplace, someone - Floyd | evidently as bored with this place as you are - has scratched a series Floyd | of graffiti into the slate walls. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Under My Roof, east to Function and Floyd | Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x graffiti" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > X GRAFFITI Floyd | Floyd | A little South African flag, the word "shit" in various fonts, several Floyd | rather inexpert faces, a recognisable Blackhawk helicopter, and some Floyd | stick-figures fucking. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl snrk. | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x guests" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > X GUESTS Floyd | Floyd | Tall, graceful men and women, all slightly androgynous in an elfin, Floyd | decorative manner. Crisply and expensively dressed. Everyone in Floyd | carefully-chosen greys and blues, and you in scarlet. You can tell Floyd | that, in other settings, each would be alarmingly beeautiful; taken Floyd | together, they feel like a school of predatory fish. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "beeautiful" | ||
| DavidW says, "hm. We were red at the game, and in scarlet here." | |||
| DavidW asks, "Is colour important, then, or is it just a way for us to be in foreground?" | |||
| Zach says, "Also hair" | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x fireplace" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > X FIREPLACE Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Back north? See if we can't order Jave around a bit? Or start some trouble. Whee." | ||
| DavidW asks, "Is our hair red?" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Yup." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Crimson." | |||
| DavidW says, "hm. Sure, let's poke Jave." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Under My Roof Floyd | Middle-class living-room, with couches. The teenagers variously Floyd | slouched around the couches and the floor are clearly the occupant's Floyd | spawn and comrades thereof. Big blocky stereo from back when CDs were Floyd | new and exciting. The air's full of the reek of cheap weed, half-empty Floyd | drinks are scattered over every surface and niche, and over at one end Floyd | of the couch there's a couple pointedly making out. Floyd | Floyd | Jave is sitting in a big armchair, blonde-dreadlocked, entirely Floyd | comfortable but a little apart from the group. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to No Place To Rest Your Head, south Floyd | to Granite and Glass and east to None Know The Hour. Floyd | Floyd | > | Zach says, "Yeah, grab Jave and start fighting/cheating" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use warrior" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > USE WARRIOR Floyd | Floyd | Jeez, they're just kids. Drunken roughhousing seems socially Floyd | plausible, but you'd probably break one. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use trouble" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > USE TROUBLE Floyd | Floyd | You hate to mess with them. They're just kids, they're raw and stupid Floyd | in so many different overlapping ways, and... somehow they're Floyd | comfortable. You don't grow up by being comfortable, is the thing. Floyd | This group's never going to change or grow without a major disruptive Floyd | influence. Floyd | Floyd | The fact that this justification seems completely reasonable to you is Floyd | probably a sign that this place is making you raw and stupid yourself, Floyd | but when in Rome, what the fuck, right? Floyd | Floyd | Your overture is sequentially snogging both halves of a couple in the Floyd | upstairs hall, letting yourself get caught the second time. You Floyd | extract some stoned secrets from one guy and deliver them to the worst Floyd | possible recipient, with certain shifts of emphasis. You identify the Floyd | guy with bottled-up fury and subtly needle him until he has a Floyd | spittle-spraying outburst at someone less subtle. You allow the drama Floyd | to overlap and interweave. Floyd | Floyd | You don't feel good about it. But at the end of the evening, Floyd | there are two people who are at the heart of everything, and Floyd | Jave is quietly watching you, awaiting your next move. It's a start. | genericgeekgirl says, "Oh gosh. That worked." | ||
| genericgeekgirl asks, "Undo? Or go with it?" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "I presume we're going in the right direction." | |||
| DavidW says, "yes, let it stand." | |||
| DavidW says, "We should re-examine the people and location, I think." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "l" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | Jave is quietly watching you, awaiting your next move. It's a start. Floyd | There's a muffled explosion. It takes you a second to realise that Floyd | it's the door being kicked in. Floyd | Floyd | Then there are red-and-blues flashing harsh through the windows, and Floyd | everyone's scrambling in one direction or another. There's muffled Floyd | shouting through a megaphone, but the words are broken up by further Floyd | crashes and yells of fear or pain. Thump, a window breaks and Floyd | the room's filling with smoke, and some of the shadows moving through Floyd | it have gas-masks and clubs. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Oh. Oh shit." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use warrior" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > USE WARRIOR Floyd | Floyd | This is an unsustainable fight. You've got no allies, a surprise Floyd | attack by what look like LE professionals, no weapons or defences Floyd | worth speaking of. Chances are you're surrounded. Escalate and they'll Floyd | just fucking shoot you. Your only way out is through the ways. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl asks, "Command Jave to come with us?" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "SAVE" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "cf6" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > SAVE Floyd | %% Enter a save filename to write: Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > SAVEOk. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "jave, follow me" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > JAVE, FOLLOW ME Floyd | Floyd | Jave has better things to do. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Like hell you do, bitch." | ||
| DavidW says, "I don't know if any of this action really affects us." | |||
| DavidW says, "Wait a bit, see what develops." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "But we do want her to come with us, yeah? Ok." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "z" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > Floyd | > Z Floyd | Floyd | No time. You should really be getting the hell out of here. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | None Know The Hour Floyd | Feels like the apartments of a well-off academic couple who entertain Floyd | a lot. Lots of one-of-a-kind furniture in nice old wood, very full Floyd | bookcases, art conspicuously esoteric and ethnic. Would feel kind of Floyd | crowded if it wasn't so unnaturally tidy. More, similar rooms Floyd | sprawling out through odd-angled spaces. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka Strossi is kicked back on the couch, arms slung around two Floyd | randoms, her feet up on the coffee-table. She appears to be sipping Floyd | Kool-Aid. Jeez, way to keep it classy. Floyd | Floyd | Over on a cabinet, a wineglass with red lees in the bottom. And one of Floyd | those tasteless little charms around the stem, in the shape of an Floyd | osprey. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock, south to Floyd | Function and east to Wedding on the Water. Floyd | Floyd | The guests are gathering around the windows. (Were there windows Floyd | before?) A cityscape, a crescent of glittering high-rises along a Floyd | shoreline, with an orange-purple sunset filling the sky over the sea. Floyd | The sea itself, though, has a dark line across its face, a band that Floyd | grows thicker even as you watch it. Floyd | Floyd | Time bends. Roaring. The wall of water engulfs the waterfront, Floyd | swallows onetwothree blocks. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "Maybe Jave will follow on their own." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "undo" | |||
Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | Floyd | > UNDO Floyd | Floyd | Under My Roof Floyd | [Previous turn undone.] Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "No, but the description definitely changed, yeah" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "But she didn't seem to follow." | |||
| DavidW says, "well, it seems silly to undo when we're still flailing at basics." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Playing alone, I'd probably just save here and explore and see what happens. Whether or not she follows." | |||
| genericgeekgirl asks, "So back east and see what's changed?" | |||
| DavidW says, "yes, please." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "SAVE" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "cf7" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > SAVE Floyd | %% Enter a save filename to write: Floyd ] Under My Roof Floyd | > SAVEOk. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | None Know The Hour Floyd | Feels like the apartments of a well-off academic couple who entertain Floyd | a lot. Lots of one-of-a-kind furniture in nice old wood, very full Floyd | bookcases, art conspicuously esoteric and ethnic. Would feel kind of Floyd | crowded if it wasn't so unnaturally tidy. More, similar rooms Floyd | sprawling out through odd-angled spaces. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka Strossi is kicked back on the couch, arms slung around two Floyd | randoms, her feet up on the coffee-table. She appears to be sipping Floyd | Kool-Aid. Jeez, way to keep it classy. Floyd | Floyd | Over on a cabinet, a wineglass with red lees in the bottom. And one of Floyd | those tasteless little charms around the stem, in the shape of an Floyd | osprey. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock, south to Floyd | Function and east to Wedding on the Water. Floyd | Floyd | The guests are gathering around the windows. (Were there windows Floyd | before?) A cityscape, a crescent of glittering high-rises along a Floyd | shoreline, with an orange-purple sunset filling the sky over the sea. Floyd | The sea itself, though, has a dark line across its face, a band that Floyd | grows thicker even as you watch it. Floyd | Floyd | Time bends. Roaring. The wall of water engulfs the waterfront, Floyd | swallows onetwothree blocks. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x rivka" | |||
Floyd ] None Know The Hour Floyd | > Floyd | > X RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | No time. You should really be getting the hell out of here. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Oh." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Where to, unless we suddenly have access to other places." | |||
| DavidW asks, "So maybe one of the 'outside' exits might work now?" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | A little way up the hill, half-silhouetted against the sunset, Rivka Floyd | Strossi stands on one leg and a staff. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, east to The Pleasant Month of May, Floyd | west to No Place To Rest Your Head and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | Your waysense is still lurching around, making you a little nauseous. Floyd | The tangle's temporary structure isn't robust enough to cope with Floyd | this - it was probably designed to fail, like luring someone inside a Floyd | condemned building and encouraging them to lean against a joist. Your Floyd | very passage may be disrupting it. Floyd | Floyd | There might be an up side, though. When the walls are coming down, Floyd | it's hard to keep doors locked. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | Barren Way Floyd | It goes by other names - high places, silk road, the tracks of the Floyd | goats. It's old, bones-of-the-earth stuff. It leads through Floyd | mountain, tundra, steppe, high desert: dry harsh land, where missing a Floyd | cairn can kill you. It scares the everliving fuck out of you, every Floyd | time, but your feet understand its course, it is one of Floyd | yours, and a walker cannot help but love their way. Floyd | Floyd | Reba is looking out over the rock, wearing the least hijab-ish hijab Floyd | you've ever seen. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the inside to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock. Floyd | Floyd | A memory: Floyd | Floyd | Two-thirds of the way along Mirror Branch, the only time that an easy Floyd | job got a little twitchy. Along the river there was, unexpectedly, a Floyd | stockade, set up by a Romani band, out of Upside via Kosovo. They were Floyd | well-armed, and had one or two single-gifted among them; it was not Floyd | clear whether they were set up as bandits, or toll-collectors, or were Floyd | simply protecting their settlement. They bristled; accustomed to Floyd | persecution, they assumed trade along this river would be followed by Floyd | Mission, and if they were wrong it was only through happy accident. Floyd | You still don't really have any idea about how their humour Floyd | worked - you had the vague sense that dark humour was part of Floyd | everything, something in the vein of Soviet political jokes, and that Floyd | there was a subtle distinction between the kinds of joke told by women Floyd | and men, but really all that you knew was that there was a Floyd | vast, vast amount of vital meaning that was shooting back and forth Floyd | over your head. Floyd | Floyd | And Jave just sort of waded into all this - look, the first time you Floyd | really remember her, remember her as a distinct person rather than a Floyd | template Mission-vet, is when she burst out in full-bellied laughs at Floyd | an aside from the headman. Floyd | Floyd | They didn't suddenly become her bosom friends. The scene did not end Floyd | with a guitar sing-along over potent drinks, worse luck. They knew Floyd | that something was going on with her, and you're not completely sure Floyd | it changed the outcome. But they had started thinking of her (and only Floyd | her) as a person rather than a problem. She waved when you left, and Floyd | some of them waved back. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Oof." | ||
| DavidW says, "I don't understand any of that." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Back in and try north now? Yeah, I dunno. It's a memory, possibly just background flavour." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "I wonder if there are different outsides." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "Or maybe "outside" is "I"." | |||
| DavidW says, "We could talk to Reba here." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x reba" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > X REBA Floyd | Floyd | Little aquiline nose, teeth a little too large for a mouth always Floyd | smiling, really good at choosing scarves. Reba is the least obnoxious Floyd | of the three, the one who you actually get along with when distinct Floyd | from her cohorts. Which is ultimately why they've got a problem with Floyd | you: while the motives and interests of the Rebeccas are a matter of Floyd | carefully-tended ambiguity, the one thing they do not forgive is any Floyd | attempt to divide the Rebeccas. Floyd | Floyd | True, the possibility of schtupping Reba wasn't entirely Floyd | absent from your mind, and at least part of the appeal of Floyd | that prospect was that it would fluster the others. But it's not as Floyd | though that formed an objective so much as a routine Floyd | possibility, a basic consequence of her being kind of cute and not Floyd | conspicuously a jerk. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "talk to reba" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO REBA Floyd | Floyd | "What the shit are your cronies up to, al-Nasri?" Floyd | Floyd | She actually looks hurt. "Nice to see you too, T. How have you been?" Floyd | Floyd | "Oh, same old - grouchy, lovelorn, intolerant of horsecrap. Seriously, Floyd | what's the idea here?" Floyd | Floyd | Reba straightens herself a little. "It is... not easy to express our Floyd | motives succinctly. We act as one, but we cast many shadows. Any Floyd | single explanation would fall short. This one may serve you: we are Floyd | offering you an opportunity for closure." Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "talk to reba" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO REBA Floyd | Floyd | "Closure is nonsense, Reba. Spin me another story." Floyd | Floyd | She bobs her head at an angle, beaming. "If you must. In you and Jave Floyd | we perceive the potential, perhaps, for a counterpart to we Three. Floyd | Your gifts align in worrisome ways. You both tend to form attachments Floyd | fiercely, firmly and to strong walkers. Harmless now, maybe, but Floyd | introduce Nusku to the dynamic, or Dlamini, or the Shadow Minister, Floyd | or, no offence meant, Thalud -" Floyd | Floyd | "Wow. Just... you have some really incomplete information." Floyd | Floyd | "Care to enlighten us? No? Then admit that the principle has some Floyd | merit." Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "talk to reba" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO REBA Floyd | Floyd | "Jesus, Reba, Jave isn't... my conspiracy to come up with some Floyd | crazy-ass dynastic threesome or whatever. Hard as it is to imagine, Floyd | not everybody aspires to be you." Floyd | Floyd | "I'm sure you intend nothing of the sort; the potential is what Floyd | matters. This is a long-term aspect. A shorter one: the match would Floyd | bring Jave into the Sheaf, and she is ex-Mission." Floyd | Floyd | Ah. Yeah, that one has some clout. Among a certain mindset, ex-Mission Floyd | is about as cuddly as ex-KGB. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "talk to reba" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO REBA Floyd | Floyd | "Look, Reba, she's not Mission. Completely severed. Doesn't draw Floyd | pension, she doesn't even like hanging out with vets, and Floyd | she'd never rat if it might possibly hurt me." Floyd | Floyd | "Love is the falsest witness. Mission is Mission. Also, we understand Floyd | she's not interested in food." She twinkles at that, but it's Floyd | actually a pretty serious indictment for a potential clademate. Food's Floyd | at least half of what holds the Sheaf together. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl asks, "Food?" | ||
| DavidW says, "Perhaps get Jave in a bakery and they'll both explode. I dunno." | |||
| DavidW says, "I'm having a real difficult time getting stable earth under my feet in this game." | |||
| Zach says, "I gotta work tomorrow morning :(" | |||
| Zach says, "Good luck, y'all" | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "think about mission" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > THINK ABOUT MISSION Floyd | Floyd | Much as you're inclined towards it, this is not a good time for Floyd | navel-gazing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "what is mission" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > WHAT IS MISSION Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "help mission" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > HELP MISSION Floyd | Floyd | I only understood you as far as wanting to help. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW asks, "Perhaps we can visit other 'ways' via other 'outside' exits?" | ||
| DavidW says, "Also, we might be able to move beyond our initial 3x3 grid now too." | |||
| DavidW says, "Maybe we can 'take Jave' to get her to move to other locations with us." | |||
| pollux says, "I would try a simple "Jave, e" first." | |||
| DavidW says, "sure" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "talk to reba" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO REBA Floyd | Floyd | "Can you please cut the crap, Reba? For me? The Rebeccas aren't God, Floyd | I'm not Job. What's the real reason? If you tell me then Floyd | maybe I can, you know, negotiate, figure something out that works for Floyd | everyone." Floyd | Floyd | She draws closer, raises her brows. Floyd | "Maybe I'm just jealous." It's a joke, yes, but only half one, and Floyd | you both know it. Floyd | Floyd | Shit. You refrain from slipping your hands over the crest of Floyd | her hips. This would be an awful lot easier if she was tidily Floyd | wrong. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "talk to reba" | |||
Floyd ] Barren Way Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO REBA Floyd | Floyd | You're sure she could come up with a hundred more reasons, but it's Floyd | clear there's no negotiation possible, and it's only going to make Floyd | your heart ache. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Ok, that's all of it." | ||
| genericgeekgirl asks, "Inside?" | |||
| DavidW says, "yes, please" | |||
| DavidW says, "(and I seem to be lagging again)" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "in" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > IN Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | A little way up the hill, half-silhouetted against the sunset, Rivka Floyd | Strossi stands on one leg and a staff. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, east to The Pleasant Month of May, Floyd | west to No Place To Rest Your Head and Outside to Barren Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Ok, that's still blocked. East to May, which has a north, outside and east we haven't seen." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Wedding on the Water, east, Floyd | west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW asks, "Talk to Rivka?" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | A little way up the hill, half-silhouetted against the sunset, Rivka Floyd | Strossi stands on one leg and a staff. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, east to The Pleasant Month of May, Floyd | west to No Place To Rest Your Head and Outside to Barren Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "talk to rivka" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | All the response you get is the impassive regard of her aviator Floyd | shades. Maybe the beginnings of a smirk. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x rivka" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | Rivka has the air of a self-satisfied cat: she's petite, broad-hipped, Floyd | with a constant slight smirk. You don't think you've ever seen her Floyd | eyes: she's always veiled, or masked. Today it's oversized aviator Floyd | sunglasses. Fearsome reputation, absolutely none of it confirmable. If Floyd | Becky grounds the three, it's Rivka who makes them what they are. If Floyd | she decides you're her enemy, she will crush you and not give the Floyd | tiniest shit about it; and her definition of enemy is a lot Floyd | looser than most people's. Floyd | Floyd | It takes you a minute to realise that she's naked except for Floyd | thick-daubed ashes. (And those fucking aviator shades.) Her head's Floyd | shaved clean. She's gazing out at the horizon, all her weight on one Floyd | leg, the staff barely needed for balance. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x sunglasses" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X SUNGLASSES Floyd | Floyd | That style of big-lens sunglasses with a shape calculated to make Floyd | their wearer look like aloof and dickish. On Rivka this is coals to Floyd | Newcastle. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "kiss rivka" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > KISS RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | Or, y'know, you could dry-hump a hornet's nest. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Ew." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "That's another game." | |||
| DavidW says, "ha ha" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "take rivka" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | That's kind of ambiguous. Are we talking physically lifting her? Sex? Floyd | Ass-kicking? Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl asks, "East?" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Wedding on the Water, east, Floyd | west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | Hollow Way Floyd | A deep-sunken lane, not wide enough for two to comfortably walk Floyd | abreast: stumpy trees of thorn and ash, hazel and oak turn it into a Floyd | sea-green tunnel. There are fields on either side, a bright spring Floyd | sun, but the path slopes upwards, steeply, promising a hilltop wood. Floyd | Floyd | You've trodden this many times before. A generous way, if not an easy Floyd | one. You could walk it in your sleep. Floyd | Floyd | Reba al-Nasri sits atop a stile, balancing an improbably-sized crock Floyd | on one knee. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the inside to The Pleasant Month of May. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Ok, here's another outside area." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "talk to reba" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO REBA Floyd | Floyd | You're sure she could come up with a hundred more reasons, but it's Floyd | clear there's no negotiation possible, and it's only going to make Floyd | your heart ache. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Same thing, though, really." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x crock" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > X CROCK Floyd | Floyd | Little aquiline nose, teeth a little too large for a mouth always Floyd | smiling, really good at choosing scarves. Floyd | Floyd | She has a straw hat, a vaguely French-looking floral-print dress, an Floyd | extremely French-looking scarf and the beginnings of a tan. The huge Floyd | earthenware crock she's lugging seems heavy enough to pull her arms Floyd | from their sockets. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "take crock" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE CROCK Floyd | Floyd | That seems to belong to Reba al-Nasri. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, ">lift rivka" | ||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "lift rivka" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > LIFT RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "up" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > UP Floyd | Floyd | The choices are a lot simpler: either dive back into the tangle, or Floyd | head out of it entirely. The latter, you're reasonably certain, would Floyd | be a final decision. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "SAVE" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "cf8" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > SAVE Floyd | %% Enter a save filename to write: Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > SAVEOk. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | You fucking hate the idea. This is, you're sure, the last chance you Floyd | may have to contact Jave in a very long time, and that could always Floyd | mean never. You don't know if she can make it out of here on her own, Floyd | either - probably she can, if you can get out then likely so Floyd | can she, but still. And, fuck, you hate the idea of running away with Floyd | your tail between your legs, and seeing the Rebeccas at the next clade Floyd | potlatch and smirking to one another about it. Floyd | Floyd | But you could fucking die. That is a point of some Floyd | consequence. And you're not sure if you're still young and stupid Floyd | enough to die for love or spite. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "No thans." | ||
| genericgeekgirl says, "No thanks, rather." | |||
| genericgeekgirl asks, "In and to the east?" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "I presume this is not the happy end." | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "in" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > IN Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Wedding on the Water, east, Floyd | west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Raftered Hall Floyd | A long wooden building with a complex structure of knotwork-carved Floyd | beams supporting a high roof. The only light are fires and greasy Floyd | candles; the air is smoke-filled, laced with the smells of sweat and Floyd | roasted meat, fuggy and far too warm. A line of tables and benches Floyd | runs down the length of the hall, and on the benches sit a gnarly and Floyd | gruff crew. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south and west to The Pleasant Month Floyd | of May. Floyd | Floyd | > | genericgeekgirl says, "Yay." | ||
| DavidW asks, "Perhaps forage in the hall?" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "use forage" | |||
Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > Floyd | > USE FORAGE Floyd | Floyd | There's nothing you really need to deal with here. You need to find Floyd | Jave. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| genericgeekgirl says (to Floyd), "x crew" | |||
Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > Floyd | > X CREW Floyd | Floyd | Mostly men, almost exclusively white. Mostly big burly guys, or guys Floyd | whose burliness has sagged into fat. The sort of wolf-pack Floyd | conviviality common to groups brought together by gang violence. The Floyd | ones scurrying about serving are probably slaves. Not a scene in which Floyd | to let anyone sense you're an outsider. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "I suppose we need to move Jave somehow." | ||
| DavidW says, "I'm still unclear on the basics." | |||
| DavidW says, "I'm guessing that north is blocked, but south ought to work." | |||
| DavidW says, "I wonder if this is what IF is like for newbies, unclear what options there are, fumbling about at random." | |||
| DavidW asks, "also, what gifts does Jave have, btw?" | |||
| genericgeekgirl says, "I dunno." | |||
| DavidW says, "Try north, and if it fails, try south." | |||
| Zach was just a state of mind, like happiness or penguins. | |||
| Zach has disconnected. | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Trad Romance Floyd | A high-ceilinged ballroom, decorated in full-on shameless rococo with Floyd | fussy strapwork and gold-enameled nymphs and all the rest of it. A Floyd | ring of galleries overlook the dance floor, and you would really Floyd | rather prefer to be up there and watching people prance Floyd | about, but instead you're stuck down here getting handed off from one Floyd | twirling ninny to the next. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Raftered Hall, south and west Floyd | to Wedding on the Water. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "dance" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > DANCE Floyd | Floyd | Alas, you already are. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x galleries" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > X GALLERIES Floyd | Floyd | Evidently this is where you go when dancing doesn't appeal, to watch Floyd | the dancers and flirt and mingle. Still doesn't really look like your Floyd | scene, but it's about 1000% more appealing than prancing about in a Floyd | pattern. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x nymphs" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > X NYMPHS Floyd | Floyd | Gaudy, ostentatious, tits-out affluence. The colour scheme starts at Floyd | gold and works out from there. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x dancers" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > X DANCERS Floyd | Floyd | Immaculately-dressed. Women like tropical flowers, men in monochrome. Floyd | Every one of them more capable of self-expression through movement Floyd | than you are. And none of them are wearing masks. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "u" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > U Floyd | Floyd | The sharp, scraping-bone feel of an edge sends crawly feelings up your Floyd | spine. Ugh, tangles are horrible things. Though you can see how you Floyd | might feel differently if you could make them yourself. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Parallel Crunch Floyd | A convention kind of space, a room that feels low-ceilinged because Floyd | it's so big on the other axes. Resilient carpet and inoffensive Floyd | lighting accommodate an ocean of folding tables. Said tables are Floyd | occupied by nerds of varying degrees of hipness, some furiously typing Floyd | at laptops and others circulating busily within small groups. Floyd | Floyd | An emergency exit leads outwards to a familiar stair. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Trad Romance, west to Solitaire Floyd | With Friends and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "Parallel Crunch was Captain Crunch's younger sister." | ||
| DavidW asks, "I'll just pretend this location is a GenCon gaming room, shall I?" | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x nerds" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > X NERDS Floyd | Floyd | They're sun-starved, mostly young, trendy in an aggressively Floyd | anti-stylish manner, and in a state of ferociously contained panic. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x laptops" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > X LAPTOPS Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x tables" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > X TABLES Floyd | Floyd | Blocky, unremarkable. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "use critic" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > USE CRITIC Floyd | Floyd | It's impolite to criticise a work in progress unless you're invited to Floyd | do so. You feel quite strongly about this. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "i" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > I Floyd | Floyd | You are a Warrior, a Forager, a Textual Critic and a Troublemaker. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Wedding on the Water, east to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Function. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Function Floyd | Paneled ceilings, carpet tile, decor that's dead inside. A table of Floyd | snacks and a sad-looking punchbowl. The non-smell of recycled air. Floyd | Party decorations from a party store. Floyd | Floyd | There's a paper plate abandoned on the edge of the buffet table. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Solitaire With Friends and west to Floyd | Granite and Glass. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x plate" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > X PLATE Floyd | Floyd | The plate's been picked over, with a pile of rejected items - some Floyd | limp celery sticks, an ill-favoured species of cracker - over on one Floyd | side. She loves food, but she has a habit of throwing everything on Floyd | her plate and sorting out what she actually wants to eat later. You've Floyd | been curious about that, and haven't found the moment to ask: is it a Floyd | military mess-hall habit, or is there something going on from further Floyd | back? There's a lot of undramatic, ordinary mystery left to go over. Floyd | Or, to put it another way: you don't really know one another all that Floyd | well. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "take plate" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE PLATE Floyd | Floyd | You run a wistful finger over the paper plate. Keepsakes are not Floyd | something that anybody gets to keep for long in the Ways - for that Floyd | matter, practical equipment doesn't have much of a lifespan. That's Floyd | never more true than in the constant transition of a tangle; little Floyd | point in hanging on to it. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Granite and Glass Floyd | This is a home, you think, but a home out of a spy movie or a Floyd | photoshoot, not intended to be lived in by humans. Ceiling and floor Floyd | are vast oceans of polished black granite; the walls on two sides are Floyd | sheer glass, so the overall effect is of being between two crushing Floyd | plates. There is no clutter at all, each item of furniture spaced out Floyd | from the others like a piece in a gallery. The guests are beautiful in Floyd | a marble-and-porcelain, expensive-tailor manner; they aren't so much Floyd | mingling as posing in groups. Floyd | Floyd | There'll be a garage somewhere, and a ridiculous prestige car, and the Floyd | road out. Floyd | Floyd | Jave is standing by the arm of a chaise longue, flanked by a pair of Floyd | perfect, bored-looking drones. Is the idea here to make you jealous? Floyd | Someone didn't do their research. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Function and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "ah, Jave mmoved." | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | You flinch away, a plummeting sensation in your gut. You can feel how Floyd | the substance of the tangle is torn there: if you pushed harder at it, Floyd | you'd shred yourself to pieces. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "oh. I guess the 'Under My Roof' location has been obliterated." | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to jave" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO JAVE Floyd | Floyd | "Jave! Fuck, I'm glad you're here - wasn't sure you really were. Look, Floyd | this place is a tangle, a place woven from bits of the ways and Floyd | worlds. Super unstable, but I've seen some exits -" Floyd | Floyd | She hasn't reacted at all. You're in her line of sight, she'd have to Floyd | be deaf and blind to miss you. Something's up. Floyd | Floyd | Then she jumps up, beaming, and runs with arms outstretched in a Floyd | direction about forty-five degrees away from you. She fades as she Floyd | moves, until she's quite gone. Shit. Floyd | Floyd | So why didn't that work, when before... okay, right. The tangle is Floyd | strong in some places, fragile in others. It's strongest at the Floyd | anchor-points, the exits and entrances, where the ways feed into it. Floyd | In between, the weave is looser, more negotiable. Still too strong to Floyd | tear through alone, perhaps, but with two... Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Function Floyd | Paneled ceilings, carpet tile, decor that's dead inside. A table of Floyd | snacks and a sad-looking punchbowl. The non-smell of recycled air. Floyd | Party decorations from a party store. Floyd | Floyd | There's a paper plate abandoned on the edge of the buffet table. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Solitaire With Friends and west to Floyd | Granite and Glass. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Seriously, you'd be obliterated if you tried to go through there. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | There's an empty seat at the table, with a set of yellow-orange Floyd | markers stacked up in front of it. She was just here. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Wedding on the Water, east to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Function. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends, east to Trad Romance and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Trad Romance Floyd | A high-ceilinged ballroom, decorated in full-on shameless rococo with Floyd | fussy strapwork and gold-enameled nymphs and all the rest of it. A Floyd | ring of galleries overlook the dance floor, and you would really Floyd | rather prefer to be up there and watching people prance Floyd | about, but instead you're stuck down here getting handed off from one Floyd | twirling ninny to the next. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Raftered Hall, south to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Wedding on the Water. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Parallel Crunch Floyd | A convention kind of space, a room that feels low-ceilinged because Floyd | it's so big on the other axes. Resilient carpet and inoffensive Floyd | lighting accommodate an ocean of folding tables. Said tables are Floyd | occupied by nerds of varying degrees of hipness, some furiously typing Floyd | at laptops and others circulating busily within small groups. Floyd | Floyd | An emergency exit leads outwards to a familiar stair. Floyd | Floyd | Jave is definitely not part of this set; she's moving around to some Floyd | ulterior purpose. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Trad Romance, west to Solitaire Floyd | With Friends and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x jave" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > X JAVE Floyd | Floyd | She's strolling easily around, with clothes and body-language that Floyd | scream security. A bland lack of interest in the interesting Floyd | details of what people are working on, a sweeping, tactical gaze. Floyd | Jave's brain doesn't really register artistic creation as in any way Floyd | interesting; she likes a great many things, but has a Floyd | maddening indifference regarding their ontogeny. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "jave, outside" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > JAVE, OUTSIDE Floyd | Floyd | Jave has better things to do. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to jave" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO JAVE Floyd | Floyd | "Hey. Jave. Can you hear me, or are you - " Floyd | Floyd | Evidently not. This time she spaces out on you for several minutes of Floyd | gesticulating and yelling, and then calmly walks away, brushing you Floyd | with her elbow as she goes. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "l" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > L Floyd | Floyd | Parallel Crunch Floyd | A convention kind of space, a room that feels low-ceilinged because Floyd | it's so big on the other axes. Resilient carpet and inoffensive Floyd | lighting accommodate an ocean of folding tables. Said tables are Floyd | occupied by nerds of varying degrees of hipness, some furiously typing Floyd | at laptops and others circulating busily within small groups. Floyd | Floyd | An emergency exit leads outwards to a familiar stair. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Trad Romance, west to Solitaire Floyd | With Friends and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Trad Romance Floyd | A high-ceilinged ballroom, decorated in full-on shameless rococo with Floyd | fussy strapwork and gold-enameled nymphs and all the rest of it. A Floyd | ring of galleries overlook the dance floor, and you would really Floyd | rather prefer to be up there and watching people prance Floyd | about, but instead you're stuck down here getting handed off from one Floyd | twirling ninny to the next. Floyd | Floyd | There's something a little off about one of the nymphs. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Raftered Hall, south to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Wedding on the Water. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x nymphs" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > X NYMPHS Floyd | Floyd | Gaudy, ostentatious, tits-out affluence. The colour scheme starts at Floyd | gold and works out from there. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x nymph" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > X NYMPH Floyd | Floyd | One of the gold-enameled nymphs in bas-relief on the balcony trim is Floyd | wearing combat boots. Another is applying a throat-punch to a handsy Floyd | triton, her feet planted in a familiar stance. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to nymph" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO NYMPH Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x boots" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > X BOOTS Floyd | Floyd | One of the gold-enameled nymphs in bas-relief on the balcony trim is Floyd | wearing combat boots. Another is applying a throat-punch to a handsy Floyd | triton, her feet planted in a familiar stance. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | The Raftered Hall Floyd | A long wooden building with a complex structure of knotwork-carved Floyd | beams supporting a high roof. The only light are fires and greasy Floyd | candles; the air is smoke-filled, laced with the smells of sweat and Floyd | roasted meat, fuggy and far too warm. A line of tables and benches Floyd | runs down the length of the hall, and on the benches sit a gnarly and Floyd | gruff crew. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Trad Romance and west to The Floyd | Pleasant Month of May. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Wedding on the Water, east Floyd | to The Raftered Hall, west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to Floyd | the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | And of course Jave is the bride, big white dress and all, all the Floyd | party orbiting slowly around her. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends, east to Trad Romance and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x me" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > X ME Floyd | Floyd | You're wearing an ill-advised confection that crawled out of a Disney Floyd | princess catalogue to die. It's a sort of shimmery lilac, there is Floyd | lace and ribbon and poofy bits, and while it technically fits, it does Floyd | so with a tone of thinly-veiled annoyance regarding the configuration Floyd | of your tits and waist. The train keeps slipping into the water, and Floyd | is thoroughly soggy. Floyd | Floyd | More practically, you're standing at the rear of something resembling Floyd | a gondola or punt, and in possession of a long, single-bladed oar. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "use critic" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > USE CRITIC Floyd | Floyd | Hm, how would that work, exactly? You have an idea or two, but - Floyd | Floyd | A moment of confusion. Something's not right with the weave. Jave Floyd | strides away, intent on something, fading as she goes. You're not sure Floyd | what just happened. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "sigh. Jave keeps moving." | ||
| DavidW says, "I wonder if talking to her is a mistake." | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | You recognise one of the scraps of cloth tied around the tree's lower Floyd | branches: a scarf. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Wedding on the Water, east Floyd | to The Raftered Hall, west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to Floyd | the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x scarf" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > X SCARF Floyd | Floyd | The scarf is burnt orange, crude-woven. You all wore them in Lacmore, Floyd | partly for unit identification but mostly because it's useful to have Floyd | a piece of cloth around. She was the only one who managed to keep hers Floyd | consistently clean. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "I guess orange is Jave's colour, the way red is ours." | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | A half-drunk bottle of Castle lager is propped on a rock, still dotted Floyd | with beads of condensation. Floyd | Floyd | A little way up the hill, half-silhouetted against the sunset, Rivka Floyd | Strossi stands on one leg and a staff. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, east to The Pleasant Month of May, Floyd | west to No Place To Rest Your Head and Outside to Barren Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x bottle" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X BOTTLE Floyd | Floyd | (the bottle of Castle) Floyd | The only beer she actually likes. (Philistine. But certain allowances Floyd | have to be made for South Africans). Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | A rough-plastered room that you suspect of being in the back of a pub Floyd | somewhere. Deep in the night. A patchy assortment of people are Floyd | sitting silent, a respectful distance away from the open coffin laid Floyd | out on a table. Floyd | Floyd | Jave occupies the single chair beside the body, veiled, motionless. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north and east to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x jave" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > X JAVE Floyd | Floyd | She's in widow's weeds, with a veil more fetching than modest. She Floyd | sits by the body, a little apart from everyone, face downcast and Floyd | tear-streaked. She's... older? Her face doesn't look it, but she has Floyd | the neat, tidied-away posture of an old woman, or a woman from an age Floyd | when being respectable was the law and the prophets. Grasping a purse Floyd | for support. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x purse" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > X PURSE Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x body" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > X BODY Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "look in coffin" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > LOOK IN COFFIN Floyd | Floyd | You find nothing of interest. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x coffin" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > X COFFIN Floyd | Floyd | He's not old, not young. White, shortish, wearing a dress suit grown a Floyd | little ratty. His face won't stick in your memory, and you suspect Floyd | that he's not the point of this exercise. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "kiss jave" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > KISS JAVE Floyd | Floyd | You can't really get anything across that'll help, and the Floyd | conversation you want to have will have to wait until you're both out Floyd | of here. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "jave, north" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > JAVE, NORTH Floyd | Floyd | Jave has better things to do. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "take jave" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > TAKE JAVE Floyd | Floyd | Oh, if it were that simple. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "forage" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > FORAGE Floyd | Floyd | Now you consider it, your stomach bears evidence of a very substantial Floyd | meal earlier in the evening. Good thing too, considering all the Floyd | spirits. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to jave" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO JAVE Floyd | Floyd | You can't really get anything across that'll help, and the Floyd | conversation you want to have will have to wait until you're both out Floyd | of here. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "point north" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > POINT NORTH Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "dance" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > DANCE Floyd | Floyd | Not the place, not the mood. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "pray" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > PRAY Floyd | Floyd | A good portion of the mourners are doing so. It feels disrespectful to Floyd | fake it. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "sing" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > SING Floyd | Floyd | You don't have much of a voice, and this doesn't seem like the place Floyd | for it. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | A little way up the hill, half-silhouetted against the sunset, Rivka Floyd | Strossi stands on one leg and a staff. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, east to The Pleasant Month of May, Floyd | west to No Place To Rest Your Head and Outside to Barren Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Wedding on the Water, east Floyd | to The Raftered Hall, west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to Floyd | the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Raftered Hall Floyd | A long wooden building with a complex structure of knotwork-carved Floyd | beams supporting a high roof. The only light are fires and greasy Floyd | candles; the air is smoke-filled, laced with the smells of sweat and Floyd | roasted meat, fuggy and far too warm. A line of tables and benches Floyd | runs down the length of the hall, and on the benches sit a gnarly and Floyd | gruff crew. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Trad Romance and west to The Floyd | Pleasant Month of May. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "SAVE" | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "cf9" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > SAVE Floyd | %% Enter a save filename to write: Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > SAVEOk. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "use warrior" | |||
Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > Floyd | > USE WARRIOR Floyd | Floyd | There are a lot of big, hard-bitten bastards in here. In a pinch, you Floyd | could take a few of them down and beat a fighting retreat. But that'd Floyd | be playing their game. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Trad Romance Floyd | A high-ceilinged ballroom, decorated in full-on shameless rococo with Floyd | fussy strapwork and gold-enameled nymphs and all the rest of it. A Floyd | ring of galleries overlook the dance floor, and you would really Floyd | rather prefer to be up there and watching people prance Floyd | about, but instead you're stuck down here getting handed off from one Floyd | twirling ninny to the next. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Raftered Hall, south to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Wedding on the Water. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "use warrior" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > USE WARRIOR Floyd | Floyd | Yes - if you think about the dance as a footwork exercise it clicks Floyd | better with your brain. It still doesn't make it fun, though Floyd | - the dance-like martial arts are very much not your style. But it's a Floyd | thought worth stowing away for later. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends, east to Trad Romance and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x me" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > X ME Floyd | Floyd | You're wearing an ill-advised confection that crawled out of a Disney Floyd | princess catalogue to die. It's a sort of shimmery lilac, there is Floyd | lace and ribbon and poofy bits, and while it technically fits, it does Floyd | so with a tone of thinly-veiled annoyance regarding the configuration Floyd | of your tits and waist. The train keeps slipping into the water, and Floyd | is thoroughly soggy. Floyd | Floyd | More practically, you're standing at the rear of something resembling Floyd | a gondola or punt, and in possession of a long, single-bladed oar. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x oar" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > X OAR Floyd | Floyd | Some light but robust wood; narrow enough to use handily as a pole in Floyd | shallow waters, but with enough total area to make a tolerable paddle. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "paddle" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > PADDLE Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "nw" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > NW Floyd | Floyd | Traversing along two axes at once is a reasonable approach in the true Floyd | ways, but within the artificial structure of a tangle it's Floyd | near-impossible. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "d" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > D Floyd | Floyd | The sharp, scraping-bone feel of an edge sends crawly feelings up your Floyd | spine. There's no way through there. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Wedding on the Water, east Floyd | to The Raftered Hall, west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to Floyd | the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x mouth" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > X MOUTH Floyd | Floyd | Only three sides of the green are ringed by buildings; the fourth is Floyd | fields, and up them, like a seam, runs a hedge so broad and dense as Floyd | to accomodate a sunken track at its heart. A hollow way, an ancient Floyd | road. You feel the accumulated tread of the long-passed, of words Floyd | spoken in tongues long-buried. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | A little way up the hill, half-silhouetted against the sunset, Rivka Floyd | Strossi stands on one leg and a staff. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, east to The Pleasant Month of May, Floyd | west to No Place To Rest Your Head and Outside to Barren Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x staff" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X STAFF Floyd | Floyd | She's naked except for thick-daubed ashes. (And those fucking aviator Floyd | shades.) Her head's shaved clean. She's gazing out at the horizon, all Floyd | her weight on one leg, the staff barely needed for balance. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "use warrior" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > USE WARRIOR Floyd | Floyd | "You want to play games? All right, let's fucking play," you snarl, Floyd | lunging. Rivka... withdraws. It's a neat little trick, a looking-glass Floyd | effect where you seem to be traveling towards her at speed, and she Floyd | seems to remain in place, yet she gets further and further away. Floyd | Before she disappears entirely, she makes a pass with one hand, which Floyd | now holds a knobkerrie, and tips it in sardonic salute: some other Floyd | time. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x horizon" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > X HORIZON Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "l" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > L Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, east to The Pleasant Month of May, Floyd | west to No Place To Rest Your Head and Outside to Barren Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Wedding on the Water, east Floyd | to The Raftered Hall, west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to Floyd | the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | Hollow Way Floyd | A deep-sunken lane, not wide enough for two to comfortably walk Floyd | abreast: stumpy trees of thorn and ash, hazel and oak turn it into a Floyd | sea-green tunnel. There are fields on either side, a bright spring Floyd | sun, but the path slopes upwards, steeply, promising a hilltop wood. Floyd | Floyd | You've trodden this many times before. A generous way, if not an easy Floyd | one. You could walk it in your sleep. Floyd | Floyd | Reba al-Nasri sits atop a stile, balancing an improbably-sized crock Floyd | on one knee. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the inside to The Pleasant Month of May. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to reba" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO REBA Floyd | Floyd | You're sure she could come up with a hundred more reasons, but it's Floyd | clear there's no negotiation possible, and it's only going to make Floyd | your heart ache. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x crock" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > X CROCK Floyd | Floyd | Little aquiline nose, teeth a little too large for a mouth always Floyd | smiling, really good at choosing scarves. Floyd | Floyd | She has a straw hat, a vaguely French-looking floral-print dress, an Floyd | extremely French-looking scarf and the beginnings of a tan. The huge Floyd | earthenware crock she's lugging seems heavy enough to pull her arms Floyd | from their sockets. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "u" | |||
Floyd ] Hollow Way Floyd | > Floyd | > U Floyd | Floyd | The choices are a lot simpler: either dive back into the tangle, or Floyd | head out of it entirely. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "in" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > IN Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Wedding on the Water, east Floyd | to The Raftered Hall, west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to Floyd | the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends, east to Trad Romance and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd ] Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | A sky perfectly clear, moonless, cream-thick with stars. Air agreeably Floyd | cool, suggesting a warm day to come. Below, water so clear and shallow Floyd | that you catch starlit glimpses of its floor. And the horizon, gods, a Floyd | horizon densely studded with islands and islets, a horizon that will Floyd | go as far as you need it to. The little wedding-punt will serve. Floyd | Floyd | This is not a way you have any feel for at all - walking is in your Floyd | blood, rivers you can handle, but trackless open water loses you. But Floyd | unlike the Great Open Sea, you love this place as a strangeway, a road Floyd | that's always fresh because you'll never understand it. Floyd | Floyd | Reba al-Nasri sits quietly in the prow, turned half-away, fingertips Floyd | trailing in the water. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the inside to Wedding on the Water. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x reba" | |||
Floyd ] Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | > Floyd | > X REBA Floyd | Floyd | Little aquiline nose, teeth a little too large for a mouth always Floyd | smiling, really good at choosing scarves. Floyd | Floyd | The starlight suggests a French braid and a sundress, but mostly you Floyd | see the arm extended over the water, turning one way and another, the Floyd | fingers playing with the wavelets as if idly picking out a tune on the Floyd | piano. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "listen" | |||
Floyd ] Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | > Floyd | > LISTEN Floyd | Floyd | The waves lap gently against the punt. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "i" | |||
Floyd ] Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | > Floyd | > I Floyd | Floyd | You are a Warrior, a Forager, a Textual Critic and a Troublemaker. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x me" | |||
Floyd ] Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | > Floyd | > X ME Floyd | Floyd | A light tunic and sandals. You can't see in this light, but your skin Floyd | always goes a glowing bronze colour here, your hair closer to black Floyd | than red. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "lift reba" | |||
Floyd ] Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | > Floyd | > LIFT REBA Floyd | Floyd | That noun did not make sense in this context. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "d" | |||
Floyd ] Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | > Floyd | > D Floyd | Floyd | The choices are a lot simpler: either dive back into the tangle, or Floyd | head out of it entirely. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "in" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > IN Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends, east to Trad Romance and Outside to the Floyd | Wine-Dark Sea. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Trad Romance Floyd | A high-ceilinged ballroom, decorated in full-on shameless rococo with Floyd | fussy strapwork and gold-enameled nymphs and all the rest of it. A Floyd | ring of galleries overlook the dance floor, and you would really Floyd | rather prefer to be up there and watching people prance Floyd | about, but instead you're stuck down here getting handed off from one Floyd | twirling ninny to the next. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Raftered Hall, south to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Wedding on the Water. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Parallel Crunch Floyd | A convention kind of space, a room that feels low-ceilinged because Floyd | it's so big on the other axes. Resilient carpet and inoffensive Floyd | lighting accommodate an ocean of folding tables. Said tables are Floyd | occupied by nerds of varying degrees of hipness, some furiously typing Floyd | at laptops and others circulating busily within small groups. Floyd | Floyd | An emergency exit leads outwards to a familiar stair. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Trad Romance, west to Solitaire Floyd | With Friends and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd ] Turning Stair Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | Turning Stair Floyd | A landing, quite ordinary, dim and unhealthy-looking in the manner of Floyd | something institutional from in the post-war decades. A staircase goes Floyd | down, double-doors lead this way and that, two others lead up in Floyd | different directions. Floyd | Floyd | And each will lead to another staircase, and another, a door, a Floyd | landing. The labyrinth at Minos was just a big building, seen through Floyd | the eyes of uncultured Greeks for whom a three-room house was a Floyd | palace: the Stairways and Doorways are that sense of mazed awe, the Floyd | feeling that the corridors might go on forever, the wildwood in the Floyd | dorm block. Floyd | Floyd | Arrayed in theatrical drapery, Reba al-Nasri stands at the top of one Floyd | stair. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the inside to Parallel Crunch. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x reba" | |||
Floyd ] Turning Stair Floyd | > Floyd | > X REBA Floyd | Floyd | Little aquiline nose, teeth a little too large for a mouth always Floyd | smiling, really good at choosing scarves. Floyd | Floyd | Reba is swamped in vaguely-classical drapery, not corresponding to the Floyd | dress of any particular era, culture, class or gender so much as to Floyd | painterly imagination. It cascades down in folds and pleats and Floyd | counter-folds, spills across rather a lot of the staircase, and Floyd | exposes one carefully-arranged arm. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "d" | |||
Floyd ] Turning Stair Floyd | > Floyd | > D Floyd | Floyd | The choices are a lot simpler: either dive back into the tangle, or Floyd | head out of it entirely. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "in" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > IN Floyd | Floyd | Parallel Crunch Floyd | A convention kind of space, a room that feels low-ceilinged because Floyd | it's so big on the other axes. Resilient carpet and inoffensive Floyd | lighting accommodate an ocean of folding tables. Said tables are Floyd | occupied by nerds of varying degrees of hipness, some furiously typing Floyd | at laptops and others circulating busily within small groups. Floyd | Floyd | An emergency exit leads outwards to a familiar stair. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Trad Romance, west to Solitaire Floyd | With Friends and Outside to the Turning Stair. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Wedding on the Water, east to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Function. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Function Floyd | Paneled ceilings, carpet tile, decor that's dead inside. A table of Floyd | snacks and a sad-looking punchbowl. The non-smell of recycled air. Floyd | Party decorations from a party store. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Solitaire With Friends and west to Floyd | Granite and Glass. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Granite and Glass Floyd | This is a home, you think, but a home out of a spy movie or a Floyd | photoshoot, not intended to be lived in by humans. Ceiling and floor Floyd | are vast oceans of polished black granite; the walls on two sides are Floyd | sheer glass, so the overall effect is of being between two crushing Floyd | plates. There is no clutter at all, each item of furniture spaced out Floyd | from the others like a piece in a gallery. The guests are beautiful in Floyd | a marble-and-porcelain, expensive-tailor manner; they aren't so much Floyd | mingling as posing in groups. Floyd | Floyd | There'll be a garage somewhere, and a ridiculous prestige car, and the Floyd | road out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Function and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd ] Night Ride Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | Night Ride Floyd | A dangerous way, but a swift one. There are branches of the Night Ride Floyd | that are unlit mud tracks that you go down a-horse, post to post, Floyd | watching the woods; there are gun-barrels through desert or taiga, Floyd | mountain dragonbacks, or - as here - an inhuman world of neon signs, Floyd | snaking lines of tail-lights, a grimy trash-strewn darkness. They're Floyd | all the same way, and you're one of those who endorse its other name, Floyd | the Hell Road. Floyd | Floyd | You're behind the wheel of a vehicle: fuck knows what make or model, Floyd | but it seems low-slung and expensive. Something rhythmic and poncy Floyd | with a lot of synthesizers is playing on the stereo. Floyd | Floyd | Reba al-Nasri is in the darkness of the back seat, face contoured by Floyd | streetlight shadow. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the inside to Granite and Glass. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "Interesting out all the outside locations seem to take their cue from the adjacent tangle location, and yet since all of the outside contains just Reba, it might as well be just one location." | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "in" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > IN Floyd | Floyd | Granite and Glass Floyd | This is a home, you think, but a home out of a spy movie or a Floyd | photoshoot, not intended to be lived in by humans. Ceiling and floor Floyd | are vast oceans of polished black granite; the walls on two sides are Floyd | sheer glass, so the overall effect is of being between two crushing Floyd | plates. There is no clutter at all, each item of furniture spaced out Floyd | from the others like a piece in a gallery. The guests are beautiful in Floyd | a marble-and-porcelain, expensive-tailor manner; they aren't so much Floyd | mingling as posing in groups. Floyd | Floyd | There'll be a garage somewhere, and a ridiculous prestige car, and the Floyd | road out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Function and Outside to the Night Floyd | Ride. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Function Floyd | Paneled ceilings, carpet tile, decor that's dead inside. A table of Floyd | snacks and a sad-looking punchbowl. The non-smell of recycled air. Floyd | Party decorations from a party store. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Solitaire With Friends and west to Floyd | Granite and Glass. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x plate" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > X PLATE Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Wedding on the Water, east to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Function. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "push bottles" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > PUSH BOTTLES Floyd | Floyd | It is fixed in place. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends, east to Trad Romance and Outside to the Floyd | Wine-Dark Sea. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Wedding on the Water, east Floyd | to The Raftered Hall, west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to Floyd | the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, east to The Pleasant Month of May, Floyd | west to No Place To Rest Your Head and Outside to Barren Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | A rough-plastered room that you suspect of being in the back of a pub Floyd | somewhere. Deep in the night. A patchy assortment of people are Floyd | sitting silent, a respectful distance away from the open coffin laid Floyd | out on a table. Floyd | Floyd | Jave occupies the single chair beside the body, veiled, motionless. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north and east to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "sit" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > SIT Floyd | Floyd | What do you want to sit on? Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "chair" | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head Floyd | > Floyd | > CHAIR Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "use warrior" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > USE WARRIOR Floyd | Floyd | Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this with its trousers Floyd | on. Floyd | Floyd | There's a point in night, sometimes, when you have to choose between Floyd | despair and fury, and you're done with choosing despair. Floyd | Therefore. Floyd | Floyd | You stand up in what you hope is a dramatic fashion, and toss back Floyd | your whisky, or a whisky which you retroactively hope was yours. Floyd | "Goodfolks," you growl, "we are gathered here to remember that it is Floyd | shit to be dead: job thoroughly done, good show, now if Floyd | anyone here's got two fists and wanster remember that it's really Floyd | pretty fucking non-shit to be alive, I suggest we take it outside." Floyd | Floyd | "Here's fine." A big lad, no question, in a big-pawed puppy way. Floyd | Non-lethal, you'll have him in fifteen seconds max. Floyd | Floyd | "Awright. No gouges, biting, strikes to the head, low and indecent Floyd | behaviour," you say, counting off fingers. You have a moment of Floyd | concern that you're wrecking everything, but a quick scan of the room Floyd | suggests otherwise: little old ladies are rearranging chairs with a Floyd | bloodthirsty glint. Floyd | Floyd | The puppy is used to winning with one big punch, and is squealing in Floyd | an arm-bar inside five seconds. Enough for the adrenaline rush, Floyd | though. You're breathing hard, soaring: and then widow-Jave stands up, Floyd | kicks off her shoes, sweeps her stockinged back foot around into a Floyd | fighting stance, and makes everything perfect. | |||
| DavidW pushes the green 'space' button. | |||
Floyd | fighting stance, and makes everything perfect.
Floyd | Or would have, if the Rebeccas weren't intent on ruining everything.
| |||
| DavidW pushes the green 'space' button. | |||
| DavidW pushes the green 'space' button. | |||
Floyd | Or would have, if the Rebeccas weren't intent on ruining everything. Floyd | A rosy light grows outside the window. Dawn. | |||
| DavidW pushes the green 'space' button. | |||
Floyd ] No Place To Rest Your Head
Floyd | A rosy light grows outside the window. Dawn.
Floyd |
Floyd | Very casually, as if there is nothing strange about the situation at
Floyd | all, the corpse climbs out of the coffin, draws itself up a little,
Floyd | and walks to the door. The doorknob squeaks. Everyone is getting up,
Floyd | now, but there's no panic or shock: patiently, a little dreamily, but
Floyd | quite under their own volition, they're following the dead man out of
Floyd | the door.
Floyd |
Floyd | You hurry to the window; in the pale morning light, the graveyard soil
Floyd | is heaving, the tombs opening, their inhabitants clambering out to
Floyd | walk steadily towards the gate. In the street, the quick and the dead
Floyd | walk shoulder to shoulder, softly, as you would on a still morning
Floyd | with most people still in bed. Uphill. You raise up your eyes.
Floyd |
Floyd | The first sliver of the rising sun crests the hilltop. And a few at a
Floyd | time, people are walking into it, and are gone.
Floyd |
Floyd | >
| |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Mutual Slump Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Mutual Slump Floyd | The room is safely small. There's a big bed, and soft carpeting, and Floyd | it's agreeably warm. You are in good company. Details beyond this come Floyd | lightly and go away lightly. Floyd | Floyd | There are ways out, but they're less comfortable. Floyd | Floyd | The stomach your head is resting on is, you're suddenly aware, Rivka Floyd | Strossi's. Floyd | Floyd | Hey, there's your copy of The Baron in the Trees that you Floyd | lent to Jave and never got back. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | The walls are fading into a nondescript grey. The soft, gentle feel of Floyd | the world is turning into an unbearable fug. There is no longer very Floyd | much distinction between the sleepers and the floor and bed: you Floyd | cannot make out where one begins and another ends, and you can't even Floyd | say what they ought to look like. The light, already soft, is Floyd | flattening into a uniform fuzzy glow, the background noise into a Floyd | single steady heartbeat. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to rivka" | |||
Floyd ] Mutual Slump Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | All the response you get is the impassive regard of her aviator Floyd | shades. Maybe the beginnings of a smirk. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x rivka" | |||
Floyd ] Mutual Slump Floyd | > Floyd | > X RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | No time. You should really be getting the hell out of here. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "use critic" | |||
Floyd ] Mutual Slump Floyd | > Floyd | > USE CRITIC Floyd | Floyd | Most obviously it's concerned with escapism, exile, and with the Wood. Floyd | The wood touches every part of Ombrosa, yet it is not Ombrosa. Cosimo Floyd | is a sort of fairy, an inhabitant of a land adjacent but fundamentally Floyd | separate; thus able to retain a certain attitude of youth. The bargain Floyd | he makes is an end in itself, not a temporary sojourn in the Floyd | wilderness; unlike Mowgli or Crusoe, he is not destined, nor is he Floyd | willing, to return to an ordained place in civilised society - about Floyd | which Calvino, unlike Defoe or Kipling, is generally pessimistic, yet Floyd | Cosimo's exile is in some limited senses a triumph, not a reduction. Floyd | It's a book tied to the age of profound disappointment that follows an Floyd | age of idealism, particularly intellectual idealism. Floyd | Floyd | You could expand at length upon this to unpack the significance to Floyd | post-WW2 Italy, to mid-C20th socialism, to the relationship between Floyd | sainted hermit and ivory-tower intellectual, to clade Floyd | non-interventionism, and to your own special turmoils; but you have Floyd | more pressing objectives. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Double and Twisted Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Double and Twisted Floyd | A long cocktail bar, with a certain degree of wood-panelling but not Floyd | all stuffy about it. Populated, but not crowded: it's late, but not Floyd | yet that desperate hour of the black morning when all is ruin. Windows Floyd | overlook a rain-soaked street. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka sits at the end of the bar in full-on suit-and-tie drag, a Floyd | sharp-angled fedora, lipstick the colour of falling ashes. Floyd | Floyd | Jave leans against the bar, toying with a martini on its last legs. Floyd | Her hair has shrunk to a flapper bob, and she's wearing an arresting Floyd | red-gold dress of some shimmery, perilously-thin material. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and east. Floyd | Floyd | Your guts do some zero-gravity acrobatics. A lot worse this time. A Floyd | tangle's a big lie, a trompe l'oeil, a cloth woven from borrowed Floyd | threads. Usually they're static dioramas, set-dressing, sometimes a Floyd | den made for a single occupant. Using one for this is... excessive. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "hm. Rivka and Jave in the same room." | ||
| DavidW says, "Also, I'm lagging again." | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "buy drink" | |||
Floyd ] Double and Twisted Floyd | > Floyd | > BUY DRINK Floyd | Floyd | Nothing is on sale. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x me" | |||
Floyd ] Double and Twisted Floyd | > Floyd | > X ME Floyd | Floyd | Black dress shirt, black pants, waistcoat and tie; Floyd | androgyne-going-on-femme. Maybe a little taller than you were. Hair Floyd | black, slicked-back. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "dance" | |||
Floyd ] Double and Twisted Floyd | > Floyd | > DANCE Floyd | Floyd | Not the place, not the mood. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to jave" | |||
Floyd ] Double and Twisted Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO JAVE Floyd | Floyd | You can't really get anything across that'll help, and the Floyd | conversation you want to have will have to wait until you're both out Floyd | of here. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "l" | |||
Floyd ] Double and Twisted Floyd | > Floyd | > L Floyd | Floyd | Double and Twisted Floyd | A long cocktail bar, with a certain degree of wood-panelling but not Floyd | all stuffy about it. Populated, but not crowded: it's late. Windows Floyd | overlook a rain-soaked street. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka sits at the end of the bar in full-on suit-and-tie drag, a Floyd | sharp-angled fedora, lipstick the colour of falling ashes. Floyd | Floyd | Jave leans against the bar, toying with a martini on its last legs. Floyd | Her hair has shrunk to a flapper bob, and she's wearing an arresting Floyd | red-gold dress of some shimmery, perilously-thin material. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and east. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to rivka" | |||
Floyd ] Double and Twisted Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | All the response you get is the impassive regard of her aviator Floyd | shades. Maybe the beginnings of a smirk. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | It's sort of a mixture between a hotel lobby and a singles bar, just Floyd | in terms of how it's laid out; there's a lot of wine-red velvet drapes Floyd | and abstract erotic photography, just in case anybody was confused Floyd | about it being a sex club, but really it's not as tacky as that Floyd | sounds. The light's soft and distributed, and somehow the infographic Floyd | posters not-so-discreetly positioned all over the place produce a kind Floyd | of Toulouse-Lautrec feel rather than the sense that you're here to do Floyd | something akin to buying a house or undergoing major surgery. There's Floyd | a balcony section above, around which are distributed windowed booths. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to The Pleasant Month of May, east and Floyd | west to Double and Twisted. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x posters" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > X POSTERS Floyd | Floyd | You see nothing special about the infographic posters. Floyd | Floyd | A memory: Floyd | Floyd | In Masdita you almost never saw a woman outside without a man or Floyd | several other women. Every girl above the age of five or so wore long Floyd | skirts, and hats above about twelve. But nobody took exception to the Floyd | two of you wandering around in shorts and going all goopy-eyed over Floyd | one another. You vaguely ascribed it to genial tolerance of the Floyd | strangeness of outsiders (which was, in other respects, true: they had Floyd | a strong hospitality code and a deep appreciation of the ridiculous), Floyd | but once you started paying attention it became clear that they were Floyd | decidedly unhumourous on the subject. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "use critic" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > USE CRITIC Floyd | Floyd | There's obviously some subtext to the bracelets everyone's wearing. A Floyd | code, there. If you had the time and the inclination to try and pick Floyd | up here, it'd be highly useful. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x bracelets" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > X BRACELETS Floyd | Floyd | Can't be decoration; they're too varied. A code. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x balcony" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > X BALCONY Floyd | Floyd | It's really just a walkway to connect to the second-floor booths, but Floyd | since it's also a good point for visibility, a good number of people Floyd | are loitering around up there. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x booths" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > X BOOTHS Floyd | Floyd | Each booth is a small room - a little larger than a double bed - Floyd | separated by from the main room by a door, a window, and a curtain. In Floyd | about two-thirds of the occupied booths, the curtains are closed; the Floyd | remaining third might arouse more of your interest given less Floyd | stressful circumstances. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x people" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > X PEOPLE Floyd | Floyd | A variable and polite bunch, mostly mid-twenties to mid-forties. Too Floyd | ethnically diverse for almost anywhere on Earth; you suspect this is Floyd | mostly drawn from Upside. The disconnect between those dressed in high Floyd | fetish gear and those who look as if they're just on a low-key night Floyd | out is a lot odder than the minority who are just naked. Floyd | Floyd | Nobody is quite naked, though; everyone's right arm contains Floyd | a variety of coloured metal bracelets. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x me" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > X ME Floyd | Floyd | You're in a voluminous, ankle-length dressing-gown of padded silk, the Floyd | sort of thing a leading man might wear at breakfast in a 30s comedy. Floyd | Floyd | They may think it's light entertainment to threaten your life and Floyd | treat your private relationships as the field for a stupid game, but Floyd | the Rebeccas have at least the basic decency to not drop you naked Floyd | into a sex club. Which is a shame, really, because that would Floyd | really have given you a reason for bloody revenge. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Even though this clearly leads to other parts of the tangle, you can't Floyd | make it through. Yet. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Double and Twisted Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Double and Twisted Floyd | A long cocktail bar, with a certain degree of wood-panelling but not Floyd | all stuffy about it. Populated, but not crowded: it's late. Windows Floyd | overlook a rain-soaked street. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka sits at the end of the bar in full-on suit-and-tie drag, a Floyd | sharp-angled fedora, lipstick the colour of falling ashes. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and east to Floyd | Ashteroth Karnaim. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "oh geez. Jave's run off again." | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | Jave seems a natural part of the group; if you didn't know her Floyd | already, you wouldn't have picked her out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Double and Twisted, east to The Floyd | Pleasant Month of May and Outside to Barren Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "forage" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > FORAGE Floyd | Floyd | You could find food in this kind of country, though it'd be laborious Floyd | and unappetising - lizards, insects, roots, buried water. Fortunately, Floyd | there's a cooler full of drinks and hot sausages on the grill. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to jave" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO JAVE Floyd | Floyd | Again you try to contact Jave, and again she fails to register you, Floyd | sees something else, moves to chase or follow it, and disappears. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | You recognise one of the scraps of cloth tied around the tree's lower Floyd | branches: a scarf. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Ashteroth Karnaim, south to Wedding Floyd | on the Water, east to The Raftered Hall, west to Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Raftered Hall Floyd | A long wooden building with a complex structure of knotwork-carved Floyd | beams supporting a high roof. The only light are fires and greasy Floyd | candles; the air is smoke-filled, laced with the smells of sweat and Floyd | roasted meat, fuggy and far too warm. A line of tables and benches Floyd | runs down the length of the hall, and on the benches sit a gnarly and Floyd | gruff crew. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north, south to Trad Romance and west to The Floyd | Pleasant Month of May. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Trad Romance Floyd | A high-ceilinged ballroom, decorated in full-on shameless rococo with Floyd | fussy strapwork and gold-enameled nymphs and all the rest of it. A Floyd | ring of galleries overlook the dance floor, and you would really Floyd | rather prefer to be up there and watching people prance Floyd | about, but instead you're stuck down here getting handed off from one Floyd | twirling ninny to the next. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Raftered Hall, south to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Wedding on the Water. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends, east to Trad Romance and Outside to the Floyd | Wine-Dark Sea. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | You recognise one of the scraps of cloth tied around the tree's lower Floyd | branches: a scarf. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Ashteroth Karnaim, south to Wedding Floyd | on the Water, east to The Raftered Hall, west to Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | It's sort of a mixture between a hotel lobby and a singles bar, just Floyd | in terms of how it's laid out; there's a lot of wine-red velvet drapes Floyd | and abstract erotic photography, just in case anybody was confused Floyd | about it being a sex club, but really it's not as tacky as that Floyd | sounds. The light's soft and distributed, and somehow the infographic Floyd | posters not-so-discreetly positioned all over the place produce a kind Floyd | of Toulouse-Lautrec feel rather than the sense that you're here to do Floyd | something akin to buying a house or undergoing major surgery. There's Floyd | a balcony section above, around which are distributed windowed booths. Floyd | Floyd | Somehow worked into the decor, a familiar and out-of-place window. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to The Pleasant Month of May, east and Floyd | west to Double and Twisted. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x window" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > X WINDOW Floyd | Floyd | (the Masdita window) Floyd | Her room in the boarding-house in Masdita was a shoebox - a comfy, Floyd | clean shoebox, sure, but the one grand thing was this window, old Floyd | carved wood with little geometric insets around the edges. It was high Floyd | enough that from the bed all you could see was the sky, broken up by Floyd | the highest branches of a pepper-tree. On the last week, which neither Floyd | of you knew was the last week, the week after you abandoned the Floyd | separate room, you'd lie in bed and watch the morning sun angle across Floyd | the room. (The mornings were always gloriously sunny in Masdita. Floyd | Weather like clockwork.) The pepper-tree was popular with songbirds, Floyd | too early and too loud. You can't remember what any of them sounded Floyd | like. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "open it" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > OPEN IT Floyd | Floyd | It isn't something you can open. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | You recognise one of the scraps of cloth tied around the tree's lower Floyd | branches: a scarf. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Ashteroth Karnaim, south to Wedding Floyd | on the Water, east to The Raftered Hall, west to Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends, east to Trad Romance and Outside to the Floyd | Wine-Dark Sea. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Wedding on the Water, east to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Function. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Parallel Crunch Floyd | A convention kind of space, a room that feels low-ceilinged because Floyd | it's so big on the other axes. Resilient carpet and inoffensive Floyd | lighting accommodate an ocean of folding tables. Said tables are Floyd | occupied by nerds of varying degrees of hipness, some furiously typing Floyd | at laptops and others circulating busily within small groups. Floyd | Floyd | An emergency exit leads outwards to a familiar stair. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Trad Romance, west to Solitaire Floyd | With Friends and Outside to the Turning Stair. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Wedding on the Water, east to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Function. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Function Floyd | Paneled ceilings, carpet tile, decor that's dead inside. A table of Floyd | snacks and a sad-looking punchbowl. The non-smell of recycled air. Floyd | Party decorations from a party store. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Solitaire With Friends and west to Floyd | Granite and Glass. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Granite and Glass Floyd | This is a home, you think, but a home out of a spy movie or a Floyd | photoshoot, not intended to be lived in by humans. Ceiling and floor Floyd | are vast oceans of polished black granite; the walls on two sides are Floyd | sheer glass, so the overall effect is of being between two crushing Floyd | plates. There is no clutter at all, each item of furniture spaced out Floyd | from the others like a piece in a gallery. The guests are beautiful in Floyd | a marble-and-porcelain, expensive-tailor manner; they aren't so much Floyd | mingling as posing in groups. Floyd | Floyd | There'll be a garage somewhere, and a ridiculous prestige car, and the Floyd | road out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Function and Outside to the Night Floyd | Ride. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x garage" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > X GARAGE Floyd | Floyd | You can feel that outwards from here is the Night Road: it gives you a Floyd | feeling of burger-grease and petrol fumes, high-beam glare, the Floyd | squeeze of a brake pedal. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Function Floyd | Paneled ceilings, carpet tile, decor that's dead inside. A table of Floyd | snacks and a sad-looking punchbowl. The non-smell of recycled air. Floyd | Party decorations from a party store. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Solitaire With Friends and west to Floyd | Granite and Glass. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Wedding on the Water, east to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Function. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends, east to Trad Romance and Outside to the Floyd | Wine-Dark Sea. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | You recognise one of the scraps of cloth tied around the tree's lower Floyd | branches: a scarf. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Ashteroth Karnaim, south to Wedding Floyd | on the Water, east to The Raftered Hall, west to Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to the Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Double and Twisted, east to The Floyd | Pleasant Month of May and Outside to Barren Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Double and Twisted Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Double and Twisted Floyd | A long cocktail bar, with a certain degree of wood-panelling but not Floyd | all stuffy about it. Populated, but not crowded: it's late. Windows Floyd | overlook a rain-soaked street. Floyd | Floyd | Jave leans against the bar, toying with a martini on its last legs. Floyd | Her hair has shrunk to a flapper bob, and she's wearing an arresting Floyd | red-gold dress of some shimmery, perilously-thin material. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka sits at the end of the bar in full-on suit-and-tie drag, a Floyd | sharp-angled fedora, lipstick the colour of falling ashes. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and east to Floyd | Ashteroth Karnaim. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "forage" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > FORAGE Floyd | Floyd | You don't understand any of the labels, but if you sample - Floyd | you grab a shot glass and fill a larger one with water. Floyd | Floyd | What does she like? So much of your time together was spent in places Floyd | where food was just fuel. Coffee, absolutely. Citrus: in Masdita she Floyd | ate grapefruit and oranges at every chance she could. Otherwise, Floyd | usually not sweet things. Awful beer, let's not go down that road Floyd | just this moment. Something cold. As you're thinking, you're Floyd | popping open every bottle in sequence, pouring just a few drops: Floyd | sniff, sip, rinse and spit. (If anyone objects to your indecorous use Floyd | of a spare bus tray as a spitoon, they can go fuck themselves.) The Floyd | first three taste of... nothing you've had before, definitely acquired Floyd | tastes. The fourth is a sickly fake-hazelnut thing. You wrinkle your Floyd | nose and spit with gusto. Floyd | Floyd | Before you've moved more than three feet down the rows, your tastebuds Floyd | are no longer to be trusted, but an idea's formed: a couple of fingers Floyd | of the crisp, faintly-fruity clear stuff, one of the golden thing that Floyd | might be pear brandy, a lemon's worth of juice, a muddle of Floyd | those aromatic herbs, stir in ice, strain. Not going to win any awards Floyd | for originality, but hopefully not something you'd send back. You Floyd | place it lightly before her. Floyd | Floyd | Her eyes go hooded for a moment after the first sip, then go to you, Floyd | smiling. "Yeah, that should do it." | |||
| DavidW presses the yellow enter button. | |||
Floyd | smiling. "Yeah, that should do it." Floyd | Floyd | Her hand's lying, palm-up, on the bar. You move to touch it. | |||
| DavidW presses the yellow enter button. | |||
Floyd ] Double and Twisted Floyd | Her hand's lying, palm-up, on the bar. You move to touch it. Floyd | The high windows explode inwards: a second later, the chatter of Floyd | automatic fire from the street. Reflex takes you and Jave to the floor Floyd | behind the bar - useless as cover, find a supporting wall - Floyd | and spares you the sight of whatever's happening to the patrons. One Floyd | gun cuts off, another two start up, rhythms mismatched - Uzi, AR, Floyd | AK. Irregulars. There were... two, maybe three vehicles pulled up Floyd | outside, big SUVs, different colours. Gang? Militia? Shattered Floyd | glass is raining down from above. No equivalent weapon, no allies, Floyd | no position of advantage. Get the fuck out. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | It's sort of a mixture between a hotel lobby and a singles bar, just Floyd | in terms of how it's laid out; there's a lot of wine-red velvet drapes Floyd | and abstract erotic photography, just in case anybody was confused Floyd | about it being a sex club, but really it's not as tacky as that Floyd | sounds. The light's soft and distributed, and somehow the infographic Floyd | posters not-so-discreetly positioned all over the place produce a kind Floyd | of Toulouse-Lautrec feel rather than the sense that you're here to do Floyd | something akin to buying a house or undergoing major surgery. There's Floyd | a balcony section above, around which are distributed windowed booths. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka Strossi is over by the doors, dressed as a bouncer. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to The Pleasant Month of May and east. Floyd | Floyd | From outside, very far away, a bell begins to toll, deep and slow. Floyd | Very matter-of-fact, the patrons set down drinks and curtail embraces, Floyd | straighten their clothes, and fade into nothing. Floyd | Floyd | The lights go out, one by one; the curtains fade to reveal shattered Floyd | windows and the lifeless amber cut of streetlights. The floor and Floyd | couches are strewn with fallen plaster. Your bones ache with someone Floyd | else's nostalgia. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x rivka" | |||
Floyd ] Ashteroth Karnaim Floyd | > Floyd | > X RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | No time. You should really be getting the hell out of here. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Goat's Wood Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Goat's Wood Floyd | It's night, and you're in the forest, tree limbs thick in a moonless Floyd | sky. Figures dart and stagger at the edges of your vision. The ground Floyd | is wet with dew. Floyd | Floyd | The woods get deeper, further up. They might lead anywhere. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka Strossi is perched in the crook of a tree. One arm dangles a Floyd | brace of severed heads by the scalps. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to The Raftered Hall and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | The nausea has been at a low background level for a while; you Floyd | expected it to come back, but this is like being in a car-crash. Floyd | Holding up fine one moment, then snap, knocked reeling. Floyd | You're throwing up before you realise it's coming, almost breathe it Floyd | in, undergo some truly revolting coughing and spluttering for a few Floyd | moments. By the time you've spat out the last of it, though, the Floyd | adrenalin has kicked in and you feel vastly better. Bile mouth, Floyd | watering eyes, still kind of dizzy, but solid and alive. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x rivka" | |||
Floyd ] The Goat's Wood Floyd | > Floyd | > X RIVKA Floyd | Floyd | The dark hides it at first, but she's naked except for a mane of hair Floyd | that sweeps down, like a cloak or a waterfall, to below her gripping Floyd | feet. The limbs that emerge from it are death-white, model-thin, with Floyd | fingers and toes too long to be human. Her lips tweak in a dreamy Floyd | smile, but you sense fangs beneath. Floyd | Floyd | A memory: Floyd | Floyd | You'd come off a particularly lousy patrol, and the depot was just on Floyd | the other side of the river; but the river was swollen with unseasonal Floyd | rain, and had turned from a clear sheet of water a stone's throw broad Floyd | to a turbid chocolate torrent, full of broken-off trees. It was still Floyd | raining. A couple of grunts had taken noncritical wounds in a Floyd | skirmish, but more to the point, the antifungals supplied by command Floyd | were about as effective as talcum powder, so you were all itching Floyd | furiously in inconvenient places. You had fuel and ration bars and Floyd | tents, so there was nothing to do but wait; and everyone knew that as Floyd | soon as command spotted you setting up camp, they'd be starting the Floyd | clock on your four days off. Nothing to do but sit and itch and stink Floyd | until the water went down, cheek-by-jowl with a bunch of exhausted, Floyd | grouchy grunts. Floyd | Floyd | Jave was just about the only reason why the group didn't disintegrate Floyd | by the second day. She sat quietly, did stretches, and made tea. She Floyd | didn't lose her temper when a brawl broke out among the grunts, and Floyd | she didn't run herself ragged trying to figure out a fording method Floyd | that was, plainly, never going to work. And somehow her calm Floyd | transferred to the rest of you, and made it all endurably Floyd | shitty. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "tldr: Tea is great." | ||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "u" | |||
Floyd ] The Goat's Wood Floyd | > Floyd | > U Floyd | Floyd | The sharp, scraping-bone feel of an edge sends crawly feelings up your Floyd | spine. There's no way through there. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | The Raftered Hall Floyd | A long wooden building with a complex structure of knotwork-carved Floyd | beams supporting a high roof. The only light are fires and greasy Floyd | candles; the air is smoke-filled, laced with the smells of sweat and Floyd | roasted meat, fuggy and far too warm. A line of tables and benches Floyd | runs down the length of the hall, and on the benches sit a gnarly and Floyd | gruff crew. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Goat's Wood, south to Trad Floyd | Romance and west to The Pleasant Month of May. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] The Goat's Wood Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | The Goat's Wood Floyd | It's night, and you're in the forest, tree limbs thick in a moonless Floyd | sky. Figures dart and stagger at the edges of your vision. The ground Floyd | is wet with dew. Floyd | Floyd | The woods get deeper, further up. They might lead anywhere. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka Strossi is perched in the crook of a tree. One arm dangles a Floyd | brace of severed heads by the scalps. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to The Raftered Hall and Outside. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| Ellison has had his fill of playing for now, and goes back to the Lounge. | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x heads" | |||
Floyd ] The Goat's Wood Floyd | > Floyd | > X HEADS Floyd | Floyd | You can't see any such thing. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "u" | |||
Floyd ] The Goat's Wood Floyd | > Floyd | > U Floyd | Floyd | The sharp, scraping-bone feel of an edge sends crawly feelings up your Floyd | spine. There's no way through there. Floyd | | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd ] Into the Woods Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | Into the Woods Floyd | The fringes of the Old Forest, the most ancient and powerful of the Floyd | Great Ways. You're amid mixed-up thickets of rowan and thorn, holly Floyd | and beech; beyond them, distant and deeper, the crowns of vast oaks Floyd | spread to the sky, every leaf picked out in the sunlight. Mossy grass Floyd | underfoot, soft and damp. There are no paths here, not so much as a Floyd | rabbit-trail: but a wanderer among the trees will always find Floyd | something, sooner or later. Floyd | Floyd | Nobody is entirely comfortable with it, but every walker has to deal Floyd | with it at some point. It's a way home. A long one, but it'd be one Floyd | hell of an adventure. Floyd | Floyd | Reba al-Nasri waits, dressed too ornamentally to go far. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the inside to The Goat's Wood. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "x reba" | |||
Floyd ] Into the Woods Floyd | > Floyd | > X REBA Floyd | Floyd | Little aquiline nose, teeth a little too large for a mouth always Floyd | smiling, really good at choosing scarves. Floyd | Floyd | You'd describe her outfit here as Elven Druid Princess. There's a Floyd | muted palette of pale greens and browns (her eyes have shifted emerald Floyd | to match), a lot of leaf-themed cut-outs and vaguely-Celtic jewelry, Floyd | and a skirt that's part fairytale-wedding and part ghillie-suit. Floyd | Setting aside that it'd last three seconds of actual woodland travel Floyd | before being snagged and muddied and torn, those boots are essentially Floyd | a blister factory. She would look very spirit-of-the-forest in a Floyd | photo, though. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "in" | |||
Floyd ] The Goat's Wood Floyd | > Floyd | > IN Floyd | Floyd | The Goat's Wood Floyd | It's night, and you're in the forest, tree limbs thick in a moonless Floyd | sky. Figures dart and stagger at the edges of your vision. The ground Floyd | is wet with dew. Floyd | Floyd | The woods get deeper, further up. They might lead anywhere. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka Strossi is perched in the crook of a tree. One arm dangles a Floyd | brace of severed heads by the scalps. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to The Raftered Hall and Outside to Floyd | Into the Woods. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] The Raftered Hall Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | The Raftered Hall Floyd | A long wooden building with a complex structure of knotwork-carved Floyd | beams supporting a high roof. The only light are fires and greasy Floyd | candles; the air is smoke-filled, laced with the smells of sweat and Floyd | roasted meat, fuggy and far too warm. A line of tables and benches Floyd | runs down the length of the hall, and on the benches sit a gnarly and Floyd | gruff crew. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Goat's Wood, south to Trad Floyd | Romance and west to The Pleasant Month of May. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | You recognise one of the scraps of cloth tied around the tree's lower Floyd | branches: a scarf. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to Wedding on the Water, east to The Floyd | Raftered Hall, west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to the Floyd | Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock Floyd | Slickrock hillside, orange-red, a hot sun low in a cloudless sky, a Floyd | hard dry heat. Far downhill, the rock gives way to thornveldt, the Floyd | plain punctuated by distant outcrops. Floyd | Floyd | Beneath a lone, broad-spreading shade-tree, people kick back on Floyd | boulders and blankets and camp-chairs. There are meaty things sizzling Floyd | over a fire, a couple of coolers. Floyd | Floyd | And outwards, across the sun-baked rock, you can sense the Barren Way Floyd | beckoning. Floyd | Floyd | A half-drunk bottle of Castle lager is propped on a rock, still dotted Floyd | with beads of condensation. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to The Pleasant Month of May and Floyd | Outside to Barren Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | DavidW says, "I'm guessing that we're essential removing pairs of locations from the map each time we successfully use a gift in Jave's presence, and whichever exit is leftover will be the one we actually use." | ||
| DavidW says, "essesntialLY" | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | The Pleasant Month of May Floyd | You're on a village green: in England, or something very close to it. Floyd | It's a flawless day in late spring, a blue sky dappled with lazy white Floyd | clouds, air clean, crisp and just on the pleasant side of cool. Fresh Floyd | green all over the trees, including the big dancing-lime spreading its Floyd | shade over the green's heart. And evidently someone decided that the Floyd | only thing that could possibly improve this was an accordion. You're Floyd | amidst a rustic and jubilant crowd, dancing with more enthusiasm than Floyd | choreography. Floyd | Floyd | And there, at the edges of the green, the mouth of a hollow way. A way Floyd | out. Floyd | Floyd | You recognise one of the scraps of cloth tied around the tree's lower Floyd | branches: a scarf. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the south to Wedding on the Water, east to The Floyd | Raftered Hall, west to Sun-sleeps-in-the-rock and Outside to the Floyd | Hollow Way. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | And of course Jave is the bride, big white dress and all, all the Floyd | party orbiting slowly around her. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends, east to Trad Romance and Outside to the Floyd | Wine-Dark Sea. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "trickster" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > TRICKSTER Floyd | Floyd | Weddings of this sort are big concentrations of extended family who Floyd | may very well not like one another; a great deal of money is riding on Floyd | the thing, and a lot of people are going to get drunk. It would not be Floyd | excessively hard to torpedo the entire thing. It's not clear how that Floyd | would help you, though. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to jave" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO JAVE Floyd | Floyd | Again you try to contact Jave, and again she fails to register you, Floyd | sees something else, moves to chase or follow it, and disappears. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Wedding on the Water, east to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Function. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Function Floyd | Paneled ceilings, carpet tile, decor that's dead inside. A table of Floyd | snacks and a sad-looking punchbowl. The non-smell of recycled air. Floyd | Party decorations from a party store. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Solitaire With Friends and west to Floyd | Granite and Glass. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Granite and Glass Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Granite and Glass Floyd | This is a home, you think, but a home out of a spy movie or a Floyd | photoshoot, not intended to be lived in by humans. Ceiling and floor Floyd | are vast oceans of polished black granite; the walls on two sides are Floyd | sheer glass, so the overall effect is of being between two crushing Floyd | plates. There is no clutter at all, each item of furniture spaced out Floyd | from the others like a piece in a gallery. The guests are beautiful in Floyd | a marble-and-porcelain, expensive-tailor manner; they aren't so much Floyd | mingling as posing in groups. Floyd | Floyd | There'll be a garage somewhere, and a ridiculous prestige car, and the Floyd | road out. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Function and Outside to the Night Floyd | Ride. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Function Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Function Floyd | Paneled ceilings, carpet tile, decor that's dead inside. A table of Floyd | snacks and a sad-looking punchbowl. The non-smell of recycled air. Floyd | Party decorations from a party store. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Solitaire With Friends and west to Floyd | Granite and Glass. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Wedding on the Water, east to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Function. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "e" | |||
Floyd ] Parallel Crunch Floyd | > Floyd | > E Floyd | Floyd | Parallel Crunch Floyd | A convention kind of space, a room that feels low-ceilinged because Floyd | it's so big on the other axes. Resilient carpet and inoffensive Floyd | lighting accommodate an ocean of folding tables. Said tables are Floyd | occupied by nerds of varying degrees of hipness, some furiously typing Floyd | at laptops and others circulating busily within small groups. Floyd | Floyd | An emergency exit leads outwards to a familiar stair. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to Trad Romance, west to Solitaire Floyd | With Friends and Outside to the Turning Stair. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "n" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > N Floyd | Floyd | Trad Romance Floyd | A high-ceilinged ballroom, decorated in full-on shameless rococo with Floyd | fussy strapwork and gold-enameled nymphs and all the rest of it. A Floyd | ring of galleries overlook the dance floor, and you would really Floyd | rather prefer to be up there and watching people prance Floyd | about, but instead you're stuck down here getting handed off from one Floyd | twirling ninny to the next. Floyd | Floyd | Jave is in the dance, now closer, now nearer, a flame-gold dress Floyd | flickering in and out among the penguin suits. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Raftered Hall, south to Floyd | Parallel Crunch and west to Wedding on the Water. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "warrior" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > WARRIOR Floyd | Floyd | Well, fine, fuck it. You can't dance, and you're not going to be able Floyd | to figure out how this one works in a hurry, but this is all basically Floyd | just footwork, right? Footwork you can do. Floyd | Floyd | As you're handed off from one partner to another, you put your hands Floyd | behind your back, hook one foot behind his, step into him, and shift Floyd | your bodyweight just so. No hands required: not expecting anything of Floyd | the kind, he goes down smartly onto his rear. You translate the motion Floyd | into a broad turn, scanning the room. There she is. You turn Floyd | through the dance. It throws another partner at you - you evade her, Floyd | sweeping around to the far side of another couple. You're getting some Floyd | really good glares now, but without a partner you can position Floyd | yourself far more easily. Floyd | Floyd | Interception. You judge the next arc of movement correctly, get a grip Floyd | on her partner's upper hand. Then it's just the right twist to peel Floyd | him off her and away and down to his knees, and a step to rejoin her, Floyd | hand to her waist, and there. Floyd | Floyd | She's trying not to crack up. "You'll spoil the party." Floyd | Floyd | "I think it's made to ruin itself. Look, if we get separated, meet up Floyd | at the -" Floyd | Floyd | "Wait, who's leading?" You've slowed to a sort of skippy shuffle. Floyd | Well, if you don't know how to do this, why did you think that she Floyd | would? | |||
| DavidW presses the yellow enter button. | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | would? Floyd | The music's quality has shifted somehow, grown... more full-spectrum, Floyd | is the only way you can describe it, like maybe a complete orchestra Floyd | snuck up and progressively infiltrated a string quartet. Faster, too, Floyd | rising towards an ever-delayed crescendo. The dancers are speeding up: Floyd | a woman trips on her skirts, goes down, you're whirled away and don't Floyd | see what happens to her. You can't tell if those are masks or the Floyd | actual faces of the dancers any more. There's no ceiling, no walls, Floyd | just a floor surrounded by darkness, and you know that as soon as the Floyd | dance ends - Floyd | Floyd | You're aware of Jave at your elbow. A hand brushes lightly up your Floyd | forearm, and it takes you a minute to recognise your old signal: Floyd | this is your bailiwick, take lead. Not strictly part of the Floyd | code, but implicit: I trust you. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "dance" | |||
Floyd ] Trad Romance Floyd | > Floyd | > DANCE Floyd | Floyd | No time. You should really be getting the hell out of here. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "w" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | > Floyd | > W Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | A still and starry night. You're amongst a chaotic flotilla of Floyd | smallish pleasure-boats, their masts and rails all hung with lights. Floyd | Beyond the clustered vessels, inky-dark water reflects the more Floyd | distant lights of a city, on three sides: a lake or a bay. The boats Floyd | are full of people in suits and gowns, chattering fit to burst. Floyd | Floyd | Outside the shelter of land, the sea at the bay mouth is dark and Floyd | inviting. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka Strossi appears to be a priest, moving among the guests with Floyd | smiles and nods. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the north to The Pleasant Month of May, south to Floyd | Solitaire With Friends and Outside to the Wine-Dark Sea. Floyd | Floyd | Bubbles burst on the still lake surface - first marble-sized, then Floyd | larger and larger, bringing with them the stench of anaerobic mud. The Floyd | guests make disgusted noises, and one boat turns for shore. And then Floyd | one of the boats cracks in half and abruptly goes under, too fast to Floyd | have swamped. The water's full of splashing people, and everyone on Floyd | the boats is shouting, and then you spot the first tentacle. Floyd | Floyd | It's black as the black water, and covered in barnacles, and the Floyd | portion you can see is about the size of a small commuter train. Floyd | Floyd | Jave has made it through after you. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "s" | |||
Floyd ] Solitaire With Friends Floyd | > Floyd | > S Floyd | Floyd | Solitaire With Friends Floyd | A comfortably cluttered room: warm but clear lighting, lots of Floyd | shelves. You're seated with a half-dozen others around what is Floyd | probably a dining table, and on the dining table is spread out a Floyd | board-game with approximately a billion pieces. Beer-bottles have Floyd | competed ineffectively for real estate, and are relegated to Floyd | precarious edges. Floyd | Floyd | Rivka Strossi is seated opposite you. She has a great many more cards Floyd | in hand than anyone else. Floyd | Floyd | The tangle extends to the east to Parallel Crunch and west to Floyd | Function. Floyd | Floyd | The player opposite you cracks his knuckles. "Endgame." Floyd | Floyd | The rules change. Armies crawl of their own volition across the map, Floyd | meet and consume one another. A cluster of fire-blossoms burst across Floyd | one stretch of the map; in another, an inland sea bursts a channel Floyd | into the ocean. A vast serpent drags itself from the sea, scattering Floyd | pieces before it. Floyd | Floyd | The room has been replaced by darkness. The other players are lit only Floyd | by the light of the world spreading below: jackal-head, skull, empty Floyd | hood, lion. Floyd | Floyd | There are fewer and fewer pieces. You don't want to find out what Floyd | happens when one of them wins. Floyd | Floyd | Jave's still with you. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "undo" | |||
Floyd ] Wedding on the Water Floyd | Floyd | > UNDO Floyd | Floyd | Wedding on the Water Floyd | [Previous turn undone.] Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd ] Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | A sky perfectly clear, moonless, cream-thick with stars. Air agreeably Floyd | cool, suggesting a warm day to come. Below, water so clear and shallow Floyd | that you catch starlit glimpses of its floor. And the horizon, gods, a Floyd | horizon densely studded with islands and islets, a horizon that will Floyd | go as far as you need it to. The little wedding-punt will serve. Floyd | Floyd | This is not a way you have any feel for at all - walking is in your Floyd | blood, rivers you can handle, but trackless open water loses you. But Floyd | unlike the Great Open Sea, you love this place as a strangeway, a road Floyd | that's always fresh because you'll never understand it. Floyd | Floyd | Reba al-Nasri sits quietly in the prow, turned half-away, fingertips Floyd | trailing in the water. Floyd | Floyd | Jave is seated at the middle of the craft, facing sternwards. Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "talk to jave" | |||
Floyd ] Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | > Floyd | > TALK TO JAVE Floyd | Floyd | "Are you OK?" Floyd | Floyd | "Yeh. Little shocky. I'll be fine." Floyd | Floyd | "We're still in range of the tangle, I think - keep moving?" Floyd | Floyd | "Sure." Floyd | Floyd | > | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "out" | |||
Floyd ] Wine-Dark Sea Floyd | > Floyd | > OUT Floyd | Floyd | The water laps softly at your prow, and the sky teems with unfamiliar Floyd | constellations. Jave slips one hand into yours, which makes the going Floyd | a little slower, but who fucking cares. Floyd | Floyd | You might walk together for a month, or a few days, or years. But Floyd | that's not something you have to worry about just yet. You know that Floyd | you can talk, now, and that matters a lot more than what gets said. Floyd | Floyd | Floyd | Floyd | *** On and up. *** Floyd | Floyd | Floyd | Floyd | Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT or UNDO the last Floyd | command? Floyd | > | DavidW says, "That would seem to be an acceptable ending. Perhaps there are other endings." | ||
| DavidW says, "I will stop here unless there's objections." | |||
| DavidW says (to Floyd), "quit" | |||
Floyd | > Floyd | > QUIT Floyd | cheapglulxe quit with exit status: 0 | |||
| Floyd asks, "That game over already? It was just getting good. Wanna play another?" | |||
| DavidW has had his fill of playing for now, and goes back to the Lounge. | |||
