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dreadhaus-literature · 5 years

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{January Collection} #18

I really just had some fun with this; it’s already late, I have to leave early for an airport run, and I can’t spend hours writing another smutty piece so I went with a more...light-hearted take on obsession. It’s not as wordy, meant to be fast-paced and sweep Monica right off her feet in the process.

Used this for inspiration.

Hometown

Friday’s Theme: Surveys

The census is boring; make up your own!

“I can’t believe how easy this is!”

Monica looked over at her full-time bestie and 24 hour on-call girlfriend, who was gesturing with one arm out in a wide arc, the other cradling a cup of coffee from their favorite shop. The shorter woman laughed good-naturedly, nodding as she switched the sheets of paper on her clipboard to a blank survey page.

“Normally I’d argue, we’re having to talk to strangers but...today hasn’t been too bad.”

Dot slung that free arm around her girlfriend’s waist. “I told you making up these ridiculous questions was the way to go. No need for us to be the only ones uncomfortable through this whole process.”

“True,” Monica adjusted her glasses, “but I don’t see how asking people about their weirdest dream is going to count as a census for our stats class.”

“The census is for nerds,” Dot took a sip of her coffee with a scowl. “This isn’t 1955, if you wanna know how many people are in the world google it. This is the heart and soul of the population! Which is way more important in my opinion.”

Monica just shook her head; she’d let her emotional half take the lead on this particular project for their mutual college class and she was only mildly worried about their project grade. When she got back to their apartment she may have to double check just what the percentage of this project counts toward their final grade...but as long as Dot as having fun, Monica wasn’t going to complain. She’d hated the idea of having to go door to door in New York City, of all places, but this professor of theirs was real old school and wanted an accurate picture of their hometown so door to door was the assigned task. The subject of the survey that students were supposed to ask about was at their own discretion--which was exactly what Dot was wanting to hear. She volunteered to put together a questionnaire that was “guaranteed to make the recipients just as uncomfortable answering the questions as we are asking them!” Monica didn’t know...how she felt about that, but in the end at least asking silly questions made up for the annoying and oftentimes ugly participants as they navigated down another street.

“How many more of these do we have?” Dot tilted her head down, watching Monica count the slips.

“Twelve, so not too bad!” She responded, almost missing Dot’s grimace.

“Seriously? We’ve been at this all damn day, I thought we’d be closer to done.”

“Weren’t you just saying how easy this is?”

Dot poked Monica’s nose with an audible, “Boop,” before continuing. “I said it was easy, not quick, which it isn’t. Gimme six of those, we can split up for the last dozen and get ‘em done faster.”

Monica raised both brows, drawing to a stop on the sidewalk. “You wanna talk to people alone?”

“It’ll make me all the more appreciative when I get to talk to you, alone,” Dot answered with a wry grin, before putting on a pout. “Come on, angel, the new issue of Super-Spider and Deadman comes out tonight and you promised you’d read it to me.”

“i still don’t get why you ask me to read it to you, it’s got pictures.”

“It also has words and your reading voice is the best.”

“I sound like R. Kelly.”

“Who is a gross bag of limp dicks but also has several platinum selling records for having a bomb ass voice so what is your argument again, sweet peach?” Dot fluttered her eyelashes, which earned her a swat to the face with her half of the surveys.

“Fine, fine. Split up and leave your girlfriend all by herself--”

“That fuss isn’t going to work on me, I know last week you got that cute barista’s number because I wasn’t sucking your face in the coffee line,” Dot snatched up the surveys, leaning down to give Monica’s Crentist face a kiss. “Which, by the way, you should text him? He’s gonna think you’re not interested since he’s already text you three times.”

“I-I’m not!”

“Not interested? Reaaaally,” Dot put on her best Kevin Hart voice as she started further down the sidewalk. “He’s Russian and broods when he’s not serving up lattes like a champ. Tell me he’s not your type with a straight face?”

“You’re going to get hit by a car walking backward and I��m not going to help you if that happens!” Monica shot after her.

Dot took a swig of her coffee, in the process of facing forward with a point. “No, you won’t, because you’re going to go--wow, you’re going to go knock on that castle’s front door.”

Monica was so distracted by the word castle she momentarily forgot the argument she was having with Dot about the barista that she...absolutely did find attractive and was too shy to text back because she saw him almost every day thanks to Dot’s coffee addiction. What if she said something lame? ...And when did their hometown get a castle? Monica adjusted her glasses with her free hand, amending her thoughts after another moment or two of staring. This place wasn’t a castle but it definitely did not fit in with the rest of New York’s ever modernizing architecture and Monica definitely did not remember this building always being here. It was stone, several stories high, and seemed like it would be better suited somewhere in Europe than on a bustling city block. Monica glanced a little up the street and saw Dot was already knocking on the door of the next building and it...really was up to her to go ring this doorbell, huh?

This was the last time Dot was in charge of a college project.

“Gonna go knock on this door and greet some ugly motherfucker with a lazy eye and droopy skin because he’s 600 years old,” Monica grumbled, tucking her clipboard closer as she started up the walkway toward what was very likely a haunted mansion. “And he’ll curse me to steal my beauty and then where will I be? Ugly, too, just like him, that’s where.”

The stone steps leading up to the intimidating double front door gave Monica enough time to rethink her decision, but her knuckles had barely tapped against the wood before the door swung open and revealed an...unfairly attractive middle-aged man who immediately locked eyes with her.

“Yes?”

Monica’s voice failed her; she’d been prepared for some frog-looking cretin but she was not prepared for handsome billionaire behind door number one. “I--A-Ah...”

Dr. Stephen Strange lifted his dark brows at the adorable little girl stammering on his front step, but he didn’t interrupt, content to listen to her flounder if only to hear her speak. How long had he been waiting? A glance at the otherwordly watch on the wrist holding the door open told him he’d been waiting nearly 6 weeks for her to arrive, but then that was what he got for using the Eye of Agamotto to peer into the future and ruin things for himself. It was just...he’d never had a fortune so intriguing before.

A beautiful, dark-haired stranger will arrive on your doorstep, asking questions you’ll struggle to answer--not because they are difficult, Strange, but because your heart will be too loud for you to hear them.

Ask her name, bind her as only you know to do, and take the gift the universe has bestowed upon the Sorcerer Supreme.

For weeks, the doorbell had Stephen’s heart racing but it had been nothing but false alarms--but surely, this had to be his stranger. She was stunning. Simply looking at her had the Sorcerer Supreme rethinking his policy on love spells--something he’d staunchly denied even existed because Tony Stark insists that’s the only way he’ll ever find a girlfriend.

Honestly, what does an idiot in a tin can know about magic? Or fashion sense, for that matter?

“I-I am...l-looking for the...A-Are you the...” Monica gripped the clipboard to steady herself, holding in front of her chest like a shield. “Is t-this your home, sir?”

“It is,” Stephen’s regal features softened and he offered Monica a smile, taking his hand off the door frame to offer to her. “Dr. Stephen Strange.”

Monica glanced down at his hand before gingerly putting hers in his. “N-Nice to meet you, Dr. Strange.”

Stephen closed his hand around hers, bending his spine to press a kiss to the back even as his gaze remained riveted to hers. It was an Old World greeting, a call to European roots, and it was a thousand percent an excuse to touch her, and he took it a step further and urged her past the threshold of the Sanctum Sanctorum. He had a better hope of keeping her if she was already inside his ever-changing magical home, after all.

“Stephen, please, my dear.” Stephen swept his free hand around the small of her back as the door closed behind her. “And you are?”

“M-Monica.”

“Monica...what a beautiful name.” Stephen’s long legs drew her deeper into the Sanctorum with a smile she couldn’t help to decode. “Tell me, dear, what are your thoughts on magicians?”

#{theme} : for monica #{collection} : january 2019 #{character} : stephen strange #{ i wanna pick this apart and keep writing because I don't know when to quit }#{ but this was supposed to be written this way }#{ it's...idk what this is }#{ a new style maybe? }#{ whatever i'm not gonna nitpick this to death }

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queering-the-frontier · 7 years

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Thoughts on “Essential Nature Lore”

Excerpted from the essay, “Essential Nature Lore,” by Lee Steven Pierce:

“Probably none of us here will question the proposition that wilderness is beautiful, precious and a thing to be cherished. We give it great value not because of material goods that it might produce, but because it is a source of inspiration, wonder, challenge and awe. This is probably the common opinion here at Tanager Lodge, but I think that it might be uncommon in the general public, and I know that it is antithetical to the views of many influential people in the United States today. It is perhaps un-American to think of Land as something more than a source of timber and ore for industry, as something other than a stock of deer, bear, grouse and bass for sportsmen, as something more than potential farmland, and if so, then I ask all of you to be as un-American as possible for a summer, if only to discover what it feels like.

“Aldo Leopold suggested in the 1940’s that extension of our ethics to include Land might be an expected step in the growth and change of our world view. Just as we now abhor slavery, we might one day think that senseless and heedless exploitation of Land is an immoral and abhorrent act. The idea was not originally Leopold’s; it has been part of the ethics of diverse cultures throughout history and around the globe. It was common among native American peoples, who viewed themselves as coeval with the animals around them, or who looked upon plants and animals as gifts upon which they were dependent for life, and which had to be treated with respect and reverence. This is distinctly different from the Judeo-Christian tradition of Man as master of the world, of Earth as something put here for Man to use and abuse as he will.

“The notion that Land is something worthy of protection, as something with rights, is not only ethical; it is expedient. Whether we like it or not, we are animals with basic biological needs: air, food and water, none of which are infinitely available. In the long run, resources are always limited. Healthy soil is still a prerequisite for healthy crops, and its scarcity will be obvious when petrochemical fertilizers are used up or become too expensive to use. We depend on green plants for the oxygen we breathe and for thousands of other goods, including all of our food. A few arboretum and zoo specimens preserved in the concrete jungle will not be enough. We know that the Earth’s biota is wonderfully complex, and that no organism or species lives in isolation from the rest of the world. We cannot preserve the pieces without preserving the whole.

“Sadly, modern Americans are generally unaware that they are one of those pieces, that they are dependent on the rest of the world, which is hidden from their view by a wall of technology. Too many people don’t know that soil is not dirty, that food does not reproduce by binary fission on supermarket shelves, that they can live without cars, television, frozen TV dinners, mopeds, underarm deodorant, Sony walk-mans, McDonald’s, ph-balanced shampoo, cheese whiz, dishwashers, electric toothbrushes, kiwi fruits, Michael Jackson, cuisinarts, and a host of other worthless items. Thoreau said, “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” in 1854. Nobody listened.

“Tanager Lodge is named after the Scarlet Tanager, a small bird that does not tolerate the noise of technological civilization. Tanager Lodge is a small community that is removed from the technology of mainstream American culture, technology which stands between modern Americans and the Earth that nourishes them. Here on Indian Point we have an opportunity to see plants and animals close up, to feel free breezes and sunshine that has not been filtered through smog. We should take advantage of this and learn something about the world that is so close around us, and upon which we are so ultimately dependent, and we should be generous enough to teach others what we know. Most importantly, we must teach reverence for things wild and free.Tanager Lodge is not a tennis camp, nor a riding camp, nor a computer camp, but it is a wilderness camp. It was conceived of as a place where people could learn to feel at home in the woods, and begin to see them as something more than a stand of trees. On two occasions, camp parents have asked me, “but what is the point of the place? Wouldn’t it be better to send junior off to tennis camp, where he could learn something important?” I resisted the impulse to start ranting and raving about superficial, meaningless, and crass American consumer culture has become, how totally out of touch it is with the universe, and instead tried to stress the importance of coming face to face with things wild and free, tried to emphasize the importance of the sort of experience that we can offer here, without explicitly criticizing the alternatives.

“True, the Adirondacks are a very tame sort of wilderness, but they’re different enough from the streets of New York, Philly, and D.C. to make the point. Have any of you taken a walk by yourself in these woods? A really long walk, for an hour or two, off the trail maybe, and slowed down enough to look around you? Have you noticed the subtle changes in vegetation going up a mountain, approaching a beaver meadow, or paddling up South Inlet from the marsh to the forest? Have you sat in a canoe in West Inlet at dusk, listening to the frogs and loons, seeing the golden sky in the west arch over your head and mingle with the deep violet sky in the east, and watched the swallows go to roost as the bats begin their flickering dance over the still water? Have you ever walked up to a tree, put your hands upon it, and been aware that it was as alive as you are, that it too was born and will die? Have you ever sat and watched a bee forage on a rose bush, then move to a peony, then off to somewhere else, and wondered what that meant to the rose and the peony, and why didn’t the numerous birds in the birches behind you eat the bee, and did all of this activity have anything to do with the Sunday Pine, which has shaded this spot for a hundred years? Have you considered the fact that the soil beneath your feet is literally alive with countless organisms, that it seethes with activity? Do you realize that this is the current expression of a process that is three and a half billion years old, a process in which your infinitely brief existence is an insignificantly small part?

“The next time you stand on top of Averill Peak and look west, don’t see a puddle of water and some trees, see a glacier, a level sea of ice filling the horizon and washing around your ankles. Listen to the ice crack and boom, if you can hear it above the rush of the wind. Now watch the ice melt for a thousand years, watch Ragged Lake Mountain and Lookout slowly emerge from the ice, black bare rock in a sea of white, blue and green ice. The ice is gone, and a clear mudless lake shimmers in the sun, a gem set among barren lifeless hills. You can see for two hundred miles in the clear air. No humid exhalation of forests, nor soot from the Ohio River Valley obscure the view. How long will it be before a few grass seeds find their way this far north, how long will it take to build soil enough to support trees? A thousand years? Two thousand?

“And what are these hills anyway? Two billion years ago they were a thousand feet of mud off the eastern shore of a continent that was as barren and lifeless as the moon. How long did it take to press that mud into rock, to squeeze the water out of it? What lifted the rocks above the waves? What crumpled 2000 miles of a continent’s edge as if it was tinfoil, and pushed the rocks up into mountains?

“The most amazing thing of all, however, is that we can walk around knowing all this, and not be struck senseless with awe. The irony and tragedy of this drama is that in a few hundreds of years we have destroyed so much of what was, and that in a few hundred more, in an instant after so much history, Earth may once again be as barren as the moon.”

On the last Sunday of every summer at Tanager Lodge, the entire camp (usually in the realm of 75 individuals, campers, staff, and visitors all told) gathers beneath “The Sunday Pine,” a great White Pine (pinus strobus) with arching, twisted bows. The tree, so named for its use as a spot for regular Sunday gatherings, fits all 75 (if uncomfortably) under its branches, on a bed of soft and sharp-smelling pine needles. On this last Sunday, we are read “Essential Nature Lore” (always by the camp nurse, Ben, whose voice still echoes in my head every time I reread Pierce’s words); to me the purpose of this ritual is to remind us, everyone seated around the tree, of the beauty, spirituality, and answers that nature holds, and of its sacredness. We read it at the end of the summer because in doing so we are reminded to carry Pierce’s lesson back with us to the harsh world from whence we came.

At this very moment, I am on board a transcontinental flight from New York, and will arrive presently in San Francisco, then on to Seattle and, ultimately, Fairbanks, from where I will depart in one week and travel approximately 250 miles north to Coldfoot, Alaska, a census-designated place of population ten, situated along the Dalton Highway Corridor, just five miles from the boundary of Gates of the Arctic National Park, America’s northernmost, second-largest, and yet also least frequently visited national park, where I will be working for three-and-a-half months as an intern with the United States Bureau of Land Management.

I still don’t really feel like I have a good answer for all of the people who ask me why I’m doing this. I guess you could say I’m looking for answers of my own – and the irony of the cliché isn’t lost on me, though I’ll certainly not meet the same fate as Christopher McCandless. But Wilderness, not nature, true Wilderness, has always held an inexplicable spiritual pull – has me bewitched by some inexorable spell. I am a practicing Jew and Wiccan. Despite Judaism being a constant presence in my life from the beginning, I have only recently come into my faith. I do not believe in a god, but I do believe there are forces in the world which cannot be explained, and that the power which Wilderness holds over me, and a select few others, is once such force. Perhaps this is my own “Essential Nature Lore.”

I’ve always had a fascination with places on the edge of the world – places that are forbidden, abandoned, or condemned. Denali, of course, has held sway in my consciousness since I decided I would climb it at the tender of age of 12. I learned about Gates of the Arctic from a pack of national park postcards I bought to decorate the drab plaster walls of my boarding school dorm room my Upper year – and the idea of a Wilderness so remote, so untouched, and so vast has preoccupied me ever since.

People go into the Wilderness looking for their respective holy grails, an infinite set of desires containing both the tangible and the etherial, the everlasting and the ephemeral. So I’ve been dancing around this question of “why,” because to name my holy grail is to assert that it exists, and then risk never finding it; and also because definitions are hard, and language is almost always an inadequate and bulky tool when it comes to carving out the tenuous notation of emotion, especially for an obsessive-compulsive.

But the beauty of these places is part of it. When I stand alone in the vastness of Wilderness, I know for once, if fleetingly, that I am not alone. That I am valuable. That there is an order, and a greater good, and that perhaps I may one day find it. Wilderness is never empty, because when we know how to appreciate it, we fill it so fully with ourselves.

#writing

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ciathyzareposts · 4 years

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Shadow of the Comet – A Friendly Little Town

Written by limbeck

So, here I am, in my not so austere room, getting to grips with the controls of the game. I can move with the arrow buttons, but only on four directions, which seems fair. Sometimes, though, you jump to the next screen by stepping at the wrong point.

Walking around the room, I notice that, as I pass close to an item, a line from my face to that object appears. Handy. I welcomed it with satisfaction at first, but I may reconsider, as it misled me into thinking that it works with all items. More on that later.

Look at my lasersight!

Fortunately, the all-keyboard interface is intuitive and not hard to grasp. You press O for objects in your inventory, U for using an item, G for getting. Even if you haven’t read the manual, you get the hang of it quickly. And that’s really it.

So, once I have perfected my baby steps, I explore the room and pick up whatever I can, which is BOLESKINE’s diary and a telegram from my provisioners. Reading the diary gives me my first clue: a 12-year-old boy had served BOLESKINE as a guide, so there is a chance he is still alive and can point me to the precise spot in the forest. Other than that, BOLESKINE clearly had a poor grasp of astronomy, not recognising the familiar constellations and just randomly inventing new ones.

The telegram was more annoying, because it said that I have to find my own photographic plates. This is critical to my mission, as Mr GRIFFITH really expects “spectacular photographs”. I hope this backwater town has a hardware store or something.

Request refund / STOP / Want speak to manager / STOP

Now that I have my first tasks, I am ready to head out to the outside world. First step is to head out of my room. I then explore the areas of the Doctor’s house that are available to me and notice some really impressive paintings around. The Doctor is not at home, so it is time to explore the town proper.

The immediate neighbours are an old barn-looking house with a bench and a locked door to the east, a forest without a guide to the west and a fancy house, also locked, to the south. The house to the south turns out to be the Mayor’s.

It’s good to be the Kin.. erm, Mayor

To the south and west of the Doctor’s house is the Pharmacy / GP’s office / hospital of the town. I see a guy with a white robe going in, so I decide to follow. Inside, I just catch a glimpse of him getting into his office, so I try to go in myself only to be stopped by a very unhelpful nurse, who is also the daughter of the busy doctor.

South of the pharmacy is the main square, which we briefly saw in our carriage trip. When I first visit, an old lady, Ms PICOTT is sitting alone, but says nothing of importance, so I leave.

One should never presume

Heading west, I arrive at the impressive (according to the description) Town Hall. The clerk in it is, as expected, unhelpful and does not let me see the Mayor, who is only accepting visitors for a few hours each week and only by appointment. I am starting to get really annoyed now. Why does nobody want to get out of their way just to indulge me? I am a visitor in their town after all. They should show some hospitality!

But I brought the forms for the animal census, and these fine leather jackets.

I decide to continue being nosy and I try the other door on the Town Hall building. Inside, it looks like a museum, with several exhibits from exotic lands. This is where I realised that my lasersight does not identify all the items that I can examine or interact with in a location. Instead, when I am close to something that looks interesting, I need to press L to examine it. So, before I continued, I went to all the other locations I had visited and furiously examined everything, but I mainly got background information.

A few minutes later, I am back at the museum, where I discover a lost page from BOLESKINE’s diary. It describes how the stars are really a pistol rifle shot away and closes with a quote from J.Keats: “Truth sleeps beneath appearance”. The remaining art is just flavour text, or so it seems for the moment.

Some of Parker’s lines have these “good lord” and “Oh my”, I suspect for added Englishness.

So, I continue into the door I can see to the north and into the Archives, where I meet the Master of Archives himself. He introduces himself as Tobias JUGG and he is the first person that seems genuinely excited to talk to me. Of course, true to the character of this little town, he already knows who I am. I ignore that and try to get in his good books, which I succeed by striking a conversation and proving my own love for books, by correctly recognising Shakespeare’s quote. I leave him for now and head to a nearby table, where a I search through a ledger and note down three names of men who were 12 years old when Boleskine visited. The names are Curtis HAMBLETON, William COLDSTONE and Thomas GREENWOOD.

Looking over my shoulder, JUGG confirms that all three of them are alive and gives me directions to their houses. I speak to him a bit more, engineering my responses so that they appeal to his love of literature and history. He appreciates that and invites me to his house for a chat later. He also says that he has a large library on local legends, which the locals believed in until recently. After that, he heads out and I leave the Archives.

I continue wandering the town and revisit some of the areas I was before. I notice that there is a couple sitting outside of the house to the east of Dr COBBLES house, which I now know belongs to one of the three people I am looking for. However, Mr GREENWOOD is deaf, mute and blind from an accident during his birth. This makes it very hard for him to be the one I am looking for. The other half of the couple is Miss PICOTT, whom we met earlier. She maintains her unhelpfulness and we move on.

Fortunately for you, he cannot see that smirk when you say that.

Some more wandering later, I arrive outside of the Dead Horse Inn, a name that seems oddly suitable to this town. Outside is Jed DONAHUE, who also knows who I am. News travel quickly in this part of the world. Not that they have to travel too far. Jed was complaining about…, but he didn’t offer anything else other than some more background. Inside the tavern, there is even more unhelpfulness. A group of card players in one table does not want to be disturbed, but is gossiping about RENATO, apparently a misled youth who doesn’t know better. The bartender is ruder than average and does not open up even after I pay an extortionist’s fee of $1 for his watered-down beer.

Dealing with customers: How not to

My little trek around the village then brings me to the post office. As I walk in, I see a map of the area and I hear some heavy object being rolled above. The lady behind the counter mentions that the DONAHUE boy (I presume Jed’s son) is sick and that she really has a lot of work to do. Clearly, she is only bothered by me and not by all the clatter right above her head. I leave.

Yes, like rearrange those mail sacks by the wall

Eager for some intelligent conversation, I head to JUGG’s house. At the entrance hall wall hangs a rifle, which, upon closer examination, turns out to be Lord BOLESKINE’s own rifle. I wonder how it ended up at the doctor’s house. However, despite his invitation earlier, Mr JUGG does not have any more insights to offer so I leave him alone.

Anyway, I keep exploring dutifully and I finally find the town’s general store. I enter from the south and I see the proprietor, Mr MYERS, dealing with a client. A hooded figure who apparently is in the business of direct parcels. He has left one with Mr MYERS, who informs him that another one he sent to some Mrs GUILDCHRIST was delivered successfully. I don’t know who that lady is, but I know the name the wooded figure goes by. HAMBLETON. To be fair, I was a bit careless at the time and I did not remember that HAMBLETON was one of the three people I was looking for. Anyway, the figure walks out, either on a limp or quirky animation, and I can speak to the shop owner.

Maybe townsfolk go to the general store for their mail because the post office is always “too busy”

I go directly to the point and ask for photosensitive plates, which he delivers with delight. Not only that, but he suggests trying them out first and, if they are not good any more, he will reimburse me. Now, that’s what I call good customer service.

Dealing with customers: How to

Loaded with my new plates, I head out from the north door and arrive at the square again. Heading west a few screens, I end up at the abandoned fishery that HAMBLETON lives in. Before getting in, I pick up a rope ladder, because who knows when I will need to go down a cave or something.

Inside, the place is a proper mess. My delicate British nostrils cannot stand the stench, but I persist nonetheless. The fishery has absolutely nothing of value, but I discover a loose floorboard used to hide moonshine and an old man sleeping on a pallet in a corner. As I creepily watch him sleep, I notice that his fingers are webbed, like a frog’s. I feel fascinated, and a bit lightheaded, but I compose myself and decide to speak to the old man.

Subtle

Curtis HAMBLETON tells me that he indeed took Lord BOLESKINE in the forest, at a place with a cross. On the third day, BOLESKINE was painting / sketching when he saw a “thing”. I also learn of another name: WILBUR. He is HAMBLETON’s brother and probably very important. He apparently cursed CURTIS who ended up living in these squalid conditions. WILBUR is still alive as well and he says that in 3 days the comet will come back, and the THING as well. That’s just superstition, right?

After this conversation, poor Curtis goes back to sleep and I am left to think of my next steps, now that I have my plates and a potential guide that does not want to be a guide. I must also note that the Mr HAMBLETON I saw at the general store is most likely Wilbur, Curtis’ brother and he seems to hold some position of power in Illsmouth. I smell a cult, built on superstition and the old legends.

But we’ll have to find these out next time. I did not make much progress in the game, but I enjoyed walking around the town and familiarising myself with the locations. The outline of the city is logical and I never really felt lost, except for the time in the forest, which I assume was intentional. So far, the game does well in letting me play the stranger moving into a small, closed society, which doesn’t really like having anybody poking into its secrets. It may seem stereotypical, but it works. In the next post, I will try to get into that spot in the forest and get some photos taken.

Some other interesting locations that will probably become important later:

N. TYLER’s house is to the north of the pharmacy. It smells nicely of hot soup, but of course it is locked. Suspicious little town.

There is a well that is standing on its own, but I cannot interact with it at the moment.

The way to the port in which I arrived, is blocked by two burly guys.

The cemetary is a blast of fun, according to JUGG.

In the house south of Mr JUGG’s, I see somebody going in and moving on the top floor, snooping at me from the window. Yet, when I knocked, nobody replied.

There is also an abandoned mansion, with nothing to do.

END notes – CD ROM version

Somehow, addition of mouse control makes the game more frustrating. You do not click where you want to go and let the character find his way there. Instead, you hold down the left button and the character moves in the direction the mouse is with respect to him, but again only in the four main directions. You cannot mouse over items either, which makes me wonder why they bothered at all with adding mouse, other than to not seem backward. Outdoors, there is an option to go to a location using the map.

Time played: 1:30 Sanity lost: 1 (from seeing HAMBLETON’s webbed fingers)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/shadow-of-the-comet-a-friendly-little-town/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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