Making the Best, continued
Oct. 10th, 2005 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerNOTE: It's going to be Original Myst spoilers pretty much all the way from here on in--no actual puzzle solutions, but descriptions of the Ages will be pretty much unavoidable unless I have my bold adventurer stumbling around with a blindfold on. Sorry .
SUCCESS!
I managed to punch a big enough hole in the side of the gear to crawl into the space inside, and there was the Book, untouched. I didn’t link straight through—it wasn’t actually easy, and I was shattered—but went back and gathered some more dead wood and stacked it in the generator hut to dry out, and then had a sit down. I’m not actually designed for high adventure.
But I am writing this now in the Mechanical Age.
Odd name for it, really, given that the only mechanical thing I know here is this fortress, and Atrus and his sons put that in to protect a people against armed attack by a fleet of mysterious black ships. Where the people are, is a mystery: the only land mass visible is the fortress itself. But that’s what he called it: the journal has a cog on the cover and everything.
Fortress. That’s another thing. I’m not a military type, but to my untutored eye this place looks about as defensible as a small stuffed plush rabbit. It doesn’t even have a door. Its one capability is to go round and round. There aren’t any weapons, or places where they could have been. I mean, I could see Sirrus and Achenar gutting it before moving on, but in that case there would be the remains at least. And yet, according to Atrus, this place held off an attack by the black ships. At least one.
What kind of wussies were they? “By the Great Horn Spoon, me maties, ‘t is a terrifying small fortress that goes round and round! Hard about, Mister Bo’sun, and make all sail for Tortuga!” I can’t see it somehow.
How much of what Atrus wrote is actually true?
Later.—Well, I’ve come up with a theory. Which, like all good theories, raises more questions than it answers, but it seems to fit all the facts.
It was a game.
It was a game Atrus played with his sons. There were no black ships, or if there were he made ‘em. Him being Atrus, of course, it was a serious game with high educational content. He and the boys built the fortress together, and when the time came for the attack he maybe stationed them on the outlying rocks and they went “Bang! Bang!” at the black ships till they turned tail and ran like the lily-livered cowards they were. Lots of useful engineering stuff there, not to mention strategic thinking, and nobody actually hurt.
Sirrus and Achenar, of course, were kings of their respective countries, and their throne rooms were outfitted to reflect this. I looked again at the note from Achenar in Sirrus’s hidey-hole. It’s a kid’s note to another kid, role-playing. I checked out the bottles in the rack. I’m not precisely sure what two-hundred-year-old wine should smell like, but it should have been more alcoholic than what I smelled. Two-hundred-year-old orange squash is nearer the mark.
Of course there are things in the rooms and the hidey-holes that must have been added later, when they were more, um, grown-up (the cage springs to mind—still makes me shudder), but the sheer profusion of toys should have been a tip-off. What mature psychopath is amused by a clockwork bird that turns its head and flaps its wings? This “fortress” was a playhouse. Again, there’s nowhere to live in it, and I’m pretty sure if there were a secret entrance I would have found it. They played all day and went home for tea. And Atrus wrote up a solemn, serious journal about it, which for some reason the boys didn’t burn when they torched the rest of the library on Myst.
Which deals a fairly decisive blow to the “Atrus neglected his children” theory, which never struck me as particularly plausible anyway.
Anyway. I had a reason for coming here. Off to do some more exploring.
SUCCESS!
I managed to punch a big enough hole in the side of the gear to crawl into the space inside, and there was the Book, untouched. I didn’t link straight through—it wasn’t actually easy, and I was shattered—but went back and gathered some more dead wood and stacked it in the generator hut to dry out, and then had a sit down. I’m not actually designed for high adventure.
But I am writing this now in the Mechanical Age.
Odd name for it, really, given that the only mechanical thing I know here is this fortress, and Atrus and his sons put that in to protect a people against armed attack by a fleet of mysterious black ships. Where the people are, is a mystery: the only land mass visible is the fortress itself. But that’s what he called it: the journal has a cog on the cover and everything.
Fortress. That’s another thing. I’m not a military type, but to my untutored eye this place looks about as defensible as a small stuffed plush rabbit. It doesn’t even have a door. Its one capability is to go round and round. There aren’t any weapons, or places where they could have been. I mean, I could see Sirrus and Achenar gutting it before moving on, but in that case there would be the remains at least. And yet, according to Atrus, this place held off an attack by the black ships. At least one.
What kind of wussies were they? “By the Great Horn Spoon, me maties, ‘t is a terrifying small fortress that goes round and round! Hard about, Mister Bo’sun, and make all sail for Tortuga!” I can’t see it somehow.
How much of what Atrus wrote is actually true?
Later.—Well, I’ve come up with a theory. Which, like all good theories, raises more questions than it answers, but it seems to fit all the facts.
It was a game.
It was a game Atrus played with his sons. There were no black ships, or if there were he made ‘em. Him being Atrus, of course, it was a serious game with high educational content. He and the boys built the fortress together, and when the time came for the attack he maybe stationed them on the outlying rocks and they went “Bang! Bang!” at the black ships till they turned tail and ran like the lily-livered cowards they were. Lots of useful engineering stuff there, not to mention strategic thinking, and nobody actually hurt.
Sirrus and Achenar, of course, were kings of their respective countries, and their throne rooms were outfitted to reflect this. I looked again at the note from Achenar in Sirrus’s hidey-hole. It’s a kid’s note to another kid, role-playing. I checked out the bottles in the rack. I’m not precisely sure what two-hundred-year-old wine should smell like, but it should have been more alcoholic than what I smelled. Two-hundred-year-old orange squash is nearer the mark.
Of course there are things in the rooms and the hidey-holes that must have been added later, when they were more, um, grown-up (the cage springs to mind—still makes me shudder), but the sheer profusion of toys should have been a tip-off. What mature psychopath is amused by a clockwork bird that turns its head and flaps its wings? This “fortress” was a playhouse. Again, there’s nowhere to live in it, and I’m pretty sure if there were a secret entrance I would have found it. They played all day and went home for tea. And Atrus wrote up a solemn, serious journal about it, which for some reason the boys didn’t burn when they torched the rest of the library on Myst.
Which deals a fairly decisive blow to the “Atrus neglected his children” theory, which never struck me as particularly plausible anyway.
Anyway. I had a reason for coming here. Off to do some more exploring.