Nue Quest 10 - The Lost Levels: A Z-Machine Adventure

[Kilgamayan]

> "All right. If we don't speak again tonight, get well-rested, and thanks again for everything."

[Hello Purvis]

> "All right. If we don't speak again tonight, get well-rested, and thanks again for everything."

>"Same to you, Nue," she says. "Same to you."

>_

[Kilgamayan]

> Smile and give Byakuren's shoulder a small squeeze, then leave the storeroom and make for the guest bedroom opposite ours.

[Hello Purvis]

> Smile and give Byakuren's shoulder a small squeeze, then leave the storeroom and make for the guest bedroom opposite ours.

>You give her a small shoulder squeeze, then depart and head for the guest room opposite of your own.
>It is a small, clean room, with some drawers and a place to set a basin, but little else. You'll have to find a futon for it. And possibly a light source, given its lack of windows.

>_

[Kilgamayan]

> Do we know where either of those things are kept?

[Hello Purvis]

> Do we know where either of those things are kept?

>The former should be in the linen closet, and you have seen candles and such in the various storerooms.

>_

[Kilgamayan]

> Got some unpleasant times ahead of us in the coming few days...still, people won't have the cojones to beat up a defenseless braindead half-human in a house of peace, especially not with Reimu and Marisa around. Besides, why should anyone that spent this disaster shutting down all contact with the rest of Gensokyo or beating up their constituents have any right to decide what gets to happen to him? They didn't go out and fix shit, the Temple did. We did. Like hell we're gonna let anyone that sat on their ass and twiddled their thumbs for 36 hours tell us how to handle this situation. If they wanted jurisdiction over him, maybe they should have done something about it. Step up or step aside, as the saying goes.

> Gather a futon and a couple of candles and bring them to the room, laid out as proper.
> Once this is done, return to the front room, put our shoes back on, head back outside and wait for Mamizou at the Temple entrance.

[Hello Purvis]

> Got some unpleasant times ahead of us in the coming few days...still, people won't have the cojones to beat up a defenseless braindead half-human in a house of peace, especially not with Reimu and Marisa around. Besides, why should anyone that spent this disaster shutting down all contact with the rest of Gensokyo or beating up their constituents have any right to decide what gets to happen to him? They didn't go out and fix shit, the Temple did. We did. Like hell we're gonna let anyone that sat on their ass and twiddled their thumbs for 36 hours tell us how to handle this situation. If they wanted jurisdiction over him, maybe they should have done something about it. Step up or step aside, as the saying goes.

> Gather a futon and a couple of candles and bring them to the room, laid out as proper.
> Once this is done, return to the front room, put our shoes back on, head back outside and wait for Mamizou at the Temple entrance.

>You get the room laid out, and head to the front of the temple to front of the temple, silently fuming over this whole mess.
>Time passes, and the village goes to sleep around you. The rain eventually stops altogether, and you find yourself growing more and more concerned. You were only gone in Avalon for a few minutes, from what you remember, so should Mamizou have come back hours ago? Did the gap youkai close the gates behind her? If so, you'll definitely have to do something about it. You don't know what, but something. Possible involving robbing her blind until she changes her mind... At one point, you see someone coming down the road, and have a moment of relief before you note the person is too short to be Mamizou; it turns out to be Rumia running around and paying no one any mind. You have no idea how she managed to set up any kind of business in the Ancient City, let alone a continually successful one!
>Then, sometime around midnight, you see someone else coming down the road, and are pleased to see it is indeed Mamizou. You help her with the bags she's carrying, containing a number of weird Avalonian odds and ends that you do not recognize, and well as a considerable amount of odd-looking silver coins. She tells you that things went well, and she was able to gather up a number of her debts before packing up everything and leaving, and forgave the rest in exchange for some small gifts. She tried to find Isolde, but had little luck in doing so. However, she did find a Marchstepper roving through a swamp she had taken, which slowed things down as she had to avoid being noticed by it. The two of you chat a bit more, before weariness overtakes you.
>You barely remember your head hitting the pillow before waking up to find weak sunlight streaming in through the window. You clean up and make your way toward sounds of activity in the kitchen to find that Reimu has already arrived and that Shou has returned; the latter in the process of making a fairly sizable breakfast. This irks you just a little, food has been somewhat short this year, in the wake of the whole thing with Bhava-Agra falling, but you content yourself with a few subtle jabs at her weight that she either ignores or didn't catch.  She informs you that Marisa will be along later today.
>The morning passes peacefully, as you pitch in in dealing with minor temple affairs while Mamizou sleeps in and Reimu lazes about. You begin to wonder if you were just a little overly worried about the whole affair when Yuugi and K both make their way through the front doors of the temple and politely but firmly demand to put things into order. A conflict quickly brews as you, Reimu, and Byakuren try to hash things out. You remind the Devas that you were the one who did the real work in resolving this issue, they remind you that they were the ones who did the real work in keeping the Ancient City and your property in one piece in the aftermath of Rinnosuke's actions. Quite a lot of conversation happens, as Byakuren pleads for mercy in regards to Rinnosuke's condition and recovery. Eventually, the Devas agree to let Rinnosuke recover before they break him again, which does not satisfy Byakuren. Marisa arrives in the middle of this, which prompts Reimu to order everyone out of the Temple, then challenges the Devas to a proper danmaku battle with Marisa at her side. You are mildly insulted, in retrospect, that she didn't call upon you, but you're not certain if you want to be personally involved with denying them their idea of justice and let it slide. The resulting battle is a sight to see, and you imagine it must be close to what it would look like if all the stars in the sky exploded at once. In the end, the two incident solvers win out, and you're silently pleased with yourself for getting them involved even if Reimu made a swine of herself at breakfast.
>Reimu chooses to remain at the temple, while Marisa leaves after visiting Rinnosuke and talking with Byakuren behind closed doors for a little while. Reimu's instincts prove to be correct, as shortly after sunset, Remilia Scarlet and her maid appears at the Temple's doorstep. In contrast to the bluntness of the oni, Remilia is achingly polite in her airs of nobility; a thing that rubs you the wrong way even as you appreciate she isn't making overt demands. Still, her desire is clear, her household had been violated and she demands satisfaction for it. Showing her Rinnosuke's condition does a fair amount to mollify her vengeance, though she makes a joke about her maid taking a few fingers as payment; which you suspect might become anything but a joke in a heartbeat. Eventually, over supper prepared by the maid, you manage to convince her that he has suffered enough, given she received a full and largely unintrusive restoration of her money. Satisfied with this, she leaves a small offering to the temple, which quietly but visibly irritates Reimu greatly. Feeling satisfied the worst threats are dealt with, you return home that night, with the tanuki following behind you. Even with your escort, she is very nearly robbed by Kisume.
>The next few days in the Ancient City are active, to say the least. While the rioting has come to an end, there's still quite a number of oni who feel that that they owe their neighbors a bit of payback and brawls are especially common.Thankfully, this results in no damage to your tavern, but it does mean that it takes more time for things to stabilize again. It takes about a week before you start to notice the streets are markedly more calm, and another before you can really tell yourself the good old days are back. Then you can finally get your door replaced, and put away the sheet you had hung over the threshold.
>Soon after, Koyomi appears at your bar, much to your surprise as you had forgotten invitation. You find she is all too willing to line your coffers, while you pry at her here and there. You learn that she is very much the typical tengu, loyal to a fault and a bit too orderly for her own good. But she has a nice sense of humor and is a bit of a gossip as well. You aren't able to lure her upstairs to show her your collection of uncut stones that night, but you're pleased to see that she's able to return a couple evenings later. When she returns the third time, she doesn't leave til well after closing time.
>Mamizou takes to roving around on her own around the city every so often while she is there. She is evasive when asked about her activities, but this isn't surprising given she's Mamizou. She also spends a lot of time wandering the Ancient City, and much to your irritation takes up an interest in hanging out around The Felt. You suspect she might have done it specifically to irk you. These things aside, it's wonderful to have her back, and the two of you fall into old patterns quickly. She seems to prefer staying around the Myouren Temple and the human village, but she visits you often enough, and you find yourself at the temple more often to check on Rinnosuke.
>For the first couple days, Rinnosuke remains unresponsive as ever, and as the temple inhabitants trickle back from the Ancient City, they divide up their duties of taking care of him. Then, he begins to move about more on the third day, until he's practically back to normal in physical term by that night. But he does not speak, nor does he seem to really pay much attention to the world beyond his own physical needs. After nearly a week, he utters his first words to you and Byakuren, staring directly at the two of you and saying, "Let me go."
>He does not take refusal well, and Byakuren asks you to leave as he shouts in response. You resist at first, but you're smart enough to realize that Byakuren is far better able to deal with it than you are, and giving into anger would just be giving him what he wants. But you do stay outside of the room, silently fuming as he rages at Byakuren for longer than you can keep track of. The others join you as time passes, listening as he begins to try to bargain with Byakuren, then pleading, then threatening and raging again. This continues for some time, before he finally breaks into sobs, begging to be allowed to return to his store. Byakuren continues to politely and calmly refuse to do so until he is deemed better, and remains with him until he finally collapse exhausts himself to sleep.
>Byakuren meets with everyone afterward, clearly emotionally exhausted herself, as she lays out her plan for dealing with this part of the treatment. Everything done for him must be in the name of charity, it cannot be allowed that there was any real exchange involved with this work; he cannot derive any power from it. Moreover, no one can allowed themselves to be baited by him and perform something that may fall into his notions of debt, do not even allow him to help clean up.  Not only for their safety, but his own. She explains that what they are doing will be one part trying to dissuade him from his ideals, and another part trying to break him of what she perceives as an addiction to exchange. Until he can deal with it in a healthy fashion, he cannot be allowed to do anything of that nature, all things must be freely given.
>Things proceed slowly from there. Rinnosuke is not very responsive to Byakuren's attempts to talk with him, while he seems to become increasingly desperate to try to do anything to satisfy his need to trade things. You are not entirely certain if it is because he is trying to find a way to escape with whatever sparks he may harvest, or if he's even thought that far ahead. As time goes on, he tries more and more tricks to get some kind of transaction from whomever is his caretaker at the moment, and grows more and more forlorn as he fail. Eventually, he stops trying at all, becoming entirely despondent. Now, Byakuren says at a nightly talk on the subject, the real work may begin.
>You have gotten a Good End!
>Let's all drink deliciously and responsibly!

[Kilgamayan]

Phew.  Well done on maintaining this as well as you did in the face of what was probably the highest level of negative attitude flares from the playerbase in any of your games to date.

I meant to go to bed an hour ago so my own brief thoughts on the game will have to wait until tomorrow. However, I will at least dump my list of prepared questions.

> I remember you saying you expected us to open the game spending more time playing tricks and whatnot. What sort of shenanigans did you specifically expect us to get into?
> Was Ichiro's pick of our cards from Tewi really just a conscious decision and an unfortunate coincidence, or was he under Rinnosuke influence to further obscure the spell card trail by making them pass through multiple sets of hands?
> You mentioned soon after the release of Ten Desires that there were two characters placed and that one would be really hard to miss while the other we'd need to go out of our way and hunt around a bit to find. Presumably Mamizou was the former. Who was the latter?
> Could we have gotten down proper with Mystia?
> Would Shuuei have actually gone with us if Mystia wasn't already committed to the party? If so, how would she have behaved while sneaking around the shop?
> What was the actual time countdown on letting Rinnosuke go about his business before shit was fucked for good?
> Would his plan have actually worked, given it was fueled by stolen money and stolen spellcard energy (however much he would have liked to argue either of those assessments)?
> Was there any actual way to argue Rinnosuke down or otherwise stop him without bothering with the sword?
> What would have happened if we went the path of giving stuff up to get through the barriers?
> What was the intended solution to Brythonic communication during the welding process before Ten Desires dropped Mamizou in your lap?
> What was the alternate planned course of Avalonian events, where the Seelie blacksmith would have had to get involved?
> If we had killed Rinnosuke, would he have stayed dead? If so, what would the consequences have been, aside from massive disapproval from the Temple?

> Why did Red Bull break our wings? Red Bull is supposed to give you wings! :C
> Where was Koishi the whole time? After every other Extra boss ended up playing some sort of role I figured you'd throw her in somehow.

And...

> With no update on the matter, can we assume Iku is still mute?

[Hello Purvis]

Phew.  Well done on maintaining this as well as you did in the face of what was probably the highest level of negative attitude flares from the playerbase in any of your games to date.

I meant to go to bed an hour ago so my own brief thoughts on the game will have to wait until tomorrow. However, I will at least dump my list of prepared questions.

> I remember you saying you expected us to open the game spending more time playing tricks and whatnot. What sort of shenanigans did you specifically expect us to get into?
> Was Ichiro's pick of our cards from Tewi really just a conscious decision and an unfortunate coincidence, or was he under Rinnosuke influence to further obscure the spell card trail by making them pass through multiple sets of hands?
> You mentioned soon after the release of Ten Desires that there were two characters placed and that one would be really hard to miss while the other we'd need to go out of our way and hunt around a bit to find. Presumably Mamizou was the former. Who was the latter?
> Could we have gotten down proper with Mystia?
> Would Shuuei have actually gone with us if Mystia wasn't already committed to the party? If so, how would she have behaved while sneaking around the shop?
> What was the actual time countdown on letting Rinnosuke go about his business before shit was fucked for good?
> Would his plan have actually worked, given it was fueled by stolen money and stolen spellcard energy (however much he would have liked to argue either of those assessments)?
> Was there any actual way to argue Rinnosuke down or otherwise stop him without bothering with the sword?
> What would have happened if we went the path of giving stuff up to get through the barriers?
> What was the intended solution to Brythonic communication during the welding process before Ten Desires dropped Mamizou in your lap?
> What was the alternate planned course of Avalonian events, where the Seelie blacksmith would have had to get involved?
> If we had killed Rinnosuke, would he have stayed dead? If so, what would the consequences have been, aside from massive disapproval from the Temple?

> Why did Red Bull break our wings? Red Bull is supposed to give you wings! :C
> Where was Koishi the whole time? After every other Extra boss ended up playing some sort of role I figured you'd throw her in somehow.

And...

> With no update on the matter, can we assume Iku is still mute?

>I fully expected yalls to sneak into SDM, into the upper reaches of Youkai mountain, and so on.
>Both. The way that the spell, for lack of better term, worked was to engineer a set of coincidences that would deliver what he wanted into his hands, once something was done to get them out of your hands.
>The other character was Kyouko.
>You could have formed a relationship with Mystia, and I'm surprised it was dropped after so long. I had a whole scene planned with her turning various shades of red.
>Shuuei would have been more likely to do so without Mystia around; she doesn't like gossipy people. As for sneaking around, that depends on the situation.
>Yes, and it depended highly on your actions. Note that even if you decided to go along with it (a possibility I had considered), it wouldn't have been the end of the game.
>It would have worked to an extent, there would have been consequences unforeseen that would have made it unsustainable.
>You could have stopped Rinnosuke a couple of ways. The sword was the path of least resistance in that regard. You would not have argued him down without him actually succeeding first.
>Going through the path of giving stuff up would have been one of the ways to end it. The exchanges he was proposing would have given him quite a bit of extra energy, which is why he proposed it. He would have asked for your danmaku, your shapeshifting, and then your physical strength (while Nue is on the low end of the beef scale, she is still a youkai).
>There wasn't a solution to communicating without the sword. At the same time, there wasn't much need for it.
>The alternate course was intended to be the main one, I didn't anticipate you would get on well enough with Sir Kay to keep him from trying to beat the tar out of you in the first encounter for being suspiciously non-human. After that, I intended for you to fall in with a Seelie; likely Isolde or possibly someone else, who would help you convince a masked Seelie smith named Vivian to help restore the weapon.
>Rinnosuke would not come back if killed. You would lose all friendship among the temple inhabitants save Bykauren, who might well have taken to tossing you into the makeshift sanitarian. Being sealed by Reimu is a distinct likelihood.
>The Red Bull does not care for your wings.
>Koishi was doing what Koishi does, gawking at the chaos. She even followed you for awhile before finding something more interesting. Which while? A while.

>_

[Oldmansour]

>Had you read The Last Unicorn before coming up with the Red Bull?
>Was it possible to get into Byakuren's pants?
>What role did you have in mind for Kyouko?

[Hello Purvis]

>Had you read The Last Unicorn before coming up with the Red Bull?
>Was it possible to get into Byakuren's pants?
>What role did you have in mind for Kyouko?

>Yep.
>Immediately? No. But you could have tried to make a romantic option of it.
>[Redacted]

[Oldmansour]

>When Marisa read an excerpt from The Inferno, was that merely coincidence, or did it have some signifigance?
>Where'd you get the idea to bring Arthurian myth into your universe here?
>Was your king Arthur 'Arthur', or 'Arturia'?

[Solais]

Good game, good game. I'm not even that upset anymore that Kilga dominates the game, it's just an interesting thing to read, he can do better than the likes of me. Also Kisume Quest? You've been really wanting to get that done, right?

[Kilgamayan]

> Would those extra trades to get through have overloaded him, or what?
> What would said unforeseen consequences have been had he succeeded?
> Did Shou ever actually apologize to Merlin?
> Is Iku still mute, as far as Nue is aware?
> Does Utsuho even remember her encounter with Nue on Gensokyo Isle?

> Where does Murasa get off severing ties with us for killing one person in a fit of clouded judgment when she killed so many under similar circumstances? >:|

Good game, good game. I'm not even that upset anymore that Kilga dominates the game, it's just an interesting thing to read, he can do better than the likes of me.

Nothing was stopping you from jumping in at any time.

[Hello Purvis]

>When Marisa read an excerpt from The Inferno, was that merely coincidence, or did it have some signifigance?
>Where'd you get the idea to bring Arthurian myth into your universe here?
>Was your king Arthur 'Arthur', or 'Arturia'?

>It was a coincidence. I literally just picked some bit of classical literature out of my head that would be easy to quote in a phrase.
>A few reasons. One is that fandom and canon like to insinuate there are other worlds out there (Yumemi's home, for instance), and it seemed to be that the West needs a home too. Arthurian legends slide into the mold very easily, having a kind of mythological root, but no real hard source that you can definitively point to and say, "That's the main canon right there" As well, it too is prone to a number of fanworks that I can draw from as I like, and given it is already a mishmash of legendary things (you have Muslims and the Roman Empire existing at the same time across various takes on it), it's easy to expand out into a Good Parts version of Middle Ages storytelling and beliefs. If you'll notice, I had references to Rome and Vikings pretty much in the same breath, and hints at Beowulf. Another thing that no one would have caught without a lot of digging was that it was the home of the shadow magician that Patchouli made a vague reference to in Iku Quest, who was taken from Lord Dunsany's The Charwoman's Shadow, and if there's anyone who is Western Touhou, it's Lord Dunsany.
>Yes. Or rather, King Pendragon  might be either. Too bad you couldn't have found a way to ask his/her foster brother about it~~~

> Would those extra trades to get through have overloaded him, or what?
> What would said unforeseen consequences have been had he succeeded?
> Did Shou ever actually apologize to Merlin?
> Is Iku still mute, as far as Nue is aware?
> Does Utsuho even remember her encounter with Nue on Gensokyo Isle?

> Where does Murasa get off severing ties with us for killing one person in a fit of clouded judgment when she killed so many under similar circumstances? >:|

>They would not have. Rather, they would have given him the confidence to use them directly against you, and you would have gotten a real fight out of it while hobbled. You would have had to beat him to reclaim what he took from you.
>Twisting reality to implicitly allow for pretty much anyone to bargain for anything would have quickly lead to significant problems of Gensokyo starting to unravel as place when people started to pick at the fabric of it's reality.
>She did. Also Tenshi showed up after breakfast; I knew I forgot something. =I
>Iku is still under a vow of silence.
>Utsuho remembers it quite well. She's just letting people suspect it was anything other than a dream.
>She was young and stupid then! You would be old and stupid now >=|

[Kilgamayan]

> So Tenshi called Suwako's bluff? Good on her. Hopefully she at least appreciated the setup for what it was, even if it was targeted at her.
> Did Tenshi's opinion of Nue drop as a result of all this, given it was pretty damn obvious we were trying to embarrass her in front of her students?

> Did Utsuho at least sort of regret mugging Nue while the two were talking?
> Did Nue maintain any of the various side contacts she made? Visting Flandre again, or the heretics, or joining Utsuho on the roof for philosophy time?

> Would Rinnosuke have actually tried funny stuff with our shapeshifting if we went that direction? Presumably he wouldn't have the extended knowledge of what's a good idea and what's a bad idea that Nue got through experience.
> How would things have returned to normal if he pulled it off? Would Gensokyo itself eventually hit a restart button of its own, would he have undone his own work once he saw the destruction it caused, or would he have been killed by the pressure of maintaining it in the face of apocalyptic force?

[Hello Purvis]

> So Tenshi called Suwako's bluff? Good on her. Hopefully she at least appreciated the setup for what it was, even if it was targeted at her.
> Did Tenshi's opinion of Nue drop as a result of all this, given it was pretty damn obvious we were trying to embarrass her in front of her students?

> Did Utsuho at least sort of regret mugging Nue while the two were talking?
> Did Nue maintain any of the various side contacts she made? Visting Flandre again, or the heretics, or joining Utsuho on the roof for philosophy time?

> Would Rinnosuke have actually tried funny stuff with our shapeshifting if we went that direction? Presumably he wouldn't have the extended knowledge of what's a good idea and what's a bad idea that Nue got through experience.
> How would things have returned to normal if he pulled it off? Would Gensokyo itself eventually hit a restart button of its own, would he have undone his own work once he saw the destruction it caused, or would he have been killed by the pressure of maintaining it in the face of apocalyptic force?

>Nue got a report from Sanae a day or so later; Tenshi tried to wriggle out of it at first, but when pressed on the issue she shouted "Fine!" and went along with it. Suwako managed to mollify her with some sweets when the trick was revealed.
>Who knows how Tenshi thinks?
>Utsuho doesn't especially regret it, given the circumstances.
>Perhaps you will find out!
>Rinnosuke wouldn't have been able to use the shapeshifting to his advantage, it's too unique to Nue.
>It depends partially on how you approached it. If you remained antagonistic, changes are you would have forced him to use enough sparks on other things that the transition would have been especially sloppy, for lack of better terms, and the intended changes would not always work, and when they didn't work it would cause problems. His focus would have been more on trying to fix it than restore the old order, but he could have been talked out of it. If you did ally with him, unless you drained him heavily first, the changes would have put into place much more firmly, and there would quickly be other forces at work trying to undo it. I hadn't fleshed it out very thoroughly once it became plain it wasn't going to be a problem.

[Hanzo K.]

Regardless, a gem of a game as always.
Nobody's done the BGMs yet have they?

Regardless, I kinda liked having to break Rinnosuke. It was a rather practical resolution in my opinion.
Nue may not have liked it, but that's Nue. Different strokes for different folks, as they say.

>BGM: Breaking Rinnosuke
>BGM: VS Red Bull
>BGM: Sparring with Sir Kay
>BGM: Finding Mamizou
>BGM: Sword Reforged

[GuyYouMetOnline]

>BGM: Encounter with the jet.
>BGM: Match against Tenshi's students.

[Kilgamayan]

> Did you expect promiscuity? It seemed like you were kinda nudging in that direction with the brief discussion about the size of Nue's bed, but I had a hard time bringing myself to turn her into a whore.
> Where was Kyouko? I wanted to look for her but there seemed to be zero hints as to her whereabouts and there was just too much else to do to spend time stumping blindly around Gensokyo for a single person Nue didn't actually have a legitimate reason to be looking for regardless of what I wanted as a player.
> What became of the gem used to buy the mahogany?
> Is this it for Koyomi, or could we see her again, even if only in passing? Or is Koyomi Quest coming down the pipe soon?

I think this will probably be it for these sorts of questions, barring interesting answers, but no guarantees. Ideally, my next post (which would be several hours down the line) should be my personal assessment of the game, where I plan to cover the game itself, Rinnosuke, Mystia, and maybe a couple of other things. I certainly wouldn't mind the parser's assessment of the game in the meantime, though.

[Hello Purvis]

>BGM: Breaking Rinnosuke
>BGM: VS Red Bull
>BGM: Sparring with Sir Kay
>BGM: Finding Mamizou
>BGM: Sword Reforged

>A Battle of Wills
>Tyrant Flame!
>A Round We Go!
>It's a Tanuki!
>The Enemy of My Enemy

>BGM: Encounter with the jet.
>BGM: Match against Tenshi's students.

>Too fast!
>Five On One is Fair

> Did you expect promiscuity? It seemed like you were kinda nudging in that direction with the brief discussion about the size of Nue's bed, but I had a hard time bringing myself to turn her into a whore.
> Where was Kyouko? I wanted to look for her but there seemed to be zero hints as to her whereabouts and there was just too much else to do to spend time stumping blindly around Gensokyo for a single person Nue didn't actually have a legitimate reason to be looking for regardless of what I wanted as a player.
> What became of the gem used to buy the mahogany?
> Is this it for Koyomi, or could we see her again, even if only in passing? Or is Koyomi Quest coming down the pipe soon?

I think this will probably be it for these sorts of questions, barring interesting answers, but no guarantees. Ideally, my next post (which would be several hours down the line) should be my personal assessment of the game, where I plan to cover the game itself, Rinnosuke, Mystia, and maybe a couple of other things. I certainly wouldn't mind the parser's assessment of the game in the meantime, though.

>Did I foresee the possibility? Of course. Did I expect it to happen? Not really.
>She was in the mountains. Had you go chasing after the jet, you might have seen her.
>I have yet to decide!
>I keep a registry of my NPCs these days. You may or may not meet her again.

Thoughts will be shared later.

[Kilgamayan]

You're waiting for me to post mine first, aren't you? >_>

[Hello Purvis]

Can't blame a guy for being efficient.

[Kilgamayan]

Aha, I knew there was something I forgot to ask about.

> Would Rinnosuke have gone for the trade of Marisa's clothing, and if he did, would it have broken what he was doing? If he would never have gone for it or if it didn't deter him, was there any way into tricking him into doing something self-destructive like that?

Also thoughts still aren't coming soon and may not be able to come today due to time constraints! Sounds like you can write yours first after all. ;\ (I already know most of what I want to say and the player perspective is not going to be posthumously skewed by the parser perspective, so if you're worried I'm going to modify what I have to say based on what you have to say, don't be.)

[Hello Purvis]

Well since you insist shitstacker >=|

> Would Rinnosuke have gone for the trade of Marisa's clothing, and if he did, would it have broken what he was doing? If he would never have gone for it or if it didn't deter him, was there any way into tricking him into doing something self-destructive like that?

>It would have worked, and honestly I hadn't considered the idea until it was proposed. The hard part, though, would have been interesting him in the trade. At that point, he would have been naturally suspicious of anything like that, so you would have to offer him something he was interested in, or interest him enough to chance it.

Normally I don't volunteer a lot of thoughts because I prefer to let my stuff speak for itself, and gather thoughts to try to quietly alter things in the future, without tipping my hand to things that may or may not come back.  But I think I can share a few things. Some will ask if I'm happy with the game, and the answer always is that I'm happy with a game that gets completed; the only ones that make me unhappy are the ones that die, as either it means interest died or my inspiration did.

As for things I expected and didn't expect. I fully anticipated youse guys would get the spellcards back before they got to Rinnosuke. To me, it seemed evident that if someone was robbed in human town, the best place to check would have been the known thief. This would have lead to the plot changing radically, as Rinnosuke would try to trick you out of them, or out of Nue's shapechanging ability directly.  At the same time, it would have made it harder to actually find the money, as Rinnosuke wouldn't have abandoned his store until he had what he needed.

Another fun thing: Once you started banging on Nitori's door, I ruled that if you spent five posts there being loud (that is, posts that pass time), she would have eventually heard you and gotten to the door to answer it. I also anticipated that you would try to break in, which is really how I expected yalls to get involved with that if you did.

I suppose a thing I should go into more detail with would be Rinnosuke's ideology and how it worked, since it seemed to be a source of confusion. The main way it worked was extrapolating the logic of a subjective barter system and applying it to the cosmos at large. If you can get a different value for a bag of rice from a number of different people, then perhaps other things held as axioms were also more subjective than one thinks. That is, perhaps many of the things taken as scientific or axiomatic constants were more subjective than originally believed. Perhaps you can buy happiness? This is why money was also a problem, because it created the idea of a constant and agreed upon value. Exchange became an act of faith for this ideology, much like prayer or ritual.

The way he got influence over people was essentially by exploiting that inequality, and how it built up as time went on. Economically speaking, this is pretty much the concept of an externality. That is, a cost or benefit that comes outside of the basic cost and revenue structure of an economic entity. Pollution is an excellent example of this, and one that Rinnosuke alluded toward when explaining himself; on it's own. it doesn't cost a factory anything to create pollution. However, this pollution will have an effect upon the surrounding region in various ways, lowering the quality of life and slowly increasing costs to live there. However, the factory doesn't really bear these costs directly unless some outside entity makes them pay for it; and even then the damage is done and may not be possible to undo if all the money take goes toward treating it. Another example is park land, which doesn't generate revenue directly, but creates a quality of life increase outside of the employment it maintains. Your roommate buying a new toaster oven would be a similar idea if you're allowed to use it too. The way that he influenced people was to call in those externalities people had gotten from the products they purchased from him. The greater the benefit, the less spark he hard to expend to exploit it. This is why it would have been very bad to get Reisen involved, given how heavily she has benefit from his deals (and this is when the concept really solidified as a thing I was going to use). However, things he did with Nue were very border cases, and devoured a fair amount of spark to use.  This is part of why he sold the sword hilt to you, he didn't understand its power well enough and didn't think you'd be able to turn it against him effectively on the seemingly off chance that you fixed it. But, it would give him an edge over you if he did. Unfortunately for him, you drew upon it well enough that he could not do much.

I kinda expected youse guys to figure this out by getting him to talk more; because he truly did wish to proselytize; and putting things together. Another solution I had considered was that Nue might try to counter him by taking up the ideal of the thief, which is a natural nemesis of the merchant. This is why Rinnosuke particularly feared you. Obviously, you wouldn't really derive power from it, unless you went super whole hog on it to a degree I couldn't anticipate. But that wouldn't have been necessary, if taken strongly enough to convince Rinnosuke, he would have been affected (again playing into his idea of subjectivity). Using charity against him would have worked too, but as Shizuha said, it would have required proper timing. In particular, responding to his requests for exchanges with "I'll give it to you." In this regard, Nue doing it would have been all the more effective, as charity of this nature wouldn't be expected from her.

On another subject, Kilga brought something to my attention a week or two ago I had not noticed, that being a recurring motif of the land you can never return.  Patchy Quest had the Sun, Reisen Quest had the Sunken Shrine, and technically Reisen and the Construct's battlefield. Okuu Quest speaks for itself.  Maribel Quest was the closest to not having one, but the edge of the netherworld is fairly close. Iku Quest had the Shadow of Bhava-Agra. And in this one, we have Avalon, which is one of the most archetypical of the idea. It's not intentional, but I suppose there is a monomythical sort of meaning to them in the idea that ever character is changed by their experiences and can no longer be how they were before everything started. Also there's a mechanical use for them in having somewhere new and exotic to explore.

I think this covers it. I may or may not elaborate more later on.

[Kilgamayan]

Hmm. There is some interesting stuff in there, and while it doesn't retroactively alter my experience as a player, I may end up referring to some of it to perhaps help explain where I was coming from.

EDIT: Also I mentioned Ran traveling to Higan but I guess that one isn't quite as unreachable as the others (especially given the circumstances!).

[Kilgamayan]

So, dis gaem.

RE: Game

* My greatest regret is not taunting Rinnosuke with "Looks like your market just crashed" either of the times we put him down for the count. I had that line planned since near the beginning of the quest, had not one but two! opportunities to use it and forgot both times. I actually started genuinely fuming at work today when it dawned on me that I hadn't used it.

* I would like to hold a candle for the death of the Law of Unintended Consequences, as this was the first game where a major part of the resolution of the previous game was not a visible generator of the main conflict of the current game.

* Gensokyo is fucked fucked fucked if/when the Myouren Temple ever decides it's going to be responsible for an incident. They've built a good-sized squad of people with great strength and greater willpower and faith. This entire series has been about shades of grey when it comes to protags and antags (even with Alice), so there is no doubt in my mind that they could eventually become "villains" in some capacity without actually straying from their ideals, which is truly frightening to even just consider. And don't forget Jack Sparrow's take on the honest ones.

* Since Purvis admitted that he hasn't decided yet what happened to the gem that was used to pay for the mahogany, here it is: When Mamizou went back to Avalon, one of the last stops she made was catching up with the woodworker, where she explained the situation, paid Avalonian currency to take back the Gensokyo currency, and brought it back with her to prevent a total economic meltdown from a few missing pieces of money. This is now canon. You're welcome.

RE: Game (okay seriously)

This game is slightly hard to judge because it was a marathon of energy and a roller coaster of emotion, and I have the attention span of a hamster. There were things I liked and things I didn't like, as if that weren't the most obvious statement ever uttered. This will probably sound like it's focusing more on the negative things on the whole, but those sorts of things tend to stand out more. Apologies in advance. On the whole, I did like the game a lot. Please keep that in mind as you read, whoever "you" may be.

I will give this game due credit in that it did a fantastic job of taking a character I actively gave less than zero shits about, made her interesting, and eventually turned her endearing. This game is almost solely responsible for inspiring me to get off my ass and clear UFO Extra, and I ended up finding it the most fun of all the Extras I've completed (though PCB is the only one I didn't thoroughly enjoy). It was also nice to resurface in the Nue portion of the Touhou fandom to find that all the morons that initially made up her fanbase when UFO first came out seemed to have moved on to God knows where. And, of course, fanart still makes her as hot as ever.

The setup itself, however, felt slightly limiting. We had some neat toys but only the trident was useful in a pinch. The shapeshifting limitations in particular made it feels like it was tacked on in an "oh by the way" manner rather than being something useful. I know that shapeshifting is a power that's incredibly easy to accidentally turn in to a gamebreaker, and I realize we were expected to use it with foresight, but given how the overwhelming majority of this game consisted of the players having no bloody clue what was going to happen next when times where it would have been useful rolled around, it was kinda hard to have the foresight to use it usefully. It was a very satisfying solution to the barrier problem and it did good in getting us into Arzas, but there didn't seem to be any opportunity to truly have fun with it (outside of the Sanae thing), which is what I expected would happen given Nue's personality. It ended up never being an entertainingly clever solution to anything.

The fact that only one of the seeds was used and that use ended up being a total dead end speaks for itself.

I would have like to have mischief fun throughout the course of the game, or at least at the very beginning, but the mass panic at the beginning over the missing money combined with our missing spellcards came off to me (and probably others) as a signal that silly time was over and serious time had begun almost immediately. I was surprised to learn that we were expected to begin the game in shenanigans mode, because I didn't (and still don't) know why we were expected to think that was okay given the environment. Especially when our one previous encounter with shenanigans Nue had been her prompting Iku to come up with an idea since Nue was tapped out at that point. We would have had to spend mental energy on coming up with good tricks, which I'm horrible at anyway (Aya picture was the only thing that came to me the first time around), so I just brushed it aside as something we weren't mean to do.

It was neat getting to explore the vast majority of Gensokyo, including seeing Shuuei through the only other pair of eyes that could legitimately connect with her (I'm really going to miss being able to talk to the real her). The heretics were an especially nice discovery, though the Yumemistery still remains unsolved. And, of course, Avalon was a joyful puzzle all to itself; requiring quality nonverbal communication skills is deliciously evil of a text adventure. It's a shame Nue will never get back there, if for no other reason than because I would have liked to see the fallout of the eventual clash of Shintoism combined with Byakuren-taught Buddhism and Middle Ages Catholicism. (I was incredibly tempted to start a religious misunderstanding with Kay in order to force the mutual discovery, but I couldn't risk the invariable negative reaction due to :middleagescatholicism:.)

Oh, and I'm mentally slapping myself for the now-blazingly-obvious solution to searching for the cards in the human village. That one definitely went right over my head.

RE: Rinnosuke

So, the second big bear of the game. Hopefully my initial disclaimer will be kept in mind while people read this. This wasn't particularly easy to write, and I'm not sure how easy it will be to read for anyone, but I promise, it gets better eventually.

IMPORTANT NOTE: In retrospect, I do appreciate what was attempted here. There's only so much entertainment in dealing with known threats (Yuuka, Yorihime, 'Nacko and 'Wacko, Alice). Having a villain whom we don't already know like the back of our hand can be a good challenge, and it makes for much more unpredictability in regards to how everything is presented and how the player base reacts.

I'm not sure I can pin my problem with Rinnosuke down to any one particular concept. My best attempt at getting it down to a single sentence is the incredibly broad "I don't know how we were ever supposed to figure the real him out with the way he was presented."

It seemed to me like he operated under the morals of convenience in that he was allowed to violate his own rules to further his agenda - the money he was using was stolen regardless of whatever he left in its place, and the cards were stolen (twice even, though we obviously didn't know the second one the first time we ran into him in action). Why did that not end his plans immediately, I (and I'm sure others) thought? It made no sense. There were other lesser aspects of what he did - mostly surrounding his discussion of sparks - that made it sound like he was just making up the rules as he went. And his concept of debt was presented as a total one-way street in that he could almost arbitrarily decide how much something he gave away was worth and hold it against the receiver while not feeling indebted to anyone for all the aggravation and panic he caused. And he gets demonstrable power over us just from telling us stuff? Really? Really?

These things then tied into his own personal presentation. It's disappointing to hear posthumously that he was legitimately interested in converting others to his faith, because, by design or not, he went about it in the worst possible way. He stole to get his way (already a black mark against what he was claiming to believe in), had no issue causing mass panic or brainwashing people into doing his bidding (the fact that he ganked Tewi like it was nothing caused a LOT of internal paranoia, and is why I asked UK to pull the trigger so fast on putting him down), and he tried to semantic the hell out of the way he got our cards. I may be the only one that felt this way, but as a player playing a thief character (because who would have thought this way better than a thief?), amongst all of this, I never saw any logical reason or felt any emotional impulse to take a single word he said at face value. He did everything possible to kill every potential piece of credibility he had. He was absolutely dripping with arrogant sleaze. There were so many things he said to us where my first thought was "Would he stand to gain from lying about this, and if so, would he stand to gain enough for it to be worth lying about?" And the answer was "yes" more often than not. And hey, look at that, he was at least lying when he claimed he was likely incompatible with our danmaku because he was planning on using it against us should we have gone that route. (For the record, one of the main reasons I ultimately didn't go through with his offers was because I was convinced our trade for being able to traverse the final third of the distance was going to be giving up our ability to travel the first third of the distance, effectively keeping us trapped with him. It sure as hell is what I would have done were I in my interpretation of his situation.)

When it seemed like the rules just plain didn't apply to him in any fashion and what few remaining logical courses of action sputtered, I just threw up my hands. Rinnosuke is why the game had several instances where no meaningful posts were made for days (and at least one where no posts were made for days at all). I am sorry to say this, but this Rinnosuke was, by a wide margin, the most unfun thing in any game to date. He even broke the worst parts of the Brock Inspector with flying colors, because her situation was far less based in arrogance and "screw the rules, I hate money" and more based on uncertainty and paranoid anger. It was much easier to empathize with Shuuei and her situation, and the reason I went apeshit over her and tried to call in as many minds as I could in that game were because I wanted to help her like crazy but I just couldn't figure out how. There was far less effort in this game in terms of parser poking and fellow player poking to figure things out. It just ceased being entertaining entirely. If I could have hated Rinnosuke to death I would have done so on the spot. There are not many gentler ways to put this. And what was truly heartbreaking about this was that it had just come on the heels of Shuuei, and a publicized mentality that will the parser would not apologize for the way a game played out, he would try to take into account what worked and what didn't and use those to shape the future (supermegaparaphrasing here because I forget the exact wording), and after that, this antagonist felt like several steps backward. I would say I felt cheated if this weren't a service being offered for free through nontrivial expenditures of personal time and energy on the parser's part. So instead I can only say I felt overwhelmingly disappointed.

I'm beyond tired of dwelling on this guy. I'll just leave it with saying that while I feel some sympathy for what he went through postgame, it is notably less than what I could have felt, and extraordinarily less than what I would have felt for Shuuei were she in the same situation. Enough of him. Onto other things where I have only myself to blame.

RE: Mystia/Koyomi

All market crash jokes aside, I feel worse about how this ended than anything else. But before we get into all that, I would like to say that Mystia was an exceptionally well done character for how simple her role seemed (this kinda comes up later in regards to someone else, by the way). There was a ton of attention to detail in molding her personality, mannerisms, morals, and so on. There were so many little things she said and did that reminded me of the fact that she did indeed evolve from a bird that I had long since lost count by the time her role was mostly finished. It was a joy to be working alongside her, and an honor to finally give her the spotlight she deserved after every other member of the baquartet had been featured prominently in one capacity or another earlier in the overall storyline.

I wanted to pair Nue and Mystia. I really did. Mystia is adorable and her design was done incredibly well, and knowing that there was a humorous scene planned makes it hurt all the more. There just never seemed to be a good time or handy segue to go for it. I have no idea where my Koyomi material came from, because it sure as hell wasn't there for Mystia at any point in the game. And by the time the main stuff was resolved and we were making our rounds of Gensokyo on the second night, the game had gone on so long that I was just exhausted. I couldn't dredge up the energy. All I could do is treat it like it she was a quality business partner. Maybe something will happen down the road between them. I don't know, that's no longer in my hands, and I can't say I feel like I definitely did enough to plant the seeds. But I tried to make Nue visibly care for Mystia at certain times throughout the game, so who knows? Maybe they will. And even if we don't get to know about it until after the fact because we're an unrelated third party, I'll still be happy for them. Hope springs eternal.

But it's not all bad. That Koyomi worked out as well as she did has plenty of its own positives. Less importantly, I consider Koyomi my apology to the tengu for being a jerk. More importantly, we now have a new character to work with, however much a side character she may be. Variety is the spice of life, no? The existing Touhous are great and all, but there's only so much to do with them that won't be expected. We may never see Koyomi again, or (I hope) she may become a recurring character. I suspect it would have been the former easily without that postgame, but now? Who knows. And it's a good thing Nue is semi-promiscuous, because showing Koyomi our uncut jewels doesn't mean Mystia's automatically barred from browsing the shop herself.

(Despite bed size, I had no plans for a threesome.)

RE: Other people

* If you don't appreciate Tenshi's character by now then I truly feel sorry for you. EOF.

* One last time: Goodbye, Ann Poulter. I'll never forget you. ;_;7

* Remember way back to when we talked to Youmu? Remember how Yuyuko was not worried at all? See all those postgame consequences? Yeeeaaaaaah.

WARNING: The following may make some people feel uncomfortable to read/consider.

* Something I loosely pondered during the waning hours of work today: What could have happened between Marisa and Mr. Kirisame that Reimu would heavily suggest even the process of rehabilitating her close friend and his former apprentice wouldn't be enough to get them to even tolerance each other's presence?

Spoiler:

I am aware of a copypasta story from /jp/ that is a taunting Mr. Kirisame monologue directed toward Rinnosuke, in which Kirisame all but outright states that his and Marisa's falling out was a result of a somewhat abusive incestual relationship. /jp/ even suggested it is a potential canonical explanation, depending on how far you've rotated your head as you read through CoLA, though a brief glance through the minute amount of canon info of the guy doesn't reveal anything obvious. I know Purvis likes to throw little odds and ends into his canon. Makes me wonder. It would be a reasonable explanation for the body-building, even with the existing explanation of "Danmaku's all about power". Maybe it's also a subconscious coping mechanism, in which she tries to make it so no man would have the guts to put a hand on her without her consent. I do not mean at all to make light of such a subject, but I know Purvis is not only attentive to detail, but is not afraid to treat real issues as real things. We'll probably never find out for sure, though, so ultimately this is nothing but speculation that will probably still make people feel uncomfortablt despite the warning.

This is all I can think of for the time being. If a nontrivial amount of further content comes to my mind, I'll probably post it.

[Hello Purvis]

I never said Rinnosuke would use your Danmaku against you. He'd use the physical strength, which isn't nearly so personalized as danmaku.

Some aspects you had problems with were part of the plan. He was a poor proselytizer by intention, partially because his obsession was strong enough to be a clinical disorder. It was such an important part of his psyche that he could accept anything else. This is where a lot of the arrogance was born from, he truly believed he found something no one else had, and didn't really know how to deal with it being challenged. As well, he had laid out everything on the table and was cornered, to back down even a little bit would have been to admit to possible flaws.  Amusingly enough, it would have been easier to get into his good graces than it ever would have been to do so with Shuuei, as he would have reacted well to what seemed to him to be like honest interest. But at the same time, he had done terrible things and he knew it. He knew that he terrorized and manipulated Tewi, and going back on anything from there would have rendered that just a crime. He had gone too far, so all that was left was to finish it. Trying to be understanding with him would have taken a Byakuren's patience, which might have been IC for Nue, if she wanted to follow that example. Sincerely joining him might have also been acceptable under such thoughts; hoping to reform the world into something less materialistic by removing money from it.

Related to this, Kilga, you may be pleased to know that you approached the relationship between Edmund's ideals and Rinnosuke's much differently than I did. I didn't think to view it as inequality vs equality,  but rather as the relation between tyrant and merchant, in particular that the former does not let the latter stop him when it's inconvenient.

[Kilgamayan]

I enjoy how often I get to situations in life and games where my position looks like total shit and it turns out in the end that pushing one iota harder would have won. :C

I guess the fundamental flaw in the player thought process here was that our cards got stolen and it took brainwashing someone to get them. That in and of itself cut off all chances of going with him. I actually did consider, on several occasions, what would have happened if we had let him go about his business, but every single time my mind returned to what happened to our cards, and I couldn't think of a legitimate reason to try it. Assumptions really killed here; not only with everything we thought, but if he had asked up front before beginning everything, I (at least) as Nue would have been far more inclined to say yes.

I suppose the ending is fitting in this regard. He may have truly wanted to better the world, but his modus operandi was deplorable (I guess hell truly is paved with good intentions), and now he gets rehabbed in an incredibly painful manner.