The Pawn: axb8N

Turns out that the "metal key" that the game hinted the existence of was on my person from the start! This opens the toolshed, where I find a hoe, rake, and wheelbarrow. But I can't find any immediate use for these that works - I try using the hoe to lift the loose floorboards inside the tree, to dig in the garden, and I try raking leaves in the forest, but either these are invalid actions or I just haven't found the right words to communicate them.

I turn to a walkthrough. The first thing I missed; if you speak to Kronos about your wristband the first time you meet, he gives you the cursed chest earlier. I can get the adventurer to spawn by wandering the path, and I even score some points for giving it to him, which kills him, but the wristband doesn't come off and Kronos is nowhere to be seen.

Next point in the walkthrough - by searching the palace fountain, we find an IOU for one ferg. Honest John will accept this, but I don't yet know what I can do with any of his wares. But this teaches me to be more thorough in examining objects, even ones that seem to be background scenery, and when I apply this lesson to the toolshed, I also discover a trowel on top of the workbench, and a potted plant under it. But I still don't really see how this helps solve my immediate problems, and though I can remove the plant from its pot, "plant the plant" is an unrecognized command, much as I'd like to see what happens when I try.

Back to the walkthrough - to get any help from the guru, I must remove my shirt and cover up the wristband so that he stops laughing. Why is he the only person who finds it so funny? Who knows. But he requests "essential nourishment." The spring water sold by Honest John doesn't do; too commercial for his tastes. And I can't find a way to fill his bowl with water from the palace fountain or the river underneath the bridge. He also does not accept rations or beer.

So the walkthrough again - the next steps don't complete the guru's quest, but solve a problem I didn't know could be solved yet, in a manner (and verbiage) I would have never guessed.

This opens up a new area, a narrow path up into the mountains, where I find a cave entrance too dark to fully explore, and a snowy plateau region, where a snowman guards the entrance to an ice tower. At one point, the adventurer shows up and begins fighting him.

I discover that if I murder the adventurer, I can ride his horse, and explore the dark cavern on it. Cruelly, I discover during this time that if you simply DROP objects, some of them (like the guru's bowl and the potted plant) will break. At least the game tells you. PUT ALL DOWN will do it safely.

• A pool of ammonia collects in the middle, but I can't find a way to interact with it.
• Northward, a small cave is too tight for the horse to enter, but too dark to enter on foot.
• Southward, a hazily lit corridor opens up to a locked door that neither of my keys will open.
• Eastward, a malformed REM statement states that this this where I fall into a trapdoor, but I can find no trapdoor.
• Further east, a precarious path by lava river forces me to explore on foot. A narrow upward shaft takes me to one of hell's radiators, where I can break down a crumbling wall and release the inflow back down to the lava river, cooling off a a sub-area.
• On the north bank of the lava river, now crossable, an exit sign warns that an irrelevant maze lies past it, and sure enough, not only is this true, but the maze behind is completely unsolvable and inescapable. Instead, pushing a pedestal here reveals a blue key underneath it.

Infuriatingly, there's a bug that causes "PUSH PEDESTAL" to not work, which is solved by restarting the computer and reloading a saved game. But for awhile, I was banging my head on the keyboard with "PUSH PEDESTAL" and "MOVE PEDESTAL" and "LIFT CUBE" and all these permutations until I tried doing a restart/reload (a reload alone does not fix it). It makes me wonder how many other failed actions were bugs, and definitely does not inspire any confidence that this game was playtested by anyone.

Anyway, the blue key's purpose isn't quite clear, but an uncharacteristically logical solution to another problem hit me - snows from the mountain in the guru's bowl satisfy his demand, and he tells me,

"Some light in the forest would help you and the trees. We must live in harmony with nature you know." 

I ride my light-emitting horse into the forest, and the description of the clearing seems different. Inspecting the stump, I now find a pouch containing a glowing red, blue, and green. No, I did not forget a word in that sentence.

Stuck again, because I don't know what to do with these colors, the walkthrough claims they act as portable light sources (if this is true, I haven't figured out how to use this property yet), but the next action it directs me to take is in the treehouse in the rank forest. Remember those loose floorboards that the game said were too heavy to lift? The game lied. It's not too heavy - the door was in the way! Close the door and you can lift it.

Just in case you thought I was kidding

 

Also, this is another action affected by the invalidation bug. If you successfully lift the floorboard and then reload a game (as I did, to take the above screenshot), then it won't work any more until you restart the computer.

The passage below is, of course, dark, and I'll need to figure out how to use my pouch of primary colors to see. 

My Trizbort map so far:

Game 461: The Pawn

 

Before Data Driven Gamer, I had virtually no knowledge of any IF titles outside the Infocom canon and Sierra's proto-adventures. Even now, it's still pretty limited. From my own perspective, Infocom remains the main contributor to the genre in 1985, but their relevance is quickly waning despite significant advances in world size, mechanical depth, and vocabulary. In the UK, where Infocom lacks a publisher and the disk drives needed to play their games are uncommon, audiences are served by Adventure International's exports, and a cottage industry of BASIC adventures in the same style (and limitations) thrives but sees no fame abroad.

The UK's biggest and most iconic homegrown IF studios are Level 9 and Magnetic Scrolls, whose games are released overseas through British Telecom. The latter is known for lusciously illustrated scenes on cutting-edge 16-bit platforms, and the former known for squeezing impossibly large game worlds into the confining limits of 32KB micros. I have yet to play a single game by either studio.

The Pawn was Magnetic Scrolls' first release, and the earliest by Telecom to make whale status, but their trademark illustrations aren't here yet; the initial release was on Sinclair's ill-fated 16-bit Spectrum successor "Quantum Leap" and was text-only. Presumably there is a reason why this was the target platform, but it's not a well explored one, and this is likely the only time I will ever emulate one. A consequence is that the only emulator I could find and get working with the QL's "microdrive" cartridge format is QemuLator, which lacks many modern emulation niceties, including native resolution screenshotting. Which I guess doesn't matter that much for a text-only game.

The original booklet, titled "QL-Pawn," explains that this adventure is set in the fantasy world of Kerovnia during a time of social upheaval driven mainly by whiskey and beer shortages. I'm not really sure how seriously we're supposed to take that backstory, but the dwarves are banished, King Erik is unpopular, and we're here for some unexplained reason and purpose. It also outlines the capability's of Magnetic Scrolls' parser, and demonstrates no particular feat that we haven't seen from Infocom, but complex, compound sentences parse, adjectives are recognized, and there is even some structure for interpersonal conversation.

 

Well, no points for originality in this intro.

Unsurprisingly, the wristband can't be removed, and has no remarkable qualities when examined. So, as always, I begin by Trizborting.

This initial area is wide open with most "rooms" having exits in all eight directions, though a few non-orthogonal passages exist, and rooms are not all uniquely named.

• To the east of the path, Honest John the traveling salesman, offers rations, water, whiskey, and armor for sale, but I have no money right now.
• Southward, a magician "Kronos" asks me to deliver a sealed message to King Erik.
• Further east, a bridge leads to the palace gardens, where a toolshed is seen in the corner, and a conspicuous mat reveals a key when lifted. This key does not open the toolshed, unfortunately, and the parser none-too-subtly reveals the existence of a metal key when I try ("wooden key or metal key?" it tasks, when I tell it to unlock the door with my key).
• The place guards permit me an audience with the king, but he promptly throws me out after reading Kronos' message.
• A series of notice boards posted on the southern edge of the map inform me that this is the edge of the adventure, and crossing any further in possession of artifacts is impossible. This proves to be correct.
• The western side of the map is the "Rank Forest" and gives me the most mapping trouble of any area, consisting of multiple confusingly laid-out rooms, though unique room descriptions help.
• A tree stump lies in a clearing in the middle, but there is no obvious significance.
• A sole tree in the forest is climbable, and at the top, a little wooden door is opened by my wooden key, but I get no further; the room is empty save for loose floorboards that I'm told are too heavy to lift.
• In the hills to the north, a  spiritual leader dwells in suitably austere living space, and is remarkably unhelpful.

 

And now I'm stuck. There are two other events I've seen while exploring, but I've restarted since and am unable to figure out what triggers them - an adventurer on horseback appeared once, somewhere around the main path, and Kronos appeared in the forest clearing demanding that I murder the adventurer with a cursed chest in exchange for my freedom from the wristband. Sound fishy, but I guess it's not called The Pawn for nothing.

 

My Trizbort map (so far) - most of the extraneous room connectors are removed in order to keep the map from looking like a Factorio blueprint: