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: