Yukari Quest IV - A Z-Machine Adventure

[Kilgamayan]

> Shake head.
> "No and no."

[Hello Purvis]

> Shake head.
> "No and no."

>"Good," she says, giving it a nasty look. You suspect she might be a bit embarrassed about her reaction. "Then what is it? It it connected to that music?"
>She walks over to examine it.

>_

[Mr. Sacchi]

> "It might be, I'll have to make sure."

> Watch her examine the sigil.

[Hello Purvis]

> "It might be, I'll have to make sure."

> Watch her examine the sigil.

>She walks over to it, then brushes her fingers across it a few times. "Mmm. There's definitely something about it," she says. "But...I don't think it feels like that music."

>_

[Mr. Sacchi]

> Is mary looking away from us?

> If so, try to use the Magnifying glass on her, try to get more information out of her loss of humanity, don't actually take the Magnifying Glass out though, that would be disastrous if she found out.

> If she turns around, stop, even if we aren't t finished yet.

> "Well, yes, but that sigil seems to be longing to be completed."
> "And that musical bubble wasn't complete either."

> It's as good as a bet as we can make, anyway.

[Hello Purvis]

> Is mary looking away from us?

> If so, try to use the Magnifying glass on her, try to get more information out of her loss of humanity, don't actually take the Magnifying Glass out though, that would be disastrous if she found out.

> If she turns around, stop, even if we aren't t finished yet.

> "Well, yes, but that sigil seems to be longing to be completed."
> "And that musical bubble wasn't complete either."

> It's as good as a bet as we can make, anyway.

>You quietly draw upon the Magnifying Glass and take a closer look at Maribel while she is distracted.  At a glance, you can see that the border between humanity and youkai is shifting within her. You aren't entirely certain what the cause is, but you think it is due to exposure to something; it resembles what you've seen with humans that lost their humanity due to dabbling into some thing their beings were unable to handle.
>She turns, keeping you from looking any deeper. "Longing to be completed? I guess that might be it. It does seem like it's been torn up. But I don't think they're the same, really."

>_

[Mr. Sacchi]

> "Truth be told, neither do I."
> "But it never hurts to check. Besides... It wouldn't be the first time this place defied common sense."
> "Or any sort of sense, really."

[Hello Purvis]

> "Truth be told, neither do I."
> "But it never hurts to check. Besides... It wouldn't be the first time this place defied common sense."
> "Or any sort of sense, really."

>"I guess if we're going to pass by it, anyways," says Maribel.

>_

[Mr. Sacchi]

> "Anything you want to check out before we go?"

[Hello Purvis]

> "Anything you want to check out before we go?"

>"I guess you already looked this place over pretty thoroughly," says Maribel. "I looked around the first floor and didn't seen anything, really. Not even any signs of hands. So yeah, let's go."

>_

[Mr. Sacchi]

> Leave the shrine, proceed to the sound bubble.

[Hello Purvis]

> Leave the shrine, proceed to the sound bubble.

>You leave the shrine, stepping through the gap and returning to your proper scale. From there, it does not take terribly long to find your way back to the disembodied music from there.

>_

[Mr. Sacchi]

> Make a gap and enter.

> Magnifying Glass, ho! (Note: Don't actually pull it out, etc.)

[Hello Purvis]

> Make a gap and enter.

> Magnifying Glass, ho! (Note: Don't actually pull it out, etc.)

>You enter into the music's border, Maribel trundling in behind you.
>You then draw upon your Magnifying Glass and have a closer look at the music. Much as you feared, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with your tools. You...really aren't sure what this is, to be honest. It exerts a calming influence upon the borders, but you really aren't sure what is causing it. The music doesn't seem to emanate from any phenomena that you can sense at all, it simply is. It seems to be an effect that simply has no cause that you can understand.  It's hard to tell how complete it is, but you feel there are likely a few pieces missing to it.

>_

[Mr. Sacchi]

Alright so...

Missing Tools:
Mirror (Largely useless for our purposes, as it essentially only allows us to get information on the other side of a border, if we ever needed the mirror for something, it would probably mean that we couldn't go through the gap at all.)
Wrench (Allows us to move gaps for great distances, this is only theoretically useful, but the only gap we have so far that would actually require the usage of the Wrench it would be the Sound Bubble, which, as we checked, seems to have little purpose right now.)
Astrolabe ("Press this button to finish the quest", likely the very last tool we'll find.)
Vice Grips (Our current objective as it would allow us to open two different gaps and actually make some sort of progress. However, we have zero clue on where to find it.)

Well, here goes nothing:

> Insight: Where can we find our Vice Grips?
> Break the fourth wall and use the Magnifying Glass on whatever information the parser gives us, to get even more information.

Note: Players, feel free to belay that, we only have one more Insight Point, after all.

[Kilgamayan]

My personal grievances with the system aside, that's not how the insight points work. The idea behind them is to draw upon them everything Yukari might know given her vast amount of experience with various things to answer more general questions. Asking a question she wouldn't know the answer to isn't going to give you the answer.

If that command goes through, Purvis may do the same logical-narrowing that we've done, or he may do nothing at all. But he's not going to tell you exactly where they are, because Yukari doesn't know where they are.

[Mr. Sacchi]

I'm not expecting a straight-up answer, just some insight on something we might've missed, anything helps since we're stumped.

And, AFAIK, if the command gives us nothing useful we won't lose an Insight Point, correct?

Of course, if you have a better idea, or just feel like it's a bad idea in general, feel free to belay the command.

[Kilgamayan]

I'm the wrong person to ask about whether or not the group should use insight point commands. It looks to me like we're not entirely out of options yet, though. We did basically no exploring of where we just came here from, and Mary mentioned a couple of "odd borders" in the floating islands that are likely worth investigating.

> How did we first get to the floating islands?

[Mr. Sacchi]

That would be the gap the we first tried to use but ended up falling into backstage.

It's the only way back to the Floating Islands since mary destroyed the Island -> Wasteland one, and I'm a bit skeptical about using it since that would require going back to the caves, and Purvis has stated that the Field of Fronds -> Caves gap has limited usage, which is a further concern since we now have mary.

[Hello Purvis]

> Insight: Where can we find our Vice Grips?

>This is a difficult question to answer, because in the end it relies making assumption about how this whole place works.  Obvious you don't know for sure where to find them. but there is some guesswork that may serve you well. So far, you have yet to find signs of more than one tool in any given area, with one exception: when you found tools in in earthen areas choked with roots. And in those cases, they were both reached from different places entirely.  If this rule holds true, your best bet would be to seek them in a world where you have yet to find one. By extension of that reasoning, it would also suggest that the rest of your wrench would be found here. By extension, it seems that the best place to search would be the floating islands. The Crystal Palace wasn't really a separate world; the doorway that brought you there didn't precisely transverse worlds so much as bend space within the field of fronds. As for the Colors, you're not entirely certain how a tool would manifest there.
>If that reasoning holds true, there may be more than a coincidental connection between those facts, but that may be too much of an inductive leap.  If so, it may well be that the worlds themselves bear some connection to your tools. If that is the case, it would leave you with the question of why as well as how. You suppose, though, the latter isn't necessarily that difficult of a question.
>You have no insight points remaining.

> How did we first get to the floating islands?

>You found your way there from the caverns, using the gap that you first found not long after waking up.

>_

[Mr. Sacchi]

I guess floating islands is our only real option then.

> Didn't the Field of Fronds -> Caves gap have limited usage?

[Hello Purvis]

> Didn't the Field of Fronds -> Caves gap have limited usage?

>At best. You may have to find another way there by this point.

>_

[Mr. Sacchi]

> From what we remember, do we think it could withstand another entry for both us and Mary?

[Hello Purvis]

> From what we remember, do we think it could withstand another entry for both us and Mary?

>You weren't able to tell. But you feel you shouldn't count on it, with Maribel in tow.

>_

[Yaersulf]

>Is the gap that Maribel forced her way through beyond repair even if we had appropriate tools?

[Hello Purvis]

>Is the gap that Maribel forced her way through beyond repair even if we had appropriate tools?

>It is beyond repair. There is nothing to be done for it.

>_

[O4rfish]

>Are all of these worlds separate in that we would need the Astrolabe to create new gaps in the borders between them?

[Hello Purvis]

>Are all of these worlds separate in that we would need the Astrolabe to create new gaps in the borders between them?

>Yes.

>_

[Mr. Sacchi]

> Was there anything left to do on the color space?

[Hello Purvis]

> Was there anything left to do on the color space?

>You honestly don't know. It's hard to tell what there is to do there. You've explored a couple of directions, but there may be others to look into.

>_