Companions of Xanth – Won!

By Ilmari

Last time, I had just arrived at the gates of the castle of Good Magician Humfrey. I asked Jenny, my new companion, how to get in, and she suggested using her cat, Sammy, to find a way in.

Sammy kept pawing the wall, and checking it, I wound a loose brick, behind which I could find a switch. Flipping it opened the gate and let me in.There’s traditionally three obstacles preventing all visits to the Good Magician’s castle. The gate had probably been the first of those, so I was most likely going to face two more. And indeed, I was facing a moat, with a drawbridge raised.

I wonder what happens if I’d just draw it?

This is ridiculous, but fits the game

Drawing the drawbridge didn’t help me that much, since all I found out behind it was a door, with an unhelpful guard.

I guess this must be a hint of some kind

I decided to walk around the moat, but all I could find was a sea serpent. With no other clues, I asked Jenny for advice.

What cricket? I didn’t notice any cricket

It’s too tiny to see, but I guess it’s there

I imprisoned the bug in a jar, and the serpent started to sleep. The serpent also rearranged its coils so that I could reach the other side of the moat. We found a grate leading to the castle sewers, which I simply pried open with a crowbar. I also picked up a lok pick lying beside the grate. Yes, it was spelled like that and it was actually a scale from the serpent, shaped like a guitar pick. After entering the sewers, I was treated to a cutscene.

It’s fish-themed puns all the way through

Considering that I’ve never seen these two characters anywhere else, but in cutscenes, I couldn’t really care less

Back to my immediate surroundings, I saw a panel with some switches. Jenny suggested that this was the place where the hint of the door guard was meant to be used. Now, what had the guard said? “For one to…” It didn’t take any genius to figure out that I should flip the switches number 4, 1 and 2. Doing that raised a platform to the Good Magician’s study.

Humfrey is usually described as a gnomish person: is that what gnomish would look like?

It was finally time for some plot exposition. We already knew that the Game we are playing is actually a part of a competition between demons X(A/N)TH and E(A/R)TH. What we did not know was that if the player representing E(A/R)TH won, magic would vanish from Xanth. Furthermore, it wa us who represented X(A/N)TH, while our opponent, Kim, represented E(A/R)TH. Humfrey also revealed that the sword I had been carrying was the Sword of Wisdom, an artifact from ancient Xanth that would convey some measure of wisdom to its carrier and that had a power to repel and destroy evil.

My goal was (finally) clear: I should find the Prize of the game before Kim got it. Problem was where I could find the Prize. Luckily, Humfrey knew that the Prize was located in the gourd. Quite convenient, you might say, that Humfrey could tell me this. Well, he is meant to be the Magician of Information, so knowing everything is part of his job description.

What’s the Gourd, then? Well, pumpkin, obviously, or squash. But in Xanth it’s also a realm where your mind is transported, once you look too deep into one of those plants, which are thus aptly known as hypnogourds. The Gourd realm is the Dream World, ruled by Night Stallion, who sends his horselike Night Mares in the Xanth to spread disturbing dreams during the night.

Humfrey escorted me to a small room, where Kim and Nada were already sitting, their gazes being transfixed by hypnogourds (because of the rules of the Game, Humfrey had been forced to help the two move forward). Me and Jenny looked into our own hypnogourds, and our souls were transported to the Dream Realm.

A spooky house and a zombie guarding its entrance. A land of nightmares, indeed. I asked Jenny what to do and she suggested that there might be a way to unlock the cellar door. What cellar door? I went around the house and found it. It was easily unlocked with my lok pick.

I moved my pointer around the dark room and searched for all the hotspots. After futile interactions with bats, maggots, a jar full of blood and a dead feline, I finally found a piece of twine and a skeleton key I can take. I also found the cellar door that I could unlock with the key.

Upstairs, perhaps?

Nope

I had to somehow lock the lever on the stairs to the “stairs”-position. I tried using the twine with the lever and that worked: I used the twine to tie the lever to the knob on the stairs.

Nada’s being controlled by the demon

Nada closed the trap door to the attic behind her. On the wall there was a sign saying that pressing the button above it would open trap door. I pressed and a trap door opened – not the one to the attic, but one right below me.

I had no idea how to get out of here, but Jenny thought the bottle of red bills beside the skeleton was important, so I took it. The bottle had a label saying “pain-B-gone”, but that didn’t seem helpful. Jenny suggested that there might be some mechanism moving the hearth, so I tried picking up all the books on the mantle. The third one did the trick and the hearth started to rotate.

I was back at the room with the stairs. I started checking the hotspots and found that I could do something with window pane. Pain – pane: would the pills work on it? I tried using them, and indeed, the pane was gone. Beyond the window, there was a cane I could now pick up. Jenny noted that the trap door to the attic had a hook, so I used my cane with it to pull the attic stairs down.

The prize of failure

Kim was already reaching for the Prize, and if I waited too long, I failed in my mission. Talking to Kim didn’t help at all, and Jenny wasn’t allowed to help me in the vicinity of the Prize. Maybe I should do something with that sword I had been carrying? I finally tried throwing it at the Prize.

I was instantly transported away from the Gourd Realm and away from the Xanth altogether (or was I? Maybe I should seek a spinning top to verify this.) Then, the telephone started to ring.

 I sense a romance brewing up

They had to go out with a pun

That was that game. Next time, we’ll see how it scores.

Session time: 1 h
Total time: 14 h