King’s Quest VII - If You Believe They Put a Man on the Moon

Written by Michael

Guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue...

Welcome back to the saga of the Ladies of Daventry!  This installment is rather short compared to the last two, so let us get to it.

What does a newt say when you catch it in a lie?  I amphibian.

When we last were with the queen, she had entered the cave behind the Aztec-looking door, and was confronted with a large lizard of some type blocking her in the passageway.

If she does nothing, the newt eats her.  She can back away and go out of the cave, back to the first chapter area, but I don’t think that’s very useful right now.  There’s some trash on the floor below the creature, and I think it’s supposed to be sloppy leftovers from him eating a prickly pear from the bush just outside this door, because it turns out giving him one fills his stomach and he goes back to his hole.

A convenient hole in the pitcher?

Beyond the cave, we come across a broken bridge over a chasm, the water having disappeared, and two statues on either shore, one with a water pitcher, another with what turns out to be a cornucopia.  There are some flowers here, with some hummingbirds doing their thing with the stamens and the nectar and whatever.

I’m writing this at the start of hunting season near my house.  If someone would care to provide me with the meat from a 8-point buck like this, I won’t argue.

In the next screen is a resting deer, next to a tree with a blade sticking out of it and sap leaking out.  I wake the deer and talk to him.  It seems he is the lord of the hunt, Attus, who was turned into a stag without warning by a powerful magic user, of who he did not see.  The oak tree behind him that was violated is his wife Saries, better known as Mother Nature.  “Only a noble from the high court of Etheria could have such power” to transform the two of them without a fight as they did.  

The queen bores of the conversation, and tells us that she has no more time because she has to get back to looking for her daughter, but if she can, she’ll help out.  Snobbish Valanice, don’t you know the cardinal rule of adventure games?  You need to take care of the side quests before you can help yourself.

Attus warns us not to enter the forest to the extreme west, because the savage creatures there are unforgiving and very hungry.  So, as soon as he goes back to sleep, after I exhaust the dialog with him, that’s where I proceed to next.

He’s got the same pants as Teddy Ruxpin, could they be related?

Of course, I died.  I won’t end up needing to go that way in this chapter, but being as each level seems to connect to the last, perhaps our next Valanice chapter.

You're trying to make your mark in society; Using all the tricks that you used on me; You're reading all those high fashion magazines; The clothes you're wearin' girl are causing public scenes.

We come across another section of the waterless chasm, with some stones I can cross the same as the last chapter, by clicking them in turn of where I want Valanice to go.

Some pig.

Across the chasm, we’re treated to a giant spider web blocking one of the paths, with a cute little hummingbird stuck in the web.  We go to help the bird, who warns us to stay away from the venomous spider.  I guess Roberta has learned something since King’s Quest 5?

I try obvious things, like using the stick on the spider to send it away, or on the bird to free it.  Nah.  It seems you need to use the box to trap the spider.  Then, you’ll simply reach out and free the bird by hand.

She’s incredibly thankful, and promises to find a way to help us sometime in the future.

Molly Ringwald, eat your heart out.

Beyond the web, we encounter a rather vividly-colored archway.

The HOA is going to be making complaints about the paint job, no doubt about it.

They just copied this scene from the last game, right?

We knock on the large door, and some eyes peek out from a hole in the top.  In exchange for our entrance, we’re told the price would be a one-ton heirloom tomato.

Nah.  Next, I try the other door, off to the side, and while the voice tells me to stop, he can’t truly stop me.  The voice appears to be a little mouse-like creature, who warns me that the Archduke will hear about this.

I’ll think of this smaller door as a “doggie door” from now on, because of whom we meet inside.

The cane is to support his hind legs, I suppose.

The Archduke Fifi le Yip Yip stops me, as a stranger to the town of Folderol with no legitimate business there.  I try talking to him, and he mostly just yips back.  What ends up being Valanice’s sucker punch in these situations is to click the comb on someone, where she then begins to cry, as she did in the first chapter, and then tell the sad story of how she is trying to rescue her daughter.  Fifi joins us in tears, because “it’s the saddest thing I have ever heard” and he lets us pass to enjoy the town.

Remembering that there’s no text in the game, I did some quick web searching to try to confirm the name of the town.  I’m sticking with “Falderal” for now, because of the dictionary definition: “foolish nonsense”.  That truly does describe what we are about to encounter.

For example, just next, a chicken dressed in a bonnet runs around frantically, warning us that the ski is falling.  The archduke, in his thick French accent: “Never mind him, my lady.  He is very silly.”

Before he leaves, his royal highness makes an off-hand remark that will end up being an important clue later; the Faux Shop should be taken with a grain of salt.

Actually, the slant of the shelves on the right are the more pressing threat to the merchandise.

As the poodle departs, we are free to explore the neighborhood.  I try the very first door that I see, for a china shop.  Inside, not surprisingly, I find a bull in the china shop.  

Owning it, in fact.

We could all see that pun from a few miles away, right?

There are so many dainty items on display, but of course, the mask of a slightly different color hanging on the right side of the screen is the item we’ll need, although I couldn’t tell you why yet.  The bull is rather depressed, so he says we can have the mask, which normally retails for a hundred gold coins, for just eighty.

Seeing as we have none, neither amount is reasonable at the moment.

Talking to Fernando the bull, we learn he is depressed because his treasure has been stolen.  A china bird named “Treasure”.

Guess I know what we need to look for.

Back outside the shop, we are accosted once again by the chicken, whom is almost literally running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  Still the same warning about the impending doom from the sky falling.

This game is making it hard for me to make puns about the puns.

To the east, we find a town square, complete with a fountain (well, no, just a pool, I suppose), an upside-down house, the aforementioned Faux Shop, a cart with a salesman offering goods, and what looks like a canary’s cage with a curtain draped over it.

That’s my first stop.  It ends up containing the missing china bird.  I offer it a ride on my finger, and we go back to the china shop.

That was way too easy.  Seriously.

In return for rescuing his pet, Fernando offers me the mask as a reward.  The bull and the bird go off together for some private time in the back room of the shop.

Yes, seriously.

Back to the town square, the seller is a true snake oil salesman by all accounts, including his genus.  Yes, he’s a snake, and selling things that are obviously ridiculous.

So instead, I head over to the Faux Shop, but a note on the door says the shop is closed.

Back to the town hall, where a queue of guests are awaiting entry to Fifi’s birthday blast, a masquerade. Well, I now have a mask, so I don it, and am granted entry.

Al Lowe will copy this scene in the next Larry endeavor, although thankfully with no dogs involved.

Inside is a party scene, and almost nothing can be interacted with, except to wish the archduke a happy birthday.  There is, however, a door in the rear, so we go that way.

This is far from a step in the right direction.

An easy to figure out maze, I find one path through and reach the archduke’s office, but upside down.

That’s a large chair for Fifi to sleep in.

There is a desk, with a drawer I can open, and something that looks like a hand mirror on the floor ceiling.  The drawer yields nothing, and I cannot reach the other object.  So I leave.

I suddenly crave some Eggo waffles.

We enter a washroom with some useless fixtures, and a mirror that shows us upside-down.  When we click on it, our reflection grabs us, and deposits us right side-up into the Archduke’s office.

Now, the thing that looks like a hand mirror falls from the ceiling, into the open desk drawer.  I’m able to take it now, and turns out it’s some sort of a magic statuette.

What I discover later, by accident, is that if I click on the statuette with the comb, I cry over it, and my tears activate a vision of Rosella arriving somewhere from the ricketty rope elevator from the end of my last post.

Still, this is all I can do here.  I exit the room, using the door rather than the mirror, but somehow I am not inverted wrongly upon leaving.  I’m not sure I understand the logic of this world.

The Bleu Cheese blew in.

Back at the town square, the chicken is vindicated when, suddenly, the sky falls.  There is a hunk of cheese floating in the pool, because, of course, the moon is made of cheese.  I try to fish it out, but cannot reach it.

The Faux Shop is now open, maybe they can help?

Going through the door is no help; you land on the other side of what looks like a movie facade.  But, if you (quite literally) take a grain of salt as medicine, walking through the door brings you into a shop.

Everything in this shop is artificial.  So, it is just an average American storefront.

Inside the shop, we learn that everything in the shop is fake, artificial, or a replica or the like.  Some of the items can be looked at, like the fake yeti feet (for making false tracks in the snow) or a fake snake for scaring your friends.  The owl hanging in the upper right was originally used at a farm to scare other creatures away, but instead of being afraid, they just drew a mustache on it.  There’s even some rubber chickens hanging around, sans pulleys.

One might also notice the eyeglasses on the top of the right-most row; it appears to be otherworldly.  Say, Andomedian.

There’s a stack of books on the counter, one of which which will cost us a wooden nickel.  Guess I need to get one of those.  

Seeing the empty displays for masks, likely because of the party, I offer my mask in trade to the merchant.  He is thrilled, and gives me a rubber chicken in return.

Looking closely at the rubber chicken (remember from my previous posts, I examine and rotate every inventory item because they make use of the feature), I notice the tail feather is a noticeably different shade than the rest of the bird.  Clicking on it separates it from the body.

I step out of the store, and notice something I failed to before -- the now-empty bird’s nest above the pool.  Inside is, conveniently, a wooden nickel.  I take it, and then go buy a book.

I look around some more, but there’s nothing else for me to do in town at the moment.  So I go back out to the woods, and explore some more.  

It’s Pizza the Hut!

I discover the sleeping figure of Feldspar, the ancient rock spirit that Attus told us about.  Anyone ready for an obvious solution?  We were told he was nearly unwakeable, but ticking him with a feather does the trick.  He tells us to rescue Attus and his wife, we’ll need to restore life water to the stream by refilling the pitcher and cornucopia of the two statues.

Nectar of the gods.

On the side of the river with the pitcher, I find the hummingbird playing in the flowers, and talking to her, she offers me some nectar if I have a vessel.  Will this clay pot do?

She fills it, and then I put it into the convenient hole in the pitcher.  As it flows to the river, it becomes a life of its own, so to speak.  The river is now flowing, and a rainbow bridge forms over the broken passage.  Attus appears on the other side, gracious, but still fretting over how to rescue his wife.  He tries to pull the blade from the tree himself, as well as use some of his powers, but it does nothing other than change the dripping sap to dripping blood.

We go on, I try the other statue with the cornucopia, and I try refilling it with my ear of corn, but Rosella comments that it likely just isn't enough.

I really don’t know what else to do here, so I try something I didn’t try before: I go the other way from the starting point.  I go back into the desert from the first chapter.

Exit, stage right.

This ends up being a good idea, because I am able to trade the book to the rhyming, bespectacled mouse, who offers me a shepherd's crook.

I’m being arrested?  That’s not gouda.

That seems like the perfect tool for fishing out cheese from a pool, so I head back to town and do just that.  I am promptly arrested, for various crimes, including being unseemly by not having fur or feathers covering my naked face.

(I wonder if that coyote fur I have in reserve will help with that?)

But, alas, that will be a question for the future, as this chapter draws to a close.  The next chapter title seems to put me in the mood to listen to Eminem, even though I do not enjoy his music at all.

But some thoughts: I seem to be sometimes completing things ahead of time, which means the game isn't entirely linear. For example, I picked up the salt crystals in the first chapter, but didn't use them until now. But the area I had gotten them from was accessible to me this time around, so I could have gotten them now as well. I suspect I could have skipped the watering of the stream; had I just went to fish out the cheese and gotten arrested, that might have been a future puzzle instead. So, it feels like once again, I am front-loading a game, making my life a little easier later. Perhaps.

Session Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Total Time: 4 hours 15 minutes