yes, sorry, it’s a bug. i’m adding new variables into existing chapters for the next update, and at the same time i keep fixing mistakes that people send me, and so i re-upload these chapters with the new variables. however, i try not to re-upload ‘startup’ a lot because it forces people to restart, but doing so creates bugs. anyway, sorry, fixed, but i’m afraid you’ll have to restart 
(and please send me the typos so i can fix them!)
1 Like
Ah well, I’m not averse to starting again - it’ll be fun! Forgot to mention as well I love the sneaky reference to1960s Barbie outfits when picking out outfits for the female MC, it was fun looking them up to visualise the clothes and such a smart way to get period accurate fits.
Have taken screenshots below! Hopefully not too pedantic!
1
Not sure if this was supposed to be:
“Gotta do something, you know.” The ghoul draws a claw over his throat.
Or
“Gotta do something, you know,” the ghoul drawls, a claw over his throat.”
2 Likes
Here is a path where Marsh is still alive but I killed her. I went through Roulet’s dreams with no issue whatsoever and then went with the 'what shall we do for money."
I chose: “I shall not beg.”
The very next page has text like this, mentioning of killing Marsh:
“You said yesterday that you…” she lowers her voice to a quiet whisper lest anyone at the bus stop would hear you, “killed Marsh.”
“I have,” you say simply, calmly.
“Oh…” Roulet looks away from you. “Um. I suppose this was in self-defence. Or perhaps prophylactic self-defence. But what do we do now? Marsh seemed to know something important. Do you think her coadjutor knows something? Would he even be willing to help after… now that Marsh is gone?”
“I don’t need him willing,” you say coldly. “Beside, he doesn’t know Marsh died by my hand.”
“Right,” Roulet nods, her brows furrowed in anxiety. “We’ll just… pretend we know nothing of what happened with Marsh and…” She doesn’t finish the sentence, her eyes staring at the road unfocused.
From the choices here, I chose: I really don’t care if Roulet is starving.
The next page is about another thing of earning money and it really didn’t matter, but got to the point where we get either the Esoteric Order to help us, or earn it ourselves. I chose earn it ourselves.
I think this may be where one of the problems arise. You get a short paragraph that you can’t do anything with, but the very next page after that says:
“Let’s go to Marsh then,” Roulet says. “First, we’ll hear what she knows, and then we’ll see how we can make our money. I have a few ideas.”
Roulet takes one final drag, slow and full, holds it, looks at her cigarette, then drops it and crushes it with her kitten heel.
Marsh is dead, but this sentence says she isn’t. There may be a couple of weird variables going on. First, I said ‘well earn it ourselves’ but instead shunts you off to the order anyways. And then it references Marsh being alive.
Then you go through the whole thing with the man on the bus, wanting a smoke, interacting with the bird.
Then you get this line:
You reach towards the bird—and you can’t grasp it.
You can’t.
Don’t look at it. Turn away. Go.
You walk toward Marsh’s little hut.
Marsh’s fishing hut stands quietly, hunched and weathered, nets hanging limp from hooks on the outside. A single lantern glows weakly from inside, just a little amber smudge behind dirty glass.
I push open the door, and it reads:
You push the door open. The wood feels soft under your fingers.
The interior of the hut didn’t change: slightly flooded and reeking of sea salt and damp rotting hemp rope, that hangs from nails, alongside neatly bundled nets.
Marsh is sitting at the table with an enamel mug half-filled with some black liquid and a plate of a writhing octopus. She is wearing a woollen vest over a collared blouse embroidered with flowers and mushrooms, a mid-calf wool skirt, rubber wellingtons, and a yellow PVC oilskin coat.
The next part leads to where she offers you breakfast and tea.
I don’t understand how it goes to this line D: I’m so confused. The code is very simple:
*if (f_punishment = “dead”) *goto not_marsh
*elseif (f_punishment != “dead”) *goto see_marsh
It should go from top to bottom, check that marsh is dead, and to to “not_marsh”
I don’t even know what can I change because it’s so straightforward. The only other variable is “moneymake”, and it’s pretty simple too.
3 Likes
Perhaps *label not marsh doesn’t have an underscore?
it has (the screenshot is just cut). i ctrl c ctrl v them, and quicktest would have caught that, too
1 Like
Understood. I should’ve looked at the code first, my apologies. I think the problem could be with *if (not(rarms)) because it doesn’t have *goto walkfish.
This part
*if (not(rarms))
$!{rhe} looks up at you and nods further up the street.
*page_break Walk.
*elseif (rarms)
$!{rhe} looks up at you with a smile, nods further up the street, and offers you ${rhis} elbow again.
*fake_choice
#Decline.
*set rarms false
Roulet seems a little disappointed but tries to hide quickly.
*goto walkfish
#Accept.
Roulet smiles, and you link your arms once more.
*goto walkfish
*label see_marsh
2 Likes
Theorizing on MC’s Imprisonment & N.
Summary
NGL in the final scenes when N is puzzling out MC saying they’re afraid of him or mad at him, I was nodding along with N’s reasoning. Like yeah, MC is a sentient cognito hazard, right? What does it matter if their OG body is stuck somewhere?
Put together with the blog saying thar N’s reasons for imprisoning MC could be mitigating or aggravating depending on the person, and N’s obvious interest in MC living out the human experience, seems clear that N imprisoned MC’s body as a way teach them to let go of their attachment to it, so MC can be something bigger.
N himself is the shapeshifter to end all shapeshifters, and in his view he (fount of infinite knowledge that he is) is teaching MC something new. Why would he feel remorse for that? Why would he view it as a meaningful betrayal? It couldn’t be anymore his nature.
Maybe I’m just stating the obvious, idk, I had to get my thoughts out.
Anyway as someone who has very little knowledge of Lovecraft’s works, aside from a bit about Dunwich Horror & Shadow Over Innsmouth, I’m having a great time with this story. The characters, MC included, have a strong voice and I like how the MC gets to be powerful without feeling like they could just break the plot apart at a moment’s notice.
2 Likes
omg I think you’re right! thank you so much! this is such a dumb and obvious mistake too I don’t know how I missed it. I really hope nothing else is wrong. thank you!!
2 Likes
It also should be possible to make MC feel vulnerable without making them run around like panicked headless chicken in the long scene without any reader’s input. I found that whole scene irritating enough to develop a permanent grudge against Nyuk Nyuk and everything they stand for. Like, there is power disparity between Nyah Nyah and MC and there is imprisonment, but MC is still a mythos deity for whom time passes differently and whose name makes humans mad. I’d like if there were choices other than “trembling panicked rabbit shivering in pants-shitting fright like a lowly human”. 
Having some minimal dignity does not cancel power disparity.
Sorry, I’m afraid this isn’t the kind of story where the MC is at the top of the food chain, so to speak. It was never my intention to make them OP, completely invulnerable, or fearless. Yes, they are ‘above’ humans, but it is part of the story that there are things much bigger and scarier.
But it was also NEVER my intention to strip the MC of ‘minimal dignity’! Could you please send me quotes/screenshots of the choices that have no options ‘other than trembling panicked rabbit shivering in pants-shitting fright like a lowly human’? Perhaps you could also help me by sharing what you would change or add to those choices? I’m sorry I wrote this part poorly, and I’d like to fix it! (although, hopefully, without compromising my original intention)
1 Like
It’s not dumb at all. Plenty of people who code for a living wouldn’t notice something like that until they start debugging. You are a great writer and I really enjoy your work.
2 Likes
It’s entire start of chapter33.txt before to this:
*fake_choice
#I am paralysed with terror.
*set daring %-10
You can't move a muscle. Like a dumb rabbit before a snake. Just waiting to be eaten.
#"Oh fuck you."
*set sarcastic %+ 10
*set daring %+ 10
"Oh fuck you," you roll your eyes at the mockery.
(Gotta mention how much I appreciated the “Fuck you” here. Took me microseconds to click on it after all that “rabbit before the snake” sequence). And what I want is, essentially, more “Fuck you” choices. Like here. You can choose to be scaredy-rabbit if that’s your thing, but you can also choose not to. But the text before it is just panicked flailing.
Compare it to “Enter the ghoul” scene, where MC could choose to stop, think and fight. The fact that ghoul wasn’t impressed much by the attempt sets MC’s situation to being far from top dog of this world, but does not take away from characterization of MC as someone who tries to do something even in direst circumstances instead of curling into weeping catatonic ball by default.
Equally I have no problem with the scene preceding chapter33.txt, where Marsh kicks MC in the balls and leaves them to rot. MC is basically this:
They’re not supposed to breeze through everything like a foul yellow wind when they’re balancing meat sockpuppet on a tip of one of their appendages, so it makes sense. Scene from “Fishing with Marsh” episode also makes sense (and leads to appropriately bizarre for eldritch entity followup too!).
Well…everything else either works or reads plausible enough to go “Hm, makes sense”. It’s just the start of that chapter that automatically reduces MC to gibbering mess reads like an outlier to me.
1 Like
thank you! I’ll try to fix this (sorry if it takes me a while, I sometimes find it difficult to work on older chapters)
1 Like
1966 WIP UPDATE 3 17/7/26 +64k = 408k words
23 Likes
I assumed N just by their nature caused the MC to freeze in terror, the same way MC causes humans to lose their minds.
4 Likes
I also want to give a big thanks to @medard for helping with the coding part. I know I don’t dig into coding myself when playtesting stuff, and such.
grins But I’m also glad to see that I wasn’t hallucinating.
More seriously, when I do encounter something like this it is hopefully helpful, though obviously in this case, others figured out the cause and deserved big thanks for it.
2 Likes
Will we ever see the Nazzadi and the Mi-Go
This made me smile, thank you : -) I referred to your post multiple times to figure out exactly where things went wrong, so if it hadn’t been for you, I would probably have stopped after the first try. I must say you deserve a big thank you too.
I want to add I love how big the updates are. I restart the game with each update, and seeing something new is always exciting, even though I have never been someone who explores branches.
4 Likes
Hastur (The King In Yellow and presumably who we play as) is only a Great Old One in Lovecraftian mythos (which is still stupidly, goofily powerful but not the peak of power, Cthulu would be here and he’s just a high priest of the Outer Gods) while Nyarlathotep is an Outer God (the peak of power and a fundamental facet of reality itself) and Nyarlathotep is the messenger of Azathoth (the one whose dream is the entirety of reality), it’s quite reasonable to be scared of them, it’d be weird if we weren’t scared (or scaroused at least in the case of some players) of them.
On the note of us being an intelligent cognitohazard, that’s just a part of our existence if we have a full physical body of our own (which we do), more like an extra limb than anything else, we’re obviously going to want to feel whole so it’d make sense if our PC is feeling the Great Old One equivalent of some variety of dysmorphia (and/or pehaps Phantom Body Syndrome?)
15 Likes