The Moonlit Tower
Yoon Ha Lee
dragon East Asian setting fantasy IF Competition 2002 IFComp Game parser strong NPCs surreal tower walkthrough Xyzzy Awards 2002 XYZZY Best Writing
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No, not a prison, though stone stands around you, as expressionless as a mirror awaiting face and form; and in the silence you hear no plaint of flute or roar of gong, but instead the crash of porcelain shattering.

Moonlight diffuses through the walls, tracing out unreadable sigils in calligraphies of light and dark. Stairs adorned with bas-relief motifs spiral downward.

You can see a porcelain mask here.
You look at the mask
The half-mask is the pale, almost bluish color of the finest celadon, cracked with uncanny precision down its axis of symmetry. The face in its blank, sculpted features has no more personality than new-forged steel. Half a mask, though--that must mean the left half is--
You take the mask
Taken.
You examine the sigils
A curious thing, that the walls' stones should admit moonlight. A half moon, you think, from the level of illumination: a moment's memory suggests nights spent campaigning beneath open sky, but is soon gone.
You wear the mask
The thought of putting this mask on suggests to you a disturbing question: how long have you been wearing porcelain as a face?
About yourself
The weight of armor and the breath of silk are familiar. Your face, though--when you reach up, it is porcelain that meets your touch on the left side, and you cannot remove it, though neither does it impede your senses. It seems the left half is a part of you, perhaps no more a mask than a hand is a glove...
You touch the face
Save for the jagged edge, the mask is cool and glazed-smooth.
Break mask
This mask shattered once, and only once, in a terrible clean fracture.
Inventory
You can only do that to something animate.

You are carrying:
half a porcelain mask
armor and silks (worn)
Go downward
Shadows gather around you. For a moment, dregs of light defined by the negative space take on the shapes of maple leaf, kite, comb, and other shapes that flicker across the walls too rapidly for you to interpret.

Curiously, the only weapons here live amid light and cannot be worn: they are silhouettes flung against the walls. Stairs carved with bas-reliefs spiral upward.

Northward and westward lie passageways unhindered by door or folding screen.
You go to the west
The shapes of light you saw as you entered fade irrevocably.

A single bronze gong hangs from its wooden frame in the room's center. There are also silk cushions arranged around the floor in a court ensemble's traditional half-circle, but no bamboo flutes or clay ocarinas, nine-stringed zithers or singers' unfolding fans, are in evidence. A mural that touches each wall in turn gives the room an illusion of greater depth.

Two entrances, one east, one north; the former is wrapped in shadow, the latter in light.
You look at the shapes
Traced in light are leaf, comb, kite: a strange triad.
You take the leaf
Improbable, despite the claims of certain scholars.
You look at the leaf
Autumn is the maple's season, when all things die but fire and sun, pine and moon, last guardians before the door into winter and winter's snowlocked court. Once you knew a dark-haired woman who always wore red, gold and black, the maple's colors, even at the emperor's winter court, steadfast against the encroaching fashions of indigo or palest blue. She had a low ironic laugh, but she is lost to you....

Here, surrounded by stone, shadow, light, there is no indication of the season.
You examine the comb
The comb has the curved, tortoise-shell shape that you have seen in years past--but is one of the teeth broken?
Yes
That was a rhetorical question.
You comb the hair
With what comb?
You examine the kite
There should be two kites, not one: brothers and sisters fly them as pairs during the kite-fighting auguries of spring. Alas, no wind stirs in this dustless place.
Look around
Curiously, the only weapons here live amid light and cannot be worn: they are silhouettes flung against the walls. Stairs carved with bas-reliefs spiral upward.

Northward and westward lie passageways unhindered by door or folding screen.
You go north
The shapes of light you saw as you entered fade irrevocably.

Barren branches and pines suggest winter's quiet. Metal and wood, painted and sculpted, the false garden is heedless of harvest, drought or rain.

A jade compass rests at the garden's metaphysical center, between translucence and opacity, curve and line, and other dichotomies too subtle for your eye. A gentle warmth from the surface invites touch.

Transactions of light show other rooms southward and westward.

You can see a tortoise-shell comb here.
You examine the compass
The compass is carved from a single piece of jade in which violet and green intermingle delicately; the cardinal directions--if such they be--are marked by hawk, swallow, crane and feather. More curiously still, the needle is of glass, suggesting that it homes to something other than the north. Perhaps you can set it yourself?

The needle points to the feather.
You turn the needle
You spin the needle, which settles at a random position. A tasseled fan appears upon the compass' surface. The needle points to the crane now. You hear a clear chiming sound as the garden's trees and flowers move subtly, obedient to this new season.
You describe your surroundings
Summer's heady blooms are much in evidence. Metal and wood, painted and sculpted, the false garden is heedless of harvest, drought or rain.

A jade compass rests at the garden's metaphysical center, between translucence and opacity, curve and line, and other dichotomies too subtle for your eye. A gentle warmth from the surface invites touch.

Transactions of light show other rooms southward and westward.

On the jade compass is a tasseled fan.
You examine the fan
More remarkable than the fan's intricate designs is the long blue tassel that trails from it. It is the kind of fan a lady might carry to cool herself during the summer's heat.
Wave fan
You look ridiculous waving the tasseled fan.
You open the fan
The fan itself is fixed, but as you look upon the tassel, it evokes the improbable memory of a kitestring tugging against your hand.
You throw the fan
Dropped.
You fly fan
Upon what wings?
You think
What a good idea.
Xyzzy
(No Garden of Unearthly Delights, alas.)
You describe your surroundings
Summer's heady blooms are much in evidence. Metal and wood, painted and sculpted, the false garden is heedless of harvest, drought or rain.

A jade compass rests at the garden's metaphysical center, between translucence and opacity, curve and line, and other dichotomies too subtle for your eye. A gentle warmth from the surface invites touch.

Transactions of light show other rooms southward and westward.
Go west
It seems this is a banquet room, if a banquet had no especial place for people to dine. Glassware and stoneware are arranged in deliberate shapes, as though they are constellations.

South lies a chamber of brooding silence, and a vague, sweet fragrance comes from the east. Stairs of blackest marble lead downward.

On the table are a banquet of bones and some ivory chopsticks.
Xyzzy
(Itadakimasu!)
You examine the banquet
The feast before you seems a mockery, for everywhere upon the plates and bowls there is nothing but skeletons artfully pieced together to create grotesqueries from ordinary game. A creature half-bird, half-rabbit, for one, or a pheasant with extra legs. Yet it is perhaps no more grotesque than some of the intrigues that poisoned the emperor's court, at times.
You examine the chopsticks
The chopsticks are pale, almost too slender for practical use, and perfectly matched, though one is carved with a dragon, the other with a phoenix.
You go to the south
A single bronze gong hangs from its wooden frame in the room's center. There are also silk cushions arranged around the floor in a court ensemble's traditional half-circle, but no bamboo flutes or clay ocarinas, nine-stringed zithers or singers' unfolding fans, are in evidence. A mural that touches each wall in turn gives the room an illusion of greater depth.

Two entrances, one east, one north; the former is wrapped in shadow, the latter in light.
You examine the mural
The mural shows court ladies whispering to each other in a garden; men kneel to float folded-paper poems down the brook for them to read.
You hit gong
It rings a sonorous note. A faint shiver of music fades, awaiting instruction as to the proper piece to play. In the end, nothing remains but silence.
Go east
Curiously, the only weapons here live amid light and cannot be worn: they are silhouettes flung against the walls. Stairs carved with bas-reliefs spiral upward.

Northward and westward lie passageways unhindered by door or folding screen.
You go to the north
Summer's heady blooms are much in evidence. Metal and wood, painted and sculpted, the false garden is heedless of harvest, drought or rain.

A jade compass rests at the garden's metaphysical center, between translucence and opacity, curve and line, and other dichotomies too subtle for your eye. A gentle warmth from the surface invites touch.

Transactions of light show other rooms southward and westward.
You go to the west
It seems this is a banquet room, if a banquet had no especial place for people to dine. Glassware and stoneware are arranged in deliberate shapes, as though they are constellations.

South lies a chamber of brooding silence, and a vague, sweet fragrance comes from the east. Stairs of blackest marble lead downward.

On the table is a banquet of bones.
Go down
As your feet meet that first step, a sudden vertigo overtakes you, as though you journeyed through skies beyond imagining, across hollow and infinite distances. You emerge back where you started: it seems the night's hold is too strong here, and you must find some guide-star to anchor your way.
You examine the bones
The feast before you seems a mockery, for everywhere upon the plates and bowls there is nothing but skeletons artfully pieced together to create grotesqueries from ordinary game. A creature half-bird, half-rabbit, for one, or a pheasant with extra legs. Yet it is perhaps no more grotesque than some of the intrigues that poisoned the emperor's court, at times.
You examine the constellations
The arrangement is in the shape of the constellation known as the White Archer. Legend says that he shot his love, the Sun, out of the sky while hunting. For ten days and nights, the Sun hid her face from the world, and ever after, in penance, he exiled himself to the night, unable to see her; his faithful horse, the Moon, travels between them, bearing messages between the parted lovers.

As to how the Sun was brought back to the world by the phoenix--that is another tale.

This seems an ill-fortuned constellation to complement an ill-fortuned feast.
You examine the compass
The compass is carved from a single piece of jade in which violet and green intermingle delicately; the cardinal directions--if such they be--are marked by hawk, swallow, crane and feather. More curiously still, the needle is of glass, suggesting that it homes to something other than the north. Perhaps you can set it yourself?

The needle points to the crane.
You set the compass to the hawk
The needle points to the hawk now. You hear a clear chiming sound as the garden's trees and flowers move subtly, obedient to this new season.
Look around
Autumn's fiery colors are evident in the trees and flowers around you. Metal and wood, painted and sculpted, the false garden is heedless of harvest, drought or rain.

A jade compass rests at the garden's metaphysical center, between translucence and opacity, curve and line, and other dichotomies too subtle for your eye. A gentle warmth from the surface invites touch.

Transactions of light show other rooms southward and westward.

On the unliving trees is a folded maple leaf.
You examine the leaf
This cleverly-folded leaf stirs as though, in its secret paper dreams, it yearns to fly.
You fold the paper into the crane
You now have a sheet of red paper.
I only understood you as far as wanting to fold the sheet of red paper.
You fold the crane
The crane: unlikely to yield in such a fashion.
You read the paper
It is hard to believe that this sheet of red-dyed mulberry paper can take upon the shape of a leaf with folding.
You examine paper
The paper cannot unfold any further.

It is hard to believe that this sheet of red-dyed mulberry paper can take upon the shape of a leaf with folding.
You examine the tassel
The silken strands are longer than your arm.
You take the tassel
The tassel is too firmly attached. A knife might serve you better.
Inventory
You are carrying:
a red paper kite with no string
a tasseled fan
a lady's tortoise-shell comb
half a porcelain mask
armor and silks (worn)
You examine the comb
The comb is curved like a smile, though it seems fragile, easily broken by a chance hand.
Look around
Autumn's fiery colors are evident in the trees and flowers around you. Metal and wood, painted and sculpted, the false garden is heedless of harvest, drought or rain.

A jade compass rests at the garden's metaphysical center, between translucence and opacity, curve and line, and other dichotomies too subtle for your eye. A gentle warmth from the surface invites touch.

Transactions of light show other rooms southward and westward.
You look at the hawk
It was autumn when last you went hawking with the emperor's justiciar. Freed of court robes, she soared as surely as the kestrel that raced before her; her hair was black and scandalously unbound as the red-and-gold ribbons tore away in the wind to land in your waiting hand. Autumn...
You examine the crane
The most auspicious of all birds, save the imperial phoenix. Many a summer morning have you gazed upon cranes in flight, whether silhouetted against the setting sun or set in abalone-shell upon a fine lacquered cabinet, a cloisonne hairpin.
You look at the swallow
Spring is the swallows' season, when they return from their sojourn in distant lands and signal the kite-flying auguries. If only an augury could help you now...
You look at feather
Even for the emperor's winter court, the only birds that remain in the gardens are the jeweled nightingales, which sing dainty mechanical tunes when they are stroked with a feather. Your brother hated them passionately, but he listened to them readily enough whenever the justiciar asked, with that smile that lit her eyes, though it never reached her mouth.
You examine the cushions
The cushions are dyed in summer colors and embroidered with gold thread. You remember finding your brother's terse poetry, written on a slip of pale paper, under such a cushion.
You look under the cushions
Beneath one of the cushions you find an ocarina, as though it had been left by a careless musician.
You look at the ocarina
The ocarina is round, tapering at both ends, with eight finger-holes and one thumb-hole, a mouthpiece and a hole from which the sound emerges. You have seen musicians carry such instruments with them, as they are forgiving of the chance accidents that sometimes happen outside the sedate confines of a symphony chamber.
You play it
The ocarina's notes are high and sweet.

In this place, they remind you of that first court dance, when you and you brother first saw the justiciar, a vision of red and black, a flash of gold. Someone played an ocarina that time, too. Flutes, zithers and lutes join in the cheerful clamor of instruments being tuned, though none of them are to be seen. You hear among the instruments the low, melancholy tones of an autumn dirge.
Go east
Curiously, the only weapons here live amid light and cannot be worn: they are silhouettes flung against the walls. Stairs carved with bas-reliefs spiral upward.

Northward and westward lie passageways unhindered by door or folding screen.
You eat the bones
(first taking the banquet of bones)
Uncannily, the bones edge away, suggesting that another approach will be necessary.
You look at the table
The table is lacquered in red and black, carved in elaborate motifs. The justiciar would have liked the colors.
You look at the motifs
The motifs suggest leaf, vine and blossom before retreating into the uneasy shapes of abstraction.
You examine compass
The compass is carved from a single piece of jade in which violet and green intermingle delicately; the cardinal directions--if such they be--are marked by hawk, swallow, crane and feather. More curiously still, the needle is of glass, suggesting that it homes to something other than the north. Perhaps you can set it yourself?

The needle points to the hawk.
You set the compass to swallow
The needle points to the swallow now. You hear a clear chiming sound as the garden's trees and flowers move subtly, obedient to this new season.
Look around
Spring's blossoms and budding trees are here in profusion. Metal and wood, painted and sculpted, the false garden is heedless of harvest, drought or rain.

A jade compass rests at the garden's metaphysical center, between translucence and opacity, curve and line, and other dichotomies too subtle for your eye. A gentle warmth from the surface invites touch.

Transactions of light show other rooms southward and westward.
You look at what you're carrying with you
You are carrying:
a clay ocarina
a red paper kite with no string
a tasseled fan
a lady's tortoise-shell comb
half a porcelain mask
armor and silks (worn)
You examine the comb
The comb is curved like a smile, though it seems fragile, easily broken by a chance hand.
Break comb
Three of the long central teeth flex, then snap in your fingers. The justiciar wore a comb long-broken as a memento; it proved an uneasy prophecy of waking passion and breaking promises.
Play comb
The teeth make a faint, almost musical plucking sound as you run your thumb down the comb.
You examine the teeth
They are of tortoise-shell, like the comb from which they came, and span the palm of your hand. Too light for hairpins, too dainty for weapons.
You cut the silk with the teeth
That seems an unlikely way to cut anything.
Sing
A hundred poems set to music suggest themselves to you, an evening's pastime among friends and lovers. It is with difficulty that you choose one, and too soon it is done.
You go to the west
It seems this is a banquet room, if a banquet had no especial place for people to dine. Glassware and stoneware are arranged in deliberate shapes, as though they are constellations.

South lies a chamber of brooding silence, and a vague, sweet fragrance comes from the east. Stairs of blackest marble lead downward.

On the table is a banquet of bones.
You go to the south
A single bronze gong hangs from its wooden frame in the room's center. There are also silk cushions arranged around the floor in a court ensemble's traditional half-circle, but no bamboo flutes or clay ocarinas, nine-stringed zithers or singers' unfolding fans, are in evidence. A mural that touches each wall in turn gives the room an illusion of greater depth.

Two entrances, one east, one north; the former is wrapped in shadow, the latter in light.
Play teeth
The comb's teeth seems an unlikely instrument.
Play comb
The teeth make a faint, almost musical plucking sound as you run your thumb down the comb. In response, you hear a woman's soft sigh, then the businesslike cacophony of instruments being tuned to a new mode.
You examine the woman
The ladies wear the fine trailing silks of summer court, and though their faces are all but hidden by their fans, the cant of their eyes suggests laughter.
You examine the gong
The gong stands taller than a man, and its rim is etched with faint characters. The surface has no patina; there is no mallet with which to strike it and signal the absent musicians to begin.
You touch the mural
The walls seem to ripple at your touch, as though echoing the eddies and flow of a brook.
You examine the men
They wear somber colors in contrast to the ladies, though their expressions are amused rather than grave.
Strike gong
It rings a sonorous note. In the delicate layering of sound you can hear the lutes, the plaint of flutes like the cries of wild geese. The music fades note by note, like the best of autumn nights. The mural appears to have shifted subtly, like a hand seen beneath the surface of water.
You examine the poems
The poets' sentiments are written on sheets of paper in faded colors, but the details were known to the painter alone. You know poems of your own, though, written in past pain and longing.
You look at the mural
The mural shows court ladies reading folded-paper poems that they have just fished from the brook; men stand upstream, watching their faces. In the northeast, a passageway stands open to the court beyond.
You recite the poem
("Walk silently in the shadow of the sunrise,
knowing the warmth of days, of words and whispers,
shall never touch you again.")
You play ocarina
The ocarina's notes are high and sweet.

In this place, they remind you of that first court dance, when you and you brother first saw the justiciar, a vision of red and black, a flash of gold. Someone played an ocarina that time, too. Flutes, zithers and lutes join in the cheerful clamor of instruments being tuned, though none of them are to be seen. One of the flutes runs through a storm of arpeggios, suggesting the spring's wild winds.
Strike gong
It rings a sonorous note. In the end, nothing remains but silence.
You look around
A single bronze gong hangs from its wooden frame in the room's center. There are also silk cushions arranged around the floor in a court ensemble's traditional half-circle, but no bamboo flutes or clay ocarinas, nine-stringed zithers or singers' unfolding fans, are in evidence. A mural that touches each wall in turn gives the room an illusion of greater depth.

Two entrances, one east, one north; the former is wrapped in shadow, the latter in light.
You go northeast
Lanterns hang from the ceiling in a constellation of soft and shining stars. Tapestries on the wall promise tales of splendor and grace, while folding screens partition the room, if incompletely, as they are no real barrier to eye or foot.
You look at the tapestries
The tapestries show, in no particular sequence, the legend of the Sun in hiding. The dragon and the phoenix, both brothers, see her where she hides: the dragon glories in the untamed sky while the phoenix sings to soothe the Sun, and at last carries her on his back to the waiting world.

As to why the Sun went into hiding, and the injury done to her--that is another tale.

Mysteriously, a passage is woven into the tapestries, suggesting that southwest lies a way out of the legend.
Play comb
The teeth make a faint, almost musical plucking sound as you run your thumb down the comb.
You examine the screens
The screens are of paper over bamboo, and their arrangement seems intended to allow fleeting moments of privacy rather than to serve as any real barrier. The brushstroke paintings show cats frolicking among flowers and butterflies.

Before your parents died, you and your brother used to run among the screens as though they were a labyrinth, tripping over hems and searching for abandoned letters.
You look at Sun
The weavers suggested the Sun's shape indistinctly within a nimbus of light.
You examine the phoenix
With its fanciful plumage in the colors of fire and sun, the phoenix looks like a figure of legend indeed.
You move the screens
The folding screens already has a place in the world's reckoning.
You look at the dragon
With its pearly scales and sinuous twinings, the dragon looks like a figure of legend indeed.
Search screens
Following the elusive smell of plum blossoms, you find a strangely insubstantial lantern half-fallen beyond one of the screens. It hovers near your shoulder like an errant star.
You examine the lantern
(the paper lanterns)
The lanterns are hung in an artful scattering, hinting at unseen constellations. Their glow is warmer than the moonlight slanting through the walls.
You examine the insubstantial lantern
The lantern floats behind you, following you almost apologetically. Its glow flickers gently.
You take it
Though the lantern follows you like an errant star, it refuses to be touched.
You check what you're carrying
You are carrying:
an insubstantial lantern (floating behind your shoulder)
three comb's teeth
a clay ocarina
a red paper kite with no string
a tasseled fan
a lady's tortoise-shell comb (broken)
half a porcelain mask
armor and silks (worn)
You go southwest
A single bronze gong hangs from its wooden frame in the room's center. There are also silk cushions arranged around the floor in a court ensemble's traditional half-circle, but no bamboo flutes or clay ocarinas, nine-stringed zithers or singers' unfolding fans, are in evidence. A mural that touches each wall in turn gives the room an illusion of greater depth.

Two entrances, one east, one north; the former is wrapped in shadow, the latter in light.
Go downwards
The lantern behind you brightens as you approach the stairs, anchoring a path for you through the sea of stars.

Memory overtakes you as you enter: you and your brother speaking to each other in low, tense voices (not shouting, never shouting before her) until the justiciar bids you leave, curtly. The next day, when the emperor stripped her of her rank, and neither you nor your brother had the influence to free her from the court's machinations--you have lived that day over and over, more than any man ought.

You see silhouettes out of the corner of your eye: blade, hand, a woman's hair floating long and free; they elude any attempt to view them directly, as though they ceased to dance across the walls when you do so.

Hawks painted in gold and brown soar along the walls. It is strangely warm here, as though fires lived just beyond your perception. The entire hall is open to the wind and warmth, unobstructed except by your presence.

Stairs of darkest marble circle upward. A passageway leads south into clear, colorless light.
You look at the hawks
A splendor of hawks in flight, each feather meticulously painted. Each one has a woman's dark eyes instead of a raptor's golden gaze.
You examine the light
Subtle gradations characterize the light in this room, as though it were filtered by great wings.
Go south
As you approach, you realize that the shadows split the passageway in a terrible clean fracture, and your face aches unbearably; only when you move away does the pain ease.
You wear the mask
Suddenly and disturbingly inspired by the riven passage to the south, you lift the mask to your face, momentarily shadowing your vision. When you can see clearly again, the mask has been rejoined flawlessly--and the shadows close around the passageway. Yours is the dragon's perfection, the dark journey skyward, as you have chosen.
You check your inventory
You are carrying:
an insubstantial lantern (floating behind your shoulder)
three comb's teeth
a clay ocarina
a red paper kite with no string
a tasseled fan
a lady's tortoise-shell comb (broken)
armor and silks (worn)
You look at your surroundings
Hawks painted in gold and brown soar along the walls. It is strangely warm here, as though fires lived just beyond your perception. The entire hall is open and unobstructed except by your presence.
Up
Cherry blossoms and lilacs, kite-flying auguries and newly-budding leaves: the trappings of spring are far beneath you now, though the kite is a red speck dancing in the storm. The moonlit tower lays open beneath you, and lightning and storm clouds gather around you.
You examine the kite
(the red kite)
Caught in the grip of gale and rain, the kite dances, a last reminder of the human things you are leaving behind.
You look at the tower
In its way the moonlit tower is like any other tower, despite the strange things trapped within; you are part of them no longer.
You fly
The sky is yours, in a dance unending, and you have shed your past (her eyes, the hand upon the blade, the blood, your brother's white and anguished face) as you ascend to your place in the zodiac.
Break mask
Suddenly and terribly inspired by the shadowed passage to the south, you smash the half-mask upon your own face. The pain nearly blinds you. When you can see again, both halves of the mask are gone--and the passageway stands open, free of shadow.
Go south
At first, this place of polished surfaces seems like a profusion of mirrors and a kaleidoscope of doors. Looking more closely, though, all doors are one, save the one you came from. The peculiar translucence of the walls suggests that it is growing light out.

Northward, a passageway no longer riven by shadow returns to the rest of the tower; across from it stands a door to the south.
You examine the light
The light here has a clarity rarely found except in dreams or childhood, through which everyone must pass eventually.
You examine the walls
The walls are smooth and polished, reflecting every chance movement.
You examine the door
The door is of the same strange stone that characterizes the tower.
You feel the walls
The silent, smooth perfection of stone.
You open the door
Swallows soaring and tumbling, the flowerfall of cherry blossom petals, a wind that needs no kites to augur good fortune. The paths you take are your own, now, no matter what jealousies you and your brother exchanged, knotted too deeply to be disentangled in past dreams.

You leave the tower behind you, no longer trapped by the tyranny of moonlight. The rest of your story is your own to tell and cherish, as you walk past the tower's broken boundaries and into the rest of your awakening.
You go to the east
Spring's blossoms and budding trees are here in profusion. Your lantern gives the chamber a quality of sharp angles at odds with the careful arrangements. Metal and wood, painted and sculpted, the false garden is heedless of harvest, drought or rain.

A jade compass rests at the garden's metaphysical center, between translucence and opacity, curve and line, and other dichotomies too subtle for your eye. A gentle warmth from the surface invites touch.

Transactions of light show other rooms southward and westward.
Go south
The lantern seems to have no effect on the shadows that reside here, which remind you of long nights standing sentry, straining your eyes against the darkness.

Curiously, the only weapons here live amid light and cannot be worn: they are silhouettes flung against the walls. Stairs carved with bas-reliefs spiral upward.

Northward and westward lie passageways unhindered by door or folding screen.
You examine the shadow
Weapons line the walls, writ in shadow--yet you know their heft and balance, the patterns of movement that make one deadly in attack and another impenetrable in defense. If only you knew, as well, the histories of blood, patronage and betrayal--or loyalty--that they represent.

One of the weapons is more substantial than you realized at first, a bronze-hilted dagger with a tassel hanging from the pommel.
You take the dagger
Taken.
You examine the dagger
Such daggers rarely leave the hands of the justiciars who wield them as their symbol of office. A white tassel hangs from the pommel of the hilt.
You examine the white tassel
The silken strands are white, for death. The justiciar's last resort, someone said to you once--or did you say it?
You cut it with the dagger
The fan's blue tassel may serve you better.
You cut the blue tassel with the dagger
A few neat cuts free some strands from the tassel, and tying them together results in--a kitestring?

For a second there is a dark-eyed boy beside you, whose laugh is yours, but wilder; whose smile is yours, but wider. If only you remembered the augury that you and your brother cast that spring in the kite-flying ritual, years before either of you met the woman who wore black and red and gold...
You tie the string to the kite
Though it takes some patience, you tie the kitestring to the kite. Surely a season of gales and newborn blossoms awaits you, even in this skyless tower.
You go to the north
Spring's blossoms and budding trees are here in profusion. Your lantern gives the chamber a quality of sharp angles at odds with the careful arrangements. Metal and wood, painted and sculpted, the false garden is heedless of harvest, drought or rain.

A jade compass rests at the garden's metaphysical center, between translucence and opacity, curve and line, and other dichotomies too subtle for your eye. A gentle warmth from the surface invites touch.

Transactions of light show other rooms southward and westward.
You look at the swallow
Spring is the swallows' season, when they return from their sojourn in distant lands and signal the kite-flying auguries. If only an augury could help you now...
You turn the compass to swallow
The needle points to the swallow now. You hear a clear chiming sound as the garden's trees and flowers move subtly, obedient to this new season.
Fly kite
Spring: the season of augury. Red and black and gold, maple colors, kite colors; you no longer know which. A breeze stirs through the room, though the trees and flowers are no more affected by it than they would be by the sun's earnest light or a plague of locusts. Nevertheless, you hear the hollow sound of something being dislodged from one of the trees.

It was spring when your kite and your brother's became too entangled for one glass-edged string to cut the other's, for one to conquer the other, though entangled they flew yet; and spring when you were first parted from your brother on his first campaign and yours, two fatherless boys entering the emperor's service as adults.

The kite tugs from your hand, as impatient as a hawk winning free of hood; dances perilously upward upon the wings of this nowhere breeze; and disappears.

The breeze swells to a gale that rears southward and upward, seeking the sky in this enclosed and skyless room.
You examine the trees
Bamboo groves, graceful though ungrowing.
Go south
The lantern seems to have no effect on the shadows that reside here, which remind you of long nights standing sentry, straining your eyes against the darkness.

Curiously, the only weapons here live amid light and cannot be worn: they are silhouettes flung against the walls. Stairs carved with bas-reliefs spiral upward.

Northward and westward lie passageways unhindered by door or folding screen.

A wind gallops toward the stairs, seeking the sky.
You go up
Moonlight diffuses through the walls, tracing out unreadable sigils in calligraphies of light and dark. Upwards, the sky is open to your eyes. The lantern brightens slightly, like a star as the night grows deeper. Stairs adorned with bas-relief motifs spiral downward.

Wind flings itself up the walls and toward the sky; you have but to look up.
You look up
The night spreads her wings above you, and shows no sign of welcoming her sister of the sunborn day. Constellations jewel the sky, half-hidden by clouds like nestling feathers: the Heavenly Horse and the Imperial Chrysanthemum.
You look at Horse
The star-stallion rears like the chargers you once rode. The justiciar herself preferred such spirited mounts.
You look at Chrysanthemum
It is the first among constellations, open to the eyes of all people unlike the emperor himself. You and your brother saw him only once, when he called on you to stand together for your family's name.
You look at the stairs
Each step is carved upon the side in bas-relief, though the design is abstract.
You go downwards
The lantern seems to have no effect on the shadows that reside here, which remind you of long nights standing sentry, straining your eyes against the darkness.

Curiously, the only weapons here live amid light and cannot be worn: they are silhouettes flung against the walls. Stairs carved with bas-reliefs spiral upward.

Northward and westward lie passageways unhindered by door or folding screen.
You go upwards
The shapes of light you saw as you entered fade irrevocably.

Moonlight diffuses through the walls, tracing out unreadable sigils in calligraphies of light and dark. Stairs adorned with bas-relief motifs spiral downward.
You examine the moonlight
A curious thing, that the walls' stones should admit moonlight. A half moon, you think, from the level of illumination: a moment's memory suggests nights spent campaigning beneath open sky, but is soon gone.
You look up
The ceiling above is only a ceiling.
You examine the armor
Both armor and silk are in black and gold, night and sun, skins without sensation.
Go downwards
The lantern behind you brightens as you approach the stairs, anchoring a path for you through the sea of stars.

You see silhouettes out of the corner of your eye: blade, hand, a woman's hair floating long and free; they elude any attempt to view them directly, as though they ceased to dance across the walls when you do so.

Hawks painted in gold and brown soar along the walls. It is strangely warm here, as though fires lived just beyond your perception. The entire hall is open to the wind and warmth, unobstructed except by your presence.

Stairs of darkest marble circle upward. A passageway leads south into clear, colorless light.
Break mask
Suddenly and terribly inspired by the shadowed passage to the south, you smash the half-mask upon your own face. The pain nearly blinds you. When you can see again, both halves of the mask are gone--and the passageway stands open, free of shadow.
Go south
At first, this place of polished surfaces seems like a profusion of mirrors and a kaleidoscope of doors. Looking more closely, though, all doors are one, save the one you came from. The peculiar translucence of the walls suggests that it is growing light out.

Northward, a passageway no longer riven by shadow returns to the rest of the tower; across from it stands a door to the south.
You open the door
Swallows soaring and tumbling, the flowerfall of cherry blossom petals, a wind that needs no kites to augur good fortune. The paths you take are your own, now, no matter what jealousies you and your brother exchanged, knotted too deeply to be disentangled in past dreams.

You leave the tower behind you, no longer trapped by the tyranny of moonlight. The rest of your story is your own to tell and cherish, as you walk past the tower's broken boundaries and into the rest of your awakening.
Go north
N = next optionP = previous
RETURN = select option  Q = resume game

> For the Copyright-Conscious Sonnet-Reciter
Notes on Development and Setting (Long)
A Last Apology
If you've found some of the various poetry fragments in the game, rest assured that anything you don't recognize immediately is by yours truly. In particular, one of the fragments is from my short story "Alas, Lirette," in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2001. Chalk it down to a moment of hubris. Plus, it amused me. And you may safely conclude that I am easily amused.
Some Final Words
N = next optionP = previous
RETURN = select option  Q = resume game

> For the Copyright-Conscious Sonnet-Reciter
Notes on Development and Setting (Long)
A Last Apology
You go to the north
N = next optionP = previous
RETURN = select option  Q = resume game

For the Copyright-Conscious Sonnet-Reciter
> Notes on Development and Setting (Long)
A Last Apology

For the first, it's probably several kinds of insane to enter one's first work of IF in the IFComp. (I'm told that "this is my first game" is a bad way to start an entry...?) I found it to be several kinds of educational, though--I knew beta-testers were helpful and generous souls, but I hadn't realized how helpful and generous they were!--and the deadline encouraged me to finish the project instead of leaving it to float in limbo.

The fact that this is my first game also led to certain design decisions. For one thing, no NPCs. I admire the depth of conversation available in games like Emily Short's Pytho's Mask, but I peeked at the coding necessary to implement the most basic ASK/TELL system and concluded there was no way I was going to learn enough Inform to do a convincing job with one NPC, let alone several, within the time frame available. Implementing the inanimate jade compass and its associated seasonal changes turned out to be enough of a headache. I thought of having the player wake up in a tomb (generally a good reason for other people to be absent), the opening lines "No, not a prison..." came to me, and I was off and running.

(Aside: For an idea of the time I had available: I started learning Inform sometime in July. I got married on 3 August 2002, which was rather more of a priority, and moved from Ithaca, NY to Boston in mid-August. And my husband is already resigned to the fact that he's going to hear me muttering arcanely about "forgot to give it pluralname" and "you should be scenery" when I'm at my computer.)

For another, the tower was a deliberately extensible (or collapsible) design in that I figured I could add as many "levels" or floors as I had time for, with a small number of rooms per level. Hence, a wimpy three-storey tower with only half-a-dozen rooms. And no, I don't plan on adding more floors. I think I'm burned out on towers.

I also made the mistake of making up puzzles as I went along, which will not happen again. The only reason I got away with it (or not, as the case may be) was the small size of the game. It has, however, gotten me thinking about modular puzzle design, which might be a good thing, though unfortunately it isn't immediately useful to you.

The setting itself draws loosely from Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Mongolian sources, though you won't find any isomorphisms. I took considerable liberty with the phoenix and dragon; the Heavenly Horse, which appears in a famous Shilla (Korean) tomb, was co-opted into a Moon-figure. The tale of the White Archer was adapted from "The Legend of Erkhii Mergen, the Archer," which you can find in Hillary Roe Metternich's Mongolian Folktales, but I collided it with the Japanese and Chinese tales of the sun going into hiding and having to be sung back into the world. The chrysanthemum is a familiar Japanese symbol, and some of the earliest ocarinas were found in China. Kite-flying (and sometimes fighting, as well as various militant uses) were recorded from early times in China, Korea, and/or Japan. And for seasonal motifs I drew freely on my years in Korea, where my parents were born.

One element had nothing to do with mythology, and came from a homebrew roleplaying setting: the Brixten Shanai, a tower whose starry stairs stretched endlessly into the void. A minor thing, perhaps, but it has some nostalgia value for me and my sister.

Finally, one of the attractions of this medium for me is that it allows me both to exercise rusty computer programming skills (though arguably Andrew Plotkin's Lists and Lists would do that too!) and my writing skills. After getting used to linear storytelling, it was an interesting exercise trying to find some way of conveying a sense of story and setting without "railroading" the player overmuch. I've also been on a crusade for non-visual sensory details ever since I read Poul Anderson's rule of thumb for at least one non-visual detail per page. I don't know if I succeeded entirely--puzzle design in particular is going to be an Achilles heel for some time--but now I have a better idea of how to go about it.

Now that you've heard more than you ever wanted to know about the game, it's time to send you on your way so I can start working on my next crazy project!

Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofveils.com] http://pegasus.cityofveils.com/if.phtml