text: [Themes: Eastern, East Asian setting, surreal]
  
  > 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.
  
  > 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
  
  > 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