I finished this story last night, later than most people as is my wont. I loved it! The mansion was a very rich and complex self-contained environment and I spent a couple of days in there, exploring the various options. I’d never even heard of Pentecost Apes, so this aspect of the story was lost on me, but I didn’t sense something was missing from the narrative on those grounds. I assume the emphasis on itching is not a carry-over from previous content, but merely one of those universally understood horrors that make a story feel more visceral. I found it effective here.
I’ll agree with some fellow players that, although the Flash Lay fit the story in theory, it didn’t in practice. It certainly felt like padding for me at the time it came up, not only because it was generic but because there wasn’t much of an introduction to the mark. In "The Frequently Deceased" there was extensive set-up woven throughout the story that prepared us for the establishment we were meant to target, thus making the Flash Lay feel like something of a culmination of one’s efforts; here, on the other hand, the Flash Lay was close to the beginning and there was perplexingly little content before it. When I reached the mansion and felt the story come into its own I began to enjoy myself more, though, and at that point I thought of the Flash Lay more charitably as something of a pacing mechanism, to stop people from going through the story too fast. In any case, I actually found the Flash Lay enjoyable in and of itself because I hadn’t played many of them lately and I thought it greatly improved since its introduction last year.
Generic spoilers follow.
I also appreciated the way that the body of the story, with content more or less common to all players, set up such an explosion of options and strategies at the endgame. I ended up having all of them open to me, so I was spoiled for choice (and was actually a tiny bit disappointed that I didn’t get to use the weapons I’d readied), but there were options for many types of player character that covered all sorts of discoveries in the game. The number of alternatives also mitigated what might otherwise have taken away from the narrative’s power: that important challenges seemed meaningless to me because they were geared towards players with low stats. The final conversation did strike me as being too short; we’d already learned a lot about the Empire of Hands, but I liked the character of Vespasian and might have preferred to spend some extra time with him.
Although all players saw the same content in the mansion, the experimentation with interactive storylet text continues. I found it very novel that the text now incorporated a quality (the clock); I think it was only with archaeological expeditions in the Forgotten Quarter that something similar was attempted before, and not nearly as elegantly. The problem from "The Seven-Day Reign" hasn’t been solved, but it doesn’t actually matter here that the clock isn’t visible in the journal, and only in the Study’s recorded echo does a false time appear, which is also a clue in its way (Hark DeGaul got it right on page 2 of this thread). By the way, the choice to incorporate the time at the beginning of the text in the Study was brilliant, because it allows the time to be seen even in the mansion’s hallway (the general view), which is where the clock is supposed to be. Very effective use of the new mechanic.
And the clock really was put to good use. Although I was apprehensive in the soirée as far as the available time was concerned, I really liked how the time mechanic functioned at night, and how new options opened up occasionally. The overall atmosphere was beautiful, and the information about the apes and their origins was nicely spread around. (I even found two rare successes, which in itself is rare in Exceptional Stories; did anyone find more than two of them?) This attention to detail extended all the way to the little bits of colourful content given through the "Trespassing" quality. I understand it was an "Airs-style" quality that dictated when the two main threats in the mansion would appear; I kept checking it in the Myself page, though its purpose would have been clearer (at first, anyway) if it were placed under "Randomizer" rather than "Story". (Even if it didn’t seem to be completely random, in that only certain numbers appeared to be available.)
Specific spoilers:
[spoiler]Playing a story four weeks late means one is being spared the occasional crippling bug, and the problem with the smoking room was therefore something I only read about. However, there were a few elements that didn’t make sense. For example, the mansion’s keys were always taken away from me when I returned to the cage and there was no apparent way to hold on to a key and use it to open my cage at the beginning of a night. The branch was there, but perfectly useless as far as I can tell. It didn’t matter to me because I was unlucky with the cage only once or twice in total, but others were not so fortunate and would have had more use for the key. Also, I was not forced into a loop after trying to talk to the child-butler, but I still had the option to "try again", which didn’t feel right.
On another note, I expected a little more from the estimable Agatha Treadgold once I realised she was in the house. Her book did most of her talking for her, though, and perhaps it makes sense that she would be useless in person. I met her in Apis Meet for the first time, but I understand she has featured in another story before that. By the way, it is a common complaint that there is no more interconnection between different stories, and characters we’ve met before seem not to recognise us. I’m sure it’s a lot of work for the benefit of relatively few players, but it is very satisfying when it happens (as it did for the players who came into this story with a Pentecost Ape). The Delightful Adventuress didn’t recognise me at all here, and although this may actually be in-character for her (I don’t know), there have been similar cases in previous stories.
As for the ending, I went with persuading Vespasian to return to his homeland. I disliked the Captain and hadn’t wanted to give him the satisfaction of beating the apes, so I was pleased that he would suffer for his choices at the end, and it was also plausible on a character level that his family would turn away from him (though he clearly cared for them).
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