cave (2) (1)

You ahem loudly.\n\n'Excuse me, would you permit me to once again pass through the entrance/exit you so valiantly guard? I am in danger of a death.' Surely, a plight so polite would open any door with a soupçon of sensibility.\n\n'...' That means the door is not listening to your appeal for mercy. Uh ohhhh!\n\n'I do not fear death,' you continue, 'and perhaps I welcome it in light of my innumerable sins. But my camerades, the purest in the world, do not deserve the cruelty of modern adventure gaming.'\n\n'...' Yet more silence.\n\n'I am in no way meaning to undermine your capacity for self-government. I only seek passage into survivabrbrbrb--' Your pleas are quite literally drowned out as the water level has caught up to your mouth!\n\n'--frrbrbrbrand I would much rather die in my trailer on the parking lot' Oh! It seems the door graciously decided to open itself while you were delivering your bubbly soliloquy.\n\n'Het spijt mij. Ik ben van Nederlandse maak, en kon uw Engelse pleidooi niet verstaan. Maar uw gebubbel deed mij het noodzakelijke schieden: mijzelf opendoen voor uw overleving.' Perhaps now would be the time to consult a Dutch-to-English translator, in case this Netherlandish nonsense persists.\n\n'Yes. Thank you,' you nod diffidently.\n\nNone of your companions have sustained any lasting damage. This game is only out to kill you. \n\nAlso, the water has opened up a new passage in the room you were just in! You have survived yet another danger-filled decision! It is now entirely possible to progress with your head held high. \n\n[[PROCEED TO DO SO|cave6.2]]

Oh! Don't forget the time you went swimming with some river women and the text made it seem as if you were having fun but you were actually being drowned.\n\n[[GOOD TIMES WITH FRIENDS]]\nHUNGER METER: 80

After an arduous trek to the entrance of an awe-inspiring cave, you can taste raw accomplishment in your mouth. It is a strange taste, but you are convinced it is NOT that of poisonous herbs you might have mistaken for healing ones. As the narrator, I could inform you of the truth, but you are just so proud of yourself right now.\n\nIt took seven weeks of your doubtfully precious time to reach this place, something which could have been significantly more velocitous had you remembered where you parked your car. But! You are here with a purpose. I promise.\n\n[[ENTER THE CAVE|cave]]\n[[REVIEW GREAT LIFE CHOICES THAT LED TO THIS WHOLESOME SPOT|Reminisce on the road that led you here, to this cave]]

No, I will not describe their genitals!!! You bio-essentialist scamp!!!\n\n[[PLEASE REFRAIN FROM DOING SO. DISTRACT NOT FROM THEIR PERFECT LEGS...|cave7]]

Alexei, the Avaricious Alura\n\n[[TOO LENGTHY|frog2]]

You step up to the lady of leaves and perform a small curtsey.\n\n'Hello, I am a traveller in need of a singular fig leaf.'\n\n'I happen to be quite covered in those,' notes the dryad astutely. 'Would you want one?'\n\n'Wood I? Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah.'\n\n'Nyo ho ho.'\n\n'All jest aside, I realise this request is the same as asking to remove an article of clothing for a stranger. This is all very forward. Let us get to know one another.'\n\nThe dryad smiles coquettishly and begins pulling off leaves, even the ones covering her breasts!!\n\nYou swiftly move to cover your own eyes and those of your compeers. (Where did that third hand come from? Some mysteries are left unsolved...) After five blushful minutes you peer through your fingers. She is not nude, but rather wearing a pair of working overalls. She hands you a fig leaf.\n\n'Note how this is an ash tree, making me one of the Meliae. We are more industrial than our other dryadic sisters. It is all thanks to feminism.'\n\n'Ah.'\n\nYou return to the centaur and hand them the fig leaf.\n\n'Thank you. I am now presentable and ready for a career in modern rock music.'\n\n'Not quite. I must first comb your manes into a flamboyant lustre.'\n\nYou spend some time barbering them, which serves no real function but feels nice to do nonetheless.\n\n[[CONTINUE TO THE NEXT CURTAIN|cave10]]\n[[CONTINUE BRUSTLING, MAKING SMALLTALK|mm]]

You are carrying:\n\n- A saucy letter written in Dutch\n- Your trusty confidante, a lovely member of the Pacific Tree Frog species.\n- Me, your narrator! Hello!\n\n[[RETURN TO THE MOST IMPORTANT CHOICE IN THIS LIFE|cave]]

You and your party teleport to the next zone, which feels very reminiscent of the Winter Palace in St. Petersberg. You dareclaim to be an expert on what is and what is not agnate to the Winter Palace, having played Shadow Hearts: Covenant up to the point of that selfsame area.\n\nYou are inside of what you presume is and what is described to be a spacious, opulent ballroom. There is no directly visible exit. Many candle chandeliers hang from the ceiling, which, upon closer inspection, is a complete void. Statues of Grecian make are placed throughout the shiny marble chamber.\n\nLining the left wall are three high-violet curtains. Sticking out from underneath them are legs belonging to various bipeds and one polymelic. There is a draft coming from behind the middlemost curtain.\n\nIt seems that you are dealing with an area running on pure aesthetics alone, the most treacherous of video game locations. A sledgehammer coyly beckons you.\n\nHowever will you proceed?\n\n[[PICK UP SLEDGEHAMMER WITH HEAVENLY FOREARMS|ohno8]]\n[[CLIMB CHANDELIER INTO VOIDIC CEILING|ohno7]]\n[[CHECK CURTAINS ONE FOR ONE|cave7]]\n[[DISCUSS THE PRINCIPLE OF KALON WITH FROG FRIEND|wisdom4]]

You are alerted as Queer Torch's azure flame is now a lighter, colder blue.\n\n"What is wrong?"\n\n"It fffrightens me to be in a place wifff so much to conffflagrate." She speaks softly, merely an ember of her usual brightness. It is clear you have brought her into an uncomfortable situation. And you cannot blame yourself for not realising sooner, only attempt to comfort her before later!\n\n"We do not have to be here yet. Let us return to a cave for now." \n\nYou recall the darkest-described area on your adventure thus far and take Queer Torch there. Casting light on the darkened walls soothes her in therapeutic ways. You talk to her about the time you were stuck in a rural Dutch village called Doodstil. How the deathly silence chilled your wholesome being; you had elected to leave the frog and I in your car. Experiencing the world through your own eyes, without a narrator sifting through a terrifying reality to filter out scary bits, brought about an anxiety attack. \n\nOverwhelmed by possibility and, therefore, responsibility, you could not do anything. And that is fine! The world can be a scary place. When you find yourself terrified, sometimes all you need to hear is a concerned "hey". Or, as Melinda the Pacific Tree Frog did, a supportive "ribbit". \n\nQueer Torch's warmth has returned, which might prove useful in any future ice level or barbeque area; you are ever the utilitarianist.\n\n"Fffank you. I am fffine anew." You give her a kiss on what you pray is her cheek. Your lips are turned to cinder but you can live with that. "Let's return! We have an adventure to continue." She giggles which scorches your eyebrows, lovingly.\n\n[[RETURN TO THE FOREST AREA|cave7.11]]

You emerge in a tranquil grove.\n\nProtected from description for the longest time, the beauty here is natural and of purity. A small creek is the only thing here resembling a path, the ground a thicket of tall grass and aromatic flowers.\n\nIn the centre of this scenic ecosystem stands a single, giant ash tree. Upon one of its mighty branches sits a dryad, notedly covered in fig leaves.\n\nHowever will you proceed?\n\n[[APPRECIATE THE BEAUTY, SMELL A FLOWER|ohno9]]\n[[WITH COMPLETE DISREGARD FOR SOCIAL CONVENTION, ASK THE DRYAD FOR A FIG LEAF|cave8]]

You have never considered yourself as someone who gets scared easily. For your international high school's thirtieth anniversary, they turned the school grounds into one big haunted house. Your best Dutch friend Lang Engnek spent three hours applying make-up every day for the week-long celebratory duration, alternatingly hiding inside of bathroom stalls and underneath cheap school desks hoping you would walk by as to become victim to his elaborate scare-scheme and Frankensteinesque (not the monster) acrylic bodypaint. \n\nWhen you finally decided to show up on the last day of the festival, you headed into the bathroom after drinking one too many of the free juice packets with the apple logo inventively modified into a badly-drawn skull. You just so happened to enter the stall one before Lang's. You could clearly recognise his trademark clogs sticking out from underneath the walls - handcrafted by his parents who are undeniably Dutch and expert clogmakers and undeniably Dutch clogmakers - and proceeded to greet Lang context-appropriately in his native language ('Goedendag, Lang, wat een festijn om u te ontmoeten in dezen WC-ruimte.'). Cringing loudly, Lang ran out of the bathroom, yelling that it's just impossible to scare you, and, after you ended your friendship with him for not replying to your greeting with the customary 'clog click', you began taking that to heart. \n\nOh, the folly of the young and stupid! It IS possible to scare you! This cave is really spooky, frightening even. There's a human skull covered in cobwebs - a clear sign that you are dealing with someone dead and disassembled, the two scariest states a human can find themself in. Yet, as much as you deplore the slovenliness around you, you can faintly make out the pitch-black outline of a door shape on the other end of the room. Cramming your body in there will surely teleport you to the next zone. You feel yourself inexplicably, narratively drawn to it...\n\n[[IGNORE HANDSOME NARRATOR'S CLUES AND LEAVE REALLY FAST|leave]]\n[[PUT A LITTLE SPRING IN STEP, MOSEY DOWN CAVE LANE INTO CAVE TOWN, POPULATION: YOU & MORE CAVE|cave2]]\n[[HIT WITH ACUTE AMNESIA, CHECK INVENTORY TO BE REMINDED OF CURRENT POSSESSIONS|WONDER HOW THIS CAVE WORKS, GEOGRAPHICALLY/EMOTIONALLY]]

<big>Thanks for playing!!!!</big>

Glancing into your dark shirt's chest pocket, you are met with the charming sight of your trusty confidante. She ribbits concernedly for you, imploring you that, while this is technically a family member of hers, you should nevertheless refrain from acting brashly. \n\nWhile this has not been particularly helpful advice, it has been an incredible boost in morale and a reminder of how much you care about her. Upon leaving this dungeon, you resolve, you will take up clothcraft and weave her a velveteen nightgown.\n\n[[IT WILL HAVE MANY FRILLS|cave2]]

There was the time a merchant tried to sell you a pair of shades, but you were already wearing shades.\n\n[[BOUGHT THEM ANYWAY|HAHA YEAH]]\nHUNGER METER: 100\n

"HELLO READ THE SINGPOST[sic]"\n\nThat is what the note says.\n\n[[HOW CONSISTENT|cave5]]

If you manage your life as badly as you manage adventure games you are probably the despair of your family.\n\nYou pull the lever to lower the frog's cage. Your first glimpse of the fellow also happens to be your last: you were never dealing with a Pacific Tree Frog!!! You are quickly disposed, perhaps justly so. You seem to have forgotten that Pacific Tree Frogs are the only frog species that make the 'ribbit' sound. 'Croak' is the cry of less pacifistic amphibians... \n\n[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]

While the road itself is littered with the many corpses of humanoid beings and many more carcasses of creatures that have yet to lobby for or are actively resisting the classification of 'humanoid', the metaphorical road is one you look back on with a smile.\n\nYou began your travels in a village reflecting the inviting and homely aesthetic of European rurality, rather than bothering with an architectural culture of its own. A border town, it seperates the Underworld - a different but applicable name for The Netherlands - from a really big parking lot you call home. For twenty years did you live (and search for your car) in that car park and those were the worst years of your life, sans the half year you spent as an exchange student in Underworld's top university.\n\nThe last letter college sweetheart Madelief Curd sent you, you keep in your inventory and read in private when you are feeling saucy.\n\n[[REMINISCE FURTHER]]\n[[READ SAUCY LETTER]]

After a high-pitched yelp, your heart suddenly, explicably stops for reasons I am about to explain.\n\nFoolhardily glossing over the scare warning included in the item description, you laid eyes upon the scariest font you had ever seen. It was written in an already-frightening gothic style, its chillingness highlighted through creepy, slipshod penstrokes. Furthermore, the writer of the note had gone through the trouble of altering each dot on the 'i's into blooddrops, in red ink!!! You never even got to read the text it forms, but you can only despair at the dreadful message it may convey.\n\nThat is, if you were still alive!!!\n\n[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]

With great gumption and bared legs (you foresaw a grim scenario where your expensive purpure trousers burned, so you elected to take them off), you stride towards the volcanic river.\n\n'Whatever are you planning, dear mixter?'\n\n'Whoever enprisoned you, I fear that we are dealing with a mischievous lot. There exists the chance the lever may lower your cage INTO the lava--'\n\n'I believe we are to refer to it as 'magma'. We are inside of the earth, after all. Error breeds error, no matter what kind...'\n\n'I stand tremendously corrected, and I thank you. Regardless, I now stand below your sky prison. Please to hurry, as I cannot remain here long; may I suggest you perform a hop of faith into these arms of mine?'\n\nBeautifully, you witness the frog leap from its cage... but not into your sculpted arms!!! With one fell jump, it reaches the solid ground you had left and where you left your prized pants. It would seem that you were never dealing with a noble frog. What a fool you were! It had clearly announced its capitalism moments before! Seeing it hop off with your trousers is a disgrace too much to bear, and you remain in the lava/magma/ouch water until killed...\n\n[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]

With the hesitation of an elderly man who has spent seven fruitless weeks panning for gold dust in the Colorado river and has to break the news to his underfed family that it's mud pies for dinner again, I hereby inform you that you are unequivocally dead.\n\nBecause the previous lever resulted in a bad end, you naively assume that this must be a good lever. But it seems you are again dealing with untrustworthy machinery! As your beautiful fingers move to wrap around, it does away with its metallic pretense. It was, in all actuality, a rubber tube con artist!! \n\nFooled and embarrassed and holding a snickering garden hose, you are unable to operate the sluice gates or recall any of the remaining possibilities of escape.\n\n[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]

The clay idol sticks out like a mesoamerican clay idol in the lobby of a modern museum, pillaged and put there by English archaeologists sometime in the early twentieth century. Apropos of nothing, you conclude it must be enchanted or perhaps animatronic in nature.\n\nIt is a terrible logic and you have done the world a great service by never having continued your education after those six months in Underworld, thankfully removing yourself from academics entirely.\n\nBut! You are not wrong! The clay idol IS animated!! You make casual small talk, eventually segueing into the topic of escape routes. You politely nod at the claymation experts rushing in and out of the room to make minor adjustments to the idol's head.\n\nRather than leaving alongside the animation team, you resolve to wait until two full 'Shake Head No' cycles have been completed. You deeply understand the ardour and labour involved (they made 79 different head models just for this!!) and wish to see this artistry to completion. Unfortunately, by the time they are done or think to lend you one of their snorkels, you have already drowned.\n\n[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]

The chandeliers hang high above you, just out of mainstream jumping distance. But your confidante has taught you well! All this time, you were a text-game protagonist with the ability to jump very high!\n\nThe elegance of your leap matches the chandelier you now hang from. But the curse of your bloodline - your comical lack of insight - is once again invoked! Aside from your superhuman jumping, you are also renowned for your complete lack of footwear.\n\nNot only that, it never was a candle chandelier! It was a notorious finger chandelier! You realise your erronous ways much too late and undergo a merciless flurry of feet-tickling. You giddily plummet to your death but not before ensuring the safety of your confidante and Queer Torch and including them in your will.\n\n[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]

[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]\n\nsorry :(

You approach a beautiful bed of romantic roses and crouch down to shove your small, adorable nose right in there. Inhaling deeply, you realise your pleasant-smelling mistake.\n\nThese are hyperallergenic roses!!\n\n'Argghh, my allergies...!' You cry out to a capricious god before symbolically slumping into the rose patch.\n\n[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]

Cave!

You draw the middle curtain, revealing the owner of a set of legs, who also happens to be just a set of legs. You dare not cast judgment from the benignity of your heart. It is clear they are the guarding the progression path. Also, it is rude to stare. \n\n'I see you staring at my legs,' the legs communicate coquettishly through a series of advanced acrobatics. 'I have three of them.'\n\n'Yes... It is true. You have three legs.'\n\n'Do you wish to touch them? I am easily seduced.'\n\n'Very well,' you sigh.\n\nYou begin operating the legs like levers, switching things up with the occasional direct poke in the back of a knee or shaving them.\n\nYour érotiquette successfully exhausts the tripedal, who has gone aslumber. The way forward is now open to you! Or, if you so desire, if your inquisitivity permits, you could check out the next curtain...\n\n[[WALK FORWARD BUT NOT BEFORE PLACING A BLANKET OVER LEGGY LOVER|cave11]]\n[[SATIATE CURIOSITY|ohno10]]

You arrive in an impressive throne room. Three seats reserved for the rearends of royalty are centered on elevated platforms in the right, left, and center of the room. All is covered in expensive carpet, imported from areas that evoke orientalistic imageries in a reader and reinforce the mysticism and exotique of the chamber as a whole. Gold and jewels are strewn all over which makes you slightly concerned as to why they won't hire a custodian.\n\nThey, being the ones currently seated upon the triple thrones!\n\n'You have endured an arduous journey, sojourner...' speaks the strong-voiced occupant of the firstmost seat. Beside the throne are piles of books, one of which a universal dictionary capable of deciphering any language.\n\n'...brave as you have been, refusing to abandon your plight despite numbers of perilous game over screens...' descants a gentle voice from the second seat. Vials and flasks of the alchemical sort are arranged in pyramidic orders next to it.\n\n'...you must be rewarded,' continues the last speaker, a voice familiar yet cold from an unadorned throne.\n\n'But you may choose only one of us to be your rewarder! So, whom will you choose? Is it I, the first?'\n\n'Or will you elect me, the second?'\n\n'I am an option, too, the third.' \n\nThis is obviously a very important choice, so I, the narrator, must implore you to consider your choice carefully. Use the knowledge you have gained thus far to come to a conclusion, which of the elocutionists can grant you the 'it' you truly desire? Whomever you choose, always know that I love you and so do your friends.\n\n[[I CHOOSE THE FIRST|ending1]]\n[[I CHOOSE THE SECOND|ending2]]\n[[I CHOOSE THE THIRD|ending3]]

Ferdinand, of the Ferocious Frogs\n\n[[TOO URBAN|frog4]]

Trevali the Tenacious Toad\n\n[[IT WAS CLEARLY A FROG|frog3]]

I said that you read the letter only in private! Besides, you can't actually read the letter because it is written in the ancient and arcane language of Dutch. Why, it is what led you to this cave in the first place! You heard a rumour that this cave contains many secrets, perhaps even a dictionary. The mere suggestion the letter might be a sexual one - a 'setter' (sex + letter) - is enough to rouse and install a sense of purpose in you.\n\n[[ENTER THE CAVE, SIGNIFICANTLY MORE FLUSHED|cave]]

You gently place your amphibian ally atop your crown and hold Queer Torch above your head, safe from harm. You are holding the magazine in your final hand.\n\nYou mermaidishly tread the water as the room continues to fill up, flicking through the pages of the Nintendo Power issue with your tongue. Ooohhh, a colour remake of Link's Awakening! Out of uncontained excitement and personal affinity for The Legend of Zelda series, you clumsily cut your tongue turning page 32.\n\nNo big deal, you only lost a few drops of blood. That won't kill you.\n\nBut, the great white shark will!!! It seems that when the room filled with water, the mural you thought so harmless came to life, and it has tasted your blood! Now it is tasting your legs!! And now it is tasting your head!!! Ahhh!!!!\n\n[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]

Thank you. :)\n\nThe darkness before you is actually another pitch-black door shape of the telporting sort! Step inside, if you dare and player agency allows it, to materialise deeper still in the cave... \n\n[[IT'S A CAVE WORLD BABY|cave4]]

NO THERE'S NOT AND IT'S MAKING MY JOB REALLY HARD :(\n\n[[YOU'RE DOING FINE|cave3.7]]

Kevin\n\n[[PERFECT. LET'S ADVANCE|cave5]]\n[[CONSULT CONFIDANTES|wisdom2]]

You whistle a catchy tune as you strut down the dark corridor, confident that no narrator or game designer bears any malevolence towards you. Surely, this path will lead you to what you have been searching for AND bonus piles of gold and assorted gems.\n\n'Thank goodness that signpost was there to point us treasureward,' you muse.\n\n'What are you fffinking of purchasing with your share offf the treasure,' flickers Queer Torch curiously.\n\n'Fffirst off--' you stop dead in your tracks, terrifyingly aware of what you have wrought. You underestimated the infectiousness of Queer Torch's accent. You feel embarrassed and terrible, and perhaps you should. If you were to stand against a pile of filth, you would be completely camouflaged.\n\n'Forgive me. I absolutely did not intend to ridicule you. I am a pock-marked pisswater face and my mother gave birth to a disease.'\n\n'Do not be so swiffft to douse your fffire to rekindle the ffflame of our fffriendship. You hafff not wronged me. I do not regret you,' Queer Torch conflagrates forgivingly.\n\nYou wipe a tear from your eye and let it plummet. But the splash of your tear hitting the ground takes unusually long! Looking down, you notice you were inches away from stumbling into a deep pit, with spikes at the bottom of it!!!\n\nIt would seem you were dealing with a trickster signpost, and you were none the wiser... If you hadn't been a such deplorable human being, you might have died that time! Queer Torch has saved you from an impaleful death!\n\n[[RETURN TO T-JUNCTION AND TAKE THE OTHER ROUTE, DEFINITELY A WORSE PERSON THAN BEFORE|cave6]]

Overrun with the spirits of children that were never born into this world, raised without love or wisdom... Their only emotion a primitive sort of cruelty, you felt their anger not even they understood on your skin...\n\n[[PLEASE STOP|PLEASE]]\nHUNGER METER: 40\nMOOD: D:

Ruben Ferdinand (@urbanfriendden)

You outstretch your arms, holding both your confidantes before you. Queer Torch, the newest addition to your inventorical inspirers, burns elegantly in your left hand. Your more amphibian ally ribbits pleasantly in your right.\n\n'Will 'Kevin' suffice as a new sobriquet for the 'Trick Frog'?'\n\n'I fffink it fffits fffery well,' responds Queer Torch in all earnesty. The accent catches you off-guard, but the embered intonations please you like a hearth would.\n\nAn approving ribbit can be heard from your right hand.\n\n[[WONDERFUL. OUR AMPHIBIAN ADVERSARY WILL BE KNOWN AS 'KEVIN'. LET'S PROGRESS|cave5]]

With quivering hands and perfect biceps you pick up the sledgehammer. You wrap yourself around the shaft, shaking its length with nervosity and excitement. The giant, obtuse stone head hints at what impact it is capable of. The suggestion alone renders your inhibitions obsolete!!\n\nYou swing it around, whirlygigging through the ballroom with operatic grace, destroying the beautiful statues in literal sexual violence. With extreme precision, you bounce from one statue to the next and always into the genital area. Your pinball machine of bioessentialist destruction is stopped suddenly after hitting a section of the wall, thereby destroying it. You escape through the hole and return home safely, sledgehammer in hand.\n\nSeeing as you left the game's narrative confines early, nothing can place limiters on your actions anymore, and your life spirals out of control. You whirl into a life of vandalism and nondescript pretty crime (you do look so ravishing in a catsuit). After you have destroyed all things physical in your immediate area, you move to more sentimental things.\n\nFinally, after six months, you come down from your raging haze. Diffidently, you check your inventory. There is just me, the narrator. The Pacific Tree Frog and Queer Torch, who once considered you their dear friend, after months of attempted counsel and consult, left soundlessly and sadly.\n\nFrankly, you are a deplorable and disgusting person. I do not want you to play this game any further until you learn to behave in a more civilised manner.\n\n[[Goodbye.|https://www.google.nl/search?espv=2&q=please+let+me+go+to+jail+for+my+sins&oq=please+let+me+go+to+jail+for+my+sins&gs_l=serp.3...4773.9680.0.9785.44.26.1.0.0.1.246.2989.0j16j3.19.0.ekpsrh...0...1.1.64.serp..30.14.1909.s2x6rH6i91g]]

You have seen through the frog's clever ruse! Indeed, you were never dealing with a Pacific Tree Frog... Well done.\n\nYou turn your head in the opposite direction of the pretender-in-peril as you walk towards the oaken door. Sensing its defeat, it dissipates in an impish puff of smoke, which is given a delightful blue hue by the queer torch. You feel rejuvenated and bold! Enough so to knock thricely upon a door specifically designed to deter would-be enterers...\n\nThe slidey-grate in the door is pulled to the left and you are met with two claret-coloured eyes... The grate closes with a slam and the door opens with a slow creak. Behind it is complete darkness! The odd-eyed figure is nowhere to be seen!\n\n[["SLIDEY-GRATE?" IS THERE NOT A WORD FOR THAT|cave3.5]]

The arrow pointing to the right reads THIS WAY TO TREASURE. The arrow pointing to the left reads THIS WAY TO GUARANTEED DEATH.\n\n[[TAKE THE RIGHT PATH|hmm]]\n[[TAKE THE LEFT PATH|cave6]]

'Soo... Got any plans this summer?' You ask your gorgeous customer.\n\n'Oh. Uh, no, I'm staying home. For work,' they reply.\n\n'Soo... What kind of work do you do?'\n\n'Oh. Uh, I work security. In this place. Nothing special. Need all I can get to pay off student loans.'\n\n'Soo... What did you study?'\n\n'Oh. Uh, alchemy. Specialised in... hybridification.'\n\n'Soo... Is that, why, you're...?'\n\n'Oh. Uh, yeah...'\n\nCongratulations! You have absolutely killed the mood with forced topics of conversation. The barber's league has been notified and will be hiring you shortly to cut the hair of queen Medusa.\n\n[[LET'S JUST GO TO THE NEXT CURTAIN|cave10]]

You draw the last set of curtains hiding the last elusive pair of legs. \n\nBut 'lo, it is not a pair of legs!! It was actually the claret-eyed figure from before, standing on one leg and leaning on a very big sword. You are slain, but you have only yourself to blame...\n\n[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]

You hid from the ghost of a young man roaming its burnt halls. His eyes were missing. He had fallen out of the circle of life.\n\n[[THIS WAS A MISTAKE...]]\nHUNGER METER: 20\nMOOD: :((

You have made your choice. \n\nYou walk the steps to the first throne, that which you presumed to be the more elucidatory of the three. The books tower above you, each approximately a third of your height and a forest's worth of paper. You are certain you that the occupant is either an avid reader, a mighty mage, or a floraphobe.\n\nYou kneel in front of the seated figure. They extend their hand and you agree to plant thereupon a small kiss. You look up to meet their stern, critical gaze. They are a scary wizard with a long and ill-kempt beard. His gray longrobe is equipped with many satchels (Do not call them fanny packs!) and his nails are pure crystal. Surely, he is a veritable fount of wisdom.\n\n'You have chosen for knowledge, he speaks with thundering voice. 'I know why. You hold a letter undeciphered, and wish to partake of my infinite intelligence.' \n\n'Honestly I just want to borrow your dictionary.'\n\n'You would prefer a book to me!!!' He is visibly upset, alternating crawling over the floor and putting considerable effort into breaking his impressive oakwood staff collection over his knee but failing to break even one. Red-cheeked and exhausted, he sits back upon the throne. \n\n'Very well.' He indicates the universal dictionary that caught your attentive eye one choice earlier. 'You may use it, but not without remuneration. Such is the price of tarnishing my pride as a powerful wizard! I will have your magical torch.'\n\nAny normal text-only protagonist would hesitate to surrender their companion to a scary wizard that easily, but you have picked your ending so you might as well roll with it. You hand over Queer Torch to the mad sorcerer, her flames enveloping your wrist as if clinging onto you. 'Such a magnificent torch! I will be the envy of this dungeon and will be rewarded many points from my guild.' She disappears into a backroom, the kind where malevolent experiments happen, along with the wizard who will undoubtfully perform malevolent experiments upon her sad blue flame.\n\nDusting off your hands, you enter a comfortable lotus position. You grab the saucy letter from your inventory and carefully pry open the perfumed envelope. You sniff the intoxicating aromas - curded cheese perfume and also curded cheese - and your patience crumbles away. Opening the universal dictionary, you feel almost a year's worth of sexual fantasy and Dutch ineptitude coming to a close. \n\nBut alas, despite the fact you chose for wisdom and knowledge, all you have proved is that you are clearly deficient in those two assets. Have you not been paying attention at all? This game is all about things not being as they seem! And it is exactly the case in this ending. \n\nThe dictionary was actually a MIMIC!! It eats you whole in one fast gulp. Find solace and redemption in the off-chance that it may have levelled up on you. Madelief's letter slowly floats down, its undecipherably Dutch message in clear narrative sight. Yet you will never read the sensuality she wrote to you:\n\n[[//Eieren\nMelk\nBoter\nPannenkoekdeeg\nAppelstroop//|thanks]]

You have made your choice. \n\nYou approach the second throne, intrigued by the mystique and esoterics surrounding its occupant. Making eye contact, you instantly fall in love. 'You' being in the plural; it is reciprocative love!\n\nApologising preemptively, you frogleap into their lap, which is instantly forgiven. You waste no time and move in together; they are especially welcoming of Queer Torch and Melinda, eradicating the fear your lover may hate pets and the singular doubt you had of them.\n\nYou spend much time doing things people in love do: holding each other's hands and arm-wrestling, watching various liquids swirl in alembics and in other alchemical apparatus, buying urns and filling them with drinking water for the hot summer, poking one another in the belly and saying 'you like that, don't you, you furry fucker'. All the time, you consider not why their throne was surrounded by vials and flasks. \n\nThey were medicinal in nature, you see. Necessary to combat their detrimental and, unfortunately uncurable illness. Your comical lack of anything apt may have caused you to believe what was said was 'the second', while it was actually 'the sickened'.\n\nYour relationship was brief but powerful. You do not regret the time spent together, but you may bear regret towards choosing this ending, or perhaps some rancour towards your narrator. Ensure you let your loved ones know they are just that: [[loved|thanks]].

You have made your choice.\n\nYou approach the third throne, drawn to the familiarity with which its occupant spoke to you. The more you trundle closer, the more the seated figure recedes into the cathedra and hides their face under the hood of their Rush '2112' hoodie.\n\n'Alex?' You inquire, but you already know the answer.\n\n'Y-yeah...' Indeed, the figure confirms, he is none other than Alex. The lead guitarist of your progressive rock cover band. You wipe away a single scared tear off his face as you were wont to do for him in your drumming days.\n\n'Hey. Do you want to go grab a bite to eat?' \n\n'Oh. Uh, sure. That'd be great.' You extend your hand to help him stand up, pulling him in for a heartfelt embrace. \n\nYou decide on eating at the ramen shop where you, Alex, and Melinda used to eat all the time. Queer Torch has never eaten there or ramen at all before, and it is adorable to see her so befuddled over how to eat them. The warmth of Melinda's ribbits, the heat of Queer Torch's embarrassment, the glow of Alex's world-moving smile, and your terribly hot udon noodles coalesce perfectly into a [[heart-warming ending|thanks]] fit for someone who chooses to reach out to old friends in need.

Back home safely, you turn on your Philco Predicta just in time for another rerun of Full House and idly crochet a nightcap for your confidante. Right then you are struck with a feeling of intense regret! \n\nA feeling that hints that maybe, you have perhaps... missed out on something.\n\nSomething... amazing...\n\nCuriosity has killed much more than just cats, including nondescript text-only protagonists AND their amphibian companions, but maybe it might prove fruitful to, just once, go against the will of the gods. \n\nBut this, you will never find out... Because once again, your poor judgment skills betray you, as that feeling of intense regret is actually the poisonous herbs kicking in!!! In your last moments, you wonder if you could have eluded this excruciating passage if you'd just explored that cave further...\n\n[[<big>IT'S A SAD THING THAT YOUR ADVENTURES HAVE ENDED HERE!!</big>|Start]]

'Kalon in art - especially in sculpturework - is the strife of the artiste! How will you approach perfection let alone greatness, without a clear ideal to mirror it to?'\n\n'Ribbit.' I, as narrator, for this passage alone, now speak to you, the avid intaker of text and meaning, directly. \n\nAllow me to elaborate. Despite your many core competencies, your mastery of frogspeak leaves much to be desired. The frog with whom travels the protagonist, as a counterpoint to the initial rhetoric, suggests that art is not about purpose but about self-fulfillment. \n\nYou need not thank me, I enjoy my time addressing you.\n\n'A compelling argument! I would admit defeat as I do not wish to see you bestraught, but this room fills me with a fervour. I continue! Reflecting perfection is what makes art thus. I do argue art cannot be perfect as humans cannot know perfection, and must therefore encapture a facet thereof.'\n\n'Ribb...it.' Hello again. The amphibian is a mastress of art in both its philosophies and its creation. Indeed, entire galleries' worth of her work can be found all over the parking lot. As a ribbituous crackerjack who has dealt with many a boorish text protagonist, she elegantly disposes of them: \n\n//How approach perfection as ill-defined as it persists? There exists not one universal ideal of beauty - the global mind has escaped such colonialism eras yon. Art is for the individual to express and is, ergo, perfect.// Thusly ribbits the frog.\n\nHere ends our reader-writer interaction. I will never forget you.\n\n[[I AM A MORLOCK AND DO ADMIT DEFEAT.|cave6.2]]

You emerge in a tranquil grove, sensing a hesitant flicker of Queer Torch's flame. \n\nProtected from description for the longest time, the beauty here is natural and of purity. A small creek is the only thing here resembling a path, the ground a thicket of tall grass and aromatic flowers.\n\nIn the centre of this scenic ecosystem stands a single, giant ash tree. Upon one of its mighty branches sits a dryad, notedly covered in fig leaves.\n\nHowever will you proceed?\n\n[[ADDRESS QUEER TORCH'S ANXIETY|wisdom5]]\n[[APPRECIATE THE BEAUTY, SMELL A FLOWER|ohno9]]\n[[WITH COMPLETE DISREGARD FOR SOCIAL CONVENTION, ASK THE DRYAD FOR A FIG LEAF|cave8]]

A room filled with the dolls of unbaptised infants. They wailed and cried for their never-existent mothers. Unloved, uncherished... They crawled towards you for affection.\n\n[[AAAAAaa.........]]\nHUNGER METER: DEAD\nMOOD: DEAD INSIDE\nSTATUS: DOUBLE DEAD

You patiently wait for the narrator to describe your surroundings to you.\n\nOh! Ahem. \n\nThis section of cave is illuminated only by a queer torch, burning a soft blue flame, giving the walls and the various objects present an aesthetically-pleasing pastel finish. \n\nYou can see: an oaken door marked 'DO NOT ENTER', a lever to your right, and, hanging in a small cage above a daunting lava flow, a single member of the Pacific Tree Frog species.\n\n'Hello', you utter as riveting first word, 'what are you doing in that cage?'\n\n'I have been made prisoner by cave demagogues. Croak,' articulates + onomatopoeias the trapped amphibian.\n\n'Do you need my assistance to be removed from your sky prison?' You inquire politely, as to not come across as overly presumptuous.\n\n'Indeed. Moreover, I am a frog of great capital. I would reward the person to save me with a jute bag of money and one prop of their choosing from the set of the 1920 German expressionist cinematographic masterpiece,\n//The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari//.' \n\n'Morality alone dictates I should help a member of the Anura in need, but that prize tinges the idea of your rescue with all the more allure. With alacrity, I would try to assist you.'\n\n'Grand tidings! You can use the lever over there.'\n\nWhat will you do to assist this caged hoplet? Will you even assist at all?\n\n[[CONSULT TRUSTY CONFIDANTE|wisdom1]]\n[[OPERATE THE LEVER, GRACE BASICALLY SPILLING FROM FOREARMS|ohno1]]\n[[FORD THE LAVA FLOW|ohno2]]\n[[LEAVE THROUGH THE OAKEN DOOR|cave3]]

And don't forget exploring DOLL MANSION. Who could've guessed that it used to be the workshop of a strange puppeteer? Driven to using REAL HUMAN BEING PARTS to build FAKE APPROXIMATIONS OF REAL HUMAN BEINGS for the sake of a horror narrative? I sure couldn't!\n\n[[THAT WASN'T FUN LET'S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE]]\nHUNGER METER: 60\nMOOD: :/

You feel good about yourself, the memory of your victory over the Trick Frog still warm. Warm, like you are holding a queer torch burning an azure flame... which you are!! If only could check your inventory right now, there it would be: queer torch. \n\nIt would have looked so lovely, the most endearing thing to read in any inventory menu. 'Queer torch.' This what-could-have-been is exactly why you brought it along with you. Also because you feel more comfortable possessive of a source of light in this undubitably lightless place. Also because you look really pretty in that blue light.\n\nWhich is why henceforth, Queer Torch is an actual character. Your cordon of carriable confidantes has credulously increased!\n\n[[THERE IS NO GREATER OBJECT-COMPANION THAN QUEER TORCH. THANKS QUEER TORCH|cave5]]\n[[BRAINSTORM NEW NICKNAMES FOR 'TRICK FROG'|frog]]

You arrive at a typical cave corridor. You can discern no remarkable thing about it other than an old rotten signpost before a T-junction and two small notes. Picking them up and checking your inventory, you notice one is labelled 'DIRECTIONS FOR THE ADVENTURRE[sic]' and the other 'DIRECTIONS FOR THE ADVENTURER (SCARY)'.\n\n[[READ 'DIRECTIONS FOR THE ADVENTURRE[sic]'|wisdom3]]\n[[READ 'DIRECTIONS FOR THE ADVENTURER (SCARY)'|ohno3]]\n[[CHECK SIGNPOST|cave5.1]]

The cave transitions into a more palatial scene, its marble floors producing hard but pleasing footstep noises. Your years of drumming in a progressive rock cover band finally pay off as you walk the entire drumline to Rush's 2112. You could have made it big, but your lead guitarist left on the night of your first gig to pursue a career in text-based adventure games.\n\nYou arrive at a torch-lit room - of the regular variety, nowhere near the delight that is Queer Torch's kindle. Entering the room, the heavy steel door slams shut behind you, entirely of its own volition. Perhaps one day you will be like that door, acting independently of a narrator, but today is not that day.\n\nIn the room you see: \na human-sized clay idol\na realistic but otherwise harmless mural of a great white shark\na metal lever connected to sluice gates\nan issue of the 1998 edition of Nintendo Power magazine, waterproof\n\nSuddenly, your danger senses start to tingle!! The senses that only go off when your creaseless curdoroys are in immediate danger of getting sullied...\n\n'Lo!! The room is slowly filling with water. You are not against drownage, but Queer Torch is neither capable of locomotion nor resistant to the element of Aqua. It is your duty to survive, so she may, too!\n\nWhat will you do?\n\n[[SUSPECT CLAY IDOL OF SENTIENCE, INQUIRE IF IT KNOWS AN ESCAPE ROUTE|ohno4]]\n[[PADDLE ALONG AS THE WATER LEVEL SLOWLY RISES, READING NINTENDO POWER TO PASS THE TIME|ohno6]]\n[[RUSH TO THE LEVER, OPERATE IT WITH SHAPELY FOREARMS|ohno5]]\n[[ASK HEAVY STEEL DOOR IF IT WANTS TO OPEN|cave6.1]]

You draw the set of curtains hiding the owner of the most alluring legs.\n\nAn inverse centaur! Normally you are not attracted to mythological hybrids of any sort - there are many drawings in your trailer of chimeras, minotaurs, selkies, etc., each with a number of poison darts in them - but this steed catches your eye of infatuation. You would do anything for them, selflessly, not needing any reciprocation or gratitude.\n\n(I point out that in a real scenario, this would constitute as manipulative, perhaps even abusive. Please forgive me for using dysfunctional love as a plot device.)\n\n"I desire a fig leaf to bashfully cover my [[genitals|oho]] with." A fair request, indeed.\n\nThey lollop aside, revealing the familiar door-shape of a door-shaped teleporter.\n\n[[I WILL SEEK THEM A FIG LEAF|cave7.1]]\n[[I WISH TO REVISIT MY OPTIONS|cave6.2]]\n