In the Caves of the Wumpus Queen

Part Three

Last we met we were in the steam room, being washed along by the River Muffy. Since we're not likely to escape the clutches of this wicked stream, just go with the flow down to level 3. You'll recall we just escaped region 21...and here we are in region 45! Looks like we're in for it again, especially because we're in a pit, the end of the River Muffy itself. Due to a persistant bug that I've never been able to track down, swimmers at the end of rivers are sometimes washed one step back UP the river, which is particularly strange when you're effectively at the bottom of a waterfall. Think of it as a some kind of tumultuous whirlpool and pretend it's supposed to happen.

All of the exits "rise steeply," which means they'll be hard to climb. But try exit 2 anyway. If at first you don't succeed, try try again...but keep an eye on your health, because if you keep falling back down you'll start to hurt yourself. In any case, be prepared for a disappointment because it's a dead end. If we're lucky this region will be a small one. I'm still traumatized by the steam room that took up half of level 2.

Return to the pit and try to climb up exit 3. Once again it will take a few tries, but eventually you'll find yourself halfway up a steep slope that continues onwards. It's also the end of the region...this one only took up three rooms. But we're in a bit of a conundrum, wondering where this rising slope leads to. It has a pretty good chance of taking us to "River Panks," since its path wasn't descending as sharply as the other two exits into level 3.

But let's not find out yet...drop back down into the pit to find out where that final exit goes. Jeez, ANOTHER region (#50), this time part of a garden that continues up a steep cliff. Don't even try to climb it, it's far too steep...we're REALLY in a pit here! At this point I start to worry that I might be trapped, and I wish that I'd remembered to teach you how to use that rope we found. If I'd done that we wouldn't be in this mess.

There's still one hope: maybe that other slope isn't too steep to climb. Go back up to the unexplored exit in region 45 and try to climb through exit 1. The good news is that you can actually climb it. The bad news is...it's a dead end. So we're running out of options.

Think about it, though: if you're exploring a cave and you're ill-equipped, you ARE going to get stuck in a pit. This is realism! Annoying, yes, but REAL.

Slide back down to the bottom of the pit. swim, and try to go back up River Muffy (exit 1). Thank goodness, it's not too steep and you can eventually get back to room 21! But we're not out of the woods yet...you need to go through exit 2 as well, in order to make it to a part of the river that you can escape from. In doing this you might get washed all the way back down to level 3 a few times, but eventually you can make it to the part of region 21 with four exits. Go through exit 3 and see if any good stuff has dropped through that chute. I found a firepoker (not a MAGIC poker, sadly, but at 12% it's better than my stone spear) and a "shiny light red jewel" worth all of $30. I'll tell you about the jewels later; for now let's go to room 26 and see if THAT passage to level 3 is any safer!

Uh-oh...outside the Zen Man's room I hear a "whooshing sound." This is the Compressor, fraternizing with the Zen Man and searching for jewels. The Compressor is a sort of cavern janitor whose real job is to seek out objects and convert them into jewels, usually combining several objects into a single jewel. He's probably the reason that the "shiny light red jewel" was in the chute room. Why does he do this? So that objects that have been sitting around in dark corners can be "recycled," to be found again in the possession of monsters or dropping out of chutes.

The Compressor isn't a predator, but he does tend to run afoul of other monsters (yes, the monsters have their own little fights, usually when you're not looking), and when he's wounded he gets nasty. Try to avoid the Compressor -- and NEVER fight him -- because if he hits you, you're probably dead before you know it.

So what I do is wait for the Compressor to wander out of the Zen Man's room, then I dart in before he gets a chance to smack me. And what do you know, he's left behind a jewel for me that's worth an incredible $13860...a lot of good junk went into this one.

Anyway, I make my way to room 26 and I find blood-spattered walls and a very angry Hurkle...I bet he and the Compressor had a battle royale in here. I'd love to kill the bastard -- he has one of the three keys I need to escape the caves, and it's not often you see him out of the water -- but he could easily clean my clock so I quickly run through exit 3, down to the grey level through a (hopefully more friendly) entrance. So what's a Hurkle anyway? A "happy beast" from a book by Theodore Sturgeon (hence the Hurkle's fishy appearance). Hurkle was one of the many early computer games that involved finding a monster on a ten-by-ten grid, and these "gridlocked" games inspired Gregory Yob to write Wumpus. That's why he gets a cameo here.

We're in room 51 of level 3, and things ARE looking a little friendlier than they did in the "Pit of Death." With the Hurkle hot on my tail (with a 65% chance of movement per turn) and a health of 16% (due to impatiently wandering instead of resting after all those nasty falls), I leave a trail of dropped items into exit 2, room 53, then through exit 3 to room 59. The rooms are getting smaller and they're all bloody...the blood trail will probably lead us to whatever pool the Hurkle was hiding in before he decided to attack something (probably the Compressor). The increasing cold and the shrinking rooms make me think I'm heading to a dead-end, or at least that this cave section is isolated.

Exit 2 takes me to room 55, and exit 1 to room 46, where I my light bar goes out and I decide to rest for better or for worse. Let this be a lesson to you: don't go running around when you're hurt. It doesn't help that these caves are cold, which makes me heal slowly. By the time I start getting thirsty -- and acknowledge that I dropped the canteen somewhere due to my weakness -- I'm back to 50% health. I turn my light bar back on and head to room 55.

I take exit 2 to room 54, which connects back to room 53...and out of room 53 comes the Hurkle, still chasing me. There are two more unexplored exits here but I want to go back a bit and see where the other exits go. So I head into room 53 and take exit 1 to room 49, and here the mystery of the wandering Hurkle (who is still following me) is revealed: this is probably the swamp he came out of, and the dead grubling lying beside it was probably the reason the Hurkle left his hiding spot. Then he and the Compressor probably crossed paths, fought each other up to level 2, where the Hurkle decided *I* was better prey.

This is what I mean about the monsters behaving in nifty ways.

What's more, we've just found the next link in the Panks Swamp...the exit it comes from is referred to as "distant" but not "unexplored"...when exits cross levels you are not told which room numbers they connect to, but there's no doubt the other end of exit 3 is room 21 -- the notorious steam region.

Let's not follow the Panks Swamp yet...I return to room 53, then go back to 51, and take exit 1...and now we're in the OTHER half of that garden room that we got stuck in so long ago. Exit 2 will take you back down to the Pit of Death, but it would be awfully stupid for me to go down THERE again. It's a sad fact that monsters aren't hindered by things like water and slopes...implementing such a thing would be very difficult. Like the whirlpools I mentioned earlier, chalk it up to an intentional decision -- monsters are so accustomed to the caves that NOTHING can stop them! -- and let it go.

As you can see, this development forces me to rearrange my map a bit, moving room 50 down to connect to room 51. Don't cry! As I keep on saying, we'll straighten it out when we make our "good copy."

I make my way back to room 54, intent on exploring these cold little caves before I tackle Panks Swamp. Exit 1 takes me to room 52 (a dead end), and a very handy stone knife (17% effective). Back to room 54 again, then into the dead end of room 60, where another skeleton tries desperately to advance the narrative and a sharp drop tries to convince us to go down to level 4...but we're not done mapping yet! Return to room 49 (feel free to eat the grubling corpse there if you're peckish), then follow Panks Swamp to its end in room 43.

Through exit 3 we find room 44, as well as this level's chute. My chute has dropped a ginko bar (eat it...it will raise your maximum strength) and "sensor 4." Somewhere in the caverns there is an electronic receiver, which receives messages from five sensors (referred to as "s1," s2" etc.) If you turn the receiver on and carry it around, it will tell you about any creatures that enter or leave the vicinity of the sensors. Useful? Not at all! But it's neat and makes me think of "Alien."

Back to room 43, the unexplored exit takes us to room 42, then to 57, and finally to 48, a long descending slope that ends with a sharp drop to level 4. Thankfully, Panks Swamp seems to have thrown the Hurkle off my scent so I can rest momentarily before using my rope to get me down to the next level. We've found all 20 rooms so we can comfortably descend (I must have somehow missed level 3's barrel while I was running hysterically from the Hurkle). Here's our map:

Onward to Part Four >>

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