Podcast 40 sprinkles:
Significant secrets remain. Figuring out the story of the girls would help.
Most of the hardest stuff to find is in interactions between reflections.
Well, I'll have a go at the story of "the girls," or rather the one woman in four different periods of her life (/death).
It's odd that the in-run order is Summer, Winter, Spring, Autumn, since my tingling spadey senses tell me that's not the order seasons happen. Plus the story is clearly in the expected order:
Spring: The Child
She "grew up in an ancient forest, far from any civilization." She is full of possibility, playful, trusting.
An old, wild-eyed swordsman-hermit is probably the one who raises her, but she distrusts him and dislikes the place she lives (or at least part of it). This might be because she's found tunnels with the bones of hundreds of people, behind a strange sword in a cracking stone.
You pull the sword from the stone, and give her flowers.
Avenues to explore:
- Climb the tree (Arkaim suggested a hooked chain, but hint sounds like you need a pile of something to stand on. Might just be reference to other seasons)
- Burn the tree (Erenoth suggested equipping a mislit torch)
- Useful result from children games
- Chop down the tree (no reflected axe that we know of…)
- Find something else in the tunnels (maybe a young serpent, but I doubt it given the hermit fills the role of secondary character)
- Discover the origin of the flower field (It's in a small depression, did a building once stand there? Might just be so that it can be replaced by pool.)
Summer: The Maiden
Living in the same forest, the girl-now-young-adult is "waiting for someone to arrive who will end the terrible boredom. She wears a ball gown and a masquerade mask, so perhaps she's preparing for a ball… or more likely being prepared for one, for how could she get those materials herself in a forest?
The flower field has been filled in by a pool.
Instead of a hermit, a giant serpent.
You first obtain for her an apple guarded by a serpent, then snake skin from the serpent. She eats the apple, then cradles the skin and weeps over it, sorrowful… I'm not sure why. Maybe the serpent killed the hermit (and she had some fondness for him after all). It could be that the hermit that raised her is now a serpent, if we want to get really weird. Maybe something else entirely.
Avenues to explore:
- Burn down tree nothing with mislit torch
- Climb tree (I consider this less likely since there's already a way to solve the apple-getting puzzle.)
- Find a purpose for Stand Ground in the minigame
- Understand why the pool filled in (hardly something that typically happens in summer, but there don't seem to be any hints of this being a mystery)
Autumn: The Crone
"endless memories of being oppressed and stepped on, unable to fight back." "endless years of hardship and a cage that turned out not to be gilded at all."
She's become a bit of a witch with her cauldron and the weird strands and knowing how to use the mislit mask. She has built herself (?) a hut.
Instead of a serpent or hermit, a skeleton, in a weird tower that wasn't there in her youth, but looks old. Is the skeleton the hermit? What purpose did she serve, what kind of toil did she do?
You defeat the skeleton, and she starts a new life, looking younger.
Avenues to explore:
- According to Mag's old notes the crone can react to the cauldron, but we've only recorded one message of this nature. There could be a way to get her to move the cauldron, so you can look underneath it.
- Burn / chop down the tree?
Winter: the Grave
This is the hardest for me to interpret. The hut is standing, though the tower is nowhere to be seen. The hut has a torch in it, which is odd, since the woman isn't present. You burn down the hut. You see an old headstone nearby, but it has your name on it, not the woman's. It's perspective description is odd: "You're seeing things from two perspectives now, one surprisingly depressing and the other obsessed with death. Something about that knowledge, and the fact that it seems more at peace than your everyday mind, inspires you to greater calm." All of the other perspective descriptions just describe the one perspective, with the other presumably your own. So why does this one describe both perspectives?
The "secondary character" is a wolf this time, and connecting it to the hermit and skeleton seems relevant, since it's "still compellingly human." (Also a "child's nightmare.") Though there's also a hint of the snake beneath the pool, so I could be making the "secondary character" links overblown.
You accept death (?) or contemplate it anyway, first by offering a fish fearlessly to the wolf, then by offering the wolf's tooth to the grave.
Odd ghoul easter egg.
Avenues to explore:
- The minigame
Misc story notes:
- Snow White influence. The girl is raised alone by a hermit in the forest, More definitively, the maiden's mask is divided into two halves, "lily white and apple red," similar to the half white / half red apple (nourishing / poisoned) in original Snow White. Then the crone gets pretty witchlike on the other side of things.
- Genesis influence. Maiden is eager to escape her boring world, and eats an apple guarded by a snake.
- Norse influence. Always worth taking a look. Signs of Jormungandr and Fenrir, but nothing that screams "figure me out" unless the hermit and the skeleton are also Norse figures.
- Arthurian influence. Sword from the stone, but that's all I got unless the serpent is FREAKY lady of the lake.
- Fae Sight / Cavern's Light / Ocean Sight interact in a couple places, but nothing that seems major to me.
- Given the efforts someone has taken to repair the spring stone, and the hermit's odd understanding of what's happening when you crack his world and catch his reflection, we could have a cyclical story of grooming someone for sacrifice in order to avoid a cataclysm.
- The girl might have an understanding of these "time zones" – perhaps the maiden gestures to the west when you show her the mask because your mask is older, from a reflection where the sun hangs still further on (west) in the sky.
In the beginning, men were mortal.