The Holy Grail, Cracked Open
Bing the pyrotechnic
A crate arrived this week wrapped in the particular reverence reserved for relics — for inside lay a true grail, a game so scarce (some two thousand pressed, late in the last century) that Daniel (@dungeondive) hunted it for years before prising a copy loose from the auction-houses. The Keeper, who knows the difference between a thing one loves and a thing one will keep, recognised the look in the chronicler’s eye at once.
What the crate holds is the channel’s very first Let’s Play: a complete solo expedition through the cursed city of Burynathar, where the sorcerer’s curse has loosed chaos into the streets and two heroes — Bing the pyrotechnic and Dizzy the magi-duelist — wander its sprawling tile-laid avenues gathering clues. The arc is, by the chronicler’s own cheerful admission, gloriously incomplete: no single plot fully solved across three hours, yet a wizard’s war traced nearly to its end, an undecaying duelist’s ring half-explained, and a phantasm of jealous love that the Keeper has read three times for the pleasure of it. The file closes with a verdict as honest as the archive owns — a poor game, a peerless work of interactive fiction — and a sketch for playing it better next time.
The Keeper has shelved the run below in the order it was lived, with the deeper Warhammer Quest stacks folded in for those who would tour the whole world.
Exhibit Catalogue
- City of Chaos: Introduction — a years-long grail hunt ends; weird-fiction vibes and two freshly-painted heroes.
- Let’s Play - Part 1 — Dizzy joins the Magi; Bing buys nutcracker knuckledusters; the city begins to sprawl.
- Let’s Play - Part 2 — an undecayed corpse, a no-use heirloom ring, and a 40-year-old murder.
- Let’s Play - Part 3 — the first combat kills both fighters at once; the Wild Hunt sweeps Dizzy away.
- Let’s Play - Part 4 — a library ballad pays out two clue cards and the Wizard War snaps into focus.
- Let’s Play - Part 5 — a rabid dog’s plague, a deadly Naga, and an info board that cracks the ring open.
- Let’s Play - Part 6 — a jealous phantasm, Sif’s trapped lover, and the twin scars of the Duelists.
- Let’s Play - Part 7 — the apothecary confesses he caused it all; a letter of apology ends a wizard’s war.
- The Review — not a good game, a peerless work of interactive fiction, and a variant to play it better.
Curious simularities may exist elsewhere:
- Warhammer Quest - Take a Look - Part One — the component tour of the parent system, for the curious.
- Warhammer Quest - Take a Look - Part Four: The Lair of the Orc Lord — a representative scenario from the wider world.
500 transcripts • 579 posts archived
– The Keeper
Notes that the truest collector is the one who pays a king’s ransom for a thing he freely admits is not good — and reads its every paragraph twice anyway.