Quinn’s Journal #3: "We’re making good progress on collecting these stasis boxes. Hindmost keeps demanding answers we don’t have or don’t want to give. We’d do better if he’d just leave us alone to do what he sent us here for. At least Seeker hasn’t been putting himself in danger so much."
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Seeker and Quinn get macho. |
The next box is located on a rock in the middle of a "sunflower" field. Not the usual sort of flower, these things are dangerous bioengineered constructs. We can't land close enough to retrieve the box on foot, so Seeker decides we should fly an unmanned probe through the sunflower field. I get a couple of conversational options about who should fly the probe, but it boils down to Quinn volunteering. This starts a little minigame where I have to navigate the probe over to the rock by moving the mouse back and forth to steer while not flying over any sunflowers, depicted by yellow lines.
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Quinn's quip about nervous habits. |
I'm not sure if I did anything, or if that was just the game giving up on me and letting me proceed even though I was failing to do what was needed there. Seeker manages to get the box back to the lander, but the probe is too damaged to fly again afterward.
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Miranda's more clever than she seems. |
Afterward, Miranda admits she did get the first box open, and what she found was a neural control module which could be used on the "sunflower" devices. That might have been useful for the box we just got, although maybe there were too many sunflowers to control them all.
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Nope, not Louis Wu. The name's Quinn. |
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Take me to your leader then! |
I wish the game didn't let you wander around the ship while wearing it, since the airlock is in the same room as the suits. You can't leave the ship via the ladder while wearing the suit: you have to use the airlock. I forgot initially and went off to the ladder first.
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The Coralhouse of Poria |
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I guess the universal translator doesn't translate dolphin. |
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The Explorer’s home is in a floating tower. |
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Quinn asks for what he wants... |
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...and is firmly rebuffed. |
Not seeing any other options...I stun him. Not exactly my favorite mechanic, but it is sort of refreshing once in a while in a genre that usually gives you some variation of "Violence is not the answer here." when you try something like that.
First I take the glinting thing, which turns out to be a key. Except I have no idea where to use it. None of the six (!) visible desk drawers are locked, although one is jammed and won't open. There's also a sealed wooden barrel that I can unplug, which spills some sticky lubricant onto the floor. Atop it sits a dirty tin cup, which I can't take.
The desk has some equipment without a power source, so it doesn't do anything, plus there's a greasy towel. I feel like I should maybe be able to use the towel to get more of the spilled lubricant in order to unstick the drawer, but I can't take the towel either, or do anything else with the lubricant. I even tried scanning it, which told me it's "repellent" but "non-toxic to mammals". I guess maybe it's more like bug repellent?
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The marks seem to line up. |
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The Explorer lies stunned while I ransack his books for clues. |
I can put the key back where I found it, so I do that in an attempt to mitigate the damage I've done here, although I can't figure out a way to put the stool back how it was, nor the combination paper. Maybe I need the paper later for something else? I don't know why there's any reason to put the key back if I can't undo the other things I've done too. Not that the Explorer won't know what's happened once he wakes up anyway.
I return to the ship with my purloined goods. Back out to the shore we go (donning the pressure suit again first) to hand over the device to Skeenar. As it turns out, I didn't need the pressure suit this time, because I don't have to swim. He asks for the box's location, which Quinn provides, and then swims away to direct the dolphins to find it.
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Skeenar returns with problems. |
Well, I have no immediate answer to this one. I did see a coil of frayed rope in the Explorer's lab, but when I clicked on it, all it said was that you should never use frayed rope. What if I could un-fray it or repair it somehow? Not that dolphins could tie it.
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Quinn transforms a broken probe into mechanical hands, quite a feat of engineering. |
I hand over the hand-device to Skeenar, and he promptly returns with the box. He also mentions that Louis Wu and Chmeee probably aren't too far from there, since they only had their feet to transport them when he saw them. But we still have one more stasis box to retrieve, so they'll have to wait.
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Kzinti don't do well at negotiation. |
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I don't really see how he could prevent us from leaving, honestly. |
Before that, we'll aim for the last stasis signal. It's 100 kilometers away, but Seeker doesn't want to bring the lander any closer because it's in a palace inside a city. So we'll fly the flycycles over there to check it out.
I don't really understand this, but Seeker says that this city is in an area of Ringworld called the "Map of Earth," like there's part of the Ringworld that replicates Earth somehow. And there's also a "Map of Kzin" that replicates Kzin somehow. It might be just that those are the areas where humans and Kzinti live. Seeker seems surprised that there are Kzinti on the Ringworld at all, because a colony expedition would have been rather difficult to send.
Next time we'll collect the last stasis object and find out what's in the ship in the canyon.
Number of people stunned by Quinn: 1 (the Explorer); 5 total
Number of actions taken by Quinn other than stunning: 14 (including getting 5 items: the key, the glass jar, the combination paper, the dolphin translator device, and the mechanical hands); 38 total
Number of conversational choices: 2 (two in the argument with Seeker about flying the probe]; 9 total
Number of deaths: 0; 2 total
Number of alien species encountered: 1 (the Coastal Sea People); 6 total [the Explorer looked human]
Session Time: 1 hrs 30 min
Total Time: 4 hrs 40 min
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