Necronomicon

By Jen

Pawtuxet/Providence—Setting the Stage

You hear a knock at the door. Exit the room you're in and cross the hallway to open the door. A friend of yours hands you a black pyramid-shaped thing. Go back toward your study, and you'll hear another knock at the door. Talk to the man; he asks you to pay a visit to Edgar Witcherly, and he gives you his card with his phone number. His name is Egleton. Return to your study. Examine the side table and take the key. Examine the secretary, then use the key on the middle drawer. Take the keys and coins from the drawer. Leave the house.

Go through the gate and turn left. Examine the motorcycle, then use the keys on it. Go to the right. From where you get off your motorcycle, go down the right side of the left street until you come to an alley in the middle of the block. Follow it all the way to the end and talk to the old woman on the bench. Talk to her again; she offers to tell you where Edgar Witcherly lives for a few coins. Give her your coins. She says, "Go see Mr. Crumm at the grocery store. You can't miss it." The grocery store is the whitish building on the left side of the left street (relative to your motorcycle).

Talk to Mr. Crumm. He's not very forthcoming. Talk to him again, and he tells you he's just a poor grocer trying to make a living. Take some matches from the counter to the right of the grocer and show them to him; he tells you they're one dollar. Get the coins from your inventory and pay. Talk to him yet again, and now he tells you that you have to buy a map for $20. Examine the maps to the left of Mr. Crumm. Take one, back up, then get some more coins from your inventory and give them to Mr. Crumm. He says he marks the address on the map, but his X didn't show on my map.

Look at the map in your inventory. Now you can use it to jump to locations. You have four choices, two near Pawtuxet and two near Providence. The map shows your current location with a circle, which is the town of Pawtuxet. The other Pawtuxet location is a weathered old house just outside of the town. The two Providence locations are your house and Edgar Witcherly's father's house. First go to the house near Pawtuxet and pull the bell handle to the right of the door. The man who answers the door tells you Mr. Witcherly has gone out. You can pull the bell repeatedly, but if you pull it again after the man tells you he will beat you up, he will beat you up and you'll get a game over.

Go to the mansion and in through the front door. This is where Edgar Witcherly's father lives. He offers you a soda and goes to get it. Roam the room a bit until he comes back and sits down. Examine the portrait over the fireplace and learn about one of the Witcherly's ancestors, Gregor Herschel.

Go back to the town and talk to the grocer again. This time you ask him about Gregor Herschel, give him some more coins, and he tells you to go check down at the docks. Go to the docks (follow the rightmost street all the way to the end and turn left) and approach the boat that's tied up. Talk to the man in the boat, who tells you that Herschel was a traitor, and you get a new location on your map, the newspaper office, to the south of Providence. Go there.

Approach and talk to the man behind the desk. Go through the door directly across from him, and you're in the file room. Turn to the left and examine the drawer for 1741 to 1760. Use the Pawtuxet folder, then examine the newspaper. Take it. Look at the next drawer down, 1762 to 1780 (what do you suppose happened to 1761?). Use the Pawtuxet folder again, and read and take the newspaper again. Use the same folder again to get a different newspaper; read it but this time you can't take it. You can examine all of the drawers in the file room and read a few more things, but there are only the two newspapers that you can take. You can move the little stepladder in front of each of the file cabinets and climb it to examine the upper drawers, and you can also point at the floor to crouch down and examine the lower drawers. The newspapers that you took are now in your inventory, in the cubbyholes at the bottom left of your screen, above your map. You can go there anytime to read them.

Return to Pawtuxet. Talk to the captain again; he tells you to talk to Blackfish in that small house down there. "That small house" is the one directly across from the dock. Go there and use the door. You find out Blackfish won't talk to you unless you bring some "supplies." Return to the grocer, talk to him, then give him some money. The hooch shows up in your inventory. Go back to Blackfish's house and enter. Approach Blackfish and give him the hooch. He tells you a story about Egyptian mummies and dead sailors, and finally he tells you to go talk to someone else, Arthur Profrock, at the tavern. So go to the tavern, of course.

Arthur Profrock is the man sitting on the bench outside the tavern. Talk to him, and he tells you if you come back tomorrow, he'll have some documents for you.

Return to Edgar Witcherly's house. This time you can go on in. Toward the left is a man sitting at a table; approach. It's Edgar. He introduces you to Doctor Owens, who promptly leaves, and Edgar asks you to reassure Egleton that everything's fine. Then he says a final-sounding goodbye.

Go home, go into your study, and examine the side table where the phone is. Use Egleton's card on the phone to call him. Egleton comes right over and tells you some more mysterious stuff involving some papers of Herschel's that Edgar had found.

Go back to Edgar's father's house. After you talk with the father, go upstairs to Edgar's room, on the right at the end of the second-floor landing. Go forward to the desk, examine it, and take the key from the third drawer. Examine the bookshelf next to the door, and take Herschel's journal from the bottom shelf. It goes into that cubbyhole in your inventory. Examine it. You see what Egleton meant about the strange writing.

Go back to Edgar's house. Use Edgar's key on the door and go in. Go to the cabinet on the other side of the table and take the indecipherable letter from the bottom middle drawer. It goes into your cubbyholes. From the same cabinet, top right drawer, take the letter from Simon O. to G.H. and read it in your cubbyholes. Try to leave the house through the door to trigger a cutscene with Edgar.

Go home again. Egleton is sitting in your study. Talk to him about Edgar. You and he go back to Edward's house to have him committed. Egleton instructs you to make a thorough search of the house and meet him back at your house. From the bottom drawer of the corner cabinet on the near side of the table, push aside the round thing (you get a key when you do this, but it just automatically appears in your inventory) and take the map that's revealed.

Go home and approach Egleton in your study. Use the hand-drawn map on him to show it to him. You get a new place on your built-in map; go there. It's a big barn-looking building. Walk around the outside of the building. At the back, you can see some shelves. Examine them and take the rightmost keys. Continue around the building until you happen upon the old car; use the keys on the trunk and take the crowbar (what adventure game is ever complete without a crowbar, I ask you?). Go to the front of the building and use the crowbar on the door. Against the wall on the left is a cabinet; go to the far corner, turn around, and use the cabinet to push it. Examine behind it to find a secret compartment. Use the heart-shaped key on the strongbox inside. Take the Saturn emblem and the multi-pronged key. Examine the papers on the table and take the strange 1750 calendar with words written on it. Cross the room and examine the giant Zodiac picture on the wall. Examine the ledger on one of the tables until you can take one of the letters. Read it, and then close the ledger. Go toward the stairs, turn left, and enter the door.

In the basement, go down the stairs and straight ahead. Push the barrel out of the way and use the trapdoor that's revealed. It's a strange combination lock. Here is a picture of the solution:

Underground

Use the multi-pronged key in the center and go down into the hole. Take one step forward then enter the tunnel to the right. After you take that step into the tunnel, turn to the right and use your matches on the torch. Take another step into the darkness and light another torch. Lather, rinse, repeat, er, continue on in this manner until you come to a cage door. I wasn't able to find a torch to light at every stop; I continued on in the darkness a couple of times and circled looking for hotspots. I guess that's the way it's supposed to be because your match supply is finite and you start running out. Anyway, after you light the torch by the cage door, turn to the right of the cage and go in through the wooden door. Use your last match on the candelabra.

Take a step toward the dim globe at the back of the room, past the table, and turn around and pull the lever that's slightly above and left of the bowl on the floor. After you pull it, you'll see some cage doors moving, and then you'll be prompted to insert CD 2.

After you insert the second CD, you lose all of your inventory except the pyramid and the stuff in the cubbyholes. Turn around and pick up a lighter from the table. Leave the room through the same door you came in, turn to the right, and go through where the cage door used to be. Use the lighter on the lantern hanging on the wall. Finally you can see! Step through the wooden door and save here because once you go into the next room you will be unable to save, and there's death galore.

Step into the room with the holes in the floor, and you will lose your lantern. So much for being able to see anything. It was nice while it lasted, though, wasn't it?

Take two steps to the right, into the darkness, and then find and light a torch on the wall. This torch goes out after a few seconds, so you've got to be quick about this next part. Make your way between the holes, three steps, to the lit-up altar in the middle of the room. Look down to the right and pick up the axe. Go back the way you came, again watching out for the holes, and then leave the room through the door you came in. You can save again in the well-lit little room.

Return to the room with the table and the cage-door-moving lever, take a step to the left, and examine the chest. Use the axe on the lock, then open the chest. Take the key, then move the lantern. Use the lighter on the lantern and you will now have it in hand.

Now step into the darkness behind the table and examine the cabinet. Use the key on it. Take the gas can and the case full of goodies, which becomes the fourth "permanent" item in your inventory, below the map. It contains various jewels and essences and some tools. Take a step to the right of the table, examine the side table, and take the red book, the "Book of Oaths." It goes into your cubbyholes. Take another step toward the back of the room and turn to face the stone staircase. Go up, and cross to the far side of the bookshelf ledge. Take the book "Spirits of the Day."

Return to the main part of the room, and go into the dark area behind the globe. There is a red book on a podium; examine it and then use it to rip a page out of it, which again goes into your cubbyholes. It's called "Borellus."

Go through the door back out to the dark hallway, take a step left, then turn right and go through the door. When you get in there and come upon a thing that looks like a double door, it's really a fork. Take the right one. Continue until you're in a roomful of crates; look down at the one that's slightly open and use it to look inside. Use the hand and take the key that's under it. Return to the room with the holes in the floor, follow the wall all the way around to the right until you get to the end; turn right and face the cage door. Use the new key to open it. Go through and go through the door at the other side, and you will be in a new room. It's dark again; what happened to our lantern?

The Laboratory ...

Keeping the wall of the room to your right, take about four steps until you come upon a bright green/brown door. Go in. Turn to the left, look down, and find the shovel. Pick it up, and then use it to scoop coal from near where you found the shovel. Put the scoop in the round hole of the boiler. You need to put three scoops of coal in, and then you get a hotspot on the coal in the boiler. Use the gasoline on the coal, then the lighter. Pull the lever to the left of the fire to close the grate. Back up from the close view and look at the dials/levers above the fire. Pull the middle lever, then turn the dial under the gauge. Leave the boiler room, and then keeping the wall to your left, return the way you came until you can make out a trunk sitting on the floor. Turn around, looking at the floor until you get a magnifying glass, then examine it. It's a dial; turn it. Now facing the trunk, turn right and take one more step. You should now be back at the door you came in through. To the left of the door is another magnifying glass hotspot; click there to see a fuse box. Use it to open it and then pull the lever inside. Now you have light. Finally. Close the fuse box and back up from the close-up.

On the left side of the room is a desk with a couple of books on it. Examine the red book; it's about herbs. Take a step to the right of the desk and examine the drawers, bottom right side. You can take any of the herbs, but you can only hold one at a time. Take from the unmarked drawer on the right above the garlic (it's Euphorbia), and from the bottom drawer take a smut disk and a multi-pronged key. Back up, turn to the left, and take a step. Take the syringe from the sink. Continue in the direction you were going to the end of the room, and then look at the thing on the left, not the glass thing but the machine thing next to it. Push the middle button on the bottom left to start the machine, then turn the crank at the bottom right a couple of times until it starts talking to you. You can talk back by pushing the buttons in the row under the row of lights. Make it talk to you until it won't talk anymore. You learn that you have to make a vital fluid, but ingredients are missing.

Go to the shelves of jars, directly across the room from the sink. From the bottom shelf, take the first bottle that you can take on the left (it's really the second bottle on the shelf). Turn around, examine the table, and use the bottle on the jar. Turn back to the bottles and take the fifth bottle from the left (that you can take) on the bottom shelf. Use it on the same jar on the table. You get a radioactive green concoction. Use the syringe on the green juice.

Go back to the machine in the corner that talked to you before. Use the syringe on the jar on the right side, then use the lever that's below the jar. The green stuff goes into a jar holding a brain, and the brain goes nuts. Look at the talking part of the machine again. Push the middle button at the bottom left again to restart it. Click on the crank on the right until one of the lights in the row of lights lights up. Push the button under the lit-up light to start it talking to you. This can go on forever; basically just get it to tell you everything in its repertoire.

Back up from the machine, turn to the right, and approach the combination lock on the wall. This is like the one you used to get into this dungeon in the first place, but a different combination this time. Here is a picture of the solution:

When the keyhole in the middle opens up, use the key from the herb drawer on it and go in.

... And Beyond

Go to the left and take five steps down the aisle. Then turn left and take the jar with the EL tag. Color me clueless as to why this is the jar, but it's the only one where something goes into your inventory. Make your way back to the center of the room, then go through the doors opposite where you came in. Turn to the right to go down, then cross the room to the table that's sort of lit up. There's a hotspot to the right of the table; use the smut (the black round thing that you got from the herb drawer) on it, then use the Styrax (one of the little bottles in that case full of goodies that's in the permanent part of your inventory). Then use your lighter on it.

Next, look at the drawer in the table and take the card for Eliphas Levy (EL like on the ashes jar). Back up, look at the pentagram on the floor, and place the card there. Use the EL ashes on the pentagram, then the diamond out of the permanent inventory, then the Euphorbia, then light that whole mess on fire with your lighter. This triggers a long cutscene that results in your visiting Edgar in the asylum and shooting him dead. After that, take the key from near his corpse.

Research

Go to Edgar's house. Take the papers from the floor in front of the door. Go into the dining room and take the paper from the ledge on the right. Go into the room near the stairs; from the cabinet take the Necronomicon, from one shelf, take the package, and from the other shelf, take the small statue. Go back to your house and give the Necronomicon to Egleton. He tells you to go to the library, and you get a new location on your map. Go there.

Go straight in, through the double doors. Head all the way to the back, turn right, and go through the door. Talk to the man sitting at the desk (Saunders), and then give him the Necronomicon. He tells you to go look at the Occult section. Leave, and at the first opportunity, go left. Take five steps, then go left again. Walk straight toward the window, then examine the books underneath it. Examine the one called "The moon, gateway to the soul (Diane Hecate)" and take it. Go back to Saunders's room and give him the book. (Note that he's standing at the table now, not sitting at the desk.) After he talks to you, look at the book in front of him. Leave his office and go straight across to the double doors on the other side. Follow the path all the way down, then go through the door on the left. Go left, then right, then examine the open case. Examine the book "The red dragon" and take it. Go back to Saunders and give it to him. Read the book after he talks to you. Outside of Saunders's office, take a step left at the first opportunity, then left again, then right, then three more steps forward. Turn left and approach the window. Examine the book "Language of initiates;" take it, return to Saunders and show it to him. This time he shows you a map. Examine the map.

On the map, use the statue, the label, the letter, the package, and the newspaper, one after the other. The approximate places to set the items are as follows: The newspaper goes on Greenland, the letter goes to the left of the Black Sea, the package goes on the red part of South America, the statue goes on the word South in the South Atlantic, and the label goes on Africa near where the Congo River would be if you could see it clearly. Click on Greenland, then South America, South Atlantic, then Europe, South Atlantic then Europe, and then Europe and somewhere in New England. Or something like that :) until a six-pointed star is drawn on the map. Then you get a new location on your inventory map. Go there.

City of the Ancients

There are four structures in this place. You can interact with three of them. You have to adjust them to match the symbols drawn on the prism you were given at the beginning of the game:

Here are pictures of how they look when they are adjusted correctly:

When you align them correctly, a little door will have opened on the side of the largest structure. There is a keyhole in that door; use the "Key of Ancients" out of that goodie box in the permanent part of your inventory. Then use the prism on the structure that's revealed. Take the three new prisms that become available to you. A part of the biggest structure moves.

Now go to the pyramid structure, the one that you couldn't do anything with before. Use the hotspot on the face of it. Make your way back around to the hole that's revealed and go down.

Blue Tunnels

Make your way into the tunnel. You come upon three blue tunnels. Go down the middle one; keep moving roughly forward until you come upon a stone circle with four symbols on it.

The top left symbol appears to have an arrow; go that way. Keep as close to the left wall as you can until you come to a stone bridge. Cross it and then turn around and take the second tunnel immediately to the right of the bridge. Take two or three more steps in that direction, and when you're faced with your next choice, take two steps into the left tunnel. Then turn around and take the tunnel immediately to the right of where you came in. In four more steps, you will come upon a green entrance instead of the usual blue. Go that way.

Green Rooms

When you come upon the green pedestal, examine it, then use it. It lowers and exposes three columns of buttons. Push down all of the buttons in the middle column, and a gate will open. Back up from the pedestal and go through that gate (it's to your right). Take a step into the room and then turn to the left and examine the thing on the wall and use it. It's some kind of device that closes the gate you just came in through and opens another one off the pedestal room; it's also a timer. If you don't make it the gates will reset themselves and you have to start over. But this part is easy. Turn the timer, then go into the middle tunnel. You will come upon a metal door; pass through it. Continue down every middle tunnel and through every metal door (there are about five or six of them) until you return to the room with the pedestal. Then enter the new open gate. You'll end up in a big circular room with a bunch of symbols high up on the wall.

Go through the triangular tunnel on the other side. Go straight as many times as you can, into the next room and approaching the giant spire, then turn to the left and go down the ramp. At the bottom, turn away from the spire and go all the way back to the wall. Then turn left and go down another ramp. This time you will reach the bottom of the room; again approach the giant spire. Go to the right and make your way to the back of the spire (this involves a lot of steps). Go into the entrance at the back of it.

Several more steps, and you come upon another pedestal. Examine it, then push the middle white one. A door will open up and a green symbol will appear in the circle (the symbols prove to be meaningless, but at least you know you did something right). Go to the right and continue roughly forward until you come upon another pedestal. This time push the left black button. Go to the right again; it becomes apparent that you are making your way around a star shape. You come upon another pedestal; this time push the left white button. Go to the right again; when you come to the pedestal push the middle black button. Go to the, you guessed it, right. This time it's the right white button. You know what to do next, I hope. This time use the right black button. After you travel down the right corridor this time, you will be back at the beginning. Take two step into the left tunnel (aren't you surprised I didn't say right?), then turn to the ... right (there ya go) to discover a new door that's open. Go in and go to the pedestal in the center of the room. Examine it and lay down your three pyramids on it thusly:

The Button-Pushing Maze

Step through the gap, and when you're through the short hallway and surrounded by obelisks, turn around and face the way you came (you'll be able to see the pyramid pedestal through the opening). Then turn toward the right and take the first path you can. Turn to the right again and take the second path you come to, toward a button that's jutting out of a wall. Face the button and click on it. Turn around 180 degrees and take two steps into the small square opening. There will be two buttons on the wall, on the left and right side of an alcove. Push both of them, then step all the way to the back wall. Go to the right. Go to the left. Left again, straight, then turn to the right. There is a strange door with a button on either side. Push the button on the right and go through the hole that opens up near the left button. Straight, right, right, straight. Left, left, left, then turn to the right, and you see another one of those doors. Again, push the button on the right and enter through the hole that opens up near the left button. Left, right, straight, and you're at another door. Again, push the right button and go through the hole at the left. Straight, right, straight, then turn to the left to be facing another door. Save here. Push the right button and go through the left hole. Follow the path now as far as you can go, through some pillars and toward a door in the wall.

Unlocking the Final Door

You have to push the buttons fairly quickly in order to open the complicated door lock. If you don't finish by the time the voice stops talking, you get the "bad" ending. (The "bad" ending is worth a look.) Here is the order to push them to get the "good" ending. If you face away from the door, number the buttons from 1 through 7 starting on the left, and then push them in this order: 2 3 5 4 2 6 4 7 2 1.

Step toward the man and use him when you get the hotspot.

The [Abrupt] End