You play as Zbyana (and you have many other names) of the Ruritanian Liminal Patrol. In the Margin Cafe, you find a beautiful outclade elf. Do you arrest her, ignore her, or try to help her?
This solution is by David Welbourn, and is based on Release 2 of the game.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Reading a walkthrough prematurely can sometimes diminish one's enjoyment of an interactive fiction game. Please make an honest effort to play the game before reading this walkthrough.
You don't have to hassle the mudlark, but if you want him gone, just hit him.
> hit mudlark.
> in.
Margin Cafe
> footnote 9. footnote 10. footnote 11.
> x Druse. footnote 12. footnote 13.
> x soup. x outclade. footnote 14. footnote 15. footnote 16.
> look up outclade in Nook.(No record of her at all.)
> look up mudlark in Nook.(Only minor offences.)
> look up Krebs in Nook.
> look up Druse in Nook. footnote 17.
> look up Maral in Nook. footnote 18.
> look up supervisor in Nook.
> kiss outclade.
> z.
You assess your options with the outclade, none of which are ideal. I found four options. You can arrest her, ignore her, give her the Nook, or give her your gun.
> save
> arrest outclade.
> out. out.
> give Nook to outclade. footnote 19. out. out.
> give gun to outclade.
In some endings, Krebs is angry and fires you. It's not clear to me what exactly is the trigger.
*** The End ***
Perhaps there is a better ending that I failed to discover?
Extras
Characters
A mudlark is hanging around outside the cafe.
Druse is the proprietor of the Margin Cafe. But after you've examined her, she's removed from the story.
An outclade (a foreign elf) is eating soup in the cafe. You recognize that she's of the Ae Cau Shar clade.
Krebs is your boss at headquarters; he appears in the epilogues.
Mentioned:
Maral taught you how to tie your scarf.
Credits
This is the response to CREDITS:
Moondarkling: Elfboon was made for SpeedIF Jacket 4, in which games were based upon blurbs supplied by other participants. I had all of the following in mind while writing this; some worked out more than others.
Due to an abject failure to provide any core interaction, no moral is or should be implied.
"It's urban fantasy without the "urban"." -- Carolyn VanEseltine
"This was the best game that I never want to play again." -- Colin Sandel
"More of an extended joke than a game. Not a particularly funny joke either." -- Tanga
"The game's triumph was not just making me care about the love interest, but also making me understand why I had to let them go." -- C.E.J. Pacian
"I've read more comprehensible prose out of a James Joyce book dunked in hydrochloric acid." -- Sarah Morayati
"One item in particular has a really impressive number of different uses." -- David Fletcher
"The subtle use of antiquarian language made me laugh in this futuristic restaurant adventure." -- Royce Odle
"You'll never look at barnacles the same way." -- Jennifer Earl
Footnotes
This is a possibly-incomplete list of topics that have have footnote tags, the actions that display those tags, and the footnote texts that they reference.
your names (via examine me):
And several others that you're not allowed to disclose, one or two that you are literally incapable of disclosing, and a whole host that are best left unshared in polite company. Turning down elf-boon names is Not Done, but it would be a lot easier if they weren't such a bunch of pervs.
your clothes (via examine me):
By inclination you think about clothes perhaps four times a year, but elves have an intense cultural prejudice against anyone not ridiculously overdressed. Most patrollers default to something gothy and heroin-chic on the grounds that it can be sustained with little sleep and less laundry, but it's become such a staple of the patroller stereotype that you resisted. Fortunately, even the Ruritanian Liminal Patrol maintains a stylist on staff.
how you think about your boots (via examine boots):
This is what happens[4] when you think about clothes four times a year, but do so in a boutique in Praha's Fae Quarter, after a half-dozen Flek Thirteens in the company of an unprincipled and inventive Azeri police stylist, with a performance bonus burning a hole in your pocket and five years' worth of accumulated low-key resentment at always being dowdier than the other half.
meta-introspection? (via footnote 4):
You have a sample size of one, but gathering more extensive data has proved difficult.
gun calibre (via examine gun):
It's only in the last couple of years that anyone started making automatic rounds jacketed in cold iron; formerly you had to lug around a gigantic revolver that made holes of undiplomatic proportions in everything and kicked like an onager with a hornet on its balls, and the Glock.
illegality of mudlarking (via examine mudlark):
And in Ruritania, tedious, complicated and socially bootless to prosecute. As far as you're concerned, the law exists as an alternative way of nailing the ones who branch out into smuggling or elfin traffic.
mudlarking in water margins (via examine mudlark):
It's called something else in dry margins, of which Ruritania thankfully has none.
what counts as a direct threat when justifying info searches (via look up mudlark in Nook):
You can scry for someone's psych records if they're waving a gun at you. You can't remotely view someone's home if you think they're building a bomb.
liking fish soup, damp clothes, and ill-washed foreigners (via Margin Cafe description):
And actually, having come here almost every day for three years, you are disturbed to find that you kind of do.
the term "outclade" (via the outclade's initial appearance):
The Liminal Patrol does not make judgments act on behalf of the Outsider Office[11], and it is very important to use a term that remains agnostic on whether its referrent is an asylum-seeker, refugee of war, economic migrant, vagrant, smuggler, baby-snatcher or insurgent. It's best to just think of them as a shambling mound of paperwork.
Outsider Office (via footnote 10):
Who's in charge of the margin is kind of complicated. The Frontiers Division is nominally in charge of securing the borders, but here they just make flyovers and kick the crap out of anything that looks like a monster or an invasion. The Outsider Office processes such immigrants as make it into a queue at a provincial capital (or, just as often, a holding cell). The Liminal Patrol deals with everything that falls in between, which is to say the difficult stuff.
proprietor (via examine Druse):
By its nature, few of the Cafe's clientele have or even understand money; Druse is mostly paid in low-end elfboons. He hopes, or says that he hopes, to eventually accumulate enough boons to be able to go home, once the war's over; but boons don't stack in a neat numerical fashion, and you have only the vaguest idea as to whether this is a credible ambition.
past dealings with the Pale Colony (via examine Druse):
See Moondarkling Volume La Zeroiene: Witchlighten.
the fact that humans can't learn Middling Forkmouth (via examine outclade):
Which is suspiciously convenient for anybody who might have a motive to avoid the challenges of interrogation, hem-hem.[15]
not being able to talk (via footnote 14):
C.E.J. Pacian, Gun Mute, talking to.[16]
footnote abuse (via footnote 15):
Adam Thornton, Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis, opening screen. Believe it or not, I was abusing footnotes before I even fired Stiffy up, but the encouragement is appreciated.
scrying Druse (via look up Druse in Nook):
That didn't prevent you from scrying him a couple of Volumes ago, which led to a protracted misunderstanding that led your not-relationship to go on not-hiatus, which he took advantage of to shtup your supervisor. Luckily she got vampirised by a renegade Variant and was executed after trying to take over the Pale Colony, or things would have been really uncomfortable around the office.
You and Maral have no secrets (via look up Maral in Nook):
Except in the telenovelas. But those don't count. And you'd never dress like that, anyway.
Nook-gifting consequences (via give Nook to outclade):
Actually, you'll be infuriatingly hobbled by the lack of a deeply reified Book of Shadows for the next four Volumes, but at least it offsets your power creep for a while. And the outclade elf becomes an occasionally recurring character starting around Hexedfire, and gets her own spinoff graphic novel series while wearing considerably less clothes, so that's all right.
Inventory
the Nook of Shadows. You're carrying it.
It's basically a magical book of Who's Who, and you can look up people in it, but legally, you're only permitted to do that if they're a direct threat to you.
You may give the Nook to the outclade.
semi-automatic. You're carrying it.
You may give the gun to the outclade.
a camel trenchcoat, an extremely French scarf, and a World's Stupidest Boots. You're wearing all three items. If you remove them, they're in your inventory.
The outclade is uninterested in your clothing, and frankly, you don't care for it either.
The Moondarkling series
Moondarkling Volume La Zeroiene: Witchlighten tells about your dealings with the Pale Colony.
"a couple of Volumes ago" is mentioned in the footnote referred to in the response to look up Druse in book.
Volume La Soixieme: Shadowed Wings is mentioned in response to kiss outclade.
Hexedfire is one of the volumes if you give the Nook to the outclade.
The telenovelas are mentioned in the footnote referred to in the response to look up Maral in book. You're of the opinion that the telenovelas don't count.
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