Key & Compass presents:
Wearing the Claw
by Paul O'Brian

• Maps
  • Map 1: Poor Village
  • Map 2: Isle of the Goergs (and Bex)
• Walkthrough
• Extras
  • Amusing, Characters, Credits, Endings, Inventory
• Thank You to my Patreon supporters
• Support me on Ko-Fi
• External links:
  • This game at IFDB, IFWiki, and ifwizz.
  • Tweet about this walkthrough on Twitter.

Maps

Map 1: Poor Village

Map 2: Isle of the Goergs (and Bex)

While wearing the pendant:

• "Before the Barrier" becomes "Bare Hallway".
• The three river locations become the "Foyer".

Walkthrough

Your province was cursed by the wizard Marnian. You must find the Pendant of Elinor and return with it to Lord Midel.

Dirt Road

> x me. i.

> remove pack. x it. open it.

> x parchment. x handkerchief. x gold. x topaz.

> x town. x mountains.

> w.

Outskirts of Village

> x buildings.

> w.

Dusty Road (east end)

> x garments. x alehouse.

Although you need something from the clothing store, and you can buy it right away, this walkthrough will bypass the store for now and return to it after seeing the rest of the village. That way, you'll have more topics to talk about and have a better idea of what you need to buy.

> w.

Dusty Road (central)

> n. s. (nothing for you in the lanes)

> w.

Dusty Road (west end)

> x shop. s.

Boarding House

> x desk. x bell.

> ring bell. (You take it. No one answers.)

> n. w.

End of the Road

> x sand. x waves. n.

Shed

> x man. ask man about ships. (He fears your paw.)

> x paw.

> s. nw.

Beach (northwest)

> x island. x bushes. s.

Beach (west)

> e. sw.

Pier

> x ship. x sea.

> w. (A sea-captain blocks you. You need a contract from Old Bill.)

> ne. s.

Beach (south)

> x pebbles. e.

Beach (southeast)

Okay, time to return to Goodman's:

> nw. e. e. e. n.

Goodman's Used Clothing Emporium

> x clothes. x box. x table.

By this time, the clerk offers you a leather glove.

> x glove. buy glove. (with gold piece)

> wear glove. (It falls off immediately.)

> take handkerchief.

> tie glove to paw. (with handkerchief)

Talking to the clerk is optional, but it adds more depth to this part of the game.

> x clerk. ask clerk about glove.

> ask clerk about town.

> ask clerk about alehouse.

> ask clerk about shop.

> ask clerk about boarding house.

> ask clerk about Old Bill.

> ask clerk about ship. (or contract)

> ask clerk about Goergs. (magicians)

> s. w. w. w. n.

Shed

With your paw concealed by the glove, Old Bill is now willing to talk to you.

> ask man about ship. (He can sell a contract for a one-way passage.)

> buy contract. (using topaz.)

> x contract.

> s. sw.

Pier

> w. (The sea-captain takes you to the island, dropping you off at...)

Rocky Shore

> x sea. w.

Southeast Corner

> x wall. read plaque. take plaque. (can't touch it)

> x sand. w.

Southwest Corner

> take coat. x it. ("PhantomPiercer, BarrierBreaker")

> x crag. n.

Northwest Corner

> climb wall. (Your paw is unsuitable for climbing with.)

> e.

Clearing

> x silver wall. e.

Northeast Corner

Nothing here.

> w. n.

Chersonese

> x pebbles. x waves. s.

Clearing

> touch silver wall.

> wear coat. touch silver wall. (The wall vanishes.)

> s.

North of River

CAUTION: If you enter the river while wearing the coat, it will melt away as if made of cotton candy.

> read sign. (The River Styx)

> remove coat. put coat in pack. close pack.

> x river. x shapes.

> s.

In the River

> s.

South of River

CAUTION: If you hit this dog, you will die.

> x dog. pet dog. (You felt nothing.)

> open pack. wear coat.

> s. (The illusion of Cerberus vanishes, and the guard dog that was inside the illusion cowers and flees south.)

Before the Barrier

> x water. (It endangers your coat.)

> remove coat. put coat in pack. close pack.

> s. s. s. (With persistence, you reach...)

Hall of the Goergs

Clea apologizes for the "hell", but says they needed to be sure you were capable of rescuing Marnian.

> x Clea.

Clea says Marnian is a victim of Lord Midel then hands you a crystal to look into.

> look in crystal. again. again.

Two turns after looking into the crystal for the third time, Clea hangs her pendant around your neck. While you wear the pendant, you cannot deceive with false appearances, nor can you be decieved. The pendant destroys lies.

Once you have the pendant, you can leave the island immediately, but surely you first want to ask Clea some more questions, and see what the island looks like without its illusions?

> ask Clea about Midel.

> ask Clea about Marnian.

> ask Clea about crystal.

> ask Clea about curse.

> ask Clea about pendant.

> ask Clea about Goergs.

> ask Clea about magic.

> ask Clea about illusion.

> give crystal to Clea. (She tells you to keep it.)

> x pendant. look.

> x northwest door. ("Women's Chambers")

> x northeast door. ("Men's Chambers")

> x throne. x dog. x basins.

> n.

Bare Hallway

> x drain. n.

Foyer

> n. e. s.

Southeast Corner

> x plaque. (It's blank.)

Okay, we're done here.

> yeyos.

Town Square

Midel has cast an illusion of himself as Marnian and Marnian as himself.

> remove pendant.

> give pendant to Marnian.

Everyone can now see that Lord Midel is the true villian, and Marnian is in the cage. Midel can't remove the pendant!

> open pack. wear coat. (Midel brandishes a huge sword.)

Prevent Midel from cutting your head off:

> enter cage. (Thanks to the coat's magic.)

> remove coat.

> give coat to Marnian.

*** You have won ***

> amusing

Extras

Amusing

The response to AMUSING after you've won the game is a Postscript menu with two items on it:

Author's Note

The initial impetus for writing Wearing the Claw was my desire to make a step towards reducing the artificiality of scoring in interactive fiction. What the discussions on rec.arts.int-fiction have indicated to me is that having a score (and/or rank) points up the "game" aspect of an interactive text and, in its rupture of the fourth wall, devalues the fictional aspect. On the other hand, the lack of a score causes some players the anxiety of feeling at sea in the plot, unsure of how they are progressing. My notion in this game was to introduce a device (albeit a highly artificial one... as I said, it's only a start) which would alert players to their progress (or lack thereof) *and* remain an organic part of the story. Thus, the transformed hand. Hopefully this device allowed players to maintain a rough idea of their progress while not breaking the fictional context.

My other goal in this text was to try to hide the seams between plot and puzzles to as great a degree as possible. Of course, fantasy is a genre which allows a few giant strides toward this end, in that much is possible with magic which would otherwise remain senseless. Players may be bewildered by the large number of beach locations; I'll confide that they were originally written as a part of the glove puzzle, when I intended to force the player to fill the glove with sand so as to fool Old Bill more convincingly. Even after I'd scrapped that part of the puzzle, I still kept the locations, because they felt necessary to making the game world a less arbitrary and more natural one. The same is true for the closed alehouse, boarded-up building, and bell. These are not intended simply as harsh red herrings but rather as ways of filling out the outlines of the town. After all, even the poorest town has more than two buildings!

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention here that I drew significant inspiration for the player's 'magic hand' from the novella "Dankden" by Marc Laidlaw (published in the October/November 1995 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.) I also owe acknowledgement to Emily Dickinson, whose words provided not only the title page quote but also the poem on the plaque hung outside the fortress. Additional thanks are due to Stevie Nicks, who provided the model for the Goerg queen, and to Piers Anthony, whose recurrent theme of the hero's three tests strongly influenced the "Hell" sequence inside the Goergs' fortress. Finally (saving the best for last), a thousand thanks are not adequate for my excellent playtesters Matthew Daly and Michael Kinyon, both of whom provided important feedback that significantly affected this game's eventual state.

I hope you enjoyed this story, and I encourage all players, whether they liked it or hated it, to email me their responses (constructive criticism, please) at email redacted. This was my first work of interactive fiction and while I hope it was a quality piece of work, I'm sure there is room for improvement, so please send me your thoughts! Thanks for experiencing Wearing the Claw!

Have you tried...

• Walking east four times from your initial position?
• Breaking the shop window?
• Killing, kissing, or throwing things at the clerk?
• Showing the glove, bell, or handkerchief to the clerk?
• Asking the clerk about various things?
• Putting things in the clerk's box?
• Taking or searching the clerk's box?
• Buying the glove twice?
• Smelling the glove? (*obscure reference alert*)
• Ringing the bell more than 10 times?
• Drinking the ocean or the river?
• Throwing things into the ocean?
• Saying hello to Old Bill more than once?
• Killing, kissing, or throwing things at Old Bill?
• Climbing the fortress wall?
• Going east, west, or down in the golden river?
• Putting things in the river?
• Looking for those things after you're wearing the * pendant?
• Letting the coat disintegrate in the dripping water?
• Exploring the Goerg fortress with and without the pendant?
• Reading the parchment while wearing the pendant?
• Asking the queen about various things (she's programmed with a reply about most things in the game)?
• Taking the pendant on and off in the fortress?
• Showing various items to the queen?
• Killing or kissing the queen?
• Putting the coat in the water in the Hall of the Goergs?
• Walking back out of the cage before winning the game?
• Killing, kissing, or throwing things at Midel or Marnian?
• Asking them about various things?
• Saying "yeyos" before acquiring the pendant?

Characters

• Lord Midel is the lord of your town or province and he gives you your mission. He appears benevolent, but he's actually greedy and corrupt.
• Your family (father, mother, sister, and brother) and the townsfolk are all depending on you to succeed in your quest.
• The clerk in Goodman's Emporium is both haggard and clearly surprised to have a customer.
• Old Bill is wrinkled, superstitious, and the only one who can sell you a contract for a ship's passage.
• The sea-captain (and other sailors) man the ship that can take you to the island.
• A fly stings you when you cross the "River Styx", even though its waters should have made you invulnerable.
• Cerberus is the three-headed hound that normally guards the entrance to Hell, but now appears to be blocking your way on the south side of the river. But he's actually a normal guard dog wearing an illusion.
• Illusionary fairies may be seen (or not) in the bewitched Hall.
• Clea is the queen of the Goerges and the owner of the pendant. She can answer all your questions.
• Marnion is a wizard who was somehow captured by Lord Midel, imprisoned in a cage, and forced into doing Midel's bidding.

Mentioned:

• Children and other villagers in the poor village keep their distance from you.
• The other citizens of Goergs are presumably sequestered in the side chambers of the fortress.
• The people in the court of the capitol only respect wealth, if Lord Midel can be believed at all.

Credits

From the Acknowledgements menu-item accessed via HELP:

Acknowledgements

My first and foremost debt is of course to Graham Nelson, who wrote Inform (the development system for this program), and to the original implementors of Infocom, who created the z-machine for which Inform compiles code as well as the traditional style in which this work is written. Mr. Nelson has made it possible for me to realize a long-held, dormant fantasy of writing an Infocom-style game. In addition, his own works of interactive fiction have elegantly shown that the medium is still alive and thriving.

I also appreciatively acknowledge the minds and talents of the denizens of rec.arts.int-fiction, originators of the annual IF competition and the many excellent development systems and games resident on ftp.gmd.de (thanks by the way to Volker Blasius and David Kinder for maintaining that superb archive). The people on that newsgroup provide consistently interesting discussion of IF issues, not to mention rescue from dreaded coding jams. I'm especially appreciative of Gareth Rees, Andrew Plotkin, and Graham Nelson, all of whom created or suggested code without which this game would not be what it is.

In addition, a great deal of helpful feedback was provided to me after the 1996 IF competition. Among those whose feedback has helped me improve later releases are: Allison, Anthony Baechler, Richard Barnett, Giles Boutel, Neil DeMause, C.E. Forman, Roger Giner-Sorolla, Stephen Granade, Graham Nelson, Magnus Olsson, Andrew Plotkin, Andrew Pontious, Suzanne Skinner, Lucian Smith, Michael Straight, and Brent Vanfossen. Their input has been valuable and much appreciated.

Wearing the Claw is dedicated to the authors of Infocom and to the people who continue to blaze the trail that those authors began.

Note that the IF Archive is no longer at ftp.gmd.de; instead, see ifarchive.org.

Endings

• You have died
• if the guard dog kills you.
• if Lord Midel cuts your head off with his sword, either because you didn't enter the cage in time, or because you left the cage.
• You have failed
• if you say YEYOS when you don't have the pendant.
• You have won
• if Lord Midel is defeated and Marnian removes the curse.

You can also make the game unwinnable if the coat is ever destroyed by water.

Inventory

• a leather backpack. You're wearing it.
• You must remove the pack if you want to examine or open it.
• It initially contains a parchment, an embroidered handkerchief, a gold piece, and a blue topaz.
• Put the coat into the pack to protect it when crossing the river or going through the barrier where water is dripping.
• a parchment. It's in your backpack.
• Examine it. It has the Yeyos spell on it, which returns you to Bex when you say YEYOS.
• CAUTION: If you say YEYOS when you don't have the pendant, you fail your mission.
• an embroidered handkerchief. It's in your backpack.
• Tie the glove to your paw with the handkerchief to keep it there. Now you can talk to Old Bill in his shed and buy a contract from him.
• a gold piece. It's in your backpack.
• In Goodman's Used Clothing Emporium, buy the glove from the clerk with the gold piece.
• a blue topaz. It's in your backpack.
• In the shed, buy the contract from Old Bill with the blue topaz.
• a bell. It's in the boarding house.
• You can ring it, but that never helps you. You don't need the bell.
• a leather glove. In Goodman's Used Clothing Emporium, the clerk offers to sell it to you after a few turns in his shop.
• Buy the glove in exchange for the gold piece.
• When you try to wear the glove, it always falls off. The glove is too big for your paw.
• Tie the glove to your paw with the handkerchief to keep it there. Now you can talk to Old Bill in his shed and buy a contract from him.
• a contract. Buy it from Old Bill in the shed, using the topaz as payment.
• You must hide your paw before dealing with Old Bill. Otherwise, Old Bill is too scared to talk to you. Tie the glove to your paw with the handkerchief to keep it there.
• The contract allows you to enter the ship from the pier and travel to the isle of the Goergs.
• a long black coat. It's on a crag at the southwest corner of the island.
• While you wear the coat, you can negate or ignore many magical barriers.
• CAUTION: The coat is vulnerable to water. If it gets wet, it will dissolve into nothing as if it were made of cotton candy. Put the coat into your backpack to protect it from water.
• In the clearing, touch the silver wall to make it disappear.
• Before crossing the river, put the coat in the backpack so it doesn't get wet.
• At south of river, wear the coat and go south to defeat Cerberus.
• Before going south at the barrier, put the coat in the backpack so it doesn't get wet from the dripping water.
• In the town square, wear the coat so you can enter the cage, which will protect you from Midel's sword. Next, remove the coat and give it to Marnion so he can leave the cage.
• a tear-shaped crystal. In the hall of the Goergs, Clea gives this crystal to you soon after you enter there.
• Look in the crystal three times to see visions of Lord Midel and Marnion. After the third vision, the crystal won't show you anything more, but now Clea will give you her pendant.
• the pendant of Elinor. In the hall of the Goergs, Clea gives this pendant to you soon after you've looked in the crystal three times.
• It provides light and is wearable.
• While you wear the pendant, you cannot be fooled by illusions, and you cannot fool anyone else with your own illusions.
• In the town square, remove the pendant and give it to "Marnian" who is really Lord Midel. Everyone will immediately see that Lord Midel is the true villian and he won't be able to remove the pendant or make any new illusions.
• By the way, Marnion lied to Lord Midel about the pendant's goldmaking capabilities. The pendant can't do that sort of magic at all.

Honorable mention:

• your paw. A wolf's paw is in the place of your left hand.
• You get an itchy sensation in your paw when you make a poor decision, and a tingling sensation when you make a good decision. This is meant to convey an in-game sense of progress to the player as an alternative to awarding points and using SCORE.
• You must hide your paw before dealing with Old Bill. Otherwise, Old Bill is too scared to talk to you. Tie the glove to your paw with the handkerchief to keep it there.
• Your paw prevents you from climbing anything, such as the fortress wall on the isle of the Goergs.

Thank You to my Patreon supporters

This walkthrough was funded via Patreon with

• the support of Robin Johnson, Ville Lavonius, Andrew Schultz, Kenneth Hon, Carl Muckenhoupt, Mark Musante, Phil Tatro, Mitch, and Vivienne Dunstan;
• the generous support of Janice M Eisen and Matthew Foxley;
• the very generous support of Karl Ove Hufthammer and Lance Campbell;
• the extremely generous support of Emily Short, Allen Garvin, Jesse McGrew, Jacqueline Ashwell, Marius Müller, Jennifer Rexrode, and Durafen;
• and the invisible support of several anonymous patrons.

Ko-Fi is a way to send me small one-time donations. Every little bit helps, and thank you!