The "Black Stories" crime riddles thread

[Mandle]

Case #48
Paragraph #3: The Final Puzzles

Having figured out the puzzle of the key and button, and witnessing the amazing results, the box now sits before you slightly altered: Each side of the box now has a compass-rose of eight narrow slots radiating out from the central glyph-circle in all vertical, horizontal, and diagonal directions.
You have discovered that each glyph-circle can be slid along the compass-rose of new slots in eight directions. For convenience you think of them as: N, S, E, W, NE, SE, SW, and NW. Once a glyph-circle reaches the end of its track it locks into place. Once all six glyph-circles have been slid to the end of a track there is a "CLICK" from inside the box, the whirring sound starts again, and all the glyph-circles slide back to the center points. There is a "CLUNK" and the whirring sound winds down and stops.

You have:

The Second Box. ~ This is the smaller box you took out from inside the wooden box. It sits on the coffee table next to the wooden box. It looks like this:

(Hidden only for size considerations)

Spoiler

[close]

A Wooden Box. ~ It's a wooden box about big enough to contain a softball. It has many intricate designs inlaid in what appears to be gold. You never had the time to examine it carefully while at Kilmurray's mansion, except for when you shook it and heard something heavy and metallic thumping around inside. Now that you have had time to calmly examine the box, you see that each side of the cubical box has some kind of glyph embossed in gold in the middle, surrounded by swirls of intricate and beautiful gold designs. The glyphs mean:
                                                 Top Glyph: God
                                                 Bottom Glyph: The Devil
                                                 Front Glyph: Fire
                                                 Back Glyph: Water
                                                 Left Glyph: Male
                                                 Right Glyph: Female
After solving the key/button puzzle the box is slightly altered: It now has eight slots radiating out in a kind of compass-rose from the central glyph-circle on each side of the box.
After opening the wooden box its top is now split open along the tracks the "God" glyph slid along, the eight triangles lying open like a flower with its petals spread wide.
Inside the wooden box you found a second box, which now sits on your coffee table next to this one.
The box is sitting on the coffee table in front of you.


A Tiny Roll Of Paper. ~ This tiny paper you found inside the gold key reads:
                                                    As surely as The Mississippi flows non-stop,
                                                    As surely as Mount Vesuvius blows its top,
                                                    As sure as the arrow shot by man,
                                                    As sure as the cross borne by woman,
                                                    God above us is never wrong,
                                                    Yet the sinister one below us still grows strong.

A Gold Key. ~ This is the clockwork-winding key you used to unlock the glyph-sliding puzzle of the wooden box. The key is currently lying on the coffee table.

A Beer. ~ A freshly opened bottle of Wudbeiser beer. It is sitting on the coffee table in front of you. You have had 3 swigs of the beer.

Internet Access. ~ Your tablet lies on the table next to the box and beer.


To keep things simple game posts should follow this template:
Water: S
God: N
Fire: SW
Devil: NW
Female: NE
Male: SE
This shows both the order and directions you are moving the glyph-circles in.

CORRECT SOLUTION

(Solved by Morgan LeFlay)

Spoiler

Water: S
Fire: N
Male: NE
Female: S
God: NE
Devil: SW

[close]

You slide the last glyph into place and the whirring sound starts up inside the box once again. It begins to vibrate in your hands so you put it back down on the coffee table. The whirring speeds up and then suddenly stops with a loud "CLUNK". All the glyphs slide quickly back to their central positions, much faster than before, and the "God" glyph on the top disappears down into a circular hole. The eight triangles formed by the "God" glyph's tracks open smoothly like a flower filmed in time-lapse and snap into position 180 degrees from where they started. And then all is still...

You lean forward slowly, with some trepidation, and peer into the open top of the wooden box to find:

Another box?!

You reach into the wooden box, you fingers barely fitting around the smaller box within, grasp your prize and bring it out.

You set this new box, a cube about 13 centimeters to a side, on the coffee table next to the now open wooden box and look at it:

(Hidden only for size considerations)

Spoiler

[close]

You reach for the box, entranced by its beauty and the new secrets, perhaps the ultimate secrets, you sense it holds...

But then you hesitate. You are also warey, and feel quite like a small child reaching for a beautifully coloured snake...

One part of you wants to open the box, but another part wants to grab it and destroy it in the pottery kiln in your "artistic hobbies" room...

GAMEPLAY: Let's leave this to a vote! I will leave the vote open for about two days starting now. Please vote either "OPEN THE BOX" or "DESTROY THE BOX". Majority wins and then we shall see which ending this story gets... If "OPEN THE BOX" wins you don't actually have to manually solve the box post-by-post. It will be a cut-scene...

[Mandle]

Search "God above us is never wrong"
Search "Yet the sinister one below us still grows strong"

You do find something that catches your eye: Where God is concerned, "never wrong" is usually phrased differently...
Hmmmm, and that's interesting too: It seems "sinister" has a few meanings...

[Kitty Trouble]

Spoiler

Water: S
Fire: N
Male: NE
Female: S
God: E
Devil: W

[close]

[Kweepa]

Water: S
Fire: N
Male: NE
Female: S
God: NW
Devil: W

[Stupot]

Water: S
Fire: E
Male: NE
Female: S
God: E
Devil: W

[Mandle]

Will update above soon.

(None correct so far)

[Kitty Trouble]

Spoiler

Water: S
Fire: N
Male: NE
Female: S
God: NE
Devil: SW[/hide

[close]

[Mandle]

Spoiler

Water: S
Fire: N
Male: NE
Female: S
God: NE
Devil: SW

[close]

You slide the last glyph into place and the whirring sound starts up inside the box once again. It begins to vibrate in your hands so you put it back down on the coffee table. The whirring speeds up and then suddenly stops with a loud "CLUNK". All the glyphs slide quickly back to their central positions, much faster than before, and the "God" glyph on the top disappears down into a circular hole. The eight triangles formed by the "God" glyph's tracks open smoothly like a flower filmed in time-lapse and snap into position 180 degrees from where they started. And then all is still...

You lean forward slowly, with some trepidation, and peer into the open top of the wooden box to find:

Another box?!

You reach into the wooden box, you fingers barely fitting around the smaller box within, grasp your prize and bring it out.

You set this new box, a cube about 13 centimeters to a side, on the coffee table next to the now open wooden box and look at it:

(Hidden only for size considerations)

Spoiler

[close]

You reach for the box, entranced by its beauty and the new secrets, perhaps the ultimate secrets, you sense it holds...

But then you hesitate. You are also warey, and feel quite like a small child reaching for a beautifully coloured snake...

One part of you wants to open the box, but another part wants to grab it and destroy it in the pottery kiln in your "artistic hobbies" room...

GAMEPLAY: Let's leave this to a vote! I will leave the vote open for about two days starting now. Please vote either "OPEN THE BOX" or "DESTROY THE BOX". Majority wins and then we shall see which ending this story gets... If "OPEN THE BOX" wins you don't actually have to manually solve the box post-by-post. It will be a cut-scene...

PS: A huge congratulations to Morgan LeFay for solving the glyph puzzle!!!

Here is the solution if anyone wants to read it:

Spoiler

Water: S (The Mississippi river flows south)
Fire: N (Volcanoes blow their "top")
Male: NE (Up and to the right is the way the arrow points in the symbol for male)
Female: S (The cross in the symbol for woman hangs downwards)
God: NE (God "above" us is "never wrong", another way to say the same is "always right". So up and right.)
Devil: SW (The "sinister one", sinister being an old word for "left", "below" us. So down and left.)

[close]

And yeah, I never considered Never Wrong being taken as NW, or Eruption being taken for E... Interesting puzzle feedback for if I ever turn this into an actual game...

(MAIN POST UPDATED ABOVE ALSO)

[Mandle]

Oh, and the reason why I'm leaving the vote open for two days is because I'm about to leave tomorrow on a summer camp with my students.

I hope that's okay. I kind of feel like I'm hijacking the thread by doing this, but as there wasn't a lot of people in line to host a new riddle before I started this one I think it might be alright?

[CaptainD]

We have not come this far just to destroy boxes that may or may not annihilate us and / or the rest of the universe.

OPEN IT, I say!


(In case you're not clear, my vote goes with opening the box.)

[Mandle]

boxes that may or may not annihilate us and / or the rest of the universe.

Hmmmmm, sounds a bit like a game I beta-tested recently...

[Stupot]

OPEN THE DAMN BOX!!!

[Riaise]

Oh wow, multiple endings!

OPEN THE BOX

For the same reasoning as CaptainD. Also, why would the old man have been pointing out the way to open the box if it was just going to kill us? Unless he knew he was going to die and wanted to take everyone else down with him... I still say open it.

[Kitty Trouble]

I too vote open. Though it's probably a mistake.

[Cassiebsg]

> Save game
> Open Box

[Riaise]

Ooh, good thinking, Cassie!

I change my vote to save game, then OPEN THE BOX.

[Mandle]

Sorry, guys, but this is a roguelike... There IS no "save game" function!

Both endings are already written in my head but, sorry, you only get the one you voted for

Case #48
The End: The Final Box Solved

(Hidden for size and sanity considerations)

Spoiler

At first, trying to solve the second box, which you discover, after quite some research on the deep net, is one of the "Lemarchand's Box" series, is a ton of fun!

Lemarchand, an 18th century French toymaker of unsurpassed skill, was either commissioned or forced to make a series of such boxes for a shadowy aristocrat figure named Duc de L'Isle.

One of said boxes was "The Lament Configuration", the very box you are trying to solve, judging by the few blurry pictures you were able to dig out from the deep dark web.

One site, which you only ever managed to find online once and never again, described the box as a kind of gateway, or possibly the key to a gateway, to another realm.

Unlike other puzzle boxes, including the Rubik's Cube, this box is fascinating in its non-repetitive gameplay structure:

Sometimes entire sections can be slid out and shifted over, or rotated, and slotted back in. Sometimes the corners turn on diagonals. Sometimes you can turn halves of the box. Sometimes the mechanisms move on their own just by pressing an inlaid button or spinning an inlaid disc with your fingertip.

And sometimes there are flashes of light or glowing sparks leaping out from the razor-thin gaps of the box.

You become as if hypnotized and the passage of time slowly loses any meaning for you.

In steps your world becomes the box, and only the box:

You stop showering. You stop shopping. You stop eating. You stop sleeping. You stop going outside. You stop feeding your cat. You stop answering, or even hearing, the phone or doorbell ring.

You notice Sasha lying dead in the corner of the room at some point, her matted fur bursting with tiny, white, swarming things, but even this is barely a shrug for you before you return to solving the box.

You stop getting up from the sofa to go to the toilet. You stop feeling the bed-sores on your buttocks and the backs of your thighs. You stop feeling the infection spreading from these sores, festering in their bath of old urine and faeces. You stop seeing anything except your hands and the box they manipulate.

Then, during the brighter hours on one particular Someday: You solve it!!!

You hear a muted bell tolling mournfully somewhere far away. The gaps between the planks of wood you nailed over the inside of your windows grow dark for a moment, and then a blinding light slips between them, radiating multiple rays through the fetid, dusty air.

The wall before you splits jaggedly open about a horizontal meter, as if during an earthquake, although you feel no shaking, and, through the gap, even though it should just lead to your neighbor's apartment, one by one, from out of the blinding light, they come:

Spoiler

[close]

The one with the grid of pins embedded in his head steps forward, while the others chitter and twitch behind him, and speaks in a low, yet echoing voice:

"Greetings."

The husk of your voice from your skeleton-like frame manages:

"who? ...th-th-... f-f-fu-...?"

"We are the Cenobites. You solved the box. You summoned us. Now you must come with us."

"w-what... are you?"

"Outriders of the verge of human experience. Angels to some. Demons to others."

"come... w-where?"

"The ultimate realm of the senses. Pain and pleasure. Indivisible."

"august... k-kilmurray... tell me... all..."

"He also opened the box. And we took him. He experienced centuries of our work. But he escaped us."

"centuries? ... n-no, that's not... p-p-possi... escaped?"

"He found The Machine. It made him one of us. For centuries longer he worked beside us."

"b-but... he wasn't... g-gone... for centuries..."

"He learned of The Ritual. A way back to his human time. He used it to escape us. He fed on the unwary. He regrew his flesh. He kept his Cenobite powers to tap and use emotions. He grew rich."

"why didn't... y-y-... take him... back?"

"He knew the box too well. The configurations needed to banish us. We waited. He grew old and slow. Weak in his mind. Then we came for his soul."

"what... h-happens... now?..."

"Come. We have such sights to show you."

THE END

(If you really need to know what would have happened if you had tried to destroy the box then just watch the ending of the original movie HERE. It's more-or-less the same as what would have happened in this story apart from the setting.)

[close]

[Mandle]

I guess the next round is open for anyone with a good idea?

[Kitty Trouble]

I was going to think of an idea within the next couple days but if anyone else wants to take it sooner they can.

[Mandle]

Okay, in the meanwhile any feedback on the previous case is very welcome:

Did you enjoy this kind of structure and, if so, would you like to see more cases with similar structure in the future?
Did you enjoy any of the puzzles and, if so, which did you like most and why?
Did you find any of the puzzles too obscure and/or annoying and, if so, which ones and why?
Did you enjoy the story-arc?
Did you understand the ending or was it too obscure?
Did you feel the ending gave you a sense of closure?

Spoiler

Did you feel the words "obscure" and "closure" right next to each other confused your reading of them? I did!

[close]

Spoiler

Did you feel sorry for Sasha? I did!

[close]

Any other feedback also welcome! I'm interested in how this kind of "many-minds/one-character" gameplay works and could be developed maybe into an actual game, and also maybe how this case itself could be developed into a short game.