Nobody in the audience prefers any book in particular to be the next one, I guess. So it's time for the 7th book in the Ultimate Ending series, The Tower of Never There. The House on Hollow Hill was #2. It seems the Ultimate Ending entries aren't any more related than Final Fantasy games.
The cover says we have "12 Perils" and "32 Conclusions" to look forward to. This suggests there are substantially more endings than The House on Hollow Hill, without making the book more than about 30 pages longer. So each trek through the tower is likely to be short.
"For Chuck Palahniuk, a man who sure knows how to write an ultimate ending". Does this dedication mean I'll have to look out for Fight Club references?
"You are TYLER PAULSEN, rookie hiker, camper, and all-around nice guy. In fact, this happens to be your first camping trip ever. You might even be enjoying yourself. . .that is if you weren't alone, and so deep in the remote wilderness!"
Good to know that the tradition of ALL CAPS player character names continues in The Tower of Never There. Is TYLER PAULSEN related to MIKE THOMPSON, or do all parents know whether their children are going to find an ULTIMATE ENDING when they are born?
Why am I on a "rocky, uncomfortable ridge, staring down into the snowy clearing below?" It's because TYLER PAULSEN started receiving blank envelopes with no return address. A sheet of "vellum paper" saying COME ALONE with some coordinates was in each. At first, the envelopes probably gave TYLER PAULSEN some false hope he was going to Hogwarts.
According to the GPS on my phone, I'm at the right place. "Suddenly you feel something. A vibration at first, then a rumble. Your teeth chatter together as the ground begins trembling violently beneath you. The tremors go on for a long moment, driving you from nervous to uncomfortable to outright frightened".
After the earthquake, an "ugly" tower appears. "The structure has a definite shape and form to it, but in many places it also doesn't". A gray mist appears around the base, and I rushed so quickly that I left my food, water, and utility knife behind. But the mist now prevents me from going back. It parts in multiple directions in obedience to CYOA convention. CHOICE #1 is to either go left to a clearing, go right to a forest and a gnarled tree, or take my chances and try to break through the grey mist and get my equipment.
The tree piques my curiosity, so I'll try that first.
This may be a bad idea. "Oddly the snow ends, and a strong, earthy smell fills your nostrils. Like smoldering mulch, or even decay".
Inside some brush near the tree is a crystal figurine that looks like the kind of angel you'd find in art. (Not the more bizarre varieties you'd find in Ezekiel or Daniel. . .)
But a creature that looks like either a vulture or a bat attacks. "Erupting from the canopy before soaring toward you, it extends talons that end in sharp, curved claws. . ."
One of the last CHOICEs before the ULTIMATE ENDING in The House on Hollow Hill was a coin flip. . .which is irrelevant because the "wrong" window is inaccessible anyway. The Tower of Never There seems to use chance as a combat mechanic. CHOICE #2 gives me one result if I flip a coin and get heads twice, and another page if at least one is tails. This is the CANONICAL ENDING playthrough, so I'll be fair this time. For Alternate Ending posts, I can cheat my way past luck-based CHOICEs.
*Flips penny* First one is tails! So to page 146 it is.
Wait, this is a positive result? "You drop to the ground! There's the whistle of razor-sharp talons as the creature buzzes past one ear, then swoops high into the air and begins to fly away. You watch it until it becomes nothing more than a dot against the weird purple sky".
After walking for a while, I see a cave with moss covering its entrance. I hear a "BOOM!" coming from the path ahead. A decision must be made quickly, because "The mist is a lot closer than it was before. . .". And I have no idea what this mist will do to me if I touch it. Probably either Death or a Bad Non-Death Ending.
CHOICE #3 is to either check out the BOOM sound on the path, or go in the cave.
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
The Pirate Island protagonist should take advice from TYLER PAULSEN. The latter has a cell phone with a flashlight feature!
Fortunately the cave is clean, and I can go straight ahead without worrying about branching paths at first. But then I hear the sound of "Bats!" I drew their attention, and now they're flying around me. This time there's no place left in the main cavern to go. CHOICE #4 asks me to take the wide passage that goes down, or the narrow passage that goes up.
Spelunkers can't be claustrophobes, so I'll go on the straight and narrow. It's also harder for the bats to fit through, and going up may bring me closer to the tower. (You know some CYOA author is going to use a CHOICE like this as a Matthew 7:13 allegory. Maybe in Choose Your Own Narnia.)
My hunch is correct. "You choose the upward-sloping passage, hoping it will take you to the surface. Right away you feel like you made the right choice. The air tastes fresher, cleaner. You can even feel a breeze." A few of the bats hit me "with the very unpleasant crunch of tiny bat bones".
The tower has double doors, because what imposing structure would settle for single doors? Silhouettes of people make gestures telling me to enter.
Two girls with dark curly hair, olive skin, and a "waifish" appearance greet me. Their names are Una and Kara. Are they going to be my NPC companions? Una and Kara gave the place the name The Tower of Never There because it travels to different places and times every hour by "blinking". The entrance to the tower has a ceiling hundreds of feet above the floor, and "plants and trees and breathtaking gardens" are everywhere.
My mission, according to the two girls, is to climb up the tower to meet the "boss". I can't leave until "the tower is done with you". But the odds are good that many of the endings will involve me being marooned in the wrong time period.
Kara notices I forgot my backpack. But I can't do anything about that. I follow Kara and Una as they "dance along the path as if they'd lived here their whole lives". There's a fork in the road. On the left side, I see a wooden sign saying "-AN--R-". I can't represent that perfectly in these posts, but the letters "ANR" appear with some gaps in the beginning, middle, and possibly the end. Una says she doesn't remember "that being there".
I pick up a "G", a "D", and an "E", and Kara picks up another "E". CHOICE #5 is to believe the sign is meant to say DANGER, or "something else". That extra E makes me think the latter option is correct.
Fans of Adam Cadre's Lyttle Lytton Contest will remember a Choose Your Own Adventure joke from 2017. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, Lyttle Lytton is about imagining the worst sentences for a book possible. The 2017 winner was about an "Anagramancer" whose approach to dealing with a MANTICORE depended on, well, anagrams. CHOICE #5 of The Tower of Never There is essentially the same thing. (Though without some of the. . .kinkier spells the Anagramancer had.)
TYLER PAULSEN spells out the word ANGERED with the letters. "Kara's expression takes on one of sudden enlightenment". After she experiences satori, Kara runs down the left path and brings us a red iguana-like creature. Kara says it's "The Saspernink", and it roars loudly. It's happy though, and the sign writer perhaps didn't know how a Saspernink expresses emotions.
It does excrete a "powerful musk", however. It makes me stink when I touch it, but Kara just laughs. Now I'm railroaded onto the right path.
We take a stone path through a garden with "vibrant blue-green grass". The tower is bright in spite of not having any obvious source of light. The next fork in the path has a mossy boulder in front of it. Its message says:
BACK TO MOVE FORWARD, DOWN TO GO UP
THE MIRROR OF REASON, FILLS CHAOS'S CUP
I ask Kara and Una about this puzzle, because they live here. Una says "Not always", and "bites her lip and looks down". There is probably a tragic circumstance that made them enter the tower in the first place.
There's no clue other than the two lines on the boulder for CHOICE #6: left or right. I wonder if another path taken earlier in the story would have revealed the correct way to go?
The puzzle isn't written backwards, so holding a mirror up to it would be useless. It's not an atbash cipher (i.e. A=Z, B=Y, etc.) either.
I took the right path to enter here, but both branches of the fork seem to go forward. And the authors wouldn't tell me to flip back pages in direct contradiction of the CHOICE presented, right? I might as well take chances with the right path because it's a 50-50 chance anyway.
Right takes me to a "large pool of cool, clear water". TYLER PAULSEN says "This place is unbelievable. I can't believe you have an indoor pond". Kara pulls a prank on my character by telling him there's an ocean inside the tower too. Una advises skirting the pond, but Kara says the water is "only knee-deep" and "You want to save time, right?"
I don't trust Kara. Her idea sounds like a trap.
It starts to rain inside the tower, which confuses TYLER PAULSEN. Isn't it possible for extremely large buildings to have their own weather? This rain has a "strange, coppery smell". Kara taps me on the shoulder to point out some giant white spiderwebs among the trees. There's a "beautiful silver key" in one of them. CHOICE #8 is to either get the key from the spiderweb, or follow Una's advice to stay away.
Somehow, I think there will be a door locking me out of the ULTIMATE ENDING if I don't have the silver key. Getting it seems to be the correct option! No spiders appear to punish me for swiping the silver key. The key has a decorative octopus on the top. Then I go to page 148 anyway, the same as if I had tried to avoid the spiders.
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
The next section of the tower has a "circular seating area, complete with tiled mosaic benches and a central marble fountain. There, a massive staircase winds itself in a spiral around the tower's inner wall". Una tells me to go up, but there's no guardrail, and the staircase is narrow. "Wow. You should be careful', Kara says. And if she's advising caution, now you know you're really in trouble!"
Another path at the start of the staircase goes down into "the darkness beneath the tower". Neither Kara nor Una particularly want to go with me, regardless of which path I take in CHOICE #9. But I remember the boulder from before:
BACK TO MOVE FORWARD, DOWN TO GO UP
THE MIRROR OF REASON, FILLS CHAOS'S CUP
Perhaps the clue was for CHOICE #9 instead of CHOICE #6?
I may be right. TYLER PAULSEN starts walking backwards into the basement. "When you come to, you're standing on a tiny ramp more than a hundred feet in the air!"
Kara and Una tell me I'll have to go solo from here on out. They go off the edge of the ramp, but float rather than fall. A man named Finnegan ("Finny") with a firm handshake approaches me and asks if I was followed. I ask who's chasing Finnegan, and he only answers "Him". When I ask why, he says "Why does he do anything? He's crazy! Or maybe he's just a genius. Or even a crazy genius. Those two things usually go hand in hand, you know".
What concerns me about Finnegan is that his eyes "shift from side to side". Anyone who's watched a cartoon knows that's dangerous. Finny says it's 1:30, and I'm forced to follow him on page 99.
Finnegan takes me to a hallway with at least 12 doors on each side. He bangs on one of them shouting "I SAID BE QUIET IN THERE!" When I ask him which door, he says "Oh, you don't want any of these doors". He then asks CHOICE #10 "stairs or elevator".
(CHOICE #10 on a CANONICAL ENDING playthrough? This is already twice as much as in a You Say Which Way. . .)
Any Mass Effect player or horror movie fan knows elevators are bad news, so I'll take the stairs.
Finny guides me through twisting corridors until we reach "an enormous concave depression in the hallway. It's almost like someone came along with a giant ice-cream dipper and just scooped out a huge, rounded piece of the wall". He says we missed the stairs, and they'll be back tomorrow. I tell him I don't have that much time.
He tells me to pick a door, although he said not to earlier. "Did I?' Finnegan rubs a hand over the stubble of his chin. 'That's odd. Some of the doors are actually pretty cool". Is this guy going to be Una and Kara's "boss" in the end?
It's time for the old Choose Your Own Adventure standby Let's Make a Deal! Door #1 is oak, Door #2 is pine, and Door #3 is "made of a soft white material you've never seen before". No clues are given, just like Madame Clotilde's mansion in La Isla de los Dodos. But Door #3 is the odd one out.
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
The strange white door is for an "elaborate bedroom. . .The ceiling is twice normal height, and the over-sized furniture is carved into beautiful nature-inspired designs".
According to Finnegan, it's Kavalgyth's room. Finny rummages through Kavalgyth's stuff to look for something that "I'll know it when I see it". A minotaur crashes through a door just as Finnegan pulls out a dragon figurine. "Kavalgyth, stop being such a baby! A bet's a bet! You and I both know you lost fair and squ-".
Kavalgyth is about to charge us. CHOICE #12 is how to deal with that. Two of the options are to stand my ground or reason with Kavalgyth. But the final option must have been included to appease the Peanut Gallery. "Of course, you can always take a page out of Sir Robin's book. To run away, flip to page 89".
RFS-81, this one's for you. You posted that clip of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail wizard after the Dragons Realm playthrough.
"You turn, just in time to see the creature spring at your friend with two powerful legs. It goes sailing through the air, straight at Finnegan. . .and then he slams the door in his face! The wooden exit door is totally obliterated. Hanging through, half in and half out of the room, is the unconscious, crumpled-up form of Kavalgyth the minotaur".
We run away to safety, and Finnegan thrusts the dragon figurine on me because it's "bad luck". It'll probably be used with the angel figurine and the silver key in some later puzzle.
Finnegan and I move to a corridor with a chasm and a rock bridge. The narration wonders why a tower would have a chasm too. The bridge is sturdy, but Finnegan wants to jump. "Finnegan looks thoughtful, then suddenly excited. He grabs your arm and looks down. 'Should we?"
"If you grin deviously back at Finny and jump, roll two dice! (Or just pick a random number from 2 to 12)."
If I roll 3, 4, 9, or 11 I go to page 77. Any other number sends me to page 48.
"If you think jumping into the swirling darkness of a bottomless chasm is absolutely crazy, you haven't been hanging out with Finnegan long enough. Continue across the bridge and turn to page 66". All this is CHOICE #13.
Maybe this is "THE MIRROR OF REASON FILLS CHAOS'S CUP". Jumping into a pit is the most unreasonable action I could take. So perhaps it's true.
I got a 2 on Random.org, so off to page 48.
"Your body slams through something soft and spongy and very, very weird. As your senses return you find yourself covered in chunky goo. You're lying flat on your back, staring up into the ribbed underbelly of a giant mushroom cap!"
Finnegan says "Man, that was a lot further than I thought it was!" One of the giant mushrooms has "a Tyler-sized hole". This is Kavalgyth the minotaur's garden.
Finny hands me a glass of cold water out of nowhere, and says farewell to me because he won't climb the iron ladder with me. It's still 1:30 according to his watch, though even he acknowledges it may not work.
The ladder rises to a "square stone chamber" with a "humanoid figure" made out of thousands of lights. These lights are "silver and white". It points to a red orb and a gold orb and to an "ornate-looking, twisted metal stand". CHOICE #14 is which orb to put on the stand.
I'll pick red because the. . .iguana was red? Who knows?
The humanoid light being is named YON, and says "I know what it is that you seek. Come. There is little time." "I am obligated to help', YON replies. 'Nothing less, nothing more." I hear "an obvious bitterness" in my mind.
YON turns violet and says he was exiled by his people.
I see what looks like a museum, with sculptures, paintings, and tapestries. A block of stone is falling above us, and YON tells me "Move, quickly! Starboar-I mean, to your side!" CHOICE #15 is to dive left or right. Starboard is right.
"There's no time to think! You dive to the right. . .just as a half-ton block of stone whizzes past your leg! It shatters into a thousand pieces right where you were standing, obliterating the tiled floor and scattering chunks of jagged rocks in all directions". YON said "starboard" because he was "a great navigator of the stars" and has trouble giving directions in English.
When I try to hug YON, I fly backwards. Touching him gives electric shocks. "I am not. . .like you".
I rest for a while while YON gives us a bit of backstory. He was sent to the tower as punishment for a crime he didn't commit. He mind melds with me and shows me his memories, which aren't described in much detail in the narration.
Grabbing the octopus key from the spider web in CHOICE #8 is about to pay off. There's a keyhole plate with "two ocean waves crashing together". I'm supposed to add the letters from the animal on the key's head to get the appropriate page number (109), or take the iron gate for losers in CHOICE #16.
The octopus door opens into a circular garden with a snow globe on top of a pedestal. I stuff it in my pocket. YON refuses to answer my questions about this room. "There was no one to help me when I was first banished here. Like you, I had questions without answers. No one came to my aid". TYLER PAULSEN replies "Yeah, well to pay it forward".
Then I go through the iron gate anyway. This was just to get another required item.
The iron gate reveals a dark room with low ceilings and a lit brazier. Purple smoke fills the air. "The vision chamber', YON says dismissively. 'If there were only time, it might actually be of help to you".
I feel a taste like "sugar with lemons" in my mouth. Time to roll 1 d6 for CHOICE #17! There are different results for 1/2, 3, 4/5, and 6. But that will have to wait until tomorrow evening.
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
The DM has asked me to make a 1d6 saving throw for purple gas damage in CHOICE #17. Random.org gave me a 1. Turn to page 94 to find out. . .
"The smoke is starting to get to you. All of a sudden you're exhausted, and the next thing you know you're sitting on the floor. I'll just rest for a moment, you think to yourself. Get my strength back. . .When you look up again you're in a field. Everything is mud and muck. Steam rises from the warm ground as men swarm all around you. They are armed, armored. But none of them pay you any attention".
The next vision has two armies fighting on a hill over a river. A horn blows, and then one army retreats. The vision ends.
And I go to page 163, the same as what would have happened if I rolled a 4 or 5. (2 generates the same page as 1.)
CHOICE #18 is another fork in the road decision after YON snaps me out of the purple gas illusion. He refuses to tell me anything more about this room. As for my decision, "You must choose this path. I cannot".
My attempts at metagaming have no results. No page numbers in any of the previous CHOICEs match the options presented here. The vision seems useless at first glance too, because the troops don't retreat in any particular direction. But the instructions for the LEFT option say "Flip back to page 28". Is flipping back meant to represent a retreat?
The next room is an "old, dilapidated chamber". Floral wallpaper is peeling from the plaster walls. Four stone blocks have a symbol one them. One is a seashell, one is a shield with a bird decoration, one is a fountain, and one is two swords crossing. The way I'm supposed to solve this puzzle is to look at the floral wallpaper.
It's a Stereogram, where you're supposed to relax your eyes and a hidden image will appear once they're out of focus.
["Some people can see Stereograms easily. Others can't see them at all. Hopefully you're not one of the latter!"]
After several attempts, I can't see the image I'm supposed to. I'm docking The Tower of Never There a star on Goodreads just for CHOICE #19. 100 points from Ravenclaw. Don't think you're so clever now, do you authors?
I'll use Random.org again to give me a 1d4 roll to pick which button to press. I got a 1, so it'll be the seashell.
Nothing happens except for a "hollow click from somewhere behind the wall". Then I'm given CHOICE #19 again minus the seashell. Next Random.org roll for 1d3 is. . .another 1. This happens to be correct. Or is it? CHOICE #20 is another LEFT or RIGHT decision. My only hint is that going LEFT takes me to 113, the same page that would have happened if I went RIGHT in CHOICE #18. RIGHT in CHOICE #20 is a new page.
The next room in the tower has a glass floor over a "thousand-foot drop". YON glides across the room, while I "step as gingerly as possible".
CHOICE #21 is a riddle:
WE ARE THE SAME BUT NOT AT ALL
A REFLECTION OF NOT ME BUT YOU
MIRRORS OF EACH OTHER'S LIVES
GIVE OR TAKE A MINUTE OR TWO
If I know the answer, I should turn to the appropriate page by adding up the letters of the answer. If not, I can go through the "fancy arch" of shame and go to 20.
Does this riddle have anything to do with THE MIRROR OF REASON FILLS CHAOS'S CUP? Was I supposed to find some clue earlier that I missed by flunking a die roll or something? The answer is a plural because it's WHAT ARE WE? instead of WHAT AM I?
Let's test MIRRORS by going to page 110. That doesn't work, and instead leads to a page with my character looking at a "card with an eye on it" while Finny tells him to run. So let's go through the fancy arch of despair because I failed to solve the riddle. (Cue the audience throwing rotten fruit at me because I failed to recognize an obvious clue.)
"You pass beneath the archway and into, a tall, domed chamber. The room is enormous. Moonlight spills in from tall, frosted windows that reach skyward on all sides." I'm at the top of the tower. YON stares at me and nods. We see 8 carved pillars that combine to create a pointed ceiling. The artwork would be impressive if I were close enough to see it.
YON points to 4 pedestals of ebony, ivory, soapstone, and "pure, glimmering crystal". YON tells me "You must choose. One choice. One trial. One chance to make things right again." So I'm presented with CHOICE #22 based on which figurines I've collected. I didn't get the ivory ballerina or the ebony soldier. That means my trial will be based on either the soapstone dragon from the minotaur room, or the crystal angel from the gnarled tree. I'll pick the latter because crystal is probably better than soapstone in the ending hierarchy. (There's also an option for bad or unlucky players who failed to get any figurine.)
The angel that appears is more likely a fallen angel. "The angel looks down at you. She's strikingly beautiful. Then she smiles. . .and her grin twists grotesquely around a mouthful of broken teeth!" One paragraph later, and she dives at me.
CHOICE #23 is another decision about which item to use on the angel. These are the Lotus Blossom, the Jeweled Pin, the Bone Horn, and the Snow Globe. For unfortunate players, there's a "no item" option too. The only one I have is the Snow Globe because I got that from the octopus key room.
"A cold wind swirls through the chamber, spinning out in tornado-like fashion. The weather exactly mimics the small blizzard going on within the snow globe. Glimmering crystals begin to appear, clinging to every surface of the room. The walls, the dome. . .icicles form, and everything soon sparkles with frost. Up above, the angel shrieks! Snow and ice have coated its wings, dragging it downward and toward the floor".
The angel bows and fades. My actions were successful enough to impress YON before he leaves too. Now it's off to page 100.
I reach a glass room with a cracked grapefruit-sized diamond in the middle whose reflected light creates star maps. The final question for CHOICE #24 is WHO IS THE MASTER OF THE TOWER? It would have been funnier if it were WHO IS THE SHERIFF OF 64 SQUARES? Once again, I need to add up the letters of the correct answer.
I've met several NPCs along the way. I'll solve this if only through brute force. Finnegan knows more than he should about this place. He's 70, a viable page number. And a troll page too.
HAHAHAHA! FINNEGAN? SURELY YOU MUST BE JOKING! FINNEGAN IS BARELY THE MASTER OF TYING HIS OWN SHOES! EVEN SO, I FIND YOUR ANSWER AMUSING.
I get another guess. YON is 54.
YON HAS BEEN HERE LONGER THAN ALL. HE HAS LIVED MANY LIFETIMES. HE HAS GARNERED GREAT POWER. BUT NO. YON IS NOT THE MASTER.
Is this going to be some kind of trick question where the answer is the player character? TYLER PAULSEN is 168. But that's not an answer to the puzzle at all. 80 is just TYLER's first name. That appears to be the correct response.
"Did you hear me?' you shout defiantly. 'I am the master of the tower!"
A mirror is glowing, with a golden light coming out of it. I see myself in there, but the reflection doesn't imitate me when I swallow the lump in my mouth. He's holding a flawless version of the cracked diamond in the chamber.
CHOICE #25 is to either touch the mirror or try to smash it. Touching mirrors was a bad idea in Creepy House, because my CANONICAL ENDING in that one was to be trapped inside for eternity as my evil reflection stole my identity.
But this isn't a Blair Polly or DM Potter book. Maybe the reflection is offering me the diamond to use as a replacement? THE MIRROR OF REASON FILLS CHAOS'S CUP, after all.
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
My hand goes through the mirror, and the other TYLER says he's "not exactly" me. He replaces the broken diamond with the perfect one as I had hoped. Every mirror that the diamond shines on creates a new TYLER. They "chuckle" at me, and one says "We owe him an explanation, and it's going to be hard to give it if you're all talking at once".
I get my canteen back. The one the mist kept me from retrieving at the beginning. The tower is supposed to teleport, but not so frequently or randomly, and the flawed diamond is to blame for its current behavior. The letters I kept receiving were from alternate TYLERs, as indicated by my handwriting.
The Tower of Never There doesn't go forward and back through time, but instead seems to travel to parallel universes and other planets, such as YON's homeworld. The tower's teleportation can now be controlled or anchored, so we'll use it to send all the prisoners home.
"A cheer goes up in the room-a whole bunch of yous, all roaring together in delight. It's an eerie but satisfying chorus".
"So everyone goes home?' you ask. 'Yup!' the other Tyler says. 'Una and Kara, YON and Kavalgyth. . .Finnegan too, if we can somehow drag him out of here. But yes. Everyone.' You look back at him skeptically. 'Including me?' The other Tylers laugh. 'Especially you', one of them says.
As you watch, the Tyler with the broken diamond uses it to tap the nearest mirror. He does it three times in rapid succession, and the glass begins to glow. 'There's good news and there's better news', he tells you. You raise an eyebrow. 'Okay. Give me the good news.' 'The good news is you're going home first.' The surface of the mirror shimmers. It's now a bright, fuzzy orange. It looks exactly like every portal you've ever seen, in any sci-fi movie ever made.
'And the better news?' 'The better news is you don't have to walk.' He smiles and gestures to the portal with a grand bow. You step forward. Under normal circumstances you'd be hesitant to trust every molecule in your body to a glowing orange portal opened with a broken diamond. But these are far from normal circumstances.
'Wait!' one of the other Tylers calls from the back row. He pushes his way forward. 'You forgot to tell him about the best news of all!' The mirror-twin who opened the portal looks confused. 'And what's that?' Tyler from the back row reaches down and plucks the flawed diamond from his twin-brother's palm. Turning to you, he places it in your hand. 'He's rich'.
This time there are gasps from all around. The Tyler who opened the portal looks at you and shrugs. 'Sure, why not? I supposed he is!' Your heart just about stops. The jewel you're holding is tremendous. Even flawed, you know you'll never want for anything. Ever. Again.
'Goodbye brother!' back row Tyler calls out. You decide on the spot he's the best Tyler ever. 'Oh, and hey. . .' 'What?' He winks. 'Don't do anything I wouldn't do!'
The journey through the portal is instantaneous. One second you're waving goodbye to a bunch of your mirror-selves, the next second you're standing in your campsite staring down at your feet. Your fire is almost out. It's colder than ever. But the way the moonlight glints off your giant diamond? Well, that tends to warm you up a bit. Suddenly the trees shake. The ground rumbles. There's a brief flash of light, and when you look back over your shoulder the tower is gone.
'Goodbye Tylers', you say to the wind. Then, stretching your aching legs, you go about the task of finding more firewood."
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE REACHED THE ULTIMATE ENDING!
In recognition for taking up the gauntlet, let it be known to fellow adventurers that you are hereby granted the title of: Sultan of the Shimmering Spire!"
My ULTIMATE ENDING award sounds like the title of a Dragon Quest game, particularly DQ IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies. Getting this as my first ending for The Tower of Never There will be one of the greatest achievements in this thread. The Tower of Never There feels more like a series of puzzles and dice rolls than The House on Hollow Hill, which behaves closer to a conventional CYOA. Will the other Ultimate Ending installments be more like the former or the latter?
I'll upload the certificate once I input the code on the Ultimate Ending website.
Results So Far
0 Good Endings
0 Deaths
0 Bad Non-Death Endings
0 Neutral Endings
0 Inconclusive Endings
1 ULTIMATE ENDING
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
Hey, congratulations! The CANONICAL ENDING and ULTIMATE ENDING are one and the same!
(July 28th, 2019, 18:43)Herman Gigglethorpe Wrote: (Cue the audience throwing rotten fruit at me because I failed to recognize an obvious clue.)
I don't think you missed a clue; I think it's just a straight riddle. I don't like the composition, but my best guess on reading it through a couple times was TWINS, which then seemed to be borne out by the ULTIMATE ENDING. It was really the last line of the riddle that made me think of twins - which is a little amusing because actually (as I understand it) twins are rarely born that close together except in fiction and C-Sections. Of course, the authors can take poetic license here, so long as we're very charitable with the term "poetic."
Point is, if you're wondering about the path where you guess the riddle correctly, you might try page 85. Presumably it converges with the path you took to the Ultimate Ending at the room where you name the master of the tower.
(July 29th, 2019, 01:01)RefSteel Wrote: Hey, congratulations! The CANONICAL ENDING and ULTIMATE ENDING are one and the same!
I don't think you missed a clue; I think it's just a straight riddle. I don't like the composition, but my best guess on reading it through a couple times was TWINS, which then seemed to be borne out by the ULTIMATE ENDING. It was really the last line of the riddle that made me think of twins - which is a little amusing because actually (as I understand it) twins are rarely born that close together except in fiction and C-Sections. Of course, the authors can take poetic license here, so long as we're very charitable with the term "poetic."
Point is, if you're wondering about the path where you guess the riddle correctly, you might try page 85. Presumably it converges with the path you took to the Ultimate Ending at the room where you name the master of the tower.
The answer is indeed TWINS! Who is the sadder case: Herman Gigglethorpe, for writing exhaustively detailed playthroughs of Choose Your Own Adventure books, or RefSteel, for solving a riddle by reading said posts instead of the book?
Unfortunately, there aren't any branching paths or items you get for saying TWINS. Just a single page before you're redirected to CHOICE #22 where you pick your figurine trial.
"Your voice echoes loudly in the cold stone chamber. For a moment nothing happens. Then, just as you're wondering if you spoke the wrong answer, a high-pitched twinkling sound reaches your ears. The glass directly beneath you shimmers. It goes from partially frosted over to totally crystal clear. Frightened, you leap back. there's a man on the other side! He looks like you. In every aspect, every way, the man is a mirror image of yourself. He stands on the other side of the floor, looking up at you just as you look down at him. Then he smiles. . .and fades away".
The only benefit you get is a vague clue that you shouldn't smash the mirror at the end of the book. But then the final CHOICE implies you should touch the mirror anyway.
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
Ultimate Ending: The Tower of Never There Alternate Endings Part 1
My score for this book happens to be the ULTIMATE ENDING, so everything from here on out might as well be a blooper reel. Let's smash the mirror in CHOICE #25 and destroy the space-time continuum!
"The unblemished diamond is on the other side of the mirror. You need to get to it. . .There's a block of broken stone at your feet, and an idea comes to mind. You don't over-think it. With one arm you scoop up the brick, rear back, and smash the mirror! The Tyler on the other side of the glass doesn't even flinch. For a brief moment he looks overwhelmingly sad, and then his image is lost in a maelstrom of glittering, shimmering glass.
Your vision blurs as jagged shards rain down all around you. Then, everything goes wonky. The floor twists beneath you, and seems to dissolve. The walls of the tower waver as if made out of crepe paper. You look up and the stars are gone-even the skylight too! Somehow you're staring up into a broad expanse of violet sky that stretches from horizon to horizon. A chill in the air tells you a steady breeze just picked up.
You look down. . .You're back at your campsite! It's not even dark yet, it's just before dusk. You're sitting on a rock, staring down from a ridge. From the heat on your back you can tell that your fire is still roaring. Your gaze is fixed on the clearing below. Like you're looking for something. . .What was it? Or maybe waiting on something. Waiting on what?
Unconsciously you bring your hand up to your mouth. You're holding a half-eaten granola bar. You take another bite. Man, you're hungry! Thirsty too. Not to mention a little tired. The clearing. What's the deal with-
Suddenly you feel something. A rumble at first, then a steady vibration. The ground is trembling! Maybe it's an earthquake. . .Well, it certainly looks like you have an adventure ahead of you! Good luck with that. For this time around however, we're calling it THE END".
This may be the supreme example of a Neutral Ending. I rank a conclusion as a Neutral Ending if you might as well have not gone on the adventure at all, or receive an insultingly small reward for your efforts. Smashing the mirror means I'm sent back to the beginning of the story in a time loop or something.
Results So Far
0 Good Endings
0 Deaths
0 Bad Non-Death Endings
1 Neutral Endings
0 Inconclusive Endings
1 ULTIMATE ENDING
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
Ultimate Ending: The Tower of Never There Alternate Endings Part 2
Good thing I didn't get 2 heads in CHOICE #2 while facing the flying monster, because this ending would have followed.
"The taloned bat-thing comes on too fast! It dives like a bird of prey, leaving you with no time to move! Reacting instinctively, you throw up your arms to protect your face. Razor-sharp claws pierce the skin of your forearm, creating a long red cut from wrist to elbow. You grab your injured arm and whirl, bracing for the next attack. But it never comes. The creature climbs high into the strange sky, makes three lazy circles, and then disappears.
Turning your attention back to the wound, it's nothing but bad news. Unfortunately the cut is both long and deep. You wrap it as best you can by stripping off your socks, even using one of them as a makeshift tourniquet. But you definitely can't continue. Not in this state.
As you turn your back to the tower, you can't help but wonder about all the discoveries you'll never get to make. Maybe one day you can come back again. Perhaps the tower will even be there for you. . .As of right now though, this is THE END".
A 1/4 probability of losing on CHOICE #2 is sadistic game design. This is a Bad Non-Death Ending because the arm injury means TYLER PAULSEN is worse off than before. And medical treatment is likely far from the campsite.
Results So Far
0 Good Endings
0 Deaths
1 Bad Non-Death Endings
1 Neutral Endings
0 Inconclusive Endings
1 ULTIMATE ENDING
"I wonder what that even looks like, a robot body with six or seven CatClaw daggers sticking out of it and nothing else, and zooming around at crazy agility speed."
