34 thoughts on “Brochure, ‘Experience Kennet’

  1. As I touched on in the Ward retrospective, I’m wanting to leave people less up in the air when it comes to some stuff, so to provide some grounding in the setting, there should be side content or snippets every Wednesday. Stuff like this that people can go back to or use as touchstones. They’ll be marked for when in the story one should read them. This one is a freebie to go with arc 0.

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  2. Why do I get the feeling that, in the grand tradition of the Affair at Styles, the layout of that map will be on the test, as it were?

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    • Louise is unlikely to be the L, considering the nearest feature of the town to her home seems to be the Blue Gas, nearest the upper right corner of the map. If she’d resided where L’s point of origin looks to be marked on the map, the blood hound she was following would have had a short journey to safety by going to St. Augustine’s Catholic Church. Judging by the route connecting the foot path from the Blue Gas to the Kennet Arena, I suspect that that very church may have been the blood hound’s destination, for that very reason.

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  3. This us really, really cool!
    Very well made and will help figuring out the phsyical space in the scenes a lot! Looking forward to more side stuff like this in other arcs.

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  4. Oh no. The notes inside the brochure give me a very strong feeling of kids about to get into a whole world of trouble. They are bringing literal conical hats into their ritual.

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  5. Interesting, I wonder what that shopping list is for. Seems like ingredients for a ritual, but they’re also a bit mundane for the first list. Maybe it’s their meaning that’s more important, or that these ingredients are code for something…

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  6. I’m not sure how to do spoiler tags on WordPress, so since I have stuff to say involving things we learned in Pact I’ve turned to rot13.

    Gurfr ner nyy vzcyrzragf arrqrq sbe gur cenpgvgvbare njnxravat evghny. Shegure, gurer frrz gb or guerr crbcyr ybbxvat gb haqretb vg.

    Back to current serial speculation, I think L, V, and A are yet to be introduced characters, Ganurath above convinced me L probably isn’t Louise. If what I suspect the list implies is true, there’s a chance that Louise’s chapter was setting up the plot and these three might be the characters the story will actually be following.

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    • Rot13 should be the mandatory spoiler-scrambling for any eldritch discussion.

      V guvax gur ung zrnaf Y, I naq N ner nyy ‘va gur xabj’ (jvgpu ung).
      Gur frpbaq yvar frrzf gb or snzvyvnef, naq gurl nyy unir bar nf jryy.
      Sebz gur nyvtazrag, ‘I’ jnf fhccbfrq gb tngure gur vaterqvragf, ohg tnir fbzr gb gur bguref… be znlor qryrtngrq gb gurz. Gubfr ner bssrevatf ba gur bhgre evat bs gur njnxravat evghny. Gur obggbz yvfg unf fghss sbe gur frpbaq evat, jvgu fbzr inevngvba sebz jung gur gubeoheaf qvq.

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      • Lbh pna’g unir n snzvyvne vs lbh’er hanjnxrarq, gung erdhverf n evghny, naq lbh pna’g qb zntvp hayrff lbh njnxra… Gubhtu vg pbhyq or “neenatrq zneevntr” fglyr snzvyvnef vs gubfr guerr pbzr sebz jryy-rfgnoyvfurq snzvyvrf, yvxr ubj gur Qhpunzcf qvq vg.

        Tvira gur jbys znfx va gur onaare vzntr V guvax gur navzny urnqf va gur abgr ner npghnyyl znfxf. Gurer’f nyfb n jvgpu ung va gur onaare vzntr, fb vg zvtug or gung gurl’er yvgrenyyl oevatvat jvgpu ungf.

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      • V’z univat gebhoyr vzntvavat n fpranevb jurer guerr crbcyr jub unira’g Njnxrarq lrg jbhyq nyernql unir snzvyvnef.

        If it wasn’t obvious, I’ll be the third to endorse the use of ROT-13 for spoilers.

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        • Znlor fb fbzrbar ryfr pna qb gur evghny ?
          Ohg lrnu, gubfr ner cebonoyl znfxf.

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      • Gur frpbaq evat bs gur njnxravat evghny pnyyf sbe n qnttre, na ubhetynff, n qernzpngpure, n fxhyy, n pbva, n ebfr, naq fbzrguvat crefbany. V pna frr yvggyr znexvatf sbe nyy bs gubfr guvatf ng gur obggbz bs gur abgr rkprcg sbe gur ebfr. Gurer’f pyrneyl FBZR qenja flzoby orgjrra gur qnttre naq gur ubhetynff, ohg vg qbrfa’g ybbx yvxr n ebfr gb zr.

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        • Vg’f guernq. Gur CnpgQvpr qbpf unir guernq orvat bar bs gur zvqqyr pvepyr pbzcbaragf vafgrnq bs n qernzpngpure, gur ynggre orvat n zber fcrpvsvp rknzcyr bs gur sbezre. V crefbanyyl vagrecerg vg nf Ebfr Fravbe tvivat ure tenaqpuvyqera na vzcyvpvg jneavat nobhg gur cbgragvny sbe pbaarpgvbaf gb ragenc gurz.

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    • I feel like drawing attention to the scribbled note about “NOT stolen”. It would imply that not stealing needs to be stressed to the intended recipients of the list.

      Also, rot13 is tradition in spoilery WoolBonk comments, I was going to start doing that but am not sure how to address the comment someone put about text-to-speech limitations.

      The animal heads drawn look to me like a dog, a cat, and something with antlers.

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  7. Ugh, I forgot how much I hated ROT13’d spoilers with how rare they were in the Ward comments. As copy and paste is a bitch when you can’t see what’s being highlighted, anyone know of a Firefox extension that’ll either:

    auto detect ROT13 and decode it.
    Rot13 the active tab with a keyboard shortcut.
    RoT13 the active page through a context menu option.

    Also, extensions that add a ROT13 button to the toolbars are useless as I can’t access the toolbar… and non-Firefox solutions are not appreciated as I have no means of running a different browser(the script I use to launch Firefox plus a graphical screen reader in a stripped down x-session is hard coded to use Firefox and I don’t understand the script enough to swap in Chronium.

    Also, while the map probably won’t translate to text well, any chance of getting a transcript of anything that might actually be useful? Because my screen reader is just seeing a completely blank post, not even an image with a useless alt-text.

    Also, anyone know where I can read the retrospective Wildbo mentions in the top comment?

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    • Ward Off – a retrospective on a sequel

      Impressionistic Transcript:

      2020: EXPERIENCE KENNET

      Stylized imamge of snowboarding and iceskating

      KENNET logo has a mountain

      Next page: A map of a small coastal town with a river going through it, a valley between two mountains. It’s in a very corporate style.

      From top to bottom, presumably north-to-south:

      Axxel Gas station, in town
      Blue Gas station, on mountain
      Ski Bowdler, has a little logo of a guy skiing, at base of mountain
      Arena, as a little logo of hockey, in town
      St Augustine’s Roman Catholic, icon is a church, in town
      L’s house, drawn in
      Greensey Hills, skiing logo, at base of the other mountain
      A’s house, drawn in
      V’s house, drawn in
      Kennet Pentecostal, church logo
      unnamed green space with a star drawn on it. Arrows lead from L, V, and A’s houses to the star. It’s labelled “5:30!”

      Next Page: Key to various businesses and locations that weren’t important enough to be named on the map. Includes a public school, private school named Saint Victor’s, hospital, museum, and “Ontario Liquor & Cannabis”

      Next Page: Some kind of guide to skiing venues, obscured by a note. 5:30! is circled at the top. L, V & A have a shopping list with checkboxes, much of which is in pictograms, and the columns are somewhat muddled but appear to be used to attribute different items to different people – if so, V is getting most of the stuff. The list runs, roughly:

      Witch hats for all three. Unclear if this is literal or symbolic.
      Animal masks/heads for all three; wolf, cat and deer. Again, could be symbols
      Meat, Bread, Milk, Molasses, Honey (by A?), Wine (by L?), Veg Ash. Note at the side: “Bought or Given, NOT Stolen”
      Knife
      Skull
      Thread.
      Hourglass
      Coin
      “Something OURS” from all three.
      Impressionistic Transcript:

      2020: EXPERIENCE KENNET

      Stylized imamge of snowboarding and iceskating

      KENNET logo has a mountain

      Next page: A map of a small coastal town with a river going through it, a valley between two mountains. It’s in a very corporate style.

      From top to bottom, presumably north-to-south:

      Axxel Gas station, in town
      Blue Gas station, on mountain
      Ski Bowdler, has a little logo of a guy skiing, at base of mountain
      Arena, as a little logo of hockey, in town
      St Augustine’s Roman Catholic, icon is a church, in town
      L’s house, drawn in
      Greensey Hills, skiing logo, at base of the other mountain
      A’s house, drawn in
      V’s house, drawn in
      Kennet Pentecostal, church logo
      unnamed green space with a star drawn on it. Arrows lead from L, V, and A’s houses to the star. It’s labelled “5:30!”

      Next Page: Key to various businesses and locations that weren’t important enough to be named on the map. Includes a public school, private school named Saint Victor’s, hospital, museum, and “Ontario Liquor & Cannabis”

      Next Page: Some kind of guide to skiing venues, obscured by a note. 5:30! is circled at the top. L, V & A have a shopping list with checkboxes, much of which is in pictograms, and the columns are somewhat muddled but appear to be used to attribute different items to different people – if so, V is getting most of the stuff. The list runs, roughly:

      Witch hats for all three. Unclear if this is literal or symbolic.
      Animal masks/heads for all three; wolf, cat and deer. Again, could be symbols
      Meat, Bread, Milk, Molasses, Honey (by A?), Wine (by L?), Veg Ash. Note at the side: “Bought or Given, NOT Stolen”
      Knife
      Skull
      Thread.
      Hourglass
      Coin
      “Something OURS” from all three.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Thanks for the transcript.

        I’ll manage with reading the ROT13 stuff(I do have a generalized rot converter bookmarked) I was just hoping there was an easier method than literally blindly highlighting the rot13 text and copy and pasting. Not the worse thing I’ve had to deal with as a member of the Wildbo fandom(I once read a Worm/Castlevania crossover that featured a version of Death who sometimes took on his Discworld incarnation and the author used some fancy font from the regions of Unicode that are too alien for my screen reader to make comprehensible but not so out there that it just gives up… ended up only hearing Jack’s side of the conversation when Qrngu pnzr sbe gur Fynhtugreubhfr 9. And yeah, copy and past within the confines of a text box is a lot easier(something about comments on pretty much any website with comments screws with my screen reader reading text that was just highlighted or unhighlighted at times.

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    • My apologies. I don’t know of any autodetection, and all my rot13 tools rely on selecting the text… Technically you could select-all and listen to the whole comment section, but that would be a pretty horrible experience still.

      Maybe something with details+summary tags…
      Spoiler test
      This text should be hidden.

      Humans should have to click, hope your reader handles it ok.

      Regarding the retrospective, it’s @ https://wildbow.wordpress.com/2020/05/03/ward-off-a-retrospective-on-a-sequel/

      Picture transcript: there are 4 pages of a recent (2020) tourism leaflet.
      On the first page are a stylish ‘Experience Kennet’ title, silhouettes of an alpine skiier and an ice skater, and the town logo (a mountain on top of its name).

      The second page shows the town map. A river splits it in two, crossed by two bridges. It shows 18 locations, 11 of them as lettered shortcuts. The other spots are 2 gas stations, 2 churches (catholic and pentecostal), 2 ski slopes and a hockey rink.
      Three tags (A, V and L) were added manually, with arrows leading from these to a pentagram mark at the southwestern end of the city with a “5:30!” note next to it.

      On the third page is the legend for the lettered shortcuts: restaurants, shops, motels, entertainment, schools and a hospital. Dunno if you need exact locations, but overall it’s not a big town.

      The last page features a post-it note hiding most of its welcoming spiel (the town is close to Lake Superior in western Ontario). At the top-right there’s another “5:30!”. Under that, a handwritten checklist of sorts, with L, V and A at the top and boxes next to various items.
      In a section named ‘Prep’:
      – something like a witch hat,
      – 3 animal-like faces.
      All 6 boxes are black.
      Next a list ‘Bought or given, not stolen” (with not underlined):
      – meat
      – bread
      – milk
      – molasses
      – honey
      – wine
      – veg ash
      The last four have black boxes, a couple with arrows that may point to ‘L’ and ‘A’ to my understanding.
      Another list with drawings:
      – a knife
      – a roll of thread with needle
      – an hourglass
      – a skull (tagged ‘skull’ for clarity)
      – a coin
      All of their boxes are black.
      Then a final ‘Something ours’ section, with 3 black boxes for L, A and V.

      Hope that helps.

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  8. This stuff is endlessly fascinating. I was a fan of the Brockton Bay map in Worm, it helped my not-great sense of orientation when Taylor was describing locations.

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  9. Hi,
    Reporting linky weirdness here: 0.0 leads here, but there’s no ‘Next’ going to 1.1, although that’s out.

    (also 1.2 through, like, 30.10 are also missing… :))

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Reply - No Pact spoilers!