I decide to boot up the game on the Masochism difficulty. I wander around briefly, and then get smited by the Moon God.
I load the save and try again. I see a man with a shotgun. I get killed by the Moon God.
I load the save and try again. I find a boat. I immediately get killed by the Moon God after arriving on an island.
I realize I don't get killed by the Moon God if I'm inside, so I enter the house next to the boat first this time. I see a dying man inside. I'm playing the occultist so I kill him and try to resurrect him but it doesn't work. I go to the island and encounter a fucked up winged creature. It is a valkyrie. The valkyrie tells me that it is there to guide the souls of warriors to the afterlife. I then die and the game throws an exception.
I load the save and try again. I beeline to every building I can find and make it into town. Everything in town is trying to kill me. I run from every fight and find some woods to the west. There are some dogs in the woods. I run. I find a hatch while escaping the dogs and jump into it. I wander around the bunker for a bit, but a monster notices me. I try to put down a bear trap to take out its legs, but I've panicked and put it down a tile to the right of where I should. I run. It doesn't work. I die. I think I should turn the difficulty down to Normal.
I decide to head back to the pier where I found the boat on Masochism Mode. I cannot find the boat. I wander to the town to the west and promptly lose my legs in a bear trap. I give up and start over.
I try playing as the yellow mage and get some insight into the other characters from his talking head. I return to the area with the bear traps. I accidentally get into a fight with some wandering enemy and fuck up so bad I die. I decide to try playing as the mechanic instead.
The next run I walk into town and get killed by a man in a pig mask.
This run I try to follow the journalist but lose sight of her after two maps. I enter a town to the north with a bunch of Moonscorched, get cornered while exploring, and die.
This time I head up to the zone north of the train and find nothing and manage to not die, and then head back down south from the train and back to the underground bunker. Near the bunker I find a sleeping giant named Ki'turso that asks if it is time and then tells me not to wake it up again. I head back down into the bunker that killed me on my last Masochism run and wander around a bit. I find a backup generator that I pour some gasoline into, and narrowly manage to avoid getting killed by a quack named Needles by blocking off a door with a movable crate. I wander around the underground some more and find that the generator powers an elevator. I follow a glowing light off to the right and turn on something called a telectroscope, and then loot an Eagle brass key off of a nearby corpse. To the south I light some candles and press confirm on a magic circle. This teleports me somewhere. I see some creature with fucked up axe-hands. I book it out of there. I wish I'd checked electrical engineering instead of mechanical engineering on the mechanic's background. Not being able to see anything else I can do down here I head back up and encounter Lieutenant Pav, who tells me I can use that key to open the city gates. This is about as much progress as I've ever made so I go back to the train and save.
I found a bear trap before resting, so I use it to take out the woodsman's legs. He dies from an attack to the head, and I get his axe and the key to the basement. In the basement, I find some messages in blood talking about how good a fuck they got from some demon, and a ritual circle I can do nothing with. I head back into town and enter the house in the northwest. In the basement I find Alchemilia Vol. 2 and another ritual circle I can't do anything with. I exit the basement to the left, which unlocks the cellar door outside. I talk to a homeless man next to the gate who wasn't there before, and he tells me the location of the keys. One key is in the place I mentioned above to the west of town, and the other is in the possession of the old mayor. I don't know where the mayor is. I then get cornered by moon-crazed townsfolk in the east part of town and die.
I can't find anything else on the route to the south of the train so I head back north and find a map transition that I didn't notice before. The journalist is there. She will not join the party. I head into the house on the north part of the screen. There are two people in the kitchen and one of them has a gun. I take out one of them with a bear trap and sneak through. I head west and then north through the next couple of screens and enter a house. In the basement is an occult grimoire. I get killed by some of the villagers down there and then get fed to the pigs.
This time I opt not to go to the house to the left and just continue northward, which gets me to the mayor's house. The butler says hello and tells me the mayor is in the dining room. He asks me about the food, and then promptly kills me when I say it's ordinary.
This time instead of talking to the mayor I go and explore the rest of the house. I find the manor key on the right side of the mansion after taking a circuitous route through the upper floor and avoiding a cultist. I can't find anything in particular with the doors it unlocks so I attend the man's dinner table again and die. This continues a few more times as I eventually pass his dinner questions and then get in combat for saying I support the Bremen army. Telling him I fight the Bremen army has him give me the second key to the city. I save again, and then head to the city.
In the city I find a man in a cat mask offering to sell me books for the heads of the other possible player characters. I continue exploring to the north west of the city. I encounter some people who've been tied up and eaten alive by crows. heading to the west a bit more I encounter some people with buzzsaws. I try putting down a bear trap. it clamps shut. it does not slow them down for a second. I exit the screen as fast as possible. I run into some fucked-up shit creatures, and die.
I try entering the city again. I get killed by guards.
I try going right at the junction and find a bookstore. I can probably use this to fish for tomes. I don't find anything else of note besides a cointoss chest at the right junction. Back to the left side of the junction, I find an apartment complex that seems to lock behind me. In the basement is a bleeding washing machine that needs a six-digit passcode to open. On the main floor is a working TV. There is a broadcast from the journalist. It says there were murders in apartments 2, 6, 11, and 13. I expect that this is the password to the washing machine downstairs. I try it, but it doesn't work. I go upstairs and investigate each of the rooms. I find nothing in apartment 2. I find nothing in apartment 6. I get ambushed by a human anteater and die.
Heading back to the apartment to try again, I go upstairs to the third floor and find a horse statue in a room with a constellation on the ground that I don't recognize because it's been a decade since I took astronomy. It's probably, lemme check here, Pegasus? Or something made up. In the adjacent room I notice some of the floorboards creak when I walk over them and that they have different tiles than the rest of the floor. I move the horse statue and it falls through the floor. In the hole in the floor I find the madman's diary, which lists out hints for the order to put the numbers in. Room 2 is full of plants. Room 6 is full of guitars. Room 9 has the horsehead statue and the constellation. Room 13 is full of moving boxes. Room 11 is full of dolls. The code I got is 213116. Entering the code into the washing machine I then open it up, which leads me to the basement. Some of the stairs in here are broken, and heading up one floor I see people in cells getting juiced. I get stuck on some stairs and ambushed by a human anteater and die again.
Making my way through to the apartment again I find that the code is seemingly randomized. This time it says 9, 13, 11, 6. I make my way around the monsters since this time I know that some of the stairs are broken. I find a statue of a winged being holding a fellatio effigy after a few floors of going up and down. I try using it on the golden door nearby but it doesn't work. I remember the weird holes at the start and wonder if it goes in one of those. It doesn't seem to. I look around a bit more and realize I can jump down a hole to get to a chest, and figure that there's nothing more to do so I return through the bloody hole. A cutscene tells me the door to the apartment has been unlocked, so I leave. Heading south I unlock a couple of gates that make it easier to return, and then make my way north past a large sigil and then enter a mannequin store. There's a giant obelisk on the lower floor. The game says it thinks she's staring at me, and offers me the option to attack it. Not seeing the point, I leave. I find a fortune teller, who tells me I can find the one symbolizing hunger and discontent at the place where the journey started. The martyr can be found at the house of the holy. Three rivers, a quest hidden in plain sight. A man-made conflict hiding a stream of consciousness. Follow it upstream and find a treasure hidden behind a waterfall (cc @VGWaterfalls). North of the fortune teller, I find a cafe, with a bunch of sanity-restoring drinks. In the outdoor eating area I see some creatures I want nothing to do with, so I decide I've made enough progress for now and head back to the train to save.
I wake up in the train and find that nobody is inside it anymore, so I leave. The botanist is nearby, and she says that everyone has headed toward the city, so I head back over that way too. I'm nearly accosted by the woodsman being right next to the entrance to his map, but I dodge around him. I make it back into the city and find Marcoh and Pav squaring off. I make the decision to fight Pav and on killing him get the Chaotic soul. Talking to Marcoh afterwards, he says he's heading back to the train, so I follow him, noticing that he's carrying a wheelchair. At the train, I recruit Marcoh and the botanist Olivia into my party. Feeling emboldened, I stop avoiding encounters as much, and promptly Olivia loses her arm to the woodsman, and everyone starts having status effects I need to deal with. I buy some supplies from the merchant in the northeast of Old Prehevil before I head back into the city. I promptly get killed in a fight with one of the police officers.
I try again. I head up to the city without incident and fat-finger the button on the choice and Marcoh dies. Pav goes on his way and I grab Olivia's wheelchair. I go back to the train and recruit Olivia. I hear from a friend that you can enter the city from the sewers, which I've never seen. I head back up north of the train and make my way through the basement of the house before and to the left of the mayor's manor. It just takes me back to the main hub of the old town. I enter the city and get cornered by Needles and a cop. I make it out with an infection, poison, and bleeding, so I decide to run back to where I left the night off and see what I could find before Olivia succumbs to poison. I head to the west of the liquor store and find a department store. There's a chainmail dress on a mannequin on the second floor and a Leechmonger ring on the mummified corpse next to the screaming man being drawn and quartered on the top floor. I do not equip it, it seems like a trap. Going back down to the second floor, I exit out the northwest onto a different street. There's an occult shop here. I do not investigate it in much detail. I continue west along the street and find an apartment with a bed I can rest in. I opt not to save in it because I've given up this progress as dead. I head out to the north and find some white vials in some crates north of a ladder, which I use to heal Olivia's poison. Curious about the bed, and wanting to get something in a new save slot nearer where I've progressed to, I reverse on what I just said and save.
I head back up north from the outside of the apartment and run into a school. I wander around a bit to the left and fail a coin toss. The floorboards break and I'm sent down into the basement. I wander around the basement but don't find much. I check what else I can but get wombo comboed down to 1HP on Abella and 2HP on Olivia, with both of them at low mind. Heading up the stairs on the other side of the basement and up to floor 2 I find a statue and a twinkling item light behind a door. Heading out, I find an entrance to the courtyard and a shortcut to the entrance if I need it. I expect I will die soon, and will not need the shortcut yet. I return to the room I noted earlier to take a screenshot of it. I try exploring the classroom on the left of the map, and promptly die.
