Featuring in the Tales of the University (Guide)

Late MYN Content

It is what you may call a castle manned by learning and scholarship. Or a vicious and permanent dog-fight between Benthic College and Summerset College.

Introduction

Featuring in the Tales of the University is the final part of the Watchful Making your Name. This Guide will take you through the steps needed to complete it.

Featuring in the Tales of the University 1-5

Featuring in the Tales of the University is started on either Making your Name: Invitations from the University or The University 1. Either of these will give you Featuring in the Tales of the University 1. After that, you will need to go through a few levels, which introduces you to the main cast of the university, before you can start doing interesting things.

• A walk around the University: a quick tour of the University.
• Omnes adsint, quamvis dementi, quamvis nefasti: meeting Benthic's Principal.
• Superbe et sophistice: the Principal of Summerset.
• A new vocation: just sign here and here and we'll get you started (no, no need to read any of the fine print).

Interlude: the Term Passing Carousel

The next storylet is Making your Name: A most notable academic; however, by playing this option you will lock the Term Passing carousel. As parts of this carousel can be quite profitable, it is highly advised that you spend some time doing the carousel first. For more information on the carousel see Term Passing... (Guide).

Featuring in the Tales of the University 6-8

After you've become A most notable academic, you can proceed with University life. Becoming A most notable academic will lock you out of all the options discussed before. You'll then need to do a few steps before a new carousel will open up.

• Making Your Name: First steps for your new department: try to find out who has studied the Correspondence before you.
• Meet the Department of _______: a nice cup of tea with the Department of_______.
• Making Your Name: Horrors in the chamber!: the Senior Reader in _______ has been murdered in a gruesome and unusually permanent way. After you offer your assistance the University, they agree to keep you as a consulting detective.

Featuring in the Tales of the University 9-24

After completing the previous storylet, a new Term Passing... carousel will open. The only way to make progress here is to raise your Investigating... high enough to progress with your investigation of the case. One of the most profitable ways to do this is Talk to the Porters which gives you Sudden Insights. In batches of five at a time, Sudden Insights can be traded for up to 50 CP of Watchful under Attend to Matters of Watchfulness and Nightmares using Every stone. Talk to the Porters requires Cryptic Clues, which can be obtained through other options under Making Your Name: Investigations in the university. As this is one best ways in the game to gain Investigating... and Sudden Insights, it is advised you get everything you want out of it before doing the last of the options mentioned below, which locks it.

One somewhat profitable way of disposing of Investigating... if you wish to pause increasing Featuring in the Tales of the University is to trade it for 540x Rostygold (or, rarely, 540x Foxfire Candle Stub, 10x Relic of the Second City and one Reprehensible Lizard, worth 7.10 in total) in The Flit using More than just Messages in the The Heights of Chicanery storylet.

Alternatively, Raid a Message-Drop -- also on Heights -- pays out 270 x Cryptic Clues, if you need more of them to feed the Porters, though there's no chance of a bonus from a rare success.

Assuming you build Investigating... to 7 using (coincidentally) 7 actions with the Porters at a net profit of 58p for each action, with a 540p payout from Messages or Message-Drop, that's (7*58p) + 540p = 946p or 9.46. Investigating... 7 gives a 90% chance at the 540p payout, which would be an EPA of 9.46/8 = 1.18 (or an EPA of 1.05 if you need a second crack at it) -- plus the value of 7 x Sudden Insights, of course.

An EPA of ~1.1 is in the range of what the Term Passing... < 7 storylets of the second carousel pay out, so there's no need to lose out on Echoes grinding Sudden Insights.

The Storylets

All levels require Investigating... 5.

Level 9

• Making Your Name: Consider your initial suspects: Who could have murdered a man so permanently? Based on the evidence, you have two suspects: the Consumptive Cryptozoologist, implicated by the use of a sorrow-spider, and the Fellow in Venomous Rarefaction, implicated by the vial of venom found at the scene.

Level 10

• Making Your Name: The next step of the investigation: The real question of course is how a sorrow-spider managed to escape a locked room... but didn't you once read something about mirror traveling spiders?

Level 11

• Making Your Name: A spidery hypothesis: This is quickly getting out of your area of expertise. You'll need to consult an expert, who is, unfortunately, a suspect of the murder.

Level 12

• Making Your Name: A note from the Consumptive Cryptozoologist: The Consumptive Cryptozoologist and you prove that arachno-speculative travel indeed works.

Level 13

• Making Your Name: On the matter of spiders: But who owned the mirror traveling spider? After consulting the University's records, you find out the Provost of Summerset has had one for years.

Level 14

• Making Your Name: The Fellow in Venomous Rarefaction: As The Fellow in Venomous Rarefaction is allergic to sorrow-spiders, he is off the suspects list. However, he does tell you about something illegal called Cantigaster venom, which the Senior Reader was using in his research.

Level 15

• Making Your Name: The Poison and the Palace: The Senior Reader was holding a vial of Cantigaster Venom when he died. The stuff comes from the palace apparently, but no one knows from who exactly.

Level 16

• Making Your Name: The Duchess and the Cantigaster: After having interrogated a servant, you're waiting in the third wine cellar on Sunday when the Duchess approaches. She opens the door with an immense bronze key; beyond the door lies the Cantigaster, once a man, now a sac of poison.

Level 17

• Making Your Name: The note you were half-expecting: It appears the Duchess did see you that night. She tells you to look into love.

Level 18

• Making Your Name: Look into love: The Consumptive Cryptozoologist has a Radical Postgraduate sister driven mad by an experiment of the Senior Reader. Finally, a good motive.

Level 19

• Making Your Name: What were they up to?: The Semi-semiotic Fellow tells you that the Senior Reader and the Radical Postgraduate were trying to contact the sun. This drove the latter insane.

Level 20

• Making Your Name: Dig up some dirt on the Provost: Even though the case against the Consumptive Cryptozoologist seems ironclad, it would be wise to completely rule out the Provost first. After taking a look at his appointments, you see that every Thursday is full for no apparent reason. When you follow him, you see him picnicking with a devil!

Level 21

• Making Your Name: The Provost and the devil: After following the Provost, you overhear him confessing that it was he who killed the Senior Reader.

Level 22

• Making Your Name: What connects the Bazaar and love stories?: Even though you have solved the case, it would be wise to investigate the last loose thread: what connects the Bazaar and love stories? And is it really a sentient being? What you can decipher from the Correspondence sigils upon its spires seems to indicate that it indeed hungers for love.

Level 23

• Making Your Name: A note from the Masters: You have been summoned by the Masters of the Bazaar. The Master commends your skill and knowledge, and proceeds to describe the Master's relationship to the Provost. He is useful, but not trusted. Favored, but not protected. If they had to replace him, it would be inconvenient... but only that.

The End

Revealing the murderer of the Senior Reader in _______ will finish A Name in Seven Secret Alphabets. Don't do this until you've done everything you wanted to do using the Term Passing carousel mentioned above.

The Final steps

Level 24

• Making Your Name: Consider what to do next. No matter how you choose to contemplate the case you'll get Notes on the Case of the Speculative Arachnid which will allow you to reread the case later and you'll need to reveal who murdered the Senior Reader.

Level 25

• Making Your Name: Reveal the murderer of the Senior Reader in _______. Will you choose the truth or the more "convenient" option? Depending on your choice you will either get The wreckage of your career or Survival, at a price.

Level 26

• Making Your Name: The wreckage of your career. Having chosen the hard truth you are banished from the University until you can convince them to take you back

Level 27

• Making Your Name: Survival, at a price. Having chosen the more convenient option you can continue your work in the University, such as research.

What is it all for?

Congratulations

You'll be redirected to your Lodgings where The Honey-Addled Detective will ask you what it was all for. No matter your choice this will set A Name in Seven Secret Alphabets to 7 (Immortal in Horizon Glyphs) and will increase Watchful by 500 CP. That concludes this portion of Making your Name.

Afterwards, you can embark on a voyage of scientific discovery.