You find yourself in a charming, rustic mansion. Outside of the windows you see a wild expanse of prarie, ending at a peaceful, muddy river. You can hear the blackbirds chirping and the last whisps of a woman singing an old ballad, far away.
In your more immediate vacinity, things are an absolute disaster. Chairs are toppled, the floor is covered with detritus, and your well-loved copy of Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is missing. Taking its place the Sega Genesis' cartridge slot, you find a strange [[bootleg->Snail Maze]]
To the East is the [[Drawing Room]].The half-peeled, sun-faded label on the cartridge says "Snail Maze II." That doesn't sound like a particularly fun <a href="./rom_pages/sm2.html" target="_blank">premise</a>, does it?
[[Go Back->Entrance]] "What is a drawing room anyway?" you think to yourself as you pass throught the doorway.
As it turns out, this drawing room is full of stoats. They are swinging from the chandeliers, using your fine golf clubs to whack antique salt and pepper dispensers, playing objectionable music from boom boxes, and causing all sorts of other havoc.
<<if $noticedSituation neq 1>>
You now notice that this scenario is a clever homage to The Wind in The Willows, a classic and conveniently public-domain childrens' novel. You also notice for the first time that you are an anthropomorphic raccoon.
<<endif>>
One of the stoats is staring at you cautiously. He is eating a sandwich and wearing a hardhat. The hat is labeled, "[[Bob]]".
To the West is the [[Entrance]].
To the East is the [[Kitchen]].
To the North is the [[Gardens]].
To the South is the [[Conservatory]]
<<set $noticedSituation to 1>>"Oy, scuse me sir!" exclaims Bob in a cartoonish Cockney accent, "but aren't you meant to be a toad? Isn't this Toad Hall, the ancestral home of one Mr Toad? To my eyes, you're more of a cat-sized mammalian woodland creature you are!"
You feel exasperated at the question, but attempt to calmly explain that this is an //homage// to the classic work, and not meant to be an entirely accurate reproduction. You flail your paws about, searching for the right language to further explain your point, but you realize that Bob has long since lost interest and has resumed focus on his sandwich.
[[Go back->Drawing Room]]The Stoats have chosen to reject the tyranies of order and refrigeration and relocated all of the food onto the floor. The various food items are in different stages of eaten and decomposing. You step carefully, but notice a discarded cartridge half-submerged in a savaged pie.
Both the cartridge and the pie seem <a href="./rom_pages/tsoa.html" target="_blank">unfinished</a>.
The [[Drawing Room]] is to the West.
The [[Blood Arena]] is to the East.You're once lovely, French-style gardens have become something of a warzone--full of dirt, mudd, craters, and rotting corpses of fallen tomatoes.
Where the once stood the tranquil pond, there is now a menacing [[Lava Pit]].
To the North is your large, concrete [[Labyrinth]]. The cherubs that once adorned the gate lie smashed on the ground.
To the South is the [[Drawing Room]].
To the East, your property suddenly ends in an unsightly, 6-lane [[Highway]].A fox suddenly dashes out of a bush, takes a mighty leap, and plunges directly into the pit. You investigate the bush and find a suicide note attached to an unmarked game <a href="./rom_pages/ddlp.html" target="_blank">cartridge</a>. The note reads "I did not enjoy playing this."
[[Back->Gardens]]After wandering a few steps into the labyrinth, you find yourself lost in another world of concrete walls, pillars, strange statuary, and shrubs trimmed into abstract shapes. It's really cool; trust me.
Go back to the [[Gardens]].
Get super [[Lost]].
Rather than wasting your time, just take all the correct paths and [[Solve->Solved]] the maze already.Various roadkill lines the highway, which is constantly beset by a parade of noisy SUVs. You shiver as you speculate about whether or not the various furry corpses were once animals of the anthropomorphic, talking variety.
Attempt to [[cross->Crossing]] the road like some kind of idiot fowl.
Go back to the [[Gardens]].
This seems like as good a time as any to [[Sunbathe->Sunbath]].What was once a peaceful greenhouse is now more of a vegetable graveyard. The floor is covered with dirt, potsherds, and plant detritus. Fortunately, your space rocket tree has been spared, and may still retain a functional gravity drive!
Take the rocket tree to [[Space!]]
To back to the [[Drawing Room]].You choose to ignore good sense and forgo using a simple maze solving algorithm. The phantasmagoric stone and topiary structures swirl and warp around you. Ultimately, you find yourself in a small rose garden surrounded by shining, limestone parapets. In the center of the space there is a vine-covered, wooden [[Cellar Door->Dungeon]].
Get [[Unlost->Labyrinth]].At the center of the maze, in a golden room, you find a golden, ornate pillar about one meter tall. A golden plaque is affixed the side of the pillar. On top of the pillar is a game cartridge, which has been poorly spray-painted gold.
The plaque reads: "<a href="./rom_pages/golfanalia.html" target="_blank">Our Best Game</a>".
After observing this unparalleled artifact, your life may never be the same. You use your furry wrist to wipe a tear from your eye.
The doorway that you entered is nowhere to be found. However, embedded in the opposite wall there is a fun [[Slide]].The small room smells of mold and many dogs. An ancient CRT <a href="./rom_pages/acebs.html" target="_blank">television</a> lights the filthy stone walls.
[[No thank you->Lost]].In an entirely unsurprising turn of events, an unsightly electric truck crashes into your butt the moment you step onto the road. The loathsome vehicle propels you dozens of meters into the air. You fly over the highway to the nearby office park, and you crash into a large, tan, cubic office building through a skylight.
As you pick yourself up from the pool of broken glass, you check yourself for injury. You're somehow fine.
[[Explore->Office]]You reluctantly lie in the grass amongst the many disregarded chip bags and plastic cups. It's difficult to relax given the honking, engine noise, and exhaust fumes, but eventually you drift off and have a <a href="./rom_pages/mythdragon.html" target="_blank">dream of hunting</a>.
You wake up feeling mildly frustrated.
[[Go Back->Highway]].You are in one of those hellish open offices where all the employees deliberately hunch down behind their laptops so they don't have to look at each other. There are white desks and moderately expensive wheely chairs as far as the eye can see.
There is an unoccupied, circa-1997, white [[Desktop PC]] on a nearby desk.
To the South is the [[Break Room]].
To the North are the [[Elevators]].As is their want, the old computer is running a <a href="./rom_pages/ddr.html" target="_blank">disk defragmenter</a>. You should probably just leave it alone--these old operating systems can crash if you so much as sneeze on them.
[[Go back->Office]].You enter the break room hoping for a free protein bar, or at least a lukewarm cup of coffee. Unfortunately, all the furniture and appliances here have been throughly exploded. There is a fine confetti of wood and glass on the floor. The only thing you can find that's intact is the [[Mini Fridge]].The buttons on the elevator are labeled:
* [[Office]]
* [[Discotheque]]
* [[Lobby]]
* [[Dumpster Fire]]Inside the fridge there is a game <a href="./rom_pages/gcb.html" target="_blank">cartridge</a>. The words: "Love, goblins" are scrawled on the cart in bright green sharpie, but it is otherwise unlabeled.
[[Go back->Office]]."Wheee!" you exclaim, as you slip and glide down the extensive plastic tube. After a pleasant few seconds of tumbling, you are blinded by daylight and dumped into a pile of ivy. You look around and find that you have returned to the [[Gardens]].Obsolete bleep-bloop sounds squeel out of the speakers overhead. The bright green shag carpet doesn't seem conducive to dancing. There is a pixelated disco ball hanging from the ceiling and projecting colorful squares of light about the room.
Against one of the walls, you see a neglected <a href="./rom_pages/jukebox.html" target="_blank">jukebox</a>, covered in perhaps a centimeter of dust.
If you so choose, this would be an appropriate venue to [[Dance->Dancing]].
Or you could just return to the [[Elevators]].You walk out of the elevator bank and notice that, right outside of the front door, there is a [[footbridge->Highway]] that extends over the highway and back to the mansion. It would have been nice if you'd known about that earlier.
You can also return to the [[Elevators]].The potent smell of burning plastic punches you in the face. Atop the fire, one hideous game cartridge <a href="./rom_pages/ctsfc.html" target="_blank">refuses to burn</a>.
[[Please get me out of here->Elevators]].Hey, this is fun!
Continue [[Dancing]].
[[Go back->Discotheque]].Two stoats slowly circle each other on the killing floor, their eyes locked fast. They both wear little, tiny chain mail shirts and handle steak knives as if they were swords. The scene might be adorable if it weren't a prelude to bloodshed.
You feel an insane impulse to [[Participate]].
Alternatively, you could go East to the [[Blood Nursery]]
The [[Kitchen]] is to the West.On second thought, those knives look really sharp. Perhaps it would be better to quench your lust for violence vicariously, through a <a href="./rom_pages/firebrawl.html" target="_blank">video game</a>.
[[Go Back->Blood Arena]].The stoats seem to have spared the Blood Nursery--probably because it's full of occult symbols; unidentifiable fluids; impossible shadows; and disturbing, unknowable creatures from The Deep.
You feel relieved. When interlopers sully the Nursery it can be very difficult to clean.
There's a neat <a href="./rom_pages/xv.html" target="_blank">kid's toy</a> on top of the dresser.
The [[Blood Arena]] is West.
To the East, there is the [[Portal Beyond the Confines of Space and Time]].You don't remember where you came from, but when you return to lucidity, TV static covers you like a blanket. Your mind flickers in ten thousand flecks of gray. You are <a href="./rom_pages/ptp.html" target="_blank">the god in the machine</a>, albeit sort of a milquetoast god.
[[Continue Wandering]].Your skin turns into little brown worms; you know what the palm tree fears.
[[Still Wandering]].A room of perfect mirrors--each reflecting a writhing ball of styrofoam and silt.
[[Wander Wander Wander]].There, in the eyes of The Spring Beast, the eidetic appropriation of young harmonics. Do you taste in your brightest synapse the chirp of void?
[[I Say Again, Deciduous Teeth]]!The kidneys weep; the terror of hypertrophy!
[[Avast]]!Cold; cold and wet; sticky with old juice.
[[Open The Door]].As you pass by Proxima Centauri, you are hailed by the Seasaw Space Security Squad Force Corps. They beseech you to go on a <a href="./rom_pages/ssss.html" target="_blank">silly mission</a>.
Onward to the [[Undiscovered Reaches]].
[[Careen]] back to Earth.You open the door and fall out of what was apparently a refrigerator. You're now in the [[Kitchen]].You receive a distress signal from an unknown gas giant 10 clicks away.
[[Check It Out]]!
[[Be Boring]]Like some kind of madraccoon, you turn the ship around and set your engines to full burn, directly back to home planet. Cooler heads would advise a more cautious approach, but you're a procyonid on a mission! (What was that mission again?)
You are now rapidly [[Approaching Earth]].As you decelerate from Go-Really-Fast Mode, you are hailed by the captain of a remote mining colony. When he comes onscreen, you are exhilerated to see a concerning, but not gory, amount of blood dripping from his mouth. He tells you that he is being bombarded by a fleet of nerdy pirates who are scouring the galaxy for 90s nostalgia items. They are threatening to destroy the colony unless it surrenders its strategic, vintage poptart supply.
[[Attack The Nerds!]]
[[Never mind let's just go home->Entrance]].You aimlessly wander around space, which, you recall, is mostly empty. You resist the impulse to do anything remotely dangerous, until you eventually get bored and [[Go Home->Conservatory]].The blue dot is quickly growing beneath you. Through the viewscreen you begin to see clouds, then landmasses. You are appear to be heading towards [[An Obscure Island]].Before crashing into the forest below, the advanced space-tree stops abruptly, turns upside-down, unbuckles your seatbelt, and opens the cockpit. You feel more nauseated than you have in your entire life combined as you plop down into a clearing. You regain your vision just in time to see the arboreal craft departing into the sky--probably destined for the Conservatory so you can take this whole journey again later. Convenient.
Your stomach has a grand temper tantrum as you crawl slowly through the grass, bewildered and searching for some possibility of relief. Instead, you find yourself at the base of a concrete statue.
The statue depicts a strange, little man. He stands erect, with his right arm heroically extended towards the sea. He is half-bald and spiderwebbed with cracks. One particular crack splits its face as if the elements themselves have graffitied a funny mustache above his lips.
There is a plaque at the base that reads:
<center>//My name is Ozymandius; I'm a genius.
Trust me.
They say they've never looked upon anybody else's works and dispaired as much as they have with mine. My works are by far the most dispaired anywhere.//</center>
There is a <a href="./rom_pages/tb.html" target="_blank">discarded cartridge</a> on top of a nearby pile of garbage.
If you want, you could root around in [[More Garbage]].
Surprisingly, you find a pair of silver shoes in the rubbish which are probably a reference to //The Wonderful Wizard of Oz// (The novel not the movie). Shall we click them together?
[[Oh, Let's Do!]]You are whisked away in a brilliant cloud of deus ex machina back to the [[Entrance]].You have no weapons. You are flying in a tree. What were you expecting? Were you going to throw pine cones at them? Were you going to irritate the invaders by shedding leaves on their lawn?
Fortunately, the 90's nostalgia nerds are amenable to <a href="./rom_pages/wml.html" target="_blank">a different kind of competition</a>.
Okay I've had enough of that. Let's [[Do something else->Be Boring]].