Previously on Nancy Drew: Sea of Darkness: You know what we haven’t investigated in a while? Hidden treasure. So we’ve been called to Iceland to do just that. I mean, presumably we’re also looking for a missing dude too, but fuck him, we’re just after the gold.
So we’re heading back to the gift shop to chat with Soren and finish some puzzles. Hey dude! We talked to the whole town (read: Gunnar), and they all hate you, what’s up with that? Soren tells us what we already knew, which is that he moved here as a teenager and then came back after university — he’s been in Skipbrot for a total of twelve years, and people still think of him as an outsider. Soren bitters that he was born in another town ten miles away, but to Skipbrotters, that’s basically another country. “Upper secondary school was a nightmare with these people,” he says. He wails that he’s tried to please them by putting on the Ancestors’ Festival, but people still won’t hang out with him. “Spending my birthday alone is getting to be a real downer.” Not to be rude, but why doesn’t he just go back to his hometown? A ten-mile commute is not that bad, Soren! I mean, I guess that would require Skipbrot to not be in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and actually have clear roads.
Anyway, Soren insists that he’s never done anything to Gunnar, but Gunnar hates him anyway. “Between you and me, he hasn’t been the same since that terrible crash years ago.” Terrible crash? Tell us more, Soren! Soren’s all, “Gosh, I just don’t know if I should tell you. But I will anyway!” Heh. It’s sad that the Skipbrotters won’t accept Soren as one of their own, because he nails small-town gossip perfectly. Anyway, Soren tells us that Gunnar’s boat sank one day and dude hasn’t sailed since.
We ask if he and Elisabet get along, and Soren affirms — “She’s quite a peach, that one.” Soren, I’m sorry, but I’m starting to see why you got beat up in high school. Apparently Elisabet’s the only person in this entire town who’s not a dick to Soren, although they’re actually not on great terms right now, on account of Elisabet not wanting Dagny anywhere near the ship, and also because she’s real messed up over her breakup with Magnus. Soren implies that their breakup was kind of a big deal, probably because it’s the most exciting thing to happen to this town since that volcano erupted.
So tell us about the treasure, Soren! He says that he was tired of hearing about it, and maybe if Dagny and Magnus found it maybe everyone would shut up about it. He sold Dagny the exploration rights in exchange for her funding the ship rebuild. Soren admits that he’s tried to find the treasure himself — everyone has, even Gunnar, despite him acting too cool for school about it — but he’s no Nancy Drew, and he’s never found anything. He does, however, often go scavenging for “lost artifacts” in the hillsides. HMMM.
Apparently people in town were upset that Soren sold the exploration rights, but Soren shrugs that everything he does pisses them off, so he might as well do what he wants. If the townspeople have an issue with him, they can sit down and talk it out with him like adults. But why would they do that when they can talk about him behind his back in the local pub, right?
We ask if Soren knows anything that might help us, and Soren chirps that he has some excellent pamphlets about Skipbrot. “The Pamphlet Lover’s Journal rated them nine stars out of ten!” He passes us one about how to repair a dinghy. OMG, Soren, how did you know that this was the exact pamphlet we needed to advance in the game? 10/10 for customer service.
LOL I forgot to mention this, but we found a flashlight in the hold along with Dagny’s letter, but it was missing batteries. We can buy some here, and now we can go exploring. And check the Jovic Tech branding! Has Krolmeister been run out of business? The free market is cruel 🙁
I try to go back and talk to Soren again, but he says, “I need a little space, Nancy.” Wow, Soren, way to be a dick to one of only two people who can stand you.
Anyway, I’m rich as fuck on account of being really good at guessing Icelandic words, so I buy a bunch of books and postcards and a sweater for Ned. If you really love him, you can buy him one of the swords on the wall, but I don’t believe in spending that much money on men.
Let’s check in with Dagny. She wails to us that she’s freezing, since the heater out here is broken and no one will fix it because everyone in town lowkey hates her. She doesn’t want to go inside either because then she won’t be able to keep an eye on the Heerlijkheid. We offer to fix the heater for her, to which Dagny says, “I don’t care what they say — you’re okay.” Hey, who’s “they”? Have you been talking to Dwayne Powers, Dagny?
The heater has to be fixed by a puzzle, wherein we want to place the colored blocks over a set of numbers that will add up to the totals at the bottom. The color you put over the number doesn’t matter, although of course certain solutions can only be covered by certain shapes. So for example, the pink shape is covering -3 and 1, which makes -2, one of the numbers at the bottom. (Nancy’s like, “I don’t think this is how electricity works,” and Dagny’s like, “Shh, leave the fourth wall intact.”).
While we solve the puzzle, we can chat with Dagny and hear some of her backstory. She tells us that she’s from somewhere in the southern US, and she used to have a normal job, then she got married, then she got divorced, and now she has another job “involving definitely-legal treasure hunting activities.” Nancy notes that that was a really quick backstory, and Dagny snipes that if we want to pay her, she can make up a sad backstory and we can both pretend it’s real. Heh. She points out that it’s not like she and Nancy have even known each other for more than a week — “Are you an open book with everyone you meet?” Nancy admits that she’s not, because then she wouldn’t be a very good player proxy. She tells Dagny that she meets so many interesting people, she feels sort of ordinary in comparison. WHAT? Nancy, half of our cases are meeting people in small towns who are bumming around doing nothing while making Nancy do chores for them. Dagny says that everyone seems normal to themselves — she says that treasure-hunting is actually pretty boring; it’s all “nine-to-five diplomacy and occasional gunfire”. Nancy’s job is nine-to-five unlocking doors and occasional head trauma, so I get where she’s coming from. Dagny says that being a teenage sleuth is actually pretty cool. Aw, she likes us! She really likes us!
We finish the puzzle, and the conversation ends. I think you can draw it out to be a little longer, but that’s the pertinent bit. Dagny asks us if we’ve been up to Magnus’s cabin in the mountains, and says that Elisabet has the key. “Talk about refusing to let go.” Hee. Of course, there’s no way Elisabet is just going to hand it over, so we’ll have to get her off the ship somehow. We muse that it’s a little fishy that the treasure was on the ship to begin with, and Dagny snarks, “It’s Iceland. The economy runs on fish.”
We ask if she’s been in Iceland for the entirety of the ship rebuilding project — it’s been going on for about two years — and Dagny’s like, “Hell, no, do you see how they treat Soren?” She adds that she doesn’t like staying in one place too long, as “people start to need you and feel things about you and all that icky weird stuff.” “I like to think you and I are on friendly terms,” Nancy derps. Dagny snipes, “Get lost, Drew. Find my gold.” I love her.
We can keep talking to her, though, so let’s do that. We ask what she thinks of Gunnar, and Dagny says that he’s tried to sabotage the festival for the past two years, so she wouldn’t be surprised if this was a stunt of his. She adds that he was the only one of our suspects present at the festival this year — “Elisabet and Soren were thoroughly MIA.” But then she’s like, “But half of Iceland is related to each other, so I could’ve missed something.” Heh. The Skipbrotters should be grateful Soren moved here from ten miles away. He’s really adding variety to their gene pool!
Okay, we can ask her for her radio key now. She just hands it over, and Nancy’s like, “Wow, that was easy.” HEE! Of course, it’s not that easy, because neither Nancy nor Dagny know how to use the radio, so we’ll have to figure that out later.
That’s it for Dagny. I called Ned next, because I’m nice like that. He’s all surprised that Nancy actually called, and then he wins me over by using “dude” conversationally. We chat a bit about what he’s up to — apparently Burt’s moved in with him and brought a pet chicken, and they ask Nancy for name suggestions. We can choose between something “feisty,” “elegant,” or “adorable.” I choose “elegant” because I’m a classy lady. Burt suggests calling the chicken Mr. Darcy. I’m more of a Mr. Knightley girl myself — or Fred Vincy, if we’re expanding the pool to all male characters of 19th century English literature — but whatever. Ned says that “Mr. Darcy” is already a name, so they can’t use it. Ned, Jane Austen’s estate isn’t going to come after you about your chicken’s name. Pride and Prejudice is in the public domain!
We can start recapping the game with him, so let’s do that. We tell him that Magnus is missing, and Ned wonders if he disappeared on his own or if he was kidnapped. Since his disappearance is likely connected to the treasure, and since he was working on finding it for years, following his steps will probably get us close to him either way. Makes sense.
Then we can bring up that this town is crazy insular and probably a little incestuous, and they hate all outsiders, including Nancy. Ned tells us about a show he saw on the nature channel: wasps fight over staking claims to moth larvae to lay their eggs in, but when a bear attacks their hive, they stop killing each other and focus on attacking the bear. The bear is a threat to the entire hive’s safety, just like Nancy is a threat to the Skipbrotters’ weirdo isolationist social customs.
Then we tell him that we’re working on getting him an Icelandic souvenir. Again, we can pick if we want to tell him that his gift is going to be cute, romantic, etc. I choose “romantic” because, like, Nancy is an 18-year-old girl who’s been dating Ned since the 1940s. We can get a little suggestive here. Ned’s like, “Wow, that’s very unlike you.” Heh. He’s so passive-aggressive. Ned adds that he has a surprise for us, too — he’s like, “I should’ve known you forgot our anniversary when you didn’t go rummaging through my stuff for your gift.” Oh, Nancy. Ned says that we’ll have to wait and see what the surprise is.
(Spoiler: It’s like fucking nothing. We’ll get there.)
Let’s see if we can drag Elisabet away from the ship. We’re like, “Don’t you have…literally anything better to do than sit here?” She tells us that the ship is an antique, and things break easily, and it’s hard to hear the ship’s alarm from the harbor. Hmm.
We ask about her and Soren, and Elisabet admits that they worked on the festival together, which the townsfolk weren’t thrilled about. Elisabet says that Soren is “not one of us. He doesn’t know our stories. No shared memories,” and she says it in the creepiest voice ever. Are the Skipbrotters cannibals or something? I have questions. Anyway, we’re like, “He doesn’t seem that bad, maybe you guys should be open to some dominant genes in your gene pool and let him hang out.” Elisabet creeps, “You are either ‘outside’ or ‘inside’ in Skipbrot. You cannot stand in the doorway. You will be driven out. We are not like Reykjavik — not like a big city.” Reykjavik, by the way, has a smaller population than Akron, Ohio. I’m just saying.
That said, it’s not like Soren couldn’t work on Viking history in Reykjavik — or in his own town, presumably. Could he have ULTERIOR MOTIVES for hanging around Skipbrot? On the other hand, if people are trying to get rid of Soren, then ruining the festival sure would do a good job of running him out of town.
Speaking of the festival, was Gunnar up to any weird shit during, before, or after? Elisabet says that he wasn’t being more of a dick than usual, and he ruined the two festivals before this one, so it wasn’t really a surprise. Elisabet remarks that Gunnar was only making his “usual” threats to throw Magnus into the ocean, like a totally normal person.
We bring up that we saw that wacky cartoon about how Elisabet’s ancestors were brutally beaten to death by an angry mob, and she’s like, “Yeah, that was some dark shit to grow up with.” Nancy mentions burying the hatchet, and Elisabet creeps, “Nothing is ever buried here. Just sleeping. And sometimes it awakes in unexpected ways.” Spooky.
We mention that she’s connected to the ship by her family line, and Elisabet confirms that Captain Lawrence was her great-great-great-great-grandfather. If the treasure is ever found, it would technically belong to her, but Elisabet thinks digging up the ship’s bloody history is a bad idea. Fair enough. We’re like, “We know you’re all cold and Nordic and stuff, but if you ever want to talk about your supremely fucked-up relationships, we’re here for you, girl.” Elisabet tells us that she and Magnus grew up together and dated for four years, but he went through some hard times and started getting obsessive over the ship and neglecting their relationship, so they broke up.
So, uh, Elisabet, how about Magnus’s cabin, huh? Weirdly, Elisabet says that Soren is the one who won’t let anyone up there. We offer to go, but Elisabet shuts us down, saying that the townspeople take care of each other, and they don’t need outsiders meddling in their affairs. Spoken like a true small town resident covering up that they sacrifice children under town hall or something.
Well, let’s see what Soren has to say about all this. We ask if he was at the festival, and he claims to be, but we tell him that Dagny didn’t see him. Soren says that’s because he was up in “Old Stulka”, the tower right outside town, doing audio control. HMMM.
Soren confirms that he locked up Magnus’s cabin, because he doesn’t think anyone should be going in there and messing with the crime scene until the police can investigate. Okay, but like…did you even call the police, Soren? Soren frets that, since the town hates him already, he doesn’t want to call the police and incur even more of their wrath. Nancy’s like, “I’ll call the police for you. The local reporter of my small town literally tried to murder me, so I’ve already been down this road.” Soren wails that we’ll be tarred and feathered faster than we can say, “Eyjafjallajökull.” Slowest tarring and feathering ever, then. Soren says that the town won’t want the police to get involved, so it’s up to “the two of us” to solve this case. Whoa, did we invite you along, Soren? I’d rather hang out with Dagny.
Okay, I lied, I didn’t do any more puzzles in the cultural center because I think I did most of them already and also they are boring. I head back to the Missti Skip instead, where Gunnar immediately greets us by yelling, “HEY! GIRL!” He tells us to get our “lady bones” to the prep area and start serving food because women belong in the kitchen, amirite? He says we have to do it because we’re living at the Missti Skip for free. I mean…so are you, Gunnar, damn.
So here we have a food puzzle. The goal is to fill the orders in the top left (each row is a separate order) by arranging them in either a row across all the trays, or in Z-formations in a single color group, and creating an arrangement that aligns all the orders together. So for example, in the above screencap: the first order is fulfilled across the top row, the second one is fulfilled in the bottom row, the third one is fulfilled in a Z-formation in the pink trays, and the fourth one is in the first row in the green trays, overlapping with the first order.
We do this a couple of times, and doing menial labor has endeared us to Gunnar enough that he’s given us a nickname. He keeps calling Nancy “fiskur” (“fish”), which has a terrible interpretation if you were inclined to think that way. Anyway, we bring up Elisabet to him, and he cackles that she’s tough and knows what she wants, and she used to scare the hell out of the local boys. We argue that Elisabet’s heart is in the right place, and Gunnar agrees, but notes that she is big mad at Magnus right now, so she’s scarier than usual.
Gunnar tells us that Magnus has never been great with women: “He is…how do you say it? A runner. He runs.” Apparently, Gunnar yelling at Magnus was his way of showing his concern over Magnus’s total wreck of a personal life — it was friendly yelling! Nancy’s like, “Sounds fake, but okay,” and Gunnar’s like, “Whatever, you’re traveling to Iceland by yourself, I bet you don’t even have friends.” Ouch. Call me out, Gunnar. Anyway, we go ahead and sell Soren out by telling Gunnar that Soren told us about his boat crash. Gunnar snarls that Soren will pay for gossiping about him, and he’s going to pay EXTRA because he’s an outsider and everyone hates him. Nancy’s like, “Bro, you need to chill,” and Gunnar snaps that hating everyone who’s different is Skipbrot’s culture, and it won’t change for us just because we think it’s unfair. Enjoy the town’s descendants developing Habsburg jaw in a few decades, Gunnar.
Lemme earn some money real quick by guessing Icelandic vocabulary and making food. I eventually cap the wallet out at 9999 kr, which is the first time I’ve ever actually earned a ton of money in these games. I usually find the money-making games pretty boring, so I’m perpetually broke in these games.
Now that we know about Magnus’s cabin in the mountains, we can go up and visit it on the snowmobile. Dig the northern lights in the background. The scenery in this game is really so gorgeous, I’m not over it. Anyway, Magnus’s cabin is locked, so we can’t go inside yet.
We can, however, explore these ice caves! Woo! Secret ice cave through the mountain!
A few steps into the cave, we find this lone glove lying here. “I wonder who it belongs to,” Nancy muses. Yeah, gosh, who could it be?
Okay, that’s it for the mountains. Let’s turn around and head back to town…where we are promptly jumped by Gunnar, who’s holding a giant knife. Jesus Christ, Gunnar, I know you don’t like outsiders, but you don’t gotta knife us! Just ask Nancy to leave, damn!
Gunnar was apparently gutting fish for Elisabet, and he’s all, “Whoops, didn’t mean to wave a giant knife at you, carry on.” Oookay. So that happened.
Our next step is to go use Dagny’s radio key. Oddly, there’s no puzzle here — we just stick the key in the radio, and Nancy automatically tries to call out. This game actually isn’t very puzzle-heavy — there are a few long puzzles, but the actual quantity of them is a lot lower than previous games. Anyway, there’s a bit of silence, and then someone starts talking back at us. Her name is Alex, she’s American, and she hasn’t heard from Magnus in ages — but she totally didn’t mean to sleep through training and she hasn’t filled out any of his daily logs for months, but she really needs this job so please don’t fire her. Nancy’s like, “What?” and Alex is like, “What? Oh, if you’re not my boss, then this is control tower #32.” Heh. Alex is interning at the control tower for her degree in “marine psychology” (“It’s sailor feelings.”), and she keeps track of ship movements and speaks with anyone who’s planning to dock in Iceland. Except not really, because Alex is a mess and hasn’t been keeping any of her records straight for months.
She tells us that Magnus always called in every morning, and after a while they started talking and got to be friends, like how you get to be friends with whoever’s on the morning shift at the coffee shop and after greeting each other every day you start bonding over the misery of being awake at 6:45 in the morning. I don’t miss my old job. Anyway, one day Magnus and Alex were chatting, when she heard another voice on board. Magnus went to go check it out, and then Alex heard fighting, and Magnus never came back. Nancy gulps that this is starting to sound like an abduction. We ask if the voice was male or female, but Alex says it was too far away to make out.
We ask if she knows Dagny, and Alex asks, “Always freezing, kind of sassy?” Hee. Alex tells us that Dagny was always calling her trying to find out when Magnus would be in and out of harbor. HMMM. (Also, reminder that Dagny claimed not to know how to work the radio.) Alex says that she stalked Dagny a bit online, and found out that Dagny’s wanted in the US for stealing money from some treasure she found there.
Let’s ask about Elisabet! Alex says that Magnus called her “Sæta”, which means “cutie” in Icelandic. (According to Wiktionary…kind of? It apparently officially means “woman” but in a poetic way, or alternatively, a woman who waits for a sailor to come home — which fits Elisabet. I can believe that there’s a slangier meaning not listed there, though.) Alex tells us that Magnus spent all his time either complaining about Elisabet or pining for her. She heard that they broke up right before he went missing. Alex is like, “You know, now that I’m saying all this out loud, it sounds totally suspicious.”
So, Alex, about those ship records. Alex is like, “Yeah, no, I got nothing. Except a super-cool drawing of a whale.” Sigh. Okay, what about helping us distract someone so we can go through their stuff? Alex agrees to help, but wants something in exchange. She’s supposed to fix the light in the Skipbrot lighthouse, but like, it’s soooo far and soooo cold, and “why do my job when I can make Nancy do it?” is the unofficial motto of the characters in this series. Nancy agrees, so we’ll have to go off to the lighthouse.
In order to get to the lighthouse, we have to use the dinghy, but it’s not working. Per Soren’s pamphlet, we have to solve this puzzle to get the boat working again. Remember when all we needed was some torque? Simpler times. Anyway, the diagram in the pamphlet indicates that the spark plug connectors have to be placed in the order 16, 9, 19, and 13. Then we want to add the red and black spark plugs whose combined value equals the connector. It’s actually pretty easy — you just put the connectors in order, then put the plugs in that add up to the number on the connector. The only twist is that all the numbers are written in Icelandic. You have to buy the Icelandic guidebook in the gift shop to find the translated numbers — or, if you understand Icelandic (or Swedish, in my case*) and can guess the numbers, you have to buy the guidebook for the game to recognize that you know the numbers.
*I don’t mean to keep bringing this up, but this game is literally the most use I’ve ever gotten out of my Swedish lessons. LET ME HAVE THIS.
Anyway, we start up the dinghy and zip out of there — “I don’t know whose this is, but I’m just gonna borrow it,” Nancy says. Hee. We pull up to the lighthouse, which is very creepy and imposing-looking. I’m a fan.
The door is locked, but we have the key that we got from Magnus’s desk, so we can just rock in. When we get to the top, Nancy says that we should call Alex (she gave us her number at the end of our first conversation with her).
We call Alex, and she gives us instructions for the lighthouse puzzle: we have to combine similar colors to create white bubbles, and we have to get seven white bubbles on the board (corresponding to the circles on the lighthouse). Two blue bubbles will combine to create green, two green creates red, two red creates a multicolor one, and two multicolor will create white. All the bubbles can be “pushed” in one direction or the other, and if any of the same color bubbles are next to each other, they’ll combine. New bubbles of a random color (not multi or white, though) will pop up on the board as you combine more bubbles. The goal is to push them around the board so that they’ll combine, without trapping yourself in a corner where you can’t combine any more colors.
Success! Let’s call Alex and tell her what’s up. She thanks us and says, “Okay, now let’s talk about stealing stuff.” Heh. I like you, Alex. “I prefer ‘snooping,’” Nancy snips. Alex: “Whatever, klepto.” She tells us that there’s an alarm hidden in Magnus’s chair in the wheelhouse, and we can set it off to cause a distraction. Okay, but…don’t we want Elisabet off the ship entirely? How is setting off an alarm on the ship going to accomplish that? Whatever.
But then! We turn around all ready to leave, when one of the panels lights up, telling us that remote access has been activated. All of the windows open, letting freezing air in. Oh snap, we’re gonna die up here. Let’s solve a puzzle like our lives depend on it!
To the right of the hatch that we came through is a panel, and we can click on it to start this puzzle. It’s similar to the camera puzzle in Trail of the Twister — we want to arrange the numbers in the pyramid, with the sum of two numbers stacked on top of them.
When we finish the puzzle, the windows will close, we won’t freeze to death, and we can bail back to the ship. As Alex told us, there’s an alarm hidden in the armrest of the chair in the wheelhouse. We press the button, which doesn’t cause any noise that we can hear, but when we leave the wheelhouse, Elisabet will gone. Time to go through her stuff!
We open her bag, and find the key to Magnus’s cabin. We also find this letter from Magnus, telling her that her anniversary gift is in his room and that there’s a puzzle to solve for her to get to it. Whatever’s inside is rightfully Elisabet’s, and Magnus says that he didn’t mean to hide it from her for so long. He gives her some hints as to how to solve the puzzle, and Nancy muses that Elisabet must not have ever opened her present. I can’t believe Magnus disappeared off the face of the earth with no warning, and he’s still a better boyfriend than Nancy is a girlfriend.
And hey, now that Elisabet’s gone, can we open that door she was guarding? No, it’s locked. Bummer.
So off we go, back to Magnus’s cabin. On our way there, we get a call from Ned. Jesus, Ned, do you really have the money to be making all these international calls? He’s acting hella weird — he asks if we have a minute, and Nancy’s like, “Actually, I’m about to go break into this dude’s house, so now is not a good time.” Ned’s like, “Oh, okay! In that case, I am not calling about anything important at all. Just ignore me! Everything’s fine!” Nancy’s like, “Dude, I am a detective, I can TELL that you’re acting weird.” Ned blusters a little more about how EVERYTHING IS TOTALLY NORMAL. In the background, Burt is like, “Dude, give me the phone, this is just embarrassing.” Then Ned hangs up on us. Nancy freaks out that Ned is being held hostage or something, and that’s why he’s acting so weird. We call back, but Ned doesn’t pick up. Ned, if Dwayne Powers is holding a gun to your head, say “pasta.”
So we use the key we found in Elisabet’s bag, and we can go into Magnus’s cabin! Let’s go through all his shit and see what we can find.
We open up his stove and find two more yellow discs, similar to the fish one we found at the Missti Skip. We’re now 3 for 10 on these.
On Magnus’s end table, we find the following: 2 more discs (5/10), a poster that completely shatters the fourth wall, and a set of sailor-themed limericks(!) that Magnus has been writing. Attached to the limericks is a note from “Gracie” from International Publishing, who gushes that the maturity and darkness in the limericks is beyond anything she’s ever seen. Nothing like anapestic meter to put you in a solemn mood.
Magnus’s bed has two more discs (7/10) and a bunch of pictures on the wall. We can look more closely at the photos, which appear to be of food and the ice caves. Nancy wonders what they’re for.
Let’s be invasive and listen to all of Magnus’s voicemails. A little weird that he has a landline when apparently the reception up here in the remote mountains is good enough that Ned can hit us up to say nothing, but we need to be able to listen to his messages for plot purposes, so whatever. There’s another disc (8/10) on the answering machine.
Most of the messages are from Elisabet — they start off concerned and regretful, but as time passes and Magnus doesn’t call back, she gets more and more upset. By the last one, she’s threatening to ruin him and “destroy [his] happiness the way he destroyed [hers].” Yikes! Meanwhile, Dagny’s also called (“I literally can’t believe you still have a land line. What are you, ninety?”) to tell him that she found something that might be a big break in their hunt for the treasure. Obviously Magnus never calls her back, and the last message on the machine is Dagny bawling him out for disappearing and leaving her to deal with the crashed ship and the angry townspeople. Man, Magnus is going to have a hell of a time catching up when we find him.
One of the books on Magnus’s desk is about the volcanic eruption of 1783 — the one that Captain Lawrence came to town for — with a note in the margin. Magnus has circled the bit about the crow’s nest in the center of Skipbrot, saying that the solution is there. He wanted to try the puzzle after the festival.
We find this note from Dagny, who says that Magnus’s dog stole her spare luggage key. We poke around the cabin some more and find a dog bed — Nancy notes that it’s odd that the dog isn’t here. Underneath the bed, we’ll find the key to Dagny’s luggage. We’ll just have to get Soren out of the way so we can look through it.
We also find another disc on the blue table, so now we’re 9/10. Wow, that was quick.
Behind the dog bed is a panel, which has this puzzle on it. There’s a list of instructions telling where all the toys go — e.g., “No adjacent toys of the same kind” and “The first two toys in the row are a dog and then a pony.” So we want to arrange the toys to match the clues given on the instruction sheet. It’s pretty easy; there are a lot of these puzzles in the series so you should be used to them.
Solving the toy puzzle opens a drawer, where we find this folder full of messages between Dagny and Magnus. Dagny suspects that Magnus is holding out on her about the treasure, and she’s starting to get her threat on with him. Magnus assures her that he’s still working with her — he’s tasked her with getting a toy made out of rawhide for some reason. He also notes that he’s been trying to scrape the barnacles off of the docks, because apparently that’s important for finding the treasure. He’s afraid that someone is following him, and Dagny’s like, “You shouldn’t be worried about that, you should be worried about me burning your house down if you run off with the treasure.” Damn, Dagny.
Okay, so let’s see what Magnus’s present to Elisabet was. Hope you don’t mind that Nancy’s just opening up your anniversary gift, Elisabet! We follow the rules laid out in Magnus’s letter to her — there should be four colors of each crystal in every row and column, and no more than 2 of the same color adjacent to each other.
The trunk opens, and we find a music box inside. We click on it and it plays a tune, but we don’t know what it means yet.
There’s also a small sketch taped to the lid of the trunk, that looks like the pieces of the sketch that we found on the ship. We don’t have enough pieces to put together a full picture yet, though, so we’ll come back to this.
Finally, we turn around to leave the cabin, and we find the last disc near the door. 10/10! Now that we’ve found all sorts of shit, it’s time to go back into the ice caves and then maybe get up in everyone’s faces about their shady personal lives.
Up next: Puzzles for fucking ever. We also explore the ice caves and snoop in everyone’s stuff. Privacy is for squares!
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