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National Neopolitan Museum Archive: The Lost Desert Plot - Enter Jazan |
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Stop! This page is still under construction!
On August 30, 2005, we were introduced to a new plot in the Lost Desert. It all started when a mysterious stranger arrived to claim Princess Amira of Sakhmet as his bride...and stole the entire city away!
To read the comics connected with the plot, click here.
The plot finally concluded on November 29, 2005.
This was the biggest plot puzzle they've done up to this point. Here's the (really really long) solution!
- Prologue
- Part I - The Temple of 1,000 Tombs
- Part II - The Mysterious Tablet
- Part III - The False Prophecy
- Part IV - The Scroll Repository
- Part V - The Return of Razul
The Sakhmetian Hieroglyphs
Twelve hieroglyphs were seen again and again throughout the puzzle. Here's a reference guide:
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| ahn - an ankh | ben - a bird | djo - two stalks of wheat |
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| fer - a pawprint | kar - a leaf | kha - a fish |
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| lat - a cup | nem - water waves | ra - the rising sun |
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| saf - a staff | set - a vase | tep - an eye |
The Mysterious Scrolls
Before the plot actually began, the news revealed that there would be some new scrolls found around the site. It showed four of them.
In reality there were twelve such scrolls, one for each of the twelve Sakhmetian hieroglyph symbols that players would come to know and love. Each scroll was in one of three styles, and had a wax seal in one of four colors -- red, yellow, blue, or green. The colors of the seals and the styles of the scrolls were totally irrelevant and random (although they were evenly divided so that there were three scrolls of each wax color, and four scrolls of each scroll style).
The scrolls were never made available to players. They were not given out in shops or through random events. They could be searched for by name in the Shop Wizard, but because of the strange names of some scrolls, only about half of them were found this way.
Early on in the plot, three of the scrolls were "released" to fake accounts that we created. We posted on the Neoboards, putting the scrolls in galleries or trades so that players could see them. (No one guessed they were fake accounts. Apparently we're brilliant actors!)
The Fortune Teller
A link at the bottom of the comic page led to the Fortune Teller, a mysterious Kau occupying a tent outside Sakhmet City. She said lots of mysterious things at first, and gave many clues throughout the course of the puzzle.
Quite by accident, some extra artwork was left inside the .SWF file showing the Fortune Teller. This was removed shortly after she was launched, but not before many players found it, thinking the extra art were clues. We later replaced the extra art with a spinning ben scroll, as a red herring.
The Mysterious Tablet
The Fortune Teller linked to a Mysterious Tablet she had found:
The tablet had sixteen pieces, twelve of which were missing. The position and symbol of each of the four non-missing pieces was random for each user. At first, the Mysterious Tablet did nothing.
Once the comic began, players occasionally saw a banner ad that would direct them to the Temple of 1,000 Tombs. This lost temple, out in the wastes of the Lost Desert, contained a vast maze of corridors and traps. The entrance of the temple displayed one of two images:
The second image was displayed between 3pm and 5pm NST every day and otherwise had no relevance. But it was fun to watch the theories people came up with. :)
Below the temple image was a two-line poem. For example:
We'll come back to the meaning of this poem later.
Clicking on the temple image caused you to enter the temple. Each temple consisted of around 80-85 rooms. Each room consisted of 5 doorways, each of which either led into a tomb or into another room. Here's a sample room:
The left and right arrows took the player to adjacent rooms, each of which also had five doors. The first, second, and fifth doors in this room also led to other rooms. The colored doors (see the blue and black doors, above) led to tombs. While in the entrance room, players were given an option to leave the temple. This option was not available in any other room.
Each player's temple was randomly generated and unique to that player. It was also the same every time they entered the temple. In this way, it was possible (and necessary, to complete the puzzle) to map the entire temple by navigating from room to room and recording which doors and passages led where.
Every temple contained 288 tomb doors, one for each combination of door color, shape, and symbol above the door. There were six door colors (ruby, lapis, gold, silver, onyx, moss), four door shapes (rectangular, triangular, pentagonal, oval), and the symbols above the doors were the 12 Sakhmetian hieroglyphs.
All but one of the 288 tombs led into trap rooms, which would lock the player in place for one hour. There were seven traps:
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| An unsolvable riddle | A gelatinous non-cube |
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| A spike pit | Crushing walls |
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| A room that fills with water | A room that fills with sleep gas |
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| A pile of sand | |
Astute players noticed that the riddle, spike pit, and water traps were modifications of the related TCG cards from the Lost Desert set. The pile of sand trap caused the player's active pet to appear as a pile of sand for the next hour, in that pet's lookup page as well as in the Battledome.
The traps were randomly distributed; there was no relationship between the door color, shape, or symbol, and the nature of the trap within. However the same tomb door always led to the same trap.
The one tomb door that was not a trap led to a statue of the fire faerie, Nuria:
On the base of Nuria's statue was, again, one of the twelve Sakhmetian symbols. This symbol was randomly determined for each player, and was always the same for any given player. The statue contained an inscription: "Whosoever shall speak the prophecy here, shall be rewarded with treasures beyond compare." At this point, speaking any text to the statue caused the player to be ejected out into the desert and barred from reentering the temple for half an hour.
But how did a player find the statue room out of the 288 tomb doors? The clue was the poem on the front door of the temple. The poem was randomly generated for each user, from two sets of "clue" lines. One set of clues indicated the color of the door:
However, knowing the color and shape of the statue room door only helped narrow down the choices to twelve doors. Players had to enter each of the twelve candidate tomb doors, via trial and error, to figure out which one contained their statue.
In addition to the 288 tomb doors, there were also three library doors:
Each library door had an artistic depiction of a snake on the front. (The snake shape was a reference to the snake on Jazan's headpiece.)
The first door showed a constellation picked out with gems -- the filename ending, "_ast", is short for "aster," the Latin word for "star."
The second door depicted a river made of inlaid lapis gemstone. This corresponded to its ending, "_h2o", the chemical formula for water.
The third door showed a snake-shaped maze, corresponding to its filename, "_nwo", short for "no way out."
Inside each library door was a small library that looked something like this:
(Notice that on the left side of the bottom shelf of each library sat the reward from Lenny Conundrum #132, "Pyramid Painting Vol. 7: Faux Finishes." This was another red herring.)
Four of the twelve scrolls mentioned in the prologue, above, were present in each of the three libraries. If a player read one of the scrolls, they would be thrown out of the temple for twelve hours. The libraries did not actually figure into this part of the puzzle; we'll explain more about them later.
Finally, some players' temple contained a "blank wall" door, which did nothing and led nowhere.
Its existence was merely an artifact of the random nature of the temple; sometimes there would be more spaces for doors than there were doors available to fill them (since every temple had exactly 288 tomb doors and three library doors, but a random number of connector doors).
Once players found their statue, this fact was recorded, because finding the statue was a requirement for many later stages of the puzzle.
After comic #3 went live, the Fortune Teller began seeing images in her crystal ball, and gave cryptic clues. The first clue was, "I see ancient pharaohs laid at rest." This was a reference to Pyramids; after reading the clue, if a player went to Pyramids and completed a game, a strange parchment was displayed at the bottom of the screen:
Each column of the parchment corresponded to a room in the Temple. (The vertical order of color, shape, and symbol was random and irrelevant.) So in the example above, the fourth column (the one with a single dot over it) corresponded to the red pentagonal room with a kha (fish) symbol over it. If the player subsequently went to the room in their temple indicated by the column with a single dot, they would receive a dirty stone fragment:
The player then had to take the fragment to the Toy Repair Shop on Terror Mountain. Donny would clean it (if he didn't blow it up by accident, or give you something else in exchange):
If the player then took the piece to their Mysterious Tablet, it would slot itself into the proper spot.
Once the player did this, they could return to the Fortune Teller, who would give another clue. Decipher the clue, find the next parchment, and it would tell the player which room in their temple had the next dirty stone fragment.
But each parchment had four columns, each pointing at a room in the Temple. Which one was the correct one? For each parchment, the room containing the fragment for that step was indicated by the room with a number of dots over it equal to the clue number. So for the first clue (and first parchment), the correct room was the one with one dot over it; for the second clue, two dots; and so on. The other three rooms depicted on each parchment were meaningless red herrings.
The fortune teller released one new clue every six or seven hours, over the course of the weekend following the release of comic #3. There were twelve clues in all, one for each missing spot in the Mysterious Tablet. Each clue led to one of the twelve main Neopian worlds.
The twelve clues she gave were as follows (what's shown is the text of the clue followed by what world it was in and what the player had to do to get that clue's parchment):
After comic #4 was launched, clickable versions of the twelve Sakhmetian symbols appeared in comics 1-3. Here's the ra (sun) symbol, hidden in the arm of Amira's throne in comic #2:
In the second image, it shows the highlighted version of the symbol that occurs when the player moused over it.
Each time the player clicked a symbol, nothing appeared to happen, although each symbol clicked was recorded by our web servers.
If the player had completed their Mysterious Tablet by finding all 12 missing pieces, and then clicked the comic symbols in the order they appeared in their tablet, they would be shown a prophecy. There were 27 very similar prophecies, one of which was randomly selected for each user:
Whichever prophecy the player received, they could then take to the statue room in the Temple of 1,000 Tombs. Speaking the prophecy to the statue caused a bright light to appear above the statue, and a compartment to open in the base of the statue.
After a great deal of scrolling down, the player was revealed to be... buried in a pile of scarabs.
We found this hilarious and laughed for days and days.
When comic #5 was launched, Sakhmet City disappeared from the Lost Desert map (to coincide with the storyline, when Sakhmet was transported to another dimension by the "evil" Jazan). Shortly thereafter, the Fortune Teller said that she'd heard that some of the royal ministers were planning to build a scroll repository out in the desert, in order to collect scrolls so that they could do research and figure out how to bring Sakhmet City back. (The Scroll Repository was based on Lenny Conundrums #132 and 133.)
Several days later, a trail of footprints appeared in the corner of the (now nearly-empty) Lost Desert map. Clicking on the footprints led to the Scroll Repository. However, the repository was guarded by a pair of irritable Grarrls:
When a player tried to enter the repository, the guards challenged them to provide a reason why they were there. A drop-box below offered a choice of six reasons.
Before we get into that, let's go back to the library rooms in the Temple of 1,000 Tombs, and the 12 scrolls found therein. By this time, we had reduced the rarity of the 12 scrolls so that they could be searched on the navigation bar. Soon, all 12 had been discovered.
If the player looked at the base of the Nuria statue in their temple, they would see one of the 12 Sakhmetian symbols. If they took this symbol and examined the scroll item whose wax seal symbol matched the symbol on their statue, the description of the scroll was a clue, pointing at which of the three libraries that particular scroll could be found in.
| Symbol | Scroll Title | Description | Library |
| kha (fish) | Famous Sand Collections | Here you can see suns far away. | stars |
| set (vase) | Royal Proclamations of Coltzan Vol. 13 | Here you might find a hunter or cup. | stars |
| ra (sun) | Desert Tent Zoning Regulations | Here you can look ages into the past. | stars |
| ahn (ankh) | The Joy of Burnt Desert Food | Here you can navigate by points of light. | stars |
| lat (cup) | The Chemical Properties of Sand | Here you could be terribly lost. | maze |
| ben (bird) | Sand Cuisine for Elephantes | Here you cannot tell one path from the next. | maze |
| saf (staff) | Ruki Population Survey Vol. 5 | Here you could wander with no end in sight. | maze |
| nem (water) | Decorating With Sand - Winter Quarterly | Here you might never be heard from again. | maze |
| tep (eye) | History of the Sakhmet Dynasty Vol. 3 | Here you could sail from lake to sea. | river |
| djo (wheat) | Desert Petpets: A Cautionary Tale | Here you might weather a deadly flood. | river |
| kar (leaf) | Edible Desert Foliage Vol. 9 | Here you can take a cool drink. | river |
| fer (pawprint) | Desert Survival Skills for the Dim-Witted | Here you will find rushing rapids. | river |
If the player went to the library room corresponding to "their" scroll, they would find that scroll among the four sitting on the tablet. If they read that scroll, they would get the message, "Your pet understands the scroll and gains a little insight." (emphasis added) If they read any other scroll, it would say, "Your pet reads the scroll and gains a little insight."
If the player had not yet visited their statue, then it was impossible to find the proper scroll (the temple would automatically redirect them to the wrong library, even if they entered the right door). Once they visited the statue, it became possible to find and read the proper scroll.
If the proper scroll was the most recent scroll the player had read, then when they visited the repository gate, one of the six reasons they could give would be the correct one that let them enter the repository. (Otherwise, all six reasons would be wrong.) If the player gave any wrong reason, the Grarrls would throw them out for half an hour. Each scroll had a reason associated with it, and the player had to give the reason corresponding to their scroll:
| Title of the player's scroll | Correct reason |
| Famous Sand Collections | "I don't have sand that color yet! Don't you know who I am?" |
| Royal Proclamations of Coltzan Vol. 13 | "I know I'm late, but I'm here to deliver an important royal message." |
| Desert Tent Zoning Regulations | "That tent over there has insufficient ventilation. I'll have to write you a citation." |
| The Joy of Burnt Desert Food | "I'm here with extra charcoal for the caterers." |
| The Chemical Properties of Sand | "This sand contains traces of faeryllium. To the laboratory!" |
| Sand Cuisine for Elephantes | "I'm here to prepare food for your Elephante workers." |
| Ruki Population Survey Vol. 5 | "I'm here with the royal census. You're not a Ruki! Get out of my way!" |
| Decorating With Sand - Winter Quarterly | "Have you thought about triple-glazing your windows? It's fun and functional!" |
| History of the Sakhmet Dynasty Vol. 3 | "I'm here to chronicle the construction of this repository." |
| Desert Petpets: A Cautionary Tale | "Did that Anubis get its 15-minute break yet?" |
| Edible Desert Foliage Vol. 9 | "I'm the food specialist for your herbivorous workers." |
| Desert Survival Skills for the Dim-Witted | "You guys should drink some more water before you get heat stroke." |
Once the player gave the right reason, they were admitted to the Scroll Repository. There the player encountered the Yurble foreman, in charge of all the workers in the construction project. The Yurble foreman was very ill-tempered.
Phase 1 - Moving Sand
As related in Lenny Conundrum #133, the Scroll Repository was buried by a freak sandstorm. So the first step of the Scroll Repository was to carry away all the sand. Each player could carry away one handful of sand at a time.
However, due to the distance of the repository from the rest of civilization, it took anywhere from 1 to 3 hours per trip. The time it took had to do with the movement speed of the player's active pet: Pets with a speed of 20 or below took 3 hours, and pets with a speed of 80 or above took 1 hour. Speeds between 20 and 80 were scaled linearly from 3 to 1 hours as speed increased.
Also, each time a player took away a handful of sand, there was a chance they would find an item. Each item had a small chance of being a Lost Desert Paint Brush, but was otherwise some cheap junk.
It took players about four days to carry away enough sand to unbury the repository pyramid. 104,034 handfuls of sand were carried away from the repository.
Phase 2 - Excavating Blocks
Upon clearing the sand, it was discovered that the original pyramid architects had neglected to actually leave any internal space inside the pyramid, so that there'd be room for scrolls! Thus the next phase involved excavating blocks from the repository. There were 4,330 blocks that needed to be removed, spread across six floors.
Each block had a Sakhmetian hieroglyph carved into it, and required five players working in tandem to move it.
Any player trying to move a block whose carved symbol did not match the symbol on their Nuria statue was punished and sent outside by the foreman to wait for half an hour.
Once five players joined a particular block with the right symbol on it, they could move it outside. However for each block, there was a small chance that a pile of scarabs would erupt from behind the block, frightening all the pets and forcing them to run outside in terror. At this point, other players could take over trying to move that block.
When a block was successfully moved, each player who helped move it had a chance to receive a medium-to-high quality item that was found stuck behind the block.
It took around 22 hours to clear the repository of the necessary blocks.
Phase 3 - Placing Furniture
Once the blocks were cleared, a team of Ruki furniture-wrights began carving the stone blocks into furniture. This took them several days. They carved benches, tables, scroll racks, and stand-lamps.
After the carving was done, players could move furniture into the repository by picking up a piece from the Rukis' tent outside the repository, and carrying it inside. Each spot that was intended to have a piece of furniture had a chalk outline of the shape of the furniture on its spot.
Top row: Chalk outlines.
Middle row: Smeared chalk outlines after a piece was stolen.
Bottom row: Correctly placed furniture.
From left to right: Stand lamp, table, scroll rack, and benches.
Once a piece of furniture was stolen, its chalk was redrawn (allowing a new piece of furniture to be placed there) after 15 minutes.
However, players could not just put furniture down willy-nilly. First they had to find the Interior Decorator (ID).
The ID started out in the entry foyer of the repository, and told players on which floor to place their furniture. Once the player talked to the ID, they could put that piece of furniture down in any correct spot on the specified floor. Adding to the difficulty, after several hours the ID got bored and started wandering around the repository. Every hour or two, he moved to a new (random) location.
Players who put furniture down in the wrong spot, or on the wrong floor, were kicked out of the repository for a while by the angry foreman.
Another problem arose: Unknown thieves were stealing furniture! As fast as it could get put down, the furniture was stolen. The thieves were determined and never seemed to sleep, but over the course of several days, the players made progress against the thieves, and finally the entire repository was furnished. The thieves pilfered 138,989 pieces of furniture, which put a terrible strain on the Ruki furniture-wrights, who were forced to continue making furniture day and night.
Finally, all 1,829 pieces of furniture were placed. Of these, the majority (1,434) were scroll racks.
Phase 4 - Reading Scrolls
Finally the repository was unburied, excavated, and furnished. The players took a breather while a team of librarians came in and filled the repository with scrolls, putting 20 scrolls in every rack. Once this was finished, the repository was open to everyone -- the Grarrl guards were downsized and all and sundry could enter the repository.
Here's a sample scroll rack:
There were thousands of scrolls in the repository. Each scroll had a colored wax seal, with one of the 12 Sakhmetian symbols on it. The seven wax seal colors were red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple, and white. There were also five styles of scroll, for a total of 420 distinct scroll images. The scroll styles were irrelevant and had no bearing on anything. Ignoring scroll styles, there were 12 symbols x 7 colors = 84 distinct scrolls.
Reading any given scroll in the repository would display the message, "Your pet reads the scroll and hopefully learns something!"
The Chef Mini-Quest
Explorers soon found that, as the construction had ended, the Yurble foreman had been moved to a new job -- head chef in the repository's cafeteria. He lamented his boring job and that he had no food to prepare.
At this point, if the player had completed the earlier parts of the puzzle, up to and including the step of speaking the false prophecy and getting buried by a pile of scarabs, the chef mentioned that he wished he could have adventures like that, and wished he had a souvenir from some exotic place.
To continue, the player had to go to the Gift Shop of 1,000 Trinkets, in the Temple of 1,000 Tombs.
The bored Ruki running the place (who normally had nothing for sale) mentioned that she did have one souvenir, and that she'd give it to the player if they brought her some black smoke. She gave the player an empty vial but no clue as to how to find black smoke.
However, in the Battledome, a challenger known as the Spirit of the Ruins was made available a few days before the scroll repository opened.
If the player equipped the empty vial and attacked the Spirit of the Ruins with it, the vial would fill with smoke.
The player could then take the filled vial back to the gift shop clerk, and she would trade the player the vial for a novelty T-shirt.
If the player then took the T-shirt to the chef, he would exchange it for a "Useless Crystal" from a box that had been mistakenly shipped to him.
The Scroll Racks
A few days later, the repository's signage was completed. Every room had a name associated with it. Also, three special scroll racks were installed in the entry foyer.
The location indicator, and the three card catalog racks on the repository map.
The card catalog racks in close-up.
Each rack had a list of the 12 Sakhmetian hieroglyphs on it. If the player wanted to know where a yellow tep scroll was, for example, they would look at the yellow card catalog and read the name of the room next to the tep symbol:
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Asparagus Recipes |
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The Stacks, Eastern Archives |
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Lost Desert Literature (fiction) |
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Ormlikadian Scrolls |
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Rejected Marriage Proposals |
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Lost Desert Historical Archives, Sections 95-161 |
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The Stacks, Western Archives |
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Uncategorized Archives, Group 5 |
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The Catacombs, Section Grit |
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Lost Desert Genealogical Histories, Lat through Tep |
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Civil Records New Acquisitions, Gas Room |
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Coltzan Royal Archives, Room 928b |
Symbol list in an example yellow card catalog.
In the example above, the yellow tep (eye) scroll is found in "The Stacks, Western Archives." That particular room was located on the third floor of the repository. In practical terms this meant that at least one of the scroll racks in that room was guaranteed to have a yellow tep scroll in it. (But other yellow tep scrolls might also be found elsewhere, depending on other factors. We'll get back to that later.)
The Map Room
Something else changed: A secret staircase on the fifth floor of the repository led down to a secret map room in the basement.
Most of the time, the map room was dimly lit, as above, but 1 hour out of every 8, sunlight would be shining directly into it. (Yes, we know this is physically impossible.) Each player was randomly assigned three hours during the day that light would be shining into the map room. (The three hours were separated by seven-hour breaks; so for example, a player might have light in the map room from 2am-3am, 10am-11am, and 6pm-7pm.)
On the floor of the map room was a miniature model of Sakhmet City. The back wall contained a series of (irrelevant) Sakhmetian hieroglyphs. If the player had the Useless Crystal when the player entered the map room, the player could click on the spire of Sakhmet City and the crystal would be placed there. If the light was dim, nothing would happen. If the light was shining, then a beam of sunlight would strike the crystal and cause a series of red, yellow, and blue spots of light to be projected on the opposite wall:
There were exactly 12 colored spots, and 4 blank spots. These 16 spots corresponded to the 16 symbols on each player's completed Mysterious Tablet, as shown:
The 12 colored spots identified which scrolls the player had to read, but in what order did they have to be read? If a player examined their Useless Crystal in their inventory, the pop-up window would show a different image than the main inventory screen.
The Useless Crystal, left, and the close-up view, right.
In close-up, the crystal had three tiny gems across the top: one blue, one red, and one yellow. The left-to-right order of these gems dictated the overall color order each player had to read the scrolls in. (And, as usual, the order was randomized for each player.) So if a player's crystal order was red-yellow-blue, as in the image above right, then they had to read the four red scrolls first, then the four yellow scrolls, then the four blue scrolls.
But which order did they read the scrolls within each color? This was dictated by the order in which the symbols for that color appeared in the card catalog for each color. For example, the four red symbols in the tablet shown above are ahn (ankh), kha (fish), fer (paw), and set (vase). This player's red card catalog looks like this:
| 1. |  |
Artisan Licensing Records, Rukis |
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The Stacks, Western Archives | |
| 2. |  |
The Stacks, Eastern Archives |
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Anubis Toxicology Reports | |
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Artisan Licensing Records, Yurbles | |
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The Catacombs, Section Dust | |
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Coltzan Royal Archives, Room 932a | |
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The Stacks, Western Archives | |
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Sakhmetian Special Collections, Selket Room | |
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Historical Index Reference Room | |
| 3. |  |
Civil Records Standard Reference, Onyx Room |
| 4. |  |
Tomb Artifacts, Coffin Details |
In the card catalog list, the four symbols appear in the order fer (paw), set (vase), ahn (ankh), kha (fish). So the first scroll this player had to read was the red fer (paw) scroll. As the card catalog indicates, this scroll would be found in the section marked "Artisan Licensing Records, Rukis." So the player would proceed to that section of the repository, search the racks there for a red fer (paw) scroll, and read it.
Then the player would read the red set (vase), red ahn (aknh), and red kha (fish) scrolls, in that order. Once they had finished the red scrolls, they would move on to the yellow scrolls, using the yellow card catalog as a guide to the order the scrolls should be read. And once yellow was done, they'd repeat the process with the blue scrolls.
One tricky aspect is that the twelve scrolls the player needed each only appeared ONCE in the entire repository. All the other scrolls were used as "filler," appearing hundreds of times throughout the repository.
When they read the 12th scroll in the correct order, instead of the usual, "Your pet reads the scroll and hopefully learns something!" message, the following message appeared: "A sharp eye holds the next step." This clue directed the player to find a spike pit trap in the Temple of 1,000 Tombs.
If the player subsequently fell into such a trap, and clicked on the eye of the largest skull, the image would change to show another Useless Crystal jammed into the eye socket of the skull. The player would acquire the second Useless Crystal at this point.
Click inside the red area to reveal the second Useless Crystal.
As soon as the player acquired the second Useless Crystal, the color order of the three card catalogs, the order of the symbols in each catalog, and the positions of every scroll in the repository were randomly reshuffled for that player.
The Second Crystal
At this point, the player could take the second Useless Crystal to the map room, and place it into the spire of the Sakhmet Palace miniature. Doing so (when the room was lit up) would show another series of colors on the wall:
This time, eight of the 12 red, yellow, or blue colors from the first wall pattern were overlaid with another color, turning them into green, orange, or purple, as shown:
Combining the new color pattern with the Mysterious Tablet would result in eight color-symbol pairs in which the color is green, orange, or purple. (The four remaining primary color spots are ignored in this step.)
To complete this step, the player had to read the eight relevant scrolls in reverse order, from right to left. In the above example, the order would be: green lat (cup), purple set (vase), green kar (leaf), purple fer (paw), green kha (fish), purple kha (fish), orange ahn (ankh), and green ra (sun). But how did the player find those scrolls, since the card catalog doesn't contain green, orange, or purple entries?
In the example above, the first scroll that would need to be read is a green lat (cup) scroll. To find the location of this scroll, the player would have to read a blue and yellow lat (cup) scroll. Once the second of those two scrolls was read, it would reveal the room location of the green lat (cup) scroll. When the player proceeded to that room and read the green lat (cup) scroll, this fact would be recorded and the player could proceed to the next purple, orange, or green scroll.
The "component" scrolls -- in this case, the blue and yellow lat (cup) scrolls -- could obviously be read in one of two orders (blue first or yellow first). Which one the player should read first was determined by the left-to-right order of the card catalogs in this step.
Repeat this process for all eight secondary-color scrolls, and the player was given the next clue: "This clue does not exist." This is a reference to the fact that Jelly World does not exist; the player had to find a jelly blob trap in the Temple.
Click inside the red area to reveal the third Useless Crystal.
Once the player did so, clicking on the large bone in the bottom left of the blob would reveal the third Useless Crystal.
As before, the card catalog racks and scrolls in the repository were shuffled randomly.
The Third Crystal
Placing the Useless Crystal in the map room caused... the exact same pattern of lights to appear as the previous time! This was not a bug. What it meant is that the player had to read scrolls corresponding to the four squares that are unlit. Specifically, the player had to read the white scrolls of the matching symbols, from left to right in the tablet.
But how did one find the white scrolls? The scroll racks in the card catalog (which have been repainted and reorganized again) contained nothing about white scrolls. This time around, the player had to read the red, yellow, and blue scroll of each symbol, which then revealed where to find the appropriate white scroll for that symbol. But what order were the red, yellow, and blue scrolls to be read in?
It turns out that the chef had gotten bored, and has started painting his toenails:
In the above image, the chef's right foot has the toenails painted blue, yellow, and red, from the outside in. This means that in order to find the white ahn (ankh) scroll, the player would have to read the blue, yellow, and red ahn (ankh) scrolls in that order. This would reveal the location of the white scroll. The player would then proceed to that room, find the white ahn (ankh) scroll, and read it. This would be recorded and the player could proceed to the next white scroll.
After each white scroll, the chef's toenails would change, indicating a new three-color order to read the scrolls in, in order to find the current white scroll. This step was not necessary but was a time-saver. (As it happened, virtually no one discovered this clue!)
Once the player read all four white scrolls this way, a third clue was revealed: "The solution to the puzzle is thus..." followed by a number of strange diagrams and figures. Somehow, it all makes sense. This directs the player to find an unsolvable riddle trap in the Temple.
Click inside the red area to reveal the fourth Useless Crystal.
Clicking in an area in the bottom left of the image reveals the fourth Useless Crystal.
The Fourth Crystal and the Mysterious Scroll
Take this crystal to the map room and place it atop Sakhmet Palace. This time, the sunlight causes a beam of powerful, focused energy to blast a hole in the wall.
Click on the hole in the wall to enter the secret chamber.
Beyond the hole in the wall sat a secret chamber containing a Mysterious Scroll:
If the player returned to the Fortune Teller, she would look at it but not be able to decipher it. However she made a copy and examined it for several days.
Soon, Jazan's evil father, Razul, arrived to wreak havoc in Sakhmet City!
Shortly thereafter, the Fortune Teller figured out how to read the scroll -- she had it upside down! (Those crafty Qasalans.) It turns out that the scroll was a guide to translating Sakhmetian into Qasalan. If the player took the scroll to their mysterious tablet (via a separate link from the original tablet), they were given the opportunity to play what amounted to a game of Time Tunnel, except with sixteen symbols instead of four.
Placing symbols into the tablet and clicking "Attempt to Translate" caused a series of white or black dots to appear.
The white dots indicated how many spots had the correct symbol, and the black dots indicated how many spots had a correct symbol that was in the wrong place in the tablet. Some trial and error and logic combined to solve the tablet.
Solve the tablet, and the Fortune Teller congratulates the player on doing so, but... then what? They'd translated the tablet from Sakhmetian into Qasalan, but what does it mean?
At this point, if the player viewed comics 12-14 again, they would find that new clickable symbols, corresponding to the Qasalan hieroglyphs, had appeared in them. Clicking the symbols in the normal left-to-right order would yield another false prophecy:
Return to the Temple of 1,000 Tombs as with the first false prophecy, speak this prophecy to the statue of Nuria, and this time the player would be buried by a MOUNTAIN of scarabs!
In reality, the player had to click the symbols in the reverse order of how they appeared on the Qasalan tablet. (This is because Qasalan is read backward compared to Sakhmetian; the Fortune Teller noted this when she realized she'd been reading the Mysterious Scroll upside-down.) This caused the real prophecy to be revealed:
Speaking this prophecy to the statue of Nuria would result in a similar output as before, except this time, no scarabs. Instead, the player was shown three weapons inside the compartment, and told to choose one:
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| Scimitar of Eternal Dawn | Mace of Righteous Flame | Spear of Infinite Wisdom |
No matter which weapon the player chose, it immediately disintegrated (although the broken-down version remained as an item).
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| Scimitar of Eternal Dawn | Mace of Righteous Flame | Spear of Infinite Wisdom |
The final step was to equip the weapon, fight Razul in the Battledome, and use the weapon against him. This would cause him to be immediately reduced to zero hit points, which would "defeat" him (although in the context of the plot, this would only "weaken" him). Players were only allowed to fight him once, however there was a bug that allowed some players to fight him multiple times. (Only one fight's worth of Battledome points was awarded, even if a player beat him multiple times.)
Once enough players had weakened Razul, Jazan finally confronted him and defeated his evil father, and the Lost Desert was finally saved!
To view the prizes you could earn, click here.
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