Weekly Recap: The Allure of Wanton Cove

Another week, another weekly recap.  Honestly, I spent the last two days thinking about how to handle the weekly story style recap for Wanton Cove.  I think I came up with something you will all enjoy.

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A grizzled middle aged man sits behind a cluttered desk.  Behind him is a coat rack with a single long jacket and a battered jacket hanging from it.  As you enter the room he glances up.  The dim light glints off his eyes, but with the lights off it's hard to make out many details.

Suddenly, the soft orange of his cigarette flairs bright, his haunted features illuminating for a second as he draws on the cigarette between his lips.

"I suppose you want a brief on what's been happening?"  The man says, his voice is gravely, but it's the kind or raw that comes from emotion, "Please, take a seat."

He reaches across the table as you sit down, offering his hand in a firm handshake, "My name's Peter Duntell."

You accept the handshake, then settle back in the seat to allow him a chance to speak.

"You already know that my son went missing a while back?  I looked into it, called in every favor I knew in the hopes of learning something.  Even asked my Captain for time off, but he told me my son was a grown man and that if I wanted the time off it was time for me to retire,"  A humorless laugh escapes his lips, "For some damned reason, I thought my job was more important at the time, so I went to talk with my former partner.  Some of what my son had mailed me before his disappearance looked like it might be tied to a case he got hung up on and never solved.  I thought I could use it as leverage to drag him out of his bottle, get him to go looking for my son for me."

He moves his cigarette to his hand then picks up the glass at the edge of his desk and takes a big sip.  When he sits it down there's only half as much of the amber fluid still in the glass.

"I've been learning what I can, but it's not much.  I think I'm going to be packing up my desk and go looking myself.  Maybe, just maybe I can find my son, and my best friend,"  His voice cracks, but he keeps talking anyway, "I just got a letter from my former partner,"  He shuffles around the desk, the cherry on his cigarette flaring as he does so.  He lets a cloud of smoke leave his lips as he picks up an envelope.  His eyes meet yours as he hands it to you, "It doesn't make an ounce of sense to me.  But maybe you can make heads or tails of it."

Taking the letter, you open it.  

Peter,

Nothing is what it seems, and even the nightmares are real now.  Even I am no longer who I once was.

I'm still following the clues, and I'm getting close to something, even if I'm not entirely sure what exactly I'm getting close to.  Even as things get more confusing, it's all starting to make more sense.  

Wanton Cove is dangerous.  Don't come here, no matter what happens to me or what you hear.  If you come here, you'll never be allowed to leave, at least not as you are now.  This place, . . . . it changes you.

I was out in the forest yesterday, I thought I heard something, so I investigated.  I was raped by some kind of corrupted plants, vines and flowers violated me.  It was not unpleasant.

In my previous letters, I mentioned my physical changes, and the way this new female body craves the touch of a man.  I'm not even ashamed of the fact that I prostitute myself to the men of the island now, I tell myself that it's so I can afford the costs of staying here, but I would do it for free just so I could feel another hard cock thrust into me.  I sometimes wonder if I can get pregnant.  Regardless, I'm starting to wonder if I should just give up the search and let the men of Wanton Cove use me however they please.

I don't know how many more messages I'll send you.  Promise you won't come looking for me.  And stay far away from Wanton Cove.

~John

When you look up from the letter, the glass sitting beside him is empty and he's in the process of pouring it full from a bottle of whiskey.

"I've got a half dozen more from him, one a day since he arrived in Wanton Cove.  The first one sounded a little paranoid, but every one of them has been stranger than the last.  I can't make sense of any of it,"  He picks up the glass and throws back the whole thing.  He starts to pour the glass full again, but the bottle runs empty with his glass only half full.  He grimaces and sits the bottle down.

"Maybe the gibberish makes since to you?"  Peter sounds hopeful.  After a second he lets out a defeated sigh, "Who am I kidding,"  He mumbles to himself.

"I don't know what to do.  That letter game two weeks ago, after receiving a new letter postmarked a day apart.  Somethings happened, and I'm the one who sent him there."

Leaning back in his seat, he looks longingly at the half full glass, then turns his eyes to you, "I'm sorry, I don't know anything more than that.  Take the letters,"  He sits the pile in front of you, "Maybe you can make more sense of them."  He shrugs.

After a lingering silence, he finally adds, "I don't know what to do.  Do I stay put and hope something new comes up?  Or do I go looking?"  He sighs again, this time there's a faint shudder in his breath, "My Captain tells me to give it a month, then he'll consider my request for a leave of absence."

By now, you can tell he's just talking to himself.  You stay for another minute, but you realize that he's not going to share anything further with you, so you finally pick up the letters, mutter a goodbye, then leave the room.  

There's an unsettling finality to the click as the door latches in your wake.

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Changelog 1.15

*Added one new branching event to the trail.  This one introduces a new horror to the island.

*Added the "Strange Plant" to the case notes for reference.

*One new prostitution scene added to the game.

*One new ending added to the game associated with the prostitution.

*Includes the usual assortment of bug fixes, spelling/grammar fixes, and all that fun stuff.

*Changelogs have been changed.  We have blind players who play the game using a text reader and their text readers do not read dashes properly all the time, but WILL read asterisks.  Short of this somehow breaking the game for other players, all future changelogs in all of our games will use asterisks instead of the dashes that have been used up to this point.

*It has been reported that sometimes Mr Morichi acts like you haven't met Azumi during the ending when you in fact have.  I spent a couple of hours trying to find the source of this bug but was unable to locate it.  In the end, I made some adjustments that will hopefully resolve the issue.

*Updated "Special Thanks" area with Patrons who pledged at the $10 and up levels.  1/4/19

*Added about 9k words of content to the game bringing the game's total size up to about 477k words of content.