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[plikma]

S2 Back meta puzzle?

[PuzzledPineapple]

I've had a look through the cards, and set about trying to summarise/categorise the card backs a little. You'll notice some of the detail is missing - I've put up a separate appeal for the missing information and will try and update if and when it comes in. Below are the general categories, links between them and links to the card threads, in the most logical order (IMHO) for the backs*.

One Offs

001, 002, 003, 005, 006, 007, 008

Mostly in the Reds, there are several cards that just seem to advertise the wider world of PXC. Odd ones out are 005, which is a seemingly random poem, and 007, a heart-wrenching story from Fleming Heath.

Mimasan Maze Mystery

004, 010, 009, 012, 011, 042, 041, 044, 043

A Choose Your Own Misadventure puzzle game. Good fun, scary monsters.

Sentinel Sunday

Letters: 073, 075

Guy falls in love with girl, sends girl puzzle encoded love letter, girl doesn't like guy, girl pretends not to be able to solve puzzle, guy falls out of love with girl, both write into the Sentinel letters section. Fun all round.

Crimes of Fashion: 034, 033

Police Lieutenant Cornelius Day-Etherbrington and Tippy analyse the fashion mistakes of Aurora Belle and Serena Duncan

Meeting in a Cafe

036, 035

Someone meets someone else in a PXC cafe. Mysteriously.

Cat's Eye Stone and Moths

037, 038

The moths and the stone are intertwined and have deep religious significance, but those silly PXC tourists are stealing the stone and using it in jewellery.

Academy All-Schools Scholarship Tournament, Sekani

040, 039

Our narrator muses on meeting a young underdog in the tournament - did Sekani let him win?

Futures

066, 065, 068, 067

Details of the Futures signs The Dice, The Maze, The Apple-Thief and The Hand respectively, from the Sentinel.

Earth Studies

070, 069, 072, 071

Information about Earth Studies Modules on History, Politics, Culture and Technology. How aliens see us: usually interesting, always funny.

Morgan-Hatfield-Blumenthal Syndrome

097, 098, 099, 100

Only in PXC. A syndrome that inhibits puzzle solving: a possible cure, a short description and how a sufferer feels about the discrimination in every part of PXC life (or, more likely, Sophia Westernra's Baffled as mentioned in the next article), information pamphlet produced by Morgan Pride denouncing previously mentioned book. See Stone Sleeper Crossroads below for a reference to MHBS.

Missing Kit - his father's recollections

102, 101, 104, 103

An Academician goes about a normal, snowy day but when his son goes out to play in the snow and doesn't come back, wild stories circulate but the truth is never uncovered. See below for more recent investigations (under the title Missing Kit - Misc).

Cube/Recons

105, 107

So, these two appear to be one-offs but are next to each other and Cube related. Coincidence? Day in the life of a recon and a hand written cipher.

Saunion's Story

130, 129, 132, 131

Rock climbing expedition goes wrong and Daniel Saunion tries to rescue two people, possibly colleagues. Further information below: see About Saunion and, possibly, Second Person Quest. Go here for more spec.

Stone Sleeper Crossroads

134, 133, 136, 135

There are some mysterious stones at Stone Sleeper Crossroads and they look like someone sleeping. Four views are presented here: Northern Rempstone's legend of a confused warrior princess; Western Dee's legend of a thief who tried to learn the secret of Eternal Wakefulness, to the South lived an old man who said it was an inter-stellar traveller and to the East lies PXC. From there, a scientists analysed the rocks, found something geologically interesting and then died, apparently of complications to undiagnosed MHBS (see above). Suspiscious.

Ilja and Anja

Woodsman: 137, 139

Frog-Catcher: 169, 171

We've heard about these fables before, and now we get the actual text. The two stories come with their own morals.

Exposing Madame Blanca

162, 161, 164, 163

The narrator goes around exposing charlatans who use the supernatural to prey on grief e.g. Madame Blanca - a medium.

Voyage of the Exsuscito

166, 165, 168, 167

Competing horologists set sail on the Exsuscito with their chronometers to find a solution to the longitude problem but it appears they may have been lured under false pretenses by evil Academicians (see also Missing Kit - Misc). Then pirates turn up!

About Saunion

195, 194, 193, 196

(Note on order: this is my guess, others disagree and it doesn't fit the pattern so make up your own mind) His mum, his doctor, someone from the Brotherhood (probably Sister Cecile) and his dad recount how he's been in Greycastle hospital (despite his mum wanting to move him), asleep and dreaming since the accident five months ago, and how he woke up. See Saunion's Story above and, possibly, Second Person Quest below.

Half Term Reports

197, 198, 199, 200

Some Half Term reports from seemingly random kids although it includes Myra Champaign and, from the surnames, a brother and sister.

Stories of Gyvann

201, 203, 235

These seem like copies of a religious tex about Gyvann's life including: meeting a peddlar, his wife and his death.

Second Person Quest

225, 226, 227

Told in the second person, this is a weird story about 'you' passing through several odd rooms. Pure spec: it reads like a dream and mentions, in the third link above, a woman with a shard. This tenuous link leads me to think it might be Saunion's dream (see Saunion's Story/About Saunion above). Otherwise, not a clue what it's about.

Missing Kit - Misc

230, 229, 232, 231

See Missing Kit above. Various people pick up the investigation into the disappearence of little Kit. A trail of witnesses suggest that an Academician may have taken Kit, believing he was an orphan, to perform some nasty experiment on him, although the final witness, Gwyneth Hughes, may have made that up to suit her anti-Academy political purpose. See also Voyage of the Exsuscito for evil Academicians.

I'll try to convert this into wiki goodness to let other people mess around with it, although lacking card catalogue links is a bit of a shame.

*There is a pattern to the orders, often supported by the design of the backs, but in some instances I just can't make it fit such as Ilja and Anja

EDIT: information in the MHBS section changed to reflect back of #100

[poozle]

Wow, thats one heck of a list PuzzledPineapple. I get the feeling that some of these backs may help with the stories section of the game, what do others think?