Originally posted 03 January 2012 @ HypArc.net.
You may recall that I was standing at the grave of our missing village priest, Father Scowell, asking for someone, anyone to shed some light on the mystery. And lo and behold, a villager appeared, whom I believe was the same villager that was skulking about during Father Scowell's funeral looking shifty.
I followed our villager - whom I have since named Virgil - as he led me on an epic journey down the stairs just north of Scowell's grave.
He seemed to be intimating that there was something nearby.
…and uncovered a redstone circuit. Now, this was not unknown to me, being that I had built it when the new chapel had been created. The redstone circuit was created to serve the new chapel, which has, at the back of the room, a lever. This lever operates a mechanism that provides access to a hidden room in the chapel, which I had designed for the priest. Not only that, but the redstone circuit room was immediately below Father Scowell's grave. Was Virgil trying to tell me something?
I ran back through the tunnel, into the chapel, and pulled the lever at the back of the room.
This exposed a set of ladders that carried me down to Father Scowell's secret room.
But Scowell was nowhere to be seen. I searched the small, dingy room, but found nothing. No clues, no hints, no indications of Scowell ever being here. After taking a few moments to look, I left.
When I left the chapel, dawn had begun to break. I noticed two villagers that seemed to be deep in conversation… but as soon as I appeared on the street, they turned their attention to me, and swiftly departed.
I spent the rest of the day filling in the tunnel, erecting a small shrine near the dirt wall, and thinking about what was going on. Virgil had seemingly recognised that there was some connection between Scowell - or his grave - and a bland dirt wall that actually hid a tunnel leading to circuitry that opened the way to a hidden room in the chapel where Scowell could feasibly be hiding. In other words, the villager's emergent intelligence was creeping back in. Up until now, though, they seemed to be aware that I was watching them. I reasoned that I might gain some clue as to what was going on if I watched them without them realising.
Only one place in town I could do that.
I ran into the Remedy Master Lodge. The building was positioned such that I could watch the villagers in the western portion of Remedy - in other words, the area containing the chapel and grave site.
Until the sun came up. I don't know what he was up to. Was he mocking me? Did he know that I was watching, and simply stood there to taunt me? Was he communicating somehow with the person standing in the door of the Remedy Arcade at the top of the screen? Were his actions part of some rite related to Scowell's disappearance? Was there something visible from that vantage point that could not be seen from any other place in Remedy? I didn't know, but I was going to get an answer somehow.