The Tale of Woe

This article documents a current event. Information may update rapidly as the event progresses.

The Tale of Woe is a plot based in the Haunted Woods and entails the release of Neovia. It began on October 2, 2006, and appears to be designed to coincide with Halloween. The plot follows the travels of Gilly, who first appeared as the star of The Castle of Eliv Thade.

Plot Summary

The Gypsy Camp

Deep within the Haunted Woods users happen upon a Gypsy Camp, where a Pink Elephante greets and warns them of the dangers of the woods - "[...] Trees and creatures roam the night, and they can swallow the unwary. It's no accident that so many legends and myths surround this place [...]" - and reads the user a story of Gilly, when she visited the Camp and heard the story of Neovia...

The Legend of Neovia

The Elephante began his tale of a family of Edmund and Alice, and their three children: sons Bruno and Reginald, and daughter Sophie (who the Elephante avoids mentioning until his story is almost over). They lived in Neovia, and had many troubles. Bruno sought the affection of Lily, but lacked the charm and strength to court her, and was not helped in his attempts by Oscar, Lily's current protective companion.

After Oscar hit Bruno for talking to Lilly, Bruno resigned to his fate but stumbled upon Mr. Krawley, who offered him a potion which would make all his troubles go away for only a few Neopoints. After drinking the potion, the very next day he was handsome, strong and much more presentable to Lily.

Edmund claimed Bruno was foolish to take such an action, complaining that one must work for success. However, when he was offered the potion by Mr Krawley, he reluctantly took it to resolve the family's financial hardship. Like Bruno, the elixir worked and he became rich within the next few days. Soon after Reginald took a potion as well, becoming extremely intelligent, and word of the potions began to spread. Soon everyone was taking the potions to have their wishes - such things as height, vanity, and youth - granted with a simple potion, and only the innocent such as Sophie refrained from drinking the potion.

The potion seemed to give everyone in Neovia happiness, but as the days passed the effects of the potion continued to make their wishes more twisted. Edmund became suspicious of everyone, carefully guarding over his fortune. Bruno became a muscular, deformed monster. Reginald became lonely, seeking refuge in his books when people couldn't stand to talk to him and his great intellect. Curses like this spread to everyone who drank the potion, and the angry town joined together and searched for Mr. Krawley, but he disappeared. They then decided to put the blame on the family which advertised the elixir, and attacked Edmund's home.

Bruno ran outside to distract the villagers while Reginald and Sophie sneaked out the back and ran for the woods. In the forest, they encountered Ilere, who said Sophie had no where else to go but in her care. Reginald refused such an action, but relented when Sophie went of her own free will, saying she felt safe with Ilere. Returning back to Neovia, Reginald saw Bruno being chased into the woods town, and escorted his parents to an abandoned mansion on the other side of town, used in the past for games of hide-and-seek.

Bruno lost those chasing him in the forest, and when the towns people returned they attacked, determined for retribution. Suddenly, the Mayor of the town stopped them, realizing they must be cured before they can hold those responsible to account. The Neovians summon The Spirit of Slumber, who cures them with magic, but extracts a terrible price...

The Ruins of Neovia

The locket that was found in the ghost town.

The story ends and Gilly goes to sleep, and after a night's rest she sets out into the woods and stumbles upon Neovia itself. The small town is in ruins, but after looking through a burnt wreck of a house she found a strange silver locket hidden, with the picture inside decayed beyond recognition.

Gilly headed to the Deserted Fairground and took the locket to Lyanka, of the Cork Gun Gallery; Leeroy, of the Coconut Shy; Harker, of the Bagatelle stall; and Ssidney, of Ssidney's Scratch Cards. None of them knew who the owner was, although some seemed impressed with the metalwork and one mentioned they were quite popular a long time ago. Heading back to Neovia for more information, she discovers a path leading to a hut in the swampy part of the woods.

Bruno's Cave

At the hut, Gilly met the adult Sophie, who snatched the locket and shouted for the Usul to leave and not to disturb her. Gilly ran off through the rain and took shelter in a cave. Inside, amongst strange, old artifacts, she was stalked by a dark creature. By arranging a mirror, a broken lamp post, and a chair around a pile of food for bait, Gilly managed to get the monster to eat some of the food, leap back from its own reflection, and stumble across the lamp post and into the chair, where it banged its head and fell into the moonlight, revealing itself to be the horribly disfigured Bruno.

Taking pity on Bruno for her actions, even though he was trying to scare her, Gilly approached him, only to be chased outside of the cave. Gilly ran all the way back to Sophie's hut, asking to be let in from the chasing Bruno, and Sophie answered the door angrily, but calmed into shock when she saw Bruno was alive.

Exposition ensues as brother and sister relate their stories: Bruno, hiding from the townspeople, had hidden in the deepest, darkest recesses of the Haunted Woods, never daring to return to Neovia. Sophie, on the other hand, had indeed gone with Ilere... only to be given a chest with "all you need to survive", as well as the hut, and effectively left to fend for herself.

Sophie explained that some days after she had settled into the hut, she returned to Neovia to find only deserted buildings. Sophie returned several times in the weeks that followed, but there was no sign of what had happened to the residents - until she visited the town on Halloween night.

When Sophie returned to Neovia that night, its streets bustled with life again. She noticed something was wrong, however. The Neovian's faces were blank, they walked about doing their daily actions in silence - no speech, no play, no desire or thought or emotion: Just action, without need. Upon accidentally touching one of the returned townsmen, she put her hand straight through him. Sophie quickly concluded that they were not physically there, and returned to her hut to work on a cure. The next day, however, the town was once again deserted. For ten years, Sophie revealed, she had been working to cure the Neovians, and had little else left to try.

Gilly, almost forgotten in the exchange between brother and daughter, spoke up, remembering the Gypsy Elephante's story. She explained the Spirit of Slumber's involvement, realizing that this must be the "terrible price" mentioned in the story - while the spirit restored them to their forms before their use of Mr Krawley's potion, the residents of Neovia were no longer aware of themselves, unable to enjoy their restoration. Sophie is skeptical that this will help at all, but finally elects to try for information from Ilere. She's even more reluctant to bring Gilly along, but Bruno pleads the Usul's case; she relents, providing Gilly won't "... get in the way. Got it."

Plot Solution

Finding the Locket

In Neovia, the user must visit the burnt-down, although fairly structurally intact, house in the lower right section of the Neovia map. At this point in the plot, this house is the only visitable place in the town.

Every co-ordinate of the map is linked, but only certain key co-ordinates produce an individual result. These co-ordinates are:

• (67,201) -- Chair
• (80,135) -- Fireplace
• (147,218) -- Couch End
• (150,115) -- Bookcase
• (175,145) -- Crack in the Wall
• (186,186) -- Sofa Couch
• (210,130) -- Broken Staircase
• (235,232) -- Broken Boards
• (308,199) -- Pillow Spring
• (364,195) -- Table Leg

The co-ordinates exist in the URL of the links. The structure of the URL used in conjunction with the locations in the map follow the following format: http://www.neopets.com/halloween/hwp/neovia.phtml?hvh=[House Code Identifier]?[x,y] thus the co-ordinates can be manipulated by changing them at the end of the URL link. This makes hopping to the above locations very easy.

When visiting the locations above, there will be one of the ten (which is random for each user) where Gilly finds the charred silver locket. A form button that will appear beneath the locket, which when clicked will add the locket to the Quest Inventory.

At the Fairground

After the locket has been gained, the user must head to the Deserted Fairground, where the following four characters will talk to Gilly about the locket she has found:

• Harker the Lupe, at the Bagatelle stall.
• Lyanka the Aisha, at the Cork Gun Gallery.
• Leeory the Quiggle, at the Coconut Shy.
• Ssidney the Nimmo, at Ssidney's Scratch Cards.

The conversations appear bellow the games themselves. There have been some bugs where the conversations do not appear. Methods of rectifying it including clearing one's cache, refreshing, or playing one of the four games.

Each of the characters will give a different conversation, and while these are four set characters, it is random for each user which character has which conversation. Each conversation starts with one of the following opening lines:

• "Why, certainly, little miss... Well, what a pretty little trinket this is. I haven't seen one like it in years."
• "Amazing! I haven't seen such metalwork in, oh, must be ten years. Where did you say you found it?"
• "That piece of junk? It looks like a hundred other lockets I've seen."
• "It looks familiar... where did you get it? I know someone who'd pay a thousand Neopoints for that locket, though. At least, I used to. Haven't seen her in ages."

When the characters are visited so that the conversations appear in the above order, Gilly will decide that nobody will help her there. Back in Neovia, a small path that leads away from the town becomes hyperlinked to a new site, Sophie's Shack.

At the Cave

After visiting Sophie's Shack, Sophie will run the user off. Clicking the form button bellow, "Flee in Terror", will bring Gilly to a dark cave. Clicking the "Go into the scary cave..." button will send Gilly inside.

The cave is unique to everyone, but consists of a 3 x 3 grid of rooms, which all have at least one doorway into them. In the cave, there are several items, some of which can be carried and some of which can't. The chest and the table cannot be picked up, but the lamppost, chair, mirror, rotten food, and key can. Additionally, at least one of the rooms will have a pool of moonlight in the centre.

The user can pick up one object at a time, and can be placed down at a certain co-ordinate in the same way as the user searched for the locket in Neovia.

When moving about the cave, occasionally the message "Something seems to be following you..." will appear under the picture of the room. It will eventually catch up with you, and it will scare Gilly into a random room. By placing the Rotten Food object on the ground in one of the rooms, when the monster passes through it, they will, instead of scaring Gilly into a random location, stop and eat. They will become disorientated and run off.

The user must set up a trap in a moonlit room in order to illuminate the creature. To do this, the following items must be placed at the following co-ordinates of a room with a pool of moonlight in the centre:

• Mirror at (240,330).
• Lamppost at (240,215).
• Chair at (235,160), or sometimes (225,155).
• Rotten Food at (330,325).

When the monster follows Gilly into the room, it will eat the bait, see its reflection in the mirror, stumble backwards over the lamppost, crack its head on the chair and collapse into the light.

Into the Woods

With that out of the way, it's time to go back to Sophie's Shack for a little dialogue. When you click on the "Start Searching for Ilere" button at the end, you'll be transported to the Haunted Woods; this is a Flash segment, so make sure you're updated and ready.

In the first segment, you're looking for a stick. Yes, a stick, a pointy one. This is because the way to the next section is watched by a two-headed Hissi, with one head always lying and one always telling the truth... but don't expect the old logic problem, because he's too busy arguing with himself to listen to your questions. Once you have the stick, find the two-headed Hissi again and select the stick from your inventory; once you click it on the Hissi, you'll move on to the next section.

In the second part, you're collecting vines to make a rope, and you'll need 5-6 of each type of vine; it needs to be strong, but you're given lots of help when you reach the clearing. Once there, just drop all the vines and select them one bunch at a time; you'll be told whether your rope will be strong enough. (There's no "Drop All" feature, so be patient; also, try to make as few attempts as possible, since there's a chance a monster will grab your rope and scatter the vines all over the forest again!) You'll need to add vines twice more before your rope will reach the ground.

Once you have the rope, and it's strong enough to hold Bruno's big caboose, you'll move on to the next section.

The third section, and time to play Meepit Juice Break! Yes, this is necessary.

Once you've reached the third level, send your score; your Quest Inventory will acquire a glass of Meepit Juice. In the forest, you'll run across Ghost Meepits; offer them the juice, yes, but it's like soup to a skeleton; it goes right through them. Sophie will change the juice to Ghost Meepit Juice, and now you need to collect seven meepits.

Once you have them, you'll find the door to Ilere's cave, which has seven spots of light; the Ghost Meepits will jump out of your inventory and land on the spots. It's now your job to re-aracnge them until every Meepit is dancing.

Once you've done that? It's on into Ilere's cave.

Quest Inventory

This plot brought in a feature called the Quest Inventory, where items discovered in the plot are stored. Items in this inventory cannot be used, traded, or stolen in the way items in the Inventory can, like previous plot quest items in the past.

Trivia

• An Aisha resembling Megan can be seen in images of the Gypsy camp.
• This plot seems to be based off the movie/book Something Wicked This Way Comes.
• When part 3 of the plot was released on October 13, 2006, the new section of the plot came upon many database issues, requiring The Neopets Team to move the database, replacing all pages relating to the plot with the following texts (as the errors were happening more than once)
  • TEMPORARY DB MOVE - WILL BE BACK SHORTLY
  • MORE DATABASE ISSUES -- GEEZ THERE'S A LOT OF YOU GUYS -- DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH

External Links

• Plot Info: The Gypsy Camp, The Tale of Woe (comic), Neovia, Sophie's Shack, Burned-down House, Bruno's Cave
• Quest Inventory
• Neopets TCG: