BasketMC

Blue Torch, Episode 5: Quern

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Episode 4 ended with the telescope aimed at a lens in a window. This video opens in the room with the symbol grid, and its wall is now covered in glowing blue writing. Basket uses that writing to crack the grid, finds a blue crystal torch in a basement, charges it with what the commentary calls an electric eel, and ends by setting it in the torch holder by the path.

Writing on the wall

"Oh, it's so pretty. Everything's so lit up in here, it's like stars." Rows of pale symbols cover the curved wall, in columns with tally marks above them. "This thing is showing secret writing exists."

A curved stone wall covered in pale blue glowing symbols in columns, small groups of tally marks above the columns, and specks of light scattered across the wall

The notebook sketch from earlier has the symbols that matter, and the commentary works out a number for each from the column it sits in: "the backwards F is three." Then it's back and forth between the wall, the notebook and the grid. The first orders fail. "What did I screw up?" One symbol had been counted twice: "I had two fours." A few orders later, the last symbol goes in and the floor starts to sink. "Oh, I'm moving." A stairway now leads down to a basement.

The blue torch

The basement is lit by orange crystals on a long cloth. "We're gonna pick up a blue torch." It's "a big thing to carry." A door down there is locked, and a glass jug sits on a stand.

Bait in the well

Outside, the jug hangs on the hook over the well and gets lowered into the water. "I have dumped all of my valuable dust into this bucket." When it comes back up: "That was electric eel bait. And now I've picked up an entire bucket with electric eel in it."

Back inside, the jug is emptied into a round dish wired to a machine on a bench, and the water swirls. The blue torch goes on the machine next, and comes off as what the commentary calls "a charged blue staff."

A round copper-rimmed dish of water swirling with pale streaks on a wooden bench, wired to a metal machine, with a glowing orange crystal in a holder beside it

Blue light through the telescope

The blue torch fits on the telescope, and the view through it shows rocks and a banner washed in blue light. Nothing reacts. "It doesn't seem to care." The orange torch goes back on, and the middle button still isn't happy.

A cluster of glowing blue crystals mounted at the back of a dark metal telescope on a wooden platform, two pale handles sticking out to the sides, with rocks and trees beyond

Where it ends

Down by the path is "the torch thing" that nothing happened with before. The blue torch goes into it. Basket then heads into a dim room of pots and a wooden door: "So what might that torch do down here?" The video fades out on the walk back, before anything is seen to change.

A glowing blue crystal torch set in a ring holder on a dark metal post against a pale rock face, with a wooden walkway rail in the upper left