The idea for SceptreQuest was born during an emergency midnight meeting of
the G-7 nations in Geneva. Well, actually it was born when Sean Givan thought
it up as a child, but who's keeping track? In a message posted to the
rec.games.int-fiction newsgroup, Sean had asked that his game, which he
cherished so dearly in his heart, be ported to the Inform system. I, then,
being an agreeable sort, immediately proceeded to port it to Hugo instead and
worked at it (very) sporadically over a period of several weeks. What you
have now is the fruit of those couple of long hours' work, a game which will
live in infamy--oh wait, wrong speech--a game which is destined to be called
the finest example of the literary art known to man; or, at the very least,
it will be called the simplest, shortest, and most inane text adventure ever
written. In either case, I am unutterably proud to have written it and
sincerely hope that it may contribute in some small way to the cessation of
hostilities in the Middle East.

						Cardinal Teulbachs
						Archbishop of Frith
						8 Oct 95

IMPORTANT NOTE:

SceptreQuest is not a stand-alone game. The Hugo runtime engine is required
in order to play. You can obtain the engine from ftp.gmd.de, where it is
located in the \if-archive\programming\hugo\executables directory (or
something close to that). Once you have the engine in your hot little hands,
put it and the game files in a common directory and type "he squest" to start
the game. Be forwarned, however, that the game engine is only currently
available for the DOS platform, so a PC or an emulator is required in order
to run it.