🚀 go-pugleaf

> ...so there I was on level 8 with all the good powers bestowed on me by
> having eaten a floating eye, a leprechaun, and a killer bee.  Having
> thoroughly raided whatchamacallit's shop, I possessed many good things
> including a ring of conflict, a wand of digging, etc.  Eventually, I killed
> off all the monsters on the level, even a cockatrice.  But no way could I
> leave the level, even by digging holes in the floor.  At every hole and
> staircase, a "mysterious force" kept me from descending or ascending.
> 
> Does anyone know how to overcome the force?  I was not able to correlate it
> with anything that I was carrying.

When you change levels, the system creates a disk file describing the
new level.  If it is unable to make a lock file during this operation,
you get the "mysterious force" message.  The comment in the source says
that this could be due to disk quota overflow or to a write-locked
directory.  It might also be that the lock file was already there and
wasn't writable by you.

In any event, nothing that you type to hack (except perhaps
shell-escape) can overcome this problem.

  -=- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew)       [UUCP]
                        (orca!andrew.tektronix@csnet-relay)  [ARPA]