The Red Velvet Bag is found on Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'Intrate. It's worth one point and contains a Clear Blue Potion. Definitely worth having but does the bag itself have a purpose?

Examining it doesn't appear to reveal much apart from this odd line:

It seems unusually light.

We'll return to this cryptic clue later.

The Official Hint Book has this to say on the subject of the Red Velvet Bag:

Holds huge amounts of stuff.

Short and sweet... and quite accurate. You can throw your entire inventory into it and it still doesn't get full unlike the Canvas Bag. But so what?

The real purpose of the Red Velvet Bag is rather more subtle. Here are the clues:

When you pick up the Red Velvet Bag your total Inventory weight doesn't increase.

Yet the Red Velvet Bag and contents weigh a total of 0.11kg. The bag itself weighs 0.07kg and the Clear Blue Potion inside the bag weighs 0.04kg

When you remove the Clear Blue Potion from the bag and place it in your inventory your total weight increases by 0.04kg.

Confused? How can a bag that weighs 0.11kg not increase your total weight yet the contents can? Remember that odd line of text about the Red Velvet Bag:

It seems unusually light.

Now add an item to the Red Velvet Bag. Note that the total weight of your inventory is reduced by that item's weight. Add the entire contents of your inventory to the Red Velvet Bag and your total weight becomes zero. Very handy for heavy loads.

I had the opportunity to raise the subject of the Red Velvet Bag with Matt Soell (Bungie Software) some time ago. On the subject of its function Matt remarked:

I do remember Jason telling Doug and me that its increased capacity was supposed to allow you to hold a very specific object. Part of a puzzle that never got in, if I recall correctly.

I would hazard a guess that it wasn't the bag's increased capacity that was important but rather its ability to make items placed inside appear weightless.

Matt Heath <PoetOTR@aol.com> provides another piece of the puzzle. Matt made the following observation:

How can the player pick up goodies and treasures (including the eleven gold ingots behind the sealed door) totaling nearly 400 pounds, and still manage to fight off monsters and climb up ladders back to the ground floor, with no discernable lack of mobility?

He went on to say:

Buried deep in Pathways' resource forks (Str. #1000, Section 1) is the following warning dialog box:

"You're so encumbered with objects that you can't move. Try dropping something heavy."

In playing the game, so matter how many items I acquired, I've never had this warning appear, even when weighed down with all of the twelve gold ingots. So I guess the designers never linked up this box to any trigger that would make it appear. Meaning -- all of this discussion of too much weight is purely academic. But one wonders at what point of excessive acquired weight the designers originally intended the dialog box to be triggered.]

It is interesting to note that Str. #1000 (Inventory Errors) also contains the following warning dialog box comments:

You can't drop the ^1 here, move somewhere else and try again.

And...

Sorry, there's no room left on this level to drop the ^1 (so much for virtual reality, huh?).

It's not to diffcult to imagine that at some stage in Pathways development there was a puzzle which involved picking up a heavy object. However this may have triggered the warning dialog:

You're so encumbered with objects that you can't move. Try dropping something heavy.

Given that you would have wanted to retain the heavy object you might have attempted to drop a number of non-essential items. This would then have triggered the warning dialog:

Sorry, there's no room left on this level to drop the ^1 (so much for virtual reality, huh?).

The solution? Place the heavy item in the Red Velvet Bag.

Of course this raises the question "What was the heavy item?"

Now that's another story altogether. ;-)

Arvid Nordenskjöld <h97arn@student.ki.se> points out that while you can get the warning dialogs

You can't drop the ^1 here, move somewhere else and try again.

and...

Sorry, there's no room left on this level to drop the ^1 (so much for virtual reality, huh?).

in the game you can use the Red Velvet Bag to avoid the first one and postpone the second. You can actually drop alot more items on a level if they are in the bag than if you attempt to drop them singly. However there is a limit to how much you can put in the bag and still be able to drop it.

Peter Swanke <pswanke@hotmail.com> writes:

In Dungeons and Dragons there is a magical item known as a bag of holding. These can hold large amounts of weight, something like 100 pounds up to 300, without encumbering the owner.

Coincidence or...?