We don't actually know how high up cloudland is. It's possible to be able to go up in the clouds and maybe not be able to get to Cloudland.
Now you are just stretching...
I'm not sure I should attempt to give you a serious answer... Its rather obvious what Roberta Williams et al had intended in the updated manual story... They are clues to set the player in direction where to find the treasures :p... The same thing was done for the "false dwarf", "went into a dark hole". Not so much of a hint for the sorcerer though, "taken to his dwelling, and had one of his beasts guard it".
Umm also I recommend looking at the clouds when your in KQ1... The game makes a big point of usually calling "cloudland" the clouds... and makes a big deal about the "clouds". Go around looking at "sky" in the remake even. Especially around the mountain.
But no its really no way to easily explain why she had that note...
Maybe she was trying to keep it from good guys? Maybe she ate the last person trying to get the chest?
As for the gnome helping because you have a good heart.... that's suspect if you ask me (), if he wanted to help he wouldn't have riddled you to get the beans. The elf doesn't riddle you to get the ring. Your fairy godmother just casts protection on you, she doesn't make you do anything.
No, as its enxplained he jsut enjoys riddling, he would have helped either way... Infact he states this more clearly in the remake... He's not a friend of the witch... :p...
He's a good guy... By KQ3 his position as a friend of the Daventry's family is given a deeper light, as he helps Alexander reach his potential.
Also he has the riddle, since he is essentially rumplestiltskin and that's his MO... Roberta was trying to toss in as many random Fairy Tale references as possible... If he didn't riddle, he would have been a generic gnome... :p...
The magic ring itself is taken from a handful of various fantasies...
Maybe she was trying to keep it from good guys? Maybe she ate the last person trying to get the chest?
As for the gnome helping because you have a good heart.... that's suspect if you ask me (), if he wanted to help he wouldn't have riddled you to get the beans. The elf doesn't riddle you to get the ring. Your fairy godmother just casts protection on you, she doesn't make you do anything.
...and are you done trying to widly speculate?
Seriously, sure maybe it was one of the kids outside of the house... maybe someone she cooked in her oven...Maybe she accidently picked it up, from someone she killed and had no idea what it meant... We could pontificate all day and not get anywhere...
Again we could speculate all day, and its not going to get us any closer to the truth... Again in the original version of the game the witch was not part of the plot in any meaningful or explained way... So there is really no point to even try to speculate... it its tiresome... we could come up with any dozens of "fan theories" and it still wouldn't clear things up...
There are a few more problems, the giant has the chest, and there is no explanation what he would have to do with the witch... in the original version he's just a guardian of the chest... in the second manual, he doesn't even get mentioned...
We could speculate all day what the giant and witch have to do witch each, other but in the end it would be just speculation and pointless waste of our time...
Peter Spear didn't even try to explain the note exactly, I think there was something along the lines that it referred to "to a backwards realm within daventry were people spell there names outs backwards or do othings backwards." (thus stretching it outside the scope of just Rumpy)... This was probably one of Peter Spear's attempts at humor, I'm not sure...
IIRC, he did go with the idea that Dahlia flew up to clouds (as up into Cloudland) and hid the chest up there directly, as is stated in the manual. Although I don't remember the exact details, but I seem to remember that he said something along the lines, that the giants just live up there naturally, and that one particular giant accidently discovered the chest... Thus the reason why the giant isn't technically evil, and why you lose points if you kill it. Thus the reason why you take the route of just waiting for the giant to fall asleep.
It also takes Dahlia out of the equation sorta, as she lost the treasure not long after having stole it, :p... We are told the giant has been carrying the treasure chest for longer than he can remember :p...
Dangerous creatures and friendly creatures never meet?
They might of met who knows, teh game doesn't state they did or they didn't... But even if they did it wouldn't be in friendly terms...
In the remake he doesn't even like the troll, and says it prevents him from having many friendly visitors :p...
He's a thief. He can probably pick locks. Or maybe he has a key, since obviously keys exist. You, on the other hand, do not have a key (unless you mess up the gnome's name) or the ability to pick locks (or anything to pick locks with!)
Well point of note in the original manual, it states there are "dwarfs" trying to attack Graham, so originally it was more than one dwarf. That could have been anywhere. But that's fairly vague, they could have meant one in the cave one outside, or any screen they appear as representing individual "dwarfs"
In the companion we are told of at least two, the one that you normally see running around Daventry, and his wife.
In the remake I think it makes it more clear that there is probably only one in that version of the story.
However, my point actually was that a dwarf in the mountain that opens up into Cloudland has a more direct closeness to the chest, than some random note that isn't even about the chest, but someone's name. He/she (its hard to tell with dwarfs)acts as yet another obstacle to reach the chest, or to even escape with the chest (after getting the chest).
And that's not a backstory. When they remade KQ1 at least they gave the treasures a little bit more backstory. "Mysterious" is not a backstory for an important story element unless it's a mystery that can be solved.
I'm going to have to agree to disagree with you on this, tell that to Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and many fantasy authors.... They routinely made vague references to mysterious histories, and locations, just tangible clues, to make his readers want to know more, without actually putting the answers in the his books. I'd use the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings here specifically, you are given tiny bits of poetry, legends, mysterious objects, and places, characters, etc.
Take for example Tom Bombadil, the books never explain him, but hint about his grand powers, and his resistence to the Ring. Vague references that that may not actually be his name, and that he has gone by many names. People routinely argue over who what the character is, what he means,etc. Its simply not told to us, and this was intentional.
Take Shelob as another example, there are these vague hints about her being from a ancient time, when the world was whole (a nod to the fact that the world was sundered in a war in a distant time). There is a reference to her being the spawn of a powerfuly supernatural terror, Ungoliant. You however are not told all the details, its intentionally kept vague and mysterious. You don't even get these details in the Appendices. Tolkien intended for them to be left mysterious (although he did write many backstories for Ungoliant for his life's work, these were not published until after his death, and were works in progress). But they were not details he wanted to put into LOTRO itself, in order to give his world a backdrop and depth, and an idea that more is too the world than what the hero's experience and know. Hell even Sam Gamgee states this much towards the end of the Two Towers. He's like the reader, he doesn't know everything, and suspects he'll never learn everything, and he and Frodo will probably end up in the great tales himself at some point, and then those tales will fade as the next person writes the next chapter of the great tales.
As Peter Spear says in Companions this is actually how you make the world seem bigger than it really is, and is all about the world building, and adding a certain type of depth, that the world is bigger than it is, and that there are things that not everyone knows, nor will they necessarily discover all the world's secrets. If you simplified it even further, then you destroy the sense of mystery and exploration (sense of a lived in world that exists beyond what the player experiences or learns). He has a whole chapter devoted to how he thinks this actually made the early KQ better in some ways in the companion (I think its in the introduction chapter actually).
Maybe that's not what you like in the stories you read, and you prefer having you hand held, and everything spelled out for you, but for many people that kind of thing, the extraneous and unexplained is considered a plus (as something that actually adds depth to the world).... I'm just going to say Tolkien is better than you...

But maybe you don't like those books, maybe you prefer overly simplifying stories so that every thing is spelled out and that all mystery is destroyed...
Also in King's Quest is meant to be a fairy tale story... In most cases fairy tale stories don't generally give you backstories for every single little mystical bauble, character, or land that pops up in the story... :p They often very simple, and have some kind of moral 'message' hidden in them. The details themselves are largely irrelevent. You generally don't find most people bashing fairy tales... Again I understand if fairy tales are not to your taste...
Because you were working off of the Rumplestiltskin fairy tale, I think it's safe to assume that even in the original there is a spinning wheel. It's an added hint in the remake... although it's also quite possible that it's a nod to the companion
Yes it could just be an added hint, but like I said it wasn't in the original...and Peter Spear beat them to it (creating something that wasn't in the original, and adding it into his book)... So he apparently didn't do a straight adaptation. However, his adaptation is based on the second version of the manual...
However, I still must remind that the witch doesn't have a name in KQ1 nor in the remake in the game, and every single line just calls her "a witch"... so she maitained her rather generic stature from the original :p... There is nothing in the game, that specifically states that she is directl tied to any one of the treasures.
We could speculate all day, on how to connect her to the treasures (that's what Peter Spear and others have done), but its a fact in the game, that none of that is actually stated within either version of the game. Nor is it stated if wizard, dwarf or "a witch" are the same individuals from the manual.
Peter Spear was the only one as far as I know, until King's Questions, that stated that "a witch" and Dahlia were the same, and vaguely hinted that the Sorcerer may be the same (although in game text actually implies that Daventry is being overun by evil sorcerers, and he's just one of many :p). He actually picked up on the second manual story calling the so-called 'dwarf' a "false dwarf", and took that to mean that he was probably a leprechaun and not a dwarf, and thus explaining how the Leprechauns got the treasure.
...and as I said, it actually states are actually, multiple "dwarfs" in the original version of the manual, and even Peter Spear went that route to a degree. I think he even mentions this in the "An Encyclopedia of Daventry" as well, about how many dwarves, wolves, and other evil individuals were overunning Daventry at the time.
BTW, as far as canon, obviously its not something Sierra clearly defined, however I point out that Sierra continued to reference the original as a source as 'canon'. When sierra was around, most material nodded back to the original game, rather than the remake. Maybe partly because most fans like the original. Roberta has even sided with the original in many interviews (although commenting on things she liked about the remake). King's Questions primarily sides with the central canon of series as original, kq2, kq3, etc. Although I think there is a sense that it treats remake as an equal to the original to some degree. Though we are talking "original with the second manual". There are very few references to the original version of the story from the original manual, after Roberta updated the story for the late 1984 and/or 1987 release.
The mythos was made in QfG2, before the remake. Even though there was no reference to its value in the original, that made it the real one prior to the remake's creation.
No, actually alot of people back in the day who only played the original QFG1 assume that the original easter egg version of the bird, was just another "fake". Because its not actually hinted at in the game... "It once belonged to bogey"... Why did they assume it was a fake? Because the second game stated that there were "four fakes", so as each game was released people were assuming that it was still a fake... Others thought maybe one of the fakes moved around (like the one in Tarna at that market) for example (a reference in QFG3 could be implied that the one in Tarna was the one from Spielburg or somewhere else or another fake)... It wasn't until QFG1 remake staing that the "bird's fate is entertwined with the hero's" (although it also doesn't state specifically that it is the "real one"), and more specifically QFG5 that there was a more straight answer to the conundrum.... that there was a nod that the one in QFG1 was the original rather than just another fake.