Session 20

So here's Sira. Not long ago she was living in the magnificent alien (well... not to her, but you know what I mean) city made of crazy plants grown into buildings. She and her dad didn't get on, so she probably devised a foolproof way of having him killed. Almost certainly since Iskai (that's the race of space-cat people that she belongs to) law says that the family of the prime suspect must take responsibility for investigating the crime, she hired a human from a different continent to come over and do the deed.

Since he'd have no family near by, no one would be there to investigate and she'd get away with it (it would be easy to trick the human assassin into getting himself killed later too - just send him into a death-trap haunted house). Just as long as the human killed her dad very publicly so everyone could see what species he was.

Probably quite irritatingly, it turned out that some other humans had turned up just at the wrong time and the local town leader decided they were close enough to family for it to be their job (with the help of a police space-cat woman) to convict the killer...

Thankfully the humans were amazingly dim. Even when they found Sira's family heir-loom on the body of the human - clearly an expensive object that could've been given as payment - she and her probable accomplice (there was some other chap she got involved to act as an intermediary with the killer) managed to convince them it was an elaborate form of suicide!

Officially cleared of any suspicion - Sira was still aware that anyone with half a brain would be able to spot her obvious probable involvement in her father's death. Her best course of action would be to get out of town for a while - give people a chance to move on from the apparently solved killing.

To this end she decided that she would tag along with the humans who "solved" the mystery in her favour. Clearly idiots, they would probably never suspect her of having paid for her dad to be murdered and would almost certainly attest to her good character on returning from whatever barmy mission they were on - "We have to find the giant metal planet eating monster that we travelled here on..." Sounds like a wild goose-chase to her!

Not even questioning her motivations, the humans take her along with them (and irritatingly Dirr the police lady too... But she doesn't seem to suspect anything either...)

Sailing across the mighty ocean, Sira and these prune-brained weirdos end up on the human populated land of the druids. It becomes immediately apparent there's no massive metal monster here so Sira pushes the group to keep on moving. The further from home, the better for now!

But irritatingly they can't just leave. They have to go on some sex errand for the king which leads them to the layer of the Druids - an underground catacomb filled with monsters and demons.

And this is where her plans of casual travelling suddenly go awry! To help them navigate the labyrinth, the druids assign the team "Mellthas" the deaf mute simpleton. Although Sira initially dislikes him - it turns out that despite being even more of an idiot than the rest of this gang, Mellthas is so good with his fingers that he can make her feel things she's never felt before! I.e. a psychic connection with a sex starved human!

Sira falls in love then and there! Dank and Satanically infested though the surroundings might be, she is captivated by his suddenly-not-so-unattractive face (and hands).

From then on she's been in a sort of loved up stupor. Not really thinking about the horrible dangers they've been wading through. Until now!

Just now the floor gave way beneath the team. Where previously they'd been fairly carefully mapping and scouring the dungeons so as not to get lost - they were all suddenly plunged into a totally un-known area of the underground city. Sira suddenly wakes up to how deeply she's let herself get into trouble! What is the point of leaving her home town (probably) to escape suspicion if she's going to let herself be entombed in an inescapable crypt! Even if she HAS found "love" with a nimble fingered human - how did she let herself wander so blindly into obvious, enormous peril like this?!

The roof - where the gang just fell through, closes up behind them. They can't even use the rope to climb back up!

"DIRR YOU IDIOT!!!!!" screams Sira. "YOU STUPID EFFING IDIOT!!!! WHAT THE EFFING EFF WERE YOU THINKING YOU INSANE CATBITCH!!!! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE NOW!!! YOU STUPID STUPID EFFING STUPID IIIIDDDIIIOOOTTTTT!!!!!!!!"

Mell holds up a little sign saying "Sira! Calm down!" but she knocks it from his hands, pokes him in the eye and kicks him firmly in the fork.

"RIGHT!!!! I'm taking the lead now! You... UTTER idiots can't be trusted to get anything done!!! HOW HARD IS IT TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF A DUNGEON, RESCUE AN OLD MAN AND GET OUT!?!?!?! WHY!!! WHY WOULD YOU BE SO AGONISINGLY STUPID!!!!!!"

Sira finds it difficult to express exactly how enraged she is by this situation. But to try and get a fraction of it across she pushes her face close to Hoff's and just goes

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!"

Rolling her eyes backwards into her head, clawing at her face with her hands, quivering at the knees and then collapsing from the strain.

There is a brief, stunned silence.

"Ehem..." starts Tom. "I think perhaps Sira must've... bumped her head in the fall..."

"Ahhhh! yes!" chime in the others (except Mell who holds up a sign saying "Relieved agreement") as the tension of Sira's outburst is defused totally by their ascribing it to her being out of sorts from the drop.

"We women are prone to hysterics sometimes" says Dirr, preferring to betray her gender for the sake of avoiding a socially awkward situation when their companion comes round.

They all have an 8-hour rest to compose themselves before waking Sira to carry on.

On looking around themselves the gang notice that they're in a long room. There's a door at one end and a barred portcullis at the other - neither locked. There's a fire pit in the corner but nothing much else to look at...

Out of the door there's a locked chest that no-one can pick and a fountain. I fill a bucket from the fountain and go and put out the flame pit (since there's nothing much else to be doing... apart from exploring through the portcullis).

Excellently there's a secret button behind the flames, and pressing it opens a passage behind it. Down the passage is another flame blocks the way - but it's easily dealt with by another trip to fill up a bucket at the fountain.

Further along there's a force-field! Hof says it's "A non-electric force field! This is more than a rational man can cope with!"

Looks like this is a dead end. The passage carries on past the field, but I can't get through... And as I'm staring on my last torch dies. I'm lost and trapped in the dark. But it's not so bad! Un-like when I was in the crazy haunted house back on the first island, this time I've got Sira with me. With a little encouragement she lights up a glimmer spell - it's not as bright as a torch, but it's enough to make seeing-where-I'm-going not too problematic!

I turn back and explore a little through the portcullis - there's a load of red-walls and a red pressure plate. I guess if I want to go this way I'll have to open them, but there's swarms of Warniaks and Fears on the other side...

Maybe I missed something by the force field? Oh, I did. The passage actually carried on past it (I guess it forked, but one of the forks was fielded over and the other one I missed before in the dark).

I seem to be leaving a lot of places un-explored now, but to be honest I'm totally lost and cut off from the last place where I knew where I was going... I find three pick-axes in a pile of trash and some stairs up!

They lead to a room full of three flames and a locked door. Dead end? Ha! Not for me! It takes no time at all to ferry three buckets of water up here to reveal a lever that opens the door that leads to the blue pressure plate room where we fell down last time! Fantastic!

I'm back on track and ready to start properly mapping and exploring! Only... well... I know there's areas I've not seen properly yet... but there's some very tempting stairs down here... I'll just have a LITTLE peep down that way...

These stairs lead back down to the same floor I just came up from - but in a different area. An area riddled with dodge-the-fire-ball traps.

Scuttling around to dodge the flamey death I get totally lost - this place is a total maze! I'm finding areas and leaving them un-explored at a terrifying rate! I honestly no-longer have the first idea if I'm on the right path or not!

In one room that seems to be a dead end Dirr announces "The rubble in here! Tch! Makes this place look like a quarry. Like people had been quarrying in here. Like a QUARRY."

The significance of her words doesn't strike me until I spot a crumbly wall...

I found pickaxes... this place looks like a quarry... the wall looks crumbly... what can it all mean...

SECRETS! That's what it means! And nested secrets too! I smash through a wall into a room... then through another wall from in that room... then through another! Honestly, I'm drowning in ignored side-passages... Charging blindly through the chambers of this dungeon miles away from help and safety - I sort of know this is a really bad idea, that it'll only take one fight to bring me horribly un-stuck, stranded in the heart of an un-known area.

Oh well, I've been this brash, the only thing to do is keep going and to heck with whatever treasure chests I might be missing!

Pull a lever, totter through a portcullis and I'm at a T junction. To the right is an obvious trap room of red walls with monsters behind, baited with a juicy chest. There's only a green plate on the floor but the team all stop to have a conversation about how funny it should be that there's a green pressure plate but only red walls... Too spicy for me, I've left enough other avenues un-explored, this obviously bad-news area's not going to tempt me...

In the other direction there's a crazy pit chamber - LOAD of pit traps making a maze across the floor. At the far end is a passage blocked by a series of force fields.

You know... I never really tested what these force fields do if you hit them. It could've been that you could strut straight through perfectly happily. I never tried it...

So I try it now!

BZAT!

Everyone gets hurt horribly. But they survive and we've pushed through the first field.

I wonder if there's meant to be a proper way to switch these things off... Probably... but I also wonder if I could just push straight through them...

BZAT! BZAT!! BZZAT!!!!

Amazingly, by blindly barging through all the fields I survive all the way to the end of the passage. Well... Dirr survives. Somewhere along the line everyone else was shocked to death and she had to drag them along behind her...

But it was worth it! Stairs down! Down ANOTHER floor! Alone (sort of, unless you count in the company of corpses) Dirr creeps down.

It's all totally dark and quiet... quiet, that is, except for the buzzing of warniaks in the distance...

I scamper back up the stairs for a quick rest - but find the fields have all reactivated behind me! Properly trapped now! I'd better hope this was the right way!

With everyone a little recovered I advance for a SERIOUSLY tough sequence of warniak and Fear fights!

So tough that everyone levels up pretty frigging sharply! To the extent that by the end of it all Dirr can take down a level 3 warniak in one punch! And Hoff has gone up to level 11!

Level 11? What at? He never does anything except stand at the back not being able to stab warniaks who creep up on him!

Actually, I feel a little sorry for him. He's basically total dead weight at the moment. I make a mental note to kit him out and train him up next time we're in town - it can't be nice for his self-respect that all he ever does for the team is look at every magical item they come across and say "Magic!!?!? But this is so baffling! I'm baffled!"

Honestly, the fights in this room are epic! I have to take time out once or twice to rest up some more - but it's all worth it! Finally, when all the monsters are dead, I can cross the room to the door on the far side and there - back in isometric 3rd person mode - is BERO!!! QUEST COMPLEEEEEEEEETE!!!!!

Session 19

Down the stairs I do a little exploring... I've lost track of what basement this is now... something like 6 or 7 I guess...

I come to a room with a green jelly wall and a red jelly wall. There's corresponding pressure pads on the floor too.

I decide to try the red plate first and sure enough the red jelly disintigrates! Eager to see if this has opened the path back on the previous floor (currently blocked by a similar red wall) I scamper up the stairs again... Alas, it was a waste of time - I'm still trapped.

Well, not a COMPLETE waste of time actually. The team have decided that as a result of all this running around they're ready to rest! They must've been very NEARLY tired before when they refused.

Back down again and I go to have a poke around in the new area the red wall revealed. There's not much back here... except a crap-load of warniaks! Gah! They're in my hair! Oh crumbs!!!

Since I've been fighting these monsters for ages now, you'd've thought I'd've got tough enough that they don't bother me any more. But the level 2 and 3 warniaks are still quite capable of killing my team off if I'm not careful!

Indeed, this crowd take Tom and Mell down before I can chop them up!

During the fight I notice something I need to come back to have a look into later. The Space-cat-people's magic works by throwing special seeds at people. No seeds, no spells. But since this is all the seeds are any use for, I've given them all to Sira the Space-cat-lady wizard. Only some of the magical weapons seem to fire seeds when they're used - even if it's by people on the team who aren't carrying any. I wonder if this is because the weapons contain these seeds somehow or if the characters using them are dipping into Sira's seed-bag... It doesn't make a HUGE difference at the moment since Sira has an enormous quantity of seeds and so isn't going to be stranded, unable to do spells any time soon. But eventually I imagine there'll be a time when she doesn't have many and I'll be casually using them up without knowing by firing lightnings out of daggers...

Anyway, Hof and the two cat ladies survive the fight and peer further into the next chamber. As the gloom recedes they discover... More Warniaks.

"Come on then, we can deal with these stupid monsters!" Dirr probably cries to her companions. "Tom and Mellthas wouldn't want us to give up! Hoorah!"

"Hoorah!" chorus Sira and Hofstedt! Gallantly the three of them charge the swarm of flapping horrors.

"outch!" exclaims one of them as he's stung on the arm by a beastie. "That really hurts!" and from here he falls into a panic and runs away.

"ooh!" complains the the other as she's poked on the nose. "That's quite unpleasant!" then she too descends into a panic addled quivering jelly.

"Cheers guys. Really helpful" responds Dirr as she has to single handedly slay the rest of the monsters.

When characters panic they just flee out of the combat grid. But there's no lasting penalty, so when Dirr finished the monsters she finds the other who stood just behind her saying "Oh, you did it then? How splendid" and "Yes, I was going to help, but I just remembered that actually I had probably left the oven on... And then I went to check but there's a wall I remember so I came back"

Tutting and deciding not to pursue this conversation, Dirr walks to the back of the Warniak chamber and finds a lovely chest full of treasure! What's this though? Just a pair of boots and a crummy shield? Why the heck did I have to fight so hard for THAT?

No one's tired yet, but I decide to go get a cup of tea (leaving the game running) to give them a chance to become exhausted since there's no way back to go get help and Sira's healing spell will only go so far.

Once I've got my cuppa and a slice of toast, we rest and head for the green-wall-with-pressure-plate.

As expected, the plate vanishes the green wall and the gang wander through it down a long corridor into a huge chamber. Up ahead I can see blocks of red-wall cells containing the beedy eyes of demons. As we close in Dirr points out that after the pummelling we took from the last demon, if this lot got out we'd be totally screwed - and I'm inclined to agree.

After giving the room the once over, the exact situation is this: There are 4 blocks of Red-wall arranged close together in a square - so that the path in between them all forms a cross shape. Inside the red-wall blocks are crap-loads of demons - the predator demons, not the "fear" demons. To the north, there's a green wall with a dramatic prominade behind it, lined with pot-plants (or what would once've been pot plants except for the fact that it's been 400 years since they've been watered)

On the ground between the demon's cells are a scattering of green and red pressure plates.

I reckon it's a safe bet that stepping on any of the red plates will release the demons - but that I need to hit all the green ones to proceed.

I wonder what circumstances have lead to these green and red gelatinous walls being everywhere. And why these demons are trapped in them.

Presumably the demons have been in their red rooms for the whole time since the end of the war - but where they trapped in there to protect the world from them? Or were the evil druids so hardcore that they summoned demons from hell to act as their guard dogs?

Maybe the gel walls have been here since before the war? Maybe the ancient druids thought nothing of having demons around the place and used to cage them up in these red-chambers all the time back in the day.

Well, whatever the reason, the game here is to tip-toe between the red plates in order to press all the green ones.

It's actually surprisingly fun - a little bit of precision walking's a lot more interesting than the previous puzzles I've undertaken in this dungeon. And having the demons banging up against their prison walls trying to get to me - willing me to mess up with their gaze - is surprisingly pressuring! Plus, as I weave my way in amongst the two-tone scattering, the last of my torches goes out! This puts the pressure on to be even more careful as I delicately step around the panels - since now I can't see what colour they're going to be until I'm almost upon them!

Eventually the team hear a clunking sound away to the north - indicating that I've stepped on all the right plates and can leave.

I contemplate freeing the demons and running away before they can grab me. But I probably shouldn't since they ARE demons and they're at best angry - but more probably they've gone insane from being cooped up in their little prisons for so long. And I don't know if the remaining druids on the floors far above would appreciate it if one day a bunch of mad demons find their way into the library and start ripping people up like damp kitchen roll.

Down the dramatic promenade (which is quite a strong description for a regular passage, but lined with pot plants) I pass another pair of red and green plates with corresponding walls. But since I can walk past them I decide to give them a miss for now. I shall get a feel for the lay-out of this floor before I start beggaring around with any more levers, pressure plates and buttons etc.

Further down and round a corner I come to a room with a stair-case down on the far side, a cadged door to the right and a blue pressure plate in the middle.

Interesting - there's no blue jelly wall... I wonder what this does...

And Dirr wonders the same. As I cross the threshold of the room she pipes up "Ah! Well! Since we've worked out that red-plates = bad news and green plates = good..."

Had we? I hadn't! I suppose it makes sense now she points it out - but I'd not make the connection in my head. I make a mental note to go back and ONLY try the green plate back up the prominade

"...I wonder what the BLUE plates will do!"

"I don't care WHAT it does, from now on we don't press any plates until we have to..."

"Where's your spirit of adventure Tom! What's going to happen? Is the whole place going to collapse around us?"

"Well I shouldn't think so - I mean, why would druids put in a self-destruct pressure plate just in the middle of a random room?"

"So what's your beef?"

"Well I just don't want to release any monsters..."

"TOO LATE!"

Dirr excitedly jumps onto the blue pressure plate (this is actually what happens in game by the way - this isn't another instance of my accidentally doing something and blaming it on Dirr's ineptitude) and the floor collapses. Everything goes black...

Session 18

Turns out the fireball didn't scorch the tips of the noses of my team of intrepid adventurers. Turns out it was miles off, but thanks to a trick of perspective it looked a lot closer than was in fact the case.

In the next room is a constantly triggering fire-ball trap that is easily negotiated using the power of timing. At the far end I can turn left or right and being left-handed I almost always pick left. This leads me into a room with another funny green flowing wall in it. The wall surrounds a chest that I reckon will be easy enough to free - there's a load of passaged behind it that look like they'll lead to another lever puzzle or something. However - for the sake of exploration I'll carry on down the main passage first and see what's about, then come back for this.

Round the corner there's a glowing RED wall. Just the same as the other except in colour... and in the fact that there's glowing eyes floating in it looking at me!

As I walk closer, the eyes turn out to be attached to a huge hulking beastie! Looks like it's been trapped in some kind of cage by a concerned citizen... I press my face up against the red wall like a gormless child gorping at a gorilla in the zoo

"It's like... a natural embodiment of everything we fear in predators!" exclaims Dirr (which is odd because it looks more like a man in a rubber suit - sort of like THE predator from the film Predator. But with a less wobbly face)

There's a door next to the cage with another red wall through it and another door to the side of that. Through the second door is a lever and that opens the second red wall. Through that there's a long winding passage into the darkness...

Feeling reckless (and wondering how this passage related to the monster in the cage that I seem to be leaving behind) I walk further along the corridor.

I turn a few corners and eventually come to a set of metal plates in the floor. They don't seem to do anything so I walk over them... only then it turns out that they're flame jets and as soon as I've crossed over them they spark into life! Oops! I can't get back now - I've not got enough buckets of water on me to clear them all! Looks like I've missed my chance on the treasure chest!

A little nervous I carry on, only to find the passage leading me round on myself... Directly into the cage of the predator!

Oh crumbs. I'm not very well prepared for this - I wasn't REALLY expecting to have to deal with a predatory elemental demon! I just thought I'd have a snoop about, but this dungeon's got other ideas!

Well... it's not SO bad... I've sill got my magic weapons... and I've got this sun dagger - that's got to do something good hasn't it?

Bravely, with knees knocking, I open the caged door to the demonic layer and get ready for a pummeling. Mell and Sira hold hands as the confruntation begins!

The first thing I do is fire off the sun dagger, cast "view life" (assuming this'll let me know how well I'm doing) and shoot a fire-ball at the monster.

Stupidly it looks like I clicked the wrong spell for sira and she blinds the monster. Then the sun dagger does a crazy wave of light effect across the whole of the battle field! The monster doesn't seem bothered though and after shrugging off the fireball too it flattens tom in one punch!

Uh-oh! Let's try this sun dagger again...

Oh I see! The blind spell I fired earlier WAS the sun dagger - I just got mixed up. The crazy wave of light must've been the "view life" effect...

Turns out that being blinded twice doesn't really bother demons much though. It takes half of Dirr's health this time round...

Some more fire-balls, a couple more well-aimed blows and Hof uses up the last of high lightning dagger charges - but the monster still has enough strength to take Dirr down!

It's all down to the magic users now. Hof's less than useless stood quivering, nude in front of the horrible beasty.

Thankfully the magic users are a lovey-dovey tag team of awesome! Sira lobs a freezing bolt of freezyness and Mellthas (using his own guts to fuel it since he's out of magic) lobs his last fire-ball! It's just enough! The beasty lets out a final, blood curdling roar and evaporates into an orange mist!

Score one to the team! Those flames will've been bound to have gone out now that I beat the monster challange!

I hurry back, eager to get that chest behind the green wall that I ignored earlier... but bad news! The flames don't care that I beat the demon! I'm still not allowed back. In your face, me! Gnarg!

Where to go next then?

I head back into the demon chamber and poke around. Only to find stairs down!

No way! I can't move on from this floor without scouring it completely can I?

Looks like I've got no choice. And with my two top fighters dead (but no one else tired) it looks like I'm going to have to be extra specially cautious...

Session 17

The gang are stood in a strange dungeon, staring at a solid wall of green on the far side of the room. What on earth is this weird barrier? How am I supposed to progress from here?

Re-wind a little way.

I come back to the game and my characters are stuck in the shop with huge quantities of food weighing them down! Oh no! I swear I didn't save the game when this happened!!! This is horrible!

What makes it worse is that I'm going to have to euthanise these guys again - I don't really like abandoning characters when they're still alive just to re-load their younger selves and prune away this branch of their story. I thought it was painful enough to do it at the end of the last session - but now it turns out that I didn't prune hard enough and the stump has carried on growing!

What has actually happened is the game seems to auto-save when you switch it off! It's actually a really cool feature! When you've finished playing you just turn the game off, then when you come back to it you pick "Continue" from the main menu and it picks up from wherever you left off!

These days that's not a particularly amazing feature - most console games do the same now. But I certainly don't remember any other PC games being so user friendly all that time ago! It's only a shame that what's brought the feature sharply to my attention is the resurrection of my over-laden characters, begging not to be banished to the void of a history that should never have been.

Oh well, never mind. Main Menu. Load Game. Load slot 1.

I quickly play back through to where I left off - only instead of buying over a thousand food supplies, I bought a measly 150 (30 per character). I don't know how many rests that will keep me fed for, but at least I'll be able to move freely. I save the game just to minimise the damage of any subsequent stupid errors.

It's interesting actually, I've tried to watch the amount the food goes down each time I rest to get a feel for how much is "a lot" of food. It's surprisingly hard to monitor since all the characters' food supplies are shown separately and I'm fairly sure the amount changes depending on how hurt people are (if this isn't the case, it certainly SHOULD be - that's how I'D'VE designed it at least).

Off I trot back to the dungeons of Drinno. It occurs to me that the actual dungeons aren't "Basement 1" and "Basement 2" - they're actually "3" and "4" since the library they're below is already the second floor down from the surface! This is quite an impressive subterranean citadel!

I head directly for my lowest level so far - basement 4. Feeling quite relaxed about it now (despite the fact that last time I was here I got horribly killed up) I take time to investigate the pressure plate puzzle that I ignored last time round.

The room is laid out with three rows of three pressure plates spaced quite far apart. Between the rows are moving flame jets that are just sliding back and forth along the length of the room.

There's no obvious clues as to what pattern of plates I should switch on, but since I can switch them on or off, I assume it's not going to be just as simple as "switch them all on". There must be some kind of cunning hint somewhere round here - maybe to do with the now long-since-wilted pot plants in the corners of the room...

Oh wait no I'm wrong. It IS as simple as switch them all on. That's a bit lame.

I guess the idea was that I was supposed to be weaving in and out of the flames to dexterously hit each pad without getting burned. But actually, even with the very slow first person controls, this is no effort at all.

A door opens to the side of the room and stepping through into an ante chamber I find a chest full of weapons, a gem and some arrows.

Well fair enough, I guess I'll carry on round to where I got nearly-killed last time.

Back at the t-junction with the fountain, I fill up all my water buckets. Then I find that water buckets are a LOT heavier when they're full and my team can't move from the spot! Ooops!

Thankfully discarding buckets that I stole in the first place is no bother, so I thin my collection down to just three and carry on.

This floor of the dungeon is amazingly empty now! I guess that I killed the last set of baddies last time I was down here. All that's left is a sort of flame-spout room (where I walked delicately round the flame spouts to bag myself a gem and a crystal dagger) the stairs down to the next floor (which I found behind a flame jet that I put out with a bucket of water - but ignored for now since I hadn't got the whole floor mapped) and a flame-and-levers puzzle.

The flame and levers puzzle sees three levels behind three flame spouts. I put out the first flame and pulled the lever behind it. Then I put out the second flame and pulled the lever behind that. As I put out the second flame, the first came back on again.

I headed back to the fountain and filled my buckets up with water again, put out the third flame and pulled that lever too, and the near-by door opened.

Seriously? This is ANOTHER totally rubbish puzzle. Does it even count as a puzzle if you just have to pull all the levers or press all the pressure plates? I mean - that's more just a task than a puzzle. I'd've been more than willing to do some full on Dungeon Master / Eye of the Beholder / Lands of Lore style work-out-what-lever-does-what investigation work here! That sort of thing (if done properly) can be really rewarding - and ties in nicely to the sense of exploring a location. You have to get to know the environment and then spot what changes are triggered by levers and stuff. I guess maybe that's a style of puzzle that's gone out of fashion these days - but this game wasn't made these days! It was made in those days!

Bah. Well anyway, through the door is a locked chest that I can't get into prompting me to trudge back upstairs and into town to buy more lock-picks.

I quite like the game's approach to lock picking. Basically anyone can do it, but each pick only works once. If you want to be able to pick a lock, you've got to come prepared. It's a slight shame that you don't have to work to find picks, or that there's always easily enough picks for every lock available. It would've been cool to have to say "Oh crumbs, the locked chest or the locked door, which do I open with my pick I bought!" then later to find a second pick in an alcove in a hidden chamber so that I can say "Awesome! A second pick! Now I can go back and open that door/chest I didn't open before!"

Anyway, on my way back into the dungeon - on basement 3 (formerly basement 1 until I changed the numbering) Hofstedt suddenly has a spark of inspiration on how I could solve one of the puzzles I solved ages ago.

"Look Tom!" he pipes up as we're trying to hurry back the chest that may well contain some awesome treasure "These swords are arranged in a cross shape! I think it must be more than a simple co-incidence!"

I actually couldn't see any swords arranged in a cross, but more importantly this is a clue for the pressure plate puzzle I overcame hours ago - the one where you mirror the arrangement of flame-spouts to progress. Why would he tell me this now.

I imagine Dirr, Sira and Mellthas looking at him confused while Tom feels almost pitying. Is Hofstedt finally losing it? Is the pressure of being stranded on a strange planet and having to run sex errands for its anachronistic inhabitants getting to him? Is he starting to crack? Certainly being naked in an apparently demon infested dungeon might be enough to push anyone's sanity to the limit... Maybe I should look after him a bit better...

I resolve to get him some clothes at the next opportunity - as a comfort. Considering how inhabitants of H.P. Lovecraft stories are regularly sent batty just by meeting a man in a sea-shell chariot in a hut in the mist on a hill it would be a bit hard to expect this poor old government inspector to be totally undaunted by crash landing on a mysteriously inhabited planet (where he expected desert) where there are body snatching cat people, haunted talking buildings filled with giant maws, magic wielding Celtic folk from beyond history and virility enhancing crystal merchants being held prisoner / killed by actual demons.

Back at the chest, I pick the lock and find a new kind of crystal dagger - a different colour from the ones I have already! This one is red so probably a fire spell - I shall have to give it a test drive next time I meet some nasties!

I saunter over to the steps down to the next level. I've been feeling very casual up to this point - there's no monsters about so there's been nothing to worry me recently. But as I stare down into the depths of the dungeon I think perhaps it might be prudent to prepare myself...

I dig out the scroll of banish demon and decide I'll try and get Mellthas to learn it. That way he should be good to protect me from more than one demon if more than one demon should show up.

Irritatingly the stupid man is too low level to do it.

"Ugh, you're so USELESS!" mutters Sira

Mellthas holds up a card with "It's hardly my fault!" written on it, but Sira knocks it out of his hands and pokes him in the eye

"I knew I should've listened to my mother and had a strange mystical bonding with Ralf from over the road. He runs his own business now you know!"

"But Sira! We're like the river flowing together!" he scrawls on a pad.

"Oh that old line..."

"Can't you feel the salmon of my love leaping up the waterfall of your gullet?" he scribbles.

There's a pregnant pause.

Sira fixes her gaze on her erstwhile boyfriend.

"I'm turned on now."

So maybe I won't be any much better prepared than I am already for Basement 5. But to break the horrible tension of the moment Tom coughs and announces "Come along, no sense standing around chatting"

"Yes, good idea Tom. These steps won't walk down themselves you know" chips in Dirr.

And here's where you came in at the start of this post.

As the gang reach the next floor down, they're confronted with a large empty room - on the far side of which is a glowing green wall.

There's no clear explanation of what the wall is. As you move up close to it, it turns out to be translucent. It looks to be a sort of gelatinous block running along the back wall of the chamber and behind the far right hand end there is a passage disappearing into the distance.

In the centre of the room is a pressure plate and a small hole in the floor.

Each time you press the plate, a wandering flame spout comes out of the pit and starts to chase you!

However, in tandem with this a hole appears in the gelatinous wall. Each time you press the plate, the hole moves along a notch from left to right.

The "puzzle" is just to press the plate enough times to get the hole in line with the passage in the corner of the room without being burned to a crisp by the flames.

Excellently there's also a secret button in one of the patches of back wall the jelly reveals half-way through the process. Taking time out from flame-dodging to press it rewards the team with a stash of treasure! This time it's a "Sun dagger" and a gem hat! I decide not to put the hat on right away in case it's cursed and I add the sun dagger to my list of weapons-that-are-probably-magical-and-need trying out!

When I get through the jelly wall into the passage beyond I'm set upon by some more warniaks. No sign of demons yet - and these guys are distinctly soft nowadays. I don't even have to pull out any of my magical arsenal to deal with them.

There's another pressure plate back here too. But all it seems to do is set fire to me whenever I press it. Not very helpful - especially since I'm not keen to rest because I don't want to have to put Hof, Dirr and Tom through another 8 hours of man-on-cat mage loving just yet...

At the far end of the passage is a room with two doors and a pit in it. The doors both appear to be locked. Lucky me! I brought along a couple of picks!

Oh. The picks don't work. And they're used up by my trying them on the doors! Gah! Never mind, there's still a hole in the floor I can throw myself down in despair.

Actually, I don't throw my plucky gang of adventurers down it - instead I just rappel down with a rope I've been carrying since who-knows-when. I just KNEW I was going to need it at some point!

As I drop down into the basement below (Basement 6 I guess) I just check that I can use the rope to get back up from here... Thankfully I can - so no fear of being trapped just yet.

The room I've descended into is small with a door to my left and a corridor leading away to the north.

I check the door first - this one's not locked and leads to a room with funny looking blue skulls up the walls (which you can't even "examine" so they must just be scenery). There's a staircase upwards here which leads into another room, this time with an earthy floor and a locked door blocking progress. I guess (and confirm it by looking at the map) that this door leads into the upper end of pit room and is one of the ones I wasted a lock pick on from the other side earlier...

Back down to Basement 6 and I notice that it's not just that one room with skulls up the walls - it's actually the general motif here... Weirdly this suggests that the druids used to like skull walls back in the day...

Actually, I noticed that since this game is set in the 2200's - the war that drove the naughty druids out of Drinno is meant to have happened something like 200 years ago now. It's funny to imagine that if this game were real, then somewhere out in space there's a planet of cat people and humans for whom the splitting of the druids into the clans of nice-druids and assasin-druids is as distant event as the marriage of Napoleon and Josephine and the Mexican war of independence...

Anyway - just along the corridor from where I climbed down the pit to this floor are cages of warniaks! Three cased to be exact... And on right clicking on the bars you can either "examine" or "manipulate" them. I move the pointer over "examine" and then accidentally click manipulate instead. Oops!

In the game world I imagine what happened was this: Dirr steps forwards to take a closer look at the bars with her night vision. Meanwhile Mellthas and Sira steal a secret kiss in the darkness while no-one's looking ("who cares about these dangerously sprung cage bars... KISS ME!") but Hofstedt blunders into them as he catches up ("dangerously sprung cage what? OOF!").

Sira is knocked off balance and is grasping for something to steady herself ("Arg! Bars you fool!"). She snatches the collar of Mellthas's cape yanking him into a doubled over position (he's just finished writing out "Dangerous WHAT cage bars?" on a card he had held behind Sira's head whilst they were kissing)

As he bends forward he head-buts Tom in the ass shoving him forwards ("What do you think about them D-erk!") He stumbles and pushes himself up against Dirr at the bars of the cage. Dirr - being a topless cat lady - has her boobies poke uncomfortably through the bars of the Warniak cage! ("It looks like any pressure at all could... OOPS!" *poik* *poik*)

Hofstedt (secretly in love with her you'll remember) rushes forwards to delicately extricate them for her ("Don't worry fair maiden! You boobies wil always be safe while I'm around!")

Having freed the objects of his affection from the bars - Hofstedt thinks this is going to be one of those magic moments he's dreamed of for the whole time he's been on this planet. Remembering how Mellthas had got Sira to fancy him, Hof pulls his most chivalric don't-worry-fair-maiden-your-boobies-will-always-be-safe-while-I'm-around and goes to poke Dirr in the Trii.

Dirr, who is a rough tough fighting sort of girl and didn't NEED to be groped out of the bars of the cage since she was perfectly fine to do it herself, has no patience for anyone to be poking her in the face and gives Hof an open palmed slap in the chops. ("You fool! Those bars are dangerously sprung!")

Hof topples against the bars of the cage and the clanging impact of his still gurning face on them sets hidden cogs rumbling...

There's a moment of horrified silence as the bars judder... then start to rise! The horrible warniaks within buzzing frantically for the fight!!! This can only go badly!

"Uh oh" says everyone in unison.

But actually it doesn't. The warniaks are pretty easily dispatched in the first cage. There's no treasure in here though so, feeling cocky, we move on to the next one.

Another bunch of warnicks and, this time, an intentional cage opening rewards us with a decorative sword.

In the last cage there's a tougher bunch of warniaks. They give us a run for our money and the poison on their leader leaves Dirr INSANE!

Mercifully I have a potion for that and her mind is quickly cleared. Thank goodness really! I can't imagine it's easy to get a fierce lady cat warrior back up a rope and away to medical attention while she is insane with poisoning!

At the far end of this cage is a level. I pull it and nothing much seems to happen... nothing, that is, until I walk back out into the passage when I'm confronted with...

A DEMON!!!!!!!

A horrible monster that looks like a cluster of 4 hands with a pair of flaming eyes in the centre is just hovering down the corridor towards me!

I've been waiting a while to get into a tussle with some more interesting monsters than warniaks and krondirs - but this bad-boy looks like he's probably more than I was bargaining for!

The beastie is thankfully alone - and I decide that the best thing I can do is go for a quick kill. Throw everything I can at it and hope to take it out before it has many turns to nobble me first.

Everyone with a magical weapon sets it off - and Melthas uses "boasting" because it's a wild-card. I've no idea what the spell does, but it might just be the answer to all my problems!

In the end, it doesn't do anything much... at least, not that I can distinguish. The game tells me it hit, and there's a crazy sound effect! The monster (which the combat screen names as a level 1 "fear") has a sort of spooky ghost effect triggered on it. But it doesn't do any damage and the monster doesn't run away.

The Fear's not fussed for our attacks and sits back and kills Tom outright with a sort of rainbow effect spell.

The rest of the party advance and this time they're DEFINITELY not going to let it take another pop at them!

It's Dirr who kills it in the end! Her two weapons technique (one in the hands and one held on the tip of her tail) means she gets two strikes per round - just enough to evaporate the fear into a cloud of glowing fire-smoke...

The team stops to nurse Tom back to health. Everyone's tired now so they're happy to rest a while.

When they're all back to fully functional - they walk down the passage to see what the "fear" was guarding...

Turns out it was a chest with a key in it. The key, in fact, to the door up the stairs back into the upper pit room in basement 5. And the same key opens the other door out of that chamber...

As the weary Dirr turns the key in this second lock, the team exchange glances. Thank heavens! We've beaten the demon! This room must surely contain our awesome reward and imprisoned Chemist!

Clunk!

The door makes a creaking wooden sound (despite the fact that it's made of metal and doesn't open on hinges - it raises up into the ceiling). As the exhausted gang step forward to finally claim their prize, brushing demon soot off their clothes, a GIANT FIREBALL WIZZES PAST THEIR NOSES!!!!!!

Not finished yet guys! Not finished yet!

Session 16

Mellthas, Sira and Tom run back through the dungeon. All the way back to the library and back some more to the healer.

Right. I think we've had enough action for a little while. Let's get everyone resurrected and just get a feel who who's who round here. What do you mean I'm chickening out? What do you mean I'm putting off the inevitable? No no no no no, I'm simply getting to know the environment - giving this space-Celtic section of the game the same amount of attention I gave the Iskai city.

The first person I stopped to chat with was the healer. I've used his services a couple of times now so it would only be polite to actually stop and pass the time of day with him.

Turns out his name is Makaio. He's not got a lot of useful stuff to tell me - turns out that the dungeon under Arjano is called "Drinno" (possibly I've been told this before and forgotten. But if so, I've forgotten). And that's mostly it.

I did ask him how he was healing my guys -when it actually happens you don't get to see him do it because it all takes place in a text box. As such, I've no idea if he's using herbs and polices or if it's full on magic. Obviously the humans CAN do magic since Mellthas has been helping me out with his fire-balls and boasting - but no-one's mentioned how they're achieving it yet. Without special psychic organs like the Iskai it seems like they shouldn't be able to. I've tried to ask Mellthas this stuff, but he's an idiot and says "I don't understand that" no matter how I phrase the question...

Makaio's not much more use either.

"How do you heal people Makaio?" Tom asks

"Oh well you see, my talent for it appeared when I was young"

"No, that's the answer to the question 'How long have you been a healer' which I didn't ask you. Tell me HOW you do the healing..."

"Yes"

"HOW DO YOU DO THE HEALING YOU DITHERING, AGING SPACE HIPPY????"

"Psst" interrupts Dirr "we should keep him sweet, he's helping us for free..."

"Oh... err... oops... um... OH NO! Quick Makaio, I've DEFINITELY just come down with a terribly case of 'insane'! I'm really definitely having an episode and have just enough of my senses left to know it's happening! Quick you have to help me! I'm totally not even aware of what I'm doing and you DEFINITELY shouldn't take anything I've said recently seriously!" Tom staggers around the room fake swooning against things.

Makaio looks unimpressed at Tom until Tom stops and the team sort of shuffle embarrassedly out of the healing room.

Next we swing by Ouktero the magic teacher. Actually, he seems like a much more probable person to be able to tell me where magic comes from

"Oh, it's just a gift of knowledge from the Gods you know. Some of us have got it, and some of us don't. Those of us who have it get trained up to use it right. Those of us who don't... well... I'm sure they find something to do with their time..."

Blah. Not very satisfactory an explanation. But this guy's got nothing else to say so I'll leave him be.

Next to visit is Torko the object identifier.

"Hello. So you're an object identifier... what's THIS!"

"That's your finger. But really I specialise in identifying magical items."

"WRONG! It wasn't my finger!"

"You see, TRUE masters of magic can put power from themselves into objects. They can embed a spell into something. This means that subsequently ANY idiot who picks the item up can use the magic that's been put in it..."

"Aren't you going to have another guess at what this is..?"

"Tom. It's ok to be proud. But just put that away now." (Dirr interjects)

"... Crystals from Danu's womb are good at taking on enchantments. However, magical items have a limited charge! Use them too much and they'll drop off"

Tom puts his magical item away.

"Aparently it IS possible to get them re-charged. But despite Arjano being a centre for learning, no-one here has any idea how this could be done."

"Please then - oh splendid object identifying man" Dirr's taken over the conversation now "Can you tell me what THESE things are!!!"

"Well. The first is a crystal dagger... ENCHANTED WITH LIGHTNING!!!!!" (I hadn't used this yet, so that's pretty good news. Actually, I think I have two of these bad-boys as well - even better news!")

"The second is a Stiletto infused with the power... OF FROST CRYSTAL!!!!" this is Sira's ice-efying sword. Really it's not a VERY useful identification though, since it's out of charges now. I guess it's a good one to keep my eyes peeled for though so I can teach one of my magic users that spell (it's a badass spell you see).

"And the third is a a silver necklace."

Oh bother. I was really hoping there'd be something cool about Hofstedt and Tom's jewellery. Sort of feel that was a bit of a waste of money there...

Next guy we meet is a student at Arjano. Turns out that the absent Bero was his tutor and subsequently he exclaims "It's difficult to study now that my tutor's disappeared..."

Stupid student. Use the library! Don't wait for your tutor to spoon feed you everything! You're going to have a student loan for the rest of your working life, you may as well make the effort to TRY and make it worth while!

Looking around the various rooms in this place there's HEAPS of books scattered about. What's irritating however is that you can't read them until you pick them up. And then it turns out that NONE of them are of interest to Tom.

That's a bit rubbish really since this is a place of magical learning - you'd've thought that there'd be something interesting to read in here. If I were writing a review of this game I think this would definitely count against its final score. I mean, Ultima 7 (sorry for name checking it all the time, but it's a game that's still relevant to western RPG design even today! I mean, Oblivion takes a LOT of features direct from Ultima 7 and still hasn't quite got as strong a sense of simulating a living world... Although it is a LOT prettier and the character progression is way better) had text for every book in the game (oh look! A feature that was in Ultima 7 and then later also in the Elder Scrolls games). Albion could've at least given you some kind of title or subject line for the books in its environments. I mean, so far I don't even know why it bothers to offer me the chance to read these things.

Round the corner I find Nemos again - leader of the druids - wedging himself behind a pot plant

"Oh hi! Did you find whatever his name is yet? I see you've still got Stupid McDeafanddumb with you! Not pushed him onto some spikes to save you having to deal with him yet? Ha ha ha - I love that he's both an idiot AND can't tell what I'm saying about him"

Mellthas holds up a piece of card with "I can lip read" written on it. Nemos knocks it out of his hand and pokes him in the eye

"Who gave you these cards? You naughty simpleton!"

Since he's got no ACTUAL news for me I leave him to his path-finding error, butting his face against the wall, turning round and hitting is nuts on a plant pot, then turning to walk into the wall again, then turning to walk into the plant pot again etc etc etc. I hope that this isn't going to Class A the game later - but there's not much I could do about it... You can't push characters around so even if I tried to un-wedge him it wouldn't work. I'm not TOO concerned though - most of the times anyone's ever needed to be at a specific place in the game so far, it has appeared to just teleport them there. So I expect that the next plot-critical conversation he has with me will free him from his unfortunate predicament.

We swing by the store room and thieve a load of buckets (just in case they're going to come in handy). Then head down to the library to see what anyone has to say for themselves down there.

The only chap who'd talk to us at length in the library was a man called "Roves". Interestingly he must've had some kind of lapel badge on him with "Ask me about magical documents" written on it because somehow Tom automatigically knew to ask "Do you have any magical documents you could sell us".

"Why yes! Here are a loaf of different spells to do with banishing a demon, banishing a group of demons, scaring a demon, protection from demons... You need to do something magically to or about a demon, I'm your man".

This pretty much scuppers my hopes that the "demons" in the basement are just the warniaks and that the druids over react to them. It also strongly suggests that there's a LOT of demons down there...

I can't afford many scrolls at the moment. Indeed, I can only afford one "Banish a demon" scroll. But I thought that the investment would at least be protection against my first supernatural encounter.

"Don't forget - the scrolls I sell can be used by ANYONE! Which is just as well since your only mage is mute and presumably wouldn't be able to recite it."

"Er - excuse me? Invisible am I?" complains Sira, but no one notices.

"These libraries contain ALL the knowledge the druids have EVER accrued! Thankfully someone invented printing roughly 400 years ago, so the knowledge of the druids now fits into this one neat and tidy room! Previously everything was on scrolls and took up LOADS more space"

"400 years ago eh? Exactly the same length of time ago as Drinno was sealed off after a fight with the fire worshipping druids... I wonder if there's a connection..."

"I imagine that Drinno used to be scroll storage space. Then when they needed to close it off, they had to find a way of squeezing all the texts into a safe storage area - which pushed them to invent the printed book..." suggests Hofstedt.

"oh... Well that solves that I guess..."

"Anyway" Roves interrupts "None of the books in here will be of any interest to you. They're all just about magic and the histroy of the human race on a strange and distant planet. Boring stuff like that"

"Oh... Actually, regarding your history, we heard about Canto who lead humans here 2000 years ago... is there anything you can tell me about that?"

"Ahh! Canto! He was a man who lead us here 2000 years ago!"

"Yes... anything more you can tell me?"

"He's revered by some as a GOD! He lead us here you know, when the homeland was ravaged!"

So nothing much more useful. I guess that this whole story has just descended into a myth for these people - no-one knows the name of their ancestors' home land because it's been forgotten in the intervening millennia.

Bah. Well, time to get back to work in that dungeon. No one has any mana at this point so I just have a quick rest to recover - only the game says "No one has enough food to feel revived after their rest"

Oops! Starving team members! That's no good! And I'm stoney broke! I hope the Druids in the kitchen can help me out...

Oh. There's no kitchen.Off into town I go then.

Vanello is the local village. It's only got one shop so I stop in to flog everything I'm not using - plenty of warniak spheres, weapons, Mellthas's clothes (he can ware Tom's old boiler suit from the Toronto, since Tom's got some nice new armour recently somewhere along the line).

It's interesting how inconsistent the character art is in this game. I don't know if I touched on this before - I can't remember. I'm sure I mentioned how dressing your character up in new clothes doesn't effect them in game. Anyway, the reason I think of it is because I'm just dicking around with Melthas's garb and the inconsistency with him is VERY striking!

Each character on the team gets drawn in at least 3 different places: One sprite that you see walking around and in combat. One facial portrait that you have at the bottom of the screen and one full-length portrait that you use as a dress-up-doll in the inventory page.

Melthas is a squat, pudding faced fatso in the game screen walking around. On the character portrait screen he's a cheery, young looking bearded chap - not especially lumpen or misshapen and a little chubby. And then in the inventory screen he's a cackling, bare chested, thin muscular (clearly evil) mage wielding lightning boxing gloves!

This makes it very hard to keep track of exactly what he looks like and build up any kind of image in your mind when you think of him.

Anyway, he's dressed up as a space man now - no stupid floaty capes on this team thankyou very much. Now let's buy some grub.

"...You don't sell food? But... How does anyone in this town stay alive?"

"Oh we all walk the treacherous route back to the first village to eat. This is why this town is such a small one, since we all walk through monster infested jungle twice for each of our three meals a day there's quite a high rate of being-picked-off-by-a-krondir"

Gah! This is making an already multi-part quest much more multi-parted! I've got to walk to the village to get supplies to take on the dungeon to find the chemist to get the viagra to take to the king to get him to give me permission to leave the island! Crazy!

Still off we trudge, back down the river (taking a sensible route this time - it turns out that if you stick to the east side of the river there's another bridge much further south than the one I saw before that cuts the journey down significantly!) grumbling and cursing our luck.

Striding into the food shop late at night - the team decides they're going to buy a huge heap of grub so they don't have to come back here and get more again until after they've finished the dungeon of Drinno. With this noble intention in mind, Tom strides up to the shop-keeper and says "I'd like 1486 portions of non-perishable food please"

Honestly, this is the actual number I asked for! The game calculates how much money you have and when you ask to buy something it gives you a slide bar the goes from 0 to as-many-as-you-can-buy-with-the-money-you've-got.

I thought that since I'd got all this money by just selling a few bits and pieces I didn't need (and hadn't taken long to get) I may as well spend 100% of it on food - then I wouldn't need to buy more for AGES.

Amazingly, the woman in the shop was ready for me! Without batting an eye lid she went into her store cupboard and produced the full amount of food rations! These people must be whole-salers or something!

"Thankyou kindly for your service!" Tom says cheerily then walks away...

Or at least he tries to... Alas however, he's so utterly laden down with food that he can't shift from the spot. Neither can Dirr, Hofstedt (where he's put all his portions for carrying is anyone's guess) Sira or Melthas! Arg! I've bought at least 100 times the maximum amount of food my team can carry! We're stuck!

We're going to have to eat our way out of the situation! Only there's no option to just eat a ration just like that. The only way to do it is to make camp and rest - only the party won't rest inside the shop (and probably wouldn't anyway because of not being tired).

You can't DROP food rations, but maybe I can sell them back to the lady in the shop? But no! There's no button for this, you bought it, you're stuck with it!

That's it! Game over! I can't move from the spot so even if I wanted to wait the hundreds and hundreds of real-time hours it would take for the gang to get tired and rest enough times to bring the amount of food we're carrying down to a manageable amount, I couldn't since I'm in this shop!

I can't believe it! The quest to save the planet of Albion was defeated by overly optimistic rationing!!!! Crazily the only option left is to effectively kill myself - I'm going to have to switch the game off and re-load from an earlier point when I come back! I'm going to have to cut off this time-line altogether! Goodbye team! I hereby consign you to nothingness!!! FAREWELL!!!!