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!!!!