Session 22

I am so SO glad to be back on albion after having been on holiday. I've honestly missed the characters and the landscape - how crazy is that!!?? Especially having been to ACTUAL Scotland where there's ACTUAL landscape to look at!

I've been thinking about how games are more and more being crowbarred into line with movies or books or (sometimes) music. I think it's a shame that people look to compare games to other entertainments so much as they do in the magazines and on-line. I know that there's heaps you can pinch from other entertainments when you want to make a great game - I mean, I love how action movies influence FPSs. But always talking about games in terms of how they can be like other things tricks you into forgetting that some of the things you can do in games that would ruin a film are total delight on a plate.

For example - for most of this session I was just idly wandering around the next town (more of this below). An hour of wandering around a town looking at all the doors and trying to get a feel for the place would make for staggeringly dull viewing on film, staggeringly dull reading in a book and staggeringly dull looking at as an art installation. But in an RPG like this one - the exploration is delicious! I love every second of it!

Anyway - I'll pick up where I left off.

We wander casually back to the main town on the island of the Celts and hand in the amulet to the king. He's terribly grateful and issues us papers allowing us to leave the island. We set off to visit the fisherman but he's had a change of heart since last time I talked to him.

"Oh, right. You got the papers. So I guess you really DO want to leave... Well, see, the thing is - since last time you spoke to me the not-a-fish tax has gone up."

"The not-a-fish tax?"

"Yeah... Anything I take in my boat that's not a fish - I get taxed on..."

"Wow... what a strange thing to tax!"

"Yeah. Kings a bit nutty. Wotcha gonna do. 150 gold pieces please"

"(make it 200! We need a new set of tankards!)" (this from the kitchen)

"Ahem - I mean 200 gold pieces."

Alas, we don't have the gold right away so I spend a little more time ambling about selling all the junk I got from the bandits I killed coming through the pass. And it's pretty good that I did since, while I'm in the local "useful items" shop I pick up a natty "fire ring". Seriously, I made a packet on all the old bandit rubbish - the ring cost 800 gold on its own!

Actually, by "A packet" I mean pretty much exactly 1000 gold. So in a way it's a bit frivolous of me to be splurging on magical niceties. But then I did say recently that I was going to give Hoff something for him to be good at - so I reckon he can be my new magical item wielder. Pretty much useless - except for an expensive to maintain but seriously over-powered arsenal of mystical pendants.

I especially like the idea of setting him up like that 'cos it sort of makes him Gordon Freeman in space - a weakling scientists who gets seriously kitted out and kicks ass.

So with my 200 gold change, I swan back to the fisherman - wait for his boat to come in (he's out at sea most of the day - at first I thought I'd got the place where his boat lands wrong, but when dusk fell he turn up again and everything was fine) and cough up for my ride.

Off we go! Garris (the fisherman) is taking us to Beloveno - the "Great harbour city" on the island (continent) of Maini.

One thing I miss in this game from other RPGs is a world map so I could see how all these islands are positioned relative to each other. I guess it wouldn't have any use in the game and that's almost certainly why it's not there - but it would've made a great desktop backdrop!

On the way, Dirr teaches everyone the Maini language and then lo-and-behold we catch our first full-screen-image sighting of the next continent! It's a lovely long-shot of a thin line of buildings perched on the shore in front of a cloud covered stack of mountains! For a huge important city it looks surprisingly cut off from the world - but then Albion works differently to other planets...

This Full screen picture's followed immediately by another - this time it's from the harbour-side looking out at all the boats coming and going.

"Excellent - we've all got off the boat and the boat we were on has sailed away again and we're all fine. What an eventful voyage that wasn't!" (or something like that). "Let's get on and find out if anyone round here has heard anything of the Toronto!"

I click to clear the speech text but the full-screen image doesn't go away. And that's because I've been bamboozled! It ISN'T a full screen image! It's in-game graphics and I'm in first-person mode looking out to sea! It's like one of those moments in modern games where they show off how good their in-game graphics are by swapping into them from a cut-scene and you don't even know it's happened!

I turn around and directly behind me is Beloveno - the Constantinople-like hub of trading in this part of the world.

The town has a sort of slightly eastern-european / mediteranian feel about it. It's mostly built out of light-coloured bricks - but with an odd pirate-shanty-town angle on top. There's large wooden spikes sticking out of the ground all over the place and picnic benches laying around the place (in one area the game tells me "This is where goods are inspected as they arrive from sea" - I assume this will be important later.)

As I walk about a sort of dancing conquistador body-pops up to me like MC hammer. He busts a move right up to the gang and stops in front of us - pumping the air continuously with his arms while showing off some sort of moon-walking-on-the-spot fancy footwork. I assume he's a busker, but I just spent the last of my money paying Garris's not-a-fish tax.

"Excuse me - I'm impressed by your moves, but I'm afraid we don't have any gold to give you--" Tom starts. But the dancing conquistador's not interested "I can't TALK to you mate! But ask around about the mountain pass!" And with a wink the man dances backwards away from us - always keeping his eyes on us to make sure we don't try and talk to him again until he reaches the shore where he just stops and busts moves until we eventually go away.

Mountain pass eh? I wonder what that could be about...

Round the corner we meet another local - this time it's a huge blond man with an exceedingly luxuriant moustache. His sprite is much higher res than everyone else's suggesting he's going to be important. He has a tartan shawl over one shoulder and when spoken to declares in thick accent:

"Ye must nae walk throo the grrain! Thank ye forr being condierrate to yon local farrmerrs! 25% ae crrops arrrrre rruined baa pipple trrapsin' through them roond herrrre!"

Crops eh? I'll have to keep my eyes peeled and try to avoid any if I see them. But it doesn't look like they're going to be in this first-person section. All I can find is paved streets and a large market area (currently empty).

Near a strangly out-of-place Iskai building (multi-culturalism! No doubt brought on by this being a trading hot-spot...) I chat to another peasant about the Toronto and his not mentioning it leaves the team a bit dissapointed.

"No one's heard any thing about it!"

"That must mean that it's not landed anywhere round here..."

"For real?!?! How can this be? It's been absolutely MONTHS since we crashed on this planet! And we've visited half the continents already and no-one's heard ANYTHING? Oh man - what if it's been blown up??!! What if the aliens have over-run it and killed everyone on board!??"

"Woah there Tom - Aliens? In case you haven't noticed, half the people on this planet are humans just like you..."

"That's a thought Tom - I've never stopped to consider how that'll change the earth-people we arrived with's reaction to this place. I mean - if they touched down and met just aliens, that's one thing. But think of how confusing it'll be for them all to touch down and find they're amongst people who're somehow from our own history!"

Mell - who's never had Tom and Hoff's funny clothes and mission properly explained to him holds up a card with "WE'RE something to do with YOUR history? Um - other way round I think!" But Tom idly knocks this into a ditch and stamps on it.

"Well" he decides "We'd better keep moving I guess. Let's ditch the boats and see if we can explore this new land-mass on foot."

We finish mapping the whole town - creeping round every nook and cranny - exploring the inner court-yards of the huge building in the middle of town, poking around by the tiny houses in the northern corners, even looking at the town gate leading away to who-knows where. Then we're left with the decision of what to do first...

We try and have a nose outside the city wall (just to see how hard a job it's going to be to walk to wherever's next... maybe get a glimpse of the mysterious "mountain pass") but the guard stops us: "Skeima Din" (this means hello here - presumably this island's language is quite similar to the last) "But you should certainly go and learn about our town at the council house before you leave..."

"but we don't want to... we want to go and--"

"LEARN ABOUT IT!"

"woah - ok ok!"

Off we go to the council house where we're promptly greeted by a woman who bad mouthes our clothes. "Don't you think you could've dressed a little nicer for the Council of the Just? I mean - look at yourselves!"

I didn't think we were that dowdy actually. Tom's sporting a lovely chain-mail, studded cap and silver necklace look. Dirr's naked except for a hat with a big crystal on the top (and some blingy rings) - but naked is normal for an Iskai.

Sira's got a sort of sexy-harness on and Mell's got one of the main chaps' Toronto jump-suits on.

"Oh Hoff! You plonker!" Tom mutters and he works out which of them is letting the side sown. Hoffstedt's not naked any more - he decided that he'd rocked that look long enough and was tired of getting prickled round the U-bend as the gang traipses through forest and jungle undergrowth. Only instead of putting his overalls back on (possibly my fault since I did sell them a while back) he's dressed up as a bandit from the mountain pass on the last island.

The outfit he's put on is equivalent to low-slung jeans, a vest top and a bandanna in his gang's colours. Only it looks even more ridiculous on him since he's a doddering old man clasping an heap of crystal knick-knacks.

Never mind - we walk on into the grand meeting room of the Council of the Just. No-one's told me what they do yet, but we soon corner someone who ought to know.

His name is Gard and he is one of the Just Councillors.

"Tell us about the Council of the Just"

"I'd love to. The Council of the just is made up of just three men - me, Riko and Perron. Ricko is miserable old git and Perron is sensative to ghosts so you can see why we make such a good team. Oh, also there's the president Therras."

"But... what do you DO as a council?"

"I'm sorry, I don't understand that"

"What is the council for?"

"I'm sorry, I don't understand that"

In case you hadn't guessed, "I'm sorry I don't understand that" is the generic response all characters give you if you ask them something the designers didn't prepare them for. Stupid councillor doesn't even know what his job is! Bah.

Still, I ask him about the mountain pass and he lights up!

"Oh I know of the mountain pass all right! It's tough to follow - a winding an vague route through the otherwise impenetrable hills that surround our city! It's the only way in of out of our huge trading city that has somehow grown to this size despite the fact no-one can get here..."

"Right... anything else we should know about it? This disco Spaniard shuffled up to us specially to tell us to ask about it - so there's got to be more to it than it just existing..."

"Well, along the pass you'll find the towns of Kounos and Srimalinar. Kounos is a very religious human town while Srimalinar is a very religious Iskai town. There's a shrine there that it's taboo to visit, so don't bother. But it's very pretty so maybe you should. But it's quite hard to find - you have to put in a little exertion to get up onto the plateaux. But the towns people will kill you if they catch you looking at their shrine so maybe don't bother..."

We walk slowly away from Gard: Councillor of nothing then bump into Perron.

I try to ask him about ghosts - perhaps his being sensitive to them is something to do with the function of the Council. But he doesn't seem to understand about them so either they're a red herring or will only turn out to be important later. He feeds me a few more facts about the town (there was a plague a couple of years ago, but it's gone away now. The locals drink something called Sugo which is exceptionally hardcore and is liable to flatten you after only one glass - presumably helping you forget you're trapped in a city that dedicates the majority of its building space to a palace housing a redundant cabal of "the Just") but has nothing much to say for himself.

Rikko's not much help either but then I meet Therras the president.

When you speak to him he fills the screen with text - an uninterrupted tirade of a sales-pitch explaining why everyone should love to visit the beautiful and powerful and rich city of Beloveno. It's a really ace and great town with a huge port and a lovely view of the impenetrable mountain range! You can just see the team's eyes glazing over during this since there's no gaps for them to ask questions or even say "Uh-huh" or "Is that so, how interesting".

But it's not a total waste of time. Although most of what he tells me is stuff I've heard before - the climax of his speach contains at least a HINT of a quest to follow up while I'm in the district. Alas, as soon as he finishes talking he rushes off busy with his Council duties so I couldn't pester him for details - but the last thing he says to you is:

"...so you really should go visit the inn, it's brill - you can have a room to stay the night and everything. It's a great place to base your holiday here, easy access to the local amenities and a great spot to come back to after exploring the impenetrable mountains or taking a pedalo round the bay. Monsters have overrun the shrine at Srimalinar byeeeeeeeee *scuttle scuttle scuttle disappear round corner*"