Session 26

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between games design you don't like and games design that's just bad. Properly bad. Objectively bad.

But I'm pretty sure that actually this puzzle is PROPERLY bad design.

What you have to do to get the amulet is go down the stairs (that I passed before, remember?) pull a seemingly un-related lever then go back up and fetch it. As you head towards it Tom will say "Oh, without having any experience of such things and with no obvious evidence to suggest it to me, I realise this wall is totally illusionary!"

He's right, you can walk through the wall and get to the amulet without using the passage where the floor turns to lava. All you have to do is grab the amulet then come back through the magic wall and you're away scot free!

My argument for why this is bad design is this: Either you HAVE to die to work it out (like I did) or you do it without realising you've done it (i.e. you happen to go down stairs, pull a lever, then come back up without knowing there was a lava trap to avoid). Why couldn't they have made it so that if you put the amulet back in the box, the lava goes away? That way you could get the amulet, discover that you can't keep it, but not have to die or re-load in order to find the solution.

Blah.

Still, I DID pull the lever, go back upstairs and grab the amulet through the secret wall and now Siobhan's strength is super powered up! This should help her survive more fights!

While I was downstairs pulling that lever, however, I noticed an extra corridor to explore. Setting off back I find a veritable maze of passages and doors - tantalisingly leading me on into Kontos's domain...

"Let's go east shall we?" suggests Sira.

"After you m'lady!" pipes up Hoff, indicating the way onwards with his cape (which I just made up).

"Why thank you kind sir" giggles Sira blushing and tapping Hoff with her lace fan (which I also made up)

Melthas, brooding, scowls at Hoff - suspecting him of lusting after his betrothed. Adjusting his top hat (again, totally fictional) he is just about to step up to Hoff and strike him in the face with an imaginary white glove, challenging him to a duel when--

"OOOOooooOOooooH!" Sira cries!

Having skipped merrily down the corridor on her tip toes, her totally fictitious crinoline bouncing and showing off her bustle, she is suddenly twirled! Twiiirrrrrrrrled! An invisible force spins her round and round before she drops onto her, sat with her legs out infront of her and her bonnet all a squiff!

"Lawks-a-lady ma'am! Woteva's come over ye?" pipes up Tom, looking up from the cow!

"Sira! How positivly abserd of you!" cooes Dutches Dirr, tapping her cane on the dungeon floor and stepping forwards.

She and Mell get a couple of inches from Sira, each about to help her up when they too cry out

"Oh cruuuuuuumbs!"

"Good heavens!" (this isn't actually cried, but scrawled hastily on a card)

Then they too spin round, shedding sequins and monogrammed handkerchiefs as their toes tip-tip-tippy-tap in circles just a little faster than their bodies can keep up with - before tumbling unceremoniously to the ground.

Mell's monacle pops out in a amazement and Old Lady Dirr's umbrella pops spontaniously open with a "SPROIIIING"

"Crumbs m'ladies! 'Ere, let me help you up" Peasant Tom mumbles, knocking over the milking stool as he hurries to help the fallen damsels.

"Tut tut! Come come now!" Chides Siobhan the corseted school mistress. "We've no time for this nonsense! Why 'twill be luncheon in a quarter hour and we haven't even polished the cucumber yet!" Her heavy boots click-clack on the ground as she too steps forward to drag the others to their feet

"I'll help too..." says Hoff who couldn't think of another period drama sterio-type to be, but felt he needed to be involved.

"Bless my soul and stick my finger in my eye! 'Tis devilry! 'Tis devilry" cries Tom

"splutter splutter fume and agast!" emotes Siobhan

"Oh god! My hip! My hip!" exclaims Hoff

Round and round they all three go, dancing in tight circles round and round until they each trip and tumble into each other - collapsing in a dazed and bedraggled heap on the floor.

Well ok. So the above might be a little fictionalised.

What actually happens is there are areas in this part of the dungeon where, if you step into them, the whole party spins round and round and round and ends up pointing in a random direction.

It's a trick you see in a lot of First Person dungeon crawlers from this era - your ability to map the dungeon and move around it using your compass and charts is tested by your view-port being spun round disorientingly.

But in the actual game world there's no actual thing on the floor that causes this. No disc that, when you stand on it, spins round and round. It's just that in that particular spot your characters are all compelled to spin and spin and spin for no reason other than it makes for a natty puzzle.

The campness of this makes me chuckle heartily. I love the idea of someone making a film of this game (*coughcoughAvatar'snotfaroffcoughcough*) and at this point the cast all going "Oh no!!!" and spinning round on the spot, waving their arms and throwing sheaves of paper in the air - miming being picked up by a twister or something.

I also love that there is no in-game explanation of this phenomenon at all! It was presumably taken so much for granted at the time as a standard mechanic that the developers didn't even consider it needed explaining! The places where it happens are marked on your map (so that you can avoid them) but only as little exclamation points (which makes it even more camp I reckon. I can just imagine the characters pretending to be spun round with bemused and befuddled expressions on their faces and these little orange "!" marks over their head.

Anyway, as I work my way around the spinny-fallover arena I find several heaps of rubbish that my team pick up loose teeth from!

None of them mention the teeth and I can't find them in my inventory afterwards, but I suspect that they must be some kind of quest item that perhaps will be explained further into the dungeon...

Off through another door and OH NO! MONSTERS!!!! Heaps of monsters!

It's sort of bad news - but at the same time quite cool news! This is ANOTHER new kind of monster I've found! They're called "Kizz" monsters and they look sort of like the Alien from Alien, but with scissors for hands!

Admiring Kontos's collection of new enemy types (and wondering why the developers felt that they should hold back on new monsters for so long, only to splurge 2 away in an aparently optional dungeon) the gang kills them all, but not without taking losses. Only Dirr and Hoff survive to get and XP - so much for Siobhan's bloomin' amulet of strength then!

We retreat and rest - then explore a different path only to be assaulted by even more Kizzes. This time it's only Hoff and Siobhan who survive! These things are really gloomy news!

Before they rest, Hoff and Siobhan creep onwards into a darkened room to grab a map from a cobwebbed treasure chest!

Scuttling away back up the stairs - the two decide to pass the time (until they're sleepy enough to bother resting) looking at the map.

Fantastically, it's a map of coloured pressure plates - exactly like the ones in the test lab I passed previously on this floor! And since they're in the vicinity already, the intrepid two glance at each other

"The team will be so pleased if they wake up from their blood-loss induced unconsciousness to find we've opened the lab cages!" Enthuses Siobhan.

"Not just that, but how exciting to be the ones to claim the treasure out of them!"

"Wheeeee! How exciting!"

Scampering like children on cristmas morning, the two jump on the pressure plates until the colours match the ones on the map and *POOF* the test-chamber doors vanish!

"hee hee hee! They'll be so pleased with us" squirms Hoff - bouncing from foot to foot

"Let's look at what's inside -- oh god!!!"

As she steps into the chamber Siobhan finds that whatever test subject was once held in this energy prison has since wasted away into a pile of "trash" (the game's word, not mine).

"Still... You should search it..." Hoff mutters from behind - peering over her shoulder and the horrible mess.

Reaching amongst the fragments of whatever this thing used to be, Siobhan pulls out... another tooth!

"gag, balk, almost-spew" she says.

This process is repeated for the other 5 cells and in each one they pull a tooth out of what used to be something trapped in a test chamber. Quivering and a little bit sickened, they go back downstairs and rest - but don't bother telling the gang what they missed when they are revived...

Some more exploring of the catacombs throws up some more surprises - most surprising of all is a THIRD unique monster type! This time it's a "Brogg". Some kind of (really cool looking) lizard dog that throws clouds (can that be right?) at you with its tail in the fights.

They're cool, but they're not that tough, and on killing them I find that the clouds they've been hurling at us have turned into stones.

"Hmm... just a bunch of pebbles now..." Tom mutters. "Still - Hoff! You've got nothing better to do in a fight now that we're out of magical items. Perhaps you could throw these stones at enemies?"

Hoff "Oh, but... I thought maybe we could get some new magic items for me... y'know, make me useful again? I quite liked being useful!"

"Useful is a very strong word Hoff. Now carry these stones"

Actually, Hoff throwing stones at monsters does almost as little as Hoff standing around with nothing to do. But you never know, he might one day score a critical hit (especially if I can save up to train him in how to do it) and do some damage to something. And since stones don't feel valuable (even if they DO turn into killer clouds when Broggs hurl them) having him fart them away trying to hit a monster with them doesn't feel too gauling (unlike when I have to use a magical item which makes me a little sick to the stomach because they're so blooming rare and valuable!)

Next there's quite a natty puzzle - firing fireballs from apertures in the walls moves a pink block of energy around (the fireballs push it then bounce off). By moving the pink block you can line up a shot where you destroy a blue energy wall elsewhere in the room, revealing a passage - to BOOTY!

Through the secret passage there's another chest with another amulet in it! This time it's called "Danu's collar" and can only be used by druids - so naturally I have to give it to Mell.

The precious tresure maxes out his "luck" statistic which sounds like it probably WILL be useful, but I sort of wish it'd been something more like his magic or health or something... Ah well, I'm sure the designers knew what they were doing.

To keep her happy (since they're going out now, I feel like she would be peeved if Mell got something and she didn't) I give Sira a lovely jeweled amulet I also found down here. It doesn't do anything, but I suppose it probably covers up her horrible catboobs a bit...

Some more exploring and we pass a lone Kizz - easily taken down. I wonder if this was meant to be the first kizz we met... If I was building the game, I imagine that having one kizz turn up on it's own first, then all the other large groups of the things come along later would seem like quite a funny trick to play on the audience. But since this area's not very linear, there wasn't a VERY high chance that players would come to this one first, so I suppose the joke was a bit more miss than it was hit.

In another chest we find ANOTHER amulet (was this Kontos guy obsessed with amulets? Maybe that's what he's been collecting teeth for...) This time it's a "protection" amulet - so I give it to Dirr - my key front-liner.

The catacombs goes on. It's a sprawling maze of interconnected rooms with no single path leading you all the way round - each room has several exits so there's a proper sense of exploring here, rather than just going through a dungeon in a long straight line.

This is something that the game does quite well actually. Most of the dungeons I've been in so far have suffered from being randomly sprawling so there's heaps of pointless nooks and crannies, but a side effect of this is that they all feel excitingly open and explorable. You're not just trapsing from A to B, you're constantly aware that there are heaps of other paths you really OUGHT to come back and investigate later... It's a nice effect and if it could be achieved without the environments feeling like loose smeary locations where no room feels like it could've actually been built by someone in the game world for something other than housing cloud lobbing Brogg monsters, it would be something designers today should take note of!

Eventually, the whole place has been explored (including another room with an amulet of speed in it - which I give to Sira. Sorry Kontos! I recon I've just nicked the whole of your amulet collection! AND I didn't have an invite!). The whole place except, that is, for ONE room. Right at the centre of the maze, the map reveals the shape of the room I'll be going into, but the door is still shut and mysterious...

As the team approach, the "monster eye" monster detecting doobery flashes. Clearly there's trouble in there!

A quick rest to get everyone's strength up and GA-DOOSH! We kick the sliding ornate golden door open!

Hundreds (well, ok, not that many. But as many as the game is able to put on one combat grid) descend on us! Broggs and Kizzes! The party have to fight hard and dirty to survive!

Sira puts as many to sleep as she can, but the Kizzes are semi-magic-resistant to she has to concentrate on the Broggs. Plus, it's impossible to tell by looking at them which of the baddies is sleeping or not (no icon, no text, nothing) so I just have to do my best to remember. If you slap a sleeping monster it wakes up and gets involved in the fight again!

Mell is on healing duty - keeping the front line of Tom, Dirr and Siobhan alive while they hack and slash at anything they can reach.

Hoff throws pebbles ineffectually at the monsters at the back, to possibly soften them up by maybe 1 hit point or something.

It's a brutal fight and I'm just lucky to have my magic users since I don't think I'd've made it without that sleep spell!

Although actually - in a very rare occurance, the WHOLE TEAM has survived a fight!!! Bloodied and totally out of mana, but alive all the same!

creeping into the highly guarded chamber, the team behold another chest. Could this be another fantastic amulet? Perhaps it's the string that all these teeth are meant to be strung on? Perhaps it's the evidence linking Kontos to Gard and Riko - the corrupt members of the Beloveno Council? Maybe it's something to prove Kontos's crackpot conspiracies about the Iskai in the nearby shrine-worshipping town...

Tom reaches forwards to open the creaking chest. It must contain answers - it's at the heart of a dungeon. You don't put things in the heart of a dungeon unless it contains answers...

As the lid comes up, Hoff shines the light from his torch into the old box to reveal...

DAN DAN DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Session 25

I suppose it's wrong to pretend to myself that accidentally cool things were actually done on purpose.

Nodd, the guard who won't let me see Kontos until I have an invitation, comes over as quite an obnoxious sort. Or rather the game provides me with lots of dialog options to suggest he is: "I don't need an invitation you IDIOT!" or "You stink and are an IDIOT?" or "I've just been a little bit sick in my mouth, you IDIOT" or "I'm not getting any invitations to see anyone! Instead we're going to fight you - inspite of it being a really bad idea!"

"Oh, a little bit sick is it?" he responds. "Well I don't like that sort of talk - Prepare to fight me!" at which point he puts up his dukes rather gentlemanlyly. Oh dear, now I notice his waxed curly moustache and striped excersizing leotard and start to wonder if this was such a very good idea. Rather than being a brutish lout who could be intimidated out of the way, I've pick a fight with a gentleman brawler who takes his job seriously.

My worries only grow as combat starts and Sira casts "View life" on this chap - 350 hp! Dirr (my toughest character) only has 70! I have a sinking feeling about this, he's clearly one of those impossible fights thrown in to punish players who stupidly think they can barge past an obvious aquire-an-invitation side mission!

Well bother to it. This bounder's not going to best me without a fight - and he might have all the stats on his side, but like most honourable folk he has no hope when someone plays dirty!

The fight goes QUITE baddly for me - he managed to chop up most of my team (not least Sibhan, who seems destined never to get ANY XP) but Sira and dirr form a winning all-girl cat-woman strike team!

Sira casts "sleep spores" on their assailant once every other turn. When she hits him with it, he loses his chance to attack at the end of one turn. Then, although he's woken up on the next turn by Dirr slapping him (and Mell and Hoff fireballing him - not to mention Tom and Siobhan gently and ineffectually rubbing their weapons against his super tough stripy leotard) he doesn't get another chance to attack because he's still dazed. Keeping this up for as long as possible - until Sira runs out of mana - brings his health down to a fairly managable looking level before he even gets a hit in.

Using the last ounce of her power - Sira blinds him so that his subsequent attacks are weakened and less accurate.

With all the magic I've got used up (Hoff's out of magical items already, so it's back to sitting around with nothing to do for him...) my front row just has to slap him as much as they can before they're all killed off.

It doesn't take long for Nodd "right-hook" The Bouncer to take out all the humans on my team, but he's not looking too frisky afterwards.

I imagine a scene with Dirr and Nodd, both bloodied and out of breath in the bar. Sira's standing back, she can't help any more and she knows that if Dirr goes down there's nothing she could do to defend herself.

Looking fiercly into each other's eyes, the who fighters prepare for the fatal brawl. Whoever this Kontos is, Nodd clearly feels his privacy is worth dying for... Dirr must admire that, but this has gone too far now - there's no backing down any more!

With a final florished twizzle of his moustache, a flex of his bulging thighs and a hearty "Tally hooooooooooo!!!!" Nodd charges!

Sira can't look! Turning away she hears the clashing of sword on leotard! Punching against harness. The sounds are brief, there's a thud as someone's body falls lifeless to the floor... The pit of her stomach falls as she realises that Dirr's not said anything and turning slowly she sees her worst fears confirmed... Dirr's down and Nodd, bloody and exhausted is looming towards her to finish this foolishness one and for all.

Falling to her knees, our last remaining heroine prepares to beg for mercy - but as she drops to the ground she stumbles forwards and jabs her would-be assailant with her decortive sword...

"RRRRG! My health point!!!"

Nodd slumps and expires - his life's purpose in tatters! Someone will get to see Kontos without an invitation! But at least he doesn't have to kill THREE women! And being killed like this means he doesn't have to feel guilty for having killed the first two anyway... As life ebbs away from him, his moustache wax gives out and with a SPROING of re-curling facial hair, it's all over.

The combat system in this game isn't very interesting. With turn based games I think you need to have plenty of tactial thinking required from the player - but in Albion you just pick the best possible attack and keep using it 'til the monsters fall over. Or rather, most of the time that's it. HOWEVER, when you come under pressure - proper pressure - the combat system can be really fun! The tactical options you have aren't very deep - put someone to sleep, freeze them for a moment or blind them. There's not much bite on them, but when you're in a squeeze it's JUST enough to catch onto... Just enough to make struggling through like this exciting.

Hardly able to believe her luck, Sira stands up and starts arranging her fallen team-mates into a pile (ready to drag them away somewhere safe to rest). Then she notices something... No one in the pub is at all bothered about this epic struggle. Despite the fact that 6 seasoned warriors just walked in and killed a local gentleman boxer in a prolonged and bloody brawl. Also, she doesn't seem to have been awarded hardly any XP - even though it was the hardest fight we've had for ages and she was the only one left alive and should've got everything that was available.

This is the accidentally cool thing that I'm sort of pretending to myself was intentional. If you're hard enough, or good enough at fighting, the game will let you get away with horrible anti-social behaviour with no repercussions. It's like the developers were saying "you'd be an idiot to pick a fight with this guy, but if you do and then you manage to take him down - we'll let you get away with it because you've totally earned the right not to have to do the find-an-invitation questette" hence no-one seems to care. You don't get arrested or (like you would've in Ultima 7) hacked to bits by an infinite swarm of guards.

But then, on the flip side, the devs also said "Yeah - but if you're going to try and get out of playing the game the way we want to, you're not getting any XP freebies! You cheeky scallywags!"

Of course, deep-down I know that actually the devs won't've done it on purpose. They'll've just expected you to die if you pick a fight with their over-pumped bouncer character. And you don't get much XP because he was only a human enemy with artificially upped stats - they'll've turned up his health and strength stats to stop you getting past him, but not the rewards associated with him since you probably weren't expected to get them. Bah.

Dragging the heap of unconcious heroes by Siobhan's excellet tresses, Sira gets them all outside only to find that none of them are tired. GAH!!!!!!! HOW CAN THIS BE!!!!???

Oh well - to pass the time she heads into one of the other buildings near by which turns out to be a sort of dorm FILLED with people. This tiny town seems to have quite a large population after all!

Chatting to people she doesn't learn much until one of the strangers cries "MELLTHAS!!! Is that you! Why how splendid! You've come to visit me!"

The game then tells me (inspite of his being unconcious) that Mell starts to scribble on his pad. But really the stranger's clearly not THAT interested in whatever he might be writing out as he promptly says "I recon Kontos stinks and ares an IDIOT" and the conversation is over.

Stepping back outside, our still-concious heronine muses to herself "Hmm... There's some trouble brewing locally..." (presumably I'm to take this one man bad-mouthing Kontos, the village leader, as a sign of deep seated social un-rest). "I bet if we could mediate the troubles, someone would help us out in some way in return..."

Seriously? That's the motivation here? If we help out, someone MIGHT help us somehow? That's a bit vague! I mean, I'm going to do it because I'm a good little player who does what he's told - help the locals solve their political troubles? 'Course I will! But it would it have been so VERY hard to have something happen that forces my team to NEED to help, rather than have them decide to on a sort of well-intentioned whim? Even just "Hello - I'm the man who runs the bus service to the next town, but my bus-driving papers are suspended until the council gets its act together... If only someone could solve the political troubles round these parts I could take you to Next Town". Even that would be rubbish by today's standards of believability in stories - but as it is, Sira's whimsical decision is rubbish even by 15 years ago's standards!

Pfft. Never mind. At least everyone's ready to rest up and get back to work. We sleep under the stars, then in the morning we all swan back into the pub and straight down the stairs to Kontos' basement lair.

Downstairs, below the pub, is a huge vaulted dungeon with lavish, jewelled doors! It's seemingly completely empty though - huge storage rooms with nothing and no one around. This town obviously was rich once, rich enough to build this place. But now there's only a handful of empty barrels left in the far corners of these enormous chambers... whatever made this place great is very much over now!

Exploring a little further I find my way into Kontos's chamber! Back to isometric view - his room is quite luxuriant with two fire-places alongside each other (why not have one big fireplace I wonder...)

"Bah! Get out of here! Can't you see I'm composing a speech? My name is Kontos - I am the greatest magician in these parts and I'm OBSESSED with religious theory! Bah! I wouldn't expect YOU to understand magic and religion! What could YOU plebs know of science! Bah! Now push off - I deliver my speeches to the whole of Kounos, educating them en masse so it's important they come across convincing!!!"

And that's it! I tried to talk to him about Gard and Riko (whose fellow members of the Council of the Just in Beloveno sent me to quiz him about) but he doesn't understand that. He doesn't even know about Nodd (who was, perhaps, just a nutter who guarded the stairs under the delusion that Kontos wanted him to...)

With not much else to do, I leave and go talk to people in the other huts in Kounos - maybe one of them's seen something suspicious...

"Oh hello" the first woman I speak to begins "Did you know the Iskai are using black magic irresponsibly at their shrine? Kontos told us so at one of his mass education rallies. He explained that you can't trust Iskai! Also, he does some cool secret experiments down in his base, but we're not allowed to see them..."

Oh reeeeeeally - so these mass education speeches that Kontos told me about are sort of hate-propaganda meetings?

I nip straight back to the village leader's underground lair and confront him again - and I was right to! This conversation with Joe Public's unlocked new conversation options with him...

"Oh right. So people've been telling you I'm Iskai racist? Well ok - I am. But you would be too! Have you BEEN to their town? Edijir and Arrim are SO unprofessional!"

"For real? You're a racist because two people are un-professional?

"Well ok, you broke me down with your interrogation technique. Actually it's also because of this conspiracy only I know about - You see they've got this shrine that it's oh-so-conveniently taboo for anyone to visit. But do you know WHY it's taboo? It's because they don't want anyone seeing the black magic they perform there. Only I saw it!!! I saw it and they don't know I saw it! And the black magic's gone wrong for that (I could've told them it would!) and now they can't stop monsters coming through and they've doomed us all with their Iskai irresponsibility! But the people in Beloveno - people who could do something about it - don't believe me! SO I TELL THE PEOPLE OF KOUNOS IN MY HATE RALLIES!!!! THE TRUTH MUST BE KNOWN!!!! By the way - I'm a great trainer in magic."

"Seriously? Could you train my spell-casters?"

"Nope. I'm to busy. Byeeee!"

On the way out of the basement, I was just wondering about how much truth there will've been in what I've just been told when the monster-eyes lights up! Oh ho! Looks like Kontos is keeping some nasties of his own in the basement with him!

Poking around I find a turning I'd missed earlier leading to a (so easy it's not worth explaining) puzzle door.

Through the door... CREEPING MONSTERS!!!!

As I round a corner, a swarm of dog-sized grasshopper things creeps very very slowly towards me as though with an attitude of "What's going on? No one EVER comes through the puzzle door..."

Inevitably a fight occurs and it's quite cool to find a new species of enemy at last! These things are called Rinrii and they're sort of fleshy purple grass-hopper shaped things with hoover attachments for heads. Only, can you imagine a really complicated hoover attachment - maybe a really specifically designed one for hoovering between the banisters or something. Only, not JUST a complicated hoover attachment - a complicated hoover attachment made of meat. Purple throbbing meat.

That's their faces.

There's loads of these things and they do a lot of damage when they hit you - but interestingly you only have to kill one and the rest run away! The fight, although it looked like it was going to be un-winnable, is over in a couple of turns with only one fatality (on their side). Siobhan FINALLY gets some XP!

Walking further into this secret area of Konto's ever-more-impressively huge pub basement I find a sort of vivisection-cage lab area (reminds me of something out of Resident Evil). There's rows of cells in here with energy barriers blocking you from getting in. They're seemingly empty at first, but looking more closely it looks like there's heaps of rotting something in each of them... perhaps monsters held captive 'til they died?

I think there'll be a puzzle to it since you can make the barriers change colour via pressure plates - but for now I can't make any of them switch off at the moment and there's more to explore yet...

Through the next door are some stairs downwards (I'll ignore them for now - better to map the whole floor before going any deeper) and a long corridor.

Seriously? Stairs down? I love this kind of surprise dungeon! Underneath the pub in this back-of-the-backwater town there's these science catacombs! And what's best is that I've found them without being told to go looking! It properly feels like I'm DISCOVERING them, not just questing to them! Not just doing what the game's told me to - I'm sneaking off the beaten trail to explore some kind of crazy-man's extensive and mysterious lair! What a brilliant feeling to give a player in a game!

Down the corridor is a chest in a small room. I open it and find... AN AMULET OF POWER!

Sweet! This'll do perfectly for Siobhan!

Just as she's trying it on though, we turn around and spot a sign-board on the wall that says. "Whoever sees the amulet must die!"

I pause a moment - expecting to be jumped by monsters, trained to guard the treasure... But no-one turns up. Maybe it was meant to be those meat-hoppers from earlier... After a little longer I decide that must be it and set off back the way I came, swaggering smugly at how clever and tough my party is.

Only then the floor turns to lava and everyone dies.

Session 24

Grabbing Hoff by the collar and dragging him back to the Inn for a recovery nap, the team turn to Siobhan to get to know her.

"So... You're a local girl?"

"Yeah - I grew up with semi-adoptive father figure. It's sad because he's a trainer (who specialises in critical hits) but he never seems to get much business. Still, he taught me everything I know!"

"He ever gets any business? That's a shame. I wonder why that is. It sounds like critical hits would be a really brilliant thing to get trained in..."

"I dunno. Still, if YOU want to give him some business be aware that he's VERY VERY VERY expensive. Oh, and he works in Kounos (the tiny village you can't get to half-way over the impenetrable mountain pass). Oh, and he will only train people between 8 and 9 in the morning. Oh, and he always takes his lunch break and goes to the pub between 8 and 9 in the morning. Oh, and he doesn't like people knowing he's a trainer..."

After hearing about her dad, it sort of makes sense that despite being a 29 year old warrior who's done nothing but train all her life (until the other day when she left her home and sarted hanging around in a house in Beloveno on the off chance someone on an adventure might pass by) she's still only level 7. Even Hoff is level 12 and he's spent almost exactly none of his life training for anything!

I'm also guessing that she's never been to a hair-dresser, since her stat-screen portrait suggests her "do" is about 2.5 meters long. It looks amazing in the picture because she's been drawn standing in a strong wind and it's all flying out to one side behind her - VERY dramatic, windswept and interesting. But has this planet invented tangle-free shampoo? No one in the party has a comb in their inventory...

We stop off for a rest, then return to the basement Hoff had signed us up to clear of monsters.As we're walking through the house to the stairs down, we stop momentarily to chat to a child who lives there.

"I hope I don't get asked to fetch any more wood from the cellar for mummy and daddy. I don't like having to kill the flying creatures that live down there..."

Seriously? That kid must be super hard-core. It's a crazily hardcore series of fights down there and my team of blood-thirsty adults have to pop back for more resting after pretty much every encounter. Siobhan is in fact left poisoned and insane after one fight!) If this boy is swatting them with such ease that he sort of feels bad for the monsters, why did the owners of this place hire Hofstedt to clear the basement out?

Actually, it's quite irritating. Level 7 Siobhan looks like she'll be dead handy when she starts building up some XP. But it's hard to get her to do that since she keeps being killed in every fight. As far as I can see, the XP gets dished out at the end of each encounter and shared equally between everyone who survives. That means that Dirr and Tom (top level characters) tend to get all the levelling up because they're the ones who're tough enough to survive. I guess I'm going to have to buy Siobhan some ace armour so that she has a chance of surviving long enough to benefit from being in a fight at all... To this end, I pinch all the gold out of the chests in this family's basement. There's not all that much really, just 30 or 40 coins - but I reckon that since I'm clearing the place out for them I can get away with clearing them out too. Plus, it's plainly not gold they'll've been relying on since it's been inaccessible in the cellar surrounded by warniaks for who knows how long...

After I've finally got rid of all the problem monsters in the family's basement, I wander back up stairs to gather my thanks from the grateful family.

"*huff puff huff* Phew! We've finally cleared all those monsters out of your basement!"

"Eh? Really? Why did you do that?"

"Y... You asked us to!"

"I don't expect I did! Our son is quite handy enough with the warniaks!"

"But... But we've been coming in and out for days... Every time we've left we've been dragging our un-concious team members... why... why would you just let us do that?!"

"Well I assumd you were some kind of, y'know, contemporary dance troupe..."

The team turn to Hoff who signed them all up for the basement-clearing quest...

"Hoff. Who asked you to clear the basement of monsters?"

"Er... Well... Now you see... The thing is..."

"Excuse me..." (the home owner interjects before a fight can break out in the team) "...You don't have any food do you? We're basically starving for one reason or another..."

Casually, the team thieve the family's remaining food and leave. The whole visit to this house is given up as a bad lot - with the possible exception of the recruitment of Siobhan (who, I noticed, has apparently got nothing at all to do with the family who live there. When I met her she was just standing in the middle of their living room. On talking to her she immediately asked to be allowed to tag along with whatever we were doing, so long as she got to see the world. But at no point do the family there acknowledge her and she certainly never refers to them. Maybe she's another character who, like my own, just shambles round towns blundering into people's homes, killing their pet warniaks and stealing their food and money. Maybe the reason no-one ever says anything about ME nicking their stuff is that there's loads of people on this planet who act in the exact same way and everyone else just takes the imposition for granted...)

On the street we talk briefly to a loony lady who explains:

"I think you should DEFINITELY pester people you know. My mother always told me, pester pester pester, that's how you get the best(er). Oh yes - many times I've spoken to someone and they've told me one thing. Then I talk to them a few more times and they tell me the same thing, but eventually I talk to them enough times and they tell me something different and more in line with what I wanted to hear in the first place! It's true! I can heartily recommend the power of pester power... Pester pester pester I needn't tell you the rest(er)."

Arg. This sounds like the game's designers are telling me to have repeated conversations with characters. This was a variety of "puzzle" that you used to get cropping up in point-and-click adventures back in the day. Lazy designers would decide that if you try the same thing three or four times in a row (e.g. talk to bar man) you get no indication of progress until eventually the victim of your chat-barrage crumbles and gives you the important item (e.g. packet of kettle chips) out of exasperation. This kind of puzzle is 100% no fun and I really hope that I'm reading too much into this woman's obsessively interrogative attitude and that in fact it's not ACTUALLY a clue to an important puzzle later...

Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if it was a joke character who - if I pester her loads - would give me something ace just to make me go away... I'll have to go back and try pestering the pester suggester...

We stop into a shop to get Dirr's boob-protecting harness mended (did I mention she had one of these? It looks like an incredibly uncomfortable bra made out of one sea-shell and 4 boot laces. There doesn't seem to be much other armour around that Iskai characters can have so there's not much I can do except for making sure the boob-protector is at least not shattered and sticking into her. Also, she's already my toughest character, so I don't feel I should be splashing out on armour for her too much anyway).

While I'm in there, I notice the AWESOME weapons that're available. For 2250 gold coins you can pick up a Danu's Light (some kind of sabre). This is the most expensive weapon in the game so far and there's 4 of them available. Presumably the designers felt that SOMEONE would play the game and have 9000 gold on them when they got this far... Alas, I have only 30 (which I stole from a starving family... did I mention?) so I'm not sure where I've been going wrong... I'm tempted to grind the area until I earn enough for all of my fighters (plus Hoff) to have Danu's Light sabres... But perhaps I'll leave it for now. I'd have to sell a LOT of warniak sphere's to earn that much gold.

I wander into another person's house. It's filled with kids who ask "Have you seen my mummy?" (what is it with this town and a neglectful attitude towards children?!!)

Further into the house (which is large to the point of being probably the most luxuriant private residence I've wandered blithely into so far in the whole game) I meet a man with very bushy eyebrows who is levitating a cup, only to hurriedly un-levitate it as soon as he sees we've seen him doing it. The whole scene stinks to me like he's staged it and DESPERATELY wanted us to know he's a wizard, but also wanted to look like he's mysterious and didn't want us to know he wanted us to know...

Mell - a trained wizard himself - holds up a card with "Nice cup levitation" written on it. But the man says with pretend casualness

"Cup levitation? But there WAS no cup levitation... It must've been a trick" (at this point he waves his hands in front of his eyes theatrically) "of... you miiiiiiiiiiiiind" (this last in a dramatic whispered tone with meaningful eyebrow waggling and winks).

*smack*

*poke*

"Never mind all that. Who're you then?" says Tom, shaking his finger.

"Who am I? Ah ha ha ha ha ha" (the stranger sweeps his cape and releases some doves)

"ooooooh" (this was Dirr, Sira and Siobhan)

"Why I am Khunag!" (a sudden strong wind blows dry-ice smoke up behind the magician who scatters shiny confetti into the breeze to enhance the effect)

"Gosh - you're very impressive!"

"Impressive? But I'm a simple man with nothing remarkable about him" (Khunag sits sharply back down and pretends to be drinking his space-coffee, although he stops this abruptly when he remembers that there's actually nothing in the mug - this having been a precaution against staining his clothes when he did the mug levitation earlier)

"But... ptah fth fth... what about this?" Hoff responds, spitting out glittery confetti and holding it up.

"I don't see anything..." (dramatic turn of the head, pause, and eye-brow twitch) "Unuuuuuuusual! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!" He jumps up and releases a tiger from his pants, then sits back down again as though nothing's happened. A little more eye-brow work and some mysterious pouting of the lips - he seems to be daring... BEGGING someone in the team to mention the tiger so he can pretend not to have noticed anything...

"Uh-huh... Well... We're on a mission to find the enormous planet eating robot space ship that me and Hoff" (indicating the befuddled old man who's looking quite a lot like a magical-item chandelier since I've started using him as my crystal pack-horse recently)

"Oh ho! What an ostentatious outfit your friend has on..." Khunag comments - trying to mask his jealousy of Hoffs splendid magic rings, multiple crystal daggers, pendants and hat. In an attempt to compete with it he jumps up, drops a coloured smoke bomb and whips his clothes inside out, revealing a bejewelled snow-leopard fur cape and silver jump-suit. When the smoke clears he's once again casually sat at the table - again daring anyone to comment...

"Well, it's not really meant to be ostentatious... it's just that I'm not a very good fighter and have no magical abilities so I carry all this stuff to make myself useful when..."

"Ah ha ha ha ha ha!" Khunag cuts Hoff off awkwardly. Embarrassed by Hoff's legitimate reason for wandering round like Liberachi in space he tries to fold his cape around himself and hide the jump-suit - maybe no-one will think he was trying to compete after all...

There's a long awkward silence, then eventually Tom breaks it saying "So... What do you do round here then?"

"Oh, this and that. The odd job here and there. You know how it is" (Khunag makes sure everyone knows this modesty is entirely fake by tapping the side of his nose, winking and flicking his tongue in and out like a conspiratorial lizard).

"Seriously? You're... like... and odd jobs man?"

"Ah yes. I am THESE DAYS..."

"Right. So you just, what, fix people's plumbing and stuff?"

"Indeed. That's the sort of thing I fill my days with NOWERDAYS... not like IN THE OLD DAYS..."

"Hmmm... I guess this makes sense. I've not met any actual labourers on this planet yet so far. Previously I've just met hunters, shop-keepers and politicians. It's nice to find that there ARE handymen around..."

"I DIDN'T USED TO BE A HANDY MAN! I USED TO BE A WIZARD!!! I USED TO BE A MIGHTY POWERFUL WIZARD!!!!!!" he jumps onto the table kicks his shoes off and they turn into doves in the air, does a back flip through a flaming hoop and pulls 15,000 hankies, each of a different colour, out of Sira's ear.

"oh, you used to be a wizard eh?"

"Oh yes. But I gave it all up looooong ago. I'm far too old to be a waizard now..." to demonstrate that he's fibbing and still as fit as ever, he flexes his guns and shoots green sparkles out of his fingers. But then so that it doesn't look like he's posing, he feigns a crooked back and hobbles around the room for a bit winking and going "blblblblblblblblb" with his finger on his lips. Then he does some lunges and pulls a bunch of flowers out of his sleeve, chains himself into a box then steps out of a cupboard on the other side of the room and sits down as though nothing happened.

"Oh, so you don't do any magic any more. Never mind."

"NO! NO! I MIGHT'VE GIVEN IT UP! BUT I'M ACTUALLY WAY MORE POWERFUL THAN I HAVE EVER BEEN IN MY LIFE! I'M NOT TOO OLD AND I CAN MAKE LOVE FOR 10 HOURS STRAIGHT!!!! I'M NOT PAST IT! I GAVE UP MAGIC BECAUSE I WANTED TO SETTLE DOWN AND BECOME A HANDY-MAN / SECRET ADVENTURER!!!" Backflip vancishing into a bucket of water, re-appearing on a crane coming down from the ceiling with several chorus girls who he turns into a eagles playing electric guitars while he whips off his cape, throws it over a table and pulls it away to reveal that it's turned into all the same girls. Then he bangs two solid hoops together until they are linked, pulls a pheasant out of a hat, rips his beard off to reveal that he was a beautiful chorus girl all along then steps out of the cupboard behind the fake him again and makes an elephant disappear.

"WOW!! That was AMAZING!!!" Hoff blurts out.

"Sorry, what was amazing? I didn't notice anything..." (Khunag is sat back at the table with a wry smile and an arched eyebrow... and has he had that eye-liner all along?) "It must've been a trick... Of the mind!!!" (waving his fingers close across his face. More winking).

Dirr taps Tom on his shoulder "this guy's clearly amazing! We should definitely have him on the team!"

"I agree - I'll ask him." Then turning back to the eccentric magician. "Listen, we were wondering if you'd join our quest - we could really do with someone with your skills on board!"

Jumping up, punching the air and celebrating that his pitch had worked, Khunag can hardly contain himself!

"YEAH! AWESOME! I'M TOTALLY THERE! WITH BELLS ON! YOU WON'T REGRET THIS! GO TEAM!! YEAH!!!" he bounds over to the party and a text box pops up saying "your party is full"

"Oh well, never mind..."

In the next room we meet Kariah who's house this is. She's clearly minted to be able to afford such a massive pad in the middle of the worlds biggest trading city. I wonder what she does in the Inn to make this much money...

"Hello Kariah! Aparently you tell a good story!"

"I'm sure you can tell from my clothes where I work" she begins (looking at her she seems to be dressed the same as everyone else, but I guess if we were to see her inventory screen we'd get a better idea... Mind you, we already know she works in the inn) "Although most men are to WEAK to admit they've ever been to a brothel. Anyway - perhaps you could do the city a favour?"

What?! A Brothel? Kariah is a prostitute?!?! She "works" in the inn - the only inn in town - and that inn is a brothel??!! I've staid there several times already and had no idea! I certainly didn't get any of the attention I'd expect if I took a party of 6 into a brothel!!! A BROTHEL??? For real?? This only makes me MORE confused about what this woman was doing to "over excite" the guests! I mean, how "excited" does someone have to get before they're too "excited" to be in a whore house? I thought this woman just told stories!!!

Kariah takes the party's stunned silence to be a pause waiting for her to explain the favour she wants us to perform.

"Would you mind killing Gard and Rick. Y'know - from the Council of the just? I'm a prostitute, so I know for sure that they're bad news."

"Um... how does that work?" Sira asks - since she's probably a murderess she doesn't want to come a-cropper on any psychic prostipowers this woman might have...

"Oh they tell me about how they're cheating the local government to work it in their favour instead of for the good of the populace. Men ALWAYS reveal their secrets in their 'moments of weakness'"

For real? In the throws of bought-passion these men throw their heads back and say things like "I'm funnelling off a percentage of the council tax to buy up private land for my own farrrrrrrrrrms... ahhhhhhh"? I'm expected to believe this with enough certainty to justify double homicide?

Thankfully Tom's a little reticent to jump into action too and suggests "Are you possibly over-simplifying things? Maybe just killing these guys isn't the best thing to do immediately... I tell you what - we'll do some investigating. Don't wanna chop these guys up without making sure they were just lying to impress you..."

As we leave and step back out onto the street the little text box saying "everyone is tired" pops up. "Tired" Eh? Oh yeah - you find out that the inn is actually a den of vice and now all of a sudden you're tired? This team sickens me. None the less, we book in for a good time.

In the morning we set off to the Council house to have it out with Riko and Gard. But neither of them will talk to us (not even about Aurino's land dispute that we found out about before and that seems to fit perfectly with claims of corruption). Eventually we track down Perron (leader of the Council and thus probably the most just person around).

"Yeah. I've sort of been thinking that they might be bad news too" he confides rather over casually. "But I've not really bothered to look into it. Maybe you should go talk to Kontos and Darios in Kounos. They CLAIM not to know Riko and Gard, despite the fact that I KNOW they do. That's pretty suspicious don't you think? They probably know something..."

Sweet - that's two reasons to go to Kounos. Both to track down the conspiracy gang AND to meet up with Siobhan's sort of dad for some training.

We head out of the town and set off north (after a little exploring to grab some more magical-berries so that Sira can keep casting spells) avoiding treading on any of the corn, since that blond guy warned us not to.

We find a sort of valley that has some vines signposted "Climb vines to access pass". Seriously? Someone thought they'd put up a sign, but couldn't be bothered to nail up a rope ladder even? I mean, what about in the winter when the vine dies back? This sign will be meaningless!

For now we ignore the vines but have to come back and climb up them a couple of minutes later because just up the valley from them the only route is blocked by a tiny fence. The fence (that is half as high as a man and not even covered in barbed wire or anything) has a gate in it. But the gate is locked so progress is CLEARLY impossible.

The vines allow the team to walk up the vertical cliff faces and along a winding trail of plateaus and ledges. Soon they come to a very very very small town (three huts and one pig). This must be Kounos. The pass carries on but we stop off to follow up our quest.

First things first, we wait to meet up with Garaad the trainer in the pub.

"Oh for christ's sake. Can't you see I'm on my lunch break here?" he starts when we walk up to him at 8 in the morning. Then he catches a glimpse of Siobhan and says "Oh! Siobhan! I didn't see you there! Well I GUESS I could train you and your chums up a little!"

I wonder if this is a sort of eater egg. Certainly without Siobhan on the team there's little chance I'd've known to look for this guy for training. And I wonder if he just wouldn't give me any if she wasn't in the party...

Actually, he won't give me any now since I've got no money on me.

Balls.

I'll have to come back when I'm packing a little more clout. That was stupid of me to turn up skint. Still, critical hit training seems like it'll be really handy - so it's worth having worked out where to come to get it.

In the same pub we walk over to a flight of stairs. Out of curiosity we go to head down them, but soon discover they relate to the OTHER part of our questing in this town

"STOP!" cries a burly door man "No one gets to see Kontos - the HOLY RULER of our three huts and that pig who won't leave and whose divine residence is the cellar of the pub! No one, unless they have... AN APPOINTMENT!!!!!!!!"

Dan dan daaaaaaaaaa