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.