Session 36

Phillipe Wanghammer, robot detective, leaned back on his chair in his smokey Manhatten office. It was smokey because he was oil powered and had an exhaust pipe coming out of his face. His body was unsophisticated compared to modern robots. Hilariously behind the times. For starts he LOOKED like a robot. Add to that his dependence on liquid fuel. And to cap it all off - he had an on-board brain which meant that his life might end at any moment.

Long ago he'd learned to find a kind of nihilistic thrill in this. There weren't many robots left who weren't remotely operated from super computers housing their brains in some impregnable bunker. If they took a bullet to their exhaust pipe they could just dial up a new body and carry on. For him it would be all over but he'd come to find the constant certainty of imminent, permanent demise somehow... Comforting? It didn't really matter what he did or who he upset, he'd probably be de-activated before he had to deal with any repercussions.

And anyway, an on-board brain gave a P.I. one great advantage. His mind was significantly harder for hackers to get their dirty data into. Anyone who wanted to would need a physical connection to his undignified rear port, and he'd long since bunged that up with chewing gum just to be on the safe side.

He clanked to his feet.

"Missing you say" his voice-generating output put out as he angled his optical sensor array out of the window.

"Yeah. I haven't seen him for... oooh, maybe a couple of years now..."

"You've left it that long before you thought to hire a detective?"

"Nope. I hired one back when he first disappeared. But they didn't come up with anything. Then I hired another, then another. I've been working through the phone book getting no results from any of your competitors until I finally reached W. So Mr Wanghammer - Do you think YOU could find my husband?"

Phillipe rotated to face the new client. She didn't look like a robot, the office sensors didn't pick her up as a robot, she was even functioning in his wireless communications proofed office. But she sure as heck THOUGHT like a robot. Cycle through all the detectives in order until you either get a result? Is that compatible with typical human behaviour?

Plus, the cost should be bankrupting her but she still looked expensively dolled up. If she was artificial, that hair-do could've been put together in a factory 50 years ago and still look salon fresh. Real people would need to spend half their morning fighting with their straighteners to get it looking like that and someone funding a heavy P.I. habit couldn't afford to give up that much of their day just to put their fringe in place could they?

"COMMISSION ACCEPTED" he used his official voice for this.

"Thank you. Here are the 50,000 dollars to cover your first week - in advance because I'm SURE you won't fail me." She flashed a smile that - if she WAS a robobride - must've cost this guy a bundle. Not just teeth, but genuine human teeth.

"So what's your husband's name Mrs Bernard OOORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" Phillipe faked a yawn. It was tricky to synth a yawn so that humans would understand what they were meant to be hearing, but between robots they were as infectious as between any species of ape.

"Oh... aaahhhhhhhhh... excuse me" Mrs Bernard yawned immediately. Surely she's a robot then? But Phillipe did a swift optical scan of the inside of her mouth as she did it - no speakers. No robowife facial consumatory equipment. No obvious plastic or metal components of any kind!

"His name, Mr Wanghammer, is Joe... Joe Bernard..."

MEANWHILE, ON THE PLANET OF ALBION

Joe and Tom scramble across the desert under the cover of night. Although it takes them a day or so (according to the text) they finally get back to the exact spot where the girls (and Hoff) are still standing around awaiting their leader's return.

"Oh wow! I was right! You DID come back! I KNEW that giant flying fish that swallowed you wasn't dangerous!" proclaims Hoff.

"Flying Fish? But Hoff, that was a podule from the Toronto. You know that! You've seen them a million times!"

"Oh... a podule eh? Yeah... Yeah of course it was! I knew that! Silly me! I think I thought it was a fish because of all the dust in the air. And, since we're on an alien world, I thought - y'know - it could easily have been a giant land fish..."

"Look who I've got with me - it's Joe! You remember Hoff don't you Joe?"

There is a brief pause.

"Yes. Yes I do. Hello Dr Hofstedt. I don't think we ever talked on board the Toronto - but I certainly recognise you!"

"Oh... Well... I hope you won't mind if I don't remember you so clearly... I was er... y'know... always terribly busy..."

"Hoff! Joe was our top technician! How could you not remember him? You must've seen him around mustn't you?"

"Well... you know how it is Tom..."

"Anyway Joe - this is Dirr, she's an Iskai - one of the alien cat people I was telling you about? And this is Siobhan - she's the beautiful human warrior descended from ancient celtic space travellers. Remember?"

"CAT WITH BOOBS"

"Pardon?"

"Ermmm - I mean: Ancient space travellers! Yes, I remember that... heh..."

"Cool. Well guys, it's bad news I'm afraid. The Toronto (which is sort of a giant robot that eats planets) doesn't believe you guys exist - or doesn't WANT to believe it! We could have a real problem on our hands here!"

"What?!?! You mean that you couldn't talk your friends on board into not destroying our home? EVEN THOUGH WE'RE THE SAME SPECIES?"

"Um... I think you mean Dirr and Siobhan's home, Hoff. You come from earth, remember?"

"Well... I... About that..."

"But basically yes. I tried to talk to the captain but the Toronto had me through in prison (it has this man-sized robot body that it uses to walk around inside itself and give orders and what-not). It was only Joe here who came and helped me out! My best chum Joe! We were going to shut down the power to the Toronto's brain, but it set the guards on us so we had to escape!"

"Oh cripes! We'd better get back to the Dji Cantos. They'll know what to do! I'm sure of it!"

Later, in the pleasure palace of the Dji Cantos (where we are, mercifully, magically transported by a camera fade) the whole gang are stood around with all the Dji Cantos folk and Hoff is explaining what's been going on since they were last here.

"...Well you see, it turns out that the people of Umajo have secret knolage. Can you believe it! Non-Dji-Cantos people who know something we don't? I got Tom to thieve the secret of how to mine without being badded up by monsters for us - but they still know about how to do other stuff with metals..."

"Hmm yes." Intones Nemos. "I'm glad you pilfered that secret for us. We can't have normies knowing stuff that we - the intellectual elite - don't. Why, I heard there is a man in Umajo with the secret of how to destroy metal with magic. And it's not just them! The Kenget Kamulos are still resisting our attempts to get hold of their secret of enchanting objects..."

"Excuse me..." Tom interrupts. "But isn't there something rather more important we need to talk about?"

"What..? Oh, oh yes! Also, the planet might be at risk! Turns out that the giant planet eating monster Tom arrived in--"

"Um... You arrived in it too Hoff..."

"Yeah... Ok. The monster me and Tom arrived in--"

"Arrived in? But you were born here on the island? What are you--" Nemos is confused, but Hoff just shakes her head and gives desperate signals to just let it go.

"THE POINT IS. This thing that the new set of humans have all arrived on is bad news. It's 'AI' brain is fixed on mining all the minerals away! We'll need to do something about it."

"Hmm..." Nemos is thoughtful. "Well it's clear to me that this 'Toronto' must be the avatar of Amoeka."

"In that case, shouldn't we get the sweet-ass spells out of the spell cabinet? I'm sure that we'll have something in there to deal with it..." Hoff says, keen to be helpful to his boss.

"Woah woah woah there, fatty. I think you're forgetting that our magic wouldn't work on this Toronto beast..."

"Yeah it would wouldn't it? I mean, some of those spells are SERIOUSLY sweet!"

"Oh no no no no no. You're forgetting that the spells we need will have to destroy the metal body of the ship--"

"Seriously? I'm sure that just using lightning on it would blast all the circuits enough - we don't need to evaporate it's body. Especially since it'd made of precious metals we could make so much use of..."

"NO. We need to destroy the metal. AND we can't just cast the spell we need. We'll have to enchant some object with it--"

"For real? I could just cast it though! Honest, Nemos! I'm good at casting spells! Seriously! I could take a scroll and just do the spell with it..."

"No, you don't understand. Only I, the cleverest person out of all the cult of cleverest people on the planet, could work this out because I'm the most knowledgeable. The planet is in peril and we need the knowledge of destroying metals and enchanting objects in order to save it..."

"Oh I seeeeeeeeee. Yes. You're absolutely right. Why didn't I realise this before."

"I'm not sure I follow, Hoff..." Tom pipes up.

"Well, old friend, it's a bit of a sticky situation. The Dji-Cantos would LOVE to help, but it turns out that by keeping secret information from us - the people of Umajo and the Kenget Kamulos are stopping them from being able to..."

"But... no one on the planet knows you guys exist... They're not keeping secrets on purpose..."

"None the less. In order to craft something that'll be able to neutralise Amoeka's avatar we need to get the secrets of destroying metal and enchanting objects for Nemos. It's VERY IMPORTANT that we get those secrets. We MUST know them. We can't have people knowing things that the Dji Cantos don't..."

"Oh... But... Won't people want to keep their secrets secret?"

"That's the genius of it." Nemos interjects. "I'm sure they'd rather not have their planet eaten. You just say that we need their secret or else everyone will die - they'll HAVE to give them up to us... ah ha! Ah ha hahah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa"

"Oh... ok... Well, I guess we'd better get going then..."

"Here. Take this money to sweeten the deal with the Kamulos. They're assassins for hire so they obviously love money and it might be enough to buy them off from killing you (which they're bound to want to do)".

And with that the conference is over. Everyone wanders off leaving the team standing around in the middle of the Dji Cantos's halls of knowledge. The moment is a little awkward since the conversation has stopped so abruptly, but eventually Dirr says

"So... I guess we should go ask around for these clues then..."

"Ah, now listen guys..." murmer Joe, seemingly hypnotised with lustful curiosity at the sight of this palace of Amoeba's chosen few. "I think I'll stay here. I think I should document this place - I brought my cam-corder along so I've got all the kit I'd need."

"Document the place? But why?"

"I have an idea. When we go back to the Toronto I'll transmit my video - cataloguing and recording everything about the Dji Cantos and their relationship with Amoeba and their systems of magic - over the view screens. Everyone'll see it and learn all about the things I find here. That'll prove to them that there's a civilisation out here! We can put a message in the tape too saying that they should all get out of the Toronto as soon as they can because we're going to be fighting it and they should get themselves to safety. Then the innocent people of earth will be able to escape the presumable destruction of the ship and mingle with the people of this planet - taking with them a detailed, clear understanding of the world their arriving on..."

"That sounds like a great plan, Joe! Good on you!"

"Thank you. Now off you go! You've got a final, dual pronged quest to attend to!"

"Indeed! Come on gang! One last fetch-and-carry and we're on the home straight! To victoryyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!"

Session 35

"Crumbs! Such a vivid dream!" murmurs Tom Driscoll as he groggily wakes up aboard the Toronto - the most high-tech space mining organism ship ever to be invented by human hands.

His sleep has been fitful and restless and represented as a cheaply put together CGI cutscene of a space podule flying over a desert and arriving at a sort of moon base.

Blinking his little eyes our hero notices something unusual. Instead of being in his sleep-mo-bed unit in this cabin, he seems to be in a corridor. And instead of being stationary and laid down, he appears to be moving along and sort of almost upright. His legs are dragging along the floor behind him and he's being pulled along by a couple of conspicuously cold-to-the-touch men. And instead of having any skin at all, he appears to have no skin at all!

"What's happening? I was having the strangest dream..." he begins before a door slides open infront of him and he realises he's being presented - more naked than naked - to the ship's captain, the ship's AI's robotic body, his best friend Joe and a girl who looks so familiar, yet he hasn't thought about her or mentioned her for so long that he's forgotten who she is... wait... it'll come to him... That's it! It's his girlfriend! His girlfriend who gave up years of her life to live on this space ship with him when she could've been becoming a successful radio DJ back on earth. His devoted girlfriend somethingorother -who needs names when love is deaf?

"Oh this is just a dream isn't it" says Tom. "In real life you don't find yourself suddenly more naked than naked in front of a load of important people AND a girlfriend who you are somehow aware you have but don't know any details about. That's it, in a minute I'll wake up and everything'll be--"

"TOM! WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN YOU SLACKER? WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD?"

"Oh God! Captain, Sir!!! I'm... That is to say... We were... Me and Hoff"

Tom tries to stand up but his skinless feet just slip around on the polished metal floor and he staggers clumsily.

NED - the nattily-bearded robot body provided to the ship's super-intelligent AI as a way of talking to the humans on board the ship without freaking them out by asking them to talk to computer panels or a single red LED on a dashboard - locks its jaws open and a plays a message through the speaker revealed inside its mouth "He must be drunk captain".

"No wait! I have something important to tell you! The planet isn't just a desert! It's inhabited by -- snooooooooooooze"

"Oh look. He's fallen back to sleep. Supporting my drunkness theory entirly... Ignore the panel in my chest that is closing up again"

"...Are those darts sticking into him?"

There is the sound of a chest panel springing back open and a sort of *thwip* sound - not unlike the sound darts being fired.

"His friend Joe has fallen asleep too. This supports my drunkness theory also. They are friends. They must've been drinking together... Ignore the panel in my chest that is closing up again again."

"That doesn't make sense" chips in the girlfriend - whatever her name is - "since we've not been able to find--"

Clunk. Thwip. Slump. Snooze.

"I propose that this also supports my theory somehow. Please ignore the panel in my chest that is closing up again again again"

"I must say NED. This robot body of yours, though not as sinister as an LED in the wall, does have a lot of foibles. The locked open mouth. The deadly exhaust fumes. The frequent problems with the directional controls that leave you walking holes through the walls. And now there's some panel in your chest that keeps popping open? Honestly, it's enough to make a man wonder if you're really as benign and friendly as the beard suggests."

"ERROR: FRIENDLY REASSURANCE 1536 NOT FOUND"

"Easy for you to say."

Ned turns his attention back to the slumped Tom, still held sort-of upright by the guards.

"Secret robot attendees - please take this man to a holding-- I mean... Recuperation cell."

"What did you just call those men? Secret whatbot whonows?-- *slump, snooze*..."

"The captain is drunk. Nobody be alarmed".

Later:

"Crumbs! Such a vivid dream!" murmurs Tom Driscoll as he groggily wakes up. He's locked in a cell on board the Toronto but there's really nothing to do. Minutes pass and he spends his time examining everything that could possibly be a clue to the (presumably) puzzle of getting out of the room. Eventually though, Joe turns up.

"Tom! Sorry I couldn't get here earlier. I fell asleep for some reason and only just woke up. When I heard they'd put you in here I just had to come visit you!"

"Joe! You're NEVER going to believe what I've been doing for the last few months!"

"Sitting in a desert going mad and eating your own skin?"

"NO! I've been living it up on a planet of adventure!"

"Tell me it all. But keep it short."

At this point the game says that Tom explains everything that's happened so far keeping it "short and sweet". I can only imagine where he started on this - the intelligent cat people? The fact that pre-Roman European druids travelled here through space? The fact that the Christian "God" of earth is in fact Amoeka - the evil brother of lovely Albionian goddess Amoeba? The fact that God is using the Toronto as a way of effing up his sister's goody-two-shoes kids just to get her back for saying that naming stuff was lame?

Whatever the specifics of what he says, Joe is convinced.

"Looks like we've been conned then!" he explains "Since the only bit of this planet that any of us have seen with our own eyes is the desert, we all assumed it was ALL desert. Additionally, NED said it was all fine and none of us thought to ask. I mean, there were all those monsters we had to kill when the mining started. I mean, LOADS of monsters. It was almost like the planet itself wanted to stop us mining. But we thought that really, since they didn't seem intelligent, we'd just blast their faces off with our shotguns and it'd all be fine..."

"I wonder who knows about this!"

"Well it's probably just NED. Think about it - remember snoopy beagle getting exploded by that space phone panel? It was definitely the panel exploding that killed him. Well the ship's AI could've short-circuited the panel and caused it to explode! Trust me, I'm a technician with access to all parts of this ships complex machinery - even super high security ones - so I know how these things could get done by a rogue AI that's gone rogue and exploded a panel that was definitely the thing that killed Snoopy Beagle. Oh, just on an asside, I think I've lost my space blaster... if you see it around anywhere let me know yeah?"

"'course mate. So what about the scanners telling everyone the planet's uninhabited?"

"Well I think someone could quite easily put scan data into the computer that makes it show up scan results that are actually taken from a different, totally un-inhabited planet if they had super high security tech-clearance. Or were, infact, the AI! See! It MUST be NED!"

"Wow! That's pretty bad news really isn't it!"

"Well yes. And if NED is a bad news cupcake, the disaster-cherry on top is that... NED isn't the only robody under the AI's control on board the ship! According to what I've seen, the AI has HEAPS of bodies. To the point that almost anyone on this ship might be a robot, piloted by the Toronto's super brainputer. Anyone, except me naturally. You can trust me Tom!"

"Cripes! Ok, so how do we sort all this out then?"

"Well here's my theory. The AI's superbrain is in a tamper proof, space proof, external booth that no one can get into no matter how high their clearance - to the point where if we wanted to take control of it, the only way to do that would be to feed it bad information through - for example - fake scanner info that can be input via a separate unit. Oh, but naturally we don't want to take control of the superbrain - ha ha ha ha ha. I'm getting all mixed up... in the excitement!"

"Hold on... Do you think that it might've been the AI that sabotaged me and Hoff's space podule when we set off to the planet all that time ago? You work in the podule dock a lot of the time so you'd know if it was possible to do it..."

There is a pause. "Yes. Yes I think the ship's AI could've done that thing."

"I suppose it wouldn't want us to report to the captain what we'd found - otherwise the captain would spot that the scan data of the planet was fake..."

Another pause. "Yes. The podule was sabotaged so that the CAPTAIN wouldn't receive data that conflicted with the readouts of his scanners."

"Anyway, what was your plan?"

"We should go to the fusion reactor room and try to work out a way of cutting off the power to the super-brain. There-by preventing it from ever finding out what's REALLY on the planet's surface..."

"Wait... no, the ship already KNOW'S what's on the planet's surface. It's just lying to get everyone to co-operate with the mining."

"...Oh! ha ha ha! Yes Tom. Yes. That's what I meant. I got confused because I'm a simple human! Oops! What a silly billy! We'll shut down the superbrain to kill it so that we can tell everyone to stop mining the planet. Yes."

At this point Joe joins the team! This is awesome - I love that the game has come back round and started re-introducing people you could casually chat to before setting off on your space mission at the start. It's like the stuff on the mono-rail in Half Life. You go past all the things that you don't think twice about initially, but that you'll later realise were significant and important.

Tom and Joe's route to the fusion chamber will take them through the servant's passages of the Toronto again - just like when Tom snuck into the space-phone room earlier in the game. They thieve the password for the access hatch from someone's bedroom and are able to scramble down the ladder into the first-person-perspective maze below stairs.

Joe explains to tom that they'll probably have to use some "strange" devises to navigate the maintenance passages. And he's not kidding! You know how you sometimes wonder how Bowser gets anything done living in a castle where all the corridors are populated by timed lava traps and angry ghosts? Well it's not much different in Albion land. Sure, these corridors aren't deadly, but how exactly anyone gets any maintenance done in them is beyond me!

Firstly we have to open a door. But we can't just use a security pass to buzz our way through, instead we have to coax a cuddle-bot to come out and stand on a pressure pad for us.

In the next corridor we have to do the beep test from gym class. Press a button at one end of a long hall then run down to the other before the timer runs out to press the other button at the far end. Wouldn't one button at one end be a better way of letting service engineers through?

In another room there is an array of pressure pads that light up when you step on them. presumably this next door is opened by lighting up the correct pattern? Can you imagine mentoring a new technician in this place? "Yeah, pretty soon you'll notice that none of the doors in this place work the same way as any of the others..."

"Boss, how do we know what pattern to make on the pressure plates?"

"Well you have to find your way through that maze over there and make a note of the pattern on the matching pressure plates somewhere through there..."

"And then the door opens?"

"Well, no... Once you've done the pressure plates, the force-fields between the buttons over there are deactivated and you have to run around and press them all within a certain time. THEN the door'll open."

"And then we'll be able to get to the fuse box for the meeting room?"

"Yeah... Well... Nearly..."

"Nearly?"

"Well as good as."

"Boss..?"

"Well ok. So then we might have to hurd hug bots around the place in a huge chamber to get them to (possibly) stand on the pressure plates in order to open the next set of doors into the fusion chamber."

"And the hug bots will follow us just like the last one did?"

"No, the rules for these hugbots are different. They're sort of random. I think it's something to do with bumping into them."

"So... We sort of stand around in a room full of randomly moving hugbots until the doors open for some reason, possibly to do with pressure plates, and then we can proceed?"

"Yes. Welcome to the team!"

This kind of stuff you can just about get away with in a "dungeon" setting. Y'know - if it was a prison style set up, or well-defended crypt, you can imagine that someone would set up fiendish trials and traps to prevent people getting in or out if they're not meant to. But you'd've thought that in the future, people would've sussed out that when a bulb needs changing somewhere it's a good idea to get the technician to the right place as conveniently as possible. Having Joe quip "I'd love to know what screw ball came up with all this" while you're working your way through it all only draws your attention to the ridiculousness of it all even more.

I'm bad-mouthing this section, but it was actually pretty fun. It was a really nice puzzle dungeon where you weren't under threat ever - you were just solving things to progress. Plus, it had quite a nice structure to it where you were solving a new puzzle in every room PLUS looking for the secret side chambers (none of them were TOO secret, but they were secret enough that you had to keep your wits about you and your eyes peeled) so as to gather all the pieces of scrap paper that no-good mechanics with their terrible memories had left about the place to remind them of the access code for the FINAL door into the reactor room.

After not too long you find your way into a really massive chamber - in the centre of which is the towering reactor operations room.

Stepping inside we flip back to third-person view and can have a good ooh-and-ahh at the reactor itself. A glowing yellow panel at the north end of the room, it pulsates rhythmically. It is the beating heart of the invincible planet eating organism that is the Toronto and Tom and Joe comment on how wondrous it is (although in reality it's nothing special).

Back to business - we saunter over to a control console.

"I'm going to suffocate the computerbrain now Tom... Just give me a minute since it's a bit complicated"

"STOP!!!" comes a voice over the loud speaker. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

"We have to stop you mining this planet!" Shouts Tom - recognising the voice as that of the Toronto's AI.

"WHY WOULD YOU EVEN DO THAT? THE COMPANY NEEDS TO MINE THE PLANET! THAT'S WHAT WE'RE ALL HERE FOR!"

"There's living people on this planet you heartless computer! We can't let you destroy Amoeba's children!"

"YOU'RE DELERIOUS! DON'T DO ANYTHING AND WE'LL COME AND GET YOU AND PUT YOU INTO CARE AND LOOK AFTER YOU! I CANNOT ALLOW YOU TO WASTE THE WHOLE TRIP HERE!"

"It's a trick Tom! If we stay here the AI will send it's hench-bodies to come and kill us! I don't have time to kill it either! It's too complicated! I couldn't kill the brain without ruining all the mining equiptment!"

"Oh, but we could do that! It'd be fine 'cos we wouldn't want the mining equiptment anyway..."

"No, we'd be better off running away."

"...No, honestly, kill the brain AND the mining stuff! That's be best possible result, Joe!"

"Too late! Here they come! We've got to go all they'll DEFINITLY shoot us!"

"But the AI said it'd just look after us... maybe we could talk it round..."

Tom says this last while Joe is pushing him bodily out of the door - at which point he concedes and they run away.

Weirdly, they aren't accosted by the swarms of guards you might expect. Instead they're able to run all the way back to the dock where Tom arrived at the start of this post and the only person who tries to stop them is NED the robody.

"Tom. You cannot leave. We've only just rescued you once! Where will you go?"

"You know full well NED! Don't try and stop us!"

"I'm sorry Tom. You're clearly mental..." a panel on the front of the robody starts to open but Tom's too fast!

He pulls out a special magical bead that (aparently) someone gave him earlier in the game. I have no memory of this bead, but according to Tom it was a major plot point some time previous and he's been holding onto it ever since. Anyway, he uses it to eff NED up with a fire ball before he can attack!

As the robody fritzes out, jittering and spinning round, Tom and Joe make good their escape

"How did you do that?" asks Joe as they jump down from the hanger door to the sandy desert below

"Oh yeah - magic is real on this planet. Did I not mention that? So is telepathy, teleportation and resurrection."

"Do you think we should've stopped to let your girlfriend know we were running away again?"

"My whatnow?"

Session 34

So let's head south instead. Konny promised an impenetrable maze of boulders, hoards of deadly monsters and a recent horrific cataclysm.

Interesting that no-one is DOING anything about the cataclysm. I assume this means that no one lived in the south so they're happy for it to cataclysm itself to bits as long as it doesn't impact on the status quo.

Anyway, since I KNOW the Toronto must be on this continent somewhere it seems almost certain that the cataclysm is it landing and turning into an invincible planet eating robot.

"Honestly, those Dji Cantos must be either not nearly as clever as they make out or REALLY lazy if a world eating metal organism latches onto the side of the planet and all they can be bothered to do is send out 4 people to have a look at it. Talk about head-in-the-sand!" Muses Siobhan as the team stroll around a complicated forest of stone pillars and cacti.

"Shut up! They're just really busy secretly ruling the world is all!" Hoff retorts defensively.

"You know..." starts Dirr "...I'm not completely sure that I LIKE having secret rulers. Just because they're descendants of the original mixed-species settlements from 2000 years ago, I don't like that it means they're allowed to manipulate everyone..."

"Well be fair Dirr - they don't seem to do a lot of manipulating." Tom points out. "They have one old guy who keeps getting re-incarnated in Nakiridani and the leader of the druids amongst them - but the rest of them aren't connected with life outside their palace. And they don't really seem to DO anything to the people. They're not oppressing them or using them to amass huge personal wealth. It seems to me they're more of a club of secret layabouts with access to a pleasure island."

"NO! They're very important to keeping the planet in balance!"

"You seem very sure of that Hoff..."

"...I just... I think they deserve a little more respect from us is all. They're dedicated to peace and happiness for all!"

"Yeah. That's what they say they're about. But to be honest... They SEEM like they just live it up on a palatial continent of their own and sneak around via magical portals they don't tell anyone else about and... Listen, have we been going round in circles?"

Tom makes a good point. The path through the rocks is really complicated and after quite a lot of aimless meandering it looks like we've arrived back at the mystical eye in the rocks that marks where the portal cave we used to get here is.

"Well... Now... I don't think can have..." muses Hoff. "And yet - why would there be a second eye on a different rock? It doesn't make sense..."

Certainly there is a secret symbol of the Dji Cantos on this boulder. But wouldn't we be able to see the city wall from here if it was the same one?

"This is ridiculous" huffs Siobhan sitting heavily down in the sand. "Have we really be wandering around all this time just to have got back to where we started?"

Hoff isn't sure. Stepping up to the rocks he runs his fingers over the carving of an eye. None of the other Dji Cantos ever mentioned there being another portal cave here. And these eyes aren't used for anything else so what can it mean?

Well there's only one way to find out. Pulling the necklace he has that allows him to access the teleport caves out of his shirt where it's been resting on his boobies (since it's a huge dinner-plate sized stone eye and his boobs are firm and full and amazingly well supported considering he passes for a man - the amulet can't really sit attractively between them. If he was keen on being alluring he'd probably be quite frustrated by the fact that he has to balance this thing on his cleavage like a tea tray on a bouncy shelf. Even resigned as he is to being mistaken as an old man, it's quit annoying to have it knocking him on the chin whenever he has to run anywhere) he holds it up to the rock face.

The boulder opens up exactly as expected and the team step inside.

"Hold on... this ISN'T the cave we came here via... where's the teleporting vortex of the goddess?"

Hoff doesn't answer. This is a totally different cave - but somehow marked as a Dji Cantos teleport hub. The passage ahead not-only doesn't hold a pillar of brilliant light that could take them wherever they wanted, but stretches deep into the ground, totally unlike the regularly bored out chamber she was expecting. Indeed the darkness ahead stretches well beyond the penetration of his flaming torch.

"I thought that maybe this was going to be an old abandoned teleport cave... but it doesn't seem to be anything like one..."

"Well lets see where it goes! We're more than a match for any trouble that might come our way!" Siobhan overconfidently announces as she strides forwards and is devoured by a hoover-face monster.

"Oh crumbs" announces Tom as it chomps him down too.

This hoover-face beast is exactly like the ones the team encountered in Kontos's evil alchemical vivisection labs - only this one's sort of yellow and much MUCH tougher. How did a creature created by Kontos's - evil political manipulator - end up here in a double-secret Dji Cantos cave? Between them Dirr and Hoff (although to be brutally honest, Dirr did most of the work) fend the beast off.

Hoff, it turns out, has some healing magic skills he'd been hitherto keeping to himself. But he runs out of magic points during the fight. This means that, when Dirr has cut the beast's bag open and fished the skinless bodies of Tom and Siobhan out from amongst the carpet fluff and pennies, they are un-able to revive them.

"We should take these guys back and get them healed up somewhere" Dirr suggests. "These beasties's weaker cousins gave us enough trouble last time round - and there was 6 of us then! Just the two of us don't stand a chance. Especially since one of us is you"

Hoff is too preoccupied to notice this jibe. And besides, it's pretty much deserved - he might have a crystal throwing axe, but he's rubbish with it and is dressed like a clothes horse in a shirt factory where none of the machines can decide what sized person they're habidashing for. AND he's run out of juice re: magic.

"...You say you've seen these creatures before?" he asks.

"Um... Well BLATANTLY Hoff! You were there! In Kontos's basement. He was breeding them in his labs? Come on - I know that one was a different colour, but couldn't you recognise the mess of tubes and brushes that made up what should've been its face?"

Kontos? Who is Kontos? Hoff only recently got Dirr's trust so decides not to start asking questions like this that reveal that he's not who he says he is.

"We should keep going... We MUST know what's in here!" He says.

"Seriously Hoff? What for?"

"There's something deeply wrong about this place... What is it? Why is it here? Why was this monster here? What's the link between the Dji Cantos and mr Kontos.... Cantos, Kontos, Kantos, Contos... It even SOUNDS like there's a link... Can that mean anything?"

Without really waiting for Dirr to come round to his train of thinking, Hoff presses on into the darkness.

"Oh great! Leave me to drag these two peeled onions why don't you!" shouts his companion trying to grip their recently hoovered up team-mates by what should've been the scruffs of their necks (but which were now sort of like trying to pick up a slab of bacon that's just slightly wider than the span of your hand).

The cave isn't home to just one monster. It's huge and FULL of the things.

There's really only one way to deal with it - fleeing! Every fight the team gets into they flee immediatly. Thankfully, since the hoover-attachment monsters don't have ranged attacks this means the daring duo can slip through without taking any damage - but is this really a sensible tactic?

As I was playing I was guessing that this was some kind of secret area cave - it SURELY can't be that ACTUAL way forwards! It doesn't make sense for a Dji Cantos cave to be full of monsters instead of a portal. At least, it doesn't make sense that the correct route to the Toronto (assuming that's what the cataclysm was) would go through one. As such - I reckon it's fine to skirt past some fights - these creatures are just more badass than usual since this is a bonus area. And besides, I've skirted monsters before. In the ancient underground war-torn ruins of Arjano. I saw plenty of monsters there that I didn't even TRY to take on.

Dodging, rolling and skittering around the place - Hoff and Dirr eventually spot a barred door leading out of the caverns. Running up to it they get it open and escape the monster room.

But where have they escaped to? They find themselves outside in another part of the boulder maze. Turning to look behind them they see that this entrance to the cave is also marked as a Dji Cantos eye-cavern.

"Where are we?" asks Dirr.

"I dunno - it seems like we've come a long way from the city through that passage..."

"I think I can see a way south through the boulders..."

Heading south, Hoff and Dirr find their way onto some prairies. Huge tracts of open grassland spread out ahead of them. 4 screens worth of the stuff to be exact.

I wish at this point that I'd've been able to look through the character's eyes. The savannah is completely flat and so they'd've been able to see across it to the sea in all directions and known that there was NOTHING THERE.

As it was, viewing the scene from above, I spent ages - AGES - exploring this vast wasteland. Seriously, this area is probably as big as the northern desert - if not bigger! But it's 100% featureless and (as far as I can see at this point) POINTLESS!

Hoff and Dirr wander around for DAYS, dragging the ever mouldering bodies of their companions with them through the dirt and pampas grass - looking for either a settlement or evidence of a cataclysm and finding nothing. They even reach the southern coast of the continent without passing anything of note at all.

I know that previously I've been quite a fan of the exploring in this game. I loved wandering round the pleasure island of the Dji Cantos. I enjoyed mapping out the whole of the first continent. But at least in those places there was a point to it - either level-up flowers or magic-ammo berries to find. It seems this continent has very little to entice you to walk around it except a locked prison where you can trigger a load of murders by well-meaningly releasing a murderess - although naturally my characters don't know that since that never happened remember?

Honestly - I was totally stumped by what the point of this place was. It almost feels like I'm not supposed to have been able to get here at this point and that a plot point later in the game would fill up a lot of this space (possibly with a landed space ship or Brigadoon or something).

Eventually Dirr throws down the now filthy and fly wridden bodies she's been dragging and exclaims "listen Hoff. I don't even know what you're looking for out here? We need to go back and get these two fixed up - if it's even possible any more. I've tried to stop their bodies getting too out of shape - I managed to pocket one of Tom's eyes when it fell out but I don't know what happened to the other..."

Hoff looks at Dirr who, being an Iskai, is completly naked and subsequently doesn't have pockets to put things in. There is a brief period of intense calculation as he decides if it's a good idea to ask exactly what she means by "pocketed" the eye - but in the extended pause Dirr carries on, leaving the question un-asked.

"We're going back now. And YOU'RE carrying these two for a change. I'm sick of my hands being covered in bacon slime all the time".

So many questions still to answer. This abandoned kingdom that can only be reached by a Dji Cantos monster cavern... what does it all mean? Hoff's still not satisfied but can concede that starving themselves to death out here isn't helping anyone.

They hike back to the monster passage and enter through the eye-cave.

But as they go in they're swarmed by monsters again and in the confusion end up heading the wrong way. By the time they notice they've gone south instead of north it's too late - but it's ok because there's another exit up ahead! Running out as before (still fleeing any monsters that take an interest in them) the two step once again into the blazing sunshine in yet another part of the continent.

"Hey look!" cries Tom, leaping upright and acting as though he hasn't been dead for the last several weeks being dragged skinlessly around the dusty far horizons of the desert continent. "There in the sky! It's a pod from the Toronto!"

And lo-and-behold he's right! Swooping into view is a hovering ship exactly like the one Tom and Hoff arrived in all that time ago!

The thing lands and Tom scampers in through the automatically opening doors!

"Come on" he calls back to the other guys - Siobhan also standing up now and trying to brush the ants out of her exposed ligaments.

Looking round he notices there's no pilot on board though. That's strange.

He glances back to the others who - being all natives of Albion (with the sort-of exception of Hoff) are stood awestruck by the magical metal box that's just dropped out of the sky. Somehow zombie-Tom's enthusiasm doesn't really make getting into it seem any more of an inviting prospect...

Suddenly the ship doors close.

"No! Wait! My companions! And Hoff! *ack choke* What??!! Gas!!! *ack splutter puke weep* Why??!!"

Tom doubles over and the whole world goes dark.