Session 39

The executive priest placed his paperwork neatly to one side as Phillipe's caterpillar tracks chewed up his office rug.

"I'm very sorry about this" intoned the detective "my client will pay for the damages."

"I'm sure she will. And how is Mrs Bernard? I'm impressed that she's still sending people to find out about her husband, considering that every single detective she's hired so far has found out the truth and reported it back to her. I suppose she thinks that if she doesn't like them, continuing to examine the facts might eventually change them. But then what can one expect from a cyborg - did you notice that's what she was?"

"PROCESSING" Embarrassingly Phillipe's automated response unit kicked in to give a reflex answer to a detected question while his speech processors were busy - having been sequestered for information analysis. He hated when this happened because it showed up how out of date his hardware was, but there'd been a LOT of new data in what this man had said already...

"Oh dear. You're rather old-fashioned aren't you. Yes, she is a sort of conglomeration of various pieces of machinery who were connected together (kitchen mini-droids, an optical analysis device, navigation modules from a shuttle, that sort of thing) and housed in a human body - which was, itself, then greatly modified; plastic surgery, prosthetics etc. The whole mess just about functions by running all the computer parts' communications through the human brain so that through highly efficient team work their AI's have sort of become co-dependant and amalgamated - not to mention augmented by the natural chemical workings of the living organ. The wretched thing delights in how hard it is to pin down exactly what she is - is she a group of AI's? Is she one AI formed from several? Is she an animal that has been kicked into life through mechanical intervention? The whole thing is disgusting... yet wouldn't it be delicious to study? Too bad the world has ended. Now, I suppose you want me to take you through what we did with Joe's body?"

"PROCESSING - PLEASE WAIT"

MEANWHILE, ON THE PLANET OF ALBION

I cannot tell you how awesome this dungeon is. Quite simply, this has been the most exciting part of the game by absolutely leagues. Properly edge-of-the-seat stuff.

It starts out with Khunag busting you out of your prison cell. I don't remember exactly how he does it, but presumably he uses his shunvisibility powers.

"Excuse me" Tom propably called to a guard to came over to the bars. "I'm really lonely. Could you tell me a story?"

"Well ok. But I'll have to keep it short..."

As the guard proceeds to tell Tom The Tale of Walter the Rabbit and his Amazing Dressage Routine, Khunag is able to walk over, reach through the bars and take the keys off his belt. The guard - completely focussed on blanking his caddish ex-brother-in-arms - refuses to acknowledge his presence even to the point of letting him get away with this rather than have to look at or speak to him.

"...And then, even though he'd bungled the half-pass, he knew that what was REALLY important was having tried his best. The end. Now you be good in there!"

"Thankyou!"

When the guard had walked away Khunag let the team out of the cell.

This is a 2D top down section - in an area of the castle I've not seem previously. Since it's a dungeon, I assume I'm looking for a way up and back into the main area of the citadel.

Suddenly - the guard comes back!

"Oi! Get back in your prison!"

"Listen - we don't want any trouble! We're just trying to--"

But it's no use trying to be peaceful now, the guard attacks and I'm forced to kill him (and then take all his sweet armour and his amazing axe!)

"What're you doing Siobhan!??"

"Well he wasn't going to need it any more..."

"Yeah - but we're hardly going to be able to defuse this situation if you rob the body of the man we were forced to kill!"

"Well maybe it's a disguise? Maybe I'll pose as a guard, taking you to see the chamber of secret knolage?"

"But Siobhan, no-one is going to be fooled by this! This is a colony of muscular, hairy men. You're sexy lady with flowing golden locks. And boobsies. And no skin!"

"Well you don't know 'til you try..."

Suddnly "Oh god! Miguel's turned into some kind of bacon woman and let the prisoners out! We've got to kill them!"

Another fight ensues and we find we've now killed three or four guards.

"Ooh - natty shoes..." exclaims Khunag as they put down a gad-about Oqulo. His fighting style had been to hop around the battle grid so that I was constantly having to run at him in order to land a blow. "You can't hit me! You can't hit me! Float like a butterfly, sting like a ARG!!!"

Thankfully his system hadn't completely worked. It mean he was a pain in the bum to kill, but ultimately he was just delaying his defeat - once he'd run out of magic points he could dodge around all day, but he was never going to kill me by throwing no-fireballs.

"This is a total disaster! We can't just kill all these people and expect the Kenget Kamulos to give us the secret of enchanting magical items! What're we going to do!" Dirr exclaims.

"I've got a good idea" Khunag helpfully explains. "Let's just kill our way out of the problem!"

"Seriously? Are you mental? This is a citadel full of trained assassins! How could we hope to kill our way out?"

"Well now, since you're in the citadel of the Kenget Kamulos, you've got to start thinking like a Kenget Kamulos. And they have a saying here: 'no-one eats just one segment of a satsuma""

"What does that mean?"

"Well you've started dealing with your problems by killing people, now you should just roll with it. No point letting the rest of the satsuma go to waste..."

"But... In this example, isn't the rest of the satsuma living people?"

"I killed my way through my Baccalauréat..."

"Oh come on then. Let's get on with it."

And so I completly ditch any thought of peaceful negotiations and just kill my way through the corridors (looting corpses as I go) until I reach some stairs.

But hold on! These stairs are stairs DOWN! Deeper into the dungeon! That can't be right? But it turns out it is! The only way to get out of the area I'm in is down these stairs.

Of course, this means that the screen fade that covered our transfer from the secret passage to the prison cell must've skipped the whole of my team being brought into the prison this way. Which means that Tom, Hoff, Dirr, Siobhan and Khunag must've already seen the whole of what comes next once already (coming from the other direction). And yet none of them seem at all concerned. Not one of them says "Oh god, there's no way we'll get back to the main bit of the citadel through here! We're totally doomed" which is what I'd've been thinking if I'd known exactly what I was about to go through.

Downstairs we drop into first person mode. The way out leads through a sequence of puzzle chambers. In the first you must lure a fire-sprite onto a pressure plate. In the second you must light some braziers by triggering fire-ball traps (everyone dies except Dirr and Siobhan, so they have to rest before they can carry on - a stupid error that I didn't even think about at the time, but which used up a precious rest's worth of food supplies...)

In the next room a tiny button releases a whole bunch of demons!!

Now, unlike most other dungeons, the game pre-explained why there might be demons in this one. One of the boring things that the Kengets told me while I was chatting to them was that creating a demon is dead easy for them and hence they make them all the time just for a laugh (or as guard dogs maybe). I think this would also explain why the druid's dungeons were full of demons earlier on too - Kenget Oqulos just can't get enough of summoning them to show how tough they are, so they'll've just flooded the whole place with them!

Anyway, we find a stash of potions (which up to this point I'd not really been using - I'd pick them up and hold onto them, but mostly I just used magic or resting to do all my healing) and a nice hat for Siobhan that matches Dirr's

"Oooh look! We match now!"

"Snaps!" the girls bond over fashion while Hoff looks on with boiling jealousy. Why had all the girls always locked him out of this kind of friendship and clothes talk? Even to the point of deciding that he's actually a man so as to avoid having to talk girl stuff with him?

The next room is actually quite full of assassins. And my cheery "oooh what an exciting dungeon" demeanour starts to be a little bit rocked by the fact that they're turning up in groups of 3 or 4 now... This won't be quite the breeze I was expecting...

Also the room is some kind of elaborate looking boudoir with an area in the middle marked out with curtains. I can't resist taking a peek at what's behind the lush purple velvet - but am a little alarmed to see that it's just packed with the "fear" demons - freaky floating hands with eyes... Are the Kengets even pervier than I thought?

We kill everyone but only Tom and Dirr survive this time. Another costly rest ensues (and again, at this point I have no idea how precious my food supplies are).

Round the corner from the floaty hand bedroom are two sets of stairs down. Again, my stomach sinks a little - this dungeon looks like it's going to be a bit more extensive than I was expecting. I was thinking that there'd be a bit of a gauntlet to run, but then I'd be back in the citadel thieving the secret. Not so it would seem - turns out there's going to be some exploring and maze navigating...

Down the left steps I meet a new monster type! They're called "plagues" but are actually just zombies. Why have THESE wandering around your castle? Unless... no... they wouldn't be THAT pervy would they?

All the doors are locked down here so I pop back and try the other stairs. Oh god! I get seriously pummeled by some super tough assassins here - Khunag goes down almost instantly as does Hoff (who's got all the magic items). Dirr and Tom only survive by relying on his fire-bead that he's aparently had all along. Very little food left after this rest.

Next there's a sort of chasey-flame puzzle that kills the frame rate. You have to trick loads of living flame sprites into moving onto coloured panels that evaporate them - it's very very tricky, but patience wins out!

Carrying on we pass a statue of the cyber-demon from doom and slip through a curtain into a large chamber filled with booths.

Each booth is surrounded with privacy curtains and inside most of them are couples of demons waiting for your arrival.

"Why... Why would the Kengets keep demons in these little private booths Khunag?"

"Well now, we have a saying here: 'If your companion's out of town on a job, the next best thing is a monster he created by breathing life into an embodiment of his most dreadful fears and emotions'".

"Are... Are these make-out booths?"

"Ooh look! Someone's left a treasure chest in this one!"

Past a fire-ball trap (which is a total nightmare to dodge and we lose more health again) we go down some more stairs into a room full of more monsters and more cyber-demon statues.

It's another tough fight and in order to heal afterwards we have to crack open the healing potion stock pile (not to mention the mana potions - since you don't get any magic-points back when you rest if you've not got any food).

Round the corner is a door with a pressure plate you have to stand on for ages before it'll work. Through there Khunag points out that we've now arrived in "The Beatmaster's Breeding paddock".

This dungeon is epic. I'm cracking through the write-up at lightning pace because I don't want to bore you, but honestly it's immense! The Beastmaster's Paddock zone is extensive and tough enough that it could have been a quite satisfying dungeon all on its own!

I open a door and kill some more wizards for their loot. Some of them are carrying a couple of bits of food which means I can eek out my potion supplies a little longer. Then I start opening cages and letting the animals out.

This is a really really bad move. There are hundreds of monsters in cages here - most of them pretty darn tough. I kill my way though 50 or so (using up all my food for resting and all my mana on lightning trap spells and healing) before I get to a room full of level 3 Kizzes that I just can't beat.

This is frustrating - how am I going to beat the dungeon if I can't get past them?

Well, how about running past?

In Albion, if you flee from a fight you have a grace period where you can't get into another one of about 4 seconds. Doesn't sound like much, but it's often long enough to get away from a scrape OR to get past an impossible enemy - the only risk is that fast moving enemies will kill you before you've got everyone out of the battle grid.

I manage to slip past the kizzes and find that actually there's no treasure in this area at all. ARG! I'VE WASTED SO MANY RESOURCES GETTING HERE!!!

Well... it's ok... I've still got some potions to be getting along with. And some of my magical items still have some charge in them...

I wander over to another area and am attacked by some wizards who think I'm part of their training... I'm not 100% sure what the point of this is, but this particular bunch of guys stop you before your fight and say "Oh! You must be our next test of worthiness! Come on then, let's be having you!"

I just about manage to kill them and get nothing much for my trouble except I have run out of grub again. This is going to make the rest of the dungeon very tough.

I can't rest any more and am having to round around monsters now (this means luring them out into wide open spaces, then scampering around them without triggering a fight - since they'd be able to do me too much damage before I could flee properly and I want to save up the few remaining potions I have). But there's only locked doors and chests wherever I go!

Well, locked doors, chests and more and more pens full of monsters that I can't spare the resources to take on. I can't help wishing I'd been better prepared since, if I'd've stocked up on enough food and potions with the money the Dji Cantos had given me, this place would've skyrocketed my characters's XP!

Eventually - as I pop open yet another pen, expecting to have to run away - THE BEASTMASTER appears! He's presumably been in here feeding the various nasties that are lurking inside.

He absolutly mangles me. I manage to get away just about but have to run a mile on a desperate provisions search.

Turns out there's a few secrets I missed earlier - I find a couple more potions and (most pleasingly) a "frost axe". I find this when I open a door into a room full of rotting debris.

"Oooh - look at all the piles of junk!" exclaims Siobhan. "I bet there's something good in there!"

"Yes, but it stinks of rotting meat and death... And look at all the zombies"

But it's no use arguing. Siobhan has us flitting about the room plunging out hands into the neatly heaped putrifying zombie food just in case there's something useful in any of them and to be fair to her, the raid comes up with the goods! A Frost Axe is an exceptionally good weapon and one that I'll have to make sure I make the absolute most of. No more fighting any monsters unless I REALLY need to!

Backtracking even further I find that a door I thought was locked can be opened with secret buttons. But all it yields is a load of locked chests (and I used my last pick to look at that stupid anvil back in Umajo! I bet these chests contain mountains of food and supplies but without anything to crack the lock they remain completely out of my grasp!)

"Can't we just smash the chests open?"

"What a totally ridiculous idea Dirr. Smash the chests? Can't you see they're made of wood?"

"Yeah - it's only wood--"

"Totally impregnable wood..."

"Impregnable? Are you barmy I--"

"TOTALLY IMPREGNABLE. Come on. Off we go..."

I return to the beastmaster with a heavy heart and low expectations. There's no way one lousy frost axe can swing the balance of the fight is there... or IS there?

Turns out there is! Fantastically I can use the axe's frost spell to repeatedly incapacitate the blighter! He takes almost no damage from every hit on him, but since he can't get away or fight back we're ultimately able to completely smash him to bits! Wahooooo!!!!

Also - turns out that Tom's sword (called a Danu's Light) has a magical healing power he can use... And it's a really powerful healing power... Oops! How did I not notice this earlier? Well never mind - it actually looks like things are on the up and up! And now we've beaten the beast master, the end of this deadly maze must be but a stone's throw away.

WRONG. There's still ages left!

Using the beastmaster's key I head through a locked door (still no joy on the chests though - stupid beastmaster wasn't carrying any keys for those) and find... More stairs!!! Oh no! I'm never getting out of here!!!

Down a floor we're confronted with a fire-ball and lava puzzle. This is a really nice, satisfying puzzle combining a load of stuff I'd learned about earlier in the dungeon AND suddenly they introduce ANOTHER new monster type! The freaky cloud guy!

This frost ace is coming in amazingly handy - finally, since wassername left to hide out with that mute idiot druid she snared with her wiles, I can stop people in their tracks again! I didn't realise how much I'd missed that spell!

The puzzles on this floor are quite cryptic. I push a lot of secret buttons, stand on a lot of pressure plates and pull a lot of levers - but to what effect I'm never quite sure. I have to go down some stairs to a mini-dungeon where mysterious buttons and levers must be interacted with. Then I have to back track (the whole time I'm dodging monsters so as not to have to use any of my precious charges on my magic items) and navigate round a weird timed-portcullis maze (that's sort of like something in a fun house except that it's full of zombies who I have to fight because - annoyingly - there doesn't seem to be a way of avoiding it).

Never mind though because I score a few more potions plus a speed amulet and...

"Hey look what I found Tom!" calls Hoff "It's a musical crystal! Like the one you carried around for ages because that weird building didn't want"

"Fuck you, Hoff."

"Oh but I..."

"Leave it Hoff" (this from Dirr). "Just hold onto the crystal and move on..."

It seems I can't progress at all at this point. I've been everywhere I can and it's not even as though there's a locked door stopping me. None of the levers or buttons I've found and pressed seem to have done anything and eventually I'm reduced to trawling all the walls for secret buttons (this being the only thing I can think of that I might've missed) and amazingly I actually manage to find one!

It's halfway down a huge long corridor where there's no other reason to stop - but there it is and voila! A wall opens to reveal... Some stairs down. Stairs that lead to... EVEN MORE stairs down! I can only guess that this path would've been more blocked if I'd not done all the stuff on the previous floor...

This place is EPIC sized. I think this dungeon so far has been the same size as the whole of Dungeon Master...

On this next floor are two huge chambers of pressure plates. One has a pattern on it already which I match in the other - but to no effect. Round the corner is another pressure-plate/fire puzzle that opens a door to a room where... The floor gives way!

What?!?! I've gone through the whole dungeon and have now arrived in some kind of sub-dungeon cave system? Am I EVER going to get out of this place?

"This place looks like it's been abandoned for EVAH" Khunag helpfully points out.

This new floor is massive. It's sprawling and totally open to exploration. Paths lead in all directions but monsters are everywhere - as are locked chests I can't get into. There's a pressure plate puzzle I can't work out and and something weird to do with door-frames that appear and disappear but I can't hang about long enough to solve any of it 'cos now I'm being constantly hounded by huge groups of baddies. I just have to dash from one area to another hoping to find some treasure or tools I can use to beat back the opposition. I've drunk all the potions I had. I've eaten all the food. Danu's light is out of charges and I don't want to waste any of the mana that my spell casters still have (acquired with the last of the potions) since I'm sure there's going to be a boss somewhere eventually and the game's not giving my anything new to fight it with!

Suddenly I find myself horribly trapped! I walk through a door that then locks shut behind me!

A flame trap is triggered and there seems to be no escape until at the last moment...

The walls give way!!!

I'M FREEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

The releaf of having got through the first-person dungeon is immense! I'm suddenly back in the Kenget Kamulos citadel in 2D. Indeed, I'm even back in a bit I recognise!

Only now all the assassins are angry with me... It turns out that actually my ordeal isn't quite over yet!

"We've got to get to the inner sanctum!" Khunag exclaims. "Our only hope is to take the secret by force from the Murder Pope himself!"

With one last burst of energy the team dash through the halls of the underground city - dodging encounters with wizards and assassins as they go until they reach the chamber of the Murder Pope.

The stage is set for the final battle.

Everyone is exhausted.

The Murder Pope is sat at a table having a sandwich with some of his buddies, then gets up to talk to us.

He starts into the usual "ha ha ha, you'll never get out alive" speech but then...

"Khunag? Is that you?"

"FINALLY someone notices me!"

"So you've come back for revenge eh?"

"Revenge? But Khunag, I thought they wanted to get revenge on YOU? Why would you need to get revenge on them?"

"Well Tom. I actually never murdered the Murder Pope at all. Arrrrrrgh (which was the previous Murder Pope's name) was killed... BY HIM!!!" (points at Murder Pope)

"AH HA HA HA HA HA! It's too late Khunag! No-one will believe you! I don't know how you tricked this bunch of idiots into helping you get in here..."

"Woah woah woah! Idiots? We're here because we need the secret knowledge of how to enchant magical objects!"

"Seriously" retorts the Murder Pope. "Didn't you realise that Khunag, former top-companion to the my predecessor would have that knowledge?"

"*GASP*"

"Is that true Khunag? We're trying to save the world here and you've dragged us through a CITADEL OF ASSASSINS instead of helping us just to get revenge?"

But Khunag is in tears now. "I LOVED THAT POPE!!! AND YOU MADE EVEYONE THINK I KILLED HIM!!!!"

"Shut up and fight."

At which point the Murder Pope channels all the power of Kamulos and morphs into Murder Jesus!!!!!!!!!

What? I thought Murder Jesus wasn't real? Didn't the Dji Cantos say that none of the other gods people believe in on this planet are real?? What gives here?!!!

No time for thinking. The final battle is upon us! Murder Jesus in his crazy hat looms down with terrifying power and a temper to match!

There's nothing we can do! We've used everything! We've got no aces up our sleeves and even re-loading's not going to get us one since we've not had one for ages...

"Oh... unless this would help?" suggests Hoff producing a sun dagger from the recesses of her clothing.

It's the slenderest of threads. With the sun dagger I can blind Murder Jesus. But that doesn't stop him attacking, it just make it less likely he'll hit anyone.

But a slender thread is sometimes all you need.

Hoff focuses on repeatedly blinding their adversary forcing him to move in and use melee attacks (which Dirr can just about absorb as long as every OTHER turn Hoff gets busy healing her).

Khunag can just about pull together some more fire-balls - and so can Tom with his flamy bead. Siobhan has a crack at stabbing him up too.

It all goes wrong when the dagger runs out of charges and there's no way to blind him any more. As soon as he gets his eye-sight back Murder Jesus smushes up Dirr. On his next turn he takes out Tom.

Khunag's got no magic points left so he may aswell not be there and all Hoff can do is Heal Siobhan up.

Siobhan stabs at Murder Jesus. Just a scratch! This is a disaster!

Murder Jesus clobbers her with his mighty divine fist.

She's hurt... But not dead!!!

No more healing coming her way - Hoff's out of magic now too... It's all down to you Siobhan... Don't let us down....

She takes a deep breath...

Raises her axe (stolen from that guard all that time ago)...

And takes her make-or-break swing at the physical embodiment of a killing obsessed god that shouldn't exist....

I can hardly bare to look at the screen....

And then......

CRITICAL HIT!!!!!

MURDER JESUS IS DOWN!!!!!

SIOBHAN FRIGGING KILLED HIM!!!!!

OH MAN I CANNOT BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*JUMP OUT OF CHAIR!!! PUMP AIR WITH FIST!!!! SAVE GAME!!!! CUP OF TEA!!!!!*

----just a brief thought on balancing, while you've read this much already----

I would love to believe that this always-on-the-brink-of-being overwhelmed balancing was intentional on the part of the developers. It's one of those sequences in a game where, by luck, I have been exactly well prepared enough to be able to scrape through but always by the absolute skin of my teeth. One of those sequences where you think "I need to remember this experience and work out how to reproduce it on purpose".

I guess there's a chance it was SLIGHTLY intentional. The huge number of monsters that you never need to fight might well be the result of someone saying "this dungeon needs to be challenging for those player's who've power-played and ground up to this point - so we need lots of monsters in there. BUT it needs to be possible for those players who've got really low level characters by comparison. So most of the monsters should be optional."

To be honest, locking you into a dungeon with a finite amount of supplies in it was a really bad move on their part in terms of fairness. It was really only luck that meant I never QUITE ran out of equipment completely. But at the time the game was made this was pretty standard practice. I can imagine the conversation in the office "If they don't want to engage with the game and buy up all the food and weapons they can before going into the CITADEL OF ASSASSINS then they're an idiot and deserve to get pummelled".

But then again - would this dungeon have been so thrilling if they hadn't made that bad decision and locked me in? If I knew I could be constantly popping out to rest and re-supply all the time? It's only because I knew I had to make it with just the stuff I had that it was so satisfying to get through! The experience of that last dash and fight with Murder Jesus was exactly the same seat-of-your-pants game-desperation you get when you're just 3 levels away from level 100 in Llamatron and you've only got one life left so you know you've got to perfect it despite the levels being crazy hard at that point. But then you DO make it! Against all the odds you're in the zone completely and you're suddenly on a screen full of nothing but cute camels to rescue and the game's telling you you're amazing and you just think "WOW! That's a feeling Gears of War could never come CLOSE to giving me!"