Deathlord Walkthrough with FAQ stuff interspersed
copyright 2002 by Andrew Schultz schultza@earthlink.net
version 1.0.0 submitted 12/01/02
Please do not reproduce this for profit without my consent. This was
hard to write and I obviously tried something different. It's the result
of several times through a hard and wonderful game...but if you'd like
to post it please e-mail me asking me by name for the game(by name.)
Although I'm bad about responding.
Also if you have suggestions and I get enough I may revise this. But it
has been re-read several times.
** AD SPACE **
My web site:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/2762/
Deathlord color maps at:
http://members.fortunecity.com/cartographics
================================
OUTLINE
0. Introduction
1. Lost in Lorn
2. Preparation BS: a classic Bait and Switch
3. Back in the Chain Mail Gang
4. Todo: Light Up a Hibana
5. Sam and Mac Hit the Dirt Path Face Down
6. The Apocalyptic Visions Return
7. Lorn Again and Me With No Cool Gods to Praise For It
8. Right Said Ned--Dancing in the Dark
9. You're Shi! Sai!
10. Who Wants to Be a Tenthousandaire?
11. Wassamata, Kawahara?
12. Sailing, Sailing, Over the Ocean Black and Blue
13. Itemizing the Items
13-1. Shiny Happy Crystals
13-2. I'll Senju More if You're Clever
13-3. No Banks with Greenbacks in Greenbanks
13-4. Insultin', pal: Us in Sultan Palace!
13-5. Don't Try to Shogun-s, We Got Magic!
13-6. Heck on Earth
14. Diary Wherein Monsters Re-Die
15. Joyous Memories of Our First Town Looted
16. This Chapter is Just Seven Words Long
16-1. Your and Mines: the Kobito Mines
16-2. He Chutes, He Stairs!
16-3. All's Fair in Chess and RPG's
16-4. Elements Aren't Elementary
16-5. A Droll Stroll in the Troll Hole
16-6. Shogun Me the Way
16-7. Pyramid Mapping Schemes
17. The Lore of Lorn for those not Born in Lorn
17-1. Kodan't You Stay a Little While Longer?
17-2. Asagata Hurt!
17-3. Akmihr Tkrifle!
17-4. Poke! Slap! Nyuku Nyuku Nyuku!
17-5. Chigaku, Chigaku, That Toddlin' Land!
17-6. The Land of the Dyslexic Tsunami
17-7. Osozaki Fragments(Back to the Old Telegrond)
17-8. Gil, You In Giluin?
17-9. Sirion, Banned From the Round Table for Alchemic Excursions
17-10. Sectors for Suckers
18. For Reddish Mountain Majesty: a Brave New Island!
18-1. What May Skulk(eep) in Skull Keep?
18-2. Levels 1-4: Well, Well! Hell!
18-3. Levels 5-8: Hello/Oh Hell
18-4. Levels 9-12: Acid Trip
18-5. Levels 13-16: Gates Without Microsoft Is Still Hell
18-6. Deathlordus Ex Machina, or The Hell With Hell
18-7. But Do I Look Like I Kaeru?
19. Don't Let the Portcullis Cleave You in the Brain-Pan on the Way
Out
================================
0. Introduction
Deathlord would certainly be rated as one of the toughest games of the
early eight-bit computer era if it had ever gotten any 'juice.' If
Ultima IV is a symphony inspired by Ultima III, Deathlord is the more
intelligent Gangsta Rap. It certainly deserves a focused walkthrough,
and while Wilson Lau has written an excellent FAQ on the matter, which
is probably responsible for me getting onto GameFAQs in the first place
to write these walkthroughs, I thought I had a niche for a document like
this. Wilson Lau, whose Deathlord FAQ brought me to GameFAQs in the
first place, also bought a Deathlord cluebook, apparently official stuff
from Electronic Arts, and he was kind enough to type out and show me the
contents of it. I was eager to read it, given the hilarity of the
Wasteland cluebook, but he also warned me.
A brief aside: for anyone out there on GameFAQs who is considering
writing a humorous walkthrough, I -strongly- recommend you know the game
inside and out. Make sure the walkthrough is hilarious to both people
who played the game(some somewhat inside jokes to reward their
knowledge--note this requires serious knowledge of the game's details
itself) and to people who haven't(giving the walkthrough some general
scope.) There's also a list of great adventure satire I've listed at the
bottom of the walkthrough, but y'all will have to read/scroll through it
in the first place unless you happen to know what the End key does.
(Err...oops!) At any rate, you should probably have a lot of sources to
inspire you to humor, unless you are sui generis. In which case you
should just be writing something to tide me over before the next Harry
Potter book comes out and not some silly walkthrough.
As for the warning, it was right. The book worked out the big picture
well enough. But it wasn't funny, it wasn't thorough, and it didn't seem
as though and love and fun had been put into it. Granted, that's easier
to do with a game like Wasteland which has its own humor and is
considerably more popular. But Deathlord has its own charm in its
fascinating dungeons and abstract puzzles. You're told very little and
must map the rest--while dealing with some very tough monsters.
Even if you know where all the items and words you need to win the
game are you still have the prospect of improving your party enough--
that is assuming you've chosen them reasonably for the start of the
game. For this I am sorry to say that your experience gained tends to
outstrip your haul of gold--unless you make plans to cheat to get more
gold. The FAQ mentions several methods for this appropriate to how
powerful your party is. There's an obvious cheat not related to power--
just finding the words in a cheat document, getting the items(which are
less heavily protected) and heading to Skull Keep. But in fact even the
cheats are involved and technical. Deathlord is that sort of game.
In fact while most games allow you the general technical dishonesty of
cutting the computer off when two players get killed, this game saves
EVERY time you move to a new sector and EVERY time someone gets packed
off. If you teleport to a nonexistant level, your whole party dies, and
it's awkward to resurrect them. It's like Wizardry, only the dungeons
are interesting, and it has towns, color, NPC's, and sixteen continents.
Clearly a game this exacting requires exact strategy. You may have to
sacrifice time just to leveling up. Fortunately there are several ways--
none obvious unless you've got good experience, and it can get maddening
that you can never see how far along the way you are. You also want to
back up your character disk often. I've played through the game several
times and still goof up.
So I figured I'd drag along a fella that helped me with Might and
Magic II. Ned, the rotten apple providing the perfect change of pace in
a non-rotten Apple adventure game(you Commodore fans will find him an
acceptable commodore as well.) Read his insights carefully--he's found
some ways to beat the system and hopefully his sense of humor will help
ease you through a game that can be thoroughly frustrating to the
impatient. I dare Final Fantasy fans to come back in time and try this
game. Ten bucks says they'll get smeared.
But after a brief poem(with apologies to Tom Lehrer and whomever he
ripped his tune off from) below I will let Ned tell his story in his
dynamic fashion; I believe a cult classic like Deathlord deserves a cult
classic style tribute.
If you visit a Deathlord dungeon
You will find it very pungent
Just two things which you must recall
Don't open coffins and search every wall
1. Lost in Lorn
It's Ned again. Your old crony from Cron? Well, from Earth, really--
when I returned I got a plum upper management job but got canned after
the dot-com boom fizzled out, which happened just after I cashed in my
stocks at their peak and paid off a big new house. Good thing those
intelligence and luck boosts I got while saving Cron took a bit of time
to wear out: a little calculation and pfft, I knew about what to buy and
about when to sell. I picked an exact day out when my luck was still
high and stuck to it. Charisma landed me the quick influential job, but
I do miss being able to stack the weight machines with one hand.
Then one day this roach garrison carried in a telegram saying a person
of my exceptional abilities was needed in Lorn, and would I please mosey
to the dumpster in back of the retirement home and place the magic hole-
producing film under it and slip quietly in while the garbage men did
their job? Once they plied me with a brochure and assured me they were
just visiting from my neighbor next door's, I instructed my bank to make
other automatic payments like gas and water and stuff and even scruffed
myself up so that the workers would be less inclined to think my
disappearance meant much(it's hard with my distinctive important air.)
I'd been hoping for a Narnian transition between worlds, but it was in
fact horrible, cartwheeling through a dirt chute without even any free
mead to help lessen the shock of it all. Lemme tell you, Lorn was a real
four letter word. Everything was mixed up: the spell names(so much
easier as numbers,) the character classes, and the weird looking items
with weird names. It was even tougher to cheat. Fortunately there were
some fighters that came before us whose ideas spared me the hour it
would have taken me to figure it all out on my own.
The worst part was the pep talk I got on the way spiraling through the
transdimensional void. 'That 1000 HP bonus you got in Dragon's Dominion?
Eh-eh. Not gonna happen here. You got three digits max and they ain't
usin' hexadecimal but for the machine language coding. Attribute
improvement? Not gonna happen. Yer stuck with what you start with. And
death is a LIT-tle more SER-i-ous. And spell points and hit points don't
grow on trees--food can, but you need some pretty high-level spells for
that. If Lorn weren't such a square-griddy place you'd be in big trouble
getting around. As it is you've got lots of 64x64 locations and only
41x31 graph paper. Chew on that for a bit. You wanted a bigger
challenge? You got it. It's not a place for yellow bellies even if
yellow were a featured color there. No spells to reduce your age and no
snarky Lord British types to help resurrect you either. Let's also just
say that it's tough enough to figure out what the towns' NAMES are, let
alone learn whatever you're supposed to do. Then there's little stuff
like fire not giving you light in dungeon. You'll see. Just be thankful
you're starting out near a town, pal.'
The Deathlord chimed in with more useful and concrete advice, to be
honest. Seven words and six items stood between my future party and him,
although the subesequent digitized evil laugh(so frequent with early
computer games) inspired less fear than his arrogant advice. He also
said our incompetence stood in the way as well, but in my vague and
admittedly secondary experiences with all that, I find it usually lies
in wait to trip people.
I still chose the robbing trade, only there were several classes(could
one fourth of them being thieves have contributed to the current lawless
mess?) and I picked something called a shukenja--and listen up, ol' Ned
has spellcasting abilities. Unfortunately they were largely about
healing, and you had to wear this housedress robe looking get-
up(offensive spellcasters got jazzy stripey numbers,) but you take what
you can get. After some research I decided having pure fighters would be
important if there weren't good ways to level up and such a diverse
range of spells, so I crossed my fingers and hoped my picks would turn
out OK and I'd find a seedy joint where moderately bad guys popped up.
And anyway why should I feel obliged to drop in one pure fighter in my
party? Leaders often seem to do that, as a nod to tradition. The party
I'd set up might not be immediately powerful, but once it got above a
certain level it would be very flexible.
The old Cron gang had gone their separate ways--Might and Magic III,
some forgotten point and clickers, even stints as nameless thugs in bad
brawlers. I tried to keep up but lost contact. Cell phones don't work
across alternate realities. So I made it clear that anyone who wanted to
join up would have to change their names--for sentimental purposes. Now
that they're gone and I have to put up with even worse people(the ones
whose kingdom I guess I have to save, not my companions,) I miss 'em
even more.
The new kids? First, Bob, the Kishi, an upright uptight fellow from a
place called Britannia who also had healing spells like mine(sources
said we'd get smacked around in a lot of fights.) Fighters with healing
spells tend to moralize too much in general but Bob had some especially
nutty paradigm about ways to combine truth, love and courage. Bub the
Ryoshi--lived up to the Bub name, the schmooziest of the lot, to whom I
told my deepest inner feelings that can be expressed to peons anyway.
And his Shizen spells would be extra nifty--making food and casting
location spells and so forth--if not as practical every day. They and I
would make the group's front line. Gus the Shisai--well, he'd get the
spells I had, but much faster, and he wasn't half bad to relieve me in a
pinch during the days when I woke up in the morning and realized I just
didn't have the usual armor class. Then Sam, the Mahotsukai, and Mac,
the Genkai, rounded things out; our group had each of the four spell
groups, making it that much less likely we'd be a well balanced meal for
any wise guy enemies. And as I was summoning people I made sure they
were all human and had superb constitution(18 gave the maximum hit
points for a class. Expect the maximum and get it; be unafraid to reject
anyone who can't prove they also have 11+ spell power, 14+
intelligence(it's not just for remembering maps when you get low on
papyrus,) 11+ strength and INSIST ON DOCUMENTATION--no sick notes from
Ma saying constitution'll be back up as soon as they get healthy and 17
is quite good anyway--besides, if your finger wears out from pressing
'N' a lot, you aren't gonna solve any of the actual puzzles in this
game, chum) Other classes may have had more intelligence or constitution
but were woefully short in other areas. How many Mahotsukais with one
hit point did I send away scornfully? Well, a few got snarky, but they
weren't exactly in a position to get in a fight about it--haha. It's
pretty easy to get killed in Lorn. These guys would just have to walk
into a swamp for a move--even AFTER making level two. I'd been
recommended to look for toshi mages, but seeing how wimpy they wound up
made me wonder if that wasn't another factor in the current turmoil.
Size also mattered. We needed one big member to smash down doors(Bub)
and one small one(Sam) who could help us hide from monsters we didn't
feel like fighting. An inherent perfectionist streak made monsters
tough, as they felt that if they can only see five of your party members
and not six, they can't see any--but BOY did those lunkheads keep in top
shape.
Diversity wasn't a big deal for us. Anyway from what I see on Earth
humans wound up taking over everything, so why not go with the best?
Some races have one or two stats better than human and the rest stink,
but human spellcasters can actually survive more than one hit. You just
have to accept only the best. I also took only guys along. They SAID
there was no difference, but I bet the monsters wouldn't know that, and
I wanted as little attention as possible. Besides, if it made no
difference, couldn't the leader(i.e. Ned) call the shots? To make up for
the potentially bad PR from this I gritted my teeth and decided I would
be good alignment along with my party especially since we were all male.
Although I privately noted that a world so advanced on gender issues(men
or women ALLEGEDLY had the same stats) turned out a little too weenie to
save itself. Hey--just an observation. I'm just saying. You never saw
that nonsense in the good old days of mythology, after all.
Right from the start I could see Lorn would be a weird place. Palaces
and towns were shaped like teapots on the outside(later we found the
Sultan's Palace was an ice cream cone) but were definitely square
inside. I'd need to go unorthodox early, so before we began I proposed a
little racket(this despite the lack of tennis courts. Am I resourceful
or what?) wherein we could start off on the right foot.
2. Preparation BS: a classic Bait and Switch
Party profession choice is an important part of a red green and blue
print to save any world oppressed by magic. Before you jump the crossbow
and lash out at whatever monsters you can find, you want a party that
can win battles early and have a wide spectrum of spells later. Noting
that, it's nice that although you get in increasingly complex computer
games, classic methods still work. In this case it was time to pretend
to be fair to the lesser computer classes. Having decided on my
companion classes, I decided to recruit one of each. I picked them at
random, giving me the added ammunition that they 'just weren't up to
what I'd expected.' I brushed them off with the excuses below, even
adding 'you're a nice guy and all' where appropriate. First, the
evil/neutral party(Bub actually had to scam them since my alignment was
good:)
--Stu the ansatsusha: wimpy fighter, no spells like ol' Ned, and plus
their class name isn't cool and their icons are ugly.
--Kip the kichigai: neato ritz cracker shield, decent weapons, but
ryoshis trump them with spellcasting. Also shizen nip them with puns
although "Kichigai Kitchen Kitsch" is unbeatable for alliteration.
--Leo the kosaku: just plain lame and worthless. "I choose YOU, Kosaku!
... NOT." If he'd studied harder in school he might have wound up a
halfway decent different class.
--Nat the ninja: kickin' fighters(for thieves) but no magic
--Ric the ronin: the toughest cut, but then they're well employed in
times of good or evil with all the mercenary work they do. Same as
kishi, but evil. Again, the icon thing and the general PR.
For this first party Bub just took all their gold and decided to phone
them back later--like in a few hundred years when they get the phone
invented here. I'd do the same for the second, a bunch of gumps that
looked easier to dismiss and play off. Good/neutrals are so much more
gullible.
--Tod the samurai: okay, they have cooler tools to play with, but it
takes forever to find or buy them, by which time a senshi/ryoshi is
piling up the new spells.
--Sol the senshi: your basic fighter, the sort you always feel obliged
to include in a group in an RPG. But Deathlord isn't your average RPG.
Let the senshi go protect something.
--Gil the shizen: we already have three pure spellcaster and their
spells are the silliest of the lot, often costing more and taking longer
to acquire than similar shisai stuff. And they don't get the quick
offense mahotsukais do. Decent fighters, but they don't start out with
great attack or defense spells. I'd explained his spells were good for
shizen giggles but not down and dirty fighting, but still he begged me
to join until I overused 'No SHIZEN!' to his responses. Aficionadoes of
fine humor such as myself can get away with such crudity every so often.
--Wes the yabanjin: lots of hit points, not a lotta armor, no spells
whatsoever. Neeext!
--Sly the yakuza: y'all excuse me for a minute while I sneak off into a
corner and feel superior to thief classes that can't cast spells. It's a
new feeling, and I want to get in touch with my feelings.
All this firing people at random and for fun, eventually gutting a
whole department(Pick up your "I tried" jerkins at the door, boys,) was
also great experience for my current upper management role. It's all
enough to start me humming 'Do You Believe in Magic' without any
underlings around too worried about offending me to mention their
annoyance.
There would be no NPC's asking to join our party during the gameso it
made sense to stack up. We also had space on the roster for two more
guys we never used: Pop, another kishi, and Guy, another ryoshi. If
there was a huge emergency and we had no gold, they'd be in reserve.
Final bonus--later on when my party was short on food without
TABEMONO, I and Bob and Bub took these aspiring adventurers' peanut
butter and sushi sandwiches their mommies made them. We were level ten
or so by then, so we had some clout even though we were close to
starving(we had zero food left,) as the newbies couldn't exactly push
back. We lost more hit points in one fight than they could afford in a
day, and we could even kick them out and get new recruits.
3. Back in the Chain Mail Gang
But enough on administration! Let's proceed to do first things first,
whether or not we state we are so doing in such a voice to deter lesser
lights from doing so.
First thing we did was to stop in Kawa. It didn't have the best stuff,
but in case we got jumped early on we wouldn't get totally wasted.
Haramakido for Bob and Bub at the armor shop, and cloaks for everyone
except Mac. We didn't bother with any weapons as the ones on display
were really too wimpy, but I got lockpicks at the miscellaneous goods,
Bob got torches, and we got Gus a holy symbol. No-one else seemed to be
able to use it, which implied it could be quite powerful.
That town in the northwest--Tokugawa I believe it's called? It's got
the best goods, if you're loaded with dough. And I was. The Yoroi Bob
bought allowed a trickle-down effect, giving Gus haramakido and Mac a
cloak. For weapons, we got naginatas for Bob and Bub as we found the
first of the Goros weapon chain, staffed by Kobito. I didn't see
anything I liked, but Sam and Mac were happy with the tantos; the Bo
Staff knocked their armor class back up to ten. Utterly useless.
In the south part, the missile weapons(non-nuclear, Kreskin) shop
netted a crossbow for me(lowered armor class a point) and a sling for
Gus. A trek east to Tokushima got us medium shields: Bob, Bub and Gus
anyway. I could see that I would be switching places a lot with Gus
early on due to his better armor class. The extra cash we got would come
in handy for resurrections.
Speaking of resurrections, hoo boy were the healers in the Emperor's
Castle a racket. I mentioned there was no way to change attributes but I
was wrong; if you 'raise' instead of resurrect you can drop a comrade's
constitution by one, which is a big blow. In the long term I think we
got the better of them once our hit points went up; it was 200 GP for a
complete healing, whether for 15 or 500 hit points.
Still I knew each time Gus moved up a spell level meant that we'd have
to spend less time around these clowns. Perhaps Bob and I could kick in
some healing and maybe even Bub later for the very basics.
4. Todo: Light Up a Hibana
Suitably equipped, for the moment at least, we started looking for
trouble. But not too much. Gus or I would constantly have to cast heal
spells whenever a frontliner got hit(we also cast it on ourselves in
combat,) we had to avoid swamps, and Mac and Sam had limited, although
nice, firepower. We saved Mac's HIBANA for when there were eight or more
monsters, and Sam's todo spell could work very well to kill a pesky
monster. In fact sometimes we would risk Sam and Mac losing all their
magic, because they seemed to get experience even pretending to try to
cast spells in combat--we found that just sitting around, they never
wound up with any experience, and they couldn't go in the front line
yet.
The first advancement was the worst to wait for. We'd been briefed;
everyone in the party knew when a comrade could advance, and careful
inspection could reveal if he had potential for double advancement, but
no-one knew how close they were until then. We had very little margin of
error in combat, one hit necessitating a heal spell, and often it would
take forever to look for a fight, only to get the wrong ones. Brigands
were a nasty bunch, but Obake and Kaibu were quite fun. Then one day we
ran into some skeletons, and Gus, out of spell points, whipped out his
holy symbol. Boom! A few were banished. This in fact worked again; later
on we were to find that the tsuiho spell Gus could cast only worked once
and on the weaker(skeletons, zombies, ghouls.)
But there was something else that worked more than once. It was the
ruined city of Yokahama. We had to watch our step with it surrounded by
swamp. When we entered, a group of skeletons greeted us. Easy enough to
take out, and we went further north. More skeletons. They looked like
they could use some meat on their bones and believe you me we made
mincemeat out of them. We felt lucky until Gus's holy symbol lost its
charges, after which we ran south and left out of fear. When we crept
back in, more skeletons had popped up. Less surprising than the others
that regenerated other places; people have been dying for quite a while
now, after all, and what with routing the land the Deathlord probably
had another ready-made population surge in his millions of minions.
All this made a holy symbol a great investment. It cost 100 gold and
had 10 uses(generally best on six or more enemies,) and skeletons gave
100+ gold one third of the time. We even bought a few for an extended
stay in Yokohama, just trading to Gus when his vanished after the last
charge. Later on we found a holy symbol that seemed to have endless
uses. It turned out to have 255, really; looking at it Gus was surprised
to find one day it claimed to have ;7 and then :0 and ,0. I knew what
was going on, but a discussion of hexadecimal would disrupt us from our
goal. So I clammed up--this lasted us the whole quest, winding up with
40 as, soon after, found better ways to make a fortune than through
skeletons.
I've often wondered what the skeletons were doing with so much gold.
So much for 'You can't take it with you.' Maybe being evil they got a
pittance of an allowance from the Deathlord, but there's no telling how
long they'd been dead, and you know what compound interest can do. At
any rate they made more sense than the wolves with gauntlets(not that we
minded the extra equipment or the gold) who even negotiated sometimes.
To the north of Yokohama there was a nasty dungeon hidden in some
brush that we knew one day would seem simple, but harpies diseased us
and ghouls paralyzed us. This got us very well acquainted with the
healers, so we looked for something else.
We had a few stops in Kawa, and that slowly got us assimilated.
Crashing through a few doors and finding some citizens annoyed at our
actions netted experience and, in the case of kobitos in the east, some
gold behind a portcullis.
We'd also heard rumors of secret passages, walls you could walk
through, there. We found them. However there was rumored to be a
thieves' guild somewhere else and we couldn't find any fake passageways
there. Turns out there was a secret door in the left passage from the
courtyard; eight paces up, search the right wall. Several groups of
Yakuza were a bit too much for us to handle, although a one-off was an
unfair enough fight for the victors(i.e. US) it still felt it was
relatively fair(our opponents never seemed to disagree) in that we
always took damage, so when we saw the hornet's nest below with twelve
groups, including ninjas, waiting for us, we turned tail.
There was also a secret passage to the Daimyo's southeast of the
plaza. There were a few side rooms but we figured the back one was
occupied. There was also a secret door right of a coffin, but we knew
better than to go snooping in it. Good thing we'd been warned; a vampire
was in one. They level drain and cast spells and probably even know a
thousand and one clever put-downs. We even discovered a secret door to
the east. Between that and the urns in clear view, we made out all
right. It figured we should avoid the Daimyo's wrath(damn, yo,) so we
didn't open the door to the southeast. At level 20 he was an easy
proposition.
On the southwest coast we also found a ruined city, Wakiza, and we saw
some islands we couldn't reach. It would be nice to go back there once
we got a boat.
5. Sam and Mac Hit the Dirt Path Face Down
Things were going as swimmingly as they can for people who don't own a
boat or can't cast UKU(walk on water,) but then one day we got too
familiar with our routines, and we walked into a swamp without realizing
it. We bashed into a river a couple of times and before we knew it, Sam
and Mac had kicked off! So the money we'd saved up for advancement and
food had to go to healing. We still had a nice wad left over. I was
actually surprised I hadn't been killed yet but then I was allowed to
retreat occasionally, Gus taking my place.
What really stunk about all this is that Sam and Mac lost all their
spell points when they died. No spell or healer would bring that back.
We'd just have to wait. Good thing we started out with 100 food.
Eventually, after casting enough penny-ante spells, Sam and Mac got
level boosts. But Mac had to wait for level 3 before HIBANA had improved
effect, and then at level 5 it maxed out. But first a bunch of things
happened after this that I can only relate second-hand.
6. The Apocalyptic Visions Return"
Things got all dreamlike in the midst of fighting skeletons. Of COURSE
we were going to escape unscathed, it always worked out that way, and we
were out of holy symbols after skimping on them for a while but then my
mind wandered and I felt a bit of pain and a bit of not wanting to fight
any more. We hadn't holed up and camped for a while anyway...
Then I heard two voices and clashing polka dots flashed in front of my
eyes, in more than the six colors you generally see in the Deathlord
world no less! Well, I figured I was intended for better things.
****
"It's time for more apocalyptic visions for Ned."
"Are they necessary?"
"I'm afraid so."
"What if he doesn't understand them?"
"He may not, but he can pretend like he does, and that'll help people
who might have an understanding of what he's saying who didn't think of
it like I did."
"Your call, Schultz. Of what should Ned be aware?"
"First, the time honored tradition of disk swapping. I remember how I
was forced to pretend to enjoy the Hokey Pokey in pre-school. Well
surprisingly that kerfuffle applies to more technical pursuits as well."
"Please continue."
"Well, let us say you have two disks labeled scenario A, A1 and A2.
Leave one untouched although you can always recopy the scenarios if you
forget. Alter, let us say, a location on A1. The next time you want to
enter the location, insert disk A2 after typing E. Then enter. Then put
A1 back in and hit Q to save. It will be reset."
"In what way is this practical?"
"Towns the party has looted. Dungeons where the party raided a
treasure trove. Refilling the Yakuza Guild with treasure and monsters.
In fact even some of the game puzzles can be solved multiple times. And
if the party is backed up on, say, disk A2, and they are killed on A1,
you can load the A2 party and save to A1."
"But how can we enable Ned to do it?"
"He will just know. He will use the force."
"Shall we give him more apocalyptic visions?"
"As circumstances warrant. Often we will transmit to him strings of
letters that seem like nonsense but are actually important command
strings. When giving him macros we will also wrap them in parentheses.
We will use macro 2, the single quote, because it does not require the
shift key. The shift key is difficult for primitive cultures to
visualize or even fully modern people thrown into primitive cultures."
"Perhaps you should give Ned some useful macros now."
"It shall be done. Keep in mind that these macros can be rotated
directionally as well and the first can be retyped with another number
or the party slots can be swapped. Ned is smart enough to figure which
rotation is appropriate, when."
(C1NASU):for super quick spellcasting
(IIIIIIIIIIIIII):for quick sea sailing
(FIFIFIFIFIFIIK):to search for secret doors and fake walls, can rotate
or flip
(AIAIAIAIAIAIAI):to back into a corner and wait for enemies and still
get first strike
(C2DRUNASU):once Bub makes it to level 12
(C4MONASU):once Gus gets to level 10
"We may have to transmit other macros to him at appropriate points. It
may cause slight discomfort, but it is ultimately for his own good."
"How about describing the duplication trick?"
"Of course it is possible with two disks. But you have to disperse
parties and fool with that a bit. Lots of disk running. Even on an
emulator at fast speed it is a nuisance. But rebooting if your
characters don't get the maximum hit points per level is even sillier. I
did it in the bad old days with a party that failed. With a real Apple
no less. One mustn't micromanage."
"Anything else?"
"Find easy combats and hold down the A key. Also zap the delay with
the colon key. And for mapping towns or pyramids, tape sheets of graph
paper together if you have to. Dungeon levels can just fit on one sheet
but note you start at the top center."
****
Usually these visions would come when I was fatigued or when our party
was just waiting around or when someone else was steering our boat and
everyone else dozed. I'll cut away every now and then; they didn't
always make sense to me, but I get the feeling they're important.
7. Lorn Again and Me With No Cool Gods to Praise For It
"You've been down in the daisies, old pal."
"Dah--what? There's no daisies here only generic scrub...whoah,
sheesh, Bub, you look stronger. Bob too. Gus, buff there. Eh, Sam, eh,
Mac."
"Yeah, we picked up a couple of levels while you-all were dea--
dozing."
"That was nice. You guys put the con in considerate. Hey and oh yeah
thanks for saving me for last. What if I started to rot?"
"Be hard to tell if you're already rotten. Whoah, hey, relax, it took
less than a day. And it was cheaper for us to level up until now--we're
level five and won't get killed so easily so it's long term, didn't
wanna get packed off quickly again--we all got it in the meantime. I got
killed by an obake--real embarrassing, that. The healing spells can be
concentrated on you, now."
"If you say so. Got anything else?"
"Well, some random encounters got us gauntlets--with wolves, that one,
and even Kabuto. For the rearguard we got gloves for Mac and probably
some for Sam later. But we gotta be a bit more careful about encounters.
It was rough. Lots of beating up Kosaku guards in Tokushima when we were
down to three people. Our part in the War on Poverty, with a twist(of
the arm.) Maybe we shoulda suckered some bright eyed new adventurers
into forming a new party and then-BAM."
"Say, Ned, you need time to rest? Getting killed is hell on your spell
points."
"Nah, let's go. Pick fights, not noses. Pack steel or get packed off."
"Rock on, brother." I needed levels. Y'all don't know what it's like,
to lose an armor class point without having to slap on new duds. I
wanted that feeling again.
8. Right Said Ned--Dancing in the Dark
One day after whooping it up in Tokushima and Yokohama beating up
scrubs had felt a bit played out, so we took greater chances with that
dungeon--north northwest of Yokohama. It was hidden by some trees.
Inside it was dark so I cast Akari--it was probably worth the investment
to buy torches, but we didn't.
There were lots of side rooms on the first level but only a dirt path
through a swamp with lakes on each side led to the bottom of the first
level, where we found stairs pretty easily. We met some interesting
monsters including stonebrows who were hard to hit(a HIBANA or two did
for them) and ogres and niatama, two headed monsters with double attacks
and mucho strength. Harpies also inflicted disease, and ghouls paralyzed
you, but as our levels improved we found this was rarer--it wasn't just
down to armor class, either.
Level two presented more of a dilemma. We weren't sure how many levels
this dungeon had, and we couldn't find the stairs easily. We wondered if
the water was good to drink--some folks said it was magical--and all I
can say is, it encouraged magic. Specifically it encouraged Bub to get
to level 40 and learn BYOKINASU to cure diseases one day--so we had to
drop back for a trip to the healers, dejected anyway that there were no
stairs.
When we left the cave, our surroundings were dark. No light spells
worked above ground, so we had to fumble a bit. We knew if we lost hit
points we'd have fallen into a swamp, so we proceeded slowly. We really
wanted to get to the Emperor's Palace and get healed too. So how did we
get there from Kawa? Well, we'd gone NE, E and SE. So we traced that
back again. Eventually we kept running into a barrier which seemed to be
a river. Voila, it was actually the mountain range by the emperor's
palace! Going around it, we managed to find the palace in a nook in the
south part. It was fully lit, of course, and we had no problem getting
around. A little thought had saved us this time but when we went to
distant lands we probably wouldn't know them as well as Lorn, and we
didn't want to wait in the dark for monsters. At 300 gold it was worth
having a glut of torches but actually we never got around to it.
We also memorized the path between Kawa and the palace, useful for our
later excursions with the thieves' guild. You exit Kawa from the north,
go seven paces west, and enter to the north.
Of course this tired us all out and I had an apocalyptic vision where
I only remember one scrap of nonsense strings.
****
JEIJEIJEIJEIJEI <-to palace
KEMKEMKEMKEMKEM <-to Kawa
Exit palace W, MJJJJJJJM and JIJIJIJI etc. to Tokugawa until invalid
move, EJ or KEIKEIKEI
****
The next time through, we decided to just follow right-hand walls. I
kept a hand on the wall and somewhere near the top what looked like a
wall to the right felt considerably different. We stepped into the area
and didn't get crushed, so we there was a false wall off to the right.
We followed it and then went up to find stairs to level three.
This was a bit more orderly. Pillars formed a grid, with a structure
in the center. We opened the door, and there were plenty of urns. We
made out well 'til we opened the coffins in a fit of optimism; I got
drained a level by the vampires, and Sam and Mac got killed by a huge
spell. We ran.
Our discovery of the thieves' guild led us to suspect there might be
secret passages in a dungeon. Two squares up from the bottom a secret
door to the right revealed mucho chests and urns. We also looked for
stairs down and found them through a false wall. There didn't seem to be
much on level four although we searched around for hidden passages. But
we'd gotten enough loot and learned enough lessons.
We'd have to find some other place to build up our characters than
this dungeon(monsters did annoying damage) and Tokushima(peasants not
tough or lucrative enough for stronger parties.) It would be the
theives' guild. But we felt like walking around and meeting the populace
first, picking up experience along the way.
9. You're Shi! Sai!
Exploring towns was an interesting affair. Often we had to knock down
doors, and we'd get the random fight. Then there were Shizen or Shukenja
hiding in thick forests--these folks were tough to root out and then
they'd say "PAY UP!" So much for the living in poverty and in touch with
nature schtick--and business sense as well. A Yakuza was hidden away in
Yokohama and we saw an island in Tokushima we couldn't reach--had to be
hiding something.
Kobito attacked us in Kawa after we busted one door down but we found
gold there. We suspected many merchants had loot behind their doors as
they did in Tokushima, but in towns with guards that was too risky.
****
Searching in forests best done with
MMMKKKKKKKKKKKKMMMJJJJJJJJJJ etc.
PKPKPKPKPK to get through doors
SKSKSKSKSK also decent macro for door/portcullis once you've got the hit
points
****
We eventually discovered the false walls where the guards were in
Kawa(entrance hallway, off to the side) and even found that you can take
whatever you want from coffers in clear view--lots of food stores had
urns where you got free samples. At the emperor's palace a room of
Mahotsukai wandered about among chests and only bugged us when standing
on the chests.
These chests even regenerated after a while, and it was fun to check--
although the haul was never as great as the first time, it was easy
money. But not easy enough; soon we started on the growing pains of too
many levels too quick, too little money. We suspected the problem would
get worse but didn't know where to find a steady stream of income.
10. Who Wants to Be a Tenthousandaire?
We weren't able to stake out all of Tokugawa, but we'd seen enough of
it that we could formulate a plan to bust in, make money, and bust out.
We'd seen how guards acted when alerted in Tokushima and crossed our
fingers hoping they were just as dumb here. Our fighters could hold them
off for a bit at any rate. We knew the following:
1. They always tried to run right for you even if a door or wall was
looming
2. They'd swerve around a wall directly in front if they had no other
option
3. If you could sucker them into a culdesac, they were trapped
because...
4. These melvins couldn't open a door with their lives in the
balance!!!!
Ironically, Tokugawa was easier for confusing guards than Kawa, with
its secret passageways that let guards run right after you. We mapped
the place out several times; there were only four guards and no
dangerous secret hallways, and I naturally was the one to come up with
the plan.
First, we headed to Goros and had Mac steal an item. Bub did a great
job of too obviously distracting the kobito from his post("What's the
hubbub, Bub?") for a moment by pretending to trip and fall on his
naginata. "Oh, boy!" yelled Mac, on purpose, as he went to the counter.
"Look at all the shiny toys! Wowee, all mine!"
"Stop thief!" yelled the Kobito. Oh no, caught with our hands in the
urn! We curled into the corner in the right; the kobito left us to our
fate, as he thought. Soon the guards below would get trapped in the
arrow-shaped entrance, and after barely containing our giggles during a
brief wait, we went off to the left. We moved down and a few paces left
and waited by the docks a bit(one of the guards at the bottom was now in
the training room.) We went all the way to the left and waited a few
moves; the other guard at the bottom had gotten free surely and was
moving up. We moved back to the right, close to the right hand door,
waited some more. Both guard groups were bottled up in the training
room, so we took a detour to visit the ship merchant who takes you for
every gold piece you've got(really--10000, all you can hold.)
It wasn't long until we were able to bust through that merchant. We
were sure he'd be hiding something valuable, and he was. He seemed
shocked at our irregular business regulation while we were giving him
the business. But in the end there were six more converts to the free
market--or at least getting something free from the market. Well, that's
what he gets for overcharging.
Bub kicked in the door behind the merchant's carcass. That 50 gold we
got from the carcasses seemed small fries. Not that we were cannibals or
that we used unhealthy oils when we cooked, but most of the twelve urns
behind contained 1000+ gold. W00t! Loot! Bub in fact took so much that
he went over his limit, after which excess gold he'd collected
disappeared. We often found we'd have to re-pool gold later when hauling
in all that loot, but right then we seemed to have all the money we'd
need. But money wouldn't buy the finesse I'd worked out. Some guards
were still waiting in the training room.
Back directly above the training room, we moved left and down to two
squares above the hallway to the right. We waited some more; this
dragged the guards left without releasing them from the training room.
Then it was a straight shot down although we worried about a meddlesome
group of Ryoshi that might get in the way. The two guards in the
training room were trapped, and the two guards on the left would move
down the near vertical hallway and not ours. "He's WIDE...OPEN! He
could...go...all...the...way!" The plan had worked!
But we still couldn't quite get SAILS, which we needed; sailors were
wimpy but numerous. They also summoned others, and we didn't have any
high-powered wide-range spells to wipe them out yet. And we didn't just
want to give the money back as if it were part of a joke, when when we
knew one day we'd be able to whip the sailors. That sort of thing is
cool if you live in a forest and wear green tights and drink mead and
eat mutton, but none of that stuff here even if some heretics believe
'All the world's a Green Screen.' Even so we'd really be black-and-white
deep down anyway.
Yup, it was time to play it square. It'd acquire a bit of adjustment,
though; deep down inside we were all just 14x16 pixel arrays, too.
11. Wassamata, Kawahara?
Now the emperor had been banging on for a bit about a disturbance
below his palace, but he didn't do anything other than advertise a lot.
Imagine if there were roaches, how unlivable the place would be. I mean,
he had a ton of guards, but they seemed more worried about the treasure.
Looking back now, the introductory caverns taught us many lessons we
applied later on. We thought it was beginner's luck that locations were
turning out square, but in fact the dungeons were that way, too.
There were two guards standing watch by the entrance. It was in the
hall to the right of the emperor. They made the usual wisecracks,
simplistic stuff, but we empathized with folks who weren't smart enough
to read spell books. Lorn was harsh on such backward folks.
I cast the Akari spell for light(did this make us Akari Warriors? If
so, the sequel MOAKARI warriors offered more longevity for its increased
production costs.) I got mop up duty a lot since I had the lowest level
spells, and Gus's spell points were needed for more powerful ones. Bob
had gotten ahead of me as well with all his front-line time, and he and
Bub ran about even.
Our first inspection of the cavern yielded nothing impressive. Half
was made out of rock, and the other half was like your average city. A
few Kaibu bugged us as we smashed open doors, and we found some opened
chests. But everything wound up in a dead end.
Gus had an idea. "Oop! Nothing here! What a little dump! Let's go
level up some more. Like 'til Sam gets to level 24 and can cast UNPAN.
Maybe something will turn up"
I had a better one. "Well, if we are too scared of a few kaibu--not
even BRIGANDS--we probably shouldn't push and search the walls. There
might be obake or something behind. Especially with this cavern being so
SMALL, it shouldn't take too long."
So we started feeling the walls, because it took less time than
searching for hidden doors. We found a passageway below the first lake
on the right hand side. It went left into fake stone, and when it
branched we found we could go down. There was a door with a sign.
"Five gold pieces there are kaibu behind there. You sure you wanna
risk it, Bob?"
That got him mad enough he pushed Bub aside and knocked the door down
at the first blow. If he'd taken the bet, I'd have gotten twenty GP.
There was a portcullis and then a hallway, and then we fell down a pit.
It was actually pretty comfortable, and we waited around and cast some
heal spells. I drifted off for an hour or so.
****begin apocalyptic vision****
"Man, I remember the first time I got stuck in one of these. Thought
I'd read all I needed to of the instruction manual and tried every key
and couldn't get out. Didn't even know I'd fallen into a pit. Felt I had
to turn the computer off. Next morning I reread the thing and noticed it
was shift-6 to get out. This after I'd learned macros. At least this
isn't one of the more damaging ones where you can slip back in."
****end apocalyptic vision****
The corridor turned south, and it seemed to be going on quite a ways.
Gus: "Maybe we're going in a big huge circle." All the scenery seemed
the same and cycled pretty quickly.
"Yeah," I said, "maybe the world all of a sudden got sixty feet in
diameter and we're just walking around it a bunch of times. I mean the
scenery's pretty repetitive here but not THAT repetitive. Not like we're
in some big screen cartoon or something. So maybe we hit a teleporter.
Let's try walking back up."
We did. It wasn't far away. We repeated the experiment. Same distance
back. I started searching the walls to each side. A secret door on the
right provided a brief detour, with another coming out ahead of us in
the hall.
"Now, walk north." We seemed to jump another square. Then we walked
south again, and the door didn't budge.
Teleporter it was between the side doors. Nothing of interest in the
side rooms before level two. A winding passage with lots of doors led to
a treasure room, but we were after conquest. We suspected another secret
door and sure enough we found it to the left. We saw some fire in the
shape of a K along the way--the first level it had been water. A sign
between two doors stated one led to doom. Apparently we chose one--the
right one--that led to a bit of tedium as it wound up as a dead end a
few levels down. The left one seemed even worse--it led us down a series
of chutes and there appeared to be no way out until we found a teleport
to a familiar area. Then I remembered an offhand conversation with an
Ansatsusha.
"Step east on the second drop." Worthless class. They poison you in
combat(big use that'd be on OUR side) and their help sounds like
gibberish when it comes out. Took a while for it to make sense.
We went down again--it's a bit like the high dive, the second time
jumping off it you don't feel as scared--and there was a secret door to
the right! It continued that way until we found a forest. There was a
small lake that blocked progress but we took a boat and moved it to the
south of the lake where you could board and disembark to cross--so if
anyone else had to come over(reinforcements? Please?) or God forbid we
were killed and dispersed, there'd be a way over.
The stairs were easier to find, but they dropped us into a maze of
darkness with a bunch of minotaurs. We deduced a few teleports and took
a break once we got to the end.
****
MKMMJMJJIIKIJMJJMJMJIJIKIJIJIKI
****
The maze wasn't big, but it was twisty. The next level, there were
wraiths, and we were glad of every piece of armor to beat them. Gus's
holy symbol fizzled, and Bub got drained a level, but we made it to a
large chamber--Kawahara. He waited for us to run at him. We thumbed our
noses at him and healed up. We did so off to the side of the door so
monsters wouldn't see us.
He hit us with a nasty spell to start--damage for the whole group so
no one would feel left out even if they could afford to in the heat of
battle. A different one killed Mac outright, and another nailed us for
big damage. Sam's two TODO missiles may not have seemed like much, but
they eventually nailed him just as he was warming up his voice box for
another big fireball. Bingo! I uncovered a document in the chest, and
with two chests to the side, we stepped onto the open chest and got
teleported. We knew where we'd wound up; it was the dead end from
before. Some gold lost, but we were a level closer to the surface.
EESWSWN led to level four. Through one door and another to the northeast
we found stairs up yet again. Around a lake and north through a paved
corridor and back to the choice of stairs on level two. We deemed the
mystery chests not worth it although later we heard there were some good
treasure hideouts in lower levels we'd missed. Secret doors and all
that. But we had a document to give to the emperor.
He subsidized us nicely with a ship on receiving our gift.
12. Sailing, Sailing, Over the Ocean Black and Blue
Once we had a sailboat we were able to discover places we'd only seen
before. There was Bone Island in Tokushima, where we learned of Senju's
flight north, the left side of the river in Tokugawa(nice treasures
people had probably forgotten,) and even a couple of places we didn't
think we could get into.
When we were about to leave a place by boat it made sense to curl
around the edges. In this case we found Kiyoshi the Sorcerer, who for
all his isolation had nothing interesting to say. There were some chests
behind a magic shield we couldn't penetrate as well. We'd seen all we
wanted to, so we left Kodan at this point. As it turned out, we stumbled
on the crystals early, after which everything else came together much
more nicely.
We wanted to cover all the places we could and originally didn't have
KONPASU(astrolabes weren't invented yet.) So we generally tried to align
ourselves in the middle of a sector(sector = 56 paces) and after
figuring out the world's general dimension tried to map out which
sectors had land. Twenty of 256.
One thing that helped was, when we passed sectors I'd often hear a
noise like an old 5.25" disk drive humming--sort of like how your bad
knees tell you when it's going to rain. Later when we got KONPASU, if
locations were 'below' and nothing turned up immediately we would just
move eight paces in one direction, turn right and explore the sector,
eight paces again, turn left, etc. so as to sweep it. Of course if
KONPASU gave a direction I'd go in that direction until I heard the
humming--twice if it were diagonal.
Moving a little bit out and then wrapping around the world N/S or
E/W(it is 16 sectors round) was useful for scoping general areas, and
quite a bit turned up; fortunately we could flee in the sea(not sure
how) and this was quite good when Behemoths started multiplying. It was
critical to find land before dark, though; camping/waiting in the sea
left us open to much tougher monsters than those we saw on land. Krakens
got eight attacks, whorls four, sea serpents poisoned you, all had a
stock of hit points, and they'd just jump out at you every so often on
long rides.
13. Itemizing the Items
I've cut out a lot of the intermediate trips here. In fact I may just
lump all the unimportant places later with the highlights(well, medium-
lights actually but compared to the long boat trips they were the best
we could do,) but I'll go through the six relics in the best order to
get them. You can actually do this when your party's pretty weak, and in
fact it's a decent boost. Some Lorn pundits and scribes said we couldn't
find them with such a weak party and then found our strength near
impossible once we got them.
There were some pretty seedy places, but thankfully there's an
obsessive-compulsive streak in Lorn where people have to design square
cities, and when a huge chunk of that square is unexplored, you know
something is up.
They really have that bug bad. I don't know what's up. It's that way
even for the dungeons for goodness's sake.
But first we got a less critical set of items rank-and-filers who
don't necessarily need to save a world would do well to get. Here's what
we wound up with:
spellcasters: Sable Cloak(Toshi or normal cloak,) Gloves,
Sunspear(Powerstaff is good too I hear) with one holding the sharktooth,
the other holding the blue crystal
kishi: Golden Yoroi(+1 Yoroi/+2 Haramakido will do,) Sunspear(many other
good weapons--but even the nonmagical Great Bow works,) Golden
Shield(>Silver Shield>Bronze Shield=Great Shield,) Golden Crown(Kabuto
is OK,) ruby ring
ryoshi: Haramakido +1/+2, Sunspear(again, many other good ones, great
bow if nothing else) Golden Shield, Golden Crown, ruby ring
shukenja: Sable Cloak, open hands/Sunspear, gloves, ruby ring
shisai: Haramakido +1/+2, Emerald Rod(a weak weapon, but good armor
class,) gold jingasa, Golden Shield, ruby ring
13-1. Shiny Happy Crystals
The Loser Lagoon, er Lost Lagoon, was the first fruitful place. It was
tough to get around, because all these lakes kept getting in the way.
But there was one place we couldn't access; it was a de facto island
bordered by a building on the north and a lake elsewhere. Some guy in
robes was standing there.
It seemed to be a Genkai who had cast Uku to get there and was waiting
around to recharge his spell points to get off. Then we noticed he had
no staff.
"No dice," said Gus. "We'll have to wait to get Uku and then cast it."
We waved at the Mahotsukai and even started talking loud and slow and
pointing around, but he seemed deaf.
"Wait up," I said. "If a clod like that can make it back over there
without Uku, so can we." I dismissed complaints that it might take a
while and located the building that made the de facto island. In
accordance with my apocalyptic visions I focused on the following
mantra:
FMFMFMFMFMFMFMJ
And soon I found a secret door leading south in the center. Bingo! I
tried to chat up the Mahotsukai, who said "Look at all the crystals!"
And we knew that a fellow Mahotsukai in Yokohama back on Kodan said
'Give a crystal to Senju.' Being the big thinker I am, I resolved to see
what would happen if we each gave him a crystal.
We were in a good mood after finding our first valuable item we didn't
have to cough up to the emperor, so we decided not to loot and pillage
the town despite its lack of guards. For being impossible to get around,
it wasn't a bad place, as it even had a training academy.
But we decided to wimp out before getting into Malkanth. We'd have
wasted a lot of time with heal spells if we'd gone in there; it's
protected by fire and even a 'half off discount' magic field in Fort
Demonguard, which bottlenecks it; the crystal didn't work on those.
Process of elimination: it worked on the green and red fields we'd seen.
I just hoped there wasn't a third kind, but given this world's penchant
for just six colors it seems a black and white field would be a bit
dull, so I was optimistic on that count.
So instead of entering the old volcano we stopped off in Kashiwa, the
town nearby, and after a wild goose chase where we used our boat, we
learned of a word in a Pyramid to the west and were told "Search the
Shrine of Chaos." We counted on the law of averages making the Shrine
out to hide an item and not a word.
13-2. I'll Senju More if You're Clever
Chez Senju was just a straight shot to the north; we'd heard he was
around that area from a reclusive Shukenja in an island on Tokushima, so
we planned on muddling around a bit and having Bub pass Konpasu but had
our experience cut short by good fortune. We stopped at this place
called Two Rivers although I have to say that the rivers I saw in the
town, while being plural, were sadly not as numerous as advertised. It
was north of two rivaling towns bordering on a river--the Spindrifts--
and on Nyuku, one of the continents from our original map.
There were all manner of trees that precluded any sort of clear vision,
and given this we started breaking down doors figuring Senju himself
decided to remain anonymous. We couldn't find him and so eventually we
just got upset and asked the first person we found about him. "Oh! Him?
He's in the southeast corner of the village." Everyone else we talked to
seemed to agree, too, and the snarkiness was even worse than Senju's
I'm-enough-of-a-hero-to-be-self-referential schtick when we asked HIM
about Senju(I have to admit, we egged him on a bit there.)
Before, we waited for a clue to be dropped before asking details. If
only we'd known earlier, we could have asked the right questions. From
then on we asked the first person we found in a new town about a dungeon
and a word--but if they didn't know, chances were others wouldn't tell
unless you talked to them normally.
After leaving we got into a fight, and the Sunspear, which helped
armor class something serious, did some major hurting. And it occurred
to me: could we get another one? It would be quite good. Think of it!
Some people may call it cheating, but the Sunspear is good. Having more
would increase the overall content of good in the world! It was our
duty, indeed, to give it thought. The obvious route just left us short a
crystal(I coulda swore Senju laughed after we left one crystal poorer,)
so we plotted. I suggested we pitch camp.
****Cue apocalyptic vision****
'So there are two scenario disks, disk A-1 and disk A-2. Now you enter
Two Rivers on disk A-2 and save it to disk A-1. Then go see Senju again.
Exit, insert A-2, try again. Don't forget to get a crystal from the Lost
Lagoon. Oh, you won't be able to give everyone a sunspear, so don't
worry about THAT. But it is not unlike--ahh, shall we say, replenishing
the towns.'
****End apocalyptic vision****
Who needs visions of Lord British when you've got THAT on your side?
Especially since he'd probably be all cross and nagging about the
killing tons of civilians deal.
Invoking the vision this all worked although Senju increasingly paid
less attention to the rest of the party as one person offered the
crystal. 'You done real good, kids,' he said as we walked out for the
final time. 'You made me feel all regenerated, that's important for an
old wizard like me.' Even his wink was not too emphatic.
If you ain't got the spells, you gotta make your own magic.
So we may have had six relics, but I guess they were supposed to be
unique. A thousand years from now they would sell for less exorbitant
prices anyway and what if the only one got destroyed?
13-3. No Banks with Greenbacks in Greenbanks
This one was a gimme. Kodan's still a home base, as after getting an
item we're much more gung-ho about our favorite level gaining haunts for
a bit, and Sirion, Greenbacks's continent, is directly to the south.
It's a big one and you'll have to go a good deal west to get to
Greenbanks.
Navigating through Greenbanks the main hassle was avoiding the swamp.
The graveyard was the first thing we saw as we entered via ship from the
west, and we decided the least we could do for the spirit of the Kosaku
we kept beating up in Tokushima was to follow his advice and search the
graves. Behind some trees on the far west was where we found the
lantern. I couldn't hold the lantern and lockpicks at the same time, so
we just gave it to Bob. There were also two very weird dungeons and a
town called Clearview on the southeast continent, but we'd gotten what
we'd wanted.
13-4. Insultin', pal: Us in Sultan Palace!
We'd heard of Akmihr before; it was one of the last places on the
original map to visit, more useful than the other major desert continent
Asagata, which had little adventure to offer aside from some cool towns.
The Sultan's Palace offered a selection of round-headed characters.
From the people we talked to, including our first tomb robbers in a
jail cell, there seemed to be suggestion of a tower, but the three we
found turned nothing up. There was a treasure room we could just walk
into if we were willing to sacrifice 75% of our hit points, a tower full
of fire, and a swampy area. We tried to walk around the perimeter and
noted that there were blockages in every corner. Three were accounted
for by towers we'd been in. The fourth?
I had been working on finding secret doors, and so we started at the
bottom and searched every square in the southeast that made any sense.
We'd already turned up a secret garden there and extra searching there
turned up nothing. Eventually we found it in the east corridor. There
was a long hallway up to...magic fields. We saw a dragon behind there
and so we healed up before Sam, who had won the booby prize of getting
stuck with a plain weapon for the moment, used the blue crystal. Two
Sand Dragons breathed on us something nasty to start, but we hit them
with all the offensive spells we had--and the Sunspears, of course--and
they fell. In the chest was an Emerald Rod. It soon proved to be rather
good for armor class, but not as good on the attack, we switched it to
Gus, who was mainly a defensive player with his healing spells.
We also stopped in the Kobito Mines in the hills to the west. It was a
lucrative trip, which I'll detail later. It's a good place to beat up
bad guys and still get gold(Kobito are quite good for that!) and
possibly a bit better than Kawa's thieves' guild once everyone's in
triple digit hit points. If you don't mind the desert and mine gas
smells. And the sunburn--HITATE only protects against fire, not sun
rays.
13-5. Don't Try to Shogun-s, We Got Magic!
The first thing you do in a world where there's a ton of magic is to
track down each sector and look for foreign lands. The first way to do
that is to go continually in one direction until the game wraps or, if
the world is bounded, zigzag. Here the game wrapped after a long trek
west(a dungeon rumored to have sixteen levels was guarded by swamp, so
we passed,) and so we moved north and then circled west again. We ran
into two islands.
Elementals are tough customers in any world with magic, and it stood
to reason that the Cave of the Elements contained a few. Lorn was a
goofy place but not totally illogical. So we skipped it.
The other cluster of islands contained a castle. One island off to the
side said "What lies behind the Red Shogun's Castle?" but we decided to
see what lay in there first. There seemed to be a forest in the
southeast but it was easier to go right up and talk to the Shogun. He
looked tough and if there was a secret door behind him we'd have to wait
a few levels to find out. Smoke demons guarded every long hallway. There
was even a group of golems guarding a magic field, which tipped us off
immediately. Instead of forcing our way through we looked around--no
evidence of the Ruby Ring, but if we attacked the golems the enemies
could not run after us. They felt confident they could wait for us to
leave. There was a healer with a dragon pet, merchants showing off their
treasures, and even a jail to the left of the golem. Smoke demons ran
out to attack us. Two groups. We had to let them strike first. A few of
us got paralyzed, leaving us in no shape to fight a golem. You obviously
wanted to get the first strike in against these guys--in other words,
open the jail door, attack the golem, then run to nail these guys. But
fortunately the healer in the right allowed a finesse--the golems looked
stupefied as our previously bedraggled party came out dressed in our
Sunday(or whatever the sabbath is here) best. In the meantime we checked
out the prison cells for advice. Apparently someone escaped from a lower
cell, and the bottom left one had a secret door leading down. We had a
quick way out.
Now Deathlord monsters have a nasty habit of not showing their true
numbers until a combat, or calling pals in quickly. We didn't realize
how lucky we were fighting only two golems at first. There could be up
to six--as it was we wasted 'em pretty easily. Softened by our front
line's assault, they went down to TODO, which would remain surprisingly
effective against a single powerful enemy. We braced ourself for the
jolt and on the other side a Mahotsukai told us to search the walls. In
the upper right we found a passage to a chest--the Ruby Ring.
Apparently the Ruby Ring was made on an assembly line in a
supernatural forge because, with the same sort of thought-focusing we
used for the Sunspear, we decided to tempt fate again, opening the
escape passages first and fighting the smoke demons and all--and found
another one. But then everyone seemed to get paralyzed after we picked
up our fourth Ruby Ring.
****
"That is what we get for not paying attention and not casting
MOTUNASU. Or recharging spell and hit points. But it is not worth disk
swapping to restore. We've done it enough, and we have all we can use."
"Indeed, we should have kept our offensive spellcasters up to
scratch."
"No matter, let us disperse the party and get a Senshi to pay for
their healing. Then ditch him."
"That is fair."
...
"We are lucky that Senshi fled those nine wolves that appeared at the
start!"
"Not as unlucky as having them turn up. But let us take three
'grubbies' adventuring next time all the same if the adventurers all
die. We'll have to resurrect a main party member later anyway."
****
Later when we were stronger we would raid the Red Shogun's treasure
chamber off to the east of his audience room. Some golems and fire
squares guarded it, but with the Ruby Ring we were able to search some
walls(it turned out the secret door was next to about the only plain
square) and descend to a treasure room we could loot and no one was the
wiser. As long as the golems or numerous hidden traps(I knew to search
for them) down there didn't do for us. Fortunately the healers just to
the south in the castle proper didn't question where we got our money
from if we had to make a pit stop during looting. In fact when we
eventually went back to raze the whole place to the ground, we were so
grateful we waited until they were the last ones standing to kill them
and even gave them a parting gift first--a lesson in combat. After we'd
gotten some interesting magical items(Haramakido +1 for Bub, for
instance) it was the least we could do.
Oh yeah, there was nothing behind the Red Shogun's throne. But we
tried. The clue led us somewhere very nasty, much nastier than the place
that claimed to be Hell on Earth but, well, we were in Lorn, and there
was another nastier town much later on anyway.
We also found a friendly necromancer in a building in the forest. A
shizen hung out there too. It took a while to comb but we just started
at various positions on the brick path and went east from there. No new
info, but it helped our mapping skills.
13-6. Heck on Earth
Turns out south of the Lost Lagoon there's an island in the center of
Narawn. One place, Fort Wintergreen, serves to bottleneck access to the
volcano inside, where there's a town. The exit east of Fort Wintergreen
was nastily guarded. Doors and portcullises in the center east, with a
half-off discount magic field(and I don't mean it was a bargain)
waiting. The field would be a total nuisance on the way back because you
needed to step on it to smash the door; if Bub couldn't do it on the
first few tries, we'd have to back off, wait, heal and try again.
Fortunately we were able to stock up on food and cash in Malkanth.
Malkanth was the place's given name. Nobody seemed eager to take it
back--tough joint. We figured what with the Ruby Ring there'd be less
bother with fire, but as it turned out the main nuisance was outside--a
small fire barrier, which would've done little damage even if we hadn't
had ruby rings. Inside Malkanth you just had to be alert to tiptoe past
fire--and acid, which gave double the damage. A brief search of the
place turned up some spooky dark areas lighted only by fire and acid,
with only the southeast varying. There wasn't much there at all except a
diamond shaped room with a few dead ends.
"You guys should know the drill by now. If there's a big chunk of a
nice square city you can't explore..."
So we searched to the south. A room with a table; I searched all
around, nothing. Then we noticed a secret door in the west point. It led
to a torture room where a Senshi was moaning about how he wished he'd
worked harder in school so maybe he could've been a Kishi, and maybe he
wouldn't be roasting over a fire now. Further on down the hall was a
treasure hoard. But no Shrine of Chaos. But back in the diamond room we
searched the east nook and, after stopping by a grotesque freezer, we
found the shrine at the end of the hall. Two coffins. One held the
shark's tooth. Unfortunately though they looked fashionable together it
didn't jibe with the ruby ring, so that was a blow to the party's
overall armor class average. Not much of one practically though as the
front three would always have one.
Given that the sharktooth seemed useless in combat, we thought we
might go back to Malkanth later for a bit of a challenge(or the sort of
adventure that seems like a challenge to observers who don't know better
but is just grinding down a bunch of bad guys.) Beating the various
demons gave us confidence we could face Hell later on.
14. Diary Wherein Monsters Re-Die
Notes here in place of a blow by blow description of endless yakuzas
beaten up. We spent a lot of time in the Kawa thieves' guild, and
there's a lot of repetition, so I will give a quick rundown.
--kosaku in Tokushima not lucratice any more. The chump change you get
from beating them was, well, for chumps.
--down to Kawa courtyard, go to left passage. All the way south, go back
up eight, search east. Secret door! Enter door beyond that(some Yakuza
guard it initially) and take stairs down. If you've already cleared out
the initial monsters, See my apocalyptic vision about disk swapping for
an immediate challenge.
--today realized we probably needed to beef up for dungeon. Bob/Bub at
20 or so, OK, me at 13 and Gus at 16. Sam and Mac at level 8, that just
won't cut it. Frontline getting quite strong, picking up two levels a
pop down in the thieves' guild. Need to get back line involved more than
just casting spells. Shisai at level 5 spellcasting and if we could get
6 we'd have alnasu. Obviously quite powerful if lots of HP to cure and
will get better with time; plan is to have Bob, Ned cast NASU on someone
who needs it leaving Gus to cast ALNASU for 'big boys' at first. This
allows our raid to go on as long as possible. Made chart of spell point
cost effectiveness.
Shisai
----------------------------------
NASU 1-8 for 1 pt. = 4.5 avg
MONASU 17-32 for 4 pt. = 6.125 avg
HONASU 33-64 for 5 pt. = 9.7 avg
INOCHI worthless, -1 constitution
ALNASU all for 6 pt. = better than HONASU if healing 64*6/5=77HP. Worth
waiting for if getting butt whipped and can find safe spot in dungeon,
use if 10% of hit points left.
MOINOCHI not out of question in tougher dungeons
Shizen
---------------------------------
DUNASU 1-8 for 1 pt. = 2.25 avg
DRUNASU 17-32 for 5 pt. = 4.9 avg
DRUINOCHI worthless, -1 constitution, boy they got the Shizen end of the
jo-stick with healing spells didn't they?
--realized we can get a bit more mileage if we kick someone who's gained
the max 2 levels to advance to the back. Then we bring up Gus to the
front. I'm sacrificing time to get it all started. Noticed Sam and Mac
can, with no power, gain experience pretending to try to cast spells.
Tried to put them in front, they lasted for a few fights. Gus also can
go up front, then Ned can cast healing a lot during combat for
experience. Leave Akari to Bob/Ned, Bub occasional DRUNASU once he hits
lvl 24. Still far away from lvl 40 fighter/spellcasters(give lvl 4
spells,) our goal before we continue.
--After Bob and Bub got 2 levels we realized we could flip party order
and exchange ruby rings with Sam and Mac. Just remember to change back
although with 200+ hit points that is not as critical any more. Best to
start out with only one of them in front line, swapping with someone who
just got a level, always swapping when someone turns +2.
--a little extra cash from selling missile weapons and(for me and the
pure spellcasters) shields. Not to be overlooked.
--By the way--if you get stuck at night, Emperor's palace right on way
back to Oceanspray(his name for Tokugawa, town in the NW.) Exit Kawa to
the north at night, go west til you hit a wall and then n/e/n/e along
the wall. Enter emperor's palace to east. If you want to go to
Oceanspray then continue west(go a bit S from Emperor's palace if you
hit a wall at first) then go n/w/n/w until invalid moves all over. Try
entering to west or failing that go east and enter north.
--Rob the ship merchant(one must fight capitalist oppressors as well as
pure evil) and beat up the guards if you must, detailed in the next
section. Fortunately the level teacher doesn't care about this; heck,
you can even steal. He just cares if you have cold hard cash.
--techniques for navigating thieves' guild: it's much easier with the
ruby ring. Use it before stepping on each fire and neter a secret
chamber. The first time looting is the best but if you leave and come
back then the treasure chests will slowly fill back up. Plus just after
you teleport is the safest place to rest although that is a relative
term with baddies being replaced so fast and furious. It's probably
better to exit the guild go up the stairs and wait in the antechamber,
recharging spell points. Don't try to be a hero either. If someone's hit
points get below 20, start with the NASU.
--it's also a good idea to retreat strategically to get a first strike
in. Only bad guys down here are yakuza, ansatsusha, and ninja. No
shukenja. We aren't riff raff you know, probably more white collar crime
than beating people's faces in. Ansatsusha annoy you with poisoning and
if one frontline character gets it it's best to wait a bit to cast
ALNASU than to cast DONASU--as the person hit is likely to get hit
again, and the more hit points you have the longer it takes for DONASU
to do any real damage. Or you can just move your character to the back.
Yakuza are really easy and the most common by far. Ninjas will critical
hit you if you're at low levels, and they also get three attacks, so we
tried to be healed when fighting them.
--early on hit groups of 4 or more ninjas with all the spells you got.
--note the secret doors diagonal to the fire. Thieves being thieves they
can skip diagonally from the treasure room through this so don't be
surprised if they seem to be jumping out of the woodwork. In general
just keep moving around to seek out skulking monster groups. Speed will
offset the tedium that sets in after your 100th straight crushing
victory.
--pick up spare missile weapons for extra cash and sell them in S
Oceanspray. Pennies compared to beating up ship merchants whenever you
need $ for levels but a good emergency stash.
And now back to the chronological part.
--Yippee doo, Bob and Bub at level 3 spell casting on L24. No biggie for
Bob except he takes some heat off Gus having to cast MOTUNASU(and what
if he's the one paralyzed?) but awesome for Bub who now has KONPASU
which will be useful if we get lost. Also awesome for the people Bob can
cast spells on. Now that Bub got BYOKINASU I think we used it 2 or 3
times. DONASU was much more useful. Bob's YOBUZUMA also only worked
outside which wasn't useful to such an advanced party--we'd be needing
the spells indoors.
--Holy stinkola Mac bothered to get around to getting level 10. Him and
Sam(we let the other in the frontline once one gets a level) got new
offensive spells, GENEITODO replacing the worn-out HIBANA. Gus hit level
19 allowing ALNASU. My AC drops one point per bash-through(2 levels.) We
let Gus show off his new offensive spell after which he didn't have the
power to do much else and felt embarrassed even Mac outdid him with a
less costly spell.
--monsters coming a bit slower now, may have to open up door to Master
Ninja's room. They probably all get boxed in there. Dude sent me in the
daisies for a bit with slay-on-hit but we beat him and apparently the
flood of other monsters I was too extra comatose to see.
--Throne of master ninja's room a nice retreat. Used macro mantra
AIAIAIAIAIAI to 'entertain' monsters who approach us, but they still pop
up and get around us.
--Sam and Mac get a new spell level at 14. They both advance around the
same time but our first try at maximum plussage killed them. Sam makes
out the better with KOORI being as good as ZUMA and HITAMA combined.
--Gus hits level 24. Sam and Mac follow in same session hitting level
19. New spells all around! Lots of offense. ARASHI(Sam,) KOTOBA(Mac.)
Mac even gets UKU for walking on water. They're even having fun with the
hands-on approach to beating monsters as opposed to the hands-blasting-
bolts-of-light. Twirling their Sunspears nicely and even getting in some
jumping back kicks. Us fighters who get switched to the back ranks right
when we're in line for two levels enjoy cheering them on more than ever
and even get a chance for an occasional healing spell. In the continued
leveling up, I take the lead in armor class. Doubleplusplussage is much
easier for all concerned now; we'd even go for three extra levels if we
could, we're so strong. Sam and Mac, needless to say, are no longer
nonplussed with the whole barnstorming concept. Am beginning to feel
repressed by societal and money woes; gaining levels faster than the
money I need to buy training.
--MY PARTY CLEANED UP A WHOLE CRIME CABAL AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY
TOSHI CLOAK. But another point off armor class is another point for me,
Sam and Mac. Ninjas seem to drop Toshi Cloaks occasionally. We flipflop
armor and ruby rings as they are sent to the front line--every little
bit helps. Sometimes we forget to flip back. Finding toshi cloaks is a
lot like when we found gloves randomly. Don't think mages will ever even
get to original fighter levels, but they're better than we expected. We
know we'll have to fight tougher monsters to get the REAL armor but
until then we've gotten some surprising boosts.
--Bub and Bob get into a quarrel about hit points. Who's got more? Who's
better? Bob, having two levels advantage, still trailed. Big argument.
"You all wouldn't understand, you don't know what having all these hit
points is LIKE." Later he pulled ahead, increasing the possibilities for
heated discourse. Fortunately neither will have any worthwhile offensive
spells 'til level 56(L5 spells) and their armor classes are nice and low
so they don't hit each other a lot in fights but there's a lot of macho
that beating up a bunch of scrubs doesn't really assuage. Growing pains
I guess. Bub mocks Bob because he 'should' have more hit points, Bob
pulls out a complex set of equations saying Ryoshi really should get
more per level, anyone with an intelligence over 6 on that 3-18 scale
could see that, and Bub is lagging behind. Four to two party vote
suggests we should worry more about current hit points and folks would
be glad to give a demonstration where one lost a ton of hit points so it
was obvious who'd win and they'd clam up. Then if Bob and Bub didn't
like it that way we all could beat the other guy up 'til things were
roughly even again. Things like this dampen my need to feel like a yutz
about it all; Gus and I are about equal, but we don't care.
The really stupid part about all this is that hit points are totally
random when you gain a level. Bub mentioned that this just showed how
generous he was; if he were to debate Bob on something more concrete the
results would be terribly unfair, here Bob has a fighting chance. We
couldn't dispute this; there seemed to be a distinct chance of a fight
coming soon. Bob threatened to withhold heal spells. Politics ensued.
Bub tearyeyed when Bob reduced to single digit hit points in fight with
six ninjas. Bob the same later with Bub. No more said about it until Bub
at level 40 gaining mostly useless spells aside from food the
prospective taste of which Bob submits to considerable speculation. Only
sixteen levels to a useful healing spell!
Sam and Mac don't have these squabbles either. They're within a couple
hit points all the time, and anyway they're way above everyone else in
their classes and never at full spell power(more their specialties) so
they can't compare THAT. Oops, better not give Bob and Bub any ideas.
--Bob and Bub take time out from discussions to laugh at me though once
I trip level 32. I'd been way below everyone in armor class but took a
big step forward--15 POINTS. I mistakenly leave my hands open for a
fight and find I can wallop baddies for 16 points each blow, standard.
May be useful a few levels from now. We're about ready to leave but I
might as well get on the bus and get level 40. "You're still the same
guy deep inside, Bub."/"You may not have low armor class, but you're
still low class in our eyes!" Well, I guess as leader I have a solemn
duty to rediscover and rebuild myself ever and anon.
--Speaking of level 40, Bob and Bub make it next. Non-Gus healing is
quicker and more efficient with MONASU. Bub found it was nice to run out
of spell points using KONPASU as opposed to the usual DRUNASU after
getting over Bob's jabs; "HITATE and SANTATE. Real useful, with the ring
and rod. But buck up, only 16 levels til you have a REAL offensive
spell." The trick here is to use Bob and (eventually) Ned for MONASU,
especially on those with fewer hit points, to save Gus's spell points
for ALNASU on the bigger people. Unless there is an emergency. HINAGU
and KURENZA make lots of pretty sparks Sam and Mac do it better for the
same price so they are also for emergency only.
--Sam and Mac tip the big two-four. They now have all spells. But we
want to be conservative about using UNPAN--go below the dungeon bottom
and we're toast. Teleporting into a wall doesn't hurt, but it wastes
time and spell points.
--I'm at level 40. It'll have to do. I'd love to get another spell
level, but that's a lot of working up, and in the end turns out we
didn't need it. But we've got words to find now. There always seems to
be another milestone. We agree on one more; Bob and Bub are oh so close
to 500 hit points.
--Bob and Bub at 56 now. Bub marginally useful with DRUNASU. Bob extra
useful with HONASU. Hinagu(Bob,) Hikabe (Bub) handy for offensive spells
though other spellcasters confuse the two. Don't need to/want to get to
76. Due to level advancement Bob/Bub/Ned way more power than Gus, who's
above Sam/Mac. Lorn's a funny ol' world, mate.
15. Joyous Memories of Our First Town Looted
We'd heard horror stories of looters in Kawa being ambushed by guards
coming from secret doors. There was the thief who got caught and forgot
to disperse his party(RIP) and even someone who felt that he could
attack first after busting down a door and hearing "DIE SCUM!" Tokushima
didn't count. With our new boat we could see what was on the other side
of the dock. But first we had four guards to wipe out. Stealth had
worked well before and most of our experience came beating weak riff-
raff, but we needed to build up confidence against 'real' monsters for
the tough dungeons. Heroes have feelings too!
Walking around looking tough after bashing guards' helms into their
hauberks was cool; the populace just avoided us, and we could even train
for extra levels; in fact the trainers were probably happy we attacked
the townfolk who never believed they could cross level one in their
lives(sure seemed like it from their measly hit points.) All that money
went to the trainers too.
We also braved Yang the Necromancer's digs. One secret door north of
the entrance, a few zombies, and a secret door off to the top right in
the circular passage. It held treasure, and Yang was off to the left.
In general you could wipe out town residents and they wouldn't come
back. Guards still would, though--maybe this strategy cost a few extra
ruined towns. However the merchants' treasures were often disappointing:
they stocked weapons or armor that was already obsolete. Often food
merchants were the best for our purposes.
After looting Tokugawa several times and eventually exiting by
ship(killing sailors) we found ships disappeared if you got more than
16. I guess that's what we got for being greedy.
****
"But which towns are best to loot?"
"Well, the Emperor's Palace is the best if you want to determine how
good everyone is. Not in the moral sense, of course."
"Ha, ha."
"The southern towns are the best. Guards are a bit easier there. Towne
Royal has some good treasure, and the various palaces are fun to kick
around. But we do well to concentrate on disk swapping one place
continually. There's no place like home--or Tokugawa. We will just have
to remember to reset the disks for good our characters go on the final
quest. It wouldn't do to have towns upset at the returning heroes, or
have populations mysteriously massacred."
****
16. This Chapter is Just Seven Words Long
But it's gonna take puzzles. A whole lot of mapping puzzles. It's going
to take plenty of puzzles...to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it ri-i-
i-ight.
Plus it's gonna take fiiiiiiights. A whole lot of bruising fights. It's
gonna take plenty of fights...to build up, to build up, to build up your
party ri-ight.
(With apologies to the late George Harrison)
We'd already spent a lot of time beating up bad guys and were ready to
do that.
There was not much else to do but look for the words. I didn't have
access to the internet while in that godforsaken place, which might have
helped a good deal. You never know. But I had a pretty good idea where a
lot of words were.
On Sirion, a kobito in Clearview mentioned a word in the dungeon to
the NW.
Over to the west in Greenbanks someone alerted us to another word in
the dungeon off to the west.
Then in Lost Lagoon someone else referenced the Pyramid on the Isle of
the Dead. Not Akhamun-Ra's but a much tougher one.
Someone in the Sultan's Palace on Akmihr predicted a word in the
Kobito Mines.
The dungeon behind the Red Shogun's castle told us it had a word right
away. Finding it was a bit tougher.
I'm not aware of anyone offering information about the Cave of the
Four Elements, but it's featured prominently on the Save Lorn Now
brochure I received, so it had to be important.
Another word was carved in the Troll Hole in Chigaku; folks in Fort
Wintergreen will tell you that.
In a weird reverse, NONE of the words were in dungeons more than eight
floors deep although there were some with up to 16. But a few words were
still tough to find. But each one had its share of tricks that were
logical enough once we'd solved them. I won't go into too many of the
tangents except to note that our efforts to teleport around and find the
word took at least as much time as just making good maps.
These adventures are slugged out a bit. I've put the words at the end
for those curious more about the result than the details--whom I don't
blame. Getting there was half the fun--of getting your tongue stuck in a
blender. But we learned extra well about magic teleports and secret
walls and how to negotiate them, and if you ever get stuck on a world
like this you need to save, I provided some reasoning that I hope might
help. Facts aren't real exciting unless they're used misleadingly to cut
someone down. But hey--ol' Ned's been spoiling you enough. Saving a
country is serious business and besides it's hard work to make stuff
like "6 north, 18 east" sound snappy. Woulda been easy with my
intelligence back at 60 on Cron. As it is it's all I can do to help save
Lorn.
So I guess to start off the new tone I'll complain--about how enemies
aren't sapped by fire(which gives no light) or acid or magic fields, how
they aren't affected by teleport squares or chutes or how they can move
quicker diagonally than you can move straight. Talk about home-dungeon
advantage. Occasionally they blunder at you through a secret wall, the
only thing you can use. We almost blamed Senju for this but he only just
put the words there.
Oh yeah. I've also included a few treasure hunts--we really would have
felt gypped if we had just gone in, found a word and nothing else, and
gotten out. I felt the gentle reader might as well.
Occasionally I'll also detail approximately how we moved. Only I'll
inject a bit of local flavor in it--for some reason folks like instead
of North/West/East/South to abbreviate I/J/K/M here, prefacing with a
tilde to indicate direction change at an intersection. They say it's
easier to understand. Ancient rune initials or something, but I say they
can't even put four alphabet letters in a row together right.
And one last thing--UNPAN and UKU gave us some nice short boosts to
exploring areas at random. Often we could count paces to have UNPAN send
us where we wanted, but these spells could maroon us on water or in rock
with an exhausted spellcaster. Generally it was our blood sweat and
tears that got us through but once we did we recognized the easy way to
teleport out.
OMG OMG P.P.S. some goombahs(or maybe they are goobers) wanna
differentiate between secret doors and false walls. Well we always kind
of bumped into walls and searched them as well wherever we went. Because
precautions are good in general. Except the unnecessary ones.
16-1. Your and Mines: the Kobito Mines
The Kobito Mines were the first and in fact the easiest of the lot. We
fought kobito and not much else; they're good for experience and cash
and low-risk. They won't suddenly zap everyone in your party for huge
damage, and they're slow enough that you can flee easily in an
emergency.
The vast majority of the place was easily accessible. The only problem
we found was that there were some holes on level one. These made leaving
awkward, but they were not too bad to run around, and they didn't have a
pigeonhole that was hard to get out of.
In the southwesterly area there was something called the central shaft
that allowed easy access among all four levels. If we had gone MMMKMJ
and looked for a false wall before the next intersection, we would have
found the shaft right away. As it was we found it after dropping through
a couple of chutes; levels two and three were standard wasteland with no
real tricks, and it was obvious, climbing back up, where the dungeon
borders were.
This would pay off. Three levels scoured, very little gold and our
rudimentary grasp of kobito psychology from chats with Lornians added up
to a mother lode somewhere. Level four was the only real candidate. As
we mapped it out we had pretty much a square, which you expect from
Lorn--except for a bit in the southeast and northeast. More was missing
in the southeast, so we went there first. Bingo! We'd seen urn
collections on a level worth more overall, but here we saw 61 separate
piles of treasure. Enough to play a basketball game on if the coins
weren't so sharp. Me, Bub and Mac would make fair three-on-three.
The northeast presented a bit of a problem. We wanted to be thorough,
and we hoped there was a long corridor of urns or chests. At the very
top, off to the right, we got a sequence of secret walls which seemed to
stop. We decided to make a turn for the heck of it and a few paces south
we squinted at the next wall we ran into.
The first word!
"NIKUMU." We didn't need any big system to keep track of the word yet.
We'd always remembered the first. No others to recall yet.
****
"Took me thirteen years to solve this game. I remember in my foolish
teenaged youth I wrote a word on a piece of scratch paper. I remember
seeing the word in college cleaning stuff out. But I didn't remember
which one it was when I solved the game for good. Careful notes--not
just for mapping but for the words themselves."
****
Sam flirted with casting UNPAN, but it was easy enough to make it back
up, and we didn't mind the exercise from a bit of kobito pummeling
anyway. Back to the makeshift elevator, where ~KIJIIIK from leaving the
top(secret door to the south) got us outside. But not after we seemed to
try every other passage first and even discovered some treasure in the
south of level one.
16-2. He Chutes, He Stairs!
The next dungeon, in northeast Sirion, started us in the center
instead of the north, an oddity. It featured two entirely different
sections; in the middle, there was a 11x11 mess of stairs. On the
outside you had a bunch of 3x3 rooms. We spent a lot of time getting a
workout(not that it helped our constitution) but noticing that if you
went back to the center square it kicked you all the way up.
Experimentation showed there were a lot of blocked-off rooms and a lot
of chutes in the center of rooms; secret doors or fake walls appeared in
the middle of a wall. After muddling about a bit we remembered a
Ryoshi's advice: "step north in the caves." So after exiting once again
we stepped north and found one such door. We went JII our second time
through in the room(we hit the chute in the center first time--there
were chutes in the corner but they didn't kick us all the way to level
4) and found a false wall to the north. In the next few rooms we found
false walls to the west.
We kept going that way until there were no more, but then we
discovered a false wall to the north. A long corridor ahead, with the
first and only door we saw in the dungeon. We opened it. Five groups of
vapor demons, who cast HIBANA but were otherwise not too annoying,
guarded a sign at the back. We reckoned it was a word. Bulling to the
right we read CHIJOKU. It would have been an easy way back out (retrace
steps, go to stair center) except we decided to explore all six squares
of the room and hit a pit. At first glance it didn't seem too bad; lots
of rooms, secret doors mid-wall, no problem. But we ran into a culdesac.
UNPAN was a definite possibility but trial and error revealed that if we
stood in the first secret wall between the 3x3 rooms and then moved left
we hit several urns in a row--bad timing made us hit a dead end. One
room had a secret passage south, and when we followed it, we got back to
the stairs. We weren't sure where we were, so we went into the upper
right corner and paced off five left and five down. Then we looped up
the stairs and out of the dungeon.
****
"Cute, if you enter, the game teleports you from the usual start
square to the center. The other stairs are in the upper right but with
the weird teleports it's not worth it to explore this dungeon despite
the lack of monsters."
"But if you must it is a 7x7 grid of small rooms, with the inside
carved out. And the exit in the dead center."
16-3. All's Fair in Chess and RPG's
One sector away, halfway across the continent, was another dungeon
with a word. Brigands in Greenbanks claimed something was on level six,
and since we had all the items we had our suspicions even if we didn't
find any neon signs with arrows to help us out.
Eventually we got to know this as the chessboard dungeon but it was
really the closest these got to a potpourri. The first level has a
diamond room that reminded us of Malkanth--secret doors to east and
west. The west led to a dead end, the east went through a weird overpass
and eventually led to a stair down.
The second level was a bit odder. It consisted of several octagonal
rings linked by secret passages, and often you'd be teleported from an
inner one to the outer one, and continuing on the path led you back to
the stairs up. The object was to get to the center and level three. This
had us buffaloed until we saw a monster come out of a wall our fourth
time through, at the top of the octagon. We continued going
counterclockwise but got bumped again; We went around, through the
secret door, and clockwise. The maze was better behaved after that. The
secret doors were pretty obvious, at dead ends. Still what appeared to
be the penultimate inner ring revealed no false walls; we searched for
secret doors and found them 2s2w of the tip of the diamond we couldn't
enter. There were two next to each other. Beyond them lay the stair.
The third level had one stair next to the other. Too easy, so
naturally we were suspicious and decided to look around a bit; the
forest had some cool monsters called evil trees, and there were even
unicorns to fight. It was light on scenery, though, with only a sign
across a river we couldn't reach. Mac cast UKU since the monsters here
weren't too tough. Across the pond, "You really should have a word with
the king." We even got back without having to use a second spell.
The stairs down seemed to lead to a bare cavern. We frisked the fake
walls but found nothing. I am sorry to say that we voted to cast UNPAN
down a level here(I'm sorry Sam cast it--I wouldn't be sorry to learn
it.) just south of the stairs to go down a level. We knew there were six
levels so we weren't worried about getting killed. We saw the stairs to
the northwest--DUH! the secret wall was right in front of us when we
descended. It was just north of the stairs. We went through the paces of
making sure--climb up, go through the secret square, go back down.
There wasn't much in the way of secret doors except the north side of
a west corridor; there were three secret doors lined up one NE of the
next, and they led to a mondo treasure room. We got in, looted, and got
out.
Then in short order some dudes who looked like Mahotsukais with
wreathes came by and one of them hit Bub, who turned to stone. I always
thought Bub, being pretty cool, would be the most likely of us to get
stoned, but not like this! It would require a visit to the healers in
the Black Isles. Turns out the Mahotsukai-likes were Medusas.
Interestingly wreathes were a fashion statement for magic mavens in this
dungeon; ogre mages cast ZUMA and wore them too.
But no passages turned up. Wait a minute, I said, there are isolated
acid squares, a treasure room nearby--reminds me of the thieves' guild,
which had a teleport in...the fire squares! Gus did his thing with the
rod, and the right acid square zapped us to a separate Y-shaped path
with the stairs down to the right.
The next level had open spaces and alternating tile and fire. With the
red and orange motif it was technically nearer a checkerboard, it was
rectangular and not square, and you needed to put the white square in
the right. But we made the connection--king, chessboard--helped by rooks
and knights that attacked us and coughed up some fine magical shields.
Kings always appeared in the third from right squares. We searched
there. It was the center of the bottom one, leading to a diamond room
with another word. YOKUSEI. We ran to safety--where after I got drained
by a knight, last I remember we were fighting a rook, and next thing I
know we're in the Shogun's palace.
****
"You know, there's a secret door to the west in level three. It's
actually tougher than casting UKU and you have to walk through the swamp
to find the sign. But you can get there without magic."
"That seems to be the case. But using it judiciously can make things
quite easier."
****
"Guess you can say we got stoned together old buddy," said Bub. "You
even got healed first this time. So what's up?"
"Three words down, four to go."
16-4. Elements Aren't Elementary
On hearing about a Cave of the Elements I had to ask "Say! What's your
Table of Elements like? We have a hundred or so where I come from!"
Fortunately folks took the classical view of the table. Especially with
dungeons the way they are in Lorn.
And yet...on the one hand, we'd originally thought the cave name
assured us it only had four levels, but we'd heard about the Telegrond
and Sunken Temple and maybe there were four levels of each element.
Fortunately we were wrong about the right assumption; we were, however,
also right about elementals and the monsters they hung around with being
nasty--a general rule in worlds with magic
Earth elementals were as usual weak on magic, but we had to watch for
Purple Worms, which had critical hits. We were also on the lookout for
large rock structures that blocked off part of the territory. After
wandering about a bit we noticed a cross in the center. We bashed around
its walls and found a secret door to the south. Once inside we didn't
see anything, but as we moved forward we fell into a pit.
The next level down was air; lots of false walls and dark areas.
Despite the lack of barriers we couldn't get to the northeast; there
appeared to be teleporters. Djinnis and Wind Spirits cast some annoying
spells.
The stairs to level three were one-way. It's a good thing we had a
Ruby Ring because fire covered the area. There were diamond-shaped
bunkers in the middle of fire pits, and many of the bunkers housed
secret walls at their four vertices. The directions from one bunker to
the next were:
S(from stairs)WSSW(SW)NW(NE)ENWWNE. We found we had to rest in one
bunker(surrounded by walls) a bit before moving on.
A teleporter ensures your trip to the final level is one-way even
before the stairs. Here minor dragons breathed fire on us but the first
three bore most of the brunt.
Level four is easy enough to work through if your party is ultra
powerful. It's just a spiral, but people who cheat with UNPAN and try
for a quick UKU may be thankful that you only get frozen where you are
when it wears off and you don't sink.
We had a bit of a break before it started; only Sea Spirits dwelt
here, and they couldn't get on the ground, where we had a nice long
rest. They couldn't get close with several boats blocking the way.
But they were waiting in the canals as we spiraled around. They seemed
to get more numerous as we moved in. Along the way, in the boat, we were
able to wait(pitching camp was not an option) to heal in peace, though,
and fortunately the Sea Spirits didn't cast spells. At the center was an
island full of walls. Its small size was encouraging; we didn't need a
treasure trove, and it was too small for that. The southern tip proved
to be a secret door. Then there was one to the north, and we saw writing
just in front.
And were shocked to be zapped back to the top, by the welcome sign.
Now it's not our party's policy to teleport where we can walk. But in
this case Sam's seven magic points and the time it took to rest and gain
them were a small price to pay, since I thought I knew where we wanted
to go. The cross-shaped chamber was near the center of the dungeon, and
so was the word. We could teleport back down, get the boat, and look for
another secret passage aside from the one we'd found. None turned up. We
re-entered. This time we searched inside the island for a secret passage
and in fact on the first tiled area we got to, we found two--to the left
and the right. We hooked around the teleport square to read "OSORERU."
Of course our transport back up was easy--the teleport square. We left.
16-5. A Droll Stroll in the Troll Hole
The Troll Hole would have presented no real challenge without all the
swamp. The monsters, trolls and niatama at worst, were weak, and it was
only four levels, almost shaped like a small town--you could almost say
it tried for a grid of streets. You had the occasional secret passage
for treasure, and in fact it would have been quite easy if Sam had
followed an urge early on. Then he followed one later, and it cost us
some time. But fortunately even though the swamp drained our hit points
there were plenty of places to rest.
There were also a lot of secret doors leading to treasure--nothing
much, it wasn't a terribly tough place. We were able to barnstorm
through--I'll try to leave out the dead ends.
We went off to the west first. Standing in the doorway, we saw a huge
gate to crash with swamp as far as we could see, and Sam said, "I bet
they tried to be sneaky and hide the word on the fourth level behind a
ton of swamp. Let's just UNPAN there and save healing spells." It was
obvious the place had gone to the trolls(a common phrase in fantasy
worlds, but not PC in Lorn where trolls were well respected enough that
some applied to be in my party) with all the swamps and the general wall
decay and broken tile.
There was a big argument over whether maybe the word got tucked into
level two just to show smart alecks like us up just as we were getting
the hang of dungeons. Sod's law dictated we'd get it wrong. As it turned
out there was no good way to teleport right next to the word without
casting UKU to get on the right square, but we couldn't have missed it
with our plan anyway.
As it was a corridor to the east wound south. Then to the east there
were the stairs to level two.
More swamps here with no obvious passage to level three--not even with
UKU. Considerable patience and discomfort resulted in us finding the
secret door: from the four way intersection west of the stairs, we went
north and two squares east. A passage south, voila.
Level three afforded some treasure early as we lucked out going east.
At the crossroads we went north, and at the end of a winding tunnel we
searched east for a secret door to some loot. Back at the intersection,
to the south, through the door and to the east led to two more side
rooms with treasure. However the way to level four was to the east of
the intersection with water around it. The first door south led to a
passage; SESESWSWSSSE and the final door you saw hid the stairs to level
four.
Swamp was all over level four. There were two detours for treasures.
But the word was actually easier to find; that was all the way to the
west, then up north past the lake and around the bend. First the on your
left--knocked it open. It was across water so I'll add a little more
suspense discussing the treasure.
First one I'll say was behind a secret door on the right in this very
corridor, between the second and third doors, and you followed a false
wall east from there. Three doors, three treasure rooms.
Second one was actually north of the stairs, through the swamp. A big
upside down house shaped structure, triangle under a square. We only saw
the square through the portcullis and didn't see any secret doors inside
so we searched outside. Sod's law dictated that we'd have to walk
through quite a bit of swamp to do so. We had to search for the secret
door while in the swamp and the reward wasn't really worth it.
But back to the secret word. There was a plaque across the water. Mac
suggested it was probably the word, as there wasn't much else in the
dungeon, and we didn't need Mac's spell points for healing so maybe he
could, well, cast an UKU? We said OK. There was some drama here as we'd
seen other worthless signs, but in fact it was indeed the word. FUSHIN.
High fives all around! Complete oblivion to how UKU wore off! Little
objection to Sam casting UNPAN to kick us down at this mess! Further
annoyance at being stuck on water, still, without life buoys or even
rubber duckies, and Sam with under six spell points! Time to wait around
a bunch. Tents don't pitch well over water for camping you know.
At least we were on the lake we saw to the west of the entrance. It
was obvious how to get out once we got back on solid ground.
Still without even the possibility of easy battles to distract us I
tried to think up all the good jokes I could, but they were mostly about
O.J. Simpson or Jeffrey Dahmer, which were a bit topical, and the ones
I'd heard here were forgettable: "What did the Ogre Mahotsukai say to
the Elf Kichigai?" I have standards. But I am sorry to say that our time
originally passed quickly when Gus got snippy, but it had its drawbacks.
"Why the heck can you only teleport vertically? I could've been ten
times the mahotsukai you are! If you didn't have those ungodly unfair
offensive spells I'd clean your clock!" Sadly the UGOKU spell Sam
suddenly remembered and cast impulsively didn't work, costing us a
couple more hours of rest.
****
Macro: 14 spaces
****
But the waiting allowed Gus to cast some healing spells, and we walked
out of the Troll Hole in as good shape as we entered it. You could even
say it all UNPAN-ed out well in the end.
16-6. Shogun Me the Way
The word was on level seven. The sign at the entrance said so. If we'd
known that levels 3-6 would be pretty much blank, it would have seemed
like even more of a joke. After all there were a bunch of doors around;
how hard could it be to move around?
As it turned out, half of the doors were false. My lockpicks could
tell the difference between the two and opened up quite a few doors, but
once they broke we had to resort to Bub smashing stuff. At first he
found he was trying to smash a wall but my desultory lockpicking
efforts, even without tools, showed when nothing like a door was there.
To top it off, evil spirits would attack us as well, and we couldn't see
them coming. This distracted our mapping efforts further. We were
fortunate the healer at the Red Shogun's was so close and that we knew
to leave before we were desperate for hit points and out of healing
spells.
Eventually we made it through the maze. It wasn't easy, and we even
experimented with UNPAN in the process to sneak out(into rock; we were
to find that most of the lower levels were.)
KMMMMJMMMMMJMMMJMMKMKMMMMMKMMKMKKIKK
MMMMMMKKIKIIIIKKMKKMMMJMMMKKIKIII
Here we got kicked to an open area. From there we walked to the other
end and then hit more doors.
IKKIIJJIIIIKKMKMKKIIIIKIKIIIII
KIIIIIIKIKIIIKIIKKMMMKKMKKMKKMKM led us to a teleport. We'd jumped from
level 2 to level 5. There was a long diagonal hallway here.
We actually found the monsters on levels 5-8 to be easier than the
Evil Spirits. However we also found that the corridor acted bizarrely.
You moved, from northwest to southeast, from level 5 to 8 to 7 to 6.
Also if you moved to the extreme edge either way, you got sent back to
the entrance. Fortunately we'd learned the way back so that wasn't too
costly. But we did have to pitch camp a bit to heal our wounds and
recharge spell points.
****
"We need to search thoroughly for walls and secret doors. This macro
costs moves but if you hit M between uses you'll be able to rifle the
entire southwest wall. If it doesn't work use the reverse one just
before you reach the SE end."
FJFJFJFJFJFJFJJ
FKFKFKFKFKFKFKK
****
So we did--about twenty or twenty squares southeast of our starting
position on level 5, we got teleported to level 8, then it took a three
more moves down before our first secret door. And what a promising one
it was! Three rooms of urns for free, a secret door to the left of the
bottom one. Behind a portcullis we saw the word, but we couldn't do
anything about it. It was an immovable grate, and believe me, Bub tried.
Two hundred times. ALNASU time there.
Nothing else turned up searching the southwest walls. We only tried
searching there for a while because it'd be too much running back and
forth the other way. At the end of the hallway we looped around and Bub
slapped his head and said "Geez, we only needed to search level seven."
He started casting ICHIHAN every so often, and we tracked down roughly
where level seven was. Searching the northeast wall soon turned up a
few more treasure areas. This time it was a secret door below the lower
right corner of three rooms, with another just to its right. We saw the
portcullis on the other side, crossed our fingers there was no
teleporter nearby(we used the ruby ring for the fire) and noticed
DARAKU.
I counted thirty-four paces north of the bottom corner for the room
that eventually led to the word. But maybe I got bored and miscounted by
a few.
16-7. Pyramid Mapping Schemes
While Akhamun-Ra's pyramid was straightforward, the Pyramid on the
Isle of the Dead teased us with winding passages that led nowhere. The
north entrance turned out to be the right one, but even that way, there
were several secret doors to small places that turned out to be small
enclaves of treasure raided by a character named Yorik. It was a lot
like a town, the top level, where people didn't attack except for a
bunch of minotaurs, but they sure did moan about being lost and blocked
our way. The de facto guards(minotaurs) were attacking us anyway, so we
ended some people's miseries early.
Our path:
JMJMJMJIJMJIJMJMJIKIJMJJMJMKMKMJMKMJMKIKMKM
JIJMJMKMJMKMJMKMMJMKMKIKMKMKIJIJIKIJIKIJIKI
JIKIKMKIKIIJMJIKIKMKIKIKIKMKIKMKIJIK and N through the secret door.
There wasn't much funny about the pyramid's lower levels, either. From
some messages we read, Yorik got lost inside there and ran out of food.
Guess that gold didn't help him. We never ran into his carcass but did
find obnoxious monsters such as mimics. KONPASU also acted funny here;
you had a big maze the size of a town, and we never ascended or
descended, but the level number would change.
We eventually discovered a chute that dropped us to level 5. From
there we mapped out a whole level full of secret walls, level 6 had
chutes all over that dropped us to level 7, and the stairs in the corner
kicked us back up to 6. We searched all around for stairs on level 7 but
eventually it was a teleporter on level 6 that kicked us to the bottom.
We didn't see any words or treasures in the passageways so we hoped it
was on level 8, a level of darkness. One overpass teleport confused our
mapping skills for a bit, but eventually we discovered a non-dark
enclave in the upper left. We fell in a pit as we ran across to read the
word on the wall. SEIYOKU.
"Shoulda used UNPAN down."
"Hindsight is 20/20. With torches or AKARI or new longer lasting
MOAKARI. But we may have to to get out."
And we did. A nice thing about mazes is, monsters can't really follow
you unless they're very close. Which is nice until or unless you get
lost.
We rested up with little incident and Sam cast two UNPAN, up three
levels and then four, and in fact recognized where we were pretty
quickly--a dark area in the northwest. The way out: IKKMMKKKKIII.
Walking out I realized Gus's KAERU spell would have been pretty handy,
dumping us outside when we'd found the word. But we'd made quick enough
progress finding them all. We didn't quite know what to do with them or
where to do it yet, though.
17. The Lore of Lorn for those not Born in Lorn
So far I've mentioned all the strictly useful things we've needed to
do. But we also visited other places. Lorn is enormous, and it would be
a disservice not to mention all the continents you'll find on it. I
wasn't sure if I should mention sea travel seeing that this was a
WALKthrough, but sometimes it felt like we had to walk on water to get
through this game, so I did.
Unfortunately once again my snappy style is not at its dynamic best
describing bare facts without that critical human element, and anyway I
sort of planned it this way because we want to keep the important parts,
well, the most accessible and interesting, to help steer those less
focused than myself the right way. We wanted to explore the country
thoroughly for clues, and the mop-up work got a bit tiresome. But I will
not try to whine about it. I will go continent by continent, only
referring to places we've already been.
I also listed a map below of where all the continents are in relation
to Kodan for historical purposes, perhaps one day forcing kids to
remember geography as well as emperors' names.
Narawn is 2E then several S of Tokugawa
Nyuku is 2E then several N of Tokugawa
Sirion is directly S of Tokushima
Akmihr is 2E then several S of Tokushima
Giluin is SE of Tokushima(sail 14 S, 14 E, etc.)
Tsumani is SE of southern Giluin
Asagata is 1W then SW of Tokugawa
Isle of the Dead is a bit beyond that, SW from Tokugawa
Chigaku is 2N then several E of Tokugawa
Black Isles are N and then several E of Tokugawa
Elemental Isle is N and several W of Tokugawa
Skull Keep is 3N and then W of Tokugawa
Osozaki is S, then several E of Tokushima
17-1. Kodan't You Stay a Little While Longer?
Kodan was a great place to base our operations; return to cash in on a
level bonus, looting, pretzeling around the thieves' guild and beating
up Yakuzas. We knew the place well enough, and a few fights there
boosted our morale after some of the tougher dungeons. Plus it was hard
to miss as it took up two sectors(out of sixteen, I counted) of both
latitude and longitude.
With the greatest land mass of all continents, Kodan has a lot to
explore, even if you can get through it that much more quickly with the
relatively easy monsters. I've related our encounters with the yokels in
the towns, but mostly there are good places to fight. I place them in
order of descending difficulty.
--routing the Emperor's Palace
--the pirates' guild under Wakiza
--the dungeon in the mid-east
--the yakuza guild under Kawa, best for continual experience and quick
fights
--Yokohama, devastated by the Deathlord and overrun by skeletons
--Tokushima, the village in the east where Kosasku act as guards if you
attack something
Everything else has been discussed previously, but I haven't talked
about Wakiza and the pirates' guild yet, so a few words aren't amiss.
We'd stumbled through it before, but it seemed we'd only seen half of it
when we entered on land. Using a boat to enter it we found a lot of
passages in the back. The northeast passage seemed a dead end, but the
prerequisite searching turned up a secret door and stairs down. We
slogged through two levels of swamp and dirt and water, even needing to
take a boat. Level three seemed to lead to a dead end in level four; a
few secret doors led to useless stairs down, and there was a nasty
notice at the center of the lake to the north. We thought it was
important as it was guarded by lots of fields; UNPAN, moving around, and
another UNPAN saved us several hit points. We'd have died otherwise.
****
"In dungeons you may be aided by exploring, resetting the game before
you die, and returning to the critical points, thus cutting out the risk
of combat. I fear it has made Ned a little pompous; he thinks he is
finding all the critical stuff right away, and it is his own doing."
"Well, there is more doing of his own than he knows."
Before leaving, though, we made sure we'd checked all the walls. Lots
of secret doors to the north, and west of a treasure rooms were stairs
down to the real action in level four. A clockwise sweep led us down
another level.
With sea dragons all around the mixed hallway/sea maze gets annoying.
I'll just run down where the treasure is. At first it was worth it to
use UKU to get to it, but level 7 was tricky.
--level 5: SW
--level 6: NW
--level 7: try to find boat and move around as urns are isolated in the
center
--level 8: dead center
Bub spent a lot of time bashing a gate in the upper right of level 8.
"Dark elves only." And us being all humans! I suspect after the first
twenty times Bub knew it was probably locked especially considering
there are no elves in Lorn(toshi/dark toshi are distant relatives) but
he needed something to vent on and beat the gate up pretty good. It was
worth losing a couple hundred hit points temporarily. He also knew no
harm would be done in the long term as, exhausted, Bub snapped his
fingers and called for an ALNASU spell. Mac UNPANned us up four levels,
landing us in a treasure den. With no power left for UNPAN at the moment
we began to search for, and find, secret doors with secret walls. We
wound up near the stairs down to the fifth level and left the way we'd
come in.
17-2. Asagata Hurt!
Croyo, Towne Royal and the Hill Giants' dungeon featured prominently
here. Towne Royal was a ritzy affair living up to its name, with every
dwelling a waterfront property, and Croyo featured two reclusive
hideaways for particular races, kobito and toshi. Nothing in Asagata was
critical to solving our quests except for a tangential hint, though.
Deserts would seem to be harsher than normal areas but the cacti did
less damage than the swamp.
Interestingly(well, except for the dungeon being uninteresting) each
of the towns was a more intricate maze than the dungeon. We'd suspected
it would have a word, but we didn't feel like teleporting into rock
finding out. Well, actually, we hoped it had a word, because after a
secret wall passage very far south led to level two, it was an easy walk
to the bottom at level eight.
Level four had some big treasures, and there were some behind a secret
door in level three as well--a secret door to the left of the top of a
long vertical hallway. There were nasty purple worms guarding a treasure
room to the east of the up stairs as well.
Level five was the only other level with treasure; we searched the
walls to the left as we went down the corridor and found two mother
lodes. Nothing was below that except a lot of nasty fights.
Croyo presented a difficult maze. I in fact found that we had no
problem looting and attacking--not that there was much to do so. There
was a huge guard house where they got stuck, and although a few attacked
us on the way out, there was less question than usual that we'd escape.
Added to southern guards seeming a bit weaker than their northern
counterparts, this made laying waste to the place quite easy. There was
even a daimyo. But the best part was advice from a skeleton in clear
view who said to search Greenbanks's graveyard. I said, "Oh, the one on
the far west?" A light went up in his eye sockets; he had been
remembered! He began to tell us his life story, and even mild-mannered
Gus, in a shift from his usual pro-whining stance, almost raised his
holy symbol in a move that would surely have alerted the guards. We
weren't ready for that, but of course we even forgot to ask his name
while finishing our big spree.
Towne Royal was a real piece of work. It had a restaurant with the
far-off cuisine of Akmihr(big deal, with Bub's TABEMONO we sampled food
even from the exotic barren islands--risking the occasional eggplants
and brussels sprouts. It kept better than the instant stuff I was used
to, too.) Raiders and yakuza greeted us, but normal citizens attacked us
when we searched their homes for clues. Rule of thumb: use the boat to
get near where you want to go and walk as little as possible. This town
also had a Daimyo--and a few clues. I'll include the directions we
traveled from each intersection, in and out, below.
Kobito home:
~IJIKIJMJMJJIJMJJJMKMJMKMJMKMKIKMJMJJMMKIKMKIK and we were lucky to see
a kobito who'd gotten lost slink back through the door.
~IJMJIJMJIIKKIKIJMJIJIKIJIKIJIKKKIKMKKIKIKMJMKM gets you back.
Toshi home(for die hard tourists only:)
~IKKMKIKIKMKIKIKMKIKMKKMJMKMJMKMJMKMJIJJMKIKMJMJMJMJMKM
From the door, ~IJIKIKIKIKIJMJIKKMKIJIKIJIKIJIKIJJIJMJIJMJMJIJMJMJIJJM
gets you back.
We headed north from Towne Royal to find the Cave of the Elements.
Though no-one said there had been a word we realized there was vague
evidence for it--and a puzzle outside of a dungeon to find it.
17-3. Akmihr Tkrifle!
Oasis made an effort to be renamed 'Oabro' what with all the tough
characters it housed. One turncoat Kobito revealed there was a word in
the mines. Everyone else insulted us or demanded a donation or attacked.
It even had training, which was nice. Moving from there to the kobito
mines and back to pile up levels was potentially lucrative, with all the
gold the kobito tended to hold. On later levels you even stood a chance
of paying for your training with just the gold you found.
We weren't surprised that Desert Flower had mages once we saw all the
vegetation around. Outside was desert. Oasis at least had a city wall
which helped contain the foliage. We learned about the spear, crystal
and tooth from the guild in the southeast of town and tried to look
suitably blase. The Mahotsukais got a bit angry before we casually
flashed five Sunspears at them. That shut them up for a bit. Other than
that there were lots of chests no-one minded if we pilfered. Not a lot
of treasure but you gotta enjoy the little victories as well.
After leaving we went southwest and noted, while being stung by cacti,
'Not all seas are as they appear.'
We'd already hit up the Sultan's Palace and still felt walking through
two Rakhammon's Curtains wasn't worth the gold we'd find in the treasure
vault. So we skipped out after being clued in to a pyramid to the west.
Enter in the gate of the rising sun--the east. We still saw nothing,
but a secret door popped up in the west wall, and we were in business.
Trapped corridors led to various rooms where tomb robbers had already
been. We found one they hadn't, in the west branch from the central
room. The southern wall of a room with fire turned up some loot. Then
from the center, the northeastern wall hid another door. Climbing up to
the second level we had more to worry about with fights than finding our
way. The mother lode was to the south.
Ra, Ra, Akhamun-Ra! Undead misers, sis-boom-bah! Being Egyptian
sounding and all he was probably a bit upset already being out of his
element and with us not knocking before we opened his coffin. He took
more rounds than usual to hack through, but this all was a satisfying
finish to our escapade.
17-4. Poke! Slap! Nyuku Nyuku Nyuku!
Another continent on the original map, Asagata, was important, with
many places to explore.
There was relatively little to see in the Spindrift Cycle, as it were.
On the west coast below Twin Rivers, North Spindrift, with its rogues,
had more information. Now I'm not condoning the stuff THESE rogues
pulled, I'm just saying I'm not surprised rogues(with whom I am loosely
affiliated) knew more hard hitting stuff. They mentioned a huge temple
in the north and trumped the southerners, who kept spouting off about
Senju. But you may want to avoid the Beholder in the southwest in North
Spindrift. Let it come to you through the magic wall at any rate.
I've already told you about Two Rivers, but it's pretty depressing how
if you listen to people you get bounced between the three cities a lot.
Best to collect all information, move on, and move back.
The temple sounded pretty intimidating so we explored the continent.
We found "Second Stone" on a plaque in the southern scrub. The seventh
stone was in N Spindrift, but we never turned up three through six, or
one. Maybe there was even an eight. It was a bit confusing--I had a half
hearted hope similar logic would have allowed me to jump from spell
level two to seven. No dice--illogic craps out before it goes in your
favor.
The great sunken temple provided no end of headaches. We came back
later after we'd already worked out where the seven words were, so we
just felt like knocking around a bit with UNPAN. It was 16 levels deep
and had some crazy sights, to wit:
--the same acid/fire mark we repeatedly saw in the Telegrond, also
useless for our ultimate purposes
AAAAAA
AAAAAA
AA FFFF
AA FFFF
AAAA FF
AAAA FF
FFFFFF
FFFFFF
--countless corridors with false walls guarding stairs, where we'd find
the secret doors after UNPAN on the way back
--pits and chests in the SE of level 8
--a teleportal in the south of level 9 to the SW, another treasure
chamber
--a garden full of Evil Tomatos on level 10(and I thought I hated
eggplant!)
--the beginning of huge corridor mazes on level 12
--level 13 divided into the insane on the left and the sane on the right
--chests in the northwest in level 15. Worth casting UNPAN up one from
level 16 for. If you are on the west side of level 15, look for the
stairs in the lower right.
--On level 16, you have two treasure chests at the very bottom. The left
in fact contains a genuine Ruby Ring. This may decrease its market
value, and I suppose the Red Shogun would be cross to find there was an
extra one, if we hadn't packed him off already(I'd imagine he'd still be
even crosser about losing his though.) But we were so loaded with
special items that no-one could use the new one. There was also a room
to the north of the chessboard surrounded by a circle of acid and then
fire. We could see it with MOAKARI, but we kept getting kicked back by a
teleport. In the meantime going around the edges proved lucrative with a
ton of urns. Going around the outside edge clockwise and walking over
the fire works well; once you pass the pillars, go north at the first
opportunity. Beyond the door you have some valuable treasure. Watch out
for Loric in one of the coffins, though. After beating him, we hit a
teleport walking over the coffin and got a free ride back up. We'd
earned it.
Sure, it was easy enough to appropriate gold from the towns, but we
got some neat items this way, and variety is a good thing. Routing the
temple also will jibe with many more modern people's general separation
of church and state mentality. Our discussions of this reached a fever
point with the sign 'See You on Level 21.' After being chided for lack
of faith, I said, let's search level 16 first, as it seems like it
couldn't possibly get much tougher. My apocalyptic visions("ALL PLYRS
OUT" burned in my mind) influenced me here, and once booted back up we
just gave up on it all. Several of us had 10000 gold as it was.
Truth be told you can just stumble around, UNPAN down to level 16, and
work from there. Be careful about the pits though; they do damage
something nasty.
17-5. Chigaku, Chigaku, That Toddlin' Land!
Chigaku was the least of the foreign lands on the map I got at the
beginning.
Fort Wintergreen wasn't even terribly difficult to loot. Senshis, not
even standard guards, looked after it. I was surprised the Deathlord
hadn't laid waste to it yet, but there was the cutest little unicorn
petting zoo there, and even treasure in the northwest--if you found the
secret door below the water. The place didn't even have a spell for
fresh breath as its name would indicate.
Crystalmist, in the northwest, had little to offer other than
affirmations that there was indeed a Troll Hole and information as to
where the crystals were. But there was a ton of treasure in the
northwest.
The Troll Hole will probably never turn into a summer resort. You've
already read how we got in and got out. In fact Shumi's tower, which
held lots of undead, would have been an even nastier place to put a
word. But Shumi probably didn't want anyone messing with his creation.
The first level had all manner of false trails; a recurring theme in
Shumi's is that you work hard to get past teleports and traps to get to
a plaque, and the politer ones say 'try again.' In the west area we had
this problem with darkness, but off to the east we sliced through a
bunch of secret passages to find the stairs down. After this the
stairway down to level three was a few steps away, but our party fell
prey to reverse psychology. We saw treasure behind three Rakhammon's
Curtains in a row--UNPAN proved the amount to be not worthwhile for
better characters, lethal for lamer ones. We also found a secret
door(west corridor) to a long sequence of doors ending in a sign that
said "Door Storage." Ha, ha.
The third level featured a nursery for skeletons and a pool hidden in
the southwest. WE kept searching once we entered the door there and got
treasure too. A secret door in the main north/south corridor to the
east(with a secret passage to the north revealing a treasure room)
turned up a passage down to level four. But as it turned out UNPAN was a
more efficient way to go down--and we could slowly map the world out
that way--because there were curtains blocking standard progress next to
the stairs, with no secret doors.
Exploring the levels we soon eliminated possibility of secret doors in
the lower half, although there were treasure behind more curtains. We
decided to UNPAN and drop ourselves in the upper right. After a passage,
a sign stated the wizard was in, but when we went to the door we were
teleported into fire. Thank goodness for Ruby Rings...we had to UNPAN
out(no secret doors--did pitching camp work?) and go back in the general
vicinity. The secret doors to the room were in fact a good deal back in
the looping passage. The battle was an anticlimax; Shumi was as strong
as your average necromancer. Getting there was indeed the hard part.
Still, it just goes to show what you can do once you put your mind to
it. If he had had dreams of conquest, Shumi would have made short work
of Chigaku. I am convinced of that.
"Don't like evil wizards? Ah, so Shumi!"
17-6. The Land of the Dyslexic Tsunami
Tsumani: a land that hid much, including how useful or exclusive said
hidden information was(i.e. not very.) We turned up a dungeon in the
hills, a town, and an igloo looking town tucked away in the mountains.
Snow Raven was first, with the usual generic information about a
dungeon on this continent, blah, blah. It was nicely divided into four
segments as so many towns were, but it didn't have any soul. So we went
to the dungeon.
The dungeon was in the hills, barely distinguishable. If we didn't
know where all seven were, we might have suspected it held a word, but
we decided to have a go anyway. After what had become the obligatory
secret wall/door on the first level, it had its ups and downs and chutes
kicking you back to places you'd been before. Often you'd wind up dumped
on the fourth level as well. The lower left seemed to be a dead spot,
meaning you'd have to go back up, but there was a secret passage north.
We took it, fought past two whorls, and found some secret passages.
First was straight west, second was north of the door to the north, with
an east one right after that. The jackpot however was right of the
corridor, two secret doors north of a door that didn't seem to lead
anywhere.
~JIKIKMJMKMJ and S2 squares and we searched west. Bingo!
We didn't feel like actually finishing a map of the place out as we'd
hit enough pitfalls, so we went back to the upper left treasure room,
behind the door, and cast UNPAN up three and got out.
That left the rest of the continent to explore. There was surprisingly
dense undergrowth and a lot of mountains barring the way, and it seemed
there was a full circle of them at one point near the southeast portion.
We found a break in it and entered a town called Morningfrost where a
clearing had been razed.
There were fun yabanjin and even a snow bear to beat up, but the only
person with anything constructive to say was Koshi the Huntsman. He was
a Ryoshi and the obvious title might have made people snicker especially
if he were a Toshi. He told us to go back to Snow Raven and look for a
secret passge. A Mahotsukai reminded us about items we needed to find.
That was IT?! As we left, Bub spotted a narrow corridor and found a
group of Mermen who advised us to go north of Cross Rock--which was
shaped like a cross, in the north of Tsumani. We did.
After doing so, we learned it's actually closer to go SOUTH from Cross
Rock to the Shogun's castle than North.
Tsumani red herrings there to stay very long, if at all.
17-7. Osozaki Fragments(Back to the Old Telegrond)
There's nothing useful at all in Osozaki except for the lower levels
of the Telegrond dungeon. More of the shuffle back and forth stuff and
cross references between two towns. If these folks ever want to organize
a maddening bureaucracy it's obvious they have the mental tools to build
one quickly--unless they decide to be thorough and bureaucratize THAT
whole process or indeed construct think tanks to decide if they should.
Anyway, Deepingdale was on the island in the center, with that swampy
dungeon to the northeast. We heard of Wakai to the southwest so we
searched there. The only meaningful info there was about the dungeon
behind the Red Shogun's castle, which we'd already found. Someone also
mentioned there were no pyramids around, a big surprise given all the
dense forest and lack of huge Inca idols in the landscape. Oo, wacky
Wakai.
Eventually our fear of boredom eclipsed our fear of big nasty spell
casting monsters with triple digit hit points, and we went to the
Telegrond. Those nutty wizards from the sunken temple were part of a
chain, and we'd hoped to bust the whole cabal.
Helping all this was that you could muddle around a bunch of teleports
and chutes through small brick rooms and gardens until you hit level 13.
You might not see a lot on the way but UNPAN helps.
--level 3 has a big lake with Mermen in the north part.
--level 4 has a lot of treasure, nowhere near as valuable as the lower
levels.
--levels 5-8 are even less interesting, as we spent lots of time taking
a one-step away from the center and back. Bub's ICHIHAN showed we were
getting teleported even if we didn't realize it. You'd think the wizards
would be nasty enough to induce sickness with their teleports especially
since in most fantasy worlds it's hardly comfortable in its first
incarnations when magicians are still working out the kinks. As it is
you have to avoid being stupid and stepping on the acid/fire/magic
fields.
--levels 9-12 had more substance with lots of secret doors to the west
of chutes. On 9, 10 and 11 this seems to lead to treasure and adventure.
Eventually tending to the left and back dropped us down to the bottom
four levels.
--levels 13-16 presented a vicious loop. Necromancers were waiting for
us at the very bottom after we once again tended west, back to the
center of our structure, etc.(it was more dangerous now for total
klutzes with magic fields around.) If we stayed on then we got kicked
back up; otherwise we could fight several necromancers at once. I found
we needed to heal after fighting a few. Once they all were gone there
was treasure to left of us, treasure to right of us, as into the valley
of lucre rode the 600 hit point kishi and ryoshi and so on. Our main
problem was pooling the gold away from the pillager before a spree.
Again loaded, we used the teleport back up and then UNPAN. Even winding
up in rock gave us opportunity to wait and heal up. Monsters could walk
diagonally to catch up and always found secret walls and never got
injured by magic/acid/fire but walls-no.
Thankfully Sam had enough room to move his hands. There's rock and
there's ROCK, but only the one below a dungeon kills you. Or kills you
enough to be really inconvenient.
17-8. Gil, You In Giluin?
Dunno where he was, Gil sure wasn't in our party. He was actually the
Shizen I had to give the verbal smack down to. For all I care he could
be sent there, though. Giluin was largely useless.
The first place we discovered was the temple. You needed a boat to get
to the more restricted areas. There was a weird water maze in the
southeast, where you had to go through a secret door to find another
boat; that gave you a clue a pyramids. Then in the northwest(rivers
divided the temple in quarters,) I found a clue to search the entry,
where a shrine turned up after more boat-swapping. In it an Acid Demon
in a fire pit(where was the Fire Demon in the acid pit?) told us a clue
that only made sense later(where Hell Island was, due north.) There were
secret doors to treasure but annoyingly when we tried to smash a door
behind a magic curtain(it took a few attempts) there wasn't much
treasure. But there were vicious fights with undeadand if they'd had
stone-tablet tabloids I'm sure we'd have precipitated CLERICS IN ANIMAL
BODY SNATCH SCANDAL.
We also saw a bunch of urns across some pits and our only reward was a
lesson: 'Greed is a Sin--repent.' Darned urns, can't tell if they've
been looted from a distance. 'I had enough of this **** in Britannia,'
moaned Gus.
I learned another lesson; getting away from the basics like looting
rich towns repeatedly can distract you from your quest more than you'd
think.
As does searching too long in a town which looks like it'd be useful
but ultimately isn't. Kobar(north) and Shupan(south) were two such
informational ghettos where you learned that, indeed, the temple so much
more easily seen from sea or land had not been blown up yet. Although
Shupan had a weird haunted house and even one place where you needed to
use UKU to see some old codger. He mentioned Cerberus guarded the gates
of hell. There went my dreams of a welcoming committee with untrapped
urns.
You'll agree, advice like that won't exactly put the bomp in the bomp-
she-bomp-she-bomp, will it? So we tried the dungeon.
The Linear Dungeon, at first blush, was a cruel rejoinder to all who
would cast UNPAN to make things easier. We were mildly embarrassed to
have done so to avert the tedium of the spiral on the first level and
start intense diagonal schlepping on level five only to find that we
wound up near an 'up' staircase. Fortunately there was treasure on the
way down, but level eight was full of secret walls to find and little
treasure. We UNPANned down one. Level nine had some masty teleports, but
after that we almost wished for a challenge again, as it was smooth
sailing to level 13.
Which almost did for us.
First of all we went two squares south through a magic curtain(no
choice really) and got zapped to south of a treasure room. Secret
passages were not in abundance but teleporters were. We went north
through another curtain and through acid. There was another curtain;
when we ran into the exposed pits, we hit teleports. Eventually we found
a nook at the top of level nine(where we had to UNPAN to heal up--we did
so from the east part of the dark east/west passageway) to teleport back
down from to get into the treasure area without tripping the pits we
knew were to the side of the three we could see. The treasure wasn't
quite worth it. There was also treasure behind secret passages blocked
by acid, but Ice Giants guarded them against us. We were already in a
drained state, and this almost killed us. The wait to recharge healing
and UNPAN spells wasn't worth it, although we found we could cut the
wait down a bit better with periodic MONASU spells from me and Bob,
subsisting on forty hit points across the board--provided we whipped all
the giants first.
On the way back up we discovered that levels 1-4 were straightforward
if a bit tedious to walk through. A variety of long twisting roads where
you're forced into combat, but with no dead ends.
17-9. Sirion, Banned From the Round Table for Alchemic Excursions
With Giluin relatively useless the other candidate for second-most
important continent to Kodan was Sirion. It had two dungeons, ruins and
a city. I've mentioned the words in the two dungeons. I've also
mentioned Greenbanks. It's got treasure behind a secret door in the
southwest, more in the east, some reachable only by boat(tiptoe around
the swamp to get to the door) and even more in the very northeast, where
you'll get hit up for some swamp damage as you bash in the door and some
yeti charge. A good challenge.
Clearview hadn't much to offer besides an interesting and diverse
prison complete with work area. West of the training area there were
some urns to raid--I saw them through a window. There was however a tip
about the nasty "stairs" cave. However my abstract puzzle solving skills
had rendered this advice, while technically correct, moot.
17-10. Sectors for Suckers
There were a couple of sectors with small islands that didn't seem to
hold anything. I was a little suspicious; the second time to both the
Isle of the Elements and Black Isles we'd overlooked the Cave and
Shogun's Castle on first glance. Islands were scattered about. With
these, though, there was no doubt. They had no immediate purpose but
we'd been to Akmihr("All seas are not as they seem") so maybe some cool
pyrotechnics were in our future.
Third, though, there was this one area where Bub's KONPASU claimed
there was an island below. I began discussing the Magnetic North Pole
and the legend of Atlantis and so forth, but as the rest of the party
started to get bored I reassured them that Lorn wasn't THAT magical.
We figured one of these areas without towns or dungeons was useful,
but of course we guessed totally wrong. Perhaps there was some town we
were overlooking. We'd heard rumors that a big island would spring from
nowhere. Of course we also felt that it might be more likely to appear
if it'd had a head start. Shows how much we know.
18. For Reddish Mountain Majesty: a Brave New Island!
Dead lost, we searched for what to do next. Back on Kodan we were so
lost we even had Bub slam-dance into a Mausoleum two hundred times in a
row. Didn't work, but ALNASU healed that damage quickly enough. In the
meantime we re-stocked up on food. Hell would probably take a while and
wasn't exactly likely to have even an Inter-Dimensional Hut of Pancakes
if you know what I mean. And if it did, we'd be lucky to have soap in
the bathroom instead of the food.
Finally we decided we should re-check the three islands that turned up
nothing before. What do you know, the previously utterly calm one turned
up a huge continent with mountains on the shoreline? Strange we missed
the rumbling, but then again Lorn didn't have many exotic sounds expect
for the farty bells that rung in our head as we searched for secret
doors and failed.
One thing we forgot to do was to cast KAERU before going away. That
might have helped us leave, although we did find another way to zap
around.
Until now we had encountered mazes everywhere except for in the
outside world. With the advent of Skull Island this changed. At first it
was a maze through darkness; smoke demons attempted to impede us but
failed.
~IKKIKKIIIJJMJIJ led us to the fire. From there we just used our ruby
rings a lot(when in doubt, be paranoid and use them too much) until we
circled around(the dead ends weren't too long) and found Skull Keep, in
the shape of a person, with fires delineating a bat. If it were magic
curtains we'd have been scared.
18-1. What May Skulk(eep) in Skull Keep?
Skull Keep wouldn't have been too hard to walk through if it weren't
for the monsters. You could actually try to talk to them, but the
conversation wasn't great. All sorts of demons. Smoke demons were the
worst; despite our high level they still managed to paralyze us every
now and then. Kill spells didn't do for us any more, but a simple MOTU?
Ouch.
There were a lot of magic curtains to avoid, but they were all at
regular intervals, so I adopted a sort of marching tune depending on the
way the diagonal passages stretched.
****Apocalyptic vision****
Macros IIJJIIJJIIJJIIJJ
MMKKMMKKMMKKMMKK
healing
****end vision****
The passage seemed to hit a dead end after a while, but we knew
better. I searched and found a door, after which demons poured out at
us. We retreated so as to deal with the groups individually--and we
could even get the first strike in. A diamond room with a dead end
followed, and we figured we should rest before searching there. We were
right; another wave of demons followed in a similar room, and we canned
them. We knew we needed to save spell points for Hell itself so there
was no sense in winning quick battles. Everything would be hand to hand.
Third time was a relief. Cerberus stared at us across from some water.
We had a choice; walk across magic barriers with the crystal and lose
hit points or sacrifice an UKU spell. We went with the latter and
whipped Cerberus. But we decided to retreat back outside and rest before
entering; big mistake, the monsters respawned and we got another
workout.
The next time through it was a bit easier--after winning, we healed
and waited to recharge spell points. The door to hell was in front, but
we wanted to be fully prepared first.
18-2. Levels 1-4: Well, Well! Hell!
We entered Hell full of optimism. After Gus cast a Moakari which
fizzled, some members lost it. Sam tried to use the shark tooth, but
only Bob using the lantern worked out. We stepped right and were
teleported right to a pool of acid. This one was off to a very bad
start, especially when we noticed smoke demons, who could still cook up
a mean paralysis.
The teleports were frustrating at first. Mac even cast an UNPAN to get
around them. It also fizzled. But then we realized the teleports were at
the top. Some of them made the top row seem endless, but in fact the
ones that worked for us were two west of the entrance. Although you had
to go SWWN to get to them--all those teleports were crowded. After
taking the obligatory five second pause to feel stupid about the
solution close to right under our noses, we saw a lake to the south(we'd
seen it previously, but gotten teleported out of it,) ran to it, and
began searching the walls. Voila, a secret wall. Stairs down at the far
end of the level--middle east side. As a bonus when we cast ichihan we
noticed we were on level three after climbing down.
After this the game, remembering its non-Irish roots I guess, didn't
seem to pull many shenanigans. Just straightforward chugging and
plugging away.
Level three was devoid of rooms. From the bottom part you went up to
the first gate. For a while Bub tried the usual slam dancing into
it(he'd already lost hit points and was due for ALNASU) but after
burning off 200 hit points and at least as many calories, Gus made with
the spell and the healing blue light and all. It was time to try plan B.
We were in hell, but we hadn't used any of the seven words yet, and two
levels had already passed.
It was time to try.
Now Bob had carved the letters of the seven words on his Golden
Yoroi(Bub's +1 Haramakido, along with surprising rust protection, had
the nasty habit of regenerating what it felt were dents and chinks) and
started to sound them off.
"YOKUSEI!"
Blammo. Down to level four. Where we immediately discovered a gate and
stairs down.
Guess which one we took first? Guess which was a dreadful fake?
Time for Bob to yell again.
"NIKUMU!" He extended his hand and started it shaking for effect. The
portcullis in turn offered a little extra creaking, and up it went! Off
to the left a frozen bad guy blocked our way so we searched to the
right--no secret doors there. However we could go around the non-monster
with secret passages(above and below,) and we wound up around Malokori,
the Dark Lord. He just waited for us to round a bunch of frozen Kichigai
and come to him. He didn't seem so important when we saw him, but it
almost felt like we were kids at a carnival trying the hammer strength.
He looked shocked as we all pulled out sunspears but fought pretty well.
South of that we found secret doors at the bottom of the passageway.
We didn't need gold, but one didn't want to get lazy and shirk details
with success so near. One small slip...then we used a ruby ring to get
through fire we were too expedient to round, and down we went to level
five.
18-3. Levels 5-8: Hello/Oh Hell
"This lantern's broken. I can't see a thing."
Still, the heat was on. We could make or break, we could win or lose.
But sadly we couldn't make marshmallows--woulda been a great place for
it. So we futzed around with magic items for a bit before realizing a
simple AKARI once again worked--and was necessary.
** Come on, baby, light not fire **
A vast expanse of fire. Lucky for us our ruby rings had infinite uses,
although they needed to be kept up every few moves. We did it every 10--
that way if we forgot a bit we still had enough time. Monsters were
going to attack us anyway. They weren't so annoying here; the spell-less
blaze demons, acid demons, and slime demons stood little chance. If one
of us got poisoned, we could just wait it out and cast ALNASU much
later.
Surprisingly much of this trip was one-way. No branches. I'd thought
we were on the west edge but we curved down, right, up and left. Then
up, right, up and a good deal left. Bub's KONPASU goofed up here saying
we moved from level 5 to level 6--a relief level 5 wasn't so big, but
confusing with all the teleports. We didn't seem to be tending downhill.
Left, up, left curving, down. We faced four stairways. Three were time
wasters. I say this for sure because we took them. The most expedient
one would have been in the lower right, but if you generally tended
right from whichever stair we took(the upper left in our case) you could
find hollow walls to walk through. There were a bunch more in the very
lower right, behind which we found stairs down again. It led to what
appeared to be solid rock, but a walk south proved otherwise. Just as we
were getting sick of continually protecting ourselves from fire, we
reached the next gate. The first portcullis was magical. Bob got it
right with "SEIYOKU" but next we got faked out, tried each word, and
eventually Bub did a nifty 360 degree roundhouse job on it. Frashaak the
Fire Lord lay to the north. Shortly after that, he lay dead to the
north. We looked for a secret door and found a useless one to the left
and a good one to the right.
Another portcullis, another concordance of words. This time we had to
stand in a pool of acid, and "DARAKU" was the Open Sesame. Stairs led
down to the realm of some dude named Jhelag, the Acid Lord.
"Groovy, maaan." I snapped my fingers. Gus would be the man here, with
his emerald rod. The stakes were higher with acid being more damaging,
as you'd expect on descent.
18-4. Levels 9-12: Acid Trip
It wasn't all acid. There was some darkness. However what there
WEREN'T any of were branching paths. Through to level 11(we didn't even
notice we'd gone downhill, again,) there wasn't much choice. Then there
was a pavilion of fire and pillars; going east we searched a whole lot.
This was impeded by Gus having to use the rod to be safe, but even with
my concentration, nothing turned up in a search. We hooked around north
and at the very end we found a secret passage. The stairs down led to
another very impressive looking, if linear, level.
After seeing all this repetitiveness and waste we all felt less guilty
about getting multiple sunspears and ruby rings; the Deathlord chose to
create a ton of damaging squares, and we with our ideas created
something to protect people.
Anyway, on level 12, we hooked around clockwise and fell into a pit
the first non-acid square we found. Going a few chambers north(walking
around the water) we found a secret passage to the right at the top.
More walking: east through acid and north through secret doors and to a
gate.
With three choices left we had less to worry about, and Bob got it on
the second try: "FUSHIN!" There was obviously another secret door ahead,
and eventually we moved through more acid to a magic field. One crystal
put us through. The pain seemed so much less than when we were all level
ten at most and stumbled into one by accident. Jhelag was surrounded by
more frozen henchmen. We froze him up a bit himself so he didn't feel
left out(not only that, I don't suspect he felt much, period.) Then off
west through the field and south through the acid. This level seemed
very symmetric. Another gate, and Bob actually used a word that had
already worked before getting the right one, "OSORERU!" Down, right,
down, left up in a reverse of how we entered, and it was time for the
final quarter.
Having passed the acid test, we strayed yet further from home base.
But we had not dissolved all our worries yet.
18-5. Levels 13-16: Gates Without Microsoft Is Still Hell
More fake stairs down greeted us on level 13, but they made a nice
enclave to rest by(we needed a few ALNASUs again,) and we needed it. So
we had to go to the right where we saw a pool of fire and a pool of
acid. "Which one?" Spellcasters voted fire, Fighters voted acid. I
leaned against a wall splitting the two, preparing for an argument...
CRASH! Amazingly I didn't lose any hit points falling through the
secret wall. We decided to postpone judgement until we ran into
something, which we never did. A straight run right, then up and right
into an S-shaped passage. I am not sure when we were spit out into level
15 but some time it seemed we'd run down a slippery chute and tumbled
out. We went up a square and right, ran into a checkerboard of pillars,
and ran left. A mess of water and magic fields signified something
potentially important. To the north were various frozen character
classes. Mounds of treasure were on each side of us, but we were on
level 15 and didn't want to fall into any pits or find an accidental
teleporter until after we'd defeated the Deathlord. A run up to the
top(we had to use the rod and the ring) revealed one last portal.
Bob put a little melodrama in the final word, "CHIJOKU." He looked
like he'd miss the job. It was down to level 16.
On level 16 we ran into a barrier of magic curtains. This was going to
be tough, and monsters had the home field advantage of being able to run
through them with no damage. Now my intelligence may not be all the way
up at 18 but I do have a great memory for boiling down the essence of a
maze map even in times of duress when there are monsters fighting us as
distractions. It is:
~JIJMJIJMMKMJMKMJMKMJMMMKIKMKIKI
A whole wave of the stubborn fields you need to use the crystal on,
and the Deathlord behind there, not seeming to have too much fun. Maybe
he had a tin can on a wire he shouted instructions through, but he
seemed too isolated to go after us. He even just sat there as we burst
through. We'd just have to let him have the first blow. I even un-
equipped my Sunspear for the special combat but did no damage without
it.
The rest of the gang hit the Deathlord with Todo and all those other
spells; they were group spells, but we'd saved well. None of them were
effective either. Only the Sunspears worked. The Deathlord cast spells
between his exclamations: "No fair! I thought there was only one! You
guys would be too weak with one!" Maybe he was trying to distract us
during our turns. It didn't work. After we poked him with our spears, he
was much less unwilling to give up the black orb. I took it, replacing
my ruby ring. Didn't think I'd need much armor class now.
"But what do we do, guys? I don't want to go back up there!" Some
nasty monsters like undead ronin and so forth were lurking outside. If
there was a way...in the meantime, why not pitch camp?
I mixed food Bub had TABEMONO'ed on Asagata together with some choice
Chigaku delicacies just to be sure I'd have a weird dream. Then I lay
back and...
18-6. Deathlordus Ex Machina, or The Hell With Hell
****The final apocalyptic vision****
"But there is a way, Ned."
"How?"
"Remember when you got paralyzed and dispersed?"
"Yeah, Bob looked really stupid with his tongue all frozen out and..."
"No, Ned. Where did you end up?"
"Just outside Kawa. Some brigands attacked the gofer we pooled the
gold to and we were lucky he fled and we should've had five active just
in case...
"Oh man. We'll have to disperse and regroup. Is that fair?"
"It might save some evil monsters for the sequel. But not even KAERU
would work if you had the foresight for it."
****end the apocalyptic vision****
I felt a bit guilty about such a cop-out, but frankly we'd done enough
work. What new lessons could we learn wading back through Hell? It was
the Deathlord's own stinky fault he set up the anti-UNPAN zones anyway.
He was such a poor sport he kept them in place after he died.
So the party dispersed, casting KAERU just to make sure we weren't
being bamboozled(we weren't) and came back together again. But I had to
check with them just to make sure they didn't want the additional
challenge. That they found out my powers beyond casting spells from a
silly old book was a nice side effect. But it's not like I forced the
knowledge on them. And anyway I was thinking of other people here. We
guessed, "Hey, they're eager to see us, so let's take the quick way
back."
18-7. But Do I Look Like I Kaeru?
Keep in mind that I knew what I was sacrificing long-term. I didn't
want to go back just yet. These puzzles were actually challenging.
Although it was a relief that I was able to have decent challenges and
make money, unlike those scary computer game players who we're sure have
potential and all but never crack the upper social and economic
echelons, I still had some scores to settle. Lots of but it was pretty
obvious that 1)I was the only one who would ever get called for such
service ever again and 2)you tend to loose all your gizmos and doodads
and strength anyway when you zap around between magical worlds. Hey,
they've got gold and fame, who needs levels and hit points?
Everyone else was happy with 100000 gold pieces and rich lands; just
being able to have 10 times what any normal adventurer could get must
have been a thrill. But then I had my own small fortune back home and
cable TV too, so the choice was clear. Still, I deferred my decision in
case I was needed. Voicing strong opinions indefinitely, the new interim
government(puppets of the Sultan and Senju all and almost as jealous)
extended the deferral indefinitely and booted me out of Lorn entirely so
I wouldn't be jealous of my companions' wealth. Didn't help that I
asked--very politely, mind--where all the patent money went from the
Ruby Rings and Sunspears I'd SHOWN them how to duplicate for the special
Lorn army built to repel future invaders. It got worse when I was the
only party member not a guest of honor as the Emperor slashed the ribbon
barrier to the New Yokohama at a big ceremony with a shiny new katana.
19. Don't Let the Portcullis Cleave You in the Brain-Pan on the Way
Out
I thought that would be the end of things, and I sunk into writing the
second chapter of my memoirs, which I predict you will finish in another
minute or so. Shortly after I finished it, I'd received an invitation to
some place called Deruvia. Another 'fixer-upper' fantasy country.
Apparently you can't be a hero there unless your name is under five
letters long, but most of them have four or five, and most folks get
spells right away.
I'll have to take a new angle on it; apparently my old pals wouldn't
be joining me if they wanted, though, as the cohorts are lined up. I
checked the list, and the new names seem way cool. As for the old gang,
I imagine they'll tire of being heroes and just hope they don't get
dumped in some cheesy Final Fantasy. Because I tell you what; Bub I and
Bub II may become confused in my mind, but the new wave of kids turned
out better. A product of my refined intellectual leadership or the
tougher environment? It is tough to judge the blending of social forces.
I will not worry too much. It all came together. And I have a new
kingdom to save.
And yet...it does feel a bit empty knowing I've never met Doom Golems
or Safirs. It is like not beating the Long One back in Cron. Because
when you go adventuring to an exotic land part of the fun is finding all
the weird exotic creatures there and slaughtering one of each. If you
nab one, try to send me a photo of the carcass, 'k?
One last thing--you know what? I got so caught up in the adventuring,
mapping, etc., turns out I never did get an offensive spell. I got stuck
on level 54, with two plusses no less and two level-drains to my
discredit in our travels, but I forgot to ask to stop off at the
Tokugawa training so I could add to the celebratory fireworks. But on
the other hand my open-handed attacks usually wound up more devastating
than a fabled item of legend. Ka-BLAM! How many people can say that? Not
half bad. Yet it was one piece of unfinished business for the stop-over
in Deruvia, a personal experience and challenge over and above just
saving a world.
================================
20. CREDITS/VERSIONS
Thanks to the following writers of the books, many of whose identity I
don't have a clue:
--Wasteland clue book
--Wasteland paragraphs book
--Neuromancer hint book
--Demon's Winter anonymous walkthrough writer
--Tintin(Herge)
--Asterix(Goscinny/Uderzo)
--Bored of the Rings(Henry Beard and Harvard Lampoon)
Thanks to the following proofreaders/commentators:
bloomer, falsehead, M Golding, WLau
1.0.0 submitted 12/01/02 to GameFAQs, mostly complete, probably some
stylistic errors, but if there's nothing gross, no second version.