17: Third Heart
In which we crawl on, get caught in an infinite loop, and find the third stone heart.
Previously on this LP, we got plagued and had to run to the hospice asap. Now that the disease is cured, let's visit the temples and the magic circle to see if new rings are available.
Kalos gets nothing, alas, but spekkio does receive a new one:
His Protection magic is finally improved, it's level 2 (copper) now:
Two new and highly useful spells are now available to our magician:
6 SELMUR The Copper Armor
Copper is a nobler metal than iron, and so this Spell is more potent than Sell The strength of its magical armor is such that it will bear twice the damage of Sel's armor. However, like Sel, it is a Spell that is not long lasting.
5 TASRAK The Shell of the Unborn
This highly valuable Spell may only be cast upon yourself. For a brief moment, it will seem as if a cocoon of fine, strong copper fibres entwined with red silk encompasses your body. This magical shell is completely impervious to all physical attacks, but it will vanish before long. Use this power when you have strayed into a position of vulnerability near your opponents; but remember that it is far better to avoid such dangers, as Magicians are never of a strong physical constitution, and can withstand only a few wounds to the flesh.
Yay!
Next we head to the shop and stock up on food as well as buy a -- guess what? -- Plague antidote:
It's quite pricey though, so I hope we won't be plagued too often.
Back at URRAN, we rest to replenish our virtue and psychic points and then return to the room of many doors:
My, this room is scary. Last time we explored the passage right to the north of the entrance, now let's head into the one to the south of it:
This passage consists of many one-square cells connected by doors. The first three rows of cells are mappable...
...whereas the last row is not:
The compass doesn't work either, so we make sure to memorize all our movements in order not to end up going in circles. There's also some kind of room here...
...but it looks to be an illusory room or maybe an infinite loop or something: in vain do we try to advance further, always ending up in the same kind of room. Luckily for us, we finally find the way back.
Back in the many-doored hall, we take the next door to the south:
"You cannot map this area". Gosh.
The fuck!? I was pretty sure I was headed further into the room, not back outside! This game sure gets more devious with every step.
After a bit of trial and error, we locate a spinning plate in the middle of the southwestern room -- and taking that into account, we're finally able to make it across. Nothing interesting here though, just a bandage:
spekkio picks it up, and we're back in the many-doored room. I'll be exploring it by leaving the eastern set of doors for later, slowly advancing to the east by exploring both the northern and the southern doors first.
As we enter the first southern door, a vision of Mara appears!
An evil curse! :twisted: And I wonder what those "objects of great importance" may be.
Further inside this small room is a message scribbled right on the wall:
"Of the light"? You mean, as in the heroes of light?
We are the four heroes of light, sure thing: Rocket, Bee, spekkio and Kalos!
Ahem. Let us proceed.
The second door to the south hides a simple-looking corridor:
Something must be fishy though, given that we can't map the corridor...
SUDDENLY
A DOOR APPEARS!
WTF? It appeared right out of nowhere.
It looks like we've been teleported to a different corridor. Twisted!
A group of thieves attacks us!
spekkio casts SEL to boost our AC, and Kalos tries out a new offensive prayer to Ufthu,
KARNH:
KARNH Hammer of Shattering
Ufthu, Sword of the Night, Hammer,
Defend your lowly subject,
Smite those who stand near your servant,
And damn them to the darkness.
It's the second prayer to Ufthu (out of five). As you can see from the prayer's text, it asks Ufthu to damage those standing near the priest, which is highly useful if said priest -- who is of course physically quite frail -- is surrounded by enemies. And indeed...
...one thief is killed, and another one greatly injured. Nice!
Soon one of the thieves steals spekkio's gem:
A thief runs away, but thankfully it's not the one who stole the gem. As for that one...
...spekkio's AMRASAKIM deals with him in an instant.
Serves him right for stealing our shiny precious things!
Finally the victory is ours!
Meh, the amount of exp we gain is quite pathetic.
Well, at least the gem is back with us.
The corridor to which we've been teleported turns out to be one to the north of the many-doored room:
(It's the only explored northern corridor in the above screenshot.)
The third southern door awaits!
Another corridor we can't map...
But as we enter the door we see in the distance, we're teleported back to the main hall. Oh well.
The fourth door to the south...
A skeleton thingie, ouch!
Or rather, four skeleton thingies and two phantoms. :twisted:
Good thing Kalos has a cool, really cool prayer to deal with the undead,
IDRIS, the fourth -- and thus highly powerful and costly -- prayer to Ufthu.
I didn't really think Ufthu would heed Kalos' call, given that our priest is still pretty low-level.
IDRIS Peaceful Bones
Ufthu, Supreme Lord of Corruption,
Through this ring I call your divine essence,
Take back these lifeless bodies that assail us,
That struggle against death's mortal coil.
But, surprisingly enough, it
did work.
And it's totally devastating -- the undead thingies are left with x-tremely low HP.
And so we beat the hell out of them.
That's better!
A breastplate, yay! That one's for Bee.
We're running low on virtue and psychic points and so head back to the URRAN sanctuary in order to rest as well as back up our progress.
We've still got some way to go to level 6...
Oh, and why don't we teleport to Sagaris to have the newly found Breastplate identified?
We also ask the sage to identify a scroll for us:
As well as the bandage we found:
And a yellow gem:
Kewl. We teleport to the shopping area to sell two gems and stock up on food, and then make it back to URRAN. Let us now further explore the corridor in which we fought the undead:
Crawlin' on...
...we reach a small cell with three more doors.
The southern one...
...hides an inscription, or rather a drawing:
That looks totally like the drawing we came across in the last update, but the skulls are a bit differently placed. Hmmmmm.
Another inscription is behind the door to the east:
I'd better move all the skull drawing screenshots to a separate folder.
Just in case.
But what about the northern door? asks a curious reader.
Why, there's yet another drawing there:
Oh gosh. Does it even mean anything?
Nothing more of interest here, so we head back to the main hall. The next door we are to explore is the fifth southern one. But, to cut the long story short, there's nothing there. Nihil. Trust me, I've been there. It's just an unmappable room with a whole lotta nothing.
Which means that now it's time to be moving on to the northern doors.
Oh wait. We still have one western door left:
Yeah, let's see what's---
Oh. A mysterious device!
So, folks, will it kill us or will it not? Let's, uhm, touch it gently, yay!
Very gently.
Oh. That can only mean one thing:
no way should we stand on it. No no no. Sorry bro lightbane, we won't die a gruesome death just here.
We choose to
Step
around the panel and find ourselves in the next room:
Naturally, the automap doesn't work here. Exploring this area further, we stumble upon one more skull drawing:
My oh my. This sure is confusing. :dizzy:
But anyways. We're back to the many-doored hall. The first of the northern doors hides a fucking infinite loop: you go on and on and on through samey-looking rooms, ad infinitum. That shit is annoying as hell.
Well, at least you can get out if you head back. Be careful not to lose the sense of direction though -- which is quite easy since neither the automap nor the compass works -- or else you'd get totally lost.
The second door to the north...
...hides three similar rooms:
In each of the rooms there's an inscription. Here's the first one:
spekkio casts NGOSMUR to translate it:
The second inscription can't be fully translated...
...but I guess it says "No right turn".
Finally, the third one can't be translated with NGOSMUR so we use
UMESH, a prayer to Drutho, instead:
UMESH Knowledge Without Wisdom
Drutho, O Worm of the Deep,
Call forth the meaning of these words;
Pass your darkest light over their script,
That they will yield their meaning to me.
And here's the result:
I've no -- seriouly, no -- idea what those three inscriptions are supposed to signify. I've crawled through those three rooms without any problems and haven't found any secrets or anything... Perhaps they refer to the infinite circle of rooms nearby? Well, I dunno.
Anywayz. The third northern door, here we come!
Yeah, yeah, sure.
What, we're back in the mail hall again!?
That can only mean one thing: there's a goddamn spinning plate somewhere in that corridor. What makes it quite tricky is that the compass isn't working. But after a while of cursing and swearing, we make it across the corridor:
Looks like it's an elevator, yay!
This area is unmappable, too. :/
There's yet another skull picture here:
As well as...
...another stone heart! (You remember that Mara ordered us to collect the stone hearts at the beginning of the game, right?)
Lord Rocket picks the heart up! Three hearts have been found!
We enter the elevator again:
And so we're back in the mail hall.
Oh gosh my little head is spinning already. Stay tuned for more once I come back to my senses!
.
For the update. Still, 
