19: URSHAS and the Secret Temple Rooms
In which we run, fight, and genuflect!
Previously on this LP, we made it through the first room-of-many-doors in the Beyond Reason dungeon only to reach another one, unmappable to boot.
Adding insult to injury, our compass isn't working either. Now where do we go next? Confused and afraid of getting hopelessly lost, I choose to ... just rush ahead. Straight to the east we go!
We enter a corridor. Thankfuly, it's mappable, which means this isn't a puzzle area. Let's proceed.
Five skeletons, of various strength, engage us a couple of steps down the corridor.
Bee tries doing the X-TREME collar-grabbing thing (which killed the witch in the last update) on a skeleton:
But the undead thingie drains her exp!
I'd rather it drained HP, not experience. Exp is p. precious, you know.
spekkio casts SEL to boost our AC, and Kalos tries turning undead:
Thanks to the silver cross he's carrying, Kalos' Turn Undead ability works wonders: a skeleton is killed outright, two more severely wounded, and another one loses ca. 1/5 of his HP.
Lord Rocket does his melee thing:
Skeletal Phantoms are pretty tough physically, but still, Rocket's swing wounds him a bit.
In Kalos' prayer arsenal, there's a quite specific incantation called
IDRIS:
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.
IDRIS is a prayer to Ufthu specifically designed to aid against the undead.
So yeah, Kalos attempts reciting IDRIS, but Ufthu doesn't answer. :/
In an unexpected turn of events,
Gosh, Skeletal Phantoms' regular attacks can inflict poison. Not good.
But spekkio-kun has a trick up his sleeve: now that he's got the silver ring in the Arkana of Healing, he can cast an anti-poison spell,
ISO:
7 ISO Air
This incantation involves drawing the air from one afflicted by poison into the caster's own lungs. This will cure the poisoning.
spekkio cures Lord Rocket from poison. Truth be told, from the spell description, I expected ISO to make spekkio poisoned instead, given that he was supposed to draw the poisonous air into his own lungs. Now THAT would've been trolling! But nope, that didn't happen. Alas?
But anyway. Nothing exciting happens in the next few turns: we just keep hitting at the remaining skeletons, and they keep hitting back at us. Finally, when only one Skeletal Phantom is left, Kalos successfully recites IDRIS:
And the foe is killed right away. Yay!
What, THAT is all the experience we get for this totally draining battle?
(Well, the battle wasn't too hard, really, it's just that I wasted a lot of virtue and psychic points on it.)
A coif is our loot. Kalos picks it up.
And so the corridor goes on...
Gosh, it's long.
Great Scott! This looks hardcore.
What kind of fucking fuck is that!? "Rots some of his food"? Really!?
...
Oh well.
The good news is, Kalos manages to successfully recite IDRIS, the anti-undead prayer, in one go:
Hell yeah! The enemy ranks are devastated!
Next turn Kalos is, however, stunned:
Bee lays her hands on Kalos:
I feel embarrassed every time I do this.
Stop touching me, you undead freak! Gosh.
In a few turns...
The enemies keep on rotting our food every couple of turns. That's quite ... rage-inducing!
We're totally out of spell and prayer points by the end of this fight. That's why it takes us quite many a turn and many a frustration...
...to finally bring the two remaining foes down:
Oh-kay, not bad. But our spellcasters get much more exp than Bee and Rocket. That's kind of unfair.
Further down the corridor...
Oh no not this shit again. We're stunned and weak, you know. Death seems pretty nigh!
Sure.
As you can see from the automap, in running away we basically jumped over a couple of squares. Good thing the enemies, trying to surprise us, attacked us from behind -- otherwise we would've been pushed back down the corridor, which wouldn't have been good.
:twisted:
Also, folks: you see our food metre, right? It's almost empty FFS! The bloody undead
did manage to rot almost all of our food! R00fles. This game sure loves its trolling and frustrating the player.
Finally (!) the corridor comes to an end.
A sanctuary door.
(We're totally out of food, by the way.)
We activate the URSHAS sanctuary using the goddamn bloody copy protection thingie, and our HP is fully restored. Nice.
Okay, still quite a long way to go until level 7.
We teleport to BORASAL to visit the shop and buy some food. And just in time, it seems -- spekkio is getting hungry:
A character dies if he remains hungry for too long, so we should hurry! After all, we don't want our dear spekkio to die, do we?
Having stocked up on food, we then teleport to Sagaris in order to identify ourselves some items.
Shiny, yay!
Kewl.
Nice!
Oh well. Back to shopping now!
Let's sell some things now, shall we? First the Leather coif...
...then the Silver pin...
...and finally the precious emerald:
Good.
We attempt buying a Greatsword for Rocket...
...but the game warns us that Rocket can't use it yet. Yay for handholding!
What 'bout a Halberd?
Meh. Same thing.
A Warhammer maybe?
Rocket, I am disappoint. :/
Disappointed in our bro Rocket, we're off to the Circle of Magi to check on spekkio's progress:
We're also allowed to take a peek at a new passage in the archives:
Hmmmm. A dragon playing a game with us? I smell a lot of butthurt ahead.
But anyway, spekkio is indeed a true gansta bro now:
Looks ... fashionable.
We'll visit the temples a bit later. Let's head back to URSHAS for now to have a rest:
The idea is to finish exploring the Beyond Reason dungeon first, before moving on to other things.
Four orcs ambush us as we head back down the long corridor:
spekkio casts a stronger version of SEL,
SELMUR:
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.
Our AC is significantly improved:
Bee goes X-TREME:
One of the orcs is an Orc Leader, and he can cast an AC-reducing spell:
Notice that our AC has gone down a few points. Thankfully it doesn't annul SELMUR, and so our AC still remains higher than normal.
No problems in this fight, really:
Plus 201 coins for loot.
Movin' on.
Back in the unmappable room of many doors, we notice the compass is now working. WTF?
Oh well,
anyway. Otherwise I'm not sure I'd be able to figure this part of the dungeon out.
To cut a long story short, most of the doors in this room simply teleport you to the other side of it. Only the central doors in each of the walls matter.
Another trolling thing is, the northern door leads to yet
another room of many doors, so I got totally confused at first. :dizzy: In that 3rd many-doored hall, it is again only the central doors that lead to somewhere meaningful.
The northernmost central door hides a passage:
There's an inscription here, which spekkio attempts translating with NGOSMUR:
Surprisingly enough, it does get partially translated:
"Here lies ?iriy??, bold defender of the light". A tomb, yay!
We also stumble on a locked grate we can't yet open:
This precludes us from further exploring the tomb for now, so let's head back and explore some more.
The western central door in the 3rd many-doored room hides a small treasure:
And the eastern one, a weapon:
What's that, I wonder?
A hammer! Lord Rocket picks it up.
Yup, we'll have to identify the hammer later.
After some wandering around and getting lost
roll
, we enter the southernmost door (in the second room of many doors):
Hmm, something important must be here for sure.
A key, wow!
Lord Rocket, being our party keykeeper, picks it up.
Nothing of further interest here, so let's head back to the northernmost room, the one with the locked grate, and see if our new key fits.
And fit it does!
Now we can finally explore behind the grate.
A tomb indeed. Of someone named Kiriya. As you know from the fragment of the diary I posted on the previous page on this LP, Kiriya was one of Mara's party. Apparently he was slain -- by Uukrul?
Anywayz. We are presented with four options. I choose to
Slide the lid off:
Bee, being the only female in the party, takes the mysterious mirror. But of course!
Gotta love this game's sense of humour. We'll need to identify the mirror, too.
Oh, by the way. There are still two passages left to explore in the very first room of many doors, so we head back there to clear this area. Nothing interesting there though, just another skull drawing which we already don't need to pay attention to.
After that we head back to URSHAS -- attacked by some kind of fungus along the way!
Hell yeah, a mushroom attack! Yay for green mushrooms!
Those green fuckers can release a harmful spray of acid:
spekkio is damaged the most. Oh well.
The Creeping Fungus is revealed to be a Magic Mushroom, by the way.
Fighting magic mushrooms, lol. The devs surely were on 'shrooms this time.
spekkio's spellcasting comes in really handy in this battle.
Oh my, those mushrooms can heal themselves!
Also, you've gotta love the acid spray animation:
Next-gen!
Finally the last of the mushrooms goes down:
We get some experience, but no treasure. Meh.
Back at URSHAS we rest up a bit -- and now it's time to explore the secret rooms in two of the temples!
It's just that thing Fowyr was talking about. So we teleport to BORAMIS.
But first things first. Let's check if Kalos can get new rings.
He does indeed receive a new ring from Fshofth!
But it sure feels like spekkio is progressing faster than Kalos for some reason.
But anyways. The Fshofth temple hides the first secret room:
Four (?) HOYAMOQs do the trick:
And we go in.
The corridor leads us to some kind of inscription:
We can't translate it with neither NGOSMUR nor UMESH though.
Oh well. There's also a painting here:
We approach it.
Hmmm. Let's, uhm, Peer closer?
Oops.
Uhm, Clean off the dust?
Oopsie daisie.
Search the painting perhaps?
Nope.
Okay, let's Summon Fshofth, then!
An eagle? More like a falcon, amirite?
So, let's Touch the eagle, eh?
Oh. :/
The correct option is of course
Genuflect.
Wikipedia said:
Genuflection (or genuflexion), bending at least one knee to the ground, was from early times a gesture of deep respect for a superior. In 328 BC, Alexander the Great introduced into his court etiquette some form of genuflection already in use in Persia. In the Byzantine Empire even senators were required to genuflect to the emperor. In medieval Europe, one demonstrated respect for a king or noble by going down on one knee.
As we choose to genuflect, something weird happens:
And that's it. I wonder if this thing has any effect other than "oh, cool"; at least I haven't been able to find any.
Oh well, the first secret room is explored. The second one is in the Ufthu temple. But first let's head to Sagaris to identify something.
The future, eh? Kewl.
Let's try it out, then?
Rub it, baby!
Don't even ask.
We teleport to URSHAS to have a rest and replenish our psychic and virtue points, and off to the temple area again we go! The Shrine of Ufthu, here we come.
And here's the secret door we've been looking for.
Three HOYAMOQs suffice:
There's another totally untranslatable inscription in here:
As well as another door:
:twisted:
We find some treasure here:
Bee takes the money!
To the south there's another door:
Some kind of weapon is lying on the ground behind it:
A nasty knife! :twisted:
Bee, being the bravest one, picks it up.
:twisted: :twisted:
Okay so what do we d---
Oh hi there.
Two Robed Men -- the guardians of the crypt? -- ambush us.
As they attack us, they are revealed to be Monks.
One down, one more to go.
RALKOR, SEHKMUR, AMRASAKIM and other spells and prayers prove quite useful here. Bee's collar-grabbing ability is also nice if not exactly powerful:
Not everything goes as planned though:
Bee changes her weapon to Long sword.
Kalos is silenced FFS.
The second monk is extremely resistant to all kinds of damage -- he's a Master Monk, not a regular monk, after all -- so, having run out of spell points, we have to resort to using the Healing salve:
(One thing I liked about this game is that it almost always gives you some wrong and totally useless options alongside the only correct one when using an item.)
And then the Master Monk presses a button and something awful happens:
Now THAT's what I call close! Poor spekkio-kun. :/
That Master Monk feller is pretty tough, you know.
Will we be able to make it, I wonder? Oh, and who said "cakewalk"!?
Gosh, Bee is out of weapons!
Well, at least Kalos has recovered from silence.
Just in time for his RALKOR to put the Master Monk to an eternal rest.
Victory, yay!
of experience!
of loot.
Okay so what do we have her---
Now THIS is nasty. I mean, we hardly have any HP left!
Luckily for us, the dogs are extremely weak and die in one hit.
Trololo.
Nothing of interest here though. I guess this concludes our exploration of the secret temple rooms. Well, that was funny but ... a bit underwhelming, I suppose.
Do they even serve any purpose at all? It is a mystery!
Still a long way to making level 7. So stay tuned!
Next time: more mindfuck!
