Alright time to end this once and for all.
15: All's well that ends... well?
As you might recall (who am I kidding - I couldn't recall this myself before I re-read the last couple of updates), our brave party of four was in the middle of a quest to reach the planet Europa, home of the mysterious Sarians who we are supposed to grant us ultimate wisdom and immortality. In the previous update, we obtained a special ether propeller required to fly our spaceship beyond the asteroid belt:
I'll spare you the frustration and re-write Tereshkova's speech in proper grammar.
Get away from me or I will cut you to pieces. You are no better than the Martian scoundrels who came here years ago and kidnapped my best friend, Kleuht Na Vriss.
He doesn't take kindly to us, but hey, we've got that emerald Na Vriss gave us! I wonder if it's going to change Professor's attitude.
Kleuht's emerald!! He is alive, and you spoke to him!!
How the hell does he know we didn't just kill Na Vriss and take his diamond?
I always knew that I would receive a message from him. As Kleuht was being abducted by the Martians, he begged me to protect the remains of his crashed ship. Kleuht said that this was the only ether propeller that could carry a ship beyond the asteroid belt.
He told me to guard it with my life. If you are going to attempt a journey to the home of the Saurians in the core of Europa, you should equip your ether flyer with this propeller. Although I am too old and ill to travel with you, my dying wish has been granted. I can rest in peace knowing my that my friendship with Kleuht will last forever.
The propeller is ours, yay!
But now we also need special fuel,
Ammonia, and a special magical thingy to power our engine, the
Glowing Crystal that can only be found on Mercury. Luckily, ammonia can also be found there, so off to Mercury we fly.
Damn I forgot just how frustrating navigating the star chart is in this game.
Aha, I guess this is it.
Mercury is a scary place inhabited by giant crabs and centipedes.
Thankfully they don't have time to attack us if he just run past them.
On the nearby river shore we stumble upon a Glow Crystal. That was easier than expected.
Impressive.
Further along the shore we come across a harbor where we rent a zeppelin. Now we can explore what else apart from mudcrabs there is on this god-forsaken planet.
A town, huh?
We seek out a nearby harbor, land our zeppelin way and hurry back to town.
The City of Princess Christiana. Fair enough.
Excuse me?
I wonder if the innkeeper can give us some kind of clue.
Yeah, thanks, we've already found one of those "worthless" glow crystals. If we hadn't though, we'd know where to look now.
The mines, huh? We'll sure to find 'em.
This here is the scientific outpost - with, like, three dudes inside.
Hm, I don't think we found that when we were visiting Angkor, so whatever. These sidequests are useless 'cause we're filthy rich anyway.
This one doesn't talk much. He has a name though so he's probably also involved in some kind of sidequest.
...tried to seize his ship and destroy him. The man shot a magic arrow into her craft, and the queen was set free from her evil bondage. Later, the young brahman man marrieed Queen Willow Leaf. I've heard rumors that the magic arrow is hidden in one of the temples in Angkor. If you bring me the arrow, I will give you roughly £5,000.
£5000 is mere spare change for us, but as luck would have it, we did found the arrow back in Angkor so we hand it over to Jonathan Wilson.
Hah, as luck would have it we have the statue too!
That done, the man has an even further side quest for us:
Fable says that the sword will be a symbol that proves that Uriah Tu has returned. I want the sword of Uriah Tu for my Martian exhibit. If you bring it to me, I will reward you roughly £7,500.
My, so generous. Unfortunately we don't have that sword for you, Mr. Wilson, and I don't think we can be bothered to go searching for it. I guess you'll have to do without.
Anyway, we've found an entrance to the mines. Let's explore inside and see if we can find some ammonia there.
Lots of miners in here.
Good for you, I guess.
My my, there's a Pole in charge here!
A truly evil one, to boot.
I wonder if tin is a fancy alien name for potato.
We take the stairs down.
Poor fellas.
This one looks like a boss.
And
of course he's paranoid and wants to kill us. Told ya he's evil!
Pretty easy to predict who'll die here though.
Told you so.
So, you were saying?
These must be worth something to someone... Too bad I can't be arsed to keep track of all these sidequests.
Thankfully the miners don't turn hostile after we've killed their boss. As you could see, they didn't really like him much.
After a long time of circling around the mines and swearing and cursing and digging in random places we finally discover some ammonia. Fuck yeah.
A typical 5 gallon container. Why of course.
Back at the ether port, our flyer is automatically updated with the ammonia and the glow crystal.
We still need to install the new Saurian propeller though.
Okay, I believe now we're all set to fly beyond the asteroid belt
Europa, here we come!
And indeed, we can cross the belt with easy now.
This must be it.
A cutscene ensues.
(Un)fortunately the game doesn't let us explore Europa at all - it's all told via this cutscene.
You descend thousands of feet, until you reach the bottom. You stand in a barren room of yellow rock. A powerful odor of gas permeates your nostrils, and you become lightheaded. Your eyes can't seem to focus, everything begins to darken and blur, and the wall in front of you starts to slowly fade, revealing a large room with a labyrinth of passageways snaking out in all directions.
Are you hallucinating, or is this some sort of supernatural illusion?
tl;dr Earth is hollow and the Saurians live there. The entrance is at the North Pole. Naturally.
You begin choking on the toxic gases. Feeling faint, you realize that you have to leave before it's too late. You climb the long ladder back to Europa's surface. Boarding your ether flyer, you prepare to return to Earth for a face-to-face meeting with the Saurians.
So, it's back to Earth again.
We take the zeppeling and fly to the North Pole.
Here it is, the entrance to the Earth's hollow inside!
The City of Inner Earth, no less.
Lizards everywhere!
Yeah yeah whatever. What are we supposed to do here, exactly?
Cool beans, I guess.
Awesome.
This maze is pretty long though and with no end in sight. We blow up some walls with dynamite to proceed.
This is my favorite part!
Blah blah
Hmm, that room looks different from the rest. Let's blow up the wall and get inside!
Fancy place.
Sup drog?
...similar in feature to Kleuht Na Vriss. At last, you've discovered the Saurians!!
Aaaah!!
Yeah, we're good! You can't even begin to image through what pain and what struggles with the interface we went to get here.
Give us our immortality, dude.
So, do I get this right? No immortality for us because you are afraid to "take an active, daily role"?
Bring 'em on.
Dude, immortality. Nao.
A horrible PC speaker tune plays, then stops.
The game ends.
Groundbreaking stuff.
Farewell, dear
zero readers one reader! Until better times!