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Bad
to Worse
Progression:
* Missions: Dasha Vestibule, Grand Court
of Sebelkeh
* Quests: Pledge of the Merchant Princes; Attack at the Kodash;
Heart or Mind: Garden in Danger; Heart or Mind: Ronjok in Danger
Wyrm -
02 Jul 2007We
enter the hidden city and things seem quiet enough. Goren urges us along and before
we really get anywhere, we set off the alarm and are attacked by djinn. This is
going to be painful. Especially the Ruby Djinn. To add insult to injury, in order
to get to the princes we have to first pass several tests. The first one is about
perseverance, making us fight guardians that slow us down and make us weaker.
We do prevail, however, and prepare for the next trial. One of the djinn we fight
drops a key to a chest and Margrid insists we bring it along, even though it doesn't
work in the chest nearby. The
next trial is a test of knowledge and, is easier than the first. All we have to
do is answer a bunch of questions about the gods. We let Zayisha take care of
that since she seems to be the braniac of the group. Another of the djinn we fight
drops a key, only this time this one works on the chest we find in the area. It's
a treasure of Ahdashim, which Margrid takes for herself. Well, she is a corsair.
We head to the third trial, which is a trial of... math? Along the way, Jenova
forgets to watch where he's going and steps through a trap. It's not much, it
just freezes him in his tracks for a few seconds. In any case, we have to fight
more guardians. These just seem to be normal foes until they knock Ginger, Jenova,
and Wirr down to the ground for a few seconds and hit for a pretty large amount
of damage, which, fortunately, isn't fatal. With
the guardians out of the way we do our little math quiz and are about to head
to the central chamber when Margrid spots another treasure chest. Oh boy. As it
turns out, the key we found earlier opens this chest, which means the key we got
her might just open that one. I'm not really sure why we're doing this though
since Margrid is the one getting all the treasure. Not that treasure interests
the rest of us, but it just seems awkward to get all this stuff just for one person
to hog it all. Well, whatever. We
head back to the central chamber and, sure enough, Margrid gets her last piece
of treasure. Jenova walks through another trap. It's nothing too bad, he just
gets burned to a crisp. He really needs to watch where he's going a bit more.
We think we're done with the tests and we're right, but unfortunately, there's
still an obstacle in our path. That obstacle happens to be the three djinn leaders.
Oh, this is going to hurt. And it does. The Ruby Djinn boss nearly wipes us out
on its own before we can defeat it. Needless to say we use up just about every
res sig we have. The other two bosses are nothing compared to this guy and, once
through them, we run into the princes. Bokka
and Mehtu still seem to feel safe in Ahdashim, despite the fact that we just busted
our way through all their traps. That feeling of safety disappates when more tentacles
erupt from the ground and we inform the princes that Nightfall has come. That
gets them singing a different tune. They tell us they have to go do some thinking,
but will send word to us before long. We're used to how these princes work by
now, so we don't bother arguing with them any longer. It's
not long before we receive word that they're waiting for us in Mehtu's library,
so we head there. As it turns out, these princes do have something useful to offer
us in the way of assistance. They've got a lot of writings on the subject of Nightfall
and are able to predict what Varesh's next move will be, which really does help
us out a lot. With that taken care of, we prepare to head to the Sebelkeh Basilica,
which is right near where Kehanni's head priest friend is. As we're leaving, one
of Kehanni's messengers shows up in a hurry, being chased by Margonites. We destroy
the demons and ask the messenger what's going on. She tells us something big is
happening at Sebelkeh, which means we need to head there in a hurry. We
arrive at Sebelkeh and find none other than Morgahn, Varesh's general, waiting
for us. We prepare for a fight, but then he asks us to stay our weapons, since
he's come on a mission of peace. It's a little late for that, but whatever. He
claims to have been deceived by Varesh and her claims of righteousness. Talk about
not seeing the forest for the trees... Well, whatever. He's decided to help make
up for it but we've got more important things to take care of, like stopping Nightfall. We
head into the court at Sebelkeh and see quite a few Margonites guarding rift formations.
They're trying to take over the central altar to open a rift there as well, but
we have to stop that or all is lost. Once we've dealt with the Margonites we head
to one of the rifts to close it. We destroy the Margonites and are about to seal
the rift when we spot a ghost-like figure moving to the central altar. This must
be the great demon that Vahmani told us about. We attack him and he dies before
we really get started. That's it? That's not it. When he dies several orbs of
energy spawn and start attacking us. These things hurt. A lot. I mean a real lot.
More than anything we've fought before, even that Ruby Djinn boss. Ouch. Ouch.
Ouch. We have to use several sigs before they're destroyed. With
them out of the way, we figure we're safe once again so we destroy more Margonites
and start to seal another rift when the demon shows up again. Didn't we kill him
already? This could really get painful. We destroy the demon and his energy orbs
again, using a few more sigs. Unfortunately, these enemies seem to ignore Ginger,
who has the most durability out of any of us, and go straight for Kali, who has
the least durability. It must be the armor, but for a different reason than usual.
We're having a hard time keeping Kali on her feet so we know we have to end this
soon. There's only 1 rift left, so we force our way into it and attack the Margonites.
The demon appears again but we ignore it while we work on sealing the rift. Once
the rift is closed we take out the demon one last time. This time he's not coming
back. With
that crisis averted, we run into Morgahn once again. He says he wants to help
us stop Nightfall in order to atone for what he's done. This seems agreeable enough,
so we let him join us. Unfortunately, greetings will have to wait as Koss and
Melonni show up and tell us that the Kodash Bazaar is being attacked by Margonites
and we have to do something about it. Well, ok. We head to the Kodash where the
demons are appearing and see several djinn. We're about to get really nervous
about having to fight them again when we're told they are here to help us fight
the Margonites. Phew. Margonites start attacking and the djinn do their thing
as we do ours. Ruby djinn are really handy in a fight and it's good to be fighting
near them without having to fight against them for a change. The
attack is thwarted easily and we have nothing to worry about anymore, or so we'd
like to think. Melonni is having dreams of her home village being attacked back
in Kourna, but we know for a fact that the gardens of Seborhin are being destroyed
by demons. Neither choice is very appealing so we decide to check out the garden
first, since it's closer. When we get there demons are everywhere, but the place
has been evacuated so there's no immediate threat. We just have to go in and wipe
them out. We decide that we can save that for later so we head all the way back
to Kourna to see about Melonni's dream. When
we get there the place is fine and there are no demons in sight. It's starting
to seem as though this is a waste of time, but Melonni starts running around franticly,
making us chase after her. Her fears turn out to be warranted though, when we
run into one of Melonni's mentors, Hahla. She's screaming something about Torment
Demons and as we approach her, monsters the likes of which we've never seen before
show up. These foul demons reek of death and fight more viciously than any others
we've encountered so far. To make matters worse, once they get close to death
they will summon more of their comrades to the battle, which means fighting them
can be endless if we don't finish them off quickly. After
we manage to destroy these demons, Hahla tells us that Melonni's dreams were premonitions
of what is about to happen. With that in mind, we head to Ronjok and prepare for
the incoming assault.
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