Lair Ruins
-Aaaaand we missed him. Lol. All that tension and build-up, and Lavos is already buried deep.
-A Gate formed?
-Aha! It’s residual energy emanating from Lavos that forms these gates.
-We jump in.
---
-We have a “time gyro?” Neat! Maybe that’s the word for Lucca’s key. It tells us that the gate took us 12,000 years into the past. 12,000 years before Crono’s time or before Ayla’s?
-12,000 BC. The Ice Age Azala predicted.
-Brr. Just looking at this screen and listening to the howling wind makes me want to put on a sweatshirt.
-There’s a “Skyway” to the east, a glowing dome. What the hell is a skyway doing in 12,000 BC?
-To the west, there’s a tent or a cave, and north of it is an island with what looks like a continent floating above it, chained to the earth below. I’ll enter this part first.
-Never mind. Terra Cave is a dead end for now. Back to the Skyway.
-My save file is called “The Magic Kingdom.” Origins of Magus maybe? Ooh ooh, or what if Magus got sent back here and created the kingdom he’d later rule in the future! And maybe he’s his own grandpa!
---
Skyway
-uhhhh
-Ok. We went into the skyway, a futuristic looking building with a warp pad. It zapped us up to the sky in a burst of pink light.
-…and now I’m on a chain of floating islands with stuff on them. This is WEIRD AS HELL.
-The islands are connected by “land bridges.” A town is on this first island.
---
Enhasa
-Monsters and humans living together in what seems like harmony.
-Kingdom of Zeal.
-WELL THAT’S NOT OMINOUS OR ANYTHING. A piggy-looking goblin, that looks exactly like the second form of Masa and Mune, says that this is a kingdom where dreams come true. “But at what price?”
-They find “truth in the bliss of sleep.” Someone I spoke with thinks they are still dreaming.
-Queen Zeal is in charge.
-This is a philosophical race.
Or a drugged out race. Could go either way.
-The city of Kajar, on the western continent, studies magic.
-Someone mentions that the airship Blackbird is there. Wait. That’s the airship designed by the guy living in 2,300 AD near Death Mountain. How is he still alive?
-Elemental weapons are on the north palace… I recognize that place! It’s the blue triangle from north of Medina Village.
-A pig goblin named Doreen urges us to seek the hidden path. She then vanishes. All three pig goblins I’ve spoken with vanished immediately after speaking to them.
-The citizens of Zeal call themselves “The Enlightened Ones.”
-lol. Ayla is my hero in terms of diplomacy. A boy walks up to us with his cat, and Ayla wonders if the cat tastes good. New ship: Ayla/Alf.
-The boy gives one of the creepiest responses possible to Ayla’s perfectly innocent feline cuisine inquiry: “The black wind howls…” Ok, Lovecraft.
-WAIT, ONE AMONG US WILL SHORTLY PERISH? YOU BETTER FUCKING BE KIDDING. I mean, I don’t care too much if Crono perishes, but everyone else is off limits.
-The queen’s palace is at the center of Zeal.
-There’s a doorway of destiny in here. Not sure what this means. Thought it might be a puzzle, but the only puzzly thing I could see in Enhasa were three books that I could open. Opened all three at the same time, each one spewing out something different (fire, ice, or wind) but no doorway opened.
---
12,000 BC – Overworld
-Took the other land bridge on the floating island back down to earth.
-On the eastern continent now.
-I can see the island continent northeast of me. There’s a cave. I wonder if that’s the Cave of the Sun or whatever it was called back from prehistory.
-Back up another skyway.
-The art of this new island is quite beautiful.
-Three locations to visit: a cave at the base of a mountain with a palace on top, Kajar, or the Blackbird. I’ll start with the cave.
-The cave led to a series of warp pads that took me to the palace at the top.
---
Zeal Palace
-The people here believe it’s the center of the universe. A proud people.
-Oh fuck. A new “prophet” has impressed the queen with his predictions, and he’s not a native.
It’s Magus, right? Must be.
-This may be a clue. I could swear that I remember the dancers from when we first met Ayla mentioning earth people and wind people. Maybe the wind people were around even back then.
-The queen’s heirs are Schala and Janus, but Janus doesn’t open up to others. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that Janus is a bit, how do you say, two-faced.
-Our pendant looks like Schala’s. This kingdom is probably the predecessor to the line of Leene.
-The music is super ominous for such a blissful magic kingdom.
-…and now I know why. They draw their power from somewhere deep beneath the ocean. Something… hedgehoggish perhaps? And now they plan on building an Ocean Palace down there.
Look. I know I just got here, and I don’t want to assume I know more about your culture than you do and tell you what to do, but that seems like a spectacularly bad place to build a palace given the likely source of your power.
-There’s a Nu wandering the palace. LOLOL – we scratched his back, he enjoyed it, and we got victory music. XD
-Belthasar is the name of the “Guru” who designed the Blackbird and the Ocean Palace. He’s gone now. The other two Gurus have gone. No reason yet given for why.
-Gaspar is another Guru who left. He’s working on a deserted island on
HEY IT’S THE GAME TITLE!
-There’s a Mammon Machine in the palace. Sounds doomy.
-Melchior is in this time.
-AND THESE ARE MASA AND MUNE!!!! LI’L MASA AND MUNE!!
-The city hopes for the Ocean Palace to bring eternal peace. Not likely.
-The Queen’s aide, Dalton, was replaced by the traveling prophet.
-When Schala chants, the pendant (made from the same rock as the Mammon Machine) glows.
-Oh, Janus is the boy who predicted the black winds and the death of our party member. Schala is his sister, and we see them talk.
-Schala gives Janus the pendant to protect him. Janus fears the Black Wind, and he fears that the Queen isn’t herself.
She hurries off to the palace at the behest of the Queen.
-Janus’s cat is Alfador. KITTY! MORE BEAUTIFUL KITTIES
-Someone near the Mammon Machine says outright that it is powered by Lavos. I’m surprised. I was expecting that Magus had tricked the Queen into drawing on Lavos by saying it’s powered by angels or something like that, not admitting it draws on an evil hedgehog.
-Everyone seems to know that the Mammon Machine is bad news. Tremendous power, but bad news to mess with. Like the Lifestream, but not as fundamentally good.
-Melchior opposed the queen’s plans and disappeared.
-As soon as the Mammon Machine was completed, the queen changed.
-Found him. Frigging Magus.
-HE OPENED THE DOOR! He used a pendant to open one of those sealed doors that’s been blocking me for the last 13 hours.
-Tried getting in with our pendant, but nothing happened. We have to first commune with the Mammon Machine.
-Jackpot! Made it through the door.
---
Zeal Palace – Throne Room
-The “Prophet” warned the Queen about evildoers like us.
Queen’s court.
They all warp away, and Dalton (the deposed aide, but still here) summons an awesome looking golem to take us out.
-Golem copies our abilities somehow. It’s kicking my ass hard. Trying to keep reviving, but it keeps blasting us with massive one-shotting physical damage.
-It seems to be a question of picking our poison. Which spell do we want Golem to copy? Lightning spreads out the damage, so I stick with Volt Bite.
-We win. Barely. Yeesh, brutal fight.
-The Queen and her court return, imprisoning us in a blue triangle thing like the one at the North Palace and the one north of Medina Village.
---
Prison
-We’re trapped in a floating light prison. Unmoving and unconscious.
-Schala and Janus come in. They want to bust us out. To help rescue the Gurus.
-Melchior was sent to the Mountain of Woe for opposing the Queen.
-The jailbreak is interrupted. By the Prophet… OH! The Prophet is a different dude from Magus. New guess: the Prophet is the Chancellor from 1,000 AD who figured out how to use a Gate.
-He conditionally agrees to free us, as long we show him the gate.
---
Gate Cave
-We do. We hop back through the gate. The Prophet has Schala seal the Gate in a red triangle.
-Schala is remorseful. I’m mostly confused.
---
65,000,000 BC
-Back here. The Gate sealed behind us, so we can’t return.
-Ayla asks a good question: if they’re drawing power from Lavos, is Lavos getting weak? Didn’t seem like it.
-We remember the dude near Death Mountain in 2,300 AD. Time to return to him.
---
Next time: back to the End of Time. Try to get Ayla magic. Then back to the future to try opening those sealed chests.
[Later edit: I was so certain that Magus was in this world that I didn't even look all that closely at the people in the queen's court. I just assumed the person to the queen's right was Magus. As I look now at the screenshots, I no longer believe that Magus is at all in this timeline. Pretty sure that person in the throne room and who we followed was Schala the whole time. Not sure where that leaves Magus.]
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