Arris Dome
-Made my way back through Lab 16 and arrived at the Arris Dome.
-SUPER forboding music here.
-I was expecting a nicer place, but no. It’s bleak and desolate. The Terris Dome wasn’t wrong exactly – there IS food here. But it’s guarded deep within the Arris Dome by killer robots. (This is probably where we come in.)
-Similar problems all around. There’s another dome, the Proto Dome, to the east. Also guarded by killer robots.
-Sewers can help me get to the southern continent.
-Warned to stay away from “Death Peak.” Probably sound advice. An old hermit lives in a dome by Death Peak.
-I take it back: the music isn’t just forboding. It’s bleak. Despairing and hopeless.
-We head down underground. Maybe we can get some food for these folk.
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Beneath Arris Dome
-Walking on narrow beams.
-There’s a creepy-as-fuck statue of a giant rat or something with a memo warning not to go near the food stores.
Huh. Is someone down there guarding it for themselves?
-uh oh we tripped an alarm HOLY CRAP that scared the daylights out of me! A giant metal pounder thing slammed down on us.
-Boss fight. A big Guardian and two smaller floating Bits. Let’s try attacking the Bits first.
-Both of the Bits down. Guardian is immune to fire.
-crap crap crap the Guardian is counting down from 5.
-PHEW. It got to 0 and just revived the Bits. I mean, not good, but I thought it was about to one-shot me.
-The three of them did a hard-hitting Delta Attack on me.
Going to try just taking one of the Bits out, wailing on the Guardian, and then finishing the last Bit.
-Bad idea. The remaining Bit does a counterattack whenever we hit the Guardian. Instead, let’s try killing the Bits as they come up and using the countdown window to kill the Guardian.
-Victory! Toughest fight thus far.
-Arrrrrrgh. That SUCKS. The refrigeration in the food stores beyond failed and all the food is rotten.
-There’s a corpse in the room. Two things of note about it. First is that he’s holding a seed. Maybe that can help them grow stuff above. Second is a note.
More to the rat statue than meets the eye.
-Found the rat on the beams outside. She led me on a merry chase, but caught her eventually. She says that the passage (to the sewers I suppose) opens with L+R and then A.
-Went upstairs in the hopes that I could give the seed to the residents of the Arris Dome, but no luck. No change in dialogue from before.
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Towards the Info Center
-The first fight in the sewers is awesome. There’s a robot in the middle of the room and two rats running around. All three are my enemy technically, but I guess the robot didn’t know that. The running rats tripped the robot’s motion sensors and it blasted them.
Priceless look on the rat’s face. Thanks, robo-buddy!
-Creepy looking bugs down here.
-Another sealed door. These things are just taunting me now.
-Through an unsealed door into the main information center. I was wrong – thought this was the sewers but it’s just the info center.
-Lucca works her tech magic and finds that the Gate to get us back home opens up east of Arris Dome. We got a journey ahead of us.
Did I say yet how much I love the relationship being built between Lucca and Marle?
-We’re about to leave when Marle hits another button randomly. The computer pulls up the “Day of Lavos” in 1999. I remember that day! I was in 10th grade at the time.
Screen shows the continent we arrived at, but green and lush.
Until a chasm emerges right underneath one of the domes.
AND A GIANT HEDGEHOG THING EMERGES SHOOTING LASERS AND FIRE AND SHIT AND DESTROYING THE PLANET.
Lavos emerges.
Lavos doesn’t rampage Godzilla style. Just sits in its chasm and rains down fire on the world.
-Damn. Are the earthquakes we feel back in 1,000 AD the initial rumblings of Lavos?
-Marle is crushed to see this. Devastated.
There’s something so disheartening as a ruler to know this is how your kingdom and your world ends.
But will she sit there and take it? Hell no. Lucca can manipulate Gates. They can change history.
-She’s SO GREAT! She’s optimistic and also a woman of action. Happy and excited, but capable of feeling wrecked – before she gets up and does something to help. Brava, Marle.
-Watched the Lavos attack again. It’s hard to tell from that whether Lavos is mech or beast. Currently betting on it being a beast – but not necessarily acting on its own. Something else is afoot in a game like this beyond just a random monster we have to stop. Someone awoke it, or someone’s controlling it, or something.
-Next stop for Team Marle is to head back to 1,000 AD through the Proto Dome Gate and start researching Lavos’s activity back in their time.
-Now we know how the world ends, but we have a plan. The music turns hopeful again! Woohoo! Yet for all that, I don’t know how hopeful to feel. The rules of time travel in this game are still new. I don’t know if the past can be changed. It probably can, but may be equally likely that the actions of Marle, Lucca, and Crono are what wake Lavos up. Time is funky.
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Arris Dome
-Back up top of the Arris Dome. The team starts to reveal that this is their future, but the survivors couldn’t care less of course. It’s their present. It’s their lives. They just want to know about the food.
-They at least acknowledge the difference between us. We’re healthy, they are not. A new concept, this “healthy.”
-Marle passes the seeds. Hope for the future.
-The elder here, a man named Doan, gives us a bike key to help us on our way. The bike is at Lab 32 on the way to the Proto Dome.
-The music turned pretty haunting. Love it.
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Next time: towards the Proto Dome, the Gate, and 1,000 AD.
