Part 42: Chapter Thirty Two: A Whale Tale
Music: 02 – My Home Sweet Home000.png)
:…What? A…’Whale’? What’s a ‘Whale’?
: Oh, such an amazing animal!001.png)
: And their intelligence! They are born with an instinctive knowledge of all human language! This is an unbelievable find!002.png)
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: I’ve tried everything! Pepper, fire, poking him in all the usual sensitive spots, even kicking that great big uvula of his…004.png)
: Dunno about anyone else, but I doubt I’d be much inclined to speak to someone doing the equivalent of repeatedly kicking me in the nads.
: Still, it is strange that such a large creature would show no reaction at all to being the focus of such extensive…uh…cajolements. I get the distinct impression that the reason for his languor is supernatural in nature.005.png)
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: Ah, I get it! It’s like when you eat something off the ground and then you get all shivery and shaky for a while, right?: Poe! Sydon! What have you two not been telling me?Poe? Sydon? Poe Sydon? Poseidon!
As an aside, in Capcom’s butchered script these two were called Tree and Ton, another play on words referencing the Greek god Triton, messenger of the sea.
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: Ah! There was a statue of some kind in the whale’s stomach, I’m sure of it! But…how could that statue be keeping this whale asleep?: It sounds like a black magic totem of some kind. It could be implanting some sort of subliminal hypnotic suggestion, but it’s impossible to know for sure without seeing it for myself.014.png)
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: Ah, apologies! Apologies! I’ll be stranded here if you don’t give me a ride back!016.png)
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: I appreciate it, Poe…018.png)
: Yeah, we’ll get right on that.019.png)
:…So I guess we just got roped into waking this whale up, seeing as how we now have no way of leaving this place.: Yep.: This, uh, this sorta thing happen a lot to you earlier?: Yep.: Okay then. Guess we better get right on it, huh.020.png)
: Well, here we go…Music: 04 – Dungeon
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: Gross.You can get Lin to smack the uvula with her staff, but it doesn’t do anything just yet.
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Beyond this point the dungeon really begins. New enemies appearing beyond here are as follows.
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Hermit Squids aren’t too tough. They can buff themselves up with Protect but other than that they don’t seem to have any special tricks.
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Hustlers…can be lethal sometimes. Their attacks involve them glowing for a moment and then hitting for 1 or 2 points of damage. They can also very rarely cast Lightning on the entire party, knocking off over half of everyone’s HP. Other than that they’re fairly tough and can take a number of hits from the party’s physical attackers before going down.
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Shotgunheads are the next step up from Sniperheads and the third tier of the Gunhead family. They’re pretty resilient – Ryu and Lin will only do around 50 damage to one on a single hit, whereas they’ll do double that to any other enemy in the area. They also hit fairly hard, dealing around 30 – 40 damage per attack
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The Earthshaker is an extremely dangerous enemy who rarely appears in this dungeon. He has a fairly large amount of HP, around 250 – 300, and a fair amount of defence that makes it nearly impossible to take him down in one turn. His attacks do around 30 – 40 damage, but it’s his spellcasting you have to watch out for. Earthshaker is capable of casting Quake, and it’ll ruin your day if he ever gets it off since it’ll shave at least ¾ of every party member’s HP off.
There’s another enemy in here called the Champion Slime. It has massive amounts of defence but dies in one hit from Slice. I don’t have a picture of it because I ran into one once, fought it to see what it did and then never found another one. The Champion’s gimmick is that it gives a ludicrous amount of exp, around 5000 or so, once defeated.
Anyhow, on with the main game.
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This room is massive. The pink nodules scattered everywhere turn it into something of a maze. The left path leads to a dead end, so the first thing to do is to head right all the way along.
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There’s a treasure chest on the right hand side that contains obsolete armor. Eh, we can sell it for cash, so it’s not entirely worthless.
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The next move is to head left and down the middle of the room.
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The exit is right there, but there’s another chest for the taking should we follow the room around to the left.
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Pocket change is still money I guess. Although honestly it wasn’t that long ago that I’d have been overjoyed to find a whole 100 zenny inside a treasure chest…
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This next room immediately splits into three branches. The left hand branch quickly ends in a closed sphincter-door-thing that Lin can open by hitting it. However it leads to a dead end. The right hand branch is more fruitful, however…
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The path takes us through several narrow corridors where we can see the central path but can’t reach it.
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Hello, Stat-Up item. Power Food increases Strength, and we’re feeding it straight to Ryu so that he can become even more of a powerhouse.
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Time for the central branch.
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We are met with another branch. Once again, the left hand branch only leads to a dead end.
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This time it’s important to go left then up.
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We come to another closed sphincter that Lin can bash open.
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Behind lies a small chamber with a treasure chest containing the Golden Armor. Only Ryu can equip it, and though it raises his defence by ten points it also halves his Vigor due to gold being so heavy.
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At the end of the central path lies a rather ominous looking closed sphincter. We’ll be finding out what lies behind it next time.