Part 16: Temple of the Sun

Update 16: Back From the Army, Temple of the Sun

After taking a quick detour to turn the tide of a war, it's time to head back to Phoebus!

We leave Byzanople and go through the abandoned Siege Camp (the black marketeer is still there, the healer and soldiers are gone). We travel to the eastern part of King's Island, just outside Kingshome, to get to the transportation nexus. There are a few giant groups of Goblins around here, and we'll have to fight through one of them to get there:



This fight is actually a huge pain in the ass. The Goblins in the front are easy, but the Guard Goblins are really tough, and there are a lot of them. They also advance 30' at a time, so they'll be attacking us in no time! Our first order of business, as it usually is with these large-scale battles, is to cast Big Chill.



This kills the two packs of Goblins up front and takes a considerable chunk out of the first batch of Guard Goblins. For Round 2, Piers and Kali take them out with Fire Blast.




From here, we let the remaining group walk into 30' and have everyone use up their remaining MP on taking them out. We'll be visiting a recharge pool soon.



Yep, we even use Death Curse here! Kali had a few MP left, and Death Curse is slightly more reliable than stabbing them with the Firesword.



The Lance Sword does pretty good cleanup work.



Two of these were actually a delayed level-up. We could have leveled them up just by running from the fight. For some reason, the game doesn't process levelups at the end of the Kingshomer battle. I don't know if the level-up process is pre-empted by the messages we get for winning, or if we actually get an unannounced experience bonus for saving Byzanople. Anyway, on to the Nexus!




Killing a couple of Wild Dogs here levels up our original four.

Upon leaving Mystic Wood, we could just walk into Phoebus, but we want to re-energize first, so we go over the Guard Bridge back to Forlorn. Going in this direction, we get this message:



If we say say Yes, we still have to present our Citizenship Papers or fight the guard. I actually threw out the Citizen Papers to free up inventory space, since the fight is so easy at this point. We kick the bridge guard's spleen (not pictured), walk through Slave Camp (not pictured), recharge by wading into the pool (not pictured), then make our way back over the bridge, re-kicking the spleens of the guard and goblins (also not pictured). Now, Phoebus!



I love this thing, whatever it is.



Remember: whenever anything in this game is clean or well-kept, something bad is going on. Actually, something bad is always going on, but you get the idea.



This is a somewhat tough fight if we come here earlier, but at this point it's pretty easy.



The Long Mace is a good weapon. Louie gets to do something useful now!



And with that, let's make our way into the temple!

Paragraph 66 posted:

This is Phoebus' incredible Temple of the Sun, renown all across the world of Oceana. The sun's warm rays shine into an open atrium, bathing the broad leaves of a variety of exotic heliotropic plants. Acolytes of the temple are busy about on mysterious tasks. The floor is inscribed with a gold design depicting the motion of Oceana and her sister planets. From some unseen chamber you hear the soothing sound of running water.

A gold curtain swings aside and a short, swarthy man enters the chamber. He is dressed in blue robes inscribed with stars and moons, and wears a pointed cap. It seems the man very much wants to look like a wizard, but has no idea of what wizards actually look like.

"I am Mystalvision, High Priest of the Temple of the Sun," says the wizard in a comically high and wet voice. "You are to be commended for making it this far. I don't care that you cracked out of Purgatory, but your behavior since entering my city has been intolerable." Mystalvision snaps his fingers, and several cruel gentlemen dressed all in black appear out of nowhere. "Namtar's Stosstrupen would like to ask you some questions," Mystalvision sneers. "I should ask you to come along quietly, but it will be more fun to do this the hard way."

It's really a great introduction to Mystalvision. As funny as it is, this next battle is no joke.



10 Stosstrupen in melee range is the game's way of saying, "Fuck you." They can very easily stun your entire party in two turns. And if you get through them, you get to deal with this gem:



We'll learn more about Inferno later, but obviously it's a tough spell to tangle with. It hits our whole party, does good damage, and has better range than Sun Stroke. It's possible to win this fight, but it's really difficult and not really worth the effort. Best thing to do is conserve our MP, and let the Stosstrupen rough us up.



The following screen appears for about one second on my system. You almost have to take a screenshot to be able to read it!



This "sleep spell" is the reason it's not worth fighting the battle. There's no actual sleep spell in the game, this is just the game's way of making sure the Mystalvision battle is unwinnable. Even if you do beat him, he just casts this unstoppable sleep spell on us. Of course, this sleep spell is never ever seen again for the rest of the game. The game doesn't usually resort to this kind of bullshit, but here it is.



OK, no problem, time to use the Lockpick skill...



...Oh.



Well, fuck. Sure enough, Lockpick does nothing here:



Why did we think it was a good idea to take on the all-powerful master wizard exactly?