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Time to see what's down the vine ladder...

A purple thing. It doesn't seem to be a monster. I wonder what happens if we try to pick it up.

OW.

We move further into the level and find a few skitters. Once we ki

Aw hell, not this again. I like having the flashlight on.

Much better.

...fuck you.

It turns out that the way to get rid of the flying reptiles is to step on the violet pods. The explosion will take off 2 health but it drives the reptiles away.

With that in mind, we go hunting real monsters again.

I think we found them

That giant pile of monsters, and some extra ones I just killed, were between us and this.

The green crystal makes earthquakes. The good part is that the attack affects everything within a certain distance of me, including monsters behind me or obscured by walls. It's also worth a point, which brings me up to 20 health. The bad part is that it takes forever to recharge and it doesn't work on ghasts because they have magical earthquake powers or something.

In the center of the map we find more shiny things for our collection.

The sapphire is also worth 1 point, and $15,000.

Nearby is a second sapphire. I get another $15K, but not another point.

In the northwest area of the map we find another one of these dudes. He still won't let me by, but I did just find a brand new weapon, so let's give it a shot.

Much better. I hope he gets reincarnated as a headless

When we walk over his corpse, we find out that these guys are called sentinels.

Behind him is a long, twisting corridor that dead-ends at a save rune. The ghast was caught in the middle of dissolving into dust.

When you're not being attacked by reptiles, dodging pods is kind of annoying. They're always blocking the way you want to take.

On the opposite side of the map we find another guy, and introduce him to our new friend.

Same deal as before- a long, twisting corridor.

There were rather a lot of monsters in that room.

THAT'S ALL?!

Oh, OK. Thanks.

Ten points for the reference

This is apparently based on a true incident that happened to one of a developer's friends. That friend went on to become the driving force behind the plot of the Marathon series.

And now you know... The Rest Of The Story.

Yes, fortunately. If not, you've got some backtracking to do.

Definitely got the first part under control. Have to get back to you on the second.

Only one thing to do now- go south.

This must be the pod he was talking about.

Only one way to open it. This is gonna sting like a bitch.

OH MY GOD JC A BOMB.

A BOMB.

We're not allowed to use it yet (we're 15.3 meters underground at this point). If it were me down there, I'd set it anyway and get the fuck out

There's not much else down here, so I head back up to LOSVC. There's a ladder to the west I didn't get around to exploring (damn reptiles), but it and the one I'm taking both lead back up to the same room, only with their exits much closer together. This breaks the idea that ladders are simply straight lines up and down and makes me imagine the player crawling through all kinds of narrow shafts and tunnels while passing between levels

Next update: I passed some sentinels a while back, right?



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