Part 13: The Obligatory Appearance of the Undead.

Hey everyone here's the entirety of chapter 12. Before we start I'd like to address something I should have told you at the beginning of this thread. You may notice that I don't show much combat as I play through. That's because the combat engine for Paladin's Quest makes such image capture during combat pretty difficult. For example, I don't get an icon to point to a command I want to use. I tap the D-Pad to indicate my command and it's automatically registered. Then once all commands are entered for the entire party I get one mass confirmation for all of them before they are executed.

Additionally the menus for all my possible attacks are plastered in front of the enemies. Meaning the only time I can get a clear screenshot of the enemies is when I'm attacking or being attacked. During that period there's a good chance that there's going to be some special effects going off. Bottom line, it's hard to get good combat screenshots from this game because of several factors. Anyway, on with the show.

Previously, on Let's Play: Paladin's Quest:

While traveling through Saskuot to destroy Noi Gren Johnny and Mindy learned that Zaygos' rule was not absolute. A resistance force blew up the Rope Network line they were riding. Rather than befriend and assist out heroes, the resistance takes Mindy Hostage to force Johnny to help liberate one of their operatives (who also happened to be their leader's fiance). After infiltrating Canshiuto and liberating Wind, the captured operative, the town alarm was triggered. Rather than fight a few guards, Johnny and company had to fight through the entire town, including old women, and children who mobbed the heroes. After much bloodshed they completed their escape, Johnny was reunited with Mindy, and the resistance sent them on their way with a note to prevent any further misunderstandings.

So begins

Yeah that's right. I am not having sex with you Mindy. Deal with it.

You're going to be begging for it in under forty-eight hours. Just you wait.

You know, this Rope Network station looks really crappy. Those benches have to be at least forty years old. What's going on here? Fancy mass transit terminals are the earmark of any good fascist dictatorship. Zaygos has no clue how to be a tyrant.

End of the line huh? On a related topic who did you piss off to get stationed here? You swear your commanding officer's daughter looked eighteen? That's the worst excuse in the book. Mindy you may want to take a few steps back. Oh hell, he's coming right for us! Watch those busy hands mister! Nobdy touches that ass but me, and then only when she's asleep!

After making a bloody mess of the rope network lobby we realized that the next gondola wasn't scheduled to arrive for a week. There was nothing to do but check out that ghost town

He said it was to the west right. Well, that's the opposite of the direction we should go to complete our grand quest, but what the hell.

There it is, just looks like a normal egg town to me. Closer look time.

You sir, are the worst greeter ever. Either that, or the town is the worst place ever.

Well you certainly weren't underselling this place Mr. Greeter Guy. Maybe talking to the local spooky ghosts isn't the best idea. Let's try the pub.

Even the bartended hates this place. So it must be pretty bad. Are specters lousy tippers?

Well I can certainly relate to wiping out an entire town. Hell, you can practically do it by accident sometimes. Though since this is a place for lost and wandering souls I bet we should be able to find a mercenary to fill that character slot.

Well I meant living mercenaries, but he seems friendly for a ghost. Besides, maybe having a specter on the team will help us get along with the local apparitions.

That's one hell of a rapeface though.

Welcome to the team ghost of Rowan Atkinson.

I decide to rest at the inn, hoping against hope that Mindy would be too scared to sleep in her own bed. I should have known better, that girl fears no man living or dead. Which is of course hot, I mean hot!

After another boring night we see a familiar face at the check out counter, Joyce from Misuto. For those of you with a touch of the ADD Joyce was the woman who gave our team the bread that stopped the population of Saskuot from stabbing us on sight.

You're in the resistance, I guess I was wrong when I said they were all incompetent jerks.

The inn keeper is the leader of the resistance here? As the living population of this place is under twenty people, I guess it had to be somebody. Try as I might I've never been able to get more than the nightly rate out of these guys, but I'll give showing him that note a shot.

Yeah I don't wanna sleep here, I just woke up. Look at this thing here, isn't it shiny? I think Grunt wrote on a Ding Dong wrapper.

Success! I got an innkeeper to say something different. It's a miracle I tells ya!

I'm not doing anymore favors for anyone without knowing what's involved first. Tell me what you need.

No just I said I'd hear you out. Take the cocks out of your ears and listen.

While I'm not really in the mood to help the resistance, perhaps helping these restless spirits to finally find peace would, in some small way, make up for that act of genocide I just committed. I'm in. Before I set out I'll tell Joyce what's up. She's still the nicest person we've met on this continent.

Glad to hear you got together with that Zaran guy. He seemed to really care about you. Enough to throw himself thoughtlessly into a fight that was out of his league even.

So the seeds are on an island to the south? I hope there's a ferry.

I don't see an island, but there's a tower on this peninsula. Maybe the innkeeper was just geographically challenged.

This tower is a pretty short dungeon, but it has two gimmicks. Firstly those ghost things behind me. One appears in each random battle. They run away or use weak attacks and spells for the most prat, but they're cumulative. After the battle ends, defeated or not they follow the party. When you get enough of them behind you, this happens.

They merge into this thing called a BigBoss it's moderately tough, but not as much as the name would imply.

So you walk up the tower a ways until you encounter the second gimmick.

This room with holes in the floor. The idea is you're supposed to guess which one to jump down to drop a single floor at a time. If you do it correctly you get a treasure for each floor.

Including this S Tavern thing. More on what it does when we get out of the dungeon

You drop through a few more floors and eventually you find the glow seeds.

At which point you can leave

While the team walks back to the town I'll tell you about the S Tavern item. It's a single use item that lets me summon a single mercenary I've worked with before. By summon I mean I can hire them again regardless of my current location. As I said it's single use, but I think there's more than one in the game. Also of concern is the fact that of course the mercenaries will still be the level they were at when they were last in my party, but if there is a particularly popular chacater or two it does allow us to bring them back if we want. Just something to keep in mind.

Back at Karon our hero's are making their triumphant return.

One slight clearing of a guilty conscience here I come.

Here are the glow seeds. Even though you gave us lousy directions.

Yes, guide them to their eternal rest.

Yes I could use a rest too. Thanks, you're a stand up guy.

When we woke the next morning the innkeeper and Joyce were both gone. We rushed outside fearing they began whatever ritual they were trying without us. Insuring some large boss would jump out and kill the hell out of them

Guess I'm a poor judge of character, and he took Joyce hostage. He is about to experience levels of pain usually reserved for the victims of insane medical expeiments.

Hey ghosties, back the hell off before I visit a second death upon your domes!

Bitches don't listen, bitches get blasted.

Hey innkeeper, I just did that to someone who was non corporeal. Imagine what I can do to you. Also by hostage he clearly means sacrifice, yay for censorship!

Wow you're an idiot. No matter how obvious it is that I'm going to just kill them, these idiots just keep coming. Time for a pounding montage.

Between my spells, and Gunny dropping a boulder on his head a few times, this guy never stood a chance.

I've been wearing the things out in the open the whole time. You're the first person to even notice. Even then it didn't affect your decision to cross me at all! My opinion of your intelligence keeps plummeting. Not that it matters anymore because you're fucking dead.

I say again, with followers like you Zaygos can bring it on.

With their leader slain the specters dissipate. Except for Bean, who also never betrayed me. I gotta find out what this guys story is. More importantly we've got to save Joyce.

Oh God, she's bleeding pretty bad. Mindy, elevate her legs. Let's make some tourniquets everyone DO SOMETHING!

imsosorry.jpg You don't need to apologize for anything Joyce. Just, just don't die okay.

I think I'm gonna be sick. I wasn't sick after I blew through an entire town's population in an hour.

I told you before you don't have anything to apologize for, I'm the one who should be apologizing to you. I'm sorry I slept in this morning.

Joyce? Joyce! Talk to me.

I... I don't even know what to say anymore Mindy.

My sentiments exactly.

That only seems proper.

The last few days have been quite a bummer haven't they?

Come on Mindy let's go. If we don't do something about the state of this place we're going to be digging a lot more graves.
To Be Continued

Chapter Epilogue: Excerpt from the journal of Johnny

After digging a grave for Joyce we spent the night at the now abandoned inn. That's probably going to be a blow to the local economy, but with the specters gone this town has a chance to thrive for the first time in ten thousand years. When we woke up this morning and got ready I was surprised to see that Mindy had decided to not wear her leggings today. There was a time, only a few days ago actually, when that one little thing would have made me the happiest guy on the face of the Earth. Damn she's got some nice gams. I didn't comment to her about that though, or even about noticing her change in wardrobe. It just didn't seem right to do that today. The gondola still isn't gong to arrive for days so I guess we'd better look for the base Joyce told us about. still i can't help but wonder what the hell is wrong with me. I'm on a world saving adventure with the prettiest, smartest, and possibly strongest girl on two continents. Who gets to do that? I should be running around with a deliriously happy smile on my face and a constant erection. The enormity of what we're trying to accomplish is becoming more and more clear to me though. I hope to God I'm not going all emo at this stage of the game. Mindy will barely give me two looks as it stands. Nail polish would be the last screw in the coffin.

(By the way, An Pan is great!)
Entry ends

These last few chapters have been bordering on Soul Blazer/Illusion of Gaia/Terranigma territory in terms of shockingly depressing moments haven't they?

I should be back with a short update in a two hours or less. There's a group of mercenaries right around the corner so I need your input before we can get into the meat of the next chapter.