Part 34: Into the Mouth of Satan.

34: Into the Mouth of Satan.




Araym and Badu will make their appearance momentarily, but for a conversation with Campbell, this is the obvious party makeup.



General Campbell?
Maya, you've come. I feared you would ignore my request.
Your daughter has been very worried about you.
We don't have time to argue of the past, I'm here to try and correct my mistakes. I'm dying.
Dying?
Radiation from all of the experimental weapons I was involved in. But I want to redeem myself before I go. I've learned that Jinam was developing a counter weapon that can neutralize the Doomsday Device Doskias stole from my ship.
But Jinam was destroyed.
Yes. But the weapon still lies in its bowels. If you can find a way to reach it, and recover this weapon, it can be used against Doskias.
How?
Jinam now rests under this very continent, where the Doomsday Device put it. Find a way to blast through from the catacombs of Wind City, to the now underground Jinam Labs. Here is a pack of explosives, but you will need to find more. After that, a keycard will be needed to open the door to the heart of the Lab.
What sort of card?
One of the security passes used by the Jinam Generals. High level clearance.
But where will I find one?
You won't find one inside the Lab, so you must search quickly. We need that weapon.

What kind of weapon are we searching for?
It will neutralize the Doomsday Device that Doskias uses to raise the land masses. But it is hidden in the bowels of the labs of Jinam, which is now under our very feet. After blasting through the catacombs, you'll need a Jinam security pass to get into the final building. But you won't find one inside the labs themselves.

Father, I'm glad you're alive...
You mother would be very proud of you. I loved her very much. I wish I had been there for her when she was sick, instead of creating these godforsaken weapons...



Jinam's war plagues took her away from me, I only wanted to make sure that never happened to you. Now I'm paying for my obsession.
I'm sure you'll do the right thing when the time comes.

I don't have anything to say.

I was kind of hoping for more out of Lobo. If you bring Araym, at least, you get some conversation:

You're dying of radiation from military experiments?
Aye, it tears my body apart.
I lost my arms to war...Lot of good it did me, when my own people turned their backs on me and my kind after the war.

Ok then. We need more explosives, and a Jinam access card.



Hey, look at that! We picked that up in the wreck of the Tiamat a long time ago on Shell 5.



As for the explosives, we know who to talk to when we need to get hooked up with some boom.

Go away, I ain't feelin' too good.
What ails you?
I got sick from breathin' in too much of the Mold Forest. It ain't good for me.

Do you have any more of the explosives we borrowed before?
No, but I know where there is more, that I do!
Where?
Ain't sayin'! I'M SICK! AND WHEN I'M SICK, I'M CRABBY! IF I CAN'T HAVE FUN, neither will you!

Sigh.

We could run around finding out what the cure for mold sickness is, but as it happens I already know: helgak bone and antidote herb.



Bone!



Herb!



Antidote!

Incidentally, you can't break the game this way. The flute isn't used up, so you can still open the lumen plant with it even if you grind it up as soon as you get it. The herb is found in Pranno, but Pranno still exists, on Shell 1; if you missed the herb earlier, it's still there, guarded by the tormented shades of Pranno's former inhabitants.

Fortunately, we got it earlier, so we don't need to go there.

Ho! That feels better, much better, thanks!
Now will you tell us where to find some more explosives?
Sure, sure, here ya go!

And he hands us two more detpacks, along with a pickaxe.



It's time.



We go through the doorway behind the Draxx statue, as though going to the cathedral.



Instead, however, we bear left to this bricked-over doorway.

Alright! Let's rock and roll!



I LOVE IT!

There's another doorway just behind it, and once that crumbles...



...we're in the catacombs proper.



The enemies here are much nastier than in the catacombs outskirts.



Badu, incidentally, has learned all of his special abilities. I'll try to showcase them all while we're down here.




SonicStun is occasionally useful, capable of completely shutting down one enemy for a while - and if you haste Badu, you can keep the enemy perma-stunned. It's not bad, but in most cases you're better off spending your Core on something that kills the enemy, rather than something that weakens them.



PoisonSpit damages and poisons. Poison as a whole is kind of useless in Septerra Core, though, so this ability really isn't worth it.





SonicWave hits all enemies for a respectable amount of damage. The utility is questionable, however, given that twice as much Core will get you three times as much damage via Big Bang.



There's a lot of fights down here. I briefly considered taking one screenshot for each fight, but I have decided to spare you, gentle readers, and just visit the hilights.




Most of which look like that. Once you have Big Bang and enough money to seriously destabilize the world economy, there's no reason not to use it on every fight.



Anyways, the goal here is to exit to the southeast. There's a locked door in the way, though, so we throw a lever, which extends or retracts a bunch of bridges, which lets us exit to the southwest.




This area consists of a grid of small rooms linked by bridges.



And containing zombies, leeches, and the like. Our goal is the room furthest to the south, which contains the key we need.




And there it is.



One of the western rooms contains a Psyche Charm, which provides a nice boost to Core and is worth picking up. The others contain enemies and a few healing items.



Key in hand, we unlock the door and descend further into the catacombs.



Pausing briefly to dispatch that rarest of enemies: one that doesn't die instantly to Black Hole.



The next floor is a pull-the-levers-to-open-the-doors affair.



Same tileset.



Same enemies.



Alright, the transparent panther thing is new.



There is one point of interest to this area. A lever inside a cell...



Opens a door...



Behind which is a chest which contains the Vampyre and Curse cards.

Ok, so it's not that interesting; Curse is outclassed by pretty much every other card in the game, and as for Vampyre, it's situationally useful, but this is not one of those situations.



As I will now demonstrate.



Healing items damage undead. In effect, undead have anti-hitpoints. So what happens when you try to drain their life?



And that's why we won't be using Vampyre again until we're out for this hellhole.




I decide to mix things up a bit by healing the last group of enemies to death.



The third and final doorway explodes. This is why you need to take Araym with you all this time rather than just using him to crack the first two doorways and then swapping him out.



And behind that doorway is our destination: Buried Jinam.

Next Time: we plunder Jinam and then leave this place behind forever.