Part 29: I Don't Want To See What They'd Do To David Bowie

I Don't Want To See What They'd Do To David Bowie

Last time on Tides of Numenera, we abused the shit out of our already abused brother so hard he committed suicide by Sorrow and left us all his worldly possessions.

Now that we've taken literally everything from him, we drank all the acid piss and died so we can conduct Deep Introspection(tm).



Anyway. This is the labyrinth, our weird mental mindspace zone which contains
-1 penis meme we got from the psychic guy
-The Specter, a blue ghost dressed like a pimp who wants us to repair the resonance chamber and is totally not the Changing God
-A whole area of angry women ghosts upset about the probability machine
-An odd collection of reflections that do stuff.

Anyway, Seria down there is giving us +1 to all stat pools. Choi showed up after we stole her from Inifere during the time travel flashback. What's she got to say?



: Talk to Choi.

The game has been pushing hard that we care about this kid for some reason. I do not know why.



: How are you?



: Are you all right?



: What happened to you?

It's at this point I say fuck it and do the dumb psychic dance thing.





There are two levels to this. Right now we just get a max health boost. We can wander around the real world to upgrade it, but unfortunately we're stuck here right now with stupid crap to do.




Well, uh, hi?



Well, shit. You can technically access this side quest in Part 1, but I didn't and will be paying the price.



: I would speak with you, Inifere.



I get a very pseudo-Shakespearean vibe from Inifere, as though a sci-fi bad writer culturally osmosed that Shakespeare was "good" and set out to copy him on the most simplistic level.

: How did you get here?



We...did? Sure. Why the fuck not. Incidentally, you get this after the non-merecaster flow as well.

: Have you found some comfort here?



: How can I help you, Inifere?



: Is there no way I can help you?



: Can you teach me how to open the Gate?

We should already know this from the merecaster flashback. I am 99% sure we can't use it.



: Do you know how I can bring peace to Choi?



: Tell me something you learned in your years beyond the Gate.



: Come, tell me something you learned.

A better game would let you unlock the Gate powers as your new focus. This is...not that game.

: Let Inifere's emptiness drag you in.

WAKE ME UP!

Ok, that is the only line of that song I can remember. Inifere's weird nihilistic depression just isn't very compelling. I get that his whole backstory was that the Changing God made him to open the gate to Hell and then CG chickened out and decided Hell was too bad, but this shit is so over the top it's funny rather than tragic.





We take a hit to our intellect pool to get a point of might edge.




Oh, fuck.



Remember these assholes? The Changing God cult sent us into the clock because we didn't have a focus on our character sheet, and we got to select from three completely uninspired focus abilities: Talks Good, Does Extra Damage, and Has Shield? We got kicked out by the Sorrow's Black Demon Seed after we picked our focus, and it's been chasing these three losers around the MC Esher painting while we've been out.



The Sorrow is so elusive sometimes it feels like we are trying to track it down rather than it supposedly chasing us.



As always, the failures of the Ninth World make The Last Castoff help with their problems.





Blah blah blah Divaticu can cast a not-spell that banishes the not-demon and I have him do that.



I also let the rest of the party join because...why not?



It's still not an interesting fight. We have two of the three focus losers with us and the entire party can dump enough firepower into the Sorrow fragment that it dies quickly and horribly.



The three stooges disappear into some other part of the Labyrinth. I elected to omit their chattering.



We can leave the portal and we get intercepted by The Specter.





Anyway there's a whole new portal of uninteresting Sorrow monsters to fight! Join us next time as we sword our way through sperm not-demons!