Part 9: Immortal Ka

Oh.

Yeah.

I knew that.

Honestly.




...what the fuck happened here?

Music: City Destroyed



Well, the city is wrecked and abandoned. No trace of anyone here, unless you count the destruction...



We are stuck with the equipment we bought before the lava dungeon, which is yet another reason to grind before talking to the duke.



Even the castle is in disarray...



...but there is one survivor!


I translated the azcan runes and have discovered the valley we inhabit has an ancient being called a Burrower beneath it. It drives all life forms crazy.
Since you have traveled outside the valley you have remained sane. Our only hope is to destroy it!
To do so you must cross the river and travel north. Follow the northern wall east, then go south to the swamps. There you will find the caverns of the evil elves.
Take this scroll and read it when you find the burrower. It will summon the immortal Ka who will destroy the beast.

He's asking me to walk around the entire world map again? I don't care how badly this thing needs to die, there is no fucking way that's happening.



Fortunately, there is an alternative. Remember there was a guy here - brown robe, stood by a grave?



Turns out he was blocking a path that will take us where we need to go.

The things in the distance are cave bears. Also, there are tiger beetles. Nothing new here.







Only trap in the whole dungeon. I should probably be grateful, because it's pretty big.



Shitty reward we can't even spend, check. Rings of regeneration doing their thing, check.



These guys are new! But these are black, sorry, dark elves (also known as drow), not shiny Aryan ones like Questor, so naturally we are superior.

And when I say that, I mean Merlin one-shots the entire group with Ice Storm.



The Pyro Hydra looks... identical to a red dragon. I'm pretty sure that's not right.



So does the Flapsail, which is why I don't care that I didn't get pictures of them where I wasn't murdering them. Both of them go down to the usual tactics, and with this much space, I don't even need to Entangle them first.



And here's the exit!



And here is where the cave ends, behind an old tree stump.



Say, that looks terribly familiar...



Fortunately, the medallion actually does something! Imagine if we had left it back in the lava pits. That would have been... the pits.



This is a new dungeon texture. Like the vines in earlier caves, the "secret" doors here are pretty easy to spot.



It looks as if it might be possible, of have been possible at some point, to obtain the medallion before the town goes to hell. Maybe with a lot of clerics and a lot of Pro Fire spells...



The elven caves are full of high-level encounters. Yes, those are two flapsails in the same room.



Our blonde norse superman elf gasses some of his distant dark-skinned relatives to death. I see nothing wrong with this at all.



Elves have a tendency to drop +1 chainmail and swords when they die, but we want none of it.



This guy is new, but has no HP. Merlin is much sturdier.



It's just another couple of steps to the elven city. It's a palette swap of the azcan temple, which is pretty boring.



The difficulty increases as we continues inside... I guess. Oh, you know how these things go by now.



Free +2 chain from the elven LT. No one wants it.



...these guys have a lot of ranks.



As opposed to "elf wizard". I'm not sure which one is stronger, but this one shows up later, so it's probably him.



The city is huge. The 1 and 2 are Flesh <-> Stone scrolls, one of each flavour, but we care not. First turn to the right, straight down the corridor.



There are steps up, leading to...



...a door...



...which leads to the final dungeon.



The enemies in here are presumably the strongest in the game.



Unfortunately, these rooms are huge and... I don't really need to continue.



It's rather a pity you don't run into these things in the top-down view where they'd be a threat.



Well, almost a threat.



Well okay, they wouldn't be a bigger challenge there.



Eventually, we reach the end.







And so, we witness the utterly rad ending to this game!

VIDEO: Watch this, damn you. Watch all of it.

(Or at least listen to the music.)



Marmaris gave us a scroll of Summon T-Rex!
















Holy shit, we have the best god ever!



The party parades through the recently restored streets...



...on their way to the castle.



The duke is back on his throne...



...and still hasn't found any pants.


Allow me to attempt amends.
Each of you will be the leaders of your guilds.
We will rule this land together and try to make peace with our neighbours.
Words can not express my gratitude.



And then the credits roll!

(Music.)



The game is not very long, nor is it difficult. It has a few interesting ideas and pulls them off as well as a 16-bit game can be expected to. It may not be very well known, but I think it's a fun game - though perhaps mostly due to all the ways it can be broken.



After the credits, we get a screen of our characters - but to my knowledge, there was never a game that used these stats in any way.



And that's the whole thing! But as always, there were a few things that were planned but didn't end up used...



Several special swords exist in the game, with icons and all, but since there is no proper description, it's hard to tell if they work as intended. Hitting things with them didn't do anything amusing, at any rate.

In order, these are: +1 Sword, Energy Drain; +1 Sword, +3 vs. Enchanted; +1 Sword/+2 vs Spell Users; +1 Sword, Flames; and +1 Sword, +3 vs. Dragons. There's also a Ring of Spell Turning, a Ring of Water Walking, and a Ring of Weakness (using the amulet's icon). Unfortunately, the water walking ring doesn't let you walk on water. That would have been neat (and saved a lot of time).



Questor has found some Boots of Speed, and they actually work! Also Drums of Panic, Girdle of Giant Strength, Horn of Blasting...



...with real blasting action! The potions are Heroism, Giant Strength and Invulnerability, and the wand Detect Secret Doors. Most of these don't seem to do anything.



I think the Potion of Speed first in this list may also work, but I'm not sure. The scrolls are Protection from Elementals, Protection from Magic and Protection from Undead. The next item is a Staff of Striking, and it actually does work - it deals some (apparently fairly minor) damage to a target enemy. Might have been nice early on. Also, there are wands of Magic Detection, Negation... and Detect Secret Doors again because I am .



And that's a Wand of Trap Detection and a couple of nameless scrolls.

There are also several spells that didn't make it into the game.



It's far from all of them that have icons, but several do. As far as I can tell, Cure Blindness, Wizard Eye, Detect Traps, Animate Dead, Create Water, Sticks to Snakes, Barrier and Remove Barrier, Hold Portal, Read Languages, Mirror Image, Wizard Lock, Fly, Infravision, Water Breathing, Project Image, Wall of Fire, Wall of Stone and Wall of Iron all exist as scrolls. Again, most of them either do nothing, or cause some harmless sparkles, but it's fun to imagine what they might have used some of that stuff for.



And that's all she wrote. I hope you've enjoyed Warriors of the Eternal Sun - I certainly did!

(Bonus music: the game's awesome Title Theme for those who missed it before.)