Part 100: Episode XCVII: Krelian – The Mr. Wizard of Solaris!
Episode XCVII: Krelian – The Mr. Wizard of Solaris!
Just a quick funicular ride and we make the transition from the Soylent System to Krelian’s Wacky Umbrella Laboratory. I’m sure this will be a fun tour. Full of SCIENCE!
Initially, we are dumped into a central lobby with a locked gate. Well...this is the end of game Umbrella Lab area. Weird themed keys are the early game stuff. We’re going to need a keycard...possibly a MO Disk. If we have to fight the Tyrant, then we may come across the Master Key for the area at the cost of a Self Destruction sequence. Oh well...let’s keep our eyes peeled as we explore.
Krelian’s Lab is a bit different than most Xenogears dungeons. Sure, there are still long, winding endless hallways. You’re never getting away from that in this game. But the difference here is that there’s actual neat shit scattered between the long corridors. I’m not going to include said hallways in-between points of interest. Let’s just say that Elly and Citan learned their penultimate Deathblows roaming this sprawling complex.
Our first stop is where Save Points come from... Fei can toggle a console to send the ones in suspension wildly spinning.
"Is it the thing we usually use to save?"
"The information of all the people who have accessed the memory cube from all over the world is being sent here now."
"This facility is the Integration Control Center?" "What's it for...?" *awkward silence* “Oh yeah...they never did actually justify a reason for save points to actually exist...” “Let’s just say it accesses the Internet and leave it at that.” “Agreed.” “Lame.”
Further down the hall, we come to a dark catwalk leading to well...
A somewhat large Gear is being kept in an Olympic sized swimming pool. Probably worth discussing.
"A... Gear!?" *shakes head* "No... Look! The surface of the armor isn't segmented... It's the same as Bart's Gear Andvari and the Gear we saw in Shevat... It's an Omnigear!" *shakes head* "But, this thing is huge!" ”And I don’t have a reference point from that one in Shevat because none of us saw it!” “Yeah...okay. That’s starting to bug me too. Is that going to be referenced many more times?” “Likely...” "Yes. It's got to be around 3 times as powerful as our Gears." ”Gears’ strength goes by size now?” “Doesn’t it usually...?” “The Dora. Hecht. That Bishop guy’s Gear I heard about. Shakhan’s Gear...all pretty big. All sucked.” “...Point taken.” "So... This is Solaris' Omnigear." ”So, should we...like...jack it?” “No. Now is not the time to trifle with such a thing.”
“Tch... I swear, if it comes back as a boss fight...”
Next up, we have a series of holding cells for kidnapped demi-humans (and a few regular humans) being converted into Wels. Most are in good old fashion Umbrella-esque containment capsules waiting to be...well, dropped out of a flying fishbowl in Aquvy or turned into canned meats or medicinal supplies seems to be the only outcome for most Wels. So one of the two.
But a few are being held in generic cages. Some plead to let you out. Others just babble nonsense. The key thing is every cage has a shiny treasure chest in the back of it. And the switch to release the cage lock is on a panel right next to ‘em.
We just need to...
“Y...you opened it... I told...you not to open it!!”
“Mi...my dog, please...take care of him...”
“He...help...me... My body...”
“I...kinda feel...like eating you up...”
“Bbbpbpbpobpobpobpobpyo!”
“Uh...my mind...min? M, min mi mi m...”
“Bbbbaababababbaabu...”
Fun times!
The Wels themselves are mostly the same variety we saw on the derelict Ethos ship from way back during Billy’s story arc. Only these are “Neo Wels”. The Neo enhancement?
Suicide bombing tactics. Since the only thing worse than a zombie mummy is an exploding zombie mummy.
There are also Orphans, which are much more annoying variants of those Rotten Sods from the Kislev Sewers. These guys counter every attack by sucking out EP or HP out of their attacker (their only attack is also leeching EP/HP. They’re decent punching bags for Deathblow training but eh. Security Cubes are infinitely better and out in droves in this dungeon.
There are also those undead mutants from the Ethos Dig Site that can only be killed with healing spells. Ho-hum. All the Wels fights are entirely optional and we could just truck through this area in a couple minutes. But where’s the fun in that?
Anyway, after several holding cells of kidnapped and experimented upon slave labor we come to a security console in the back of a conference room that unceremoniously unlocks that gate from the start of the dungeon. Bizarrely enough...they do not make us backtrack through the whole place. It unlocks a door just at the end of the hall that leads back to the central foyer. This dungeon is weird.
A few connecting corridors later...
Next up on the tour of the Solaris Science Department: Giant body parts floating in glass tubes. We’ve got a brain the size of a human adult and what appears to be a dissected giant horse sans head and legs.
Then there is...uhh...an Ent’s arm maybe? The one in the opposite tube is hard to make out from that perspective and pesky compass in the way. Let’s just scoot the camera over and...
Well that is just a giant’s torso is what that is. And looking at that earlier tube...I think we found the horse legs...
The last tube is just a giant fuck-off claw. The opposite one is just some indistinguishable chunks of meat. That is uhh...all a wee bit creepy. Especially if they all belonged to the same...thing. Which I would assume to be a centaur-crab hybrid of some manner. A frightening thought. Let us...just move on from here...
A couple rooms over we have lasers just frying the living shit out of some poor demi-humans. No explanation. No way to stop it. Just lasers blasting away up and down the poor sods stuck in the stasis field. I’m getting the feeling this Krelian chap might be kind of a dick. Perhaps he moonlighted as a professor at the same Med School that Citan attended.
Past the laser room we find yet another Wels storage area. This one contains a massive cage holding around a dozen infected demi-humans. In the back of the cage are two treasure chests. One contains an EtherVeiler (double elemental defense) and the other has a Deathblower 3 (crazy strong Level 3 Deathblow unlocked on a Gear.) Probably worth the effort. But, just be aware that you’re in for about twenty minutes straight of fighting battles with the only breaks being at the mercy of the enemies’ pathfinding in lumbering toward our party.
These fine fellows all have a bit of gabbing to do before attempting to consume our brains. Flavor Text Mk II time!
“Thanks... In return I’ll... Eat you!!”
“Help... I can’t control... Don’t kill me...”
“Y, you look tasty...”
“I, I’m a human... Used to be...”
“Ouch, it hurts, it hurts...”
“A mutant in addition to a Wels...”
“W, Wels are pretty good... H, how ‘bout you?”
“Ooooooooooo...”
Double fun times!
There is one special opponent in the bunch. Apparently Redrum back in the Kislev Sewers was this guy’s brother and he’s a bit pissed we offed his sibling.
This triggers yet another battle with a Redrum palette swap. Only this time there are two of ‘em to contend with at once. They still really haven’t been buffed, beyond a HP boost, since the first time we fought this boss back in Kislev. Indeed, their regular attacks don’t even break the double digits. They can, however, still use Murder (1 hit KO) and coordinate their attacks to kill two party members in sequence. But other than that annoyance, not much to deal with.
Music: Jaws of Ice
After the final Wels brawl, our party finds themselves traveling into an even deeper complex in the heart of Solaris. Weren’t we supposed to be sneaking into the Imperial Palace...?
The next series of hallways presents yet another locked door. This one is a pain in the ass. And a total dick move if you’re tone deaf. The shutter requires a specific audio sequence. I hope you have good memory for this one. You can press the assorted directions to hear the four tones we need. But the passcode itself is on the other side of the very long, random battle filled hallway.
In order to find the required tone, we need to investigate a few suspension tubes in the room. Krelian really loves his glass stasis tubes. And of the tubes will do but eh...let’s take a look at all three...
....So it would appear Krelian is keeping angel corpses (complete with halos) to study. Uhh... That is...interesting... Each container makes a distinct tone when raised or lowered.
Since I cannot convey tones via screen shots...just remember Up, Down, Up, Left, Right. Since even hearing it, good luck remembering it five random battles later. But before we proceed, let’s check out the other offices back by the dissected angel carcasses.
On this end of the hallway there are still a couple more oddball rooms. This one seems to contain some sort of Gear piloting simulation. Our Krelian is just really into arcade racing games. You decide!
And at the very end of the map is a room containing what appears to be a hologram of a cracked open Ft. Jasper. Or at least one of those giant point defense drones from the Eldridge. Did we leave anyone to guard that thing when we went to Solaris...?
Backtracking to the sound password door and proceeding further into the facility...
At the far end of this level we find a set of pseudo-staircases lined with blue versions those glass tube things in Mother Brain’s chamber in Tourian. I’m sure it is used for some sort of sciencey purpose.
We are nearing the end of the dungeon. Not many more sites to take in now. There is what I am just going to go ahead and assume is some manner of brainwashing device. I mean just look at it. I get the feeling it’s not a robotic hug machine.
One last stop before we reach the end of the dungeon. This room is...
Why it’s filled with Fei and the gang. We’re special enough to have our own creepy Krelian Labs room. Aww... The Gazel Ministry shouldn’t have.
Anyway, we can click on the assorted holograms to bring up a quick blurb regarding the character in question.
Poor Emeralda. 4000 years stuck in a tank in a dead city and she finally finds someone who she thinks is her Science Father...only for Citan to immediately break them apparent and stick her in the B-Team. Toward the end of the game I should do a comprehensive write-up of all of Citan Uzuki’s dick moves.
Whoever wrote these reports has done a spot-on job accessing Chuthulhu.
Nothing much to say about Maria. Much like the overall narrative. Heh. I bet Rico’s entry is just a post-it note beneath his name saying “Crap.”
Uhh...huh. Rico actually has more written about him than anyone. So it would seem that Rico got artificially turned into a demi-human by the Ethos. Perfect Works mentions the Ethos used to basically run Kislev but once Kaiser Sigmund took power he got fed up with their shit and purged them all from the government. So then the Ethos/Solaris got pissed and kidnapped his wife and son for Krelian experiment test subjects. His wife died and his son got turned into Blanka. None of this is important or ever mentioned again. But there’s the last bit of development Rico ever gets.
Billy is scheduled to go parkour around the Zeboim era next time he goes in for a check-up.
Dan...? What does Bart have to do with Dan?! I don’t like the sound of that one bit. No sir!
Hyuga Ricdeau is Citan’s real name? Ricdeau must be Solarian for “dickhead”.
So Elly has infinite potential to get an Omnigear upgrade. And she’s possibly one of the vague proper nouns the Gazel Ministry like to throw around. Good to know.
Fei appears to be in the same boat. Except he’s a “Contact”. And Solaris REALLY wants him dead. Poor Fei...
At the end of the next series of hallways we come to yet another locked shutter. Terrific. I smell some backtra--
...Or Citan can just pop open a hidden panel and punch in the password. That...works? Upon seeing this, Elly’s bullshit alarm fully fires off.
(Why... is the deactivation code for the door lock already known?) “Doc, wait!”
"This place was not meant to be seen since the origin of time. This facility centers around the Emperor and the Ministry's longevity experiments." "The origin of time?" *nods* "Yes... 10,000 years ago. Beings called humans were born here. The first were the Emperor and the Ministry's elders." "How could a human... live 10,000 years...?""Now only the Emperor is left. His destiny is to never die. However, the Ministry is different. Once, during the Diabolos invasion... the Ministry elders died losing their bodies. Now, the Solaris governing Ministry exists as data in memory banks. Each of their personalities are bits of data." "It's the data on the memory bank?" "Having neither flesh nor souls they are just binary numbers. They both exist and do not exist at the same time..." ”So...Solaris is ran by a 10,000 year old guy and his computer AI friends...? Alright then.”
“...they transferred a research facility that was once the Soylent System on the land to Etrenank. Eventually the facility was no longer only for the Emperor's life and the Ministry's resurrection, but it began producing food and drugs with additives that controlled the public. The memory cube Fei and them were using was meant for obtaining living data. Of course, the 'Ethos' also sent various data to help." "That means we were living for those elderly people of Gazel?" *nods* "Yes." "They're transferring and taking living data via memory cubes to the Ministry so they can use them to resurrect their bodies!?" "Yes." "You mean those mutants getting disassembled at that factory were too?" "Basically, they wish to reuse the useless dregs." ”The Emperor has always been a big proponent of recycling, you see...” "That's horrid... How could they..."
"Citan, how would you know that? Not even the government or the army know such things!" ”What Med School did you say you went to, again? Secret History of Mankind wasn’t a course I recall offering anywhere when I was applying to colleges... “ "What?" *folds arms* "Come to think of it, it seems like we took the long way here on purpose. There must've been a faster way to Bart and them. Also, the route to get to this block can't even be downloaded on the map. So how did we know what streets we were on?" "Doc, didn't you also find out..." "That's impossible. First of all, that partition we took to get into this block. That panel was displayed to be a P4 facility. Even a high ranking officer of Solaris can't get in here. You think they'd leave a facility like that unlocked and open? And you could open it? Who exactly are you?" "Hey, wait a minute. It could've been luck." ”Luck factors into opening a hidden panel in a facility that just has a big CLASSIFIED on the map? Luck figures into also knowing the password to enter said facility? No. Sorry. My threshold for tolerating bullshit has bottomed out back when this jerk made us into surprise cannibals.” “Something's wrong! You were able to get into Solaris under martial law, sneak into the palace, get through a P4 level door, and even learn the purpose of the P4 facility... How is that possible? Even father. I'm sure it was possible you were in Solaris then. Even Jessie, who was also in Solaris then, didn't know the motive behind the M Project. So Citan, why do you know? You know even more details than Maria... something's not right... I know it."
Pictured: Fei’s brain finally processing Citan is an unbelievably shady unassuming country doctor.
"I should've noticed sooner. Citan... Who are you?" “...”
*extends hands* *clap* *clap*
Welp! Look what happens when you finally call Citan out on all his bullshit. He employs the Clapper and vanishes with your love interest. This can’t end well...
Casual Elly Concept Art – Well, at least she’s wearing a full skirt. That’s something.