PoR entry 14 (a very convenient truth)

So, we're not NEARLY as thorough as we thought.

First of all, it turns out that there was an unturned stone in the Kuto's Well area of Phlan. It's merely in the form of another old woman with foreboding tales. Interestingly, though, it appears the actual Pool of Radiance is making headlines, or soundbites I guess. "An evil spirit from an unholy pool guides your enemies. It hides behind a fair countenance. Be not deceived." Hmmm. Evil hiding behind a fair countenance, eh? I had a feeling waaaay back at the beginning that the good government of Phlan isn't all that good. We'll see.

Oh, and there was a weird journal entry discovered around that part of town too.

But the really important thing is that near the old woman we found another set of bracers. Now Disposo isn't guaranteed to be killed every battle.

So, as tough as we are, we felt it was about time to take care of that kobold cave again. I think we probably tried about six or seven times using various methods of fireball strategy. It's hard enough to fight everyone, but it's even harder to knock everybody over before the trolls start picking themselves back up again. Anyway, when we finally defeated the trolls and kobolds, the evil guy in the cave sent another wave of enemies on us. This one had warthogs. Nevertheless, we didn't succeed.

Dejected, we thought we'd hang out in the pyramid again for old time's sake. If anybody is reading this who has actually beaten the game, they probably laughed out loud at the last entry when I wrote that I thought I had the whole place mapped out. Obviously not. Either I missed a teleporter the first time around, or the game variables changed which enabled me to investigate further. I must admit that when the town clerk informed us that our next mission would be to clear up the pollution of the river, it was pretty obvious that it had to do with the pyramid in some way. The river is fine before the pyramid, but everything downstream of the pyramid is all gross and salty. The overhead view of the land shows that quite obviously.

Anyway, after a series of transportation stuff happening, we came across a door with a password on it that we needed to translate. Obviously this is some kind of copy protection that didn't come with the abandonia doxbox copy of the game I play. So, I consulted GameBanshee for the appropriate answer. Cheap, I know, but I suppose it's the price I pay for piracy of out-of-print DOS-based computer games from 20 years ago.

So behind the door, we found a big polluting machine that we disabled. Once again, the game gives us the option. It's sort of surprising that the game doesn't just do these obvious sorts of things for us.

After that, we dealt with the feared wizard Yaresh! Actually, I'm not sure we even knew his name before reading the sign above his room. Silver still had her fireball spell available, so defeating him was no problem at all. He was accompanied by five or six lizardmen, which is a surprisingly small entourage for this part of the game. I'm guessing that the pain of finding our way around the pyramid is the challenge here, and not the caliber of end boss. Yaresh left behind quite a bit of paperwork:
It's kind of nice to see that there are politics in the criminal world. It's not like there's just one enemy controlling everything. Good thing, there are politics. I imagine if the entire criminal element got along and was organized, then we'd already be enslaved to them.

Past Yaresh was just one more room with some lizardmen in there. They mentioned something about saying something to other lizards. Looks like we'll be doing a little more cheating to figure it out. Hey, you know what? That skeleton back on Sokal Keep! Oh, man! I just realized as I'm typing right this very minute. That thing didn't have something I'd figure out; that thing had something written on itself that's part of the copy protection! Whatever it is, it's what I'm supposed to say to the ghosts! Oh, craptacular. Well, we'll be talking about that next time. We'll also probably be talking more lizardmen in the future, because when we got back into town, the clerk said something about preventing them from joining the enemy.

So, yeah. They gave us a bundle for clearing up the pollution problem. This was bigger than the Pelican Brief. The environment is so hot right now. The experience achieved pretty much raised everybody up a level except for Chlorine -- who's at level 7 right now, so she's got a lot more XP between classes now. Unfortunately, we're out of money, so we can't buy our diplomas, at least not with cash. We'll finally need to trade in our gems and jewelry.

Not a moment too soon either. The clerk gave us a pretty cool +3 two-handed sword to use specifically on the undead. Apparently, the ghostly situation is so catastrophic, that the FEMA-equivalent on Phlan is actually distributing means to combat it.

Next up: Sokal Keep and Valhingen Graveyard... again.