I can tell it’s going to be SO EASY finding my way around this place!

My first port of call is the large house opposite the well, which turns out to be an orphanage run by nuns. On the subject of nuns, I was really terrified of them as a kid, which I think stemmed from this story I read about a guy who was walking his dog on the beach when he noticed what he thought was a woman in a white dress approaching him, but upon closer examination it turned out to be a nun with no face under her habit, which really scared the shit out of him. …Which game am I recapping again? Oh yeah, the one with all the dragons and wankers. A frog kid sitting right next to the door remarks that his clothes are pretty snazzy, and that they were a gift “from the Wyndian princess!”. And yes, he’s talking about Elina, not Sandy. Aren’t you glad I’m here to point this stuff out? An elderly, kindly-looking nun by the name of Sister Lyta tells Ruley that she’ll be more than happy to talk to him, just as soon as she’s finished seeing to all the kids. Wait, that sounded wrong. One of the kids reveals that none of them can eat until Chino gets his ass back to the orphanage. Chino, it seems, is quite fond of running around the city like Road Runner on speed. Another child snits that Chino is “such a kid”, despite appearing to be under ten years old herself. Whatever, random brat. Some more kiddies upstairs excitedly inform Ruley about their recent visit from Elina, who was on a goodwill tour, and brought a buttload of clothes and toys for the orphanage with her. For the ‘plot’ (and I still use that term very loosely) to advance any more, Ruley must search the city for Chino, who I’m starting to dislike already.

Upon exiting the building, Ruley stumbles across a commotion between the dog-faced Chino and another nun, who is chasing the kid along one of the perimeter walls of the town. Eventually the nun falls flat on her face (am I going to Hell for laughing at that?) and Chino takes off, providing a perfect opening for yet another Minitorture. Ooh, I almost felt that collective shiver from you readers. This particular game involves chasing after the little shit. Oh, but it isn’t as simple as that. No, you see, Chino follows a predetermined path around the city, but will run in the opposite direction if he happens to notice Ruley in front of him. As you can imagine, then, this isn’t exactly the most fair Minitorture in the game (and that’s saying a lot). After twenty minutes and more curses than from a ship full of sailors a few stress-free moments, though, I manage to catch Chino by taking a shortcut and cutting him off at some stairs. HAHA, THOUGHT YOU COULD OUTRUN ME, SUCKER?! …Excuse me.

Ruley drags Chino back to the orphanage, where Sisters Lyta and Fellflatonface thank the party before declaring to the hellspawn that dinner is ready. Interestingly, Chino receives no punishment whatsoever, despite ignoring his guardians, making one of them fall over, and placing himself in danger by dashing along precarious walls at high speed. Anyway, Sister Lyta invites the party upstairs to talk, whereupon she reveals that Princess Elina did indeed visit the orphanage. Clay demands to know “where Elina and the people with her [went] when they left?” “Well…I’m terribly sorry, but…” Lyta replies, indicating that she doesn’t know. “Also – Clay, kindly remove the stick from your ass.” At this point, Bratty Chino comes flying upstairs (well, not literally flying, but you get the picture) and declares that he knows where Elina went. When Sandy, as politely as usual, asks him to elaborate, he replies “I won’t tell you!” God, what a bastard. “You caught me when we played tag before. This time, you have to play hide and seek with us!”

…No. Please, no. God, why have you forsaken me?! NO! I thought I’d already suffered my share of hide-and-seek related shenanigans, but obviously someone up there hates me. Sigh. Meanwhile, the several little lumps of vaginal discharge downstairs are running amok, creating chaos in the adorable way that kids in general are wont to do. It seems that the poor nuns are at the end of their tether — and who can blame them? — due to the seven-or-so ADD-riddled kids. Short of slipping Ritalin into their morning cereal, it seems that there’s nothing they can do to keep the hellions under control. May I suggest a dog leash or ten? The kids pile out of the orphanage, closely followed by Sister Fellflatonface, who — you guessed it — falls flat on her face again. I don’t know whether to force a laugh at the in-your-face comic relief moment, or cry at the general awfulness of this part of the game.

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Back in the orphanage, Sister Lyta apologizes for the general asshattery on the part of Chino, who is reminding me more and more of Cocko with each passing minute. Sandy, showing some signs of possessing a spinal cord, declares “If Chino does know what happened to my sister, I’ll do whatever I have to to get him to tell me!” She looks over at Clay for approval, before chirping “Well, let’s go try to find them!”

In the interest of keeping my sanity relatively intact, and to prevent this recap from degenerating into a 3-page rant about how much this SUCKS and is TOTALLY UNNECESSARY and has NO RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER, I’ll just skim right over our little game of hide-and-seek (read: explore every damn nook and cranny of the city looking for an annoying kid, then finding him/her in the very first fucking place I checked). Upon rounding up all of the crotchgoblins and heading back to the orphanage, it becomes clear that my torture is far from over. Apparently, one of the rugrats is still missing, so says Sister Fellflatonface, and the kid in question is – wait for it – Chino. Quelle surprise.

Upon learning that Chino, possibly the most annoying urchin in RPG history, has gone missing, I make no effort to suppress my hopes that the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is currently holidaying in Synesta. The frog kid who was previously seen chattering about his new clothes reveals that Chino “said he was gonna hide in the cellar or something”. Hearing this, Sister Fellflatonface practically has a seizure – apparently Synesta has a vast area of underground rooms and cellars that were evacuated during the Hex and haven’t been used since, and there are monsters down there and it’s OMG SO DANGEROUS and what are we going to DO? Won’t someone think of the children?! We see a helpful shot of the entrance to the cellars during all of this. The entrance, located on top of the city wall, has its own guard, leading me to wonder how the hell Chino managed to sneak past him. I won’t even try to make sense of it, so let’s just say that the guard is an incompetent drunk who turned to alcohol when his wife left him for another woman. It has to be more interesting than the next portion of the game, at least.

Ruley and the others high-tail it out of the orphanage, up the stairway and across to the entrance to the cellars, which is simply an open set of stairs leading down. Maybe there would be a decrease in the number of bored orphans deciding to play in the cellars if the guard, I don’t know, sealed the entrance. Upon hearing of Chino’s plight, the guard’s all “Holy shit! That’s impossible! I haven’t moved from this spot all day apart from when I left to buy more vodka, I swear! I’m not a liar! You can ask my wife if you don’t believe me! Or rather, you could if she hadn’t left me for a female Russell Crowe lookalike.” He then continues “Whew! I’m really thirsty now after all that shouting! I could really do with some gin…” This is a subtle hint for a little puzzle, which involves finding the woman walking around carrying a jug of whiskey water on her head, and leading her towards the beer-soaked guard. When addressed by Ruley, she wonders aloud if “he will buy whiskey water again today”. I’d count on it, lady. As soon as he notices the water lady, the guard leaves his post, allowing the party to sneak past and down into the dark, spooky cellar.

Dude, protest much?

The cellar is a ridiculously straightforward dungeon, consisting of straight paths, a few side rooms containing – yes, again – crappy treasure, and lots and lots of broken tables and shit.
During several of the hundred-or-so random battles I run into along the way, Ruley is poisoned with poisonous poison, which surely would have been his undoing had he not been carrying industrial-sized quantities of antidotes. You see, it always pays to plan ahead! Game designers, take note. At the end of the cellars lie a bunch of cells. Snot-nosed shit Chino is visible through the bars of the first cell, but Ruley is unable to enter as a barrel is blocking the door from the other side. However, he is able to circumvent this by ascending to the cell on the floor above and dropping through a rotted floorboard, straight into Chino’s secret hiding place. Ew, that sounded wrong.

All Chino has to say for his wanky self is “Drat! You found me! I thought no one’d be able to find me here!” Listen up, you little fleshlump. I don’t give a shit about your little game of hide-and-seek. The only reason I came to find your sorry ass is because you’re the only one with the information required to get out of this God-forsaken shithole of a city and actually advance the plot further than a few inches, and at a pace somewhat faster than a slug wearing a concrete straitjacket. Otherwise, I’d have been perfectly content to leave you down here with only the bats, rats and roaches for company. Do we now understand each other?

As I anticipate some plot advancement, the volume of Chino’s wankery behaviour strikes me. Holy shit, if this is what he can do in one hour, just imagine how much mischief he must create in the average day. I’m amazed Sisters Lyta and Fellflatonface have survived this long without going batshit crazy. Nuns? They must be saints.

Orphanage. Sandy is interrogating Chino about Elina’s visit to the kids. We see a flashback of Elina, who looks like a taller, slimmer and less sluttily-dressed version of Sandy, leaving the city with her entourage of winged Wyndian guards. Chino dashes away from the other kids and follows her to the gate, where he notices some strange fox-tailed people (who look very similar to the unnaturally-tall robed men from last recap’s fucked-up dream sequence) approaching her, along with a fish-man dressed as an old-fashioned sea captain, complete with hat and waistcoat. This meeting doesn’t seem ominous or suspicious at all, and I’m sure it ended perfectly peacefully, perhaps with a nice tea party.

Unfortunately, we don’t get to see what happens next, as the flashback is rudely interrupted by Clay yelling “What?! Who was it?! Who was there?! Tell me!!”, because he’s short-fused and hotheaded. It’s easy to forget that. Chino reveals that he doesn’t know who the creepy tall men where, but the fish-faced guy was Marlok, the shop owner. “Marlok is a merchant who lives here in the town,” Sister Lyta helpfully exposits. “He owns a large sandflier of his own. Some people say he even has dealings with the Empire.” And yes, this would be the very same Empire that infects entire towns with Hexes. I’m sure this Marlok is going to be a kind-hearted and virtuous character. “The Empire?! You mean Elina’s been taken to the West?” Sandy gasps, in such a horrified manner that I’m led to wonder if “the West” is a euphemism for “the bowels of hell”.

Clay asks Sister Lyta if she knows where to find Marlok (amazingly, his name isn’t in red text this time). Before Lyta can open her mouth, bratty Chino chirps that Marlok owns the big house in the middle of town, complete with a musclebound bodyguard. Hearing this last part, Ruley senses feelings he’s never known before welling up inside him. Without delay, the party decide to pay a little visit to Marlok, in the hopes of obtaining new information on Elina’s disappearance. And, in Ruley’s case, to check out his hot guard. Even though Marlok’s house is located mere feet away from the orphanage, it takes me almost a minute to get to it due to the plethora of obstacles in my way. Why don’t BoF architects try building a town with a normal layout? They should try being on this end of the controller, then maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to incorporate all those arches and walkways and alleys and fuck-knows-what-else into their designs.

Guarding the door is a big shirtless meathead with a ponytail and a scary crack-crazed avatar. Hey, maybe Marlok’s bodyguard is a game designer! The crack fiend barks “This house belongs to the magnificent Mar…What!? You want to meet with Mr. Marlok!? No way! Forget it! He doesn’t meet with anyone but his business partners and prostitutes! If you’re not selling or buying something, he won’t see you!!”

‘Need. Crack. NOW!!!!’

…I’ll take that as a “no”, then, shall I? Before Sandy offers to bribe him with a special trick she learned, the crack-crazed buffoon cries “If you insist, you’re gonna have to go through me!” And thus, we have ourselves a boss battle. For a moment, I’m pretty anxious about this fight – I mean, this guy looks quite tough, and he has muscles on his muscles – but any fears are laid to rest as soon as I hear his personal battle music, which sounds like something from The Beach Boys. Seriously, I half-expect to see him surf onto the battle screen. And no, I’m not the one on crack. Kahn (for that is the crack fiend’s name) is very fond of his Shout skill, which temporarily paralyzes the party, and somehow widens his neck until it has more girth than his torso. I swear I’m not making this up, people. For some reason Kahn the Crack Addict spends the rest of his turns defending, which means that I have little trouble vanquishing him.

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After the battle, Kahn the Crack Addict is seeing stars as Marlok – who apparently wasn’t even in his house – is standing nearby, clapping and smoking a cigarette. “My my…Very impressive, my friends…” he says. I can tell he’s going to be a complete sleazeball. “I am Marlok. You are wanting to see me, yes?” he continues, before inviting the group inside. The Black Screen Of Telling Marlok The Entire Story In Two Seconds makes a brief appearance, before he (Marlok, not the Black Screen) reveals that Elina took a ride on his sandflier. Ah, so that’s what people are calling it these days. “What did you do with her!?” Sandy squeaks in what I imagine to be a voice even more helium-affected than usual. “Non, non, my little birdie. You misunderstand!” Marlok creeps, exaggerated French accent and all, making my flesh crawl. God, even his theme tune sounds sleazy. He continues that he was asked to “take ‘er to zee West”, prompting Clay to predictably show us his single character trait yet again. “Listen, mister — you’d better start making sense, and fast!” he yells, because he’s short-fused and hotheaded. I think we all get it now, game designers.