The Mammon Machine itself is a large statue surrounded by golden light, and six NPCs are standing around it in a circle. One of the NPCs gushes to Punk that the Mammon Machine “draws and magnifies the infinite power of Lavos,” but the rest of the NPCs apparently aren’t that into the Mammon Machine, because they instead gossip about how the Queen has a habit of making people who agree with her, even a guy named Melchior, disappear. Well, obviously they can’t be talking about the Melchior that we know because he hasn’t been disappeared at all! He’s safely living in his cottage in 1000 AD. It must just be a common name.
When he’s finished pumping the NPCs for information, Punk approaches the Mammon Machine and holds M!Sue’s pendant aloft. The Mammon Machine makes a BBP-opening noise and the screen glows red as it powers up the pendant with Lavos power. With the party’s pendant as fabulous as Schala’s, surely they’ll be able to get through that sealed door, now!
Punk races back to the throne room and throws M!Sue’s pendant on the ground in front of the sealed door. This time, instead of beeping ineffectively, it glows blue and the door opens. Sweet.
‘I mean, look at me, don’t I seem trustworthy?’
Inside the sealed door is the throne room. The Queen, Schala, Dalton, and a man with long, silver hair and a purple hooded cloak are all hanging out inside. I wonder if the party thought this part of the plan through. The Queen yells, “Who are you!? How did you get in here?” and the man in the purple hood, the Prophet, steps forward to hiss that Punk, M!Sue, and Babs are “the evildoers” that the warned her about.
Just so that we get that she’s evil, the Queen totally hams up her next line: “How DARE you think you could oppose me, you … foreigners! You’re worse than the Gurus!” Then she calls on Dalton to take care of the party.
Dalton shouts, “Golem!” and warps the Queen, Prophet, Schala, and himself away. In their place, a monster appears. This monster, “Golem”, is just a face with a fabulous crown and two arms sticking off the sides of his head. Even though he doesn’t look like much, the Golem is a tough boss; he copies the theme of the party’s attacks, meaning that if the party uses physical attacks, he’ll physically attack, and if the party uses elemental magic, he’ll use magic of the same element against the party, too. He also has an “Iron Orb” attack that reduces a character’s HP by half. I know it’s possible to beat the Golem, because I’ve done it before, but the party isn’t strong enough to get the job done this time. Probably because I skip every battle I can. Whoops.
After the party has collapsed in defeat, Dalton, the Queen, Schala, and the Prophet reappear. The Queen talks some trash, so that we get that she’s evil, and then takes the party hostage. Scene.
Golem uses ‘Scripted Battle!’ … it’s super effective.
Sometime later, the camera pans up in the Mammon Machine room. The Mammon Machine itself has been removed, and Punk, M!Sue, and Babs float in its place, in the yellow column of energy. So was the Mammon Machine being kept in some sort of stasis chamber, then? Or this is just a general purpose force field? Do they have to move the Mammon Machine each time they want to imprison somebody?
Janus and Schala enter the room after a beat. Janus jokes that the party must be really lame to get caught, and Schala suggests that they set the party free because Punk and company might be able to “rescue the Gurus”. I guess she wasn’t watching when the party just got their asses handed to them by Dalton’s pet, then, or else she wouldn’t trust them to save anybody.
Schala turns the machine holding the party off, and it lowers them to the floor. Schala tells the party to quickly escape the palace, and begs them to rescue Melchior, who is being held captive on the “Mountain of Woe”. Before the party can escape, however, the Prophet appears to ruin everything. Even though surely he’s never encountered the party before today, the Prophet tells Punk that he’s tired of his meddling, and that he’s going to make the party disappear.
Before the Prophet can do whatever he’s going to do to the party, Schala leaps in between them, and Janus leaps in front of her. The Prophet can’t bring himself to harm Janus and Schala, for some reason and instead decides to use the party for leverage to get Schala to cooperate. He ominously demands that the party show him the BBP that they used to get to the Ice Age.
‘I never gave much thought to the name, though. Hope you have fun there!’
After a quick cross-fade to black, the party enters the cave that brought them to the Ice Age. The BBP is still there, of course. The Prophet and Schala shuffle in after them, and the Prophet tells Schala that he wants her to seal the BBP shut after he throws the party in. Because that’s apparently something that Schala can do. Schala tries to refuse at first, but the Prophet says that if she doesn’t cooperate, he’ll just kill the party, and even though she barely knows them, Schala can’t bear to see anything happen to Punk and crew, so she acquiesces.
The BBP then opens, the party heads inside, and then it closes. Schala summons a pink pyramid around the portal, sealing it shut. The Prophet leaves the cave, presumably to head back to Zeal Palace, and Schala slides to the floor, and moans, “Please forgive me…”
The BBP spits the party out in the Tyrano lair ruins. After it closes again, another pink pyramid appears, sealing it shut on this end, too. “Why did the Prophet let us go?” M!Sue wonders, but then, she’s interrupted by a shiny new thought, and blurts out that she’s seen the design on the doors that the pendant opens somewhere else, too. We’re treated to a “flashback” of the future, where we see a man and a Nu in a lab with a sealed door. The door has the same crest as the sealed door in Zeal Palace. The Random Text God announces, “a curious crest is engraved here. Some unknown power keeps it sealed.”
Even though she’s never actually been to that room that we just saw, M!Sue excitedly suggests that the party go check her premonition out. Whatever. The party leaves the cave and finds their Dactyl mounts near the crater-formerly-known-as-the-Tyrano-lair. If they’re here, I wonder how Kino escaped this island? Punk, M!Sue, and Babs use their Dactyls to cross over the lava and back to the Mystic Mountains, where the BBP leading back to the Lugubrious Veranda of Intersecting Space-Time Continuums awaits. They also spend some time dicking around in Prehistoria, but nothing noteworthy happens, except that all of the NPCs are obsessed with how cold it is, now that Lavos has crashed to earth and, presumably, caused an ash cloud that will usher in the Ice Age.
Fabulous!
At the End of Time, the Old Man comments that the party will need some other way to get back to the Golden Age of Magic, now that the BBP is closed. He then helpfully recalls someone working on just such a device in 2300 AD. This corroborates M!Sue’s premonition a little bit, so the party warps to the Proto Dome in year 2300 (where they met Kosmo) to investigate. I’m too lazy to think up a reason for how he knows to do this, but Punk backtracks through Lab 32 and finds a Sewer Access dome to the south. It turns out that that sewer is the way to the lab from M!Sue’s premonition, you see.
As soon as they enter the sewer, the party gets spotted by a flying yellow bat with purple wings and a single, enormous eye. The bat shrieks that he’s going to warn “Sir Krawlie” about the bandits in the sewer and flies off. Way to be stealthy, guys.
The sewer is consists of two large rooms, and in each room, a series of walkways connect several platforms. During the course of their exploration, the party sneaks up on two talking frogs, who comment that some of the walkways are missing, but then run away when they see the party coming. This is the game designers’ subtle way of telling Punk and company that there’s a switch somewhere that will restore the bridges and make it easier to navigate the sewers. Which is kind of silly, because what if Frog had been in the party? Would the talking frogs still run away? I don’t care enough to check into it, mind you, but it just seems kind of random.
Punk follows the two talking frogs down a nearby hatch and finds himself in a gauntlet of sorts. There is a note nearby warning Punk that the monsters on this level attack in response to any noise, and then there are a bunch of indirectly noisy things scattered around the room, like a piece of cheese that summons a squeaky mouse when touched. Punk just doesn’t touch any of these obvious traps, however, and makes it through the room without misadventure. I feel like maybe I’m cheating you out of your recap experience by not interacting with all of the noisy traps on this floor, but on the other hand, we’ve got like ten minutes to go, and the sooner we get to the end of the sewer, the sooner this recap can end, so whatever.
‘This was a bad place to bring my party poppers and Crunch bars to…’
After silently proceeding through the sewer’s sub-level, Punk finds a hatch that leads back up to the first floor, and proceeds along until he finds the flying golden bat again. It’s in the middle of reporting to “Sir Krawlie”, saying that “the 3 of them are almost here!” Krawlie menacingly says that he’ll teach the party a lesson for waltzing through the sewers like they own them, and then there’s this obnoxiously long sequence where Krawlie and the bat laugh. But then the bat spots the party and escapes, leaving Krawlie to fend for himself. Heh.
So it turns out that it’s possible to do this dungeon the first time the party ends up in 2300 AD, after escaping from prison in 1000 AD, so Krawlie is leveled appropriately for that portion of the game. Meaning that Babs kills him in like one hit. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Speaking of sad, it’s kind of rude that the party essentially just busted into this guy’s house and then murdered him for trying to defend himself. Oh well.
Punk continues along until he runs into the talking frogs again. This time, they’ve found the switch that restores the bridges on the first level, but neither of them can reach it. They run away again when they see Punk, though, and he’s tall enough to hit the switch, so that’s awesome. Next time we have to pass through the sewers, we can use the shortcuts created by the new bridges. Punk then finds a ladder leading to the surface. Man, I wish all dungeons were this easy to recap.
The other end of the Sewer Access tunnel is on a continent with the “Keeper’s Dome” and “Death Peak”. The Keeper’s Dome is the one we want, but I guess that’s going to have to wait until next time, because that’s all the footage I have taped for now. Next time we get a real, honest to goodness time machine, which the party uses to return to the Ice Age and raise some hell. Plus we’ll probably also find out the Prophet’s secret identity! Try not to look too shocked when it turns out it’s the other character in this game with a purple cloak and long, silver hair. See you then!