The other statue, this one unbroken, is of Ellia, the astonishingly educated slave girl and dancer. Hey, I think I notice a pattern here! Tony has no idea, but I bet he’s going to be on the next empty pedestal after this chapter is finished. Still blissfully ignorant of his tragic fate, Tony proceeds to the other end of the walkway, past creepy murals made from human bones, and toward a creepy clawed hand holding a familiar tome. Oh, and the walkway consists of screaming, distorted human faces, just in case the other features of the room didn’t clue us in that this whole setup is — wait for it — creepy.
The bony hand uncurls as Tony approaches, and RETD leaps into the scene to describe the Tome of Eternal Darkness for us like we’ve never seen the thing before. “It beckons and yearns to be possessed,” he adds, making the Tome sound like it’s the main heroine in a trashy romance novel. Tony’s all about bones, of course, so he snatches — er, picks up — the book. This triggers a series of screenshots from the last two chapters. It lasts about three seconds, which is way too short for a recap, in my opinion. But as a gamer, I’m glad it didn’t drag on and on. The montage spits Tony back out at the top of the cathedral stairs, as an ominous moaning sound indicates that things will not be as bright and cheery as they’ve been up to this point.
I don’t think Tony is interested in shrunken bones.
Sure enough, as soon as Tony reaches the next floor, the Golden Shower Spell takes effect once again, covering Tony’s body in yellow shiny magic and making him crouch down and moan like he’s just been violated with the 5-inch diameter buttplug. When the spell subsides and Tony is able to stand up again, the camera swoops in to show us the effect of the spell on his formerly pretty face. His skin is now gray and somewhat shriveled, and it’s going to take a hell of a lot of makeup to make him presentable again.
By this point it’s obvious that the Golden Shower Spell is a slow-acting one, rather than a one-time, moderately painful magic attack. However, it’s not yet apparent what the spell’s final result will be. According to Tony’s freakout earlier, he thinks that it’s a spell of death. Sure, that’s one possibility, but let’s not overlook the fact that it could also be a simple Spell of Unfabulousness. Maybe someone just wanted Charlemagne to turn butt-ugly. Of course, in 814, Charlemagne was in his 70s, so I doubt he was an Adonis anyway. I don’t know. It seems kind of silly that someone would create a killing spell that wasn’t instantaneous. Kind of like Penis Assthrustus and his lame “Murder Mewtwo Slowly” plan. The evil mastermind had to know that someone besides Charlemagne might open the scroll, so why give that person a chance to warn the intended target?
None of that matters right now, as Tony has a dusty room full of items to explore. The interesting items emit a pulsating glow, while the non-interesting items that he can’t pick up are regular and non-glowy. Over on a shelf, Tony finds a gorgeous blue urn with the Squirtle symbol on it. He stuffs it in his sack, wondering whether he should give it to Charlemagne as a show of his affection or keep it and use it in his home decor. Sure, he has this nasty spell business making him all gross, but there’s no reason he can’t be optimistic about the future. In no rush, he takes a moment to look through one of the arched windows at the magic light outside. But RETD isn’t going to let this guy enjoy the view in peace. “Faint, warm sunlight filters into the room through these windows. Tiny dust motes drift, caught in the rays of the dying sun, fighting the growing shadow,” he narrates in what I imagine is a high-pitched, unsettling voice. You know, not everything has to be creepy, asshole.
Gay pride!
Well, Tony’s buzz is fully harshed, so he continues examining the room. On a nearby desk he finds a gold circle with a triangle carved into it. From the camera angle, it appears to be an upside-down triangle, which is fitting. When I order Tony to pick it up, the thing sends up yellow orbs while emanating a strange sound. This lasts for several seconds, and although it seems like this might relate to the evil Golden Shower Spell, it’s actually a helpful item. Immediately, RETD falls all over himself to describe this find, opening up my menu and everything. According to him, this is a Circle of Power, which controls the strength of a spell. It looks like I’ll get to use magic at some point in the near future. But not before RETD tells me just what a spell is: “Spells are magickal incarnations that enhance a character’s natural abilities.” I guess that would be helpful for someone who has never played a video game before, but I doubt any of those people are playing this game. In other words, shut up, RETD.
I need to collect more shit before I can actually cast spells, so this item is just dead weight for now. It’s kind of weird that someone would leave it lying on a desk in plain sight, though. Tony moves on to three bookshelves located in a rounded alcove. RETD gives some more descriptive backstory, indicating that all the religious books look dusty and unread. I’m not sure if this is a comment on the “unexpected” un-Jesus-y nature of the monks, or if it’s just to make the one non-dusty book more noticeable. And it’s not like I have to figure out that the clean book means anything — right away RETD asks me if I want to move it, an option I don’t have with any of the other books. In other words, I don’t get to feel the sense of satisfaction I normally would upon discovering a secret door behind the bookshelf.
Thirty seconds of dusting, and Tony would have never discovered the secret passage.
A ladder leads down into a dark and spooky passageway under the cathedral. Well, it seems like it would be underground, anyway, but I can’t tell how far down the ladder goes from the upper floor of the cathedral. Someone has taken care to light the torches down here, but it’s still buttfucking dark. I can barely see the detail on the video I recorded, to my annoyance. Of course, Tony doesn’t even take two steps before a moaning zombie stumbles over, lusting after his manflesh. This zombie is not exactly like its brethren, however. A giant, three-dimensional runic symbol floats around inside its transparent midsection. Sure, why not?
This fucker — a zombie of the Bulbasaur variety, for that extra, sanity-lowering flair — seems bigger than the others, too. Still, Tony manages to take it down and retrieve the giant symbol from inside the rotting corpse. RETD, accompanied by the Choir of Discovery, informs me that Tony has just found a Magickal Rune. I’m going to shock you all here, but this is yet another of the requirements for creating magical — or magickal, rather — spells. Given its size, I can only imagine how annoying it is to carry around the items necessary for spellcasting. And it gets worse from here.
There are more angry Bulbasaur zombies on Tony’s tail, and like many zombies in many games, these also enjoy the noble art of buttraping. Considering what Tony does to them with his sword after he knocks them down, I guess he’s not entirely innocent either. There’s not much else to say about the long, dark hallway filled with aggressive zombies, so let’s move on to the next room.
In here, Tony lets out a high-pitched drama queeny gasp as he spies something that is apparently very horrifying. A lone monk wielding a torch is being attacked by multiple zombies. I’m not sure why Tony is so shocked, since he just fought through an entire hallway of these mofos. Maybe he’s in awe of the large tapestry hanging on one of the walls. I’m sure that style was ultra-fabulous back in those days. Unfortunately for Tony’s love of fine decor, the monk sets a Mewtwo zombie afire with the torch, causing it to stagger and flail into the tapestry. Within seconds, the tapestry is cinders, revealing a secret door that Tony would never have found otherwise!
As in Ellia’s scenario, Tony must now save this man from the ravening zombies. Only this time, the zombies in question are not the giant, freaky Charmander zombies, but the sad, withered Mewtwo types. Sure, the monk dropped his torch, leaving him (presumably) without protection (hee), but it’s lying, like, two feet away. Rather than quickly picking it up or even running away, the chickenwuss monk just stands there, hunched over and quivering in fear. Christ in a cereal box, this guy is a fucking pussy. I’m sure Tony feels like a strong brute man as he madly swings his sword around, crying out in his girl voice.
When all the slow-moving zombies have been dispatched by the effeminate guy with the pageboy cut, the monk immediately stands normally again, probably pretending that he’s been totally in control the whole time. RETD relays the conversation between the monk and his heeeeeero. The gist is that while the monk was carrying an Urn from the baptismal Font, he ran into the Bishop who went all psycho on him with a sword. That’s right, just a regular sword and not a sword or even a sword. Before running like a scared rabbit, the monk clumsily dropped the Urn. For some odd reason, this guy, who resigned himself to death when confronted with a few shitty zombies and no torch, went back to get the urn. I’m sorry, I’m not typing that shit in green font every time. There was no urn, but for some odd reason (again), the Evil Bishop had left his sword behind. I bet Chickenmonk wishes he’d had the sword in his possession when he fought that roomful of zombies.
As it turns out, Chickenmonk did have the sword with him, the fucking moron. It’s even better than Tony’s sword, too. You know, the one he used to easily fight off the zombies? At least Chickenmonk has the decency to hand over the sword to this tights-wearing pageboy, who’s a thousand times more buff than his sorry ass.
At this point, now that we’ve encountered quite a few monks and found out that the Bishop is evil (shocking!), it’s time to discuss whether or not all the monks in the cathedral are in on the evil plot. I’m guessing that Chickenmonk is of the non-evil variety, given that he appears genuinely terrified of the Bishop and was helpful enough to give Tony a better weapon. But then why was he down here in this clearly evil secret basement? Why would they have everyday urns and baptismal fonts and such hidden underground like this? And even if that were normal, wouldn’t Chickenmonk have passed through the hall full of zombies to get to the font in the first place? Why would the Bishop use as his secret evil lair a place that non-evil monks apparently regularly go? And how did Chickenmonk manage to escape the crazed, sword-wielding Bishop when he couldn’t handle a few shitty zombies? This all confuses me.
In that last paragraph alone, I probably put more thought into this scenario than the game designers did during the entire game-planning process. That means it’s time to continue. With the single torch in hand, Tony (and I) can now see the details of the room’s one dark corner. Here, Tony finds three pieces of a green urn, presumably the one that Chickenmonk dropped earlier. These pieces show up as identical on the menu screen, but when Tony uses the Mix command to combine them into one group of broken pieces — a task that seems somewhat extraneous — the pieces all look different. I admit this is just me being a nitpicky butthole, but that doesn’t make the game designers any less lazy. Tony takes the broken urn with him as payment for dealing with Chickenmonk’s pathetic behavior.
Through the wooden door, Tony finds himself at the top of a stone staircase leading down. Although he can’t yet see the zombie with the transparent runic torso, the camera helpfully pans downward so that I know what’s in store for our Charlemagne-loving friend. On the way down the stairs, Tony finds a glowing stone tablet with a rune carved into it, as well as some labeling text. This one reads “MAGORMOR” and “Item.” RETD nonconsensually flips open the menu and gives me the lowdown on this latest find. This, he says, is a Magickal Codex, which is necessary for understanding runes. In other words, every time Tony finds a rune, he must also find the matching codex, or the meaning will remain a mystery. It’s too bad no one wrote this information down in a book somewhere. That would be a lot more convenient than tracking down these stone tablets. This means that Tony now has in his magical possession a circle of power, a giant rune with no codex, and a heavy stone codex with no matching rune. Luckily, the rune inside the zombie happens to be MAGORMOR (Item), meaning that Tony has exactly one magical item pair that’s somewhat meaningful. He still can’t do anything with it.
It’s a runic cock ‘n’ balls!
By the way, Tony can wield either the torch or a weapon at any given point — he can’t hold the torch in one hand and the sword in the other. I suppose this makes sense with the ginormous blade he has now, but it still doesn’t explain where he puts the lit torch whenever he whips out the sword. I like the torch, not just because I can actually see what I’m recapping here, but because it does a great job of burning both Mewtwo and Bulbasaur zombies. Oh, and the girly squeal Tony emits when he burns a zombie is simply priceless. Still, Tony must switch back to the sword every time he needs to perform his finishing move on a flaming zombie in order to regain his sanity. Don’t think the game designers let me do this via a button assignment, either. Nope, I have to open up the menu to switch items every single fucking time. I really wish someone had invented a flame sword back in 814 A.D. — it would have made my life so much easier.
Passing through yet another door triggers a third Golden Shower recurrence. Now Tony is even uglier, with some rotting sores on his face. Even worse, he now runs much slower, with one shoulder hunched. Things are not looking good for our hero, in any sense of the phrase. Usually when I play a game, the playable character becomes a better fighter as the enemies become more difficult and/or numerous. This convention has been turned on its head here, as Tony will face more difficult monsters as he becomes shittier and shittier. Good thing he has my awesome gaming skills to back him up while he rots away into something that Charlemagne will never, ever want to have sex with.
Twink would no longer love this guy.
Tony squeals and shrieks his way through a room full of zombies (including a Charmander one, which has its way with him). When they’re gone, he collects all the glowy swag in the room. Next to a fountain in the corner, he finds a Red Urn. But it’s not just any Red Urn — it’s a Filled Red Urn. I’m not sure how that differs from a filled Red Urn but the important thing is that it matches the design of the Blue Urn that Tony found earlier. It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway for the sake of being thorough, that this urn has the Charmander symbol on the side. Also, the shards of the Green Urn appear to match the others as well. Hmm, I’m noticing another extremely obvious pattern!