Nash, meanwhile, still has more to discuss with Royce, so he hastily escorts them back out the door. For some reason, no one asks Nash why he’s telling some random skank about Gams’s singing. Not that I give a shit if her singing is important or not (especially since I know it is, SIGH), but it does seem like a legitimate point of curiosity.
Back at Dross’s shop, Ram-It has finally negotiated an acceptable sum for the product of Quark’s digestive tract. 20,000 silver–that’s good, right? Judging from the way Ram-It creams his boy scout uniform, I’d say it is. Plus, that’s, like, twenty bars of soap. All involved are excited about the imminent transaction. Dross tells them he needs to go get the money out of his safe, and while he’s doing that he’ll put the diamond in there. Yeah, he’s taking the diamond from them before they get the money. Ram-It is about to learn a valuable lesson about never trusting a pawn shop owner. Dross takes the diamond and is all, “I’ll be riiiiiiiiiiight baaaaaack,” before disappearing through a back door. Everyone stands around waiting for him to return, because they’re stupid. Finally, Squeak wonders what the holdup is, and flies through the back door to shriek at Dross. Suddenly: “Alex! [Ram-It]! Dross is gone…and so is the Dragon Diamond!” Color me surprised over here. I was so sure that Dross was going to run away and leave the diamond behind.
Ram-It is devastated, of course, because possession of that diamond is the one and only reason Alex has been putting up with his whiny shit. He blames himself, and if Gams were Marge Simpson, she would retort, “We all blame you.” But if Gams were Marge Simpson, this game would be a lot more interesting. Alex and Squeak interrogate Dross’s assistant, who did not expect this to go down on her first day at work. Bad timing there. She does suggest going to see Mel about their problem, and they do so.
Mel is sympathetic. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times…that Dross is a crook! But,” he adds, “it’s yar fault, too. Ya can’t just hand over a valuable jewel like that!” Hey, if I proclaim my undying love for Mel right now, you guys wouldn’t call me a furry…right? Logically, Mel finishes, they should solve this problem on their own, as it’s something a group of halfway decent adventurers should be able to handle. When I make Alex complain, Mel basically calls him a little wiener. Hee. Okay, I admit it: I heart Mel, and his hairy beastman body. Screw you for judging me!
The down side to Mel’s heartening message of self-reliance is that I have to actually go through some effort to get the Dragon Diamond back, instead of Mel snapping his fingers for me. So Alex, Gams, Squeak, and Ram-It return to Dross’s Perfectly Legitimate Retail Establishment and go through the back door. In this back room there’s another guy wandering around, and he confesses to Alex that he’s been casing this joint to eventually rob Dross. He got here by coming in through the back-back door, which is helpfully in plain sight. It leads into the Meribia sewers that we conveniently heard about right after getting off the boat.
The sewers, you could have never guessed, are full of water monsters and serpents and that sort of thing. Naturally, a good deal of them are weak against lightning magic. And naturally, where is the guy with the lightning magic? Dishing gossip about Gams to an evil fortuneteller at the other end of town. Stupid Nash. I’m so dumping him for Mel.
The other gimmick of sorts to this place is the series of bridges over the somehow perfectly-blue waters in the canals. Alex presses a button, and a bridge falls, but it’s usually not the one closest to the button pressed. And this makes sense…how, exactly? This is not a naturally-formed cave with twists and turns, nor is it a dungeon designed to keep people out. It’s a fucking municipal sewer. Shouldn’t it be straightforward by design? Shouldn’t it…you know what? I’ll stop. It’s a dungeon in an RPG, and therefore it has to be convoluted. Don’t know what got into me.
While fighting Trouser Grog Snakes, everyone gains a level, and at long last, Ram-It has stopped gaining weight. He’s stopped gaining anything. It’s all, “[Ram-It] gained a level!” and then nothing follows that statement. Of course, I’m happy that Ram-It’s exit from the party is imminent, but it’s still stupid.
Well, it’s not that imminent. Remember that little problem I had earlier, where Alex has no money whatsoever? Due to this, the whole gang is still wearing crappy armor and carrying crappy weapons. So they actually end up making about five different trips through the sewers, just to make enough money to have good equipment for the boss battle. This is called “poor financial planning” on my part. Hey, if I could have made Gams take up prostitution to make the money, I would have, believe you me.
The dragon wants his Squeak toy.
Eventually, Alex and Gang walk all the way through the sewers without leaving to heal and buy more armor. Down some stairs, in a sooper seekrit chamber of the sewers (again: the hell? this isn’t Hogwarts) they come upon Dross, standing in the corner and petting his only, his precious. The diamond, guys. Minds out of the gutter, please. Squeak and Ram-It are all, “Give it!” and Dross is all, “Hands off the merchandise!” and then he summons his pet dragon from the water. Before you ask, this is not one of the Four Dragons of Althena. Dross is definitely not that cool. But it is a humongous, hostile lizard creature, so it’s time for the boss battle.
For those of you who haven’t played Lunar: the boss battles? Not that hard. There is almost never a trick to winning, and if a particular boss is difficult to fell, it’s either because he has too many hit points or he’s taking away too many from the party. In general you can use the same formula of actions for each character in every battle, and it will always work. That said, when you’ve played the game as many times as I have (I won’t tell you how many, because I come off as enough of a loser as it is) you start to get creative with boss fights just to lessen the monotony. In this particular battle, I’m both bored with going through the motions and unwilling to use expensive Star Lights. So when Alex’s MP whittles down to zero, and he can no longer use Sword Dance, I decide to forgo giving him more MP and just have Gams and Ram-It attack the thing instead. Hell, it only has about 100 HP left at this point; that said, it only takes about 20 more rounds for the two sucky party members to kill it. Well, there goes the lack of monotony.
Following the demise of his minion, Dross is all out of bargaining chips. Cornered, he gives Ram-It 500 silver, which, Ram-It points out, is considerably less than 20,000. Then he’s struck with inspiration. Yes, Ram-It actually has a reasonably intelligent thought. The Four Horsemen are approaching as I type this. “Hey, I have an idea! You own your shop, don’t you?” Dross answers in the affirmative, but asks why it matters. Ram-It answers, “Because now I own it, Dross…in exchange for the Diamond! That’s a fair deal, right?” Dross agrees that it is, and is about to run off with the diamond, but Ram-It gleefully lets the other shoe drop: “I sold the Diamond to the shop. And since I own the shop, I own the Diamond!” Well, if Dross had been thinking in those terms, he would have never agreed to give him the shop in the first place. And certainly Dross could just run away, given that possession is nine-tenths of the law and Mel would probably tell Ram-It tough shit anyway. But the lesson here is that Ram-It is a con artist on equal terms with the guy who just conned him. I guess everybody has to be good at something.
Ram-It, beacon of generosity that he is, allows Dross to work for him in the shop. Dross knows he’s been beaten by this tubby teenager, and runs off before Ram-It steals the clothes off his back. There’s a doujinshi I hope I never see. Before they exit the sewers, Ram-It tells Alex that he can have his half of the money, since Ram-It gets a whole store and all. I don’t know what money Ram-It is talking about here. They only got 500 silver from Dross, and even then no 500 silver appears in Alex’s inventory. And if he’s talking about the 20,000 silver…yeah, no sign of that either. If Alex and his friends weren’t going to be rich as Nazis by the end of the game, I would make a bigger deal out of it.
Loading ...Immediately after the kids leave Dross’s Chamber of Secrets, a sprite warps into the room. It’s skanky Royce. “Oh yes…” she murmurs, “there’s no doubt about it now, is there? She is the one…” And then she warps out again. Who the fuck even knows why she had to warp to the sewers just to give one line’s worth of exposition about Gams that nobody else heard and we didn’t even fucking need anyway. This stupid game.
Back in Dross’s Ram-It’s shop, Nash is waiting in his own impatient manner for his “friends” to return. As soon as he sees them, he rushes over and insists that Alex come to the Magic City of Vane. It’s where all the cool kids hang out and Alex wants to be cool, doesn’t he? After consulting with Gams and Squeak–who cares what they think?–Alex decides that yes, he does want to be one of the cool kids. If cool kids get to see dead bodies, anyway.
Sure it will. I still have you, Squeak.
This decision is followed by the best moment so far in the game. Ram-It announces that he’s going to stay in Meribia. “Magic is way beyond my grasp…” he says, and everyone in the room dies of shock. “Besides,” he adds, “I’m a businessman now. I’ll be too busy remodeling the store to go anywhere!” So he doesn’t think he’d be much of a mage, and he wants to check out this store that just fell into his lap. Truly non-obvious insights here. Ram-It wishes everyone except Nash all the best. Alex, Gams, Squeak, and Nash leave the shop, feeling about 250 pounds lighter all of a sudden.
For once I’d like to end the recap on a happy note, and not having to recap Ram-It’s whining and complaining anymore makes me very happy indeed. Next time the gang will get into Vane–eventually–and meet a hawt albino wizard guy. Surprisingly enough, he takes an immediate interest in Gams. Astounding!