A large tablet at the head of the graveyard tells Twink that those who were loyal to the Royal Family are buried here. “The Sheikah, guardians of the Royal Family and founders of Kakariko, watch over these spirits in their eternal slumber,” it states. I guess they couldn’t get colored text etched onto granite. Anyway, this is yet another clue for later, so I won’t be surprised when we return here–I’ll just be horrified and angry.
The little kid with the limp is even scarier up close. He’s entirely bald except for one cowlick of red hair on his forehead. So he has the appearance of a nine-year-old infant. Who happens to be impersonating the gravekeeper, Dampé, hence the exaggerated limp. Baby Dampé tells Twink he’s all pissed because he can’t go on something called the “Heart-Pounding Gravedigging Tour,” so instead he’s impersonating his hero Dampé to pass the time. Okay, so a gravekeeper is his idol and he wants to desecrate graves? This kid needs therapy, like, now.
I beg to differ.
In an effort to get as far away from Baby Dampé as possible, Twink ends up at the very back of the graveyard, where, in front of a large tombstone, he finds a plod of dirt with three grass triangles planted in it, in the shape of the Triforce. Twink plays Zelda’s Lullaby while standing on the Triforce, because it just seems like the thing to do. As the notes ring through the graveyard, the rain–did I mention it started raining as Twink approached this area?–pours down more heavily, the sky suddenly grows pitch black and lightning flashes. Twink stares at the tombstone as a ball of lightning-like energy–a phantasm, if you will–expands in front of it and connects with a well-placed bolt of lightning to blast the tombstone to smithereens. Oops, I guess maybe I should have read it before playing that song. I bet it had “Twink really is gay in canon!” carved on it and now we’ll never know.
AHHHHHH!!!!
Of course, the tombstone was hiding a hole leading to an underground chamber. Twink really wants to be all, “Not on your life,” and then flee like a bitch, but we all know he’s going down there. It would probably comfort him to know that his invisible controller doesn’t like it any better–I mean, there are ReDeads down there. I. Fucking. Hate. ReDeads.
The underground mini-dungeon is labeled as the “Royal Family’s Tomb,” even though it appears to be full of large dinosaur bones. Zelda is apparently the descendant of lizard people. Also, how does this place even function? Is there another back entrance that the royal family uses to bring bodies down here for interment? Or do they have to blow up the tombstone to get in every time, and then build a new one? Shit, there aren’t even stairs. But enough pointing out of plotholes. Twink has some bats to kill.
With the Dicku Seed-riddled bat corpses now lying among the T-Rex skulls, the doorway to the next room is unbarred. The hallway past the door leads down into a chamber filled with green mist and–oh boy oh boy oh boy–several ReDeads. I won’t explain what ReDeads are, because if you don’t already know, you probably wouldn’t be reading this recap. I will say that these ReDeads do not possess the Big-Headed Zombie Chic of their Wind Wanker counterparts: they actually look like shit-brown mummies, with no pretty earrings to be found. One of them eagerly gets its hump on with Twink, and actually kills him because I suck at this game am rusty after not playing the game for so long. The only thing that saves me from having to redo the events of the last two hours is the fairy Twink bottled up in the Sacred Forest Meadow. And I won’t lie to you–I wouldn’t have done it. I don’t need to take this kind of abuse from this game–I’ve got seven taped hours of Xenosaga to provide that.
After Twink is revived, he sprints out of the ReDead chamber before any more of them can try to jump his bones. The next room is full of green mist like the last one, but there are no monsters–just a huge stone tablet at the opposite end of the room, etched with several lines of Hyrule’s crazy moon language. Reading it, Twink discovers that it is a poem “dedicated to the memory of the dearly departed members of the Royal Family.” The poem is pseudo-deep schmaltz at its finest:
The rising sun will eventually set,
A newborn’s life will fade.
From sun to moon, moon to sun…
Give peaceful rest to the living dead.
To the living dead? So…zombies? Is that why there are so many ReDeads in the last room? Also, did Live write this?
The Disembodied Shitty Poetry Interpreter calls the poem “interesting,” but then points out something scrawled beneath it: “It’s the secret melody of the Composer Brothers!” I was about to make a smart-assed comment about having never heard of the Composer Brothers until this very moment, but then I remembered that I blew up the tombstone topside before reading it, and it probably mentioned them. Whoops. Twink plays and memorizes the Sun’s Song, an exceedingly generic right-down-up melody that changes day to night and vice versa. We are shown that, above ground, it just became nighttime. Even though Twink’s rendition of Zelda’s Lullaby a little bit ago had already changed it to nighttime. Way to go, Sun’s Song!
An aside to bitch: the Sun’s Song so does not belong in this game. Pretty much every song Twink learns has a pretty neat melody, even these three-note songs, let alone the longer ones later. The Sun’s Song sounds like the one the composers came up with on Friday afternoon, after their lunch break, and they’d all had a few at lunch and just wanted to clock out a little early so they could go home and nap on the couch. I mean, we’ve all been there, but let’s not pretend that this time of the week is when we produce our best work.
DSPI also tells Twink, “Restless souls wander where they don’t belong, bring them calm with the Sun’s Song.” I think what the comma-splicing DSPI is trying to tell me is that I can fuck up the ReDeads with this song. Sure enough, when Twink plays the melody in the next room, all the ReDeads are temporarily stunned–long enough for Twink to get out of their buttrape radius. Though paralyzing them doesn’t really sound like “bringing them calm.” I would think that they’d just be more pissed off now.
Back in the graveyard, since it is now nighttime, the scary little boy has gone home, and the legitimately limping form of Dampé the Gravekeeper has taken his place. Twink ignores him for a minute in order to pull on a tombstone with some very obvious dragging marks behind it. As loath as he is to go below ground again, his curiosity overtakes him and he ends up in a one-room chamber with a chest holding a Hylian Shield. At this point in the game, this shield is too large for Twink to use properly–he just ends up hiding under it like it’s a turtle shell. But it was free, and it’s fireproof as well, which will become important shortly.
Dampé, for what it’s worth, is probably an improvement over the kid: he’s just a really ugly dude (think Uncle Fester with a bad underbite), a not uncommon phenomenon in Hyrule. Besides, being kinda creepy (which he is) is one thing, but idolizing that creepiness in another person and then emulating it is quite another. Dampé puts a finer point on it, saying that he’s fugly but he’s really a totally nice guy. Whereas that kid was “cute” by normal standards but deeply, deeply disturbed. Dampé tells Twink all about his “side business,” also known as “Dampé the Gravekeeper’s Heart-Pounding Gravedigging Tour.” No, I don’t know, either. Basically, Twink pays Dampé five Rupees to dig a hole in front of one of the graves, and gets to keep whatever Dampé finds. So Dampé, in his own words, is “not a bad guy,” but he makes extra money by looting valuables off dead bodies. Maybe that’s what passes for “nice folk” around here.
Oh God, is he going to drop his pants?
Twink gives the game a try, and quickly wishes he hadn’t after Dampé digs a hole and finds absolutely nothing. Maybe that’s his go-to grave when he wants to rip people off, since he knows all the good stuff’s long gone. Okay, I changed my mind: fuck Dampé. At least the little kid didn’t take Twink’s hard-earned money.
As it’s nighttime now, Twink takes the opportunity to kill a few Gold-Assed Spiders skittering around the village and, holding his breath, takes his ten Gold-Assed Spider Commemorative Coins back to the guy in the Crazy Fucked-Up Spiderman House. Near the entrance, one of the spidermen has changed back into a person, albeit a wild-eyed, spindly, bug-eating sort of person. The guy’s practically leaping in the air for joy–can you blame him?–and to show his gratitude he gives Twink an Adult Wallet. Sadly, it doesn’t have penis-shaped leather patches stitched onto it, but it does allow Twink to carry a bigger load of Rupees–two hundred, to be exact. And with the nine he’s carrying right now? Boy, does this seem like a useful gift.
There’s loads more stuff to see and do here in Kakariko, but let’s let Jeanne have some fun here, too, shall we? I’m sure she’ll thank me for leaving her the Cucco-gathering mini-game and the well dungeon. For now, it is time for Twink to head to Death Mountain and get that Spiritual Stone of Fire. Naggy seems to think it’s pretty damn important that he do so, anyway.
No, because your language is gibberish.
A lone guard is stationed at the gated entrance to the Death Mountain Trail, and since he’s a videogame guard who has to talk to the youthful hero, he is required to cop an attitude and speak to Twink like he’s a retarded toddler. He explains that the trail is off-limits, especially to illiterate children. So Twink produces Zelda’s letter, all, “Can YOU read THIS, asshole?” The guard examines the letter, which reads: “This is Twink… He is under my orders to save Hyrule.” Oh, that’s convincing, sweetheart. Twink couldn’t so much as give Ganondorf a makeover at this point. The guard doesn’t believe a word of it, either, but he did recognize Zelda’s handwriting (I bet she dots her i’s with little hearts) and thinks she’s playing some cute game of make-believe, in which the gay young man before him is her boyfriend and he’s going to save Hyrule for her honor. Oh, Princess Zelda and her wild imagination. The guard, still laughing, allows Twink to pass, because letting this kid die on Death Mountain would make this whole charade even funnier. Oh, but he does tell Twink to equip “a proper shield” to protect himself from all kinds of volcanic dangers. He even tells Twink where he can get a discount on shields in Hyrule Castle Town. That should ease the guard’s guilt when Twink is brought back in a body bag.
And the guard is still talking. I’m guessing no one ever keeps him company at his post, so he’s letting it all out for the first person who comes along. The guard has a favor to ask Twink, since they’re now BFFs: he wants Twink to go to Hyrule Castle Town and visit the Happy Mask Shop, which is apparently the most happenin’ place in the area. It wasn’t open when Twink was there previously, or Twink would have been in there, trying on every frilly white lace mask in the joint. The guard wants Twink to buy a “popular mask” for his son, since he doesn’t have time to visit the shop himself. Twink really isn’t into buying presents for random guys’ kids, especially clingy bastards like this guard, but this is the first step to a long and involved fetch quest, and we all know how much fun those are.
OH BOY!
But Twink can put that on his to-do list for later, because Death Mountain awaits. Twink takes in the sight of the top of the mountain, shrouded in a ring of smoke, before starting up the trail. And it’s a good thing he’s already got his sightseeing out of the way, because he’s immediately attacked by yet another spider creature. Well, not exactly–for one thing, it doesn’t have eight legs, only four. And it only has one eye–hey, wait! This creature–and its brethren further up the road–are actually mini-Gohmas. So: not only are there more annoying and creepy spider creatures, but they are spider creatures that shouldn’t even be here. Shouldn’t they be mourning their fucking Queen? Or maybe they’re marching on Hyrule to hunt down Twink and avenge their Queen’s death. I don’t know or care. I just know I have had it with the fucking arachnid overload. If this keeps up, the next weapon Twink receives should be a heavy-soled shoe.
At a U-bend in the trail, Twink comes across a blocked-off cave entrance with many lumpy brown rocks strewn about. As he approaches, one of the lumpy rocks stands up to say hello. Jesus. This is bad for my heart. The rock is actually a Goron, one of the naked, rock-eating, teddy-bear-without-ears-esque denizens of Death Mountain. This Goron (along with all the Gorons, as we will soon see) has a problem, and has no trouble whining at length about it to Twink: “Look at that huge boulder over there! It blocks the entrance to the Dodongo’s Cavern, which was once a very important place for us Gorons… But one day, many Dodongos suddenly appeared inside the cavern. It became a very dangerous place!” Yes, Mr. Goron, what an unexpected turn of events. A bunch of Dodongos appearing at a place called Dodongo’s Cavern. That must have knocked everyone for a loop. But also: Dodongo. Hee.