The Goron continues with the kvetching, “On top of that, a Gerudo in black armor used his magic to seal the entrance with that boulder!” Two things here: first, I thought the cavern was a dangerous place; if so, wasn’t that oh-so-mysterious Gerudo doing them a favor? Second, Gorons eat rocks. Even if they want to get in there to deal with the dangerous Dodongos that previously did not inhabit Dodongo’s Cavern, couldn’t they just eat through the boulder? How is the boulder a problem in any way?
Twink is promised that, if he continues up the path to Goron City, he’ll get to hear even more about all the Gorons’ problems. Even better, on the way to this irresistible treat, Twink is run over by a rolling Goron careening down the mountain, and is subsequently knocked back to the beginning of the trail, where he has to run the gauntlet of mini-Gohmas all over again. Awesome. Twink could not be happier about how this day is going.
Goron City turns out to be a series of caverns dug into the mountain, rather than the lush jungle atmosphere I was expecting. There’s a log, or a piece of a log, in the center of the largest cavern, with ropes and planks extending from it to the outer walls; it creates the appearance that the whole city was built around a giant maypole. Or, you know, a phallus. Bet you didn’t see that one coming.
A Goron at the entrance feels the need to moan about his problems to Twink, too. What is it with these guys? “Oh…I’m so hungry…” wails the Goron. “Everyone feels faint from hunger because of the food shortage in this town. We are in danger of extinction!” Now before you all say, “Hey, if you can survive the Deluge, you can probably live through a little famine,” just wait, because it’s about to get even dumber. “It’s all because we can’t enter our quarry, the Dodongo’s Cavern. We Gorons live on a diet of rocks… And the most delicious and nutritious rocks around are found in the Dodongo’s Cavern! But that seems like ancient history now… We’ve become such gourmets that we can’t stand to eat rocks from anywhere else! Sigh…I want to eat the top sirloin rocks from the Dodongo’s Cavern!”
Okay. Let’s say you’re a grizzly bear. (If you moonlight as one, and have your photos from FurCon ’06 to prove it, you can keep them to yourself. I don’t mind. Really. Put that away.) And as a grizzly bear, you love plunging your head into icy streams and pulling out juicy, wriggling salmon. They are the crème de la crème of fish. So delicious! But oh noes! The salmon are only available in your part of the river for a few months of the year! Whatever will you do in the meantime? Starve to death without your salmon fix, or eat the less scrumptious but perfectly edible and readily available trout? Well, if it were up to Wolfgoron Puck here, I guess grizzly bears would be extinct. I mean, I’m an atrociously picky eater, and if I had to choose between choking down some deviled eggs (blargh) and dying, well, bring on the deviled eggs.
None of the other Gorons have anything of worth to tell Twink, so let’s skip to Twink trotting down to the lowest level of the cavern. The maypole apparently does not extend to the bottom of the cavern, but there is, down here, an extremely large clay jar with several Goron blowjob faces painted on its sides. I can only speculate as to what this thing is for.
Loading ...Past the weird jar, Twink finds a ornate door with an ornate rug spread out in front of it. The door won’t open, but the Goron hanging out next to it makes with an explanation: “Big Brother has shut himself up in his room saying, ‘I will wait in here for the Royal Family’s messenger!‘” He said it just like that, huh? Text-based retina assault, here we come. Twink plays Zelda’s Lullaby in front of the door to open it.
The chamber of “Big Brother” is decked out with more lush rugs, tribal carvings on the walls, and a few clay pots for Twink’s smashing pleasure. Big Brother himself is standing at the front of the room. Unlike his Goron comrades, he is not smiling like he just got laid. He is very stern, and also very, very naked. I mean, all the Gorons are, but for some reason this guy’s nudity is just more…prominent. Like, it’s one thing for all the nobodies outside to be letting it all hang out, but their leader? Put on a loincloth or something. Thankfully, his large, round gut manages to conceal his rocky junk.
Big Brother is not at all happy to see Twink, as he was expecting a messenger from his boy King Daphnes, and not–wait for it–“a little kid.” He asks Twink, rhetorically I’m sure, “Has Darunia, the big boss of the Gorons, really lost so much status to be treated like this by his Sworn Brother, the King?” He is so pissed that Kegmeister Daphnes would punk him out like this that he orders Twink out of his sight. But of course, Twink can’t leave until Darunia smacks him sideways with the Woe Is Me Mallet. Among his complaints: “Ancient creatures have infested the Dodongo’s Cavern! We’ve had a poor harvest of our special crop, the Bomb Flowers! Starvation and hunger because of the rock shortage!” He adds unconvincingly, “But… This is a Goron problem! We don’t need any help from strangers!” Uh huh. The entire Goron species is collectively stupid enough to complain of starvation when they are literally surrounded by food, and they’re also scrambling because there are Dodongos in Dodongo’s Cavern. I was about to say these guys should require help from strangers in dressing themselves in the morning, but you see the problem with that statement.
Darunia won’t say anything else to Twink, but Twink has by now figured out that situations like these are generally solved by blowing on his Fairy Cockarina. Sure enough, the musical score pops up. But what to play? A second rendition of Zelda’s Lullaby probably isn’t going to help at this point, and the Sun’s Song and Ebona’s Song also seem completely useless. That leaves Saria Sue’s Song, and while Twink’s heard enough of that irritating shit to last four lifetimes, he doesn’t exactly have a lot of other options. But nothing–nothing–could have prepared Twink for Darunia’s reaction to the music. I mean, Twink could understand if he gnashed his teeth or pulled out his hair or beat his head against the wall, but this? This is on another plane. You see, Darunia has such a violently bad reaction to Saria’s Song that he is driven insane. Insane enough to enjoy it.
I really don’t like this camera angle.
The camera gets way, way too close to Darunia’s face as it goes through a series of epileptic contortions. And then…and then he begins to dance. It is basically the Elaine Benes dance, if Elaine were naked, overweight, made of rock and totally fucking crazy. As he flails around in his upright death throes, he shouts things like “Oh-oh!” and “HOT! What a hot beat!” and “WHOOOOAH!” This goes on for an astoundingly long thirty-eight seconds. Twink is kind of confused by this display, but all he knows is that if being turned on by this is wrong, he doesn’t want to be right.
A sweating, exuberant Darunia thanks Twink for lifting him out of his depression with that hot island forest beat. For no reason, he re-introduces himself like he didn’t make his identity clear earlier, and then asks Twink if there was something he wanted. No, he came in here to help you jazzercise.
Twink telepathically communicates to Darunia that he’d rather like the Spiritual Stone of Fire, to which Darunia responds, “The Spiritual Stone of Fire, also known as the Goron’s Ruby, is our race’s hidden treasure…. But hold on–I’m not going to give it to you that easily. If you want it so badly… Why don’t you go destroy the monsters inside of the Dodongo’s Cavern and prove you’re a real man?” Yeah, “Goron problem” my ass, Darunia. But Twink’s not about to roll over after this challenge to his manhood. Er, so to speak. Darunia promises he’ll give “anything” to Twink if he can clear out the cavern, even the Spiritual Stone. Twink tries, and fails, to suppress his strangely appealing thoughts of receiving “anything” from Darunia. Hot.
In addition, Darunia has a present for Twink right now, the big naked sweetheart. He explains that the gift will allow Twink to pluck the previously ridiculously heavy Bomb Flowers. The gift is the Goron’s Bracelet, a lovely golden bangle with inset rubies. I still don’t really understand how a piece of jewelry could strengthen Twink’s wimpy muscles, but who cares? It’s sparkly!
Back outside, Twink meets with a Goron who says he’s sitting in this spot so he can “shade the Bomb Flowers from the sun.” Except that it appears the flowers have plenty of shade without his assistance. But hey, if this job keeps him occupied enough to not bitch to Twink about how hungry he is, more power to him. The Goron asks if Twink has any questions, which opens up two options to Twink: ask the Goron about Bomb Flowers or ask about Dodongo’s Cavern. I am not going to recap either of the Goron’s responses for you, as I trust that 1) you haven’t forgotten what Dodongo’s Cavern is in the past minute or so and 2) you have enough common sense to figure out what Bomb Flowers could possibly be used for. Twink brushes past the Goron and chucks his precious shaded Bomb Flower in the general direction of the boulder in front of the cave entrance below. Kaboom, boulder gone, cave open. Now, even if we accept that the Gorons could not chomp the boulder out of existence, how is it that not one Goron has thought to chuck this conveniently-placed Bomb Flower at the boulder, as Twink has just done? Does a single thing about this Goron dilemma make any sense?
DURRRRR!!!!!! DURRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!
Fuck it, let’s just do the dungeon before I run out of Aleve.
The first room of the Dodongo’s Cavern is your standard-issue cave entrance, with one Bomb Flower on each side of the room and a blocked-off entryway leading to the rest of the dungeon. Did Ganondorf put this blockage here too? I can only assume that if the Gorons had ever gotten a spark from rubbing their collective two brain cells together and had bombed the boulder themselves, they would have paced around this room for weeks, scratching their heads in frustration and eventually starving to death. Dumbest. Race. Ever.
Once Twink bombs the door he gets into the cavern proper and takes a look around. The first thing he notices–it really can’t be helped–is a humongous Dodongo skull, its gaping eyeholes leering at him from across the room. Oh, and a lake of lava, some rising and falling platforms in the lava, and some Creamos. Minor details compared to a creepy reptilian skull big enough to swallow the Great Dicku Tree’s rotting wooden corpse.
On either side of the cavern there are ledges with several blow-uppable walls, with each ledge guarded by another Creamos. Oh, fantastic. On the way to the right-hand ledge, Naggy makes sure to tell Twink, “It looks like there are many lava pits around here, so watch your step!” I’m starting to think that the Great Dicku Tree thought Twink was blind and needed a Seeing-Eye Fairy.
In this corridor, Twink comes upon his very first Dodongo, a “baby” one. The Mini-Dongs can be killed with Twink’s sword, but as he learns the hard way after killing the first one, it’s important to jump back from the dead body, since it very inconveniently explodes after a few seconds. But Twink, the smartie, takes advantage of the pyrotechnics by letting a Mini-Dong explode next to a bombable wall. The door behind the wall leads to an empty chamber with nothing but a single torch and a Gold-Assed Spider on the wall. Maybe it was the Goron miners’ breakroom before they were driven out of here. I don’t know. Back to the corridor. When the area is cleared of all bombastic lizards, Twink drags an Armhos statue onto a pressure switch to open the door to the next room.
The door opens to another corridor, full of bats that drop hearts and clay pots with hearts in them. I correctly take this as a bad sign of what is to come in the next room. In this chamber, Twink finds a circle of large rock platforms in the middle of a lava lake, as well as two velociraptor-like creatures which, according to GameFAQs, are called Lizalfos. They must have taken hours to come up with that name, especially after exhausting themselves creatively with “Wolfos” and “Beamos” “Creamos.”