Ten expensive minutes of blacksmithing and armor shopping later, Marvy is ready to go, but first he decides to stop at the Obel inn, since he didn’t bother resting or saving with Louise. But before he has a chance to book a room, he sees one of the inn’s employees yell up the hill at a young man with long blond hair and knee socks. The young man wordlessly takes off toward King Lido’s palace, and the woman, exasperated, asks Marvy to track him down, since he left the inn without paying. Marvy would like to know where he got those cute socks, so he says yes. “His name’s Cedric…” she tells him. “He looks really spaced out, but he’s unbelievably quick on his feet!!” Indeed, once we get to see his face, his completely stoned expression is evident, but I didn’t think stoners were exactly fast runners. No matter. “He’s always saying he’ll pay…” she goes on. “But it’s all just talk! I’ve lost count of how often he’s eaten here without paying! I hired a collector to help out, but it’s just getting nowhere…” She’s apparently never tried the crazy method of not giving him any more food until he pays the fuck up. And hiring a debt collector? Yes, throw more good money after bad. That’s working out. Marvy almost wants to let this kid go since this lady is kind of an idiot and probably deserves to lose money. But he refuses to let Dr. Yueh’s weekly readings of Ron Paul’s racist newsletters get to him, so he takes off after this freeloader.
In front of the palace, Marvy spots Cedric running toward the cliffside path, sees him again on the path, and once more at the mouth of the cave. Eventually he’s back in his headquarters, and over a black screen he hears Cedric mutter, “I…I may not know my way around here… But I’m not about to get caught!” Too bad he just ran into a dead end. Astoundingly, someone who regularly has to steal food is not all that good at planning ahead. As soon as Marvy enters the tavern, Louise goes “!!” and sure enough, Cedric’s only option was to leap behind her bar and “hide,” even though his stupid towhead is sticking up like half a foot above the counter. That’s just pitiful. Louise gives him up immediately, as if she even needed to, but Marvy appreciates her team loyalty.
Like most guys in this game, he’s already out.
Cedric whines a bunch that Louise promised to hide him, and Louise lectures him, awesomely, “You fool. I’m siding with the stronger party. That’s the key to succeeding in life. Remember that.” Bad hair and vagina aside, Marvy is starting to warm to her. Cedric doesn’t listen at all, like most 20-year-old men, and calls her a “traitor.” Once he’s out from behind the bar, he frets that Marvy is going to turn him in, but Marvy has something else in mind. That vest-and-khakis combo is going to look great crumpled up on the floor next to his bed. Louise unnecessarily chimes in, “Say, Marvy, this kid can run like the wind. Why don’t we recruit him and make him one of us?” Cedric readily agrees. “One of you?” he asks. “I-If you’re okay with that, I’ll join! My ability to flee…I mean, run, can be useful!” Then he can start by running his ass up those stairs and keeping himself limber until Marvy gets back from Nay. Recruit!
Marvy lets Louise work out the details of Cedric’s “service” in order to pay back the Obel inn, since he would really prefer to keep their relationship non-transactional. Onward to Nay! And as if the half-hour of mindless sailing and random battles weren’t going to make this enough of a chore, Marvy doesn’t even get started on that before he’s interrupted by another visit to the Kooluk Chatty Mustache Twirlers Council.
Graham Cray–in case it wasn’t clear, the CEO of the creatively named Cray Trading Company, which apparently deals in mermaid honkers–replies to something Ramada just told him. “Very well, Ramada,” he creeps. “All I ask is you complete one more job for me.” But the Governor is watching! Is he supposed to crawl under the table? Ramada ignores this bald-faced proposition instead says he will “prepare at once,” and takes his leave. Some service! Cray stares after him, deeply unsatisfied. As soon as the door closes, Old Man River creaks to his feet and asks, “By the way, Sir Cray, what of the object in question?” Ooh, an object in question! This is riveting stuff. “Very soon…” Cray responds. Discussion of this very specific object is enough to make the Governor stop resting his head on his palm and sit at attention. “Ah… So this is the ‘new product’ we discussed?” he asks. They must be talking about their brand-new poor-fucking dildo. “Indeed,” Cray says, presumably to me. “And for indulging my whim about Razril [RAH-ZOO-RILL! UUUUUU-DOOOOOO!], I’ll be willing to sell you the requested item at a lower price this time. Call it a gift to celebrate your installment as Governor.” Yeah, because I’m sure a guy who doesn’t even have a name past “Governor” is going to be in power a really long time.
And back to Marvy. Wow, Joe Bishounen didn’t even have a speaking line during that entire scene. He was probably too busy checking Tumblr for fanart of himself, anyway. So Marvy now has to sail all the way to Nay. I’d like to say I spend a little extra time sailing around for potch and levels for Reinhold and Ornan, but it takes so fucking long to get there that I’m pretty sure Ornan hits level 99 before they reach the halfway mark. I may be exaggerating. Marvy does at least spend enough time on the battle screen to see Ornan occasionally take damage and wake from his unhelpful stupor, at which point he stands very erect and flicks throwing knives at monsters. It’s a pretty big turn-on. Unfortunately, he can’t let Reinhold and Mitsuba handle things while he and Ornan skip into the cabin and grope each other.
A new ice age has dawned outside my window by the time the ship arrives at Nay. Don’t worry, I’ve got a warm coat. Marvy runs stiffly all the way up to the inn on the cliffs, which is where he finds this Oleg person. Just as Marvy feared, this man is not an attractive addition to his Rebellion of No Specific Purpose. He is dressed all in brown, has a terrible double cowlick hairstyle sitting atop a forehead suffering from rapid beach erosion, and he’s peering at Marvy through tiny pince-nez glasses. Oh well, what’s one more uggo. Such is Marvy’s life.
“Hmm? What do you want with me?” Oleg asks. So it seems like Oleg didn’t have any warning of Marvy’s visit, but then he adds, “…Ah-ha, it’s this.” Marvy has no earthly idea what “this” is, but Oleg says he’ll show him how it works, and that nobody around here understands him or his device. Maybe it really is gaydar goggles. Marvy can either say he would like to see it or tell him bluntly, “Not surprising they don’t understand,” but he is curious enough to humor this drab nerd. So he watches as Oleg fumbles around with a device the size of a shoebox and places it on a convenient phallic rock formation in the middle of the clearing. “It’s not quite ready yet,” Oleg says in the reedy dork voice I expected him to have. “How about we leave it here and take a little break.” Yeah, Marvy’s gonna pass on that. But thanks for the hospitality. “Yeah, that’s good…” Oleg keeps going, like Marvy is giving him a reacharound. “We’ll continue the rest of it tomorrow… Come on now, it’s time to get some sleep…” It’s worth noting that all Oleg did was put a box on top of a rock and pretend to fiddle with it for two seconds. But no, that’s quite a day of work he just put in. He even demands that Marvy pay for their lodgings. Did he know Marvy was going to show up here, or what? Did he have any plan for having a place to sleep and jack it tonight if a strange teenager with gigantic eyeballs didn’t ask to look at his black box?
Man, this dude is pushy. Marvy is not interested!
Apparently Oleg wants to leave his amazing, one-of-a-kind invention outside where the cat people can steal it and bury it in their litter boxes. But Marvy figures he knows what he’s doing and heads to the inn, where the innkeeper offers him a room “with a gorgeous view of the ocean.” That just makes Marvy miss Slowe more than ever. How many times did they hold each other, naked and sweaty, while looking out over the ocean through Slowe’s bedroom window?
Oh, honey, no.
And the perfect capper to Marvy’s lame day: his sudden pang of grief over losing Slowe leads to a Black Screen of Bad Decisions, after which he is standing in his romantic hotel room that night, staring at Oleg, fast asleep in one of the beds. Oh, Marvy. You didn’t. This is not the way. You’re not winning the breakup by fucking Oleg. Marvy slowly comes to realize this–maybe because I’m yelling it at him and he can hear me–and is ready to bolt through the door, when he’s rudely interrupted by another cutscene.
We fade in on a gothic castle elsewhere in the ocean, presumably the Kooluk Palace of Mustache Twirling. A large marble statue stands atop the castle, not unlike Cristo Redentor except with a large, glowing crystal ball in its hands. As Joe Bishounen monotones, “What is the meaning of all this…?!” the crystal ball glows brighter still. Graham Cray does his best (not very good) Grand Moff Tarkin impersonation and tells him, “Perhaps a demonstration is in order.” The glow from the crystal ball focuses into a laser beam and fires. Marvy even sees the bright flash of the beam from his window, which is enough to distract him from the walk of shame he was about to commence. (Oleg doesn’t even stir, as he is well and truly spent from earlier.)
No, Jesus! Alderaan is peaceful!
Back to the Mustache Twirlers, who are staring out the window at whatever destruction Cristo Redeathstar just caused. Joe B. groans a little and Old Man River clutches his stomach, like they can literally see bodies being ripped in half. But behind them, not even bothering with the front-row view, Graham Cray rises from his chair and gives a possibly sarcastic golf clap. “That went rather well, don’t you think?” he asks in maybe his worst voice-acted line yet. “With that, you could attack the entire archipelago in one fell swoop, Governor.” The Governor is like, “WHOA, NEAT,” but Joe is much less enthusiastic. “But is there a need for a weapon of that scale?” he asks. “Won’t Iluya be the base of operations for our southern expansion?” Cray and the Governor basically reply that they can still use a smoking crater as their base, and that they had permission to use Cristo Redeathstar from the king. I was honestly unaware Kooluk even had a king. It’s not like we ever meet anyone else in the Kooluk chain of command other than the chucklefucks in this room.
Now, this entire time Joe has been giving off all the body language of having a problem with These Cold Truths of War™, and so he objects, “But if you launch an attack of that scale, the people on the islands will…” I’ve met enough of the people on those islands at this point to declare them an acceptable loss. But the Governor snits at him, “Why do you side with those barbarians? For your information, we do not act on petty emotions. Now go on outside and cool your head for a while.” Calling them “barbarians” seems like a bit of a semantic stretch, given that the Island Nations seem roughly as civilized as what we’ve seen of Kooluk, but I guess at some point we had to establish why these two political bodies don’t get along. And that’s probably as much of an effort as anyone will bother making for the rest of the game. So, barbarians! Okay!
Loading ...Once Joe has stalked off in a huff, the Governor complains to Old Man River, “I had heard so much about the ‘Child of the Sea God,’ but what a coward he has turned out to be!” He doesn’t even want to NUKECRUSH any islands, bro! WHAT A PUSSY. Colton is all, “Yeah, and now I have to go soothe him with my wrinkly penis so he’ll stop crying. I hate my job.” He walks off too, leaving Cray and the Governor alone to braid each other’s hair and watch Mean Girls. But the Governor does ask, over a Black Screen of Post-Nuclear Slumber Parties, why Cray invoked the name of the king. I mean, he didn’t, since he just said “the king,” but whatever. Cray apologizes, and makes like he’s about to whisper a super-duper top secret piece of intel in the Governor’s ear.
The game returns, rather anticlimactically, to Marvy, who has no choice now but to flop down onto the other bed in the room. He’d rather not backslide onto Oleg’s penis again. The next morning, Oleg makes no mention of whatever they might have gotten up to in their room and ushers Marvy over to the rock where they left his device. Oleg lifts it up with a grunt and offers it to Marvy, indicating that he should take a look inside. Marvy easily holds up the box, and after making sure it’s not attached to Oleg in any way like a bottomless popcorn bucket, peers inside. Over the clicking sound of a film reel, he watches as an island in the distance, obviously Iluya, is ripped to shreds by a powerful yellow laser beam.
Okay, a couple things. First, Desmond specifically said this device of Oleg’s can help people see things they normally could not see. But it’s a fucking video camera. This isn’t Lotta Hart capturing an image of a big-titted ghost. In fact, Marvy did essentially see this last night. Second, let’s assume Iluya didn’t happen to get obliterated in clear view of Oleg’s camera–in that scenario, Marvy would have just watched a short video clip of the ocean and a distant island at nighttime. Oooooooooh. Was that supposed to be impressive? Why didn’t Oleg just walk around with the thing and film people or animals moving? The best demonstration he could come up with was setting it to record an unchanging landscape in the dark? I hope Marvy is happy knowing he got plowed by a complete idiot last night. Though that never bothered him with Slowe.