Earthbound – Day 45

–Day 45–

Fully rested, today we set out to the distant land of Scarabia. At least that’s what I thought we would be doing today. The captain of the ship is refusing to leave because he’s worried about his wife. Apparently she has mostly given up on her Magic Cake business and is instead spending all her time in some strange club. It has him really worried that maybe their relationship is over.

I kind of ignored it as just a funny comment before, but wasn’t there someone inside the Stoic Club that was supposed to be able to make Magic Cake? Sure enough, there she was with the other strange people in the Stoic Club talking about weird things. However, just mentioning the Magic Cake to her was enough to snap her out of it. She quickly agrees to make one for us, we just need to meet her outside by her food cart.

The beach is pretty long, so it took me a moment before I was able to find her, but there she was with her food cart just south of the Shop. Just for us, she used the very last of her ingredients to make a very special magic cake just for us. And boy oh boy, does it live up to its name. I don’t know what kind of drugs she infused that cake with, but now I understand why those people at the stoic club are speaking nonsense.

While Ness and friends fall into their drug coma, we’re going to shift our attention to the country of Dalaam in the Far East. This is where we finally are introduced to the last member of our party, Poo. Apparently, Poo is actually the Prince of Dalaam, who would have thought we’d have royalty joining our party.

We join Poo as he is being informed that the time has come for him to undertake his final trial. He must go to Mu, the “Place of Emptiness” and endure the final test. I have no idea what any of that means, but I’m sure it will become apparent as soon as we leave the palace.

Before that, I do want to point out this guy next to Poo’s throne. See how he has a really funky hairstyle? Well that’s because this guy actually is a telephone. Poo ends up calling Ness’ dad, who thinks his son is doing voice impressions, and is capable of saving the game this way. I just thought it was funny and wanted to point it out.

As we walk around town, it becomes apparent that Poo is quite the ladies’ man. I mean, just being a Prince surely makes it easy to have all the ladies falling over you. That is, everyone except for this one girl who seems to not even recognize Poo as she talks about him in the 3^rd person. How do you know even know what your prince looks like? There are only maybe 10 people in the whole village.

As us suspected, it’s not hard to find Mu. There are only a few buildings in town, which by the way seems to be floating in the air. And the only exit out of town is blocked by some kind of rabbit statues. Anyway, there is an elder here that will walk us through what we have to do.

We climb to the highest point and start to meditate, but we’ve barely gotten comfortable before we’re interrupted. A messenger has shown up saying out master needs us to return to the Palace immediately and give up on the trial for now. I have no idea if this is actually PART of the trial or not, so I’m going to wait here just a moment longer to be sure.

Apparently waiting here was the right choice. Moments after the messenger leave we encounter the spirit of his ancient lineage. As part of the trial, the spirit is going to break our legs so we can’t use them anymore. Hold on a minute! No one said anything about breaking our legs!

Next he tears off Poo’s arms and feeds them to the crows. Without arms and legs there’s really nothing Poo can do to defend himself now, but the spirit isn’t done yet. He continues to cut off Poo’s ears so he can’t hear anything either. What kind of trial is this?

The spirit isn’t done yet either. Now he wants to remove Poo’s eyes, leaving him immobile in a world of silent darkness. With nothing left, the spirit communicates telepathically to Poo. Apparently the spirit wants the last thing he has left, his mind. And just like that, Prince Poo is a vegetable. What a shame. We only got to play as him for like 5 minutes…

OH! I guess we passed the trial! And look, Prince Poo seems to still have all his limbs back. With the trial completed we really should return to the Palace this time to tell our master, Yi-Si-Qi. I’m sure he’ll be very pleased to hear we were not in fact chopped to pieces by the spirit of our ancestors.

Our master has nothing left to teach, and so he relays a message he received from the heavens. The evil entity that controls all wickedness, most likely Giygas, is preparing for the greatest struggle of all time. The only ones that can challenge him are three boys and one girl. This of course refers to Ness, Paula, Jeff, and now Poo himself.

With his training complete, Poo must now join up with the rest of the party. To do this, his master forces his level to increase several times until he naturally learns the ability of Teleport β. Using his new found powers, he quickly joins the party who seem to have recovered from their previous drugging.

Finally the party is complete and we head off on our first adventure together. This is a perfect opportunity for the camera guy to show up and take the first picture of the four saviors to the world. Make lots of copies of that one, I’m sure it will be worth a lot once we all become famous!

The captain is very happy to hear that his wife is once again making her magic cakes. Well, magic tarts now anyways. She ran out of ingredients for cake after all. But that’s not the point, the point is that he’s finally willing to give us a ride to Scarabia. It’s probably going to be dangerous, and we’re most likely going to encounter the Kraken along the way. But what’s the worst that can happen?

We pass by several small islands on our journey, some with small villages I wish we could stop to explore. At one point we have to stop the boat because the captain became sea sick. I guess it has been quite a while since he’s been out to sea. As night begins to fall our fears are realized as we are blindsided by the Kraken himself.

This fight was over faster than anyone could have expected, but unfortunately not in a good way. The Kraken hits unbelievably hard and fast, with a single fire breath causing mortal damage to Paula, Jeff, and Poo all in a single turn. Even with all of the most expensive equipment money could buy, three out of four party members were defeated all at once in a single attack.

Death Count: 8

Ness took massive damage, but remained conscious for the moment. However, against such overwhelming power, there really wasn’t anything he could do, and the party was quickly defeated. Honestly I’m not sure what we can do about this enemy. I do recall acquiring a flame pendent while I was in the monkey caves which might help. But beyond that I’m not sure…

Well, for now, we need rest. Join us next time as we most likely get burned alive yet again.