And with that, let's get this party started.
In my last post, we had just been locked into the Moon Cave by that dastardly bastard Waka. There didn't seem to be any way to escape our predicament, so we decided it was best to just keep going.
This looks like a fun place. Here's a less blurry picture of the stairs, complete with us standing on them and an ominous purple cloud in the background.
Did I mention how ominous-looking that cloud is? Because it is. And as you can see, the stairway, uh, stops existing in a few more feet. Interesting.
That's no big deal, right? Can't we just jump over it?
I guess not. And that's "goddess" to you, buddy!
So Issun tried to give me a lame clue about what to do next. Something about doing it "our way." Huh?
Oh. Right.
I dunno, Issun. I don't know if jumping straight into the scary purple cloud is really a good idea...but I guess there aren't any other alternatives. Well, here goes nothing!
So we dived into the purple cloud, and after a long fall, we landed on...this.
Well, I guess this is technically the Moon CAVE... or "Calcified Cavern" according to the title card I didn't get a photo of.
Hey! You're the one who suggested we jump right into this! Shut up if you don't have anything useful to say!
I hope so too, but somehow I doubt she's in this cave. Well, this particular cave.
So we headed toward the closest door, which you can actually see behind us in the above photo. But we were rudely interrupted!
Gah! We've been here 30 seconds and we've already been caught? We're the most inept investigative team ever...
Imps? Well, at least they aren't trying to drag us away...
They'll gladly recruit us to their cult, though. No thanks, cultists.
No, Issun! Don't piss them off!
HEY! WHO ARE YOU CALLING DUMB?
IF IT'S AT ALL POSSIBLE TO DO SO, I WILL MAKE SURE YOU BOTH DIE LONG, PAINFUL DEATHS!
Grrrrrrrrrrrr......
Wait a second. If they think I'm an idiot, maybe they won't haul me off to the dungeon!
Durrr...I mean, I was just...looking for something to eat...
YES! YOU GIVE FOOD NOW!
So they threw me some fresh vegetables (inexplicably enough) and then let me go on my merry way. Not that I could go very far.
Oh, there's the Calcified Cavern title card. Well, there's the cavern for you. Complete with a Golden Archway that, uh...I'm not really sure why it's there instead of at the end of the dungeon, but whatever.
Kushi's Thunder Brew was sitting on the path in front of the archway. We weren't sure how it got there, but we figured it would probably be a good idea to take it with us.
So we explored what little there was to explore of the Calcified Cavern, until we found another Blighted Gateway or whatever these things are called.
There were a lot of these in this dungeon. Well, I suppose it was mostly populated by demons.
Apparently the demon we were fighting was originally intended to be someone's Christmas present...
...And he also does kung fu with skulls, or something.
Fortunately, he was really easy to kill with my new beads. And after he died, we got THIS!
A mask? Well, that was unexpected...
Oh! It's a disguise! Okay then.
Ooh! Ooh! I know what to do with it! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me!
I want to draw on it! Let me! Ooh! Ooh!
Heh. Let's see what that looks like.
Hmm...let's try again. That one looks like somebody punched him right in the lip.
Ha, there we go!
Aww, his mouth looks like a slice of pizza. Again!
HAHA! Awesome!
Nah, too tiny (and blurry).
So, after some more experimentation, I finally settled on a design I liked.
Ha! Perfect! Time to go talk to those imps again.
I, uh...nothing in particular...
Holy crap, they're actually falling for it...I mean, yay!
OKAY, I'M GOING! After you tell me where I'm supposed to be!
So the imps filled us in on the whole Orochi sacrificial ceremony and how everyone was busy getting ready.
Okay! You don't have to tell us twice? Right, Issun? I mean, Demon-Issun?
So we went through the doors and into the Moon Cave proper. Here it is!
Well, that doesn't look so bad...
Okay, never mind. Looks like this place will be a lot more complicated than the Gale Shrine. Although it wouldn't be very hard to be more complicated than the Gale Shrine, really.
Since there wasn't really any indication of where we needed to go, Issun and I wandered into the kitchen...
...where the chef had apparently gone missing.
Well, golly gee. There's a giant cookpot right over there with a lid on it. Did you check in there?
...I think what we have here is a case of criminal negligence!
Fortunately, there were some conveniently-placed blossoms hovering above the cookpot, so it was easy to draw some vines from the pot to the blossoms and pull the lid off. Which revealed...
Well, looky here. I solved the Mystery of the Missing Chef in about five seconds. Well, I guess nobody ever said imps were smart.
Calm down, Cookie, we'll get you out of there.
Darling? Oh, I see. You must be a FABULOUS cook. No offense intended. Hey, how did you get out of the cookpot, anyway? The game didn't really show me...
Haha, I knew it! Well, Mr. Faboo, how can we help you?
I know your name is Ajimi, but I'm going to call you Mr. Faboo instead, okay?
Glad you approve!
Assistant? Well, I guess that could work...since I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing here...
So Mr. Faboo explained that his job was to make a tasty appetizer for Orochi to eat before he dined on the main course, which would be Kushi. Uh, okay...
Oh? What sort of problem?
Secret ingredients? Do I want to know what those are? And anyway, it's an appetizer...why does it matter?
Bwuh?
Yeah, I don't know either. Moving on...
Since we felt we didn't have any other choice in the matter, we agreed to be Mr. Faboo's assistant(s). His task: Find the four missing secret ingredients, which somehow got lost all over the Moon Cave. These ingredients were Ogre Liver, Lips of Ice, Eyeball of Fire, and Black Demon Horn. Those, uh, all sound really tasty. Or not.
To help us out, Mr. Faboo gave me a Exorcising Demon key to open one of the nearby locked doors.
From there, it was just a matter of exploring the dungeon. Here's what we found behind the previously-mentioned locked door.
It was basically a matter of using the vine buds to travel from bud to bud without touching the ground...because there was no ground. Just a massive lake of poisonous water. Whee!
I could stand on the first bud, but for the rest of them, I had to draw a line to the next one while I was still flying through the air from the previous one. Fun stuff.
But eventually we made our way to another locked door. Fortunately, a well-placed Power Slash defeated the eye lantern and unlocked the door. On the other side of the door we found another Cursed Gateway, which contained another Skull Imp, or Black Imp, or whatever they are. He was just as much of a pushover as the last one was, and when he died...
Yummy!
From there, it was just a matter of doing some more exploring, defeating demons, and filling a giant deer scare with water. Eventually I managed to do something to make the water level in the main room go down, which freed the lift operator to, uh, do his thing. I guess.
We couldn't just jump to the bottom of the shaft because it was full of more nasty purple water. So it looks like we get to have an adventure!
Of course, the elevator operator was quick to tell us that he was only supposed to take the elevator up. Now that the water was gone, he had to concentrate on keeping the elevator where it was.
Oh, really? Time to do some Power Slashing!
This part was actually pretty funny. The imp kept making hilarious "ouch ouch ouch ouch" noises every time I Power Slashed him. This made him drop the crank for the elevator, which made the elevator go down. I could only get one decent picture of what was going on, because I had to keep Power Slashing the imp over and over. The poor guy, I bet he was in a lot of pain by the time it was over.
But he's a demon, so he deserves it! Okay, I feel better now.
At the bottom of the elevator shaft, we met another imp, who said he'd recently added a special mechanism to the upcoming door that made it really hard to open. He said it was hilarious to watch people trying to open it! Well, prepare to be amazed, imp.
The trick to opening the door was to line up the camera so I could Power Slash all four of the eye lanterns at once. It was sort of tricky, but not really. Behind the door we found...
A frozen statue? Uh, okay then...
Monsters? Why am I not surprised?
These monsters just keep getting weirder and weirder, don't they? That's a wheel with a pair of lips on it. And it has ice powers. Um, yeah.
Fortunately, defeating the Ice Wheel was simply a matter of avoiding its attacks and waiting for it to lose its ice powers so I could hit it with my beads. Eventually it fell over and turned gray so I could Power Slash it, and from there it was a piece of cake. When I was done, the frozen statue set itself on fire, no joke!
How is it burning? I'm not sure I like this! I don't think there's anything else in the room that can burn, but I don't want to find out!
Looks like a phoenix. Huh.
I'm just as stumped as you are, buddy.
Now I'm even more confused. It's a constellation, but how? We're kind of in a cave...
Oh well. Just roll with it, I guess.
So I filled in the missing stars, and the constellation turned into...
A phoenix smoking a pipe? Okay, clearly I'm woefully ignorant of Japanese folklore.
Moegami explained that he'd been sealed away in the cave "by dark forces." Not sure how that happened when Orochi was defeated, but there you have it. He was unable to escape until we killed the Ice Wheel. And of course, he had to give us a new brush technique!
Yay! We get to play with fire!
Damn right he is! Let's burn something!
Yay!
Fortunately, there was a handy block of ice over the closest doorway, so we melted it to practice.
It's kind of a letdown that all you do to use Inferno is draw a line with the brush, but I guess I don't know what kind of symbol you'd draw.
Fortunately, after we were done melting things, we found another elevator with an imp who was more than happy to take us back up to the surface.
Giggity.
Okay, anyway. When we got back up to the surface (after Power Slashing the imp again for additional hilarity), we found ourselves in the side of the kitchen that was previously blocked by ice. So we melted the ice and went on our merry way. Well, after we defeated the demon that was waiting in the Cursed Gateway.
That was a lot of work just to get one ingredient.
So we did some more exploring and found a cannon, of all things.
Out of order, you say? We'll have to try again later.
After some more exploring, we found a rickety bridge, which broke while we were walking on it and dropped us into another cavern with yet another Cursed Gateway.
Heh. Cursed Gateway. I hope there aren't any cow-spotted boxes around! Hahaha. I crack myself up.
Anyway, back to what we were doing.
When we went through the gateway, we encountered another bizarre wheel.
Well, I suppose if there's an Ice Wheel, there had to be a Fire Wheel too. Fortunately, the Fire Wheel was also pretty easy to defeat, and he gave us our next ingredient!
Woo! Only one left to find!
Of course, to find that one, we had to do more exploring. Eventually we found something called the "Skull Dunes."
This was basically a room full of sand and bottomless pits. The objective was to push the aforementioned ball into a hole in the floor that had a switch at the bottom of it, which unlocked the door to get out.
There's the ball. I'm pretty sure it was made of stone. I had to use my headbutt attack on it to get it to roll. I'm pretty sure Amaterasu had a pretty terrible headache by the time I was done.
But eventually, we were successful, and the door was opened. I'm not really sure what the point of that room was, but whatever. We made our way back up to the nonfunctional cannon (which was now functional, I guess?) and proceeded to blow a hole in the wall across the way.
Yay! Now we can add vandalism to the list of naughty things we've done here! Or would it be destruction of property?
Anyway, we headed into the newly-opened hallway, where another one of those shiny orbs with leaves in it was awaiting us. Except this one was on fire.
Fortunately, I still have my Galestorm technique, so all I had to do was blow the ball down the hallway using wind. Fun stuff. At the end of the hallway, I had to use the ball's flames to melt the ice blocking a doorway, and on the other side of the doorway was yet another Cursed Gateway. I defeated the demons inside, and....
Yay, we got the last ingredient! Let's go talk to Mr. Faboo!
Why are you so surprised? Suspicious...
Well, now that I'd brought back the ingredients, it was time for Mr. Faboo to finish his masterpiece.
I hope it smells better when you're done!
Knock yourself out, champ.
And without further ado, Mr. Faboo threw the rest of the ingredients in the stew, which made it bubble a lot and (presumably) smell even worse.
Sounds nauseatingly tasty! Can we go now?
How do you know her name? Dammit, Kushi! You weren't stupid enough to introduce yourself to these guys, were you? Oh, who are we kidding? She probably was.
Yeah! Let's do this!
We went back out to the main area and rang the epicurean bell eight times, once for each of Orochi's heads. This was the signal that the plans were about to be put in motion!
Four imps came out of the kitchen carrying the appetizer and took it onto the elevator...
Wait a second! Can we go too? We, uh, forgot the silverware.
Quit crying about Orochi's scary throne room and take us up there!
That's more like it! Come on, Issun, it's time to meet our destiny.
And that's a blurry picture of the elevator imp taking us up to Orochi's throne room.
Unfortunately, due to how long this post is, and how long the Orochi fight is, I'm going to have to cover that in my next blog post. I hate to disappoint, but at the same time, I'd hate to make a blog post that took an hour to read.
Until next time, heroes!
