I strongly dislike forced pace. This is something that needs to be said aloud.
“I strongly dislike forced pace.”
“Yeah, you've said that a few times already.” (Dancer)
Traveling in a sailing ship feels like an unbearably slow autoscroller. It's my first time in a real sail ship, yet I can't enjoy it. My head does not agree with the constant swaying.
Back in the early days of Mu-Ur Quincunx, some neurogamers complained that they got motion sickness when traveling in ships, even though it shouldn't have been possible with the automatic adjustments neuroware made to your senses. A small patch was released to fix the problem and everyone seemed happy with it, until someone looked deeper into it and found out that the patch was internally known as Placebo Patch.
There's no medicine for nausea here. Someone suggested rum, but I don't think getting drunk like a pirate helps. My best bet is to try to keep my eyes on the horizon ahead and stay dead still.
There's nothing I can do to make the ship go faster.
The only good thing about sea travel in Mu-Ur is that it's relatively safe. Just like on dry land, there's not much life in the oceans, mainly massive swarms of tiny fishes and that's about it. No sea monsters, except that rumored one at the southern edge of Fireland.
I wonder how the global ecosystem keeps operational without all the animal life. Maybe it doesn't.
“What are you looking at, Runner?” (Dancer)
“Keeping your eyes on the horizon is supposed to help with sea sickness.”
“Must be true, if you say so. I hope we don't see any pirates.” (Dancer)
“That's a flag, you know.”
“Flag? Where? Did you really see a pirate ship?” (Dancer)
“No, it's just... never mind.”
I wish I could use sleep skip in this part, but I'm too sick and stressed out to sleep.
I had a speedrunning burnout once in the past, but I got over it by switching titles and running light FPS games for a while. I never burned out on Mu-Ur, but right now I was ready to push the logout button.
“Where's Crys?” (Dancer)
“I saw him examining the compass card or whatever with the captain. They were comparing it to the ship compass.”
“Ah, Kimono must be there too then.” (Dancer)
We bribed our way into this merchant brig as passengers, but I had a feeling Crys intended to collect our bribe money back at first port of call.
Crys and Kimono were keeping close eye on the captain. I also had a rising suspicion that the captain harbored some genius ideas of throwing us all overboard, except Kimono, and then having fun with Kimono with the whole crew.
Well, I can leave that matter to Crys. Or rather, I have to leave the matter to him.
Keeping my eyes on the horizon instead of the captain or the crew, I spotted a group of high islands similar to Ball's Pyramid.
I hadn't seen anything like these islands in the game or anime, which was understandable – there wasn't much point in creating scenic islands in remote sea areas like Khagan Sea, out of bounds and below the horizon.
It was a mysterious archipelago waiting for explorers – maybe to kill and eat the explorers. There were some vicious tribes living in small islands, knowing nothing about the outside world.
This world of Mu-Ur, this planet, was smaller than planet Earth. It was the size of planet Mars, or even smaller, maybe? I was really bad at estimating distances and sizes.
When we traveled through the Ur Continent with autorail, we traveled about one fifth of the overworld map, east to west. Mu Continent took two fifths of the map, Sea of Peace between the continents took one fifth, and this Khagan Sea between the continents took the last fifth. Two fifths of sea, three fifths of land. That's about what existed in this day and age.
According to the lore, Strangers completely destroyed and submerged a third continent called Le Continent that was located below Mu and Ur. Not only it was erased from existence, it was erased from history as well.
The existence of a third continent was mentioned only once in the anime, during the fifth season episode where Rainwoman time-traveled to Lauticaa monastery at Fireland. An old world map in a book was shown where Mu, Ur and an unnamed third continent formed a triangle around Sea of Peace.
The fans named it Le Continent, by the way. It didn't have an official name.
I was pretty sure real world astrophysicists and geophysicists would protest against this type of terrestrial arrangements as profane and absurd. How do you erase a whole continent from existence without global repercussions, or how is this planet able to have normal Earth gravity when it's so small?
Strangers, man. If you think about it too much, you lose.
It might be a good idea to travel to Fireland and check the Lauticaa monastery records at some point after this run is done, though. But knowing the nature of this world, Suleiman or Caliph Tze might have burned the library already.
Rainwoman saw the map much further in the past, so the monastery might be just ruins now.
Speaking of Caliph Tze, one of the oddball episodes in the last season of the anime was a long flashback that told the whole backstory of a little slave boy named Tze. It came as a complete surprise for viewers that Caliph Tze actually started his life as a slave in a dungeon mine.
Tze was a slave child of a slave family, living in a slave village at the bottom of the Pnath-Sora Dungeon in Reignland. But he was different from other children – a once-in-a-century prodigy with cold and calculating intellect.
During the first half of the Tze episode, you started to sympathize with the struggles this little boy was going through as a slave, and cheered him on as he painstakingly learned how to use the Starcutter (which was thought to be just another low-powered Strangers mining tool back then). Then you ended up cheering him further when he became the young leader of a group aiming for slave rebellion and freedom.
The true personality of Tze was revealed on the latter part of the episode, when he betrayed the rebel group to achieve his personal goal: he wanted to become one the slavemasters and stand with the guards above instead of slaves below. A real punch in the gut for viewers who rooted for Tze at the start.
After that, it was shown as a montage how Tze worked his way up in the old Reignland Caliphate step by step. Slavemaster Tze turned into Quarrymaster Tze, and then he became Strangermaster Tze. He was put in charge of finding and analyzing new Strangers artifacts.
The High Hats didn't see him as a threat. They thought Tze was just a useful, hardworking idiot.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Tze's grand plan worked and he rose in ranks high enough that he could visit the White Palace at the City of the Sun.
When Tze got his first audience with Gray Caliph, his predecessor, he slaughtered everyone in the throne room using Starcutter he had mastered and customized in secret. He picked up the helmet-crown of the Warmaster and sat down on the throne like a conqueror.
He called in the grand viziers, the warlords, and the heads of the High Hat families for a council, and soon after that, the reign of Caliph Tze started.
It was a one-man revolution. Starcutter was a weapon so overpowered that Tze managed to do it.
Of course, the true backstory of the new Caliph was spindoctored for lower nobles and commoners. As far as the simple townsfolk of Mu knew, Caliph Tze and his followers were the good guys who dethroned a mad dictator. For the people of Reignland, Caliph Tze wasn't a villain trying to summon Strangers back to the world; he was a heroic conqueror king who fought against the ancient slavemasters and brought order to chaos.
Obviously, Caliph's knights and death patrols also held an appearance of honorable protectors of the empire and their misdemeanors were brushed aside. Attacking a knight brought an automatic life sentence in slavery, which the knights gladly used as an excuse when they needed to get rid of anyone opposing them – oh, you attacked a knight's honor with your nasty words and even claimed they were doing something wrong when they took your daughter? You get a life sentence, and here's an extra life sentence for your wife too!
In Caliph's propaganda, Suleiman-Beyond-the-Sea was a demonic monster with long horns under his high hat; a tyrant who kept his citizens in iron chains and tortured his own family to death – a grim projection after Tze left his own family to die as slaves in the dungeon mine.
Sure, Suleiman was a villain too, but that was like Stalin calling out Hitler, or Kim Il-sung calling out Pol Pot.
The emperor of Mu needed a great enemy to justify his war effort. Suleiman was a perfect scapegoat.
The Justified and Ancient Empire of Mu has always been at war with the Dark Realm of Ur!
And so the Great War continued, until the day Caliph Tze became an immortal emperor of both continents. The Suleiman of Swing finally died, and Caliph of Calypso kept on rockin' in the slave world.
“Ugh...”
“What's wrong, Speedy?” (Dancer)
“I suddenly had this feeling I've taken a bite of a steak so big I can't eat it.”
“A steak, huh? I'd like to eat fresh meat instead of potatoes and turnips. They say aristocrats of Om thrust their fingers down their throats so that they can keep eating after they're full.” (Dancer)
“You're not helping, Dancing Man.”
“What was the thing you wanted to talk about?” (Dancer)
“...I'll tell you when Crys and Kimono are present. I have to infodump like crazy on this journey to get everyone on the same page, and then I have to do it again when we pick up the newbies.”
“Well, you should infodump in the ocean, not on the deck.” (Dancer)
“Your allusions suck, Dancer.”
Dancer was talking more and hesitating less, which was good.
I also felt that Kimono was more accepting towards me because Crys was sleeping more and working less. I was the cheat that allowed Crys to skip most of the information gathering and planning he had been doing every night since City of Sighs.
----------------------------------------
I thought I could use the downtime in the ship efficiently by sketching the layouts of the secret research facility Bone Dune Station in Crys' notebook, and we could brainstorm a perfect plan for the rescue mission, but sea sickness had different plans for me.
My detailed infodump turned into an abridged version.
One of the cold opens in the anime (and introductory cutscene in the game) was a flashback to the time when Cursed Children were found. The episode started with the words “somewhere in the Mu wasteland”, and the game didn't include the location at all, so I didn't know where it happened.
Anyway, Strangermaster Tze's xenoarchaeologists found a massive new dungeon system, like the Hang Son Doong of dungeon mines. It included huge crystal halls, flowing magma streams and spiraling staircases that looked like they were made out of massive human bones.
At the bottom of that giant unnamed dungeon, they found a machine built by Strangers: a metal sarcophagus in the shape of a seven-pointed star.
One of the children sleeping inside that heptagonal incubation tank was Rainwoman. She was the next character we needed in our party, and probably the hardest.
“...And after we're out, we'll throw an area effect spell and destroy the whole station.”
“We throw what...?” (Kimono)
“We use the dynamite and destroy the Bone Dune Station.”
“Use understandable words.” (Kimono)
“Anyway, it's supposed to be a top secret facility, so they don't expect attacks, but there are still lots of guards and soldiers stationed there. Their main job is to keep the slaves and prisoners down.”
“How do we find this station? Your information about its exact location is not exact.” (Crys)
“I know the general area and it's landforms. Once we are there, we can just follow the rain.”
“Rain really follows Rainwoman?” (Dancer)
“Yes, and the intensity of the rain is related to her mood. The more angry she gets or the more excited she gets – if you know what I mean... nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.”
“And there are others with powers like her?” (Crys)
“There were originally seven siblings, but only Rainwoman and Mirim are still alive, as far as I know.”
I explained briefly what I knew about the Dark Children aka Seven Cursed Ones. They all had strange powers triggered by strange means. But I didn't want to spend too much time infodumping this part now because I would still have to explain this to Rainwoman in more detail later.
“...Caliph Tze uses Rainbow Codes for all his secret projects involving Strangers. Rainbow Code is usually color plus object, or color plus name. 'Dark Children' is a top secret rainbow code for the seven kids that were found sleeping in the machine coffin and they were taken to Bone Dune Station located in the desert in northern Reignland. All children had different mystical superpowers, or Strangers curses, whatever you want to call them. The seven kids were given their own code names according to their abilities.”
“Were they found in the dungeon of Pnath-Sora?” (Dancer)
“No, Caliph Tze grew up in Pnath-Sora. I don't know the location of the giant dungeon system, unfortunately. Pay attention, Dancer.”
“Sorry.” (Dancer)
“Okay, back to Rainwoman aka Weather Girl aka Rain Girl. Her passive curse ability is that rainclouds follow her everywhere, but she can also create rainstorms with rage, lust, or extreme emotions in general. There's more to her backstory than the machine coffin, but it gets complicated, so... What you all need to understand is that the rain curse is just a side story, the main thing is that Rain is amazingly skilled damage-dealer and needs to be handled with care.”
“You have already repeated this before.” (Kimono)
“Yes, and I will repeat it again, because it's important. Her current personality is a random element, but Rain and Sorry must absolutely join our party. We want her on our side, even if we can't be sure about her. If she freaks out, you need to keep it cool and back down, and never touch Sorry Man without her permission or she will definitely freak out. Okay? Good. Then, the second flag we need to collect is Mirim–”
Crys listened my explanation deep in thought, asked some pointed questions and made some notes in his pocket book.
“Only two of the seven Cursed Ones lived, but Test Subject hoped to become something like them?” (Crys)
“That's right, and in the original timeline he succeeded, more or less. Test Subject got the skill called Limit Break, but it came with a heavy tradeoff: he can't trigger Limit Break himself, or trigger anything in his body himself at all. Test Subject basically turned into a zombie vegetable and you two rolled him around in a wheel chair like a puppet – a puppet that came alive only when triggered with finger strings.”
“I see. Then, after we get inside the station and go down to the underground floors to release Rainwoman and her companion, how do we get out of there? Your plan does not seem to take this into account.” (Crys)
“Yes, after we release Rain and give her her weapons, she will take care of the rest. If there's nothing wrong with her, that is. If there really is something wrong, I have to rely on you.”
“I see. And Sorry Man?” (Crys)
“Rain knows where Sorry Man is kept. She has probably memorized the floor plans while plotting her escape. If everything goes well, we can simply follow Rain and provide cover fire. She will find a nice optimal route through enemies.”
“You place a lot of trust on unseen card.” (Crys)
“Oh, I've seen her in action. If she's in her top condition, and she should be at this point, that level of difficulty is a walk in the park.”
In the anime, the flashback where Rainwoman and Sorry Man escaped the facility was a glorious animated homage to all the complicated, super-long, one-take, hyper-choreographed fight scenes from live-action movies. And it was the same in the game – a long route through corridors and staircases full of enemies, but instead of just watching, you got to shoot them yourself.
A solid bonus level with interesting bullet time glitches, but fully accessible only when playing the campaign as a Rainwoman and thus unsuitable for WR attempts.
“And Sorry man?” (Crys)
“Sorry Man, well... he's a different story. Let's just say that Rainwoman and Sorry Man come as a package deal, and Sorry Man is more like an item than a person... Uh, feels bad man, I have to go again–”
I left the cabin in a hurry and ran up to the deck to vomit.
Curse you and your stacked status ailments, Mu-Ur!
“Look, Mad Seer is vomiting again.”
“Haha! Saw another vision, eh?”
The ship's crew had started calling me Mad Seer. They had been curious about the weird way I speak and apparently asked Dancer about it, and he had explained that I was a clairvoyant and saw prophetic visions.
Dancer apologized later for saying too much to the crew.
I wasn't really annoyed about it in itself, but it was a bit unsettling because there was actually a character named Mad Seer in the anime. He lived in one of the roomworlds of Starfish Mansion. Unfortunately he never had a chance to tell any prophecies to Revolution Movement because Rainwoman shot a bullet into his mouth on their first encounter.
Hopefully my new name is not a bad omen.