The so-called city planning of the Sun City was eccentric, to put it mildly.
It was originally a vast slave fortress built by Strangers, so the massive outer and inner walls placed hard limits on expansion. Buildings inside the colossal city walls extended and widened upwards, turning side streets into narrow tunnel alleys and walkways into labyrinthine network of stairs and slopes going up and down like in some Japanese science fiction anime.
Wider main streets going north to south were reserved for nobles and merchant caravans. A child slave being run over by a horse carriage was a daily occurrence. And as you would expect, there wasn’t any codified street names, bicycle paths, pedestrian crossings or public transportation options.
All these details added into the common game scenery where neutral NPCs spent their whole lives walking routinely through predetermined paths inside their designated sub-areas. Stepping outside your home district was something illegal, immoral, unthinkable, and horrifying.
My next goal: take the shortest path to Sun Palace with minimum number of turns.
The main street was the straightest path, but it wasn’t the fastest one.
In the game, players usually took one of the three main routes to the Sun Palace: this main street using a carriage or a mining vehicle (optionally disguised as a soldier or a merchant), or hijacking the Warship City autorail train, or infiltrating through the Ob Canal with a ship (which Drue’s crew did). In the anime, the MC group used the water channel route, and all the orphanage school students and the rest of the Army of Twelve Monkeys were simply used as distractions and sacrificial pawns against the urban Death Squads.
I slowed down to check the Great Windcatcher Tower, the tallest spot in the district. The top of the tower was the coolest sniping spot.
According to our master plan, two professional assassins from Rajalgar Drach’s group should be camping in the tower right now with a clear view down to the main streets.
Squinting, I could see the glints of their rifle scopes. Yep, they were watching us.
“Snipers are in the tower. Let’s continue.”
Since I was able to see them, the city guards should have noticed them as well. Holding the Great Windcatcher Tower was an important detail because the city guards wanted to climb as high as possible to shoot the airship, but two snipers should be enough keep them down.
The guards will obviously try to raid the tower, but all the tower exits should be blocked by furniture by now, except one secret underground passage that leads to a nearby basement of a slave market house – the designated escape route for our sniper duo.
Anyway, while I tried to avoid driving over innocent humans and horses crowding the main street the best I could, I had to pick and choose my victims.
“Hey, I'm driving here! Get outta here! Run, you fools!”
They couldn't hear me over the chaos and noise, but I had to try.
After driving through some hastily built wooden blockades, we relentlessly rolled forward and pushed abandoned carriages out of the way. Guard patrols took shots at us from the side alleys, but they quickly realized their bullets did nothing.
“Move, move, move! It’s revolution o’clock! New update coming through, restart your devices!”
“Two heavy mining vehicles ahead blocking the road.” (Crys)
“Right on time.”
The actual heavy troops had finally realized that blocking our route to the Sun Palace was the best way to go. It was a fine idea from them to use Strangers vehicles against a Strangers vehicle: they chained multiple autopalanquines, Hathicars and Flat Trucks sideways on the street.
As expected, of course.
“Crys, fire away! They’ll either burn or suffocate!”
After few bursts of hot sauce the enemy vehicles turned into flaming saunas for the drivers inside and for the knights behind them.
“Mediocre!”
I continued to slowly push the lighter vehicles out of the way. Slowly, slowly –
“...Alright, we’re back on the track. Kimchi, get ready for a quick right turn soon!”
I counted blocks looking for a specific turning point. When I saw the building I was looking for, I gave instructions to Kimono and we took a turn to the right.
Then I pointed at a specific building along the narrow side street.
“Crys, that’s the tavern owned by Wyrmbat, the guy I told you about. He’s the main info peddler in the Sun City.”
“Acknowledged.” (Crys)
“Oh, and Purest Song lives in that half-collapsed building there. I haven’t mentioned him before, but he’s a funny dude. Kind of like a local stand-up comedian, a village idiot type stock character with comedic dialogue.”
“Do you need to point out every person who lives here?” (Rain)
“Why not? Sightseeing trip combined with a city conquest. I’m not pointing out every person, just the few interesting characters.”
“This is the city of that masked bastard. Just destroy everything he created.” (Rain)
“It’s not the city’s fault, Rain. The city was here before Caliph Tze and before Strangers, although it was smaller back then. Strangers built the star fort walls around the original, the original was built around an oasis and Strangers turned the oasis into a canal, like cutting a watermelon with a sword... Should I point out the specific buildings and monuments Caliph Tze ordered to be built? We can certainly destroy some of those. You want to take a small detour?”
“Tch.” (Rain)
“You’re a hitwoman with revolvers, but verbally you’re more like a misswoman, right?”
Crys unexpectedly chuckled at my old pun. You liked that one, huh?
It was a mean thing to say to Rain, though. I should apologize.
“Sorry, Rain-chan. That was kinda toxic. You’re not a misswoman.”
“Just shut up about people who don’t matter.” (Rain)
Pouting Rain is cute too. Happy or angry; it’s all good.
Because we need plenty of rain after all the firebombing.
“They will destroy the city on their own. All they need is an excuse and an example, and they will gladly burn down their own houses. We provide that excuse and an example.” (Crys)
That’s one possible scenario we prepared for: when easily impressionable citizens observe gangsters burning the city around them, they might go with the flow and join the terrorists in crazed property destruction. Simple people follow hype and trends, no matter how detrimental.
“Okay, here’s the eastern market square. This is always a hot location on the map.”
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I drove straight through the lazy midday market square, knocking down market stalls and crushing wares, trying to avoid the panicking people.
On the other side of the square, I stopped right before heavy metal gates that partitioned the eastern district from the central district. War-slaves lived in the eastern section. If we had approached Sun City from east instead of south, they would have sent war-slaves out of the gate instead of wardogs.
The partition gates were quickly closing before us (right on schedule), so I kept driving forward on leisure pace. The panicking guards turning the gate cogwheels were probably confused about why we didn’t try to rush forward.
“Alright, closed enough. Fire in the middle, starting from the top.”
Crys pulled the triggers. Double flame beams melted the heavy metal gates together.
“Flame perfect trick, am I right? That was another pun, guys.”
Closing these partition gates was a bad move from the guards. In the community, these were called Bottleneck Gates for a good reason. Now the barracks were sealed and they were practically trapped inside the district. If the troops on the other side wanted to join the battle, they’d have to circle around on foot and use another gate further south, and that gate wasn't wide enough for Strangers vehicles.
“Rain, how’s the airship?”
“Northeast. Dropping dynamite.” (Rain)
“Excellent. Next checkpoint is Hall Alley Wall, let’s roll.”
I turned the Flame Tank around with Kimono's help and navigated across the main street to the opposite side.
When people saw us coming back, even the most curious ones ran away (or at least tried to hide and take cover), but surprisingly, on this particular location, there was one person who didn’t run.
One NPC kept standing in the middle of the street – a young man thin as a wire, with chains on his wrists and ankles, and a dog carcass strapped on his neck; a common Caliphate punishment for keeping a pet, which was strictly forbidden hobby for slaves.
Was this dude a named character? I didn’t recognize him.
He just stood there looking right at us when we approached. A slave citizen trying to commit suicide by tank?
...Oh. Oh no.
I suddenly realized what this situation looked like.
“Crys, hold your fire!”
It’s this type of guy.
A dude like Tank Man during Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 when Chinese Communist Party slaughtered thousands of peaceful protesters.
“Kim-chan, help me out. We’ll take a small detour.”
I took a sharp turn to the side street on the left.
“Someone you know?” (Crys)
“Nope. Never seen him before.”
“Why then?” (Crys)
“Well, I just felt that this reference would be too much on the nose.”
“This isn’t worth a turn.” (Kimono)
“No backseating allowed on this issue. Tank Man must live. Real recognizes real, warrior respects a warrior.”
After maneuvering through few wooden backyard fences, we returned back to the street.
“Rain, is that guy still standing there?”
“Yes.” (Rain)
Tank Man of Mu-Ur...
Sorry, but unlike your real world counterpart, you took a stand for the wrong side. But still, respect for breaking the NPC curse and stepping forward.
Like a noob in a survival game hunted by teaming sweats, he suddenly decided to turn around and fight, but the tryhards just ignored his courageous final stand and ran by.
I hope my decision to let him live doesn’t come back to bite me. He might grow up to become some radical neo-caliphate influencer ten years down the road, longing for the good old days of Soviet slavery and telling embellished stories about how he turned a tank around with a prayer.
For him, this might be the most important event of his life.
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Start of airship cutscene:
While we were avoiding bodyblocks, our airship kept dropping explosives from around 400 meters above the city – double the height of a regular Slave Tower. Caliphate rifles didn’t have the effective range or muzzle velocity to reach or penetrate the airship in that height.
Airship’s first objective was to destroy a covered bridge over Ob Canal. The bridge was a bottleneck for the Death Squads inside the city, but dropping dynamite on either end made it unusable. It was pretty hard to hit the covered bridge accurately from high up, and we had a limited amount of dynamite, so they destroyed the bridge during their first ascent. There was plenty of civilian traffic on the bridge at the time, but it couldn’t be helped.
Secondary airship objectives were the hidden gunpowder warehouses in the city. Destroying them crippled the Caliphate supply lines in Reignland. There wasn’t need to be accurate in the case of these warehouses, so dynamiting and firebombing the general area was enough to cook them.
Third objective was to dronedrop firebombs on Death Squads until the rainstorm starts hits the city proper.
After that, the airship descends above the north wing of the inner palace and lands on the palace roof to set up defensive positions and explosive traps. Enemies should run up and straight into the traps first, and then they would take cover under the arcades where they can be dealt with by throwing more firebombs.
Backup plan for the worst case scenario: if the airship starts coming down, they should throw down all ballast and bombs before using their parachutes, and try to crash land the airship on the palace roof or in the palace garden.
End of airship cutscene.
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We kept driving through side alleys barely wide enough for the tank. The improvised blockades arranged on the streets were useless against back alley zigzag strats.
And then we came to a dead end. Which was good.
“Crys, full power at the wall ahead.”
This point in the run was quite important. This thick wall was the final thing separating us from the Sun Palace sub-area.
The streets, alleyways and paths in this area were especially labyrinthine to prevent enemies from bringing large war machines into the palace grounds, but melting and breaking this Hall Alley Wall (named by gamers) was the easiest route to wiggle the Flame Tank inside the palace in a reasonable amount of time. Every other route had some massive roadblocks or collapsed bridges preventing vehicles from going forward; maybe the ascent was too steep, maybe the ground couldn’t carry the weight – everything except invisible, indestructible walls to prevent players from driving vehicles inside the palace.
Challenge accepted, sayeth the gamer. Driving vehicles into unintended areas is one of the oldest tricks in speedrunning. It’s not exactly elegant or classy, but I want to keep our armor as long as possible.
Safety strat, best strat.
After a few minutes of full bursts, I bulldozed through molten rock.
“Shaka, when the walls fell!”
And with that red hot shortcut, we soon arrived in the palace pergola.
Unceremoniously, we rampaged through neat rows of trees, columns, topiary and water fountains. With minor interruptions, we drove up the palatial terraces and climbed the wide marble steps to enter the inner palace.
None of the Caliphate troops in the city followed us in the palace grounds because they were programmed (read: trained and brainwashed) to stay in their own sub-area. They didn’t dare to cross the line.
Of course, there was also the second reason: this scary vehicle wasn’t their problem anymore. It was the palace guard's problem now.
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Sun Palace, the final level of the game and the finale of the anime.
We were finally here.
Multiple palace walls, narrow corridors and tight entrances later we reached a luxuriously decorated inner hall flanked by carpeted staircases. This high particular domed hall reminded me of the interior of Pantheon in Rome.
I turned the Flame Tank around, pushed some debris to the side and parked the tank in a hallway. We might need to exit in a hurry if something unexpected happens.
When I turned the engine off, it suddenly became very quiet.
“Alright, we have successfully sneaked in. I don’t think anyone noticed us.”
“Why are you whispering?” (Rain)
“Joke didn’t land at all, huh...”
“Are we going out?” (Rain)
“Yeah, this is as far as we can drive, unfortunately. We don’t want to burn all the great works of art here, we’re not savages... wait, wait, don’t go out immediately.”
We got in the palace fast and easy – just as expected, just as I like it. If it had been hard and slow, we wouldn’t have used this strat in the first place.
There was only a few half-unexpected and half-expected anomalies on the way. Mid-boss Autokrator wasn’t patrolling his boss area outside the inner palace; another character who was able to break free from his NPC zone curse.
Autokrator was probably camping in the throne room area, probably with the current puppet Caliph.
Oi, area bosses! You should just wait patiently in your own home areas instead of wandering around and causing trouble!
“Okay, I think we’re cool enough to get out. Ladies first, Rain. Watch out for campers, there are always campers in the Sun Palace, especially on the second floor. Throw a firebomb through a doorway and pop a few rounds through a wall, if you hear or see them moving. Always double check your gear and move carefully. Don’t push too hard, don’t go berserk. Take care of your health, don’t ignore the damage.”
“Sure.” (Rain)
“That's the spirit! Crys and Kim-chan next, I’ll watch your back.”
We don’t want to take unnecessary risks at this point. Even if the final boss Caliph Tze and his semi-final bodyguard bosses are long gone, Sun Palace is still the location of the final battle. We must expect the unexpected.
“Is it too late to cancel this whole thing? Anyone else want to turn back now?”
No answers from the MC’s.
“Just me? Okay, up we go then.”
Flagstaff in my left hand and a revolver in my right hand, I climbed out of the Flame Tank.