#4 The Belly of the Whale

The story so far: we're still a fool-punching shadowrunner who conned our way backstage in a gigantic nightclub/recording studio/office building. Our employer wanted us to destroy said building but we said no and sold him out to a short-tempered former musician and record label mogul named Kali. Why? Because her employees are nicer than she is.

I accidentally loaded up the Dragonfall main campaign before getting here and I'm still shaken. If you play that campaign through to the end enough times, the intro mission's music will probably give you traumatising flashbacks.

On topic, we load into the zone and immediately get four karma.

Altogether, we have five extra karma now. Maybe we can spend it on something useful like melee skill, or Body, or -

DON'T YOU DARE

Kidding. We spend it on Body and now have a Body of 5, giving us an HP total of 55.

Halfway across the room, this conversation starts.

Well, that's not creepy or anything.

We traverse a winding corridor, lit by dancing magical lights...

...and get attacked by a hellhound. Hellhounds in Shadowrun are awakened dogs that sometimes breathe fire. Let's not give it the chance.

It goes down quickly, but another shows up! We splatter the walls with green blood.

We exit the corridor, enter the next room, and find a basilisk and final hellhound waiting among a bunch of strange statues, strange pillars and a pair of strange arches. Basilisks are awakened lizards the size of a komodo dragon that do exactly what you'd expect them to. Let's - again - not give it the chance.

We get the drop on him.

Through careful use of cover and the ancient art of flanking rather than attacking head on, we catch the last hellhound by surprise as well.

Not a scratch.

The gate on the right seems to be locked and we don't want to touch the statues, so we check the arch on the far left.

Passing through it we find a book on a pedestal.

PROPAGANDA

This would be harder to decode for someone who doesn't know the lore here. This poem is about the emergence of the Shadowrun races. Homo sapiens nobilis is the scientific name for the elves. The next two are easier to guess - dwarves, orks. Homo sapiens ingentis are the trolls. Clearly this puzzle is easier to solve if you know the names; you can also see the inherent bias when you translate from the Latin: 'noble' humans are elves and 'unnatural' humans are trolls. Ugh.

It's attempting to imply that it was written in the age of the Fourth World, but neither English nor Latin existed then.

We return to the statues on the right but the statues just need to be rotated. There's no connection to the puzzle.

We have all the statues face outward. The gate opens -- and we go into combat mode.

We head through the gate and there's a ghoul waiting for us.

Ghouls are humanoids with the HMHVV virus, which can turn humanoids into a variety of 'undead' like creatures. Some ghouls keep their minds but most are feral flesh-eaters. This one probably is.

I end my turn immediately, since ghouls don't have ranged attacks and we do. They're literally blind, after all.

A well-placed shotgun blast is all it takes.

We advance down the corridor and more ghouls rush us.

The last one gets too close and Turm is scratched. 1nv4d3r tries scouting ahead...

...and runs into five of them.

We beat a quick retreat back to Turm. When most are in range, she throws a grenade.

With a 22% chance of hitting, our hero manages to pick one off with his untrained pistol skills.

They try to attack but we're too far, and they get into shooting range but not melee range when the turn ends. Like ghouls in a barrel.

We advance a bit more - and the last ghoul was in the corner. He advances but can't make it to us, instead stopping just short. We also get a good look at the second puzzle - one that no doubt uses that poem we found.

Our scratch damage is undone as the last ghoul falls to the floor. I am so glad I picked Turm and not Dalmin.

The puzzle uses life-sized replicas of each race. So let's try this, without reading back.

Nobilis came first...

Then either dwarves or orks. I'm going with dwarves, 50-50.

We prostrate ourselves before our hypothetical ancestor next.

And then come face-to-chest with our larger counterpart, the troll. I'm sure our hero would prefer if it were Turm but then that was probably the kind of talk that made Dalmin persona non grata (and rightfully so).

We don't need to trigger the human statue - do the rest in the right order and the new passage at the far right simply opens on its own. Convenient.

I mean, perfect place for another ambush but convenient.

Hey, wha-

In a clever move, the new passageway leads straight to an area transition. There's nothing to click and no confirmation to take care of. And I'm okay with that - we didn't have any nuyen or items to leave behind down there, so nothing is lost by it.

We resume where we left off, only the gate is shut behind us.

Oh thank goodness. A well lit area. I was half expecting to be mugged before.

A hellish-looking fire elemental appears in the middle of the area and starts spouting Bond villain talk.

His nature elemental buddy offers to be our boss fight for the evening.

I attempt to dissuade it, telling it not to go to all the effort...

...but it insists on entertaining us.

It even summons four air elementals to help out. How thoughtful!

Also, heeeeeeeeeere's Johnson!

Hey, I wonder what this 'button' does? We send Turm to check it out.

The nearby pillar collapses into the pit. You hear a scream of rage.

Also, the elemental is no longer hostile to us. That's... a big deal.

We try the same thing again down south and get the same result.

Two of the elementals are no longer hostile, and fighting with the other two - and Johnson just fired on the nature spirit.

I send Turm up north to the pillar on that side (and also to find our Johnson) while 1nv4d3r circles around the bottom.

She gets shot for her loyalty, but she's still kicking. Together, we knock the last pillars into the abyss. Both bosses turn on her, leaving her "almost dead".

And by almost dead I mean with 18 health. Sheesh, it's good to be a troll.

I let her use her medkit, and then kamakaze for what I hope would be extra sturdiness...

...while our brawling ork closes in on the nature spirit. Turm soaks up another shot as she joins him in the middle.

Unfortunately as I feared, the spirit dying loses us our backup. I wasn't sure this would happen because I usually end Johnson first. But no, this time I saved him for last. We do get the option to spare him and just escape but... why would we?

Realising his peril, he jumps to another cover-spot and uses a stun grenade. An indignant Turm shoots us both in trying to finish him off...

But the final honour is mine.

Yes. Yes I do.

We're back out in the open and the first thing we notice is a strange man in the corner who appears to be suffering from possum syndrome.

Leaving him to his despair, we go talk to Kali, who's waiting by the entrance.

Did... Kali just Nicholas Cage me? Don't worry, I'll spare you the meme.

We appreciate that. That Johnson was a spiteful little hardass. For all we know, he put out the word of our betrayal to assassinate our character in advance in case he died.

I like this use of the Matrix interface to do our epilogue.

I don't think I've mentioned this but Antumbra was initially released in three modules. This is the end of the first one.

Had we gone along with the Johnson, the building would've gone down and his company would've taken the site. But we didn't, and I like to consider this the canon ending.

So with the first part finished, here's the loading screen for the first zone of part two!

Don't worry. These sections get significantly longer as time goes by, and the story gets more involved. But that's it for now.

See you all next week, hopefully!