Zelda Universe RPG

Emilica, Christopher Belmont, and Harvey have all gathered on the training grounds of Hyrule Castle, curious about a rumor they heard regarding the Frozen Mind’s Eye. Sensing people on his turf, Shady wanders out to greet them cheerily. When Christopher inquires about the nature of the rumor, however, the poor ghost enters a temporary trance and becomes, for lack of a better term, significantly colder. He opens a portal and takes a whip to the face for his trouble as Belmont has a minor freak-out. This somehow summons Firiann, who joins the entire group, minus Shady, in getting sucked into the portal. All is darkness until the void pulls back, revealing a room made completely of ice: ice-brick walls, ice-wood floor, and ice-cube blocks. As it turns out, the group is in some variety of puzzle room, though the solution is apparent enough to them from the get-go. In the next room, Harvey blows up a barrier of snow, revealing a Freezard (aka King Freezie) which promptly calls an Ice Keese down for combat. Firiann is immediately ganked, Belmont gets frozen, and Emilica twiddles her thumbs for the first round of combat. Things look grim and continue to get grimmer as Emilica misses with a lightning bolt and Belmont gets hit in the weak point for massive damage. It’s only by sheer resolve on the part of the remaining members of the party that the battle is won (that and a lucky stalactite.) They find that the room they are now standing in is occupied by a tank of water, some doors, and a few more stalactites. A pipe system leads to the west, but the party can hear footsteps through the door leading that way. They wisely elect, after such a harrowing battle, to try the northern route instead. Through the door, they find a patch of red ice and a scrawling note that reveals that Shady has a sister, and she may be still alive.

The adventurers leave the revelatory room behind and press onward. In the next room over, they discover a river, a phantom troll, and a very irritable, passive-aggressive bridge. The structure only grumbles about rent as they pass over it. On the opposite shore lies another block puzzle, but Christopher Belmont once again solves it with relative ease, almost as if he’d had practice with them before. Solving the puzzle reveals a block with a suspicious keyhole though no one currently has a key. The party is left with little choice but to continue investigating and heads west. The next room is yet another degree larger than the previous one, accommodating two ice mountains and a very long stretch of the river. Harvey climbs a ladder leading up one of the mountains, finds an enemy atop it, and promptly slides back down, creating a comical heap of himself, Belmont, and Emilica. This alerts every enemy in the room, bringing three Chillfos and a Freezard down upon them. Christopher boldly challenges one of the icy knights to Mortal Kombat, and Harvey uses his expert ring on the Freezard, though you cannot grasp the true form of this attack. Whatever the heck it is, it kills the cold king, though not before he takes out Firiann (again.) Faced with two Chillfos, Emilica promptly buggers off, leaving Harvey with a difficult choice. He wisely elects to flee as well, since he’d be taking on two enemies solo at that point. The party splits during their hasty retreat, with Christopher Belmont and Emilica heading north, and Harvey and Firiann heading south. What awaits our beleaguered heroes in the frozen halls? Tune in to find out. Same ZU time, same ZU channel.

Shady's mind isn't remotely prepared to handle a party split, so it just deletes Christopher Belmont entirely and sticks Emilica back with the rest of the group. Harvey and Firiann discover Green Enrics in a pile of snow while these actions are processing. No, don’t ask why. When it comes to the Enrics clan, these things just happen. Regardless, her presence inspires our previously cowardly heroes to use the door as a bottleneck, attempting to take the Chillfos on one at a time. The Spartan Defense tactic actually works out well for them, and the ice skeletons fall to some missiles from the party and one massive Slam Jam from Green's axe. With the immediate threat of death taken care of, the party returns to the room with the water tank. A stalactite falls from the ceiling due to too much excitement, revealing a treasure chest on the ceiling. The famed drunken aura of Clan Enrics momentarily engulfs the party, and they begin doing the only thing they can think of to get the treasure down: bashing their bodies against a solid frozen wall. Physics takes a break, because it can’t even handle this right now, and the sheer enthusiasm displayed by everyone in the room somehow dislodges the chest. It turns out to only contain the map. Once sanity returns, the group heads back to the room with the lock block to try the key a Chillfos dropped earlier. The lock block shockingly unlocks to become two puzzle blocks, and without Christopher Belmont, the solution is not so clear. Right about then the vampire slayer simply drops out of thin air. In the end it’s Firiann who discovers the correct answer, spawning a stairway and a second, bonus puzzle as a result. The group attempts the second puzzle, nearly ragequit it, and then realize they can just reset it as many times as they like, and then solve it without needing to anyways. To the victors go some fairies.

In the room at the top of the stairs lies a small, badly hurt, huddled-up figure mumbling quietly to itself about Bloodwind. One of the bottled fairies finds that it can do nothing for the poor soul, leaving it somewhat of a mystery. Christopher Belmont, never one to leave someone in need of aid behind, carries the mysterious creature with them as they move on down a hallway. A wall of red ice blocks their way, prompting them to return and notice the blue fire on the ceiling of the room they had just passed through. Harvey and Emilica both slam on the walls before anyone can say differently, resulting in Harvey and Green Enrics getting hit by the freezing fire. The wall is not amused. The group wisely puts together the idea that freezing fire must cancel out burning ice and combines the two successfully for some useful treasure: bottles with which to grab more blue flame. Emilica chances total protonic reversal by using Shady’s Whistle, though this only results in an empty table and confirmation that the portal did lead into Shady's mind. Harvey leads a backtracking expedition to the twin peaks room, where the gum he likes is coming back into style. Further northwards, the group finds a small key in a chest and a locked door representing the most devious puzzle so far in the dungeon. Emilica doesn't wait to see what’s behind the door, and falls into a void for her brashness. Bafflingly, the others follow her and land right in a trap room populated by an angry two-headed Gleeok. Green Enrics, mortally terrified of multi-headed wyrms, bodily throws Emilica at it, killing one of the heads outright. The Gleeok is extremely unamused, and deflects three re-rolls to hit the entire party with fire. Being tucked away in a pocket dimension has severely weakened the boss though, and it falls fairly quickly to the combined assault brought to bear against it.

After the boss goes down, a metal wall in the northern hallway fires up and starts spinning cogs and gears. The immediate effect of this mad machinery is not clear to the party, at least not until they head back to the twin peaks room. The river has dried up completely, which means it’s time for another attempt at a party split. Green Enrics and Emilica investigate the eastern end of the river while Harvey and Christopher Belmont head for the south door and back to the hall there. Once again, however, Shady is having none of this Scooby Doo nonsense, and blocks Harvey and Belmont with a locked door. They dejectedly rejoin the group in the room where they solved the second puzzle as the other two head up the river’s path to an unmarked room on the map. Green Enrics promptly passes out from all the excitement. The rest of our heroes discover a low-ceilinged room where, above them, someone is pacing. A staircase appears, leading up to the upper dorm--room. Harvey apparently hadn't learned from climbing the peak, so he walks straight up and into a magic blast to the face. His compatriots wisely elect to chuck projectiles at the camper Wizzrobe instead, distracting it enough to charge into proper battle. The frail sorcerer is easily vanquished, and though it has an ice elemental familiar, the thing is too stupid not to run straight at the axe blow that killed its master. For their mastery of the double kill, the party discovers the motherlode of chests: sweet loot for everyone. There’s even a victory slide for them to use as they exit, depositing them back in the puzzle room once more. Most of the party heads for the switch room marked on the map, but Christopher Belmont gets spatially dislocated and travels south so far that he circumnavigates the globe. He’ll get there someday folks.

Harvey, sore from taking the only damage from the previous battle, smashes the now empty water reservoir to vent his aggression, not even waiting for Christopher Belmont to get out of the way first. This ends up with Harvey nearly killing himself if not for a well-timed fairy, rather than hurting Christopher even a little bit. The object, whatever it was, only needed to be melted, which the great-grandson of Trevor accomplishes by using his freshly anointed Fire Whip. This unlocks a new door, which leads them to a massive room long enough to make a figure at the other end indistinguishable until approached. The party tries their best to ignore this person, but a locked door forces them to investigate. The figure turns out to be nightmare fuel: a grotesquely charred vision of something that was once humanoid. All that’s left besides a melted grin and bloody tears is hatred and fire; the room transforms accordingly. Christopher Belmont further enrages the horrible remnant when it notices the small creature which the vampire slayer has been carrying around this whole time. For all its rage, though, it’s still just a boss in a--that is to say, it falls quickly to physical attacks, spraying blood everywhere and making sure that the party won’t be sleeping soundly for weeks. Even the key it leaves behind dissolves into blood. Thankfully the room beyond is just a normal sort, seemingly of Kokiri design. As it turns out, the burning spirit was once a Kokiri who lived peacefully in the forest with his friends back before the Old Great Deku Tree died. Nothing more can be gleaned from the peaceful scene, forcing the party towards the only room left to explore: the boss room.

As the group passes into the darkness beyond the boss door, they find themselves revisiting the memories of the Kokiri who would become the spirit they fought. Though once as happy and carefree as any wood sprite could be, Ganondorf’s force decimated his village during The Hero of Time’s seven-year slumber. Faces were slammed into the face, people were stampeded, and cattle were molested. Set ablaze by a Wizzrobe, this lone Kokiri shambled in pure agony into a hollow tree, falling all the way to Subrosia, where it was tended to by two magical beings. Cloaked like a Subrosian, the Kokiri came to be the being known as Shady. This revelation carries them forwards to a monochrome version of the Master Sword shrine. Green Enrics awakens from her spontaneous drunken stupor and finally catches up with the rest of the group in time to speak with a grey version of Shady. This version seems to be fixated on salvation, though the nature of that salvation is difficult for the party to work out. At first, Grey Shady draws them into battle and they answer with force in turn. Once Christopher stops sorrowfully monologuing, however, he is suddenly possessed of a wise idea. He has Emilica use Shady’s Whistle once more, before passing it around to each person to play in turn. Grey Shady reacts very poorly to this, transforming slowly back into his usual self though not without resistance. Grey Shady attempts once last attack, though he’s too weak to do anything. Instead, Emilica is tossed by Green at Emilica, resulting in Emilica's dying via Emilica. That’s the power of Enrics.

Shady, on the other hand, is restored to his chipper self, and plays the Song of Healing on the flute. He’s also delighted to find that Fraaz, one of the beings that saved him back after his fall and the creature who Christopher Belmont selflessly carried all the way there, is still alive. He quickly opens a portal and returns our heroes back to the real world along with the faintly alive Fraaz. There’s nothing a rest at the inn can’t fix though, and she’s back to herself in no time. As for the rest of our heroes, they gladly stay by the fire, and recount their adventures in the frozen rooms of Shady's mind.

At the Hyrule Training Grounds, a group of Hylians are milling around and rubbernecking a monochromatic portal that has opened there. Fireblast, Hal, and Sephiroth arrive in time to notice this commotion, and discover Shady looking very wan and not at all like himself. Fran appears as the adventures variously attempt to enter the portal, only to find themselves in a time-sink. Unable to truly reach the portal, they instead follow Fran to the Temple of Time and through the portal to Subrosia where the sky appears to have frozen over. Fran explains that his party attempted to solve the problem through the exploration of a fire dungeon located in the Temple of Seasons, but this only served to make things worse. He requests this second party assist in tackling an ice dungeon nearby simultaneously, before scurrying off like a scared little rabbit. The party obliges the request, but not before making note of a very peculiar fountain containing water that cannot be interacted with in any meaningful way. The icy dungeon before them is every bit of winter that it’s supposed to represent, and then some. Sephiroth, in a moment of prescience, lights a bomb and blasts a hidden Wolfos before it has time to register the party. Its accompanying Freezard is highly unamused, and battle is quickly initiated. The party gets their first taste of just how nasty fighting beings of extreme cold can be. Thankfully no one takes any damage that can’t be healed. They also get the chance to try out deep-roasted Wolfos, which is surprisingly delicious, though a bit gamy.

Fireblast decides he’s had enough of the cold fairly quickly, but Alucard wanders by to replace him before the group moves on from the lobby of the dungeon. The vampire attempts to introduce himself, but is shot down in favor of enthusiastic exploration of the dungeon at hand. The enthusiasm is so great that the party nearly attempts a split right there, though they think better of it at the last minute. This proves fortunate as two more Winter Wolfos fail at ambushing the party from obvious snow blinds. The party is far more prepared for this battle than the previous one, and it ends with a furious triple attack from the heroes and the sheer erasure of two Wolfos from existence entirely. All that’s left are bloody walls and the experience of having witnessed destruction incarnate. No one has anything witty enough to come close to capping the moment, so they simply take the map from the anticlimatic chest, noting that the room is supposed to be a control room of sorts, though nothing visible indicates any reason for this nomenclature. Sephiroth, as usual, decides that bombs are the answer, and is once again proven right. He bombs out a section of wall, revealing an unmarked room as well as Alucard's badass sunglasses as the son of Dracula walks away from the explosion in style. Within the unmarked room is a mista—I mean an aura of directional distortion, which temporarily stymies the party’s exploration. They decide that the endless abyss above them really isn’t worth checking out anyways, and head off in a different direction instead. In a different hallway, Alucard finds a snowboard bush, and doesn’t hesitate to ride off down a steep slope on one of the plant’s snowboard leaves. Hal and Sephiroth, never ones to be outdone, ride off after him.

After going to get a warmer cloak, Fireblast returns just in time to get in on the wild snowboarding action. A Freezard and an Icerobe also try to join, but the party has a no-scrubs policy and promptly bombs the Freezard right off the run. Unfortunately, the Icerobe proves a more difficult problem to solve as it amuses itself pegging Hal in the head with magical ice bolts. A Beamos appears, but Sephiroth is having none of that nonsense, and phases it directly out of existence before it has a chance to notice it had begun existing in the first place. This works so well, he does it again to the Icerobe, though not before the wizard clubs Hal with a massive chunk of ice. They turn around, free of distractions to find a massive wall of ice careening towards them at very unsafe speeds. All seems lost, until they pass harmlessly through it and land on some soft snow.

Our heroes discover that they’ve landed in the East hall, where they are also not alone. Huddled up in the cold is the insubstantial body of an unfamiliar creature. It awakens upon trying to be touched, and though frightened at first, recognizes the party as friends of Shady and amiably introduces itself as Fraaz. She doesn’t seem to know where she is, nor why her body is now incorporeal. In fact, the creature is a mite loopy after having been passed out for so long and doesn’t seem to be making a whole lot of sense at all. Despite confusion on the parts of everyone involved, Shady eventually explains that the ice dungeon is her home, and decides that she must be a ghost, a fact that doesn’t bother her in the slightest. What does bother her is Bloodwind's involvement in her affairs, as well as a memory of Shady's sister shanking her at some point. She knows an awful lot about Bloodwind, a name that causes Sephiroth to lock up in fear, and proceeds to explain a little more of the wanted man’s backstory. Back when he was just Wind, something triggered an awakening of his powers, which slaughtered the entire party he was traveling with, save for the person they were assigned to escort. Fraaz explains that she traveled with Bloodwind's group of underworld operatives, along with Silvio, which puts Hal on edge, Shady’s sister Summer, and a mysterious, and seemingly impossible, Gerudo male named Gauntlet. Our heroes continue to investigate as Fraaz perkily chatters away behind them. They discover an ice block with, of all things, a button on it, even as the ghost behind them starts to put it together that she’s been out of the picture for longer than she thought. By pressing the button, the party engages a curious puzzle that requires the manipulation of elemental powers to solve. After two parts have been cleared, however, the plot takes a coffee break to catch its breath.

The next part of the puzzle rises from its grave, and our heroes find themselves looking at two magical mirrors. A Mysterious Voice speaks to them, though it appears not to know itself all that well, only that it is the creator of the puzzles they are solving. DM, is that you? Actually, it turns out to be Bloodwind, which given his general M.O. isn’t all that surprising. The mirror puzzles get a little harder, and the voice of Bloodwind continues to mess with the heads of the party. Fraaz attempts to enter one of the mirrors, but only succeeds in becoming invisible. Alucard attempts to enter one of the mirrors, but only succeeds in blasting himself across the room. Since Sephiroth is still locked up worse than Windows Vista, it’s up to Hal to use his sword beams and save the day. Or at least to solve the puzzle. Their tribulations are just beginning however, as Bloodwind himself manifests into the room. He invites the party to join him, which they are wise enough to decline. Alucard, on the other hand, accidentally lets slip about the power of his father, which would come back to bite him, and all of Hyrule, much later on. In the meantime, Sephiroth is completely unnerved and makes his way back towards the exit, even though the villain has disappeared. Alucard follows behind him, and confronts the silver haired man at the fountain in the lobby. Sephiroth is both upset and furious, wanting to not even be near the idea of Bloodwind for reasons that he refuses to elaborate upon. He storms off, leaving Alucard to realize that he’s accidentally left Hal behind in the dungeon. Silker shows up, but since one man walked out of the dungeon and another seems to be talking to himself, the new adventurer elects to simply go on ahead and hunt for Hal himself.

Alucard, himself now furious at being strung along thus far, attempts to attack the shadow of Bloodwind, but this goes about as well as one can expect. Bloodwind, while taunting the vampire, reveals that he was the one that ordered Summer Night to kill Fraaz, before the two characters briefly channel Aristotle and Socrates in a debate on the nature of evil and death. Philosophically, nothing is settled, but since the Bloodwind hounding him is just an illusion anyways, Alucard and the others wisely elect to just continue on with what they were doing regardless of his attempts at interference. Or at least they attempt to. An Ice Keese blocks their way over a bridge, and Bloodwind takes this time to bait Alucard into another philosophical mire. Silker simply bombs the Keese out of existence with an explosion large enough to finally dissipate the talkative phantom as well. The plot elects to be a nihilist for a while.

When reality reasserts itself, the Dude’s rug has been stolen, Silker has vanished into the night, and now a new character named Roka has joined Hal and Alucard after the latter two rested up. All business after the meandering mind trip that was the night before, the newly formed party head back into the dungeon to try and solve the mystery of the ice once and for all. Right out of the gate they run into a wandering patrol of Chillfos, though our heroes get the drop on the notoriously inattentive ice skeletons, mopping them up quickly. They find a key, and it’s about this time that they realize Fraaz has also gone missing somewhere along the way. They hope to find her lingering behind a locked door, but instead find Shady’s table with an overly large cloth draped over it. On the table itself are two totems that no one seems to have a use for. Feeling like they’ve hit an anticlimax, the group wander off to continue exploring when Hal has a brainwave and runs back to the table. He pulls the cloth off and reveals Windstri—nothing specific hiding underneath. In frustration, he flips the table over, and discovers that his hunch was accurate after all: a disguised hatch lies underneath the former table’s location. Within the hatch lies a single drawing. Hal and Alucard momentarily have a simultaneous psychotic break from reality and believe they are seeing other people related to themselves via omnipotent controllers, before realizing that this is silly enough already. The picture is actually of Shady, along with Fraaz and several others who they don’t recognize. Roka believes that the Skullkid depicted is someone named Sleepy, and the others put together that the twin to Fraaz is probably Blaaz. That leaves only a female Kokiri unidentified. The party heads out again, eventually ending up in the Twin Peaks room, which I’ve already made a joke about previously.

Hal unhappily notices that there’s an Icerobe in the room, and the Icerobe notices him right back while ominously bouncing an ice slab in its hands. Unfortunately for both parties, a river separates them, though this doesn’t stop the wizard from hatching a devious plan which carries it out of sight temporarily. The sound of ice cracking echoes through the room, but after that nothing happens. The enemies remain hidden somewhere, and the only thing Hal and Alucard can think to do is knock down some icicles from the ceiling. Whatever it is about these icy stalactites, neither one of them realizes they can just hit the things with a ranged attack, and instead they try bashing each other with weapons first. Roka is completely unamused by the strange macho ritual, and just blasts the icicles with magic, an action the other two enthusiastically join in on. The combined explosion launches a chest across the room, and opens a hole in the ceiling. Roka somehow leaps 50 feet in the air, catching Charles Barkley’s attention for a minute, before climbing into the hole and pushing out three more chests, one of which has a Scythe Key in it. While they’re distracted by the loot, the monsters finally attack, hitting a surprised Hal with an icy explosion. Hal, unlike his friend Harvey, is not one to be caught flatfooted for long however, and utterly decimates both the Icerobe and a Freezard between his and Roka's attacks. Alucard, feeling left out, gets the final hit on the Freezard before an Ice Keese owns him in the face. The Ice Keese eventually falls, and the party gears up to tackle the final frozen rooms of the dungeon.

Behind the locked door in the otherwise empty Switcher room, Hal, Alucard, and Roka discover a 20-foot tall talking ice block calling itself Conflict. Using similar tactics to Bloodwind, it draws the entire party into another philosophical debate, while sneakily using their distraction to manifest additional parts of itself. Thankfully, our heroes notice this and quickly spring into battle with the icy monstrosity. It manages to create a doppelganger of Alucard in its first round of attacks, but in the end even this isn’t enough to protect it from the furious, powerful attacks of the party. As its laughter and taunts fade away, the group looks up to find that the sky of Subrosia has finally cleared, though this is their only reward. The boss key, Fraaz, and Bloodwind have all eluded them for now. Only the Scythe Key remains, tantalizing but unusable in the frigid halls of Winter.