Zelda Universe RPG

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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.

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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.

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An unnatural winter has fallen over Subrosia. A call goes out to adventurers willing to fix this, but the only two people who answer are the unlikely pairing of Dhoo, a werewolfos of questionable history; and Sandor Clegane, a man with no profile. Windst--reality kicks the two out into Subrosia village where Smithy is waiting to greet them. Our heroes wade through the blacksmith’s accent to discover that his plan is to kickstart the volcanos via the healthy donation of a powder keg to the core. The two walk away with the bomb, but the discussion of how to proceed quickly breaks down in favor of discussion about what the bomb could also conceivably blow up. Much to the DM’s chagrin, they settle on a heist plot aimed at blowing open the Clock Town bank’s vault. Just as the duo are making ready to put their plan into motion, however, Smithy reappears and attempts to convince them to stick to the original plot. Dhoo will be having none of that, good sir. For someone built entirely on power, the werewolfos proves surprisingly persuasive as he lays out a convoluted plan to pay Gorons with the ill-gotten proceeds to do the job the keg was supposed to accomplish. Smithy, who had just finished huffing too many industrial fumes, agrees to let them attempt the heist and wanders off to talk to some ore chunks.

Things go almost immediately downhill as Sandor and Dhoo are set upon by a Lizalfos attempting to reassert sanity to the plot at the Temple of Seasons. It dies on the first turn, and reincarnates as an ocelot living under a small library in Phoenix. Heady with their success, the pair proceed further, but are too drunk on themselves to get far before a second Lizalfos and a Winter Wolfos attack. Dhoo goes down in a flurry of attacks from the lizardman, but Sandor manages to fairy his way to victory. Both of them bleeding and broken from the fourth wall’s attempts at being an actual wall, they head to nearest inn to recover as best they can.

As the sun rises on the South Inn of Hyrule Town, Dhoo and Sandor Clegane awaken and recall that they had hatched a totally awesome, brilliant plan of great fortune the day before, involving the clock tower of Termina, ransom money, and far more heavy ordinance than they should legally have been allowed access to. The sun isn’t the only thing rising that morning however. Voices, indecipherably shouting, have disturbed the slumber of our intrepid duo. Given the previous day’s misadventures, the two wisely elect to make a window exit rather than brave the front lobby and commotion brewing there. Dhoo barrels through the glass, inelegantly tumbling to the alleyway below. Sandor, on the other hand, pulls all 9s from the judges for his spectacular Kickflip McTwist into a 360 Nosegrab. In a fit of jealous rage, Dhoo proceeds to explode a random thug hanging out in the alley. An unfortunate guard happens by as this happens, and is sliced and diced by the pair as well, despite it being his first day on the job. Thankfully, no one else appears and the two hoof it to the Temple of Time. Unfortunately, while Sandor jumps gracefully, he isn’t so good at blending with crowds. Someone spots the pair as they reach the doors. Curiously enough, however, neither of the two can actually see this person. The only apparent signs that he’s there at all are his voice and the smell of a bloody knife. He proposes a deal, offering to meet them in the Temple of Seasons. Dhoo counteroffers to have them meet in Termina, which the stranger is amenable to. The three commence traveling through the portal.

In the darkness of the clock tower entrance, Dhoo and Sandor discover that there are significantly more invisible folk than there were before. They offer a job pulling a heist on the bank – convenient considering the duo was planning much the same thing. It doesn’t take a whole lot of convincing for the two to go along with the plan, although the details remain vague. The walk to the bank is uneventful. When they reach it, however, Mysterious Hooded Figure #5834 appears and begins to execute the plan. Subtlety is a word in the dictionary, but Dhoo and Sandor don’t have time for such trivialities. They immediately pick a fight with all of the guards at once. One guard dies before the others have time to do more than raise their weapons. The second manages a hefty hit on Sandor with a sledgehammer before being flung full force into the third, snapping one’s neck and maiming the other. Terror empowers the fourth guard to swing mightily with a Deku stick, though this succeeds only in impressing and annoying Dhoo. The only thing more annoying to the werewolfos is his troubling habit of rolling 14s every time he attacks. guard 4 goes down easy, but guard 3 and his Deku Stick prove quite the challenge to the blood drenched duo. Still, even the brave must pay the reaper his due, and he falls to well-placed swipe of Dhoo's claws.

Sandor Clegane decides that he’s had quite enough of ghosts and their Faustian bargains and elects to simply blow the whole bank up rather than loot it. Dhoo shrugs, lights the powder keg, and tosses it into the vault, slamming the door behind it. The bank promptly explodes, launching the duo across town but leaving them mostly unharmed. The pair hot-foot it out of town as fast as they can, never pausing to wonder just exactly who it was they blew up or why. Wanted signs for a werewolfos and a balding, half-burned human went up around Termina that evening, setting a new record for highest bounty ever offered. The Subrosian winter abides.

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Joseph Lightwall wakes up on the shoreline of an ocean to the sound of seagulls. A Zora pleads with him to locate the wayward shore beyond the Moblin Forest, before Lightwall then wakes up in Hyrule field. His former party having wandered off while he overslept, he elects to take a ride in a caravan wagon to Lake Hylia instead of following after them. An affable old man named Barly Jones regales him with stories of his prior life, and rambles on about a great many things besides. Our hero, momentarily distracted, recalls his strange dream and inquires about the Moblin Forest, which happens to be above a cliff on the other side of the lake. The climb up a crumbling staircase proves uneventful. The forest, on the other hand, is dark and lonely, and despite Lightwall’s efforts to emulate Solid Snake, his sneaking isn’t so successful. A Canadian Moblin attacks him in a hidden grove in the forest, eh. The battle goes about as well as one can expect when taking on a massive 7-foot tall man-beast solo, though in the end good triumphs over evil with the aid of a forest Wisp. The Moblin, now under Lightwall’s command, leaves the grove. The fairies and wisps of the forest makes a request of their new hero: help them rid the forest of whatever dark presence has darkened the generally brighter forest. As with most fairy fountains, the Moblin Forest fairy fountain has been corrupted, presumably by Agahnim. This has, in turn, corrupted the woods they love so much. In return for undertaking this quest, the fairies promise to take the Hylian to an ocean shoreline they know of nearby…

The Wisp from the earlier battle leads Joseph Lightwall back into the darkened woods, stopping only briefly to awaken the Moblin from earlier in order to bolster their numbers. Though their guide seems uncertain, an hour of careful trekking through the trees brings the party to a veil of Windst--darkness which Wisp's light cannot dispel. With mounting trepidation, they enter the darkness only to find themselves face to face with one of the many corrupted fairy fountains dotting Hyrule. The Wisp can only explain so much, and casts a spell of enlightenment on the Moblin. With his newfound neural capabilities, the moblin explains how Agahnim was able to get away with poisoning the fountain, and is about to go on a massive trip with his newly discovered ego, when the spell wears off again. In a fit of supreme bravery (or perhaps denseness), Lightwall actually steps into the fountain and is immediately sucked into an inky void. He shrugs off the malevolent forces in his head, and tries his best to navigate a nightmarish horrorscape conjured up by the corruption. Visions of strange buttons, laughing Poe souls, and a pressing urge to sleep all attempt to hinder the hero and his Moblin friend, but to no avail. Finally, the darkness coughs up a dark version of the dream Zora, but in an extraordinary fit of intelligence, the Moblin figures out before Lightwall that the Hylian controls the path they’ve been wandering around on. They get creative with this knowledge, trapping the shadow in its own darkness. Nightmare logic being what it is, this not only works, but a healing beam proves to be the solution to chains of darkness that suddenly surround the party as well. Boss music swells up, things look grim, and Dark Link(42) briefly pops his head into the story before everything fades to Loading.

In the darkness generated by a corrupt fairy fountain, Joseph Lightwall, a Wisp, and a Moblin freshly christened Moe square off against The Interloper (A Twilight Princess Dark Link™.) The initial volley of attacks from the party land true, but the boss has a great many tricks up his shadowy sleeve. He takes the form of Dark Link (No, not THAT one) and wails on the party with his mirror shield and the Megaton hammer, because cheaters do prosper. Although the fairies within the fountain seem to be awakening, the rage of Joseph Lightwall is not to be denied and he continues to struggle against the dark forces of the Interloper futilely. The boss traps the Hylian in a dark bubble after taking the form of a Poe. Moe responds in kind by first freeing his master, and then by using the power of the Slam Jam, which not even a being of pure darkness can resist. Still, the boss’s charge meter fills, enabling it to fully realize it’s potential. The boss evolves into Reaper Poe. The Wisp is finally able to break through the weakening darkness barrier, enough to give the party some much needed support. In a moment worthy of any decent JRPG, Lightwall creates a Lightsword and fires a Lightbeam into the boss, simultaneously defeating it and cleansing the fountain. Wisp keeps its end of the bargain and leads the Hylian to an ocean shore on the eastern edge of the forest. They discover a skeleton, just kicking back and watching the sunset. Lightwall is saddened to discover that this is the Zora that contacted him, although he also finds a set of Zora armor and a mysterious note. The note reveals that the remains are not, in fact, those of the Zora after all, but instead just a goofy prop left by Lightwall’s father, who seems to be a prankster among other things. He challenges his son to find him, but it is here that the record of this particular quest ends.

Link

In the land of Romania, the sleepy village of Jova awakens to another peaceful morning. Just as the sun has settled into its customary path across the sky, travelers appear at the south gate. Darte, Kirran, Gurloz, and Silker have answered a summons from a monk somewhere in the land. The guards are understandably wary of the extremely diverse cast, but Father Nikolas arrives before any real trouble happens. The note, he explains, is from a natural philosopher named Gregory who operates out of Veros. Kirran picks up a rock while looking for Gossip Stones, and takes it with him as the party heads out for the new village. They are immediately struck by just how run-down the place is, as well as by the robed figure standing in front of the inn. Resisting the urge to trope it up, this is actually Brother Gregory. The party is wary of him, but reluctantly agree to follow him to an abandoned house due to his fears of being overheard. The monk explains that two important blueprints were stolen from the Grand College of Alba, where he had been researching until recently. One was the design for a flechette, but the other was an alchemical design which, when paired with the previous design, would create a solar bomb. Gregory has every reason to suspect that Dracula was behind the theft, though what he would want with an object so dangerous to him is unknown to the holy man. What he does know is that it’s highly likely Dracula sent in a doppelganger to do his dirty work, and that said doppelganger is likely to be hiding among the ruins of Wakiruya Town.

There are two paths leading to the ruins, but the group decides the south path sounds more interesting, since it features an apparently mad forest. Dex joins up with them mid-travel. They make for an abandoned monastery first, only to be ambushed on the road by monsters. Gurloz and Silker both get turned to stone during the fight, but things don’t get truly weird until the sun itself joins the battle for reasons known only to itself. Dex chalks up “make an empty shell bleed” to the list of impossible things he’s done, and Kirran manages to kill an enemy by hitting it for the exact amount of damage it was prepared to sustain. The plot, exhausted, elects to take a break.

Amazingly, the rock Kirran picked up back in Jova turned out to be Baegba all along, who joins the expedition despite an intense dislike of the cold fog. The Abandoned Monastery proves to be right near the entrance to the Mad Forest, which aptly explains the building’s state of abandonment. Dex tries to light the forest on fire, but all he manages to do is goad a Sinister Voice into taunting the party. For its trouble however, it ends up only with Kirran warping into a tree by accident, Baegba becoming even less intelligible than he already was and then transforming into Gurloz, and Dex wanting very badly to treetop-walk. The Lizalfos is stymied, however and as usual, by his lack of overall height. The jaunt through the forest proves to be surprisingly easy going, as the group walks right through a rusted-out spike trap, and then vaults handily up a set of cliffs along a ravine. Eventually they reach a heavy metal door, which the party decides is too metal not to go through, despite the fact that it is otherwise set in a crumbled wall that could be sauntered around with ease. From the depths of illogic, a clearing appears before them. Monsters beset our heroes once more here, though the battle swings in their favor early when Dex one-shots a Zombie, Gurloz sun-melts a Fleaman, and Kirran discovers the joys of super bomb arrows, badly scorching an Owl who manages to just barely escape the fight. The group is then left with a chest and a choice of several paths to take as the fog in the clearing dissipates.

The chest, it turns out, has holy water in it. This has no particular effect on which direction the group of adventurers takes. Silker, Darte, Dex, and Kirran all head on an eastern path brimming with darkness, while Gurloz elects to fly solo and travel in a different direction entirely. In the darkness, Kirran's torch counts for nothing and he trips on a Geodude. A very large pine tree, a gated path, and a dilapidated, rotting cabin materialize out of the void. Dex promptly walks into a tree. While the group considers what to do next, the Owl returns with a vengeance and a couple of friends. Kirran is more than happy to continue where he left off by flinging bomb arrows willy-nilly into the enemy group, deep-frying the Owl before it can even act. The Medusa Head promptly dies of pure shame. Darte is left with the cleanup, which he amicably demonstrates he is capable of. The Owl proves to be delicious, but was also carrying a key to the gate, behind which stands Gurloz somehow. Dex picks up a rusty sword from the cabin, but that’s all there proves to be aside from pocket change. In the distance, a massive graveyard is illuminated by the sun setting, and among the graves stands a shovel-bearing figure. Who’s that gravekeeper?

It’s Graveyard Keeper! Not-Dampe tells them that the graveyard is no place to be at night, and invites them to stay in his cabin for the night. Surly though he is, the man is hardly uncaring, and tries his best to make the small space amenable. Dex, however, proves to be a poor house guest and tries to steal anything not nailed down. All the same, the Graveyard Keeper lets them stay until the Moon has completed its journey for the night.

What a terrible night for a sidequest. Gurloz, more curious about the river than the darkness, heads off on his own down a separate path. He finds that the river is both wild and deep, so he wouldn’t really understand it anyways. The Knight of Light elects to follow the riverbank instead of attempting to cross, and discovers a door standing by its lonesome on the path. As anyone would do when confronted with such insanity in an insane forest, Gurloz pokes the door. The door, oddly, begins to speak. It explains, in much the same way that scientists wax on about quantum theory, that it is both itself and its own house. The door then unravels itself into a house to prove the point. Gurloz walks in, unafraid, and ends up back on the same path he was on, with the same door awaiting him as before. Flummoxed, he approaches the door again, this time opening it completely and letting out a dark force that names itself The Doorman. This curious apparition appears to know quite a bit about the Knight, which is enough to keep Gurloz from fleeing. The Doorman then takes the opening in the Knight’s defenses to transform into Dark Gurloz, and promptly attacks him. The darkness proves no match for the power of light, and with its dying breath, the bizarre entity confers a vision upon the Hylian of a place where the Guardian of Light may very well be imprisoned. The boss defeated, our hero heads onwards to the graveyard.

The Sun rises, and with it the levels of chicanery. The Graveyard Keeper leaves our heroes to their own devices, which results in his overall loss of some fifteen pot roasts and 200 biscuits. These are never spoken of again. They head out at once for the ruins of Wakiruya, and are beset by a decrepit church. The building is otherwise inanimate though, which makes it an easy target. The party at once heads inside, and are confronted with a mirror and another chest. Gurloz and Dex choose to investigate the mirror, which promptly explodes with dark power and coughs up Christopher Belmont (Dark Edition.) Although both Gurloz and Dex land on Kirran, the Sheikah only has the strength to throw the lizalfos back at the doppelganger, while Gurloz elects to have a seat. This creative battle maneuver, however, is unsuccessful, as doppelgangers apparently are unable to be surprised (except by megaton hammers.) Fake Belmont whips out a Blender Sword, and scores some minor hits on Dex, Silker, and Darte. Feeling confident, he then chooses to taunt Gurloz, which proves unwise. The battle continues with some impressive displays of combat prowess on both sides, though the group is dismayed to find that Fake Belmont has access to infini-spawn minion sword hilts. Properly pissed after countless misadventures on the quest, Gurloz puts his sword away and power-shots the boss with light beams, ending the fight right there.

Fake Belmont, in true villain style, refuses to die until he’s properly purged himself of exposition. He reveals that even as they fought, Dracula was busy wrecking the home of the Zoras and pilfering the Spiritual Stone of Water from its resting place in the Water Temple. Darte, understandably, is infuriated beyond reckoning by this news. He and Kirran shoot the doppelganger with arrows until it’s good and dead, though the Zora’s rage is far from satiated. The real Christopher Belmont arrives, filling them in on what they had just heard from his evil twin. The party takes a second to process this sudden, major turn of events on what ought to have been a relatively innocuous quest, then follows the Real Belmont on a shortcut back to Veros.

In the time it took for our heroes to return from the ruins, Brother Gregory changed his name legally to Brother Thomas. This proves to be of little consequence to the plot. Dracula appears, and has a good laugh about the ease of his victory at the expense of our heroes. No one is remotely strong enough to deal with his dark power, and the Count simply laughs and flies away again. Brother Thomas sets to work on making some solar bombs, while Christopher Belmont openly brainstorms ways to defeat the Lord of Vampires. Alucard takes a moment to appear, informing them that the next target will likely be Kokiri Forest, since it is strategically the weaker of the two potential temples. With nothing more to do but gather strength, the heroes of Romania depart at once. The rest of the party, wisely, elects to do the same.

Link

Railroaded onto a boat by the DM, Serra, Alexander, Flonne, and Iyaruka_Aetashigo began their first quest, which was on route to Saria Town. They searched the boat a bit, not really finding anything except a drunken man below deck. Iyaruka_Aetashigo was quick to pull off a party split as she jumped from the boat. The rest of them were below deck when the boat arrived at Saria Town. Guards swarmed the boat, asking them to submit and follow them to Lord Malek. The shifty merchants on board got caught in an argument. Meanwhile, the group found the Engine Man, who was some sort of mage-looking guy. He was rather shady, as he shooed them away and then locked himself inside the engine room.

Two guards went below deck and demanded submission. Instead, one of them met submission to life as Alexander sliced him with his sword. Flonne blasted the other guard down, and after the battle, an explosion happened in addition to a group of bombs dropping down from above. The Engine Man appears again, throwing a fireball at Alexander before they begin to jump off the ship. The ship explodes from the bombs which they all survive, albeit after taking a good amount of damage. Everyone else on board... not so lively.

Bizen, the drunk man, also escaped. He offered them a place to hide before more guards came, but Flonne, after nearly dying from the ship explosion, got too stuck up and killed him with a wand blast.

While shenanigans were happening on the boat, Iyaruka_Aetashigo escaped earlier to venture off on her own shenanigans. She sniped a guard at the front of an inn at the same time of the explosion, causing the citizens to not really notice... somehow. She entered the inn to find a bunch of old folks staying there. They were defensive, but they thought she was just a lonesome passerby and let her stay. Then shenanigans happened. Just look at the God darn moments below.

She fell from the room she was staying in and dropped into the first floor room below, where a group of young adults, all of whom appeared to be armed in some way, met and greeted her. The leader of the group was a man called Lode, with a woman by the name of Yuka acting as the secondary leader. More shenanigans happened. Just... read the moments. Iyaruka_Aetashigo mentioned the explosion, which the group was unaware of. They then dropped into a series of tunnels below the town, going towards the direction of the explosion.

After the destruction of the boat, Serra found a mysteriously new companion, Charizard, while Flonne and Alexander spontaneously disappeared. They attempted to surrender to the oncoming guards, but instead, they peer pressured a guard to drown himself. Shortly afterwards, a hipster Zora known as Joe Bunschtag met up with them, claiming he was only there to pass through. He led them away from the guards, and they entered a Kid's house to escape. Inside the house, a trapdoor opened, and they met with a resistance force, led by Lode and Yuka, exiled residents of Saria Town. They desire for Malek to fall for his corruption. They also met up with Iyaruka_Aetashigo, who disappeared earlier.

One of them accidentally ticked off Joe Bunschtag, causing him to trigger a gem. A moment later, a dark night fell upon Saria Town. Guards bombed their way in, knocking Yuka out, which caused the rest of her group to rescue her and fall back. Joe Bunschtag, after his possession wore off, used a bomb to nuke himself and another guard to help even the odds for the upcoming fight. Three more guards appeared, but one of them was assassinated by a stealth kill from Alexander. They defeated the rest of the guards, and when they were going to spare the last one, he was struck by lightning. Malek's voice was heard, warning them to turn back, or else he'd come at them at full force. They did not heed the warning, and they rested the night at an inn.

Meanwhile, Iyaruka_Aetashigo went back down to the tunnel. I wonder how that's going...

Serra and Alexander awake after a restful night to the kid named Kid's knocking on the door. He explains that he and the others are going to raid Malek's stronghold. The two warriors strap on their armor, while the kid somehow dematerializes his wooden sword by swinging it. In the streets, they are surprised to find that everyone has vanished without a trace. The only lead is Malek's palace looming on the horizon. Lode's plan is to attack the front door, while Kid and Co. sneak in through a side door (which proves to be mighty indeed, withstanding a dedicated physical assault by all three of them.) Upon opening a perfectly safe trap door in the shack they found, Serra comes face to face with a less-than-safe spear point, belonging to a grumbly moblin in the darkness whom she fails to reflexively stab. Alexander breaks time and physics in a ploy to confuse the moblin, but the beast is neither fooled nor impressed. What does impress him is the spontaneous train that collides with him moments later. The moblin doesn’t have much time to feel this new emotion, however, as the ceiling then promptly kills him thanks to a rapidly redirected magic blast from Serra.

Mysterious robed figure #810390 leads Iyaruka up a ladder, spawns a torch, then takes a shield to the face. Yuka appears and attempts to exposit about the plot, but is quickly derailed by the plot torch (that is quickly extinguished by her shields) and the MRF who transmorgifies into a Priest (which is becoming a subtrope within the MRF trope.) Everyone follows everyone else out the door, and towards the palace somehow. Much reluctance of the plot ensues. The party discovers that the frontal attack on the palace is already underway, to Yuka's exponential chagrin. Six guards approach, and then begin attacking each other thanks to mysterious magic on the part of the Priest. Yuka and Iyaruka (the unpronounceable) head off to the OTHER side entrance to the palace, which is a dried up well. The mahogany ladder explodes, and Windstrike hands you a hamburger. A guard and a DarkSoul(s) attack, but rather than throw their controllers at the wall, the party bravely strike back. Iyaruka somehow rolls a zero. As the battle continues, none of the enemies can pierce Yuka's Iron Ski--defense. Iyaruka rolls a sixteen on a roll of fifteen dice. The battle ends in the only way it can: with shenanigans. The way forward is clear.

In the continuing adventures of Iyaruka (sideways of the plot), she and Yuka make their way further into the passageways leading to the palace proper. They don’t make it very far before Marty, a distant cousin of Shady the Merchant Poe, stops them and requests their help. Malek has stolen his powers, along with those of Marty’s twin, before placing a barrier between the two ghosts. Yuka isn’t too impressed by the apparition, but in lieu of being able to hit it with her shields, elects instead to charge onwards. They all come to a puzzle labyrinth, consisting of five doors with numbers, two DMs, one fake DM, and some more doors with math symbols. The gist of the puzzle is to make the number 18 by walking through the doors, but each door can only be entered once. This, understandably, breaks reality for a while, but the party remains stoic and arrives at a sufficient (and surprisingly logical) answer. Marty powers up from a mysterious phantasmagoria in the shape of a sphere. Certainly nothing could go wrong at this point…

The two timestreams are finally fused, causing Serra, Charizard, and Alexander to fly out of a vent and into the hallway leading to Malek's throne room. Yuka meets them there, but before she can do much more than explain the current plot, Iyaruka Aegreoafgoureaigrae appears out of thin air. Alexander waits for no plot, kicking the golden door to the throne room down and killing a guard behind it instantly. The fully reunited party wastes no time in charging into a Shyamalan twist: Malek was really Kelam, brother of Lode, leader of the resistance. The guards, stunned by the sudden death of their comrade and the plot twist, do not engage in the boss battle at all. As the two brothers clash with the adventurers, it seems as though nothing will pierce Lode's masterful defense, at least not until Iyaruka takes that as a literal challenge and one-shots him with an arrow. An enraged Kelam blows her up with a massive magical attack in retaliation, but he forgets that this is the Zelda universe and moments later she’s revived by a fairy. A concentrated effort brings the boss to death’s door, but the adventurers forget that this is an RPG, and they weren’t even fighting Kelam's final form.

Somehow, the two brothers fuse into an actual Malek, causing the members of the party with weaker constitutions to flee in abject terror. Serra, Charizard, and Yuka are all that stand between the mad science experiment and Northern Hyrule’s complete subjugation. Things are looking bad, when Iyaruka reappears and rolls a seventeen on sixteen dice. Even with this powerful attack, Malek is able to fell Serra and knock the party’s collective health to almost nothing. Things now look even worse than before, at least until the party realizes his one true weakness: arrows.

Priest returns, infected with glowy yellow eyes syndrome. He passes this on to Yuka, which somehow convinces the rest of the party to enter an otherwise terrifying portal of light. They’re all knocked out for their troubles and conscripted into the Followers of Wisdom. Who is this cult and what are their plans? Perhaps they’ll find out next time.

Link

Joseph Lightwall is just finishing his shopping when the ever-affable shopkeeper Monroe mentions off-hand that Lord Eldin is looking to get in contact with him. The story hook in place, he heads out immediately for Eldin's office, though his efforts are briefly stymied by illusory door shenanigans. Neither the door nor Eldin are amused by the trickery of Dan Kaze, Joseph's new partner for the mission at hand. It seems that Eldin's cousin, a priest named Lordan, has recently fallen in with the Followers of Wisdom, a creepy sect of cultists who have been aggressively recruiting new members via Glowing Yellow Eyes syndrome. There’s no way to know what Lordan's true angle is, which is why Lightwall and Axel--,er, Dan Kaze need to infiltrate the Followers and gather intel. Eldin warns Lightwall not to trust Dan too much, both because he’s preternaturally powerful with illusion and because he seems to resemble Bloodwind in more ways than one. With that, the mission is finally set to begin.

Lea--, er, Dan, proves to be an amusing ally, entertaining Joseph Lightwall as they head for the church. Lordan greets the pair amicably, and invites them to stay awhile and listen. With nothing better to do, they accept and are promptly preached to about the creation myth and Nayru’s importance in it. After the homily, Lightwall inquires about the Followers of Wisdom, triggering the transition to night. Some quick talking gets Lordan to reveal that he is, in fact, a member of the cult, and has gained some additional powers as a result. He accepts their desires to join at face value, and leads them through a magical doorway to the entrance of a castle, one that he reveals was rebuilt with the help of Bloodwind. Lordan summons forth a simple training dummy as a test, but since neither of the new recruits can so much as dent the thing, he elects to have them skip the Physical Challenge, and sends them towards an unknown trial in the other direction instead.

Mysterious Robed Figure 618, equipped with non-standard issue glowing green eyes, greets our heroes as their trial begins. Joseph Lightwall and Dan Kaze (got it memorized?) answer some questions, and then promptly get slapped across the face for being caught flatfooted in a potential battle situation. Actually, the MRF 618 uses “Lay on Hands,” exposing the pair to a taste of the power available to the Followers. Dan Kaze immediately goes blind, and Lightwall is given access to a literal rainbow of elemental possibilities. It seems the cult may have discovered a way to circumvent natural affinity gain/ spell use, and 618 sends the two into another room to test that power. Within the room are several ragged fighters in a Mexican standoff, which Lightwall promptly interrupts with a water blast. As he slowly comes to the realization that he is now the Avatar, one group of fighters takes the advantage afforded to them by his meddling and slaughters the other group, before turning on our heroes. They perish quickly and with little effort. 618 returns, informing Lightwall that he’s supposed to be a Follower of Wisdom, not of Power and to try again as the DM makes my Kingdom Hearts joke for me. Joseph retunes his powers as the illusion before them resets, and grants Dan Kaze the power to throw a tree through the wall. After putting a few more points into Wisdom, Lightwall disarms the fighters, and in a stunningly sideways move, creates a table and grapes. The fighters amuse themselves by punching grapes into each other’s mouths, and your sanity meter just dropped two notches after reading that. I give you a hamburger.

618 returns, much more pleased with the new recruits, even returning Dan's sight. However, the lesson is not quite over. It turns out, these Followers really are fanatical in their sense of righteousness. They have no real interest in peace per se, unless it is for their own gain. 618 demonstrates this as he first awes the illusory fighters, then poisons them with wine, and finally decapitates one of them. Whatever else the cult desires, they are not concerned with the well-being of the individual members therein. Joseph, reluctantly, and Dan, enthusiastically, head still further into the Depths of the Light.

In a hallway of chanting monks, Joseph Lightwall and Dan Kaze encounter three magic circles. The first circle grants them the ability to understand the language of the chant. The pair is not comforted by the lyrics in the slightest. The Followers subscribe to a very “Lawful Good”-style of living, and lines about divine judgment make it abundantly clear the fate they foresee for those that don’t fall in line. (Protip: we’re not talking about Nayru’s Love here.) A ghostly robed figure appears, his purpose to swear the new recruits in. Judge Dre--the ghost instructs our heroes about the importance of The Law before inviting them to step into the next circle. Once there, the pair is treated to a new illusion of Hyrule Castle town and a single Poor Man. They realize that they are being tasked to demonstrate a conversion, which they proceed to attempt. Things go swimmingly at first, but with some deft illogic, they manage to convince the man that Nayru is the light. The final circle awaits them.

In it, our heroes are confronted by a sandy gladiatorial arena straight out of a Russell Crowe film. 618 makes his return, as does Lordan. They task Lightwall and Dan to prove their true devotion by killing two chained men who have refused to join the Followers. Dan conjures up an impressive illusory display for the crowd in which the victims are decapitated, but whether they were actually successful in sparing the two men is a secret to everybody. Lightwall and his partner walk forward, and are suddenly surrounded in a darkness that causes Dan to flip out. Their overall gambit seems to be in doubt, but they suddenly reappear in front of the door to the castle, decked out in Follower robes. Lordan invites them to take the Deep Dive, if they’re ready to see why they should believe as he does.

In the home of the Followers at last, Joseph Lightwall and Dan Kaze discover that Ganon's former castle has been converted into a fully functional battle station, replete with army and defenses. Our heroes waste no time in almost completely blowing their cover by heading for the prison first before the school, but a little smooth talking gets them through an awkward situation. In a grittier reproduction of the scene from Mulan where she tries to pass as a manly man, Lightwall somehow finds himself volunteering to chain-whip a prisoner. Dan begins calling him Deathwall, a name that the guards all buy hook, line, and sinker because their combined IQ would make Bandit Bob look like Shakespeare. Some illusion casting later and the guards are eager to please this herculean hero that has entered their unworthy lives. Joseph notices a couple of odd prisoners, and while he tries to covertly assure them he’ll find a way to free them, Maliki overplays a distraction and ends up starting a fight. Lightwall has no choice but to club one of the guards in the head. This does nothing to prevent Maliki from killing the other guard with a massive hammer that the guards entirely failed to take away from him. Dan Kaze pushes blood into the blood so that the unconscious guard can bleed while he bleeds. More illusions later, and somehow our heroes have once again escaped totally botching their stealth mission. Kojima awards both men a C-rank.

Maliki and Herian, the two former prisoners, reveal that there are other important captives behind a steel door. Key fumbling and introductions later, the newly formed party enter the maximum security ward and find Sahasrahla and Moe the Moblin. The keys to the cell don’t work, but that’s nothing a Buster Hammer can’t solve. Sahas—the sage recognizes Dan Kaze immediately and isn’t too pleased to see him. He’s reluctant enough about the illusionist to want to stay in his prison cell, but Lightwall ain’t having none of that. Maliki breaks down the door, though in the end the Sage elects to stay in his cell. The rest head back out and brace themselves for the bluffing streak of a lifetime trying to spring three obviously out of place prisoners from an underground complex. Stay tuned for the second half of the plot of Star Wars: Episode 7.

The game of cat and mouse continues, as Lordan leads our heroes to the training room. Here they find a session about to begin, with guards on one side and prisoners on the other. Among the prisoners are none other than Serra, Alexander, and Irayuka Aetashigo who had previously been forced into cooperation with the Followers at the end of Corruption. Yuka and Charizard are nowhere to be seen. Lordan tasks Joseph Light/Death wall and Dan Kaze with beating submission into the prisoners, since the bedraggled folk are to be newly minted Followers if they survive. Like a classic Bond villain, he promptly takes all the guards with him and leaves the room. Serra and Alexander struggle mightily, but there is no escaping the room. Lightwall puts on an impressive display, playing his role to maximum effect. Irayuka promptly trolls him. Serra and Alexander attempt to fiddle with a broken wall and get zapped, and Dan attempts to become Lightwall. Throughout all of this, a large contingent of Hylian prisoners watches with interest, but like an audience at a David Lynch production, ends up quite confused and reluctant of the plot. Eventually Alexander has a nervous episode and after attempting to do what he does best by attacking the door, which gets him nowhere, he tries attacking Lightwall. Given that he’s outnumbered five to one, this goes about as well as anyone might expect it to.

In the end, they decide to cooperate again, and Lordan is invited back into the room to see the progress being made. He comments briefly on being a little too literal with the term “enlightenment” but accepts what he’s told. Alexander gets antsy again and forgets to play along long enough to feel Lordan's wrath. Joseph Lightwall is instructed to try the same technique on the hapless swordsman, and strangely enough it works. Lightwall learns Subjugate! But Lightwall can’t learn more than four moves! While Joseph tries to figure out which move to swap out, the others are encouraged to try the move on the huddled masses still left in the room. Dan Kaze attempts it, but instead sets off a massive explosion instead. Serra, on the other hand, has no problems learning at all. Lightwall and Lordan exit to discuss something mission related, which leaves Dan Kaze and Co. free reign to instigate shenanigans. The Followers won’t know what hit them.

Having drawn Joseph Lightwall away from the others, Lordan promises to impart upon our hero a secret mission, though not before bringing him through a dazzlingly massive hall lined with the knowledge of the ages. In a much less aesthetically pleasing side room they meet with a Sith Hologram in the form of Liberac--Lord Entrama. The leader of the Followers is quite mad really, but nevertheless impressed by Lightwall’s courage and fortitude. Unlike Dan Kaze’s cheeky and fun shenanigans, Entrama is more of a fan of the cruel and tragic variety, and has Lordan run full tilt into a closed door, knocking the old man out cold. He then explains that the base’s magic detector has been going haywire, and that he suspects Bloodwind’s knavery to be involved. To this end, he assigns Joseph to go hunting for the infamous mercenary, and teaches our hero a new spell to aid him in this task. Finally, the chatty villain lets slip that while he is the top brass, there’s still one more even above him: Orland. Lightwall is transported back to Dan Kaze who got ditched by the others. Ours heroes converse momentarily with each other and some surfer guards. Lightwall casts a couple of subtle Illusion Breaks on Dan Kaze – suspicious of his partner’s resemblance to Bloodwind – but nothing much comes of it.

Continuing their trend of nearly blowing their cover, Lightwall and Dan Kaze call Lordan, and ask for permission to enter a forbidden section of the hideout. The old man is immediately suspicious of them, and it takes from extremely quick thinking on the part of heroes to convince him they’re still on the up-and-up. When they arrive at the dungeon, Dan Kaze heads straight through the maze like a rat with a nose for cheese. Joseph is concerned by his partner’s strange behavior, but also by an odd humming that draws them further into the dark heart of the labyrinth. They use some Dance Magic to stomp the ground at the center of the maze, which sends them still further down into the earth. In the deep depths of the dark there is, as Kingdom Hearts taught us, light and a mysterious hooded figure. In this case, they find themselves addressing Orland himself, who is quite baffled by the sudden intrusion of strangers in his most secure sanctum. It also turns out that Dan Kaze -- the guy who looks like Wind and is a master of illusions like Bloodwind -- is, in fact, Bloodwind. Who’d have guessed it?

The chips finally fall as Bloodwind reveals his purpose in infiltrating the Followers' hideout. While constructing the fortress, they discovered a powerful artifact. The first person to touch it went on a murderous rampage, which lead Orland to lock it away under his personal protection. Bloodwind reveals himself to be involved with higher powers, in this case the Fierce Deity and Majora, though which side he's taken is questionable; he wields artifacts of both. Orland, defeater of General Onox and a former Knight of Light, puts up a strong defense. Amazingly, the two seem evenly matched. They both try to enlist Lightwall’s help in retrieving the artifact, though the Hylian is obviously conflicted. In the end, he agrees to investigate while the two powerful mages d-d-d-d-duel behind him. With magic bolts and beams flying everywhere, it’s only a matter of time before the mirror in the room shatters, revealing a shining suit of armor behind it. Lightwall is the first to touch it and from it feel a tremendous power which he embraces. Suddenly outclassed, Bloodwind attempts to put up a fight anyways but is rocked like a hurricane by the sheer force of light Joseph is able to summon.

The power of the Fierce Deity is not to be trifled lightly with however. Lightwall quickly finds himself overwhelmed by dark and violent narrative suggestions while the fourth wall steps out for a smoke break. Orland reveals the full extent of his own power by summoning the dark dragon, and outs himself as the killer of Luekke in the process. Even Lightwall’s newfound armor cannot match the fury of a black dragon, and Joseph is forced to beat a hasty retreat. Strangely, an illusion of Dan Kaze appears to guide him forward and lead him to Sahasrahla. Joseph uses the last of the armor’s waning power to blast a hole out of the cavern and escape with the old Sage. Hyrule Castle Town is quite shocked at the explosion of purple flame bursting out of the ground. Later, in Eldin’s office, Joseph Lightwall explains what happened to the best of his ability, and is made an official Knight of Light for his valorous conduct. Sahasrahla takes the armor into his care, Bloodwind reveals himself to be very much alive, and the curtain closes on this crucial turning point in the tale of Hyrule.

The next day, Joseph Lightwall walks in on Eldin flipping his desk over in anger and frustration. The extent of Orland's betrayal is shocking to him. Sahasrahla, on the other hand, is too old for this and smokes his pipe serenely. Eldin fills our hero in on the plot as it’s been happening above ground, though there’s precious little to say. He hatches a ploy to catch some of the Followers off guard, but more important to him is the fact that Lightwall now knows how to pull off the Glowing Yellow Eyes trick. The Sage reveals that there are high ranking Followers that hide in villages for the sole purpose of controlling people, and Lightwall is assigned the future task of hunting them down Blade Runner style. The armor elicits further conversation about its nature. No one really knows who Fierce Deity is, but they do know now that it and Majora are major players in the events going on around them. They also realize that Bloodwind is, has become, or is possibly possessed by an Interloper. Whatever the case, his motivations for both helping and hindering remain murky at best. Finally, Sahasrahla reveals that he knows a way to infiltrate the world of the Interlopers, mentioning that he has a group in mind for that task. The debrief over, Lightwall heads home for some much needed rest.