Things are getting a little complicated
here in Lufia Land.
So, the actual trip to Belgen isn't a
particularly difficult one. And we may even be getting close to
where Elfrea is now, because I can see a big old desert from the
town.
The down side here is that nobody's
really talking about anybody who knows how to get to Elfrea.
Instead, everybody and their brother, including the town counsel is
talking about somebody named Jerin and how she's been ransomed to
monsters who've been attacking the town. In fact, that's the first
thing anybody in Belgen brings up to us, as there's guards at the
town's makeshift stockade gate who stop us at the entrance and debate
if we're monsters until we convince them otherwise.
That's one thing about the good folks
in Belgen. It's easy to think that maybe they're not so sharp in
that town, since both Lufia and Aguro call the townsfolk out on the
whole “ransoming” thing as being backwards and a little barbaric.
And based on the other things that the townsfolk keep saying about
the situation, I come to the conclusion that the word they're looking
for here is “sacrifice”. Part of the reason I cut this issue a
little short was because that
classic line from The Princess Bride
kept running through my head and I just had to look up what the word
“ransom” meant in my Handy-Dandy Tenth Edition Merriam-Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary that my mother gave me when I graduated from
high school. One definition is the act of holding a person or thing
for a price; the other is the price paid to attain that release.
This may be a matter of the localization of the game for the North
American and specifically US market changing it to avoid the word "sacrifice" or "hostage", because we're funny
like that here. Granted, there's only so much they could have done
with the technology at the time, but the translation here is still a
little clumsy. Then again, it's like that in a lot of other games of
that era, too. But that's a topic for another time, outside these
Text Plays.
The good news,
though, is that the people in the town hall will tell you where this
Jerin person is. She's at a dais on an island to the west, but
there's a locked gate there that needs to be opened. Fortunately,
there's a cellar where other sacrifice “honorees” are kept, and
one of them tells you where the key is, and that her brother's
guarding it. This is good, because both brother and sister have
enough of a conscience about this whole thing to just turn over the
key.
Of course, the bad
news is that the cave where the key is kept is a nice level-grinding
dungeon, much like the Phantasm Cave from last issue. There's lots
of good stuff to be had in this cave, too, and I know I missed a lot
of it. If I need to grind for levels, and I may very well need to
soon, I'll do an issue about revisiting those caves. I consider
myself lucky that I haven't had to so far, but that's certainly
subject to change.
But for now, with
the Dais Key safely retrieved and the party back at Belgen, I'm going
to give it a rest for now. With any luck, next outing will get us to
Dais of Our Lives. See you
then, folks.
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