Return To The Castle

Waking of Monday, April 22, 2019

Return To The Castle

I searched a few more shrines for missed treasure.... no good.

SHRINES.

I am missing some shrines.

Impa is hiding at least one shrine.

And Impa wanted me to regain my memories.

My last memory rests at the castle.

I must go to the castle.

So.... I went.

At least I had a shortcut now.

I warped to the Docks Shrine, donned my Lizalfos Mask, and ascended the crumbly, rubble-strewn passageway to the Library once more. Venturing further along the avenues I had previously discovered, this time I made my way to the Dining Hall.

And found I had to change my Mask.

Ugh, four Moblins had turned it into.... a waste. But there were edibles everywhere. On what looked like animal furs draped over the ruined tables. What a mess. But I took the foodstuffs for myself.

Two Moblins squatted near a little fire at one end of the long room, and the other two squatted near the cold and unused fireplace at the other end. For—

I killed them. As was my wont in such tight quarters; I didn’t need their noses in my face while I was poking around.

The Dining Hall had a very gentle bend along the length of it, so that one of the long walls was slightly concave and the other silghtly convex. The convex wall had two doorways, each double-doored and both widely spaced from each other, and those led back to the red-carpeted corridor where the Lizalfos patrolled. Or.... where they had patrolled.

The concave wall had only a single door in the center, framed with fine stonework, and that led outside.

....

I went outside, and it was a bewilderment of Maliced things, the mighty Sheikah Sealing Pillar looming toward me, looking down the drop-offs, dun and dusty ruin, cobbled stones and.... uhuhuhuhhhhgjklhdfsjgklfhjk Guardians.

! But what was that Guardian? There on the other side of some kind of battlemented tower. Just far enough around the structure so that it couldn’t see me. The head looked different, skinnier like a pole, there were swivelly bits.... Guardian Turret? That’s what my Slate told me.

And then that dread spotlight, and a Guardian Flyer chased me back inside. I hated the flyers; they were hard to kill....

Hhhh but....

Gotta move forward now.... gotta find that memory....

I watched the Flyer settle down and resume its normal pattern, and waited for it to pass by again.... and then came back out through the door. It was a broad, flat area, just bare stone, with what seemed to be a street of hardy cobblestone continuing off from it in either direction, running fairly parallel to the Dining Hall behind me. And across this street from the Dining Hall was only a drop-off down to the lower levels of the tiered castle grounds.

I had seen the castle from many angles, but it was bewildering to be crawling around the surface in the thick of it.

As the Flying Guardian was elsewhere in its circuit, I ran to the left, hard along the wall, which degraded into a rough earthen slope as the street continued counterclockwise at a gentle incline. I ran until I was certain I was far from the Guardian’s patrol loop, and continued cautiously as the street became progressively rougher, the cobblestone giving way to packed dirt and the traces of double-ruts.

The wall of earth to my left became more uneven and encroached upon the road, as though parts of it had broken off and slid down over the years AND A BIG DARK SHAPE DROPPED AND THUDDED ONTO THE ROAD IN FRONT OF ME.

A GUARDIAN? DECAYED? NO, IT WAS—it was—It was dead.

Its overturned, cereal-bowl-shape teetered to a creepy standstill before me, and a couple of Ancient bits tumbled down beside it or bounced away unclaimable down the drop-off.

I looked up.

An Ancient Screw still perched on a little jutting boulder most of the way up the steep slope.

Had this Guardian fallen from all the way up there?

What the heck?

That Flyer was coming back. Coming from the direction of the Dining Hall. I didn’t want to be under its gaze, and so darted up the landslide from which the dead Guardian had fallen.

I didn’t even know which way I needed to go.

Where was that spot?

That spot in the pictograph, the last memory.... such elegant stonework....

I thought I needed to get higher at any rate, and so I abandoned the circuiting road and just kept climbing up to the next tier. It was unnerving to peek up over the last edge....

But I climbed. I could face down the Guardian Turrets, for they behaved no differently than Decayed Guardians, and I could simply avoid the flyers. Or dang well try.

Where was it?

I ducked beside a wall and studied the pictograph: Spires, a big round turret of some kind, winged caps of stone on the battlements. Echoes of that motif from the Royal Crest. Those wings.... Where was that spot? I looked at the pictograph, the map, the pictograph, the map, my surroundings.... Danger was everywhere.... and the 3D overlay map was deucedly difficult to read.... Could it even register details so fine? Maybe that structure there....

One Turret had me pinned. It had the higher ground, it was far away at a very unpracticed distance in my parry-reaction-timing, and Daruk’s Protection had become a short-lived resource in this place. But I couldn’t hide forever. I stepped out from behind the wall again and again, fishing for the correct angle, and I arrowed that Turret to death. Dashed across the open—how could there be grass here?—and hid beside a large structure. This was quite sizeable and roundish. Could this be the castle turret in the pictograph?

There was a doorway that led inside the structure, but I did not go in. I could see Malice Mouths in there. And no eyeball in sight. Didn’t need to deal with that....

And on the outside of the structure, just around the corner, was another Turret. Didn’t need that just then either.

My options were somewhat limited.

So.... I climbed up.

I climbed up over the awful, perpendicular stonework and jutting battlements, and onward and upward, until I found myself clinging to the side of a very pointed roof-spire. But I didn’t dare go higher than the width of my own silhouette lest another Turret spot me. The Guardians seemed to crop up on all sides; they were so thick on the castle grounds.

The air was so blustery and hellish hellish red....

I looked around, but the pictograph.... this place that I’d thought might have been it.... It didn’t look like it was so. No matching battlements, no winged capstones.

Haungh, besides, the turret in the pictograph didn’t have a pointed roof-spire of its own.

Hahhhh.

But as long as I had such a spider’s-eye vantage point I took the opportunity to look around a little more.... Those wings.... Looked around.... looked around.... scrutinizing every pointed spire I could see and every object nearby, scanning for those wing-shapes.... near and far, far and near, high and low, low and—and?

There! That spire! Those shapes! Could it be?

I studied the scene and it.... looked likely! Those wings were there! And they seemed a proper distance from the spire!

But.... it was on the other side of the castle! The west side!

I was on the east!

....

Well....

There was nothing for it.

I climbed up to the highest, highest spire on this big round structure—and found a Korok. Hey there jolly little friend.

The Turret did not see me.

There was another Flyer nearby, however. Patrolling right around the direction I wanted to go no less, gleaming a loop over some kind of landbridge near the end of the broad road to the castle’s gate. I waited for it to make its round a couple of times, and then.... paraglided. Oh gosh through all this danger....

That other Turret saw me then, but didn’t lead me as a target. One blue bolt flashed behind me, I cleared its range or line of sight—didn’t check which—slipped under the landbridge and was coming down fast over a deep pool. Made it to the water, swam only a couple of strokes against a tame waterfall’s current and climbed up the little bank which immediately dropped off in a ledge. Malice gathered on both sides of me. The air was clearer again down here.

Danger? Am I safe?

....

I thought so, for the moment.

But this was a narrow perch—what waterfall engineering....? It was a little like standing on the lip of a bowl.

I looked over the edge, down the drop-off.

There was another Turret on the next tier down below, a bit to my right. Guarding that little winding staircase I’d seen on the external map. Only he was facing the large open area away from the wall behind him. Away from me.

So I dropped down onto the stairs behind him and whistled to get his attention.

Funnily enough, it worked.

I parried him into oblivion.

The stairs were only slightly clockwise round the Castle of where I had stood on the lip-ledge, and they were set into a much taller tier of the castle ground, the one spilling the waterfall that fed the pool I’d landed in. A mountain of Malice globbed all over the towering walls of this tier, and high above, spanning out from near its crest to connect with another tower....

That bridge.

That must have been the battlement from the pictograph. I was probably just below the round turret-structure! I was so close!

I climbed the stairs—watching out for the Flyer, for there was another Flyer patrolling high around the attendant tower. Patrolling that battlemented walk where I needed to be....

The Flyer passed by, I scrambled up quickly over the rough and weathered stones, got inside.

Inside—

Silver Moblin!

I wasn’t wearing my mask.

Oh, he’d seen me....

But I switched to my Barbarian Gear, and the Master Sword had been glowing fiercely this whole time besides.

I killed him in short work, and he went down beside a fireplace.

Inside. Inside.... Where was I?

What was this room?

What? What.... was this.... corner?

There were papers plastered on the walls.... books everywhere.... and.... one book open on the desk.

Zelda’s Diary.

Oh my gosh.

BIG BOYS

Waking of Friday, December 7, 2018

BIG BOYS

In studying the network of bright blue shrine markers on my map, I could still see a few empty spaces between them, too-broad empty spaces with conspicuous geography that looked.... likely....

I warped to the Qukah Nata Shrine high above Faron’s waterfalls, and wandered into the wetlands—the Rabella Wetlands these were called. I could see a spot on my map that looked like somewhere I’d seen David visit before....

And I found it. In the middle of a leafy, dappled plateau, an enormous ribcage jutted into the air, points to the sky. And in the middle of that ribcage, snoring grotesquely away.... a big Black Hinox. I remembered seeing David throwing Bombs at this one from one of the ribs....

The Hinox was surrounded by lesser meanies, just Bokoblins, and these I drew away one by one with my Mask, dispatching them each privily in a manner that did not make me feel proud.

But when it was just me and the big guy, I was able to get closer, and I saw that it had.... an orb?

On went my Barbarian Armor and I killed it then and there! With Urbosa’s help. I was just briefly bewildered during the short time its life-meter was visible. For this one wasn’t just a “Hinox”, but it bore the secondary title of “Eldest Kin”.

Oh yeah, I remembered, It had said that when David was fighting it.

What was this some kinda Super-Hinox?

Well if it had been before, it wasn’t now.

I looted the spoils. Now where the heck did this orb go....?

I looked around, and.... there! There seemed to be some ruins of a sort just a bowshot away. I hefted the orb over the grass and drew nearer to the ruins and—

What the—? Three pedestals??

I set the orb in the pedestal nearest to where I had come from, and approached a small stone marker. The inscription on it said something about orbs guarded by three giants....

And the shrine quest banner flashed across my screen: The Three Giant Brothers.

Heh, it sounded like a kind of fairy tale. ^_^

Well then! Two to go, I supposed! :D

So I had killed the Eldest Kin in the Rabella Wetlands. I spread out and searched now in the directions indicated by the remaining two pedestals....

In a place called Uten Marsh, as the sun was going down, I found the Youngest Kin, a Red Hinox. He was just a little bit down the grassy hill, and so was very easy to get to with my paraglider. So easy, in fact, that I took my flight just a little bit farther than I’d ever gone, and landed right on his big sleeping chest!

He didn’t wake, but only continued to snore.

Link meanwhile adopted the broad-stanced, bent-kneed posture he took on whenever danger was near, and glared with ready eyes down at the beast. But at every heaving breath from the monster beneath his feet, his arms would windmill just slightly, and he would have to twine his torso aright with a little jerk to keep from losing his balance.

“David, look at this!” I choked in a whisper.

“Oh my gosh, what are you doing?” He didn’t sound shocked or impressed, just.... resigned. :|

I stole the orb right off the Hinox’s necklace, turned, and stepped off the side of his big red belly....

I hit the grass with the expected clomp of my boots and little gasp from my lips after the drop.... but the Hinox didn’t wake up.

The orb was still in my hands, still held high over my head. I’d been afraid I would lose my grip on it in the little freefall and it would clonk loudly against the ground, or strike the Hinox. But nothing had happened.

And so I started walking softly away through the darkness, back toward the hill.

Well this was going to be cake! I thought. ^_^ I could just walk off with it!

But I stopped when the ground began to incline, and remembered.

I still needed Hinox guts.

I set the orb down in a place where it wouldn’t roll, and.... I actually felt a little bit sad, when I went back, and just.... killed the thing.

Red ones don’t especially drop a lot of good stuff anyway, but it never hurts to check.

And when I came to Hanu Pond and found the Middle Kin Blue Hinox.... I wasted no time there either, but killed him right away too.

And when I went back to the ruin and placed the last orb in the last pedestal, the Tawa Jinn Shrine appeared. It was a Blessing.

That was 105 shrines for me. David was still at 109? Maybe....?

I continued to wander all over the wetlands. I thought about going up to that one high plateau to kill the Lynel, but.... eh, I held off.

Wandered.... wandered.... I meandered looking for Koroks and new things to explore until I came back to whatever peak that was—the Peak of Awakening? Mount Floria? It was Mount Floria. The Peak of Awakening was above the Lanayru Road.

Mount Floria was the name of the mount between the provinces. The one above Misko’s Treasure Cache, and the Twin Bridges. The peak from which you could see both the Valley of Terror spread before the Dueling Peaks Stable, and the jungled plateaus of the Faron Province.

It was the crest from which I had first seen that Lynel-haunted plateau. The Lynel had been Blue that first time—the kind I’d always wanted to fight, but had never gotten the chance to.

Tougher Lynels kept showing up all the time.

I had a look at the Lynel down there now. Looked like another White-Maned one. I scoped in for a better view, not knowing what in the world possessed me to use my Pictobox zoom instead of the regular scope....

And as the reticle passed over the Lynel, the targeting box briefly flashed, but it was.... orange? What in the heck—The box only ever turned orange if the subject hadn’t yet been logged in the Compendium. I thought I’d already pictographed a White Lynel....

I steadied the Pictobox, and looked again. Lined up the reticle.

And the Sheikah Slate identified it as....

A SILVER LYNEL?

THE HECK.

....

.__.

....

WELL.

I’D JUST HAVE TO FLY DOWN THERE AND GET IT THEN.

I donned my Lynel Mask, and laughed as Link puffed out his chest and cast back his arms in muscular majesty. Forgot about that one. XD

I paraglided in, and could see the subtle differences now. It was still striped like a monstrous Zebra, but it was not so much black-and-white as purple-and-white. Like the other silver creatures, Moblins and Bokoblins and Lizalfos, pale with purple markings.

The thing had 5000 HIT POINTS.

DANG.

....

SO I GOT TO IT UNTIL IT WAS DEAD.

....

Hey I needed the Lynel bits.

After that I kept wandering, just finding a whole lotta Koroks. And finally a claw from the dragon Farosh as well.

More wandering, more wandering, more wandering in the Wetlands.... That would make a good title. Wandering in the Wetlands. Or Wetland Wanderings....

Just a few more Koroks, just a few more Koroks.... I was up to seventeen; if I could just get to twenty, Hestu could fill my last shield slot, and then.... I could find out what would happen next. Just a few more.... Huh, I wonder what color the southern Corridor Lynel is....

I warped to Ishto Soh to check.

It was Silver.

Just my luck.

I didn’t bother with it.

Any more Koroks....?

Hhhhhh.

Running out of juice, I warped to Tera and upgraded a few clothes. Soldier’s Armor all up to level three.... Barbarian Leg Wraps up from level one to level two.... which meant there might be a perk....

And there was! My charge-attack stamina was.... up? Or something? Did that mean.... I could charge up a spin-attack without wearing out so fast? Like how in the Zora Suit I could swim harder and faster without wearing out?

I dunno I’m tired.

PEPP’S AND BED.

GOOD NIGHT.

SNOW DAY 3: WRESTING THE BEST ERE THE QUEST TO THE WEST

Waking of Friday, November 16, 2018

SNOW DAY 3: WRESTING THE BEST ERE THE QUEST TO THE WEST

FOR A TEST PER BEHEST OF THE GODDESS MOST BLESSED.

That’ssss a little carried away.

BECAUSE I DO NOT JEST WHEN I SAY I’M HER GUEST

‘CAUSE THIS WORLD IS ALL MESSED; I’VE KILLED MANY A PEST—

I don’t even like rap, what am I doing—

*AHEM*

I put on all my cold clothes and was ready to go back to Hebra to try out shield surfing and I warped tooooo.... Mount Lanayru.

I sailed down to the Lanayru Road; couldn’t see a thing on the way down for the snowclouds....

But I was gonna get me some hornshard.

It took forever. The dragons never show up when you’re looking for them. I ran around looking for other useful things in the meanwhile, and found the most enormous Korok circle I had ever seen. By which I mean the circle itself was typical, and not extraordinary in shape or pattern. It was just made of BOULDERS. BIG rocks! I grunted and huffed and puffed to roll the one from the center over to the empty spot in the ring.

Whoof.

Well played, Korok. Well played.

I also took the opportunity to kill a Blue Hinox, and that so quickly that it was dead before its music even started! By the time its life bar showed up, only a tenth of it remained, if that. Two more hits with whatever dragon-bone Big Stick I was wielding, and he was down. It’s astonishing what Urbosa’s Fury can accomplish when I wear my Barbarian Armor....

But these my diversions were not without their own frustrations—like HOW does a 300-foot dragon sneak past you? TWICE?

I tried to be more attentive, and was rewarded with some scales, but EVENTUALLY.... I did get a hornshard!

That was two hornshards. I could have upgraded my Champion’s Tunic if I wanted to.

But....

I didn’t.

I just went to the Plateau to pray.

I went all the way to the Temple of Time again, before I remembered that I only had 11 Spirit Orbs and I wanted to wait until I had 12. Just one more....

I went back to Pepp’s. I almost went straight into the Deku Tree’s Navel, but I stopped to actually talk to the Deku Tree first, as it had been a while.

And the Deku Tree told me something most illuminating—he said that the Master Sword glowed when it was near Ganon, or those touched by his Malice.

Well that explained it.

And that meant that.... the Guardians must have had the Malice in them too.... judging by my encounters in Ordorac Quarry.

It was 4:55 in the morning when I went to check in with Pepp, and so I slept five minutes until the morning proper, and then quit for a while.

When I came back, I warped to Hebra again, and continued my Snow Day! :)

I didn’t go shield surfing after all, but continued south from the northwestern corner of the map, where I had climbed low down the cliffs nigh to falling off the edge of the world.

Saw many things along the way! Found a bear and killed it—and it was a much more drawn-out fight than I would have thought! I could see now how David had once been killed by one of these. Found a Hinox and killed it—Urbosa’s Fury in the Barbarian Armor once again brought down the house! Found a Lynel and.... skirted it. They’re all White-Maned now.

I kept meandering southward until I found, hidden deep within the black stony cliffs beside a deadly icy lake brooding with malevolent Octoroks and planked by pointless and rickety boardwalks to nowhere.... the Maka Rah Shrine! Whose resident challenge was called Steady Thy Heart.

DANG.

If Hawa Koth were like the sparky younger cousin of Kaam Ya’Tak.... then this Maka Rah was surely.... like the sadistic older sister who punishes you for intruding on her CLEARLY-boundaried privacy.

That was my one-hundredth shrine.

I was ahead of David now.

Another Maze

Waking of Friday, September 21, 2018

Another Maze

I had come back toward the Suma Sahma Shrine until I was close enough to trigger an autosave. Now from the shrine I wanted to go south to the Devil’s Own Highway, and thence to that big mysterious maze between the mountain and the desert....

But....

That King Of The Mountain Syndrome.... KOMS.... I just wanted to explore a bit of the northern parts of Mount Granajh first....

And we all know how that goes.

I wandered and wandered until I came all the way to Spectacle Rock, catching Koroks, Violets, and Guardians along the way.

But I did come back, and ended up on the north side of the Champion’s Gate canyon anyway, down low to the ground. And so I just decided.... to approach the maze via the Gate, as I had originally intended.

It was called the SOUTH LOMEI LABYRINTH.

Another Lomei Labyrinth. How interesting....

From ground-level it looked much like its Akkalan counterpart, just a large, very tall cubic thing of ancient stonework. The encompassing geology meanwhile was either exceedingly convenient.... or this gigantic depression had been carved out some time beforehand.

Then again the land was old. I thought of the Forgotten Temple far to the north, and the pressing collapse of the canyon all around it. Anything could have happened in the history of this South Lomei Labyrinth. At any rate the surrounding crags concealed it perfectly from any eyes below the tops of the foothills.

I circumnavigated it first. It was big, and all the while my shrine-locator was going off like crazy. I knew what had to lie within, somewhere near the center by the sound of it....

There were no sweeping Guardian Flyers here, but rather I saw, from some higher vantage points, a couple of Bokoblins patrolling the tops of the walls! Interesting....

When I’d made a round of its outside and encountered no other baddies, I came to the opening nearest the Champion’s Gate, and set foot over the threshold and inside.

A monk’s voice sounded: To you who sets foot in this place, my blessing awaits you at the labyrinth’s end.

Or some such words.

Well.

I knew how to play this game.

I started running the maze....

It wasn’t like the Akkalan island; on my map the maze looked downright symmetrical, which was why I had wondered if it would just be a big flat enclosure similar to the top of the Forgotten Temple. There was a straight shot right to the middle that I could see, but....

Well the Akkalan Lomei Labyrinth had also had a wide open central court.... with a Guardian running around in it.

The straight corridor stank of ambush, and so I plunged into the lesser tunnels to try my luck there. The avenues still twisted and turned, but I could still feel a bit of the symmetrical order in their arrangement, which was nice.

I continued running the maze, senses flared for any minor baddies or Decayed Guardians. But I never encountered anything that actively sought to hurt me.

However, around one corner, in the distance down the hallway—

“Malice,” I hissed.

I’d have to be careful in this place.

It made for some interesting climbs and a tight watch on my stamina-meter, but eventually I found the shrine—the Dila Maag Shrine—without too much of a struggle.

It was a blessing Shrine. And I remembered winning the Barbarian Helm at the Lomei Labyrinth north of the Akkalan Ancient Tech Lab.... and I wondered....

AND MY WONDERING WAS JUSTIFIED—Inside Dila Maag’s treasure chest was BARBARIAN ARMOR.

And when I put it on—OOOOHHHHHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHHH DID I LOOK AWESOME. 8-) All fur and bone and cord and a wicked right bracer and there was even vicious purple paint splashed up my midriff in thuggish, primordial shapes! XD I looked like I fell out of a Mad Max movie or something! Oh my gosh so cool....

There were at least three more areas on my map that I had yet to fill.... And I decided then and there to keep my eyes open for any more mazes that might show up once I hit those towers....!