Basecamp

Waking of Sunday, January 6, 2019 ~ 2

Basecamp

It was so much easier to get to Kaysa now that I could warp directly to the Tabantha Tower. With the Red Lizalfos tails I had collected, I had her do up my Snowquill Ensemble to its highest level! And then.... I think I am set....???? I thought wildly.

Back to Rito Village. I could only explore for so much longer. At length.... I came back to the Painted Landing—now Revali’s Landing—and aligned myself to the snowy clifftops Saki had indicated before. The Flight Range was somewhere over there. The distance looked manageable....

I was ready.

I leapt off the landing and began my paraglide over the lake. But what was my surprise before I even reached the other clifftop shore.... to see Kilton’s Balloon parked down there behind a rock near the edge.

I went to visit with him, taking my time perusing his wares, but he had nothing new.

FORWARD.

The cold pressed in at once, here near the icy coasts of Hebra once more. There was even snow on the ground. But my newly enhanced gear was awesome.

I did have to switch over to my Snow Boots after just a moment, though. If I wanted to move fast. And I did, because DANG I ran into a lot of trouble with mounted Bokoblins, an extraneous Yiga man who really should’ve been at home before his fire, and a number of Stalmoblins. And wolves.

Always the wolves, man....

But thanks to Kaysa, my Snowquill Ensemble was strong as well as warm. I cut and fought and bowled my way across the snow until I made it through to the Sha Warvo Shrine.

Path of Hidden Winds was the trial inside. Tricky!

Onward....

On into Dronoc’s Pass.

The Flight Range would be near here.... I could see the way I needed to go. But.... there was a dwelling over there, just to the north, nestled against the foothills of the mighty Hebra Peaks.

I just went to check it out....

The Hebra Trailhead Lodge this was called. Seemed to be some kind of basecamp.

No one was home, though.

Well, almost no one—there was a book. “Selmie’s Notes”. Selmie had been here?

Oh, she left survival notes, and mentioned that she’d left supplies at the bases of the flagpoles along the trail. That was nice of her. :)

Somebody else added....

“Selmie! Baby! I think I’m a better shield surfer! If I prove it, can we get married?”

And below that, an up arrow, and: “This total loser will never win!”

And then: “I didn’t know what love was until I saw Selmie sliding down the slopes... I can’t believe you retired... Where did you go?”

“Selmie, thank you for leaving the food! I’ll make good use of it here in the hut!”

“I saw some kid north of Coldsnap Hollow! He looked like he was pretty great at shield surfing!”

These must have been notes from other travelers. ^_^

“Selmie, thanks for the food that was left here. It seriously saved my life. I’ll be sure to leave some for the next person.”

“To whoever is reading this, please take as much of the food as you need.”

That was the end.

And well.... given express permission.... I helped myself, too. <3

When I came back outside, there was a dude by a fire.

I could be in the mood.... I approached him.

It was a Traveler all right.

I killed him.

Okay, to the Flight Range....

But....

No, it was late. I’d spent all day combing around this frosty little valley, and the icy night was fast approaching.

I decided instead to sleep in the lodge until morning.

SNOW DAY 2: THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES

Waking of Thursday, November 15, 2018 ~ 2

SNOW DAY 2: THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES

I put just a little more juice in the controller before moving on with Selmie’s dialogue.

“*sigh...*” she said, and then, “Hey... What’s that on your back?! That’s a radiant shield! You wouldn’t believe how rare those things are! You practically never see them anymore... If you’re carrying THAT shield, then... Whoa. This is big! You hiked all this way to meet the best there ever was at shield surfing, right?”

Guess that explained all the shields on her walls....

And oh dear I had a choice: “Yes!” or “No.”

I kind of wanted to continue on with my mad rush of a snow day, but.... well, I’d be nice to the lady. “Yes!” I said.

“Knew it!” Selmie cheered, “Too bad for you that I’m retired, huh? It’s been years since anyone knew me as the Duchess of Downhill.”

Oh my gosh I breathed a BIG sigh of relief. XD I don’t like damaging my shields, and hated to think I would be roped into doing so!

“But if you don’t mind a few pointers from a has-been, I’d be happy to critique your technique.”

And again: “Yes!” or “I’m fine.”

Hhhhuhhuhuhuhhhhmmmmm.... but I was sure I could find something.... in my inventory.... that I could throw away for this....

Hhhhh.

“Yes!” I said.

Selmie laughed. She was such a cute, short-haired blond with cute clothes. Just comely.

“Such enthusiasm!” she said, “I haven’t seen anyone with passion like that since...well, me!”

Hehhh.... |D I wondered what Siara would think of my being so codependent. Still.... what was I really here for anyway?

A short while later I was hitting the slopes for twenty rupees a pop, first the basic course and then the advanced. As I’d never practiced very much, my time was pretty average, Selmie said. But she encouraged me by noting that once I cleared the advanced course, I could earn special shields for beating certain times.

“How’s that for incentive?” she said.

Ooh la la! 8D

Except, I was so full on shields already that she couldn’t give me anything just at that time.

Ohh. :c

I could have dropped a Lizalfos shield; I had a million of those. But I didn’t feel like doing the whole slope again just then.

But if I ever wanted neat new shields in the future.... I definitely knew where to find them now!

I had been so distracted by Selmie’s Spot that I hadn’t even locked down the shrine just next door, the Shada Naw Shrine. I completed it to quiet the brreeping, and that was my fifth shrine of the day.

After that I just kept on keepin’ on to the northwest, discovering one Goflam’s Secret Hot Spring. That was a nice place to warm up my hearts.

Next in line was a shrine I had already seen David get—well, I hadn’t actually SEEN him get it, but I sure watched it drive him mad for hours and hours as he combed the northern faces of the mountain range looking for it.

He had showed me on his map all the places he had searched, and the shrine signals he had tracked (he had marked them with stamps). But I had been more interested in the topography.... There on the southern side of the mountains, but still somewhat close to all the hot signals, there seemed to be an overhang of some sort. It looked quite massive....

But I said nothing.

I just watched until David noticed the same thing.

It didn’t feel like a spoiler then.

It was another hidden cavern, and it was kind of like the Kopeeki Drifts in that he’d had to roll a snowball down a hill to smash the doors open. But once those doors had opened for him, I was out! I didn’t want to see spoilers, and the interior of that place looked massive.

But now it was my turn to uncover the same secret.

I hadn’t felt spoiled about watching him roll the snowball either, for I had silently guessed how to do it before he did! (And that before I’d even made it to Kopeeki Drifts!) You had to Cryonis an icy little pond partway down the slope in order to bridge a certain gap and let the snowball go over. And once it did.... smash! The two giant double-doors collapsed inward.

A vast, blue cavern lay within, with what looked like.... roots, at first glance. Pale roots arcing over the path as it bent around to the left.

But then I moved, and the parallax set in. The pale protrusions were much farther away than I’d thought. But I didn’t pay them too much heed; I had eyes only for the shrine I knew was here. And I saw it.

But as I descended further and the cavern widened and I began to take it all in, I could see the glowing orange shrine, and I could see that it was set far down in the middle of the gigantic space, and a bewilderment of dim colors slid over each other high in the gloom as I moved and—AND A SKELETON??

It had registered all at once, of a sudden.

OH MY GOSH THIS WAS THE HEBRA LEVIATHAN??

David passed through the room at that very moment and looked from my gaping mouth to the screen and back, and laughed.

I had found the third skeleton. Without even knowing it.

Those long, bending, crooked pale shapes.

I kept moving forward.

The jutting stalagmites around me rightly crawled with iridescence.

The Hebra Great Skeleton. Oh my gosh.

There was water here, too.... And it was temperate. It lapped along a hump of blue-grey rock that led to the shrine like a path.

This was the To Quomo Shrine.

And that made.... six today, I thought.

It was a Blessing Shrine. I was grateful for the Spirit Orb, but I was also keen to come back out and look around!

I explored the Leviathan, chased a Korok around on top of it. This one’s bones were different again. The skull had.... an occipital protrusion, like a pterodactyl, and its snout was split, down the middle. It was in two parts, all the way to the tips of the nose, which hooked slightly downward. The bottom jaw was in two pieces as well, and those wide apart from each other. A baleen feeder? It had very large eye sockets, and I could also see the phalanges on this one. It seemed.... like a water creature. What on EARTH....

Then.... the Eldin Great Skeleton had been a ground thing, Gerudo a flyer, and.... this one a water-dweller.

But how did it end up inside a mountain? Makes me think of.... Jabun.

Well.

I guess that’s why they call it the Legend of Zelda.

So many elements all the same.

All different in every telling of the tale.

And here was the water-whale god inside the mountain.

Rest In Peace.

Was it.... getting foggy in here....?

I moved on, and kept climbing.

And it wasn’t long before there was.... another Shrine Signal?

I found it over the edge of and down underneath the high, flat Biron Snowshelf. The Mozo Shenno Shrine. Tricky one to get to.

It was a Major Test of Strength, and so I went in with my Guardian Armor. I did well! Until I tried to backflip away again, but evidently came up short as the Guardian cut me once with his giant blade. After this we drew apart, and he did that spinny-laser in a wide radius, casting up an updraft. But hot and mussed from the contact I equipped my strongest Lynel bow (50 damage x3) and nocked some hard specialty arrows.

“Don’t screw with me,” I growled, “I will wreck you.”

I killed him in the end. Hacked him to bits just before his charging laser could fry my face off. And I got a core among the spoils!

That brought me to fifteen cores.

I could upgrade my Ancient Armor set now, I thought. If I wanted.

But I kept trekking through the mountains. More Koroks. Sherfin’s Secret Hot Spring. I wondered who all these people were who had discovered all these hot springs, and why they were a secret....

The Hia Miu Shrine.

I kept climbing about the north faces, chasing lower altitudes and ledges that looked promising but led nowhere until.... I’d finally had enough. Clinging low off my map, wary of the boundary between solid ground and what the game would register as a bottomless fall, I warped the nope out of there to Dueling Peaks. Wasn’t there a cave I’d seen around there once?

I checked.

There wasn’t.

The polygons.... they can trick your eyes, when viewed from a great distance.

I was running out of juice, and for some reason decided to just.... go home. I warped to the Shrine of Resurrection.

“I went home,” I said to David.

And then David caught the affronted look on my face as I saw.... there was a Korok waiting to be found in my bed-pod.

David laughed.

“GET OUT OF MY BED.” I say. D8<

I left the shrine and jogged down the grassy slope to the Temple of Time, and the Goddess Statue.

But.... 11 Spirit orbs.... Just one more....?

I would wait for 12, and pray for three vessels at once.

I did nothing.

I warped to Tera.

But I did nothing.

I went to Pepp’s, and slept.

I was tired.

Been doing this icy mountain all day on a day when it’s cold, cold, cold....

SNOW DAY

Waking of Thursday, November 15, 2018

SNOW DAY

So David and I.... we’d kind of been one-upping each other the entire game. He had more shrines, but I had more Koroks seeds. And we would poke fun at each other for being so behind in one area or another....

But lately.... David’s been seeing my shrine number go up, and so that sped him up, which made me want to get more....

And I’d seen him combing this cold, cold snowy region....

....It was my turn now!

Out from the Snowfield Stable and I was goin’ for the mountains! Looking for Koroks and Shrines!

OH it was a hard and fast snow day for me! I found my first shrine in the Pikida Stonegrove—which would have seemed a friendlier place if not for the everpresent snowy haze in the air! That and the incessant Lizalfos and Frost Pebblits made it rather foreboding. Great stone columns in a slanting valley, bearing up a canopy of flat-topped rock on top—which was as good as another snowfield in and of itself! Rok Uwog was the name of the Shrine there.

The second shrine I found in the Kopeeki Drifts! That was a fun one to get to, rolling giant snowballs down criss-crossing grooves in the snow! Trying to guess which one would lead to the giant stone doors at the bottom and SMASH them open! The Gee Ha’rah Shrine was inside.

I followed my shrine locator just up the hill to the west, and proceeded to chase it in circles around a large, snow-covered mound, beneath which ran an icy stream. I was dang near tripping over the Koroks, but for the life of me I could find no way to access the inside of this mound.... Well, no safe way. For the water was frigid, and would sap my hearts.

There were two small, tunnel-like openings into the mound where the stream entered and exited it; the only other opening to the interior was a low, wide cave-mouth on the side, where the icy water licked at a tiny shore like a miniature beach. I could see the shrine’s orange glow if I crouched. It looked like it was on its own tiny island in there.... with some Lizalfos, aw crap heck....

I rather found that.... there was nothing for it. I swam for it in my Zora Gear! And lost half my hearts. This was the Lanno Kooh Shrine, and thankfully it simply offered a Blessing for my efforts. Hahh, I could see why....

Made me want to draw Link shivering getting back into warm clothes once he got up onto the shrine-rock. Hoohoohooo brrrrr....

I don’t like interrupting the line of my travels when I can help it, but I did not want to swim back out of that place. Though the Spirit Orb had replenished my hearts, I really would rather have warped, and so went back to the Hebra Tower. That would be close enough.

The day was clearer than it had been when I touched down. And looking back at the mountains and studying my map, it was only then that I realized.... oh my goodness....

There is a mountain. A mountain I have seen many times. And it is the most oddly-shaped thing.... There is a hole blasted right through it. Well, not strictly; it did not form a tunnel.

When you looked at it from other places all over Hyrule, you saw the triangle of the peak, and then just high on the left side of the silhouette, somewhat overlapping the edge, there was just a big circle missing. Like a leaf-cutter bee had come and just snipped it out.

I had long been very curious about what must be up in that hole....

And looking back at the mountains and studying my map, I now realized....

I HAD BEEN ON TOP OF THAT MOUNTAIN.

The very one! It was the tallest peak! I’d climbed up there in my mad snow day wanderings and already said hello to the Korok! That giant hole had been right beneath me!

I wanted back up there!

So I went! I climbed and climbed and climbed, cresting hills and paragliding over ravines until I came to THE HOLE.

It gaped above me like a monstrous cave. “Oh my gosh IT’S HUGE,” I marveled. And the inside was all.... one texture? .... Eaten away, blasted out. Burned up.

Wow.

The shrine signal was strong here. I followed it to about the middle of the cut—for though the hole seemed crisp and shallow by far away silhouette, it was actually quite long, spearing lengthwise through the mighty ridge.

Around the middle, nestled in the inward wall against the heart of the mountain, there was a shrine behind some huge chunks of ice. I could see the orange glow through a high gap. There seemed to be plenty of room to access it from above, but when I tried to climb up to it, I slipped down the bluish-grey surface.

“OH MY GOSH, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”

“What is it, ice?” asked Mom, who was in the room.

“It’s.... glass,” I said.

The mountain had been burned right through. I knew it.

What could do this?

Had it been a Divine Beast?

I got busy laying fires, and decided to clear away all of the ice, even the block containing a frozen Moblin. It came to life well enough once it was free, but I killed it with a little help from Daruk. Another chunk of ice contained a hidden treasure chest, and that was neat.... but most of the rest of it was merely ice.

The multitude of campires I had laid was a striking sight against the cold, dark blue, so I backed up and took a pictograph of them gleaming along with the warm light of the shrine.... JUST before a Blood Moon put them all out and brought that Black Moblin back to life! He hit me again this time without Daruk impeding him. Ouch my Warm Doublet had such a low defense....

I was suddenly regretting freeing the monster from the ice.... Would it forever spawn in this location now? Dang it....

This FOURTH SHRINE that I had found today was called the Goma Asaagh Shrine. And it contained a Major Test of Strength. Easy peazy lemon squeezy.

Upon completing the trial and exiting the shrine, I stepped back into the hole in the mountain to discover.... MORE SHRINE SIGNAL?

I continued up through the hole! Northwest and at a slight incline. Maybe whatever blast made this hole had come from the lower direction of the castle....

After getting rid of an Ice Wizzrobe in my way and going just a bit further I saw some smoke in the distance! And following this, I saw there was.... there was a cabin!

Selmie’s Spot, this was called?

Well at least it sounded like there would be people around.

I went in.

Selmie was.... a girl. Out here alone?

She had a lot of shields mounted high on her walls. Some of them I recognized, some of them I didn’t.

“Huh... Welcome to the middle of nowhere,” she said, “Population: us.”

Hah. XD

Her music was so soothing and pleasant after the rigours of the mountain.

I set the controller in its cradle to recharge (the light was red), just with the screen on that first line of dialogue. And when I came back from MADLY JOTTING ALL THESE NOTES FOR THIS ENTRY.... I just felt like sitting and listening to it. Just the sound of the music at Selmie’s Spot.

So soothing and pleasant after the rigours of the mountain....

Just the sound of it.... and the fire crackling.... and the wind blowing.... I just wished I could have it.... playing. Just for sound in the house. Or in my room. I could fall asleep to this. “Wouldn’t this make a beautiful lullaby?”

Mom agreed. <3

I was so utterly content and happy.

But wait it gets worse.

I was just listening to the slow, downward progression of the notes, the chords.... broken chords rolling upward in little changes.... when OH MY GOSH WHAT NO THIS WHAT YOU CAN’T THAT’S—

I TENSED UPON THE COUCH....

Got up. Still rather crouching. Padded softly closer to the TV.

Listened.

And listened more.

The progression was slow....

But no.... It was.... unmistakable.

Selmie’s music....

WAS THE HOUSE MUSIC FROM OCARINA OF TIME.

OH MY GOOOOSSSSSHHHHHH—

Augh.

It was so beautiful....

I love meeting old friends in new skins and new attire.