The Entry For Which I Do Not Apologize

Waking of Thursday, October 25, 2018

The Entry For Which I Do Not Apologize

I wanted to get back on the road to Lurelin, but.... I was distracted by my shrine-detector once again as I wandered around.

My wanderings also brought me back to that Lynel I’d seen from the top of that peak above the Twin Bridges. It had been blue, then. But now it was a White-Maned Lynel!

Why were they all white now? I’d been hoping to try my hand against a blue one.... a nice, medium level against which to test my mettle....

I didn’t want to mess with a White Lynel right now, but I did run a derping circle around it in my mask a few times. Seems if you stay in motion and they don’t get a chance to study you carefully.... they might just stay fooled.

After a time I finally found the shrine I’d been detecting—the Shoda Sah Shrine, hidden behind a big waterfall, like that one near the Lanayru Promenade.

You Shoda Sah me get it.

THEN I came back to the Lurelin Road, and back to that little canyon just beyond the jungle that had been so infuriating, where the cliffs had been impassable in the downpour. Maybe I’d try them again at some point, if the rain-spell were truly broken. But for now, I pressed onward down the road.

Just how far away was this village?

I ran on and on, along the bottoms of the cliffs and back to where I had plunged into the foothills to double back, and beyond, and still the road wound on through treeless, grassy hills and grey mountains, with no sign of the village.

I sported for a little while with a treehouse full of Bokoblins before.... my shrine-detector started going off again.

Maybe this one would be the shrine near the village.... for there was always a shrine near every habitation....

And this time, as it turned out.... it was.

Over the last rise in the road, I could see the sea, and spread along the shore, little fishing huts, and boats resting along the beach.

The shrine, the Yah Rin Shrine, was nearby the village, and it was easy to find.

You just go up the hill from the trail a little bit, and Yah Rin.

I was upon Lurelin Village, but.... I detected buzzkill impending.... and my laundry needed switching out anyway.

So I saved and quit.

Soon.

Into The Dragon's Maw

Waking of a Saturday, February 3, 2018 ~ 3

Into The Dragon’s Maw

I pressed forward through the jungle again, as the rain-haze came and went. And the foliage and brush were still so thick that it came once more as a surprise when the leaves suddenly parted and I was presented with a wider view of the valley.

It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing.... I could see on my HUD that I was very near to the riverhead—I thought I should be able to make out the shape of the toothy mouth.

But that wasn’t what caught my eye first.

Looming in the dimness—was it daytime or nighttime?—a large, very large shape of stone thrust from the deepest wall at the back of the box canyon, thick, and heavy, and greened with atmosphere or moss. It was enshrouded and entangled by the sprawling plants, and hazed by distance and mist, so that it was difficult to say where the stone ended and the canyon wall began. Everything was so dim....

But even in the darkness, the shape was unmistakable—mountaining over the last grinning lake of the dragony river, flanked by two taloned paws of the same immense scale, stood the masoned head of a dragon.

Dodongo’s Cavern, I thought, seeing the enormous lower jaw there like a ramp into the Inferno. The Lizalfos that guarded it were so tiny....

Surely this must have shown up on the topo—I checked my map and could see it now, even the claws. How had I never seen—?

But it had always stood just adjacent to the gaping, bright blue mouth of the ribbony dragon river. Of course. How could anything stand out juxtaposed against that?

I decided to pick off a Lizalfos or two with my bow before venturing too far from the shelter of the trees. The range made it tricky, but I couldn’t have them alerting any of their friends to my presence.

Scoping in to examine the dragon’s head further, I saw part of a cubic Korok puzzle standing on the back of the big right paw.

Well, I could do that at least, I thought, and moved ahead through the gloom.

But as I drew near, something beyond the puzzle caught my eye—something.... glowing.

A MEMORY?

I bypassed the puzzle—the light was coming from behind—inside—the dragon’s neck. It seemed much of it was hollow. That made sense, with the gaping jaw-ramp.

But as I clambered closer over the mossy, sloping terrain, I could see it was not a memory.

It was a Goddess Statue.

IN—? WHAT?

—the name of the place gleamed over the screen—

IN.... THE SPRING OF COURAGE.

THIS WAS THE SPRING OF COURAGE.

I HAD FOUND ANOTHER SPRING.

I killed the Moblin keeping the inside of the Dragon’s Head—and waded through the water to pray before the Goddess.... I think.... Oh, was there some kind of sign in the stonework or was it.... Her?

Whence came those instructions?

Hhhh, I must not put off the keeping of the log for so long.... -_-

Said to offer Farosh’s Scale to the spring.

I had two scales on me, and I parted with one.

Light shone where I dropped it into the water, right in the center before the statue of the Goddess. Golden light shooting straight up from the tiny concentric ripple....

And a mighty stone door opened in the grey canyon wall behind the Goddess.

Inside was a Blessing Shrine. The Shae Katha Shrine.

After collecting the monk’s Spirit Orb, I came back out and proceeded to climb the Dragon’s Head—a gigantic tree rooted among the springwaters inside came bursting through the top of the neck. The views from its upper boughs were excellent, and aside from that I found a Korok!

But.... it was getting late.

From the treetop I saw the other half of the cubic puzzle I’d seen on the right paw—it happened to be on the left paw, and that one held the Magnesable piece.

I paraglided down, and studied the structure very carefully before removing the spare block and trekking back behind the Dragon’s Head to the other side again. After inserting the block correctly into the first puzzle, the Korok appeared, I got a seed and....

I called it a day.

I climbed back onto the Dragon’s Head for a safe perch, settled down somewhere near its right ear, saved, and quit.

I was done.

Fooling Myself

Waking of a Saturday, February 3, 2018 ~ 2

Fooling Myself

There were too many people around.

I tried to figure out the password to that place behind the clothing shop again. And who was Pokki? Nobody in town that I could find.... or at the Ice House.

And why wouldn’t that other Gerudo in the bar wake up? I wanted to talk to her....

I went to the Ice House, I went back to town, I went to the Bazaar, and somehow.... found that I could take the heat in my Gerudo clothes now? I thought I couldn’t before.

I couldn’t find out the password.

Mmm not all my clothes were enhanced. A trip to Cotera remedied that.

I didn’t want to do anything important with all these people around.... and so decided.... to just look for Mister Hestu.

I rode Memory from Dueling Peaks to Faron Woods, and walked him cautiously in among the trees.... But after a while of encountering a few too many Bokoblins and other nasties, I rode him back to the Highland Stable to board him—No more endangering the horses.

After that I warped back to that shrine in the woods I had unlocked so long ago—the one near which I’d saved Tye and Sorelia in the shallow, dappled water—it was near to the path—and continued into Faron Woods on foot.

I wandered around and onward, meeting a few other travelers, some of whom claimed to hail from a nearby village. And I was sorely, SORELY tempted by the prospect of discovering a new, friendly habitation, but.... Hestu.

And I could see on my map—there was something about this forest that had piqued my curiosity every time I looked upon it: the river which twined through it in great looping curves and which ended in (or sprang from; I wasn’t really paying attention to the direction it flowed) a box canyon....

It had always looked like a dragon to me. The long course of it like a serpentine body, and the last distant pool of it shaped like open, toothy jaws. Perhaps more akin to a typical charicature of a venus fly trap than anything else.... but drawn there in the geography and hinted at all the same.

I had often imagined myself traveling into this forest, wondering what I might find at the dragon’s maw. But now that I was here, my intentions of being so straightforward began to melt away, and I was longing to maintain a stealthy distance from the road as is so my wont.

The deciduous trees gave way to palm trees, tall and thick, and a racket of birds and bugs began to fill the air. This was the jungle I had always seen from the Talus’ sporting field on the slopes of the southern Dueling Peak.... but never ventured into.

There were a few more Bokoblins; a lady called Meeshy, whose words and wants I didn’t really catch because I was giggling at her name—it’s the name I call the neighborhood cat (an Anglicized variant of the Spanish for “Kitty”) when she comes around and wants something to eat; and—

That accordion!

Kass!

He treated me to a song about a dragon’s mouth, and I was sure of it then—something important had to be at the end of that river.... And I wanted to find it for certain, but.... the road to get there twined among the trees in almost as circuitous a route as that of the river. Great place for an ambush or three....

I was wary of roads.

Leastways those upon which I’d never traveled.

But then again.... what else was new?

Pausing only to solve an INFURIATING Korok Puzzle involving metal balls tethered together by a chain like enormous bolas—infuriating!—I plunged into the foliage to the left and kept well off the track, clinging to the hills on the edge of the giant jungle-bowl instead.

The whole valley seemed to be nestled between the foothills of the Dueling Peaks and an appreciable red mountain of steps and buttes which I had never explored. Or at least, that’s what I had always surmised by the view from Talus Junior’s Field.

I set the high rim to my left and the cascading, sweltery depths to my right, and crept forward, ever cautious. Tropical rain came down in sheets to claps of thunder and lightning, and I quickly found myself having to unequip anything metal. The palm trees rattled in the din. They really were huge, and they grew more and more thickly as I pressed on.

And then of a sudden I emerged from the leaves and was confronted by a level clearing set with a weathered old square of foundation ruins.

It positively stank of Korok to me.

A number of large, flat paving blocks made up a hollow square shape on the ground, with grass and foliage filling its wide center. On three of the cornerstones of this formation sat three very large stone boulders. Where was the fourth....?

And at each corner of the grassy central space, a huge pillar towered out of the earth. Three of these were empty, but atop one of them—SOMEHOW—was the fourth boulder.

Oh boy....

Stasis and arrows didn’t make it budge. And I didn’t want to spend any specialty arrows.... Or maybe I just didn’t have any left after that last Lynel encounter. I would need something more powerful....

I didn’t want to throw any of my heavier weapons and damage them in the process. A Bomb would do, but.... I couldn’t throw them so high. Mm, but I could drop them....

I set myself to climbing the pillar in the rain, slipping again and again, but forcing myself onward. This course was made even more difficult by the fact that the boulder was so huge and the column just thin enough that there would be no place to stand until I had scaled the boulder itself, crawling up around to its top like a spider!

It took a few tries, but I made it, standing at last in sodden triumph at the top. The view from up high was nice, even in the rain. I could see over some of the trees and deeper into the valley....

But now for this boulder.

What I did next also took a few tries, to get the timing right. But fortunately Ja Baij is a gernerous chap, and I had an infinite number of Bombs to play with.

I Stasised the giant boulder beneath my feet, took out a Bomb, rolled it over the edge, and detonated it while it was close enough to exert some force upon the boulder, but far enough away that it wouldn’t blow me up!

And when the Stasis let go.... over the boulder keeled and finally fell to the ground (I paraglided down after it) where I could manage it with a bit more ease.

Ha, yeah—ease. Surely. The thing was still huge.

I tried pushing it toward the empty cornerstone. No good; it was too big. So I tried Stasis and another Bomb. Not enough force. Stasis and two more Bombs.... got it on the square!

And the Korok appeared!

YES! ^_^

That had to be the heaviest Korok I’d ever chased up. Epic.

There was something supremely satisfying about that one.

Really made you work for it.