Dragon Warrior III: Lia tries to find the final key. She does eventually find it but first finds just about everything else first.
The first noteworthy discovery is an empty spot where a man wants to start a new town. He wants Lia to get him a dealer to help with the town building. Fortunately, she just happened to know someone she definitely can spare. Kara the dealer joins the party for the second, and probably last, time. The ambitious town founding man seems happy with the assistance. Hopefully the +4% income a dealer grants will be more useful for him than for Lia.
The next noteworthy discovery is a town harassed by a monster named Orochi who demands sacrifices, female sacrifices to be specific. Apparently it was the leader of the town who figured out the sacrifice to pacify monster method. Lia figures out a quicker solution which has the additional benefits of not being temporary and not requiring loss of women. Some townspeople also seem rather enthusiastic about this idea. Their leader is not however. She's in fact downright hostile and wants Lia to leave. Not suspicious at all.
Very close to the town is a cave. The party ventures there in search of Orochi even though chance is the monster's actually in town. They are lucky though and Orochi decided to venture down. Boss battle time.
This one turns out to be a lot of trouble. Orochi usually usee a flame breath attack which hits every party member for about half what Healmore heals. With four party members it means the total damage is about twice of what Healmore heals. This wouldn't have been such a problem had Lia also known Healmore, but she doesn't. Heal and medical herbs aren't really cutting it, so the fight becomes a race against time where the party tries to whittle down Orochi's hitpoints before they wipe. They pull a narrow victory. In another reality they could just have put the boss to sleep and it would have stayed asleep until it died.
The boss retreats trough a warp and what's left of the party follows. The warp takes them to the town hall of the village of sacrificing women. There the leader lies, wounded. The party is however in even worse shape and makes a quick retreat hoping that the monster will stay nicely wounded while they have a rest in Lia's house. It does that.
When they confront the leader the next day, she again tells them to leave, this time adding more threat. Lia refuses and the party has to fight Orochi a second time. Despite the monster being wounded, the fight is no easier. This time Orochi uses the flame breath much less, but it now gets two turns every round, so the damage output is about the same. Again the party pulls a narrow victory.
The monster is killed and the villagers hail Lia as a hero. While this is the kind of stuff she really wanted to do when signing up as a hero, the events still leaves a bad taste in her mouth. In both fights against the monsters she was one of the unfortunate to fall. Harl the fighter had at this point gained much more strength than she had. When the fights started to lock desperate, the party had to focus on keeping him alive so that he can finish Orochi off. While sacrifice is seen as heroic, sacrificing oneself so that someone else may finish off the big bad monster is the job of a sidekick. Had she only known Healmore things would have been different. A quick consult with el-FAQo tells her that it takes way to long for her to learn it. Once she does it won't be long until she learn Healall however.
From Orochi she gained the Orochi sword and an Orb. She is the only one in the party who can equip the Orochi sword, but she has a flail which hits multiple enemies, so no deal. When it comes to the Orb, she scans her memory and recalls someone saying something about six orbs being needed to awake something. Someone else also said doing so will make a ship unnecessary. Lia adds the orbs to her list of items to get.
More exploring reveals the third noteworthy discovery. She runs into the village where her father Ortega was born. The villagers mistake her for her father, apparently not seeing that she's a girl. Thinking of it, this isn't the first time people have gone "what, you're a girl?" Sure, her heavy armor makes it impossible to see that she has breasts, her muscular build is very unfeminine and her mannerism is nothing like what you expect from a girl, but still...
Anyway, after talking to a lot of old friends of her father she gets his helmet. The helmet provides 5 points of defense over her current head wear meaning she takes one less point of damage from enemy attacks now with a 25% chance of having a second point of damage subtracted. Lia can just feel how she's getting invincible!
Finally, Lia finds what she's looking for. Some shoals laying on the south of her magic map turns into an island when she uses her vase. The island has a shrine and inside it is the Final Key.
First she returns to the passage blocking town and unlocks the temple there. A cleric who apparently spends his whole life there greets her and offers her a challenge she has to complete alone. Lia accepts and is granted passage to the previously inaccessible pass. Going west reveals a cave.
Fighting alone turns out to be easy since the enemies are weak and her weapon hits a whole group. Or at least it turns out to be easy until she encounters a mimic who hits her with an instant death spell. Did her father have to put up with this sort of? Fortunately, Lia awakens next to the cleric who's all "oh you died, try again?" and she has a second go. This time she makes it to the end of the cave without any further incidents and finds her second orb.
After that she revisits the dead village. She enters the jail and talks to the man there. He recognizes her as a heroine and gives her a third orb.
More searching gets Lia to a pirate's hideout. They seem to know that she is the heroine and apparently figures not getting in the way of saving the world is more important than looting. The leader turns out to be a female who asks Lia if she finds a female pirate captain strange. Since Lia herself is a girl and leading a band of warriors, she says no. The captain however assumes Lia's just sucking up. Chance is she just enjoys the "OMG, it's a girl!" attention and got cranky when Lia didn't give her that. Anyway, some searching outside the hideout reveals the fourth orb.
Two orbs are left now. Lia also has to pay another visit at the various castles in case the Final Key reveals something more that's not nailed down.
