Dragon Warrior III: First on the to do list is revisiting various castles and see what the Final Key can get her. The most noteworthy find is the Expel Shield. It turns out the fighter can equip it and suddenly he has the highest defense of the party. The situation is getting out of hand. He now has higher attack, defense, hitpoints and agility than Lia does and she does not yet have any noteworthy spells. Fortunately she has a group hitting weapon which he can't use, but it still doesn't seem right. Isn't it supposed to be sidekicks who has one skill that exceeds that of the hero while the hero is better at everything else?
While hoping the situation will somehow resolve itself, Lia visits the town under construction. It looks like Kara got a small shop going and a few people has been suckered into immigrating. The town is not yet really useful.
Next Lia goes to a shrine which warps her to a kingdom surrounded by mountains. This one suffers from quite a serious problem, other than the big one threatening the whole world that is. The king has suddenly started to act suspiciously and is now execution happy. Also, people are taking about the Change Staff that allows you to change appearance. Obviously there's no relation between the two. People are also talking about a mirror that allows you to see how things really are.
The first course of action is to go shopping. Then it's time to take a look at the king. The guards won't let the party in, but there's a convenient side entrance. The guard there asks if Lia is there on business. Of course she is, that's why she's taking the side entrance instead of the front entrance! Thus she makes her way to the king which in turns orders the guards to throw her and her followers into prison. The guards does so, but doesn't confiscate any of her equipment. Lia doesn't know if it's because they are dumb or because they are smart.
She uses the Final Key to get out of her cell. A guard is blocking the straightforward exit. Taking to him just yields a "Zzz, I'm talking in my sleep. The king is behaving really suspicious!" and no getting out of the way. Oh well, there's always the less straightforward exit. While getting out the long way, Lia finds a man locked up deeper down than the others. He identifies himself as the real king. Lia is really starting to suspect that the fake king isn't very good at the whole villain business.
Since the guards are already very suspicious of the impostor king and Lia just opened the cell to the real king, he could easily have walked out and rallied the guards. However, he refuses to move. Lia gets the feeling that she is supposed to get the magic mirror she heard about earlier. While much more complicated than needed, this method will get her much more glory than if the real king reclaimed his kingdom, so she doesn't complain.
The mirror lies in a nearby cave, another sign that the impostor king isn't very good at his job. Anyway, the layout of the cave isn't very complicated, but still manages to frustrate the party a bit by negating the "hug the left/right wall" method. Monsters there also like to drain the party of magic. Still, getting the mirror doesn't prove to be to hard.
The first plan is to reveal the fake king right in front of his guards. Unfortunately, cutscene fiat gets in the way and the party is thrown into jail a second time. Not surprisingly, the party still doesn't have their equipment confiscated, so out they go. This time Lia waits until night and enters the king's bedroom and produces the mirror while he's asleep. The king turns out to be a troll who looks about as intelligent as you'd expect considering his actions. Boss battle time.
This fight seems easier than the Orochi fight. Things does get a bit more problematic though when the troll takes out the healer via a critical hit and Lia still hasn't learned Healmore. Nevertheless, her party wins and this time Lia remains standing.
Other than glory and fame, she also picks up the change staff. Time to have some fun.
First she goes to the elven village. Her first plan is to change to an elf or a hobbit and see what she can do. However, the staff transform the party to slimes. To her surprise the elf shopkeeper is willing to sell to them in that condition. Are humans the only creature elves discriminate against? In any case, the rest of the elves manages to see trough the disguise so no fun can be had here.
Next Lia goes home to see if she can scare her mom a little. It works. It also works on a lot of other villagers. Eventually she gets tired of that game and trades the change staff to a hermit for a pirate bone which allows her to find a ghost ship.
Before tracking down the ghost ship, Lia pays the town under construction another visit. Things have changed. The town is now called Karaburg, has a weapon shop with quite expensive equipment, a theatre, a cell and a mansion for Kara herself. Despite the serious lack of housing, there’s actually quite a number of people there.
After some shopping, the party visit’s the theatre. There’s male dancers, a bar and some loot. Lia gets the loot and then leaves. As she’s about to leave, she’s presented a tab of 50,000 gold. While she’s not the type who regularly visits theatres, Lia still got the impression that you’re supposed to pay for entering, not exiting. She refuses to pay and the tab is waived upon the account of her being a friend of Kara. Alternatively, even 50,000 gold isn’t worth getting impaled by a flail.
Taking to the villagers reveals that they aren’t to happy about how the town is running either. One of them however reveals that Kara recently purchased a Orb, so she’s doing something right at least. Lia therefore pays Kara a visit, but she won’t just fork over the Orb. Maybe returning at night will be more fruitful?
Unfortunately, Kara was sensible enough to hire a guard. The guard however also bars the man, who had the idea of building a town here in the first place, from entering Kara‘s mansion. The man wants to warn Kara about an upcoming rebellion, but is now unable to.
Lia looks around and sure enough, she overhears some townspeople plotting rebellion. They seem to be worried when they realise she overheard them. One of them defiantly states she can’t stop it. While Lia is sure she could stop them from much more including breathing, she has no intention to stop anything. Things has to change for her to get the Orb.
Seth casts passtime and it’s day again. Now things are different. The town greeter reveals that Kara is no longer the mayor. The weapon shop has even better equipment to sale. The theatre has turned into a children singing contest hall. In this case Lia gets the suspicion that the townspeople just wanted to spite on Kara and made the theatre as much the opposite of what it previously was as they could. Thinking of it, was there even any children in this town yesterday?
Kara is chilling out in the cell. She wonders what she did wrong, but also reveals she hid the orb behind the throne in her mansion. Lia goes and gets it and decides this earns Kara a get out of jail free card. Kara however decides to stay and hopes the townspeople will forgive her at some point. She may not be to far off, at least one of the townspeople is already starting to wonder if things weren’t better with Kara running the show. Well, making the theatre into a children singing contest hall is a good sign that whoever’s now making decisions isn’t to competent either.
Five orbs of six gained. Next time Lia tracks down a ghost ship and maybe even the last orb.
