Part 20: The Cube Generator

We flew to the place on the map with where the compass sits and came across a sealed in cove with two dinosaur skulls at the entrance. The Guardian spoke to me:

Do you really know where you're going Avatar?

Exploring around we found a magically sealed fort in the middle of an inlet. To enter, we will need to go and get a ship because there is nowhere to land. We also found a camp of pirates and mages, a lich, and a fairy. We decided to quickly collect a ship, and remembered that Lord British had provided us the deed to the Golden Ankh berthed in Vesper.

So, for the first time in the game, we traveled by ship.

I went to cast Unlock Magic to open the door to the fort I mentioned earlier, but the spell failed! It appears magic does not work on Ambrosia. We disembarked on a broken stone wharf and explored. There was a cave to the north of the island and outside was a fairy throwing magic dust into the air. Her name was Kissme.

My party - Iolo, Shamino, even Spark all volunteered to kiss her to 'protect' me from whatever foul magic she may have at her disposal. She ended up planting a sloppy kiss on Iolo's cheek.

What we did learn from Kissme was that the Caddellite can be found in a pit with a hydra (a three headed dragon). She warned me that the hydra was very protective of the Caddellite.

I briefly explored the cave but found it hard to make progress without my spells. It must be Kissme's dust which is blocking magic. The solution is to travel away from Ambrosia and cast the linear spell "Weather". This causes it to rain which counteracts the fairy dust everywhere. We tried this but it didn't seem to work.

Inside the cave a lich behind a magically locked door summoned waves of enemies before teleporting in himself. He killed Sentry and Spark. I was lucky to have Jaana there to resurrect them both (we had to sleep for a while in the cave for her to recover).

We came across another magically locked door completely blocking our progress. I went back out to the island and found some powder kegs (explosives) by that camp I saw earlier to see if they could blow the door open.

It didn't work. However, for whatever reason, I was able to cast spells at that point in the cave so I was able to unlock it.

And then we came across the three headed hydra. We spoke to the hydra's three heads - Shandu, Shanda, and Shando. The hydra decided I was its food and only spoke to me out of amusement.

When they learnt I meant to take the Caddellite they attacked, but the hydra turned out to be one of the easiest enemies I've encountered in the game - killing deer for food is significantly more challenging.

On the hydras corpse was a headless corpse, and inside that was a troll, and inside that was a "fire bolt". I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to be able to see that - I think Exult messed up. I gave it to Dupre to see if it would act as a weapon and we moved on (it didn't work).

Just down from the hydra was the meteor crater. We picked up eight pieces of Caddellite (it was pretty heavy) and headed back out of the cave.

We sailed back to Vesper to collect our flying carpet and then flew on to Minoc to visit the blacksmith Zorn.

Zorn was more than happy to craft us the required helmets, crafted them right before our eyes.

We are now each sporting a blue winged helmet which should protect us from the damaging sonic waves emitted by the Cube Generator:

We returned to the Meditation Retreat and the Cube Generator. The helmets worked, we were able to bypass the exterior defense mechanism (the piercing sound) and approach it:

I took some healing potions and bandages from Jaana, left my party behind, and entered...

Inside is the most complex puzzle in the game. It requires moving around tiny platforms to try and get to the centre. There are traps everywhere, invisible walls, and to get to the centre requires walking on pretty much every part of the structure at one point or another.

(This puzzle beat me when I was a kid. I remember giving up after dying so many times).

It was pretty challenging this time around too. At several points I arrived at the centre, but an invisible wall blocked me. The Guardian laughed at me each time:

No, no, no. Pick again!

... said The Guardian. Along with many other taunts. Finally, after having to heal myself several times and re-tracing my own steps multiple times... I made it to the centre:

We picked up the cube shaped prism, and the Cube Generator was no more. The Time Lord appeared and told us something interesting. The cube shaped prism I now have in my possession has the power to coerce people into telling the truth! He instructed us to take it to Buccaneer's Den to find the location of the Black Gate.

Next time we will travel to Buccaneer's Den to find the location of the Black Gate and see what else those unscrupulous pirates are up to!