A Ripple in Time

From Soloralwiki

Plot of Chapter 4, “A Ripple in Time”

NOTE: Clearly this is just a plot summary. This will be replaced with actual dialogue at some point.

The team, after recovering from the shipwreck, find themselves in 230 AD on the island of Hau’oli ‘Ena. They attempt to investigate the Truppen des Todes base in the area but find no sign of it. While the party is bumming around, the Yardistani Pirates attack and loot the town. They take the party prisoner because they look weird and haul them back to their base Yardistan. They declare the party “annexed” and let them go no worse for wear on Amity Island, other than the fact the party has no business on Amity Island or in 230 in general at this point.

While trying to make travel arrangements off of Amity and on to some place with a time gate so they can back to their original mission of looking for the Truppen des Todes in 0, the city of Erudition busts into a riot over the recent Automatic attack on the city and the capture of notable historian and scholar Scott Siskind. Bill insists this is a perversion of history as Scott wrote most of his history books after 230 and says the party needs to go rescue him. There’s some skepticism about if this counts as progress against the Imperials, but Amy joins Bill’s side in saying that if Bill’s right and history has been altered, the team needs to look into it at once. So the party agrees to investigate.

After the riot ends, Erudition Airport is reopened and it connects to the 230 airport list of Bray in Blackrock, Hau’oli ‘Ena, and Djugagrad. The party decides to avoid Djugagrad again and goes to Bray.

(Note: with the exception of Djugagrad, all other destinations are open through connecting flights if the player really wants to look around and start subquesting)

Upon arriving in Bray, Jason tries to impress the party by saying that the Demesosian War will happen in a months and that the United Demesos probably has a good spy program on Audentior. But Bill one-ups him by saying the UD got most of its real intelligence from Blackrock and they should visit that city for the real info. Awkward.

(Note: Yes, we just had this conversation over MSN…)

Blackrock City is like most ACS 230 cities – dirty and cramped, but with an era of military readiness. Bill impresses the guards with some Demesos codewords and the party is given access to Fort Frymire, the major military base in the city. There they talk to Brandon Frymire, the fort’s commander, about the recent abduction of Scott Siskind. Brandon says he knows nothing about it and that it’s troubling. He offers to help plan a raid on the Djugagrad military prison. Empress decides to help him out. The team is allowed to wander the fort for a time but eventually they’re called in and briefed on a method of attack. The party is given Blackrock identification papers.

Briefed, the party journeys south. The Blackrockian Soldiers allow the party to pass the checkpoint with no trouble. Soon they reach Djugagrad. Djugagrad, by far and large the dirtiest city in an entire era of dirty cities, is an industrial fortress built into the mountains. The city is on several levels of uneven ground and has a lot of factories and the like. The GAPR clearly has some decently modern military technology in the forms of helicopters and rocket launchers. If it wasn’t so evil, it might actually be pretty nifty. The city has several statues of John Sager. The team wonders if this is some distant ancestor of the John Sager from ACS 360. Bill is pretty sure the statues should be of Djugashvili, the puppet leader of the country but the leader none-the-less.

Empress explains the plan of attack. The prison tower is actually way up the side of one of the mountains near from the city proper. There’s a main road up but it’s well-guarded and totally out of their league. They’ll have to climb the mountain directly off the beaten path to a small helipad near the prison. After that, it’s a lot of run and gun until they find Scott. They’ll make their escape in a helicopter that should be at the helipad.

The prison attack is a major action sequence longer than any in the game so far. The party would be wise to stock up on items before the attempt.

The mountain climb is a dungeon of moderate length. At the beginning it’s pretty easy to navigate the slopes, but near the end the party needs to do some rope throwing and climbing up pretty sheer cliffs. As usual, there’s probably a minor cave system too, but the majority of it should be in open air and have nice panoramas of the ground getting smaller and smaller below the climbers.

The actual prison tower should probably be similar to Chrono Trigger’s in the sense that it has small levels but a lot of them stacked on top of eachother. Resistance is light until the party finds Scott’s cell; after that, the gloves are off. Scott is forced into being a party member during the escape. The party gets out to the helipad but the helicopter is gone. The prison gate is closed behind them, trapping them on the small helipad, and a GAPR attack chopper attacks as a boss battle as well as some ground soldiers. The chopper can only be hit with ranged attacks or spells.

When it’s destroyed, the team won’t risk going down the mountainside with choppers around and so they make a break for the access road. They steal a GAPR jeep and speed their way over hapless ground soldiers. On the way down, they have to fight off other jeeps (again with ranged attacks) and gates block the way, forcing a few of the party members to disembark the jeep and wander the cliffs to find ways to open the gates.

Finally the jeep gets to Djugagrad where a GAPR soldier blows it up with a rocket; the party barely manages to get out in time. The main gates into Djugagrad are closed and soldiers are closing in on all sides. Realizing how outnumbered they are, the party gets ready for a final showdown when Amy senses a time disturbance in the area. Fighting off GAPR soldiers, they party forces their way into an abandoned factory with a lot of equipment in the middle of the floor. Matt identifies some of it as looking like his early prototypes. The GAPR soldiers keep attacking and so, in order to give Amy time to stabilize the portal, AI holds them at bay with his arm cannon. Finally the portal is ready and Matt opens it with the TimeTravel1000. As the party is rushing in, stray bullets from the soldiers fly into the room. One of them hits Matt’s TimeTravel1000, causing it to malfunction and close the portal before AI can pass through, leaving the robot trapped in ACS 230 and trapping the rest of the group in the far far past of ACS b7500 with a broken time machine.