“Continue telling me about Caliph Tze's part in history.” (Crys)

“Okay.”

We should concentrate on the campaign strategy, not on philosophical musings, Crys was definitely right about that.

He wasn't as knowledgeable about Caliph Tze because he had directed most of his efforts against Suleiman, his personal adversary.

I moved to the front of the railcar and sketched the details of the future timeline, skipping Tze's backstory and starting from the point where he left Reignland.

“Caliph Tze travels from Reignland to Rukhkh Mountain. The whole royal palace moves with him, which is why it's called Moving Palace. Servants and slaves move the partition walls and curtains around him during the day and carry his whole bedroom during the night. They try to keep up an illusion that the palace is not really traveling at all, so they move only around hundred meters a day and the whole journey to Rukhkh takes about 2-3 months.”

In the game, Caliph Tze's journey in the Moving Palace was the internal timer during flashback missions. You could choose the order you wanted to clear the missions, but the time you spent was added together. This meant that there was a hard, unforgiving time limit: even if you cleared all other flashback missions, you could fail the final flashback simply because you spent too much time clearing the previous ones. Restart from earlier save and try again!

“Some time after arriving at Rukhkh Mountain fortress, another month maybe, the twins break ties with Caliph and kill some of his soldiers on their way out. Caliph Tze declares that the twins are wanted outlaws. And about month or two from that, Rukhkh-bird arrives at the top of the mountain to lay an egg, and Caliph uses that magic egg to become overpowered immortal being.”

“Rukhkh-bird?” (Crys)

“That's a whole another story, I'll get to that later. Now, at the same time during Caliph's journey, Test Subject travels to Reignland, offers himself to the High Hats as a volunteer labrat, finds his way at the Bone Dune Station, flips out completely and turns into a yarn-triggered sleepwalker-berserker. The details of his flip out don't really matter, it's too confusing to explain... What's important is that during the ensuing chaos, Rainwoman and Sorry Man escape the facility. Rainwoman wants to kill Caliph Tze for everything he did to her and Sorry Man, but then she learns, a bit too late unfortunately, that Caliph Tze has already left Reignland and traveled to Rukhkh. Rainwoman runs after him, and on the way there they find the Hidden Walley, meet Kurdt Krurick, and also save Mirim from Wineep Dungeon.”

I'm skipping over details like Rainwoman's drug addiction and the weatherman death patrols hunting her.

“Eventually Rain, Sorry and Mirim reach Rukhkh Mountain. They literally climb the mountain instead of going through the spiral labyrinth, and reach the top of the mountain at the exact same time Caliph Tze is about to break the magical Rukhkh Egg. They have a short battle and Caliph wins. He uses his overpowered Starcutter weapon to launch Sorry Man and Mirim high in the sky and far away towards east like, ahem, in some morning shounen anime... Anyway, Mirim ends up landing in the Winter Forest, dies immediately, and turns into a machine. Sorry Man ends up landing in the Mandarin River and some fishermen pick him up. Rainwoman is injured, but manages to stay at the mountaintop. She survives by hanging onto a cliff just below the top. Caliph Tze thinks they are all dead and leaves. Rainwoman climbs down the mountain, travels to Winter Forest, where she finds Mirim, and they continue together to Mandarin River area to search for Sorry Man... Wait, I'm getting sidetracked, I was supposed to talk about Caliph Tze.”

“Caliph Tze using the Rukhkh-bird's Egg is the worst case scenario then?” (Crys)

“Yes.”

“I see. And what time is it currently?” (Crys)

“I'd say that Caliph Tze has started moving at this point, or at least is going to start moving pretty soon. I'm basing my guess on the time Test Subject would have met you for the first time at Crumbling Shores in the near future, and then soon after traveled to Reignland if I hadn't intervened, but Caliph Tze had already left Reignland when Test Subject reached the City of the Sun.”

“So, about six months to a year from now Caliph becomes immortal using this Rukhkh Egg.” (Crys)

“Yeah, we need to kill him before he gets the egg, but we need to do it after the twins have left his side. That's our time window, those months between the twins leaving Rukhkh and the egg landing on Rukhkh.”

“You said previously that I traveled with Kimono and Test Subject to the north. Where and when I met Rainwoman's group?” (Crys)

“That would have happened several months afterward, maybe month or two after the egg. Rainwoman already found Mirim and Sorry Man again in the original timeline before meeting you.”

“I see. And how did Test subject return to Ur Continent, then, if he was in this sleepwalker state after Bone Dune Station?” (Crys)

“Yeah, that's the hard-to-explain part. The events got really surreal during Test Subject's flip out, but he basically timewarps during a Strangers-related experiment in the Bone Dune Station, travels continually back and forth in time for a while, and eventually ends up at your place in Ur.”

Crys closed his eyes and thought about that for a while.

“Immortality egg, time travel device, dynamite, and a special weapon with enough power to launch people at neighboring territories. There are quite a lot of fantastic elements I need to consider.” (Crys)

“I can guess the one part you're particularly interested in. You’re probably thinking about getting that Rukhkh Egg yourself and becoming Crystal Caliph in place of Caliph, right?”

Nail, meet hammer. Crys showed his ultra-rare smile.

“You don't intend to obtain immortality yourself?” (Crys)

“Nope, too many downsides. Of course, if it were just a regular immortality without any side effects, sure, I'd go for it. But I'll gladly pass the Rukhkh Egg flavor of immortality.”

“What are the side effects?” (Crys)

“Glad you asked. First, the transformation is quite painful. Secondly, it changes you in a very bad way. You have to rub egg yolk everywhere on your body, you have to eat it and shove it into your nose, ears, and other orifices. It's a nasty process. After that, you have to wait for it to dry and then burn it into your skin like acid – that's the most painful part. Third, the poisonous yolk leaves you permanently scarred, so you'll look like a zombie goblin and have to wear a mask in public. And fourth, if that's not a trade-off bad enough already, you can't drink, eat or have sex anymore, but the desires stay. The desires stay and drive you mad. It's like your own body becomes a permanent chastity harness and you can't do anything to take it off, ever.”

“I see. Does Caliph Tze know about these side effects?” (Crys)

“That's the thing; he knows, but he's insane enough to not care. That's the common theme with Strangers powers: what doesn't kill you makes you stranger. You have to be a complete weirdo to become a Strangers-style weirdo. You have to be someone like Test Subject or Caliph Tze.”

“The egg could still be useful for something else.” (Crys)

“Sure. I don't know how, but acquiring it for examination could be possible, although destroying it would give me more peace of mind. If we leave it alone, another Rukhkh is born eventually and returns to the painting at Raft Island like a migratory bird... Oh, right, speaking of flying, the dirigible airship I've mentioned is in the Starfish Mansion. It's too big to fit through the front door, but we can break it into parts, bring it out and put it back together outside. We can use the airship to get at the top of the Rukhkh Mountain. Skip the climbing and labyrinth-ing, start right from the top.”

“An airship.” (Crys)

“Yeah, it's like those hot air balloons Suleiman uses for reconnaissance, but this one is bigger, faster and goes higher. It looks like a large floating cigar with a long canoe hanging on wires at the bottom. There's room for about ten people. You thought we would have to climb to the top like Rainwoman? No way, we fly.”

I'm sure Crys and Kimono could climb at the top like Rain and Mirim did in the anime, but I personally don't have the stamina or nerves for that sort of mountain adventure. Airship strat is way faster and way safer.

There's also a safer way to extend your lifespan in one of the rooms in Starfish Mansion, but I'll hold on to that information for now.

“Would it not be faster to return to west coast with autorail and travel to Mu through Wineep Isthmus?” (Crys)

“In normal circumstances, yes. But Caliph's journey to Rukhkh means that the whole isthmus and coast of Mu is full of Caliph's death patrols and knight cavalry. I can't recommend going through the coast twice, and first time would be much harder without dynamite and Rainwoman, our main anti-personnel weapons. It's better to pick up those first.”

“I see.” (Crys)

“When we return to Pier City in the more distant future, after Caliph Tze is done, we can use the airship to cross the continent as well. It's slower than autorail, but much safer.”

I continued to entertain Crys with random info: humans having unique fingerprints, chair smash exploit, underdoor tools, movement sensors, security cameras, and other stuff I thought he would find interesting. Modern security measures beyond glyph combo locks didn't exit in this world (kicking doors until the hinges gave up was the standard entry procedure), but Crys was fascinated by the exotic concepts alone.

I was reminded of all the times my stream had only few regulars on chat and we had long conversations about random topics.

I miss the Internet.

---

After several hours, the tunnel train slowed down and stopped at the Halfway Station. The railcar body turned transparent again and I could see the light pillars in the cavern.

When the automatic doors opened, I immediately turned the skeleton key again and advised everyone to stay on full alert.

In the game, the autoscroller stopped at this station for about five minutes, the doors on both sides opened and you had to constantly fight hordes of deviants who tried to break inside the train from the dark platforms left and right.

Ostero's crew probably tried to step out and talk with them, but that just wasted time. The deviants living in these areas were classified Extremely Hostile Enemies; they had the ability to talk, but spoke only to distract the player. These mine morlocks didn't know anything, didn't say anything important, didn't advance the plot in any way, and their drops were crap. Deviant hordes around Drakenveld Crevice were pure cannon fodder.

I couldn't see any movement in the cavern. No one came to welcome us.

“Yep, shoot the corners.”

When Crys and Dancer shot the corners of the walls as planned, the deviants appeared.

Deviants were low-intelligence wasteland mutants with their own culture and fashion. Instead of a-punk-alypse type desert punks, they were bio-goth scavengers; instead of building villages, they lived in dungeons or abandoned ruins; instead of wearing clothes, they dressed up in scrap metal, chains and bones; and instead of farming or gathering, they hunted rats, spiders, humans, or cannibalized neighboring deviant tribes.

Each of them had unique deviations from baseline human body: only one eye in the middle of the forehead, third arm in the back, whole body covered in thick hair, horns growing from their shoulders, feathers instead of fingers, and so on. Human-sized mutant goblins – that was the classic deviant look and character.

You didn't see extreme body variations in human cities because deviations from baseline humans were treated like Strangers curses: if a mutated child was born, or found in a human settlement, it was either sentenced to death or secretly banished to wastelands.

This was one of the clear policy differences between the two continental boss dictators: Suleiman allowed only “pure humans” to live in his territories, but Caliph Tze happily collected and researched rare mutants that went above and beyond human capabilities.

In any case, we had to stop the deviants before they could dash inside the railcar to bash our heads with their bone-handle axes and scrap metal clubs.

“Dancer, don't worry about the ones trying in from front and back, shoot only the ones coming from left and right!”

Kimono and I pushed boulders down the ramps while Crys and Dancer continued shooting. The deviants kept coming like Japanese businessmen late from work, but as expected, a few of them lying on the steep ramp with broken legs slowed down the ones climbing over from behind.

When the boulders were gone, I picked up a revolver and started shooting as well. Crys had lined and loaded up all our guns on the railcar floor, so instead of stopping to reload, we just had to toss the empty gun aside (gently) and pick up a full one.

Crys was keeping time with his pocket watch.

“One minute!” (Crys)

“Yosh!”

One minute felt like eternity in a battle, but everything was going fine. We had the high ground.

Suddenly, there was a massive roar of rage and a hulking three-meter tall mutant monster wearing a DIY black metal armor appeared from a tunnel on the right side. It had large meat hooks attached to its hands and it wore a colorful face mask with curved horns like a Chinese dragon.

“Wh-what is that?!” (Dancer)

“It's just a deviant lord. Shoot its kneepads first, then shoot its head. No biggie, just a stupid mini-boss.”

Crys, Kimono and Dancer seemed far more concerned about the deviant lord than me, which was understandable, since it was their first time seeing one.

I had fought these monsters on daily schedule, so I casually stated the takedown strat and aimed my revolver at its knees without delay.

“They're not as strong and scary as they look, they're just jumbo editions of regular deviants.”

I fully enjoyed the feeling of momentary superiority of being the most experienced monster battler in the party.

Just like with oversized dudes in real life, knees were deviant lord's weakness. If you took the deviant lord down before it could start its rock-throwing phase, it forgot to take cover and tried to crawl into melee swinging his hook hands like an idiot.

There wasn't deviant lord in this area in the game or anime, but it wasn't that surprising to see one. They spawned randomly and their lifespans were quite short.

The deviant lord went down. At the same time I heard the autorail audio cue we had been waiting.

“Three minutes!” (Crys)

“Nice, we got the shorter time! The doors are closing, no need to waste ammo, they can't break in!”

The doors closed, peaceful silence returned and the railcar started moving again. Some of the deviants grabbed the edges of the railcar roof and managed to hang on until we went inside solid rock again. They fell off with soundless splashes of blood and gore.

“Wow, that was... Is this how you people always fight...?” (Dancer)

“It seems we do.” (Crys)

“Yep, that's more or less how it goes down in the hood. Stay with us and every battle is a cakewalk.”

Pretty solid Halfway Station stop. Soothingly anticlimactic.

"Guys, sorry, but can I leave cleaning to you? I think I need to lie down a bit..."

My head felt dizzy. Time to try resting recovery and stack it with sleeping skip again.