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	Message: : : Last time on Tour of Duty Martin took on the Gauntlet and found the : manuscript the Venetians stole. We start off with a new chapter screen. : : Salvo. : noun : noun: salvo; plural noun: salvoes; plural noun: salvos : a simultaneous discharge of artillery or other guns in a battle. : a number of weapons released from one or more aircraft in quick succession. : a sudden, vigorous, or aggressive act or series of acts. : Incidentally, Tempus Irae translates to “Time Wrath.” : We arrive in a castle with Drones coming at us through the windows. In the : next room is a magnum, apparently for the scratchstarter, and right down : the hall is our first terminal… err… book. (There’s even some realistic : shadows behind the platform it’s sitting on. A nice touch.) : : : : This is an odd tangent, but I think the semicolon is misplaced. It should be : “Giovanni still sick; threw out some beggar children that tried to climb : the northeast wall.” Okay, what you’re really interested in is the : translation error. That’s weird, usually that stuff happens with the s’pht : language translations. Anybody fluent in renaissance-era Italian or Latin : care to take a crack at what was written? Anyway, there’s more: : : : These pages are bloody, so the guy who wrote them must have died (and the : pfho took the body). I’m going to guess that these are clues to help us : navigate the map. New Bellwick? Loose floorboards? A rusty door and a : detached stone? Good thing I just took note of all that, because I : remember this being one confusing doorstop of a map; it's like the Aye Mak : Sicur of Tempus Irae. Speaking of which, : : : Note from the future: The illustrations in the book (terminal images) : actually show the places on the map we're supposed to go. A nice touch and : it's more interesting than Durandal and Leela's mundane use of directly : showing points on the overmap itself. : There’s an AR at the bottom of the stairs and outside there’s an ambient : sound of rain and thunder, but presumably due to engine limitations, we : don’t actually see the rain (the engine is perfectly capable of random : lightning flashes, but there’s no hidden juggernaut crushers on this map). : It adds to the map feeling truly dark and medeival (even though this is : the renaissance). : Enforcers were placed on really annoying high platforms, and that zoom button : I never use would be useful here if I remembered what key it was mapped : to. In the middle of a tower there’s a shotgun and some ammo on a candle : (some drones will teleport into this room in addition to the fighter and : hunter). : : Is this the wall those beggar kids tried to climb over? : : This is actually two walls that enclose a body of water. On the other side is : a hole in the wall that looks like the place we need to go, but it's just : a pointless alternate route. : : In the level notes: (Level based on existing structures found while : vacationing in Italy) : So that explains why there's stuff like this. Now that’s dedication. : After running around firing at drones and troopers (and being annoyed by : out-of-reach enforcers) we find some stairs leading to a new entrance. : : : It reveals a lift, and it looks like I finally found the pattern buffer! : : Unfortunately, I got splattered by a trooper grenade before I got to use it : =( : *respawns from Repository Six* : Back to where I left off, this room has some nice lighting effects, but seem : a bit too strobe-ish for the candles they’re coming from. Still, I : appreciate the effort to put lots of candle flickers in this tower. : On the other side is another platform to drop down to the northern part of : the map. : After a lot of filling up the un-drawn portions of the map, we find a little : hard-to-spot cubbyhole right here. : : In here we find the first enforcer that we can take an alien weapon from! : : On the other side is a window we can jump through. : : In that room is a rocket launcher, which is old news by now since we found : the secret levels. At least the s’pht made good on their word, even if it : was a bit retroactive. Maybe the secret ones were sent back in time. : : There’s one more door that won’t open, and I’m out of places to explore. : Where do I go next? Maybe Giovanni’s friend’s hint guide will give us a : clue? : : Hmm… this must be that door with the rusted mechanism the guy referred to. : What else is there? The southeast wall can supposedly be climbed (which : requires grenades. I don’t know how the kids didn’t get themselves killed : doing that). The kids were hiding in the northeast garden (is that where I : found the rocket launcher?). There’s a loose flagstone to the south of the : garden, and finally there’s a loose board in the water tower, which we : can’t really reach yet. Let’s look for that stuff. : Aha! I found something: : The gear has to be punched to do… whatever. Maybe it opens that door? : : Yep. Inside is a flooded room. : : We find a button located here: : This does… something we’ll find out later, and if we dive under the fountain : in the middle of the room, we’ll find another switch to punch. : : This raises the water level, allowing us to leave, but first we swim back to : get up on a platform and find a 2x canister. : : It’s like the s’pht knew we liked being rewarded for exploring and teleported : their little gifts in obscure, inconvenient crannies like this because : they knew we would be disappointed if they just constantly beamed shield : canisters in front of us. : So… what else is there? “A loose flagstone at the base of the stairs in the : building to the south of the garden.” Well, I didn’t find that, but after : some exploring I found this thing open: : According to the official level notes, this thing is the water tower our : friend was speaking of, and I think we just opened that loose board. How : did these fountains fit in here? : : It’s nice architecture, but it’s such a tight space! We go down some creepy : stairs and shotgun shells teleport in behind us; we're in a really creepy : dungeon. At the end we find an L switch we have to shoot. : : We return back up the stairs to meander around some more looking for whatever : that switch activated. : I think this might be the “loose flagstone” area our friend mentioned. : : Drones and fighters teleport in to eat our lead. I hear some ammo teleport in : somewhere, but I don’t see it, and just what is this? : : A seemingly conspicuous painting that does nothing whatsoever. A moment later : I find that ammo on top of the stairs, as well as building windows to hop : across. We could alternatively fall down the hole where that missing stair : should be, but let’s jump out the window first. We hop through some : windows and battle some fighters and an enforcer. : There’s a zeuss fusion pistol and a 1x canister waiting for us in a candlelit : corner and it seems like we’re supposed to make an obvious jump here, but : where we’re supposed to go is really not so obvious as it just drops us : off outside. I guess we drop down below that staircase now? : At the bottom of the drop is the manuscript, enshrined in all it’s glory in : what looks like a (?Doom?Indiana Jones) style death trap. : : We take the book and the whole place floods! Really, really fast, too. Did : that manuscript act as a drain plug? I’m sure it’s useless to the s’pht : now that it’s all wet. The entrance we came through is blocked off, and : what we have to do is fight the current and swim down the other side. We : can resurface in a triangular opening outside, but there’s nothing up : there, so we dive back under to find a button at the bottom that raises : the floor and lowers a wall outside. That was quite a ride. We got the : manuscript, so how do we get out of here? We reached the end of the hint : book, man. : : Ah, there it is, right there by the terminal. But first, the level notes : mentioned another secret in that flooded room that had the 2x canister in : it. We can open the waterfall behind where that canister was, and this is : the most insane door platform ever! : : There’s an L switch at the end, which opens a flashing chamber to a : teleporter that sends us to a room with invincibility and a 3x charger! : Where is this, anyway? : : Now that’s a Never Burn Money-ish secret room. The teleporter takes us back : to the start of the map, so we have to race to the exit and rush through : Repository Seven to make any use out of the invincibility. : Repository Seven is the same as always, with the same failure message; except : this is Repository SEVEN! There must be something significant about this! : No; not really. : Here's our exposition to end on: : : : : : : : I like the self-awareness that we already predicted this (uh.. : "plot-twist?" No, I'll call it a "spoiler" ) way : back on Ain't My Bitch. The thing we didn't already know - the copy of our : own pattern - explains how the pfhor are predicting our every move. Tycho : scans Italy for a pattern that matches his own, then beams the troops down : on us. : Join Martin next time when we get to visit a castle Leonardo was hiding from : the French in on The Revealing Science of God. It's safe from the French : Army, but not from the Pfhor! Oh, and repository 8. I'll be back for Rock : The Boat.
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