RGR009 - Welcome to the Necrogond

Once we finally got around to venturing into the Necrogond, we realized something: although we knew we had to use the Sword of Gaia in the crater of a volcano, we didn't actually know where the volcano was. Forced to use a map, I remembered someone saying you could reach the volcano from Portoga by sailing around the southwest continent, and sure enough, the map showed the volcano's location, south of Assaram and west of Baharata. So we warped to Assaram, hopped on board the ship, and sailed into a small river that ended near the volcano.

The animation below doesn't do the volcano's eruption justice. When I thrust the Sword of Gaia into the volcano, the earth began to shake as flames appeared in the crater. Then everything began to flash bright white, and flaming rocks shot out of the volcano. Finally, a stream of lava poured down the side of the volcano, flowing along the river next to it and cooling to form a platform of rock where the river once blocked our path. It was still 8-bit, but it was pretty awesome.

The path to the Necrogond Cave was long and riddled with much stronger enemies than we were used to dealing with. The cave itself was worse: five increasingly large and confusing levels, full of difficult enemies. I lost count of how many times we either died or had to flee the cave before we finally found all the treasure and reached the other side, although the Thunder Sword and Swordedge Armor almost made it all worth it. Almost.

When we emerged inside the Necrogond, we could see a castle on a small island directly to the north, completely surrounded by mountains, and we found a small shrine nearby. When we entered the shrine, we found a surprisingly peaceful-looking man who was very happy to see us. He expressed his confidence in our ability to destroy Baramos, and handed over the Silver Orb. With five orbs down and nothing else to do here right now, all that's left is to resume our search for the final orb, which I'm guessing is green.

YOWZA!!!

Ooh, fancy weaponry!

And fancy armor!

Phew...

This looks important.

Yay! One more!

It's pretty sad that we went through so much trouble to get here, and now that we've got the orb, we're leaving. But I have a feeling it'll be much easier to get back here soon enough.

I'm talking about flying, you know.