Still reeling from her abrupt engagement to Ranni, Shaw found herself wandering aimlessly, lost in thought at the implications of her impending nuptials to a ancient puppet ghost witch, she ended up in a cave. Since she was somewhat dazed at the time, all she can remember is what this picture documented: a group of bearded men, just hanging around in a somewhat dark, dank place, like the basement of a used record shop.
Once she regained her mental bearings, Shaw looked at her map for unexplored areas, and was quite surprised to find a rather huge green area in Mt. Gelmir with a castle smack dab in the middle of it. This was somewhat concerning, how had she missed such an obvious place? When she tried to get there, the reason became evident; the castle was nestled in a valley at the end of a canyon, that was easy to overlook, if one was not looking at the map.
From the outside, this fortification appeared to be manageable; from the inside, the ground was covered in poison and then it started to rain (at least it wasn’t frogs).
Poison, poison, poison everywhere. Poison ground, poison-spewing flowers, poison-spewing undead. Lest you think the battlements were any safer, they were guarded by red knights, who, you guessed it (or maybe you didn’t), poison you with rot! For those unfamiliar with the game, rot is like poison that drains your health bar ten times as fast. Suffice it to say, our girl Shaw was in trouble; bereft of health potions and down to her last sliver of vitality, with poison all around, she needed to find another site of grace, and fast.
Not a moment too soon, Shaw found a grace; her 62933 runes were safe, for now. Incidentally, nice statuary, almost makes up for all the poison.
From this point onward, the entire place was filled with statues. Evidently, whoever owned this castle was a collector. Troublingly, all the statues were of women or girls, with a lot of duplicates. Were all the statues depicting the same person, at different stages in their life? If so, the implications were somewhat disturbing, as they might suggest an obsessive, somewhat toxic personality.
Whoever these ladies (or lady) were, Shaw killed the primary resident of the castle, so if they were still alive, they would be safe now.
Once the fight was over, Shaw explored her surroundings, and oh, who was this lady in the painting? Was she the true master of this property? Wait, were the statues also of this armoured lady? The plethora of statues suddenly took on a different significance; no longer were they the product of an obsessive personality, but rather, the physical representation of a vainglorious narcissist. Shaw was intrigued, but also a little conflicted, the painting was eliciting feelings…
