A critical re-evaluation of Eternal Darkness part 2

Immediately after the last chapter ends my attention is drawn to a piece of paper pinned to the wall written in the now understandable ancient language. Alex picks it up and the second chapter starts.

Edward starts his opening narration, he recommends "The Golden Bough" by James George Frazer, and I'm going to admit, in my last year of high school I had a choice in which literature subject my last english credit would be. I took Folklore/Mythology based solely on the fact that I found out I'd get to read that book. Yeah I was that kind of fan back then.

Anyway we open to Ellia, a dancer in 12th century Cambodia who is in a temple, reading the Tome of Eternal Darkness while we read the tome about her reading it, cosmic. She is reading a passage about our new friend Pious using magic to impale an ancient god to the ground. This is Mantorok, he was the one keeping the other eldritch gods in check so they won't take over the world as they are trying to do right now. With Mantorok out of the way Pious and his sponsor (Xelotath this playthrough) can do whatever she wants. Ellia finishes her chapter, then breaks horror commandment #1. Yes the one more important than don't go against puritanical notions of sex and drugs, more important than going
off on your own in a group. She says she is BORED, and wishes something important would happen.

Something important does happen, she gets locked in the temple. After some wandering about she encounters a zombie and the game's main gimmick, the Sanity meter. Every time a creature stares at you your character loses a little
sanity and the lower your sanity, the more likely it is you'll run into one of a hundred or so randomly selected hallucinatory effects. To properly measure this at the end of each chapter I will have a compiled "Insanity log" keeping
track of what happened.

After some wandering through generic ancient temple style traps (Wow if I step on the yellow tiles darts will hit me? Color me shocked) and solving a rediculously easy puzzle involving candles, Ellia gets a blowgun, don't ask how
poison darts work on zombies. After getting it she falls through a hole in the ground and finds another part of the temple. Her sword breaks but after using the new blowgun to save a temple guard from zombies he repairs it for her. After some more trap evading and zombie killing Ellia makes it to the temple's central chamber. Mantorok is there, in all his many mouthed, many eyed and many tendrilled glory. Two guards warn Ellia not to go near it, Mantorok eats them. Pious walks in all smug that Mantorok now has to eat food to survive because he took away the god's godliness, then warns Ellia not to go any further or else he will kill her, then leaves for no known reason.

Ellia then gets zapped by a beam of light and gets knocked out. A short time later one of the temple guards walks up to her, gives her some clumsy exposition about how she is one of the many who will work together to save the world, and he gives her a giant heart, this heart is apparently Mantorok's essence, the only thing keeping him alive after all that happened. She is then ordered to take it to the next room on the other side of the central chamber. Which means I have to take a rod from a statue in that room, go ALL THE WAY BACK to the other end of the temple and put the rod in a hole that will let her pull a switch that opens the door. This is the absolute worst kind of level padding, so I'll just skip ahead.

She gets to the next room, Pious demands her to tell him where she put the heart. She says never, he kills her without a second's hesitation. On the one hand I'm ok with a genuinely threatening villain, on the other it means he has no idea how to interrogate a prisoner and that makes him pretty useless. Chapter end.

Back at the Roivas mansion, Alex learns how to open a bookshelf by solving the same puzzle from that chapter, and the page for the next chapter is revealed. See you next time

Insanity log-
-Ellia went into a room and started turning gigantic to the point where she couldn't fit into the next room
-Strange voices were heard

I haven't been benign since 1968