I'm getting 'em all this time, dang it!
I love that John plays along with the Consorts' programmed ignorance of him. He's such a good sport.
These guys really love their Important RPG Terms. It's sort of like a species-wide typing quirk.
SALAMANDER: Our great elder, the magnificent Secret Wizard was one day graced with the First Rag of Souls from the clouds.
SALAMANDER: He donned the oily, humble cloth and assumed the countenance of a simple beggar.
SALAMANDER: But lo, he beheld a great pillar of rock, and on that pillar he beheld an impossibly tall white tower belonging to the fabled Heir of Breath.
SALAMANDER: And so our leader ascended this pillar and this tower, but found no sign of the heir.
SALAMANDER: He did however find the Heir's floating blue servant, and she laundered his robes, and so the Rag of Souls was born anew.
SALAMANDER: Such was his magnanimity, he employed the Heavenly Machina to duplicate this relic and distribute robes to his many followers across the land, so that they too might be beheld with a beholden eye of admiration.
What I'm getting is that Nanna started a salamander cult for the bit.
Talented though he is, John will have a hard time living up to such a prankster's legacy.
Ooh, we're back in the old style - it's like a game-within-a-game!
This thing does an uncomfortable amount of damage, even with John's maxed Gel Viscosity.
Still, at least it doesn't one-shot him like I expected. These Imps aren't quite as scary as I originally thought.
I can even time-freeze it with Fear No Anvil! There's a shocking amount of polish here for a one-panel walkaround.
It's tough, but John's fully capable of taking it down.
Hopefully once he's scaled the god tiers, Imps will go back to being fodder - although we don't know for sure if the god tiers increase your stats. I assume they're distinct from the Echeladder levels in some way, but I can't really speculate.
SALAMANDER: I'm so hungry. Alas, I have not a single boondollar to pop my bubble with.
JOHN: i've got loads of boondollars! here, i will treat you to a nice lunch.
Is that some LOHAC contraband I spy?
The Consorts must have opened an interplanetary trade route.
SALAMANDER: Do you hear that? He is still asleep, thank goodness.
SALAMANDER: But when the Windy Thing was kicking up all that fuss, it sounded like he was not happy at all.
SALAMANDER: It makes him absolutely furious when anyone other than him bends The Breeze to his will! It is not pleasant for anybody.
SALAMANDER: Luckily there is only one person who can do that, and he is surely a mythical figure, who only morons believe in.
Now this is interesting. Typheus claims authority over the Breath element, and can't abide anyone else wielding it...
SALAMANDER: Luckily there is only one person who can do that, and he is surely a mythical figure, who only morons believe in.
...which means he's basically calling John out by name.
The Heir is the only person in the Medium even capable of drawing his ire - and thus, the seeds of their inevitable battle have been sown.
SALAMANDER: It's said the Heir will wake the denizen by playing a magical song only he can play, and when he wakes up, the Heir will meet the terrible beast face to face!
SALAMANDER: It is then that he will be offered The Choice. The nature of the Heir's triumph depends on what he chooses!
How much choice do you really have, when your future's set in stone? Choose anything that hasn't been pre-approved, and you're sent careening into an offshoot timeline, before being dissolved into nonexistence.
Maybe this proper-noun Choice is a real choice, then - a decision that can violate fate, but won't doom the timeline. The implications could be staggering.
SALAMANDER: Then the Heir will lead us all to a beautiful place, with the most bristling insect furrows and the richest, dampest mushroom soil you could hope to farm.
Either way, John's Choice seems to involve transporting the Consorts somewhere. This salamander is describing a heaven-like location, so I hope the twist isn't that John will destroy LOWAS, 'transporting' its residents to the afterlife :/