Ding 27 -- Smuggled Lollipops in Tower of Fantasy

I played some ToF last night and progressed a bit with my story quest. As it turns out, there's trouble afoot in the Banges Tech Headquarters! It's THUGS! Crazy thugs with cool stylings!

THUGS gonna die!

As the story goes, after being introduced around the island by Hilda and getting to know a few important characters, you head to bed for the evening. It's a nice scene and you even light off a few fireworks. Ahh, happy days. 

In the morning things are much different. Banges Tech headquarters' shields are up and there's trouble, so Hilda leads you through a back door. When you get there, you find a lot of people in a kind of restraining field and start freeing them and taking down the aforementioned THUGS.

You head into the headquarters itself to see what's going on . . . and promptly get caught while trying to be sneaky.

It was a good try

That's ok, they throw you in a prison cell with a guy named Koh. Koh lets you know that everybody has been captured and put in jail cells, including President Kolador and his son Theo. GASP! 

It's ok. Not only is Koh President Kolador's right hand man, but he's also a thinker! He has a great plan to get the cell door open and have you throw on a guard uniform as a disguise! "Plan Koh" goes off without a hitch and before you know it, you're walking around Banges Tech headquarters in an Heirs of Aida guard uniform freeing people left and right.

Just act natural

I haven't looked up any spoilers about the Heirs of Aida, but I'm thinking that things may not be so black and white with the bad guys of the story. I mean, they could have outright killed President Kolador and Theo, but instead they just locked 'em up, right? 

Here's where the story goes a little kooky. Theo is a pretty sickly kid and looks to only have a couple months left to live. That's driven President Kolador crazy, and he decided to give him some kind of monster making syrum in hopes of saving his life.  However, you only discover this after running a couple of strange black market delivery jobs for a shady character named Hopkins while looking for Astrum. Side note: Keeping things light, Tower of Fantasy makes one of those delivery jobs giving some random kid some lollipops? *scratches head*

The best black market jobs are the ones you pull off for bratty kids

You see, this Astrum stuff we're hunting for is pretty rare and valuable since it's an energy source used to power Omnium machinery.  Yeah, I don't know what that is either. Look! It's all very complicated! 

Anyway, while hunting for Astrum, you then encounter a super frustrating puzzle mechanic that basically wants you to throw a laser box (ala the game Portal) onto a moving platform. Honestly it took me about a good 10 minutes to figure out how to put that cube on the platform.

I hate that stupid cube

Inside the ruins where you're hunting for Astrum is President Kolador, and he's just about done turning his son into a soulless monster. It doesn't end well.  

Theo!  You monster!

In the end, the Heirs of Aida take care of Theo and leave you and Kolador behind. Kolador gives up the "now depleted" Astrum and bids you a final farewell by telling you that "Sean at 201" has what we need as he's left to wallow in the fact that he failed as both a husband and a father. (Dang, I could use some light-hearted lollipop smuggling right about now.)

Heading back to Franz and Hilda, they put 2 and 01 together for you and point you toward Shelter 201 on the east side of Banges Port.

. . . and that's where I decided to stop and do a few bounty missions and dailies and things. Whew. Intense, and I really liked the story there -- even the crazy part of delivering a mystery kid some smuggled lollipops. (especially the crazy part of delivering a mystery kid some smuggled lollipops!) It's all good times in Tower of Fantasy.

Happy Dueling!