Song used: Atomyk Ebonpyre by Toby Fox
Author commentary:
As you watch this animation load, the "GATE 5" up there is really ominous. The Fifth Gate? What happened to...the first four?
You wouldn't guess it just going by the scenery, but LOHAC is the bustling financial capital of the Medium. There is a thriving stock exchange here, run by energetic, greedy lizards.
This animation was pretty slick at the time. Lots of action, cool music. Neat time tricks by Dave. It's an absolutely massive time skip that left everyone overwhelmed by its implications. Dave has already been here for months, battling monsters, hopping around gears. He's made a stylish new suit too, I guess to foster a certain Secret Time Agent chic. He's like the James Bond of horsing around with weaponized time travel, is the message being conveyed here.
Just as the monsters on LOWAS and LOLAR have oil and chalk themes, these ones on LOHAC are amber-themed and yield grist accordingly. I touched on this a while back, but the "planetary pollutant" in a world full of clockwork would be a substance that could gum up the clockwork and make it tick slowly or grind to a halt. That would be a sticky, hardening substance like amber. The quest here on this planet, if done by the book, would involve clearing the land of its sticky pollutants so the gears could tick freely, which probably would wake up the denizen, and so on and so on...
But here's the first glimpse of why so often in this story the by-the-book quest falls into the background as something trivial, like a sidebar of mythos-color that's mainly of academic interest and not plot importance. It's because there's always bigger fish to fry. Something more imminently concerning or threatening, like having to survive for months in this hellhole while two of your friends are dead.
He did it. He prototyped the crowsprite with Cal. He knew it was a bad idea. But he did it anyway. The cursed journey of Davesprite begins with one unspeakable folly. So tragic.
Say what you will about Calsprite. He's a formidable combatant. That huge puppet-ass attack? Absolutely devastating.
This sword concept is pretty cool. Caledscratch, as the weapon is named, is a broken sword, which Dave can wield thanks to his ½bladekind specibus. But it has a built-in time travel mechanism that allows it to cycle through previous states in its history, including back to a period of time when it was not yet broken. So it can extend and contract at Dave's will. A bit like a lightsaber, maybe? If you could turn on a lightsaber only halfway, I guess.
Dave is doing all these cool time-attack tricks. Hopping forward and backward in time, but only by a little to keep the maneuvers simple. Each time he does, he's creating a little stable time loop he has to account for. Good practice for a Knight of Time.
Starting now, Dave gets into the habit of casually encountering himself a lot. It's kind of his thing. Some kind of charactery thing about his character that he has to deal with, think about, and learn from. What? Referring to it as a charactery thing about him isn't highbrow enough for you? Why don't you go back to book school for lame nerds, you dork.
He made some TURNTABLES offscreen over the last few months. They let him time travel. I'm not sure what he used to make them, other than his record players from home. Looks like some sort of mystical gear component he probably plundered from the local industrial ruins. He probably went on a lot of exciting but lonely adventures on this planet we'll never get to see or hear about.
Those block-type grists are sulphur. I wonder how many huge sulphur cubes have fallen into the lava over the course of his Knight of Time berserker fits? They're kind of like giant, stinky bouillon cubes falling into a huge vat of boiling broth. It probably absolutely reeks on LOHAC when Dave goes on a rampage.
Right about now, the Ruby Giclops is wondering where it all went wrong in his life. It was probably when he, for some inexplicable reason, decided to swim through an ocean of lava to go mess with this boy in a suit going nuts with a sword.
You can tell Dave is probably overloaded with grist he doesn't particularly need by now. He carves up that giclops, and it starts raining huge rubies everywhere. But he doesn't seem to care at all about harvesting them. Instead, he takes a moment to yell at his puppet.