Here you'll find a summary of Alundra, for those of you who don't have the inclination or the ability to get a hold of a copy and play it. But if you can't, don't worry! You don't even necessarily need the information on this page in order to play. Unlike with GrandiaRPG, the story of this game won't be so closely tied to the original. Knowing the story will probably be beneficial to you, but if you only have the vaguest idea of it, that's fine too! So if you feel up to it, read on:
Our story begins on a ship. Our hero, the red-haired, elven-eared adventurer named Alundra, is sailing across the sea to the village of Inoa. His dreams have warned him of an evil stirring near this village, and he is traveling to investigate it and see if he can help the villagers. However, his dreams continue to grow worse and more disturbing each night, and as he lies in his stateroom napping one afternoon, he dreams of a strange man named Lars, who tells him more of the troubles of Inoa, and who calls Alundra "Releaser." Lars is interrupted by another being, a shadowy figure that calls himself Melzas. Melzas threatens Alundra if he gets involved, and Alundra awakes to find the ship caught in the middle of a sudden storm.
The resulting shipwreck leaves Alundra washed up on the seashore near Inoa, where an older man named Jess finds him. Jess brings him home and nurses him back to health, taking a great liking to the boy in the process. When Alundra awakes, Jess introduces himself as the village weaponsmith and tells Alundra he is welcome to stay with him as long as he likes. Alundra decides to get up and walk around the village and meet the villagers. As he does so, he finds that they are all quite varied, and many seem to suffer from strange afflictions...
Aside from Jess, the villagers also include:
Okay, that's about 34 characters right there. Got that? Right. Now, by the end of the game, at least 17 of them will die.
And now you have an idea of the general mood of this story!
It does have its funny moments and brighter spots, however. But you can see that this will not be all sparkles and light! In any case, Alundra walks around the village and meets the villagers. As he does so, he discovers that several of them are afflicted with strange dreams. For example, Nadia has been up for days and guzzles coffee like a madwoman, because whenever she nods off, things nearby explode. Sybill has an eerie vacant gaze and speaks prophecies, claiming that she dreams constantly while she is awake, and that many of her dreams foretell the future. Elene has something wrong with her that has caused her to develop four different personalities. These are just a few examples of the nightmare curses that will come to plague the village even further as the game progresses.
Upon visiting Rumi and Meade's house, Alundra discovers that Rumi's elderly father, Wendell, has been asleep for days and cannot be woken. He groans in his sleep as if he is having a terrible nightmare. The family calls for Septimus, the scholar, to see if he has any idea what to do. Septimus notices Alundra standing by curiously and introduces himself, then asks Alundra about his strange appearance—he has noticed Alundra's elven ears and a strange scar on his forehead. He surmises correctly that Alundra belongs to the Clan of Elna, a race of elves legendary for their ability to dreamwalk. He also speaks of having read about a legend of a particular Elna with strong gifts in this direction, with a scar on his forehead. He tells Alundra that he believes he must have this ability, and he asks Alundra to retrieve a book on the subject from a nearby abandoned manor. Alundra does so and hurries back with the Book of Elna, from which Septimus is able to learn how dreamwalking works. He guides Alundra in entering Wendell's nightmare, in an effort to end it and bring him back to wakefulness.
Alundra enters Wendell's dream and eradicates the demon within it. The villagers are very grateful, and the priest Ronan asks Alundra to come and pray to their idol god and give thanks. The relief doesn't last long, however, as troubles are about to come crashing down on the village of Inoa, one by one. First, the coal mine collapses, and Olen is brought to the village, unconscious and trapped in a nightmare. Entering it, Alundra discovers that the humanoid monkeys called the Murgg were involved in the collapse. Just as Alundra exits the dream, Olen dies. Alundra goes to the mine and confirms that the Murgg were involved, but he is too late to save the other miners.
After Olen's death, Jess created the mining bomb, which Alundra took in order to enter the mine. Jess explains to Alundra that ever since the villagers began to have strange dreams, two things have happened. First, they have gained an odd ability to control their dreams, one that had often backfired in the form of curses. Second, apparently in exchange for this new ability, they have found themselves losing the ability to create new things. Jess himself has lacked the inspiration to make any new weapons in some time, and it was only after Olen's death that he had the idea to make the mining bomb. He wonders if maybe Olen's spirit gave him the idea somehow. This is not the first time this will happen...
Alundra visits Olen's grave to place flowers on it, but as he stand alone in the cemetary, he hears a voice from a nearby crypt. Following it, he makes his way to the depths of the underground crypt and is confronted by the shade of Lars once more. Lars tells him that the nightmares are being caused by the evil being named Melzas, and in order to defeat Melzas, Alundra must raise the Lake Shrine in which he is imprisoned. To do this he needs seven jewel crests, one of which Lars gives him. Armed with a new mission, Alundra returns to the village, only to learn that Bonaire and Nadia have both succumbed to nightmares. Nadia wakes up long enough to beg Alundra to save Bonaire first. Bonaire is trapped by a succubus dream demon who has him fooled into believing she is a real woman. Alundra prevents her from devouring Bonaire's soul, but in return she says she will take the life of the woman who loves him, Nadia. Sure enough, when Alundra hurries to Nadia's house, she is dead. Unfortunately, Myra blames Alundra for her death, and this begins a cycle of distrust and suspicion as Alundra tries to help the villagers, but they begin to doubt his intentions or abilities.
Nadia's death inspires Jess to create an iron flail, which Alundra uses to help him explore in his journey to seek out the other crests. His journey leads him to the Despair Desert, where he acquires new tools to help him in his quest. When Alundra returns, he is greeted by more suspicion—Giles now believes that Alundra is the bringer of death to Inoa. Lovely! Bonaire has happier news—an unusually low tide has made a cave on the beach accessible. Within, Alundra meets the shade of someone named Vul, who was a guardian of a crest, but he tells Alundra that the crest was stolen by the Murgg.
This time when Alundra returns to the village, it is Myra who has succumbed to a nightmare. Alundra rushes to help, only to find that someone has gotten there before him. Meia is a young woman also apparently of the Clan of Elna, an elf-eared girl with the ability to dreamwalk, just like Alundra. Meia is harsh with the villagers, warning them to be constantly vigilant against nightmares, and she treats Alundra with disdain, clearly believing he has been too reckless about the whole thing. Myra is grateful to Meia and offers to allow her to stay with her.
In the middle of that night, Kline appears in Alundra's bedroom and threatens him in a quite gruesome and creepy way. He springs out through the window, and Alundra follows, finding Septimus also awake. The two search for Kline with no luck. In the morning, however, Kline is still sleeping late, so Septimus suggests that Alundra enter his dream to try to find out why he is behaving so strangely. Alundra does so—it turns out that a nightmare curse has been slowly twisting Kline as the demon causing it devours his soul. Alundra battles the demon but is called out of the dream by Septimus, just as Kline turns into a werewolf and attacks Alundra. During the battle, Kline dies, reverting to human form as he does so. Kline's death inspires Jess to create the hunter's bow, which Alundra uses to access the caves of the swamp. Inside he encounters another shade, a crest guardian named Jeal. Alundra acquires the crest and leaves.
This time it is Giles who is ill. As Alundra hurries to help, Meia warns him not to enter Giles' dream, but of course Alundra doesn't listen. A demon just like the one in Kline's nightmare is trying to devour Giles' soul, but this time Alundra is able to save him in time. Giles is very grateful and regrets his earlier suspicion of Alundra. Alundra is asked to go find the townsfolk, who are at Magyscar praying for Giles' recovery, and tell them the good news. Alundra does so, only to find an entrance at the back of the shrine into a strange, underground world. Magyscar, according to village legend, is a sort of underworld where souls come from when they are born, and go when they die. It isn't very appealing, unfortunately. Deep inside, Alundra meets the queen of the underworld, who was also a crest guardian and also lost her crest to the Murgg. Once transported back to the surface, Alundra returns to Inoa. There, Sybill confronts him with another premonition, this one of Alundra fighting Melzas. No big surprise there, at this point we kind of figure he's the final boss. Meia finds Alundra next and tells him that Septimus has gone to the sanctuary to investigate, as he is suspicious of Ronan's doings lately. Alundra and Septimus break into the sanctuary and explore. They find Ronan in the basement, next to a forbidden idol of Melzas. Apparently the villagers used to worship Melzas, but recently the king ordered all idols destroyed. Ronan hid the idol and blames the village's recent troubles on the fact that the villagers have abandoned Melzas. Frustrated with the priest's zeal, Alundra and Septimus leave.
Alundra wakes the next morning to hear Jess at work on another weapon. He presents Alundra with the power gloves, but both worry...who has died this time, in order to give Jess the inspiration? The answer is not long in coming...Sybill is lying dead beside the village fountain, murdered in the night. Some of the signs seem to point to Ronan...but Meia is also sleeping late this morning. Septimus is suspicious and asks Alundra to enter her dream to determine if Meia is a threat or not.
Meia's dream shows her as a young girl who plays games with Alundra. Each time he wins a game, he unlocks a memory from Meia's past. He discovers that Meia's father died when she was a girl, and her mother turned to the gods to try to make sense of the tragedy. Her mother became a zealot, but eventually she discovered something she was not meant to know and was burned at the stake. Meia escaped from the priests who came looking for her and began to live as a wanderer. In her travels, she discovered her ability to dreamwalk, and she also learned that the widely worshiped god Melzas is also the source of the nightmares. Meia has a healthy fear of Melzas that leads her to great caution, and she believes that dreamwalking poses great dangers for the dreamwalker.
Thus reassured of Meia's intentions, Septimus and Alundra relax, although Alundra is struck by the tragedies of Meia's past. The next day, Meia tells Alundra that Nava, the old man who lives on the seashore, has asked him to come see him. Meia seems oddly friendly to Alundra now. Alundra hurries to Nava, who directs him to the giant god Nirude of the northeast. With a new destination, Alundra hurries on his quest. Nirude is protected by gnomish followers, however, who do not wish to let Alundra near their patron god. Alundra manages to elude them and find Nirude, who wishes to test Alundra. Alundra passes, and Nirude acknowledges that he must be the prophecied Releaser. The demon Zorgia, who is acting on orders from Melzas, appears and attacks Nirude. As he is dying, Nirude asks his followers to aid Alundra and grants Alundra the third jewel crest.
Nirude's followers present Alundra with the aqua cape, which allows him to travel underwater through a whirlpool and explore the undersea kingdom. He meets a woman named Steina there, who tells Alundra of the history of the giants and how Melzas came to be. She provides Alundra with a new sword, and he continues on his journey. Back in the village, there is more evidence that Ronan seems to have been somehow involved with the troubles. Meia takes Alundra to confront Ronan and attempt to smash the statue of Melzas. They are foiled in this, but when Meia accuses Ronan of being in league with Melzas, he merely laughs. He is obviously a growing threat. Alundra returns to Jess' house and gets some sleep, only to be wakened in the morning by a frantic Meia. Jess went to confront Ronan the previous night, and this morning he was found dead in the cemetary. Septimus gives Alundra a key that Jess left for him. Opening a locked chest, he finds a letter from Jess, telling him his plan to confront Ronan and his belief that he might not survive.
Alundra does not have long to grieve, because Gustav comes to ask for his help the next day. His daughter Elene has succumbed to a nightmare, and Meia has come to help, but Gustav asks Alundra to join her. When Alundra arrives, Meia tells him that Elene's dream is very complex and will take the two of them to unravel. Inside the dream, the two work together to navigate the four parts of Elene's personality. Meia is becoming noticeably friendlier toward Alundra and seems more relaxed around him. The two of them successfully defeat the three dream demons inside Elene's mind, leaving her original personality intact. A grateful Gustav promises to stop drinking, and all seems well, for now...at least until midnight, when Septimus and Meia wake Alundra with news that now Giles is ill again. The same dream demon has taken hold again, but this time it is worse. Giles turns into a werewolf just as Kline did and attempts to kill Alundra, but at the last minute he stops himself, fighting with the dream demon in his own mind. He loses and falls down dead in human form, but without harming Alundra.
Meia next asks Alundra to investigate the Murgg woods and gives him the key to the gate that guards their territory. There, Alundra makes his way to the top of the great tree and encounters their king, Zazan. Defeating him, Alundra takes back the two jewel crests that the Murgg had stolen, but not before learning that Zazan had taken the crests under Melzas' orders. Next on the list of places to investigate is Torla Mountain, which has erupted recently. Alundra makes his way inside the volcanic mountain and into its heart, where he meets Wilda, the dragon guardian of the Emerald Crest. Wilda is destroyed in the battle to test Alundra but grants him the crest as he dies. Six crests down, one to go...
The morning after Alundra returns to the village this time, Meia awakens him with news that Bergus, one of the twins, has been kidnapped by the Murgg. Septimus joins them at Rumi and Meade's house and tells of his studies that twins' dreams are often connected. He theorizes that Alundra can enter Nestus' dream and exit again at Bergus' side, where he can rescue the boy. Alundra does so, encountering Murgg inside the boys' connected dreams. Once in the woods, he frees Bergus and the two head back to the village...only to find that while they were gone, the Murgg used Melzas' power to travel through the twins' dreams and to attack the village of Inoa. The village is on fire and many residents are dead, including Myra, Bonaire, Meade, Sierra, Wendell, and Elene.
In the aftermath of the fire, Alundra goes to confront Ronan, to whom the evidence points in many of the recent deaths. Ronan calls upon Melzas' power and turns into a demon that attacks Alundra. Alundra defeats him, killing him. Alundra learns that Ronan had killed Jess to keep him from creating the Holy Sword, which would have the power to destroy Melzas. When they learn this, the villagers come up with an idea. They have the power to control their dreams to an extent, and maybe they can use this power to create as well. Using their combined dreams, the villagers create the Holy Sword for Alundra and ask him to go defeat Melzas for once and for all. But where to go to find the last jewel crest? Cephas, the gravekeeper, tells Alundra that Nava has it, so off Alundra goes. When he arrives, however, he finds that Zorgia has appeared and attacked Nava. Alundra defeats Zorgia, and the dying Nava gives Alundra the final crest and tells him how he is a member of a long-lived race called the Zolists, many of whom were guardians of the crests. His dying request to Alundra is that he take the crests to the northern lake and raise the Lake Shrine so he can confront Melzas.
The journey through the Lake Shrine is long and confusing, but finally Alundra makes his way to the inner chamber and battles Melzas, killing him for once and for all with a magical wand of fire. In the end, it turned out that Melzas drew power from the people's prayers to him, but when they stopped worshiping him because of the king's edict, he began sending the nightmare curses to them. They prayed once more out of fear, and Melzas drew power from this. When Alundra arrived, he saw him as a threat, and only then did the dreams become deadly—Melzas was trying to cause a dreamer to die while Alundra was dreamwalking, which would kill Alundra as well and rid him of a threat. In the end, the false god was destroyed in spite of his efforts to thwart Alundra.
Alundra helped the village to rebuild, and then went on another journey...this time with Meia at his side.
That's most of the story (yes, I know I'm long-winded, and here I was going to try to keep this shorter than the Grandia story). There's more I may use in my game, because there's a certain Alundra fanfic that has ideas I may use...but we'll see. Keep in mind that most of what you need to know is the nature and origin of the dreams and the nightmare curses. My game will not take place anywhere near Inoa and will not involve many characters from the original game. But still, some elements will return!
