The Last Crusade: Catacombs and Crypts

In my previous posting, I mentioned arriving in some hidden catacombs. These creepy passages are beneath the city of Venice, and although they should probably be flooded, they form an annoyingly long maze instead. The top-down maze is periodically interrupted by rooms with puzzles or items in them, often with rather oblique solutions (after all, this is an adventure game, and they do have their own logic).

The room with the torch

Onwards, I progressed through the maze and found my first room, seemingly empty, but with two skeletons on the wall. One of them had a hook for a hand, and so this entered my inventory. The next room had a torch on the wall, but I couldn't budge it. The third room had a slab on the floor, but I couldn't grip it. Things were looking down, and then I found my way back up. Back up to the city of Venice that is, back where I started outside of the library. I wondered what I could do to progress, but all of my attempts failed.

The room with the slab

For in-game hints, it's often best to check the grail diary, which provides many puzzle clues. For this challenge, I had to resort to the king of hint books, the world wide web. As it turned out, it wasn't something easy that I had missed, but rather something a bit unusual. I had to get a bottle of wine from a couples table (for a use I shall recount later on). It would have taken me quite a long time to get this by trial and error, as it's not always obvious what you can interact with, nor how. After asking the couple for the wine and being rebuffed, you need to look at the wine bottle, and declare it a poor vintage. Then, the man will allow you to take the bottle away.

The room full of water (you can see the plug in the centre)

Proceeding back into the maze of passageways beneath the city, I found a room filled with water and filled the bottle. Using this, I could remove the mud from the torch, allowing me to interact with it. When I tried to take it though, a trap-door opened beneath me and I was plunged into a lower part of the maze! In this second part, I found myself beneath the water-filled room, looking up at a wooden plug (which was leaking a little). Beyond this was a small room, with various inscriptions about the grail.

Important Inscriptions

With nothing better to do, I decided to dislodge the plug next, which I did with the hook and my trusty whip! This released a torrent of water, and when I made my way back to the upper level, it allowed me access to yet another maze. This maze led to two chambers: the first with a strange machine, and the second with a puzzle door. A quick consultation with the grail diary revealed the correct code, which then revealed a passage down... to another maze. The machine turned out to activate a drawbridge, but it required a little fixing with the cordon rope I had taken from the library earlier.

Pulling the plug: The Indy way

If the mazes didn't feel so much like padding, I wouldn't mind so much. Anyway, onwards and downwards, my next challenge was a musical one. The key to the final door, before the Knight's chamber, was to play a series of notes on skulls. Unfortunately, I have absolutely zero musical ability. I can't read music, nor can I tell which note is which. Yet again, I had to rely on the outside assistance, something I hate to do when playing any game.

Indecipherable nonsense, or a musical code?

After playing the notes in the correct order, the door lead me to my goal: more mazes! Well, eventually it led to the Knight's Crypt, in which I found the aforementioned knight, and the tablet telling me to go to Iskenderun, also known as Alexandretta. Upon returning to the surface, I rejoined my two travelling companions. Marcus would meet us in Alexandretta, and I would take a slight detour with Dr. Schneider. My detour will take me to the castle where my dear father, Doctor Henry Jones is being held!

The Knight!