FFIX – Part 49: Digging Deeper

Summary: Team Zidane delves into the mysteries of Oeilvert. Team Dagger orchestrates a prison break.


Oeilvert

-The music here is a warped version of the title screen music.

-Mimoza is a moogle here at the entrance. She wants me to deliver a letter to Mooel, who I think is a moogle we haven’t met.

-The doors don’t budge when Zidane pushes against them, but then they suddenly open up.

-There’s a massive glowing spiral window or something.

-In terms of sound, there’s a low-level hum in the background.

-We flick an orb from blue to red. Not sure what that means. A key system of some sort?

-A hologram appears. What looks like a giant red planet with writing. Nobody can read it except Zidane, who thinks it means something like “Terra” or “Mother.”

-The status screen says this new area is “Ship Display.” Is Oeilvert a crashed ship?

-Ah, I may have misunderstood. This part of Oeilvert may be the area that displays ships rather than a command bridge. One display shows a hologram of an ancient ship. Another ship for war. Another…

WHOA.

ZIDANE: “Battleship… Invincible… prototype.” The Invincible was the ship that Garland seemed to commandeer, the ship that looked like a giant eye that sent down those waves and turned the eidolons.

-We see both an early version of the ship and the current version.

-Stiltzkin is here. Along with Mooel. Apparently, Artemicion hasn’t been delivering mail of late. What’s up with that? Artemicion mentioned that he’d be ending his route soon or something like that.

-Mimoza’s letter is complaining about the mail service, asking Mooel to go to Mognet Central (I WANT TO GO THERE) and complain.

-This area is the “Star Display.”

-ok wtf. Just ran into an enemy called “Epitaph” that spat out a Quina copy that one-shot Quina.

Revived Quina, and the clone said something like “I the real Quina!” and one-shot Quina again. [Later edit: I didn’t realize this at the time, but this must be what Kuja meant about Zidane having to fight himself.]

-This this is just SCREAMING “ancient crashed spaceship.”

-Found another of those projection devices. It’s telling a story. A city that’s gone. It flourished at first. At Terra’s peak, there were cities everywhere. Then it declined.

-OH GOD A PREVIOUSLY SEALED DOOR IS NOW OPEN AND IT’S A HALL OF STONE FACES AND FUCK EVERYTHING

-AAAAARGH ONE OF THE FACES CAME TO LIFE

-It’s a recording. The recording of this lost civilization.

RANDOM FACE: “The seeds’ decline was not our fault.” Seeds? Everything died out. Terra’s decay triggered it all.

-This is so cool. Faces keep activating and picking up the story. They tried to save the civilization of Terra, but whatever it was they tried was the catalyst for further decline.

-They made four “tremendous sacrifices,” which seemed to put success in reach. Flora and fauna were saved. But it put the civilization itself into stasis.

“Final results… are still pending.”

-Does this mean that the civilization wasn’t really lost, just put on hold? That it could wake up at any moment? Perhaps Garland and Kuja are guardians or advocates that the ancient civilization wake up or something. Hard to say though. It seems like the civilization here was prepared to defend itself AGAINST Kuja. If he were working for it

-This makes sense now that the only enemy we saw here was a stone Epitaph. This place is a monument. A time capsule.

-The star display that wouldn’t activate before now has something going on.

-It’s showing “that other planet,” the one with the red core. Of course, Zidane calls it “that other planet” but I’m not convinced yet that Terra isn’t just an earlier version of Gaia.

-Another planet’s hologram appears, a blue one. Maybe that actually is Gaia. The two planets merge…?

-Found an elevator near the star display room that zaps to life and spirals down a huge pit quickly.

-At the bottom of the elevator is a small room. A triangle case, holding inside it a small triangle with an eye in it. That must be what we have to get for Kuja.

-It can’t be that easy, and it isn’t. Boss time. Ark.

-This is weird – I can’t use magic here. …oh. *bonks self* Kuja told us already there was an anti-magic barrier. In hindsight, perhaps bringing Eiko for white magic wasn’t a great idea. …Nah, it was fine. The walk here was tough enough even if she can’t help in this fight.

-Got a Pumice Piece for my victory, as well as the Atomos card. The Pumice Piece’s flavor text implies that it goes with another piece, that it can be combined. Maybe I find another Pumice Piece and go to a synthesist.

-The Pumice Piece has a great ability, “Boost.” Just like FFVIII, it raises the strength of eidolons, though I’ll bet it does it passively here rather than the button-mash minigame from FFVIII.

-Took the eye stone. The Gulug Stone. (Still interesting to me that the Gulug Mountains are on the continent to the north while the Gulug Stone is here.)

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Kuja’s Prison

-Steiner in his cell. Raging against Kuja. Angry at Kuja, and mostly worried for Dagger.

-Kuja’s voice comes from above. Tells Steiner that Zidane is helping him in exchange for the others’ safety, but he hates keeping promises. Of course.

-He plans to kill Steiner, but in a memorable way. There’s an hourglass in Kuja’s palace, and as the sands in the hourglass fall, the cells will gradually open to the lava below.

I was sort of kidding about Kuja’s Bond villain-esque tendencies, but this is 100% pure Bond villain.

-If Zidane makes it back here within 10 minutes, they’ll be spared.

-Regent Cid hears this and is determined to take action.

-The scene switches to two black mages doing Kuja’s bidding. They KNOW it’s wrong. They’re debating whether it’s better to act immorally than to stop functioning, and as much as I want to hate them for their choice, I simply can’t.

They’re grappling with massive moral and philosophical questions for the first time, and doing the best they can.

-hee! We get this weird mini game where Cid has to inch forward towards the hourglass. The Hedgehog Pie guarding is keeps looking back and I think as long as he doesn’t catch Cid moving, we’re safe.

”You can’t see me you can’t see me nope I’m just a statue you can’t see me…”

-Normally timers are not my thing, but the music and setting and mission is so goofy here that I’m not even mad. XD

-There is a scale and some weights. Huh. There’s a clay weight, a stone weight, and an iron weight. I have to somehow use the weights to get a scale to launch me high enough to reach the hourglass and stop it. I doubt I’ll make it in time. I’m bad at these riddles.

-I see. I have to put the heaviest weight possible on the scale so that when Cid jumps on it to reach the hourglass, it won’t bounce down. I do so, hop up there, and reverse the hourglass.

-Everyone emerges from their cells, safe and sound.

-Found a moogle in the room with the hourglass, Mojito (lol). Asked us to deliver a letter to Mogsam.

-oh boy. I didn’t notice until just now. The room with the hourglass? It’s a torture chamber.

-There’s a trap coming up that we overheard the black mages talking about. We get past it by switching everything on, whatever that means. It’ll probably make sense in context.

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Next time: exploring Kuja’s palace.