Mission: The Ties That Bind (Rhapsodies of Vana’diel)
-Last time, we had gotten out of that weird gray parallel world, Escha, and regrouped in Norg. Then a ringing was heard in Sea Serpent Grotto that was reminiscent of the disorienting bells in Escha. Time to investigate.
-I’ve only briefly been in Sea Serpent Grotto before. It’s Sahagin territory.
-I reach a pond within Sea Serpent Grotto. Zeid and Iroha join me. A bell starts to ring, and the bell is just… hovering.
Hovering in mid-air above the lake.
-OH SHIT IT’S THE SIMURGH!!
(sorry, I read “Worm” like a year or two ago and am still jumpy as hell.)
ZEID: “You are not Garuda. Then what…?”
So maybe it’s… alternate dimension Garuda? Escha!Garuda?
NOT!GARUDA: “Pitiful humans. You cannot hear nature, though she aches for one to listen. I am left breathless knowing my name has been forgotten.”
-Iroha recognizes her. hahahah she’s SIREN! A favorite from both FFV and FFVIII.
SIREN: “Ah, young daughter… One is mere happenstance, but to think… two…”
-So another like Iroha came from the future back to this time.
“It no longer needs to wait for the future, and has sent its emissary to this time.”
The “other” is an emissary of the Emptiness. That must be the guy with the creepy split mask.
-YUP THERE HE IS!! He uses some evil magic on Iroha, but before she disappears in a flash, she fires a brilliant arrow at Masky (not his actual name).
How badass is Iroha right here?
It stuns him.
-Siren disappears, and Masky flies away.
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Mission: Impurity (Rhapsodies of Vana’diel)
-I have to chase the masked man. No clue about where to go, but the guide says to go to Yuhtunga Jungle.
-I head to the spot in Yuhtunga Jungle, another lake. Mask*deMasque is hovering, and Zeid asks him to remove his mask.
-Siren reappears behind Masky.
SIREN: “This voidsent has emerged from the abyss, endeavoring to lead Vana’diel into it.”
Now I have a name at least for the kind of being Masky is. A voidsent.
“Darkness is not to be feared, but embraced like a lover in the cold winds of the night.”
-Another of those gray-black “undulating confluences” that led to Escha appears above Siren. Zeid wants to destroy it before it consumes the land.
-Siren causes the bell to ring again, binding Zeid. He can’t help me.
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Mission: The Lost Avatar (Rhapsodies of Vana’diel)
-I think I’m about to have a boss fight against Siren, and I’m definitely worried. Siren always messes me up. If I’m totally outclassed on this, like I was on that fight against the bull-creature, I may leave this be and come back to try it later.
-She has ridiculously high evasion and defense. I rarely hit her, and when I do hit her, I do practically no damage.
-LOLOL SHE CHARMED ME AND NOW I’M HER PET
-yeah, I’ll come back at higher level.
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Mission: The Final Image (Bastok)
-Chief Engineer Cid is doing research on the architecture in a zone called Ro’Maeve. Haven’t been there yet. I have to go help him.
-The Zilart used “cermet” in many of their old architecture. I have to go find him some reinforced cermet for his research.
-I teleport to Sanctuary of Zi’Tah and head north to Ro’Maeve.
-Okay, this is a pretty cool zone. It’s all this bone-white cermet, clearly an old Zilart city. And worse, the next zone over is “Hall of the Gods.” Ominous af.
-Ow. Got one-shot by a Cursed Puppet, a golem-type enemy. It used an ability called Meltdown, and this is where my prior FF experience was detrimental.
In FFVIII, Meltdown was an ability that (iirc) dramatically debuffed the target’s defense. Here, it was like the self-destruct that bomb-types use. It insta-killed me.
-Returned to it, and found another confounding quest. To get the cermet, I had to run around between about nine different potential spawn points to find an invisible “???.” Eventually I found it, and two huge crystal golems spawned.
-It was touch-and-go, but I beat them. Woohoo! The problem is that by the time I beat them, the “???” had disappeared and I had to hunt it down again.
-About 5 minutes later, I find it and get the reinforced cermet.
-I return to Cid. He’s happy to get the cermet, and we get a visitor: Cornelia!
-Cornelia recently met with the li’l Galka, Gumbah. He wants Cornelia to find Werei, the real Talekeeper of the Galka. Nice! This is what I had expected.
-Werei is off on a journey of rebirth, so if we find him, it might not be as Werei.
-Cornelia is the president’s daughter, but doesn’t get along well with him. Gumbah wants Cornelia to ask her dad for help finding Werei, but Cornelia is hesitant. It’ll be awkward for her to ask her dad.
HOLY SHIT GUMBAH RIPS INTO HER.
He says that if she’s not willing to use her position of privilege and power as the president’s daughter to help the Galka, than all her little “good deeds” she’s done for the Galka were just useless pity. He walks away.
-Back with Cid. Gumbah’s words really hurt Cornelia – mostly because she thinks he might be right.
-Cid relates a fascinating story about President Karst from back when he was a young politician. There was a fire in Bastok, and the city was broke. The president at the time had a plan to solicit donations to rebuild. Karst’s plan was to give merchants who lent support and money priority in the market district when the city was rebuilt.
To start with, the city went with the donation plan. It sounded nobler, but didn’t work. It was too slow, and after a while they switched to Karst’s plan which worked well.
Karst is a pragmatist. An asshole, yes, but effective in his own way. I hope Cornelia can get him to see the benefit to the city in helping to find Talekeeper Werei – even if Karst is bigoted af against the Galka.
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Mission: On My Way (Bastok)
-This next mission starts in the President’s office, which makes me think Cornelia might have talked to her dad in the end.
-YES! This is the mission to find Werei.
-There’s a rumor that an adventurer got a letter from Werei. Who I wonder? A rando or someone I’ve met?
-Cornelia is still pissed at President Karst for being a jerkface, but now that he wants to take action on it, she says that an adventurer named Hani at a restaurant in Bastok heard from Werei.
-We’re about to go, but Cornelia first tells her father how worried she is that she’s just a hypocrite for not helping the Galka more. Karst has a surprisingly fascinating reply, given that I thought he’d just say “blargh blargh bigoted nonsense blargh:”
“I once heard a Far Eastern legend that stated hypocrisy is born from the acts of good that one performs. Whereas the word used to symbolize a simple act of human nature, over the years, the meaning of the word became warped to the negative tone that it holds today.
“Whenever anyone tries to do anything, there will always be someone there to judge them. I have experienced that my whole life, but it has never stopped me from pursuing my goals. I won’t let anyone stand in my way.”
-I’m probably being overly generous in my reading here, but I love the message here for being a better ally. You’ll always fuck up, but that’s part of the process for trying to do good acts. (As long as you try to improve and listen to those who tell you when you fuck up.)
After all, the alternative is not desiring to do good and not acting. You won’t fuck up in that case, but you sure as hell won’t get anything done.
-I head over to the Steaming Sheep Restaurant to talk to the proprietor, the FFII callback named Hilda.
-Hilda tells me about the adventurer Hani. Hani got a letter about Werei, but was busy with his own adventure in the Palborough Mines.
-I go to the Mines, and my target here is the end of the mines. Four brutally tough Quadavs are about to take out Hani. I have to save him.
-I lose my first attempt, but come very close! I take a break, and check something online… AHA! Apparently, I CAN use Sleep on my red mage. It’s just sold at a vendor I hadn’t seen yet.
-Here we go. Round two.
-Again, so close. But my Sleep was resisted, and I wiped out midway through.
-I told my linkshell-mates about this problem, and they said two things:
1)There’s no need to rush the Bastok storyline. It’s common to come back to these at a higher level.
2)The reason my Sleep isn’t landing is because of “magic skill.” Sleep is from a school of magic called “Enfeebling,” and my current enfeebling skill is really low. So going forward, I’ll level that up a bit by casting enfeebling magic a bunch and come back to this mission down the line.
-Goodbye, Quadavs. You win. FOR NOW.
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Next time: I’ve gotten as far as I can for now on the Bastok storyline and Rhapsodies of Vana’diel. Next up: pushing forward in Rise of the Zilart.
