Mission: Queen of the Dance (Wings of the Goddess)
-I head to San d’Oria. When I zone into the city, everyone is scrambling about – but not due to war. They want to see the performance of a dancing troupe, Troupe Mayakov. Let’s check it out.
-Mr. Mayakov looks AWESOME.
“We have reached the abtholute pinnacle of vithible aeththetic beauty.”
Hm. There’s nothing wrong with a guy having a lisp, but when you make it a flamboyantly-dressed dancer, it seems like pretty lazy queer-coding.
-Someone in the crowd asks if this is the right time to dance, in the middle of a war, but he says FUCK YEAH. His troupe will dance no matter what.
-Uh-oh. I’m caught. I don’t have a ticket and get bounced out of the tavern.
-Fortunately, outside the tavern, a wife comes after her husband. He tried to skip out on work to watch the dance but she drags him away. I might have an in.
-Not sure where this guy with a ticket he can no longer use went off to…
-OH SHIT THAT’S AWESOME! The answer doesn’t lie in past San d’Oria, but rather in present Jeuno. That person is an old man now, one of the spectators watching the dancers in Jeuno.
“Don’t get me wrong, the dance shows that are put on nowadays are all well and good. But they’re nothing compared to the shows of old, back in the days when dance was in its prime!”
-He waxes poetic about the old Troupe Mayakov. A young girl known as the Moonshade Butterfly was an especially amazing dancer, and he regrets missing that show.
-He even still has the old ticket with him. I love how this expansion plays with time.
-I return to past San d’Oria, ticket now in hand.
-Mayakov is suspicious the ticket I present might be a fake because it’s so oddly weathered. Then a San d’Orian knight, Ragelise, comes by and sticks up for me. Thanks, random knight!
-We chat inside the tavern about the war, which isn’t going well.
-The show begins. The three dancers are awesome.
Lilisette, the Moonshade Butterfly, is in the middle. She’s half Elvaan, half Hume.
-She finishes off her solo performance by brandishing two knives and hurling one at me that explodes into confetti as it reaches my table.
Talk about style.
-We leave, and Sir Ragelise’s knights find him. Ragelise is the commander of the Knights of the Ironcrest Hawk.
-Suddenly, Cait Sith walks up calm as you please behind Ragelise, then walks away before anyone else notices. I pursue.
-Scene change. Ragelise discusses Beastman attacks on La Vaule with his knights. They lack the numbers to reinforce La Vaule effectively, so Ragelise recruited outside help. Me?
NO IT’S TROUPE MAYAKOV, I LOVE THIS
-They stride in, ready to kick ass as “battle dancers.” Portia the dancer will help.
Lilsette, the Moonshade Butterfly, is still too young. Dancer is my favorite job in FFV. This is great!
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Mission: While the Cat is Away (Wings of the Goddess)
-I catch up with Cait Sith outside San d’Oria.
OMG SHE HAS TOE BEANS
-Lilisette is in the tree branches above us. Watching. And she overhears Cait Sith talking about how I’m “traipsing through time, spanning the ages.”
-The battle dancers surround us and charge. THEY GRAB CAIT SITH AND HER BY THE EARS, POOR KITTY!
She is SO ANNOYED at being caught. “Come no closer! Keep those filthy hands away! Dirty, dirty hands! Do you even groom yourself!?” SUCH A CAT
-SHE SWATS AND BITES LILI! ANGRY KITTY
-Cait Sith teleports away.
-Ah. I see. Lilisette is convinced that Cait Sith is a Beastman from the future disguised as a cat. Lol no. Well, sort of? From the future, but not a Beastman.
-They notice me. What I’m doing running around with that cat.
-I love Lilisette. Her mannerisms remind me of an angry Rinoa from FFVIII, leaning in to make her point.
-Lilisette demands I come with her. Apparently, her whole “cute” thing is just an act.
RAINA: “More like a Moonshade Wolverine! She’s a hard-nosed little scrapper when she needs to be… She refuses any suitor who dares show even the slightest interest.”
JUDITH: “Oh, I’ve seen what happened to a few of those. Putting on their smoothest moves only gets Lili even angrier. I’ve seen a few broken noses and dislocated jaws. Shame. Such fine-looking young lads, too.”
LILI: “I’m not into looks! I just hate foolish, weak men. That’s all. What’s wrong with that?”
-I tell Lili about the cavernous maws and how I met Cait Sith. I’m not your enemy!
-In the distance, Lili notices Ragelise and the battle dancers heading to La Vaule. She FREAKS OUT.
LILI, to Portia: “But you must not go to Dav—to La Vaule! It is far too dangerous!” She was about to say “Davoi!” Davoi is the future name of La Vaule, after it becomes an orcish camp. Lilisette must be from the future too!
-Ugh this is awful. She sees her friends charging off to a battle that she knows they end up losing.
-She admits that she’s from the future, and guesses that I too am from the future. How did she get back here too? And is she from my time, or farther in the future?
-She’s especially panicked now because the orcs aren’t supposed to capture Davoi yet. Something is speeding up the clock, altering history in favor of the Beastmen. She’s gonna head for La Vaule to see what she can do to help.
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Mission: A Timeswept Butterfly (Wings of the Goddess)
-I head to La Vaule, the future site of Davoi.
-Lilisette and I arrive. We try to warn Mayakov and Portia and the others away, but our “we’re from the future” argument is…
…unpersuasive.
-Since we can’t warn them off, we join them.
-Another group of knights is in town already.
-Ragelise wonders why the orcs have attacked this town anyway. (Iirc from the Bastok missions, it’s because magicite lies beneath the town.)
-Houses suddenly go up in flames. How?? No orcs… oh shit, I know. Last session, we saw demons disguised as Elvaan. Some of the Elvaan in town must be demons.
-Dark Kindred (demons) start to appear, undisguising themselves. A full-fledged assault.
-Lili sees Cait Sith atop a chimney. This confirms for her that “the meddling furball” is behind this. I’m pretty sure Cait Sith is just watching to hopefully set things right.
-The battle rages between San d’Orian knights and Dark Kindred.
-An Elvaan named Haudrale runs up to Ragelise, saying his company’s commander was killed. Ragelise is about to put Haudrale in charge, but…
“Wait a moment. You… your face is not familiar to me. State your name and rank, knight.”
OH SHIT A DISGUISED KINDRED
-Ragelise doesn’t pick up on this. Haudrale give a name and rank, offering to guide the dance troupe and me to a safe cavern. Suuuure. Nice and secluded. The dancers and I run off with “Haudrale.”
-The camera stays in the village, on the battle. Despite heavy losses, San d’Oria comes out on top.
-After the fight, another knight tells Ragelise there is no “Haudrale.” It clicks. Ragelise sprints to find us.
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Mission: Purple, the New Black (Wings of the Goddess)
-We follow “Haudrale” deeper into La Vaule. He surrounds us with Kindred.
-Too bad he underestimated his prisoners.
LILISETTE: “This will not be over quickly. On your mark! Lilisette of the great Troupe Mayakov stands before you. Feel honor and privilege at your enemy this day!”
-Even though we clearly don’t need saving, Sir Ragelise swoops in and kicks some ass. Slow-motion, “300” style.
-Before he can reach Haudrale, a shade named Aquila fires some purple/black arrow at Ragelise.
-Haudrale introduces himself, as “Spitewarden of Lady Lilith… and Commander of the Knights of the Rustwing Hawk.”
AQUILA: “Me too, me too! Leader of the Cryptscale Protectorate, Aquila! It is sooo nice to meet you. And I truly mean that.” Hee! I like him. Both dress in the same purple cavalier garb.
Aquila summons a bone dragon against us and dances an adorable little jig as it emerges.
-We take out the dragon. He cries on the ground, “It’s not faaaair!”
-Haudrale drags the sobbing Aquila away, about to teleport out. But then he turns to us, summoning a purple orb of magic.
“For emptiness itself is not to be sustained.
The whole of creation abides right at this point.
Both good and evil, both the sacred and the profane.
And all realities…”
-His magic teleports Lili and me INSIDE ATOMOS, within the cavernous maw.
-Haudrale shows us images of Windurst destroyed. Bastok destroyed, San d’Oria destroyed. An altered future.
-As we see these, another voice, “???” (Lady Lilith if I had to guess) recites what Haudale said just now, that bit about “For emptiness itself…. And all realities.”
-An image then of Zeid dead, the Shadow Lord victorious on his throne. This is so wrong. Literally. It’s not how it happened, and feels weird to see.
-Suddenly, we’re all back in La Vaule. Haudrale bows and teleports away with Aquila.
-Lili and I fall unconscious, waking later among the dance troupe. Sir Ragelise is unconscious on the ground, pulsing with dark magic at his core.
LILISETTE: “Father! Father, can you hear me?” OH SHIT SIR RAGELISE IS LILI’S FATHER
-Ragelise wakes. Tells us not to worry about the images we saw in the portal, that the Dark Kindred lie all the time.
-By the way, I just had a thought. The purple enemies – Haudrale and Aquila – serve Lilith.
And like I said before, Mayakov has a lisp. That means when he talks to Lilisette, he calls her “Lilithette.”
Lilithette. Lilith. I give myself like a 60% chance of being onto something.
-Lili admits to me that she’s an adventurer from my time. 10 years from now, the wound her father just sustained will eventually kill him. When she heard about the Cavernous Maws, she thought to come back in time and save her father.
-But in our timeline, Sir Ragelise got this wound at the Battle of Jeuno. Not here.
LILISETTE: “But things are changing! History is changing, Detolilla. Like the events we witnessed back at La Vaule. My father’s diary contained no such entries or recollections.”
-She still blames Cait Sith as behind this, and swears vengeance upon Cait Sith, to save her father.
Current prediction: Lilisette becomes so dead-set on stopping Cait Sith and saving her father that she inadvertently ends up becoming Lilith, this Kindred Big Bad who messes with time.
-Lili wants me to pretend to help Cait Sith still, and when Cait Sith shows her face, Lili will get her.
-The scene switches to inside the Cavernous Maw, inside Atomos. Cait Sith is singing that prophecy about the Harbinger…
WHEN SUDDENLY WE SEE ANOTHER CAIT SITH!! THERE ARE MULTIPLE CAIT SITHS! One is Cait Sith Coig, another is Cait Sith Seachd, another is Cait Sith Tri, and Cait Sith Ceithir. I’m sure if I were familiar with Celtic or Irish mythology these would mean something to me.
THEY’RE ALL SO GOOFY, FLOATING IN THE ETHER AND MEOWING AND SLAPPING THEIR PAWS ABOUT AS THEY PLOT
-They note that someone is trying to impede their work and slow them down. Lilisette. Cait Sith Naoi is the one she caught. They’ll keep an eye on her.
-This scene was AMAZING. I’m blessed to see it.
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Next time: pursuing Cait Sith.
