Mission: The Man in Black (Seekers of Adoulin)
-I find Teodor at the Mummers’ Coalition. He wants to play me in “Boom or Bust,” a Blackjack/21-style game.
-I suck at it, but thankfully can bypass it to continue the story.
-Teodor has a theory on Arciela as the key: Ygnas didn’t point at her, he pointed at her sword, Ortharsyne!
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Mission: The Order’s Treasures (Seekers of Adoulin)
-I research the sword at the city library.
-The founder king had Ortharsyne from youth to death. It served later as a reminder of his prohibition.
-The blade is rumored to have untapped potential.
-One legend tells of the king fighting a giant yellow beast, Terrcualn. LOL – I love the book’s art after the king defeats him, the look on the beast’s face!
They became companions, friends.
-The King pushed into the wilderness of Ulbuka until its perils killed him. He passed Ortharsyne onto his right-hand man before he died.
-Teodor arrives, and adds a brief and confusing legend he heard:
“In an eage whence schade dennen his land, the warants of forest shalt floc neoen the leme of the merke blade, yet only with the ore of the swallow’s witeword.” Uh… sure.
-I go to the castle. A guard randomly bursts out with her love for Ygnas: “He’s just so… so… so adorable! Eeek! I just want to squeeze him and bite those little toes off!” Judgment-free zone here.
-She tells me a story of Arciela as a kid. Her family was fighting, and she fled to the forest to get away. She was found one week later, safe and sound, protected by local fauna. No memory of that week.
-Arciela was found with a sigil-etched cloth in her hand. The sigil terrified city leaders.
-Since that sojourn in the woods, she’s been able to travel into the Ulbuka wilds unharmed, protected.
-I love FFXI’s technique of using art that looks sketched by a colored pencil.
-A Peacekeeper interrupts us: Arciela’s been kidnapped by monsters!
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Mission: Beauty and the Beast (Seekers of Adoulin)
-Ingrid is in the wild, already hunting for the gargantuan tiger that kidnapped Arciela.
-We regroup in the city. This is weird. Arciela has gone into the woods untouched hundreds of times.
-The exorcists offer to lead the rescue. I don’t trust them. I think they summoned the tiger to kidnap her, to give themselves a chance to shine.
-Ingrid is FURIOUS that I’ll join the mission, calling me a “tottering wench” (lolol).
-I scour the city for leads on the tiger, and learn about “Kumhau, the Flashfrost Naakual.”
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Mission: Drifting Northwest (Seekers of Adoulin)
-I head to the snowy north, to the Naakual’s den. Is this the same beast that served the founder king?
IT’S SO CUTE I WANT TO SNORGLE IT’S DEADLY FROZEN CAT FACE
-He speaks to me. He’s shocked that any jungle inhabitant would attack Arciela.
KUMHAU: “Except… possibly for him…” He directs me to a cave in the southwest of the zone.
-OH. MY. GOD. ARCIELA IS LIVING THE DREAM. SHE’S SNUGGLING WITH A GIANT TIGER.
ARCIELA: “Have you come to finish what you started?”
???: “Sadly – for you – I have.” IT’S INGRID, NOOOO! She attacked Arciela. The tiger saved Arciela.
-Flashback. Ingrid lured Arciela with promises of a cure for Ygnas’s curse. When they were far away from the city, the exorcists trapped Arciela.
INGRID: “This is nothing personal, Arciela. It is only that your archaically conservative attitudes about expansion are starving Adoulin of its future. If only you were less of a sniveling waif that kowtows to every sprite in the forest, colonization could have gone on unabated… and his [his?] ideal world would have been realized!”
-Before the exorcists killed Arciela, the beautiful horned tiger charges to the rescue, knocks out the exorcists and saves Arciela.
BEST KITTY 12/10
-Back to the present. Ingrid siphons Arciela’s soul into her brooch without needing to fight the tiger. The exorcists flee.
-The tiger talks to me. “(I am Darricuiln, descendant of Terrcualn. Worry not about the girl – I shall look after her. You need only concern yourself with pursuing that foul-mouthed shrew.)”
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Mission: Stonewalled (Seekers of Adoulin)
-Scene change. The exorcists moving through a cave of unmoving gargoyle statues.
-At least, unmoving until they come to life and WRECK THE EXORCISTS’ SHIT, along with a giant stone guardian creature. I jump in before it crushes Ingrid.
-The fight is tough. I barely kill the stone beast before my trust NPCs die.
-Ingrid is ashamed – not for stealing Arciela’s soul, but rather for losing to that stone monster that attacked her, and for being worse than us. She gives me the soul pendant to revive Arciela.
INGRID: “All shall revert to as it was. With the exception of us exorcists, that is. There is nothing left to us now but to atone for our failures.”
I LOVE this character. She’s fascinating. I smell redemption arc.
-The exorcists and I return to the tiger’s cave and restore Arciela. Ingrid promises to accept punishment.
ARCIELA: “Look at me, Ingrid. We may reside on opposite sides of the colonization issue, but we’re both Adoulinians. This nation has no hope for survival if we resort to violence.”
-Ingrid is shocked by this. Unnerved. She’s not accustomed to forgiveness. I love love love this.
-Teodor’s theory – that Ygnas pointed to Ortharsyne – hits home for Arciela. She remembers a poem her father used to say. The poem is Teodor’s odd language.
-We head to nearby cliffs. Arciela draws her blade. Light blazes from it towards a distant mountain.
AND A BEAUTIFUL AND TITANIC WHITE DRAGON EMERGES WTFFFF
It looks almost birdlike with its feathered wings.
-The Adoulinians apparently know this dragon as “The Scourge of the Land.” It has appeared before during times of calamity. Many see it as a harbinger of the calamity. Others believe it appears in times of need to save Adoulin. I am in the latter camp.
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Mission: A Glimmer of Portent (Seekers of Adoulin)
-Back in the city. Yay! I get Ingrid as an alter-ego NPC. She doesn’t like me, but acknowledges I saved her.
LOLOL – as soon she summons her alter ego, it dissects her.
AlterEgo!INGRID: “You wish to thank Detolilla for all she has done for you. Why must you hold back?”
INGRID: “Dare you forget which one of us is the mistress? I—“
AlterEgo!INGRID: “You hide behind a prickly mask, but we both know your inner voice speaks of her as softly as freshly washed velvet.”
She’s fucking trolling herself with honesty. XD
-After I walk away, the camera lingers on Ingrid. It’s not so funny.
INGRID: “This incantation only strengthens my ability to purge the world of its ills. Only once the world is clean will I finally be free of this pain. Mommy, I…”
WHAT IS YOUR STORY INGRID TELL ME NOW
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Mission: Melvien de Malecroix (Seekers of Adoulin)
-Meanwhile, something’s wrong with city trade. The Finance Minister of Adoulin, a pink-haired dude named Melvien, has been messing up a ton of paperwork. He’s usually an accounting wizard.
-A tremor hits, one of many recently. I’ve played Chrono Trigger. I know this is a bad sign.
-The rumor is that aides now handle Melvien’s duties. Where has he gone?
-Arciela finds me. She thinks that Ortharsyne’s light hit Mount Kamihr and wants to investigate. The founder king, August Adoulin, visited there.
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Mission: Lighting the Way (Seekers of Adoulin)
-We reach the mountain, at the north edge of the Kamihr Drifts to find the dragon.
-The Winged Scourged is ready to rain vengeance upon us until she sees the blade.
-The Scourge knew August Adoulin, the founder, personally – from centuries and centuries ago! Her name is Sajj’aka. She swore allegiance to him.
Look at this beauty!
-She sees humans as fleeting, insignificant – except for August. “His resolve was ssstrong enough to wrest me from the realm of shadows.”
-By the way, when Arciela tells Sajj’aka about a book she read, Sajj’aka refers to books as “an inconvenient form of immortality.” I LOOOVE that phrase.
-Sajj’aka starts to quiz us on August Adoulin, questions we don’t know. We disgust him, seeming to him false in our devotion, and we’re dismissed.
Time to brush up on our August Adoulin knowledge.
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Next time: studying history.
