Chapter 8: Ivalice – Ivalice Revisited
-We finally head over to meet the Leviathan.
-HI ASHE AND BASCH!!!!
-Sky pirates have been wreaking havoc through Ivalice by summoning Yarhi. Ashe is here to stop that.
-Yaaaay Basch and Ashe joined! I’ll bet they’re guests.
-This is really cool. I get to head down to Ivalice and do missions there.
-Ashe’s portrait is super badass.
”Dalmasca’s strong-willed queen.”
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An Irresistable Opportunity – The Dalmasca Estersand (8-1)
-Ashe and Basch want us to meet someone in an inconspicuous place - the desert. Unfortunately, sky pirates spot us and attack.
-I LOVE THE SKY PIRATE DESCRIPTIONS SO MUCH!
Wayward White Mage: Feels summoning is wrong, but is unable to give it up.
Wanting Sky Pirate: Archer who compensates for shortcomings with Yarhi.
Yarhi-smitten Seeq: Summoner who uses auracite with reckless abandon.
Auracite Wastrel: Collector of auracite with a Stone for any contingency.
The Conjurer Nedhi: Sky pirate who uses auracite for amusement.
They took fairly faceless, random enemies with no major significance, and using only a few sentences (and that delightful FFTA art) made them delightful.
The future protags of Revenant Wings 2: Sky Pirate Boogaloo.
This tells such a story! It’s a party I want to play as and learn more about, not just Random Sky Pirate Group #72.
It also helps fill in the game’s main story. These sky pirates are greedy in a specific way tied to auracite. Some rely on it for personal value, some out of near-addiction, some just for fun.
-The fight awards me two new recipe books – if those are recipes for Basch/Ashe gear, I’ll be so pumped.
-LOL THE GUY WE’RE MEETING IS LARSA, THAT AWESOME IMPERIAL KID!
Now the emperor, iirc.
-The Judge of Wings has been attacking all over Ivalice. The fact that she calls herself “Judge” hasn’t done the new Empire any favors.
-It’s surreal to see the Empire working hand-in-hand with Queen Ashe of Dalmasca.
-Another thing: I love that the Empire is still the Empire. So often in media, a new, good emperor or king or something will take power and immediately convert it to a republic. And look, empires are bad, but I still like seeing these kinds of kingdoms/empires change more gradually.
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Taking Counsel – Airship Bridge
-I can now talk to my new party members and hear what they know about the Judge.
Basch: Someone in Giza Plains was asking about Lemures shortly before these shenanigans began.
Larsa: The Judge was seen near the Paramina Rift.
Balthier: Mydia grabbed another piece of the Cache of Glabados recently.
-I can choose which lead to follow first.
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The Secluded – Giza Plains (8-2)
-A Rabanastre patrolman has info for us. The problem in this mission is that there are a bunch of patrolmen scattered through the map, and I don’t know which is the one we have to talk to. The ones I talk to throughout give me clues (like, “I saw him by the bridge!”) to track the right guard down.
-This mission is super annoying. The key soldier keeps running into packs of enemies before I find him and dying. Like an escort mission where the escort is across the map.
-Finally found him. He remembers a woman traveling to learn about a lost continent.
She was a viera in hiding, with short ears tucked into her hat. And light-skinned, which is unusual for the viera I’ve seen. Passing as human.
SOLDIER: “Ah, that’s right! She said her name was Mydia.”
-Fran recognizes this description. They’re from a tribe called the Exiled. Unusually long-lived. Fran’s tribe drove them from their wood as monsters. What’d they do?
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Last Will and Testament – The Glabados Ruins (8-2)
-Counting Mydia’s Stone, there were three treasures in the Cache. We missed a room when we came at the beginning of the game. Let’s find it.
-I really like this mission mechanically. I can’t summon espers. I just have my five party leaders. I get to micromanage against fewer enemies without feeling panicked.
For example, the Elder Wyrm boss is ranged with a short frontal cone area effect. I put together a strat to have Basch tank the wyrm, Ashe, Fran, and Penelo stay at range, and Llyud swings behind the wyrm to avoid the cone.
-This treasure room is empty. It confirms it. Balthier and Vaan took two of the treasures and Mydia took a hidden third.
-The cache Mydia took has an engraving:
“To the viera I took for my wife, to our beloved children, this gift I leave – Feolthanos.”
Wow. This lends some credence to my theory that Feolthanos was an aegyl.
1) The Exiled are long-lived. They could have come from a time before the aegyl flew to Lemures.
2) The Exiled features suggest a hybrid between a non-viera race (the aegyl?) and viera.
3) A pre-Lemures aegyl!Feolthanos would explain the cache being on Ivalice.
4) “Our beloved children” could be the Exiled.
-Fran agrees with me.
-Oh no!! So the reason the Galbana came down when we took the Cache and brought us up to Lemures was because Feolthanos was expecting it to bring his children up. What a disappointment to him (although he was trying to steal aegyl souls so idc that much about disappointing this guy).
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Ye Who Rest – The Paramina Rift (8-2)
-The music here gets SUPER intense.
-We find a memorial dedicated to the dead of the battle of Nalbina. Velis’s name is here.
-She came here to pay respects, to mourn.
-A narrator voice: “I left my anima in Lemures.” Crap. The Judge.
[Later edit: I was so surprised by her appearance here that I didn’t think about the meaning of this quote. I think it implies that the human impulses that led her to mourn Velis are now nearly gone.]
-Basch confronts her but she puts some magick whammy on him. She’s especially pissed at him.
JUDGE OF WINGS: “You are a false judge. You fanned war’s flame, only then to heel like the cur you are before the throne of empire. Your every breath betrays those who died for you.”
Come on, Mydia! We dealt with that last game! You should play “FFXII: The Zodiac Age” and find out. It’s really good. I’ll lend you my ps4.
But I suppose she’s stuck in the past, and that’s part of the theme.
-She summons a bunch of zombies to eat him. Basch cuts through them. He’s not bound by the past.
Basch literally slicing through the past.
BASCH: “A man whose gaze bends ever back cannot hope to find his way forward. You would bind yourself to illusions, to the fallen. I will cut you free of those bonds.” TELL HER BASCH!
-Btw, I now have a guess about why Penelo gets less experience than the others: she’s my only healer. I swap the other party members regularly, but Penelo always stays. She’d be way over-leveled without the penalty.
-The Judge swarms me this fight with goofy zombies and vampires.
Well. Not so goofy, given that these are war victims. Kind of a shit way to honor the dead, Judge.
-WHEW. I was wrong. The Judge of Wings just summoned Yarhi that LOOKED like zombies for the shock value. She wasn’t raising the actual dead of Nalbina. I wonder how much of her anima is really gone.
-Larsa appears. “If this new era is to shape the people living in it, it will not happen overnight.”
This RW plot bears great similarity to FFXIV’s Heavensward. Both deal with cultures conflicted between the desire to move on from war and the desire to dwell on and feed that rage. Both favor the former while respecting the latter, how the injustice of those who don’t want to just “move on” is neither silly nor foolish.
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Taking Counsel – Airship Bridge
-We regroup aboard reviewing what we learned.
-So this Exiled, Mydia, sought Lemures to reunite with her beloved Velis, and to find a way to avenge his death. She became the Judge of Wings along the way. She also sought her race’s “father,” Feolthanos.
-Fran says that the Exiled flouted the Wood’s strict laws. But how? Did they just want to go explore or something and get kicked?
-Llyud wonders how a god can have children. I’m still on the “he wasn’t a god” bandwagon pretty hard. I think he was an aegyl, but I’m not 100% certain on that.
Or maybe he was a god, like a rogue Occuria. Or some combo, like an Occuria who possessed an aegyl.
-Ashe brings up a great point. Mydia rightfully blames the Empire for Velis’ death, so why wear a judge’s armor? Could be some kind of irony thing or role reversal, giving the Empire a taste of what she sees as true judgment.
-Uh oh. Filo and Kytes are missing. Where’d they run off to? I’m gonna be a grumpy panda if they went off to take on the Judge themselves to prove themselves or something.
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Next time: some time aboard the ship, side missions if any appear, and following the Judge’s backtrail.
