Unlikely Allies
-Alphinaud, Alisaie and I go investigate the kobold crystal supplies.
-A little kobold kid named Ga Bu is running around our camp, looking to talk.
-He’s oddly terrified. His group’s patriarch plans to summon Titan again, and he begs us to stop the ritual. Why?
-Oh man, this poor kid! His parents objected to summoning Titan, and the patriarch took his parents.
GA BU: “Ga Bu loves the Great Father, but he loves his parents too! So please, help Ga Bu stop the patriarch and save his parents!”
-The Patriarch intends to use them – and similar objectors – as sacrifices to summon a more powerful Titan. “Coke for the furnace.”
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The Beast That Mourned at the Heart of the Mountain
-Titan loves crystals, so what if we take the crystals away?
-We head into kobold territory and start removing the crystals. We take some, but many have been already transported to the ritual site.
-Alphinaud discovers something disturbing: the crystal crates once bore Ishgardian symbols. Someone inside Ishgard is facilitating the WoD/Ascians’ plans.
-We press on into the heart of the mountain. The patriarch is preparing the ritual.
-NOOOOO!! THE PATRIARCH ALREADY KILLED GA BU’S PARENTS DEAD
-Alisaie is ready to murder this asshole, but Alphinaud stays her hand. He’s wary of this cycle of violence.
Instead, Alphinaud empathizes with the patriarch. He understands his desire to protect the kobolds, but can’t we work on this together?
The kobold patriarch.
PATRIARCH: “Another peace to be abandoned at the overdwellers’ convenience! Oathbreakers, all of you! Liars, betrayers, oathbreakers! You take and you take and you take, and when you have had your fill, you sue for peace. You promise that this time, this time is the last – until you grow hungry again!”
I mean… he’s not wrong? We’ve learned that the beast tribes have not traditionally been the ones to break the peace.
LOLOLOL!!! He then says, “You’ve ruined your own lands, you’ll not ruin ours!”
This is a CLEAR reference to the old MMO “EverQuest.” At release, a gnoll named Fippy Darkpaw spawned frequently charged the Qeynos gates saying, “You’ve ruined your own lands, you’ll not ruin mine!” Bless.
The legendary Fippy.
-Meanwhile, Ga Bu absorbs the shock of his parents’ death. This is HEARTBREAKING good lord. He pleads with them to awaken.
-Uh oh. That pleading activates the crystals.
GA BU: “Wake up… wake up… wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up… WAAAAKE UPPPP!”
Something awakens. It’s not his parents.
Good morning, Titan!
-Titan looks around, lashes out in rage, smashing two of his worshippers.
-He sees Ga Bu still weeping on the ground and moves to smash him. What a shit god.
-Alphinaud stuns Titan with a blast of light and teleports us away, including Ga Bu.
-Ah, I see. This version of Titan was so enraged because it was born specifically of Ga Bu’s anger and grief.
-Still, this version of Titan was summoned with a fraction of the desired crystals. It won’t be as powerful.
-I go into an 8-person trial against the hard mode of Titan. “Hard” is the middle tier. (There’s normal, hard, and extreme.)
I expected this to be just like the prior times I’d fought Titan, but something’s different. He talks.
“Mother? Father? I can’t… I can’t find you…?”
“WAAAKE UUUUUP!”
“Why… Why… Why… WHYYYYYY!!!”
This version of Titan is directly imbued with Ga Bu’s grief. Oof. What a gut punch.
-Back at camp, Ga Bu is safe. But he hasn’t spoken in a long time.
-The worst part is that this isn’t as simple as “let’s let him mourn.”
If Titan “tempered” him – turned Ga Bu into his mind-controlled thrall – we have to kill Ga Bu. Jesus.
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Beneath a Star-Filled Sky
-That night, Alisaie, Ga Bu and I sit beneath the stars.
-Alisaie reminisces. She felt so angry when she learned how petty the world was that Louisoix chose to save. She’s exhausted. “I have lost count of the many petty crises that I was helpless to resolve and of the people whose actions I could not understand.”
-And yet, she remembers her grandfather’s urging to save whoever you can, however you can. “To ignore the plight of those one might conceivably save is not wisdom – it is indolence.”
-The camera pans up to the starry sky… and back down, to the Warrior of Darkness (WoD), elsewhere. He holds an orange crystal fragment.
-A masked man approaches him, Interesting that the guy is called “Masked Man,” not “Rogue of Darkness.” This guy is not part of the Warriors of Darkness.
-The Masked Man shares that Titan’s destroyed, and the kobolds are still not at “deepest desperation.” Elidibus says they’re to proceed as before. The Scions will turn their focus fully now to Team WoD.
WOD: “Are you sure you don’t welcome them? I’m starting to think you might hold a candle for your old friends, after all…” He’s one of our old friends? Someone who we thought died maybe?
-The Masked Man proposes a means to invoke the Ardor unrelated to the Ascians’ plan: kill the Warrior of Light. He then quotes the EXACT PASSAGE from Louisoix that Alisaie remembered.
He called Louisoix his TEACHER wtfffff. So this is some former Sharlayan.
-The WoD agrees. The Masked Man will draw me out for WoD to kill. WoD leaves.
-The Masked Man is clearly distraught by what he’s now set into motion. “Minfilia, my friends – I shall not now beg your forgiveness. Full deeply though it paineth me to walk it, I shall not stray from my chosen path. As Moenbryda remained steadfast, so too shall I.”
-OK WAIT A SEC, IS THIS GUY URIANGER?? I wasn’t recognizing the voice, and I’m still not because I don’t have a good ear, but all the formal speech, his Sharlayan ancestry, working with the Ascians, his love for Moenbryda… this has gotta be Urianger.
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Random Stuff Around Eorzea
The FFX-2 fan in me loves this guy’s free company name:
An FFXII fan!
Something in this guy’s character design reminds me strongly of Gilgamesh:
A “magic bucket” that’s literally just a bucket with a fish in it:
Scene from a city bench in Ul’dah:
I… I think this is a mount?
A koala sitting on a Mail Box:
The Mountain That Walks:
Mummy’s Little Mummy:
Two red mages on a red chocobo:
A terrifying kraken boss in a small dungeon:
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Next time: pursuing the leads of “the Masked Man.”
