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Bend with the Wind
-We sail west and land on the coast. And with that, Soroban heads back to Kugane. See ya, turtle friend!
LYSE: “So we’ve finally arrived in Othard. All we need to do now is, uh… liberate Doma.” No biggie.
-We landed near a fishing village. There’s a disproportionately huge imperial contingent here.
-BECAUSE YOTSUYU, VICEROY OF DOMA IS THERE.
”Filth and squalor everywhere I look. How very Doman. What I wouldn’t do for a drink…”
SHE IS GLORIOUS, ELEGANT, AND I LOVE EVERY EVIL BONE IN HER BODY. Vaguely looks like a flapper.
-She presents herself to the terrified villagers as a reasonable woman. “’Tis better to bend with the wind than stand tall and be broken. Therein lies… hope. Therein lies freedom.” Basically, things will be okay as long as you do everything I say!
-The Imperials captured a villager fleeing suspiciously. She wants help convicting them.
-Some villager steps forward, swears fealty to the Empire (clearly out of a panicked desire to help protect the village)… and she immediately gives him a gun and asks him to shoot the caught villager to prove himself.
-HE DOES IT. HE SHOOTS HIS VILLAGE MATE.
AND SHE RESPONDS BY GLEEFULLY CLAPPING
SHE IS SINISTER AND SADISTIC AND I LOVE HER??? I swear, this is the expansion where I get a crush on literally ALLLL the villains.
-Is she done? Nope!
“YOTSUYU: “Next, I want you to shoot those two over there. Too old to work, you understand – a burden on the Empire, and we can’t have that.”
SHE WANTS HIM TO SHOOT HIS PARENTS. He refuses, panicks, points his gun at the viceroy.
An imperial guard shoots the villager dead immediately, but I doubt that was necessary. Shooting Yotsuyu would likely be about as effective as when Irvine shot another witch, Sorceress Edea in FFVIII. She was so unconcerned as the villager took aim.
-We’ve watched all this, and Gosetsu is ready to fight. He plans to walk forward, identify himself, and confront them alone while we make plans. He directs us to go to a tower in the north for aid.
-He surrenders himself on condition that Yotsuyu stop tormenting the village like this. She accepts, pulling a drag on her smoking thingy and smiling. They arrest Gosetsu.
[Non-rhetorical question: what’s the name of that super long, elegant pipe thing she has?]
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Confederate Consternation
-We head east as Gosetsu directed us.
-There’s a tower along the road called Heaven-on-High. (I already know just from being around FFXIV that Heaven-on-High is a newly-implemented roguelike dungeon, a new version of Palace of the Dead.)
-Huh! I was expecting us to reach the Doman Liberation Front, but the outpost Gosetsu sent us to is a Confederate outpost.
-The chocobo travel has been replaced by a “falcon porter.”
-Tansui is here! And now I understand that though this is technically Othard, we’re still on islands just off the coasts, in the Ruby Sea.
-He takes me to meet the Confederate captain, Rasho.
Rasho (left) and Tansui.
-He’s a chill, “don’t worry about formalities” type. I love the floral designs on his and Tansui’s clothes.
-Rasho take a practical approach. Lyse pleas for him to step in and save this fishing town. He (rightfully) says how that will bring them into open conflict with the Empire. How many Confederates would die?
Like, I have no doubt he’ll join the fight eventually, but nothing about Lyse’s approach changed the status quo of the past 25 years.
-Our next step then is to learn more about the Confederate strengths, weaknesses, and needs. What reason can we give them to help us?
-We talk to folks around town. Their resources are low. They’re struggling, and they blame the Empire. The only thing holding the Confederacy back from pushing things further is the belief that they don’t have enough strength to survive a war.
That’s where we’ll come in.
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The Solace of the Sea
-We set out on a series of small tasks to prove ourselves.
-First, I help a seasick pirate get medicine.
I feel SO BAD for him. I’ve heard of professional sailors who deal with that. What a nightmare.
-The sailor didn’t grow up on the seas. He grew up in the mountains of Doma and escaped here.
A random giant enemy that looks like the first boss of FFVI.
-Another task has me seek an Au Ra recruit who wandered off. His superior officer sent me after him thinking he was just lazy, but it turned out he was mourning a dead kinswoman in his own fashion.
These paint a picture of the Confederacy as a diverse, motley crew.
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Alisaie’s Stones
-The final task is ominous. I help a pirate fight off a red Kojin, one of the Empire’s mercenaries. Someone actively trying to capture a Confederate.
-We share what we learn with Tansui and Rasho. They always knew the fight with the Empire was just over the horizon. It seems to be here now, regardless of our presence.
And yet Rasho STILL (and not unreasonably imo) chooses the path that many in Ala Mhigo chose:
“We suffer the ignominy. We endure. We survive. There is no better path. Until the day our enemy is grown weaker, and we stronger, there can be no retribution.”
-So Alisaie steps up with a bold proposal. She’ll give the Confederates a sign that the time is right to fight back. We’ll deprive the Empire of their Red Kojin allies. (I have no earthly idea how.)
RASHO: “Words are air. We will weigh you by your deeds.”
Well. At least we have a path to getting the Confederacy on our side.
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Under the Sea
-So the Red Kojin are imperial mercenaries (though with no special loyalty to them beyond that relationship). The Blue Kojin are free traders. The Blue are on the isle of Bekko nearby.
-Lyse feels frustrated. All she could do was rage at the Confederates for inaction while Alisaie stepped up and presented a more diplomatic path. She wonders whether she has that gift that her father had.
-Lyse, Alisaie and I head to Bekko. There’s a cave leading down and HOLY SHIT IT’S BEAUTIFUL!
-Soroban’s here! This is his home. It’s called Tamamizu.
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Of Kojin and Kami
-We share our goals with Soroban. He offers to introduce us to the leader, Bunchin.
-Bunchin’s design is fantastic. It looks like he’s wearing traditional samurai gear carved from turtle shell.
-He talks to us about the Kami. I’ve heard that name before, as a focus of religious belief in Stormblood.
“All creation is a tapestry, through which the divine is interwoven. Kami are legion, and they can be found in the great and the small.”
-The Kami covet certain vessels. Red and Blue Kojin both treasure these. The Red Kojin work for the Empire so that they might be able to search for these vessels freely.
-It’s tricky because the Empire is actively hostile to faith in general. The Red Kojin are highly religious but mask their faith as if they truly care about money and power.
-The Blue see it as a misguided path. Embracing faith by denying faith. Plus, it hurts the Blue. The Blue follow traditional ways of peace and trade, and those who do not distinguish between Red and Blue are reluctant to trade even with them.
-Bunchin will share how we might use this knowledge to get the Red Kojin to retreat from the Empire. If we prove ourselves to them.
I don’t understand why the Blue haven’t used whatever secret tactic this is before. The Red alliance with the Empire clearly hurts the Blue, so why wait until we came along?
-Our trust-building task is to find the Yasakani-no-Magatama, a sacred Kojin jewel. The Hingashi had it and tried presenting it to the Garleans to show reconciliation. The Red could not abide this and attacked the ship bearing the jewel. It fell into the sea.
Let’s go treasure hunting! Soroban will cast magic on us to let us travel the sea bed without drowning.
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Next time: seeking the Yasakani-no-Magatama.
Late comment is late, but the pipe Yotsuyu smokes is called a kiseru.
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