Part 22: Chapter XXII: Faeries, Continuity, And Royalty

Welcome back. Let's check out this ? house near Ahm Fen.



: "Oh well...I guess that's what I get for marrying a faerie!"

This man has questionable taste. Let's check upstairs to see if there's anything to loot!



: "Barging into someone's room like that! Get out!

Nope, just a pissed off naked housewife faerie. We'll come back later.



Over here, we get a link to Shyde, letting us actually explore the stuff from Act I again, but there's nothing too exciting for now.



Plot ahoy!



: "Elina and I were born and raised inside Castle Wyndia..."



: "I didn't mean for us to end up like this, coming back to Wyndia without Elina..."

: "But we had to! If you're captured by Ludia again, we'll never be able to find Elina."

: "I suppose you're right. Who knows? We might be able to find some more clues as to Elina's whereabouts here."







: "You've got to help us, Dragon Boy! We were able to get back to our home, but we've been done from our homes so long, we don't know what to do anymore! We need you to help us! Will you come help us?"

Yep, they're actually too stupid to live. Let's help the little morons.



And we're back in the dream world, now with the faerie music.



So let's see what we have to do to help.



Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!

As you can see, there's a lot of detail in the faerie side-stuff that I'll do my best to summarize. Let's start with the faeries themselves.



We start with three. Each faerie has three stats, a heart that shows how much they like you, and a personality type. Jika here is odd, which means that her commitment to jobs fluctuates and she does weird things when assigned to certain roles. She doesn't get tired too easily, and she's moderately stylish, but she's dumber than a sack of hammers.



Kora is diligent, which means she'll keep working even when tired and is meticulous in her efforts. She's got less endurance than Jika and is tragically unstylish, but is sort of smart.



Feyl is normal, which has no benefits or penalties to anything. She's terribly out of shape, and thinks that plaid goes well with everything, but she's a certified genius.



This is the jobs screen. The trees are plots, which are currently unavailable because of all the trees. It's best to have at least a third of your population hunting for food at all times, or the faeries are gonna starve. It's better to have more. You can also set their pace to normal, relaxing (they work slow, eat less, and like you more, unless they're diligent, in which case they dislike you), grueling (work faster, everybody dislikes you but diligent faeries and all faeries eat more), or you can tell each faerie to set their own pace, in which case they act in accordance to their nature. The only personality type we haven't seen is lazy, which is the opposite of diligent and is pretty much useless.

We've got Jika hunting while Feyl and Kora cut down trees to make houses in which we can stick all sorts of fun stuff like shops, games, and the like. It'll be a while before anything comes of this though.



From now on, we have our own little faerie tag-along in camp who can take us to visit our faerie village.



Now, to Wyndia!



I absolutely love the music here, by the way.

Most everybody here's got wings, and have different reactions if you talk to them with Princess Nina. That blue manillo there gives you stuff in exchange for fish, but I'll cover that way later in the game as it's difficult to get enough fish to buy anything useful until you have all the fishing spots.

Let's pop into this windmill over here and-



You have no idea how mind-blowing this was as a kid having played III first.



: "What am I doing here? And how did I get here? The last thing I remember, I was working on something in my room, and then there was this big explosion...........oh well, I guess it's not that important. Hey, would you be interested in hearing some of my other stories?"

Sure, Momo! I love your stories. Where'd Honey get to anyway?

: "Thanks! That's really nice of you! You might not know it by looking at me, but I've travelled around a lot, and I've picked up a lot of interesting stories here and there. Here, I'll teach you something I learned...I forget where, but anyway. I'll show you how to Drowse. It'll help you relax!"



So, instead of joining our party, Momo is a Master now. Unfortunately, she's pretty much entirely useless. She only gives us more HP and her special ability makes her students automatically use Snooze if they're in the back row. She gives you abilities based on how long you've played the game, and they're all oddball moves.

: "You know, I have the funniest feeling...like I don't belong here. It's as if I've fallen into a parallel dimension or something..."

That line right there has caused so much rampant speculation. You know how I said earlier that Breath of Fire IV's spot in continuity is a total crapshoot? Yeah, this is a major reason why. There's a bunch of canon nods and a few cameos (this one being the most blatant) but nary an explanation of how it all fits, especially considering how incredibly different this game's world is. Is this long before the rest of the games? Long after? Is it an alternate future that took place instead of one of the other games, or an alternate past? Is it just a parallel universe disconnected from the series, like Momo implies? There's too many possible links for me to think that, and I have my own theory as to its place, but that discussion will probably be in one of the last updates.

That, or it's just Capcom's developers putting in a bunch of in-jokes and old traditions and laughing at us nerds.

Let's explore the rest of the town.



KITTY



This butler gives us Aurum in exchange for stuff like toothpicks and straws at an increasing rate of returns. The reason? The young master of the house refuses to eat without utensils since he's so proper, and his have gone missing. If you look around the house, you can talk to a cook who hid them because she was so sick of making so much food for him.



Nothing important here, I just love this pun.



So the rest of the houses just have idle NPC chatter and a few random items, so it's time to use this wind-powered elevator to go on up to the castle.



There's a bunch of futzing about (futzing is recognized by Firefox's spellcheck?) on the ramparts that you can do, but there's an extremely important item hidden in one of the towers.





Yeah. This is going straight on Mr. Weak-To-Wind-Attacks and never leaving.



Let's go into the castle proper.



: "Princess Nina! Welcome home! Everyone has been worried about you!"

Aww yeah. Now we have free reign of the castle. There's a bunch of little side rooms with items but I'll spare you that.



: "Go on in, Princess - you can see the King anytime!"



Brace for D'awww.



D'awww away!

: "I didn't know what to think when I received word from Ludia that you'd been captured."



: "My daughter goes out in search for her missing sister, only to be caught trespassing in enemy territory...how did this happen?"

: "I beg your forgiveness, Majesty. It's all my fault. If it hadn't been for me..."

: "Enough. What's done is done. Regardless of what happened, I owe you my thanks, Chief Cray. As you have probably discovered for yourself, our neighbor and supposed ally Ludia is more worried about their relationship with the Empire than in helping me search for my daughter. However, in spite of all obstacles, not the least of which being your responsibilities as leader of the Woren nation, you chose to search for her yourself...not many other men could do what you did. So, what do you intend to do now? Sooner or later, the Ludians are bound to discover you are here. We will of course do everything we can to protect you..."

: "Father...there's something we'd like to do while there's still time, before the Ludians come. We want to meet with the Wind Dragon. We have questions that only he can answer."



: "The patron god and protector of our people..."







So the Wind Dragon looks like some sort of mix between a chinese dragon, a pleisiosaur, and and elephant.



When I said these dragons were weird, I meant it. You ain't seen squat yet, either.



: "Even though I am king of Wyndia, I have no control over the dragon, you know that."

: "We believe that if the dragon can tell us what the Empire is searching for, then we might be able to think of some way to stop them."

: "Hmmm...I see. Very well. Go to the woods east of here. There you will find the Oracle of the Wind, a priestess who serves the Wind Dragon. I shall inform her you are coming. Rest tonight - you can begin your journey in the morning. Don't worry - should the Ludians inquire about you, we will think of something to distract them."

And rest we do. Let's give the castle one last go-round before we head out.



We find the one of the best frog-type lures available in the King's room.



Smells burnt.



In the prison, we find a guy who sneakily confides in us he stole this treasure from the castle and pawns it off to us in exchange for our current treasure ball.



Outside, we find this nerd.

: "Princess Elina is engaged to marry the Prince of Ludia...Princess Nina is next in line to the throne...which should I choose, a love that is wrong, or a love that cannot be?"

Ooookay. Moving right along.



Let's get to that Oracle!



OH FUCK BEES! AND BOARS! ANGRY BEES AND BOARS!

The bee people are the same as the one we found in that doghouse way back when, and Bilboas are...well, the screenshot sums them up pretty much entirely.

As we explore, we find a man by the river.



: "Ain't a thing worth fishin' in this river! You wanna go fishin' too? Then lemme tell you 'bout a real good fishin' spot I know 'bout. It's jus' outside this forest - go an' look!"

FISHING SPOT! We'll look at that next time, as we're already most of the way into the forest.



This lake has logs. You can move the logs left and right by walking on them. There's items if you take paths not necessary to continue. Sensing a pattern with this game?



*splash splash splash*



As we leave, we snag Last Resort off the boars. Ryu will find this very handy, especially in hybrid form.



Thanketh ye, signe.



And so we end the update the way we started it, in front of a mysterious house in the woods.