Part 98: Part Ninety-Eight: Sorceress's K***ht

Part Ninety-Eight: Sorceress's K***ht


Just as Squall is about to look sullenly at Rinoa, Zell busts in.


An emergency! Oh no!


Look, I know signals have been jammed up, but the phone ringin' is not cause for alarm.

: They have a plan to defeat Ultimecia. They want to hire SeeD to execute it.

I like the implication of "hire SeeD" here. The Esthar government is just assuming that Squall's not coming back after he busted up their Memorial and took Rinoa.


Squall is immediately sceptical of Esthar.


But, uh, Zell's not really gonna engage with that.

: Could he be... that Kiros?

Well, did you get his last name?


Who handles billing now that NORG and his boys are out of the picture?

: ...Alright. Let's go.


And now we know the next plot destination. More importantly, we know we're getting paid to kill Ultimecia. SeeD don't work for free.


Also, Zell pushes into your party here.


Edea has decided to hang out at the front door of her place for whatever reason.


So let's talk to her!

: You were always looking for Ellone with tears in your eyes...


That's it. That's the conversation. Edea just points out Squall used to cry a lot.


She's probably just going to tell him leather pants are dumb or something.

: There is something I must tell you. It is about me...



It turns out Edea is some kind of double-sorceress. I guess there's no rule against it.


How did she get here? Nobody lives on this continent.

: I received her powers of my own will.

Are you going somewhere with this?


Oh, okay, she just came over here to tell Squall he also cried because he saw a sorceress.

: I could not let her get to them. But... This turned out to be the beginning of my painful story.

Edea meeting this sorceress 13 years ago makes it concomitant with Ellone leaving and the foundation of SeeD. Her saying that it was the beginning of her story suggests the two events are related. We can infer that the impetus for creating SeeD wasn't just fear of Adel or someone like her showing up again, but of an actual encounter with a fearsome sorceress. It's also implied that her inheriting those sorceress powers was related to her later being possessed by Ultimecia.


Note: Edea is not dying, she's just being dramatic.

: Therefore... Squall?

The conclusion does not follow from the premises. Being a sorceress doesn't mean you're any good at formal logic.



: Now...go, Squall.


She kinda dropped the ball at the end there, but okay, let's go.


And let's return immediately!


Now that Edea's not standing in the doorway, we can talk to Cid, which is always just so fulfilling.

Cid: However... If you're undecided and unsure, stay that way, and follow through with your indecision. Being caught in the middle is the worst.

Cid is somehow so bad at giving advice that he fucks up "do what you think is best"/"listen to your heart".


Anyway, we actually came here to talk to Edea again.

: Let me advise you of a way to clear your anxiety about being a sorceress.


Thanks to this optional conversation, we're going to finally get some elucidation on what a sorceress's knight actually is.


This is the part we basically already know.

: Since long past, almost all sorceresses have been hand in hand with a knight.

So sorceress's knights aren't just in the movies.


This is something new, though. Keep it in mind.

: I have heard Sorceress Adel did not have a knight. More than likely, Sorceress Ultimecia of the future does not have one, either.

I believe this means she doesn't have a knight in the future, but I'm going to make the argument that she doesn't really have one in the present, either. Seifer's no knight.

: Do you have a knight...?


She means Cid.


This builds on the earlier line about knights protecting the sorceress. The obvious conclusion from that is that the knight protects the sorceress from people who want to do her harm or (in the case of the movie) dragons. That's what Seifer thinks he does, but it doesn't really make sense if you think about it - sorceresses are some of the most powerful people in the world. No, what the knight protects the sorceress from is feeling alienated and threatened and from giving in to spite or fear and becoming evil. Which is why Seifer isn't Ultimecia's knight but her lap dog - not only does he fail as a knight by repeatedly getting his ass kicked, but he doesn't actually give her a meaningful connection to society and the world. Aside from that, you can look at the relationship between the two, which I would hardly classify as "hand in hand".

Seifer, meanwhile, just wants to be a movie hero and fight dragons and save the world. It's tragic what happens to him, really.


Anyway, this is Edea's conclusion.


For whatever reason, this conversation is broken into two chunks, and you have to talk to Edea again.



This is the last bit of dialogue to see around here, so let's head out.


Today, we're heading to FH to check in on a couple things. The Ragnarok just lands on the solar panels, which seems kind of rude. At least we can look at it a bit. I really like the design of the Ragnarok, it's probably my favourite airship in the series.


You can get a look at it from the bridge, too.



I'm actually heading towards the Garden, but yes, there have been new posts on the FHorums. There's no reason to ever look at this.



Grease Monkey has new dialogue, too, which he probably actually picked up after he went to Shumi Village, but I never bothered to talk to him.


Anyway, finally, back to Balamb Garden. Selphie doesn't have new dialogue, but she has immediately started posting.


Some of her posts are pretty low-content. This is her most recent post, by the way. I guess she's buying into the "one Kiros" theory.


But she also posted three new diary entries since we got back!


This first entry must have been made shortly after Squall carried RInoa out of Garden. I guess she stopped briefly to type it out before the rest of the party sprinted across the Horizon Bridge.


Note that there's no post saying she's left for Esthar, or that they're on the way. She would theoretically have made this if we came back between stealing the Ragnarok and going to the Sorceress Memorial.


It's too bad that we can't read the comments to see what everyone thinks.



The last real new content to see around here is that Xu has a couple of new lines. Once you get the Ragnarok, there is absolutely no reason to ever return to Balamb Garden, but there you go.


There is a bit of content I missed before, though.



See, if you fly the Garden around near Trabia, you can find this crater:


But you can't fly or walk past it. This is most likely the crater from the Lunar Cry near Trabia that this guy was talking about :


So now we've seen that.


And, while we can't walk past it, we can fly past it.


If we do, we can find this mountain pass.


And that takes us back to Trabia Canyon!


I didn't know this was here before, because there's nothing suggesting it is and there's no reason to look for it or come here, but here it is.

Now, this next bit is all speculation, but the last time we were here:


We could see, off in the distance, Lunatic Pandora. Laguna was in this canyon shortly before Esthar figured out how to get the Pandora moving, but likely before the crater is there. What this suggests, to me, is that Esthar accidentally caused the Lunar Cry using Lunatic Pandora, and that time it happened to come down over here. Nobody was hurt, since it was in an isolated area, but they found out that the Pandora caused the Cry and decided to sink it.

Again, though, that's all speculation, I don't think it's ever covered in the game itself.


If we go down to the bottom of the canyon...


The Ruby Dragon nest has disappeared in the last 17 years, so we can now get through!


Before we go very far, though, we run into Esthar's camouflage shield.


And that's because the city is right there. Again, there's no point to coming here, since the wall is in the way of actually entering the city, but it's a neat thing to see. Also, if there hadn't been dragons here a decade and a half ago, Laguna wouldn't have had to go through FH to get to Esthar. Oh well.

Anyway, that's all there is to see in Trabia Canyon!