Part 39: Battle Preparations/Reference Talk

: If we come to Badon, he'll give us passage to the Dread Isle.

: Well then, let's get going!

: It would be best if we outfitted ourselves before setting out. We will need many supplies for a campaign on Valor.

: And the castle town here is better stocked than Badon, I'm sure. We can empty the coffers here and sell the treasures if need be.



: …Uh… Within limits, of course. Say…30,000 gold?

: That seems a reasonable amount.

: Come on! I'll lead the way!

Oh, Oswin. Only you can keep Hector in check.



: Shops and items of all types imaginable.

: For generations, our ancestors dedicated themselves to a sort of frugal militarism. Nobles and commoners alike shunned extravagance. "Corrupt neither the body nor the mind," they cried! Since the time of Roland, this has been the dominant ideology of Ostia.

: I heard that when Lord Uther first participated in the Lycian Council as Marquess Ostia, he gave a scathing indictment of the peer system. Now I understand, his philosophy had its roots in the history of Ostia itself.

: That's right. Yet this thinking… it threatens the lifestyles of many of our aristocrats. So some groups view my brother with enmity. I must grow wiser so that I can sit at my brother's side and aid him. Of course, my fighting skills are not yet what they should be…

: …

: …

: But this isn't the place for that kind of talk. We've got to get going. Come on!

: Yes, I will go with you.



: What is it, Lyndis?

: Hector. He acts like such a brute, but he takes his duties seriously.

: Hector has always been a man of firm character. I've always envied him for that. His ability to conceal any doubts he feels about himself or his actions.

: …I know. I'm a little envious, too.

: Of what?

: He doesn't second-guess what he must do. No hesitation. I mean, I wouldn't hesitate about anything concerning my grandfather's health. In fact, I'd be happy to do anything I could. I thought I was all alone in the world, and now that I've found my family, I don't want to lose him.

: I know what you mean… I can't bear to think of losing my mother. If I survive all of this, I want to be at my mother's side…to do anything she asks.

: …Nothing is more important than family. …Yet in my heart, the plains still call me… The neverending oceans of grass… The memory of that scent alone is enough to leave me weak.

: …Lyndis.



: …Well, first we must deal with the menace before us. If we can't stop Nergal, we lose everything dear to us. …Let's go.

: Everything dear to us…

Alright, Battle Preparations! Not a very subtle chapter, as you'd might expect. The name of the day is shopping, and what a shopping trip it will be. First thing to do is to make space, so selling is the first order of business. With the exception of those who can't use anything higher, anything Iron or Steel should be thrown out. In addition, any light tomes (not called Aura) should be sold, and anything below Elfire. Dark magic is unfortunately stuck with enemy drops, as no regular shop sells anything aside from Flux tomes.

What we are looking for is a healthy stock of Killer and Silver weapons, because the last chapters don't fuck around. Specifically, Chapter 30 is going to feature a level of reinforcements very similar to Cog of Destiny, and the faster we can cut through enemies, the better. Chapter 31 is Endgame, and if you're dumb enough to take Iron or Steel to Endgame, you'll get exactly what you deserve. In general, each unit should have a Killer weapon in both of their weapon types if possible, a Silver of their main weapon, and ranged attack of some sort. Units with unique weapons (like Lyn's Mani Katti) can substitute as necessary. And of course, Merlinus should have at least a couple of everything sitting around in case. To be honest, this is probably being overprepared, but no one wants to lose units in the penultimate or final chapter.



: I have brought you the 30,000 gold you asked for from the treasury.



Most people generally aren't rolling around with 150,000 gold before this chapter, so this can be a very significant boost to your buying power.



And this is all there is here. An arena if you're feeling frisky, but otherwise nothing but shops. Four armories (one for each weapon type) and two shops (one has staves, elixirs, etc, the other tomes). 5 turns to do all the shopping you need to.



So let's take a peek inside. Any given armory has almost every possible type of weapon, with the exception of unique things (You will not find a Light Brand here, for example).



The magic shop carries a new tome, Divine. It's quite expensive, but it's the C-rank light magic, and is roughly on par with Elfire among the Anima family.



The bow shop is also notable for having Longbows, which are incredibly handy.



All in all, almost a 50,000G shopping spree. I think we're stocked for Valor.



: Then to the Dread Isle!



: Limstella, look at this.

: The children's dragon stone. What will you do with it?

: I will infuse it with quintessence.





...Oh. He can open the Dragon's Gate on his own now. ...Well, fuck. We'd better not be too far behind crashing his party.



: The dragon girl… Ninian's essence. Beautiful… Absolutely beautiful… With this, I will be able to call dragons whenever I please.

: Shall we begin the process right away?

: No, I lost some quintessence from the injuries I took from Athos. To summon the numbers I need, I must have more essence. One must be fully prepared when dealing with dragons. If they wrested free from my control and killed me, all would be for naught.

: I fear to report… that the quintessence from the Black Fang has all been used. Where shall the next harvest come from?

And you people thought it was a joke that Limstella would kill the entire Black Fang.

: Heh heh heh… All the materials we need are heading this way even now.

: …I see. Eliwood and friends.

: That's right. I will crush them, steal their essences, and call forth my dragons! Heh heh heh… Haaa haa haha haha hah!

-----

So that's a really short update, so let's have some bonus material. First, let's talk about the translation a bit. Those of you who have played Sacred Stones might have noticed some things with slightly different names. Like the "Iron Rune" being called the "Pavise Shield," or "Longsword" being "Zanbato." That's because these are actually the original Japanese names, but were retranslated for whatever reason. To be honest, I think the FE7 names are better, but a matter of taste, I suppose.

Also lost in translation were the tome names. Our big bad "Fenrir" tome was original "Nosferatu," and "Nosferatu" itself was originally "Resire." It's hard to argue with IntSys on that one.

Next, a little talk about references. We all know Fire Emblem fucking loves to reference any and everything historical, so a few of the more interesting ones I found:

King Charles I and the Song of Roland

King Charles I of France, otherwise known as Charles the Great (or Charlemange) is responsible for, among other things, expanding the French Empire to include Italy, being the founding father of both the French and German monarchies, and becoming the Emperor of Rome in 800 AD or so. Anyway, in about 778, he was leading an expidition into Muslim-controlled Spain, under the pretense that he would be getting several Iberian cities in exchange for military aid to the governor of Barcelona. The deal was withdrawn, and his forces were massacred. Among the losses was his nephew, the knight Roland (his sword, of course, Durendal).

The battle was memorialized as the The Song of Roland, and the gist of it is that as they're getting massacred, Roland is urged to blow his horn to summon back Charles and his army for support. Roland refuses, and once things get worse, his last act is to blow on the horn three times. He does this with enough force that he bursts his temples, which is what does him in. King Charles comes back and is understandably pissed. With a "miracle of God" in which the sun does not set, he comes back and pretty much murders the Saracens.

Afterwards, the Franks continue their efforts and take the city of Saragasso in northeast Spain. Being good and proper crusaders for the Lord, they destroy all the Jewish and Muslim relics in the city and force the citizens' conversion to Christianity, lest they find themselves in a few more pieces. The exception was the queen, Bramimonde, who he simply took hostage. Reportedly, he wanted her "to come to Christ through the agency of love."



Roland himself was supposedly buried in the basilica at Blaye. Here, he's depicted overlooking a train station in Metz, France.

Other names of note that come from the Song of Roland included Hamon, who we'd know better as Hanon, the horseman of Sacae, Durban, the founder of the Western Isles (which we won't see until very late in Hector's story), and a few other names, but they're spoilery for now.

It's also important to note that the Song of Roland was a heavily fictionalized count of the battle, and that several important things may have been a little embellished or made up entirely (There is no account of Bramimonde existing as a real person, as least for the short while I looked).

Some more one-off references:

• As mentioned in the thread, Nergal has a colorful past as a Babylonian god. He's a god of war and pestilence, as well as the sun of noontime and the summer solstice (this is because high summer was the "dead season" of the Mesopotamian year). He also presided over the underworld with his wife, the goddess of the underworld Ereshkigal (this being Nergal's in-game tome).
  
• Almost every province in Lycia or other country is a reference to an actual city (Bern is the capital of Switzerland), country (the Sacaen city of Bulgar comes from Bulgaria), or geographic region (Lycia is a region of southern Turkey).
  
• Nergal's localized class is "Dark Druid," but originally it was "Basiliskglance," which is obviously a reference to the basilisk, a creature whose gaze kills a man if their eyes meet.
  
• Fimbulvetr (the ice-based A-rank Anima tome) comes from Norse mythology as the three successive winters preceding Ragnarok.
  
• The Delphi Shield comes from Delphi, Greece, the city where the temple to Apollo was. Apollo's most common attrtibute? The bow and arrow.
  
• Quintessence comes from Norse mythology, and is the component element of the celestial bodies. So when Nergal claims to be using the essences of Gods? He's not kidding.
  

The full list of references is here on Serenes Forest, and almost all of the historical stuff I pulled from Wikipedia. Feel free to correct me on anything you see as wrong.