Part 56: The Dread Isle

This update brought to you by technical difficulties, a lack of artistic talent, and .





Nothing gets the day started right like a fog of war map. Mercifully, we're allowed the full 12 units here, so Lowen, Erk, Bartre, and Florina can jump back in. The pirates are a lot more aggressive with the center, so we can't just treat it as an afterthought like before. Kent, Dart, Bartre, Matthew, and Canas are taking the eastern route, while Hector, Oswin, and Lowen are heading south. Raven and Florina are hanging out (for pirate reinforcements and Fiora, respectively), and Guy and Erk are holding the center.



Dart is back as well, having mysteriously lost several points of strength, speed, and HP.

That's just cruel. There existed a Dart With Speed™ and then it was taken from us...

Dart has a 60% speed growth, dude. He starts a little slow, but if your Dart doesn't end up fast as hell, something went horribly wrong.



Lowen gets us started with an alright level.



Oh, for god's sake Dart, what the fuck was that?

It was Dart Without As Much Speed™.



This, for reference. Two pegs with Steel Lances, and a double hit from a nomad. With the hand axe equipped instead of his steel axe, the nomad can only attack once and leave him at critical HP.



Reinforcement time! Pirates in the northwest corner, pegs with javelins in the northeast. Raven has the pirates covered, Bartre and Dart are going to take care of the pegs. And speaking of Bartre, I should point out that these steel lance pegs can be doubled even by Bartre. They literally have zero attack speed.

And very little evasion, since evasion is based on attack speed, and enemies have low luck. Really, I don't know what they were thinking here. I guess this is part of the rationale behind the eventual changing of the carrying-capacity-governing-stat from Con to Str... though that had its own range of peculiarities, too.



A desperately needed level for Florina. she's still squishy as hell, but the Angelic Robe will cover for that...for now.



The center's not too populated, but the AI loves to send up cavaliers and nomads through here once the snags are knocked down. Guy and Erk will easily be able to handle it.

It is generally good practice to assume every covered square has an ungodly powerful enemy in it. Just in case.



Ah, fuck. Stupid pegs.



But Fiora is here to help! If only she didn't try to help on a space in range of several nomads. Hector goes and rescues her next turn.

Forget "AI hates you" at your peril. It extends to the partner army too; they'll always do the absolutely least helpful things. Just think; if not for the ability to (somehow) rescue mounted units, you'd be fucked here.

Hey, this one's justified at least. We know Hector is capable of catching falling pegasi, and I doubt Fiora is that much heavier than Florina.



Erk continues being a one-trick pony.



Fiora has traded her Steel lance for an Axereaver. Arguable whether this is a good or bad change.

The Axereaver is lighter than a Steel Lance, though much more situational. I guess it'd be more useful to some players than to others.



Can't complain about this.

Even adjusted for HHM bonuses, this Raven is ahead. That's pretty awesome.



A very Oswin level.



And a terrible Dart level.



This guy. Fuck this guy.



Caught Fiora with her Axereaver equipped on the first go. I hate having such fragile pegs.



Roughly at turn 6 or 7 now, and we're starting to work our way south to Uhai.



Priscilla continues to give Serra a run for her money in the avoid department. Not getting very much magic though.



Well, now we have a problem. If both nomads go after Canas, he's a dead man. Fortunately, they decide their time is better spent going after Matthew.

This isn't actually that surprising; Canas can counterattack at range, and Matthew can't. That Matthew has high avoid and is on a forest means nothing to the AI. I guess this puts paid to my "AI gangrape contingency theory" though. If it had that, it would've gone for Canas, no question.

Canas returns the favor and kills one off next turn. Also, right about here my footage mysteriously disappeared, so now we must venture into a land of incredibly shitty MS Paints.



...............

I can hardly find a more appropriate use of . And no, I didn't check to make sure that this matched what the level up screen looked like before actually making it, why do you ask?



Matthew also helps out, but gets another terrible level.

...Those took me far too long for how they turned out.



Anyway, Uhai. I have no idea what the hell his bonuses were because the stat screen is among the missing footage. However, he was the most dangerous boss for when you fought him in Eliwood's story, and nothing has changed since then. In fact, he's been made even more dangerous by the fact that he's upgraded his Steel Sword to a Killing Edge.



Kent performs the thankless job of baiting him into using the longbow, and Oswin moves forward. He misses, but this is the Plan B. If we can't knock him out in this one turn, he should switch to his Killing Edge and go after Oswin, and get murdered by the Horseslayer in return.



Guy has most of our hopes on him here. Two crits will kill him, but even one would be a great start. But first, he and Uhai are going to have a little chat.



: I am Guy, of the Kutolah!

: Kutolah... The Ash Wolf, Dayan's tribe! They're said to be the strongest on the plains. But you're still a child. Do you fight like one?

: No!

: Then show me. Come!



Hey, look at that. He got a crit and both hits landed. Better than I was hoping for. Florina swoops in to get Guy out and free up another space.



These are troublesome odds. Lowen's nearby to recuse him, at least. Best to try and tip the odds a little more in our favor first.



...Or, Kent could miss with his Javelin. Fine, I was hoping to get away with using Hector's Iron Axe, but the Wolf Beil will have to do.

...And then more missing footage. What the fuck happened?

I reckon there's a opening here for a sort of retroactive narrative LP of a strategy game that opens with the finishing moves being completely ridiculous, and slowly reasoning backwards to figure out how it all came to be so.

...You know, that sounds like it would be really interesting. If I weren't a terrible creative writer, I might take a stab at it.

Anyway, Hector and Uhai get into a yelling match where Hector goes all "Did you kill Leila? 'Cause if you did, I'm about to fuck your shit up." and kills Uhai.



Speed and resistance are nice.



Oh boy, do I ever.

Don't ask stupid questions. This is HHM. If you didn't hate yourself you wouldn't be here.

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Resets this chapter: 2

Total resets: 10

...So yeah, the entire chapter can be summed up by Walliard.