Part 12: Chapter 3 Part 2: Madino-Silvail

Chapter 3 Part 2: Madino-Silvail



So where were we last time? We took a castle and then…



Oh, right, Eltshan and the Cross Knights. Well this should be an interesting fight. Let's take a look and see how Eltshan has grown since Chapter 1.



So here's his Chapter 1 stats, certainly not bad, and he has a holy weapon.



Fuck, ok, he's grown a lot. 7 more Strength, 5 more Speed, improved defenses, and more Skill so he has a greater crit chance. This will be a difficult fight.



And he has five leadership stars. That means all of his Cross Knights within three squares of him will have +15 Hit and Avoid. This will be troublesome to say the least. But let's see if maybe we can get Lachesis to recruit him, make things a bit easier on us.



But before we do that, some preparations. First of all, Lex needs to get the fuck out of there. Even his awesomeness can't stand up to Eltshan.



Azel then grabs a village. I wasn't really sure who to get it with, since nobody really needs a lot of money at this point, but he was nearby and could maybe use a better tome if/when one comes up.



And to think we trusted that leader of theirs, Brigid what's-her-face!

I always forget if my translation patch spells it Briggid or Brigid, so don't be surprised if it switches back and forth.





Actually, my boyfriend is one of 'em! Pretty cool, huh?

Oh, well, we'll try to not kill him if we see him. I guess. Second to none, though, this will be a pretty tough fight. Now, we start getting our troops ready to fight the Cross Knights.





Our foot units won't likely be able to reach the fight by the time it's over, let alone make it to Silvail and back, so we'll just have them wait north of Madino.



And the enemy slowly moves forward. We'll probably be fighting in a turn or two.





Beowulf and Cuan get ready to save that last village, and Cuan prepares to join the fight against Eltshan.





We heal our units and get into a formation to try to defend against the incoming swarm.



And it turns out only one of the enemy units actually reaches us.



And Beowulf saves that last village, a single turn before it would get destroyed.



Apparently Fiat is in this village. Just another example of sprites getting reused. I don't see why they used a main character instead of another generic villager, though.

I'm much obliged to ya. Please accept this magical staff on my behalf. It's called the Rest Staff. It can heal any bouts of Sleep or Silence. I'm sure it'll be of use to ya.



Like not-Fiat said, the Restore Staff will cure any status ailment. It's not very useful until much later in the game though, because enemies don't have too many status staves to use on you. This isn't Thracia 776 after all (and oddly enough, when we do eventually visit Thracia, there are actually no status staff users).





We'll have Midir grab a crit kill here, then have our forces retreat a bit. We need Lachesis to talk to Eltshan asap, in order to tip the balance in our favor.



I did not anticipate them attacking Agusty though. Still, Ardan has enough defense to hold out for a bit.



Everyone piles on Fin, luckily knocking him down to 3 HP and activating super-Prayer-dodge-everything mode.









And even with Eltshan's high Hit, Prayer helps Fin manage to dodge the lethal blow.

Now, when Eltshan ends his turn within a certain distance of Sigurd (or vice versa), this scene plays.











During this scene, a new track, Crisis 2, plays. It's a lot more foreboding and tense than the energetic Crisis 1, and prefect for this conversation. It seems Sigurd's words have no effect on Eltshan's resolve. Let's see if Lachesis does any better.





Now, you may have noticed that in this LP I often talk about archetypes of the Fire Emblem series. There's another big Fire Emblem archetype that I've avoided mentioning up until now.





It's called the Camus archetype.





You see, Camus was an enemy Paladin in the first Fire Emblem.





He was an honorable knight who was good and kind to the people of his country.





He seemed to hold no ill will to Marth or his army.





However, he stood and fought loyally for his country.





There was nothing Marth, or the members of his army could do to get Camus to stand down, or to join their army.





In the end, Marth's army had to regrettably slay Camus in order to move onward.





Ever since the original Camus, there has been a Camus-like character in almost every Fire Emblem game.





Naturally, the Camus in this game is Eltshan.



The difference is, Sigurd doesn't actually kill Eltshan, and Eltshan's loyalty falters in the end. Well you can actually kill Eltshan, but doing so is extremely difficult and results in Lachesis not getting the Earth Sword.



I do love that line from Eltshan. It's kind of like, "Well, you're an idiot, the kingdom is doomed. Good job."



And so marks the tragic end of Eltshan. I think this game was the best at pulling off this archetype. The player kind of assumes that they'll recruit Eltshan since he has a sprite that looks like he'd be recruitable, and he has a holy weapon, playing on another one of the player's assumptions: The player tends to assume that they'll get every holy weapon by the end of the game, if not the end of the generation. This is not the case.

As a side note, since it's now obvious that we'll have to fight the Cross Knights, I'll go ahead and say that there's actually alternate dialogue if we visit the village with the woman whose boyfriend is a Cross Knight after fighting the Cross Knights:

(sigh...) My boyfriend was killed in this cursed war.
This is all Grandbell's... No! This is all King Shagaal's fault!!

Good to see that the villagers don't blame us for this war at least. Anyway, like I said, this marks the end of Eltshan.





Now, let's look at his parting gift, the Earth Sword. Like the Thunder Sword, the Earth Sword is a magic sword that uses physical attacks from one range, and magic at two range. The Earth Sword casts the Light magic spell Resire, which heals the user HP equal to the amount of damage done. It's pretty excellent, though it only has 10 uses, and it costs a lot to repair. Now that Eltshan and his leadership stars are gone, I guess it's time to start killing off the Cross Knights.



















So without Eltshan, these guys aren't too big a threat. We can plow through them pretty quickly and get some easy kills. Now on enemy phase…







Hmph. Maybe these mercenaries I hired will do more for me than those other imbeciles. Alright. You know what to do!







: Set your sights on Grandbell's army, and give it to 'em as severely as you please. Let the name of Thracia echo across the land!

Something kind of cool about this game is that these are legitimate dragon riders, not wyvren riders like in future FEs. When the Dragon Knights of Thracia move, the Thracia Army theme plays. This is one of my favorite enemy phase tracks that plays. The clapping throughout it kind of cracks me up for some reason. Maybe it's just my association of the track with Thracia, but it seems like there's a feeling of deceit and self interest in it that's perfectly suited to the Dragon Knights, as we'll see later.



Now, we need to go save Ardan before he gets his ass kicked by the remainder of the Cross Knights.



And of course, we're still doing our best to feed Lachesis kills.







I didn't mention this before, but Fury is of course using the Horsesalyer to wipe these guys out with no challenge.











We manage to wipe out the vast majority of them, leaving just a few left for Ardan to deal with.



Ok, with 1 HP he's gonna have a hard time killing anything, or even just living. He's gonna need some immediate backup.







So the Dragon Knights get lured over to our infantry units, instead of going to back up Silvail like they normally would. Once again, I did not expect this, though it's actually a good thing since those units could use some more EXP. Meanwhile, our cavalry troops save Ardan and start heading towards Silvail.









So Ethlin initiates combat with the Light Sword, backed up by Lex and Fury with the Armor Cutter.



So we eventually we get our group caught up and approaching Silvail, taking a defensive stand. I stupidly put Fury kind of close to those archers, but she ends up surviving just fine. Actually now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I've mentioned that archers get automatic crits against flying units until now.



So the Dragon Knights finally reach our foot units, and swarm around Jamka.





He ends up dodging just fine though. Papilion's not too tough, especially since we have two mages and an archer here. He does have a pretty good ring that he drops though.



The Live Ring heals its owner 3-10 HP at the start of each turn. It's not fantastic, though it'll ease the healers' job a bit. Anyway, here we're gonna try to level up Azel a bit.







Aira and Holyn weaken Papilion for Azel to kill, and Levin kills the northern dragon rider, setting up a good dancing spot for Sylvia.











Jamka easily kills a Dragon Knight with the effective damage bows do to them, and Azel snags the miniboss kill.







Levin unfortunately does not get a skill proc to get his kill, but Aira does, so it works out. So on ending our turn, Trabant decides that this fight isn't worth it, and abandons Shagaal.





The infantry units then easily kill the remaining few Dragon Knights off-screen.















Pretty standard charge tactics here. I once again stupidly leave Fury in range of archers. I get lucky with a dodge though, and I did set it up so that only one archer could hit her. Now since the remaining enemies are mostly archers, there's not much resistance, and I'm not gonna show me destroying a bunch of enemies that can't fight back. Let's fast forward to Shagaal.









An easy dodge from Ethlin. Shagaal's using a pretty awesome Fire tome here, Volcanon.



As you can see, it's the A rank Fire magic, and it's pretty damn powerful, but being Fire Magic, it's heavy. Now, let's compare his stats to what he had last chapter. Last chapter's Shagaal:



And this Shagaal:



He's actually not too much stronger. 4 more Strength, Defense, Skill, and Speed, but his Resistance is still about the same. He should be pretty easy to take down.







Cuan, Beowulf, and Sigurd all start weakening Shagaal for Fin to grab the kill. When Sigurd and Shagaal fight, they have a quick conversation.









Then Fin goes in for the kill





I know this is Lex here, I screwed up when I was capturing these shots. For some reason I thought I wanted Lex to have the Silver Blade, but I actually want Fin to have it, for inheritance reasons.



Now, Lachesis heals Aideen to get some EXP, and…



Finally, level 20! We'll be sending her back to promote ASAP. Aideen and Ethlin Warp/Return Lachesis and Fin back to Agusty. Sadly we'll have to wait until next time to see her promotion, because now, Sigurd is seizing.





Also, um... Shanan's here. He must have had a good reason to leave Agusty. He says he needs to speak with you.



What's up? You're crying. What happened!?

Deidre left the castle and never came back. She said she was going to see you! I'm sorry! I promised you I'd watch out for her...

What? Deidre left!? And what about Celice?

He's with me. See? He's right here. But Deirdre...

Shanan, don't worry. This isn't your fault. I'm going to find her.

But I shouldn't have let her go. I'm so sorry, Sigurd!







Now, before ending our turn, we set up our infantry units like so, with Dew in front, believe it or not. Now then, when we end our turn…







Them Grandbellians'll attack up this way 'fore too long. Whaddya reckon?

Dobarl! They're coming because you guys went behind my back and raided the villages! I won't have this insubordination!

Hey! Enough from ya! We tried lettin' ya lead us, but ya too power hungry! I've got news for ya sis. Ya ain't t'late cap'n's real daughter anyhow. Ya's jus' this cryin' lit'le girl on a ship we attacked. So th' cap'n decided t'raise ya himself. Then ya grew up 'n started orderin' us around. Makes me head hurt jus' thinkin' 'bout it!

What!? That can't be...

But we've no use fer ya now. I believe t'is dyin' time fer ya.

Hold on! You're not taking me that easy, you rotten filth!





















Now Enemy Phase actually starts, and the pirates start moving.



Luckily, everyone here will attack Brigid with either a bow or a hand axe.



They have pretty low hit on Brigid, which is nice, and Brigid has strong attack against their low defenses, which means…



Easy kills.



Now, this other squad will come after Madino. Here I have them chokepointed so that Dew can get some EXP without being overexposed. This is pretty much the best point in the game to level up Dew, if you can manage to set up some kills for him.



These pirates out here start moving towards the northern island, ready to take out Brigid while we try to rescue her. When enemy phase ends…









We can't be messin' 'round here. If pirates showed up, they'd kill us fer sure.

I'm coming. By praying to Lord Blagi I've learned the truth behind what's been happening. It's just as I thought it to be.



Have a look.

Huh? This dirty ol' stick?

Tiltyu! You had better watch what comes out of your mouth.



Only one descendant of Saint Blagi can use it, and that's me.

Hmm... So can it bring back my sweet grandma?

Well, no it can't. You see it has certain limitations, so it won't work on everyone. You see, we're all born with this life force. It's called 'Aegir' and...

Huh? You lost me. You're (yawn...) puttin' me t'sleep. Anyway, we don't got time for that stuff. We gotta get movin'!

Yes, you're right. Let's go.

I really like how they work the mechanics of the game into conversation here. I also love how Claude has a legitimate explanation for why the staff doesn't work on people who die from old age, and he says enough of it so that the player gets the idea, but Tiltyu cuts him off before the game starts delivering boring, longwinded explanations. They have a nice dynamic between the two of them. Could they be destined to fall in love!?  No.  The track during this scene is Speak of Legends. It's not one of my favorites. It's another track that's not bad, I just don't have a lot to say about it. We'll take a look at those three new units next time.