Part 2: The Village of Ith

On the way, he passed through a small village on the coast called Ith...

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Besides, those fighters from Fiana won't be bothering us. It's our boss that leaked the information that they were hiding the prince of Lenster.
Prince Leaf!? Are you sure?
Yep, he took one of the villagers and made him talk. He died, of course.
Torture...
Right. Our boss said you're the one who taught him how to torture people. No wonder you were cast out of the order.
That Lifis, he's going overboard... Of course...I'll have no more use for him once I find the prince. Well...what to do now... I suppose I should first let my master know of this matter.





We can see that one of the enemy brigands destroyed the village on the right. Although this one was plot mandated, during actual combat brigands will try and torch any villages they can, robbing you of any potential rewards.

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They must be Lifis' pirates. They can't stay put for long, can they...
We have to help the villagers!

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(Player Phase)
(Enemy Phase)

Alright, let's get started. This is another pretty easy map, and really only serves to introduce two new ideas. First of all, this is the first map where any villages are in danger of being destroyed. The group of pirates in the northeast will slowly make their way to the northeastern village, and so we need to make it to the village before they can. There's really no rush, they can only move one turn space per turn while on the sea, so they'll take a long time to reach the village. This is also the first map with enemy reinforcements, something we can expect a lot of in the future.



Again, we don't start in range of any enemies (or at least nobody we want to give EXP to does), and so the team moves forward, with Leaf and Othin leading the charge. Leaf switches to his iron sword, its lighter weight should let him double the enemy. It'll also help save his Light Sword (which is probably his greatest asset), for later.



On the enemy phase, one of the nearby pirates attack Leaf. Leaf does 6 damage his first hit, and misses his second. Save some for the rest of the team there Leaf!



Othin shows him how it's done, critting and killing the second pirate with what appears to be his bare hands .

An archer charges towards our troops, however is too far away to actually attack anyone.



Leaf brings the fight back to the pirate that attacked him... and hits once for 6 damage, missing his second attack. Atta' boy! At least he hasn't been hit yet. Tanya shows Leaf up and manages to finish the job.



Othin takes down the archer, netting a paltry HP +1, Lck +1. Why do I feel as if I'll have come up with a lot of synonyms for bad by the time this LP is over?

With the area clear, Dagda takes the opportunity to visit the nearby village.



Here... I hope this vulnerary will help.

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I end my turn in the formation above; Othin serving as bottleneck against the two enemies.

Enemy phase comes and goes uneventfully, a pirate attacks Othin and dies (although he does take Othin down to 17hp in the process), and the other attacks Fin from across the water with a hand-axe, a ranged axe.



On our turn, Tanya weakens the archer and Fin captures him. The lighter blue background to the attack window signifies an attempt to capture.



Havan takes a vulnerary and a hand-axe from Fin's captive, Othin moves a space north of him and steals the vulnerary to heal himself with.



Reinforcements! Although right now they're out of the way and fairly harmless, reinforcements have the delightful ability to move the same turn they appear. Having some semblance of a formation is pretty damn useful, it'll help minimize casualties due to surprise reinforcements. We'll be sending Havan down to take care of them. Up north Othin visits the village.

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Hey screw you too buddy, we didn't have to save you.

Now they're going to come take it out on us villagers. We'll all be killed! Yeah, great job, really.



You should just mind your own business and go home!
...I'm sorry. My brother wasn't like that before. He's just frustrated that all the hardwork he's doing isn't paying off at all. Here, take this magic ring as an apology. You have my support. Good luck!

We get a speed ring for our troubles. The speed ring is an incredibly useful consumable that boosts the speed of one character by three. As it's so useful, I will of course hold onto it until the last chapter, rendering it near useless. (I'll let you guys decide who to give it to once we expand our roster a bit more. Same with the life ring.)

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The enemy phase comes and goes. The pirates to the north are nearly within range of our northern characters, and one of the pirates in the south is in Havan's range.



Havan attacks said pirate, both killing him and leveling up, gaining a respectable +1 HP, +1 Spd, +1 Lck, +1 Def, +1 Bld. Almost makes up for that empty level Havan.



I move Leaf into the range of the closest pirate, and have the rest of the gang form up behind him.



On the enemy phase, said pirate misses Leaf; Leaf hits back for 4 damage, and then misses I miss you Ike. In the south a pirate moves up to Havan, wisely deciding not to attack him, earning himself another turn of life.



Havan tries to capture the pirate, but math is hard and he survives with one hp.



Meanwhile, Leaf switches to his Light Sword and actually manages to do 12 damage to an enemy.





Tanya gets the kill, gaining +1 SPD, +1 Lck. Dammit Tanya, the one good thing about you is your decent growths, can't you do better than that?



I try to capture the second pirate with Fin, but math is still hard and they survive with 3 hp . You can still increase your reset votes if you want. Othin finishes the job, and then takes down another on the enemy phase, leaving one to the north.



Also on the enemy phase, some reinforcements show up to the right of our main force, and the pirate Havan let live fully heals with a vulnerary.



Othin kills one of the reinforcements with a long ranged critical (gaining +1 HP, +1 Spd, +1 Bld. Disappointing, but it'll do.) Fin succeeds in capturing another of the reinforcements, and Leaf takes the northern pirate down to 13hp.



Back in the south, Havan takes down the second to last enemy in the area. On the enemy phase Fin kills the last of the eastern reinforcements, and the northern enemy runs from Leaf of all people.





Between Dagda and Havan, we manage to capture the last enemy in the south.



Leaf scores a kill, and the rest of our troops congregate around him.



Oh fantastic, more reinforcements.







There's only so many ways to say Othin kills a pirate, so here's the cliff notes version. Over the next couple of turns Othin kills one guy, and weakens another for Tanya; Havan catches up to the main group and captures the third, getting +1 Mag, +1 Spd. It's always great or terrible with you, isn't it Havan?
I considered attacking one of the pirates with Leaf, but he would have reached an all time low of 3 damage per attack.



All we have left is the boss and his retinue of two archers. Tanya moves into the range of one, and everyone else forms up behind her.



Between the enemy phase and the player phase, Tanya kills and levels up on the first archer. +1 HP, +1 Str, +1 Lck. More strength is always welcome on Tanya, but overall that's pretty bad.



The second one moved into range while the other attacked Tanya, which proved to be a bad idea. With all enemies but the boss routed, let's visit the village, shall we?



Oh, you must be the Fiana Militia. Please, let me join you! I can use a bow. I promise I won't get in your way.
But you've never been in battle...
That doesn't matter! If we don't do something, we'll always have to live in fear of Lifis. I just can't take it any more!



Ronan belongs one place and one place only, and that's on the bench. Hey, at least he'll be keeping his promise that way

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Let me talk (or well, rant), about the structure to the left of Fin you can see in this shot. That's a shop. Right now, it's only selling one thing, vulnerarys, which I would buy if it weren't for one thing. I'm broke.

You see, there's only two ways to get money in this game. The first is to sell stuff of yours. But don't be mistaken, there are no vendor trash items, no red, white or blue gems. Anything you sell is something that you could have put to use. This is why capturing items is so important, you're either going to fight with the weapons you steal, or sell them at half-price for different weapons. (There is another way to make money, but it's tedious, risky and not always an option.)

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Getting back to business, I believe we had a boss to take care of.



Well shit. Bucks is no push over, he's already promoted, and his stats are pretty damn good. As well, he's on the same terrain Wiseman was (henceforth known as "fuck you" tiles) and gains a solid 10 defense and 30 avoid as well as HP regen. Unlike Wiseman, Bucks has the stats to make the evasion boost count, we're barely going to break a 50% hit rate against him. We also can't just cheese him with Leaf either; he could easily double and kill Leaf with his iron bow, whereas Leaf would be hard pressed to even touch the guy.



I put Othin in his range, and then end my turn, relying on wrath to take out the boss. This proves tougher than anticipated, turns out wrath can only proc on a hit, and so if Othin rolls a miss he doesn't get wrath. Seeing as how his hit rate is 50, this happens pretty often. As well, Othin only deals 15 damage on the critical, and has to deal with Bucks' passive regen.



He doesn't go down easy, it takes three vulnerary uses (one vulnerary can be used three times), and a little help from Fin to manage. In fact, after having Othin attack on the player phase, gambling on a hit which would have killed Bucks had it hit, I'm forced to rescue Othin with Fin or watch him die. Rescuing is kind of like capturing an ally, it allows a character to protect an ally from all harm and carry them with them, in exchange for the same stat penalties as capturing. The battle nets two level ups, Fin gets +1 HP, +1 MAG, +1 SPD, +1 LCK, +1 DEF, which is pretty great (I knew I could count on you Fin). Othin doesn't disappoint either, getting a fantastic +1HP, +1 Str, +1 Spd, +1 Lck, +1 Bld.



Finally he goes down, and Othin gets another level, bumping him up to level 5 (+1 HP, +1 Bld). C'mon Othin, I just finished talking about how great your last level was.

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My name is August. I am a traveling Blagi priest.

Continuity time! Blagi was one of the twelve crusaders, who were briefly mentioned in the prologue. The twelve crusaders were a group of people who fought against and defeated the evil Loputo Empire, way back when. They went on to establish the various noble houses of Judgral as they exist during 5.

Do you need something from me?
I heard you were planning to go to the pirates' island to help the villagers...
Yes, if we don't get rid of them now, they'll be sure to attack the village again. Also, I heard that there was a cleric kept captive on the island.
Very well. I shall escort you to the island.
You would?
Do not worry... I won't let you down. Leave everything to me.

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New recruits:

Ronan:



Hp: 40% Spd: 55%
Str: 15% Lck: 20%
Mag: 55% Def: 5%
Skl: 45% Bld: 2%
Mov: 3%

Class: Archer Weapon Ranks: E (bows) Movement stars: 3 Skills: Double

You can probably see why I was so dismissive of Ronan when he joined. Honestly, Ronan is an odd character. He's pretty much a mishmash of a bunch of different things, none of which add up to a character you need in any way. First of all, 15% strength vs. 55% magic is inexcusable on an archer. There aren't any magic based bows, and a mage-killer archer isn't such a valuable niche to be worth the fact that he'll be barely dealing damage. Some of his other stats are just plain bad, like his defense and build. Three movements stars is nice, but a terrible unit who moves more often just gets more chances to show how terrible they are.
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Total Resets: 0

Next time on Thracia 776: Hope you brought torches!_{Ha, you can't even have torches yet}