Part 4: Chapter 2x: The Pirate Isles

Or will you fight with us for the people of Tahra, Lifis?
Against the Empire!? No way, I'm better off committing suicide.
I know this is asking a lot... But handing out innocent children as sacrifices simply cannot be forgiven. We'll probably all be killed, but we have still chosen to resist. The citizens of Tahra are not just fighting for themselves... Our world will eventually be blanketed in darkness. If we don't stand up now, the world will fall to the dark god Lopto. Please, Lifis, we need your help! I want you to fight for Tahra, and for the future of our world!
...If I say okay, then will you do me a favor?
Yes, anything that I can do...
All right, I'll convince the boys and go to Tahra. But you better keep your promise.
Yes!

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But I'm sure there are torches somewhere. Do not worry.
All right, let's go. We can't be wasting time here!

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(Player Phase)
(Enemy Phase)



Welcome to the first sidequest of the game. Sidequests are bonus missions you get sent on if you fulfill a certain set of conditions in the previous chapter. In this case, 2x opened to us because we prevented any of the villages from being destroyed in Chapter 2. All in all pretty easy; as the game goes on it'll get harder and harder to unlock sidequests.

First thing you may notice is that the amount of the map we can see is several limited. This is our introduction to fog of war ("night" if you want to be technical), and if my memory serves is the very first use of fog of war by Intsys. That's right folks, even when you're not actually playing Thracia 776, it still finds a way to screw you over. The way fog of war works is that each character is able unveil tiles in a small radius around them, any tiles in an allied characters' vision range is revealed to the player. You can't unveil an enemy and attack them in the same turn, and if you run into an enemy while moving you'll stop in front of them. Veterans of Advance Wars and Fire Emblem may notice that fog of war seems to be working slightly differently here; not only does fog of war obscure enemies from sight, it also hides the layout of the map. This is, quite frankly, incredibly annoying. We're pretty much going into things completely blind, we can't take advantage of natural choke-points and the like when moving a character into the dark; nor can we use the terrain to predict where enemies could be hiding, or where they might be spawning from. (Oh and the AI cheats, but that pretty much goes without saying.)

To start off with, Eyvel and Leaf can have a little chat,



Do you know Lifis, Eyvel?
Yes... He's just another rogue, not even worth killing. Lord Leaf, when you capture Lifis, don't let him escape. We shall bring him back to Ith and make him apologize to the villagers.

Subtle. Luckily, for all the crap this game can throw your way, being deliberately misleading isn't something it does. We want to capture Lifis, we don't get anything for killing him.

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Our turn ends in a formation a little like this. Notice Fin being relegated to the back there, as a mounted unit, Fin can normally move further than foot soldiers, but also gets hit harder by unusual terrain like sand.



A pirate with a bow snipes Leaf on the enemy turn, somehow getting hit with an arrow makes Leaf a better fighter. (+1 HP, +1 Str, +1 Spd). Figures his first actually good level would be from an arrow. (Well, relatively good, it's hard to have lower expectations of Leaf than I do.)



Havan heads south to make room for Tanya to attack the pirate and Leaf ends up finishing him, going down to 16hp in the process. If you look in the middle of the attack window, you may see our snazzy new menu color. I've changed colors from the default grey to this somewhat more stimulating blue-black number, the game has extensive menu recoloring option, so speak up if there's something you'd like to see.



Down south, Havan reveals two pirates, while Leaf and Othin make a defensive line against any potential enemies. In the meantime, Fin slowly makes his way across the sandbar. It'll be normal terrain again soon, if the whole map were sand it'd be a good idea to dismount Fin.

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There's no way I'm going to Tahra. Shiva, that bastard! He's just a mercenary, so where does that soft spot come from?



What? Damn, this just ain't my day, is it? All right boys, go get 'em! Catch them and feed them to the sharks!

I don't really get why Lifis is in charge, he looks a lot less threatening than any of his flunkies. Who knows, maybe he's secretly really tough?

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Both pirates attack Havan, he somehow misses one twice, but manages to critical the other one before they can even move. Nothing else happens on the enemy phase (that we can see.)



I wanted to feed the surviving pirate to my weaker units for EXP, so I had Havan move out of the way. Unfortunately, I forgot that the entire map was covered in fog of war, and the pirate ends up being shrouded by fog



I do the next best thing by having Leaf move down to reveal the pirate, letting Tanya attack him. Not ideal, but it'll do.



There's nothing for Othin and Fin to do this turn, so they just slowly make their way eastward.



All's well that ends well as Leaf finishes off the enemy pirate on the counter attack.



There's still no other enemies to kill, so Havan bravely presses forward into the dark, while Leaf and Tanya go to rejoin our larger host. If I recall correctly, not much action goes down in Havan's part of the map, so he doesn't need the backup.



An enemy warrior shows up out of nowhere and deals some heavy damage to Othin. Thankfully he doesn't have any backup, so there's no real reason to be worried. As well, he attacked with his bow, which means he can't use his axe to counter at melee range.



The warrior just so happens to be carrying a torch, so it'd be to our advantage to capture him. Othin tries to weaken him, but misses (he only got one attack too, this guy ain't going down easy).



Unfortunately, Fin can't do enough damage to capture him. We could weaken him and try again next turn, but he could bring Othin down to 3hp, and we don't know if he's got any allies that could finish the job.



It's in our best interests to just cut our losses and kill him. Even though Othin could only attack once (and missed), Fin gets four attacks with a 98% hit rate, which goes to show how powerful Fin is at this point in the game. He also gets a critical, but it was on his third attack so it wouldn't have helped us capture the enemy.



Havan moves up onto a nearby fort, which just so happens to have some torches up for the taking. I don't really know how you were supposed to know to do this, the only reason to move onto a fort is to take advantage of the terrain while fighting, and there aren't any enemies around.



Except for the two Fin takes down on the enemy phase that is.



Havan uses his torch, providing us with a better view of the map. Every turn the effective radius of the torch goes down.



There's also two more pirates in the western corner. Havan's going to take care of those guys, so the rest of our party can feel free to move to the bridge. It takes two turns, one to move everyone towards the bridge, and another to place Othin on the bridge as a roadblock. I also send Leaf south from the bridge, if my memory serves (hint: not really), some enemy reinforcements should start showing up there about now.



A lone archer attacks Othin, he realizes his mistake on the player phase. Luckily, Othin is feeling merciful, and captures him instead of killing him.





Everyone continues pursing their objectives: Havan makes contact with the enemy group to the west, successfully capturing one; Leaf slowly moves down south, and the rest of the gang makes a formation on the land across the bridge.



Othin captures an archer that attacked him (the only enemy movement in his area), but nobody can reach him to take his captive from him. Hopefully nothing particularly dangerous is waiting in the void. Meanwhile, Leaf continues his search for enemies to kill, and Havan moves into the range of some nearby foes.



I don't know what I was worried about.



+1HP, +1 SPD, +1 Lck, +1 Bld. An above average level up too! Everything's coming up Cake Attack!



Leaf finally encounters the enemy, doing surprisingly well for himself. He also dodges an arrow from an archer.



Havan's not doing quite so great for himself, although he is trying to capture the enemy.



I run some numbers and decide that putting Leaf on the offense against the two pirates is a little risky. He probably would have survived, but no sense leaving it up to chance. Instead, I have him retreat and head towards our main force. I don't know why I thought this solo expedition was a good idea, maybe I thought all Leaf needed was for someone to believe in him?

Two enemies fall to Havan and Othin on the enemy phase, while the archer both pursues and misses Leaf.



I take the chance to show off a function of the Light Sword that I totally remembered because I'm a competent LPer and didn't just rediscover by accident. Lies aside, the Light Sword can actually function as a vulnerary for Leaf, at the cost of one use. Definitely worth it.



Havan waits on a fort, gaining another torch.

A whole lot goes down on the enemy phase.



First off, a pirate comes out of nowhere to attack Dagda. This'll keep happening for the next couple of turns, I'm just going to let Dadga and Eyvel take care of them. (This is why jeigan characters aren't bad, they're incredibly useful in situations like this.) Then, Leaf takes some damage from the archer pursuing him, and some pirates start assaulting the main force from the sea to the south.



Leaf meets up with our main force, while Havan captures a random mook. Fin captures the one pirate, revealing two more.



Pirates keep coming from the south; dodging their hand axes nets Fin +1HP, +1 Def. Dissapointing! Fin's stats aren't actually that bad, the stat penalties from carrying the captured pirate show up on the level up screen as well. Leaf gets hit yet again by the archer chasing him.



Leaf attacks one of the pirates, and gets hit with a 12% chance, knocking him down to 12hp. Luckily he gets another turn, so he can just heal fully using the Light Sword. (I wouldn't have died regardless, this just made things easier.) Othin captures the archer who was chasing Leaf (Othin's high PCC makes him great at captures, because the near guaranteed crit helps make up for lower strength.)



I have a plan here. You see, hand-axes have next to no accuracy and are fairly weak, so the group of pirates coming at us from the south are pretty much harmless. They're also the only enemies we even have to worry about; and so I decide to let them waste their time attacking Fin (Fire Emblem AI prioritizes no counter attacks above nearly everything else), while Tanya and Leaf score some easy kills. There's also a couple of enemies left in Havan's territory, but he can take care of them no problem.



Case in point. +1 Def, you're killing me here Havan. (He's not actually doing so bad compared to his averages, Strength is the only stat he's noticeably behind in (-2 points)).



Using his torch, Havan reveals the only enemies he has to worry about in his area, leaving us free to continue farming some easy EXP for Leaf and Tanya.



+1 HP, +1 Lck. Speaks for itself, really.





+1 HP, +1 Str, +1 Spd, +1 Lck. Speaks for itself too, although this time in a good way. (Okay, it's not that fantastic but Str is always welcome on Tanya.)



Fin gets another level just by dodging, this time getting +1 Hp, +1 Spd.









Between our two forces we kill around 10 pirates, Leaf getting +1Hp, +1 Spd, +1 Lck which isn't so good, and Tanya getting +1 Skl, +1 Spd, +1 Lck, which is also pretty bad. What Tanya really needs is build, without build she's going to be taking heavy speed penalties if she wants to use strong bows later on.



Finally, we can press on. On the enemy phase an archer misses Havan, on the player phase Tanya kills him with a critical.



Havan leads the charge, revealing a nearby swordsman.



Oh dear. I'm glad we've exposed him though, I couldn't remember exactly how Shiva behaved, and so I've been worried that he'd pop out of nowhere and take one of our characters out. I'm pretty sure he's stationary, but never hurts to be cautious. And even then, if our last character to act ended up being interecepted by Shiva, we'd have been in trouble.

The reason why I've been so worried about Shiva is his weapon. Shiva is equipped with a Killer Edge, a weapon that boosts critical chance by 30%. Did I mention Shiva has a PCC of 4? Because he does. And he can use it without speed penalties, so he's bringing a full 12 attack speed to the table. Shiva's pretty much a 120% crit chance waiting to take us out. And we can't kill him, we have to capture him (or avoid him, but I want that killer edge, and I can't remember if he moves or not.)



That was a fairly long build-up for what ends up being fairly uninteresting. Leaf does 12 damage with his Light sword,



And Fin captures him. Admittedly, things could have gone terrible wrong if Fin missed twice (or if Leaf missed).







I don't think leaving without doing anything for us counts as "owing" us Shiva. Anyways, Shiva was pretty much the last threat left on the map, so with him gone, it's home free. Fin kills one myrmidon on the enemy phase, and Othin captures a second on the player phase.



Another myrmidon and a warrior appear. Fin captures the former and Othin kills the latter. He gets +1 Hp, and +1 Lck. Hurray, two stats again!



The map is pretty much over now, all that's left is to take care of Lifis.



He's not particularly tough, or particularly armed for that matter. What he does have that's interesting is the Hezul Scroll. The Hezul Scroll is one of twelve crusader scrolls, placing one in a character's inventory gives them a net boost of +30% to their growths. For the Hezul scroll, this comes in the form of +30% Hp, +10% Str, and -10% Lck.



Turns out unarmed units can be captured without a fight, and so taking care of Lifis and finishing the map is trivial.

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Lord Leaf! Have you forgotten me? I'm Safy, from Tahra!
Safy...? The girl at the monastery in Tahra...her name was Safy.
I have only met you a few times, so I don't blame you for not remembering me. But I remember you, Lord Leaf. I was the one who comforted Lady Linoan when you left Tahra...

(Just for the record, most of these names are new. Linoan wasn't a character in 4)

Oh, right... You were Linoan's friend. You were the bishop's daughter, weren't you?
I couldn't be her friend... Lady Linoan is the daughter of the duke of Tahra. I am but her servant.
What are you doing here? Is Linoan doing well?
Don't you know what happened to Tahra, Lord Leaf? Tahra was under the Empire's control after the duke passed away, but it has been horribly corrupt. They even started the child hunting this year.

Child hunting...

The citizens couldn't take it, so they started a rebellion with Lady Linoan as the new duchess. They hired mercenaries and bribed the higher-uppers of the Empire in an effort to win their freedom, but King Blume wouldn't allow it, and Tahra was surrounded by Imperial troops. The mercenaries feared Empire's power and fled, leaving only a small number of citizen warriors putting up a hopeless struggle. I have been sent by Lady Linoan to look around Thracia for people that would fight for Tahra.
Tahra has been in such a bad situation...? The duke of Tahra hid me for five years before he was executed by the Empire...I will never forget my gratitude for him. I'll go to Tahra, I'll save it! Let's go, Safyy.
I have nine whole people in my army. Seven of them are actually any good! What could go wrong?
Yes, Lord Leaf! Thank you!



Hey, what's going to happen to me?

We're turning you over to the villagers. They'll decide your fate.
H-Hey, wait a minute. If the villagers get a hold of me, I'll be killed! C'mon, let me go... Please, Safy. I promised I'll go to Tahra, right?
Lord Leaf, this man isn't as evil as he seems. I know piracy is an unforgivable act, but he already realized his mistake. Please help him.
Well, if Safy says so... All right, we'll see how you do for a while.



...Wait, if that kid's really the prince, then I can also turn him in to the Empire for a hefty reward... Well, I guess I'll think it over. It'll all be after I get Safy in my hands...

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New Recuits

(Technically they don't join until the start of next chapter, but I figure I might as well jump the gun a bit)

Safy:





Hp: 35% Spd: 40%
Str: 30% Lck: 5%
Mag: 60% Def: 3%
Skl: 45% Bld: 2%
Mov: 0%

Class: Priest Weapon Ranks: C (staves) Movement stars: 0 Skills: None PCC: 1

Safy is our party's very first healer, and she's one of the better candidates for the job. She's got excellent magic, and most of her other growths are good as well. Defensively she's terrible, but if your healer is being attacked, you've done something wrong. She also has the incredibly valuable repair staff, which is unique to her. The repair staff allows her to repair any item to full durability (except for repair staffs.) There are a lot of powerful weapons in this game (we've already seen the Brave Lance/Axe, the Pugi and the Light Sword), and being able to fix the best of these is amazingly useful.

Lifis



Hp: 65% Spd: 45%
Str: 35% Lck: 5%
Mag: 10% Def: 15%
Skl: 25% Bld: 10%
Mov: 2%

Class: Thief Weapon Ranks: D (swords) Movement stars: 2 Skills: Steal PCC: 0

Lifis isn't exactly cut out for combat, which is okay, because that's not what we need him for. Lifis is a thief, which means he can use his lockpick to open chests and doors; as well as steal items from enemies. To successfully steal, he'll need higher speed than his enemy, as well as higher build than the items he wants to steal's weight. Honestly, capturing tends to be more convenient. Lifis himself is okay as a thief, he'll do for now, but there's another character I prefer.

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It's viewer participation time!

Now that Lifis has joined our gang, a very interesting item has fallen into our hands. The Hezul Scroll gives +30% to a character's HP growth, as well as +10% to their strength, and -10% to their luck. My question to you is who do we want to hold onto the Hezul Scroll for the time being? Keep in mind the scroll is not a consumable and so can be passed around as much as we like.

And yes, scrolls do stack.

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Current Resets: 0

Next time on Thracia 776: Cartoonishly evil Empires!