Part 5: The Gates of Kelvas

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All four of them... we could probably find a better place to do this.
Good. Keep them there until the Lopto Church comes to pick them up. Make sure to be on your guard, because the Magi group might come to claim them as well.
Magi group? Oh, the rebels from Manster... They were still operating?
I thought I had killed them off, but they seem to have recovered somehow. Apparently they have a new leader. Irritating little pests.
Indeed. Are you going back to Manster, my lord?
No, I think I will stay here for a little bit...I'm tired from the long journey. I should be able to rest without worry in this impregnable fort. The fort is impregnable, right?
Well it has a door.
An impregnable door?
No... just a door.
We have the worst forts. I'll leave the rest up to you, Lobos.
Yes, my lord.

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It is now the headquarters for the child hunting...
Child hunting? They literally hunt children? Who runs the place, their puppy strangler?
All children between the ages of 7 to 13 are kidnapped and sent to the Imperial capital of Barbara. Once there, they are reborn as followers of the dark god Lopto.
What? No... That does make more sense though.
It's the truth. Many children are being captured and locked up Fort Kelves as we speak.
Such...inhuman behavior...! August, I'm going to rescue the children. I'm sorry, but we'll have to separate here.
Yes... Then let me give one last bit of advice. You won't be able to enter the fort on horseback, so dismount your horses before going in. Also, the children can't move, so carry them back to their homes. The villagers will be very grateful to you if you do. Good luck, Prince Leaf.
!? ...August, you knew that I was the prince?
Of course. I wish to help you rise back to power, Prince Leaf. Farewell for now...let us meet again in Manster.

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(Player Phase)
(Enemy Phase)

Let's take a look at what we're up against.



There's a decent sized garrison inside the fort for us to fight. Of particular note is the fellow in the long robes, he's a fairly powerful magic user, and has a particular trick up his sleeve we'll see soon enough.



The fort is guarded by some archers, some soldiers and a bow armor. Not pictured is a soldier and a mage to the west. There's also a group of four villages, we can't get anything from them until we've rescued the children.



We start near a small grouping of three enemies; none of which are any particular threat.



Othin proves this by cutting the nearest one down.



Leaf moves into the range of the archer. Take note of the terrain he's on, the lighter green trees represent forests, which boost evade by 20 and defense by 2. Forests are fairly common and pretty powerful, if you can fight an enemy (or set up a formation) on a forest you should.



The rest of my viable troops start heading toward the fort.



Othin kills a soldier with wrath, while the archer undoes my brilliant plans by attacking Eyvel instead of Leaf.



I improvise and have Dagda weaken the archer, letting Leaf finish him off.



As requested, Leaf holds onto the Hezul Scroll.



Everyone else continues to move up. On the enemy phase the nearby soldier approaches us, but doesn't get close enough to do anything. We effortlessly cut him down, with the eventual kill going to Tanya.



+1 Str, +1 Skl, +1 Spd. Stength is always welcome, and speed is pretty good too, but she needs some build if she ever wants to be viable.

You see, one of the cruelest things Thracia 776 does to the player is cap all stats at 20. This changes character dynamics a fair bit from other Fire Emblems; for example, lower growth rates are more acceptable (especially for characters like Othin, who have a kick-ass axe and skill to help them fight), because at the end of the day you don't need as many points in a stat to cap it. This can go the other way though; it also makes it a lot harder for one high growth to compensate for lower growths. Herein lies Tanya's problem. Her speed will cap at 20, which isn't high enough to offset the fact that most bows will tear into her attack speed. At level 1 2nd tier, if she wants to use a Steel Bow, she'll be taking a 6 point attack speed penalty (on average), essentially giving her 14 speed. You should see where I'm going with this, her greatest asset is heavily neutralized by one of her weaknesses. You'll eventually have a decent amount of control over who we field, so keep this in mind.



Enough though, we've got some killin' to do. I don't want to split our forces, so after Tanya kills the soldier, I have my front line wait while Leaf, Othin and Rifis catch up. Like in 2x, Eyvel and Dagda are going to be the rearguard. On the corresponding enemy phase, two soldiers and an enemy made head towards our troops.



Leaf waits in the range of both the mage and one of the soldiers; even together they don't pose a threat to him.



Leaf takes the soldier down to 15hp, and takes the mage down to 5hp with a critical. Magic is pretty simple, it can attack at 1-2 range, and uses the magic stat to determine both Attack and Defense. There's some other stuff too, but nothing that will really be important until we've got a mage of our own.





Leaf kills the weakened soldier (after Tanya takes him down to 1hp), and Othin captures the mage.(+1 Hp, +1 Lck. Whatever, it'll do. Also I'd feel bad if I complained about a mediocre level after a long spiel about why high growths aren't that important for Othin.) I have Havan weaken the second soldier with a hand-axe.



Say what!? Leaf's movement star procs, letting him kill a second soldier. (+1 HP. That Hezul scroll's really paying off there buddy.) Nothing happens on the enemy phase. We still have the two archers and the soldier guarding the fort's door to take care of.



Fin charges the soldier and captures him.



The two archers attack us, neither hit.



Leaf kills one with the help of Tanya, and Havan takes the other. +1 Skl, +1 Spd



Lifis uses his lockpick to open the door. Lockpicks only have 30 uses. You...you don't want to run out. Havan moves up into the bottle neck, everyone else ends up outside the fort.





Havan kills one soldier, but doesn't manage to finish off the sword armor. Tanya gets attacked by the bow armor. (Her terrible stats are on account of having a broken bow equipped. I make sure to switch to a good bow later.)





Take lots of prisoners .



Fin is forced to dismount; wouldn't want to get the enemies fort dirty.



This is what healing looks like. We're going to be doing a lot of this.



Leaf enters the fort, and moves himself into range of the soldier.



On the enemy phase, two brigands show up. They're going to make a beeline for the villages, and they'll going to be spawning for quite some time. Luckily, Dagda and Eyvel are in place to take care of them. Meanwhile, Leaf brings the soldier down to 16hp.



Oh crap. Remember how I told you to watch the guy in the long robes? This is why. He's just unlocked the door in the upper-right, and next turn he's going to pillage the chest (he has a set of 20 chest keys.) Why is this a bad thing? Inside the chest is a meteor tome. The meteor tome is a long range (3-10 tiles) magic weapon. If we don't take care of him, we'll have to deal with being sniped from a range while we fight. Furthermore, each use of meteor is one less use for us. (Seige tomes only have 5 uses.)

So, here's what we're going to have to do. We'll have Lifis unlock the door on the right, then we'll send our heavy weights (Othin/Havan/Fin), to take care of him. He can only do 16 damage at most, and so we can shrug off one or maybe even two hits. Furthermore, seige tomes are incredibly heavy, and once we reach him it'll be an easy kill. Let's move.



Hell yes (The music note means a movement star has given you a second turn)



Yoink!



General healer protocol in Fire Emblem is to heal every turn, even if it's only 1 point of damage caused by gaining a point of HP upon leveling up. I haven't really been doing this, and I'd like to say it was for some strategic reason like to preserve heal staff uses, but in truth it's muscle memory. Wait is on top of Staff in 5's menu, which is backwards and incredibly annoying. This'll get me killed one of these days, mark my words



With that out of the way, Havan captures the soldier Leaf weakened. (+1 Hp, +1 Str. You know, saying lower growths are acceptable wasn't a challenge Fire Emblem.)



All right! He would have survived the attack, but this makes things more convenient. Meanwhile the nearby enemy soldier moves towards Havan. On the player phase, Lifis moves out of the range of the enemy bishop, and Leaf kills the soldier by activating continue. Othin moves up to the front of our forces.



Weapon triangle be damned, Othin effortlessly takes down a sword armor with a critical.



Tanya weakens the remaining soldier, while Leaf moves into position to finish him on the enemy phase.





He's tougher than I gave him credit for, he deals 11 damage to Leaf's 5 on the enemy phase, forcing Leaf to put him down with the Light Sword. (+1 Hp, +1 Str, +1 Lck, +1 Bld. Essentially what I said earlier about him making good use of the Hezul Scroll, but without the sarcasm.)



Othin moves into the very edge of the bishop's range, luring him out. The bishop is fairly dangerous; if you attacked him on the player phase and got unlucky, he could end up killing you on the corresponding enemy phase.



While this is going on, a soldier spawns in the corridor next to the treasure room, and approaches Leaf.



As strong as the bishop is, he doesn't have much in the way of defenses, making for an easy capture. On the enemy phase Leaf kills the soldier, with the help of a vulnerary used on the player phase.



Surprise reinforcements! This time it's a sword armor coming from the corridor to the right of the treasure room. He attacks Havan, things go about as well as you would expect for him. (+1 Hp, +1 Str, +1 Bld. I like to grumble about bad level ups, but honestly, Havan's done a good job of making up for his strength deficiency this chapter.) With all non-reinforcements dead, we can start taking care of loose ends. Lifis goes to unlock the prison door and start rescuing children, while Safy heals Othin. Safy also ends up with the chest keys in her possession. (Most of our characters' inventories are filled with pillage loot.)



Safy heads toward the treasure room. If you're observant, you may have already noticed the mistake I've made.



...Oh Shhh-



Oh thank god, I've held on to my 0 resets. See, capturing is actually a two way street, enemies are perfectly capable of capturing your units. For the most part this doesn't really come into play, most enemies realize they wouldn't stand a chance attacking your units with halved stats. But, when it comes to units like Safy, they can easily capture her without penalty (as she's unarmed). So, that's what they'll do. That said, we're far from out of the fire yet. If the Sword Knight leaves the map with Safy captured, she's for all intents and purposed dead. Furthermore, he's looted her inventory (minus the repair staff, enemies can't loot unique weapons), and so we need to capture him next turn if we want both of those things back. On a less interesting note, Leaf gets attacked by the soldier. He'll be dead next turn.



Crisis averted, good job Othin. Reinforcements stop coming about now, so we no longer have any random enemies to deal with, letting us go back to dealing with loose ends. More specifically, we've got to save the children. To do so, we have to rescue the children, and then carry them to the group of villages in the south-east. This is kind of a nuisance, because you have to take each child to a specific village, not just drop them off in any old village. To foreshadow a bit, this is a strongly diluted form of one of the hardest (non-mandatory) objectives in the game (I'll be doing it of course).

Skipping ahead a bit, let's see what happens as we visit the villages.

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Here, take this magic ring... You deserve it.

We get a shield ring. Shield rings boost defense by two.

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Ah, Master Corple! I'm relieved to see you back in one piece! This child is on mission from an important person, but he was mistaken for one of the villagers. It would have been a disaster if something happened to him. Thank you very much.

Corple was a playable character from the second half of 4, and is the son of Claude, who's pretty much the head guy of the Blagi church.

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We get the Baldo scroll, which boosts various growths by 5% each. (Hp, Str, Skl, Spd, Lck, Def)

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My older brother is a knight serving the empire. If you see him, please tell him what Yuvel went through. I'm sure he'll help once he hears the truth. His name is Dalshin.

Well, I don't think that will ever be relevant.

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Lobos is hardly a threat. He's got low stats, and neither of his weapons are all that powerful. As well, the introduction of Safy has given us a whole new boss killing strategy. We can just attack him at a range, while using Safy to heal our attacker. If you've played other Fire Emblem games, you may be expecting this to end in disaster, however Lobos' long bow is not the same longbow from 6-10, and doesn't give him a three tile range. Lobos' class is a new one, he's a promoted armor (all armors promote to general, and gain use of all melee weapons upon doing so.)



Our strategy pans out pretty well. I feel like pointing out that I can't actually damage Lobos without a critical.



And he's dead! Othin gets +1 Str, +1 Bld. Over two levels. (He leveled once while fighting Lobos.) I will say one thing, he's got fantastic build. Before I finish the map, Safy opens the two chests. In one I get the previously described Meteor, in the second I get an armorslayer, a sword that deals effective damage to armored enemies. It takes a B rank though, which means Eyvel is currently the only character who can wield it.



And we've taken care of every threat, time to seize the map and walk away triumphantly!

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Oh. Right. Reidric.

Put down your weapons if you want this girl to live!
Nanna!? Reidric, you...!



Damn... ...All right... I'll drop my weapons. So don't hurt her!
Hahaha... It's nice to see obedience. All right, capture Prince Leaf! Don't forget his friends, either!



Eyvel said that? All right, we'll have to retreat for now. Lord Leaf, I promise I will go rescue you!"
Damn, is this it...?
Damn... Leaf! We'll go rescue you. You better not die until then!
Dear God, please protect the prince...
What, the prince was captured? Damn... Guys! Let's pull back to Purple Dragon Mountain. Guess we'll have to gather all the boys and attack Manster by force.

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Current Resets: 0

Next time on Thracia 776: The gloves come off