Part 8: Mother and Child

Eyvel...
Thanks goodness you are alive... Are you hurt?
No, I'm fine... But Marita, she...
Marita!? What happened to her?
I-I don't know. We were seprated as soon as we arrived here...





You said you would let me see my daughter. Did you lie to me?
No, of course not. I'll bring you to your daughter. If...
Eyvel! Swordsmen are approaching us!



What!?



......
What's the matter, Eyvel? The swordsmen are approaching.
Eyvel...
...Lady Nanna, please stay behind me.

---

(Player Phase)
(Enemy Phase)



I can't stress this enough. Don't forget about Nanna and Eyvel. I was on the ball this time around, but last time I played FE5 I reset an unholy amount of times because I'd always forget to move Nanna and Eyvel once during the first couple of turns. (Eventually we're going to bottleneck in the staircase, so we don't have to worry about remembering to move them.)

This is important, because only Eyvel can actually fight the enemies, they'll completely butcher Nanna if they get the chance.



Nanna's still underleveled, and so she can't really fend for herself. Until we get Safy back she's going to be taking her place as designated healer, she's not quite as good at the job, but she'll do. You may also notice she's got a sword, Nanna is a troubador, which lets her use swords and staves (and horses when outdoors). Think Mist without the need for a promotion. Her Earth sword heals her for the amount of damage dealt, and I really wish I could give it to someone who's not Nanna. She's also got charisma, which boosts the Avoid and Accuracy of any allies within 3 spaces by 10.

We can also check out Berdo and Redric for the first time.



Well that's suitably intimidating. If you could actually reach him here, you could probably kill him though. You'd have to sacrifice 8 units, but still.



Pretty sturdy, but nothing incredible. This of course means he's hiding a gimmick (one which we will eventually see.)

Now to take a look at the map as a whole.



A whole hell of a lot of mages, and a sniper trying to pass himself as a mage are guarding the exit (which is currently impossible to access).



Nothing intimidating, although the bishop has a meteor tome. Also, there are two dark mages (well a dark mage and a dark bishop) guarding some treasure.



The general in the middle of the archers is a mid-boss.



Again, nothing too frightening. He's fairly strong, but otherwise not much of a threat.



The bishop here doesn't have a meteor tome.



And here we are, as well as another group of enemies. There's also a ridiculously out of the way chest.



Karin's going to bait out the mage and one of the armors. She's got good magic, so she seemed like a decent candidate for the job.



I remembered to move Eyvel and Nanna That means I won't have to reset.

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It is all up to that swordswoman... I certainly hope she is as powerful as the rumors go.

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(+1 Str, +1 Spd. Keep the strength coming Karin.) The mage misses Karin.



The mages are less stationary than you would have hoped, and are going to swarm us once they reach us.



Lifis steals a fire tome from the mage, I don't want to burn though any more uses of Grafcalibur.



He's... not as strong without it. He'll be fine once he gets a couple more levels under his belt. On that note, while Dalshin is getting the Sety Scroll like I said he would, I'm also going to be giving it to Asvel when I think he's going to level up soon. I'm not going to bore you with the navigation details of the scroll through my inventory, so it should suffice to say that every level Dashin and Asvel get, they get holding the Sety scroll.



Abandoning the mage for a while, I try to have Dashin capture an enemy sword armor to make up for our dwindling sword supplies. He can only do enough damage with the Devil axe, but I'm feeling dangerous



He misses, and then takes 13 damage.





Murder couple does their thing. I gave up on the long sword, no one but Dashin had the build to capture the armor.





Enemy time!



Eyvel takes the general out with a critical.



Karin brings the armor down to 11 hp with one of her quite terrifying crits.



Leaf takes twelve damage.



The mages continue on their march.



Yoink!



Lara goes to earn some EXP from the unarmed mage. She misses twice. Yes, that is a 96 hit.



Oh whoops, uploaded the same screen twice. Haha, nah, I'm just kidding, she missed twice again. I'm never listening to you again Keldulas



Leaf levels up from weakening the sword armor. He gets +1 Hp, +1 Spd, and +1 Def, which is pretty acceptable. He's left with 10hp, but he will have healed before anything else interesting happens to him.



Karin's going to get the long sword we pilfer here. Her iron sword's almost done with. Now for the mage.







(+1 Hp, +1 Str, +1 Skl, +1 Spd, +1 Def. Damn Karin, way to go.)

In the arena, I have Eyvel move into the bottleneck created by the stairs, with Nanna moving safely behind her.



Nanna heals Eyvel up.

---







Marita! Oh, Marita, you were all right! I'm so glad..





I'll...kill...you...all...with... this...sword...! Aaaaaahhhhhh!

Teenagers, am I right?

Marita...!
Well, what is it like to see your beloved daughter?
...What have you done to her?
Nothing. In fact, she was trying to escape, so I lent her a hand by giving her that sword. ...The Blade of Darkness, was it?
The Blade of Darkness...an evil sword... Are you trying to turn her into a crazed killer!?
There was a curse on that sword? Well...I never knew that.

Don't feel bad, how could you have known

Don't play dumb! ...Why, you...!
Shouldn't you be worrying about yourself? I hear that that sword is among the deadliest of its kind. Hahaha...!
Redric...! Marita! Wake up!





I don't think it's actually possible for Eyvel to die here, I think the RNG is rigged to keep her alive, because ~plot~.



Marita enters the ring, backed by a swordmaster.



On the player phase, I start by healing Eyvel and having her finish the Warrior. The rest of my troops keep on trucking, stealing a Holy Water, a Door key, and a heal staff from an unarmed cleric. The Holy water is the only interesting item here, which boots its user magic for several turns, starting at +7 and decreasing by one each turn.



A berserker shows up, while Marita and swordsmaster head towards Eyvel. Berserkers are pretty much swordmasters with axes, and are awesome.

---



She has the sword, why is she having so much trouble?



Her love for her mother is slowing her down. She's resisting the sword's power with all her might... Look, can't you see those tears?

This isn't just generic JRPG power of love, its also our first clue that Marita is awesome . We'll see more of that as the game goes on.

---



The player phase is boring.



Eyvel won't attack Marita, which is surprisingly nice and logical coming from Thracia 776.



A soldier from the grouping of enemies in the north-west attacks Makua but survives.



Dashin takes the opportunity to capture him, getting +1 Hp, +1 Lck, +1 Def.



Leaf moves up to act as a lure.



Did my heal staff just miss?







And here come the mages.



Leaf starts by finishing the soldier.



Asvel weakens the armor, and Dashin does to capture him. Say, what's 18-11?



Right. Why does this keep happening? I'm a damn math major, I gotta stop doing that.



Fergus finished off the armor, but we're still in trouble. The mage will kill Dashin, and there's no one who can reach him. Plan time!



I make a wall blocking off Dashin from any enemies. I should survive the turn, but next turn I'll have to deal with a bunch of mages with already weakened characters.







This is the second mage who attacked Bryton, but the first who actually hit.



I realized while making the update I almost died here. Admittedly, three 50% chances hitting isn't that likely, but still.



Hoo boy. This won't be easy. The mages will deal around 10 damage to anyone they hit, because all my characters (Karin excluded), have terrible magic. My plan is simple, kill as many mages as I can, taking as little damage as I can, to maximize my chances of surviving until next turn.



Karin starts us off. She's in the least danger out of anyone here, she can only take 4 damage and she has fantastic avoid. The mage goes down clean.



Asvel takes down one of the soldiers, he won't be much help against the mages.



(+1 Hp, +1 Str, +1 Skl, +1 Spd, +1 Def) Familiar, but still awesome.



Leaf takes the brave sword from Fergus. The brave sword is fantastic here because you can kill the mages without dealing with a counter attack.



Makua uses the Holy Water to protect her from the remaining mages. Lifis gives his items to Dashin (who healed with a vulnerary), and proceeds to become capturing bait for the soldier.



Two of the mages miss Leaf, the third hits him. The soldier does what I had hoped he would.









Lifis is stealing the mages thunder tome here.

Now that we have a thunder tome under our belt, we've got one of each of the three main types of magic. The three types of magic are roughly analogous to melee weapons; Thunder is strong, but inaccurate and heavy (Axes), Fire is weaker, but lighter and more accurate then Thunder (Lances), and Wind is the lightest and most accurate of them all. Except, since all mages can use all three types, the game mixes things up a bit. While Wind is the lightest and the most accurate, it's also only one point of MT weaker then Thunder, and stronger then Fire. This is balanced by making Wind incredibly rare.





(+1 Skl, +1 Lck. That's just plain not good.



And we've taken care of the mages. I'm pretty impressed I pulled that off



Nanna levels from healing Eyvel, earning +1 Hp, +1 Skl, +1 Lck



Lifis steals a heal staff from the bishop, while Asvel heads down to attack some of the enemies crowding Eyvel from a distance.



Fergus takes down the unarmed bishop (I wanted to feed this to Makua, but I couldn't get it to work, and the bishop started running as soon as I took his heal staff). (+1 Hp, +1 Str, +1 Skl, which is kind of dull but still good.)



Asvel misses the swordsmaster.



One of the archers from the middle group attacks Makua, but misses.



Compare Asvel with Grafcalibur to Asvel without it. It's insane.



(+1 Mag, +1 Spd, +1 Def. That's probably the best possible three stat level for a mage.)







Makua kills the archer, but ends up in range of Bandol and two archers. I don't want to deal with them yet, so Fergus rescues her.



And down goes the swordmaster.

+1 Hp, +1 Mag, +1 Spd, +1 Lck . What can I say, it's a pretty good level.



Another enemy shows up in the arena.



God damn, that can't be good. I'm not sure what Galzus showing up means, but I think it's time we break Eyvel out. And then run. Run like hell.

---







Lord Leaf! You came!
Thank you for protecting Nanna.
But... Marita is still...
Marita? Is something wrong with her?





N-No, wait, kill them! It will be my responsibility if they get away! Kill them! Kill them all!
Reidric, there is no need to panic. Leave it to me.





Eyvel's just got teleported to where Berdo and Reidric are, which is blatantly cheating, because he doesn't have a rescue or a warp staff.







Hahaha...
What a perfect statue we have here. Hahaha... All right, we have nothing to fear now! Kill them all! Don't let them get away alive!

And now Eyvel's been stoned. We're going to have to go get a supersoft to heal her. Wait, wrong game.



Not pictured (or even commented on by anyone), is Marita being warped away along with Berdo and Reidric. Probably a good thing, I'm not sure how we'd deal with the whole evil sword thing.

---





Well shit. This won't be easy.



God Grafcalibur, be less amazing.



Galzus thankfully leaves. What's his deal anyways? Beyond that, I put my genius plan into motion. Lara gives up her items, and prepares to be captured.



Well, that was downright Machiavellian of me





(+1 Skl, +1 Spd, +1 Lck. Not bad.)





A random mage opens up a wall leading to the exit and starts heading towards us. Let's reflect for a moment on the fact that a random glory seeking mage is the only reason we escape. This random mage has pretty much won us the war. We're still going to kill him, but we should remember what he's done.



His final contribution was to give Makua +1 Spd. You were a man of many contradictions, god speed random mage. While I was waiting for the mage to arrive, Nanna healed everyone.



+1 Hp and +1 Lck are her rewards.



Dashin moves into position to bait some of the archers.



He lures one, and takes 6 damage in the process.



+1 Hp. One bad level up amongst a lot of good levels up isn't so bad.



All three archers and Bandol move up and miss.





Fergus is using the armorslayer, which is why he's doing obscene damage to Bandol here.



+1Hp, +1 Mag, +1 Skl, +1 Spd, +1 Def. Asvel's coming along well, especially in Magic.



Movement stars rock. I'm sure you're all starting to see why Asvel is so great.



Karin takes the second last archer.



The last one does some promptly healed scratch damage to Leaf, followed by Makua hitting him.



We start moving forward, and Karin gets attacked from a distance by the bishop with meteor. I think about if for a while, and decide to use Karin to waste meteor's uses. We could try to rush the bishop and capture him to steal his meteor staff, but we'd have to deal with 4 fairly strong soldiers (~10 strength each, and an armor), while getting pelted by meteor, for around 17 damage for anyone not named Karin.



+1 Hp, +1 Str, +1 Spd. How much Strength is that by now? All I know is that Karin's doing pretty damn good.



Meteor's out of uses, so I start moving in. Asvel's going to take out the nearest solider on the enemy phase.



Or just damage him I guess. Makua finishes him.



Remember Lifis? He's finally found his way to the magic ring way out of the way.



Dalsin baits the second soldier, and then captures him on the player phase. Byrton's holding onto him here.



Asvel kills the third soldier after Dashin baits him, and Dashin captures the armor.



+1 Hp, +1 Str, +1 Lck, +1 Def. That Sety scroll really isn't paying off here. (This is on you voters, this is on you.)



The last soldier attacks Makua...



And spontaneously combusts.



Many turns late, Lifis steals a heal staff from the bishop.



And the damn coward starts running .



Lifis gets a movement star and manages to wedge his way in front of and bishop, and steal the broken meteor tome. It's still worth some chump change, even when broken.





Another healing level up (+1 Mag, +1 Skl, +1 Spd,+1 Def. Not bad, not bad.)



We don't want to get attacked by the dark bishop.



He's going to get away, nothing to be done for it. I move Asvel into range of the mage on the right.



He gets +1 Spd, +1 Def, and finishes off the mage next turn.



We've got an enemy sniper here to deal with. (Snipers are promoted archers). He's also got a Silver Bow, which gives him a hefty 21 attack. We don't want to mess with him, especially with the remaining mage next to him.



Fergus moves into the edge of his range, from here, only the mage or the sniper can attack him.









(I wanted to give this to Makua but she missed.)



+1 Hp, +1 Str, +1 Skl, +1 Spd, +1 Lck. I think Karin made better use of the level than Makua would have anyways.



Here's the plan to deal with the dark mages. Lifis is going to pick the lock, at which point Fergus is going to take one out with the brave sword to avoid a counter, and then Leaf is going to take the brave sword from Fergus and take the other.



I would try to capture the Dark Bishop, and get his Psychic staff, but I decide against it. He's got 25 attack, and a decent critical chance . (I rememebered while typing this up that Scrolls negate criticals. Whoops .



Empty level, damn it Fergus.



Movement star! +1 Str, +1 Lck. It's not a good level, but I find out later Fergus actually got a point of movement somewhere between these last two levels, which more than makes up for it. Also, anyone who can find out the stupid mistake hidden in the last couple of images gets double weighted votes. Either for a poll of their choice or multiple polls. I'll decide later based on how long it takes someone to get it.

As a side effect of being hit by Yotsmung, Fergus is poisoned. Poison gradually seeps away at a character's hp, until they die or it get cured. It doesn't wear of naturally. In this case it's not that frustrating, the maps almost done, but sometime in the future I will rage at this fact.

Anways, let's wrap this up. We get a skill ring from and a lockpick from the treasure chests, and a psychic staff from a still living healer. Nanna gets an unusual level (+1 Str, +1 Lck, +1 Bld) from healing Fergus' poison wounds, and we start escaping. Remember, don't let Leaf escape first. That wasn't a one time thing.





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New Recuits

Nanna:



Hp: 50% Spd: 35%
Str: 25% Lck: 55%
Mag: 10% Def: 15%
Skl: 40% Bld: 10%
Mov: 1%

Weapon Ranks: C (swords), E (staffs) Movement stars: 0 Skills: Charisma PCC:1

Nanna falls into the old trap of hybrid characters, she's not that great at either. Her low magic and staff rank makes her a worse staff user (although right now healing is all they do, staffs are a lot more powerful than that) than Safy, and she's not a great physical combatant either. That said, Charisma is fantastic, and having a healer who can heal and then move is really useful, so it's worth having her around. Also, now that I see her official art, Nanna is pretty much proto-Priscilla.

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Current resest: 0 (I think I've earned a (seriously though, I'm baffled at myself))

Next Time on Thracia 776: After three chapters, we can actually put our mounted units on horses. :woop