Part 12: Chapter 8x: Dadga's Mansion

You'll just be a hindrance. Shut your pretty little mouth and do as I say!

Well that's just kinda creepy.

Y-Yes, dad...



You're both gonna die here!
Gomes! I don't want to fight you. Let's talk...
I'm sick of this shit! What the hell are we accomplishing by working this worthless piece of land? I work my ass off day and night, and I'm still starving. You're just being tricked by that bitch, Eyvel.



Man, isn't Dagda supposed to be the good guy here?

All right then, show me what you've got! I'll take you all on!

---





Remember Battle before Dawn, where you had to save two characters separated from the rest of your troops? This is kind of like that, although at least this time we have control over Dadga and Tanya. On the other hand, Tanya isn't isolated like Nino was. Either way, we need to save them.

For those who don't read the thread, just the updates, today's sally consists of Leaf, Makua, Havan, Othin, Safy, and Lara.







They've been outfitted like so. Safy's psychic staff is going to come in handy in a pinch here, although Tanya is more likely to go from full health to dead over the course of one turn than anything else.



Leaf moves over into the western corridor to defend against any potential threats there. Everyone else heads east, simultaneously discovering an enemy and blocking him from any potential attacks from us.





Two brigands head toward Dagda, while a third, closer brigand attacks him.



He dies. Dagda's charge skill comes in handy here, it pretty much lets him keep fighting a brigand until it dies.



Tanya gets attacked, and nearly killed.

[Lv. 7, Hp: 23, Mgc: 1, Skl: 8, Spd: 15, Luk: 11, Def: 2, Bld: 4] Pretty mediocre.



Dadga takes down four more brigands. Shown here is him finishing off the last with a critical.



Leaf fights a brigand, bringing him down to 12hp.



On the other side, Havan kills a brigand. Someone's Havan some fun.



An archer attacks Leaf, taking him to 25hp. Why don't you guys Leaf him alone? _{I'm going to do this for every character, and there's nothing you can do about it .}



An archer comes out of the night/fog and weakens Havan.



Havan strikes back with a hand-axe.



And Makua finishes him. Looks like she's.. uh. Makuaing him pay? I may be in over my head here.

Meanwhile, Safy heals Havan. [Lvl. 9, Str: 2. Mgc: 8, Skl: 8, Spd: 8, Luk: 9, Def: 0, Bld: 3[/b]].





Leaf finishes off the brigand, while Tanya heals. Dagda steals Tanya's vulnerary and heals as well.





Tanya dodges two brigands, leaving her safe from any other attacks. (Dadga's blocking her front and she has her back to the wall.) Dadga kills a third.



The brigand hangs on with 1 hp.



Fortunately, he misses.



Back to us. Leaf does some meager damage to the enemy archer.



Makua kills the nearly dead brigand with a giant ball of fire.



This leaves everyone else to make their way through the narrow corridor.





Just one brigand left.



It's go time for the enemies. One attack Tanya, but misses. How hard can it be to hit someone who doesn't even have a melee weapon, seriously?





Othin does his thing to a brigand, while Leaf dodges the archer yet again.



Leaf finally kills the archer.



Our main force keeps on trucking.





Leaf kills a brigand with a critical.



Othin levels up by dodging a hand-axe.

[Lv. 11, Str: 8, Mgc: 0, Skl: 7, Spd: 13, Luk: 9, Def: 4, Bld: 16] He gets a thoroughly disappointing level up from it.







Havan attacks the brigand, while Othin equips a hand-axe to kill archers from a distance. Safy positions herself outside of any potential ranged attackers range. There are a couple of positions here that are safe from any archer, it's important to use them if you want to get Safy through Safyly.



Havan continues the trend of leveling up from dodging hand-axes. (Hand-axe's are awesome by the way, because their animation makes them out to be boomerangs. They just come back to whoever throws them. It's ridiculous.)

[Havan: Lv. 11, Hp: 35, Str: 10, Mgc: 1, Skl: 9, Spd: 10, Luk: 3, Def: 7, Bld: 14]





Speaking of hand-axes, Othin use his boomerang skills to kill one archer and hurt another. (The gif doesn't show the archer dying, but it does.)





On our turn, we finish both jobs.

[Makua: Hp: 28, Str: 6, Mgc: 2, Skl: 17, Spd: 18, Luk: 10, Def: 5, Bld: 7] It's not stellar, but Makua really needs strength to stay competitive, so I'm pretty happy about it.



With that done, Havan keeps moving forward.





Our turn. I feel like pointing out how strong these random brigands are. While most have weak and inaccurate hand-axes, the occasional brigand has a steel axe. Havan would have taken 18 damage in one hit (which is more than half his health, which is a lot considering Havan is fairly beefy as far as things go).







Nobody can reach Havan to take the captured brigand from him, so I have Dagda move up.



With Dadga having taken care of the brigand, Makua can take its place and form a wall alongside Dadga.



Holy shit, that's a lot of enemies out of nowhere. Not pictured is a brigand who attacked Dagda from a distance with a hand-axe. (On account of its being dead and all.)



The archer suffers a similar fate. Makua is thankfully unharmed, having dodged both the archer and brigand who attacked her from afar.



Dagda retreats and uses his last vulnerary to heal.



Makua retreats into a bottleneck, while Othin takes the captured brigand from Othin. He doesn't drop him yet, because Othin's inventory is full.





What did I say about steel axes? On a related note, oh god please don't die Makua





Either would have killed her, but neither had an accuracy above 25%. Seeing as how the first was 13%, I'd be well within my rights to call bullshit. (Incidentally, I reset once for the very same reason, Makua getting unlucky and hit multiple times by very inaccurate enemies. I'd been getting crap levels though, so it's all good.)



Lara takes the steel axe from the brigand, while Makua falls back and gets healed by safy.





Havan attacked the brigand with a hand-axe, missing once. This was actually what I was hoping for, as on the enemy phase Havan misses again, leaving the steel-axed brigand weakened and prime for capturing.



Equipping the hand-axe also lets me kill this guy on the counter-attack. I wish I could say I planned that, but hey, I'm not complaining.



Back to what I was saying. We capture yet another brigand (and his steel axe).

[Havan: Hp: 34, Str: 11, Mgc: 1, Skl: 9, Spd: 10, Luk: 4, Bld: 15] Not great, but no bad.



Two turns later, our units are making their way into the main room.



Makua dodges two brigands with hand-axes. The hand-axed brigands are pretty pathetic, they're only really a concern in that if a lot of them attack you at once, one or two may get through, which could easily kill you if a stronger, steel axe/bow wielding enemy's already hit you.



You see? This guy's only sporting a 10% hit chance against Makua.



With the nearest of the two dead, Othin is free to move into his spot and block off any potential threats from the north, while simultaenously being part of a wall against anything from the west. If any reinforcements come from the east, we're screwed. Wouldn't that be hilaraious.



A miss.



And another miss.



Only one hit connects.



Everyone else keeps pressing slightly west.



Havan actually gets hit here, taking him down to 27hp.





He survives attacks from both Havan and Othin, mainly because Hand-axes suck.



Both Leaf and Othin get attacked from a distance, neither gets hurt.



An archer comes out of nowhere and attacks Makua, again, he misses.



Othin tried to finish him via hand-axe, but missed twice.



Ugh, seriously?



Othin gets healed, and Tanya moves into position to fight the archer in the enclosed room.



Havan yet again dodges another hand-axe, while Leaf makes himself useful and does the same.





Tanya kills one archer, and has an archer contest through the walls with another. She's pretty Tanyacious. (Like tenacious_{like you could do better})

[Tanya: Hp: 24, Str: 6, Mgc: 1, Skl: 9, Spd: 15, Luk: 12, Def: 2, Bld: 4] That's just bad.



Guess what he does. (Here's a hint: it's not hitting)







He survives. I would have moved forward and used a melee weapon, but than the gap between the two rooms would be open.

Incidentally, Dadga rescues Tanya after she fails to kill the archer. If she had been hit by that archer, killed him, then hit by a second archer, she could have died the next turn due to poison damage (as the archers are using poison bows.) It's a long shot, but not worth risking.









Holy shit they're everywhere. Luckily, they all miss.



This guy hits though, leaving Havan with 10hp. Fortunately, there's no enemies out there to finish him.



So, he falls back and gets healed. (Or at least Safy attempts to heal him, she misses and then gets frustrated and goes for a smoke or something, I don't really know.)



Everyone else falls back slightly too, while Dadga drops Tanya.



All three of the greyed out brigands attack Makua with hand-axes but missed. Being the enemy must be incredibly frustrating in a Fire Emblem game, imagine fighting a small group of incredibly dodgy enemies. Hell, imagine what the game would be like if enemies were as accurate as you. Haha, imagine, that's a good one. 



He dies. Shocking, I know.

[Othin: Lv. 12, Hp: 36, Str: 8, Mgc: 1, Skl: 8, Spd: 14, Luk: 10, Def: 5, Bld: 16] Now that's what I'm talking about.



He doesn't die, unfortunately.



He hits once, but otherwise doesn't do very well.



Again, we fall back. This time, Safy actually managed to hit Havan with her giant glowy ball of healing.



I also decide the aren't any enemies to worry about, so I send Lara to go pilfer some chests.



A miss.



A death.



Another death.



This guy survives though.



Othin kills the brigand who attacked Makua.



Tanya is healed and goes back to fighting archers.

[Safy: Lv. 10, Hp: 16, Str: 2, Mgc: 9, Skl: 8, Spd: 9, Luk: 9, Def: 0, Bld: 3] C'mon Safy, are you actually doing this?

Meanwhile, Lara opens the nearby door.



He gets a level from dodging. [Othin: Lv. 13, Hp: 38, Str: 8, Mgc: 1, Skl: 9, Spd: 14, Luk: 10, Def: 5, Bld: 16] That's just terrible, it's not Othin you get an Othin with bad strength. (Actually it's fairly likely, he only has a 30% growth in the stat. Luckily, between wrath, and his high build (letting him use heavy but powerful axes without penalty), makes it fairly easy to cover for this weakness.



That'll do I suppose.



Lara's finally made it to a chest.



From here we get the Neir Scroll. Neir gives +10hp, +10 Str, +10 Def, and +10 Bld at the cost of -10skl. In short, Neir is awesome. (Just like the video game.) It's in high demand by every speedy but frail character.



A couple turns later, Lara is back to our main force, having given Neir to Makua. Leaf heads west, to scout for any hidden enemies. He finds one.



Nothing he can't handle though.



Leaf dodges an archer who attacked him though the northern wall.



I wanted to try and capture the brigand with the steel axe, so I had Leaf retreat a bit. This of course, made the brigand become hidden again, which lead to Othin killing him with a hand axe. I had hoped he would miss, but no dice.



Both archers miss Makua.



Things go poorly for him. He misses twice, and gets hit once.



Makua does much better than Havan.



Othin takes Leaf's place as scout.



He misses.



Dadga, Havan, and Makua close in on the archer. Othin keeps pressing into the dark, but doesn't find any other enemies.



[Makua: Lv. 13, Hp: 29, Str: 8, Mgc: 3, Skl: 18, Spd: 20, Luk: 10, Def: 6, Bld: 7] Makua's really turned it around this map. She's made up for her strength deficit, and she's picked up a fair amount of defense and magic (which is, of course, resistance as well).

Anyways, that was the last non-boss enemy. As always it's time to care of any loose ends. First, Othin and Tanya can talk.

---



You know, why can't you just say thanks? If we had come a little later..
What do you mean! You're the one picking the fight! ...You could also be a little...kinder...
W-Whoa! D-Don't cry! Um, so... I'm glad you're okay. Yeah...

Dagda and Leaf can also talk.

Dagda, are you all right?
Of course. But...I never thought you would come out all the way here. Is Eyvel with you?
......
What's the matter?
Eyvel... She's in Manster. We...couldn't save her...
What! What were you doing in there!?
I couldn't do anything! I...just couldn't...
......
If only I were stronger... If only I had more power...!
...It's all right. Stop blaming yourself.
But...
I'm sorry I shouted, I wasn't expecting such news. But you're a tough one... Forgive me, I was a little harsh.
Dagda...
Don't worry, I'll help you out from now on. I may not be as strong as Eyvel, but I'm still tougher than those youngsters. We'll go back and save Eyvel together!

---



From the two chests down here, Tanya gets a Devil axe and a Wrath manual. Before everyone starts yelling at me to give the wrath manual to Havan or Makua, I have to point out that IntSys is actually aware of how powerful the Wrath + Vantage/Ambush combo is, they just only ever bothered to nerf it in Thracia 776. If you give a character with Ambush Wrath, the ambush attack is treated as a normal attack, and then their second attack is given wrath. In short, you can never use wrath unless an enemy attacks you first.



Increases movement by two. God, this mission just loves giving me items that are too good to use, doesn't it?



And another Holy Water. Now it's time to take care of the boss.



Well fuck. Gomes is an absolute powerhouse, I really wish we could recruit him, he's that good. He's of course on a fuck you tile, which means we're dealing with 22 defense, as well as an excellent avoid. He also has one leadership star, and a movement star. I have no idea why Dadga was in charge, Gomes is much stronger than him. My plan to deal with the movement star is pretty much hope he doesn't get one.



His biggest weakness is his magic, and while Leaf's Light Sword is nearly broken (and he would be torn to pieces by Gomes), Makua's Fire Sword is pretty damn effective.



Actually, I'm not so sure.



One hit connects.



Havan rescues Makua, and then Othin takes the scrolls from the rescued Makua (for good levels and crit immunity), and waits with the Pugi equipped. Dadga takes Makua from Havan and drops her, so she can still move next turn. (I'm not sure I ever mentioned this, but dropped characters can't move until the turn after they got dropped.)



Not bad. Wrath pays off, dealing 14 damage.



Othin is healed, and then moves into melee range of Gomes, Pugi still equipped.



Makua takes the scrolls, and goes in for another attack. She leaves Othin Sety though, just in case.



That could have gone better.



She's rescued and dropped again.



Damn. Every turn we don't hurt him is another turn he recovers more health.



Makua is healed...



And then healed again. Did my heal staff just double? (Heal staffs have a (Speed+Skill+Luck)/2% chance of double casting)



Alright, let's do this.



Makua scores a crit, putting Gomes out of his misery





Oh...

[Makua: Lv. 14 Hp: 30, Str: 8, Mgc: 2, Skl: 19, Spd: 20, Luk: 11, Def: 5, Bld: 7]

Well geeze, everything about killing Gomes just kind of sucks, doesn't it.



---





Wouldn't have pegged Leaf for a Republican

They were abandoned as children and had no choice but to grow up to be bandits. They wouldn't have been able to survive otherwise.
What? Nonsense! What parents would abandon their own children?
Oh? You were traveling, yet you don't know the pain of starvation? Where did your food come from when you running from the Empire?
Food? I...don't know. But my hunger was always satisfied...
Hm, I see you were blessed with fine servants. But you don't understand the suffering of the people. Southern Thracia is covered with steep mountains. The soil is dry, and the climate is harsh. The farmers work day and night, but still they aren't able to feed themselves. Either they all starve, or they sacrifice a few to let the others survive. This is the truth, Lord Leaf.
Can't they import food from other countries? Northern Thracia didn't have a shortage in food at all.
Northern Thracia has placed tarrifs on the south. They are especially strict about agricultural trade.
What did they do that for?
The immediate reason lies in the war that happened one hundred years ago, but the situation continues to this day because the north and south don't try to understand each other. Also, Northern Thracian nobles are known to be especially greedy.
I've always been told that Thracia was a cruel, militant empire. But...they have their own troubles. Why? Why do they keep on hating each other? They used to be one unified kingdom...
That is the tragedy that lies behind the two sacred spears, the Gae Bolg and the Gungnir. People can become both wise and foolish depending on their leader. Lord Leaf, you have much to learn to be able to lead your country to a bright future. You must not make the same mistake as your father...

I like this scene, it's a nice bunch of realistic world-building, characterization, and moral ambuigity. Good stuff.

---

Current Resets: 6 8 (Unlucky critical )

Next time on Thracia 776: You know what the players like? Hoping low level characters don't die before they can save them, that's what!

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Note: There is no viewer partcipation right now. As next chapter is not a fog of war chapter, I'll be splitting the next update into two parts - an introduction to the map + voting, and the actual battle. The first part should be up soon.